Freedom, Immortality and Social Life

GA 72 — 30 November 1917, Bern

6. Spiritual Scientific Findings on the Ideas of Freedom and Social-moral Life

Anyone who hears about anthroposophical spiritual science today, as it is meant in these considerations, very often forms the opinion, based on what they hear about it, that they are dealing with something that wants to insert itself into contemporary spiritual life in a sectarian or similar way. Especially since the construction of the building in Dornach near Basel was begun to cultivate this spiritual scientific direction, both this building and the whole of spiritual science have been fitted into the template — and templates are so necessary today — of a sectarian spiritual movement. And it is difficult to do anything about such prejudices. They become more and more entrenched, and I am almost tempted to say: the more you try to fight them, the more intense they become and the stronger they grow.

By way of introduction, I would just like to point out today that the foundations of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science have nothing whatsoever to do with sectarian tendencies or sectarian goals. Indeed, as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is understood here, it has not developed from any initially religious impulse, but rather stands on the standpoint that what it seeks is a necessary endeavor of our time, especially in view of the great and significant achievements of scientific thinking over the last centuries and especially in recent times.

Scientific thinking, which has achieved so much in a certain area, proves, upon closer examination, to be incapable of addressing the actual enigmatic questions of humanity concerning the realm of the spirit. It is precisely when scientific thinking achieves the most outstanding, the most significant, and the most accurate results in its field that it proves incapable of doing so. And there is a historical necessity for spiritual-scientific research to stand alongside natural science in modern times, but with the same seriousness with which natural science itself proceeds.

And so it is also the belief and endeavor of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not to interfere in any religious movement, not to interfere in any religious movement, in this or that religious conviction of this or that person; On the contrary, it will lead people who have strayed from religious life back to this religious life. But this is only a side note.

But, as I said, I would like to point out a few things in this regard by way of introduction, because, at least internally, they are not entirely unrelated to the topic of this evening.

I have often emphasized here and there that no one's religious convictions are affected by what is presented as spiritual science. How often has it been emphasized, in particular, that spiritual science does not interfere in religious movements and, above all, does not want to be and cannot be, given the current circumstances, what might be called the founding of a new religion or a new sect or the like — how often has this been emphasized! However, precisely when this is emphasized, a certain side very often raises the accusation that spiritual science has nothing to say about this or that religious impulse. And then it is criticized for not having anything to say about this or that. Whereas the silence arises precisely from the tendency not to interfere with what the representatives of religious denominations have to do in their work. One does not want to talk others into anything. And then it is easy to forge a weapon out of what is not done in order not to violate any rights. Of course, if one does the opposite, opposition is also constructed from this.

Well, I just wanted to point out that anyone who traces the origins of spiritual scientific endeavors will find that they arise in a direct line of development from the demands made by properly understood natural science itself.

However, on closer examination of precisely those assumptions that were discussed here the day before yesterday, it becomes apparent that this scientific approach, precisely because of what makes it great, must in turn be inadequate for precisely those questions that are to form the subject of today's debates, for the questions of moral and social life.

Today, we often hear from various quarters that what has made natural science great, what it has achieved, must also be made fruitful for the social or sociological perspective, made fruitful for the perspective of integrating ethical and moral ideas into human society, and so on.

Now I would like to start from something that is heard very often today. Today, people's judgment is being challenged in many different ways by the tragic, catastrophic events that have befallen the whole of humanity on earth—one can already say that today—to form an opinion about this or that which the great, deeply incisive, sad events bring. One person needs to form an opinion about this or that which the sad events bring, because of their position and profession; another will form an opinion purely out of the goodness of their heart, out of sympathy with the fate of the whole of humanity. And it is precisely from these significant, profoundly dramatic events that the need has arisen for some to form an opinion about what we can broadly call the social life of humanity, the life of humanity in human society itself.

When questions such as these arise, one very often hears the judgment: History teaches this or that. After all, history is nothing more than a list of events. How can this or that be decided under the influence of today's sad events? – one very often hears the judgment: History teaches this or that. After all, history is nothing more than a list of what people think they know about the course of social life up to the present.

For many people, history is understandably the basis on which they want to form a judgment about how events that have developed in human life up to this stage in this or that area could develop further.

Anyone who is fully involved in the events of the present day will have to admit that these events do not give many people the impression that something completely new needs to be learned from them, that in many respects it is necessary not to stick to the judgments that were made four or five years ago about the impulses of human life.

Those who are deeply involved in these events with their soul will have to form this judgment of relearning. Perhaps one of the saddest symptoms is that this judgment of relearning has not yet taken hold in broad sections of society, even though these sad events have been going on for so long, that there are still so many people today who believe that they can apply the same judgment to certain things today that they could apply four or five years ago. The signs of the times could teach us a great deal in this regard.

I would like to start by giving an example from contemporary history and then one from the broader scope of history.

Those who study contemporary history know that so-called reasonable people, people who have formed their opinions based on an apparent pursuit of the facts, believed they could say with complete expertise when this war broke out: Given the general economic and social conditions that have now developed in humanity as a social structure, this war cannot last longer than four, at most six months. It was truly not insignificant people who chose this judgment, which they believed to be deeply rooted in a proper view of what a connoisseur of the circumstances could observe.

How events themselves have refuted such an apparently appropriate judgment! How little one is still inclined to say to oneself: Such appropriate judgments have been refuted, and one must relearn. In such matters, one must relearn. — One must not simply stick to the understandable prejudice that history teaches this or that. History has taught us that war cannot last longer than four to six months; but how history reflects reality has been taught by reality itself!

