The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear Attendees!

The momentous events in which the German nation finds itself justify my speaking, as I have done for many years in other German cities, about subjects related to spiritual science. This year, as in the past, last year, I shall not speak about a narrow subject of spiritual science itself, but about something that is intimately connected with the spiritual life of the German people, with that which is suitable to reveal something about the position of the German people within the overall development of humanity.

If I do this, it is certainly not to give expression to mere emotional views, which are particularly close to the soul in these difficult but also, in a certain sense, hopeful times, but because it is not based on dark feelings and perceptions , but rather, as I believe, on real facts, cognitive facts, well-founded conviction, that what has always been characterized here as spiritual science, that it is rooted in the innermost depths of precisely those expressions of German intellectual life that we can count among the peaks of that intellectual life.

We have no need, dearest ones present, as Germans in the present, to express our feelings and thoughts by denigrating and even slanderously distorting, before all things – as it is also done by the most outstanding personalities in the ranks of our enemies – that which what is outside of German life - as it is done from the other side in relation to the German essence - but we can look at it from a purely factual point of view, based on the German national character.

It should be mentioned briefly in the introduction that spiritual science, as it is meant here, is based on the fact that it is possible, from within the human soul – through processes of the soul's life, which have been described here in this city many times and which can also be found in our literature can be found in our literature, that it is possible to develop such powers in the human soul that lead a person to an understanding of that which is not exhausted in the time between birth and death, but which goes through births and deaths and represents the eternal, the immortal essence of man. That such a deepening of the soul life is possible, and such a strengthening of the powers of the soul life, that the human being becomes aware within himself within his physical body that which has shaped this physical body out of the spiritual world and which, when the human being passes through the passes through the gate of death, returns to the spiritual world, that such knowledge is possible, and that such knowledge must gradually be incorporated into the spiritual life of humanity in our time, that is the spiritual-scientific conviction as it is meant here.

And this spiritual-scientific conviction, which – as I believe – is true spiritual science, is contained in the most beautiful and meaningful striving of the German people.

Now, precisely one objection could be raised: it is supposed to be about spiritual science, about that which gives the mind a similar knowledge to that of natural science for external nature, so it is supposed to be about a science. People who stand at a certain point of superficiality will immediately object: Yes, science is something completely international!

This objection is so overwhelming for many because it is so endlessly superficial. One could say: superficial to the point of being taken for granted; because the moon, for example, is also common to all peoples internationally. But what the individual peoples have to say about the moon, what struggles out of their souls to characterize the moon, that differs from people to people. And if one could also say that this is limited to poetry, then the one who is not merely a scientist, who sees in science not only that which is a description of external things in the most external way, but also that which one can know about things , emerges from the foundations, from the basic forces and basic drives of the human being, and is individual, as the human souls themselves are individual, that is to say: that is why they are shaped so differently, depending on the way in which the individual peoples are predisposed to knowledge of the world. But these predispositions, these inner impulses of the individual people, are what carries humanity forward – not what can be described as “international” in a superficial sense that takes for granted everything that has gone before.

If we want to characterize the German quest for knowledge, what immediately comes to mind are three figures, three great figures, which should only be mentioned in the introduction to today's discussion. But the development of German thought rests on the ground they prepared. These three figures are perhaps not often mentioned in the general German nation today. But that is not important. What is important is that these three figures are difficult to understand in what they created, but that these three figures will nevertheless play an ever greater and greater role in the development of German intellectual life in the future. And these three figures are: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel – the three figures who, as world-view thinkers, formed an enormous background, [who] from the depths of German nationality provided that from which the great creations of German intellectual life also flowed, which we encounter in Goethe, Herder, Lessing, Schiller, and which, after Greek culture, represented a greatest cultural flowering in the development of humanity.

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, what do we see before us? He who only appears to be a difficult philosopher to understand, who rather felt that what he had to give as so-called philosophy is really, in the highest sense, the result of a dialogue that he himself held with the German national spirit. And when we approach Fichte, what does he show us?

He shows us how a personality rooted in the essence of Germanness, in its quest for knowledge, starts from the premise that the human soul itself has something through which it can grasp and inwardly see that which lives and weaves through the world as spiritual and divine in its own inner experience.

In terms of the power with which this came to expression in Fichte's soul, one might say that Fichte stands almost completely alone in the history of human development. Fichte tried to get into his own soul what pulsates and lives and weaves through the world. He was clear about the fact that one could not get to that point, [to experiencing in one's own experience what pervades the world as its fundamental essence, divinely and spiritually], through external observation, [not] through the senses, nor through the mind that is bound to the brain, but only by invoking the soul's deep, hidden powers. And in this he shows a fundamental disposition of the German character: this growing together in the innermost part of the soul with the secrets of the world, this not being able to be satisfied otherwise than by experiencing in the innermost part of the soul what spreads in the great, wide universe as the most hidden, the most mysterious.

One need only recall a few details about this Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which I will mention because they are so characteristic of a figure like Fichte, and one will see how we have to revere in him a personality who, by virtue of his innermost disposition, must seek to give himself completely with his soul to that which he can call experiencing the mystery of the world. Fichte, the son of very simple people, from a simple Saxon village, is seven years old; he was already at school and was a good schoolboy. As a reward, he received a book from his father for Christmas when he turned seven: 'Gehörnte Siegfried' (The Horned Siegfried). After a while, it became apparent that he, who had previously been very eager to learn, was becoming careless about his studies. This was pointed out to him. One day, his father meets him standing by the stream that flows past the simple house: “Der gehörnte Siegfried”, which the boy had thrown into the stream, is floating in it.

An extremely characteristic trait for seven-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. What had passed through his soul? What had passed through his soul was that he said to himself: I have neglected my duty by taking an almost irrepressible interest in this great, powerful material of Siegfried; but duty is what must come before everything else. That is why the book is thrown into the water! To live up to his duty.

And another example: our Johann Gottlieb Fichte is nine years old; the neighboring landowner comes to the simple village one Sunday to listen to the pastor's sermon. He comes too late. The landowner is very sorry that he was unable to hear the village pastor's sermon. Then one reflects and realizes that there is a nine-year-old boy who remembers well what the pastor said in his sermon. They call the nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte; he steps forward, awkwardly, in his blue peasant's smock; but soon he gets into the rendition, so that he repeats the entire sermon with heartfelt sympathy for the neighboring estate owner – not from a dead memory, but he repeats it because his soul has grown together with what he heard and what then tinged his ear to his soul.

This is what is characteristic of this growing together of Fichte's own soul with that which is experienced. And so this develops more and more in Fichte, so that in the end the whole universe is pulsating with will. The world will, the divine world will, it weaves and lives through all spaces and through all times, it sends its currents into the soul weaving of the human being.

And when this weaving of the soul has been completely surrendered, then the soul experiences within itself a stream of the infinite world-will. Then one is united with that which pulsates through the world as Divine-Spiritual. Then one is borne by that which flows as the world-duty on the waves of the will, which shines into our soul and which is the highest that Fichte sought to grasp. Thus, his world view arises from the innermost essence of his personal character. This is the most German thing, to seek out the most personal and the most objective. Fichte is not seeking some soul essence that can be proven, but rather a soul essence that continually participates in the divine-spiritual creative power of the world, so that it can create itself in every moment. And in this inner creativity, which rests in the divine-creative, lies for Fichte the guarantee of the eternal, which goes through births and deaths and which lives in the spiritual world even after the human being has passed through the gate of death.

In his beautiful speeches in Berlin in 1806, which he calls “Instructions for a blessed life”, Fichte says of what flows from the eternal duty of the divine power into the soul of man, in Berlin in 1806, which he calls “Instructions for a blessed life” - of which Fichte says: People talk about the fact that the immortal essence of man only comes into its own after death. The one who really gets to know the soul knows that immortality can be grasped directly in life within this body; and that is why he is immediately certain that - even if this body disintegrates into its elements - that which is grasped within it through real knowledge goes through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

But Fichte is also convinced that the eternal spirit must be grasped in the most intimate inner self at the same time. Therefore, as a teacher at the then-famous University of Jena – because it was the home of the greatest German men – he is fundamentally quite different from any other teacher. He does not teach in order to impart a certain content, a certain set of propositions to his students, but prepares himself in such a way that what he has to teach is first an inner life in his soul, so that he experiences what he wants to let flow into the souls of his listeners.

One listener who understood him well once said beautifully: Fichte's speech rushes along like a thunderstorm. What he had to say in words escaped him as if in a raging thunderstorm. It is clear that he does not just want to educate good people, he wants to educate great souls. Therefore, his endeavor was not just to communicate something to people, but to let something pass into them, so that these souls became something else when they left than they were when they entered the lecture hall. And more and more he referred to the power of the soul, to the strength that lies within the human being, which is beautifully demonstrated in the following sentence. In his lectures, there was always a striving for the direct coexistence of one's own soul life with that of the audience, which he sought to achieve through such beautiful things as this one, for example. An audience member, the naturalist Steffens, described it like this. In the course of his lecture, Fichte called upon the audience: “Think of the wall!” So they thought of the wall. He let this happen for a while – so said the man, Steffens. “And now think of the one who thought of the wall!” [was Fichte's next prompt].

There the human being was referred to himself. There the listeners were taken aback at first; they could not grasp it immediately. But it was the way to refer the human being to his own soul, as to the power that can arise from it, in order to live together with the divine-spiritual powers of the world.

And so there he stands, this Johann Gottlieb Fichte, truly such that enthusiastic listeners could say of him: He lives in the realm of concepts as if in a transcendental world; but in such a way that he not only dwells in this transcendental world, but also rules over this transcendental world. And Fichte was aware that what lived in his soul had been in intimate dialogue with the spirit of the German people itself.

In saying this, I am not characterizing something out of national narrow-mindedness, but rather something that Fichte experienced directly as his perception, and through which he was able to have such a great, such a significant and supportive effect on this German nation in one of the most difficult times for the German people.

One need only compare what it means that a worldview like Fichte's could arise from a particular nationality with what is the pinnacle of the Romance worldview, a worldview that in turn arose entirely from the essence of the French national spirit. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, we have the French philosopher – one of the greatest and precisely one of those who most strikingly characterizes French nationality: Descartes or Cartesius.

He also started from what lives in the human soul. He can therefore be compared favorably with Fichte. His “I think, therefore I am,” the “Cogito ergo sum,” has become famous. But what does it consist of, what he says: “I think, therefore I am. - Cogito ergo sum”? – By the fact that the thought lives in me, I can prove that I remain myself. That which lives in the soul is revealed, it is proved by a logical conclusion. Fichte wants to grasp it in direct life, that is the distinguishing feature. This extends to the broadest aspects of the world view. You can see this from a single detail.

Dear attendees, you see, Descartes, who creates out of French folklore, comes to form a view of the world. What is this view? Yes, this view is this, that – I have to pick out one example because we don't have much time to characterize everything in detail – that he comes to see not only the external nature as one – one might say soulless, but that he also sees the animals as a soulless world. Only humans have a soul because they can experience it inwardly within themselves. Thus Descartes says: animals are no more than moving machines.

This then continued to have an effect on the French world view well into the eighteenth century, when man was also made into a machine. When this world view then confronted Goethe, Goethe, out of his German consciousness, said: Yes, they offer us a world view in which the whole world is a machine, nothing but atoms and molecules bumping into each other. And if they could at least explain to you how the beautiful, glorious world comes from this mechanical pushing, then one could still be interested in such an undertaking. But they simply put the world machine in place without explaining anything about it. That was Goethe's objection to what comes from the French West as a mechanistic worldview.

However, Fichte's view can be compared with this, which wants to immerse itself in every single creature and being, to live with everything, in order to recognize the will, the divine will in everything. This immersion in the world of beings is German.

This confronting, only seeing soul in oneself, making everything a machine - [that is not spoken out of national narrow-mindedness] - that is the French way of doing things, for example.

Now we are looking at Fichte's world view from a different perspective. For him, that which is only revealed to the senses is what he called: a material field for the fulfillment of duty. Everything that is not divine spiritual will, which weaves and lives through all beings, that which only presents itself to the senses, that is, as Fichte says, material material for duty to have an object on which it can exercise itself. That is the great thing that Fichte wants to experience – the spiritual in his own soul – and that he brings to the world, experiencing this spiritual in his own soul also from the other things.

Let us compare this with what emerges, for example, within the English world view, insofar as this English world view has emerged entirely from English nationality. Of course, it is not the individual who is meant; the individual can always rise above his nation; but what is meant is that which is connected with nationality. We see that not only in older times the world view of Bacon of Verulam is based merely on the useful, merely on that which presents itself externally to the senses, for which the spirit, which experiences in itself, stands only as bands that bind together so that the spirit can find its way. There the spirit is only the means to bring the external sense into a system. There is no co-experiencing with what lives as spiritual in all sensuality. And that has been preserved until today. We see pragmatism at work there. For pragmatism is a word for something that, placed next to the Spruce worldview, really looks like darkness next to light.

What is pragmatism? For pragmatism, there is not a truth for its own sake – truth that is sought so that one experiences it as truth in the soul – but the truth: Now, that is something that man forms as a concept, as an idea, so that he can find his way in the outside world. So man forms the concept of the “uniform soul”; but he does not want that in his soul, which is something like soul unity, but because man shows different expressions of his being, does this and does that. And one finds one's way around by assuming a concept like “uniform soul”. It is useful for holding together external, sensory things, for inventing something like truth. Truth only exists because it allows us to orient ourselves in sensory things. And in that which can be experienced at all, truth has no independent meaning.

The opposite is the case in Fichte's quest for a worldview. What is external and sensual is certainly not underestimated; we are not dealing with a false, world-alien knowledge. But we are dealing with a desire for the soul to grow together with the world spirit and with an assertion of truth, which is experienced in the spirit as the most original, living and breathing in the world. For Fichte, things are there to reveal the world, not as they are for the pragmatists as the only reality; while that which is called truth is only there to have such bindings and brackets with which to summarize the externally coincident sense world so that the mind can comfortably survey it.

I am not exaggerating, that is how things are! And so Fichte, in developing this view more and more, stands in 1811, 1813, before his Berlin students and tells them that anyone who wants to penetrate the world must look to the spirit. He speaks of a new spiritual sense – Fichte – and means by this that this sense can be developed, that when one speaks of the experiences of this sense, it is really, in the face of people who do not want to admit it, as if a single seer were speaking among a crowd of blind people! But Fichte strives to achieve in the human being that which directly connects the soul with the spiritual world. And from this he also draws the strength that is so profoundly evident in his “Speeches to the German Nation” at one of the most difficult times for the German people, through which he wanted to pour supporting forces into the future of the German people, into their souls.

One can only characterize this extraordinary personality in these few words because of the shortness of the time! The even lesser known Joseph Wilhelm Schelling then stands there as his follower. But precisely this shows the infinite versatility of the German nature: that Schelling, too, wants to arrive at a world picture through the soul's living together with the secrets of the world, but — I would like to say — through completely different soul forces. While Fichte is the powerful man who wants to experience the will in himself and, in his own will, creates the world will, the eternal world will. Schelling creates out of the soul. And through this out-of-the-mind-creation, a world picture arises for him, through which nature and spiritual life grow together wonderfully. Even if it is difficult to read today what Schelling created - it is not at all important that one accepts the content, but the striving - even if it is difficult to read: one does not have to accept it like a teaching, in relation to which one must become a follower or an opponent. Look at people who have striven in this way – who have striven from the very heart of the German national character. Schelling strove to penetrate into every single being; to experience that which works within the being as a spiritual being. In this way, nature became for him a physiognomic expression of the spirit. And the spirit was that which built itself on the soil of nature. Just as the present human soul is built on the basis of its memories, so, in Schelling's sense, man felt himself to be facing nature with his spirit, as if he had lived through all times, but had left nature behind. And as he now looks at it, it offers him the memory of what he had previously created unconsciously, so that the ground for his consciousness could then be there. In this way, soul and nature grow together in Schelling.

While Fichte had to be characterized by his contemporaries as the one who, above all, stood before them in German power, those who listened to Schelling, and who appreciate him, characterized him as a seer, as a personality who, when he spoke, was surrounded by what immediately showed that he was shaping words while his mind looked into a completely different world.

Perhaps I may read such a word of a student and friend of Schelling, because it shows more than anything else how Schelling was seen by those who knew him. Even as a young man in Jena, Schelling had such an effect that the young men around him were immediately convinced that he not only had something to tell them that would immediately ignite their souls, but that, as he spoke, his spirit lived in the spiritual world and he spoke from within it. That is why Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, a man who himself tried to descend into the spiritual depths of the human soul, says the following. He characterizes Schelling as follows:

“What was it that attracted young people and mature men alike to Schelling's lectures, from far and near, so powerfully? Was it only the personality of the man or the peculiar charm of his oral presentation, in which this attractive power lay?”

No, Schubert believes, it was not only that.

“There was a compelling power in his lively words, which, wherever it met with even a little receptivity, none of the young souls could resist. It might be difficult for a reader of our time,”

— Schubert writes down in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the 1890s,

"who, unlike me, was not a youthfully participating listener, to make it understandable how it often felt to me when Schelling spoke to us, as if I were reading and hearing Dante, the seer of a world beyond that was only open to the consecrated eye. The mighty content, which lay in his speech, as if measured with mathematical precision in the lapidary style, seemed to me like a bound Prometheus, whose bonds to dissolve and from whose hand to receive the unquenchable fire, is the task of the understanding mind."

So it was once possible, esteemed attendees, to speak to the German people in such a way that it made this impression, from the spiritual world, that it could make this impression!

Those who knew Schelling, and I myself knew people who still heard him in his old age, say that what he had to communicate was effective simply through the glance of his eyes, which still burned in his old age; so that one saw: it is the personality itself that wants to grow together with the world by giving a world-view.

And the third of those who, coming from the depths of the German folk-soul, wanted to penetrate to a Weltanschhauung, is Hegel. Hegel, from whom those who do not want to make any effort when they are to absorb something flee at the first sentences - Hegel, what did he want?

Schelling tried to create a world picture through the German soul. To penetrate into the spirit and the spiritual worlds through the will: Fichte. Through that which thought is, through the pure thought that lives in the soul when this soul does not turn its eye to the outer world of the senses, does not want to devote itself to the outer world of the senses with the mere intellect, through that which lives as pure, crystal-clear thought in the soul, Hegel tried to grow together in his own soul with that which is at work in the world. So that he says: When I think the thought purely, when I give myself to the life of thought, to the life of thought free of sensuality, in my own soul, then it is no longer my own arbitrary thoughts that live in the thoughts that live in the soul, but they are the thoughts that the divinity itself is in its soul. Then that which is light and illuminates the whole world ignites a little flame in one's own soul, and through this little flame the soul grows intellectually together with the world spirit. The soul rests in the world thought. In the German way, there is a striving for that which can be called mystical, but not a mysticism that revels and wants to revel in dark, confused feelings, but a mysticism that, while emotionally striving for what all mysticism strives for - a living together of one's own soul with the secrets of the world - does so on the basis of crystal-clear thinking.

And this, in turn, is something characteristic of the German character: that the highest is striven for in all-spiritual clarity, not in confused, chaotic feelings. This is the world view that is in the background and from which it has also grown – from the same mother soil – from which Goethe's “Faust” and the other great works of art and literature of that time have grown, they too have grown from this same soil, as it were. And Goethe basically stands on this same soil.

And Goethe says – in contrast to Kant – in a small, beautiful essay on “Contemplative Judgment,” he expresses how he strives for a knowledge that has indeed resounded within the soul, but which is an immediate revelation of that which is to develop out of it in the world. The soul does not limit itself to merely looking at the external world of the senses and judging it; but when the soul withdraws into itself, then something should awaken in this soul, so that the judging power itself becomes a contemplation - so that one learns to see spiritually.

Goethe speaks of spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, which look directly into the spiritual, just as the physical eyes and ears look directly into the physical world. This permeates the Goethean soul.

And Fichte could rightly say when he published his seemingly quite abstract trains of thought in 1794, he could write to Goethe:

[“Philosophy has not yet reached its goal, as the results of reflective abstraction do not yet nestle against the purest spirituality of feeling. I regard you, and have always regarded you, as the representative of the latter at the present level of humanity. Philosophy rightly turns to you. Your feeling is the same touchstone.”]

There is a close harmony between what has emerged as the greatest, also in a poetic sense, from German intellectual life, and what lives in the background as a world view. Even if, in the period that followed, simply because the height of the outlook was simply astounding, something else came to the surface within the development of German thought than a pure continuation of the powerful thoughts of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, these thoughts are, after all, what lies at the depths of the German essence, what will continue to develop, has also continued to develop, as we shall see shortly, and what must lead to the most beautiful blossoms and fruits of the German essence.

When we call to mind the spirits of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, we see that they reveal from three different sides what can be gained from a different kind of dialogue with the German national spirit. But behind them, as if invisible, is the German national spirit itself. And one expresses more than a mere image when one says: like a shade of the German national spirit itself, what comes to the surface through Fichte, Schelling and Hegel is like a shade of that which the German national spirit itself expresses. And behind that, one senses what passes through the currents of German intellectual life as an even more powerful wave.

Hence the peculiar phenomenon can occur that the great minds of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were followed by lesser minds, who were less talented and who, in a certain way, sought to present that which had passed through German intellectual development as an aspiration through the German intellectual development in an even more beautiful, even brighter light.

It is indeed a remarkable phenomenon, is it not, that minds that were less talented than these greats had more opportunities in later times, precisely because the German national spirit also stood behind the greats, which could then continue to work through the following, who already had the inspiration of the preceding ones. We see one such in the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Hermann Immanuel Fichte.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte says it outright: that which the senses can see of man, which the mind, bound to the brain, can recognize of man, but can recognize through science, that is merely the outside of man; that contains only the powers that hold man together more for earthly things. But in this physical human being, according to Immanuel Hermann Fichte's view, there lives an etheric human being who permeates this physical human being and who is just as connected in his powers with the eternal world forces as the powers that live in the physical human being are connected to the actually perishable powers of the earth.

What has been described here in these lectures over the years as the spiritual background of man, as the etheric human being, is laughed at by the current, but even within Germany , because it is influenced by foreign countries —, this etheric man has also been pointed out here in this city in lectures over the years, again and again.

But we see an even higher, even more magnificent pointer to what Fichte saw in the human soul as a mere potential force, but which can be drawn out so that these eternal forces weave and live more and more. We see this even more clearly, even more magnificently, in an almost completely forgotten spirit, Troxler: Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler. Who still knows him? But he stands on the shoulders of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! And he delves even deeper into the spiritual background of the world than his predecessors, who were far greater in terms of intellectual gifts than he was. He was simply able to receive the stimulus from them.

What do we see in this Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler? We see in this Troxler how he definitely points out that when a person develops their soul, when a person brings out of their soul that which cannot be there for the outer life of the senses, then spirit is found in the human soul, that which Troxler calls on the one hand the “supernatural spirit”. And by this he means that if a person develops what lies dormant in his soul, he is then in a position to have nothing in his soul life when he turns his senses away from the outer world, but that an awakening can take place that goes beyond the senses – a supersensible spirit, a spirit that sees spiritual processes in the world as the senses see sensual processes and beings: a supersensible spirit. Even those who, as idealists, as abstract idealists, want to grasp the world through ideas and concepts will admit this.

But Troxler goes further. He not only speaks of the supersensible spirit, but also of the 'super-spiritual sense'. What is super-spiritual sense?

When this spirit, which looks at the world, is able to speak not only of concepts, not only of ideas, but when it can describe actual concrete entities, which it can describe as one describes an individual animal, so that one ascends to a world of higher beings that cannot be seen with the ordinary s , but which the “super-spiritual sense” can see - something that, again, popular science can easily laugh at, but which, as an energetic striving in this faded, forgotten tone, of which I will now speak to you, comes to us in such a wonderful way within the development of German thought.

It becomes even more wonderful when we see the following in Troxler. Troxler says: When the human being brings forth the most beautiful thing that can live in his soul, insofar as this soul lives in the body; when he brings forth the most beautiful thing from his soul, the most beautiful thing in the soul that is bound to the body – when the soul becomes cosmic and is confronted with the world as a cosmic soul, then it develops in faith, in love, in hope. But faith, love, hope, for Troxler they are what outwardly reveals itself as the flower of earthly life, but only for this earthly life. Behind faith, behind the power of faith, which belongs to the soul insofar as the soul lives in some way, behind this power of faith, a higher power lives in the soul; the supersensible hearing, says Troxler. And faith is only the outer manifestation of a supersensible hearing, through which one can hear, as the sensory ear hears the sensory tones, the spiritual tones of the spiritual world, the spiritual language of the spiritual world , in a sense the soul in its world, because such a spiritual hearing takes place and because the soul lives in the body between birth and death, this spiritual hearing takes on the form of faith in the physical embodiment. This faith is the external revelation for the spiritual hearing.

Love, this most beautiful, this most glorious flower of the soul's life within the body, is the outer revelation for the spiritual seeker of what he calls spiritual sensing, spiritual feeling. Just as one physically reaches out to touch material things, so behind the power of love lies another power, the purely spiritual power, through which the soul can extend its spiritual feelers to sense what lives as a concrete spiritual being in the spiritual world.

In 1835, the beautiful lectures were published in which Troxler speaks so much about the spiritual-soul person who stands behind the believing, loving, hoping person. And behind what is the power of hope, the power of confidence, lies, in the soul, what Troxler now calls: spiritual vision, spiritual seeing.

When the soul enters the body, it transforms spiritual hearing into faith, spiritual feeling into the power of love, and spiritual vision into the power of hope.

And when the soul passes through death, that which was in its power of faith in the body between birth and death is transformed into spiritual ears; that which was in its power of light is transformed into spiritual touch; that which was in its power of hope is transformed into spiritual vision, into seeing the spiritual world.

Thus Troxler speaks of “sensitive thoughts” - where thoughts do not pass ordinary judgments on the outer world, but where thoughts are inwardly so seized, so vividly seized, that through thoughts the spiritual world is directly grasped. And he speaks of “intelligent feelings,” where the soul does not judge through the intellectual power of mere intellectual science, as Schelling once expressed himself - that is strong, of course, but great people have the faults of their virtues - , but where the soul really judges in such a way that it lives with its thoughts together with the outer world, as it otherwise only lives with the feelings, but in clarity; Troxler speaks of “intelligent feeling”. Truly, this forgotten tone of the German world view, of the development of German thought, is wonderful. It is not necessary to be offended by the fact that this wonderful, faded tone has not continued to live externally visible; that does not matter, esteemed attendees: The important thing is that it is there and that, although it has not become outwardly visible, it nevertheless lives on in what Germanness strives for and hopes for in the world, and that it will revive again in the midst of even this materialistic science; and that the world position of the German people is precisely in the spiritual realm: to bring man and his soul to the spirit, as it lies in the sense of this faded, forgotten sound - only externally forgotten sound - of the German development of thought.

Troxler quotes a beautiful sentence from his book in which he describes how he now conceives of the ethereal human being, the human being who is bound to eternal forces within the physical human being, who is bound to temporal power. Troxler says:

"In the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body... a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and which for them was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire inner spiritual human being who carries all the limbs of the outer one on his spirit body; Lavater also writes and thinks in the same way; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about Bonnert's under-skirt and Platner's soul-laced bodice Platner's soul-string-bodice, which are supposed to be hidden in the coarser body-coat and martyr's robe, we still hear him asking, “What was the point of and where did these extraordinary abilities and desires come from, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthy shell? ... In the stony limbs”

of man

“grow and mature in a way that is unknown to us.” “We could

continue to

"we could cite a myriad similar ways of thinking and poetizing, which in the end are only different views and conceptions in which... the true, only teaching of the individuality and immortality of man is contained.

That is a tone of the development of German thought that has faded away, but has not ceased to have an effect, and it is a great, powerful tone! If the German people today have the task of securing their place in the world through external forces, then what must be fought for today through the weapons is only the other side of the same essence, hidden in the depths of the German soul, which, through its versatility, could ascend to these peaks of thought life. - And Troxler says beautifully elsewhere:

"If it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which... must reveal itself in every anthroposophy... reveals itself in every anthroposophy, it is nevertheless undeniable that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true individuality of the human being must not be confused with either what it posits as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it juxtaposes as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

Troxler is clear about the fact that there is a higher human being within each of us. And when this inner human being begins to work, then first comes not anthroposophy – anthropology, human science, first comes when the outer mind observes the human being, anthropology comes first, Troxler says. When the inner human being comes to the fore and gets to know the higher forces, the spiritual forces, the spiritual feelings, then anthroposophy comes. One therefore has the right to call a science that has grown out of the innermost striving of a German national being anthroposophy.

And this must be stated, esteemed attendees, because it must not remain merely a forgotten and forgotten sound, but must become part of German national life again. And we shall see – perhaps official science will not accept the things, but it is only a prejudice that these things are too difficult to understand – a time will come when it will be recognized that the simplest person – it is precisely the simple souls that show this when they are approached in the right way – will understand that these things can be incorporated into the education of every child! Then this education of children will also be able to create from the very depths of German national character.

This must be mentioned because one truly does not need national narrow-mindedness to characterize the world position of the German and his task in the overall development of humanity, because one does not need to lapse into a tone like that of some Frenchmen, like for example, leading world-view thinkers like Boutroux and Bergson – yes, it is still called Bergson, although it does not sound very French – like Boutroux and Bergson, who are still talking such nonsense to their French. You wouldn't believe it! For example, this striving of the German to grow together with what lives outside in things, what the soul wants to grasp within itself. Boutroux, who traveled around here in Germany before the war, who was also allowed to teach at German universities, was allowed to preach, who spoke of the fraternization of the German and the Latin, Romanic being, now, for example, he speaks of the fact that he says: the French have no expression for “Schadenfreude”. The Germans are characterized precisely by the fact that they have the word 'Schadenfreude', they have such a word; so they have Schadenfreude. On the other hand, they have no word for 'generosity', only the French have that. So the Germans don't have that, generosity, only the French have that. He also indoctrinates his French with other things. For example, the French are very easily inclined to treat everything with a certain wit.

In this regard, it is perhaps not unnecessary to read the judgment on the French character. One could still have a small spark of faith that I also wanted to speak out of narrow-minded nationality here. Therefore, I will give another judgment - a judgment on the French character, French intellectual endeavor:

“Thirst for truth”

is the verdict of this judgment.

"is not a French passion. Appearance, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, the shiny more than the fertile, public opinion more than conscience. This means that the center of gravity of the Frenchman is not within himself, but in the others, in the great multitude. Individuals are zeros; the digit that forms them into a number comes from outside: that is the sovereign, the writer of the day, the most read newspaper, in a word, the current master of fashion. All this can be deduced from an exaggerated sociability; it suffocates in the soul the courage to resist, the power of judgment, personal conviction, the cult of the ideal."

Everywhere just the opposite of what we have seen today. ... it suffocates everything!

So I am not speaking; not even a German speaks, but Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss Amiel, who as a French Swiss wrote these words on January 22, 1875. I have chosen the words of this man, this man of spirit who seeks to understand life, Henri Frederic Amiel, because he is actually a French Swiss who has only just become acquainted with German life, and can therefore compare it with what he knows within the French character. The Frenchman cannot easily understand this desire to grow together with the innermost essence that lives and moves in the most outwardly sensual thing!

That is why Boutroux gives a speech in which he ridicules the German who wants to grasp everything from within: “The Frenchman,” he says, “who wants to get to know a camel goes to the menagerie, where he gets to know the camel. The Englishman goes on a journey and seeks out the camel in its environment; yes, he travels to distant countries on earth to get to know the camel where it lives. The German withdraws into his study, goes neither to the menagerie nor on a journey to distant lands, but rather deals with the camel in himself, as he can recognize it from his own soul.

From this Boutroux draws the conclusion – yes, you can present this to your French people today, present it to your Parisians – from this Boutroux draws the conclusion: the Germans imagine that what they experience in their own soul is the delusion that this is the whole world. That is the one that really matters. And that is why, says Boutroux to his French audience, the Germans also imagine that they are something in the world. And then they don't look at the world any further; rather, what they imagine they are is directly divine-spiritual. And to explain that, he then made this joke.

The French are, as everyone knows, a witty people; but the joke that Boutroux made was by Heinrich Heine! And so it is not even a joke. It was born on French soil, on French intellectual soil.

Within German intellectual life, what I have called a forgotten tone is by no means something that perhaps only presents itself on the heights of philosophical endeavor, but it lives, it really lives. Isn't it, for example, truly wonderful? In 1856, a book was published, a small pamphlet by a simple pastor in Waldeck, in the countryside, in Sachsenberg, in the Principality of Waldeck. His name was Rocholl, and he was a simple parish priest; the little booklet is called “Contributions to the History of German Theosophy,” which shows, I would like to say, how its author is completely immersed in a view of the world as it reveals itself to the spirit. Even if some of it may not appear so simple as true in this little book today, but only fantastic, it does not matter whether one becomes a follower or an opponent, but it does matter that one sees how what man's striving is towards the spirit of the world can really reveal itself everywhere, especially within German intellectual life.

If I had time, I could give you hundreds and hundreds of examples that show how, in our time – but that was not so long ago, a decade ago – a foreign essence, which also has taken over German intellectual life, [how] in an incredible way, only what can live within German intellectual life has been forgotten at first by foreign influence; for it is precisely because of this that the German people will have to take their great position in the eternity of time development.

And that is what now has to defend itself in the small, relatively small area of Central Europe against the immense superiority of the rest of the world. For how will history speak one day about what is happening in the present? One can say in simple words how history will speak: 777 million people against a maximum of 150 million people in Central Europe! That is what history will have to record: 777 million people encircling 150 million people, defaming and slandering the spiritual life of these people.

They need not be envious of the size of the earth's surface, these 777 million people! Because they have 68 million square kilometers, the 777 million people, compared to 6 million square kilometers that the Central European powers have - 6 million square kilometers that are surrounded! History will have to record that. And history will say that these 777 million people, with 68 million square kilometers, did not want to conquer the 150 million people on the 6 million square kilometers by bravery alone, but by starving them.

The German may feel what is living in his national soul and what significance this has in the overall development of humanity. The German may live with calmness and confidence towards the future, precisely because he is aware of the forces that live in the depths of his national soul. They have always lived on; for what matters is not whether they have become famous, but that which is not known externally is revealed internally as the significant, the great.

It is often difficult to bring out what is actually German spirit in contrast to foreign spirit. For example – I may mention this because I myself have been in the middle of a struggle of more than thirty years in relation to this: Goethe, in his German scientific consciousness, turned against Newton's mechanistic optics, which is still not at all understood today. But physics is so inundated with Western mechanism that today every physicist still sees nonsense in Goethe's optics. And for thirty-three years I have endeavored to establish what may be called: Goethe's right over Newton. It will take some time before people realize the situation regarding the chapter 'Goethe's Right over Newton'.

Despite everything overwhelmingly self-evident that physics has presented to Goethe, there have always been individual German minds who knew whose side the law was on in this field! From Grävell, who wrote the beautiful book “Goethe Right Against Newton,” to what I myself have written about Goethe's physical-optical studies, about his color studies, one is dealing with something that, in terms of truly entering into German intellectual life, is still reserved for the future. But that future will come.

In the 1850s, from the same stream of the faded, forgotten sound of German intellectual life, a man emerged: Planck, Christian Karl Planck. He wrote beautiful writings, wanting to see nature everywhere as itself imbued with spirit, forming the subsoil for the spirit, beautiful writings: “Truth and shallowness of Darwinism”, “Foundations for a science of nature”, “Spirit and Nature” - wonderful writings, entirely arising from - as he was aware, as he himself was aware - from the very deepest power of German thinking, German feeling, German scientific ethos, he describes the German essence. I can only emphasize one example: when we speak of the Earth today, how does external science speak of the Earth, how does a geologist speak of the Earth? The Earth is a material sphere, and it is only mentioned in passing that man also walks on it. For Planck, it is not. For Planck, the Earth is that to which all living beings belong. Christian Karl Planck seeks to develop a conception of the Earth that corresponds to what someone looking at the Earth from the outside would see, with all that it spiritually carries. It is not just an organism, but a spiritual being, and man belongs to the Earth as part of it. And to merely imagine the earth in terms of pure physical geology, that would be for Planck's consideration as if one would only look at the tree in relation to the trunk, at a lignified trunk, and does not see that what blossoms and fruits are, is connected with the innermost nature of the tree. Just as these belong to the tree, blossoms and fruits, according to its essence, so when one has the earth before one, one cannot be satisfied with a mere geological view. And so it is with Planck.

And so, in Planck's view, something comes into play that he wanted to use to have a powerful effect on his contemporaries, but was unable to do so because they were not yet mature enough to absorb this view so directly. He wanted to say: By living with nature, one lives not only with external nature, but together with the spirit of nature. That is what he wanted, that the religious consciousness of humanity should be included in the moral, in the sense of right and wrong. The time in which Christian Karl Planck lived has not yet had the opportunity to see things in perspective. It has ultimately branded him as an “overly nervous person”. Such a thinker can often stand alone, not only in life. So that his last written work was published after his death by his dear friend Köstlin, under the title Testament of a German.

All that I have mentioned led to Planck being spoken of as a hyperexcitable person; so that those who today only have a vague idea of the matter might speak of a megalomaniac. But he is a person who lives deeply and consciously within the forgotten tone of German intellectual life – so consciously that in 1864 Karl Christian Planck was able to write about what he wanted to seek as a German scientist:

“The power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”

of the author

“He is fully aware of the power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”

sure that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit.”

Now he continues:

“What our medieval poetry has unconsciously and profoundly anticipated will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which has been visited with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram describes it in his Parsifal).”

written in 1864, before Wagner's Parsifal!

“Finally, in the power of her unceasing striving, she attains the highest; she looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what the poem has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which is attained by her hero, is, conversely, fulfilled and made real purely naturally in the lasting knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.”

Thus Planck in 1864, with the awareness that he could bring forth a spiritual-scientific discipline out of the German tradition.

Now, many people will say, won't they, “Well, a poor philosopher who dreams in his mind doesn't know anything that actually lives in reality!” In addition, there are the practical people who know how to handle and judge practical life in the right way. When such philosophers come with their ideals: But what do they know of reality? Yes, I would like to give you an example of this Christian Karl Planck. The man died in 1880; in 1881 his Testament of a German was published – in 1881, ten years after the Franco-Prussian War had changed some of the German conditions. Let us note this point in time. How many Germans have since then believed different things about European affairs, have imagined what would come, statesmen and non-statesmen, diplomats and non-diplomats, what have they all imagined the “practical” people, who know how things are going out there! What have they all imagined! How they smiled at the idealists who, from their dream world of ideas, formed an idea about the currents in the world! Well, the “impractical idealist” Christian Karl Planck wrote in 1880 at the latest – because he died in 1881 – he wrote in his “Testament of a German”: A great European war will come!

"No political wisdom, no love of peace on the part of Germany can prevent this hostile clash within the current merely national order. For more powerful than all wisdom is the nature of circumstances; and already now, despite the friendly attitude of Germany and Austria, the hostile mood of the Russian East is only emerging all the more clearly because it could not be given a free hand in everything, but rather a certain goal had to be set. And if it should come to a fight one day, then, however much we have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not stand by our side, but as in the East, we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South at the same time; on all sides, national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst.

And now I ask you to listen carefully to these words:

“And should it ever come to a fight, then, however much we may have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not find us on our side, but as in the East, we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South; hostile national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst on all sides.”

This is the “dreaming philosopher” of 1881, who says to people: You will be able to do whatever you want, I no longer believe it today - he couldn't say it then, but there is something in his words that clever people still [believed] in 1913, 1914, that for example Italy would be on the side of the Central Powers. The “impractical man”, the “impractical philosopher” Christian Karl Planck no longer believed it as early as 1880! You just have to get to know the true situation of life as it is today, the true situation of life that rests in the depths of the spiritual being, the whole situation as it is today was written down by a philosopher, by a German philosopher in 1880. It can be read by everyone! In 1912, the second edition of this “Testament of a German” was published by a publishing house that, at that time, had much more to do in its printing work than to deal with the “Testament of a German.” Rather, it preferred to focus on the numerous translations of the works of the French philosopher Bergson in Germany, as they say, popularized, that Bergson - I have in my “Riddles of Philosophy in their History as an Outline” also referred to Bergson in the new edition of the work “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century”. But however difficult it may have been, or in fact still is, to realize that, although I pointed out the full significance of Christian Karl Planck as early as 1900 in my “Welt- und Lebens-Anschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century) – supplemented by a prehistory of Western philosophy and continued up to the present – and conscious of the fact that a German philosopher can speak in this way, it did not even have the effect that I was able to point out in the past – written down even before the war – what, for example, is accepted as a particularly significant idea by those ignorant of Bergson, such as the famous sentence “Duration endures.” You could see that as saying nothing more than ‘Duration endures.’ It would be the same as saying ‘The heart beats.’ But what could be seen as something different was that in Bergson's work, the next thing that man has to consider in terms of a world view [...] is that he starts from man and puts the human being at the forefront, and the other beings as it were fall away from human development - that first the human being is there, then something arises from the realm of minerals, plants, animals, which some will consider madness, but which is the actual real world view - one admired that and pointed it out. One might say that in this case, because there is no full diversity among those who have so enthusiastically turned to Bergson's philosophy and regurgitate many things. One was somewhat saddened when Bergson concluded his speech by saying that during the war the Germans had sunk so low – and I already mentioned this last year here that the Germans have come down so low from their heights, as they once had in Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, [as they had it] in a Goethe -, [that the Germans] have come down so low now that everything is mechanistic with them, [that they] want to let everything merge into machines and the industrial. The good Bergson probably believed that the Germans would declaim a Novalis, a Goethe or a Schiller for them.

But I was able to show you at the time – this happened before the war – that what had been so admired as a weaker thought in Bergson, that in the German Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss – but in the works that appeared as early as the 1870s, especially in 1882 —, [that this] appeared and was advocated in a much more powerful way by the German Preuss!

There we see how Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, in his 1882 work “Geist und Stoff” (Mind and Matter), cites this entire forgotten and forgotten pursuit and current of German intellectual life as an example, and he very energetically points out that one must start from the human being. And only a view of nature that is not at all aware of the real connection between the human spirit and the spiritual can start from the lower beings and develop everything up to the human being, while what is otherwise present is seen as splintering. Preuss says:

"It may therefore be time to establish a [different] doctrine of the origin of the organic species, which is not only based on one-sidedly established propositions from descriptive natural science, but is also in full agreement with the other laws of nature, which are at the same time also laws of human thought. A doctrine, at the same time, that is free of any hypothetization and is based only on strict conclusions from scientific observations in the broadest sense; a doctrine that rescues the species concept according to actual possibility, but at the same time adopts the concept of evolution as proposed by Darwin and seeks to make it fruitful in its realm.

The center of this new doctrine is man, the only species on our planet that recurs: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers started with natural objects and then went so astray that they could not find the way to man, which Darwin only managed in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals, while the naturalist would have to start with himself as a human being, in order to gradually return to humanity through the whole realm of being and thinking.

It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the development of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of telluric processes and every other form that emerged alongside him borrowed its features from his. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos...

When its germs had emerged, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary strength to produce further human germs. What emerged was animal or plant...

Did Bergson not know whether he had actually known Preuss, Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss? Which would be just as big a mistake as if he had known him and simply written what Preuss's property is without pointing out that it is from Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss.

It would be conceivable for him – the latter as well; for it has now become sufficiently well known that Bergson – who accuses the Germans of a mechanical world view in order to prove how they have degenerated in the present day – has himself taken a very strange path. It is sufficiently well known that Bergson copied entire pages of his books – Bergson's books! from Schelling, Schopenhauer and other German philosophers, simply copied – not a mechanical way of writing his books! And to copy pages and pages from the personalities of a people, a people that is so reviled and slandered! You simply copy, and thereby gain great fame and praise.

These are things that are so easily forgotten in the present. Some people already see how things are! For example, Henry Frederic Amiel once said:

"Perhaps only the Germanic mind has the need to think for itself, to search for the origin of things. The Slavs and Romans are more strongly under the sway of convention, tradition, custom, prejudice, fashion; and when they break through them, it is as a revolt and rebellion, without therefore recognizing from within themselves the law immanent in things, their true standard, not the written, arbitrary one that has been read into them. The German wants to penetrate to nature; the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Russian stop at convention. The root of the problem lies in the question of the connection between God and the world: immanent or transcendent - it decides from stage to stage the significance of everything else. If the spirit is outside of things, then it does not need to adapt to them. If the spirit lacks truth, then it must be given to it by the prophets. Then thought despises nature and is subject to the church, that is the Latin world."

Thus Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss, who wrote these words about the Germanic spirit and the French, Spanish and Russians in 1877, when he was staying in Ems.

Through such things, dear attendees, you get to know what actually lives in the six million square kilometers that are now not only being enclosed, but also vilified and defamed by the prominent personalities of those who live on the 68 million square kilometers.

But if we try to extract the essence, the most significant part of the individual national spirits as they now have to fight with each other, yes, we can truly say: if we look at the Italian national soul – I am sure there are many listeners here who know that I have been the war, not only to Germans but also to other European nations, so that they are not just caused by the mood of this war, these words, but are based on objective knowledge of the facts. If you look at the Italian people's soul, you can find a simple word to characterize it. The Italian turns to the world – of course I do not mean the individual, but insofar as he belongs to his people – the Italian turns to the world; but he says: this world must be such that I like it! Quite solely from this point of view – nationality is that.

The Frenchman also turns to the world. But he says: This world must think nothing but what I want, what I, in my French concepts, imagine the world to be. And if he encounters different thinking somewhere, then it must be subordinated. Woe betide if something exists that the Frenchman cannot understand from his Frenchness.

The Englishman, the Briton, thinks: Yes, the world is good too; the world, right, very good; but it must be made in such a way that it serves the Briton, that the Briton can assert his ego in this world above all else, and that it is otherwise arranged in such a way that it serves him. You can read about it in detail, especially in those who believed that they were creating from the depths of the English national soul - historians, philosophers - wherever you look, you can see it everywhere.

The German in his development of thought thinks: The world is there, and as I stand as a human being before the world, I want to develop my human soul so that it becomes the threefold image of the great world. That is the essence of German thinking and feeling.

The Russian, who thinks: the world as it is, is worth nothing at all; it must be replaced by another. And it is a matter of putting that world in the place of this world, in which the Russian person can flourish. That is the mood of the Russian people.

Henri Frederic Amiel, the Swiss Frenchman, once painted a strange picture of what it would be like if the Russian national character were to flood and dominate Europe - as it wanted, and as the entire Russian national current in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries actually portrayed it from its own impulses. Henri Frederic Amiel says:

“What terrible masters the Russians would be if they ever extended the power of their rule over the countries of the south!”

He names Russia as the country of the north, and includes France and Germany among the countries of the south.

"What they would bring us would be polar despotism, a tyranny the world has never known, silent as the fog, cutting as ice, rigid as iron, with the loveliness of falling snow and its cold splendor; slavery without return or relief. But probably they will gradually lose the virtues and vices of their semi-barbarism. The centuries will mature these sons of the north, and they will intervene differently than as a threat or discordant note in the harmony of nations...

In relation to Germany and Austria, the peoples allied with them, as we know, that time has not yet come. But just as the East, the Russian East, gradually learned to think about the European West in the course of the nineteenth century – what the European West is for it, which in the nineteenth century included not only Central Europe but also Western Europe, France and England – that which lies in the Russian people, incited by an incomprehension of the Western intellectual culture, especially also the German spiritual culture, has heated up to the point of megalomania, which has truly not only been counteracted in the “Testament of Peter the Great”, in the falsified or non-falsified “Testament of Peter the Great”, but has been counteracted in the whole developmental principle of leading personalities in nineteenth and twentieth century Russia.

You can read more about this in my booklet “Thoughts During the Time of the War. For Germans and Those Who Don't Hate Them”; it is currently out of print, but the second edition will be coming out soon. It is therefore not available at the moment because it is out of print.

It is a strange process. More and more, one sees in Russian literature, in the descriptions of Russian philosophers, a development of thought that says: everything that lives in the West, especially in German intellectual life, these thoughts that have emerged from Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and the others, are abstract thoughts that do not grasp the depths of what is happening. It is all decrepit; it is a world that must be done away with. And in its place must come the Russian world, the world that the Russian man will create. Kireyevsky is one of those who started with this way of thinking. In 1829, it was already a tone that had become dominant, then became political, and when the Russian steamroller was now to be sent over Europe. This Kireyevsky, who writes:

“The fate of every European state depends on the union of all the others; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia is decided in its formation: this is the condition and source of all goods. As soon as all these goods will be ours, we will share them with the rest of Europe, and we will repay all our debts to them a hundredfold.”

... 1829! So: all European goods, as soon as Russia extends over all of Europe. This is not only the political program, it is also the literary program, the artistic-aesthetic program, to possess all of Europe and then, out of good nature, to share as much as one sees fit - according to Kireyevsky.

But Russian intellectual life did not immediately embrace the West. As late as 1885, we find a book by Yushakov, who dreams, as is typical of deeply rooted Russian identity, of having to exert an influence in Asia first – a kind of Pan-Asianism. Yushakov constructs a curious theory: he says that there are peoples living over there in Asia who once had a wonderful spiritual and economic culture. They themselves – these Asian peoples – have in a wonderful but true legend of Ormuzd and Ahriman that which has arisen and developed within their lives. They call Ormuzd the good god; Ahriman was always the evil god. But the Iranian peoples, to which the Indians and the Persians also belong, have placed themselves in the service of Ormuzd. They have taken from the evil Ahriman that which opposed them, so to speak, that which Ahriman left to them, the evil Ahriman left to them, took from him. And in 1885, Yushakov looks particularly at the West, at the Western peoples of Europe, and especially at one Western European people: the English. How were they robbed of their gifts of the good Ormuzd by these English, these Asians! These English treated the Asian peoples in such a way, intervened with what could come out of their worldview. But what did they bring to these Asian peoples? - says Yushakov in his book “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”, 1885. These English came to the Asian peoples and thought that they were only there to dress in English clothes, fight each other with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English baubles.

Then he goes on to say: Now the Russians have to take charge of the cultural blessings. They will not take away from the Asians what Ormuzd has given them, but they will ally themselves with the poor people enslaved by Ahriman and share their Ormuzd with them, in order to work their way up with them and collect Ormuzd's goods anew in Asia. In their hearts, with the hearts of the Asian peoples, they will be - not I say this, but Jushakow. So it will be that they will go over from Russia, those from Russia who are the real future types of humanity from Russia, the farmer and the Cossack, the greatest bearers of the moral world order, the greatest bearers of selfless humanity. From the union of the peasant and the Cossack will come forth that which will make Asia happy again.

And then he, Yushakov, goes on to say, pointing again to England - 1885:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula.”

So England's existence. And then he continues:

“I wish my fatherland”

my Russian fatherland

“nothing similar – I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as brilliant as it is sad.”

and has nothing to do with this terrible England. This was said by a Russian in 1885 about England, who longs for a state and is grateful that Russia is sufficiently far removed from what England brings upon the world.

In such things lie the reasons, not the logical ones, but perhaps the illogical ones, who will then experiment on the world, who will then take the place where the Russian people have treated relations with the Asians, which, in the opinion of these people, and which one would have to free from Ahriman again that the Russians did not initially ally themselves with the Asians to fight the evil Ahriman and destroy him with them, but that the Russians initially allied themselves with the evil Western peoples, with the evil English, to crush Europe. We need not descend into the [tone] into which so much has been descended today on the part of the opponents of Germanness [...], who for martial reasons have also become opponents of the German essence and national character. With the characterization of Christian Karl Planck given earlier, we can say:

"[...] the German mind has not in vain devoted its deepest and most intimate strength to this, [not in vain has even its poetry made the image of this indelible urge to understand itself and reality. That unbiased, purely objective and universal sense, by which it has become possible for the German alone to fully appreciate foreign education and nationality, and which gives him the genuinely human consecration in religious, moral and artistic respects, it also includes the knowledge of the general natural law of things, as soon as in the perfection of time] the mind has matured for it."

Therefore, we prefer to look at what, from a world-historical point of view, in terms of pure fact, the German spirit must strive towards. There we see something that existed long before the appearance of Christ on earth, in the form of spiritual striving in Asia. There they also tried to unite with the spirit that permeates and animates the world, the whole world, to attain a culture – for no culture can be attained otherwise. But how they tried to achieve this in Asia! By weakening, by extinguishing the I, by extinguishing the I as much as possible!

