The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition as Realities of Action on the Path to Reincarnation

[ 1 ] First of all, let me say how deeply gratifying it is for me to be among my friends here in Breslau. We have all gone through a difficult time, but it is precisely this that makes us realize that humanity today needs something for its further development. For the reason we have entered this catastrophic era is that people have lost the strength to move forward. But it is precisely what has grown on our soil—forces that can serve to build spiritual life. And that is why today I would like to speak not so much about current events as about things that are necessary for human understanding—necessary for what must be absorbed into our moral impulses. Much lives within our souls of which we scarcely suspect its existence. But since it is there in our souls, and since the soul is connected to life, it is also very important for our lives.

[ 2 ] What weighs particularly heavily on humanity today is the discrepancy between, on the one hand, what the soul truly needs and, on the other hand, what reaches the soul through current scientific knowledge. These scientific insights are demanding, and we should consider what they actually require of human beings. For example, they demand that we look toward the beginning and the end of the Earth in accordance with their perspective. Here one speaks of the origin of the Earth according to Kant-Laplace: Based entirely on the principles of chemical mechanics, a glowing ball of gas formed; this cooled down, and when it had cooled sufficiently, everything that later became the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the human kingdom expanded outward from it according to the same mechanical laws. And with regard to the further course of life on Earth and earthly existence, one speaks of the cessation of all life through the gradual establishment of thermal equilibrium; and so we have become accustomed, in accordance with the scientific view, to speak of a “heat death of the Earth,” which will occur according to the laws of physics. We look toward the end of the Earth as if it were a vast graveyard. Between the chemical-mechanical beginning of the Earth and the heat death of the Earth—between these two extremes—lies everything that has emerged and continues to emerge for us humans as ideals and as morality. But one must ask: Why do such ideals actually arise in a chemical-physical manner in the first place, if they are destined to perish again in the general heat death? One might, of course, object that these are theoretical considerations that have little influence on everyday life. But even if one prefers to pass over such questions in silence, they are nonetheless sources of disharmony that affect the unconscious life of the soul deeply. They lead to the anxious question: What do we do with our moral impulses, what do we do with our religious ideals, if the entire development of the Earth is doomed to perish?

[ 3 ] The very fact that this question is asked illustrates what is meant by this remark. For all our moral impulses, all our religious ideals, would be nothing more than a colossal deception of humanity, a terrible delusion, if they were all to be buried in the graveyard of the earth. There are already clear examples of the harmful effects of such states of mind arising from purely scientific knowledge; it’s just that they do not come to our awareness so clearly. But the anxious question lives on in people’s hearts. If one understands the spirit of the natural sciences and summarizes this question from their standpoint, one must say: Since we humans have sprung from nature, moral ideals have come to us, but these perish with the earth. Moral ideals perish in the natural sciences. The natural sciences do not allow one to grant these ideals an independent, real existence. And even if this is merely a theory, it nevertheless weighs heavily on the human soul.

[ 4 ] This fatalistic worldview is ultimately based on what has emerged as a belief in the immortality of material force. But anyone who challenges this dogma today is regarded as insane. If this dogma were true, there would be no salvation for moral ideals, and they would then be nothing more than a figurative concept for something that human beings merely piece together and construct for themselves. Nor would there be any salvation for these ideals unless we were to find, through spiritual research, the means to restore a supersensible content to human consciousness. That ‘is a question of time. With regard to this question of time, we are living at a crucial turning point in evolution. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not like to make such a statement, because one can say of any given moment that it is a turning point. But it depends very much on what this moment is a turning point for, or in what respect it can be regarded as a turning point.

[ 5 ] Now let us see where and to what extent scientific knowledge can actually lead us. To this end, let us consider the human being as he appears to us in his outward, sensory form—as a physical, sensory being living before us. But we must do this in a very radical way. If we picture human beings in this way, they ultimately appear to us as nothing more than a corpse. If we disregard everything else and consider only the physical-sensory essence, and if we allow nothing other than chemical and physical laws to act upon this physical-sensory essence, then the human being begins, at the very moment he starts to follow the external laws of nature, to decompose, to dissolve. The forces that we perceive through our ordinary sources of knowledge are the ones that destroy the human being.

[ 6 ] If one takes this fact into account, one can arrive at a refutation of the materialistic worldview on this basis alone. For if one considers that these external forces dissolve human beings, then human beings must have been in a state before birth in which they gathered forces capable of resisting this dissolution. As the physical body disintegrates, it merges into the world we perceive with our senses. There it unites with the sensory world through the forces of death arising from chemical and physical processes. But what takes place inwardly and spiritually at the moment of death cannot be perceived externally or through the senses. This inner-soul aspect can only be experienced through intuition in the realm of higher sources of knowledge. And there it is perceived that the inner-soul aspect, outside the body, unites with the Spirit—unites with that which, as Spirit, permeates and flows through the world. The soul, which unites with the Spirit after death, is then connected to the Spirit in the supersensible world.