Another example, taken from a larger historical context: In 1789, one could say at the dawn of the era in which the science of history as we know it today first emerged—for it is not as old as is commonly believed; the science of history as we understand it today is barely more than a hundred years old, a fact known to very few people. At the dawn of modern historical thinking, a truly great man took up his historical teaching post: Schiller in Jena. And the speech with which he took up his historical teaching post has become famous: “On the philosophical head and the bread scholar.” In this speech, in 1789, Schiller expressed a very, very remarkable sentence as his conviction, as that which should permeate his historical view. This sentence reads: “European society seems to have been transformed into one large family; the members of the household may be hostile to one another, but hopefully they will no longer tear each other apart.” This sentence was uttered by someone who tried with genius to penetrate what history teaches, and who also, it cannot be denied, had a little genius himself. It was uttered at a time immediately following the French Revolution, with all that it itself brought in its wake.

Now, if we consider the longer periods that followed, how does what Schiller learned from history—that the European peoples, that the European states had transformed themselves into one big family, that they looked like one big family, that they may be hostile to each other but can no longer tear each other apart—appear? Something must follow from what the signs of the times teach us today. That is, that we really learn something from them.

Now, what about the underlying principle, the statement: History teaches this or that? — First and foremost, we must be clear that we cannot judge life by its mere outward symptoms. This is precisely what spiritual science aims to do: to move away from the surface and penetrate into the deeper foundations of life. Life cannot be judged by its outward symptoms. What has emerged as the scientific way of thinking — as I said, I value it highly — has developed from the habits of thinking, the impulses of thought that have arisen in humanity over the last few centuries. It is the expression of these impulses of thought. And not only scientific thinking, but all human thinking has been drawn into these habits of thinking, so that these habits of thinking not only have a beneficial effect in science, but must also have an effect in other areas of life. It can already be said that great effort has been made to carry what has made natural science great into other areas of human life as a direction of thought, as a thought impulse. Today, we shall concern ourselves primarily with the sociological and moral aspects. But the impulses have had a different effect there.

Anyone who is able to follow contemporary history in a deeper sense knows how closely the effects of these impulses over time are connected with the catastrophic events we are experiencing today.

I would just like to mention as a starting point that outstanding thinkers in particular have endeavored to transfer what has proved so significant as a scientific way of thinking to the sociological field, to apply it to the observation that ultimately leads to history, the historical life of humanity.

Let us mention one example in this direction, but hundreds and hundreds of examples could be mentioned. The great English philosopher Herbert Spencer attempted to apply biological concepts and ideas derived from the scientific view of life to the social coexistence of human beings. The concept of development has been applied to everything. It has also been rightly applied to human life.

Herbert Spencer said: We see development in organic life, in the life of animals, in the life of human beings themselves; the individual living being develops in such a way that it emerges from the germ, from a triple layer of cells, the so-called ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm. These are the three layers of cells from which the various organs of animals and humans develop. Herbert Spencer, who was accustomed to scientific concepts, now attempts to apply this way of understanding a scientific process to historical and social life. He attempts to understand what develops in human life, in moral, historical, and social life, in such a way that it also develops, as it were, from a threefold stratification. In a very interesting way, he transfers all those organic systems that develop from the ectoderm in humans and animals to the fact that in social life, the actions and activities of those people who belong to the military class would develop from the social ectoderm, as it were, those people who belong to the working class from the social endoderm, and those who belong to the merchant class, the mediating class in society, from the endoderm. It is then only a necessary consequence that the great English philosopher Herbert Spencer goes on to say: because the nervous system and the brain develop from the ectoderm in the organism, the best also developed from the social ectoderm. Of course, I do not share this militaristic view of the philosopher Herbert Spencer, nor do I wish to comment on it in detail here for easily understandable reasons; but it is only a necessary consequence for him to say that the ruling circles of any state must necessarily emerge from the military, because otherwise the state would have no nervous system, no head system, no heads, but only subordinate organs.

This is just one example, but hundreds and hundreds could be cited, of the attempt that has so often been made to directly transfer scientific thinking to the understanding of social and historical life.

Anyone who has a feeling for such things—I am speaking only of feelings for things at first—will see how all these attempts show only one thing, namely that with such ideas, which achieve so much in natural science, one cannot at all approach what is effective in social life. One cannot approach these things. The big question arises: Why can't we approach these things?

I will now apparently have to start from something very, very distant in order to then bring our considerations into the moral and social realm. But in spiritual science, since it must strive for a fundamentally different kind of knowledge than natural science, some things must be brought in from very far away today.

The first thing I must point out in connection with what I said the day before yesterday is that people today are not very inclined to include the whole of human life in their knowledge. What is included in their knowledge is what is contained in waking daily life.

Now, anyone who followed my discussions the day before yesterday will not suspect me of wanting to introduce any fantastical, dreamlike things into spiritual scientific considerations; but this must be emphasized: The whole of human life is made up of what human beings experience in their waking daily lives – I cannot go into other beings today due to time constraints – and what enters into this life during sleep and dreaming, which initially surges up and down in chaotic images from the life of sleep. The most remarkable and strange views have been formed in the field of scientific thinking, also in relation to sleep and dream life. It would be very interesting to go into this at some point. However, I must be brief in relation to these things, which are only to be mentioned here. Above all, people have really strange ideas about what happens during sleep. I must draw attention to this.

Who today, even as a scientist, is not often convinced that sleep comes from fatigue, that people simply become tired and then sleep must come. Anyone can easily refute this theory of fatigue by remembering that the well-fed pensioner who somehow finds himself at a concert or a lecture and falls asleep after the first five minutes does not necessarily fall asleep because of fatigue, but that there must be completely different reasons for this.

Anyone who investigates these things will see that fatigue is caused by sleep rather than sleep by fatigue. Sleeping and waking are really a rhythm of life that must alternate because one is just as necessary for human life as the other.

