The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Three Steps of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Before I begin my lecture today, please allow me to extend my warmest greetings to all of you here, greetings in the spirit that should prevail here in this Goetheanum and that should also underpin all the work carried out in this Goetheanum. This spirit is meant to be one that does not arise from human one-sidedness, but from full, all-encompassing humanity. And this can be achieved in such a way that, on the one hand, what is presented here—what is developed—stems from scientific knowledge, art, and religious devotion. On the other hand, this spirit should be that of free, broad-minded, and magnanimous humanity.

[ 2 ] It was this spirit, after all, that was meant to serve as the best foundation upon which construction of this Goetheanum began in 1913. And we did indeed manage to bring about a situation in which, at a time when all of Europe and vast regions beyond Europe were at war with one another and engaged in bitter hostilities, all the nations of Europe worked together here in Dornach out of a spirit of free, all-encompassing humanity. Here, international collaboration has never ceased. I feel I may particularly emphasize this fact today, because I wish to offer the greeting I bring you here out of this international spirit. What is to be accomplished here cannot be achieved out of any other spirit, for only this spirit of all-encompassing, universal, free humanity can also bring about true spiritual science, spiritual art, and true religion—which, in and of itself, can be spiritual and international. But this spirit also, I believe, provides that openness of heart that is capable of lovingly receiving and welcoming every human being. And so it is this spirit that should reign here at the Goetheanum, from which I speak these opening words of welcome. They must therefore be meant from the heart. In this spirit of warmth, I would like to express the hope that over the next few days we may succeed in working together and discussing various topics here in the most diverse fields of science and life—topics that everyone who chose to come here will take home with them with a certain sense of satisfaction.

[ 3 ] If we, who have been working here at the Goetheanum for years, are able to inspire the feeling that, after such a visit, one always looks back with a certain joy on what one has experienced here, this will fill those who work here at the Goetheanum with a very special sense of satisfaction. In this spirit, let me welcome you and thank you for coming here. And let me express the hope that this visit may also bring you some satisfaction.

[ 4 ] As has already been indicated, the aim here is to pursue spiritual knowledge as a foundation for enriching life in all its various aspects. The spiritual insight sought here at this Goetheanum should not be confused with various practices that are pursued in the world today under the name of occultism, nor with various practices to which the term “mysticism” is applied today. This occultism, which is widely practiced today, is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of our time—the spirit of true modern life. For this spirit of true modern life is, after all, shaped by the development of scientific knowledge in recent times. What is pursued here as spiritual knowledge must certainly take into account what corresponds to the spirit of modern scientific knowledge in the strictest sense of the word. What is often called occultism today is based on ancient traditions; it is not imbued with the immediate spirit of the present. Ancient traditions are brought over. But since people today cannot develop the corresponding insights from the same spiritual foundations, it can be said that these ancient traditions are often misunderstood and, as such, have been presented in a layman’s manner by this or that person as a form of knowledge intended to satisfy the human soul.

[ 5 ] What is being pursued here has just as little to do with such traditional occultism—which is sometimes misunderstood—as it does with what is sometimes even sought by the scientific community as a kind of occultism, in which the usual scientific methods of sensory observation and experimentation are imitated for the purpose of investigating the supersensory realm. What is overlooked here is that the methods of scientific research that have developed over the past few centuries have been perfectly suited for understanding external, sensory reality, but that they are, for precisely that reason, unsuitable as paths of inquiry into the supersensible realm.

[ 6 ] On the other hand, there is much talk today of mystical deepening and mystical inner experience. Here, too, one is often dealing with nothing more than an immersion in the spiritual experiences of ancient mystics, a renewal of such experiences—and yet, fundamentally, once again, only with something that leads to a questionable insight through a certain vague self-contemplation.

