The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Karma of Materialism II

[ 1 ] I said that I wanted to offer aphoristic additions to various topics that have been considered recently. These reflections were primarily intended to show what is necessary in light of the current intellectual trends—specifically, the fundamental character of those trends. They were aimed at showing how spiritual science—as we understand it here—can provide what must flow into the thinking, feeling, and willing of our time. For the fact that such things must flow in could already be clear to many today, even from a superficial, external observation of current events.

[ 2 ] I would like to begin by showing how—I would say—what can be healed only through spiritual science is encountered at every turn today. To illustrate this, in connection with various things that have been said recently, I could, of course, also single out something else; but I want to single out an essay that appeared here in a Berlin newspaper in the last few days, titled “StaatsPhysiologie.” When one reflects on the times, it is indeed necessary to pay close attention to such symptoms, for they reveal the way in which our contemporaries think, feel, what they want, and so on. If one does not merely engage in one-sided polemics or the like regarding such an essay, but rather views it as flowing from the very nature and essence of our feelings and thoughts, then one can demonstrate many things through such a phenomenon. The essay was written by Max Verworn, whom I have mentioned here many times—Max Verworn, who is regarded as the supreme authority in his field. And Verworn, the famous professor of physiology, sets out to demonstrate how politics must be influenced by the very way of thinking to which he is accustomed. One can well imagine this; it is almost self-evident, for how could anyone not believe that his own way of thinking is the best, and therefore recommend precisely his own way of thinking as the one by which the most important affairs of the day should be guided? Well, when one reads through this essay, “State Physiology,” one gets a peculiar feeling. First of all, this essay reminds one once again how wrong those are who believe that the most blatant materialism has already been eradicated from science today. Some say this—some who are themselves completely in the clutches of this materialism—and simply because they have cobbled together a few concepts that they regard as philosophy, they believe they have overcome materialism. Just how little they have overcome materialism is demonstrated by a few sentences from this essay by one of the leading authorities in the natural sciences today. We need only bring such sentences to mind: “The animal world represents the more general concept, which also includes the specific case of humans, just as the animal world itself constitutes a specific case of the even more comprehensive concept of the world of organisms.” That is to say: If one wants to know something about humans, one turns to the animal world; if one wants to know something about animals, one turns to the general concept of the organism. In any case, this eminent authority believes that, above all, one must study the conditions in political life according to the same model used to study—that is, as he, Professor Max Verworn, studies—the conditions within the animal world. For he discovers what is significant:

