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

## GA 70b — 10 January 1916, Zurich

### 6. On the Paths to Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul

Dear attendees!

What I have to present to you today about spiritual science, as it is meant here, cannot, of course, be anything that could be convincing from the outset. Only suggestions are to be given, more or less drawing attention to what is intended by this spiritual science, as it is meant here.

Those who are grounded in this spiritual research know that many prerequisites are necessary to enter into those paths of spiritual contemplation and activity that make it possible to regard this research, the core of which I would say is no more than a vain fantasy, as a reverie. And it is almost self-evident that such views initially take hold when one hears the first suggestions from this scientific direction.

The starting point of this spiritual research, dear attendees, is that it must hold the opinion that, through the impulses inherent in the development of mankind, similar conditions prevail in the realm of the soul's life today as they have for three to four centuries, since the dawn of the modern scientific world view of nature and its phenomena.

In truth, this spiritual research wants to be nothing other than a genuine continuation of the scientific way of thinking. And it wants to gain knowledge about soul and spiritual facts from the same concepts of truth - yes, I would like to say, perhaps better say - from the same sense of truth, from the same sense of knowledge, as science gains knowledge about natural things and their interrelations. But for this, an understanding of something is necessary, for which one must acquire spiritual understanding.

Those who are of the opinion – and I say explicitly – that the scientific methods, the basic views of nature, have gradually become something exemplary in terms of the way science is conducted, will all too easily to believe that all research, absolutely all research into reality, including research into the spiritual and soul life, must proceed exactly as research into nature and its results are sought. If, for this very reason, spiritual research must take different paths from those of external natural science, then this is certainly something that cannot be admitted directly from the outset.

Now, after these introductory words, I do not want to beat about the bush in the abstract, but would like to get straight to the heart of the matter.

The first point to be made is that spiritual research, as it is meant here, is based on observation, on the observation of facts; indeed, in a way that one can say: on the production of experiments, but only if all observation and experimentation takes place in the most intimate life of the soul itself. It is not the same as conducting experiments in a laboratory, not the same as conducting zoological, botanical or other observations with the outer senses and with the intellect [research] that is connected to the brain. The things that lead the spiritual researcher to insights into spiritual and psychological life are pure, inner experiences. And here it is difficult to see that pure inner knowledge can completely strip away the character of everything subjective, everything individual, and can become truly objective, that is, can become such that they can provide insights into facts.

The scene of the research is therefore not something that can be pursued with the external senses; nor is it something that can be grasped in any way – or, rather, grasped – with the mind that is applied in ordinary science. Rather, the point is that spiritual research must first develop the powers and abilities in the human soul that lead to the pursuit and observation of spiritual facts in a way similar to that in which the external senses and the armed external senses lead to the observation of facts and to external experiments.

Now, the first thing that needs to be developed is an inner ability of the soul, which is latent, one might say, in both ordinary everyday life and in the ordinary scientific method. In all ordinary life and in all scientific life, this first ability is not actually applied. And it can be characterized externally in such a way that one says: everything that one does in terms of external handling, external observation, thinking about external observation in everyday life, in ordinary science, leads to a certain result. It leads to one visualizing through concepts or ideas – or however one wants to call it – that which one believes to recognize as the laws of nature. And then, when you have arrived at results through the effort of the soul in the handling of observation of the experiment, of reflection, then you have reached a certain conclusion, so to speak an end, with regard to external life, with regard to ordinary science.

What is considered the end, what is considered the conclusion with regard to outer development and outer life, is, for spiritual science as it is meant here, basically only the beginning. From there, all further development of inner soul forces must proceed. That means that the methods used in ordinary science, the results obtained, the peculiar mental experiences that one reaches, these are the preparers, they first prepare the human soul powers to become what they must become if one wants to look into the spiritual world. So that one must start at the end of ordinary science for the development of spiritual research.

Now, in earlier lectures that I have been privileged to give in this city, I have already said a great deal about the principles of how the soul must train inwardly in order to reach the point where it can observe the spiritual world. But since there are a great many honored listeners here today who were not present at previous lectures, I must, at least very briefly, mention some of the principles of what the soul has to do in order to arrive at actual spiritual research.

Of course, dear attendees, I can only mention the very most fundamental principles here; everything else can be found in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in the second part of my so-called “Occult Science”. There you will find a detailed account of the soul's inner workings, the purely spiritual and soul-like workings that must be carried out in order to achieve what I will now only discuss in principle.

First and foremost, it is a matter of a very specific development of the human being's ability to think. I do not say “of thinking”, but “of the ability to think”. And essentially one can say: What is at stake in such a development of the human being's ability to think is that this thinking is strengthened inwardly, inwardly strengthened, and so not only grows in intensity compared to ordinary thinking, but also, in that it is gradually strengthened, becomes in a certain sense of a different quality, of a different scientific nature, becomes a completely different ability.

Technically, what the soul has to do with itself is called concentration, meditation. But I ask you to pay attention to the fact that in spiritual research, as it is meant here, these words do not completely coincide with what is otherwise understood by these words. I therefore ask you to pay attention to the fact that here only that which is to be expressed briefly now is meant by these words.

The point is that while in ordinary life and in ordinary science, the spiritual faculties of man spread over a certain field, going from one to the other, also passing from one to the other over time, the point is that in order to prepare oneself for spiritual research, one must concentrate on a single point of presentation, I would like to say first. The life of the whole of our inner picturing and visualizing must, as it were, be strengthened and made more powerful by the constant exercise of our inner will, to which we must first train ourselves. I have shown in the books mentioned how this is to be done.

I will first give only one of the principles by which this can be done. One should place – as I said, meant purely technically now – a certain idea at the center of one's mental life, in – as one could say – one's total consciousness.

