The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I attempted to show how, within Eastern spiritual life, people sought to approach the realm of the supersensible world, and I pointed out how those who wished to embark on this path into the supersensible, so to speak, omitted the connecting bridge between themselves and other human beings—they did not cross it— but instead chose a different path than the one that, in social life, initially leads from one person to another through language, through thought, and through the perception of the “I.” And I showed how, at first, people attempted—instead of relying on words—to hear what their fellow human beings were trying to tell them, what they wanted to understand about them; in other words, instead of understanding through words, they sought to live within the words themselves. This “living in the word” was then further strengthened by the fact that words were shaped into certain sayings in which one lived and which one repeated, so that the power of the soul, gained through this living in the words, was further intensified through repetition. And I showed how, in this way, something was achieved in the state of the soul that one might call inspiration in the sense I have characterized—except that the sages of the ancient Eastern world belonged to their own race, their sense of self was far less developed than in later periods of human evolution, and they therefore immersed themselves in the spiritual world in a more instinctive manner. And because the whole process was instinctive—that is, sprang, so to speak, from a healthy impulse of human nature—it could not, even in the most ancient times, lead to the pathological damage we have also discussed. In later times, measures were then taken by the so-called Mysteries to prevent the onset of such harmful effects as I have attempted to describe to you. I have now said that those within Western civilization who wish to gain access to the spiritual world must do so differently. Humanity has progressed in the meantime. Other forces of the soul have developed, and one cannot simply revive the old Eastern spiritual path today. One cannot seek to make a reactionary return to prehistoric times or to earlier historical periods of human development in the realm of spiritual life. For Western civilization, the path to the supersensible worlds is that of the imagination. However, this imagination must be organically integrated into the rest of the soul life. And this can take place in the most diverse ways, just as, after all, the Eastern spiritual path was not predetermined in a completely unambiguous manner, but could be followed in the most diverse ways. Today I would like to describe the path into the spiritual world—as it is appropriate for Western civilization—in the way that could best be taken by someone who is engaged in the scientific life of the West.

[ 2 ] In my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, a sure path into the supersensory realms is indeed described, but it is described in such a way that it is, so to speak, suitable for everyone—and above all for those who have not followed a strictly scientific career. Today I would like to describe it specifically in a way that is more suited to the scientist. For this scientist, based on all my experience, I must regard as a kind of prerequisite—we will hear shortly in what sense this is meant—I must regard as a genuine prerequisite for this path of knowledge the study of what is presented in my Philosophy of Freedom. This Philosophy of Freedom was not, after all, written with the intention with which most books are written today. Today, books are written with the aim that the reader simply inform themselves about the content being communicated, that—based on their particular prior knowledge, their education, or their scholarly background—they simply take note of what a book contains in terms of content. That is not, in fact, the intended purpose of my Philosophy of Freedom. For this reason, it is not particularly popular among those who merely wish to take note of a book’s contents. My Philosophy of Freedom is intended such that one must engage in one’s own direct thought process page by page; in a sense, the book itself is merely a kind of score, and one must read this score through inner thought in order to proceed continuously from thought to thought, drawing from within oneself. Thus, this book always counts on the reader’s active intellectual participation. And it also takes into account what becomes of the soul when it engages in such mental work. The person who does not admit to himself that, once he has truly worked through this book in his own inner mental process, he has, in a sense, grasped an aspect of soul life that he had not grasped before; anyone who does not feel that they have, so to speak, been lifted out of their ordinary mental image into a thinking free from sensuality—in which one moves entirely, so that one senses how, in this thinking, one has become free from the conditions of physicality—is not actually reading this Philosophy of Freedom in the proper sense. And anyone who cannot admit this to themselves does not, in essence, understand it correctly. One must, so to speak, be able to say to oneself: Now, through this inner mental work that I have carried out, I know what pure thinking actually is.

