The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I want to speak to-day¹ about a certain aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha of which I have often spoken before in more intimate anthroposophical gatherings. What there is to be said about the Mystery of Golgotha is so extensive in range, so rich in content and of such significance, that new light needs constantly to be shed upon it before any real approach can be made to this greatest of all Mysteries in the evolution of the earth and of humanity.

The importance of the Mystery of Golgotha can be rightly assessed only when we envisage two streams of evolution in man's earthly existence: the stream which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha and the stream which, following it, will continue for the rest of the earth's existence.

In speaking of the very early period in earth-evolution when thinking of a certain kind—dream-like, imaginative, but still, thinking—was already active, we must be quite clear that in those times men possessed faculties whereby—if I may so express it—they were able to commune with Beings of a higher cosmic order. From the book Occult Science and other works of mine, you know something of these Beings of the higher Hierarchies. In his ordinary consciousness to-day man knows little of these Beings, for his intercourse with them has, as it were, been broken off. In earlier periods of human evolution it was different. To imagine that coming into contact with a Being of the higher Hierarchies in those ancient times in any way resembled the meeting between two men incarnate in physical bodies to-day would of course be a wrong conclusion. Such intercourse had quite a different character. What these Beings communicated to man in the original, primeval language of the earth could be apprehended only by spiritual organs. Momentous secrets of existence were communicated by these Beings, secrets which flowed into the human heart and awakened the consciousness that above and on all sides—where we to-day see only clouds and stars—earthly existence is connected with divine worlds. Super-earthly Beings belonging to these worlds came down in a spiritual manner to the men of earth, revealing themselves in such a way that through them men received what we may call the primal wisdom. The revelations proceeding from these Beings contained an abundance of wisdom which in their earthly life men could not have discovered themselves. For at the beginning of earth-evolution—the period of which I am now speaking—men could discover little through their own faculties. Whatever vision, whatever perceptive knowledge they possessed was received from their divine Teachers. These divine teachings were infinitely rich in content, but one thing they did not include—a thing which it was unnecessary for men of those times to know, but which for the present-day humanity is essential. The divine Teachers imparted many aspects of knowledge, truths in profusion, but they never spoke of the two fundamental boundaries of man's earthly life; they never spoke of birth and death.

Needless to say, in this short hour I cannot attempt to speak of everything that was communicated to the human race in those ancient times by the divine Teachers. A great deal is already known to you. But I want now to stress the point that among all those teachings there were none concerning birth and death. The reason for this was that for the men of those times—and for a considerable period after them—it was unnecessary to have knowledge of the facts of birth and death. The whole consciousness of mankind has changed in the course of earth-evolution. The animal consciousness of to-day, even that of the higher animals, must never be compared with human consciousness, even as it was in those ages of primitive antiquity. Yet we may perhaps find a point of approach by considering the life of the animal to-day. This lies at a level below the human, whereas the earliest form of the life of primitive man lay, in a certain respect, above the present level of the human, in spite of having certain animal-like characteristics. If you think, without preconceived ideas, about the animal to-day, you will say that the animal is unconcerned with birth and death because its existence is wholly passed in the state of life between them. Disregarding birth—although here too, of course, it is an obvious fact—we need think only of the carefree lack of concern with which the animal lives on towards death. The animal accepts death. It is simply transformation of its existence, a transition from individual to group-soul existence. The animal does not experience any such deep incision into life as is the case with the human being.

Now as I said, the primeval man of earth—in spite of his animal-like organisation—was at a higher level than the animal; he possessed an instinctive clairvoyance which enabled him to commune, to have intercourse with, his divine Teachers. But, like the animal of to-day, he was unconcerned with the approach of death. It never occurred to him, if I may so express it, to pay any particular attention to death. And why? With his instinctive clairvoyance, the primeval man was clearly aware of what was still his nature even after his descent through birth from the spiritual world into the physical world. He knew that his own essential being had entered into a physical body; and because he could say with certain knowledge, ‘An immortal, eternal being lives in me,’ the transformation taking place at death was not a matter of interest or concern to him. At most the process was like that experienced by a snake when it sheds its skin and has it replaced by another. The impression of birth and death was taken much more as a matter of course; birth and death were far less drastic incisions in human existence. Men still had clear vision of the life of the soul; to-day they have no such vision.

Even in dreams the transition from the sleeping to the waking state is hardly perceptible and the dream, with its pictures, is regarded as part of the sleeping state, as itself a semi-sleep. But what came to primeval man in his dream-pictures belonged, in reality, to a waking state, not yet fully awake. He knew that what he received in these dream-pictures was reality. In this way he felt and experienced his life of soul. Therefore questions about birth and death could not seem to him as crucial as they must inevitably be to-day.

This condition was very marked in the earliest epochs of human evolution on the earth, but it faded gradually away. As men began more and more to be aware that death makes a drastic incision not only into earthly physical life, but into the life of the soul as well, their attention was inevitably drawn to the fact of birth. On account of this change in human consciousness, earthly life assumed a character of increasing importance for men; and because experience of the life of soul was also growing dim, they felt themselves more and more removed during their sojourn on earth from an existence of soul-and-spirit. This condition became more and more marked as the time of the Mystery of Golgotha approached. Even among the Greeks it had reached the point where they felt life outside the physical body to be a shadow-existence, and regarded death as an event fraught with tragedy. The knowledge received by men from their earliest, divine Teachers did not cover the facts of birth and death. Hence before the Mystery of Golgotha took place, men were exposed to the danger of having to face experiences in their earthly life that would be unknown and incomprehensible to their earthly consciousness—namely, the experiences of birth and death.

Now let us imagine that those early, divine Teachers of humanity had descended to the earthly realm at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. They might have been able, through the Mysteries, to reveal themselves to a few specially prepared pupils or men of knowledge, to communicate to priests trained in the Mysteries the wealth of the ancient, divine wisdom; but in the whole range of these teachings there would have been nothing concerning birth and death. The riddle of death would not have been presented to man through the revelations of this divine wisdom, not even within the Mysteries; and in their outer life on earth men would have observed facts of vital importance and interest to them—namely the facts of birth and death—of which the gods had said nothing! And why?

You must approach this matter with a certain freedom from bias, laying aside many of the conceptions that have become part of traditional religion to-day, and be clear about the following. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies who were the divine Teachers of primeval humanity had never experienced birth and death in their own realms. For birth and death, in the form in which they are experienced on the earth, are experienced only on the earth, and, again, only by human beings on the earth. The death of an animal and the dying of a plant are altogether different matters from the death of a human being. And in the divine worlds where dwelt the first great Teachers of mankind there is no birth or death, but only transformation, metamorphosis from one state of existence into another. These divine Teachers, therefore, had no inner understanding of the facts of dying and being-born.

Now to these divine Teachers belongs the host of beings connected with Jahve, with the Bodhisattvas, with the early interpreters of the world to humanity. Just think how in the Old Testament, for example, the mystery of death as it confronts men, comes to be fraught with an increasing sense of tragedy, and how, in fact, none of the teaching conveyed by the Old Testament gives any adequate or revealing illumination on the subject of death. If, therefore, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha there had happened nothing that differed from what had already happened in the realm of the earth, and in the higher worlds connected with the earth, men would have faced a terrible situation in their earthly evolution. On the earth they would have lived through the experiences of birth and death, which now confronted them, not as simple metamorphoses but as drastic transitions in their whole human existence, and they could have learnt nothing of the significance and purpose of death and of birth in the earthly life of the human being. In order that there might gradually be imparted to mankind teaching concerning birth and death, it was necessary for the Being we call the Christ to enter the realm of earthly life, the Christ Who indeed belongs to those worlds whence the ancient Teachers too had come, but Who in accordance with a decision taken in these divine worlds, accepted for Himself a destiny different from that of the other Beings of the divine Hierarchies connected with the earth. He lent Himself to the divine decree of higher worlds that He should incarnate in an earthly body and with His own divine soul pass through birth and death on earth.²

You see, therefore, that what came to pass in the Mystery of Golgotha is not merely an inner affair of men or of the earth, but is equally an affair of the gods. Through the Event on Golgotha, the gods themselves for the first time acquired inner knowledge of the mystery of death and of birth on the earth, for they had previously had no part in either. Therefore we have this momentous fact before us: a divine Being resolved to pass through human destiny on the earth in order to undergo the same fate, the same experiences in earthly existence, as are the lot of man.

Many things concerning the Mystery of Golgotha have become known to mankind. A tradition exists, the Gospels exists, the whole New Testament exists, and modern humanity approaches the Mystery of Golgotha for the most part by way of the New Testament and such interpretation of it as is possible to-day. But very little real insight into the Mystery of Golgotha is to be gained from the interpretations of the New Testament current at the present time. It is inevitable that modern humanity should pass through the stage of acquiring knowledge in this external way, but knowledge so gained is itself external. There is no realisation to-day of how differently men in the first Christian centuries looked back to the Mystery of Golgotha; how differently—in a way that became impossible later on—it was regarded by those who understood its import. The reason is that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, although the change I have described was beginning to take place, vestiges of ancient, instinctive clairvoyance still survived in certain individuals. They were no more than vestiges, it is true, but they enabled men, until the fourth century A.D., to look back to the Mystery of Golgotha in a quite different way from that which was possible later on. It is not without meaning that at that time—and some confirmation of this, although in very many respects wanting, can be found in the historical traditions emanating from the earliest Church Fathers and other Christian teachers—those who came forward as teachers valued more highly than any written traditions the fact that they had received information concerning Christ Jesus from direct eye-witnesses, or from those who had been pupils of the Apostles themselves or again pupils of pupils of the Apostles, and so on. This continued until the fourth century A.D., so that a living connection was still claimed for those who were teaching at that time. As I have said, by far the greater part of the historical records have been destroyed, but those who study attentively what is left, can still discover by these external means what value was placed upon the testimony: I have had a teacher, he too had a teacher ... until at the end of the line was an Apostle who had seen the Saviour face to face.

Even of this tradition a great deal has been lost. But still more has been lost of the genuine esoteric wisdom surviving during the first four centuries of Christendom thanks to the remaining vestiges of the old clairvoyant insight. External tradition had lost wellnigh everything that was known in those days about the Risen Christ, the Christ Who had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha and then, in a spirit-body, like the early teachers of primeval humanity, had taught certain chosen disciples after His Resurrection.³ In the story, for example, of Christ meeting the disciples who had gone out to seek Him there are indications in the New Testament—but scanty indications even there—of the significance of the teachings given by the Risen Christ to His disciples.⁴ And Paul himself regards his experience at Damascus as a teaching which, given by the Risen Christ, made the man Saul into Paul.

In those early times there was full realisation that Christ Jesus, the Risen One, had secrets of a very special kind to impart to men. The fact that later on they were unable to receive these communications was due entirely to their own human evolution. For it was necessary that man should begin to unfold those forces of soul which, later, were to operate in the exercise of human freedom and of the human intellect. Evidence of this is clear from the fifteenth century onwards, but its beginnings can be traced to the fourth century.

The question naturally arises: What was the content and substance of the teachings which could be given by the Risen Christ to His chosen disciples?—He had appeared to them in the same manner in which the divine Teachers had appeared to primeval humanity. But now, if I may so express it, He was able to tell them out of divine wisdom what He had experienced and other divine Beings had not. From His own divine vantage-point He was able to explain to them the mystery of birth and death. He was able to convey to them the knowledge that in the future there would arise in the men of earth a day-consciousness, unable to have direct perception of the immortal element in human life, a consciousness that is extinguished in sleep, so that in sleep too the immortal element is invisible even to the eyes of the soul.

But He was also able to make them aware that it is possible for the Mystery of Golgotha to be drawn into the field of man's understanding. He was able to make clear to them what I will try to express in the following words. They can only be feeble, stammering words because human language has no others to offer, but I will try to express it in these halting words:—

The human body,” He taught, “has gradually become so dense, the death-forces in it so powerful that, although man will now be able to develop his intellect and his own inner freedom, he can do this only in a life that definitely experiences death, a life into which death makes a marked incision, a life from which vision of the immortal soul is obliterated during waking consciousness. But,”—so Christ taught His initiated disciples,—“you can receive into your souls a certain wisdom. It is the wisdom which through the Mystery of Golgotha, my own being has made possible for you, something with which you your selves can be filled if only you can attain the insight that Christ came down from spheres beyond the earth to the men of earth; if only you can come to realise that here on the earth there is something which cannot be perceived by earthly means, but only by means higher than those of the earth; if you can behold the Mystery of Golgotha as a Divine Event set into earthly life; if you can apprehend that a god has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Through everything else that comes to fulfilment on earth you can acquire earthly wisdom, but in order to understand the significance of death to humanity it would avail you nothing. Earthly wisdom would suffice you only if you, like the men of earlier times, could feel no intense interest in death. But since you must needs be concerned with death, you must strengthen your perceptive faculty by drawing into it a force stronger than all earthly forces of perception, a force so strong that you can realise that in the Mystery of Golgotha there came to pass something to which all earthly laws of nature are inapplicable. If you can include in your beliefs only the laws of earthly nature, you will, it is true, be able to observe death, but you will never discover its significance for human life. But if you can attain the insight that the earth has now for the first time received its true meaning and purpose, that at this middle point of earth-evolution a Divine Event has taken place in the Mystery of Golgotha, an Event beyond the comprehension of earthly means of perception, then you are preparing a special power of wisdom.”

This power of wisdom is the same as the power of faith; it is a special power of Spirit-Wisdom, a power of faith born of wisdom. Strength of soul is expressed when a man says: “I believe! I know through faith what I can never know by earthly means. This is a stronger force in me than when I claim to have knowledge of what can be fathomed merely by earthly means.” A man is lacking, even were he to possess all the science known on earth, if his wisdom is able to embrace only what can be grasped by earthly means. To perceive the reality of the super-earthly within the earthly, a far greater inner activity must be unfolded.

Contemplation of the Mystery of Golgotha gives a stimulus to unfold such inner activity. And in ever new variations, this teaching that a god had lived through a human destiny and had thereby united Himself with the destiny of the earth—an experience hitherto unknown to the gods in their own realm—was proclaimed over and over again by the Risen Christ to His disciples. And it worked with stupendous power. Try to realise the power of it by thinking of the conditions prevailing to-day. Less is demanded of a man who can grasp what his thinking has extracted from earthly concepts and also out of the generally acknowledged, traditional tenets of religion than of one who is required to attain understanding of the fact that there were some among the gods who, until the Mystery of Golgotha, possessed no wisdom concerning birth and death and then for the first time acquired this wisdom for the salvation of mankind. To penetrate into the realm of divine wisdom needs a very definite strength. No particular strength is required to repeat from some catechism, ‘God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-divine,’ and so forth. One needs only to use the prefix ‘all’ and there is the definition of the Divine—ready-made, but utterly nebulous. People do not muster the courage to-day to penetrate into the wisdom of the gods. But this must happen. The divine Beings themselves added this wisdom which the gods acquired through the fact that One from among them passed through human birth and human death.

That this secret should have been entrusted to Christ's first disciples after His Resurrection is a fact of supreme moment, and so was the sequel to it, that through this knowledge they were brought to realise clearly that man once possessed the power to behold and understand the eternal nature of his own soul. This understanding, this insight into the eternal nature of the human soul can never be acquired through brain-knowledge, that is, through the intellectual, cogitated knowledge which uses the brain as its instrument. It can never in any real sense be acquired unless, as in earlier times, nature comes to the help of man, through the kind of knowledge that may still be attained through a particular development of the human rhythmic system. Yoga achieved much while the old instinctive clairvoyance could still come to its aid, while the last possessors of instinctive clairvoyance were still practising yoga. But it is a long time since the modern Oriental, the Indian—about whom many Westerners weave such fantastic ideas to-day—has attained any real vision of the eternal essence of the human soul when he engages in his exercises. He lives for the most part in illusions, in that he has a fleeting experience belonging to some elemental reality of earthly life, and then reads into the experience something from his sacred books. Real and fundamental knowledge of the divine nature of the human soul has been possible for humanity only in two ways: either as primeval humanity attained it, or as man can again attain it to-day, in a much more spiritual way, through Intuitive cognition, through cognition which, rising to Imaginative knowledge, and then to knowledge through Inspiration, finally becomes Intuition.

Now during earthly life the thinking part of the soul has poured itself into the human nervous system; it has built up this plastic structure and in it no longer has a separate existence. In the rhythmic system it is only partially absorbed. We can say of this is that there remains here some possibility of independent thought-activity. But the really eternal element of the human soul is hidden in the metabolic system, in the system which, for earthly life, has the most material function of all. Outwardly it is indeed the most material, but just because of this, the spiritual remains separate from it. The spiritual is drawn into, absorbed by the other material parts of the organism, by the brain and the rhythmic system, and is no longer there independently. In the crude materiality, the spiritual is present in itself. But to use it, a man must be able to see, to perceive, by means of the crude outer materiality. This was a possibility in primeval humanity and, although it is not a condition to be striven after, it may still occur to-day in pathological states. It is known by very few, for example, that the secret of Nietzsche's style in Thus Spake Zarathustra lies in the fact that he imbibed certain poisonous substances which brought into play within him a particular rhythm, which is the distinctive style of this work. In Nietzsche, it was a definitely material substratum that was really doing the thinking. This, needless to say, is a pathological condition, although in a certain respect again there is a kind of grandeur in it. If we are to understand these things we must no longer have false ideas, either about them, or about Intuition and the like, which lie at the opposite pole. We must understand what it means that Nietzsche should have imbibed certain poisons—a procedure not to be imitated—which substances work in such a way that they lead to an etherisation, an etherealised mode of experience in the human organism. This irradiates the thinking and produces what we find in Thus Spake Zarathustra. Intuition, on the other hand, is able to perceive the spirit-and-soul as such, separated from matter. Nothing of a material nature is at work in Intuition as described in the books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment or in An Outline of Occult Science. Here we have two opposite poles of spiritual knowledge.

But in the Mysteries into which Christ sent His message, it was still known that men once possessed a sublime knowledge born of the working of material substances, born of metabolism. No attempt was made to awaken the old matter-born knowledge of spirit-reality in the manner in which this had been done in primeval humanity, nor in the degenerate way subsequently pursued by hashish-eaters and others with similar habits in order to acquire, through the workings of matter, knowledge not otherwise accessible. An attempt was made in quite another way to awaken this matter-born knowledge, namely, by clothing the Mystery of Golgotha in ritual, in mantric formulae, above all in the whole structure of the Mystery as Revelation, Offering, Transubstantiation, Communion, in the administration of the sacrament of the Eucharist in bread and wine. It was not poisons, therefore, but the Lord's Supper, clothed in what arises from the mantric formulae of the Mass, and from its fourfold membering: Gospel, Offering, Transubstantiation, Communion. For the intention was that after the fourth part of the Mass, the Communion, actual communion among the faithful should take place, with the aim of giving an intimation, at least, that thereby a knowledge leading to what was once achieved instinctively by the old metabolism-born knowledge, must be re-acquired.

It is difficult for men to-day to form any conception of this metabolism-born knowledge, because they have no inkling of how much more a bird knows than a man—although not in the intellectual, abstract sense—how much more even a camel, an animal wholly given up to the process of metabolism, knows than a man. It is, of course, a dim knowledge, a dream-knowledge, for degeneration has entered to-day into what was contained in the metabolic process of primeval man. But on the basis of the earliest Christian teachings, the sacrament at the altar was conceived as a means of pointing to the need to re-acquire a knowledge of the eternal nature of the human soul.

At the time when the Risen Christ was teaching His initiated disciples it was beyond men's power to acquire such knowledge by themselves. It was taught them by Christ. And until the fourth century of Christendom this knowledge was in a certain sense still alive. Then it ossified in the Western Catholic Church, because, although the Mass was retained, the Church could no longer interpret it. The Mass, conceived merely as a continuation of the Lord's Supper described in the Bible, can obviously have no meaning unless meaning is imbued into it. The establishment of the Mass with its wonderful ritual, its reproduction of the four stages of the Mysteries, stems from the fact that the Risen Christ was also the Teacher of those who were able to receive these teachings in a higher, esoteric sense. In the centuries following there remained only an elementary kind of instruction about the Mystery of Golgotha. A faculty was developing in man whereby, to begin with, this knowledge concerning the Mystery of Golgotha was veiled, concealed. Men had first to become firmly rooted in what is connected with death. This is the stage of early medieval civilisation.

Traditions have been preserved. The rituals of many secret societies existing at the present time contain formulae which, for those who understand and recognise them, are unmistakably reminiscent of the teachings given by the Risen Christ to His initiated disciples. But the individuals who come together in all kinds of masonic and other secret societies do not understand what their ritual contains, have not the remotest inkling of it. It would be possible to learn a great deal from these rituals because they contain much wisdom, even if it be in dead letters,—but this does not happen. Now that mankind has passed through that period in evolution which as it were shed darkness over the Mystery of Golgotha, the time has come when human longings are reaching out for a deeper knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha. And that longing can be satisfied only through spiritual science, only through the advent of a new knowledge which works in a spiritual way. The full significance for humanity of the Mystery of Golgotha will then again be acquired. Then men will again come to realise that the most important teachings of all were given, not by the Christ Who until the Mystery of Golgotha lived in a physical body, but by the Risen Christ after the Mystery of Golgotha. Men will acquire a new understanding for words of an Initiate such as Paul: “If Christ be not risen, then is your faith vain.” After the event at Damascus, Paul knew that everything depended upon grasping the reality of the Risen Christ, upon the power of the Risen Christ being united with the human being in such a way that he can affirm: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

It is an all too characteristic contrast to this that there should have arisen in the 19th century a kind of theology which has really no desire to know anything about the reality of the Risen Christ. It is also a significant symptom of our times that a tutor of theology in Basle—Overbeck, a friend of Nietzsche—should have written a book about the Christianity of modern theology, in which he sets out to prove that this modern theology is no longer Christian. He concedes that there may still be a great deal in the world that is Christian, but he declares that the theology taught by Christian theologians is not Christian. That, in effect, is the view of Overbeck, himself a Christian theologian. And this view is brilliantly substantiated in his book. In respect of the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, mankind has come to a point where those officially appointed by their Church to tell men something of the Mystery of Golgotha are least of all capable of doing so. As a result of this there is springing up the human longing to learn something about the need for Christ that every individual may experience in his heart.

I have often made it evident that Anthroposophy has many services to render to humanity to-day. One significant service will be that rendered to the religious life.—This is in no sense the founding of a new religion. With the Event of a god passing through the human destiny of birth and death, the earth received its meaning and purpose in such completeness that this Event can never be surpassed. To one who understands the nature of its founding it is quite evident that there can be no question of inaugurating a new religion after Christianity. To believe such a thing possible would be to have a false idea of Christianity. But as men themselves make strides in super-sensible knowledge, the Mystery of Golgotha, and together with it the Christ Being Himself, will be more and more deeply understood. Anthroposophy would fain contribute to this understanding what perhaps it alone, at the present time, is able to contribute. For it is hardly possible anywhere else to hear about the divine Teachers of primeval humanity who spoke of all things, save only of birth and death—of which they had had no experience—and about that Teacher Who appeared to His initiated disciples in the same manner as that in which the divine primeval Teachers had appeared, but Whose momentous teachings included the crucial one of how a god shared the human destiny of birth and death. This revelation was intended to give men the power to regard death—which from that time must inevitably be a matter of concern to them—in such a way that they would realise: “Death indeed there is, but the soul is beyond its reach! The fact that men can assert this is due to the Mystery of Golgotha.”

Paul knew that if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, if Christ had not risen, the soul would be involved in the destiny of the body, that is to say in the dispersion of the elements of the body into the elements of the earth. Had Christ not risen, had he not united Himself with earthly forces, the human soul would unite with the body between birth and death in such a way that the soul would be united, too, with all the molecules which become part of the earth through cremation or decomposition. It would have come about that at the end of earth-evolution, human souls would go the way of earthly matter. But in that Christ has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, He wrests this fate away from the human soul. The earth will go her way in the universe, but just as the human soul can emerge from the single human body, so will all human souls be able to free themselves from the earth and go forward to a new cosmic existence. Christ is thus intimately united with earth-existence. But the union can be understood only if the mystery is approached in the way indicated.

To one or another the thought may occur: “What, then, of those who cannot believe in Christ?” Here let me give you reassurance. Christ died for all men, for those, too, who to-day cannot unite with Him. The Mystery of Golgotha is an objective fact, unaffected by human knowledge. Human knowledge, however, strengthens the inner forces of the soul. All the means, therefore, at the disposal of human knowledge, human feelings, and human will, must be applied, in order that in the further course of earth-evolution the presence of Christ in this earth-evolution shall be an experienced reality, through direct knowledge.

• 1. See also: Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity. Lecture given at Dornach, 22nd April, 1922. Anthroposophical Publishing Company.
• 2. Cp. Epistle to the Hebrews II, 14, 15.
• 3. “Not baptism alone sets us free, but knowledge (Gnosis): who we are, what we have become, where we were, whither we have sunk, whither we hasten; whence we are redeemed, what is birth, and what is re-birth.”
  Fragment from the Eastern School of Valentinus, copied by his pupil Theodotus.
• 4. See Acts, I, 3.

Dear attendees! First of all, I would like to apologize for not giving this lecture in the language of your country. However, since I do not use this language, I must ask you to allow me to make the following comments in the language I do use.

Anyone who wants to talk about the spiritual nature of man and how we can get to know it today will indeed meet with a certain interest within our contemporary educated society. The fate has befallen wide areas of modern civilized life that people today can often be thrown into confusion and a sense of loss when faced with what the external world throws at them. And so many people today seek that which was once sought in the external world in the inner human soul itself, seeking the strength to sustain themselves, seeking the security that the human soul needs for a strong life. On the other hand, if one wishes to speak in the spirit of the present age about the realization of the supersensible human being, as I intend to do today, then one immediately encounters resistance from precisely that world and world view that should actually be the most valuable to us today must be the most valuable to us. We meet with the opposition of the scientific world, which, from the most diverse foundations of its own mode of knowledge, must assert that ascent into the supersensible, into the spiritual worlds, is not possible by means of the methods which are habitually employed in scientific life.

Nevertheless, modern civilization has approached man in such a way that he has become accustomed to viewing everything in the light that comes to him in some way from scientific knowledge. And so it is that in the sense of today's education, people no longer want to seek satisfaction for their spiritual life in the sense of old traditional beliefs, but they do have the need to strive for such knowledge with regard to the spiritual world, which can still be justified in the face of the scientific needs of the present. And it is this kind of knowledge of the spiritual essence of the human being that is sought by the anthroposophical world view, which I would like to speak about today and next Friday, today more about the knowledge of the spiritual essence of the human being, and next Friday about the knowledge of the spiritual essence of the world.

When one speaks of the spiritual essence of the human being as the deepest mystery of existence, what does one actually mean, dear ladies and gentlemen? Actually, one does not think that there can be any doubt about the spirit and its activity in the human being; because anyone who reflects on himself, even a little, will see precisely in what is spiritual in him that which gives man his actual dignity, which elevates him above the other beings in the world. And it can be said that not even the convinced materialist will actually doubt the value and the existence of the spiritual life in man. He will only raise objections against the independence, against the own entity of this spiritual life within human nature. He will say: That which you acknowledge as human being as your spiritual entity, that goes out of the physical, like the flame from the candle; that arises out of this physical; that extinguishes with this physical-physical.

Is it then, as one should believe, since man must once see the spiritual as his actual, peculiar dignity, is it then really grounded in ordinary life, that man, if not about the existence and the existence of the spiritual, so can be driven into deep doubt about the fate of his spiritual being? Yes, he can. He can do it through everyday life. And basically there are no other doubts in the science of the spiritual than those that unconsciously exist in the everyday life of man, that confuse man, that make man uncertain when he wants to have clarification about the nature of his own spirit.

And these doubts come from the most diverse sides. They are particularly strong in those who receive a scientific education in the present day. Of the various doubts that arise in a person, I will mention the two main ones, which a person does not really realize in everyday life, but there is indeed much, my dear audience, that sits unconsciously or subconsciously in the depths of the human soul, which surfaces into consciousness, not as clear concepts and not as clear doubts either, but as uncertainties, as something that, from the very bottom up, constitutes a person's inner happiness or inner instability. The one thing that — I emphasize it again —, not with complete clarity, but all the more strongly emotionally, gives rise to doubts about the fate of the spiritual, we actually encounter as human beings in every course of fate.

With each passing day, we sink into the life of sleep, through which the spiritual life, which is active during the day, gradually fades and finally extinguishes completely, until it arises again when we wake up and fills our consciousness. It is this extinguishing, this everyday disappearance of spiritual life, that repeatedly makes people uncertain when they ask themselves: Does the spirit have an independent existence? Doesn't it arise, this spirit, in the human physical life, just as it develops from childhood from the dull to the brighter more and more, like the flame from the candle when it is lit? Does it not go out again, this spirit, does it not go out, this soul life, when the body passes through death, as the flame goes out when the fuel is exhausted?

From this [night experience] everything that one seeks to eliminate and solve deep doubts and life's riddles actually emerges. But basically, and this will be the other side of the matter that I have to emphasize, basically it is no different in the waking life of the day. If we see the spirit extinguished in our sleep, then in our waking life we see it, as it were, immersed in the darkness of our own body in relation to its activity.

What is it then that we entertain in clear consciousness as our thoughts? Certainly, we have them. But if we only ask ourselves how our soul works in the simple movement of the hand when this primitive expression of the will comes about, we can only say to ourselves: Yes, we grasp the thought; the hand is to be raised. But the thought disappears into the darkness of our own organism. In our everyday consciousness we have no idea what our soul accomplishes within our organism in order to send its power through muscles and tendons in a flash, as it were, to actually bring about the act of will. We see, finally, how the hand moves – so again a mental image – and we see an external action as a result of going from mental image to mental image. But how the soul and spirit descend into our own body, that actually remains in darkness for us.

This darkness and this extinguishing, as I have just characterized them, is what anthroposophy, as a modern spiritual knowledge, now seeks to overcome, just as these doubts have been overcome at all times in the development of the human soul. What Anthroposophy strives for, ladies and gentlemen, is, I would say, exact clairvoyance, and by this term I would distinguish the knowledge of Anthroposophy from all the nebulous mystical views to which people in our time of uncertainties so often turn. It is this exact clairvoyance, this exact seeing-through, that aims to take full account of the requirements of modern science.

What, then, are these requirements of modern science? Well, they are that one can, with an inner clarity in observation and experiment, survey that which presents itself to the senses, and the genuine, as he calls himself, the exact modern scientist, in pursuing that which his senses observe, that which he wants to achieve through the experiment, he wants to have such clarity, such inner necessity in it, as he has in mathematics. That is why mathematical thinking is so readily applied to the natural sciences. One would actually like to apply this mathematical thinking everywhere, because it brings about exactness, that is, transparency, inner necessity. Now, anyone who speaks of exact science in this sense today seeks to bring this exactness into the way he follows external things and processes, or, for that matter, if he wants to be a psychologist, into the way he follows his own soul processes.

Anthroposophy, as it is meant here, also applies this exactitude. But it does not apply it to the external world, not to the observation of sensual things and to external sensual experiment. It applies this exactness to something that is not initially available to human consciousness. It applies this exactness to the development of soul forces that are initially hidden in the human being, but that can be evoked in it. Anthroposophical spiritual science has certainly learned from natural science how, through external sensory observation, through external experiment, through the methods by which natural science has achieved such triumphs, as they are also fully recognized by spiritual science, that through all this one cannot penetrate into a spiritual, not into a supersensible world, that the soul forces of man, as they are in everyday life and also in ordinary science, are unsuitable for penetrating into the supersensible. The human soul must first be made suitable for this, and the hidden powers deep within it must be brought forth. In doing so, one can proceed in an inward, mystically unclear way. Anthroposophical spiritual science specifically rejects this. But it wants to bring hidden soul forces out of the nature of man. And by adhering to this bringing forth, it observes a method that is as clear and inwardly necessary in the same sense as the research of external science in sensory observation and in experiment.

What exact science does to the finished outer nature by introducing clarity and exactness, that is what anthroposophy does to the development of the human soul forces. Nothing is done in the human soul that is not done with the same inner clarity, comprehensibility and necessity as the strict mathematician does with his investigations. In this way, the method of this exact clairvoyance seeks to develop the human soul in such a way that, to a certain extent, one's own development initially becomes a mathematical problem. I wanted to start by characterizing how the anthroposophical spiritual science that we are talking about here does not believe that one can research the spirit in the same way that one conducts external research in the natural sciences. Rather, it carries the scientific spirit that is present in the natural sciences into spiritual research in the truest sense. So the first step in anthroposophy is to work on oneself, on those forces of one's soul that then lead to insight into the supersensible world.

From this you can see, my dear attendees, that the person who wants to penetrate to the knowledge of the spiritual essence of the human being, let us call him a spiritual researcher, must, so to speak, turn back to himself in order to, first of all, I would say, illuminate his soul inwardly. It is a process of illumination and strengthening.

We shall most easily be able to understand what this modern way of observing the soul is to become if I remind you, my dear audience, of how such spiritual knowledge was sought in the more ancient times of human spiritual development. They were, I might say, striven for in a somewhat more material way. And since that which I have to describe to you later as today's method is more spiritual and soul-like, we shall be able to present this spiritual and soul-like more easily if we start, I might say, from the coarser, more material older methods.

But to do this, we must first take a look at how, in earlier periods of human development, people related to their environment. It is easy to believe that the human race has always been the same in its state of mind as it is today, since historical times. But this is not correct. Those who have an inner view of the human soul life will find that, even if they go back only a few centuries, people thought, felt and wanted quite differently, indeed, their whole soul mood, their whole soul condition was different than it is today. And if we go back thousands of years in human development, it becomes significantly different. The external historical monuments can only tell us a little about this, because, firstly, even if we look at the oldest times, for example, Egyptian monuments, they do not go back very far. Secondly, however, it depends on how the present-day person interprets these monuments. And according to that, he then finds one thing or another, which is basically only a reflection of his own state of mind, which he dreams into the souls of older humanity.

The spiritual science itself, of which I want to speak to you today and next Friday, sees the soul life of an older humanity in a different way than ordinary history. It looks at what has been preserved in significant, let us say, poetic or other monuments and can form an idea of how what is preserved in such monuments basically breathes from a completely different kind of spirit than that of today's human beings and she gradually comes to recognize that primitive humanity already had a kind of clairvoyance, a clairvoyance that was, however, dreamy, a clairvoyance that, compared to today's demands for clarity of consciousness, must appear to us as something foggy, as something dreamy. But this dreamy clairvoyance of ancient times looked deeper into the inner structure of the world, into the spirituality of the world, than today's sensory consciousness can. Fundamentally, the older person's relationship to the world was quite different.

It is easy to say that this older person saw all kinds of things in the things around him, that he saw a spiritual being in every plant, in every tree and bush, in every wave and ripple, and that he dreamt spiritual entities into clouds and winds. Yes, his consciousness was dream-like. But he did not simply project his own imagination onto the spiritual and soul-like beings he saw in water, in the spring, in the clouds, in the rain and in the wind. Rather, his state of soul was such that he saw all the spiritual beings in the world so naturally, with such elementary power, as we see the red or yellow color in the environment today, as we hear the sound in the environment, as we feel the warmth. We only perceive the senses and their contents; the older person experienced a spiritual element in the whole natural environment through the same elementary world, but in return he did not feel such an I, such a distinct self-reliant I as the modern person.

This feeling of a solid ego only developed over time in the course of human development, and only with it did the experience of human freedom arise. For this experience of freedom, this ego experience, to come about, the older dream-like, clairvoyant way has faded away. Man has been limited to the external sense world. In it he acquired his freedom. But today we have again reached a point where we, in our position as humanity within the sense world, must long to find the connection with the spiritual world again, where we are dependent on regaining a kind of clairvoyance. For the reasons already mentioned, however, this cannot be an old, dream-like clairvoyance; it can only be an exact clairvoyance, a clairvoyance that is modeled on modern scientific requirements. The older person had a dream-like clairvoyance; but just as we cannot be satisfied with external science today, so he was just as little satisfied with his clairvoyance, even though he found everywhere in the plant, in the bush, in the tree, in the cloud, in the wind , in the wind, he found a spiritual essence everywhere. He was not satisfied with this, and he turned his gaze to those personalities who, in those older times, represented what scholars represent today, what priests represent today. He directed his gaze to those personalities in older times who can be called initiates, initiates, for they were perceived as such, and who, through the development of special soul powers, but in a more material way than we are to do today, came to a kind of spiritual knowledge of man.

Yes, this kind was more material than our present-day one may be. I would like to describe such a kind of ancient spiritual knowledge first. I would like to describe to you what has actually come down to us, more or less distorted, in the external literature from the ancient Orient, and was practiced in the oldest times of the Orient by individual personalities in order to gain knowledge of a higher, spiritual world and to be able to communicate it to the broad masses of humanity, who lived with their state of soul as I have characterized it.

I know, esteemed attendees, that what I am about to describe as the so-called yoga method of that oldest oriental spiritual development has then come into decadence, that it has fallen into decay, and that even in many descriptions of that yoga method, because they actually describe periods of decay of this kind of spiritual research, something very bad is given.

But I would like to give you a little description of the genuine ancient yoga method, so that we can then get some orientation about what modern man can strive for as exact clairvoyance. It was a special kind of breathing that was aimed for through that yoga method. How does breathing actually work in the ordinary person? He doesn't really know much about it. He breathes in, he breathes out. Only when our breathing becomes irregular during illness do we actually feel our breathing. We do not pay attention to it in ordinary life. It fulfills our corporeality, but it fulfills our corporeality in such a way that its activity basically remains unconscious. Nevertheless, this breath plays - we can also prove this physiologically today, I can only hint at it in this lecture - but this breath nevertheless plays a significant role in our entire human life.

We breathe in. The breath does not just take the path into the inner cavities of our body, only to be exhaled again in a different form, but, for example, it passes through our spinal canal, flows into our brain, and we have , within our brain, while we are awake, we do not merely have nervous activity, but we have this nervous activity continually vibrated, radiated, and permeated by the breaths, by the rhythm of the breathing process. And we can say that even in our thinking, in our imagination, the breathing process has the greatest conceivable share.

But just as we pay little attention to the breathing process in the rest of our organism, we are just as unaware of it in our head organization. The ancient yogi changed the breathing, that is, he shifted the breathing into a different respiratory rhythm than the usual one. The ordinary breathing is not noticed. By breathing in differently, slower or faster, holding it longer or shorter than one does in ordinary life, breathing out longer or shorter, the yogi brought himself into a different rhythm. This made him aware of the breathing process. This allowed him to follow the course of the respiratory flow from inhalation through the lungs, how it spread throughout the entire organism, and how it ran through the spinal canal into the brain. In this way, the person pervaded the organism with his consciousness. He followed the respiratory flow everywhere. In this way he got to know his own organism. And this getting to know one's own organism, my dear ladies and gentlemen, means that all mere material experience comes to an end. In ancient times of human spiritual development, anyone who consciously radiated through their own humanity with an altered breathing rhythm would have seemed foolish if they had said that only material things were circulating through their body. No, the breathing current appeared to those old yogis, so to speak, as an internal scanning of the organism. And what arose for them through this scanning was the inner soul and spiritual being of the person. The method was material. What was discovered was the inner soul and spiritual being. What was discovered was how one feels, how one thinks. They proceeded materially and discovered a spiritual being. They examined themselves inwardly, so to speak, feeling their way. And what the ancient yogi strove for on the one hand was precisely the sense of self that he did not yet have through his natural knowledge, which he tried to acquire in this way.

You just have to look at such things not with the dry, philistine way that is often applied today, you have to put yourself with all the full human feeling in that, what is one, so if you scan his inner human.

Then, my dear audience, you feel what is described in the wonderful Bhagavad Gita as the true human self, which flows into the spiritual and soul world as the eternal in man. One feels that what is described as the ego in a wonderful world poem is the result of a process such as I have just described as yoga breathing.

Now, my dear attendees, we cannot proceed in this way as modern people, because after all, it is the case that the one who, on this path, through the change of breathing, or also because one wanted to support all of this wanted to support this by means of special postures, by means of the position of the person in relation to the physical body, because by doing so they made the physical body particularly intense, because they made themselves hypersensitive as a person in general, it happened that they had to withdraw from life. But that was entirely in keeping with the old habits of knowledge of mankind. Those who, in this way, made themselves overly sensitive as seekers of the spiritual world sought solitude, for it was not appropriate for them to always be in relation to the harsh rest of the world, to come into contact with it. But on the other hand, those who wanted to know something about the fate of human souls sought out such lonely personalities. People trusted these hermits. They were considered to be able to give sound advice on the temporal fate of the human soul in relation to the eternal.

We cannot proceed in the same way today, because humanity has come to a point in its development that it can no longer trust the one who, in order to explore the truth, to explore the spiritual, withdraws from life, but that it can only trust the one who fully cooperates with life, who, like every other person, engages in the practice of life, in the needs and demands of the day. Today we need methods that do not make the human body overly sensitive, but that strengthen the human soul. These methods can be attained, and they can lead to a truly exact clairvoyance.

