The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Three Perspectives of Anthroposophy: The Spiritual Perspective

[ 1 ] As an earthly being, the human being initially experiences three alternating states of consciousness: the waking state, from the moment of waking until falling asleep; the opposite state, that is, the state of sleep, in which the soul, so to speak, plunges into spiritual darkness and has no experiences around it; and between the two, the dream state—of which we are well aware that waking experiences play a role in it, but also that, on the other hand, certain extraordinarily significant and interesting inner forces alter the connections of waking life, such that—to mention just a few examples—events long past appear as if they were happening right now; how something that passed by the consciousness in complete oblivion—something to which one might not have paid particular attention in ordinary waking life—rises into the dream consciousness, and so on. Things that otherwise have absolutely nothing in common are brought together by the dream.

[ 2 ] But at the same time, it is a thoroughly characteristic feature of the dream state that the content of the dream, everything that is perceived in a dream, is highly pictorial; so much so that even when a word enters the dream, it is the pictorial nature of the word that comes into play—the sound of the word, the modulation of the sounds—all of which unfold into pictoriality, albeit an audible, psychologically perceptible pictoriality.

[ 3 ] Well, dreams certainly contain an extraordinary wealth of elements that can engage the human soul at its deepest level. But one cannot gain insight into true spiritual existence unless one is able to form valid concepts regarding the relationship between these three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and sleeping.

[ 4 ] Today, as far as possible, we want to characterize these three states of consciousness with the help of spiritual science. First, the state of waking daily life.

[ 5 ] A person can become aware that they can lead this waking daily life by beginning to make use of their body as it awakens—its organs, but also their thinking, which is, after all, bound to the body. And even if one is unaware that, upon waking, the “I” and the astral body merge into the physical and etheric bodies, one must still sense—albeit rapidly, yet clearly perceptible, or at least distinctly felt—how a person gains strength over their limbs, strength over their organs, and the strength to unfold their inner thinking.

[ 6 ] All of this can teach us how waking daily life is bound to the physical body. And when we consider the etheric body—or body of formative forces—from the perspective of spiritual science, we must also say that this waking life is bound to the etheric body—or body of formative forces—just as it is to the physical body. We must immerse ourselves in these two aspects of our human being and make use of their organization in order to lead our waking life.

[ 7 ] One can fall prey to the most varied illusions regarding this waking daily life if one does not begin to examine it from the perspective of spiritual science. We need say little about sensory life; for what could be clearer than that in waking daily life, human beings make use of their sense organs, and that these sense organs convey to them what is revealed as the external physical world around them. One need only consider the nature of the sense organs for a moment to see how, through the relationships of the eye, the ear, and the other senses to the external world, that which human beings call their waking daily experiences—as a revelation of the sensory world—comes about.

[ 8 ] What now makes it necessary to proceed to a more detailed examination is thinking and imagination. Let us be perfectly clear about the fact that human beings, with their ideas, have initially achieved nothing more than an internalization of their sensory life.

[ 9 ] When a person looks honestly within themselves, they will say to themselves: Through the senses I receive impressions; in thinking, I carry these impressions inward. And when we then examine our thoughts, we will find that these thoughts are shadowy reflections of what the senses convey to us. In a sense, human thinking is directed entirely outward. Thinking is the activity of the etheric or formative body, so that we can also say: When a person thinks while awake as a sensory, earthly being, their etheric or formative body is directed outward. But in doing so, we have essentially considered only one aspect of the etheric or formative body. And when we consider what we have in ordinary waking consciousness—thoughts about the external world—it is as if, due to certain circumstances, we could only physically observe a person from behind. Imagine that you had always seen a number of people only from behind. You would form impressions that might not do justice to these people. You would, if I may say so, be curious and eager to know what these people look like from the front, and you are, after all, convinced from the outset that the front belongs to the back of a person—that it is precisely the other side, the side that is more expressive for the physical human being on Earth.

