Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 69d — 8 May 1914, Kassel

20. How Does the Soul Find Its True Essence?

Dear attendees! How does the soul find its true essence? It is a question that every soul asks itself incessantly. One does not need to ask this question in such explicit terms as it has just been asked. In the darkest feelings, in the depths of the soul, every human being undoubtedly has the feeling that the deepest destiny of their soul itself has something to do with this question. And, dear attendees, there is no need to consider: What use is an answer to this question? What does an answer to this question mean? What scientific value does it have? — and so on. Instead, one can feel that a person's inner peace and inner balance depend on whether they can at least develop the feeling that some answer to this question can be found. From the perspective of spiritual science, as it is possible for the inquiring human soul in the present, this question will be discussed today.

What spiritual science has to say about this question is, in the truest sense of the word, a product, a result of human striving in our time and will become more and more so, hopefully, in the future development of humanity. Humanity goes through different stages in its development, through individual peoples and epochs, and just as what is rightly valued today as natural science entered human development at a certain point in time and was not part of it before, so it is with spiritual science as we understand it here. One can say that the conditions that existed three to four millennia ago for the development of natural science are, in the opinion and “recognition” of the spiritual researcher, present for spiritual science in our time.

However, if the question raised this evening is to be discussed from the point of view of this spiritual science, this does not mean, dear audience, that what spiritual science has to say is something completely new. On the contrary, one can say that what spiritual science has to say has always lived in human souls, lives in a dark way in all human souls, with greater or lesser clarity, especially in the very first souls. Let us quote a saying by an outstanding thinker of recent spiritual development, a saying that can, in a sense, lead us right into the heart of our question. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great philosopher, once said, when speaking about the nature of the scholar:

Not only,

said Fichte,

It is not only after I have been torn from the context of the earthly world that I will gain entry into the supernatural world; I already exist and live in it, far more truly than in the earthly world; it is already my only firm standpoint, and the eternal life that I have long since taken possession of is the only reason why I may still continue in the earthly world. What you call heaven is not beyond the grave; it is already spread around our nature, and its light shines in every pure heart.

Dear attendees, even if this statement was made by a profound mind, it was made at a time when spiritual science could not be discussed as it can be today, and when the human soul did not yet have the same pronounced needs in relation to the supernatural life as it does today. It is fair to say that the time has already come for every thinking soul, and it will come more and more – only the short-sighted can disagree on this point – the time has come and will come more and more when souls will feel uneasy when they have to realize: Yes, the true home of the soul, that which must be called the spiritual world, is something that must arise in the imagination of every loving heart, but that which we value as science, that which the best of our contemporaries say is alone entitled to establish the truth, either turns away from any exploration of the supersensible worlds, or at least presumes to say that human cognitive ability is so limited, so restricted, that it cannot penetrate the supersensible world, and that therefore all knowledge, all insight into this world must be left aside.

The times are past, dear friends, when souls did not feel this disharmony, expressed in the fact that the heart has an inner certainty of a supersensible home, while the intellect claims to be unable to reach this home. It is precisely for this reason that spiritual research in our time feels that what must become part of general culture is the realization that the forces that have been drawn out of humanity through centuries of work on natural phenomena make it possible, when used in the right way, to truly penetrate the spiritual worlds, just as external knowledge, which is bound to the senses and the brain, can penetrate the natural world. However, this assertion still encounters opposition today. It encounters misunderstanding. Yes, it is fair to say that if one wants to speak of spiritual science in the sense meant here, one must use such unfamiliar terms that it seems quite understandable, especially when one is involved in it oneself, that countless people who today believe they stand on the firm ground of scientific thinking must still oppose this spiritual science. But just as a change in thinking habits had to occur three or four centuries ago, when the natural sciences brought about a completely different way of thinking about the spatial world, so too will a change in thinking habits take place in human souls, which is necessary if more and more understanding is to spread for the truths that I will attempt to outline in this lecture.

However, dear audience, as certain as it is that spiritual science is the true child of natural science, it must be admitted that today one might believe oneself to have been abandoned by all the good spirits of natural science if one can stand on the ground of this spiritual science. For the whole mood in the soul of the spiritual researcher is fundamentally different from that in the soul of the natural scientist. Let us consider, dear audience, how the natural scientist feels about the external world. He applies his senses, either unarmed or armed with the appropriate tools, to external things; he applies his thinking to recognize the laws of the facts of nature. Just as human beings are, just as they are, as it were, placed in this world by themselves, so human beings, in their desire to understand nature, face the world. They apply their thoughts, their powers of judgment, their senses, as they are given to them, to the exploration of the facts of existence.

Those who wish to penetrate the spiritual world must proceed quite differently. I will therefore begin by describing the attitude that must be characteristic of the spiritual researcher. The natural scientist approaches external things and human beings themselves directly with his senses, his power of judgment, and his ordinary powers of cognition, but the spiritual researcher does not initially apply these directly. Everything that is so characteristic of him, with which he otherwise directly confronts the world, the spiritual researcher initially uses to prepare for the actual research. He applies all the thinking he can muster in this soul work, the sharpness of his thinking, the strength of his feelings and sensations, to bring his soul into a state of development, to gradually transform it inwardly into a different being, to make it ripe for what he wants to undertake. And by approaching the development of one's soul in the manner to be described later, one feels quite differently than one feels toward outer life. One feels that when one honestly engages in spiritual research, a shy reverence for the truth arises in the soul; one feels something like the truth hovering in the distance above one, and that one must first approach it. Yes, this mood intensifies more and more, so that the further one progresses in spiritual research, the more one develops the feeling: You must wait. As your soul is now, it is better for you not to approach the exploration of certain questions of spiritual life. Continue to work on your soul, and you will reach a point where you will be more mature, where the questions you want to answer today will be answered.

