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

GA 70b — 14 January 1916, Basel

8. The Harmony Between Spiritual Science and Natural Science and the Misconceptions about the Former and the Building Dedicated to it in Dornach

Dear attendees!

In the lecture I had the honor of giving here the day before yesterday, I tried to explain how the concept of spiritual science, as it is used here in this lecture, comes about, and I pointed out that in that lecture I would like to pay less attention to the objections that may still be raised against the recognition of spiritual science in our time, particularly from the natural sciences.

Today, I would like to address these various possible and, as you will see, quite understandable objections. The day before yesterday, I tried to show that the spiritual researcher does indeed come to the conclusion that the human soul can be penetrated into the spiritual world, but that this conviction develops in such a way that it is simultaneously connected with the insight that it cannot be the same soul forces, the same cognitive abilities that lead into the spiritual world and those that lead the human soul to penetrate into the sensory world and everything that belongs to it in a sensory way; that it is rather necessary for the spiritual researcher to first develop and develop out of the ordinary thinking, feeling and willing, as they and ordinary science know and control, to first develop and evolve other soul abilities and other soul events through which the soul is then enabled to carry itself alive into the spiritual world and in this way to receive something that can be called spiritual science. I have pointed out that it is first necessary to practise what is called thinking and what is called imagining in a very specific way, so that something arises out of ordinary thinking and out of ordinary imagining that is no longer the same as this ordinary thinking and imagining, but has become something different, which, above all, differs from ordinary thinking and imagining in that it experiences itself, comes to life, in order not just to rise up in images like this ordinary thinking, but to experience itself in reality. This transition of the soul's rising in images, as is the case with ordinary thinking in ordinary life and in ordinary science, this rising in images must be transformed into a living in real being. In this way, when one has attained this, one actually discovers something that the soul could not previously know, of which it could not even form a concept; for it cannot be grasped by any ordinary concepts, but must be directly experienced if it is to come to consciousness, even though it is continually present in every soul. As a result of this - I said the day before yesterday - the soul, through the strengthening of its power, through the intensification of its thinking, on the one hand, manages to lift itself out of the body, to become independent of the body and to experience itself in a reality, so that it knows: You have now stepped out of your body with your thinking.

On the other hand, I emphasized, these exercises of thinking, through which thinking frees itself from the body, must be accompanied by an exercise of the will, of the powers of the mind in general, so that the will also frees itself from the body. Then one does not enter into such a sphere of experience as through the elevation of thinking, but one comes rather to recognize that something real lives in our will current, which works through the organs of the physical organization in ordinary life, but which, when these exercises have brought the will so far, in turn lifts itself out of the physical. But now it becomes consciousness through consciousness, as the human being continually carries within himself as a different consciousness from his ordinary one, but which can only become truly inwardly vivid in this way. And then I showed: When, on the one hand, everything that is bound to the physical, such as ordinary memory, is driven out of thinking, when thinking is experienced freely in its own activity, and, on the other hand, this other consciousness is, as it were, crystallized out of the will, then the two can combine, and a new person is created in the human being, who can now know himself in the spiritual world, who can also perceive spiritually in the spiritual world - a spirit-soul being among spirit-soul beings, as the physical person is a physical being among physical facts and entities.

That was roughly what I explained in the lecture the day before yesterday. It is self-evident that the assertion of such insights in our present time must, one might say, meet with opposition from all sides. For what is being said here contradicts the habits of thought that must, quite understandably, dominate the thoughts of the vast majority of people today, and one might even say, when looking at the history of the last few centuries. In particular, there is initially a complete contradiction from the scientific side. Now the spiritual researcher does not see this contradiction, this opposition from the scientific side, as being due to human limitations or a very dry logic, but he understands very well that such opposition is possible. The spiritual researcher can, precisely because he views the world from a spiritual point of view, can fully empathize with every kind of contradiction, especially those raised from the natural science side. And above all, the opinion should not be entertained that the spiritual researcher despises the natural science point of view. On the contrary – and I have emphasized this time and again in earlier lectures here – on the contrary, the spiritual researcher acknowledges the great, the tremendous achievements for all human work and for all human knowledge that natural science has incorporated into human development over the last few centuries since the dawn of modern times. Indeed, the spiritual researcher even views his relationship to natural science in the following way. Speaking in the abstract – it could be presented here in detail, but that is probably not necessary today – speaking in the abstract, I say, one recognizes that in a certain time that which today is called natural scientific knowledge of the external material world had to arise. Anyone who delves into the history of natural science, connecting with the great names of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and so on, will realize how different what was called natural science before these names came about was from what we now call the scientific approach to the world. This scientific approach has now, over the course of three to four centuries, provided humanity with a wealth of knowledge that has had a profound and far-reaching impact on all of life. And it is easy to see, if you just take a little understanding look at this life as it has developed over the last three to four centuries, the significance that scientific achievements have for the ideal and material side of life.

Now the spiritual researcher continues: We are now living in a time when the human soul must be able to look into the spiritual life in a similar way to the way people were able to look into the processes and entities of the purely natural three to four centuries ago. Spiritual science would like to penetrate into the spiritual realm in the same way that natural science has penetrated into the realm of nature in recent centuries, in the same way of seeking truth, in the same spirit of research. And one can say: spiritual science shares this conviction with many personalities, but in such a way that precisely with many personalities, who also understand the tremendous turnaround brought about by the scientific approach, this relationship between spiritual contemplation and natural science is viewed differently than the spiritual researcher must view it. Thus, for example, one can see how philosophy, which also wants to penetrate into the spiritual realm through the same conceptual world - not through the spiritual-scientific conceptual world of which I spoke the day before yesterday, but through the conceptual world that is applied in ordinary life and in ordinary science -, which wants to penetrate into the spiritual realm through this conceptual world , this philosophy has often been forced in modern times, under the influence, I might say, of the splendor of natural scientific observations, to take the path of simply taking the truths that the natural scientist has discovered about the essences of nature and the facts of nature. And then, through all kinds of conceptual connections, through reflection on what natural science has discovered, one tried to penetrate more deeply into the essence of the phenomena. One felt, as it were, no longer as philosophically sovereign as before in the face of nature and the world; one felt that one had to reckon with the findings of natural science. The peculiarity of many personalities who wanted to appreciate the scientific way of looking at things in this way lies in the fact that these personalities say to themselves: one must accept the results of natural research; one must simply process philosophically what natural research reveals about nature and its events. Then one will recognize that which can be fathomed more deeply about the world.

