The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] From my remarks on the limits of knowledge of nature, it should at least have become somewhat clear what difference exists between what is called “knowledge of higher worlds” within Spiritual Science and the kind of knowledge we speak of from the perspective of ordinary consciousness in everyday life or in conventional science. In everyday life and in conventional science, our powers of cognition remain limited to what we have acquired through education—conventional education, which has brought us to a certain point in life—and to what we are able to make of our inherited qualities, of our general human qualities, through this education. What is called “knowledge of higher worlds” within anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science is based on the fact that one, so to speak, takes further education and further development into one’s own hands, that one acquires an awareness of how, just as one can progress as a child toward ordinary consciousness, so too, in the course of one’s life, one can advance through self-education to a higher consciousness. And it is only to this higher consciousness that those things are revealed which we otherwise seek in vain at the two boundaries of knowledge of nature—the material boundary and the boundary of consciousness—whereby consciousness here is understood in the ordinary sense. The Eastern sages of old spoke of such an elevated consciousness—through which a further level of realities becomes accessible to human beings beyond ordinary, everyday reality—of such a consciousness, of which we have indeed spoken, and they strove for such higher development through those means of inner self-education that corresponded precisely to their racial characteristics and their stage of development. Only when one recognizes what is revealed to human beings through such higher development does one fully grasp the meaning of what shines forth to us from the ancient Eastern wisdom texts. If one is then to characterize the path of development these sages took, one must say: It was a path of inspiration. — Humanity at that time was, so to speak, oriented toward inspiration. And it will be helpful, in order to understand these paths of development into the higher realms of knowledge, if we first clarify for ourselves, by way of preparation, what the path of development of these ancient Eastern sages actually was. I would just like to note right from the outset that this path can by no means be the same as that of our Western civilization, for humanity is, after all, in the process of development; humanity is moving forward. And anyone who—as many have done—wishes to turn back in order to embark on higher paths of development, returning to the ancient Eastern teachings of wisdom, is in fact seeking to reverse the progress of humanity, or is demonstrating that they have no real understanding of human advancement. We live with ordinary consciousness in our world of thought, in our world of feeling, in our world of will, and we ground what surges up and down in the soul as thought, feeling, and will; we ground it, first and foremost, through cognition. It is precisely through external perceptions—the perceptions of the physical-sensory world—that our consciousness actually first awakens.

[ 2 ] Now it is a matter of realizing that a certain different way of behaving was necessary for the Eastern sages—the so-called initiates of the East—a way of behaving different from that which people exhibit in ordinary life with regard to the handling of perceptions, thinking, feeling, and willing. We can gain an understanding of what was actually at work there as a path of development into the higher worlds if we consider the following: At certain stages of life, we develop what we call the spiritual-soul aspect toward greater freedom and greater independence. We could describe how, with the change of teeth, the spiritual-soul aspect—which acts in an organizing way within the body during the early years of childhood—then emancipates itself, becomes free, so to speak; how the human being then lives freely with his or her “I” within this spiritual-soul aspect; how this spiritual-soul aspect yields to him or her, whereas previously—if I may put it that way—it was occupied with organizing the body. But now, as we grow more and more into life, there arises something that, at first, prevents the ordinary consciousness from perceiving the development of this now-liberated spiritual-psychic realm into the spiritual world. As human beings, we must, in our lives between birth and death, forge the path that establishes us as suitable beings within the outer earthly world. We must acquire those abilities that give us the capacity for orientation in the outer sensory-physical world. We must also develop those abilities that make us useful members of social life with other human beings.

