The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] The last time we met here, I was able to speak to you about the inner reasons behind the idea of the threefold social order. I was able to take these reflections far enough that we became aware of the sense in which we are, in a certain way, living in a transitional period at the present time. You will not misunderstand this remark, since I have often said: When I speak here of a transitional period, I do not mean that triviality which people often have in mind when they say they are living in a transitional period. For, after all, as I have often said, every era is a transitional period—namely, from the preceding one to the following one. What matters is to focus our attention precisely on that which is in transition. And in this regard, there are indeed moments of greater and lesser significance in the great course of world history. And when considering spiritual life at the depths to which it is accessible to human observation, it is clear that, particularly with regard to the most important—indeed, the most crucial—impulses of human development, decisive events are taking place in our time, so to speak, beneath the surface of external events. I already drew your attention to this last time: one must look into what is often called the unconscious or subconscious of human nature, of the human being, in order to recognize what humanity is currently undergoing in a transition—in an essential and important sense. What we currently hold in our consciousness does not, in and of itself, tell us much about the development of humanity as a whole—even though we are living precisely in the age of the development of the consciousness-soul, and even though it is a law of world history for the individual human being in this age to develop his or her consciousness-soul. For humanity as a whole—in contrast to individual human beings—this age is such that humanity as a whole, with regard to its inner soul and spiritual powers, is passing through an epoch in which development takes place more in the subconscious. In the subconscious, we must find the most essential transitional forces for all of humanity, just as we must find the most important forces for the individual human being today, in this age, precisely in the acquisition of full consciousness. For the individual, the instinctive, more naive experience of the soul is increasingly giving way to a conscious experience of the soul; for humanity as a whole, however, something significant is taking place unconsciously, without the individual often paying attention to this significance, unless he or she is specifically seeking to deepen their understanding through spiritual science.

[ 2 ] And this important thing, this most essential thing—it’s not at all easy to describe. For our language is, after all, fundamentally designed for the psychological representation of external sensory reality. This language makes it difficult for us to describe with complete precision—that is, sufficiently—what does not belong to sensory reality, what belongs to the supersensory realm. One often has to resort to comparisons here, but not abstract comparisons—rather, the kind of comparisons you are well acquainted with from spiritual science, which always juxtaposes one phenomenon of life with another so that one phenomenon of life may elucidate the other. When such comparisons are made, one must be clear that only flexible thinking—thinking that does not force concepts and words into a rigid mold—can truly capture the precise meaning of what is to be described. For I must make comparisons if I am to characterize the most important thing taking place within all of humanity in the present moment of world history—as I hinted at recently—I must compare the underlying currents of today’s historical events with the experience that the individual human being can consciously undergo only when he, as one says, crosses the threshold into the supersensible world. You all know from the description I gave of this individual human experience in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* that it is an event that profoundly affects the human being when a person crosses that threshold, on this side of which lies the sensory world for human consciousness and beyond which lies the supersensible world. Indeed, everything beyond this threshold into the supersensible world is different from how things are here in the sensory world. And the human being undergoes something there—as you know—that has been described by those who experienced it, particularly in the style of earlier ages, with the meaningful phrase “crossing the threshold of death.” One must come to know death in its very essence if one truly wishes to cross this threshold. One must recognize death in its significance for the entirety of human life.

