The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Supernatural in Humanity and the World

[ 1 ] First, I must apologize for not being able to present the following remarks this evening in the language of this country. I therefore ask that you accept them in the language I am accustomed to using.

[ 2 ] Well, anyone who is open-minded—and anyone who experiences contemporary life with an alert mind and an alert heart—can sense that we are living in a time that places severe obstacles in the way of human beings. Times have become difficult. Yet one would be mistaken to think that the causes of today’s difficulties should be sought solely in the external world. What confronts us in the external world—especially insofar as this external world is composed of human actions themselves—ultimately has its roots in the depths of the human soul. It is just not always apparent how a person’s strength, confidence, competence, and—above all—sense of perspective on life gradually fade away when they are unable to form, from the spiritual and psychological foundations of their being, a view of life that, as such, gives them inner strength.

[ 3 ] As I said, we do not always realize this, particularly because we do not know how even the physical forces of human beings—which we apply in the external world—are ultimately dependent on what, as spiritual life, flows through and permeates our entire being. Therefore, anyone who cares that—within the broad spheres of our present civilization (for individual, narrow areas are irrelevant here)—an ascent may arise from a joyful human heart must be concerned with turning inward to the life of the human soul, asking how forces for work, forces for observing life, and the strength to navigate life’s paths in an appropriate manner.

[ 4 ] And if we wish to confront the conflict—one of which many people today are actually unaware—it presents itself to us in the form of a struggle between, on the one hand, what our minds can grasp and, on the other hand, above all, what our hearts can feel regarding the insights and impressions we can gain from the scientific worldview that has developed over the course of several centuries.

[ 5 ] This scientific worldview has celebrated one triumph after another and has transformed all of modern life. Everything we encounter in the outside world today—especially if we live in cities—is, after all, a result of contemporary scientific thought as it has developed over the centuries.

[ 6 ] But this scientific way of thinking is counterbalanced by another—one that arises from the needs of the human heart, indeed, of the whole human being, as the moral and religious worldview of humankind. If we take a brief look at the development of humanity, we must acknowledge: The further back we go in this development, the more we find that in earlier and ever earlier times, human beings derived everything they believed they knew from a moral, from a religious worldview. When people looked out into nature, they believed they perceived guiding and directing spiritual beings behind all natural phenomena. And when they raised their gaze to the stars, they believed that the formation and movement of the stars were guided and directed by divine-spiritual beings. And when they looked into their own souls—or, indeed, into their very being—they imagined that this divine-spiritual guidance and direction continued; they assumed that even when they moved a single arm or took a step in their daily lives, the divine-spiritual guides were actually at work within them.

[ 7 ] People in earlier times did not actually have a view of nature as vast as the one we have before us today. This becomes strikingly clear to us in many specific details. Consider, for example, the close connection that existed in earlier times in human thought between illness—and indeed, death—and what was called sin. It was believed that a person could fall ill solely for moral reasons. In earlier times, in particular, it was believed that death was imposed upon the human race as a result of original sin. Everywhere one looked, one did not see natural phenomena as we understand them today; one saw the reign and workings of divine-spiritual powers, whose domain within the human race itself is the moral worldview—and toward which one turned one’s heart and mind when one wished to feel oneself in one’s spiritual-eternal core, in the bosom of the divine in the world.

[ 8 ] Apart from this moral-religious worldview, people had no conception of nature. And today, humanity essentially retains only remnants of what has been handed down from ancient times—when there existed solely a moral-religious worldview, without any conception of nature—in the form of its moral and religious worldviews.

[ 9 ] Today we are faced with a magnificently developed view of nature, and we have incorporated human beings into this view; the 19th century, in particular, learned to reflect on how human beings are formed from natural foundations, how they have gradually evolved from lower animal forms. The nineteenth century—and, in an even more complete way, the early twentieth century—has learned to reflect on how what we carry in our limbs, our vitality, is, in essence, the natural consequence of heredity. Modern times have placed human beings themselves within the natural order. Everywhere we see natural laws that we cannot conceive of as being connected to anything moral.

[ 10 ] The way plants grow, the way electricity and magnetism operate through natural processes, the way animals develop—indeed, the way human beings physically develop: into all these things—into everything to which natural science has brought such clarity—moral thoughts cannot, at first, be introduced. And even if humans can experience deep joy, profound contentment, and, in a certain sense, an aesthetic devotion to nature, they cannot have religious devotion to the order of the world—especially not toward the nature that science presents to them today.

