Spiritual Science as a Life's Work

GA 63 — 30 October 1913, Berlin

1. The Spiritual World and Spiritual Science

As I have done for a number of years now, I will take the liberty this winter of giving a series of lectures from this place on the subject of spiritual science, spiritual science as it has been understood in the lectures I have given here over a number of years. This winter, I will again endeavor to illuminate as many different areas of life, and knowledge from this spiritual scientific standpoint, and so today, at the beginning of the lecture cycle, as in previous years, I would ask you not to take today's lecture as an isolated event, but to consider the whole cycle of lectures as a more or less coherent whole, although I will endeavor as far as possible to make each individual lecture self-contained.

In this series of lectures, I would like to touch on the areas of spiritual, moral, and artistic life in order to show how spiritual science can become an enlightening cultural factor for the most diverse enigmatic questions that must justifiably arise in the soul of the present. To emphasize once again what has often been said in past years, the perspective from which these lectures are given is by no means one that is recognized or popular in the present. On the contrary, the viewpoint of spiritual science as it is meant here is treated in the present day with opposition, misunderstanding, and even hostility, and it should be said from the outset that those who hold this viewpoint of spiritual science are the least surprised by this attitude. For how much can still be brought against this spiritual science today, with supposed justification, from the ideas and habits of thinking of the present, from everything that is believed to be scientific or otherwise justified today, how much from such points of view, is best appreciated by those who have really penetrated into this spiritual science. So please accept my assurance that to the person speaking here, contradiction, opposition, and misunderstanding are by no means incomprehensible or inexplicable. The misunderstandings that arise against this spiritual science lie in various areas. On the one hand, it is believed that this spiritual science is based on some ancient religious beliefs from the Orient or elsewhere, because people think they can find certain similarities between individual points and what such religious beliefs have represented. The fact that such similarities are quite different can only be recognized in the course of spiritual science itself. But that is just a hint.

I would like to say in a preface that spiritual science, as it is meant here, has nothing to do with any traditions or lore, but is based on immediate research results that can be achieved in the present, on a method of research that does not require any lore, any more than the research results of chemistry, physics, or any other science. I would like to say this as a kind of preface; the lectures themselves will show how this can be proven and demonstrated. On the other hand, spiritual science is met with misunderstanding insofar as it is accepted as a kind of new religious creed, a kind of sectarian belief. But it is no more a religious creed or sectarian belief than any other science of the present day. Just as one cannot say that those who unite to cultivate chemistry are a sect of chemistry, so too, when one penetrates into the spirit of spiritual science, one cannot speak of it as a sectarian belief. But the opposition to spiritual science comes from entirely different premises. The religious confessions of the most diverse directions believe – let this be noted as a preface today – that they somehow have a new religious confession to fear; they fear that a new faith will enter their field and endanger religious life in general. People will gradually become convinced that spiritual science will follow the same path as natural science did when it experienced its modern direction, let us say, in the age of Copernicus. Just as people believed at that time that the Copernican worldview, because it had to break with so much of the old, endangered the religious life of humanity, just as Copernicanism was banned for centuries in the various religious communities, so it may be in the present with spiritual science, which has a similar task in relation to the spirit as Copernicus had a corresponding task in natural science. Ultimately, it will be recognized that there is a similar relationship between spiritual science and religious studies as there is between Copernicanism and religious confessions, and that it will be just as impossible to oppose what culture demands in the realm of the spirit as it has been in the realm of scientific knowledge. These things may only be touched upon, for how they stand will become apparent in the course of the lectures.

Another weighty objection, however, comes from the very side that, if it understood itself correctly, should actually regard spiritual science as a kind of continuation of its own endeavors: it comes from the side that believes it stands on the firm ground of scientific research, scientific thinking, and scientific imagination. Today, let us first draw attention, figuratively speaking, but with more than just a mere image in mind, to how what modern spiritual science aspires to be relates to the current of scientific knowledge. No one can appreciate the high value and great cultural power of modern scientific thinking more than those who stand on the ground of this spiritual science, and those of you who have been listening to these lectures for years will know how thoroughly this appreciation of scientific thinking and research is emphasized by this spiritual science. And who today would want to introduce a spiritual current into culture that believes it must oppose scientific thinking? They would have to be blind to what this scientific thinking has created for humanity in the course of the last centuries, right up to the present day! They would have to be blind to how deeply science has intervened not only in the content, but in the whole nature of questions of knowledge and the riddles of knowledge. Nothing will certainly be objected to the justified claims of scientific achievements in the course of these lectures. Humanity saw it blossom and flood forth, this scientific knowledge, saw it enter into the life of our technology, into the life of our transportation, saw it transform the external material world culture and conquer the social life of peoples around the globe. But precisely because modern spiritual science understands this, it draws the following conclusion from what natural science can achieve: if this natural science is understood in a living way, not abstractly, not theoretically or dogmatically, then something can follow from this natural science itself and its habits of thinking that not only enlightens the human soul about the external laws of the sensory world, the external material forces and substances, but also about the life of the soul itself, about the destiny of the soul, which includes questions about death and immortality and the whole scope of spiritual life. For let it be emphasized from the outset that spiritual science here is not meant as a summary of the various cultural sciences, for which the name “spiritual science” is often used today — for history, sociology, art history, legal history, and the like, but that spiritual science is meant here as a knowledge of a real spiritual life, which is as real as the natural life around us, and to which man belongs with his spirit and soul as truly as he belongs with his body to that which natural science can enlighten us about.

