The Inner Nature and Essence of the Human Soul

GA 80b — 12 February 1922, Stuttgart

5. Natural Death and Spiritual Life

Dear attendees,

Anthroposophy, which I have been privileged to represent here for many years now, is initially met with disbelief for a very specific reason: because its particular modes of knowledge not only require it to speak about different things than one is accustomed to hearing in scientific circles today, but also to speak in a different way, to have a different mode of expression. This, however, my dear ladies and gentlemen, does not only lead to the essence of anthroposophy in an external, formal way, but, as the considerations of this evening for a particular case would like to show, leads deep into the whole essence of the anthroposophical world view.

The ideas and concepts in which Anthroposophy expresses what it gains in a certain way through so-called supersensible knowledge have, in contrast to the concepts that one is accustomed to in scientific life today, something, one may say, more vividly. Without abandoning its scientific basis, it stands out in a certain way from that which is only bound to the outer world of facts that can be perceived by the senses and reached by the intellect. From this outer world of facts, anthroposophy turns to another world of facts, and from this other world of facts it must not only proclaim something other than what the senses are able to see, but it must also speak in a different way.

This can be seen particularly clearly in the fact that most intensely characterizes human earthly destiny: the fact of death. For human hopes of being able to transcend one's own nature through death are connected with the fact of death; the problem of immortality is connected with the problem of death. And talking about the problem of immortality today is considered unscientific.

Now, my dear audience, when we consider such a fundamental question, such a fundamental riddle of life, we must draw attention to the way in which the way of thinking is expressed in the most diverse ways across the different regions of the earth. I would like to say: we here, within the German world of Central Europe, are precisely wedged between the West and the East with such questions. And I would like to point out, just by way of introduction, the Western way of thinking and the Eastern way of thinking, and then show how it may be incumbent on the German mind, precisely by avoiding the one-sidedness of the West and the East, to arrive at a higher level of knowledge in this field.

If we look across to the West, we encounter above all a thinker who has also profoundly influenced Central and Eastern European thought for almost a century, a thinker who has had more influence on Central European scientific concepts in particular than is usually realized. He is Herbert Spencer. He looks at human life, and it is most interesting to take his view of life where he applies it to the problem of education. He asks: What must be the real goal of human education? And he comes to say – as I said, I will only mention this in the introduction, not explain it – he comes to say that the real goal of education must be to make proper parents and educators out of all people. Now, what he presents as the goal of education may be of little interest to us today, but the reason why he recognizes this goal of education as his own is. He says: human development reaches a certain conclusion at the moment when a person becomes capable of reproduction, when a person thus enters into sexual maturity. And if the power to produce one's own kind is the highest that a person can achieve in the course of their life, then the highest goal of education must also be to educate and teach these descendants in the appropriate way. And it is clear from the context as a whole, rather than from this single assertion, that this Western thinker actually sees a sure cognitive insight into the human being only by pursuing natural processes to their peak, to the point of producing the same; that he regards, so to speak, everything that man has to strive for most significantly after he has reached sexual maturity, that he regards all so-called intellectual development only as a kind of superstructure, only as a kind of appendage, one might almost say, to the secure natural foundation of human development.

Now it is extremely interesting to contrast this Western thinker with an Eastern thinker: Vladimir Soloviev, the most significant Russian thinker of the most recent period, who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and whose most important works thus extend well into the present day. From a completely different spirit, from completely different psychological backgrounds, we hear this Eastern thinker speak; in that – one might say – although he expresses himself entirely in Western and Central European thought forms, the whole of the Orient still resonates emotionally and sentimentally, which everywhere nuances what he has to say in a warm, deeply intimate way.

Solowjow now also speaks about the human course of life. And he says: Man must have two goals in life. One goal can only be the striving for perfection through ever further and further advancement in the knowledge of the truth, but the other must be to live in that which gives man immortality. One might say that Solowjow speaks not from abstract concepts but from the full human experience when he says that life, which would only perfect itself in truth, would be meaningless if it were not accompanied by immortality immortality, because without immortality the striving for truth, for perfection in truth, would be senseless, a simple dying down, a passing away of the being; the striving for truth would be senseless. And an immortality without the striving for truth would be equally senseless; life would be a world deception if the striving for truth were not accompanied by the fact of immortality. And it is precisely against this background that Solowjow speaks out sharply against what Herbert Spencer sets as the goal of human development, not mentioning Spencer on this occasion, but discussing it himself. He says: Let us just assume that this development of humanity would consist solely of individual generations producing further generations, thus the same always producing the same; a rolling wheel of this kind would be the most senseless thing imaginable.

