82. Mind and Matter

Thoughts always remain somewhat alien to sensory reality; they can only be understood if one recognizes their origin in a spiritual realm. With thoughts, one is already in the spirit. A person who wants clarity about the spiritual must not flee from the experience in the thought. They must be able to live in the thought. There is no support, no point of rest, as there is when one simply deals in the realm of imagination with what is communicated by natural processes and human life. Thinking can spin out of itself nothing but empty thoughts; but in the experience of thinking, this does not remain empty.

In the continuous life, with appropriate attention, one can see how living forces are at work in thoughts and how what we call conscious thinking is only the soul illuminating objective thinking.

Comparison with traces of footsteps.

Impossibility of finding the spirit in matter.

The thinking self-awareness is not in the material processes.

The origin of sensory perceptions.

Knowledge first mediated by matter; waking up and spiritual awakening. Then perception (looking) in the being that has made the body a mirror of the whole physical course of life. Looking at life against the background of death.

In sensory perception, partial death lies behind the perception - which is always compensated for when the senses are at rest.

In the perception of the human life cycle, behind the gaze lies death and behind this lies the supersensible world, which gives us the supersensible consciousness from the forces that also reveal themselves in the material world.

In general, people lack the calm and inner strength to experience the spiritual. He has the most vivid desire to know something about the spiritual, but he likes to avoid bringing about the situation through which he might learn something about it. His thinking tool has been wrested from the context of the spiritual, while the rest of the human being remains in contact with it. Therefore, when the spiritual comes into consideration, he likes to rely on feeling.

The spiritual can only be experienced. The insight needed here arises when man realizes that the idea - the thinking - is as little conditioned in the body as the footprints found on a path are from the earth on which they are found. But here one cannot gain the right insight by examining the ground, but by knowing the being that left the footprints.

In the material world, man only notices what he can perceive, not what is effective in perception; in the spiritual, he loses himself in activity and does not come to perceive this activity.

For the one who has awakened to intuitive knowledge, matter ceases to be matter; it becomes flowing activity - which is no longer as foreign to one's own being as the perceived matter. But the imagination ceases to be the activity that is enthroned above things, looking down on them: it is immersed in a powerful reality. One must experience how the spirit works in matter. One must experience that in developing one's inner life, one does not become estranged from the world, but connects with it. However, this connection is not possible with the perceived material, but with that which works in this material.

When a person remembers an event that he has experienced, something that was separated from him but is stored in his body is before his soul; in the material world, something that was separated from him but is stored outside his body is before his soul.

To bring thinking so far that one has handed it over to the world process and can watch its fate there.

There is a being within man that unconsciously confesses to the ordinary consciousness the truths that spiritual science expresses; if this being were not in man, he would have to abstain from thinking and willing.

By observing nature, one can only gain knowledge of nature, that is, of material processes. It is different with that which the soul develops within itself by allowing knowledge of nature to take effect on it. Then the processes behind the material reveal themselves to it, with which it itself is related, but not to its sensual capacity for knowledge. Therefore, one should not interpret and allegorize on the basis of natural phenomena – but rather allow the soul to develop through knowledge acquired through these phenomena. The naturalist is reluctant to progress from thinking about nature to experiencing knowledge of nature.

In religious experience, the soul is directed towards the spiritual world – but there it attains only consciousness of the spiritual, not knowledge of this spiritual – the situation is different with that which the religious consciousness desires in the soul when it becomes strong and powerful – it then produces desire for spiritual science. The representative of religion is often averse to letting religious consciousness become so strong that it demands knowledge.

Spirit and matter confront each other in the human experience of existence. To recognize how they relate to each other is the endeavor of every person who awakens from the dull life that asks no world riddles. And there is a feeling in the soul that, having attained such knowledge, one will face the events of the world differently than by merely accepting them from the point of view of: this happened today, that happened yesterday. And yesterday's happened to me like that; today's happens to me like that. One need not say with Schopenhauer: Life is an unfortunate thing; I have decided to endure it by reflecting on it. But one can admit to oneself: Life is full of riddles; I want to find myself and myself in it by taking it so seriously that its riddles are an incentive for me to deal with them.

If a person delves into the phenomena of the material world, he can gain rich insights; but these insights remain silent when the soul asks about its own nature.