This immediately takes us into a field where, and let us emphasize this once again, understandably, many minds of modern times cannot yet follow, because for them the whole way in which this spiritual science approaches the spiritual and the mysteries of life is still something quite fantastic and dreamlike, just as, in essence, the Copernican worldview was fantastic and dreamlike to its contemporaries. But natural science and spiritual science, to use a metaphor, behave in the following way: when a farmer harvests his crops in the fall, most of these crops are initially used for human nourishment, and this part then plays its role in life as human nourishment by being transformed. However, if life is to continue, part of this fruit must be used for new sowing. It must not be used for food, but must be processed by being returned to its elements, just as it was processed by the earth and the other elements, which ultimately produced human food. Thus, most of what natural science has achieved in terms of brilliant accomplishments is rightly destined to pass into technical, social, and transport life, to fertilize and permeate material culture, and to shape the progress of human life. But precisely in what natural science gives us, there is also something that can be passed on to the human soul without flowing out into material life, something that can be processed in the human soul in the way I will indicate shortly. and which, if it is not theoretical or dogmatic, but is taken in by the soul in such a way that it lives within it, then takes root in the soul like a seed that has been planted in the earth. What can be taken in by the human soul in this way is then transformed within it and becomes the clairvoyant power referred to here, far removed from all superstition and obscurantism, as the clairvoyant power that can then cast its gaze into the spiritual world. For this is what distinguishes spiritual science from other branches of knowledge cultivated today: that spiritual science presupposes a development of the human soul beyond the point of view that otherwise prevails in today's science. In this scientific approach, human beings are taken as they are, equipped with their powers of cognition, sensory observation, and intellectuality, observing the world around them, seeking the laws of nature, and thereby compiling science. Human beings are taken as they are, I say, and human beings take themselves as they are in order to penetrate this scientific approach.

This is not the case in spiritual science. For human beings, as they are in their immediate state, as they must take themselves in the rest of science, the spiritual world is at first a hidden world, a world that is not there for the senses, that is also not there for the ordinary use of the intellect and reason, a world that lies behind the world of the senses, although what man is in his deepest being belongs to this supersensible world, if we may use the expression. Man, with his power of cognition, when he takes himself as he is, belongs himself to this world of the senses and this world of the intellect. In a deeper sense, he belongs to the spiritual world; but he must first develop this deeper sense. In other words, as true as it is that man accepts himself as he is for ordinary science, it is equally true that he must first transform himself for spiritual science, for the knowledge of the spirit, in order to penetrate the spiritual world. The powers of cognition, the capacity for knowledge of the spiritual world, must first be developed; human beings must first transform themselves so that the dormant capacity for knowledge within them can awaken. But this dormant capacity for knowledge is within them, and they can awaken it. This is, of course, a point of view that is not only uncomfortable but in many ways incomprehensible to the present day. For when it comes to questions of higher life, the present age is so inclined to first raise the question: What can human beings perceive? And then some who live in the thinking habits of the present age come to the conclusion, and rightly so, that human cognitive abilities are limited and cannot penetrate into a spiritual world at all. On the one hand, there are many people who say: such a spiritual world may exist, but human cognitive abilities are not capable of penetrating it. Others are more radical and say: no one can see a spiritual world, therefore it does not exist. This is the view of materialism or, as it is more nobly called today, monism.

There can be no dispute that human beings, as they are, cannot penetrate the spiritual world if they want to grasp it scientifically, if they do not want to grasp it through mere faith. But such mere faith is no longer enough for humanity today — and will satisfy it less and less as scientific education has flowed through the last centuries. However, the capacity for knowledge of the spiritual world must first be developed in the human soul; the conditions must first be created through which human beings can penetrate the spiritual world.

Now, when one accepts that such a thing is possible, one usually has the idea that these must be very special, abnormal powers! These must be powers brought about by abnormal circumstances, through which human beings are to penetrate the spiritual world. This, too, is a misunderstanding. What is at stake here is that the knowledge, those powers of the soul through which human beings enter the spiritual world, are basically present in the human soul, that they also rule the soul in our ordinary everyday life, insofar as the soul is involved in this everyday life; but they are, as it were, submerged in this everyday life; they dominate subordinate areas of life, or if they dominate more important areas, they do so in such a way that their powers and influence are not noticed. What is always present in the soul, what is not lacking in any soul, but what is only present in everyday life in a small measure and with little power, must, when developed to a certain height and strength, provide the powers of knowledge for spiritual science. Attention should be drawn to one characteristic of the soul — because I do not want to talk in abstract terms, but want to get straight to the concrete — a characteristic that everyone knows, that plays a role, but which, when brought from its low level to a certain intensity, provides a fundamental power for spiritual science.

Everyone knows what it means to focus the soul's attention on something. In life, we must focus the soul's attention, or we could also say our interest, on a wide variety of objects; for we need to form ideas about these diverse objects that remain with us, that remain in our memory and continually influence our soul. Anyone who has ever thought about the quality or weakness of their memory will notice the role that attention or interest plays in human life. Those who have concerned themselves with the quality or weakness of memory will know that a strong, good memory is in many ways a consequence of the ability to pay attention to things and pursue them with interest. Something to which we have paid intense attention, something in which we have been fully interested, becomes engraved in our soul and is preserved in our spiritual life. Those who pass by things fleetingly, who do not allow themselves to be moved by things, will have cause to complain of a weak, useless memory. But in another respect, too, what we call attention, turning our interest to the things of life, is important for this human life. For what we can call the inner integrity of the soul life that is necessary for us depends on our retaining, in our imagination, the things with which we have once been connected. Anyone who has studied the life of the soul knows that it is necessary for a healthy soul life that human beings retain the connection between the present and past experiences. Anyone who does not know to a large extent how their self-awareness, their ego, has behaved in past years, so that, looking back, they would not recognize that they have experienced it, for whom the ego would always be a new experience, would not have a healthy soul life. Ultimately, our healthy soul life leads back to our ability to pay attention to the things of life. This is therefore a fundamental force of the soul that plays a role in life and is always present.

