The Eternal in the Human Soul

GA 67 — 24 January 1918, Berlin

1. The Goal and Nature of Spiritual Research

As I have done for quite a number of years now, I would like to give a series of lectures here in Berlin this winter on topics related to spiritual science. The lectures will be linked by a common train of thought, but I would like to structure the individual lectures in such a way that each one can be heard as a complete whole, at least in a certain sense.

Today's lecture is intended as an introduction and orientation. It will deal with the aim and nature of spiritual research as understood here.

When we speak of the goals of spiritual research, we are actually referring to something that is the goal of every truly human heart that feels and senses, and, one might say, the goal of humanity, of the human quest for knowledge, since there has been a thinking, feeling humanity. And yet, every age must try to achieve this goal in different ways. This is also the case in other areas of human endeavor. If we look back over the various epochs of human development, we see that the character of human endeavors changes from age to age; interests are directed toward ever-changing things, impulses arise from ever-changing corners of the human soul, and life is dominated by ever-changing perspectives. This is why what is actually ancient must be pursued by humanity in ever-changing forms, even if this pursuit is directed toward the eternal, imperishable goal of humanity itself. One need only consider how different the way in which people view the external spatial structure of the world today is from the way they viewed it five or six centuries ago. One could apply the same observation to other areas and find that the whole nature and form of human striving and thinking, all the relationships of human thinking to the world, are constantly changing. What is referred to here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to take particular account of this circumstance. It seeks to pursue the deepest goal of human striving for knowledge in a way that corresponds precisely to the character and nature of human striving in the present and the near future.

What is meant here by spiritual science can very easily be misunderstood. It is also very easily misunderstood and is still completely misunderstood in the widest circles today. People think of something sectarian, imagining something that wants to appear as a new religious foundation or something similar. This is not correct at all. What this spiritual science wants is actually so closely related to human striving that it must be lived out as a direct continuation of the scientific worldview itself, which is so deeply ingrained in all human thinking and imagination. First of all, the spiritual science referred to here did not arise from a religious impulse, but from what must necessarily stand alongside natural science with its great achievements and insights into the outer life of existence in accordance with our present and future. It must be emphasized again and again: spiritual science does not misjudge the achievements of natural science, but recognizes them in the deepest sense; but precisely what has made natural science great and significant, what has brought it its great successes, has at the same time prevented it from finding ways and means to penetrate into the spiritual life of humanity itself. One need only point to the actual goal of human spiritual striving, to that which stands at the center of this striving, and one will immediately recognize, when looking around at the current state of scientific life, that what has just been said is correct.

Towards the end of his life, the eminent philosopher Eduard von Hartmann wrote a history of the doctrine of the soul. In this history of the doctrine of the soul, which is very remarkable, he stated that, since the middle of the nineteenth century, the scientific, academically pursued doctrine of the soul has basically been unable to address the two main questions of human knowledge of the soul. These two main questions are none other than the question of the eternal in the human soul, which is essentially called the question of immortality, and the other, the question of the nature of human freedom; and basically, everything that strives for knowledge in this field culminates in gaining clear, certain, true knowledge about these two questions. And it is precisely these two questions that cannot be answered by what is today known as scientific psychology.

One of the most significant figures in recent times to have engaged in psychological research, Franz Brentano, who died last year in Zurich, applied his deep thirst for knowledge to questions of the soul, said as early as the 1870s, when considering what “soul science” could be from the scientific spirit of the present: This soul science deals with how one idea is linked to another, how attention relates to the human soul, what role memory plays, how love and hate work, how feelings rise and fall; However, Franz Brentano believed that if the precise investigation of all these things were to result in the answer to the great question of the immortality of the better part of human nature — that great question that Plato and Aristotle had already pursued — being compromised and having to give way to the results of individual research, then individual research, despite its precision and accuracy, would be completely futile. And it must be said: precisely that kind of thinking which, as it must be in the field of natural science, can penetrate the external conditions of nature, is unsuitable for penetrating the human soul, and it is unsuitable for the following reason:

The ideal for the present-day natural scientist must be to observe the phenomena of nature in such a way that nothing interferes with this observation that originates from the human soul itself, from what is called the subjective nature of the human soul. Everything that does not arise from the laws of nature itself before the human mind, but which the human mind adds of its own accord, must be excluded. If the ideal of natural science must be to exclude the subjective nature of the soul, is it any wonder that a way of thinking, a way of imagining, develops which, precisely because of what makes it great, is unsuitable for penetrating the life of the soul?

