The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Spirit as a Guide: Through the Sensory World and Into the Supersensory World

[ 1 ] Even today, it is still widely regarded as a sign of a particularly enlightened mind to reject the possibility of penetrating the spiritual, the supersensible world, through human knowledge. It is true that in certain circles—particularly those characterized by a scientific way of thinking—people are already taking a stand against this so-called “enlightenment.” However, no matter how much may be said from this perspective about the spiritual and the supersensible world from one viewpoint or another, it cannot be said that a truly satisfactory path into the world of the spirit is even being attempted or sought after in wider circles today.

[ 2 ] Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science seeks to demonstrate that it is possible to penetrate the supersensible world—not merely through an indefinite, dogmatic belief, but through a genuine and true continuation of the very mode of thinking that has made scientific thought so great in modern humanity—and, as I said here a few weeks ago, —is to find its outward expression through the Goetheanum in Dornach—to present to the world as evidence to be fathomed through the experience of the spirit.

[ 3 ] If, once again, I am to explain—from a different perspective than I have already done here in numerous lectures—what exactly the path of this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science is, I would like to begin today by speaking about something that seems quite abstract and may appear distant to some.

[ 4 ] It is no coincidence that the Goetheanum takes its name from Goethe. In a certain sense, Goethe’s entire worldview and mode of thought form the starting point for a more recent endeavor in the Spiritual Sciences. And while one might say that what we find in Goethe still appears to be merely a beginning, perhaps the fundamental principles can best be illustrated by taking certain simple thoughts or ideas of Goethe’s as a starting point. Well known in wider circles, but unfortunately still far too little appreciated today, is what Goethe called his “theory of metamorphosis,” in which we also find his idea of the “primordial plant.”

[ 5 ] By this “primordial plant,” Goethe does not mean a simple, sensory plant form, as a modern naturalist would say, but rather something that can only be grasped and experienced in the spirit. But at the same time, by this “primordial plant,” he means something that cannot be found in any single plant, but rather something that can be discovered in every single plant of the Earth’s vast plant kingdom. He thus assumes that—I would say—within every sensory plant there exists a “primordial plant” that can be grasped supersensually and experienced in the spirit.

[ 6 ] He has a mental image of the same thing—albeit less explicitly—for the others, for non-plant organisms. And while Goethe developed this idea of the “primordial plant”—in part precisely out of his artistic sensibility—it must nevertheless be said that his primary aim was to find, through something like the “primordial plant,” something scientific in the very best sense of the word—something that could serve as a guide for humanity, a spiritual guide through the entire vast world of plants.

[ 7 ] When Goethe traveled through Italy to clarify and refine his worldview, he once wrote to his friends in Weimar—who were well aware of what he actually intended with his “primordial plant”—that, especially in Italy’s rich, exuberant flora, the image of the primordial plant had once again dawned on him. At first in abstract terms—though, as we shall soon see, one need not confine oneself to the abstract—he says: Such a “primordial plant” must surely exist, for how else could one find, within the entire diverse plant kingdom, that every single being is truly a complete plant? —As I said, this is expressed in abstract terms, but Goethe speaks of this primordial plant in a much more specific and far more forceful way. For example, he says: Once one has grasped this primordial plant in the mind, one can, from the living image of this primordial plant, form one’s own images of individual real plants that have the potential to exist.

[ 8 ] One need only look, in the right sense, at what is actually meant by such a word. Goethe thus seeks to arrive, in spirit, at an idea of the plant being, and he wants to have the spiritual capacity to form, out of his primordial plant, a spiritual entity that is a single plant—not, however, one identical to a plant he perceives through his senses, but rather one that, in a sense, adds to the sensory plants a plant that does not exist in the sensory realm but would nevertheless have the potential, given the right conditions, to exist there. What is actually being pointed to here? It points to the fact that human beings, through their soul, can immerse themselves so deeply in sensory reality and, in this immersion, experience the spiritual element inherent in sensory reality in such a way that they become completely one with this Spirit, which weaves and lives creatively throughout nature.

[ 9 ] This is precisely what is so great about Goethe’s worldview: that it aims at this immersion in reality, and that it is convinced that, insofar as one immerses oneself in this reality, one arrives at the spiritual aspect of this reality, so that one discovers the spirit of reality, which can then serve as a guide through the entire bewildering diversity of the sensory world itself.

[ 10 ] Now, what Goethe strove for can be extended to the entire world surrounding human beings and to human beings themselves. Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science has made it its task to extend this mode of thinking, in the broadest sense, to everything that confronts human beings—both from the outside and from within themselves. It is thus the opposite of all vague obscurantism, the opposite of all vague mysticism. It strives for what Goethe claimed for his worldview: to delve into the spiritual world with mathematical clarity and mathematical transparency.

[ 11 ] Now, the Spiritual Science feels itself to be entirely in harmony with modern natural science, even though it goes far beyond the natural science of recent times. One need only have studied this natural science to see how the Spiritual Science must spring forth from it. Let us consider what this modern natural science actually strives for. It sees its true goal in attaining a knowledge of the things surrounding human beings—the mineral, plant, and animal worlds, and indeed human beings themselves—in which no subjective feelings or mental images of human beings themselves play a role. This natural science seeks, particularly from its newer standpoint—that of the experiment, which it has rightly adopted as a natural science—to investigate nature in such a way that the individual phenomena and processes of nature itself reveal their essence and their laws, so that human beings do not weave into what they call knowledge of nature anything that they find within themselves.

