Knowledge and Immortality

GA 69b — 5 February 1911, Elberfeld

X. Supernatural Knowledge and Everyday Life

Dearly beloved! The subject of today's lecture may seem a little strange, for it seeks to combine two things: supersensible knowledge, spiritual research – or, as we are accustomed to saying, theosophy – and everyday life. It might seem as if nothing is further removed from each other than what we experience in everyday life and what the soul aspires to when we speak of supersensible research - of insights into the world that lies beyond our physical-sensual world, beyond the world that our senses perceive and our mind can grasp, which is bound to the instrument of the brain. But on closer inspection, these things are not as far apart as they appear at first glance. I would like to remind you that even the philosopher of pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer, made a strange statement, which should initially only be considered in relation to his point of view on our topic. He said: “Life is an unfortunate thing, and I have tried to make it bearable for myself by trying to understand it.

We want to completely disregard the fact that this saying is based on absolute pessimism, on the conviction that life is not worth living, and instead turn our attention to the other side. Despite the fact that Schopenhauer regards life as not worth living, despite the fact that he regards existence as one of suffering and pain, and despite the fact that he cannot find anything consoling in the world according to his view, he still thinks that if he rises to enlightenment, he will be able to find something that will enable him to cope with life in the right way and thus to come to terms with it. Thus, even the pessimist speaks of the possibility that a worldview that takes us beyond the world of sense perception may lead us to something that makes this life possible in the right sense.

Theosophy does not lead us to a pessimistic world view, but to a spiritual life that shows us that what presents itself as a material exterior has emerged from spiritual origins. And it also shows that human beings, who pass through the material world when they are schooled by experiences in this material world, have to ascend to a spiritual world again. And that means: the origin and the goal of all world experience must be sought in the spiritual. This alone shows that by looking at the great spiritual goal, through which physical life first acquires its value and dignity, man cannot be absorbed in pessimism if he is able to make this world view his own.

However, Theosophy is still something that evokes not only contradiction but even ridicule in the broadest circles of our present-day humanity. Or it is understood in such a way that those who profess it are only dreamers. Theosophy also still finds hatred and contempt in wide circles. Time and again, one can observe that some people who believe that they are very much part of the people of the present day wonder, when they learn one fine day that some acquaintance whom they thought of as a reasonably reasonable person after what he has done so far has become a theosophist: How can a reasonable person turn to such foolish stuff? They think that anyone who occupies themselves with Theosophy no longer lives in the real world, is no longer capable of anything sensible, and tries to make life as unpleasant as possible for themselves. They think that such a person no longer experiences any real joy, that they pursue all kinds of idle thoughts and shut themselves off from everything that gives other people joy. Perhaps on top of that, they don't eat meat and don't drink – then the disaster is complete, and one is only surprised that they don't hang their heads and look at the world with a gloomy expression. After all, one can have such experiences every day.

But another experience has been made often enough and is by no means an anecdote. A lady hears that her friend professes Theosophy and thinks that it alienates her from life, because Theosophers do not amuse themselves in the usual way and so on, and that her friend must be protected from such a cruel fate. So she goes and says: How can you profess Theosophy? It alienates you from life, it is dangerous; the Theosophists are not only dreamers, but they become half-crazy. Before the friend even gets a chance to say anything about it, the one she warned becomes thoughtful and asks: What is Theosophy actually?

It so happens that when it comes to things like Theosophy, which in a certain sense are supposed to live their way into culture as something new, one often does not allow oneself to form an opinion about the matter and content, but rather judges on the basis of secondary circumstances. It may therefore be useful to consider how Theosophy relates to what we have to go through in ordinary life. Indeed, we shall even see how valuable it can be for life to make some observations about it. Theosophy will admittedly say nothing about how to nourish oneself “theosophically”, how to prepare food, and how the purely external life is otherwise to be provided for through Theosophy. But since it has to bring down for us the knowledge from supersensible worlds, we will see how it can affect our soul life, our mood, our joy and suffering, our desire and pain, how it can intervene in our life practice.

