Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul

GA 70b — 8 January 1916, Bern

5. Ways of Knowing the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul

Dear attendees!

What I have to say to you today about ways to knowledge of the eternal powers of the human soul will by no means be suitable to immediately evoke conviction in our time. Even those who speak from the point of view of spiritual science, as spiritual science is meant here, do not succumb to such an illusion. It can only be a matter of communications that are made for the purpose of stimulation, communications about a research method that believes it can say something with the same certainty and the same certainty about the soul life, its meaning and its significance in the universe as the newer natural science expresses something about the connections of the forces of nature, the meaning of this or that natural event in the whole world context. Precisely because spiritual science, as it is meant here, is, so to speak, a continuation of the achievements of nature, of the way of thinking, one could also say, of the spirit of research, for the spiritual life, which has been integrated into human development through the scientific world view over the last three to four centuries. But because this spiritual science seeks its field in the spiritual worlds, it is necessary that its scientific and research methods are quite different from the research methods and the research approach for the natural scientific point of view. It is precisely in order that spiritual science may be, as it were, the sister of natural science, that it must, because its field is so different, take other paths and other methods. And so the methods and paths that I have to describe to you will at first differ completely from those paths and methods that seek to eavesdrop on nature's secrets through external manipulation and action. But the attitude is the same.

Spiritual science also seeks, as it were, to eavesdrop on the spiritual world's secrets through spiritual experimentation. In spiritual science, one is not dealing with the paths to knowledge of spiritual secrets, nor is one dealing with some kind of experiments that can be observed externally with the senses and whose factual sequences can be combined through the powers of the external mind. When one speaks from the standpoint of spiritual science about the “Ways to Knowledge of the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul,” one is dealing with the most intimate processes of the soul. If one calls them experiments, they are very intimate, inner soul experiments, experiments that cannot be observed externally.

The goal to which these inner soul experiments should lead is an inner knowledge of that essential core of the human being that is not accessible to the external senses, nor to the mind that is needed for ordinary life and ordinary science. Rather, it can only be accessed by forces that are first activated in the soul. Therefore, I would say, from the very beginning the path of spiritual science is different in a certain respect from the paths of all other sciences and from the paths of thought and action in ordinary life.

In ordinary life and in ordinary science, we also try to gain insights into the things of the world and their processes. And when we have gained insights through which we believe we can see through the lawful connection of the individual facts, see through the individual things, then we have finished our efforts in ordinary science and also in natural life.

Now one can say for spiritual science: that which is the end, the conclusion in relation to research and thinking for ordinary science and for ordinary life, is only the beginning. All those activities that lead us to a desired goal in ordinary science are only there to prepare the soul for what will then evoke the forces in that soul through which insight can be gained into the spiritual worlds.

And so, what the spiritual researcher has to say is, in many respects, much, much more different from the conventional thinking and conceptual habits of the present, than what had to say about the structure of the universe, about the movement of the Earth, the Sun and so on, was much more different than what was thought about these things immediately before.

Therefore it cannot be surprising that what the spiritual researcher has to say is not so readily accepted in the present day. One need only recall how long it took for what was to be said about the structure and the paths of the universe and its bodies from the standpoint of the newer scientific world view to become established in wider circles in the face of long-held views. And the fact that people do not believe everything from the outset is something that is just as understandable and comprehensible as it is basically even commendable from a certain point of view. Therefore, one need not be surprised if some of what the spiritual researcher has to say still sounds fantastic, like a dream today. And so some things will indeed have to be said, especially today.

When one first looks at the writings and publications that are sent out into the world from the perspective of spiritual science, as it is meant here, some of it will seem like a dream, like a fantasy. How could one possibly recognize that this physical body of man, which one sees with one's eyes and which external science investigates with its admirable methods, that this ordinary physical physical body is based on a finer body – whether you call it the etheric body or something else, it does not matter – that a finer body is based on it, a body that is absolutely invisible to the ordinary eye and [to the ordinary methods of research]; and that you can know something about this finer body, that seems, at first, to be rightfully something incredible.

And it seems just as incredible when the spiritual researcher has to say that when a person has gone to rest after work and has now surrendered to sleep with regard to external events, something of what the person's nature is has emerged from the physical organization, from the physical-bodily organization, something that represents a different soul life than the ordinary daytime soul life. And in this different soul life - let us call it a different consciousness from the consciousness of the day or whatever one wants to call it, it does not matter - in this different consciousness, in this different soul life, the human being lives until he wakes up again. And when he wakes up again, this different soul life emerges into the outer physical body.

And when the spiritual researcher must claim that something of the eternal essence of the human being lives in what emerges from the physical body when falling asleep and re-enters it when waking up, something of the eternal essence of the human being lives in what emerges from the physical body when falling asleep and re-enters it when waking up. Only in ordinary life can a person not be aware of what he experiences between falling asleep and waking up. Again, this is something that, for the ordinary habits of thought of today, still has something dream-like about it.

One certainly only has the right to talk about these things, esteemed attendees, if one can show in a world of facts – even if this world of facts is an unfamiliar one – that one can really come to something like a finer body and a different kind of soul life, a different kind of consciousness.

Now the processes by which one can explore this finer body – what underlies the physical body that the eyes see as an invisible human being – these methods are intimate; they are not based on some kind of magic, some kind of false mathematics or false mysticism. Rather, they are methods that are entirely in line with what a person already does in their ordinary, everyday mental life, only in its continuation. What must arise as an intimate process of the soul, what must be brought about as an intimate process of the soul, ladies and gentlemen, is first of all something that can be described as a strengthening of the inner life of thought, about which, however, one has no real conception in the ordinary course of the life of the soul.

Technically, in the sense of spiritual science, these inner activities, these inner exercises, are called: concentration and meditation in the soul life. What is concentration, what is meditation in the soul life? Meditation is a form of visualization, a form of thinking, only a somewhat different kind of visualization and a somewhat different kind of thinking than ordinary visualization and ordinary thinking. And since I do not want to talk in a nebulous way, but want to communicate the most definite, I would like to describe, at least in principle, the process of meditation, the process of concentration of thinking, this inner soul experiment - in principle. Everything else can be found in the books, namely in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science: An Outline”.

