The Essence of Anthroposophy

GA 80a — 20 January 1922, Mannheim

The Essence of Anthroposophy

Dear attendees! Anthroposophy is currently regarded by many people who initially deal with it from the outside as a more or less fantastic attempt to penetrate into areas of the world through knowledge that serious science should not concern itself with.

Now, anthroposophy does indeed want to penetrate into those regions that are usually, more or less justifiably, referred to as supersensible regions, and in which the human being is rooted with his or her own deeper, eternal being. There are, of course, already scientific researchers today who are to be taken very seriously and who turn to all kinds of abnormal human abilities that point to the fact that the human being is subject to other laws and is connected to the world in other ways than can be determined by the usual scientific studies.

However, precisely those who turn to such abnormal human abilities, which they then, quite justifiably, only register scientifically and research according to their laws, often see the path that anthroposophy takes as a fantastical, nebulous, mystical one, one that must even lead to all kinds of superstitious beliefs and enthusiasm. Now, my dear ladies and gentlemen, one cannot say that in the long run, enthusiastic mystical natures can be satisfied by what anthroposophy actually is in its essence. Such natures, who, indeed, there are many such today, run everywhere where there is talk of anything occult, as they call it, such natures very soon find that Anthroposophy wants to be based on strict thinking, on that which can be described as a conscientious scientific method. And that is not really suitable for enthusiastic, nebulous and mystical natures. Of course, on the other hand, this does not prevent those who want to reject what is unfamiliar to them with a slight wave of the hand from finding that neurasthenic or hysterical natures and the like come to anthroposophy.

Now, dear ladies and gentlemen, in the face of this caricature, which is still very often presented of anthroposophy, it is not easy to characterize the essence of this research and this world view in a short lecture. I will try to do so this evening by first characterizing the paths by which anthroposophy seeks to penetrate into those areas that are not accessible to ordinary science. And then I will try to say something, at least in outline, about the results that are obtained in such ways.

One should not think that anthroposophy, as it is meant here, wants to oppose in any way what the unique scientific methods have achieved for human progress in the course of the last few centuries and especially in the nineteenth century. It must be accepted as a prerequisite that anthroposophy claims to be in full agreement with the scientific results of modern times, and that anthroposophy wants nothing to do with any abnormal human abilities, but only with an appropriate continuation of the completely normal human capacity for knowledge and soul. It is often believed that nothing of significance can be achieved through such a normal continuation and further development. Anthroposophy first has to fight against this prejudice. But here it encounters two formidable obstacles. And by becoming clear about these two obstacles to knowledge in a completely unbiased way, it wants to find a way to avoid them.

On the one hand, as I have already mentioned, we have the tremendous scientific research results of recent times with their great practical effects on life. Anthroposophy looks squarely at the views of those 'cautious' natural thinkers who are at the forefront of their science and who speak of the necessary limits of this knowledge of nature.

Initially, human knowledge is presented with that which comes from sense impressions, which is accessible to observation and experimentation, and which the human intellect can find in terms of laws within this sensory realm. Now, there is often an effort to go beyond this sensory realm through mere, self-directed thinking to realms that lie beyond the sensory world. These are the attempts that, through philosophical thinking, as it were, philosophical speculation, seek to go beyond the sensory realm. But anyone who approaches these subjects not as a layman or dilettante, but as a connoisseur of scientific methods, can also know, through the special way of handling thinking in natural science, how the thinking that our scientific conscientiousness has produced, how it does not only arbitrarily binds itself to the external facts of the sense world, but how, in more recent times, it has developed to its greatness precisely by adapting to the laws of the external sense world, by conscientiously following the facts that can be observed in the external sense world. And once one has gone through this process of seeing how scientific thinking follows the facts, then one also knows the uncertainties and subjective arbitrariness one encounters when one leaves the safe territory of sensory facts, the territory of observation and experiment, and surrenders to self-abandoned thinking.

This is why those who are approached by a world view that has come about through such thinking feel unsatisfied. They have to say to themselves: Yes, what one or another thinker, going beyond the sensory world, combines in his thoughts could have turned out differently if he had been differently predisposed. And it does turn out differently. The philosophical systems argue with each other, and the dispute between the philosophical systems justifies the very dissatisfaction that must immediately arise for the unbiased human mind when natural science crosses its borders in the manner just indicated. Now, anthroposophy is not at all inclined to think about nature in a different way than the strict natural scientist himself. And what it attempts to fathom about the supersensible worlds is only meant to be a genuine continuation of the unified scientific world view, not the discovery, in a dualistic sense, of some second world to the one in which we live as human beings. But today there are many natures that are much more deeply laid who feel themselves unsatisfied by what science can give about external nature, in which man with his physical corporeality is also integrated. Such deeper natures then turn away from all research, from all conscientious knowledge in the sense of science, and they turn to a certain mystical direction. This is very common today: people say to themselves that external observation and external experiment provide great things for practical life, but they cannot give the human soul, with its hopes for eternity and its longing to fathom its own deeper being. Such natures then seek ways to delve down into the deeper shafts of the soul, and then believe that they will find in these deeper soul shafts, through mystical contemplation, that which cannot be found through external observation.

