Knowledge of Soul and Spirit

GA 56 — 14 May 1908, Berlin

Heaven

I find myself in a situation as difficult as last time, when I spoke to you about the concept of “hell,” as today I am to summarize the various observations and conclusions from the series of lectures I gave this winter in a reflection on the fundamentals of the concept of “heaven.”

We are faced with a concept whose true meaning has already been largely lost to the various religious denominations today, even though they cling to the concept out of a thoroughly correct and apt spiritual instinct. At the same time, however, we are faced with a concept that is mocked and rejected in the strongest terms by those who not only want to set the tone in today's intellectual currents, but who are also regarded as setting the tone by wide circles. For a vast number of people today, the concept of “heaven” still encompasses the goal and content of their deepest heart's desire; it forms the basis of the devoted faith of many souls, something that comforts them in the most difficult matters of life, while at the same time this concept is understood by a large number of people as something that expresses the deepest superstition and is associated with everything that is supposed to constitute the objects of human superstition in the wider world. We need only, especially in our day, turn our attention to spiritual phenomena that are much discussed in certain circles, and we will very soon see what enormous obstacles stand in the way of understanding for people today if they want to arrive at a pure, unprejudiced conception of what is to occupy us today.

No one should be surprised, least of all those who speak about these things as I intend to speak today, if much of what is said today is regarded as the epitome of empty fantasy and wild mystical reverie. Nevertheless, today's reflection will show us how urgently necessary it is, especially in our time, to point out the foundations of such concepts as strongly as possible.

Many of you will know a man whose name is now associated by some with the concept of true enlightenment, a man whose works have recently caused a great stir in German intellectual life and elsewhere. Of course, it is far from my intention to belittle in any way the great and tremendous achievements that this man has made in his narrow field of natural science. You have also seen from the other lectures that my sole concern has been to present spiritual scientific research in full harmony with the scientific findings of the present. August Forel's lecture on “Life and Death” has now been heard in various places, and anyone who wants to learn a little about how one can thoroughly misunderstand what Spiritual Science has to say about these things would be well advised to study Forel's lecture thoroughly. The perspectives from which Spiritual Science approaches such phenomena are discussed in my magazine LuciferGnosis, where you will also find much about the relationship between Spiritual Science and natural science. The very thing that reveals the relationship and harmony, and that brings to light where Spiritual Science builds on the basis of natural science and leads to higher insights, is the task of this thirty-fifth issue of the journal “Lucifer-Gnosis.” Forel's entire lecture on “Life and Death” is filled with rejection, a thorough rejection of this concept, which today describes the content of our lecture.

Right at the beginning, we are made aware of how someone who wants to construct a worldview based on pure scientific facts can arrive at the following thoughts. It is said: What great and tremendous progress has this natural science brought to humanity, how is it able to shine light into the structure of the world beyond the stars that are closest to us in space? How has this natural science been enabled to look into the smallest parts of the cells of the living body, at least to a certain extent? How has natural science succeeded in overcoming space and time to a certain degree in the field of technology? How does it achieve the most incredible things in wireless telegraphy and telephony across almost all continents? How has natural science succeeded in explaining the components of the sun, the moon, the stars, and so on? How has it succeeded in liquefying air? How has it succeeded in showing how the individual parts of the brain work together when humans think, feel, and will? All of this, of course, to a certain degree, but this degree is rightly described as admirable.

But now the author of this lecture continues: Nowhere, however, despite its admirable results, has this natural science discovered anything that could be called “paradise”; nowhere has it discovered a spiritual world. Despite its admirable results, natural science has found nothing of what humanity has dreamed up in its imagination as “heaven” and “hell.” And so the bold conclusion is drawn, which is repeated by many today: since natural science has not found any of this, we must discard all these concepts. We must stand on the ground that nothing, absolutely nothing, of what was dreamed and raved about long ago could be true, that there is an immortal core in human beings that survives the decay that science has experienced in such a wonderful way. And then, like an outpouring of emotion, the observation is added that it is much more beautiful, greater, and more powerful to know that before humans came into this personal, individual existence, they lived entirely in their physical ancestors, and that afterwards they will live purely in their physical descendants. The entire existence is to be forced into the physical world. The author then makes a real emotional outburst, saying: Is it not much more beautiful that what man has created is connected with his physical ancestors and continues to have an effect in his physical descendants, than to assume what can only be dreamed of – that there is a world in which there are all kinds of beings above man, a world in which choirs of angels can be heard, and so on? — It is implied that it is unworthy of a scientifically minded person to adhere to a worldview that has even the slightest connection with such concepts.

