From Central European Intellectual Life

GA 65 — 3 December 1915, Berlin

2. The Eternal Forces of the Human Soul

Reflections on the eternal forces of the human soul from the point of view of spiritual science, as this spiritual science is meant here, are naturally, one might say, quite naturally exposed to misunderstandings in our time. And it is quite natural for it to be refuted from this or that point of view, which is undoubtedly justified from a certain side. When such refutations take place, the following occurs: the person who supposes to refute such results of spiritual science puts forward these or those reasons and then thinks that what he wants to have is met, and that the spiritual scientist cannot agree with his reasons at all. Precisely such a consideration as is to be undertaken here today on the basis of the results of spiritual science is subject to the misunderstandings indicated, for the matter usually lies — yes, one can say, in the cases that have come to light the matter always lies — in such a way that the person who refutes brings forward things with which the spiritual scientist absolutely agrees. It is just that spiritual science has something to say that is not affected at all by such objections, by such objections, which the spiritual scientist often accepts to a much greater extent than the person making the objections.

This applies in particular to the question that is to be asked today, and to what is often said on the part of the scientific world view. I have often emphasized from this platform that the humanities scholar is in no way opposed to the scientific world view based on the great achievements of modern times, especially when it comes to questions of the human soul. Of course, there are many things that can be said about the eternal character of the human soul from the point of view of those who want to practice psychology, the study of the soul, in a sense that is still valid today. Then the natural scientist comes, and I say expressly, often with full justification, and says: There we see the human soul-expressions, man's thinking, man's feeling, man's willing, as they express themselves from birth or from the time when man can develop conscious ideas, until death. If we look at this life of the soul, then the representative of the scientific world view must say that it appears to be bound in the strictest sense to the bodily processes; and one can show how it is bound to the bodily processes, how the bodily develop little by little from the earliest childhood, and how, in strict parallel with these physical processes, the faculties of thinking, of perceiving, of understanding and perceiving, develop as these physical processes, as they say, perfect themselves. One can see, again, how, with the fading of the physical processes of the human being, the mental processes also gradually recede into the background, gradually recede, subside. Yes, one can show even more. One can show how, in the case of illness or the like, parts of mental life disappear due to the exclusion of some brain activity or some part of the nervous system; how inability takes the place of ability when organic functions are excluded. What has been stated could be multiplied ad infinitum. So it is justified to say: Is not everything that man develops with his thinking, feeling and willing bound to the physical processes that are gradually being discovered by natural science, just as the flame is bound to the fuel of the candle? And in fact, some of the so-called proofs that are presented for the existence of a soul-core within ordinary thinking, feeling and willing, they really resemble something that one would imagine by saying that one finds something in the flame that cannot perish if the material of the candle is somehow removed from the flame. It may be said that much of the ordinary teaching on the soul is so constructed, according to the reasons and the kinds of proof, that it corresponds exactly to the thought one would have in order to prove that what lives in the flame cannot disappear if the flame is deprived of its fuel.

Now it must be emphasized that with regard to all that has just been indicated, spiritual science stands entirely on the ground of natural science, and indeed, as we want to see in particular through today's consideration, it must place itself more intensely and more strongly on this ground of natural science than natural science itself can do according to the current state of its research. In its method, in the way it thinks and is minded, spiritual science also stands in the same direction as indicated for human research through the newer methods of natural science. But the way in which these newer methods of natural science have been applied to the life of the soul shows that they do not lead to those regions in which the real riddles of the human soul are to be found.

In order not to make merely general remarks, I would like to consider a specific case. One of the more recent scientists who wanted to place psychology entirely on the basis of the scientific way of thinking was the psychologist Franz Brentano, who has already been mentioned here in these lectures on several occasions. His scientific endeavors took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the natural scientific way of thinking quite rightly made a great, even overwhelming impression on the personalities of this age, so that no kind of scientific research wanted to escape what lay in the fertility of natural scientific observation. And one of those who went along with it completely and said, ” If strict scientific results are to be achieved, then they must be achieved by a method that is constructed according to the model of natural science, otherwise they are not truly scientific results. One of the personalities who took this position, both with regard to the study of the soul and to the study of nature, was Franz Brentano. His theses, which he formulated at the beginning of his teaching career in Würzburg in the 1850s, went something like this: The future of the study of the soul depends entirely on its moving in the same channels as the study of nature. Now, with regard to the hopes that the study of the soul can have for our age and the future, Franz Brentano is a characteristically strong personality. He has begun to write a “Psychology,” a book that has achieved a certain fame in the narrower circles of the soul researchers. When the first volume of his psychology was published, he promised that the second volume would appear before the end of the year in which the volume was published – it was 1874 – and then the third volume in quick succession. So far, only the first volume has been published! And this is characteristic precisely because Franz Brentano is one of the most conscientious and energetic of thinkers.

Franz Brentano sets out to pursue the science of the soul in the spirit of modern natural science. He begins by examining the soul life as it presents itself in the ordinary existence of man; by investigating how, as man lives within the ordinary physical world, thought follows thought; what are the laws that cause one thought to evoke another; what are the laws that give rise to this or that sensation of pleasure or pain in the human soul. In short, he endeavored to investigate in a natural-scientific sense the life of the soul as it takes place within the ordinary physical existence of man. The aim of psychology is already clear to this student of the soul, but he sees no possibility of doing anything to approach this aim in any way. A saying of Franz Brentano is characteristic here, and runs as follows: “For the hopes of a Plato and Aristotle, to gain certainty about the survival of our better part after the dissolution of the body, the laws of association of ideas, of the development of convictions and opinions, and of the sprouting and driving of lust and love, would be anything but a true compensation.... And if it really meant... “– he means the newer natural scientific way of thinking – ‘the exclusion of the question of immortality, then [this loss] would have to be called an extremely significant one for psychology.’