[ 12 ] This is what distinguishes what has emerged as the natural sciences over the past three to four centuries—and especially in the 19th century—from the understanding of nature in earlier times. Anyone who traces this understanding of nature from earlier times knows that people projected into natural phenomena what they had formed in their mental images and, in a sense, extracted from those phenomena what they themselves had first projected into them. The aim of modern natural science is precisely to ensure that this does not happen—that human beings allow nature to speak to them entirely without preconceptions.

[ 13 ] But when one studies nature, one cannot help but let the mind do the exploring. One cannot help but apply what one possesses within oneself as a life of thought and ideas—and which is of a spiritual nature—to the context of natural phenomena. Now, one can take one of two paths. The conventional scientific worldview of recent times has taken one path; the other, however, is the one that anthroposophical Spiritual Science would like to take.

[ 14 ] When the natural sciences develop their ideas—ideas that are supposed to be derived from nature as purely as I have described—then they can, I would say, use these ideas to reflect on themselves; then they can ask themselves: “What is the nature and value of the ideas we apply to external nature?” - Modern natural science does not do this. Modern natural science limits itself to discovering everything about nature that does not provide an answer to the question: “What, then, is human beings themselves?” - This is, in fact, the defining characteristic—and, one might say, the defining feature—of all discerning natural scientists: that they say: Yes, we can investigate many things about the physical world outside and within us—but this does not answer the question: What is man himself? - And time and again, one must emphasize: In its endeavor to understand nature, natural science presents a worldview in which man is not included as soul and spirit. Science, honestly standing on today’s vantage point, has no answer to the question of soul and spirit.

[ 15 ] The question of why this is so must be answered historically. Natural science itself does not know why it fails to advance toward an understanding of the soul and the spirit, why it comes to a standstill—despite its admirable findings about external nature—when it comes to the soul and the spirit, why, time and again, natural scientists emerge who say: “Yes, if natural science were to speak of the soul and the spirit, it would be overstepping its bounds.”—One believes one is speaking impartially about nature. But they do not speak impartially, for hanging over natural science—and indeed over the mindset of modern natural science—is a burden, a pressure: that which has become established over the centuries as a certain way of thinking. And this pressure consists in the fact that certain religious movements have claimed a monopoly on the truths of the soul and the spirit.

[ 16 ] If we go back a few centuries, we find that precisely during the period when modern science was in its infancy, religious creeds claimed a monopoly on dictating the truths about the soul and the spirit. Modern science retreated in the face of this claim to a monopoly. Modern science has made magnificent inroads into the external natural world; but it was not because this exploration of the external natural world had led to the realization that one could not ascend to the soul and spirit that this ascent was abandoned, but rather because it was so deeply ingrained in unconscious human perceptions that the claim to a monopoly by the confessional religions had to be taken into account. Consequently, this belief transformed into an apparent proof that one could not penetrate the soul and the spirit.

[ 17 ] Anyone who has seriously engaged with the scientific research methods of recent times, and who has then inwardly and spiritually processed precisely those ideas about external nature—with the exception of the actual essence of the human being—knows that the other path taken by anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science must be pursued further into the future of humanity. If natural science understood itself—if it were not living under the pressure alluded to—then, precisely because it strives to be a natural science that disregards the subjective aspect of the human being, it would arrive at Goethe’s principle: to grow together with the spirit that is spread throughout the phenomena, facts, and beings of nature. And modern natural science, if it understood itself, would of its own accord choose precisely that which anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science must now claim for itself as a continuation of the natural scientific direction.

[ 18 ] However, what can be cultivated through the natural sciences—namely, inner imagination and the power of thought—must be substantially supported by careful inner spiritual methods. And the development of such inner spiritual methods forms the basis for everything through which the Spiritual Science referred to here seeks to find its way into the supersensible, spiritual world at all.

[ 19 ] Today, people perhaps have a mental image of what is meant here by this path into the supersensible world. People think it refers to something like inner daydreaming, a surrender to all sorts of mental images through which one weaves all manner of ideas about what the nature of things is supposed to be. One might imagine this to be easy compared to the difficulty of the experimental method or the methods used in observatories and clinics. But if you read through something like what I have attempted to describe in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? or in my Secret Science, you will see that it is not a matter of just any random daydreaming in inner mental images, but rather a strictly law-governed, inner psychological work of the spirit ascending into the spirit. For true Spiritual Science can never hold the view that one can penetrate the spirit through external experimental methods; rather, true Spiritual Science must uphold the view that only the spirit within the human being can find the spirit of the world.

[ 20 ] What a person must accomplish within themselves, I have often referred to in these lectures and in my books as meditation or concentration. Today I would simply like to point out that this work of concentration and meditation is a purely inner work of the soul. But toward what does this inner work of the soul strive? Toward what does this work—carried out solely with inner soul forces—this devotion to the pure unfolding of the soul-spiritual within the human being—strive?