[ 3 ] It is, in fact, peculiar that precisely what is supposed to become real in the soul as one follows my Philosophy of Freedom is denied as real by most Western philosophers. One finds numerous philosophers arguing that pure thought does not exist at all, that all thought must always be imbued with remnants—however diluted they may be—of sensory perception. One would have to conclude that such philosophers have never truly studied mathematics, nor have they ever engaged with the distinction between analytical mechanics and empirical mechanics, to make such a claim. Yet our specialization has already led to a point where people today often philosophize without having even the slightest grasp of mathematical thinking. Fundamentally, one cannot philosophize without having at least grasped the spirit of mathematical thinking. We have seen how Goethe related to this spirit of mathematical thinking, even though he himself said that he could not claim to have any particular, specialized mathematical education. So, in fact, many deny the very existence of what I would like people to acquire through the study of The Philosophy of Freedom.

[ 4 ] And now let us suppose that someone, while remaining within ordinary consciousness, were to work through this Philosophy of Freedom in the manner I have just described; then, of course, he could not say that he were somehow immersed in the supersensible world. For this Philosophy of Freedom—I wrote it quite deliberately the way it is written—because it was intended, at first, to appear before the world as a purely philosophical work. Just imagine what would have been accomplished for anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science if I had begun right away with works on Spiritual Science. Such works in the Spiritual Sciences would, of course, have been dismissed by all professional philosophers as the purest dilettantism, as lay literature. I had to write purely philosophically at first. I had to present to the world something that was conceived in the pure sense of philosophy, even though it went beyond ordinary philosophy. But of course, at some point the transition had to be made from writing purely about philosophy and the natural sciences to writing about the Spiritual Sciences. It was at a time when I had just been invited to write about Goethe’s Natural Scientific Writings as a special chapter in a German biography of Goethe. It was at the end of the 1890s. And so I was to write the chapter on Goethe’s Scientific Writings. I had already written it; it had already been submitted to the publisher; and immediately afterward my work Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and Its Relationship to the Modern Worldview was published, through which I paved the way from the purely philosophical to the anthroposophically oriented. And after this work was published, I received my manuscript back from the publisher, accompanied only by the honorarium—so that I wouldn’t make a fuss—since the rights had thus been paid in full. But of course, the scientific establishment no longer wanted a chapter on Goethe’s scientific development from the very person who had written about this mysticism.

[ 5 ] Well, I assume, then, that one has first worked through The Philosophy of Freedom from the perspective of ordinary consciousness in the manner I have described. Then one will be in the right frame of mind to undertake, so to speak, for one’s soul—in the best sense of the word—what I already described yesterday, albeit only in a few words, as the path into the realm of the imagination. This path into imagination can be undertaken—in a manner appropriate to our Western civilization—by attempting to devote oneself entirely to the external phenomenological world, allowing it to act directly upon oneself while excluding thought, yet in such a way that one still takes it in. Isn’t it true that our ordinary mental life in the waking state proceeds in such a way that we perceive, and in fact always, even as we perceive, already imbue what is perceived with mental images; in scientific thinking, we quite systematically interweave what is perceived with mental images, systematize it through mental images, and so on. By having acquired a mode of thinking such as gradually emerges in the course of The Philosophy of Freedom, one now truly finds oneself in a position to engage in such acute inner mental work that, while perceiving, one excludes mental images—one suppresses mental images—and simply surrenders oneself to external perception. But in order to strengthen the powers of the soul and, in a sense, to absorb perceptions in the proper sense—without processing them with mental images as one absorbs them—one can also do the following: instead of judging these perceptions with mental images in the ordinary sense, one creates symbolic or other images corresponding to what is seen with the eye, heard with the ear, as well as thermal images, tactile images, and so on. By, so to speak, setting perception in motion—by bringing movement and life into perception, but in a way that does not occur in ordinary mental images, rather through symbolic or artistically processed perception—one is much more likely to attain the power to allow oneself to be permeated by perception as such. One can, after all, prepare oneself well for such insight simply by truly training oneself, in the strictest sense, in what I have characterized as “phenomenalism”—that is, the thorough working through of phenomena. If one has truly sought at the material limits of cognition—not out of inertia breaking through the tapestry of the senses to search there for all manner of metaphysical entities in atoms and molecules—but if one has used concepts to organize the phenomena, to trace the phenomena back to the primordial phenomena, then one thereby receives an education that can subsequently keep all conceptual elements at bay from the phenomena. And if one then goes on to symbolize and visualize the phenomena, one gains a powerful spiritual force to, so to speak, absorb the external world into oneself without recourse to concepts.

