Human History in the Light of Spiritual Investigation

GA 61 — 19 October 1911, Berlin

Human Beings in Their Relationship to the Supernatural Worlds

As has been the case for a number of winters now, I will continue to give lectures in the coming months on topics and interests related to spiritual science, the science of the supernatural worlds. When we speak of knowledge or science of the supersensible worlds in our present time, we still encounter numerous prejudices and resistance. This is only too understandable. For anyone familiar with the spiritual development of recent years or decades will readily admit that this spiritual development has generally been quite averse to accepting research into the supersensible world in any sense. If, as has been the case in the past winter lectures and will continue to be the case, the claim is made that these lectures, in their entire form and tone, have a scientific character and can stand alongside other scientific considerations, then these prejudices are all the greater. However, it must be admitted that recently, within our spiritual life, there has been a growing need to look up into the supersensible worlds in order to draw meaning and understanding of the whole of human life from this knowledge of the supersensible world, and also to gain strength in our complicated lives for the demands of the outer world. There is an ever-increasing longing for knowledge of the supersensible world.

On the other hand, however, it cannot be denied that modern man, when imbued with what is otherwise considered authoritative for the attainment of views on life in our present age, also makes scientific demands on spiritual science, demanding a scientific justification in a certain respect. Now, it must be admitted that there are numerous circles in our present time which, from the standpoint of contemporary science, completely deny the claim of the supersensible worlds to scientific validity in any way. If we look around to see how this denial occurs, we may notice that two very different points of view are taken in this regard, but that they find numerous representatives, especially in our time, among those who have the urge, the longing, to outgrow the old traditions that exist to satisfy supersensible needs. Some say that what external science in its various branches can provide today, especially the admirable natural sciences, is sufficient to give human beings a satisfactory picture of the world that must satisfy any longing for a worldview and philosophy of life. Only that worldview could be valid, they say in these circles, which simply summarizes the scientific or other scientifically recognized results in order to form a picture of the solution to the world's mysteries from their entirety. Others, on the other hand, say: We can indeed form a picture of the world if we use today's science as a basis for forming thoughts and ideas about what may underlie external phenomena, but this picture is not sufficient for the indelible need of the human soul for knowledge. Everything we can know about the world through external science alone proves to us how little this external science is sufficient to answer the really great mystery questions of existence in any way. Everywhere, a precise and thorough knowledge of external science points to the foundations of what this science itself provides. —- Within these circles, there are again those who admit that there are indications of the supernatural everywhere in the world and that external science is never sufficient to obtain a satisfactory picture of the solution to the world's mysteries, but who nevertheless say that man is limited in his cognitive abilities and knowledge and that in scientific terms he would exceed the limits of his capabilities and his knowledge if he wanted to penetrate this supersensible world.

Thus we see that it is precisely from the spiritual life with which spiritual science seeks to harmonize that prejudices and resistance against it arise. Therefore, at the beginning of this series of lectures, it will be necessary to engage in a certain programmatic discussion about the possibility of a relationship between human beings and the supersensible worlds. That human beings must have such a relationship with the supersensible worlds, and that they are perhaps simply unable to penetrate these supersensible worlds with their powers of cognition, has always been admitted by more cautious minds, even in the recent golden age of natural science. When one hears, as is often the case today, that such discussions as are to be cultivated here in this series of lectures are basically an inadmissible fantasy about the supersensible worlds — and this is not meant as a criticism — and if one must find this understandable, then on the other hand it may also be pointed out that at least one fact has always been admitted by more cautious thinkers and researchers, namely that it is not arbitrary on the part of the human soul to draw its own conclusions from what external science can provide, namely that everything in our environment ultimately points to supersensible worlds.

Let me point out one older and one more recent fact from the numerous series of facts and thus introduce what will then be clarified in the further lectures through spiritual scientific research itself. Let me begin by saying that the science of the last decades has not led those who really know it to deny the supersensible worlds, and that, on the other hand, for those who are familiar with the current scientific standpoint, it can already be said today that our external science has progressed to such an extent that it feels compelled, at least to a limited extent, to admit a certain knowledge of supersensible worlds in our immediate present. This rigorous science thus refutes in the most serious sense what is represented in many popular worldviews today as a materialistic or monistic, or whatever you want to call it, worldview.