This world view must belong to the past, now that the Christ Impulse, the greatest impulse to have come to Earth, has entered into life on Earth, and given it true spirit and meaning. This world view of the Orient can no longer found a real spiritual view. There the I must not extinguish itself, but must strengthen and uplift itself, and through this elevation grow as I into the spiritual universe, into the spiritual universe.

Panasiatism has thus shown this Hinduism, whose height had been reached by extinguishing the ego. In more recent times, after the influence of the Christ Impulse, the realization of the self has been sought through knowledge, not by damping down the self, but by the self becoming aware of itself, experiencing itself, so that in its experiencing it has a sense of the world. The German receives this as his task; such a task was always present in the depths of the German people's striving for knowledge. And those who lived in Central Europe as Germans were united in such striving.

And finally, I would like to mention a few words from an Austrian German, an Austrian German who says of Austria, “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland,” to express in the 1860s - it is 1862 written in 1862 to express how a shared spirit unites what was later – it only happened after Robert Hamerling's death – was later welded together so firmly by external ties, as Central Europe now stands. Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, Austria's greatest poet in the second half of the nineteenth century, summarized this in the words: “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland.”

I, as a closer compatriot of Hamerling, I, who myself lived almost thirty years of my life in Austria among Austrian Germans and fought with them, I may point out precisely this seriousness of the German character within the German-Austrian. Robert Hamerling expresses this trait, this trait in world history, beautifully in his “Germanenzug” (The German March) – as I said, written in 1862 – where he describes, as in a dream, how the ancient Germanic peoples migrate from Asia to Europe – and in them, as in a germ, the later Germans – how they seek out their new European homeland. It is beautifully described: the moon rises; it is evening. The Teutons lie down to sleep, these future Teutons migrating to Europe; only one is awake: the blond Teut. The genius of Teutonia, the genius of the later, the future Germany, speaks to Teut. He speaks of the spirituality that must rest in striving, which is German striving. Then Hamerling says, that is, he lets the spirit of the German people say it to the blond Teut:

"To whom will the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the strings So boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Whom does his urge, his foreboding lead so high, so deep?
Who grasps the near and the far so faithfully?
Where is every earthly and heavenly zone
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?

This is the very deepest knowledge that can be derived from the tone of the partially forgotten tones quoted today from the development of German thought. It is a tone that can never be anti-religious, the tone that will also grasp all knowledge in man in such a way that this knowledge is offered as if on the altar to the world spirit, to the spiritual, real world. that tone of which Jakob Böhme, the “Philosophus teutonicus” - as he was also called - has spoken in the beautiful words that suggest the true popular character of German knowledge:

Wenn du, O Mensch, die Tiefe

he means the depth of heaven, the blue

and the stars and the earth,
so you walk in God,
so you strive in God,
so you die in God,
and so you will be buried in God.

These are deep, German words.

And Robert Hamerling, Austria's great German, who knew how to empathize with even the smallest German being – just by the way, I mention that in 1884 a statue of Strasbourg was erected in Paris and the German flag in front of the statue was burned, that went so close to Hamerling's heart that he wrote the words:

"May you believe in revenge
And in the victor's wreath in the future

he wrote to the French

Hope not to rob back
A clod of German land!
You may rave like ravens<
Around an Alsatian statue,
Strasbourg you will not have,
Strasbourg nevermore!

So it sounded from Austria to the French as they danced around the Strasbourg statue and burned the German flag.

But Hamerling also knew how to remind people of the fact that the German spirit is the continuation of the greatest that once appeared in the world spirit in the ancient Orient, from which the ancient ancestors of the Germanic peoples emerged; he knew how to point out that, just in a pre-Christian manner, by a lowering of the ego, man wanted to merge with the universe, but how this still lives, is raised to a higher level, lives in the German character, which has to bring the greatest that the world once created in the Orient to this world in a new form, as befits Christian development.

This connection with the whole development of humanity comes to Robert Hamerling's mind – also in his “Germanenzug” – this basic trait that everything the German recognizes should grasp his deepest being, become one with his whole personality; but that at the same time it is something that is a world-historical mission and ties in with the highest aspirations of humanity in the past. Therefore, Robert Hamerling again lets the spirit of the German people speak:

"But however proudly you may strive,
high above other swarms,
you will always keep the ancient, sacred fire:
the dream-filled, drunken drunkenness of God,
drunken with God, the blissful warmth of the heart
of the ancient Asian homeland.
This holy ray, a temple fire
of humanity, free of smoke, with a pure flame
will glow in your chest and soul
and remain a pilot at your helm!
You strive only because you love: your most daring thought

We may and must actually immerse ourselves today in that which can bring us to the realization of how truly the roots of a high spiritual striving live, which must have an effect on the future for the benefit of humanity. This spirituality lives in the most beautiful expressions of German intellectual life in the 6 million square kilometers that are threatened today by people who live in 68 million square kilometers.

And one does not need to speak out of national sentiment, but out of objective knowledge, when one speaks of the world vocation of the German people, which cannot be overcome by those who today - not understanding it - not only revile but slander it.

We Germans may look back to that which, in Germany's greatest spiritual period, has incorporated itself into the development of German thought and what lives in it and will flourish again. And we may look to what has presented itself to us in such a way that we look to it as to roots and germs. And by recognizing the rooting and germinating power of that which has passed, we have faith in the continued effect of this past. And in this belief in what we have to cherish and cultivate not only for the sake of the German people, but for the sake of humanity, we may love these roots of German national identity and cherish the hope and confidence that what has been recognized as germs and roots will bear blossoms and fruit in the future! Despite everything and everyone who rises up against it today, we are imbued with the power that expresses itself on the one hand in German intellectual life and that today has to undergo such trials in relation to our external daily life. We look to the future and trust this power, which must carry the German essence in the future as it has carried it in the past.

From this, what was meant by these arguments can be briefly summarized, according to feeling. Again, in the words of Robert Hamerling, looking at what is being said against us, the Germans, and against our name, today, looking at what the German essence must be in the development of humanity, what I wanted to express today out of true, discerning feeling can be summarized in four short lines by Robert Hamerling, an Austrian German who sensed how strongly what is today welded together by the same, by such great and such sorrowful and such trials and tribulations rich time conditions in Central Europe belongs together. He, Robert Hamerling, who felt this, he coined the beautiful words with which we want to conclude this reflection:

“And when ever the German name
sees a hostile day,
From ocean to ocean
will find its way the German mind.”

Esteemed Attendees!

As I did last winter, I would like to take the liberty of speaking this evening about a topic that is intimately connected with the development of German intellectual life, and thus deviate from what I have been privileged to do for many years, both in this city and in other cities in Germany: to speak about a narrower topic of the spiritual-scientific worldview.

This deviation is certainly close to the human heart due to the great, momentous events in which the German people find themselves, due to the facts unfolding around us, which on the one hand represent a severe test, but on the other hand must become the source of many significant hopes for the future.

And besides, I don't think there's any need to speak out of a narrow-minded nationalistic spirit when one ties the great periods of German intellectual life to the spiritual-scientific considerations that have been cultivated here over the years. For it is my conviction, not based on some obscure feelings, but, as I humbly believe, on the recognition of the facts, that precisely what I have often shown here as a striving into the spiritual worlds is contained in its most significant germ in the most diverse endeavors of German intellectual life, in the flowering of this intellectual life.

If spiritual science wants to be science, then one could very easily – I would say – from a certain point of view, a matter of course, a matter of course that is superficial after all – one could very easily say: science must be international. And wanting to tie science to certain popular endeavors is unacceptable from the outset. So many people say. And it is so obvious when one speaks in this way that the matter of course already becomes superficial.

I will just say about this comparatively: for example, the moon is international, dear attendees, the same moon for all peoples; but what the different peoples have to say about the moon, from the soul, arises from their different dispositions. Now one could indeed say: that may apply to poetry, to literature. But if science is to become a worldview, then what science has to say must be objective, must be exactly the same for all people. But whether science penetrates deeply into the sources of existence or remains on the surface – to name only these two extremes – depends on the different dispositions of the individual peoples, on the impulses that the individual peoples have to give to humanity with what science is to them. And it is of the greatest importance that these impulses, these forces [...] arise out of the inherent qualities of the peoples! This is what is important for the overall development of humanity, not what can be common to all in the abstract sense!

To [hint] at what is actually meant here, one need only recall a saying of Goethe. When Goethe, on his great journey to the south, had not only viewed and explained the most diverse works of art in his own way, but had also studied natural facts and natural beings, he wrote to his friends in Weimar: After all that I have seen of knowledge and nature, I would most like to make a trip to India - not to discover something new, but to see what has already been discovered in my way.

The way of looking at what one is able to bring from the soul to the world phenomena and the world weaving is what matters. And that is intimately connected with the folk souls. And when one speaks, most honored attendees, of the German national soul and its effect within the German nation, it seems immediately obvious to anyone familiar with the course of German development that the summit reached by the German national soul at the end of the eighteenth century, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, must be reached. There, a worldview background was created, a background of knowledge, by minds such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, which, within European intellectual life, became a second [...] flowering period after the Greek one, through Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and others who belong to them. Behind Goethe's “Faust” and the other great poetic and artistic achievements stands what German world view has created in the field of thought development in those days.

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, appears first before the souls of today in such a way that it seems so obvious to consider German minds in connection with the development of their nationality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte appears first as the great orator in the “Speeches to the German Nation”. If you consider what was achieved by those speeches, each word of which must still ignite in the German soul today, for the simple reason that in one of the most difficult times in German history, every mind was invigorated and strengthened by these words, and how they actually shed light on the possibilities for German development. And because these speeches arose from the most intimate feeling for German national character and from the most intimate kinship with the innermost forces of the German national soul.

But how easily one would say: Yes, what Fichte spoke to the German people in his enthusiastic, fiery speech back then will easily find its way into every soul. But if you start from what Fichte's world view actually is, then you come to something difficult to understand. Oh, honored attendees, if only this prejudice of the difficulty of understanding such creations as Fichte's, Schelling's, Hegel's could fade away: Never could a personality like Johann Gottlieb Fichte have delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” if one had not experienced that world view in one's soul, which only appears difficult to understand and which he felt, always felt, had arisen in him as if through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. For that is how he felt about what he had to say!

Now, spiritual science, esteemed attendees, as it is meant here, is based entirely on the premise that there are dormant forces in the human soul that are not used in ordinary external life, not even when one intelligently observes this , nor in ordinary external science; but which must first be developed, [which must first] be brought out of the depths of the human mind, and developed into what can be used for Goethe's expressions: spiritual eyes, spiritual ears - through which one can look into, listen to, the spiritual world - spiritual eyes, spiritual ears!

Spiritual science assumes that such a real inner sense is not bound to a physical organ, but slumbers purely in the soul, but can be brought out of it. Spiritual science assumes that such a sense is able to perceive a real spiritual world that is around us and to which we belong with our souls and with our spirit, just as we belong to the physical-sensual world with our body. Only that when we look at the physical-sensual world with the organ of the physical-sensual body, it presents itself to us, which dies with our death. Whereas when the inner sense of man proceeds just as scientifically as the other senses or external science and through the external mind bound to the brain or nervous system, when the inner sense proceeds in this way with regard to the spiritual world, then man comes to the observation of those forces that are within him and that permeate the entire external world. [He comes to the observation] of those forces that represent for him the eternal, the immortal forces of the soul that go through births and deaths.

To awaken such an inner sense, such inner forces, was Fichte's, Johann Gottlieb Fichte's, unchanging striving for a worldview. He strove for such a sense. He could only do so because this unique quality - we will see later why I say “unique” - of the German national spirit lived in him, this will to acquire in one's own soul, through an elevation, through a strengthening, through a development of the soul forces, something that cannot be acquired if these soul forces are not strengthened , but which is one and the same – not a vague fantasy is meant here – which is one and the same as that which, as spirit, as real, objective spirit, is as objective as the external natural objects are objective for the senses, which, as spirit, permeates and interweaves the world.

For Fichte, the human self was able to live into this human self if the human self was able to grasp itself inwardly in such a way as to grasp what pulses and weaves and lives through the world as its secrets.

Fichte believed that when a person comes to experience this inner self, this center of the soul, in the right sense, in a truly direct and powerful way within themselves, then not only does he live as an individual human being in such inner experience, but then the life of the world, the world spirit, that which is the creative spirit in all things of existence, lives in this inner experience.

This desire to recognize with the innermost sense organ is what is so characteristic of Fichte. And it is characteristic of him because it was in his very nature. It was in his nature to grow together with that which made an impression on him. He did not just hear something, he did not just see something, but when he heard something, when he saw something, he put the whole feeling and life of his personality into what he heard, into what he saw. He was so immersed in what he perceived that he felt creatively immersed in it – recreating the world, recreating nature, recreating every other human life. This was present in him as a personal disposition.

To illustrate this, I would like to mention a few episodes from the life of Fichte, or rather Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He was a small boy of seven years old, a simple weaver's son; there he stood once at the edge of a stream that flowed past his father's small house. He had thrown a book into the stream! And he stood there crying, watching the book float away. Then his father came along and saw what had happened. The fact was that last Christmas his father had given the boy, who was precocious and did well at school, the “Horned Siegfried” as a present. On the boy, on the seven-year-old boy in the blue farmer's coat, the child of simple people, the mighty, the primeval Germanic deed of “Horned Siegfried” made such a powerful impression that he became completely absorbed in it. And then it turned out that one had to say: Although he used to be so diligent, conscientious and dutiful at school, he is now less attentive. He was reproached for this.

What did the seven-year-old boy do? He said to himself: “I like ‘Siegfried’, I love him, I am attached to him; but he must not take my duties from me, so I throw him into the water.

And again: He had turned nine years old. The neighboring landowner had come to the village where Fichte lived to hear the pastor's sermon there on a Sunday. He had arrived too late to hear the sermon. Then someone came up with a solution. They said: “There is a boy of nine who is so good at listening to sermons that he might be able to repeat the most important parts by heart.” And so they brought in nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He stood there awkwardly in his blue peasant's smock. Once the ice was broken, so to speak, he began to develop the sermon as he had heard it. But not, as children relate, by reciting the words from memory. Rather, he recreated them! So that one could see: the inner fire of the soul had grown together with what had reached him from the pulpit. Even as a boy, he was so intimately united with what was around him that he absorbed everything from the world. That was what he realized, and what led him to his world view, [what led him] to his world view in such a way that he felt: What lives as will in the individual person does not live merely as will in that individual person, but what lives as will in the individual person is like that drop taken from the sea, but which is of the same kind as the whole sea. The will that man learns to recognize in his ego, that throbs, lives and weaves through all existence as the will of the world. And when man pronounces “I,” the will of the world speaks in him.

Thus in his world view, the individual ego grew together with the will of the world. And as if on the wings of the will, what radiates from the divine-spiritual existence, from the divine-spiritual will existence, shines into the human soul as duty.

To him, duty became the highest, the most significant, that which enters a person as a duty – in relation to the world and its phenomena – as a task; this was an immediate inspiration of the divine spirit of will, which pulses and weaves and lives through the world.

And so, in his will as in his ego, Johann Gottlieb Fichte felt at one with the existence of the world. He believed that when he spoke, he spoke not out of personal arbitrariness but out of that which the God who wants to speak in the soul wants to say. And one really cannot imagine that anyone could have been more earnest than Fichte was when, for example, he spoke to his audience in Jena and tried to convey to the souls of his listeners what he had experienced in his soul as a world-certainty.

It was not a matter of merely communicating certain content, certain sentences, so that they would be heard, as was the case with other speakers; no, but for him, when he ascended the lectern, it was a matter of carrying in his soul something to carry in his soul something of which he knew - in true humility, in all modesty: “The world-will, ruling through the world, speaks through me; it must be carried into the souls of my listeners on the wings of my words. And there must be established that connection between the souls of my listeners and the divine-spiritual world-will, by which I myself am aglow and inspired.

And deep within his soul – within Fichte's soul – was the realization that the deepest thing in the world must be grasped by the innermost part of the soul. In turn, here is a short story, which is familiar to those who have studied Johann Gottlieb Fichte, about how he made the following demand of his listeners, for example. As an example of how he sought to establish an immediate personal connection with his listeners, he said: “Gentlemen, think the wall.” And so the people thought about the wall; it was easy for them. After he had let them think about the wall for a while, he said: “And now think about the one who just thought about the wall!” Then the people were already somewhat strangely touched; they did not really know what they should do; they were referred to their own inner being. They should become strong in themselves, in their own inner being, that which, as something impersonal and spiritual, permeates and interweaves the world.

In this way he sought to reach his listeners. And his words were not words shaped in the ordinary way. People who knew him well said: His speech rolls along like thunder, and his words are discharged like individual lightning bolts. He sought not merely to educate good souls, but to educate great souls.

And another said of him: Oh, with Fichte it is so that he lives and moves in the realm of the invisible world of thought; not like one who dwells within, but like one who rules this invisible world.

It was out of such a spirit that Fichte then, in his Berlin lectures from 1811 to 1813, said things that were probably not often uttered before a university audience. He spoke of a “new sense”, of a spiritual sense that is necessary for man if he wants to know the eternal in contrast to the temporal. He spoke of this by comparing this sense with another sense that prevails in ordinary life. He said: “My dear listeners! If a single soul – he meant Fichte's soul – were to appear among a number of people who cannot see Fichte and have never seen Fichte, would they not declare what he has to say to be fantasy? But it is the same with everything that your senses can see compared to what man can see when the new sense - as Fichte called it - the spiritual vision, opens up to him, through which a new world arises.

A genuine spiritual-scientific striving is developed here out of German scientific striving! And Fichte said, being aware of the contrast between this German striving and the Romance striving in relation to knowledge, Fichte said: This striving, that is a striving that emerges from the original source of the living, and that does not merely want to establish a knowledge of the dead.

Even more thoroughly than Fichte was able to do, one can point to certain Western views of eternity, which show quite clearly how different Fichte is from the world development of humanity than, for example, similar spirits from the Romance, French tradition. Take the excellent philosopher Descartes, Cartesius, who was active in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In a similar way to Fichte, he wants to start from what is in the soul: “I think, therefore I am” - “Cogito ergo sum”. But what does it represent? An endeavour to use the intellect to clarify what one already has. Fichte's energetic activity strives to develop in the soul something that one does not yet have, in order to recognize the actual, deep secrets of the world. And one need only mention one thing that comes to light particularly strongly in Cartesius, in Descartes. Descartes also tried to gain clarity about nature from the innermost depths of his spirit, from the innermost depths of the human spirit. About that which is around us. But he does not start from the living and therefore cannot come to the living. And it is characteristic of Cartesius, of Descartes, that he regards not only the other natural phenomena, but also the animals as inanimate, as moving, soulless machines. This is no exaggeration, this is a genuine Descartesian theory: only man, who experiences a soul within himself, actually has a soul in the true sense of the word. The rest of nature is soulless.

Compare this view of nature as something soulless, compare the directly living in Fichte: the soul of man stands in it in the divine will, which pulses and weaves through the world. He looks at external things, but he looks at them in such a way that man is called upon to see in external, material things that in which he has to see the divine will... ... and living everywhere, everywhere ensouled.

The time will come, honored attendees, when people will indeed pay attention to these differences between the individual nations, because the realization of these differences of such outstanding minds must bear fruit. We Germans have no need to prove all that we have now heard from some outstanding personalities on the enemy side. We Germans have no need to join in the tone of not only the misjudgment but the slander of German intellectual life, as we can hear it everywhere. But we do have reason to penetrate into the peculiar, into the essence of German intellectual life.

And then, like Fichte's follower, we see standing before us, also unrecognized, but as a personality who will already celebrate his resurrection, Joseph Wilhelm Schelling. Schelling does not stand there like Fichte. That is precisely what is significant in German intellectual life, this versatility, this diversity. He does not stand there like Fichte; Fichte stands there as if emerging from the contemplation of the individual personality, becoming aware of the world-will pulsating and interweaving through the world. Fichte's entire personality is active out of the will. Out of the soul, out of this German soul – for which the other languages of the West do not even have a literal translation – out of this German soul, Schelling creates his magnificent view of nature and spirit, which only appears difficult to understand.

For Schelling, nature is not something dead, something merely mechanistic; rather, nature is that which has been created out of the same forces over the course of millennia and millennia, out of the same forces that the human soul feels within itself when it truly goes within. And then Schelling looks at nature and can say to himself: That which lives and moves out there in nature – the same powers of the human soul that now come into being in human souls – have created that, have created a foundation for themselves, a preparation; so that they can arise and appear internalized in the human mind, in the human soul.

And so, for Schelling, soul and nature grow together in such a way that he coins the certainly one-sided sentence: To recognize nature is to create nature!

It does not matter at all whether one becomes a follower or an opponent of these great people, whether one agrees or declares oneself to be an opponent of what these great minds have expressed; today this can even appear childish; it does not matter; but what matters is to look at these personalities and to see the best in their personalities, their spiritual striving. It must not be a matter of repeating what someone has said out of the spirit of his time, but of strengthening and empowering oneself in relation to one's own soul forces, in order to perhaps create something completely different today from what Fichte can give than what Fichte gave.

If you see it the way those who heard Schelling, Friedrich Joseph Wilhelm Schelling, did – I myself met people who heard him in his old age and who fully confirmed what those who were young when Schelling was young had to say, when Schelling was at the University of Jena at the end of the 1790s. This is how they spoke, for example – I am telling you what Schubert, who himself was a deep spirit who wanted to penetrate into the depths of the human soul, wrote in his diaries after hearing Schelling in Jena: If someone came during a few afternoon hours on a weekday, Schubert says, you saw an eventful life in Jena. But this eventful life did not come from some kind of frequent celebration, not from some other kind of gathering; rather, this eventful life was because the hour was approaching when not only students, but mature men of all professions went to Schelling's lecture hall. Schubert continues: “The personal impression Schelling made on me was of a great, powerful man.” When Schelling spoke, it seemed to him as if he were standing there and his spiritual musings were directly connected to the spiritual world and his words were shaped in such a way that he grasped what he had to say from what he looked into: the spiritual world.

Fichte came across as a powerful person, as a powerful representative of the German essence. Schelling came across as an educator, a philosophical educator, who appeared to his listeners as if he was surrounded by an aura of spirituality, which he knew how to communicate even as a young man to those who listened to him. And those who heard him in his old age – as I said, I myself still knew people like that – [they] assured that the eye, which still sparkled in old age, spoke of the immediate personal nature of nature, which presented itself to him in the communications that he sought to give to humanity, not out of prudent wisdom, but out of an inner vision of the spiritual world. And Schelling speaks of the so-called [intellectual] views. In this way we have coined the word in his way for the new sense, for the spiritual sense, the spiritual sense that can be awakened in man and is able to look into the spiritual world. Schelling's way of speaking of this spiritual sense may be one-sided; but the fact that it could be spoken of with such earnestness in German intellectual life is one of the most significant intellectual blossoms, in the presence of which one must feel in the right sense.

The third person to be considered among those who created the world view from which Goethe's “Faust” and the other works of art emerged is Hegel. In Hegel, we again notice how he strives to relive in what the soul experiences in itself as an individual soul that which permeates the world, that which pulses through the world. But while Fichte sought this in the will and Schelling in the mind, Hegel sought it in pure, senseless thought. And when thought becomes completely pure, when thought does not lean on that which the senses observe externally, but when thought creates itself as free thought out of the soul, then for Hegel it is not the human soul alone but for Hegel it is the divine world-being that penetrates into the soul and that now kindles its world-thoughts, which gave rise to things outside, in the human soul as the light of the soul itself.

In Hegel, we have a remarkable kind of mysticism that does not want to revel in dark feelings, not a mysticism that wants to live only in feeling, because it believes that in feeling alone it is more closely in touch with the secrets of the world than in thinking. We have a mysticism in Hegel that is intellectually clear and yet not intellectually superficial, a mysticism that is suffused with the light of ideas, with the light of thought. But Hegel seeks to bring to life in his soul those thoughts that truly bring man together with divine thoughts. I would like to say: mystical, but not mystical darkness, but mystical light, mystical brightness.

Hegel did indeed oppose the idea that the new meaning, the inner meaning, should become something that man could only receive through a special disposition; and that is why he criticized Schelling, who spoke of [intellectual] intuition. In a sense, Hegel was right, because for every human being – you only need to read about it in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” , for every human being, this new sense is attainable if only he wants to develop it. And this new sense, basically it lives most beautifully, most gloriously in that man, in the German, to whom Fichte, when he showed him his seemingly so dark, arbitrary teaching, wrote in 1794: Philosophical endeavor, like every pure philosophical endeavor, weaves itself into the spirituality of your feeling; for this pure spirituality of your feeling is actually the touchstone. - So Fichte wrote to Goethe in 1794.

And Goethe himself, in the beautiful essay he calls “Contemplative Judgment,” spoke of the fact that there cannot be only one way of looking at the world that relies on the external senses. Rather, just as the power of judgment judgment otherwise judges only about the external sensory experiences, so the power of judgment can develop an impulse in itself, which unfolds an inner life, so that it sees the spiritual, as the senses see the sensual.

Kant still had this inner vision, this vision of the spiritual through the human spirit, of the divine spirit through the human spirit. Goethe said: Let us then bravely face this adventure of reason! And it is from this inner sense that everything Goethe wanted to offer to science was created. And Goethe, in his scientific and cognitive struggles, showed most clearly how the German mind must understand the world differently than the Western mind.

In his early youth, Goethe encountered what Descartes' worldview had become within the development of the French world view. While Descartes still regarded animals as machines, de La Mettrie had already written the book “Man a Machine”! The mechanistic worldview, rooted in the French national character, is a mechanistic view of the world, a view of the world as a mechanism.

And when this worldview was presented to young Goethe, he said, from his German worldview: “Now they are telling us about atoms that collide with each other; this great world machine. If only they would explain to us how this beautiful and diverse world can arise from these colliding atoms. But after they have shown us how the atoms collide and push each other, they do not explain anything more about it!

Now, this striving has been preserved in the mechanism to this day. The mechanistic world view is actually the French world view. Of course, esteemed attendees, this is not meant to apply to the individual members of a nation; individuality can rise above nationality, above that which has been discussed and which arises from the character, from the inner nature of nationality. And here I believe that the right thing has been said. I would like to let the voice of a man be heard, the voice of a man who may perhaps be heard when considering the striving of the French nation towards a scientific world view. This man says:

"Thirst for truth is not a French passion. Appearance is more important than essence, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, the shiny more than the fertile, public opinion more than conscience. This means that the center of gravity of the Frenchman is not within himself, but in the others, in the multitude. Individuals are zeros; the digit that forms them into a number comes from outside: that is the sovereign, the writer of the day, the most-read newspaper, in a word, the current master of fashion. All this can be deduced from an exaggerated sociability; it stifles in the soul the courage to resist, the power of judgment, personal conviction, the cult of the ideal."

This was not written by a German out of one-sided national sentiment, but rather, dear honored attendees, it was written in 1875 by Amiel, Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss at the University of Geneva! He could know as someone who, although he was deeply familiar with German intellectual life, was bound to French intellectual life by his blood ties. And in 1862, Amiel wrote the following:

"I feel a common bond with a Goethe, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Leibniz, who are nevertheless sufficiently different from one another, while French philosophers, orators or mathematicians leave me cold despite their great qualities, because they do not carry the sum of general life within them, do not control all of reality, gag me or make me suspicious. What the French lack is direct knowledge of the living unity, a sense of the sacred, a feeling for the mysteries of being; what is theirs is the foundation of specialized sciences, the art of making a book, it is style, politeness, grace, a sense of order, art for art's sake, discipline, elegance, truth in the details, staging, proselytizing zeal, strength in practical conclusions. But for the journey through Inferno and Paradise, other guides are needed; they are rooted to the earth, in the realm of the finite, changing, historical, and limited. Mechanism and dualism are the pinnacles of their intellectual flight. To break out of this circle, they must force themselves.

One does not want to present a one-sided view, not out of national sentiment; therefore one must choose something that is said by someone who says it out of his own attachment, out of his blood ties to the French nation.

But the time has come when, just as other things, the relationship between the individual elements of the nation must be recognized objectively. And once one has achieved something like Fichte's achievement – Fichte, for whom that which lives outside in the world of the senses is, so to speak, the nationalized field of duty – if one compares that with what lives in the British, in the English world-view, then one need only point to where one will, take old Baco of Verulam, who would accept nothing except what the senses see externally – everything else is an 'idol' to him; and his book about idols is an attempt to prove that what man can grasp in his soul has no objective validity beyond sensuality. And if we go up to Spencer and all those who have a similar view, we arrive at the latest English world view, which has been developed out of the English view: it calls itself pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? It is not something that applies to us Germans. For us Germans, as with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, it is something that experiences truth, and by experiencing truth, one lives together with the world spirit. But the Romance peoples and the British have no conception of the objective world spirit at all. It is something that will only be fully recognized in the future. [...] Truth [...] is something that arises in the soul as a result of this soul growing together with the world spirit itself. Then the soul brings this truth to bear on external things, and the external things become a revelation of spiritual truth. What are they to pragmatism, to this pragmatic product of a worldview? A caricature! I say this, as I said, out of pure fact, not out of any antipathy. For this pragmatism, truth is only of value insofar as one connects concepts and ideas in the spiritual, which are actually only brackets, only bands that bind together the external sensual facts, so that one can find one's way in the external sensual world. Truth has no meaning in itself, has no value in itself.

A person, for example, commits an act; he has thoughts. All this is expressed. We seek the soul for thoughts and actions. The soul is a real being for us. And as we grow together with the truth, the soul itself becomes a reality for us, it is grasped as a reality.

For pragmatism, the soul is a concept that was formed to orient oneself, to hold together the otherwise disintegrating thoughts of man as with a bracket. Truth is what is useful if one wants to understand the world. - The pragmatist forms concepts and ideas with a view to usefulness, so that he can find his way in the world.

One has only to compare this with what lives in the characterized summit of German intellectual life, and one will be able to get an idea of the spiritual world position of the German within the developmental history of humanity.

But now something else comes. If you look at Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, they are great, important minds, geniuses; they represent the coming together of man with the secrets of the world from three different sides: from the side of will, from the side of thought, and from the side of feeling. If anyone today still thinks – and most people do, in fact, think – that it must be so, that they are difficult [to read and understand], then I may well express my conviction that there is a way to present what these spirits have achieved in such a form that even the simplest mind can grasp what it is about, if it only wants to. These spirits can be fruitfully employed in schools; [that they cannot be fruitfully employed there] is merely a prejudice. But the peculiar thing that confronts one when one contemplates these spirits, esteemed attendees, is that in their triplicity something like a unity hovering over them asserts itself! One has the feeling that something is being expressed in three ways, invisibly prevailing over the three. It is what one might call: the German folk spirit itself.

Amiel - again the French Swiss - has sensed something of the fact that the German folk spirit itself seeks to grow together in the souls with the innermost reason for things. Therefore Amiel says:

“Perhaps only the Germanic spirit has the need to think for itself, to search for the very basis of things.”

Amiel therefore goes on to say:

“The German spirit, like the collective inspiration, passes into these characteristic personalities; it speaks through them.”

Therefore, dear attendees, it could happen that personalities actually came along, personalities whose work is largely forgotten today. Therefore, I may speak today by wanting to reopen this as if it were a faded, forgotten pursuit of the development of German thought. Personalities who are largely forgotten today, they appear after the great personalities just mentioned. And the strange thing is that, while these personalities are smaller minds, less ingenious, after the three greats, they even show greater achievements in the field of spiritual searching, more penetrating achievements than the great ones who preceded them. Of course, the great ones need stimulation; but the lesser ones who follow usually achieve greater things, at least more penetrating things, from what has once been stimulated within German intellectual development. They are closer to the soul's inner search for the concrete spiritual world, for the search for spiritual entities that can be found with the characterized sense, just as one finds concrete external natural objects and natural facts through the external senses.

And among these lesser spirits is the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Immanuel Hermann Fichte. Certainly, there are not many today who still occupy themselves with this Immanuel Hermann Fichte; but Immanuel Hermann Fichte – to mention only that – already stands there and says: the human being whom we observe with our outer senses, the human being who is made of flesh and blood, is bound to the perishable earthly in terms of his material and his powers. But in this human being there is another human being. This other human being – I mentioned him earlier in these lectures. People still laugh about it a lot today. But they will not always laugh! That other person, whom Immanuel Hermann Fichte calls the “ethereal man”, is a supersensible, higher person who has certain higher powers through which he is just as connected to the eternal spiritual aspect of existence, to the whole universe, as his perishable body is bound here to the physical-sensory powers of the earth. And the etheric body, which Hermann Immanuel Fichte assumes, is what first builds the physical body!

And another spirit can appear before us, again more or less forgotten, but no less significant and no less characteristic for the innermost freedom and for the innermost strengthening of the forces of German intellectual life: that is Troxler. Who still knows him today? But how he stands before him who got to know him! Troxler wrote his beautiful lectures on a world view in the 1840s. In them, we see emphasized, again and again, how the human being who stands before us with his senses lives within a spiritual world, a spiritual human being who has a spiritual world around him just as the sensual human being has a sensual world around him. Troxler speaks of abilities that the soul has, which are only hidden in ordinary life. Troxler speaks of what he calls the “super-spiritual sense”.

What does he mean by that? When Troxler speaks of the super-spiritual sense, he means that the senses we usually call that and that have different organs are not the only organs of perception for humans; but that humans can perceive another world with new organs, with new senses, with purely spiritual senses, which is just as full of content as the external physical world.

I have said here before that many people today believe that there is a spiritual world in general. And anyone who bandies a few pantheistic terms about, thinking they are talking about a spiritual world – spirit, spirit and more spirit – is merely bandying abstract terms! Spiritual science speaks of the individual spiritual beings that can be seen; just as one does not always say only “nature, nature, nature!” when faced with the external physical world, but rather “lilies, tulips, carnations” and so on. Specifically, one shows what physical nature produces individually. In the same way, one can show what spiritual nature shows individually. This is what Troxler means when he speaks of the 'super-spiritual sense'. And then he speaks of the 'supersensible spirit', which is not dependent on sensuality, but which knows itself within the spiritual, which feels itself as a body within the spiritual.

But Troxler goes even deeper in his discussion of this spiritual, this higher human being, who goes through births and deaths. And it is wonderful how Troxler – not in an abstract, indefinite way – addresses the higher human being in a very definite way. Even if this is a faded, forgotten tone in the development of German thought, it lives in it. And whether one notices what is alive there or not is certainly important for understanding; but even if one has not noticed it, it lives in the development of German thought and will be noticed! It will celebrate its resurrection as an actual spiritual science!

Then Troxler sees that in the human soul, insofar as it experiences itself between birth and death in the outer physicality, three forces live - as the most beautiful forces according to Troxler's world of vision. First there is the power of faith - that which man has as the power of faith. What a person has as love power, he has it as the power of his soul, but in the soul, insofar as this soul lives in the body. Behind the power of faith, however, there is another, higher power for the soul itself, and Troxler calls this spiritual hearing. That is to say, he believes that the human being can develop the outer form, so to speak, the shell for a spiritual hearing, through which the human being, when he becomes aware of it, can perceive the language of spiritual beings, which speak of the eternal secrets of existence. Thus, faith appears as the outer shell of a much deeper power, an eternal power in man. Spiritual hearing is love, the power of love, which expresses itself in the body as the most beautiful, greatest flowering of the human soul. Nevertheless, for Troxler this is only the outer expression of the power of spiritual touch, of spiritual feeling. The one who loves has the most beautiful flowering of human existence on earth. For him, love is the shell for the powers of which he can become aware, which extend the spiritual organs in the material world so that he can touch the spiritual world as he touches physical things with his physical senses of touch.

And what lives in us as the power of hope is in turn the shell for Troxler, the power of spiritual vision.

So that Troxler sees a higher person in the ordinary person - a higher person who has a spiritual sense just as the physical person has a physical hearing; who has a spiritual feeling just as the physical person has a physical feeling and who has a spiritual vision, a spiritual soul. And that we can be seeing, loving and hearing people in the body, that is for Troxler because, when we go through the gate of death, our soul goes out of the body. The power of faith then appears as spiritual hearing, the power of love as spiritual touch, the power of hope as spiritual strength.

It is in this spirit that Troxler also expresses the following very beautifully. He knows that, in terms of feeling, we are closer to things on a human and spiritual level than with the mere abstract mind. But one can develop such thoughts that are just as close to the direct experience of the thing as feelings usually are. Nor does Troxler seek a sentimental mysticism. This is foreign to the essentially German nature! That vague, hazy sentimentality of mysticism is not part of the German character; it is also foreign to Troxler. But Troxler nevertheless speaks of “thoughts felt” - of thoughts that, like feelings, live as thoughts in the soul. He speaks of “intelligent feeling” and of sensitive thoughts - thoughts that touch the spiritual life!

Troxler is completely imbued with this view. And he once speaks of how he feels in harmony with the entire spiritual life of the German people through such a view, insofar as this spiritual life has appeared in great personalities after Christ. There Troxler says once - I will read these words to you myself:

"Even in the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body... a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and which was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire internal spiritual human being who carries all the limbs of the external one on his spirit body. Lavater writes more and thinks the same; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about the Bonn under-skirt and the Platner soul-corset, which are said to be hidden in the coarser body-skirt and , we also hear him asking: “What is the purpose of and where did these extraordinary abilities and desires come from that lie dormant in us, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cutting through our earthly shell? ... In the stony limbs of

of man

“grow and mature in a way that is unknown to us... We could”

says Troxler further.

"cite a myriad of similar ways of thinking and creating, which in the end are only different perceptions and representations in which... the true, only teaching of the individuality and immortality of man is contained.

Troxler also speaks of the possibility of a science of man on the path of knowledge he sought, through which – to use his own terms – the “super-spiritual sense” in union with the “supernatural spirit” can grasp the supernatural essence of man in his “anthroposophy”.

Troxler cites these [individual personalities], and many others could be cited who, entirely from the essence of German national identity, sought the way to the real, true spiritual world. And before Troxler's [inner eye] stood a certain science. He thought: When man observes man himself with his senses and explains this observation with his mind, which is connected to the senses, then anthropology arises – the science of man through the senses. But anthropology arises from man observing man as a sensual being; but the spiritual man, the higher man with the awakened senses that we have already spoken of, can also observe man; then a higher science arises. In 1835, Troxler spoke beautifully of this higher science, as anthropology is, saying:

Although it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which... must reveal itself in every anthroposophy... must reveal itself, is moving upwards, it cannot be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts it with as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

This German spiritual life developed entirely out of the German national character. And is it not wonderful to experience such a phenomenon as this: In the 50s of the last century, a simple pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck published a simple little book, a wonderful little book that is at the height of spiritual science, that stands apart from all materialism, but also from all mere intellectual and conceptual considerations, that sets out to consider the human soul in such a way that it can grasp spiritual reality.

Some of the simple Rocholler writing, which is simply written for seeking circles, may seem fantastic, but that does not matter; what matters is that we have here a simple person, at the pinnacle of education, leading a way into the spiritual worlds. It is the intention that counts. That is why intentions such as this little book, which was published in Waldeck in 1856, are so infinitely important. And anyone who might think that I am choosing to present these phenomena in order to prove something is quite mistaken.

However, over the past few decades, circumstances have developed in such a way that even the vast majority of scholars were numbed by what Goethe, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel had created, and descended from this height, thinking: the one-sided, materialistic Darwinism had proved powerful, the French materialism had proved powerful.

But what I am characterizing is not something that can be explained away by German intellectual life alone; rather, hundreds and hundreds of such phenomena could be cited. When people actually become aware of this, they will see the depth of German insight that can be drawn from German national character. For that is what really strives for a German world view, from German intellectual life.

Perhaps it may be mentioned, just as an aside, how profound these things actually are. Who among physicists, overwhelmed by French mechanism and English utilitarian philosophy, does not laugh inwardly when he praises them outwardly? I may well speak about the matter, for more than thirty years have passed since I endeavored to bring out the deep significance of Goethe's Theory of Colors in opposition to that theory of colors which is completely overwhelmed by Newtonism and by mechanism in general. Whenever you talk to a modern physicist about Goethe's theory of colors, all you get is, “Goethe's theory of colors doesn't tell you anything.”

This is quite understandable for someone who is familiar with today's circumstances; but there is something here. And that is that Goethe, through his direct coexistence with the mystery of the color spectrum, has created a tremendous work about nature and dared to oppose the intellectual appropriation by the British in Newton, and that the world has not understood it. But the chapter has yet to be written: Goethe - also in the theory of colors - is right against Newton, when one will grasp even more deeply what Fichte calls Germanness within Europe.

I could point to many other minds. As I said, you only need to pick them out. For example, I could point out a soul researcher - Schultz-Schultzenstein is his name, that is certainly a German name: Schultz-Schultzenstein - who tries to place the soul life of man under the concept of “rejuvenation” in the 1850s of the last century. Schultzenstein was able to offer some wonderful insights! He said that the human soul can only be properly understood in its life here between birth and death by observing the experiences it has as feelings and thoughts at the various stages of its life. And as it progresses, one can follow how the soul, like a previous skin, sheds what has already been experienced, and something continuous, something alive is renewed and rejuvenated within the soul.

I can point to another mind, whose literary activity also began in the 1850s and who died unnoticed in 1880. In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” - [...] already in the first edition, which appeared in 1900 - I referred to Karl Christian Planck. He was a mind that was aware of how it created from German national character. Who knows him! But that does not matter, because what was in him as a force is at work in the German character, is at work in Central Europe and brings forth what belongs to the best life in Central Europe.

I would like to mention just one thing to show Karl Christian Planck's originality. Today, from the point of view of natural science, anyone who believes that they understand everything – to look at it the way the French look at the earth, the way the English observer looks at the earth, the way the geological observer looks at the earth – they look at the universe that consists of matter. For Planck, such an observer of the earth is like someone who would look at a tree only in terms of the trunk and the wood, and not in terms of the essence of the tree, the leaves, the blossoms and the fruits! For Planck, we do not see the earth in its entirety if we do not also see the whole human being on the earth. Planck looks at the earth as a spirit would, from the outside. And in what the geologist sees, we see only part of the earth, like the trunk, the wood of the tree, but nothing else of the nature of the earth. For Karl Christian Planck, the Earth is not only a living being, but a living, spiritualized living being. And what the physical human being himself is – as a flower, as a fruit – that belongs to the essence of the Earth. – A spiritual – Goethe would say – a spiritual worldview. And Christian Karl Planck is aware that he comes to such a spiritual worldview from the depths of the German people. Planck already expresses this beautifully in the 1860s. He has written several books; the books he has written breathe the breath of such a worldview. In 1864, in his book “Grundlinien einer Wissenschaft der Natur” (Foundations of a Science of Nature), he expresses beautifully how he is aware that he has come to his view, which sees the spirit in nature, from the depths of the German essence. I will read the words to you myself:

What power

writes Planck

deep-rooted prejudices from the previous view from his

the author's

writing, the author is fully aware of this; but just as the work itself, despite all the unfavorable circumstances, which, according to the author's

situation and professional position,

a work of this kind has been opposed, but has fought its way to its realization and its path into the public, so he is also certain that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit.

What our medieval poetry has unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation as the times mature. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which was met with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram describes it in his Parzival)

In 1864, before Wagner, these words were truly written!

finally, in the strength of its unceasing striving, it attains the highest; it looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which is attained by its hero, that conversely receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the enduring knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.

Karl Christian Planck died at the age of eighty. He left behind a writing that he called “The Testament of a German”; the first edition was published in 1881; the second edition by Diederichs Verlag in 1912. Who has dealt with it?

Well, people had other things to do! For example, they had to deal with the books published by the same publishing house by a man who lives in a rigid spirit - of course, that is not meant as a criticism of him at all; they also dealt with the books by the French philosopher - his name is still Bergson - a French name! He is the one who, since the beginning of the war, has not found enough defamatory words for the German worldview and German intellectual life. I think I actually said last year that this Bergson kept saying to his Frenchmen in Paris: the Germans once had a significant intellectual life, but now they have completely degenerated; all that can be seen is their mechanistic life. I said last year that in earlier times, good Henri Bergson would recite Novalis and Goethe and Schiller to you, in a time when he might not yet have called it “mechanical.” It cannot be emphasized enough. One looked out into the world with admiration. Not only now, during the war and the period of hatred – I have also tried to point out before what Bergson's “philosophy” is like.

A special feature of Bergson's philosophy is the following: He comes up with an idea; but he puts it forward in a light-hearted way. It consists in saying that one does not proceed correctly when one looks at the development of the world in such a way that one regards the subordinate beings as the origin of what man descends from, because one must start from man. That is indeed a very good thought: we must start from man. Man is the most original thing before any other being of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdom existed. This is not understood today, but it is nevertheless founded in the writing on the reorganization of the world view of Bergson.

This also emerged in Planck's work: before the other things were there, man was there, albeit in different forms, and then he pushed away certain things that he could not use in his development, and so man came into being by excluding the plant and animal kingdoms. Just as man secretes his bones inwards, so that which is placed at the top, the plant kingdom, the mineral kingdom, secretes itself out of itself. This is a thought, esteemed attendees, that will become established in German intellectual life once the material colorations of Darwinism have been refuted and correctly illuminated.

All right, Bergson presents this; but I was able to show – as I said, just before the war, so that people would not think that it is only under the influence of the war events that things are now being characterized as they are here – I was able to show that precisely this idea, which – in a somewhat simplified form – the French philosopher Henri Bergson – that this idea, which already in the 1870s, 1882 [published], lived in the German thinker Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss – also a faded, forgotten aspiration of German intellectual life – was powerfully and energetically advocated by Preuss!

I am quoting a few words in which I have cited this Prussian, this German view of the matter; I am quoting these words from Pruss's book “Geist und Stoff” - 1899 in second edition already published. It says:

"It may therefore be time to establish a [different] doctrine of the origin of the organic species, which is not only based on one-sidedly established propositions from descriptive natural science, but is also in full agreement with the other laws of nature, which are at the same time also laws of human thought. A doctrine, at the same time, that is free of any hypothetization and is based only on strict conclusions from scientific observations in the broadest sense; a doctrine that rescues the species concept according to actual possibility, but at the same time adopts the concept of evolution as proposed by Darwin and seeks to make it fruitful in its realm.

The center of this new doctrine is man, the only species on our planet that recurs: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers started with natural objects and then went so astray that they could not find the way to man, which Darwin only managed in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals, while the naturalist would have to start with himself as a human being, in order to gradually return to humanity through the whole realm of being and thinking.

It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the development of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of telluric processes and every other form that emerged alongside him borrowed its features from his. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos...

When its germs had arisen, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary power to produce further human germs. What did arise became animal or plant...

and so on. Bergson, the Frenchman, either does not know this German predecessor – which, in the case of a philosopher, would of course be just as big a mistake as if he knew him and did not name him; but the latter is to be assumed in the case of Bergson! He accuses today's Germans of mechanism! In the meantime, it has been possible to show that entire pages in Bergson's books have been copied from the Germans, whom he now disowns. Entire pages of arguments have been copied from Schelling and Schopenhauer by Henri Bergson! This is perhaps not a mechanical way of constructing intellectual life.

I would like to say: With something like this in the background, Germany's enemies now dare, insofar as they are represented by such personalities, to defame and belittle the German essence. But precisely from what is now at stake, in the world-historical development, this German essence will learn to assert that which lies at the bottom of its being, also in world-historical becoming.

Dear attendees, what is happening now – before world history – needs little saying to characterize it as one might imagine an objective act is characterized: There are enemies surrounding Central Europe. One need only mention a few figures that will speak strongly in the future, when things will be seen differently than Germany's enemies see them now: 777 million people, not counting the Italians, stood around Central Europe facing a group of 150 million. 777 million against 150 million. Do they need to be envious of this Central Europe? Well, the property of these 777 million people covers 68 million square kilometers, compared to the 6 million square kilometers of property owned by the 150 million in Central Europe. And these 777 million – multiplied by Italy – against these 150 million, they are in a position where they not only want to fight with weapons, but also want to have the better part of the rest of the world, want to starve the 150 million people. And leading people - people called “great personalities” from Germany's side - they indulge in the most vicious accusations and slanders of the spiritual life that has emerged in the 6 million square kilometers in the middle of Europe and show how little they understand of what is alive there.

Besides Bergson, there is, for example, the French philosopher Boutroux – shortly before the war, he was still traveling around in Germany, even giving lectures in German about the close scientific relationship between Germans and Frenchmen! Now he is saying things like this to his fellow Parisians: The Germans imagined that they had come to the end of all searching. With this, they also imagined that they were at the center of the divine order of the world and that they could rule over all men. [...]

We do not need to fall into this tone; but it is necessary to point out such facts and to get to know the facts. After all, Boutroux also managed – well, the Frenchman is witty – to make a joke not too long ago: the Frenchman, the Englishman and the German are talking about the pursuit of a worldview, of knowledge of external things; Boutroux said to his partner: the Frenchman, if he wants to get to know a camel, goes to the menagerie, looks at a camel and then describes it. The Englishman goes to the area where camels live, looks at the camel and then describes it. The German neither goes to the menagerie to see a camel nor to the area where camels live in distant lands, but goes into his room and studies the camel in its inwardness in its being and creates the camel in himself out of his being. The French are witty! Just this joke about Boutroux comes from Heinrich Heine!

And so much more could be said. It must be said: the German does not really need to fall back into the ways of those around him! But the German has all the more need to engage with that which is currently the best part of his nature in the pursuit of knowledge. The German nature will also overcome those prejudices which arise from the fact that, under the influence of French and English materialism, a person who searches for spiritual science is still considered today to be a dreamer, a person who does not live in reality: Oh, when you see someone like Planck or [someone like] Preuss – well, these people can spin theories, but to engage with reality, to see what lives in reality, that's what the “practitioners” are for; someone like Planck, you can't use him for life!

I could give many examples; I will just mention one in connection with Planck, since I was allowed to discuss him: about 35 years ago (Planck died in 1881) he wrote words that I will even read out. He was not a diplomat; he was not a politician; he was not one of those preachers who believe that they have a complete understanding of the workings of the world, that they have “lived it all,” who know how to speak authoritatively about everything from a broad perspective and disdain those who live only in the spiritual world. He was none of these. He was a simple man of vision! But a man who was able to see into the course of events. And what he developed before 1881 is written in his Testament of a German. He died in 1881. In it he wrote about what presented itself to him in the development of Europe. And he looked at it with discerning eyes. He wrote that war must come. And about this war he wrote the following words:

“If a people, universalistic and central by its very nature, is now in the sharpest contrast to its earlier history, unites to form a pure nation-state and, for all others, increases to the highest military armament, what else can be the consequence in a time of the highest national aspirations than ultimately the most comprehensive clash?”

So says the “impractical man of world view”! How many people who were practically inside the circumstances did not believe, when the war broke out, that the Italian would also stand against Central Europe! But the impractical man of conviction knew how to say this in 1881. Not only will the Russian East rise up against Central Europe, but as in the past we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South.

“It is not only the antagonism of political interests that must provoke him,”

"but, as it is now becoming increasingly clear, above all the conflict of economic interests in their still nationally bound, still inorganically opposed form. And the more the contradictions and evils that this state of affairs brings about in relation to the universalistic increase of means of communication, which have already been discussed earlier, must come to the fore, the sharper the tension that arises on all sides as a result.

And to this is added another contrast, in which the inherent one-sidedness of our Western culture has created an enemy, and which, by the nature of things, must become hostile above all to the German spirit. From the very beginning, as we saw, Western Christianity and its striving for a full, humanly present mediation of the divine content has gone hand in hand with the rigid otherworldliness and bondage of the Oriental and Byzantine essence, for which ecclesiastical and political power and authority directly coincided. In this rigid unity, the Christian East remained just as unfreely confined as, conversely, in the West, the free national development overgrew religious unity and pushed it into the background. But the one-sided, secular, and outwardly material character of Western culture, which is rooted in this, has also made it possible for the unfree East to appropriate these external cultural means without having to absorb the deeper, free, spiritual side of that development. On the contrary, it only helped him to confront the West, which had fallen into a one-sided national separate existence, all the more consciously in the self-confidence of his distinctive religious and political unity, and thus, in view of the still unfinished state of other Slavic tribes and the disintegrating Turkish Empire, to claim an even more far-reaching significance for himself. And precisely because of this, by the very nature of things, he becomes an opponent of the nation, which also in this respect has its central and unifying human and universal calling, of the Germans, and especially of that empire, which for a long time has based its existence precisely on the comprehensive interweaving of German and foreign elements.