[ 6 ] Of course, one need not believe that this can be achieved in a short time. Spiritual research requires far more work than laboratory or observatory research. Above all, it requires an intense effort of one’s own will. And once one has engaged in such symbolic mental images for a while, and has also made an effort to dwell—in a contemplative manner, for a long time and ever longer—on the images that one allows to be fully present in the soul in this way, based entirely on the phenomena within the soul—images that would otherwise merely pass by, since in life one rushes from sensation to sensation, from experience to experience—once one has become accustomed to to rest contemplatively—for a long time and ever longer—on an image that one fully comprehends, one that one has created oneself or that has been suggested by someone else, so that it cannot be a mere reminiscence; once one has become accustomed to resting contemplatively on such an image, and if one repeats this process over and over again, the inner strength of the soul is strengthened, and one eventually becomes aware that one is experiencing something within oneself of which one previously had no idea. At most—but one should not misunderstand this—one can form an image of what one is now experiencing, though only within oneself, by recalling particularly vivid dream images; except that dream images are always reminiscences and must not be directly related to anything external, whereas what comes to meet one, as it were, as a reaction from one’s own inner being. So when one lives through these images, it is something entirely real, and one comes to realize that one now encounters within oneself that spiritual element which provides the process of growth—which is the power of growth. One realizes that one is entering a part of one’s human constitution that is within one, that connects with one, that is active within one—but which one previously experienced only unconsciously. How was it experienced unconsciously?

[ 7 ] Well, I have already told you that from birth until the change of teeth, a spiritual-soul element permeates the entire human being, and that it then more or less emancipates itself. But then, between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, this spiritual-soul element—which, so to speak, submerges itself into the physical body—first stimulates the love instinct, but also many other things. All of this, however, happens unconsciously. But if one approaches such soul processes—as I have characterized them—with full consciousness and seeks to trace this penetration of the spiritual-soul element into the physical organism, then one sees how such processes take place within the human being, how the human being is, in fact, always, from birth onward, devoted to the external world. Today, this surrender to the external world is regarded as mere abstract perception or abstract cognition. That is not the case. In that we are surrounded by a world of color, in that we are surrounded by a world of sound, in that we are surrounded by a world of warmth—in short, in that we are surrounded by everything that makes an impression on our senses, which, through the processing of these impressions by our mental images, in turn makes fresh impressions on our organism—in that we consciously experience all of this, we see that, when we experience these color impressions and sound impressions unconsciously from childhood onward, we take in something that, as a spiritual force, permeates our organism. And when, for example, we take in the feeling of love between the time of losing our baby teeth and reaching sexual maturity, this is not something that grows out of our body, but rather something that the cosmos gives us—something the cosmos gives us through colors, through sounds, through streams of warmth that reach us. Heat is something other than mere heat; light is something other than light in the physical sense; sound is something other than sound in the physical sense. When we have sensory impressions, what is conscious is, at first, I would say, only the external sound, the external color. But through this surrender, it is not what modern physics or physiology dreams of—etheric movements, atomic movements, and the like—that is at work, but rather the spirit; it is the forces that, here in the physical world between birth and death, make us what we are as human beings. And as we embark on such paths of knowledge, as I have characterized them, we become aware of how we are organized out of the external world. We consciously trace what lives and breathes within us, as we now, above all, gain a clear sense that spirit is present in the external world. It is precisely through phenomenology that we come to see clearly how spirit is present in the external world. It is not by engaging in abstract metaphysics, but precisely through phenomenology that we arrive at the knowledge of the spirit—by perceiving, when we raise to consciousness what we otherwise do unconsciously, how the spiritual penetrates us through the sensory world and organizes us.

[ 8 ] I told you yesterday that the Eastern sage, so to speak, disregards the significance of the spoken word, the significance of thought, and the significance of self-perception, and perceives these things differently, entering into a different spiritual relationship with them—with language—because language, thought, and self-perception initially distract us from the spiritual world and direct us socially toward other human beings. In a sense, in ordinary physical life, we “purchase” our existence in the social world by making language audible, thoughts transparent, and self-perception perceptible through feeling. The Eastern sage, on the other hand, accepted the inaudibility of the word and lived within the word. He accepted the opacity of thought and lived within the thought, and so on. We in the West are more dependent on looking back to the human being as we journey into the supersensible worlds.