Now someone might say: So, in order to tell us about spiritual science, you are telling us about something very ordinary and claiming that this attention must be further developed, brought to a particular intensity?

And yet that is how it is! What may be weak in life, even if it is strong in external life, what may be weak in comparison to the intensity it assumes in the spiritual researcher, is precisely this attention. For the intensification of attention is something that the spiritual researcher must practice again and again, something he must bring to such an intensity that the degree of attention developed in ordinary life is negligible in comparison. One might say: it might seem that it would be easy to reach the ground of spiritual scientific research, because it is only a matter of training something that is always present in ordinary life. But Goethe's words in Faust also apply here: “It is easy, but the easy is difficult.” It takes years of persistent soul training to develop the soul power that we encounter to a small degree in everyday life as attention, and in spiritual science we call this heightened life of attention the concentration of spiritual life. We call it concentration of spiritual life because the human spirit or soul, as it is, spreads its powers over a wide area in everyday life, over an area that encompasses everything that the outer sensory world offers and what the mind forms from these outer sensory perceptions. In ordinary life, too, the soul's powers are spread over everything that human beings want, desire, feel emotional about, and so on; in short, the soul life is initially scattered. What the spiritual researcher must develop within himself as an addition to the spiritual scientific apparatus, which he must prepare in the spiritual realm just as the chemist prepares his apparatus in the material realm in the laboratory, what must happen in the process is to gather these soul forces, which are otherwise scattered throughout life, into a single point, so to speak, to turn his attention to a single point. To what point? To a point chosen by oneself in the inner experience of the soul. This means that the spiritual researcher must form some idea, some impulse of the soul, some impulse of feeling or will, and place it at the center of his or her soul life. The best such idea, such impulse, is one that initially has nothing to do with any external world: an image, a symbol.

Let us take a simple example: Let us take a sentence that initially has no external truth, but that does not matter: I imagine how light — the light of a star, the light of the sun — touches me, and how this light is wisdom rippling through the world. A symbol. Now I focus all my attention on this symbol. It does not matter that anything about it is true, but that all the powers of the soul are drawn together in this one point. Therefore, it is necessary to choose as preparation what has been discussed further in the book “How to Gain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” and presented in its various methods; here, only the principle should be pointed out by way of introduction. To do this, it is necessary to develop the strong will to really concentrate one's entire soul life on this one point. This means, however, that one is able to artificially bring about what otherwise occurs naturally in the state of sleep. In the state of sleep, our senses relax; the world ceases to be perceptible to us through the senses. Colors, sounds, and smells cease to make an impression on us. But at the same time, our consciousness disappears. For the spiritual researcher, it must be consciousness itself that arbitrarily silences all external impressions, and yet at the same time consciousness must be fully preserved. In the same way, everything that comes to a standstill when we fall asleep must be brought to a standstill: everything that corresponds to the impulses of the will must become completely calm. And everything else that human beings bring to bear in order to actively engage with the world must also become completely calm for the spiritual researcher. They must divert their consciousness from everything else it is normally directed towards and concentrate the entire sphere of the soul on the one point they have chosen for themselves. Then our soul forces grow stronger. And it is precisely those soul forces that otherwise remain hidden in everyday life that grow stronger, and now, little by little, something occurs that I would like to compare with what happens in the realm of external material life when, for example, the chemist researches water. For the spiritual researcher, the human being stands there in the world as water stands before the chemist. For the spiritual researcher, the human being is a connection, an intimate interpenetration of the spiritual-soul with the physical-bodily, just as water is an interpenetration of oxygen and hydrogen for the chemist. And just as the chemist could never discover what water is if he only studied hydrogen, so too can one never discover what the human being is in his spirit or soul if one only considers the human being in his physical existence. In this field, the spiritual researcher need fear no more being considered a dualist than the chemist in his field need fear when he decomposes water into hydrogen and oxygen. One has no more right to call the spiritual researcher a dualist because he practices “spiritual chemistry” in his field than one would have to call the chemist a dualist because he does not accept that water is a unity, but consists of hydrogen and oxygen, and because, in order to understand the nature of water, he must separate hydrogen from oxygen.

The spiritual researcher works with the same means, only in his own field. And what I have just indicated: concentration, heightened attention, brings forth the powers that are present in the human soul but lie dormant in everyday life, through which the spiritual-soul, which is otherwise inseparably connected with the physical-bodily, can be separated from the physical, just as material hydrogen is separated from water in a chemical experiment. And this is what the spiritual researcher experiences when he pursues this increase in attention in energetic, often years of devoted practice: that what can otherwise easily be doubted in its reality, namely the spiritual-soul, becomes an immediate experience for him, so that it makes immediate sense for him to say: I experience myself independently of the body in the spiritual-soul realm; only now do I know what the spiritual-soul realm is, because I experience myself in the spiritual-soul realm! — Not so much that the spiritual researcher has to add findings of the same kind as those of the natural sciences to these; but although his kind of research is entirely in the spirit of natural science, namely in the spirit of knowledge, his research method is nevertheless of a completely different nature; and precisely because it wants to remain faithful to the laws of knowledge, it must take a different form than the scientific methods directly aimed at the material realm. In this way, the spiritual researcher gains awareness of the following, for example.