It is not necessary, and indeed it is better if the idea chosen has no external content of truth. It is not important that the idea means something in the external world, that it represents or expresses something. What matters is the activity of thinking, not knowledge of anything in the first instance. Therefore, it is best to use, let us say, allegorical, symbolic ideas. What truth value they have is not important. What matters is the strength that one develops in the inner application of the power of thought. I will give an example.

Let us say that someone imagines: flooding light, and in the flooding light wisdom. Of course, it is not a concept that can initially be said to mean anything in terms of an external truth, an external truth to which one is accustomed. But that is not what really matters; what matters is that you now concentrate all your thinking power, all your imagination, on this one concept, and to persist in it, that is, to learn to send your whole soul in this one direction.

Why it does not depend on the truth of the character, this follows from the following. I will make clear, dear attendees, by means of a comparison, what it actually depends on. Let us assume that we perform an external task, some manipulation, a manipulation that is part of our trade, our business, through which we want to get ahead in the world. We often perform the same task - now, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. Every person knows that not only what we produce through our handling happens here, but that our skill grows, that we can do the thing better and better, that our activity, our ability increases. That is a side effect. For the expressions of ordinary life, one knows very well that this is a side effect.

What matters is this accompanying phenomenon in thinking. You can completely disregard what you think in preparation. For spiritual research, it is important to learn to gradually focus on this inner mind, on this inner development of the ability to think.

So I say explicitly: what matters is not the thoughtfulness or ingenuity of ordinary logic; if one is predisposed to it, one has it as if from the outset. What matters is to become aware of this increase in inner thinking power, to learn to grasp it as something real in its workings.

Such exercises, honored attendees, are by no means effective if done only temporarily. Certainly some people believe that if they have devoted some time to such exercises, they must achieve a result. It also takes different lengths of time for different people to achieve a result: for some it takes months, for some years.

You don't need to spend much time on it in detail. We will see in a moment why you don't need to. In fact, spending a lot of time every day on such exercises is not always beneficial. But the point is that such exercises are repeated over and over again, even to the extent that the same meditation content appears again and again in the soul, so that the meditation content gradually becomes completely irrelevant and the activity for the purpose of strengthening the inner strength of thinking becomes particularly prominent.

Now, honored attendees, if you have been doing such exercises for a while, have seriously done them daily, and have mustered that energy - which you will already be convinced is necessary when doing such exercises - you will, after some time, come to notice that thinking actually becomes something quite different. Above all, the power that works in thinking is experienced as something much more real inwardly than that which lives in the ordinary physical [world] or in ordinary outer research.

Admittedly, one has strange experiences at first; experiences that can be discouraging. And inner courage is necessary to continue to progress in the appropriate way. This discouragement consists, for example, in the fact that, precisely by doing such exercises, one notices how, little by little, one becomes more and more - one can already say - a slave to those thoughts that one has once conceived. Reminiscences of the soul life, memories of the soul life, they gradually come up more and more. And one also feels that by looking at these reminiscences of the soul life, one lives with one's soul in the midst of an army of thoughts of nothing but reminiscences. The point is that you continue anyway; because you gradually arrive at a certain point - only experience can actually provide the appropriate explanation for these things - you arrive at a very specific point. You arrive more and more at having an overview of life - the life you have lived since you began to think consciously. Really, endless details emerge. Details that you didn't even notice before! You learn something very strange: you learn how much you actually go through in life without your consciousness being seized so intensely that you pay attention to it. Much of what has remained unconscious and subconscious now comes to the fore; but you don't recognize it as such.

To go into details would be going too far. But the experience is that one not only learns to recognize one's conscious soul life that one has gone through, but really also a lot, and finally, as in a view, everything that prevails in one's subconscious soul life. One learns to see through oneself, so to speak. But one makes the discovery that, especially in one direction, the whole power of thinking changes, and that for the activity that now emerges from thinking like a new birth of a certain inner power, one loses completely — or actually never had — what one calls memory for ordinary thinking and for ordinary scientific thinking.

This is an experience that one must have. The experiences that crowd in like this then pass before the soul; but one knows: they pass like fleeting experiences, which have the particular character that they do not imprint themselves on the memory in the same way as the experiences made through the senses or ordinary imagination. They sweep by and could not be had a second time if something else did not occur. And I ask you to pay close attention.

What occurs is something that was not known before. We know that memory retains thoughts – I do not want to discuss the inner process of memory now – memory retains thoughts. And something that was previously there as a thought experience enters consciousness again at a later time – I would say – from the deep underground of the soul life, over the threshold, into consciousness.

This is not the case with these experiences, which one cannot have in this way; but it is somewhat different, in that what one experiences - the imaginative experience - cannot be evoked again at all; but the activity, the inner soul activity, that one has performed when the experience was present, can be evoked. One can only return to one's own activity. One can relive what one did inwardly in one's soul when one had the experience. And one knows this quite precisely. And that is what matters: instead of memory, which one now recognizes as an ability for the external physical life, one acquires a completely different ability: the ability of an inner tendency to evoke performances again; and that through the evocation of these inner performances the experience again presents itself to the soul – now not just like any other memory, but like something that again approaches us anew. One would like to be led out of the ordinary life of the soul perhaps into this very different life of the soul, ladies and gentlemen.

And so let me – actually only comparatively, not to prove anything, but only to explain something – let me cite something that is not yet what is meant here, but which has, so to speak, prompted what is meant here.

The poet Grillparzer had already worked out the idea and also the details of his poem “The Golden Fleece”; he had it completely in his soul; but he had forgotten it. - It is a well-known phenomenon; a phenomenon that is familiar to anyone who is familiar with the biography of Grillparzer. He had forgotten, and he really could no longer remember what he had come up with as his poetic treatment of the “Golden Fleece”. And lo and behold, when he played some piano pieces again that he had played at the time, as it turned out when he was formulating the concepts for this “Golden Fleece”, the content of the “Golden Fleece” came to his mind again. That is to say, when he performed the same activity that had taken place in his soul at the time when he conceived the “Golden Fleece,” that which had been in his soul at that time emerged again. It was therefore the activity that actually emerged again within him.

