The Essence of Anthroposophy

GA 80a — 23 January 1922, Cologne

The Essence of Anthroposophy

Dear attendees! Anthroposophy is still accepted by many people today who are only able to look at it from the outside as a more or less fantastic attempt to penetrate into areas of the world through knowledge that a serious scientist should not concern himself with. And it is true that anthroposophy, by developing special powers of knowledge, wants to penetrate into areas of life that are important to people above all else, and to which science, with its great triumphs, which are fully recognized by anthroposophy, has no access. Above all, it must be said that there are already scientists today who take their work very seriously and who are concerned with all kinds of abnormal human soul-body forces. These scientists point out how human beings can develop effects that show that they are rooted in the world in other ways than mere natural science can determine. But it is precisely such serious scientists who find the path taken by anthroposophy fantastic. They see it as being open to enthusiasm or perhaps even superstition. In any case, they do not see it as a path that can be taken seriously scientifically.

Now it really must be said that those people who are prone to enthusiasm, to nebulous mysticism, and who are of the kind that today, as is so common, easily run to anything that somehow calls itself occult or the like, will by no means find any lasting satisfaction in anthroposophy. For this anthroposophy aims to work with the seriousness, the conscientiousness, and the methodology that is absolutely in line with the direction of more recent scientific development. And above all, the healthy, harmonious, human thinking must be applied in this anthroposophy. And so it is that the enthusiasts and the superstitious people soon give it a wide berth. Of course, this does not prevent those people who want to reject everything that is unfamiliar to them with a slight wave of the hand from saying: Only neurasthenics or hysterical people have an interest in anthroposophical research.

Now, my dear audience, it is difficult to explain the nature of anthroposophy in a short evening lecture in the face of this. But I will try to show the paths of this anthroposophy and at least hint at the results that this anthroposophy can arrive at, in order to characterize how this anthroposophy can be, although it is not for dreamers or superstitious people; but how it can be a soul food for all those who, with a healthy common sense in practical life, but who, precisely because of this, need support, security and direction for their soul life, in keeping with the spiritual development of our time, and also certain forces that can only be truly effective in the outer practical, social life if they are drawn from a spiritual, from a supersensible world and carry the human soul out of such a world.

Now, no spiritual research could possibly make any impression or exert any fruitful influence in the long term if it were to contradict the significant developments that have taken place over the last three to four centuries, and particularly in the nineteenth century, through natural science and its practical results. But that is certainly not what anthroposophy wants. It seeks to follow into the spiritual world the very paths that have led to significant results in natural science. It must therefore side with those natural scientists, the level-headed natural scientists, who, after thoroughly pursuing the paths of natural science, speak of the limitations of natural science. These limits soon become apparent when one considers that natural science can only observe the external sense world, can only combine the facts of the external sense world that arise from observation or experiment through the intellect, through the mind, and then can combine certain natural laws from these observations, from these experiments; natural laws in which, however, the human being with his physical corporeality is also harnessed. But the attempts made to go beyond the limits set by the sensory world by mere reason alone — as one also says, by philosophical thinking — always leave the unbiased person unsatisfied. The unbiased person feels: as soon as scientific thinking, as we are accustomed to it today, leaves the paths of sensory experience, experiment and observation, thinking left to its own devices enters into uncertainty. The dispute between philosophical systems testifies to the extent to which thinking left to its own devices enters into uncertainty. Anthroposophical research in particular makes it clear how this thinking, which we have in ordinary life and in ordinary, recognized science, not only binds itself to the sensory experience of the level-headed natural scientist out of habit or arbitrariness, but how it itself is dependent step by step on this sensory experience, so that it only has certainty when this external experience, this sensory experience, guides it.

In short, my dear audience, just when one cannot think in a lay and dilettante scientific way, one sees the inadequacy of this kind of thinking left to its own devices, which somehow wants to philosophically penetrate into the supersensible. Many people in our time therefore do not think much of satisfying their soul needs, their longings for the eternal in the human soul, through such self-abandoned thinking. And in our time, when the old traditions of religious life, of faith, as such are becoming increasingly shaky and shaky, people do need such new supports. Therefore, many deeper minds are found in our time, which understand: a philosophy of life that relies on reason alone cannot give the soul the necessary support and security. That is why such deeply-disposed natures today turn to certain mystical directions.

Particularly when one speaks seriously of what anthroposophy can be for today's human being, one must characterize these two pitfalls that one must avoid in one's research. The one pitfall is the purely intellectual world view that wants to go beyond the supersensible through thinking left to its own devices; the other is certain mystical directions. These seek to penetrate into deeper shafts of the human soul life by means of man, as it were, immersing himself in his own inner being. They seek to bring up from these deeper shafts that which is not present in ordinary life and which connects the eternal in the soul with the eternal world-ruling powers. Anthroposophy must draw attention to these two pitfalls because it must show that it is absolutely serious about not carelessly stopping at either side, when it cannot provide a sure basis for knowledge. Anyone who can observe the inner life of the human soul with an open mind – esteemed attendees – can no more remain with a more or less nebulous mysticism than he can go beyond the limits of knowledge of nature through self-abandoned thinking. We usually do not know how that which lives in the depths of the soul is connected with external sensory impressions. We usually do not know how the human memory works. Decades ago, someone may have unconsciously or subconsciously, without fully realizing it, received some impression from the outside world. It has descended into the soul life; there it has been transformed. He may have connected with human emotional life; connected with human sympathies and antipathies, with impulses of the will. He has become something quite different, but he is still only a transformed external impression. And then, as one says, it is brought up out of the soul through inner contemplation and is thought to come from eternal depths, not from some external world through an external impression. In this way, illusions upon illusions can arise in nebulous mysticism. That is why anthroposophy cannot stop at this mystical immersion in the human interior. If the human inner life is taken as it appears in ordinary life and as it is also used for research in ordinary science.