Now, as I said, I cannot go into the actual characteristics of this rhythm of life; but what is important is that spiritual science is compelled, on the one hand, to pursue this other side of human life, sleep, with its revelation in dreams, and, on the other hand, to establish that what we call sleep and dreams are much more widespread in human life than is usually assumed in trivial judgment.

Spiritual science is not at all interested in adopting old superstitious prejudices. And it is certainly one of the old superstitious prejudices to attribute some kind of prophetic significance to dreams for something in the future. But there is sometimes a grain of truth in such old superstitions. Only one must not take it as it is usually taken.

When I recently gave a series of lectures and was therefore able to speak in more detail than I can here, where I have less time at my disposal, I also drew attention to how spiritual science must address the problem of sleep and dreams. Those who practice psychoanalysis responded by saying that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science speaks of a certain higher knowledge which, in terms of the strength with which it acts on consciousness, could be compared to the dream images present in consciousness, but that psychoanalysis, which is so enlightened and and scientific, is correct in this respect because it uses what people dream only to explore human nature, seeing only symbolism in the expressions of dreams, seeing only symbolism in everything that occurs outside of ordinary consciousness, in the so-called subconscious; whereas I, for example, as a representative of spiritual science, take what otherwise occurs in the subconscious as reality.

Well, one could not put forward anything less accurate, anything more misleading. For in real anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, it would never occur to anyone to regard what the dream presents, what is the immediate content of the dream, as merely symbolic. One can confidently say that if psychoanalysis believes it is superior to spiritual science because it regards dreams as symbolic, spiritual science does not seek to regard the content of dreams as reality, but rather shows that the content of dreams has no real value or meaning whatsoever. On the contrary, it says: what lives in the dream, what is active in the dream, is connected with what I spoke about the day before yesterday, what the human being comes to know as his eternal core being. When the human being works in the dream — if one may call it working — then an excess of his ordinary consciousness works in the dream, that surplus of his ordinary consciousness which, when examined closely through a realization that will be discussed in principle shortly, proves to be connected with the eternal core of the human being, which enters spiritual life after death through the gate of death. What lives in dreams is also what now works into our future. But what a person experiences in dreams, the images they experience, have nothing to do with the reality underlying the dream.

Therefore, the spiritual researcher will never view dreams in such a way that they disregard the following: When someone dreams something, the dream is based on a spiritual fact, but the dream images that are experienced and recounted as experienced in the dream could be completely different. One person may experience the same thing as another in a dream, but they may recount the dream in a completely different, radically different way because their dream images have a completely different meaning. What is important to the spiritual researcher when it comes to dreams? It is not important for him to pursue the dream images as such – whether one grasps them in their reality or in their symbolism – but rather the inner drama of the dream: how one image follows another, whether one image replaces the next, i.e., whether it is a relaxation or a fright, and the like. This inner drama, which the soul experiences completely subconsciously, only reveals itself to ordinary consciousness in that the subconscious experience is clothed in the reminiscences of everyday life. What is at work in the subconscious as the drama of the soul is clothed in images. The same experience can be clothed differently for hundreds of people, in hundreds of different images. Anyone who, as a spiritual researcher, becomes acquainted with a dream, therefore knows that they must not listen to the dream by looking at its content, but rather at the how in it, at the way in which the images surge. That is where the essence lies.

I mention this because I have to say in connection with it that when, through spiritual exercises, through strengthening the special soul forces in the way mentioned here the day before yesterday, the human being comes to see his eternal core being, he then recognizes what sleep and dreams actually are. These things are processes of consciousness, and they must also be recognized within the field of consciousness. The spiritual researcher who explores consciousness in the way I indicated the day before yesterday comes to realize that what is so often misunderstood in modern times, and which cannot be grasped by scientific thinking, is attested to by such distinguished psychic physiologists as Ziehen and others: that human beings can only have the experience of the I, the I-experience, as they have it, because they are bound into the rhythm of life of waking and sleeping.

If one learns to recognize what the soul is, one also learns to recognize that human beings only know of an I because they are not always immersed in waking life between birth and death. Imagine hypothetically that waking life extended over the entire human life between birth and death; imagine that one could never sleep: then one would never have that counterpoint in which the ego becomes aware of itself in time. Because you can sleep, because you can exchange this consciousness, which lives in the outer sensory world and with the mind that is active in the sensory world, for a consciousness between falling asleep and waking up that does not distinguish anything because it is dull, you have your sense of self. Human beings would not learn to say “I” to themselves if they were not caught up in the rhythm of life between sleeping and waking.

It is strange how little one is inclined to respond to such things. The great aesthetician Friedrich Theodor Vischer, known as V-Vischer, engaged in a consideration of dream life. He criticized Johannes Volkelt's interesting book on dream fantasy and wrote a treatise on it. People were quick to label him a spiritualist, although he certainly did not engage in such things in a false mystical sense. Well, what won't people make of a person if they want to harm them in some way? But Vischer knew that people can say for a long time: What is expressed in dreams is fantastical stuff. Certainly it is fantastical stuff, but in this fantastical stuff lives that which is the eternal core of the soul. And if a person is not prepared, in full waking daytime life, through waking daytime life, through what can be called seeing consciousness, to develop ideas of such strength as are otherwise only found in dreams, then he is completely incapable of looking into the eternity of the human soul. If one wants to look into the eternal nature of the human soul, one must be able to elevate that which works involuntarily in dreams to voluntary, completely free consciousness. But Friedrich Theodor Vischer once drew attention in a very interesting way to something which, if properly pursued, sheds tremendous light on human life. He pointed out that those who cannot properly understand dreams also fail to properly understand human emotional life, passionate life, and feeling life in general. Why is that? Friedrich Theodor Vischer was absolutely right! Just as the soul is active in dreams, only that it lives itself out in images that are reminiscences from life, so too is the human soul active in emotional, affective, and passionate life during waking daytime existence.