[ 3 ] “This fact—namely, that humans are this special case within the animal kingdom—can no longer be overlooked by anyone who has not remained completely oblivious to the entire development of biology. Humans stand in contrast to the rest of the animal kingdom only insofar as they differ from it in certain specific characteristics—for example, through their cultural achievements—but for that reason they are and remain an animal organism whose entire behavior is subject to the general laws that govern every animal organism.” — One can certainly say that this is, more or less explicitly, despite all counter-arguments, nevertheless the fundamental conviction of today’s official science. And even if it often goes beyond this in theory with one remark or another, one must nevertheless be clear that the entire way of thinking, the entire way of conducting science, is today viewed in the light of such a perspective. And the consequence is that Verworn goes so far as to say, “one can be convinced that our entire cultural development is nothing other than a special case of organic development in general.” — In other words, everything that our cultural development encompasses is a special case of organic development in general. This means: if we study how an animal eats, how it digests, how it develops gradually, and how the individual cells in the animal organism work together—and then apply this concept to the life of the family, corporations, and other smaller organisms within the larger organism that is the state—then we have a sound foundation for a theoretical politics, in Verworn’s sense. “We will only think clearly in this area,” he says, “if we try to ‘conceive of the “political state”—as he calls it—as a large organism.’” — For he believes that when one considers the cells and cell groups found in an animal organism—and in his view, the human organism is nothing other than the animal organism—they are related to one another, mutually dependent, and so on, just like the individual bodies within a political state. Now, Verworn argues, the animal organism is, first and foremost, subject to development. He conceives of development, however, in a peculiar way. He says: “A general characteristic of all living things is the fact of development.” But what does development consist of, according to him? For him, development consists in what he calls the organism adapting to the conditions of life. Development, then, is what arises when the organic—the living being—adapts to its living conditions. Yet he stumbles right from the very beginning, for there he says: “One of the lower organisms, for example the amoeba, is undoubtedly already adapted to its living conditions; otherwise it would not be viable but would perish.” — Now here’s the catch: The simplest organism is already adapted to its living conditions; why, then, does it continue to develop if it is already adapted, if development is adaptation to living conditions? You see, in its use of concepts and ideas, what we call science today does not even recognize the very first initial impulses that must exist within us; for the entire concept of evolution would immediately collapse if one were to take seriously a statement such as the one Verworn himself makes here. But that does not prevent him, having uttered this, from building another statement upon it: “A comparison of the various levels of organization that we find in the world of organisms now shows us that increasing perfection consists in the ever richer and better development of the physiological means for sustaining life amid the most diverse changes in living conditions.” Aha! While the amoeba, the simplest organism, is already adapted to its living conditions and therefore has no need to evolve, Verworn constructs the concept in such a way that he says: It must, however, become ever better adapted. Where, then, does such an impulse toward better adaptation come from? There is no reason for this within the amoeba, for “if it were not adapted, it would perish,” he himself says. In other words: People are ready at any moment to spout such nonsense, and the entire audience has been conditioned—since we certainly do not blindly follow authority—to patiently accept such mental somersaults, to regard them as the outpouring of great science, and to base all sorts of other nonsense on them. Such concepts are now being used in the field of physiology. In the details, it doesn’t do much harm, because what physiology has to deal with is right there under the microscope. When you present the facts, you can construct even the most erroneous concepts; you can make the most wonderful discoveries, because what you see under the microscope reveals those discoveries; you can be a great physiologist and yet a fool when it comes to dealing with certain concepts. But the harm becomes immense when one then has the pretension to believe that one can introduce such concepts—whose folly does not become apparent when one has the objects right before one’s eyes—into sociopolitical life, where the concepts themselves must serve as the guiding principles, where, if they are put into practice, they become folly made real. This is something that must be taken into account—it is here that the great tragedy of life begins.

[ 4 ] Anyone who knows even a little about contemporary intellectual development must surely be astonished by the ignorance and lack of knowledge that prevail today, even among prominent researchers. Thoughtlessness on the one hand, ignorance on the other. For a renowned authority puts forward a demand such as the one I have described. One wonders in vain: Does such a gentleman not know that an attempt was made not so long ago—albeit based on equally unclear concepts? Take the three volumes by Schäffle, the former Austrian minister: *The Structure and Life of the Social Body*. There, an attempt was made to conceive of the state according to the model of a cellular organism. The matter has thus already been attempted and ended in fiasco. It is the same Schäffle who later wrote a book titled *The Hopelessness of Social Democracy*, to which Hermann Bahr, as a very young man, wrote a rebuttal: *The Lack of Insight on the Part of Mr. Schäffle.*

[ 5 ] This is the ignorance of starting over and over again from the same place today, without realizing that such things have long since ended in failure. If one were not to simply toss out a general idea like that, one would, before conceiving such a thought, undertake something like Schäffle’s work *The Structure and Life of the Social Body*. One might ask: How did Verworn even come to conceive of this idea? That is particularly interesting. For, you see, not too long ago—a few decades back—Virchow sought to speak about the structure of the human organism, indeed of the animal organism in general. In the animal organism, there are various cellular systems that belong together and work together. What did he do to arrive at a concept, an idea, that would encompass these individual cellular systems? Well, in order to find a term, a word for it, Virchow called the animal organism a “cellular state.” That is, he took the concept of the state, as it exists around us, and compared the animal organism to the state. What does Verworn do? Because Virchow used the concept of a state to characterize the animal organism, Verworn, in turn—now that the concept of the state has been introduced—sets out to pick that state out again and, starting from the animal organism, apply the whole story to the state. Isn’t that like the story of the famous Münchhausen, who pulls himself up by his own hair?