No political cleverness, no love of peace on the part of Germany can prevent this hostile clash within the current merely national order. For more powerful than all cleverness is the nature of the circumstances; and already now, despite the friendly attitude of Germany and Austria, the hostile mood of the Russian East is only emerging all the more clearly because one could not give it a free hand in everything, but had to set a certain goal. And if it comes to a fight one day, then, however much we have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not stand by our side, but as in the east, we will also have to defend ourselves in the west and south at the same time; on all sides, national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst.

But it is precisely the realization that in this last and most difficult struggle the completely inadequate nature of all previous purely national orders comes to light, that above all the universal position of the German nation, linked as it is to a series of foreign elements, is completely incompatible with it and could only lead to unending struggles. This realization will give this bloodiest of struggles its forever decisive significance and will open the minds of the nations, which are now still trapped in dull externalities, to their ultimate and lasting calling. The realization will dawn, amidst blood and tears, that it is never the mere nation-state and its commercial society that can bring peace and reconciliation, but only that of the universal law of vocation, that only in it lies the renewing rebirth for all the inner wounds, for the relationship of states to one another, for the degenerate conditions of the Orient, and for the corruption and externalization of one's own education. If the first struggle, which was intended to prevent our national awakening, has brought it to completion precisely for that reason, then conversely the second, which is caused by the very inadequacy of all this national order, will also lead beyond it forever to the humanly universal goal.

It is from the German spirit that a renewal of humanity must come, so that there may be a victory over that which lives in a sense indicated by these facts and which has come from an un-German spirit, especially in more recent times, and which can be characterized by saying: the power of incompetence that crushes all justified striving must be recognized. The German spirit is strong and vigorous and will recognize this in this area and will heal the world in this area when it becomes aware of what still lives in German intellectual life as a forgotten pursuit in many cases.

We have been able to glance over to the West on many an occasion. Finally, let us glance over to the East with a few words. This whole East, yes, how does it present itself? Central Europe?

The German essence: can it be characterized in relation to the West in such a way that one can say that one truly does not need to belittle the West in any way. One can know that the scientific spirit emanated from Italy before the dawn of the newer intellectual life. This scientific spirit has emerged from the south. One can know that the French spirit also gave rise to the rational conception of the world; that the sense of utility emerged from the English spirit, the view of the world in such a way that everything is placed in the utility. But just how far removed this British spirit is from the German spirit, well, you can tell by the fact that if someone wanted to try to characterize Fichte's theory of knowledge, where he repeatedly attempts to describe the self feeling and experiencing itself in the world spirit, if you are able to fully penetrate this field of knowledge, it would look strange linguistically alone...

If I say: “I represent the I” – not even that could be adhered to, [instead of the German word “ich” the English “i”] – not even that could be adhered to, that one [in English] goes from the lower-case “i”, as one writes in German, to the capital “I”, when you have experienced the “I” – Fichte calls it “reproduction”, the progression of culture in the “I” – within yourself, how should you call it when you want to move from the small “I” to the large “I”, since grammatically the personal “I” is written “I” everywhere.

You could say: the German essence relates to the Western essence in the same way that the Italians were the contemplatives, the French shaped reason, the utilitarian principle shaped the English; but the principle of internalization is part of the German essence. The Italian looks at the world. By looking at the world, he says: the world is quite right; but it just needs to be reshaped a little, it needs to be made to correspond to our ability, not a compulsory language, but a word that has been experienced. It is precisely when you look deep, deep inside, especially into the best sides of intellectual life, that this word is true.

The Frenchman says: This world is also worth / gap in the transcript ]. The Englishman says: [gap in the transcript] The German says: I also like the world. And within himself, he wants to create a small image of the world. The Russian, yes, one only needs to think of such characteristic figures as Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky's “The Brothers Karamazov”. But this type of Karamasov character is poured out over the whole of the East in the nineteenth century. [...] Ivan Karamasov himself says: I would still accept God; but I cannot accept the world from God. The world, in the Russian sense, is actually something that should be replaced by another, namely by the one that is made for the Russian people.

It is a seemingly radical word, but anyone who follows the development of Russian thought in the nineteenth century will find it to be true. For it is indeed strange: from the first decade of the nineteenth century in Russia it is emphasized that in the Russian countryside there lives - Dostoyevsky said it, for example, despite the greatness of Dostoyevsky, one must also bear in mind the greatness of Dostoyevsky -: the Russian person is the one in all people who, through his universal humanity, must place his spiritual life in the place of others. And man faces the world in such a way that one can say: in the nineteenth century, he is increasingly coming to say to himself: European intellectual life is decrepit and has had its day. That must be eradicated. Russian intellectual life would be young; it must dominate. The Russian language means joy, means love. The West – and that includes Central Europe, but also France, Italy, Spain and England – means struggle, means war, means selfishness. This is the underlying tone of all [Russian] intellectual life in the nineteenth century.

Outwardly it does not appear so strongly; but it is so. Only strange: Who is then actually the first to have pronounced the nature of the Slav, from which they then want something quite different than lies in the Russian national spirit? They claim that a noble man spoke of it first, and they have built on that. Who was it that first characterized the matter so beautifully, coined a word, an idea, on which they then based the whole of the nineteenth century? Herder! Herder was basically the first Slavophile. But the word of a Slavophile has degenerated into megalomania. And it came to pass that it resounded again and again: Europe is decrepit, and Russian intellectual life must take the place of European intellectual life.

Dear attendees, as I said, just one more fact: in 1885 a book was published that was written by the Russian Yushakov. Yushakov stands on a somewhat different cultural ground than the one I have just mentioned – the literary counter-image, presented for that which has emerged up to the present day and up to our current terrible events – Yushakov, 1885, a remarkable book! He does not look to the West, but to the East, to Asia, to the Asian peoples. Now, as Jusakhov says in his, as I said, remarkable book: These poor Asians, they have shown themselves how they have gradually struggled from their cultural life up to the corresponding present culture, they have shown it as the struggle between two spiritual beings. But this struggle represents a reality in Asia. According to Yushakov, the two spiritual powers under whose influence the Asians were, were represented as the good Ormuzd and the evil Ahriman.

Ahriman was always the one who was the negation of Ormuzd. Jushakow says to the Iranian peoples, to whom the Persians and Indians also belonged: Ahriman, the evil spirit, took away these fruits of both material and spiritual culture from them.

But what have the European peoples of the West done? - Jushakow asks. They have squeezed out of those Asian peoples what those peoples had acquired under the influence of the good Ormuzd! Russian culture must intervene here. Russian culture is the only one capable – Jusakhov says, I am not saying this – of lovingly embracing the Asian peoples. Two powers stand in the world that will bring happiness in the future – and above all happiness to the Asian peoples; these two powers are – I am not saying this, Jusakhov is saying it! , these two powers are: the Russian peasant and the Cossack, the two great representatives of [Russian] humanity - says Yushakov in 1885. And he does not go to Asia to bring love to the Asians, to bring love to the Asians in turn, sooner or later the evil that the Western peoples have brought over Asia, which he could not really talk about in those days in the case of Germany, will be brought to light.

Strangely enough, the book is called “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. And there Yushakov says in relation to this: The English show by their treatment of the Asian peoples as if they believed that these Asian peoples were only dependent on this unloving English love. And then Jushakow says how he imagines the relationship between his people and the English. He says to England - these are his words, his own words:

"England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland - I can only rejoice that

my Russian fatherland [according to Yushakov]

is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as splendid as it is sad.

Thus in 1885 the Russian Yushakov on England.

He is probably not primarily concerned with the alliance between Russia and England, but with restoring the blessings of Ormuzd to the Asians. Russia will now cross over to Asia, says Yushakov, because in Russia the alliance between the all-fertility developing farmer and the all-chivalry bearing Cossack is rooted in a deep culture, Yushakov believes, and they will prefer to spread Russian spirituality across Asia first.

Thus writes one of those minds that thought this way in Russia and already expressed it in the 1820s – in 1829: Western Europe and Central Europe are decrepit, have outlived their usefulness. But we in Russia, we have the right to bring this Europe under our rule. And when we have it – so says Kireyevsky – when we have it, then we will share what we have with the others, insofar as it is right.

This is not only the “right” thing to do in the political sphere, since the falsified “Testament of Peter the Great”, but also in the entire intellectual and cultural life. And what is going on through this Russophile: the excellent Russian philosopher Solowjow has said it himself. And you can read this in my book 'Thoughts During the Time of War' – it is not available at the moment, but it will be published again in a while. Solowjow himself said it: what is alive in Russian intellectual life comes from what one could call: Russia still has a long way to go before she attains the maturity of her own nature; for Russia is still today, in fact, in the midst of it, thoroughly in the midst of unclear mysticism. That is all. One has to be 'mystical' if one is to be able to say: This German spiritual life seeks the tool of mystical endeavor. On the contrary: fully conscious thoughts, light-imbued, thought-filled views, clear views; the German seeks an image of the world in order to shape his own being as similarly as possible to this image of the world.

The other nations should not be disparaged. But what can they recognize that the German strives for, that he strives for consciously, so that he makes his own image of man similar to the image of the world? The Italian cannot strive for it so consciously if he only strives from his nationality. He would have to be taught this, as it were, by suggestion, so that what is a striving for knowledge in him would have more of an effect than a morality.

The Frenchman wants it more as an intellectual art, to give the mind pleasure, to give the mind a sense of well-being. This is basically something that lies in the fundamental character as a French imprint of the mechanistic view of nature.

The Englishman wants – he would certainly also accept Fichte's science if one could transform its truths into a principle or a machine, if one could place it in the pragmatic order of life, could make pragmatism out of it, as it was mentioned today.

The Russian still needs unclear, hazy mysticism everywhere today. I have already mentioned Ivan Karamazov from Dostoyevsky's work “The Brothers Karamazov”, who is a true representative of the Russian who has absorbed Western European culture. God would be there, yes, God, but in mystical obscurity. And one can say: when the Russian becomes atheistic, he wants a mystical atheist. The Russian can become atheistic, but he almost wants the atheist to be revealed to him by God! You could also teach him Fichte's philosophy, you could also teach him Hegelianism; but then it would have to be found mysteriously on an altar somewhere or at least bear the imprint that it came into the world in a mysterious way!

In short, the various nations surrounding the German nation still stand today in such a way to this German spiritual life that there is truly every reason for the German to become aware of the germs and roots and diversity in his spiritual being! And the fruits and blossoms will come when the German becomes truly aware of this, aware of it precisely through the difficult time of trial in which he is currently mired.

Yes, what has been attempted to be presented in brief, dear attendees, developed on the 6 million square kilometers in the center, compared to the 68 million square kilometers in the surrounding area! And as if by bonds, which are also bonds of the spirit, this Central Europe is held together. The alliance between Germany and Austria is truly such a bond, one that is also based on the commonality of the spiritual life flowing through the two countries, through the two national territories.

I may say this because I have lived in Austria for more than half of my life, almost thirty years, and have participated in all the times of these thirty years in the way in which the German essence must live there in Austria, must live in multiform Austria. I have come to know what it means to take the word of one of the most German of Austrians – Robert Hamerling, the greatest son of Austria in the second half of the nineteenth century – and to feel it in the innermost being of someone who grasps the sense of belonging in Central Europe. Robert Hamerling said: “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland”.

Robert Hamerling, as early as 1862, in his wonderful poem 'Germanenzug', spoke of this inwardness of the German world-view. Does it not appear to us in a beautiful form, this inwardness of the German world-view, when we see, for example, how Jakob Böhme, in very early times, speaks of how the German strives for knowledge, but in such a way that he wants to use it to enter into the spirit of the world? He expresses it so beautifully:

“When you look at the depths”

he means the depths of heaven

“And the stars and the earth, you see your God. And in you live and are you also. And the same God rules you also.” “You are created from this God and live in the same. Also, all your knowledge is in this God. And when you die, you will be buried in this God.”

Fine words! If we take this, which I have tried to illustrate today: it turns out that in this internalization of the German essence – in this desire to grasp what, as divine spirituality, permeates and animates the world within one's own inner being – lies the profound world-historical calling of the German. And it is so intrinsic to the German that it really stands out like a second wave in the great upheaval of the human race. If we look across to the Orient – looking differently than the Russian Yushakov – then we find in the Asian peoples how they have dreamed of, how they have also once tried to penetrate into the spiritual that lives and breathes through the world. They tried to bring the I so close that it was as if asleep, [that] the actual human inner being was asleep, and so the human being could merge into what the life of the world spirit in the principle of the All interweaves and lives through the world. Now that the greatest impulse for the evolution of the Earth has been introduced – the Christ Impulse – the Asiatic type is no longer the one that can dominate the human race.

The German nature has found the right way to penetrate into the spiritual world in the sense of the Christ impulse, so that the ego is not eradicated as it was in Asia; [but that which is sought in the future of the world as a divine-spiritual, that is achieved through the elevation, through the strengthening - not through the weakening - of the ego. But the I is precisely exalted, strengthened, in order to grow together with the whole world. Thus ancient human striving continues in the newest form, as in historical vocation the essence of the German spirit.

This is beautifully shown by Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, in his “Germanenzug”, in which he describes in beautiful words how the ancient Germanic peoples, the ancestors of the Germans, once migrated from Asia to Europe, so that we take part in it, that we take part in the setting sun, in the mild twilight that spreads; and when everything sinks into a deep sleep, only one remains awake: the blond Teut. While everyone else sleeps, he is occupied with the thoughts of the future German being, the German task. The genius, the spirit of the German people, appears before the blond Teut and speaks to him of the future of the German people. This is how Robert Hamerling feels it and expresses it through the genius of the past to the blond Teut just as the Germanic peoples, the ancestors of the Germans, are crossing over from east to west. Thus speaks the genius:

"To whom will break the word from soul depths
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly in string sounds
His innermost? Who zich'n the sense so magnificent
Into the heavenly blue, granite hieroglyphics
Of the soul's upsurge from the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
Of the inquisitive thought to the stars
So boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Who is so high, so deep, his urge, his hunch?
Who grasps the near and far so faithfully?
Where is every earthly and heavenly zone
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?

And how related, but on a higher level, appears the spiritual search for the divine reason of the world. Here, too, the genius of the German people speaks to the blond Teut as if through Robert Hamerling's mouth, from that which I just hinted at through the words of Jakob Böhme, where devotion becomes knowledge, where devotion becomes the world view, devotion to the divine spiritual forces of the world. This is how Hamerling has the blond Teut say to the genius of the German people:

"But however proudly you may strive,
Soaring high above other swarms,
You will always retain the ancient, sacred fire:
The dream-filled drunkenness of God
of the ancient Asian homeland. This holy ray, a temple fire, will glow in your chest and soul, remain with you and be your pilot at the helm! You only strive because you love: your most daring thought will be a devotion that seeks to merge with God."

Yes, the German needs to become aware of his German essence. Then he will find the right relationship to the events of the present! For he may trust in that which exists as the source, the root and germ of spiritual striving within the German nation. And whatever has such germs may be felt with hope and confidence that its blossoms and fruits will develop, despite everything that rises in hostility in the world against this spiritual foundation in German development.

I think that a truly objective, not a narrow-minded, consideration of the German nature says this. And the German can rely on such an objective consideration. Then he can also look objectively at the way in which one not only simplifies but also defames what extends over 6 million square kilometers compared to 68 square kilometers.

Anyone who looks at this, at the roots and the hoped-for seeds, blossoms and fruits of the future, may summarize what today's contemplation was, summarize it sentimentally in a few words. Words that are intimately connected with the whole feeling of the German essence, all German essence. They, too, are by Robert Hamerling, and they, too, prove how Central Europe has been welded together from this side and from the other side of the Ore Mountains, but has also been welded together by this common spiritual weaving and essence in this Central Europe.

Therefore, let us conclude today's reflection with a word from Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, a word that summarizes in a sensitive way what I have tried to bring before your soul in a longer exposition - an unfortunately all too long exposition. Robert Hamerling says out of the sentiment from which he said “Austria is my fatherland, but Germany is my motherland”:

“And if ever the day
Should prove hostile to the German name,
From ocean to ocean shall run
The course of the German spirit!”

Dear Attendees!

Once again, as in my previous attendances during this fateful time, it seems appropriate to me to begin with a consideration that is related to the development of German intellectual life, and then tomorrow to come to a subject that more strictly belongs to spiritual science.

And if today's reflection is to be linked to the development of German thought, then I would like to emphasize, first and foremost, that this reflection should not fall into the trap of establishing an external connection between all kinds of intellectual changes and the fateful historical facts of our time, a trap into which so many reflections today fall. At a time when the fate of nations is decided by the force of arms, the word cannot possibly intervene, meaningfully intervene, for example, in that which is to be decided by the force of arms. But this is the age in which self-reflection - including national self-reflection - seems to be entirely appropriate.

Now, when it is said, from the point of view of science, including spiritual science, that certain developmental forces of such a spiritual science are rooted in popular forces, as is to happen today, one will immediately encounter, dear attendees, all kinds of objections, objections that are extremely reasonable because they are so self-evident, from a certain point of view, that they seem extraordinarily plausible precisely because of their self-evidence to those who do not want to rise to certain higher points of view. In such a consideration, one will repeatedly encounter the objection that science as such, and everything that somehow wants to claim that it is so, is said to be “international,” and that one is not entitled to claim any rootedness in popular culture.

This objection can be appropriately countered only by means of a comparison. “International”, dear attendees, is also the moon, for example. It is the same for everyone; but what different things the various peoples have to say about the moon! Of course someone may object: Yes, that is in the realm of poetry. Yes, of course; but anyone who delves a little deeper into the spiritual life of humanity will notice that – even if the observations and insights relating to the external, actual things are all the same in the science of the moon – that which comes from the innermost drives of the human soul, on the basis of what man can recognize, that this is different for each individual people, and that each people penetrates more or less deeply into the secrets of existence, depending on their different dispositions and drives. And the overall progress of humanity does not depend on what is the same everywhere, but on what is incorporated from the driving forces of the overall development of humanity, which are peculiar to the innermost individual nature of each people.

From this point of view, it should be pointed out today how German nationality is intimately connected with the endeavour not only to found an external science of the senses, but also to penetrate deeply into the spiritual secrets of existence – how the very search for a way to arrive at the spiritual secrets of existence is peculiar to much of what can be called German nationality.

And there is another reason, esteemed attendees, for such a consideration here, because it is my conviction – not arising from a narrow-minded, parochial sentiment, but from what I believe is the appropriate consideration of the German essence that what has been advocated here for years as spiritual science is strongly rooted in the general spiritual life of the German people, that all the seeds of a genuine spiritual science are present in the spiritual development of the German people.

Dear attendees, I will take as my starting point three personalities about whom I had the honor of speaking here in this city a few months ago, when I tried to sketch out the world view of German idealism. Even at the risk of repeating certain details, I will take as my starting point the three great figures who appear within the development of thought and spirit of the German people and who create a world view that provides the foundation, the background, one might say, for what was then artistically and poetically achieved by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on within German intellectual life, as a flowering of the newer intellectual life in general, which can only be compared with the tremendous flowering of human intellectual life in ancient Greece: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were the starting point once again.

Fichte stands before us – and I already remarked this in the lecture a few months ago – as he has something like the feeling that he has given his people everything that he has to give as the best, in terms of a world view and insights into the nature of his people, and that he has gained this through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. Carried inwardly by the consciousness that the most German essence speaks out of his soul, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is.

It is also he who, not only in one of the most difficult times of German intellectual development, found tones that were highly suited to inspiring the entire nation to rise up from oppression, but he was also [the one] who, in the way he wants to receive a world view for his knowledge, so clearly shows that he seeks this world view from the qualities of the human soul, from the powers of the human soul, which are essentially German qualities of spiritual life, German powers. He emphasized that. And that is certainly the truth with regard to Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

And what is it that is so distinctly German about Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It consists in the fact that, out of his Germanness, as he himself calls it, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was led to seek in a living way to deepen and at the same time strengthen his own soul-being, his own ego, and was convinced from the living inner that what permeates the world as divine-spiritual, illuminates and warms, can flow into this I, if it experiences itself in the right way, if it becomes fully aware of itself. So that, in Fichte's view, what speaks outside in all natural phenomena, what speaks in the course of history, but also what speaks behind natural phenomena and behind history as spiritual forces, flows into human will.

The human will that asserts itself in the self is only the innermost, secret expression of the soul for that which permeates and warms all beings in the world, from the most materialistic to the most spiritual. This intimate interconnection of the experiences of the soul with the great mystery of the universe, as far as man can fathom it, that is the very German in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's striving.

And if you observe Fichte as he presents himself, you can see how this is to be judged, how it is not something invented, something acquired, but how it arises from the most secret depths of his soul as his natural disposition. To substantiate this, a few details from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's life will be given. As I said, even at the risk of repeating details that I have already taken the liberty of mentioning.

For example, we see this Johann Gottlieb as a small, seven-year-old boy in front of his father's house, who was a poor master weaver. We see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seven years old, standing in front of the small stream that flows past his father's house; and he has thrown a book into this stream. His father comes along and is amazed at what has happened. What had happened? Well, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a six- to seven-year-old boy and a diligent student. That which is called a sense of duty lived in his soul with the greatest strength; and because he was so diligent, his father gave him a book for the last Christmas: “Gehörnte Siegfried” (Siegfried Horned). The seven-year-old boy, who could already read fluently, was so extremely interested in the book of the “Horned Siegfried” and he was always absorbed in the great figure of the horned Siegfried; so that one could have noticed that he had become a little less diligent at school, and it was held against him. Now, within the life of the will, even in the seven-year-old boy, the soul's duty stirred: he no longer wanted to read on, nor be tempted to read on in the book of horned Siegfried. And to be quite sure, he throws the book into the stream, crying! Such was the nature of the one who, according to his own consciousness, was to create the German worldview for his time!

And again, let us look at nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. One Sunday morning, the estate neighbor had come to hear the sermon. But he had arrived too late, and so was unable to hear the sermon. Some of the squire's acquaintances had hit on the expedient of sending for little Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was so good at listening to sermons that he could repeat them word for word. So they fetched nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. After he had appeared awkwardly at first in his blue peasant's coat, he then stood and repeated the sermon, but now not in a way that was only an external adherence to the words, but with the most inner participation, not only in terms of memory, but with the most inner participation, so that one saw: everything that had been spoken lived a very own life in his soul.

These are the small traits that show how intimately entwined Johann Gottlieb Fichte's soul was with what he called duty on the one hand, and on the other hand with what was in him the urge to elevate his own human ego so powerfully that what willfully permeates and warms the world as primal laws could live and reveal itself in him. And how he later aimed to work when he was appointed professor in Jena is told to us by people who heard him speak and who assure us that when he spoke, his words were serious and strict, but at the same time forceful, as if interwoven with the language that spoke the secrets of the world from the nature of things themselves. His language was like the rolling of thunder, and the words discharged themselves – so someone who heard him speak and was friends with him tells us – the words discharged themselves like lightning. His imagination was not lavish – we are told – but it was majestic and grand. And so we are told that he lived in the realm of supersensible ideas, not like one who merely dwells within it, but like one who essentially mastered this realm of ideas.

And it was also peculiar, for example, how he perceived his teaching profession: there was not much of what one is accustomed to from a speaker or teacher. He was in constant inner work. His preparation for any lecture or speech consisted not so much in working out the content as in trying to place himself, with his soul, in that spiritual inwardness that he wanted to infuse not only through the content of the words, but through the way in which he , he strove to work in such a way that it was not so much the content of his words that mattered as the fact that the souls of his listeners were moved by the whole way in which the spiritual was expressed in the flow of his speech. Thus, again, someone who knew him well could say: He strove not only to educate good people, but great souls.

We should like to draw attention to a little-known trait that must be mentioned again and again if we want to bring to life the direct and lively way in which Fichte related to his audience. For example, the deep thinker Steffens told us that in Jena Fichte said to his listeners: “Think the wall!” – The people found that easy, of course: they thought the wall. After he had let them think the wall for a while, he said: So, and now think the one who has just thought the wall! – Some were amazed!

This was an indication of one's own soul, in which that which flows through and warms the world at its deepest core should be ignited. However much he may have amazed people with this, at the same time it is also a testimony to how Fichte actually did not just want to convey spiritual ideas to his listeners with clever words. He wanted to work through words, not just in words. That is why it could happen that this man also sought to actively grasp the historical aspect of the creative national spirit. And in that he wanted to connect vividly, as with the workings of the world in general, he also wanted to connect vividly with that which is part of this world-working and lives close to him as a member of his nationality; he wanted to connect with the essence of the German national spirit. And no one can understand the meaning and the significance of the wonderful words which Johann Gottlieb Fichte addressed to the German people in his 'Discourses to the German Nation' during such a difficult period in the history of the German nation. No one can understand this unless he sees the connection between the way in which Fichte wanted to grasp the world-will in himself in his own ego, and then to carry the power that arose in his soul into action, into events, into the social and other forms of human coexistence, and into the conception of life.

There he stands before us – albeit in our way – this Johann Gottlieb Fichte! And – as I said – it is not out of narrow-minded patriotism, but rather out of actual observation that these things are to be said, which must now be discussed. We need not fall into the error that the enemies of the German spirit are now falling into, who not only accuse this German spirit, but even slander it in the truest sense of the word; we can take an objective point of view within the considerations of the German spirit and will be able, precisely through this objective point of view, to recognize in the right way what the essence of German nationality is.

Fichte wanted to grasp the will of the world in itself. And this will of the world was for him the bearer of what he called the duty of the world, which in turn separates into individual human duties. Thus, that which lives outside becomes for him a living being everywhere. But this also puts him in opposition to everything, as he himself emphasized in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” You can read about this in my essay in my little booklet “Thoughts During the Time of War,” which is now out of print , but will soon be reissued, [how] he, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seeks the living everywhere and is aware that he is thus in opposition to much of what he calls a dead science. And this dead science, Fichte also finds it among the Western European peoples, among the French and the British. Only, as I said, for the sake of actual characterization, not to impose anything on any people, may that be said; but it must be recognized in which relation the German spirit stands to the other national spirits in this fateful time!

In my earlier essay on the world picture of German Idealism, I pointed out that Descartes, Cartesius, is a typical example of the development of the French world-view at the beginning of the seventeenth century. I pointed out how he characteristically expresses that which lives in his worldview from his nationality, in that not only the mineral and plant world, but even the animal world is nothing more to him than a sum of living — not souled, but only moving — machines! That is the peculiarity of this Western mind, that it can only grasp a dead science at bottom.

In this respect, Fichte, with his living approach in all his works, stands in essential contrast to the path of knowledge and the striving of the West, [where] animals are like machines. This has continued. And not long before Johann Gottlieb Fichte worked in Germany to show life in all the facts and beings of the world from the living grasp of the secrets of the world, a descendant, I might say, of that Descartes - Cartesius - worked in France: de La Mettrie.

And while Cartesius at least conceded to man a special soul from inner experience, from inner experience, de La Mettrie, in an exaggeration of this western dead science, expressed himself in his book “Man a Machine” that even that which stands before us as a human being is itself part of the world in the same way as a mere machine; that we can understand the whole person by regarding him as the result of purely material processes and forces. According to de La Mettrie, everything about a person, including all soul qualities and activities, should be understood in such a way that the person is only recognized as a machine.

Of course, to a certain extent, man is a machine. This is not the essence of spiritual science, that it contradicts what such assertions have right about it; but that it can show other ways - we will talk about this tomorrow - that it can show other [supplementary] ways to this, that it knows other ways that also lead beyond the justified claims of materialism. De La Mettrie is basically, from the French folklore, one of the most significant minds of this view that the whole world of man is only a kind of mechanism. And it is interesting to consider the contrast between the Frenchman de La Mettrie and the German Johann Gottlieb Fichte. For de La Mettrie, everything about man is mechanism; for Fichte, everything is spirit. He received into his soul what he calls the will of the world, and for him, the external material world is only an internalized field for the performance of duties arising from the spirit. Hence that beautiful, that wonderful striving of Fichte to derive everything that appears to man in the world of the senses from the spirit; whereas, in de La Mettrie, everything is imbued with the goal of regarding the external physical as an immediately decisive impulse for the spiritual as well.

De La Mettrie is sometimes quite witty in such matters, for he is just as deeply immersed in his mechanistic worldview as Johann Gottlieb Fichte is in his spiritual worldview. For example, when de La Mettrie says in his book The Machine Stops Here: Can't you see how the body shapes the soul? Take a famous poet, for example, whose soul can be seen to consist of one half rascal and the other half Promethean fire. de La Mettrie was a little clever in not saying which poet he meant, but Voltaire flew into a rage at this remark. When he was told this, de La Mettrie said: Well, okay, I withdraw the one half of the claim – he meant half of Prometheus! – but I maintain the “filou.” He just expressed it in his own way; there's no need to press it. But if you take the individual statements, that man is a machine – and in this he is tireless in showing how the machine-like, the heating-up [gap in the transcript] in man, as it were, how that characterizes the whole man, causes satisfaction – that is where he sometimes becomes quite remarkable. And I don't know, and I don't know with what feelings a passage from 'Man a Machine' will be read in France today! I certainly don't want to quote it as something that a German, for example, needs to share; but I would like to quote it because it is quite characteristic and because – you will see in a moment why I would like to quote it – one could perhaps ask precisely from the point of view of spiritual science: how such a soul – he did deny that this was possible – but how such a soul, more than a hundred years after its death, looks down on the praise that has been exchanged between France and England, when he, de La Mettrie, the Frenchman, in his book “Man a Machine” proves how people's characters are dependent on the way the materialistic affects them, when he says the following:

Dear Attendees!

When any worldview asserts itself – be it a more materialistic-intellectual or an idealistic-spiritual worldview – it can be said that such a worldview has an opponent on the corresponding opposite side, or even just on a side that is more or less turned away from it, and that it is fought from that side. But of the spiritual scientific world view, as I have been developing it from this place for years now, it can be said that it is fought more or less by all of these world views, whether they lean more towards the idealistic-spiritual direction or the materialistic-realistic direction. The fact that it still has opponents from all sides today is largely due to the fact that the most essential basic characteristics of this spiritual scientific worldview are misunderstood and then judged or condemned before one has actually got to know them.

This spiritual-scientific worldview is misunderstood not only because of what it asserts, but above all from many sides because of certain fabrications that are made about it, because of certain false ideas that are formed about it. I have often emphasized this here, and I will have to ask you again today to allow me to say things that have already been said in some small details, but which are necessary to tie in so that new points of view can be developed.

For example, it is widely believed that spiritual science does not want to stand on the standpoint of firmly established scientific knowledge, which has rushed from triumph to triumph in recent centuries. But this is quite a mistake! For spiritual science, when it is represented from its true foundations, is entirely based on the point of view that says: everything that scientific knowledge has brought us must today be regarded as a first starting point for any, including the spiritual scientific, world view.

I have often said here that I would not say a word from the spiritual-scientific point of view if I were not aware that none of the scientifically justified truths would be contradicted by spiritual science.

First of all, there are two things to be emphasized if one wants to speak of the opposition of those who say: We stand on the firm ground of natural science, and we must fight against this amateurish intervention from an authoritative, spiritual-scientific point of view. In this connection two things must be considered. Firstly, that such people can either stand on the ground from which they say: everything that can be the subject of scientific observation and that may be taken into account when a scientific world picture is being built up, is the experience of natural science, that is, what natural science has brought.

Another direction, which arises from its point of view and is opposed to this humanistic direction, is that which says: Of course, one can admit that behind the facts that natural science establishes for the sensory world, there are still other spiritual facts or spiritual beings to be sought; but the human capacity for knowledge is not at all predisposed to recognize anything of this world of existence hidden behind the sensory world.

And from these two points of view, spiritual science is then fought against, as if from its side it itself somehow appeared antagonistic, appeared opposed to these two views, insofar as these two views are positive. But it does not do that at all! That it does not do that at all will be clear from some of the reflections of this evening.

On the other hand, however, spiritual science, as it is meant here, also has an opponent, an opponent who often does not present himself as its opponent, but who in many respects is perhaps even an honest opponent, as honest as the one just mentioned. And this other opponent of spiritual science, as it is meant here, is that which is brought into the world in terms of ideas and fantasies in a large number of unclear minds under all kinds of mystical names, and sometimes also under all kinds of mystical fraud. On this side, dear attendees, there are, above all, people who can count on such listeners and confidants who, in blind faith, accept everything that is somehow chattered about the spiritual world, and who accept it all the more willingly when such chatter occurs, usually in an amateurish way, of course, with a judgmental attitude towards strict science, which often appears all the more snobbish the less the person in question has taken in the denier of this strict science into his soul.

Then there are those who make all kinds of assertions that are supposed to come from the spiritual world, and who pursue quite different purposes with them, in that they first want to befuddle people with all kinds of assertions from the spiritual world so that they can then use them as tools for whatever purposes they have in mind.

Perhaps it will be possible, if time permits, to talk about this kind of opposition to spiritual science at the end of the lecture. This opposition is not harmless because people who are often quite honestly striving for science either lack the opportunity or the ability to engage with spiritual science and therefore lump together true spiritual science with nebulous mystical ravings, superstitious ideas, and the delusions of such ambiguous minds.

The question may still be raised as to why spiritual science is being fought by the more or less materialistically colored world view, which also believes that it stands on the firm ground of natural science.

This, esteemed attendees, is something that must indeed be seriously considered, considered for a very specific reason. From this side, from the more or less materialistically colored world view, which believes that it is standing on the firm ground of natural science, it will be emphasized again and again that spiritual science claims all sorts of things that cannot be understood, while the materialistically colored world view only says what can be observed everywhere, so to speak, what everyone can understand.

Spiritual science, however, does not want to deny the latter; and that is why it is so difficult for it to penetrate precisely against this objection. A materialistically colored worldview, such as the one I mentioned yesterday as that of de La Mettrie in his “Man a Machine”, such materialistic worldviews can be understood extremely easily. Everything about them is extremely plausible, obvious, clear. That is why they find such willing adherents in our time. And then such worldviews often spread the opinion that their clear views are denied by spiritual science.

Just as de La Mettrie can be described as the father of the newer, more materialistically-oriented positivism, how can spiritual science appreciate something like what de La Mettrie says in his book 'The Human Machine' to prove how everything of a spiritual nature is dependent on material things, how everything of a spiritual nature is conditioned by material things? De La Mettrie says:

“What power does a meal have over us? Joy awakens in a sad heart; it passes to the souls of the fellow diners and is expressed in those charming songs in which the French excel.”

No one with a humanistic worldview would dream of doubting such a palpable truth as is expressed here. And whether such a palpable truth is expressed in a coarse, boorish manner, as here, or whether it is expressed in a somewhat more refined way, is ultimately irrelevant!

This same de La Mettrie says, for example: Man's mental qualities, everything he reveals of his soul to the outside world, are so dependent on the mechanism of his body that one can say: If only some little thing in the brain of Erasmus or of Fontenelle – a little thing that cannot even be proved anatomically – had been different, then Erasmus and Fontenelle might have become blockheads instead of geniuses!

These things are always mentioned, with the intention of making it appear as if spiritual science could somehow be refuted by them! Spiritual science will readily admit this; it will only have to consider such a crude truth and the somewhat finer truth lying on the same board, as when one says, for example: It could have been much worse; let us assume that Erasmus, the one who should have become Erasmus, had been killed as a five-year-old boy by a bandit, then of course his soul would have been able to develop even less than if only a cog in his brain had been wrong! Or even before he was born, his mother would have been killed by a bandit!

All the things that are put forward from that side cannot be refuted at all; they even stand out because they are taken for granted, but it can still remain a small thing to keep mentioning them and to awaken the belief as if the spiritual scientist were so foolish that he could not admit such “tangible” things.

But the humanities scholar, he knows, dear attendees, that – [just as] such assertions are true, [just as] well-founded they are – that they are, on the other hand, just as well contestable, of course! – Because that which one can say with regard to the external world, can combine with the mind, can be totally wrong on the other hand! I have often repeated here what the unforgettable Vincenz Knauer said against materialism. He said: Just do the test and lock up a wolf, lock him up. After you can be sure that everything [he had in terms of matter was pure wolf matter], feed him only lamb meat. One will convince oneself that, even though he will have rebuilt his body out of lamb, one will convince oneself that, even though he will have rebuilt his body out of lamb, the wolf will not have become a lamb!

It is a matter of the fact that what de La Mettrie says about the influence of a meal on the soul is certainly very true; it is absolutely true. But assertions that are supposed to have the strength to support a worldview are likely to gradually merge into others, or even into their opposite; and that, when viewed from the other side, their opposite can be asserted just as well.

I had to presuppose this, especially today, when it will be a matter of entering, from a certain point of view, the path that spiritual scientific research takes. This path is initially characterized by the fact that, in its further pursuit, it leads the spiritual scientist to confirm certain scientific findings even more than the natural scientist himself can confirm them today.

Now I have often explained here that the path that spiritual research has to take is an entirely inward one; that although this spiritual science wants to be as scientific, as strictly scientific as any natural science, the path it has to take because it does not deal with the sensory world but with the spiritual, that this path must be a purely inward one. I shall not go into the exact nature of this inner path today; I have done so here often enough, and the same thing cannot be repeated over and over again. I must refer you to what is written in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, where it is described in detail what the soul has to do with itself if it wants to go the way that awakens certain dormant powers in it, which can be called spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, to use these Goethean expressions. It describes the development the soul must undergo to acquire such spiritual eyes and ears, in order to be able to see into a spiritual world just as the senses can see into the world of the senses.

But when everything that is needed for the soul to find the way that has just been indicated will come, then it will be found that the essential part of it is that thinking, and then imagining, is treated in a different way than this thinking, this imagining, is treated in ordinary life. In ordinary life, man forms ideas about the external world, and he is intent on this – and must be intent on this, for only in this way can he stand firmly in the external world and in practical life – he is intent on this and must be intent on this, in his ideas to have images of what is outside as reality, inwardly awakened images.

But something else is also necessary. Not only do the images have to be formed within us, but these images, which the human being forms as representations of reality in his environment, must - if I may use an expression that, although it does not accurately indicate the fact, allows us to communicate - these images must remain in the inner life of the human being: memory and recollection must be present. If the images did not stick, if what we imagine passes by without leaving a trace [in the form of memories], we would not have our continuous ego image, which must accompany us from the time we can remember back to our death and which must remain undisturbed. We only have this idea of self, we can only carry it with us, if the ideas we form are not just momentary, present experiences, but if they remain in our inner life, if they can be brought out of this inner life.

Now the essential thing about the first inner undertaking, the first inner activity that the spiritual researcher has to undertake with his own soul, is that this imagining, which is quite right for ordinary outer life, is changed, so that it occurs in the soul in a completely different way than it occurs in ordinary life. So in order to really recognize the spiritual, something must happen to the soul that arranges the life of ideas quite differently than it is in ordinary life.

Now, I have often emphasized that the point is for the spiritual researcher, in order to find his way into the spiritual world, to make a plan for himself, that it is a matter of making certain thoughts - the external reality of which is not important at first, they can be pictorial thoughts, symbolic thoughts - present in his soul. This is called 'meditation'; the soul's entire activity is concentrated on a thought-content that is placed arbitrarily in the soul, which one can survey, in which therefore no subconscious feeling, unconscious feeling driving forces can play a part, but a content that one can survey, that one places transparently clearly before the soul, is placed at the center of consciousness, moved to the center of thinking.

And then thinking must – this is a long path of practice that must be traversed, which can often take years – thinking must repeatedly return to placing this content at the center of consciousness. In this way, the entire life of the soul is concentrated – certainly, it may only last a short time, minutes during the day, for example – in this content. And in this way, little by little, I am describing what spiritual research really involves, the soul life gradually comes to separate two things that are always linked in ordinary thinking: namely, to separate the inner activity of thinking, of imagining, from the content. One must separate that, dear attendees, which one does when thinking, when visualizing – this inner activity of thinking must be completely separated from the content. So that when you place such a content at the center of your mental life, you gradually become aware: It does not depend on this content; I have only introduced this content so that I can exercise the inner activity of thinking with it.

And then I experience inwardly, now not a particular thought, now not a particular content, but the inner activity of thinking. This is less that which one otherwise calls thinking, but rather that which otherwise always remains unconscious in thinking; it is a certain activity of the will that is practiced in other thinking and imagining, a fine activity of the will. In ordinary life, in ordinary thinking, when one is thinking, one does not pay any attention to this at all. One does not pay any attention to the fact that one actually always uses one's will when one thinks, when one imagines; one does not pay attention to this. But now one experiences the fact that one exercises a fine inner will activity there. The soul becomes aware of certain powers within itself, which it otherwise exercises all the time in ordinary life, but to which it does not direct its consciousness and which remain unconscious. So that all the content of meditation can emerge from the imagination, and only this inner movement in thinking, in imagining, is inwardly grasped, so to speak. And that is what matters. Because when you continue to practise in this direction, you will have very definite experiences as you continue your search for the spiritual world. Certain experiences attach themselves to it when you have come to really separate the content and to be able to experience the mere inner activity, the activity in thinking, in imagining. Then you initially have an inner feeling as if you were now in some very vague experience. It is important - I would even say essential - to focus on these fine details if you want to know something about true spiritual scientific research.

What otherwise is the resting of thinking in the imagination can initially cease under the influence of such exercises if the goal is to be achieved, and must actually cease for certain experiences if the goal is to be achieved. One enters into an inner experience, into an inner movement. One does not feel external now - only the comparison is linked to the external - one feels as if one is groping spiritually in the darkness all around; one feels completely absorbed in the inner activity of thinking and imagining, which one has grasped. Through inner experience, one now has a certain experience; and that consists in saying to oneself: So, you have now reached the point where you live only in the activity of thinking, in the activity of imagining. First of all, one experiences that with regard to these inner experiences in the activity of thinking, in the activity of imagining, that which is otherwise the power of recollection, that which is otherwise memory, is no longer there. That is no longer there. One notices that one has entered into a completely different inner stream, that one does not experience what one now experiences as thinking activity in the same way as when one remembers something or when one otherwise thinks with reference to external objects or facts; but one notices that one is now developing thinking activity, just as one develops will activity out of habit – not a thinking, but an inner activity out of a certain fine habit, that is what one experiences inwardly now. And this inner experience has only one value, one meaning at that moment – this experience of inner activity has one meaning at the moment when one experiences it. It is also a rough comparison, but I can still use the comparison: what one experiences by separating one's inner thinking activity from one's thoughts now belongs to the momentary experience, just like eating and drinking. It is a rough comparison, but it is a comparison that illustrates everything I want to say. We cannot, when we have eaten yesterday, use yesterday's food or yesterday's drink to nourish the body today, but we have to eat and drink again today. Eating and drinking only have this momentary, present meaning. We cannot say: We eat today; and tomorrow, when we perform this activity, which [...] reminds us of our eating and drinking today, thereby also nourishing us. It is an activity – eating and drinking – that must always be repeated.

And so this inner activity of imagination is something, this inner activity of imagination is now something that has no value for a later time, but must always be evoked anew from the experience. You have to acquire the inner ability, not to remember what you have once experienced in this way, so that you can recall it, but so that you can experience it again and again from a now inner, finer habit. So that you realize that what you have now developed as an idea actually flows like dreams. Just as dreams flit by, so does this real sensing, spiritual-soul sensing, which is in an unchangeable mobility, as I have indicated.

So what do you actually notice at this moment, dear ones who are present? You notice that which can now have a shattering effect on the soul, as do many things that I have already mentioned on the occasion of the spiritual path of knowledge: you notice what it actually has to do with what we call memory, with what we call the power of remembrance. At first, we cannot use this power of recollection for spiritual knowledge. We have to let go of this power of recollection if we want to gain spiritual knowledge. And now we clearly recognize that the thinking that can be recollected – and that is all everyday thinking and must be all everyday thinking; if it is no longer everyday thinking, then one is no longer spiritually healthy – we recognize that the thinking that can be passed on to memory is directly connected to the physical body. One recognizes that the physical body really does function like a machine, albeit a more delicate one, in contributing to the thoughts we have in our daily lives in such a way that they can evoke memory.

You see, esteemed attendees, the spiritual researcher comes through an experience precisely to an affirmation of the trivial truth, which materialism claims as its own, that the thinking that is developed in everyday life is definitely conditioned by the body. Only what we have now peeled away, the inner activity, is not conditioned by the body. [It is not thinking, the activity of thinking, that is conditioned by the body, but the content of the thought is entirely dependent on the body.] The content of the thought is entirely dependent on the body.

And when some amateur spiritual scientists, or philosophically nuanced experts, come along and say: Yes, but a thought has an inner quality from which one recognizes that it cannot be absorbed into the body, that it is something other than the body, then one will say, with science that may not yet exist today – but with the ideal of science, which will one day be fulfilled, spiritual science –: there are certain materials that, when exposed to light, absorb it to a certain extent and then continue to radiate it for a while. Will these radiations now be regarded as something that is not based in matter? In the same way, when the external world, the physical, sensory external world, makes an impression on a person, and these thoughts are only retained during our lifetime, when they fluoresce, as it were, out of the physical body, these too should not be regarded as something that is spiritually alone, as something that could have significance for the eternal forces of the human soul. They are phenomena that occur in the physical matter of the human being. Just as electricity occurs in matter. Not in the denial of this justified scientific view, but in the right understanding lies what spiritual science has to do with it.

So that all philosophical talk, which is based on the observation of thoughts as they are, will never be able to say anything about the eternal powers of the human soul. Just as the fluorescence of matter, when it is removed as matter, naturally causes the fluorescence to cease, so anyone who is grounded in natural science cannot help but state the truth: when the body decays, its basis for the appearance of thoughts from the body also decays.

Only the direct evidence that arises from the fact that the otherwise unconscious thought activity, imagination, has separated itself from the thoughts themselves, has grasped itself inwardly, that initially gives the higher consciousness that one now lives in something that is really outside of the body. With the thoughts of everyday life, one does not live outside of the body. By seizing hold of the activity that one has isolated in the manner described from the content of one's thoughts, one knows that one is living with something in a sphere that is now outside of the body.

Thus, dear ones, one can never explore the eternal powers of the human soul from what a person consciously practices in relation to the physical environment and in relation to his outer life; but it is necessary that, from what a person experiences within himself in ordinary physical life, first that which can be inwardly grasped in the manner described is separated. But it is not enough for a person to go through the path just described; for by doing so, he would never come to anything other than to feel, in a sense of eternal departure, as if in a darkness of soul. So that is not enough.

What has a person actually achieved in this way? Basically, they have shed the content of thought, the thoughts themselves, and have recognized that these ideas, these thoughts, are bound to the physical, and that only the activity of imagining, the activity of thinking, is not bound to this physical.

Therefore, they must now go hand in hand – the exercises, the inner exercises that I have mentioned, in order to train the soul in the right way, must not be followed merely on their own – but they must be accompanied by other exercises. The exercises I have just characterized are actually intended to develop the life of thought, the life of imagination. One separates the activity of the will in imagining from the content of the life of imagination. These exercises must be accompanied by others that relate less to the life of thought and more to the life of the will. And just by practising the meditations – and that is usually enough; you can read more about it in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' – just by practising the meditations, by carrying out this daily concentration of thought, which is an inner activity of the will – a fine will activity – one practises the will in a way that is not otherwise used in ordinary life. In ordinary life, one does not do this, that one makes an original decision of the will out of oneself. So there you are already practicing a volitional activity that, so to speak, does not develop as darkly as the impulses that otherwise arise from our desires, from our wishes, or for that matter from all kinds of ideals; but you are practicing a volitional activity for which you must first equip yourself directly, which must arise from the most direct, inner resolve.

But that is not the important thing; rather, the important thing is that this activity of the will is now actually practiced with a completely different goal than the activities of the will in ordinary life. The activities of the will in ordinary life are practiced in such a way that one brings about this or that external action, that this or that happens. Isn't it true that when you will something, you want this or that to happen. But outwardly nothing should happen at all if you just want to direct your thinking in a certain direction, in a certain concentration. But inwardly something does happen; inwardly something very essential happens. What happens inwardly is that through such a volitional decision, the human being's I itself, its innermost soul essence, advances, that what is otherwise always, so to speak, the center of all volition, from which all volition emanates, the I, is now itself made the object of volition. Otherwise the I wills this or that; now one wants to transform the I with the will, to make the I into something else: The ego becomes the object, the goal of the will. And that is what matters.

These exercises can be intensified and made more effective if one starts out from the point just characterized, saying to oneself: the volition of ordinary life proceeds in such a way that one satisfies one's desires, and perhaps also pursues certain very justified ideals in the outer life. But now I will also take on something besides all that. Of course, the spiritual researcher must not step out of all the justified claims and demands of life step out of the justifiable claims and demands of life, otherwise he would become a crank and no spiritual researcher; but I will also, so to speak, take on things that do not have an external effect, that do not aim at the realization of these or those desires or ideals, but which are aimed at taking my own inner being in hand, at developing my own inner being in a way that would not otherwise develop if I did not take it in hand. For example, after I have poured, I realize that under certain circumstances I would wish for this or that: I want to consider not pursuing these desires, but rather to tame my ego and to steer it in a different direction of desire, and so on, and so on. In short, [the aim is] to develop an inner will that does not start from the ego, but that is directed precisely towards the ego, towards the development, the unfolding of the ego, towards the progress of the ego.

A will is developed that runs in the opposite direction to the ordinary will, a will that runs towards the I; while the ordinary will runs from the I. If you continue the practice in this way, after a reasonable period of time – which may be longer for some, shorter for others, and may take weeks for some and years for others, depending on their disposition – you will then you will notice that just as you have discovered the activity of the will in thinking through the treatment of the life of thinking, you will now, strangely enough, discover in the will a hidden consciousness, a real, true hidden consciousness. This is not just a figure of speech, but a statement that corresponds to reality: you discover a hidden consciousness, a constant observer of what actually develops as will activity. One really discovers now that in the self lives a higher self, a real higher self; not just as one often speaks in a figurative way of a higher self, but a real being lives there in the will. You discover this by colliding with the ego through the opposite direction of will, and now the ego becomes so objective to you, so external, so external to you, as it is otherwise always within you.

So the second, which must go hand in hand with the development of the life of thinking, and which must likewise discover consciousness, the more comprehensive thinking in the will - as one has discovered the will in thinking through the foregoing -, that is precisely an inner exercise of the will.

Both exercises must go hand in hand. And when one speaks of this, what arises in the soul, it appears to the uninitiated, who absolutely wants to remain with the obviously plausible world view with its more materialistic coloration, as a great folly. But it is there, and it can be described as an inner spectator. And what one calls an inner spectator, which speaks from the will when it is treated in the appropriate way – which you can read about in more detail in the book mentioned – is now able to brighten, really brighten, the darkness of which I spoke earlier, this darkness of the soul. And so two inner experiences are drawn together, as it were. The first is this groping experience in the realm of the movable; and the other is the survey, with the higher consciousness that one has now developed within oneself, of that which was at first dark. One illuminates for oneself that which was at first in the dark.

And now one recognizes that the refutation of materialism lies in a completely different area than where one usually looks for it! What de La Mettrie says, that some small cog, which anatomy cannot even explore, could perhaps have been just a little bit different in Erasmus, and Erasmus would have become a fool instead of a genius - that is quite right, so right that it is quite self-evident. But that is not the point; rather, the point is that the inner, finer structure of his organism, which made Erasmus Erasmus and a genius out of him, had already been created, had been made under the influence of the soul-spiritual!

So that, in our body, we initially carry something like a machine, but this machine has been made by the soul-spiritual, has been made under the influence of this soul-spiritual, which also emerges from the spiritual world and connects with what is inherited from the father and mother, as well as with what is present that has been inherited from the father and mother. Those 'cogs' in Erasmus that truly enabled him to make of his corporeality precisely that which his ingenious thoughts and ingenious creations were, the structure that was in him , these little cogs, were first made by his soul-spiritual individuality, which had descended from the spiritual world to his physical birth, and were first structured there!

If you look for the soul, the deeper soul of the human being, alongside the physical, during our physical life, you are quite wrong! You go so far astray that the spiritual researcher himself objects: Yes, what develops during your physical life, for example, as your world of thought, that is entirely dependent on your corporeality. And then, as a spiritual researcher, you are very aware of materialism insofar as it is justified. But that which is our material body is created out of spiritual power!