[ 10 ] This is what happens when we become aware of the thinking of the external world: we look, as it were, toward the back side of thinking. It is the reverse, because the direction of sensory currents in human beings always runs from front to back. Even where it appears to be otherwise, we must think of it this way: what physically appears as the front is, for thought, the back. And we must, in essence, place ourselves in a position to view human thought from the other side—where it is not turned toward the impressions of the external senses, where it reveals its hidden inner side to us.

[ 11 ] But then we come to something quite remarkable. Then thinking does not present itself to us as it appears when we carry it in our consciousness as images of the external sensory world. Viewed from this other perspective, our thinking—which, after all, constitutes the forces of the etheric or formative body—is transformed into forces that build up our physical organism, into forces that create our physical organism.

[ 12 ] When we grow, when our organs are built up from the embryonic stage, when our organs are plastically formed—it is the other aspect of thinking that actively intervenes from the etheric body, or body of formative forces, and organizes us. What works and lives within us as we grow, as we process food, and all the formative forces present within us—that is the other side of thinking. Ordinary thinking produces only shadowy thoughts within us; it is the passive aspect of thinking. But what actually gives our thinking apparatus its form, what shapes our brain and our entire nervous system—that is the creative power of thinking, and that is at the same time the creative power of the form-forming body or etheric body. That is the other side.

[ 13 ] It does not take much clairvoyant insight to realize how this creative power of thought operates within human beings as a force of growth, as a formative power in general. One need only—I would say—take a step inward to become aware that thinking is not merely a shadowy reflection of the external world, but an inner activity. One need only, so to speak, take a step back from one’s focus on the external world and turn toward what one does inwardly, what one thinks; then one becomes aware of this activity of thinking.

[ 14 ] In this grasping of the activity of thought, we now first grasp what human freedom is, and understanding freedom is one and the same with grasping this activity of thought. Therefore, by grasping the activity of thought in this way, one also grasps the morality that permeates, surges through, and interweaves human beings.

[ 15 ] This understanding of thought as an active element, this understanding of pure thought as opposed to thought filled with external sensory images, this inward turn—I wanted to make this comprehensible in my Philosophy of Freedom, I wanted to make it clear how a person can grasp this activity of thought inwardly, how, through this turn inward toward pure, non-sensory thought, he also grasps morality as something that can be absorbed into pure thought, and how, through this, he truly attains a consciousness of freedom.

[ 16 ] So that we can say: If we allow human thinking—which at first, in its initial aspect, shows us shadowy images of the external sensory world—to turn inward, then it becomes the sculpting creative power of the human being itself; then it becomes inner activity; then it becomes the bearer of freedom—that in which, so to speak, moral impulses within the human being can be captured.

[ 17 ] In this way, we advance from the physical body into the etheric body—or body of formative forces—in a spiritual manner. We can therefore say: The first step upward into the spiritual world is the genuine experience of the feeling of freedom.

[ 18 ] And now let us consider dream consciousness. No matter how chaotic dreams may be—whether they are nightmares, dreams of fear, or sweet dreams—they always weave and live in images that they conjure before the soul. If we set aside the content of the dream and focus instead on the drama of the dream, we see how the soul, so to speak, weaves and lives within these dream images as it awakens or falls asleep.

[ 19 ] Yes, this reveals a certain power of the soul. One may argue about the extent to which these images are true or false—but the very fact that these images can be formed must indicate to us that there is a power within the soul that shapes them. The dream image is placed before the soul itself by an inner power of the soul. There is an inner, weaving power of the soul at work in the formation of dreams.