The spiritual researcher does not say this directly. Rather, the spiritual researcher is fully aware that, although science has not yet fathomed every mystery in its field, and that much remains to be done before the scientific approach has reached its ideal, the spiritual researcher is also aware that the scientific methods as such have developed, at least up to a certain scientific attitude, in such a way that natural science itself has provided information about what can be deduced from nature, and that further reflection, following on from natural science with the same means of thought that natural science also applies, can lead to nothing more. Natural science is, as it were, something that is so constituted that, as it develops, it leads to a totality, not to something that could be taken and philosophically expounded upon. It is not by taking the results of natural science, combining them and speculating on them that spiritual research intends to proceed, but spiritual research stands in a different relation to natural science. Spiritual research says to itself: Because of the fact that the transition has been made, we say, through Copernicus, through Kepler, through Galileo, with a special way of looking at nature, the soul forces have also entered into a special relationship with natural events. Under the influence of this newer natural science, the human spirit had to relate to nature in a completely different way than it did before. This has given rise to completely different methods of thinking. A completely different kind of relationship to nature has arisen. In the last three to four centuries, people have thought and felt differently about nature than they did before. And by directing the powers of the soul towards nature in a different way, humanity has, so to speak, inwardly exercised these soul powers. The soul forces themselves have thereby carried out a different inner activity than they did before.

Spiritual research does not take the starting point of taking the facts of natural science directly, but it builds on what the soul forces themselves have acquired over the centuries through a different exercise of the soul forces. A person who has gone through the process of scientific thinking, through physics, chemistry, biology and physiology, thinks differently from someone who has not gone through these sciences as they have developed in modern times, because they have acquired the methods and forms of thought of these sciences. Spiritual research first looks at the way in which thinking has been practiced in recent times. And spiritual research becomes clear about this: the way in which thinking is practiced must gradually lead, through what is experienced in this exercise, to what was described the day before yesterday as a special exercise of thinking and will. Thus it is not what has been investigated by natural science that is placed in a relationship by the spiritual researcher to spiritual research, but rather what inner consciousness of these activities one has acquired, that is what is particularly emphasized; how one has learned to think differently, how one has learned to feel differently in nature, how the soul forces have been stimulated. And then the spiritual researcher says: This stimulation is just the beginning of a path; because if you follow it up - he himself has led to what was described here the day before yesterday - you can see from it that you are really led to grasp something in the soul through the exercise of thinking, feeling and willing, which can detach itself from the physical organization.

In this context, dear attendees, it is important to note that the spiritual researcher must, in a certain respect, actually be a true believer in the scientific way of seeking truth and knowledge. And this is also the case with the one who has recognized the true nerve of spiritual research; he sees what it actually means for the spiritual development of the world that such profound and exact scientific methods have emerged in the course of recent times, methods that are so suitable to eliminate all that may be illusion about the world, all that may be fantasy about the world, simply by developing a certain sense of fact, which can only lead to spiritual research if a sense of fact becomes a fact [fanaticism]. That inner discipline of the soul that humanity has been able to acquire by bringing thinking so close to the external objective course of facts, this inner discipline of the soul is highly recognized by spiritual research as something exemplary. For in this way something enters into the whole structure of thinking by which the soul says to itself: You must not follow as truth that which lives subjectively in you, that which you would like to believe to be true, that which you like; you must refrain from all that which speaks in you out of your liking, out of your sympathy, out of your affections: you must let purely the world of facts itself speak for itself. In particular, by moving from mere observation in natural science to experiments - whereby nature expresses its secrets in compiled facts and one is only a spectator - in particular, by doing so, humanity, which has gradually absorbed the scientific attitude into its world view, has earned a certain respect for the fact - and, connected with that, for the inner discipline of truth-seeking.

However, this is very often opposed by those who do not enter into spiritual research with a thorough knowledge of the soul, but who engage in such spiritual research with dilettantism and superficiality. And the disaster, I would say, in relation to the assessment of spiritual research, can arise in particular from the fact that those who want to form an opinion do not form it according to what true spiritual research has to give, but form it according to what all kinds of spiritual research dilettantes offer the world. It is very often the case, however, that a certain contempt for scientific methods and also for scientific results comes to light in these presentations. This contempt is usually in direct proportion to what is actually not known about this science. The true spiritual researcher will always take the trouble to discipline himself in the good discipline of truth and research of the scientific way of knowing. And often the contempt for the scientific way of thinking is enormous, especially among those who have never actually learned anything useful from science.

What I have just said in this sentence need not be said, dear attendees, if practical life does not show that very often one does not approach what is serious spiritual knowledge that measures itself against natural science, but that one adheres to all the excesses of spiritual-scientific dilettantism, which suffers from the mistake I have just described. If misunderstandings arise, they are very often not the fault of those who indulge in such misunderstandings about spiritual research, but in the vast majority of cases they are the fault of those who glorify spiritual research dilettantism and give the world a miserable image of all kinds of talk. The only guilt that lies with those who call this talk nonsense, fantasy and reverie, is that they allow themselves to be convinced by this amateur spiritual science and disdain or find it too inconvenient to approach real spiritual research. But that's it.