[ 11 ] And so modern man has come to see the true, the existing, that which alone has reality, in nature. Yet within his heart, the urge for a moral world order still struggles to rise; the deep-seated need to be connected to something that, as the supersensible, stands in contrast to all the sensible in nature struggles to rise; the urge to be able to feel religiously toward powers that cannot speak to human beings through the laws of nature struggles to rise. And more and more, this modern person is led astray by the desire to preserve the old traditions rooted in a moral, religious worldview; more and more, he finds them at odds with what a more recent view of nature offers. Thus, modern man stands in a state of conflict as he looks upon a world that is entirely interwoven with the laws of nature, that has its beginning in the laws of nature, and that, according to his hypothesis, must have its end in the laws of nature.

[ 12 ] And above that lies what he says actually makes him human in the first place; above that lies moral sensibility, above that lies religious devotion. And man stands there with his anxious, enigmatic question about existence: Am I capable of giving reality to that which I derive from my moral sense, since nature does not give it reality? Am I capable of directing my religious sense toward something it can strive for in truth and honesty, since this sense cannot turn toward that which confronts it merely as natural law?

[ 13 ] Thus, this person feels as if his moral ideals and religious sentiments were beginning more and more to hang as abstractions in a spiritual void, as if they were doomed to be buried and lost in the universe governed solely by natural laws, should the Earth one day meet its end in a sort of heat death.

[ 14 ] In this way, modern man is placed in a profound conflict. He is not always aware of this conflict. Yet he becomes aware of something else. They become aware that they do not understand the world, that they lack the strength and joy to act in the world. And often, in order to have at least some foundation for their moral and religious life, they fall back on all sorts of old worldviews—all sorts of old mystical or, as some say, occult worldviews. They revive these because they cannot find, in what surrounds them today, an understanding of the supersensible in human beings and the world.

[ 15 ] Nevertheless, it is possible to find this supernatural aspect in the world and in human beings. And tonight we want to talk about how it can be found.

[ 16 ] Between what is purely moral and purely religious, and what is natural and sensual, people have always sensed something in the middle—something that confronts us in human beings themselves during their lives. This was viewed differently in earlier times, when the world was viewed solely through a moral or religious lens; today, it is viewed differently. Nevertheless, even today, one can only place that which is inherent in human beings into the mere order of nature in a one-sided manner.

[ 17 ] There are three aspects of human nature that, I would say, waver back and forth, oscillating between what is perceived as the supernatural and what is merely natural. It may seem strange to you that I am highlighting precisely these three aspects of human nature; yet you will see that it is precisely their transformation, their metamorphosis, that will lead us upward into a contemplation of supersensible insights and worldviews.

[ 18 ] The first thing we encounter in a human being—when, I might say, he must go through his earliest life experiences as a very small child in the struggle with the environment—is that, from his very nature, in which his own place in the world has not yet been established, he fights to carve out that place for himself: walking upright, standing.

[ 19 ] The second thing into which a person finds themselves is learning to speak. And it is only through speech—as anyone who can observe childhood with an open mind knows—that the gift of thought develops. To orient oneself in the world so that one does not look down at the earth like an animal, but gazes freely out into the cosmos toward the stars; to be able to convey one’s own inner life to one’s fellow human beings through language; to bring the world into one’s spiritual life in the form of thoughts: an older worldview perceived this as something that is, in a sense, a gift of the supersensible to human beings here below in the sensible realm. The connection between the supersensible human being and the supersensible world was perceived by looking to these three characteristics of human nature. An older worldview, which focused on the moral and religious aspects of the world order, saw the fact that human beings are constructed in such a way that upright walking and the ability to gaze out into the vastness of the heavens spring from their very constitution as a gift from divine-spiritual powers at work within them. And the ability to learn to speak was regarded all the more as a gift from these divine-spiritual powers.

[ 20 ] In earlier times of human development, it was always the case that people told themselves: When thoughts take root within them, angelic, spirit-like beings dwell within those thoughts. — It was not until the Middle Ages that people began to debate whether their thoughts were merely their own creation or whether divine-spiritual powers were at work within their physical bodies through their thoughts.

[ 21 ] In earlier times, these three gifts were regarded as something that enters into human beings from supersensible worlds and dwells and lives within them. For this reason, these three gifts—which are bestowed upon a person during childhood—were used as a starting point when seeking to guide a person who stands on Earth, lives on Earth, and has work to perform on Earth, upward toward the powers of the moral and religious world order.

[ 22 ] I will now set aside those practices that an even more ancient humanity performed—for example, by regulating the breath—in order to gain supersensory knowledge in addition to knowledge of the external world. I would like to look back at views and exercises of humanity that, while dating far back into the pre-Christian era, are not exactly the oldest, and which were specifically linked to these three characteristic features of human nature.