And so it is in a heightened sense with what is meant here. So it is not a memory that one is dealing with, but a re-evocation of the activity and a new experience.

That is the first change in the inner soul forces when such exercises are undertaken.

The second thing that should be said about this point, dear audience, is that one now experiences how what otherwise happens in the life of thought becomes something completely different. One now really gets to know a soul experience that one did not know before. When one is confronted with one's thought life, one is aware that these thoughts must be something that is merely figurative. If the thoughts we have about the external world were not of an imagistic nature, then they would not really help us, because we do not want to gain anything from them that is added to the external world - even if it is in an epistemological sense, but that is not the point now, I do not want to talk about that now - but rather, what this external world faithfully reproduces. Thoughts must be as little as possible something new compared to the external world.

That is the meaning of the newer truth research, that one treats thoughts critically so that they do not add anything to external reality. So that one has the feeling: in one's thought life, as in a passive way, to have the external world as an image.

But this ceases as soon as the forces are experienced, which - as I said - emerge from the thought life through a kind of consciousness, in the way it is meant here. It must be said: one lives oneself, by experiencing these new inner soul abilities, into a world that differs from the thought life precisely in that one experiences it as a reality, as a flooding, living reality.

And that is also – I would say – the harrowing thing that the soul life has to go through. When describing these things, it really seems as if one were describing mere fantasy. But anyone who is compelled to describe otherwise unknown facts must not be deterred by what seems incredible. If one imagines that the thoughts that one otherwise has passively present in consciousness begin to live inwardly, to have a life, then one has approximately what the spiritual researcher comes to in the point that has now been indicated.

Now, dear attendees, I have described to you – I would like to say – in simple words something that is extremely meaningful to go through in the soul, because it is really connected step by step with inner shocks, with inner experiences that bring something new and surprising again and again.

We can know that we have come to a certain conclusion in the direction that has been described so far: when we have a very specific experience, an experience that has actually been assigned a certain word for thousands of years, a word that can only be fully understood by someone who knows something about this experience.

You see, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is only now able to emerge; just as, let us say, Galileo's view of nature, the Copernican view, first emerged, but out of different soul forces in the human epoch, where the souls had to work differently. It is always something that led certain people who were prepared for it to look into the spiritual world. And such people, of whom little is known in external science, in external history, such people already knew how to describe the point until one arrives when one proceeds on the path meant here. And they describe this point with the word: Man arrives – but I emphasize here expressly: only with the inner soul life he arrives first there – man arrives at the gate of death.

And this experience, which is referred to as “arriving at the gate of death”, is a harrowing experience, because one now gets to know it as an inner experience. And from the time one arrives at this point, one knows through inner experience what it means to carry out an activity that is no longer carried out through the instrument, through the tool of the physical body. One knows from that moment on that one can weave and live with spiritual experiences in something that has separated from the physical body, which basically proves to be detached from the physical body of the person.

What it is called – since names usually cause the most contradiction, we want to refrain from using them altogether – what it is called, that is unimportant. But if one perceives from a certain moment on that in the person who is given to external science, that is, to external sensory observation [...] that in this physical person there is another, finer human body inside - 'body' is perhaps used a little improperly ; one can only apply 'body' to the physical. There is a finer organization within, and the measures that have now been taken in the soul life have led to the detachment of this inner organization from the coarser, physical organization. However, one now stands in relation to the outer physical body as one otherwise stands in relation to an outer object or an outer event that one observes with the senses, and in relation to which one is the one who has it in his hand. Now you are facing your own physical organization. Now you know: This is you, you who have emerged from your physical body and survey your physical body. Everything that has happened before takes place in it. We will see shortly that this is very important. And because one has an inner life that is independent of the outer body, one experiences this as approaching the gates of death – although in theory it is meant as an experience – one knows what it means to live outside the body. One learns to recognize the phenomenon of dying. You learn to recognize that something lives in a person when their physical body is being returned to the element of the earth, in inner experience, in inner experience.

But first of all, if the exercises that have been characterized would lead to nothing else than what I have explained, then a significant inner grievance would arise, yes, a danger, not in the physical sense, but a danger in relation to error and truth, if something else did not take place in the soul parallel to what I have described. But if one does the exercises exactly as described in my book 'How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds', then the way in which these exercises are carried out prevents one from arriving in this one-sided way, as I have described it, at what is called with a weighty word: arriving at the gate of death. Because if the exercises were to reach this point in the way I have indicated, and if nothing else were to happen in parallel, it would be the case that one could not maintain oneself in this inner experience. It would be like being consumed from the outset; one would feel how it would slip away, be forgotten. One would feel this as long as one lives in one's physical body: [The physical body is always willing, always able to draw in life, and yet it cannot let it arise.] In short, attempts to experience the spiritual world would be continually unsuccessful.

Dear attendees, meditation and concentration should not only lead to a strengthening, to a revitalization of thinking, but it must also go hand in hand with a strengthening of the will and feeling, of the soul's power of mind. That which lives in the will must also change in the course of the exercises. And if the exercises given in the book mentioned are done correctly, this will already happen.

I would like to explain again how the soul's state of will, its mood of will, must change. I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just But anyone who is familiar with the path that truth takes through human development, through human history - and in our time, the spiritual researcher must familiarize himself with this - knows what I have already said: that truth finds its way through the finest cracks crevices that extend like cracks in rocks into the rocks of prejudice, and which human development - I do not say it critically, I do not say it reproachfully - can not only take up, but must take up. For life needs just as much - as it has its judgments about how life can be lived - its processes, which must accumulate for a certain time. Life must run its course in rhythm with the world, and for a time the scientific view had to drown out everything else. Only now can the other wave, the other pole, so to speak, come, which now also drives that sense of thought and truth into the spiritual world.