In our present time, one will say, and with a certain degree of justification: Well, has natural science, if not provided proof, then at least provided hypothetical justification for the view that human thinking, as we encounter it in human beings, is a function or a result of the brain? This is where opponents of natural science or supporters of spiritual science in the not entirely modern sense, i.e., not in the sense that is meant here as modern, usually come in. There are many people who want to acknowledge the spirit and therefore take a stand against such a claim from the outset: that human thinking is bound to the central nervous system, is an efflux of the central nervous system. And much polemic is developed against what natural science has not proven, but believes it can put forward as a hypothesis: that human thinking is a function of the brain; and many people immediately consider spiritual science to be endangered if one believes one must admit that human thinking is bound to the brain, that one cannot think without a central nervous system. Not even on this point does spiritual science have to contradict the justified demands of natural science; for it is true that thinking, as we develop it in ordinary life, is bound to the central nervous system and the rest of the nervous system. But true spiritual science teaches us to recognize that the formation, the structure of the brain, of the central nervous system, which must be brought about for everyday thinking, has flowed out of the spirit, that the spirit first builds up our body so that this body can become the tool of thinking. Spiritual science does not merely descend into thinking; it does not claim that thinking, as we encounter it in everyday life, is eternal and immortal. Rather, it teaches us to recognize that what builds up our thinking apparatus is our true spiritual and soul life, that which lives behind our thinking apparatus, behind our physicality. And the methods of spiritual science, as they have been indicated, lead to these active, creative forces that stand behind all material things.

Thus, because it must be present in that which separates it from the body, the spiritual scientific method leads to a completely different kind of experience and a completely different state of mind than the kind of experience and state of mind of ordinary life and also of ordinary science. Let me just mention one thing right from the start, because I want to speak in concrete terms. What is otherwise expressed in our thinking and imagining, and what is bound to the brain in everyday life, is really separated from the physical body through the concentration that has been described in outline; and the spiritual researcher comes to experience within himself how he empowers himself inwardly, how he feels himself to be outside his central nervous system, with which he is otherwise connected in all his thinking, feeling, and willing, and that his own physicality stands opposite this spiritual-soul experience like another object that one faces. In other words, just as one experiences oneself within one's body in ordinary life, so one experiences oneself outside one's body when one applies spiritual scientific methods to oneself. When one applies these methods of concentration of thought in particular, one experiences oneself outside one's brain. Only now do you know what the brain tool is like. For I am not telling you fairy tales or fantasy images, but something that can be experienced by the spiritual researcher, when I say: he feels, experiencing himself, how his brain circles around him, he feels as if he were in the circle of his brain. They know what it means not to think as one thinks in ordinary life, but to think solely in the spiritual-soul element and to feel the brain outside this element — yes, even to feel it as something that offers resistance, that one bumps into, just as one bumps into an external object. I have already described here the intensification of such experiences into a more comprehensive experience, and I have also described it in my little book “A Path to Self-Knowledge for Human Beings.”

If the spiritual researcher continues his exercises and truly has the devotion to concentrate his entire soul life not on one image, but on hundreds and hundreds of images, so that the forces themselves increase more and more, then what I have described in the aforementioned treatise as a shattering event will occur. It occurs in one form for one person and in another form for another, but it always has something typical about it. As I describe it, it will be possible for everyone to experience it. Even in the midst of everyday life, if a person has practiced long enough — and if the exercises have been done correctly, external life will never disturb him — he may come to say to himself: What is it that wants to reveal itself to you from your everyday imagination? It is something that wants to penetrate you, but wants to penetrate you like something that otherwise only rises from your own soul. But it can also want to penetrate like a dream when you wake up from sleep, which is infinitely more than a dream, something that enters, and you say to yourself: What is happening now? — Something happens that feels like a flash of lightning striking the room, which you feel passing through you. And you can say to yourself: It is as if your body were falling away from you and being destroyed. But now you know: You can be inside yourself without being in your body!

From this moment on — for this is the value of this experience, which has always existed, even if it has not been made known in the outer world — when you experience it for the first time, you know what the spiritual researchers meant when they said: Whoever experiences the eternal in man, the spiritual-soul, must approach the gate of death. One experiences death in image within oneself. One experiences in image, in real, not imagined imagination, what it means: the spiritual-soul separates from the body and continues to exist as it separates when the human being passes through the gate of death. We will have more to say about all this; today I only want to indicate, as in a preface, what the essence of spiritual life and the related spiritual science is. A sum of inner experiences emerges, which initially leads to knowing what it means to practice “spiritual chemistry,” what it means to “separating the spiritual-soul from the physical” in order to explore the destinies of the spiritual-soul and to know that there is a real separation of the spiritual from the physical and an independent life of the spirit in relation to the body. To know oneself outside of one's physical body is the fruit of heightened attention and heightened concentration. One notices this standing outside the body even at relatively elementary stages, especially in relation to the central nervous system. When one feels oneself thinking and imagining, as it were, drawn to the spiritual world outside one's brain, that is, outside one's body, then, because one is initially standing in it as an earthly human being in ordinary life, one has again and again the necessity of returning to ordinary imagination and thinking as one thinks in normal life. But you experience the moment when you have to say to yourself: You were now outside your body; you must return to your body and shape what you experienced outside your body in such a way that your brain grasps it, that the thoughts you had outside your body become brain thoughts!