Franz Brentano is quite typical of those representatives of newer psychology who, while wanting to stand on the ground of newer natural science, that is, wanting to observe mental life exactly as one otherwise observes external natural phenomena, but who, in the course of their observations, let slip precisely those questions that are important, significant, and intimately connected with human life. We can, as Brentano says, in the sense of modern natural science, come to an understanding of how ideas are linked, how opinions take hold in the human soul, how pleasure and suffering are mutually dependent, but one cannot comment on the important question of what the eternal forces of the human soul are from what one wants to achieve with this method. And so it must be said that in more and more writings and literature on psychology in recent times, the question of the eternal forces of human existence has disappeared. Just try to leaf through the literature on psychology and you will see how true what I have just said is.

Spiritual science now attempts to find its way to the riddles of the human soul by adopting the attitude of the natural sciences. But it is convinced that the way of thinking that is so fruitful for the observation and study of the secrets of external nature must be internalized and completely transformed if one is to pursue spiritual science from the same attitude from which one pursues natural science. Spiritual science shows that the processes of the soul life that take place in ordinary thinking, feeling and willing between birth and death really contain nothing that is not as bound to the physical body as the flame is bound to the candle's material. Spiritual science shows that one cannot get at what is present in the soul as eternal with those functions of the soul life that are completely suitable for ordinary life and are also completely suitable for ordinary scientific research. Spiritual science shows that the soul of man, as it is in everyday life and in ordinary scientific research, is bound to the physical functions of the body, and that one must first seek out what is eternal in the soul by seeking a way from the ordinary soul functions to where these ordinary soul functions do not reach, where they do not come when they only accomplish what is accomplished in everyday life and ordinary science. An inner development of the soul abilities to a point that is completely superfluous for ordinary life is necessary if one wants to find the eternal powers of the human soul.

In earlier lectures I have already spoken about this development of the soul abilities of the human being from certain points of view, to a different view than that of everyday life. Today, I want to put the question in a different light from a different point of view.

What is considered the most important thing in ordinary science, the most important thing in ordinary life, for example in thinking and imagining, comes into play in a completely different way for spiritual research than in this everyday life. In ordinary life, it is a matter of our recognizing something by thinking about something that initially approaches us from outside. We perceive what approaches us from outside; we perceive even that which is in historical becoming; we think about it, and in so doing we explore the laws of external facts and of historical becoming. Thought arises in us, and precisely because we can think, because our thoughts have a certain content, we know something about the external world. And so it is right for our everyday life. It is also right for the activities of ordinary science.

But if one wants to grasp thinking in such a way as it must be grasped in order to arrive at true spiritual-scientific results, then one must grasp it in the following way. I will show, by means of a comparison that I have already used here once before, the quite different way in which the spiritual researcher must approach thinking, imagining, as compared with the way in which a person in ordinary life or in ordinary science approaches it. I have already hinted at it: When we use our hands for some external work, it depends, first of all, on our doing this external work, that the results of this external work be there. What is realized in the outer world through our work is what is seen. But that is not the only result of the work. The outer world must look at this result, and it has a right to look at it. But by repeatedly doing this or that, man also strengthens the strength of his hands and arms at the same time, and not only strengthens them but also makes them more adept at doing this or that. One can say – if we may use the word, which is of course only correct in a relative sense – that man makes the dexterity of his hands and arms more perfect by working. In terms of external labor, this is perhaps a very small thing, if we look only at how the result of the work fits into the context of human life. In this respect, it is a secondary result that the human hand and arms become more skillful. But for humans, it matters a great deal. Or even if one did not want to accept that, it is precisely this that is there as a secondary result! But with this we can compare what man achieves in imagining, in thinking. In ordinary life and in ordinary science, it is important to form a certain content of thought. Certainly, that is also quite right. But in forming this content of thought, in thinking, something similar really happens to thinking as happens to the strength of the hand and arm when one works. Thinking undergoes something inwardly, and it is precisely this, which is really quite unimportant for ordinary life and for ordinary science, even in relation to their achievements, that spiritual scientific research must now turn its inner gaze to: to what happens in thinking. The soul must be directed not to the content of the thoughts, but to the activity. And not to the mere activity either, but to what happens in the activity of thinking — if I may use the expression, which has only relative validity, once more — in the direction of perfection, of the development of thinking.

