The Human Soul, Fate and Death

GA 70a — 14 May 1915, Prague

15. Supernatural Knowledge and Its Invigorating Soul Power in Our Fateful Time

Dear attendees! For a number of years now, I have been privileged to present here time and again on questions of world view from the point of view of spiritual science, as will also be the basis for tonight's reflections.

Now, the friends of our spiritual-scientific worldview here have essentially been of the opinion that such a lecture should also be given this year, in these difficult times of ours. And that may well not be inappropriate, because spiritual science, as it is meant here, is really connected with the deepest questions of the human heart, of human life, of the human soul, with all the questions that go to the bottom of the bitter disappointments of human life and the impulses that underlie the courageous, bold, sacrificial deeds of the time that bears so much in its womb and in which we are currently living.

Now, of course, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is not very appropriate in our time, nor is it in line with the thinking of the broadest circles. And anyone who is completely immersed in the subject of spiritual science, will not find it incomprehensible when one contradiction after another, one opposition after another, arises against what is said here from a spiritual-scientific point of view. It is also much more understandable to the representative of this spiritual science when general judgment and general opinion see something fantastic and dreamy in this spiritual science. Such judgments are first of all asserted by those who have had little contact with this spiritual science. This is easier to understand than if someone were to readily and wholeheartedly agree with such unfamiliar things. In particular, there are three points of view that are always asserted from the opponents of spiritual science.

First of all, it is said that what wants to present itself as spiritual science contradicts a world view that is based on the sensual foundations of scientific research in the present. The second objection, which must also be raised, is that this spiritual science, by its very nature, could easily lead to the dark sides of the human soul, to superstition, prejudices and the like. And a third point that is still being asserted is that the most valuable, the most esteemed human feelings and emotions, religious feelings, would somehow be affected by what spiritual science has to assert.

Now, esteemed attendees, I hope that from the suggestions I will allow myself to give this evening, it can be seen how these three objections to spiritual science, or, one could also say, to supersensible knowledge, can be defeated.

First, let us consider the relationship of spiritual science to natural science thinking, to a natural science-based world view in the present day. Again and again, I have emphasized here that true, non-dilettantish spiritual science will not in the least rebel against anything that is a proven result of the current natural science world view. On the contrary, spiritual science wants to be a continuation of what natural science is for the external, sensory and external-practical life, what natural science has achieved to such a high and admirable degree in recent centuries. In this way, spiritual science seeks to be a science in the same sense as natural science is a science for the external world. Therefore, this spiritual science must take a completely different path, must research in a completely different way than natural science has to do its task. And because, especially in the course of the last few centuries, namely the nineteenth century, until today, we have become accustomed to regarding only the way of approaching things that natural science does as truly scientific, it is quite natural that at present people do not yet want to accept as science something that on the one hand wants to be science but, as spiritual science, must be different from natural science.

Basically, it is the case that spiritual science only begins its research where natural science, where ordinary, everyday thinking, ends. And it is easiest to get an idea of what spiritual science wants to be and should be, how it wants to position itself in the overall cultural process of the time, by paying attention to how it differs from natural scientific research and everyday thinking. In the course of such scientific research and in ordinary thinking, we look at the objects of the sense world that are around us. We try to grasp the laws of the processes of this sense world with our brain-bound thinking. We try to bring coherence into the succession of phenomena. And in general, for ordinary thinking and also for ordinary science, we are quite content with the fact that we have acquired concepts, notions and ideas about what unfolds before our senses or what takes place in the course of historical development in humanity. When we have arrived at these conceptions, concepts and ideas, and when we can be convinced that they depict something of the external sensory reality, we have satisfied our need for this external knowledge.

But where ordinary science, this everyday thinking, has to stop, that is where spiritual science must begin its research. Spiritual science is not about conducting external experiments or applying any research methods based on things that can be externally surveyed by the senses, but about studying the most intimate processes of the soul, which, however, must first be evoked. The spiritual researcher has to do with a purely spiritual-soul work in a spiritual laboratory, as the chemist has to do with a sensory work in an outer laboratory and its processes. And just as the chemist allows people to see what he can extract from nature through his processes, so the spiritual researcher must be able to allow people to see into intimate soul processes, which, however, just as in the chemical laboratory the processes must be evoked through experiments, must first be evoked. This is what one must pay particular attention to. One does not arrive at the results of spiritual science through experiences of the soul that one already has in ordinary life or in ordinary science, but only by evoking soul-spiritual processes that do not exist at all in ordinary thinking, in ordinary imagining and feeling.

What the soul has to accomplish is usually referred to as meditation, as concentration of thought. And it will be my task to sketch out, at least with a few lines, the picture that should represent what the spiritual researcher has to do to find the way into the spiritual worlds. You can find everything in more detail in my books, in “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second part of my “Occult Science”.

What it is about is that one treats the thought, the concept, the sensation, in short, the whole soul life of man in a different way than one is accustomed to treating it in everyday life and in ordinary science. Where everyday life stops, spiritual research must begin. It is not about having a thought for spiritual science, but about living inwardly, becoming completely one with a thought experience, with an intuitive perception. Therefore, it is not at all important, not so essential, to have a thought, an intuitive perception, that initially depicts something external. I would like to say that one experiences more intimately in spiritual research if one initially devotes oneself to such thought experiences that do not depict anything external. I would like to introduce an example of this, a simple example.