Let me first point out an older fact: a researcher who stood at the center of what can be called the glorious enterprise of modern natural science, who achieved a great deal in a narrowly defined specialized field, but who also kept his mind open to everything that external science cannot offer. This researcher once said the following memorable words: “The picture that natural science can give of what underlies material effects and natural forces in the theories about numerous atomic effects that natural science represents today is admirable. But,” says this researcher, and I would like to emphasize this as a fact — it would be a fatal mistake to believe that in all that natural science can offer in its views and theories, there is anything that would exclude a metaphysical need, that is, a need that the human soul has for knowledge of the supersensible world or at least for the assumption of the existence of the supersensible world. It would be a fatal error to believe that everything natural science can offer is only something that corresponds to external perception, even if it penetrates into the atomic world. This perception must always have a reason that goes beyond itself. — This natural scientist's statement was made at a time when less rigorous thinkers, that is, the daredevils of modern natural science, if I may use that expression, celebrated ideas that sought to exclude any human thought of a supernatural world. — I am not telling you the statement of a natural scientist who was perhaps afflicted by some kind of mysticism, or who was philosophically burdened, or who might have made it in a mystical gathering. The statement I have just quoted was made in 1867, at the dawn of the materialistic natural science of the past century, at the Vienna Academy of Sciences by the famous clinician and pioneer of medical science Karl von Rokitansky. And what he said will nevertheless be admitted by those who know the whole nature and innermost essence of natural science, regardless of what else has been achieved by the daredevils of this worldview.

I would like to mention another fact. Who could believe that today any science owes its greatness more to purely external experimental research than physics, which was founded on such external research and experiments by those thinkers? And what could be cited more than the physical achievements of our time, on the one hand, as characteristic of contemporary scientific thinking and, on the other hand, again and again when the possibility is to be refuted that man could have to deal with things of the supernatural world? But what if a physicist were to come along today and say: We must bid farewell to contemporary physical thinking, or at least there are numerous facts and research results that suggest that we must bid farewell to an idea on which so many hopes have been pinned in recent decades, especially for the purely scientific approach? Namely, to say goodbye to an idea such as the materially conceived world ether, which for many years has been regarded, so to speak, as a kind of magic potion for all external natural phenomena. For phenomena such as light, heat, electrical phenomena, and so on could only be explained by hypothetically assuming that behind what our eyes see and our senses perceive there exists the so-called world ether as the finest substance from which, so to speak, everything can be explained. And since this world ether was thought of as material, it was not difficult to attribute to it the origin of all spiritual and supersensible experiences of human beings in some processes of that material ether which fills us ourselves. For everything else that is attributed to a supernatural, spiritual world, this material world ether became a kind of magician and explainer. What if a physicist were to come along and say that certain things within physical research compel us to think that such a connection between the forces of nature must be assumed, through which it proves possible that light rays are conducted through space without the prerequisite of a material world ether? Or if this physicist were to say that, based on certain facts, it must already be assumed today that light waves propagate through space without a material carrier? And if this physicist were to go on to say: Well, yes, this does violate every kind of mechanical explanation of nature, but if the physical facts challenge this, then the mechanical view of nature is irretrievably lost. And if he were to go even further and say: What then is to be put in place of what has been assumed by science in the materialistic sense for so long as the world ether? Then something must be put in its place that, above all, does not have to be attributed any material properties. Something very strange must now be put in place of this world ether. — And I must emphasize this again and again: in the sense of today's physics, something very strange must be put in place of the world ether. Namely, in place of the ether, which until now was supposed to propagate light through space, pure equations in the mathematical sense must now be put. These are thoughts, thought constructs. And what continues there in the sense of thought constructs is not to continue through matter, but — as one would say in scholarly terms — through the vacuum, through empty space. In relation to light, which is not bound to any material substance, this is described as necessary by physics.

If someone had said this some time ago, in the era of materialistic or monistic excess, one would probably have assumed that this was just another confused proponent of a spiritual worldview, because only such a person could claim that light flows through space without a material carrier. But this was not said by a mystic, nor was it said at a gathering where people can be fed all sorts of things, but by the physicist Max Planck of the University of Berlin in September 1910 at the 82nd Natural Scientists' Assembly in Königsberg. This is a fact that is even more significant than the one mentioned earlier, for the reason that here we have not merely conceded what we heard from the clinician Karl von Rokitansky: that nature itself points everywhere to a supernatural world — but that the thoughts of the physicist, which he actually writes down on paper with mathematical symbols, contain something that is not bound to any material carrier. That is to say, we have not only conceded that somewhere in the unknown there are pure thoughts, that is, spiritual effects, but that physics, in its real findings, must recognize that it is not only material things that carry the supernatural through space.

