83. Proofs of the Immortality of the Soul

Manuscript, undated, c. 1917

Anyone who wants to talk about the immortality of the soul in the age of the scientific worldview must take a perspective that can satisfy the prevailing type of thinking in the field of scientific research. His approach must not be less rigorous than that of serious science. That is to say, he must adduce proofs that can be conclusive in the forum of natural science. It must be borne in mind, however, that these proofs may still meet with the most violent opposition in our time. This is only natural. For many a person has formed certain ideas about how a proof must look at present, believing that he knows how physics, chemistry, biology, etc. prove their findings. He then finds that spiritual science, as it is meant here, has no scientific proofs to offer, but only a belief that is peculiar to religions. Such an opinion is perfectly understandable to someone who is himself familiar with this spiritual science; and he will find nothing strange or surprising in it if his explanations are currently still criticized as subjective beliefs.

Only the future will bring a more general understanding of how things stand in this field. For this understanding, it is necessary to learn to imagine how differently the field of the spirit must be investigated than that of nature. It will have to be recognized that the evidence for any fact to be cognized spiritually, e.g. for the independent life of the soul after the death of the body, must take quite different forms from those for a physical fact. Precisely because that evidence is to be as rigorous in its field as this is in its own, it must take different forms. It is not a matter of adducing proofs for the immortality of the soul, as they are justified in chemistry, but solely of how such proofs of immortality must be shaped for the cognitive need of a person who is able to properly appreciate the scope and significance of chemical or biological research. For those who do not want to admit this, even the insights into the soul that are held to be true spiritual science will be mere belief. And yet, in no sense is it intended to speak here from the point of view of belief, but from the standpoint of a science, which is this for the spiritual realm as natural science is for nature.

Now, many phenomena in present-day spiritual life can give the impression that many people, even those who stand on the ground of the strictest science, have lost the old prejudice that only natural science is a true science. Strict researchers and serious thinkers are beginning to investigate the continuation of the soul's life after death. Societies have been founded for such research, which aims to transfer the question of immortality from the realm of faith to that of strict science. There are already enough people of insight today who no longer consider anyone who devotes themselves to a scientific examination of such questions to be backward.

But these very researches usually show in the clearest way that one does not consider how different spiritual-scientific evidence must be from natural-scientific evidence if they both arise from the same scientific way of thinking. Such thinkers, who have formed their opinions about science through natural science, try to approach the spiritual world in the same way that one approaches nature. They want to conduct experiments in the field, as they do in the laboratory. I do not want to talk here about the attempts of the so-called spiritualists. People should not come into consideration who do not want a sufficient judgment about a scientific control in investigations. But at present, personalities may be mentioned in this field who have the will and seriousness for scientific research. Of course, the experiments and observations of Gurney, Myers, Podmore, Hodgson, Oliver Lodge, James, Wallace and many others may be considered prejudiced, perhaps even childish; but only someone who is thoroughly prejudiced can deny these men scientific spirit.

However, the experiments made in this direction clearly show how little understanding there still is today for developing the scientific way of thinking in such a way that it can seriously be considered for the spiritual realm. The natural scientist is accustomed to his field of research unfolding outside of his own soul. He must endeavor to accept as knowledge only what this field of research reveals, while keeping out of his own soul everything that comes from its own experience. He can only recognize as natural laws what is justified by facts independent of himself and his thoughts, and what exists independently of human ideas. Therefore, he also only wants the results of revelations in the spiritual realm that do not come from ordinary human consciousness. He believes, for example, that he can only learn something about the soul that may exist after death if it manifests itself within the world of facts in the same way that a physical force manifests itself. This leads him to his experiments with so-called mediums. These are persons in whom ordinary human consciousness is eliminated through certain events. The physical body of such persons behaves like that of a sleeping person, except that they develop an activity in response to questions or other stimuli, in which their own conscious soul life is uninvolved. It is then as if a foreign spirit were speaking through such persons, or, as in automatic writing, were using their hand to make itself known. If one could recognize in such manifestations that they must come from the soul of a deceased person, then this would be a kind of proof of the continuation of the soul that the scientifically minded person would want to accept as objective. Efforts are indeed being made to obtain evidence of the continuation of the soul in this way.

