The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Our Mental Life During Sleep and Wakefulness and in the Afterlife

[ 1 ] If we consider human beings as they exist in their earthly lives, then what must undoubtedly appear to us as the most significant aspect of their life expressions is their capacity for thought or imagination—the ability to reflect on the world, on their own actions, and so on. We are mistaken if we form a different judgment about the course of earthly life. Certainly, there are many things that lead us to say that what is most valuable to human beings cannot lie in thought. For example, human beings perceive their emotional and psychological expressions, so to speak, as lying below the threshold of thought, and whatever a person might feel about their own responsibilities, about their behavior toward their fellow human beings, and indeed about the world itself, is considered more valuable than their thinking. And especially when we look at moral existence and become attentive to the voice of conscience, we will say to ourselves: This voice of conscience speaks from the deepest recesses of the soul, which cannot be reached by mere thinking. In particular, we are led to make such a statement when we wish to point out that even through the highest development of their intellectual life—as it can be attained through training in ordinary earthly life—human beings cannot achieve, in moral terms, what is inspired by a pure, indeed—as one might often say—a simple conscience. And yet, we are mistaken if we say that, simply because all these things are true—and they are true—thoughts are not the essence of earthly human life. For certainly, from depths far more profound than those of thought, the voice of conscience resounds, as do feelings of compassion and so on. But for human beings, these impulses that resound and manifest from the depths of the soul only then take on their true light—only then do they attain what actually elevates them into the human realm—when they are interwoven with thoughts. The voice of conscience, too, derives its value from the fact that it works its way up from the depths of the soul, but then finds expression in the world of thought, allowing a person to clothe in thought what the voice of conscience tells them. Without overestimating the life of thought, we must nevertheless acknowledge—if we wish to devote ourselves to a human consciousness free of illusion—that it is this life of thought that makes a human being truly human. And in a certain sense, the German philosopher Hegel is right when he says: “It is thinking that distinguishes humans from animals.”

[ 2 ] But when we now consider the full scope of those thoughts that fill us throughout our entire earthly life—from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep—and if we are honest in this reflection, in this examination, then we will say to ourselves: The greatest part of our thoughts during our earthly life is, in one way or another, dependent on external factors—on sensory impressions and on experiences connected with the material processes of earthly existence. And our thoughts unfold in close connection with earthly life, so that we associate precisely what is most valuable in human life—during our existence between birth and death—with earthly life. But when we consider the entirety of human life on Earth—as we have done from certain perspectives, particularly in the recent lectures I was able to give here—we must realize that at least one-third of our earthly existence passes by without thought. When we look back on our earthly life using the ordinary tools of our earthly consciousness, we actually always link only the experiences of one day to those of the next; we naturally leave out the experiences of sleep, which remain in the unconscious. But in doing so, when we look back on our earthly life in the usual way, we exclude at least one-third of it from our consideration. This is only natural, because this one-third—the third spent in sleep—remains in the unconscious.

[ 3 ] But you know from previous lectures I have given here that this activity we engage in during unconscious sleep is not without experiences. Between falling asleep and waking up, the ego and the astral human undergo their own experiences, which simply do not shine into consciousness. And if one looks more closely, one finds that those unconscious forces that are at work between falling asleep and waking up continue to exist even in the waking state. One might say that they continue to live a kind of “sleep life” there as well. They influence our entire volitional activity, which is no clearer to our ordinary consciousness than the states of sleep. They continue to influence a large part of our emotional life, which constitutes a kind of dream-like existence. Precisely when we look at what emerges from our deepest being, from our fundamental nature, we must also look at something unconscious even during our waking daily life. And through spiritual scientific observation, one then comes to realize that what is active within the human being between falling asleep and waking up continues to work during wakefulness—as the “I” and the astral human—but that these do not enter the sphere of ordinary consciousness; rather, they manifest only through their effects—in the effects on the will and in the effects on the emotions. As a result, what is actually present in full waking consciousness—the life of thought—takes on a special aspect. And it is precisely this special aspect that becomes comprehensible to us when we contemplate that existence which a human being does not spend on Earth, but which he spends between death and a new birth.