And it is with that, dear ones present, that which has gone before our physical existence and that which will be there after our physical existence has disintegrated, it is with that that one connects through the spiritual research path. And just as it is true that at the moment when the heat that I put into the steam engine is converted into propulsive power, the heat that is converted into propulsive power is no longer present as heat, but rather as propulsive , it is equally true that the power we have as soul and spirit before we have accepted physical existence, that this is precisely what is transformed by organizing the body, by becoming physical. And as long as we are physical, it is absorbed in the physical and can only be regained by spiritual research showing that the soul-spiritual is separated from the physical in the way described and knows itself as such soul-spiritual, living alongside the physical. One can be convinced that there was a spiritual-soul in us before it transformed into the physical – that it will be there spiritually-mentally when we have passed through the gate of death.

But it is crude spiritualism, one-sided spiritualism, to believe that on the one hand you have the matter of the body and on the other hand the spiritual, and that the two go side by side like two good comrades between birth and death.

The real process is very different. The real process is that this miracle of the human organism is actually created out of the spirit, is structured out of the spirit. And when it is structured, then it can unfold as a body. For just as it develops during ordinary external physical life through a higher fluorescence, so the eternal powers of the human soul are really only discovered through spiritual research. One cannot approach the human being philosophically and say: We point to the thoughts that have grown in the human being, and so on, and show that these thoughts are imperishable. Every sleep shows that they can be extinguished. And why should they not be extinguished as in sleep for all when the human being passes through the gate of death? In this way, one can never develop a proof of the eternal powers of the human soul. But if you want to develop a proof, win, then you have to win it on the way of spiritual research, by separating the will from the thoughts, and connecting this will, separated from the thoughts, with the thoughts that jump out like a higher consciousness from the development of the will. There you have that which goes through births and deaths.

Now I know, dearest attendees, that there are countless objections to what I have just said, as there are countless objections to spiritual research in general. And these objections are so self-evident internally, and so seemingly logical, that they must be convincing. And so, for example, someone could also raise the objection and have the opinion: The spiritual researcher is talking nonsense again; he says that the soul must be involved when a person comes into existence physically. As if it were not known through external science how a person comes into existence physically! That happens all by itself; no spiritual activity from spiritual worlds is necessary for that, that happens all by itself; natural science proves that very precisely in the doctrine of generations, in embryology and so on!

I will now use a comparison, one that can, of course, be refuted by obvious objections. But anyone who wants to think about this comparison will find it so powerful that it will overcome the purely materialistic objection alluded to here.

Let us assume that there are beings who cannot understand anything, perhaps cannot even see anything – of course it is a hypothesis, but it is a hypothesis that can be put forward after all – who cannot see how clocks are made. Let us assume that there are such beings walking around here in Stuttgart who cannot perceive how clocks are made. All the activity of making clocks and watches passes them by; they do not see it. But they see the clocks and watches; they are seen by them. They go into a watchmaker's shop, do not see how the clocks and watches are made, but they see the finished clocks and watches, the clocks and watches that have been created. Since they cannot see the clocks and watches coming into being, they will come to the conclusion that the clocks and watches come into being by themselves! That they will come together from the outside through an inner attraction of their individual parts and so on. These beings would speak in a way that is similar to the way people speak when they say: That which arises in the human being in the continuous succession of generations arises all by itself! Because what is not seen is that the spiritual forces that come from the spiritual world are involved in the deception that takes place here in the physical world. And in these spiritual forces lies that which we discover in ourselves through the paths of spiritual research just discussed.

In this way we arrive at a spiritual view of the eternal core of the human being, consisting of soul and spirit, which stands before our soul and of which we know that It inclines down from a spiritual existence and unites as a third with that which the person materially inherits from father and mother. And then one also knows what it is that passes through the gate of death in order to live again in a spiritual world.

And now possibilities arise for the spiritual researcher to speak of a structure of the human being, just as he does. You see, dear audience, when the spiritual researcher comes first and says: This person is not just made up of the physical body that the eyes can see and that ordinary science describes and explains – all that ordinary science has to say is readily admitted by spiritual research – when the spiritual researcher says: This person also has an etheric body - the spiritual researcher says: This person also has an ethereal body on them. The term is not important, it could also be called something else, there is no need to be put off by the term “ethereal body”; “ethereal” is meant quite differently from the usual ether in physics. When this is simply stated as an example - when it is said: There is a finer body living inside the coarser body and this gives rise to the idea: Now, the coarser body is just coarse, and a somewhat finer body lives in it, so a finer etheric body is woven into it, and this finer, woven-in body is just the etheric body – so one could indeed say that this is nonsense. But the spiritual researcher does not take this point of view; the spiritual researcher takes the point of view that just imagining, thinking, can be transformed in different ways, that thinking becomes such that the thinking person says: That is nonsense. But the spiritual researcher does not take this point of view; the spiritual researcher takes the point of view that precisely the imagination, the thinking, can be transformed in various ways, that thinking becomes such that the power of memory is woven out of thinking; that thinking is developed such that the imagination becomes such that it is not only experienced instantaneously, as is otherwise the case with coarse eating and drinking. And by living and moving in this thinking, which does not now lead directly to memory, but which must always be newly created, one lives in something other than the physical body; one lives in the etheric body. There the etheric body is pointed to as an experience. There it is pointed out what it is. And spiritual scientific truths are not found by simply showing physical facts in a more refined form, as spiritualism wants to do – this corruption of a true spiritual science – but by showing what the spiritual world is in inner experiences, which, however, also want to be inwardly experienced.

And then, when the spiritual researcher also talks about the existence of a so-called “astral body” in addition to this etheric body, well, then the objections come flying in from all sides, spurred on by all the scorn. One can say, as all the fine phrases are already called, one can say: spiritual research aims at man to “astralize” himself – and so on and so on.

The people who talk like this do not even notice how the spiritual researcher quite agrees with the most foolish way in which the astral body is often spoken of: But I have to explicitly point out that by developing one's will in the way I have explained, that one then discovers in oneself a more comprehensive , a consciousness that can illuminate what is first experienced in the etheric body, and which soul darkness provides us with; and this consciousness, which is shown to be a reality, is now what is figuratively called the “astral body”, these are the inner realities, but realities that are gained in inner experience!

The world is indeed comfortable and would like to have the spiritual world in front of it as one has the material world in front of one; this is called “spirit-matter” so that one can see it with physical eyes. One can then indeed spare oneself the trouble of using one's spiritual eyes! But these ghosts are usually something quite different from real ghosts, even when, as in the majority of cases, there is more than mere fraud. It is precisely this that spiritual science needs to shake off, because it is based on strict inner experience. And in this strict inner experience, the first thing that is achieved is that the human being has the experience of being able to distinguish between another consciousness and another experience in a world of facts, to distinguish this soul from its ordinary corporeality and to live in what its eternal powers are.

When he then lives in what his eternal powers are, then he will become aware of what actually builds up his body – or let us say 'helps to build it up' so that it cannot be misunderstood. that this whole life breaks down into lives that are spent in the body between birth – or let us say conception – and death here on earth, and such lives that are spent between death and a new birth [in a spiritual world].

In what the person experiences when he feels the indicated consciousness emerging from his will, he experiences something very special. If I am to characterize what he experiences, then I must show it as a consciousness. And that is what essentially matters – not that one points out that there is something nebulous, monadic – or whatever one wants to call it – contained in man, but that it is a certain consciousness. I have also described it as consciousness; consequently, I can characterize it.

When we survey external material processes, there is the possibility, as you all know, that from certain constellations of the sun and moon today, we can predict that after a certain time a lunar eclipse or a solar eclipse will occur. This means that the realization of a future event is already present in the present event. Here we are dealing with an external realization that lives in concepts, in concepts that correspond to the laws of nature. Here we see a future event in the present event.

As the soul develops that consciousness out of the will, of which I have spoken, she actually experiences in the present physical body that which must necessarily lead to a next life on earth. What must lead to the next life on earth is experienced as truly as the future can be foreseen in the present constellation of the sun and moon. [How the future can be foreseen], so is experienced in advance that which must lead to the next earthly life. And so it is experienced that what goes through the gate of death, then lives in the spiritual world for a time, and then must come again to a new earthly life. This is experienced.

And this must be said as a general characteristic: the insights of spiritual science are not merely hinted at, but are inwardly experienced insights. Mere conceptual inner activity is transformed into direct experience. And things are experienced.

There is something important about this, very revered attendees, when we emphasize that what is, so to speak, detached from memory, that this only has a meaning for the moment, that it must be experienced again and again if it is to be there properly.

This is how it is in general with regard to the spiritual world. The spiritual world must always be experienced anew. And if someone wants to speak from the spiritual world, to characterize the facts of the spiritual world, then basically he cannot always remember and then recite them, but basically, if what he has to say is to come directly from the spiritual world, he must give it in the moment as his own experience again and again, he must bring it out of his innermost being in that moment.

Therefore, what is to be spoken of the spiritual world will have to have a somewhat different character than what is spoken in external science from mere memory. What is spoken from the spiritual world will be directly related to the present insight into the spiritual world, so that it can be described from the spiritual world. But as a result of this, dear attendees, one is also protected from falling into a kind of aberration of spiritual scientific research, namely, that one merely adheres to what has been said.

Those who stand on materialistic ground, on self-evident materialistic ground – I must emphasize this again and again – will say: Well, what the spiritual researcher claims to have developed within himself through his special development of thinking, what is it other than what we all know in psychology as hallucinations, visions and so on and so forth? What is it other than that? It is a riding-oneself-into-an-unhealthy-mental-life that is indicated as a spiritual research path!

There is another objection, which is just as foolish as it is self-evident and plausible; plausible for anyone who stands on the ground of a materialistic interpretation of psychiatric phenomena, self-evident. It is only through constantly experiencing anew that one actually knows that one is in touch with the spiritual world; because there is nothing to prove. It is not possible to prove that anything is a reality. Those people who believe that one can prove that something is a reality – I have often pointed this out here – do not understand anything about the concept of reality. You cannot prove that a whale is a reality if you cannot show its existence in the external world. Reality can only be experienced, not proven. But in the direct experience of reality, what we need to show something as reality arises vividly. And so, in the direct experience of the spiritual world, what the spiritual world is must always be experienced anew; otherwise, of course, one can indulge in all sorts of fantasies.

This relationship between logic and reality even played a trick on Kant, causing a dispute. Kant sought to eliminate the so-called proof of the existence of God by agreeing that conceptually one hundred ordinary dollars, one hundred merely imagined dollars contain exactly the same amount as one hundred real dollars – not a penny less. Of course, in concept, a hundred imagined dollars contain just as much as a hundred real dollars. But in reality, which one reaches not in concepts but in experience, a hundred real dollars mean precisely a hundred dollars more than a hundred merely imagined ones! Everyone can convince themselves of this through life!

Now, it is very easy to fall into error by saying: Yes, but does this ordinary consciousness, which is bound to our physical body, as today's explanations have sufficiently shown, does this consciousness, which leads into the spiritual world, have no connection at all? One can have such a connection – and must even have it, and it is important that one has it. It is a very important thing that, while unfolding this higher consciousness, man should always have his quite ordinary rational human being at his side, so that he knows: as he otherwise looks at external objects that are before him and which he can neither imagine nor fantasize, he should look at his quite ordinary human being as he stands in the physical-sensual world; and while one dwells in the spiritual world, one must never for a moment lose sight of the quite ordinary physical man with his memory-producing thinking, with his will, which arises from desires, ideals, and so on. That is the characteristic. And anyone who understands this will immediately understand the truly foolish nature of the materialistic psychiatric objections that speak of an 'unhealthy mental life' in relation to spiritual research endeavors.

What happens when you enter into an unhealthy mental life, an abnormal mental life, a morbid consciousness? Then the consciousness, which may have been healthy before – I say “may” have been healthy, if it is not completely healthy but perhaps has certain aptitudes, these will develop the morbid, abnormal consciousness – then they become morbid and can no longer develop the healthy soul life, cannot develop one out of the other. For, to put it trivially, one cannot be a fool and healthy at the same time, otherwise one would no longer be a fool! But what is really necessary for proper spiritual research is that the person, so to speak, really knows himself as a duality, and that he, in his completely rational, healthy human being, equipped with the physical conditions of reality, has worked into all of way of life as it otherwise was, so that when he puts himself in the place of the other consciousness, which can see into the spiritual world, these two consciousnesses do not develop apart, but one must place itself next to the other. And that is the essential thing that must be thrown in more and more if one wants to put together in a dilettantish way that into which the spiritual researcher lives with some form of unhealthy consciousness: it is precisely the most healthy consciousness, because the spiritual researcher not only lives in his otherwise healthy human being, but because he also looks down on him, looks up to him or looks into him, if we want.

Now it is self-evident, dear attendees, that in order to start spiritual research, one cannot be a crank or something similar. Otherwise, one can only look at the crosshead, and one must not demand that any other starting point for spiritual research is the right one than that of a person who is in real life, who has a sound judgment for all things of immediate, practical life, who also has the corresponding sense of truth for all things of practical life. Nothing is more unhealthy than being in any way affected by untruthfulness or dishonesty and the like when it comes to the development of spiritual vision.

One must even say: that which is achieved on the two paths that have been indicated is achieved precisely by seeking out what is independent of physicality, what is not achieved with the help of physicality. One frees oneself precisely from physicality. Therefore, all things that are bound to physicality – and these are visions, hallucinations, which do not come from the spirit, as they are understood in the ordinary, trivial, superstitious, mystical sense – these have nothing to do with true spiritual research, because they depend on physicality. And they are not in a more spiritual realm than the one we are in when we are in the physical world; rather, they are in a more material realm than the one we are in when we are in the physical world. One can be a visionary because one works with fewer tools on one's physical body than one works in ordinary, external physical life. There one works with the entire healthy body and looks into ordinary reality.

The ordinary visions are only a kind of afterimage, are afterimages of what one can also see with the eyes; only that they are pressed out of the physical body. They are based on the fact that certain parts of our organism do not come into effect, and others can only then come into effect; so that we are driven to the undersensory, not to the supersensory in this case, that we see less reality than we see with the ordinary, healthy senses.

Spiritual science, when understood in its true basis, is not suitable for reinforcing any kind of superstition. On the contrary, it is precisely that which will eliminate any kind of superstition, of strange mysticism, because it wants to develop a different soul life, not out of a sick person, but out of a healthy one, and because it wants to reject everything that has to do with the ill visions and hallucinations, which must be eradicated root and branch, so that true clairvoyance can arise, leading to the spiritual worlds, on which alone spiritual science can be based!

In the way described, dear attendees, the human being discovers the eternal powers of the human soul, he discovers that which goes through births and deaths, he arrives at a certainty of the eternal significance of man.

And this is the task of spiritual science: to show, in a scientific way, that what science has produced so gloriously about the external world has a counterpart in the spiritual world of spiritual human development. That is the task of spiritual science.

For some centuries now, I would say, natural science has had to educate humanity to a sense of reality that did not exist in the past. The time could come – and it has now come – when, with the same rigor in the development of inner soul forces, man can also speak about the spiritual world. And even if today all the reasons that have already been mentioned are still being objected to this spiritual science – this spiritual science will become as much a part of the spiritual development of humanity as natural science has become a part of it. What is today taken for granted in natural science was, relatively recently, still fought against, fought against in the worst way. That which is fought against today in spiritual science will become a matter of course, like certain achievements in natural science. But then the time will come when people will realize that just as everyone does not have to be an astronomer to understand what astronomy contributes to general knowledge and to convey to the world, so too does not everyone need to be a spiritual researcher. Today, anyone can become one to a certain extent, as can be seen from my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. But it is not even necessary. It is just as little necessary as it is necessary, in order to understand a book, to have the gift of writing that book oneself. When the truths about the spiritual world have been brought forth by this spiritual world through this or that spiritual researcher, then ordinary human comprehension is enough to understand what the spiritual researcher says - not just to believe it, but to really absorb it and have it as soul food. So that even in such difficult times as these, when we are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of deaths every day, we can develop an even greater awareness of the eternal significance of the human soul and the everlasting eternal powers that underlie the human soul.

I do not want to say, esteemed attendees, that our time – this time, which is so fateful – is more suitable than any other time to grasp these truths about the immortal powers of the human soul ; but what is happening around us and what we spoke about yesterday can be a pointer to point out to people that we need to reflect on what is happening around us a hundredfold every day, especially in our time. Our fateful time can serve as a pointer, if not as an extension of understanding, for these spiritual truths.

The spiritual researcher must speak when he, as I have indicated, looks into the spiritual world, a real, concrete spiritual world; not into the nebulous spiritual world already mentioned yesterday, which is spoken of by pantheism: “Spirit, spirit is behind everything! Spirit, spirit and always spirit again.” Abstract philosophy speaks of this. It is just the same as if one were always to say, “Nature, nature, nature!” and not “lilies”, “tulips” and so on. The spiritual researcher speaks of concrete spiritual facts and entities, with which spiritual life is related in the same way as our body is related to the outer sensory world through its senses.

However, when one enters this field, all those who, out of sheer cleverness in our time, have become foolish out of the obvious truths, which the spiritual researcher by no means denies, will rise up. But the time will also come when people will realize that just as there may still be people today who have not learned that there is air in the gap in the transcript, so too is there space. If space is empty, then air is not there. Just as it is a matter of course for someone who has learned something about these things to take the presence of air for granted, and even to consider it indispensable for life, so too will it be recognized as indispensable for the life of soul and spirit, that which constantly flows to us, as air flows to our lungs — flows to us from the spiritual and soul world that surrounds us and in which we live, just as the body lives in the physical and sensory world. A time will come when people will speak of this world, in which we are rooted spiritually and soulfully, just as the senses speak of the sensory world. However, there is still much to be improved, including the way in which spiritual science itself is practised. Today, strict scientists will say, and those who are immersed in and respect science will agree with them: 'Well, let's look at the people who talk about a spiritual world! We need only watch a little to see that some kind of enthusiasm, a morbid consciousness, is what brings it all about. And when you see how superficially this spiritual science sometimes behaves - well, then we have had enough!

One can certainly agree with those who, on the basis of their esteem for and application of the strictly scientific method, which is truly to be highly esteemed, come to such a judgment; because, as I have already indicated, that it can all too easily be lumped together with all kinds of amateurish and fantastic reveries and ravings, with starry-eyed nonsense. As true as it is on the one hand that there is a way into the spiritual world, to understand, to convince oneself of the eternal nature of the human soul, of its eternal life, as true as it is on the other hand that precisely this spiritual science, which by no means produces pathological clairvoyance, that this spiritual science must reject the community with all that wants to assert itself as a revelation of the spiritual world in a charlatan-like, twisted mystical way!

In our serious time, it is perhaps necessary that at the end such things are pointed out in more detail, dear attendees, so that people in wider circles do not believe that they can simply mix spiritual science, because it does not defend itself, with all kinds of confused stuff, and even worse than confused stuff. And so, because this has already been discussed in the circles of materialistic thinkers, let me, in conclusion, cite a fact, just as a fact, for a reason that will soon be apparent.

In 1912, in a yearbook published for 1913 by a person widely revered as a special prophetess who has much to say from the spiritual world, as many you could read in a yearbook that was published in 1912 for 1913, you could read – take note of the timing – you could read with reference to Austria: 'The one who still believes he can govern today will not govern. Instead, a young man will govern who should not yet govern. And the same assertion in a similar way then appeared again in 1913 in the same yearbook for 1914. And then, as we know, in June 1914 there was that assassination attempt on the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I just want to put the facts together. Of course, anyone in their right mind would think of something other than the fact that the person in question, who is a highly dubious character in many other ways, prophetically foresaw it!

But this becomes even clearer when one makes the following discovery – as I said, these things have also been discussed in a healthy way in the materialistic field, and spiritual science has every reason to show where it stands in relation to such things – the matter becomes even clearer when one considers that as early as 1913 in a Paris newspaper – “Paris-Midi” – the wish was expressed to commit the assassination of Sarajevo; that in this same newspaper it was also expressed, on the occasion of the introduction of the three-year term of service in France, that if there were to be a mobilization in France, Jaures would be killed in the first days of mobilization!

Combine these facts with the fact that they are prophetically - seemingly - bandied about among people - prophetically, seemingly from spiritual realms, bandied about among people - then you have the choice of either thinking of something that I don't want to insinuate – some kind of underground connection between this apparent prophecy and what actually happened – or the fact that what actually happened was really foreseen!

But spiritual science emphasizes that clear, realistic, healthy thinking is particularly important for it and that it does not want to be mixed with what, especially in our time, people are willing to accept who, through some external evidence, want to have the spiritual realm “proven” to them.

Just as little as any materialist will the true spiritual researcher think of the “prophecy” of that dubious personality, but of something else! And there is every reason, esteemed attendees, that now that things are being discussed publicly, it should be pointed out that spiritual science must shake off everything that likes to attach itself to its coattails: all that is charlatan-like, all frauds, and all that speculates on the credulity of humanity to achieve certain ends, which may sometimes be ends reprehensible. And in no other field does charlatanry, nonsense and speculation on the folly and superstition of people flourish more than in the field of striving for the truth about the spiritual worlds with the spiritual-scientific direction and world view.

This serious word is especially necessary if one wants to put the sense of truth, which is inseparable from spiritual scientific research, in the right light, and if one wants to draw attention to how everything spiritual must be inward, must be based on the internalization of human must be based on the internalization of human nature, and how it strictly separates itself – when spiritual science also speaks of things that can only be recognized from the spiritual world, even with regard to such things it will not be dismissive – but it will strictly separate itself from all that has just been characterized. This is especially necessary in our serious time, because it is necessary on the other hand that spiritual science incorporates the course of development, the spiritual course of development, as natural science once incorporated the spiritual course of development of humanity.

This will only be possible if it is understood how spiritual scientific endeavor is really sought in the sense indicated today, as paradoxical as it may seem, outside of the body and not through physical strength. If it is pointed out that these complicated spiritual scientists are vegetarians, for example, then that is a matter of taste, which has nothing to do with spiritual science as such, and should not be lumped together, just as one should not lump together the fact that some who consider themselves part of the spiritual scientific school of thought , wear short hair, if they are men, long hair, and that they wear these or those clothes and the like; just as little can the spiritual world be “eaten” through a false asceticism, through any mortification of the body - even if it is necessary, of course, to develop a healthy life - just as little can the spiritual world be “eaten” through an unhealthy mortification of the body! You cannot enter the spiritual world by eating or by doing this or that, but only through spiritual and soul forces!

I wanted to add this in particular, dear readers, to what true spiritual research is and what true spiritual research often has to face difficulties in asserting its position in the world today, compared to what presents itself as such.

One can only ever act from this or that point of view. Of course, much could be said in support of what has been presented today; I just wanted to hint at individual points of view - individual points of view that should once again show how well grounded in human experience, and especially in healthy human experience, the spiritual research direction is.

And if this spiritual research direction, esteemed attendees, is still fought today from many a self-evident side – the time will come when people will have worked themselves up in sufficient numbers to that inner activity that makes the spiritual world an immediate knowledge, and when that which is spiritual knowledge will be incorporated into human knowledge, just as the Copernican world view incorporated itself into human knowledge.

Yesterday we saw how anchored in Central European intellectual life in particular is the path of spiritual research and how virtually, if also forgotten, a tone of German intellectual life strives towards a real grasp of the spiritual world. Therefore, we may confidently point to what was mentioned yesterday as a faded note of German spiritual life, confidently to that which is effective after all, even if it is not seen today, which will be the germ and root of blossoms and fruits that must develop. What has been prepared in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel and the others mentioned yesterday must come to the fore, what is a preparation for actually stepping into the spiritual world.

But this progression will come about just as surely as the plant, if it cannot be prevented, will develop from germ and root to leaf, flower and fruit. And the spiritual cannot find obstacles in the physical if it is well grounded. Therefore, we can look with confidence at the further development of what is in the German spiritual life and may do so - as a special act of self-reflection on the German nation - in this present, serious hour of world history. And we may also say to ourselves: however high and ever higher all the prejudices accumulate, all the prejudices against true spiritual-scientific knowledge, however great the power of those who exclude this spiritual-scientific world view or do not want to allow it to arise for whatever reasons: Looking into the nature of spiritual science, one can say: If spiritual science is truth, it will find the ways that truth has always found. It will develop through clefts and crevices as it has always developed, and so will spiritual truth. Even if many prejudices and opposing forces should pile up, he who is able to examine the relationship between truth and the human soul from a genuinely human, truly human feeling must say to himself again and again: Let it seem to him as if the human soul and truth are connected like sisters.

Truth, dear attendees, can be fought as an enemy, but it will always find ways and means. Even if it is suppressed by opposing prejudice in any given time, it will always find ways and means to prevail in the times to come.

Those who mock and ridicule spiritual science may be told by those who, as indicated, think about truth and life as indicated: Whatever powers still want to suppress spiritual science today, spiritual science can rely on its own strength. It will find itself in its own strength against all suppression; for one can suppress the truth, but one cannot erase it from the world.

Truth and the human soul are related and belong together like siblings, siblings in spirit. And even if human souls that tend towards error, not towards truth, may also diverge to a greater or lesser extent at one time or another, They will always find each other again in brotherly and sisterly love, and let me say this as the final word of today's lecture: these siblings, truth and the human soul, must find each other more and more in the spiritual love that rejects them both to their common origin, in which their brotherhood is rooted. And this origin is the light of the world, from which they both come, the spiritual world, the world of origin, the spiritual world, which is the paternal-maternal principle for truth and soul and to which truth and soul will always strive, embrace each other as siblings, mindful of their common origin in the all-encompassing, world-imbuing and world-interweaving spiritual of the world, in which this world has its true, its only true origin.

Dear Attendees!

As at my previous visits here in Munich, I would like to take the liberty of speaking on one of the two lecture days about a subject that does not strictly belong to the field of spiritual science, but rather touches on general German intellectual life. In these fateful times, this can be considered particularly appropriate.

And the day after tomorrow – on Sunday – I will return to a consideration from the narrower field of spiritual science, as I have been allowed to present it here for years, myself.

But it is not only because of my feelings in the face of the momentous and far-reaching events of our time that I would like to talk about today's topic, but because I may assume, not out of purely national feelings , but because I believe that I can assume, based on the facts, that the spiritual-scientific worldview represented here is intimately connected to very specific currents and aspirations of German intellectual life.

Not, dear ladies and gentlemen, to stoop to the level of Germany's opponents – the opponents of German national identity – who not only accuse but also defame what German intellectual life has produced, not to stoop to that level – I believe that is not necessary within German intellectual , but because I would like to make this observation, because our time requires a kind of self-reflection on the actual essence of the developing German national spirit, also with regard to the attainment of a spiritual world view, because self-reflection on this matter of German spiritual life must arise like a kind of basic need of the soul currently within this spiritual life.

When one engages in such reflection, one's spiritual gaze naturally falls first on the three great figures that I spoke of during my last visit here. And I would like to begin by saying a few words about these three great German thinkers and philosophers, about whom I was already able to speak here last time, even at the risk of having to say some things again that have already been said before, at the risk of having to say some things again that have already been said before, at the risk of having to say some things again that have already been said before.

First of all, our spiritual gaze must fall on that personality who had grown entirely out of German intellectual life and who, even in one of the most difficult times in German life, found tones that were suited to carry the whole nation along in a world-historically necessary enthusiasm: our spiritual gaze must fall on Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

Fichte – I believe one must say of him: on closer, more thorough examination of his work, it becomes apparent how deeply true it is that he expressed what he felt to be his own sentiments in the most diverse forms. The best that he has to say in his world view was born in his soul from an intimate conversation that he repeatedly had with the German national spirit itself.

I do not want to present this as an external judgment, but rather as something that Fichte himself felt in his deepest innermost being. And what exactly is this innermost path of Fichte's striving? I think it can be described as a well-founded conviction: to so power the innermost part of the human soul, the center of the human spirit-soul-being, to so inwardly enliven it that in this heightened experience of the innermost soul life, that which interweaves and lives through the world as divine-spiritual resonates, that one enters into the innermost being of this conviction by , so that what one can go through inwardly in one's own soul - not in everyday life, but in moments of celebration in life - grows together with the spiritual-divine currents themselves, but now not only in our inner being, but also in the whole of nature and in all spiritual, outer spiritual life, which pulsates through the whole world.

Now, in Fichte it is as if something is revealed from a particular side of the soul that has taken root in him, from a soul power that was particularly strongly developed in him, from that soul power that can perhaps be described as follows: Of the three powers of the human soul – thinking, feeling and willing – he felt the willing above all. And he himself felt the I in such a way that the most essential thing in the experience of the I is that the human being can indeed come to say to himself: the I actually consists in the fact that one can will, and always will anew; and that one's eternity is guaranteed by feeling within oneself the authorization to will it again and again; and that into this volition there penetrates what one feels in the very deepest sense as a commitment to life and the world; that in this commitment to life and the world one can at the same time feel something that strikes from the divine-spiritual expanses into one's own being. So that one can say: the highest that one can experience is the duty that reveals itself to one's own soul in the whole of the world, that strikes into one's own being and gives one the certainty that, because one has interwoven into what goes through the world as a duty-bearing will, as an eternally duty-bearing will, one oneself stands in this world as an eternal being.

From such an experience, from the experience of such a relationship to the world, Fichte's entire - one cannot even say “worldview”, but entire - way of thinking and feeling and speaking about the world emerged.

But it did not follow from his nature that one could speak of a theory, of a theoretical side, about the world. It followed from his nature - and he always felt that to be the German thing about his way of thinking about the world - it followed from his nature that what was like a general sense of the world, a general view of the world, was the most direct, personal power of his nature. And so it was the most immediate force of his being that it basically emerged when Fichte was very young, a boy.

And so allow me to describe a few traits that characterize this personal relationship to the world: There we see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the son of poor people, at the age of seven – he was already a schoolboy – there we see him one day standing by the stream that flowed past his father's small weaver's cottage, and he has thrown a book into the stream. He stands there crying; his father comes to him.

What had actually happened? As I said, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was already a schoolboy at the age of seven; and since he had often been praised for his good learning, it was now clear to see how, since his father had given him the book that he had now thrown into the stream, he was no longer as attentive and diligent at school as he had been before; this had often been criticized of him. This book was a description of the deeds of “Horned Siegfried.” And when young Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who could already read, got hold of this book, he became absorbed in these great exploits; his attention to school subjects waned, and he was reprimanded for it.

But then the deepest trait of his character immediately showed itself in his soul.

However your inclination may speak, however your enthusiasm may be kindled by the figure of “Horned Siegfried” – he thought to himself – that must not be; duty is the highest. Because he does not want to diminish duty in any way, he throws the book into the water – as a seven-year-old boy! Thus, what later became the keynote of his relationship to the wider world was already alive in the boy: this permeation of the human soul with the will borne by duty, which he later felt to be the fundamental force of the whole universe.

And two years later, the nine-year-old boy Fichte, we see him in the following example: the neighbor of the estate – who later became Fichte's benefactor – had set out to hear the sermon in Fichte's hometown on a Sunday; but this neighbor from the neighborhood had arrived too late. The sermon was already over. The neighboring landowner was a little sad; he would have liked to hear the sermon. And while they were talking, they came up with the idea that there was a boy who knew how to listen to sermons in such a way, even though he was only nine years old, that he was able to repeat them quite faithfully. They fetched young Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who appeared in his blue peasant's smock, at first rather awkwardly, then warming up, repeating the whole sermon, not repeating it in such a way that he rattled it off without inner participation, but in such a way that one saw – and this had the effect, as I said, so deeply significant that the estate neighbor later became the benefactor of Johann Gottlieb Fichte – so that one saw: this entire boy's soul was interwoven with every word, and with what lived in each word, and could give the whole sermon anew, as one's own spiritual property!

Interweaving this, the environment, the why, the observation with the innermost of one's own experience in the soul, that is the characteristic that Johann Gottlieb Fichte always felt was the basic feature of the formation of a specifically German world view. This was very much alive in him, that only by strengthening this inner self, by experiencing what sits in the deepest soul, can one also experience what lives and weaves through the world as divine-spiritual.

Something like this lived, for example, in a basic trait that the profound Steffens tells us about, which he himself experienced in Jena when Fichte was already a “professor”. There Johann Gottlieb Fichte stood before his audience and said: First of all, gentlemen of the audience, think of the wall! He did not just want to speak to the audience in such a way that he communicated a content to them, but he wanted to create a living bond between his soul and the soul of the audience. They were to participate in a spiritual process that he allowed to take place directly: Think of the wall! Well, the people could do that. After he had let them think of the wall for a while, he said: So, now think of the one who thought the wall! That was more perplexing; they were no longer fully engaged in the activity he was asking of them. But he immediately pointed to this inwardly grasping and seizing of that which works and lives in the world.

Therefore, the whole way in which Johann Gottlieb Fichte presented was very special. People who heard him say how his speech flowed like rolling thunder, and how the individual words discharged like lightning strikes. Yes, we are told how he seemed like a person who not only inhabits the transcendental realm of ideas, but directly rules in it. And this is a word coined by his loyal listeners.

And indeed, they too have retained such a saying. If you have an ear for tracing history in its more intimate currents, you can follow what became of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's students and how they retained such a saying. People who understood him said: He does not just want to educate good souls, he wants to educate great souls!

This should give a rough idea of the depth of Fichte's work; for when he stood before his audience, he was not really concerned with saying this or that, he was not just concerned that his listeners should take up this or that of his words; he did not prepare himself at all for the individual wording, but he tried to live that which he wanted to bring home to his listeners - to live in it with a living, inner part of the soul. Then he would go before his audience. And, as already mentioned, it was not important to him that they should take up these or those words, but what he experienced in saying them was most important to him: to express the Will of the World, so that the Will of the World would live on in his words. That this should surge and surge to the souls of his listeners, that was what he wanted, this will that felt so alive in him in what underlies the world according to his view.

That is why he was able to find those stirring words to characterize German national character, which he found in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” No one understands their deeper meaning, which is Fichte's soul, and is unable to respond to the deep needs from which they arose. We may say: That which the German spirit had to say to the world was realized through Fichte's personality in terms of the will.

If we consider the second figure — the figure of someone who follows on from Fichte, Schelling — we see a completely different side of the German nature. When Fichte speaks, it is as if the element of will itself were rolling through his words. Schelling did not appear to his listeners that way. Even as a very young professor in Jena, still a youth among youths, Schelling spoke enchantingly, in a way that perhaps no one before or since has achieved through a directly academic speech.

Why does Schelling have this effect? With Fichte, we can say that what he said to the world lived in the will. With Schelling, everything lives from the mind, from that mind for which only the German language has a word, from that mind that wants to convince with love, even when it recognizes that it wants to submerge with love in the things to be achieved. Thus, for Schelling, what it means to be in nature flows together, and he wants to immerse himself in this with love so that all of nature becomes like the outer countenance of his hidden spiritual life, spirit in nature. He went so far that he could utter the one-sided saying, Schelling: “To know nature is to create nature.” Certainly a one-sided, in this one-sidedness quite untrue word; but it points us precisely to the essential thing with him, Schelling, to this creating and weaving of the spirit, which lives behind nature, and in which the human spirit wants to grasp itself in order to know itself as one with all natural and with all spiritual existence.

Because he worked in this way, he appeared to his listeners as a seer, so that while he spoke, Schelling was able to convey the spirituality of which he spoke and which surrounded him. While Fichte conveys the will, with Schelling it is as if he had spoken as a seer and directly said what he saw while saying it.

One learns such things most easily – I would say – from direct, traditional observation. Therefore, allow me to describe the impression that a truly deep mind, who was Schelling's friend and first listener – Schubert – had of him; because it is good to put oneself directly into what happened in a certain period of German intellectual development.

“What was it”

as Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert asks.

“that attracted young men like mature men from far and near to Schelling's lectures? Was it only the personality of the man or the peculiar charm of his oral presentation, in which this attractive power lay?”

It was not only that.

“There was in his lively words”

indeed

"an absorbing power, which no young soul, wherever it met with any receptivity, could resist. It might be difficult for a reader of our time

Schubert writes down in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the 1890s

"who was not, like me, a young and enthusiastic listener, to make it understandable how it often felt to me when Schelling spoke to us, as if I were reading or hearing Dante, the seer of a world beyond that was only open to the consecrated eye. The powerful content of his words, as if measured with mathematical precision in lapidary style, seemed to me like a bound Prometheus, whose bonds to be loosened and from whose hand the unquenchable fire to be received, is the task of the understanding mind."

All of this must have been magical. I myself knew people who got to know Schelling when he was already an old man [...] because he expressed what he, as a shearer of the spiritual worlds, brought to his listeners in such a way that, as people who saw and knew him in those days say, he not only spoke to them, but his words, as he wanted to communicate them, flooded out of his eyes to them. That was still the case in old age; what must he have been like as a youth!” Schubert then says:

"But it was neither the personality nor the invigorating power of the oral communication alone that so soon after their public announcement by writing, evoked such interest and excitement for or against the direction of Schelling's philosophy, as no other literary phenomenon of a similar kind has been able to do for a long time before or since. ... In matters of sense-perceptible things or natural phenomena, one will immediately recognize whether a teacher or writer speaks from his own insight and experience"

from the spiritual world

“speaks or merely speaks of what he has heard from others, or even has thought up according to his own self-made ideas...”

Now, dear audience, it is probably fair to say today that it would be a childish view of the world to believe that by describing such spirits, one is demanding to speak to followers or opponents. In such matters, allegiance and antagonism are not important. One need not subscribe to a single word that Fichte or Schelling have written or spoken, nor need one be their opponent for not subscribing to a single word. The content is less important in this regard. The content of worldviews is in a state of dynamic development.

We will have much to discuss the day after tomorrow, especially about the living development of these worldviews and what the content has to do with it. It is not about defending this or that position that Fichte or Schelling took, but rather about looking at the lives of the personalities – at how they were situated within the whole of German intellectual life.

It is something tremendously significant when such minds try to recognize what nature is and what historical life is, so that they - as Fichte himself was well aware - grasp what is around them in a living way, submerging themselves in the things with their own knowledge. And that was what these minds strove for.

But because of this – and one really does not need to speak out of narrow-minded national sentiment, but one can speak entirely from the factual; as I said – we do not need to fall into the tone in which our enemies today fall! In this, as Fichte also emphasized, life in the German world view shows itself to be different from, say, the Western European, French or British world view.

Last time I pointed out what an enormous difference there is between this kind of Fichte and Schelling and - however much one may fight against them in terms of content - [what an enormous difference there is] between this kind of Fichte and Schelling, between penetrating into the foundations of things, where the whole outer world lives and gains life in knowledge itself, to what Fichte calls the dead world view, the world view of the inanimate among Western European minds [; where the world] of the inanimate begins, we say, within French folklore at the beginning of the seventeenth century with Descartes or Cartesius. But then it develops further, and we find it particularly pronounced, shortly before Fichte and Schelling, as has been described, appeared before their German nation, we find this world view of the dead, of the merely material and mechanical, over in France; we find it expressed, for example, in de La Mettrie.

This world view, as it can be found in de La Mettrie, for example – in this father of materialism, of modern materialism – is not to be fought against; it is only to be pointed out how precisely the French nation, in contrast to the German nation, is moving towards the dead and the mechanical. We see this already in Descartes, in Cartesius, in that for him not only minerals, plants, but also animals are merely moving machines. For de La Mettrie, the world finally becomes what he was able to put down in his book: “Man a Machine”.

Now, of course, dear audience, it is easy to find materialistic and spiritualistic elements in every culture and so on. But I am aware that I am not following this convenient mode of expression, but that I am highlighting precisely the characteristic that is related to the culture, and that for the German culture, Fichte and Schell ing in their striving - even if perhaps not in their thinking, as we shall see shortly - are as characteristic and as significant for German folklore as de La Mettrie - this could be proved in detail - for French folklore.

Everything is explained in such a way – and this is justified because it is self-evident – that one can see how man is dependent on what also works in him materially.

De La Mettrie comes to some strange assertions when he wants to prove how everything that exists depends on what is taken in through eating. Perhaps it is not entirely unnecessary to draw attention to a passage in de La Mettrie's book, “Man a Machine”, and to point out this passage in the Frenchman's book precisely in our present time. Of course, we do not need to endorse this passage in the way it is quoted here. We do not want to think such terrible things of a nation that is now at war with us, as the Frenchman de La Mettrie thought at the time. But it is perhaps interesting to quote what he says in order to prove how an entire nation, by eating in a certain way, acquires very specific mental and spiritual qualities, and thus wants to deduce the dependence of the soul and spirit of an entire nation on what is taken in materially through eating and drinking. So de La Mettrie says in the book 'Man a Machine':

"Raw flesh makes animals wild; men would become wild if they had the same food. How true this is can be seen from the fact that the English nation, which cooks meat less than we do and eats it quite raw and bloody, shows greater wildness, which is partly brought about by such food and partly, of course, by other causes, which only education can suppress. This wildness produces pride, hatred, contempt for other nations, stubbornness and other feelings in the soul that corrupt the character, just as coarse food produces a heavy and clumsy mind in a people whose main characteristics are laziness and dullness."

As I said, we do not need to subscribe to this harsh judgment of a Frenchman about the English; but it is perhaps interesting to recall it, especially in our time, when so much else is heard today, moving in other directions from this side, towards today's English allies.

The third person, who is very much honored by being present, and to whom attention must be drawn, because the third side of the German character speaks through him – and of the soul's character in general – is Hegel.

Of course, when people speak of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel today, the first thing that comes to mind is: Yes, but you really can't expect people to deal with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! And most of them will indeed open a book and then close it again because they find it too difficult.

But, dear attendees, anyone who is familiar with the more intimate sides of intellectual life will not entirely disagree with me when I say that the time will come when these three minds will be so grasped in their striving that they can be vividly presented in modern times, so that what is essential – which, of course, had to first be expressed by them in a language that is difficult to understand – can be understood by everyone. And this treasure, which lies in these three minds, will once again bear fruit for every German child, if we are no longer too casual and too lazy to delve into the greatest treasures of the mind.

The third, as I said, is Hegel. If in Fichte it is the will that seeks that which weaves and breathes through the whole world; [if] in Schelling it was the mind, in that love is sought, which can recognize all exteriority in its liveliness – so in the present case it is the conviction that man, when he ascends to the thought that is not permeated by sensuality, when he ascends to the thought that is free of sensuality, and allows this sensuality-free thought to grow and live within him, that this thought, which the soul now experiences within itself, is a flowing in the soul, in which the divine-spiritual thoughts, from which the universe itself is created, work and weave. The soul is permeated by the Divine Being, and the soul thinks free of all sensuality.

The content may be wrong – and you can read more about this in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” – but something significant underlies it, and this in turn resonates with the most intimate trait of German spiritual life: mysticism as a striving, but not mysticism, which attempts to solve the riddles of the world in the dark and confused, which wants to reject all ambiguity, as mysticism so often wants, namely amateurish mysticism, confused mysticism, which we will talk about the day after tomorrow. Hegel's striving is mystical, namely to unite the soul with the very weaving of the world. But the goal is to achieve this mystical experience not in a dark emotional chaos or in a dark inner visionary chaos; but in the full clarity of the world of ideas, in the clarity of the world of ideas of the spirit of all things.

And this mystical connection in clarity is one of the deepest traits of the German character. One almost recoils from finding such a connection to the German character as a German and from emphasizing its significance for the German character. Therefore, let me present to you another characteristic of the German character, esteemed attendees. In 1877, someone noted in his “Diary”:

"Perhaps only the Germanic mind has the need to think for itself, to search for the source of things. The Slavs and Romans are more strongly under the rule of convention, tradition, custom, prejudice, fashion; and when they break through them, it is as a result of revolt and rebellion, without therefore recognizing from within themselves the law immanent in things, their true standard, not the written, arbitrary one that has been read into them. The German wants to get back to nature; the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Russian stop at convention."

So that I cannot be accused of characterizing from a one-sided national sentiment, I bring you this characterization, written from a soul torn by pain, and which – dear lady – was not written by a German, but by the French Swiss Amiel, in 1877! I think it behoves us to be more forgiving of the others, who perhaps have more justification from their feelings and from their observations to express themselves about the relationship of the German spirit to the other national spirits of Europe. And the same Amiel wrote in his “Diary” in Geneva in 1875:

“Thirst for truth is not a French passion. Appearance is more important than essence, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, gloss more than fertility, public opinion more than conscience.”

This is how the French Swiss write; as I said, as a German I would not say it directly.

“Appearance is more important than essence, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, the shiny more than the fertile, public opinion more than conscience.” This means that the Frenchman's center of gravity is not within himself, but in the others, in the great multitude. Individuals are zeros; the digit that forms them into a number comes from outside: That is the sovereign, the writer of the day, the most-read newspaper, in a word, the current master of fashion. All this can be deduced from an exaggerated sociability; it stifles in the soul the courage to resist, the ability to judge, personal conviction, the cult of the ideal."

Thus the Frenchman Amiel, a Frenchman who was familiar with German intellectual life, about what he had noticed. Amiel himself says, as early as 1862:

"I feel a common bond with a Goethe, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Leibniz, who are different enough among themselves, while the French philosophers, orators or mathematicians leave me cold despite their great qualities, because they do not carry the sum of general life within them, do not control the whole of reality, gag me or make me suspicious. What the French lack is direct knowledge of the living unity, a sense of the sacred, a feeling for the mysteries of being; what is theirs is the foundation of specialized sciences, the art of making a book, it is style, politeness, grace, a spirit of order, didactic art, discipline, elegance, truth in the details, staging, proselytizing zeal, strength in practical conclusions. But for the journey through Inferno and Paradise, other guides are needed; they are rooted to the earth, in the realm of the finite, changing, historical, and limited. Mechanism and dualism are the pinnacles of their intellectual flight. To break out of this circle, they must force themselves."

The same approach could be taken for other Western European cultures. But it is more important to take a look at these three minds that created a German worldview, which forms the backdrop to what German intellectual life produced in Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Herder and the others associated with them, as a flowering of intellectual human experience that can only be compared to the flowering that existed in ancient Greece. But when we consider Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in particular, when we look at them in this context, we have a special feeling; we can almost believe that something else is speaking, something higher that lives in all three of them than is expressed in each individual personality. One picture expresses more than one speaks when this feeling is expressed: the German national spirit speaks through these three personalities. And that is perhaps the solution to a riddle that must emerge when we consider the German intellectual life that follows on from these three personalities, albeit in a much more faded and forgotten form, which I will now try to sketch in a few characteristic strokes.

We are witnessing something very special. Within a more or less forgotten current of German intellectual life, which has been forgotten throughout the entire nineteenth century and into our own days – only this forgotten tone has been little studied so far – there are spirits who, in terms of their intellectual makeup, in terms of the extent of what they know and can do, in terms of the their genius, are far below the tone-setters Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, but who, curiously enough, when one looks at what must be striven for today through spiritual science, have created more of spiritual science or have created more that corresponds to it than the great inspirers: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel.

The lesser minds that come afterwards create more significant things than the great minds that preceded them. It is a striking phenomenon. It does not need to be a cause for great surprise, because it is self-evident that it is easier for those who follow; as lesser minds, they can achieve greater things than those who preceded them under certain circumstances. In the extreme, this can indeed express itself in the fact that every schoolboy can understand and grasp the Pythagorean theorem - and for its first formulation Pythagoras himself was necessary.

Thus the great men had to come; the clever ones are already there, pointing the way into the spiritual world. But that which has come out of the German folk spirit through them lives on now. Even if it is still emotionally restricted and spiritually surrounded – one can also speak of spiritual encirclement – it still forms the vanished, the faded tone in the world view that I would like to talk about now.

Here we find, dear ladies and gentlemen, the son of the great Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Immanuel Hermann Fichte, who was influenced by his father's ideas. But we also find that he is able to penetrate deeper into the knowledge of the spirit than his father, despite being a much lesser spirit than his father. Immanuel Hermann Fichte already speaks of the fact that man, on the one hand, has this physical world. He, Hermann Immanuel Fichte, calls physical the substances and forces that the outer physical world also contains. Through this physical world, man is connected with the physical substances and forces of the earth world, he is connected with what appears to him as something past. But behind this physical body, for Immanuel Hermann Fichte lies what he calls the etheric body; and just as the physical body contains within itself the substances and forces, so the etheric body contains substances and forces of a supersensible nature, which link this inner man, this supersensible spiritual man, to the great world of the spirit and place him in it.

Thus, Immanuel Hermann Fichte sees behind the other person the etheric human being, who is a reality for him, not just an image. And everything that spiritual science has to say about the etheric body, about these supersensible powers of human nature, in the sense often hinted at here in these lectures, can be found very beautifully in Immanuel Hermann Fichte.

But, one might say: Even with regard to the path that has been characterized here more often, an infinite amount already lives in the germ of another, who is to succeed in the world view of the great period of German idealism: For example, we see Troxler. Who knows Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler today? Who reads Troxler? Who, even among those who write the history of philosophy, takes more of an interest in Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler than to scribble five or six lines that say nothing about Troxler! Who is Troxler?

Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler is indeed a mind that – even if he has not yet fully mastered the spiritual science, for which it is only now at the right time – but Troxler is a personality who is on the path to this spiritual scientific research. We see then how Troxler coins strange words that show that something lives in his soul of the living spirit of spiritual science itself. Troxler coins strange words such as “supersensory spirit” and “supersensory mind”.

“Supersensory spirit” is relatively easy to understand; now, “supersensory spirit” is precisely what Goethe calls “contemplative judgment”. For – Goethe, in his real world view, is on exactly the same ground – because “supersensible spirit” is precisely that power of the human soul which unfolds in such a way that, without the help of the body, without external senses and without the sense bound to the brain, the human being directly “looks” into the spiritual environment, just as the spirit itself does – “supersensible spirit”.

But “super-spiritual sense”? By speaking of the “super-spiritual sense”, Troxler shows that he really has an understanding of the essence of spiritual science. I have mentioned it often, as there are people, idealistic philosophers, who say: Yes, of course, that is quite clear: the physical world is not the only one; spirit is present behind the physical world. Spirit, spirit and always spirit — they say. And that's where that pantheism comes out, that worldview that, doesn't it, spreads such a general spirit sauce – it doesn't specialize in that, it's nothing; maybe today you would have to say “dipping sauce” instead of “sauce” – [that worldview that] thinks it has spread such a general dipping sauce over everything that appears before people as physical objects and physical facts, doesn't it.

But that was not the case with Troxler! Troxler would have said: Those who speak only in a pantheistic way of spirit, spirit and spirit again, they seem to me to be saying: Why should we speak of tulips or lilies, of snowdrops, for example? Nature, nature is everything! And why should we speak of individual experiments in the laboratory? Nature, nature is everything. Those who speak of naturalism in this way should just / gap in the transcript /

But what matters is not just to talk in generalities about the spiritual, but to be able to point out that we are surrounded by a spiritual world that consists of individual entities and individual facts just as much as the physical world does.

That is why Troxler, because he knows this, speaks of the “super-spiritual sense” - which is of course a figure of speech, but which testifies that one can really look into, is able to look into the spiritual world and observe it in its details - not just as a “general spirit dip”.

And in yet another way, Troxler – in his “Lectures on Philosophy” in 1835, he speaks very beautifully about all these things – in yet another way, Troxler speaks of a kind of spiritual-scientific path that he has already taken. He says: The most beautiful powers of the soul that rule man here, insofar as he lives in his physical body, that man can make his own, insofar as the soul expresses itself through the physical body, these powers are those of faith, love, hope. But now – Troxler says: faith, love, hope, as great and significant as they are for the life that the soul spends in the physical body, they are – this faith, this love, this hope – the outer shell for the soul's spiritual powers that lie behind them and that this soul will experience when it has discarded the body and passed through the gate of death.

While the soul lives in the body, it lives out – through the bodily organs, of course through the finer bodily organs – the power of faith. [But, says Troxler, this power can be experienced not only as the power of faith, but also – as Troxler believes – as spiritual hearing, as spirit-hearing, in such a way that the power of faith becomes the outer, physical shell for a spirit-hearing of the soul; this organ would allow itself to be experienced free of the body – a wonderful, great thought.]

And love, this bloom of outer physical life on earth, this highest development of outer physical life on earth, insofar as the soul lives in the physical body in earthly life: For Troxler, this love, this love-power, one could say, is the outer shell again for something that the soul has within, that envelops this physical body. And what Troxler now addresses as a spiritual sense, a spiritual feeling - as one today senses physical things with the physical - lies behind the power of love. When the soul is able to free itself from the body or passes through the gate of death, then its spiritual organs unfold. And as it hears through that which lies behind the power of faith, what resounds as facts in the spiritual world, so it is able to feel the spiritual facts and entities through its [“groping”] spiritual organs, which the soul extends out of itself. While when it lives in the physical body, the spiritual feeling powers, touching powers bring themselves as love to revelation.