The point is that in order to continue the ordinary everyday thought process and the thought process that he practices in ordinary science, man - in order to continue the ordinary everyday thought process and the thought process that he practices in ordinary science, man - in order to continue the ordinary everyday thought process and the thought process that he practices in ordinary science, man places very specific ideas that he can oversee at the center of his consciousness.

It does not matter how these ideas relate to external reality, nor does it matter what truth value these ideas initially have; therefore, it is even better not to take ideas that are retained from memory or ideas that depict something external, but to take symbolic, allegorical ideas. Say, let us imagine – even if it has no truth content, it does not matter; we will see in a moment why it does not matter – let us imagine, for example, that light spreads out in space, and in that light lives wisdom. – As I said, how this relates to any truth is not important.

And now you should arrange the whole range of your soul life, your entire soul life, so that you think nothing but this one idea: wisdom flooding in light – so that your entire soul life, which is otherwise distributed across reality processes, reality impressions, changing impressions, this entire soul life holds on to this one idea for a certain period of time.

I said that it does not depend on the truth content of what one places in consciousness. It does not matter whether you place something external, something depicted, in your consciousness, but it does matter what the inner activity is; it matters that the soul carries out the activity with particular effort, lives in an elevated effort of will, and in doing so exercises the activity that is necessary to place a single idea at the center of consciousness, to hold it for a longer period of time, even if only for minutes.

By doing these exercises over and over again, for months – it does not take long, although this time frame naturally depends on the disposition of the soul of the person doing the exercises – if you practices with inner effort and pays particular attention to how one moves inwardly in a delicate will activity in this way, in order to grasp this idea - because that is what matters - then one gradually notices that the entire soul life changes. Of course, this only changes for those times when one undertakes these soul exercises. The entire soul life gradually feels that it is detaching itself – this is an inner experience – from everything in which it otherwise lives. And the success is initially a very peculiar one.

Initially, the success is that if you now try – and you have to try this to complete the exercise – if you now try to suppress the idea that you have brought to the center of your consciousness, that is, if you want to get out of the meditation again – or even earlier – then you will see all kinds of ideas emerging from the depths of your consciousness. Indeed, one is tempted to say that never before has one had so many opportunities to see what a vast number of ideas are constantly striving to rise above the threshold of consciousness and gain power over the soul as through this exercise. If you now continue this exercise, a certain change occurs: you gradually have the feeling that you are moving in nothing but memories of life, in all kinds of memories of the life you have gone through since you started thinking and observing the world in a conscious way. All kinds of memories that have flooded past us, either recently or long ago, arise; and one feels, I might say, enslaved for a time by the emerging inner soul reminiscences, the soul memories.

Now one must acquire the ability - and it comes more or less by itself if one continues the exercise over and over again - to observe that now - even if they are memories of one's life that arise - the way they enter consciousness is different than memories of one's life usually arise in consciousness: the memory of one's life will arise dream-like. And there is one thing one notices above all, which is tremendously important to notice: it does not linger in the memory, it passes by like a dream image. One knows exactly: they are memories from life; they now flood up, but they do not call to mind memories as such now - by being there now; they do not evoke memories. They come, they go; they torment us, they enslave us, so to speak; but they do not evoke new memories as such, they are like flooding dreams; but it is a coherent whole, a flooding whole.

You now have to continue your meditation in the face of all these inner experiences. You always have to keep doing exercises like the ones described. By doing so, you will gradually develop the ability to gain control over this mass – one might say – of pure dream experiences that emerge. You gain control over them. One becomes master of them in such a way that one can gradually fade them out and dampen them down through one's own will. And this will becomes so strong through meditating on and on and on that one really comes to empty the conceptualized space in which these ideas arise, to make it like a free visual field.

Yes, dear ones, what I have just described, I first had to describe in the abstract; but it is not experienced in such an abstract way. The experience is an incredibly profound one. And that is the peculiar thing about spiritual scientific research: the paths one has to take are filled with meaningful, harrowing inner soul experiences. By continuing such exercises, one arrives at a certain point in time at an experience that is truly harrowing; and when it occurs, one knows: one has now reached a certain point, to which one must arrive in order to have any prospect of making further progress in spiritual research. What is this point?

And, honored attendees, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is really only possible, I would say, after three to four centuries of natural scientific thinking has been incorporated into human development, into the spiritual development of humanity. It can only arise for similar reasons for which the Galilean, the Giordano Bruno, and the Keplerian achievements could only arise in their time. But what must be found for the present and for the future in a certain way through this spiritual science has always occupied the human soul. I cannot speak about it in detail now, because it would be going too far to explain how something similar to this spiritual science was developed in earlier epochs of human development. It was much more unconscious, one might say, much more instinctive, if I may choose an imprecise but descriptive word. But from the powers that people had at that time - which were not the powers that are, so to speak, beginning to develop humanity now - people also came to the point that I mean now, where one stands, as it were, at the entrance to the spiritual world. And they described the experience that one now has – has at the point I have described, and still has today and must have – they described this, dear honored attendees, with a word that one really understands when one has gone through the corresponding experiences, with a weighty word. They said: 'The human soul comes to a certain point in its development before it can enter the spiritual world, to the 'gate of death'.

As I said, you learn to understand what this means when you have reached the point I am referring to: the moment you have come to fade, to dampen the dreamlike soul reminiscences described to you, you also come to know that precisely because you can think as a human being, since the time you have absorbed the powers of thought within you, especially in the powers of thought — not only in the powers of thought, but especially in the powers of thought — that power is to be seen which, little by little, as it develops in man — develops gradually or even at times suddenly —, which leads man into death.