Precisely because Anthroposophy is fully aware that one cannot penetrate to anything that is not is not already present in some form in this ordinary life, anthroposophy must look for cognitive powers that have yet to be developed, that lie dormant in the human soul – one could also say, if one wants to use a scientific term – that lie latent in it and can be brought forth.

That there are such forces slumbering in the human soul, that they can be awakened, that they can become higher powers of knowledge than those of ordinary life and ordinary science, can only be proved by practice, which I want to talk to you about this evening. But to even arrive at seeking such powers of knowledge through one's own soul development requires something I would call intellectual modesty. At some point in life, this intellectual modesty must say to us: You were once a child with dream-like soul powers, soul powers that were without any orientation towards the outer world, with a soul state that was dull compared to the one you have today. External education and life have brought out of the soul what lay dormant in it. They have developed those powers of perception that are generally recognized today in a person who has had a corresponding education, whether in life or in some other field. Now, for once in your life, you have to say to yourself, with intellectual modesty: from the point of view that you have gained in this way through ordinary education, through ordinary life, you can now take your self-development into your own hands and get further than you were, you can bring further forces out of the soul that lie dormant in it. And it is with such forces, slumbering in the soul of every human being, and which in their development represent nothing other than a continuation of the normal human soul forces, that Anthroposophy seeks to do research. Research into that which lies behind the world of the senses, research into that which is hidden in the human soul as something eternal, and which is connected with the most important longings and life riddles of this human soul. I will not, however, speak to you about external measures that might be taken to develop such forces lying dormant in the soul. I must first speak to you of the intimate exercises of the human soul if I am to characterize the paths that Anthroposophy takes into the supersensible world.

In my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second part of my “Occult Science” and in other books, I have pointed out in detail everything that must be gone through in energetic and persistent soul exercises so that man can come to such supersensible knowledge. I will have to characterize the essence of what is written there in detail.

The first thing that is involved is the development of the soul in terms of [the powers of] presentation and thought. Just as you can strengthen a muscle by using it in work, so you can indeed strengthen the powers of thought of the human soul by using them in a certain way, using them again and again, indeed using them again and again in rhythmic succession, so that they become something quite different from what they initially are. To do this, it is necessary to bring a clearly defined idea or a clearly defined complex of ideas into the center of consciousness, and then to withdraw one's attention from everything else by strong inner volition and to concentrate the entire life of the human soul on this one idea or this one complex of ideas. In order to achieve what is necessary, however, this complex of ideas must be such that it is not taken from our ordinary memory life. I have already indicated how what we bring up from ordinary memory life can put us in illusion, it brings up reminiscences that lie dormant in the unconscious. One cannot know what will come up from the soul if one were to take an idea or a complex of ideas from one's ordinary memory life and make it the focus of one's soul life, and then concentrate on it. Therefore, one should take something that one finds, let us say – this is just an example – in some book by someone else, a saying, a sentence. What matters is not the content, but the fact that one is strengthening one's thinking by working with thoughts, and that one is taking some material that was previously unknown to one, that is newly entering one's soul life. We will see in a moment why. Or else, one can have some experienced person in this field compose such a spell. Because what matters is that what enters into the center of the soul life, and on which one then concentrates the whole soul life, on which one focuses all attention, that it approaches the human being as otherwise only any external sense impression, such as a color or a sound or any other external sense impression. What Anthroposophy strives for in this path of research is quite definitely the outer sensory perception. This outer sensory perception presents itself to us from the outside, compelling us to accept its content. Just as the human being faces external perception as something foreign, and is thus particularly alert to it, so too should the soul life face what I have been talking about here, which should be brought to the center of experience. For the human being should be as alert in their thinking as they are when they are facing an external sensory impression.

In this way, I am already drawing your attention, dear attendees, to the fact that what anthroposophy strives for as a path of knowledge must not be confused, as unfortunately still often happens today, with everything that tends towards the pathological, the diseased side of the soul life. For anyone who can look at human mental life with an open mind, it is clear that even ordinary memory – admittedly, it lies in the realm of the healthy, of course – is connected to the human physical organism, and that when the normal connection between the human soul and the physical organism develops in the direction of the abnormal in the process of remembering , when the soul life becomes more bound, more intimately bound to the physical organism, those pathological conditions arise which express themselves in hallucinations, in visions, in illusions, in easy suggestibility, and so on, and which lie at just the opposite pole from that to which anthroposophical paths of knowledge lead. Everything that presents itself to us pathologically leads the soul life deeper down into the bodily functions, deeper down than the ability to remember lies. What is developed through the described strengthening of thinking makes human thinking more and more similar to the behavior of the human soul when taking in an external sensory impression. Just as the human being is much more alive when absorbing an external sensory impression than in ordinary, more passive thinking, so too should thinking be energized so that it becomes as alive and intense as the experience of an external sensory impression would otherwise be. It is precisely in this coming to life of the world of thought that one notices more and more that one is penetrating into a soul life that is not the ordinary one. You know, my esteemed audience, how pale, rightly called pale, the ordinary thought life is compared to the life in sensual impressions and in external processes in general. Just as one usually lives in sensual impressions and external processes, so should the whole thought life become for those times when one wants to devote oneself to supersensible knowledge.

