The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Anthroposophy and the Mysteries of the Soul

[ 1 ] A person does not truly confront the mysteries of existence until he has developed a certain level of awareness about life, until he feels compelled to form mental images, sensations, and feelings about his relationship to the world. But once they have reached such a stage, the mysteries of existence represent for them precisely what one might call a question of life, for they are not merely connected to some theoretical longings or to purely external matters of education; rather, the entire human stance toward the world depends on them—the way in which a person can find their bearings in the world, the degree of security they can have in life, and the inner stability with which they can navigate this life.

[ 2 ] However, there is indeed a considerable difference between the various types of existential mysteries. Human beings stand before nature and must form mental images and sensations regarding their relationship to nature; and if I may use a comparison, I would say: When human beings have attained consciousness in the way I have described, and they cannot come to terms with certain things that confront them as mysteries of nature, then existence—to which they once belonged—appears to them—as I said, this is merely a comparison—as a dark, spiritual force; they feel as if they have been placed in a dark world, and they feel unable to find their bearings in this dark world. Yet this entire relationship to the mysteries of the external natural world remains, to a certain extent, something external to human beings; it concerns their external relationship to existence.

[ 3 ] People approach these enigmatic questions quite differently when they concern the mysteries of their own souls. They live within these enigmatic questions; these questions essentially constitute what may initially be mental health and illness, but which can also become physical health and illness. For the life of the soul is something extraordinarily complex, however simple it may appear at first glance. What we carry in our consciousness during our waking hours from morning to evening—and this is indeed now scientifically recognized—is, after all, only a part of our soul life. A large part of our inner life lies in unconscious—or, I might also say, subconscious—depths; it surges upward in the form of vague sensations, vague moods, and indeed all manner of other inner contents, and constitutes what is an indeterminate underlying framework of our inner life. But what unfolds in this more or less vague way in the depths of our inner life and wells up from there is intimately connected with what actually constitutes the happiness or suffering of our lives. And precisely those who, following the anthroposophical path, attempt to penetrate the inner life of the human soul soon realize how everything that surges up in such an indeterminate way from the depths of the soul is connected to the physical body—how, at first gently, then more and more, our entire state of health—which makes us capable of living or incapable of living—can depend on these subconscious soul states.

[ 4 ] Today, however, I do not wish to speak to you in the manner in which this “unconscious” aspect of the soul is so frequently discussed these days—that is, by placing everything that shimmers unclearly in consciousness into the vast container of this “unconscious” and forming more or less vague mental images about how this unconscious or subconscious operates. I have, after all, been speaking here from this place for many years on questions of anthroposophical research, and so today I cannot begin with the most elementary aspects of this research; rather, I would like to consider the questions of the soul’s life in their very essence, insofar as they are, in a certain sense, connected to happiness or unhappiness in life. To do so, however, we must address what, in human soul life—permeated by all manner of things that are initially unknown, which we intend to point out more or less clearly through today’s reflections—can have a disturbing or soothing, joyful or painful effect—and everything in between.

[ 5 ] Now, even if we look only superficially at our inner life, we find two poles that can be clearly distinguished from one another: On the one hand, the life of the imagination, which encompasses everything that unfolds clearly and luminously in our consciousness; and on the other hand, the life of the will, which, in a certain sense, initially emerges darkly and gloomily from the depths of the soul.

[ 6 ] As I have mentioned here on several occasions, we distinguish—in the ordinary course of human life—between two states of consciousness, of which only one is actually a distinct state of consciousness: the waking state and the sleeping state. In the state of sleep, conscious imagination ceases; the entire life of the soul sinks into a more or less pitch-black darkness. But if we look at our soul life in the waking state with complete objectivity, we can only say that, with regard to everything that pertains to imagination, we are truly awake. As waking human beings, we have control over ourselves, so to speak, insofar as we have filled our consciousness with clear mental images and luminous thoughts. We also accompany our volitional impulses; we accompany our actions with thoughts. But even in the simplest physical movement of the human body, it remains a complete mystery how the thought of consciousness is connected to what actually takes place during a volitional impulse or an action. How obscure it is, after all, what actually happens inside the arm when I simply raise this arm—when the thought that has the goal of raising the arm seeks to realize itself, as it were, to shoot into it and willfully set the arm in motion.

[ 7 ] What goes on within our own organism eludes our waking daytime consciousness just as much as what takes place in the human soul from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, so that we really must say: It is the case with this human soul life that even in the waking state we experience an influence of sleep, that the state of sleep continually permeates us, and that we are fully awake only in the formation of a mental image, in the experience of luminous, clear thoughts. Between these two states—between what I would call the fully awake state of imagination and the life of the will, which is immersed in darkness—lies the life of feeling and emotion, participating in both. Our feelings permeate our mental images. We bring certain sympathies and antipathies from our feelings into our mental images, thereby usually connecting our mental images or separating them. We accompany what flows into our volitional impulses with our emotional judgment, perceiving some actions as dutiful and others as failures to fulfill our duty. And because we experience a certain emotional satisfaction with actions that fulfill our duty, or emotional dissatisfaction with those things we cannot accomplish or fail to do for some other reason, the emotional life flows back and forth between the life of the imagination and the life of the will.