This was not always the case. Anyone who can trace the course of human intellectual development in earlier centuries and millennia will find that natural science, in the sense in which it is great today, has not always existed, but that, as it is today, it is actually only three to four hundred years old.

Before that, people also observed nature. But consider only what people believed they knew about nature: in all knowledge or supposed knowledge about nature, there was always something of the soul present. People spoke about nature and its phenomena in such a way that they always saw something similar to the essence of the human soul itself. It is entirely justified that this way of viewing nature has sunk into obscurity and another way has emerged that excludes everything spiritual and intellectual of this kind. Those who take the view that we have now come so far in most fields that we finally have certain knowledge, that we have such knowledge that we can look down haughtily on the childish achievements of earlier centuries and millennia, will certainly find it easier to deal with these questions than those who look a little deeper into human relationships. With reference to the great achievements of a Helmholtz or a Julius Robert Mayer, one may be of the opinion that these are finally the truths that humanity has been striving for in vain for centuries. But a closer look at history shows that this is not the case, that all striving leads us back to the great ideas of Lessing, that the development of humanity through the centuries and millennia is an “education of humanity,” that humanity progresses in such a way that it discovers what it discovers in order to advance further and further and thereby go through the various forms of development. This leads us to conclude that a particular form of development should not be regarded as a definitive truth; for just as Copernicus thought differently from the older astronomers before him, so future generations will think differently from Copernicus. But one arrives at the following train of thought: this more recent period, especially since the thirteenth century, has developed a way of thinking about nature that forms a stage in human development, a stage that can be characterized in particular by saying: Man has learned to drive everything spiritual out of nature, to view nature in such a way that it presents him with its chemical and physical laws, in order to seek within himself with all the more power those forces that lead into the life of the soul, that bring him to the spirit. Thus, natural science in particular points to the fact that, in modern times, the path to the spirit must be followed according to the model and requirements of natural science, with the rigor that prevails in natural science, but that this path to the spirit is built on the inner, individual forces of the human soul itself. This even leads us to the conclusion that spiritual science, as it is meant here, represents just as much “scientific” and strives for scientific certainty and a form similar to that of natural science, but that, because it wants to stand on an equal footing with natural science, it must take other paths and must realize that the thoughts, ideas, and concepts that are suitable for understanding nature cannot penetrate the human soul.

We can therefore say straight away – and I want to get to the point without further ado – that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here appeals to different powers of cognition than those that are recognized and used in external science today. Basically, everything that is misunderstood or even dishonest about the appearance of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is directed against this striving for such special powers of cognition. It must be said that in seeking to find the eternal in the human soul, which lies beyond birth and death, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must penetrate into the depths of the human soul itself, which are indeed constantly present in every human soul, which can always be found, but which cannot be sought with the current methods of science and, in fact, are not sought. The point is that human beings carry the eternal core of their being within themselves, but that this eternal core must first be sought within them, and that the forces through which it can be found must first be brought up from within the soul. One may use the comparison I used in my book The Riddle of Man: what actually leads human beings to soul knowledge “sleeps” in the soul in ordinary life and must first be awakened; “contemplative consciousness” must first emerge from ordinary consciousness. For spiritual knowledge to occur, something is necessary in the human soul that can be described as an “awakening” of the soul from the consciousness that guides us through everyday life and through ordinary science. Something must therefore be brought up from the depths of the soul.

