Spiritual Science and the Future of Humanity

GA 69e — 13 March 1914, Basel

XX. Spiritual Science in Its Relationship to Religious and Social Movements of the Present Day

The first two lectures on spiritual science that I was able to give here this winter were more about the way in which spiritual knowledge is acquired. They were about those forces in the human soul that generally still oppose this spiritual knowledge in our present time, are hostile to it, and the like.

This evening, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words, even if they are naturally limited in a short lecture, about the relationship between spiritual science and various religious and social currents in our present-day culture. I may remark that, as is natural, I can only advocate spiritual scientific research, which was the subject of the first two lectures here, and that we should carefully avoid confusing this spiritual scientific research with all kinds of other currents that call themselves theosophical or similar and are active in the present day. Generally speaking, it is not pleasant to talk about such currents, but perhaps it is not necessary after these lectures. We live in a time in which the human soul, which is only a little aware of what is going on around it, must undoubtedly feel how it is increasingly being forced to step out of the instinctive life of the soul and to live more and more consciously and recognizably in that which one can call the demands of the world, namely the cultural world, on man and his soul development. We need not look back to the very early days of human cultural development to be convinced, very soon indeed, if we are unprejudiced, that in those earlier times man was able to live much more instinctively, much more, one might say, naturally, than in our own time. This is the basis for what we experience as the progressive aspect of our time. The human soul is increasingly compelled to think and imagine about what, if the expression may be used, was instilled into it by inner, soul-spiritual forces that remain more indeterminate, so that they could express themselves more instinctively.

In a genuine and true sense, spiritual science seeks to serve this human soul, which is striving for maturity and full consciousness. But since it must do so from a point of view that, at least initially, is seemingly in stark contrast to the traditional habits of thought and ways of thinking for many souls, it is, on the other hand, quite natural, as has already been emphasized, that the general consciousness revolts against what spiritual science wants to bring into the present, so that it really corresponds not only to what is present, so to speak, on the surface of the soul, but to what, in the deep longings of the soul, weaves and strives towards the human future.

For some, what spiritual science has to say must seem radically different in a much more profound sense than, for example, what was radically different in the dawn of the new spiritual life that the scientific way of thinking brought. To a much greater extent, man of today must feel that spiritual science has apparently — and this must always be emphasized — pulled the ground from under his feet, in contrast to the time when Copernicus, with his new physical worldview, shook what people had previously believed, namely that the earth, along with man, was stationary in space. That people had to accept the new truth, which was new for that time, they felt it somewhat as if the ground on which they stood quietly had been pulled out from under their feet. If one felt something physically at that time, one can certainly feel it today to an increased extent, if one wants to hold on to old habits of thinking, when spiritual research speaks of repeated earthly lives and says that the spiritual spheres can only be explored if one frees the soul from the experiences in the body. Spiritual science requires a soul observation that is free from all sense perception and free from the brain-bound thinking.

It is natural that in contrast to this, many a person feels insecure who has always sought the safe ground of human perception and observation, human philosophizing, in that the soul makes use of the senses and the intellect that is bound to the brain. For the latter, a feeling of insecurity arises, as if the ground were being pulled from under his feet, only to a much greater extent than was the case at that time in the dawn of the new spiritual life.

Anyone who is even slightly familiar with the meaning and spirit of spiritual science cannot but be repeatedly amazed at certain objections and attacks that come particularly from one side, namely from the religious denominations of the most diverse orientations. One must be all the more amazed at this, although it is understandable, since attacks also come from materialistic and other scientific sides. One must be all the more surprised by the attacks that come from religious denominations. In the face of these attacks, it must first be emphasized, albeit this has already been done, in a few words, what the actual stumbling block is for many souls when they encounter spiritual science.

Spiritual science wants to be a continuation of the scientific way of thinking in the most eminent sense, but since it deals with the spiritual realm, it must overcome this scientific way of thinking. It must, so to speak, develop in a different way what the scientific way of thinking has achieved in its field, because spiritual research deals with the realm of the spirit. Recent spiritual science shows that with the means available to man when he wants to explore the natural world and fathom the great truths of nature, he cannot enter the spiritual world with these powers and soul abilities. It is evident that no insight into the spiritual world is possible if man wishes to make use only of those soul faculties that can be developed when man, from waking to sleeping, is in the resulting state of consciousness, that man makes use of the senses of his body, of thinking, feeling and willing, for which he needs his nervous system and his brain.

That, in addition to the soul faculties that man must apply precisely in the realm of external sensual life and also in the realm of scientific research, that in addition to these faculties, other faculties slumber in the soul that can be developed if man does something to further them – this is what is objectionable for many minds of the present day. Many minds of the present time do not even consider the fact that in a certain respect a similar change takes place in miniature, in the primitive, in man in the course of his entirely natural life, as is required by spiritual research if it is to develop in accordance with it.

