Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science
GA 69d — 5 March 1911, Hanover
2. How Can We Gain Knowledge of the Spiritual World?
I have often had the opportunity to speak to you about subjects of spiritual science, or, as one is accustomed to saying, of Theosophy. Naturally, this leads to the question: What paths must the soul take to attain knowledge of the spiritual world?
These paths differ greatly from what we are accustomed to calling scientific. It is all too easy to dismiss these methods as unscientific. Today, we understand something quite different by the word “scientific”. Therefore, it is necessary to first examine what “scientific” is.
What does the scientist of today demand of a method in order to call it “scientific”? In answer to this question, today's man has developed the attitude that what is to be scientifically provable must, firstly, be researchable by every person at every moment and, secondly, it must be completely independent of what is called “subjective”.
These requirements are met by experiment and, for the most part, by everything that is done in the laboratory. The experiment is independent of sympathy and antipathy and so on, in short, of everything that depends on what is subjectively going on in us.
The situation is different with research into the spiritual world. We must choose the path that is completely independent of the world of the senses, that is, of what today's science is based solely and exclusively on. We need precisely what is to be excluded from today's science. When we speak figuratively of spiritual science, we want to apply a word from Fichte. He says: “What I have to say to you cannot be explored with the ordinary mind, because a special, higher sense is needed for that.” It would be like someone born blind suddenly being given the ability to see colors and light, if one attained this special sense, the “spiritual eye,” as Goethe says.
If a person must first have a new sense in order to recognize a new and different world, then it is already indicated that this is not possible in every place, at every time, by every person and so on, as external science demands.
If we take the ordinary human life, this inner experience differs greatly from one person to another. But this should be excluded in the case of external science; after all, there can be no agreement in what people experience within themselves about the spiritual world. But this judgment is a very superficial one.
However, all this can be easily refuted. I have given a method of refuting Theosophy in the appendix to Seiling's 'Theosophy and Christianity'. But this easy refutation is possible only so long and only insofar as this soul life does not proceed with the strict regularity of which I will speak in a moment. As long as the soul life still flows along in an unregulated way, as long as one stops at that, one is not a spiritual researcher. If this soul life advances methodically enough, it will eventually reach a point within. If we now disregard everything that comes to life in us as pleasure and suffering through the impressions of the outside world, what actually remains in the normal soul life? One fact sheds light on this: sleep, when all external tools are tired and relaxed and no longer supply us with anything (no sensory impressions).
No one will admit that a person ceases to exist in the evening with their inner being and begins again in the morning. But this core of our being is unconscious from the moment our experiences cease, when, figuratively speaking, it dies.
Is it not conceivable that the human soul can create something out of itself [to maintain consciousness] when this soul, which is too weak in the ordinary person during sleep, is made strong? It is indeed conceivable that the soul no longer needs impressions from the outside. We would have to learn to distinguish between a person's unconsciousness during sleep and an arbitrary withdrawal of this core of being, where life is drawn from the soul itself. The impressions of external life are bound to the external sense organs. The soul must withdraw from these external sense impressions artificially. Yes, how can it do that? We are left empty-handed if we do not have external sensory impressions, since our entire soul life only receives nourishment through these impressions.
If we want to sustain our inner life only through these external impressions, we will never come to a broader experience. We must, in order to experience this, not only use the external sense impressions to gain knowledge of the world around us, but also learn to see them as symbols.
For example, we see the plant: it takes root in the soil, green sap courses through it, chaste, without drive or instinct, it stands there. And if we compare it to the human being: the human being is permeated by drives, desires, instincts; he is permeated by blood. The red blood carries the life of the instincts. Thus the green sap can emerge as a symbol for the chaste life, the red blood as a symbol for the life of instincts and drives. The human being must become like the plant, which is free of drives. Let us take a look at the rose, for example, which has transformed the chaste green sap into the color of the instinctive blood. The rose is then a symbol for the human being who has transformed the instinctual life of the blood into chastity. This is expressed in Goethe's words:
And so long as you have not
this:
Die and become,
you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.
“Stirb und Werde” (die and become) – that is what matters. We should not want to achieve this in an ascetic way, but in full power. Why can we hit something with a hammer? Because we are objective towards it. So our body should become [a powerful tool] for us, [which we put at the service of the higher worlds]; the body, the life of the senses, should die for us. The “Stirb und Werde” must be taken seriously. The Rose Cross is a symbol for Goethe's “Stirb und Werde”. We have the “die” in the dead black cross of the wood, our blood that has died to instincts and lower desires, and in the roses we have the “becoming”. Yes, man can “become” something. The sprouting red roses are the symbol for this. Now one can say: Yes, these are after all images taken from the world of sense. But roses will never grow out of black wood. — The black wood and the red roses are indeed taken from the world of sense, but the combination is formed only as a symbol for the soul.
[The staff with the snake is also a supporting symbol. We can compare life with a staff; the higher life leads straight up, the snake-like lines are the external impressions through which the human being winds upwards.
No scientist would set up such a symbol. What scientists say is all true, as if you could see it everywhere in space. What the spiritual scientist sets up as such symbols, on the other hand, is arbitrarily put together.