[ 7 ] I wanted to point these things out simply to warn against confusing what is being done here at the Goetheanum with what is sometimes done in such an amateurish, dilettantish—albeit well-intentioned—manner. Here, a scientific method for understanding the supersensible is to be developed—one that is as rigorous, as precise, and as scientific as is required of scientific methods today in the field of natural science. One can only ascend into the supersensible realm if one does not stop at methods of research that are suitable only for the sensible world. However, one cannot ascend scientifically into the supersensible worlds if one proceeds from a spirit other than the one that has so effectively proven itself in the realm of sensory reality. Today I would like to offer only a few introductory remarks regarding the intentions and goals of the spiritual science being pursued here. Therefore, a more detailed discussion of what I intend to outline today will not be possible until the coming days. I would like to point out first of all that, for the purpose of exploring the supersensible worlds, the task here is to seek, from the depths of the human soul, those powers that—as powers of cognition—can penetrate the supersensible just as the powers of the external senses penetrate the physical-sensory world. The first task of the spiritual researcher is to direct his soul’s gaze toward the soul-spiritual organization within himself that is capable of penetrating the supersensible realm. This is what distinguishes the spiritual researcher from the natural scientist. The latter takes the human organization as it is, applies it to nature, and uses this precision to gain insights into the facts of the external natural world.

[ 8 ] The spiritual researcher—precisely because he initially stands on the foundation of sound scientific knowledge—cannot proceed in this way. He must first direct his gaze toward the soul-spiritual organ of perception, which I might perhaps call the “spiritual eye.” But this gaze, which initially prepares and develops the spiritual eye, must be such that the inner laws of this spiritual eye lie precisely before it, just as, for example, a mathematical problem lies precisely before the mathematician or the content of an experiment lies before the experimenter. This work that the researcher must undertake within himself—the preparation for science itself—is the essence of spiritual research. And just as the mathematician or natural scientist is precise in seeking results, so must the spiritual researcher be precise in preparing his spiritual-soul organization, which then perceives the fact, just as the eye or the ear does in the sensory realm.

[ 9 ] Spiritual research, as understood here, must be exact; mathematics and the natural sciences are exact. But I would like to say: where the natural sciences end in terms of exactness, spiritual research begins with that very exactness. Spiritual research must be exact in its approach to the development of one’s own humanity, so that everything done to the human being himself—to enable him to become a spiritual researcher—is carried out with precision and, in a sense, through exact work justified by science, reveals the spiritual eye when he begins his spiritual research, when he approaches the reality of the supersensible world. Whereas in what is often called mysticism the inner soul is treated with considerable obscurity, in true spiritual research every tiny step must be treated with the same inner clarity and transparency as a mathematician applies to a mathematical problem. Then a kind of awakening is brought about—an awakening to a higher level of consciousness, comparable to the awakening we otherwise experience when we “emerge” from ordinary sleep to perceive the sensory world around us.

[ 10 ] When I speak of “exactness”—particularly in the context of spiritual research, which is what is meant here—this term refers to the precise, scientific preparation of what must precede research in human beings: the organization of a spiritual-soul nature. This is what must first be clearly evident to the spiritual researcher. Only then does he begin to look into the world of supersensible facts.

[ 11 ] This is intended, for now, merely as a preliminary observation that does not yet constitute proof. Since this precision is sought in the preparation for actual supersensory spiritual perception, one may well speak of “precise clairvoyance” if one refers to the type of spiritual perception meant here as “clairvoyance.” This is intended to be the specific characteristic of the spiritual research practiced here: that it is based on methodologically precise clairvoyance. The precision of clairvoyance is intended to be the defining feature of the spiritual research referred to here.

[ 12 ] From this perspective, the spiritual research pursued here is intended not merely to evaluate a narrowly defined field, but to develop something into which all other sciences and forms of life in the present day converge. Not only should what is developed here spiritually serve as a spiritual superstructure for the scientific worldview, but those fields of knowledge that have been developed by humanity in modern times in the spirit of this scientific worldview should also be elevated into the spiritual realm, so that they may, as it were, be crowned by what spiritual research can offer.

[ 13 ] I would like to cite medicine as just one example. Medicine, as it is structured today on the basis of scientific knowledge—and as it has indeed achieved admirable results—is fully recognized by what is pursued here as spiritual knowledge. But it is possible to take what has been developed for medicine today from a purely external perspective and carry it further through the spirit of precise clairvoyance. Only then does the full fruitfulness of even the purely scientific medical approach practiced today truly emerge. Likewise, one would like to gain spiritual insight here that is capable of bringing the artistic into the spiritual realm. And what is sought here is an artistic quality that emerges from the total nature of the human being in a spiritual way, just as that which is sought here as insight does. And a religious and social element is to be cultivated here in such a way that the religious and the social arise as a matter of course from the spiritual insight that has been attained.