We dream in our feelings, in our emotions, in our passions. And anyone who is able to truly follow the life of the soul knows that the same degree of intensity and the same quality of soul life that expresses itself in dreams, albeit in an abnormal way, also expresses itself during waking life in everything else that lives in human feelings. Spiritual research shows, precisely because it truly observes the soul with its methods, that human beings only have their full waking life for external sensory observation and for the life of imagination. We are truly awake only in relation to sensory perceptions and the life of imagination, while dreams draw into our waking daily life. They draw into our waking daily life so that what we experience emotionally, what is in us in terms of emotional impulses, is dreamed. While waking life proceeds in sensory perceptions and imaginations, the undercurrent of subconscious life, which can be brought into consciousness through spiritual science, continues as a stream of subconscious life in feeling, in the life of passion; we continue to dream while we are awake. And above all: we continue to sleep while we are awake. We not only dream, we continue to sleep while we are awake.

Everything that lives in our feelings, we dream while awake. What lives in our will is no more conscious to us in our waking daily life than the dull, barely perceptible consciousness during sleep. This is precisely why people in the field of philosophy have always argued about whether the will can be free or not, because even if they are enlightened philosophers, with their ordinary consciousness they cannot look into the workings of the soul when it expresses itself in the will, just as little as they can see into what the soul experiences during the deepest dreamless sleep. For the life of the will in its actual mystery is not only dreamt away, it is slept away in ordinary consciousness. We know nothing more about any action we perform, about anything we put into life, than what extends from sensory perception to imagination. You can convince yourself that psycho-physiologists who think thoroughly in scientific terms have already come to this conclusion when you study Theodor Ziehen's very important book on psychology: that one must stop at the disposition of the will, at the impulse of the will, at the imagination; that one cannot go any further. Only then does the completed action occur, which re-enters the imagination. What lies between the completed action and the imagination is just as immersed in the dullness of consciousness in waking daily life as what a person experiences between falling asleep and waking up is immersed in darkness when no dreams pass through their sleep.

Thus we continue to dream during our waking daily life, we continue to sleep. From our dream life, which permeates our waking life, emerge the emotional impulses, and from the sleep life that permeates our waking daily life emerge the impulses of the will. Thus, what manifests itself in social life, what manifests itself in history, emerges from our dream and sleep life.

If one examines these things, one needs — as I spoke about the day before yesterday — a faculty of knowledge that activates the soul in a completely different way than ordinary consciousness is capable of, and that enables one to truly view the soul life as such through the soul.

Today I would also like to add something about what consciousness must do in order to arrive at the perception of these things. For time and again the misunderstanding will arise that the spiritual researcher does not prove his things. He proves them by showing what the soul accomplishes in order to arrive at the perception of these things.

However, one cannot arrive at the perception of these things by consulting ordinary consciousness alone. As I said, I spoke about this the day before yesterday. You can find more details in my books, such as “Occult Science” and “How to Know Higher Worlds,” or summarized in my book “The Riddle of Man,” and again in my latest book, which will be published in the next few days: “The Riddle of the Soul.” But I would like to emphasize one thing that may be essential for our consideration today: the kind of thinking that is fully justified for scientific ideas must become quite different if human beings want to fully comprehend what I have said and will say. It cannot be grasped with a way of thinking that is rightly applied when dealing with ordinary everyday life. That is not sufficient, for example, in the areas where the impulses of social, moral, legal, and ethical life lie. There, one needs concepts that are related to reality in a much more intense way than scientific concepts. Scientific concepts are characterized precisely by the fact that the reality, the essence, is outside them, that in a certain sense they do not need to delve into the object, to delve into objectivity itself. One cannot penetrate the humanities with these concepts. In order to penetrate the humanities, it is necessary for the concepts to grow together with life, to immerse themselves in life, so that they have such an experience within themselves, feel such an experience vibrating within themselves, as is happening within the things themselves.

This can only be achieved by detaching oneself from the way in which one relates to things in ordinary consciousness with one's ideas. But this ordinary consciousness has rightly spread over the whole field of natural science, for only in this way can the brilliant advances of natural science be achieved.

When a person enters into spiritual scientific observation, their ideas become something completely different. You see, if you look at a tree from four sides — I have already given this example here — photographed from four sides, then these four sides are completely different from each other, and yet you will always have the same tree. You cannot see what the tree is actually like from a photograph.

In everyday life, people are satisfied when they have a concept as a representation of some process or entity, when they can express a pure law of nature. As soon as one enters the realm of spiritual science, concepts such as these photographs from four sides must be applied. One can never form an idea of a being or a fact of the real spiritual world by merely forming a concept. One must form one's concepts in such a way that they, as it were, circle around the thing, that they view the thing from as many different sides as possible, although the concept is only meant symbolically. In outer life, people are pantheists, monadists, monists, or some other kind of “ists.” They believe that with such a concept they can really explore something of reality. The spiritual researcher knows that this is not possible. When it comes to the spiritual realm, it is not possible to conduct pantheistic research, to view the tree from only one side. One must at the same time be a monadist, photograph the tree from another side, and so on; one must make one's concepts internally flexible.

But in this way you gain the opportunity to truly immerse yourself in full life. In this way, as I have shown in my book “The Riddle of Man,” you become realistic in your concepts. And it is necessary to become more and more realistic in one's concepts. This is what the spiritual researcher strives for. I would like to clarify this with an example.