Understandably, misunderstandings arise from many, many other things as well. I would now like to point out a misunderstanding that is bound to arise in a perfectly understandable way. As we saw the day before yesterday, the spiritual researcher has to speak of how, through what he does with his own soul, the soul powers are changed, that a different kind of soul activity from that of ordinary life and ordinary science occurs in his soul. And so someone who is grounded in natural science must say to himself: Well, if a different soul life can be distinguished from the soul life that we can call normal — we are familiar with that; these are all the abnormal phenomena of the soul, which are known under the most diverse names, and which can only be distinguished by the self-deception that the spiritual researcher arbitrarily wants to bring about with his own soul. Then the naturalist shows us how certain soul processes of normal life are closely bound to a normal brain; he shows us, by the very sure and conscientious scientific method, how spiritual processes cease when certain parts of the brain are switched off, and he shows us how spiritual processes, how the whole soul life, the whole soul mood, can be changed by a physical change. The natural scientist can then reply to the spiritual researcher: Yes, is nothing more achieved by those strange exercises, which you speak of as a strange enthusiast, than a change in the physical organization, albeit one that cannot be proven externally or anatomically? And is not, after all, what you call spiritual research methods with other soul powers nothing more than a special kind of disorder of the soul life in general?

I would like to emphasize, dear attendees, that it is a perfectly possible view from the point of view of someone who is firmly grounded in natural science, if they do not know exactly the spiritual scientific methods. It is a perfectly possible view, which expresses itself in this way, and in particular it is a possible view when one then looks from the natural scientific point of view at the nature of the soul forces, which many who now also call themselves spiritual researchers have, and who possess the opposite of what can indeed be described as a healthy soul life. Now the natural scientist also repeatedly points out something to us that I would say is trivial, but which is no less striking when viewed from the perspective of the scientific way of thinking. It is striking when one wants to refute the observation of particular, completely free forces and experiences of the soul that go through births and deaths. The natural scientist says, precisely on the basis not of mere prejudice but on the basis of careful observations by physiological science, the natural scientist says: One can see how physical life develops slowly from childhood on, and how the development of soul life goes parallel with physical development. One really sees how closely bound the soul life is to the bodily life. One then sees how the body must have attained a certain formative maturity at a certain age in order for the soul life to develop in a way that can be described as normal. And again, one sees how, with the decline of physical strength in old age, with the demise of the organs, the spiritual-soul life recedes. And objections to an independent spiritual and mental life have repeatedly arisen in the course of the nineteenth century, which - I would say - were based on this ground.

Now the spiritual researcher is by no means opposed to the natural scientist in this field, but on the contrary, with regard to the positive statements of the natural scientist, the spiritual researcher fully agrees with him. The spiritual researcher says: Yes, if one looks at the thinking, feeling and willing that is taken for granted in ordinary life and in ordinary science, then what physiology has to say is fully justified; for this thinking, feeling and willing is closely bound in this form to the physical organization of the body. But the true spiritual researcher does not stand on the ground that, for example, by merely observing ordinary thinking, feeling and willing - as it presents itself in everyday life and in ordinary science - one can thereby arrive scientifically at the immortality of the human soul. Rather, the true spiritual researcher says to the natural scientist: You are quite right when you claim that the forms of thinking, feeling and willing that reveal themselves in ordinary life and in ordinary science are bound to the physical-bodily organization, that they are so bound to the physical-bodily organization that they could not and should not be thought of at all without this physical-bodily organization. But it is precisely through the spiritual research method that it can be seen that there is something in this thinking, feeling and willing: the thinking of which I spoke the day before yesterday, or rather the thinking activity and that being that is contained in the stream of will, that they are so intrinsic that they cannot be grasped by the consciousness of ordinary science and ordinary life, and that they are what preceded our present life on earth in the spiritual world and will follow our death in the spiritual world. What is eternal in the human soul must first be sought. And it cannot be sought if one stops at ordinary thinking, feeling and willing. So says the spiritual researcher. If today there could even be any philosophical worldviews that believe they can contradict science by looking at ordinary thinking, feeling and willing and mentally deriving all kinds of things from this thinking, feeling and willing - they could contradict by saying: If you look at this thinking, feeling and willing through the usual scientific method, you can see something that reaches beyond death. When philosophers speak like this, the spiritual researcher says: No, these judgments will increasingly disappear from the world. Rather, with what is indicated here, the natural scientist will be proven right more and more. And that is why spiritual research is actually in complete harmony with the justified results of the scientific way of thinking in this field.

But now natural science is making progress and says, for example: Yes, but if you develop your thinking through spiritual research, if you say that this thinking can be brought to life in a completely different way through such exercises as those mentioned the day before yesterday, then it experiences something that it has not experienced before. If you say that, then you are actually deluding yourself; for you do not know how much unconsciousness there is in the life of the soul, how much dependence there is in the life of the soul on mere – well, let us say, if we speak in terms of more recent natural science - nerve dispositions, bodily dispositions, and how much has entered into these nerve dispositions without the consciousness noticing, but which now comes up when - as the natural scientist might easily think - one maltreats one's thinking as described the day before yesterday. So that the natural scientist says: Yes, the spiritual scientist is deluding himself, he is creating a pure illusion. While he believes he is finding something that leads him out of his body, something that is independent of his body, he is only bringing unconscious dispositions, the numerous unconscious mental dispositions, into his consciousness, and he actually has only life and perception processes, and naively believes that by bringing up his unconscious soul life, he has something new that leads him out of the whole sensory world and into a spiritual world, while in truth he is only immersed in the bodily life that he has otherwise not known.

As long as one is confronted with what one can grasp in thinking, feeling and willing in ordinary life and in ordinary science, this objection on the part of science is completely understandable. It is also entirely appropriate to the facts. It is so appropriate to the facts that, even today, because spiritual science, as it really is, has not yet found much entrance, it is still the case in very many instances that some person believes that through special soul exercises he has recognized something that goes far beyond the sense world, that is rooted in the spiritual world , while he brings forth nothing but the bodily dispositions that would otherwise remain unconscious, all kinds of illusions that arise, which he does not recognize only because he does not have an overview of his soul life, all kinds of things that are transformed from bodily dispositions into hallucinations and the like. It must be all the more understandable that the natural scientist, who strictly adheres to the facts, also looks at spiritual scientific research in this way, because amateur spiritual scientific research is often nothing more than what the natural scientist quite rightly criticizes.