First of all, there are intimate processes of the human soul life to which one must devote oneself: meditation, concentration of the life of imagination. In a similar way, I have described in my books, for example in “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science”, what the human being must devote himself to. I have pointed out what today's modern man must do in order to enter the spiritual world in a similar way, but now according to his needs, as was given to the ancient yogi.

Shall I now give you a brief definition of meditation? Meditation is a specific training of the life of thought, which is not present in ordinary existence. And through this training of the life of thought, one first comes to the development of such soul powers that lead into the spiritual world, into the supersensible. But what is this meditation?

Now, dear audience, you will find more detailed descriptions in the books mentioned above of what this meditation is, what these modern methods of clairvoyance are. But you will also find more detailed descriptions there of how the modern person must undertake, what the modern person must undertake to achieve such exact clairvoyance. But here I can only state the principles.

And if I were to describe to you in a single word what the soul has to do, I would put it like this: when we develop our imaginative life in other ways, we are immersed in our ideas with a certain indifference; in our ordinary lives we are often immersed in intense warmth or deep antipathy. Our whole inner being can be stirred up in hot passion or wild repulsion when we are immersed in ordinary life. But the images, they are, I would like to say, a cold current in our everyday life; they accompany this everyday life.

However, anyone who wants to progress to meditation must do something other than the coldness of the imaginative life that one otherwise deals with in ordinary daily life. One must be able to call thoughts into one's soul, thoughts that one may have guessed at from someone who is already a spiritual researcher, or thoughts that one otherwise finds out in the world, but which should work in the soul in such a way that they calmly fill the soul life. One tries to distract one's soul life from everything else in the world. One seeks to direct one's attention to such images and to dwell on such images; one seeks to devote oneself entirely to the imagination, to individual images. But there is something necessary in this devotion to the images: that we can love these images at the moment when we thus devote ourselves, when we disregard all the rest of the world and live in complete inner peace in one image or one complex of images.

Yes, my dear attendees, the development of inner love, the development of inner warmth of soul when resting on ideas – ideas that we ourselves have first placed in the life of the soul – these are what make it possible for ordinary imagining to become meditation. When we can love our own thinking with the same inner love with which we love our objects or fellow human beings, when we can love our own thinking universally, when we can merge completely in it with love, when we can remain in him, then this life of imagination receives that inner power which is indeed something quite different from yogic breathing, but which works in the same way, only producing somewhat different results than yogic breathing. While yogic breathing attempts to send the breathing process into the head in order to scan and illuminate the whole person inwardly and to recognize their spiritual and soul essence, we gradually develop gradually develop an inner, true power of thought, by means of which we can scan and examine ourselves inwardly, not in the same way as with the modified breath, but still to a certain extent.

And so, in modern man, exact clairvoyance can be evoked by strengthening and energizing the soul life, while in more physical terms, dreamy clairvoyance was sought in the earlier periods of human development.

But then, when we really come to examine ourselves inwardly in this way, through intensified, strengthened thinking, we become aware of something different from what we have in ordinary life; then, my dear audience, we have developed a power of knowledge in us that leads us out, initially, beyond the ordinary life of memory. What do we have in this memory life? We look back from the present moment of our existence on earth to some time after our birth. Thoughts of experiences emerge from memory. There is a continuous stream, but it remains in the subconscious; memories arise, either freely, as they are said to do, or evoked by ourselves. These memories are abstract thoughts of experiences that we may have gone through in all the heat of life. These abstract thoughts remain with us. But then, when we apply meditation or concentration, loving thoughts and repeatedly thinking loving thoughts to our soul life – whether it takes a short time or many years for each person depends on their destiny, depending on the nature of their destiny, can attain such exact clairvoyance. When we use it to illuminate our inner life, our past soul life since birth lies before our spiritual gaze like a unified, temporal panorama. But not as memories, but as creatively active in us what can be called an ethereal human existence.

We do not just look at how we have had external experiences that have remained in us in abstract thoughts, we look at our previous life, how we ourselves have worked on our organs from a spiritual and soul perspective since our childhood. We look at how we have shaped our still untrained brain in a plastic way in our early childhood. We look at how we have taken in external substances into our organism, how they have worked in us in terms of growth force, how we still work on ourselves daily in the forces of nutrition. We look at the outer organism as that which we ourselves are working on. After all, we do not have a spatial organism, a spatial body, in front of us, but we do have a temporal body in front of us.

All at once there stands that which is our whole life, but which only underlies the external appearances, which works on our outer organism, a time body - anthroposophy calls it the etheric body - a time body that cannot be drawn or painted, just as a flash of lightning cannot be drawn or painted, but can only be captured for a moment.

That is the first thing that one discovers through this exact clairvoyance: a time body that we carry within us, which is a unity like our spatial body, just as –– in our physical spatial body a unity is to be thought with the arms or with the hand, a unity is to be thought with the head, how the one is not to be thought without the other, how the one stands in reciprocal interaction with the other – we look at our time body when we turn 50 years old, just as we formed our physical body out of our etheric soul at the age of 30, we look back at our 28th year, we look back at our 18th year, we look back at that which is as interconnected as the individual limbs of our physical body. We look at an etheric element that underlies us. This etheric element remains in us throughout our entire life on earth, from birth to death. While we remove the substances that make up our body from our physical body after a relatively short time and replace them with others, what we see as the time body is a unity from our birth or conception to our death , a unity that is continually active within us, which, like a vast panorama of time, now stands before the soul life as that which we have acquired through meditation, through concentration, through the loving life of thought.

But we can go further. Those who remain for weeks or months, or for years in such meditative, that is, loving thought, even if only for a very short time each day, will eventually come to see how their thought life is strengthened. And because it is strengthened, it works in them as forces of growth, as realities, not just as abstract thoughts. He takes hold of those forces in his thoughts that have brought about his growth, that bring about his nourishment, that work in his inner being as nourishing forces. He transfers himself, so to speak, from the passive, abstract, dead life of thought into the world of living thoughts. And he first learns to recognize in this world of living thoughts his own etheric body, which has been building him up since his birth or conception and which is still working on him today.

Oh, it is as if, one day, something happened in our inner being through this loving introduction, through this loving thinking, through the attainment of this exact clairvoyance, as if something arose in our inner being which seems to us, as when we have gone through a dark night and see the morning sun come up and see it light up around us; so we experience for a moment in our inner being something like an inner soul sunrise. Our inner being, which was previously dark and we had to say to ourselves, we do not penetrate down to where our soul works on our body, we do not even penetrate down to those depths where, as I said before, the soul twitches like lightning through the muscle to move the arm through the thought, to raise the arm. Now we look into our organism through loving imagination. What we otherwise have only when we look into ourselves, thoughts, we now have as living forces; these are we ourselves as we have been in every hour of our earthly existence since our birth.

But by continuing our meditations, we come to the point – I have described it again in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science” or in other books – we finally come to the point of perceiving other exercises as necessary, because we learn to recognize that even if we always work on our soul life with the same inner awareness as we otherwise only have in mathematical work, when we work with such inner awareness, with absolute inner clarity and lucidity on our soul life, we come to see that it is now becoming more difficult to remove from our consciousness those thoughts that are now living forces, yes, that are ultimately what we recognize as ourselves, these living thoughts. It is as if they become fixed, because in the end we ourselves are what these living thoughts are. But just as we first learned to live lovingly in these ideas, so now we must turn to something else with all our inner effort. To do this, we must be able to remove the ideas from our consciousness of our own free will.

This is more difficult for us than in ordinary life, especially when we have previously lovingly placed them there. Therefore, as a rule, someone who has meditated for a while and is then advised by the spiritual researcher to move on to removing the ideas will say: Oh, the thoughts rush in like swarms of bees; I can't get rid of them. But the effort must be made to bring about an artificial forgetting within, a suppression of thoughts. And one can actually achieve this by making an effort, practising inner self-discipline, suppressing thoughts again, and finally, after first strengthening and reinforcing thoughts, creating an empty consciousness. One can then rest in this empty consciousness. One is actually now in a state that is only awake. One is awake, but one has no content of waking.

That this is difficult, my dear audience, you will see from the fact that most people immediately fall asleep when they have no content in their everyday consciousness. But that is precisely what must now be developed for the purpose of gaining knowledge of the higher worlds: to have a completely empty consciousness at the same time as an alert consciousness. If one really succeeds in this, then, as light and color effects stream into the eye and sounds stream into the ear from the physical world, so, when this has been prepared, the spiritual worlds stream into the empty consciousness. And now, for the first time, one becomes aware not only of what I have described before, seeing one's own life as an ethereal-spiritual world, but one now becomes aware of a spiritual world around oneself. I will say more about this next Friday, but now I want to talk about the spiritual essence of man and show that one can go further.

In the same way that one can come to discard ideas that one previously sought to gain with all one's strength, one can, by increasing one's strength of this discarding, come to finally discard the whole overview of one's own life. Everything that one sees there, what works inwardly on one's own organism, what growth and nutrition brings about, what allows us to develop from small children into fully grown adults, everything that is at work within, what stands before us like a spiritual panorama, one can remove it; just as one can abstract from one's own perception, one gradually learns to disregard one's own life. Just as it is otherwise difficult to achieve an empty consciousness, so now one can achieve an empty consciousness by having removed one's own consciousness in life. Then one stands there with an empty consciousness in full wakefulness. One stands beyond one's own life.

Now, a spiritual life flows into this soul, which has removed its own life between birth and death from consciousness. We learn to recognize this spiritual life by seeing it more and more as our pre-earthly existence. And now we are looking into a spiritual world that has nothing of what is otherwise around us in the material world, which is a purely spiritual world. But in this spiritual world we ourselves are in it, we are in it as we were before we descended as spiritual-soul beings into the physical-sensual world and united with what was given to us by father and mother as our physical body. Now we do not need to believe; now we have acquired, through the appropriate exercises, a real, exact knowledge, an exact observation of what we were in the spiritual and soul world before our birth or conception. How we worked, thought and willed in the spiritual world, how we work after we have clothed ourselves with our physical body between birth and death in earthly existence, how we bring about everything in earthly existence through our bodily organization , and even the thought we conceive can only be conceived through the medium of the nervous system, so we see ourselves in our spiritual-soul existence through a truly exact clairvoyance before we descended to our earth.

We see ourselves surrounded by spiritual beings, just as we see ourselves surrounded by physical beings here in the physical world. What leads us back a little in the physical world, but not out of the physical world, is our memory. We have abstract thoughts in the present moment. They bring into our soul the experiences we had years ago; but now, through the processes I have described, we not only have before us the ordinary experience on the physical earth, now we have before us – albeit in an image, but in an image of a reality – we have before us our pre-earthly existence with all its essence, with all its activity.

I could only describe to you, dear audience, the paths that the soul must take to penetrate the transitory, which the soul has as thinking, feeling and willing, to that which was creatively at work in the human body, what was there before this human body united with it, what belongs to a spiritual world, what does not come into being with the body, but rather first takes place in the body and actually makes its existence as a human body possible. Through such exact clairvoyance, we gradually advance from the physical existence into the super-physical, into the spiritual. We do not speculate, we do not philosophize in abstract terms, we seek experiences of the spiritual world, and seek to come to an understanding of the spiritual nature of man through experience.

In this way we arrive at discovering the eternity of the human soul. On the other hand, we can now train in a modern form for an exact clairvoyance, which an older time, which had more of a dreamy clairvoyance, trained in so-called asceticism. Let us again make clear in asceticism what was sought in a more material way, while we must seek it in a more spiritual way in modern times: the ascetic tried to paralyze his body, to kill it, even to make it ill in a certain way. Now, as a modern person, I will certainly not advocate the weakening or mortification of the body in any way; but in those older times, people knew exactly what they were doing when they systematically mortified their bodies. What happened to the person in the process? To the same extent that people systematically mortified their bodies, to the same extent did their soul come to life. It is precisely through this mortification that the body became, I would say, more and more transparent and more and more transparent. It was an experience of these ancient ascetics that by paralyzing the body, the soul became more and more alive and more and more alive. And in this way they attained a knowledge of that which man experiences unconsciously during the ordinary state of sleep.

In this way I have described to you, in the one way, in the yoga philosophy, and in the other way, in the modern way, through modern meditation, how man can consciously, that is, clairvoyantly, penetrate into that which is otherwise in the darkness of his own organism. I said that this is what touches us most closely in relation to the fate of our own spirit: that we cannot see how the soul and spirit work down there in the human organism, that we move, as it were, into the darkness of the human body while keeping watch, that we do not even know what the soul is doing by moving a hand.

The ancient yogi got to know this inner realm by scanning it with his breath, as it were. The clairvoyant person of today x-rays himself with exact thinking that has become clairvoyant, and in so doing penetrates into the darkness of his own body. This brings certainty instead of the insecurity that arises because otherwise, in ordinary daily life, one only plunges into the darkness of one's own body. But on the other hand, doubt arises from the fact that one sees the spiritual-soul dawning down in the process of falling asleep and finally one sees that it only dawns again when one wakes up. One must ask oneself: Can this soul then exist independently if it can be extinguished every day in this way by the needs of the body?

That was precisely what the old ascetic achieved: To the same extent that he systematically weakened his body, tuned it down, and in some respects even made it sick and weak, to that same extent his soul became more conscious, no longer completely permeating his life between falling asleep and waking up, but sinking down into the unconscious during sleep, experiencing dreams that were realities, more and more certain things coming up. To the same extent that the body was subdued, a soul life shone forth that was similar to the sleeping soul life, but which was conscious, and thus in turn opposite to the sleeping soul life. One had to say to oneself: You can therefore also live with this soul in the way you otherwise only live during sleep. So this soul can maintain itself in relation to the body even when it is not in this body. By reducing the life of the body, the ancient ascetic, as it were, drew out the independent life of the soul, and from that, in those ancient times, knowledge came to him, albeit in a dream-like way. When your body finally falls away from you, when it has reached the highest degree of dullness, which you have achieved to a small degree during your asceticism, when it falls away from you in death, then the highest moment will occur, which you have already experienced in a diminished way here in earthly life. And from the practice of ancient asceticism, the old clairvoyant person gained that knowledge, which he was also able to communicate in a different way: that the soul has eternal life in the spirit, even in the face of death. In ancient times, through a kind of exercise, yoga exercises, and today through meditation exercises, one saw into the pre-earthly existence, thus into the eternity of the soul on one side. The old clairvoyant person sees through the gate of death, sees how the soul overcomes death, precisely through the mortification, the paralysis of the body.

Again, this is something that we modern people cannot do, because again it turned out that the old ascetic was not up to life: his body, which had been weakened for asceticism, that is, for higher knowledge, could not meet the demands of everyday life. In those ancient times, people had confidence in such hermits and sought knowledge from them that they did not want to have themselves. Today one would not have it. But just as the yoga exercises can be modified for today's life, for today's sense of time, so too can the ascetic exercises be modified. The ancient ascetic attuned his body to awaken the soul life, as it was in the face of eternity, in his death. He thus weakened the body in order to allow the unaltered soul life to become relatively stronger in relation to the weaker body, so that he might recognize it. The modern person must take the opposite path. He leaves the body as it is and strengthens the soul life. This is achieved in a special way through exercises.

I will highlight some of the things I have described in detail in the books mentioned. One exercise is particularly effective. We are so immersed in our ordinary lives that we let our thinking, our inner soul life, passively follow the events of the outer world every day. We think about things that happen earlier in the day earlier, and think about things that happen later later. And when we follow life in reverse, as we do in legal, logical thought, we do nothing but imagine the correct course of events in our minds. Those who want to systematically strengthen their inner life must work day after day, even if only for a few minutes, but if they want to achieve something serious, they must work as diligently as in a laboratory or an observatory or a clinic; but what they have to do are intimate inner processes. Let us say, for example, that he first reviews his day in reverse order, for example, from seven o'clock; he reviews what happened first between seven and six o'clock, then between six o'clock and five o'clock, and thus follows his day backwards. It is best to follow the events of the day in full detail. Let us say, for example, that one went up a staircase. First you were on the bottom step, then on the next one, and so on. In this reconstruction, which should not be a mere reminiscence but a reconstruction, you are first on the top step, imagine how you go down to the penultimate, last step and so on. You do the whole process again. The same applies to other things. You can also do this with other years of your life, going back from the age of eighteen to the age of fifteen, but preferably in great detail. This is more difficult than is generally believed. In doing so, you actively resist the external course of events within yourself. You no longer merely surrender to the external course of events. You oppose it. In doing so, you tear your thinking away from the succession of the external sense world. By tearing one's thinking away from the succession of the outer sense world, one gets accustomed to a completely different inner hold on thinking. Thinking must become more powerful, more independent, by tearing itself away from the outer world.

Likewise, one can do other exercises. You know, my dear audience, that life is constantly changing. Anyone who is honest in their self-examination will have to admit that they are now quite a different person than they were ten or twenty years ago. But how did we become this way? Yes, we have actually only surrendered to life, we have become what life has made of us, what heredity, upbringing and so on has made of us.

Anyone who wants to become a spiritual scientist in the way meant here must take their own life into their own hands, must put as much inner energy into it as they have put into strengthening their thoughts in meditation, and must do the same in terms of strengthening their will. For example, at a certain point in his life, he must say: “For the next three years, you set yourself the task of equipping your soul life with inner habits in a certain way. You take into your own hands what life would otherwise have done to you. Life makes you different with each passing year. Now you take this power of the life stream into your own hands. You consciously change certain habits within you that life would otherwise have changed. It will be seen that especially small habits that have crept into life, when they are done with ever more conscious and conscious soul practice, work wonders in inner self-education – for example, someone who has had a certain handwriting up to this moment in their life, who now changes this handwriting out of this power. And so you can imagine that there are countless smaller or larger habits that one can take in hand, so that one can become, as it were, one's own inner guide, that one can become the director of one's will more and more.

And anyone who then continues the exercises related to the will from “How to Know Higher Worlds” and other books, anyone who continues these exercises, in other words, practices that which can be practiced both through that backward and by this self-discipline; anyone who practices self-conquest strengthens the life of the soul, just as the old ascetic weakened his body and left the life of the soul, so that it became relatively stronger than the weakened body. The body remains as it is, but the soul life is strengthened in this way. And we see something peculiar in our own human existence. I can describe it to you by using a comparison.

Take the human eye. How does the human eye see? Well, because it is transparent itself, because it allows light to pass through it. In the moment when the eye, let us say, becomes clouded, asserts its own materiality, in that same moment, vision ceases. The eye, so to speak, completely forgets itself. Thereby it becomes the servant of the human organism in relation to seeing. By not asserting its own materiality, it becomes the sense organ for the external physical world.

Our soul life, when we strengthen it in the manner described by overcoming ourselves, will ultimately prevail over the human organism in such a way that the latter is not only illuminated from within by meditation exercises, but that the body, like the eye in relation to sensory light, becomes transparent to the soul and spirit. Just as we do not see the eye, but the objects outside, so we learn through our body, which is now not physically but spiritually transparent, and which now does not drive out any desires, longings or passions, in the moments when we want to use it as a higher spiritual sense organ, through this organism we learn about the spiritual world as through a soul transparency. And in this way we attain the possibility of saying to ourselves: We see into a spiritual world through our organism. It has become our soul eye, our spirit eye. Now, like the ancient ascetic, we gain knowledge of the eternal nature of the human soul beyond death.

And by learning to live with the spiritual world around us, after our own organism has become a selfless sense organ, a life of the soul outside the physical body becomes clear to us. And we now have the opportunity to leave the body untouched by our soul life, as it is during sleep. But we have strengthened our soul life. We can separate the soul from the physical body and from the etheric body in the same way as it is separated during sleep. We experience a state similar to sleep, but which is in fact the opposite of sleep. We learn to recognize that we have not extinguished our soul life with sleep, that our soul life was just too weak to develop consciousness from falling asleep to waking up. Through the intensified soul life, we shine through an artificially induced sleep, we illuminate it. We know that we can develop a spiritual-soul life without the body. We therefore know, through the fact that this image is before us, this image of dying, of life after death, we know that the soul, beyond death, that is, on the other side from the one I described earlier, is endowed with eternal life.

Thus, through our meditations, we learn to think of our soul life, for our pre-earthly existence, the one side of eternity, and through the training of our will, through self-transcendence, through the strengthening of our soul life, we come to know eternity as extending beyond death, and we gain a vivid sense of the eternity of the human soul, of the spiritual essence of the human being.

You see how this is attempted. It is not attempted, as the spiritualist does, by means of experiments that are the same as those in the external world, no, but rather, the human soul life itself is developed in such a way that the muscles grow up to this soul life in order to look into the spiritual world. Anthroposophical spiritual science does not want to sin against the spirit of modern exact science. But it cannot initially research an external environment exactly, because it is not there at all, just as colors are not there for the blind, but the spiritual eye, the power of vision, must first be developed. This happens through meditation, through willpower.

But by proceeding with this meditation, with this discipline of the will, in the same way that the scientist otherwise proceeds with the external world, we can speak of bringing the spirit, the meaning of modern scientific civilization, into those areas where, ultimately, our scientific life merges into religious experience, where we ultimately recognize what the spiritual essence of man is. And this spiritual essence of man, my dear audience, lives just as much as the physical human being here with a physical world, lives with a spiritual world.

And how man can find his way into this spiritual world, how he can find the spiritual essence of the world, will be the subject of next Friday's lecture, so that we can understand not only the spiritual essence of man through the method of supersensible knowledge, but also the spiritual essence of the world. But then it will become clear to us how, through the intimate coexistence of the spiritual essence of man with the spiritual essence of the world, a deepening of religious life can arise out of real modern clairvoyance, how man can perhaps what he has lost through modern science, can regain in such a way that he can now combine the deepest religion with strict science.

That is what modern civilization is actually striving for. Because modern civilization has lost the spirit, it has also come to such bitter outer destinies. Perhaps it will also be possible to show what exactly the present dire fate of the times is when we next look at the spiritual essence of the world. Today, I just wanted to show, by way of preparation, how man recognizes himself as a spirit, so that he can then also find the spirit within the world and connect with it in a religious way, in bright, clear clarity. For perhaps it will emerge from the discussions that I have allowed myself to engage in before you today, my dear audience, that what is here called exact clairvoyance and which should lead to a knowledge of the eternal essence of human nature, that this should not conflict with the spirit of modern science, whose triumphs within modern civilization are to be and can be fully recognized by anthroposophy.

But something must be sought that this modern science, as it develops in external observation and external experiment, cannot give. This modern science is no more denied or criticized away in its justification by anthroposophical spiritual science than it is a criticism of human existence when we stand before people and say: There we have the physiognomy of the face, the person's gestures, their forms, the color of their skin; but in all that we see with our outer senses, there is something soulful, spiritual. And only when we see the soul speaking through the incarnate parts – through the skin color – through the gestures, through the whole form of the human being, when we see the soul speaking through the gaze, only then do we have the whole human being. And in just the same sense, when we know the outer world through the outer science of observation and experiment, we have, as it were, the outer gesture of the world, the outer physiognomy of the world, but not yet the soul, not yet the spirit of the world. But just as we only know people half way and cannot gain a proper relationship with them if we only look at the outside, at their color and form, we can only gain a relationship if the soul and spirit speak to us through all of this, so we can only recognize the world in the great and the essence of people if all that true, genuine natural science gives us — especially when it keeps within its limits — gives us of the world's physiognomy and gestures, if we allow all this to be valid, even recognized, and if we progress from this to an exact clairvoyance, to an exact seeing of the world's soul through the outer physical gestures of the world, and to an exact seeing of the human spirit through the outer physical gestures of the human being, so that we may recognize the spirit of the human being.

In this way, anthroposophy does not seek to rebel against science; on the contrary, it seeks to bring science into a realm that modern science cannot enter. It does not want to become something that seeks spirituality in a combative way, I might say; it wants to become something through full recognition of natural science, yes, through a higher evaluation of natural science than is often possible for the latter itself; it wants to become something in relation to what we know as soul and spirit in the world of materialism, in the world of physiology; it wants to become this anthroposophy itself, soul and spirit of modern science. And this modern scientific approach needs soul and spirit to complement the science, it needs warmth of the human soul, the inner light of the human soul, the true religious need. Only in this way can the modern human being revive in a new way from his soul, from his spirit, and move towards a more hopeful future than would otherwise be possible with a more materialistic world view.

Dear attendees, Last Tuesday I took the liberty of discussing here how it is possible for a person to gain knowledge about his own spiritual being, about the eternal that lies beyond birth and death. Today I would like to shed light on the same subject from a different angle and explain how it is indeed possible to gain knowledge about the spiritual essence of the world.

These insights cannot be gained by the methods currently used in scientific research. For this scientific method of investigation, which has achieved such great triumphs in recent centuries, triumphs that are fully recognized from the point of view that is asserted here, this scientific world view builds its knowledge on observation and experimentation, that is, on that which man can experience of the world through his senses. Of course, one does try — and must try — to penetrate intellectually that which the senses reveal about the world. In this way, one arrives at natural laws, that is, in a certain sense, at spiritual content, because the natural laws that one establishes in thought are, after all, a spiritual content. But the thoughts that one gains in this way, beyond observation and experiment, have no independent content; they only provide images of what the senses, either unarmed or armed, experience from the outside world. That is to say, the soul-spiritual in man reveals itself through what can be experienced by the human being through the senses, or through methodically trained sensory perception.

Everything that is experienced by man in this way is the effect of the external world on his bodily organization, on his physical organism. And what man experiences in his soul is nothing other than the experience of the sensual-physical world.

Man cannot stop at this mere experiencing of the sensual-physical world, because within this physical-sensual world there is no place for that which lives as an indelible impulse in the human soul, there is no place for the religious-moral inner experience. And the newer scientific world view achieves perfection precisely by observing the things and processes of the world in such a way that it does not mix anything of the human being as moral or religious into the world view, into the laws of the world. Man stands before a world to which he ascribes reality and existence, but which, as I said the other day, does not contain the most valuable thing by which man actually ascribes his dignity, his true value in this world: the moral, the religious essence. That is why people have always tried to penetrate beyond mere sensory experience, beyond mere experience in the physical, to a knowledge of the spiritual essence of the world.

Only the centuries in which we still live and which have become great in terms of their civilization through rigorous scientific thinking have either completely denied the possibility of supersensible, spiritual knowledge, or at least expressed serious doubts about the possibility of such knowledge. Today, however, we have reached the point, as I also hinted at last time, where man, precisely because of the certainty that knowledge of nature gives him, must seek an equal certainty with regard to the knowledge of spiritual life, that life which, in addition to the natural-physical, can also contain the moral event and the religious connection of man with the supersensible.

But if we want to visualize that path into the supersensible worlds for the knowledge of the spiritual essence of the world this evening, my dear audience, it will be good to follow a similar path to the one I took last time on Tuesday to explore the knowledge of the spiritual essence of the human being. I pointed out how, in the early days of human development, such a path to spiritual knowledge of the human being was sought, in order to illustrate how that older path was more material and how we today, based on our scientific foundation, must seek a more spiritual path to knowledge. Therefore, today I will begin by pointing out how, in the early days of human civilization, those who wanted to ascend from the contemplation of the physical-sensual world to a knowledge of the spiritual essence of the world sought it out. I do not want to be misunderstood about this either. I am not recommending that older path. It can no longer be followed today. But to explain the path that should be taken today, we can tie in with the older, more outwardly descriptive path.

This older path, which in turn leads us back to oriental spiritual contemplation, to human prehistory, this path presupposes that the one who walks it turns to someone who has already walked it, to a teacher, to a teacher of spiritual knowledge. In ancient Oriental times, anyone who wanted to ascend to the spiritual essence of the world had to seek out such a guru, a teacher of spiritual knowledge. However, you may ask, my dear audience, where did the first spiritual teachers of humanity come from according to those older times?

First of all, let us consider the view that existed in those older times regarding the most ancient teachers of humanity. These people believed that the very first teachers received their knowledge directly from divine teachers with whom they were in contact in a supersensible way at the very beginning of the earth's time. I can only point out this belief of older times here, because a discussion of the question would lead far afield from the subject today. I have only to point out that this question leads to the same regions as, for instance, the question concerning the origin of human language or the origin of human thought. In the past, people resorted to a transcendental explanation even for the transmission of the teaching of the transcendental to people, just as they sought the origin of language in the fact that divine influences themselves exerted an influence on people and humanity, and that in this way people directly acquired language from the transcendental. So it was also thought that the first teachers, the first gurus, received their knowledge through a supersensible intercourse with the first great teachers of mankind. But those who came later knew that they could only come to a true understanding of the spiritual, to a knowledge of the spiritual in the world, if they turned to such a teacher.

What did such a teacher do? The prerequisite for him to be able to do anything with his pupil at all was that, through all of civilization, the disciples sought this older teaching of mankind with an almost absolute trust in it, a trust that today's mankind, who feel and think differently in this respect, can no longer really imagine. The aura of mystery that surrounded such personalities was due to the fact that it was believed that they were in direct contact with the supersensible in their places of worship, which were also places of art and science – for religion, art and science were one in those days – in those places, in the mystery schools, as they are called today. They were looked up to in such a way that it was not merely assumed that they could be taught something theoretical, that they could be taught something that they themselves had discovered through some kind of natural experiment or the like. Rather, it was that the word they spoke, the signs they gave, that what they performed before the students was directly the external manifestation of the divine behind these teachers.

Thus one did not approach these teachers one-sidedly with the intellect, not one-sidedly with the head, but one approached them with the whole human being. One felt enlightened in one's intellect, not just intellectually and theoretically; but one felt everything that one received intellectually as enlightenment, warmly imbued with an element of feeling, and one felt it imbued with the power of a will that emanated from the depths of the world itself and poured into the will of man. You gave yourself completely by turning to the leaders of such mystery centers.

And the teaching was not theoretical in the sense that we understand teaching today, but it was linked to a deepening of feeling in all the details, it was linked to the fact that the student saw in the teacher how this teacher was aware of the fact that he was, as it were, with every word, with every hand movement, with all that he now developed in spirit-permeated experiments before the student, how he with all of this brought the divine spiritual will itself into earthly life.

What was achieved by this? The result was that the spiritual-soul nature of the pupil was actually able to separate itself from the physical organism and also from the finer, etheric organism, which leads a fleeting existence in the physical organism. And the student became aware of one thing. Before he received such instruction, he could say to himself: Perhaps my entire soul life ceases when I fall asleep at night, perhaps then I am only a physical body that performs different functions than in the waking state, and perhaps, when this physical organism has devoted itself to purely organic activities for a while, then it can in turn develop out of itself, just as a candle can develop a flame when it is lit, then it can in turn develop out of itself the conscious spiritual-soul life.

Before his instruction, the disciple could say to himself: Perhaps what takes place for me as spiritual-soul life from waking to sleeping, arises merely as an illusion, illuminated by the physical functions of the body. Through the instruction of the guru, he came to realize that he could no longer say this to himself, but he became aware that in the act of falling asleep in the evening, he actually emerged with his spiritual-soul being as a reality free of the body, a reality that emerged from his physical organism and also from the finer organism, the etheric that he is just as much with his physical organism among physical things and physical processes during waking hours, that from falling asleep to waking up he lives in a purely spiritual-soul organism that is outside the physical body, but that in the morning when he wakes up he submerges again into this physical organism. Only he said to himself through that teaching, which he received as a student: Yes, but when I fall asleep in my ordinary life, then the spiritual-soul entity that is now next to the physical organism, which remains in the physical-sensual world, is now in the spiritual-soul world and is active there, is so weak internally that it cannot become aware of what it experiences in the spiritual-soul world. But through the power that went out from the guru, what had been outside the body in the night from falling asleep to waking up in an unconscious state was transferred to a different kind of existence outside the body. And in this other existence, which at first could only take place under the influence of the guru and to which the disciple himself then became powerful, in this other existence, which was now no longer sleep, which resembled sleep only in that the spiritual soul was outside the body but which was therefore opposed to sleep, [it happened] that now within this spiritual-mental a power awakened in a spiritual-mental way, as one otherwise only has it through one's blood, through one's nerves when awake in the physical body. Through the awakening of such power, the soul and spirit came to life without the physical body and its support in a state opposite to sleep and yet so similar to it because the person was outside his body. This spiritual-soul life was inwardly enlivened. And just as the physical organism gives man the sense impressions when he is awake, so now this inwardly awakened, this inwardly strengthened spiritual-soul organism gave the disciple of the guru the impressions of a spiritual-soul external world.

Therefore, one can say: The guru brought it about that not only in the natural way that happens when a person falls asleep, the soul-spiritual realm outside the physical body of the disciple went, but the guru brought it about through his teachings, but above all through the influences borne out of trust, out of faith in action, that in a fully awakened state the soul-spiritual realm could leave the body, thereby internally strengthening it, interspersing it with waking, and experiencing in a waking state that this whole external world, which we otherwise perceive only through our senses – and which shows us only a sensual physiognomy and a lawfulness that summarizes the details of the sensual physiognomy – that this whole environment now appeared to him as a spiritual one. As I said, the prerequisite for this was not just a theoretical one, not just a student-guru relationship, but a moral relationship, as I have described it. The guru was virtually a morally sacred personality. And the disciple of such a guru not only had a religious relationship with the mysterious, supersensory powers of the world, but above all, in his guru, he had a mediator to the divine spiritual beings. He had a religious relationship with the guru himself. In this way the elderly person was able to see into the spiritual essence of the world, not in a theoretical way, but through a development of his whole being.

But you see, my dear attendees, what the prerequisite is for looking into the spiritual essence of the world. It is this prerequisite that we can step out of our physical organism with our spiritual and mental organization and knowingly unfold ourselves outside of our body in existence.

However, the way in which the older student in times of oriental civilization did this brought him into a relationship of dependency on his teacher, on his guru, which would be unbearable for people today. But all of that, dear attendees, what is traditionally present today in religious ideas, even what is present in moral impulses, did not arise from what science has taught people in recent centuries, but has been traditionally preserved from such older times, when people wanted to gain a relationship to the spiritual essence of the world in the way described.

Then came other times in the development of humanity. These other times are characterized by the fact that the possibility of one person having the same effect on another as the old guru had on his disciples ceased to exist. If this possibility had continued to exist, human civilization would never have been able to develop into what we find today gives human dignity and value to earthly existence; full self-awareness and the awareness of human freedom would never have entered into humanity.

This self-awareness did not exist in those older times, when someone who wanted to become a scholar in that way – if we may use today's word – did not have this self-awareness. Man felt an indeterminate dependence on external nature. He felt no freedom in relation to what came to him from external nature. But in the upsurge to a spiritual world, he felt even less freedom. He was primarily dependent on the guru in terms of the method of his development. And by allowing himself to be intensely stimulated by the guru to experience his spiritual and psychological life free of the body, he then felt even more dependent on those spiritual worlds into which he had entered cognitively. In this way he felt, so to speak, to be a tool of the divine spiritual powers. He felt dependent in every single volitional impulse, in every single thought, in every single nuance of feeling, on the divine spiritual currents that pulsed into his own organism from the spiritual worlds he had recognized.

It is precisely through the cessation of these old conditions that humanity has been able to achieve self-awareness and the awareness of freedom, that the human being has truly placed the highest value for a time on only that which is imparted to him through the mediation of his body. But that which comes to us through the mediation of the body gives us thought-images only for our knowledge, thought-images which initially merely depict for the external world that which reveals itself to us in nature.

Now, in the early 1990s, I had already shown in my “Philosophy of Freedom” how a person who is now completely imbued with the scientific spirit of the present can relate to the moral world. It is gradually being realized that natural science can, even more than it already has, apply all thought only to penetrating and ordering external phenomena in thought, and thus to arrive at laws that are, after all, conceived in thought. One comes to say to oneself: This view of nature cannot, by itself, gain anything supersensory; all that it can gain as an inner soul experience is an image of a sensory external world and must remain so.

Thus, precisely when we bring thinking to the perfection to which the scientific age has brought it, precisely when we are not dabbling in our scientific attitude, not as laymen, but from inner connections in the strict, exact methods of modern research, then we gradually come to an inner experience of thinking that is nevertheless now free from all physical corporeality.

This is generally rather difficult for modern humanity to grasp. Only those who have really immersed themselves in modern science ultimately find something in the life of thought that is not mediated through the body. And I called this life of thought pure thought and its activity pure thinking in my Philosophy of Freedom, written at the beginning of the 1890s, and I tried to show how precisely when man, in a thinking that has become pure from all inner instincts, from all inner arbitrariness, from all inner fantasy, when, through training in natural science, he pure thinking grasps a nature that is amoral, that no longer contains anything moral, grasps a nature to which he cannot gain a relationship, a religious relationship, when he makes himself very strong in relation to this thinking about nature, then, from deep within himself, precisely into this pure thinking that has become natural science, what now penetrates are the individual, personal moral impulses of the individual human being. We need only look uninhibitedly into nature, but then not stop at this looking, but now look back at our own personality, then we will find that the more genuinely we think scientifically and experience this scientific thinking, the more powerfully that which I then called moral intuition penetrates into our pure thinking. And then we stand before the world and say to ourselves: Of course, nature has been deified for us, has become amoral; but we human beings, as thinkers about nature, feel — as we otherwise feel the blood in our physical head, so that we have a physical tool for thinking —, so we feel our purest scientific thinking being pulsed through from within by moral intuitions.

Anyone who has felt this, anyone who has experienced this, my dear audience, knows through this experience that there is a spiritual, a purely spiritual, a body-free spiritual. And in this body-free spiritual, precisely in the power of that thinking that the Galilean, Copernican, Goethean, Darwinian age has brought us, precisely through that thinking, through we understand nature in a completely natural way, we gain an inner strength that makes it possible for us modern people not to seek out a guru in the old way and yet to penetrate the spiritual essence of the world to which we belong. For what in an outward way proceeded from the chela, from the disciple to the guru as the deepest trust that I have described, is replaced for us as modern people by what we experience when we let our gaze sweep over nature in a very exact way, with mathematical exactitude, as I mentioned last time, and then look back into ourselves and ask ourselves seriously, with genuine internalization: What have you actually done there? What is in you?

That which ruled within you while you were thinking about nature, excluding all arbitrariness and subjectivity, that which was woven in your own soul while you were completely absorbed in observing nature, in the objective observation from which you excluded everything subjective, that now gives from within that great trust that the old disciple had for his guru. I would like to say that simply by standing in the world as a human being, one acquires precisely from the scientific attitude that great trust, that great trust that tells you: if you have developed a way of thinking without anything from your imagination, from your arbitrariness, playing a role in it, which you faithfully accept in order to grasp your thinking, if you have developed such a way of thinking, then you can also develop this thinking with certainty. And you develop it further in the way I described last Tuesday, through meditation; that is, you penetrate the thinking that modern man accepts in the face of the scientific view of the world by having risen to its power, with what you will find described in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds,” “Occult Science” and others. For example, you will find a description of thinking as meditation within thinking. I already hinted at the principle of what this consists of last time. While otherwise one scurries along with one's thoughts about things and processes, so to speak passively scurries along, and lets one's thoughts run as the external impressions want, at most then reflecting on what the external impressions have given one, in meditation one stops this thinking, so to speak. One refrains from, one could also say one abstracts from all external impressions. One has learned to think of external impressions. One has learned to develop the power that lies in thinking. One does not hold on to external sensory impressions, but only to the inner power of the thought, pours into this inner power of the thought ideas that are easily comprehensible, rests on these ideas. But I already said last time that one thing is necessary for this. It is necessary that the meditation takes place in love for the images that you allow to be present in your consciousness in this way. However, one must be able to bring this love, because the spiritual scientific method is one that can still engage the whole person today and that, above all, must be imbued with that which is not needed for external natural science, or at most needed for its operation, but not needed to find something in it itself in order to handle its methods.

But what the spiritual scientific method needs in this direction is to start from the forces that otherwise lie dormant in the soul, from love. To meditate means to rest and to rest again and again in thoughts of love, to love purely mental life. We should not underestimate the fact that, given the way we educate and train people today, this is actually quite difficult. For when people are supposed to hold something in their thoughts, they become impatient. They say, “Oh, thoughts are sober; let's rather go where our senses get a lot of impressions.” Our present civilization, in its excesses, is set up to orient everything as much as possible to the senses. People find cold and sober and abstract and empty that which can be experienced in mere thought.

Meditating means gaining such inner warmth for these seemingly abstract thoughts in meditation as one otherwise gains in the world when one turns a loving heart to another personality or to some event or thing in the world. That warmth, which is otherwise only developed in everyday life on certain occasions, must glow and burn through that which is to be shaped in meditation by the human soul. Then this thinking is inwardly strengthened and invigorated without calling upon a guru in the old way, and one gradually comes to know: Through this meditative strengthening of the thinking, you come out of your physical body with your soul and spirit.

I say that today one does not seek out a guru in the old way. But one can indeed receive instruction from someone who is already experienced in spiritual matters on how to set up meditation, how to concentrate in one's thinking. But anyone who is a teacher of spiritual science today, if he is not a charlatan but a real teacher, will not make his student dependent on him, but will take into account the demands of contemporary civilization and in such a way that from a certain point onwards the pupil feels placed on his own personal foundation and, by virtue of his own liberated thinking, experiences living with his consciousness as reality outside of the physical body organization.

This is in fact the first thing one must experience in order to penetrate spiritually into the spiritual essence of the world, to become so empowered within oneself as a spiritual-soul being that one does that which one otherwise only does when falling asleep – leaving one's body – consciously in such states that one brings it about voluntarily.

