The Rudolf Steiner Archive

At the Section for the Philosophy of Religions, Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Germany spoke about the psychological foundations of Theosophy and their scientific justification. The speaker pointed out that he had to represent a subject that is not yet considered scientific in the broadest circles. This is quite understandable, however. For the school of thought in question has a completely different kind of knowledge in mind than the other current philosophical trends. These ask, what is the human soul like, and what can it know by virtue of the fact that it is constituted in a certain way? Theosophy, as expounded by the speaker, maintains that the soul can rise above its so-called normal state and thereby extend its powers of knowledge from the realm of the sensual and intellectual to that of the supersensible. However, by such a different state of the soul is not meant that which is referred to in ordinary psychology as the “subconscious” or “unconscious”, nor that of a vision, ecstasy or the like, but a state that can be achieved under the strictest self-control of the soul. To achieve this state, the soul must subject itself to strict and intimate exercises. It must imbue itself with ideas, thoughts and feelings that do not bear the usual character of images of an external reality, but rather have a more symbolic character. The soul must now exclude from its life all sensual, memory-based and intellectual impressions and contents, and through constant repetition become completely one with the characterized symbolic representations. The result is a very specific experience in which the soul perceives itself as an inner reality that rests within itself independently of the bodily organization. Through this experience, the human being knows that they can truly live independently of their body as a soul. The exercises must proceed from this point. The human being must remove the symbolic images from his soul life and direct the inner sense only to the activity through which he has experienced the symbols within himself. Through this practice, a condensation of the soul independent of the body is achieved; and into this inner life the content of a spiritual world now flows in the same way as sensual content flows into sensual perception when eyes and ears are directed towards the physical outer world. This opens up new levels of cognition; the first, in which the symbolic representations transform the soul life, can be called imaginative cognition, and the second, which only arises when the symbols have been removed from consciousness, can be called cognition through inspiration. The speaker then points out how the theory of science at present cannot agree with a development of the soul as described, because it transfers the “I” of the human being into the bodily inner world from the outset. But a future theory of knowledge will recognize that the I in truth already lies in the spiritual outer world and only reflects the ordinary I as its image in the bodily organization. Such a theory of knowledge will be able to fully reconcile itself with theosophy.

The speaker's brief remarks were followed by a lively debate. The well-known Platonist Dr. W. Lutoslawski asked the speaker a series of questions. These led to the further discussion that the soul exercises of modern man are not based, as those in ancient times were, on physical isolation from one's surroundings, on an extremely ascetic life and the like, but that they place the main emphasis on the development of those spiritual-mental powers which, within man, bring about his isolation of consciousness. In response to another question from Lutoslawski, the speaker remarks that the methods of soul training, as appropriate for the human being in modern cultures, have been developed by leading spiritual figures since the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Another speaker, Dr. Stark, asks whether an objective criterion can be given for what a person, after the appropriate preparation, finds to be facts of the spiritual world. The speaker replies that research and experience in the supersensible worlds require a soul that has been prepared as described. If, however, the facts of these worlds are presented in a logical form, then the truly unbiased logic of ordinary consciousness can decide on them and recognize them as correct. In response to a question from the same speaker, Dr. Steiner adds that the epoch seems to be beginning in which the theosophy described above will flow into spiritual cultural life and develop into a recognized common good of human science.