[ 14 ] The spiritual insight sought here is meant to encompass the whole person and to arise from the whole person, not from a single human faculty. That is why this insight seeks to have all areas of both theoretical and practical life converge into spiritual life, so that only through this can a fully human, universally human state be attained.

[ 15 ] From this perspective, I would like to speak to you in these lectures primarily about three areas of knowledge, in order to use these three examples to explain to what extent one can be led from the spirit of contemporary scientific thinking into the spirit of higher, spiritual scientific thinking. In these lectures, I would like to speak to you about philosophy, cosmology, and religion in the way that they are meant to take on a certain spiritual form through anthroposophy.

[ 16 ] Philosophy was once the universal body of knowledge that, in ancient times, provided people with insight into all the individual realms of reality. Philosophy was not a specific science. Philosophy was the universal science, and all the other sciences we cultivate today have, after all, essentially grown out of the substance of philosophy as it still existed in ancient Greece. In addition, a distinct, specialized philosophy has emerged in more recent times, one that thrives on a certain body of ideas. What is peculiar, however, is that this philosophy—from which, in essence, all other sciences have grown—has now found itself in the position of having to justify its own existence in relation to the other sciences. The other sciences, which after all grew out of philosophy, deal with this or that recognized realm of reality. The realm of reality exists for the senses, for observation, or for experimentation.

[ 17 ] There can be no doubt about the legitimacy of addressing this topic from a scientific and epistemological perspective. Although all these individual fields have emerged from philosophy, philosophy today is compelled to justify its own existence, to explain why it develops a certain body of ideas, and whether these ideas might not be entirely unreal, having no connection to reality at all, but merely being something conceived by the human mind. Let us just consider for a moment how much rigorous intellectual effort is devoted today to justifying those ideas—which, incidentally, have already taken on a very abstract character—that are today called the content of philosophy, so that they may still enjoy a certain standing in the world. They have given rise to the sciences; these are, I would say, well-established in relation to their respective domains of reality. Philosophy, on the other hand, is not accredited today. It must, in fact, first prove that its existence is justified. In ancient Greece, this was not even an issue. There, anyone who had developed even to the point of engaging in philosophy felt the reality of philosophizing just as a healthy person feels the reality of breathing. When, on the other hand, today’s philosopher surveys his philosophy, he senses the abstractness, the coldness, and the sobriety of the ideas he develops in philosophy. He does not feel firmly grounded in reality. Only those working in a chemistry lab, a physics lab, or a hospital, I would say, have something tangible in their hands. Anyone who harbors and pursues philosophical ideas today often feels miles away from reality.

[ 18 ] There is another point to consider. It is deeply rooted that philosophy does not bear a name that refers merely to theoretical knowledge. The love of wisdom is philosophy. Love is something that is rooted not merely in the intellect and reason, but in the entire human soul, in the whole human spirit. A comprehensive spiritual experience—the experience of love—has given philosophy its name. The whole person, so to speak, should be engaged in the development of philosophy. And after all, one cannot love—love in the true sense of the word—that which is merely theoretical, sober, and cold. If philosophy is the love of wisdom, this presupposes, for those who have experienced philosophy in this way, that this Sophia, this wisdom, is also something lovable, something real, something essential—something whose existence one need not first prove. After all, just think: if a man were to love a woman, or a woman were to love a man, but first felt it necessary to prove the existence of the beloved—wouldn’t that be a completely absurd idea! But with philosophy in its current sense, it is no different. It has, I would say, turned from philosophy—which was once warm, wholeheartedly embraced by people, and self-evident in its existence—into something abstract, cold, sober, and theoretical. Where does this come from?

[ 19 ] If one traces the origins of philosophical life not through external history but through an inner, lived, and felt understanding of history, one finds that philosophy did not originally exist within human beings in the same way that it does today. Today, when thinking scientifically, human beings essentially accept only that which has been acquired through sensory observation or through experimentation conducted in the realm of the sensory. What has been acquired is then synthesized by the intellect. What is acquired in this way is acquired by the physical human being. The senses are physical organs; they are embedded in the physical human being. What the physical human body acquires in terms of knowledge is recognized scientifically today. But this can only take us as far as the physical human being itself. Within this physical human being, one cannot find what the ancients regarded as philosophy. As I said, I can speak only briefly today and will have to elaborate further on what I am pointing to in the coming days; but I must at least point out that what was still called philosophy in the heyday of Greek philosophy—this spiritual substance experienced inwardly in the soul—was not experienced within the physical human body, but within a human organization that, as an etheric human being, permeates the physical human body.