We thus see science arriving at that gate where it must not be content merely to say: There may be a supersensible world, but human knowledge cannot penetrate it. — Instead, it now admits that the thoughts that science itself forms do not merely refer to the external world, which consists only of matter and is saturated with matter, but that the insights one has refer to the spiritual, to the supersensible! This provides proof, based on our current circumstances, for those who truly understand the development of science, that it is backward-looking today to say that supersensible knowledge cannot claim validity within science. And perhaps it should not be considered so fantastical when those who stand on the ground of spiritual science feel compelled to say: With such concessions, science is just beginning to find a path that must lead further and further, for things are developing from their beginnings toward recognition of the reality of what human beings can perceive with their powers of cognition in relation to a supersensible world.

If human beings want to penetrate the supersensible world, they first turn today, and have always turned within certain areas, to what is called the contemplation of the world. We do not even need to use the word philosophy; what human beings essentially need is contemplation of thought. For it soon becomes clear to a person that mere external observation — however scientific it may be — cannot lead to the underlying principles of things. So people turn to contemplation and seek to form a picture of the solution to the riddles of the world within their thoughts. Even those who want to form a picture of the world based solely on materially given facts are dependent on forming a picture of what underlies the world in this way. Everything that Ernst Haeckel, for example, contributes to a world picture also springs from thoughts, even though he relies on what is external scientific knowledge. Whether someone relies more or less on what external science provides, or whether science arrives at an idealistic or spiritual world picture, in both cases thoughts must be resorted to. And this thought has a peculiarity when we surrender to it. What is peculiar about this thought is revealed by the fact that many people find intellectual research and philosophical reflection unsympathetic or at least uncomfortable.

There have always been philosophers since ancient Greek times. But it is not only that students, in the sweat of their brow, are forced to immerse themselves in what reflection on the mysteries of the world has sought to provide, but it is also the case that people who, out of the warmth of their hearts, perhaps out of a deep religious need to maintain peace and harmony in their souls and strength for life, or who, out of a lively need for enlightenment, and gain insight into what can shed light on life, find what is presented in theoretical books and philosophy about the solution to the mysteries of the world to be rather dry, sober, abstract, and uncomfortable. Those who are truly fulfilled by life, who stand in the midst of it as practitioners and feel attracted to what life immediately offers, will easily feel repelled by the sobriety and abstractness of many writings and lectures that seek to ascend into supersensible worlds through intellectual work. This is something that is probably experienced in the widest circles. But as dazzling as philosophical systems about the mysteries of the world may sometimes be for those who can pursue them due to the preconditions of their lives, such paths are unpalatable for people who are fully immersed in existence, creativity, and work. Nevertheless, those who, out of a serious thirst for knowledge, have created such systems of thought in order to penetrate the mysteries of the world, have felt that they have said: This mental work provides a picture of what actually underlies the world as supersensible facts. And anyone who is able to admire what thinkers of recent times, but also of earlier times, have achieved in this regard knows what has been accomplished not only in terms of human acumen, but also in terms of human dedication, in order to penetrate the world in this way of thinking. And they also know what deep satisfaction can be felt, under certain conditions, at the solution of the world's mysteries in the philosophical, intellectual constructs and systems of ideas of great thinkers. These are by no means merely abstract, but, even if they appear abstract, are nevertheless written with a great deal of heart and soul, with all the warmth of the spirit.