You see, the natural scientist is quite right to remain within the sphere of ordinary consciousness with his concepts. He achieves something significant in his legitimate field precisely when he takes these concepts as they are presented by ordinary consciousness, for there they prove suitable for grasping the facts that are apparent to the senses. However, if the natural scientist then wants to extend these concepts beyond the facts that are apparent to the senses, he must be aware that he may be entering a void, that he is no longer remaining true to reality. The following example is very interesting in this regard. Professor Dewar, a great scientific thinker of our time, has very well and meaningfully described, based on what researchers can observe today, what the final state of the Earth will be like after millions of years. By proceeding in a completely correct physical manner, just as a good physicist would consult everything, one can form views about how certain conditions change over short periods of time. Then, by extending what changes in the shorter period over a long period of time, one can calculate, as it were, what the situation will look like after millions of years. The professor describes in a very interesting way how a time may come when, for example, milk will be solid. I don't know how it will appear then; that's another matter! He describes how the walls of the room will be coated with this white milk; that's how solid the milk will be. Of course, it will then be many hundreds of degrees colder than it is now. But there will be no liquid milk; the milk will be solid. These things are all conceived with great scientific acumen, and there is nothing wrong with putting forward such hypotheses on a scientific basis.

For the spiritual researcher, another thought immediately arises, because he thinks vividly and realistically, not abstractly. One can even take the example of a young person of fourteen years of age, how they have changed by the age of eighteen, and then compile these small changes, according to the method used by Professor Dewar, and now calculate what this human organism must be like after three hundred years. It is exactly the same method. Only, after three hundred years, human beings no longer live as physical human beings! This immediately occurs to the spiritual researcher. The approach is entirely correct, making use of all the scientific and physical refinements. There is nothing wrong with it; it is entirely correct. It should not be dismissed as false, but it is not realistic; it does not penetrate into reality. Similarly, one could go back from the changes that the human organism undergoes and then ask oneself, based on these changes: What was it like three hundred years ago? One will come up with something very nice — only that human beings did not live three hundred years ago! But it is according to this pattern that those who form theories construct their examples. The Kant-Laplace theory of the primordial nebula—it has undergone manifold modifications, all of which can be known—but what underlies it in principle is an impermissible thought for the spiritual researcher, because just as man did not physically live three hundred years ago, even if one has calculated his earlier and later state quite correctly, nor did the earth exist during the period for which the Kant-Laplace theory of the primordial nebula is established; and the solar system did not exist. I have only cited this as an example of how ideas can be entirely correct, can be derived from absolutely correct foundations, but nevertheless do not have to be realistic.

This is precisely what the spiritual researcher achieves through his exercises, coming to ideas that are true to reality, with which he grasps that which can only be grasped when one immerses oneself in reality. And through such immersion, one learns to recognize what the I would be like in its ordinary consciousness if human beings could not sleep. Self-consciousness or ego-consciousness would not exist in human consciousness at all if human beings did not live in the temporal rhythm of sleeping and waking. Through direct observation, one also learns to recognize how the qualities of feeling are actually dreamed, how the qualities of will are actually slept.

I would like to insert something here, as it were, in parentheses, because several people have drawn my attention to a remark I made the day before yesterday. I said: What the spiritual researcher experiences can be transformed into concepts; but the experience itself, the direct perception of the spiritual, cannot be remembered, but must be experienced anew again and again.

One might quite rightly object: How can one know that a spiritual experience is new if one cannot remember it? One cannot remember a spiritual experience any more than one can remember certain people who are not present. The spiritual event that disappears is not stored in the memory. Only when it has been transformed into concepts, into ideas, can one remember the ideas. Just so that there is no misunderstanding, I wanted to say this in parentheses, so to speak.

But now I would also like to touch on the other side of human consciousness with a brief remark. What happens when a person actually brings to consciousness what otherwise always remains in the subconscious, what is dreamt away, what is slept away, when he actually raises it to consciousness through such inner processes as you will find described in my books? When consciousness arises about this, as it is only present in ordinary daytime consciousness for the life of the senses and imagination, then the human being actually learns, for example, what is otherwise only overslept in his impulses of will. But just as one learns to recognize, when one focuses on the life of sleep, that ego-consciousness is dependent on the life of sleep, in another way, by actually raising the life of the will from the subconscious to the conscious, one learns to recognize that if one always had this life of the will before one, if one did not sleep through the life of the will, one would have a completely different consciousness, the consciousness that spiritual researchers actually develop in a certain way. That which wills within us, and in a certain sense also that which corresponds to our feelings, which lives in our emotional impulses, would, if we had it before us as we have our life of imagination, affect us like another person, as if we had a second, different human being within us. The human being would walk around with another human being. And one can say: it is arranged in the wise plan of development that the unified consciousness that the human being needs for his life between birth and death is made possible by the fact that the life of the will is pushed down into sleep, so that he is not divided by having to constantly look at the other who actually wants within him. This other person is connected with the eternal core of the human being, with the eternal core of the human being that is free from physicality, with that which does not work through physicality.

Therefore, if the spiritual researcher really succeeds — I said the day before yesterday that I will not be deterred by any timidity from drawing attention to things that really emerge from the field of spiritual research with scientific precision, like the laws of natural science in the field of natural science — if the spiritual researcher really succeeds in bring the life of the will and the life of feeling into consciousness, if he intensifies his inner activity so that he can bring not only the life of the senses and imagination to life within himself, but also the life of feeling and will, then the world is complemented by the other side, by the spiritual side; then human beings experience as a reality that we are separated from those souls who have lost their bodies through death only by our sensory and imaginative life. The moment we consciously enter into our feeling and will life, we enter a region where we also stand on common ground with the souls who have passed through the gate of death. The separation between the so-called living human souls and the so-called dead human souls is bridged by spiritual science. It is bridged by spiritual science in a very precise way. Through a very precise way of looking at things, however, the life of the soul must be transformed again. If one really wants to make real perceptions in this realm into which human beings enter — dreams come involuntarily, what is experienced in dreams comes involuntarily — if one wants to bring something into one's consciousness that really comes from the realm where the dead live, then one must use just such arbitrary ideas, but now higher than those of waking daytime consciousness, because these ideas must encompass the life of feeling and will; he must face the objects in the spiritual world with just as arbitrary ideas as one otherwise faces the objects in the sensory world. In ordinary dreams, one cannot distinguish between what compels one to imagine and oneself. This distinction is present when the spiritual researcher approaches the life to which the souls who have passed through death also belong.