However, the large amount of work that has been devoted to such investigations cannot satisfy the judgment of the strictly thinking person. The objections that can be made are all too easy to come by, even when only the most serious works are considered. First of all, the communications that one would like to relate to the deceased are of little value in terms of content. Souls whose carriers were astute in life express themselves after death in a manner that is not very astute, often childish, petty, etc. Also, their messages are of such a nature that one cannot gain the slightest insight into a world in which one might suspect them after death. One may admit that they speak about things that take place far away from the place where the experiments are being done, or that they deal with things that neither the medium nor the people involved know anything about: the things themselves are insignificant. It is not possible to refute the objection: Why do only revelations come to light in this way that are so uninteresting to a more sophisticated human intelligence? Why are they so different from those that could be of interest to a deeper spiritual mind?

Another objection also carries a great deal of weight. Why should forces not be at play in such experiments that may indeed lie outside the field of ordinary nature, but which have nothing to do with souls that continue to exist after death? Let us assume that a dead person speaks through a medium about a personality who lives in a distant place, or who has herself died long ago, about whom neither the medium nor any of the observing persons knows anything. It will certainly be a seductive fact if it turns out that the stated fact and the person to whom it refers are known only to the supposedly dead person.

But why should there not be forces that have nothing to do with the soul after death, and which carry knowledge of facts into the soul of the living medium through channels unknown to the ordinary consciousness? If one has no other proofs of the continued existence of the dead than those characterized, then it is truly more befitting for human thought to conclude on unknown mediators between facts and souls on earth than on mediators in a questionable hereafter.

Another objection that has been raised – and with some justification – is that the messages from alleged deceased persons who inspire confidence stop relatively soon after their death. Indeed, the longer the time that has passed since the death of the persons making themselves known through mediums, the more questionable the revelations become. Well-meaning people who want to attach importance to the facts of these observations will therefore have no choice but to admit that these facts actually only speak for a short afterlife of the soul's expressions, so to speak an after-swinging, not for a true immortality.

On deeper reflection, one will not be able to agree with those who say that these investigations have only been carried out in a truly scientific way for a few decades: one must hope that the currently still unsatisfactory results will later lead to satisfaction. Rather, this deeper reflection shows that through these investigations one seeks a way into the realm of the spiritual that cannot promise success.

Just as one should not expect ghosts to enter a house in their true form if one makes other entry points instead of doors and windows, so one should not believe that spiritual beings reveal themselves through human bodies or through other entities of the physical world. It should be obvious that manifestations of spiritual beings can only take place in the spirit of man himself. But then one must seek these manifestations nowhere else than in the activities of one's own soul. Even the true essence of the soul of another person can only be revealed to the soul of the observer.

On the basis of this insight, another kind of spiritual research seeks its results precisely where the natural scientist does not want to look if he does not want to modify the meaning of research in line with the spiritual realm. This other spiritual science asks whether the human soul can find the spiritual realm through its inner life, how it finds the memories of past experiences through this inner life. The way in which these memories emerge from the hidden depths of the soul into consciousness is a purely inward one. Is it not possible for a spiritual world, if there is one, to enter the soul through inner experience? Is it impossible for a purely spiritual, disembodied being to speak directly to the soul, as a thought emerging in memory speaks to it?

Even the possibility of such a state of affairs initially repels the human being. He is, after all, of the opinion that everything that comes into his consciousness in this way can only be thoughts. He cannot imagine that thoughts can come into his soul that do not depend on being justified by something other than himself. When he becomes aware of something that merely speaks to his inner being, he will demand that it speak to him in some other way as well, so that he does not have to consider it merely a thought. But what if, of all that man can experience, the idea, the thought, the inner experience, is the only thing in which a disembodied spiritual world can make itself known?

Now the ordinary inner experience, the ordinary thought, is certainly not of that kind. The spiritual science referred to here does not dispute this. But it cannot find in any other human experience a suitable means for exploring the spiritual. So then it must ask: Is not the inner experience capable of development? Does it not carry within itself the possibility of unfolding in such a way that it can express the /Text breaks off]