[ 8 ] But the true mysteries of the soul do not reveal themselves to the dull-witted person who, in the manner just described, surrenders himself on the one hand to the life of the imagination, and on the other to the life of feeling and the life of the will; rather, these mysteries of the soul emerge as the person becomes more and more conscious. And even then, the experienced mysteries of the soul do not arise fully consciously; rather, they belong precisely to the more or less subconscious experiences of the human being. A person will never become entirely clear in their consciousness as to what actually gives rise to the moods and states of their inner life that so influence their daily happiness and daily suffering. One must seek out and clearly articulate what remains unclear in one’s consciousness. And I ask you to bear this in mind, first and foremost, as I proceed with the remarks I am about to make: that I will be compelled to articulate in clear words something that never exists with such clarity in consciousness, yet which is present in the life of the soul—both as a source of healing and as a source of illness—something that a person senses and feels without being able to bring it into full consciousness. And because this is so, the mysteries of the soul are not merely theoretical; they are, in fact, lived mysteries of existence.

[ 9 ] When a person gives themselves over to the life of the imagination—as I said, I am clearly articulating what is only vaguely felt, what is never fully brought into consciousness—they experience something like the futility of their own existence. The life of the imagination is an experience of images. The life of the mental image is something that, during our waking daily life, fills us with the impressions and perceptions we receive from the external world; what we experience from nature forms the content of our mental images; it lives within us; it is precisely what we draw up from our memories. But we are aware: Yes, you are active in that you process your mental images within your imagination, in that you separate and connect mental images; you are inwardly active, but your activity is not fully present in your mind; what is present in your mind is, in essence, a reflection of the external world. - We know that we must anchor our life of imagination to this external world. What we have is merely an image of the external world; we live by living within our mental images, within mental images; we do not experience a fully realized existence within our life of imagination.

[ 10 ] And this feeling plays itself out subconsciously, as strange and paradoxical as that may sound. And even though it is not present in consciousness—it is alive in the subconscious; this feeling manifests itself in relation to the life of the imagination in certain anxious emotions, in feelings of fear.

[ 11 ] It sounds paradoxical, but there is this undercurrent in human spiritual life. Most people know nothing about it, but most people—or rather, all people—are constantly under its influence. And this undercurrent is a fearful current—the fear that we might, so to speak, lose ourselves in the world, that we stand on the edge of an abyss—precisely because our world of imagination is a world of images. And yet, an indefinable longing lives within the human soul: How do I find true existence in this world of mere images?

[ 12 ] One can certainly compare this unconscious sensation in the undercurrent of the soul to the sensation that a person—caused by physical factors—experiences when they are not getting enough air, when they suffer from a lack of oxygen, and consequently consciously fall into feelings of anxiety. What a person consciously experiences through physical conditions is, in reality, always unconsciously perceived as a concomitant of the life of the imagination. And so one can point, on the one hand, to a mystery of the soul—not in theoretical terms, but by bringing to the surface from the depths of the soul something that is germinating or slumbering within it.

[ 13 ] On the other hand, when a person turns toward the element of will, they experience the opposite state. There is a different undercurrent at work in the life of the soul. There, the human being feels how he is exposed to his drives, his emotions, his instincts; how something natural intervenes in human soul life that does not open up to the clarity of thought, that is always, in a certain way, immersed in a reality that we cannot penetrate with light, that forms a darkness within ourselves. And yet, if one can penetrate these undercurrents of the soul with unbiased observation, one can describe—one must always point out a contradiction when characterizing what exists in the depths of the soul—how what lives there is felt unconsciously. One must then characterize it by saying: It is felt in much the same way as anger is felt in consciousness, or as a person feels when they cannot exhale, when their blood circulation is so disrupted that the air they breathe is not properly processed in their body, when a kind of suffocation sets in. Something like a hot-tempered disposition always arises from such a tendency toward the element of will in the human soul.

[ 14 ] These are forces that dwell deep within the unconscious of the human soul, that well up and constitute the very mystery of human soul life. And anyone who merely takes mental images in their pictorial nature and the will in its instinctual nature—as they present themselves to consciousness—may indeed sense these mysteries of the soul as something indefinite, as an indefinite sensation of the soul, but they do not grasp these mysteries of the soul; fundamentally, they do not know what this indefinite force within them is, a force that nevertheless profoundly influences their happy or unhappy state of mind in life.

[ 15 ] It must be said time and again: The mysteries of the soul are not like the [mysteries] we encounter in nature; the mysteries of the soul are those that are experienced inwardly, that well up from the deep undercurrents of the soul and that must first be interpreted. That is why every branch of science—against which, of course, as I have often emphasized here, no objection should be raised within its legitimate sphere—has little to offer when it comes to the true mysteries of the soul. We see this—and I would like to cite two examples—in modern scientific thought as a whole: how fundamentally helpless science, which celebrates such great triumphs in other fields, actually stands before the life of the soul, even though the highest mysteries of existence hang upon this human soul life. I would like to recall two examples which, in my conviction, are deeply indicative of what exists and of what is scientifically necessary in order to penetrate the actual realm that human beings experience as the mysteries of the soul.

[ 16 ] It has now been nearly half a century since the great physiologist Du Bois-Reymond delivered a speech at the 45th Congress of Natural Scientists in Leipzig—a speech that must be referred to time and again, even though it has been discussed at great length and has now been almost forgotten and has disappeared from public discourse. This speech dealt with the “Limits of Knowledge of Nature,” and Du Bois-Reymond rightly identifies, on the one hand, the material world in its essence as one limit of knowledge of nature. He says: Where matter exists, the human mind cannot penetrate; it proceeds from the external observation of external sensory phenomena to the revelation of material existence, but it cannot specify what matter itself actually is. - Du Bois-Reymond identifies this as one limit. As the other limit, he identifies that of human consciousness; today, however, this is nothing other than that of human inner life. He says: Even with the most perfect knowledge of nature, one cannot even gain any mental image of how the simplest sensation arises in the human soul. Even if one knew perfectly clearly how carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms move within the human brain, one would never be able to deduce from a clear understanding of these movements how the simplest sensation—“I see red,” “I smell the scent of roses”—arises, that is, how the first elements of the life of the soul come into being.

