The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Spiritual Science as a Synthesis of Science, Intelligence, and Clairvoyant Research

[ 1 ] Today I would like to speak from the perspective that we are currently living in an age in which human development makes it necessary for our understanding of spiritual life to be based on principles similar to those upon which the understanding of external nature was founded three or four centuries ago. Spiritual Science, as understood here, feels driven by the impulse to achieve for the spirit and its understanding something similar to what figures such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno achieved in their time for the understanding of external nature. Anyone who feels imbued with such an impulse must, however, accept that in our time the Spiritual Science referred to here encounters resistance and hostility of the same kind as the scientific understanding and mode of thought mentioned above did, and that this direction of Spiritual Science will be incorporated into cultural life just as slowly and amid just as many difficulties as was the case with the other, related direction.

[ 2 ] In order to explain what needs to be said from this perspective, I must, however, start from the premise that the sources of research into spiritual life lie in a mode of activity of the human spirit that is still unknown—or at least unpopular—in the broadest circles today. What is called clairvoyant research is indeed the foundation of Spiritual Science from whose perspective I would like to speak to you this evening.

[ 3 ] It is not only by heaping prejudice upon prejudice against what might be called clairvoyant research that this research is brought into disrepute. It is also brought into disrepute by the fact that the concept, the very idea of this clairvoyant research, is currently being widely abused. Therefore, I wish to note right from the outset that I will certainly not be speaking from the standpoint of occult knowledge, as it is so often touted today in a charlatanish manner, but rather of that clairvoyant, occult knowledge to which even a person who today stands entirely on the ground of serious scientific research and makes the results of genuine scientific facts the foundation of their knowledge can profess to adhere. In terms of its inner logic and mode of thinking, the Spiritual Science referred to here is very much in the current established by scientific concepts. In terms of the field to which it pertains, however, it differs significantly from natural science, for natural science relates to the external sensory life, to the physical facts of the environment, whereas Spiritual Science relates to that field which must necessarily remain hidden from natural science—the field of spiritual experiences and spiritual beings. That is why it is also impossible to explore the realm of spiritual facts and spiritual beings using the human faculties and methods with which science has celebrated ever greater triumphs in recent centuries and continues to celebrate them in our time. For the study of nature, in fact, only those spiritual powers and abilities are utilized that are inherent in human beings by virtue of their being placed in this world in a certain way and being educated and guided by their fellow human beings in the normal manner to develop certain abilities. With these innate and acquired abilities, which are entirely sufficient for the external sciences, one cannot gain any insights into the spiritual world. For this, it is necessary to draw out from the human soul abilities that, in ordinary, so-called normal human life, lie as it were slumbering in the depths of the human being, resting—one might say, to use a scientific term—in a latent state. All the efforts and methods that a person imposes upon themselves to explore the external world of facts in the way that is immediately possible in life—all these efforts are not initially used by the spiritual researcher for research at all, but rather to place their own soul in such a state that the abilities and powers slumbering within it emerge for the spiritual world, and only after they have been brought forth through ordinary human powers do they become effective for the cognitive powers of the higher world. For example, in ordinary life and in ordinary science, we apply the mental images we can form in our souls to gain knowledge of the external world. As a spiritual researcher, one cannot do this at first. One must apply one’s imaginative life to efforts that take place entirely within the inner life and aim to develop abilities entirely different from those found in ordinary life. To make myself perfectly clear on this point, I would like to resort to a comparison, not to prove anything at first, but to clarify what I have said. I would like to say that the correspondence between Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, and the scientific mode of thinking is precisely evident in the fact that this Spiritual Science attempts to penetrate the spiritual worlds through a kind of spiritual chemistry. When we have water before us, we cannot tell by looking at it that the chemist is able to separate this water into hydrogen and oxygen. Water is a liquid; water does not burn. The hydrogen that the chemist separates is a gas; it burns; it is something entirely different. This is the comparison I would like to draw for a process of spiritual life that I shall discuss shortly. When we have a human being before us in ordinary life, we have united within them the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily, just as we have united hydrogen and oxygen in water. In what I would like to call “spiritual chemistry,” it is our task to separate the spiritual-psychic from the physical-bodily, just as in the physical realm the chemist separates hydrogen from water. And it is only natural that one can gain no insight into the nature of the spiritual-soul aspect by observing the ordinary human being, just as one can gain no insight into the nature of hydrogen by observing water.