You experience this entering into the brain, and it is connected with something that must be well prepared, but which can be well prepared if you have gone through the exercises described in the book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds.” When you immerse yourself in the brain with your thinking, you then know that the brain resists and that, in fact, the thought process of ordinary life is a destruction of the central nervous system, genuine processes of destruction, which are, however, reversed again by sleep. All thinking is basically a process of decomposition, and sleep always compensates for this process of decomposition. But as one progresses in spiritual practice, one experiences oneself sinking into a process of dissolution; and if one has not developed the right feelings in preparation, this is expressed in a fear of sinking back into the organism. For now the human being stands outside the actual earthly body. One feels oneself sinking into an abyss. And therefore one must do precisely those exercises that give one serenity, that give one dispassion toward what might otherwise appear as anxiety, as fear. So it is a certain kind of soul mood, of soul disposition, that expresses itself in what is the power of knowledge, what are the methods of research for the higher worlds.

Something else must be added if real knowledge, real revelation from the spiritual worlds is to penetrate the human soul. Another power must be increased to the highest intensity: devotion, love for what we encounter. This devotion is necessary to a certain degree in ordinary life. But on the path to the spiritual worlds, this devotion must be increased to such an extent that the human being learns to renounce completely, to suppress every activity, even in the deepest part of his organism. Gradually increased practice leads to the suppression of the arbitrary movements that come from the ego of the human being and, so to speak, to complete devotion to the stream of existence that flows before us; but not only this, but also, to a certain degree, to perceiving involuntary movements as something external. Through these exercises, the human being learns to feel his way into the vascular organs. Then the human being can say of the spiritual world: You experience it outside your body; you will experience it as a structured world in which beings appear — just as the natural world is a world in which natural beings appear. Through concentration, that is, through increased attention, and through meditation, that is, through increased devotion, human beings find their way into the spiritual world, just as they find their way into nature when they observe it with their outer eyes and with their intellect. Then, however, when the human being has separated his spiritual-soul from the physical through a process of spiritual chemistry, he also comprehends himself in his infinity; then he comprehends himself in the existence that lies outside of birth and death or, if you will, outside of conception and death. Then they recognize themselves in this eternal essence in such a way that they grasp the idea of development, which will often be discussed in these lectures, and which corresponds in the realm of human spiritual life to the idea of development to which natural science owes so much in its field in modern times: then the human being grasps the idea of repeated earthly lives, the fact that the full human life consists of repeated earthly lives, between which lie lives in purely spiritual worlds. The idea of reincarnation distinguishes between life in the body between birth and death and life between death and new birth in a purely spiritual existence.

All these things, it should be emphasized once again, are very easily regarded as dreams and fantasies by those who believe themselves to be firmly rooted in scientific thinking habits; and in our time, research into dreams, hypnosis, suggestion, autosuggestion, and so on often points to how all kinds of things can emerge from the depths of the subconscious soul life that can cause a deceptive consciousness in human beings: you experience something that has meaning outside your physical life. All these things are theoretical objections; those who delve deeper into spiritual science will no longer raise them. For we will raise many objections in the course of these lectures and will show how spiritual science should respond to them. Today, we will only draw attention to one fundamental principle.

It is easy to say: If the spiritual researcher has experienced his spiritual-soul life in its independence and then, as if in an expanded memory, looks back on earlier earth lives or on his last earth life, this can be nothing other than his transformed desires, his desire life, which plays in the subconscious and shimmers up into daily consciousness, causing him to form illusions, hallucinations, and so on. It is understandable that in such a case, uneducated thinking speaks of self-formed desires, illusions, hallucinations, and so on; but one does not know what is really involved. Those who have separated their spiritual-soul life from the physical through spiritual chemistry realize, when they actually experience such a look back into a previous earthly life, that it is not a transformed desire or something that can emerge from their subconscious; for the word may be used: Usually, what one experiences in the spiritual realm is very different from what one can dream up. A great deal of nonsense is peddled in the field that is referred to here as spiritual science. In no other field is charlatanism as widespread as in the field of spiritual science; and many who have looked into what spiritual science is, who have taken up some of its teachings and have also gained the conviction that these teachings are true, are heard to say: This or that person experienced this or that in a previous life, was this or that in a previous life. Well, one can experience a lot of nonsense in this field. Usually, it is very clear from the statements made in this field that they correspond to certain human desires; for what people want to have been, who describe how their previous lives passed, sometimes takes on quite strange forms. Mostly they are quite famous, outstanding personalities, whom one can get to know not only through spiritual scientific research, but also through history! But for those who really penetrate the spiritual worlds, things appear quite differently. Consider the following example: after applying spiritual scientific methods to their soul, someone takes a look at a previous earthly life, as is possible and even natural when spiritual research methods have had a certain effect on the soul; then the image of previous experiences in a previous earthly life appears. But one will notice that these experiences are such that, at the present moment, when one sees them in one's expanded memory, one does not really know what to do with them; except that they enrich one's knowledge, one will not be able to do anything with them in ordinary life. One notices that in a previous life one had certain skills, certain knowledge, and so on. Now this comes back to you in the image. But in your present life you are too old to reacquire these skills and knowledge. As a rule, what happens is what you would never dream of, what no fantasy could conceive; real life is usually very different from the fantastical image you might have of a previous life on earth. Or you realize that in your past life you had a relationship with this or that personality. But if, at the age when you discover this, you want to draw conclusions for your present life, your circumstances do not allow it, and you are then referred to what is called the spiritual law of causality. You recognize — but you cannot apply this knowledge to your present life. You must also develop a devoted spiritual life and say to yourself: What you once developed as relationships with people will play itself out; but you must wait until the spiritual connections bring the causes from previous earthly lives to fruition in the present. What you might dream of in the spiritual realm will not come to pass if the insight is a real one.