[ 4 ] When a person passes through the gate of death, they undergo states that I have often described to you, that are also recorded in our literature, and that you are familiar with—at least from certain sources. If we examine precisely and carefully the individual components of the human being to which our thinking and our imagination are actually attached, we come to the conclusion that we need the physical body for earthly thought formation. The physical body is truly what must be set into activity when a human being, as an earthly human, has thoughts. Furthermore, for this purpose—that of thinking—the etheric body must also be set into activity. Yet these are precisely the two aspects of human nature that, between falling asleep and waking up, remain in bed—seemingly unconscious, as one might say. However, once one reaches a certain level of consciousness development—a certain training of the soul that enables one to view even physical things from a spiritual perspective—one comes to realize that a human being thinks the entire time he or she is asleep. A human being never ceases to think during his or her earthly life, if we consider the whole human being.

[ 5 ] For when we wake up in the morning and return to our physical and etheric bodies, ordinary consciousness is very quickly forced into these physical and etheric bodies, and this ordinary consciousness merely becomes aware that external things then begin to make an impression, that we then have sensory perceptions which we process mentally—sensory perceptions of the external objects present. But when a person manages to immerse themselves much more consciously in their physical and etheric bodies, they encounter upon waking the thinking that has been taking place continuously within them between falling asleep and waking up. It’s just that they were not present with their I and astral body. They think—that is to say, the physical body and the etheric body are engaged in a continuous thought process between falling asleep and waking up—but the human being, with their I and astral body, is outside of this thought process; they do not participate in it and believe it does not exist. They are thus in a state of great self-deception regarding themselves. And since what is beautifully and harmoniously integrated into the entire nature of the human being—and indeed into the entire nature of beings—in normal life can be recognized particularly well when it is torn from that harmony and appears in an abnormal form, then a person can also conclude, based on external experiences—when these arise in the context of the world—that they not only think between falling asleep and waking up, but that they actually think more clearly during that time than when they are fully awake. For when we survey the entire situation, we arrive at what I would call a depressing self-confession: that our etheric body thinks less effectively when we—in terms of the “I” and the astral body—are immersed in it with our normal consciousness than when we are not immersed in it. We corrupt the thoughts taking place in our etheric body by being immersed in it with our ordinary consciousness.

[ 6 ] Therefore, those who have insight into these matters can certainly confirm stories such as the following: Once upon a time, there were two college students. One was a philologist and knew nothing about math—I must add—knew absolutely nothing about math. The other was a math major. Well, as we all know from experience, when it comes to certain parts of a math course, you have to work up a bit of a sweat on the problems. In philology, things are usually easier. And so it was with these two students, who—as often happens with students—shared a room and even slept together, so that when they had finished preparing for their exams one evening, the philology student was very pleased with himself, whereas the mathematics student was not at all, because he could not solve a problem he was supposed to have solved for a written assignment. He went to bed feeling extremely dissatisfied, and a strange thing happened: At a certain hour, the philology student was woken up; he saw the math student get up, go to the desk, and continue to ponder the problem—even writing for quite some time—and then lie back down in bed and fall asleep. The next day, when both got up, the math student said, “We didn’t go out drinking at all yesterday—I have a terrible hangover today.” — To which the other replied, “It’s no wonder that if you get up at three in the morning and spend hours doing calculations, you’ll have a foggy head the next morning.” — Then the first one said, “I didn’t get up!” — He had absolutely no recollection of getting up. So they checked, and lo and behold, he had solved his problem, but he knew nothing about it. Such things are by no means mere fairy tales. I’ve chosen an example from literature so that it can be verified. I could tell you many similar stories. I am not concerned with this particular case at all; rather, what matters to me is that this is in fact a reality: when consciousness is absent—and I emphasize that the person in question knew nothing about it—the physical body and the etheric body are, so to speak, acted upon by external forces, and the etheric body works within the physical body alone to continue the task.