[ 3 ] Now, as you know from the description I gave in *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* of this event—the crossing of the threshold into the supersensible world—the entire soul being of the human being undergoes a transformation during this crossing, though of course only for the periods during which one consciously dwells in the supersensible world. With the state of soul one has here in the sensory world—which is appropriate for life, for activity, and for action in this sensory world—it is simply not possible to enter the supersensory world. Here in the sensory world, the soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing are inseparably interconnected, so that in our sensory life we never actually come to perceive or experience these soul forces separately. Someone who did not simultaneously develop a certain degree of willing in the soul—even if in an inner, latent state—while thinking would not actually be mentally healthy. In our sensory life, we are not at all capable of separating these three soul forces from one another, so that we never actually develop with our soul a pure, mere thinking, never a mere pure feeling, never a mere pure willing. In our imagination, feeling, acting, and willing—these three soul forces—are always intermingled and blended together. When we cross the threshold into the supersensible world—that is, when we bring our soul to a state where, just as we are otherwise surrounded here in the world by sensory objects and sensory events, we are now surrounded by supersensible beings and by the supersensible actions of these beings—then a clear separation must take place within our soul between thinking, feeling, and willing. As you can see from the descriptions in *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*, a person must then be trained in such a way that they can develop the inner strength to hold these three elements of soul life—thinking, feeling, and willing—together with their “I”; otherwise, they would split into three personalities.

[ 4 ] Yes, this is the significant inner experience of activity that we must have after crossing the threshold: this finding our way into the highest activity of the “I,” into the highest exercise of the “I,” in order to hold together the separate soul forces—thinking, feeling, and willing. This is also, at first, the fear that today’s faint-hearted human being has: the fear of truly supersensible insights, this fear of inner soul activity of the highest order. Today, human beings would actually like to let all their activity proceed in such a way that it is brought about by the external world and takes place in the external world. Inner activity is not yet second nature to people today, but it must develop more and more for them as they look toward the future. But because this development is still a task—and not yet actually present—people feel a reluctance, a fear, to enter the supersensible world. Unconsciously, they fear—if I may use this expression—the effort required to hold together the three soul faculties that are separating there. I am describing this inner, individual experience here in order to be able to characterize for you—otherwise it would be impossible to characterize at all—what is taking place within the inner life of the soul—and you know we may speak of such a thing—what is taking place within the inner life of the soul of all humanity in the present age. What I have just described as an individual experience upon crossing the threshold into the supersensible world is, of course, for the one who crosses this threshold, a fully conscious event—far more conscious than any conscious experiences of ordinary waking daytime consciousness. It is a heightened state of consciousness in which one crosses the threshold and perceives the inner threefold structure of the human soul in the supersensible world.

[ 5 ] Something similar—though now, naturally, occurring spontaneously rather than consciously—is unfolding for all of humanity in our present age as a cosmic-historical event. One does not notice it unless one consciously studies this unconscious process, which is taking place for all of humanity, from the perspective of spiritual science. As you know, our age is the fifth following the great Atlantean catastrophe, which, after all, gave rise to the present configuration of our Earth’s surface. It is the fifth post-Atlantean period in which we live, and during this period, humanity must, in its overall development, pass through something similar to the threshold that each individual human being encounters when stepping into the supersensible world. Humanity as a whole, I said, in its cosmic—or, if you will, terrestrial—historical development, is crossing the threshold; on this side of which—that is, in the preceding era—a completely different kind of worldview and understanding was necessary for humanity as a whole than on the other side of the threshold, that is, thereafter.

[ 6 ] This is what is taking place today in the unconscious of all humanity—something that must be brought to light through spiritual science, but which also proves just how necessary spiritual science is for humanity today. For this crossing of the threshold must not, in fact, remain in the unconscious. People must become aware of this crossing of the threshold; otherwise, they will sleep through—or at the very least, dream away—what is actually happening to them as the most important event. And it is precisely in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch that we are to develop consciousness. With regard to the most important thing happening to humanity, we cannot develop consciousness in any other way than by ascending from mere sensory science to spiritual science.

[ 7 ] If you consider this, you may recall what has been said time and again in the course of the lectures on spiritual science that have been held here in Stuttgart for such a long time now. You see, time and again I have had to emphasize: spiritual science—as it is understood here—is not merely something intended to satisfy, so to speak, the individual’s subjective need for knowledge. Spiritual science is something connected with grasping—through thinking, feeling, and willing—the fundamental impulse of humanity in our time. Thus, engagement with spiritual science should not be merely a satisfaction of the individual’s curiosity or thirst for knowledge. Rather, spiritual science should be the fulfillment of a certain duty one has toward all of humanity, which must recognize in the present what is taking place in its depths—in the depths of its development—precisely in this epoch.