And in a similar way, behind the power of hope, in the power of an expectant confidence in something, lies for Troxler, spiritually, what he calls “spiritual vision”.

Thus, Troxler knows that a soul dwells in the physical body of man, endowed with spirit-hearing, spirit-touching, spirit-seeing, and that this soul passes through the portal of death with these three powers, but that it is also able to experience, when it frees itself from its ties to the body, that which spiritually surrounds and envelops us.

And, for example, Troxler expresses how he thinks – and I would like to share this with you in his own words – and at the same time points out that he has certain comrades in relation to such a way of looking at the world. He points to these or those spirits. I would like to read one of these passages to you verbatim. He says:

"The philosophers of old distinguished a fine, noble soul from the coarser body (or in this they assumed a kind of shell for the spirit), a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and that was the inner, higher man for them. This view, even if it is only an explanation, was also held by most of the first great church fathers, such as Origen, Irenaeus, Lactantius, Tertullian, and Augustine. In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire, inward, spiritual man who wears all the limbs of the outward man on his spirit body. Lavater also writes and thinks in the same way; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about the Bonnese under-skirt and the Platner-esque soul-corset, which are said to be hidden in the coarser body rock and martyr's robe, we still hear him asking, “What is the use and origin of these extraordinary talents and desires within us, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthy shell? [Why was I stuck to this dirty lump of earth, a creature with useless wings of light, when I should rot back into the birth clod without ever wriggling free with ethereal wings? “The inner man,“ he says in another place, ‘this ’veiled God in nature,' is not himself of stone, like the latter.] In the stony limbs” — of man — “his living limbs grow and mature according to a way of life unknown to us. We could

”still cite a myriad similar ways of thinking and writing, which in the end are only different views and ideas in which [the one Evangelical-Apostolic idea is revealed,

"we could cite a myriad more similar ways of thinking and writing, which in the end are only different views and ideas in which [the one Evangelical-Apostolic idea is revealed that Paul expressed to the Corinthians , saying: “A body that the soul has quickened is laid down, and a body that the spirit has quickened rises, for there is a body that has been quickened by the soul, there is also a body that has been spiritualized. And in this is] the true, only teaching of the individuality and immortality of man.”

And now a remarkable – I would even say a decisive – thought arises for Troxler. He thinks something like the following. It is quite clear when you let his various writings sink in, especially his lectures on those subjects, which he had already written and delivered in 1835. The following thought is on Troxler's mind: There is an anthropology, a knowledge of man, he says. How does it arise – a knowledge of man? Man comes to know it by observing what can be observed of man with the senses and with the intellect, which is connected to the brain – that is how anthropology comes about. But this man who sees with the senses and observes through the intellect – in this man the higher man lives. And we have seen how clearly Troxler can express himself about this higher man. This higher human being, with his “supersensible sense” and with his “supersensible spirit”, can now also observe that which is supersensible and superspiritual in the other human being. In this way, just as anthropology arises in a lower realm, a higher science arises: the science of the spiritual human being - anthroposophy. And Troxler expresses himself about this in the following way:

"While it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which [we have long since recognized as the one that founds all living religion and] must reveal itself in every anthroposophy, thus in poetry as well as in history, is now making headway, it cannot be be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true personality or individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts with as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

Troxler speaks of a foundation of an “anthroposophy” in contrast to “anthropology”!

And so one has the right to speak of the germs of that which must now be incorporated from the universe into the spiritual development of humanity as spiritual science. One has the right to speak of it in such a way that it is present as a germ in these personalities. These germs, however, ladies and gentlemen, are firmly anchored in German intellectual life, in keeping with its nature. I can only hint at how firmly these things are rooted in German intellectual life. And how German intellectual life, through its innermost development, cannot but produce them. Everywhere we look back, we find that this is firmly rooted in German intellectual life, and we can only hope that it can incorporate itself as a spiritual science into the future development of humanity.

Such a tone has been forgotten many times; it has faded away. But, dear ladies and gentlemen, it still exists! And it was able to live in the most diverse fields. Not only does it live, so to speak, in the spiritual heights, but wherever there was spiritual striving, there were also such endeavors as these. And the time will come when people will gain a new understanding of the deepest essence of German striving, and that this must be brought up again.

Much has covered up precisely this innermost part of the German being! This can be seen when one tries to seek out the German essence in very specific, particular, concrete areas. For thirty-three years, esteemed attendees, I have endeavored – forgive me for making this personal – for thirty-three years I have endeavored to show the significance of Goethe's Theory of Colors for a true knowledge of nature that penetrates to the essence of things, and the significance of Goethe's dispute with Newton, who is rooted in British nationalism!

But, as I said, it is not only external political life that has been encircled; the deeply, deeply influential, brutal foreign scientific attitude has come to such a pass that it is still a laughing-stock for the physicist to speak of the justification of Goethe's theory of colors! But the time will come when, in this field, there will be a deeper understanding and the chapter “Goethe vindicated against Newton” will be revived, precisely on the basis of the spirituality of the most Germanic nature; and it will be revived in a completely different way than one might have dared to dream of today.

One must then be able to bear the fact that one is regarded as a fool for representing in advance what must come, what must be recognized, when one is fully aware of it. But, as I said, this striving lives not only on the spiritual heights, but also in many ways in the German character. I could cite hundreds and hundreds of cases for this; one for many shall be cited, because we do not have time to cite many. One for many shall be cited: I would like to point to a small booklet published in 1856 by a simple pastor Rocholl in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck - a small booklet. It was published in 1856 and is called “Contributions to the History of a German Theosophy”. Today, one may find much of what is written in this little book fantastic; one may even be right in much of what is said when calling the little book fantastic. But this little book, published in 1856, shows Pastor Rocholl in an awakened, true spiritual striving that at least wants to penetrate world phenomena with a “supernatural sense,” with a “supernatural spirit.” And in wide-ranging spiritual views, an attempt is made to characterize how natural life and spiritual life, sensual life, are one, and how divine spiritual forces weave and work, and how man has the possibility to ascend to them.

The level of education and the depth of knowledge are the things that come to light in such phenomena, which, as I said, can easily be ridiculed. But we also encounter this in other areas and with other personalities. Here, I would like to draw your attention, most esteemed attendees, to a spirit who, unfortunately, is all too forgotten: Christian Karl Planck.

After the Swabian Vischer – the V-Vischer – referred to him in an essay, I tried again in more recent times, as early as the first edition of my “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century), to draw attention to this primordially German world-view personality, Christian Karl Planck. But what use is that today? People generally have other things to do than to look into the German character, or the most German character.

I can only give a brief description here of what Planck's German nature was. And in his case it was certainly grasped out of his German nature, what he presented. We will see in a moment how conscious he was of the basis of his world view. I will illustrate this with an example.

When people today look at the earth as natural scientists, they see it, let us say, as a geologist would see it. The earth is seen as it is built up from mineral forces, as known from geology. For Planck, such a view of the earth would not have been considered without higher world-view questions. For him, it would have been like looking at a tree and only wanting to accept the wood and bark, but not the leaves, flowers and fruits! It is clear to him that the leaves, flowers and fruits are part of what makes up the essence of the tree, and that anyone who only looks at the wood, bark and roots is not looking at the full tree. To Karl Christian Planck, this seemed to be an earthly consideration that is only held in the sense of geology.

For Planck, the full earthly consideration is not only an ensouled, but also a spiritual-soul being. And man, as he walks on earth as a physical human being, belongs to the earth, to the essence of the earth, which one has to seek if one wants to learn to recognize the earth, just as one has to see the essence of the fruits and the flowers and leaves together with the essence of the tree if one wants to recognize the tree in its essence; a worldview - I would like to say - genuinely spiritual and genuinely interwoven with life.

Christian Karl Planck wrote many books in an effort to gain recognition; he did not succeed! For example, in 1864 he wrote a book, his “Fundamentals of a Science of Nature”. And from this book I will read a passage to prove how much this Christian Karl Planck belongs to that forgotten, faded tone of German intellectual life - the German intellectual development that was conscious for some of the personalities who worked for him, as the work is from the primal power of German nationality. There Planck says in 1864:

“The power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”

the author's

"Schrift entgegensteht, dessen ist er sich vollkommen bewusst; allein wie schon die Arbeit selbst, trotz aller Ungunst der Umstände, die zufolge der ganzen Lage und Berufsstellung des Verfassers einem Werke dieser Art sich entgegenstellte, doch ihren Durchführung und ihren Weg in die Öffentlichkeit sich erkauft hat, so ist er auch gewiss, that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit.

People who have different ways of thinking first see it as pure folly – then it becomes a matter of course. This is how it was with the Copernican worldview; this is how it was with everything that belongs to the development of mankind's worldview. And Planck says words that prove how he consciously penetrated from the German spirit to his spirit-based worldview. And he continues:

"What our medieval poetry has already unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit (as Wolfram describes it in his Parzival), which has been visited with harm and ridicule,

1864, written before Wagner's Parsifal!

“Finally, in the strength of her unceasing striving, she attains the highest; she looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the rule of which her hero attains, that, conversely, receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the lasting knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.”

Karl Christian Planck wrote this in 1864; he died in 1880. In the last years of his life he had written his Testament of a German, in which he summarized all the individual lines of his world-view. In 1912 the second edition of this Testament appeared; it did not attract much attention and was not much studied. One had other works to deal with, which had appeared in the same publishing house at the time! For example, one had to deal with a world view that is truly not one that has somehow emerged from the German character or is even related to it! You can read more about this in my book, “Riddles of Philosophy.” However, the passage in question was not written under the influence of the war; it was written long before the war. In 1912, people were too busy dealing with Henri Bergson – yes, he is still called Bergson today, Henri Bergson he is still called – to deal with this Henri Bergson, who, as I mentioned last time, tells his Parisians all kinds of slanderous things in prominent places of his intellectual work! Next time he will also do it in Sweden.

When you look at this Bergson: Let us highlight just one aspect of his philosophy, one aspect that does resonate with something that is truly being recognized today: the aspect where he says – I could of course highlight many other things, among other things – the beautiful sentence that has been so admired throughout Europe: that one can only recognize the soul if one comprehends it in its duration and in particular if one understands the sentence in relation to the essence of the soul “Duration endures”. I have had to read an awful lot about this infinitely ingenious sentence by Henri Bergson: “Duration lasts”. I have never been able to find it any differently than when one says “The wood is wooding” or “The money is moneying”. But let's ignore that.

A fruitful world view would only be achieved if one did not start in an abstract way, as some do, who actually start with the most imperfect beings and go up to the most perfect, and believe that they have a perfect derivation, but if one starts from the most perfect, from man, and places man at the origin, and then considers the other kingdoms - animals, plants, minerals - and considers them in such a way that they have arisen like waste from the overall flow.

Certainly, a good thought. But it is presented in a slightly distorted way by Henri Bergson. And what is essential: long before Bergson expressed it - I point this out in the second volume of my “Riddles of Philosophy” - this thought was expressed - as early as 1882 - by the German thinker Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, most recently in his book “Geist und Stoff” (Spirit and Matter), but also in earlier books! There we find this idea powerfully expressed from the very basis that I have just characterized as the very basis of the German essence.

One can now assume two things: Bergson, who expressed this idea later, may not have known Heinrich Preuss – which is just as unforgivable in a philosopher as if he had known him and failed to mention that he got this idea from this source – one could believe the latter, now that it has come out that entire pages of Bergson's books have been copied from Schelling or Schopenhauer! However, this is a basic feature of the times, isn't it, to confront German culture, which appears “mechanistic” to him, and which he says has come down from its great heights and only produces mechanistic things.

I said it before: He probably expected that when the French shoot with guns and cannons, the Germans will come and quote Novalis and Goethe! He could hardly have expected that, could he? But he speaks of a “mechanistic culture”. I would like to know: is copying entire pages from German philosophers and then slandering them the opposite of the “mechanical”?

But we do learn a great deal in this field, and we have to find our way through these things. But the only way to find one's way, dearest attendees, is to try, as a person living in Central Europe today, to delve into that which, from a certain point of view, is able to unfold this Central European and, above all, especially the German essence to unfold, the power that must be present today in the physical world in an external way, so that in our fateful time the German can defend itself against all attacking enemies. This same power lives, expressing itself in a different way, in the German spiritual being. The two are intimately connected. The two cannot be completely separated. In the distant future, when the fateful situation of the Central European German people in this fateful time is judged, history will have to be spoken of in this way.

One needs only to consider a few figures, but these figures, which will speak to the most distant times, must come to mind when the following questions are asked: What, then, is actually confronting what is to unfold in Central Europe with the spiritual content just characterized? Not counting smaller nations: 741 million people encircle 150 million people in Central Europe! And do these 741 million people, who are facing the 150 million people, have reason to envy the ground on which these 150 million people stand?

One need only remember that this humanity encircling Central Europe owns 69 million square kilometers of the earth – compared to 5 to 6 million square kilometers of the Central European population! 69 million square kilometers compared to 6 million square kilometers in Central Europe! 9.5 percent of the earth's population is pitted against 47 percent of the earth's population! So half the world is being called out against Central Europe. That will stand out in history in simple numbers!

And how does this surrounding population, which does not even rely on direct combat but on starvation, how does this surrounding population view this population, this Central European culture, of which one says – the least one can hear –: The spirit – this spirit that is all around – fights against the raw material in the middle!

And this view, we find it in a certain modification also when we look across to the East. And there we find, as it developed throughout the entire nineteenth century, one can say from the simple Russian people, who are predisposed to something completely different - you can read more about this in my little book “Thoughts During the Time of War”, which will soon be available again; at the moment it is out of print. There we find that a Russian intelligentsia is developing from the Russian people – but one could also follow the development in other areas – that grows up to hold very, very strange views. Much of what is in my little book Thoughts During the Time of War would have to be repeated – and much would have to be added to it – if one wanted to even begin to characterize the trend that is taking hold in Russian intellectual life, the intellectual life of the intelligentsia, which draws from the belief that Central Europe in particular, but also Western Europe, is basically an aged, decrepit culture, and that it must be replaced by the culture of the East, that this culture of the East is young and fresh and must be brought into Europe because everything within Europe has become decrepit.

For example, we find – just to mention a few things, although I could of course talk about this for hours – we find, for example, as early as 1827, Kirejewskij indicates a tone that is then found again and again. Only, various things have been done to prevent the good Germans in particular from noticing this tone; sometimes strange ways have been sought to prevent the Germans from noticing this tone. One of these ways is this: after the lecture that I have given in various places about Tolstoy, no one will attribute to me the claim that I do not value Tolstoy precisely as a spirit of the very first order; but precisely with spirits of the very first order, whom one does not need to fight as spirits, one can find the characteristic peculiarities that develop in them out of their nationality. Now, even in Tolstoy's works of fiction, one finds this tone, this sense of the staleness and decrepitude of Central and Western European intellectual life. But, you will say, people have read Tolstoy's works, they can't possibly have forgotten that they found this in them!

Something strange is going on here. Until Raphael Löwenfeld published his complete edition of Tolstoy's works at the end of the 1890s – which is the most accurate – all earlier translations had deleted the passages that were directed against Germanness! All the works that Löwenfeld translated before the complete edition was published – and who had the complete edition by Löwenfeld in their hands? – all of Tolstoy's works that had been translated by others before that, were presented to the German people in this way!

In 1829, Kirejewskij said:

“The fate of every European state depends on the union of all the others; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia is decided in its formation: this is the condition and source of all goods. As soon as all these goods will be ours, we will share them with the rest of Europe, and we will repay our debt to them a hundredfold.”

You see what the background here is – to make Russia Russian and then generously assign to the individual what one wants to assign to him. And seriously: this tone runs through the whole of Russian intellectual life. And in a strange way, it appears in various places in more recent times. For example, in [Michajlovskij] there is a Russian spirit that takes this - as he thinks - strangely decrepit, crippled, brutalized intellectual product of Central Europe, Goethe's “Faust”, and says: What then is this Goethe's “Faust” actually like as a personality? Well, just as in Central Europe one strives for metaphysics, so Faust strives metaphysically. —- He needs the expression, this Michajlovskij: a metaphysician is a person who has gone mad with fat! I don't know how many metaphysicians one has come to know with this characteristic! But he regards Goethe's Faust as such a metaphysician, who has become alien to all human life.

But let us go to the end of the nineteenth century; there we find a mind like that of Sergius Jushakow; he wrote a book in 1885 that reflects much of what is currently in this Russian intellectual life: he despises Western Europe as something decrepit! He says, Yushakov: “Let us look across to Asia, where we find the fruits of European culture, which must be eradicated through Russia and replaced by something else. Let us look across to Asia, where we find these Western and Central European fruits of culture. There we find these Asian peoples, and it reminds Yushakov of an Asian legend that truly expresses what lies in the development of Asian peoples. He says: “These Asian peoples have expressed their destiny themselves by speaking of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Then there are the Iranian peoples, to whom the Persians and Hindus also belong; they have had to fight against the Turanian peoples, who are under the leadership of Ahriman. And as the people of Ormuzd, the Iranians, to whom the Persians and Hindus belong, have what they have conquered materially and spiritually through their culture, they have conquered it through the kindness of the good spirit Ormuzd against the evil Ahriman.

But then, according to Jushakov, the evil Europeans came and did not help the Asians to continue their Ormuzd culture, but came to take away from them what they had received under Ormuzd and to deliver them to the bondage and dangers of the Ahriman culture. Russia must intervene against this unpeaceful, unloving Western European culture. Russia must turn, says Yushakov, towards Asia and join forces with the Asian peoples languishing under Ahriman, in order to save them from the parasitism of Western European culture.

Yushakov says that it will be two powers that will join forces, two powers that express the greatest, most significant, and strongest cultural forces of the future. It will be two powers that will look towards Asia from Russia – I am not saying it, Yushakov is saying it; so if it sounds strange, read Yushakov! There are two powers: the simple Russian peasantry will join forces with the greatest bearer, with the noblest bearer of spirituality, with the Cossacks! Peasants and Cossacks will rescue the Asian population and the ancient Asian culture from the clutches of the Western Europeans. One day the world will owe this to Russia and its mission, which is made up of the deeds of the peasants and the noble Cossacks.

The book that Sergius Jushakow wrote in 1885 is called: “The” - yes, it is called “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. And he characterizes the Asian peoples from a Western European point of view in terms of what they have suffered. He says, for example: These Asian peoples are viewed by Western Europeans – he couldn't take the Germans, so he didn't take the Germans – these Asian peoples are viewed by Western Europeans, he says, as if they existed solely

“to clothe themselves in English fabrics, fight among themselves with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English tinsel.”

And then Jushakow continues, summarizing what appears to him to be a great, pan-Asian ideal, so in summary, he says:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland – I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state, which is as brilliant as it is sad.”

I do not wish anything similar for my homeland, says Yushakov, a leading Russian, in 1885 – about England! It is probably on this path that we should seek that strange world-historical consequence – the forging of the alliance between Russia and England! For at first little was noticed of the current, of the mission to Asia, which should have come about under the influence of the peasants and Cossacks. For the time being, we can only note that Russia has allied itself with England and France, the latter of which have thus betrayed European culture in reality! It has allied itself in order to uproot the decrepit, decrepit Europeanness root and branch, at least that is what they said.

Dear attendees, it is necessary to speak out, as I said, without falling into the tone that is being struck around us, and anyone who is even a little familiar with this tone knows that today's tone has not tone of the English, French, Russians, without falling into the tone that is being struck around us today, purely on the basis of the facts, can point out what is going on within German intellectual life for self-reflection. There it is, after all, [that what lived in minds like Troxler, Planck, Preuss and so on, and in the minds of others – what was a germ, will also come to fruition as a flower and as fruit]!

However, through this tone of German intellectual life, which still resonates today, a realization must come to those of you who are present: intellectual observers of the world are not the impractical people that they are often made out to be by the very clever people – and especially by the very practical people. Because that is, after all, the general tone, isn't it, that one thinks: Well, people like Planck, like Troxler or like Preuss and so on may have very nice thoughts - but they don't have a clue about practical life. That's where the practical people have to go, those practical people who, in their own opinion, have a practical insight into practical life. Because the others are those impractical idealists!

Well, but I could also give you hundreds and hundreds of examples in support of the refutation of this sentence. Karl Christian Planck, for example, who was one of the most German of Germans, died in bitterness in 1880. And the dullards will no doubt say: something like megalomania sometimes emerges from the last thing he wrote - after time itself had driven him to a certain nervousness because he could not convey to his contemporaries what was in his heart. The dullards will even say: he became megalomaniac. But he died in 1880, and in 1881 his “Testament of a German” was already in print. It contained words that I will read to you now. So they were already written in 1880. Planck – about whom certainly quite practical diplomats, politicians and people who know everything about practical life will judge disparagingly – Christian Karl Planck spoke of the present war, of this war in which we are now embroiled. He spoke the following words in 1880. They were written by this “impractical idealist,” who was, however, a very practical thinker and who should have been put in a practical position, because the power that lives in the spiritual life also knows how to judge practical life correctly. This “impractical” Planck, who in 1880 wrote about the present war, which he knew would come, the words:

"No political cleverness, no love of peace on the part of Germany can prevent this hostile clash within the current merely national order. For the nature of the circumstances is more powerful than all cleverness; and already now, despite the friendly attitude of Germany and Austria, the hostile mood of the Russian East is only emerging all the more clearly because one could not give it a free hand in everything, but had to set a certain goal. And if it comes to a fight one day, then, however much we have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not stand by our side, but as in the East, we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South at the same time; on all sides, national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst."

I ask you, how many diplomats believed – you can point the finger at them – much later, yes, much later, that Italy might still be dissuaded from participating in the war. I will only point out the one point. But these are the “practical” people, they have eaten practice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But the unpractical Christian Karl Planck, in 1880 he characterized what happened in 1914, 1915 and so on, so that what he said back then has appeared again exactly in the real, actual facts!

Oh, one should listen to what a spiritual man creating out of the real depths of the German essence would be able to create if this German essence were to once fully consciously stand on its own feet – symbolically speaking.

But for this to happen, the present moment in world history must provide the right conditions. For the German spirit will also one day solve the problem for the world of the fact that it must be realized from within the German spirit what it means that power – the power of the incompetent, which crushes so many legitimate aspirations – is actually the ruling power in so many parts of the world! It is precisely in this area that the German spirit must have a healing effect. Without in any way seeking to flatter national pride, this can be emphasized in the present fateful hour from the facts themselves.

Finally, let us point out to you, esteemed attendees, how those who were steeped in this German essence, who know how to grasp it with their whole soul, with their whole heart, how they always experienced what has now taken place. I may, since I have spent almost thirty years of my life in Austria and had to go through the last times just at the end of these thirty years within the struggles that Germanism had to wage there, [since I was] in the midst of these difficulties of the German essence, I would like to draw attention to how naturally it lived in a spirit like Robert Hamerling, one of the most German spirits in Austria, one of the best spirits in Central Europe in general, how he expressed what lived in him so beautifully: “Austria is my fatherland; Germany is my motherland!” These words express a vivid sense of the spiritual reality that has forged Germany and Austria into this Mitteleuropa out of necessity in these difficult times. But such minds as Robert Hamerling's not only grasped such a thing in its depth, in its full depth, but also experienced it, esteemed attendees. This is particularly evident when you look at Robert Hamerling – not, of course, in the poem that has been distributed and which so many people have fallen for, even quite clever people have fallen for it, it is, of course, a forgery, the prophetic poem that has now been widely published in the newspapers – I don't mean something like that, of course! Anyone who knows Robert Hamerling even a little recognizes it as a fake from the very first lines. But in Robert Hamerling's work, there are enough clues to see how this Mitteleuropa lived! In 1862, he wrote his “Germanenzug”. Let us highlight the “Germanenzug” from the many. In 1862, he wrote in his “Germanenzug” how the ancestors of the Germans moved among the Germanic peoples from Asia - this is described to us in a wonderful mood , as they camp there - it is evening - how they camp there still in Asia; it is a beautiful evening atmosphere: the setting sun, the rising moon, the Teutons are asleep as they move across. Only one is awake: the blond Teut. And above him appears the genius of the future Germans and speaks with him. And that which one must cite as a fundamental trait of the German striving for knowledge - the genius speaks with him, with the blond Teut of this German future - is expressed by Robert Hamerling through the genius of Germanness to the blond Teut. I would like to say: the beauty of what is a German trait is already evident in the “Philosophus Teutonicus”, in Jakob Böhme, where this Jakob Böhme regards all knowledge in such a way that this knowledge, insofar as it comes from the German mind as knowledge, is at the same time a kind of worship. Jakob Böhme says so beautifully:

"When you look at the depths

, he means the depths of the blue sky

“When you look at the depth of the sky, the stars and the earth, you see your God, and in the same you live and are you too. And the same God reigns through you and also reigns you.” “You are created from this God and live in the same. Also, all your knowledge stands in this God, and when you die, you will be buried in this God.”

This mood also lived in Robert Hamerling when he let the genius of the German spirit speak to the blond Teut:

"To whom will the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the strings of the searching thought to the stars
so boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Whom leads so high, so deep his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps so faithfully the near as the far?
Where does every earthly and heavenly zone
reflect itself as in your thinking, O Teuton?»

This mission of the German character - Robert Hamerling was already aware of it at the time he wrote his “Germanenzug” (The German Character).

To see clearly the full world-historical, the all-embracing world-historical significance of this German nature – one can indeed look across to Asia in a different way from that in which Yushakov did: there one sees these Asiatic peoples, how they once, in primeval times, aspired upwards to the spiritual worlds. They brought it from India; they did it by sinking and muffling everything that forms the basis of the human ego, the center of the human being, into a kind of dream life. And by muffling the ego, they created something within themselves that arose out of a dream life, which introduced them to the spiritual that permeates and lives through the whole world. This world cannot and must not arise again as it was, as a witness of what remained from ancient times over there in Asia; for after the greatest impulse that earth-dwelling humanity could experience, the Christ-impulse, had broken into the development of earth-dwelling humanity, something else must come than this former elevation to the spiritual world.

And this other - with the same inwardness, deep inwardness, with which the spirit was once to be experienced in the ancient Orient, with the same inwardness it is to be experienced again through this other; but this other is to develop in the exact opposite way: The ego is not to be paralyzed, it is to be strengthened, it is to be invigorated - precisely by rising up, by living to the full, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, want the other spirits, who are rooted in the depths of German intellectual life, to penetrate into the spiritual world: And so this German essence is to give the Orient what it once had in the form of profound inwardness in pre-Christian times; it is to give the German essence in a new way, as it must be given in the post-Christian era.

This was already clear to Robert Hamerling when he had the genius of the Germans speak to the blond Teut, the leader of the Germanic peoples, in his “Germanenzug”. Robert Hamerling draws attention to the fact that all cognition in the German is to be a kind of worship, that the German wants to know himself in such a way that he knows himself as born out of the divine-spiritual powers, living in the divine-spiritual powers, and being buried again with the divine-spiritual powers.

That is why Robert Hamerling lets the genius of Germanness speak these beautiful words to the blond Teut:

"But however proudly you may strive, high above other swarms, you will still keep a blazing, ancient, sacred fire: the dream-filled drunkenness of God, the blissful warmth of the heart of Calm existence
This holy ray, a temple fire, free of smoke, with pure flame, will glow in your chest and soul, remaining your pilot and your rudder! You strive only because you love: your most daring thought will be devotion that wants to sink into God."

So the one who, as a Central European German, feels at home in the intellectual life of Central Europe, which I have tried to characterize today, also in one of its faded tones, in one of its forgotten intellectual currents, but precisely in the intellectual current that shows which seeds, which roots of a striving for the real, for the real spirit, are anchored in German intellectual life.

The insight that this is so will always give the one who recognizes and feels German essence within himself the justified conviction: Whatever arises from the 68 million square kilometers around against what lives on the 6 million square kilometers, whatever has such roots, such germs, will bear its blossoms and its fruits against all enemies in the way and as they are predisposed in it! This hope, this confidence and also this love for the German essence is precisely what characterizes anyone who truly recognizes the German essence.

Let me summarize in four simple lines by Robert Hamerling, after I have tried to characterize such a Central European spirit to you. Let me summarize what can arise in the soul from an objective observation of the German character and immersion in this German character today, in the face of our difficult, fateful events.

I believe that these four simple lines, with which I would like to conclude today's reflection, these four simple lines by Robert Hamerling, which state that it is true, that not only out of national overheating, but out of objective knowledge, it may be said:

“And if ever the day
proves hostile to the German name,
from sea to sea
the German spirit will find its way.”

Dear Attendees!

Spiritual research, as it is meant in the lectures that I have been holding here for years now, has, as is well known, basically not only opponents and antagonisms from those sides from which other worldviews their nature have opponents and opposition – materialism has opponents in spiritualism, spiritualism in materialism, idealism in realism and so on – and in a certain sense it can still be said today that spiritual science is fought against by all possible ideological directions. And so the question must arise: What is the essential reason why spiritual science in particular is so strongly rejected by the current zeitgeist as a whole?

I have already repeatedly drawn attention to what is important in relation to this question. The peculiar thing about this spiritual science is that the opposition does not arise from the fact that one gets to know this spiritual science more closely, that one studies it in order to be unable to agree with it, but rather that the opposition is mainly based on the fact that there is little inclination on either side to get involved in the actual essentials, in the meaningfulness of this spiritual scientific direction.

Instead, people invent all kinds of characteristics that this spiritual science must have according to their own ideas, without any knowledge of it. They think something like this: From what I know and from what I have heard said offhand from this quarter or that, this spiritual science wants this or that. Or rather, one thinks even differently, one thinks: it must want this or that. So in this or that sense it is naturally reprehensible.

And then the peculiarity emerges – and precisely this peculiarity can be observed if one delves deeper into the relationship between spiritual science and other currents of world view. The peculiarity then emerges that many people assert this or that against spiritual science on the assumption that it can affect spiritual science, while in truth the fact is that, as regards what these people assert, one is in complete agreement as a spiritual scientist in the sense in which spiritual science is meant here, that one has nothing at all against what these people say, that they only believe that, because one is precisely on the point of view of spiritual science, one must object to this or that.

So the peculiar thing is, dear attendees, that spiritual science is very often fought by those with whom it actually agrees entirely in all the positive things it demands.

One particular area that must be illuminated by the light that has just been mentioned is the subject of today's reflection: “Healthy mental life and spiritual research”. For it will be seen time and again that the very ways and methods of spiritual scientific research, the paths taken by spiritual science, are presented by those who, under the influence of today's habits of thought, believe they have built their views on the foundation of pure natural science. beliefs on the foundation of pure natural science. It will be found time and again that these methods and procedures are treated as something unhealthy, as something diseased, or at least lumped together with something diseased. And in this case, ladies and gentlemen, one cannot even say that the cause of such misunderstandings lies solely with those who develop misunderstandings from this side, but the causes lie in completely different circumstances, which will also be considered in the second part of today's reflection.

But first I would like to develop some essentials with regard to the types of spiritual science procedure, in order to show, by means of the actual method of spiritual research, how little justification there is for pointing to this method as something that could even remotely be connected with a somehow pathological soul life. In doing so, I shall today refrain from what I have often allowed myself to present here over the years; I shall refrain from a more detailed description of what the human soul has to accomplish in order to enter upon the path of spiritual research and to follow this path. A detailed description of the soul's inner processes can be found in the books already mentioned here: in the second part of my “Outline of Esoteric Science”, also at the end of my “Theosophy” and in detail in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Much will be derived from these writings with regard to the methods. Today, however, I would like to describe the effect of the spiritual research path on the human soul, not so much what the spiritual researcher has to do, but rather how his soul is affected by what he has to accomplish.

One of the essential things that the spiritual researcher has to accomplish in order to move into the spiritual world is, as has often been emphasized, a certain transformation, a development of thinking, of human thinking. After all, we also distinguish the three human soul powers: thinking, feeling and willing. All three soul forces undergo a certain transformation under the influence of the spiritual scientific path, a certain inner development in the life of the soul.

One such direction of development now relates to thinking. What happens, we might ask, to what a person calls their thinking when they want to become a spiritual scientist? In a certain way, an impulse is given to thinking – an impulse given out of the arbitrariness of the soul – so that this thinking becomes something other than it is in ordinary life. In ordinary life, thinking develops thoughts. These thoughts are there to depict some external reality. It is said that one has a true thought in that this true thought refers to a reality that it depicts. Such an aim of thinking is perfectly healthy for everyday thinking and also for thinking in the ordinary sense of the word scientific.

For the spiritual researcher, however, this thinking, which is justified in everyday life and must be applied unconditionally in ordinary science, is only the starting point of his path of research. The spiritual researcher must devote himself to such inner activities that he does not turn his attention so much to the content of the thoughts within the thought process - this, as I said, is important for other things, not primarily for the spiritual research path. So the attention is not turned to the content of the thoughts, but - is, after all, a specific activity, an inner accomplishment. The attention is diverted - this is essentially the culture of this thinking that is meant here - the attention is diverted from the content of the thinking and is directed entirely to the inner activity of thinking that is being done.

The thinker captures himself in the act of thinking, focusing so strongly on this thinking, on what is actually going on inside him, that this attention is completely diverted from any thought content - yes, that it to such an extent that the content of thought is completely expelled from consciousness, and the person ultimately comes to do this himself in an inner process of activity that is thinking, but which is not filled by certain thoughts relating to anything.

But as a result, one experiences the peculiarity in the thought process of bringing something to consciousness that, in ordinary life and in ordinary science, must not be brought to consciousness in this thought process, because otherwise the judgment about external, sensually real things is clouded.

A volitional process is hidden at the basis of our thought process. This, which is the will to think, which is actually an unconscious volitional process in the thought process, is detached from what thinking otherwise is in life, and the soul holds consciousness solely and exclusively on this inner volitional reality of thinking. In this way, through an inner, spiritual-soul process, which is absolutely real, something is detached from the thinking of ordinary life, in the same sense, only spiritually-soul-like, not physically, something is — as in the chemical process that separates hydrogen from oxygen, just as hydrogen is released from water, just as hydrogen is released from water, in exactly the same sense — only transferred to the soul-spiritual. So it becomes a scientific method that is well recognized in the outer life, and it is simply transferred to the soul-spiritual.

What one arrives at can only be experienced, dear attendees, of course only be experienced. And what is experienced is that one has now detached a process of the will from the thought process, and one now knows that by living in it, one no longer lives in the physical body. At first this sounds fantastic to anyone who is not familiar with these things. It also sounds fantastic to many who believe that their habitual thinking is based on solid scientific ground, and therefore view something like what has just been said as fantastic from the outset.

Nevertheless, the more one continues to pursue the development of thinking described above with perseverance and iron energy in one's soul, the more one becomes aware of how, in the end, one really lives in an element that only experiences the will present in the thinking process in the soul; but experienced in such a way that the experience is free from the body.

You experience this freedom from the body in two ways, through two things. The first is that you can have the – and it is not too strong a word to use – harrowing experience of realizing that, when you have come as far as just described, one's own corporeality, and one's physical experiences, which one otherwise experiences as belonging to oneself, that one has these outside oneself, as one otherwise has mountains, tables and chairs [– just external facts –] in front of oneself in physical perception. Being outside of the physical body is experienced by no longer having the physical body within one's subjective experience, but rather having it as an external object. This is one thing.

The second thing, however, is that a very definite transformation of thinking takes place through the processes that have just been described. Ordinary thinking, which a person must develop in everyday life and in ordinary science, has the peculiarity - and must have the peculiarity - that the thoughts it develops can be remembered. For a healthy life of soul within the physical body, it is a necessity that the thoughts that are developed about external things or about the inner processes of the soul should, if we may use the rough expression, stick to them as they live and can later be brought up again from this life of soul. This possibility of recalling the thoughts we have experienced, this ability to remember, must be connected with the healthy life of the soul in our everyday life and ordinary scientific work.

I have often mentioned here how this healthy soul life would be disturbed if such an ability to remember did not exist back to the point in time when we can become aware of our self in childhood, in our first childhood. A soul life that has an interruption in the continuous ability to remember, that could not recognize that its experiences belong to its self, that would be a sick soul life.

Such illnesses of the soul do exist. There are people who experience a condition in which they are completely rational and can carry out intelligent actions, but they forget how they have seen this or that happen in their inner life or how this or that has developed in their inner life. Because their I is interrupted in them, this I that is so intimately connected with the ability to remember, such people can nevertheless appear to have a sick soul life in their ability to remember, despite the fact that they carry out intelligent actions.

So, dear ones, the ability to remember is connected with the nurturing of thoughts in thinking.

It is quite different with the inner soul activity that one enters into when one carries out in the soul what has just been described. Then one has the opportunity to really weave in an initially indeterminate experience. You know full well that you are immersed in a new reality, one that is essentially different from the external sensory reality and also from the reality that can be grasped by the mind.

But what one experiences, which initially shows itself in images, so-called imaginations, weaving through the reality of the will - you will find this explained in the books mentioned - shows itself in such a way that it cannot pass into the ability to remember as it is immediately. And that is an essential part of this higher thinking. Because there is no other term for it, it should be called: This higher thinking, which is developed out of thinking, cannot be remembered so directly. It belongs to a world in which one now lives and moves, a world that is in constant becoming, a world that flits by. It could initially be compared to fleeting dreams that do not imprint themselves on memory, where these dreams are different from the ordinary dreams of everyday life.

If you take this immediate psychic experience that has just been described, then you can say: you experience a certain content of the soul; it is not immediately imprinted on the memory as it is, [in such a way that you could later say, “What did I experience back then?”] and that you would not need to relive the experience, but could simply remember it. That is not the case! If you want to have what you have experienced spiritually back again, then it must be experienced again in the same way. And you can recognize from this that you are really in the spiritual world, that no memory remains of what you remember in the spiritual world. You can recognize it precisely from this!

And you can tell something else too: you can tell that everything that, like ordinary, everyday thinking, leaves memory traces, that this is dependent in its process on the physical body of the person as its tool. And it is precisely the spiritual researcher who, in this respect, can fully agree with certain directions of modern science. It is precisely the spiritual researcher who realizes that this ordinary thinking cannot take place without the physical organism, the nervous system and that which is connected with the nervous system in the rest of the physical organism being set in motion. And through the - again, roughly speaking - imprinting of the life of thought in the bodily life, the remnants of memory remain.

In this way, one can learn to distinguish between what has really been experienced in the spiritual [from what] is only conceived and bound to the physical. And precisely by recognizing the spiritual experience of the kind described, by realizing that it is basically only there in the experience itself, in its process itself, one learns to recognize it, [learns to] distinguish it from everything that is bound to physical corporeality. Because in the moment when any remnant remains in the physical human being, the bodily life is also involved.

However, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to penetrate into spiritual science, you have to make more precise distinctions. You might now ask: So is there no way for the spiritual researcher to remember what he has once experienced in the realm of the spirit in the way described?

To speak correctly, I have always used a word that I would like to draw attention to. I have used the word: “The spiritual experience does not immediately imprint itself on the memory.” Not “immediately”; but when it has been experienced, when this spiritual experience has been made, then it can be allowed to flow over into the ordinary presentation. It can be converted into an ordinary thought, and this ordinary thought can then be remembered in exactly the same way as one can remember an external life process. One has formed an idea of it. The idea is retained, but the life process is not carried along in life. If one wants to have it again, then one must relive it, exactly as with an outer life process, which also does not itself live on in memory, but only in the idea that one has formed of it.

Exactly as it is with the external life process, so it is in the spiritual experience. Not the spiritual experience as such passes over into memory, but only that which has arisen when one has first allowed the spiritual experience itself to flow into the ordinary life of thought through the exercise of the will.

The process of detaching the spiritual and soul life from the bodily life takes place as I have just described. But this side must not remain the only one. And so all the inner soul processes that are intended to point the way to the spiritual world are described in the books mentioned. They are designed in such a way that this development of the soul life, as it has just been characterized, is paralleled by another development. And just as the one development directs thinking in a certain direction through an inner impulse, so the other development directs the will life of the person, the will, to a certain development, which in turn is not present in ordinary life and of which ordinary science, including ordinary spiritual science, can know nothing.

As I said, today we are not here to repeat things that have often been discussed here, but to describe the effects. We can cultivate the will of the human being by looking at this will, as one would otherwise only look at external objects. In ordinary life, one has will. You have volitional impulses that arise from opinions, from external concerns and the like. But if you want, what is wanting flows so closely with what is carried out as an action and the like, or it remains contained in the sensation of desire, that the actual volitional process is not looked at. Even the self-observation that is often referred to as mystical, which so easily believes it can achieve certain [goals] that it sets itself, this self-observation also knows nothing of a real observation of the will.

This real observation of the will must in turn be achieved through long, energetic and persistent soul work. In this way, the human being comes to give the striving a certain form: to become a spectator of his own will. But then something very strange happens. By striving to become a spectator of one's own will, by striving, so to speak, to look at one's own will as one otherwise looks at external mineral or plant or other entities, one gradually loses oneself completely as a matter of course, one ceases to be a spectator, so to speak.

So the strange thing happens that what one must energetically strive for – to be a spectator of one's will – is that in the process of developing this spectator role, one's will is extinguished like itself! You really do extinguish yourself by trying to look more and more at your will, you extinguish yourself!

On the other hand, the will that one gazes upon will bear less and less the character of the will, the character of wanting. What one has previously experienced as volition will appear to one as a superficial configuration of the inner soul existence. And from this surface, as it were, something emerges from the underground through this surface, through something that one knew nothing about before, one learns to recognize that something is hidden beneath the surface of the will.

What I am going to tell you now is not just an image, not a metaphor or an illusion, but a full reality, a reality that is even more real than any external, tangible event! That which springs forth out of the will, which always remains unconscious in everyday life, is, yes, it is consciousness itself. One experiences that one carries within oneself during one's whole life an inner, invisible, unconscious spectator of one's whole volition.

This other person in the person is quite real. It is present in every human soul, and it can only be seen by directing one's gaze to the volition. And in that, as it were, one's own consciousness is extinguished, [through the surface of the will another, higher consciousness emerges] that takes the place of the ordinary consciousness, it is the reality of the will that is brought out of thinking through spiritual development in the way indicated above. So it is a different consciousness from the everyday consciousness that is now released from the activity of the will.

And now, instead of merely looking at the world with our ordinary consciousness, we learn to look at a [new] world with this consciousness that we ourselves have born out of the surging and driving of our will.

But that which has developed out of the will, that which one gets to know as a power of the will and soul, must connect with that which develops out of thinking. This consciousness that has broken out of the will must, I would say, connect spiritually and chemically with that reality of the will that has broken out of thinking. Then the inner spiritual man is present - who now knows himself as the spiritual man completely free from the bodily and at the same time knows himself in a spiritual reality, just as the sensual man with his eyes and ears knows himself in the physical-sensual reality.

If one were to develop only that which can be brought out of thinking, one would enter into an ever more anxious, one might even say fearful, state of mind, into a feeling of inner loneliness. By detaching from thinking that which can be detached from it, one actually only finds oneself, oneself weaving and existing in spiritual becoming - in a spiritual process of becoming. The one-sided experience of this could be compared to the ability to stretch out one's hands everywhere, to make grasping movements everywhere, but not being able to grasp anything. One would experience one's own spiritual-soul reality, but not a spiritual-soul reality outside of oneself. This spiritual-soul reality outside of one is experienced by the fact that the consciousness, which has been hinted at, is raised out of the will-being. And in and through this consciousness, in this and through this consciousness, one now experiences a spiritual external world, as one experiences an external physical world through the senses.

You see, dear attendees, that in all striving for spiritual research, it is important to develop something within the soul that makes that soul completely independent of all physicality. And the processes that really develop the soul are solely soul-spiritual processes. Everything that happens for the further development of the soul, all these are intimate, inner soul processes in which the body cannot participate; because they consist precisely in their essence, that the spiritual-soul is drawn out of the physical. From this it follows that the physical body as such cannot have any part in the development of real methods of spiritual research, because their essential nature consists precisely in making oneself independent of everything physical.

At the moment one believes that through some physical process, which must be stripped away to such an extent that even memory is immediately excluded, one can enter into the spiritual world through some physical process, one is completely mistaken.

And now, dear attendees, ask yourselves: how can it be possible to somehow bring about an unhealthy human experience through methods that lead people to experience something that is completely free from their physicality? How can physicality be ruined, how can it be affected by something that is precisely what it is because it makes itself independent of all physicality? It will admittedly take a while before it is recognized in wider circles of those people who have a scientific mind, that true spiritual scientific methods - and these are only those that really lead into the spiritual world - make man independent of all corporeality, so that it is absurd to speak of an ill soul life in any connection with the spiritual research methods! For it is precisely spiritual research – when it is based on such premises as those just briefly characterized – that must agree with true natural science regarding everything that modern science has to say about the dependence of soul life on physical experience.

Even ordinary memory, which is thus an entirely soul power that is part of healthy soul life, even ordinary memory knows: spiritual research is linked to the tools of the body, because thinking must work in such a way that the fabric of thought sends its waves into the physical realm and thus gives the physical realm its due by developing thoughts that are capable of being remembered.

Spiritual research has come to a deep insight with regard to the share of bodily life in the life of the soul. And it is only a delusion and a misconception when some scientific school claims that true spiritual research wants to deny the dependence of ordinary thought or will life on the body. It is precisely through this spiritual research that it becomes clear that what is to be independent, soul-spiritual life must first be released from ordinary soul life.

But the ordinary life of the soul is such – and it is precisely from the point of view of the liberated life of the soul that one experiences it – the ordinary life of the soul is such that it is everywhere submerged in the ordinary life of the body and thus dependent to a certain extent on this life of the body.

And further, in the spiritual scientist's research, it is shown how other expressions of the soul, other experiences of the soul, which are rightly counted among the pathological experiences of the soul, are also bound to the life of the body. When the natural scientist comes and says: We know visions, we know hallucinations, we know illusions - we must, even if we have not researched all the details, definitely take the view that an illusory, a hallucinatory soul life is at the root of this, that the bodily tool that has to be used by the soul life is not functioning in the right way. When the natural scientist says this, he will find that the true spiritual researcher is in complete agreement with him. This is because the combination of visions, hallucinations and illusions with that which has just been described as developing in true spiritual research means combining things that are as different as day and night.

The development of soul powers, which spiritual research requires, lies in the exact opposite direction to the processes in the soul that lead to hallucinations, visions or illusions. And anyone who is in the process of developing spiritual research abilities knows that they should not devote themselves to that part of the soul which can lead to visions, illusions or hallucinations, but that he should devote himself to those forces in the soul which alone are fruitful for him, which alone lead him to something that is suitable for dispelling, combating and dispelling hallucinations, illusions and visions. The development of spiritual research into the life of the soul lies in an intensification of this, in something that makes visions, hallucinations or illusions healthy. Because hallucinations, visions and illusions make the human being dependent on the life of the body in a much greater degree than the ordinary life of the soul, which he develops in everyday life, this healthy ordinary life of the soul, makes it appear dependent on the body.

This does, of course, touch on a sensitive issue, in that spiritual researchers are perhaps misunderstood not so much by natural science as by a school of thought that also claims to be spiritual research. And here we touch on the area where some people claim that true spiritual research - which is difficult - should not be difficult. Understanding a watch is difficult; but you get involved with it if you want to understand it; but the deep secrets of the world and the secrets of the soul should not be difficult to understand!

But those who shy away from the difficulty of spiritual research find an easy way to look into the spiritual world, precisely by resorting to a visionary, hallucinatory life – even if this hallucinatory world appears in all kinds of guises. And the evil is that spiritual research is all too easily lumped together by those who do not like to get involved with the differences with all the amateurish goings-on that claim visions, hallucinations instead of true spiritual insight.

The spiritual researcher takes the following stand on these matters, and stands by it so firmly that what he has to advocate becomes spiritual research practice. He takes this standpoint: the ordinary mental life that makes us familiar with the physical environment in a healthy way, and with much of what can be grasped about the physical environment through the mind that is tied to the brain, this mental life is bound to the whole human body in its thinking, feeling and willing. The normally organized human body is the tool for this outwardly healthy spiritual life. If true enlightenment is to occur, so that one really looks into a spiritual world, then the human being must rise above this normal, ordinary looking at things, which is bound to the body, to a healthy body. He must make his looking more comprehensive. And above all, he must make it more suitable, more subject to the will. He must do it in such a way that, while a large part of what takes place in ordinary mental life remains unconscious precisely because the body serves as an instrument, in spiritual contemplation man cannot be as passive as he is in ordinary contemplation, but must be active in everything he contemplates; he must develop will, inner activity. In short, in true clairvoyance, the human being's experience becomes broader than that which is bound to the body.

But what is seen in hallucinatory, visionary, illusionary soul life is more bound to the body. Because it is usually not the whole body that is seen, but only a part of the body – so that another part of the body is even paralyzed – it is more bound to the body than the ordinary spiritual life that is unfolded in everyday life.

So that one does not, through visions, hallucinations or illusions, gain access to a spiritual world that can give one more insights than the outer world of the senses. On the contrary, one does not gain access to a supersensible world, but to a subsensible world. One uses a smaller part of one's body as a tool than in ordinary life, in which one uses one's whole body as a tool.

But this is also why hallucinations, visions, illusions are less subject to arbitrariness, less subject to acts of the will than the perceptions of ordinary life; while true clairvoyance is a more active process, that is, it is more subject to the will than this perception of ordinary life. And the images that arise in hallucinations, visions and illusions are much more bound to the body than the images of ordinary memory. And if man were clever, he would value the occurrence of the images of ordinary memory more highly than all the fantasies that live in visions and hallucinations and illusions, insofar as they are bound to the body in the way described. He would realize that it is only his need for sensation that leads him to appreciate not what he sees in everyday life, but to appreciate more what is rare, what one produces through some rare process - to appreciate this more for the exploration of the secrets of life than the everyday observation. And in this unfortunate, psychic sensationalism lies a multitude of aberrations that consist in an amateurish spiritual worldview.

It is gratifying to be able to point out that one has this or that medium. The spiritual researcher, who says yes to everything from his consciousness; you don't have to believe that. He says yes just as in everyday life everything comes from his consciousness. You can't be sure. You don't have to believe it. But if you have a medium, you can be sure, because the will plays no role in it, everything happens in natural processes. Real, will-free science is present!

The true spiritual researcher knows that the field of vision into the world is narrower for the medium – although nothing should be said against some research methods involving mediumship, I have already spoken about this here – but the true spiritual researcher sees that the field of vision into the world is narrower for the medium, not wider, but narrower than for ordinary observation in everyday life. In ordinary observation, in ordinary science, which simply come about with healthy senses and with a healthy mind, one experiences many more of the secrets of existence than through any kind of mediumship, through which one can only experience something strange - something strange because under abnormal conditions a smaller field of vision is overlooked. (Interjections: “That's wrong!”; “Oh oh!”).

But that is precisely what it is about, that for true clairvoyance this field of vision must be expanded, that this field of vision must be expanded precisely by the fact that what one otherwise experiences in terms of world secrets in ordinary life undergoes an addition, in order to experience what is now being experienced, completely independently of all physical activity!

It is therefore, esteemed audience, that a number of people are gradually coming to recognize, precisely from the genuine, true conditions of natural science, how all development in clairvoyance to the opposite side, from which, wherever the human soul develops, when it falls into hallucinations, mediumship and the like due to a downgrading of healthy life.

I have already indicated, dear attendees, that it will take quite a while before the recognition of such a spiritual path can be achieved on the basis of genuine science. Because the people who still call what is presented as the essence of spiritual research wrong will still be around for a long time! These people belong in the same category as those who initially rebelled when the Copernican worldview was introduced into human history; these people belong among those who are not counted on when it comes to the further development of because they are naturally subject to the law that everything that enters world development may initially appear to be wrong, or at least to be something dreamy, crazy, fantastic. [...]

But this, esteemed attendees, already indicates how, basically, I would say, the balance between spiritual science and natural science is slowly coming. Little by little, natural science will realize that the true spiritual researcher is indeed on their ground.

But today there is still a danger that must be faced directly, and it comes from another side. This danger is not to be sought among those who, perhaps because of well-founded habits of thought, are opponents of spiritual science because they are scientists, true, honest scientists; but the danger lies with those who often believe themselves to be true followers of spiritual science; for spiritual science has to shake off much of its coat-tails, if I may use the rough expression, that clings to it. And above all, it has to draw a clear dividing line between the paths it takes and that have been characterized, and those that lead into the hallucinatory, visionary and so on, into the media, and that do not broaden the field of vision in relation to everyday life, but narrow it.