Now, in order to avoid being misunderstood, I must point out another difference between the abnormal states of mind I have just mentioned: the person who seeks anthroposophical knowledge develops such strength of thought while the ordinary personality continues to exist in its full, healthy state of mind. A second personality develops, so to speak. And the first, the personality with common sense, with healthy criticism, remains controlling next to the developed personality, the personality with the higher cognitive ability. When someone falls into hallucinations, visions, illusions, when they become a medium, when they are exposed to suggestions, then their entire ordinary, healthy personality enters into the state of hallucinating, of illusions, and so on. The radical difference of the thoroughly healthy anthroposophical path is that the ordinary personality always remains as healthy as it is in life, controlling, criticizing, alongside the developed other personality. On this condition, it may be said that – it takes years for some people, depending on their disposition, but only months for others; some can achieve it in a few weeks through meditation and by concentrating on a specific thought content, that is what I call it – it may be said that it can be achieved that a person feels similarly to how they feel during ordinary thinking. In ordinary thinking, he needs the physical organism. In this respect, one could say, anthroposophical spiritual science fully recognizes the validity of materialism.

In order to develop his soul abilities at all in ordinary life and in ordinary science, man needs the physical body. And he only becomes free of the physical body by strengthening his thinking, making it more intense, more alive. Thought becomes free from the physical body to the same degree that external sensory phenomena are free from the physical body. Consider how independent the physical apparatus of the eye is from the rest of the human organism. I cannot characterize it further now, I would just like to hint at it. What happens in the eye under the influence of the outside world is what, to a certain extent, makes man subject to an objective world in the sensory perceptions of the eye. By linking his thinking with this objective world, thinking itself is also introduced into an objective world. Through sensory perception, man comes out of himself in a certain way.

This is not the place for deep epistemological considerations, but what I am saying can be understood by any simple human mind. Man comes out of himself when he does meditation and concentration exercises as I have described them. But then man realizes how he is only now gradually learning to develop the soul life as such independently of the body. However grotesque and paradoxical it may still sound to a modern person, one learns through experience, through the practice of life, what it means to have thoughts outside of the human physical organism. These thoughts are, however, different from the usual pale thoughts, and also from those that deal with natural laws. These developed and strengthened thoughts are as pictorial as the outer sensory impressions themselves. What is fully clear to the anthroposophical researcher must not be missing at this stage of knowledge. In the writings mentioned and elsewhere, I have called this stage of knowledge the imaginative stage. Imaginative not because one imagines something, but because thinking passes completely from the abstract form into the pictorial, into the living, into the intensified form. But what is absolutely necessary for anyone embarking on anthroposophical research to be aware of within this imaginative thinking is that they know: you are now only carrying something with you in your thoughts that lives within your own human being.

You see how carefully the anthroposophical path of knowledge must be described. It must be emphasized that this first stage allows one to experience one's own inner being more intensely, but that one must realize that one is not yet experiencing an external world, but only this human inner being. But we do achieve a first result when we explore the inner being through such a more intensive, pictorial, imaginative process of imagining. For we gradually learn to have before our soul, as in a comprehensive tableau of life, everything that has formed us, that has affected us inwardly, spiritually, from birth to the present moment. We normally carry what we have in our soul only in the form of ordinary memory. The stream from which memories of this or that experience arise, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, essentially runs subconsciously. We know how abstract it is, how shadowy it is compared to the real experiences when we are immersed in these memory images. These memory images should not be confused with what now occurs before imaginative knowledge. It is not mere memories that arise, but rather something that suggests how one has become. Yes, right back to the first years of childhood, one sees the inner forces that have developed the ordinary abilities of life in one. One sees how the moral and intellectual faculties have developed, how they have been integrated into the forces of growth and nutrition. One really looks into the human interior.

You learn to recognize what I have called the formative forces of the human being. You really learn to recognize a second body. But if you want to characterize it precisely, you have to say: it is a temporal body. It is something that is constantly developing in a mobile way. You cannot draw it without realizing that you are drawing or painting it like a flash of lightning. That which is mobile in time can only be captured in a moment, and so it is with this human formative forces body. In truth, it is a unified organization in time, and it must be understood in that way. There have always been older intuitions for such higher insights, and what I call the formative forces body has also been called the etheric or life body. If one learns to recognize it in the suggested way, not through logical conclusions or otherwise, but through direct inner vision with the imaginative knowledge that has been acquired, then one knows once and for all: what is human organization is not only played out by the fact that there is a sum of chemical and physical forces constitute the human physical body, but because a spiritual soul has entered the physical organization at birth or conception, and that a second, a spiritual-soul, a supersensible body, which is not only spatial, which is temporal, which is always mobile, works in us. And one learns to recognize the inner relationship that exists between thinking, imagining and the forces of growth. As long as one only looks at the human being from a physiological and biological point of view, one finds the forces of growth on the one hand and, on the other, through inner observation, for example, the abstract powers of thinking. Through the imaginative contemplation of which I have just spoken, one learns to recognize how a gradual transition takes place between the ordinary forces of growth and the forces of thinking, how, by strengthening itself, imagining itself leads to that which at the same time brings about growth, the development of the inner organic power from stage to stage in the growing human being. Thus imaginative knowledge becomes a first result of anthroposophical inner research.