[ 23 ] There we see how, over in the East—where in earlier times there was a powerful striving for knowledge of the divine-spiritual—human beings initially sought to develop that which lies in the power of their orientation, that which lies in the power that leads them, as children, to become upright beings gazing out into the vastness of the world. - Consider those postures, those physical positions, which the Eastern sage prescribes to his student because—by approaching in a different way, as an adult, what in the child serves as the orientation of gait and posture—he wishes to provide the opportunity for the divine-spiritual to work into the body. It was said: When the child learns to walk upright after crawling, the divine-spiritual begins to work within. When the student of the Eastern sage crosses his legs and rests his upper body on them, he assumes a different position. And when he then becomes fully aware of this position, the spiritual-soul world can work within him, just as it works within the child, so that it spurs the child on to upright walking. And when a person, instead of learning to speak as is the case in the sensory world, turns speech inward, he transforms this gift from God into a clairvoyant and clairsentient power, so that through it he can connect his own supersensible nature with the supersensible nature of the world.

[ 24 ] This is why, in ancient Oriental times, a certain discipline of breathing was associated with the recitative recitative-like recitation of certain phrases called mantras—which were not spoken to communicate with other people, but were, so to speak, turned inward, vibrating through the human organism, turning inward everything that we otherwise direct outward through speech, so that the entire human organism participated in the power and force of these mantric words. And what the child poured out into language—as a gift from the supersensible world that had come to him—through which he communicated with people, the disciple of the Eastern sage poured into his own body. For him, the words did not merely vibrate outward so that he could communicate with other people; for him, the words vibrated down into his lungs, continued vibrating into his blood, and, carried by his breaths, vibrated upward through his blood into his brain. And just as one who listens to our language feels the beat of our soul and the sensation of our soul through the words, so too did the Eastern sage perceive the supersensible reality of the world from what vibrated as a word within his body—from this supersensible experience of the mantric word.

[ 25 ] And just as the child develops thinking through speech, so this Eastern sage—as the third stage, by perceiving the supersensible through the mantric word, through the mantric utterance—did not develop a form of thinking that existed only within him. For just as in ordinary speech our soul vibrates outward toward other people, so in the inner word that he experienced, the world vibrated inward. And what spoke to him was not another person, nor were they human thoughts; what spoke to him were world thoughts—it was the Spirit, the supersensible aspect of the world, pouring into his own organism as something supersensible.

[ 26 ] In this way, people in earlier times sought to establish a relationship between the supernatural aspect of the human being and the supernatural aspect of the world. And everything that has come down to us in terms of religious and moral worldviews—everything that lives on in tradition—stems from such a connection that human beings once established between their own spiritual realm and the spiritual realm of the world.

[ 27 ] For a certain epoch, humanity has stepped away from this direct experience of the divine-spiritual in the world. Teachers who sought to enter the supersensible realms of the world became increasingly rare; and the people who needed such teachers and who wanted to listen to what they had to say in order to draw nourishment for their own souls from their words also became increasingly rare. For a time, humanity passed through an epoch in which everything that was to develop within it—including its spiritual and soul life—was to be closely connected to its body, to its physical form, and to its sensory realm. For that older human being, who felt completely secure in a moral world order that did not lie within him but permeated the world, who felt completely secure in a divine world that nature fully absorbed for him—such a person, as such, could never have attained freedom—that freedom which becomes conscious of one’s own “I” as a firm point of support within the human being; to that freedom which does not derive the actions a person performs directly from the divine-spiritual, which works within the person and which actually acts within the person; to that freedom which seeks the impulse to act within the person himself.

[ 28 ] Humanity had to arrive at this sense of self, at this experience of freedom—and it has. But now we stand at an important turning point in human development. We have lost our ancient connection with the Divine. And even those who, as I have already indicated, seek in every possible way to revive the old paths—looking to Gnosticism or Eastern occultism—cannot find it, in order to find solace for what they cannot find within the scientific worldview of the present. No, the worldview I am speaking of here is often slandered as merely seeking to revive old Gnosticism or Orientalism. But that is not the case. This worldview takes the position that we can find the path to the supersensible through the very same rigorously exact mode of thinking that we apply today in the study of nature, provided we only apply it in the right way and sharpen it.

[ 29 ] However, even what I have just characterized as the trinity of special qualities in human nature—and what in earlier times was regarded as gifts from the moral-divine world order—appears to modern people, upon whom the scientific worldview exerts a powerful influence and compelling authority, merely as a natural, sensory gift. And so today, as a matter of course—and, from a certain point of view, quite rightly—one seeks to derive the distinct organization of the individual human limbs from the unique structure resulting from the human way of life, which has evolved from the way of life of the animal realm, and thereby to understand upright walking as arising from purely natural conditions. One seeks to understand language from the perspective of natural organization and from the connection that this natural organization of the child has with that of the adult. And one also seeks to understand thinking itself—the nurturing of thoughts—as something connected to human organization.