One of the most important truths in this field is one that is viewed with hostility by many people today and as if no rational person could possibly believe such stuff. This truth has already been touched upon in earlier lectures, but since it is one of the fundamental truths, it must be referred to again and again. It is a truth that will become just as established in intellectual life in the not too distant future as another [truth has done in the past]. As late as the seventeenth century, there was still the opinion, not only among laymen but also among natural scientists, that lower animals and even fish could develop from river mud. It was Francesco Redi who first formulated the sentence: Living things can only come from living things. And for this truth, which he dared to speak, he was almost burned. Today there is no rationally thinking person - whether he has drawn his education from Haeckel's work or from his most radical opponents - who would not recognize that a living being cannot arise from the inanimate.

Spiritual research now shows that a similar truth can be spoken of in the realm of the spiritual soul, namely that a person does not merely show us the qualities he has inherited from his parents, grandparents and so on, but that we truly grasp him only when we recognize a spiritual-soul core in him. The life that a person now leads is not the first, and it is the starting point for many lives in the future. And the living essence of a person absorbs and permeates itself with what it can absorb in the way of inherited traits, just as the living germ of a worm absorbs the matter surrounding it. We must distinguish between [a purely spiritual life] between death and new birth of life between birth and death, where we again encase the spirit in matter. Thus, the entire existence is a chain of earthly lives and purely spiritual stages of existence.

If this is asserted today, it is considered to be fanaticism. It is said that [theosophists] know nothing about science and so on. And yet it is just as much a firm result of spiritual research as Darwin's theory is from a scientific point of view. But that is how it is with all truths. What is regarded as reality today was considered heresy when it was first proposed years ago. Later, one cannot understand how one could ever have thought differently. And with regard to the truth of repeated lives on earth, one will no longer be able to understand how one could ever have thought differently.

Another truth is connected with this, the doctrine of Karma. Karma means the law of our human destiny. If we wish to characterize this law, we find it not only in the human world, where it is developed in a special way, but everywhere we look. We need only remember that, for example, edelweiss can only grow on mountains. Every creature is driven into the environment to which it belongs. Every creature strives, as if attracted by magnetic forces, into its own environment, where it belongs. One must learn to understand that man, depending on how he has developed in previous lives or how he has acquired faults, is so constituted that he is driven to where he fits in terms of environment and destiny. What he experiences is not really alien to him, but through the general laws of nature he fits in there. That law is already recognized for non-human beings. In the future, man will learn to recognize: When good or bad luck befalls me, it was necessary for me, and I sought it in a certain way because I laid the groundwork for it in previous lives, which is why I fit into this environment. This law will be self-evident in the not too distant future.

When people talk about the causes of good and bad luck, talents and abilities lying in past lives, it may be said that this is far removed from our everyday way of looking at life and takes us into distant worlds. But the question is: does this law really only apply from one life to another, or must it not also apply in narrower circles, to our ordinary life between birth and death? Through supersensible research, we come closer to understanding this law in relation to our present life as well. People usually see only the shortest periods of time and have a certain aversion to connecting longer periods of time. But one can only recognize cause and effect if one tries, for example, to connect what took place in childhood with what happens at a later age, or similarly to connect the other ages with each other. In short, if one makes an effort to explore step by step - in the way a scientist researches in his field - how [the idea of] karma becomes fruitful for life.

To gain a more thorough understanding, we can start from circumstances that are obvious to everyone and look at them from the point of view of karma. Of course, external circumstances will modify the law of karma, but if we look at life seriously and worthily, we will always come back to the underlying law. We just must not come up with all sorts of objections and cite exceptions and so on – these do not apply in science either. There is a law that a stone thrown in a certain direction falls, but a gust of wind can come and modify that direction - that is why the law applies. Life can only become true and fruitful when we recognize the law of karma and when it becomes a way of life, as the laws of physics are in physics. Theosophy can become something that intervenes in our lives as the laws of physics do in the external processes and activities of life.

Let us move on to something very specific. Suppose that a person, in his youth, say up to the age of 15 or 16, shows us that he gets angry when he sees injustice in his environment. It is easy to do so when you are young. What is stirring in the soul should not be considered worthless, because if a person in his youth can become very angry about injustice and later manages to overcome this anger, to purify himself of it and to refine it through appropriate self-education, then something quite different will come of him than, for example, of a phlegmatic person. Anger is an affect, a part of a passion, and when it is transformed, it becomes something quite different, and the later it becomes, the earlier the anger-fortitude in childhood has occurred. The true student of life will recognize this everywhere. In a phlegmatic person, this transformation will never be seen. But how does anger transform? What we have as blind anger towards injustice [in youth] we apply as helpfulness for our fellow human beings in later life: anger-fortitude in youth transforms in such a way.