And this brings me to the second obstacle that anthroposophy must avoid. It cannot remain with a limited knowledge of nature, just as it cannot remain with some kind of nebulous mysticism. For precisely the person who, through unbiased observation of the soul – and one must indeed penetrate ever more deeply to such observation through anthroposophy – the person who, through unbiased observation of the soul, penetrates into the inner self, knows how impressions that we may have absorbed into our souls decades ago, perhaps half unconsciously at the time, resurface after a long time , they do not just emerge as they were received at the time, but in the depths of the human mind they combine with all kinds of feelings and sensations, they are often interspersed with volitional impulses in such a way that the person is not even aware of this subconscious soul activity. And then, after years, they emerge from the soul of the mystic who is absorbed in contemplation. They do not know that these are only transformed external impressions; they consider them to be divine inspirations and believe that, in what they are bringing up in the way of transformed external perceptions, they are approaching the very sources of the existence of the world, in which the human soul is immersed with its eternal essence.

Anthroposophy does not turn to this side of the supposed knowledge of the eternal either, but says to itself: In the external knowledge of nature, the external facts and their laws arise; in inner contemplation, only that which is a direct or transformed memory of the impressions of the external sense world arises. And precisely because anthroposophy deals with these things in such detail, it comes to the conclusion that it is impossible to transcend the limits of natural phenomena on the one hand and to penetrate more deeply into the nature of the human soul itself on the other with the cognitive abilities that a person initially has for normal life and also for ordinary science. It is precisely for this reason, because Anthroposophy looks at both directions impartially, it seeks the path of further developing human soul abilities.

Now, my dear listeners, if you want to embark on this path, you need something that is admittedly difficult for human beings to achieve, and which I would call intellectual humility. You have to be able to say the following to yourself at a certain moment in your life: As a very small child, I was not at all equipped with the abilities that I have today. I was disoriented in the world, and from the depths of my humanity the abilities have developed that make knowledge possible for me today, that make practical orientation in life possible for me today. In ordinary life and also in ordinary science, one now draws a line with what has been acquired through education and what has been appropriated through life. But anyone who wants to do research in the anthroposophical sense must not stop there, but must realize that, in addition to these abilities of ordinary life and ordinary science, there are abilities slumbering in the soul that can be awakened through certain soul exercises, intimate soul exercises, and that through their development one comes to the contemplation of a completely different world than the one that otherwise surrounds one. The development of these abilities does not take place through external measures, but through intimate soul exercises. And it should be noted that these soul exercises are carried out in such a way that they are thoroughly and scientifically conscientious, which can be acquired in the currently legitimate field of science. Initially, however, what can be achieved through anthroposophy is directed towards the soul, but it is done so rigorously that it can be accounted for by the methods of conscientious science.

Now, the aim of these intimate soul exercises is to strengthen the entire human soul, on the one hand by strengthening the life of the imagination.

My dear audience, just as you strengthen a muscle when you need its power for work, so you can also strengthen the power of the imagination in man by simply translating it, by implementing it in a soul work that does not otherwise occur in life. I will describe the principle of this soul work, but the details — for it takes many years of practice to strengthen the life of the imagination — can be found in my books, for example in 'How to Know Higher Worlds' or in the second part of my 'Occult Science', or more briefly presented in the last chapter of my 'Riddles of Philosophy'. But, as I said, I would like to present the principles, the essentials of the matter this evening.

First of all, in order to strengthen the human faculty of imagination, easily comprehensible ideas or complexes of ideas are brought into the center of consciousness and then, turning away from everything else, the soul life is completely devoted to such a complex of ideas. It is good, indeed almost necessary, to either find such a complex of ideas by seeking it out – let us say – in a book that is completely unknown to you at first, or by simply turning to a page, taking some saying or sentence that you are quite certain that it has not yet passed through one's consciousness, through one's soul life, or one can also get some such content from someone who is experienced in these matters, on which one then concentrates one's soul life, to which one, as I have described in the books mentioned, devotes oneself in meditation. It is necessary to devote oneself to soul-content that was previously unknown in this way, because when one brings up any soul-content from the treasures of one's memories, it is bound up with all kinds of other areas of the soul life. One cannot know what one brings up from the subconscious depths of the soul and what then arises as reminiscences. You can only protect yourself from this if you have a readily comprehensible set of ideas that has been unknown to you until now. Then it is a matter of concentrating the soul on this set of ideas, while disregarding everything else, turning away from all the rest of life and the world, and concentrating it in such a way that the fully conscious will, the genuine reflection, never ceases, but rather the person surrenders to such concentration or meditation with complete inner arbitrariness, with the same inner arbitrariness with which one is also surrendered to an external, sensual perceptual content.

Because that, dear attendees, is the ideal of the anthroposophical method: not to plunge into all kinds of physical or other hidden human conditions, but to strive for the state of mind that one has when one is devoted to external sensory impressions. Anthroposophy is completely misunderstood when it is believed to strive for those areas that involve the visionary, hallucination, suggestion or the like. In all these things, the human being turns to a kind of soul activity that delves into depths that are only weakly active in relation to an external sense perception, an external sense impression. The anthroposophical method does not descend into this foggy darkness; it is the opposite of the visionary, the hallucinatory, the suggestive. This is the opposite of what the anthroposophical method strives for. It further develops the state of mind one has in relation to external sensory impressions, but it develops it in relation to a conceptual content that can be characterized in such a way as I have just described.