[ 30 ] How could one not? After all, the natural sciences have shown that human thoughts are very much dependent on our natural constitution. It only takes for this or that part of the human brain to be paralyzed for a certain aspect of mental activity to cease. We see everywhere how even the use of toxic substances that act on the human body can impair human mental activity. The habit of viewing everything through the lens of natural science has placed precisely this triad—human orientation in the universe, learning to speak, and learning to think—into a natural, sensory world order in a natural, sensory way. And from there, other things have also been placed into such a world order.

[ 31 ] Now, what a human being first becomes here on this earth through birth—or, let us say, through conception—one can believe arises—for one sees it arise outwardly—from a purely natural order. Thus, on the one hand, one can look forward toward birth, and one can see in birth and heredity everything that pulses through us and gives us strength. But if one looks in the other direction, toward death, then one sees clearly—if one is only willing to be a little open-minded—how what we are as human beings is not taken back by nature, but rather extinguished, just as the flame of a candle is extinguished. Thus it appears to modern human beings as though they themselves were given by nature through embryonic life and heredity. But it must also seem to them as though, at the end of their earthly life, they could not see themselves continuing through nature—as though nature were simply incapable of absorbing their human being, but only of destroying it. That is why the great mystery—which was once, for people in earlier times, when they held a moral and religious worldview in particular, the mystery of birth—has become, for later generations and even for us today, the mystery of death. The mystery of being born has become the mystery of immortality.

[ 32 ] For in the time when people were able to look toward the divine-spiritual world with moral and religious insight—when they could relate the supersensible aspects of human beings to the supersensible aspects of the world—they asked themselves: How did human beings descend from the spiritual worlds in which they once lived to this Earth? Whatever natural processes occurred during embryonic life and at birth were seen merely as the outward expression of this descent from the divine-spiritual worlds into physical earthly life. Birth was the great mystery. What is humanity meant to accomplish here on Earth? That was the question people asked themselves. Today, when people wish to pose the great mystery of the true nature of their innermost human core, they look toward the other side—the side of death.

[ 33 ] And we can look at this same mystery from yet another angle. Yes, one can hold the belief that human moral impulses arise, through a certain refinement, from the natural instincts that originate in the blood, the flesh, the nervous system, and the entire human organism, and one can also deduce certain religious sentiments from the existence of such moral impulses. Thus, in a sense, one can trace the origin of morality and the origin of religious sentiments back to the sensory order of nature.

[ 34 ] But we need not speak of retribution for moral or immoral actions. That leads too far into the realm of selfishness. Yet we can say that whatever we accomplish morally—if we believe, as an all-encompassing principle, only in the sensory order of nature—would inevitably fade away, powerless, in the world. The question arises: The smallest manifestation of electrical force has a specific consequence within the universe—that is the view of natural science; yet what springs from us morally is supposed to have no consequences in the universe?

[ 35 ] In this regard, too, we are looking in the opposite direction. At a pinch, we can regard moral impulses as more highly developed drives and instincts, but we cannot recognize the significance of moral impulses for the future from a purely natural-sensual worldview.

[ 36 ] Some people today are very consciously grappling with these questions. And anyone who is consciously grappling with these questions must turn to what is explored here as anthroposophical Spiritual Science. A large portion of humanity approaches these questions unconsciously, relying more on intuition. They can no longer fully identify with what has been handed down to them from ancient religious traditions, for they instinctively sense that this must have arisen from ancient insights. — It did not arise from a belief that people today are being persuaded to accept! All religious creeds have sprung from ancient insights, from such a connection between the supersensible in the human being and the supersensible in the world as I described to you earlier. But we cannot retrace that old path today. Humanity has since taken on other forms of development. Otherwise, it would not have been able to pass through that path—I might say, that intermediate epoch—in which it acquired the sense of ego-consciousness, the experience of freedom. It would not have been able to live fully within the physical human body if it had not been organized quite differently during this intermediate epoch than in those earlier times, when those who, through the practice of physical postures, mantras, and the cosmic ideas revealed to them, brought word to humanity about the way in which the human soul—the inner being of the human being—is connected to the supersensible realm of the world, and how the human being is a transitory being only as a body, but as a soul a timeless being, an eternal entity.