[ 8 ] Well, when I had the opportunity to speak before you the other day, I did tell you how certain individuals—who possess a certain outward intelligence shaped by contemporary scientific training—recognize in specific phenomena that what we as humanity are experiencing today in such an epoch corresponds to something indefinable in the depths of the human soul. I have cited for you how such people—such as Fritz Mauthner, for example—speak of the fact that human beings may initially have their sensory perception, but that this is actually the only true reality of which human beings can speak. But this reality, which he can at most give form to in art, in the beautiful, and in the sublime, does not bring him satisfaction. He wants to penetrate deeper into the essence of things. If they attempt this—if they try to penetrate the essence of things through their inner being—they do not achieve a true connection with the true essence of the world, as Mauthner says, but only a state of dreaming, albeit a kind of dreaming that feels good because it senses a connection with the central forces of the world, yet can only know this through mysticism in a dreamlike state. This mysticism is then the second stage of human inner spiritual striving for such people. However, they claim—and from their point of view they are right, because they reject supersensory knowledge—that mysticism is “dream-knowledge.” And as a third stage, Fritz Mauthner identifies a form of knowledge that one strives for by mastering the natural laws that govern the world, historical laws, or others. However, he essentially describes all of this as *docta ignorantia* for the reason that, in believing we gain insight through science, we are not merely dreaming as in mysticism, but sleeping—sleeping with regard to what would be a connection to the world’s actual central forces. Thus, people like Fritz Mauthner believe: At most, human beings can perceive sensually while awake and refine these sensory perceptions through art. Human beings must dream when they attempt to connect with true reality religiously or mystically through their inner selves. And human beings must sleep when they believe they can somehow connect with things through science or wisdom.

[ 9 ] Well, in absolute terms, something like that is folly. Relatively speaking, however—considering the particular state of mind of humanity that developed throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, speaking specifically of this humanity and not in general terms—it is a truth. With the very means that have made scientific knowledge great—the means through which we have found ourselves in such a state of shipwreck with regard to the social order of humanity—with these very means, one can only live spiritually in the three-stage manner described by Fritz Mauthner: awake in sensuality, dreaming in mysticism, and sleeping in science. A person like Fritz Mauthner finds his way across the threshold of all humanity. Anyone who has read works such as Fritz Mauthner’s *The Critique of Language*, in which Mauthner seeks to go beyond Kant, where he critiques not only concepts but language itself, and anyone who has read, in particular, Fritz Mauthner’s *Philosophical Dictionary*—that thick, two-volume work—at least with regard to one or two entries (it is, after all, arranged alphabetically)—knows the state of mind into which one is led precisely by these works of Fritz Mauthner.

[ 10 ] I would especially advise you—in this case, you may be grateful for my advice from only one perspective— I advise you to read the entry “Christianity,” for example, in this dictionary of philosophy, or the entry “Res publica,” or the entry “Goethe’s Wisdom,” or the entry “Immortality.” In each case, you will have the feeling: Now you are reading a sentence. In the second sentence, what you have read is qualified. In the third, what has been qualified is further qualified. In the fourth, the first statement is retracted. In the fifth sentence, the whole thing is retracted, along with all the assertions and qualifications. Then you enter into a whirlwind of your entire system of intellect, emotions, and soul, and what one feels after such reading is something terrible. It is a terrible inner torment of the soul. And by describing this inner torment of the soul—which a person feels while reading, a person who has the courage to draw only the ultimate consequence of their present state of mind—in contrast to many who simply lack this courage— you will not, by voicing a criticism such as the one I have just expressed, hurt Fritz Mauthner by holding it against him personally, for he admits that he himself is in the same state of mind when he writes this article. For he says: With human knowledge, one can arrive at nothing other than a kind of mental dance in which one cannot find one’s way. Fritz Mauthner confuses the instability of cognition—which became inevitable in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century—with a supposed absolute instability of human cognition. But what is the reality? Something entirely different from what Mauthner believes.