[ 20 ] In modern science, we really know only the physical human being. We do not, after all, know that body—the subtle, ethereal body that permeates the physical human body—in which the Greek philosopher experienced his philosophy. In the physical body, we experience breathing; we experience the process of seeing. But just as we have this physical human organism before us, so too is there an etheric body within the human being—an etheric human. When we look at the physical body, we observe, for example, the process of breathing; we can understand the process of seeing from a physical or biological perspective. When we look at the supersensible etheric human, we look at the being in whom philosophy was practiced in the Greek sense. The Greek human constitution was such that human beings sensed and experienced themselves within their etheric organism. And by exerting the etheric organism in this way—by bringing it into activity, just as one brings the physical organism into activity, for example, in breathing or seeing—philosophy arose within the etheric human being. Just as we can never be in any doubt that what we experience as the act of breathing is real, because we are conscious of our physical body, so the Greeks could never be in any doubt that what they experienced as philosophy—as the wisdom they loved—was rooted in reality, for they were conscious of their etheric body. He was aware that what philosophizes takes place within his etheric body; he was clear about this.

[ 21 ] Modern man has lost his etheric body for the purpose of cognition; he does not know that he has an etheric body. Traditional philosophy is a collection of abstract ideas because it can regard as reality only what is experienced as reality, within which one engages in philosophical activity. But if one has lost the etheric human being for the sake of knowledge, then one has also lost the reality of philosophy. One perceives it as abstract; one feels the need to prove its existence.

[ 22 ] Imagine that a human being were to grow into an organism even more robust, denser, and more material than his physical body. Then, for example, the process of breathing would gradually appear very refined in relation to this more robust experience, and eventually human beings would know nothing more of what is now our physical body, just as modern human beings today know nothing of their etheric body. Then breathing—the process of respiration—would be a theory, a set of ideas, and one would first have to “prove” that breathing is a reality, just as one must prove today that philosophy is rooted in reality. Doubt regarding the reality of that which one is supposed to love in philosophy has arisen because the etheric body has been lost from human consciousness. For it is in the etheric body, not in the physical body, that the reality of philosophy is experienced.

[ 23 ] If, therefore, philosophy is to be experienced as reality once again, the knowledge of the etheric human being must first arise. Then, from this knowledge of the etheric human being, a true philosophical experience will once again be able to emerge.

[ 24 ] The first step in anthroposophy is to convey this understanding of the etheric human being. I intend to proceed in three sections, and I would now like to ask Dr. Sauerwein to translate. After the translation, I will continue.

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[ 25 ] In philosophy, human beings first have an inner experience of themselves—the experience of their etheric body. However, ever since humanity began to think, it has also felt the need to integrate the individual human being into the entire cosmos, into the universe. Human beings need not only a philosophy; they also need a cosmology. They want to understand how, as individuals standing within their own bodies at a specific place on Earth, at a specific place in the world, they belong to the entire cosmos, and to what extent they have evolved from this entire cosmos.

[ 26 ] In the earliest stages of human development, people felt themselves to be part of the entire cosmos. But as a physical human being alone, one cannot feel oneself to be a part of the entire cosmos. What a physical human being carries within themselves in their experience between birth and death belongs to the immediate life of the physical-sensory environment. Beyond that, human beings have their inner spiritual life. This inner spiritual life is something entirely different from what human beings carry within themselves in their physical body from the physical-sensory environment. In order for a human being to want to feel, perceive, and know themselves as a part of the entire cosmos, as a part of the universe, they must also perceive, feel, and know their inner soul life as a part, as a link, of the universe.

[ 27 ] In the earliest stages of human development, people were truly able to perceive the spiritual and inner aspects of the universe and the cosmos—not merely through what is today misleadingly called anthropomorphism, but through an inner contemplation. At that time, people could perceive what was their own inner spiritual life as a part of the spiritual and mental life of the universe, just as one can regard the physical, sensory, and bodily life of human beings as a part of natural, sensory existence.