Every human being develops soul powers in the first years of their childhood that they could not get through life with if they remained throughout their whole life as they were in their first childhood years. The fact that we, as adults, find our way in life, that we can position ourselves in life in such a way that we develop an appropriate relationship with other people and with the world as a whole, depends on the abilities we have in early childhood being developed further, and on the abilities of childhood being raised to a higher level. Just as the forces slumbering in the human being in the first years of life are developed in such a way that the human being can orient themselves in their sensory world, so too, if the human being really wants to recognize, look at and perceive the spiritual world, a change must take place in them in later life. And through exercises, the principle of which has been explained in the last lectures and in my books Occult Science and The Threshold of the Spiritual World, and so on, through such exercises the human being is able to transform the abilities of the soul, which he naturally has without doing anything, into abilities through which he can see into the spiritual world. And this transformation is connected with the fact that man learns to really draw his soul out of the body.

In this way the human being comes to the clear concept of consciously distinguishing between two different states of life. The one state is that of ordinary waking. There one knows that one must make use of one's senses. And anyone who has even slightly penetrated the way of thinking in modern times knows that he must make use of his brain and nervous system-bound thought life in order to orient himself in the outside world. Consciousness is such that everything of the soul is directly connected with the body, that the body is contained within the soul and spirit. Through the effort of the powers of thinking, feeling and will, which the human being must develop in certain spiritual exercises, he is able to concentrate and strengthen his soul forces in such a way that the soul detaches itself from the body. He is able to truly experience that moment which is otherwise also experienced, but unconsciously: the moment of leaving the physical body. This moment is otherwise experienced - but unconsciously - when falling asleep. The person still perceives how the impressions and inner activity fade away. Slowly he then passes into unconsciousness. In a similar way, someone who has strengthened their thinking, feeling and willing by doing certain spiritual and soul exercises feels how they can make their soul so strong that it feels: I am still something even when I no longer move my hands, no longer use my eyes and ears, I am still something within myself.

These soul-spiritual exercises are based on the fact that the deeper forces are brought out, through which the soul is also something when it renounces the bodily impressions and the feeling of itself, by exerting the will in the limbs of the body. Through these exercises, the soul is able to leave the body. The body is then an external thing for the soul, like the other things outside our body. In the last lectures, I used the comparison of a spiritual chemistry: just as hydrogen is extracted chemically as water, so the soul experiences itself as a spiritual-soul being, and so it will withdraw from the body. Then it knows itself in a world of spiritual processes and entities, just as it knows itself in a world of sensory processes and entities as long as it uses the senses and the intellect, which is bound to the brain.

I have already pointed out that in the presence of some people it is still forgiven to refer to the spirit in a general way; but it is no longer forgiven when the spiritual world, in which the soul lives, is referred to in such a way that this world, like the sensory world, consists of individual, very concrete processes and entities. It is difficult to forgive when one does not dream oneself into a general, hazy, pantheistic spiritual world, but enters into a world of spiritual diversity. And yet this inner strengthening of the soul leads to it becoming free of the body, to the human being really entering into concrete spiritual worlds.

I do not wish to speak in abstractions, but rather to draw attention to what the spiritual researcher experiences in concrete terms. Through devotion to very specific thoughts that he thinks, he experiences the feelings and will impulses crowding together, and in so doing, he causes the soul to become free from the body. He experiences this, as it were, while awake, which is otherwise only experienced in a dormant and unconscious state. At first he feels how the outer sensory world, the world of colors, light and sounds, fades away as he falls asleep. Then he feels that his thoughts, of which he has rightly said, “I grasp these sensory impressions with them,” become as it were detached from him. And a new world opens up before him.

Man pours out his thoughts about the new world. And when the impressions of the sensory world disappear, then man knows: Yes, so far, where I have seen the carpet of the sensory world around me in my state of consciousness, as it were, something like a veil was woven for me. Now that this veil is gone, a new world is opening up for me. When you live consciously in the body-free soul, you not only experience the disappearance of the sensory world, but something like a veil also disappears, which is felt as if it has covered a world of the spiritual. You then experience a world of spiritual beings that emerge when the veil of the sensual tears.

When the veil disappears, one experiences beings that are one degree higher than the human soul in the order of the world. One then becomes familiar with a feeling that enriches the soul infinitely. One then feels: When you look around here in the world of the senses, you have the beings of the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms beneath you. The highest realm, which you have around you, is on the same level as you. You immerse yourself in a world that comes to you, and as a soul you know: what lies in your depths, what you are not aware of in your ordinary existence, what does not enter into your self-awareness, that is something through which you will be enriched. It is a world of spiritual beings that stand above you in the order of the world, that are not embodied in the body, but that are “ensouled” and within which you yourself are when you have become a body-free soul.

That is one thing. A second thing that comes to you when the veil of the sensual world is blown away is that you perceive what you otherwise call natural laws in a completely different way. The laws of nature, which one comprehends in the sense of being through thoughts, are no longer laws of nature when one perceives outside of the body; the thoughts are gone, they have united with spiritual beings that stand above man. What we experience in the laws of nature, which we previously perceived through thoughts, is now life itself. These are spiritual beings, which, when one has attained the relevant level of knowledge, stand before the soul of man as real as animals, plants and minerals otherwise stand before the senses of man. One familiarizes oneself with these entities, in relation to which one says to oneself: the laws of nature show us something like silhouettes, like abstractions of them. But what is present in the laws of nature when the veil is lifted are high spiritual entities. In spiritual science, these entities, which constitute the form of the laws of nature, are called the spirits of form because they instruct everything in the world to take on form through their spiritual power, out of the life of the world. Everything that exists in minerals, in animals and plants as form is the result of the activity of these entities.