[ 7 ] Yes, I already know what’s on some people’s minds; I know that some would very much like it to happen quite often. But it’s not that easy for the younger generation. So in this case, the ego and the astral body were working only through external impulses, and the etheric body—when it can work alone within the physical body—often proves to be even more ingenious than what one often fails to do ingeniously when the ego and the astral body are involved. As I said, this is merely to illustrate the fact that a person has thoughts throughout the entire night—that is, the physical body and the etheric body of the person—but the ego and the astral body are not involved. For thoughts are formed directly from the external world through the mediation of the etheric body, and then the physical body is called upon to nurture these thoughts as a physical human being on Earth.

[ 8 ] We must therefore recognize that the life of thought is thoroughly bound to the physical body and the etheric body. This is not the case with the life of feeling and the life of will. It is merely a superstition of today’s official science that the emotional and volitional lives are dependent on the physical and etheric bodies in the same way as the life of thought. I have spoken about this on numerous occasions; I do not wish to elaborate on it today, but merely to refer to the various lectures I have given to many of you.

[ 9 ] In this present earthly life, however, human beings are not in a position to follow what their “I” and their astral body experience when they are separated from the etheric and physical bodies and take with them from ordinary life only the will and a portion of their feelings. For this experience between falling asleep and waking up does indeed take place in a completely different world—in a spiritual world—a world in which the surroundings are not the natural kingdoms, such as the mineral or plant kingdoms, but rather the higher hierarchies; a world in which the surroundings consist of spiritual beings and spiritual events. But as long as a person remains in earthly life, it is certainly the case that they are not yet sufficiently developed to trace everything they experience there—with their “I” and astral body—from falling asleep to waking up—into the conscious and self-conscious realms. It remains unconscious, but is no less alive than the conscious. It is experienced; it is something that, once experienced, becomes part of a person’s inner being. We also wake up every morning changed in the same way that we have been changed by the night. We do not simply wake up in the state we had reached by the evening before falling asleep, but rather we wake up in the state that our sleep life has brought us to.

[ 10 ] When we pass through the gate of death, we shed the physical and etheric bodies. And accordingly, the experience is such that in the very first days after passing through the gate of death—the shedding of the etheric body takes only a few days—the person feels as though their thought life is being absorbed by the world. At first, they have only a fleeting glimpse back at their earthly life. It is as if they were beholding their earthly life as their own world, seeing it in vivid images. As if in an instant, the past earthly life stands before the soul when the soul has completely freed itself from the physical body and the etheric body—that is, when the passage through the gate of death has taken place. But this process—this transition—continues for days: after the physical body has been shed, the etheric body slowly dissolves into the universal ether. During this time, the impression is that at first there is a vivid, sharply defined overview of earthly life. Then it grows weaker and weaker, yet at the same time becomes, so to speak, more cosmic, until finally, after a few days, it seems to melt away from the person.

[ 11 ] But in these few days, everything that is most precious about earthly life slips away from the human being. Everything we think about the things of the world, about our entire earthly surroundings—everything that fills our ordinary consciousness—melts away from us, melts away within a few days. And to the same extent that this content of earthly life melts away, to that same extent emerges what a person has always unconsciously experienced in the sleeping state. Consciousness now expands to encompass this. It begins to become conscious. If we had no experiences during sleep, our life as a conscious existence would come to an end three or four days after death. For what we currently regard as our most precious possession during earthly life fades away, and out of this darkening, fading consciousness emerges what we have always experienced in the sleeping state—what has remained unconscious there.