[ 3 ] What appears here is a threefold entity. A threefold aspect places us in the proper context, particularly with regard to the external human world, and governs our interaction with it: this is language; this is the ability to understand the thoughts of our fellow human beings; and this is also gaining an understanding—a perception, so to speak—of the “I” of another person. By speaking of these three things—perception of language, perception of thoughts, and perception of the “I”—we are expressing something that appears simple at first glance, but which is by no means so simple for those who strive for knowledge in a serious and conscientious manner. We usually speak only of the five senses, to which modern physiology adds a few more, internal ones. So we do not have a complete system of the senses within external science. Well, I will speak further on this point here before you. Today, however, I merely wish to note that it is an illusion to believe that an understanding of language is already given through the sense of hearing, through the structure of the ear, and through what modern physiology envisions as the structure of the ear. Just as we have a sense of hearing, so too do we have a sense of language. This does not refer to that sense—which is also called by that name—that prompts us to speak, but rather to the sense that enables us to understand language perception just as the sense of hearing enables us to perceive sounds as such. And once we have a complete understanding of physiology, we will know that this sense of language is entirely analogous to the other senses, that it can rightly be referred to as a distinct sense in its own right. It is simply more widespread within the human organism than some other, more localized senses. But it is a sense that can be clearly defined. And in the same way, we have a sense—which, admittedly, extends across nearly our entire physical being—for perceiving the thoughts of others. For what we perceive in words is not yet the thought itself. We need other organs, a different system than the mere system for perceiving words, if we wish to understand, through the words, the thought that the other person is communicating to us.

[ 4 ] And in the same way, we are endowed with a sense—one that extends throughout our entire physical organism, however—which we might call the sense of the other’s sense of self. In this regard, our philosophy in more recent times has, one might say, been in its infancy, for today, for example, one often hears people say: We encounter another person; we know that a person is shaped in such and such a way. Because the being we encounter appears to us to be shaped in the same way that we know ourselves to be, and because we, as human beings, possess a “self,” we draw a sort of subconscious conclusion: “Aha, that person also has a ‘self’ within them.” — This contradicts every psychological fact. Anyone who is truly capable of observation knows that it is a direct perception—not an inference by analogy—through which we arrive at the perception of the other, of the foreign “I.” It is actually only one friend, I would say—or a relative—of the Göttingen Husserl School, Max Scheler, who has just arrived at this direct perception of the other’s “I.” So that, I would say, on a higher level, beyond the ordinary human senses, we must still distinguish three senses: the sense of language, the sense of thought, and the sense of the “I.” These senses emerge in the course of human development to the same extent that what gradually separates itself—from birth through the change of teeth—in the very being I have described to you.

[ 5 ] These three senses first draw our attention to our interaction with the rest of humanity. In a sense, we are guided into social life among other people by the very fact that we possess these three senses. But the path taken through these three senses was, for the sake of higher knowledge, taken in a different way by the ancient sages, particularly the Indian sages. For the purpose of this higher knowledge, the soul was not directed toward words in such a way as to seek, through those words, an understanding of what another person was saying. The soul, with its powers, was not directed toward thoughts in such a way as to perceive the thoughts of another, nor was it directed toward the “I” in such a way as to perceive the other’s “I” with empathy. That was left to ordinary life. When the sage, so to speak, returned from his pursuit of higher knowledge—from his sojourn in spiritual worlds—to the ordinary world, he needed these three senses in the ordinary sense. But when he wished to develop the method of higher knowledge, he needed these three senses in a different way. He did not, so to speak, allow the power of the soul to penetrate through the word while listening or perceiving speech—in order to arrive at an understanding of the other person through the word—but rather he stopped at the word itself. He sought nothing behind the word. He directed the flow of his soul life only as far as the word. This resulted in a heightened perception of the word for him. He refrained from seeking to understand anything else through the word. He immersed his entire soul life in the word; indeed, he used the word—or rather, the sequence of words—in such a way that he could live entirely within the word. He formulated certain sayings—simple, word-heavy sayings—in which he strove to live entirely within the sound and tone of the words. And he moved with his entire soul life in step with the sound of the words he recited to himself. This then led to the development of such a way of life in sayings, in the so-called “mantras.” The art of mantras—life within the sayings—consists in not understanding the meaning of the words through the sayings themselves, but rather in experiencing the sayings themselves as something musical, in connecting the sayings themselves with one’s own soul power, in remaining within the sayings, and in strengthening, through constant repetition, one’s soul power that lives within the sayings, and that, by reciting these phrases to oneself over and over again, one strengthens one’s soul power. This art was gradually developed to a high degree, and it transformed that power which we otherwise carry within the soul—the power to understand other people through the word—into something else. A force arose in the soul through the recitation and repetition of the mantric verse; a force arose in the soul through the repetition of the mantra, which now did not lead toward other people, but led into the spiritual world. And once one has trained the soul in this way through the mantras, once one has progressed to the point where one inwardly senses the weaving and flowing of this soul force—which otherwise remains unconscious because all attention is directed toward understanding others through speech—one has reached the point where one perceives such a force as a soul force, just as one otherwise perceives muscle tension, when one wants to perform an action with one’s arm—then one has prepared oneself to grasp that which lies in the power, in the higher power of thought. In ordinary life, one seeks to reach out to another person through thought. With this power, however, one grasps thought in an entirely different way. One grasps the weaving of thought in external reality. One immerses oneself in external reality. One ascends to what I have described to you as inspiration.

