The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] You will have seen from yesterday’s reflections how easily the entire course of human development can be misunderstood, and how it is currently misunderstood by many, to the detriment of both present-day knowledge and humanity’s current social aspirations. Today, let us bring to mind some findings of spiritual science that are of such a nature that they can, I would say, shed light from the other side on things that remain enigmatic when one limits oneself to the conceptions that the present day forms of them. I have told you that human beings will only be able to cope with the present if they resolve to truly reorient themselves by turning toward the spiritual path—both with regard to their relationship to the external natural world, since the old points of reference are no longer sufficient, as well as with regard to the relationship between human beings, since there, too, the old points of reference are no longer sufficient to understand what impulses are necessary for the present social structure of humanity. Indeed, if one wishes to come to terms with these matters, one must take very seriously the fact that, just as human beings today are placed in the world during their earthly existence between birth and death, they see only the outer manifestation of their true being, just as they actually relate only to the outer manifestation of their fellow human beings.

[ 2 ] Life takes on different forms in the various epochs of human development, and we strive to truly study these matters with specific reference to modern humanity. For in the present epoch, a great deal is at stake for human beings on Earth. Up until the 15th century—and, one might say, because things do not come to an end all at once—right up to the present, human beings were actually still, to a greater or lesser extent, under the influence of old concepts and old impulses. This fifth post-Atlantean period is, in a certain sense, something extraordinary with regard to human development. For, as you know, if one considers the entire history of Earth, it is divided into seven successive great epochs, of which the fourth was the Atlantean, the current fifth is the post-Atlantean; then the sixth would come, followed by the seventh. The Atlantean period marks, so to speak, a kind of turning point. For up to that point, the entire existence of the Earth had been a repetition of the earlier Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases. The Atlantean period marks a kind of turning point, but only the beginning of one. It was merely a time of preparation for the things that were actually to take shape in the subsequent development of the Earth. So that up until the Atlantean period, human beings were essentially only what they had already been in other forms as Saturn, Sun, and Moon beings. In the Atlantean period, however, they were only a hint of what they were to become as true Earth beings. Then the process continued, and now we are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the post-Atlantean period, through the early Indian, early Persian developments, and so on, increasingly defined conditions have always emerged. But the Greco-Latin era—the fourth post-Atlantean period—in turn offers only a kind of repetition, albeit in a different form, of what was already present in Atlantis on a different level of existence. Only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean period—an era that began in the 15th century—has humanity, so to speak, reached a stage in its overall development where truly noticeable new impulses, perceptible in its very nature, are emerging. These were not so noticeable before; now they are becoming perceptible in humanity’s nature, though they have so far only been hinted at. The terrible, catastrophic events of our time—which we can already say will shake humanity to its very core—are an expression of the fact that new conditions are entering into human development. And I have already indicated to you how these new conditions can be characterized from a certain perspective by pointing out how one clearly perceives the influx of a spiritual wave, arising, as it were, from an ascent in the development of the spirits of the personality.

[ 3 ] Now, when one considers from a spiritual-scientific perspective precisely this peculiar state of mind in which modern human beings find themselves here on Earth, one currently perceives quite strongly, from a spiritual scientific perspective, how human beings are actually aware of the manifestations of natural existence as well as the existence of their fellow human beings only when they perceive, or when they are actively engaged in external volitional activity, and know nothing of the real entities into which they must, in a certain way, grow in the course of their development, and into which they will have grown by the time their development has progressed further. As you know, human beings are situated in the world in such a way that—to put it roughly—they perceive the surrounding world in the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and in their own kingdom, the human kingdom. This is what is visibly present around human beings. And it is within the visible human realm that what arises from the will and is meant to find a certain order within the social structure actually takes place.

[ 4 ] Well, people have thought a great deal—though with insufficient depth—about how human beings relate to their surroundings. The results of this reflection have been incorporated into various theories of knowledge. But these theories of knowledge cannot yield very much. And what is taught today in schools within these theories of knowledge to young people—who are then expected to speak philosophically about the world—is really quite inadequate stuff. For a true insight into what is actually revealed in the human environment can only be gained by approaching the matter from the perspective of spiritual science. On the one hand, human beings can look at the mineral and plant kingdoms; on the other hand, at the animal kingdom and the human kingdom itself. Both the mineral and plant kingdoms, as well as the human and animal kingdoms, reveal themselves to them in such a way that, if they are honest in a theoretical sense, they perceive contradictions in this revelation. They cannot make sense of the way in which, on the one hand, the mineral and plant kingdoms, and on the other, the animal and human kingdoms, reveal themselves to them. And if people believe they can make sense of it, this stems only from a certain dullness. They do not want to address all the doubts that spring from the observation of the natural kingdoms, because they are too complacent to do so. But if one delves deeper into knowledge, if one trains oneself in the direction indicated in How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, then, in a certain sense, both the view of the mineral and plant kingdoms and the insight into their relationship to the animal and human kingdoms are transformed. Even today, people already have, to a high degree and unconsciously, a sense of this transformation that does not yet rise to consciousness. But it remains unconscious, just as I have said that, in the course of their entirely natural development, people today unconsciously approach the Guardian of the Threshold. It is actually always a certain fear of the truth that unconsciously prevents people from truly advancing to the point where they arrive at this transformation. I am speaking in imaginations—in imaginations that have been put into words. There is really no other way to accurately characterize these things. For when one brings to life within oneself that which can be brought to life—by applying to oneself what is described in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—one will, looking upon the mineral and plant kingdoms with this transformed power of knowledge, always feel something akin to fear. Isn’t that right? You need not shudder or get goosebumps at the description of these conditions. People avoid them because they are afraid: from this you must surely understand that, naturally, when such conditions are described, it is also true that one can get a certain kind of goosebumps; that is precisely why people are afraid. There is always something about advanced insight—when one then contemplates the mineral and plant kingdoms—like the smell of a corpse that one senses, a smell of a corpse that, as if in a living sensation, characterizes what lives in the mineral and plant kingdoms. In contrast, when one looks at the animal and human kingdoms with this transformed insight, one always has a sensation that can be characterized in such a way that one might say: Actually—and please forgive me for putting this image into words—as long as they dwell in this physical body, human beings, even the most advanced among them, remain, in relation to what is truly within them, always children, real children. It is simply true that there is much more within a human being than he or she can develop or reveal from his or her being between birth and death.