Therefore, dreams that come involuntarily, even if they bring us apparent messages from a supernatural world, must always be treated with caution. The spiritual researcher can only recognize as his real observation that which he wants to bring about with complete arbitrariness. If the researcher therefore wants to come into contact with any soul that belongs to spiritual life, which may have passed through the gate of death long ago, he can do so by bringing about what he experiences with the soul in question through his own will, not in the involuntary way that happens through dreams.

You see, spiritual research leads us to recognize how another world intrudes into our world, but one that has a deep, intense meaning for our world, for the simple reason that our emotional and volitional life belongs to this world.

For the world that is confined to the senses, which is to be comprehended by laws derived from these senses, in short, for the world that natural science considers, the abstract ideas of waking and ordinary consciousness are sufficient. For the world of social and moral life, however, we need ideas that correspond to reality. Ideas such as the Kant-Laplace theory, or ideas about the final state of the earth, can only lead to error. They may be justified ideas if we remain in the realm of theoretical discussion. The moment one introduces abstract, unrealistic ideas from science into social life and political structures, one has a destructive effect and causes catastrophes within this reality. Ideas that are not realistic have a completely different meaning in this context.

Now it turns out that if one wants to observe what really happens in the course of human history, what drives historical life forward, one cannot observe it with scientific ideas; for this historical life is not experienced in a field where scientific ideas can be applied. The whole of history is not really impulsed by human beings with waking ideas, but is dreamed. This is the important thing to bear in mind — still a completely paradoxical truth today, just as Copernicanism was a paradox when it first appeared — historical life is not created from the kind of ideas we are accustomed to in natural science. Sociological, social life does not arise from an impulse such as we understand in natural science, but is dreamed. Human beings dream social life.

I have always found it interesting — I may make this personal remark; I have been intensively engaged with this problem for more than thirty years now, seeking to explore it from all sides — I found it interesting how it shed light on a mystery when Herman Grimm often said to me in conversation: If one applies the usual concepts, the scientific concepts, to historical life, so that they should be suitable, one does not get anywhere. If one wants to grasp historical life, if one wants to look into the impulses that are at work in it, then one can only do so with the imagination. Herman Grimm was not yet a spiritual researcher; he rejected such things. But he believed that historical life could only be grasped with the imagination. Well, it cannot be grasped with the imagination either. But Grimm was at least a personality who knew that one cannot enter into historical life with ordinary concepts.

But spiritual science in particular can enter into it by adding to ordinary consciousness imaginative consciousness, inspired consciousness, and intuitive consciousness, three supersensible modes of perception of the contemplative consciousness. Spiritual science brings into consciousness that which is otherwise dreamt away, that which is otherwise slept through.

In earlier centuries and millennia, people had a certain instinctive awareness of spiritual realities, as I mentioned the day before yesterday. But this instinctive awareness had to be lost. It was lost and will be lost more and more as the brilliant achievements of natural science prove themselves in their field.

What has been lost to instinctive consciousness must return from the other side. Therefore, one can say: During the time of human instinctive life, moral and social ideas, ethical ideas, and legal ideas could flow into historical, social, and societal life, which were dreamed of; and so humanity can still draw on what came from instinctive consciousness.

But now we have entered an age in which humanity must enter into full consciousness, in which humanity must attain full freedom. The old instinctive consciousness will no longer suffice. We are in an epoch in which spiritual science must bring forth those forces that must be effective in the social structure of society, in the ethical structure of society, in political life. What lives in social life can never be grasped with concepts that are derived solely from sensory perceptions, from waking daytime consciousness, from ordinary consciousness. Herman Grimm was quite right — but he only knew half the story — when he said: Why is the English historian Gibbon so important when he describes the first Christian centuries in terms of what was coming to an end? And why is there nothing in his account of history about the significant growth and development that came about in human development as a result of Christian influences? The reason is that Gibbon also uses the usual concepts, the concepts of waking daytime consciousness. But these can only grasp what is perishing; they can only grasp the corpse.

That which is becoming, that which is growing, is dreamed, slept through. And this can only be recognized and understood through spiritual science. Because political impulses must become conscious, because they can no longer be merely instinctive, they must be understood through spiritual science in the future.

This is what must be recognized from the signs of the times, especially in areas deeply connected with the human soul; even from external things, one can recognize this today. Let us take an example that is very widespread today.

When I speak of this example, one should not think that spiritual science wants to be one-sided in any direction, wants to take sides in one direction or another, but rather that it takes it completely seriously that one can only illuminate a thing from one side with any concept and that one therefore does something wrong if one wants to introduce this concept directly into reality. Take, for example, the materialistic, historical-sociological view of the social life of humanity and the course of history presented by Karl Marx and others, which is brilliantly clear to some people. If one follows this social democratic approach, if one follows Marx in his attempt to demonstrate with a certain acumen that everything that happens historically is the result of certain class struggles, that material impulses determine the structure of historical life, then one realizes: One can only understand what Karl Marx says in this area if one knows that he describes realities, albeit one-sidedly. But what realities does he describe? He describes the realities that had passed by the time he wrote his books!