[ 21 ] You know, as we live in the world, we perceive it through our senses, and then we process this world. That is, after all, how the natural sciences operate as well. We process this world by reflecting on it, by uncovering its laws, and by forming mental images about it. But you also know that this process of forming concepts leads to something else—something that is intimately connected with the health of our personal human being. This process of forming concepts about the world is connected to our ability to retain the impressions of the world, as we say, through our memory, through our power of recollection. People so easily overlook this power of recollection, this human memory, because it is something so commonplace to them. But this is precisely what is distinctive about the genuine pursuit of knowledge: that which is often commonplace must be understood by human beings as precisely that which raises the most important, the most significant questions.

[ 22 ] When we perceive the sensory world, form mental images about it, and after some time seem to bring these mental images forth from within ourselves—so that we remember events we have experienced—there is much that is unconscious in these memories, in this workings of memory. Just consider how little control you actually have over your memory through your will, how little you can, so to speak, command your power of recollection. Above all, consider how little you are able, while you are perceiving the external world, to think about this memory at the same time. Or is it perhaps the case that, as a person looks out into the world with their eyes and hears sounds with their ears, they simultaneously ensure that mental images are present to make recollection possible? No, for that would require a person to consciously exercise yet another faculty alongside their perceptions and inner sensory experiences. In reality, they do not do this in ordinary life. I would say that memory, with its power, runs alongside external life. But it is that which works subconsciously, which, in a sense, helps determine all life in the external sensory world, so that we carry this life forward through our memory throughout life. It is this that must be brought up from the subconscious as a force. In other words: We cannot bring up from the depths of our soul that which we unconsciously exercise as a power of memory as it runs alongside our lives simply by recalling our experiences, but rather by attempting to bring the power—which we otherwise do not even know, which simply runs alongside us, as I have said—to a level of conscious clarity comparable to that of external sensory perception, by drawing this power up from the depths of the subconscious and weaving and living within what is otherwise in the subconscious realm of memory. If we do not use the power of recollection for memory or for mere remembrance, but rather to allow ideas and mental images—which are otherwise kept alive only by the power of recollection—to be consciously present in our minds, then we strengthen something within our spirit through which, when the necessary moment arrives, we come to experience a completely different kind of awakening than the one we experience every morning. If one repeatedly and consistently works consciously in the way that otherwise only memory—the power of recollection—works, then one experiences something of a new awakening in the soul. One experiences something of the emergence in the soul of a person entirely different from the one who otherwise moves through the sensory world. The spirit cannot be reached through theorizing. Any philosophical inquiry that seeks to reach the spirit through mere deduction actually has nothing else in mind but the word or words “spirit.” The spirit must be experienced. And it can be experienced only by bringing to the surface that which is otherwise subconscious memory activity—that which lives in the deeper layers of our human soul—so that it lives within us with the same luminous clarity as that which we otherwise perceive through our eyes and hear through our ears, and so that in what has been brought to the surface, the conscious will lives just as the conscious will lives when I turn my gaze from this wall toward that wall, in order to turn my eyes away from what I see here and look at what I can see there. As I make use of my senses, the conscious will lives in this act of making use of the senses. This will must fully permeate

[ 23 ] Through this inner work of the soul, one arrives at something that is a continuation of the ordinary activity of the human soul—something that relates to that ordinary activity in the same way that waking life relates to the life of sleep, from which, at most, dreams emerge.

[ 24 ] That there exists within human nature something that can be brought to the surface and that becomes a new organ of perception—something that becomes what Goethe calls the “eye of the soul” or the “eye of the spirit”—this is precisely what anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science seeks to demonstrate through gradual immersion in such inner soul work. Through this, it will express what natural science is unable to express, because it operates under the pressure I have alluded to. But this pressure must—because humanity longs for it—be removed from humanity’s understanding; one can perceive this longing if one is only open-minded enough to do so.

[ 25 ] As you can see, anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science does not aim to be some kind of misguided mysticism or something obscure, but rather a truly genuine continuation of what is currently known in the natural sciences. And it is precisely those who have received a scientific education who will find it easier to concentrate and meditate on their thoughts; for they are accustomed to methods and modes of inquiry that set aside the subjective aspects of the human being and delve fully into the objective. If one now applies what one has thus cultivated through the natural sciences specifically to meditation, then one eliminates all human arbitrariness; one brings into meditation—into the inner work of the soul—something that is as objective a law as that of nature itself. Precisely by incorporating the mode of thinking and imagination characteristic of the natural sciences into the human being, one overcomes the chaotic, unclear self-knowledge that is sought through certain convoluted and misguided forms of mysticism, where one merely seeks to brood endlessly over one’s own inner self. In contrast to this untrained brooding over one’s own inner self stands the kind of inner work that, at every step, proceeds just as the most conscientious natural scientist does—by extending one’s power of judgment over what unfolds before one’s eyes or before one’s instruments.

[ 26 ] That is one aspect. I would say it is the aspect that points to the awakening of special powers of cognition. Ordinary memory, however, will not be present in those moments when one seeks to explore the spiritual directly, for this power of memory has itself undergone a metamorphosis. It has become a spiritual eye capable of perceiving the spirit. One cannot penetrate to the true spirit using the ordinary deductions of today’s conventional logic. Anyone who wishes to speak of a true penetration into the spirit must point to the actually existing powers that lead to this spirit. And one such truly existing force is the power of memory. But this power of memory must be transformed; it must become something entirely different. Any other attempt to penetrate the spirit simultaneously leads into darkness, because the human will is thereby bypassed—and with it, the most essential part of the human being itself. Just as we regard that which arises from—I might say—the organic depths of our spirit as fantastical, just as we do not describe that which we do not have under our control as true memory, so too will the true spiritual researcher not accept any content of the soul for his spiritual research that he does not completely penetrate with the light of his will.