Now the series of lectures will show how this, which lies deep within the soul as the eternal core, can be brought up. Today I will only hint that this bringing up is not a matter of any external measures, but of an intimate inner soul path, which is aimed above all at making the ordinary soul forces of human beings more powerful, more intense, and stronger than they are in ordinary life and in ordinary science. Exercises to be described later and described in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” as well as in other writings enable the human soul to draw such stronger powers out of itself and to develop more intense thinking, more heartfelt feeling, and more luminous willing, which are then able to look upon the spiritual world — in which human beings are rooted, just as they are rooted in the sensory world as physical human beings — in the same way that physical eyes look at colors and shapes and physical ears listen to sounds. Through such exercises, which will be described in later lectures, human beings come to strengthen and intensify what they otherwise use as soul forces, so that they thereby develop something in their soul constitution which, if one merely mentions it today, naturally elicits a kind of derisive smile in the widest circles: They come to see with spiritual organs in the same way that they otherwise see and hear with physical organs in outer life. They come to live in a human being that is just as supersensible as they live in the physical sensory world in ordinary life. In other words, the human being comes to live with his whole soul in a — even if the expression is improper — “supersensible physicality.” The human being always carries this supersensible physicality within himself. In order to recognize the essence of the human being himself, it must first emerge from within. One must recognize differently when one recognizes nature than when one wants to recognize the spirit; one must look into the realm of the spirit with different powers than those used to look into the realm of nature. Although I will describe the intimate soul processes that lead to spiritual vision later, I can already mention a few things that belong to it.

Something peculiar becomes particularly apparent when one asks the question: Why is it that human beings in their ordinary consciousness know nothing of their eternal soul core? Well, the spiritual research referred to here shows that when this eternal core is brought into the field of vision of spiritual consciousness, it slips away from ordinary observation and ordinary thinking with extraordinary ease. The eternal core of human beings is like the delicate feelings in the human soul: they can live in the human soul, and they live most intensely when one does not try to observe them with the ordinary mind. If one tries to shine the light of the ordinary mind on them, they flee. It is similar with the eternal core of human beings. Our external natural science is based on robust, trivial, easily understandable concepts; it arranges observation in such a way that such concepts prevail in it. If one wants to look at the life of the soul and its eternal core with such ideas, which are just suitable for recognizing nature, it flees. It flees especially from those who today believe that with all their concepts and ideas they stand firmly on the ground of contemporary natural science.

And there is something else. Anyone who approaches the spiritual world with the soul forces described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds” approaches the spiritual world, can notice that the soul has a peculiar shyness, one might say, a kind of inner fear, which very few people today are aware of because it lies deep in the subconscious: a shyness and fear of penetrating into the depths of the soul, where the eternal nature of the soul lives. On the other hand, human beings strive with every fiber of their being to recognize something of the life of the soul; but they find the paths that lead to this so difficult that they are overcome by something like this inner shyness and fear. Precisely when people begin to do such exercises in order, I might say, to come face to face with their eternal self, not only does this eternal self flee in the manner described, but the fear and timidity become even greater, intensifying.

There is something else that comes into play. If, as spiritual researchers, we have grasped something of these things and try to approach what we have now gained with untrained thinking, untrained in spiritual science but well trained in natural science, then what we have gained becomes confused. It is indeed as if that which is so wonderfully applicable to external nature were to drive away that which human beings can bring forth from within themselves through their own being. In addition, human beings are very easily inclined to bring their desires, cravings, and prejudices into the results of soul research, to color what should be objective with their imagination, just as objective as the results in the field of natural science should be. All of this creates obstacle after obstacle. And anyone who wants to know how to actually approach the spirit does not really need to apply specific exercises to bring out certain abilities hidden in the soul; for if you give them freedom, if you let them act as they wish, they will come of their own accord; they only fail to come for the reasons mentioned above.