[ 12 ] Now, the peculiarity of what we experience while asleep is that, during sleep, the world runs in reverse. Whether sleep is long or short—it doesn’t matter when we fall asleep—because the temporal conditions for this other state of consciousness are entirely different. So whether you sleep through a long night or just a few minutes, the description I am giving applies equally to both sleep experiences. When a person traverses the time between falling asleep and waking up, they relive in reverse what they experienced in the physical world between their last waking moment and falling asleep. They relive it all over again in a different form, and they experience it as follows: While in our waking consciousness we experience events more through physical nuances and feelings related to those physical nuances—the sequence of events from beginning to end, each individual event or circumstance as they follow one another—in physical-intellectual nuance; in sleep, we relive all of this, but with a moral nuance. That is where the moral-religious impulses reside; there we experience things in such a way that we evaluate every event according to how valuable or worthless it makes us as human beings. If we were to consciously go through this process, we could not delude ourselves about the significance of whether we have accomplished this or that, for there we evaluate the events of the day in relation to our humanity.

[ 13 ] As far as the human order on Earth is concerned, it is certainly true that natural science has a valid point when it says that in the world there is only causality, only causation, only the explanation of what follows from what precedes it—because in waking life, human beings see only this current, perceive only this current. But another current is also present in reality; it simply remains unconscious to human beings in their earthly consciousness. Yet human beings experience this moral order of the world every night between falling asleep and waking up. There we evaluate things morally, particularly in connection with our own human worth. And we do this every night—or rather, every time between falling asleep and waking up—for the preceding period of wakefulness. And once we have passed through the gate of death, we retrace our steps through the last night, the night before last, the night before that, all the way back to the first night in which we first became conscious after birth—covering roughly one-third of our earthly life, because we have slept through one-third of it. Before us lies the physical-causal course of the worlds, which has sunk into the past; before us has risen what the gods and spirits think, feel, and will concerning this course of the worlds. But at first we are still bound to the coloring, the hue that earthly life has imparted to all of this, because we must experience it in the form in which we lived it during our earthly life. Approximately one-third—because we have slept through one-third of it—we need to relive this backward journey, which then proceeds exactly as I have described, for example, in my *Theosophy*, where I described the realm of the soul, the world of the soul.

[ 14 ] Before we enter a world that is purely spiritual, we must first relive everything we unconsciously experienced on Earth during our sleep states. In this way, we train our consciousness for the actual spiritual experience between death and a new birth. And at the same time, this reliving of our earthly life in reverse is a process of liberation from earthly life. We do not become free enough in our consciousness—so that this consciousness can move among the spirits of the higher worlds in a manner fully appropriate to it—until we have freed ourselves through this re-experiencing in reverse. Then we have, so to speak, returned to the starting point of our life in the higher world. And then the rest of our life between death and a new birth unfolds as a purely spiritual experience. Just as we live here among physical beings and physical events, we then live in the spiritual world among spiritual beings and spiritual events—among those spiritual beings and their deeds that never descend to Earth, and among those beings who descend to Earth as human beings, who have passed through the gate of death before us or who follow after us. We will indeed meet again with all the people with whom we had fellowship during our earthly life. And this fellowship is, in fact, a very extensive one. For through the fact that we live through the life of sleep, everything that we experienced only in glimpses with people during our earthly life is also included in this fellowship. The fact that, in every state of sleep, we are already within the spiritual world but still experience earthly events in reverse as earthly human beings—it is precisely this fact that distinguishes this nightly earthly experience of the human being from the one he undergoes after passing through the Gate of Death.

[ 15 ] First of all, we must admit to ourselves: What we recognize as the content of our consciousness during our earthly life melts away from us in the course of just a few days. That which we do not pay any attention to during our earthly life—because it is submerged in the unconsciousness of sleep—emerges afterward, as we truly relive it—yes, truly relive it. For in those earthly states of sleep, we relive—with our “I” and astral body, moving backward through time—only the events of our waking life in a pictorial form. As we pass through the gate of death, we plunge into the spiritual substance just as we plunge into material substance here when we become earthly human beings. One could even say: Just as we receive a physical and an etheric body when we become earthly human beings, so do we receive a higher form of being as an outer covering—a spiritual covering—once we have passed through the gate of death. Through this, however, we then actually experience in reality what we here only experience symbolically in states of sleep. This is a genuine, real experience—just as real an experience as the earthly life spent in the physical body constitutes a genuine earthly life. And it is only this genuine experience—which is a repetition in reality of the symbolic experiences of every sleep state—that is followed by those experiences we undergo in the further course of our life between death and a new birth.