When the physical body of a person is at rest, but in such a way that consciousness is maintained, when every will that only acts through limbs, that only acts through the body, when every such will is paralyzed, when it rests as it then does in sleep, when the person his physical body lies motionless in bed, when the will has been weakened by the application of soul power, but the person does not sink into unconsciousness but remains conscious, then he realizes: there is something within you that is the giver of your will, that radiates into your will. Your will is permeated and permeated by exalted spirits that permeate and interweave the world. One is tempted to call them spirits of the will. By paralyzing the will within himself, man discovers the spirits of the will.

In this way he lives into the spiritual world in the same way as when he opens his eyes at birth and becomes familiar with a world that he perceives through his senses. In this way he lives, when the ordinary conscious powers of the soul are rejected, into a spiritual world. This living into comes about through man's submerging with his own soul into the spirit, as modern natural science submerges into nature in its experiments. What has led to the great triumphs in natural science? It has separated observation from experiment. In the experiment, the natural event is detached from the immediate impression it makes on the senses. It is true that one must observe, but in the experiment one tries to penetrate into what lies behind the sense impressions in the physical. We dive down into nature, and every natural science experiment demands that what is to be seen be made independent of the subjective impressions of the senses.

Spiritual science goes to the other side. It makes the human being himself the subject of experimentation. It does not do it, as it is done in some spiritualistic circles, where experiments are done on people in the manner of observation. Spiritual science knows that man can only make himself a tool to find his way into the spiritual world. And so it shows how the physical and perceptible detaches itself from the soul-spiritual in man, and how he comes to be among spirits and souls under spirits and souls.

All this, which has now been discussed, is offensive to many minds of the present time. It is understandable that it must have this effect. Why is it so offensive? I cannot now go into what I have already mentioned in the last lectures. Only those who train themselves spiritually can perceive in the spiritual world, but in order to take in and understand what the spiritual researcher writes in books after he has researched it, one does not need to be a spiritual researcher. You have to be a painter to paint a picture, but not to understand it. It would be sad if only painters could understand paintings. In the same way, you don't have to be a spiritual researcher to understand what spiritual research has to say.

More and more, the world will realize that even if only a few people can be spiritual researchers – after all, my books explain how everyone can become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent – the world will be directly and convincingly affected by what these few have to say and by the way they express it. And the time will come when even non-spiritual researchers will crave descriptions of the spiritual world. Human souls are designed for truth, not error. To see in the spiritual world, one must consciously look into it, one must be a spiritual researcher. To comprehend, one need not look into it, one need only accept fully and without prejudice what the spiritual researcher has to say.

In this way, the human soul will be directly grasped by what the spiritual researcher has to say. In the depths of the human soul lies a hidden language. This language only needs to be developed. It slumbers in every human soul. It approaches the human soul directly and is awakened by the spiritual truths that the spiritual researcher brings from the spiritual world. The spiritual researcher is understood more and more through the intimate, profound language that the human soul has for the spirit.

Above all, in this way, the human being gets to know his own soul. He comes to know that it is possible to speak about immortality, about that which goes beyond the world of the senses, in a truly scientific way, when, through the development of his spiritual powers, he comes to find the soul core, which can detach itself from the physical and then lives on as a living being when the human being passes through the gate of death and hands over the physical to the elements.

To get to know the immortality of the soul consciously, one must follow the paths that lead to this human soul. In the ordinary person, the properties are as hidden as the properties of hydrogen in water. Therefore, he cannot approach the soul with any philosophy, not with mere concepts. He can certainly determine all kinds of things theoretically about what is called immortality, but it is only possible to speak knowledgeably about immortality when one really understands the nature of the soul. Then it will be shown that our whole life on earth between birth and death presents itself in such a way that we really develop something with what we carry in our soul, which the spiritual researcher only extracts from the body, but which always remains independent of the physical. as the natural scientist discovers the living germ in the plant as it grows from the root to the leaves and blossoms and fruits, which gradually develops and which, when the plant fades, offers the prospect of a new plant life.

In this way, the spiritual researcher senses the soul, and discovers in the human being that which grows inwardly, spiritually and soulfully in the whole of life between birth and death, and which then, as a living soul, passes through the portal of death and enters a spiritual world, undergoing the events that are spiritual and that in turn lead to repeated earthly lives. What passes through the human being in the form of a disembodied soul must go through repeated earthly lives. And what passes through death in this way is truly discovered by the spiritual researcher. But it is discovered by the fact that the ground is actually pulled from the knowledge on which one initially wants to rely. Just as Copernicus undermined the basis of the sensory evidence on which people believed they saw everything correctly, so spiritual science undermines the belief that the soul, if it only detaches itself, if it itself becomes a spiritual-soul being, can really see into the spiritual world.

This is the offensive thing about spiritual science, that it likewise repudiates all knowledge of which man is so proud and which has led to such great triumphs in external science, just as Copernicus repudiated the evidence of the senses. And this is why man recoils from this spiritual science, because it says: Not one power of knowledge, which is already there, but one that must be carefully prepared and acquired, is alone capable of looking into the spiritual world. Man recoils from this. For everything that demands of man to go further than he already is contradicts the view, often unconsciously slumbering deep in the soul, that man, as he is, is already very perfect, that he has no need at all to go beyond himself.