[ 4 ] The methods used to truly look within ourselves—for this spiritual experiment in spiritual chemistry can only be conducted within ourselves—to separate the spiritual-psychic from the physical-bodily within ourselves are technically referred to as concentration and meditation. This meditation, this concentration, are not some kind of miraculous spiritual acts. They are merely spiritual acts heightened to the highest degree, which also occur in their lower, elementary forms in ordinary life. Meditation is a devotion of the soul heightened to the infinite, as we experience it, for example, in the most beautiful feelings of religious life, and concentration is attention heightened to the infinite, as we must also apply it in an elementary way in ordinary life. In ordinary life, we call it attention when we do not allow our mental images and our emotional life to wander at will over the objects that make an impression on us, but when we summon the will to direct our interest with our soul specifically toward a single object, to single it out from the field of our perception. This attention can be heightened to the infinite, namely by the fact that, through an inner act of will on the part of our soul, certain specific mental images—which can be provided by Spiritual Science insofar as they are particularly useful—are brought into the center of our soul life. In this way, the entire life of the soul—disregarding everything else, all worries and sorrows, all sensory impressions, all impulses of the will, all feelings, and all thinking—the entire scope of the soul’s power can be directed, for a certain period of time, solely and exclusively toward these mental images that have been brought into the center of the soul’s life. We must bear in mind that what matters is not directing the power of the soul toward the content of what we have before us in concentration, but toward the activity, the inner activity and work involved in the development of attention and the ability to concentrate. It is this gathering, this concentrating of the soul’s power, that matters. And frequent practice of the soul in this concentration—this concentrative activity—which, depending on the individual’s disposition, may vary in duration, often lasting months, years, or even decades, is necessary so that the soul may come to strengthen itself inwardly, to grasp itself inwardly, in order to develop inner powers that otherwise lie dormant in the soul and are brought forth from it through this attention heightened to the infinite, through concentration. And what is particularly necessary in this process is that we develop within the soul the capacity to feel that, through the inner activity described, the soul is indeed increasingly able to detach itself as a spiritual-soul being from the physical-bodily. This detachment, this spiritual-chemical separation of the spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily, does indeed occur more and more as a result of the activity described. In a lecture that must be brief, I can only hint at this principle of concentration. The individual practices necessary to make concentration truly fruitful are explained in full detail in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, which has been translated into French under the title *L’Initiation*.

[ 5 ] By applying and practicing the methods implied here, one comes to attach a true inner meaning to the words: You now experience yourself as a spiritual-soul being. You are active within yourself without making use of your senses or your limbs. You experience within yourself, outside your body. — One has reached a certain fruitful stage of development when one has come to view one’s own physicality—with all that in the physical world is connected to one’s own physicality—from the outside, from the spiritual-soul experience outside the body, to truly behold it outside of oneself—that is, outside the spiritual-soul realm—to truly have it before oneself, just as one has a table or a chair before oneself in physical life. As a rule, one first comes to separate in this way the soul’s powers of thought and mental images from the physical instruments—namely, the nervous system and the brain—so that one learns to live in the realm of thought and mental images while knowing oneself to be outside the nervous system and the brain, which one otherwise uses as instruments in ordinary life for thinking and creating mental images.

[ 6 ] Since I wish to speak not in abstractions but in concrete spiritual facts, let me mention the following. The first experience one can have in this development is, as a rule, the realization that one lives and thinks as if within the space surrounding one’s own head. You weave and live just as you otherwise do when you use the instrument of the brain to live and weave in thought, in the realm of thought; but you know quite precisely that this life and weaving in thought is now outside your head. And in particular, that impression remains unforgettable—once you have experienced it— the impression one receives from the fact that, after having existed for a while outside the head, one dives back into the brain and the nervous system and now feels how this brain, this nervous system, as material entities, offer resistance, so that one must force one’s way back into the physical with that which first emerged from the physical. This moment remains unforgettable once a person has experienced it in the course of their development.