Now it is not enough to merely concentrate one's soul life on some idea or on a complex of ideas. Although everything I have described and what is explained in the books mentioned aims to enable the person to carry out such exercises in full arbitrariness, with complete inner composure, as one would otherwise only have in ordinary life , and also comes to such concentration, such directing of attention to a certain idea, it is nevertheless the case that one gradually feels surrendered to such ideas, feels too strongly surrendered, if other soul exercises are not undertaken in a different direction. Therefore, one must, just as faithfully as one concentrates on certain ideas, again do exercises so that these ideas in consciousness, whenever one wants, extinguish, are in turn put out of consciousness. Then one comes to establish what one can call the consciousness. Otherwise, empty consciousness is only present in people during the time from falling asleep to waking up. And if one has not gone through any school of practice, then there is a great temptation to fall into a kind of sleep when consciousness becomes empty of external impressions – or even when it is so strongly taken in by external impressions that it no longer distinguishes them. The ability to achieve an empty consciousness is essential for further progress in anthroposophical research. This does not mean that the person enters into some kind of sleep or dream state, but that they can remain fully conscious without introducing anything through their own inner strength, as they would otherwise do with external impressions or with a strongly developed life of thought or feeling or will. And then, when the life of thought has been strengthened in the way described, so strongly strengthened that one is, as it were, inwardly grasped in the direct experience of this memory tableau of which I have spoken, when one's entire previous life on earth stands before one's eyes like a huge tableau, if one's imaginative life is strong enough, then one can also manage, while being completely awake, to dampen, throw out of consciousness, and create an empty consciousness, the individual idea that one has brought to the center of consciousness in this way, or that has placed itself there. Once one has practiced this for a while (again, it varies from person to person depending on their disposition) one can determine whether it takes longer or shorter. I can only say that anthroposophical research is no easier than research in an observatory, laboratory or clinic; one must persistently and diligently undergo such exercises as I am describing now for a long time.

Once you have managed to expel individual ideas from your consciousness after they have been there, and to create an empty consciousness, then you can also remove from your consciousness that which has presented itself to the soul as a tableau of memories, which has appeared to you as a body of formative forces, as a temporal organism. It takes a strong inner soul power to do this. One must first acquire it by attenuating other images until one's consciousness is empty. But in the end one attains this power to attenuate the entire formative body so that it penetrates into the deeper layers of consciousness. Then the moment may come when imaginative knowledge first enters the second stage of supersensible knowledge for the comprehension of human self-life, the second stage of knowledge, inspired knowledge.

Do not be put off by the expression; one must have expressions everywhere. They do not mean anything traditional or superstitious in this case, but only what I am characterizing here. So, after one has first strengthened one's thinking, after one has strengthened one's soul to such an extent that an empty consciousness can be established, then the objective spiritual world can penetrate into this empty consciousness, just as breathing air penetrates into the lungs as something objective.

And now, through direct perception, the human being experiences what he has gone through spiritually and soulfully before he connected with the physical human body as a spiritual and soulful being. In this moment of inner soul-searching, the great and powerful occurs: the spiritual and soulful in itself, in its own essence, appears before the soul's vision; one sees the soul as it was in a purely spiritual-soul world before it united with the physical-bodily substances and forces through birth or conception, which are given to it through the hereditary powers of parents and ancestors.

The essence of anthroposophical research is that it advances to the perception of the real soul-spiritual not through mere thinking, not through mystical contemplation, but through the development of soul forces that otherwise lie dormant within people. Of course, when one hears something like this, it would be easy to say: Well, then only those who advance to such insights can speak with such conviction of the immortality of the human soul – or rather, when I speak of what I have spoken of so far – of the unborn nature of the human soul. Now, firstly, it is possible through books such as I have mentioned for every person to take the first steps towards such supersensory knowledge as I have described. And even if today they are still unusual paths for the soul, anyone who has entered them knows that they will increasingly become the paths of human development. Because they are only now entering the spiritual development of humanity for the first time, they may seem paradoxical to many. But just as little as one needs to be a painter to be enchanted with a good painting with full inner soul, to see through it in its essence, in what the painter wanted, just as little does one need to be an anthroposophical researcher to recognize as true what the anthroposophical researcher asserts. Common sense is quite sufficient, just as ordinary perception of an artistic achievement is sufficient to appreciate it. For there is an original disposition in the human soul for the perception of truth. Therefore, it cannot be said that only those who are spiritual researchers in the way described can recognize the results of spiritual research. It is only that over many centuries of human development, people have become accustomed to not accepting such things at all, which has gradually caused prejudices for the mind, for the intellect, which today still do not allow what characterizes anthroposophical research as its paths and its results to appear as reasonable for the common sense of a healthy person.

I have now described how the human being can come to his or her own immortality by developing in one direction, looking beyond birth or conception through imaginative and inspired knowledge. However, the paths of anthroposophical research must go further. Not only should the power of imagination and the power of thought be developed, but also the human willpower should be developed to a higher level. I will again state the principles of this. Admittedly, that which is the most intimate part of the human soul, human feeling, the content of the human mind, lies right in the middle between thinking and willing. But that which lies at the center of the soul as our emotional life develops into the higher worlds when, on the one hand, the life of thinking develops, as indicated, and on the other hand, the life of will develops.

If, on the one hand, a kind of ideal for anthroposophy is the experience of the soul in outer perception, then, on the other hand, for the development of the will forces slumbering in the soul, the ideal becomes that which takes place in the moral life, above all in the devoted life of love, in the human soul. I know, honored attendees, that when we speak of devoted love, we are mentioning something that many people want to keep far away from all real powers of knowledge. However, it is not the case that love, as it exists and is justified in ordinary life, should be considered any kind of power of knowledge. But just as thinking is developed on the one hand, so too is the ability to love devotedly developed on the other hand, in order to thereby free the will from the physical organism just as much as the life of thought can be freed from the physical organism in the way indicated. Apparently it is not at all exercises of the soul in the ability to love that come into question here. Nevertheless, they lead to an increased ability to love, to the point of insight. Again, I will only hint at the principle. The following exercise develops the will in particular and develops such an ability: Imagine something that you are accustomed to imagining only in a certain way from the earlier to the later, from the beginning to the end, now in reverse order. For example, one imagines a drama backwards from the last event of the fifth act to the first event of the first act. Or one imagines a melody backwards. Or one imagines only the evening after the usual daytime life backwards. But one must go into as much detail as possible, one must imagine in small portions backwards.