[ 37 ] If people today attempt—and many do, I might say to the detriment of true knowledge—to seek the connection between the supersensible in their own nature and the supersensible in the world in the same way as, say, the followers of the Buddha, for example, by adopting specific physical postures, chanting mantras, and through such words that stir the inner being to seek world-ideas revealed in the inner Logos—if they were to attempt to reach the supersensible through all of this—then, as modern human beings who have developed their physical bodies in a completely different way than earlier humanity, they would only throw their physical human bodies into disarray and would be unable to direct them upward toward the supersensible. That older human body, which was to be penetrated through exercises as I have described, simply did not yet possess that firmness, that inner consistency, from which a strong earthly “I”-consciousness and a strong experience of earthly freedom spring. The human organism has become more consistent. If one were to recognize today a more precise physiology—such as that provided by the anthroposophical Spiritual Science referred to here—one would know that in the bodies of modern human beings, the solid constituents, namely the saline ones, are more intensely developed than they were in the bodies of the people of old who were able to perform such exercises for higher knowledge as I have described. Modern human beings must therefore relate and connect their own supersensible realm with the supersensible realm of the world in a different way. Modern human beings must seek the moral and the religious in the world order in a different way than people of earlier times did.

[ 38 ] The Spiritual Science of which I am speaking here therefore seeks to enter the supersensible world from two directions: first, from the side of thought, and second, from the side of the will. From the side of thought, this is achieved by the human being not merely experiencing thought—which has rendered such immense service to him, particularly in modern natural science through observation and experimentation—as a mere reflection of the external world, but by learning to live with these thoughts in the quiet innermost part of the soul. In this way, modern human beings can develop a method of Spiritual Science, similar to the way ancient people developed it through their mantras—except that the mantras were still somewhat more sensory, whereas modern human beings have something more spiritual in the mere cultivation of thought.

[ 39 ] I have described in detail the long path one must travel to arrive in this way at a true Spiritual Science and thus at an understanding of the supersensible worlds in my books, for example in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, in the second part of my *Secret Science*, and in other books. Here I would like only to briefly outline, in principle, how one can become a spiritual researcher today—in a manner entirely appropriate to the current organization of humanity.

[ 40 ] Not everyone needs to become a spiritual researcher, but some people can become one. To a certain extent, however, anyone can at least become a verifier of this spiritual research if they make it a point to practice what I have described in the books mentioned. But anyone who wants to become a spiritual researcher today must do so not through the sensory chanting of mantras, but through purely supersensory mental practice.

[ 41 ] Well, today we have achieved precise thinking. When I look at the worlds of the stars through the lens of precise astronomy, we have achieved precise thinking in the physical and chemical realms; we are even striving for it today in biological research, in the study of living beings, and we feel particularly satisfied when we can explore the external sensory world in the same way we are accustomed to orienting our thoughts when solving problems in mathematics. That is why the saying has been coined that there is only as much true natural science as there is mathematics contained within the natural sciences. And for this reason, people speak of “exact natural science.” Everything should be able to be grasped through observation and experimentation in the same way that one grasps problems when solving mathematical problems. This is what is meant by “exact science.”

[ 42 ] Anthroposophical Spiritual Science—which is what is meant here—speaks of exact clairvoyance. Just as today’s natural scientist investigates the modern world in a precise manner, so too does the person who becomes an anthroposophical spiritual researcher engage in something equally precise, only in a different field. He gradually discovers that there are hidden powers in the soul that are not utilized in ordinary life or in ordinary science. He gradually discovers that it is indeed the case that in the child—in the very young child—the spiritual-supersensory and the physical-sensory still interact inseparably; but that the child then, as it were, pours into upright walking, into speech, and into thinking about the external sensory world that which previously lived within it in a supersensory form. Everything that wells up into the blood in the very earliest stages of human life—that which vibrates entirely within the organs—flows outward as the human being orientates himself toward the external world; it flows outward through language, and it flows outward, in particular, through thinking.

[ 43 ] But we can take it back again. The Eastern disciple of the Eastern sage sought, primarily by turning language inward, to achieve what might be called a connection between the supersensible in human beings and the supersensible in the world. We modern thinkers must turn the thought itself inward. We must be able to say to ourselves in all seriousness: We have come a long way in the observation of external nature. Before us stand the precise concepts of the forms and movements of the stars. Before us stand the precise concepts of electrical, magnetic, thermal, acoustic, and light phenomena. We look out into the world—precise concepts within us reflect this world to us. As spiritual researchers, we must be able to put ourselves in a position to now set aside all thoughts that lead us outward toward the stars and toward electrical, magnetic, and thermal phenomena. Just as the ancient sage turned his mantric speech inward and thereby allowed the Logos of the world to reveal itself to him, we must be able to turn the power of thought inward. With the same strength with which we perceive the external world through our senses—which are physical organs that assist us, so that we do not need to draw upon our own strength, the strength of the soul—we must strive to make our thinking during meditation so powerful that our thoughts, even though they are developed only inwardly, become as vivid as our sensory perceptions otherwise are.