But these symbols have a remarkable effect on our soul. We imagine that we close all our sensory organs and immerse these symbols deep, deep into our soul. These symbols will not initially convey any truths to us, but they do have an effect on our soul as a living force. When a person repeatedly allows such symbols to take effect on them, they experience something. But it is important to let them take effect on you again and again. You have to be patient. You have to do such an exercise fifty times and then fifty times again. Constant dripping wears away the stone. Not one, nor fifty raindrops on a stone are enough, but again and again we have to awaken our will, not just let external impressions get to us, but let such symbols live with our will, in us, again and again. We are inwardly invigorated by this, so that we can eventually revive them at will within us. When a person has been active in such practice, then eventually one wakes up in the morning in such a way that one sinks into the physical body, can make use of one's organs again. One experiences that one can live outside one's body, can be active outside one's physical body. Through such practice one learns to recognize that one can, as it were, leave one's body and be active, spiritually active. This is how this state differs from sleep. One can think, one can feel without one's body. One comes to this realization after undergoing such exercises. This is annoying for some people today, but it is nevertheless so.
Our physical body acts as a mirror. Our consciousness is the reflection of our soul life in our physical body. But [today's scientists] say that the brain has to be completely intact for our consciousness to be real. — Yes, that is quite true. Likewise, we also see ourselves quite differently, whether we look into a smooth mirror or into a concave mirror. Such exercises have torn our consciousness away from the ordinary external reflection of the body, and it is only as such a spiritual being that the human being perceives that he experiences, that he lives together with other spiritual beings.
This first step is “imaginative knowledge”. Here we are dependent only on these combined symbols, combined from elements taken from the world of the senses. We must let go of these, we must let go of the cross and the roses. We must let go of these external impressions, and now we think: What was your activity in this combination, when you combined the snake staff, the cross? What we then have is something that is no longer stimulated from the outside. The external world does not stimulate anyone to form symbols; man does this out of the depths of his soul. He reflects on the inner soul activity; this process is not influenced or even stimulated by the external world, it is purely spiritual and soul-based. This is called meditation. Then real inner powers arise that bring us into contact with the spiritual worlds. We call such spiritual knowledge “inspired knowledge”. We have experienced that there is a world independent of the physical. Now we get to know this world itself. It is like when you come to a coast that emerges on the distant horizon, and you gradually get to know it. This is how it is with the knowledge of the spiritual worlds.
We have to go even further after this inspired realization. We also have to let go of the activity of the soul. It can be described as a conscious sleeping – it can occur, can occur quite consciously. But it can also occur that we get to know the spiritual world in such a way that we become one with it, flow into it. This is called 'intuition'. This should not be confused with what is today called “intuition”, when something suddenly occurs to you. This is something quite different. The greatest effort of the soul is needed for intuition. All subjectivity should be eliminated from the soul, just as scientists demand, so that it is truly scientific. The soul is a place of vision in the intuitive world. All subjectivity is eliminated, even the activity that brought us here. (The soul becomes a place where things express their essence.)
The way described here seems very abstract, but in reality it is not, and those who want to go this way have to go through very, very difficult struggles. Renunciation and struggles are on this path. Our inner soul life takes hold of us as if with tentacles when we have given up external stimuli. The moral and immoral urges, as far as they are in the soul, come up there. Then what we actually are comes before our soul. Self-knowledge arises. The mystics have written about this, about the moral trials and temptations when they become aware, when they want to descend into the soul: You were a person of a certain nature, regulated by convention, custom, tradition, but now the truth of the soul comes up. People swear by the most opposing worldviews, they have morally examined everything. The monist accepts his view out of feeling, and so does the spiritualist. Only now does man recognize the reason for accepting this or that view; now we see what illusions we had when we thought we were being logical.
It can fill one with a certain irony when people come and say that the spiritual scientist is a fantasist and so on, and such people have no idea how little they themselves have looked behind the scenes of fantasy and illusion. One can only overcome what one has had within oneself. This cannot be achieved without pain. Not only with one's thoughts, but also with one's happiness one has become attached to what one sees sinking as an illusion, and not only the illusion, but the source of this illusion, both must be given up with heroic strength. If the human being also wants to overcome inspiration, it happens to him that he finds himself very 'light'. Logic doesn't help here; you can't fight impotence with logic. You can't achieve anything, even the surrender of happiness is of no use – you end up thinking like that. You enter the realm of doubt and despair, and all the doubts of the external world are nothing, they are inferior compared to the doubt at this level. The only way we can overcome this terrible region of ice is not to arrive there unprepared. Instead, we must gain strength beforehand.
It is difficult to get there, very difficult. It is only outlined, but it is not impossible, and no one should be deterred by that. There are ways to overcome the difficulties. To explore and experience the spiritual world, it is necessary to penetrate the spiritual world, but to understand it, unclouded logic is necessary.
However, it is difficult to apply unclouded logic today. What has been proven is not always believed. It is important that the evidence be believed. Everything that spiritual researchers say can be proven, but often people do not accept this evidence at all. Anyone can become a spiritual researcher, but a healthy sense of truth and unclouded logic are sufficient in advance. The most beautiful prospect for us is that spiritual nourishment is given more and more to people, and people give it more and more to physical life. And that is the mission of spiritual science: to bring down this spiritual life, this spiritual sap, and let it flow into what the senses convey, and what we can summarize in the words:
It presses to the human soul From the depths of the world, mysterious The rich abundance of matter. It flows into the depths of the soul From the heights of the world, full of content The clarifying light of the spirit. They meet in the human interior To a reality full of wisdom.
Question and Answer
Question: Isn't it pride to want to know about spiritual worlds in this life?
Rudolf Steiner: On the contrary; it is humility when one does not want to remain as one is. It is pride when one does not want to use the powers that lie within us. One surrounds oneself with the mask of complacency, which does not want to ascend into spiritual worlds.