What is the point of this? Dear attendees, in our ordinary lives we develop our thinking through the external sequence of events. Thinking is passively devoted to the external sequence of events. In doing so, it also makes itself dependent on the laws of the physical human organism. The physical human organism is devoted to the external sequence of events through the physical senses. Thinking is dependent on this sequence of events. And by bringing up experiences in a pictorial way through memory, it nevertheless remains dependent on the external sequence of facts. Of course, one can object: with logical thinking, man makes himself independent of this sequence of facts. But what does he ultimately aim for when he makes himself independent? Precisely to recognize the external sequence of facts even better. We think logically so that we can see through the spatial and temporal sequence of facts even better. We are lifted out of this dependence on the external world of facts, but also out of the dependence of thinking, by developing thinking in this way, by thinking from back to front, thus in reverse order to the sequence of external facts. But in this way we now develop the will. In the life of the soul, thoughts, feelings and will interact. In abstract thinking we can separate the three; in the life of the soul, the will is present in every thought, connecting and separating the thoughts; and thoughts are active in the will, even if the connection between thoughts is as unclear to the ordinary consciousness as the state of consciousness during sleep at night. But it is precisely the will, when given over to thinking, that develops freely and independently of the world of facts and also of the human body through such reverse thinking.

If one adds to these exercises others that I would describe as intensified human introspection – all of which must be done with absolute inner composure and complete arbitrariness – one performs such introspection in such a way that one observes what one does, what one thinks and feels, the whole way , how if one were to stand beside oneself as another, as a second person, one becomes pensive with regard to the will, then the will gradually breaks away from the physical, if the exercises are only carried out long and energetically, especially if one also actively engages in one's own development. Just consider how people are helped in ordinary life by what life itself provides. Certainly, everyone today is different from what they were ten or twenty years ago in terms of certain finer nuances of the soul life. Life has done that. But if you take your self-development into your own hands, you set yourself the goal: you should incorporate this or that quality; if you work towards incorporating such qualities, you work particularly energetically towards getting rid of certain habits, then you develop that which tears the will away from physical corporeality. And now one arrives at having the will living in the soul, so to speak, only to the extent that it is completely permeated by thoughts everywhere; it is torn away from the body, it has become transparent. Consider how little transparent the will is when we form the thought, let us say, to raise our arm, to raise our hand. The thought, the intention, is clear, and afterwards, when the hand is raised, we see from the sense impression what has happened. The unfolding of the will that lies in between is as hidden from human consciousness as the processes of falling asleep themselves. But now we experience a will in which we are completely immersed, as we are otherwise only in thoughts, a will free of the body, which submits to the imaginative and inspired ideas, free of the body, that we have received before.

And now, honored attendees, as we experience how our will can become body-free, as we can, in a sense, step out of our bodies with our will, we are now experiencing the essence of human immortality on the other side. This stepping out of the body is nothing other than an image of the knowledge that occurs when a person steps through the gate of death. While man is outside of his body, he becomes aware of what he experiences through this strengthened will, through this will that has become deliberate, which I call the stage of intuitive knowledge. While he is outside of his body, it is immediately clear through his qualities as an image of what enters the spiritual-soul world as a spiritual-soul being when man leaves his physical body in physical corporeality. In this intuitive knowledge, one learns to recognize the other side of human eternity, which extends beyond death.

You see, dear attendees, the eternal part of the human soul does not come to light through anthroposophical research, but is pieced together from the prenatal and, if I may say so, the post-mortal existence, from unbornness and immortality. And by getting to know what is eternal, what is immortal in the human soul, one also learns to recognize the worlds that surround this human soul when it is in its pure spiritual-soul nature, by looking at what the soul was before birth or before conception. Of course, there is still another objection possible, the objection: Yes, how do you know that what you are looking at in your consciousness really lies in the time before birth or before conception? Now, just as with ordinary memory, when you remember an experience you had ten years ago, the memory itself contains the time, as you cannot believe that you have something in your consciousness that is only there in the present , just as the content of consciousness itself points to the time in which the experience took place, so that which we experience as spiritual and mental carries within it the time before birth or before conception. But we also become aware of the worlds that are not the sensual ones, because we only perceive them through the human senses between birth and death. But the worlds that we perceive through the soul senses, if I may use the expression, before birth and after death, they are now unlocked. We get to know them as concrete, essential worlds. And by getting to know these worlds, we also get to know the spiritual-supernatural world that always surrounds us, which we cannot penetrate through mere philosophical speculation. We can penetrate it only by developing more and more imaginative, inspired, intuitive knowledge.

This intuitive knowledge, which in a certain respect is the highest level of knowledge for looking at the external spiritual world, already comes to us in ordinary life, albeit in a different form. And I had to point this out as early as the beginning of the nineties — if I may make this personal remark — from my own soul development in my “Philosophy of Freedom” how the moral impulses of the human being — and the moral life gives the human being his actual value and his actual dignity — are drawn from a world that I also called an intuitive world back then, a world of spiritual substance. And I already said in this “Philosophy of Freedom”: The true moral impulses are drawn from a spiritual, supersensible world through pure, sensuality-free thinking. I established freedom in human life by pointing out that the question is usually asked wrongly. One asks: Is man free or unfree? He is just as free as he is unfree. Unfree in relation to everything that are the ordinary actions of life, which are bound to the physical organism, where they are impulsed by instincts, drives. But man develops more and more to freedom by coming to get his impulses for the moral, the ethical life from a spiritual world through pure thinking, even in ordinary life, even if more or less unconsciously. And man is free to the extent that his moral impulses come to him from a spiritual world. Therefore, what man grasps as moral intuitions becomes the model for what must now be asserted in anthroposophical research as the highest level of knowledge, as the intuitive level.