A large part of the effort required in the exercises comes from the need to overcome the obstacles just mentioned. Anyone who takes a superficial look at the spiritual research referred to here will easily think: well, our exact science demands more rigorous thinking and more skilled development of ideas. On the other hand, those who delve deeper into spiritual research will find that it demands far more “thought” — one might even say — than official science today. But on the other hand, it is the case that one can strengthen weak thinking, a way of thinking that has developed in its present form precisely because it is carried from experiment to experiment and thus becomes accustomed to a certain passivity. This thinking must become stronger, more active, more vigorous; and only by strengthening thinking will one be able to organize observation in such a way that the results about the eternal essence of the human being do not escape, that they are not destroyed, and that the shyness and fear I have spoken of are overcome.

Added to all this are other things that are quite unfamiliar to people today in relation to spiritual research, and which they must regard as paradoxical, as strange. I must repeat what I have already emphasized on other occasions: true spiritual research must work entirely with inner means, must draw the power of supersensible vision from healthy human nature, must come to organize the supersensible human body in such a way that it can develop its supersensible organs independently of the physical human body. These methods are opposed to those that confront people at every turn today and are understood and overestimated by some, and which are also supposed to lead in a certain way into the supersensible, into the realm of the eternal in human nature. Today we know what the vast realm of the subconscious or unconscious soul life is. We know how human nature can be led to perform tasks that are quite different from what are considered normal through all kinds of interventions; we know what hypnosis and somnambulism can achieve. None of these things can be considered true spiritual research. All these things do not make human beings what spiritual research can make them: they do not make him more independent of his physical body, but rather more dependent on it. When spiritual research is often accused of leading people toward pathological traits, this is not true. For the paths and methods of spiritual research are precisely the opposite of those of other endeavors that seek to approach the life of the soul in other ways; these other endeavors make people more dependent on their ordinary consciousness. It is precisely through the methods of spiritual research that people are to become more independent than they are in their ordinary consciousness. And on this path of spiritual research, people acquire powers that can penetrate the spiritual realm, but which must indeed appear paradoxical to those who do not want to gain a closer knowledge of them.

What human beings draw out of their souls looks very different from the ordinary soul forces. One need only point out how human beings, as soul forces, need their memory and power of recollection every day in order to be efficient in ordinary life. One need only think about what human beings would be like if they had to live their lives without the individual points of their lives being connected in their memory — and we will have much to say about this in the coming lectures. When the spiritual researcher, through spiritual vision, brings a spiritual, supersensible event before the soul, an event that can truly shed light on the eternal core of human nature, then it is a special characteristic of this conquest of the supersensible that one cannot remember such things in the ordinary sense, that such results of spiritual research, which are conquered inwardly, are not subject to ordinary memory. One must — you can read about this in the books already mentioned, and it will also be discussed here — cultivate certain inner activities if one wants to attain spiritual vision. One can remember these activities. If, through these activities, one has managed to see a fact in the spiritual worlds, then later, when one wants to return to this matter, that fact does not reappear; one can only remember the soul activities that one has performed. One must bring these about again, then one can bring the soul back to the point where it sees the same thing again. Just as one can grasp what is around us in space as objects in concepts and ideas — then it is no longer what was seen — so one can remember the concepts and ideas. If one really wants to approach the life of the soul, one must be prepared to make such distinctions. One must become accustomed to the fact of repeating the soul's activities. Without such an undertaking, the great question of human existence cannot really be approached.

In ordinary life, we know that when we practice something repeatedly, it becomes more familiar to us. This is the power of habit. What would ordinary life be if we could not do something we are supposed to be able to do better through repetition? After all, all creation and activity in life is based on the fact that we habitually perfect ourselves.