Spiritual science knows that it is necessary to go beyond the ordinary powers of perception, just as a child must go beyond its powers of perception if it is to orient itself in the world. Basically, we know that some children are uncomfortable when we want to lift them beyond their innate powers of perception. Children just don't have the stubbornness and resistance that people have at a later age. If you say to a person, “If you want to get close to the spirit, you have to believe in other forces than your ordinary power of perception,” then it contradicts human vanity, the belief in the perfection of the human being. But no matter how much one resists recognizing the truth of what has just been said, it is the vanity and discomfort of a new, unfamiliar way of thinking that prevents people from approaching spiritual-scientific interests.

And basically, this is what has always held back or tried to hold back all real progress in human cultural life; it is only more so in the case of spiritual science. Those who oppose spiritual research today, whether from a liberal or orthodox point of view, are truly the successors of the opponents of Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno. Just as the opponents at that time believed that everything that had previously been recognized as true by people was now being called into question and was in danger, so it is also believed today to an increased extent of spiritual science. And this, and nothing else, is actually the basis of the attacks that are made on spiritual science, particularly by religious communities. Here one must address the question: Why is it that religious communities stubbornly resist the progressive development of humanity? How could it be that in the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno, certain people believed that religion was endangered by the advent of these scientific discoveries? How can it be that the successors of these people today believe that religion is endangered by spiritual science?

When one hears how the confessor of this or that religious community rebels, one might say with all the weapons at his disposal, against something like spiritual science, I am repeatedly reminded of a priest who was elected rector of a large university not so long ago. He gave his inaugural address about Galileo Galilei. He was a priest and at the same time a great scholar, an amiable scholar. He, the priest, said at the time, contrary to the views of his church community, with regard to new cultural achievements in the field of the mind: At the time when Copernicus and Galileo appeared, people who judged the matter from the perspective of their religious community in a shortsighted way believed that such discoveries would endanger the worship of God and religious sentiment. Today, we should have outgrown such beliefs. Today, it should be clear that every new insight into the great truths of existence can only serve to reveal the holiness and glory of the divine order of the world. These are the words of a man who, as a Catholic priest, understood the core of his religious community better than those who today want to be the successors of those who fought Galilei and Copernicus. That he said it in the spirit of his religious community was clear to anyone who sensed in him something that was not entirely genuine, as he held on to it throughout his life. And even in his dying hour, he held fast to what he had said. He spoke in his hour of death, saying that he wanted to die as a faithful son of his church. One must sympathize, without perhaps standing on the ground of this priest, with what true, inner connection with the core and soul of a religious community means, if one at the same time finds the possibility and ability to speak, as he does, about the progress of humanity.

Every religious community, more or less in the course of its existence, allies itself with certain views, with the insights of its time, because it has to work. Thus, as is quite natural, the Christian religion has associated itself with the ideas of the pre-Copernican world view. But the fact that it associated itself with them was an expression of its time. Those who said that religion would be endangered if something different were now known about the world view were short-sighted. Those who said: The God we carry in our hearts, the Christ with whom we feel, the religious feeling that runs through us, that will be effective, however the rest of the world view may be shaped. And it is still somewhat understandable when today's religious communities behave antagonistically towards materialistic world views that believe they are building on the basis of science, but which are usually far removed from true knowledge of nature.

But one cannot understand at all why individual representatives of these religious denominations are so terribly opposed to spiritual research, although deeply-disposed natural scientists – one need only think of Galilei, or, if one does not want to mention him, Copernicus, one could also mention a whole series of profound naturalists and scholars of the nineteenth century who really carried the call of natural science throughout the world - although more deeply inclined naturalists were basically always pious. It was said of Newton that he did not pronounce the name of God without baring his head. Those who today behave as materialists and say that the observation of nature forbids them to believe in the idea of God rely on him. Newton was so attached to it that he never bared his head wherever he was when he uttered the name of God, he, the alleged founder of the movement that today wants to be monists in the materialistic sense.

Nevertheless, one can understand how opponents can arise. From a superficial observation of nature, some may believe that science demands to deny immortality, to deny God - superficially considered, in that one has detached from sense perception that which is hidden in external nature. By refraining from this hidden knowledge and arming the senses to observe external nature, science has grown. It will always come from superficial observation of nature, from dilettantish knowledge of nature, if one believes oneself forced into atheism, into a lack of religion. This can only come from a misunderstanding of things. This can lead to those who feel religiously inclined rebelling against what arises from a non-religious observation of nature. However, spiritual science affects the mind differently than a worldview that claims to be based on pure natural science. People very quickly understand how this spiritual science works if they just open themselves up to it a little. Anyone who engages with spiritual science is presented with a set of concepts and ideas about the world and its processes to which the soul truly belongs. If you absorb these concepts and ideas, they are of a completely different strength than the ideas of external natural science. These ideas can, so to speak, solve many external puzzles, but they will no longer reach what sits in the depths of the soul. They will no longer stir the inner being into activity, they leave the depths of the soul barren. But spiritual science, with its concepts, reaches into the soul, into the mind, into the will and feeling of the soul, permeates and spiritualizes all impulses, even all affects and passions of the soul. It interweaves and lives through the whole soul. And the consequence of this living and interweaving of the soul through spiritual science is that the soul of the human being is given a religious bent. Spiritual science wants to be a real, genuine science, and has no desire to found a new religion or to compete with an old religion. It wants to be anything but a new religious sect. It wants to be a science for the soul, just as natural science was a science for the external world of nature from the moment its time had come. It wants to be scientific, but the way it approaches the soul means that the soul is tuned to religion from the outset. You can be a great natural scientist, you can get to know the full extent of natural laws, and you can be irreligious, an irreligious person. One does not become a spiritual researcher by having already prepared this or that religious sentiment, but by carrying the scientific mind and spirit upwards. But if one is attracted by spiritual science, one becomes interested in spiritual science, then one necessarily becomes a religiously minded person, a religiously minded soul.