Philosophers know this very well, otherwise they would not discuss the will so much. The contemplation of the will always slips into action. One presents that which the will accomplishes. But one cannot actually follow the will as it runs into action. As I said, this is only briefly expressed, a very important, a very significant fact of the inner life of the soul, which could be philosophically examined in all its breadth, if time were not too short for it, if time were sufficient for it, as I said.

Now the point is to get this will, this constantly eluding will, into the soul's view, to really learn to look at the will, to really learn to have it before you – mentally speaking: to have it before you.

This can be achieved by now also undertaking exercises, esteemed attendees, whereby the inner processes of our soul life are viewed in the same way that natural processes are otherwise viewed. [Just consider, for example, how different what we might call self-observation of nature is from the ordinary external observation of nature. We see nature in its processes; for we are always inclined to separate from the observation of natural processes everything that moves us only subjectively. There we are always inclined, compelled by objectivity, to come to a certain kind of objectivity ourselves. If one now practices observing not only natural processes objectively, but – it is strange that this is necessary, but it is necessary – but also what one might otherwise call theoretical, cold, in the observation of nature, [that one now] intensifies it with heartfelt concern, with deep inner concern, to the point of heartfelt love for natural processes [...]; so that [one now, although you are objectively immersed in the laws of nature – including the laws of mineral processes, plant growth and animal behavior – by immersing yourself in them, you also develop an inner sense of involvement, a step-by-step approach to what is taking place as a lawful process, in the same way that you would otherwise only do so with regard to a world being. If one learns to observe the natural event with the utmost interest, without allowing one's objectivity to be clouded, if one remains as objective as only the external natural scientist can remain, and yet can accompany this sober natural research with an inner experience, I would even say an inner merging with what one is investigating, then one acquires the ability to take up a completely different position in relation to the will than in ordinary life and in ordinary science.

But, as I said, this is a slow practice. You have to cultivate in your innermost soul life what is actually meant here. And from that you can acquire a very definite ability in this way. At a certain stage, at a point that one attains there, one notices the following.

I must start from an occurrence in everyday life to illustrate what one notices in oneself. In everyday life, we fall asleep and wake up. Our daily life follows this rhythm. When we fall asleep – I do not need to show the individual phenomena of falling asleep, the individual phenomena of waking up, but everyone knows what happens in their life when they transition from conscious daily life to subconscious or unconscious sleep – what happens in them, that happens without their will, at least at first. In everyday life, arbitrariness has only a very small part in [this rhythm].

When practiced in this way, as I have described it, one is able to voluntarily induce this transition, which otherwise always occurs involuntarily, between sleep and waking life, waking and sleeping life. That is to say, to be able to command oneself to bring about that standstill of all sensory activity, of all expressions during the course of the day, of all intellectual and imaginative perceptions; to command the faculties that are otherwise present to stand still, and yet not to pass into a state of unconsciousness, as is the case during sleep, but fully consciously to leave one's physical body again and enter into a state that would be there. Again, it is strange when it is described, but it must be described because it is a reality. One attains a state that would be there if one were to wake up fully consciously, but one does not wake up by being in one's body again , and through the eyes and ears sees and hears the external reality, but that you would keep your body out of yourself and remain in what you are in - you now realize that during sleep you have gone out in essence - wake up out of the body in what you are in between falling asleep and waking up, but consciously in it.

Through this arbitrariness, one has gained the ability to strengthen the will to such an extent that one is consciously aware of one's being, in which one is otherwise unconscious between falling asleep and waking up, by attaining this parallel guidance of the soul forces through meditation, through concentration. The first ability that one has acquired is formed [by having obtained something new from the power of thought and something new from the will]. And only now does one live outside the body, with the ability to truly perceive the spiritual world around oneself, which is always there, which is there for everyone, for whose beholding one must first educate oneself, educate oneself inwardly, must practice.

In turn, it is a harrowing subjective experience that forms the transition in the inner experience to this culture of the will. If one has first learned – I would say – in theory, but in an experienced theory, what dying must mean, then one now gets to know something by the will moving over to an out-of-the-body inner experience. One now learns to recognize what, on the basis of all being and all becoming, is pain and suffering. One becomes acquainted in an unexpected, harrowing way with the pain that runs through all existence. One learns to recognize how unwise it is to ask why all existence is based on pain.

Existence – if you observe it and have a heart and a mind for existence – dear attendees, it is beautiful and great and sublime here and there, and it would not be in the full sense of the word to be “human” if you had no sense of the greatness and beauty of existence. But just as a flower emerges from the root of a plant, so everything that is beautiful and great in life must arise from the foundation of pain and suffering. And as the most beautiful things must arise from the soil of pain and suffering, one becomes familiar with this. One experiences an inner world process consistently. One also learns to recognize that the one who, for example, wanted to criticize that a wise providence did not do as well as he thinks in his [own] wisdom, even without the basis of pain, [to be able to evoke the corresponding , one recognizes that this demand is about the same as if someone wanted to demand of the mathematician that he should work towards the fact that one should not look for 180 degrees in a triangle in its three angles. This is connected with a law, with inner laws. But these laws are now being learned. And so, by acquiring a new research of the inner soul life from the ideas about pain and death, one has brought out of thinking and will those entities of the soul which, by living in them now, show one how one is in the spiritual world, what is beyond birth - or let us say conception - and death in man.

Now the idea that we were something before we were born – or conceived – ceases to be a mere theory. The idea that we will still be something when we have passed through the gate of death ceases to be a mere theory as well.