[ 7 ] In the manner described so far, one can detach from the physical-bodily realm only the intellectual and imaginative activities of the soul, but not that which must also be detached for true spiritual research: the emotional activity of the soul, the activity in the soul’s volitional impulse. To detach the soul’s emotional activity and the activity occurring in the impulses of the will from the physical-bodily, it is necessary to infinitely intensify what one might call devotion. We gain the best mental image of this intensified devotion, which is called meditation, when we draw a comparison with human life during sleep. The sense organs are at rest during sleep, sensory activity is suspended, the limbs are motionless; in sleep, the human being is surrendered to the general course of the world; they do not interpose into the course of this general world process that which emanates from their ego, from their thinking, feeling, and willing. They are, however, also unconscious during this state of sleep. His consciousness has dissolved into general darkness, into general obscurity. Now, what sleep brings about for the human being through the necessity of the general force of nature must be brought about arbitrarily for meditation, with the sole difference that sleep leads into unconsciousness, whereas this heightened surrender leads into heightened consciousness. Through willful effort, the spiritual researcher must bring about a state in which all his senses are silent; he must be able to divert the attention of all his senses from every impression of the external world. He must be able to suppress, just as it is suppressed in sleep, the activity of the individual organs and limbs. Externally, in regard to his physical body, a person must learn to behave as he behaves in sleep; but while in sleep he sinks into unconsciousness, through this voluntary, heightened surrender he awakens in the divine-spiritual stream of the universal forces. He awakens to a consciousness in comparison to which everyday consciousness is a sleep, just as sleep is otherwise in comparison to everyday consciousness. If we train the soul in the manner described with sufficient patience and perseverance, we come to be able to detach another inner soul faculty—as it were, spiritually-chemically—from the corresponding physical-bodily activity. Just as we detach the power of thought through concentration and then have it flow solely in the spiritual-soul realm, so too do we gradually detach, through devotion, that soul power which is otherwise employed in human speech and in the use of all the tools we employ in human speech. As I speak to you, I am applying a spiritual-soul power. This spiritual-soul force flows, while I am speaking physically here, into the physical nerves and speech organs, making use of them. Through the exercises mentioned, the spiritual researcher acquires the ability to unfold the same force inwardly and soulfully through the complete stilling of the entire speech-nerve apparatus, without any outward manifestation of this force, which otherwise flows outward through speech. Through this, one discovers in the depths of the soul a capacity of which outer life is otherwise unaware, because this capacity is expended in ordinary life through speaking and the use of the speech organs, and otherwise, when not used for speaking, simply rests in the depths of the soul. In spiritual research, it is brought up from the depths of the soul. It is, as it were, spiritually and chemically detached from physical speech. If one learns to live and weave within this hidden, language-creating activity, then one learns to recognize that which one might call—using a term that is perhaps not entirely accurate—the perception of the inner word, the spiritual word. The moment one is able to take hold of this hidden power, one also becomes able to use the thinking and feeling that otherwise cling only to one’s own personality to step outside of oneself and enter a spiritual world, so that one learns to perceive: Outside of yourself, you now perceive feeling and willing, just as you have otherwise perceived them only within yourself. — That is to say, one begins to get to know willing, feeling beings in the spiritual realm. First, one’s own willing and feeling must submerge into the spiritual beings; then one perceives the spiritual beings.

[ 8 ] If we bear in mind that the emancipation of the power of thought from the physical body is the beginning of clairvoyant perception, and that the detachment of thought and feeling is the next step, then it will become clear that we can only gain true experiences—true insights—that stem from the impressions of other spiritual beings only by stepping out of our physical body with our own feeling, willing soul and immersing ourselves in the spiritual world that surrounds us. How this experience in the spiritual world takes place will be explained using a concrete example. Although it is somewhat risky, given the many adversaries Spiritual Science still faces in our time, to cite such concrete examples, let this risk be taken today. You will allow this example to be drawn from immediate personal experience, since such examples are indeed those one can best master, for it is truly only through personal experience that one is, so to speak, directly present in all its details.