Now, my dear audience, if we go deeper into the basis of these two completely opposing views, we find a very different way of living in the soul life. In the work of Herbert Spencer, one finds a thorough familiarity with the concepts that have emerged as scientific concepts in the development of humanity over the past few centuries, and one finds his view that truth and knowledge can only be attained with such concepts. We find that Solowjow expresses himself entirely in the same conceptual worlds as the Western thinker, but at the same time we find that he speaks from something in man that does not dissolve into these concepts, that only makes use of these concepts as if they were a language. And one has the feeling that old times of human cultural development, old times of human thinking are coming to life in a religiously colored world view in Vladimir Solovyov, the thinker of the East, and that something deeper in human nature is speaking than that which can be expressed in the external, sensory and intellectual representations.

But while we find, I might say, strictly reasoned logic in Spencer, and while one moves in the element of a certain certainty of concepts and ideas when pondering him, in Solovyov we find something is at work that cannot be grasped with the same certainty; in his work one finds something that seeks to renew the leap beyond the conceptual world of the old thinkers, the old visionaries. And in modern times, when discussing the deepest riddles of human existence, one feels caught between these two worlds. But perhaps one may say: It is the destiny of Central Europe to observe the two one-sidedness in the way of development and to seek a way that goes beyond both, which then leads into a real supersensible world, in which the problem of death on the one hand, that of immortality on the other, can really come before the human soul in a satisfying way. This path, ladies and gentlemen, is what anthroposophical research is trying to take.

Anthroposophical research can neither remain within the Western conceptual world nor in that world which, I would say, only makes external use of concepts like a language, but which draws from a more or less mystical darkness that characterizes the Oriental essence. On the one hand, the anthroposophical method of research must avoid losing itself in this mystical darkness; on the other hand, it must try to overcome that which always wants to keep the human being, who only lives in concepts, within the sensory world. This can be shown particularly clearly if we first consider, outwardly, that which intrudes into human life as the most intense destiny, if we consider death, in order to then ascend in the realization of the grasp of death to the grasp of immortality.

Death confronts us within nature itself, to which man belongs with one side of his being, as the great riddle of existence. And if we could link it, on the one hand, to what Herbert Spencer presents as the goal of the human life cycle – the generation of the same – and, on the other hand, to what Vladimir Solovjov addresses to immortality, not as a non-logical but as a purely human appeal Vladimir Solovjow addresses to immortality, then one would give human knowledge only that conclusion, which makes it from a mere factor dominating the external world to one that can now also carry the internal of man with certainty and with a firm hold through life.

Let us look, then, my dear audience, at how death manifests itself in the natural existence of man; and let me be clear: today I will speak only about human death, not about the types of death that we can observe in the animal world and even down to the plant world. Within the human world, how does death confront us? It draws together in a certain sense into a single moment – precisely at the moment of the conclusion of life – and that is what makes it so mysterious. We live our lives, we enjoy this life of ours, we make use of it in the outer realm of humanity and the world, and we do not immediately become aware of death in this experience of existence, but only as a riddle about a fact, that this life, as we live it every day, simply comes to an end.

When we now place this single fact of life before our soul, what do we actually find there? Man leaves behind from his life in the physical world that which we call a corpse. The substances and the forces in this corpse are in a certain connection; when the human being has become a physical corpse, they are in such a connection that they cannot remain in it, and they must emerge from it , and this must happen through the same forces, through the same natural laws that we find all over the world externally with our senses and with our intellect, into which we are placed in a sensory way. It must be said that, in a certain sense, the human material and energetic context is taken over by that world when death occurs, from which we actually draw our knowledge from birth to death, insofar as it is knowledge of the senses and mind.