[ 17 ] And Du Bois-Reymond is actually entirely correct in this statement. Here lies a second boundary for the external natural sciences, except that Du Bois-Reymond’s conviction is precisely the one that must be transcended through anthroposophical research. Du Bois-Reymond believes that the limits of knowledge of nature are the limits of all scientific inquiry. That is why he says: If one wishes to penetrate this realm of the spiritual and psychological, one must do so by means other than scientific ones, for where supernaturalism begins—where, in other words, one enters the realm of the spiritual and psychological—science ends. - This is precisely what anthroposophical research seeks to defend before the world: that science need not be limited to external, natural existence, and that science can develop the means to penetrate the spiritual-psychic realm as well.

[ 18 ] The other example I wish to cite is that of an outstanding figure, Franz Brentano, who sought to establish a science of the soul entirely in accordance with the methods of modern natural science. That was his ideal. I have discussed in detail the entire body of facts underlying Franz Brentano’s research in the third part of my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul*, and I would like to mention here only a few fundamental points. Franz Brentano then attempted, in the early 1870s, to write a treatise on the psychology of the soul. The first volume was published in the spring of 1874. The second volume was promised for the fall; it never appeared. The entire work was planned as a four-volume set; apart from the first volume, nothing else was ever published beyond individual fragments, which, however, remain merely fragments. The entire work remained an unfinished project. I have explained why this had to be the case in the aforementioned work. Franz Brentano simply wanted to conduct research into mental life entirely according to the model of the scientific method, and in this first volume one finds a remarkable confession by Franz Brentano. He says, for example: Through this scientific method of inquiry, one can indeed modestly make one’s way through the details of mental life; one can describe how a mental image connects with another, how a mental image separates from another, how certain feelings are linked to mental images, how volitional impulses are linked to mental images, how memory functions, and so on. But if, as Franz Brentano says, we were limited to investigating only these details of mental life, and if knowledge of the most important questions of human existence had to be traded for this rigorous scientific approach, where would that lead us? For Franz Brentano considers justified the longing that already existed in Plato, in Aristotle, and in ancient Greece: to trace what can be investigated in detail about the human soul all the way to the great questions of birth and immortality. And it would be sad, Franz Brentano argues, if—simply because we wish to be scientific in our exploration of the life of the soul—we had to forgo knowledge of what becomes of the better part of the human being within us when the physical part is surrendered to the earth upon death.

[ 19 ] And one can see from what Franz Brentano set forth in the first volume of his *Psychology* that his entire scholarly aspiration is directed toward taking the individual questions—which, strictly speaking, are of little concern to the general public, and which this general public is happy to leave to the scholar—on a long journey all the way to the great questions of human immortality and the divine spiritual content of the world, as reflected in the soul. However, Brentano could not find this path from his natural-scientific way of thinking, and because he was an honest scholar by nature, he left the subsequent volumes—for which he could find no path of inquiry—unwritten until his death a few years ago.

[ 20 ] I would like to say: it is precisely in the fate of this researcher that we see, in the truest sense of the word, the tragedy of how what is often recognized today as the sole criterion of scientific rigor must falter in the face of the great mysteries of the human soul. That is—and I must say it again—what anthroposophy must defend before the world today: that the path which Brentano could not find through the natural sciences can indeed be found! And it can be found if one does not stop at the ordinary faculties of the soul’s life, as they initially present themselves in external life and as they are employed in conventional science.

[ 21 ] I have often spoken of the fact that within every human soul lie dormant—or, to use a scientific term, latent—cognitive abilities that must first be drawn forth from that soul, just as certain abilities must be drawn forth from a child through education. Those who have already matured enough for the ordinary cognitive faculties must train themselves through devoted inner soul exercises so that they may develop those soul faculties through which what I have characterized on both sides as a mysterious human soul experience —the experience in relation to mental images, the experience in relation to impulses of the will—but so that the human soul process becomes, as it were, transparent, enabling one to penetrate into what is actually taking place in human conceptual life and in human volitional life. For without penetrating these everyday mysteries of the soul, one cannot find the path to the great questions of human immortal existence and the divine-spiritual content of the world, in which the human soul also has its origin.

[ 22 ] I have often described in lectures here how a person must engage in inner exercises—purely psychological and spiritual exercises—through which they awaken their otherwise dormant powers of insight, so that these powers can truly help them in their quest for knowledge. I have pointed out how one can strengthen and intensify one’s imaginative life. Just as we strengthen a muscle by using it continuously in work, so can we strengthen our imaginative life if we do so in the manner I have described in detail, for example, in my book *How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* in great detail, by directing this mental image life in a certain direction through inner spiritual work, by bringing certain easily comprehensible mental images into the center of our consciousness, and by repeatedly engaging in this kind of imaginative work that we would not otherwise undertake. I can only hint at this in principle here, but you will find clear insights in the work just mentioned, as well as in the second part of my *Secret Science*, that a person’s imaginative life can become something entirely different through such meditative and concentrative exercises of thought. I would like to say: Without any abnormal effort, but simply through the further development of what is normal in human beings as a life of thought and imagination, a stronger, more vigorous life of imagination can be brought about.

[ 23 ] And by cultivating this more vigorous imaginative life—by rising, through meditation and concentration, above what is in our ordinary mental images merely pictorial—one arrives at what I call, in the books mentioned, “imaginative thinking rich in content.”