And then one must strive more and more to become as alive in one's consciousness when surrendering to such a content of thought as one is otherwise only when facing an external sense impression. You know, my dear audience, how much more alive a person is when they are devoted to an external sense impression than when pursuing ordinary thought life. It is indeed true that one speaks of pale thoughts in contrast to the intense, fully-lived outer sensory impressions. But the anthroposophical method must strive to achieve this liveliness and intensity in relation to the characterized thoughts, which otherwise can only be achieved in relation to outer sensory impressions. As I said, this requires a great deal of stamina and energy.

And the spiritual research we are talking about here is no easier than research in an observatory or in a physics or chemistry laboratory or in a clinic. A great deal of practice is needed in this direction. But when it does take place, then after some time the person does indeed feel an inner mobility of the imagination that he did not know before, and he finds himself in an experience that tells him through the experience: You become more and more free from physicality in your soul experience.

My dear audience, everything we have in our ordinary lives for knowledge, everything we have for the other expressions of the soul, is bound to the physical. The unbiased person knows how our memories are bound to bodily functions. He does not easily give in to the idea that one can be free of the body, that one — I want to use the quite unappealing word — that one can really live spiritually outside of one's body. But that is what one can achieve through a perpetual increase in such practice. One comes to be outside of one's body with one's soul life. But at the same time, one knows that in this kind of knowledge, which I have described as the first stage of higher knowledge in the books mentioned, the stage of imagination, one also knows that with this soul life, which lives in a living, intensified, strengthened thinking, only subjective, pictorial experiences can be had at first. This, in turn, distinguishes the anthroposophical researcher from the false mystic or even from the pathological nature. The one who, out of pathological states, devotes himself to a soul ability, never knows how to preserve what he has in his soul state in ordinary life. I would like to say: He slides with his whole consciousness into the visionary, into the hallucinatory. The person who, as an anthroposophical researcher, develops the soul abilities of which I have spoken, remains, even when developing these abilities, the level-headed person that he is in life, the person with strict self-criticism and world-criticism, who can control at every moment what is going on in the second personality to which he has risen as the imaginative-cognitive one. While for this reason the pathological person takes his hallucinations, his visions, as they are, for realities, the anthroposophical researcher knows that in the imaginations he has something pictorial, something subjective, but that the self-life is increased, that he has this self-life before him in a different way, spiritually, than is otherwise the case in the human soul.

One difference between this imaginative cognition and ordinary imagination is that it is not abstract, as are the concepts and ideas of ordinary cognition, but that it lives in fully saturated images. That is why I call it imaginative cognition. In this imaginative cognition, in which one's subjective awareness of one's own being has been heightened, in this imaginative cognition, the first result of anthroposophical research occurs at a certain stage in the development of these soul abilities. One comes to have before one, as in a large tableau, the inner soul forces that have been at work in one's own human being since birth. What else do we know about this inner human being? It is contained in the stream of memories, from which we can either arbitrarily select individual areas in images of what we have experienced, or images can arise freely. So it is not what you see now, but what you see first, is the sum of those forces that you now know have shaped your abilities, have given direction to your moral impulses. One sees how, in a unified tableau, one has become, and how one has shaped oneself from within through the years. That which otherwise has passed in time confronts one in a unified image, but one that has inner mobility.

This is the first new thing that one sees through such soul development. I have seen what one sees in this way and what one now knows directly: there is a second body, a spiritual body in man, which I have called the formative force body. Older, instinctive knowledge, which already knew something of these things, spoke of the etheric or life body. It is not something that can be drawn – at best in the way one paints a flash of lightning – one must know that one is dealing with something that is intrinsically mobile, that changes in every moment, that one can only capture just as it is in a moment. One is dealing with a – I would say – time body of the human being.

Now, my dear audience, through imaginative knowledge, one can first discover this inner, this inwardly mobile, this formative body of the human being, if I may express it in this way. But the soul developments that I have characterized so far must be continued. When one has first practiced concentrating on certain ideas, one is, in a certain way, nevertheless, one surrenders to these ideas with full inner willfulness, as only a mathematician surrenders to his combinations of thoughts. But in a certain way one is held fast by these ideas. But that should not really be the case. Therefore, from the very beginning – you will find a description in the books mentioned of the appropriate exercises that need to be done to achieve this – not only must this concentration on images be practiced from the very beginning, but a second thing must be practiced. Through the same free arbitrariness, the ideas to which one has just turned with the greatest strength, with increased soul strength, must be able to be suppressed again, completely suppressed, so that one learns to establish what one could call: empty consciousness, a consciousness that is empty, as otherwise only the consciousness is empty in sleep. But just as the soul's inner disposition sinks and is completely paralyzed in sleep, so it remains alert when meditation, as characterized by me, precedes it. One is then fully awake in the empty consciousness. And I will have to characterize to you how the possibility of living in such an empty consciousness is precisely what allows one to enter a spiritual world.