And what does this external world actually do to the human corpse? It dissolves the human corpse, destroys its form, and in other words, it causes it to pass from the individual existence in which it was enclosed from birth to death into a general physical world existence. We look at this physical world existence, and must initially call it “the conclusion of life”. We must admit, when we follow the processes that the human corpse undergoes from the onset of death until it is completely dissolved in the course of the world, that these are processes that are completely unlike those that - albeit initially unknown to human knowledge - clearly take place until death. For as soon as death occurs, as soon as the external forces of the world take over the human corpse, its components, its forces, take different paths, initially for the outer sense existence, than they did between birth and death.

Between birth and death they are held together by something, whether this something is conceived as this or that, or perhaps even denied, and everything that is present is pushed into a mere different context during life, as that which is after death, but this context must at least be called a different one. And so, on the one hand, the human physical body after death, absorbed by the general forces of nature; on the other hand, this same human body, removed from general dissolution, renewing itself again and again from birth to death, maintaining its individual form. The contrast, the polar contrast, is initially a great one, and the question must be asked: How can knowledge come to terms with this polar contrast?

Well, my dear audience, it will never come to terms with it unless it appeals to that which anthroposophical research wants to introduce into scientific life, that which I have tried to characterize in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds » as a path that leads beyond mere sensory and intellectual knowledge, in that the human being becomes aware of certain deeper powers of knowledge present in the human soul, which are simply not applied by ordinary consciousness. These powers are always present in the human soul. Ordinary consciousness leaves them lying in the unconscious; the higher path of knowledge brings them up through meditation and concentration. The seeker devotes himself to certain exercises, intimate soul exercises, through which he strengthens thinking, feeling and willing, thereby evoking more intense experiences in the soul for this soul life than are ordinary experiences. But in this way he also rises above what ordinary knowledge can achieve.

Today I cannot go into a description of this particular path, which I have given here several times. It will be touched on in my lecture next Tuesday here in Stuttgart. Today I just want to point out that this path consists of the soul forces that every person has at the bottom of their soul being raised through meditation, through concentration of the soul life, and being applied to the world.

And what happens as a result? As a result, dear attendees, a third state of consciousness is added to the two in which a person alternates in ordinary life. The two states of consciousness that I have in mind are the one that we have from morning till evening, which encompasses our ordinary mental life and also encompasses everything that external science regards as accessible – it is precisely the state of waking; the other state of consciousness cannot really even be called a state of consciousness in the proper sense – it is the state of sleep. But out of this state emerges the strange life of human dreaming – that human dreaming that is perhaps accepted in a superstitious way by one person, marveled at by another, regarded by a third as something mysterious and unknown , but which draws the attention of very many people to the fact that perhaps the directing of the soul's gaze precisely to this emergence of dream waves from the deep ocean depths of the human soul life could have a special importance for the knowledge of the whole of life. Of course, anthroposophy has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of dream-related superstition. However, if it does not draw any knowledge from the dream life – that is quite beyond it – it must at least point to something deeply enigmatic and vitally important in the dream world. It must say the following to justify itself.

Is not that to which ordinary knowledge surrenders also something turned away from life when we surrender to life in the usual robust way, when we live our existence in the world only by exerting our physical bodies from morning till night? What we call knowledge, even in ordinary life, cannot come about through this. The finer concepts, the more intimate connections with the world that are sought through knowledge, depend – initially in a formal way – on the external, robust way of life. In a sense, one has to retreat to a place of existence in knowledge that lies apart from the external life. And yet, one must admit that through that which one intimately explores in this remote place, by observing, experimenting, and thereby going beyond the ordinary course of existence with observation and experiment, that precisely through this light comes into life; that light comes into life from something that withdraws from life. Could it not also be the case that the mysterious world of dreams is initially meaningless for the external, robust life, but that it is precisely in its remoteness, and in a remoteness in a higher sense than ordinary knowledge, that it points to the essence of life?