[ 11 ] In earlier times, as you know, people engaged in Atlantic clairvoyance did not merely dream mystically, but connected with a reality through mystical insight. Nor were they merely “asleep in wisdom.” We can still see in the remnants of the oldest wisdom—as in Plato—how they knew how to speak great truths to humanity. With Aristotle, it already comes to an end. Humanity did not merely possess a *docta ignorantia*; rather, it possessed a wisdom through which it connected with the central forces of the world, which are at the same time the central forces of the human being itself. But these abilities ebbed away. They had to ebb away so that human beings would seek within themselves the powerful forces—that which had previously been given to them from without by spiritual beings without their own doing—and seek it through their inner being. Today we are crossing the threshold as the whole of humanity. As we cross the threshold, we must develop the forces from within ourselves to awaken the mysticism that otherwise lies dormant within us by nature; to summon the dream of mysticism through our own power into a spiritual experience; and likewise to transform what is otherwise dead, abstract science into a real experience of the supersensible spiritual realm through inner activity and inner strength. Today, this is within our power. Therefore, we must undergo such a course of study, and therefore people who do not wish to come to spiritual science, such as Fritz Mauthner, can only perceive what was necessary for humanity—like a necessary tragedy—to evoke these inner forces. That is why people like Mauthner, who feel and experience such things yet do not wish to turn to spiritual science, must in fact despair of the possibility of connecting, through true understanding, with the central forces of existence—which are at the same time the central forces of the human being itself—in any way in life.

[ 12 ] If you think carefully about what I have just said, don’t you have to ask yourself: Is humanity currently facing a severe test in its development due to the unconscious crossing of the threshold? Yes, they are. For if they do not wish to develop the activity of the soul—the vigorous engagement of the soul—they are doomed to sink into inactivity and, as a result, into disbelief in existence, or at least into a kind of uncertainty when it comes to engaging their inner being with the entire machinery of world development. Such is, roughly speaking, the state of mind of a representative, typical person like Fritz Mauthner. There are many such people today; it is just that he was inwardly brave enough to admit this in many of his writings, while others in the same state of mind do not admit it. He also had the resignation to eventually retreat to a southern corner of Bavaria, after having worked as a journalist his entire life to earn a living. And there he conceived *Critique of Language*, his book of bitter despair regarding human cognition, and then wrote his *Philosophical Dictionary* there. He has withdrawn from public life; he still writes various articles that are truly no more suited than his books to guiding people toward a positive, active engagement with the overall course of development. There is always a kind of doubt in him regarding the possibility of intervening properly in existence, because, after all, one cannot truly grasp existence through cognition. Mauthner drew the conclusion that he should withdraw into a profession that was indifferent to him, devoting himself to journalism—a field in which one can already be a skeptic, someone who doubts life. But there are also students of Fritz Mauthner who did not share this resignation.

[ 13 ] And let us now ask ourselves something very specific, prompted by inner reasons: What will become of these students who wholeheartedly embrace Mauthner’s view of life? What will these students never be able to become? They will never be able to arrive at a vibrant grasp of reality. Hence, they lack the kind of grasp of reality that can fruitfully engage with that reality. These people cannot fit into life when they try to insert themselves into it. Fritz Mauthner, after all, set himself apart from it. These people grasp only sensory life and believe in what lies beyond it only as if it were a dream or a state of sleep.