With spiritual experiences, it is different. This is precisely what must seem so paradoxical to people. It often happens that someone undertakes exercises such as those that will be discussed later and, because the human soul always has reserve powers of the supersensible, makes good progress relatively quickly. I know many people who were able to approach the supersensible by doing the first exercises for only a relatively short time. But then they are surprised. They may have had quite significant supersensible experiences and seen something quite important. After some time, however, these experiences do not return; they cannot bring them back. For spiritual experience is precisely the opposite of ordinary practice in the outer world. In the outer world, one brings a skill to greater perfection by practicing it frequently. In spiritual vision, what we have already achieved flees from us through repetition; it becomes less and less, it goes away. Human efforts must therefore become greater and greater. This is another peculiarity of spiritual exercises: one finds the possibility of making ever greater and greater efforts to overcome the ever greater flight of the spiritual world. These things are, of course, all to be understood as something that can be overcome; but they are characteristic of the spiritual world.

And a third thing. I am telling you these details today because I do not want to talk in abstract terms, but would like to discuss things as concretely as possible, even today. When we want to observe something in the outer world, we are accustomed to focusing our attention on it for as long as possible. To observe the spiritual, something is needed that can be described as presence of mind. For the most important and essential things in experience approach the soul from the spiritual world so quickly that they appear and vanish without being observed. That is why human beings miss the secrets of the spiritual world, because they do not have enough presence of mind. One of the best exercises for finding one's way in the spiritual world is to get used to developing presence of mind in one's outer life, to get used to not hesitating for long in a situation, not taking a quarter of an hour to decide to have this or that thought. The more presence of mind you have, especially in situations that require quick thinking, the more you train yourself to grasp what the spiritual world has to offer. Therefore, people who are quick to make decisions in certain situations in their outer life, who do not turn everything over two or three times, but who can do things and do them right, even if the opportunity is only brief, these people will be the most suitable for making spiritual observations. In later lectures, other things will be presented, such as how people must develop the powers to look into that world where their eternal essence lies.

Now, I do not want every person who wants to claim spiritual science for themselves to immediately become a spiritual researcher through such exercises. But what I mean is this: just as the chemist must develop chemical methods and the physicist must develop physical methods in order to achieve chemical and physical successes, so the corresponding spiritual scientific methods must be developed if human beings really want to approach the spiritual world scientifically. But once the results have been researched and presented, then people can understand these results through ordinary common sense, provided they do not allow themselves to be misled, although even today it is possible for anyone who wants to do so to use the methods referred to here to reach a point where they can convince themselves of the truth of what emerges from spiritual research about the spiritual world through direct observation.

What one can become particularly convinced of when one steps beyond the limits of the sensory world in the manner indicated is something I have already touched upon: that those concepts and ideas that are particularly suitable for viewing the external world in the sense of the great achievements of natural science are not equally suitable for approaching the spiritual world. This becomes particularly apparent when one is involved in spiritual research and has become accustomed to feeling the deep mysteries of life with all possible intensity, mysteries which one very often, I will not say ignores, but does not yet approach in such a way that they reveal all that they could reveal. Spiritual research is based on the same truths of the human soul as natural science, but spiritual research also affects the deeper impulses of the life of feeling, even though the life of feeling and the life of emotion cannot solve the mysteries of the world. And when it is deepened and strengthened by the ideas of spiritual science, it can approach precisely those mysteries that are otherwise less noticed.