[ 6 ] And then, by following this path, instead of living our way over to the “I” of another human being, we live our way up to the “I”s of individualized spiritual beings who surround us just as the beings of the sensory world surround us. What I am describing to you here was a matter of course for the ancient Eastern sage. In a sense, he made this spiritual ascent toward the perception of a spiritual world. He attained to the highest degree what one might call inspiration, and he was organized precisely for this inspiration. Unlike Westerners, he did not need to fear that his “I” might somehow be lost to him during this journey out of the body. And in later times, when—because humanity had already advanced—a situation arose in which one could very easily venture out into the outer world without one’s “I,” precautions were taken. Measures were taken to ensure that the individual who was to become a student of higher wisdom would not enter this spiritual world unguided and perhaps fall into that pathological state of doubt of which I have spoken here in recent days. In ancient Eastern times, this would not have been a cause for concern anyway, due to the characteristics of the race. But as humanity progressed further, it did become a cause for concern. Hence the caution—which was strictly observed especially in the Eastern schools of wisdom—to remind the students that they were relying on an authority that was not external —what we understand today as “authority” essentially arose only in Western civilization—but rather, through a natural adaptation to circumstances, they sought to develop in the student a reliance on the guide, on the guru. What the guide embodied—the way the guide stood within himself, free from doubt, indeed free even from any inclination toward doubt, in the spiritual world—the student simply perceived, and through this perception he healed himself to such an extent as he entered into inspiration that pathological doubt could not reach him.