[ 24 ] This imaginative mental image lives with such inner vitality in the mere thought as a person otherwise lives in his or her external perceptions. Through this, however, one gradually comes to realize that the life of the imagination is no longer merely abstract—that is, I might say merely pictorial—but rather, through purely inner inquiry—which is, however, pursued with the very same seriousness as any scientific research—one discovers that the soul, which could otherwise fill its life of imagination only with the results of external impressions, is inwardly filled with forces that, so to speak, surge into the life of the soul. When developed through meditation and concentration, the mental images are no longer merely this fluid substance; rather, they are infused with, permeated by forces that I would like to call formative forces—forces that constitute an inner, spiritually plastic element. And after some time, one discovers that through this development of the life of the imagination, one grows together with what the formative forces of the human body itself are; after some time, one discovers that the life of thought is, in a sense, nothing other than the diluted life of forces underlying human growth. What shapes us internally and plastically in the physical body from birth to death is, I would say, our life of imagination in ordinary consciousness in a “diluted” state.

[ 25 ] We look at the newborn child. We know that in this newborn child, starting from the brain, the formative, plastic forces are at work shaping the body. We observe the child’s growth, which radiates precisely from this plastic brain activity; we follow it up to a certain turning point in human life on earth—the change of teeth—around the age of seven. At first, as we perceive this life force pulsating within the human being—this force that is plastically active within us—we will sense it as something indefinite. On the other hand, as we powerfully develop our imaginative life through meditation and concentration, we are unconsciously led to the very same element that has been working plastically within us since our earliest childhood. And this is a significant discovery regarding inner human life: that one can strengthen the life of the imagination to such an extent, that one can make it so intense inwardly, that one then feels oneself immersed in what are the human formative forces—the formative forces at work in one’s growth and metabolism. As strange as it may still sound to today’s research: it is indeed possible, through a strengthening of the soul life, to grow into that which, in a sense, then encompasses us—that which plastically shapes our outer physical body as its formative forces. Through the life of the imagination, one grows into reality; one grows into a formative element.

[ 26 ] And in this way one comes to understand what lies behind the mere thought process; one learns to recognize how a spiritual entity, with which one has now connected, works within the human organism from birth to death. The life of imagination takes on its reality; the life of imagination is no longer merely a life of images; the life of imagination becomes a life of power that is embedded within existence itself.

[ 27 ] And only through such insight can the undercurrent of anxiety and fear within the human soul be overcome by consciousness, so that what anthroposophy points to here is not merely a theoretical solution to the mysteries of the soul, but a thoroughly inner, practical solution that must be experienced.

[ 28 ] Anthroposophy must point out that, through its research, that which lives within the human being—which, I would say, only appears to be so greatly diluted that it emerges as our ordinary life of imagination, but which, in truth, is the inner sphere of growth of our existence—can enter into human consciousness and be grasped through it. And while, on the other hand, the human being loses—I might say—his center of gravity in his life of imagination and slips into an anxious undercurrent of this soul life, he can take in the findings of anthroposophical Spiritual Science regarding the life of imagination and can consolidate this life of imagination through the path of knowledge. Anthroposophy does not offer the solution to this mystery of the soul by presenting a theory, but by presenting a finding that a person can fully grasp with their common sense and that then—as if imparting weight—manifests in the life of the imagination for their consciousness, for their soul life, so that what anthroposophy appears to offer as mere knowledge about the life of the imagination can flow into the soul’s mood and disposition, resolving the mystery.

[ 29 ] On the one hand, one can certainly recognize how human beings are formed beings, how they appear as a whole in a specific form, how their individual organs are shaped by the spirit, and how—so that we may be free beings, so that we do not act solely under the compulsion of these inner forces, but can devote ourselves to free reflections—we develop our merely pictorial mental images into something plastically formed. I elaborated on this in my *Philosophy of Freedom* at the beginning of the 1890s, showing that the human being is a free being precisely because he can live in pure thoughts that are not connected to any external reality for his consciousness, and because he can shape his moral impulses within these pure thoughts. One’s relationship to mirror images is such that one must take action oneself if the mirror image is to change; mirror images do not determine one causally. Human beings would never be free if they were determined by a reality in their ordinary consciousness. In one’s ordinary consciousness, mental images exist; thus one is not determined by them, just as one is not determined by mirror images. One is free. In order to be free, one’s life must rise above that which permeates it plastically as a force of growth—as a “body of growth,” one might say, or a “body of formative forces.” But this life of freedom comes at a price: the human being must pay for it with the characteristic undercurrent of anxiety in his inner life; and therefore, in his ordinary consciousness, he must come to fully experience his sense of freedom, while also being able to set against this experience of freedom—as a polar opposite—what anthroposophy can provide as a consolidation of the life of imagination in the manner described.

[ 30 ] But if one proceeds further along this path, one does indeed advance from what I would call a highly diluted, purely pictorial life of the imagination toward what is true reality, what lives as a formative force within the human being. It is not the physical body, it is not the physical organs; it is a supersensible force, but it is there. One grasps something that lies outside the physical body, and by simply pursuing the mysteries of the soul in one direction, one thereby penetrates into that which, independently of the human physical body, constitutes a supersensible reality within the human being. One penetrates to that which, through birth or conception, is prepared as the human physical body through mere hereditary relationships and is preformed by mere external natural facts. One learns to recognize how, through the inherited characteristics derived from parents or ancestors, and through the entire body that forms within the mother’s organism, that which comes from the spiritual world connects with what one encounters in life when one develops one’s imaginative life.