Let us cite one such mystery, a mystery that confronts human beings time and again, the mystery that is revealed when human beings stand before a lifeless human body, a corpse. The comparison between the human corpse and the living human being is not made very often in all its depth, for otherwise we would recognize that it presents us with one of the deepest comparisons in life. This comparison is not made too often, for otherwise we would recognize that it presents us with one of the deepest comparisons in life. For the human corpse, which actually, when we have it before us, presents us with the immediate problem of death and thus also of immortality, we look at it, we examine it as anatomists, as physiologists, in order to solve many of the mysteries of human beings, but we give far too little thought to what it means: This soulless corpse is here; what it is now is no longer “human”; what it is now only has meaning because something else that used to be in it is no longer there. The soulless corpse in all its forms and contexts no longer has its original meaning: its meaning is given to it by something that is no longer in it. Spiritual research shows us that there is an analogue to this soulless corpse, which only acquires its meaning through our knowledge that life was in it, giving it its meaning. Spiritual research sees an analogue to this soulless corpse in ordinary imagination and thinking. Just as this soulless corpse no longer carries or reveals life within itself, and just as it has no meaning or significance without this life, because it only acquires meaning through this life, so our ordinary thinking, which is so suitable for the external observation of nature, has no possibility of penetrating the supersensible mysteries. For ordinary thinking and imagining are as paralyzed, as dead, in relation to supersensible mysteries as a corpse is in relation to life. And in this respect, materialism is right: this thinking, which has achieved its triumphs in today's natural science, stems from the fact that during our lives we carry within us this corpse of thinking, the thinking that is the tool of the ordinary intellect. And materialistically oriented natural science is quite right in saying: the moment ordinary life ceases, consciousness also ceases. For then another consciousness takes its place, a consciousness that can only be imagined through spiritual research. Just as the human body only has meaning through life, so something else must penetrate human thinking, the same thing that is otherwise in the corpse, that the corpse has discarded, and in which ordinary thinking is not contained. Ordinary thinking is only contained in what we discard as a corpse. In ordinary life, we are only in what we have in our ordinary thinking. But we must become independent of what can become a corpse. By striving to immerse this human thinking, which is actually itself a corpse, into what animates the corpse, spiritual research empowers this thinking and connects it with a world where the corpse can never be, that is, it connects it with the supersensible world. Just as the corpse does not have its true essence, its inner meaning, through what it still is, so this thinking does not have its essence within itself. And just as life must enter the human body in order for it to become what transforms it from a mere body into a soul-filled being, so too can the human being connect in their thinking with that which the body leaves behind. Spiritual research is a real process, not a formal one; spiritual research is not a theoretical process. For spiritual research allows human thinking and imagination to delve into what remains hidden from ordinary consciousness precisely because human beings cannot delve into these things in ordinary life. It means an enormous deepening of human perception when we draw this parallel between the soulless corpse and what our ordinary thinking is. In the following lectures, we will see how, precisely through the correct investigation of this mystery of life, this mystery of death, the riddles of immortality come before the soul and how they express themselves, but they can already be sensed from what has been discussed here today: that the goal of spiritual research is to connect the human soul with its eternal part, with that part that does not merely live between birth — or conception — and death, but which enters through birth into one gate of life and exits through death through the other, in order to enter a spiritual realm through death.

But this is the essence of spiritual research, that through it we seek those depths of the soul in which human beings live not only their temporary life through the senses, through their physical body, but in which they live their immortal life. In this way, the question of immortality can be a scientific question in the true sense, and this will be the path of human spiritual striving into the future. And even the present will need this striving, so that a special spiritual science stands alongside natural science; and it is precisely then that natural science will have the great, significant educational value for human beings, when people no longer seek in its field what cannot be found there: the human soul and its activities. But if, on the other hand, one trains the soul with spiritual methods in accordance with the ideal of scientific truth and veracity, in order to arrive at a spiritual science in the same way as one arrives at natural science through scientific methods, then immortality becomes an immediate certainty for the soul.

It can be said that what spiritual research wants is actually being sought after in the widest circles today. One need not believe that the spiritual researcher approaches his contemporaries with some stubborn idea and wants to impose on them something that inspires only him. No, the spiritual researcher actually wants nothing other than what, in the innermost depths of the widest circles, the souls of contemporary human beings also want. And much of what lives in the present in the form of unsatisfied feelings and unfulfilled longings, which can go as far as morbidity and nervousness, stems in many cases from the fact that the souls of contemporary human beings are searching for the mystery of the spiritual world, yet do not really know in the right way that they are searching. The best, the most scientific minds are among them. It is not the case now, but one can say that before these sad times began, people sought healing in sanatoriums and similar places for something that lay in their souls and which, as a consequence, also manifested itself in their physical lives. People made “pilgrimages” to the sanatoriums, and these journeys were much stronger than at other times the journeys to places of pilgrimage. But if it were properly understood today what spiritual science can be for the human soul, then people would undertake other pilgrimages than to spas and health resorts, namely pilgrimages that can lead the soul into the spiritual world, from which strength and health can come to human beings.