[ 7 ] But even if what is spiritual and soul-related is consciously drawn out of the physical body in this way, something else then takes its place. What happens is that the human being must once again establish a connection with the physical body, a connection that must now also become more conscious. I said this morning that the pathological condition must not arise in which a person, so to speak, immersed in his physical body while being dominated by selfishness and lacking love, for in this way he grasps his physical body in a wrong manner. In a natural way, as I said, a person grasps his physical body by imprinting the instinct of love upon it between the ages of seven and fourteen. But precisely this natural imprinting of the instinct of love can also take a pathological course. Then the very damages arise that I described this morning as pathological conditions. This, however, could also happen to the disciples of the ancient Eastern sages: that when they were outside their physical body, they did not find the means to reconnect the spiritual-soul aspect with this physical body in the right way. In such cases, a different precautionary measure was required—a measure to which psychiatrists, at least some of them, have returned when treating people suffering from agoraphobia or similar conditions. These are ablutions, cold ablutions. These are entirely physical measures that must be taken. And when you hear that in the Eastern mysteries—that is, the schools of initiation, the schools intended to lead to inspiration—the precautionary measure of leaning on the guru was used on the one hand, you also hear, on the other hand, of all sorts of precautionary measures that were applied through cold ablutions and the like. If one understands human nature as it can be understood through Spiritual Science, then one also understands what otherwise sounds rather enigmatic in these ancient mysteries. People were protected from developing a false sense of space due to an inadequate connection between their spiritual-soul aspect and their physical body—a false sense of space that could drive them to a fear of open spaces and similar conditions, and that could also prevent them from seeking social interaction with others in the proper way. This is indeed a danger, but one that can, should, and must be avoided in any guidance toward higher knowledge; it is a danger because, when a person seeks the path to inspiration in the way I have described, he then, in a certain sense, shuts off the pathways of language and thought leading to the “I” and to other people; and when he leaves his physical body in a pathological manner—even if not for the purpose of higher knowledge, but merely as a result of pathological conditions—he may then lose the ability to maintain proper interaction with other people. As a result, they may develop in an abnormal, pathological way precisely what normally—indeed, appropriately—develops through systematic spiritual research. He then establishes a connection between his spiritual-soul aspect and his body in such a way that, through an excessive immersion in his body, he feels so self-centered within it that he learns to hate interaction with other people and becomes an antisocial being. One can often witness the consequences of such a pathological condition in the world in quite dreadful ways. I once met a remarkable individual of this kind, a person who came from a family that tended toward a certain liberation of the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical, a family that also included individuals—one of whom I came to know very well—who sought the path into the spiritual worlds. But, in a sense, a degenerate individual from this family developed the same tendency in a morbid, pathological way and eventually reached the point where he would not allow anything from the outside world that sought to come into contact with his body to touch him at all. This person certainly had to eat, but—since we’re speaking among adults—he washed himself with his own excretions because he was afraid of any water that came from the outside world. And as for what else he used to do to shut himself off completely—I’d rather not describe all the things he did to isolate this body from the outside world, to turn himself entirely into an antisocial being—all the things he did because his spiritual and soul life was too deeply immersed in physicality, because it was too strongly, too intensely connected to this physicality.

[ 8 ] It is certainly in the spirit of Goetheanism to bring together in this way that which leads to the highest—what we, as earthly human beings, can initially attain—with that which leads into the pathological depths. One need only familiarize oneself a little with Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis to see this. Goethe seeks to understand how the individual parts—of a plant, for example—develop separately, and in order to understand how things undergo metamorphosis, he looks with particular interest at those conditions that arise from the degeneration of a leaf, the degeneration of a flower, or the degeneration of the stamens. Goethe is well aware that, in observing the pathological, the true nature of the healthy can be revealed to the discerning observer. And one can only take a true path into the spiritual world if one knows where the essence of human nature actually lies, and in what manifold ways this complex essence of human nature can manifest itself.

[ 9 ] But we can also see from other sources that, in a sense, even in later times, people of the East were still inclined to dwell on the word itself—not to channel the powers of the soul through the word, but to live within the word. We see this, for example, in the discourses of the Buddha. One need only read these discourses of the Buddha with their many repetitions. I have met Westerners who loved those editions of the Buddha’s teachings in which the many repetitions had been pared down to the single wording of each sentence, and then these people believed that by having such an abridged version of the Buddha—in which everything occurs only once—they would gain insight into the true content of what the Buddha actually meant. Thus, Western civilization has gradually become devoid of any understanding of the Eastern essence. For if one takes in only what is found word for word in the Buddha’s discourses—that is, the content that we, as Westerners, value, the content found in the Buddha’s discourses—then one does not take in the Buddha’s actual views; rather, one takes them in only when one goes along with the repetitions, when one wishes to live within the words, if one wishes to live within that strengthening of the soul’s power that arises through the repetitions. If one does not develop the ability to feel something in the ceaseless repetitions and the rhythmic recurrence of certain passages, then one does not enter into what Buddhism actually means.