[ 20 ] Focus on the moment of waking. You must sense how, emerging from the darkness of sleep, this inner, weaving force is present. But it sinks into the physical and etheric bodies. You would continue dreaming if this force did not sink in. It is the force of the astral body. The astral body, which is incapable of becoming aware of itself when it is outside the physical and etheric bodies, begins to sense itself and to feel its own force as it awakens, as it feels the resistance of the physical and etheric bodies as it sinks into them. It appears chaotic in the dream, but it is the soul’s own power that has been active from the moment of falling asleep until waking and is now submerging. Yes, the dream-forming power pours into the physical and etheric bodies. It sinks down into the blood circulation; it sinks down into the tensions and relaxations of the muscles. The dream-forming force also enters the etheric body. This strengthens the dream-forming force. On its own, it is weak and powerless. The dream images merely flit by when the dream-forming power is on its own. But when the dream-forming power engages with the physical and etheric bodies, making use of their organs, it becomes strong.

[ 21 ] What does it do as it grows stronger? Well, it develops memory in the human being. Memory is nothing other than the dream-forming force embodied in the physical and etheric bodies. The dream sinks into the physical body, is thereby integrated into the order of the physical world, and now forms not a chaotic recollection, but a memory integrated into the physical world—the content of memory.

[ 22 ] We would not be able to remember anything if we did not bring the dream, with its power, from sleep into the physical body; for in the physical body, the power of the dream becomes the power of recollection and memory.

[ 23 ] And when you sit there in silence, turned away from the external sensory world, and let your memories play out—your memories that surface, soothe, and bring joy; your memories that stimulate the imagination—when you let them take hold, then it is the power of dreaming, strengthened by the physical and etheric bodies, that reigns within you—that power of dreaming which, when the astral body was held outside the physical and etheric bodies, was immersed in the spirit of the world and experienced the mysteries of things within the spirit of the world.

[ 24 ] If you were to perceive, while asleep, the same force that forms your power of recollection—your memory—in your waking state, unfolding outside the physical and etheric bodies, you would not have the chaotic images of dreams, which form only in the moment of submerging into the physical and etheric bodies; rather, immersed in the outer world and freed from the physical and etheric bodies, you would experience yourself in a majestic world of images while asleep.

[ 25 ] This world of images would be the cosmic counterpart of what rises and falls in your memories as you ponder in solitude. Your life of memory is the microcosmic counterpart to that macrocosmic, gigantic, majestic weaving and surging of images that our dream power undergoes when the astral body has immersed itself—not in the physical and etheric bodies, but in the things and processes of the outer cosmos.

[ 26 ] And when we speak of the spiritual content of our soul and find, above all, that this spiritual content of our soul ebbs and flows within what, transformed from external impressions, lives on in our memories, in the contents of memory—which, having been assimilated by our own inner being, essentially constitute everything blissful and everything tragic, everything joyful and everything painful in our soul life—when we consider all that which lives here as spiritual content in the memories of our soul, then we must realize that we owe this to the fact that we can immerse the dream-forming power—which is actually akin to the cosmos—into our inner being; that what lives in the formative powers out there in the cosmos, what creates and acts out there, is present within us as the power of memory that permeates us and our soul.

[ 27 ] Thus, in our power of remembrance, we feel a kinship with all the creative and active forces of the cosmos. And we may say: When I look out and see how the images of plants unfold in spring, when I look into the forest and see how, over the years, decades, the trees develop from their seeds; when I look up and see how clouds transform under the influence of the more external formative forces; when I look out and see how mountains form and erode in the world; when I look at all these formative forces that work their way up to the stars: I have something akin to all of this in my own soul; I have the powers of memory within my soul, and these are the microcosmic reflection of what is weaving and working out there in the world through the metamorphoses of things.

[ 28 ] And now let us consider the “I,” which, even in the sleeping state, leaves the physical and etheric bodies and connects outwardly with the things and processes of the cosmos. We then become aware of how we, as human beings, are capable of immersing ourselves in things with our true being—even if this remains unconscious to us in our everyday experience. However, the “I” itself emerges from deep sleep and immerses itself in the physical and etheric bodies. And here, it is only spiritual scientific initiation that can investigate this. While, for memory, the entry of the dream force into the physical body still provides a point of reference for ordinary observation, one must—through imagination, as it can be cultivated in the sense of my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?— one must now also learn to observe how the “I,” which from the moment of falling asleep until waking remains engaged with the things and processes of the cosmos, submerges into the physical and etheric bodies; how that which is initially so powerless in relation to present human development on Earth—so much so that the human being, in sleep as in darkness, is immersed in the darkness of his soul—how, when it sinks into the physical and etheric bodies, it now also strengthens itself within them, how it takes hold of the pathways of the physical and etheric bodies and seizes the innermost power of the blood, working through the innermost power of the blood.