On the other hand, however, it must be said, dear attendees, that by developing thinking as it was presented the day before yesterday, by taking thinking so far that it does indeed come to a point where it shows itself to be something very different from what it was before, that the spiritual researcher is just learning to recognize what comes up from the subconscious, that he is learning to distinguish, to carefully distinguish, everything that comes up from the physical body. That which does not come from the physical body, but which has an effect from a spiritual world, can only be acquired through experience.

But this distinction is acquired through differentiation. And precisely because one becomes familiar with this distinction, for everything that is not investigated through the right path of developing thinking out of the spiritual world, one must basically agree with the natural scientist. Dearly beloved, there is a great difference between what can be regarded as a morbid, abnormal manifestation of consciousness and what the true spiritual researcher attains in order to enter the spiritual world. And this must be emphasized, because the right method of spiritual research, as you will find it indicated in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in the second part of my “Occult Science”, because this right method of spiritual research actually leads to the result that it does not present itself as a change in the ordinary life of the soul, but leads to the new life of the soul, which is now attained through the altered soul forces, taking its place beside the earlier life of the soul in such a way that both are embraced and comprehended by the full consciousness of the human being. Indeed, one could even say that an incomplete consciousness has been achieved in spiritual research if the ordinary consciousness merely changes, if it becomes different, so to speak. The right thing has been achieved when this ordinary consciousness in man remains in such a way that he now also develops the ordinary logic that he had developed before, that he is just as reasonable as he was before, that he further develops and oversees the same impulses of will as he actually is as a simple, straightforward, reasonable person in ordinary life; and in addition to that - but alongside it - has the consciousness through which he can see into the spiritual world. If you compare what is achieved through the correct methods of spiritual research with what arises from a morbid mental life, you can say to yourself: In the case of a diseased soul life, it can be seen everywhere that the abnormal state of consciousness takes the place of the normal one and develops out of it. You cannot imagine that a person who has become a little foolish can at the same time, while being foolish, understand and practise his normal human state. You cannot be insane and rational at the same time. That is the essential feature of the pathologically altered consciousness: it develops out of the ordinary normal state, and when the pathologically altered consciousness is there, the normal consciousness must have gone away. Of course, the normal state can return, naturally; but at the same time, in the trivial sense, they cannot be simultaneous. But the consciousness that the spiritual researcher develops in the way described the day before yesterday must be completely identical to the normal consciousness, so that the spiritual researcher is confronted with what he was before, just as the ordinary person is confronted with an external object; that is to say, what one is as an ordinary normal person, one sees through the attained consciousness of spiritual research as something that one can look at, just as one looks at an external object with ordinary sense consciousness. One has become an object to oneself with one's ordinary organization. But this object continues to function; it remains completely intact. [...] And anyone who applies the methods described in the books in the right way and right style will achieve nothing other than to do the same with the newly acquired consciousness.

But there is one thing in particular that must be considered, dear attendees, which, I would say, is of particular importance for the beginner in the methods of spiritual research. It is of particular importance that the beginner does not allow himself to be tempted to change his ordinary life immediately, to transfer it immediately to a different one - something that can very often correspond to a person's inclinations. Rather, it is necessary and good, at least advantageous, for the beginner in spiritual research, in the performance of the life, in the reasonable conduct of life, which he has previously pursued from his education or from other circumstances, remains as far as possible, and that which he wants to develop as a spiritual consciousness, really develops alongside. Otherwise, a kind of bondage must usually befall the person. Certainly, esteemed attendees, one really does not have to go so far as to grow long hair in order to become a spiritual researcher, or, if one is a lady, to cut one's hair very short or to seek to remove oneself from ordinary life by other extravagances; one does not have to take it that far. But even if you do not go that far, you can still have the belief that if you are to become a spiritual researcher, you have to step out of the ordinary routines of life, create some kind of colony where you live in completely new circumstances, and you even have to arrange these living conditions in a certain way. This will not be particularly beneficial for the beginner in spiritual research, because it encourages the mistake of introducing the previous way of life into another, and one does not have the advantage of having the previous way of life alongside, like an object to hold on to.

So one can say: The objection from the point of view of the natural sciences, the objection of thorough, careful physiological science, that the consciousness of spiritual research could also be based only on illusions or the like, one can fully understand it. But it does not apply if the consciousness of spiritual research is developed in the right way. And here it will also be of particular advantage if the spiritual researcher is not, I might say, partly too proud or too lazy to get involved in what natural science now gives, not only in theories but also in practical instructions, in order not to lead the soul life into all kinds of extravagances. And one can even say: the more spirit-scientific education strives to apply the beautiful, the careful results of justified natural scientific practice, the better it will be for this spirit-scientific education. What spiritual research strives for - precisely because it strives into the realm where mere natural science can never enter - that which spiritual research will always carry with it will be: complete respect for the legitimate claims of natural science itself and of that which arises for life from natural science. That will have to be striven for between the two, which can be described as complete harmony. And for someone who, I might say, is familiar with the nature of the soul behavior in healthy natural science on the one hand and in healthy spiritual research on the other, it is only now that complete harmony is revealed. But he will also realize that, seen from one side or the other, objections and antagonism can arise in a completely understandable way. Opposition also arises from the side of one-sided spiritual science, which believes it can fight natural science without knowing its actual core. So, for example, one hears - of course I do not blame it when someone who knows the scientific methods speaks of an unjustified materialism - and knows how a one-sided criticism of spiritual science is directed from these scientific methods. And indeed, we see that many who want to be scholars of the humanities speak about the materialism of the natural sciences from one or other point of view, from a point of view that they consider “sublime”, and believe that, without knowing what the natural sciences achieve in terms of methods and intellectual discipline, they are hitting the nail on the head when they reproach materialism in some aspect of the natural sciences. Natural science has developed its methods over the centuries and has developed these methods by not exceeding its limits. It has developed these methods by strictly adhering to material processes.