[ 9 ] Let us recall, then, that human beings also possess a certain kind of sensory organization within themselves. I have already explained how human beings have three inner senses through which they perceive their inner world just as we otherwise perceive the external world. We have a sense of balance, through which we sense our proper spatial orientation as human beings and can thereby work within it with our will. We have a sense of movement, through which we know—even when moving in the dark—by inner sensation that we are moving, not merely by perceiving our own movements in relation to the other objects we pass by. We have a sense of movement. And we have a sense of life, through which we perceive our overall well-being—our inner life situation, so to speak—as it is constantly in a state of flux. These three inner senses work together with the will, particularly during the first seven years of a person’s life. It is guided by the sense of balance, transforming a being that cannot walk—and later can only crawl—into a being that can stand upright and walk. This is the process of developing upright gait mediated by the sense of balance; it is a positioning within the world through the sense of balance. In the same way, we develop into fully human beings through the sense of movement and the sense of life. Anyone who can observe—with the same objectivity as one observes in a laboratory or a physics lab—how the human being develops their spiritual, soul, and physical aspects will see that whatever has organized the human being throughout this process, and which was primarily active within them during the first seven years of life, organizing them from within—that this emancipates itself and takes on a somewhat different form later on, beginning with the time of tooth replacement. At that point, the human being is no longer, I might say, as intensely connected to their inner self as the child is. The child is intensely connected to its inner self, to human balance, to human movement, and to human life. But at the same time as this emancipation from balance, movement, and life takes place, something else develops. A certain sensitivity develops in the three other senses: the sense of smell, the sense of taste, and the sense of touch. It is extraordinarily interesting to observe in every detail how the child—this is indeed most evident at an early age, but it remains clearly perceptible later on as well for those who train themselves to observe it—how the child gradually finds its way into life, guided by the sense of smell, the sense of taste, and the sense of touch, and how, in a certain sense, while the human being pushes balance, movement, and life outward from within, he draws inward all that constitutes the qualities of the senses of smell, taste, and touch. In a sense, one is exhaled, the other is inhaled over a longer period of life, so that within our organism the forces of balance, movement, and life—which push outward from within—meet the quality-oriented aspects of smelling, tasting, and touching—which push inward from without. And this is brought about by the interpenetration of one triad of the senses with the other triad of the senses. Through this interpenetration, a firm sense of self arises in the human being; through it, the human being, so to speak, first experiences itself as a true self. And just as we are separated from the outer spiritual realm—rightly so, of course, for otherwise we would not become social beings in physical life—just as we are separated from this spirituality through language, through the perception of thoughts, through the perception of the “I” in relation to other human beings, so too, precisely because the qualities of smell, taste, and touch run counter to balance, movement, and life, we become cut off inwardly from this triad of life, movement, and balance, which would otherwise reveal themselves to us directly. In a sense, the experiences of the senses of smell, taste, and touch lie in front of what we would otherwise experience through the sense of balance, the sense of movement, and the sense of life. And therein lies the result of that development toward imagination of which I have spoken: just as the Eastern person pauses at language in order to live within it, pauses at thought in order to live within it, and pauses at the perception of the “I” in order to live within it—so as to penetrate outward into the spiritual world—exactly as he pauses, we, through imagination—by, as it were, absorbing external perception without forming images—come to exercise, so to speak, the opposite activity from that which the Eastern person exercises in relation to language, thought perception, and self-perception. He remains with them. He lives himself into them. The one striving toward imagination winds his way through smell, taste, and touch; he penetrates into the inner realm, so that—remaining undisturbed by the perceptions of smell, touch, and taste—he encounters that which is to be experienced through balance, movement, and life.

[ 10 ] It is a great moment when one penetrates through all that I have characterized as the triad of the senses—taste, smell, and touch—and, in a sense, finds oneself face to face with what is there in motion, in balance, and in life.