[ 44 ] When you hear sounds, see colors, or feel sensations of warmth and cold coursing through your body, reflect on how vivid all of this is, how intensely it affects you. Consider, by contrast, how gray and abstract the thoughts are that you retain from these experiences of the outside world. And meditation consists in taking these thoughts—which relate to the external world only in a gray and abstract way, and which dawn within us as a result of passively surrendering to sensory observation—and strengthening and intensifying them internally so that they become just like sensory impressions. In this way, one rises to a new level of thinking. Whereas the thinking we engage in during ordinary life and in conventional science is such that we feel passive within it—that these thoughts are actually powerless, mere images that reflect the external world, through meditation one can achieve a state of living in the world of thought just as one lives in one’s growth forces, just as one lives in hunger and thirst, just as one lives in inner physical well-being—this is the fruit of meditation. One need only learn one thing to enliven the world of thought in this way: one must learn to weave lovingly within one’s thoughts.

[ 45 ] If one wants to become a spiritual researcher, one must practice this with just as much dedication as one must practice for years in a physics laboratory if one wants to become a physicist, or as one must practice for years at an observatory if one wants to become an astronomer. It is truly no easier to become a spiritual researcher than it is to become an astronomer or a physicist. Anyone who pays even a little attention to what I have described in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*—that is, what the spiritual researcher says—can verify this. But just as not everyone who incorporates the findings of astronomy into their worldview is meant to become an astronomer, neither does everyone need to become a spiritual researcher if spiritual research is to become an element of our civilization and our cultural life. Indeed, on the contrary: that relationship between human beings which can one day arise—and which must actually arise in humanity’s not-too-distant future, if the decline is not to grow ever stronger—that social coexistence between human beings, which will become necessary and, one might say, is in fact already necessary today, will be substantially enlivened when that trust returns to people’s social life, through which one knows: Whoever speaks from the depths of his soul about the spiritual, supersensible worlds—because, as a spiritual researcher, he has risen to them—deserves trust.

[ 46 ] Where souls can be so intimately connected that the intimacies of the supersensible world are communicated to one another within the human being’s supersensible nature, in such a social order will live those forces that, and they alone, will in turn strengthen our social life. Therefore, it is completely unfounded—and stems, in fact, solely from human selfishness—to say: “I will not accept the findings of anthroposophical research into the supersensible realm until I see these things for myself.”—Every human being is constituted in such a way that they are predisposed toward truth and not toward falsehood. Not everyone can explore the supersensible world, just as not everyone can paint a picture. But just as everyone can take in an artistically painted picture, so too can everyone—because they are, as whole, fully developed human beings, predisposed toward truth—acknowledge the truth of Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, not out of blind faith but through inner experience. This Spiritual Science itself can only be attained by progressing, through meditation and concentration within one’s own thought life, from ordinary abstract thinking to pictorial thinking—to a form of thinking that is inwardly alive. Within this kind of thinking, the world-ideas come to life. In this state of thinking, the human being no longer feels confined within his or her body; in this state of thinking, he or she feels, on the first stage, that he or she is entering the supersensible world.

[ 47 ] The person of earlier times started from something more sensual, from words turned inward. The person of more recent times must start from something more spiritual, from the thought itself turned inward, and through this finds his connection with the supersensible world and can, in turn, speak of this supersensible world. For these are not empty words that arise when one enters the supersensible realm of the world in this way through inwardly animated thinking and, together with the supersensible within one’s own inner being, experiences this supersensible realm of the world. Just as we are surrounded in the external sensory world by the many forms of plants and animals, just as we are surrounded by what shines down upon us from the stars, so, in a sense, the sensory world fades away before the spiritual vision that arises from pictorial thinking, and a spiritual world unfolds. One no longer sees merely the sun in its physical splendor; one sees a host of spiritual beings whose physical image is the physical sun. One penetrates through the physically appearing sun to the spiritual sun being. And in the same way, one penetrates through the physically appearing moon to the spiritual moon beings. One learns to recognize how these spiritual lunar beings guide the human soul from the spiritual-soul worlds through birth into earthly life here, where it receives its body from the mother and the father. One learns to recognize how the spiritual solar being contains the forces that lead the human being out again through death, and one learns to recognize the path of the human soul as it emerges from the supersensible worlds.

[ 48 ] This insight is further deepened, however, by the fact that one now does not develop the will through physical postures, as the ancient Orientals did, but rather develops the will in a manner similar to how one has developed the mind toward precise clairvoyance—as I have described to you. It was also a form of will development when one suppressed external orientation, crossed one’s legs, and sat in that position in order to allow different currents of the world to flow through the human body in a different physical posture, thereby gaining a perception of the supersensible. Modern people cannot do this. Their physical constitution has changed. Modern people must turn to the will itself. What the ancient Orientals—I would say—cultivated through a more physical means, namely bodily postures—they would, after all, orient the body toward the east, the west, or the south—all of that would be charlatanism to modern people. Modern people must take their will directly into their own hands. And you will find, once again, in *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* and in *The Secret Science* a whole series of exercises for self-mastery, self-education, and above all, the cultivation of the will. I would like to mention just a few.