[ 31 ] One arrives, I would say, at one aspect of the question of immortality. We look to that which is immortal, that which is eternal in human nature, because it penetrates from a spiritual world—through conception and birth—into what is human and physical, and because it continues to work even during earthly life as the inner, formative creative power with which we connect by strengthening our life of thought in the manner described.

[ 32 ] Anthroposophy thus offers the perspective that someone like Franz Brentano sought. Brentano also began with an investigation of thoughts, but he left the thoughts as they are in ordinary consciousness. He limited himself to merely registering what is present in ordinary consciousness. Only the strengthening of the life of thought through meditation and concentration leads this life of thought to an inner, formative power, and it truly leads along the path that begins with the grasping of the simple, everyday thought and ends with the spiritual-soul element of the human being—which existed before birth, before conception, in the spiritual-soul world itself, and which has united with the hereditary forces and the physical forces of the human body.

[ 33 ] There is no other solution to the mysteries of the soul than by truly finding this path, from the simplest phenomena of everyday life to the great enigmas of existence.

[ 34 ] So far, I have pointed out what a human being can achieve in relation to his or her inner life. There he arrives at what, in a sense, drives the human being outward into space, what vividly permeates the human being’s physical form, what finds expression in form, what, as I have indicated, descends from the spiritual world and flows into the human being’s outer form, including the form of his inner organs. But this is only one side of human life, and the soul also participates fully in the other side of human life. Just as we can develop our life of thought through meditation and concentration, we can now develop the life of the will—not in the sense that we are strengthening it, but rather by making it more devoted and more spiritual.

[ 35 ] This can be achieved by, in a certain sense, detaching this life of the will from its everyday context. - I have given many individual exercises—Spiritual Science is no easier than research at an observatory or in a clinic—that would have to be practiced for years, but I would like to single out just one to illustrate the principle. - This [detachment] can be achieved by taking what acts as will in ordinary thinking—for there is always a will present in thinking; thoughts are shaped by the will; the mental aspect is only one side— in the life of the soul, the will is always interwoven with thoughts, and thoughts with the will—that one detaches this element of will, which lives within thoughts, from its ordinary course—which adheres to external physical facts—by, for example, creating a mental image of something in reverse. Let us say, for example, that while one is accustomed to forming a mental image of a drama from the first act to the fifth, we form a mental image of this drama in reverse, proceeding from the final events back to the beginning. One should then proceed to form a mental image of external events in reverse. For example, in the evening, one can create a mental image of one’s usual daily life in reverse by proceeding in as small segments as possible, from evening to morning, even to the extent of imagining the act of walking up a flight of stairs as if one were walking down it in reverse—from the top step to the second-to-last step, and so on.

[ 36 ] Because we are accustomed to always directing our thinking in the same direction as external events unfold, thinking actually plays a passive role for us with regard to the will that unfolds within it. It becomes actively engaged internally, imbued with inner initiative, when we train it through exercises such as “reverse visualization,” in which we detach it from the course of external events and make it rely on itself. For when we reinforce what we achieve in this way through careful and energetic exercises with truly serious self-observation—by observing what we do as beings of will —as if we were standing beside ourselves and observing ourselves step by step in the unfolding of our will—or even when we move into action, when we perform exercises specifically for the purpose of setting out to do something and then carrying it out precisely with iron determination, so that we live entirely within the element of the will —I merely wanted to outline, in principle, exercises that not only detach the will from external circumstances but also from its bondage to the body itself, exercises that render the will independent and spiritualize it—then, in this way, we actually arrive at an unfolding of the will, so that we experience our soul life—which is now unfolding the will—as existing outside our body. It is a significant experience. But only through it do we come to understand what the will is. In ordinary life, the will is bound to the organs. We see it unfold as we move our limbs. It is only through our life of thought that we observe the processes and effects of our will. We look into it when we have torn it away from physicality, when we experience it in and of itself, becoming completely one with it. Then it becomes permeated by an elevation of that force which is otherwise also bound to our physical organism—permeated by the force of love. And that self-sacrificing element in the life of the soul—which, I might say, previously approached us obscurely as an emotional life of the will within love—is transformed into a transparent, luminous clarity.

[ 37 ] I know how little people today are willing to regard love as a power of cognition. In everyday life, it is not; but when it is developed to the point where the will is no longer rooted in instincts, drives, or emotions, but rather lives in the purely spiritual realm, apart from the physical, then this will is truly recognized for what it essentially is, and it reveals itself as something entirely different from what the element of thought has revealed. As it has intensified, the element of thought has revealed itself as that which shapes in a constructive way—that which, I might say, causes one organ to flow out of another, culminating ultimately in human procreation. The element of thought unfolds as a formative activity, a formative activity emanating from the soul and working into the human physical body. The element of will unfolds in the body in such a way that—if one perceives it separately from the body, one can then observe how it acts upon the body—it does not, in fact, shape the physical body plastically, but rather the plastically shaped form is reduced, dissolved, atomized, and made to flow away. The element of will is that which constantly—please do not misunderstand me—I would say, burns up the formed elements of the human being, causing them to rise up in flames, so to speak, in a spiritual sense. The expression is meant figuratively, but it signifies something very important.

[ 38 ] Human life, as it flows from the soul into the physical body, can only be understood by perceiving it, on the one hand, as this plastic element, and on the other hand, as the dissolution of the plastic element—as, I might say, the plastic element’s entry into the atomized, into the dissolving. And since everything that unfolds as will within the human being is, in the human body, a force that dissolves, atomizes, and causes things to melt away, this will-like element is what is now experienced as that which points the way to the other side of human life—that which points the way toward death.