And indeed, this dream world, that which resonates and vibrates from the time we spend between falling asleep and waking up into the waking consciousness, contains something that can indeed be further developed. And this further development happens precisely through the higher knowledge of the human being, through the attainment of a third state of consciousness. Through the intensification of thinking, feeling and willing, something is achieved that is, on the one hand, similar to the world of sleep, out of which dreaming arises, and, on the other hand, is completely opposed to it. When we say we fall asleep, we let the dream sound from the world of sleep; so we have to say: in the world of supersensible consciousness, into which anthroposophical research wants to penetrate, there is not a falling asleep, but on the contrary a higher awakening. There is an experience in a world that is similar to and yet very different from the world of dreams; similar in that it ceases when we submerge into the full physical life with the dream world, which, after all, flits past us in moments, say, of waking up, and immediately gives way to the life that permeates the thoughts imbued with will. The life in consciousness that is attained in the manner indicated can and must likewise cease when it submerges into ordinary human corporeality. Just as the dream fades away, so the higher consciousness ceases when it submerges into corporeality. This waking up, this higher state of consciousness, if I may use the much-debated term, hovers, I would like to say, in a lightness just like that of the dream world – but on the other hand it is opposed to it because it is interspersed with certain thoughts in just as strict a sense as waking daytime cognition.

Thus, anthroposophical research consists in an advance to a knowledge that is experienced with a lightness like a dream, but at the same time it is experienced with a firmness that is only possible if it is logical in the context of knowledge. But one thing is the case with both. When one becomes conscious of the complete context with one's corporeality from one or the other area of consciousness, then one or the other occurs in such a form that the dream is extinguished by the waking day life, can at most remain as a memory, but as a memory it integrates itself into the waking day life , but the content of higher knowledge is not erased, but stands alongside ordinary daytime cognition, but stands in such a way that it clearly stands out from it, so that the person can then experience his own existence as if he had two personalities, one can control the other, can illuminate what he has in ordinary consciousness in the waking state from morning to evening, with the higher knowledge that he has attained, which in turn he can control through his ordinary logical thinking, in order to experience how it relates to what can be experienced in the sensory world. This higher knowledge places us in a purely soul-spiritual experience, one that is full of content and inner reality. Just as in the ordinary life of the senses one can distinguish between something merely fancifully imagined and reality itself in life, just as one can distinguish between the mere idea of a hot iron and the real hot iron that one touches through life itself, so one can distinguish between something merely fancifully imagined and what is really seen in higher knowledge, what is directly experienced.

But this reality confronts man in such a way that it constitutes the complete opposite of what confronts us in natural death. In natural death, as we have seen, the human body is taken up by the general, natural laws of the world, which dissolve it, take away its form, and allow it to merge into their general existence. In higher knowledge, the soul life becomes more powerful, permeates itself with purely soul-spiritual reality, and comprehends itself in purely soul-spiritual reality. But it does not flow out into the general laws of nature as the human body does after death. It does not flow out into the general laws of nature, and this soul-spiritual experience does not flow into any general laws of the world either.

In this soul-spiritual experience, we become acquainted with something that must be said to be different from what we otherwise experience between birth and death in our waking daily life; it is something viewed from within that is as different from this waking daily life as the dead corpse is different from the living human body that we carry within us between birth and death. We look at something from the outside in the human corpse, which allows us to approach the mystery of death in the realm of nature; we look at something that is different in its innermost being from what we carry within us between birth and death in the same organism. And in higher knowledge we behold something — spiritually, inwardly — that is just as different from all that we experience inwardly, spiritually, through our human organism, which in death becomes the corpse. One would like to say: On the one hand, the dead corpse has separated from life for our external view; for our inner view, that which can be seen as a spiritual-soul reality in higher knowledge has separated from the same experience before our soul's gaze.

My dear attendees! In this confrontation with death staring at us from nature, when we look at it, I would say, in the form in which it presents itself to us, when we follow the fate of the human corpse after death, in the confrontation of this fact of death and that which knowledge — when the human being brings the soul forces that exist subconsciously, one could also say superconsciously, into his soul life —, in this juxtaposition lies that from which, in a certain sense, the most important problems of human life arise, even before anthroposophical research. It is an inward consolidation, an inward strengthening of oneself in that which one grasps as one's own spiritual-soul life. One feels as if one has been returned to one's innermost being, one feels completely within oneself by grasping oneself in this one's spiritual-soul reality, apart from the life between birth and death.