To wait in holy awe for what the soul may attain, yes, to restrain oneself, as it were, from approaching certain questions about the foundations of existence—that will be the mood of the spiritual researcher. He then lives in such a way that he is trustingly devoted to the flow of existence, trusting that wisdom reigns in existence and that flowing wisdom will make him ever more mature. With such words, I would like to begin by suggesting the mood that is important for the spiritual researcher. Much depends on his having a sacred reverence for the truth, on his feeling that he must first become more and more mature in order to be allowed to approach it. And it becomes an inner necessity for him to immerse everything he has to do with his soul in the mood I have just described. Not that I want to claim, dear audience, that such a mood must be artificially created, that it should be imposed on those who want to become spiritual researchers. No, it arises quite naturally when one does what is necessary for the soul to find its true essence. How is this to be done? — I can only briefly outline the principle; you will find the details in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and “An Outline of Esoteric Science” in the second part, or, with regard to very specific details, in one of my most recent writings: “The Threshold of the Spiritual World.”

It would be easy to believe that one must perform very special, miraculous deeds in order to enter the spiritual world. This is not the case. Basically, what the soul needs to enter the spiritual world is present in every human soul life. It takes place between the other experiences of ordinary existence. And what otherwise takes place, if I may use the expression, between the lines of life, must be developed by the spiritual researcher to an unlimited degree. And there is one thing that at first appears to us as something quite inconspicuous in the life of the soul, namely what we call attention in ordinary life.

We know, dear friends, that we must develop attention in ordinary life; we must take an interest in the individual things that come our way; we cannot let life flow past us as it presents itself to the senses and the intellect, but we must pick out individual facts and entities and look at them closely. Only in this way can we shape our soul life into an orderly one. We develop this attention quite involuntarily. Before I go into its application to spiritual research, I would like to show in two points how this inner attention is already significant in everyday life. A certain philosopher rightly said: “Basically, the question of the ability to remember, of memory, is actually the question of the attention of the human soul.” And we would gain infinitely much for educational questions and maxims if we really wanted to recognize what spiritual science has to say about the connection between attention and memory.

How many people, one might almost say all people, complain of a weak memory, of a declining memory at a certain age! If we were to consider the connection between attention and memory at the right time, things would be better. We can say the following to all people: the more a person strives to develop the power of attention, that is, to repeatedly focus their interest on individual facts of life, the more they concentrate their soul on attention through inner effort, the stronger their memory and power of recollection become. Not only do we remember more easily what we have paid attention to, but the power of memory, the power of recollection, becomes stronger the more we are taught or teach ourselves to develop the activity of attention again and again. Activity and ability are related here. Not only is it very easy to observe in life that we remember more easily what we have paid attention to, but the development of the activity of attention also strengthens the power of memory. That is one thing.

Another thing, I would like to say, is something that can lead us into a sad chapter of human soul life. Many of you have certainly heard how, in extreme cases, the human soul can be disturbed by the fact that the recollection of one's own experiences is somehow interrupted. In very special cases, it happens that a person suddenly feels torn away from their activity; they no longer know what they are doing; they have forgotten part or all of their previous soul life; and lives as if in a different state of consciousness. They can travel, can undertake all kinds of activities, but only later does the undisturbed, continuous memory of their experiences reappear. Then they suddenly become aware of who they are, whereas before they had forgotten their ego. Although this represents a radical case of human illness, the disturbance of memory occurs in the human soul in a more or less mild form, and these things could occur much less frequently in life if one were to note that this continuity of consciousness, this overview of one's own experiences – so that one is always truly present with oneself – depends on developing the activity of attention as much as possible. And we do children a great service for their later life when we encourage them to concentrate their interest on individual processes and entities. We strengthen their willpower, insofar as it arises from the connected experiences of life, and also their power of judgment through attention. But when we look into ordinary soul life, we must say: Attention takes place between the lines of life.

The activity of attention must increase in an unlimited way for spiritual researchers, or rather for those who want to become spiritual researchers. While we otherwise come to develop our interest in this or that through external circumstances, the spiritual researcher must develop concentration in an inner, skillful way. Arbitrarily, through strong inner exertion of the soul's power, the spiritual researcher must draw together everything that is present in his soul and, as far as possible, direct it toward something that is not prompted by external influences, whether it be ideas formed in the soul itself or those suggested by knowledgeable spiritual researchers. One allows these ideas to arise arbitrarily in one's soul at certain moments; otherwise, one tries to put oneself in a state where the outer senses perceive nothing, as in sleep, where ordinary thinking comes to a standstill, as in sleep, except that the whole soul is directed with all its powers toward the single idea that one holds on to for as long as one can. This is called concentration. You can read more about this in the aforementioned books. The more one uses such ideas, which in a sense have no model in the external world, the better; the more one places symbolic ideas at the center of consciousness, the better. And now it is a matter of the spiritual researcher doing this exercise over and over again; depending on their abilities, some will achieve something in a short time, others only after years, but as it is presented to us, we achieve, so to speak — the present development of humanity makes this possible — the ability to increase something in the soul by behaving in this way. Powers that otherwise lie dormant in the soul, as if in its depths, are brought to the surface when we repeatedly and patiently, with perseverance, perform such exercises of concentration. One does not become a spiritual researcher in an external, tumultuous way, but through such processes in the soul as [they] are described in the increase of attention to the infinite.