When man awakens a true consciousness of his own inner being, he can feel the strengthening power of the spirituality living in him; but this consciousness must also ask: Why is it transferred into the material world, whose nature thereby becomes so important for its own nature?

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science arises in the human soul when, on the one hand, the reason why knowledge of the material world remains so mute is understood; and when, on the other hand, the self-sufficiency of a consciousness in the spirit becomes the endeavor to penetrate from the spirit to its manifestation in the material world.

In order to experience the material world as his own, man must be so interwoven with it that he is matter himself with a part of his being. He is this with his senses and the thinking body that is connected to the sense life. While he is awake and devoted to them, his spiritual being lies outside the circle of his attention. What takes place in the senses is itself of a material nature. Through his senses, man plunges into the essence of matter. If the whole essence of man were given in this way, he could never have a consciousness of himself. He would be a sum of processes that matter settles with itself.

Self-awareness is acquired outside of matter. But as soon as the processes of matter cease in ordinary life, self-awareness also ceases. This is the case in sleep. Man knows of his self through matter; but in the self he experiences spirit. He brings himself, what he is, to consciousness through matter. In the ordinary waking up, it is true that man's knowledge is awakened, but not his essence. That this essence can also awaken can only be proved through experience, through direct realization. It can be proved. Man can awaken to life in the spirit, not merely to life in matter.

In such an awakening, one does not merely experience a kind of repetition of material perceptions, but a spiritual world. One experiences the essence of the human being, which not only produces the processes that lead to sensory phenomena, but the essence that makes the body a mirror for the psychological phenomena that take place between birth and death. Against the background of death, life reveals itself. But death does not merely show its surface, but its deeper content: the supersensible world, which has ceased to function when the soul enters physical life, and with the onset of death, just as the living and constructive powers of the body enter into action, as opposed to the activities through which sensory perceptions arise. Death, as it were, becomes transparent on its surface and shows its interior, which is the creative spirituality. If the body did not carry within itself the forces that cause death, life could not be brought to self-awareness. Just as the painter's brushstrokes would never produce a painting if they did not meet on the canvas.

But the soul itself is not contained in the body - not in material processes. It is merely effective in them. And what it has achieved is not exhausted in the traces that arise in the material; it lives on in the soul itself - will impress itself on the soul like memory of past activity. The memory that remains on the surface of the soul is a reflection of the memory that is rooted in the deeper layers of the soul and carries the experiences of the soul through death.

Plato believes that “a life without research is not worth living”.

K. Rosenkranz finds the thought “devastating”: “what would happen if this world did not exist”. The anthroposophically oriented spiritual science sets itself tasks in such a way that it takes into account the progressive development of humanity. The forces with which man tries to solve the great riddles of the world are different in the successive ages.

In the present age, we are particularly aware of the world riddle that is encapsulated in the opposition of “spirit and matter”.

We will start from two images:

G. Th. Fechner, who approaches what he calls the “night view”.

K. Rosenkranz, who trembles at the thought: “What would become of me if this whole world did not exist?”

Personalities such as these turn to the insights of an age to give people the strength to face life with understanding. For behind the intellectual riddles of the world stand those of the soul. Contemplation of the joys and sorrows of life, its changing destinies. It would be a sad state of affairs if man were to seek and accept only those ideas that correspond to his desires. But underlying all such striving is the endeavor to recognize the truth, even if it is painful, for it is a better support in life than illusion.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science first draws attention to the essence of thought. It recognizes the spiritual nature of thought. And at the same time it recognizes the reality of thought. This is all something that can be understood with ordinary consciousness.

But when one has recognized the reality of the world of thought, then one gains the possibility of actively engaging in it. This, however, leads continuously to the experience of the spiritual world.

Man, who makes use of material processes, is now placed in the spiritual world.

The spiritual researcher can be understood; for if the one who listens to him properly has the right idea, then he also has the matter.

It is recognized: the soul causes the material process in the bodily tool. When this causing has passed, consciousness first arises. Behind this are processes of dissolution.

In spiritual knowledge, the soul is grasped in its processing of the material bodily processes. —

From there it arrives at the knowledge of the continuous production of physical life between birth and death. Against the background of death, [life] appears. But death does not now represent its surface, but its interior.