Those forces of human nature, of bodily human nature, those forces that are active in this human nature and that are the instrument, so to speak, the tool for the most glorious thing we have in the outer, in the physical life: for thinking - those are not constructive forces, not constructive life forces; the fruiting life forces tend to make man dull, to push his consciousness down under dreaming. That a person's consciousness can become bright enough to think is due to the fact that there are forces of death, of disintegration and destruction within him. What is the physical instrument for our thinking is intimately connected with what works in human nature as the forces that bring death.

Spiritual science is in complete harmony with natural science - especially with that part of natural science, esteemed attendees, that will, on the whole, gain in popularity. Spiritual science does not take the view that thinking, as it is practiced in ordinary physical life, does not need a physical instrument. It needs a physical instrument. That is to say, wherever it occurs, ordinary thinking needs physical representations that are carried out. But these are destructive representations. And at the moment when, through meditation, one has brought one's thinking to the point that I have described, when one can replace thoughts and develop thinking through thinking itself , one is confronted with full clarity by how ordinary physical thinking is bound to the physical tool - that is, to the destructive power, to the death-bringing power - of ordinary memory. One has an inner experience of standing at the gate of death. One knows now what it means: there are forces within the soul that can separate themselves from the body, but that, in separating, must also look at what is death-bringing in the body.

That is the harrowing experience. That is what has been referred to for thousands of years in the circles where these things were known as “stepping to the threshold of death”. But by bringing it to this experience, one has confronted oneself with the power that lives in thinking – mind you, dear honored attendees, not with the thinking that occupies us in physical life, but with the power that lives in it and that one has now released – one has brought it to the point of really facing oneself. Thus we have stepped out of ourselves.

But we must not remain one-sided in the way I have just described. If we were to remain in this way, we would only come to know the realm in which we live with our thinking when we have separated it from the physical body. One knows, in the moment when one has come to the point that I have described to you, that one lives and moves in a finer element than usual. One knows what it means to live with one's ordinary consciousness, with one's eyes, one's ears, one's visual and auditory sensations, to live in one's ordinary thoughts. One knows what this means. But one also knows what it means to live outside of this.

But holding on to this state is an extraordinarily difficult task. And because it is difficult, a person cannot initially reach this point without strong, strongest efforts of will of an inner nature. But this path must not remain one-sided. And it does not remain one-sided, not even through what we do in meditation. By not exerting our will in such a way as to move our limbs, to walk, to do some physical work or even to do mental work with the brain, but by exerting our will in meditation, we are at the same time cultivating our will, an inner spiritual willpower. And we gradually learn to feel our will in a completely new way, to experience it inwardly.

If we did not achieve this through meditation – and we do achieve it through meditation if we practise it as described, for example, in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' – we would not achieve the inner control of our will, then we would come to the point described; but then something like a spiritual faint or even like a sleep would occur. We would pass over into an unconscious state, we would not be able to carry our ego over into the new state.

But by strengthening our will at the same time - and we strengthen it, as I said, through that inner effort, which thus has a direct effect on thinking, as has been described - by strengthening our will, we carry our ego into the new state , we carry it into that fine corporeality in which we [weave and live] initially, as I have described, after the muffling and killing of the representations, which lies in a corresponding expansion of time — we carry our ego, we carry our will into it. And now a new harrowing experience, a harrowing event for the soul, occurs, which must now be gone through again.

If the first was an experience that, as I said, familiarized us with the experience of death in the soul - theoretically experienced by the soul [death] - familiarized us with what can be called “really dying”, then the other thing we are experiencing now is what can be called: one learns to recognize the basis of what goes through the world as pain, as pain and suffering.

Therefore, anyone who has walked the paths to the eternal powers of the human soul will always be able to tell us what the reasons are for why pain and suffering must flood and surge through the world. For this carrying of one's own ego, of one's own will, into the new world is associated with a painful effort, with a full effort, which is also connected with the deepest, deepest loneliness. The rest of the world is as if absorbed at first. One is alone within a vast, vast emptiness, as if with oneself. At first one has only carried one's own will and thus one's own ego into this world.

You now learn to recognize that everything that comes into existence, that enters into existence, must enter through the sphere of suffering – which is simply a law of the world. And one learns to recognize that everything that pulses through the world as a wonderful world, in beauties and wisdoms and in other useful and pleasurable things, that this can only be like the blossom that rises out of the plant - but in the roots, as the underground, are suffering and pain.

Those who would not recognize this as a reality would be in the same position as someone who refuses to recognize that the three angles of a triangle are 180 degrees. If something wants to be a triangle, then the three angles must be 180 degrees. And so everything great, everything glorious, everything beautiful, everything that develops harmoniously in the world can only develop out of the element of pain. And this pain of the soul must now be recognized again when one enters into a primal element.

But now, at this point on the path of knowledge, something occurs, dear attendees, which, when described, seems even more like a fantasy, like a dream, because one is accustomed to accepting such things according to what is currently valid, as if they are meant figuratively, as if they allegorically represent something. But as I have described them here, they represent something - they represent real, actual inner experiences of the soul, realities in an even higher sense than the external realities of physical space and physical time.

What we are coming to now is this: one learns to recognize that all will – and one has indeed carried the will out into a completely different realm, into the realm – now let us say it, I don't think we need be afraid of the words – into the realm of etheric experience.

After one's will, one's own will, has been transferred there, one learns to recognize that this will, which rules in man, is now based on what can be called the actual spiritual-soul core of the human being, but which does not come earlier to the outer — one can say externally in relation to its objectivity, internally in relation to ourselves — which cannot otherwise be perceived than by muffling one's thoughts in the manner described. Now you realize that in all the will that rules our hands, our walking, all our work, all our yearning, that in all this will there is a core, but such a core that has consciousness, that is a being.

That is the incredible thing, dearest present, but it is just true: one now discovers another consciousness in oneself, an inner spectator - but as I said, one only understands this if one takes the matter not for an image but for a reality - one discovers in oneself an inner spectator, whom one carries within oneself continually, who also acts, who has a consciousness of his own.

And this spectator, when you discover him - discovered in the light of what you yourself have created through your meditation - who can only appear in this new element, in this new sphere, you recognize this inner spectator as that which preceded our birth, or let's say, our conception, and [you recognize] that we pass through the gate of death once we physically go through death.