And in the same way, another idea will be fulfilled by very concrete content. There is nothing speculative about these ideas anymore. Instead, the soul has developed powers within itself to experience what could be called its immortality in a living way – to experience that within itself, the powers, the essences, that goes through birth and death.

But something else is experienced as well. What is experienced, dear honored attendees, is that by learning to observe the will – by learning to recognize something in the will in an intimate way – yes, what one learns to recognize when one characterizes it in this way, it looks as if one were merely dissecting a picture, a sum, something fictitious; but it is not like that. If you really succeed in having the will within you as I have indicated, then you realize: In this will lives a core essence of the human being; a second person lives in it, but a conscious second person, a person with a very different consciousness that we carry within us. As I said, this is not an image; but it is also not a reality that we have within us in the same way that we have a physical heart within us. However, it is as true as it is that there is an inner person active in our inner will who is conscious. we now externalize, an external observer, a spectator; but such a spectator from whom we recognize that we can only unite his consciousness with our consciousness when we get to know that power of thinking, which is gotten to know in the only characterized way.

Thus, in what one finds in the will, one gets to know a second person; but a person – it is revealed by looking at it, by experience, by inner living – one gets to know a person who lives in the human being in a spiritual-soul way, just as the plant germ lives physically in the plant and blossom, as it lives in the plant as a germ, and one knows: in this plant germ there is something that, depending on the external conditions, can become a new plant. This is in the nature of the germ! So, dear attendees, through the direct experience of inner observation, we know that this observer, whom we have found to be a reality within us, is what the individual human beings carry through the gateway of death, what is carried through the spiritual world, and what must be carried again into a new earthly life. For this is formed in it, as the new plant is formed in the germ of the plant. And while the germ of the plant can perish through external conditions, one knows, one has found this core: in the spiritual world there are no such external obstacles; the human being returns again, will live in the outer world. And one also learns to recognize that this life, which one is now investigating here, is the consequence of earlier lives on earth. What Lessing and other geniuses sensed as a necessary consequence of the presentation of the newer spiritual life becomes a strictly inwardly researchable, inner fact: repeated earthly lives!

But one must realize, when one is living in the spiritual world, that one perceives differently than one perceives in the external world. In the external world, one perceives through the fact that things stand before one, and one faces the things themselves and looks at them. Those who, starting from the trivial concepts of everyday life, want to form a picture of what this new thing is that has been spoken of here today, who think that the spiritual world is only a finer ethereal repetition of the ordinary sense world, and they imagine that the beings in the spiritual world come towards one out of mist or finer things. No, it is not so, esteemed attendees; but everything that comes towards one, when it is properly investigated, comes towards one in such a way that one suddenly moves in the investigation as in the spiritual world among nothing but spirit beings. The developed will shows spirit beings that fill the world – how whole multitudes of spirit beings fill the world. So here it can be a matter of perceiving an abundance of concrete spiritual beings in the spiritual world – they perceive! Let us assume that a soul that has passed through the gate of death lives in the spiritual world. At first you perceive this in such a way that you really know: it now enters, as it were, into your own sphere of will; it unites with the consciousness that you discover in your own consciousness; and you experience that your own consciousness melts together with the consciousness of the other being. Through consciousness, through this new consciousness discovered through the sphere of will, you enter into the world of spiritual beings.

Although what I have already stated is, I might say, eccentric enough, I do not want to be deterred from presenting, as I might say, further compromising evidence in this field. Then, of course, one must come to the experience itself. And it is neither out of immodesty nor for any other reason that an external experience is presented. It is, for example, the case that I really only want to mention a very simple one from the wide range of experiences that could be cited.

It was about the fact that I had to deal with certain artistic tasks that required me to invent something, I might say. Now, the point is that a long time ago a personality died whose soul was full of intentions, of tendencies towards such artistic creation. She had passed through the gate of death. Just as, dear readers, in the ordinary physical life one learns to distinguish between the flower one sees outside and the flower one's own eye creates, so too in this spiritual realm one learns to distinguish between what is objective and what is subjective. And so I knew that I had to do certain artistic things - and for those things something like an inspiration was necessary - that what came from this deceased soul entered into my consciousness.

That is to say, one can observe the interaction with these deceased souls in the same way as one can observe the interaction with external beings. Of course, in this case vanity would have it that it is all the result of one's own powers of invention! But one comes to quite different views about the spiritual world when this spiritual world can be gradually seen through the exercises of the soul powers.

Now, dear readers, precisely in view of the misunderstandings that are brought to this spiritual research, as it is meant here, some things must be mentioned.

Anyone who approaches spiritual research with a scientific worldview will, of course, have a great deal to say in favor of the fact that everything I have described so far is basically nothing more than a collection of illusions, hallucinations, and so on. If the scientifically minded person now believes that someone grounded in spiritual science will come and tell them they are wrong and start arguing with them, they are completely mistaken! The spiritual researcher is fundamentally full of appreciation for what the natural scientist has to say, right up to the exploration of the borderlands between the soul and the purely external natural realm. Not even does the spiritual researcher need to reject anything that has been achieved on the basis of experimental psychology, for example. But I do not want to go into this any further now.

But anyone who, starting from a natural scientific world view, objects from the outset – I will now point out the most common objections –: Yes, look, from a certain point of view one believes one can prove the immortal life of the soul ; then one turns to the present way in which thinking, feeling and willing proceed; one believes that one can fathom something through ordinary logic; one perhaps believes that one can achieve something through some mystical process that points to the immortality of the soul. But now natural science shows – and as I said, the spiritual researcher is completely on the ground of natural science here, even more so than the natural scientist himself – natural science shows that man develops from childhood on. Just as the external organs and organ systems gradually develop, so do the spiritual faculties. And again, when the external organs become paralyzed in old age, the mental and spiritual faculties decline. Yes, it can be shown how some part of the mental system, the central nervous system, is paralyzed, how very specific mental and spiritual functions suffer. Doesn't the natural scientist ask the spiritual researcher, don't you see how closely the spiritual and mental life is bound to the organic functions and to the organic tools?