Let us assume that someone forms the idea: “In the light that spreads through space, wisdom spreads through the world.” This is certainly not a thought that any scientist or the external, material life will recognize. But the point is not to depict something that is real in the external, sensual sense, but to now fully immerse the thought in the soil of the soul life and to awaken the strength in the soul that must be awakened if such a thought is to be held entirely within the soul life through inner effort. One must distract one's attention from everything else one sees and hears in the world; from everything else one is reminded of in life; from all that one can experience as suffering and joy in life, especially feelings that arise from the passions, from the instinctual life; one must distract oneself from all this for the time in which one wants to immerse oneself completely in such a thought, which one places at the center of one's soul life through inner arbitrariness.

All these soul forces, which are otherwise used for the unfolding life of the soul, are drawn from the outer life, including the everyday inner life. For what matters is not that one has this thought on which one wants to concentrate, not what it contains, but the inner, spiritual-soul activity, the spiritual-soul work of becoming aware of what the soul is doing by fixing itself on a single thought. But such an exercise should not be done just once as something temporary or repeated a few times, and then one should not expect that some experiences will already occur. This exercise, depending on the personal disposition of the person, must be continued for years. For some people it takes less time, for some more. But patience and perseverance and inner energy must be applied so that the path of spiritual research can be entered in this way. Above all, the exercise of patience must consist of holding the same thought again and again – you will soon see why this must be so. What matters is not a change of thoughts, but this concentrated soul activity.

Now, when the soul is urged in this way to perform an arbitrary task that it does not otherwise use in the outer life, then one gradually notices that what the soul does becomes more and more independent of what it otherwise depends on very much, of the bodily, the external bodily. One must experience for oneself what arises from this togetherness, this very intimate togetherness with such a soul activity. And that is what seems so grotesque, even paradoxical, to the thinking habits of our time when one hears what can arise from such an inner effort of the soul life. Just as little as someone who has never heard of chemistry and has only seen water can imagine that hydrogen, which has completely different properties than water - water is liquid and extinguishes fire, hydrogen is a gas and burns itself - can be extracted from water, hydrogen is something different than water, but it is in water, and you only notice it when you have extracted it through chemical methods. To someone who has never seen this, who has never heard of chemistry, it will sound amazing that a substance that burns can be obtained from water.

In the same way, it will sound paradoxical and fantastic to someone who has never heard of spiritual experiences or such experiences in the soul when they are told that through the repeated exertion of the soul in the direction described, the spiritual-soul element is really released from the physical-bodily element , that the soul-spiritual becomes completely free and one can speak of the fact that the end of the path, the beginning of which, as already mentioned, has been characterized with a few strokes, is that one experiences: You are no longer in your body with your thinking, your brain, you are outside your body with it. Your body has become an object outside of yourself, as the objects of the sensory world are outside of the physical body.

This is a great and significant experience, to which the spiritual researcher ascends. To have really experienced once that one can be independent in one's spiritual and mental activities from the physical and bodily, is one of the most harrowing things one can go through in one's mental experience. And that must be emphasized: the methods of the spiritual researcher are not ones that leave one as indifferent as external scientific methods. Even if I have had to describe to you what may have seemed to you to be an abstract inner process, it is nevertheless connected with the whole of our soul life, if one really succeeds in intensifying one's entire soul life with what has been brought into the center of one's soul life through free will. Not just the thoughts, but the impulses of the emotions and the impulses of the will move up from the depths of the soul. One has the feeling that one's entire inner being is drawn along by what the thought, on which one has concentrated, has torn out of oneself. The beginning of the path is that one feels energized inwardly, so to speak, and rises to the one sensation, which is first felt fully: You break away from your physical body; you move into a completely different world, into which your physical body cannot move. I am not telling you something constructed, but the real experiences of the researcher.

At first, you have this experience of coming out of the physical body. But then this experience changes. If you keep making efforts in this direction, you will notice that instead of further intensifying this inner experience, you now feel how it becomes paralyzed, this inner life; how it becomes weaker and weaker. Up to a certain point it becomes stronger and stronger, but then it becomes weaker and weaker. So that one has the feeling: not an external-physical fainting, but a mental-spiritual fainting begins. One has the feeling that one would lose all one's spiritual experiences when one has left one's body, as if some unknown force were taking them away.

If I were to try to characterize what one experiences inwardly, I would have to resort to concepts and comparisons, but these imply more than usual comparisons, which may seem unfamiliar at first. Let us assume that a plant grows out of the ground, towards the leaves and flowers, and finally into the fruit. In this plant there is also the power that ultimately brings forth the germ. Let us assume that the germ could become conscious by growing the plant in this way. Let us assume that the germ would have to have the feeling: I am becoming more and more powerful, more and more able to create a new plant out of myself. But the germ knows that the old plant is dying. It knows: I take its strength; only by causing the leaves to fall and the flowers to wither can I flourish as a germ. All this must lose its meaning, then I can develop as a germ.

This is also how it is, my dear attendees, when you immerse yourself in the spiritual and soul realm in the way described, which has now become free of the body. One feels as if one is living into an element that is always at the bottom of the soul, but the whole of human life between birth and death has within it forces that actually destroy it; forces that gradually cause the human being to die, the human being as he is in physical life, leading him towards death. One cannot look at this process in the depths of the human soul without first having brought before the spiritual eye the reasons that exist in man as reasons for the death that will come over him in physical life.