If the religious communities of the present day were to sense correctly what is happening through spiritual science, they would not fight it so much. They would say: Thank God that a world view is emerging that gives souls a sense of religion. It will bring the soul what so many are being deprived of through misunderstood natural science. One can misunderstand natural science, but no-one will misunderstand spiritual science in an anti-religious sense. The souls of the various communities should rejoice that a spiritual power is emerging that will once again give a religious outlook to souls that have become irreligious as a result of so many things in the present day. And it is strange that this trend, which occurs in spiritual science and gives religious spirit to souls, is not felt. It is not felt because people are not at all inclined to learn from history. They have been able to fight and even burn the representatives of the scientific world view; it has prevailed. You may fight the proponents of the spiritual-scientific worldview; it will prevail. It is only surprising that the members of religious societies do not ask themselves: Must we go through the same thing with the spiritual-scientific achievements as our ancestors did with the natural-scientific ones? Could we not learn something from history after all? The fact that humanity has still not progressed far enough to learn from history, in turn, gives rise to the question: Why, for example, is there opposition to spiritual science?

It must be said that many people certainly have their conception of God, their religious feelings, but they have forgotten how to rejoice, to feel joy when a time shines forth anew that deepens these religious feelings. They are too lazy to go along with this new time because of it. Let us look at individual aspects. Spiritual science fully recognizes the Christ whom the true Christian worships. Spiritual science even deepens it, going along with the course of development of humanity, saying that all human development before the Mystery of Golgotha pointed to the event of Golgotha, that through this event a spirit that was previously extraterrestrial entered the earth to live and remain on earth with people, albeit invisibly.

Spiritual science shows that something tremendous happened at that event, to which the Bible so alludes, namely at the event at Golgotha. At that time, a spirit that had previously only worked into humanity from outside the earth entered into earthly activity through the human being as if through a gate. Spiritual science says: What was not previously in the spiritual atmosphere of the earth has been in the earthly atmosphere since that time. Christ has entered the earthly atmosphere. Spiritual science says: A cosmic being has become an earthly being. And in the man Jesus of Nazareth it lived in order to become a companion of men. Spiritual science says: The Christ, who from the birth of Jesus of Nazareth hovered around this Jesus from the outside, so to speak, entered into the depths of his soul at his baptism in the Jordan.

Now the opponents come and say: You teach a Christ idea that we cannot recognize when you claim that until the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, Jesus was merely preparing to receive the Christ, while the Bible prescribes that the Christ being was connected with the Jesus of Nazareth from the beginning. The Bible will also teach something different in this regard. It will prove the spiritual scientific interpretation right, because it can no longer do otherwise. Today, insightful translators translate a passage from the [Gospel of] Luke:

This is my beloved son, today I have begotten him.

that is, immersed in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. In the face of the all-encompassing grandeur of this Christ-idea, which can truly grasp the soul in its very depths, opponents may say that it is not Christian, that one should not present the Christ in this way, because you do not seek the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth before his baptism in the Jordan.

When you look at a child and say: From the moment the child learns to say “I”, that is, from the point in time up to which you remember later in life, from that moment on, something new has entered the child has entered into the child – will it be possible to come and say: You must not call the child, who is called Paul, Paul before the moment when the child learns to say 'I', because something significant happened at that moment? Does the fact that the significance of the baptism in the Jordan has been recognized in spiritual scientific terms, that something that previously surrounded Jesus of Nazareth has entered into his inner being and become one with this inner being, change anything about what is now Christian? No, that is the right thing, that all the conceptions of the soul, all the deep feelings, all the union with Christ Jesus, that only some Christian soul can feel, are preserved, and that something is added which, because times progress, makes the idea of Christ appear even greater, even more glorious. So when spiritual science has to say to those who approach it from a Christian point of view: what you demand to believe, spiritual science does not deny it, spiritual science admits that what you believe can be believed. Only something is added, which we believe must be added because the Christ has said:

I am with you until the end of the world.

He is alive among us, and He reveals Himself continually in the souls of people today. It is He who introduces us to spiritual science, and through Him we feel connected to spiritual science. The adherents of this spiritual teaching do not want to say: You should believe everything we ask you to believe; that is not the case. Spiritual science does not deny anything, it adds something. It does not demand that something be believed that it believes, but it does demand that what it does not believe but knows be not believed but known. It conveys that the idea of Christ grows and advances in the world. How does it do that?