Someone who has become established in any field of natural science, let us say – because this must be of particular interest to us for our topic today – let us say in the scientifically based psychiatry of today, who has become established in such a field today, who has experience through faithful and faithfully meant scientific research , what the seriousness of the methods of procedure in natural science means, who is familiar with the efforts in the genuine sense of truth, which prevails in the field of natural science today, where it appears truthfully and honestly, must, in a certain way, be given attention if he is still unable to approach spiritual science simply because of his habitual way of thinking. And if it happens to him, which can easily happen, that he does not immediately get to know spiritual science where it is represented by its serious methods - by methods that are just as serious as the scientific methods - if he does not get to know this spiritual science in these sources, but gets to know it through all kinds of followers and if he then throws this following together with what true spiritual research is, there is a danger.

I do not want to talk about appearances, dear attendees, I do not want to talk about the fact that today there are still people who see an essential thing in how one feeds oneself in order to get on the path of a certain spiritual research! Whether one is a vegetarian or not is a matter of taste; it depends on other things. There may be certain advantages and benefits; but with regard to the intimate development of the soul, which generates the forces that have been mentioned and leads to the spiritual world, what one eats or does not eat has nothing to do with it, directly. It can make the physical life, which goes hand in hand with it, more comfortable; but it has nothing to do with it directly. You cannot eat your way up into the spiritual world by not eating certain things, for example. And anyone who believes that you can eat your way up into the spiritual world through such external materialistic processes or not eat – let's say starve – is just as much on the wrong track as someone who, out of his materialism, what de La Mettrie, whom I quoted the day before yesterday as the father of modern materialism, saw as the influence of the food of a meal, the substances ingested, on the actual life of a person. These things are indeed plausible.

It is plausible, for example, much more plausible than anything that the spiritual researcher has to bring forward in further development, it is much more plausible when de La Mettrie says: What power joy has over us. Joy awakens in a sad heart; it passes over to the souls of the fellow diners and is expressed in those charming songs in which the French excel. And then de La Mettrie points out – draws attention to the fact, which is certainly true – that Erasmus of Rotterdam and Fontenelle, for example, would not have become the geniuses they were if just a small cog in their brain had developed differently than it did.

The truths that come from this side are characterized above all by the fact that they are self-evident, so self-evident as to be trivial, but they do not touch on the subject of true spiritual science. Because a statement like that – de La Mettrie makes it in relation to Fontenelle and Erasmus – can even be taken further. If you think of it as even more exaggerated, you can say: Well, if Erasmus' mother had been murdered by some bandit before Erasmus was born, then the whole of Erasmus would not have come into being. There you can see the dependence of the spiritual life on the physical.

Yes, esteemed attendees, that is the essential point: the opponent of spiritual science does not even suspect from this side how true spiritual research basically agrees with his trivialities. I do not want to speak of other external appearances either, but unfortunately a spiritual research world view is often judged by those external appearances, which, for example, express themselves - if it were not discussed, there would be no need to comment on it - in the fact that certain ladies who consider themselves to be spiritual researchers wear their hair short - if they are men, they wear their hair long - that they wear certain clothes and so on. Well, of course, all such frippery can be lumped together. But there is a much more serious area - the one that is most certainly likely to give rise to the worst attacks and opposition to spiritual science in the near future, and in the more distant future.

With true natural science, for example, and with true psychiatry, spiritual science will be able to fully agree. The spiritual researcher will readily concede to the psychiatrist that there is, for example, a certain pathological mystical disposition, and that simply due to some characteristic of the human body, a person shows a certain urge for inner brooding; that he then comes up with the idea of wanting to find the solution to great world riddles in a certain chaotic inner emotional life. That such drives are connected with the life of the body, that is what the psychiatrist of today will have to assert. In this the spiritual researcher will be in complete agreement with him! And he can do so because that which he, as a soul-spiritual being, must develop in order to enter the spiritual world must be made independent of the bodily, and must therefore also remain independent of a possibly diseased bodily.

Anyone who adopts the perspective that spiritual research must take must look at precisely such a process of a strengthened soul life, even in the case of a pathological, mystical disposition of the soul. And so, if you yourself had a mystical disposition, this morbid mystical disposition could be viewed like an object from the outside. And you would come to a healthy judgment about your own work if you strove for a true, healthy spiritual-scientific point of view.

In this area, it will depend on distinctions. The spiritual researcher would have to show, with regard to certain spiritual phenomena, how spiritual realities around him are experienced in such a way that the experiences can only be expressed in colorful images. You will find such colorful images described in my Theosophy and in Occult Science in Outline. When such colored pictures, such auric pictures, arise out of true spiritual research, one must be clear about the fact that they are developed with the inner will for that which is really spiritually experienced, and that such a description of a spiritual experience of color is not made in a passive letting-upon-oneself of some color impression (which, however, can also be a hallucination).

With regard to hallucinations in this area, the spiritual researcher is in complete agreement with the psychiatrist, who is grounded in natural science. The spiritual researcher knows that such perceptions can naturally arise out of the sick soul life. There are people who simply experience very definite inner color experiences when they read certain words, when certain letters affect them; there are people who, when something unpleasant is said to them, hear it only in the left ear; when something pleasant is said to them, in the right ear, and so on. These things belong entirely to the sphere with which bodily life is connected - more intimately connected with soul life than in the case of ordinary, everyday views of the world.

But the spiritual researcher stands on the same ground as the natural scientist with regard to these things. And more precisely than the natural scientist, he can see how such involuntary hallucinatory vision arises from the body's predestined devotion to its own processes, while in true clairvoyance, free, independent activity of the will, independent of the body, is involved in every detail that one experiences in relation to the spiritual world. When a person succumbs, let us say, to delusions or obsessions, the spiritual researcher will perhaps stand even more firmly on the ground occupied today by the scientifically trained psychiatrist, with regard to these areas in particular, and be clear about the fact that certain ideas that arise and exert a compulsion on the person that he cannot resist are conditioned by the fact that the life of the body has been pathologically altered. But with his spiritual life freed from the life of the body, he will be able to look more closely at this bondage of all involuntary, abnormal ideas to the body and its functions as a natural scientist himself. If only one would realize ever more deeply that true spiritual science need not be in disharmony with what natural science asserts as a justified demand.

But, dear assembled guests, although it is true that the spiritual researcher arrives at something that is outside of him, even if it is his own self, and fundamentally cannot even change his body if he does not , although this is absolutely correct, there will nevertheless be more and more people who believe that they recognize in a certain development that is bound to the body that which also leads to real insights into a completely different world than the ordinary one. And there will be confusion among them; and these are often precisely those who lean on all kinds of spiritual-scientific, even real spiritual-scientific worldviews, and these spiritual-scientific worldviews are often judged by them.

There are people, let us say, who from the outset are afflicted with some kind of predisposition to abnormal mental life. If they had remained outside of a spiritual-scientific current, then, of course, they would have come to madness themselves in the course of a certain time. Now, due to some circumstances, they have come close to a spiritual-scientific worldview. Instead of giving themselves up to all kinds of crazy ideas outside, they then give themselves up to their crazy ideas within this school of thought. Because then, if one does not distinguish, one can of course very truly say: Well, the school of thought has driven the person concerned crazy! - But in the end, what are such statements worth?

They remind you again and again, dear attendees, of that old woman who looked after the great anatomist Hyrtl in his last days; and when he died, she went out into the street and said: Yes, now Hyrtl has died! That's what happens when you spend so much time studying! Then a stroke strikes him down! Hyrtl lived to be eighty-four years old!

This should be considered proof that, in this case at least, studying was less harmful than drinking wine and beer is for some people, and that a stroke can strike at a much earlier age.

Equally clever are those judgments that are often made when someone, afflicted with some kind of mental illness, has spiritual scientific views and after some time shows himself to be crazy - when it is said: If he had not come to this spiritual science, he would not have gone crazy!

The truth is this: one can, of course, just as well as through cleverness, come to spiritual science through madness and just as well through one's weak abilities come to madness there, or through some other kind of abnormal abilities come to madness, if one is unsatisfied by this or that in life. One goes here or there to find satisfaction, and then, of course, believes that one can feel comfortable in what initially seems difficult, by indulging in strange, unclear ideas that one has no desire to clarify, one believes that one can free oneself from some of life's pressures. The amount of spiritual research attributed to this side, which must therefore be characterized, cannot be exhaustively stated!

This, however, demands, demands more and more that it be pointed out that by its very nature, all spiritual research methods cannot, under any circumstances, be related to any kind of pathological mental life, because they are built precisely on freeing oneself from everything that can cause pathological mental life.

But just as I was able to point out certain dangers and adversities that are asserted against spiritual science in detail, so it can be said that with regard to its representation in social life, in human life in general, it is all too easily lumped together with all sorts of amateurish, even fraudulent, charlatan-like paths. And because these things, dear attendees, are now being discussed in more materialistic circles of world outlook, the spiritual researcher must necessarily point out how he draws a strict dividing line between what he, in an honest striving for truth, pursues only as a goal of truth, and all the various things that are asserting themselves in a field where one can so easily rely on superstition and on the credulity and for all kinds of impure goals, people try to spread alleged spiritual science or - as it is also called - occultism, so that people are confused by all kinds of secretions of what occult knowledge is supposed to be, and when they have been confused, they have a certain power over them - even if in our time it is said over and over again: it is the time when we have finally freed ourselves from the old belief in authority and when people profess “free judgment”.

Well, the truth of what this claim is based on is not so far away. It is true that people boast about it very much, saying that in earlier times people believed in the dogmas of the church fathers. Yes, for those people the church fathers were called Tertullian, Gregory of Nazianz, Irenaeus and so on; for modern people, who in their opinion - and that they have the opinion is perhaps even more harmful than it was for the old people that they did not have it. For modern people, who believe that they do not look to any authorities, the “church fathers” today are called: Helmholtz, Haeckel, Darwin, Dubois-Reymond and so on - they are only secular church fathers. They are spoken of more as a principle; but the dependencies on them are quite the same. We must not believe that credulity and superstition have particularly diminished in our time. They have only taken on a different form.

And so the true spiritual researcher is necessary so that he is not confused, especially in the present fateful time, with what, under the guise of an alleged occult science, pursues all sorts of dishonest and corrupting goals. So that he cannot be lumped together with it, for this is happening more and more every day: everything, even the most crass and foolish superstition, is lumped together with that spiritual science which, in fact, has a brighter, clearer, more illuminated thinking than even ordinary science, as can be sufficiently proven.

And here attention must be drawn to an apparent phenomenon, because otherwise errors could all too easily arise in this field if it were not known what the spiritual researcher wants to discard; it is positively a duty to draw attention to certain things that are also connected with our present momentous world-historical events. The following is mentioned only, as already stated, to set forth spiritual science in its purity and to draw a line against dishonesty. Only individual facts are singled out, and only for the reason that they are discussed in newspapers hostile to spiritual science.

For example, a personality who lives in the western part of Europe, in a capital city of the western part of Europe, published a kind of “almanac”, a yearbook, every year for years. Such a yearbook for 1913 has already been published in 1912. In this yearbook for 1913, which appeared in 1912, the words were written, esteemed attendees, with reference to the development of Austria - the words were: the one who believes that he will govern will not govern; on the other hand, another young man, who is believed to not yet govern, will govern. And in the almanac that was printed in 1913 for 1914, these things were repeated.

The credulity of our time, the foolish superstition, can of course easily believe in all sorts of prophecies. And how many will have believed in prophecy in this area!

Perhaps people will believe less in prophecy when they know that almost simultaneously with the appearance of this passage in the said almanac, the following sentences appeared in a very ordinary Parisian newspaper, “Paris-Midi”: “It is said that it is wished that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria be assassinated at the right time.

The personality who wrote such things in her almanac is probably connected with certain circles that pursue this or that goal through all kinds of underground channels. And anyone who is serious about spiritual research must also show that they agree with serious, scientific thinking in this area, even if it initially comes from the field of materialism, and not with the fraud that, under the guise of prophecy, pursues all kinds of charlatanistic or dishonest goals. The same personality who published this almanac and supposedly knew how to predict what would happen as a prophecy of the future, went from Paris to Rome in the first days of August 1914 to influence certain people there in their way to do certain things, which then contributed to the well-known interest in current events, or at least was supposed to contribute something.

The personality who wrote such things in her almanac is probably connected with certain circles that pursue this or that goal through all kinds of underground channels. And anyone who is truly sincere in their spiritual research must also show that they agree with serious, scientific thinking in this area, even if it initially comes from the field of materialism, and not with the fraud that pursues all kinds of charlatanistic or dishonest goals under the guise of prophecy. The same personality who published this almanac and supposedly knew how to predict what would happen like a prophecy of the future, went from Paris to Rome in the first days of August 1914 to influence certain people there in their way to certain things, which then contributed at least something to the well-known interest in current events, or at least should contribute something.

Because, as already mentioned, these things are publicly discussed, the spiritual researcher must point out that all unhealthy response of the human soul to this or that “revelation” based on such foundations must be rooted out by true spiritual research! True spiritual research will not work towards the unhealthy, but towards the healthy. For true spiritual research is not capable of obscuring thinking or making man stupid in regard to the outer real processes of life. Everything that paralyzes spiritual life and leads it astray, as has been described, also clouds thinking and makes it dull to the sober realities of life. Everything that broadens, these spiritual explorations that expand one's view beyond ordinary life, also enlightens one's healthy judgment of this ordinary life. This does not force people to be deceived under the influence of superstition, but it does lead to a clearer and brighter understanding of life's circumstances.

In this area, spiritual science still has much to offer and much strength to give. For today, esteemed attendees, one does not notice how, I might say, dull the weapon of thought has become, how much thoughtlessness always prevails!

In conclusion, let me give you another example of this, which will show you where unhealthy thinking lies and that this unhealthy thinking does not lie in spiritual science.

I would like to say: chance has just brought it home to me, which I now have to explain in relation to the following. Some time ago, dear attendees, I gave a lecture in a city in Austria. There I developed thoughts that I had also developed here in Munich, partly in the lecture that I gave here months ago, about the world view of German idealism, partly in the lecture that I gave here the day before yesterday about the individual national souls.

I think that all healthy thinking will be able to at least recognize this – however one may critically view it – at least recognize that when one truly looks into the spirits of the people, into the individual national souls, certain characteristics present themselves, so that the individual national soul differs from the other in a certain way.

I also presented this in that city in Austria. Not only did a confused mind in a newspaper at the time go on about this truth, which he did not understand at all; he also said: I would have taken the opportunity, because the military power relations in the east and West and Central Europe happened to have brought about antagonism, to now also construct a spiritual antagonism. Well, that was a confusion that one can absolutely conceive in a “daily paper”. But that was not enough; rather, a reprint of what was in that “daily paper” at the time appeared in a German magazine. And in a German magazine, a man writes - according to him, he is an Austrian German - the following words, really the following words:

"The critic's accusation that Steiner has constructed opposing cultures from the current constellation of powers is justified. With the best will in the world, I am unable to perceive any essential difference between Central European and Western and Eastern European culture, as Steiner does. In my opinion, European culture is essentially completely the same.

Consider the light of thought that such a claim casts! Consider it, honored attendees! Yet the same man even finds the opportunity to say:

“Intellectual life has also developed in this direction and is absorbed in this pursuit. The wild greed of the European man of culture for the possession of earthly goods would degenerate into a predatory struggle of all against all if individuals were not constrained by iron state structures.”

Now I ask you: Did the “human individuals” today declare war, or did those at the heads of the states?

So with a complete slap in the face of what is accessible to the simplest thought, people are beguiled! Such things exist in the world of that thinking, which one does not want to recognize as unhealthy today because one has become too indifferent to it. Instead, one finds, the less one is aware of it in particular, in what is contained in true spiritual science, that which is intended to mislead people, that which is intended to create confused ideas in people.

Truly, the spiritual researcher could, if he found it somehow compatible with his otherwise sound character, could fall into a certain complacency when he sees the confusion of ideas prevailing today as a result of a very common-place thinking - but which in truth turns out to be quite unhealthy compared to the healthy thinking life of spiritual research.

It is possible – one must, I would say, as with Hamlet's words: “Writing table here!”, so that one can write it down – it is possible that a person exists who is able to tie something like this to humanity! And it is possible that a magazine exists that prints something like this! The person who publishes the magazine is called: Dr. Friedrich Maier and lives in Tübingen. And attention must be drawn to such things so that one can see where unhealthy thinking and spiritual life exist.

In this case, dear attendees, if one or the other might be surprised that I say such things with apparent zeal – as one might always believe in such a case – perhaps out of wounded, personal vanity, I can in this case provide the counter proof, I can adduce the counterproof from the journal itself – although anyone who knows me and is familiar with how I represent spiritual science will trust me when I say that whether what I do and say is praised or criticized by someone else is of as little personal concern to me as possible! Truly, whether someone praises or criticizes what I do and say is of as little personal concern to me as possible. But when it is a matter of pointing out where there is public mental illness or health, then I feel called upon to have my say, precisely from the point of view of pure spiritual science.

As I said, I can prove that I am not dealing with vanity here; for I have published a brochure - “Thoughts during the Time of War. For Germans and those who do not believe they have to hate – Berlin 1915). These are – admittedly with somewhat different examples, but essentially – exactly the same thoughts that I expressed at the time in Linz an der Donau and in other lectures, which I – as I have explained here – on the diversity of the European national souls. The thoughts are contained in it, of which the magazine I have just mentioned has spoken in such a way, as it has been suggested, has spoken in such a really nonsensical way. The next issue of this magazine contains the continuation of the article. In any case, it continues in the same vein. And at the end of the same issue there is a section in which the brochure 'Thoughts During the Time of War' is discussed. And there this book is particularly praised. Part of the article was written in August 1915, the rest in [October] 1915. So in this [...] article, alongside the article in which the foolishness in question is mentioned, there is also a laudatory review of the book that says exactly the same thing! So here we have a case, ladies and gentlemen, which I just wanted to highlight, that should really be seen, and from which it can be seen how true spiritual science is often placed in the overall spiritual life of humanity. I have often pointed out how the spiritual and cultural conditions of the present demand that from now on and into the future, spiritual science must be incorporated into the development of humanity.

Of course there will be people for a long time to come who will denounce, defame and fight spiritual science. But spiritual science, firmly rooted in the ground it has managed to gain through the foundations it has laid today and in the past, will always and forever have to be aware that the truth, if it is the truth – and if it is the truth is the truth, it will always and always have to be aware that the truth, if it is the truth, will find its way through the narrowest cracks, no matter how large the masses of rocks of prejudice and slander and opposition that arise, which only leave the small cracks for the truth to pass through.

Therefore, esteemed ladies and gentlemen, allow me to conclude these reflections of today, which only sought to hint at a truly healthy soul life in connection with spiritual research, with what lives in the spiritual researcher who carries the fundamental nerve of his science within him as the source that gives him convincing power and certainty of action and will.

To this spiritual researcher - to put it figuratively - the human soul appears as a sister of truth. And by cherishing this thought, he says to himself: One can fight the truth, but it will always and again assert itself through the truth power within it, even if the fight should make its existence difficult in a certain period of time. One can even suppress the truth with force, suppress it for a certain period of time; not suppress it for the entire developmental history of humanity.

The suppressed truth will emerge again and again, because the human soul and the truth are siblings. And even if, as is otherwise the case with siblings, they live in a kind of disharmony and alienation in certain periods of time, There will always be periods of time when truth and the human soul will come together in their brotherly relationship and remember their origin, their common origin, their paternal source in the world. And this common paternal source in the world for truth and the human soul, which is at the same time the source for all true soul-searching, is what spiritual science, in healthy endeavor, seeks to find. This is the world spirit itself, interweaving and permeating from eternity to eternity, into which, starting from the point of origin of matter, to penetrate is the task and goal of all true and healthy spiritual research.

Dear attendees! I will take the liberty of giving two lectures here, which have related content in a certain respect, so that some of what is said today will be followed by a special supplement tomorrow. However, for the sake of the esteemed audience, I would like to strive to present each lecture as a self-contained whole, which can be heard on its own.

If one speaks of spiritual science in the sense in which it is to be used here, one will, for the time being, meet with the strongest resistance and the sharpest misunderstandings. In particular, this resistance and these misunderstandings will come from those who believe that they are starting from the so-called completely safe, solid ground of the only true science, natural science, with regard to all far-reaching questions of world view.

Now, on the other hand, it must be said from the outset that the spiritual science meant here is not in the slightest contradiction to the most modern demands and achievements of modern natural science; indeed, that it wants to be a necessary supplement and a necessary conclusion to this modern natural science. If you only know natural science, it is very easy to become an opponent and rejecter of this spiritual science. If you are familiar with natural science, especially in its most important and comprehensive present-day results, and at the same time you know the spiritual science that is meant here, then, dear attendees, you are by no means an opponent of natural science.

The fact that today's scientific education is so dismissive of this spiritual science is primarily due to a very strange circumstance. And such things must be mentioned in the introduction, because it is very easy for someone who is hearing such discussions as are being held here for the first time to get the idea that what is being said here is unfounded and contrary to any truly scientific requirement. If I may make this personal comment, I would like to say that I myself, wherever natural science legitimately appears, go with that natural science against all amateurish or superficial endeavors in the field of spiritual science, but that precisely for this reason I have to represent spiritual science in the form in which I have to speak of it.

One may say that what is being achieved today in the field of the scientific way of thinking, of the scientific way of research, has, especially in recent years, struggled to achieve a great lack of prejudice compared to the very superficial materialism of the middle, the last third of the nineteenth century. Today, in contrast to the natural science romanticism of the past, we have something that is so objectively and convincingly presented, for example, in the recently published great work by Oscar Hertwig, “On the Nature of Organisms. A Refutation of the Darwinian Theory of Chance”. And one could cite many, many more similar examples if one wanted to speak in praise of natural science in the immediate present.

If we look at the attitude, the way of thinking and imagining that prevails among today's level-headed natural scientists, then these attitudes and this way of imagining are similar to those of the greatest biologist from the Haeckel school, Oscar Hertwig, who says that natural science to occupy itself only with the world of the senses, to investigate only the finite, and not to concern itself with the infinite; this must be left to – says a leading natural scientist of the present day – this supersensible, this spiritual must be left to metaphysics, to epistemology and so on. Again a saying to which hundreds and hundreds of level-headed natural scientists' sayings of the present day could be added. And one might believe that such attitudes, coming from such a quarter, would certainly pave the way for an unprejudiced approach to spiritual-scientific research. And yet this is not the case. For although this is said, on the other hand it is again tried to be made understandable, precisely from this quarter, that true science, genuine science, can only be that which stands squarely on the ground of mere external sensual facts. And so, on the one hand, only this ground of sense facts is investigated, the supersensible, the spiritual, is excluded; but at the same time it is pointed out, though quite covertly, that all that which is said about the spirit , about the supersensible, cannot actually be truly scientific, because it is implied that strict, serious scientific methods can only arise on the basis of sensory observation, of the finite.

It must be said: Indeed, these statements and thoughts are found in the narrower circles of natural scientists or those who build any kind of worldview on the foundation of natural science, and one might think that this does not particularly concern the great multitude of educated people. But that is not the case today. One must only be clear about the fact that today our many-branched educational and thinking life is nourished and satisfied through thousands and thousands of channels, and that such ideas, which in their place of origin are known only to those who familiarize themselves with scientific literature, that such statements are embedded and introduced into the way of thinking of the broadest audience in the most popular way. Hence the very widespread prejudice, which is habitually present in people's minds without them being aware of it, that anyone who talks about the spiritual, the supersensible, cannot be a true scientist.

In response to this, the following must be noted: Precisely when one is a true, but reasonable admirer of the modern scientific way of thinking, then one learns to recognize the methods and ideas on the basis of which this scientific way of thinking has achieved its great successes. But then one also learns to recognize that these scientific concepts, ideas and notions are highly suitable for the study of nature, and that they must achieve their brilliant successes on the basis of science, precisely when they are completely unsuitable to say anything about truths that relate to the spiritual or the soul life of man. Gradually, precisely those types of research have emerged on the basis of natural science that cannot be applied to the spiritual. That is why it is precisely because natural science has such brilliant, such penetrating ideas, because it can achieve such brilliant successes with these ideas, that it is necessary for its sake that a spiritual science be placed alongside natural science from a completely different side.

In earlier times, by observing nature, man, in his own conviction, received all kinds of spiritual knowledge from the realm of nature itself, through the concepts of natural science. Anyone familiar with older scientific ideas knows that with the concepts that were formed earlier, it was also convincingly accepted that nature is spiritualized everywhere. Natural science has rightly eradicated such concepts on its own ground. It has developed concepts that are only suitable for considering external natural existence without any spiritual element. Therefore, the necessity arises in the present day to explore the spirit from a different angle. It follows from the character of contemporary natural science that there must be a spiritual science alongside this natural science, if man is not to lose all connection with the greatest questions that must fulfill his soul's longing, with the questions, for example, for example, about human freedom, namely with the question of the eternal nature of the human soul, about the character, the essence of the human soul; all these questions culminating in the question of immortality.

Now I have given today's lecture the specific title: “Body, Soul and Spirit of Man”. This has a certain inner justification, for the reason, dear attendees, because – I cannot go into the details here – because since the ninth century it has gradually become customary, when speaking of the human being and his essence, not to speak of body, soul and spirit, but only to speak of body and soul. Anyone who has a clear understanding of the facts in this area knows that it is precisely the neglect of the spirit that has led to the inattention to the spiritual, that basically the knowledge of the nature of man has become completely obscured in recent centuries, that it must first of all be clarified again. If I may use the comparison, it is really the case today, even if one is familiar with everything that has been written in the field of philosophy, that it is as if a chemist has a compound substance and always starts from the preconception that two components must be found in it. He does not even assume that a third must be found in it. Therefore, when he experiments, he must constantly come up with the wrong concepts.

These are more or less the considerations that are made today from a philosophical point of view about the nature of man, especially about the eternal nature of man. It is assumed that one can only speak of the body and soul of man. One starts from the prejudice that the third, the spirit, must somehow be inherent in the soul, and one must therefore go wrong. To substantiate this latter point, and in particular to show provisionally how one has to speak rightly of body, soul and spirit, let us consider the following.

Those inner soul experiences that are most intimately connected with bodily conditions do not, however, provide any real insight into what is going on in the human body. I mean such inner experiences - one does not see them at all as soul experiences, but they are experienced by the soul - such experiences as hunger and thirst or other things that we perceive. He who only wanted to observe how one becomes hungry, how one becomes satiated, would not be able to arrive at what external natural science confirms: that while we are in a state of hunger or satiety, chemical changes in the blood are taking place in our body, or something else chemical or physical is happening.

But it must be said that the ordinary consciousness of the human being knows nothing of what is going on in the body while the person is experiencing hunger and thirst. It must be determined by special scientific methods, which relate to the examination of the human body, what happens when one feels hunger, satiety, thirst or the like. What we are aware of, what we experience through our everyday consciousness, is backed by something that our everyday consciousness knows nothing about, but only physical science can shed light on.

Consider, dear reader, how much a person in ordinary daily life actually knows about his body. He knows its outer form, knows that which is outwardly inclined. If you consider the relationship between what you know of the body and what you actually know, you will see that you know very little. But this is expanded and supplemented by what external physical science, anatomy and physiology have to offer. We can say that, on the side of the body, what anatomy, physiology and biology add to what we inwardly experience and feel initially remains unconscious.

The spiritual researcher now shows, as we shall see shortly, how we have different experiences on the other side of the human soul. These other experiences, these experiences of thinking, feeling, and willing, of which we already have a superficial awareness, that they are less inclined towards the bodily side than hunger and thirst, these other experiences - the spiritual researcher is the one who first of all addresses himself to these experiences when he wants to arrive at the other side with his science, from the soul to the spirit, just as the physical researcher arrives at the other side from the soul to the body in the way just described. That is the difference between the physical researcher, who follows what the person experiences mentally from the soul side to the body side, and the spiritual researcher, who follows what the person experiences mentally from the soul to the spirit side. Just as little as one can learn something about the physical being by only observing hunger, thirst or similar general physical moods, and just as little as one can know anything about the body by these means, but must penetrate into the body itself by special scientific methods, so it is also necessary and possible to do so on the spiritual side.

It is very often believed that the spiritual can be attained through what is commonly called “inner contemplation”. All kinds of mysticism are spoken of in this field. It is believed that if a person really immerses himself in his soul life, he must also gain insight into what underlies the soul as spiritual.

Without a special spiritual science, one achieves just as little insight in this way as one would achieve insight into the bodily side if one only ever observed hunger and thirst inwardly and immersed oneself in them. Mere mysticism, mere inner contemplation, can certainly be compared with brooding over hunger and thirst and breathing needs and so on. Just as one must follow these phenomena mentally, but then expand outward toward the body with the scientific methods of physical research, so one must be able to follow in the mind what one experiences through a certain deepening of the soul life in imagining, feeling, and thinking.

Now it may well be said: about the kind of research, how one comes from the soul to the spirit, how one comes to the body on the other hand, about this kind of research, one still has very few accurate ideas today. It is very easy to believe, dear ladies and gentlemen, chemistry, physiology, physiological chemistry are serious sciences, they have developed good methods. Every spiritual researcher will of course admit this. But compared to what appears to be quite simple, such as how to research spiritual life, everything that physiology, chemistry and anatomy have developed makes it seem so much easier, because everything that is the research of physical science can be more easily acquired. For no external manipulation, nothing that has its points of reference in the external world, can lead to knowledge of the spirit. It is a matter of that which one initially, although wrongly, calls inner life, being expanded, if I may use the pedantic expression, systematically expanded, that the threads are really drawn to the spirit.

Now I can only characterize the nature of the research that is necessary in broad terms. You can find more details about it in my books “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, in the second part of “Occult Science”, “The Riddle of Man” and in the last book, which was published a few weeks ago, “The Riddle of Souls”, and so on. But what is described in detail in these books as the path to the spiritual worlds, I will characterize here at least in principle.

The point is that if one remains in ordinary consciousness, one cannot know anything at all about what underlies the human being as a spiritual being, and that if one takes a superficial approach, one is quite right to state a limit to knowledge at this point. If one wants to stop at what the ordinary consciousness gives, then one can say nothing other than that the spiritual realm is simply closed to man. But in truth it is not. Of course, for ordinary consciousness, the situation is such that what truly is soul and spirit is not known at all, that it is hidden at first and that one can only penetrate to the true soul and true spirit through very specific paths of research. What one experiences of the spirit is actually not much more than what one experiences of the body through the ordinary external way of looking at things without science. What we see of the body in everyday life is, as we said, only part of what constitutes the nature of the human body.

For ordinary consciousness, the spirit also presents itself from a certain perspective, but this ordinary consciousness knows no more about the spirit than it knows about the body when it only looks at it externally. What ordinary consciousness knows about the spirit is actually contained entirely in the simple, short word “I”. When one pronounces this little word “I” and at the same time feels and thinks through what is connected with this idea of “I”, then one has a part of that which underlies man as a spiritual being, but one has not much more than one has from the ordinary superficial way of looking at the body, without science.

The point is that when you go from the soul, from its experiences, hunger, thirst, need to breathe, to the body, you cannot help but actually kill or paralyze what the soul experiences, whether in the way you look at it or in reality. In this way you learn to recognize what underlies the soul experience. As a rule, we experience something through the body when we expel the soul from the body. In spiritual research, it is the other way around. The aim is not to paralyze what we experience in our soul, but to strengthen it, even when we undergo the much-vaunted mystical experience. And I would like to point out two inner activities that need to be strengthened.

In principle, the matter can be characterized as follows: If we look at the human will as it lives in ordinary consciousness, it is reflected in the life of ideas, but what underlies a volitional impulse is something of which we know nothing. You can find a discussion of this in an excellent book such as Physiological Psychology by Theodor Zichen, who excludes the will from the psychological point of view because, in his opinion, the will is not present in everything that can be found from an external point of view. What actually happens when a person executes any volitional decision, what happens when I just want to raise a hand, until the actual raising of the hand, remains unconscious, just as, for example, the experiences from falling asleep to waking up remain unconscious. We have ideas that underlie the motives of the will, but in our ordinary consciousness we have no idea of the process of the will itself. That is the one thing, the honored presence, that the spiritual researcher comes to, to be able to relate to the process of the will as such in the act of imagining, to be able to relate to the process of the will as one is otherwise able to relate to the external world.

I would like to give an example to illustrate what I mean. When we speak, it is a special volitional act. The fact that we produce images does not change what I have said. When we recite a poem that we have learned by heart, it is a continuous series of volitional impulses that gradually become habitual. Now everyone knows that if you try to recite a poem and at the same time make an effort to observe your own recitation of the poem as one would observe an external natural process, then you sacrifice the recitation.

This example in particular shows you, dear attendees, how impossible it is for the ordinary consciousness to observe itself. Self-observation in a higher sense than is usually meant – self-observation is what must be striven for. It is not enough for spiritual science to merely state: It is virtually impossible to recite a poem aloud or to recite it inwardly in thought and to observe oneself while doing so. Certainly, for the ordinary consciousness this is absolutely impossible; but the spiritual researcher must learn to do so. He must, just as the chemist applies his methods, also apply his methods; he must do everything possible - you will find a more detailed description in “How to Know Higher Worlds” . The spiritual researcher must do everything possible to be able to work through his will on the one hand, and on the other hand to observe at the same time what he carries out with his will, just as one observes an external natural process.

This is one of the things that can be said: It is easy to say; to actually carry it out requires a far greater effort than to acquire the methods of chemistry, physics, astronomy or a physiological science. Of course, it is not enough to observe oneself in such a case, but to learn to recognize that inner attitude of the soul, whereby one can simultaneously accomplish an act of the will and, on the other hand, face oneself while observing.

Only by coming to cultivate self-observation in this way, only by doing so, do we gradually come to distinguish between what is ordinary mental life and what is true mental life. For if one attains an inner practice in the way that has been indicated, in this self-observation, then one gradually comes to a completely different way of thinking. Thoughts such as one has in ordinary consciousness do not flourish in this way, but thoughts that have a much greater, inner, meaningful power, thoughts that have much more of what one can call a pictorial content, but which at the same time points to a reality. When one learns to observe oneself in this way, one comes to know something that is hidden in ordinary life, something that is part of this ordinary life but which, in this ordinary life, remains entirely unconscious, subconscious. Something emerges from the ordinary life of the soul that was previously unknown.

At first, one sees from the inner consequences how the matter actually stands. One learns, namely, only when one gradually learns to distinguish between the ordinary soul life and the true soul life, one learns more and more to find one's way up to the concept, which can then become a guiding concept for the contemplation of the actual human being. One learns to recognize that what we call the ordinary life of the soul is related to the true life of the soul, which one first discovers in this way, as the mirror image is to the real person standing before this mirror image. The important thing is that one acquires this great knowledge with reference to the soul life: that the outer soul life, known to ordinary consciousness, is the mirror image of the true inner soul life, which is unknown to ordinary consciousness.

The consequence of this is that we are only now beginning to gain an insight into the human body. Before seeking knowledge in this way, we cannot really know anything accurate about the human body. I will point out just one fact: The person who, in the sense of mere external natural science, fully recognizes its methods for [spiritual] science, even when they are applied in an outstanding way, as for example by Oscar Hertwig, who thus observes the external bodily life of man, he follows, among other things, for example, how the bodily life of a person leads back to the bodily life of the parents, grandparents and so on. One speaks of the inheritance of certain characteristics. Whenever we speak of heredity in the field of natural science today, we always have the view that we inherit something, but that in what we inherit as a body, the germs for the development of the I, for example, are also contained. It is said that, as the I develops into it, self-awareness, the I, arises in the course of life on the basis of the inherited characteristics. It is quite impossible for a different view of the matter to be formed while remaining on the ground of mere natural science.

But for someone who, in the manner described, learns to distinguish the true soul from its reflection, the ordinary soul life, such a view as that offered by natural science today is as if someone wanted to explain: Man stands in relation to the air through his lungs, and in the lungs is the origin of the air that man breathes out and in; the air comes from the lungs and returns to them. Such a person would be deluding themselves, as if what is air were somehow essentially connected to the lungs themselves, whereas air is in our environment and must be sought outside of the human being. If one is able to see through these circumstances correctly, then one will naturally not look for the origin of air in the lungs. But if you go through the spiritual path, you come to recognize in the soul and spiritual realm that the belief that the air comes from the child's body, as it develops according to the inherited characteristics from the parents, the I, the self, that this corresponds exactly to the belief that the air comes from the lungs.

One learns to recognize, through spiritual scientific methods, that the I is not something that can arise from the body, but one learns to recognize the independence of the I, one learns to recognize the coming of the I to that which comes from father and mother. These things must be emphasized today, for the reason that the opposite idea is so deeply rooted in the thinking and cognitive habits of the present that what must be said from the spiritual-scientific point of view seems quite absurd to some. Nevertheless, it can and must be said if one does not choose the starting point of amateurish inner observation, but rather a spiritual-scientific observation. In this way one learns to recognize that just as air enters the lungs from the outside, this I enters from a spiritual world into that which comes from the father and mother, that which is physically inherited. Just as the air does not disappear when it leaves the lungs, so this self, which has just as little to do with the life of the body as the lungs have to do with the air, passes through the gate of death.

If one then follows the path further, one comes indeed, precisely with regard to the point touched upon, via the bodily life to very definite, now truly scientific concepts, in relation to which even the fully appreciated results of natural science are amateurish. One arrives at this by learning to distinguish between what is the inner spiritual self and what is inherited. One arrives at forming a true picture of what one actually inherits from one's ancestors. These things can only be touched on today; I only want to encourage you and cannot give anything exhaustive. What we inherit is, in the deepest sense, our own bodily form. Anyone who is aware of how what we do in a certain sense in our ordinary mental life depends on the physiognomy of the body – by which I mean the inner structure of the body – will be able to imagine that the human being lives out his or her life in the inherited formations of the body, but the basis is always the inherited form. This inherited form, which in turn can shape the substance out of its structural forces from what we take in during our lives until we reach sexual maturity, so that this substance, which in turn passes on the inheritance to the offspring, now contains the form. This sentence, which spiritual science has to add to science: that only the form is inherited from the ancestors and that the form is inherited by the descendants through the substance, provides a supplement to natural science. It will be very informative with regard to a certain matter concerning the relationship to the higher aspects of the human being.

I have to progress in the consideration of the path of research into the spiritual worlds. I have first described how ideas must be added to the impulses of the will, how self-observation must occur in a higher sense. If one wants to get to know the being of the human being, the spiritual being of the human being, then not only must this self-observation be able to occur, but something else must happen: one must carry out that which, in one's soul, results in a strengthening of the soul life on another side, which, using a technical term, can be called “meditation”. You can find more details about this in the books mentioned; I can only give the principles here.

Just as we have seen that in the will and its impulses, the ideas must be led to self-observation, so on the other hand, the will must be introduced into the life of ideas. This is even more difficult. And precisely the introduction of the will into the realm of imagination, whereas otherwise we let the images run according to the sensory processes or let them run dreamily, for example in contemplation of what one has experienced. The person who wants to introduce the will into this world of imagination often needs years and years to achieve real results. The matter is by no means a simple one. Years and years are needed if one is to truly research the realm of spiritual life.

The point is to introduce the will into the life of the imagination, so that one learns, on the one hand, to direct the imagination as one directs the hands. The will must be introduced into the imagination. This is best achieved by trying to separate oneself from ordinary imaginative life and only reflecting on that which one introduces into one's consciousness through the will. Therefore, one should not introduce such ideas as are given from the external sense world or from the ordinary sensual world; but self-made ideas or ideas that have been suggested to one; these should direct the life of ideas. There it is the arbitrariness by which the life of ideas is directed. But it must not remain so, for then one would not come to spiritual research, but to dreaming. On the one hand – and this may sound paradoxical – the will, arbitrariness, must be introduced into the imaginative life; on the other hand, this will must be excluded, because otherwise one would enter into fantastic thinking, which must not be allowed.

But if you continue the meditative life with patience and energy, and keep trying to continue with the ideas you have put together yourself, whether they are symbolic or similar ideas, then you bring such content into your consciousness again and again. In doing so, you acquire an inner mastery of this imaginative life. One gets to know something that was previously impossible to get to know at all. One gradually learns that one can arrive at one mental image from another, even when nothing is taken up in these images from external sensory perception, through mere arbitrariness. Imagining at random is only the trial, only the path, but it gradually develops as a self-evident inner life process, in that one notices that just as one otherwise, when observing external ideas, does not arbitrarily place one idea after the other, one now notices that one must now follow something that flows into the ideas themselves; so that little by little, although one now follows the course of ideas inwardly, one cannot help but develop one idea from the other just as regularly, not arbitrarily, letting one idea follow the other, as one does when one follows the course of external sense observation. Just as one is subject to necessity there, so one is gradually subject to a purely spiritual, inner necessity. Just as the external sense world prevails in the external perceptions, so an inner spirituality gradually prevails in the imagination that one has thus developed.

Just as the other method I have described ascends from the outer soul to the true soul, so in this way one ascends from the imagination to the spirit, by discovering the spirit as something objective, just as the external sense world is objective. One knows very well whether one is merely stringing together dream-like images or... gaps in the transcript]. And as a spiritual researcher, you know exactly whether you... or whether you are going through the inner process that... not arbitrarily stringing one idea after another, but developing one idea from the other as the spirit demands this sequence of ideas. In this way, through meditative life, one ascends to a real observation of the spirit.

Again, if you want to carry this out in its strictness, it is a work that lasts for years and requires much more devotion and willingness to sacrifice than astronomical or chemical work, but which leads to inner observation of the spirit just as strictly as astronomical, chemical, physiological methods lead to the observation of external laws.

He who, as a spiritual researcher, has experienced in countless cases how one often begins a path of research in certain areas of spiritual life, and who has then seen how this path of research leads through a spiritual necessity just as much as through sensual necessity , the one who has experienced how what one has followed from a certain starting point turns out differently than one had actually expected, quite differently than what one had assumed, may well speak of an inner necessity of the inner spiritual path. There is no arbitrariness here. One experiences it only too clearly when one is truly a spiritual researcher, that before one begins to research, one has false ideas, that the inner necessity of the path brings one to ideas that one could not have arrived at through sensory observation. One may say: When one really progresses on the path of spiritual research, things usually turn out quite differently than one expects. And if one does not want to form arbitrary ideas in the sense of exploring the spiritual world - one expects something completely different and something completely different comes. And one is as surprised by it as one would be by an unexpected experience in the outer world.

These things are not dealt with because it is expected that everyone should go through them – although it would be desirable that as many people as possible in the present day would follow the path of spiritual research to the extent that one can follow my books, so that they can bear witness from their own experience that the spirit and man's share in the spirit is a reality. But to make spiritual science part of our culture, to assimilate what spiritual research brings to light, does not depend on one's being a spiritual researcher oneself. That which is to be researched in the spirit must be researched through those inner paths - in truth they are outer paths - which you will find described in my books; but once the things have been researched, anyone with ordinary common sense can find them confirmed.

I would like to say: Although today, to a certain extent, anyone can become a seer – you don't need to be a seer to recognize spiritual research as such, but rather, you can put what spiritual research brings to light into the service of life, just as you can put what chemistry and physics bring into the service of life, without being a chemist or a physicist yourself. I would like to use a comparison to characterize what is to be characterized: Not everyone can be a watchmaker, but most people will recognize the watch. Not everyone can be a seer; but what the seer science can research about the nature of man is of importance for the life of every human being. When someone goes into a watchmaker's workshop, he sees that the watch has not come together by chance. You can see that in the watch. When the seer shows the spiritual powers and beings from which life and its facts, its entities, flow, the life and the fact of life are present for every person. And just as one can tell, without having seen the watchmaker at work, from the way the watch is made that it was put together by the watchmaker, so after the seer says that the life has come from the spirit, one can judge whether what the shearer says is correct or incorrect. Furthermore, it is not the case that the seerical development comes before humanity without saying how it comes to its results. For everyone can observe whether what the shearer has to say is reasonable, how he comes to his results. And that which is found in the course of spiritual research will gradually have to become part of our culture, for the very reason that advanced science, in particular, does not have the methods to arrive at spiritual knowledge itself, because on the other hand, this makes it necessary to have a different way of arriving at spiritual knowledge. And even if many prejudices against spiritual science still exist today, they will be dispelled by the fact that people will increasingly recognize how life confirms what the spiritual researcher has to say.

I would like to briefly mention at least one point: recently, a well-known personality here in this city, Dr. Rittelmeyer, has pointed out the religious significance of spiritual science, as it is meant here, in a number of beautiful articles in the “Christian World”. He has also forcefully and appropriately characterized the very nature of this spiritual practice to come to the spirit. Recently objections have been raised against these statements in the “Christian World” from another side that is also highly esteemed. I do not want to touch on these objections any further, I just want to point them out. It is said that a major mistake of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is that one does not rely on mere grace, that the spirit would come to one, so to speak, that one would be graced as one is gifted with a talent, with genius, but that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would try to lead the soul into the spiritual world, the spiritual realm, through arbitrary exercises. This is characterized as a particular mistake; it shows that nothing other than that this side, which is so highly esteemed by those who rebel against Pastor Rittelmeyer, simply does not understand what is important.

If one advances from the soul to the spirit, yes, if one advances only from the ordinary soul experience to the true soul, then one comes into nothing but activity, and that would be precisely the wrong thing if one wanted to remain passive in relation to the spirit. For everything that comes to one in a passive state makes one dependent on the body. To live independently in the spirit must be a free act, an act that arises entirely from the arbitrariness of the human being. Without entering the spiritual world by free decision, one cannot enter it. Anyone who speaks of spirit as something that can be attained without this free entry into the spiritual world does not know what spirit is; they only know the soul life, which, in a more or less refined and sophisticated way, is nevertheless dependent on the body.

Thus one sees how today, even in the most influential circles, there is not the slightest conception of what the spirit really is. This real spirit is an active spirit, it is not something with which one can connect merely passively. At most, one comes out of the essence of the spirit; one denies a spirit when one only develops that which behaves passively. The difficulty in entering the spiritual realm lies precisely in the fact that one enters it arbitrarily on the one hand, but that it can only be a trial, that one comes upon other necessities, that everything turns out quite differently than one had expected. One develops the will into the life of imagination, but in the end one knows that one can only develop this will by turning one's eyes from one point to another. But the will must prevail in everything that is to truly enter the mind. That is the essential.

And when we learn to recognize through direct contemplation what the true soul is in relation to the mirror image of this true soul, then we learn to know the soul - I have shown before how to recognize the I as something that is taken up by the body - we learn to know the true soul in relation to what are only the ordinary soul experiences. Getting to know this true soul, coming to the contemplation of this true soul, leads at the same time to knowing that this true soul essence is not enclosed within the boundaries between birth and death. Above all, one learns to recognize how this true soul essence is actually extinguished by the life of the body, how it can be seen in its true form through the consciousness that has been expanded, as I have characterized it, can be seen before birth or conception and after the person has passed through the gate of death. One learns to recognize that external life on earth is not at all as one thinks in ordinary life.

In ordinary life, one has the idea: well, what one experiences between birth and death comes to one in this way. Chance brings one thing, brings another; life is merely configured from the sensual outside world. It cannot be otherwise than to have this idea in ordinary life. But this idea alone brings one into a certain calamity when one can consider the life of the soul. If you have this sense, then you know that you would actually extinguish this soul life itself if you were to extinguish external experiences. The word “soul”, the abstract concept “soul”, is not important; what is important is the real, meaningful soul life.

But ask yourself, when you turn 40, what this really concrete, true content of your soul life actually is. It is actually what your experiences are. You cannot separate experiences from your soul life. Think about what you have in your soul and how it would be different if you had gone through different experiences. It is you yourself, and these experiences have become you. When experiences come up, as is the case, then you are saying that your soul has actually come up to you, as is the case. Observation of the true soul shows that this is not the case; it leads us out into the distance, as a telescope leads us out into the distance, it leads us out beyond birth and death. We see into worlds in which we are before birth or conception, in which we will be after death. We see into these worlds and we know: What we experience here from the moment we become conscious until death, when we lose our earthly consciousness and acquire a different one, what approaches us is not random. It is because we, let us say, lived from 1872 to 1925, but because we have previously lived in a spiritual world and have united with what we have inherited as a body from the spiritual world and have been led down from the spiritual world through the inner longings of the soul in order to live through the series of experiences that can be lived through in the place and time into which we are born. What external experiences of life are, what approaches us as longing, as the will to experience that, it exists in us before this life.

These external experiences are definitely connected with what we have lived through in the spiritual realm before we proceeded to conception or birth. And what we experience as inner soul experiences: We grow inwardly, spiritually with our outer experiences, we develop certain habits, we acquire ideas that guide our lives, and so on. This inner experience between birth and death, one can truly ask: What significance does it have for the world outside of us? One can ask that. And a contemporary philosopher who is strangely obsessed with complaining about philosophy – he says: Man has no more philosophy than an animal, and differs from the animal only in that... [gap] – who is a professor of philosophy at the university, he looks at the inner life of man and says: The natural life, the life in the great world, actually runs its course without concerning itself with the inner life. And he uses the expression, this philosopher: Nature is great and admirable, and we are moping!

One could easily come up with this thought if one has no connection with the spiritual world. One could ask oneself: Why, in addition to the events that take place in the cosmos, does something else take place that resembles an image of the cosmos? The truth is this: While the outer soul experiences are longed for from our spiritual existence before birth, the inner experiences, the gradual becoming of the soul, that which grows within us as a sense of life - that is what we carry over into the spiritual world through death; that is the germ of this inner experience to that which we experience after death.

Thus we are led beyond birth and death into a spiritual world, not by speculation, but by seeking first to develop the faculty of observation, by which we can grasp the eternal in our mind's eye. It develops the perspective into that world in which we really are. Spiritual science leads us to the contemplation of the spiritual world, to the development of what, in an extended sense, can be called, with Goethe, “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears”.

And again, the destiny of man, to extract something specific from the abundance of the matter, when you consider what we ourselves are and what our destinies are – and yet, the ordinary consciousness is again of the opinion: It happens as it happens, this fate; on the one hand it is a sum of coincidences that group together into a whole, on the other hand the fact that we ourselves are this fate, if we really consider not only abstract terms. When we consider this, we again come to a disharmony between what ordinary consciousness sees in fate and what fate actually is for what we essentially are as human beings.

When a person rises by experiencing the inner necessity, as I have described it, in his or her imagination, by being able to observe the mind, he or she learns to recognize that the body is a reflection of the mind, just as the ordinary soul is a reflection of the true soul. But also what we experience as fate is in a certain respect a reflection of the spirit, only something is at work in our life that is hidden from the ordinary consciousness. It has an effect when we see our fate approaching us – spiritual observation shows this – it has an effect on our present life that radiates as forces from earlier earth lives. That is the mystery of the will, the mystery of the fact that the will, without our knowing it - because it is in the unconscious - that this will, just as hunger feels drawn to food, feels drawn to that which then bears its destiny. The reason why we know so little about this will in our present life is that what now works as the will to fashion our destiny does not work at all in ordinary life. Just as the seeds of the outer experiences of the soul lie in the prenatal life, so the will that shapes our destiny lies in past earthly lives. And the wisdom that develops within the soul, which is hidden in old age, goes with us through the gateway of death, growing from the imagination to the will for the next life on earth.

Not only can we see through the soul if we are able to extend our ideas by drawing threads from the soul life to the spiritual life, but we can see through the whole course of the human eternal through births and deaths. We first learn through the first degrees of self-observation that the I is something that connects to the inherited body. We learn that our experiences of the soul are drawn from the spiritual world, which we pass through before birth. We learn to recognize that destiny, the wisdom of life, is what leads to repeated and repeated earthly lives.

I could only give you a few hints today, you can read more in my books. I will have a few more special things to say tomorrow. The indications I have given should above all characterize the fact that spiritual science is not about dreaming or creating concepts of the world, but that spiritual science is based on genuine, true research, on a kind of research that is just as strictly inward as the external natural sciences are strict in their field - yes, even stricter. Those who have followed the spiritual path can say this. And that this spiritual science can also shed light on scientific fields, you can see from the last chapter of my book 'Von Seelenrätseln'.