The soul's gaze must be trained to do this. And it must be possible to do so in order to enter into regions where the eternal powers of soul life open up, to disregard the content of thinking and to direct the soul's gaze to the activity of thinking, to what one does by thinking. This is achieved systematically and methodically through an intimate inner activity, which could also be called an intimate inner soul experiment, and which I have often referred to here as meditation. The word meditation need only be taken in the sense in which it is used here, as a technical term for the striving to develop such an ability by which the gaze of the soul can be directed precisely at this development of thinking. And one can really achieve this setting of the inner soul forces in this direction through what is called meditation, if this meditation is practiced in the right sense. Of course, I can only give the principles here with regard to what meditation is. More details can be found in my books, especially in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” where the soul's activities, the inner soul experiments, as it were, that set the whole soul life on the path that is to be indicated here in principle, are discussed in detail. Thinking and imagining must often be brought into a possibility, so that it stands, as it were, as external things stand, that one can look at it, that one holds it, as it were, more firmly, in the inner soul capacity, than one is accustomed to holding it when one lets thinking proceed only in such a way that it serves one in understanding the external world. And to bring the soul into such a direction, one must again and again, now out of the most inner freedom and arbitrariness, give the thinking a direction, which one gives it only to really feel inwardly what has just been indicated, to experience it inwardly, to strengthen this thinking so that one can inwardly experience what has been indicated. To do this, one must bring into one's thinking, into one's imagination, thoughts, ideas, upon which one then draws one's entire inner soul life, so that one really forgets the world and everything around us, disregarding the whole course of the rest of one's soul life, in order to concentrate all one's soul powers on one point, on one thought content that one has placed at the center of one's imagination. It is a seemingly undemanding activity of the inner soul life, but with reference to what is meant here, as it is said in Goethe's “Faust”: “Although it is easy, yet the easy is difficult!” In general, it is easy to give thought a direction such as that indicated here. But in order to summon up the inner strength needed to observe thinking in its activity, the process must be repeated over and over again. Depending on the individual, it may take weeks, months or years before any result is achieved. So that most people, if they take such an inner path, have long since lost their patience by the time any result might come.

Then there is another factor to be taken into account: if we take any thought from our soul life, as it presents itself to our memory, then this thought, which we have thought often, and which is linked to this or that external stimulus, cannot help us much in the activity we have indicated. For when a person draws a thought from the depths of his soul, a vast number of other sensations and remnants of sensations that would otherwise have remained unconscious are associated with it; and one experiences many things through this thought that one would otherwise not experience in the ordinary course of life. We cannot know whether what we experience in these thoughts is not somehow a reminiscence, some hidden memory from ordinary life. And finally, when we take a thought that is linked to something external, we cannot be quite so sure either. For, although we form a thought from the external world, this thought does indeed enter our consciousness, but we are never fully aware of the impression that we still receive more or less unconsciously alongside it. For my part, one can bring into consciousness any thought of an external object that one has seen. And by concentrating all the soul's power on it, something that one did not bring to consciousness in an immediate contemplation can well emerge, and one can believe that one has somehow brought what one is experiencing up from unknown worlds, while one has only brought it up from one's own soul, from the part that otherwise remains unconscious. Therefore, it is best to form ideas that one can easily keep track of and that do not run the risk of conjuring up something from one's soul life and then making us believe that we are experiencing something that is nothing more than reminiscences of our own subconscious soul life. To prevent this from happening, it is good to form a thought or take a thought from the literature of spiritual science that one can survey, to which one has not yet attached any habits, so to speak, of which one knows how its individual parts are composed, of which one knows that it does not subconsciously evoke something from one's soul life that then presents itself to one's mind instead of one experiencing something new. I have therefore often said: Since it is not at all important to recognize anything external through these activities of the soul life, which one calls meditation, to visualize any external truth, it is good to to take symbolic images, about which one is clear from the outset: they express nothing external, they are only placed at the center of thinking in order to exercise the thinking, to strengthen the thinking. For everything depends on taking hold of the processes of thinking in a living way by performing them. Through free inner activity, one must place a content at the center of one's soul life and then limit oneself entirely to that content. Only a few minutes need be spent on the individual content for the individual exercise, because as a rule it does not depend on the length of time at all, but on how far one really succeeds in concentrating the soul power in such a way that it is directed at one point and thereby strengthens inwardly, so that this inner thinking activity does not go unnoticed, but occurs with such strength that one can feel it inwardly, that one can experience it inwardly. If one now, with sufficient patience and persistence and energy, repeatedly performs such an experiment on the soul, one finally comes to really place one's thinking, that which otherwise withdraws as an inner thought process, in front of one's soul, to really place oneself in relation to one's inwardness in a completely different way than one has otherwise related to this inwardness. One comes to discover something quite new in oneself. But it is only new for one's consciousness; it is always there in the person. The soul's processes that one has accomplished merely lead to noticing it. What one discovers is always present in every person. But as a new human being in man, as something of which we notice that it also fills us, which we did not know before - we can now grasp a new human being in man with the power that we have become aware of through the comprehension, through the inner energizing, strengthening of thinking. And if we practise this long enough, with sufficient intensity and patience, it really takes us beyond the realm of ordinary thought and imagination, leading us to a completely different way of looking at our soul from the one we are accustomed to. But at the same time we notice something that can only be noticed at a point where the human being really arrives at a result. One must patiently wait until what is now being related as a result comes about. One arrives at a shattering result.