[ 5 ] You can see from this—since in this supersensible knowledge one gradually ascends from appearance to true reality—that when one looks at and contemplates this external world as it is, one is actually dealing only with an appearance. For the stench of decay I spoke to you about, and the childishness of human beings—forgive me—mask themselves. The stench of decay, if I may put it that way, finds our physical being to have a nose too dull; the etheric nose is not sufficiently developed. And people’s childishness—it prevents us from truly acknowledging that it exists, because we, as human beings, are simply too conceited for that. But that is indeed the case. And by distinguishing what I have just described, one simultaneously points out that there is much more within the human being than can be brought into play. One can then ask oneself the question: Yes, in minerals and plants, human beings do not perceive realities; in animals—and not even in their own human nature—they do not perceive realities either. To what, then, is the human being actually attuned here on Earth? Strangely enough, they are attuned to beings that belong neither to the mineral nor the plant kingdom, nor to the animal nor the human kingdom, but lie in between. They are attuned to a kind of plant-animal or animal-plant. If there were beings here on Earth that were neither plants nor animals, but which had purely plant-like nature in terms of their internal organization, yet could walk, beings that had neither muscles nor blood, but whose anatomy were like that of plants—possessing only the same cells and tissues as plants—yet could move at will like animals; or if animals were to roam our Earth that, upon dying, left behind something like a plant carcass: then human beings, in their entire soul constitution, would truly be attuned to such beings. He would be; humanity would actually be able to grasp such beings here in its earthly existence. But the strange thing is, in turn: These beings, for their part, cannot exist in earthly life; these beings are to be found only in other worlds. They are, for their part, such that they could not thrive in earthly life. So one can say: Human beings actually lack the capacity for insight—and this is particularly evident today—that would enable them to penetrate directly into the essence of minerals and plants, as well as animals and human beings. And the beings whose entire constitution they would indeed perceive directly cannot, in turn, dwell on Earth. Such is the peculiar state of human beings with regard to their relationship to the surrounding natural world.

[ 6 ] But even in relation to himself, the human being here on earth finds himself in a peculiar situation. On the one hand, the human being is a thinking being. But when he exercises his power of thought, he loses his own essence in the very act of thinking. And this very essence of their own being—which cannot come to light in the act of imagining—they actually possess only because something, the will, works its way up from the unconscious. If the will did not work its way up, if we did not feel the will within us, the whole world would seem ghostly to us, even if we could merely imagine it. We would have a ghostly world before us, much like the world of scientific concepts; that would then truly be our world. Imagine if the world looked the way natural scientists or zoologists describe it; imagine if there were nothing else there but what is written in books on botany and mineralogy—the actual plants and rocks, of course, contain much more than what is in the books, but imagine you were led into a world as described in the books, where there were nothing more than what is described in the books: it would be nothing but a ghostly world, a true ghostly world. The only reason this world is not a ghostly world is that the will always plays a part. If you could fly—not with a machine, but fly on your own, that is, if you didn’t need the ground beneath your feet, so that you could move freely without the ground—then you would come close to perceiving the world as ghostly. Even if you were simply to observe the world with your eyes while awake, it would already seem very ghostly to you; not as strongly as the naturalist describes it, but it would still seem very ghostly to you. You have a solid sense of your existence in the world only because your feet are planted on the ground. And this pressure of your feet against the ground gives you the feeling—which is related to the will, which is merely an attenuation of the will—that you are not merely in a ghostly world, but in a solid world. If you did not have this feeling, but only saw, then the world would seem very ghostly to you. For you do not tell yourself what is going on in your subconscious. What is constantly happening in the subconscious is that, deep down, a person tells themselves—in the subconscious, they tell themselves: “Yes, actually, the world looks like a ghost! But if the world were the way my eyes show it to me, I wouldn’t be able to stand firm; I’d have to sink. And yet I don’t sink, so the world isn’t the way my eyes show it to me.” — This conclusion is constantly being drawn in the unconscious. That’s how complicated our very ordinary, everyday relationship with the world is. It is always an unconscious conclusion that, in a certain sense, stems from the will. So in mere imagination, we actually lack—if I may now express myself in a scholarly, that is, pedantic way—the subject; it falls away. The fact that we have a subject, that we feel ourselves united with the world, comes from the will.

[ 7 ] And again, when we want something—when we develop the will—we actually lack the object. The object does not properly and solidly enter our consciousness. If I simply want to lift this little book here from the left side to the right side and actually do so—yes, the actual object of the will does not enter into consciousness. You see the path the little book takes, the mental image that haunts the act of willing, but the actual object of the will does not enter into consciousness. So that the human being, both insofar as he is a thinker and insofar as he is a volition—which is, again, a grotesque way of putting it, because one must clothe an imagination in words—that the human being is, in fact, both as a thinker and as a volition, forgive me, a cripple. He thinks in a ghostly way and actually wills incompletely. What a human being really is is actually not fully present either in imagination or in the will; it lies, in turn, in the middle between imagination and the will. But the fact is that this cannot come to our consciousness in ordinary life. Just as the plant-animal cannot enter into external nature, so too can a human being not become conscious of what he actually is. That is why I have often spoken to you about this fact from another perspective, telling you: Human beings perceive the true self as a gap in the events of life. Isn’t it true that one need only be aware that gaps can also be perceived? Human beings know nothing of sleep; they wake, sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep; but when they look back over their life, the missing consciousness—the hole in consciousness—appears within the course of their life, and they see it just as if they had a white surface with black holes where they actually see nothing; in the same way, they see the holes in consciousness caused by sleep. But this is also how it is with our “I” in our waking life. Our “I” is not, in truth, brought into consciousness; rather, in consciousness there is only a hole where this “I” should be, and the perception of this hole makes us aware that we do indeed have the real “I.”