From the 16th century onwards, European life and life belonging to Europe began in such a way that, in addition to what was conventionally told in history – history is, after all, mostly a fable convenue, as taught in schools – in addition to what is told as real history, there were class struggles and material impulses. What emerged up to the age described by Karl Marx—he describes it one-sidedly, but not entirely unjustifiably — what had already been dreamed away by humanity at the moment when he attempts to apply concepts of ordinary consciousness to it, what was reality at the time when humanity was dreaming, is expressed in ordinary concepts. But now it turns out that if the method of spiritual science, which is based on reality, is not applied, then nothing can be found in social processes that can be continued from what one wants to grasp with ordinary consciousness; nothing applicable to further life can be found. Karl Marx's description is correct for a certain one-sidedness of life, for the last few centuries. It is no longer applicable now that humanity has dreamed itself out, has slept off what he describes. It is indeed the case that if one gains concepts that correspond to reality, one cannot say that one can read what is important from external experience, as natural science must do. Anyone who, in any position in life, in any position in life, has to intervene in the social structure must have concepts that correspond to reality. But these concepts that correspond to reality cannot be gleaned from life. Only what ordinary consciousness grasps can be gleaned from life.

One must be involved in social life if one wants to deal with living concepts rather than a lack of reality. One must be involved in such a way that one is not dependent on this life giving one something, but that one knows the laws that otherwise only operate in the subconscious and is able to introduce them into life. From imaginative knowledge, from the kind of knowledge that can elevate ordinary abstract ideas to inner vitality in such a way that these ideas are pictorial but also submerged in reality, from this imaginative knowledge emerge all those concepts that can be effective in the future in relation to the social structure. Social experiments have remained so bleak and have caused so many real errors because people believed that social concepts could be understood in the same way as scientific concepts, because these concepts were established in a way that was divorced from reality. From imagination, from immersion in that which is otherwise experienced by ordinary consciousness only as in a dream, can be drawn those impulses needed by anyone who has something to say that can be considered a social idea. Every age is a time of transition. It is, of course, a trivial truth to say again and again that an age is a time of transition; what matters is what is being transitioned. But in our time, instinctive consciousness is transitioning into free, full consciousness that lives under the idea of freedom. The old impulses that came from instinctive consciousness—including Roman law—must be replaced by what provides imagination for social life, inspiration for ethical and moral life, and intuition for legal life. This is certainly not as convenient as constructing all kinds of legal concepts out of the abstract and knowing, because one is an intelligent person, how the whole world should be. One knows that!

As a spiritual researcher, one is not in this position; one must penetrate reality everywhere. Today, one has little idea of how this happens. For decades, this field has been dealt with in this way, from the abstract. One does not know, for example, how the Western peoples of Europe — as peoples, not as individuals! — have certain soul characteristics, how the peoples of Central Europe, the peoples of Eastern Europe, Asia, have certain other soul characteristics, how these soul characteristics are connected with what these peoples are. Today, in these catastrophic times, when we look more deeply, we often see what only spiritual research can see; we see a sad event passing through humanity in the world that is incomprehensible to the outer consciousness, whose signs speak so clearly, in which humanity can only find its way if it seeks concepts that correspond to reality. Realistic concepts are not those that are modeled on natural science or on waking daytime consciousness when it comes to social, moral, and legal life. Here in Switzerland, a start has been made, a good start in terms of legal concepts; an attempt has been made to extract the concepts of ordinary contractual relationships from concrete reality. In his excellent book “Der Gesamtarbeitsvertrag nach Schweizerischem Recht” (The Collective Bargaining Agreement under Swiss Law), published recently, Dr. Roman Boos has, for the first time in modern times, begun to search for something in concrete reality that belongs to the legal structure.

This way of shining light on legal life in a social, moral, and liberal way must continue if we want to find concepts that reflect reality. There is a simple means—if there were a simple means—that would be very helpful if, in its radical form, an attempt were made to show somewhere how the concepts of ordinary consciousness, which appear so magnificent in the field of natural science, are incapable of intervening in moral and social life. One would only need to attempt to assemble a parliament of people who are great in the field of philosophical reflection on the world, using concepts that are taken only from ordinary consciousness, which is also called scientific consciousness. Such a parliament would be best suited to ruin the community to which it belongs in the shortest possible time, because such a parliament would only see the impulses that are coming to an end.

Creative life belongs to those who can raise to consciousness what otherwise only dreams in external real life and history, what has sunk into sleep.

That is why utopias are so bleak. Utopias are really like trying to apply a chess game you have studied without considering your partner. To form utopias means to grasp what should live in abstract forms of understanding. Therefore, a utopia can never contain anything other than what can destroy a community, but not what it can build. For what reality can build cannot be grasped in connection with intellectual concepts; it only works in living imaginations and has something in its immediate effect that is related to, but not the same as—I ask you to note this explicitly—what is related to artistic work. The most manifold is revealed to us when we consider precisely this social, this moral life from the point of view of spiritual science.

Above all, when what is expressed in this way as social-moral ideas, as legal ideas, enters into life, it can always culminate in human freedom. This human freedom can never be understood by natural science, because natural science cannot address what is free in human beings; for natural science, human beings cannot be free beings. Spiritual science, however, reveals the eternal core of human nature, which I have told you about, which is like another human being within human beings. Natural science reveals only one human being, not the other; but the other is the free one. The free human being also lives within the human being. But through social and moral life, through state life, through ethical life, the free human being is brought out.

The modern way of thinking, which should now be refuted by the facts, if one could observe correctly, actually leads everywhere, in theory, to the expulsion of freedom.

Let me conclude by adding this. In recent times, there have always been – and even now it is emerging and causing a stir – such views of social and moral life and of state and political life which compare the state, for example, with an organism, with a life form. An excellent researcher whom I greatly admire has published a sensational book: “The State as a Life Form.” But it is really an example of what must be overcome. Some have tried to draw these analogies, to compare the state to an organism. You can compare anything. If it were a matter of comparison, you could easily draw comparisons between a peach and a walking stick; it just depends on whether you are clever enough to do so! Comparisons are not important at all; what matters is that the comparison is realistic, if it is to be used at all.