This shattering result is always reminiscent of an expression that has often been used in the course of human development. It has been used within those circles that have known something of the fact that there is such an expansion of soul life as that which is spoken of here. Now, in order to explain what is meant here, it must be said that spiritual science of the kind meant here has only become possible in our age. Humanity is evolving. What occurs in some form or other in a later age was not possible in an earlier one. The newer form of natural science, as it has developed since the time of Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus, was not possible in the earlier epochs of human evolution. But these earlier epochs had to precede the newer one. In these earlier epochs, attempts were made to penetrate to the innermost nature of things in a quite different way from that which is the case in the present epoch. Just as natural science in its newer form was not yet possible in the Greco-Roman period, for example – not possible in terms of purely external facts, not only in principle – so spiritual science, as it is meant here and is described here according to its method, is something that can only dawn upon our time within the evolution of humanity. But just as man delved into nature in the same way as the human faculties that lay closest to the surface in the evolution of humanity, so too did he seek to gain access to the eternal forces of the human soul and develop the soul faculties in the same way as in ancient times, so that they might see in the old way what is eternal in the development of the human soul. In days gone by, people often spoke of the goal of developing the inner life of the soul as I have just described. They said that in order to reach the eternal foundations of his soul life, man must approach the portals of death. The full significance of this saying, “to approach the gate of death,” is only realized when one has truly brought this inner experience, which has just been described as meditation, to a certain point. One comes to a point where one discovers within oneself a real second person, a person who can only be grasped through strengthened thinking, just as one grasps the ordinary physical person through ordinary comprehensive volition, through what one can otherwise do within oneself. One comes to this second man in oneself, who is felt inwardly, so to speak, by the invigorating thinking, but at the same time one comes to realize, to see through direct observation, how this second man is connected, not with constructive but with destructive forces of our human organism. One comes to realize that, basically, one carries within oneself the conditions of death since birth or, let us say, since conception; that certain processes in the human being are real, that they take place and that, when they reach a certain point, they must lead to death. Alongside that which animates the human being, alongside that which is the ascending life process, which of course cannot be seen with the ordinary soul powers either, stands that which is the eroding soul powers, which, I would say, are destructive soul powers. And with the highest development of these destructive soul powers, with that which rules and lives in man as, one may say, the cause of death, as the lasting cause of death, one sees most intimately connected with it that which is now this second man, whom one feels inwardly, as it were, with one's thinking. Indeed, only through an inner experience can one come to assert what I am now asserting. Just as little as someone who does not know that water is divided into hydrogen and oxygen in electrolysis can discern anything about hydrogen or oxygen , just as little can anything be recognized in the ordinary life of the soul that is similar to the experience that has now been hinted at and that has been expressed at all times with the words: one approaches the gate of death.

One experiences that just as there is something in water that cannot be seen directly when looking at the water, even though it can be seen as hydrogen and oxygen, there is something in man that is connected with his thinking, but at the same time with the forces that give him death. One looks within oneself at the human being who brings it about that one can have precisely the purest, most abstract thinking, the one that furthest advances one in ordinary life, between birth and death, but that one could not have it if the death-giving powers in man did not come to their highest flowering. And by discovering through the strengthening of thinking that which brings death, an experience is directly linked to it, an inner experiential knowledge — one cannot call it anything other than an inner experiential knowledge —, not something that could ever be reached by a conclusion of reason; just as little as looking at water externally can be reached by a conclusion of reason, that hydrogen and oxygen are in it. One gains the experience by saying to oneself: One now looks beyond the scope of what ordinary consciousness overlooks and gets to know the human being who, between birth and death, is connected to the forces that give birth. But at the same time, one gets to know oneself in such a way that, by looking through oneself, one gets to know in this second self that which was there before one entered into physical existence through birth or, let us say, conception. From this moment on, one comes to know that not only have the hereditary powers of the ancestors, of father and mother, placed the human being in existence, but that spiritual powers, which come from a purely spiritual world, have combined with what lies in the hereditary current.

In ordinary life, we are accustomed to calling only that 'knowledge' which is arrived at by pointing to certain facts that already exist before the knowledge is acquired. For spiritual facts, this way of thinking would be exactly the same as saying: I want to communicate something to someone, but I don't say it out loud, because by saying it out loud it is no longer an objective fact that is there; it has to come about by itself. Just as in speaking one produces something that is not exhausted in the content of what is spoken, so spiritual scientific knowledge is bound to an activity in which what is the content of knowledge is first realized, just as what is the content of speaking is first realized in speaking. And now we really come to realize that in spiritual fields there exists in a higher form that which natural science has been striving towards since about the middle of the nineteenth century: what is called the “transformation of forces”. Transformation of forces is, for example, in its simplest form: you press on the table, and the force of your pressure, the work of your pressure, is transformed into warmth. Your pressure force is not lost, but transformed. This law of the transformation of forces has indeed taken hold of the scientific mind and thus acquired great significance. The spiritual scientist who brings himself to the point I have indicated learns to recognize that what underlies all our thinking and what I have just called “the death-bringing forces” are in fact eternal life forces, but can only become active as eternal life forces if they take hold of an organism, a physical organism. If they are present in the purely spiritual world before birth or, let us say, before conception, they are eternal life forces. And they must lose the form of eternal life forces; they must transform themselves into such forces that build up the organ of physical thinking between birth and death. They have to do this in order to build up the organ of physical thinking. They can therefore only again occupy themselves with their spiritual character when the organ of the physical body, the organ of thinking, has been broken down. Therefore it is really impossible to find within the physical life that of which has now been spoken. For one could not think at all in the ordinary sense if one could find that of which has been spoken. One thinks in the physical life — this is particularly shown by spiritual science — with the organ of thinking. It is not the thinking that is created by the eternal activity and the eternal powers of the human soul, but the organ of thinking; this must always be there first, so that thinking can take place. This ordinary physical thinking would therefore have to cease if one wanted to look at the very thing that matters. It is not thinking that comes from the eternal powers, but the organ of thinking, which remains hidden behind thinking. And it is precisely this organ of thinking that must remain hidden so that thinking can come to the fore.