Today we are taught in school that warmth is transformed into propulsive force. A similar law, which works in the same way as that of the transformation of natural forces in external life, exists for our inner life, for what can be experienced and felt in the soul. It is no coincidence that a person like Goethe said: What one wishes for in youth, one has in abundance in old age. It is not meant to say that in youth one only has to wish, but Goethe thought: a person who is angry would like to help, but cannot in youth; this wish to help is transformed, and now in old age one has abundance. Today, people still do not believe that this is the case. We have, it is thought, ample opportunity in old age to develop love and goodwill of our own accord. But if you look more closely, you will find that it is precisely those who were wrathful in their youth who are most likely to be helping their fellow human beings.

Another example shows how karma enters our lives. If you have had the opportunity as a child to look up to relatives with reverence and awe, you cannot be grateful enough if you reflect on yourself with sufficient self-examination. And if one had the opportunity not only to worship people, but to rise in devotion before the great facts of life, then this is something to look back on with deepest gratitude. It is an instinctive feeling that the sense of reverence that one can experience in youth has causes that have effects in later life. The underlying principle could be expressed by the image of folded hands and bowed knees. One might say – and life proves it to be true – that those who were able to fold their hands a lot in their youth can figuratively raise their hands a lot in old age to bless and thus become a benefactor to those around them. There are people who enter any circle, and one feels, without them saying much, their mere presence as a blessing. They bless by their mere existence, because they have acquired the appropriate soul powers. Such powers occur in later life when in youth the karmic causes have been laid by shyly looking up to something worthy of veneration. Devotion is transformed into beneficial powers.

We can go much further in such a consideration of everyday experiences to something that most people hate very much and are frightened by, not at a low level of education, but at the highest levels of education - the lie and envy. Yet we never meet these qualities interwoven in character. They can be traced back to earlier experiences, but when we see them occurring, we can say that lies and envy are the causes of something that is already being lived out between birth and death. We know how a person despises himself, as it were, when he has to say to himself, 'I am envious' or 'I have a tendency to lie'. He is convinced from the outset that these are not good qualities. Goethe, for example, says in his self-observation that he is glad that he does not have envy as one of his vices, and Cellini says that he feels particularly fortunate not to be aware of any lies. People try to get rid of these things when they find them in themselves. Let us assume that a person realizes that he is envious; he wants to get rid of it, but he is not strong enough to uproot envy. You can't just uproot something like that, but only transform it, like external forces. The person fights envy so that he no longer thinks: I don't want this or that for this person. Thus, with the intellect, he has overcome envy, but in the depths of his character he cannot, and envy reappears in a transformed form.

There is a legitimate connection between envy and its transformation product, a kind of addiction to criticism. He criticizes everything he can find fault with, and such a person is often very pleased with himself. He no longer notices the envy, and criticizing - that is right and proper, because one must point out people's faults! Of course one must, but it depends on whether one does it to improve people or just to criticize them. In the latter case, it is transformed envy. This is very common in life. Many tea and coffee klatches and morning and evening chats would not exist if envy had not been transformed into criticism. There we see how a quality is transformed under the influence of human soul striving itself. Let us now follow what occurs later in a person when he develops envy and criticism, especially when these have raged in youth. He becomes what we might call a dependent being, a person who needs the advice and help of other people for even the smallest things, who does not know how to cope with life. One can doubt such things, but if one looks into life, one will see that they apply just as much as the physical laws in natural science.

From this, good educational principles for life can be derived. We must see that envy and carping do not run rampant. We cannot eradicate them, but we can transform them in the right way. The educator must use all the means at his disposal to ensure that these qualities do not degenerate into instability, but become what could be called a certain yearning to immerse oneself in the mind, so that the person gets the feeling that there is something inside of me that I sense as a faint presentiment, something that is asleep in me. This is one of the most beautiful fruits that can arise from properly transformed bad qualities when they are guided in the appropriate way.