And a special shade of the idea that he gets from this view arises for him when he contrasts this idea with the idea of natural death. But then, when man has experienced through higher knowledge this reality consolidated in himself, this strengthened spiritual-soul life, and then immersed again in the physical body, that is, as I have mentioned, the consciousness that gives higher knowledge and the consciousness that is bound to the body, which accompanies us during physical life between birth and death, from waking up to falling asleep.

When these two are juxtaposed, when one penetrates the human being in his ordinary physical existence with what he appears to be, when he beholds his true, higher existence, then – my dear audience – one encounters the riddle of death for the second time, and one encounters it in a way that is not presented in ordinary life and ordinary science. Then one plunges back into the physical organization with that which first emerged from the tool of the body, from the entire physical organization; and one experiences this physical organization in a different way than in ordinary life. One experiences now what it means that we indeed carry within us during our physical life that which falls away from us at death as a corpse, which must move according to completely different physical laws after death than during physical life. And one actually sees that this moment of death stands out as a separate event in human life. You now feel in recognition: You carry within you all the time that which you see in a dead person in physical relationship with the destructive forces before you; you always carry these destructive forces within you. This is a significant realization, my dear audience!

One submerges oneself with one's soul-spiritual existence, which one has glimpsed through higher knowledge, into the physical body and only now does one find out how one actually carries the powers of death within oneself continuously; and how these powers of death are now continually overcome by the life forces, how a continuous struggle takes place in the human organism, the struggle that takes place between the powers of death and the life forces. Only now do we begin to feel what it actually means when waking and sleeping alternate in ordinary life. We feel that the whole human being in sleep leaves the physical body just as the human being with higher knowledge, which I have described, leaves this physical body. But one also feels how, in the ordinary life between birth and death, man relies on the use of his physical body to exercise his logical powers and his powers of thought. For when he is not in his physical body during sleep, he at most brings it to a confused, chaotic dream life, which must immediately vanish when man submerges into the physical body. But through higher knowledge one also learns to see what is continuously at work in the human body, which counteracts the dissolving forces that are in us from birth to death. One learns to recognize that this counteraction is most intense precisely from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. And one learns to recognize how the waking life with its thoughts is connected to that which manifests itself separately with the corpse. One learns to recognize how one actually always carries within oneself the forces that are active in the corpse as the forces of dying. And through higher knowledge one learns that we initially carry those thoughts through which we permeate and order our existence in ordinary life, and that we actually handle it in the right way, that we cannot carry these thoughts up into higher knowledge. Into this higher knowledge, into this higher reality, we carry, my dear audience, only a part of our emotional and volitional life from our ordinary daily life, and in a higher world we acquire new thoughts. The sphere of thought that is bound to the physical body and one sees: is bound to that in the physical body which is always in us, which are the dying forces, this sphere of thought is grasped with higher knowledge. One also realizes that one had to strengthen thinking, feeling and willing in order to carry the thoughts that our physical body carries in our ordinary life, in order to carry the self.

For this reason, my dear audience, the whole inner soul life and the whole inner spiritual life must be strengthened and strengthened for the sake of higher knowledge. What we can leave to the forces of the body in our ordinary life, we must carry and accomplish ourselves in the spiritual-soul realm in higher knowledge. And we experience this personal contribution. We experience thoughts that are not bound to the outer, physical body, that are world thoughts. We do not experience natural laws, we experience world thoughts! Through higher knowledge, we experience the way in which what is outer world revelation is created and formed out of world thought. And what the ordinary world of thought is, and what the world of thought is that one only enters with higher knowledge, is revealed to this higher consciousness. One now learns to recognize the intimate connection between the forces of dying and death in human nature and the forces that actually express themselves in our thinking, in our ordinary imagination, from the moment we wake until we fall asleep.

We are in a dull state of consciousness that only reaches as far as dreams, which are only brightened up by higher knowledge and thus also become transparent. This state of consciousness also only reaches as far as the world of images in dreams, which is not permeated by thoughts. In order to have thoughts in ordinary consciousness, one must descend into the physical organism, which carries the forces of dying and of death within itself. And if we did not have these dying and these death forces, we would not have a self-contained world of thoughts in ordinary consciousness between birth and death.