First of all, I would like to point out that anyone who has gained the ability not only to experience individual images that arise in the imagination devotedly, but also to remove them from consciousness so that they can live awake in an empty consciousness, gradually acquires the ability to suppress everything that I have now characterized as the formative forces body, as the great tableau of life that makes us inwardly comprehensible in the life of forces that has been shaping us since our birth. One arrives at this, this whole inner life, after first having fully looked at it, again from the consciousness. But when one arrives at creating an empty consciousness in relation to one's own inner life, then the second stage of human knowledge also arises with all clarity, which I have mentioned. I ask my dear audience not to be offended by expressions . They are only a way of expressing myself. I do not mean anything superstitious or traditional, but only what I myself characterize. I have mentioned the second stage in human knowledge: inspired knowledge. The first stage is imaginative knowledge, the second stage inspired knowledge.

By attaining this inspired knowledge through the empty consciousness, one is then able to expand consciousness beyond birth by suppressing the inner soul tableau of the body of formative forces. One now experiences the soul, the soul-spiritual of one's own being in the state in which it was before it united through birth - or let us say through conception - with the forces of inheritance, which are the forces of the body that man received from his ancestors, from his parents. One comes to understand the destinies that the soul and spirit, the eternal core of the human being, has gone through before uniting with a physical human body. You may ask, my dear audience, how does one know that what one sees really belongs to a soul experience before birth or before conception? Dear attendees, I would like to clarify what appears before the anthroposophical researcher by means of a comparison. When I have a memory of an experience from ten years ago, I know from the content of the memory itself that it is not something that arose in the consciousness at the time, but the content of the memory itself points me to the time ten years ago. Thus the content of what one experiences as spiritual-mental is that it indicates its own time in the relationship, that one knows these are experiences of the soul before it came into an earthly body.

However strange this may still seem to today's humanity, people will be convinced that soul abilities are developed with complete, convinced conscientiousness, not to speculate or to immerse themselves in mystic nebulae, but to come to a real insight into what the eternal-spiritual-soul core of the human being is. In this respect, Anthroposophy has a contribution to make to the further cultural development of humanity: it will show that experience itself must be further developed, that experiencing itself must be increased, so that in increased knowledge, man comes to the contemplation of that which is his eternal core of being. For this reason, Anthroposophy can proceed in the field of natural science in exactly the same way as the strictest natural scientist. It will not misuse the usual method of knowledge, it can, within the justified limits, be Haeckelian for the external physical field, profess Haeckel, because on the other hand it knows how to develop cognitive abilities that come close to an immediate insight into the eternal, spiritual-soul core of being in man. Then, my dear audience, when one has developed this spiritual-soul core, when one has attained inspired knowledge, one not only gets to know what the human soul itself is, but just as one gets to know the sensory environment through the human body, which the senses, one gets to know the sensual environment, in the same way one gets to know the spiritual environment through this knowledge of one's own soul-being when it was in a body-free state before it moved into the physical-earthly body through birth or conception.

But it is not enough to stop at this inspired knowledge. Only one aspect of the soul's abilities has been developed, namely the ability to imagine. The other aspect, the will, must also be developed in the human soul. Then, one might say, the life of feeling and emotion, which lies right in the middle between the life of imagination and the life of will, follows of its own accord. This life of feeling is the very own, most intimate element of the human soul life. It follows the inspired, imaginative knowledge and the one that I will now further characterize by showing how one can also lead the human will into the spiritual world, freeing it from the body.

From the wide range of exercises that I have outlined and explained in the books mentioned, I would like to highlight a few principles that show how this development of the will takes place.

First of all, I would like to point out a very simple exercise, but one that must be undertaken with perseverance and energy in order to achieve real positive results. It consists in starting from the realization that our ordinary thinking is already permeated by the will at all times. It is indeed the case that in abstract thinking we can distinguish the soul abilities according to imagining or thinking, according to feeling, according to willing. In reality, everything that is imagining, feeling and willing flows together in the soul. And even in the purest thinking, the will element is always present. Therefore, for the higher schooling of the spirit, the will element should first be developed in thinking. But ordinary thinking, and also the thinking that a person initially uses in his or her usual science, is in harmony with the external sequences of facts. The earlier is presented earlier, the later later. And even if we free thinking for ordinary life and ordinary science from external temporality and spatiality, we still need it in ordinary logic in such a way that we want to come to the conclusion that things are arranged in space and time. If we also detach thinking from reality, it is only a detour to get to the true reality through thinking. But what will training should be must tear this thinking away from the usual sequence of facts, and this can be done by presenting, if I may call it that, in reverse. Suppose we present a melody or a drama in reverse, a drama from the last events of the fifth act back to the first of the first act. When one presents in reverse in as small portions as possible, then one is forced to apply a stronger will to thinking than is otherwise the case. One can train one's thinking, or rather, the will that lives in thinking, in this direction particularly well by retracing one's own day experiences backwards every evening in as small portions as possible, starting from what one has experienced that evening, going to the afternoon, to the morning, and then really then into the most minute details — I would say —, into the atomization of the day's life, so that one imagines going up a staircase in such a way that, when one has reached the top, one then goes back in thought, going backwards from the last to the penultimate step and so on. You will see how this becomes more and more difficult the smaller the sections you take. But it is precisely through this that the will, which lives in thinking, is torn away from the external sequence of facts and you will gradually notice how you not only tear it away from the external sequence of facts, but how you tear it away from your own corporeality. You can support yourself with other exercises, for example, by developing a habit of observing yourself as a second personality alongside yourself in your own actions and in the expressions of your own life. If you practise such clear self-examination, if you, so to speak, observe every step, including every step of your soul life, as if from the outside, you will strengthen the will element.