When one looks into that existence that flows between death and a new birth, where one is in a purely spiritual life, all thinking in terms of concepts and so on does not help one to form ideas about how one lived during that time. What one must first consider as the next form of one's life tasks, one's interests, what the nature of one's environment is, into which one has grown in the outer material world, what one has developed as desires, cravings, affections, what the world of imagination has assumed for one's character, is mostly completely opposite to what one experienced in the spiritual world before descending to the present incarnation. What one desired and wished for there does not correspond to the desires in earthly life. Let us take a rough example: In earthly life, one can very easily be painfully affected by some stroke of fate. Then one can—I pointed out in my last book, The Threshold of the Spiritual World, how things stand and how the objections that can very easily be made from a materialistic point of view are by no means decisive—if one finds something painful, and if this painful experience does not correspond to any desire, not even in the subconscious, then it is very easy to believe that in the spiritual world, where we were before, our whole life of desires, our attitude to the spiritual world, was similar to our present attitude to life. But that is not the case. The feeling in the spiritual world before our incarnation is completely different. Therefore, one must imagine that one has brought everything about oneself in order to experience this pain that has now befallen one. What one certainly does not desire, indeed, what one must admit one desires as little as possible in earthly life, one learns that one desired and longed for before one's earthly life, because through experiencing and working one's way out of this pain, one can achieve perfection in one's soul life. For, as we shall see, the question of destiny becomes a question of perfection through spiritual scientific knowledge.

When we place spiritual life before our soul in this way, it indeed appears to our heightened inner life as a spiritual environment, just as the natural environment appears to the senses and the intellect. And the spiritual researcher has much to overcome in order to elevate what he is able to observe to the rank of a science. For, as I have described, you can imagine that the experiences that the spiritual researcher must have, which reveal the spiritual world to him, must first be achieved. They are achieved in such a way that they first appear so faint that the weakest, almost completely faded memories of ordinary life must sometimes be called strong in comparison to these manifestations of the spiritual world, and that these — now memories from the spiritual world — must be strengthened and reinforced. This strengthening occurs only gradually, through continued immersion and practice in spiritual conditions. This strengthening, this invigoration of the soul life, is the basic condition for spiritual research. But then something else must be added.

In the course of these lectures, we will see how unfounded it is, but understandably easy to happen, that the materialistic thinker says: What is achieved through concentration, through devotion of the soul life, through meditation, is no different from the illusions and hallucinations of a sick soul life. Looking at things from the outside, one could say that what the spiritual researcher experiences is no different. One could even say that when the spiritual researcher describes these things, it is really like a dreamer describing his dreams. The dreams that the dreamer describes express something that is also experienced in the outer world: reminiscences of the outer world are expressed in them. And so, in a certain sense, one can say that what the spiritual researcher separates from the physical as his spiritual-soul life and presents to his soul as the essence of a world of images is, when he describes it, such that the characteristics of the images are taken from the characteristics of the beings of the outer world. Anyone who looks at what is written in my “Outline of Esoteric Science” will, if they so wish, be able to say: What you describe there of things that can only be attained in the supersensible worlds for a spiritual science are things that can also be experienced in the outer world, even if not in the same combination. In a certain sense, this can be said, although the objections raised today by some against what spiritual science says are somewhat naive. For example, if someone says that what is written in a book such as Occult Science is fantastically compiled from a kind of compressed inner experience, and that such a presentation is actually fantasy and not reality, one very soon realizes what kind of mind such logic comes from. For if one examines it more closely, one will notice that it is the same logic as when a child who has only ever seen a wooden lion says, when it sees a real lion for the first time: “That is not a real lion, because the real one is made of wood.” This is often how opponents of spiritual science behave. Because they do not know things properly, they accuse spiritual scientists of not describing things as they know them from ordinary life. But one can object that the descriptions of the spiritual researcher are reminiscences from ordinary life. However, this objection is worth just as much as the objection of that child, or the objection of a person who cannot read and who says: What I see in front of me are all kinds of shapes; I see something that has a line from the bottom left to the top right, then a line from the top left to the bottom right, and then a horizontal line! — whereas someone who can read perceives this as an A.

It is not what one immediately achieves and sees, what must pass from the observation of the spiritual world into the sensory world; rather, it is that one learns to read from what one sees. For what is seen must first be read in the right way. But one learns this reading at the same time as one practices finding one's way into the spiritual world. And if someone sees only reminiscences of the ordinary world in the descriptions of spiritual science and says: When earlier earthly lives are spoken of, these are only concepts that are also found in life, just not grouped in this way — then such a person is like someone who looks at a letter and says to another: Do you want to learn something new from it? I already know everything that's in it, because it only contains letters I already know, nothing new! It is exactly the same when people say: What the spiritual researcher describes are only reminiscences from the sensory world! But what matters in these descriptions is what lies behind them as essential beings, what is revealed there.