[ 10 ] One must therefore familiarize oneself with the inner essence of Eastern culture. For without this familiarity with the inner essence of Eastern culture, one ultimately cannot even arrive at a true understanding of our Western religious creeds, since, in the final analysis, these Western religious creeds ultimately stem from Eastern wisdom. The Christ event is something else entirely. That is a fact. It stands there as a fact in the development of the Earth. But the way in which one is to understand what took place through the Mystery of Golgotha was, in the first centuries of Christian development, derived entirely from Eastern wisdom. Eastern wisdom was initially used to understand the fundamental event of Christianity. But everything moves forward. What once existed in the East in this primordial wisdom, attained through inspiration—and is still discernible in Greek culture, having developed from the East into Greece—is still discernible in Greek culture as art. In Greek art, something different was experienced than what we usually experience in art today. In Greek art, people still experienced what Goethe sought to return to when he expressed his innermost impulses with the words: “To whom nature begins to reveal her manifest mystery, there arises a deep longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” — For the Greeks, art was still a slipping into the mysteries of worldly existence; art was not merely a revelation of the human imagination, but a revelation of that which emerges through inspiration from an interaction between the human imagination and the revelations of the spiritual world. But more and more—I would say—that which still flowed through Greek art became diluted and became the content of Western religious creeds. At the origin of primordial wisdom, we are dealing with a spiritual life rich in content, but in its further development, we are dealing with the fact that this rich spiritual life becomes diluted and ultimately finds its way into the Western world, forming the content of Western religious creeds. Thus, those people who are predisposed to a different age can see in what has arisen as a dilution only something they regard with skepticism. And, fundamentally speaking, it is nothing other than the reaction of the Western mind to Eastern wisdom that has fallen into decadence—a reaction that gradually develops into atheistic skepticism in the West and that must continue to advance further and further unless another spiritual current counters it. Just as one cannot thoroughly rejuvenate a natural being that has reached a certain stage of development—let us say, a state of old age—one cannot, either, thoroughly rejuvenate that which develops spiritually and psychologically once it has fallen into a state of old age. Nothing can be derived from the religious creeds of the West—which are descendants of primordial Eastern wisdom—that can fully satisfy humanity again, as humanity advances on the basis of the insights that have now been gained for Western humanity over the past three to four centuries through the study of nature and the observation of nature. An ever-increasing skepticism must develop. And anyone who sees through the course of world development can speak quite plainly of a current of development moving from East to West that is heading toward skepticism—that is to say, a spiritual life is moving from East to West which, as it is taken up by minds that are becoming ever more immersed in Western culture, must lead to ever-stronger skepticism. Skepticism is simply the march of spiritual life from the East to the West, and it must be met with another spiritual current that now flows from the West to the East. And we live at the intersection of these spiritual currents, and we shall see in the further course of these reflections how we live within that intersection.

[ 11 ] First, however, it should be noted that the Western mind is more inclined to follow a different path of development toward the higher worlds than the Eastern mind. Just as the Eastern mind strives first and foremost for inspiration—and is racially predisposed to do so—so the Western mind, through its particular soul disposition—which is now less a matter of racial predisposition than of soul disposition—strives for imagination. It is no longer the experience of what is musically present in the Mantric chant that we, as Westerners, should strive for; it is something else. As Westerners, we should strive not so much to follow the path that involves the spiritual-soul aspect stepping out of the body, but rather to follow the later stage, which occurs when the spiritual-soul aspect is to consciously reconnect with the physical organization in the act of taking hold of the physical body. We see this natural phenomenon in the development of the bodily instinct: While the Eastern person has sought wisdom more by elevating to a higher level that which lies between birth and the age of seven, the Westerner is more inclined to pursue that which lies between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, by raising into the spiritual-soul realm that which is natural for this epoch of humanity. But we attain this when—just as one must bring the “I” into inspiration—we now let the “I” go outward by immersing ourselves once more in our physicality, but not leaving it idle out there, not forgetting it, not giving it up, not pushing it down into the unconscious, but rather connecting this very “I” with pure thinking, with clear, sharp thinking, so that one ultimately has the inner experience: Your “I” is thoroughly permeated by all the sharp thinking to which you have most recently brought it. One can actually have this experience of immersion in a very clear, very distinct way. And perhaps I may speak to you here of a personal experience, because this experience will lead you to what I actually mean here.