It may be said, dearest attendees, that what is explored as spirit actually sheds light on what surrounds us as nature. This does not invalidate natural science, but it is as limited as the view someone has when feeling their way around a dark room compared to the view someone has when they light a lamp and illuminate the objects. Of course, when you feel for the objects in the dark, the one, the second, the third – you always feel for the same thing. It is therefore not surprising that the room merely felt for is described the same by everyone. Because natural science conducts research in spiritual darkness, the concepts are always the same by themselves, but because when you light a light, you can shine it here and there, the configuration will be different from the different points. Hence the easily found, but by no means apt objection that one usually makes, that one spiritual researcher speaks this and the other that. That is the case, but it is the case for the reason that the spiritual researcher first also ignites the light spiritually from a certain point of view.

But there is a way out. And it is precisely the direction that I myself represent that seeks this way out. People shy away from the inner drama of the soul, from the drama of knowledge that one has to go through, because they fear getting into the subjective. This is a transitional phase, but then you enter a realm where the spirit is objective, where the spirit can be described from all sides in the same way as the world of the senses can be described. If you light a light in a room, you only have a certain aspect of the room. If you turn the light around, the impressions contradict each other; the room looks different from each place, but you gradually get an objective overview of the whole room.

In particular, the spiritual scientific direction that I am striving for seeks to apply the spiritual research methods and to illuminate everything with the light of the spirit, but it tries to do so from different points of view. This results in a different misery, but that is not too bad, that while one otherwise says that a spiritual researcher who takes the different points of view contradicts himself. He contradicts himself, but he does it in order to gradually characterize. This is the basis of the recently so popularized criticisms of my world view, where contradictions are sought. These contradictions are not worth more than four photographs of four sides of a room. The spiritual researcher must contradict himself in a certain way by characterizing life from different points of view. Only unwise people may come – precisely because of the presence of different images that the spiritual researcher gives, he wants to show his objectivity.

In the ordinary physical sense world, it is indeed the case that one need not be exposed to this if one merely describes external facts. But it is different in the spiritual. The spirit is a living thing, and the living has its contradictions. In fact, anyone who is familiar with spiritual science and then carefully and conscientiously immerses themselves in the way of thinking of natural science as it is developed in the present day will find that natural science not only does not contradict spiritual science in any of its details, but is a complete confirmation of everything that spiritual science has to say.

Therefore, I would like to say: the spiritual researcher does not shy away from having his point of view checked, indeed, from having his point of view strictly checked by the most diverse spiritual schools of thought that otherwise exist. Just check what the spiritual researcher has to say against true natural science, not against superficial natural science. After 30 years, monism still represents what natural science has overcome. If you test what the spiritual researcher has to say against true natural science, you will find it confirmed. The spiritual researcher does not shy away from real scientific scrutiny. Thus I shall never advise anyone who feels drawn to what I call spiritual science to believe in the power of superstition, to refrain from testing, to give in to blind faith. No, no one should believe what is said, no one should accept something on authority. But he would understand it all the more, the more conscientiously he tests it in the natural life of the present.

It can be tested in the same way in religious life. It is clear to those who stand on the ground of spiritual science that religious life - as Dr. Rittelmeyer shows - gains a firm support, a security, through what can be experienced from spiritual science, a support that is needed today. One must not succumb to this misunderstanding: spiritual science is not opposed to religious life. It does not say: Don't go to church! No, religion is not to be replaced by spiritual science, and spiritual science is not to be a new religion, but it wants to be something that stands alongside scientific research as a scientific research, but which, for those who approach religious life from a spiritual scientific point of view, enriches and more firmly establishes this religious life. Spiritual science does not say: Go to spiritual science and do not go to church! But: Go to spiritual science and you will see what religious life has to say in a new light.

And life itself, social life, ethical life, legal life, all of life, even the immediate practice of life, can all be enriched by spiritual science in that those who do not become sceptical themselves get their ideas in such a way that they better conform to reality, so that one does not think you are a practical person but are really a dreamer, but rather ideas that are imbued with reality, a feeling that has inner certainty, a will that can find its bearings in life, that can find the paths through life, that is what people can find from spiritual research.

Spiritual research should not be understood as a theory, but as something that goes through life like an essence, that makes people useful and strong for life. So you can go to science, you can go to religion, to life itself – spiritual science will not keep anyone from doing so. It will be glad to be examined by science, by religion, by life itself. For he who is grounded in its soil knows that these tests will not refute it, but that these tests, if carried out seriously, will always confirm it.

Not that one cannot err in the field of spiritual science, but error is possible in every field. That is not the point. The spiritual researcher does not demand blind faith in authority. He says: Go and test spiritual science; it will only gain in science, in religion, in life. Go ahead and test spiritual science against Johannes Müller's world view, for that matter; and spiritual science has no fear of losing anything by doing so. I will not in any way hurl back at Johannes Müller the accusation that he hurled at me in response to Pastor Rittelmeyer's articles: that spiritual science is something tempting, that it represents a new temptation for people. That would be cowardice; then people may let themselves be tempted if the anthroposophical world view should be a temptation - they will recognize by themselves, when they are not suggested that they are being tempted, but when it is said to them: Go to science, go to religion, go to life, even go to Johannes Müller – you will find that spiritual science is not refuted by this, but confirmed by science, by religion, by life and even by Johannes Müller. For this spiritual science – as I have been able to sketch out – tomorrow I want to say something about the conditions in the spiritual world itself – this spiritual science wants real science, wants conscientiously gained knowledge. And above all, it has to be introduced into cultural life in such a way that it can withstand the impact coming from the natural sciences.

Du Bois-Reymond, a physiologist whom I hold in high esteem, has in his famous studies on animal electricity and in other brilliant speeches explained a great deal about how to characterize the newer natural science. But at the same time he said: this natural science can only extend to the world of the senses, for beyond that, science must cease. That was a dictum. And today a wide circle of humanity is under its influence. But what this dictum means – let me express it by way of a comparison: someone sees a tree growing out of the ground. How it is rooted in the ground, you cannot see inside; that bothers you. The tree grows and grows: what is in the ground has something to do with it. You now want to look at the tree with the means at your disposal, you dig it up; you put its roots in the air. It dies, it is killed because it is uprooted. In more recent times, because people did not want to move from human knowledge about the external sensory world to what is at the root of all knowledge in the spiritual world, attempts were made to uproot knowledge about nature, as one uproots a tree. Just as the tree dies, so too does knowledge die when it is torn from the soil, the spiritual soil.

In the future, spiritual science should provide more and more evidence that, when we are torn from the soil of spiritual life, we can only develop mechanical, materialistic science. Instead of Du Bois-Reymond's dictum, “We seek science, but where the supersensible life begins, science ends” – instead of this dictum, there must be the insightful saying, the attitude: When knowledge and science are wrenched out of the soil of truly spiritual life, then science dies out. Not that science must cease where the supersensible world begins, but when science is sought outside the supersensible world, then genuine science dies out, is uprooted and killed. This will be a conviction that connects people to the spiritual world in terms of their attitudes, and this conviction – which spiritual science seeks to achieve – should become the conviction of as many people as possible in the future.

Dear attendees! In yesterday's lecture, in which I took the liberty of characterizing the essence of spiritual science as it is meant in these considerations, I pointed out how this spiritual science did not arise out of the arbitrariness of an individual or a few people in the present, but how it has become a necessity precisely through the emergence of natural science, which has shown such great success; how it must stand alongside this natural science, because this natural has been compelled, in order to arrive at its brilliant results, to develop such methods, such forms of research, such a way of looking at things, which are actually only useful if one wants to survey and recognize the field of external nature, but which prove unsuitable if one wants to get to know the field of spiritual life in its true form, in which it can be accessible to man.

Yesterday I already hinted at how this scientific approach, in a sense, asserts between the lines of its work that only the human urge for knowledge directed towards the sensory world can lead to a true science, and how this scientific approach condemns from the outset what wants to come from other, if not less strict sources of knowledge to a science about the spirit.

Now it can be said, dear assembled guests, that not only does natural science in this respect make it more difficult for spiritual science to come into existence – one can still say today – but also that the particular natural scientific attitude that is generated in this field gives rise to habits of thinking and ways of feeling that are averse to genuine spiritual research. Nevertheless, spiritual research has an aim that cannot be repelled by the human soul. Therefore, just at a time when spiritual research is rejected by recognized science on the one hand, and on the other hand, habits of thought and ways of feeling are developed that make spiritual research unappealing – just at such a time, when one wants to turn to science because of general educational prejudices – at such a time, the need to know something about the spirit must awaken all the more.

And it is awakening even in the circles of natural scientists. But there one is accustomed to devote oneself to such thinking, to such research, which proceeds by the hand of that which external nature offers in the way of facts, of entities, of events, which one can extract from it through experiments. We are accustomed to looking at the things to which the soul's life of research is directed and guided by the external. And so, precisely where even among scientifically minded people the need has arisen to learn something about the eternal, the immortal in human nature, one also wants to explore this area in the same way as one explores the area of nature itself.

Then one can only rely on very specific phenomena, phenomena that, so to speak, do not require the soul itself to be prepared by means of all kinds of exercises, as I discussed yesterday, so that it can conduct research in a particular field. A certain reluctance arises to explore that which, so to speak, must first be summoned up because it is hidden from the ordinary consciousness. One would also like to explore the soul by approaching something that presents itself externally in the same way as natural phenomena present themselves.

Therefore, a certain area that extends into the ordinary consciousness of the human being, so to speak, that mysteriously extends into this consciousness, a certain area of existence has been repeatedly considered in recent times: the broad area of what is summarized today with the rather broad-hearted, one could also say uninformative, expression of the “unconscious”. And since spiritual science is confused with many a subject that is brought into the unconscious, into the category of the unconscious, spiritual science itself is obliged to clarify its own approach to this area of the so-called unconscious. And so I have taken the liberty of announcing a second lecture, a consideration that, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, focuses on the revelations of the so-called unconscious.

Of course, since this is a broad area, I can only consider certain groups of what is considered to be in the realm of the unconscious. And so today we shall consider the phenomenon of a broad and wonderful area that is well known to every human being in its manifestation: the phenomenon of dream life. Then, honored attendees, we shall consider those other phenomena in which so many today seek to gain insight into something that underlies the human being as soul and spirit. We shall consider the phenomena which are summarized under the term somnambulism, which includes everything that is still observed by many people today with such hopes of insight: the phenomena of mediumship and the like.

But then there is a human field of activity in the realm of the unconscious that everyone knows, that is, so to speak, everyone's life companion, but which one is sometimes afraid to look at because one believes that by looking at it one takes away the magic of this realm: I am referring to the field of artistic creation, of which everyone can be convinced by an external observation that it belongs to a certain extent to the field of non-comprehensible, non-fully conscious human activity, but flows from a certain unconscious or subconscious source of human nature.

And finally, these areas of the unconscious include the spiritual activity itself, of which I spoke yesterday as the method of spiritual research. It includes the spiritual activity through which the spiritual researcher wants to prepare his soul to look into the spiritual realm in such a way that one can truly recognize the spiritual world that surrounds man and to which man belongs. Today I would like to subject these groups of unconscious phenomena to a kind of observation before you, although I must limit myself to a strictly spiritual scientific observation.

The realm of dreams is familiar to everyone, and yet, for anyone who begins to delve more intimately into the realm of dream life, it becomes more and more wondrous and wondrous, so to speak. Man's dream life is a field that one only passes by without astonishment when one looks at it superficially. The more intimately one looks at it, the more one senses that there is something in this dream life that announces itself as the higher nature in the human soul, even if it announces itself chaotically in the dream life. Of course, we bring our personal, our selfish interests into every area, including the area of dream life, and so it happened that the most superstitious, the most unscientific interpretations were attached to the dream life, which of course would have to be ruled out if it were a matter of a truly cognitive interpretation of this dream life.

He who believes that he is viewing such experiences from the dream life from a scientific perspective, which relate to all kinds of superstitious hopes, will not be able to come into his own in the face of a scientific consideration of the dream life. But on the other hand, one need only look at this dream life and one will find that the surging dreams of human sleep or half-sleep interpose themselves in a remarkable way into the existence of man, into the entire human life. On the one hand, we see how dreams can be influenced by sensory stimuli that are only partially effective. Everyone is familiar with something like, say, falling asleep near a light. If they were awake, they would see the light near the light. They fall asleep. The light makes an impression on his eye that is not processed in the usual way, and he may dream, as a result of the incomplete impression of the light, of a conflagration, to which he then attaches all kinds of dream images! He can attach a whole inner drama to these sensory stimuli. And one could tell many stories if one wanted to tell all the kinds of dreams that are connected to sensory stimuli.

On the other hand, we have those dreams that arise more from the human bodily mood, from the overall feeling of the person, whether the person is in any overall mood, for example, an overall mood that seems to him like a lukewarm bath in which he is comfortable while lying in bed and dreaming pleasantly. Or if he dreams of a boiling stove and wakes up with a pounding heart, so that the heart has symbolized itself in the stove in the dream. We are dealing here with what is lived out in the dream from inner stimuli of the organism.

And we have, in turn, the other broad area of dreams that connects to memory, to what lies in our memory, from which a particular area is then brought up through the images of the last few days, and is presented to us in a dream with inner drama. But through such, I might say, pedantic classification, that which everyone knows enough about the wonderful world of dream life is evoked. Some peculiarities of dream life, which are also more generally known, are already suitable for leading into that which we then want to observe about the dream of its essence.

Everyone knows that in dreams we are quite different people than in our waking lives. For example, dream images can make us commit crimes that we would never commit in ordinary life. The images show you in a moral condition that would be severely condemned, that you could never get into in ordinary life. The succession of images shows that they do not contain what is called the application of ordinary logic. Logical connection of the dream images is something that rarely occurs in these dream images, and when it does, the logic of the dream is in turn only a dreamt one; we remember something in a dream-like way that we have already thought through logically, and the logical only appears to us as coming from memory. But it is shown to those who can observe dream life that they are not able to apply logic to the dream during the dream itself.

A peculiarity – I just want to emphasize the things that can lead us to understand the essence of dreams from a spiritual scientific point of view – a particular peculiarity of dream life is actually also philosophically in science or otherwise deal with it, far too little appreciated, and we will see that we can appreciate it even more when we consider other phenomena of life that belong to the unconscious realm of life. It is the fact that in our dreams we do not actually emerge from the overall state in which we are during sleep, in relation to the outside world and our own body. I have, however, indicated that dreams occur that arise from external sensory stimuli, and it seems as if we relate to the outside world in our dreams, while we are unaware of it in our dreams.

This is only apparent. We do not perceive the sensory impressions as we do when we are awake, but in a symbolically transformed way. Something must happen to them first, they must be transformed into an image. We cannot absorb the sensory impression itself. We have no relationship to the external world when we dream; we have no relationship to the external world with our senses, we are cut off from the external world in our dreams, even though our dreams ebb and flow, just as we are cut off from the external world in dreamless sleep.

And again, the other area of life in the sense world, the area of action, the area of bodily movement, of activity through bodily movement, is excluded from normal dreams. It is already an abnormal dream when someone goes from dreaming to sleepwalking or the like. In a normal dream, we have the image of doing this or that. But this acting out of an action or an activity is not something we carry out through our locomotor system; we do not establish any kind of relationship to the outside world. All of this remains locked within us, just as we ourselves are locked within us when we are asleep in the dream life. Thus, when we dream, we have a real relationship not to the sense organs, not to our locomotor system, but to our own body. The normal dream is something that draws into the life of sleep, that flows through the life of sleep, but it does not bring the dreamer into any other relationship or state with respect to the outer world than he is in dreamless sleep.

This area, which can be defined as I have now defined it, this area of dream life, must be clearly distinguished – and we will then go into the important differences in the essential consideration of dream life – from everything else that occurs in human life in such a way that, so to speak, the unconscious, not belonging to human consciousness, enters this human life. There are good researchers who believe that the dream image as such, the image of a normal dream, should be considered the same as a hallucination. A hallucination is also something that, like visions and the like, rises from the subconscious into human consciousness; a hallucination is also an image.

But, dear readers, anyone who compares a hallucination to a dream image is very much mistaken. Above all, it must be emphasized that a person who dreams does not fall into a state through dreaming over which he is powerless with his waking consciousness. The hallucination must be characterized by the fact that the person is powerless against it with his waking consciousness. The hallucination intrudes into the ordinary consciousness, and one must become aware that the reason why this is so is a change, albeit a hidden change, in the human body itself; it is some part of the human body that gives rise to the hallucinations.

The soul and spirit of man are initially powerless in the face of changes in the human body. Only from the body can that which man faces powerlessly arise. The dream enters into human life and leaves the bodily constitution, the bodily structure, unchallenged, so that when man returns to waking life, he finds himself in the normal bodily constitution. And then he will be able to have, I would say, the right state of consciousness towards the dream, if he does not place it in ordinary life, which the hallucinator does with this hallucination.

Already the observation of the hallucination clearly shows that one is dealing with something very different from the dream image and that it is connected to the human body. But then one can also clearly see from the hallucination, the obsessions and the like, that they arise without any stimulus from the external world, that they arise, if indeed they arise from the nature of the body, then at least from the inner nature of the human being; and this is what the hallucinations have as their peculiar feature, this is what the visions have as their peculiar feature, the obsessions as their peculiar feature that this physical nature of man works without the organs that bring man into connection with the external world of reality, without the organs that are involved in the way they usually are in waking life, in the production of hallucinations, visions, and obsessions. This is no longer the case when that state of human nature occurs which is designated by the word “somnambulism”.

It can be said that through somnambulism, through mediumship, human nature is incited to transfer the irregular bodily constitution, which is experienced by the healthy person through inner perception, to the relationship of the human being to the external world. The senses, and also, in a sense, the human locomotor system, are infected by the inner irregularity of the bodily organization when a person acts as a somnambulist or medium. This can lead to the somnambulist not perceiving what is experienced in the world in a normal, regular way, but rather, because he does not activate his senses as they are formed by the world, but rather infects them from the nature of the body, so that he perceives the environment in such a way that he does not perceive it through ordinary sensory activity.

This is where we enter a realm that has a sensational effect on people and that is a dangerous and seductive realm. It seduces people into seeking out all kinds of mysteries in order to find answers to anything they want to know that does not present itself in normal life. We can see that even people who think well in terms of natural science, out of their natural scientific view of the world, repeatedly and again and again come to an inner dissatisfaction, that they come to a higher yearning for knowledge in relation to the spiritual and that they then somehow try to satisfy this yearning for knowledge precisely in the field that is now under discussion. It can be seen that great naturalists can be completely taken in by what appears to them as 'wonderful revelations' in this field. Many examples could be cited from history and from present-day life where natural scientists, who are extraordinarily important in their own field when they want to explore the spiritual, repeatedly fall back on the phenomena related to somnambulism in order to find out something about a spiritual realm.

Among the many cases, I will mention only one of the most recent ones, which happened to the English philosopher and scientist Sir Oliver Lodge. Sir Oliver Lodge lost his son at the French front. Even before his son was sent to the front, a friend of his in America had written to him that something would happen to his son, but that when it did, the soul of a person who had already passed through the gates of death, who had died a long time ago, would stand by his son's side and help him. At first, of course, this friendly hint was kept rather vague. One could think that the son would be in danger in the war and that the soul of the long-dead personality would intervene from the spiritual world to protect the son. One could also think quite differently. In short, the son fell on the battlefield.

Now the person who had written to Sir Oliver Lodge from America thought that he could, of course, turn the matter around so that, since the son had died, his soul would now be in the spiritual world and that this soul in the spiritual world would be fetched by the friend's soul that had been there for a long time. At the same time - I can say this after a close study of this case - at the same time, so to speak, mediumistic persons were played into the environment of Sir Oliver Lodge. And Sir Oliver Lodge, who wrote a detailed book about the whole situation, which really comes across as a strictly scientifically written book, like a book written by someone who is not only familiar with the scientific way of thinking, but is also familiar with all the conscientiousness that must be peculiar to a scientific researcher, Sir Oliver Lodge was placed in an environment of mediums. He carefully recorded what these mediums, as a manifestation of the soul of the Son, had revealed from the beyond.

The whole course of the apparitions was such that Sir Oliver Lodge, in observing what was going on, I would say, proceeded like a chemist, with the same conscientiousness. Now much is being enumerated. The following was decisive for Sir Oliver Lodge and for others – because this case has been discussed a lot, caused a lot of sensation, and convinced journalists who, from the outset, were rather unapproachable to such things due to their attitudes – the following was decisive: Through one of the mediums, a message came from the son, supposedly from the spiritual world. This message stated that the son had himself photographed on the battlefield where he fell, with a group of other comrades. It was also said that several pictures had been taken, as is usually the case. It was described which hand position was shown by the son when taking the pictures, in one picture and in another picture, where it was slightly different. The photographs were one thing that the whole of society in London knew nothing about, the photographs were simply not there.

And lo and behold: after two or three weeks – the post takes a long time these days – the photographs themselves arrived, two or three weeks after the experiments had been carried out, and it turned out that the descriptions made by the medium were correct. This was astounding for Sir Oliver Lodge. This was what is called in natural science research an “experimentum crucis”. The medium and all the people who were present could not receive anything by thought transference either. They knew nothing about these photographs, which only arrived later. Nevertheless, the photographs were correctly described by the medium's manifestations. In this particular case, which was certainly close to him due to the death of his son, Sir Oliver Lodge was tempted to look at such a thing with a certain prejudice; on the other hand, however, to have the cross-proof, so to speak, provided by a meaningful experiment, that without any knowledge in the earthly realm, something from the spiritual world came out through a somnambulant person.

I cite this case, which I judge in the same way as the other case I want to discuss today, for the reason that it shows how the longing to recognize the spiritual arises particularly in serious, great and important natural scientists, but how even in a man like Sir Oliver Lodge, who would be far from accepting the path that is described here as the true path of spiritual research, how such a person feels the need to seek something in certain abnormal phenomena of human life, such as somnambulism and mediumship, that provides information about the world of the spiritual.

In the case of somnambulists and mediums, certain phenomena that occur in connection with them are reminiscent of dreams. But, dear attendees, above all, in the case of the somnambulistic personality, the contagion that I have spoken of, which goes from the inside of the body to the senses, can also pass over to the locomotor system. Then, in particular, rhythmic movements easily occur, movements that are difficult to control and through which all kinds of seemingly spiritual connections are carried out by the medium, such as table turning and so on. I can only hint at what I want to discuss here today.

The third area, which you are well acquainted with, is that which flows from artistic creation, and we value it as a manifestation from the other world precisely because we know that when a person devotes himself to abstract concepts and abstract ideas, he almost disturbs his artistic creation and also his artistic enjoyment. Something indeterminate flows in, both into the creative process and into the enjoyment of artistry. And for many who would otherwise not be able to cope with the spiritual, the way in which the artist's work appears will at least be something that teaches them the conviction that a spiritual element extends into human life. For it will take a very stubborn, materialistic mind to say, like Ingersoll, the famous materialist, that Hamlet, Shakespeare's Hamlet, is actually the product of the metabolism in Shakespeare. This saying is well known. But it really does not take much to be able to say: That which projects into human life through artistry is such that it cannot be directly explained from the body, nor can it be derived from ordinary consciousness because it is disturbed by it.

And a fourth area, dear attendees, that is particularly important for this consideration, is the area that I characterized yesterday as the path leading to the path that, in the sense of the spiritual science meant here, leads into the spiritual world. I already hinted yesterday, and you can read about it in the books I also mentioned yesterday, that only by directing his soul life consciously, actively, and willingly in a certain direction can a person elevate this soul life to such a sphere that this soul life itself can encounter the spiritual phenomena of the world as a spiritual being.

Of course, I cannot repeat what I hinted at yesterday, but what I want to say is that it is particularly important, on the one hand, to follow the course of external phenomena through the world of ideas to which one is otherwise accustomed, and to allow oneself to be guided by it, and, on the other hand, to introduce the element of will into it, so that the power of thought, the inner life of thought, is permeated by will. And I have characterized that through this the human being enters into a state of soul through which he stands out from the ordinary life of the body, that through this he encounters a spiritual world as he otherwise encounters the physical world. I have shown that stepping out of the body is promoted by learning to understand and develop self-observation, by learning to develop not just anything as a spiritual activity, but by becoming its spectator at the same time.

Through all these exercises, which you can read about in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds”, “Occult Science” and “The Riddle of the Human Being”, the human soul is able to develop certain dormant powers to such an extent that the soul itself becomes something completely different, and a spiritual world comes face to face with it, just as a sensual world comes face to face with the senses. However paradoxical it may appear to many people, such powers lie in every human soul, and they can be brought forth from every human soul, even if this requires patient and energetic work.

I would like to speak about this area, which I call the area of the seeing consciousness, because if one calls it clairvoyance, as it would have to be called in reality if the term were not misused; but it is very easily confused with what arises from somnambulism and the like, and it is of great importance, in order to avoid misunderstandings, that true spiritual science is not confused with it I would therefore call it, instead of “clairvoyance”, the “visionary consciousness”, as I have called it in my book “Vom Menschenrätsel” (The Riddle of Man), in which I have also characterized the field of this visionary consciousness, where the soul has found the spirit in itself, so that man as spirit-soul faces the spiritual-soul of the external world and is able to observe this spiritual-soul.

As I said, with regard to the development of the seeing consciousness, the development of that which I would like to call, in a certain figurative sense, with Goethe's words, the development of “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears.” The specific description of how one achieves this, I must leave to my books for the special description of how one arrives at this, but before I characterize dream, somnambulism, artistic creation and artistic enjoyment as unconscious human life phenomena, I would like to characterize this field of true clairvoyance, this field of the seeing consciousness itself a little. Because, dear ladies and gentlemen, those phenomena that we have now summarized in certain groups can only be truly observed from the point of view of spiritual research. Therefore, I must first explain what the peculiarity of the mind of the spiritual researcher is.

I said yesterday: What the spiritual researcher can investigate presents itself differently in many respects than one would expect when the spiritual researcher travels the path into the spiritual world. It is precisely through this that objectivity and reality are demonstrated: that one does not allow a fanciful preconception to apply within oneself, but that one is confronted with a spiritual reality. But the fact that things turn out differently is not only evident in what one researches in the spiritual worlds, but even in what one develops as previously hidden powers of knowledge, as the powers of the seeing consciousness in one's soul. The way in which the human soul relates to the spiritual is quite different from what one might initially expect. When one describes the way in which the human soul relates to the spiritual world in a cognitive way, it resembles what the human soul knows from the sense world.

At first this sounds paradoxical! Above all, one thing must be said: a defining moment in all life in the physical world is that one encounters certain events in life, that one lives through them, takes them up into the soul and that one later remembers the events in one's waking consciousness. The events can be recalled from the life of imagination, from memory. The strange thing is that when the soul, which has developed the seeing consciousness within itself, is able to see a spiritual fact, a spiritual being, to observe it, it cannot easily remember this soul experience, although it is usually only perceived as an inner soul experience. It passes. This does not produce memories in the usual sense.

This is how truly spiritual observations, which also only seem to exist in the life of the imagination, differ from the phenomena of ordinary imaginative life: the latter can be remembered in the normal way, but not the spiritual experience. They pass by. Now you will say: Yes, if they pass by and cannot be remembered in later life, then one cannot actually know anything about them! If you are unable to take what you have experienced spiritually and incorporate it into your imagination, as you would an external sensory phenomenon or a being of the senses, if you are unable to transform what you have observed into an idea yourself, into an ordinary idea as you have it on the physical plane, then you cannot remember.

Therefore, to research in the spiritual world, it is necessary to be able not only to experience what you experience spiritually, but also to translate it into ordinary ideas; then you can remember the idea. You can remember not the spiritual experience, but the idea into which you have translated the spiritual experience. In this respect, the spiritual experience has exactly the same peculiarity as a sensual experience. One can remember the idea that one has formed from the sensual experience. But if I have passed a tree and no longer have it in front of me, I cannot see it in reality; I have to go back to see it. So I have to face the spiritual experience again if I want to have it a second time. But it is precisely this that guarantees its reality. When one becomes a spiritual researcher, one gets used to facing spiritual reality as one faces sensual reality.

One peculiarity is that the spiritual experience as such does not evoke any memory. It is a fleeting moment. And another thing that occurs as a peculiarity in the spiritual experience is that the way in which the spiritual experience works is different from the way in which the events and activities of ordinary life work on people. When we perform some task over and over again, we become accustomed to it; we perform it better and better. Otherwise we would not be able to learn anything, to acquire any skill, if it were not the case that we would do what we do with difficulty at first, then habitually.

This is not the case with spiritual experiences. They occur when they are repeatedly sought. Then they occur less and less strongly, and it takes more and more effort to summon them to mind. One does not acquire a habit by merely repeating an experience, but by repeating it one becomes less and less able to acquire it. To their surprise, some who seek the way to the spiritual world have to be convinced of this.

By doing such exercises, some people relatively soon experience certain phenomena that are purely spiritual. They occur after the person has only done such exercises for a short time. But after they have occurred hardly two or three times, or perhaps only once, the person loses the ability to see them again. He is then unhappy. The true spiritual researcher must learn, must learn again through careful exercises, to create new conditions so that he can have the experience again in a renewed form. It cannot be achieved by mere evocation in the old way. This is another way in which the seeing consciousness differs from the ordinary experience of the ordinary consciousness: nothing is produced habitually, but on the contrary, the more often we have an experience, the less habitual it becomes for us to have it.

And a third thing that occurs in this observing consciousness is that the person must acquire the ability to quickly grasp an event – I am, of course, talking about spiritual events. Because what prevents us from looking into the spiritual world is that, when we observe, we are usually so slow in starting the observation that the event has already passed by the time we want to observe it. I would say that the exposure time, the time during which the event occurs before us, is so short that you have to be quick to observe what you can call presence of mind. Therefore, one prepares oneself well if one strives to develop presence of mind in one's physical life, if one tries to overcome what is so characteristic of human nature: that one muddles around until one can make up one's mind.

When you develop the ability to make a decision quickly that is appropriate to the situation when you are faced with something, in short, when you gradually develop presence of mind as an inner quality, then this leads to the fact that you can really develop that presence of mind in your soul as well, which is necessary to really face the spiritual world in its manifestations. The spiritual researcher absolutely must be able to make an observation with the same lightning speed as certain subordinate phenomena occur in the outer life. If a fly tries to alight on your eye, you quickly close your eye, as they say, by reflex action, without thinking about it. If someone had to think as long to close the eye as he usually thinks, he would have already fallen prey to the fly before the eye is closed. The spiritual researcher must develop something that comes as close as possible to this involuntary, unconscious activity. One returns to certain primitive activities of life, only in a spiritual way.

Another peculiarity of this spiritual perception is that in such representations, as one is accustomed to applying in the physical world, the spiritual world cannot appear before the searching soul, but it appears in pictorial representations. And when one describes the spiritual world, what one expresses it with is a translation into ordinary language. When you read my book 'Occult Science', you must not believe that the way in which things are expressed is an immediate reproduction of the vision itself, but it is translated into ordinary language and must be translated into ordinary language. For that which presents itself directly to the spiritual researcher is the same as what he puts into words, into concepts, into ideas, but it appears in a pictorial way. Hence one can also say: Consciousness is not the ordinary logical, rational consciousness, but an imaginative one that arises first. I could still bring out many more characteristics of the seeing consciousness. Above all, however, I must discuss the other phenomena, which I have listed in groups, precisely from the standpoint of this seeing consciousness.

One can discover what a dream is, what somnambulism is, what the other phenomena are, one can discover them from the moment one regards them from the point of view of the seeing consciousness. For just when one regards a dream in intimate beholding, one finds that it becomes ever more wondrous. Above all, it becomes more and more wonderful for the simple reason that one is not in a position to compare what one encounters in a dream with any other experiences. The dream enters into the life of consciousness as something that completely falls outside of this life of consciousness and everything that one can understand in relation to the life of consciousness. Just think of what occurs in the waking consciousness when a dream occurs! It would break through the whole consciousness. If you had to remember the dream, you would have to feel insane. You cannot compare the dream with anything that the waking consciousness understands.

The seeing consciousness is primarily familiar with the pictorial experience of the human being. And so the seeing consciousness can compare the dream with what occurs in the soul when one encounters the spiritual world through the seeing consciousness as a spirit. One can compare the pictorial nature of the dream world with the world that can be grasped in imaginative consciousness. Then one will find that the dream world is indeed fantastic at first, that the imaginative consciousness leads one into spiritual reality, that it differs like fiction from the truth, from the imaginative world, but that on the other hand one has a possibility for comparison. Because one has this, one can, by observing the 'dream, arrive at what this dream actually is.

Dear attendees, you cannot say anything about dreams through research if you cannot observe the dream with a seeing consciousness. But if you can observe the dream with a seeing consciousness, then you can describe its nature and essence through the seeing consciousness. Then one knows, above all, to say about the dream who is really the dreamer, who is actually dreaming. One does not know this in the ordinary waking consciousness, who is actually dreaming, then one has images before oneself. But to live in these images as one otherwise lives as a human being in the experiences of the day – one does not know this in the ordinary waking consciousness. One comes to know it when one can compare the images of the dream world with what one experiences in the seeing consciousness. Then one experiences that what actually dreams in us is really the spirit-filled human soul; that the body as such has nothing to do with the dreaming process in subjective terms, in terms of activity; that it is not the human body that dreams, but the dreamer himself is really the spiritual soul of the human being.

If one learns to recognize through the observing consciousness what the spiritual-soul is, then one can also know through comparison that one acts in dreams as the same as one acts in the observing consciousness. Here again is an important difference. With the seeing consciousness, one sees into a spiritual world that has nothing to do with the ordinary physical world. With the seeing consciousness, one sees with the eternal that is in oneself, into the eternal of the world.

The eternal beholds the eternal. This is different in dreams. In dreams, it is the same spiritual-soul person who dreams. But what he beholds, what he can behold, is not the spiritual world that lies beyond physical experiences, but rather it is pieces, parts, and links of his own personal life. The eternal in him beholds the temporal in him. He looks at what he can inwardly experience between birth and death in any way. But he does not look at it in the way he is otherwise accustomed to looking at the external world with his body, but rather, so to speak, he looks at his transitory human nature from the spiritual-soul point of view.

That is the essence of the dream, that is also what clarifies the dream. In dreams, one sees oneself as an eternal human being. And it is really the case that in the world of dreams, the eternal human being, who goes through births and deaths, places himself in the ordinary human reality, but that the human being is not aware of the eternal world itself, but rather looks back at his temporal world; looks at temporal objects from the eternal point of view. The world of dreams, when observed correctly, gives the certainty that from the moment of falling asleep until waking up, the human being is outside of his physical body with his actual being, is outside of his corporeality altogether. Only that which takes place in the body, which cannot be seen at all with the ordinary senses in the ordinary bodily state, that which lies deeper, that which is hidden in the memory, that which expresses itself not in the sense stimuli but in the sensual-supersensory individuality, which has become more involved in the bodily, that is what the human being observes in dreams.

Now the spiritual researcher, simply by being able to see into the spiritual world, knows from his stay in the spiritual world, from his knowledge of the spiritual world, that it is completely wrong to say, for example: Man is a spiritual-soul being, and earthly life is life in a vale of tears, a life of imprisonment perhaps, to which one is condemned, while one is in truth called to a higher spiritual life. Of course one is, but in the cosmic process everything is in its right place, and the spiritual researcher in particular learns to recognize, by getting to know the supersensible life, that the sensory life has its good meaning. If man were to live only in the spiritual and soul world, if he were a human being (it is not the case with other beings as it is with humans), if man were not led into the sensory world through birth or conception, then man would not be able to incorporate into his being that which he, as a human being, can only incorporate into this being in the sensual world.

Above all, there are two things: first, as strange as it sounds, as strangely as it contradicts all possible philosophical worldviews – these philosophical worldviews know nothing about this spiritual world – logical thinking, the ability to link one's thoughts in a logical, conscious way, is only acquired by man by going to his senses in the teaching. In this sense, logical thinking is the least spiritual. It is what we abstract from the sense world. The senses are the teachers of our logical thinking, and if we were not in a sense world, we would not be able to learn logical thinking. That is one thing.

The other is that by being active in the sensory world, we carry out actions and are present with our human nature in these actions, that by living in the sensory world we acquire that which belongs to the realm of morality, the realm of moral judgment of the world. Man must be placed in the sensory world if he is to implant in his nature what is the moral conception of life. Other things that belong to the human being, the human being incorporates or, if I may coin the expression, the human being ensouls himself in the spiritual-soul world when he passes through the gate of death, in the spiritual world. But this life in the physical world has its good significance. The human being, when he stands as a spiritual researcher in the physical world, gets to know the great weight of the physical world; he gets to know that the wise order of the world has, so to speak, placed him in this world so that he can acquire the logical and the moral to the other qualities of his being.

By recognizing the essence of the dream, by knowing that it is the same being that dreams and that he is, by looking into the spiritual world, the spiritual researcher also learns to recognize those qualities of the dream that I have enumerated; that we do not think logically in dreams and that we carry out all sorts of things in dreams that we ourselves morally condemn. Because we are lifted out of the physical-sensual world in which we acquire logic and morality, we cannot develop logic in our dreams, nor morality.

In this way, things reveal themselves that would remain enigmas if we only looked at the phenomena, if we were unable to observe these phenomena from the point of view of spiritual research, if we gained the right insight into them. In purely scientific terms, by numbering all the different parts of the brain under the cerebral cortex, we do not get to know the essence of these things. Now we can also understand why: because only the soul is grasped in dreams, because the human being is removed from the body, he has no relationship to the external sense world in dreams, as to the actions of the body. If the body were involved, it would have to show.

But we must not put forward hypotheses. We must, so to speak, perceive as a mystery why man has no sensory perceptions in relation to the external world and why he has no movements in his dreams. We then experience through the observing consciousness that the person as a dreamer is really in the spiritual world, that is, the sensory world, and has also been transported beyond his own physical body, that he is in the spiritual, in the supersensible. Therefore, he cannot perceive a sensory world, nor can he perform actions in it. Thus, the human being is completely immersed in the soul when he dreams, and does not touch his physical self as such with the events of the dream. Only by the fact that he, I might say, comes up against this physical and also against that which is higher than the physical in the physical body, only by that does resistance present itself to him, only by that is his activity as a spiritual-soul being called upon, and only by that does he observe from the point of view of the eternal that which is temporal in him.

The case of somnambulists is quite different. Of course, spiritual research must also ask: What is it that is active in the somnambulist? What is happening to this person? So the spiritual researcher must also ask: Who is it that actually carries out the actions of the somnambulist? Here one must say: When one learns to recognize what it is in us, when one researches the spiritual world, one can compare it to that which acts on the somnambulist personality that the ordinary consciousness has tuned down. Here one must say: in a sense, it is also the spiritual that is active in the somnambulistic being. But this spiritual does not directly intervene in the soul, as it does in dreams, but rather, as in the case of hallucinations and visions, it directly intervenes in the body.

Now the real, full human life consists in the fact that the spirit in man, even one's own spirit, does not intervene in the physical without this intervention being mediated by the soul, that which I called the true soul yesterday. This is the peculiar thing about somnambulism, that a spiritual being directly intervenes in the physical. The soul is eliminated. The somnambulist thus becomes a physical-spiritual automaton, and as such he appears. In this way he has eliminated from himself that which, although bound to the body between birth and death, has, however, a connection with the forces that draw it out of the body - the connection with the true spiritual world from which man comes, in which he is rooted with one's own eternal being, this connection is interrupted when one becomes somnambulistic, and one has only a spiritual connection with that which exists as a spiritual being in the ordinary physical world; after all, this too is directed by the spirit. Man is indeed a spiritual-soul being, but still an automaton. The spiritual that can emerge in him is a limited spiritual, and is above all not the spiritual in which man is rooted in his own being. His own eternal being, although it is active in the somnambulistic body, remains completely in the twilight darkness of the unconscious, even when the somnambulist is active. The consequence of this, honored attendees, is that the somnambulist cannot enter into a spiritual relationship with the spiritual world.

The true mediator for the human body in the spiritual world is the soul. But because the true soul is excluded and only the soul-like effect of the body occurs in the spiritual-soul automaton, the person only comes into contact with a limited spiritual world as a personality. The consequence of this is that what the somnambulist experiences through this or that revelation, through automatic speaking, automatic writing or the like, are only fragments, scraps of what is spiritually buzzing around in the physical world itself, what is spiritually active there, but that the somnambulist cannot bring down any revelations from the real spiritual world. Everything that comes from somnambulists in the broadest sense, and also from mediums, can never come from the real spiritual world in which the person finds himself when he has passed through the gate of death, or from which he emerges when he enters physical life through the gate of birth or conception.

As long as one does not see through this, one can be the greatest naturalist, one can be a conscientious scientist, one can have the greatest yearning for the eternal, for the supersensible, one can be deceived by the facts themselves. It is characteristic, after all, how the great naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge was deceived by the facts themselves. He was dealing with a medium. He wanted to obtain communications from the spiritual world through the medium. What did he obtain? He obtained a cross experiment. It caused a great stir throughout England, especially in this war time, when so many long for knowledge of the spiritual world as a result of external events, in this war time when so many of our loved ones are passing away. What could be more tempting than a message coming through a medium that gives something completely unknown to society, where it could not be a matter of thought transfer, which one could otherwise assume?

So what was it that was going on? Well, anyone who is familiar with the relevant world of somnambulism knows what it was. And it is nothing short of miraculous that a conscientious natural scientist is open to these things and does not try to learn for himself what can be known in this field. Anyone who knows these things is well aware that through the infection I have described, when the spirit has such an immediate effect on the physical that it turns a person into a spiritual and soul automaton, that a person works under the influence of the world around him as a clock works according to spiritual laws that the clockmaker has implanted in it, everyone knows that the senses are infected, that one can perceive things that the outer senses do not perceive; that one can perceive things in such a way that these perceptions are not bound by the ordinary laws of spatial and temporal perceptions, everyone knows that, without looking into a spiritual world, one can nevertheless see to a certain extent when the senses are infected by the spiritual-soul automaton – that one can see that which is not present but future.

One does not see into a spiritual world, but one simply sees through more refined senses than those through which the ordinary sensory life proceeds, according to different laws. And in the case of Sir Oliver Lodge, the medium acted in exactly the same way as a somnambulist in another case, who saw how he would ride once in three weeks and fall off the horse; who thus saw a future event against the ordinary laws of temporal succession, but nothing but that.

Thus, in the case of Sir Oliver Lodge, the medium saw nothing other than what actually took place in the future, namely, that photography came before the eyes of society and the family, which arrived later and was not yet there at that time. And in such a case, no proof has been provided that a manifestation has come from the world through the medium, in which the soul of the son was. Of course, it is extremely useful, especially in the scientific sense, to become acquainted with such extraordinary phenomena, and it would be good to thoroughly investigate these phenomena in order to educate oneself about the truly spiritual.

But it must also be clear that the soul does not reveal itself by leaving it inactive and turning man into a physical and mental automaton, but it speaks to the human soul that has awakened the slumbering forces within itself, through which one can come into contact with the spiritual world. There is no other way from the so-called living to the so-called dead, who have passed through the gate of death and live in the time that one spends between death and a new birth, than through the correspondence between the soul itself, in the silent interior, but which becomes inwardly speaking, and the soul that no longer carries a body. That which comes from the concrete spiritual world can already speak into the soul itself, but not in a roundabout way through some physical-mental automaton. This, most honored presence, must be emphasized in relation to somnambulism and mediumship, because it is precisely through the recognition of this pure, true spiritual that it is put in the right light.

And on the other hand, somnambulism also leads to action. It leads them out of their spiritual and mental automatons. Whatever should be done logically, whatever should be done through the body in which the soul dwells, the body of the somnambulist does in an automatic way. When the somnambulist acts, what happens then? He performs actions, be it speaking or something else. He performs actions that, according to the laws of the world, should only be performed by the human body in the sense world. For we have seen that spiritual research shows us that man does not have his sensual existence for nothing. He acquires a moral conscience and moral judgment. That which should be conveyed through the sensual body is realized with the exclusion of the soul.

Thus the somnambule is in the same situation as someone who is given material to distribute among crowds of people; he does not distribute this material, but keeps it for himself to adorn his own existence. This is how the somnambulist acts. What should only take place in a social environment with other people, from human body to human body, what a person should only develop in a human community, the activity here in the physical world, the somnambulist claims as an activity that only originates from his own being. He effectively withdraws what belongs to the commonality of people from this commonality.

As strange as it may sound, this is the reason why – because the somnambulist, in a field where morals apply, automatically acts out of the spirit and does not enter the field where man should acquire morals should acquire morality. The somnambulist, when he habitually indulges in somnambulism, can very easily go astray morally, and it is basically quite rare for mediums not to go astray into fraud. It is very interesting to occupy oneself with the phenomena that arise from a person becoming a mental and physical automaton, but at the same time it must be clear that the spiritual can only be sought and found in a spiritual way, that it cannot be found in this external way that resembles nature.

The third area, which accompanies people like a faithful companion, is artistic creation, artistic feeling and artistic enjoyment. This artistic creation, artistic enjoyment – we know that, in a sense, it flows out of the unconscious. We also know that this artistic feeling, artistic enjoyment and artistic creation comes entirely from the soul. It is also known that insightful people have always considered the process of the great philosopher Plato, the poetic power of man, poetic enjoyment, and the whole artistic process to be akin to dreaming – and rightly so. Why? Because the dream is pictorial, because the dream comes from the spiritual and soul life.

Now the dreamer, as I said, is judged with his entire being, although he is in the eternal, in the temporal, in his personal temporal experiences and possibilities of experience. I would like to say that the artist, the true artist, turns with his soul to the other side. The dreamer stands in the spiritual-soul realm, but is turned towards the side of the body; the artist stands in the body, but looks into the spiritual world. But what he now experiences in the spiritual world does not immediately come to his consciousness. He cannot look into the spiritual world in such a way that he sees the process that takes place in his spiritual environment while his soul and spirit stand face to face with this spiritual environment. The process must already be over before the result of the spiritual experience enters into the ordinary waking consciousness of the day.

Therefore, what the true artist presents, even artistic enjoyment, which is based on similar foundations, rightly gives the impression of the unconscious. It is experienced unconsciously; from the unconscious, after it has happened, it enters into what man can know, what man can experience. Therefore, to those who have a feeling for such things, the manifestations of true art do indeed appear as manifestations from the spiritual world. Therefore, it is right that the artist's creative work appears to be affected when the artist mixes ordinary imagination, ordinary conscious logic, ordinary observation of the physical world into that which is actually supposed to be a message from a spiritual world. The fact that true artistry has such an origin is connected with everything that can be said as a valid judgment about real, genuine art.

The fact that a materialistic time has gone astray through so-called artistic naturalism and wants to bring everything else today as messages from the spiritual world will only be put right in judgment when it is recognized through spiritual science what true artistry is. True artistry is the penetration of a spiritual experience into consciousness, but one that is itself experienced as a spiritual experience in the unconscious. True artistry is, in the truest sense of the word, a revelation of the unconscious. Every time ordinary conscious life forces its way into artistic creation, art is, in a sense, destroyed. That is why Goethe, who was a true artist in this respect, so often compared his work to dreaming, because he could not bring into ordinary consciousness what he had already experienced in his unconscious when he had it in his ordinary consciousness, the experience itself of the spiritual world.

If you take stock of what we have considered, you will say to yourself: True clairvoyance, true insight into the spiritual world, which I have taken the liberty of calling “the observing consciousness”, looks at that in which man, with his own eternal, faces the eternal, with his spiritual-soul nature, the outer spiritual-soul nature. And the spiritual researcher brings into the conscious world from the great realm of the unconscious nothing but what lives in every human being. In every human being who merely walks about on earth, there takes place in the realm of the unconscious what the spiritual researcher attempts to illuminate only with the light of spiritual insight. While the artist, after experiencing something in the spiritual world, still brings a relatively individual experience into consciousness that not everyone can experience, the one who is a spiritual researcher brings from the spiritual world what every soul actually experiences in truth, but only leaves in the unconscious.

Therefore, a true spiritual insight is a true revelation of an unconscious that really lives in every human soul and is really active there. Again and again, I have to say what I have already said here in earlier years: It is important to realize that one does not just glimpse a generally hazy spiritual realm through spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, as one looks into and listens to the physical world through physical eyes and physical ears, but rather that one beholds a concrete spiritual world through spiritual insight.

When you say that, you encounter prejudice. In the physical world, we distinguish four realms, and no one in the physical world would think of saying: Oh, quartz, amethyst and so on, everything is nature! But when it comes to the spiritual, people find it more convenient to speak vaguely of pantheism, to view the general spirit pantheistically, as if one did not look at individual minerals and plants and animals and just always say: nature, nature, nature. Real spiritual research looks into the realms of the spiritual soul, spiritual research looks at those beings who, just like us here as humans, are structured into body, soul and spirit, who do not descend into the physical body but remain spiritual-soul, but belong to higher realms, just as animals, plants and minerals belong to the lower sensual-physical realms.

You can become familiar, dear attendees, through real spiritual vision with those entities that, just as our animal nature here mediates that we can live physically in the physical world, mediate that nature to us that we can acquire when we enter through the gate of death into a spiritual world. Just as we have to acquire the animal nature here, so we have to acquire an essential spiritual nature there, and just as we are surrounded by animal creatures here as subordinate beings, so in the spiritual world there are such beings that stand above man as animals stand among men. As we enter the world of animals, plants and minerals through birth, so we enter the spiritual world into the realm of those beings with whom we are related when we pass through the portal of death.

We enter the realm of those entities of the kingdom to which we belong through having a vegetative nature within us; but we also have the mineral nature within us. We enter the realms of concrete spiritual entities. And while we are here between birth and death with the beings around us from the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, we are there together with the beings to whom we are related, and we experience with them the life between death and a new birth in that world, through which that which is the eternal self passes as it passes through the physical world here.

But then, when we get to know what the concrete, real spiritual world is like – I am not afraid to say it, because I want to give you real results of spiritual research and not just beat around the bush – then the outer nature will also appear to us as the outer body of a spirituality, just as our own body appears to us as an expression of a spirituality. Just as we see through our own body, through its lawful processes, into the spiritual and soul life that reveals itself through the body, so we learn to see through natural phenomena into a spiritual world. Spiritual research thus truly opens up the spiritual world to man, broadening his field of experience. Man is raised above the possibility, which unfortunately otherwise presents itself to him, of regarding the outer world only as material, with the consequence that he must then regard himself as if he arose only as material substance from a material world.

The fact that, over the centuries, humanity has increasingly approached a state in which it does not see the spirit has led to people having a true, genuine longing for the spirit, a true, genuine longing for the spirit - who also have an inkling that external nature is not merely the body, but that it is the body of a spiritual world —, that such people could not find their satisfaction in what has emerged as seemingly true science in recent centuries.

How has this science developed? It is well known – I have emphasized it here several times in previous years – it is well known what is called the Kant-Laplace theory: our whole earth is said to have developed out of mere material fog, which then coalesced into all that is peculiar to us as humans, to animals, to plants; the material is said to have arisen from the material alone. It would be as if we believed that we had developed as material human beings from the material environment, that a spiritual element from the spiritual world had not been involved.

Just as our being descends from a spiritual world, so the whole universe descends from the spirit. How does something like the Kant-Laplace theory develop? It has been calculated how the beings on earth change over time. So one can calculate how they were formed 1000, 2000, millions of years ago, the beings of the earth. This gives us a calculated idea, a truly correctly calculated idea, of what the earth was like millions of years ago. It is as if we calculated from the change of the heart, the stomach, how these changes, [these organs] were two, six, ten years ago, and then draw a conclusion as to how these changes brought about a condition 200 years ago. This is just as scientific as the Kant-Laplace theory. Or the so-called geological changes of the earth can be calculated in this way. You can find out what the human body was like 300 years ago, according to the observed changes, only the person in question had not yet lived. The same mistake is made when developing the Kant-Laplace theory, when geological hypotheses are formulated that are common practice today. One comes back to the state that can be calculated - only the earth did not yet exist at that time, but it went from a spiritual state into the present state much later.