However, this has also led many to believe [- and this is the other side -] that what they had been working on, the “be-all and end-all” of all existence, was matter, which had to be adhered to in order to explore natural facts. Matter finally became an adored god; it entered the human field of vision so completely and so stunningly that they were led away from everything spiritual. But natural science itself, when working in its field, must adhere to material facts. It acquires its objectivity precisely by adhering to material facts, and it can be said that a materialism has legitimately found its way into scientific methods. If it is only applied as far as one wants to observe nature, then one even has to respect this materialism, then one has to have the greatest respect for it. For only by not speculating in a confused way about everything that is not the result of material processes, but by adhering to what observation of processes or experiment reveals, only by proceeding scientifically, can we bring to light the great achievements of scientific facts, which can then also be applied to practical life. And what this materialistic method of natural science has brought in particular in terms of soul discipline, what it has brought above all in terms of soulful devotion to the happenings, to the events of the world, to the essence of nature, must also be exemplary in spiritual research.

Spiritual research is now very likely to evoke not only justified objections against itself, but also, I might say, justified prejudices. This comes about in the following way. The natural scientist, because he has to adhere to the facts of material events with a certain healthy materialistic method, very easily comes to regard the spiritual completely as something that is either not there at all, or at least cannot be recognized. And so science gradually becomes not what it could be – I would say: an external revelation of profound inner facts of spiritual life itself – but science becomes something that is only pursued in such a way that one gets stuck in material life. Then this theoretical standstill in the material world is very easily transferred to practical life; and the consequence may be that one actually comes to the conclusion that all spiritual has no value after all or at least cannot be recognized; that science is a guide for human benefit. So that science has in many cases become a mere servant of social and also of individual egoism in the course of time, that it has entered into the service of egoism, that instead of seeking truth like a goddess in science, in many cases only that which can serve material human development in one field or another is sought. Those who see this material development of humanity as the only one that matters must, if they are consistent, also view the science of nature in such a way that all knowledge gained from nature ultimately finds an application in the material progress that humanity is undergoing. Yes, one can see how - I would like to say - a scientific direction that serves practical, purely material interests appears threateningly before the soul's eye. Man is very easily inclined, when he devotes himself to natural scientific methods without feeling and sensation for the reality of the spirit, man is very easily inclined to then respect only the material, the material use at all.

A similar mistake, albeit, I would say, in a certain respect, the opposite, can easily arise when one engages in spiritual research in a similarly incorrect way. That which is externally researched in the field of matter can easily be seen as being placed solely in the service of man's material progress. That which is investigated by spiritual research can easily serve the immature soul, which is less concerned with truth than with its preference, its sympathy, the satisfaction of certain desires and longings. It can easily serve the soul to promote a certain inner complacency, a certain inner vanity. And so it happens that just as utilitarians – those who want to apply science only to material processes – are becoming very common in the field of external materialistic science, so very often in the field of spiritual research or the life that spiritual research wants to bring, one sees a mirroring in the vanity, in all possible delusions of the human soul, because one does not proceed by seeking to bring the soul to the truth, but takes what spiritual research gives in such a way that one takes pleasure in it, that one feels, so to speak, uplifted in one's soul powers and in one's vanity, especially through what spiritual research has to give.

Just as natural science can very easily lead to materialism when a person becomes accustomed to its material aspects, so spiritual research can lead to all kinds of enthusiasm and to a complete detachment from the external rationality of life if a person does not want to follow the path of truth but instead wants to devote himself to what seems plausible to him according to his subjective needs and desires. Natural science deals with nature – this can easily lead to material things; spiritual science deals with the human being and his soul. As a result, it is particularly easy for a person to take himself very seriously, I would even say out of pleasure, out of pleasure from his soul. And by feeling, “You belong to the spiritual with your soul,” he repeats this to himself again and again, and it is not only the case that the great, all-encompassing truth of repeated earthly lives easily leads such voluptuaries of the soul that they then endeavor above all to brood over whether they themselves could actually have been Alexander or Caesar or Marie-Antoinette or someone else in historical life, or are still searching somewhere else in previous earthly lives. But I will not speak of such aberrations myself. Fanaticism - I would say - inner need, being connected in vanity with the spiritual life, that characterizes very many as not standing on the ground of truth in spiritual science, but standing on the ground of vanity and fanaticism, on that ground on which one is detached from the complete connection with life. True spiritual science does not lead away from this ground of true life, but on the contrary, it leads closer to life. Those who have no inclination to take life with full interest, with full seriousness, but to a certain extent in their soul are inclined to a kind of soul vagabondage, can easily come to even more triviality, to a casual attitude towards life, by being immersed in spiritual science. And very many who cannot bring themselves to fulfill something sensible in life through their hands, through proper diligence, you see them talking about a higher mission that has been given to them from the spiritual world and that they have to fulfill above all things. Speaking in truth, one would often have to say: laziness and carelessness in life appears translated into a strange language as a spiritual mission. Then one can no longer be surprised, dear audience, when those who are accustomed to inner soul discipline, which follows from the scientific world view, look with a certain contempt at those who now, in turn, despise science and often look down on life itself and talk about all kinds of spiritual stuff just because they don't want to understand life scientifically and don't want to apply themselves to ordinary life with the appropriate diligence, seriousness and attention.

But the moment you see through these things, when you see the nerve of spiritual science, its legitimate lifeblood, you find a complete harmony between natural science and spiritual science. One will find that the spiritual scientist, in every moment, finds that which natural science has to offer positively, right up to its justified materialistic method, completely justified and admits that by admitting this, he simultaneously shows how one can enter the spiritual world with soul abilities other than those justified in natural science and in outer life, in order to truly explore them.

Misunderstandings regarding spiritual research will not be dispelled unless people become more and more familiar with what is actually active and alive in spiritual research and how that which lives and is active in spiritual research must, through an inner necessity in the development of humanity, be carried into the spiritual impulses of humanity from now on, just as scientific thinking has been carried into them for three to four centuries. Therefore, one need not be surprised if this harmony between natural science and spiritual science cannot yet be found everywhere. On the contrary, it must be fully understood when spiritual research is simply taken by many as a fantasy. And those who are firm in spiritual science, who are thoroughly grounded in it, will find this misunderstanding to be something quite understandable. Of course, this does not exclude the need to seek to clear up the misunderstandings and to establish harmony between knowledge of nature and knowledge of the spirit.