[ 12 ] I have spoken to you about the conception of my Philosophy of Freedom. This Philosophy of Freedom is truly an attempt, in a modest way, to push things all the way to pure thought—to that pure thought in which the “I” can live, in which the “I” can sustain itself. Then, once one has grasped this pure thinking in this way, one can strive for another. One can then take this thinking—which one now leaves to the “I,” to the “I” that feels itself to be free and independent in a spirit of freedom— one can then isolate this pure thinking from the process of perception, and one can, so to speak—whereas in ordinary life one, say, sees a color by simultaneously permeating it with a mental image—one can extract the mental images from the entire process of processing perceptions and draw the perceptions themselves directly into our physicality.

[ 13 ] Goethe was already on this path. He had already taken the first steps. One need only read the last chapter of his Theory of Colors: “The Sensual-Moral Effect of Color,” how, with every effect, he experiences something that is deeply united not only with the faculty of perception but with the whole human being; how he perceives yellow and red as aggressive colors that, in a sense, penetrate him completely, filling him with warmth; how he regards blue and violet as colors that, in a sense, tear one out of oneself—as the cold colors. The whole person experiences something through sensory perception. Sensory perception, with its content, merges into physicality, and the “I,” with its pure thought content, remains, as it were, hovering above it. We set thinking aside by taking in the entire content of perception more intensely than usual—whereas normally we attenuate the perceptual content through mental images—and by filling ourselves with it. We train ourselves in a special way to fill ourselves with the content of perception when we systematically engage in what has become a distortion among Easterners—symbolic mental image, pictorial mental image—when, instead of grasping the content of perception through pure thought, through lawful, logical thought, but instead grasp this content of perception in symbols and images, thereby allowing it to flow into us, as it were, by bypassing thought; when we imbue ourselves with all the richness of colors and the richness of tone by experiencing these mental images inwardly—not conceptually, but symbolically and pictorially—as part of our training. By not permeating our inner being with the content of thought—as association psychology seeks to do—but rather by permeating it with this perceptual content indicated through symbols and images, that which is alive within us as the etheric body and the astral body flows toward us from within; through this, we come to know the depth of our consciousness and our soul. One truly comes to know the inner being of the human being in this way, not through that rambling mysticism that is often presented by nebulous spirits as a path to the inner God, but which leads to nothing other than an external abstraction—one that, if one wishes to be a whole, complete human being, one cannot remain stuck at.

[ 14 ] If one truly wishes to study human beings physiologically, one must, by setting aside thought in this way, direct pictorial mental images inward, so that the physicality of the human being responds to them through these imaginations. This is, however, a path that is still in its infancy in Western development, but it is the path that must be taken if we are to counteract what is flowing in from the East—which would lead to decadence if it were allowed to prevail on its own—with something that is commensurate with it, so that our civilization may rise rather than fall. But one might say: In general, human language itself has not yet advanced far enough to fully articulate those experiences one encounters within the depths of one’s soul. And this is where I would like to share a personal experience with you.