[ 9 ] Some time ago, I had certain tasks to accomplish in the context of my own work. I knew full well that I could not solve this specific, this particular task with the abilities that, given my personal disposition, are immediately available to me in this human life. The task involved more precisely recognizing and penetrating the spiritual nature of a specific era in the course of human development in certain directions. I knew exactly what task I had to set for myself, but I realized: No matter how hard you strain your thoughts, they do not have the capacity to penetrate the area in question. — It is exactly as if one wants to lift something but lacks the physical strength to lift the weight in question. Thus one can reach a point where the thoughts lack the strength to truly penetrate any task, to solve a problem. This was the situation I found myself in. I tried, through my own activity, to present the task as clearly as possible to my soul in thought and to develop the living will to arrive at a solution in some way. I tried to feel, to vividly sense in my feelings, the particular nuance and character of the era in question, as far as I was already able. I tried to feel its grandeur, its color; I tried to immerse my whole personality into that era. And through sufficient repetition of this inner soul activity, I could sense the penetration of a foreign will and foreign feeling into my own will, into my own feeling. I knew that foreign feelings and foreign wills penetrated my own will and my own feelings just as truly as one can know, when facing an external object, that one does not create this external object through one’s gaze, but that the object makes an impression upon one.

[ 10 ] I am well aware that, from a materialistic point of view, one might easily say: Well, something like that is simply an illusion, a delusion. The person in question does not realize that what he perceives as an external influence actually originates from within his own soul. — What is necessary in this realm to avoid succumbing to illusions, hallucinations, or figments of the imagination is true self-knowledge, a deepening of self-knowledge. Then one knows what one can and cannot do, for self-knowledge consists, for the spiritual researcher, primarily in seeing through the limits of one’s own abilities. Whoever has practiced such self-knowledge in the manner described in the aforementioned book comes to be able to truly distinguish between what they are capable of in their own feeling and willing—in their personal feeling and willing—and what, from the spiritual world, intrudes into this personal feeling and willing as foreign feeling and willing. They come to a point where it would seem just as absurd to them not to be able to distinguish their own feelings and will from foreign feelings and will as it would seem absurd if someone were to say: I do not distinguish hunger from bread. — Just as everyone knows where hunger ends and bread begins, just as one knows that hunger does not produce bread itself—although in social terms it would be highly desirable for that to be the case— true self-knowledge leads to the ability to distinguish what, as it were, constitutes the hunger of one’s own feelings and will, and what—just as bread meets hunger—comes to one’s own feelings and will as foreign feelings and will from the spiritual world, from a world unknown to the physical world. Once one has brought about something like the penetration of foreign feeling and will into one’s own feeling and will, as just described, then at the appropriate moment this inner coexistence of one’s own feeling and will with foreign feeling and will continues in a corresponding manner. And in my case, it turned out that through the intimate union of one’s own feelings and will with those recognized as foreign, thoughts were now fertilized and emerged in my own mental image—but as a gift from the foreign feelings and will—the thoughts that solved the problem of exploring and understanding a particular era.

[ 11 ] In such a process, something occurs within this spiritual experience that is, in a certain sense, the opposite of a similar process in the external world. When we encounter another person in the external world and sit down with them, we first see them, speak with them, and exchange thoughts with them. In the spiritual experience as I have described it, the opposite occurs: one contemplates thoughts within oneself, one has the feeling of being together with another’s feelings and will, and this builds up into the perception of another’s spiritual individuality, which one now faces as a real, yet foreign individuality existing only in the spiritual realm. One gradually learns to recognize it. One thus proceeds from the opposite, as in external life, approaching the personality one thus reaches through the other’s feelings and will. Through being together with it, one reaches the other person themselves.