And also in the external, dear attendees — what can come into the world through spiritual science, it is indeed little, relatively little —, and also in the external, misunderstandings are bound to arise and are basically understandable. In this regard, I would like to say a few words again today – I already tried to do so from this same place last winter – about the external symbol of spiritual scientific research, the Dornach building, which has not yet been completed. It is understandable, completely understandable, that this Dornach building is still met with many, many misunderstandings today. Because basically, It is just as true that it is based on purely artistic principles and not on anything symbolic or similar as it is true that it enters the world in such a way that it basically presents itself as something quite different from what we have been accustomed to seeing as a building or as an artistic presentation. In many respects, it contradicts the habits of feeling of previous artistic views in the same way that spiritual science contradicts and must contradict the habits of thinking of previous scientific views. Why is this the case? Yes, dearest ones present, as was shown the day before yesterday, spiritual science, in accordance with its methods, leads to a different way of thinking, or rather, to a transformation of thinking, leading to such an activity of the soul that arises from thinking, which lives much more in reality than the ordinary pictorial thinking, which wants to give nothing other than a reproduction of external reality. While ordinary thinking must see its value precisely in the fact that the ideas it awakens are faithful replicas of an external reality, nothing directly experienced itself, but only something relived from external reality, that which develops from thinking through the spiritual research method must be something that the soul experiences directly. The soul should not have to rise into an image, but into real life, into the objective thought-being of the world. And so it is also with what develops out of the will. But through this, the soul also comes to immerse itself more in what otherwise emerges instinctively as the artistic, as the stylistic, as the artistic formation - in which it can immerse itself even more. That is the essential thing in the soul's activities that come to light through spiritual research, that the soul becomes more immersed in spiritual reality. And by becoming immersed in spiritual reality, it also immerses itself differently in the world of forms, in the world of shaping. But through this it is led not to replace art with something other than art, but to approach art in a different way. While the other art must start from what presents itself to the senses, and what presents itself to the senses can be elevated into the spiritual, so that art appears as something elevated out of the sensory world, into which is poured that to which one has ascended in a spiritual quest. What can be called 'the artistic being grasped by spiritual science' is something that takes the opposite path to the external sensory reality. The human being is first within the spiritual. He lives vividly the weaving and living of spiritual events, he faces the spirit as spirit. And when now the possibility of artistic activity is present in him, when art is to come into being, then the sensuous element is not led upwards until one can give it the splendor of the spiritual, as it happens in other art, as it has happened in art up to now, but the spiritual is led down into the material.

This, above all, is the essential thing that should be striven for in the architecture of the Dornach building, for example. The first question that arose was: What has to happen here? And in the light of this thought, the question was not: how to create a building out of the previous architectural style, out of what is otherwise common practice or can be learned in architecture. Instead, a completely different question arose, a question – I would say – whose practical answer shows how one must stand with spiritual science in the immediate reality quite differently than with ordinary logical or soul-life activities.

When a fruit forms a shell around itself, then that which separates itself as a shell has emerged and grown out of the same life forces as the fruit itself with its individual formations. And anyone who observes how the fruit is formed in its core and in its shell, how, for example, I might say, the core of the nut forms the shell around it with all the fine veins, with all that arises from the same forces, how the core itself arises in its individual structures, anyone who observes this says to themselves: the nutshell comes from the same forces as the core itself. This nutshell is not formed in such a way that one could somehow have conceived a style to give a shell around the nut; the whole is one. So what is done in the Dornach building had to become one: the forces that will prevail in what will be presentations, representations from the spiritual scientific world view, what messages will be from the spiritual world, what thoughts, ideas will be developed: all that is, so to speak, the core life. But the same forces that prevail in this core life must also be used to form the shell. It must be a unity, as in every fruit of nature, the shell and the core are a unity and are formed out of the same forces. The question could never arise: Which architectural style can be applied here? Rather, the fact that a spiritual thing was to be done in the building gave the building its entire form; the two-dome form, which encompasses everything, really came about in this way. It had to be a unity.

And so, I would say, in a certain sense, the walls also had to become something other than what walls had been up to now. I have already mentioned this here. But it is significant, especially for grasping the peculiar art that is to be developed there—still quite primitive in the beginning—that this be taken into account. Walls, even those that are artistically designed – and especially these – have signified closure in art to date. Even in Greek architectural works of art, walls signify closure; they close off the outer world.

Spiritual science should lead spiritually into all expanses through what it is. Therefore, forms must be created on the walls, as sculptures and the like, which - I would like to say - cause the walls to destroy themselves when looking at the forms, so that one has the feeling: by living in the building and directing one's gaze to the forms, one has something in the forms that leads out into the world.

And yet, in context, one had to be with all of reality. Therefore, such window artworks, as they have existed in the past or still exist today, could not be created from the old art of windows, but rather a kind of window etching, if one may call it that, was used. Different glass panels, different colors, but each one in a single color. The figurative is now worked into this, and it is worked in in such a way that only thickening and thinning achieve what is artistically intended. And then the sunlight shining in will interact with this, that is, that which works and weaves in nature itself, to make art complete. There, nature and art will intertwine into a single work of art.

And so new approaches had to be taken in the most diverse ways. In painting, which will fill the domes, the aim was to treat the colors in a very specific way.