[ 27 ] So much for one aspect—the life of the imagination—as it is used in spiritual research. But there is something else in human beings that can be utilized—and must be utilized—if one truly wishes to find the path into the supersensible, into the spiritual world. And just as Spiritual Science is challenged by the spirit of natural science through the mode of thinking characteristic of modern times, so too is it challenged, on the other hand, by human life in modern times. Anyone who traces the development of the human soul over the past few centuries with an open mind—not with the prejudice of today’s historians, but precisely with an open mind—can conclude that a tremendous shift occurred in the constitution of human souls around the middle of the 15th century; admittedly, this shift took place only within the civilized world, but precisely within that civilized world. It is merely a prejudice to believe, based solely on external historical facts, that a human soul in the civilized world of the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. possessed the same inner constitution as human souls today. Certainly, there are also today human souls that have lagged behind, who still stand more or less at the level of the 8th and 9th centuries; but these are precisely instructive because they also take us back, outwardly, to that time. But on the whole, we can say: One need only look at human life in accordance with experience. A tremendous upheaval has taken place, the effects of which have become increasingly evident since the middle of the 15th century. If one wishes to describe it more precisely, one must say: If one goes back beyond this point in time, one finds that people related to one another quite differently than is actually the case today, and than what humanity is actually striving for in the future through unconscious human forces. Whatever one may say against this based on certain prejudices, there is a striving for a certain kind of relationship between people that began at the point in time described. In earlier times, people were closely connected to one another through blood ties, through tribal kinship, through everything that, arising from their organism, made them related to other people, or that made them related to other people through the organic connection expressed, for example, in sexual love. Do we not see—if we are only willing to see—that in place of the old bonds of blood, in place of the old clan ties, the old family ties, and the old tribal ties, there is increasingly taking their place that which acts from one human being to another in such a way that it passes from the soul—from the willing soul of one human being—to the willing soul of another? Do we not see that the development of the modern era makes it increasingly necessary for human beings to draw near to one another through something entirely different from their mere physical organism? We do indeed see that since the time mentioned, the consciousness of personality has been growing, and that human beings have become ever more inward-looking—and thus also ever more lonely. Since that time, human beings have lived with their inner lives—I would say—in ever-increasing isolation within themselves. The inner life closes itself off from the outside world. The blood no longer speaks when we stand face to face with our neighbor. We must stir our inner selves into action. We must reach out into the other. We must merge spiritually with the other. There is a great deal of misunderstanding—often particularly in those circles that today rightly consider themselves socialist—regarding what might be called the social principle, the social impulse of modern times. One sees this social impulse emerging; yet even today, very few circles understand what it actually consists of.

[ 28 ] It consists in the fact that, within the human being who has become lonely, the impulse is awakening more and more to reach out to other people through one’s will on a soul-spiritual level, so that one’s neighbor becomes the one who is connected to us through our consciousness—not through our blood, not through our organic connection. There we stand face to face with others and feel the need to live our way into them. What we call goodwill today, what we call love today, is something different from what was called by those names in times past. But as we live our way into others in this way, it is as if everything that pulsates within us—everything that lives in us as will—were to take in the will of the other. We step completely over into the other with our soul. We step out of our own body, as it were, and enter into the body of the other. When this feeling takes hold more and more, when this feeling—imbued with love, I might say, as a modern form of charity—spreads among people, then something emerges from this shared experience of the other person’s will, of their entire soul life, that is a true experience of life. Many people today could already have this experience of life if they did not allow prejudices to cloud it. Wherever it arises, people reject it for reasons that are truly not valid. One need only recall a figure like Lessing. At the end of his life, after everything he was capable of producing in terms of human greatness had passed through his soul, he still wrote his Education of the Human Race, which culminates in the acknowledgment of the fact of humanity’s repeated earthly lives. There are higher-class philistines, just as there are higher-class young ladies, and they have already formed their judgment on such matters. They say: Yes, Lessing was indeed sensible his whole life; but then he grew feeble with age and came up with such convoluted ideas as that of repeated earthly lives.

[ 29 ] But these repeated earthly lives are not a figment of the imagination; they are what we experience when we face another human being not merely through blood ties or mere organic connection, but when we can truly reach across into what lives within their soul. There, we are drawn to what comes toward us; there, the spirit of one human being meets the spirit of another; and there, based on experience, arises what one can say: that which here forges a bond between your soul and spirit and that of another human being did not arise through this life. What has arisen through this life is what lies in the blood. But what arises in the spirit as a necessity has come into being through something that preceded this life. Anyone who truly traces the development of modern human life since the middle of the 15th century—though a veil still shrouds it for the vast majority of humanity—will, through living among people, arrive at the idea of repeated earthly lives. And what emerges there appears, I would say, like a dream. I say “like a dream” for the following reason: When we fall asleep, we sleep our way into the unconscious. Then this or that emerges from this unconscious as a dream. One can compare this falling asleep into the unconscious to immersing oneself in the souls of our fellow human beings, just as I have just described. Then, from this immersion—I would say, not merely figuratively, but quite literally—from this sinking into our fellow human beings, something emerges at first that is like the dream of repeated earthly lives, and it draws our attention to the fact that such a thing must be sought in order to understand life, to find the path through the sensory world. And that which shines forth like a dream from social life becomes a complete certainty when we now develop the human will in the same way that I described earlier with regard to memory. But just as memory must become a fully conscious power, so too must the will, on the other hand, shed something that completely directs it in ordinary life.