[ 14 ] Gustav Landauer, for example, is one such student of Mauthner’s—honest and sincere, but consequently as ill-suited as possible to contemporary social life. He is a true student of Fritz Mauthner. Today, it is not enough to judge life solely from the surface. We face challenges today that can only be overcome if we have the good will to delve into the depths of life. We must not, like the people I have just described, seek intellectual impulses for a new social order from what the present age has brought forth. No, we must also seek social impulses from the dawning age, from the impulses that are just beginning to emerge, from the impulses of spiritual insight; otherwise, we will not arrive at true social impulses. Then, once they have been found, they can—like all findings of spiritual science—be grasped by common sense. In this sense, I would also like to refer once more to our threefold social order.

[ 15 ] Today, it is essential that people learn, in all things, to seek—with the utmost honesty—first, true self-knowledge, and second, true knowledge of the world.

[ 16 ] Examine what is called “spiritual science” here from a wide variety of perspectives. Certainly, just as in some forms of abstract mysticism and occultism, there is talk here of the necessity of self-knowledge and the necessity of knowledge of the world—but in a different way. It is spoken of in a way that I would particularly like to impress upon our time: that one can never attain true self-knowledge without seeking this self-knowledge through knowledge of the world. Brooding over the self yields no self-knowledge. Knowledge of the world is what trains our self so that this self can attain self-knowledge. And again: No one can attain knowledge of the world without first journeying into their own self. Knowledge of the world is not possible without self-knowledge. The two things even seem to contradict each other somewhat here, but this contradiction is full of life and fruitful: knowledge of the world not without self-knowledge, self-knowledge not without knowledge of the world. It is like the swing of a pendulum, which must swing back and forth. So, in life, a person must seek—constantly seek—the pendulum swing between self-experience and world experience, world experience and self-experience. But it is this alone that then strengthens the soul—that inner activity of the soul which, today and looking toward the future, will become ever more necessary for all of humanity. Precisely because human beings, out of a certain egoism that is natural in the age of the consciousness soul, so easily withdraw into their inner worlds, humanity has fallen, in our age, into a love of abstraction. In fact, it can no longer even properly judge for itself how strong the love of mere abstraction is in our age. But for this very reason, it is absolutely essential that we ascend—precisely in order to cross the threshold I have described in the right way—so that we move from a mere necessity of abstraction, a mere necessity of thought, to a fact. From mere abstract cognition to an experience of reality. To a way of thinking within us that is not confined to mere thought, but rather a thinking that immerses itself in things and thinks together with the things and events of the world. Only then can we remain equal to the challenges of the present. To illustrate this, I would like to give you an example. I should note from the outset, however, that you should not interpret what I am about to say as though, in characterizing one or another worldview, I were also taking a stance on that particular worldview. I merely wish to characterize, not to judge.

[ 17 ] What is referred to as a scientific worldview—or scientifically oriented thinking—has, as I have described to you from a wide variety of perspectives, undergone a certain development. It has ultimately arrived at a worldview such as that held by Mauthner. But it has also manifested itself in other forms. I don’t know if you remember a man I once spoke to you about here years ago—though in a different context and to illustrate a different point—the man who, in one of his books titled *Analysis of Sensations*, sought to describe the difficulty of self-knowledge. He wanted to describe even the external difficulty of self-knowledge. And to illustrate this, he cited two examples in which, with regard to self-knowledge, he was already subject to quite strong illusions concerning his own appearance. Once, he says, he was walking down the street. Suddenly, someone came toward him—the man in question was a professor—and he thought to himself: What kind of schoolmasterly figure is coming toward me? He found this figure completely unappealing, as he himself recounts. Then he realized what had happened: he had walked past a storefront mirror and saw his own reflection in it as he walked down the street. Another time, he got on a bus. Opposite the door through which he entered was a mirror. He was terribly tired. He saw the reflection and said to himself: “What kind of disheveled fellow is getting on the bus through the other door?” Only gradually did it occur to him that it was himself.