[ 12 ] In the case described, it turned out that the foreign feelings and desires that flowed fruitfully into my own world of thought originated from a person I knew well, who had passed away from our circle of friends a little over a year ago. And I came to realize that this person, who had died at a relatively young age, in the prime of middle age, had carried unspent life force with them into the spiritual worlds; and from the intensity of these unspent life forces arose the feelings and will that could harmonize with my own feelings and will. We have a mental image of a person living to a certain advanced age; they expend their life force up to that advanced age. If they die at a relatively young age, the strength they could have had to reach a greater age remains, so to speak, unspent, and they can apply it from the spiritual world. In the case described, it was the life force left unspent due to an early death that, through the relationship the living person had with the deceased, made it possible for the living person to solve a problem for which they needed the strength of the deceased—the connection with this being who was a human being until a year ago and then entered the spiritual world through death.

[ 13 ] What was mentioned earlier as “the ability of the inner word” leads to such revelations of the spiritual world which, as has been shown in this case, consist in the revelation of a deceased person. This same ability of the inner spiritual word also enables us to look beyond the personal life that is confined between birth and death, or, let us say, conception and death. It enables one to perceive the full scope of human life, which extends into the infinity of time and unfolds through repeated earthly lives, and to perceive the lives of those to whom one has become so close, as in the case of the deceased described here.

[ 14 ] If one comes to know a person through the spiritual faculties described—be it one’s own self or a stranger—what one comes to know is not merely the physical human life enclosed between birth and death, but rather the spiritual human being who builds his own body, who lives through repeated earthly lives and, between death and new birth, in a spiritual world. From this it may become apparent that in the case described, because the deceased stood before one’s own soul as a spiritual being, it was now possible to look somewhat more intimately into the spiritual-soul nature of this deceased person. As I said, one comes to know another being in the opposite direction than when one gets to know them on the physical plane. First, one comes to know, through what one has been able to learn about them, the spiritual togetherness; then one comes to know the being itself, but also as a spiritual being. And what one might call “the entry into the spiritual world” becomes a reality. To stick with the example described: it became apparent that the personality in question, who was known to the speaker and his friends in this life—a life that ended in relatively early youth—had, in a previous earthly life, a life in the first Christian centuries, absorbed much from the Christian culture of that time, but was unable to process it all due to the limitations of the culture of that era. With this unprocessed material, they now entered this life; this unprocessed material overwhelmed this life, yet remained present as a life force, and grace was bestowed upon those connected to the personality to now perceive precisely the era from which their task originated—the era in which the personality in question had lived in a previous earthly life.

[ 15 ] Even if a large portion of people today still scoff at what has just been described, and at the attitude that points toward the spiritual world in the manner described. Anyone who has to some extent ventured along such paths into the spiritual world knows, in such a case—when they have succeeded in solving or working out what they could not have achieved through their own strength—that beings, and indeed very concrete beings of the spiritual world, have helped them. For them, the world expands, because they know that they must not attribute to hunger the ability to produce bread, for from the same impulse they know how the power of the beings of the spiritual world has penetrated into their own capacity. Just as the spiritual vision of human beings expands into the realm of the dead, so too does the spiritual vision of human beings expand, through the training in the methods described, over a spiritual world that is just as real in its concrete events and concrete beings as the physical world around us is real.

[ 16 ] Even today, one is sometimes forgiven for speaking in general terms about the spiritual world; it is acknowledged that there is a spiritual world beyond the sensory world. But one is less forgiven when speaking, in the manner indicated, of concrete beings of the spiritual world whom one encounters just as one encounters the beings of the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms in the physical world. But the person who does not shy away from truly developing the powers slumbering in the soul knows that it is just as incorrect to speak generally of the spirit—as in a vague form of pantheism—as it would be incorrect to speak of nature in such a way that one walks across a meadow and does not look at the plant world, the flowers—here a pansy, there a tulip, and so on—and say: These are flowers, that is a rose, that is a tulip, that is grass—but rather says: That is nature, and that is nature, and that is nature; everything is nature, nature, nature. —But it is exactly the same when, in a vague, pantheistic way, one speaks only of spirit, spirit, spirit. Just as we speak of particulars in the concrete sensory world, so one learns to recognize the spiritual world only by creating the opportunity to truly know the individual spiritual beings that inhabit the spiritual world and the processes that take place between these spiritual beings.