We are now learning how the human being must, as it were, harden himself to a physical organization that wrests itself from him, that works in the same way as the physical forces work in death, which can only be overcome by the human being being permeated by his soul and spirit. One learns to recognize these powers of dying and death through the fact that, with higher knowledge, one has a world of thoughts that does not descend into these powers of dying and death. And so spiritual life is placed alongside natural death for this higher knowledge, and so man learns to recognize how precisely the powers of thought – those powers that connect our inner life with the world of the senses, that convey the external world – how these powers of thought are bound to the dissolving, to the dying powers of the human organism. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a significant insight, for it allows us to see the riddle of death in a new light. We see that we have not only the essence of death before us when it appears to us as the final enigmatic link, as the conclusion of physical life, but we perceive death as it continuously works between birth and death in the human being, and we perceive its intimate connection with the ordinary life of thought. But with that – my dear audience – the essence of this thought life also becomes clear to us.

It is precisely because what we carry in our soul in terms of feeling and will must, so to speak, combine with the dying forces in order to be permeated by the world of thought that we need for our ordinary life, our soul life takes on the character that it has developed to its highest flowering in the present age, of which it is most eminently and rightly proud.

Let us try to imagine what this world of thought, which we now know to be bound to the forces of dying and of death in man, is capable of. It is capable of penetrating into what is also outwardly dead nature, and in this respect, more recent knowledge has celebrated its great, justified triumphs. It has spread more and more over the field of dead, inorganic, inanimate nature; it wants to see through this dead, this inanimate nature in such a way that one day — this is its ideal — it will be able to see the emergence of the living within the dead, like a combination of the forces that work within the dead. Today, in a certain respect, it is believed that we are on the way to such an understanding of the organic from the inorganic. But even if such an ideal of scientific knowledge, which is entirely justified in its field, could be fulfilled, we will only recognize that which is dead in the living. Allow me to express this in the following way, ladies and gentlemen.

When I look at a plant, I see a living thing, in which substances revolve and forces are at work. Within that which I have before my eyes in this living thing, the same forces and laws are at work that I explore in physics and chemistry; there is a physicality, a chemistry within it. This physicality, this chemistry, is present within the living thing in a different way than outside of it, but it is only within this living thing that it is inanimate. And it may be possible to see through the particular way in which this non-living manifests itself in the living, but one still remains only with the non-living. And one remains with the non-living even when one studies it up to the point of understanding the human being. The human being carries within himself the forces, the mode of action of dead matter. But precisely because he carries these forces of dead material within him, this means that he always has death and dying within him. Through higher knowledge, one gains insight into the fact that the human being thinks in the ordinary consciousness by carrying this inanimate, this inorganic, this continually equipping him with dying forces. It is significant to see through the fact that man must see that which he recognizes as his highest in physical life as being bound to that which is constantly detaching itself from life, that is, that man can think, that he is constantly detaching the forces of the dead from life.

And that is why it also happens that at the same moment that the life processes increase in the ordinary physical life – let us say in fever or abnormal, morbid conditions – that then the human consciousness also turns into the morbid; that a person can only have a healthy consciousness when the life forces, the effervescent, warm life forces, are kept in check by the forces of death. Thoughts, as we have them in ordinary life, are placed in the powers of mind and will that are bound to the living; they are placed in these by the fact that the powers of death are placed in human life. The conscious powers of thought of physical life are bound to death and dying, are inwardly connected, most intimately, with these powers of death and dying.

And so, through such contemplation, what we encounter in the external knowledge of the inanimate, the inorganic, is put into perspective. If we become acquainted with the world of ideas and concepts in all its human aspects, as it appears in its highest development between birth and death in physical life, then we perceive it as something that is given in its nature, in its essence, to the inanimate, and is also given to external, dead nature. And one discovers the great law of human existence: because in us the powers of thought and knowledge are connected with the powers of death, we can therefore only know the inorganic, the inanimate, in the ordinary way. But when higher spiritual knowledge, such as anthroposophical research strives for, enters into this life, then ordinary thoughts are, as it were, raised into a higher sphere, just as that which is continually dying and decaying in man, that which is a continually active corpse with the destructive forces that dissolve its form, is raised into life. And we have – my dear audience – a self-living process before us in the transition from ordinary knowledge to anthroposophical knowledge.