This lecture may remind one of something I once heard one of the leaders of the modern Enlightenment movement say in a lecture many years ago. This person said something like the following: People talk about some kind of supernatural heaven, about something that is supposed to exist up there, and then made it clear that our Earth is a sphere floating freely in space, and that the same is true of the other planets, that space is therefore heaven, and that the soul does not need to be in another heaven, because we are already in heaven.

Such people do not understand much of the deep feeling from which Schiller made his well-founded statement “To the Astronomers”:

Don't talk to me so much about nebulae and suns!
Is nature only great because it gives you something to count?
Your subject is certainly the most sublime in space,
But, friends, the sublime does not dwell in space.

From all these statements, it can become clear to anyone who has taken in even a little of what has been said here in the course of this series of winter lectures with their whole soul what a profound misunderstanding underlies such things. It is a profound misunderstanding, and we can best express this profound misunderstanding by saying: If Spiritual Science were ever to speak of what these people call superstition, fantasy, or fantasy, then all these people would be right. But the fact is that Spiritual Science in its modern form is young and that its message has not yet reached a large part of humanity, especially not those who speak as has been indicated. These people form mental images of the supersensible worlds that are themselves only the product of their own fantasies and daydreams, and they fight against these creations of their own daydreams and fantasies. But they also know absolutely nothing about what true Spiritual Science has to say about these things. Thus, the battle being waged by a large part of the enlightened today is a battle against self-created windmills, a Don Quixote-like endeavor. And anyone who thoroughly understands this will find in much of what is said on this side words, nothing but words, that are apt, very apt, for combating the delusions that these people themselves have in mind. But this has nothing to do with what Spiritual Science understands by it. In the course of these lectures, we have been able to demonstrate a strange logic, namely where people, apparently standing on the ground of natural science, are dismissive of theosophy, even though they know nothing of its content. I would just like to share a few things.

You know how deeply I appreciate what Haeckel has created as the foundation of natural science. But what he himself puts forward to reject the mental images of heaven and hell that he himself has formed is based on weak logic. This weakness can easily be demonstrated. In our time, it seems quite appealing to many people who want to be enlightened when Haeckel says: "There is a belief from ancient times that points upward, toward heaven, and says: God dwells there! Those who speak like this do not know that when the earth rotates, the top is somewhere else entirely, and when it has turned completely, one would have to point down instead of up." This seems quite apt. If you nevertheless want to delve a little deeper into logic, then his conclusion is based on nothing other than someone claiming that you go head down and not head up when the earth has turned. These gentlemen are proceeding from the error that we are dealing with things in space, and not with the reference to the spiritual as opposed to the physical. All this must be said again and again, because the subject of our present considerations is, understandably, something very significant.

We may continue from what was said in the last lecture: when we permeate ourselves with the attitude that flows from this Spiritual Science and turn to what gradually forms and develops from the child growing up before us, then we have the feeling that increases more and more into a bright, light, and clear realization: that in the growth, transformation, and change of the child's body, something emerges which, coming out of the supersensible worlds, makes its existence in this world. We arrive at the mental image which, as we have seen, can be elevated to complete certainty through Spiritual Science: that the core essence of the human being, which comes into existence through conception and birth, was already present before conception and before birth, and that what we see in the physical body is the covering of the supersensible spiritual core essence.

This brings us to the question: Where is that which only comes into physical existence through conception and birth? — We have also developed this idea further, and this has led us to recognize that this physical existence of the human being is not the first, but that we must speak of repeated earthly lives, that the human being repeatedly enters into physical existence in the course of earthly development. And we have recognized the idea that what human beings experience in their lives, what they go through in their thinking, feeling, and enjoying, in love and lust, in willing and acting, does not die away, but that the fruit of it remains and continues, and that the next earthly existence takes up this fruit of earlier earthly lives. When the child gradually reveals its talents, abilities, and deeds, this represents for us the result of earlier earthly lives. The human being has struggled its way up through many stages of existence to this point, and what it has gone through in earlier lives has been transformed into a seed and has become content, so that its new life is more complete, appears fuller than its previous life.