[ 17 ] The easiest and most convenient objection raised against the possibility of knowing the spiritual world is the claim that it contradicts the power of truly intelligent interaction with the external world for a person to indulge in such fantasies about the spiritual world. However, this objection—which is seemingly derived with good reason from the power of human intelligence—is raised only as long as one has not come to recognize the effectiveness of intelligence, that is, of the human power of thought, through spiritual research itself.

[ 18 ] Let us return to our example: Imagine a person who wishes to develop certain thoughts here on Earth, the development of which has been set as a task for them. They learn to face a spiritual being, in this case a deceased person. This being sends transformed thinking—one might say thinking will, feeling thought—through the spiritual world into their own thinking and feeling. It is there, within the person living on Earth, that the thoughts first arise—the intelligent thoughts that the deceased wishes to bring forth through their own power. One learns to recognize that, of all that is on Earth, the deceased has feelings and will; that he possesses other abilities—soul abilities—that do not develop on Earth; yet that, as a deceased being, he has the impulse to connect his thinking and feeling with human thoughts. Therefore, he connects with the earthly human being. For as his thinking, feeling, and will penetrate the human being, thoughts are stimulated. He experiences them along with them; he could not have experienced them on his own. This brings about communication with the earthly human being. However, such communication with a spiritual being and the stimulation of one’s own thoughts are only possible if the thoughts have previously emancipated themselves from the nervous system and the brain in the manner described earlier, if they develop outside the brain as a thinking activity. A remarkable process takes place: by experiencing thought thus emancipated from its physical aspect, one feels as if one’s own thinking were being snatched away, as if it were expanding and spreading out in space and time. Thinking, of which we otherwise say: “It takes place within us”—identifies with the surrounding spiritual world, flows into it, and attains an independence in relation to ourselves that we can compare to the approximate independence that, for example, the eye possesses within the physical body, sitting in its socket as a kind of independent organ. Thus, this now independent thinking is indeed connected to the higher self, but it is so independent that it functions as a spiritual organ of perception for the thinking and feeling of other spiritual beings, just as the eye functions for the perception of sensory color and sensory light. One gradually comes to see that thinking, which is otherwise contained within the intellect, becomes independent of our own being, like a spiritual organ of perception.

[ 19 ] I can also express what I have just described in other words. What one truly experiences subjectively—that which the intellect encompasses, external thinking—are shadowy entities, indeed thought-entities, mere thoughts that reflect external entities. As thinking becomes clairvoyant, separating itself from the brain and nervous system, it begins to develop inner activity, a life of its own, and flows out into the rest of the spiritual world as an experience in its own right. The feeling antennae of thinking—I must put it somewhat crudely—of thinking that has become clairvoyant, we extend into the spiritual world, and as they immerse themselves, they perceive the feeling will, the willing feeling of the other beings who are around us in the spiritual realm.