From these few hints, it may already be apparent that the spiritual science referred to here is not intended to be something theoretical, but rather something that deepens and strengthens the soul, something that, in other words, can create an understanding of real, true life. Spiritual science does not want to be a confused, unclear, gloomy mysticism; it wants to be something that can intervene in life, something that can be done in life by “practical” people in today's sense. In an age of railways, telegraphs, telephones, aeroplanes, and so on, it is impossible to think about spiritual things in the same way as people did in the Middle Ages. And today it is just as impossible to shape human social coexistence in the right way if one cannot develop ideas that are full of vitality. What this means can be seen in many phenomena of the present day. I would just like to mention a book that has recently been published, which is in a certain sense a significant book. Although it does not deal with the questions of spiritual science as discussed here today, it reveals everywhere a longing for the kind of spiritual science that is meant here. I would like to mention a book that deals with matters of the external economy, with those things that are necessary for humanity if it wants to find a way out of the enormously catastrophic conditions of the present. Most of you will be familiar with Walther Rathenau's book “Von kommenden Dingen” (Of Things to Come). It deals with the subjects of the external economy, human needs, and what external measures should be taken for the future shaping of life. But there is a common thread running through the entire book: the longing for the soul, the longing for perspectives and concepts that can be used to regulate the conditions for the life of the soul from external life. One need only let a few sentences of this book sink into one's soul to understand what I mean here. Walther Rathenau also speaks of those who, in today's age of mechanization, want to make the spirit merely a result of external physicality and external economic conditions. For example, he says in his book:

"Enough of these arguments; they presuppose what they have to prove, that the body comes first and the spirit second, that matter forms spirit. If we believe that we are creatures of the flesh, then anyone who wants to can sweeten and flatter life; then the struggle for God and our soul is vain, and those who are here for the sake of utility and profit have the last word. But if we believe that spirit forms its own body, that the will carries the world upward, that the spark of divinity lives within us: then man is his own work, then his destiny is his own work, then his world is his own work."

A man speaks from this book who took part in what had to be created within this war, a man speaks after seeing what has developed over the last few years, and he speaks about the causes of the catastrophic external effects. And the strange thing is that a practitioner, a man who is completely grounded in life, comes to the words:

“For the last time, in the year before the outbreak of war, I pointed to the approaching turning point: the hardship must come, not out of political necessity, but out of transcendent law...”

And again, after these catastrophic events have lasted two years, and Walther Rathenau writes this book and looks back on what has happened so far and what must come, he, who believes in “honorable, God-sent salvation” as much as anyone else in this or that — which can be read in this book — utters the following sentence with regard to what must be done for the future of humanity:

“And once again, it is not political and military reasons that are decisive, but transcendent ones!”

“Transcendent reasons,” that is, reasons that flow down from the spiritual world! Today, there are hundreds and thousands of examples like this one from this book. It speaks of a person's lively need for spiritual and emotional life, of the desire to make the needs of the spiritual and emotional core of human beings the guiding principle of social order. But when you read this book and compare it with Walther Rathenau's earlier books, “Zur Kritik der Zeit” (Critique of the Times) and “Die Mechanik des Geistes” (The Mechanics of the Spirit), you get the feeling everywhere that the concepts are weak, do not intervene in life, are not what could actually master this reality, because they themselves do not originate from the full reality. In abstract forms, there is talk of the longing of the soul, of the transcendence of the reasons for our actions; but nowhere is there any real engagement with the spiritual world. What would people think today of someone who believed they were well-versed in contemporary scientific education and said something like: I'm not interested in sulfur, silicon, or calcium; it's all just one thing, it's just matter? They would say of him: he doesn't want to engage with the details. If we do not want to be abstract monists, we do not speak of “one substance,” but of the approximately seventy substances, the elements, if we want to understand the real structure of nature. Likewise, we do not speak of spirit in general, but of the concrete spiritual world, which is just as much a world of spiritual beings that intervene in our soul life as there are individual substances in our outer life. But this is something that the present day still fears when, in spiritual science, we speak of penetrating into concrete spiritual life, which grasps spiritual reality in such a way that, in grasping and comprehending this reality, strong, powerful concepts can also be found, powerful impulses that have the power to intervene in external social life as well. And these lectures are intended to serve this spiritual science and this grasping of spiritual life.