This is essentially the ascending path of the human being. Now, in Spiritual Science, we speak of the fact that what enters physical existence through conception and birth, and which leaves the physical body again at death, is in the meantime, between death and new birth, in a spiritual, supersensible world. We discussed part of the spiritual, supersensible world in the last lecture under the name of “hell.” Today we will discuss a large part of it under the concept of “heaven.” In Spiritual Science, heaven is not something that is dreamed of, otherworldly, distant, but something that is there wherever we are. And now we must answer the question: How can what we call heaven, supersensible existence, be where we are, when people cannot perceive it with their physical eyes, when it is true that physical science, which has made such great and mighty achievements, has nowhere been able to discover this paradise, this heaven?

But it has also been pointed out many times that every human being, truly every human being, can come to a full understanding of the supersensible world and heaven. In the essays “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?” attention has been drawn to the methods by which human beings can ascend into the supersensible world. Today, we will only briefly indicate what is important. You need only keep in mind what it means to perceive the sensory-physical world around you. You have certainly read that what we call the fully developed human ear has developed from what Goethe called an “indifferent” organ. Look at the primitive organs of animals and consider what the world of sounds, physical harmonies, melodies, and other noises and tones is like around these imperfect animals. Think about what was necessary for the delicate development of a human organ to its present level, so that humans could work their way into the realm of sounds in the world around them. You can also look at the other organs in this way.

Look at the eye, how it has gradually developed to such an extent that the wonderful world of light and colors can shine forth, which a large part of humanity perceives. And so there is so much in our environment that organs are capable of perceiving from this environment. If human organs were still at an imperfect stage — imagine the human organ of hearing at an imperfect stage — what would a world of sounds, harmonies, and melodies be like for such beings with undeveloped hearing? A world they could not perceive, a “beyond” world! Just as this world relates to the sensory human being in the world, so does the spiritual world relate to what is commonly called the world. And just as imperfect beings with imperfect sensory organs have developed to greater perfection and thereby gained new areas of perception, so too is the human being of today capable of development, just as the human beings of ancient times were. The methods by which the powers and abilities that humans have today can be raised to a higher level are described in detail. No one would think of calling what Forel rejects “heaven.” Spiritual Science simply says that if human beings have the renunciation, energy, and perseverance to develop the abilities that lie dormant within them today, they will perceive the spiritual worlds. — By the spiritual world, we mean what lies within every human being. If they train their organs, then the content of the otherworldly world becomes as much a part of their surrounding world of perception as the world of sounds becomes a world of perception. And this happens more and more as the physical organ becomes more and more perfected.

However, no one should form a mental image of this development, which is being considered here, as being anything like the current methods of development for training a physical sense. That would be a misunderstanding. As a spiritual scientist, one is often asked: How is this sixth sense formed? — and people form the mental image that it must grow out of the organism like an eye. But the higher, supersensible senses are not like that. They relate to our physical senses in a completely different way. Let us briefly characterize how these higher senses — the word does not quite capture their essence, but that does not matter — relate to the other physical senses. The manner of development through which human beings lift themselves up into the supersensible worlds is not external and turbulent, but internal and intimate. And what human beings must go through in order for the spiritual world to shine into their present existence takes place in complete silence and subtlety. It is the three fundamental forces of the soul that are capable of real development toward the higher, the fundamental forces of thinking, feeling, and willing. If we briefly ask ourselves what human beings must do with thinking, feeling, and willing if they want to become citizens of the supersensible world, the heavenly world, already within this existence, then we receive the answer that this is a delicate, subtle work. Starting with issue thirteen of my magazine, you can read about how human beings grow into a supersensible world by cultivating their world of thoughts, feelings, and will in a very specific way. Let us just remember everything that, in today's circumstances, passes through our soul from early in the morning when we wake up until evening when our consciousness sinks into an indefinite darkness passes through our soul, and consider how different it would look in our soul if, instead of living in our age and in this place in Central Europe, we were to live in an age a hundred years earlier and in another place on our earth. Then we will realize how much of what floods the human soul from morning to evening is the pure result of the external world, which is constantly changing. Subtract from the human soul everything that flows through it, everything that is influenced by the age and the place, try to remove from the soul all thoughts that are in any way connected to place and time, and ask yourself how much of such content remains. All thoughts, feelings, and acts of will that flood through the soul and are determined by place and time, in other words, that flow into the human being from outside through daily life, are unsuitable for higher spiritual development, for experiencing a supersensible world. Do not take these things as if something is to be said against human life in the realm in which it is placed. But human beings must find enough time to lift themselves completely above what enters their souls in daily life for certain periods of time. They must devote themselves, even if only for a few minutes, to thoughts and feelings that are independent of place and time, that are eternal. Such thoughts and feelings are given. They are there, they are developed in those who have undergone training in higher spiritual life. When human beings allow such thoughts of eternity to live and work in their souls again and again, then these are forces that are effective in the human soul, truly awakening dormant abilities.