Therefore, as one progresses in this inner development of the soul, one has an experience that is, I might say, no less harrowing than that which has just been described by the traditional expression “approaching the gates of death”. One experiences: Yes, your thinking, you thus strengthen it; your thinking becomes stronger in itself, so that it can inwardly feel a second person who is within you. — But one thing applies above all to this thinking. All that I have said is meant only in the main, for the reason that, since one is developing in the inner life of the soul, a residue of ordinary thinking always remains; otherwise one would have to leap out of ordinary thinking and leap into the other. So what I say is always meant only comparatively, that is, not in the full sense, but only in the main.

What stands out as particularly characteristic, as particularly significant, in that thinking strengthens itself, is something that represents a certain importance precisely for the ordinary life of the soul and now for this life of the soul, which has actually ceased to exist as a result of the strengthening of thinking. It is possible to retain through ordinary memory, through the ordinary ability to remember, what one has thus attained through thinking. The convenience of ordinary life also ceases, that one simply transmits one's thoughts to memory and then has them and only needs to remember them; that too actually ceases. So, when one has strengthened one's thinking, one has, despite the strengthening, reached a point where, by placing oneself in this strengthened thinking, one is continually faced with the feeling that this thinking will soon be lost again as it arises. And that is precisely the difficulty, which causes a great many people to lose patience and never to develop such inner soul powers as are meant here. Someone who does exercises like the ones suggested may do them for a long time, but he does not realize that what one produces in this way is just as difficult to retain as it is sometimes to retain a dream. When you wake up, you know exactly what you dreamt, but you can't hold on to it, it disappears. And that's how it is with what you have achieved. It can only be incorporated into your ordinary memory with great difficulty.

That is why, when you present spiritual truths, they always have to be created in the moment; however strange or paradoxical it may sound, it is simply true that you cannot retrieve them from ordinary memory. And why is that so? It is because man, as he is in ordinary life, continually tends to let what he actually achieves through the formation, the development of the organ of thinking, what comes out of the eternal, slip down into the physical. No sooner has one attained what the eternal presents than it slips into the ordinary organ of thinking. That is, it passes over into the ordinary life of the soul and thereby loses its eternal form. One constantly sees that one grasps something as it arises, only to lose it again immediately. And only long practice is necessary to observe to some extent what arises and immediately passes away; to have in the soul that which arises and immediately passes away. Thus, one realizes that one actually needs a completely different consciousness than the consciousness that simply comes from the ordinary organ of thought. And one gradually comes to realize – which in turn is a harrowing experience of the soul – that yes, you do attain something through your soul development; but with the consciousness that you have there, which serves you in the most fruitful way in ordinary life, you cannot hold on to it after all. For this ordinary consciousness is organized in such a way that the eternal escapes from it, so that it may be efficient. The conviction finally arises: You need another consciousness, you need a consciousness that goes beyond the consciousness that is fruitful for your ordinary life, because with this consciousness you cannot hold on to the eternal.

Therefore it is necessary that such pure mental exercises, as they have been designated as a member of the meditative life, are supplemented by other exercises, which one can now call exercises of the will, of the feeling will It is not enough to exercise the power of thinking, of visualizing, inwardly in the indicated manner, for by this inward exercise alone one would arrive at a state where what arises continually ceases. Therefore, spiritual science must also advise us to treat the will in a different way than it is treated in ordinary life. In everyday life, the will functions in the soul life in such a way that, when we will, our attention is actually directed to that which is to happen, to that which flows out of the will into action, even if we only will inwardly, if it remains with the intention – with the inward presentation of the volition. Attention is always directed to that into which the will is lived, into which the will flows. If we apply the same effort to an inner cultivation of the will as can be applied in the manner indicated to the cultivation of imagination and of thinking, we can develop the will to such a point that we attain the possibility of developing the will that is necessary to reach the eternal powers of the human soul. To do this, however, it is necessary to practise the will inwardly in such a way that one really does establish a quite intense calmness of soul, that one quiets the surging and swaying of desires, the surging and swaying of the other impulses of desire that play a great role in life, so that one, as it were, establishes complete calmness in the inner life of one's soul and then reflects on what one may have wanted at some time. All the liveliness that the will is imbued with when it is directly present is, so to speak, taken away by placing remembered will in front of you, by looking back in the evening, for example, at what you willed during the day, and now letting this will work on you in such a way that you do not become an inner critic, but you look at this volition; you look at it now that it no longer directly tempts you to direct your attention to external deeds alone, but now that the volition has detached itself in your inner soul life from the external activity, you can direct your attention to what the soul life is and what it does in the volition. We also make progress in this field if we make an effort, I might say, again as an inner experiment, to will that which we have found good for this or that reason, to place it in the inner life of our soul, and then to visualize in a fine, intimate way: What do you experience when you place yourself in the position of your soul in wanting this? — whereby one completely disregards what is connected with the desired itself, but only places oneself in what the soul inwardly feels by undergoing the volition.