When one then proceeds to go more into the depths of the soul, to say: You now have the intention of doing a very specific, concretely outlined action in some future time, you take self-observation so far that it becomes an activity, that you take your own inner life into your own hands, become master of your development, while otherwise you have left yourself to the stream of life. When one takes into one's own hands what the stream of life accomplishes for the soul's own development, one then also succeeds in tearing the will away from the ordinary physical body. Then one also comes with the will outside of one's body, and this willpower, which can be experienced outside of the body, unites with the power of imagination, which I have characterized.

But in this way one arrives at developing something in the human being that is rightly not regarded as an ability to perceive in ordinary life – and I know, esteemed attendees, how fully justified the reasons are for not regarding the soul abilities are not regarded as cognitive abilities — but when the soul nature of man is so elevated as I have characterized it, then the ability to love, devotion to something external, can indeed become an ability to cognize. And just as the body-free imagination, which is similar to memory but again quite different from it, presents us with pictures of a life that we cannot otherwise recognize, so too does this will, which has become body-free and now represents an increased ability to love, represent an increased living out into reality and, since it is body-free, into spiritual reality. We acquire the faculty which I have mentioned in the books referred to as intuitive knowledge; we acquire the faculty not only of allowing the revelations of a spiritual world to flow in, as in inspired knowledge, but we acquire the faculty of living over into the outer spiritual world with our own life. When I speak of intuitive knowledge, I naturally mean an intensification of that which is also called intuition in ordinary life, a knowledge that is not only based on abstract-logical thinking. What I mean, however, is an exact increase of what is otherwise called intuition, and represents a real cognitive survival of the human being into objective spirituality. And when a person has attained this intuition, then he also gets to know the other side of his being. Through what has been described so far, he reaches the moment of his birth, to that spiritual-soul that preceded the birth or conception. Now, by developing the will to intuitive knowledge, so that he can step out of himself with the will, now he also reaches the knowledge of that which steps out of the human body in reality when the human being passes through the gate of death. Only at that moment does man recognize the soul-spiritual that passes through the gate of death as something eternal, when, through a development of will, he has grasped this soul-spiritual in such a way that it can truly step out of itself, out of the ordinary human being, out of the bodily being, in intuitive knowledge. And now the human being beholds the nature of immortality on both sides, on the side of the unborn and on the side of what is usually called immortality. In this way, as I said before, the human being also gets to know the spiritual environment in which he lives before birth or conception and after death.

But once these two worlds have been grasped, once the sense world is really recognized in accordance with natural law, once the spiritual world is recognized through the cognitive faculties I have described, then there is still something within the human being that cannot be explained from either of these worlds. After becoming acquainted with the two worlds — I call them 'two worlds', although they only constitute a unified whole — we now stand before the mystery of the human soul. But we also acquire the ability to see through that in man which, through his development, unites both worlds in himself. And that is that in man which goes through repeated earth-lives, which thus goes through repeated earth-lives in such a way that it lives through the existence here in the physical body between birth and death, or let us say between conception and death, but then another existence between death and a new birth. And since one learns to recognize what the soul acquires through one life and the other, when one looks into what the results of development from both give, one arrives at the view of what underlies repeated earthly lives. And these repeated earthly lives themselves also become a view.

You see, my dear audience, that in speaking here in all seriousness about Anthroposophy, I cannot present these things of repeated earthly lives to you as fantastic creations. I must present to you everything that the human soul must do in order to cognitively arrive at these things. Today, I must of course briefly present this in an introductory lecture, and it could very easily be thought that only someone who has gone through everything I have described in principle in more detail in the books mentioned can see into these areas. Now these books are precisely there so that everyone can do the suggested exercises up to a certain level, and so that what the anthroposophical researcher says can be verified by actual observation. But the anthroposophical researcher uses ordinary common sense, ordinary thinking. And anyone who, uninfluenced by certain prejudices that are unfortunately so widespread today, simply asks themselves: “Is what is being presented reasonable or unreasonable?” does not need to become a researcher themselves, but can use their common sense to form an opinion about the value or lack of value of the anthroposophical results. Just as one does not need to be a painter to get a proper impression of a picture, one does not need to be an anthroposophical researcher to judge whether something that comes to light in anthroposophy is reasonable or unreasonable. Intuitive knowledge completes the stages of higher knowledge in a certain way.