And then let me describe to you the tremendous transformation that takes place when a person devotes themselves to thoughts of eternity in strictly prescribed methods, when they know how to live with such thoughts of eternity in a subtle way. Let us first describe this for our life of thought. Who could deny that such thoughts exist? What is the special nature of human thoughts as they are today? They have the nature that human beings live most intimately with them, for what dwells more intimately in our soul than our thoughts? What are we more intimately connected with than our thoughts and mental images? But these thoughts and mental images, insofar as they relate to the outer world, are the most ineffective, the most passive in relation to this “real” world of the small and trivial. But there is a deep wisdom hidden in this, for example, when one says that no matter how much someone may cling to their numbers, which express the idea of a bridge, no matter how correct the idea of a bridge may be in every detail—the idea is correct, but the bridge is not there. The idea is the most intimate thing that dwells in the soul. But in this world, in which we spend our physical existence, the idea is the most ineffective thing. It leads a completely inner existence. But the moment a person begins — and they must begin with patience — to devote at least a very small part of their time to the idea of eternity, they learn something they could never have dreamed of before. They get to know a world that is different from our physical world in terms of thought. If, in our physical world, thought is the most intimate and yet at the same time the most ineffective, the most passive thing, then through training in thoughts of eternity, which we undergo in physical life, we are introduced to a world in which thought itself is creative. That is the essential thing that matters. Then another world begins to live around the person. And he learns from his experience: when we see in the physical world, we see light; it flows down from the sun; we see how plants, when we deprive them of light, become pale and die; we see how light has a creative effect on these plants. For those who penetrate the supersensible world through training, the thought becomes a reality that floods the universe, a reality that only a sensual thing can be. The thought, which leads an intimate, ineffective existence in the darkness of the inner self, is recognized through training as something that creatively floods the universe, something that is much more real, much more actual than sunlight. Now, when this light of thought, which he then speaks of as a real world spreading around him, flows into the human soul, man realizes that what is soul is enlivened by creative forces, just as the physical plant is permeated by sunlight. Through this we learn how the space around us is flooded with a reality that humans cannot perceive as long as they do not have the necessary abilities, just as those whose ears are not trained cannot perceive sounds.

But then there are also certain feelings that are generated differently in the supersensible world, in supersensible training, than the feelings of everyday, ordinary life. How are the feelings of everyday life generated? Man directs his attention to an object. He likes it. The feeling of pleasure arises in him. The feeling of pleasure arises through the external object. We feel uplifted under the impression of a beautiful external world, we feel filled with disgust when we encounter something ugly in the external world. Thus feelings flood up and down in the human soul. Spiritual Science must lead people deeper into the true, the genuine, the real.

If human beings want to awaken their inner abilities for the supersensible world, they must make themselves capable of feelings that are not stimulated from outside. There is a method by which human beings can immerse themselves in a world of feelings where feelings surge up and down within them without the need for external sensations. Feelings that are stimulated from outside can be awakened in people through the perception of external things. When people learn to develop very specific feelings within themselves, the arousal of such feelings acts as a force that reawakens dormant abilities. And now people know from experience what the initiate can see: that the world of light is creative for both the spiritual and the physical, that it also gradates in the spiritual realm into manifold colors like physical light; they know that there is a world in which spiritual color lives, a world we call the astral world. It enters this physical world for the human being who awakens the dormant abilities and powers within himself when, without any external impulse, he develops more and more a very special kind of feeling through purely spiritual experience, a feeling that is not stimulated by external factors within the sensory world. Those who are able to awaken this feeling of love, a purely inner experience, have gained a connection with the spiritual world.

Then another world joins the element described above. Another world joins the colors. The love that is produced by physical objects can never lead to the spiritual. That love which is satisfied even when the object of love exists only in the spiritual, that love which remains in deep inner experience, is a creative force for a higher kind of element that pervades the spiritual realm. This love is true love. The preliminary stage of this is what the artist feels in his creative work. He has it only when he produces spiritual works from his soul. That love transforms the previously silent spiritual space, flooded with light and color, into a world of sounds, and a world speaks to us in spiritual tones.