But one thing cannot be denied when it comes to such philosophical systems, something that is not felt by those who are born philosophers or who can experience joy and contentment in abstract thoughts, but which can be felt by those who are attached to such a system of thought with warmth of heart, with their whole humanity and with a deep need to penetrate the supersensible world. I would like to illustrate what such a person feels using the example of a thinker who, admittedly, met a tragic fate, but who, at the time when he spoke the words we are about to discuss, was preoccupied with the great questions of the intellectual solution to the mysteries of the world in a very astute and at the same time penetrating manner. I am referring to Friedrich Nietzsche. We can completely disregard what became of him afterwards. What is to be characterized here lies in the early years of his work, when he prepared lectures at the University of Basel, which then appeared in his posthumous works, lectures on the Greek thinkers under the title “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks,” that is, before Socrates, where we are particularly interested in the gigantic thinkers such as Thales, Heraclitus, and Parmenides. They interest us because we can see how, out of a lively way of thinking, out of the Greek worldview and Greek culture, which was truly rooted in life and was saturated with immediate life, a structure of thought such as that of Parmenides arose, which strove to penetrate into the supersensible worlds, but in such a way that Parmenides, the gigantic thinker of ancient Greece, rose from the midst of the ancient, lush Greek world to the abstract thought, to the thought of primordial being and primordial non-being. Not only people who are otherwise immersed in practical life can be overcome by a slight shudder, something like goose bumps, when someone, in order to ascend to the supersensible worlds, resorts to such express thoughts, such abstractions as “being,” “primordial being,” “primordial non-being.” Even those who are otherwise accustomed to dealing philosophically with questions of existence say to themselves: it makes one's blood run cold to realize how a person can ascend to such thoughts, from which all life seems to be squeezed out like juice from a lemon, thoughts that are far too sober, dry, and abstract for other people. And this chapter particularly interested Nietzsche because it shows how a thinker rises directly from life to an abstract world of thought. Nietzsche found these thoughts, as Parmenides had conceived them at the time, to be colorless, soulless, and completely devoid of what the heart longs for. And yet, anyone who is now engaged in spiritual science in the sense of gaining insight into the supersensible world, as it is to be represented here, understands when such a person says that one's blood could freeze in one's veins at these parched abstractions, at these thoughts brought to the utmost abstraction, and when such a person shows that even in the most wonderful edifice of thought, such as that of Hegel, for example, there is something that touches us soberly, where we are overcome by the feeling: How do you want to grasp this world, which, as we know from everyday life, approaches us so full of life, how do you want to grasp its foundation with your spider's web of thought that you spin out? Nevertheless, it is precisely in such a feeling that the seed lies for what must be present in the human soul if the relationship between man and the supersensible worlds is to be established.

The human being — even if he is the greatest philosopher and the greatest thinker — who spins out systems of thought with a certain ease, who is able to ascend to abstractions and says to himself: in these abstractions you have the truth about the things of the world — this human being can only add to such thoughts, however gossamer-thin and abstract they may be, nothing more than an image, about which one must say: it is an image — an image that can never exhaust the whole rich fullness of what must underlie the world. A thinker who constructs such a worldview in his mind may feel a certain satisfaction, a certain comfort and contentment in it, but a person living a full life has a right to say to himself: such a structure of thought can never exhaust the fullness of life and thus never exhaust the foundations of life.

This edifice of thought must be developed in a very special way by those who want to find their way into the spiritual worlds; it must be reinforced and pursued to its ultimate consequences. You will find more detailed and specific information in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds.” Here, it can only be a matter of indicating the most important points of view concerning the path that human beings must take if they want to attain real knowledge of the supersensible world. It must be said that everyone can feel, when they engage in mere thought constructs, that they become spiritually cold, that they feel as if they have not approached the world but have distanced themselves from the fullness of existence, as if they have really squeezed the juice out of existence as if from a lemon. But one must also be able to feel something else, how one can still feel passion and enthusiasm for the crystalline clarity, for the wonderful architecture of a structure of thought, how one can say in a certain way: What seems so abstract is nevertheless the greatest achievements of thought that human beings can experience within themselves, and which show them how intellectual creativity rules the world. So one must carry enthusiasm, feeling, and emotion into the worlds that can seem so empty because of their abstractions; one must be able to feel enthusiasm for what appears to us as a light of thought when we rise to it. A thinker who merely thinks and cannot feel enthusiasm for the thoughts weaving through the world can indeed never penetrate the supersensible world.