Spiritual science is what emerges for the spiritual researcher as a result of the experiences he has. And that is the difficult thing, the thing that is still so misunderstood today, the thing that seems to be so incompatible with today's goals in life, that the spiritual researcher, in what for him is experience and observation, must always be present, must always be involved in everything, that he must put not his body but his soul on the line when he speaks of conditions in the spiritual world, when he speaks of the conditions in the spiritual world. observation, must always be present, must always be involved in everything, that he must put not his body but his soul on the line when he speaks of conditions in the spiritual world, when he represents true spiritual science. While the ordinary world isolates the human being when he is to recognize something of the “objective,” the spiritual scientist must immerse himself in that to which his science relates, must become one with it. Today, however, this is regarded as merely a “subjective” experience. People do not realize that the methods indicated make spiritual-soul life independent of everything we experience subjectively. For no matter how much we experience it, and no matter how much it is called “mysticism,” what we experience subjectively is experienced in the body; what the spiritual researcher experiences is experienced outside the body, but can be understood in the body by the reason functioning in the body, by the ordinary mind. For even the objection that anyone who wants to have knowledge of the spiritual worlds must himself be a spiritual researcher is not justified. One must be a spiritual researcher in order to get to know, discover, and explore spiritual facts and beings, but not in order to receive and understand spiritual-scientific communications. It is sufficient to be able to receive them with common sense and sound judgment, just as one receives what chemists or physicists discover through their methods.

If one considers spiritual research in this way, it will appear as something into which natural science must, in a sense, enter, something to which natural science must rise. Just as natural science has shown humanity material goals and radically transformed material life in many areas, so spiritual science will enrich and transform what must be the spiritual experience of humanity in a way that is appropriate to the goals of the present and future of human development. Of these goals of human development, as they are already revealed here, even if not clearly recognizable — they will reveal themselves clearly to spiritual science — we may say what a man of the present who plays a major role in the present has said, namely what Wilson, the President of the United States of America, said in relation to something more external, but which applies quite generally to the goals of spiritual science. In his recently published book, Wilson speaks of the reforms he has experienced — I choose this example precisely so as not to hurt anyone or cause offense that should not be caused; because spiritual science should contribute to peace among people, not to strife. He says that external material life has been completely transformed, that the old patriarchal relationship between employer and employee has been replaced by entirely different conditions. Corporations of employees now stand opposite employers in such a way that the former relationship between the factors of life has been completely transformed. That this has come about is a consequence of modern life; above all, for those who understand the matter correctly, it is a consequence of the knowledge of nature possessed by contemporary humanity. But now Wilson says that what we have as forms of lawful coexistence still corresponds in many ways to what prevailed in earlier times, what was considered right when the individual worker faced his employer in a patriarchal relationship. And Wilson now demands that harmony should be created between the lawful coexistence of today's human beings and what culture has created. Much of this culminates in the American president's extremely interesting literature. What he says about more external circumstances can be said with reference to the innermost goals of the present, for the whole of human spiritual experience today. When considering such things in connection with the spiritual goals of the present, one is reminded of thinkers who belonged to completely different eras of human development: Archimedes, the founder of mechanics, and Plato, the great Greek philosopher. They were of the opinion, and also expressed it, that the application of science to the technology of life actually harms the human spirit, weakens it. It is understandable that outstanding minds of other times held this opinion; but the course of the world is guided by such opinions just as little as by what people believed when the first railroad was to be built in Germany, even though this is less widely believed today. At that time, a very learned college, the Bavarian Medical College, was asked to give an expert opinion on whether railroads should be built or not. And this college gave its opinion: Railways should not be built, because if they were, the people who traveled in them would suffer severe damage to their nervous systems; but if it should happen that people did travel in railways, then at least high wooden walls should be erected on the left and right so that the people living nearby would not be harmed by the sight and sound of the passing trains. Today, some people may smile at what an expert medical council thought at the time. But even if one smiles at it, one can still find it justified. For one can neither take a position for nor against it and can say: even if the Bavarian medical council exaggerated the matter fantastically, for those who know history not only externally but also internally, what it had assumed has come true, and one can say: this council had a good eye. Nevertheless, there is no need to take a position against it. Why not? Because history itself takes a position on it! And no matter what individual people may think about it, the course of world development continues, and human beings must adapt to the course of development. This is also the demand made by Wilson: the course of development has brought about certain cultural processes, and human beings must adapt to them.