[ 18 ] I have told you this, and you will be able to judge for yourself that he is, after all, a man to be taken seriously: Ernst Mach, the natural scientist who became a philosopher. Well, he, too, has various students. His worldview is not unlike Mauthner’s, except that Ernst Mach has not succumbed to skepticism or a sense of groundlessness, but simply believes in the play of ideas. The self is, for him, a mere myth—as it is for Mauthner—only Mach is content with that. But one must study this Ernst Mach and then get to know his life, get to know his entire personality. I myself remember the first time I saw Ernst Mach at the Vienna Academy of Sciences, where he delivered a commemorative lecture on the “economy of thought,” in which he explained everything one thinks as merely an arrangement of thoughts according to the principle of least effort. At the time, I was deeply angered by this portrayal of the thought process. He later expanded on this, writing his books, which have had a profound influence on many people. If one is familiar with the rest of his life, one knows: He was most certainly a very, very upright citizen, deeply loyal to the state he served through his academic discipline, and—in terms of his scholarship—a typical representative of the mode of thought that has emerged in modern times. I could name another thinker similar to him. Mach himself did not teach in Zurich, but one of his students did: Friedrich Adler—the same Adler who later shot the Austrian minister Stürgkh. But a man whose thinking was even more abstract advocated a worldview in Zurich that was very similar to Mach’s philosophy and worldview: Richard Avenarius. I cannot advise you to read Avenarius’s books; you would throw them away after the second page. They are written in an incomprehensible language. You would be left with only one inexplicable question: how is it that so very, very many people have immersed themselves in Avenarius’s books and have formed a worldview today based on his philosophy.

[ 19 ] What I am discussing here are extreme cases that can draw your attention to the difference between a merely abstract logic of thought and a logic of facts. Avenarius was, in his daily life, truly an average citizen, a good citizen in the best sense of the word. But people like Ernst Mach, his student Adler—in whom this tendency was already more apparent—and Avenarius—let’s take Mach and Avenarius for now—have no sense of the logic of facts, in which they stand on their own facts. For, you see, what has become of the worldview of Ernst Mach and Avenarius, these upright, obedient, genuine bourgeois scholars? What has become of it? It has become the political philosophy of the Bolsheviks, the worldview that underlies Bolshevism. It has simply passed through different human temperaments, through different states of mind. Consequence of the facts! Consequence according to the logic of the facts taught by Ernst Mach and Avenarius.

[ 20 ] It was not merely by some external coincidence that this philosophy was carried over to Russia—as it were, by chance—precisely through the studies of gifted Russian students under Avenarius and then under Adler in Zurich; rather, there is an intrinsic intellectual connection at work here. This can only be understood by someone who does not think about things with thoughts, but who can think within things—someone who knows that, while an abstract, logical chain of reasoning does not lead from Avenarius and Mach to Lenin and Trotsky, a very real logic does lead from one to the other. These are the things that matter today. They are accessible today only to those who are serious enough to study the inner workings of becoming. For we have arrived at a complex time in inner life, where someone like Mach and Avenarius can believe that he is a man of order, that he is a man who lives only in the heights of intellectual order, and has no inkling that what he teaches can become political dynamite when his thoughts pass from him into other souls.

[ 21 ] Today, humanity is called upon to develop an understanding of the deeper connections of life. Without this understanding, we cannot move forward. If we wish to arrive at fruitful social ideas, then we must not, like Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach, select the lifeless end products of the old, self-destructive worldviews, but rather we must turn to that reconstruction of worldviews that can only be provided by spiritual science and that alone knows how to ask the right questions: What kind of social order must emerge if, in the future—beginning in the present and continuing into the future—human beings walk through the world increasingly divided into three inner parts—for they cross the threshold already divided into three inner parts? Then the external social order must be a reflection of this; the external social order must be divided into three parts. Then, in the future, the outer and the inner will correspond to one another. This threefold division, when one is truly able to consider it with serious spiritual science, is not something contrived; it is something simply discerned from the true inner development of humanity as it progresses from the present into the future.