[ 8 ] These things, which still seem like mere speculation to the coarse-minded people of today, must gradually become part of people’s basic consciousness. For in the future, one will not be able to base one’s life on such beliefs as one could in times past, when the remnants and aftereffects of atavistic clairvoyance were still present. In the future, one will have to base one’s life on clearly transparent foundations. Part of our everyday understanding will have to be viewing the mineral and plant kingdoms as Goethe did—who looked only at the phenomenon itself, who did not believe that anything other than, at most, the fundamental phenomena, the primordial phenomena, were revealed in the phenomenon, but rather that the phenomena reveal natural laws that cannot be expressed in thought. Goethe never sought to discover laws of nature; that would have seemed very fanciful to him. He sought to follow the phenomena, for the external world in the mineral and plant kingdoms reveals to us nothing but perceptions, the appearances. Thus, a person must look at the external world in such a way that they are aware: In the mineral and plant kingdoms, I actually see only the outer side; and when I face the animal and human kingdoms, I actually see only something that is like an embryo of the whole being. — It must be so. You see, in the mineral and plant kingdoms there are, in reality, beings that reveal themselves only from a certain perspective when a human being looks at them, because—I would say—they cannot reveal themselves in any other way. For in the mineral and plant kingdoms there lives something that can only be fully recognized when one—now understand me correctly—looks back upon the world from which one emerged when one entered this physical existence through birth. If you could retain, in memory, that consciousness which extends backward beyond birth—if, that is, you could regard being born as an event in your life, such as, say, the transition from the fifteenth to the sixteenth year—and if the thread of consciousness did not break off as you looked backward, because consciousness was entirely different before birth or, rather, before conception—then you would naturally gain a completely different perspective on the mineral and plant kingdoms than you do simply by viewing them from the standpoint of life between birth and death. For you would then say to yourself: I have stepped out of the spiritual realm through birth. I have entered this physical realm. Why did I do that? Why didn’t I remain in the spiritual realm? Why did it lure me down to Earth in the first place? For one can speak of such a luring. Then you might say, if you could remember: It lured me down to Earth because, suddenly, in the course of my development between death and a new birth, I entered a sphere where it seemed as though certain beings had fled—as though they were supposed to be there but were missing and not present. — If I may put it bluntly: In the final period before birth, one experiences at every turn in the spiritual world that beings are missing who actually belong there but are not present. Everything points to this: these beings are missing. And when one now passes through birth, these beings are present in the minerals and plants, but as if in exile—as if they had been banished from the world one had been in, and as if they could not fully thrive, were half-dying, and thus produced the smell of decay, half-dying in the world one has entered. Before birth, one longs to become acquainted with certain exiles. One knows only this: there are exiled beings, but where are they? Then one steps out into the physical world and perceives them, but—I would say—embalmed, mummified. For in the world one has entered, they cannot be anything other than embalmed, mummified, withered. This is the entirely correct sensation when one approaches the mineral and plant worlds in such a way that one sees in them the beings who have been banished from the spiritual world, from the sphere in which one was just before one had to enter physical life.

[ 9 ] And when one observes animals and human beings and sees their childlike nature, one comes to realize—if one can develop a deeper insight into their essence—that these animals and human beings, as they exist in this world where we live between birth and death, never truly reach completion; they never actually bring their entire life—as determined by their inner being—to a close. Anyone who truly observes animals—who can observe them with a fully developed, inner, living power of insight—knows, of course, that animals are not immortal, but they also know that animals experience the full tragedy of this mortality within their group souls. The group souls, after all, endure beyond the individual life of the animal; but that which of the animals is here on Earth is, as I said recently, actually sick—it is decaying because it belongs to another world and has been banished into this one. And the human being, in terms of his outer physical form, is also banished into this world; therefore, he remains crippled, remains a child. The human being remains a child. The animal, in its very essence and physical form, has withered away, for what belongs to animals and human beings can be found when one passes through death and enters directly into the spiritual world, which one now observes after “death.” For in reality, one traces a circle in the life between death and new birth. What remains hidden from us here in the animal and plant kingdoms—which is why we perceive that animals and human beings are exiles from the spiritual world (human beings in terms of their outer physical form)—is first perceived when one enters the spiritual world through the gate of death. There one undergoes a process of development and comes to realize, more and more after this “midnight of the world” that I described in the Mystery Drama, that something is missing—and what is missing has, so to speak, fled from the spiritual world. One pursues it through birth and then finds it in the mineral and plant kingdoms on the physical earth. One is not really surprised by the mineral and plant kingdoms when one enters existence through birth, for one has expected them. The fact that one also finds animals here on the physical Earth—and human beings with an outer form that is merely more perfect but still reminiscent of the animal—is something that surprises one to some extent after one has been born with the predisposition of consciousness. But one begins to understand it when one realizes: This outer form of animals and human beings marks a beginning that continues to grow in the world one enters through the gate of death.