Then, at an appropriate moment, something occurs that can now be called — I expressly note that no particular importance is attached to the expression itself, that it is not intended to prove anything — one attains something that can be called a “process of spiritual chemistry.” And as I discuss this process of spiritual chemistry, you will see that modern spiritual science, as it is meant here, seeks the true essence of the soul in a similar — but only similar — way to how natural science attempts to unravel the mysteries of nature. Only because spiritual science enters the spiritual realm must it be different in its methods and preparatory work from natural science.

Spiritual chemistry! Well, if we want to use the expression as one that is supposed to make the matter understandable to us: When you look at water, you cannot see that the chemist can separate hydrogen from it, because hydrogen cannot be seen in water. Water extinguishes fire, hydrogen burns. Just as little as the essence of hydrogen can be seen when you have water in front of you, so little can the essence of the soul be seen in the human being standing before us in the body. But just as the chemist separates hydrogen from water as something that has completely different properties from water, so the spiritual researcher, using his own soul as a tool for his research, separates his soul from his body through concentration; he separates his spiritual-soul from his physical-bodily. If an abstract, monistic natural science or worldview that does not take facts into account calls this dualism, one can calmly bear such a reproach. One might just as well say that there is dualism in water; water is not merely a unity, a monos, but in order to get to know it, one must extract the hydrogen. Just as hydrogen can be extracted from water by physical chemistry, so the spiritual-soul aspect is separated from the physical-bodily aspect by processes such as the one described above—other such processes can be found in the books mentioned. And the spiritual researcher then experiences the significant, the great moment when he can really connect meaning with words that, if one knows nothing about the facts of spiritual experience, one cannot connect with meaning: I experience myself as a soul-spiritual being independent of my body, outside my body. And since I do not want to speak in abstractions, but rather about the facts of spiritual experience, about the facts of discovering the true nature of the soul, I will not refrain from describing individual experiences that the spiritual researcher goes through.

If you stand in ordinary life, where, like hydrogen to oxygen, the soul-spiritual is bound to the physical, then, dear audience, you see the world in such a way that you know: you develop the power of your soul through the tools of your body; you use your senses, your brain; you live in this body of yours. — The first thing you know, after doing the exercises I mentioned, is that you live with your soul and spirit outside your body. This is what you might call the power of thought. In ordinary life, you know about this power of thought: you can use it because your thinking is connected to your brain. But now you experience yourself weaving thoughts and existing outside your brain. What I am telling you is not a fairy tale or a hypothesis, but something that anyone who does the relevant exercises can experience; they come to know: now you live in your thought life as if hovering around your own brain; the power of your thinking develops outside your body. This moment is experienced as particularly striking, one might say particularly shocking. If you make an effort to do the exercises for a while, there comes a time when you cannot yet really experience thinking outside the brain. It is something that spreads like a dreamlike twilight, as a result of concentration; but the moment when you submerge yourself back into the brain, when the thinking that takes place outside the body merges into the thinking inside the body, is actually the first thing you notice very clearly. You feel how you submerge again with the being you experienced outside your body, like something you penetrate with difficulty, and how, in pleasant currents, you feel your thinking being draw into your body and permeate your brain in order to use it again for external thinking. These facts are such that it is understandable that many people today must say: “He who says this is talking nonsense; these are the fantasies of a half-madman.” But these are the facts through which people will recognize how to learn to recognize the true nature of the soul. These are facts that will spread in the culture of the future, for souls thirst for them, even if they are not yet conscious of it. These facts will spread just as the Copernican worldview once spread, that the earth moves through space at great speed.