Dear attendees, I can of course only touch on these things in a very fragmentary way. Precisely for that which is important in the treatment of colors for the figurative, something should be attempted that is not usually attempted with color. One should try to experience color directly. Everything that the soul engages in through spiritual research should be experienced inwardly there. The color should not be just a surface that reveals something that is underneath, but the color should have an inner life and develop this inner life itself; so that from the corresponding color and color composition, life itself arises; so that one looks at the pictorial work of art in such a way that one has the feeling directly in the interaction of the colored and that which lives from the color into the form: You live in what is alive in the color, what is alive in the color lives in you. You grasp reality in the color, not through the color, but through the reality behind the color. Colors should express themselves, forms should express themselves – not something through colors, not something through forms. For this is precisely what leads to life with the spiritual world, the colors and forms, when they are to be depicted pictorially, to depict them only as we really have them artistically in every moment, that one does not immediately stick to some model, but that one brings what life and weaving is in the spiritual fact and in the spiritual essence into the weaving of the colors and into the life of the forms, which one then brings onto the surface. And this other had to be striven for, for the reason that the whole of the structure, like the shell, which results from the same forces, should be like spiritual science itself. There had to be a departure, for example, from the principle of placing columns, each of which is always the same as the one before, columns with capitals that are all the same. A certain development had to be followed from the first pair of columns with their capitals to the second and so on. This results in an inner design, an inner development, as nature itself does, by developing the other tones, the second, third and so on from the fundamental, from the prime. And just as it is not superstition, just as it is not some kind of mystic madness, when one sees seven tones in the scale and in the eighth tone the repetition of the fundamental, so it is not something mystically mysterious when one seeks to find a progression in the inner motives of the capitals, and thereby a sevenfold number of columns is quite automatically brought out, because one is standing inside the creation of the world with the spiritual, just as the creative element in nature lives inside the creation itself. Thus a parallelism emerges between what is present in nature in a primitive form, such as the seven tones, the seven colors in the rainbow, and what occurs in the spiritual realm. The strange thing is that it could happen that people looked at this building in Dornach and thought that seven columns had been chosen here out of some superstition about the number seven. These same people might say: What a grotesque superstition it is that the rainbow has seven colors or that the musical scale has seven tones! - It would be the same logic, the one as the other. The one as the other is required by the nature of the facts.

If someone comes and says: Well, yes, with what is there at the construction, one would like to come to an agreement. But that you do such superstitious things or do such mystical things as seven pillars, and made of seven different woods at that - where again only the artistic, which is connected with the differentiation in the wood, is actually meant - anyone who speaks like that is like someone who says: I don't understand why every string on a violin has to be different; they could all be the same and so on, and so on. It is a matter of recognizing that what leads from spiritual science to art is, so to speak, in agreement with the whole purpose of spiritual research work.

Natural science has made enormous progress in recent times. Spiritual research in particular recognizes this. But it is as if someone starts drilling a tunnel from one side – as indeed happens – and works towards it from the other side. Now, spiritual science is working towards natural science from the other side. They will meet one day. Natural science works conscientiously where it is actually working properly. It comes [up], I would say, to the point where life is to be grasped. The materialist therefore denies life altogether as a special element. He sees life only as a combination of the other forces of nature. Natural science works from the bottom up to life. Spiritual science works consciously against natural science, and in its own way comes to have this consciousness not only as such consciousness, as it is in ordinary human life, but to expand this consciousness to the point where reality is grasped in consciousness. While science cannot grasp life, the spiritual researcher often cannot grasp reality in consciousness. But both work towards each other in order to grasp the life that natural science is working towards with a different consciousness that is developed out of the ordinary human consciousness. The two work towards not only harmony but also the inner interpenetration of life and consciousness: spiritual research and natural science. And if we look at it this way, we also see in the art that begins today, and which works from the other side than the other art, something that meets this other art.

What cannot be understood, however, is how people can enter the lecture hall in Dornach and say: “Everything inside is mysterious, full of symbols, full of special signs.” There is not a single sign, not a single symbol inside. Rather, an attempt has been made to answer the question, “How should the thought be if it were to flow into artistic forms?” The nonsense that is otherwise often indulged in, let us say, in theosophical circles, the search for all kinds of mysterious signs, to which everything imaginable is attached and in which something artistic or an artistic surrogate is sought – all that has been avoided in this building. And everything is dissolved into artistry. That is precisely what has been attempted. Nowhere should the mere thought be effective. And this could happen all the more since the thought, which otherwise seeks the allegorical, the symbolic, when it strives out of sensual reality, cannot, after all, get out of the pictorial, the unreal, the merely conceptual. When this thought often seeks the symbolic, the allegorical – the living thought that becomes one with the [gap in the transcript], it can express itself directly in art, so that art in forms, in colors and so on, lives out in external reality. That which was to be depicted [in this building] was not depicted in all kinds of artistic surrogates such as allegories and symbols and the like. It is therefore surprising when people look at the things and, although they cannot see a single symbol, talk about all kinds of mysteries, all sorts of signs and the like that can be seen in this Dornach building.

But there is no need to be particularly surprised at these things, when it can even be said that what has been characterized here as spiritual science has something to do with the citation of the dead. If this can be said in all seriousness, as it has been, then the other can also be said, and can be said all the more easily.

If we really look at the work of the natural sciences on the one hand and the humanities on the other, we will find how the two work into each other, how the two work quite contrary to each other, and then the misunderstandings will disappear. Yes, dear attendees, they will disappear as they have disappeared in another area. I have already pointed this out. Today, there are still many who believe that they are standing on the firm ground of natural science and that they must object to spiritual science in this or that way. We have seen how this is understandable. Exactly the same applies when we look at the matter in the right way, which emerged when people had to get used to the fact that the earth does not stand still in space, but moves at a tremendous speed, that the movement of the heavenly bodies or even the standing still of the sun cannot be explained as it was in the past, but in the Copernican way. At that time, the new natural scientific world view contradicted the habits of thought. And people, especially those of a religious persuasion, believed that they had many, many objections to raise against this newer scientific way of thinking. It was even believed that religion was endangered by this newer natural science. As a result of this newer scientific way of thinking, with which science was intimately connected over the centuries, many things have changed. Those who today engage with the objections raised against Copernicanism and Galileo in the past find it historically interesting, but today it no longer makes any particular impression. The habits of thought have changed. What was once vigorously opposed is now taken for granted by many. And the following example, which I already mentioned here in a lecture last winter, can be repeatedly brought before our souls.