If we extend this to the state of the soul, we can say that the course of time has brought about goals for the soul that are infinitely more complicated than those of past times. It is easy to imagine this change in the outside world, but life has also changed in terms of what the soul needs for its immediate daily needs. Anyone who believes that the soul forces that previously guided people into the spiritual worlds in a justified manner could still do so in the same way today is not taking into account what is happening in the course of the world: they do not take into account that we have not only four centuries of natural science behind us, but, what is more, four centuries of natural science education, and that it has now become necessary to carry the results of spiritual science into the hearts and souls. And even if it may be true in detail that the course of world history does not always allow this, it must nevertheless be said: if anyone today objects to what spiritual science aims to be, whether from the standpoint of a religious belief they believe to be endangered, or from any other standpoint, then it could be that he resembles, in a not so distant way, the Bavarian Medical Association, which wanted to erect wooden walls next to the railways so that the people living nearby would not be harmed: the course of development would pass him by. However, it is not given to human beings to relate to the goals of world development in such a way that they leave them to themselves, but they are given the power to participate in the shaping and building of circumstances. But what approaches the human soul in external life and from external life as demands, what appears as external goals, requires internal goals of the soul. And the inner goals of the soul are the goals of spiritual science, the goals toward which the soul strives when it knows that natural science has transformed the outer world view, the body of culture. But culture needs a soul. And this soul should be the creation of spiritual science. To permeate the body of culture with soul and spirit is the goal of spiritual science. And when this goal of spiritual science is understood in this way, it will be easy to see that the spiritual researcher can calmly consider everything that today still appears as contradiction, opposition, and misunderstanding against this spiritual science. The conditions of life that the course of human development brings us demand a kind of knowledge of the spiritual world in which the soul feels strong, so strong that it draws its strength not only from what the sensory world gives, but also from what knowledge of the spiritual world can give. It will become increasingly clear that modern life requires the soul to draw strength not only from the knowledge of sensory existence, but also from the knowledge of spiritual existence, in which the soul has its true home. With these strong forces, the soul will permeate itself as with an elixir of life, will feel the meaning of its being extending beyond birth and death, will experience within itself that quality of the soul which is described by the word “immortality,” and will thus, with the elixir of life flowing through it as its lifeblood, prove itself equal to the tasks that the present and future of human history must set for it.

I wanted to say just a few words about the present and future of the human soul. All further explanations will be given in the following individual lectures. In today's introduction, I have only wanted to evoke a feeling of what the spiritual researcher carries within himself, a feeling that flows from a kind of understanding of the meaning of present-day life and its needs. Speaking from the standpoint of spiritual science, as I would like to do in these lectures, can only be done under two conditions. What the spiritual researcher has to communicate from actual spiritual research differs, at first glance, from what is widely believed and considered correct today, even though it is the direct consequence of human development over the last centuries. This difference is such that those who assert this spiritual science must either be charlatans, nonsense-talker, or frivolous person — or else he must have the possibility of knowing within himself that what he has to say is true. There may be various nuances between these two extremes, but there are almost no intermediate stages. With this awareness that one can be regarded as one or the other, one speaks as a spiritual researcher anyway. But spiritual research itself, as we have seen, is something with which human beings are so connected that, if they are true spiritual researchers, they put their soul on the line in it; and since they put their soul on the line in this way, they also know how to bear one or the other of the judgments that may be made about them. And those who are involved in this spiritual science can only develop the awareness and the power to speak about this spiritual research only by knowing, on the one hand, through their association with spiritual truths, how to measure their power of insight and their power of truth, and, on the other hand, knowing how to withstand the misunderstandings or deliberately false accusations that are made against spiritual science out of this awareness of the power of truth and insight. On the other hand, however, spiritual science also leads into immediate spiritual life, as well as into the spiritual life of the times, and teaches the spiritual researcher, even if his inclination and sympathy may lie with goals other than the representation of this spiritual science, that the representation of spiritual science is a necessity in our time. Even if this necessity for spiritual knowledge is not often clearly expressed by our contemporaries, it is present as a dark need for spiritual knowledge. In the depths of the soul, one senses today a cry for spiritual knowledge, even if this cry is often not audible to the conscious thinking of our fellow human beings, for our time needs spiritual knowledge. And all other science that is otherwise appropriate to our time would dampen this spirit, would extinguish this spirit from the souls, as it also works from other currents of spiritual life, if spiritual science does not kindle it. Spiritual research knows that the human soul needs the spirit, and therefore hopes that cultivating this spirit will be one of the goals of human development in the future.

We have seen that the human soul must transform itself if it wants to reach the spirit. From this it is clear that it is more convenient to leave the spirit where it is and not concern oneself with it than to undertake in the soul that which leads to the spirit. It is also more convenient, in accordance with common sense and a healthy sense of truth, to simply accept the material connections of nature than to develop a sharper mind and use it to understand what spiritual science says. Life is more comfortable without the spirit. But the spirit has a characteristic, namely that if one wants to live without it, it causes just as much harm as it brings fruit and benefit if one wants to live with it. If one wants to live with it, it enlivens the soul, warms it with courage, and imbues it with all the skills we need for life. If you want to deny it, it withdraws and dampens and kills the life of the soul to the same extent that the soul wants nothing to do with it. If you want to deny it, it gradually takes away as much courage to face life — and gives in return despair, discontent, and anxiety — as it bestows fruitfulness when you acknowledge it. One can deny the spirit, but one cannot destroy it. If one denies it, it reveals itself as its opposite image within the soul — and demands itself in the human soul itself. This is felt by the spiritual researcher who speaks of spiritual science as a goal of the present. That is why he builds on it — whatever may still speak against this spiritual science today —: it will take root because humanity can close its eyes to the spirit, but cannot prevent its mode of action. Ultimately, however, this mode of action transforms itself into the demand to look this spirit in the eye. That is what I would like to express in the following way, summarizing in a few words the feelings that today's lecture was intended to unfold.

The spirit can be denied, for it is more convenient, much more convenient, to want to understand the world and live in it without the spirit than with the spirit. But the demands of the spirit cannot be resisted by denying it. Therefore, what spiritual science seeks to incorporate as an elixir of life into culture will be incorporated into this culture by its own power. For the human soul often denies the spirit, but it will always have to demand it from its innermost nature, from its deepest goals!