So the first thing that can be separated from the physical body is the power of thought, and if one has the perseverance to continue the exercises described for a longer period of time, one can experience this emancipation from the physical organ of thought as one's first supersensible experience. It is only a matter of overcoming certain obstacles in order to have such experiences. People, for example, whose interests are limited to what constitutes physical existence alone, who are unable to develop broad-minded interests, will certainly encounter serious obstacles when they attempt what has just been described. A broad-mindedness of interests, an ability to respond to the beauty and sublimity that every being in the physical world already offers, must be inherent in the soul. Those who are only interested in themselves will notice that to the same extent that they do the exercises — anyone can do them, the important thing is to do them correctly — those who are completely absorbed in their usual egoistic thinking will notice that, as they progress through the exercises described, something comes over their soul that can be called a certain inner fear of the world they are to enter, which they experience outside the body. This fear is basically always present in the soul, only one is not aware of it. In spiritual science, one speaks of the threshold that separates the sensory world from the spiritual, the earthly from the super-earthly. It is said that one must cross this threshold, and it is even said that this threshold is guarded by a guardian, which of course refers to a spiritual force. This means that it is true, and spiritual science confirms this, that, as Fichte says, the spiritual world is always around us and that we can also find our way into it. Why does this spiritual world not always appear before the human soul like the physical world? Because what the budding spiritual researcher can experience through experiences such as those just described causes fear to arise in the soul, because this fear is in the soul; and this fear is a good remedy against an immature intrusion into the spiritual world. This fear is always there in souls, but it does not manifest itself as fear; rather, it manifests itself in the fact that people slacken in the efforts they could make to enter the spiritual world. They become seemingly casual, no longer interested in continuing the exercises; but in truth it is fear that they do not feel because they do not perceive it as fear. One can even say that spiritual research proves with certainty where the materialistic attitude of humanity actually comes from. In our time, there are materialistic souls who say that either one cannot speak of a spiritual world, or that one should not concern oneself with it because human cognition is directed only toward the sensory world. They also say that it is unscientific to speak of a life in the spirit. Yes, such people – today they are elegantly called “monists,” in the past they were called “materialists” – consider themselves particularly scientific when they completely reject the spiritual world, when they say that science has nothing to do with the spiritual world. Certainly, it is not exactly appropriate to find followers among these people, who are, I would say, rigid monists, when one speaks the truth about these facts, but this truth is nevertheless true. It is not logical reasons, not anything that can be proven, that keep the soul captive in materialism or monism, but rather fear, which people do not recognize as fear, which they do not admit to themselves as fear. It conjures up ideas such as that it is unscientific to see the spiritual world. Those who see through things know that souls gather in materialist assemblies because fear of the spiritual world reigns in all of them. It is not pleasant to tell people that they are basically fearful souls, that they clothe this fear in a false logic, as if they could prove that only the facts of the physical world are valid.

We have thus pointed out the obstacles that prevent the soul from entering the spiritual world, where it belongs with its true essence.

Other exercises must now be added to those already described, but not in such a way that the soul combines one with the other, but alternately. Just as the pendulum of a clock swings alternately to one side and then the other, and not to both sides at once, so the soul cannot do different exercises at the same time, but should do them alternately, then they will support each other.

We have spoken of an increase in attention. There is something else that is also present between the lines of life, which we can increase indefinitely; that is what we call devotion — devotion as we experience it when we are so completely absorbed by something that we forget everything else around us and live solely with that which demands our devotion. We must devote ourselves passively, while we must be active in our attention. But this devotion must become universal, so to speak, if we want to become spiritual researchers. This must take place in such a way that we develop a mood of the soul that resembles sleep, but is nevertheless opposite to it. All will rests, even that will which expresses itself in the slightest movement of the limbs. All arbitrary thinking rests — perception rests — but the soul is awake, and it is awake in such a way that it is completely devoted to the stream of existence, that it develops that mood of absolute tranquility which the religious person perhaps knows when he is truly devout in prayer, but even the content of a prayer is not indulged in spiritual research — it would put the soul in a certain mood — but, I would say, merely be devoted with one's whole being to the eternal power of existence, which causes forces other than the mere powers of thought to be carried up from the soul. So I will now characterize a second force that we can draw from the realm of soul experience. When I speak to you in this way, I develop my words by directing my thoughts in my brain, so that they take hold of the speech organ. I express what I want to say to you with physical organs. Just as one can emancipate the power of thought from the physical brain organ through concentration, so one can detach the power that in ordinary life pours into the speech organs from the speech organ, and also from the brain, and develop it purely spiritually in complete external, I would say, silence. If one keeps what otherwise flows out into speech within the soul, developing it only inwardly, the unspoken inner word becomes lively, the word that cannot be heard with a physical organ, the word that one hears inwardly, through inner listening to one's own self. And this word, this silent but all the more clearly spiritually speaking word, which is attained through the emancipation of the power of speech from the physical speech organ — this inner word is what one might call the “spiritual outer world.” Just as one is surrounded in the physical world by beings from the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms, so, when one detaches the power of thought and speech from the body, one enters, through inner soul-spiritual experience, a world in which one is surrounded by spiritual beings, spiritual forces, and spiritual processes.

Talking about this world is still not really forgiven today, so to speak; individual philosophers already allow us to speak of a spiritual world in general, because they already recognize the absurdity of denying such a world, but they say: Behind the sensory world there is a spiritual world. - And certain spirits already consider themselves to be highly elevated when they pay homage to so-called “pantheism.” For those who see through things, this is no more valuable than the pannaturalist who, walking across a meadow, would say: What do I care about yellow or red flowers, these forests, those mountains and valleys and rivers—it's all nature, nature, nature. I am not interested in the fact that there are individual physical processes that can be observed. Just as such a person in pan-naturalism wanted to call everything nature, so the person who only wants to allow one to speak of spirit in a pantheistic sense, in a pantheistic way, stands in opposition to the spiritual world. This is opposed by true spiritual research, which really separates the soul-spiritual from the physical-bodily, just as hydrogen is different from water. This spiritual science enters the spiritual world in such a way that it distinguishes the individual concrete processes and beings of the spiritual world, of which we must say: Just as we stand here in the physical world as human beings and look at beings of the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms, so we stand opposite the spiritual world through spiritual research; but now we are no longer on the highest level, but on the lowest, and above us, as our soul itself lives into the spiritual world as a spiritual being, the hierarchy of higher spirits begins. We ascend to the sequence of stages of spiritual beings to which we belong with our soul and spirit, just as we belong to the physical-mineral kingdom through our physical body.