[ 11 ] It is interesting, especially after such preparation, to examine what is so often presented by Western mysticism. Certainly, I am far—very far—from failing to recognize the poetic, the beautiful, and the imaginative elements in some forms of mysticism. Certainly, I admire what, for example, Saint Teresa, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and others—even Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler—have presented. But for the true spiritual seeker, all of this is revealed—everything that arises when one takes the path inward and does not pass through the realm of smell, taste, and touch. Read the writings of certain individuals who have described particularly clearly what they have experienced in this way. They speak of a “tasting” of the inner world, of a tasting in relation to that which unfolds as the spiritual-soul life within the human being; they also speak of a “smelling,” and in a certain sense they speak of a “touching.” And anyone who knows how to read correctly will see very clearly, for example, in Mechthild of Magdeburg or in Saint Teresa: They follow this path inward, but they do not proceed through smelling, tasting, and touching. They do describe these experiences in beautiful poetic images, but they are merely describing what is meant by “one smells oneself inwardly,” “one tastes oneself inwardly,” and “one touches oneself inwardly.”

[ 12 ] Yes, seeing the true nature of reality with a spiritually developed sense is not as pleasant as having a voluptuous mysticism—for voluptuous it certainly is—narrated to you, a mysticism that, when all is said and done, merely satisfies a refined, inward-turning egoism of the soul. As I said, I, too, can admire this mysticism just as it is admired by others, but as a true spiritual researcher, one must know that this mysticism stops halfway, that what emerges in the beautiful poetic images of Mechthild of Magdeburg and so on, of Saint Teresa, is in reality nothing other than what one smells, tastes, and feels before penetrating to the true inner core. The truth may be unpleasant under certain circumstances, perhaps even cruel at times. But it is not fitting for humanity today to become spiritually stunted by a nebulous, imperfect mysticism. It is fitting for our time alone to penetrate the true, human inner being with strong intellectual power—with that very strength that we have, not without reason, acquired in a far more disciplined manner through the natural sciences when dealing with the external world. This natural science is not misunderstood. It is embraced precisely for its disciplining and methodical aspects. And precisely when one has mastered this natural science, then one knows, on the one hand, how to properly appreciate that which comes from a nebulous mysticism, but one also knows that this nebulous mysticism is not what should drive a movement of Spiritual Science today; rather, this movement of Spiritual Science must seek a clear understanding of one’s own human nature, so that a clear spiritual understanding of the external world may thereby come about.

[ 13 ] I know that if I did not speak as I must speak in accordance with the truth, I could have behind me all those rambling, nebulous mystics who pursue mysticism solely to satisfy an inner, spiritual lust. But that cannot be the point of what is being pursued here; rather, the sole aim must be to find forces for life—forces that can enter our scientific and social lives as spiritual forces.

[ 14 ] Once one has penetrated to that which lives in the sense of balance, in the sense of life, and in the sense of movement, one has arrived at what one initially experiences—because of its transparency—as the true inner essence of the human being. One knows from the nature of the matter itself: Now one can go no deeper. But even then, one has more than enough to begin with. For what the nebulous mystics dream of—that is not to be found. Instead, one finds a genuine organology, and above all, one finds within oneself the true essence of that which is in balance, that which is in motion, that which is permeated by life. That is what one finds within oneself.