So you see how gradually human beings develop upwards into another world, how there is nothing here but a genuine continuation of what is also present in human beings' natural existence, in natural events. Just as the ears emerged from indifferent auditory vesicles, and thus the world of physical sounds emerged from the indeterminate soundless, so the world that has just been described emerges from the previously indeterminate. Those who fight against windmills, as mentioned at the beginning of the lecture, do not speak of these worlds that can be experienced. Those who say that the heavens have not been found anywhere do not know that they do not have to look for them elsewhere, for heaven is where we are. It is simply a matter of not adhering to the assertion: What I cannot perceive does not exist, and if someone else claims that there is something I cannot perceive, then he is a fool, a dreamer, or a swindler. This statement is the most logically incorrect statement there is, for no one can claim that the limits of their perception are also the limits of existence. Otherwise, the deaf could dismiss the whole world of sounds, harmonies, and melodies as fantasy and imagination.

When Spiritual Science speaks of heaven, it speaks of it in the way that has now been described to you. This is how true Spiritual Science speaks of heaven, and this is also how it was spoken of in the original sources of religious confessions, as they were still understood. In this visible world there is a non-sensory world, just as there is a world of sounds for the deaf.

And now we ask ourselves: Why does man, at his present stage of development, not perceive this supersensible world? He does not perceive it because sensory perception, which has entered human development as a necessity, spreads itself like a blanket, like a veil, over the supersensible world. This is what we meant when we described what someone who strives for the supersensible world has to go through. They must lift themselves out of the sensory world; they must silence the sensory world for a while. Then they come to what lies behind this sensory world, then they perceive how the sensory world spreads like a blanket over the supersensible world. Those who truly rise above their bodies in their bodies can perceive what lies behind this veil.

We must know what the powers in ordinary human life are used for, which can thus become abilities to enter the supersensible world. This can only be understood by looking at the true facts: What is the physical world, what is the most imperfect physical body, and what is the perfect physical body that appears before us as the human body? Creations are all physical entities, creations of the spirit. The spiritual underlies everything physical. We have emphasized this repeatedly in many different ways in the course of these lectures. Just as ice hardens from water, so everything physical hardens from the spiritual. It is, as it were, a condensation of the spirit. Let us consider the physical structure of the ear of modern man. What underlies this physical structure of the ear? Spiritual creative power underlies it! The sound that lives as physical sound in our environment belongs to the physical world, which has spiritual sound behind it. In the same world that flows into our physical ear, we hear the physical ‘sound’, and in the same world lives the supersensible, spiritual sound. What is spiritual sound? This spiritual sound is the creator of our ear, just as that which is spiritual, hidden light in physical light is the creator of our eye. That is why Goethe, who expressed so many profound spiritual truths, said: “The eye is formed by light for light.” The power that flows to us from the sun and enables our eye to see objects within their boundaries in a light-filled space also contains those beings who formed the miraculous structure of the eye. Thus, what the physical eye sees and the physical ear hears would mean as much as penetrating what lies behind them, rising up to the spiritual powers. In a certain case, we already do this when we turn our gaze to the young human child, who gradually forms its abilities into the physical human body. We see these abilities emerging from a world hidden behind the sensory world, see how they shoot into matter, creating an aspect of existence in matter.

We return to Spiritual Science and ask ourselves: Where was this being before it took on a physical existence through conception and birth, where was it between its last death and its last birth? It was not in a dreamlike spiritual world, but in the same world in which we are. The whole difference between this being before it entered material existence through conception and birth, and what it is afterwards, consists in the following. Before birth, this being consists of elements that can only be seen if the abilities described above as spiritual have been developed. It is invisible as long as this supersensible ability is not developed. Just as water is invisible to someone as long as it is liquid, but becomes visible as soon as it freezes, so human beings become invisible when they become like water — visible when they freeze, that is, when they become physical.

So we speak of two states of man, a state between death and a new birth, visible only to the spiritual senses, and a state in which he has woven his garment around himself so that he appears visible to the physical senses. Thus we see that in the interval between death and a new birth, human beings are connected with the creative forces that permeate space and which those who develop their supersensible abilities already recognize here as the forces of heaven. Human beings are connected to these creative forces. Here in the physical world, human beings live with physical forces, with physical sounds, with physical light; in the spiritual world, they live in what is spiritually creative behind sound and light. They live in a world that is only different from the physical world. Here in the physical world, the eye sees through light. In the spiritual world, human beings perceive what the eye has created. They live in spiritual light, they live in the spiritual world of sound, they live in what builds their physical body with the help of birth and conception, they live with the productive, creative, cosmic entity where our world, this outer world, which spreads like a blanket over the spiritual world, is built. Thus this blanket flows into the spiritual world itself. Human consciousness shines forth in a different state. The whole difference between the disembodied and the embodied human being is that the disembodied human being lives in a different state of consciousness and perceives the creative forces. And so we will understand what it means when we say that with death, the human being is taken up into a supersensible world. It is not a dream world, not a world of lesser reality than our world; it is a world of denser and stronger intensity and reality, for in it are the creative beings for our physical world. And now we understand what is at work between death and a new birth.