One might be tempted to say: we can learn in our moral life what the cognitive life must also achieve. However, in our ordinary consciousness we are given the opportunity to have such intuitions in our moral life. They are contained in what our conscience offers us. With regard to the knowledge of the supersensible world, to which the human soul with its supersensible part belongs, intuitive knowledge must first be sought after one has gone through imaginative and inspired knowledge. Inspired knowledge first offers the objective, the entry into an alien world. Intuitive knowledge is the complete surrender to the objective spiritual world. One only gets to know the latter objectivity sufficiently when one first admits that imaginative knowledge only leads into one's own subjective world. And when one gets to know a spiritual world in this way, then everything that is there as a sensual world is also revealed in the form of the spiritual. That is to say, one remains completely on the ground of natural science for the field of nature. One does not speak or fantasize about all kinds of spiritual, nebulous entities in nature. One ascends through real knowledge to that which is seen as spiritual entities when the objectively observed sensual things and entities metamorphose before the spiritual gaze in the way that I can only hint at for you today in a few cases.

You see, in the sensory view and in ordinary science, the sun is given with sensory contours. We see it that way for ordinary consciousness. It is given with sensory contours in space. Ordinary science calculates its correct, indisputable position through astronomy and astrophysics in relation to this sun. For the spiritual view that I have described to you, the sun changes. That is, of course, for the one personality, which remains fully intact, as it sees it. Otherwise one would become a hallucinator and not a spiritual researcher. But that which remains so fully intact shows itself at the same time in its supersensible essence. One learns to recognize that the sun is not only the being that stands spatially out there in space, but that a solar element, which is only consolidated and concentrated in the physical space of the sun, fills the entire space of the universe that is accessible to us, permeating all beings in the nature kingdoms and also permeating the human being himself. One gets to know the spiritual, supersensible power of the solar element.

And just as one becomes aware in one's ordinary consciousness that external facts live on in the human being as feelings, as thoughts, as triggers of will impulses, so one comes to recognize that in the depths of human nature the external spiritual-supernatural sun-like quality finds its continuation. One gets to know the sun-like quality in one's own human nature. One would like to say: everything transforms from a sharply contoured form into a becoming, into an ongoing life. And the human being's own internal organs metamorphose before the supersensible eye in such a way that they appear in the process of becoming. While the heart, lungs, brain and other human organs are sharply defined for the ordinary sensory view, so to speak representing things, it happens for the supersensible view that we can only speak of a heart process, a stomach process, a brain process, a lung process. Everything merges into life, comes to life. And as the sun-like essence pours itself into this life, we perceive, at a higher level, everything that is emerging life, that is connected with that which makes us young and keeps us young, what growing, sprouting, sprouting forces are in the human being, but also the sprouting, sprouting forces out there in the realms of nature, in the plant kingdom, in the animal kingdom and also in the mineral kingdom. One now learns to see through the realms of nature and one's own inner human being spiritually and soulfully. The peculiar thing is that otherwise the human being is faced as a whole; his individual organs are individual parts. Now one learns to recognize how the individual organs are assigned to the different areas, the different forces of the cosmos. One learns, for example, to recognize how the brain forces are assigned to the solar forces, in that they are in the first half of life, as other organs, namely the heart, are assigned to the solar forces.

But one also learns how to recognize the solar on the one hand, for example, the lunar on the other. Again, the moon is only sensually seen as a clearly defined cosmic body. A lunar quality flows through the whole of outer space, all the outer realms of nature and the human being itself. This includes all the forces of decline, all the forces of retrogressive development, all the forces through which we age, through which our organs become dulled, become dulled, somehow merge into descending development. One now gets to know this mechanism of the human organism and the external mechanism of nature from a new perspective, by being able to see the solar and the lunar together.

And in the same way, in relation to other celestial bodies, we learn about the force-giving, the sustaining, the process-sustaining, and the becoming. One learns to recognize it in its continued effect within the human being, in its effect outside in nature. But in doing so, one enters a field where it can be shown how anthroposophy can be thoroughly fruitful for other sciences, to which it does not stand in opposition, but which it would like to further develop by fully recognizing what they themselves can achieve, how spiritual science can have a fruitful effect on other areas of life.

By learning to see in this way, the becoming, the process of the human inner organism, one learns to recognize in a more intimate way the health of the human being, the illness of the human being. One gets to know the breakdown of some organic processes, as it occurs in disease processes. One also learns to recognize how one can contribute to recovery through opposing processes. Above all, one gets to know the connection between the outer nature and the human inner being. For example, one learns to recognize how certain degenerative, destructive forces of one organ or another can be balanced by the sun-like, constructive forces, say, in the plant or mineral kingdom. One gets to know the healing powers by following the supersensible in nature and in man. And that can emerge from anthroposophy that has already emerged precisely in relation to medicine.

Physicians have taken up the suggestions that can arise from this kind of anthroposophical research, and medical-therapeutic institutes have been established in Dornach near Basel and in Stuttgart, which are in the process of developing, in a thoroughly exact way, those healing methods and remedies that arise from the suggestions of anthroposophy. This is an example of the kind of cross-fertilization that anthroposophical research can provide for the individual sciences and practical areas of life. What can otherwise only be tried empirically, and only after trying can one say how it works in this or that direction in the human organism, can be understood because the natural process according to the sun and moon and according to the other cosmic processes, and the inner human natural process and soul process and spirit process can be understood. Rational medicine, a medicine of inner insight into the pathological and healing processes, can be substituted for the mere trial-and-error medicine. Similarly, a physics and a biology institute are being established in Stuttgart. That is all I want to mention. The individual sciences can certainly be fertilized by anthroposophy.