[ 16 ] Then comes the period between death and a new birth, during which we have, so to speak, shed our entire earthly existence and, as I have already explained to you, prepare for our next earthly life by working together with the beings of the spiritual world to shape the spiritual seed of our next earthly life—above all, our next physical body. Then, in turn, there comes a time when the human being once again turns more toward earthly life. After the human being has lived for a long time between death and a new birth among spiritual beings and spiritual realities, it is—naturally on an entirely different level, but I would like to clarify this through a comparison—roughly like a person who feels tired and wants to fall asleep. Thus, the person feels their consciousness in the spiritual realm growing weaker, finds they can no longer work as effectively with the beings of the higher world, and their consciousness shifts once more toward an interest in a new earthly life. Just as we sink into sleep every day, where our consciousness becomes completely unconscious, so do we, in a sense, sink down into the purely spiritual consciousness that fills most of the time between death and a new birth, but not into unconsciousness; rather, into a state filled with interest in earthly life—now viewed from the other side, from the perspective of the spiritual world—an interest in earthly life. This interest in earthly life emerges many years, many centuries before we descend into earthly life. We already develop an interest in our future earthly life when, on Earth itself, it is not only our grandfather who lives there, but a distant ancestor who lived many generations before us, from whom we are descended. The interest we have held for the purely spiritual world during the long period between death and a new birth transforms into an interest in a succession of generations. At the end of this lineage, we ourselves are then born. In fact, from the spiritual world, we follow our ancestors over long periods of time, at the end of which stand our own parents. Thus, from the spiritual world, we grow into our lineage.

[ 17 ] These things will one day become part of the general human consciousness, and only then will people see to what limited extent what is repeatedly discussed today by a science that is indeed correct but extraordinarily limited applies: heredity. Physical heredity can only become clear to a person when they know what role those very forces play in physical hereditary patterns—forces through which they are already connected, from the spiritual world, to their entire ancestral lineage. When we point out here, with our physically limited science, how we possess this or that trait of our great-great-grandfather, we must not forget how, even while this great-great-grandfather was still alive, we were already, from the spiritual world, interested in what he was like—how we grow into that which then manifests outwardly in the traits that develop from generation to generation. After all, we grow into it from the spiritual world.

[ 18 ] These things will also gain _ practical significance_ at a later time, when anthroposophy becomes more deeply integrated into the civilization of humanity as a whole. One cannot even begin to fathom how much despondency and lack of vitality in people’s souls today stems, in a semi-conscious or unconscious way, from ideas about heredity—precisely because science can only speak of these hereditary relationships in a completely inadequate manner. But these ideas have already found their way into art and into general human thought.

[ 19 ] Once a person comes to realize that they are connected not only to the physical form of their ancestors but also to the development of their own soul—which, from the spiritual world, follows the entire development of their ancestors and contributes to it—then this very awareness will become a reality within them. Then, in turn, energy and courage will flow from the spirit into the souls of some people who, due to today’s ways of thinking, are plagued by despondency and a lack of energy. For it is of the very least importance that we know this or that about the spiritual world in a theoretical sense. Most of the time, we even clothe our thoughts about the spiritual world in physical thought-forms. What matters is not that we form theoretical thoughts about the spiritual world. Certainly, we must first form these thoughts so that they can enter our minds and our will, but what is essential is that they can then live within our minds and our feelings.