[ 30 ] What, then, directs our will, our desires, and our cravings in everyday life? If our cravings did not arise from our organic bodily life, the will would, so to speak, have nothing to do. Anyone who has come to understand the will through experience knows that this will is based on craving. But we can also detach that which acts as the actual power of the will from our desires. To a certain extent, we do detach it in social life. But this is what first draws our attention to what really matters. We detach it in social life by loving our neighbor—by losing ourselves in the neighbor—and certainly not by desiring him or her as a piece of meat. We do not love our neighbor out of our desires; rather, it is an exercise of a desireless will. But even this desireless will can be cultivated through special training. This happens when we do not merely will what can be attained in the external world—that which one desire or another seeks—but when we apply our will to our fellow human beings and their development itself. We are capable of this. All too often, we simply let life carry us along as it will. But even after one has outgrown school—that is, when others are no longer responsible for one’s education—one can still engage in continuous self-education and continuous self-discipline. One can take one’s own spiritual nature into one’s own hands; one can resolve to achieve this or that. One can resolve—once life has led one to a certain point—to become knowledgeable in this or that area of life, to transfer one’s power of judgment to another area of life; in short, one can reverse the will. Whereas the will otherwise always acts from the inside out—just as desire dominates the external world—the will can be reversed and turned inward. By practicing self-discipline through our will, by striving to improve ourselves more and more in one direction or another, we apply the true, desire-free power of the will. And what you will find in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and in the second part of my Secret Science aims—alongside the other aspects I have already described—to enable human beings to apply such a cultivation of the will to themselves, so that they penetrate ever more deeply, I might say, into their own inner being with their will. But then, when these two forces interact—the power of memory drawn from the unconscious, which then grasps the human will—then the human being knows inwardly that he is spirit; then he knows that he has grasped the spirit inwardly in a purely spiritual way; then he knows that he is not carrying this out through the organs of the body. Then he knows what spiritual action in the spirit is like; then he knows what it means that the soul and the spirit are independent of the body.

[ 31 ] It cannot be proven that the soul and the spirit are independent of the body, for they are not so in ordinary life. In ordinary life, the mind and soul are entirely dependent on the body. But within us lives another person who is independent; we can draw this person up from the depths of our being. Only then does that which reigns within us as the eternal reveal itself to us.

[ 32 ] As you can see, there is by no means any kind of distorted, convoluted mysticism in this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. It certainly contains that which can be expressed in a completely clear way—but one can only arrive at this if one truly explains it to oneself inwardly, rather than merely saying: ‘You should develop your inner self, you should look within yourself, you should find the divine in your own nature.’ - In this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, reference is made to very specific forces that are to be disciplined in a very specific way. That is what matters here. In this sense, however, this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science is, in a different way, a continuation of modern scientific and social endeavors. After all, in the field of natural science, one can no longer completely disregard the spirit. And so it has come to pass that, because people did not want to eliminate the pressure I characterized at the outset, they now seek to prove—using the very same methods with which, I might say, they cower under that pressure—that there is such a thing as a spirit, as a soul, within the human being. And this is precisely what has happened among those who fail to grasp the full picture of cultural development in the present day.

[ 33 ] It is to this pursuit of the spirit—which, however, is moving in the wrong direction—that we all owe the hopes built upon certain legitimate foundations: the hopes that some natural scientists in particular harbor regarding hypnotism, regarding the possibility that one person might suggest an idea to another while the latter’s consciousness is subdued. We owe to this quest the hopes that some place in the study of dream life and the like, and we owe to this quest—to reach the spirit, after all, because human beings cannot help but seek the spirit—the entire error of spiritualism.

[ 34 ] What, exactly, are we looking for in this field? Well, take something like hypnosis or mediumship—what actually happens there? In these cases, what constitutes normal human consciousness—the state in which a person is firmly rooted in everyday life—is suppressed. When a person is hypnotized, their conscious faculties—which are active in ordinary life—are subdued. In a sense, other forces then begin to influence the person, who has become unconscious, semi-conscious, or a quarter-conscious, forces that may emanate from those around them or from other sources. There, undoubtedly, all sorts of interesting things come to light. Certainly, all sorts of interesting things also come to light through mediumship; but what comes to light is achieved on the basis of a dampening, a lulling of ordinary consciousness. This is never the aim of the research methods of anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. The research method of anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science states: Human beings have advanced in their development to the level of consciousness they possess in ordinary life through their senses while awake; if one wishes to gain fruitful new insights into human beings, one should not paralyze this consciousness or dampen it, but rather, on the contrary, develop it further, as I have indicated. One should heighten clarity and channel sensory perceptions into the power of memory by applying the will—which otherwise arises only from dull desire—to self-discipline. Because people do not follow this path, and lack the courage and perseverance to do so, they suppress the will and believe that this will lead them to an understanding of the soul and the spirit within the human being.