Then, my dear attendees, one first experiences a general sense of the world, I would say. At first, one does not know more than that there is an existence of one's own spiritual soul outside of the physical body. But by continuing to meditate further and further, one reaches the point of bringing such inner liveliness into one's own thinking, into the world of thoughts, into one's own thought activity, as is otherwise only present in sensory perception. Sensory perception provides us with saturated colors, full-bodied tones. Thinking initially only provides us with abstractions. In meditation, one attains the ability to dwell in thinking in the same way as in external observation, as one otherwise dwells in external sensory perception. But in doing so, thinking is completely freed of its abstractness, and thinking now takes place in a pictorial way.

If you want, you can compare this pictorial quality that you now experience with dreaming. Except that when you dream, you always know: you are leaning on your physicality. You experience inner physical states in dreams, or you experience reminiscences, memories from earthly existence. But now you have images in front of you through the achievement of meditation, which, when viewed externally, are like weaving dreams, but you know that you are not looking at them like ordinary dreams, but like ordinary sensory perceptions. Just as you know through a sensory perception that there is a thing behind it, so now you know, when you have created the possibility for yourself in a fully awake state – not in dream consciousness, but in a fully awake state – of being in a thinking activity that is simultaneously a form-building activity, you now know: Behind what your eyes perceive and what your ears hear, which are external, sensual, physical things, there are now spiritual realities behind the images you experience in this way. You are not yet inside the spiritual world, but you know that there is a spiritual world behind these images. You only know that you are outside of your body, and you are real, you are a being, you have an existence. And you know that you are filled with a world of images.

I already said last time: this world of images initially presents you with a large tableau of your own life since birth, since you have been on earth, but not in the form of mere memories, but in the form of what created in the first years of childhood by the still unformed brain, what was created in the whole organism, what was transformed from day to day by the food we eat from outside into the substance of the body. Everything that works in us, but also everything that arises from the body as soul, all this stands before us in a great tableau, first through this world of images.

That is the first thing we perceive through this world of images. We would get nowhere if we did not continue the practice. And it is continued in such a way that one acquires the strength, having first empathized with one's soul in love. Thoughts that have become images, which one knows are rooted in a spiritual world, one must now acquire the ability to suppress these images again in order to make the consciousness completely empty. In this way, the whole human consciousness gradually strengthens. Those who always have their rather critical objections to the anthroposophical spiritual science presented here, who say: maybe it is all based on autosuggestion, is basically just like fantastically arising dreams. The person who speaks in this way does not know that the methods described here – and they consist of genuine, calm meditation – are not a matter of tuning down, muffling the consciousness, but of a much clearer, brighter consciousness. If I am to describe individual experiences of this enlightened consciousness, alongside which the other consciousness remains quite present, I could say something like the following: For the person who has developed eyes, as most people do, the light becomes perceptible when the sun rises in the morning. He sees the sensual-physical things around him through the rays of the sun, which are cast upon them and which come back to him. He sees things through the light that is outside and in which he himself is placed.

By developing a world of images in us in this way, as I have described it, using very precise methods — you will find them described in the books mentioned — that are as exact as any mathematically exact investigation, by developing such images within us , we come to the point where we are no longer dependent on an external light, for example, but we experience a light inwardly, in that we experience ourselves, in that we feel ourselves placed with our soul and spirit outside our body in a spiritual world, we feel a light connected with our being. We live and weave in the light, and the light is not just something that makes things visible to us externally, as is the case in the sense world, but we ourselves become the light, the radiance of the light. In this way we make the spiritual entities visible to ourselves. At first we experience them in images; but the images are illuminated inwardly. Therefore, it should not be spoken of in a nebulous sense – I already hinted at this on Tuesday – but in an exact sense, from which one can speak in the same way as one speaks exactly about mathematics, of what the spiritual researcher acquires: exact clairvoyance, exact clairvoyance.

Those who associate this with mediumship, with something that is often called clairvoyance in everyday life and which is practiced by all kinds of charlatans in the occult field, are simply unaware that someone who, for example, enters into autosuggestion while completely immersed in it has a tuned-down consciousness. The consciousness that is meant here as a clairvoyant one is not tuned down compared to the ordinary consciousness. The ordinary consciousness remains fully intact and the other is added to it, so that one is not less conscious, less prudent, than in ordinary life, but rather more prudent. One should first ask whether the person referred to here as a spiritual researcher cannot also speak about natural scientific matters in the same way as those who reject this exact clairvoyance! He can do that. Since he can do what the others can do, and only what is given by exact clairvoyance is added, then one can arbitrarily reject this exact clairvoyance, but one cannot say that it is something that takes away one's ordinary level-headedness or that leads one away from what, for example, as a natural scientist, firmly places one in the world. Entering into this exact clairvoyance for the purpose of gaining knowledge of the spirit of the world does not distract one from the practice of life or from calm research.

If one also manages not only to let the images come through the appropriate meditation, but also to remove them at any time, so that one has an empty consciousness, then a spiritual world penetrates in, just as otherwise the breath penetrates into our lungs; I say, as the breath penetrates into our lungs. I could also say, if I were to express the comparison less precisely, that it is as when color enters our eye or sound enters our ear; but then the comparison would be a little less precise. It is the case that when we perceive with our senses in the external physical world, these perceptions do not come to us as vividly as what we now experience in empty consciousness. We experience this penetration of the spirit of the world as strongly as we otherwise experience breathing unconsciously. But just as breathing is alive in us, not merely with the shadowy quality that colors and sounds have for us, so too is what we now experience spiritually when we have risen to the point of exact clairvoyance, as I have described it, so too is this direct experience.

But, my dear attendees, this direct experience would leave us standing halfway. We would have images. If we can make the images disappear in the manner described, we would know: there is weaving and life in the spirit outside. But we would only know about this weaving and life in the spirit in very general terms. For the remarkable thing is that we perceive what now appears as weaving and living in the spirit not in the way we perceive sensual things, that we say to ourselves: We stand there and the things are outside, but we feel ourselves now inside the whole world. We have, so to speak, poured out our own existence over the whole world. We feel at one with the world. We have moved outside of our body, have awakened our life, I would say outside of our body as a spiritual-mental being, and feel one with the whole world outside of our body, which we used to look at from the outside, but now we experience inwardly, as we otherwise experience the blood, the activity of our organs within our skin. Our consciousness has become a cosmic consciousness out of a personality consciousness.

One does not experience the spirit of the world, my dear audience, in any other way than by first experiencing it as an inner feeling. And you see, when you stand there in the ordinary physical world with what you have as ordinary consciousness, then the riddles of knowledge come to you. These riddles of knowledge usually go to the point where you want to get to know the inner workings of things. You become aware: You look at the outer surface of things, you want to get to know the inside. We know how science constructs this inner aspect as atomic action, how other people do it differently. But you want to penetrate into the inner being. Or you construct theories that it is simply impossible for the human capacity for knowledge. In any case, however, one feels outside of things, and with what one has in knowledge, one feels that one wants to approach things. Only then, one says to oneself, can one gain a picture of the existence of things when one approaches them. If one is in the spirit of the world outside of one's body, as I have described, knowledge is something completely different.

At first, one has only images. Images are there. And one would be a fool to imagine that the first form he receives would be anything other than images – images, to be sure, of a spiritual world, but images nonetheless. Once one has put these images away and the empty consciousness has set in, one feels as though in a spiritual world. But just as little as one sees the lungs, the stomach, the heart in the ordinary world, one sees just as little that which one now experiences as the spirit of the world like one's own inner being in cosmic consciousness. One does not yet see it. One knows that it is within oneself, it is within one, but one does not yet see it. And while in the physical realization one otherwise wants to approach things, now the opposite occurs, and one wants to get rid of things, one wants to separate from them and one wants to make them into images again. One has learned the creation of images that have a purely inward weaving of thoughts but with the vividness of images. One wants to bring what one experiences inwardly into such a tableau of images. One wants to grasp what one initially has in [cosmic consciousness] as a tableau of images within oneself. One wants to externalize things. Whereas in physical cognition one introduces them in the process of cognition, one now wants to externalize what one carries within oneself, so that one has the cosmos around oneself in imaginations, in images.

In physical cognition, one first has the inner thought, then one approaches the object. One takes in the object. In supersensible cognition of the spirit of the world, one first has the object within oneself and then seeks the image outside. One seeks to be able to visualize the world as a tableau of what one actually carries within oneself.

This level of knowledge, ladies and gentlemen, is not attained without progressing to exercises of will, as I also described last Tuesday, for example, to that exercise of will in which one reverses the order of what you used to always think forward, for example, the experiences of a day from the evening towards the morning, so that you tear the thinking away from the outer reality by the willful thinking. Or also to practice strict self-discipline, so that one adds new habits to one's old ones or also breaks away from old habits and imagines habits – this is not meant in a bad way – so that one really makes a different person out of oneself in the course of one's life, which otherwise only life makes out of one, that one takes one's self-education into one's own hands with all one's inner energy, so to speak.

Again, you will find exercises on this in the books mentioned. I will now only hint at the fact that, just as one trains one's thinking within meditation, so that one can live outside of the body with one's soul, one can train one's will. And through this training of the will, one comes to experience one thing in relation to one's fellow human beings, namely, that an ascent into the spiritual worlds is possible, so that they also become pictorial and objective. At a certain stage of this development of the will, my dear audience, you see your own existence completely immersed in the deepest pain, suffering, deprivation, worry and care. I use these words to describe the situation that the spirit-seer has to go through because he is a modern person and cannot rely on a guru as in the old days; I use this word to describe approximately what has to be gone through: sorrow, worry, pain, suffering. That only means the complete separation from the physical body. Man is only in a kind of well-being during his physical life because he is immersed in his physical body in his spiritual-mental, when he lives in a waking state. And in this way he is protected from feeling pain every night in his sleep and from having to endure sleep permeated by suffering, so that his consciousness actually extinguishes itself in sleep. But now we step out of our consciousness in a higher realization in a conscious way; and by bringing not only the thought but also the will outside of the body, the deepest pain awakens in the spiritual-soul. One feels that one lacks the body in one's inner experience. Not only does the sense of well-being, which only arises from the soul being permeated by the body, cease, but so does the inclination, the selfish inclination towards the body; for through the exercises one does, one becomes more and more selfless and selfless. Love must already be developed in meditation. In this way selfishness is eradicated, otherwise one does not come at all to this experience in images outside of the body. But through this one plunges into a painful experience.

It is already the case in ordinary life, my dear audience, that anyone who has come to a little not too sober, indifferent knowledge, but to such knowledge that is inwardly connected with the human being, will say, if he wants to be honest: I am grateful for my happiness in life, for my favorable destiny, but knowledge has actually only brought me what I have suffered. And so an inexpressible pain must first spread through the consciousness existing outside the body, if the external world is now to enter the emptied consciousness and the person is to gain the strength to objectively set down in complete images that which is the spirit of the world.

But then, my dear audience, then you stand before this spirit of the world, contemplate it in images, and something arises for this externally awakened consciousness that I would compare to ordinary memory, only that it is more powerful, more grandiose and just of a completely different kind. In ordinary life, we remember through thoughts the experiences we have gone through. We went through this or that experience ten years ago. Today we experience this experience in memory or from memory. It is in us in an inward, spiritual way. By having risen to the extra-corporeal consciousness and thus looking at the world as I have described it, there is something present in this looking that I would now also like to call a kind of memory, namely the memory of what we ourselves are in the physical world. We are, however, prudent; we can behave quite well as the most prudent person in the physical world; but at the same time, within this world of images, our own body becomes an image to us, and the things of the external world, minerals, plants, animals, physical human forms, they become an image to us; within the world of images, as in a cosmic memory, that world reappears in which we were when we were only sensually aware. And that is how we orient ourselves, my dear attendees, because that is the case.

We have experienced the sun here in the physical world. In the spiritual world, into which we have found our way in the manner described, we experience something else: spiritual beings, beings that now have inner life, but such a life that, unlike the human being, does not have an outer physical body. We experience spiritual and soul-like divine-spiritual beings that are not embodied in the physical world. And we experience them in such a way that we relate the new experience to an old experience. Just as we relate something in our memory to an experience from eight to ten years ago, we relate what we experience over there in the spiritual world, which we have entered, to the physical solar experience here. Like a memory, the physical solar experience is also among the images that we experience there. And we know through this: The sun is the external image of spiritual divine beings, just as our own body is the image of our own soul. We now see the forces, but the forces that are themselves spiritual beings, behind the sun. This seems grotesque and fantastic to today's man. It is no more fantastic than the results of the science of electricity or magnetism.

One must only inform oneself exactly about the way in which the spiritual researcher comes to these things, and one will no longer find it fantastic, but will find it as exact and realistic as a mathematical-scientific investigation leads to scientific results. But one also actually experiences processes within this remembering of the physical world and the beholding of the corresponding spiritual-soul, the divine-spiritual beings. Let us dwell for a moment on what is revealed to us there as spiritual-soul beings, I would say behind the sun, what is revealed to us as the spiritual-soul of the sun, as the sun spirit.

Now, my dear attendees, by having progressed so far in our realization of the spirit of the world, we also come to – I have already described another side of this realization last Tuesday – not only remembering our existence as we have lived it since our birth or sometime after, but we learn to look back into our pre-earthly existence, how we, as spiritual-soul, which has now been released from the body in its experience, were in a spiritual-soul world. Just as we are here in relation to the external physical sun, so in a pre-earthly existence we were in a purely spiritual environment, but now in connection with that which corresponds spiritually to physical sunlight. Just as the physical sun illuminates us here on earth, so in our pre-earthly existence we were in a relationship to the divine sun beings, who did not illuminate us with physical light, but who connected their own activity with our activity at that time, so that we found ourselves enveloped in the spiritual-soul in the spiritual effect of the sun, just as we feel irradiated by the physical effect of the sun here in our physical existence. And at a certain moment in our germinal life — we learn to recognize this — we descended from our pre-earthly, purely spiritual-soul existence, united with that which comes to us through father and mother as a physical human body. We united that which we have experienced under the influence of the activity of the sun beings with the physical body. We immerse ourselves in this physical body, permeate it with soul, spiritualize it. That which was solar activity in us becomes the etheric body that permeates us, which is within us as a fine body, and this stimulates our ability to now ignite the physical sunlight and to see through it the colors.

In short, we learn by getting to know the spirit of the world, we get to know ourselves as truly existing within this spiritual world, looking beyond our birth or our conception into our eternal, that is, spiritual existence, which reveals itself to us as spiritual-eternal, because we now know: By being in the spiritual counter-image of physical sunlight, we first took in that which permeates our physical body and imbues it with activity in physical life. Just as we take in physical sunlight here, we took in spiritual sunlight there and prepared our own earthly life. Our life on earth is our creation, not that what lived spiritually and soulfully in us is merely the creation of our earthly existence. In this way one gradually learns to enter into and recognize the spirit of the world.

Or let us take another example, esteemed participants. One learns to recognize — just as the spiritual essence is behind the physical sun — the lunar beings are behind the physical moon in the manner described. They reveal themselves to one precisely as that to which one has struggled through the development of the will. So that one can picture inwardly experienced events through the power of the sun. The spiritual beings, the beings of the spiritual world, which have their image in the physical moon and its activity, its effectiveness in space, enable us to do so even before our birth or conception, not only to experience what the spiritual environment is, but to consciously experience, as we know here in exact clairvoyance, by not only receive physical sunlight through our eyes, but also absorb that which works spiritually in the power of sunlight, that we thereby experience the world in an indeterminate way in the spirit; but that we can depict what we experience, like our cosmic interior, is due to the forces that are the spiritual lunar forces. And it is the spiritual lunar forces that bring us back into physical earthly existence.

So it is - my dear attendees - that man experiences the spiritual counter-images of that which shines in the sun, in the moon, and also in the stars, in an external-physical way. Through exact clairvoyance and through that education of the will, which I would like to call ideal magic - to distinguish it from all the charlatanry with which it is so readily confused today and which is so prevalent in the world today - through this , what I would call thought training on the one hand, to exact clairvoyance, which I would call on the other hand, the training of the will to the most ideal magic, through which one arrives at the recognition of the spirit of the world, initially not religiously, but thoroughly scientifically.

In this way, one comes to recognize in that in which one actually finds oneself unconsciously every night from falling asleep to waking up, the germ of that which emerges through the gate of death when one actually steps through that gate of death. And because our physical body is incorporated into the amoral nature, one learns to recognize what one is when one is outside of the body during sleep, as – I cannot say now, embodiment, but I must say: realization — as the spiritualization of what we are worth as moral beings in the world, and of what lives in us as a religious sense of the divine-spiritual that permeates the world. In the physical body, our soul and spirit are enclosed in the natural world, as if in darkness. When we become transparent to what we experience when we are outside our body as spiritual beings, from falling asleep to waking up, everything we have morally engaged in is there, our moral value is there, and it passes through the gate of death. And by getting to know the spirit of the world as I have described it, one also learns to recognize that everything we see physically – physics even says so today – will one day disappear in the heat of death, that everything external and material is transitory. But that which man acquires as a spirit-germ, which is unconscious in sleep and becomes conscious in exact clairvoyance, that is what outlasts everything we see around us in the form of minerals, plants, animals, stars, clouds and so on. That is what lays the germ for a future world.

We get to know the reality of the power of morality as it becomes real. We learn to recognize, just as the botanist recognizes the next year's plant in the germ of today's plant, so we learn to recognize the germinal nature of the present world for the future worlds by getting to know our soul and spirit in its connection with our moral quality. This means that we prepare future worlds through our moral and religious lives when the present ones have disappeared. This imposes on our soul a sense of responsibility of the greatest possible kind, for we know that what we educate morally, what we morally engage in, seems today to be subject only to an abstract human judgment; in reality, it is the germ of future worlds.

And as we learn to recognize our own immortality – that is, the ability of that which is outside the body, from falling asleep to waking up, which passes through the gate of death, to live in a spiritual world, in a spiritual environment, in the same way as it lived in a real way in its pre-earthly existence, in a post-earthly existence – as we recognize our own immortality, immortality, we get to know the eternity of the world, we know that the present world is the solidified, condensed spiritual world of the past, and we know that in the solidified world, which we see today as nature, by letting the physical human being emerge from itself, the spiritual-soul human being is formed within the physical human being, which will create new worlds.

Through all this, my dear attendees, modern man is then able to truly gain insights into the spiritual essence of the world, merely with the guidance I have already indicated, without the dependence on a guru, as was the case in ancient times. The starting point is only that, as I have indicated, and as I have already given it in my “Philosophy of Freedom” thirty years ago, the starting point is that one first recognizes the true nature of the moral in man, how this moral as the most individual in human nature, as it were, pours into pure thinking as the spiritually and soulfully awake human being himself.

If one then develops the method that I described in “Philosophy of Freedom” as the moral one, one develops it for the recognition of the universe, so this exact clairvoyance becomes idealistic magic, penetrating into the knowledge of the spirit of the world, and thus also of the eternity of the human essence. I only mention in passing that this is also connected with the consciousness of repeated lives on earth. This occurs at the time when it becomes possible to look back on the pre-earthly existence. When we look into it, how we weave and live in it, just as we create here among the natural phenomena as physical people, how we weave and live there as spiritual-soul people, we also find how we have brought this life over from previous earthly lives, how we will carry it through death into future earthly lives. So that which can be achieved through exact clairvoyance, through idealistic magic.

This, my dear attendees, is first of all a purely scientific matter, the spiritual continuation of what the modern human being has acquired precisely through the power of scientific thinking. But it rises to a religious feeling. And this religious feeling, I would like to describe it to you in a few final words, in terms of the mighty mystery that has taken place on earth at Golgotha. I would like to describe it to you in terms of the penetration of earthly human life with the Christ impulse.

If we approach the contemplation of the Mystery of Golgotha equipped with the knowledge of the spiritual nature of the world, of which I have just spoken, it becomes clear to us that, when we look at the times before the Mystery of Golgotha, all knowledge about the supersensible worlds was gained in the way I have described at the beginning of the discussions today. They were gained through the living relationship of the chela to the guru. Basically, our present-day religious beliefs are only traditional latecomers of what the old disciples learned from their guru in this way.

How did people look into the spiritual world in those days? They also looked at nature around them, but did not develop a real science of nature; if they wanted to seek knowledge, they went to the guru. The guru pointed them back to the earliest times of the earth's beginning, when the oldest gurus had learned from divine spiritual beings what the later gurus had basically appropriated for themselves to pass on to their disciples. They were now referred back to primeval times, to times when there was not yet such a separation of earthly life and spiritual life as there was later. Man felt, so to speak, as if he, by living only in nature, had fallen away from the original spiritual essence of the world, and he gradually felt that nature itself had fallen away from the spiritual essence of the world. Morality was viewed in such a way that it was said: We humans have become what we are today through natural development. Nature itself, which lives in us, has fallen away from the divine-spiritual. We must allow ourselves to be led back to what nature used to be by the holy gurus, to a time when it not only showed natural effects, but was imbued with moral impulses. If we look back to the earliest times, we find everywhere not a mere moral nature, but a spirit in nature. The religious sense turned to that, to which it can turn not in faith but in full realization.

But through that older realization, which was a dreamily developed clairvoyance, as I have described it here, through that older dreamlike art of clairvoyance, man also saw his pre-earthly existence. And precisely because in those older times, which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha — those times that immediately preceded it no longer had it, the older insights had already dawned —, but in those older times people had something within them that they experienced within themselves in a way that otherwise only humans experience nature; in this way, people experienced something arising within themselves, of which they said: 'I have this from my pre-earthly existence'. Because people had something like this, they were able to have this deep trust in the guru. And then the guru also told them: Yes, but you have been transferred to the physical-earthly world; you will enter the spiritual world again through death. You live here on earth in a world that has fallen away from the spiritual; over there you will encounter, above all, the being whose physical image is the sun. It will guide you so that you can gain strength to see the light, otherwise you will be spiritually dead on the other side.

And there was still something left of this ancient wisdom at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was unfolding on earth. And out of this ancient wisdom, in the first few centuries, the Christ Impulse and the Mystery of Golgotha were seen first. And they said: The being that used to be only in the spiritual world, that released the human being down into the physical world, that takes over his guidance again after death, this spiritual being has descended and has taken on the body of the human being Jesus of Nazareth. That to which people looked up in the times of the old mystery wisdom as the high solar being, the spiritual-divine counter-image of the physical sun, the guide of man through all deaths and all lives, of This Being, who was later called the Christ Being, was said by those who had remained old adepts, initiates from the old mysteries at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, they said that it had descended. And because man has become so earthly that he can no longer be connected with that which still lived as Divine-Spiritual at the beginning of the earth, this Divine-Spiritual Being has descended to earth itself, has taken on a body, has remained connected to the earth. And people can, in line with the words of St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” develop their sense of self and their sense of freedom through their mere physical body. They can permeate this sense of freedom, this sense of self, with their religious relationship to Christ, who in the body of Jesus of Nazareth went through the Mystery of Golgotha. In this way they can, through the power they absorb through their union with Christ, through their inwardly devout experience of Christ, achieve the same leadership after death that they used to achieve in the way described.

Thus, in the early days of Christianity, people pointed to the Christ-leader who descended from spiritual worlds into the physical world. This consciousness gradually ceased, as did the old wisdom of initiation, the yoga wisdom, and we humans today, as I have shown, have to gain insight into the spiritual world from a scientific point of view. We stand there with our moral consciousness. We stand there with the need for a divine world. But we can also know, as the ancients said: This world has fallen away from the divine-spiritual, it has become sinful in man, it has become amoral as nature – so we accept the world today, but we know that the moral intuition penetrates into the thinking of the individual human being in an individualistic way with the consciousness of freedom. We work our way up into the spiritual world to knowledge of the spiritual world, and we know, as the ancients knew, that they have been released by the gods onto the earth; we know that through the free power of the human being, which we develop out of the earthly, we will find our connection to the divine spiritual worlds again.

The ancients saw the past and regarded this earth as a falling away from the divine-spiritual of the past. We look at the earth and hope for the future that we will rediscover the gods through human freedom, knowing that they live as counter-images behind the sun and moon, as I have described. So we today, by looking at the Mystery of Golgotha and saying with the words of Paul: “Not I, but this Christ impulse gives us the strength to really work now,” for the de-deitified earth has become divine again through the fact that the Christ lives in it, by going through the Mystery of Golgotha. And we can know when we become certain again by looking up into the supersensible worlds of the Christ-being that this Christ-being will be our helper into the future in which we have to work through our spirit germ to form realities. Thus spiritual knowledge, which is meant here, leads again from mere knowledge of nature to moral consciousness, leading to religious consciousness.

Ladies and Gentlemen, how these things can then be lived out in external civilization, what significance they can have for practical life today, that is to be the subject of a third lecture, which I may give here tomorrow under the title: “Moral and Religious Education from the Point of View of Anthroposophy”. Here I wanted to show that what was once said in a completely different way by ancient human wisdom about the supersensible world can in turn be said by modern man, that this modern man, by meeting all the demands of modern civilization, does not become weak by placing himself in dependence on a guru, but can build precisely on the strong forces of his own individuality, and can enter precisely into those regions where knowledge of the spiritual essence of the world can be gained. Man must only have the courage to let that approach him again, which comes from the present-day spiritual researcher. For just as people today must let astrological, biological and physical knowledge approach them, so our time demands that these spiritual-scientific insights into our culture and our civilized life also be incorporated. For the means by which they have been attained is the powerful force of thinking, which not only allows man to look at the world passively, but also gives him virtues, self-discipline, self-education of the will to the point of overcoming all egoism, to the point of merging in love for the whole world, without which, as I have described, universal world knowledge in the spirit cannot be attained.

The many signs of decline that we see today – I have already pointed out what makes people today so lacking in perspective in the physical world – can only be healed from the spirit, from the soul. What we lack today, and what has brought our culture and civilization to a dead end, is the power of thought to the point of aliveness, the power of will to the point where it penetrates the darkness of the outer sense existence. If we see through this existence through the living thought so that we feel everywhere we go as comrades of the spiritual world — and we can do that through modern anthroposophical spiritual science — then we take that strong power of thinking, then we take that bright power of the will into our human consciousness, through which alone, as every unbiased person can well know, what humanity needs can be shaped. Our forces of decline in civilization show quite clearly what humanity needs in order to develop rising forces out of the present into the near future. For it seems to be obvious to everyone that these rising forces cannot be brought into our civilization through mere external institutions.

Those who recognize this should actually develop an inclination to look where they try to ignite that which cannot be ignited by external means, inwardly, from the spirit and the soul. But if it is kindled, then we will gain strength, courage and confidence to move in the right sense out of this present time of ours, with its difficult trials, into a future that will admittedly also be full of suffering, that will not just be happy for humanity , but in which people will be able to endure happiness and suffering in such a way that the human race will progress in a dignified manner through the overall development of this human race and this earth of ours into future times.

Dear attendees,

Anyone who speaks on a topic such as this evening's topic and the one I will be speaking on the 27th of this month must be aware, especially with regard to the spiritual life of the present day, that there are numerous souls today who long for a new impetus, for a renewal and metamorphosis of of important parts of our entire civilizational life, out of many things that today clearly bear the hallmark that, if continued, would lead humanity into the decline of civilization, out of many things that have been the civilizing current for a century or two or more. We find this especially in those souls who are trying to look most deeply into their own inner being in the present. We can say that whatever needs to be said about the supersensible worlds can be spoken to every human soul at any time. It can be spoken, one might say, to the hermit who has withdrawn completely from the world and is only interested in his immediate surroundings; it can also be spoken to personalities who are fully involved in life. For what is at issue here is, after all, a thoroughly human matter.

But it is not from these points of view alone, dear ladies and gentlemen, that I would like to speak to you today and on the 27th, but rather from the point of view that arises when one allows the most important civilizational issues of the present to take effect on one's soul. And there, especially leading souls find much that shakes them to the core, that drives them in their innermost being to long for a renewal of certain parts of spiritual life.

If we survey the situation in which we find ourselves in the spiritual life of the present, I would say we can trace it back to two main questions. One of these questions is illuminated by the scientific life, by the form of scientific life that has been observed within the civilized world for three to four centuries. The other of these questions is illuminated directly by practical life, but also by that practical life that has experienced the deepest influences from modern science.

Let us first look at what modern science has brought forth. I would like to say, precisely in order to avoid being misunderstood, that what I am representing here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should by no means be opposed to the spirit of modern science. The great triumphs and significant results of this modern scientific spirit are to be fully recognized by the spiritual science meant here. But precisely because this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to penetrate with an unbiased soul into the spirit of this science, it must go beyond what has become the object of a general human education from this scientific spirit. In its specific disciplines, this science provides precise and conscientious information about many aspects of the human environment. But when the human soul asks about its highest concerns, about its deepest, its eternal destiny, it cannot receive any information within the spirit of science, especially not when it consults with itself quite honestly and quite impartially. And so today we find numerous souls who, out of more or less religious needs, long for a renewal of old worldviews.

What is external science, in particular anthropological science, is already drawing attention to the fact that our ancestors centuries ago did not know what is dividing and fragmenting human souls today: a certain disharmony between scientific knowledge and religious feeling, religious longing. If we look back to ancient times, it was the same human beings who cultivated a science that seems childlike to us today, but only seems childlike, and who, from this science, at the same time kindled the religious spirit in humanity. There was no discord between these two currents of thought.

Many souls today long for something like this. But one cannot say that a renewal of ancient Chaldean, ancient Egyptian, ancient Indian or other wisdom teachings would bring a special blessing to the present age. Those who believe this do not understand the true spirit of human development. Human development is such that each age has a special character, that in each age human souls want to be satisfied by something different. And what our souls need, simply by virtue of the fact that we live in the 20th century and have received our education from the 20th century, must be something different from what people of a distant past needed for their souls. Therefore, a renewal of old worldviews cannot serve the present. But one can orient oneself to what those old worldviews were. We will then see what actually gave rise to the satisfaction that human souls experienced within those old worldviews. We have to admit that the satisfaction for human souls in those days arose from the fact that they basically had a completely different relationship to scientific knowledge than we have today.

I would like to draw your attention to a phenomenon, my dear audience. If you point it out today, you are very easily accused of paradox or fantasy. But there is much that needs to be said that, just a few years ago, would have been considered highly dangerous for general education. After all, the last catastrophic years have at least brought about a change in the way we think and feel. And today, souls are better prepared than they were even ten years ago for the fact that the deepest truths may nevertheless initially appear paradoxical and fantastic to our habitual ways of thinking and feeling.

In ancient times, people spoke of something that, in view of scientific knowledge, is hardly questioned today, but which people will speak of again, probably also in the context of general education, in a relatively short time: of the Guardian of the Threshold, of the from the ordinary world in which we live in everyday life, in which we live with ordinary science, to that higher world in which man can recognize how he himself, with his supersensible, inner being, belongs to a supersensible world. Between these two worlds, the world that man perceives with his senses, the facts of which he can combine with his mind into natural laws, and the world to which man belongs with his actual being, one saw an abyss in those ancient times. One first had to cross this abyss. Within the old civilizations, only those who had been intensively prepared by the directors of the educational institutions of those days, which we now call 'mysteries', were allowed to cross this abyss. Today, we have different views on how to prepare for science and for a life of scientific research. In those ancient times, it was said that an unprepared person should not be allowed to receive higher knowledge about the nature of man at all. Why did they say this?

The reason for this can only be understood by someone who, going beyond ordinary historical knowledge, gains an insight into what the human soul has gone through in the course of human development. Today, we only have a knowledge of the externalities of human development. No attention is paid to the state of the soul. For example, no attention is paid to the state of the soul of people who have stood in the ancient oriental wisdom, of which only decadent forms still live in the Orient today. Basically, people have no idea how different the souls were in the world in those days. People in those days, just like us, saw the nature around them with their senses; they also combined in a certain way what they saw of nature with their minds. But they did not feel as separate from the nature around them as people today feel. They felt a spiritual soul within themselves. They felt that the human physical organization was filled with a spiritual soul. But they also felt a spiritual soul in lightning and thunder, in the passing clouds, in minerals, in plants, and in animals. They felt that which they suspected within themselves also outside in nature, in the whole universe. The whole universe was permeated by spiritual soul for them.

But they lacked something that we humans have today within our state of mind: they did not have such a pronounced, intense self-awareness as we do. Their self-awareness was duller, more dreamy than ours today. This was still the case even in Greek times. One can only understand later Greek culture if one imagines the souls of people in the Greek era as being in the same state as our souls. In earlier Greek culture, there can be no question of a state of soul such as ours. There was still a vague sense within nature. I would say: just as if my finger had a consciousness and then felt itself as one with my entire organism, as it could not conceive of itself as being separated from my organism, without which it would die, so man felt himself within the whole of nature, [unseparated] from it.

And those ancient sages who were the leaders of those schools of which I have spoken, they said to themselves: This is the moral in human self-awareness. But this self-awareness must not look at the world in such a way that it appears to be spiritless, soulless. If this state of mind were to face a world that is more spiritually empty – a world, I might add, that we perceive in our science, in our everyday life – then the souls of human beings would be overcome by a spiritual powerlessness.

This mental fainting was recognized by the ancient wisdom teachers in those people who were to arrive at such a world view as we have. Yes, can it be said at all that these ancient wisdom teachers said to themselves that souls should not arrive at such a world view as we say we have today? Yes, that can be said. And I would like to give you an example of this. Many examples could be cited, but I will highlight just one.

Dear participants, today we are justifiably satisfied that we no longer view the external and spatial structure of the world in a medieval way, based only on outward appearances. We stand on the standpoint of the Copernican world view, which is a heliocentric one. The medieval man believed that the Earth was at the center of the planetary system, and indeed of the entire star system, and that the sun and the other stars moved around the Earth. The heliocentric solar system brought about a complete reversal of all relationships, and today we hold fast to this reversal as something that we already absorb in our ordinary school education, in which we are immersed with all our education. We look back at the people of the Middle Ages, we look back at the people of ancient times, who in their Ptolemaic world system saw that which I have just characterized, the geocentric. But by no means did all people in those ancient times accept only the geocentric world system. We need only read Plutarch's account of the world system of an ancient Greek wise man of the pre-Christian era, Aristarchus of Samos. Aristarchus of Samos already places the sun at the center of our planetary system; he has the earth revolve around the sun. And if we take, not in the details, about which recent natural science has brought so much, but in the main features, the heliocentric system of Aristarchus of Samos, then it basically completely agrees with the one that is ours today.

What do we actually have here? Well, the world system that Aristarchus of Samos merely revealed was the one taught in the ancient schools of wisdom. Outwardly, people were left with the world system of appearances. Why was that so? Why were they allowed to keep this world picture of appearances? Well, it was said: Before a person can advance to this heliocentric world system, he must first cross the threshold to a different world than the one in which he lives. In his ordinary life, he is protected by the invisible Guardian of the Threshold, under whom these ancients imagined a very real, albeit supersensible being. He is protected from suddenly opening his eyes as if he were seeing the world, dead, de-spirited. For it is in a dead and spiritless way that we see the world today. We look at it and form our view of nature through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, and we see it as dead and spiritless. When we form ideas about the path and movements of the heavenly bodies at the observatory with the help of a telescope and calculations, we see the world as dead and spiritless. The ancient wisdom teachers of the mysteries knew that the world could also be seen in this way. They conveyed these insights after the preparation, after they had led their students past the Guardian of the Threshold, but they prepared the students through strict training of the will. How was this willpower given to the students? By leading the students through privations, but also by encouraging them for many years to strictly obey the pure morals prescribed to them by the wisdom teachers. The will had to be strictly disciplined, and this willpower was to strengthen self-awareness. And when the disciples had progressed from a dreamy, dull self-awareness to a more intense self-awareness, only then were they shown what lay beyond the threshold for them: the world that, in the heliocentric system, represents outer space. But they were also shown many other things that we now recognize as the content of our everyday worldview.

So it was that the pupils of those ancient times were first prepared, carefully prepared, before they were taught what, so to speak, every schoolboy and schoolgirl today absorbs. So times change, so do civilizations. One simply gets a false idea of the development of humanity if one only knows the outer history, not this history of the human soul.

What had the students of the old wisdom schools brought with them to the threshold of the supersensible world? They had brought with them an instinctive knowledge of the world, which arose, as it were, from the instincts, from the drives of their bodies. Through these, they saw — today we call this animism — everything outside as ensouled and spiritualized. They felt the kinship of man with the world. They felt their spirit within the spirit of the world. But to see the world here as we learn to see it today, already in elementary school, these ancients had to be prepared.

Dearly beloved attendees, in all the various types of literature that amateurishly tackle mysticism, even if they sometimes give the impression of being scholarly, there is a lot of talk about the Guardian of the Threshold, about the threshold into the spiritual world. And they are often believed all the more, the more nebulous mysticism one pours out about these things.

What I have presented to you now is what arises for the unbiased spiritual researcher precisely through what the ancients called the threshold into the spiritual world. Not those nebulous things, of which some orders and some sects and the like speak today, were sought beyond the threshold, but precisely that which is general education with us today. But at the same time we see from this that we face the world with a different self-awareness. The old wisdom teachers feared that their students, if they had not first strengthened their self-confidence through self-discipline, would have become mentally impotent if, for example, they had adopted the idea: The earth does not stand still, but circles around the sun at great speed; one circles around the sun with the earth. This loss of ground under their feet would have been unbearable for the ancients, it would have dampened their self-confidence to the point of unconsciousness. We learn to endure this from childhood on. We live, as it were, in the world as our world of education, into which the ancients had to penetrate only after careful preparation.

Nevertheless, we should not long for the conditions of ancient civilizations. They no longer fit with what nourishes our souls today. What I am presenting to you today as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is neither a renewal of old Gnostic teachings nor an ancient oriental wisdom, which could only be brought to human souls today as something decadent. It is something that can be found today through elementary creative power from this human soul, in the ways that I will explain in a moment. But first, I would like to point out that in a sense we can also speak of a threshold into the supersensible world, or in any case into a world other than that of ordinary life and ordinary science.

The ancients suspected a different world from the one presented to them in their everyday life beyond the threshold. But what do we hear from our conscientious natural scientists, from those who are most right in terms of their methods? We hear that natural science presents us with limits to knowledge. We hear about “ignorabimus” and the like, and, it must be emphasized, within natural science with full justification. If the ancients lacked the intense self-awareness that we have today, then we lack something else.

Where did we get this intense self-awareness in the first place? We got it from the fact that the way of thinking and the way of looking at things that began with Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Giordano Bruno and so on came into humanity. As a result, we have not only gained a sum of knowledge, but modern humanity has also undergone a certain education of its soul life. Everything that we have developed under the influence of the way of thinking of these minds in modern times tends to cultivate the intellect, the powers of reason. Of course, today we experiment in science, we observe carefully and conscientiously. We observe the phenomena around us with our instruments, with the telescope, the microscope, with X-rays, with the spectroscope, and we use our intellect, so to speak, only to extract the laws of nature from the phenomena. But despite all this, what are we doing when we observe, when we experiment? We are doing it in such a way that within this work of knowledge we only let the intellect speak in formulating the laws of nature. And it is also the case that, in the course of the last three, four, five hundred years, it is primarily the intellect that has been emphasized in human development. But the mind has the peculiarity of strengthening, hardening and intensifying human self-awareness.

Therefore, today we can endure what even the ancient Greeks could not have endured: the awareness that we move with the earth in the bottomless, as it were, around the sun. But on the other hand, precisely because of this strengthened self-awareness, which shows us the world as soulless and spiritless, we are led to lack a realization that souls must nevertheless long for: We see the world in its material phenomena, its material facts, as they have never been seen by ancient people without a preparation of the mysteries. But we do not see - and that is why conscientious naturalists speak of ignorabimus and of the limits of knowledge - we do not see the world of a spiritual around us.

We stand as human beings in this world. When we reflect on ourselves, we have to say to ourselves: it is the spirit that is active in us simply by thinking about things, by summarizing the experiments, by summarizing the observations. But is this spirit the same as the hermit who stands in a world of material appearances? Is this spirit only present in our body? Is the world spiritless and soulless, as we have to understand it from the point of view of the physical and biological sciences, and rightly so? Today we stand before our environment. We are standing on the threshold of a new era. This has certainly not yet dawned on the broadest sections of humanity. But what humanity does not fully realize is not completely extinguished in the soul. One does not think about things, but inwardly these things sit as feelings of the soul. We have an unconscious soul life. For most people it remains unconscious. But out of this unconsciousness arises the longing to cross a threshold again, to gain spiritual knowledge of the world through self-awareness.

Now, whatever else one may call these things, which one usually feels only unclearly, they are in truth, from one side, the deepest riddle of civilization; they are such that people feel that a spiritual world around them must be found again. The world of ordinary science, devoid of spirit and soul, cannot be the one with which the human soul also forms a unity in its deepest essence. This is the first great civilizational question of the present: How do we again find knowledge that at the same time deepens our religious feeling? How do we find knowledge that at the same time satisfies the deepest needs for a sense of the eternal in the human soul?