[ 20 ] To illustrate this, I would like to say the following. Due to the circumstances I recently described in Dornach, the anthroposophical movement has, for some time, gone hand in hand with the so-called theosophical movement. It has never adopted the teachings of the Theosophical Movement, but has merely found its audience within the Theosophical Society. Yet there are, of course, teachings that are known as such within the Theosophical Movement. Superficial people confuse Theosophy with Anthroposophy. But even though the number of such superficial people is very large, the great, profound difference must be clear to you. I would like to further characterize this profound difference with a few remarks. Try to really trace how theosophical teachings actually work. They, too, speak of the members of human nature, the members of the human being—and even, as far as the lower members are concerned, use the same names: physical body, etheric body, astral body. But if you then look into the descriptions, you will find: The physical body is the dense body; next comes the etheric body, somewhat thinner, but still a kind of mist; then comes the astral body, even thinner—a thinner mist; and then you have to climb a tremendous way, yet it becomes only a thinner and thinner mist. Notice how little this literature engages with what is expected—even of beginners, I might say—in anthroposophical literature: to conceive of the etheric body not as something thinner, but as the opposite of the physical body. Just as the physical body fills space, the etheric body takes something away from it. Physical matter fills space; etheric substance draws space out. There is nothing here of the sort where one simply moves into ever thinner mists; rather, one truly embarks on the path to spiritual contemplation. This even bothers many people, because they have convenient ways of connecting to the physical world within these increasingly thin mists; one can imagine the whole thing through physical images, so that one can construct entire systems and worldviews in this theosophical manner.

[ 21 ] When a person passes through the gate of death, I told you, their thoughts fade away within a few days. But this theosophy fades away within a few hours; it is among the first things to be forgotten. What is peculiar is that those thoughts derived from spiritualism are not even active in the very first moments after death; a person cannot even carry them through the gate of death. The thoughts a person forms from spiritualist experiments are the most materialistic of all. This is proven by the fact that they are not carried beyond death at all. For while spiritualists believe that thoughts from a spiritual world are conveyed to them through mediums, the truth is that all thoughts formed through spiritualism do not even extend beyond death. So strong are the illusions to which people succumb when they seek to form any kind of conception of the spiritual world.

[ 22 ] The point is not simply that we think about the spiritual world—we must first form these thoughts so that the content of the spiritual world can enter the soul at all—but rather that these thoughts prove to be creatively alive. Ordinary physical, earthly thoughts are abstract thoughts. Most scientific thoughts are entirely abstract; they do nothing within the human being, just as mirror images can do nothing. These thoughts are merely images. If you look into a mirror at the same time as another person and receive a slap, you will not attribute the slap to any of the mirror images, but to a real person standing next to you. Thoughts are just like reflections: they do nothing; they do not actually exert any influence. It is only the moral intuitions within thoughts that exert this influence. And so it is that, although we must start from thoughts, thoughts about the spiritual world must have the same effect as realities do, not as thoughts do.

[ 23 ] Only then do we enter into the true anthroposophical worldview, when we perceive thoughts as realities and experience them as such. This is also the point that is often met with objections. Superficial people say: This entire anthroposophical worldview could be based on imagination; human beings are subject to autosuggestion. As an example, it is said that a person is sometimes so sensitive that the mere thought of drinking lemonade is enough to fill them with the sensation one might actually experience when drinking lemonade. It is true; there are people so sensitive that they need only think of lemonade to have the taste of it in their mouths. If this is raised as an objection, it is valid—but let someone say whether the mere thought of lemonade has quenched their thirst! It certainly has not. Mere thoughts do not translate into reality. However, as long as anthroposophy remains merely a thought, it is akin to what one experiences with an imagined lemonade. But it need not remain that way, for it is drawn from spiritual reality. It does not merely act like a thought; rather, it acts upon the physical body just as the external reality of matter does. It permeates and pulses through a person’s life of will and feeling. It becomes reality within the person. That is what matters.