[ 35 ] But what is the result of depriving a person of their other faculties? By lulling people to sleep, one arrives at an external view of the human being that does not show him as a spiritual-soul being, but rather reveals him precisely in his subhuman aspects—in that which makes him more like an animal than he is in ordinary life. It must be strongly emphasized that through all these research methods—sometimes well-intentioned—the human being is led down into the subhuman realm. If I hypnotize someone and give them a potato, but through the power of suggestion make them believe it is a pear, and they bite into the potato with the awareness that they are biting into a pear, then I cloud their higher consciousness; I act upon them in the same way that one acts upon the instinct of an animal. Except that even in his subhuman aspect, a human being is not entirely an animal; rather, his animal nature expresses itself in a different way. That is the essential point. And if one seeks any kind of thought transmission in a state of sleep or with diminished consciousness in general, one is again dealing with an instinctive activity translated into the human realm—that is, with something subhuman. Anyone who conflates what aims to be anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science with these things is slandering anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. For the aim here is not to lead the human being down from his ordinary state of consciousness into something subhuman, but to lead him beyond himself, so that ordinary consciousness continues to function and a higher consciousness is added to this ordinary consciousness.

[ 36 ] This is precisely what anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science demonstrates through its research method: that the human being we encounter here in the sensory world is fundamentally driven by an animalistic, subhuman instinct; and this instinct can be evoked and revealed by lulling ordinary consciousness to sleep. When this instinct manifests itself differently than it does in ordinary consciousness, it is precisely the Spiritual Science referred to here that can trace this different manifestation. It characterizes this different manifestation—which always takes place under hypnosis or in a mediumistic state—as subhuman, as a descent into animality. But it becomes apparent at the same time that what lives as animal nature within the human being is not the same as in ordinary animals. The research method I have spoken of here—that of the Spiritual Science referred to here—knows that what comes to light through experiments such as hypnosis and mediumship is something that still lives within human beings today, stemming from earlier human states. Precisely because this Spiritual Science arrives not at a subjectively colored but at an objective self-knowledge, it can form a judgment about what it actually is that appears through hypnosis and through mediumship. This is something that does not belong to this earthly world at all.

[ 37 ] If one uses the methods of Spiritual Science to examine what unfolds in the earthly world—in the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms—and traces it in relation to the human being, one finds that the human being, as he is today, is adapted to the Earth precisely because he possesses his present state of consciousness. The states of consciousness that occur during sleep, in states of altered consciousness, in hypnosis, and in mediumship are not states of consciousness; they are not human powers that could stem from humanity’s adaptation to the Earth; rather, they stem from a form of adaptation that was inherent to humanity before the Earth became the Earth. And it is precisely through such states that research is directed toward states of the Earth itself—states that preceded the Earth’s present condition.

[ 38 ] If we now investigate further how the current state of the Earth relates to the animal and plant worlds, we see that human beings possess something within themselves that makes them appear ill-suited to present-day life on Earth, whereas the animal and plant worlds are well-adapted to it. This then gives us the insight that human beings did indeed exist in primitive states—states which, if evoked today, would do nothing but dull their consciousness—before today’s animals existed in their present forms. Thus we must say: Human beings did not evolve from the animal world, but rather existed—albeit with such states of soul and spirit as we recall, which manifest in an animal-like manner in the described states—before the Earth reached its present planetary condition.

[ 39 ] I cannot go into the details today—details you can read about in my books. However, I wanted at least to suggest that it is precisely by pursuing certain things on which hopes are currently pinned for understanding the present nature of the human being that a path is shown toward gaining insight into pre-earthly times and into the nature of the human being in such ancient times. Likewise, by being able to evoke states of consciousness that transcend our present state—which is adapted to life on Earth—we are shown how we will live in these higher states of consciousness when the Earth is no longer our home.

[ 40 ] These things reveal themselves to inner vision. One cannot say: “These things cannot be proven,” any more than you can prove that camels exist. You must have seen them, or someone else must have seen them; only then do you know that camels exist. Thus, one cannot prove the supersensible using ordinary reasoning, which applies only to the ordinary world. One must show how one comes to perceive the supersensible. From this perception of the supersensible arises that which, although it influences the sensory world, can never be seen within the sensory world itself.

[ 41 ] Of course, one might now say: Yes, you show us how individual people succeed, through supersensible perception, in making the spirit their guide through the sensory world and into the supersensible world. But can all people attain such insight into the supersensible world? — The situation is as follows: If you allow what I have described in the books I have already mentioned—as inner discipline, as inner development that you yourself undertake for your soul—to take effect within you, you will inevitably come to understand, through your own power of judgment and your own sound common sense—which will by then have been developed—what the spiritual researcher can discover in the spiritual world. But just as there are individual researchers in physical science who investigate one thing or another—and we must then accept what they have discovered—so too, in the future of human development, there will be individual spiritual researchers who investigate this or that in the spiritual world. For them, whether they can investigate something depends on whether, at certain moments in life—moments they have been waiting for, through no effort of their own (for one can only prepare oneself to wait through the development of the soul)—that which appears as a spiritual fact becomes recognizable to them. To use religious terminology, one might say that this must come about as if through a grace. This grace will come to the individual as a spiritual researcher just as, let us say, this or that experience occurs in the sensory world for one person or another. This is how it will be, for certain facts will always be brought forth from the spiritual world by individual human beings.