[ 49 ] For example, if a person—who is otherwise accustomed to using their thinking to trace only external sensory events from back to front [from the earlier to the later]—changes their way of thinking, for example, by creating a mental image in the evening of what he experienced most recently, then of what he experienced earlier in the day, and so on back to the morning—that is, by creating a mental image of the natural order in reverse sequence before his soul—then he detaches himself, through his thinking—which otherwise adheres to the course of nature, moving from the earlier to the later—from this natural course. He thinks in a manner opposed to the course of nature. Through this, the will—which lies within thought—gains strength. This is particularly the case when one focuses on small things, on details. Imagine, for example: Today I walked up a flight of stairs; I picture myself not on the bottom step but on the top step, walk back down as if I were going down, and create a mental image of the entire ascent as a descent, detaching myself from what was actually experienced and imagining it in reverse. In this way, I draw strength from the will that lies within this thinking. I can also draw strength from this will by, for example, taking my self-education into my own hands, by telling myself: I have this or that lifestyle habit; I will change it—in three years, I must have a completely different lifestyle habit with regard to something. And so there are hundreds and thousands of exercises that are directly exercises of the will, aimed directly at transforming the will, so that the will breaks free from what is imposed on it by mere physicality.

[ 50 ] In this way, modern human beings experience something similar to what ancient people experienced through their physical postures. For the reasons mentioned, we cannot return to those ancient exercises. Through this, however, modern human beings come to establish an ever-closer, more direct relationship between their own supersensible nature and the supersensible nature of the world.

[ 51 ] Perhaps I can clarify what I mean here with an analogy. Take the human eye, for example—what actually makes it our organ of sight? Well, you can see from cataracts—which involve a hardening of the lens or the vitreous humor—how the eye can no longer serve the purpose of sight when the material aspect within the eye asserts itself. Certain parts of the eye’s organs must themselves be absolutely transparent if it is to serve the purpose of sight. It must, so to speak, be selfless; only then does it serve the human being. Thus, when we strengthen our will in the way I have just described, our body becomes a spiritual-soul organ of perception—if I may use that paradox; our body is—in certain moments of insight, of course, and otherwise in life as well—no longer permeated, in a soulful sense, by drives, instincts, and desires that make our body opaque. With regard to wishes, drives, and desires, it becomes as pure as the transparent eye is with regard to the material world. And just as one sees the world of colors through the transparent eye, so too, through the body that has become free of wishes and desires—it is not always so, but it can be attuned to this state in those who have trained themselves through the exercises in the aforementioned books—to perceive the spiritual world, the supersensible world, to which one belongs as the supersensible being of the human being, which one indeed is within oneself.

[ 52 ] In this way, we come to know the truly supersensible within the human being himself. Once one has grasped how a human being functions when he has made his body transparent in the manner described, when he lives in the purely supersensible world, then one has solved the mystery of death through direct perception, for one has beheld life without the body. One knows how one lives after passing through the gate of death and shedding the body. One knows how life is lived in the world without the body. In this way, one comes to know one’s own human supersensible nature. And by coming to know one’s own human supersensible nature in this way—as it passes through the gate of death as a living soul—one learns to recognize it as something that can then be received by a supersensible world, just as it was released from the supersensible world at conception. If, in this way, through the living thought attained in meditation, one comes to know the spiritual world of the sun behind the sun and the spiritual world of the moon behind the moon—that is, those spiritual beings who lead the human being into earthly existence and who lead the human being out of earthly existence—then one comes to know the supersensible aspect of the world. And then one knows how, after death, our living soul is received by the living being of the world, the living being of the universe—the supersensible universe. Just as our body is received by the sensory world and called to death, so the human soul is called to life in the eternal by those beings whom one perceives in the supersensible realm of the world.

[ 53 ] We then recognize the path that human civilization has taken in this way as one that gives us the strength, in the present, to act once again in accordance with our nature in an equally precise manner through the cultivation of the will—which, just as with mathematical problems, is carried out with complete precision through exercises—through mental exercises, as I have described, that lead to precise clairvoyance—to integrate a morality and a religion into the natural order of the world.

[ 54 ] That is what we need today. This course of human development is also magnificently hinted at in the significance that true spiritual knowledge can ascribe to the Mystery of Golgotha in the course of human development.