And above all, dear friends, we achieve this when we emancipate the power of speech, when we retain within ourselves that which otherwise pours out into the physical organs of speech and thereby connects with the body. Then we achieve an expansion of what we might call “memory” in ordinary life. As it manifests itself in the soul in such a way that we look back on the experiences of our existence up to the time we can remember, as the experiences rise up in the form of images and thoughts of the past from the depths of the soul, so, when the soul progresses as described, there also comes a time when images arise from the undefined depths of the soul that are not those that express what we have experienced in this life, but rather lead us out of this world into a purely spiritual world, and the soul's power of memory expands so that our soul truly connects meaning with the words: Before I was born or conceived by my parents from physical matter, I was in a spiritual world; I went through experiences there, and I was further back in previous earthly lives, and when I pass through the gate of death, I will pass through a spiritual world; and what I develop in this life is the seed for the following earthly lives, which I will live through with the same certainty as I live through this earthly life. As a fact of inner experience, as a result of searching for its true essence, the soul finds the repeated earthly lives and the forms of existence between death and new birth. As an inner fact, the soul finds this.

The inner experience one has when one has detached the power of thought can be compared to an inner, purely spiritual play of facial expressions. For as passive as we are with our senses toward the outer world, we cannot face the spiritual world. The moment we experience ourselves outside the body with the power of thought, it must always be kept active. This is the difference between spiritual perception and physical perception. In physical perception, we can think and devote ourselves to thinking; as soon as we enter the spiritual world with our emancipated power of thought, we must always be active; we must slip into the spiritual beings we want to perceive. We must always be active. When we cease to be active, spiritual perception also ceases. This perception can be called an inner play of expressions. We must always, arbitrarily, express what perception is, what we can know about the other being by adapting our own emancipated thinking to the processes and beings we perceive.

Thus, emancipated speech, life in the inner word, can be called an inner gesture, an inner gesture. Just as in outer life, when one is actively involved in something, one needs gestures — sometimes too many, as I do when giving a lecture — then one expresses what one experiences in activity; just as in physical life one is in motion in gesture and thereby expresses what is within oneself, so in emancipating the power of speech, in passing into the spiritual world and into the processes of the spiritual world, one must express what belongs to other beings through inner gesture. From this you can see the great difference between real spiritual knowledge and sensory knowledge. Sensory knowledge is passive, spiritual knowledge is active.

If you continue with the exercises, you will come to something else. To express what I want to make clear, I would like to refer to the development of the child. It can be scientifically proven that human beings enter physical life in such a way that they first have to acquire the power of direction and position for external life. Animals enter physical life in a different way; the reasons for this are only apparent. Human beings enter life in such a way that they are initially crawling, helpless creatures and must first acquire the power of orientation. Significant spirits have always pointed out what it means for human beings to stand upright and be able to look up at the heavens. Humans acquire this in childhood. The powers within them awaken, enabling them to become upright beings. They give their whole body its external physiognomy; they put what they are as spirits into their bodies, which are given to them through heredity; the spirit straightens this body through forces that are peculiar to the human spirit — this can also be proven scientifically, but that would go too far today — which are not merely forces of the body, but are contained in the spiritual-soul, permeate the body, and give it its upright direction. What we put into the body in early childhood, what we pour into the body so that we become upright beings, we can also emancipate from the body, just as we emancipate the powers of thought and speech. This is, of course, the most difficult thing to do, but gradually one acquires the ability to truly extract from the body that which gives direction to the human being in childhood, so that one can give oneself any direction outside the body. In particular, one can learn to recognize the great difference between up and down; these are not spatial directions, but the direction up is an inner experience. Once you have emancipated the upward force from the body, something rises up in the soul, outside of the body, which the soul experiences deeply morally, something about which it can say: it is like working against gravity. However, this is not meant in a directional or spatial sense, but rather, what the soul experiences can be expressed as follows: by experiencing this “upward” movement, the soul feels increasingly lonely. And then, by truly experiencing this in the soul, one goes through all those moods that can be experienced under the impression of being more and more alone. Being so alone that one knows: there is a world outside of you, but you now perceive nothing of this world spiritually. You disappear, as it were, from this world and are more and more within yourself. This goes so far that if the soul is not attuned to this loneliness, as you can read in the book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds,” this loneliness comes over the person in such a way that they feel a whole world within themselves, that they feel more and more only themselves in the ascent, as it were, and the world sinks away from them. This mood, in which the soul feels a world within itself, can in turn be associated with fear of oneself, that one is now going through all the tragic and all the blissful conflicts, that one becomes aware of everything that lies beneath the surface of the human soul.