Again, long exercises in this direction are necessary if one wants to come to a conclusion; but one comes to a conclusion: namely, one discovers that during one's life one actually carries an invisible, an imperceptible spectator with oneself all the time. Again, one discovers a person, a new person, but a person who is always there, but who is not noticed. Just as the inner man, as characterized above, is not noticed in thinking, so the inner spectator is not noticed in willing, because attention is directed to something quite different. This inner man is now actually a consciousness that is unconsciously — if I may use the paradoxical expression — always in us, that is not raised into the ordinary consciousness, but that is there nevertheless.

It is difficult to talk about these things for the reason that one talks about things that are realities, but are actually unfamiliar to man; unfamiliar because they are not brought to consciousness in ordinary life. The spiritual scientist is not talking about anything new. He is not talking about anything that does not exist. He is only pointing out what exists in every human being. But in order to show it, it is necessary to approach it in such a way that one approaches it actively; that one does not merely point out facts that want to guarantee a being, but for which observation first brings forth what is, but what can only be shown through the activity.

And now, when one has progressed to a certain point in this field, something happens in the soul that can bring one to the deepest shock. One now gets to know something to a great extent, which one experiences in the outer life, namely within the intentions, the desires, the will that one has in the soul, but, I would say, only on the outside, only in bits and pieces. One experiences in a comprehensive way what one can call: the direct contemplation, the direct feeling of what suffering, what pain is. For basically, each piece of this attainment of consciousness, which otherwise remains unconscious, is connected with deprivation and pain. But the two experiences now come together. The one experience that led one to the perception, I would say, the flowering of the dying power in man, and the one that led one to the perception of an unconscious consciousness that is always present in man, that always watches man as an observer – these two experiences are linked together. From the first experience one realizes: This basically cannot be designated as such being as otherwise any being is designated. It cannot maintain itself in existence if it is not borne by consciousness, if, in other words, it is not remembered by a certain consciousness. And one makes a discovery - one of the most magnificent, powerful inner experiences that one can have on the path of knowledge at first: one makes the discovery that what you produce out of an energizing of your thinking is like a fleeting dream. It cannot approach the ability of ordinary consciousness to remember. But if you really strengthen that which lives in the will, as your observation, as your subconscious consciousness, then this is now the consciousness that can grasp the other, which otherwise cannot be remembered, and which can hold it.

And now one is at the experience, which in relation to the scientific attitude can be compared entirely with the way one does it in the outer natural life, how one observes the outer natural life. One looks at the plant. You see how it develops into the germ in the flower and how this germ, when it is planted in the earth, is the beginning of a new plant. The end is combined with the beginning to form a cycle, a circle. In the same way, but at a higher level, the end and beginning of the physical life of a human being is grasped. It is known that that which existed before birth, or let us say conception, has united from the spiritual world with that which lies in the physical line of inheritance, and which permeates and interweaves with the physical organization in the human being. We know that this lives itself out in such a way that it brings forth an organ, that this organ brings it to thinking, and that its outermost development brings it to memory; but that in so doing, having emerged from the spiritual world, it has has attained a form in this transformation that is, so to speak, a highest bloom, which must now be grasped by a consciousness that is of a completely different kind than that through which it first comes out of the spiritual world, is produced. This consciousness lies like a seed of consciousness, like something that underlies as will, but in ordinary will, because attention is not directed to it, does not become conscious. That which lies in man as death-giving unites, when man passes through the gate of death, with this seed of consciousness that lies in the volition. And the ordinary physical life is only a holding apart of the one and the other. We live physically so long as the one and the other are kept apart, so long as we place ourselves with our being in between. In the experience of death, the first is grasped by the second, the consciousness grasps the former and carries it through the gate of death back into the spiritual world.

Just as one can see from the plant seed in the flower that it will begin the cycle again if it goes through the necessary intermediate conditions, so one experiences that what was present before birth, what lies in man as the power to give birth, descends to a renewed earthly life when it has gone through spiritual conditions. By linking end and beginning in a way that is entirely in keeping with the spirit of natural science, one arrives at a confirmation of what has emerged in one of the most beautiful phases of modern spiritual life and — one might say — has emerged as if from the thinking of a great thinker: what was brought to light by Lessing when he concluded his most mature work, 'The Education of the Human Race', with the reference to the necessity of thinking of repeated earthly lives. At that time it leaped forward as if from a thinking that had struggled to an independent world-view. The more recent spiritual science strives to substantiate scientifically, but, as we shall see, inwardly scientifically, that which presented itself in Lessing's thinking, this teaching of repeated earth-lives! Today it is also regarded as something fantastic, as something dreamy; just as at a certain time, which is not far behind us, the doctrine was regarded: Living things can only arise from living things. — But anyone who has recognized such a view as truth also knows that truth has a difficult path to follow in humanity, but that it will also find this path!

It seemed fantastic and dreamy to most people when the more recent natural science-minded people came forward and said: Man thinks that a firmament above limits the space, while this firmament is nothing more than the expression of the end of the ability to see itself. What you see as the firmament is only brought about by yourselves; that is precisely what your gaze penetrates, that is precisely where your seeing penetrates! It is not externally present in nature, but externally in nature is the infinity of space, in which countless worlds are embedded! From the standpoint that was adopted at the time when the old concept of the firmament of space was to be overcome, spiritual science today stands, I would say, with regard to the spiritual firmament of the human soul between birth or conception and death. Man initially looks after conception, after birth, or to a point, to which his memory reaches, and to his death. But there is nothing that limits life, just as the firmament does not limit space. Rather, what man does not see expands behind it because he does not try to expand his capacity for knowledge, his capacity for thought, beyond this temporal firmament. Out there, beyond this firmament, lie repeated earthly lives and the intervening lives in which the soul lives in a purely spiritual world.