[ 15 ] And then, once you have gone through this, something quite peculiar has occurred. Then, at just the right moment, you notice something. I have, of course, assumed that one has previously worked through The Philosophy of Freedom intellectually. One has then, so to speak, set it aside and taken the path of contemplation and meditation toward the inner self. One has advanced to the point of balance, to movement, to life. One lives in this life, in this equilibrium, in this movement. And running entirely parallel to this—without our having done anything other than follow this contemplative, this meditative path—running entirely parallel to this, our intellectual engagement with The Philosophy of Freedom has now become something entirely different, that is, what can be experienced through such a Philosophy of Freedom in pure thought has now, because we have worked inwardly and spiritually in an entirely different realm, become something entirely different. It has become richer, more substantial. And while, on the one hand, we have delved into our inner selves and deepened our imagination, we have brought what we actually achieved through our intellectual work on The Philosophy of Freedom out of ordinary consciousness. We have transformed thoughts that previously hovered more or less abstractly in pure thinking into forces rich in content that now live in our consciousness, and what was once pure thought has become inspiration. We have developed imagination, and pure thinking has become inspiration. And as we proceed along this path, we come to distinguish—since we have attained it through two paths that must be strictly distinguished from one another—between what we receive from pure thinking as inspiration—life, which at a lower level is thinking, then thinking elevated to inspiration—and, on the other hand, what we experience as a state of equilibrium, a state of movement, a state of life. And we can now connect these two experiences, these two kinds of experience, with one another. We can connect the outer with the inner. Through the connection of inspiration and imagination, we arrive once again at intuition. What have we actually accomplished here? Well, I would like to characterize this for you from another perspective. But first I must draw your attention to how the Eastern person ascends further, after having trained himself in mantras, after having lived in language, in the word, and then proceeds not only to live in the rhythm of language but also, in a certain way, to consciously experience the breathing process—indeed, to experience the breathing process artificially, so to speak, by varying it in the most diverse ways. This is, for him, the next higher stage—one that, again, is not directly applicable to our Western world. What, then, does the Eastern yoga student attain by devoting himself to conscious, regulated, and varied breathing? Oh, he then experiences something very remarkable during inhalation. During inhalation, he experiences what is in the air—not merely when we perceive it physically, but when we connect with it and thereby perceive it spiritually. As he inhales, the person who becomes a true yoga student experiences that which organizes him throughout—spiritually organizes him—that which has not exhausted its purpose in this life until death, but which, entering us through the spirituality of the external air, creates something within us that passes through the gate of death. To consciously experience the process of inhalation means to experience within oneself that which is enduring even after the body is shed. For to consciously experience the process of breathing means to experience the inner reaction to inhalation; it means to experience that which preceded our birth—or, let us say, our conception—in our spiritual-soul life, that which was already at work in our embryonic formation and which then continued to work within our organism during our childhood. To consciously grasp the breathing process means to grasp oneself beyond birth and death. The progression from experiencing the saying, the word, to experiencing the breathing process meant delving further into the inspired grasping of the eternal within the human being. We Westerners must, in a sense, experience the same thing in a different sphere.

[ 16 ] What, exactly, is the process of perception? The process of perception is, in fact, nothing other than a modified process of inhalation. As we inhale air, that air presses against our diaphragm and our entire body. The cerebrospinal fluid is pushed upward through the spinal canal toward the brain. This establishes a connection between brain activity and inhalation. And that which, through the inhalation process, becomes specialized in the brain in this way manifests as perception in sensory activity. So, I would say, perception is a branch of inhalation. Then again, during exhalation: the cerebrospinal fluid flows downward, exerting pressure on the blood circulation. The downward flow of the cerebrospinal fluid is connected to volitional activity, which in turn is connected to exhalation. But anyone who truly studies The Philosophy of Freedom will find that in that thinking which we attain as pure thinking, will and thinking coincide. Pure thinking is, in essence, an expression of the will. Therefore, what thinking is—what pure thinking is—is now related to what the Easterners experienced in the process of exhalation. Pure thinking is related to the process of exhalation, just as perception is related to the process of inhalation. We must, so to speak, go deeper into the inner self of the human being and undergo the same process that the Easterners undergo through their yoga philosophy. This yoga philosophy is based on regulated inhalation and exhalation, and in this way grasps the eternal within the human being. What can the Westerner do? He can clearly make perception, on the one hand, and thinking, on the other, into a soul experience for himself. And he can unite perception and thinking—which are otherwise connected only abstractly and formally in a state of rest—in inner experience, so that he experiences inwardly, spiritually and soulfully, what one experiences physically during inhalation and exhalation. Physically, one experiences inhalation and exhalation; in their harmony, one consciously experiences the eternal. In ordinary experience, one experiences perception and thinking. By making one’s soul life flexible, one experiences the pendulum swing, the rhythm, the ceaseless interplay of perception and thinking. And just as a higher reality develops in inhalation and exhalation for the Eastern person, so too does it develop for the Westerner as he cultivates within himself the living process of modified inhalation in perception and modified exhalation in pure thinking—by weaving concept, thought, and perception, a spiritual-psychic breathing, so to speak, replaces the physical breathing of yoga philosophy. And through this rhythmic beat, through this rhythmic exhalation in perception and thought, he gradually forces his way upward toward the true spiritual reality in imagination, inspiration, and intuition. And when, in my Philosophy of Freedom, I initially merely pointed out philosophically that true reality arises from the interplay of perception and thinking, it was necessary—precisely because this Philosophy of Freedom was conceived as an inner cultivation of the soul—to draw attention to what a person in the West must practice in order to enter the spiritual world itself. The Eastern person says: systole, diastole; inhalation, exhalation. The Westerner must substitute: perception, thinking. The Eastern person says: training the physical breath—; the Westerner says: training the spiritual-soul breath in the process of cognition through perception and thinking.