Spiritual research can establish that between death and a new birth, the soul repeatedly experiences such moods in the purely spiritual world, alternating with the other moods that I will describe in a moment. And the moment that occurs immediately in the middle between death and new birth — I have taken the liberty of calling it “the spiritual midnight hour of existence” in the mystery drama “The Awakening of the Soul” “the spiritual midnight hour of existence” because there, in fact, in the midst of the bliss of spiritual life before the next birth, the soul experiences a moment when it is completely alone with itself, experiencing only itself, but can become quite anxious in the awareness: there is a world around you, but it is outside your consciousness, you know nothing about it; a world, indeed worlds, arise from within you. You are alone with these worlds.

The spiritual researcher becomes familiar with this mood. And he becomes familiar with another mood, which can be described as “going down,” the mood in which the soul feels as if it were radiating its own soul light, so to speak. Just as in physical life we see and perceive things because the sun shines on them, so in the spiritual world we must let the light of the spirit itself shine on things. And moments of loneliness flow into us when we slacken in letting the inner sun shine. When the light of the inner sun shines, we spread ourselves, as it were, over the world of other beings. What could be called “spiritual companionship,” “spiritual togetherness” with the souls who died before or after us, with those we lived with, or with those who are on earth—for from the spirit world we perceive the souls who are still incarnated on earth—this state of spiritual spiritual perception, living in it, alternates between death and a new birth with the state of loneliness. The two states alternate with the same regularity as day and night alternate in our physical life. In this way, one acquires the ability to feel, as it were, lonely, but with an inner world, to feel poured out over the spiritual world and its beings and processes. But one also learns to know other forces that can be compared to right and left, front and back. But by becoming attuned to these forces, by allowing the soul to develop these forces, which we are unaware of in ordinary life but which arise in the subconscious when the soul gives itself its first physiognomy for the world, by developing all these forces, one of which is the power of uprightness, we acquire the ability to to live further into the spiritual world, into the world of spiritual beings that surround us, then we come completely out of ourselves. We look at our body outside ourselves and we can enter into the other spiritual beings, we can take on their physiognomy. For while we develop our first physiognomy, our upright gait, here, we must take on the inner constitution of spiritual beings in the spiritual world. In this way, the soul connects, as it were, with the world in which its spiritual being is truly rooted.

Everything I have tried to describe is really – I must express it somewhat trivially – a kind of spiritual chemistry. The soul becomes free from the physical body and enters into a new connection, like hydrogen when it is taken out of water. This new connection is the connection with the world in which the soul is actually rooted as in its true home. Of course, someone might say: Well, then it is only the spiritual researcher who can know something about the spiritual world! So one would have to become a spiritual researcher in order to truly settle into this spiritual world. — That is not the case, dear audience. Just as one does not need to be a painter to understand a picture that a painter has made, one does not need to be a spiritual researcher to find what the spiritual researcher explores comprehensible and understandable. Although, as you can see from my books, it is possible for everyone in our time to become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent, it is not necessary to become one. You have to be a painter if you want to paint pictures; you have to be a spiritual researcher to penetrate the spiritual world; but if what is explored in this spiritual world is described, if the right words for this spiritual world can truly be found in the physical world, then what the spiritual researcher has to say can be understood by every soul. And then what the spiritual researcher has to say is truly not like any other theory, but relates to life in a completely different way. One can say: it is not only true that one must be a chemist oneself in order to investigate chemical processes, but not in order to understand what the chemist has researched; just as one does not need to cultivate the field oneself and yet lives off it, just as one does not need to know everything that has to happen to obtain food, and does not have to do the work oneself, yet still enjoy the food. Similarly, what the spiritual researcher has to say—if it is rooted in truth—penetrates to a mysterious language that is present in every soul, truly present in every soul. This language is present in every soul. And if many people today still believe that what the spiritual researcher says is absurd, that it is insane, it is only because these people have acquired prejudices instead of the ability to judge. Once the significance of external science is truly recognized, these prejudices will disappear, and then these mysterious powers of understanding, which already exist in souls today, will come to the fore, and people will understand spiritual science because it strikes secret chords in the human soul that must sound, just as surely as our taste buds develop taste when food is brought to them.

The time will come, dear friends, when people will no longer talk about spiritual science as they do today, but when the words of the spiritual teachers will resound in such a way that souls will absorb them, even if they are not spiritual researchers. Just as one enjoys the fruits of the field without cultivating it oneself, just as one enjoys the grain without grinding it oneself, so will one spiritually “suck” and “taste” what belongs to the soul through spiritual science. The time will come, even though we are still far from it today, when the mysterious language living in every soul will become active in the soul, so that the spiritual researcher will no longer be a preacher in the desert, but will be able to speak to people in such a way that they will say: What the spiritual researcher says only brings out what is already in all souls. But then the time will come when people will know that there is knowledge about the spiritual world that is not only as certain as natural science, but much, much more certain; and what Fichte sensed will be proven to be scientifically true: Not only can one live in a spiritual world after death, but even here in the physical world one can live in the spiritual world and understand it, indeed, live more truly in the spiritual world than in the physical world. - People will understand that physical existence derives its value, its security, its truthfulness precisely from the understanding of how the soul finds its true essence in the spiritual world.