In this way, the element, the spiritual world, in which our inner man can live, has been discovered, and so has the inner man himself. It is something completely new. And from now on, one learns to recognize how to see in the spiritual world. And one must say: everything is just a preparation. The seeing can only come by itself. Because everything we have set out to do was just preparation. It was like what nature set out to do to give us an eye. And once the eye is there, it sees. We have formed the inner eye. We have the inner organ of sight, the spiritual eye; we also have spiritual hearing – to use Goethe's expression. We have transported our inner spectator into the world, into the sphere that we ourselves have now created. We now live in the spiritual world, and this spectator in the human realm is beginning to see, to see what is always around us in the spiritual world, but which cannot be perceived by the ordinary human consciousness; just as one who, without physical observation, has no idea that there is air around him, can also believe that the space around us is empty, so the spiritual world surrounds us, it lives around us.

But the organ, the spiritual eye, the spiritual ear must first be there. And to prepare, to prepare for it, all the power of thought, all the powers that we otherwise apply in ordinary science and in ordinary life to a goal must be applied to prepare.

Therefore, the peculiar thing also occurs, dear attendees, that, as strange as it sounds: While the eyes see and the ears hear the ordinary external phenomena – in short: the sensory perception – the ordinary mind combines, while one must first look at these phenomena, and then understand, while one reflects, observes ing in thought, one must first understand and conceptualize what one experiences in the spiritual world, and then, when one has understood and conceptualized it, one can gain insight. Then one can see into the spiritual world.

Dear attendees, after I have described to you in a positive way how a person can prepare his soul so that he can truly perceive the spiritual world with an expanded spiritual eye and spiritual ear, after I have described this to you, dear attendees, I would also like to draw your attention to all the concerns that are rightly raised by what I have said. And there are not only logically, but also practically very significant concerns.

Take, for example, the fact that we have to develop our thinking in meditation and concentration to a certain point, and that we then regard what we have developed there in our soul as the measure of something in order to enter into another world.

As I said, spiritual science does not want to contradict natural science in any way if it is understood correctly. But the natural scientist who has not yet risen to the right understanding of spiritual science, namely of its world, will now rightly, with full justification - I emphasize it expressly - object: Well, you student of the spirit, what illusions you are laboring under! You believe that through your concentration, through your meditation, you have developed your thinking to such an extent that it can perceive something quite new. You do not know how much unconscious, how much darkness there is in the soul life of man. You take all this with you on your path of thought. Just think how the natural scientist knows or can know how, through the particular dispositions of the nervous system, how through everything that is innate in our nervous system through our inheritance, how through that the human being carries very specific dispositions, of which he knows nothing, thought directions, thought tendencies, how he drags them along. Is it not then quite obvious that if one trains one's thinking, one could also say maltreats it, one then perceives something seemingly new, but in truth only something that has long been waiting in the unconscious, subconscious soul life, and only looks like something new because it has not come to consciousness earlier, has not crossed the threshold of consciousness earlier? And the spiritual researcher must explicitly recognize such factual objections of the natural scientist as justified. And they are even factually justified; because those people who, in an easy way, without the careful way of that which is explained, for example, as the spiritual scientific meditation method in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, who want to enter the spiritual world easily, without the careful observation of this method, they very easily come to believe that they are seeing something completely new. They then talk about all kinds of things, but they have nothing before them but their illusions, that which they give birth to out of their own soul, for the simple reason that they do not know that they have had it in their souls before and only now, through their efforts, are bringing it out.

Those people who want to enter the spiritual world easily do not become researchers themselves, but illusionists. They surrender to every opportunity that must appear to them as something new. So not only a theoretical, not only a logical way, but a practical way is necessary. But what matters first is that the spiritual researcher is able to carefully examine his research path step by step, and that his research path leads him precisely to this, to gradually surveying what has entered his soul life in the course of his life; and that he is able to dampen, to kill, all the ideas that arise - that is what matters. Because by really learning to practise this act and learning to recognize it, learning to manage it inwardly, you not only dampen the conscious ideas that arise, but you know very well: you also dampen all unconscious ideas; you overcome thinking in thinking.

What is this? This can only be experienced, only be realized. But everything depends on the fact that things are experienced and realized – just as everything depends on experiencing the truth in the external world.

So then, dear ladies and gentlemen, what is being presented from this side of natural science is, to begin with, fully justified. But there is also something else to be said. The natural scientist will say: Yes, we are quite familiar with those morbid states of mind in which a person believes they have a special insight. But we know the physical causes that lead to illusions, to hallucinations; what you are putting forward here are only more subtle illusions, more subtle hallucinations. It must be said, dear lady, that the spiritual researcher fully agrees with what the natural scientist says in this way. For precisely through the paths he takes, and which I have described to you, at least in principle, all that is overcome. One learns to recognize and overcome it: what in the ordinary sense, in the superstitious or otherwise ordinary sense, is called clairvoyance. And if one wants to call the seeing with the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, as I have described it, clairvoyance, then one must understand something quite different by clairvoyance than is so often understood in ordinary life, and that is so often recognized with a light heart as something that can lead into particularly spiritual worlds. All that which appears there as hallucination, as illusion, and which also underlies ordinary clairvoyance, that is not, dearest ones present, a stepping out of the core of the soul from the body, but that is a much higher and more powerful phenomenon, which is the direct and conscious perception of the spiritual world by the spiritual eye and spiritual ear. uzination, as an illusion, and what also underlies ordinary clairvoyance, that is not, dearest ones, a stepping out of the core of the soul from the body, but a much more profound connection to the body than the ordinary, everyday life of the healthy, normal person.