All these things are certainly convincing. But just when the spiritual researcher has arrived at the point that I have described, when I stated the cultivation of the life of thought, the inner education of the life of thought, the inner exercise of the life of thought, then he describes how all thinking, feeling and willing in ordinary life is connected to the bodily organs; what occurs as thinking, feeling and willing in the physical world between birth and death cannot, however, occur without the bodily organs. That is precisely what spiritual research shows. [And it is based on the fact that you cannot gain anything about the immortal soul through speculative theory or mysticism. It is precisely the progress in the field of natural science that will show that what is present as thinking, feeling and willing in ordinary life is a transposition of activities that only have a meaning between birth and death because they are bound to the external organs in their appearance, just as they occur in consciousness. But within thinking, feeling and willing, the spiritual researcher discovers something that is not bound to the organs, which he can only discover in such a way that he knows: this is present in every human being – only one must first become aware of what is still bound to the organs – as if it were something else, something that enters through the gate of death, something that is connected to it. That which is not bound to the organs must first be sought out!

Therefore, the spiritual researcher completely agrees with the natural scientist – and it is a fundamental error to repeatedly state some kind of contradiction between natural science and true spiritual research. True spiritual research stands precisely in relation to the interpretation of ordinary thinking, feeling and willing on the ground of ordinary natural science. Even if what underlies this natural science is still often an ideal, something is present; and the natural scientist can today, from his world view, indicate certain abnormal conditions in human life.

A very important spiritual and natural scientist has called certain states that occur, and even underlie the dream life, and in particular underlie hypnotism, all possible forms of clairvoyance, etc., “rigid states of consciousness”.

But we must not think that the spiritual researcher can in any way confuse what he is aiming at with what is described from this side as abnormal states of soul development! The important thing is that in true spiritual research, as it is meant here, the soul life that develops as another, as an extra-corporeal soul life, as it has been described, that this soul life proceeds in such a way that it is not a transformation of the ordinary soul life, but that it places itself alongside the ordinary soul life. And the healthier this Hellerscher vision is to look at, the healthier it is when the person who develops it develops this vision in such a way that everything else — thinking, feeling and willing, all the other so-called social soul life — continues alongside it! Only that he normally overlooks it in the moment when he is in vision.

Take any of the conditions that occur in the pathological life of the soul: how do they appear? They occur in such a way that the so-called normal life of the soul ceases, and even if only for a short time, passes over into the morbid life of the soul. The person afflicted with any kind of disease of the soul — if I may use this expression, which of course is itself imprecise — is characterized precisely by the fact that he cannot look at his healthy soul life in the disease, otherwise he would not be ill!

What is essential now is that the one who becomes a genuine spiritual researcher does not, as it might appear, enter into the soul life of another person from his own healthy soul life, but that the two soul lives are juxtaposed clearly and with full consciousness. The spiritual researcher passes through the spiritual world, observing it with developed vision. And for ordinary life, for all the tasks of ordinary life, he thinks and feels and acts as other rational people do. This overview is the essential thing.

Therefore, it is not particularly good for beginners in spiritual research, dear attendees, as it happens out of certain conveniences of life – one might say – and also out of certain enthusiasms of life ] when they get involved in some kind of spiritual science with all kinds of enthusiasm, and so, as it were, convert from one religion to another, they enter into a completely different soul life and simply forget the first one. On the contrary, it is particularly beneficial for beginners in the right state of mind if everything that a person was before, how he thought and lived before, is continued as much as possible, and if the other way is added alongside, so that he can see the first one in its entirety.

Special institutions, which are used, for example, to cultivate spiritual research, which one takes out of the ordinary social life into all kinds of colleges, so that they enrich one's life with it as much as possible, actually lead to nonsense in the end. [At least something that is particularly beneficial for the health of the spiritual life of the spiritual researcher is ignored!] Of course one could think of preparing a certain number of people for spiritual research and, so to speak, bringing them into colleges where they can particularly oversleep the outer life they have led so far; but then those concerned would have to become so unfree in a certain sense that what they have been accustomed to so far would now be transformed into a new life that is not geared to the outer world. This has its dangers. The best thing is when a person remains as sensible for their ordinary life as they were before, and spiritual research is only added, so to speak.

But this is also the fundamental difference between all morbid mental life. And if someone who is equipped with a proper scientific attitude would only survey with full understanding what, for example, the exercises of the soul powers according to the direction indicated in “How to Know Higher Worlds” stand, he would see that precisely those who want to engage in true spiritual research and spiritual research methods are made aware and are aware of what could lead, in one direction or another, not only to mental illness but even to nebulous soul aberrations.

Indeed, many misunderstandings arise against spiritual science. Not only are they theoretical misunderstandings on the part of those who, for example, stand on the ground of natural science, on the ground of a natural scientific world view; but they arise - I would say practically, in that people want to enter the spiritual world in a much different way, a much more comfortable way, than has been described world, and then, instead of a science of the supersensible, which could be attained in the way I have described, they actually attain a science of the subsensible, that is, they attain something of what is so often called clairvoyance or the like in the ordinary sense. This clairvoyance, what is usually called that, is actually diametrically opposed to spiritual research. It is something that arises from the fact that the human being is bound even more closely to his personality than he is bound in ordinary social life. I need only point out - although this is of course only said comparatively, by way of explanation - that when we teach ourselves any kind of intervention, we feel the place with our consciousness, especially when something in us is pathologically organized in the stomach. If we have organized something in our nervous system or somewhere in our body in this way, then our consciousness turns to it in a morbid, abnormal way. But then all kinds of things can be 'seen' as a result. What one can call hallucinations, illusions and so on with a certain justification from the point of view of natural science can arise. This arises precisely from the opposite occurring to what occurs for true spiritual research, which has been described today. There is a strong attachment to the body. And in what is referred to in trivial life or also in a fraudulent way as “clairvoyance”, dear honored attendees, one has something that has much less eternal or spiritual value than that what can be observed in the normal life of the soul, where the soul is present with all its corporeality, whereas in pathological clairvoyance or in the pathological state of hypnosis or suggestion or the like, one is only dealing with a part. In these states, one comes into contact with the sub-sensible, with that which has less reality value than what one sees in ordinary life. Whereas the real, true clairvoyance consists in becoming independent of all corporeality and looking back at corporeality, observing how it has remained normal in relation to the external physical world and transcending corporeality, [so that one] arrives at the supersensible, not at the subsensible.