Therefore, for those who have known something about this process over the centuries, the experience that is meant is such that they have said: One arrives at the gate of death; one makes oneself known when the soul and spirit separate from the body, that one is continually being pulled and paralyzed by the best that one has in everyday life, by that which is our innermost life asset in the physical body. This is hidden from us in the ordinary life. There we only enjoy the fruit. We notice that we can think and feel. The spiritual researcher has made the discovery that if he really lifts out of his body what underlies thinking and feeling, it is that which actually constantly consumes the body, which lives in man as the power of thought, as the power of feeling, as the power of will. In its real form, it is that which harbors the destructive forces of the body and which ultimately really concentrates itself into death.

You can understand that the wise guides of the world had good reason to draw a veil over these processes for ordinary life. But anyone who wants to research the truth must not be afraid of the true nature of that which works in the depths of the soul and is always present. That is why one speaks of a powerlessness that comes over one when one has gone the spiritual research way to a certain point in the inwardly concentrated soul life. And when one has done everything to continue on this path, then the forces intensify, then one finally comes to overcome this inner powerlessness and to live fully consciously in the spiritual-soul, but now separated from the physical-bodily, lives in the spiritual-soul. It must now be emphasized that just as the spiritual researcher is generally well aware of the contradictions between the scientific world view and what he has to assert, he is also well aware of what can be objected to in detail about what he has to present.

Thus, the spiritual researcher knows very well that the medically or scientifically educated person can say: Yes, we are well aware of what you are telling us, that when a person hypnotizes himself or suggests a certain idea, he enters a state in which he then lives in an abnormal consciousness, in a pathological state. But we also know that such a state cannot lead to anything healthy, to any true knowledge. What science and the scientifically educated can object to in this way is very well known to the spiritual researcher. But the person who raises such objections against spiritual science is not familiar with what spiritual research presents, so that the path known to the physician and the natural scientist is avoided. For that which the physician and the natural scientist know and characterize in the manner just discussed is precisely what the spiritual researcher avoids, because all this is still bound to the body in a certain way. The unconsciousness that has been mentioned, all the upsetting things that the soul goes through, are experienced purely in the spiritual and soul realm; the physical is not involved at all.

Those who are familiar with the methods of spiritual research will find that what spiritual research provides as its methods and what lies after the soul has been healed is the opposite of what physicians or natural scientists believe to be the basis of this concentration and meditation. For everything that is experienced there is not experienced in the same way as in a hypnotized state or suggestion, but is based precisely on the soul-spiritual becoming free from that which can be hypnotized or comes to suggestion. That which is put to sleep when someone is hypnotized, that which is switched off when someone is given suggestive ideas, is what is brought to life in spiritual research, and it is what is switched off in that which is affected as in an automaton, what the hypnotist or the suggestor does. In hypnosis and suggestion, what is awakened in spiritual research is to be lulled to sleep. I can only hint at all these things; you can read more about them in my books and in our literature in general.

If the spiritual researcher now continues on his path as described, he comes to a real experience of a spiritual-soul core. This spiritual-soul core could be compared to something external; one could compare it to the plant germ, which forms from the forces that gradually arise in the plant, forming beyond the leaves, the petals, and then becoming a new plant. In this way, spiritual science can speak of a spiritual-soul core in the human being. But here I must particularly draw attention to the fact that the whole process of spiritual research is a process of knowledge. What the spiritual researcher discovers is not brought about by developing the methods within himself. All the methods that he develops within himself in this way do not lead to anything new in the human soul, but only to a knowledge of what is already there in the human soul. We can say that the plant germ, which is discovered by the spiritual researcher, does not change in any of its properties when I look at it. Likewise, what lies at the bottom of the soul and is only covered up for everyday life does not change when the spiritual researcher applies his methods to his own soul. He only looks at what is at the bottom of the soul. So this spiritual-soul core is at the bottom of every human soul. The spiritual researcher only discovers that he carries this spiritual-soul core in his soul, like the plant germ that grows from one plant to another.

He knows that what goes through birth and death, what existed in a spiritual-soul world before birth, what has descended from the spiritual world, is not brought about by bodily-physical processes , but that it itself, by living in the body, works on the formation of the body; that it then, in turn, passes through the gate of death into a spiritual world, after it has been woven and worked between birth and death in the bodily life. This is the essence of spiritual science, that this spiritual-soul core of the human being is truly contemplated.

If we now continue our meditation and concentration on life, namely on the side of the will, and continue this intimate soul life, then we notice something else. However, it is necessary to treat the will just as intimately as one treats the thought in meditation and concentration, in the absorbed way that has just been described. To make this clear, I would like to say the following. It is something simple, because these things always start from something simple; the first steps follow on from ordinary life. Only when we pursue the path energetically with inner strength can the end of that harrowing thing I spoke of be achieved.