But that is only one side of what one must feel if one wants to establish a relationship with the supersensible. The other is an experience of those who have become spiritual researchers: namely, that one has risen to thoughts, but that one feels something like having lost the solid ground beneath one's feet, like standing over an abyss. As long as one feels comfortable with the thoughts, as long as one feels secure in the thoughts, one cannot ascend into the supersensible world. Only when, in pursuing your thoughts, you feel something that contains a twofold comparison: as if the ground were being pulled away from under our feet and we had to float in the void, or as if we saw the blue vault of heaven spreading out above us and then realized that the blue vault of heaven is not a blue vault of heaven at all, but rather yourself, whose vision does not extend far enough, surrounding yourself with a blue vault of heaven, and in truth it goes into infinity, and in truth you must ask: where is a fixed point? Only when one feels, at the same time as an inner uncertainty, that one is blocking one's view and at the same time evoking the inkling of infinity, and then thinks this feeling intensifies, can one feel something of what the other must feel with all his strength, who creates thoughts about the connections between worlds, but who wants to penetrate through thoughts into the living feeling of spiritual facts and spiritual beings, and who then feels something as if he were blocking his own way with his thoughts to where spiritual beings live, where the spirit is active.

What I have told you is not something fantastically constructed, nor is it created from thoughts: it is an experience of all those who have sought the path to the supersensible worlds. This can become an experience as described in the book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds.” What I have characterized as a feeling intensifies in a certain way and, for those who walk the path of knowledge in the true sense of the word, intensifies to a feeling that is related to what people know in everyday life as fear, as a feeling of insecurity, and which could be characterized as not knowing where one stands, not knowing where one is flying, or not knowing where one is. But this feeling must not be allowed to develop fully; it must remain, as it were, in the depths of the soul; only then can we penetrate the supersensible world. This feeling must be immediately illuminated by what can be compared to the feeling of courage, energy, and the unfolding of the will. People must become aware of something within themselves that they can develop through self-education in slow, patient progress, if they often come to the conclusion: You do not only do, or set out to do, what you are prompted to do by external circumstances, what you are asked to do, but you set yourself the ideal of doing this or that out of your own thoughts and of not losing sight of the idea and the unwavering will to do it. If we do this more often in life, indeed develop it systematically, then it gives us an idea that we cannot receive from any external world or external view, that we can draw out from the deeper foundations of the soul. If we can develop this feeling at the moment when we rise to pure, sensuality-free thoughts that are not drawn from the outside world, when we do not stare at what our eyes and ears and so on provide us with, when we surrender to this feeling again and again, then something forms within us that must be experienced, but that can be experienced in the same way that a physical or chemical experiment can be experienced. In the self-experiment of the soul, one can experience a liberation from any view and knowledge that can only be attained through the tools of physicality, a liberation from the physical body and a penetration into that world about which we can otherwise only spin webs of thought. And then what is really present is not what many people know solely from such a state of ecstasy, what they know from an experiment that destroys human consciousness, but a liberation from everything that sensual existence and sensory perception mean. The human being enters the world with his own being, which he knows to have an independent reality in relation to physicality, a world that must be called supersensible because it is experienced as supersensible. And if someone says, “You can imagine that,” then of course there is no other way than through logical possibilities and reasons to give someone an idea of what is experienced in the supersensible worlds and what human beings are as supersensible beings. But anyone who enters the supersensible world knows that they are arriving at a reality of a supersensible nature in the manner described, which is just as clear to them in its reality, and which they know to be just as free from fantasy as they know the external sensory world to be.

What I have described of the supersensible world is only one direction in which we must go if we want to gain a relationship to the supersensible worlds. There is something else. What I have described is the path through thought, what we call in the language of spiritual science meditation, quiet, calm meditation imbued with feeling and sensation, deepening into the inner thought experiences of the soul. That is one direction. The other direction is that through which human beings can experience something that differs from all thought experiences. All thought experiences are such that, when we cherish them, they have something dry, abstract, impersonal about them, something that makes us feel a kind of numbness because it makes us so alien to immediate life. One must feel this in order to carry such feelings, as they have just been characterized, into mental deepening, into meditation, and one will become aware that when one rises through thought, through thought to the spiritual being, one enters the supersensible world. But the question must arise: Can human beings only enter into reality, into actuality, by way of thought?

To answer this question, we must point to another aspect of the relationship between human beings and the supersensible worlds. Just as human beings can wander through worlds and spatial spheres in the way just described, they can also penetrate into their own being. Then, however, they come to something that leads them away from thought just as the path described above led them to thought, for both materialistic thought science and the one I am about to discuss lead away from thought. Materialistic thought science shows that thinking is bound to the brain process, that nowhere in the world is any other thinking to be found than that which is bound to the brain. But when a person returns from thinking to themselves and becomes clear about themselves and sees how thoughts and their entire mental life bubble up like foam from the depths of the sea of their soul life, then there is something to experience from which the thought emerges. However, this gives rise to a deep dissatisfaction felt by those who have an understanding of the question of the true meaning of life, if thoughts were only a foam formation on the surface of the surging sea of soul life; for if they were, then the world would be meaningless. This is an emotional experience for those who have an understanding of the meaning of life. But now we will characterize how one can arrive at something through a different direction, something that is free from abstract thought, that is full of substance, that refers us back to ourselves, and that is free from thought, that does not have everything that has just been described as the abstract, sober, dry nature of intellectual knowledge, of the science of thought.