Just as an aside, I would like to mention—not to boast about it, but because it can now be mentioned as a fact—that there is already some understanding of this world, which is to be revealed to human beings as spiritual science, as the truly divine-spiritual world in which the soul is truly rooted. The fact that an understanding is beginning to stir in the world is attested to by the fact that, with relatively large resources, a place for this science is now being built at one point in Switzerland, in Dornach near Basel. we call it a “College of Spiritual Science,” a place that is to be built more than for any other reason so that, in terms of style and artistry, we may have a building that also expresses in its outer forms what flows into the soul of divine spiritual life when it explores its true essence. The building already stands in its form, it only needs to be completed externally and internally, as a two-domed wooden structure, and it will express externally and artistically what spiritual science aims to achieve. A number of friends of spiritual science have joined forces to raise the not inconsiderable funds for this building. It would be desirable, however, that this building not be understood as described in a newspaper article that has just appeared in Paris and is circulating around the world, but rather that it be understood as a first site dedicated to the science of the spirit, the science of the divine origin of the soul, the science of the soul of true being, just as the spiritual researcher, according to his knowledge, must believe that this science is already longed for today by souls, by numerous souls who do not yet know it, but who nevertheless long for it, just as it must be longed for more and more and will be longed for in the future by the human soul. It is with a certain satisfaction that we can point to this outward symbol, the imposing building we have been able to erect, as evidence of the impression that spiritual science has already made on individual souls, even though misunderstanding after misunderstanding is still encountered today when this spiritual science is discussed.

But even today, I may well make a comparison with regard to the attitude that animates the spiritual researcher, even when he sees a world of prejudices piling up against spiritual science. The spiritual researcher must think: There was a time when people looked up as far as their eyes could see; they saw the blue vault of heaven and, trusting their senses, they said: Up there is the vault of heaven, there is the moon, the stars, the sun, which wander back and forth across this vault of heaven. Then came Copernicus, came Giordano Bruno, standing alone before their contemporaries and proclaiming to them: What you believe you see with your eyes is not in space. This blue vault of heaven is the product of your limited vision; there is no boundary; the world extends into the infinity of space, and infinite worlds are embedded in these vast expanses. You yourselves create the firmament through the limitations of your knowledge.

Spiritual researchers today know that, just as the firmament was once a real boundary of the world for people who trusted only their senses, not because it was there, but because their cognitive abilities placed it there, so too is the confinement between birth or conception and death a temporal firmament that humans create for themselves. And spiritual research today must step before this temporal firmament of birth or conception and death, just as Giordano Bruno stepped before the spatial firmament, and say: Behind birth and death lies the spiritual world, life poured out in time, embedded in infinite repetitions of earthly life, forwards and backwards, like the infinite worlds to which Giordano Bruno once pointed. And just as people have become accustomed to no longer seeing the spatial firmament as a boundary, so will people become accustomed to seeing the drawing into the body and the going out of the body as a temporal firmament, beyond which lies the spiritual world in which we live with forces revealed to us by spiritual science.

Dear attendees, I pointed out that when a person frees their soul from the body through concentration and meditation, they experience something that can be called inner facial expressions, inner gestures, inner physiognomy. By experiencing this, human beings already experience in this life what will then completely surround the soul in the spiritual world after death. Knowledge of the spiritual world enters this world, and the soul recognizes itself by finding itself rooted in its true essence in the spiritual world. It is understandable that there is little understanding for these debates in our present time; when we look at our present, we understand this. Yes, what do people pay most attention to today? I would like to use a trivial comparison: an advertisement on a billboard announces “A lecture with slides.” Next to it is an advertisement for a lecture without slides. Which lecture do people feel most inclined to attend? Well, the one where they can passively indulge themselves, where they don't need to be active, where everything is presented so beautifully in pictures. Spiritual science cannot proceed in this way. Although what is seen in the spirit could also be presented in pictures, I have only tried to work through the mere word, which can affect thinking and feeling. Spiritual science can only count on the active cooperation of the soul. We have had to experience in our time that an article appeared in a significant weekly magazine in which the following was said: When you read Spinoza and Kant, yes, the concepts get mixed up. You can't make sense of it. This is true for many people today. But the philosopher now makes a suggestion: Why shouldn't we also make use of a new technical achievement here? Make a film! Sit down in front of a film and watch Spinoza being presented to you, first how he begins to grind lenses, then how thoughts arise in him, how his philosophy develops, and so on and so forth. All you have to do is passively surrender yourself; thoughts no longer swirl around in your head. That is in keeping with the taste of our time! In a slide show, one would see how Spinoza's “Ethics” and Kant's “Critique of Pure Reason” came into being. People would go to such a lecture.

So one can say that, on the one hand, in our time there is a tendency to passively let everything affect us. But spiritual science must demand the opposite. The soul must actively work on itself. In this way, however, what the souls of the present day need most for their spiritual and mental health is poured into them: activity, strengthening of the will, strengthening of the powers of thinking and feeling. And they need the inner strengthening of something else as well. When one lives in the world of loneliness, one encounters great obstacles. Every feeling of unkindness that one has ever committed against people and animals is like a barrier. A completely unloving person, when developing the powers I have called powers of judgment, comes up against this unlovingness, which he finds everywhere, like an outer world surrounding him. Thus, spiritual science will suggest to people the necessity of developing the deepest, most life-giving power of love to an ever-increasing degree. And those who know how much love the life of the future will need also know what spiritual science must mean for the entire life of the future and the present; they know how the strengthening of the forces of love must be the means by which the soul finds its true essence, because unlovingness erects a barrier in the spiritual world.