We can simply reflect on our own destiny. In our daily lives, we experience how external circumstances bring us joy, pain, renunciation, and courage. Basically, in our daily lives, people relate to these twists of fate in the same way that people relate to natural phenomena. He who has no inkling of natural laws sees the sun rising and setting, and the stars rising in the night sky; he sees the processes that otherwise develop around him, but does not see any kind of connection between them. Now, through scientific knowledge, man is beginning to see laws in these successive facts and processes. If we have come so far in the course of human development that every educated person recognizes that external facts and natural processes can be understood through lawful connections, then we have only reached the starting point of the time that will decide to also see through what takes place as so-called life destinies, so that a connection can be found in them. How can we find this connection? Not in such an abstract way, that we search for laws as in natural science and history. This also depends on a devotion of the human soul forces to research. But, as I said, starting from the simple, we can make these two paths into the spiritual world clear.

If we ask ourselves: What are we as human beings who can do this or that, who have acquired abilities? If we reflect on how we have acquired such abilities, how we have acquired what we can do, we will come back to the earlier time of our present life. If we do not review our lives thoughtlessly, but really put ourselves into these life contexts, we have to say to ourselves: I would now not be able to do something that I can do if certain coincidences of fate had not befallen me between the tenth and twentieth year. It is because this or that happened to me that I have received these abilities. And if you follow this train of thought further, you come to the conclusion that you actually owe what you are to your destiny, that what is now our whole self has come together through fate. What the self is for the world is what one can do. And you will find an intimate connection between what you understand and what you have once experienced as the vicissitudes of life. And when we do not merely exercise our intellect in this train of thought, but engage our whole soul, that is, our whole feeling and willing nature, when we give our whole mind to this willing and immerse ourselves in such a process of experience, then what we are grows beyond ourselves and grows into destiny. We say to ourselves: Destiny is what sustains us. Just as the sea carries the iceberg on its waves, so the destiny that we survey carries our self. Our destiny has made it what it is now. This can be the beginning of such an inner experience.

But if you do not let this inner experience flash by, as you are accustomed to doing in your outer existence, but instead allow it to take place again and again as a spiritual-soul experience, if you repeat it over and over again, then the matter goes much further. Then a spiritual-soul experience will arise from it that is independent of the body, like the processes described above, except that this experience is quite different. It now shows us how we do not actually grow into our spiritual and mental core, but have to imagine ourselves growing together with the whole universe. We flow out into our whole universe, as it were. And we discover our self, not now within us, but in the world outside, where we previously only perceived objects that are outside of us. It is a long way again. We know that what we are otherwise accustomed to finding within us, we receive from the world; we have to lose ourselves in the way we always are, and we have to receive ourselves anew from the spiritual world in which we now are.

Man has an unconscious aversion to this experience at the bottom of his soul. He has a certain fear of having this experience, only he is not aware of it. There is much in our soul that does not come to our consciousness. But this fear is also covered by a veil. For we discover how we could previously feel like the plant germ [gap in the text] when it feels particularly strong, when we experienced powerlessness, we now feel as if we have been lifted out, but not in the same way as in the earlier exercise, when we lose the ground under your feet, but now you feel as if you are enchanted, as if you are petrified, frozen; you feel as if everything in us that is alive has frozen into stone, like a stone mass that is stuck in its existence. Now you realize that you learn more and more and more to distinguish: the rigid shows something that wants to continue forever, even into death, and what you recognize in it, wants to go through the gate of death, wants to enter a spiritual world.

It is something within us that guarantees that our existence does not end with death, but, just as a plant bears the germ of a new plant within itself, bears the germ of a later spiritual life within itself, in order to then return to a new life on earth. What one experiences in this way can be described something like this: One year you notice this stiffness; after a few years you find the results of your life even more rigid; after a few more years you have the experience of an even harder one, and finally you discover in what you experience what you have brought with you from the spiritual world through birth; what one has brought over from earlier earth lives into this life and what separates, consumes itself in the present life; what is driven to form the body between birth and death, to fill the ordinary life between birth and death. One experiences how, at the bottom of one's soul, in the subconscious, that which lies before the present life on earth collides with that which will lie after the present life on earth. And one perceives at the bottom of one's soul the powerlessness of that which cannot yet live, struggling with that which can no longer live.

And by discovering this struggle at the bottom of one's soul, one begins to know what this human life actually is. One begins to realize that this human life does indeed bring us the goods that we consider valuable above all in ordinary human life. But at the same time one notices that these goods, everything we live through in the waking state, is built on a struggle that takes place in the depths of the soul. At first, looking at this struggle is difficult. And when a philosopher speaks of the limits of knowledge, he basically does not know what he is talking about. What is he talking about? What I have described as the approaching powerlessness that one does not want to let come over one; what I have described as the fear that one shudders from, that does not come up into consciousness; the philosopher does not want to let it come up. He does everything to suppress it, and he masks that by saying: Man cannot know the world. He cannot know it without taking the path through powerlessness and fear. But this path is to be avoided. And by not admitting this to oneself, one states: human knowledge cannot go further than where Kant described it as being at its limit.

But the real reason for the fixation on the limits of knowledge lies in what I have just explained. But if you really look at what is going on at the bottom of the soul, you will not encounter a timid or despondent view of life, but you will know that this life, even the most mundane life that the simplest person can lead, is based on the fact that an infinite amount is going on in his soul. Yes, the life that we apply in thinking, feeling, and willing for our everyday tasks must be brought about by spiritual and soul forces that lie below the threshold of consciousness, in a real struggle; it must be won through a great and mighty victory. That we can live as human beings between birth and death is thanks to the victory of the powers that rule within us as described. The path of spiritual research is one of great sacrifice. But the result is such that it gives us strength of soul, because we experience inwardly that we could not be human if unknown spiritual powers did not have a tremendous task to accomplish in guiding us to what we are in everyday life.