Last time, when we discussed the retarding forces, we saw that when a person passes through the gate of death, a tableau of memories from their entire last life appears before them. We saw that this tableau is absorbed like an essence and remains united with the person for all time to come. we saw how they pass through the Kamaloka period, where they have to undergo a kind of purification. Once they have undergone this purification, what they have taken with them from their last life becomes something special, something new. We know that when human beings pass through the gate of death, they enter the spiritual, supersensible world. Think of it as a field, as fertile soil, and think of what the human being brings with them from their last life as the fruit of their thinking, feeling, and willing, which can be summarized as the fruit of their last life, like a plant seed that is planted in the ground and sprouts. Thus the fruit of the last life sprouts in the spiritual soil, and human consciousness notices and perceives this sprouting, this unfolding, this development of the seed of life brought along from the last life. Everything that people have taken with them from the life of their time is impregnated into this last fruit of life, and what has approached people from outside expands and sprouts like a seed. This becomes the world of perception and consciousness between death and a new birth. What permeates the soul can only be made clear to those who do not themselves have the ability to perceive supersensibly by means of a comparison. Upon deeper reflection, you will understand the comparison. What a person feels when the last seed of life unfolds is rightly called bliss, for it is bliss. It is the opposite feeling of what a person can perceive when they feel objects. Now they feel them unfolding, before they flow out; but now the essence flows out, and in the formation of the seed of life, the feeling that can be compared to that which, at a lower level — upon deeper reflection, it will seem significant to you — the chicken has when it hatches the egg, permeates him: that of the blissful bringing forth of a life, the bliss of the sprouting of the seed. This bliss leads to the human being mentally modeling what chains him to physical birth, what brings him into physical existence. Because he has gathered new experiences, which he imprints on the core, every life becomes more perfect — with the exception of the ups and downs that must also be there.

As we saw last time, in the whole of life we have an ascent to ever greater and greater perfection. We see how that which has become so established in the physical world shows itself creatively anew in production in the physical world, in the feeling of bliss.

So we must be clear that only the state of consciousness of human beings is different from that in the supersensible world. By way of comparison, we can make it even clearer to ourselves how the state of consciousness differs between the physical world and the supersensible world. Imagine a person listening to a symphony. He allows the sounds to reach him from outside. He enjoys them. Now imagine that it were possible for a person to construct this symphony creatively, spiritually, without touching a text, without playing an instrument, that he creatively linked tone after tone together in his mind. The relationship between the perception of the former and the one in which the symphony germinated is the same as the relationship between the physical world and perception in the supersensible. Therefore, we must say: in order to perceive the heavenly world, a person must have renounced the idea that anything in the physical world can meet them spiritually. As long as they have not renounced this, they cannot see.

However, the spiritual world does not appear to us as a world to which logical thinking cannot rise. What people usually object to is only that they cannot perceive it.

Thus, the concept of “heaven” regains its meaning for the people of the future. It is not a concept of a dreamlike world in which we find ourselves. Consciousness in the creative world is much brighter and more intense than in the physical world. Therefore, we must imagine life and human consciousness in the creative world to be more intense than in the physical world.

What is the relationship between the physical world and the supersensible world? It is natural that people are initially interested in this relationship. I would therefore like to express this with a counter-question: Will people in the supersensible world know about those who are dear and precious to them in this world? Will what has happened here continue in some way? It will! And you will understand this correctly if you think through what has just been said with complete clarity, making it clear that there is an intimate connection between this physical world and the supersensible world. What is sown here as a seed will sprout there and bear fruit. Nothing in the world is without a spiritual background. In the physical world, human beings are already working for the superphysical world. Here is an example: Let us assume that a mother is lovingly attached to her child. This love is initially developed, one might say, through the natural basis. But then, with every moment, this love is transformed from a purely natural love, conditioned by physical circumstances, into a spiritual love. To the extent that the love that makes use of the natural basis is transformed into spiritual motherly love, the human being grows into spiritual love. This love becomes truer in the spiritual realm. Just as only the earthly shell falls away from the human being, so only the physical-earthly falls away from the spiritual being. The entire network that is drawn from human soul to human soul, that which lives from heart to heart, from spirit to spirit, is already invisibly present in the supersensible world. The spiritual, the core of the human being, lives itself into the supersensible world, and everything that the human being has established here in this physical world finds its continuation as spiritual in the spiritual world. Everything that is connected here in a spiritual way is found again in full consciousness, indeed in brighter consciousness, in the spiritual world. Depending on how it is found, a bond is formed again in a new life course, so that those who come together in often strange sympathy have to explain this to themselves from what they themselves have spun in previous lives.