[ 39 ] Just as we first come to know, through the plasticity of thought, the spiritually plastic element of the human soul that enters the physical body at birth or conception, so we learn to recognize how the volitional element dissolves the human body, but in the process of dissolution—as I said, figuratively speaking—allows pure spirituality to emerge from the flame. We come to understand the soul’s departure from the body. In this way, we come to understand death through the dissipation of the volitional element. We come to understand what happens to a person at death because we learn to understand what happens within a person during everyday acts of volition. Everyday acts of volition bring about—as I said, figuratively speaking—a kind of combustion process in the physical body, but from this combustion process emerges what constitutes our inner soul life. What we perceive inwardly as the soul could not exist if we were always merely a body, merely a physical form. The physical form must be broken down, must dissolve, and from this dissolution of the physical—from the constant destruction of the bodily—arises the experience of the soul. And we understand the departure of the human soul from the physical body at death—which, when condensed into a single moment, represents what is constantly unfolding in the soul’s development of the will toward spirituality. Just as I experience my will in the present moment—how it forms a kind of process of combustion, a process of dissolution in the body, and how, through this destruction, the spiritual comes to life in the human body—so I learn to recognize how, with the final destruction of the body at death—which is nothing other than the ultimate effect of the will hidden within the body—the spiritual returns once more to the spiritual-soul world.

[ 40 ] This is what, from within anthroposophy, leads us vividly into the mysteries of the soul. Anthroposophy does not seek to be a theory; certainly, it seeks to provide knowledge, but not theoretical knowledge—it seeks to provide knowledge that nourishes the soul. And in this way, it can present the individual daily experiences of the soul to the inner eye; it can then move from these individual experiences to the great questions of the life of the soul.

[ 41 ] Allow me to go into one detail so that you may understand the basis of what anthroposophy is intended to reveal about the mysteries of the human soul; allow me to describe the details of human memory.

[ 42 ] Once one has come to possess within oneself this intensified imaginative life, as I have characterized it, and has, on the other hand, come to understand how the plastic element is continually broken down by the life of the will, then one is able to view the inner processes of the soul with transparent clarity. One sees how a person faces the external world, how they receive their impressions from the external world, how they then form mental images and thoughts about these external impressions, how, after some time—or even after a long time—they bring these mental images up from certain depths as memories, or how they also emerge of their own accord—as we say today, as “freely arising” mental images of memory. Already in this surfacing of mental images of memory, a significant mystery of the soul reveals itself to those who wish to look impartially at human soul life, and one can say: In a thoroughly curious way, people have spoken of what is actually the essence of memory. People have imagined—and still do so at times today—that: Well, a person receives impressions through perceptions; these are evoked by the senses, then travel through the nervous system, and are transformed by the imagination. These mental images then sink into certain depths of the soul’s life and resurface when they are recalled. Well, no one who thinks impartially can form any clear idea of how these mental images—when we do not have them—are supposed to wander down there in the unknown depths of the soul, only to resurface at will when they are either needed at that moment or wish to latch onto something that appears as a new perception, as a new impression from the outside world.

[ 43 ] Anthroposophy thus moves on to the genuine, true observation of human soul life itself. By recognizing the intensified life of mental images and the spiritualized life of the will, it gains insight into the entire process that unfolds from the perception of the external object through the formation of mental images and the formation of memory, all the way to the reemergence of the remembered images. Because anthroposophical research, as I have indicated, advances toward powers of knowledge through such a structuring of the life of mental images and will, the entire psychological and physical process—and the way these two processes interact—is transformed in the same way that something—if I may use this comparison—that I perceive as something completely dark, opaque—is transformed when it is illuminated and suddenly becomes transparent. The entire human soul process becomes transparent through this intensified life of imagination and this spiritualized life of will.

[ 44 ] And what can we see now in relation to what I have hinted at? One sees how external impressions extend for miles into the senses, how the entire process continues, and how, in fact, what I have described as the formative, plastic element of an intensified life of thought operates as a continuation within the ordinary process of perception. I perceive externally, but it is not merely the abstract thoughts I have in ordinary consciousness that are at work within me; rather, that which is only fathomed through Spiritual Science is constantly at work—this plastic quality in the mental images, which works its way down into the depths of the human soul and body. And then, when this has taken place—when thought has worked formatively into the depths of the soul and the depths of the body—then the human being moves on to something else. There, a volitional decision is at work; the will is at play; but it is the spiritualized will that is present. In that aspect of human life which is bound to the external brain, this will unfolds; by dissolving the plasticity of the brain, it dismantles—for ordinary consciousness—what the impression has built up, so that we have, if I may put it crudely, spread an external brain surface over underlying layers where, however, the plasticity continues to work.

[ 45 ] Let us now suppose that I recall something at random; this happens in such a way that I unfold this will from within a certain series of mental images. This unfolding of the will is, in turn, connected with a process of dissolution, provided that no external impressions intrude at this moment; and the fact that these do not come is ensured, in turn, by the development of the will, which is itself a process of dissolution. And this dissolution allows what lies in the depths of the mind—in the case of the arbitrarily recalled memory—to emerge as the human’s plastic form. When free-standing mental images arise, the process occurs in reverse. There is some external impression present that forms into a thought. The thought is sculpturally active. It is imprinted on the brain. This sculptural form is similar to the one that once shaped, in the depths of the psyche, that which can live there in a certain form. That lives within the sculptural form that the thought has now created.

[ 46 ] You see, in this way the life of the soul becomes transparent; one learns to recognize it in its interaction with the life of the body, in the interplay of the spiritual with the physical and with the soul; one learns to recognize it in its inner, malleable structure, in its constant being erased and burned away by the element of will. And by learning to understand every single moment of life in this way, one learns to grasp, within these currents of life, what the great questions of life are. One learns to recognize through thought what enters physical life on Earth at birth, and one learns to recognize through the will what departs into the spiritual world upon a person’s death.