Let us assume that it could have happened that, before Columbus discovered America, people would have come to him and said: There are supposed to be other areas of the earth? That cannot be possible, because the sun shines so warmly on our areas of the earth. If it had to shine on other areas, it would not have enough warmth left for our areas. But others would have said to Columbus: Of course, the sun shines on other parts of the earth as well as on ours. Those who are so weak in their conception of God that they believe this conception to be endangered when people discover a new area, a new physical fact, are the same as those who do not believe the sun is strong enough to shine on a newly discovered land. But anyone who wants to live with his Christ, who is sufficiently imbued with his religious feeling, knows that this concept of divinity, this connection with the Christ, this religious feeling will shine over all areas, physical and spiritual, that man will ever discover. Must we not conclude how weak-minded people's concept of God is, who believe that this concept of Christ is endangered because they cannot accept that in this newly discovered spiritual realm the sun of the spirit will shine as it shines in the old realm?

So it will be more and more recognized that opposition arises from religiosity that has become weak, from religiosity that has become fearful, as in the various religious denominations towards the discoveries in the field of spiritual life. We should recognize much more where we actually stand with our religious life. Do we not see that it is becoming more and more fragmented? Do we not see how all possible shades, all possible religious denominations, are spreading from the most orthodox right to the most radical left? Do we not see these representatives fighting each other more and more? If you look at these beliefs from a spiritual scientific point of view, you can ask: where do these antagonisms come from?

If you go into this hatred, many things turn out to be so weak. To mention just one example, which I have already pointed out, a few months ago a Free-Religious preacher said that children should not be taught religion because it is against nature. You just have to let children grow up on their own, so they do not come by themselves to religious ideas. It is therefore not natural for them to develop out of themselves. Therefore, they should not be taught artificially. This saying seems convincing to a great many souls through logic. But if one asks what this logic is based on, one must say that it is a weak, one-sided logic. Man is not so constituted that he can do everything new out of himself. The same logic also speaks quite precisely against a child learning to speak. Logic only needs to be sharpened a little, then we can see so clearly what is actually taking place at a deeper level. For it is not logic that is fighting against logic. What is fighting from the far right to the far left are passions, human temperaments - that is what human souls carry within them in the way of affects and passions before they are illuminated and fully enkindled by Christ. When the various groups in our present time confront each other in this way in the field of religious world view, they reveal how our fragmented time must long for what spiritual science can give it.

Spiritual science does not found a new religion. It says what it has to say about the world of the spirit, in the same way that natural science speaks about external nature. Spiritual science speaks about Christ in the way one must speak about him when one teaches the soul, which has become free, to look into spiritual realms and there find the effective Christ. Spiritual science will increasingly provide the disputing parties with the basis for their mutual understanding.

The disputing parties in religious communities today are like people who, at the time of Copernicus, argued about what he had to say about the solar system. The dispute will end as soon as there is a positive basis. The task and mission of spiritual science will be to create a positive foundation, to really say how things are in the spiritual world, about which one could only form a basis from the groping feeling of the soul's indeterminacy. And anyone who looks into the souls of human beings knows that it is a task longed for by them.

Thus spiritual science will not throw a new bone of contention into the souls of the present, but will bring about the peace that can truly live in souls by balancing them. In this way it will give shape to the striving of the human soul. These souls will thereby have a basis for combating, out of their own intuitive perception, that which, through the character of the individual, tends too much towards liberalism or orthodoxy, so that people would have to fight out of this temperament. Spiritual science will bring the positive, the truly spiritual, in contrast to what is only sensed.

And when we consider this, we will recognize how spiritual science truly relates to the various religious denominations. We might say that the individual religious parties are separated from one another by a stream that they cannot yet cross. Spiritual science is the bridge that leads across this stream. It has something to say to everyone, just as it has something to say to anyone who has looked beyond a certain radius. On the one hand, it speaks to those who have retained their faith, and on the other hand, it speaks to those whose religious feeling is seeking a new form. It shows that in the end it can unite everyone. This is how it will be with spiritual science: it has to find the positive.

And this positive aspect it has to contribute not only from the religious point of view, but also to the social currents. Oh, these social currents! When we look through these social currents with understanding, we see that people are basically quite helpless when we try to think more deeply, when we try to form ideas about a possible future for humanity in the social sphere and about the effect of these social currents.

One example among many can be cited in our present time, and in this way we can fathom from the most diverse intellectual and physical causes what the social organization has actually brought about. Sombart wrote a book some time ago to make it clear how this capitalist spirit that dominates the present has emerged. He is not a fanatical representative of the capitalist spirit. Sombart spent his whole life trying to understand what has brought man, as he now stands in economic life, into this economic life. He actually found, to a certain extent, beautiful explanations about capitalism, which has taken hold of the human soul. After the author has endeavored to gather together everything that can provide insight into what our organization has created, he concludes his book – tellingly, it is a thick book – as follows:

What will happen when the capitalist spirit has ceased to have its present resilience is not our concern here. Perhaps the giant

– by which he means the present economic order

– will then, when it has gone blind, be trained to pull a democratic cultural cart. Or perhaps it will be the twilight of the gods. [...] Who knows?