[ 42 ] To bring these facts to light, various things are necessary; it is not merely necessary to have gone through what is described in the aforementioned books so that one can fully understand what the spiritual researcher is saying, but rather something that can be described as a human quality—namely, being “fearless” to a very high degree in relation to the spiritual world. People are so reluctant to enter the spiritual world precisely because they are actually afraid of the unknown, just as human beings are always afraid of the unknown. The spiritual researcher must become fearless. And on the other hand, he must acquire the capacity to endure suffering and pain; for a true discovery from the spiritual world cannot be attained without a certain amount of pain, without a certain amount of suffering. You will understand that this must be so if you simply create a mental image of the state of spiritual vision as not being adapted to ordinary earthly conditions—any more than, fundamentally speaking, our soul is adapted to our ailing organism, which is in pain. If one truly immerses oneself with a developed soul in the realities of the spiritual world, one finds oneself in a world for which one is not initially equipped. One enters a world that cuts and burns. This must be endured. And one penetrates to the realities only when one truly approaches them with the attitude that consists in applying everything the soul can develop, but then waiting until, in certain—I would like to say once again—gracious moments, the spiritual realities approach human beings.

[ 43 ] One should by no means form a mental image of this as something that approaches one like a figment of the imagination, but rather as an experience of profound intensity in relation to the inner being of the human being. I will take just this simple fact, which I have already mentioned—a fact that can actually only be revealed to the human soul today through spiritual research—namely, that in the middle of the 15th century, the entire human race in the civilized world underwent a radical transformation—a simple fact. The fact that one may state it as a scientific fact can only stem from having worked on one’s soul—having worked diligently—not seeking to conquer the spirit through arbitrariness, but rather having placed oneself, through this work, in a state of anticipation until that which reveals itself as such a seemingly simple truth has come to light.

[ 44 ] There is one more thing that is necessary. There are people—I need only mention, for example, the philosopher Schelling or others—who, through special moments of grace, received one impression or another from the spiritual world. What did they do? Whenever they received an impression from the spiritual world, they could not wait to construct a worldview. They draw conclusions from whatever impression they receive from the spiritual world. They receive a single impression, and then they turn it into an entire system, an entire worldview. This is precisely what the true spiritual researcher must completely refrain from doing. The true spiritual researcher must stop at this single fact that reveals itself to him, and he must wait until another fact reveals itself to him. For example, once one has become acquainted with the fact I mentioned today—that the Earth was preceded by pre-earthly states in which human beings already lived—one must not derive an entire scientific system concerning the evolution of the Earth from it, but must accept such a fact as an isolated, individual fact and allow other equally isolated, individual facts to emerge, so that fact after fact emerges, whether rich or less rich in content. But one must wait for each individual fact; that is what matters. Even though spiritual insights are indeed the very foundation of spiritual research, these spiritual insights arise only when destiny predestines a person for them. Just as one must not draw conclusions about the southern hemisphere of the Earth based on the northern hemisphere, but must instead investigate separately what exists in the southern hemisphere, so too must one not draw conclusions about one corner of the spiritual world based on another; rather, one must learn to wander through the spiritual world, grasping the details in their isolation. From this alone you can see that what people are able to explore in the spiritual world will be distributed among them; after all, they can learn many things.

[ 45 ] Now you might say: Yes, but isn’t there a danger that those to whom such spiritual truths are revealed will become arrogant among people, that they will regard themselves as special beings who stand above the rest of humanity? — That has already been taken care of. The very first thing that must precede genuine spiritual research is absolute humility—specifically, intellectual humility. Without cultivating this humility toward the rest of humanity, one cannot make progress in the field of spiritual research. The spiritual researcher may indeed be able to communicate individual facts from the spiritual world to his fellow human beings, but the fact that he has the privilege of sharing something that is revealed to him is at the same time due to the way in which he approaches his fellow human beings. The spiritual researcher is one who approaches even the smallest child with true reverence when the child babbles something about the spirit hidden within the human being and the soul hidden within it—even if it makes itself heard only through a child’s shrill cry. The spiritual researcher is glad when he hears this or that from the experience of the individual human being. The experiences that people share with him are his school. He submits himself completely to them. He knows only one thing: he knows that what people experience—even if they are at the most primitive stages of development—is infinitely valuable, and that the only thing lacking in this process is what is usually called human judgment. If people were to correctly assess what they have experienced, they would draw forth treasures of the soul and spirit from within themselves and from the depths of their being. It is these that the spiritual researcher looks toward. To him, every human being is an equal being with sacred mysteries in the soul; it is only that the conscious mind and the power of judgment sometimes fail to keep pace with what lies in the depths of the soul. Thus, the spiritual researcher becomes a humble person, precisely because he constantly keeps the spiritual equality of human beings before his eyes in this regard, and because he knows that he possesses what he explores in the spiritual world only by virtue of being a human being among human beings. Consequently, he is predestined to work in spirit for other people, who, in turn, through meditation and concentration, can develop their souls to the point where they are able to receive what the spiritual researcher says.