[ 55 ] How was it—let me conclude by saying a few words about this—immediately after the Mystery of Golgotha took place on Earth, with those people who were the first to profess faith in this Mystery of Golgotha? They looked upon what had been reported to them as having taken place on Golgotha. They looked upon what Jesus of Nazareth had experienced, and they sensed that the divine-spiritual Christ Being had lived within Jesus of Nazareth as a human being.

[ 56 ] They sensed that this divine-spiritual Christ Being had descended to Earth to bring them something they desperately needed here on Earth. What, then, prompted these first Christians to accept the wisdom of the Mystery of Golgotha so unconditionally? It was because remnants still existed of those ancient views that held: Human beings have descended from supersensible worlds into earthly existence through birth. In earlier times, when people still knew this quite clearly from their instinctive perception and from what their initiates and teachers had told them, they sensed that there was a spiritual guide in the spiritual worlds who had led them down to physical earthly existence. But because they knew that they had come down to Earth as spirits, they felt that they would also pass through the gate of death. And death held no mystery, no terror for the ancient human race—just as—please do not misunderstand the comparison; it is not meant to be derogatory toward human beings—just as an animal feels no mystery of death and no terror of death.

[ 57 ] It was only over the course of time that human beings came to experience death. Death only became a mystery when human beings no longer had the mystery of birth, when they no longer looked up toward the spiritual and soul worlds from which they had descended, when, in the course of human development, the tendency arose to regard everything involved in the process of birth as merely natural—it was then that the mystery of death came upon human beings, and the true horror of death set in.

[ 58 ] This was not healed through theoretical knowledge, but was healed by the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha took place on Earth. And people knew from the remnants of ancient wisdom that the Christ, who had appeared on Earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, was the very same Being who guided human souls down to this Earth from the spiritual-soul worlds. And the first Christians knew that Christ had descended to Earth to give people on Earth that which leads them beyond the mystery of death. Thus we see the connection that even Paul himself recognized between the mystery of death and what was accomplished on Golgotha. We see that Paul makes it clear to people that, as human souls, they can only think beyond death if they can look toward the Risen One—that is, toward the Christ who conquers death.

[ 59 ] Well, drawing on ancient wisdom, the early Christians were still able—more by feeling than by clear understanding—to perceive Christ as the One who had descended to Earth. Modern Spiritual Science, which I have spoken to you about this evening, teaches people once again to look into the supersensible worlds through precise clairvoyance. This anthroposophical spiritual research, by leading the human being to see beyond his physical body—once this body has become transparent in the manner described and the human being experiences himself in the world in which he must live after passing through the gate of death—may in turn point not only to the human being Jesus of Nazareth, but to the divine spiritual Christ, who descended from the supersensible worlds and can work through the supersensible within the human being himself. From this working through, from this power that Christ unfolds within him according to the words of Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me”—can the earthly human being gain the impulse to pass through death with Christ as a living soul, so as not to enter blindly into those spiritual worlds where—as I have described—he is received by the solar being, but rather to enter this spiritual world with sight, through the light that Christ has brought to Earth.

[ 60 ] In this way, such an anthroposophical Spiritual Science can embrace Christian religious life. And in this way, Christian religious life will, in turn, experience a deepening precisely through anthroposophical Spiritual Science. The past few centuries have brought us the magnificence of the natural sciences, which we see slowly developing—yet in such a way that we cannot discern a moral world order within this development; indeed, nature reveals itself to us all the more faithfully the less we impose morality upon it. However, just as we cannot truly devote ourselves to the laws of nature as if they were divine, so too, by applying the exact method we have learned to use in mathematics and the natural sciences to our thinking, we will elevate it to a state of imagery and exact clairvoyance. And by applying the exact method to our will, by disciplining ourselves to perform the most beautiful deeds for our own self-education, we will thereby arrive not at an outwardly charlatan-like magic, but at an inner, idealistic magic, and thus once again link the moral to the natural and to the religious.

[ 61 ] And ultimately: what does this anthroposophy, of which I am speaking here, seek to achieve? It seeks to bridge the deep chasm that—at least for modern human beings, for all people who in any way experience the world—unconsciously exists between the natural, amoral world order on the one hand and the religious, moral order on the other, so that in the future, human beings may, in their lives—in what nature, through their bodies, sensuality—may once again possess the powerful supersensible realm into which the moral order of the world, not merely the moral order of humanity, flows; into which not merely the natural order, but the divine order flows.

[ 62 ] And with the cosmic-moral impulses that become his own, with the permeation by the awareness of God granted to him through his spiritually sharpened gaze, humanity will find its way into the future and solve those important questions and mysteries that can already be sensed today—if one looks at the world around us and at what lives in the human heart as an impulse, as a hope reaching from the present into the future, not with a sleeping mind but with full, alert impartiality.