What the other direction gives us is what we call mystical experience. The person who immerses themselves in their own emotional world, who strives for true self-knowledge, who can bring themselves to turn their gaze away from what surrounds us in the world, arrives where the great mystics have arrived. When we look at these mystics, we hear from them that they experience within themselves the highest thing they imagine as divine, which reigns and surges through the world. A divine spark also lives within human beings. This is what repeatedly comes up in mystical discussions such as those we find in Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and many others. This is a direct mystical experience. But there is something characteristic that such a mystical experience always points to, and this is something that opponents of such mystical experiences always bring up against their significance for humanity. This mystical experience has something individual, something very personal about it. And anyone who penetrates what can be experienced in the depths of the soul as the divine spark that enlightens us about the world and its innermost reasons, and especially those who experience this most strongly, will say: It is an inner experience of such depth, such breadth, that human concepts, as they are otherwise accepted for other things, are incapable of conveying what is experienced in this way. — The deepest mystics will agree that this experience cannot be expressed in thoughts, let alone put into words, that all thought life is powerless in the face of the depths of the divine that one can experience in the depths of one's own experience when one feels at one with what pulsates through the world as the divine, when one is clear from an inner conviction about what interweaves the world. One can experience it, the mystics will say, but one cannot put it into words. Therefore, one cannot convey it to others in the usual way, but the mystery of the world can only be experienced personally by each individual.

One thing stands in the way: namely, what one believes in one's thoughts to be one's own. But this is again linked to the fact that one cannot truly arrive at the divine content of the world, which you can read about in all the mystics who have described it. There the soul encounters inner enemies. Then the human being can no longer say: When I feel this or that rising up, feel this or that passion, experience this or that, and so on, then that is within my own power. No! Then the human being feels as if he were seized by inner enemies, over whom he cannot initially gain control, but over whom he must gain control if he wants to break through what separates him from his innermost being and thus from the inner world. Then one begins to feel within oneself something that is more than what we know through our thoughts, something that rises up from within us, that pours out over this self, and one comes to the necessity of seeking forces with which to overcome everything that one finds recognizable. Certain feelings must once again permeate the mystic. For if the mystics only emphasized: You only need to penetrate into yourself, then you will experience God — then that would again be such a self-satisfied descent into oneself, like the self-satisfied life in thoughts and ideas.

But if one wants to come to reality, one must experience something that is a very specific feeling, which can be defined in the following way. Some of you will already have found confirmation of this in your own everyday lives. We all know pain, we know suffering. Let us start with a form of suffering that is easiest to recognize. Everyone knows how agonizing physical pain and suffering can be. But you may also know that when the pain increases more and more, there is a stage of intensity where it can turn into a certain stage of bliss, even pleasure. This was exploited in cases where people who were to be brought closer to the sources of existence were tortured so that the pain became so intense that it turned into its opposite. There are stages in which one feels something in the pain that emerges as a kind of pleasure and bliss. Something similar, though not the same, must be felt by those who dive into their inner selves, where they overcome everything that is hostile to them with all their strength. One gets an idea of this when reading the mystics who describe how they strove to fight against all temptations of passion and egoism. Selfishness and passion grow into something great. It is still a shallow descent into oneself if one does not feel how passion and selfishness grow as our enemies. When one then finds the strength to disperse and shatter what are inner states of temptation, one penetrates into the depths of the soul, where the sub-sensual life of the soul begins, which also goes beyond mere sensual life. But the things described should not be understood in a trivial sense. It is then easy to say: These are subjective experiences through which one cannot arrive at true knowledge. — But if they are taken as they are meant here, then one knows: when one descends into one's own inner being and must call upon the strong forces of overcoming, then one arrives at something that does not apply only to one person or another, but which everyone can experience by entering the supersensible world.