And what in ordinary life is often called clairvoyance does not lead to what, as we shall hear, this true clairvoyance, of which I am speaking today, leads to. Instead, it leads to learning – while one recognizes with ordinary healthy thinking that which is favorable for man between birth and death, through this clairvoyance, which, due to a morbid organization, binds the soul to the body more closely than it is otherwise bound, one learns to recognize something that has a much lesser significance: One does not learn to recognize anything eternal about the human soul, but on the contrary, something much more temporal than one learns to recognize with ordinary, everyday thinking. Therefore, these insights are worth much less than in ordinary, everyday thinking. Just as one becomes dependent on the body when one has even the slightest pain, no matter where, so when there is any morbid tendency in the body, the inner life of the soul is concentrated on it. And one lives, if I may express myself roughly, in a smaller part of the body; while with ordinary thinking one lives in the whole body.

But – I would like to say – the clairvoyance that leads consciously into the spiritual world, leads precisely out of the physical. Therefore, it is only there when this physical can be observed as an external thing – like other external things, next to us, outside of us – in the way I have described.

If you, dear honored attendees, have now come so far as to truly experience this inner spectator, this inner soul-core, then you are living in a spiritual world. Above all, you are living in the spiritual world that is our world before our birth – or let us say, before our conception and after our death.

And now there is no such thing as what is usually called proof of immortality, but now there is the experience of this immortality for the spiritual researcher, and one gets to know these soul cores.

Yes, dear ones, when one otherwise gets to know that which corresponds to this soul core, then one learns it in a very unsuitable way. For what is this soul core? Is it somehow also there in man otherwise?

You see, the consciousness that is actually not consciousness at all, that the human being has from falling asleep to waking up, that lives in this core of the soul, and lives in what is the inner spectator. Only that consciousness is so slight from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up that it is not really consciousness at all; that is to say, the perception, everything that the person experiences inwardly, is so dull that unconsciousness is poured over it. And through the efforts one has made, one can voluntarily, not only in sleep but voluntarily, draw out of the body the same thing that is otherwise only lived through in sleep, and unconsciously live as a spirit among spirits, among soul-spiritual beings, and now consciously live in it.

Therefore, the spiritual researcher, because he can feel his thinking in such a way that it lives in the finer body, as I have described it, and because he lives by feeling his will and getting to know the will in in which the human being lives unconsciously when falling asleep and waking up. Therefore, the spiritual researcher may speak of the finer body, and he may also speak of the other body, which can be experienced separately from the physical body during sleep. But in sleep we get to know it in such a way that we know, so to speak – I have to express it figuratively now, although all of this can be expressed in quite scientific terms, but that would take us too far now – that when this inner soul core – that which is outside the body in sleep, outside the physical body, then that which actually lives in the core of the soul [...] lives in the core of the human soul as dreams, and it reflects what the dream phenomena are, what reminiscences of life they are or the like.

But that is not what actually lives in the core of the soul. When the core of the soul is experienced outside the body – as can happen through spiritual research in the manner indicated – then one knows what this core of the soul is.

Yes, what is it then? That which passes through the gate of death, that which is our life-fruits, that which we think, feel and accomplish, and what in our thinking, feeling and accomplishing between our birth and death as fruits, as germs prepared, that carries through the gate of death.

And if you now look at it the way it has been described, you realize from all that does not come to consciousness in ordinary life, but which develops in our inner being just as a plant germ develops in a flower to become the next plant, as surely as one knows that the nature of the plant germ is such that it can develop into a plant again, so one knows that what lives in you as just an observer, as this second being, as the other person, what is inside there, that is the germ of a new life on earth. We know that it only needs to go through a period of development in the spiritual life between death and a new birth, and what develops into an individual earthly life develops so truly as the individual plant germ develops into a new plant. Only that there may be obstacles in the outer physical world for the plant germ in its development; whereas in the spiritual world there can be no obstacles for the soul germ, but under all circumstances it will enter into another earth-life!

[And while the ordinary memory - of which one notices, I said, when the memory images occur like this, how one can then dampen these images] - while this ordinary memory ceases, while one feels, as it were, hollowed out from all memory images at the moment one has dampened the images, the images now occur that let one know: Before your birth, or conception, you were in the spiritual world. You descended from this; as a physical human being you are not a product of only the paternal and maternal elements, but a third element from the spiritual world has joined with this duality, and with the paternal and maternal and with the hereditary current, that which comes from your previous existence on earth. In this way, through inner research, repeated earthly lives become a certainty, as the spiritual researcher can say, even if this certainty is perceived differently from that of the natural scientist. They become a scientific truth, the repeated earthly lives, which in more recent spiritual life have blossomed out again in such a brilliant way, first for Lessing. These repeated earthly lives.

This then adds results to the other results of developmental science; these will be incorporated by spiritual science into the spiritual development of humanity. But it is not only by realizing that human life goes through repeated earthly lives that one enters the spiritual world, but one really acquires the ability to research in the spiritual world.

But you have to realize, dear audience, that this research in the spiritual world is different from that in the physical world. This must be emphasized. The one who first hears that there is such a thing as true clairvoyance, an insight into the spiritual world, believes that when the spiritual researcher shines a light into the spiritual world, then he has the spiritual world before him in such impressions as the physical man has the external physical world before him.

Yes, you see, there is no question of that, esteemed attendees! The spiritual world is more real than the physical; but it is not like the physical. While in the physical world things spread out and then enter our thoughts, that is, they enter our field of consciousness through our sense organs, the spiritual beings, into whose sphere we enter through spiritual research, enter through our will element, but this does not have the power of that arbitrariness that would arise if only what the external natural scientist knows were spirit. And since, as I said, I do not want to talk in nebulous terms, but always in concrete terms, dearest present, I do not want to shy away from also hinting at how such spiritual experiences now take place, compared to ordinary clairvoyance.

I am well aware that by making such statements from the specific field of spiritual research, I must expose myself even more than I already have to the risk of such things being seen as fantasies, as dreams; but they are not. They are not in the sense that Copernicus' and Galileo's ideas were not fantasies, although their contemporaries thought so. For just as Galileo, even if he did not actually say it, is reported to have said, “And yet it moves!” the spiritual researcher must say in the face of all the objections that are raised against looking into the spiritual world: And the soul, the human soul, it nevertheless looks into the spiritual world! It learns to recognize that there is a spiritual as well as a physical in our environment, only that it enters our consciousness in a different way, in a truly clairvoyant way.