[ 6 ] This is thoughtlessness—just one example of the thoughtlessness you encounter at every turn today. One person brings the state into the organism, while another brings the organism into the state. For those people who always participate in only one of these processes and have no idea when something has been brought in that the other person then takes out again, the matter certainly becomes obscure. But that is how it is. Under the influence of all the popular guidance that comes from this “great science,” people today are searching for a firm, secure foundation in life, and cannot find it. Souls are losing their way. Why are these souls losing their way? Because science presents them with such Munchausen-like heroes who, in truth, cannot stand on their own two feet. Such concepts are simply tossed out as whims. If one were to examine things in detail—if one were even to take the trouble to go back to one’s own concepts and then examine them—one would discover what nonsense one sometimes spouts. For example: “There is a relationship of dependence between one cellular organization and another. This does not consist in one type of cell asserting its power to suppress the other, but rather in fostering its specific nature in the interest of the social whole and, thereby, of each individual.” He is now referring to the organism. In the case of cellular associations, it is said that the two are interdependent, yet one fosters the other in a very special way. And the way in which the cellular systems in the organism mutually promote one another should now be held up as a model for a concept intended to define a state structure. One should, for example, conceive of the idea that the brain cells—that is, a cellular association—need the blood cells in order to function, but place them entirely at their service. What would result if one were to create something similar within a state organism—such as the way brain cells utilize blood cells and the like? The matter is so thoughtless that one need only start with a single detail, and one immediately sees: one is dealing with a completely absurd idea, a mad or, rather, idiotic idea; though idiocy is, after all, merely a special case of insanity. The best part, however, is probably this: Mr. Verworn believes that the individual parts of the state should relate to one another just as individual cell clusters relate to one another, for then the correct result would emerge from what he calls the concept of freedom.

[ 7 ] “This is an immensely important principle, and a careful study of the specific paths that the development of the animal cellular state has taken in this direction can provide us with guidance on corresponding organizational issues within the social organism of the political state. Above all, the concept of ‘individual freedom’ is here restored to its natural and only correct meaning and freed from the foolish accoutrements that have so profusely entwined themselves around it.” Thus, the concept of freedom is to be discovered, for example, by studying how brain cells depend on blood cells—for blood cells, after all, have their freedom vis-à-vis the brain cells! He now wishes to carry this line of thought through. He regards the nervous system as what, within the organism, corresponds to the administrative apparatus of the state. This is the most superficial comparison one could possibly make. The nerves lead to the sensory organs. If one were to make a genuine comparison: Where, then, are the eyes, where are the ears of the state?

[ 8 ] When one engages in spiritual science, one arrives at transcendent, higher-order concepts; these are then applicable to that which exists within spiritual contexts, and also to that which exists within a context such as the animal-human organism. But if one derives one’s concepts—and, moreover, in the manner described here—in a one-sided way solely from the human organism, then one can never arrive at anything at all.

[ 9 ] But the most striking thing is that the lack of thought becomes downright outrageous. This can be seen, for example, in a sentence like this: “However, in the organic development of the animal cellular state, this condition is only fully achieved at a later stage through the principle of centralization. This is only possible if the work of the individual cells and cell groups is regulated according to current needs from a central location capable of assessing those needs based on the information it receives.” This roughly means that the brain gathers information from the other cell groups. And Verworn introduces the most childish concepts—as if the brain were sending messengers to the stomach and the like. So here, thoughtlessness becomes a glaring fact.

[ 10 ] What is culture, according to Verworn? One can plug one’s ears so as not to hear, and one can blindfold one’s eyes; let us imagine, hypothetically, that someone could block their mind—then one could offer a definition of culture something like this: “The means that human beings have created for themselves to take a fully conscious stance toward the events in their environment—and which they use as a means of adapting to all occurrences in their lives—constitute, in their entirety, their culture: for culture is nothing other than the totality of values created by human beings themselves for the preservation and promotion of their lives.” So culture is the totality of human-created values for the preservation and promotion of life. One must have lost one’s mind, for it is undoubtedly also connected to culture that we have such exquisite instruments of murder today. Just look at the entire process into which culture has strayed, and try to define how all of this was created by humans for the preservation and promotion of life. If someone were to describe this aspect of culture as having been created to oppress and destroy life, then at least they would be stating the truth about one part of culture. One must therefore have lost one’s mind to string such words together. Yet this is to be found at every turn in what is called science today. And then such science comes along and concludes: “The production of cultural values, however, is by no means merely a physiological function of the individual; rather, it is to a large extent a specific function of the political state, namely insofar as many cultural values cannot be produced by a single individual at all, but rather as a social achievement through the interaction of numerous individuals. The political state as a whole is therefore just as much a cultural organism as the individual human being.”

[ 11 ] After all this, the close relationship between politics and physiology is obvious, and it is time to draw practical conclusions from it by taking into account the physiological foundations of the human state in politics and seeking guidance from the living organism for all organizational problems of state life.» Or rather, Verworn naturally means, from Verworn, based on what he knows about the human organism.