Thus we see how our entire sensory world is embedded in this supersensible, invisible world. And just as man is a citizen of the sensory world between birth and death, so he is a citizen of the supersensible world after death, only he does not know this in our time between birth and death.

In our last reflection, we presented the concept of “hell,” and today we present the concept of “heaven,” which contains all the spiritual influences on human beings. Last time, we discussed the forces that lead to hardening, while what we describe today appears to be the opposite: the principle of development. Life progresses from existence to existence, and the more creative forces are transferred from the last life, the higher the next existence rises. By not only wanting to enjoy what he takes in, but by penetrating through what he enjoys to what is transformed into spiritual forces, man is constantly in the heavenly world. Everything that can advance man is the content of the heavenly elements; everything that hinders progress is the content of the hellish worlds.

Anyone who wants to bring such a concept of heaven into harmony with what natural science has achieved will find it easy to do so. They will achieve it in complete harmony. It is just that there is not much inclination among our contemporaries to engage in living into these higher worlds. Our age is weary of contemplating the supersensible world, and therefore this age is only too credulous toward those who assert: What I cannot perceive is not true, and if anyone claims it is true, then he is a fool or a madman. — Far too many in this age become believers of such an opinion. Even though we can clearly see the great and tremendous progress our age is making in physical science, we also see, on the other hand, how little inclined the vast majority of our contemporaries are to penetrate the supersensible world. It is believed that penetrating the supersensible world makes people weak and alienated from the sensory world. This is a prejudice. If someone has a piece of iron in front of them and says: There is magnetic force in this iron; rub it with another piece of iron and you have a magnet — another person may come along and say: Oh, come on, that piece of iron is good for hammering nails. — These are the true fantasists, who take the sensual, the practical, only as someone who takes the magnet only for hammering nails. The realists, the monists, the utilitarians, and so on are the true fantasists. They know only the forces of the physical world and triumph when tremendous progress is made by exposing the forces of the physical world. Spiritual Science has nothing, absolutely nothing, to object to in this physical world. But it also knows that it is high time for people to learn again that the spiritual is hidden in the physical, and that people become dreamers precisely when they close their spiritual eyes to the spiritual world. Today, true realists, apostles of reality, are those who point to the spiritual forces! What do these true realists want? They want the real forces that lie dormant behind the sensory to be introduced into this world, to be integrated into our entire development, so that we introduce not only the telegraph, the telephone, and the railroad, i.e., the ordinary forces, but also the spiritual forces.

If those who respond to these things are still laughed at today, they do not care about this laughter. They know that just as the great figures of physical science once found followers only in small circles, so too must those who have something to say about the spiritual worlds necessarily find their way into the wider world. Even if only a few can create telegraphs, telephones, and locomotives, others can still use them. But everyone must attain the spiritual world for themselves.

The great physicists Thomson, Clausius, and so on have their successors who are able to recognize the laws of physics. One of the greatest laws of physics is at the same time that which draws man to the spiritual world. For those who have studied physics a little, I am saying nothing new when I point out that there is a law of entropy that originates from Carnot, the uncle of the French president. What does it say? It expresses one of the most certain principles we have in the physical world, namely how the forces of the world transform in relation to the physical. It states how the forces of the physical world transform, how one force changes into another. Strike the table with your hand and measure the effect on the surface with a fine thermometer. You will find that the spot where the blow fell has become warm. You see how the heat of the locomotive is transformed into motion and this in turn is transformed back into heat. All of this is based on a great law: the law of entropy. From observing the world, it becomes clear that this transformation of force does indeed follow a certain guideline, a certain meaning. The law of entropy shows us that ultimately all force must be transformed into heat, and this heat dissipates into space. Thus, physical law has proven that the Earth, our physical world, will one day suffer heat death. This law exists. Anyone who denies this law must believe that only physical forces exist in our world; for if they acknowledged the law, they would have to say: Then everything is over. That is why Haeckel takes the position that this law of entropy is nonsense, because it contradicts his law of substance. That things are constantly changing is a law of nature. A Russian physicist has proven in a paper how firmly established this law is, which shows us the physical end of our present world state. It was in this very paper by Professor Chwolson that the “12th Commandment” was established. You can see there how competent a physicist can be in the physical realm, just as you can see from what he says about Hegel how ignorant such scholars can be in spiritual matters. The “12th Commandment” is: “Thou shalt never write about anything thou dost not understand.” Chwolson follows it in his field, where he speaks about physics, but he does not follow it in the spiritual realm. Everything he says about physics is excellent; but what he says about spiritual things is of little value and a great sin against the law: “Thou shalt never write about something you do not understand.”