An example: It is self-evident, dear attendees – one does not do this out of immodesty, but because it has to be done – one must give such examples from one's own experience in the broad field that we have been able to observe. [I will] share a simple fact.

You see, dear audience, the one who first has to do this or that in the physical world, for which a certain spiritual power is needed, which he may think he can achieve, even in a certain limited area, practices such activity intensely, and he is no longer aware of anything other than that he practices it intensely. This feeling, however, stops with the spiritual researcher. For example, it may happen that you have to do something in a certain period of time, to organize something artistic. If you now need to organize this artistic thing, then you have to bring it forth from the depths of your soul's strength, I would say, even if it is to a limited extent: inventive powers, powers that research something that is not yet there. In a sense, you have to become productive.

When I myself was once in such a situation, it came so vividly to my mind to whom something specific in this activity is actually due. Years ago, dear audience, a friend of mine died who had been close to me in life, a personality who was fully artistic in her entire soul development. She passed through the gate of death. With a soul with which one has been connected in life – so spiritual science teaches – one remains connected with it, whether it is unconscious, as it must be for the non-spiritual researcher, or conscious, as it can become for the spiritual researcher. Years later, when I was called upon to perform a certain task that involved what this other personality counted among the special powers of his soul, I knew that everything I was able to accomplish in doing so was imbued with that soul! However, in order to observe this, dear ones present, it is necessary to be able to apply all criteria. Of course I know that the natural scientist or the person who values a scientific world view alone can say: Well, that went into your soul; that then came out of your soul. One can talk like that as long as all application remains nebulous. But when one sees the forces of the deceased soul striking like an influx into the increased willpower and then raising it into consciousness, when one looks at it like that, as one looks at what is before one's eyes as an experienced , then, dear attendees, there is no denying the spiritual world and the connection of the human soul with it, just as there is no possibility of denying the external physical world when you see it with your eyes.

And so that which now enters consciousness not through external but through internal organs becomes the content of a concrete spiritual world - a spiritual world in which not only the dead are the so-called dead, but in which there are also other spirit beings are present, who are active in the evolution of the world and live in it, descending into physical existence, of which one becomes, as it were, a fellow, once one's spiritual eyes and ears have been opened in the way just described.

It must be emphasized again and again: Of course, for our time this must seem more fantastic and ridiculous to many than it seemed to people who once believed that the earth stood still and the sun moved around, and the whole starry sky, and who then heard about Copernicus: That must be different. But what was once a reverie, a fantasy – as it is in The Transfiguration – later becomes a matter of course, as what seemed paradoxical to mankind before has become a matter of course. And those who are familiar with these new research results know that this talk of the spiritual world will one day become a matter of course.

You cannot even begin to guess what a difference habitual thinking makes, what it means that you are not accustomed to even considering such a thing. But spiritual research then extends to other things as well, and I will select another example from this broad field.

We see, dear readers, not only people who have, so to speak, fully lived their lives, going through the gate of death; we see people going through the gate of death in early youth; we see people going through the gate of death - in our time, particularly painful for our soul - not because the inner, death-bringing forces send them to their death, as it were, but because they pass through the portal of death through external causes, through external violence, through a bullet or the like.

When the spiritual researcher focuses his attention on these so-called early deaths, which occur, then he arrives at a view, at a realization, which also makes these early deaths appear in the world in a meaningful way.

After all, we do not do it any differently in science: we see separate facts; we seek to recognize their essence and to find a connection in them. This is also how the spiritual researcher proceeds with what he now cognizes spiritually. And when the spiritual researcher, guided by his inner path, has come a certain way in spiritual research, then, if I may say so, when the inner circumstances are favorable, the inner soul conditions, one is led to certain inner fact connections. If one concentrates on a certain context of facts, in the way one has acquired the ability to meditate, then other contexts of facts arise in the soul, in the spiritual eye, and one recognizes the relationship in the process.

In this way the spiritual researcher can concentrate – but as I said, only when he has gone through the paths that have been described today – he can concentrate on this: A human life comes to a physical end in early youth by violent means, by a shot or something similar. A soul passes through the gate of death in such a way that not those forces that work inwardly in the organism have had an effect and brought about death from within the organism, but through violence from the outside, through an accident and the like, such a human life perishes, passes through the gate of death. If one concentrates on this – but as I said, with the powers that one has acquired on the path of spiritual research – then another fact comes to mind, and one recognizes the connection between these two facts.

And this other fact is this: that even in ordinary human life we encounter two different aspects in a certain area. We observe children growing up. We are, for example, educators or teachers of these children. We know very well: we make an effort to educate the child in this or that. We will strive for this or that knowledge through this or that, which arises from the child's soul. But with some children whom we teach and who have the potential to become more learned, more talented, more intelligent than we ourselves are as teachers and educators, we notice that something is emerging from unfathomable depths. In one child this may be something modest, in another child it may be the potential of a genius. We see in the small and in the large, the emergence of ingenious powers from the human soul. And now we recognize the connection between these seemingly far-removed facts. That which manifests itself in a later period, often years later, in some child in particularly ingenious ways, has passed through the spiritual development, through the invisible spiritual development, and has its cause in the violent death, which can be brought about by external violence. It does not have to be the same soul; but some human being perishes. What he goes through when his soul is violently snatched from the body in this way, that communicates itself to the purely spiritual world, and becomes interwoven with a human soul - with a very different human soul it can be interwoven - that is in the life between death and a new birth! And this soul brings that power, which comes precisely from such a death, into the new life. And these powers arise as genius powers.