[ 29 ] And this, too, manifests itself in waking daytime consciousness. The “I,” immersed in the physical and etheric bodies, then expresses itself. The “I” is that which acts and weaves freely within the human being; it may express itself, or it may not. But when it does express itself, what is its most characteristic expression in the human being? It is the power of love that appears within the human being.

[ 30 ] We would never have the ability to lose ourselves in love within another being or another process—to, so to speak, pass over into that other process—if the “I” did not also truly step out of us every night to immerse itself in the things and processes of the cosmos outside. There it truly immerses itself. As it slips back into us in our waking consciousness, it bestows upon us, through the capacity it has acquired out there, the inner power to love. This is what emerges as the threefold power of the soul in its deepest core: freedom, the life of memory, and the power of love.

[ 31 ] Freedom, the inner archetype of the etheric body or body of formative forces. Memory, the inner, dream-forming power of the astral body. Love, the inner power of love that leads human beings to devotion to the outer world.

[ 32 ] Because the human soul can partake in this threefold power, it becomes imbued with spiritual life. For this threefold permeation—with the sense of freedom; with the power of memory, through which we hold the past and present together; and with the power of love, through which we are able to surrender our inner self to the outer world and become one with it—the possession of these three powers of the soul is what spiritualizes our soul.

[ 33 ] To grasp this with the proper spiritual nuance means to understand what it means that human beings carry the Spirit within their souls. And whoever does not understand this threefold inner spiritualization of the soul does not understand how the human soul harbors the Spirit.

[ 34 ] This then extends to life itself. When we are able to establish a living inner connection between memory and love—the memory that reigns within us through the astral body, and love through the “I”—then, in certain cases, something wonderful can be achieved through this.

[ 35 ] This is how these things are directly experienced in life. We preserve the memory of a beloved deceased person beyond death. We carry their image in our soul; that is to say, we add to the sensory impressions we received from them during their lifetime that which remains with us once their sensory presence has been taken from us. With all the strength and intensity of our soul, we continue life with the deceased in our memory—to such an extent that we no longer have the support of external sensory impressions—and we strive to bring these memories to such a degree of vividness that it may seem to us as if the deceased were present in immediate, living reality. We remain conscious that we carry this within our memory, but we subsequently combine this power—which comes to us through a strengthening of our astral body—with the power we possess through our “I,” with the power of love. We continue to hold the deceased in our hearts with intense love even beyond the grave. We enable ourselves to connect the power of love with the image—which no longer receives any sensory stimulation—in the same way that we are otherwise able to develop the power of love under sensory stimulation.

[ 36 ] This makes it possible to intensify what the astral body and the “I” would otherwise only express when they make use of the organs of the physical body. Precisely when we preserve the memory of the deceased—a memory that can no longer be evoked within us through the physical body or the etheric body—and when we can keep this memory so vivid and alive that we can associate an intense love with it, then this is a way to, to a certain degree, detach the astral body and the “I” from the physical and etheric bodies while awake; and it is precisely in the memory that we are able to preserve for the deceased that one of the first steps lies toward the liberation of the “I” and the astral body from the physical and etheric bodies during the waking state.

[ 37 ] If people could understand what it means to keep a memory alive, what it means to view the image that remains of the deceased just as one viewed it when they were alive—then they would experience, precisely along this path that leads across the threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds, the liberation of the astral body and the “I,” that jolt that encompasses the following experience: First we have the memory, vivid, as if the deceased were still here; we know that through our waking consciousness we connect the image of the deceased with the love we otherwise felt only when we received sensory impressions of him. We make all of this active and alive within ourselves. The jolt occurs when we are able to develop the necessary inner strength. The jolt occurs; we cross the threshold into the spiritual world. The deceased can be present there in their reality.