We conquer trust, faith and hope as strength of soul when we allow the insights of spiritual research to take effect on us. And the objection is not justified, which would consist, for example, in saying: Yes, but all this can only be experienced by the spiritual researcher. No, it is not like that. Just as the chemist carries out his experiments in the laboratory and the other people are not present, so the spiritual researcher carries out these experiments in his spiritual-soul laboratory, experiments such as those just mentioned. And just as the chemist hands over what he has researched for the benefit of the general public, so the spiritual researcher can present what he has researched to his fellow human beings in a suitable way. And just as one does not need to be a chemist to have the products and their uses that the chemist produces, so one does not need to be a spiritual researcher to understand - I now say “to understand”, not just “to benefit from” - what the spiritual researcher brings forth in his spiritual laboratory, if one only overcomes the prejudices that come from clinging to the usual habits of thought.

This is precisely what must always be said: to explore things, to see into that which weaves and lives behind life, one needs spiritual research. But once things have been researched and put into words by the spiritual researcher in ordinary language, then it is only the prejudice that one has been brought up with by ordinary science that always tells one: That is not true. For spiritual science appeals to that which, as a natural sense of truth, is not only acquired but innate in man. And the time will come, most certainly the time will come, when people will not understand that they once resisted the results of spiritual science. Then people will say to themselves: Yes, the only reason why they did not understand what the spiritual researchers said, what they presented to people as the results of their research, was that they were accustomed, through scientific methods that had become common practice, to accept only what was called 'scientific', and that they did not want to think impartially about what the spiritual researchers said. Only because of this did they not see it.

Although - as you can read in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” - anyone can become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent, at least to the extent that through inner development of the soul they can also recognize as true what the spiritual researcher finds on his path, they do not need to be one. But by ordinary, sound human understanding, if it is not clouded by prejudice, it can be recognized what spiritual research has to say. And the spiritual researcher must say: He immerses himself in the way in which spiritual culture has developed in the world, and then knows that truth and the knowledge of truth will find their way through all prejudices. Today, anyone who adheres to the conventional ideas of science can quite understandably come and say: Yes, what such a fantastic spiritual researcher says goes against common sense, against the healthy five senses! Yes, when Copernicus came and declared: The Earth moves, not the Sun; the Earth moves around the Sun; the Earth does not remain stationary and is orbited by the Sun and stars, but this is only simulated by the movement of the Earth - that was the case, it contradicted what the healthy five senses had always believed until then. The external world view could only be built on the fact that one no longer trusted the five senses. Humanity has also become accustomed to this, even if it took a long time. And so it will also have to get used to what spiritual science has to proclaim. We can recall what Giordano Bruno expressed when, in his deeply feeling soul, he contemplated what Copernicus brought to humanity. We can recall how he said: You humans look up there and see the blue vault of heaven. But this is not there at all; rather, by the fact that your vision works in a certain way, you create the blue firmament for yourselves. In doing so, you set yourselves limits. But space extends to infinity. It is your visual faculty that is to blame for the existence of the blue firmament. And an infinite number of worlds are embedded in infinite space. As Giordano Bruno asserted, it caused offence.

And just as Giordano Bruno spoke in relation to space, so today the spiritual researcher must say: That which man sets as a boundary is like a temporal firmament. In reality there is no boundary, just as there is no boundary to the blue firmament. Rather, human imagination sets its own boundaries. But just as space extends over countless worlds, so time expands in its course. And embedded in the course of time are the successive earthly lives of man, of which Lessing, in the most mature fruit of his life, already spoke as in a spiritual testament. The very clever people say, yes, Lessing wrote many important things, but then he grew old and came up with this crazy idea of repeated earthly lives. That is the method by which even the greatest minds are judged; what is the highest flowering of a great spirit is regarded as a product of the decadence of old age. But that which arose as a truth in the spirit of Lessing will not only provide external benefits, but above all it will have the strength of life. It will give the ever more complicated soul life of people the opportunity to find its way into this life, which we see approaching and which will become ever more complicated. People will need spiritual scientific knowledge as the basis for their spiritual experience, which in the future will have to guide people through circumstances that are becoming increasingly difficult.

Spiritual science will stand alongside scientific research. The spirit will be investigated in this way. Just as we have the sensual world and natural processes around us in this body, so with regard to the spiritual-soul body, we have a spiritual world around us and belong to a spiritual world in which we live in the time that elapses between death and a new birth and that also belongs to our life. This spiritual science wants to be a science not only for the mind, not only for external research, but a science for the whole person, for the human soul. It will fill the soul with what is the elixir of life. In addition to the sensual-physical world, the human being will recognize the spiritual world as it really is. But in doing so, all mere dark, dream-like ideas about the spiritual world will be rejected. For superstition is best combated by really getting to know the spiritual world, by really acquiring ideas about the world of the spirit.