This does not always have to be the case, dear ones present, it does not always have to have this cause! In the future of the earth's development it will perhaps be quite different when genius powers develop. But for the life we can see, this is initially just a strangely mysterious connection, a connection that certainly provides insights that are really such that one says: spiritual science provides insights that give us insights into the meaning of life - even when this life touches us particularly hard, particularly painfully in some places. We can also investigate pain and suffering as meaningful phenomena in life. And spiritual science leads to a certain higher point of view - although it is not there to make people shallow, superficial people who are beyond pain and suffering. No, pain and suffering must be felt, otherwise they cannot become the cause that now arises from them. If one were to believe that spiritual science would simply be a means of numbing pain and suffering, then it would eliminate pain from the world and prevent the emergence of what should arise from pain and suffering. No, spiritual science does not numb pain, but from a certain higher point of view, it shows how pain and suffering also fit into the meaning of life.

Finally, I must draw your attention to one more point, esteemed attendees: it is an absolute misunderstanding to believe that spiritual science is in any discord with natural science in its views! No, spiritual science fully recognizes everything that it achieves on its part, and also fully recognizes what experimental soul research achieves. Spiritual science is much more at peace with these other sciences than these other sciences want to be at peace with spiritual science. There is a science of the soul that seeks to find out through all kinds of reflection. And many today believe this, even in those circles that practice public psychoanalysis, a science of the soul. They believe that by observing thinking, feeling and willing, as it lives in man, one can find out what the immortal is, what the eternal powers of the human soul are.

Spiritual science in particular shows that natural science is basically right from the standpoint that it is increasingly asserting today. Indeed, spiritual science perhaps takes an even stronger position than natural science itself already has today. To those who say that one can know something that corresponds to immortality in the ordinary thinking that a person develops here in the physical world, or in his will or feeling, the natural scientist rightly objects: Yes, look at the human being, at his thinking, feeling and will: if a part of the brain is paralyzed by some force, an entire part of his soul life can fail. We also see that thinking, feeling and willing, just as the organism has developed from early childhood, also changes. We see it as being linked to the organism. Do we not see how this thinking, feeling and willing is bound to the organism?

From today's point of view, the natural scientist can rightly object to those who want to prove immortality from ordinary thinking, feeling and willing.

But spiritual science also shows that this ordinary thinking, feeling and willing, this ordinary, this unique thinking, feeling and willing that asserts itself in physical life with ordinary science, that this is bound to the instrument of the body. And here spiritual science leads to something else, [namely, that] what is in this thinking, feeling and willing must first be developed in the human soul! It is always there; but it must first be made clear: And that is the immortal essence. And it is the essence that was there before birth, or let us say, before our conception and that will be there after our death. It is a different state of consciousness, it is a state that looks back on our life on earth – not an unconscious one, but a [higher state of consciousness]; for the spiritual researcher also develops through to a higher consciousness, as I have shown you. And this is what we carry through the gate of death.

We must not believe that something new is meant by the spiritual researcher carefully working his way up; this eternal essence is contained in every soul; the spiritual researcher only sees it – it is in every human soul just as, of course, an object is there even if you do not look at it. Only looking at it is what spiritual science brings. But spiritual science shows that, in addition to the thinking, feeling and willing that is in the physical body and bound to the body, there is another that is not bound to the body and that can be recognized as such. That the spiritual world must be recognized differently than the physical world is what constitutes the essence of spiritual science. And so spiritual science leads to the eternal powers of the human soul - which, developed, are already contained in the thinking, feeling and willing that is bound to the body - which can be found when that which lives as an eternal core of being in man is developed and can only not be perceived by ordinary thinking, feeling and willing for ordinary consciousness. New, different from the ordinary power of consciousness of the human soul, this spiritual science must reveal for the human soul!

As I said, it is quite understandable, esteemed attendees, that many things still have to happen before a larger group of people even see something in what has been suggested today as a small stimulus, but what already exists today as an extensive spiritual science, just as an extensive natural science exists.

But, dear ones present, everything must, I would say, enter the world in a state of germination. And that there is nevertheless a certain need in humanity, that is very well known to anyone who can get to know the, I would say, more intimate forces at work in human souls. In their consciousness, many people today still resist the acceptance of what has been hinted at here; but in the subconscious and unconscious soul forces, a great number of people, without being aware of it today and want to admit it, a great number of people have longings for such knowledge of the soul life as has been hinted at and as it must come - as surely must come as the newer natural science has come in place of medieval natural science.

And as an outward sign that with such views we no longer stand entirely on an unreal ground, it may be pointed out in conclusion – so, as I said, it may be taken as an outward sign – that it has already been possible, through the constant willingness of a large circle of friends of this spiritual-scientific world view to make sacrifices, it has been possible to build a structure for this spiritual science, a structure as a shell for this spiritual science, here in Switzerland, in Dornach, near Basel. As I said, I only mention it as an external sign; as an external sign of reality, of the real ground on which one can stand when speaking of this spiritual science.

There must already be a certain understanding in a larger circle, if sacrifices are to be made to create such an outward appearance for this school of thought today.

The main focus today could only be directed towards the essential spiritual science in this building. Those of you, esteemed attendees, who will one day turn their attention to this building in Dornach, near Basel, will see that even in the external forms and in the whole furnishings of this building, something comes to meet you that is, I would say, to the old architectural styles, old building furnishings, as spiritual science is to the old habits of thinking of people.

Many errors and misunderstandings have been spread about this Dornach building. Misunderstandings and errors about it might lead one to believe that even people who have seen it appear as though their eyes had not seen what is there! I have heard it said, for instance, that the interior of this building is completely filled with all kinds of mysterious symbols and magical figures. As I said, if you were to direct your attention to this building and look at it, you would not find a single one of the commonly used magical symbols and figures, none of that stuff at all – just a new way of building, a way of building that makes the building a kind of shell for the thoughts and ideas that are to live in it. And just as earlier buildings were the shell for earlier things, so this building must also have different forms because it is the environment for other things. Just as in ancient Greece the shell was created for Greek thoughts out of the comprehensive that was available to the Greeks, so with our building here something has been created, and not in an inartistic way and manner - for every allegory and symbolism and the like is inartistic - not in an inartistic, but in an artistic way, an attempt was made to create a building in a style appropriate to this spiritual science. For this spiritual science can be poured into forms, can live out its life without thereby wanting to speculate. Without there being symbols or allegories, it can be translated into forms in everything. With artistic feeling, [one can implement that which lives in spiritual science into the outer forms of all the arts - architecture, language, sculpture.]