[ 10 ] One might say: For the abstract and completely withered beliefs that still remain—in the past, these beliefs were much more vibrant and truly gave people something—as they enter our age of consciousness, they stand in abrupt juxtaposition with what people perceive here in the physical world, and what they are supposed to imagine lies at the foundation of the world that a person experiences between death and a new birth. What a person experiences between death and a new birth therefore remains so doubtful to people today and can so easily be denied by the crudely materialistic spirit, because, as I have explained, by entering the age of the conscious soul—that is, the intellectual age—a person lives in consciousness only through mirror images. Thus, even when he goes beyond the perceptions—into which, as I have indicated to you, the will intervenes when he stands on his feet—he can still only live in mirror images. But if no will is at work—and in the immortal life after death, no will is at work—and human beings are dependent solely on bringing before their souls, through the mirror images of imagination, what the world is like between death and a new birth, then this world becomes doubtful to them—not merely ghostly, but doubtful. Indeed, one might even say the following: If people were to insist on accepting only the natural sciences, on bringing before their eyes only the ghostly world presented by the natural sciences, then they would actually be right to deny life between death and a new birth—indeed, to deny life after passing through the gate of death altogether; For what the natural sciences provide are, after all, only images; they are, in fact, ghostly. And this also comes to an end when a person passes through the gate of death. The natural sciences can contain nothing of what a person experiences in the realm beyond death and before birth. For you see: In the books on mineralogy and botany, and in everything related to them—physiology, geology, and so on—in all the concepts you can possibly grasp about plants and minerals, you can only take in information about beings who are confined here to the physical world. And likewise, in animals and in human bodies, you can also perceive only what is confined here—including in zoology and anthropology textbooks—and this, when considered in the broadest sense, is essentially the sum total of all knowledge: you can perceive only that which lives here in confinement. But if you consider that before birth these beings are precisely absent—that is, they are not there— the beings you experience here after birth—that what is experienced in animals and humans is precisely what is not present here—then you will understand that nothing of the immortal life can enter into the ordinary scientific imagination; that natural science, in and of itself, is quite right when it, so to speak, pays no attention to the immortal life, because it lives in images. And that is why, in the era since the 15th century, in which scientific concepts dominate all spheres, human beings, on the one hand, have, so to speak, the robust, raw nature that they actually regard as the only reality, and on the other hand, a realm that they seek to reach only through the faded mirror images of the age of the conscious soul, where it actually seems to them as if they were saying to themselves: “Well, since I realize that these are only mirror images that I am conceiving”—and in the subconscious they come to this realization, for then they become doubters of immortality— then, if I believed that these reflections—and also my own reflection—would still be there after my death, I would be just as foolish as if I believed that people were coming toward me from the mirror on the wall, that they were not merely reflected but were actually coming toward me.

[ 11 ] It is simply in the nature of this age of the development of the conscious soul that, unless a person is willing to advance toward a spiritual understanding of the world, their connection with the world they enter when they pass through the gate of death gradually fades away. And it fades from their imagination, it fades from their conscious life, but it does not fade from their longing. And even the most ardent deniers of immortality have, deep down in the sphere of the will—from which this longing originates—a yearning to learn something about the world into which a human being enters through the gate of death, the world from which they emerged by passing through the gate of birth. They have this longing. Even the present is afflicted by this longing. And the various ills of the present manifest themselves because this longing reigns within human beings, and human beings cannot find conscious concepts to express this longing. When something lives within our sphere of the will that human beings cannot grasp with their imagination—one must again develop very radical concepts when speaking of these things—then they begin to rage. This is the essence of rage, of fury: that something lives within the sphere of the will that human beings cannot encompass with their power of imagination. And if people are not willing to engage in the comprehension of the spiritual world—in order, through this comprehension, to grasp that which is already taking shape in the sphere of the will—then the frenzy in the world will grow ever greater and greater: the frenzy that today presents itself as the next stage following the peace settlement that has not materialized, but which people have always hoped for—is now taking shape for humanity. This is not something one can discuss as if in a bowling club, where, according to ordinary philistine notions, one might think it possible to remedy this or that here or there by coming to an agreement; no, this is something connected to the deepest essence of human development. Human beings cannot resist the development within themselves of that which enters their sphere of will. They have no power over this. They can only resolve to consciously penetrate the spiritual sphere in such a way that they learn to understand what enters their sphere of will. Through this, orderly human coexistence will be able to develop in the future in place of the current chaos.

[ 12 ] You see, it is not merely a subjective matter for human beings to turn toward the spiritual world, which seeks to reveal itself through a particular wave of events in our time; rather, it is an objective necessity for human beings to turn toward the spiritual world in the Age of the Consciousness Soul. For changes have indeed taken place in the development of humanity.

[ 13 ] Until the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place in earthly life, everything a person needed to stand reasonably secure in this world came precisely from sleep. People slept differently before the Mystery of Golgotha—even if today’s physiologists won’t admit it—than they do now. That is why prophetic souls, to whom such magnificent things were revealed in dreams as to the Hebrew prophets, no longer exist in this form; for the Lord no longer gives such revelations to His own in their sleep. He has already given them these revelations. That is precisely the great transition in human development. And it was not only to prophetic souls that visions of the future were given; rather, thoughts were still bestowed upon people from within their sleep well into the Greek era. When one awoke, one brought those thoughts with oneself. The human organism was still structured in such a way that one brought these thoughts with oneself. This continued to have an effect for a while, even though the reality was that people had actually already lost their heads—pardon the expression!—in the 15th century; that is to say: the head was no longer of much use; the head could no longer bring thoughts with it from sleep.