[ 12 ] Yes, sometimes one must bring such symptoms to light, for they are precisely what the human soul of today is exposed to. This unfortunate human soul of the present, which would like to know something about the way it is itself situated within this great world organism, and to which one then tells such things about the way it is situated within the great world organism. It is therefore extraordinarily difficult today to communicate in any way at all with a large number of people who are currently setting the tone in the scientific field, for can one even entertain the delusion that someone like Verworn could possibly understand even the very most elementary aspects of spiritual science? That is simply unthinkable. The only thing to consider is that spiritual science, through its own power, must support more and more human souls, so that such scientific follies, with their monstrous pretensions, may then be overcome. Refuting them or reaching an understanding is futile in this context. Here, the only option is to overcome this situation by ensuring that a sufficiently large number of people come to understand where humanity is being led if what is today called “science” is allowed to continue setting the tone—and is even permitted to nestle itself within those life impulses in which concepts themselves take shape and become facts. This is a very serious matter that must be taken absolutely seriously. Thoughtlessness, for example, is already present from the very earliest beginnings. Wherever one looks, one encounters this phenomenon everywhere. And one would so dearly like to achieve a situation in which a sufficiently large number of people would regard what, so to speak, is delivered to one’s doorstep three times a day with the spirit that has now been briefly characterized.

[ 13 ] An immense amount depends on the correct assessment of these matters. One reads a famous speech by Virchow. How does one approach this today? Virchow was a famous man, an immensely significant man. From the outset—since we no longer blindly trust authority today—one adopts the following standpoint: “Yes, what such a famous man says is, of course, a dogma; it must be absolutely correct.” But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it is correct. Even then, one can still commit a folly if one fails to apply this correctness in the proper way to draw the logical conclusions in one’s own mind. Once, at a meeting of natural scientists in Munich, Haeckel and Virchow each gave a speech on the freedom of science and its teachings. Virchow argued that one should not draw further conclusions from the theory of evolution. He had made several valid points against Haeckel, objecting above all to the idea that Darwinism should be immediately introduced into schools, where it could only serve to sow discord in people’s minds. In this speech, one can read the following sentence:

[ 14 ] “What sets me apart is the awareness of my own ignorance. That is the most important thing—that I know exactly what I do not understand about chemistry. If I did not know that, I would indeed be constantly wavering back and forth.” Well, it’s nice that Virchow admits he knows he understands nothing about chemistry. But those who are Virchowians will, admittedly, refuse to get involved in chemical matters because they say they understand nothing about them, yet they will consider anyone who professes to be a spiritual scientist a fool or a dreamer. If they were to extend what Virchow himself said about chemistry to the spiritual sciences, they would say: The most important thing is that I know exactly what I do not understand about the spiritual sciences. But they do not act that way. Above all, there is no common mindset. So even with regard to the things that are said, the point is to be able to draw the correct conclusions.

[ 15 ] The nineteenth century was, in many respects, a great one after all, but one must understand what was great about it in the right way. And one must connect much of what is now the common fate of humanity with the development of the nineteenth century. Souls adrift, souls who cannot find their way in the world—they are now very numerous. For the most part, these are souls who, out of an instinctive need, thirst for something other than what traditional teachings offer them; souls who have looked around in many directions but cannot find anything that they feel would give them a secure foothold. What does a person need in order to—I won’t say to find a secure foothold in an instant, for we have sufficiently rejected that idea in our recent reflections here; it is not possible, just as one cannot sustain oneself for a lifetime with a single meal—what does a person need in order to walk a secure path?—perhaps that is a better way of putting it. Well, what they need above all else is the awareness of being part of the universe. All the weaknesses of the soul, all the dissatisfactions of the soul, stem from the soul’s feeling of isolation, from the feeling of not being part of the world. It is, in a sense, the great question of life: How do I stand within the world? — At first glance, this is expressed quite abstractly, but within this abstract statement lies something immensely significant; it contains an immense amount—it contains the deepest human destiny.