And when it is said on the other hand that religious ideas and feelings are endangered by spiritual science, it must be replied that precisely because of the scientific world view, many a person has been dissuaded from their religious feelings. But spiritual science leads us precisely to the acknowledgment of a spiritual world. Therefore, spiritual science, the science of the spirit, will lead precisely those people who have been or can be alienated from religious thinking back to religious thinking and feeling. The course of the world cannot be held back by force, but goes its way. And just as it was believed that the Copernican world view could somehow endanger religious life, so that religion rose up against it, so it must do so today against the spiritual-scientific world view. However, just as the Copernican world view became established, so the spiritual-scientific world view will become established in souls without disturbing religious life. Yes, it will even be possible to say about the spiritual-scientific world view: When people come and say: Is not spiritual science waging a campaign against religious ideas? And when all sorts of things, including defamation and the spreading of untruths, are raised against spiritual science from such quarters, one would like to say: What kind of an idea of the power of this religion do those have, who are, so to speak, by profession in those communities, perhaps even exercising an office, what kind of an idea do they have, if they can believe that spiritual science could endanger them! He is truly steeped in the belief in the power of his religious ideas who says: the power of religion is so great that one need not fear spiritual science, that we can let what is true in this field approach as much as what science has produced; yes, much sooner. Spiritual science will lead many people back to faith, to religious experience and religious feeling, just as the scientific world view has alienated many people from religion.

It is not just a matter of asserting ideas before you this evening that only reflect knowledge, so to speak, but of showing how spiritual science can engage our whole soul, our whole mind, how it can give strength to strengthening power and courage; how man can be filled with something that radiates from the experiences of spiritual science, how he can strengthen himself with it, how he can face life stronger and more vigorously.

I have already said that the most everyday life is a victory over opposing powers in the depths of the soul. If we familiarize ourselves with the fact that we have something like this at the bottom of our soul, then we can also face with good courage what will increasingly and more intricately intrude into our lives. If we know that life means winning victories under the threshold, then we will have the strength of soul that we need in the bitter disappointments of life and also in the face of the demands of such a fateful time as ours. And even if what I have said in general about spiritual science and the possibility of supersensible knowledge seems to be only superficially and loosely connected, inwardly you will feel that it is well connected with what our fateful days, in the course of which we are living in the thick of it, I would still like to move on to a very brief, concise description of what the spiritual scientist can feel about this fateful time of ours.

If we observe on the one hand how the life we lead may not appear to be particularly agitated and turbulent, but is built on a hidden stormy foundation, then we also imagine ourselves differently in the storm of historical life when it is stirred up, as is the case in our days.

Now I would like to draw attention to something that does not arise theoretically, but sentimentally, from the results of spiritual science for historical life, for the placing of the human being in historical life. It must be emphasized that even the natural scientific world view, and even more so spiritual science, has sought to apply what is called causal thinking to our surroundings. It took a long time for people to get used to this causal thinking. Goethe still asserted: Why do we always want to assert that the ox has horns in order to butt with them? One should look at the organization and show how the forces of growth have developed into the horns. One should look at the causes and not always speak of the purpose alone. The greatest geniuses of modern thought have pointed this out, and more and more external natural science is also moving in this direction. And spiritual science goes much further in looking at the causes, at the unknown causes. But it is precisely by thinking causally in relation to what is happening that one is led to it; in the living experience of the spiritual-scientific results, it becomes a feeling. By looking at what is happening as events, it is not so much the causes that are important to ask about, but the effects. It is as if we are saying: We are in the midst of tremendous events, the like of which have never before taken place in world history, at least not as long as human thinking has consciously progressed. After all, if we disregard minor tribal differences, 34 different nations in the world are fighting each other today. What is being stirred up! And we know what individual nations think of each other, say about each other, claim about each other. But spiritual research leads us, and the results of spiritual science lead us, first of all to realize that a wave of historical development rises from unknown depths, just as thinking, willing and feeling arise from unknown depths.

We do not experience the subconscious soul struggles that we carry within us, but we do experience conflicting forces in history; we are right in the middle of them. In the outside world, we are standing in something that spiritual research shows us for the individual human inner life. And as we, because we lead our everyday lives, stand there as if we were inside the struggles down there - do you think we would not ask about the cause of the struggle, but rather: What can come of it? The struggle as such would not be able to confront us in this way. If we compare these struggles, we would not be satisfied if we did not say: Yes, these struggles develop what the human being first becomes, what first comes to consciousness in thinking, feeling and sensing. And when we are immersed in historical struggles, we are led to ask: What will become of these struggles? And truly, the declamation that confronts us today in our materialistic time, because we have not yet acquired the feelings that I have just characterized, the declamation that has arisen today - Who is to blame for the war? - which always ends with one nation blaming the other, disappears as unfruitful from the point of view that is chosen when one says: Well, these events, they are there, they have arisen in the course of the becoming of the world; what can arise as an effect from these struggles, what can arise from this when more than thirty nations in the world are fighting against each other? And here one must say: when such events confront each other, it depends on one's standpoint whether one can observe fairly. And this is possible in Central Europe. For just as the spiritual researcher sees the process of world evolution, he can say: This Central European spiritual life, which now seems to be besieged as if in a mighty fortress, is one that is developing out of these struggles with opposing forces into a valuable, all-encompassing good.