[ 17 ] This had to be held up, so to speak, in contrast to what could indeed be experienced—I would say—as the dead end of Western intellectual development. Let me describe this to you in the following way. It was in 1841 that Michelet, the Berlin philosopher, published Hegel’s posthumous works on the philosophy of nature. Hegel, together with Schelling, had worked on the development of a philosophy of nature at the end of the 18th century. Schelling, a fiery young spirit, had initially constructed his philosophy of nature in a remarkable way from what he called “intellectual intuition.” But he reached a point where he could go no further. He reached the point where he then immersed himself in mysticism. His work Bruno, or On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things and his beautiful treatise on human freedom or the origin of evil bear witness to his immersion in mysticism in such a wonderful way. But all of this still did not advance the matter, and Schelling began to remain silent, merely promising time and again that a philosophy would yet follow which would finally reveal the true secret forces that had been only hinted at in his earlier philosophy of nature. And when Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature was published by Michelet in 1841, Schelling had still not shared with the world what was expected of him—what he had often promised: his true philosophy of revelation. He was called to Berlin. But even what he was able to present there was not the true Spirit that was meant to permeate what he had established as philosophy of nature. He had strived for an intellectual conception. But that, too, was something at which he came to a standstill, because he could not, through imagination, enter the realm of which I have spoken to you today. And so he remained stuck. And Hegel, who was a more rationalist thinker, took up Schelling’s idea and, by introducing pure concepts into the observation of nature, developed it further. This gave rise to Hegel’s philosophy of nature. And so we had Schelling’s promise of a creation of nature out of the spirit, which was never fulfilled, and so we had Hegel’s philosophy of nature, which was abandoned by natural science in the second half of the 19th century—though misunderstood, but it had to remain misunderstood, because in the face of actual observation of nature—in the face of the phenomenology of nature—one could not establish a connection to the intellectual content offered by Hegel’s philosophy of nature. It is, I would say, a remarkable coincidence: how Schelling went from Munich to Berlin, how great things were expected of him there, yet how he had nothing to report. It was a disappointment for all those who had believed that Hegel’s philosophy of nature would provide revelations about nature derived from pure thought. Thus, I would say, it had been historically demonstrated by the fact that Schelling had advanced as far as intellectual insights but was now unable to reach true imagination, and by the fact that Hegel had also shown that, with pure thought alone—if one does not reach imagination—one cannot reach inspiration either, and thus cannot reach the mysteries of nature; it had become evident that this had led the West into a dead end in its development. One did not yet know how to counter what had come from the East and had given rise to skepticism; one did not know how to counter it with anything that was spiritually imbued. And precisely the one who has so lovingly immersed himself in the thought of Schelling and Hegel—the one who, through this, has been able to see with love, what could not be achieved through Western philosophy—it was precisely that person who had to strive for anthroposophy, for an anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science for the West, so that we might have something that draws from the spirit just as the Easterners drew from the spirit through systole and diastole and their interplay. We in the West have the spiritual-soulful interplay of perception and thought, as we ascend to a science that is not merely an abstract science but a living one—and yet is also the very science that allows us to live within the element of truth. And after all the failures of Kantianism, Schellingianism, and Hegelianism, we needed a philosophy that, through the discovery of the path of the spirit, could show how truth and science relate to one another in their true relationship; such a spiritualized science in which truth can truly live for the benefit of human progress.