[ 22 ] Among all the other demands placed on people today is precisely this: that they develop the good will to open themselves to contemplation of the spiritual world. That they first develop the good will to look at themselves in such a way that what underlies them spiritually becomes clear to them. Scientific materialism was a test, not something definitive. That is why it is so significant and useful, even in the form of Haeckelianism. It is all just a test that must be undergone. In this view, human beings are placed in the animal kingdom because, fundamentally, in relation to everything this perspective emphasizes, human beings appear to be nothing more than highly evolved animals. But when we begin to view human beings in relation to self-knowledge within the context of the world, the situation immediately changes. Then things that are otherwise considered unimportant become important, and vice versa. Simply by adopting a particular perspective, a new light is cast on the entire being of the human being. Essentially, as we know, the animal moves across the earth in such a way that—and the exceptions actually teach us a great deal about the essential—it carries its spine parallel to the earth’s surface. In the early stages of life, humans stand upright, positioning the main axis of their body—that is, the direction of their spine—perpendicular to the Earth’s surface; their spine forms a cross with the Earth’s surface and also forms a cross with the direction of the animal spine. By stating this, one clearly articulates the relationship of humans to the rest of the world. It is different with animals; it is different with human beings. You can always read in Aeckel: Human beings have just as many bones and muscles as the higher animals. — But there are other things that cannot be counted, things that consist in an intuitive—or rather, imaginative—grasp of the human form in its relationship to the overall structure of the cosmos and the Earth; and this grasp of the form—not merely speaking about the nature of the human being—is more important than counting bones and muscles, more important than what comparative morphology has to say about humans.

[ 23 ] Starting from there, I could now tell you many things that would show you that where the previous worldview—which has produced in human beings such habits of thought that have led them into their present misfortune—must come to an end, there, where this thinking and these habits of thought end, a new one must now begin, one that, for example, is connected to form. This will then provide a spiritual view of the world; it will enrich the independent, social spiritual organism.

[ 24 ] And an even higher stage—these stages will not, as is usually the case with our contemporaries, merely awaken in a dreamlike, mystical way—an even higher stage will vividly grasp that Being which is always around us, the “revealed mystery,” as Goethe says. From there, one will then ascend in such a state of “awakening”—as I have called it in my books *The Riddle of Man* and *The Riddles of the Soul*—to that which is not merely a placing of the human form within the cosmos, but rather a resonating in harmony with the great rhythmic vibrations of the cosmos.

[ 25 ] You know that the human being consists of these three parts: the nervous-sensory system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic system. The human being is so deeply embedded in the nervous-sensory system that through it he can perceive his place in relation to the cosmos. As for their feelings—the rhythmic, respiratory, or thoracic system—they are immersed in this rhythm, which is part of the rhythm of the entire world. We can, for now—though we could certainly cover much more, since we have touched on many aspects from various perspectives over the years—we can, for now, grasp only a small part of this rhythm. I simply want to repeat what has been said many times before. Let us look at our breathing. In normal breathing, we take 18 breaths per minute. Over the course of a 24-hour day, that amounts to approximately 25,920 breaths. Thus, in a single day, we rhythmically perform the inhalation and exhalation one after another: approximately 25,920 times. This is the smallest form of breathing that our individual human being carries out. As you know, even in the Old Testament, the age of the patriarchs was assumed to be approximately 70 years. Of course, one can live longer, and one can also die younger, but that is roughly the average human lifespan: 70 to 72 years. How many days of life does this amount to? Very roughly calculated, 25,920 days of life. Now, if you consider that great breath that is taken with us—as we immerse ourselves in the morning with our “I” and astral body into our etheric body and physical body, so that we inhale our spiritual-soul aspect in the morning and exhale it again in the evening—and if you regard this as a single breath taken every day, then our life day, which spans approximately 71 years, comprises 25,920 breaths. This means that the great Spirit who breathes as we are born and die breathes in its life day—which encompasses our entire human life—just as often as we inhale and exhale in 24 hours. Thus, through our human breathing, we are attuned to that spiritual breathing performed by the Spirit, for whom inhaling and exhaling are what birth and death are for us. We are the result of its breaths in our waking and sleeping lives. And the sun, which you can at least sense has a connection to our experience: humans observe how its rising advances through the zodiac by a certain number of degrees each year, so that when the vernal equinox lies at a certain point in the zodiac, it has shifted further the following year, and so on. Thus, the point of the sun’s rising appears to circle the entire ecliptic in what is called a Platonic world year, which spans 25,920 years. One day of our life contains 25,920 breaths; our life between birth and death contains 25,920 days of life; and one great solar year contains 25,920 of our years of life. Thus we fit into what is breathed in the Sun-Earth process throughout a Platonic world year. There you glimpse a cosmic rhythm through which the human being is integrated into the cosmos.