In general, the worst qualities, when guided in the appropriate way, can have the most beautiful effects. For example, lies and dishonesty. We should pay attention to them as they arise in youth. It is not only telling untruths that is meant here, but one should recall again and again how difficult it is to always be truthful. It is easy to set up ideals in life, but always being truthful is not that easy, and it can even lead the best intention and the noblest of minds to be untrue in some respects. A teacher who tells a young child who is tormenting a worm [and cutting it in two] not to torment this worm, because it feels pain just like you, is telling an untruth, and yet he may be inspired by lofty ideals. When a worm is cut in two, one piece can continue to live. If you tell a child something like this, which it can transfer to itself, then you are drawing its attention to something that is not right, because it could not continue to live if the same thing happened to it. You would have to tell it something completely different to keep it from killing or torturing the worm.

The child may forget such things as “The worm feels pain like you do.” But where does the forgetting take place? In his conscious mind. However, there is a deeper core to the human being, and we may have long forgotten something with our everyday consciousness – but it sits in the astral and continues to have an effect. Something like this, which does not correspond exactly to reality and is not controlled by the conscious mind, nevertheless has the same consequence as a more direct lie. [Through this untruth] the child develops what we can call a shy nature. Such a child becomes shy and does not dare to look people in the eye. Every untruth has the effect of a physical law, even one implanted under the mask of a high ideal. From this example we can see how spiritual science can be useful.

Spiritual science instructs us on how careful we must be with every word. We can see how the study of spiritual science as such affects a person's life in general. Here is a concrete example: Many people suffer from poor memory, with which they themselves are not satisfied and which they claim is getting worse and worse. It is a result of supersensible research that the more a person absorbs only materialistic ideas, that is, only what he can hear, see, or grasp with his mind, the worse his memory must become. Such ideas fill the lives of most people today, but they are the least suitable for generating the powers to truly keep memory alive. We also take certain soul powers from a person whom we only fill with materialistic ideas.

What we, on the other hand, absorb as a result of supersensible research, what enters the soul as spiritual-scientific knowledge, what forces us to grasp very clear and very interlocking thoughts, that supplies the soul with strength. It is certainly not easy to grasp such thoughts, where not one stands next to the other, but one grows out of the other, as in a plant. The consequence of such thoughts is, quite apart from the fact that they convey truths to us, that our inner life becomes more concentrated. Even if he cannot see into the higher worlds himself, a person who deals with such thoughts will repeatedly have certain main concepts before his soul, provided he does not become bored with them. This holds together what we call the ether consciousness, which is not recognized by external science. It is strengthened, and the result is that man retains his memory in a much better condition than usual.

Of course, it is not difficult to refute this. It only takes one person to come and say: Look, this theosophist has spent his whole life dealing with supersensory ideas, and now he has almost no memory at all. - One would just have to look at what he would have become without spiritual science. Such things cannot be compared with each other by statistics and so on, but only by what the person can experience in himself. When memory begins to waver and when a person begins to occupy himself with the supersensible, it becomes easier for him to retrieve it. Memory will take on a different character. From this we can conclude how much our everyday life benefits when we fertilize and permeate it with supersensible ideas.

And further: What do we need as human beings for what we are supposed to achieve? Joie de vivre and contentment, interest in our surroundings. What fate assigns us often cannot be a source of joy, but a source of displeasure, of pain. Life can easily become bleak. But for those who are truly capable of striving for the truths of the supersensible world, there can be no complete desolation in life. For even if the outer world should bring misfortune upon misfortune, supersensible knowledge conjures up joy and delight and enlightens us with the consciousness: No matter where he stands, man belongs to the whole spiritual life, he has his destiny, his task and dignity and also his source of joy of existence and love of life, which no outer fate can take away.

A materialistic age should bear this in mind, because many people only find joy in what can be grasped with their hands. Then comes oversaturation and the greed to receive ever new impressions. And when these do not come and life always brings the same, then comes desolation, because man only knows a source of happiness in what comes from outside. But if he has grasped the concepts of a supersensible world, then these work from within, and so we can create the joy of life within ourselves from what we conjure up from within, even if we have no stimulus from outside. The smallest things in life can become the source of inexpressible joy of life and great happiness. That is the difference between the two kinds of concepts: The outer concepts satisfy only our intellect and only for a short time our feelings; then it stops. The pathfinders in the materialistic field can have the joy of research, but they will soon feel desolate in their souls. But what we take from the sources of supersensible knowledge offers a never-ending source of joy and the power of being.