[ 16 ] But when people today turn to scientific concepts in search of an answer to the question: How do I fit into the universe? — then, at best, this scientific worldview offers the possibility of an answer to the question of how the physical body fits into the entire process of evolution and into the universe as a whole. To a certain extent, we can indeed know today how the physical body fits into the universe. But this scientific worldview says nothing—not even the very slightest thing—about the soul’s or, even less, the spirit’s place within the universe. Compare the spiritual-scientific theory of evolution with today’s scientific theory of evolution. The scientific theory of evolution leads to the animal realm—how one conceives of this may be a matter of secondary importance—whereas spiritual science places the human body within the entire universe. Spiritual science leads us back through the various phases of earthly evolution, lunar evolution, solar evolution, all the way to Saturn evolution, and it shows us that what lives within us as human beings in a soul-spiritual sense was already predisposed during the time of Saturn evolution. At that time, nothing of the physical realm existed at all except states of heat. We are connected to the thermal states of primeval times, which were permeated and suffused by the individual beings of the hierarchies that still live among us today. We are placed within a universe in which spirit and soul exist. That is the great difference. Spiritual science places our soul and our spirit within a vast universe, which it is able to describe in detail. It alone can therefore give the soul that without which the soul must imagine itself destroyed. And the dissatisfactions, the rootlessness of today’s souls, are merely a reflection of today’s thinking. Thinking explains only the human body as existing within the universe. It overlooks the soul. That is one aspect. The other is that the soul does not feel that it has anything within itself to which it can cling. But this prevents souls from finding inner strength; this cannot come about unless we arrive at conceptions of the universe that encompass the human being in his soul-spiritual nature, just as scientific conceptions encompass the physical human being as a part of the physical universe in his physical development.

[ 17 ] To this end, it is necessary that the courage which today manifests itself so gloriously in external matters now truly emerge in relation to the inner life of the human being. For when it comes to pursuing the inner life, the modern human soul proves to be anything but courageous. Everywhere there is a retreat from the spiritual content of the world. And this then leads to countless examples of spiritual weakness that we encounter everywhere today. Of course, much is required if the convoluted ideas of the present are ever to give way to sound ideas. After all, on the one hand, let us say, atomistic ideas still persist today, even though we have moved on from the old block atomism to today’s ion and electron atomism. Everything around us consists of atoms. That is the view of the world today. And many people imagine that they must reduce everything to the smallest atomistic entities. Yes, that is how people imagine what they call matter: matter consisting of the smallest parts, of atoms. Some—indeed, the majority—then add to matter the force by which particles of matter attract and repel one another; but they believe they have done enough with that. And we saw in the nineteenth century this entire significant period unfold in the development of humanity, a period that found its classic expression in all the works that explained the universe in terms of the structure of force and matter.

[ 18 ] Let us now use this example to clarify how we will have to rethink our understanding in order to grasp what is actually necessary today. Let us keep this in mind: The materialists—let us simply call them that—imagine that the world consists of atoms. What does spiritual science show us? Certainly, natural phenomena lead us back to such atoms, but what are they, these atoms? As soon as the first stage of intuitive knowledge sets in—the very first stage, the imaginative stage—the atoms reveal themselves for what they truly are. I have, in fact, pointed out in public lectures many years ago, in various contexts, what they turn out to be. For these atoms reveal themselves in a very peculiar way. According to the materialists, space is empty, and in there, the atoms wobble about. So they are the very solidest things. But that is not the case; the whole thing is based on an illusion. For the atoms are actually bubbles to the imaginative mind, and where there is empty space, there is reality; and the very nature of the atoms consists in their being inflated into bubbles. That is what they are: bubbles. There is precisely nothing there in relation to their surroundings. You know, like the bubbles in a bottle of seltzer water: there is nothing in the water where the bubbles are, but you can see the bubbles there. So atoms are bubbles. The space is hollow; there is nothing inside. Yes, but you can still bump into them! That “bumping into them,” however, consists precisely in the fact that you bump into the hollowness, and that the hollowness, when you bump into it, causes an effect. Yes, but can nothingness cause an effect? Take, for example, the nearly airless space inside the bell jar of an air pump; there you can see how the air flows into the nothingness. If you want to misinterpret it, you can call what is not inside the bell jar of the air pump a substance and say that it pushes the air in.

[ 19 ] The very same illusion exists with regard to atoms. The exact opposite is true. They are empty—and yet, at the same time, they are not empty. There is, after all, something inside them, inside these bubbles. What is inside these bubbles? Well, I have already reflected on this as well: what is inside these bubbles is, in fact, the substance of Ahriman; he is in there—Ahriman is actually present in his individual parts. The entire atomic system is Ahrimanic substance—Ahriman. Just think of the remarkable metamorphosis of the materialists’ idea that we are witnessing here. We must place Ahriman in those parts of space where the materialists place their “matter.” Ahriman is everywhere.