Everywhere we can see how, on the one hand, souls still resist spiritual science because it makes demands on habits of thinking that the soul is not yet familiar with, but how, on the other hand, souls more or less unconsciously thirst for spiritual science. Here we encounter something that is often expressed, but which we must understand correctly. Our time has been called a transitional period. But it is not important that it is called that; what is important is what our time actually has to seek in its transition. What does it have to seek? It has to seek the transition from passive devotion to purely sensory science, where the soul cannot find its true essence, to spiritual science, where it can find it. We can become aware of this when we see that at the beginning of our religious document of the West there is an image; we do not want to discuss the image here, you can take it as you will, but one thing will be clear to everyone: that it is connected with good and evil. The words are:

You will be like the gods and distinguish good from evil.

Whether one regards this as a symbol or whatever, it undoubtedly refers to what is connected with human freedom, with pride and arrogance and the fall of man into evil—I do not want to elaborate on this today—but we live today, if what I say, even expressed in radical terms, characterizes life today, we live today in a time when one hears a similar tempting word whispered. When one considers what sensual science produces — not when it is understood correctly, but when it is misunderstood — one need only characterize how some people today believe that human beings, with all their spiritual and mental characteristics, are nothing more than a higher product of the animal evolutionary series; and some people are proud to say: The elements that are present in humans are also present in animals. Moral elements are only higher developed animal instincts. Then something would have to happen as a consequence of this worldview, which people do not draw, but they should do so. However, because they do not draw the conclusion, they do not realize that if this were the case, if natural science really taught what has just been suggested, that man emerged from the animal evolutionary series, that man does not have anything in his moral, inner soul life that comes from a completely different world, then the words that can be heard murmured as if from a new tempter would have to be true, if one knows how to listen to the voices of the times. One can reject the tempter, for

The little people never sense the devil,
Even when he has them by the collar.

One hears the word whispered:

You will be like animals, and good and evil will be like natural laws. Just as the sun shines on good and evil, so do the laws of nature. You will no longer distinguish good from evil!

The word is not spoken because people do not draw the conclusion that they should draw. Thus we see the opposite temptation peeking into our transitional period. The tempter no longer says, “You will be like the gods and distinguish good from evil!” but rather, “You will be like the animals and, like the animals, do good and evil without distinction!”

Spiritual science will work to ensure that the soul recognizes its true nature, that people do not fall prey to this word, not even in their minds or feelings, even if they do not dare to utter it, no matter how many opponents it may have today. Even if it is still the case that many prejudices are being expressed against spiritual science today, it is nevertheless true that What can give certainty and inner peace with regard to the continuing work of spiritual science, with regard to the “finding of the soul's own essence,” may be clothed in words of this certainty, this peace with regard to the goals of spiritual science, in what I have to say in conclusion, in which I would like to bring together, as in a feeling, the whole meaning of what I have tried to explain to you this evening.

Spiritual science as a real science, as it has been described here, is a product of the present age. Human souls had to go through their earlier earthly lives; now they are maturing and becoming ever more mature in order to develop the powers that lead to spiritual research. But when one lives this spiritual research, one feels in harmony with what people have always expressed, even before its existence, what the leading spirits of human development have expressed from the deepest intuitions, the most mature part of their souls. Two sayings can be quoted that are in harmony with what has been said here today. The physician and soul researcher Feuchtersleben, to whom we owe the book “Die Diätetik der Seele” (The Dietetics of the Soul), coined a beautiful phrase that is entirely consistent with what spiritual science has to say about finding the soul in relation to its true nature:

The human soul cannot hide from itself that its happiness ultimately consists only in the expansion of its innermost being and possessions.

Spiritual science seeks to point the soul to this expansion and these possessions of its innermost experience, in its spiritual home, in the spiritual world itself.

When the tempter whispers today: “You will be like the animals from which you evolved, and no longer distinguish between good and evil, but only believe in the laws of nature,” then as spiritual researchers we can take comfort and be uplifted, feeling once again in harmony with one of the spirits who, based on their intuitions, have always expressed their harmony and unanimity with what spiritual science has to offer. In conclusion, Schiller's following words summarize the thoughts that can arise in the soul from spiritual science in response to the tempter's new words: “You will be like the animals that do not distinguish between good and evil.” In contrast, spiritual science, filling the soul with words as with a feeling that permeates it completely, affirms what Schiller said, and in this may resound what I have taken the liberty of saying to you this evening:

Now the dull barrier of animality fell,
And humanity stepped onto the cloudless forehead,
And the sublime stranger, the thought,
Sprang from the astonished brain.

These were words spoken prophetically by Schiller. And spiritual science adds to this the fact that thought does not merely push its way out of the intuiting soul, but can actually emerge from the soul, can experience itself outside the body and lead the soul to its true essence.

The thought sprang from the astonished brain and gave man his true essence and dignity; so said Schiller; so must recognize spiritual science that understands itself correctly, the human soul that understands itself correctly.