Now, my dear audience, even in ordinary life, intuition points to a certain area. In my book, which was published a long time ago, I wrote it at the beginning of the nineties of the last century, in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, I pointed out how man's truly free actions are based on impulses of sensuality-free thinking, on moral ideals, which are created by the human being from a spiritual world quite free of the body, so that in this “Philosophy of Freedom” at the beginning of the nineties of the last century I spoke of the deepest impulses of the moral life of the human being as moral intuitions. And I tried to grasp the concept of freedom in a way that would guide today's natural science by showing that the question is completely wrong as to whether man is free or unfree, that the question must be formulated in such a way that one realizes that man is unfree for a large number of his actions, that they arise from his instincts, his drives, which are tied to the body. But the human being develops to the point of experiencing intuitive moral impulses, which are purely spiritual in nature and yet are impulsive for moral action. At this stage of development, in the way he grasps moral intuition, he is free. What I am characterizing today as the intuition of knowledge is only an expansion and deepening of what can actually be experienced by everyone who seeks out this moral world in its impulses through real self-knowledge.

What gives a person their true value and dignity here in this world, their moral nature, is what, when properly grasped, points to the end of all knowledge. And anthroposophy must then lead to the insertion of imagination and inspiration between intuition, which it expands into the cosmic and the human, and between this and ordinary knowledge, as I have characterized it today.

So, my dear audience, this is how one attains knowledge of one's own eternity in the human being. But if one develops the abilities of which I have spoken, then the world around us will also approach the human being in a different way. Man, so to speak, as a whole human being, becomes a sense organ for the outer world. And whereas before we only encountered the world, I would say, as a sensory tapestry, which the intellect then discerns its laws, the spiritual world enters human consciousness, imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness, in a new, metamorphosed form, but in such a way that the earlier, sensory one is fully preserved. And it enters in such a way that the contemplation of nature, which is otherwise present in the person who becomes an anthroposophist, is preserved. While the hallucinator, the visionary, turns away from nature and usually has no love for nature either, everything that is given by external natural science and ordinary love of nature remains fully intact for the one who becomes an anthroposophical researcher. It is only that the material world, which is the object of outer natural science, is permeated with the spiritual world, which is always around us, just as the physical is. Now the outer, physical world, if I may express myself comparatively, appears in a certain respect in sharp contours, in finished forms.

The spiritual view, which is gained in the way described, develops everything according to certain processes, according to an event, according to a becoming. This gives a completely new slant to natural and cosmic events. And I do not want to shrink from describing specific details as an example, despite the fact that such things are still not very well received today. We see the sun, for example, as a limited structure in the sky. We explore it with our science, with astronomy, astrophysics and so on. But what we encounter as the sun appears in a new form in the described supersensible knowledge. It now emerges not only tied to the place where it otherwise appears, but emerges as something solar, permeating and flowing through and permeating the whole cosmos. One learns to recognize the solar as permeating all spaces. And by relating it to the human, one learns to recognize the solar in its deeper meaning. I would like to express myself in the following way to make myself clear.

By having the outer world around us, which provides us with our experiences, we compare these experiences with what we form inside in our soul out of them in terms of ideas and feelings. And afterwards we still have the experiences in our memory, we can relive them. We can relive something that has long since passed and connect with the long-gone past. So there is a relationship between this — I would say — abstract soul-life and the outer concrete sense world. But there is also a relationship between the deeper part of one's own human existence and what is recognized through supersensible perception. We carry within us the effect of what is solar that the spiritual vision finds in us. This solar element enters into our human being, just as an external sensory experience enters into our memories, only it forms something deeper in the human being. This deeper aspect must first be recognized only through such a view as I have described. Then one learns to recognize that everything that is in us by virtue of growth, that is by virtue of youthfulness, that is even the force that converts our nutrients in our own human process, that this is the sunlike in us. We get to know the rising, sprouting, sprouting forces of the universe and the sprouting, sprouting forces, the rejuvenating forces in ourselves, in their interrelationships. We thus get to know a more intimate connection between the human inner being and the cosmos. Just as we learn to recognize the solar in this way, we learn to recognize the lunar.

In our sensory perception, we experience the moon as a closed, limited, contoured entity. For the spiritual perception that I have described, this moon-like quality becomes the dying forces in the cosmos that permeate all spaces and fill all of time. Everything that breaks down, everything that appears in the cosmos in a paralyzing way, everything that leads to death is moon power. And one would like to say: the solar and the lunar, as I am now describing them, are merely concentrated or consolidated in the bodies that we have given ourselves through external sensory perception. We get to know the world as processes, as becoming, and these processes, this becoming, continue within our own human inner being. We also get to know the outer natural kingdoms, how they are permeated by such cosmic forces. Just as we get to know the solar and lunar, we get to know other planetary or other forces of the universe without superstitious mysticism, through very exact observation that has been developed exactly. One gets to know the interplay of a cosmos that cannot be grasped merely mathematically or astrophysically, but spiritually and soulfully. One gets to know this interplay in human nature, and one recognizes the interplay of such cosmic forces in plant and animal nature. One learns to recognize the solar element that urges the plant towards flowering, and the lunar element that is revealed in the dying away of the plant world. One learns to recognize the forces right down to the mineral kingdom.