[ 46 ] You might object that it is not a very good arrangement for people to live side by side in such a way that one must learn from others what one can indeed understand but cannot discover for oneself. To that I can offer two responses. The first is that this is simply a fact that one must accept, just like any other fact of life, even if some might wish it were otherwise. That is the first point I can make. The second, however, is that anyone who foresees such a future for humanity—a future in which there are those among us who look into the spiritual world, and who reveal intimate matters to people from this spiritual world—so that in this way others can experience, through their own understanding, what they can gain in the manner described—such a person also knows that the most intimate relationships between human beings will then develop. And they also know that it is precisely through this that social impulses pass from soul to soul, thereby giving rise to true social life in the spirit—something that people today believe can be achieved only through external means. Just consider how people will be brought together, how they will form a social structure in their coexistence, when people relate to one another in such a way that one person accepts what the other is exploring as a matter of the utmost personal and intimate importance. It is precisely through this that people in the future will draw close to one another in the desirable way, so that the spirit will influence the soul of the next person, as has been indicated. Those who are able to explore the spirit will be perceived by others as indispensable. On the other hand, the spiritual researcher will also perceive all of humanity as that in which he is rooted—without which he cannot live, and without which his own spiritual research would have not the slightest meaning.

[ 47 ] Even if today the social question has been reduced to something that is understood merely in an outwardly materialistic sense, what is known as anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science shows—precisely when viewed from within—that when the spirit becomes the guide through the sensory world and out of the sensory world into the supersensory world, this also brings about, in human social life, the very structure through which human beings can, in the future, become for one another what they are actually meant to be.

[ 48 ] Today I have once again attempted to characterize for you—from a different perspective than in my numerous earlier lectures—how anthroposophy seeks to penetrate the spirit, and how this penetration is based on the development of the human soul’s own powers. For nearly two decades now, I have sought to articulate this in what I call “anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science.” Even today, it is still said in many circles that this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science represents some kind of striving toward Buddhism or the like. I already hinted at this in my last lecture here: it is precisely this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science—which works from the very essence of the human being, from the present essence of the human being itself— abhors that weakness in people who do not wish to strive from what is already here—from what we have acquired through modern natural science—but who, for my sake, want to turn toward the East, toward India, and take from there what was suited to an entirely different age and no longer fits into our present. We experience this again and again. Just a few days ago, we witnessed it here once more: people saying that “anthroposophy,” as they put it, represents some kind of escape to India. When this is said in particular by people who call themselves “Christian,” then I would like to remind these Christians of something they may be familiar with: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” For it is nothing other than bearing false witness against one’s neighbor to speak of what is meant here as anthroposophical Spiritual Science as if it were something obscure, as if it were some kind of quest for a humanity that has become purely passive, and the like. Because humanity has become passive, because humanity can no longer find a path to activity through what has been traditionally imparted to it over the centuries, a new spirit must be sought to guide it through the sensory world and into the supersensory world.

[ 49 ] To those who speak only of a revival of the old spirit and abhor—just as natural science was abhorred in Galileo’s time—that which presents itself as Spiritual Science, it should be said above all else, especially if they wish to speak from the perspective of the Christian spirit: Anyone who takes Christianity seriously need not fear that any discovery—be it even a spiritual one—will detract from the true meaning of the Christ impulse or from people’s religious reverence in general. On the contrary, religious life will be imbued with greater splendor as people come to know once again what the spirit and the soul are, as they refuse to have it dictated to them what the spirit and the soul are, and as they seek within the soul the path to experiencing the spirit and the soul. And this is precisely what is being strived for in the movement that finds its outward expression at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

[ 50 ] This movement seeks to fulfill what lives unconsciously as a longing in countless souls, without their even knowing it. It will not be possible to extract this from these souls by mere decree or dictate; rather, it will live on in their souls as a striving, even if one were to succeed in suppressing the actual expression of this striving. For just as a person would die if, at the age of thirty-five, he were to cease absorbing new life forces into himself—just as he could not continue to live from that point on unless he supplied himself with new material life forces— so humanity cannot continue to live if it seeks only to process the old and traditional, unless a new spirit emerges at the appropriate moment and weaves itself into the development of humanity.

[ 51 ] For this is what the Spiritual Science wishes to establish—to establish clearly and unambiguously—not obscurantism, not convoluted mysticism. It wishes to establish clearly and unambiguously that the spirit is the living force, the true guide through the sensory world and into the supersensory world. In the sensory world, we are adrift without the spirit. But if we develop the spirit as a guide through the sensory world, then it proves itself to be not merely an abstract spirit of ideas, but the living spirit within us. And then we would have to virtually clip the wings with which it seeks to soar into its true homeland—the homeland of the spirit—if, having chosen it as our guide through the sensory world, we did not wish to ascend through it, through its guidance, into the supersensory world. For the spirit is alive. And if the belief can take hold that, in contrast to matter, the spirit is not something living in its own right, what is to blame for this? The blame lies solely in the fact that human beings kill the spirit within themselves through their will, and thus the dead spirit cannot grasp the living spirit. But if the spirit within human beings is enlivened, then the living spirit within human beings seizes the living spirit in the world.