[ 7 ] This is a fact that stands alongside the fact of the physical body. During life, the physical body was permeated by the soul; at death, it unites with the forces of nature. Anthroposophy, however, leads to a fact of life that is directly opposed to death as a fact. If one were to present mere theories about the eternally living aspect within the human being, this would never satisfy people. Anthroposophy, however, leads us to the reality of the union of the soul with the spirit. The sensory knowledge of the natural sciences leads only to the reality of death.

[ 8 ] When we touch upon the higher sources of knowledge in spiritual science, we encounter what the spiritual researcher describes as imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge. These levels of knowledge are described, for example, in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? or in the book An Outline of Esoteric Science. And when you study these descriptions, you will certainly find descriptions of levels of knowledge at first, but they nevertheless provide the spiritual researcher with more than mere levels of knowledge. Just as scientific knowledge is not merely knowledge but also reveals other aspects and facts, so it is with higher knowledge.

[ 9 ] Among the elements that, in addition to imagination, inspiration, and intuition—aside from their role as stages of knowledge—also involve something other than mere facts, I would like to consider with you today something I touched upon, for example, in the 1914 Vienna Cycle regarding life after “death,” but from a somewhat different perspective. You see, what the human being is here on earth stands, as a physical body, in connection with the outer physical nature. And just as, on the one hand, the human being is connected downward with the mineral forces, so, on the other hand, he is connected upward with the higher hierarchies. Just as he grows together with the mineral forces in his physical body, so he grows upward and slowly grows into the hierarchies. One sometimes hears it said that, to know this, one can simply wait and see what comes after death, for then it will become evident. And so, one could also wait to see this growing into the hierarchies. Yes, but it is not quite like that. It depends very much on whether a person can grow into them as is actually intended for them, for to begin with—and this must be admitted—a person stands in the world in such a way that, in physical consciousness, they can have no inkling of the relationships they have with the higher hierarchies. But much depends on becoming aware of these relationships.

[ 10 ] We call the first group of beings with whom human beings have a relationship the angelic world. But anyone who, based on certain assumptions, does not acknowledge the spiritual realm cannot establish a connection with the angelic world either, for this is just as impossible as it would be for a human being to establish a connection with the physical world without physical senses. Although the angelic beings are the entities immediately above human beings—entities, so to speak, that are closest to us—we are nevertheless unable to approach them under certain conditions. Only by trying to form a picture of the angelic world here on earth can we prepare ourselves to establish a connection with it. As a person passes through the gate of death, they are led into the angelic world, and it then depends on whether, after death, they can be conscious of what is taking place.

[ 11 ] The second group of higher beings is that of the national spirits or archangels. Angelic beings are not yet national spirits. True national spirits no longer have individual relationships with human beings, as is still the case with angels. National spirits are connected to communities and groups of people. Even the natural sciences occasionally speak of the national spirit, but when they do, they do not recognize it as a real being. Through higher insight, the spiritual researcher knows that national spirits are real spiritual beings that stand one level above the angelic world. Human beings can also grow into this hierarchy. But if our inner spiritual experience is not intense enough, then the angel cannot lead us, through our consciousness, to the national spirit. But since we must be led there, this happens—if not consciously, then unconsciously—through karmic law. Either we consciously grow into the national spirit through love, or we are forcibly led into the sphere of the national spirits. When, after death, we reach the point where the descent back into the sensory world for a new incarnation begins, a great difference arises in the soul’s descent toward the new incarnation, depending on whether the person has consciously united with the national spirit through love or whether, unaware of the true circumstances, they are moved by force, under compulsion. This is expressed in a spiritual-soul fact. A person can be born into a nation either through a relationship with its national spirit that is based on compulsion, or through one based on inner love. Those who are able to look into such matters perceive as a strikingly characteristic sign of our time that there are today a great number of people who do not have a sufficiently loving relationship with the national spirit. What I have indicated here is the cause of what is driving the nations into turmoil. The conflict that prevails among the nations today stems from the fact that many people have been born who have developed little love for the national spirit and therefore now find themselves in a relationship of compulsion to it. For what has led us to love a national spirit can never actually lead to conflict with other nations. That is why we must do everything possible today to help people regain a loving relationship with the national spirits. This is an urgent necessity.

[ 12 ] Here in life, we have levels of knowledge—imagination, inspiration, and intuition—that lead to real spiritual-soul insights. In the spiritual-soul world, when the soul is to descend back into the physical world through karma, imagination, inspiration, and intuition are facts of what is happening, facts of action. There the soul stands in a relationship to what is to be attained by it from the cosmos. If we are to find our way in life, life must grant us what can enable us to approach our goal. And so the disembodied, supersensible human being works toward reincarnation into the physical world through imagination, inspiration, and intuition, while the embodied, sensory human being can gain a vision of the spiritual-soul world through imagination, inspiration, and intuition.

[ 13 ] Scientific knowledge is not capable of uncovering the deepest mysteries of life. Scientific knowledge begins, for example, with the study of a chemical compound. It then progresses to the study of more complex chemical compounds, and as it continues on to the study of the living cell, it ultimately regards the cell as nothing more than a particularly intricate chemical compound. But spiritual science shows us that while the cell, viewed from the outside, is an extraordinarily intricate chemical structure, the fact that the living cell—the embryo in the womb—arises in such an intricate manner means that chemical regularity is reversed and becomes chaos. In the case of the embryo in the womb—the seed of life—chemical regularity is suspended, reversed into its opposite, and this, in the realm of nature, is chaos. And because the embryo is chaos, the cosmos can once again exert its influence upon it.