This is how the attempt presents itself in today's current, the attempt to know how people could rise from the present economic order to a fully human existence. So strong is this “who knows” that it calls the spirit of this economic order a “blind giant”. And when we survey the various attempts to understand intellectually what is to become of our present economic system, which is not national in any way, which is taking hold of the whole earth beyond all countries, we see how, again from left and right, from radicalism and conservatism, the most diverse attempts are being made to move the whole.

Sombart's book contains certain references to what I have dared to say for many years in terms of spiritual science. He describes what has happened since ancient times to bring about the present order, how present-day humanity is determined in the field of economic life as by the command of its soul: “This you shall do, that you shall leave.” He describes how man is seized by an impersonal organism, how he is driven into the wheelwork. This observer of contemporary social life describes it vividly and with expertise. And if you look at this social life in detail, then we already have knowledge of this being seized by people who are right in the middle of this life.

Just read the autobiography of a great railroad king. You will always find the same tone, the same type of man who, for example, says:

My [...] intention was limited to acquiring enough through the construction of railways to buy a larger estate, then to retire from business and, when the opportunity arose, to accept a mandate for the House of Representatives and devote myself entirely to parliamentary work. That is what he wanted.

That's what his soul told him. He threw himself into this life. He realized: if I throw myself into this one endeavor, I'm bound to lose. Only by using these funds for a next venture, only by letting myself be dragged from one into the other, only in this way can it be done. - By plunging into a second, a third, a fourth venture and being driven from one into the other, he is driven ever more sharply into it.

Man cannot follow his own path. Anyone who looks at economic life knows that it always depends on how the affairs of the present are integrated into the objective order. Man is plunged into this objective order, seized by it, and his personal life is completely eliminated, so that Sombart can say: People have lost various things over time. If you look at today's entrepreneur, you have to say that he has given up the last thing that could still separate him from this objective economic machine. He has lost all subjective feeling and all his love for the work in the company itself. What used to be directed at completely different things has been poured into the company. Man no longer knows anything about himself, but has become homeless in his work. That is not a word of mine, but of Sombart.

This is the social current of the present: the soul is homeless in modern life, and is it only the case for those who work in leading entrepreneurial positions? No! This social spirit of the present has taken hold of everyone, so that not only the entrepreneur, but also those who work as simple laborers in the economic life do not feel connected to what they work. If, in the course of work, the question of wages or something else is a cause of disagreement, then it is not work that is at the center of interest, but the question that has been raised by our economic system. This interest is intertwined with work. This plays a role in contemporary social life. In this area, the present is certainly moving forward.

All that I have just said has not been said in order to criticize. The way things have become, they had to become – they have become necessary. But what is characteristic is what man has to say about this order. The individual human being cannot really live in a way that befits human dignity, but rather says: Today I will have to do this or that, tomorrow is none of my business; let the “blind giant” do later what cannot be known, that is none of our business. Sombart says even more. I mention him not precisely because he wrote this book, but because what he says is typical. Sombart says: This social order, this economic order has come to the point where we see it taking hold of people, making them spiritually homeless, throwing them into the wheels of industry, mercilessly throwing them in. And now a very characteristic word! He says: And what means do we actually have to counter this? Labor protection laws, homeland protection laws and the like. Means that make one shudder when they are set up. But – as he puts it – no Weimar-Königsberg doctrine of wisdom will ever change this course of the economic order. – Weimar-Königsberg [means]: a wisdom that could emanate from Goethe's or Kant's world view.

What is expressed in such knowledge? Something that should actually only surprise us when so few people today are moved by it, are disturbed by it. How do such people relate to the current social trends? It can be said that at this stage of development, individuality has become detached from people. Today, we can no longer say: the human being calculates in his business; he plunges in, it calculates, it counts, the capital flows from one place to another.

What does man say when he does not want to behave prudishly in the face of the 'fact' that it must go on and on like this? What does man say when he examines the efforts made so far to gain scientific insight into human life, to gain a worldview? Man says: No Weimar wisdom, no Königsberg wisdom will change anything. Why not? Because man shuts himself off from that wisdom that comes from spiritual science and which has quite different powers to gain access to human souls. For what is meant in Sombart's sense as Weimar, as Goethean wisdom, as Kantian wisdom, is void. But spiritual science has not only concepts, not only ideas; it is something that takes hold of the whole person and brings him back to himself.

Spiritual science alone will have the strength and power to strengthen human souls within themselves, to take hold of them in such a way that these human souls can find themselves again, after they had to lose themselves in the spirit of the economic order of the new age. This spirit of the economic order was so strong that it could make man a stranger to himself. The spirit of spiritual science will be so strong that it will take hold of the soul, that it will offer the soul its spiritual and soul home in the hustle and bustle of the modern economic order. Man has been numbed by the economic order, so that he must speak of it as of the “blind giant” of which he does not know what it will bring. Spiritual science will open the power of the soul to see, which will grip people so that it becomes their home, so that they can become glowing and spiritualized through what they do on this earth.