Once, dear honored attendees, this difference between the supersensible and the subsensible is grasped, once it is recognized that what the pathological clairvoyant does is something that has much less significance for man than that which, let us say, lives from birth to death and which can be grasped by the normal life of the senses, and that only a developed life of the soul, which has freed itself from the body, will lead into the supersensible world, then the misunderstandings that are brought by the opposing side to spiritual research will disappear!

And another area of these misunderstandings is that which is brought to spiritual research by the various religions. It must be said that we are dealing here, Ladies and Gentlemen, with an area where the religious element must be distinguished from the scientific element for a healthy consideration. Spiritual science, scientifically developed, will have to explore the spiritual and soul realm, up to the immortality of the soul, and the perception of spiritual and supersensible worlds. But it will get just as little in the way of religion if it is only properly understood as the external natural science has gotten in the way of religion. I must say that a sentence that a priest used when he took up the post of rector at the university in the 1890s is always beautifully present before me. He gave a speech about Galileo – the theologian about Galileo – and he said at the time: Certainly, in the time when Galileo lived, the Church persecuted Galileo; but now the time has come when it can be known that what Galileo said about the structure of the worlds only leads to greater glory of the divine worshipped and adored by religion. Just as people only wanted to find a contradiction with religious life out of misunderstanding in the time when the newer scientific world view emerged, and also introduced it into practical life, so it is based on a misunderstanding if one believes that spiritual research - which for today must be something similar [to the natural research of Galileo, Kepler and so on for their time] - that this could somehow interfere with religious life. This spiritual science, and it wants to be, is really, honored attendees, a continuation of the natural scientific way of thinking for the spiritual realm.

But it is understandable. Especially when one has a good grasp of the history of science, it is understandable that today there are still few people who have a sense for what is at the core of this spiritual research. But anyone who has lovingly tried to explore the course of truth through human development knows that truth will make its way through human development through the thinnest crevices of even the hardest rocks that human prejudices pile up.

And not to engage in propaganda, truly not, but only to mention that there is already at least a small circle of friends of the spiritual-scientific direction, as it is meant here, I would like to point to the building erected in Dornach, near Basle, through the sacrifice of a number of those who profess our spiritual science, or, I might say, of the disciples of our spiritual science, as a kind of School of Spiritual Science.

But this building, too, has been misunderstood. In conclusion, just a few words to point out how misunderstandings about spiritual science itself are encountered in the most diverse ways, and this building is no exception. There are even people who say that this building has something fantastic about it, that when you enter it you see all kinds of symbols, all kinds of magical signs; there is even a sequence of seven columns inside, for example.

Now, anyone who tries to understand the whole structure inwardly, esteemed attendees, can believe that those who have seen what is being built in Dornach and then speak in such a way that they have hardly seen can hardly see, but only believe, that if something arises in some area that they do not yet know, it must be something magical, something magical, magical; out of this belief they characterize.

You see, dear ones, let us take something that is tempted, I would say, in the column sequences on the left and right of the building. People think: these are superstitious people, they have constructed a column order out of the number seven because they have seven columns on each side! Yes, such a statement is just as much as if someone were to assume that there is something symbolic or magical about the fact that on a violin there are exactly the E string, the A string and so on. The inner nature of the thing demanded it! Just as light is divided into seven colors, appearing in the seven colors of the rainbow, just as tones open up in the seven-part structure of the scale and the octave is the repetition of the fundamental tone, so the fact that there was a break with the usual architectural styles – a totality of art had to arise from our artistic conviction, only because there was a break with the fact that one chapter is like the other when you have columns. But when you have a column and a chapter, the next one is different, the third is different again. But it followed from the purely artistic principle that there was a conclusion with the seventh – just as there is a conclusion with the seventh note in the musical scale, and just as there is a repetition of the fundamental note in the octave – it followed quite naturally, with the same necessity as the seven colors in the rainbow necessarily follow. And so it is with everything in this structure. There is no attempt at any kind of symbolic formation. Everything should be poured out purely artistically into the sculptural, the architectural and the pictorial. Therefore, one will never be able to achieve an art that is in line with spiritual science by painting or sculpting what one has recognized through spiritual science. This was not even attempted with our building in Dornach. There are many aptitudes in the human being that remain hidden in ordinary life, and all the aptitudes of humanity have not yet emerged in the course of the past epochs of human development. But spiritual science, because it leads to a living understanding of the living world, is a stimulant, not of an idea – not what it finds as science, should somehow be symbolically embodied in art – that would be an inartistic way – but it must stimulate artistic ability. And in this way, because spiritual science itself introduces something new into humanity, a new form of art, a new principle of art, is also created. Of course, this is just as surprising and misleading as the new aspect of spiritual science itself is misleading and surprising.