[ 28 ] But in recent times, people have developed, in a precise manner, only that scientific knowledge which is based on sensory observation and experimentation, and that form of thinking which relies solely on sensory observation and experimentation.

[ 29 ] From the findings obtained in this way through the natural sciences, a universal body of knowledge was formed by synthesizing the individual findings. A cosmology was constructed from the individual findings of the natural sciences. Yet this cosmology contains merely the image of sensually real facts, synthesized in thought. One forms a picture of the universe, but the individual parts, the individual elements in this picture, are merely the recognized laws of sensory-physical facts.

[ 30 ] In this picture, which modern scientific cosmology has developed, the spiritual and mental life is not included, as it was in the cosmology of the ancients; rather, it contains only that which can be observed scientifically: the sensory world. In this picture, which stands as modern cosmology, human beings can indeed recognize themselves in terms of their physical bodies, but not in terms of their inner soul life.

[ 31 ] In ancient times, one could derive the inner life of the soul from the cosmological picture. One cannot derive the inner life of the soul from the cosmological picture based on natural science. But this, in turn, is connected to the fact that modern knowledge cannot view the inner life of the spirit and soul in the same way that ancient, primitive knowledge was able to. What, then, does modern science do when it speaks of the soul within the body? It speaks of phenomena, of the inner experiences of thinking, feeling, and willing, and it views inner spiritual life as an outflow of what plays itself out in isolated and jumbled ways within thought, feeling, and will. One forms a picture in which thinking, feeling, and willing play a role as facts of the inner life of the soul.

[ 32 ] When one views the inner life of the soul and spirit in this way, one can never prevent this picture from leading to the conclusion that: Yes, what you perceive and describe there as interflowing thinking, feeling, and willing arises at birth, with embryonic life, develops with the child, and perishes with death. — There is no scientific insight that could protect this picture of a soul life from being viewed as something that vanishes with death. For in fact, this thinking, feeling, and willing appears, between birth and death, to be intimately connected with the physical life of the body. And just as we see the limbs grow, so do we see thinking and feeling develop. Just as we see the body calcify and head toward physical decline, so do we see the manifestations of thinking, feeling, and willing gradually fade away along with the physical body.

[ 33 ] What was characteristic of the ancient views was an understanding of inner spiritual life that transcended what exists in mere thinking, feeling, and willing. People looked to a foundation of inner spiritual life that lies hidden within thinking, feeling, and willing—and of which thinking, feeling, and willing are mere reflections. We see thinking, feeling, and willing arise and develop between birth and death. What lies beneath this—of which thinking, feeling, and willing are the outward reflections—was perceived by an older, primitive form of clairvoyant insight as the astral human.

[ 34 ] Just as one first recognizes the etheric human being as a supersensible being within the physical human being, so too can one recognize the astral human being as a higher component within the physical-etheric human being. This astral human being does not consist of thinking, feeling, and willing; rather, it underlies thinking, feeling, and willing. {It is that which flows in from the spiritual-soul worlds into the existence we spend between birth and death. This astral human being is that which clothes itself in the physical and etheric bodies between birth and death and which, in turn, departs after death into a spiritual-soul world. This astral human being is that within the human being for whom birth and death are merely forms of appearance.

[ 35 ] Thinking, feeling, and willing can only be understood within the physical organization of the human being and can only be found between birth and death. It is there that they develop, there that they gradually wane, and there that they also disappear. What underlies thinking, feeling, and willing—this inner life of the soul—as the astral human, extends beyond the physical and etheric human; it can be integrated into a cosmic, universal world. This is not confined within the physical organization of the human being.

[ 36 ] To arrive at a comprehensive cosmology, we need an understanding of the etheric and astral human beings, of which thinking, feeling, and willing are reflections. But thinking, feeling, and willing exist within the individual human being and cannot be integrated into a cosmic context. That which lies as their underlying background, however—that which is hidden within them between birth and death, accessible only to primitive or exact clairvoyance—can be integrated into a spiritual cosmos, of which the physical-sensory cosmos is merely a reflection.