But what Anthroposophy provides in this way, by pointing to our own immortality in connection with the spiritualizing of the supersensible in the universe, can also have a fruitful effect on life in other ways. This should be shown by a particular example, the Dornach building, the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach near Basel. Anthroposophy has been practised for a long time now, and the time has come when a number of friends of Anthroposophy have given rise to the building of a home for Anthroposophy. The circumstances, which I do not have to describe here, brought this home for Anthroposophy, this Goetheanum, close to Basel.

If the necessity of building a spiritual movement its own home had been felt in any other field, then contact would have been made with this or that architect. Perhaps a Romanesque, Gothic or Renaissance building would have been constructed or something similar. Anthroposophy could not do that. No matter how much one may dispute the artistic side of what has been created, what some claim it is not in any case. But if one is imbued with what anthroposophy can give as an attitude of the soul, then one is a strict critic oneself and initially describes what one has to describe only as a beginning. The Goetheanum should also be described from this point of view. Because Anthroposophy does not strive for one-sidedness, but because it springs from the whole, full humanity, and in turn wants to place the whole, full human being in the world, it could not be a matter of building a randomly stylized building as a home.

I would like to use a trivial comparison: just as the individual forms of a nutshell are built according to exactly the same laws as the nut kernel – as you can see, the same forces act in the shell in their position and in their mutual relationship as they do inside the nut kernel – so, if anthroposophy is is to be understood not as a theory, not as a collection of dull ideas, but as real life appearing in ideas, then what appears as its framework, so to speak its structural shell, must be made of exactly the same spirit as the ideas in which the supersensible life is presented. Therefore, everything that has been realized in Dornach, whether architecturally, pictorially, sculpturally or in any other artistic way, must come from the same spirit as that which is spoken as the Word on the podium. This appearance of ideas and thought-forms cannot be other than the kernel of the nut to the shell, to that which speaks out of forms that are not straw-like allegories or symbols; there everything has flowed into the truly artistic. And yet, even if the whole is only a beginning, one may still refer with a certain certainty to Goethe and in particular to Goethe's view of art. One need only think of how Goethe put it: “When nature reveals her manifest secret to someone, that person feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” In another saying, Goethe expresses the same sentiment: “Art is a manifestation of secret natural laws that would never be revealed without it.

In that anthroposophy, in the way it has been characterized, really wants to penetrate into the deepest laws of nature, into the laws of the supersensible spiritual world, it also feels inspired for the artistic and knows how to incorporate the living, not the symbolic, into the material. She has just the right feeling for the material, so that she does not feel comfortable in some artistic, symbolizing cloud cuckoo land, but in the most eminent sense, she lets what is her spiritual life be revealed through the art form. In this way, without anything didactic occurring, what goes beyond all theory into the knowledge of the supersensible can at the same time be fruitful for the artistic field.

I can only give isolated examples of the practical effects of anthroposophy. Thirdly, I would like to mention the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which has already found a certain following here too. This Waldorf School was founded by Emil Molt and is run by me. It is run in such a way that it is not intended to oppose the great achievements of pedagogy and didactics of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. It is mindful of the great pedagogical maxims that are there. But precisely those aspects that are often expressed today in the field of education as a longing for reform show that something is needed to implement the well-intentioned maxims of the great educators in practice in the individual. Anthroposophy does not want to replace old maxims with new theoretical ones in this field, but to serve their practical implementation. That is why the Waldorf School in Stuttgart is definitely not a school where Anthroposophy is to be grafted into children; that is far from our minds. We have therefore quietly entrusted Catholic religious education to the Catholic pastor and Protestant religious education to the Protestant pastor. Only for those children who would otherwise be dissidents have we provided a free religious education. The religious aspect of the world view is not what gives the Waldorf School its specific character. What it seeks to achieve is that anthroposophical knowledge teaches us to recognize the human being in terms of body, soul and spirit, to recognize this in the child; that, based on our knowledge of the human being, we can read the curriculum for each school year, for each month, for each week from the child; that it is only through a true knowledge of the human being that we can truly establish the art of education and the art of teaching. In the practical side of education and teaching, in the “how” of how to carry it out, we should let what anthroposophy can give have its effect. And if people were not so opposed to anthroposophy, purely out of misunderstanding, as they are, then far more consideration would be given to such things as occurred this summer during the anthroposophical congress in Stuttgart.

For example, a teacher at this Waldorf school showed how one-sided everything is that is supposed to be made fruitful for teaching through experimental pedagogy and experimental psychology, especially in recent times. Anthroposophy does not go against what is being done in these experiments either, but it can show that what is learned about the human being in this way can only bear fruit in the right way if one also enters into the soul through inner contemplation into the soul; when the lessons are not based merely on experimental results about memory, the development of the powers of mind and will, about fatigue and so on, which have been obtained externally, where one can stand far from the human soul. Rather, what can be gained from the soul itself will only bear fruit when one also gains the ability to look intimately into the human soul, into this wonderful, enigmatic human soul that develops from the first childlike day, from week to week, from month to month. Only when we have the right sense of insight are we capable of educating. And anthroposophy, because it does not just go to the surface but learns to recognize the whole, the full human being in body, soul and spirit, can create such a higher, inspired, spiritualized art of education.

The art of education is what anthroposophy seeks to practise in the Waldorf school. It is not some kind of world view that is imposed on the children. Now a teacher at the Waldorf school has discussed in a particularly intimate way – the lecture has now been published as a brochure – the significance of experimental psychology and what it could become through deepening. In my opinion, Dr. von Heydebrand has presented something extraordinarily significant here, with regard to the appreciation of a one-sided current of development in the present time. This would undoubtedly have been discussed much more in pedagogical circles if it had not grown precisely on the much-disliked soil of anthroposophy.