[ 24 ] After all, having anthroposophy as a theory does not accomplish anything special. It must become a living reality. But it can become a living reality, particularly in this respect: by making our souls energetic, resilient, and courageous; so that in moments when we are preoccupied with earthly concerns, in the deepest sorrow and misery, we can be filled with inner joy, inner comfort, and inner energy as we look up toward a spiritual world. Then anthroposophy becomes like a living being; then it becomes something that walks among us as a living being. Only then, however, has it truly become among us what it was meant to be; only then does it permeate all our activities. And then it leads us to truly penetrate this world, into which we are placed on Earth for the sake of the spirit, not for the sake of physical matter. Above all, anthroposophy then leads to a true understanding of human nature. For if one simply regards the human being in such a way that, after death, one disregards what has now passed through the gate of death and focuses solely on what remains as the physical body—examining the human being physiologically through anatomical means by dissecting the corpse—one learns, in fact, the very least about the human being. For then, in fact, everything about the human being becomes more or less indifferent—or rather, of equal significance: the blood cell and the nerve cell become virtually equivalent. Certainly, one distinguishes between them—I don’t want to tell you any nonsense—but one does not distinguish them in terms of their essence. In terms of their essence, one can distinguish them only if one understands the relationship between this elemental entity—the cell—and the spiritual. Now, in the case of the nerve cell—indeed, of every nerve particle—what comes from the spirit finds, I might say, its earthly home within the nervous system. When we step out of the spiritual world and become earthly beings once more, we enter our physical body through the processes familiar to you. What serves us as we descend into the physical world is everything connected with our nervous being. In a sense, we settle into our nervous system as we descend from the spiritual world. And the distinctive feature of this nervous being—of every single nerve cell, every tiny nerve particle—is that the spiritual fills this nervous substance in such a way that within the nervous being, in its very essence, there is what one might call: spirit condensed into matter. It is not quite like that, but rather, in the earthly human being, there is a constant exchange taking place between nervous matter and blood matter. But this exchange is such that the actual blood matter is not tolerated within the nervous matter—it is always expelled—so that within the nervous matter we have something that, throughout our entire earthly life, acts as an impermeable barrier to earthly spirituality.

[ 25 ] We come to Earth, transform ourselves into nervous beings, and thereby declare: We are offspring of Heaven. To the extent that we are nervous beings, we are offspring of Heaven, and we establish ourselves spiritually there, remaining offspring of Heaven to the extent that we are nervous beings. In a sense, the spiritual nature that we once were has become rigid. And it incorporates the rest—that which is not a nervous human being, which, in the extreme, is the blood-based human being. This is incorporated; it is a different kind of matter. This is matter that is in constant, intimate interaction with the spirit, that is continually permeated by the spirit. While the spirit is solidified in the nervous body, it is continually recreated in the blood body; this is where the true earthly metamorphosis takes place. These two human entities are united yet entirely distinct from one another, just as positive and negative electricity are distinct from one another. We carry such a polarity within us with regard to the nature of our nervous body and blood body. The other organs are metamorphosed organs composed of blood and nerves.

[ 26 ] It is an entirely different matter whether something is taking place in our blood process—which is then earthly—or whether something is taking place in our nervous process. We are not aware of this, however, because the substance of the spirit is so rigid that everything is reflected back. These are our thoughts that are reflected back. But we carry this duality within us, in that we are constantly both heavenly descendants and earthly seeds. Heavenly descendants, earthly seeds—both are polar opposites—and they work together.