[ 20 ] That which has been said about the necessary self-knowledge on the path of spiritual development—which, of course, makes it understandable that modesty is a given—such self-knowledge will be permitted to make the following remarks through this clairvoyantly developed thinking, and these remarks will not be taken as immodesty. As thinking becomes alive and gains independence within clairvoyant development, it also comes to be capable of truly technically reliable and precise application. Through true clairvoyance, the precision, accuracy, and logical power of thinking grow, and the possibility grows of applying thinking in a way that is truly more precise and more intimately attuned to things. Consequently, true clairvoyance refines the intellect in a more practical way, organizes it more thoroughly, and makes it easy for the clairvoyant to grasp the significance of the research findings of conventional science, whereas conventional science lacks the necessary... (gap in the text) of intelligence, which is why it is understandably the case that ordinary science of our day is unable to grasp the results of clairvoyant research. Truly, the situation is such that one who has developed true clairvoyance can grasp the full significance and magnitude of the achievements of natural science, and in this sense there can be no talk of an opposition between Spiritual Science and conventional science. The reverse, however, is understandable. It is only through clairvoyant development that the power of intelligence is organized, made inwardly independent, alive, and transparent. Therefore, external materialistic knowledge is unable to penetrate that logic which provides the certainty: clairvoyant knowledge truly provides a vision of the spiritual world. On the other hand, the example cited of clairvoyant experience with the deceased described above may make it clear that intelligence, that thinking, is a specific characteristic of souls living in physical bodies, of earthly human beings; for in our case the deceased himself had the impulse to connect with the earthly human being so that what lived within him in a wholly different, supersensory way might take the form of intelligent thoughts. The deceased thought his thoughts together with the living person. As it were, within the living person’s mind, the deceased’s thinking and the living person’s thinking were intertwined. Intelligent thinking is primarily a human characteristic. This should be illustrated by the example. It will therefore be understandable that through the power of intelligence, through the power of thinking—which, because it is specifically human, must be developed in the earthly human being in the truest sense—the results of clairvoyant research can be understood even by those who are not themselves clairvoyant. It follows from what I have said that thinking, once it has become independent, becomes, as it were, the spiritual eye for the perception of the spiritual outer world. However, it becomes evident to clairvoyant research—which employs this spiritual eye for what constitutes clairvoyant thinking—that this spiritual eye is an active, dynamic one, that its spiritual antennae extend in every direction, whereas the physical eye is a passive one that allows impressions to approach it passively. Therefore, once the spiritual researcher has taken the revelations of the spiritual world into his thoughts, they live within those thoughts. And if he then attempts to communicate to his fellow human beings what he has striven to bring into his living thoughts, it is possible for his fellow human beings to understand him, to grasp him, provided they do not allow materialistic prejudices to block these paths to understanding him.

[ 21 ] There is something within the human soul akin to an inner language that usually remains silent, yet must resound immediately like an echo when the concepts—which the spiritual researcher gains by allowing his will and feelings to be inspired by the spiritual world and its beings—reach the soul. And when the people of the present—and especially the people of the future—have engaged more deeply with the impulses of Spiritual Science, objections of the sort that one might say, “Yes, one must believe what the spiritual researcher communicates from the spiritual world, for one cannot comprehend it,” will fall silent more and more. — People will come to realize that human intelligence is indeed capable of truly understanding and comprehending what is communicated from the spiritual world, though only if it has been drawn from that world through genuine spiritual experiences and true spiritual research. And one will recognize that it is not correct to say that, as a human being, one is not predisposed to see through and comprehend the revelations from the spiritual world with one’s intelligence, and that one must accept them on authority. Rather, one will come to understand that what is called “prejudice” can only hinder this comprehension and understanding. And one will increasingly come to regard the messages from the spiritual world in the same way as one regards, for example, the findings of modern astronomy, biology, physics, and chemistry—even if one is not an astronomer, biologist, physicist, or chemist, and yet accepts—through what one might call a natural sense of truth, a natural feeling for truth, or a silent language within the human soul—what the sciences proclaim from the physical world.

[ 22 ] The connection between intelligence and clairvoyance will become increasingly apparent. And then people will admit that clairvoyant research truly offers something that, arising from the same spirit as true scientific research, ascends into the world of spiritual beings and spiritual processes. Truly, a moment will come in modern culture that may remind us—and I would say: for the spiritual researcher, this thought is a comfort today, given the many adversaries that Spiritual Science still faces— the moment will come that can remind us of Giordano Bruno, who had to stand before his world, looking up at the blue vault of heaven, which people knew as the truest thing for them, as the sensory impression that had to be true, but who had to say: You see the blue vault of heaven only because your vision reaches that far. You yourselves create this boundary, but in truth an infinity of spatial expanses lies beyond. Up there, the boundaries you see so clearly—of which sensory perception so beautifully convinces you—are created by you yourselves through the limitations of your vision. —It will be recognized that the spiritual researcher, both today and in the future, will have to stand before the world and say: Likewise, the firmament exists in relation to time, for the time between birth and death. This temporal firmament—one sees it through the illusion of the senses, but in reality one creates it through the limitations of human spiritual vision, just as one once created the blue firmament of space. And just as beyond the firmament of space lie infinite expanses of space, so beyond the temporal firmament between birth and death lie temporal infinity and, embedded within it, the infinity of one’s own spiritual life, which is in communion with the rest of the world’s spiritual life.