It is certainly even more difficult to become accustomed to the thought processes that are necessary to reach this spiritual firmament than it was to reach the removal of the physical firmament. But our time is quite ripe, out of a scientific attitude, I would say, to go beyond what the external natural science can achieve. And so I do not hesitate, even if it must lead to even worse misunderstandings than what has been said so far, to make the concrete application, the particular application of that kind of spiritual research that I have just characterized, in a particular case that can interest us at all times, but especially in our fateful time.

We speak and will speak more and more of the immortal forces of the human soul when we come to a true science of the soul. But we will also learn to speak again of what invisibly reigns in the visible, what imperceptibly reigns for the ordinary historical view in the course of human life. In connection with the eternal forces of the human soul, we have spoken of death, which is indeed a mystery, not only for those who say that they desire a life beyond the gates of death, but above all for those who must grasp life itself; for much of the understanding of life lies in the unraveling of the mystery of death. But in our time, death approaches us in a completely different way, in the midst of pain and suffering, but also in the midst of hope and certainty about the future. Death comes upon us in such a way that it seizes blossoming human life, not in the sense that the forces that give death internally expire, depending on how it is allotted to the person; this cannot be explained further today, but it could also be characterized in the sense of spiritual science. Death does not come upon us in such a way that these death-bringing forces from within, from the organic, take away the physical body from that which, as higher consciousness, unites with the Eternal in the life of the will, which is death-bringing, but which is one with the Eternal —, not only does death approach us in this way, but it also takes the physical human body away from the soul in the prime of life through violent interventions from the outside, let us say, through a bullet or otherwise. Although I shall be giving more exact details in a week's time in the lecture on 'The Human Soul and the Human Spirit', I would like to venture to simply relate here a research result that lies on the path just characterized.

It would take a great deal of time to fully explain how the same method that has just been demonstrated for ordinary, simple results also leads to the investigation of what is to be discussed now. But it is exactly the same method that, in the further course, also leads us to the knowledge of precisely the great connections in life.

We must bear in mind that no force is lost; it remains available, it transforms. If the physical body is taken away by an external influence, say by a bullet, in the prime of human life, then, based on the general human disposition, such forces are available that could have provided for the person for a long time in relation to his life in the physical world. These forces are not lost. The spiritual researcher must ask: where do these forces come from, and where do they go? A significant question arises before us. Last winter, in a lecture, I spoke from the point of view of how this force lives on in the present. Now I will speak about it in so far as these forces are linked to the historical course of humanity. The spiritual researcher must ask: Where do these forces, which cease to work in a person when his body is forcibly taken from him, reappear elsewhere? Just as one searches in natural science when some force is lost, how this force, transformed into other forms, reappears, so the spiritual researcher searches in the spiritual world phenomena to find what is lost on one side on the other. And it is precisely by seeking what is being discussed here that one comes to say: In the development of mankind, forces arise that we observe, for example, when we educate a human being. We observe how a person can become capable of thinking, doing or feeling this or that. We guide the abilities present in him in such a way that we know: we do nothing special when we develop human abilities in general. We know that when he is later able to do this or that, it is because this or that has been developed in him.

But besides all this, other forces arise in human life, forces that are called ingenious forces, forces that appear while one is educating a person. One can be much more stupid than the one one is educating: these ingenious forces still come out. They come to light, one speaks of a divine favor, of a coming forth of forces, without one being able to do anything about it. Of course, I am not just talking about the powers that the higher geniuses, the higher minds, show, but about the genius that is in every human being. Even the simplest person needs a certain amount of inventiveness in their most everyday tasks in order to really make progress. There is only a difference in degree between what is needed in ordinary life and the highest powers of genius. These powers of invention arise, one might say, out of the twilight of becoming; they arise in man as something that is bestowed on him by the world spirit, by the divine spirit that pervades the world, as one might say at first, without being able to claim that one has cultivated them, that one has nurtured them through education. And then the remarkable and surprising result emerges, that these powers, which thus come to light as powers of invention, as powers of genius, are transformed powers. Those forces are transformed into ingenious forces that disappear when a person's physical body is taken from him externally, which he would have been able to retain in the normal course of events if the bullet had not hit him. This is a surprising connection that emerges: The forces that a person carries into death by passing through the gate of death by force, by having their physical body taken from the outside, not by internal organic processes, these forces are not lost; these forces emerge, and not only in the later earthly life of the individual human being — that appears in a completely different way — but they emerge in the course of history, they emerge in completely different people. They become, so to speak, embedded in historical evolution, if I may use such a trivial, philistine expression. And what are the forces of a violent death in prehistoric times are transformed into forces of genius in an earlier or later post-historical period, which arise within the evolution of humanity.