[ 27 ] Well, allow me to use an analogy. You have two opposing states. If you imagine a balance scale with the right and left pans held in place by the hypomochlion: you have equilibrium when the weight on one side is equal to that on the other. Whenever you increase the weight on one pan of the scale, you must also increase it on the other side so that the balance beam remains horizontal. But there is one point that is completely unaffected by this: that is the point where the balance beam is suspended. You can move the scale around anywhere as long as you hold it at the single point where the balance beam is supported. You can see everywhere how the left side depends on the right and vice versa, but this suspension point doesn’t care at all. Everything is in balance there, and whatever happens on the two pans is completely independent of what is happening at that very point on the scale. You can make a certain movement—if you apply sufficient dexterity—or you can make another such movement involving the pivot point: this has absolutely nothing to do with what is happening on the scale, on the right and left sides of the balance beam. It is the same with human beings, except that there is no fulcrum, but rather a state of equilibrium between what they are as “nervous beings” and what they become on Earth. These two things are interconnected in a way that can be examined. In a person who has strong thoughts on one side, these are expressed in a strong act of will. If a person has strong muscles, they also have different thoughts regarding their will. But in between lies a state of equilibrium. This state of equilibrium does not lie in the head as the representative of the nervous human being—nor in the limbs as the representative of the blood-based human being. It lies in between; it is something like a hypomochlion, which is the point of equilibrium between the two.

[ 28 ] And what is a human being by virtue of possessing this state of equilibrium? You see, if the scale were to move on its own, it would be able to move around its point of equilibrium without the slightest concern for whether its beam is weighted or unweighted. Since human beings possess such a state of equilibrium, they act—even as earthly beings—completely independently of what natural science identifies as the causality of the will, as lack of freedom, or as the causes of volitional impulses. Just as it is true that there is a law governing the relationship between the right and left beams of the balance, so too is everything that natural science says about the cause of a volitional decision true. But the will itself lies in the hypomochlion, in the state of equilibrium. One must therefore first recognize the true nature of the human being; only then can one judge whether the human being is a free being or not. This explanation, however, only becomes clear when one understands the relationship of the spirit, on the one hand, to positive matter, so to speak, and, on the other hand, to negative matter—that is, the positive and negative relationships of the human being to matter. Then one finds, between the two, the region where the human being is realized as a free being. Then one looks into that region where the human being distinguishes itself from both causality and spiritual determination. In ancient times, there was spiritual determination, on the basis of which philosophy asserted that the human being must be determined everywhere by the spirit; in more recent times, there has been natural causality. Just as the determinists dabbled in the “nervous man” concept without realizing that there is always something else, something opposite, that brings about a balance, so do people today dwell within natural causality. Both find that human beings lack freedom. But freedom lies right in between.

[ 29 ] The point, then, is that we must truly be able to comprehend the physical world precisely by correctly grasping the relationship between this physical world and the spiritual world. It is not enough to simply say: “The physical world is based on a spiritual one.” — At best, that leads you to the trivial notion: There stands the physical human being, and somewhere a spiritual archetype floats. — That does not lead you to a conception of the physical human being. You can only understand the physical human being by recognizing that the spiritual world stands in a completely different relationship to one half of the human being than to the other half, and that between them there is a point of equilibrium untouched by either, which constitutes human freedom.

[ 30 ] Essentially, an inner rapture should arise in the soul—I am speaking once again of what is brought about by thoughts drawn with all their vitality from the spiritual realm—an inner rapture should arise in the soul when it can say to itself: It is as if scales were falling from one’s eyes when one can say to oneself that the human being is free, and when one can look upon the reasons for this freedom. — As long as there are merely people who, with brilliant intelligence—and I do not wish to deny this to anthroposophists—understand anthroposophy and profess it as a set of ideas, anthroposophy is not yet truly alive. Only at the moment when, in the face of particularly important insights, souls feel as if they might burst with delight and are joyfully stirred by this or that insight—only then, when such people feel themselves to be anthroposophists—does the anthroposophical movement come into being. It actually arises as an anthroposophical movement within the whole human being. Then, too, it finds its state of equilibrium.

[ 31 ] Well, my dear friends, I would like to conclude this lecture by leaving you with a question: To what extent can we already be inwardly inspired by anthroposophical ideas and filled with a joy of knowledge today? — Then, from this perspective, reflect on the beginnings of the anthroposophical movement!