[ 14 ] It is indeed a finding of spiritual science that, since the 15th century, our head has become a far less useful tool, much more dried up than it was before. But this has only really become noticeable in the present day, and it will become increasingly noticeable unless a substitute is created, so that what has evaporated from the head is once again replaced by the spiritual world. For right up to our time, right into the 19th century, the other nature—the human breast nature—was still accustomed to what the head received from sleep even during the Greco-Roman era. The nature of the breast was accustomed to this, and people still had the lingering impulses within their headlessness. It was still accustomed to this; I would say that people still possessed the gesture of thought, the shadow of thought. But even this shadow will fade; people will have no thoughts at all if they are willing to leave themselves entirely to their heads. And that is indeed the case, and it is evident in the fact that people do not want to think. They want to think less and less. On the one hand, they would like to have their thoughts dictated by nature; they would prefer simply to experiment and let the experiment tell them what to think. People do not want to think for themselves. Nor do they have any real confidence in doing so, for whatever they think up, they believe, is not reality after all. After all, if you consider mere thoughts in isolation, they are not reality. But one can become aware that it is thinking—not the thoughts themselves—that must become active. This activation of thinking comes from the spiritual world coming to play a role within us. And today, if you truly begin to think actively, you cannot help but allow the spiritual world to come to play a role within you. Otherwise you do not think; otherwise you think as little as today’s natural scientists, who would prefer to have everything dictated to them by experimentation or natural science, or as little as today’s social scientists, who—because they do not want to be active, because they do not truly grasp social impulses that can only be grasped through activity—work with what can be historically researched, namely heredity. Just think for a moment how people have fallen into this state—because they no longer possess the impulses through which social structure can be created—and look back to a time when thoughts were still being formed. People view the matter solely from a false perspective. It was Rousseau who presented the state of nature to humanity, because he sensed it: nothing can be gained from the present unless one becomes active in the sense of gaining insight into higher worlds. And modern socialism, which delights most in studying the primordial states of humanity—this is, after all, what socialists in particular immerse themselves in—studying primitive conditions, studying the wildest indigenous peoples and the most primitive peoples, in order to understand how human beings should be organized in society. Anyone familiar with these matters knows this. Everywhere there is a certain fear of what so necessarily breaks through like the first dawn of connection with the spiritual world—a certain fear of active thinking.

[ 15 ] That is why it is so difficult to understand works that demand active thinking, such as my Philosophy of Freedom. The ideas in it are different from those commonly held today. And when reading this book, people sometimes stop reading very quickly, for the simple reason that they want to read it like any other book. But, isn’t it true that the other books people particularly enjoy today—well, they read them by sitting down on a chaise longue, leaning back a little, then becoming as passive as possible and letting the mental images pass by. After all, some people read exclusively in this way these days. Do not deceive yourselves into believing that these people often read the newspapers differently—of course, those present here are always an exception—it’s just that emotions and worries sometimes creep in; but even the newspapers that are received with such sensation are read in such a way that the images simply flit by. Yes, something like what was attempted to be presented in The Philosophy of Freedom cannot be read that way. One must constantly rouse oneself so that these thoughts do not lull one to sleep. For it is not intended that one simply sit on a chaise longue. One can sit, of course, and even lean back, but one must then try—precisely by bringing one’s outer physicality to rest—to set one’s inner spiritual and soul-life in motion with one’s whole being, so that one’s entire thinking is set in motion. Otherwise, one cannot make progress; otherwise, one falls asleep. Many do fall asleep while reading it, and they are not even the most dishonest ones. The most dishonest are those who read The Philosophy of Freedom as if it were just another book and then believe that they have truly followed the thoughts. They have not followed them, but have merely treated them as empty phrases; they merely read the words and do not extract what actually follows from them—just as when one strikes steel against flint. This is precisely what must be demanded of what is to intervene in the development of humanity in the present and in the near future, for through this, humanity will gradually and in a healthy way rise up into the spiritual world. It is through active thinking that humanity’s inner kinship with the spiritual world will be kindled, and then humanity will ascend ever higher. Indeed, humanity can already go very far today by observing such things as are described in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But even there, it is sufficiently indicated that it is nevertheless necessary to develop, above all, coherent—if I may use the term—connected thinking, in which the thread of thought never breaks, but everything is pursued along that thread of thought.

[ 16 ] From ancient times, this longing—which has remained more or less unclear and unconscious to this day—to advance, through conscious thought, into the sphere where the spirits dwell—as far as one is able—is intertwined with a weary desire to cling to incoherent thinking. I pointed this out recently: It is uncomfortable for people to always have to advance step by step with conscious thought. They would rather move through a more unconscious realm that cannot be followed with the mind, and only then take the next step, wouldn’t you agree? It is not that one cannot understand spiritual science—as it is meant here and which, as you know, in a healthy way relies on the constant pursuit of thoughts—if one truly engages the mind actively; rather, people simply wish to understand it differently than one must. Instead of constantly pursuing a thought, people wish for the thread of thought to break off repeatedly. If you immerse yourself in what spiritual science offers you—and if you do so with genuine energy (be patient, for in this day and age this can only be present in hints)—you can, even today, by developing the power of thought to follow Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon, as described in my Outline of Esoteric Science, you can trace this development all the way to where humanity stands in the world, penetrate into your own life, and, with thought thus intensified, permeate your own life. Then you will arrive at certain insights—even if they appear differently than one might wish, yet thoroughly rooted in the context and coherence of thought—that will enlighten you about your being, about the nature of who you are, and about your character. For by truly bringing to life what has been said about Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon—and then about the development of the Earth—and applying this to yourself as an individual human being, you can progress to your own nature; you must simply continue with the thought toward your self-perception, not allowing the thought to be interrupted, but letting it remain coherent, letting it hang together. What a person legitimately begins in this way today enlightens them about their own personal nature to the very degree to which they are meant to be enlightened. Into this longing—which, however, still exists more or less unconsciously in human beings—something else intermingles when the thread of thought is broken: something calculated. A person wishes to gain insight into their own nature. What does he do? He takes an old, antiquated science—which, of course, should by no means be disparaged in terms of its venerability, but which requires explanation if it is to be brought into the new age—and calculates star constellations, all the while constantly breaking the thread of thought; afterward, the train of thought may break off, and purely externally, without thinking, this nature of humankind is to develop, just as it stands here on Earth.