We recognize the ideas, the concepts of ordinary knowledge as bound to death; we recognize that which anthroposophical knowledge strives for as that which resurrects the ordinary, dead, inanimate concepts and ideas to life. We recognize not only a formal process of knowledge, we recognize a vitalization of our soul life; we recognize a direct presentation of that which has nothing to do with birth and death, which really goes beyond birth and death because it does not partake of the forces of death and dying. We recognize the immortal part of the human being and learn to distinguish it from that which is continually bound to death. In this way, as in higher knowledge, I would say that spiritual life arises from natural death, not just a spiritual, formal knowledge. That is why, my dear audience, this anthroposophical knowledge initially seems strange to people. It is usually taken as a mere continuation of ordinary knowledge. It is that in the full sense of the word, but it is a continuation in such a way that the character, the whole nature of this ordinary knowledge is also changed, that we experience something like a birth of a living being within the thoughts and ideas that are otherwise only useful for the inanimate, within those thoughts that I have called world thoughts. In today's meditation, we are confronted with that into which the human being is first absorbed when he separates as a spiritual soul from his life between birth and death. When his physical self separates through natural death, his body is absorbed into the general natural forces and his form is destroyed. When the spiritual soul is absorbed into the world that the higher knowledge already reaches in a cognitively alive way, then the human being is consolidated. Then the human being is not dissolved into the rest of the world; then he enters the spiritual world with his full individuality – yes, [this higher individuality is strengthened, intensified] – he enters the spiritual world with this world.

In this way, by developing the powers of human consciousness, anthroposophical knowledge seeks to approach the problem of immortality. And you see, my dear audience: for this anthroposophical knowledge, it is important to approach this problem of immortality not just by philosophizing about the immortal, but by researching: Where in the human being is the immortal to be found? It can be found through higher knowledge, when one reaches that which, by returning to the body, objectively beholds death in its perpetual activity in us and therefore knows what alone can succumb to death.

Only that which is already continually in the bosom of this death can succumb to it. By seeing through the continuous dying, the actual moment of death is recognized only as a kind of summary of that which is always there. And while we are constantly saving our life, I might say, from death, by always overcoming the forces of death in the physical life, but overcoming them by the fact that within us there is always that which is only seen by higher knowledge, so in physical death, by this the spiritual soul in us, precisely in physical death, that which in its individual addenda, in its individual elements, must be overcome from moment to moment of life, is overcome – completely overcome, I might say – in physical death. We overcome natural death in every moment through our spiritual life, which has nothing to do with death. And when one acquires such knowledge of the overcoming of mortality through immortality, then the riddle of death also presents itself to the human soul in precisely that renewed form, which I took the liberty of describing to you this evening, my dear audience.

And therein lie the reasons why anthroposophy must not only speak about other things, but also differently than ordinary science. It must derive its concepts and ideas, which are, after all, about spiritual worlds, from what we have in our ordinary minds as concepts and ideas and which can only be applied to the dead because they come from death and dying. And therefore only those can enter into this world of thought that carry the will within themselves to pass over from dead concepts to living concepts; that carry the will within themselves to shape the activity of the soul in such a way that they grasp that which must be grasped in life, and not just grasp in a comfortable way that which can only be grasped in death. Today, we largely form our physiology, our anthropology, by observing human beings after death and then constructing life out of death. Anthroposophy attempts to enliven that in the human being that is bound to death and thus to bring the inner soul world itself, as living spirituality, up to a higher level of knowledge.

You certainly do not have to become a researcher in this field yourself — I have taken the liberty of mentioning this here a few times — to penetrate the justification of the anthroposophical world. Those who become researchers have the spiritual world directly before them, as I have been describing it here for years. They then describe it from what arises for them when they translate what they see into the form of human thought. But in describing it, they appeal not only to their own seeing, but also to the inner human liveliness. And because every human being has this inner life, just as they have their own dying process, they can gradually, even if they do not become researchers in the field of spiritual science and anthroposophy, acquire an understanding of what researchers bring out of the spiritual world. The publication of such writings as my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' indicates how anyone can at least get started on their own research into the spiritual world. But it also indicates that such books are primarily written as they are so that everyone can, so to speak, receive the spiritual researcher's justification for what he actually does. But that which comes before humanity as ideas, as concepts, can be grasped by common sense. For this common sense is that which can rise to living thoughts just as it can remain with dead thoughts. And this understanding is not mere belief, not mere emotional understanding, but it is an understanding that arises out of the free nature of the human being, which simply connects what is in it of world existence with what can be proclaimed through research out of this world existence.