This is followed by a passage that was apparently not recorded by the stenographer, in which Rudolf Steiner probably explained that Hegel was not understood by Chwolson. Rudolf Steiner, on the other hand, agrees with Chwolson's remarks on an essay by Kossuth in a scientific journal, where it is claimed that the law of conservation of mass is nothing more than the statement: The whole is equal to the sum of its parts, and the law of conservation of energy is nothing more than the statement: The cause is equal to the effect. Referring to Lavoisier's discoveries, Rudolf Steiner continues:

Anyone who is familiar with spiritual research knows what it means to have shown that when substances combine chemically, the weight is equal to the sum of the parts. And if one adds that this law contains nothing other than the old mathematical law: the whole is equal to the sum of its parts, then one must be clear that this only applies to the weight of the whole, which is equal to the sum of the weight of its parts. Kossuth forgets that when one enters the spiritual realm, this law no longer applies. That is how short-sighted thinking can be. Chwolson says: Let Mr. Kossuth just take his pocket watch and crush it in a mortar; then he can see whether the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Goethe has already expressed this thought, and it is often repeated:

Whoever wants to recognize and describe something living,
First seeks to drive out the spirit,
Then he has the parts in his hand,
Unfortunately, only the spiritual bond is missing.

Very few of those who believe they are standing on the ground of certain facts know that natural science is often nothing more than a disregard for the spiritual bond. On the one hand, when we survey this whole situation and relate it to what I have been able to present in our considerations regarding the supersensible world, we see that in many human souls there lives a longing to penetrate into the supersensible world. But people doubt those very specific details that must be spoken of by those who really know something about these things. We see the longing for the supersensible world stirring, but we do not see the strength and energy to penetrate into these supersensible worlds under the guidance of Spiritual Science. On the other hand, we have the facts of our time. We have a capable physical science in our time: Thomson, Clausius, and Carnot have found worthy successors. If development in Spiritual Science progresses in the same spirit, then researchers in the spiritual field will find successors as capable as Thomson, Clausius, and Carnot. The result will be that humanity, which today has almost closed itself off from the heavenly world, from the supersensible world, will emerge as one that draws the power of the stars from the supersensible world into the sensory world. Spiritual Science should not alienate people from the world, but make them strong, energetic, and active in life by enriching reality. The mind becomes not alienated from reality, but richer in reality, through the transmission of knowledge of the spiritual world to human beings.

We need only bring two things together, and they will come together: in the same rigorous way as now in physical science, a large part of humanity will have the opportunity to satisfy the needs of the heart from the spiritual world. Bringing together these two spiritual currents, the satisfaction of the senses' needs from natural science and the satisfaction of the heart's longings from the spiritual, is the task of Spiritual Science as a cultural current.

These lectures will be continued in the same spirit next winter. We will pursue some of the topics that have remained sketchy and delve deeper into them. Thus, at the conclusion, the most comprehensive and significant concept should form the subject of the last lecture. Truly, there will come a time when there will be a wisdom that can once again be religion, that can once again satisfy all the deepest religious needs of the heart. A spiritual movement will arise that will satisfy all the needs of logical thinking as well as the longing for a supersensible life. It is to this longing that Spiritual Science addresses its words. When the path is found to what is present in this intuition, then the wisdom that introduces us to this supersensible world will flow into the human soul in such a way that culture — and this is not meant in a rhetorical sense — will experience a spiritual rebirth that connects to the fire that lives in many and wants to penetrate the supersensible worlds. From this fire, spiritual scientific wisdom will penetrate the supersensible world, for that is its true ideal.

We should be grateful for the great ideal that seeks to ignite the wisdom of the supersensible from the fire of enthusiasm for the supersensible; for it will always be the course of spiritual culture that the light of wisdom develops from the fire of love and enthusiasm.