[ 17 ] See: The Roman Catholic Church, as I explained yesterday, denies what is most essential today; but precisely when one takes something like St. John of the Cross’s description of inner contemplation, this can be fulfilled if one lives today in accordance with the principles of development, as outlined in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. What is contained in this book is—especially for the present time—the following of what a person like St. John of the Cross desires, whereas the Catholic Church denies this and still insists today on applying the old way of St. John of the Cross to modern people, as some people do. Because they are too comfortable, they do not want that active life in the spirit, which is already present at a very potent level when one takes in the ideas presented in spiritual science. They wish to carry this forward into the immediate present using more conventional thoughts; they prefer to stick to the old ways so that what is meant to enlighten them about their present-day humanity might emerge from their unthinking minds. Of course, no disparaging judgment is passed on what is so venerable; but it must be pointed out from all sides that one must not deny what is precisely inherent in the spiritual necessities of the present development of humanity, which is entering the age of the conscious soul. This is what is at stake: truly understanding what is required of human beings today in the development of the world. I believe—if I may use the expression, though it is merely a “façon de parler”—that out of a proper sense of precisely what people today find uncomfortable and do not want, a better attitude toward spiritual science will increasingly emerge; and only when this better attitude toward spiritual science emerges will it also enrich social life. Then people will be able to gain insight into human life, because they will then possess only the powerful thoughts necessary to gain such insight. For in this process of gaining insight into human life, people today suffer from a very unfortunate circumstance. Whether you are a Leninist or a Trotskyist, or a Marxist, or whether you think in any other way about shaping human social structure in the right way: in all of this there is a difficult circumstance that is not understood—not even understood in practical terms—unless one allows oneself to be enriched by spiritual science. Isn’t it true that humanity has now entered the age of the conscious soul? Humanity must consciously develop what emerges as social structure. There is no other way. Humanity must stand consciously within the world; it is simply necessary for humanity to stand there consciously. But they must also consciously grasp the relationship between human beings, life in society, and social life. For there is a troublesome circumstance that prevents them from doing so. The fatal problem is that a person can always conceive of only one other person at a time. Just as two people—physical people, I mean—or two things—again, physical things—cannot be in one place at the same time, which is what the law of non-interpenetration entails, so too in human consciousness two people cannot be present simultaneously; two people cannot be truly and realistically conceived of at the same time. It is very important to take this into account. But one cannot live with another person without imagining them, nor can one develop any understanding of social coexistence without imagining the other person. Yet today, because a person can only ever imagine one person at a time, they usually prefer to imagine only themselves—to imagine their own self. And social thinking, too, is content to demand a form of coexistence in which only the individual presents himself. People cannot break free from the concept of their own self; they often convince themselves that they can break free from it, but in reality, even today, they still cannot easily do so. Only when he strives to fulfill the demands set forth by spiritual science does he gradually gain the ability to detach himself somewhat from his own self. For spiritual science introduces into the world ideas that reach very broad perspectives. Through this, human beings develop the habit of detaching themselves from their own selves. Just as a person today, when he becomes a spiritualist, becomes even more selfish than he was before, so he becomes more selfless when he seeks to enter the spiritual world by the other path—the path of spiritual science. Therefore, spiritual science is not merely the transmission of a body of knowledge, but is in fact what is absolutely necessary for the education of present-day humanity toward social life. Therefore, no salvation will come about unless one begins at this point, unless one truly considers this: one must begin with the imagination. One cannot carry out social reform unless one begins with the school system, with the education of people. And if one neglects this, one misses the opportunity for people to absorb concepts that encompass their deepest longings. And people will become increasingly frenzied—if I may put it bluntly.