If one follows spiritual science to such points, then for those who have practice in thinking, I mean inner practice in the paths that thinking must take in order to approach realities, true connections arise that come to light in the spiritual world — but which are no more wondrous than when mysterious natural connections occur, connections that only live in a higher sphere, and because they live in a higher sphere, they are all the more important for the elevation of our life, more important than how the soul feels in existence, how the soul can also permeate itself religiously with the cosmic connection, more important than mere external knowledge of nature. Spiritual science does not want to replace any religion; religious feeling has a completely different origin. But spiritual science is, if one can say so, suitable for deepening these religious feelings, for stimulating them even in those who have lost all religious feeling through the influences of modern natural science. Spiritual science shows connections within the spiritual life that arise entirely from the attitude of a scientific way of thinking. Not that all the riddles of the world will be solved, but what otherwise presents itself only as fact alongside fact is inwardly illuminated, in a similar way to how natural facts are illuminated when they can be traced back to the chain of causes and effects.

Now, in conclusion, I would like to say something that is not logically connected to the above as a final consideration of what has just been explained – I will have more to say on this next Friday – but rather something that is only is connected to it only through the logic of feeling, a logic of feeling that must be understandable to anyone who is connected to what permeates and moves us all in our time.

It is precisely this that we see: the people of Central Europe surrounded, beset, fighting for their existence. Yesterday I tried to show what spiritual endeavors are present within this circle of existence. I do not believe that I am forced, I might say, to serve the times in an outward way, to drag together what I have to say. Yesterday I tried to show how in German spiritual life, just as this German spiritual life was seeking its paths of knowledge in an idealistic way through its great philosophers, a path lies into the spiritual worlds. It must not be taken dogmatically, as I emphasized again and again yesterday, but rather in terms of the way of seeking, in terms of the way of striving. One must examine the direction in which the inner soul forces of the German idealistic philosophers moved. And if we follow, as I tried to do yesterday, the way in which, on the one hand, through abstract, sober thinking, and on the other hand, through energetic views of the will, as with Fichte, or through powerful poetic creative powers, as in Goethe, opened up Germany's idealistic path to the world, then one has an impression of how the soul of the nation itself, this German national soul as a whole, has immersed itself in meditation, the meditation of an entire national soul in the idealistic development from the end of the eighteenth century into the first third of the nineteenth century! He who sees in meditation, in the particular training of thinking, feeling and willing, the way into the spiritual worlds, may say, without having to forcibly wrench anything into such an assertion, what can truly be the most intimate conviction for the modern spiritual researcher: The progress of spiritual science can be depicted as the development of a germ that is rooted in German idealistic philosophy; it is present in all of German idealistic spiritual striving around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has continued to have an effect into our days, as I attempted to characterize yesterday. Indeed, in all that I have been able to speak about here in these lectures over the years, I have always been aware that what is now being presented as spiritual science is nothing other than Goetheanism, German idealism. I mean this specific idealism as it emerged at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the German mind, transferred to our time; not simply viewed historically as it was at that time, but grasped in a living way in our time! And I was aware that, in essence, I was never presenting anything other than Goetheanism by presenting spiritual science in the sense in which it can be in our time. However strange it may sound to some people today, if one looks at it from this point of view, one finds that striving for the spiritual world is firmly anchored in what German spiritual striving has once risen to as its highest peak, as a highest inner peak.

And when this connection is allowed to work in one's soul, one can place oneself in our fateful days in such a way that what the German people sought on the one hand in the most extreme development of their spiritual efforts is only a different side of what must work in our time so that the historical task set for the German people in our days can be solved in the external fields of action. That is why everything the German people accomplishes is intimately connected with the deepest soul life, with what was great and significant at a time when, in relation to the outside world, the ground was pulled out from under the feet of the German people. Therefore, it may be said that, if, besides the external struggle which will be decided by arms and about which it is not proper for the spiritual observer to speak, because things will be decided not by words but by arms, if, besides this struggle, something has developed that strikes us as so strange that this German spiritual life is disparaged by opponents, so that one might believe that these opponents only find the possibility of letting their own intellectual life shine in a special light by disparaging German intellectual life, then a consideration of the inner significance, the inner world significance of German intellectual life leads precisely to the realization of how little the German needs to look at his own intellectual life in such a way that, in a comparison, the intellectual life of others would have to be disparaged. The German need only look at the task set for him from the innermost part of the world spirit to know what he has to do in the world, what he has to carry over into the future.

Therefore, one may say from the bottom of one's heart: This German national spirit, which reigns in the totality of German life, which reigns in German thought, in German meditation, as I have indicated, which reigns in German action, this German national spirit may point out when it is now being reproached in such an unintelligent way from here and there with having produced a world view that is based solely on force and power. It may point out how it can refute this strange talk through its connection with the spiritual. And when it is said that the German national spirit has played its part in historical development, then it follows that the germ of the highest spiritual life lives in the meditation of the German national spirit, as indicated above. One has only to imagine how these germs develop into blossoms and fruits, and how these blossoms and fruits must develop in the future. Then, through the genuine consciousness that flows from such thinking, from such feeling, and from such sentiment, it can be said: To those who today belittle this German national spirit or even want to deny it its spiritually fruitful powers for the future, to those, out of the consciousness of its spiritual and historical deeds and tasks, this German national spirit holds up the book of destiny, which it believes it can correctly decipher by considering the German task and the German spirit. And he says to all those who believe that they must take a stand against German intellectual life, not only with weapons but also with weapons of words, and prophesy its downfall: he believes that he can hold this up to them as a sure conviction, based on an understanding of the course of German intellectual life, a page from the book of fate of the development of mankind. And on this one page is written – no matter what may be said or maintained – the future of the German spirit, the future of the German national soul!