One would like to refer again and again to something that Fichte, who did not live in the humanities but nevertheless strove for it, said to his audience. He once said: What I have to give you speaks of the facts of the supersensible world, but for this another, a new sense is necessary. He emphasizes the connection between man and this supersensible world in the following words: We only look at what surrounds us in life, such as fate, pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, with the right understanding and in the right measure, and only get the right view of our destiny when we see the connection between man and the divine. When man becomes conscious of this connection, then, says Fichte, he can say: “Ye clouds, descend and pour down upon me in streams; ye mountains, fall upon my body and bury me; ye thunders roll, ye lightnings crush me.” I defy your power, for I have grasped my destiny, and that is eternal, as the spirit is eternal.

A presentiment of such a sense of security can come to anyone who in any way becomes acquainted with supersensible research. It is necessary for human nature that these things should enter into our everyday life. How does this show itself? Take a person who lives in the country, in an area where few newspapers and enlightening literature still reach, and compare him to a city dweller who is at the center of modern education, reads newspapers and magazines of all kinds, and so on. This country dweller cannot, by his very nature, be satisfied with the consciousness that the old traditions give him. And since he has nothing else to read, he delves into the Bible. It often happens that the words of the Bible appeal to such a person's mind, but by not only seizing the consciousness but also the subconscious, they sink into the inner being, which is connected with the need for something superhuman. This is the source of many harmful superstitions. For example, the people concerned think they are prophets, they then found sects and so on. Because the urge for the supersensible lies at the deepest source of the soul, if he cannot find the right path, he seeks something else, and that can turn out to be harmful. Such a person only proves how deeply rooted it is in human nature to find the connection with the supersensible world.

The city dweller, on the other hand, has no opportunity to let the supersensible take effect on him. But the urge for it is there, and man fills the ordinary consciousness with all kinds of things: with spiritualism, with “world riddles” and so on. Many people go to “advanced” world-view meetings and also profess such views, and they do not know that their subconscious soul is longing for something completely different. There it continues to work, and later the effect appears, not as superstitious sectarianism as in the countryside, but as uneasiness, gloom; this or that, all kinds of ideas come over them, they become nervous, lose their mental balance, and if they have money, they go from sanatorium to sanatorium. They ask themselves: What is actually wrong with me? Without knowing it, they are missing the connection with supersensible truths.

Some people today are being deprived of supersensible truths because they are considered to be a flight of fancy. They are being deprived of that which gives mental health and emotional balance. And because the physical is the consequence of the spiritual, they are also deprived of their physical health. Here we see how the results of supersensible research find their way into ordinary life. We often have occasion to see how the very gravest mistakes are made because people do not know how the supersensible works. For example, parents and educators believe that they can do no better than to impose punishment immediately after the “crime” has occurred; they do not know that punishment that occurs only after some time has passed can be much milder and, secondly, much more fruitful. The child should never get the impression that the teacher's punishment is a kind of revenge; he should never see him angry. When some time has passed, this will hardly be the case anymore, and the educator will also see many things differently when he looks at the mistake soberly, with his everyday sense. While he does not believe he can get by without corporal punishment when he punishes immediately, he will be able to apply milder means later. Besides, the consciousness of his wrongdoing has a completely different effect on the child's mind if he is not immediately punished for it.

A true light only falls on this matter when man rises above his fate, which often appears to him as something dark, to what the insights from the supersensible world can open up to him. And this is something that is not just a matter of thought and intellect, but something that, like blood, flows through our whole body. Supersensible thoughts pour into our destiny. A person who is unskillful can even become skillful through them. When what sprouts from the supersensible world passes into the physical, physical mobility is attained. That is why what comes from the supersensible is clothed in such sentences that it can be examined by logic, so that man can accept the truths of the supersensible world with his mind. Then they can flow into our lives, fertilizing it and making us secure in the life we must lead within our destiny.

The application of this truth shows us more than any speculation that man is called to carry down the spiritual forces and facts from the spiritual world into the physical. And when man endeavors to do this, he will become quite certain of his connection with the supersensible world, for he will realize that he is a spiritual being and is rooted not only in the physical but also in the supersensible world, and from this certainty he will draw an ever more secure feeling and greater hope in life. No matter how much the external life may torment him with his impenetrable destiny, no matter how incomprehensible the mighty waves of fate or the pinpricks of everyday life may be to us, we know that there are hidden forces that can open our spiritual can open our spiritual eyes and bring us light about our dark destiny, so that we can face with strong, inner energy everything that comes to us in the storm of life - for the blessing of the world, for the work on ourselves, for the development of all humanity.