[ 18 ] So this is the inner connection. One simply wants this inner connection, in particular, to be grasped. One wants, above all, for this inner connection to be felt by everyone who approaches spiritual science and wishes to live within it to one degree or another. This is something that needs to be carefully considered by anyone who wishes to take spiritual science and the spiritual science movement seriously. It cannot be easily overlooked, nor can it be easily disregarded, that when one enters into a relationship with spiritual science, spiritual science, in a certain sense, places a demand on the human mind to expand its interests beyond narrow personal interests. It is truly the case that when we speak of spiritual science, we are simply speaking of things that, if one wishes to establish a proper relationship with them, necessitate that a person detach themselves from their narrowest interests. One should not be afraid that this will make them an impractical person; on the contrary, it will make them a much more practical one. What people have gradually brought upon themselves by becoming so unspiritual is, after all, nothing more than the belief that they are practical. In reality, today’s “practical” people are terribly impractical. And it is precisely these “practical” people who have brought about this catastrophe for humanity. And therein lies something immensely important that one must always assume if one wishes to truly understand spiritual science: one must detach oneself from one’s narrowest interests. One must detach oneself somewhat from one’s immediate personality, for it is not beneficial to bring narrow personal interests into the spiritual science movement. This invariably leads to some kind of disruption in the relationship through which one engages with spiritual science. This, of course, is also what still makes the spiritual science movement difficult today. Sometimes people have, in theory and in the abstract, the good will to enter into spiritual science with their own thinking, feeling, and willing, but they still cannot quite muster the strength to truly enter into that detachment which is, after all, a prerequisite for properly understanding what is spoken from the standpoint of spiritual science. In other words, a certain state of mind—one that is not readily found in today’s world, but rather the opposite of which is often prevalent—is required if the spiritual science movement is to be beneficial. For this is what distinguishes the honest presentation of spiritual scientific insights from everything else that appears in the present: that this honest presentation of spiritual scientific insights is not a personal matter, nor is it the expression of a personal opinion. If I were to believe that I am merely presenting personal opinions—that I am not presenting what is revealing itself today, what humanity needs at this very moment—then I would prefer to remain silent. For asserting personal opinions and personal aspirations within a spiritual science movement is, in fact, something impermissible. That should not take place. A movement such as the one being pursued here is justified only if there is a willingness to present only what can be observed from the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] Isn’t it true that when you describe what a city looks like, you may tell the story in an interesting or boring way, but what the city actually looks like does not depend on you. You are describing something objective. Similarly, what you yourself want or think need not be expressed in spiritual science. In spiritual science, what is spiritually observed must take effect in accordance with today’s requirements. Anyone who can really only want what is personal can, for that very reason, only understand what is meant to prevail in a spiritual scientific movement in a deficient way. Such a person always confuses what is meant to prevail in a spiritual scientific movement—as understood here—with something else that is, in turn, derived entirely from the personality. How many people approach spiritual science wishing to have precisely what suits them as their own opinion justified by spiritual science. One is not always equipped with the open-mindedness necessary for receiving spiritual science. Rather, one often approaches spiritual science with something entirely different from this open-mindedness. One would like this or that to be true, and then, in some way—by admitting that the spiritual scientist may know something about the truth—one convinces oneself: “What I myself believe is what he is saying.” Then one feels comfortable with it. But one must notice this subtle difference; it is a subtle difference, yet it is a difference with immense far-reaching implications, a difference of great significance—whether one truly wishes to receive the messages from the spiritual world, or whether one actually only wants confirmation of what one personally finds appealing as an opinion. And one will find this difference only through the most careful self-examination, through conscientious self-examination. Many who approach spiritual science fail to notice this difference; but this difference must be recognized. And once one recognizes this difference, one will already become aware that a spiritual-scientific movement must bring with it something of a new current of life that was not there before. It really cannot be the case that a spiritual scientific movement is merely a gentle breeze that comes to meet those who bring the philistine nature of their previous existence to this spiritual science and now believe that what they so dearly wish to recognize as true—arising from this philistine nature—will be confirmed by this spiritual science.

[ 20 ] If one approaches this matter seriously and conscientiously—if one does not merely seek confirmation of what one already believes—then one will also have to grapple with various issues that, particularly within a spiritual scientific movement, are bound to arise as, I might say, new phenomena, and which are bound to cause harm if they are ignored. In a movement such as the spiritual science movement, which is still in its infancy, many things can prove harmful that would not be nearly as harmful in old, stagnant movements that are no longer of any use, or of little use. One really ought to engage with such subtleties. The desire to see one’s own opinions and aspirations confirmed solely by spiritual scientific revelation is connected to the fact that one actually engages in a peculiar kind of retouching with regard to what arises—quite naturally—within a spiritual scientific movement. Within the spiritual science movement, one must be aware that people’s manifestations cannot be taken at face value as they might be in a bowling club or anywhere else where people can reveal themselves in their full breadth—the breadth they have acquired through the external world—and where they have no need to acquire anything new. One must take this seriously: one should not use one’s own preconceptions to interpret the intentions of spiritual research, but must truly prepare oneself to receive these things. One should imagine that something is seeking to flow into the world, something that is meant to spread farther and farther, so that everything one takes in should actually be received with the awareness that: One will only come to grasp certain connections—which one cannot yet see—later on. —This willingness, so to speak, to always receive everything as preparation, will certainly not be found in someone who brings personal aspirations into the work of spiritual science, for such a person wants to get things done as quickly as possible and bends the facts to fit their usual opinions. They do not adapt their opinions to spiritual science, but rather adapt the insights of spiritual science to their own opinions. And so what often emerges is precisely something like what I would like to characterize in the following way.

[ 21 ] Isn't it true that the student of the humanities must assess the world in a certain way—both the natural world and the human world? That is, after all, what a humanities education is all about: learning to reassess oneself, one's environment, and one's relationship to that environment; learning to look a little more deeply into the world. Now it happens very often, when the relationship between, say, three people is at issue, that people say: Yes, the scholar of the humanities B judges person A in a certain way. — And you see, as soon as one steps even slightly beyond the sphere of ordinary philistinism—which is, after all, quite common today—two points of view can always assert themselves with regard to such a judgment from one person to another. One point of view is that of reason; the second is that of compassion. So that B can judge A, and depending on whether an inner necessity exists, B may soon do something for A out of pure compassion. If C then sees fit to reject the matter—because he doesn’t think it through further, because he doesn’t assume that there might be a necessity for pure compassion—then he judges from a purely rational standpoint and says: “How can anyone do such a thing!” — Or, on the other hand, this inner necessity speaks in such a way that one does not let compassion prevail, but rather, for certain reasons at hand, lets reason take the lead. Indeed, if it suits the other person better, he now lets compassion speak, and he condemns and says: “What an uncaring person B is!” What a heartless person, what a cold, rational person! He judges this solely from the standpoint of reason! — And so the greatest misunderstandings can arise precisely in the person who strives to grasp the inner essence of existence, where he must sometimes act out of reason and sometimes out of compassion. If it suits the other person, then he judges what was done out of reason from the perspective of compassion, and what was done out of compassion from the perspective of reason, and he can always condemn or praise, as he pleases. One does not arrive at the truth this way; one arrives at the truth only when one first asks oneself: I must examine the situation; I must examine the reason why compassion or reason prevailed here. — This gives rise to the small misunderstandings of life, which often grow into the most terrible devastation within human coexistence, and it is precisely what spiritual scientific education instills in us that is meant to carry us beyond them. For life is such that it manifests itself dualistically, and because it manifests itself dualistically, one can always judge any given case as one sees fit. But this is taken into account very little, and above all, it is not taken into account in relation to the spiritual scientific teaching itself. That teaching, too, must be brought into the world with certain intentions. Depending on one’s convenience, one can choose one point of view or the other in a particular case if one does not take into account what the spiritual researcher must do for deeper reasons. He can often be misunderstood. And if one does not take into account what the researcher must do out of an inner obligation to the facts, then everything can be misunderstood, for the world expresses itself, after all, in dualistic terms.