Once people have entered the supersensible world in this way, they know quite clearly that human beings have a relationship with a world that lies beyond what the senses, ordinary understanding, and reason can give them, and that human beings are rooted with their entire existence in a world that does not arise and pass away like the sensory world, but is eternal in comparison to it.

Today it was important to describe the relationship of human beings to the supersensible world. In the next lecture we will have to talk about how human beings can attain such scientific knowledge about the most important matters, about all our longings and everything that is close to us in life, about death and immortality. And in the course of the lectures, we will see that such paths, such relationships of human beings to the supersensible worlds, as they have been described today, are scientific in exactly the same sense as physical, chemical, or biological science. For what is usually objected when the impossibility of such knowledge of the supersensible is alluded to is that when we investigate the powers that human beings have for science, for cognition, this investigation shows that human beings' cognitive abilities are limited, that they cannot enter into a supersensible world. But no serious spiritual scientist who claims that the supersensible worlds are knowable in the same sense as the sensory world will say that what is usually understood by the powers of cognition, when one speaks of the inaccessibility of the supersensible world to human beings, could lead into the supersensible world. What philosophers, natural scientists, and monists understand by the powers of cognition when they say that human powers of cognition must keep away from a world that could only lead to fantasy — the true spiritual researcher must also say: These powers cannot indeed lead into the supersensible world! — And no matter how rigorously one examines philosophically what humans can do with the ordinary cognitive faculties at their disposal, one will always have to answer: These cognitive faculties are unsuitable for leading into the supersensible world.

But if you consider the whole course of today's debate, you will see that nowhere has it been claimed that human beings can penetrate into supersensible worlds with what are called cognitive faculties in philosophy or natural science. Rather, it has been said that human beings must first travel a path from the standpoint where they are to another standpoint, and that they must ascend from the powers of cognition, which are rightly said to be incapable of leading into a supersensible world, to others that are then suitable for entering the supersensible world. Just as it would be wrong to claim that a blind person can see colors without eyes, it is true that a blind person, if operated on and able to use their eyes again, can then also see into the world of colors. As much as Kantianism is right in saying that the ordinary powers of cognition of human beings are not sufficient for the recognition of the supersensible, it is equally true that human beings can acquire powers of cognition through which they can then penetrate into worlds that are often believed to be so distant. Spiritual science does not proceed from the use of ordinary powers of cognition, but from those that must first be acquired. And this is at the same time a growing into the supersensible world.

Through deepening of thought and meditation, human beings can find their way into distant worlds and the depths of space and come into contact with the supersensible worlds, just as they can, through what lies deeper than ordinary consciousness, by means of their own spirituality, so to speak, by piercing through the ordinary layers of soul life, they can enter into what is supersensible or subsensible, but which then coincides with what they find outside. For what human beings find in this way proves to be intimately related to them, as the remaining lectures will demonstrate. When a person finds the way out through contemplation in the vastness of space and distant worlds and takes with them the sensations and feelings that have been described, they encounter foreign spiritual worlds, but they encounter ones with which they are related and from which they originate. And when they find the way through themselves, they enter spiritual worlds that cannot be encompassed by ordinary consciousness, but which are real as their spiritual foundations. There they find themselves again. And when he compares what he finds by delving into his inner self with what he finds by expanding his consciousness outward, it is the same thing: the true spiritual essence of the human being, the real origin of the human being. It is the opening to worlds that are spiritual and in which, in the words of an ancient mystic, the human being originated.

Then, if he makes these worlds accessible to his knowledge, man can find the deepest satisfaction to quench the highest longings in his soul, which exist through the urge of the meaning of life, through the urge to answer the question: What is the best in myself, what must exist in a completely different sense than what is around me as the material world? — Then, however, human beings also find what they need for the strength to work, for joy in life, indeed for the possibility of life and for health in life. For this follows from such an immersion in the world, when we permeate ourselves with forces that are drawn up from the deepest depths of our soul being, that are brought in from worlds far away, so that we can stand firm on the ground on which we work and recognize a meaning in existence. And if I may summarize what today's reflection is intended to convey, what should resonate like a keynote throughout the entire lecture series on the supersensible worlds, I would like to do so with the following words:

In distant worlds
Recognizing human beings,
In the depths of the soul
Experiencing world forces,
Thus the human being attains
True knowledge of the worlds
Through true self-knowledge.