At a university in the nineties, a priest gave a lecture about Galileo; he gave this lecture about Galileo as a rectorate speech. He gave an excellent lecture about Galileo, despite the fact that he took up the rectorate of his university as a theologian. He did not speak about a theological topic, but he spoke as a Christian, as a true Christian about Galileo. And he pointed out at the time that times had changed so much that one could say: back in the days of Galileo, there were many who believed that Galileo's findings were somehow endangering religion or Christianity; that what people had previously known was somehow being endangered. But now, said this priest, we have come to the point where we have realized that No kind of scientific progress could ever really endanger religion, but on the contrary, the more is discovered of the glory of creation, the more one will learn to admire that which lives as divine in the world.

Habits of thought have changed, and this is particularly evident in such an occurrence as the one mentioned. There will also come a time when people will realize that neither any other Christian principle nor the principle of redemption is in any way endangered by what spiritual research has to discover about repeated earthly lives and the like, just as people have learned to see that Copernicanism cannot endanger Christianity. On the contrary, one must say: How fainthearted are those who think that the tremendous power that lives in Christianity could be endangered by anything that is discovered, be it in the field of natural science or in the field of the spirit. No, esteemed attendees, those who are spiritual researchers do not have such little faith in the religious, in the Christian, but they have the strong awareness that in Christianity, in the greatest impulse of earthly existence, lives that which, through no discovery in the field of nature or in the field of intellectual life, could ever be weakened in its power, but that everything that can ever be investigated in the field of the intellect will be there [precisely to reinforce] that which, as the greatest impulse on earth, lives and reigns in religious life.

And so it was that at the time when the Catholic priest gave his rectorate speech about Galileo, something very strange happened.

At the same university there was a pure scientist, a naturalist who had been particularly concerned with criminal anthropology, with anthropology in general, a naturalist who was not a Darwinist but who stood firmly on the ground of fact-finding research and who has strictly adhered to this ground to this day. Just at the time when the Christian professor took up his post as rector and spoke in honor of Galileo, the natural scientist was working on a “science of the soul.” And lo and behold: the natural scientist dedicated his work on the soul to the Christian priest who stood up for Galileo. The natural scientist, who is not even a Christian by confession or descent, dedicated a work to the Christian priest that is now, as a science of the soul, entirely grounded in physiology and natural science, as a token of gratitude, so to speak, for the fact that the one who stood on the ground of spiritual life as a priest and as a Christian found the way over to an objective consideration of the natural thinker Galileo. In this way, harmony between spiritual science and natural science, between life in the spirit and life in natural scientific knowledge, has emerged in a particular example! The time will come when the goal of spiritual striving in all fields will no longer be seen as a struggle but as harmony, and that will be the time when the misunderstandings regarding spiritual research will also disappear. Today, such misunderstandings are just as understandable when they arise in the religious field or in the field of natural science as the objections to Copernicanism were understandable in their time. But people will realize more and more that this goal is not some distant, nebulous ideal, but something that can and must be striven for in the immediate future. It is remarkable how, I might say, natural science unconsciously approaches spiritual research. Only a very superficial example will be given at the end.

Anyone who delves into Haeckel's various writings will find in Haeckel a human being who, in his “Welträtsel” (World Mysteries), even went so far as to vilify and insult what can be found through pure spiritual research. He is a human being who always emphasized that there is a “law of substance” and that this is life, which one must seek. Now he has written “Eternity Thoughts”. They are no less material than his “world puzzles”; but now he is instinctively led to something very strange. He says: He recognizes - right at the beginning of these “eternity thoughts” - he recognizes the eternity of matter, the eternity of forces and the eternity of the psychoma - the eternity of the world soul - as he translates it.

Well, dear attendees, what does Haeckel do? Does he always only talk about this: You chemist, you physicist, you should declaim: eternity of matter, eternity of forces? - No, Haeckel allows the chemist to study the individual substances, the individual relationships between substances. Does Haeckel demand that one should only declaim eternity of forces? No, the individual perceptions of forces – electricity, magnetism, and so on – are studied concretely in their mutual relationships. Only with regard to the psychom, to the soul, does Haeckel for the time being stop at saying the one word – or the three words: “eternity of the psychom”.

Spiritual science wants nothing more than to study the psychoma in detail, that which, as spiritual and soul-like, spreads in reality just like matter and forces. Those who work from their natural science will truly intensify their penetration into spiritual science, if they still have the strength for it, which Haeckel, of course, already lacks today. But something will become clear: that, dear attendees, in the future people will look at nature and let what science has to say about nature take effect on them. Today there are still many who believe that what science has to say are results that only need to be summarized, and then a worldview is formed; and that is where it must stop. Those who believe this call themselves monists and so on. But the time will come when what the natural sciences give will not be regarded as mere results, but when it will be recognized that what the natural sciences give leads to further questions, indeed only to the right questions, where every scientific book studied for the purposes and goals of knowledge will not seduce people into remaining vainly in what science gives, but will lead them to questions, to a higher need for knowledge. The time is approaching when the study of science will raise questions, not seduce people into remaining with the results of mere science. The need will arise from the study of natural science to approach the study of the spirit. Natural science will create a need in the human soul, and spiritual science will satisfy this need. Just as needs arise in the human soul and are satisfied by what the course of the world gives, so natural science and spiritual science will work together like the creation of needs and the satisfaction of needs. Natural science will provide that which organizes itself as a sensual reality and develops need; spiritual science will provide that which serves this need. Just as the plant grows out of the earth, out of the substance of the earth, leaning towards the light, having the need for light, just as the light meets it, warming and shining, the power of the sun penetrates into the plant and makes the plant's life possible in the first place as a unified, harmonious life, so in the future, the needs that develop from natural science will appear as what grows out of the soil of the earthly, and what spiritual science is able to offer will be what illuminates and warms this earthly. Matter will seek the light, the light will seek the matter. Natural science will stand by itself as a higher, more refined material. Spiritual science will be there to warm and illuminate this material world.

Thus, let me say in conclusion, natural science will become like a body, and spiritual science like a soul. Together they will form the organism of human striving for knowledge and insight in full harmony.