[ 47 ] Thus, the findings of anthroposophical research appear as something that moves from the details of life toward the all-encompassing nature of the mysterious human soul.

[ 48 ] In this way, by recognizing how thought already acts in a plastic manner in ordinary memory—as if something were being formed within the body—we also come to understand how that which is not yet in the body, but which becomes connected to the body through birth and conception, intervenes in the body in a plastic way. We come to know the human element of life in this plastic formation because we come to know the individual plastic element that already appears in the formation of memory.

[ 49 ] Anthroposophy seeks to look upon the mysteries of the soul with a sense of vitality! This should be understood as the very essence of anthroposophical research: that it consistently adheres to the scientific rigor to which we have become accustomed today through the great and tremendous advances in external natural science, but that, while adhering to this rigor, it simultaneously goes beyond what mere external observation, mere external experimentation can offer; that it proceeds from the faculties which, precisely by their very existence, make the human soul a mysterious being for human beings themselves; and that, through the cultivation of these faculties, it leads to the practical—not merely theoretical—resolution of these mysteries of the soul.

[ 50 ] There is no need to fear that someone who takes the standpoint of such a so-called solution to the mysteries of the soul might one day present what solves these mysteries as a finished product, as a complete insight, so that the soul might then fall into inertia and indifference toward its own life. No, the soul poses those mysteries—which I have described today as the living, experienced mysteries of the soul—at every moment of life, and at every moment of life we need anew the results of spiritual research, which have a balancing effect on what rises so mysteriously from the dark depths of the soul. What I have called the fearful, what I have called the angry undercurrent of human soul life is nothing other than the inner call of the human soul not to take itself for granted, but to accept itself in full, continuous experience in such a way that this human soul remains a mystery to itself at all times, that it continually needs the solution to this mystery. And it is precisely this continuous solving of the soul’s enigma that anthroposophical research seeks to offer, connecting so closely with the reality of existence that one can say—if I may use a trivial comparison—: Just as the human being in his physical life is a being who must continually take in nourishment, who cannot be satisfied with a single act of taking in nourishment, because he consumes this nourishment, because he integrates this nourishment into his life process—so it is with what is presented to us through anthroposophy as the result of the soul’s mysteries. Its inner, intense effectiveness eludes us if we do not continually keep it in mind, if we do not continually make progress. Because in this realm we are dealing with a reality—not a theory that can be learned and retained by memory, as is the case with the reality of nourishment—we are therefore dealing with something that must, through anthroposophy, penetrate into the ongoing process of life.

[ 51 ] And that is indeed the case. For when a person engages with the findings of anthroposophy regarding the mysteries of the soul, they will come to realize the following: Learning—as strange as it may sound, it is a truth that anyone who engages with anthroposophy can experience, particularly in relation to the mysteries of the soul—one cannot, strictly speaking, “learn” anthroposophy; one can allow its findings to approach one, one can read books, listen to lectures; but if one does not continually experience what one has taken in, if one does not, in a continuous process—just as one continually connects the physical substances of the external world to physical processes through nutrition and metabolism—connect what is presented in anthroposophy to the human soul, to the soul process, then one will see that it loses its significance for the soul, just as the physical loses its significance for the body if it is not continually introduced into that physicality. And just as the absence of physical nourishment manifests itself physically in hunger and thirst, so does a fearful and pathologically angry nature rising from the depths of the soul express what needs to be influenced by a true understanding of the spiritual significance of the life of mental images and will. And if a person advances by being able to cherish in their consciousness—as nourishment for their soul—what anthroposophical research thus provides, then they will find what they need for the balance of their soul life, what they must perceive and experience as a continuous, living solution to the ever-living mysteries of the soul.

[ 52 ] And it must be said again and again: Although one can embark on the path of independent anthroposophical research by approaching and examining what is set forth in the books mentioned, anthroposophy does not depend on every person being able to verify what is presented in anthroposophy along this path. Even if one does not do so, one can still use common sense to determine whether what emerges in anthroposophy is reasonable or unreasonable. A person can use their common sense—without becoming an anthroposophical researcher themselves—to follow what the anthroposophical researcher asserts. But in addition to this common sense, a person has something else. After all, even if one is a layperson in the fields of physiology or biology, one does not know the chemical composition of one’s food; yet one tests what food truly is for the human being by eating it, by combining its forces with the forces of one’s bodily processes. In this way, they can unite with their own soul life the findings that anthroposophy presents—which show how it solves the mysteries of the soul—and they will find that it satisfies them spiritually. And what, fundamentally, are the mysteries of the soul before this anthroposophical forum? The mysteries of the soul, grasped in their liveliness, are nothing other than the expression of the soul’s and spirit’s hunger and thirst. And the solution to the soul’s riddles is, in essence, nothing other than the absorption of true spiritual content, true spiritual beings, which unite with the human spirit and with the human soul life. And so, I would say, spiritual fulfillment—which must be continually renewed—is the solution to the soul’s riddles. The more vividly one grasps this process and the more one realizes how anthroposophy seeks to engage with practical life in every respect—how it takes root in the most mundane aspects of daily life and ascends to the great mysteries of existence by introducing the human being to the divine spiritual foundation of existence, by leading them to their immortality—the more one will realize that anthroposophy cannot be mere theory, but something that can be truly experienced.

[ 53 ] From this perspective, anthroposophy seeks to influence the most diverse practical areas of life; from this perspective, it has sought to shape what I have often described here as the founding of our Waldorf School by Emil Molt—that is, something undertaken in the practical social sphere.