Such a thing can still be little understood by people of the present time. And what is not understood is most often met with hostility. If you do not understand something, you are its opponent. That is the easiest thing. Learning to understand is more difficult. Laughing and not understanding is easier. And it is precisely in the realm of antagonism that some people have gathered in relation to the building we are trying to establish as a place for the humanities. This place is already proving to be something special in what is new in our spiritual life, in that people are trying to find names for it from all possible angles of the old. Maps have already been shown on which the building is called “Anthroposophical Temple under Construction”. It will not be a temple, but a name is needed. It will be no more a temple than anthroposophy wants to be a new religion or the founding of a sect. If one wants a name, one can say: it will be a “Free University for Spiritual Science”. But for the reasons that have been given, it will have nothing anti-religious about it; it will not be an opponent of religion, but this college will have religiously minded souls within its walls. For through what has been explained, souls are so attracted by spiritual science that they are religiously minded.

But without striving for religion, religion is particularly protected by spiritual science, and souls are again led to understand and recognize the greatness of their religion. And many a soul that may have been alienated from the religious mood by education, that is, by that which lives outside of religion, will be won again for a sure conception of God and Christ through what is taught in this religious college, is shown. We do not undertake to build a church or a temple; but what we build, what we want: just as there are laboratories and cabinets for the physical, so we will build a laboratory, a cabinet for research into spiritual life. What we want will be an image of this spiritual endeavor in its entire configuration and in its entire design. Those who have envisaged what has just been said about the relationship between spiritual science and the social currents of the present will understand that something like this must come into being.

When buildings are erected on a large scale in which such a spiritual foundation extends to the last detail, to the last edge, and when the souls, strengthened by spiritual science, do not face it as something they do not understand, then the human souls who have not found their heaven on the socially configured earth will combine love with their work. Then we will not ask: What will become of the “blind giant?” but rather: What will become of this human soul, attuned to religious spiritual science? And we know: Our conception of God, our religious feeling is so strong that this soul will carry it over into the future. We do not ask: Who knows what will happen then? We see the well-founded knowledge that our soul passes through death, that this soul founds a new life for itself on earth, that it will carry what it acquires through death into the spiritual world, so that it will work from the spiritual world again before the soul reappears on earth. We do not say: Who knows what the future will bring? We seek to acquire in the present that which offers a guarantee that the future of the human soul will be such that one cannot say, through the stupefaction of social life, that man has lost his home. Rather, one will then be able to say: No matter how much the capitalist system spreads, no matter how much it numbs people, the human soul will find itself and will know how firmly it is rooted in the soil of its original spiritual life. It will not live in a world led by a “blind giant”, but in a world in which it can see and in which its economic system can also see. This will give it well-founded hope for the future, because the soul itself provides the building blocks for the construction of this hope. This may be said to the social movement.

This spiritual science will show anyone who takes even a little time to familiarize themselves with it that it is in search of the path that the human soul traverses from the beginning to the end of life. Spiritual science speaks of the path along which man walks towards his future. Spiritual science speaks of truth, not only of a truth of external impressions that arise through sensory perception, but of that truth that is experienced inwardly by the soul in such a way that it feels itself to be a spiritual citizen of the soul in that world. In that world, Christ can be found directly. Many a spirit in the present seeks the present Christ, but it only comes to yearning, it only speaks of it.

It is Christ who harmonizes. He will find the new harmony with the religion of old Europe, he will give the souls to themselves. Anyone who reflects must find that there is a spiritual connection between all things. And that which is subject to an external power today must long for the direct living presence of Christ. Spiritual science points out that the living Christ will maintain the order of the world as long as earthly time lasts. Spiritual science points to the Christ that the soul needs if it wants to feel truly strengthened, and to whom it turns in times of need and danger. Spiritual science imparts this Christ. It grasps the world in truth by allowing the soul to experience the truth. In this way, truth itself comes to life, so that the dead abstract truth is so enlivened that the whole human being is grasped by it.

While today's economic system has killed the human being and thrown him out of his homeland, spiritual science returns him to his living homeland. It has the way, the way that the soul had previously lost and had to take a different one instead. The soul seeks truth and will grasp it directly, so that it does not feel separate from life but connected to it. The path, the truth and the life shine forth for spiritual research. And just as it earnestly seeks these three, so it is also aware that it will find them. And it also finds the one who said that he is what it seeks. No matter how the opponents of this spiritual research fight it, whatever arguments they put forward, spiritual research points to the truth and the life through what lives in its adherents, who can only come to this adherence through their own power of judgment, through what lives in them and what they strive for. And so, no matter what the opponents of religious denominations may say, those who honestly and sincerely seek the path to the spiritual realm, and who strive for it in the same way as the adherents of spiritual research, need have no fear. They will find, in the right sense, in the sense in which souls must reveal it today, the one who said:

I am the way, the truth and the life.

And no matter how powerful the voices may become that rise up against spiritual research, In the knowledge that it is always seeking the Way, the Truth and the Life and is thus directly aware of the connection with the One who was the Way, the Truth and the Life, in this knowledge it becomes bold and free, but also aware of its glory, in modesty and humility it can always answer anyone – even those who say that spiritual science is looking for a false Christ – We seek the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Whatever He says, we know that we may express ourselves freely and honestly to everyone: We follow Him in our own way, which we believe gives souls their new home on earth. We follow Him, He calls us, He will lead us.