I could cite many examples to describe what is living in the body of Central European intellectual life, which has produced the great geniuses of Central Europe, with the powers that Central Europe has and which once found expression in genuine spiritual achievements, and today find expression in the fields of battle, where blood and death decide the fate of soul and body. From all this, because one recognizes things by their blossoms and fruits, I would like to characterize that which is present at the innermost core of this Central European intellectual life, throughout this Central European intellectual life, in all Central European nations.

One of the most characteristic spirits of Central Europe is undoubtedly Goethe. Others could be named, but let us single out Goethe. That which was given to mankind from the deepest inner being of the genius of Goethe, that something like that could not be produced by mankind living outside Central Europe, one will have to admit, as well as what must be said with regard to the following.

What Goethe has given to humanity is shown, especially in his greatness, by the fact that even as a young man, Goethe had already written the sentiment that one finds at the beginning of his Faust:

Have now, alas! Philosophy,
Law and medicine,
And unfortunately also theology
Thoroughly studied, with hot endeavor.
There I stand, poor fool, And am as wise as before!

Today, these words have become trivial for many people. But if you completely put yourself in the soul of Goethe, then you feel the whole relationship to what you can acquire, what you want to acquire in the words [to the] earth spirit.

But how does Goethe stand there? Let us take this mood and, with Goethe having written it down, let us now think of the following period, when the great philosophical geniuses – Fichte, Hegel, Schelling – passed through Central Europe. We do not need to agree with the content of their teachings, but when we look at the great spiritual energy with which Fichte represents what he teaches as philosophy; when we see how what he teaches emerges from his entire personality; how he strives to make philosophy an expression of the whole human being.

The following is not intended to evoke sentimental feelings, but to show how Fichte represents one aspect of the Central European genius. It may be described how Fichte, who felt closely connected with the great events that took place on the battlefields of his people, perished. How he, who throughout his entire life had concentrated his thoughts in the sharpest manner to discover the secrets of the world, how he lived in a feverish delirium in the last hours, witnessed the crossing of the Rhine with Blücher, how he lived with everything that had to happen at that time to save Central Europe from Western tyranny. In his delirium, Fichte felt that he was at the center of these events, he, the philosopher, who at the same time was a whole person, a person who at the same time brought the “human being” into his philosophy, even in his delirium. Thus it may be said with reference to Fichte: there the Central European spirit strives for a holistic conception of the world, and with Schelling, with Hegel - one need only look at how truth is presented there.

And now let us look back at this Faust, whom Goethe has speaking in the mid-eighteenth century:

I have now, alas! studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and unfortunately theology too!
with great zeal and effort.
There I stand, poor fool that I am!
And I am no wiser than before.

Let us assume that Goethe would have been able to live in the forties of the nineteenth century, after the great philosophers had gone through the development of time, let us assume that he would have started his “Faust” in the forties, after he had gone through the culture of the time, through what a Fichte, Schelling, Hegel had achieved. These were indeed also representatives of jurisprudence; Hegel wrote a “Natural Right”, Schelling a journal of medicine; these philosophers wanted to be theologians in truth. Do you think that if Goethe had written these words in the forties, after so much had happened in German intellectual life, he would have written: “Now, thank God, I have studied philosophy, law with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Kant and now, thank God, I stand as a wise man and am as clever as no one could have become before!” No, in the forties of the nineteenth century, Goethe would certainly have written the same at the beginning of his ‘Faust’ as in the seventies of the eighteenth century.

Now, alas! I have studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and unfortunately theology as well
with great zeal. There I stand, poor fool, and am no wiser than before!

This is the peculiarity of Central European intellectual life, this Faustian striving, which can best be recognized by its representatives, this perpetual striving and never having the consciousness of being a finisher. This is what made Fichte so great, from a Central European intellectual culture, that he shows us that in this culture people have to live who can never be finished, never complete in their development. And it is fair to say that in Italy and France, you are born as what you are. You are Italian, you are French, and you refer to what you were born as. In Central Europe, you cannot say that. There you have to discover through your own way of thinking what it means to be a human being. You go beyond what you were born as into what you can achieve yourself. And it is a profound saying of Goethe's:

What you have inherited from your fathers,
Acquire it to possess it.

And the other saying:

Whoever strives, we can redeem.

This is one of the characteristics, but also the most significant, of this Central European intellectual life: never to rest, never to stand still. You become Central European. You are French, you are British – you become Central European! This Central European spiritual culture stands before humanity like a glorious ideal. This is what makes it so closely related to what has been presented today as spiritual science itself. And when Faust says – and Goethe only wrote these words at a very advanced age – these words that express the whole relationship of the human being to the world around him and to himself:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
Why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
Thy countenance in fire turn to me.
Gave me the glorious nature to the kingdom,
Power to feel, to enjoy. Not
Coldly marveling visit you only allow,
Allow me to look into her deep chest,
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water know.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches
And neighbor trunks squashing down,
And the hill muffled hollow thunders,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself, and my own chest
Secret deep wonders open up.