[ 26 ] Without at least having the willingness to recognize human beings in a dynamic context of understanding in relation to the cosmos, you cannot gain any understanding of human beings. As strange as it may sound, modern science can understand nothing more than human life up to birth. Once a human being is born, something enters their life that natural science can no longer grasp. Therefore, natural science must stop at embryology, the method that is particularly favored. This is especially evident today in the fact that the entire theory of development is now merely an extension of embryology. Everything else is pure fantasy. Once a human being begins to live on Earth, the necessity arises to penetrate to the core of their being through imaginative, inspired insight. For only through this can one comprehend what a human being experiences at death, and what death itself is. Through the highest level of knowledge—which you will find described in *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* —the stage of true intuition—one gains that insight into the essence that is wonderfully hinted at in language itself when one says of a corpse, and indeed with some justification, that it “decays.” If one could still feel something of this today when hearing these words, one would truly feel: decay means to pass into the essence, to enter into the essence, to become one with the essence. When language speaks of decay, it is truly not speaking of passing away. And the mysterious process that a future natural science will draw from the depths of knowledge—a process that takes place only when the human body appears to decay or burn—is not a destruction; it is, in fact, something significant in the inner structure of the event.

[ 27 ] Through a reflection such as today’s, I would like to evoke a sense of the inner connection between the dying worldview and scientific orientation of the old era, and the spiritual science that is still in its infancy—one that is only now truly emerging—in the sense of what must come to be as we look toward the future. But these two things clash violently. And here a profound tragedy of modern life begins to take shape, one that we must overcome through inner human strength. What I call—no matter how much one may take offense at it—the declining bourgeois worldview and outlook on life is a final phase that is bringing about its own downfall. That which today is still truly very far from what it is meant to become—that which is emerging as a proletarian yearning—has different human foundations. While the bourgeois worldview is sinking into the etheric body, what is emerging from the astral body is developing into the proletarian worldview. And a symbol that speaks with terrifying clarity of this declining worldview was Max Stirner’s egoism. You will find it described in its proper context in my book *The Riddles of Philosophy*. We now live in an age in which we must certainly try not to judge what is emerging by its outward appearance. No matter how much it may still go astray here and there today, we must be able to view what is developing today as a social movement emerging from the proletariat as the becoming of the future, precisely from the spiritual perspective of the human being. We must be able to see: Humanity is crossing a threshold; it must enter into supersensible knowledge. And this, precisely, is a powerful indicator for the spiritually discerning person to discern the direction in which the proletarian world—in these or those leaders, in these or those bigwigs—is behaving in a very materialistic way and resisting what it will one day become. It is resisting. It has adopted the bourgeois way of thinking as its final legacy, but in human evolution it is called upon to consciously cross the threshold, to work its way out of materialistic delusion toward a true understanding of the supersensible. Precisely what is being pointed out here must be explored through observation of a spiritual undercurrent in such a way that it does not merely become abstract knowledge, but can become an inner impulse for our will. Then, at the right time and in the right way, we will be able to place ourselves within this present social order with full consciousness.