And anthroposophy can also have a living effect on the outer social life. Here too is an example, even if it is only a small beginning. Emil Leinhas also gave a lecture at the Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress, which has also already been printed, and in it he gave a spirited critique of contemporary economics. The title is 'The Bankruptcy of National Economy'. Emil Leinhas shows how this national economy must remain unfruitful for real social life if it is only understood in the pattern of outer, natural scientific thinking, and not supplemented by the knowledge of spiritual, supersensible forces at work especially in human life.

We see, especially in the social sphere, the devastating effect of a way of thinking that would like to apply the one-sided natural science approach to social life as well. Let us look at the terrible devastation that is growing ever greater and greater and that ultimately poses a threat to the whole of Europe, indeed to the whole of the civilized Western world. Let us look at what is happening in the social sphere in Eastern Europe and become aware that the underlying reasons for the emergence of these destructive forces are nevertheless that we have not been able to permeate social life with what arises from a spirit-perceiving consciousness. If we look at people only as the economics teachers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century did, uninspired by spiritual-scientific knowledge, then destructive social forces must ultimately emerge, as they have in Eastern Europe, and must become a threat to the whole educated world in a much higher sense if a spiritual element is not introduced into our social order.

Now, dear ladies and gentlemen, I have only touched on a few areas in which anthroposophy can be fruitful, in scientific and other areas of practical life. Only at the end would I like to suggest something that must be mentioned last, although it is not the last: By leading to the direct beholding of the eternal in the human soul, by leading to the direct knowledge of that which lies beyond birth and death, to the unborn, to the immortal in the human soul, by leading to those worlds in which the human soul lives when it is not clothed with an external physical body. By becoming acquainted with these two worlds, it also becomes acquainted with what is in human nature, deeper than physical human nature, more comprehensive, more intense than that which the soul experiences when it is in the spiritual world before birth or after death. What is found in the human soul is not exhausted in the contemplation of the natural or supersensible world.

After getting to know the two worlds, which of course only appear to be two worlds and in truth interact according to the whole meaning of the presentation, so that one cannot speak of dualism versus monism in anthroposophy; when one learns to recognize something in the human soul which reveals itself as a synthesis of these two worlds, that is the innermost, human, eternal core of being, which goes through repeated earthly lives, so that human life is made up of such pieces that lie between birth and death and between death and a new birth. And by learning to recognize the outer cosmos in terms of its spiritual significance, one also learns to look in a different way at times when man was still more akin to the outer cosmic existence. There were no repeated lives on earth then. And in the future, when man will have found a more intimate union with the cosmos again, the repeated lives on earth will also cease. But for a long period of time we have to observe, through the same powers that I have described, what can be called the contemplation of repeated earthly lives. Through this one is led in a cognitive way to the spiritual world.

As I have already indicated, human feeling and perception are taken along by the development of the powers of thought and will. This human feeling, insofar as it lives and wants to live out in religious devotion, can only deepen when the human soul is also presented with knowledge of that which is eternal in the soul, which is spiritual and supersensible in the cosmos. Anthroposophy certainly does not want to found some kind of sect in the world. It does not want to found a new religion. Take the whole meaning of what I have tried to explain today: it is something that wants to strive scientifically, but which, due to its special kind of scientific striving, can never become a mere specialty because it concerns every human being. Therefore, one cannot say: Anthroposophy is something like botany or zoology or geometry, which in their higher parts can only be recognized by individual specialists. Anthroposophy is something that concerns every human being. And the development of the spirit will bring it about that it will concern more and more people. And every person, through what is in them in body, soul and spirit, can understand and receive what Anthroposophy, albeit as the result of arduous research, has to present to the world, provided they are open to it. But the fact that the supersensible world emerges as a result of research does not in fact take away a person's religious life, but deepens it. Religions have every reason to look to anthroposophy as something that can offer them help, that can give people exactly what they need to come to religious devotion again, after modern life has taken away much of this religious devotion, especially in the modern intellectual life. It is therefore a complete misunderstanding to believe that true, genuine religious devotion, true, genuine religious experience could somehow be endangered by anthroposophy. This is another area in which anthroposophy can be thoroughly fruitful.

Those who see through what is actually at stake may say that anthroposophy in particular accommodates the deepest human longings of the more active minds of modern humanity.

And if I am to briefly summarize in a few words what I have tried to describe as the essence of anthroposophy – although this can only be done insufficiently in a short lecture – I would like to say: the human being stands before us with his physical body. We look at him. His soul and spirit speak from the depths of his being. It speaks from his face, from each of his movements. We do not have the whole person before us if we do not see this spiritual-soul in the natural-physical. Natural science has brought it to a high level of perfection over the last three to four centuries, especially in the nineteenth century. Anthroposophy does not want to rely on laymanship or dilettantism, although it is for everyone. The anthroposophical researcher wants to exclude any laymanship or dilettantism in the field of natural science. He wants to see genuine science and genuine methodology developed in the field of natural science. But in doing so, he is particularly aware of how external natural science, which has rightly celebrated such triumphs and has made such a significant impact on practical life, how this natural science represents something external that can be compared to the physical body of the human being.

Wherever we look with the unprejudiced eyes of a whole human being, equipped with the insights of natural science, we encounter something like the way the soul and spirit appear in human physiognomy and human movements; we encounter something as science, as knowledge of the soul and spirit in the knowledge of nature. I would like to say: through its physiognomy, through the way it develops, the knowledge of nature can point to this spiritual-soul aspect of a particular knowledge. Just as the natural human being reveals the spirit and the soul in the way his body is formed, so true scientific knowledge reveals a higher, supersensible knowledge that goes to the spiritual-soul. What the human soul and human spirit are in the human body, that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the soul and spirit are in knowledge. For a true natural science, the anthroposophical paths and results are what the soul and spirit are in knowledge.