[ 38 ] This is one of the paths by which human beings enter the spiritual world. It is connected to that which can only inspire awe—something one can even experience with a sense of awe and a certain inner solemnity, while fully recognizing its nature.

[ 39 ] If you allow all the gravity associated with such ideas—as I have just presented to you in the specific case of crossing the threshold into the spiritual world—to take hold of your soul, and if you bring this gravity to mind, then you will at the same time have a sense of all the gravity that must be associated with entering the spiritual world in general. Life must, in a sense, have revealed its profound seriousness to us through our own will if we truly wish to enter the spiritual world—indeed, if we merely wish to comprehend the spiritual world in all seriousness.

[ 40 ] This is what the science of initiation has always sought to infuse into external civilization. But this is also what our increasingly materialistic age needs.

[ 41 ] For it is a curious phenomenon that people today value dogmatic science more than reality. In every moral act, a person can be conscious of their freedom. And just as we experience red or white, so too do we, as human beings, truly experience freedom. But we deny it. We deny it under the authority of contemporary science. Why? Because contemporary science wants to focus solely on the mechanical, where the earlier is always the cause of the later. And there, this science dogmatically dictates: Everything must have a cause. It dogmatically dictates causality, and because causality must be correct—because people want to swear dogmatically by causality—they numb themselves to the feeling of freedom. Reality is plunged into darkness in order to uphold the dogma, in this case the dogma of external science, which exercises such strong authority.

[ 42 ] Science is destroying life. For if life were to become conscious of itself within human beings, that life would immediately seize freedom through the act of thinking. And so science—which is purely external and based on causality—has become the great destroyer of the sense of life within human beings. One must be aware of this.

[ 43 ] Can we hope that, if a person inwardly abolishes the experience of freedom, he can then advance further toward the spiritual form, the spiritual image of memory? Can we hope that just as a person otherwise allows the red rose to be a revelation of its own redness, so too will he allow memory to be that which reveals within him the “power of dreams” weaving and working throughout the universe? Can we hope that a person can gain conviction for the second stage if, on the first stage, he kills the sense of freedom through the so-called dogma of causality? As a result, human beings fail to look into the spirituality of their own souls. Consequently, they also do not penetrate to the point where it becomes clear to them that, in addition to the ability to live sleepily out there among things, they attain in the spiritual “I” the ability to love through their spirit. The ultimate source of love lies in the spirit-imbued “I,” which is immersed in the human physical and etheric organism. And to recognize the spirituality of love means, in a certain sense, to recognize the Spirit itself. Whoever recognizes love also recognizes the Spirit. But in recognizing love, one must advance to the inner spiritual experience of love. It is precisely in this regard that our civilization has strayed onto the most erroneous path.

[ 44 ] Memory is a weaving and a living within the soul, and there the differences do not present themselves so clearly or profoundly. Only mystical minds—Swedenborg, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler—perceive, as they immerse themselves in their memories, the weaving and life of the spiritual-eternal within that memory; they speak of the spark that ignites within a person when they become aware, through memory, that within this memory lives—in an inner, microcosmic way—the very same force that works and weaves outwardly in the creative, formative powers that, like a dream, underlie all worldly existence. There, things are not so clear.