When one advances to this knowledge, the side of anthroposophical research also presents itself through which this anthroposophy has a fertilizing effect on all other areas of life. And that is the hope that the anthroposophical researcher devotes himself to, and which - at least in part - is already realized in its beginnings, that anthroposophy can become fruitful for the other sciences, for the practical areas of life.

We already have a medical-therapeutic institute in Dornach and Stuttgart that is based on anthroposophy. This medical-therapeutic institute is based on research that can be carried out on an anthroposophical basis into the relationship between humans and the surrounding universe. By appropriating the cosmic effects in this way — as I have only been able to hint at with the recognition of the solar and lunar — one does not merely gain the knowledge of human nature that ordinary physiology or biology gives us. You also get to know the whole human being, but in such a way that the sharply contoured merges — it remains, but at the same time merges, it shows itself from a different side as a process. While in ordinary biology, as one is accustomed to, one speaks of the lungs, heart, brain and so on, from the point of view of anthroposophy one must speak of the brain process, which is vividly there, not merely , or not merely shown in its parts by external physical experiments, but be observed; of the heart process, of the lung process, of all that makes up the human being, of processes, of a becoming. All this is, after all, only the inner continuation of the ascending solar becoming and the descending lunar becoming.

And if we pursue these things further, we not only get to know the healthy human being with his organs, but we also get to know the pathological [degenerative and] anabolic processes, the growths, the paralyses, the killing off of organs. One learns to recognize how processes can be held back in individual organs. One learns to recognize how processes can proliferate when one understands the connection between such internal anabolic and catabolic processes. With the anabolic and catabolic in the universe, with the solar and lunar, one can see how these forces are then present in the plant, mineral and animal kingdoms. And then the remedies for certain illnesses present themselves, in that we know: a catabolic process is taking place in this organ, so you have to counteract it with the catabolic process that is present outside in this plant or in that mineral. We learn to recognize the inner relationship between the human organism and the kingdoms of nature. One learns to recognize how medicine can advance from mere trial and error to a rational understanding of both the healthy and the diseased human condition, how pathology can become rational, how therapy can become rational, that the process of recovery and disease can be understood. This is what emerges as a development on an anthroposophical basis that is fruitful for medicine.

I am well aware, dear ladies and gentlemen, that to raise such matters is to stir up a hornet's nest. But the world has had to face many things that were unaccustomed in older times, and what was at first met with hostility has sometimes later become accepted practice. The anthroposophical researcher must console himself with such things. I will simply cite this example of the fertilization of medicine for the fertilization of the individual sciences. We also have a physiological, a physical, and a biological research institute in Stuttgart and are trying to introduce the anthroposophical method into the individual sciences in an anthroposophical way.

But anthroposophy can also have a fertilizing effect on other areas of life. We were – for anthroposophy has existed as a spiritual movement for quite some time now – we were faced with the task of building a home for the anthroposophical movement. Friends of the anthroposophical movement came together to create a home for this movement. This building, known as the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science, was erected in Dornach near Basel. What would have happened, dear ladies and gentlemen, if some other spiritual or cultural movement had had to erect such a building? They would have turned to an architect who would have given it a framework in the Renaissance, Rococo or antique style, and then they would have done in it what stands as a present.

Anthroposophy could not proceed in this way. It does not want to be something that expresses itself one-sidedly through ideas, that is spread only in theory, as it were, but something that takes hold of the whole human being directly, and therefore reaches into all areas of life. If I may use a trivial comparison, it would be this: When you look at a nut, you say to yourself: the nut is formed by certain forces that work within it, but the shell is formed in the direction of the same forces. Basically, you cannot separate the lawfulness of the nutshell from the lawfulness of the nut kernel itself. Both are one! This is how anthroposophy wants to be. Therefore, it must build its shell, its framework, its house out of the same impulse with a new architectural style, with the architectural style that corresponds to its innermost impulses, just as the nut shell is formed out of the same natural forces and their directions, like the nut kernel itself.

And when, from the pulpit in Dornach, the language of ideas is used to speak of what can be seen in the spirit about man and the universe, then this expression of ideas through the language of thoughts should contain exactly the same life that the columns, the paintings and the sculptures of this Dornach Goetheanum contain. Art forms, without being allegory, without being straw-like allegory or abstract symbolism — neither that nor the other is found — but everything has flowed into real art forms. Everything should speak out of the same life, out of which the content of spiritual vision can be spoken in thought. On anthroposophical ground, one believes that one is approaching an artistic view that is truly in line with Goethe's thinking. Perhaps one can see most deeply into what Goethe strove for in the artistic field if one recalls such sayings of Goethe as these: Art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never become apparent without it. And Goethe also says: When nature begins to reveal its secret to someone, that person feels the deepest longing for its most worthy interpreter, art.

Yes, my dear audience, one can express one's ideas about the secrets of nature in art forms without becoming inartistic, without becoming allegorical or symbolic, and by proceeding in this way, an architectural style that is still unfamiliar today is created. Anthroposophy could not turn to something else, which would have been a foreign framework. Anthroposophy does not want to be theory, anthroposophy wants to be life. Therefore, it also had to flow into the forms of the architectural style itself, which constitutes the building, which has shaped the building, in which anthroposophy is to live first.