Well, I cannot go into detail today because there is not enough time. But if one really compares what pulsates in social and moral life with what exists in organic life, then the comparison is only valid insofar as one must compare the individual state, indeed, the individual community, with a cell. And if one wants to compare a collection of cells, such as an organism, one can only use the entire life on the whole earth for comparison with the organism.

As I said, the book mentioned, “The State as a Form of Life” by Kjellen, is absolutely impossible because it uses this comparison in a completely impossible way. However, if one uses the comparison correctly, one can compare the individual state with the cell and the entire life on Earth with an organism made up of individual cells. Then this organism does not yet contain what develops in the organism as soul, as spirit. But what develops in the organism as soul, as spirit, is what matters; it is even very important that spirit be added to the total life of the earth. And only such a social structure of the earth will be correctly conceived, which, when considering the purely external, does not entertain the opinion that it can also encompass the whole human being.

Just as little as one can encompass the soul or the spirit in the organism, so little can one, even if one extends the organic view to the whole earth, encompass in mere state life that in which human freedom is rooted. For human freedom transcends the organization.

This is something that can prove, if you understand it completely, that even the kind of thinking that the ordinary abstract form of consciousness brings to the consideration of state life must exclude the concept of freedom.

Spiritual science, by considering life that is free from physicality, that cannot be compared to an organism, will be called upon to reintroduce the concept of the free human soul into life.

I began this process as early as 1894, when I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom” — which, unfortunately, has been out of print for so long — by attempting to show how, by developing a truly free soul life that is distinct from the concept of causality rightly considered in natural science, human beings can live out their freedom. As long as one does not believe that natural science is entirely correct in denying freedom in its field, because it only deals with that which has no freedom — as long as one does not understand this, one also does not understand that that to which freedom refers cannot be grasped by natural science either.

But spiritual science achieves this by showing that, in addition to their body, which is in one sense an expression of their soul and spirit, human beings have a spiritual aspect that can only be grasped by intuitive consciousness, by supersensible consciousness: by imaginative consciousness, from which social ideas also flow, by inspired consciousness, from which moral ideas flow, which are lived out in ordinary life in compassion, in empathy with other people, from which, when it becomes intuitive consciousness, legal ideas flow, because in intuitive consciousness the human being not only penetrates into what the other being is, but through this intuitive consciousness also experiences the other being to a certain degree within himself. And as spiritual science penetrates into what is eternal in human beings and can only be grasped through imaginative, inspired, intuitive consciousness, spiritual science also penetrates into what can pulsate in human life under the light, under the sun of freedom. Today it is still quite paradoxical when, in order to describe reality, one finds oneself saying that sleep and dream impulses pulsate in history, in social life, in moral life, in legal life, in the life of freedom, and that what pulsates there can only be found through spiritual science. But I must mention again and again: what spiritual science must bring into the world as a paradox for the present time can be compared to the paradox that Copernicus brought into the world when people believed that the earth stood still and the sun and stars moved around it. He replaced this with the opposite. It was not until 1822 that a certain church allowed people to believe in Copernicanism! Now, how long it will take before the scholars and so-called educated people of today will allow or no longer be ashamed, as if it were a superstition, to accept that spiritual science explains life, expands it to concepts that correspond to reality, and leads to fruitful concepts, remains to be seen. But the signs of the times speak so strongly that one would wish it could happen very, very soon! But enlightened, outstanding minds have always seen what is true, even if only in individual flashes of inspiration. Spiritual science is actually nothing new in this respect. It merely summarizes systematically and through realistic observation what the flashes of inspiration of the most outstanding personalities of humanity have always been about.

And as I mentioned such a spirit of eternity yesterday at the end, let me mention the same one today: Goethe. He also dealt with history, with the view of history. He felt, even though spiritual science did not yet exist at that time — the time for it had not yet come in his age — that what pulsates in historical life does not contain what can be brought into the concepts that open up in ordinary imagination and ordinary sensory perception. He felt that what lives in history, even the great things that live in history, contain impulses that are different from the abstract ideas of ordinary intellectual life. That is why Goethe uttered the significant words about history: “The best thing we have from history is the enthusiasm it arouses.” — a feeling that it arouses when one can immerse oneself in historical becoming and not bring down something like the theorists of ordinary consciousness, but when one brings forth something that speaks not only to imagination and sensory perception, but also to what is dreamed in emotional impulses, what is even overslept in volitional impulses. Then one has what lives in history, not the corpse of history.

And with regard to social and moral life, with regard to freedom and legal life, one would like to say: Humanity will have to come to such an understanding of the reality of these things that the whole human being participates, including that which otherwise sleeps in waking consciousness, because otherwise the human being remains completely unconscious of the realm of social and moral life.

And so it will be a matter of stimulating, inspiring, and encouraging precisely that which is not theoretical in human beings, that which is similar to enthusiasm, that which has the effect of art — art, I say! And so, at the end of such a reflection, one will probably have to utter words similar to those of Goethe that I have just quoted, words that in a certain way summarize what could only be stimulated in a brief reflection today, but also what only wanted to be stimulated, the summary of what I believe must be spoken of today under the influence of the signs of the times. It is a matter of man finding the whole man in order to act appropriately in social and moral life, in order to contribute further to the shaping of the social and moral structure and political life. It is a matter of human beings not only arriving at abstract ideas in this area, not only at a physiological view, but also arriving at real forces, forces of life, imbued with enthusiasm. The time is waiting for them, this sad, this catastrophic, this time of trial! Spiritual science only wants to provide the answer as to what is right and should underlie this enthusiasm, and spiritual science is convinced that when humanity finds its way back to its eternal, immortal nature, to that part of human life from which the impulse of freedom springs, then humanity will also find the right paths to find its way out of the chaos into which it has fallen, in reality, not merely through illusion.