And when such things occur, for example, someone says: Yes, I like some things about this building, but there you have seven columns on one side, and seven columns on the other side as well; why do you have that? That is not meant to be a symbol. Those who study the matter more closely will really confirm – because the columns are no longer identical, because the capitals progress, have been made unequal – that the motif, which was first engraved on a column capital, actually ends at the last column. Just as the tones open in a seven-part scale and the octave is the repetition of the fundamental tone, and as one is not dealing here with some kind of fantastic symbolism, not with some kind of magical symbolism, so it is not the case here either. And if someone is looking for particularly subtle, inner reasons, reasons that are supposed to be spiritual science, then you can always say: Look for similar reasons to those why there are four different strings on a violin, if someone says there could also be five strings or three! It cannot be otherwise than that there are four strings; just as little as it can be with us six or eight columns, but must be seven! It is an inner, organic structure of the motifs, and the motifs yield this number seven - not some superstitious attachment to a number seven or the like.

Everything should be thought of in artistic terms! I wanted to mention this in particular, not, dear honored attendees, truly not, to make propaganda for the Dornach building, but to point out how spiritual science is in fact capable of intervening in human life. As it encompasses artistic forms, so it will also be able to encompass other forms of life, albeit perhaps more slowly than in artistic forms. Thus it will try to penetrate into all life, into all conceptions of life. And many souls today already long for such a conception of life, which shows the soul in a living connection with the spiritual world to which it belongs, even if they may not know it. That is why spiritual science is already allowed to say what it has to say among people.

I know, dear attendees, that what I would call emerging from the depths of spiritual existence – just as the findings of science actually emerged and came to light over time and then communicated themselves to the development of humanity – often has a difficult path. But anyone who is connected with the inner meaning and sense of the matter knows that truth finds its way in the world, however little credence is given to it. And should it go through the thinnest cracks in the rocks of the mind that confront it, it will find its way!

Therefore, the one who has to represent these spiritual truths - even if they are still regarded by wide circles as fantasies, as dreams, perhaps as something even worse - is imbued with the fact that even if they could not enter into the consciousness of humanity today, if they were completely suppressed, they would emerge anew, because they are intimately grounded in the nature of the human soul!

Therefore, in my closing remarks, I would like to express the consciousness that comes to the soul from this spiritual research when it is properly engaged in it. But before that, let me draw your attention to the fact that one does not need to be a spiritual researcher to recognize spiritual truths. Just as not everyone can become a chemist, that is, not everyone can conduct experiments in a laboratory, not everyone can become a biologist to verify the biological, chemical, physiological, and astrological truths that are communicated to the general consciousness of humanity, not everyone needs to be a spiritual researcher; although to a certain degree, as you can see from my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, everyone can at least to a certain degree recognize the truth, the validity of what spiritual science has to say; but in principle one does not need to become a spiritual researcher oneself. What the spiritual researcher brings out of the spiritual world, when it is spoken, when it is clothed in words, can also be recognized by the non-spiritual researcher, in as far as he has been able to reflect on what has been imparted. And there is a healthy sense of truth by which one can recognize the truth of spiritual experiences. Therefore, anyone who is a priori under the authority of all possible present-day scientific truths – although he cannot investigate them himself and says that he is a very clever person because he believes in scientific truths – must not object that those who, although they are not spiritual researchers but followers of spiritual science, are superstitious and gullible! They are so to a lesser degree than precisely the one who simply describes them as believers in authority. Because that which is brought from the spiritual world does not speak to our lack of understanding, but it speaks to our understanding. And I have just said at the beginning that one must first understand the spiritual world; one must be able to look at it. And this understanding can first be acquired in the message. It is, so to speak, the first step in entering the spiritual world.

Therefore one should not say: I will first recognize the spiritual world in its individual manifestations when I have investigated it. For one must first understand. Even the spiritual researcher himself must first understand, even if this seems paradoxical, just as one also understands certain mathematical laws through their occurrence and then knows that once one has gained this understanding, experiences that have not yet occurred must take place – just as one can calculate solar eclipses in advance. Because one has first understood the nature of the whole, for example, one first understands the spiritual connections; and then, with what is happening in the outer world with this understanding, the outer world illuminates that which one must first have as a concept.

This in itself is certainly something that still goes against the thinking of many researchers today; but that too will become part of people's minds over time. And having explained this, dear attendees, how the consciousness of someone who truly understands the essence of spiritual science - understands how it must arise in our time in the spiritual development of humanity , just as the newer natural scientific world view arose in the Copernican era, the spiritual researcher, when he has attained this consciousness, which arises from the nature of spiritual science, thinks: Yes, it is understandable to be an opponent of the truth; one can, for example, misunderstand the truth, misunderstand it completely, when it contradicts old habits of thought. But those who misunderstand, who fail to recognize the truth, will always be followed by others who can recognize it! For truth is something that is alive within. And though it may be misunderstood, it always knows how to find the way to its own recognition through an inner strength and intensity! One can also hate the truth, esteemed attendees. But he who hates the truth will experience that the truth has such a power over life that the hatred will eventually rebound on him. And in the face of hatred stands the truth; and he who knows how to live in it, yes, by recognizing the intrinsic value of truth, knows: you can revile the truth; but even more than with hatred, the reviling against the truth falls back on the reviler himself.

You can also suppress the truth; but you cannot destroy the truth. You cannot destroy it.

This awareness is gained particularly from spiritual science. Because – even if I express it figuratively, it is not meant figuratively, but literally: the human soul and the truth are sisters. And even if the human soul can sometimes come into conflict with the truth, can come into discord with it, if it can prove to be unloving itself, there must always be times and places when the human soul unites lovingly with the truth. For they become inwardly aware – human soul and its sister, the truth – that they belong together, that they must belong together in love, that they, as two sisters of world existence, have a common origin in the one, all-pervading and world spirit, which can be recognized when one finds the paths to the eternal powers of the human soul.