With that, I have indicated a second area that can be fertilized by anthroposophy: the field of art. Anthroposophy also wants to have a fertilizing effect in other fields of art. A eurythmy performance is to be given here in a few days. On this occasion, it will be possible to hint at how Anthroposophy can be fruitful in the sense of such an art of movement.

In Stuttgart, Emil Molt founded the Waldorf School, which I run. This Waldorf School seeks to make fruitful use of what comes from anthroposophical sources in the field of pedagogy and didactics. How does real human knowledge arise from these sources? We come to know the human being in terms of his or her full nature, body, soul and spirit, not just through some abstractions, but through concrete observation. We learn to follow the child as it gradually shapes the outer physical body out of the spiritual and soul. We learn to revere the divine spiritual being in the child, and we learn a complete unity, a mutual formation of the physical and the spiritual. Anthroposophy does not want to found schools in the usual sense in the pedagogical and didactic fields. We go so far as to leave what religious worldviews are, for example, to the representatives of the individual religious fields for the time being. Catholic priests teach Catholic children in the Waldorf School, Protestant priests teach Protestant children. However, since a large number of dissident children were enrolled at the Waldorf School after it opened, it was necessary for us to set up a free religious education for them; however, this is run in the same way as the others, as a worldview lesson. The school itself does not want to graft any anthroposophical theories into the children, but it wants to allow what can flow from anthroposophical knowledge to flow into the pedagogical-didactic skill, into the practice of education. Anthroposophy does not want to oppose the achievements that have been made through the great pedagogy of the nineteenth century. Anthroposophy is aware of the significant maxims that exist in this regard, but it also knows that the means must first be acquired in order to fulfill the justified pedagogical demand. These means can only lie in a penetrating knowledge of the human being, and Anthroposophy would like to provide these means through the knowledge of the human being that can be attained through spiritualized vision, as I have described it today. In this way, anthroposophy can have a fruitful effect on the field of education.

My dear attendees, just how little knowledge of human nature there actually is in the present day, knowledge of human nature suitable for education, was demonstrated in a lecture given at the Anthroposophical Congress held in Stuttgart last summer. The individual topics discussed at this anthroposophical congress would have flooded out into the world and been widely discussed if they had not originated on anthroposophical soil, which is still so unpopular today. From the rich field of what was discussed, I want to emphasize the lecture by Dr. von Heydebrand, a teacher at the Waldorf School. In an extremely vivid way, it shows how experimental pedagogy, which is repeatedly being worked towards today, must be complemented by a direct insight into the soul and spirit of the child, as it can flow from anthroposophy. Anthroposophy does not oppose the legitimacy of experimental pedagogy and psychology, but this legitimacy attains its practical value precisely by being permeated by the spirit. Anthroposophy is never opposed to the legitimate findings of natural science. It seeks to bring out what can be found in these natural-scientific findings, everywhere, wherever it is possible to do so, and to do so in complete harmony with the legitimate demands of modern times with regard to natural science.

Dear attendees,

And to mention one last thing – which is only mentioned as a last thing, but is by no means of least importance – I would like to draw attention to the fact that, while anthroposophy can invigorate the impulses of the social, it can also deepen religious experience, even when it is not working externally in human society, but rather in the deepest inner being of the human being. Anthroposophy – oh, it is misunderstood when characterized in this way – Anthroposophy does not want to be a sect of any kind, it certainly does not want to found a new religion, it wants to deepen what people can experience in their religious minds by illuminating it with the clarity of an understanding of spiritual life. Those who believe that religion or even Christianity is endangered by anthroposophy are labouring under a serious misunderstanding; firstly, the misunderstanding that what they present as an ideal in a blind faith can hold its own in the face of the growing knowledge of nature; and then they succumb to the blind judgment that clarity, clear insight into the spiritual world, could somehow be disturbing to the most profound piety. And this most profound piety can be strengthened if it can be attained on the basis of a true knowledge of the spirit. Anthroposophy does not want to found a new religion or a new sect, but wants to serve life as a spiritual science, and also wants to serve the innermost, most intimate, religious life of human beings.

And so, in conclusion, I would like to summarize what the essence of anthroposophy is. From my discussions this evening, it should have become clear how anthroposophy is by no means in opposition to modern, progressive worldviews, but how it is entirely in line with them. But just as the human being presents us with the physical, the bodily, and we experience from this physical, this bodily, its mobility, its physiognomic, and other revelations of the spiritual-soul, so too, when we survey the natural realm in strict natural science, we should also recognize that within the realm of nature with which the human being is connected to his eternal core, where he originates with that which is immortal in him, is one with the divine-spiritual essence of the world. And just as we can only fully recognize a person when we see their soul and spirit in their physical body, so we will only fully recognize the world, the cosmos, when we want to juxtapose the external knowledge of natural science with the spiritual knowledge of anthroposophy. But anthroposophy strives to do just that. It seeks to be in touch with nature and the world by taking the human being as its model, in whose corporeality the soul and spiritual reveal themselves.

So, dear attendees, while Anthroposophy would like to look at the knowledge of external nature with full recognition, it would also like to add something that can be there, the inspiration, the spiritualization of this external natural science.