[ 37 ] Modern cosmology is merely a superstructure built upon the findings of scientific research, a synthesis of what exists as fact in the physical-sensory realm. The inner life of the human being cannot be integrated into the picture presented by such a cosmology, but we have only such a cosmology because modern knowledge does not provide a picture of the astral human being at all. Anyone who perceives the soul life merely as a composite of thinking, feeling, and willing cannot conceive of this soul life as continuing beyond birth and death. Only when one moves beyond thinking, feeling, and willing to what lies hidden within them—to the astral human being—does one arrive at that aspect of humanity which is no longer bound to the physical body and which can be conceived as integrated into the cosmos, into the spiritual-soul universe. But one will never rediscover such a spiritual cosmos once one has left it, because one has lost the knowledge of the astral human being. One will never be able to construct such a spiritual, such a soul-world in one’s imagination unless one first returns to the image of the astral human being.

[ 38 ] The possibility of a cosmology that once again includes the spiritual-soul aspect depends on the development of an understanding of the astral human being. We will have only an external cosmology that encompasses the sensory-physical realm—and in that case, the human being will not be included in this cosmology. We have ended up with such a sensory-physical cosmology because knowledge of the astral human being has been lost. If knowledge of the astral human being is regained, then the possibility of a cosmology that includes a picture of the cosmos encompassing the human being will also exist.

[ 39 ] The point, then, is to develop an understanding of the astral human being. Through this, it will also be possible to regain a true cosmology that encompasses the human being.

[ 40 ] This is said to be the second step of anthroposophy. As for the third step, I will discuss it in the third section of my lecture, now that Dr. Sauerwein has been kind enough to translate the second part.

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[ 41 ] Apart from the fact that human beings experience themselves as unified within themselves—as in philosophical experience, for example—and that they experience themselves, as cosmology depicts, as a part of the cosmos, human beings also experience themselves as existing within a being through which they are independent both from their own physical corporeality and from the cosmos to which they belong as a part. Independent of themselves as physical beings, independent of their status as a part of the cosmos, human beings feel—when they point to themselves as the true spiritual being—that this true spiritual being is, in fact, only alluded to at present when we utter the little word “I.”

[ 42 ] When we utter the little word “I,” we mean that part of our being which is not encompassed by our physical body, nor by our etheric body, nor by our astral body—insofar as we are, through the latter, a part of the cosmos—but rather that which is an inner, self-contained being. We sense this being as belonging to a special world—the divine world—of which the cosmos is merely the outer reflection, the outer image. As human beings, when we address ourselves as “I,” we sense that this essence—the spiritual human being to whom the little word “I” refers—is, in truth, merely clothed in all that is contained within the cosmos, and that even this physical-sensory corporeality is a covering of the true essence. In earlier times, through a certain inner, albeit primitive, insight, human beings experienced this human essence—which is independent of both their own physicality and the cosmos—and thus knew themselves to belong to a divine world. But they also knew themselves to be set apart from this divine world between birth and death; they knew themselves to be clothed in a physical body between birth and death. They knew that between birth and death they were placed within the psychophysical cosmos. They knew, so to speak, that their true being, their “I”-being, was hidden by the cosmic and the physical-bodily, and they sought a union of this “I”-being with the divine world, to which this “I”-being does, after all, belong.

[ 43 ] Thus, especially in more primitive, earlier times, through the inwardly perceived experience of selfhood, human beings transcended the physical body, the etheric body, and their astral nature to reach a sense of the “I,” and they attained a union—religio—with the divine world. Religious life was the realm into which this knowledge—which was both philosophical and cosmological—flowed. Human beings found themselves, so to speak, united with that from which their own body separated them, from which the externally perceived, sensory-soul cosmos separated them. They found themselves united with this divine world in religious experience. Religious experience was the highest flowering of the experience of knowledge.

[ 44 ] But on what did this religious experience depend at the primitive stages of human development? It depended on a genuine inner experience of the self—of the true spiritual human being. Only when the “I” is experienced can union with the divine world—the religious feeling—be longed for and experienced by this “I” in turn.