For example, an attempt has been made in the most eminent sense to express in the form of architecture something that shows in the frame, in the inner shell of a room, what is going on in the room, what the room holds. But not symbolically, but by trying to grasp the inner life. For example, an attempt was made to continue it in the shaping, in the sculptural shaping of the walls [...]. [In old architecture, for example – and I want to emphasize this detail – when you grasp it artistically, the walls are such that they close through what they are in their forms.] Our walls in Dornach are such that they do not close, but in the moderation of their forms evoke the feeling that they are permeable. And when you look at them, you get such artistic insights that you actually have to practise letting your gaze wander into the infinite of the world's existence. That is precisely the difference compared to an earlier artistic conception. But differences were bound to arise as we progressed from ancient art, from antiquity to the Gothic and so on.

I would, of course, have much to say if I were to address the misunderstandings that arise – I would like to say – in this still quite incomprehensible aspect of the Dornach building, if I were to talk at length about these misunderstandings. I would not like to leave unmentioned the fact that I myself, in particular, dearest attendees, have no illusions that the Dornach building is anything other than a very first beginning, a very imperfect beginning. But perhaps something of a new artistic creative power lives in these primitive initial forms, which are perhaps still completely missed in some respects. And that should be the case. For if spiritual science is to be something that can intervene in human life in a living way, that it can intervene in all areas of human life – and I would like to say that only external circumstances have made it possible for it to have initially penetrated artistic creation in this way – then it must develop the special talents of humanity that are associated with this spiritual science today.

As I said, I do not wish to propagandize for what has been mentioned, but only to draw attention to the way in which spiritual science is also expressed artistically.

But, esteemed attendees, I would still like to say that just as one does not need to be a chemist to absorb into our world view what is coming into it through chemical research, nor does one need to be an astronomer or a physicist to the results of astronomy and physics, just as little as one needs to be a spiritual researcher oneself - although, as the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' shows you, today, to a certain extent, every person can become a spiritual researcher, every person can develop the abilities of their nature, but one does not need to be one. Spiritual science can also present its results to humanity, and because it is based on truth and not on error, it can convince. If one grasps the insights in the right way, one is led to conviction, to absorbing the spiritual-scientific results into the soul's sense of truth, into that which ultimately unites into an overall conviction about world and soul and world and spirit. But that this spiritual research is still met with misunderstandings: one can understand it, honored attendees.

One need only remember, for example, that when the newer world view, the newer natural science, had to be brought to mankind, did not I want to say that a view had to be brought to mankind that was the opposite of what people had thought until then? A view that even contradicted what the senses saw? Throughout the Middle Ages, certain circles of humanity believed that the blue firmament was up there and that the stars revolved around the earth. That changed! The earth, which had been stationary for consciousness, had to be imagined as rushing through space; and the blue firmament – one had to recognize that it is not up there at all, you create it yourself from your own view. And you only imagined this blue firmament because you had previously meant it! That was the great turning point, to which, for example, Giordano Bruno pointed out that one has to see nothing in this blue firmament but what is made out of the human way of looking at things; that what extends into the vast infinities of the world is the spatial universe.

What happened in the past can be said to be happening again: it is a different firmament that humanity is looking at today; but only through its own way of thinking. If, on the one hand, a person looks as far as birth, and on the other hand as far as death – or, to put it another way, if they look as far as conception on the one hand and as far as death on the other – it is like the firmament: there is no limit. If we now work our way outwards, what happened for the natural scientist in the past can happen for the spiritual life: that the boundary between birth and death - or conception and death - is drawn by the human soul life itself. Then we shall look out into the temporal and eternal, in which our repeated lives on earth and those lives that we spend between death and birth in a purely spiritual world are embedded. And the spiritual world will open up for people as surely as the spatial world opened up beyond the non-existent firmament.

Those who are currently at this level of spiritual science will not be at all surprised if what he has said is still regarded as fantasy, reverie, perhaps even today.

Finally, I would like to summarize what I have attempted, as something that cannot a priori evoke conviction but can only give new impetus, as if in a great intuition:

Those who try to get to the bottom of spiritual science know that it can be suppressed no more, nor eliminated from the world, than the scientific worldview that emerged at the dawn of modern times three to four centuries ago could be eliminated from the world, despite all opposing ideas. For he knows that one can hate the truth; but the one who has become so familiar with its character also knows that the one who hates the truth cannot so easily displace it.

And even if it is not yet time, esteemed listeners, for this way of looking at the spiritual world, which has been spoken of here today, to penetrate into wider circles, that time will come.

The fact that the truth is hated for a time – that is a humanly understandable phenomenon – but it can never prevent this truth from recurring again and again, as it has also happened with the scientific worldview. Truth can also be reviled; but the words of revile ultimately fall back on those who utter them. And those who know the Being, which one can see, I would say, as embodied in the truth, know that it has so much self-awareness that it can know how it is effective in the world even against all abuse. One can want to suppress the truth, but one can never want to destroy it!

These are the feelings that inspire anyone who, through the nature of spiritual research, has today attained a certain relationship to this spiritual research. And he must think about the truth that precisely because it is grounded in the innermost being of the human soul, one need only delve into this human soul, honestly apply the developed thoughts to this soul itself and say to oneself: What one has as will, thinking and feeling in ordinary life can be further developed; then that which was truth for the finite world also leads to a power of truth for the infinite world, for the primeval eternal power, for the eternal powers of mankind, which go through births and deaths.

This truth will bring about its recognition. The one who has fully come to know the inner character and quality of spiritual science expresses it as a belief, as a conviction; he believes that the truth he thinks he recognizes is as deeply rooted in the human soul as love is deeply rooted from one sister to another sister when there is a right relationship. Yes, the human soul and truth are sisters! And whatever misunderstandings may ever arise between the two, in the end there must be full agreement between the one and the other sister: between the human soul and the truth; they must remember a common origin, which is there in the world spirit that rules through all phenomena, which always and forever rules and weaves behind the merely sensual phenomena, as the inner ground, as their creating power, as the spirituality that governs and weaves through them, and which can be found precisely through supersensible research.