[ 54 ] As you can see, anthroposophy solves the mysteries of the soul by addressing the whole living human being—body, soul, and Spirit-Man. In this way, it overcomes the one-sidedness of that form of knowledge and spiritual life that was bound to arise alongside the findings of modern natural science—findings that are fully recognized in their own field and which anthroposophy itself regards as a triumph.

[ 55 ] But one would have to take such things into account—and one would do so if anthroposophy were not still so misunderstood—as was the case, for example, last summer here in Stuttgart at the anthroposophical congress, where Dr. von Heydebrand, drawing on Waldorf education, in a lecture that is also available in print, specifically highlighted the one-sidedness of purely external, experimental psychology. Not that one should take an oppositional stance against this experimental psychology—it can indeed be properly appreciated in its own field, along with its findings, if, on the other hand, one can penetrate what is explored in such an external way with what can be attained spiritually and psychologically through anthroposophy. For through anthroposophy, we come to understand what acts spiritually and psychologically upon the physical body of the human being from the spiritual and psychological worlds. Through this, however, all external research can be enlivened; pedagogy can be enlivened; medicine can be enlivened—as has also been discussed here in earlier lectures—and social life can also be enlivened.

[ 56 ] Here, too, I would like to point out a fine example from the lecture that Emil Leinhas gave at the aforementioned congress—which is also available in print here—that illustrates what political economy, arising solely from imitations of scientific methods, cannot achieve. Here, a start has been made toward a genuine revitalization of social life arising from the spiritual and soul life. And what, ultimately, is the reason for this?

[ 57 ] Through anthroposophy, one comes to understand how thought has a formative effect. Now, thought does not only have a formative effect in the human body as the soul-spiritual element; it also has a formative effect when we are able to introduce it in the right way as social ideals into human social life, and the will, when truly understood, also works in the right way in social relationships. For just as, through it—as we know—the human physical body is dissolved and led toward a certain kind of combustion, so too will that which is correctly introduced into social life as a penetrated element of will recognize, at the right moment, when any institution has outlived its purpose and must disappear, so that its very fruits may be reborn in a new form. Just as the spiritual-soul aspect rises from the dissolution of the physical body in the manner described, so do the higher structures of social life arise through the disappearance of certain external institutions that have outlived their usefulness, and through this disappearance interacting with the plastic, constructive forces. That which is perceived through the correct anthroposophical understanding of the mysteries of the human soul can flow out into social life—and, I would say, also help solve the social riddles.

[ 58 ] But this leads the human being—let me say this in conclusion—to perceive himself in the right way, to fill himself with true inner strength, with the true strength of his real self, which lives in human feeling, in the human soul. Between the life of imagination and the life of will lies the human life of feeling—always incomprehensible, always elusive, yet no less experiential for that; and within this emotional nature, the eternal “I” that passes through repeated earthly lives reveals itself to those who are able to view life as I have characterized it today in relation to the mysteries of the soul. Then one learns to view together the vividly formative, developed life of imagination and the spiritualized life of the will, which is in decline.

[ 59 ] In this way, one learns to grasp in human beings what has entered them through birth or conception in such a way that it initially points back to earlier earthly lives, all the way to the state in which, in primeval times, outer cosmic life was so little separated from inner human life that it required not repeated earthly lives, but a continuously progressing, spiritually -soul-natural life—to bring about that very progress. One learns to look at repeated earthly lives, at the spiritual-soul lives lying between them; one learns to look into the future to a state where humanity will once again have become so connected with the spiritual that repeated earthly lives will lose their meaning—as humanity rises to the spiritualization of its existence, I would say, through an experience that strives from the mere inanimate toward the spiritual.

[ 60 ] By solving the mysteries of the soul, one is led to the true solution of the mysteries of the world; one ascends to the human soul, to the cosmos. Through this, however, one attains living knowledge, living insight, which, as I have just indicated, is spiritual nourishment. Through this, however, the kind of knowledge that anthroposophy seeks to offer becomes a true inner anchor for the soul in that element where life tends to become unstable. Security in life, a foundation for life, and a sense of direction—these are found by seeking the spiritual fulfillment offered by anthroposophy. That which secretly seeks to make us exult—to the point where we might lose ourselves—is brought back to us by anthroposophy, which transforms it into inner stability and gives our inner balance a center of gravity. And in the same way, in life’s difficult moments—when we often threaten to sink into misfortune—we can find a foothold through a state of mind that is inwardly sustained by the full awareness of the spirituality that fills the human being; when we become fully aware that the life of thought is not in vain, that in the world of plastic formation —and the power of the soul—and that the will is what continually brings this formative expression of the soul’s power back to the spirit. This provides stability in life’s difficult moments; it places life on solid ground; and it also leads us in the right way toward the end of life.

[ 61 ] And so, building on what has been said today, we may be reminded here of the words of an ancient Greek, pre-Socratic sage, who, speaking from a realization that was at first only a vague intuition, uttered these weighty words: “When the human soul, freed from the body, soars into the free ether, it is an immortal spirit, freed from death.”

[ 62 ] Yes, one can unravel the mysteries of the soul through true science. One can arrive at this conviction by attempting to unravel the mysteries presented by everyday spiritual life through true spiritual insight. One can see a glimmer of insight into immortality in the ordinary events of life. And whoever can correctly assess the unfolding of individual thoughts, feelings, and acts of will will already see the immortal within them; such a person will then look up to immortality in the broadest sense and thereby come to a true understanding of the eternal in human nature, which is rooted in the eternal foundation of the cosmos and the evolution of the worlds.