It can be said that this modern science has brought great and powerful things, but for the unbiased person it has not actually brought solutions, but rather, one might say, the opposite of solutions. And we should be satisfied and glad about that too. What can we do with modern science? Can we solve the questions of the soul? No, but we can ask them in greater depth! Through this modern science, we have before us the world of material facts in their purity, free from what the human being brings into the world of soulfulness and spirituality from his or her subjectivity. We see, so to speak, the pure phenomena of the external material world. Through this, we get to know the questions of the soul more intensely. This is precisely the achievement of the modern spirit of science: it has brought us new riddles, deeper riddles. This is the first great question of civilization in the present time: How do we face these deeper riddles? One cannot solve the great soul questions in the Haeckelian, Huxleyan, Spencerian spirit, but one can, in this spirit, feel the great riddle questions for the existence of humanity today more intensely than ever before.

This is where spiritual science comes in. Its aim is to guide humanity today, in accordance with its nature, over the renewed threshold into a spiritual world. And the way by which modern man can cross the threshold differently from the ancient man, it is to be described here today in outline. I can only do this in brief strokes. What I only want to explain in principle can be found in more detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, in my “Occult Science” and in other writings.

I would first like to draw attention to the starting point that a person who wants to become a spiritual researcher must take today. He must start from a point that, due to the whole of our time, people today are least willing to accept. It is the point in the soul's makeup that I would like to call intellectual modesty. Although we have developed intellectually to a height never before seen in human development as humanity to a particular height in the last three to four centuries, as a spiritual researcher one must rise precisely to intellectual modesty.

I would like to illustrate what I mean by comparing it. Let us take a five-year-old child and give him a volume of Shakespeare. What would he do with it? He will play with it, leaf through it, tear it up; he will not do what is appropriate with it. But when the child has lived for another ten or fifteen years, he will relate to the volume of Shakespeare quite differently. What has happened? Well, abilities that were inherent in the child have been developed in the child through external intervention by people, through education and teaching. It has become a different being in the course of ten to fifteen years. Intellectual modesty allows the person to say, even when he is an adult, when he has absorbed the current education in science intellectually: you could face nature and the environment in such a way that your approach could be compared to that of a five-year-old child facing Shakespeare's works. There could still be potential in you that can be further developed, so that you become a different being in terms of soul and spirit.

People today are not very keen on adopting the point of view of such intellectual modesty. Our habits of thinking and feeling towards the life of education are different. Those who have received the usual education today are then accepted into our higher educational institutions. There, one no longer has to deal with the development of knowledge, willpower, and the abilities of the soul. Basically, one remains within the scientific research at the point of view that inheritance and ordinary education give. Certainly, observation was broadened in an incredible way through experiment and science, but the same powers of cognition were applied that one has once in so-called modern intellectual life. One did not aim at developing one's human being to bring these powers of cognition further. One did not say to oneself: the person who has these powers of knowledge of life or science could stand opposite nature as a five-year-old child stands opposite Shakespeare's works, and he could develop powers and abilities of knowledge within himself that would lead him to a completely different behavior towards nature. But this is said by someone who, in the sense of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science meant here, wants to become a researcher in the supersensible worlds. This is really about the development of human abilities that initially only exist in the Anlagen, albeit in every human being, but in order for them to be developed, a great deal has to be gone through.

I am not talking, dear listeners, about some kind of miraculous or even superstitious measures for the human soul, but rather about the development of abilities that every person is well acquainted with, that play a major role in everyday life and in ordinary science; they are just not developed to their full potential for the human being between birth and death.

There are many such abilities, but today I would like to characterize only two in their further development. You can find more details about this in the books mentioned. First of all, there is the ability to remember. This ability to remember is absolutely necessary for everyday life. We know, and those who are particularly interested in such things will know from the psycho-pathological literature, what it means for a healthy mental life that the memory is intact up to a point in childhood that lies quite early; that there is no period in life from which memory images do not emerge, bringing to mind the experiences we have gone through. If that which memory is extinguishes, then the human ego is destroyed; a severe mental illness has come over him. Now, what memory gives us is a re-emergence in pale or vivid images. It is precisely this ability, this power, that can be further developed. What is its peculiarity? Well, otherwise the experiences flit past us. The images we form of these experiences also flit past our soul. Memory retains them. I can only speak about this memory in sketchy terms; in my literature you will find a developed science precisely about this ability to remember.

What memory does with the otherwise fleeting images is that it gives them duration. This is what one first takes up and develops in the spiritual scientific method; one develops it through what I call meditation and concentration in the books mentioned. This consists of either seeking advice from someone who has experience in these matters or gleaning the advice oneself from the relevant literature, and of taking easily comprehensible complexes of images such as are geometric or mathematical figures, which one completely overlooks, knowing that these are not reminiscences from life emerging from the subconscious, but everything one has in consciousness is there through one's own arbitrariness in consciousness. One is not subject to auto-suggestion or reverie; one surveys that which one brings into the center of consciousness. Then one remains in consciousness for a long time with complete inner calm on this idea. Just as muscles develop when they perform a particular kind of work, so certain soul powers develop when the soul devotes itself to this unusual activity of remaining on such ideas. It looks easy, and not only do some believe that the spiritual scientist draws what he has to say from some kind of influence, but some also believe that what I am describing here as methods that take place in the inner, intimate life of the soul itself is easy. No, what I am telling you now also requires a long time; some people can do it more easily, others more difficultly. The depth of the performance is much more important than the length of time spent in such meditation.

But one must do such exercises for years. And what one has to accomplish within the soul is truly no easier than what one accomplishes in the laboratory, in the physics room, or at the observatory. Outward research is no more difficult to acquire than that which is carefully and conscientiously cultivated in the soul over many years. But then certain inner soul powers, which we otherwise only know as powers of remembrance, become stronger, and thus something arises in us as soul power that we have not known at all before. This enables us to clearly recognize what materialism says about the power of memory and remembrance. Materialism tells us that the human being's power of remembrance is bound to the material body; if something in the nervous system is not properly constituted, then the power of remembrance also declines, and it declines with age. In any case, mental powers depend on physical development. Spiritual science does not deny this for the life between birth and death. For someone who is developing his memory as I have just described it knows from direct experience how the ordinary memory, which conjures up images of our experiences before our soul, is dependent on the human body. But what he is now developing becomes completely independent of the human body. And the human being experiences how one can live in a soul realm, so that one has supersensible experiences in this soul realm, just as one has sensory experiences in the physical body. I would like to explain to you how these supersensible experiences are in the following way.

You know that human life alternates rhythmically between waking and sleeping. The moments of falling asleep and waking up and the intervening period of sleep occur in our waking life. What happens then? The following is present for the ordinary consciousness: when we fall asleep, our consciousness is dulled, and in most people it reaches absolute zero. Dreams sometimes bubble up out of this half-dulled consciousness. In this state, the person is indeed alive; otherwise he would have to pass away and be reborn, in a soul-spiritual sense, but his consciousness is paralyzed. This is because from falling asleep until waking up, the human being does not use his senses, does not use the impulses that represent his organic will impulses.

But the one who has developed the higher ability out of the ability to remember, which I have just mentioned, can switch off precisely the same. Such a spiritual researcher comes to the point where he no longer needs to see with his eyes, as one does not see with one's eyes when asleep; nor to hear with his ears, as one also does not hear with one's ears when asleep; nor to feel the warmth in the surroundings, nor to use the will impulses that work through the muscles, or through the human organization in general. He can shut out all physical things. And yet his consciousness is not dulled as it is when asleep, but he is able to devote himself to states in which otherwise a person is only in sleep, but unconscious; the spiritual researcher is fully conscious. Just as the sleeping person is surrounded by a dark world that contains nothing for him, so the spiritual researcher is surrounded by a world that has nothing to do with our sensual world, but which is just as full and intense as our sensual world. We face our sensory world through our senses; the spiritual researcher faces the supersensible world when he can consciously free himself from the body, when he is in a state that is otherwise experienced by a person between falling asleep and waking up; but he is fully aware in this state.

In this way, one learns to recognize that a supersensible world constantly surrounds us, just as a sensual world otherwise surrounds us. However, there is one significant difference: in the sensual world, we perceive facts through our senses, and within the facts, we also perceive entities. Facts predominate, and entities arise in the course of these facts. In the supersensible world that we open up for ourselves in this way, we first encounter entities. When we open our spiritual eyes to see the supersensible world, we are surrounded by real entities. And at first it is a world of very concrete, real, supersensible entities in which we are, not yet a world of facts; we still have to conquer that through something else.

So this is the achievement of modern anthroposophically oriented spiritual science: that the human being crosses a threshold again and learns to enter a different world from the one that otherwise surrounds him. And when a person learns to recognize how he is independent of the body, then he finally comes to say to himself: Not only when the soul falls asleep does it, as it were, separate itself from the body and then return to the body when it wakes up; through the desire for the body lying in bed, it returns. Through such supersensible knowledge one also comes to really get to know the essence of the soul, how it returns to the body through this desire when waking up. But if you acquire such real concepts of falling asleep and waking up, these concepts will eventually expand to include learning to recognize the human soul in its essence, as it was before it descended from the spiritual worlds through birth or conception into a physical body that is given to it through inheritance.

Once you have grasped and learned to follow the soul outside the body between falling asleep and waking up, just as you learn to recognize the lesser forces that draw the soul to the body in bed, you learn to recognize the soul as it lives when it is freed from the body after passing through the gate of death. In particular, the following ideas are recorded: One learns to recognize why the human soul has only a duller consciousness during sleep. It has this because the desire for the body lives in it. This desire for the body dulls consciousness between falling asleep and waking up to the point of unconsciousness. When a person passes through the gate of death, this desire no longer exists. And by getting to know the soul through the developed ability to remember, one gets to know it precisely in the state in which it develops after passing through the gateway of death; how it can then have consciousness because it is not bound to a physical body, because it no longer has any desire for one. This freedom from desire makes consciousness possible.

When a person passes through the gateway of death, he acquires a different consciousness from the one he had through the instrumentality of the body. In this way one also learns to recognize what forces were in the soul that attracted it to a physical body when it was in a spiritual world, but to a physical body that only generally shone before it as a physical body, which was not a specific one. One learns to recognize the soul as it absorbs the desire to come down again into physical life on earth. In other words, one first gets to know the eternal part of the human soul in its true meaning.

And that, dear listeners, is one thing that one gets to know in this way. But one also gets to know something else through it. By learning to recognize the eternal in the human soul that passes through births and deaths in images, I call them imaginations in my books, one learns to recognize that this human soul belongs to a supersensible world; that the soul belongs to a supersensible world just as the body belongs to the sensual world. And just as one can describe this sensual world through the body, so one can describe the supersensible world in its spirituality. One learns to recognize a supersensible world in addition to the sensual world.

However, one must be willing to develop a second soul quality, beyond that which is present in ordinary life. Today's scientist recoils at the mere mention of this quality as an intellectual capacity. One can fully appreciate the reasons why he does this; but nevertheless, what I have to tell you about the further development of this human soul ability is true.

The first power that had to be developed was the ability to remember, which becomes an independent force. The second power is the power of human love. In ordinary life between birth and death, love works through the physical organism; it is intimately connected with the instincts and drives of human nature. And only in the most sublime moments does some of this love detach itself from the physical. Then man has that uplifting moment when he becomes free from himself, which is the state of true freedom, where man does not give himself over to his instincts, but forgets himself, where he bases his actions on external facts, on the necessity of those facts. Because love is inwardly connected with freedom, I dared to say as early as 1893 in my Philosophy of Freedom, by which I wanted to found a philosophy of sociology for the present day, that true love does not make man blind, but rather seeing, that is, free. It leads him beyond that which otherwise blinds him when he is dependent on what is within him. Love allows us to be devoted to the outside world, and in so doing frees us from that which we must be freed from if we are to act freely.

But this love, which only shines into our ordinary life in truly free actions, must be cultivated by the modern spiritual researcher. Love must gradually spiritualize in the same way as the faculty of memory must spiritualize; it must become a power that is purely soul-life, and which makes him, as a soul-being, independent of the body, so that he can love without the body, through its blood, through its entire organization, providing the basis for this love. This is how immersion in the external world, in people, comes about; this is how you become one with the external world.

This developed power of love now brings us a second thing; it puts us into the spiritual world in a substantial way, which we enter through the developed ability to remember. And we now get to know spiritual facts and learn to describe the world in such a way that we do not merely say how our present planetary system once emerged from some old nebulous world, which will then in turn either disperse or fall into the sun. We do not look at such a world, which is alien to the spirit, and which is confronted by something else. And if a person is honest, they must feel that this world, as viewed scientifically, is confronted by the most valuable thing in the human being. In modern spiritual life, we have been able to get to know the besieged souls who tell us again and again: Science tells us about a world of pure natural necessity, that our world comes from worlds that were fog worlds, that clumped together into the four natural kingdoms, the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, up to man. But now, in the depths of his being, something arises in man to which he must attach the greatest value: his moral, his religious world. This stands before his soul, and it is what actually makes him human in the first place. But he must say to himself, if he is honest with regard to the purely scientific world view: This earth, on which you stand like a hermit of the universe with your moral ideals, will disintegrate, will fall back into the sun, will become a slag. There will be a large churchyard, the ideals will be buried.

This is where spiritual science comes in. It does not approach this situation from the standpoint of faith and hope, but from real knowledge, which is developed in the way I have indicated, and says: No, the mere scientific world view offers an abstraction of the world. This world is permeated with spirit, this world is permeated with supersensible entities. And if we look back to prehistoric times, what is material on earth has emerged from the spiritual; and what is material now will become spiritual in the future. Just as man discards his body and enters a spiritual world spiritually with consciousness, so that which is material on earth will fall away like a corpse, and that which is spiritual-soul on earth, that which is spiritual-soul in man, will arise in the future, even when the earth has perished. One could say that the Christian saying “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” proves true here with a certain variation. Man can say: Everything my eyes see will perish, just as the human body perishes in the face of human individuality. But what lives in man as morality rises from what is perishing. Man senses a spiritual world around him; he lives into a spiritual world.

In this way, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science deepens our knowledge of the spiritual, and in doing so, it takes on a different form from that of external science in relation to the civilizational needs of the present. External science can in turn deepen knowledge and insight to religious fervor and higher consciousness. It gives the human being a spiritual self-awareness.

This is basically the first great civilizational question of the present day. If a person does not have the right inner support, if he feels like he is floating in the void as a mere material being, he cannot develop a strong inner being, nor can he appear as a strong being in social life. Man must create what external institutions are, man must create what external social conditions are. There is something significant about external institutions and external social conditions in terms of the great civilizational questions of the present and the future, and these civilizational questions lead us back to the search for the great, true consciousness of humanity. For only people who have such inner support, which can give them peace of mind, will be able to integrate themselves properly into social life. That is the first question: how can a person with inner support, with a secure hold on life, integrate themselves into our social conditions? The second is what we might call the encounter between people, human interaction. And here we enter a field where, no less than in the field of knowledge, modern civilization has brought man not new solutions but new riddles. Consider only the breadth of technology, of technical life, that the achievements of modern natural science have brought. Technical life, commercial life, life of intercourse, as they surround us from hour to hour today, they are the achievements of this magnificent, modern view of nature. But what we have not found within modern technology, what is posed as a new vital question, is: How should people live in this complicated technical, commercial and transport life?

This question is posed by modern civilization itself. That it has not yet been solved is shown by those terrible movements that present themselves all the worse the further east we go, into Asia, where human instincts are not used to create something upward, but, because the great civilizing questions have not been solved, are used to create something destructive. Undoubtedly, the whole of modern civilization would have to perish through what is emerging in the East. Much more terrible than people in the West imagine is what is lurking there to lead to the decline

of modern civilization. But it also testifies to how necessary it is to find something else to solve the civilizational issues of the present.

We must not only work in modern technology, which has emerged from the modern view of nature, but we must also gain another possibility: Man has become estranged from nature; he has been placed, practically speaking, with his actions and his whole occupation in a soulless, mechanistic way; he has been led from dealing with nature to dealing with the spiritless machine, with the spiritless mechanism of traffic; and we must find ways to give man something again that he can feel as something given by nature. It must be a world view that speaks to his soul with great power and tells him that man is something more than what he experiences here; that he belongs to a spiritual-soul, a supersensible world that surrounds him and can be explored in an exact science, just as the outer science is that leads to technology. But only such a science will also be able to establish the right relationship between people. Such a science will enable us to encounter a being in man that not only appears to us as it comes to us, as it appears between birth and death, but in such a way that we learn to respect the eternal, the immortal, the connection with a supersensible world forever. Through such a deepened knowledge, the feeling must change from person to person.

And a third thing is also important. It is important that the human being learns again that his life is not exhausted with the life between birth and death, as the modern proletarian believes from his ideology called ideology, but that what we do here in every moment has not only an earthly but also a cosmic significance. For indeed, when the earth has perished, what we bring out of our souls into our daily work, out of moral, spiritual and soul foundations, will arise in another world; it will take part in spiritualization in the metamorphosis.

Thus, spiritual science as anthroposophically oriented approaches the questions of the present in three ways. It brings people to a spiritual self-awareness. It brings people to see in their fellow human beings, in their neighbor, a spiritual being in turn. It brings people to give their work, their earthly activities, a cosmic, universal, spiritual meaning, however material they may be.

Spiritual science today not only has theoretical views about what can be worked out in this way, but has already begun to apply it in practice in life. In Stuttgart, we have the Waldorf School, which was founded by Emil Molt and which I am in charge of, and where a pedagogy, a didactics, is being developed through the knowledge of human nature that can be obtained through spiritual science, as it is meant here. Furthermore, in Dornach near Basel, we have the Goetheanum, a Free University for Spiritual Science, the construction of which I will show you in a few days with the help of slides. This Goetheanum in Dornach is not yet finished, but we were able to hold a large number of courses in the unfinished building last fall. I have also been able to speak here in Holland about spiritual science in the past. At that time I could only speak of spiritual science as a form of research, a research tendency, as something that lives in individual human beings.

Since then, this spiritual science has taken on a different form. It has begun to establish its own School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. Last spring I myself showed how what I have only outlined for you today in its beginning as spiritual scientific research can be applied to all fields of science in its execution. I showed physicians and medical students how what can be gained from this spiritual science in a strictly exact method can have an effect on medicine and therapy. Those questions in medicine that become borderline questions are juxtaposed with the health issues of humanity. Every conscientious doctor will perceive those practical questions of medicine as cultural issues. These questions are the ones that remain unanswered today because today's science does not want to rise from the sensory to the spiritual and supersensory.

How medicine can be fertilized, how all sciences can be fertilized by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, experts from all fields, from jurisprudence, mathematics, history, sociology, biology, physics, chemistry, pedagogy, tried to show it. Then there were also personalities who belong to the arts, to artistic creation, who showed how artistic creation can be fertilized by spiritual science. There were representatives of practical life, of commercial and industrial life, who showed how their lives, guided by spiritual science, are no longer merely caught up in the old routine that led us into the catastrophes, but how, through it, the human being is brought into life practice in a higher sense. This is precisely what these courses should show: how spiritual science does not want to cultivate some kind of dilettantism, some nebulous mysticism, but how it can fruitfully intervene in the individual sciences. But in doing so, it simultaneously elevates what is in these sciences to an overall spiritual and supersensible conception of the human being.

I will have more to say about the practical side here; then I will speak about teaching and educational issues and about the social question. Then you will see how the spiritual science meant here, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, does not seek some nebulous mysticism in a sphere that is alien to life, but how it wants to grasp the spirit for other reasons: firstly, because the human being must become aware of his connection with the true spiritual origin; secondly, however, because the spirit wants to intervene precisely in the material, in the practical life, as it makes a distinction between the spiritless practical life and a spirit conceived in terms of a lack of life, which certainly does not grasp the spirit of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, nor that which is most necessary for the present.

Dear attendees, we have found people who have an understanding of what is to be achieved in the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach for the development of humanity, and how necessary it is in the face of the great civilizational issues of the present day that this be achieved. The difficult circumstances have slowed down the construction very much. We are not yet finished, and completion will depend to a large extent on whether people who have a heart and mind for all the human progress that is needed today will continue to come to our aid. In its unfinished state, we gathered more than a thousand people at the opening of our courses. Those who come to this Dornach after this — as will also be shown in the next lecture — will see that at the same time this spiritual science wants to work out of the full humanity: that it does not just want to speak to the human head, that it not only wants to gain that which can be presented through experimentation and observation, but that at the same time it strives for truly artistic expression, without falling back on straw-like symbolism or abstract, pedantic allegories. Therefore, not just any architectural style could be applied in Dornach – as the slide lecture will show – but the architectural style had to be drawn from the same sources from which this spiritual science itself flows. It is not a one-sided science such as today's experimental and observational sciences, but seeks to draw from the full human being. It wants to speak to the full, whole human being, despite the fact that it is as exact as any science can be.

I will still have to talk about the practical implementation, but today I had to present the results of the spiritual research on these matters, in order to then show in the practical areas how necessary this is for our time, which is based on the observation of the history of this period by this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It aims to add to the conscientious and methodical study of the material world, which it recognizes more than any other spiritual direction, the science of the spirit, which in turn can lead to religious deepening and to artistic creativity, just as the old instinctive science, which we can no longer renew, led to art and religion in the mysteries.

That this spiritual science is not opposed to religion and Christianity, I will have to show in the further explanation of the practical side. It strives for that which every true, religious deepening has to strive for, it strives for the spirit. Hence we have hope: all those people who today still resist this spiritual science will come round to it in the end, because this spiritual science strives for something universally human: it strives for the spirit, and for humanity, it needs the spirit.

It may remain undecided how many hearts in Western Europe today still feel so much connection between the spiritual and soul and the divine and natural that on this day, on this feast of hope for the future, in this year, the thought passes through the soul, how we are living in a year in which this festival of springtime hope may enter as early as possible into the time when the fresh shoots of the year sprout from the womb of our mother earth, when what we call spring enters into human life. In such years as this one is, three days that are otherwise far apart from each other are crowded together in a row. Easter Sunday, after all, is the Sunday that follows the full moon, which in turn follows the beginning of spring on March 21. Three days that can be relatively far apart follow each other this year: the beginning of spring the day before yesterday, the full moon of spring yesterday, Easter Sunday today. In such years, a very special writing is inscribed in the universe for those who are entering into the spiritual knowledge of the world, and especially on this day of such a year, it behoves the soul, which strives to learn to understand the spiritual secrets of the universe and the becoming of time, also to learn to understand what should be written into our human development on earth with this spring festival.

The person who knows the connection between the sun and the moon, as can be known by beholding the interaction of the sun and the moon with the Earth in the secret-scientific writing, also knows the deep secret that reigns between the Earth Spirit, Christ, and the Spirit whom we express with the words Jahve, Jehovah. And anyone who knows the connection between the sun and the moon hears with an understanding-awakening sound the legend of the Fall of Man and their seduction by Lucifer, of the words of God resounding in divine justice. Those who try to understand some of the things contained between the lines of my “Occult Science in Outline” can sense the connection between the sun-moon mystery and the mystery that is usually characterized as the temptation of Lucifer and the influence of Yahweh-Jehovah.

Today, however, we want to focus more on the fact that the sun and moon, as they follow each other in their effect on the earth, from this Good Friday to this Holy Saturday, appear to the occultist in their writing in the cosmos appear as a question mark, written in a deeply mysterious way into the spiritual universe, and the answer is given to us this year, as soon as possible, by the immediate sequence of Easter Sunday following the Saturday of the spring full moon: Easter Sunday, the day of remembrance and the day of hope, the day that symbolically expresses the mystery of Golgotha. Many secrets are hidden behind what surrounds us in the outer physical-sensual nature, and the unveiling of such secrets always brings us in a certain way close to the strict guardian of the threshold. The Easter Mystery is also one of these, which, in a certain sense, requires the maturing of the human soul in order to be understood, although in the instinctive feeling everyone can always perform the inner devotional sacrifice that our soul may fulfill when the day of earthly confidence, the day of redemption and resurrection, Easter Sunday, is joined to the beginning of spring. When spring begins, when the sun moves into such a position in relation to the earth that the plant germs can sprout from the womb of the earth mother through its power, then the human soul begins to rejoice inwardly as if in the brightness of paradise, because it knows that forces are at work through through the cosmos, which in a cyclic sequence with each new year conjure forth out of the bosom of the earth what is necessary for the outer life and also for the life of the soul, so that man in his development on earth can go his course from the beginning to the end of this development on earth. And when the impressions of winter, when the earth mother covers the ground with its icy blanket, when all this evokes the thought of all that will one day bring the earth to decay in the universe, what will one day will transform the earth into a state of world-wide solidification, which will make it incapable of being a further dwelling place for man, when winter evokes these thoughts, then every new spring evokes the other thought into the human soul: Yes, Earth, since the beginning of time you have been endowed with ever new youthful vigor, ever renewing life. You are given the task of calling forth the soul again to inward rejoicing, but also to inward devotion. And even when the cold blanket of ice has spread over the earthly realm, the hopeful images in the human soul combine with the intuitive feeling of how the earth will be able to sustain people through its spring and summer forces for a long time to come, so that they will find the opportunity to develop all the abilities, all the inner powers that lie within them. This is the soul's inner, reverent exultation at the spring equinox. It comes from the soul feeling full of hope that the earth can endure and that the earth can provide the opportunity for human forces to fully develop.

But the human soul may also wonder: Will all the forces of the sun be able to overcome all the forces of winter, or at least to counterbalance them? Will the winter forces not perhaps be able to exert such a strong influence on the earth that the earth must sooner go into a state of torpor before the human soul has fulfilled its full mission on earth? Will summer counterbalance winter? Will spring always have the strength it needs? This thought may not come easily to human souls that observe only the outer nature, but it must come more and more to those souls that can delve into the true spiritual content of the universe. These souls seek to decipher the great, powerful writing with which the secrets of the world are written into the cosmos. Then, in contrast to the writing just mentioned, the struggle of winter with summer, another writing of the soul becomes audible, the writing that is written into our universe when we follow the moon in its mysterious course, as it invisibly and visibly completes its cycle. Oh, this moonlight, like an enigmatic letter of the world's writing, it inscribes itself into the eternal word of creation of earth life. When the occultist seeks to fathom this moonlight, it reminds him first of the punishing voice of Yahweh in Paradise after the temptation of Lucifer, then it reminds him, of course, also of the wonderful, mysterious fact that the Buddha expired his spirit into the cosmic universe on a night of the silver moon. What does the moonlight tell us, which is there in the darkness of the night like a dream in a person's sleep? — The occultist learns that of the forces of the active sun, of the sun's forces that repeatedly and repeatedly renew the evolution of the earth, as much is taken away as the light of the sun is reflected by the full moon. The human soul may dream itself into the moonlit magic nights, the occultist knows that as much of the power of sunlight and solar heat is taken as the full moon reflects back to Earth from that sunlight.

Thus, the full moon is the constant symbol of what is taken from the sun. And when the Sun, with all its powers, once more penetrates into earthly life with each new spring, the occultist knows that, even if this is hardly perceptible to external observation, with each new spring the Sun has weaker powers than it had in the old, previous spring, and that just as much of its powers has been taken from it as full moonlight has shone over the earth. Thus the full moon that appears after the beginning of spring, however mysterious and soul-stirring it may appear to people, is at the same time a serious, stern admonisher of the earthly-cosmic fact that the sun's powers have diminished with each new spring, and that man could never achieve in his earthly mission what he would achieve if these powers were not taken from the sun. To sense this fact puts a huge question mark in the cosmos. Sensing this question mark, the old occultists behaved in their hearts.

So the old occultists said to themselves: We look up to the sun, whose secrets Zarathustra once proclaimed to men. We look up to the moon, whose secret has found its most significant expression in the religion of Yahweh. When we behold these two heavenly signs, we know that the interaction of Sun and Moon signifies the decline of the Earth. Then these ancient occultists looked at a point in the evolution of the Earth itself, at the point where the spirit of the Sun arose from the Earth itself in the fullness of time in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. At that time, when Christ died on the cross of Golgotha and the spirit of Christ united with the earth, a cosmic event occurred in earthly life that created a countervailing force against all that the moon takes away from the forces of the sun, while this sun works from the cosmos upon the earth. By the Christ-Spirit having taken up His abode in a human soul and from there spreading throughout all earthly existence in the course of future earthly evolution, compensation is made for what the lunar forces continually withdraw from the sun's penetrating solar forces. Thus the human soul understands its relationship to the cosmos when, morally and spiritually, it adds to the days dictated by the cosmos the third day, the day of death and resurrection of Golgotha. And when the progressive cosmic powers of the sun, which in their infinite kindness always want to give the earth new life, and the strict lunar spirit, which, because of the nature of Lucifer and his forces, must take away from the sun, insofar as it is only the natural sun, its powers, so can add to the two as a third day, morally and spiritually, as the answer to the great cosmic question, the human soul this Easter day. Wonderfully they stand side by side in such years as this one is.

Good Friday! This year in particular, it may remind us in cosmic-occult writing that the sun is constantly losing its strength with each new spring, and that the earth could die sooner than the human soul has developed all its powers. The full moon on Easter Saturday, a wonderful mystery! Above in the cosmos, the wonderful sign, the symbol of the stern Yahweh, who lets his thundering voice resound through Paradise, in which human sin radiates as the result of temptation; down on earth, the symbol of the newly resurrected power of the earth, Christ resting in the grave! It goes deep into the soul that can feel occultistically when the silver, solemn and strict full moon light spreads just above the Easter grave, the symbol of the penetration of the Christ impulse into the earthly body. Following this, the symbol of the resurrected sun, the sun that has risen again from the human soul, Easter Sunday! If we feel this trinity in our soul, we feel the cosmic sun, followed by the cosmic moon, followed by the moral-spiritual sun. If we feel in this trinity in our soul the symbol of how the spirit overcomes matter, how life overcomes death, if we feel something of what can fill us when we are occultists in the true sense of the word in our time, how the power which we call the Christ Impulse will dawn ever more clearly upon man, so that in the ever more and more revealing Christ Impulse, people will learn to feel what must be in them, so that they as human beings will find the way out of the dying earth to the higher stages of development of the immortal human soul, which lives on in eternities!

What I have to present this evening will be only a modest introduction to what I will endeavor to discuss here in the next few evenings in individual chapters about Anthroposophy.

Anthroposophy did not come about as a result of asking: What are the needs, what is the quest of our present age, what interests and longings does this present age have with regard to its spiritual life? That would be an abstract question. And just as in ordinary life, as a rule, one does not find what one is looking for without having a proper mental image of it, so one will probably not be able to satisfy the search in the spiritual life of an age if one does not already start from a very definite, concrete mental image of what this age is seeking. But although anthroposophy did not start from these abstract questions, it will be possible to speak afterwards about whether, now that it is here, it can in some sense spiritually satisfy the most important questions and needs of our age.

Anthroposophy actually started out from the needs of science itself, as it has developed in our age, after it has completed its, one may say, great and powerful triumphal march through the last three to four centuries. Anthroposophy has emerged from this scientific endeavor by simultaneously attempting to address the ways in which the Goethean worldview can provide fertile ground for the scientific spirit of the present. So that one can say – allow me this personal remark – when the necessity of an anthroposophical spiritual science became apparent to me, on the one hand it was the opinion that the present scientific spirit in particular must develop to a scientific understanding of the supersensible life, and secondly, what could be gained from a living understanding of Goethe's worldview, which was connected to this scientific endeavor itself. I have been seeking this development for Anthroposophy since the 1880s. When one hears views about anthroposophy today that are more superficial, they often sound as if anthroposophy had emerged from the chaos that has arisen for the spiritual life of the entire civilized world during and after the catastrophe of war, as if it were a dark, mystical force. This is simply not the case. This anthroposophy has been working in earnest for decades, and has emerged from very different conditions.

But as I said, once it is there, we can ask whether it meets a need, a longing in the spiritual life of our time. To answer this question, we must look at the special character, at the deeper peculiarities of the spiritual life of our age. There we shall find, I believe, a trait that is particularly characteristic. Of course, if you say something like that, someone can point out numerous exceptions. They are not to be denied at all. But what I want to characterize is the general trend in the lives of people of this age.

Do we not have to say to ourselves in the present, when we have grown a little older, that we mostly approach today without joy, without enthusiastic devotion to the tasks of life? This seems to be a pessimistic view, but it does not want to be. It simply wants to look with open eyes at what is, after all, a pervasive trait in the lives of contemporary people. We grow up, are educated, and are also brought forward by life. When we then face our own professional tasks, when we face the sufferings and even the joys of life, we do not know how to find our way into the situation of the world with our full humanity today. And from this trend, a most important area of observation will arise for our age in particular, which immediately points characteristically to the deepest peculiarities of our time. When we stand as human beings in later life today, we can no longer look back, in memory of our youth, of our childhood, as once the human being looked back on this youth, on this childhood. Those who have done a certain amount of inner historical research can say this unequivocally. When we look back at our childhood and youth, what rises up from that childhood and youth is not what fills us with joy, enthusiasm, and initiative, what gives us strength from a time that we have lost externally but that could be within us, inspiring us and strengthening us internally. It may be a radical statement, but in a sense it is true: we, as adults of our time, have largely lost our youth, our childhood. And this is particularly evident from the fact that, if we now turn our gaze more to social life, we, as adults, find it so difficult to communicate with young people. It is a general trait of our age, again, that there is a fermenting striving in youth, but that in the wide field this youth comes to the view that age can no longer be what their heart, what their soul longs for. A deep gulf has emerged in our age – some do not admit it, but it is nevertheless the case – between youth and the adult generation. But this very gulf indicates that the human being, who, one might say, brings with him into the world today, out of his full, childlike humanity, that which, whatever his origin, he brings with him through birth into this physical existence - that the human being does not find what he demands of life by virtue of the eternal that is born with him. It is precisely because the young person does not find this in the spiritual life, in life in general, that what our present time so strongly lacks is revealed. The word 'youth movement' has become a familiar one today. And the youth movement is particularly evident among young people who are growing into the spiritual professions; who are growing into a life through which a person is to become a leader in the spiritual, social, moral, artistic and religious needs of their age.

And if we now ask ourselves why so little of the spiritual life that exists satisfies the growing human being, then this question will perhaps be answered, if not fully, then at least illuminated, by looking at the various branches of our spiritual life today: Within the horizon that presents itself to us in the scientific, artistic, moral, social and religious fields, we find that, if I may express it this way, these individual branches of life, which man needs if he is to become a full personality, no longer understand each other, and that they therefore conflict with each other in man, in the human personality.

Anyone who today wants to rebel against what the scientific spirit of the last few centuries, especially since the middle of the 15th century, has brought about in the overall development of humanity, would be a fool. And anthroposophy must not be understood as if it wanted to take up an opposing position to this scientific spirit of our age. This spirit has brought forth in scientific research itself an enormous conscientiousness and exactness of method. I would like to say that the first question for this scientific spirit has become: How can one achieve certainty in the search for truth? — This scientific spirit of the present is striving for certainty in the search for truth. And tremendous achievements have been made, not only in the field of knowledge, but also in practical life, especially in the technical fields of our age. And yet, when we ask ourselves: Does this spirit of science satisfy the pressing sense of youth, does today's youth grow into this spirit of science in such a way that they feel there is something that flows towards them for their full humanity? We cannot answer this question in the affirmative. If we do so, it is because we are indulging in empty illusions or because we want to spread a fog before our spiritual eyes. For this spirit of science is in strange conflict with other areas of life.

First of all, there is the artistic field. Having developed the spirit of science with its exact methods and rigorously trained thinking, artists, those who want to pursue life artistically, who want to enjoy life artistically, feel that they must actually keep the artistic at a distance from this spirit of science. We hear it everywhere today that what art wants to create, what art wants to educate, must come from completely different human sources than what science fathoms in a certain, intellectualistic way of observing. And when someone wants to bring the spirit of today's science into artistic creation, one has the feeling that they are corrupting artistic creation, that the spirit of science has no place in art, that science investigates truth in a way that must not be transferred to the artistic.

Now, the Greeks were familiar with such a strict separation of what man allows to be revealed to him by the world through the artistic sense on the one hand and through the scientific spirit on the other; the Greeks were familiar with such a strict separation within themselves, within which, on the one hand, a brilliant scientific spirit had already emerged and, on the other hand, an ideal art. And even in more recent times, Goethe did not want such a separation, having immersed himself completely in the Greek worldview. Goethe, for example, did not want to speak of a separate idea of truth, of beauty, of religion or piety. Goethe wanted to know the idea as one, and in religion and art and science he wanted to see only different revelations of the one spiritual truth. Goethe spoke of art as a revelation of the secret laws of nature, which would never be revealed without art. For Goethe, science was something that he placed on one side, which has a different language than art; on the other hand, art was something that had yet another language. But only when both work together in man can man, in the Goethean sense, fathom the full truth. Today, we think about how the scientific spirit, which proceeds exactly from conclusion to conclusion, from observation to observation, from experiment to experiment, must undermine the context of artistic imagination; how there is no justification for wanting to fathom anything of the truth of the world through art itself. How, in other words, a strict separation must be made between art and science. Do we not have to say that science, on the one hand, strives for certainty, for a conscientious method, that above all it wants to have certainty, that it wants to present things, if I may put it this way, in such a way that they can be retained and must be recognized by every unbiased human mind? But in striving for this great certainty, one does not have the confidence in what one is fathoming about nature and man through this science that it could somehow have significance for something that also belongs to the satisfaction of the whole human being: for artistic creation or artistic enjoyment. A rigid science is established, but there is no trust that it may have a say where it is concerned with even more human needs, or at least more inward human needs than those of science itself: artistic needs. Of course, a clear distinction can be made between science and art. I can understand anyone who says: Oh, that's just a phrase, a figure of speech, when someone speaks disparagingly of this distinction between science and art. It has to be there, after all. As I said, I can understand it. In the depths of the human soul, there is something that strives for unity, for harmony of the individual soul activities. And while on the one hand logic carries out the separation between science and art, something in us demands balance, the harmonization of scientific truths on the one hand, and artistic truths on the other. Something in us, very deep in our soul, demands that what we extract from nature and man as scientific truth should also have the power to generate artistic initiative in us, without our lapsing into straw allegories or abstract symbolism. There is a definite need in the depths of the soul not to leave the knowledge that science fathoms lifeless, but to enliven it in such a way that something of this scientific knowledge can truly flow over into art, as Goethe was aware of, that for him the ripest fruits of his artistic creativity flowed over from his conception of science.

The great question, not precisely formulated but deeply felt, resounds to us from the longings of our age: the profound question of how we can gain such trust in science, which above all has sought certainty, that we may penetrate through it into the realms of truth that confront us in artistic creation, in artistic formation? And that is one of the most profound questions for present-day humanity.

One could debate and discuss at length the fact that there must be a clear distinction between the logical-observational, scientific method and artistic creation, artistic design. But suppose that in the realm of reality the matter were so that when we come up to man from the realm of the lower nature kingdoms and now wanted to apply the laws of nature to man, as we get to know them in the sense of today's certain science, then we simply could not get to know man. Indeed, it could even be that nature itself creates artistically, that in the various realms of nature there is not only such creation as lies within the meaning of the present natural laws, and that this is particularly not the case in the human realm, but that nature itself, as Goethe assumed, is a great artist, and that we, no matter how critically we approach the subject and say to ourselves, “We must not introduce fantasy into science,” it could be that, by logically setting this before us, we simply limit our knowledge, kill it, because nature is artistic and only yields to artistic observation.

Of course, if one expresses this initially in the hypothetical form in which I am doing so now, it can be contested in many ways. But anyone who is sufficiently of a psychologist to look into the depths of the soul of modern man knows that there is a particular anxiety in the mind today regarding the question: Should we not, if we strive scientifically, have the same in our state of mind as that which forms and shapes artistically? But what if we cannot get into nature any other way? What if nature wants to be grasped artistically? What if human nature in particular wants to be grasped artistically, even in its physical organs? What are we to do then, even if we have a science that is as rigorous as possible and nature, the world, demands of us an artistically shaped knowledge? I know that even present-day scientists consider such a sentence to be an absurdity. But I also know that although it may be considered an absurdity in the consciousness of science, human hearts and human souls today do not consider it an absurdity, but rather they feel its truth dimly and would like to see it in the light.

And it is no different when we move into another area, the area of morality, morals, the area of social work and labor, and the area of religious immersion. Everything that falls within the scope of these three areas has been, so to speak, banned from science for a long time, ever since the scientific spirit has so decisively taken hold of modern humanity. As regards sociology and social work, attempts have been made in recent times, especially in the popular field, to think socially and sociologically from the scientific spirit and to give impulses to social life from this science. The results do not exactly suggest that this is the right approach. For the things that are currently shaking the world in terms of the social question, and that are to be satisfied by all sorts of illusions based on the spirit of science of modern times, are leading to those terrible disharmonies, to those terrible destructive elements that are at work in the social life of humanity today, and which show clearly that a recovery is only possible if a spiritual turnaround can take place in some direction. But after all, social life cannot be guided towards a healthy solution without taking the moral and religious foundations into account. And so, in regard to the social, we must first look at the moral and religious foundations of human life. And here we find it stated quite clearly, even more clearly than in relation to artistic experience, especially in the most recent phenomena, that on the one hand there is science with its strong certainty and conscientiousness, but that, on the other hand, there is an even greater lack of trust in introducing the spirit of this scientific attitude into moral thinking and religious consciousness. And today more than ever, it is emphasized by the seemingly progressive minds that science must remain in its place. But it must be banished from everything that man has to strive for as impulses for his moral action, for his religiosity. That is not where science belongs; that is where faith belongs. Just as there is a strict distinction between science and art, there is also a strict distinction between science and morality, between science and religiosity. One would like to appeal to a special ability, to a special impulsivity of the human soul for this morality, for this religious life. One would like to strictly separate the truth of faith from the scientific truth, just as one would like to strictly separate the artistic truth from it.