[ 23 ] The time will come when people will realize how clairvoyant research simultaneously deepens and strengthens the human intellect, and they will realize that this clairvoyant research also provides a more subtle and intimate logic. In the face of such a better judgment, many of the objections raised today against Spiritual Science—seemingly with good reason—will fall silent, such as the claim: Has not the philosophy of this or that author proven that human cognitive capacity has limits? And are not the reasons put forward by philosophers for the limits of human knowledge compelling? Are they not logical? Does the spiritual researcher intend to refute these philosophers’ compelling logical reasons for the limits of the capacity for knowledge? — The time will come when we will rise above such limited scope and accuracy of human logic, when we will know, for example, that something can be correct, can be irrefutable as philosophy, and yet be completely refuted by life. It is indeed possible—and you will find the comparison apt—that before the invention of the microscope or the telescope, someone might have demonstrated with great acumen that the human eye could never see a cell. The reasons for this claim could have been compelling, apt, and irrefutable. Nevertheless, human ingenuity constructed the microscope and the telescope, which have magnified the power of the human eye. Life has gone beyond the irrefutable proofs of the philosophers. Likewise, life will not need to refute the reasons given by this or that philosopher. They may be irrefutable, but life in its reality must go beyond them by strengthening the faculty of cognition, by strengthening spiritual cognition through spiritual instruments.

[ 24 ] That these things are not generally acknowledged today is understandable given the current state of culture and the belief in the irrefutability of the philosophers’ evidence. But there will be a higher logic in the further course of human culture than that which consists in the irrefutability of so many purely external philosophies—a higher logic of life, which will then be a life in the spirit, a knowledge gained through spiritual science. The time will come when one will truly not value the great contributions to the exploration of external science any less than today, but in which one will recognize that all that the magnificent achievements of natural science have brought us provide more questions than answers for the deeper life of human beings. Anyone who looks into the individual branches of modern science—biology, astronomy, and so on—knows that we have reached the limits of these sciences. For do these sciences provide answers? No, they merely raise the questions in the proper sense. The answers, however, will come from what lies beyond what external sciences can investigate. The answers will come from the sources of clairvoyant research.

[ 25 ] I may summarize what I have sought to speak to you about today in these words: The world is broader than the mere sensory world, and the spirit lies behind the sensory world. And for spiritual research, the spirit reveals itself to clairvoyant perception and makes the sensory world, which surrounds us in all its splendor, recognizable to us only in its divinity. The world is vast, and the spirit is the necessary counterpart to the sensory world. And what humanity will strive for in order to gain knowledge of the entire world—as a true perspective on the future development of human culture shows us—will not be a one-sided exploration of the sensory world, nor a one-sided external science, as many believe today, but rather a synthesis of science, intelligence, and clairvoyant research. And in this convergence, human beings will truly come to understand themselves and their own spirit, and will recognize the solution to the world’s riddles for the coming ages—which can only ever be solved in a limited way—and will feel satisfied only through this understanding.

[ 26 ] But for those who have taken the true impulse of Spiritual Science into their souls, a spiritual insight reveals even today, in the case of many souls, a longing and an already existing impulse arising directly from the spiritual straining of the present, to go beyond the immediately sensory in science and, precisely through the exertion of the forces that sensory science has generated over the past centuries—and through the inner assimilation of these forces—to strengthen the soul, to grow in power, so as to live upward into the spiritual worlds from which alone true satisfaction for the human soul can flow.