[ 20 ] Force—that is the other concept that the “force-theorists,” as they were also called, invoke to construct their picture of the universe. Once again, the first stage of intuitive insight reveals that what acts as “force” is not actually a “something” at all; rather, where the force is not present—apart from the force itself—that is where something acts. It is just as if two people were walking and one were now observing: there go two people. He looks and looks now in between; they are walking a little way apart; he looks at that and now takes note—not of one person or the other, but of the boundaries of the space that lies between them; he looks at what is between them. In the same way, those who study forces look at what lies between reality. Where they say, “There is a force of attraction”—in reality, there is actually nothing at all there. But to the left and right of it lies what is truly present. I would, of course, have to go into great detail if I wanted to explain to you, in all its particulars, what I have merely presented as facts. But the time has already come to speak of such things as well. For all the brilliant nonsense that is peddled today—for example, as the theory of relativity, through which Einstein became a great man—can only be refuted if one has clear concepts of these things that correspond to reality. You know, the theory of relativity is so plausible. Isn’t it true that one need only imagine that, well, if a cannon is fired at a distance, one hears it only after a certain amount of time has passed? Now, let’s suppose we’re moving toward the cannon—then we hear it sooner, because we’re getting closer. Now the relativity theorist concludes: If you move just as fast as sound travels, then you’re moving with the sound, so you don’t hear it. And if you move even faster than sound, then you hear something fired later than that which was fired earlier. This is, of course, a widely accepted notion today, but it bears absolutely no relation to reality. For if one moves as fast as sound, one can be sound oneself, but one cannot hear any sound. Yet all these unsound notions survive today as the theory of relativity and enjoy the highest possible esteem.

[ 21 ] Well, as I said, where the lines of force are—the ones we draw in physics today—there is nothing; but all around them is—what, then? The Luciferic element, Lucifer. So if we want to imagine something in accordance with reality in the places where the physicist places his force, then we must imagine the Luciferic there. Well, now we have that which must take the place of something else. So if a book was written in the nineteenth century: *Force and Matter*, in which force and matter are presented as the constituents of the universe, then the twentieth century must substitute: Lucifer and Ahriman. For force and matter coincide completely with Lucifer and Ahriman. And what can be explained as force and matter is in reality explained as Lucifer and Ahriman. You will say: How terrible! There is nothing terrible about it; for Ahriman and Lucifer—as I have often emphasized—are terrible only when viewed in the one-sided swing of a pendulum. In their mutual relationship, they are used precisely for the wise guidance of the world, placing one on one side of the scales and the other on the other side—but a balance must be established between the two. We are dependent on this balance; we are constantly directed toward this balance. We carry this balance within us in a certain way, and in a remarkable way we carry this balance within us. Recall the reflection in which I told you how remarkably our breathing process is connected to the entire universe. We take a certain number of breaths per minute. If you calculate the number of breaths in a human day, you arrive, as I told you, at the same number as the number of days a person lives once they reach their seventies. How marvelous! We live as many days as we take breaths in a single day. But this is only one part of a vast interplay of harmonies in the universe. One of our breaths relates to our days of life just as a single day of life relates to our entire earthly life; and our entire earthly life, in turn, relates to a great solar year—the so-called Platonic year—exactly as our days of life relate to the entire human lifespan and as a single breath relates to a day. For our breath stands in a wondrous inner relationship to the entire cosmos. If we could, through our understanding, attain the pace that our breath develops, then we would stand in harmony with the universe in a way appropriate to human beings. The Easterners attempt this in various ways through their breathing exercises, but this does not suit Westerners; they must seek it through spiritual means.