Now, this has certainly not prevented the spirit of science from spreading to all circles in the present day, from taking on the most popular form; that today not only the scientists are occupied with this spirit of science, but the whole broad mass of today's civilized humanity. Today, one can be a religious and pious person in the old, traditional sense, but thanks to public literature, from newspapers to books, and through other public life, one still lives entirely in the modern spirit of science. Therefore it could not be avoided that, however strongly the demand arises to separate faith from scientific knowledge, this scientific knowledge appears in all possible fields as a critique of faith, that it is already having and will continue to have a subversive and disintegrating effect on this faith in numerous human minds, unless there is also a complete spiritual reversal in these fields.

Belief and knowledge, which today we want to keep strictly separate, did not originate from different sources. To recognize this, we have to go back further than we do for art, where we only have to go back to the Greeks to see that the Greeks saw artistic truth and scientific truth as one and the same. We must go back to much earlier times in the development of humanity. But there we will find times when religion is simply everything; when man, in a certain way, through the powers of his soul, becomes so absorbed in the depths of the universe that religious life wells up out of this absorption. But as this religious life wells up in him, there stands before his soul that which can make him religiously pious, to which he can sacrifice, that has an effect on him by revealing itself in beauty, and that can therefore be enjoyed artistically, and that, when his thinking and understanding delve into it, meets him as the truth of the world. Science, art and religion, they all arise from one root. But that is not all that comes into consideration. It is true that if we go back to the earliest times of human development, we find that science, art and religion are one, that they emerge from a common source, that later religious life became independent - this was already the case in Greek and Roman times - but that artistic life still remained united with scientific life. And only when we penetrate into the most recent times do we find that these three branches of the revelation of human personality are becoming separate.

Today, these three branches are again striving mightily in the unconscious and subconscious depths of man towards unity, towards harmonization. Why is that? Well, today one can only stand in awe before science, and opposition to that which is truth in science would, as I said, be folly. But science has only been creative in the field of thought and in the field of observation, or regulated observation, of experiment. Science has only been creative with regard to that which can be attained by logical judgment and through observation by the human mind. In these fields, science has achieved great and original things in recent centuries.

If we look at the other fields, the artistic field, the field of moral and religious life, then we have to say to ourselves – and again it is something that not all people say to themselves today, but which basically all civilized humanity feels in the depths of their souls – artistic sense and artistic spirit are not really creative today. We often delude ourselves, of course, when we are recreating, but the present age is not style-generating or motif-generating in the artistic field. Earlier times were style-generating and motif-generating. For example, the Greeks, who gave birth to their buildings from the same womb of the soul from which the poets created their works of art. They gave birth to them from the same womb of the soul that much so that the belief arose that Homer and Hesiod, being artists, had given the Greeks their gods. We live off artistic traditions. We build in the Gothic style, we build in the antique style, we build in the baroque style, and so on, but we do not build in the present. Nor are we able to be fully present in other areas in an artistic sense. One must express these things somewhat radically if one wants to touch what is nevertheless present as reality in the deepest forces of our age.

In the religious and moral sphere, traditions are even older. In the religious and moral sphere, our age is not creative. Hence the conservatism of religions, the urge to preserve the old at all costs. Hence the fear that arises when something new appears in the religious sphere. We have artistic styles from ancient times; we have religious content from even older times. And the young people, as they grow up today, carry a longing for creativity in all areas of life, through something mysterious that I cannot discuss today, through secrets that are born with them. They find this creativity in the scientific field. But that is not enough for her. She longs for something deeply creative in the artistic realm, and she also longs for something deeply creative in the moral-religious realm. That is why today's youth does not understand the older generation, and the older generation does not understand the youth. That is why there is a gulf between the two.

All this basically characterizes our present age, but it does not yet show the deep discord in man himself, which has actually led to all that I have just described. And to find this deep conflict in human nature itself, we must look at the peculiarity of this human nature, as it has developed in the scientific age, that is, since the middle of the 15th century. If we look at today's man without prejudice, we see two opposing poles in his nature. These two poles basically dominate our entire intellectual life. But they do not satisfy our human needs. And these two poles are, on the one hand, the strong, inward, intense self-confidence that modern man has developed over the past centuries, and, on the other hand, the special way in which man has come to understand the world through his modern abilities.

Let us take a closer look at these polar opposites. When I speak of the self-awareness, the sense of self, of modern man, I do not mean only that which arises, so to speak, in the solitude of the philosopher's study. From the self-awareness of man, that is, from the self-comprehension of the idea, of the concept, Hegel developed a worldview in a grandiose way. In Hegelian philosophy, we see only an infinitely ingenious elaboration of what self-consciousness can experience within itself when it becomes fully aware of itself. And on the other hand, we see in the anti-Hegelians, at least when they are philosophers, that they also start from self-consciousness. They despise the Hegelians, and the broad development of the ideal and spiritual that Hegel achieved on the basis of human consciousness. They want to stick to one point, which they keep looking at: their self-consciousness. It does not expand as it does with Hegel, but they also start from self-consciousness. But by characterizing in this way, even if one descends more into the concrete-scientific and philosophical realm, one cannot characterize too much of the nature of the present age from this philosophical grasp of self-consciousness, for the reason that once became particularly clear to me in a conversation with Eduard von Hartmann. We were talking about what can be achieved epistemologically through a critique, an analysis of self-consciousness, and Eduard von Hartmann said: Nowadays, books about such things should not be printed at all, but only hectographed, so that they are only available in a few copies, perhaps sixty copies, because only that many people in Germany, out of sixty million, have an interest in such things. This is also true when it comes to the most intimate philosophical matters. Therefore, you cannot expect me to bother you with how self-awareness is being lived out in the German philosophical consciousness in this day and age. But this self-awareness has been evident since the last century, not only to the inquiring philosopher, but in all human fields, and it is to these that I am referring. The way in which people today think about themselves, how they strongly sense their own being, their I, is certainly not taken into account by external historical research, but the inner historical research knows this. Before the 15th century, people simply did not think about themselves, did not recognize or know anything. There, inwardly, everything was more dull. There one did not say “I” with the same intensity as one can say it in civilized humanity since then.

Thus there has been a general intensification of inner experience. This intensification of inner experience is evident in the field of science in the complete rejection of belief in authority, in the desire to accept only that which can be justified before one's own self-awareness. In the realm of art, it is manifested by the fact that man everywhere seeks to infuse into the work of art, to shape into it, that which he can experience in his deepest self-awareness. In the religious sphere, it is shown by the fact that man can only experience a divine being fully when it sinks into his innermost self, which he experiences strongly, which he wants to experience strongly together with the divine being, if it is to have any validity or significance for him at all. In the moral sphere, man strives - as I already showed in my “Philosophy of Freedom” in the nineties of the last century - for impulses, for ethical motives, for ethical regulation of life, which arise from this root of his strong self-awareness. And in social life we have this peculiar phenomenon today, that social demands are arising everywhere, that people are saying everywhere: we need a social organization of life – but that basically human feeling is very far removed from social feeling, from social empathy. And precisely because we lack social empathy, we demand the social organization of life. We want what we actually lack within ourselves to come from outside. We say, “We must become social beings,” because in modern times, precisely as the spirit of science has grown, we have basically only become strong in our ego, in our antisocial nature, and today we are seeking a balance between this strong ego and social demands.

And so we encounter this self-awareness in all areas of human life. Anyone who studies the social question today from the perspective of the organization of human labor, anyone who has an interest in what has become of the social question under the influence of modern technology, which has removed people from direct contact with their work, which has the indifferent machine - knows how, in this area too, social will cannot emerge from awakened self-awareness, because this awakened self-awareness is confronted with something, with the machine, in the face of which this self-awareness can feel fully satisfied at the very least.

Now, on the one hand, there is the self-confidence of modern man. But how did this self-confidence come about, given that it is a fact of life? How did this modern humanity awaken to this strong self-confidence? Initially, one can only arrive at this self-confidence through a particular development of the life of thought, of the life of ideas. Thought did not play the same role in earlier epochs of humanity as it has in more recent times. But it was precisely by becoming capable of thinking more and more abstractly and abstractly, more and more intellectually and intellectually, that self-awareness became strong. Self-awareness became strong precisely under the power of thought. And so man has come to develop thinking to its highest peak, whereas in the past he lived more in feeling, in beholding, in intuition and imagination and inspiration, even if these were dream-like and unconscious. Man has developed thinking, and with thinking it was possible for him to achieve his strong self-awareness in thought.

But with this, man has arrived at a one-sidedness in our spiritual life. Thought is moving away from reality. Who would not have the feeling that thought can never achieve full-bodied reality, that thought remains only an image of reality! With an image of reality, we have cultivated our strong self-confidence as modern humanity. Therefore, even if people are not yet fully aware of it, even if they cannot yet express it, they feel it, they sense it, and today's youth feel it with particular intensity: that man stands there with thoughts that are alien to reality. He stands, on the one hand, in the face of reality with his self-awareness, the self-awareness that has been grasped through thinking. It cannot approach life, it remains an image. It is powerless in the face of life. We are completely with ourselves in our self-awareness, place ourselves inwardly as strongly as possible on our own, but we are powerless, we do not penetrate with our thoughts into reality. This is the one pole of our modern spiritual life: the powerlessness of self-conscious thinking.

This feeling of the powerlessness of one's own ego permeates modern humanity. This makes modern humanity approach life without joy, without inner devotion, even without understanding, because the strongly developed ego, the strong self-awareness, must always feel powerless even in the face of that life in which one has to work oneself. That is the one pole.

And the other pole, as it presents itself to modern humanity, is that whereas in the past man grasped all kinds of things from the depths of his soul, or, as people like to say today, , modern man only has confidence when he observes the external world in a way that is not mixed with anything from within; when he observes the external world in a so-called objective way, in an experiment. One's own inner being should be completely silent when observing or experimenting. Only the external world should speak. What has been achieved as a result? We have come to investigate this external world in faithful observation and in exact experiment, but we cannot get further with this research than the mechanism. For astronomy, the universe has become a mechanism. For geology, the developing earth has become a mechanism. Even the human organism has become a mechanism, and the modern neo-vitalistic attempts are only attempts with inadequate means to achieve something that cannot be achieved with the scientific method, which is now recognized, and which only leads to understanding the mechanism – to put it radically: the machine – in the experiment, in the observation. By coming to understand the machine, we believe that we can see through what is in front of us, because we do not mix anything into the context of physical and mechanical laws that we form into a fabric in the machine. In a sense, we do see through it, we see through how the individual parts of a mechanism interact and interlock. We initially feel satisfied because we have been educated from the newer school of thought, by understanding the machine, by understanding the universe, the cosmos, as a machine, with interlocking wheels and so on. We believe we are satisfied, but inwardly we are not. Something remains that repels us, precisely in terms of our full humanity, from this understanding of the machine. An understanding of the machine is what has actually contributed to the greatness, to the triumphs of the modern spirit of science. Why? The machine becomes transparent, not to the eye but to the mind, to the intellect. When we look into the organism, things remain dark to such external observation. In the machine, everything is transparent. But we should ask ourselves: do we understand the diamond better because it is transparent? It is simply not true that something becomes more transparent and therefore more comprehensible to us. For what is at work in the machine, we feel in the long run, when we stand face to face with it, more and more as alien to our own nature. And that is the unconscious feeling that asserts itself: there stands the machine, it becomes transparent to the mind, but it has nothing that you can find within yourself, it is completely alien to you. And so we feel cast out of the world that we comprehend, that we comprehend mechanically. We feel repelled by the other pole of our spiritual life. Just as the one pole cannot enter into reality, is powerless in the face of reality, so the reality that we comprehend repels us. This is the profound conflict in the modern human being. He has developed his self-awareness through thinking, but he cannot enter the world with this thinking. He takes the machine from the world; but in comprehending it, it repels him, for it has nothing in common with man. Thinking makes us out of touch with reality; the reality of observation repels us. However one may otherwise describe the dichotomy of modern intellectual life, these are its two roots, these two poles of modern intellectual life: the powerlessness of self-conscious thinking, with its mere pictorial character, which is unable to penetrate into fully fleshed reality, and the mechanistically conceived contents of observation and experiment, which repel one as alien to our own being. It seems as if one is only talking about the field of science when one talks about these things. But what one is discussing in this way permeates our entire modern life.

So, on the one hand, there is this modern intellectual life with the two poles just described. On the other hand, there is anthroposophy. Anthroposophy, which does not attempt to remain at the level of thinking self-awareness, but progresses in inner development through inner soul exercises, which I will have to describe later; which progresses from what we have in a self-evident way in thinking. From this thinking, through exercises, one advances to a descriptive, to a pictorial, to an imaginative thinking; to a thinking that then becomes so strong that it becomes a seeing; that becomes as strong as otherwise only the sense impressions are. Today I can only hint at these things, but in the next few days I will have to describe how one can actually achieve clairvoyant vision of a supersensible world by developing thinking.

But then, when one progresses from the training of thinking to the imagination, then one no longer stands alone with this imagination, which is nothing other than a developed thinking, in the self-awareness that has become alien to reality. Then one stands in a new spiritual reality, in the reality in which one stood before descending from the spiritual-soul world into physical embodiment. For one gets to know one's prenatal life when one really trains in a systematic way that which, in thinking self-awareness, leads to human loneliness in relation to the world. It is thinking that has been developed into imagination that leads to a new reality, to the reality that has taken possession of our own self as our physicality. Our I expands beyond our birth or conception. We enter into a spiritual world.

On the other hand, if we consider observation and experimentation from the perspective of modern science, we become aware of something that many people fail to recognize: that in the experiment itself, thinking is completely silent. Anyone who really follows the experimental process and scientific research in experimentation will find that thinking only notifies, that it actually only perceives the cases statistically and forms laws, but that it does not delve into reality. What connects with reality in the experiment is human will. A deeper psychology will recognize this more and more. Anthroposophy conducts research in such a way that, on the one hand, it develops thinking into imagination, and on the other hand, it develops the will into intuition and inspiration. As I said, I will discuss the details in the next few days. Today I would just like to state the principles.

When the human being comes to exercise this will, which otherwise remains as dark to him as the states of sleep are to his own consciousness, to exercise it in the same way that one exercises thinking for imagination, he comes to make his own organism, his own physicality spiritually and soulfully transparent – not physically, of course. This means that the human being comes to develop for his own being that which he had previously developed for the outside world, for the mechanism, for the machine. But this own being then reveals itself in a completely different way. We are not repelled by it. We grasp what has flowed out of the whole cosmos into our humanity with a transparency that we otherwise only grasp the machine with. But it is we ourselves that we grasp. We are not pushed back. We grasp ourselves in ourselves. And we grasp, initially in our minds, what the moment of death is. We get to know the eternity of the human soul on the other side. We learn through the strengthening of our will how the body becomes transparent, and we learn to understand by looking at how we pass through the gateway of death, how we leave the body to enter a spiritual-soul world.

Through the further development of thinking, we learn to recognize the prenatal. Through culture, through the development of the will, we learn to recognize the afterlife, that which lies beyond our death. We learn to recognize ourselves in a reality, learn to place ourselves in this reality. We do not remain lonely with our self. We learn a thinking, a developed thinking, that penetrates into life, namely into the spiritual life. And we learn to observe something, first in ourselves, then in the world, which does not repel us, but connects with the developed thinking. We bridge the abyss that lies between the two poles, self-conscious thinking and mechanistic observation. We acquire, through anthroposophical research, a thinking that is not powerless in the face of reality, but that submerges into reality; we get to know a reality that reaches up to the inner soul life, to the developed will, which in turn reaches up to thinking. We expand thinking so that it can submerge into reality; we expand the will to such an extent that it can reach up to thinking. Thus, with the spiritual life, we grasp a full reality in which the human being now stands.

This comes about in three stages of knowledge. It comes about in imaginative knowledge, through which thinking is first intensified to the point of pictorialness, inwardly strengthened, where one first sees the supersensible, the spiritual world in images. Then comes inspired knowledge. You can find more about this in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” In the next few days I will also have much to characterize. Through inspired knowledge, the spiritual world enters into our soul. Then comes intuitive knowledge, through which we place ourselves in the spiritual essence of the world. But without becoming a spiritual researcher oneself, one can, simply through common sense, grasp that which the spiritual researcher draws from the supersensible world through imagination, inspiration, intuition. If one appropriates these truths, for example the truths that are attained through imaginative knowledge, then one enriches one's inner soul life. How does one enrich one's inner soul life?

Well, with that which is so magnificently described, our scientific life, our scientific spirit, with which we actually live in a state of mind that is only appropriate for us as human beings as an intellectual state of mind when we are fully grown, when we have reached our twenties. If we look only at the human age that immediately precedes it, at the age, say, from the fourteenth to the twentieth, twenty-first year. There we live a life - the one who can really focus on such things, who has a deeper psychology in his soul, he knows it and can explore it - there we live in such a way that intense soul experiences arise from our inner being. These are not abstract thoughts. They are the ideals of youth, full of inner sap, with inner intensity and strength, which one experiences not just as pale, dull thoughts. Man is under the impression of an inner impulsiveness.

What is it that is effective here? Well, what is effective in man actually lives half-dreamily in him. He does not become aware of it at this age. Nor can it be brought to consciousness through ordinary science. Ordinary science will never fathom what goes on in human minds, or what goes on in the human body, say, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. Only imaginative knowledge can recognize this. It brings it to consciousness. What works subconsciously in us during our teenage years can only come to consciousness through imaginative knowledge. A young person who has passed the age of fourteen — anyone who is familiar with real pedagogy knows this — longs for knowledge that is imaginative, because only through this can he understand himself. Otherwise he must wait until he is over twenty years old before the intellectual life fully enters him. And then he can only come to the thinking consciousness with which he is alone. He drifts away, if I may express it this way, until this point in human life. He longs for a revelation from the elders, which these elders could only give him – if they are his teachers, his educators, his guides – if they had imaginative insights. Then they would be able to tell him what he is.

And between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, we live an inner life of body, soul and spirit in such a way that what happens unconsciously, what is reality, can only be grasped by inspired knowledge. Not external, intellectual, experimental knowledge can know what is actually working itself out in the human being during the childhood years. Everything wants to form itself now, not according to natural laws, but according to artistic impulses. Inspirations from the universe are at work in us. And the older generation will only be able to tell the children between the ages of seven and fourteen, approximately speaking, what these children long for, what their whole feeling and will is striving for, if they know anything about inspired knowledge. We shall only be able to talk to children in a teaching and educating way when we have some knowledge of inspired world knowledge.

And even with the very youngest children - “Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. There is a deep truth in these words of Christ. At this age of life, during infancy, the age up to the change of teeth, the child lives in such a way that one can only understand the settling of his soul-spiritual into the physical-bodily, this forcing-into, this plastic shaping of the body out of the soul-spiritual, only with intuitive knowledge. Therefore, children will only understand us - feelingly, instinctively - and can be influenced by us in the right way if we can receive religiously shaped truths from an education in intuitive knowledge.

Thus, in our present spiritual age, young people do not understand the old, because as human beings we basically lose our youth. We would only not lose it if what we experience in childhood and adolescence could be remembered by us in later, more mature years through the insights that come from imagination, inspiration and intuition. With these insights we can delve into our childhood and youth. With these insights we can speak as teachers, educators, and leaders of humanity to children and young people in such a way that they understand us instinctively and emotionally, and that young people learn to understand us. The gap between youth and old age can only be bridged in this way. It will not be possible to fill it in any other way. And if the will is not present to bridge or fill the gap in this way, our age will show to an ever greater extent what it is already showing: that youth does not understand age, that age does not understand youth.

And the consequence of this is that people do not understand each other, that a social life becomes more and more impossible. Only by introducing a spiritual-scientific insight into our scientific spirit, by expanding our scientific spirit to include such a spiritual-scientific insight, will man be able to understand himself fully, man will come to the point where he no longer has his self so impotently that it does not reach reality, but is able to observe reality in such a way that it does not strike him back. Only in this way will he be able to bring the two poles, the pole of thought and the pole of reality, which are so alien to each other in modern man, into a living balance.

Thus anthroposophy, even though it did not arise in some abstract way from the observation of the search of the time, from the observation of the longings of our time, anthroposophy, having has arisen out of scientific foundations, it may nevertheless point out how it can achieve, or at least will be able to achieve, in the most important fields of the age, what this age desires in the deepest sense of the word.

I wanted to present this as an introduction, as a preface, so to speak, to the reflections of the next few days, characterizing how this anthroposophy would like to be understood. It would like to be understood not as dead, abstract knowledge, not as knowledge in the form of mere theories, but as knowledge that has been grasped through living in life and is itself living knowledge; as knowledge that flows into the human being not just as thoughts or as the results of observation, but as the life blood of the soul; as knowledge that is present in the human being as life itself.

Anthroposophy would be the height of arrogance if it tried to inspire faith by claiming that so-and-so many of the world's mysteries exist or can be solved. That is not the point. Life is full of riddles, and only as long as there are riddles will there be life. For we must experience the riddles, and it is only by experiencing the riddles that we can continue to live in a truly human way. A world in which there were no questions would be an inanimate world. Anthroposophy does not claim to promise a solution to all the riddles of life. But it seeks to be that which is capable of serving life through its own character, through knowledge and through the power to give the whole human being, the full human being, the artistic, the religious, the moral, the social human being, the real foundation. Anthroposophy seeks to serve life. It would like to serve life by being living knowledge itself, and not just dead knowledge, and by developing its own life force. It would like to serve life, and nothing but life itself can serve life. That is why anthroposophy wants to become life itself in order to serve the life of humanity.

As Anthroposophy spreads to fields where men usually seek their religious and, maybe, their moral impulses also, it encounters many persons who feel drawn towards such a spiritual stream. The modern spirit, which yesterday I allowed myself to call “the scientific spirit”, has, in many respects, shaken old, traditional beliefs, and although many people approach the anthroposophical line of research somewhat sceptically, there are, nevertheless, very many to-day whose souls have at least an inclination towards it. But it is correct to say that, in one respect, Anthroposophy encounters difficulties when it would enter the fields of the various sciences. That is the particular aim of this course, and it will be my task to present here, in the main, the general, more comprehensive principles and results of our research, while the other lecturers will deal with special scientific fields.

But precisely such an arrangement must arouse all the antipathies—I use this word more in a theoretical than in a moral sense—which Anthroposophy encounters from scientific quarters. I can only assure you that one who is engaged in anthroposophical research fully understands how difficult it is for a man involved in scientific work to-day to pass from the scientific attitude into Anthroposophy. Although Anthroposophy has certainly much to correct in present-day science, and, at the same time, when organic and spiritual fields are included, very much to add to the present material for research, it does not of itself come into conflict with current science. It accepts the justified results of science and deals with them in the way I have just described. The reverse, however, does not occur; at least, not yet—as one may well understand. Anthroposophy is rejected; its results are not regarded as satisfying the strictly scientific criteria that one feels entitled to impose to-day.

In a short lecture I shall not, of course, be able to go into all that Anthroposophy can itself bring forward to serve as an effective foundation for its results. But I should like in to-day's lecture to attempt to characterise the position of Anthroposophy among the sciences, and to do this in a way that will enable you to understand that Anthroposophy, in laying its foundations, is as conscientious as any science with its own precise technique. For this, however, I shall have to inflict upon you somewhat remote discussions—things which in ordinary life may be called difficult but which are necessary in order to provide a certain basis for what I shall have to offer in an easier and, perhaps, more agreeable form in the next few days.

Many people to-day imagine that Anthroposophy starts somehow from the nebulous attitude of soul to be found in present-day movements that are really “mystical” or “occult”. But to ascribe to Anthroposophy such a very questionable foundation is a complete mistake. Only one who knows Anthroposophy only superficially, or, indeed, through its opponents, can do that.

The fundamental attitude of consciousness in Anthroposophy has been drawn from that branch of present-day science which is least of all attacked in respect to its scientific character and importance. I admit, however, that many of our adherents—and opponents too—fail to perceive correctly what I have now to characterise by way of introduction.

The position of mathematics among the sciences has already been mentioned. Kant's pronouncement, that in every science there is only as much real knowledge—real cognition—as there is mathematics, is widely known. Now I have not to deal here with mathematics itself, with its value for the other sciences and in human life, but rather with the mental attitude a man assumes when “mathematicising”—if I may use this word; that is, when actively engaged in mathematical thinking. His attitude of soul is then, indeed, quite distinctive. Perhaps we may best characterise it by speaking, first, of that branch of mathematics which is usually called geometry and, at least in those parts of it known to the majority of people, has to do with space, is the science of space.

We are accustomed to speak of three-dimensional space; we picture it so constituted that its three dimensions, as they are called, stand at right angles to one another. What we have before our mind's eye as space is, in the first place, quite independent of man and the rest of the world. And because man as an individual being orientates himself in accordance with spatial laws, he pictures space before his eyes, independent of himself. He can certainly say that he is at this or that distance from any selected point; thus he inserts himself into space, as a part of space. And by regarding himself as an earthly being and assigning to himself certain distances from this and that star, he inserts himself into cosmic space. In a word, man regards space as something objective, independent of his own being. It was this that led Kant to call space an a priori intuition (eine Anschauung a priori), a mode of intuition given to man prior to experience. He cannot ask how he comes to have space; he must simply accept it as something given; he must fit himself into it when he has attained full earthly consciousness.

But it is not so in reality. We human beings do actually build space out of our own being. More correctly: we build our idea (Vorstellung), our mental perception (Anschauung), of space from out of ourselves. Only, we do not do this consciously, because we do it at a time of life when we do not think about our own activities in the way that would be necessary if we were to come to a clear understanding of the nature of space in relation to our own being. Indeed, we should not have our intuition of space (Raumanschauung) if, in our earthly life, we did not first experience its three dimensions.

We do experience them. We experience one of them when, from out of our inability to walk upright from birth, we raise ourselves into the vertical position. We learn this dimension from the way in which we build it. And what we learn to know is not just any dimension, set at right angles to the other two. We learn to know this quite definite dimension of space—standing vertically, so to speak, upon the earth's surface—from the fact that we human beings are not born upright, but, in accord with the formative laws of our earthly life, must first raise ourselves into the vertical position.

We learn to know the second dimension of space in an equally unconscious manner. You will be well aware that man—to mention what pertains more to his inner than to his outer being—in developing the capacities which serve him in later life, learns to orientate himself from left to right, from right to left. One need only recall that we have our organised speech centre in a certain area of the brain, the so-called Broca convolutions, while the other side of the brain has no such organisation. One also knows to-day—and from accepted science—that the development of the speech centre on the left side of the human body is connected with the mobility, spontaneous at first, of the right hand. One knows, too, that an orientation from right to left develops, that this activity excited on the left by an activity on the right, or vice-versa, is experienced by us within the laws that form us—just as we experience our achievement of the upright position. It is in this co-ordinated orientation of right with left, or left with right, that we human beings experience the second dimension of space.

The third dimension of space is never really experienced by us completely. We first focus this so-called “depth-dimension” as we try to gauge it. We are constantly doing this, though deep down in the unconscious. When we make the lines of vision of our eyes intersect at a point and focus both eyes on this point, we expand space, which would otherwise have only two dimensions for us, into the third dimension. And with every estimate of spatial depth we build the third dimension unconsciously out of our own being and the laws that form us.

Thus one might say: we place, in a certain way, the three dimensions of space outside us. And what we conceive as space, the space we use in geometry—Euclidean geometry, at first—is nothing more than an abstraction from what we learn to know concretely, with our own organism, as the three dimensions linked to our own subjective being. In this abstraction the quite definite configuration of space is ignored; the definite directions—vertical, horizontal and depth—have equal value. (This is always done when we make abstractions.) And then, when we have constructed, by abstracting from the three-dimensional space experienced within, the external space we speak of in geometry, we extend our consciousness through this external space alone.

We now come to the important thing. What we have won from out of ourselves is now applicable to external nature; in the first place, to inorganic, lifeless forms, though it can also be applied to the spatial and kinetic relations between organic structures. Briefly, this fact largely determines the character of our external world. Having accomplished this transition (this metamorphosis of space) from one domain, which really lives in us, to space commonly so called, we now stand with our spatial concepts and spatial experiences within the outer world and are able to determine our position and motion by spatial measurements. We actually go out of ourselves when we construct space in this way. We lift out of our body what we have first experienced within ourselves, placing ourselves at a point of view from which we look back upon ourselves as filled with space. In thus objectifying space we are able to study the external movements and relative positions of objects with the help of ideas formed geometrically within space; we feel thereby that we are on firm scientific ground when we enter into objects with what we have formed so earnestly from out of ourselves. In these circumstances we cannot doubt that we can live within things with what has come from us in this way. When we judge the distance, or the changing distance, between two bodies in the outer world according to spatial relations, we believe we are determining something completely objective and independent of ourselves. It does not occur to us that this could be otherwise.

Now, however, a fundamental and important problem confronts us here. What we have experienced subjectively in ourselves, transforming it, in the case of space; simply by making from it a kind of abstraction, now becomes something permeating—to a certain extent—the outer world and appearing to belong there.

Anyone who considers impartially what confronts us here must say: In his subjective experience of space in its three dimensions and in his subsequent objectifying of this experience, man stands within the external world with his own experiences. Our subjective experiences, being experiences of space, are at the same time objective. After all, it is not at all difficult, but trivial and elementary, to see that this is so. For when we move ourselves through space, we accomplish something subjective, but at the same time an objective event occurs in the world. To put it another way, whether we see an automaton or a man move forwards, subjectivity does not come into consideration. What occurs when a human being lives spatially is, for the external disposition of the world, quite objective.

If we now focus attention on the human being as, in this way, he objectifies something of his subjective experience, moving himself in an objective domain by himself traversing space—for, in objectifying space, he really bears this space within himself also—we are led to say: If man could do with other experiences what he does when “mathematicising”, he would be able to transfer, to some extent, the mathematical attitude of soul to other experiences. Suppose we could shape other experiences—our mode of perceiving the qualities of colours and tones, for example—in the same way that we create and shape our experience of space from out of ourselves! When we look at a cube of salt we bring the cubical shape with us from our geometry, knowing that its shape is identical with the spatial concept we have formed. If we could create from out of ourselves, let us say, the world of colour, and then confront external coloured objects, we should then, in the same way, project (as it were) into the outer world what we first build up in ourselves. We should thus place ourselves outside our body and even look back upon ourselves. This has been accomplished in mathematics, although it remains unnoticed. (I have given a geometrical illustration; I could give others also.) Neither mathematicians nor philosophers have paid attention to this peculiar relationship that I have just put before you.

In regard to sense perceptions, however, science has become really confused. In the nineteenth century physiologists joined hands here even with epistemologists and philosophers, and many people think with them as follows:

When we see red, for example, the external event is some vibration which spreads itself out until it reaches our organ of vision, and then our brain. The specific sensation of red is then released. Or the tone C sharp is evoked by an external wave motion in the same way.

This confusion has arisen because we can no longer distinguish what lives in us—within the confines of our body—from what is outside. All sense qualities (colours, tones, qualities of warmth) are said to be actually only subjective, while what is external, objective is said to be something quite different.

If now, in the same way in which we build the three dimensions of space from out of ourselves and find them again in things (and things in them)—if we could, in the same way, draw from ourselves what appears in us as sensation, and then set it before us, we should likewise find in things what we had first found in ourselves. Indeed, looking back upon ourselves we should find it again—just as we find in the outer world what we have experienced within us as space, and, looking back at ourselves, find that we are a part of this space. As we have the space world around us, so we should have around us a world of intermingling colours and tones. We should speak of an objectified world of flowing colours and singing tones, as we speak of the space around us.

Man can certainly attain to this and learn to know as his own construction the world which otherwise only confronts him as the world of effects (Wirkungen). As we, albeit unconsciously, construct for ourselves the form of space out of our human constitution and then, having transformed it, find it again in the world, so we can train ourselves, this time by conscious effort, to draw from out of ourselves the whole gamut of qualities contained in the world, so as to find them again in things, and then again in looking back upon ourselves.

What I am here describing is the ascent to so-called “imaginative perception” (imaginative Anschauung). Every human being to-day has the same space-world—unless he be abnormally mathematical or unmathematical. What can live in us in like manner, and in such a way that we experience with it the world as well, can be acquired by exercises. “Imaginative perception”—a technical term that does not denote “fancy” or “imagination” in the usual sense—can be added to the ordinary objective perception of objects (in which mathematics is our sure guide), and will open up a new region of the world.

I said yesterday that I would have to expound to you a special method of training and research. I must describe what one has to do in order to attain to such “imaginative perception”. In this we come to perceive as a whole the qualitative element in the world—just as, in a sense, we come to perceive space (which has, at first, no reality that engages our higher interests) as a whole. When we are able to confront the world in this way, we are already at the first stage of super-sensible perception. Sense-perception may be compared to that perception of things in which we do not distinguish between triangular and rectangular shapes, do not see geometrical structures in things, but simply stare at them and only take in their forms externally. But the perception that is developed in “Imagination” is as much involved with the inner essence of things as mathematical perception is with mathematical relationships.

If we approach mathematics in the right frame of mind, we come to see precisely in the mathematician's attitude when “mathematicising” the pattern for all that one requires for super-sensible perception. For mathematics is simply the first stage of super-sensible perception. The mathematical structures we “perceive” in space are super-sensible perceptions—though we, accustomed to “perceive” them, do not admit this. But one who knows the intrinsic nature of “mathematicising” knows that although the structure of space has no special interest at first for our eternal human nature, mathematical thinking has all the characteristics that one can ask of clairvoyance in the anthroposophical sense: freedom from nebulous mysticism and confused occultism, and the sole aim of attaining to the super-sensible worlds in an exact, scientific way.

Everyone can learn from a study of “mathematicising” what clairvoyance is on a higher level. The most astonishing thing is that mathematicians, who of all people ought to know what takes place when a man is “mathematicising”, do not show a deeper understanding of what must be presented as a higher, qualitative “mathematicising”—if I may use this word—in clairvoyant research. For “imaginative” cognition, the first stage in this research, is only a perception that penetrates other domains of existence than those accessible to “mathematicising”; and it has been gained by exercises. In respect to human perception, however, much is understood differently once one is able to survey, in genuine self-knowledge, the whole inner nature of “mathematicising”. For example, one arrives at the following:

On looking back to the way in which we came to know in early childhood the structure of space—by walking and standing upright, by orientating ourselves to right and left, by learning to gauge the depth-dimension, by connecting all this with the abstractly perceived space of geometry (which the child learns to know from inner experience)—we realise the serious and important consequences that follow if we cannot look back to the living origin, within our own being, of space—of our conception and perception of space—but simply accept it in its already transformed shape, independent of ourselves. For example, in recent times we have come to regard this space (with its three dimensions) in such a way that we have gone on to postulate a fourth and higher dimensions. These spaces and their geometries are widely known to-day. Anyone who has once learnt to know the living structure of space finds it most interesting to follow such an extension of mathematical operations (applicable to three dimensions) and to arrive at a fourth dimension that cannot be visualised, and so on. These operations are logical (in the mathematical sense) and quite correct. But anyone who knows the genesis of our idea of space, as I have described it, will detect something quite special here. We could take a pendulum, for example, and watch it oscillate. Watching it purely externally, we might expect it to swing further and further out. But it does not. When it has reached a definite point, it swings back again to the opposite side. If we know the relation between the forces involved, we know that the pendulum oscillates and cannot go further because of the relation between the forces.

In respect to space, one learns to know (to some extent) such an interplay of forces in the constitution of our soul. Then one views these things differently. From the logical, mathematical standpoint one can certainly keep step with those who extend their calculations from three-dimensional to four-dimensional space. But there one must make a halt. One cannot pass on into an indefinite fourth dimension; one must turn back at a certain point, and the fourth dimension becomes simply the third with a minus sign before it. One returns through the third dimension. The mistake made in these geometrics of more than three dimensions is in going on abstractly from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth dimension, and so on. But what we have here, if I may express it in a comparison, is not simple progression but oscillation. Our perception of space must return into itself. By taking the third dimension negatively, we really annihilate it. The fourth dimension is the negative third and annihilates the third, making space two-dimensional. And in like manner we can find a quite real progression, even though, logically, mathematically, algebraically, these things can be carried further and further. When we think in accordance with reality, we must turn back at the fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions to the space that is simply given us. With the sixth dimension, we have abolished space and reach the point.

What really confronts us in the culture of our age? This—that its thinking has become abstract; that one simply continues along the line of thought that takes us from planimetry, stereometry, etc., whereas reality leads us back at the fourth dimension into space. But, in turning back then, we are by no means where we were when we found our way into the third dimension by gauging distances. We return spiritually enriched. If we can think of the fourth dimension (the negative third) in such a way that we return with it into space, then space becomes filled with spirit, whereas three-dimensional space is filled with matter. And we find space filled with ever loftier spiritual configurations when we pass along the negative third and second and first dimension and reach the point where we no longer have spatial extension but stand within the unextended—the spiritual.

What I am now describing is not formal mathematics, but the reality of spiritual perception. It is a path in real conformity with the spiritual and in contrast to the path that has adapted itself so closely to material appearances alone. This latter path, even though keeping close to mathematics—which does not, of course, work in a material way in the soul—leads nevertheless to an imperceptible world in which one can, at most, only calculate and construct imaginary mathematical spaces.

You see here that, by penetrating the mathematical domain completely, we are led to apprehend the inner nature of the spiritual present everywhere in the world. To understand the mathematical attitude of soul is to be led directly to the concept of clairvoyant experience. And then we raise ourselves to “Imagination” and, in the way I have still to describe, come thereby to a comprehensive survey of the spiritual that can be perceived, not in the ordinary way, but in the way I have put it here—that is: by going out of the third and into the fourth dimension, and so on, and coming to the domain of no-dimensions—that is, the point. This leads us spiritually to the highest if we apprehend it, not as an empty point, but as a “filled” point.

I was once—it made a great impression on me—regarded with astonishment by an elderly author who had written much on spiritual matters. Seeing me for the first time, he asked: “How did you first become aware of this difference between perceiving the sense-world and perceiving the super-sensible world?” Because I always like to express myself about these things with radical honesty, I replied: “In the moment when I learnt to know the inner meaning of what is called modern or synthetic geometry.” You see, when one passes from analytic to synthetic geometry—which enables us, not only to approach forms externally, but to grasp them in their mutual relationships—one starts from forms, not from external co-ordinates. When we work with spatial coordinates, we do not apprehend forms but only the ends of the co-ordinates; we join up these ends and obtain the curves. In analytical geometry we do not lay hold of the forms, whereas in synthetic geometry we live within them. This induces us to study the attitude of soul which, developed further, leads us to press on into the super-sensible world.

I have now described the extent to which Anthroposophy can be sure that it proceeds from “mathematicising” as strictly as the natural science of to-day—though from another point of view. Natural science applies mathematics as it has been elaborated to date. But anyone who wishes to understand clairvoyant activity must seek it where it is present in its most primitive form: in the construction of mathematical forms. If he can then raise this activity to higher domains, he will be developing something related to elementary, primitive “mathematicising” as the more developed branches of mathematics are related to their axioms. The primary axioms of clairvoyance are living ones. And if we succeed in developing our “mathematicising” by exercises, we shall not only see spatial relationships in the world around us, but learn to know spiritual beings revealing themselves to us, even with spiritual inwardness—as we learn to know the “cubicity” of a salt crystal. We learn to know spiritual beings when, in this way, we raise to higher domains what we develop by “mathematicising”.

This is what I wished to say, at the outset, about the basis of what must receive recognition as “clairvoyant research” in Anthroposophy. We shall go on to see how, with such clairvoyant research, one can enter different fields of knowledge—the natural sciences as well as therapy, medicine, history, etc. We shall see that the sciences are not to be attacked; they are to be enriched by the introduction of what can be known by super-sensible perception.

A consideration of the course of human evolution over a certain period—how it developed and led at last to the elaboration of our present scientific thinking—can help to a right understanding of what our aims here are.

Let us focus our attention upon scientific thinking to-day. It is able to see clearly the formalism of mathematics, while it nevertheless learns from mathematics inner certainty and exact observation, regarding natural laws as valid only if they can be formulated mathematically. This is, at least, a kind of ideal for scientific method to-day. But it was not always so. The scientific spirit, as acknowledged to-day, has been elaborated in the course of human evolution. I should like to draw your attention to three stages only—of which the present is the third—in this development, and I shall do so in a more narrative form. I shall also touch on some of the things that can be said in support of what I shall relate.