[ 14 ] Between death and rebirth, a person gains a glimpse of this. In the first stage on the path to reincarnation, a person grows into reincarnation through realized imagination. The second stage is realized inspiration, and this is a much brighter consciousness than our cerebral consciousness, for inspiration is a cosmic force. A part of this cosmic force is, as it were, inhaled and then flows toward the physical body without rising fully into consciousness, just as is the case with the will. We do not know how the will moves our hand, yet it moves exactly as we wish. The spiritual human being, who approaches embodiment through realized inspiration, relates to cosmic inspiration just as the physical human being relates to air. Just as we usually imagine our physical body to consist of muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and bones—much as when we look at a corpse—so do we tend to think of the part of our organism that is air as existing more outside the body. Although we know that we cannot live without air, we do not regard it as belonging to us in the same way as, for example, the skeletal system. Nevertheless, it forms a part of our organism. What is air out there one moment, inside the next, and then outside again the moment after that—this forms a part of our organism in such a way that the air lives within us in a rhythm. In a much broader rhythm, the human being lives with the soul-spiritual. Just as we physically inhale and exhale air, so do we inhale the soul-spiritual, even if this happens largely unconsciously. Even in the physical realm, part of what is brought about by breathing occurs unconsciously. When the soul-spiritual human being inhales the soul-spiritual in the realized inspiration, he takes in an image into his soul. He takes this into the subdued part of his consciousness, and what he takes in is the world of moral and religious impulses. He takes this in in the form of conscience.

[ 15 ] The third stage in the descent toward new embodiment is when the human being transitions to what is given to them by their parents. Here, the human being acts upon a realized intuition. Thus you see that what the human being can attain in embodiment as three higher levels of knowledge takes place as a real process in the soul-spiritual realm on the path toward embodiment. Just as we here on Earth ascend into the spiritual world through imagination, inspiration, and intuition, so too do we descend on the return journey from the spiritual world into embodiment through imagination, inspiration, and intuition. This is the counterpart to the three higher levels of knowledge in the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] What can we conclude from this? We can conclude that anthroposophy is not merely a form of knowledge, but that it is alive; for through anthroposophy we strive for higher knowledge in order to grasp higher life in its reality and to fill our souls with the content that lives within the spiritual worlds. Anyone who, through their common sense, has come to understand what the spiritual researcher has to say will discover something else as well. They will discover the following: They can tell themselves that, in the state of embodiment between birth and death, human beings are constantly confronted with the forces of death at work within the body. The forces of death have always been present in the human body, but the forces that counteract them are also always present within us. They are there. If we did not have these forces of death within us, we would never have developed the understanding of our physical surroundings.

[ 17 ] One of the most important insights is that our intellectual faculties are bound up with our mortal forces. Death is, in fact, merely a culmination of the forces of mortality that are constantly at work within us. But when we ask ourselves how a moral ideal—one that can rise to the level of a religious ideal—lives within us, we must acknowledge that it lives within us in an entirely different way. It is said that there are certain natural forces that cause plants to grow upward, and these forces are attributed with reality. But when one looks into human beings and finds there the driving forces of moral and religious ideals, one is reluctant to attribute reality to them. Yet there they are, and they are at work not only within every human being but also on the cultures of all humanity. Through higher knowledge, one comes to recognize that moral ideals live within human beings through the burning of matter. Matter is destroyed through the grasping of moral ideals. The breakdown of matter is the prerequisite for the building up of moral ideals. What matters is the way in which a human being breaks down matter and how they can rebuild it. While external research is still bound by the prejudice regarding the immortality of matter, spiritual science shows that the forces of nature in the external world are overcome by human beings. With an anthroposophical worldview, one learns to find comfort in the idea of the heat death of the Earth. For it is precisely through the destruction of matter that human beings secure the development of their moral personality.

[ 18 ] Try, with calm reflection, to look into your soul, and you will find something that wears away at and gnaws at the soul of modern humanity: What wears away and gnaws at it is the fact that modern natural science has established the eradication of morality from the realm of reality. Anthroposophy shows how human beings break through the laws of nature; it shows how morality destroys materiality, only to rebuild it anew as matter—which can then, in this new form, become the bearer of a moral world order. Matter vanishes; out of nothing, a new creation arises. What lies within us is connected to the dying forces of matter, but what rebuilds the world is something the natural sciences have forgotten.

[ 19 ] We must move on to the question of where substance can be built up in order to reach new moral worlds. Although death is within us at every moment, the resurrection is also within us. We must look toward that; this is the perspective we must present to human souls from the anthroposophical worldview, because the natural sciences have for far too long and in far too one-sided a way focused their gaze on the forces of death. And it is important to develop the courage to face what must be done to build new worlds. I assume that these hints can provide various stimuli and lead to meditations that help us recognize more clearly what is widely felt and discussed, and what should be strongly willed.