[ 22 ] But essentially, all the exercises described in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* are the spiritual counterpart in the West to what the East yearns for: to bring the process of cognition into sync with the rhythm of the breathing process. For if we were able to do this—if our cognition were in step with the rhythm of our breathing—then the universe could reveal many of its secrets to us; indeed, it does reveal them to us, but unfortunately not to our cognition—if one may say “unfortunately” in this case—but rather to obscure feelings that are, moreover, subject to many deceptions. In contrast, our cognition, which takes place in the process of imagination—our thinking—is too small in relation to the rhythm into which our breathing is set; our thinking, as it were, swings with pendulum strokes that are too small. In ordinary, external, normal life, we cannot attune our thinking to the great rhythm of the universe; thinking is too small. Something else, however, is too large—something we also possess—and that is our willing. It swings too strongly. It produces too great an amplitude. Thus we stand between thinking and willing. Thinking is too small in its pendulum swing; willing is too large. Therefore, thinking will always be able to develop only such concepts that must be corrected by other means. Through the wide variety of perspectives we adopt, we can gradually approach an insight. Will can only come to what it is predestined and preformed for by uniting with something else—because it swings too strongly, we can only ever capture too small a part of it—only through its union with something else can will reach its intended destination. This means: a will can only come to fruition in connection with another will; a will in one incarnation in conjunction with a will in another incarnation, and so on.

[ 23 ] I am presenting these things here, first of all, I would say, in a very general way; they all naturally require further elaboration, but I would like to use this to make it clear to what concepts spiritual science must lead human beings in order to conceive of them as being placed within the universe, just as they need to be now and in the future. Certainly, everything that constitutes our ordinary knowledge is too limited. Its vibrations are too small compared to the greater vibrations that our breathing undergoes. But this thinking—we know it is not a goal; it is merely a path. Everyone thinks. People think, but they do not think everything that enters their souls. A thought has not reached its goal simply by being thought, but only when it has become united with us. Conscious thoughts are communicated to our memory, but we also take in much that never reaches consciousness, yet still enters within us. Imagine the entire complex of what you have thought and not thought, and what is within you. Where is it? It is within you. You can remember them. Sometimes these memories surface, sometimes they do not, but they are within you. They are, in fact, in the etheric body. After death, they separate from us and pass into the general world. There they become what we perceive in the time between death and a new birth—what enables us to perceive reality there at all; that is what separates from us. What we think is intertwined with the external world. We need this in the external world. Just as we need light here in the physical world, so do we need there in the external world that which separates itself from us. We have often described how this passes into the external world; this is what enables us to have the external world.

[ 24 ] What we will—that is what gives us an inner world. Not merely what we desire, but what we will—that is, what actually becomes action—that is what gives us an inner world. In the time between death and a new birth, what we have willed here, what we have communicated to the outer world here, what we have done—that becomes our inner world. What we have thought, what has descended into us, illuminates our outer world; the outer becomes the inner, the inner becomes the outer. Hold fast to this significant statement: the outer becomes the inner, the inner becomes the outer.

[ 25 ] However, a great deal of water will still flow down the Spree—as the popular saying goes—before the realization dawns in what are officially called scientific circles that “force” and “matter” must be understood as: Lucifer and Ahriman—until the realization dawns that there are two extremes: the Luciferic extreme, in which we think the respiratory process develops, and the other extreme, the process of will, the Ahrimanic side, which governs metabolic processes. We oscillate back and forth between Lucifer and Ahriman, and the state of equilibrium, the middle ground, is the respiratory process, through which we stand within the great harmony. That is true science, science as it is seen!

[ 26 ] Now go back from this “seen” science to the first page of the Old Testament and compare this “seen” science with the passage from the Old Testament: “And He breathed into the man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” It does not say that He gave him the will, nor that He gave him the ability to think, but reference is made to breathing; then you will sense something—if you can sense it!—of that primordial revelation, of which even a one-sided science today can already speak, of what in ancient times was a different kind of knowledge than that which we have arrived at today. But you will come to sense a wondrous connection between what is seen today and this greatest—as well as other—documents of human development, this greatest document, the Old Testament. Of course, no one claims that people arrived at these insights in the same way as today’s intuitive science did during the time when the Old Testament was revealed; yet the concordance, the correspondence, is all the more magnificent for it. How this correspondence can then be viewed from this perspective in relation to other texts—namely, the New Testament and the manifestation of the Mystery of Golgotha—is something we will likely be able to bring before our souls next time.

[ 27 ] Through these reflections, I would like to give you an idea of what is necessary for our time, but also of how difficult it is to even communicate with those who call themselves scientists today. It is very difficult to find a way to communicate with someone who is stuck in a certain set of concepts that he believes to be infallible. I once said: while people doubt the dogma of papal infallibility, our age—which lacks authority and imagines itself to be beyond all authority—is only too happy to accept the infallibility of many, many others.