As we look back on human evolution, we do not, in fact, always find the same disposition of soul that man has to-day. He cultivates the scientific spirit as, in a sense, a most lofty thing. If we look back at the ancient Orient—not necessarily so far back as the most ancient Indian times, but to times more recent—we found much of what had been handed down as cognitive principles still retained. The path to knowledge was named quite differently then. In those ancient times—even the history of language can support this—man did not think of himself as he does to-day. Modern man has, on the one hand, his consciousness of self firmly established within him, and, on the other hand, a grasp, through observation, of what is mechanistic. But the man of the Orient, for example, could not have this feeling of himself. (As I have said, the history of language can prove this.) He felt himself, in the first place, as a breathing human being. To him, man was a breather. In self-contemplation he focussed his attention chiefly upon the respiratory process. He even related immortality to the respiratory process: death came to him as a kind of expiration of his soul.

Man a breather! Why did man in this former disposition of soul feel the human being as a breathing being? Because he did actually feel life in the respiratory process (which did not proceed so unconsciously as it does to-day). He felt the vibrations of life, life's rhythm, in his breathing; he felt breathing as one feels hunger and thirst to-day. But this was a continuous feeling in the waking state. When he looked with his eyes, he knew: the process of breathing now enters right into my head and into my eyes. He felt his perceptions permeated by the flow of the breath. It was just the same when the will stirred. He stretched out his hand and felt this movement as if it were something linked up with the respiratory movements. An expansion of the breath through the whole body was felt as an inner life-process. He even felt the more theoretical perception of the outer world through the senses to be ensouled with breath, just as he felt the breath ensouling the movements of the will.

Man felt himself a breathing being, and because he could have said: “My breath is modified in this and that way when I see through my eyes, hear through my ears and receive through the effects of heat”—because in his sensations of all kinds he “saw” differentiated, modified, refined respiratory processes—because of all this the path of knowledge was for him a systematic training of the respiratory process. And this systematic training was for those earlier epochs in the evolution of man's cognition what university study is for us to-day.

We study in a different way now. But in those times, when one sought religious satisfaction or wished to acquire knowledge, one “studied” by systematically modifying the respiratory process; in other words, by developing what was later called Yoga Breathing, Yoga Training. And what did one develop? If we investigate what was attained by one who practised Yoga Breathing in order to reach higher stages of cognition, we find something striking. Those who came to be “savants” through Yoga exercises—the word “savant” is not quite appropriate to these earlier conditions, but perhaps one can use it—required as long for this as we do for a university course. In the knowledge so acquired they had grasped in the disposition of their souls what, in a later age—the Graeco-Roman, for example—was regarded as a world of ideas and present of itself in the soul, thus making Yoga unnecessary.

This is really a very interesting thing—that what men had to strive for in earlier epochs through all kinds of exercises is present of itself in later epochs of evolution. It has then no longer the same significance as before. When Socrates, when Plato were alive, their philosophies had no longer the same significance as they would have had for the ancient pupils or teachers of Yoga, had they reached Socratic or Platonic truths. By this Yoga-breathing the pupil did not acquire exactly the same inner organisation as Plato, Aristotle or Scotus Erigena, but he came to the same disposition of soul [Seelenverfassung]. Thus we find systematic breathing exercises practised in ancient times, and we see that this cognitive path led to a certain vivid world of ideas.

One really gains a correct idea of what lived later in Parmenides and Anaxagoras if one says to oneself: What was given to men in this age as something self-understood, had been achieved in still earlier times through Yoga. It was always through exercises that men strove for the higher knowledge required by their own age. Thus in the perception of the world in later epochs, men were no longer aware of their breathing in self-contemplation, but they perceived as the Greeks perceived (I have given more details of this in my Riddles of Philosophy). At that time one did not construct for oneself isolated thoughts about the world, for ideas and sense-experiences were one. One saw one's thoughts outside, as one saw red or blue and heard C sharp, G or B natural. Thoughts were in the world outside. Without knowing this, nobody understands the Greek view of the world. But the Greeks perceived only spirit permeated with sense-perceptions, or sense-perceptions permeated by spirit, and no longer differentiations in the process of breathing.

Then once again men sought to attain a higher stage of cognition in all domains in which they were seeking higher knowledge. This stage was also gained through exercises. To-day we have rather vague ideas about the early Middle Ages and their spiritual life. A medieval student did not learn so abstractedly as we do to-day. He, too, had to do exercises, and ordinary study was also combined with the doing of exercises. Inward exercises had to be carried out, though not so strenuously as with Yoga breathing; they were more inward, but still a set of exercises.

From this there remains a kind of deposit, little understood now, in what were called then the Seven Liberal Arts. They had to have been mastered by everyone who claimed to have received a higher education. Grammar meant the practical use of language. Rhetoric meant more: the artistic use of language. Dialectic was the use of language as a tool of thought. And when the student had practised these inwardly, as exercises, Arithmetic followed; but this, again, was not our abstract arithmetic, but an arithmetic which entered into things and was clearly aware that man shapes all things inwardly. In this way the student learnt Geometry through inward exercises, and this geometry, as something involving the human being, was the pupil's possession—a tool he could use.

All this then passed over into what was called Astronomy: the student integrated his being with the cosmos, learnt to know how his head was related to the cosmos, and how his lungs and heart resulted from the cosmos. It was not an astronomy abstracted from man, but an astronomy in which man had his place. And then, at the seventh stage, the pupil learnt to know how the Divine Being weaves and rules throughout the world. This was called Music; it was not our present music but a higher, living elaboration of what had been elaborated in thought-forms in Astronomy.

It was in this way that men of a later epoch trained themselves inwardly. The breathing exercises of earlier times had been replaced by a more inward training of the soul.

And what did one attain? In the course of the history of civilisation men came gradually to have thoughts apart from sense-perceptions. This was something that had to be acquired. The Greeks still saw thought in the world, as we see colours and perceive tones. We grasp thought as something we produce, not located within things. The fact that men came to feel this in the constitution of their souls, that we can feel this to-day—that is the result of the training in Grammar, Rhetoric and so on to Music. Thought was thereby released. Men learnt to move freely in thoughts. In this way was achieved what we take for granted to-day, possessing it without these exercises—what we find when we go to school, what is offered in the separate sciences (as described yesterday). And precisely as man in different epochs had to advance by means of exercises—in ancient times by breathing exercises (Yoga) which gave him the Graeco-Latin conception of the world as something he took for granted; in later times by exercises that went from Grammar to Music and gave him the scientific standpoint we have to-day—so to-day he can again advance. He can best advance by setting out from what is most certain: namely, mathematics, recognised as certain to-day.

My reply to that author was true, although it so astonished him. It was mainly through synthetic geometry that I became clear about the clairvoyant's procedure. Naturally, not everyone who has studied synthetic geometry is a clairvoyant, but the procedure can be clearly presented in this way. Though that author was so astonished at not being told the sort of thing that people who “prophesy” are wont to relate, it is nevertheless true that Anthroposophy, setting out from the firm base on which science stands to-day, seeks to extend this base; and from this base, which science itself has laid, to carry further, into super-sensible domains, what reliable science brings before us.

From here we must proceed more inwardly. And a still more inward procedure is the path to clairvoyant research which I had to describe in my books Geheimwissenschaft (“Occult Science”) and Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der Höheren Welten (“How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”). But precisely such an historical survey as I have given can show you that anyone who stands to-day with full consciousness within Anthroposophy derives this consciousness from standing within the course of human evolution. My historical survey can also show you that I do not speak from personal predilection or subjective partiality when I assert that we need to undertake exercises in order to carry further the historical movement that has brought humanity to its present standpoint. Anyone who knows the course of history up to the present, and knows how it must continue, stands consciously within the whole historical process, and to this consciousness he adds the insight acquired by taking—inwardly, not outwardly—the spirit of modern science into the constitution of his soul.

Thus one may well say: Anthroposophy knows its position in respect to the science of to-day. It knows this in an absolute sense, because it knows the special character of contemporary science and rejects all that is dilettantish and amateurish. It builds further on genuine science. On the other hand, Anthroposophy knows the historical necessities; knows that man's path must go beyond present achievements—if we do not wish to stand still, unlike all our forerunners, who wanted to advance beyond the stage of civilisation in which they shared. We, too, must go forward. And we must know what steps to take from the present standpoint of the scientific spirit.

In the next few days I shall have to depict what this actually involves. The foundations I have laid to-day will then appear, perhaps, in a more understandable form. But I may have been able to show that Anthroposophy knows from its scientific attitude—from an attitude as scientific as that of science—what its aims are in face of the contemporary world, of human evolution as a whole, and of the separate sciences. It will get to work because it knows how it has to work. Perhaps its path will be very long. If, on the other hand, one sees, in the subconscious depths of human souls, the deep longings for the heights that Anthroposophy would climb, one may surmise that it is necessary for the welfare of humanity that the path Anthroposophy has to take should not be too slow. But whether the pace be slow or fast may be less important for Anthroposophy than for human progress. In many domains we speak of being caught up in the “rapid tempo” of our time. May all that mankind is intended to attain by cognition of the super-sensible be attained as rapidly as the welfare of mankind requires.

What I have to say to-day will be, in a sense, an interlude within this course of lectures, for I shall try, from the scientific point of view, to glance at the field of artistic creation. I hope, however, that to-day's considerations will show that this interlude is really a contribution which will help to elucidate what I said on the preceding days and what I shall have to say in the days that follow.

When the Anthroposophical Movement had been active for some time, a number of members became convinced that a building should be erected for it. Various circumstances (which I need not mention here) led finally to the choice of the hill at Dornach, in the Jura Hills near Basle, Switzerland. Here the Goetheanum, the Free High School for Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, is being built.¹ It is not yet completed, but lectures can already be held in it and work can be done.

I should now like to speak of the considerations (inneren Verhältnissen) that prevailed with us when designing this building. If any other spiritual movement of our time had decided to erect its own building, what would have been done? Well, one would have applied to one or more architects, and a building would have been erected in one or other of the traditional styles—Antique, Renaissance or Gothic. Then, in accordance with what is being done here or there in the various branches of art, craftsmen would have been called in to decorate the building with paintings and plastic forms.

Nothing like that could be done in the case of the Dornach building—the Free High School for Spiritual Science; it would have contradicted the whole intention and innermost character of the anthroposophical conception of the world. This conception is not an attempt to achieve something one-sidedly theoretical—an expression of cosmic laws in a sum of ideas. It intends to be something born from man as a whole and to serve his whole being. It would be, on the one hand, something that can very well be expressed in thought forms—as one expects of any view of the world that is propounded. On the other hand, the anthroposophical world-view would be essentially more comprehensive; it strives to be able to speak from the whole compass of man's being. It must therefore be able to speak, not only from the theoretical, scientific spirit, but from an artistic spirit also. It would speak from a religious, a social, an ethical spirit; and to do all this in accordance with the needs of practical life in these fields.

I have often expressed the task confronting us in Dornach with the help of a trivial comparison. If we think of a nut with its kernel inside and the shell around, we cannot think that the grooves and twists of the shell result from other laws than those that shape the kernel. The shell, in clothing the nut, is shaped by the same laws that shape the kernel. When the building at Dornach, this double cupola, was erected, our aim was to create an architectural, plastic, pictorial shell for what would be done within it as an expression of the anthroposophical view of the world. And just as one can speak in the language of thought from the rostrum in Dornach about what is perceived in super-sensible worlds, so must one be in a position to let the architectural, plastic, pictorial frame for the anthroposophical world-view proceed from the same spirit.

But a great danger confronts us here: the danger of having ideas about this or that and then simply giving them external expression in symbolic or insipidly allegorical form. (This is frequently done when world-views are given external representation: symbols or allegories are set up—thoroughly inartistic products which flout the really artistic sense.) It must be clearly understood, above all, that the anthroposophical conception of the world rejects such symbolic or allegorical negations of art (Widerkunst, Unkunst). As a view of the world, it should spring from an inner spiritual life so rich that it can express itself, not allegorically or symbolically, but in genuinely artistic creations.

In Dornach there is not a single symbol, not a single allegory to be seen. Everything that has been given artistic expression was born from artistic perception, came to birth in the moulding of forms, in creating out of the interplay of colours (aus dem Farbig-Malerischen heraus); it had its origin in a thoroughly artistic act of perception and had nothing to do with what is usually expressed when people come and ask: What does this mean? What does that signify? In Dornach no single form is intended to mean anything—in this sense. Every form is intended to be something—in the genuinely artistic sense; it means itself, expresses itself.

Those people who come to Dornach to-day and maintain that something symbolic or allegorical is to be seen there, are just projecting into our building their own prejudgements; they are not expressing what has come to birth with this building. Our aim is that the same spirit—not the theoretical spirit but the living spirit that speaks from the rostrum or confronts us from the stage—should speak also through the artistically plastic forms, through the architecture, through the paintings. The spirit at work in the “kernel” the spirit that finds expression through the spoken word—is to shape the “shell” also.

Now, if the anthroposophical view of the world is something new entering human evolution in the way I have ventured to describe in the two previous lectures, then, naturally, what had been in the world before could not find expression in our architectural style, our plastic and pictorial forms—i.e. in the visual art of our building. No artistic reminiscences, Antique, Renaissance or Gothic, could be brought in. The anthroposophical world-view had to show itself sufficiently productive to evolve its own style of visual art.

Of course, if such intentions press on one's heart and soul, one becomes very humble and one's own most severe critic. I certainly know that, if I had to build the Dornach building a second time, much that now appears to me imperfect, often indeed wrong, would be different. But this is not the essential thing. The essential thing, at least for to-day's lecture, is the intention (das Wollen) that I have just described. It is of this that I wish to speak.

When we speak of visual art, in so far as we have to consider it here—that is, the plastic art to which the anthroposophical world-view had been directed, as by inner necessity, through the fact that friends came forward and made the sacrifice required in order that the building at Dornach could be started—when we speak of visual art in this sense, we need, before all else, to understand thoroughly the human form. For, after all, everything in visual art points to, and proceeds from, the human form. We must understand the human form in a way that really enables us to create it.

I spoke yesterday of one element, the spatial element, in so far as this is an element in our world and, at the same time, proceeds from our human being. I said that the three spatial dimensions, by which we determine all the forms underlying our world, can be derived from the human form. But when one speaks as I spoke yesterday, one does not arrive at the apprehension of space needed for sensitive, artistic creation if one intends to pursue plastic art—that plastic art which underlies all visual art—with full consciousness. Precisely when one has space in its three dimensions so concretely before one's mind's eye as in yesterday's considerations, one sees that the space arrived at in this way cannot be the space in which one finds oneself when, for example, one forms—also in “space”, as we say—the human form plastically. One cannot obtain the space in which one finds oneself as a sculptor. One must say to oneself: That is quite a different space.

I touch here on a secret pertaining to our human way of looking at the world—a secret that our present-day perception has, one might almost say, quite lost. You will permit me to set out from a way of looking at things that is apparently—but only apparently—quite abstract, theoretical. But this excursion will be brief; it is intended only as an introduction to what will be able to come before our minds' eyes in a much more concrete form.

When we intend to apply to objects in this world the space of which I spoke yesterday—we apply it, of course, geometrically, using, in the first place, Euclidean geometry—we set out, as you all know, from a point and set up three axes at right angles to one another. (As I pointed out yesterday, one ought to take this point in concrete space to be within the human body.) Any region of space is then related to these axes by determining distances from them (or from the three planes that they determine). In this way we obtain a geometrical determination of any object occupying space; or, as in kinematics, one can express motion in space.

But there is another space than this: the space into which the sculptor enters. The secret of this space is that one cannot set out from one point and relate all else to it. One must set out from the counterpart of this point. And what is its counterpart? Nothing other than an infinitely remote sphere to which one might look up as at, let us say, the blue vault of heaven.

Imagine that I have, instead of a point, a hollow sphere in which I find myself, and that I relate all that is within it to this hollow sphere, determining everything in relation to it, instead of to a point by means of co-ordinates. So long as I describe it to you only in this way, you could rightly say: Yes, but this determination in relation to a hollow sphere is vague; I can form no mental picture when I try to think it. Well, you would be right; one can form no mental picture. But man is capable of relating himself to the cosmos—as we, yesterday, related ourselves to the human being (the “anthropos”). As we looked into the human being and found the three dimensions—as we can determine him in relation to these three dimensions, saying: his body extends linearly in one of the dimensions; in the second is the plane of the extended arms and all that is symmetrically built into the human organism; and in the third dimension is all that extends forwards and backwards, backwards and forwards—so, when we really look at the “anthropos” as an organism, we do not find something extended in an arbitrary way in three dimensions. We have before us the human organism built in a definite way.

We can also relate ourselves to the cosmos in the same way. What occurs in the soul when we do so? Well: imagine yourself standing in a field on a clear, starry night, with a free view of the sky. You see regions of the vaulted sky where the stars are closely clustered, almost forming clouds. You see other regions where the stars are more widely spaced and form constellations (as they are called). And so on. If you confront the starry heavens in this merely intellectual way—with your human understanding—you achieve nothing. But if you confront the starry heavens with your whole being, you experience (empfinden) them differently.

We have now lost the perceptive sense for this, but it can be reacquired. Facing a patch of sky where the stars are close together and form almost a cloud, will be a different experience from facing constellations. One experiences a patch of sky differently when the moon is there and shines. One experiences a night differently when the moon is new and not visible. And so on. And precisely as one can “feel” one's way into the human organism in order to have the three dimensions—where space itself is concrete, something connected with man—so one can acquire a perception of the cosmos, that is, of one's cosmic environment (Umkreis). One looks into oneself to find, for example, the three dimensions. But one needs more than that. One can now look out into the wide expanses and focus one's attention on their configurations. Then, as one advances beyond ordinary perception, which suffices for geometry, one acquires the perception needed for these wide expanses; one advances to what I called, yesterday and the day before, “imaginative cognition”. I have still to speak about its cultivation.

If one were simply to record what one sees out there in cosmic expanses, one would achieve nothing. A mere chart of the starry heavens, such as astronomers make to-day, leads nowhere. If, however, one confronts this cosmos as a whole human being, with full understanding of the cosmos, then, in face of these clusters of stars, pictures form themselves within the soul—pictures like those one sees on old maps, drawn when “imaginations” took shape out of the old, instinctive clairvoyance. One receives an “imagination” of the whole cosmos. One receives the counter-image of what I showed you yesterday as the basis, in man, of the three geometrical space-dimensions. What one receives can take an infinite variety of shapes.

Men have, indeed, no idea to-day of the way in which men once, in ancient times, when an instinctive clairvoyance still persisted among them, gazed out into the cosmos. People believe to-day that the various drawings, pictures—“imaginations”—which were made of the zodiacal signs, were the products of phantasy. They are not that. They were sensed (empfunden); they were perceived (geschaut) on confronting the cosmos. Human progress required the damping-down of this instinctive, living, imaginative perception, in order that intellectual perception, which sets men free, should come in its place. And from this, again, there must be achieved—if we wish to be whole human beings—a perception of the universe that attains once more to “Imagination”.

If one intends to take, in this way, one's idea of space from the starry heavens, one cannot express it exhaustively by three dimensions. One receives a space which I can only indicate figuratively. If I had to indicate the space I spoke of yesterday by three lines at right angles to one another, I should indicate this space by drawing everywhere sets of figures (Konfigurationen), as if surface forces (Kräfte in Flächen) from all directions of the universe were approaching the earth and, from without, were working plastically on the forms upon its surface.

One comes to such an idea when, advancing beyond what living beings—above all, human beings—present to physical eyes, one attains to what I have been calling “Imagination”. In this the cosmos, not the physical human being, reveals itself in images and brings us a new space. As soon as one gets so far, one perceives man's second body—what an older, prescient, instinctive clairvoyance called the “etheric body”. (A better name is “body of formative forces” (Bildekräfteleib).) This is a super-sensible body, consisting of subtle, etheric substantiality and permeating man's physical body. We can study this physical body if, within the space it occupies, we seek the forces that flow through it. But we cannot study the etheric body (body of formative forces) which flows through the human being if we set out from this space. We can study this only if we think of it as built up out of the whole cosmos: formed plastically from without by “planes of force” (Kraftflächen) converging on the earth from all sides and reaching man.

In this way, and in no other, did plastic art arise in times when it was still an expression of what is elemental and primary. Such a work as, for example, the Venus of Milo reveals this to an intuitive eye. It was not created after a study of anatomy, in respectful reliance on forces which are merely to be understood as proceeding from the space within the physical body. It was created with a knowledge, possessed in ancient times, of the body of formative forces which permeates the physical body and is formed from out of the cosmos—formed from out of a space as peripheral as earthly space (physical space) is central. A being that is formed from the periphery of the universe has beauty impressed upon it—“beauty” in the original meaning of the word. Beauty is indeed the imprint of the cosmos, made with the help of the etheric body, on a physical, earthly being.

If we study a physical, earthly being in accordance with the bare, dry facts, we find, of course, what it is for ordinary, physical space. But if we let its beauty work on us—if we intend to intensify its beauty by means of plastic art, we must become aware that the beauty impressed upon this being derives from the cosmos. The beauty of this individual being reveals to us how the whole cosmos works within it. In addition, one must, of course, feel how the cosmos finds expression in the human form, for example.

If we are able to study the human form with inward, imaginative perception, we are induced to focus our attention, at first, on the formation of the head apart from the rest. But, looking at this formation as a whole, we do not understand it if we try to explain it merely by what is within the head. We understand it only if we conceive it as wrought from out of the cosmos through the mediation of the body of formative forces.

If we now pass on to consider man's chest formation, we reach an inward understanding of this—an understanding in respect to the human form—only if we can picture to ourselves how man lives on the earth, round which the stars of the zodiacal line revolve. (Only apparently revolve, according to present-day astronomy, but that does not concern us here.) Whereas we relate man's head to the pole of the cosmos, we relate his chest formation—which certainly functions (verläuft) in the recurrent equatorial line—to what runs its course, in the most varied ways, in the annual or diurnal circuit of the sun.

It is not until we pass on to consider the limb-system of man, especially the lower limb-system, that we feel: This is not related to the external cosmos, but to earth; it is connected with the earth's force of gravity. Look with the eye of a sculptor at the formation of the human foot; it is adapted to the earth's gravitational force. We take in the whole configuration—how the thigh bones and shin bones are fitted together by the mediation of the knee—and find it all adapted, dynamically and statically, to the earth, and to the way in which the force of gravity works from the earth's centre outwards, into the universe.

We feel this when we study the human form with a sculptor's eye. For the head we need all the forces of the cosmos; we need the whole sphere if we want to understand what is expressed so wonderfully in the formation of the head. If we want to understand what finds expression in the formation of the chest, we need what, in a sense, flows round the earth in the equatorial plane; we are led to earth's environment. If we want to understand man's lower limb-system, to which his metabolic system is linked, we must turn to the earth's forces. Man is, in this respect, bound to the forces of the earth. Briefly: we discover a connection between all cosmic space—conceived as living—and the human form.

To-day, in many circles (including artistic circles), people will probably laugh at such observations as those I have just made. I can well understand why. But one knows little about the real history of human development if one laughs at such things. For anyone who can enter deeply into the ancient art of sculpture sees from the sculptured forms created then that feelings (Empfindungen), developed by the “imaginative” view of the starry heavens, have flowed into those forms. In the oldest works of sculpture it is the cosmos that has been made perceptible in the human form.

Of course, we must regard as knowledge, not only what is called such in an intellectual sense, but knowledge that is dependent upon the whole range of human soul-forces. One becomes a sculptor—really a sculptor—from an elemental urge, not just because one has learnt to lean on old styles and reproduce what is no longer known to-day, but was known in this or that period, when this or that style was alive and sculptors were yet creative. One does not become a sculptor by leaning on traditions—as is usual to-day, even with fully fledged artists; one becomes a sculptor by reaching back, with full consciousness, to the shaping forces which once led men to plastic art. One must re-acquire cosmic feelings; one must be again able to feel the universe and see in man a microcosm—a world in miniature. One must be able to see the impress of the cosmos stamped upon the human forehead. One must be able to see from the nose how it has received the imprint of what has also been stamped upon the whole respiratory system: the imprint of the environment—of what revolves round the earth in the equatorial and zodiacal lines. Then one senses what one must create (darstellen). One does not work by mere imitation, copying a model, but one recreates by immersing oneself in that force by which Nature herself created and shaped man. One forms as Nature herself forms. But then one's whole mode of feeling, in cognition and artistic expression, must be able to adapt itself to this.

When we have the human form before us, we direct our artistic eye at first to the head. We do this with the urge to give plastic form to the head. We then try to bring out all the details of this head, treating every surface with loving care: the forehead, the arches above the eyes, the ears and so on. We try to trace, with all possible care, the lines that run down the forehead and over the nose. We proceed, in accordance with our aim, to give this or that shape to the nose. In short, we try to bring out, with loving care, through the different surfaces, what pertains to the human head.

Perhaps what I am now about to say may sound heretical to many, but I believe it flows from fundamentally artistic feelings. If, as sculptors, we were striving to form human, human legs, we should feel persistent inhibition. One would like to shape the head as lovingly as possible, but not the legs. One would like to hide them—to by-pass them with the help of pieces of clothing, with something or other that conforms sculpturally to what finds expression in the head. A human form with correctly chiselled legs—calves, for example—offends the sculptor's artistic eye. I know that I am saying something heretical, but I also know that it is thereby the more fundamentally artistic. Correctly chiselled legs!—one does not want them. Why not? Well, simply because there is another anatomy for the sculptor; his knowledge of the human form is different from the anatomist's. For the sculptor—strange as it may sound—there are no bones and muscles. For him there is the human form, built out of the cosmos with the help of the body of formative forces. And in the human form there are for him forces, effects of forces, lines of force and force-configurations. As a sculptor I cannot possibly think of the cranium when I form the human head; I form the head from without inwards, as the cosmos has moulded it. And I form the corresponding bulges on the head in accordance with the forces that press upon the form from within outwards and oppose the forces working in from the cosmos.

When, as a sculptor, I form the arms, I do not think of the bones but of the forces that are active when, for example, I bend my arm. I have then lines of force, developing forces, not what takes shape as muscle or bone. And the thickness of the arm depends on what is present there as life-activity, not on the muscular tissue. Because, however, one has above all the urge to make the human form with its beauty conform to the cosmos, but can do so only with the head—the lower limbs being adapted to the earth—one leaves the lower limbs out. When one renders a human being in art, one would like to lift him from the earth. One would make a heavy earth-being of him, if one were to give too definite shape to his lower limbs.

Again, looking at the head alone, we see that only the upper part, the wonderfully vaulted skull, is a copy of the whole cosmos. (The skull is differently arched in every individual. There is no general, only an individual, “phrenology”.) The eyes and the nose resemble, in their formation, man's chest organism; they are formed as copies of his environment, of the equatorial stream. Hence, when I come to do the eyes of a sculptured figure of a human being, I must confine myself—since one cannot, as you know, represent a man's gaze, whether deep or superficial, by any shade of colour—to representing large or small, slit or oval, or more or less, less straight eyes. But how one represents the way the eye passes over into the form of the nose, or how the forehead does this—how one suggests that man sees by bringing his whole soul into his seeing—all that is different when the eyes are slit, oval or straight. And if one can only feel how a man breathes through his nose, this wonderful means of expression, one can say: As a man is in respect to his chest, as its form is shaped by the cosmos, working inwards, so does he, as a human being, press what breathes in his chest, and what beats in his heart, up into his eyes and nose. It comes to expression there in the plastic form.

How a man is in respect to his head only finds proper expression in the cranium, which is, in respect to its form, an imprint of the cosmos. How a man reacts to the cosmos, not only by taking in oxygen and remaining passive, but by having his own share of physical matter and, in his chest, exposing his own being to the cosmos—that finds sculptured expression in the formation of the eyes and his nose.

And when we shape the mouth? Oh, in shaping the mouth we really give shape to the whole inner man in his opposition to the cosmos. We express the manner in which the man reacts to the world out of his metabolic system. In forming the mouth and shaping the chin—in forming all that belongs to the mouth-formation—we are giving form to the “man of limbs and metabolism”, but we spiritualise him and present him as an outwardly active form. Thus one who has a human head before his sculptor's eye has the whole man before him—man as an expression of his “system”: the “nerve-sense-system” in the cranium with its remarkable bulges; the “eye-nose-formation” which, if I were to speak platonically, I should have to call an expression of the man as a man of courage—as a man who sets his inner self, in so far as it is courageous, in opposition to the external cosmos; and the mouth as an expression of what he is in his inner being. (Of course, the mouth, as a part of the head-formation, is also shaped from without, but what a man is in his inner being works from within against the configuration from without.)

Only some sketchy hints that require to be thought out could be given here. But you will have seen from these brief indications that the sculptor requires more than a knowledge of man gained from imitating a human model; he must actually be able to experience inwardly the forces that work through the cosmos when they build the human form. The sculptor must be able to grasp what takes place when a human being is plastically formed from the fertilised ovum in the mother's body—not merely by forces in the mother's body, but by cosmic forces working through the mother. He must be able to create in such a way that, at the same time, he can understand what the individual human being reveals of himself, more and more, as the sculptor approaches the lower limbs. He must, above all, be able to understand how man's wonderful outer covering—the form of his skin—results from two sets of forces: the peripheral forces working inwards, from all directions, out of the cosmos, and the centrifugal forces working outwards and opposing the former. Man in his external form must be, for the sculptor, a result of cosmic forces and inner forces. One must have such a feeling towards all details.

In art one needs a feeling for one's material and should know for what this or that material is suited; otherwise, one is not working sculpturally but only illustrating an idea, working novellistically. If one is forming the human figure in wood, let us say, one will know when at work on the head that one must feel the form pressing from without inwards. That is the secret of creating the human form. When I form the forehead, I am constrained to feel that I am pressing it in from without, while forces from within oppose me. I must only press, more lightly or more strongly, as required in order to restrain the forces working from within. I must press, lightly or strongly, as the cosmic forces (which indicate how the head must be formed) permit.

But when I come to the rest of the human body, I can make no progress if I form and build from without inwards. I cannot but feel that I am inside. Already when I come to form the chest, I must place myself inside the man and work plastically from within outwards. This is very interesting.

When one is at work on the head, one comes through the inner necessity of artistic creation to work from without inwards—to think of oneself on the extreme periphery and working inwards; when one forms the chest, one must place oneself inside and bring the form out. Lower down one feels: here I must only give indications; here we pass over into the indefinite.

Artistic creation of our time is very often inclined to regard the sort of things I have been saying here as an inartistic spinning of fancies. But it is only a matter of being able to experience artistically in one's soul what I have just hinted at: of being able actually to stand, as an artist, within the whole creative cosmos. Then one is led, from all sides, to avoid imitating the human physical form when one approaches plastic art. For the human physical form is itself only an imitation of the “body of formative forces”. Then one will feel the necessity felt, above all, by the Greeks. They would never have produced the forms of their noses and foreheads by mere imitation; an instinct for such things as I have just described was fundamental with them. One will be able to return to a really fundamental artistic feeling only if, in this way, one can place oneself with all the inner feeling of one's soul—with one's inner “total cognition” (if I may use this expression)—within nature's creative forces. Then one does not set to work on the external, physical body, which is itself only an imitation of the etheric body, but on the etheric body itself. One forms this etheric body and then only fills it out (in a sense) with matter.

What I have just described is, at the same time, a way out of the theoretical view of the world and into a living perception of what can no longer be viewed theoretically. One cannot construct the sculptor's space by analytical geometry, as one constructs Euclidean space. One can, however, perceive (erschauen), by “imagination”, this space—pregnant with forms, everywhere able to produce shapes out of itself, and from such perception (Schauen) one can create forms in plastic art, architectural or sculptural.

At this point I should like to make a remark which seems important to me, so that something which could easily be misunderstood will be less misunderstood. If someone has a magnetic needle, and one end points to the north, the other to the (magnetic) south, it will not occur to him—if he does not want to talk as a dilettante—to explain the direction of the needle by inner forces of the needle: that is, by considering only what is comprised within the steel. That would be nonsense. He includes the whole earth in his explanation of the needle's direction. He goes outside the magnetic needle. Embryology makes to-day the dilettantish mistake; it looks at the human ovum only as it develops in the mother's body. All the forces that form the human embryo are supposed to be therein. In reality, the whole cosmos works through the mother's body upon the configuration of the embryo. The plastic forces of the whole cosmos are there, as are the forces of the earth in directing the magnetic needle. Just as I must go beyond the needle when studying its behaviour, so, when considering the embryo, I must look beyond the maternal body and take account of the whole cosmos. And I must immerse myself in the whole cosmos if I want to apprehend what guides my hand, what guides my arm, when I strive, as a sculptor, to form the human figure.

You see: the anthroposophical world-view leads directly from merely theoretical to artistic considerations. For it is not possible to study the etheric body in a purely theoretical way. Of course one must have the scientific spirit, in the sense in which I characterised it yesterday, but one must press on to a study of the “body of formative forces” by transforming into “imaginations” what weaves in mere thoughts; that is, by grasping the external world, not only by means of thoughts or natural laws formulated in thoughts, but by “imaginations”. What we have so grasped, however, can be expressed in “imaginations” again. And if we become productive, it passes over into artistic creation.

It is strange to survey the kingdoms of nature with the consciousness that such a body of formative forces exists. The mineral kingdom has no such body; we find it first in the plant kingdom. Animals have a body of formative forces; man also. But the plant's is very different from the animal's or man's. We are confronted here by a peculiar fact: think of yourself as equipped with the sensitive powers of an artistic sculptor and expected to give plastic shape to plant forms. It is repugnant to you. (I tried it recently, at least in relief.) One cannot give a form to plants; one can only indicate their movements in some vague way. One cannot shape plants plastically. Just imagine a rose, or any other plant with a long stalk, plastically formed: impossible! Why? Because, when one thinks of the plastic shape of a plant, one thinks instinctively of its body of formative forces; and this is within the plant, as is its physical body, but directly expressed. Nature sets the plant before us as a work of plastic art. One cannot alter it. Any attempt to mould a plant would be bungling botchwork in face of what Nature herself produces in the physical and formative-force bodies of a plant. One must simply let the plant be as it is—or contemplate it with a sculptor's mind, as Goethe did in his morphology of plants.

An animal can be given plastic shape. The artistic creation of animal forms is, indeed, somewhat different from artistic creation when we are confronting a human being. One needs only to understand that if an animal is, let us say, a beast of prey, it must be apprehended as a “creature of the respiratory process.” One must see it as a breathing being and, to a certain extent, mould all the rest around the respiratory process. If one intends to give plastic shape to a camel or a cow, one must start from the digestive process and adapt the whole animal to this. In short, one must perceive inwardly, with an artistic eye, what is the main thing. If one differentiates further what I am now indicating in more general terms, one will be able to give plastic shape to the various animal forms.

Why? Well, a plant has an etheric body, created for it from out of the cosmos. It is finished. I cannot re-shape it. The plant is a plastic work of art in the world of nature. To form plants of marble or wood contradicts the whole sense of the factual world. It would be more possible in wood, for wood is nearer to the plant's nature; but it would be inartistic. But an animal sets its own nature against what is being formed from without, out of the cosmos. With an animal, the etheric body is no longer formed merely from the cosmos; it is also formed from within.

And in the case of a human being? Well, I have just said that his etheric body is formed from the cosmos only so far as the cranium is involved. I have said that the respiratory organisation, working in a refined state through eyes and nose, opposes the cosmic action, while the whole metabolic organisation, through the formation of the mouth, offers opposition also. What comes from the human being is active there and opposes the cosmos. Man's outer surface is the result of these two actions: the human and the cosmic. The etheric body is so formed that it unfolds from within. And by artistic penetration to “within”, we become able to create forms freely. We can investigate how an animal forms its etheric body for itself from its being (Wesenheit), and how a courageous or cowardly, a suffering or rejoicing human being tunes his etheric body to his soul life; and we can enter into all that and give form to such an etheric body. If we do this, and have the right sculptural understanding, we shall be able to form the human figure in many different ways.

Thus we see that, when we come to study the etheric body—the “imaginative body”—we can let ordinary scientific study be thoroughly scientific, while we, however, pass on to what becomes, of itself, art. Someone may interpose: Indeed, art is not science. But I said, the day before yesterday: If nature, the world, the cosmos are themselves artistic, confronting us with what can only be grasped artistically, we may go on asserting that it is illogical to become artistic if we would understand things, but things simply do not yield to a mode of cognition that does not pass over into art. The world can be understood only in a way which is not confined to what can be apprehended by thoughts alone, but leads to the universal apprehension of the world and finds the wholly organic, natural transition from observation to artistic perception, and to artistic creation too. Then the same spirit that speaks through the words when one gives expression, in a more theoretical way—in the form of ideas—to what one perceives (erschaut) in the world, will speak from our plastic art. Art and science then derive from the same spirit; we have in them only two sides of one and the same revelation. We can say: In science, we look at things in such a way that we express in thoughts what we have perceived; in art, we express it in artistic forms.

From this inner, spiritual conviction was born, for example, what has found expression in the architecture, and in the painting too, in the building at Dornach. I could say much about painting also, for it belongs, in a sense, to the plastic arts. But that would bring us to what pertains more to man's soul life and finds direct expression, not in the etheric body alone, but in the soul tingeing the etheric body. Here, too, you would see that the anthroposophical apprehension of the world leads to the fundamentally artistic level—the level of artistic “creativity”—whereas we to-day, in the religious as well as in the artistic sphere—though this is mostly unknown to artists themselves—live only on what is traditional, on old styles and motives. We believe we are productive to-day, but we are not. We must find the way back into creative nature, if our work is to be artistically spontaneous, original creation.

And this conviction has led, of itself, to Eurhythmy: the branch of art that has grown upon the soil of Anthroposophy. What the human being does in speech and song, through a definite group of organs, as a revelation of his being, can be extended to his whole being, if one really understands it. In this respect all the ancient religious documents (Urkunden) speak from old, instinctive, clairvoyant insights. And it is significant that it is said in the Bible that Jahwe breathed into man the living breath. This indicates that man is, in a certain respect, a being of respiration. I indicated yesterday that, in olden times of human evolution, the view predominated that man is a “breather”, a being of respiration. What man, as a being of respiration, becomes in “configurated breathing”—i.e. in speech and in song—can be given back to the whole man and his physical form. The movements of his vocal cords, his tongue and other organs when he speaks or sings, can be extended over his whole being—for every single organ and system of organs is, in a certain sense, an expression of his whole being. Then something like Eurhythmy can arise.

We need only remind ourselves of the inner character of Goethe's doctrine of metamorphosis, which is not yet sufficiently appreciated. Goethe sees, correctly, the whole plant in the single leaf. The whole plant is contained in the leaf in a primitive form; and the whole plant is only a more complicated leaf. In every single organ he sees a whole organic being metamorphosed in some way or other, and the whole organic being is a metamorphosis of its individual members (Glieder). The whole human being is a more complicated metamorphosis of one single organic system: the glottal system. If one understands how the whole human being is a metamorphosis of the glottal system, one is able to develop from the whole man a visible speech and visible song by movements of his limbs and by groups of performers in motion. And this development can be as genuine, and can proceed with as much inner, natural necessity as the development of song and speech from one specialised organ. One is within the creative forces of nature; one immerses oneself in the way in which our forces act in speaking or singing. When one has grasped these forces, one can transfer them to the forms of motion of the whole human being, as one transfers, in plastic art, the forces of the cosmos to the human form at rest. And as one gives expression to what lives within a man—emerging from his soul in poetry or song, or in some other art—as one expresses what can be expressed through speech, song or the art of recitation, so, too, can one express through the whole human being, in visible speech and song, what lives within him.

I should like to put it in this way: When we, as sculptors, give plastic shape to the human form, creating the microcosm out of the whole macrocosm, we create one pole; when we now immerse ourselves in the man's inner life, following its inner mobility, entering into his thinking, feeling and willing—into all that can find expression through speech and song—we can create “sculpture in motion” (bewegte Plastik). One could say: when one creates a work of plastic art, it is as if the whole wide universe were brought together in a wonderful synthesis. And what is concentrated in the deepest part of the human being, as at a point within his soul, strives, in the formed movements put out by the eurhythmist, to flow out into cosmic spaces. In the art of Eurhythmy—in “sculpture in motion”—the other pole responds from the human side. In the sculptor's plastic art we see the cosmic spaces turn towards the earth and flow together in the human form at rest. Then, concentrating on man's inner life, immersing ourselves in it spiritually, we perceive (schauen) what, to some extent, streams out from man to all points of the periphery of the universe and would meet those cosmic forces that flow in upon him from all sides and build his form; we design Eurhythmy accordingly.

I should like to add: the universe sets us a great task, but the beautiful human form is the answer. Man's inner life also sets us a great task; we explore infinite depths when, with our soul's loving gaze, we concentrate on man's inner life. This human inner life, too, strives out into all the wide expanses and, in darting, oscillating movements, would give rhythmic expression to what has been “compressed” to a point—as plastic art strives to have all the secrets of the cosmos compressed in the human form (which is, for the cosmos, a point). The human form in plastic art is the answer to the great question put to us by the universe. And when man's art of movement becomes cosmic and creates something of a cosmic nature in its own movements—as in the case of Eurhythmy—then a kind of universe is born from man, figuratively at least.