[ 45 ] But what has the “I”—the true spiritual human being—become in modern thought? In modern thought, the “I” has become that through which the facts of thinking, feeling, and willing are synthesized as an abstract idea. The “I” has now become a kind of cosmic concept—or, at most, some other kind of summarizing formula comprising thinking, feeling, and willing—in any case, something very abstract. Even philosophers arrive at a description, a characterization of the “I,” by summarizing the experiences of thinking, feeling, and willing as if in an abstraction.

[ 46 ] But in what is commonly regarded as a synthesis of thought, feeling, and volition within the “I,” one finds nothing that is not refuted every night when a person sleeps. Take the characterizations of the “I” by modern philosophers, such as Bergson. In these characterizations, you will find nothing but what is refuted in every sleep, for what is absorbed from these concepts, from these ideas of the “I,” is erased during sleep. Reality refutes these definitions, these characterizations of the “I”! And what I am saying here is not dispelled by claiming, for example, that a connection to the “I” is reestablished through memory after sleep. This is not a matter of interpretations; it is a matter of facts. But this means that modern knowledge—even the most refined philosophical knowledge—has lost an understanding of the “I,” of the true spiritual human being, and with it, the path of knowledge leading to the religious.

[ 47 ] Thus it has come to pass that in more recent times, alongside knowledge that extends only to the world accessible to human beings through observation and experiment, stand the traditions that were once part of a genuine, true religious life in earlier times—traditions that are accepted historically but to which we no longer have a path of knowledge, and therefore we merely believe in them. Thus, for modern people who do not wish to allow their knowledge to extend to religious experience, knowledge and faith stand side by side. Every tenet of faith that exists today was once an ancient body of knowledge that is brought to the surface only as a reminiscence, preserved by tradition. There is no content of faith that is not a reminiscence of an ancient content of knowledge. And because today we lack the living perception—the perception through exact clairvoyance of the true “I,” which is not numbed by every sleep but underlies both the sleeping and waking states—because we lack this exact, clairvoyant knowledge of the “I,” therefore one also lacks the continuation of the path of knowledge into the religious path and places faith—which actually only brings back old traditions as reminiscences—alongside knowledge.

[ 48 ] The fact that what was once a unity—knowledge of the physical world and knowledge of the divine world—has today broken down into two seemingly separate realms, knowledge and faith, stems from the fact that the ancient, primitive clairvoyant conception of the true self — which is not characterized as being extinguished by every sleep, but is regarded as the foundation of the human being, even when sleep extinguishes thinking, feeling, and willing — that this ancient insight has been lost and that exact clairvoyance has not yet advanced to the perception of the human being’s true selfhood: the spiritual human being.

[ 49 ] Only when precise clairvoyance once again seeks to advance to the perception of the true self of the human being—just as it must advance to the perception of the human being’s etheric and astral beings—will a direct progression take place from the knowledge of the outer world to the knowledge of the divine world. Then science will once again flow into religious life.

[ 50 ] We have this division between knowledge and faith because we have lost the living, clairvoyant perception of the true “I,” the fourth member of the human being. That is why it is also the task of modern spiritual life to restore this knowledge of the true “I” through precise clairvoyance. Then the path will once again open up to proceed from knowledge of the world to knowledge of God, to return from a worldview to religious life, and to allow faith to be merely a special, higher form of knowledge—not something specifically distinct from knowledge.

[ 51 ] What we need, then, is the possibility of a genuine self-knowledge. From this arises the possibility of a new religious experience. To bring about this self-knowledge in such a way that it stands within spiritual science just as the knowledge of the etheric human being—which was characterized earlier and is not perceived in the physical human body—and the knowledge of the astral human being, who is transcendent of birth and death, and likewise the knowledge of the “I” that is transcendent of sleep and wakefulness, as the background of sleep and wakefulness—to bring about this knowledge and thereby effect the renewal of life: this is to be the third step of anthroposophy. In this way, the following is to emerge organically from the perspective of anthroposophical research:

[ 52 ] a modern philosophy based on the precise, clairvoyant knowledge of the etheric body,

[ 53 ] a cosmology that encompasses human beings through a clear understanding of the human astral nature,

[ 54 ] a renewal of religious life through a precise, clairvoyant perception of the true human self, which transcends both sleep and wakefulness.

[ 55 ] From this perspective, I will take the liberty of further exploring philosophy, cosmology, and religion in the upcoming lectures.