[ 15 ] Many years ago, in a certain field, I attempted to put into words what might be called the human theory of the senses. I succeeded to a certain extent in putting into words what this “human theory of the senses”—the doctrine of the twelve senses—entails in oral lectures, because there one still has a greater opportunity to turn language this way and that, and to ensure understanding through repetition, so that one does not feel so acutely the limitations of our language, which is not yet equal to such a supersensory reality. But when I then—as I said, many years ago—wanted to write down what I had presented as actual anthroposophy in lectures, in order to shape it into a book, it turned out, strangely enough, that what had been experienced externally became, upon being carried into the inner realm, something so delicate that language could not provide the words, and I believe the first draft of the printed work—several sheets—lay in the printing shop for five or six years. I was unable to continue writing—simply because I wanted to carry on in the same style in which I had begun, and because, at that stage of my development, language initially could not provide the means to achieve what I sought. Afterward, I became overwhelmed with work, and I have not yet been able to finish this book. Those who are less conscientious about what they offer their fellow human beings from the spiritual world may perhaps smile at such a standstill in the face of a difficulty that is insurmountable for the time being. But anyone who has truly experienced—and who is able to penetrate, with a full sense of responsibility, what arises when one seeks to describe the paths that Western humanity must now take toward imagination—knows that much is required to find the right words for precisely such a description. As a path of training, it is relatively simple to describe. This is what I have done in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. But when one seeks to achieve very specific results—such as describing the very nature of the human senses themselves, that is, a part of humanity’s inner organization—when one is to achieve such very specific results, then the difficulty arises of grasping imaginations and rendering them in sharp contours through words.

[ 16 ] Nevertheless, this path must be taken by Western humanity. And just as the Easterners have experienced, through their mantras, the entry into the spiritual world of the external, so must Westerners—going beyond all psychology of association—learn how humanity enters into its own being by entering the world of the imagination. Only by entering the world of the imagination will he attain a true understanding of humanity. And this true understanding of humanity must be attained for the progress of humanity. And because we must live in a far more conscious way than the Orientals have lived, we must not simply say, for example: Well, we can leave it to the future to see whether humanity will gradually appropriate this imaginative world through natural processes—no, because we have entered the stage of humanity’s conscious development, this imaginative world must also be consciously sought after, and one must not remain stagnant at certain stages. For what happens if one remains stagnant at certain stages? Then one does not counter the ever-increasing skepticism—which is spreading from East to West—with the right approach, but rather with that which stems from the fact that the spiritual-soul aspect is connected too thoroughly, too deeply, and unconsciously with the physical body, so that, in a sense, an overly dense connection arises between the spiritual-soul aspect and the physical body.

[ 17 ] Yes, one can not only think materialistically; one can also be materialistic by allowing the spiritual-soul aspects to become too closely bound to the physical body. Then one does not live freely with the “I” within the concepts of pure thought that one has arrived at. And if one plunges into physicality with perception that has become pictorial, then one plunges into physicality with the “I” and with the concepts. And when one then spreads this, when one permeates people with it, this gives rise to the spiritual phenomenon we know well: dogmatism of all kinds. Dogmatism of all kinds is nothing other than—translated into the spiritual-psychic realm—that which, when transferred to a deeper level into the pathological, manifests itself in fear of open spaces and the like; and which, because it is related to this, also reveals itself in what is a metamorphosis of fear—in all manner of superstition. From what has developed there as dogmatism—which, I would say, arises from the unconscious urge toward imagination but is held back by forces of coercion—from what develops there, all kinds of dogmatism arise. They must gradually be replaced by that which arises when one maintains the world of ideas in the realm of the “I,” when one advances toward imagination, thereby taking in the human being in his true form within his inner experience, and gradually embarking on a different path into the spiritual world. This other path through imagination is the one that must lay the foundation for what, as a current of spiritual science and as spiritual development, must move from the West toward the East if humanity is to move forward. But this is precisely what is now the most important task for humanity: to recognize what the true path of imagination should be, and which path Western Spiritual Science must take if it is to measure up to what Eastern wisdom once attained—in a manner corresponding to the racial characteristics of those peoples—as inspiration, as the substance of inspiration. Only if we can counter the degenerate inspiration of the East with spirit-bearing, reality-imbued imaginations that are on the path to a higher spiritual culture—only if we can evoke this as a spiritual current flowing from West to East— then we will be doing what actually lives in the depths of humanity’s impulses—that toward which humanity strives—and what still erupts today in explosions of a social nature because it cannot find an outlet.

[ 18 ] We will continue tomorrow to discuss how the path of imagination should actually be taken, and how the path to the higher worlds takes shape for anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science.