[ 45 ] But they become clear when we move on to the third stage, when we see how, in the third stage, our civilization has misunderstood the original spiritual nature and fabric of love. Everything that is spiritual naturally has its outer, sensory form, for the spirit immerses itself in the physical. It incarnates itself in the physical realm. If it then forgets itself and becomes aware only of the physical, it believes that what is spiritually stirred is merely stirred by the physical. Our age lives in this delusion. It does not know love. It merely fantasizes about love—indeed, it lies about love. In reality, it knows only eroticism when it thinks about love. I do not mean to say that the lonely person does not experience love, for in their unconscious feeling and in their unconscious willing, human beings deny the spirit far less than they do in their thinking—but when contemporary civilization thinks about love, it merely utters the word “love”; in reality, it is speaking of eroticism. And one can certainly say: If one were to go through contemporary literature, wherever, for example, the word “love” appears in German, the word “eroticism” should actually be substituted. For that is all that thinking steeped in materialism knows of love. It is the denial of the spirit that transforms the power of love into erotic power. In many areas, not only has eroticism—I would say, the lower servant of the genius of love—taken the place of that genius, but in many instances the opposite image, the demon of love, has now also taken its place. The demon of love, however, arises when that which otherwise works in human beings by God’s will is appropriated by human thinking and torn away from spirituality by intellectuality.

[ 46 ] So the descending path is this: One recognizes the genius of love; one possesses love imbued with the spirit. One recognizes the lower servant, eroticism. But one falls into the demon of love. And the genius of love has its demon in interpretation—not in its true form, but in the way today’s civilization interprets sexuality. How is it that today, when one wants to approach love, people speak not only of eroticism, but now only of sexuality!

[ 47 ] This discourse on sexuality within civilization encompasses, one might even say, much of what is today sought after as so-called sex education. In today’s intellectualized discourse on sexuality, the demonology of love thrives. Just as, on another level, the Genius whom the age is meant to follow appears in the form of a demon—because the demon does indeed enter where the Genius is denied—so it is also in this realm, where the spiritual is meant to appear in its most intimate form, the form of love. Our age often worships the demon of love instead of the genius of love, and confuses what is the spirituality of love with the demonology of love in sexuality.

[ 48 ] It is precisely in this area, of course, that the most profound misunderstandings can arise. For what is originally alive in sexuality is permeated by spiritual love. But humanity can fall away from this spiritualization of love. And it falls away most easily in the age of intellectualism. For when the intellect takes on the form I spoke of yesterday, then the spiritual aspect of love is forgotten, and only its outward form is taken into account.

[ 49 ] It is within human power, I would say, to deny one’s own nature. One denies it when one descends from the genius of love to the demon of sexuality—and I fully understand the way people feel about these matters, as it is mostly the case today.

[ 50 ] When we consider this, we must admit to ourselves: Anthroposophy can serve as our guide—not merely for our understanding, but for the very essence and life of our soul, and for rediscovering the spirit within the soul. For we can develop an intimate relationship with anthroposophy. And we become intimately connected with it when we know how to take it in its reality.

[ 51 ] Today, it has been suggested in some outward way that we should form a picture or something similar of anthroposophy. Yes, but isn’t it already there in its reality? Do we still need an image? What we need, however, is to become intimately acquainted with anthroposophy through our own inner honesty. Then it will penetrate the innermost fabric of our soul life and soul being. We should not try to form an image of it in an external way. Rather, inwardly we should become intimately acquainted with this living entity, which, as anthroposophy—I would say—should pass through our ranks everywhere when we, as people who understand such things, are united.

[ 52 ] So if we truly live with anthroposophy as a real entity that walks among us in a higher sense, if we are truly human, if we become intimately acquainted with this anthroposophy, then the impulse will arise within us to truly experience what humanity so desperately needs to experience in our age: not merely an image for the eye of the soul, but a love for the essence of anthroposophy in our hearts. That is what we need, and that is what can most become the driving force of our age.

[ 53 ] With this, however, I have sought to add the spiritual perspective to the physical perspective and the psychological perspective outlined in anthroposophy. The spiritual perspective is not an external pursuit of the spirit; on the contrary, the spiritual perspective is precisely the experience of anthroposophy in the deepest, most intimate recesses of the human soul and the human heart. And this deep, intimate experience of anthroposophy in the human soul and in the human heart—that is the meditation that leads us to the encounter, to the real encounter with anthroposophy.

[ 54 ] This is an attempt to present the three perspectives that anthroposophy can open up: the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual perspectives.