Today, when speaking of spiritual scientific research, it is still necessary in many cases to make use of certain ideas and concepts that some people say are difficult and that one must make an effort to grasp. If I may make this remark, I have in mind a form of spiritual research that may exist in the future, a form that is simple and popular, so that every simple mind can take it in. That is how it must be. Physics is only needed by a few people, astronomy and so on are only needed by a few people. But what spiritual research is, every human being needs. Today, spiritual research is still far removed from other research. In order to be tolerated, it must still take the position that it has grown in the face of attacks against it from other research. If it were to appear today in its simplest form, it would be laughed at and ridiculed. Today, it must present itself with more difficult concepts so that it is armed against what official science can oppose it with, albeit in a simpler form. One must come to terms with this.

Above all, one must recognize that this spiritual research must introduce something into our cultural life that is particularly necessary for its innermost healing. If one takes a closer look at this spiritual research, one will see that its results have a character of which one can say: It strives for a real confrontation with the spiritual world, but without any sentimentality, without any false mysticism and piousness, without anything that makes people weak. No, people should become strong precisely by knowing their relationship to the spiritual world. Therefore, one must not think that this spiritual science somehow wants to assert itself in a sectarian way, that it wants to appear as if it were striving to form a new religion. It does not want any of that. What it develops from, first and foremost, is the modern scientific way of thinking. It must be noted that it has to develop different concepts and cognitive abilities than modern scientific research. Therefore, its origins should be sought in modern scientific thinking. Whether this spiritual science can then become the best support for people's religious life, whether religious life, which has been shaken in so many areas and in so many branches — unfortunately! — can regain a freshness and firm support, is another question. This is a question that Dr. Rittelmeyer has recently dealt with in depth and exhaustively in an essay published in the magazine “Die christliche Welt” (The Christian World). From this essay, one can see what, in the opinion of a discerning judge, this spiritual science can be, namely the deepening of religious life. Perhaps it will be precisely because it did not set out to create a new form alongside existing religious life, but because it set out to answer the question: How can one penetrate the spiritual realm as scientifically seriously as one penetrates nature through the natural sciences?

I wanted to assert that spiritual science is not really something that has arbitrarily appeared in the present, but rather the synthesis of what the best minds of humanity have always wanted, a synthesis of what, for example, Goethe felt in his soul when he was confronted with the question raised by Haller's idea: “No created spirit can penetrate into the innermost depths of nature.” Haller, a great natural scientist in Goethe's time, was an important mind. But he stood on the side of those who have since become more and more numerous, who believe that human cognitive ability has “limits.” Certainly, the cognitive ability we apply to ordinary life has limits. But human cognitive abilities can be expanded to such an extent that we can penetrate to a certain degree into the mystery of the eternal in the soul, that we can connect with the mystery of the eternal. Spiritual science will be able to demonstrate this through its research. And it will be able to confirm its method of research with the words of Goethe, with which I would like to conclude today's lecture. Goethe recalled the words of Haller, who, as I said, was one of the most important natural scientists of his time, and who said:

“Inside nature
No creative spirit penetrates
Blessed are those who only
The outer shell shows!”

And Goethe replied:

“I have heard this repeated for sixty years,
And curse it, but secretly;
Tell me a thousand thousand times,
She gives everything abundantly and gladly;
Nature has neither core
Nor shell,
She is everything at once;
Just examine yourself most of all,
Whether you are core or shell!”