[ 22 ] For example, one can fall into the following error: Precisely when one is so eager to want to confirm what suits one, one can fall into the worst kind of belief in authority. Precisely in the field in which spiritual science seeks to be active—a field that aims solely to make human beings completely free, self-reliant beings—belief in authority can naturally assert itself, and indeed does so very frequently on a vast scale. But the opposite extreme of belief in authority is hatred of authority. And fundamentally, a person who does not feel drawn to spiritual science by engaging with the facts revealed from the spiritual world, but who, carried along by authority, wants to accept these truths and wants to believe in authority because it is more convenient than engaging with the facts, is someone who can very easily slip from belief in authority—which always involves a certain kind of love of authority—to hatred of authority. And such phenomena as have recently arisen in our movement—this leap from blind worship of authority, which is sometimes even admitted with a certain shamelessness at the very moment when one has then turned to hatred; this transition from blind worship of authority to hatred—this is indeed something that poses an inner danger. It is very important to take these connections into account, for it is these connections that make it immensely difficult to shape a spiritual science movement in a fruitful way today. It must be shaped in a fruitful way for the sake of humanity’s salvation.

[ 23 ] In my life, I have encountered quite a number of people who were spiritual individuals, who were sincerely seeking a path into spiritual science—into, well, spiritual science of one kind or another—and who had also, in a certain sense, advanced in their development. One particular type among them were the disillusioned—those who had been disappointed by one of the current spiritual movements and whom one then encountered here and there. How many are disappointed by the Blavatsky movement, the Besant movement, and other movements today! The characteristic phenomenon is not that such curious reversals take place, as they do right here in our anthroposophical movement, but that one finds people there who are spiritually advanced in a certain way; after a long time, one encounters them again, but they say: “You are completely wrong!” — It is not uncommon to meet such people. Spirituality is not very common at all today, but there are indeed such people who, after some time, say to you: “You’re actually wrong, because look—proclaiming the things you teach in spiritual science publicly before people makes no sense at all! People aren’t inclined to accept them; they’re simply not ready for it.” It only makes sense to cultivate this within oneself and remain alone with it. — I have encountered many such people who say this! And it is, in fact, a defining characteristic of the truly spiritually advanced person that it no longer even occurs to them to speak to their fellow human beings about it; rather, they keep the matter to themselves. There are actually quite a few such people in the world. Based on what I perceive of the spiritual world, I have never been able to agree with these people, for a certain inner reason. These people do, of course, play a useful role in the spiritual context, but they become hermits, even if they sometimes remain fully within social contexts. One can become a hermit, can’t one, even while wearing patent leather boots and leading a hotel-dweller’s life. So one sees this dual human life that a number of people lead; they are even modern hotel-goers, wearing patent leather boots and, for all I care, even top hats, but they lead this outward life to mask themselves, to hide their inner selves—they have an inner spiritual life that they do not wish to share with their fellow human beings. This strikes one as an action that is not right, that is a sin against humanity. For it is indeed true: such people are already active in the spiritual life; what they experience flows into the spiritual current; a human being is not merely a self-contained being, so what they experience has value and significance in the spiritual world—but the question of time always plays a role there. Such people, who currently live as some I have met do, in this way, do indeed have an effect in the spiritual world, but this only comes to fruition after a long time, in later epochs of humanity. But then—and this would certainly be the case if there were always such people who, as hermits, develop their spiritual being and do not wish to teach what they know from the spiritual world, what they have developed within themselves—by the time the fruits of these people’s efforts ripen, outer humanity would already have declined to such an extent that it could no longer receive it. Earth’s evolution would be endangered; the connection would be lost. We live in such a way today that these particular spiritual truths we are speaking of absolutely must be communicated to humanity. It is not possible to adopt the attitude expressed, for example, by an acquaintance of mine who was, in a certain sense, a spiritually advanced person. He came to Berlin. I asked him if he’d like to hear a lecture from me, just to see how the movement is run—it’s been a long time now—and he said: “No, giving a lecture and speaking to people serves no purpose! Sitting down together for an hour or so and chatting a bit is very pleasant for me, but let’s leave spiritual matters out of it as much as possible; everyone has to work that out for themselves! — Paying each other a courtesy visit, talking about everyday matters—that’s the best approach, especially with this kind of spiritually aspiring people. And this attitude is very common. It would be more comfortable to live in accordance with such an attitude. And it is certainly not comfortable in the present day to step before humanity and share what one feels compelled to share. But this should definitely be taken into account in a spiritual-scientific movement: that one acts out of an inner necessity, that it is not a choice, but the fulfillment of an obligation that brings this about.

[ 24 ] I have included these words at the end of today’s reflections because I would like to take every opportunity to draw attention to what is necessary if one is to take seriously—as one ought to take seriously—a spiritual scientific movement in the present day. For what such a spiritual science movement can otherwise become—when personal aspirations and personal ambition are introduced into it—can lead to serious harm; indeed, it must lead to serious harm. Moreover, there is also the downside that those who merely believe they are finding personal confirmation through spiritual science are completely unable to discern whether others are also pursuing the matter solely out of personal ambition. This is what leads to the very worst consequences.

[ 25 ] Well, I wanted to point out things like that. We'll continue our discussion next Friday.