It must always be emphasized that anthroposophy is, so to speak, handed over to the world so that it can be tested by ordinary, healthy human understanding. If one practices this, allows it to be lived out in a comprehensive, not a one-sided way, then one will see how one relates to anthroposophy differently than one still often believes today. We can then look at concepts such as those of Herbert Spencer, which only remain within physical life, as I described in my introduction. On the other hand, we can look at concepts such as those of Vladimir Soloviev, which arise out of the fullness of human life. We shall see in the case of Herbert Spencer why he has to stop at physical life, because everything he expresses comes from a way of thinking that is bound up with the forces of dying and of death. And we shall see in the case of Soloviev that although he uses concepts that are common in the West and that to a great extent contain the conceptual form associated with dying and death, But in the case of Solowjow, we shall see how these concepts remain external to him, but how he dreams up what he actually wants to say out of a mystical darkness and a mystical depth, and thus becomes one-sided on the other side as well.

We will see in anthroposophy how it does not simply take what is dead in the Western world and use it as a means of expression, but how it brings what is dead to life itself, how it leads from the mortal to the immortal by awakening what is dead to life.

It seems to me, honored attendees, that Central Europe, with the special preconditions for its thinking, feeling and willing — these great upswings that have come to light in Goethe and those who, so to speak, can be described as being within Goetheanism — the task of avoiding both one-sidedness by continuing in the direction of these endeavors and in fact of elevating our scientific conceptual world, which fetters us to the earth and can only truly say something about natural death, to a spiritual life that has something to say about immortality.

Many will object: this science, which you describe as anthroposophy, is, as it were, suspended in mid-air; one is not standing on the firm ground of fact. My dear ladies and gentlemen! I have tried to show you today how anthroposophy can only be properly understood if it is considered in the context of the whole process of world evolution and the place of human beings in this process. If we look at what is around us here on earth, we have to say of everything: it needs a foundation on which it stands. If we were to hold an earthly object in the air, it would fall down. That which surrounds us in our immediate environment needs a foundation; that which surrounds us in our immediate knowledge of the life between birth and death, the facts of the external sense world and the combining intellect, needs to have such a foundation in order to exist spiritually. At the same moment when we look out from earthly life into the life of the world, it would be foolish to say that the earth needs a foundation on which it rests in order to exist in the world.

In the world of space, we have already become accustomed to the fact that one cosmic body freely maintains the balance of the other through the forces that unfold such a foundation. As science rises from the mortal to the immortal, it must realize that it must take the same path in the spiritual-soul realm as that which confronts us in the mortal. For knowledge, it needs a basis. That which confronts us in the world of the immortal in the various fields must support itself. And until we are able to grasp this image, we will not understand how anthroposophical spiritual science relates to external science, which it does not deny but fully recognizes. But spiritual science must not only research different things from ordinary science, it must also research differently and speak differently.

That was what I wanted to present to your soul through today's contemplation, based on the essence of this spiritual science, and what I would now like to summarize in a few words, saying: a more intimate contemplation of the position of anthroposophy and the world brings us to a very special view of the relationship between natural death and spiritual life. But we can only gain such an insight if we fulfill what Anthroposophy basically calls out to us from the deeper nature of the world itself, by saying: Human being, if you want to recognize that which lives immortal in the spirit, first enliven your own world of knowledge. If you want to grasp life in the spirit, first enliven your knowledge within you. Understand what it means when it is said not in dead but in living concepts. Rise up from that which, as dead matter, needs a support, to that which, as spiritual, moves freely in the spiritual, in the spiritual worlds, which is not bound to that which lives and weaves in the transitory, which lives in itself and which can be grasped can be grasped by man when he presents the great, significant antitheses before his soul: natural death in itself, the spiritual life that he can grasp when he frees himself from that which is bound to the transitory in earthly life!