We have before us two poles of visual art: in the very ancient plastic art and in the newly created art of Eurhythmy. But one must enter into the spirit of what is artistic, as we did above, if one would really understand the right of Eurhythmy to be considered an art. One must return to the way in which plastic art once took its place in human life. One can easily picture to oneself shepherds in a field who, in the small hours of the night, turn their sleepy, but waking, eyes to the starry heavens and receive unconsciously into their souls the cosmic pictures formed by the configured “imaginations” of the stars. What was revealed to the hearts of primitive men in this way was transmitted to sons and grandsons; what had been inherited grew in their souls and became plastic abilities in the grandsons. The grandfather felt the cosmos in its beauty, the grandson formed beautiful plastic art with the forces which his soul had received from the cosmos.

Anthroposophy must look into, and not only theorise about, the secrets of the human soul. It must experience the tragic situation of the human soul, all its exultations and all that lies between. And Anthroposophy must be able to see more than what evokes the tragic mood, what is now exultant and all that lies between. As one saw the stars clearly in older “imagination”, and was able to receive into one's soul the formative forces from the stars, so one must take out of the human soul what one perceives there, and be able to communicate it through outer movements; then Eurhythmy begins.

What I have said to-day is only intended to be once more a cursory indication of the natural transition from Anthroposophy as a body of ideas to Anthroposophy as immediate, unallegorical, unsymbolical plastic art, creating in forms—as is our aim. Anyone who sees this clearly will discover the remarkable relation of art to science and religion. Science will appear on one level, religion on another, and art between them. It is to science, after all, that man owes all his freedom—he would never have been able to attain to complete inner freedom without science—and what man has gained as an individual—what his being, regarded impartially, has gained by his becoming scientific—will be apparent. With his thoughts he has freed himself from the cosmos; he stands alone and is thereby a human individuality. As he lives with natural laws, so does he take them into his thoughts. He becomes independent in face of nature. In religion he is drawn to devotion; he seeks to find his way back to the essential foundations of nature. He would be again a part of nature, would sacrifice his freedom on the altar of the universe, would devote himself to the Deity—would add to the breath of freedom and of individuality the breath of sacrifice. But art, especially plastic art, stands between, with all that is rooted in the realm of beauty.

Through science man becomes a free, individual being. In religious observance he offers up his own well-being, on the one hand maintaining his freedom, but already, on the other, anticipating sacrificial service. In art he finds he can maintain himself by sacrificing, in a certain sense, what the world has made of him; he shapes himself as the world has shaped him, but he creates as a free being this form from out of himself. In art, too, there is something that redeems and sets free. In art we are, on the one side, individuals; on the other, we offer ourselves in sacrifice. And we may say: In truth, art sets us free, if we take hold of it scientifically, with ideas—including those of spiritual science. But we must also say: In beauty we find again our connection with the world. Man cannot exist without living freely in himself, and without finding his connection with the world. Man finds his individuality in thought that is free. And by raising himself to the realm of beauty—the realm of art—he finds he can, again in co-operation with the world, create out of himself what the world has made of him.

• 1. The first Goetheanum, burnt down on New Year's night, 1922/23. The second Goetheanum, modelled by Rudolf Steiner not long before his death in 1925, was opened in 1928.

What seems most disconcerting to many people who are not yet familiar with anthroposophy is that it not only has something different to say than what we are accustomed to hearing in the natural sciences and in life today, but that it also has to say it in a different way, in a different form. And in a sense, it is precisely this different mode of expression, this different form, that people find most difficult to forgive in anthroposophy. They immediately begin to measure and criticize what anthroposophy has to say against what they are accustomed to and what they otherwise have in today's science and in today's life.

What I have just said will probably have to be emphasized most today, when I have to speak to you about the way and the methods by which anthroposophy arrives at its research results. These methods are, of course, quite different from the methods of external observation and also from the usual methods of thinking. Today, when we talk about scientific methodology, we are accustomed to being told about things that come to us from outside: observations, experiments, and so on. And in the treatment of observation and experiment, we then see the methods of research.

This is not the case with anthroposophy, especially when it comes to the foundations of anthroposophy. And that is what I am mainly talking about today. Of course, when anthroposophy spreads to the individual sciences, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and so on, as can be seen from the discussions that have already taken place here, then the methods of spiritual research, which I am speaking about today, will touch on some point with the experimental and observational methods that one is otherwise accustomed to in the clinic, in the laboratory, in the observatory and so on. But today we shall be dealing with the foundations, so to speak, with the way of entering into the soul state through which one can present anthroposophical results to the world at all. It is absolutely essential that research in the field of anthroposophy can only be carried out when the researcher has developed his soul forces, his powers of knowledge, further than they are in ordinary life, in ordinary science. One must develop what I would call intellectual modesty. This intellectual modesty can be characterized in the following way. Think back to when you were a child, think of the dull mental experiences of early childhood. You will have to say to yourself that the clear overview of life and the world around you, which you acquired in later life, was still missing then. The ability to orientate yourself in the world was still lacking. All this one has developed within oneself. Compared to one's childhood, one has become a completely different person, not only physically and bodily but also mentally and spiritually. Abilities have sprouted from within that now serve one in life and in science. Just as the human soul is now, so one says to oneself: Certainly, education and life have drawn certain abilities out of my inner being since my childhood. But now I am finished. Now I have certain abilities with which I want to know the world, with which I want to place myself in the world as a human being who acts, who does things; with which I also want to judge my religious and moral impulses. One does not say to oneself: What has happened to the human soul from childhood until now could perhaps continue to happen. One could just as well say: I could extract further abilities from my soul. Then I would consciously make a person out of myself with quite a different soul capacity, a person who might differ from the normal person of today just as I differ from the child in my present state of soul.

As I said, it takes intellectual modesty to say what I have just characterized at a certain point in one's life and then to put it into practice. To put it into practice in such a way that one really tries to make progress, to bring up abilities hidden in the soul to the goal of further research. For how could the results of research in today's science, how could the moral-religious impulses in today's life have taken hold in the world if all people had developed only with the soul-condition that they had in childhood?

And so it is absolutely necessary for anthroposophical spiritual scientific research to take the position quite seriously: I want to bring out of my soul abilities that are dormant in my soul today, just as the abilities that are now manifest once lay dormant in my soul during childhood.

I will still have to explain that not everyone who really wants to commit themselves to anthroposophical research, or who wants to be active in it, must also become a researcher in the sense I have just indicated. But in order to achieve real results, real outcomes, something like what I have said must take place. When these research results are then presented to the world, they are perfectly accessible to common sense and can be tested by it; just as anyone who is not a painter can judge a picture artistically. So, to understand anthroposophy, it is not necessary to go through everything that I will have to describe today, but it is necessary for research. And it is also necessary to discuss it for the reason that, to a certain extent, the anthroposophical researcher has to account to his fellow human beings for how he arrives at his results.

Now I would like to start from the most fundamental point, from which one can start in this day and age if one wants to characterize the anthroposophical research method. Basically, you can find everything that is the first, let's say, axiom, that is the first, most elementary thing to understand the anthroposophical research method, in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, yes, in even older of my books. This “Philosophy of Freedom” was published in 1894, and was actually written much earlier. It may perhaps even surprise some who know this book that I make this claim, and yet it is true: the most elementary understanding of anthroposophical research methods can be gleaned from this “Philosophy of Freedom”. What one draws from it as an elementary understanding must then, however, be further developed. Only the most elementary things can be found in this “Philosophy of Freedom”. But these most elementary things can be found.

In this “Philosophy of Freedom” I have tried to determine where the moral impulses, the ethical, the moral impulses of man actually come from. Now, because I will only be able to briefly characterize this “Philosophy of Freedom” today, I will characterize it in a slightly different way than it is done in the book itself, tying in with some of the things I have said here in the previous days.

I believe that anyone reading this “Philosophy of Freedom” will find that there is something like mathematical thinking in it - strange as it may seem, but there it is - a mathematical thinking in that this “Philosophy of Freedom” actually aims to find the human impulse of freedom and the moral impulses. But the way in which this “Philosophy of Freedom” attempts to talk about the moral world is not qualitatively different from that which is present in us as a state of mind when we do mathematics. I have characterized this mathematizing in the preceding days. I have shown how it is drawn from the depths of the human soul, how we then, as it were, forget ourselves, how we forget that we have drawn mathematical space out of ourselves, and how we then live in this space with our view of space. I also said: People are initially interested when it comes to their own human abilities, not so much in what state of mind one is in when one mathematizes. I would say that there are only a few people in the world who, if I may use the expression, have the right respect for mathematization. For example, Novalis, a profound, amiable, extraordinarily sympathetic poet, had this proper respect for mathematization. Anyone who allows Novalis' poetry to take effect on them has the impression: there is a wonderful lyrical momentum, there is a complete enthusiasm, there is poetry in the soul. And when Novalis, the wonderful lyricist, starts talking about mathematics, he says something like: In mathematics we have, basically, the most beautiful, the greatest, the most powerful human poetry! I know how few people admit this at first. But, as I said, the amiable, profound lyricist Novalis knew – because he was a mathematician – what is stirred in the soul when one does not merely solve individual mathematical problems in a mechanical way, even if they are problems of function theory, number theory and the like, or of synthetic geometry; he knew how the soul feels when it is so enraptured that it forgets itself and knows itself in the space outside.

But now one thing is possible. It is possible, in fact, if one is familiar with this state of mind of mathematical thinking that Novalis speaks of so wonderfully, and can then put oneself in a position to gain something completely different from the same state of mind, namely the experience of moral impulses. In other words, if one succeeds in grasping and experiencing moral problems with the same inner clarity and the same inner certainty with which one solve, let us say, the Pythagorean theorem, to grasp and experience moral problems, then one knows: one is in the spiritual, in the supersensible world with this grasping of moral problems, and one speaks of the fact that in this supersensible world moral intuitions flow into the soul with the moral impulses. One knows that one is feeling one's way within the moral world, that one is feeling one's way in a supersensible world, which has nothing to do with what can be perceived externally through the senses. One knows that one is in a world where, firstly, one experiences one's deepest inner moral impulses directly; where one is one with them; where, because one is one with them, they are intuitive insights. And one knows a second thing. One knows that no matter how long one looks around in the sensory world, no matter how astutely one thinks and observes and experiments, what one, if I may say so, discovers in the mathematical world as moral intuitions cannot come from any sensory external world; it comes to one from the supersensible world. But that means, in other words, that it is inspired. The real, the deepest moral impulses that a person can receive from the supersensible world are intuitions that are at the same time inspired for our soul. And although they are not visual, do not appear in pictures, they are nevertheless there in the same way as sense perceptions themselves. Just as sensory perceptions are in the realm of the sensual, so too are moral impulses in the supersensible realm. That is to say, they are imaginations. And anyone who has discovered in which world the moral element, as also meant by Novalis, is experienced, knows that this moral element appears in this field, that it appears to the person who is completely removed from the sensory world as intuitions, which are both inspirations and imaginations. In short, by trying to gain a moral foundation for human life from the supersensible world, one learns to recognize how the soul must experience if it wants to be in the supersensible world. And it must be said that for today's human being - I have explained how it is different for the person who undergoes the yoga practice, or who undergoes the practice of grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, and so on - for today's human being, it is first of all the best way for a person to get to know how to leave their physical body and live in a purely spiritual world, if they live in a purely supersensible world in the way that I have tried to indicate in my Philosophy of Freedom.

I know that very many people are not satisfied with such a way of living in the spiritual world, because in this world only moral truths appear, which one prefers to accept as commandments, as conventional facts, and so on. But I am not here to talk further about the “Philosophy of Freedom”, but only about the elementary methodical. But once you have become familiar with this special way of being in the supersensible world, you are encouraged to go further, to try to see whether it is not also possible for other areas of life to penetrate into a supersensible world in relation to the sensory world. And then one gradually comes to the point where methods of inner soul development are really possible, which lead people up the path to see the whole cosmos and human inner knowledge in such a way, otherwise, in the sense of the “Philosophy of Freedom”, one only looks at the moral, where one does not yet want to admit that it is a matter of the supersensible, if one does not go into the actual foundation of the matter.

The methods by which one ascends into the supersensible world in other fields consist in further developing the ordinary soul powers as one has them in ordinary life and in ordinary science. And these soul powers are, after all, first of all, if we characterize them externally in abstract terms, thinking, feeling and willing. We distinguish these three soul abilities, thinking, feeling and willing, but in the unified life of the soul they are not strictly separated from each other. One would actually have to say: when we speak of thinking, of mental images, we are speaking of a 'soul ability in which, for example, the will and also feeling are present, but it is mainly thinking that is present. In the will, on the other hand, thoughts are definitely present, but it is mainly will that is present. Thus, it is only the most salient feature that is referred to in the individual soul abilities, while everywhere below the surface, one might say, the other soul abilities also lie.

This becomes particularly important when it comes to the further development, the evolution, of the ability to think, of the power of thought. For this, we must be clear about the following. First, we must be clear about our relationship to the things around us and to ourselves in ordinary life and in ordinary science. We perceive the world through our senses, through our eyes, ears, and so on. We live with a certain inner intensity in these sensory perceptions. Then we form mental images of what we perceive with our senses. We move away from the things we perceive with our senses. In our mental images, there remains an afterimage of what we experienced with our senses. But consider how dull and shadowy the thought, the mental image, is compared to what we experienced with full vitality in our sensory perception. These mental images that are linked to sensory perceptions are dull and shadowy. And we are accustomed in life and even in ordinary science to let the sensory perceptions speak to us and to passively surrender to these sensory perceptions so that they awaken in us the mental images that make what we have perceived through the senses permanent. And then, more or less clearly, even after a long time or throughout our whole life, we can in turn bring up from the depths of our soul or our human being, as memories, what we have experienced externally through the senses. The mental images that are otherwise linked to the sensory perceptions and that are faint and shadowy in comparison to the sensory perceptions can also arise from us, from memory. We experience inwardly in the life of mental images what we perceive outwardly through the senses; we experience it again through memory. It should be clear, very clear, that just about all ordinary life, even that which is immersed in science, proceeds in this way in terms of imagining: that we expose ourselves to the liveliness of sensory perceptions, that we then get dull mental images, but that we can bring up again from our human being in memory that which we have received from outside as impressions. Our inner life is mostly nothing more than more or less transformed, metamorphosed mental images in the sense of external perception.

I will not go into the deeper nature of memory today, because I want to describe how what I have just characterized in terms of mental images can be further developed. It can be further developed by thinking in a way that does not merely tie in with external sense perceptions, but by thinking through the methods that I have mentioned in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in my “Secret Science”: meditation, concentration, and so on - the names are not important. You will find a detailed description of how to proceed in the books mentioned. I will now only explain the principles.

While thoughts usually arise when we passively devote ourselves to perceptions or when the echoes of experiences resurface from memories, to become an anthroposophical spiritual researcher, one tries to do so through inner arbitrariness, as one has learned to do when mathematizing, when solving mathematical problems, so that one carries out everything fully consciously, not in a dreamy, hallucinatory state – that would be the opposite of what I will describe today – but in full awareness, devoting oneself to thinking and imagining, so that one learns to rest on mental images that one has arbitrarily brought into one's consciousness. It is good to bring into the center of your consciousness mental images that are as clear as possible, not those in which you can experience all kinds of nebulous, mystical stuff, but those that you can easily grasp. What matters then is not what kind of mental image you have, but the soul activity that you develop in this meditation. Just note: if you continually tense a muscle when you need it for work, the muscle becomes strong. The same thing happens with your soul's thinking power when you repeatedly concentrate on mental images that you bring to the center of your consciousness. The power of thought becomes stronger and stronger and finally reaches a point where you can say: “Now I am able to have my mental images as vividly as I otherwise only have external sensory impressions.” Mind you, I do not have hallucinations or illusions. These come from the unconscious. I now live in such vivid inner mental images as are otherwise external sensory perceptions, but I live in them with full consciousness, not with that dreamy mood of the soul, that mystical, nebulous mood of the soul, as it is present in hallucinations or visions. It must be a mathematical state of mind, through which one can immerse oneself in such inner experiences from mere mental images, which one otherwise only has when one is devoted to external sensory perception. One must compare, to say it again, the vividness and intensity of external sensory perception with what one otherwise experiences only pale and shadowy in thought. But in the way I have described, one learns more and more to be inwardly present with thoughts that have only been raised inwardly, as one is otherwise only present when some external sense impression stimulates one. No more pale, shadowy thoughts - inwardly vivid thoughts! The soul's power of thought has been strengthened. One has summoned a new power from the depths of one's soul. One has strengthened one's thinking power. When one has strengthened one's thinking, one has reached the first step of supersensible knowledge. In my books I have called this the imaginative stage of knowledge. One has reached the stage of imagination. This stage of imagination shows one, by means of the very vivid mental image that one now has: something is connected with this mental image.

Let us once again take up our ordinary sensory life and our ordinary mental images. Today we perceive something. We are vividly immersed in this perception. We form a pale, shadowy mental image. After a week, say, prompted by something or also free-rising, as one might say, this mental image arises again from memory. It comes out of us, to put it trivially. The fact that I once had the sensory experience is the cause of the same mental image emerging again later from my inner human being in memory. Now, after my practice, I am able to have thoughts that are intensified in my consciousness, which I call imaginative thoughts because they occur with the vividness, with the intensity of images, because they are really like sensory images, even though they are only thoughts at first. But just as otherwise, through the fact that I have thought about an external experience – if I just stare at it, no memory comes to me later, only if I have thought about it – a memory can come from my own being, so through the fact that I now have a thought, and to an increased extent in the soul, something comes to me from my own being, which at first looks like a memory, but which is not a memory. Something is now arising that is not a reminiscence of an external sensual experience, but something that I have never before perceived arising from within me at all. If I may put it this way: just as memories of ordinary experiences arise otherwise, so now, through the power of intensified thinking, that which I have never before seen inwardly arises from within. And I will very soon recognize what that is that is arising. I try, by continuing to meditate, to bring it to ever greater and greater clarity in this inner arising, and I finally come to understand what this inner arising actually is. I come to it: this inner ascent is I myself, as I have developed in the time since my birth here on earth.

Otherwise we have only the stream of memories, from which individual ones arise that are otherwise down there in the unconscious. I do not mean these memories. These memories are indeed what also arise in ordinary consciousness. But what is now arising, called forth from the inner being through the power of intensified thinking, that is not just thought, memory thought, it is that which leads me much deeper into my inner human nature than the power of memory. It is something that leads me, so to speak, deeper into the layers of my inner being than memory thoughts do. It is something that shows me how, as a small child, I used abilities that I had in my soul to shape my organism plastically from the brain outwards. This is what shows me how, as a somewhat older child, I used my ability to speak to further develop my inner self in a plastic way. In short, my innermost life comes before my soul in a grand, powerful tableau, the like of which I have never seen before. And what now comes before my soul is not just an image. Please bear this in mind. It is not just an image, but something that I recognize by grasping it, that it is connected with my growth forces, with that which grows in me, which also lives in me in the nourishing forces, in the circulation, in the breathing forces, which is in fact an inner, supersensible body in relation to the physical body. I am now getting to know a second person in me. I am learning to recognize that I can say the following to myself: You carry your outer body with you, it is extended in space, it has arms, feet, a head and so on. That is a spatial body. But what you have now discovered through your meditation, through imaginative recognition, that is an organism that lives in time, not in space, a time organism.

It is difficult for today's man when one speaks to him of such a time organism. But this time organism really is present in us as a second person, and we may call it an organism. Because you come to it, let's say, when you've become an old fellow, as I may say of myself, you know, you have a certain soul configuration. This soul configuration, which you now carry within you, is connected with a soul configuration perhaps in the fifth or sixth year of life. And just as my left hand is connected in my spatial organism, for my sake, with some part of my brain in this spatial organism, and just as the brain is in this spatial organism so that the individual parts relate to each other, so the individual parts of the time organism relate to each other in time, not in space. I carry this time organism within me. I have called it the etheric body or formative forces body in my books. This formative forces body is a time organism. It is the first thing we discover on the path of imaginative research. We survey our previous life on earth in its inwardly creative, supersensible forces. We do not speculate about a life force, but we look at our past life on earth as an internally organized tableau, as a time organism, as the formative body. Older, less conscious views of these things, which were more intuitive, more instinctive, but which knew something of these things in their intuitions, called this time body, this body of formative forces, the ether body. It is not the terms that are important, but what is meant by these things. In this etheric body, one has a reality, a time reality within oneself, and no one understands the formation of the human being without understanding this etheric body. And the most significant thing about this etheric body is that, at the moment we are ready, we can see our previous life on earth as if with a spiritual vision in this life tableau, which is the formative forces body, and we also stop distinguishing between subjective and objective. We could draw a diagram of the etheric body, or formative body, which we carry within us and which is a fluid temporal body. But we must realize that we are then depicting in a single instant something that is constantly flowing. Just as one cannot depict lightning, one cannot depict this etheric body either. One can only paint a moment that is captured. We must realize that our human formation depends on this body of formative forces. And in the moment when we become aware that this etheric body within us is a body of forces, without knowing the inner structure of which we cannot understand the human being, we realize that the same forces that work within us as such an etheric body also permeate the world as etheric forces; that subjective and objective cease to have any meaning; that this formative body of forces is connected with the great course of time of the universe; that we are part of this great universe. We begin to speak of the etheric processes of the universe, for these become clear to us at the moment when we arrive at such a vivid mental image, as we otherwise only have external sense perceptions in a vivid way. And we can achieve this through meditation. In short, we enter into an etheric world. But at the same time we learn to recognize the first supersensible thing in ourselves. We do not yet come out of earthly life, but we learn to recognize that which is supersensible in us within earthly life.

If we now want to progress, we must continue our exercises. These exercises consist of many, many details. I have described it in the books and will only state the principles here. The first thing in these exercises was to strengthen the power of thought, to come to develop imaginative thinking, a thinking that is as alive as otherwise only the experience of sensory perception. The second thing that must be trained can be characterized as follows: the person who, in full consciousness, develops such imaginations through which he then gets to know the ether world, the formative forces, also comes to understand that these imaginations, these images – for as images one's own life to date appears in a large tableau, the outer world appears in a universal tableau -, that these images, despite being evoked quite arbitrarily, hold one more strongly than the ordinary, pale, shadowy thoughts. Most people know that these pale, shadowy thoughts unfortunately all too quickly fade into obscurity — especially before an exam, it is usually the case. But if you have just applied a strong force in your thoughts, then the thoughts hold you, they do not want to let go. You must now, in order to get ahead, not remain at this level. With the same arbitrariness with which one has called these images, these imaginations into the soul, with the same strength and arbitrariness one must also be able to remove them again, to send them out of the soul, so that one can have in the soul what I would now like to call: emptiness of consciousness.

Just realize what this emptiness of consciousness looks like in ordinary life. When empty consciousness occurs in ordinary life, there is usually no consciousness left, you fall asleep. The ordinary consciousness falls asleep when it becomes empty of sensory impressions, memories and so on. But that is precisely the difference between this ordinary consciousness and what one has already attained in imaginative knowledge: one learns to muffle, to muffle these imaginations completely, and yet one is now facing the world in an absolutely alert state. I would like to say: it is all expectation. One is awake, but has nothing in one's consciousness because one has extinguished the imaginations with the great strength that was necessary. One waits, alert, for what will now arise. And when one has created an empty consciousness by first having to extinguish an intensified power of thinking, then this empty consciousness does not wait in vain. Then the supersensible world penetrates into this 'empty consciousness', penetrates in exactly the same way as the sensory world penetrates through our eyes and ears, through our warmth organism and so on. We discover that a supersensible world surrounds us, and this penetrates into the empty but alert consciousness as the spiritual world, just as we previously had the sensory world around us. In doing so, the original consciousness of everyday life, that is, common sense, always remains present alongside this heightened consciousness, because we carry out all of this with absolute awareness. This is in contrast to the state when someone hallucinates and has visions, because in doing so, their entire consciousness is absorbed in individual visions. This is not the case with the consciousness I am talking about. The everyday consciousness, through which we are firmly rooted in life, in ordinary science, remains with us at every step, constantly present as a controller. Those who say that what is described as anthroposophical consciousness could also be based on visions or hallucinations do not know what it is about. They speak without inquiring what it is about.

But if a supersensible world now penetrates through the empty consciousness from our environment, then we are also able to perceive more about ourselves than just the tableau-like etheric body described above. Now we are able to look beyond birth and conception. By being able to erase what the whole formative forces body is, we see through the empty consciousness nothing more of the whole human being between the birth and the present moment of experience. For when we have learned to expunge the imaginations and to have empty consciousness, then we can also expunge everything that fills us as an etheric body and look back at ourselves with empty consciousness. The ordinary human being remains for the onlooker, who can observe him. But this elevated consciousness now penetrates into the world in which we were before we descended from the spiritual and soul world and accepted an earthly body from our parents and great-grandparents. Now we look into the world in which we, before we were clothed with a physical body, were united with those spiritual substances that are in the spiritual world. Now we learn to recognize how we were before we descended into physical life. Now we learn to recognize another thing supernaturally.

First, by looking at ourselves as physical beings on earth, we have our spatial body, the physical body; we have the second body, which we grasp through imaginative knowledge, which is a supersensible one, but does not lead beyond earthly life; but now we have the third body. Because it leads into the world of stars, it is called - it is only a terminology - the astral body. One gets to know the actual soul being of the human being. One gets to know this third, the second supersensible entity of the human being. But we also have this in our body in earthly life. It is veiled in the physical body. It was present before our birth or our conception. Through observation, one then comes to an understanding of one side of the human being's eternity. We have lost so much of this one side of the human being's eternity that modern languages hardly have a word for it anymore. We speak of immortality, of that which we have through the traditions, but which were only the traditions of the last millennia, we speak of the extension beyond death. That one can also speak of an extension beyond birth would necessitate that we also know about the other side of eternity and coin the word unbornness, for this unbornness is the other side of eternity.

Now, in this way we have ascended to such insights, which now cannot enter our soul condition otherwise than by getting to know something that is completely closed to our ordinary consciousness. I have already described to you how empty consciousness must enter and how the contents of the supersensible world must come into this empty consciousness from the spiritual world, just as the sensory world otherwise penetrates into the eyes and ears. This second step of supersensible knowledge I call inspiration: inspired knowledge. Through inspired knowledge we now come directly into the supersensible world. Above all, we learn to recognize ourselves as supersensible beings in our prenatal existence. We also learn to recognize the spiritual environment. And now something very significant occurs. I would like to sketch it out for you today, and it will be explained in more detail in the next few days. Take the relationship between our environment and our own inner world. We can describe it by saying that for ordinary consciousness, the material world is out there. If we now look at the human being objectively, we can say that when a person looks into this material world through their eyes and perceives other things through their ears, material things and facts are out there, and inside the soul are its ideational, feeling and willing contents. By perceiving the material, he carries this outer material world in his soul's inner being pictorially, as an image, soulfully fine, soulfully thin. In the moment when we learn to grasp the spiritual world around us in our empty consciousness, something new also arises for our inner being.

Suppose I now see this material world as permeated by the spiritual world for the inspired consciousness. Now it is not pictorially occurring in the inner being of man, what is seen out there as spiritual, but now one learns to recognize the spiritual outside, as it is reflected in the inner being of man, and there it is reflected as his physical organs, as lungs, liver, heart, kidneys and so on, as all that which is materially in the first instance in the inner being. There is a complete reversal, a reciprocity. While the material world is reflected in us in a spiritual-soul way for ordinary consciousness, the spiritual world is reflected in us through our organs. We get to know ourselves inwardly as physical human beings by becoming aware of the spiritual world around us. Before that, one does not understand the physical human being. Before that, through anatomy, we get to know the heart, lungs and liver externally, but not how they are connected to the external world. Through anatomy and physiology, we get to know the heart, lungs and liver as if we were to learn that a person has all kinds of mental images inside them, but is unaware that their inner images relate to the outside world. They do not know that these organs relate to the spiritual external world. This is the origin of what becomes possible, for example, as the effect of spiritual science in a rational medicine. Because only now do you really get to know the human being, you get to know the inner nature of his organism. There is no way to get to know it before. You can only recognize it externally.

This is the second step on the path to supersensible knowledge and research, and it is the step of inspiration. A third step is reached by appealing to the will. One can also develop this will, in particular by first becoming quite clear about what this will is all about in ordinary life. It has already been mentioned, also from other sides in these days, that man is actually a continually sleeping being in relation to his will nature. If I just raise my arm, I first have the mental image of the goal that I want to raise my arm. But what then happens, as I plunge this thought of the goal into the human being and bring about the arm movement through the will, that initially eludes the human capacity for knowledge. I become aware again, and again through the perception, the raised arm, but the will remains as unconscious to ordinary consciousness as the states that we live through while asleep remain unconscious to the sleeper himself. We are actually awake in ordinary consciousness only for our imaginative life; we are asleep in ordinary consciousness for our will life. But we can raise this life of the will into the waking state. The exercises for this are very different from the exercises that are initially thinking exercises, as I have described them. And the best way to show this difference is to make it clear to you by means of a characteristic feature.

Those who want to achieve something through such exercises, for example in observing the etheric body, must indeed undergo preparation. The preparatory exercises are described in the books mentioned. These concern, for example, the preparation for a quality that I would like to call presence of mind. Presence of mind in ordinary life consists of being able to make quick decisions in the face of a situation. But this must become a habitual quality for someone who wants to ascend into the spiritual worlds. Because what can be perceived there is not so easy to perceive. In fact, very diligent practitioners, if I may call them that, believe: I cannot perceive anything. They cannot do it because they are not sufficiently prepared for presence of mind, for the things flit by so quickly that one must grasp them quickly. Most people have such poor soul abilities that when they should turn their attention to what they should experience spiritually, it is already gone. It is therefore a matter of presence of mind.

Exactly the opposite quality must be developed for will exercises. There it is important to apply the perfect will in the most elementary way in ordinary life, when walking, grasping, moving, in fact when doing anything, when performing actions, deeds. As long as one only develops the will inwardly in life, there is actually only a wish, not a will. A real will is always connected with an organic process, I could also say with a combustion process. The truly complete will actually changes the organism. It is linked to the organism in the metabolic process. But what about our ordinary will? We are not able to see through it at all. The impulses of the will take place, we look into our inner being, we are spiritually opaque to these impulses of the will. We look into a darkness in relation to the will. But we can lighten this darkness. We can make ourselves spiritually transparent. But this requires a lot of patience, because now we have to extend our exercises over long periods of time. I will tell you a simple exercise, the more complicated ones can also be found in the books mentioned. So let's take a simple exercise: for example, I have a habit, I write in a certain way, I have a handwriting. Once you've become an old guy, you don't like to get used to a different handwriting. It takes effort, it takes inner effort. It is something that remains within you, although it is expressed on the outside by writing. But all the volitional processes involved in changing one's handwriting take place within. Apart from the fact that I would not advise doing this particular exercise too much, even for external reasons – I just want to illustrate something with it, not give instructions on how to forge handwriting. But if one could train one's will to such an extent that one could change something that is so interwoven with a person as handwriting or other habits, in short, if one could make oneself a completely different person through inner awareness, through the cultivation of the will, one could make the will transparent. It takes years to achieve this. In particular, it is good to take the trouble to incorporate certain qualities that one initially only perceives as beautiful but does not have, by resolving, for example: “You will spend the next eight years training yourself with all your might to acquire certain qualities that you do not have, certain special ways of expressing yourself.” What I am describing seems easy, but one would like to say with Faust: “Yet the easy is difficult”. And the one who does such exercises will see that it is difficult to turn the will in this way through strong self-discipline in a different direction. In short, what otherwise only comes to life in moments when the will becomes full by expressing its existence outwardly in action, when applied to the development of the will itself, leads us to really look within ourselves through such exercises, you can find more details about these exercises in the books, to make ourselves completely transparent in relation to the will. By way of comparison, I would like to try to make clear to you what is achieved by this. How do we actually see through our eyes? Only because the eye is selfless, because it does not assert its own substantiality. It is transparent. The moment the eye partially gives up this selflessness, asserts itself, it can no longer serve us to see. It must extinguish itself.

Now I am not going to claim that for ordinary life our physical body is sick and needs to be made healthy through exercises. It is not like that. For life and for ordinary science, our body is naturally healthy, but it is useless for supersensible perception. For that, it must be transformed. Not that it remains constantly transformed. The person with the ordinary, healthy human understanding always remains alongside. It is also not a matter of one person dissolving into the other, of the ordinary, healthy human being disappearing. Both the developed personality and the original personality with the healthy human understanding remain alongside one another, so that the latter acts as a controller for the former. But for the higher consciousness, which must already be empty, we come to the point where our body is no longer there for the soul to perceive. We see, as it were, through our body. We see how the will works in us.

In ordinary science, one does not see how the will works. Therefore, one assumes that there are motor nerves. They do not know that the will works directly. It has been said today that the real discovery of the facts that exist here can only be made when one has come to make oneself transparent like a sense organ, so that the whole human being becomes like a single sense organ, permeable in soul and spirit, as the eye is transparent to light. Just as we first become free through intensified thinking and first reach the body of formative forces and then the prenatal astral body, so now, having trained the will in this way, we come to know the other side of our eternal being. By making our physical body transparent, we are able to summon the image – I say expressly: the image – of what happens to us at the moment of death. At that moment we leave our physical body, which is handed over to the physical elements. The soul and spirit pass over into the spiritual world. This moment, when we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world, we perceive it at the moment when our physical body becomes transparent to the soul. In intuitive knowledge, this third stage of supersensible knowledge, our body becomes transparent. Therefore, we get to know ourselves in the state in which we are after death, when we no longer have the physical body. For we can now see beyond it by having risen to it in the third, intuitive stage of knowledge, by disregarding the physical body. Now we get to know the other side of the soul's eternity. We get to know immortality through direct contemplation.

Anthroposophy is not a form of philosophical speculation. In order to get to know immortality, it does not start from the usual consciousness, but it assumes that the abilities slumbering in the soul, the slumber of which one becomes aware through intellectual modesty, can be awakened and thus rise to see the spiritual world. One learns to recognize the universe spiritually. You get to know your own eternal being spiritually. And when you get to know these two sides in yourself, you learn to recognize what a person is like between birth and death, when the soul is hidden under the bodily processes. on the other hand, recognize the spiritual and soul life that we unfold when we are outside the body before birth or after death, then insights into our true self also arise. And then we learn to recognize that which goes through repeated earthly lives. However, I will have to talk about this important result of anthroposophical research, about repeated earthly lives, tomorrow.

As you can see, the path of supersensible knowledge, the anthroposophical path of research, involves first entering the world of formative forces through imaginative knowledge, so that we recognize the supersensible that is already in us in ordinary physical life, but in a supersensible way: the body of formative forces. Then, through the ascent to inspired knowledge, we get to know the astral body, that is, the soul body; we get to know entering into the body and, in turn, emerging from the body through death; then we also get to know the human ego. One now enters into a concrete spiritual world, into a world of spiritual beings. For that which one recognizes as a spiritual world, for which the organs are developed, with the empty consciousness, but which is still awake, is a world in which spiritual entities are next to our own spiritual entity, next to our own spiritual-soul being. One looks into a spiritual world in this way. And now one realizes: If one wants to explore this spiritual world, one must develop these three degrees of supersensible knowledge, must draw from the soul imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. They reveal themselves, they structure themselves in degrees, when one wants to know the Cosmos in its spiritual content in itself as spiritual entity.

One has already received a hint of an impression when one searches through the moral world in its actual essence. There one comes, basically, to be in the same world, even if only for the moral impulses, as one otherwise is when one has the imaginative, the inspired, the intuitive world before oneself. Only it is so present for the moral that only the moral impulses are in it. But these can be found when one has passed through imagination and inspiration to intuition. But it is given to us human beings on earth that this world alone, the world of the moral, which we need for life on earth, can be present to our ordinary consciousness in its supersensible nature before the mind's eye. And anyone who understands the real existence of the supersensible nature of the moral can, if they only develop what they learn here in an elementary way as cosmology and anthropology, advance to a real spiritual insight into the world, so that the spiritual formations, then the spiritual inner life of other spiritual beings and then the interweaving with the spiritual world, as we are interwoven here with the other realms, and that his own eternal soul essence also really comes before the soul's eye. This is what one can get to know by studying the “Philosophy of Freedom” not just in theory but by really experiencing it. It is the same as reading the axioms of Euclid on the first page of a geometry book and getting an idea of what is to come. Just as the whole of geometry follows from these axioms, so the whole spiritual world is present, as it were, in the nature of things, in the real insight into the moral world. But no one should think that he knows the nature of the spiritual world just because he knows the nature of moral impulses. He only knows the axiomatic, the elementary.

What is described here as a method of research for the supersensible worlds is indeed something that alienates most people today. But the one who is at home in these matters says to himself: How much of our present-day spiritual life began as something alienating and then became a matter of course. One need only really know the spiritual history of humanity and one will be able to say: Today, most people see what must be said as something absurd, ridiculous, as something funny. Later, a time will come when it will be taken for granted, just as the Copernican system was first taken as a curiosity, then became a matter of course. But people will feel – and feelings are precisely the most important thing that should arise from the life of the anthroposophical worldview – that this anthroposophy truly does not want to oppose what justified natural science or other science is in the present day. For what does it want to be at bottom? This question should emerge from what I have discussed today about the research methods of this anthroposophy: What does it want to be, this anthroposophy, also in relation to the other sciences, as in relation to universal human life? What does it want to be?

Now, when we have a person in front of us, we see their outer facial features, their physique, their gait, their movements, their gestures. We cannot be satisfied with simply stating: This is how he walks, this is how he looks, and so on. We see this as an external physiognomy, but we only have a complete experience of this person when we add to this external experience his soul and spirit, his soul, when we see the soul through the outer form and outer movements. But if we understand things aright, we also have in external science what is described to us by the external physiognomy of nature and of the human being. Just as one does not deny that man must also be observed in his external form through the senses if one wants to experience his soul, so one does not deny that through external science the external physiognomy of nature and of the human being must be explained, described, and grasped by means of external science, if one asserts that behind all this there is something that can be regarded as the soul of nature, the soul of the cosmos.

And so it is that just as a reasonable person who recognizes the soul of man does not negate his body, his outer form, his physiognomy, the reasonable anthroposophist does not negate the outer science. On the contrary. He wants to be fully immersed in it. He only wants the outer science to have a soul for the further development of humanity, just as the complete human being carries the soul in his physical body. Yes, he maintains that it needs soul. And anthroposophy does not want to be an opponent of the spirit of today's science, but wants to become the soul of this scientific endeavor in the future.

My lecture today will be, in a certain respect, the opposite of yesterday's, since I shall have something to say about what can be seen supernaturally in the way I characterized it yesterday. However, I will have to ask for your indulgence, since I can naturally only highlight a few aphorisms from the unlimited fields of anthroposophical research. So today's lecture will be a kind of collection of details picked out as examples.

What is achieved for the human being through the three supersensible levels of knowledge that I characterized yesterday is that he can step before the soul's eye as a complete human being. I have already mentioned the first supersensible level of knowledge, the level of imaginative knowledge. And I already indicated yesterday how, through this imaginative knowledge, the organism of time can be seen, which is found in us human beings as the first supersensible entity, the formative forces body that exists in time and that organizes us, but as a supersensible organism organizes us in the time between our birth or conception and death. But I have also noticed that the moment imaginative knowledge begins to take effect, the difference between subjective and objective ceases to a certain extent, so that at the same time as we are spiritually contemplating our formative body, we are also standing in the midst of the entire etheric activity of the world; that we become, as it were, a member of the etheric cosmic organism and then stand out less, secrete less out of this cosmic etheric organism than we do in our physical organism in relation to the other natural facts and beings that surround us in the physical-sensual world.

When we then ascend to the inspired knowledge characterized yesterday, we extend our vision beyond what is in us between birth and death. We expand our vision to include what can be called the actual soul being of the human being, and we learn to recognize this soul being in the development in which it stood within a spiritual-soul environment before it descended into a physical human body.

By further developing this inspired knowledge into what I characterized yesterday as intuitive knowledge, one comes to know in the image the fact of death, the transition of our soul organism through the gate of death into a spiritual-soul world. So that the knowledge of the eternal nature of the human soul is joined by the knowledge of immortality and the unborn. At the same time, however, in this moment, by rising to intuitive knowledge, we see the true form of our ego, of our self. I will speak about this vision of the self again, preferably also in tomorrow's lecture. But you can see from what I have characterized that we come to the vision of a purely spiritual world, first of all of our own spiritual-soul being with its surroundings. Now, during our life on earth, we already have a definite share in this spiritual-soul world. It is always there. It is always around us, as already emerged from what was characterized yesterday. We have a share in it through our total human experience. This total experience breaks down into the waking state and the sleeping state, with the dream states in between.