There stands Faust. There stands this striving, which must think vividly even in the face of the universe, and it finds not only matter, not only substances, but everywhere the supporting power of what is within ourselves in the universe outside. The spirit of the human spirit rises into other entities everywhere. But this striving also points man back to himself, to the fact that he must find himself. When we survey all this, we must say: Oh, this Central European spiritual life, it has so far shown itself to contain the seeds of what can be sensed today as the goals of a spiritual science itself. This Central European spiritual life cannot be destroyed by its enemies. For anyone who understands its nature knows that it still has much to do in the world, that it is not only growing and justified outwardly, but that it is strong within. And one can and may feel how spiritual science finds just the right soil in this Central European spiritual life. For that which is central European, when applied to the soul, cannot lead to anything other than a deepening of spiritual science. Therefore, it can be said that if conquests have been made in recent centuries, in predominantly materialistic centuries, by any other region of the world than Europe, then it is precisely those that are made by the central European population that must now be made, because mysteriously behind all that we see so painfully unfolding around us today, lives the urge to create a home for the spirit by defending Central European culture as if in a mighty fortress against its enemies.

Today there are people in the Northwest who claim that they must stand up for the freedom of smaller nations, for the well-being of small nations, that they must rebel against Central European militarism, against Central Europe's lust for conquest. The British, who were destined to spread a material culture across the earth, waged 34 wars of conquest from 1856 to 1900, in which they conquered 4 million square miles of land and made 57 million people British subjects. One need only consider these figures and one will realize the truth that can lie in the saying that one wants to eliminate the Central European lust for conquest from the world. This is not even a value judgment. But it must be said: It is evident from Central European intellectual culture that it will develop the spiritual as a result of what must now be fought for with blood, what must be achieved with so many victims, what must be born with so much pain.

It has often been said that the present war is a purely political war and that it is being waged by individual countries for material interests. We can see how even material conquests bear the Faustian character, and that this is not only incorporated as external knowledge, but as an attitude of human and world development, which resounds so characteristically as a Central European mood from the Faustian legend. Yes, there is, as in a flower, the sign of what lives in Central European culture, namely, what Goethe showed on the heights of humanity, what is being fought for today in East and West. For just as the hand must be counted as part of the human being, just as the brain, so must the fighters outside be counted as the spiritual expression of the whole people. This is a single organism. Just as the hand cannot be separated from the head, so too what is being carried out outside with the sacrifice of blood and life cannot be thought of separately from what lives spiritually in Central European culture.

A French philosopher who is respected in many circles today gave a lecture just at Christmas in which he said that everything in Germany is materialized. The old idealism had long since faded away and only the spiritual results were encountered everywhere in the form of warlike mechanisms. He could not deny that French mechanistic tools also work, but he could not get enough of a sharp assessment of the Central European essence, which would now have become completely and utterly materialistic. This French philosopher – yes, I don't know whether one can still call him by the name “Bergson” today, it doesn't sound particularly French, maybe he has already Frenchified it in the meantime – one would have to answer him: Yes, do you recognize the Central European essence in the mechanisms of war? Did you perhaps expect the soldiers to come and recite Novalis, Goethe or Schiller instead of shooting with cannons and rifles? Anyway, there is not much logic to be found in the documents about the current situation. It is quite obvious that they are very keen to prove that basically the Germans alone are to blame for the war; they wanted it! But this logic is no better than the other, which proves through strict logic that the Germans are actually to some extent to blame for the difficult, cruel course of the war. They invented gunpowder, after all! If they hadn't done that, it wouldn't be used today. You can't say that the French invented gunpowder. There are many examples like this. They are really everywhere in today's logic. You can also say: without the art of printing, which was also invented in Central Europe, it would not be possible for those peculiar “truths” that are now being poured out on Central Europe by the British and French press to be printed.

In this way, it can certainly be said that Central European culture is to blame for all of this. In this materialistic age, we are simply blinded by a shortsighted logic. This can be seen everywhere. In contrast to this, it must be asserted that the actual character of Central European culture is not realized in this. One must say that this character, the core of Central European culture, appears only in a germinal way. One glimpses it when one thinks it further, how it bears ever more fruit and how it must spark precisely idealism, spiritualism, the spiritual life of humanity. And one then notices how it carries the soul, precisely out of the kind of connections that spiritual science provides. So it could also be said that spiritual science appears as a fruit that can be sensed for the future and that must develop out of what is the deepest, innermost essence of Central European culture. Therefore, the feeling that is born out of spiritual science gives Central European people strength and confidence and hope and faith for that which our fateful time carries in its bosom. This faith can arise out of what spiritual science gives when it takes hold of the whole mind.

Therefore, I would now like to summarize, not in an abstract way, but in a way that is in keeping with my feelings, what I have already expounded at length through my all-too-long consideration. For the best that spiritual science can give is that it does not ultimately lead to knowledge, not to a list of these or those laws, but that what can be known in it is concentrated in a fundamental feeling that that places the human being in the world in such a way that he knows: you do not only stand in the body in a physical universe, but you stand in a soul-spiritual universe with your immortal, eternal self. Through birth and death you have come to know death as life-giving. It is with this feeling that those who understand spiritual science go through life, soul-inspired, hopeful and also full of strength, and it is with this feeling that I would now like to conclude this evening's reflection before your souls:

Where sense knowledge ends,
There stands the gate,
The realities of life
Are revealed to the soul.
The soul creates the key,
When it grows strong within itself
In the struggle that world powers
On their own ground
with human powers,
When it expels through itself
the delusion of the powers of knowledge
in their sensory limitations
wrapped in spiritual night.