When one speaks of waking and sleeping, one is actually touching on a very significant riddle of existence, especially in human life. This riddle has been tackled in many ways, including by purely physical research. And as in other fields, in this too, no amateurish opposition should be made against what is put forward by natural science with a certain right. But these scientific hypotheses (and they are mostly hypotheses that have been put forward in this regard; I do not need to list them, because today I will stick more to the positive anthroposophical results in my presentation) these scientific hypotheses always start from certain assumptions that, one might say, can be partially, but not totally, held even in the simplest, unbiased observations of life. For example, when explaining the transition from wakefulness to sleep, fatigue is usually given the greatest importance. And one often sees in fatigue - not always, because there is also a correct insight in science - a kind of cause for the transition to sleep. Now, I have known reindeer that, without having acquired any reason to be particularly tired during the day, fell asleep at the first words of my evening lecture, and not only on this, indeed more understandable occasion, but also fell asleep during many an extraordinarily stimulating sonata. So that just a simple, unbiased observation of life can tell you that fatigue is not necessarily the only reason, the only cause for the state of sleep. I think that anyone who takes even a little time to observe the phenomena of life, quite apart from any extrasensory research, as I will characterize it later, must observe how there is something in sleeping and waking that is connected with the human being, as it is in the physical world, in such a way that sleeping and waking belong to this being as a rhythm of life. Just as the pendulum swings to one side and then to the other, so we must assume that the human being's overall experience in these two states, waking and sleeping, is like a pendulum-like rhythm. I am not offering this as proof, but as something that one might come up with as a possible interpretation. But this will lead us to the next stage, if I now, from the direct view that can be acquired with the help of the three levels of knowledge that I characterized yesterday, first of all present the state of sleep and wakefulness in a soul-spiritual way.

When we are in imaginative knowledge, we get to know the etheric body, the formative forces of the human being. That is, we learn to look at what is in us as the first supersensible being. We then get to know the actual soul that flows into our physical body through birth or conception and also into this formative forces body. We get to know this soul-like quality as it flows out through death into a spiritual world again. We get to know this through inspired knowledge. And we then get to know the actual I-being, I would like to say, the deepest center of our human being through intuitive knowledge.

If we now apply these three insights to our observations of sleeping and waking, it becomes clear to us that the human being is only fully awake during the waking state, when he is fully aware of his mental life, so to speak, and that he is normally the physical body, the spatial body, the etheric body, the temporal body, the actual soul-being, which I referred to yesterday as the astral body, and the I. As a physical being, the sleeping person still has only the body of formative forces within them. Essentially, the soul, the astral body and the I have emerged from the physical body and the body of formative forces, which can now be observed through ordinary external sensory perception and imaginative perception. And from falling asleep to waking up, they are in the same sphere in which they were before the human being descended from the spiritual-soul realm into a physical embodiment on earth. So that the four members of the human being, that is, the physical body, the temporal formative forces body, then the ego and the astral body, the actual soul, are separated from each other in twos.

But now, if we want to understand how the state of sleep relates to the state of wakefulness, we must gain an inner vision, also to be attained through the stages of knowledge that are characterized, of what is actually present during sleep, let us say for the time being. The physical body of space only carries out what the body of time is. All the processes that the physical body carries out in this ether body, from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, can continue. These are all the processes that are connected with the plastic development of the human being, for example during childhood, and that are connected with nutrition and metabolism. But those processes that are connected with imagination, thinking, feeling and willing cannot be carried out. Man falls asleep into a state in which the life of imagination is dimmed, in which feelings are silent, where his will becomes powerless to somehow carry out something in the physical world through the physical body and etheric body.

If we now observe through supersensible knowledge that which has gone out of the physical body and etheric body, as I, as an astral body, that is, as a vehicle of thinking, feeling and willing, we find, above all, that the conscious activity of waking has sunk into an unconscious one, and that the human being is in an unconscious state. Therefore, one can only see through supersensible knowledge from the outside what has gone out of the physical body and the etheric body.

If one wants to characterize what is actually outside of the physical man, then one must compare it with something else. When a person is in a completely dreamless sleep, it can only be compared to the same activity that is present in the waking person's will, in the impulses of the will. The impulses of the will — I characterized this yesterday — also run in the waking person in such a way that the consciousness, the consciousness living in thoughts, has no knowledge of the inner nature of this will. I said yesterday that we plan to do something, for example, to raise our arm. We have the thought. How the thought then flows down into our organism, how the will takes hold of the arm – if I may express myself trivially – is something of which one also has no idea in waking life for the ordinary consciousness. The arm is raised. We only see the result again. The mental image of the result is a new mental image. During waking hours, we have as little idea of what lies between the mental image of the result and the mental image of the intention as a volitional impulse as we have no idea in our ordinary consciousness of what goes on in deep, dreamless sleep. But for supersensible observation, what is present as I and astral body, in addition to the physical body and the etheric body, is in sleep exactly in the same activity as will is during waking. A decided volition expresses itself. The activity of imagination is subdued. We shall explain shortly why this activity of imagination is subdued. That for which we already sleep while awake is quite active, only it is outside the body. It cannot move the arms or legs, cannot use the body as a tool for the will, but this will is powerfully present. And what then is the most important characteristic of this will? It is desire, which can then increase to become the wish and the other various nuances that one is familiar with. From the moment one falls asleep until one wakes up, desire is active in that which is outside of the physical body. And one must ask oneself: What is desire directed towards? When one can observe this streaming and swirling and surging of desire in the soul-being outside of the physical body through supersensible knowledge, then one is led to the question: What is this desire, this longing directed towards? It is directed towards nothing other than the physical body, towards regaining possession of the physical body. From the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up, the human being unconsciously wants to get back into his physical body and into his etheric body because he is outside of it. And then another question arises. These questions only arise, of course, when one applies imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. The other question that arises is: Why does this soul-filled person not immediately satisfy the desire to return to his physical body when he is outside of it? The reason for this, and this is explained to us in the moment of falling asleep, is that the human being, when awake, when he has taken hold of his physical body as a being of soul, as I and astral body, becomes tired of this physical body, which, after all, connects him to the outside world; because in a certain sense he is saturated with this possession after a certain time. Not just the possession of the interior of the physical body. This physical body carries the sense organs. Through them one comes into contact with the outside world. One's self and the astral body merge with sounds and colors, one's self merges with the words one hears from other people. If you do not want to be absorbed and have no possibility to escape in any other way from the impressions coming from the outside world, then you withdraw from the impressions of the outside world by falling asleep, just like the reindeer I was talking about. So that from falling asleep to waking up, in the human being as a spiritual being, satiation with the physical body and desire for the physical body pulsate together. And only when the satiation has completely disappeared can desire triumph over satiation, and the person wakes up and returns to the physical body. There is not enough time to describe why you wake up when the alarm clock goes off, for example, and the like, or why some people cannot sleep. These things can also be experienced, but I can only describe the principles and the generalities.

When we consider the alternating states of sleeping and waking, we are actually dealing with an oscillation between an inner inclination of the human soul to be in the physical body and no longer to be in it; we are dealing with a feeling of being oversaturated, hence the going out of the physical body, and with a renewed desire for the physical body. This desire for the physical body is particularly interesting for supersensible research to study. For this desire for the physical body is also discovered to a particularly intense degree at the time when the soul, bending down from the spiritual-soul world to earth, is again approaching a physical embodiment. Between death and a new birth, that is, on the way to a birth, the soul develops in such a way that, out of all the states it has gone through before, it develops, above all, a certain emptiness towards its spiritual environment and an intensely strong will element, namely the desire for the physical earth. So that we can study the last states that the soul goes through when it draws to an earth life, in a sense between falling asleep and waking up.

So we have an explanation that simply arises for supersensible research, which does not start from the physical of the alternating state of sleeping and waking, but rather recurs to the soul; which explains waking up above all as the satisfaction of the desire for the physical body, which explains falling asleep from a soul oversaturation of the physical body. We arrive at soul qualities and explain the change between sleeping and waking from the soul.

If we then look at dreaming – initially one-sidedly, because, as I said, we cannot explain everything today – we look at dreaming when waking up. As we observe the human soul with its swirling will-being from falling asleep to waking up, we see that thoughts begin to flash to the same extent that the human being returns to his etheric body and his spatial body, his physical body. During normal waking up, it is the case that the person relatively quickly slips into their etheric body and their physical body. In these he has the tools for his thinking, feeling and willing. Thinking, which is subdued during sleep, makes use, when the person returns to his physical body, primarily of the senses and nervous system as external tools. Feeling, which is also dampened during sleep, is submerged upon awakening in everything that is rhythm in the physical organism, for example, the rhythm of breathing, blood circulation, and also the rhythm of metabolism. There is rhythm there too. In fact, the rhythm of metabolism already plays a part in the circulation. So that one can observe how that which is thinking disposition, thinking power in the soul, submerges into the nervous system, and that which is feeling nature submerges into the rhythmic system. And with regard to the will nature, which is thus mainly active during sleep and is connected with the metabolic activity, I would like to say that there is no boundary between inside and outside. During sleep, the human being is indeed outside of his physical body, and everything outside is will, but this will passes through the boundary of the body with regard to the metabolism, also striking into the body through the boundary of the body, and during sleep the activity of the will also encompasses the metabolic system. It is only out of sensory activity and thinking, but with its will nature, the human being is completely immersed in its metabolic system.

Now one can observe how, so to speak, the human being with his soul essence descends into his etheric and physical body. If it happens that, due to some abnormality – although they coincide spatially, this can be the case – the etheric body is seized before the spatial body, then the human being does not immediately enter his body completely. He only submerges into the etheric body. The etheric body then takes up the liquid components of the body, and only the soul, which comes from the solid components, really remains outside. But the moment when the human being has not yet fully taken hold of the physical body, but has only taken hold of the etheric body, that moment is when the soul, emerging from the state of sleep, can only make partial use of the physical and etheric bodies, and that is when dreaming arises. Full waking only arises when the physical body is fully seized, that is, when all the organs of will and especially the sense organs are fully seized. So it is a partial seizure of the physical body when dreaming occurs.

But precisely when one observes this coming over through dreaming in supersensible research - and one can observe this dreaming very particularly through imaginative knowledge; it is not itself dreaming, it is a more fully conscious knowledge than the ordinary day-knowledge of normal consciousness, but one can observe particularly what actually takes place objectively in the dream – one can observe how the human soul takes hold of the physical apparatus, because in the present human life, when the soul is removed from the physical apparatus, it is not strong enough to carry out the thinking activity. It needs, so to speak, the physical tool as a support to carry out the thinking activity. So that in the moment when the human being submerges into the physical tool, thinking is really carried out through the physical tool.

But then, when one also observes feeling through inspired knowledge, both the feeling that is completely subdued during sleep and the feeling in the waking state, which is also a kind of dream-like state – feelings are not as fully conscious as mental images – then one does indeed come to significant differences between thinking and feeling. Only now do you notice these differences. When thinking, it is the case that, when one observes the thinking person with imaginative knowledge in a waking state, the nervous system is continually active during the thinking. The nervous system is in a mobile plastic state, so that basically, for the most part, everything of the soul sinks into the nervous system. When passing from sleep to wakefulness, that part of the soul that becomes a thinker in man disappears. It disappears into the sensory nervous system. This is not the case with feeling human beings. The part of the soul that constitutes the feeling human being submerges into everything that is a rhythmic organism in man, but not completely. One can even say, although this is only an approximation, that just as much of the soul remains outside the physical and etheric bodies as submerges. There is a continuous back and forth between the soul and the body in this feeling activity. And this continuous back and forth is expressed in the rhythmic system.

And the part that makes up the will of the human soul also submerges into the physical body during waking, but it does not submerge in the same way that thinking submerges into the nervous system. It submerges into the physical organism and into the formative forces, but it does not connect with them. Although it slips into the physical body, it remains separate and is a distinct being. Thus one can say that in the waking state, the human being has a remarkable polarity. If we look primarily at the nervous sensory organism, we find that it is developed in such a way that in the waking person the soul is completely submerged. It has almost completely disappeared into the organism as a thinking soul. And when we look at the workings of the will in the waking person, we actually see this will as something separate, alongside the physical processes in the physical organism. These then take place as two activities, although in the same space, but as strictly separate activities. So that it is only through such research methods that we actually gain an insight into how the human being, as a being of will, is involved in his body in a completely different way than he is involved as a thinking being.

This, however, becomes particularly clear when we approach the observation of the waking person with truly developed imaginative and intuitive knowledge. Once you have completed the exercises I mentioned yesterday, you are able to observe yourself from the outside. The thinking is strengthened. This makes it independent of the physical body. In ordinary consciousness, the human being must completely immerse himself in his physical body, that is, in the nervous sensory apparatus. But the achievement of supersensible knowledge consists in learning to think without this physical apparatus. That is the essential thing. We are too weak as sleeping human beings in our normal consciousness to be able to gather up in our sleep that which is soul-like, so that it develops in itself the activity of thinking without the support of the body. The success of the exercises described yesterday consists precisely in the soul becoming so strong that it can think without the body. But in this state, in which it can think without the body, it can see the body. Just as one sees something that is outside of oneself, as one knows that one sees the table with one's eyes, so for imaginative and inspired and intuitive knowledge one looks back to the physical and etheric bodies. As a being of soul, one is only within oneself, one is now conscious of what one is otherwise unconscious of in sleep. And now something very peculiar occurs. It occurs that one does not see everything of this physical body, but only the nervous system can be objectively seen, or rather seen by the soul. The human being, seen entirely from the outside, is a nervous-sensory being. Its nervous system, together with the senses, becomes visible from the outside. I emphasize this because it has played a role - not in these evening lectures, but in many of the daytime lectures - I emphasize that not only the so-called sensitive nerves become visible, but also the so-called motor nerves, and that it is precisely at this stage of knowledge that direct observation leads to the research result: there is no fundamental difference between the so-called sensitive and the so-called motor nerves. The sensitive nerves are there to mediate our perception of the external world through our senses; the motor nerves, which are also sensitive nerves, are there so that we can perceive the position and presence of our limbs within ourselves. The fact that we have an inner perception of ourselves is conveyed by the motor nerves, which are actually sensitive nerves in this respect. Such research results arise from the path of soul research.

So we have now come to the point where we have what belongs to the human nervous system in the broadest sense as an objective thing. On the other hand, everything that belongs to the metabolic system is not present as an objective. It is present in intuition as a purely spiritual being. There the material disappears, and one now learns to recognize this peculiar process in the waking human being, this total process that actually takes place there. One learns to recognize it in this way: if one first gradually orientates oneself through imaginative knowledge, one comes to understand how one moves out of the physical body, now not unconsciously as when falling asleep, but consciously, as one feels this lifting out, especially from the brain. Then, by passing over to inspired knowledge, one arrives at a point where, in addition to this lifting out of the brain, one still notices how the brain now becomes something outside of one. And then one arrives at intuition, one really arrives at objectively seeing what one has before one as the human sensory-neural apparatus. But now one also sees the whole process of ordinary thinking.

Yesterday I emphasized the importance of the person's common sense remaining intact while they develop the second personality, the observing personality, in anthroposophical research. The ordinary personality remains intact, otherwise the person does not become a supersensory cognizer, but a hallucinator. By observing how one comes out of it, logical thinking, which otherwise adheres to the sensory world, remains in the brain. One rises out of the brain only with what one is as a higher, soul-filled being. That is why we see in the entire nervous-sensory apparatus not a lump that lies there, but a process, something that is constantly happening, that is constantly a process. You see that when you look back. Something very strange then emerges, which fundamentally illuminates our entire knowledge of the world. It turns out that in our nervous-sensory being – I apologize if I now say something terribly heretical, it only appears so; it also arises directly from the consistent continuation of scientific thinking into the spiritual world – out of the spirit, which also comes across when we wake up in the morning, when the soul enters the physical body, material-spiritual particles are stored between the parts that only relate to the material, which are deposited and generated directly from the spirit itself. One witnesses the emergence of matter, even the plastic formation of matter in the human sensory apparatus. Matter arises out of spirit. According to his spiritual soul, man not only becomes an inhabitant of his nerve-sense apparatus, but, by storing matter that forms directly out of spirit, he becomes creative of matter. This is heretical because it goes against a principle of today's natural science, which only does not go to its ultimate consequences, those that extend to all beings - and the world consists of all beings, not just of inanimate facts and inanimate beings. This natural science has abstracted from the processes of the inorganic world and, at most, from the plant world, the so-called law of the conservation of energy and matter. As if the substance were there once and for all and would only be rearranged in this way. In a sense, this is the case in all other natural kingdoms. In man, however, there is actually a real creation of matter through the nerve-sense apparatus. But we can state - read the first pages of psychologies that are written today out of incomplete knowledge - that the law of the conservation of matter also applies to man. This is based on an illusion. The law applies, but how? If we look with intuitive knowledge at the workings of the will in the human organism, that is, in the metabolic organism, the part of the organism that consists of metabolism, then matter is continually being destroyed through a process that I would call an organic combustion process. And so, while man develops thinking in normal consciousness, matter creation takes place; while man develops will, matter destruction takes place. The healthy human life is based on the fact that, as it were, the left balance beam corresponds to the right, in the human being it constantly balances itself in the whole of life – matter is created during the thinking, and matter is destroyed, used up, hurled back into nothingness through the will process. And so it seems as though the law of conservation of matter also applies to the human organism, because as much matter is created and formed as is plasticized. By extrapolating such a law as the law of conservation of matter, which is quite correct, and applying it to the human being, we are able to gain a true insight into the very specific nature of the human being in its connection with the physical and with the soul-spiritual. In a sense, the human being becomes transparent in this way. But what path does one actually follow?

If one follows today's physiology, whose methods in external relationships are not at all to be challenged by me – they have their great merits and results, but these results are for the most part questions again, and in turn pose riddles – if one merely these external methods of research to follow the human organism, then one has only one side of the human being, and then one must put forward hypotheses as to the actual cause of what happens in the metabolism, as to the cause of what happens in the nervous process. These hypotheses actually tend to presuppose something unknown, which perhaps only exists in a lawful connection. That is what materialists believe. But in reality, one does not arrive at what the metabolism and the nervous process depend on through such hypotheses, but only through direct observation of the spiritual and soul-like itself.

And so you see that with regard to man, only total research, which does not sin against natural science but simply continues natural science, is able to put into perspective what otherwise only physiology and biology bring to light, by starting with the whole person. And this research does indeed lead to the extraordinarily important result that I presented in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul) a few years ago, after it had been the subject of thirty years of intensive research: the result is that the human being is a threefold creature. The being, which is mostly a nervous-sensory apparatus, is the carrier of the thought life in the waking state. Then the human being is a rhythmic being - breathing, circulation rhythm, other rhythms - and that is the carrier of the emotional life. Finally, the human being is a metabolic being, but the limbs are also part of the metabolic organism. Metabolism is only an inward continuation of what takes place in the limbs. Metabolism is the carrier of the will element. This has nothing to do with the nervous system, but only with the processes of metabolism.

Thus we come to recognize the human being as a threefold creature. The actual inner essence of the human being is based precisely on the fact that he is such a threefold creature, in that he has in his nervous-sensory apparatus that into which the thinking part of the soul is completely immersed, so that in terms of thinking we may actually be the greatest materialists. And today's psychology also comes to see in the brain, the various structures of the brain, true images of the thought life. It does not succeed in this for the emotional and will life, as she herself admits. One sees that one can be the most materialist with regard to the life of ideas, but one does not get along with pure materialism. It is not possible to do so if one imagines the brain in such a way that on the one hand one has the brain as a finished organ and on the other hand one has somehow the soul, which now uses the brain to shape thoughts. It is not like that at all. Rather, it is the case that thoughts have an existence of their own. It is just too weak to be active, for example, when the soul's part of the soul does not have the brain, as in sleep. But when the soul seizes the brain, it does not use it as a finished organ, but it is constantly developing in this brain what is happening in the brain as a process. These furrows are a perpetual process. This is at the same time the activity of the soul. Therefore, when we examine the brain, we can only do so if we have a mental image of the brain as a reflection of the soul, insofar as the soul is a thinking being. This is more important than one might think. This is immediately confirmed when you open up any brain physiology today and see how things have already been researched. And when you see the effects of these different brain areas, they are not at all such that you can see how the soul could make use of them, but they are such that they actually reflect the life of the soul: they are images of the life of the soul.

So that one can say: the brain is actually like an imagination of the soul's life that has been realized, that has become matter. It is an image, whereas the rhythmic organism has not brought it to the point of an image. The metabolic organism has brought it least of all to this, being something entirely unplastic, something unpictorial. We can understand the brain in the way it is constructed if we grasp it as an image of the soul life. And only then will brain physiology be on a healthy foundation, when we are able to understand the brain in this way, as materialized imaginations. On the other hand, one will not be allowed to understand the rhythmic organism, for example, as a materialized imagination, but here one has an inspiration that takes place externally in the process, in the process, where the spiritual and the material continually interact in rhythm. And in the metabolism, we have a continuous transition from matter to spirit, from spirit to matter, towards one pole and then the other.

It must be said that even today it is somewhat awkward to express these things. For naturally, if one is only within the field of biology and physiology, which have not yet become consistent with themselves, one sees such things as fantasies, or even worse. But when these things are known, one has the obligation to stand up for the known truths.

And from the human being, the other parts of our entire world being can then be reached. Let us go down from man to animal, for example. First of all, we need to really get to know the animal, not just talk about it from the outside, but really get to know it. If we want to truly recognize the human being in terms of his or her essence, we have to speak of a threefold being, but the three parts do not exist side by side. An unspiritual professor wanted to ridicule the threefold nature of the human being by saying: Steiner differentiates between the head, chest and stomach human. – As if these three members were juxtaposed like three boxes or cabinets standing on top of each other! That is not the case at all. The head is primarily a nervous-sensory organ, but the rhythmic and metabolic systems play into it; the chest is primarily a rhythmic organism, but the other parts of the body play into it; and so does the metabolism. The three members are interrelated, not separate. Those who characterize them as separate, whether as supporters or opponents, do not get it right.

Now, the situation changes immediately when we move from humans to animals. The animal is not a three-part organism. This is particularly evident when we look at it with imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. Strictly speaking, the animal is a two-part organism. In the animal, the rhythmic organism continually plays a role in the nerve-sense organism, on the one hand. So that? at the head pole of the animal, there is not such a differentiated sense organism as in humans. There is less differentiation, less separation of the nerve-sense apparatus from the rhythmic apparatus. It is a nerve-sense organ that is constantly pulsed by the rhythmic life. And the metabolic organism is in turn pulsed by the rhythmic organism. The rhythmic organism is not as distinct from the other two systems as it is in humans. The human being has the thinking organism, the nerve-sense organism, then the rhythmic organism and the metabolic organism. The three organ systems are relatively distinct from each other. In animals, the nervous-sense organism and the metabolic organism are present, but they form direct polarities. The rhythmic organism is not so strictly separated, but is more absorbed in the other two systems, so that in animals one has a kind of twofold organism.

What is essential in the formation of the human being is not that his head tends to have a special formation, but that which tends to have a special formation in the human being is his rhythmic organism. This becomes independent. As a result, it expels, on the one hand, the head organism in a more differentiated way than in the animal, and, on the other hand, the metabolic organism. So that in turn, there is a more intensive metabolism in man than in the animal, where the rhythmic organism continually plays into the metabolism.

When we study the animal and human organizations in this way, we come to the conclusion that the human being is a different being as a metabolic organism than as a nervous-sensory organism. In the nervous-sensory organism, the soul is completely submerged. So what do we have in our consciousness? Our mental images, our thoughts. Yes, we feel a certain unreality towards thoughts. Thoughts are only images. The most perfect part of the human being is the head organism, but the soul-spiritual is most deeply submerged in the physical. We can be most materialistic in relation to the organization of thinking, the nerve sense organism. For what remains of the spirit in us are only images. In thoughts we have images of reality. He who understands how the spirit is completely diluted to the point of images – if I may say so – and thus lives as spirit in the waking person, will indeed see in the thought life of man a clear proof that there is spirit in man, but he will not address the thoughts themselves as spirit, but will address the thoughts as images that the spirit produces by mostly immersing itself in the nervous sensory apparatus and only reflecting back what remains as an image and arises in consciousness as a thought. One learns to see right through human nature and, accordingly, animal nature as well.

But then, when one has come to know the human being in this way, through imaginative, inspired, intuitive knowledge, when one has come to see the human being as a spiritual-soul being, when he is outside of his organism, when he is asleep ; if one can achieve self-knowledge through imagination, inspiration, intuition, that is, self-knowledge for the human being when he is outside of his physical body, then the difference between subjectivity and objectivity ceases to exist. Outside of the body, we then belong to the cosmos. If we can recognize ourselves by looking back at ourselves, then we can also observe in the cosmos. And then such observations arise that provide us with a real cosmology, a cosmosophy, as I have tried to give in my book “The Secret Science”. These are direct results of observations made by imagination, inspiration and intuition outside the physical human body. And the correlate to this is the complete knowledge of the human being.

It would now be interesting to extend this observation to the plant and mineral kingdoms. However, there is no time for that today. I would just like to point out a few other areas. I can only give examples. I would like to start from how we can follow the metamorphosis of the human organism in this way, how we can see how, on the one hand, the human being, in his material organization as a nerve-sense human being, is a result of the soul-spiritual life, and how, on the other hand, as a metabolic organism, he is not such a result. For the spiritual life continually burns matter, especially when it is most active as a spiritual life. We see how man metamorphoses, and in such a way that he materializes, spiritualizes, spiritualizes. When one is able, through supersensible knowledge, to follow this transformation of the organs through metamorphosis, then one learns to follow it not only with regard to their healthy state, but also with regard to their diseased state. In this regard, I would like to point you in just one direction.

In the moment when, through the empty consciousness mentioned yesterday, one gets to know the spiritual world around oneself, everything that was previously only the object of sensory observation becomes the object of spiritual observation. As the human being appears spiritualized when viewed in this way, so the whole world, the cosmos, is ensouled, spiritualized before the spiritual gaze of the human being. Then, for example, the sun, which we see through ordinary observation and also through ordinary science as this firmly defined, sharply contoured body, appears in what it presents to us physically, to the eye, as a physical organism. On the other hand, there is a spiritual solar element that is not confined to this part of space that we see with our physical organs, but that, as a solar element, fills the entire cosmos that is accessible to us. This solar element permeates all realms of nature, including the human being. It is something that works in the human being. And just as we otherwise study in physics, how the ethereal sunlight penetrates through the eye, how we study the effects of light through what is similar to the physical apparatus of the eye or to the eye itself, so we can now also study the spiritual part, the solar, the spiritual part of the solar activity. But we encounter this again in all the inner organs of the human being. And we become aware that a large part of the organs – actually all organs, but the different organs to a greater or lesser extent – have a life that springs, sprouts and pushes towards growth, a life that ascends towards a single pole. This begins with a lesser sprouting and sprouting power and increases with sprouting and sprouting power in the formation of growth, in promoting nutrition, also in digestion, consumption and so on.

On the other hand, there is a descending life in all organs, a degenerative one. Every evolution is opposed by a devolution or involution. The ascending life of the organs we have within us is worked on by the sun-like element spreading through the cosmos. The descending life can be observed particularly in the brain. Because brain matter is continually being molded through the activity of thinking, there must also be a continual breaking down, precisely from the brain. And the moon-like has to do with these degenerative forces. For the moon is not only that which it appears to us physically, but the physical is only the physical embodiment of that which, as a moon-like quality, permeates the entire cosmos accessible to us. This penetrates into us and into all realms of nature. But by being able to study, we say, in the kidneys, the heart, the lungs, in every single organ, the solar process and the lunar process, the ascending and the descending, the fruitful, growing and the degenerating, by this we understand the individual organ from the cosmos. There will be no complete, total physiology until we understand all the organs of the human being in their ascending and descending life from the spirit of the cosmos.

And in the same way as from the solar and lunar, we can also understand the inner organs of the human being from other impulses of the cosmos. That which is healthy belongs to the ascending life, that which is diseased to the descending life. Centripetal and centrifugal forces depend on other impulses in the cosmos than the solar and lunar ones. I just wanted to mention this as an example. These solar and lunar influences also creep into the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, into all realms of nature. This leads to the study that culminates in the following: I study a human organ in a particular metamorphosis. I find that it is not in a normal state. For example, the human respiratory organs are not in a normal state, but rather as in the case of hoarseness, of a cold. I study this state. In layman's terms, I would say that I study the state of a cold. What is present in the human being? It is actually that which should otherwise be limited to the human senses, which should only prevail as forces in them, so to speak, has slipped down into the respiratory organs. They metamorphose pathologically so that they become too much like sensory organs. The sensuality that should otherwise only be in the sensory organs slips down into the respiratory organs. They sporadically become sensory organs, which makes them ill. Why is this? It is because that which can otherwise have a particularly strong effect in the sensory organs, the moon-like or sun-like, predominates. This is then transferred from the cosmos to the air, to other climatic conditions, so that such pathological metamorphoses arise from the human being's environment.

And now I observe something in the outer world of nature. For example, I look at the lilac, a violet flower with special petals. When one studies this plant, gets to know it inwardly, one finds that in it are active those forces which have an effect in precisely the opposite sense to the solar and lunar, as that which has a morbid effect in the interior of man when he has a cold, in the case I have described. And one learns to recognize how the peculiar interaction of sulfur-like forces with etheric oils in the lilac plant is in a polar opposite relationship to that which develops pathologically in the organism.

If we learn to recognize the metamorphosis of the human organs through the spirit, and if we learn to recognize the particular effects of the forces of the environment through the spirit of the cosmos, then we arrive at a rational materia medica and a rational therapy. We can now state, just as in other sciences, where we really have an overview of things, not just trial and error, which remedy may be suitable for this or that disease. I can only sketch the process. But in this respect, anthroposophy can shine a light everywhere. It does not have to rely on mere trial and error of this or that remedy for this or that disease, but one can see the connection between the remedy and the disease from the spirit of the cosmos. This is a very simple case. But it can be applied to the whole of pathology and therapy. Today I can only hint at the axiomatic, but in this direction, in anthroposophy, we already have a fully developed pathology and therapy. There are also institutes where things can be empirically verified and where one can be convinced that those remedies that are drawn from knowledge of spirit and nature prove to be effective, if, on the other hand, one is only able to diagnose the diseases correctly. Anthroposophy does not find such things in a botched, dilettantish, lay manner. It recognizes what medicine has achieved, and only builds further. But it is possible to build further, and much can be gained for the benefit of sick and healthy humanity if we continue to build on medicine in this way. In this way, as in so many other areas that I cannot touch on today, anthroposophy leads directly into the most important areas of life.

Now, finally, just a few examples of how to arrive at anthroposophical research results. I regret that I cannot cite more, but I would like to give at least a few disparate examples so that you can see how our scientific spirit can actually become universal by being shaped anthroposophically.

History, for example, is usually viewed in such a way that one records external facts or takes what is available in the way of documents about external facts, and perhaps draws a few conclusions about the spirit of the age from these. After all, it comes down to this: “What you call the spirit of the times is the lords' own spirit, which is reflected in the times”. But one believes oneself to be quite objective in history when one puts together a course of history from external documents. But when one ascends to such a realization, as I characterized it yesterday and as I have shown today with individual examples of its application, then one also comes to really observe from the other, the spiritual side. After all, we have perceptions of the natural side. We do not need to search for them. We have to strengthen our thinking to such an extent that it can organize and master the perceptions, so that through observation and experimentation the perceptions reveal their laws. But on the side of the spirit! Yes, since the old, intuitive insights, which were not fully conscious, as are today's anthroposophical insights, since they have only become traditional and can no longer be handled by people, the spiritual has basically lost its entire content, however little one wants to admit it today. It is interesting, though, that within German intellectual life, where one always draws the final consequences in this direction, on the side of intellectualism, there is a philosopher, Fritz Mauthner, who has taken Kant even further than Kant by writing a “critique of language” in which he attempts to prove that we actually have no spiritual content, that in what we say about things we can only say words. Critique of language - not critique of reason! And that is not even so unfounded. Fritz Mauthner, however repulsive his “criticism of language” may be, is only more honest than the others for the person who sees something in the real world. The others just do not admit to themselves that they only have words when they speak of thinking, feeling and willing. For these words must first be given a content again through supersensible knowledge. They have no content in the psychologists either. Take a modern psychology and read an explanation of what a thought is. They talk about thoughts because they have the word “thought” from ancient times, but there is nothing more in it in terms of the spiritual. We must first come to an understanding of this. And we will only come to that when we develop the slumbering powers in the human soul as I have described it yesterday. Then one will be able to follow the laws of spiritual development of humanity in a similar way to the way one follows the physical laws in natural science.

For example, there is the biogenetic law, which Haeckel strongly emphasized. Certainly, this has undergone various corrections. I am familiar with the current state of research regarding the biogenetic law. But essentially one can say that in the morphological stages that the human embryo goes through from conception to birth, until it is a fully formed human being, the formation of the individual animal forms is repeated. When the human germ is three weeks old, it resembles a fish, then it becomes more and more similar to other animal forms. It is an approximate law. The ontogeny, the development of the individual being, is an abbreviated repetition of the phylogeny, the development of the whole tribe, it is said.

Now, even if this law has to be corrected to a certain extent, it still provides a suggestion for establishing a certain connection between external physical perception and organic beings. But on the other hand, the aspect of human development in its historical becoming can be similarly arrived at through such a lawful connection. Anyone who has reached a certain age will indeed come to this - but human life as a whole belongs to the human being. Therefore, what can be observed in oneself only in later old age is also peculiar to the human being; one can see something very remarkable through unbiased observation, which is then confirmed and made clear through supersensible knowledge, if one is capable of it. One notices that, as a person approaches old age, all kinds of abilities may be present. These abilities actually want to develop inwardly, but they cannot come out. In today's human being, there is such a strong calcifying tendency that certain formative powers of the inner being cannot come out. They only hint at themselves. That is why people who are truly suited to self-knowledge inwardly today feel that, as they age, certain abilities slip away from them, abilities that actually want to develop but are overgrown by the hardening organism and cannot come out. And if we pursue this further, we go back in the development of humanity to times when these abilities could still emerge, when the human organism was still different from what it is today. Today, superficial views of nature believe that the human organism is quite the same as it has always been, as it was, for example, in ancient Egypt and before. No one considers that even in historical and prehistoric times, the human organism in its inner, deeper structure, its histology, is constantly changing, becoming stiffer and more sclerotic. So that if we go back to older times and follow what people in later ages have produced in literature, poetry and art, we also find empirical confirmation of what I am saying now. If we go back in time, we find that people in fact went through a certain development into a much older age, where their physical and mental development went hand in hand. Today, this is actually only present in youth. With children, we see very clearly: mental abilities develop in parallel with physical abilities. When the child changes teeth, a strong psychological change takes place. This happens again at puberty. Those who still have a sense of observation for such things will also find, at the beginning of the 1920s, that psychological changes still occur in parallel with physical changes in people. But then it all becomes very blurred. Towards the end of the twenties, it stops altogether for today's human being. In a sense, the human being becomes stationary in terms of his intellect and his capacity for feeling. He develops a spiritual life, and he can even perfect it, but the body no longer supports him in it. He no longer undergoes the same development.

If we go back to the Greeks – and with the methods I have described, we can also observe the past of historical life spiritually and directly, just as we can observe our own psychological past before birth or conception – by observing Greek life back in our imagination, actually produced a Aeskulap, a Sophocles, a Phidias, then one comes to the conclusion: the whole soul-body life of man must have been different, there must have been a different way of feeling and living into the world. But this can be traced back to the fact that in Greece, until the mid-thirties, the physical body was as it is with us only in youth. A person today, at the end of the twenties, who stops receiving support for their spiritual life from their physical body, had something during the Greek era until the mid-thirties, in the whole ascending life, whereby the physical body supported them. And if we go back further, two or three millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find people - anthroposophical research can recognize this through direct observation - who, well into their forties, are as dependent on their bodies as a child is on his or her parents until sexual maturity. We find that in prehistoric times, people experienced their bodies into old age.

But what does that mean? It means that we experience our body as it grows, up to the age of thirty-five. When it is in decline, in degeneration, it no longer participates with the soul. We perceive nothing through the power of the body. Precisely when the body decays, we no longer perceive through it. At that point we have already become independent of the body. Yes, anyone who studies the Vedas with their wonderful flow, with what lives in them, and who finds their way into their remarkable spirituality, which also lives in similar spiritual creations, will also find external confirmation of what anthroposophical research can say.

There were times, ancient times in the evolution of humanity, when man, in his body, not only had an entity in the ascending life that worked in parallel with his soul. In the ascending life we are half-stunned by the sprouting, sprouting life, so that we do not look into the spiritual world, while, as the body decays, we see all the more spiritually in the decaying body with the soul. There were times when man still experienced his disintegrating body, and by looking in the disintegrating body, he saw with the soul all the more spiritually. In that world period – one would like to describe it today as prehistoric, as if it had been primitive, but it was not – people still lived in their fifties and sixties in such a way that their spiritual life was dependent on the participation of physical development, and now of descending development. As a result, there was a certain mood in these old people. When one was young, when one was still a child or a youth or a maiden, one looked up to the old people and said to oneself: Oh, these old people, they experience through growing old something that one can only know as an old person. They grow into a spiritual world while their body decays. In the most ancient patriarchal times, people looked up to the elderly and said to themselves: They grow into a divine spiritual world simply by virtue of their physical development. Oh, they also approached old age quite differently, knowing: If I grow old, I will become a wise man. There were exceptions, of course, but there are exceptions among the young today as well. Imagine the mood that pervades a society when you look up to the patriarchs in this way because they can have something that you cannot have in your youth.

Thus we see epochs in historical humanity, where humanity becomes younger and younger, if I may express it that way. First, people went through the physical up to their old age. Then we see people who experienced physical exertion into their forties, then the Greeks, who experienced it into their thirties, and thus only just avoided the cliff, that great turning point, where they could see into the decaying body and thus express that wonderful harmony of body and soul in their works of art.

Now humanity has become even younger. This expression is not used quite correctly. What I mean is that they consciously experience physical conditions up to the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Humanity will become ever younger and younger in this respect.

So while we say, with regard to our physical development as an embryo, that we repeatedly carry within us the physical tribal development from the simplest to the most perfect living being — the embryo goes through this from beginning to end — the reverse development takes place for the life of the soul. We as humanity experienced life into old age in earlier times. Then it recedes. People become mobile, inwardly and spiritually alive through their bodies only in their youth. This is what one notices as one grows older and actually wants to shape out what once really shaped out when the physical organization was still different. And just as the human embryo in the third week is like an earlier state, so is the soul development of humanity in its present state as if earlier states had degenerated, been lost. It is a retrogression. While the development of the embryo, now in the physical sense, is an upward development, the spiritual development is a retrogression. This is connected with the whole development of mankind. Whereas man was formerly dependent on the body in the historical development, he is more and more dependent on emancipating the soul from the body. The bodily element works in him more and more only as a youthful bodily element. This means that he is instructed to do that which he used to develop in himself through the powers of the body, now through spiritual-soul development from within, so that what the body does not give us in old age, the soul must carry us into old age.

In this way, pedagogy must be transformed, all human development must be transformed. Yes, when we get to know such laws – and there are many such laws that act as impulses in the development of humanity and of history – then we also have the opportunity to learn something very profound for human life from the study of history, which is now spiritualized. The necessity for the present-day organization of pedagogy and didactics in relation to pedagogy and didactics in earlier epochs of human development arises simply from the fact that humanity draws less and less from the physical development of the body in old age and more and more from the physical development of youth. and more and more on the physical development of young people; that it must therefore replace what no longer comes naturally by working into the body through the development of the spirit. If we find the right pedagogy, the right methodology to bring the soul to life, then we educate and teach in such a way that, for example, we do not simply receive concepts at school that are ready-made, with ready-made contours. That would be like keeping one's hands and arms as small as when one was a child throughout one's entire life. If we want to teach a child ready-made definitions and concepts, it is as if we wanted to keep the limbs of a human being fixed so that they cannot grow. We have to teach children such concepts, mental images and feelings that live and grow, so that by the fortieth or sixtieth year they are no longer the same as they were in their early years, through their own inner growth. This possibility exists. This is the aim of the pedagogy of the Waldorf school. It is not just about the child, but about the whole human being; it asks how the child must be educated so that it can benefit from the education throughout its life; so that the child does not have to say to itself when it is thirty years old: Now you have learned, but your concepts have remained childish dwarfs; they do not grow. One must convey such vivid mental images, concepts and impulses to the child that they are in a state of growth and will only be properly developed at a later age. In this way, one can learn intensively for life, directly from real, spiritualized historical observation. And when it is said today that people do not learn from history, it is because there is not much to learn from it, since it does not say much except for the compilation of data given for earlier epochs, which, however, are composed only of external appearances. Anthroposophically oriented observation also leads into the interior here, in that it provides perceptions in which the spiritual entities are not merely words, but also have spiritual substance.

So I could only show you in sketchy examples how the research results of anthroposophy look. They are such that we first get to know the human being, that we get to know the universe from the human being, that we also arrive at a corresponding practice of life through the correct application of the higher insights to the human being, a practice of life that extends into social life, as I tried to show with the example of education. So we may think in a similar way with regard to this reflection, as I have already said at the end of another reflection: Anthroposophy does not want to be a theory, does not want to be a one-sided teaching, but wants to be something that is drawn from life and can therefore, because it is drawn from the full life, from the bodily, soul and spiritual life, in turn serve the full life of man. For only then will a worldview truly serve life, when it is life itself. For this must be kept in mind: not abstract thoughts, which are inwardly dead in themselves – tomorrow I will have more to say about the deadness of thoughts – not thoughts that are dead, but only thoughts that are pulsating with life can also serve life. Only a worldview that does not live in dead thoughts, but is itself life, can serve life, because only life itself can be the true servant of life.