Spiritual science also leads us back to a spiritual view with regard to the cosmos. And people who, based on their sense of knowledge, have always felt that a merely materialistic approach is insufficient, could speak as an outstanding man of the nineteenth century spoke about this Kant-Laplace theory. Hermann Grimm says about this theory:

Long ago, in his – Goethe's – youth, the grand Laplace-Kant fantasy of the Earth's origin and former destruction had taken hold. From the rotating nebula – as children learn at school – the central drop of gas forms, which then becomes the Earth, and, as it solidifies into a sphere, it goes through all the phases, including the episode of habitation by the human race, , only to finally plunge back into the sun as burnt-out cinders: a long process, but one that is perfectly comprehensible to today's audience, and one that requires no external intervention other than the effort of some external force to maintain the sun at the same temperature. No less fruitless a prospect for the future can be imagined than the one that is supposed to be imposed on us today as scientifically necessary in this expectation. A carrion bone that a hungry dog would go around would be a refreshing, appetizing piece compared to this last excrement of creation, as which our earth would finally fall back to the sun, and it is the curiosity with which our generation absorbs it and believes it, a sign of a sick imagination, which the scholars of future epochs will one day spend a lot of ingenuity explaining as a historical phenomenon of the times. Goethe never allowed such bleakness entry.

This is how a healthy soul feels about what must deny the spirit. True spiritual science will lead mankind back to what it must long for in the present: to the knowledge of the spirit. And just as what is presented as spiritual science as a whole has been sensed by people at the height of human education, even though spiritual science can only arise today, so too have the individual parts, the individual links, above all the spiritual-scientific attitude, always been sensed. And in a spirit such as Goethe's, the mood of the human soul has also been recognized, which must always announce itself as a fulfillment of [longing], as Goethe said in his beautiful writing about Winkelmann:

When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when harmonious comfort grants him pure, free delight, then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as having reached its goal and admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

Goethe, after all, spoke with a sense of anticipation, as does the intuitive mood of spiritual science. For that which Goethe sensed is a reality in every human soul. The universe exults in the subconscious in the human soul, in that in the depths of the human soul the universe as spiritual encounters the eternal-spiritual in man himself, the universe as spirit confronts the spirit of man, who is able to spiritually contemplate this universe as emerging from his own being and weaving. What Goethe has presented as the exultation of the universe at its goal in the human soul, as something worthy of admiration, is really recognized by spiritual science as the greatest unconscious in the depths of the human soul. And spiritual science is there to bring this, which is directly connected with the human being, with the eternal in human nature, from the realm of the unconscious into the realm of the conscious. Spiritual science wants to be the revelation of this spiritually unconscious greatest secret in human nature.

Dear attendees, the two lectures that I will take the liberty of giving today and on Monday will together form a whole in a certain respect, with one explaining the other; however, I will endeavor to make each of the lectures a complete whole so that it can be heard on its own. The spiritual scientific world view, which I have been presenting here in Munich for many years now, is subject to many misunderstandings, as is well known to many who have encountered this world view and yet, it may be said that, even if not in the consciousness of our contemporaries, this world view proves to be very strongly hoped for, one might say, in the general emotional life of our contemporaries.

But the source and the actual character of this world view are misunderstood by one side or the other. Therefore, whenever it is mentioned, it is always necessary to at least briefly point out, in the introduction, how the very way of thinking in our time and in the recent past, which is particularly justified in becoming established in the consciousness of of the contemporaries, how the scientific way of thinking forms the source of spiritual science, of which a large proportion of our educated contemporaries are justifiably of the opinion that it stands on the ground of well-disciplined scientific research. And precisely because the scientific character of the humanities represented here is denied from the most diverse sides, it must always be emphasized that these humanities not only do not contradict – that would not mean much – the natural scientific way of thinking of our time, but that it has its source in it, that it is confirmed and supported by this natural scientific way of thinking, if one understands the latter in the right sense, in all its statements.

Now, however, there are many reasons for misunderstandings, and if I may make a personal comment, it is that wherever the relationship between all kinds of amateur representations of this or that intellectual direction and between natural science is at issue, I myself will always stand on the ground of natural science and with natural science against amateurish intellectualism. But precisely the way in which natural science has developed in recent times, how it has found its way into the minds of contemporaries, makes it necessary to emphasize with all strength the possibility of a special investigation of spiritual life.

The nature of science in this direction can best be described by saying that anyone who is familiar with the development of science in recent centuries, and particularly in the immediate past, can only be an admirer of science and an acknowledgment of the fact that science has developed the best-disciplined concepts to get to know and control the broad field of natural phenomena with these concepts as well as possible. No branch of spiritual science should want to deny the great achievements of scientific research and thinking; but on the other hand, there is the following significant fact, namely that if one endeavors to do scientific research and think in the right way, thinking, when one develops such concepts and ideas that are particularly suited to grasp nature in its external, sensory phenomena, then these concepts and ideas will prove inadequate, indeed unsuitable, for penetrating into the spiritual realm.

Those who are familiar with the development of human spiritual life know that centuries ago it was different in this respect. One of the greatest rifts in human cultural life occurred when the scientific way of thinking arose three or four centuries ago. Because people are not familiar with the way people thought about nature before, they fail to recognize this tremendously significant change in human spiritual culture. But anyone who is familiar with the way thinking about nature was viewed throughout the ages more than three or four centuries ago knows that in earlier times, the concepts of nature always included the idea that spiritual forces are at work in natural processes and phenomena. At the same time, by observing natural phenomena, one has taken with one's knowledge of this or that natural phenomenon ideas about the spiritual that permeates nature.

The scientific view has rightly discarded everything that somehow refers to the spiritual in order to get nature pure in its insights. And so it is no wonder that in the course of the last three or four centuries, such ideas have emerged that are precisely suited to understanding nature and that prove unsuitable for somehow approaching the spirit. And in our time, after this process has existed for a long time and become established in the minds and souls of men, in our time, even if it does not yet fully understand this desire itself, the human soul demands an approach to the spiritual realm that is just as rigorous as the scientific path to the spiritual realm, but one that stands alongside the path of scientific world view, since the latter itself cannot find access to the spirit.

What I have just said can be seen not only when one looks at the general course of scientific development over the last few centuries, but also when one looks at the particular way of thinking of the most outstanding scientific researchers of the present day. I must emphasize that, precisely with regard to the exemplary nature of scientific thinking of thought of outstanding researchers of the present, for which I, as a humanities scholar, am full of appreciation. I would just like to emphasize by way of introduction that the natural scientific development in recent years has come to a level-headed, solid position regarding the much-debated question of Darwinism, and really significant work has been done in this area.

One of the many, many testimonies to this is the significant book by Oscar Hertwig, “The Becoming of Organisms”, a refutation of the Darwinian theory of chance. Here, for once, a scientist himself, with all the tools that science can provide, has shown how one-sided the last third of the nineteenth century was in relation to important questions. If you then set about recognizing the way such personalities think, you find the peculiarity that such personalities limit themselves in their field, rightly limiting themselves to researching what is given externally through the senses , and that they say – this can be found in particular in Oscar Hertwig: everything that goes beyond observation and the methodical knowledge of the senses must, Hertwig says, be left to metaphysics, epistemology and so on.

All this would be very nice. One could say: Such a researcher therefore refers to spiritual science himself; but it is not that simple. Wherever such things occur today, especially among the most important natural scientists, they are at the same time connected, I would say, with an unspoken but effective fight against any kind of research into spiritual life in our time, in that it is always pointed out – even if it is said that natural science itself has no access to the spiritual, it must leave that to another branch of science —-, when it is always emphasized that true science can only be achieved by sticking to sensory observation and the methods that take sensory observation a little further. Thus, at the same time, the necessity of a special spiritual science that goes beyond the sensory world is emphasized, but, I might say, unconsciously, this spiritual science is discredited at the same time by denying its scientific nature.

As a result, not only those who are scientists in our modern sense, not only those who inform themselves in a popular way about the results of science, but also those who learn something from their newspaper, in the Sunday supplements, about the way the world is being explored in the present, that everywhere the opinion is established that whatever is not found only through the scientific way of thinking is simply unscientific; that one is only enlightened if one no longer speaks about the spiritual at all, if one does not fall back into the outdated superstition of still somehow speaking about the spiritual. It is in the flesh and blood of our contemporaries – as I said, even those who draw their view of the world from the Sunday supplement of their newspaper – it is in the flesh and blood that what the great naturalist du Bois-Reymond, a great naturalist, said at a leading naturalists' meeting in the 1870s (this has almost been forgotten today) that science ends where supernaturalism begins, that is, where life begins in the face of the spirit. This has led to the establishment of the prejudice that anyone who somehow speaks of a consideration of spiritual life cannot be a scientist.

But because the natural-scientific directions have developed so strictly that they are applicable only to the sensual, a very particularly constituted spiritual science must stand beside them, which today can lead man to the spirit, while in earlier centuries and millennia he was led to the spirit by the contemplation of nature itself.

Now in our time there is still a significant prejudice prevailing, a prejudice that exists in the general public, but also exists in the chairs of philosophy professors, especially those who deal with spiritual life, a prejudice that prevents the human being from being considered in the right scientific way, a prejudice about whose historical origin one could tell a lot. This prejudice consists in the fact that as soon as one comes to speak of the purely physical aspect of the human being, one does not want to consider that one must distinguish in the supersensible being of the human being the soul and the spiritual.

Everyone who speaks about this relationship today - as I said, within the broad limits that I have indicated - speaks of the human being as consisting of body and soul. But if one speaks of the human being in this way, then it is impossible to penetrate to an understanding of this human being by scientific means; it is, if I may use a comparison, as if someone has a chemically composed substance that contains three components and he absolutely wants to deny that a third component is present, that only two are there. He organizes the entire investigation in such a way that he only wants to find two components; if he breaks it down into two components, then he will always and always have a confusion either of the third with the first or of the second with the first or of the third with the second. And so it is with today's scientific view of the human being. In the supersensible, spirit and soul are thrown together. That is why I wanted to choose the topic 'The human being as a spiritual being and a soul being' for today's reflection, to point out what kind of prejudice has to be overcome in order to arrive at a corresponding scientific view of the human being.

Now, what is the actual situation regarding the division of the human supersensible being into soul and spirit? We can form a preliminary idea about this if we consider that the human being, as he is, experiences the physical between birth and death or, let us say, conception, that the human being also experiences the physical. We must be clear about the fact that hunger, thirst and the need to breathe, for example, are basically experiences of the soul. We experience hunger and thirst inwardly, emotionally; we feel a certain mood arising from this or that need to breathe.

If a person wants to explore the physical basis of hunger and thirst and the need to breathe, he must not stop at inner perception, he must not, for example, deny himself food in order to experience severe hunger, or overload his stomach to see what it is like to be satiated. In this field, one would never delude oneself that by mere introspection, by observing what it feels like to be more or less hungry and thirsty, one can learn something about what corresponds to hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe in the body.

The science of physical life has its special methods, its special types of research, to see what is going on in the body while we are hungry or when the comfortable feeling of satiety has set in. Whether it is right or wrong is not of interest to us; but physical research, which goes from what is merely experienced inwardly in the soul to physical processes, examines the chemical changes in the blood that occur when we are hungry, and so on. In order to recognize what is physically at the root of this kind of soul life, which I have just described, physical research must go from the soul to the physical, and it is admitted that for the person who only lives in ordinary consciousness, lives in the everyday consciousness, all these processes that take place in the body in chemical and physical terms while he experiences something like hunger or the general comfortable mood of his state of health, that these processes remain unconscious.

What does a person in their ordinary consciousness know about their body? What little they observe and recognize through external perception with their senses, that is explained by the science we call physics; but what physics provides is not conscious in the ordinary life of the soul.

Spiritual research shows, in turn, that what underlies the human soul as spirit is the same on the other side as what underlies the human soul as body. Just as little as one can, without any scientific approach to the body, make out anything about the body from the sensation of hunger, thirst and the need to breathe, so little can one, through the mere inner experience of imagining, feeling and willing, as they take place in the of the soul in everyday life, one can know anything about the spirit of the human being; for it is the case that the spirit of the human being, which determines the soul life from the other side as the body, only projects a part of this spirit of the human being into everyday life, just as it does of the body.

Just as one can perceive the body through one's eyes, so one cannot know anything about the soul that only physical research can tell us. From the spirit, the ability to concentrate our soul activity, which we summarize by saying that we think, feel and will, penetrates into the soul. This focusing of the soul life on an ego, which otherwise remains an indeterminate concept, is what projects from the spirit into the ordinary soul life, just as what projects from the bodily life lies before the eyes, without one investigating.

But just as one must proceed from this to physical research, so one must proceed from what is experienced in the soul in imagining, feeling and willing, and from what projects from the spirit, by combining the imagining, feeling and willing in the I, which is as inclined to the soul life as the physical form is inclined to the eye from the other side, ... [...] one must move beyond everything that can be experienced in the soul to a science of the spirit, to that which, from the spirit, determines these processes of imagining, feeling and willing just as hunger and thirst determine bodily processes, which can only be found through physical research.

Admittedly, other research methods are needed to explore the mind than those of physical science; but it must be emphasized with full clarity that no matter how far-reaching the study of, for example, mere inner life may be, it can never lead to real spiritual science. Just as increasing hunger or thirst or the need to breathe or satiation cannot lead to ordinary science, to teaching anatomy and physiology; just as little can mere mystical immersion – however intimate – mere living into ideas, into feelings, that can never lead to an understanding of spiritual reality. Only a real expansion of the field of observation from the inner soul life to the spirit, which is present outside of us and with us, as well as to nature, which is present outside of us and with us, can seriously lead to this; for this nature, which is present outside of us and with us, organizes our body, and this spirit, which is present outside of us and with us, organizes our own spirit. The soul life then develops between the body and the spirit through the interrelations between spirit and body.

In this process, however, the methods that lead to the knowledge of the spirit are to be understood in a spiritual sense. One can never come to the spirit through external activity, no matter how spiritual it may be, because the spirit is only given in the supersensible. If one only strives to learn something about the spirit through external activity, one shows that one actually has no understanding of how to come to the spirit at all. The point is this: just as one must pass from the soul-life, from hunger and thirst, to the soul-dead in the bodily life in order to gain physical science, physiology and biology, so one must pass from the soul-dead to the spirit by strengthening the soul life, by bringing in completely new elements of the soul life.

Now I must emphasize that what I have often stated here and am stating again today in principle as a path of research into the spiritual world is not meant to be taken as a recommendation for everyone to immediately go this way into the spiritual world. And those who, in order to discredit spiritual science, repeatedly emphasize that only those who have had experiences in the spiritual world should actually speak about spiritual science, fall into the same contradiction as those who say that only those who research in them should speak about chemistry and physics.

No, just as it is not an unjustified belief in authority to include in general human education what chemistry, physics and so on research, it is just as little an unjustified belief in authority to include in general human education what spiritual science is able to research; but it is true that the methods of spiritual science must become generally known today, and one finds more detailed information about what I will now only hint at in principle in all the details in my books: “How to Know Higher Worlds,” “Theosophy” and “Secret Science,” “The Riddle of Man,” “The Riddle of Souls,” and so on. There you will find a detailed description of the facts and the path that leads into the spiritual world.

Today, however, it is necessary to talk about this matter because it is desirable, according to the whole spiritual constitution of our time, that as many people as possible should follow the path that leads at least to the point from which one can bear witness that the spiritual life is a reality. And basically anyone can come to this point if they take the instructions of the books mentioned into account in some way.

But even if one did not want to do this, if one did not want to enter the spiritual world, then it would still be valuable to know how the person who presents himself as a spiritual researcher presents the results from the spiritual world and how he has arrived at these research results; because one must actually know what the spiritual researcher's findings are based on. One will be convinced when one gets to know a method that one can already judge well with the ordinary healthy human understanding whether the spiritual researcher says something absurd, foolish, stupid, fantastic, dreamy, or whether he is able to show a way that makes it seem to the healthy human understanding that one is really finding something spiritual.

Now, if I am to characterize in principle the path the spiritual researcher takes, I must say: the spiritual researcher must transform the ordinary feeling, the ordinary imagining, the ordinary will impulses; he must shape them in a different way, in such a way that that he really goes beyond mere thinking, feeling and willing, that he comes to a real insight into spiritual life, just as one comes, by going beyond the life of hunger and thirst, to a real insight into the life of the body.

Now, dear ones, there is very often the idea that physics is difficult and that you have to have some self-control to come to the strict scientific methods of physics. That is one reason why one commits oneself to the physical science, one reason besides the other, that although the physical science is officially recognized, that one can make one's way in life with it and so on, but one has the idea that spiritual research must be something easy, otherwise one would rather leave it entirely. One has the idea that one can enter into the spirit with a few transformations of one's ordinary concepts.

Now it must be emphasized that compared to what is actually the case, what I now want to describe, what is actually the path of spiritual research, the study of chemical, physical and biological methods is easy and that progress on the path of spiritual research requires patience and perseverance, depending on the various human talents that are available for this purpose, may take a shorter or longer time, but nevertheless, even if there is a strong aptitude for exploring spiritual life, it often takes many years to make any progress in just one or the other direction, even if there is the necessary seriousness of purpose in exploring spiritual life. Thus, what can be given as a description of spiritual research paths appears relatively simple; but to really put it into practice requires patience and perseverance and, above all, a strong inner energy and a certain courage of thought.

I would like to start with a comparison in which I want to show what it takes to get from the physical or mental world into the spiritual world. Each of you knows that if you have learned something by heart and recite it, it is good if you do not observe yourself while reciting it. If you want to listen to yourself reciting something you have memorized, you will stutter and get stuck. The spiritual activity that unfolds when reciting a poem cannot be fully experienced if you want to stand by as a self-observer.

So we know that self-observation is difficult. Nevertheless, not only that one observes oneself when reciting a poem, but that it is necessary to enter the spiritual world by observing one's own thinking, feeling and willing. There are philosophers who describe it as a characteristic of the human soul life that one cannot observe oneself in this way. For these philosophers, of course, the spiritual scientific path is from the outset an impossible one, because they understand what one can already do as a peculiarity of the soul, and what one must first learn, they consider as an impossibility. If you want to become a spiritual researcher, you have to learn not only to observe yourself when you recite a poem, for example, but also to stand beside yourself, as it were. You must not only achieve this through constant practice, but it is necessary and indispensable to achieve that you evoke the course of thoughts and feelings in the soul and at the same time stand beside them, so to speak.

You see, we in the West do not have the opportunity, nor should we even try, to penetrate the spiritual world in the way that the spirits of the Orient do. The methods of the West must be different from those of the Orient. But still, we can sometimes listen when an Oriental, who by his very nature is much more attuned to self-observation than we are, says something.

In an excellent essay that was recently published by Rabindranath Tagore, who is well known for receiving the Nobel Prize for his poetry, there is a brief comment about introspection that is meaningful because it comes from the soul of someone who is more familiar with introspection of the soul than most Western thinkers are. He – Tagore – points out the necessity of self-observation in relation to public culture as well; but he says: I know how difficult it is to observe oneself, and I know that the one who is drunk stubbornly denies his drunkenness; if he had self-observation, he would hardly be able to deny it. Of course, this is not only the case for the drunkard, it is the case for people in general, that self-observation, penetrating into what is within themselves, causes them enormous difficulties. But it must happen if one really wants to come to knowledge of the spiritual world.

And so, anyone who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world must increasingly learn to separate what takes place in thoughts, feelings and will from what is actually in him, and to live in a different element by putting aside what is otherwise in him and observing. In this way he must come to enter from the ordinary life of the soul into the experience of the spiritual. One must, as it were, expel, as one recites the poem when observing oneself, one must expel thinking, feeling and willing, and one thereby comes into the position - as strange and paradoxical as it may sound at first - if one does it again and again the energy with which one otherwise drives the chemical method in the outer world, one comes to develop in a completely healthy way what one can call 'having I-consciousness', having self-consciousness, but not in one's thinking, feeling and willing, but outside of it.

And when such spiritual scientific methods are applied, it becomes real, a reality, that the person can say to themselves: I am outside of my body. This consciousness, which is then an experience, which is then a view, this consciousness penetrates, that the person no longer feels with his I in his thinking, feeling and willing, as always, but that he stands outside of it and that he now knows: I am still a being, even when I have left thinking, feeling and willing, which is initially dependent on my body!

What still seems grotesque to so many people today, what they ridicule, that one can lay aside one's body and stand beside it, is a fact for him who advances in spiritual research in the appropriate way. It is a fact, although one does not, I might say, stand outside the physical body in a duplication of it, but rather in the spiritual. This can be achieved through a life that only takes place in the spirit. Just as the workings of chemical methods are in space, so too is what the spiritual researcher must undertake, something that takes place in the spirit.

One can see from the way even soul researchers talk about the ego that this ego only turns its outside to them. After Ziehen had given very beautiful and meaningful lectures on physiological psychology, which were meaningful from a purely scientific point of view, he said to his audience: “Gentlemen, the ego is by no means something very simple. When you think about what the ego is, what comes to mind?” First of all, your body comes to mind, then your relationships with the outside world, then your property and ownership, then perhaps your names and titles – he leaves out the medals – then all the experiences of your past come to mind and so on. In short, Theodor Ziehen mentions everything that can actually tell us very little about the self. Then he says: However, metaphysicians often say that the ego is something special in addition to what comes to mind, such as names, titles and so on, but that this is just a fiction. Again an example where a researcher who is to be taken very seriously – I am also full of appreciation and admiration for him – explains the scientifically researchable in an exemplary manner, but points out that one cannot find the spiritual in this field; but then also discredits this spiritual as a fiction.

To reduce this spiritual element, this I, to a single word does not prove at all that, just because one can reduce it to a single word, one also knows something about the nature of the I. Every person knows how to pronounce the word “sleep”; but the fact that one can pronounce the word “sleep” does not indicate what the nature of the soul is between falling asleep and waking up. One only speaks about something that presents itself as a gap, that actually presents itself as something unfilled in life.

It is the same when one speaks about the self: one points to something about which one has no view. When one sees a colored area and the color stops in the middle of the area, one sees a black dot. One actually sees nothing, one designates nothingness. So when you say the little word “I” in your ordinary consciousness, you don't mean anything in particular; you almost mean a nothing, actually just a spiritual point. But if you expand your consciousness by becoming your own spectator, as I have indicated, then you learn to recognize something very meaningful about this ego, you learn to recognize that what the essence of the ego is is basically always misinterpreted by ordinary consciousness.

I will use a comparison to suggest how the sense of self, with all that belongs to it, is misinterpreted in ordinary consciousness. Imagine someone were to examine the human bodily constitution and find that lungs and air belong together. Because lungs and air belong together in a certain way, he would declare that the air inhaled and exhaled in the lungs actually came into being in the lungs; the lungs gradually develop in the human body in such a way that they generate air. Of course, one cannot arrive at this error, because through physical science one finds that one not only exhales air that arises from the lungs, but that one first inhales air in order to be able to exhale it. One can only arrive at this through contemplation.

In this way one acquires an understanding of how one is to relate to one's self. Just as the air does not develop in the lungs, so the self cannot develop out of the human body. Just as one draws air into the lungs and releases it again, so the I is present in the objective spiritual life. The lungs are not the source of air, nor is the body the source of the I. The I is taken up into the body and, as it were, exhaled out of the body as the human being passes through the gate of death. But to recognize this, one must first have a real insight into the I.

Through the true self-observation described above, and not through the self-observation of which mystics speak, one must come to develop the sense of self in the spiritual, outside of the physical. Then one knows that one has grasped what is absorbed by the body but is not produced by the body. Only when one has grasped this does one have an idea of what the human being actually receives with his body; only then does one arrive at valid ideas about what can be summarized by the words inheritance and so on. Then one can speak biologically knowing that what is inherited from one's ancestors does not develop an I. It does not develop an I in the course of life, but is there to receive an I that must descend from the spiritual world.

The I must be received by the body; just as air enters the lungs from the outer space, so the I comes from the spirit. The I and that which is accomplished through the I can never be inherited in any way, even if it is absorbed and thus becomes dependent on the physical. Air is also absorbed into the lungs and, depending on the function of the lungs and their constitution, the lungs experience life in the way that lungs can experience life. Likewise, what we have inherited from our parents as formative forces is experienced by the I; in this way the I presents itself in such a way that it dresses in its activities in what we have inherited from our ancestors; but one only comes to an idea of what the true relationship between the physical and the spiritual I is if one acquires the corresponding direct insight.

Spiritual research is a progression from ordinary judgment to such judgment, which is acquired through seeing consciousness, if I may use the term, although it is often misunderstood. Spiritual research can only be attained by progressing from ordinary judgment to the seer's judgment, before which the spiritual is spread out in a spiritual external world just as the physical is spread out before the physical senses of man. If one applies what I have described, self-observation, one comes so far as to know through direct insight that what lives in the human being comes into his body from a spiritual world and goes out again through death. One comes to recognize that which is not bodily in the body, but is spirit, and which, in connection with the body, brings about the human soul, the feeling and the will.

But one must go further if one wants to come to a real knowledge of the spiritual life. One arrives, so to speak, at a clear distinction between the bodily-mental and the spiritual, but one does not arrive at a concrete view of the spiritual; one arrives at self-awareness, at what the spiritual self is, but one does not arrive at a view of the world in which this spiritual self lives, just as the bodily person lives in the physical environment. For this to happen, not only must self-observation be present, but the whole life of the human being's imagination must also be changed in a different direction.

In our ordinary life, our mental life proceeds in such a way that we orient ourselves to the processes that take place outside in space and time. We rightly set up our ideas in such a way that they follow the spatial and temporal course of beings and processes. Above all, anyone who wants to observe the spiritual must get away from being guided by external spatial and temporal processes. And he can free himself from this by introducing the will into the human life of ideas to an ever greater extent. This is achieved by tearing oneself away from the self-evident life of ideas of everyday life. In order to tear oneself away from the ordinary course of ideas, exercises of the soul, patiently and persistently spent over many years, are also necessary. This is achieved by systematically making such images in the soul that only come through one's own will into the soul.

Let us give an extreme case for this: in ordinary life, we are accustomed to first imagining the earlier, then the later. If you just get into the habit of spending at least one or two minutes each day to imagine an event in reverse, so that you imagine the end and then the previous event and so on backwards, a melody, a drama, and so on, then you have to exert a completely different willpower than the one you are used to applying in the physical world. In short, you have to introduce the forceful will into the world of imagination. I have described in detail how to do this in the aforementioned books. One must practise what can truly be called meditative life, a life of imagination that is completely permeated by will and not under the tyranny of the external world.

Take Theodor Zichen again, he says: The soul life proceeds in such a way that it is actually completely dominated by the associations of ideas, by what the person either puts together from the inner connections of the ideas, or what he puts together in space next to each other or in time one after the other in memory, and so on. — In this way Ziehen describes exactly what is not spiritual in the soul. Everything that is subject to association is unspiritual. Whenever one overcomes this association, whenever one does not proceed in such a way that the ideas associate of their own accord, but instead confronts what happens of its own accord, then one surrenders to the spirit, then one introduces the will into the life of ideas and then you notice that you are gradually moving away from that which is only connected to the body in the life of the imagination, then you notice that you are moving away from it, but also that something completely new is gradually moving into the life of the imagination.

One notices that one is not drawn into a fantastic world, a world that, because it has detached itself from the outside world, links one idea to the next in arbitrariness, but that one really experiences that through something that arises from a completely different side, namely the spiritual side, one also links one idea to the next with necessity - not by imagine a table when the chair is not present, as one necessarily does in the world of the senses under the influence of the external world of the senses - then one gradually becomes aware, when one has first brought the imagination to free itself from bodily compulsion by introducing the will, then one becomes aware that something settles into the inner life of the imagination, which, as a purely spiritual impulse, elevates one above arbitrariness. Arbitrariness is only the way. One frees oneself by introducing the will into the world of ideas.

But by going through this practice, one goes from merely shaping meditative thought complexes to the point that a spiritual necessity creeps in, which links one thought to another in the same way that only the external spatial sequence links one thought to another in the sensory world. Dear honored attendees, then one is in the process – I may use the expression, although it can be easily misunderstood, but it is only meant as I have explained it – not only to get something into one's ideas through external sensory perception, but to experience spiritual inspiration flowing into one's ideas. One must not take this expression superstitiously, but in the sense of inner, spiritual experience. Only then does one stand in the concrete spiritual world; whereas before, one only has imaginations, only that which can depend on one's own will, now flows into the soul life, in that the life of imagination has become something completely different, in that one has freed oneself from the merely soul experience, now the spiritual experience flows in.

I know very well what the objections to such a thing are. I know very well what objections can be raised against it; but anyone who has become familiar with this outpouring of the spiritual world into the world of imagination over decades also knows how to connect a real concept with the word inspiration, and knows that what is referred to here as inspiration may, in the true sense of the word, be placed alongside external perception from the spiritual side. Above all, he knows one thing: you can come and tell him that if you believe that something is inspired into your ideas, then you are deluding yourself, but only your known ideas, which you have absorbed here and there, come back to you as reminiscences, and because you do not know how these things have flowed into your imaginative life, you believe that they come to you from a spiritual world.

I know how much weight such an objection carries, but anyone who knows what is at the root of it, and has known it through years of experience, knows one thing above all: no prejudice can this field, for the simple reason that he has experienced it too often, when he is truly devoted to inspiration, that the things one comes to know in the spiritual realm always turn out differently than one's preconceptions assume.

These are precisely the most meaningful experiences and the most important spiritual experiences: You accept your spiritual path to some spiritual being or phenomenon, and lo and behold, you may have formed certain ideas about what it should look like in the spiritual world, based on the ordinary world, on what you can perceive externally through the senses, through the ordinary mind; these ideas will always be proven wrong.

And when one really experiences what flows into the world of ideas from the spiritual side, then one knows, especially after observing the most blatant cases, that one cannot get what one quite unexpectedly gets from the spiritual side into the realm of ideas from the sensory side , then you know that you are really surprised by everything you have not only experienced but that was possible to experience when you enter the spiritual world, just as you are surprised in the sensory world when you have a new experience that you have not yet experienced.

Thus one can, by means of spiritual experiences, very well distinguish these spiritual experiences from everything that can be experienced in the sensory world. What matters is to understand correctly what I mean by the words, which every spiritual researcher knows well: things always turn out differently than one expects, and in countless cases they turn out differently. This is how one can enter the spiritual world when one enters into what I have described as self-observation from this side into the spiritual world. Then one enters into a concrete world; one does not just speak of a spiritual world in general. One then knows that pantheistic contemplation of the spirit is no more valuable than if someone would disdain to look at individual plants, animals and minerals and would always just say: “Nature, nature, nature,” instead of studying them individually. One would not feel enlightened, but would simply say to the person concerned: ‘You just know nothing about individual plants and entities of the different kingdoms of nature.’ But one considers him to be particularly spiritually advanced who does not distinguish individual spirits and spiritual processes, but speaks generally pantheistically of spirit and spirit and spirit.

Now, in addition to what is achieved through this second principle, which I have characterized in principle, there is another thing that is added to the achievement with regard to the ego. Through true self-observation, one comes to recognize the ego as a spiritual being that is distinct from the bodily beings. Now, by adding real spiritual insight to self-observation, one learns to recognize that everything that is experienced in the self between birth or, let us say, conception and death, is experienced by the self, and that this is not only dominated by such forces and impulses as lie within life between birth and death; through insight one comes to see beyond birth and death. We now know that just as when water rises in waves, wind has struck it from the outside, we know that what happens in the human emotional and imaginative life between birth and death is influenced by the forces with which the soul was connected in the time before it united with the physical body.

We get to know prenatal life through direct observation, we get to know the life that follows death through observation, we learn to recognize that although this I in the body expresses itself in the known phenomena of the soul for the external sense world, but that in the subconscious is further developed, which is the eternal in human nature, that these impulses for the eternal already exist in the physical body, but are covered by the physical body, that through death, enriched by the experience of physical experience, the soul moves out through the gate of death. For one does not only learn to speculate about the eternal in human nature in this way, but one learns, by becoming free, to recognize that which passes through births and deaths.

Thus spiritual science is the kind of research that does not develop speculation about the spiritual life, not a mere philosophy about the spiritual life, but that develops spiritual insight. The one who has this spiritual vision and has thus become a spiritual researcher can speak about the spiritual world – the spiritual world in which the soul is between death and a new birth – in the same way that one is able to speak through physical consciousness about the sensory world in which the human being is between birth and death.

And this spiritual insight, even if the individual does not acquire it at first, it leads to the fact that the spiritual researcher is able to describe the phenomena of the human soul life in such a way that they become understandable. And, following on from this, it can be said that one does not have to be a spiritual researcher, a seer, to find the result of spiritual research plausible. Anyone who picks up a watch after being told how a watchmaker made it will also recognize the product of human intelligence , human ability, even if he has not himself spent time in a watchmaker's shop watching how a watchmaker makes a watch. Not everyone needs to be a seer to recognize the results of seeing from an honest sense of truth, but one must develop a seer's awareness. Just as one must develop the skill to make a watch in order to make a watch, one must develop the visionary abilities to be able to say about the spiritual world what the other person can judge by common sense when the visionary says it.

But this healthy human understanding must not be affected by all kinds of prejudices, which believe that they are standing on the firm ground of natural science, but have gained nothing from this except what can be gained from the fact that natural science points to a supersensible realm, but in turn discredits this realm by saying: true science consists in the study of the physical world.

What is important to emphasize is that spiritual research leads into a real world that surrounds us just as the physical world surrounds us. Before spiritual science, a world arises in the same way as the physical human body arises when it was previously blind and it is operated on, the physical world of the eye; in the same way, the spiritual world arises for the spiritual person. Through self-observation, man learns to recognize what is eternal in him. He learns to recognize through spiritual vision how the eternal in him is related to the eternal in the external world. The eternal learns to recognize the eternal. This shows us that, in addition to what the human being experiences as the mere soul, we have to add, from spiritual science, the spiritual, just as we have to add, from physiological science, the physical to what the human being also experiences, from the side of the body, as soul. The soul stands, as it were, between the spiritual and the physical, so that it experiences the transitory, temporal on one side, and the eternal on the other.

Indeed, my dear attendees, through spiritual science, what we might call the riddle of immortality really does enter a field that is strictly scientific. Today, many people still consider this to be impossible; just as there was a time when people refused to penetrate from the soul to the body, to a real dissection, so today they still refuse to penetrate from the soul to the spirit. What Galileo and others achieved, namely to penetrate from the soul to the body, spiritual science has to accomplish on the other side, to penetrate from the soul to the spirit, not only in an abstract way, but in such a way that one really also recognizes that as soon as he frees himself in his imagination from the body – through seership or by passing through the gate of death, he enters into a real spiritual world – that he then finds himself among concrete spiritual beings and spiritual processes, as here among concrete sensory beings and sensual processes.

The next lecture will deal with the details. For now, it only remains for me to say that what is revealed by this method of spiritual insight can truly be placed alongside the ordinary scientific path, which is used today for the knowledge of external nature, without being hindered by any kind of fear. Particularly when one really learns to recognize natural science, then one finds that piece by piece that which spiritual insight offers is confirmed by natural science, and one learns to recognize the fact that it can become so meaningful for the soul. If one stands only on the ground of natural science and is captivated by the successful methods of natural science, then one can understandably come to the prejudice that, because these methods have become so sure, so sure in nature, the study of the spirit is impossible. But if one becomes acquainted with spiritual science in its details and does not remain shod in leather, then as a spiritual researcher one also comes to recognize natural science. One comes to know something quite different from what the natural scientist can come to know compared to the spiritual scientist.

The natural scientist very easily comes to reject spiritual research, but the spiritual researcher never comes to reject natural research; he will see the scientific facts in the right light and be able to recognize their significance when he knows that the scientific facts are correctly understood, only that they appear from higher points of view as emanations of spiritual life. Those who penetrate spiritual research in this way will also be freed from the prejudice that spiritual research could be detrimental to any religious confession.

In particular, the religious side very easily makes common cause against what wants to be a new spiritual element in our cultural life. If people recognized the necessity of placing spiritual science alongside natural science, if they recognized the basic character of spiritual research, if they recognized that it strives for the human being as a spiritual being, just as biology and physiology strive for the knowledge of the human being as a physical being, going beyond the merely soul-related, then they would not believe that this spiritual science could be detrimental to any religious confession. One would find that while the materialistic creed, which has been widely adopted in modern times as a result of the external scientific approach, can very easily, but not necessarily, become a religious creed, spiritual science, on the other hand, leads man back to the spirit [and he] thereby - because he can now also gain knowledge of the spirit - will turn again to religious life, to which the longing of many more people in the present day goes than people are actually aware of.

However, even today we still experience many misunderstandings in this area. In an excellent essay in the “Christian World”, Dr. Rittelmeyer recently pointed out what I understand as spiritual science, how it can provide a foundation for religious belief, and how it can open up a path even for those who, through misleading research into nature, have been led away from their religious confession, to return to it. All sorts of objections were raised from a side that also enjoys a great deal of respect. Above all, because it is important today, I would like to mention one point very briefly; the objection was raised: Yes, this spiritual research requires that a person perform arbitrary soul exercises in order to find his way into the spiritual world through arbitrary development of his soul. That is a wrong – that was even remarked – a dangerous, a tempting way; because one would actually enter into the spiritual life only involuntarily, when it presents itself of its own accord. Yes, that was mentioned, that the disposition to enter into the spirit is as specific a disposition as the musical or mathematical disposition.

One should understand that man can find himself as a spiritual researcher, that it cannot be a special talent to come to the spirit, but must be a general human predisposition. But if it is objected that, like a grace, spiritual research must also come, the one who says this does not understand the essential of the spiritual. Because they do not find the spirit in the soul, today's soul researchers describe the soul life as if the ideas socialized themselves because the body forces us to do so. They do this because one is dependent on the body. One reaches the spirit when one becomes independent of what the body accomplishes. One reaches the spirit by breaking free in freedom from the merely physical life. No matter how much mysticism one can muster, no matter how much one can talk about the soul, if it is not gained through the free exercises of the soul, through the active life of the soul, then it is only experienced or acquired in a bodily or lowly-soul way.

The truly spiritual begins where one frees oneself from the body and can only be explored by gaining knowledge through freedom, through the activity of the will, and through the kind of activity that arises from freedom. Only by becoming free from the body can one attain the consciousness that otherwise remains in the depths of the soul life in man.

But the consciousness that remains in the depths of the soul life in ordinary experience can be explored, and what is freed when a person passes through the gate of death, which is otherwise covered by the soul experiences dominated by the body. So one can say that such an objection actually provides the proof, as well as a side that often finds recognition has no concept, no idea at all, of the real spiritual, as one describes the soul, which is dominated by the body, as the spiritual.

Now, my dear audience, such sides are often, such currents are often, which in a completely misleading way make front against the spiritual science, as I tried to characterize it again from the most diverse points of view. This spiritual science itself cannot relate to other directions in this way; it knows that it does not need to exclude anything else, that it does not need to make a front against others in order to maintain itself. This spiritual science, which seeks the spirit in the soul in the manner indicated through genuine science, just as the physical science investigates the processes of the body in relation to the experience of the soul, this spiritual science can say: Do not be misled, enter into the natural science, recognize everything that the natural scientist has to say! You will understand it no worse than he does. You will understand better than he does, and you will do complete justice to him if you open yourselves up to what he says.

Spiritual science is not shared by the condemnation that one finds again and again among the so-called monists, who always want to confront themselves, despite their position being very shaky, on the firm ground of natural science, and who avoid the spiritual because they believe that one cannot engage with spiritual science because no valid concepts exist for it, or the like. No, the scientific way of thinking, which at the same time wants to be a worldview, provides narrow concepts that do not lead into the spiritual; spiritual science provides concepts that not only lead into the spiritual, but even into natural science. Therefore, it says that man acquires as much natural science as possible. Spiritual science has nothing to fear from it; on the contrary, spiritual science will just as little describe a religious path to anyone as something that he should avoid.

Spiritual science will tell everyone: If you are equipped with the ideas about the spirit that true spiritual science can give you, then your soul is also suited, through the strength and power of these ideas, to follow the religious path with all its intensity, to take in what your religion wants to give you in its revelations in the true sense of the word. It is not religious prejudice, which is not really religious but rather a prejudice of the representatives of religion, that needs to be adopted by spiritual science. This prevents one from dealing with something else, which even finds the other path tempting, but says: Go to church and religion, they will be able to give you, by virtue of your spiritual science, what they would otherwise not be able to give you if you understand spiritual science in truth. Go into life. That which one acquires through spiritual science gives such ideas and concepts that they do not make the ideas of practical life the same as they are today, where people consider themselves practical when they are mere fantasists.

Spiritual science, even if one is not a seer, will give the ideas of practical life flexibility, direction, energy, so that one becomes more practical for ordinary external life. It does not turn one away from external life. It gives one moral direction and support, it even gives skills for external techniques. Go into life, not into asceticism! Life will not destroy spiritual science, but on the contrary, this life will confirm spiritual science everywhere, and I could add: for my part, go to Johannes Müller yourself. I will not run the risk of saying: Johannes Müller's path is a dangerous, tempting one, as Johannes Müller recently wrote, that one should avoid the spiritual scientific path because it is a temptation. I will not say to anyone: Avoid the path of Johannes Müller! Go to him! You will find the right point of view precisely when you go there with spiritual science. No one who approaches spiritual science with true understanding will be deterred from anything, for spiritual science is intended to lead into the spiritual life in such a way that the rest of life, which is ultimately nothing other than the manifestation of the spiritual, can be more fully understood, more insightfully experienced, more energetically felt and more keenly sensed.

What spiritual science can pour into the human mind and what must become useful for the longings of humanity, which can be perceived today as the most significant longings, but which are often only in the subconscious, if one has true observation of people, this attitude, which can be placed in the human heart to satisfy these longings, I would like to describe as follows: I have said: In the broadest circles, people are dominated by the prejudice that du Bois-Reymond once expressed in the 1870s, but which still haunts souls today; that science can only extend to the sensual, that it cannot explore the supersensible, can investigate the supersensible, but that science ends where the supersensible life, the spiritual life, the eternal actually begins. Spiritual science should show humanity that the opposite attitude corresponds to true insight into world conditions, that one must rather say: even natural science does not penetrate into the true deeper life of nature unless this natural science is permeated by the spirit.

But if we recognize in science itself the necessity of being permeated by the spirit, then we will no longer say that science stops where the supersensible begins, where the spirit begins, but rather the other way around: science of nature also dies, ceases, when we come out of the spirit with our concepts. Even in natural science itself, one needs the spirit for real understanding. Unfortunately, however, for the sake of cognitive comfort, one has gone through a peculiar process in recent decades. One has said to oneself, something I could compare to when someone said: There I have a tree in front of me, it grows and thrives. It draws certain forces out of the earth; but the forces that it draws out are covered by the earth. I will pull the tree out of the earth so that I have it all before me, then I can see it all.

This is how people who think in terms of natural science have done it. They have said: If we look at nature, we do not understand it; so it is rooted in something. We uproot it, we pull it out of its soil, then we survey it. But that natural science, which uproots itself in this way, is like a tree that has been torn out of the ground by the root; it is killed, it dies. And knowledge that is uprooted from spiritual knowledge dies. When the prejudice that is associated with a saying such as that of du Bois-Reymond has passed away: “Where the supersensible begins, science ends,” one will come to the realization and the true attitude towards the spirit and its relationship to man, when one will then substitute the other for du Bois-Reymond's saying: Where knowledge wants to disown the spirit, where knowledge wants to step out of the supersensible and, uprooted, wants to grasp nature, that is where knowledge dies. Not that science stops where the supersensible begins, but where the supersensible ends and knowledge is still sought, that is where this knowledge itself is killed, that is where all striving for knowledge dies.

Dear attendees, it has recently become common practice in certain circles to speak of the unconscious in relation to the human soul. What was described in the lecture I gave the day before yesterday as spiritual and supersensible is, as I have shown, sensed and longed for by a great many souls at the present time. And since the very prejudices against the study of the supersensible, of which I have spoken, happen, but since one still has an indefinite feeling that there is something beyond the sensual, one speaks in the present time, one speaks more in the negative sense about this beyond and, in contrast to what consciously enters into the human soul life in everyday life, one speaks of that which remains hidden, and also unconscious or the like.

Now, if the history of the development of ideas about the unconscious in recent decades were to be discussed, it would be possible to talk about it for hours alone. But that is not my task today. I will just mention in the introduction that, although a lot has been said about the unconscious by individual personalities in the past, the term “unconscious” was used in a broader sense by Eduard von Hartmann, who is therefore often referred to as the philosopher of the unconscious, to describe what is hidden from the senses and the immediate soul life and is connected with human existence. And perhaps I may point out by way of introduction, and only hint at, that I myself at the time, in the 1880s and early 1890s of the last century, tried to come to terms with Eduard von Hartmann's views on the unconscious in human mental life, on the unconscious in the world in general.

I have reported on those discussions, which [I] also had in personal acquaintance with Eduard von Hartmann, in the second book of the second year of the journal “Das Reich”, which appears here in Munich. Perhaps it is easiest for me to begin by expressing how the spiritual-scientific direction represented here generally relates to the concept of the unconscious if I tie in with the ideas that Eduard von Hartmann had about the unconscious unconscious in human mental life, in nature and in existence in general, because I must first deviate in two respects and have always had to deviate from Eduard von Hartmann's views on this point.

The first is that Eduard von Hartmann points from the sensory, from the soul to an unconscious, to a supernatural, supersensory, but that he was of the opinion that this unconscious could only be reached for human knowledge through logical dissection of what is perceived in nature and in the human soul, that there is no other way to get at this unconscious than in a hypothetical way, by concluding from what one sees and hears and can understand, by concluding from this that there is an unconscious in the world that must always remain an unconscious, a mere hypothetical, in relation to what man can recognize here in his physical body.

In the face of Eduard von Hartmann's opinion, I have always had to put forward the spiritual-scientific one, which consists in the fact that such a hypothetical statement, such a mere logical conclusion about an unconscious, is completely worthless; because ultimately it leads to nothing but to assume that what one deduces so logically could also be otherwise. From the experiences which I permitted myself to describe the day before yesterday and on the basis of which today's consideration is to be built, I always had to conclude from these truly spiritual experiences of the human soul that one can only come to the supersensible through logical thinking, through the hypothetical dissection of the world supernatural, but through direct experience, by bringing the forces slumbering in the soul so vividly into perceptual abilities that one can not only infer the unconscious, but grasp it as such in the same way as one grasps the sensual, the ordinary conscious.

Thus spiritual science penetrates from mere logic to a real vision of the unconscious, the supersensible, for ordinary consciousness. The methods to which the human soul has to submit in order to develop, so to speak, from its foundations, which are unconscious themselves, what one could call... [Gap] I mentioned the day before yesterday the methods by which the human soul can be made to develop out of its unconscious depths what might be called, in Goethean terms, 'spiritual eyes' and 'spiritual ears', 'spiritual organs'. That is one thing: spiritual science, as it is meant here, must relate to the unconscious in a completely different way than any philosophical direction of the present, especially those that are even hypothetically based on the unconscious.

The second point at issue is that Eduard von Hartmann ultimately regards the spiritual element under consideration as unconscious of itself, that is, he believes that although it is possible to arrive at the assumption of a spiritual element behind the sensual existence by means of certain logical conclusions and conditions, one cannot but state, on the basis of the evidence, that it itself is not conscious, that it is unconscious spirit, that consciousness arises from this only when this unconscious spirit embodies itself in the human body and there creates consciousness, which would then be the only consciousness that comes into consideration, and that, in contrast to this, that which lies higher in reality than this consciousness, would be an unconscious. One would then come to see that what man must regard as his actual being of consciousness arises like a wave from an unconscious spiritual life. I believe, esteemed attendees, that it must appear quite unsatisfactory from the outset, although this is of no particular value, if one assumes the spirit but finds it endowed only with unconsciousness, and such a spirit is basically not much more valuable than the unconscious matter. It comes down to the same thing, whether one lets the spirit arise out of unconscious matter or the conscious soul-life out of unconscious spirit; one is always dealing with what I would call a purely natural spirit, with no anchoring of the human soul-spiritual in a related or superordinate soul-spiritual.

But precisely the experience of which I spoke here the day before yesterday, the experience that is based on the life of the soul transformed into spiritual perception, shows that when one penetrates, vividly penetrates, into the world of the spirit , one does not arrive at unconsciousness, but at real beings, which, quite independently of human consciousness, are just as conscious as the human consciousness itself. Indeed, there are degrees of consciousness in the universe that are superordinate to the human.

Dear attendees, today I will undertake the task of giving you a consideration of what borders on the ordinary human soul life in the area that the spiritual science represented here actually designates as the spiritual, as the supersensible; because from such a consideration, I would like to say, many things arise that illustratively lead into an appropriate judgment of what spiritual science has to say about the actual supersensible itself, and besides, it is very close to the present, where so much is said about the unconscious, where one wants to recognize the spiritual precisely in the form of the unconscious, that this spiritual science also speaks about those areas that one would so much like to confuse with the actual area of spiritual science itself.

It happens again and again, despite the fact that for many years I have seized every opportunity here to emphasize the difference between the field to be considered by spiritual science and these border areas. It happens that spiritual science is confused with these border areas. Therefore, it must talk about these border areas. Besides, there is something else. The field of spiritual life, which, when viewed as I described it the day before yesterday, is avoided by very many people today, is seen as a dream, a fantasy, and people prefer to stick to what cannot be achieved through free spiritual knowledge, as spiritual science wants it, rather than through the supersensible, but what is more self-evident. Now the supersensible does indeed flow into the sensory as a revelation; but these revelations of the unconscious supersensible in the sensory can only be judged correctly if one is able to look at them from the point of view of actual spiritual knowledge.

Today I will speak only in spiritual scientific terms about the relevant phenomena, and I hope that it will be understood that not everything can always be said in every single lecture. I may point out that even if I merely discuss these phenomena more or less from a spiritual scientific point of view today, it is understood that what I emphasized the day before yesterday is that what spiritual science tries to recognize is not only not in contradiction to a truly understood scientific result, but that these insights of spiritual science, including those into the unconscious, are confirmed by real, genuine scientific knowledge.

The areas that come into question when talking about the revelations of the unconscious are very broad, and I will only be able to consider, I would like to say, a limited area today, the area that encompasses the interesting, familiar, albeit little researched, disregarded area of field of human dreaming, the world of dreams. I shall also have to consider a field that many people regard as related to the field of dreams, but which is not really so. This field is of great interest to many people today who are seeking the path to the spirit. It is the field of sleepwalking and all related phenomena.

I will then have to point out another area of the subconscious or superconscious that also extends into ordinary human life: it is the area of fantasy creations, poetry, and artistic creation. And I will then have to point to a broad area, even if it can only be briefly considered today: a broad area that approaches man half consciously and half unconsciously, but no less significant for human life, the area we refer to as “human destiny”, in which one might not even believe that so much unconsciousness lives in it. And then I will have to point out the area that is the actual field of spiritual science, which also remains unconscious for ordinary consciousness, but whose revelations shed light on all other areas of the unconscious. I will have to talk about the I will have to speak about the realm of intuitive consciousness, which I would prefer to avoid calling the realm of truly developed seership, although that would be correct.

I will first try to give a brief characterization, without going into any explanations, of how these individual areas, from which the unconscious reveals itself, approach the ordinary human consciousness. No one should hope that spiritual science is willing to look into the realm of dreams as some amateur or superstitious people do. But spiritual science seeks to look into this realm in such a way that it can itself explain and reveal many a mysterious aspect of the life of the human soul. Everyone is familiar with this realm of dreams, with the surging dreams that a person remembers in their waking life and has an inkling that they reveal themselves from an unconscious realm, that they occur like images of memory so that they can be grasped to a certain extent.

But everyone also senses that a person dreams much more than they remember, that the dream life permeates a much larger part of the sleep life than is believed, because a large part of the dreams experienced is actually forgotten. The external characteristics of the dream life are extraordinarily interesting. At first it seems as if the dreams undulate up and down without any inner lawfulness. But one only needs to bring a few categories of dream life to mind and one will see that a certain lawfulness prevails in this dream life, even if it is only superficially observed at first.

First of all, there are what some philosophers have called sensory stimulus dreams. In them one becomes aware that the soul-spiritual life of man stands in a different relationship to the environment than in ordinary consciousness when dreaming. In them one becomes aware that in a certain way - now speaking superficially - the normal sense life is switched off, but not every language that the senses speak inwardly to the soul also ceases. One only needs to think of an example from the realm of sensory-stimulus dreams to see that, although the receptivity of the senses to the external world does not need to cease, the way in which a person otherwise communicates with the world through his senses is not present in these dreams.

You have your watch lying next to you and you dream that you hear, for example, a rider trotting by. In the waking state, you would... [Gap] – By waking up, one realizes that it was the striking of the clock that symbolized itself into the dream. In the waking state, one would have placed oneself in relation to the environment in a normal way through the sense of hearing; in the dream, what is ordinary sensory perception transforms into a symbolic process. In principle, every sense can perceive, and a very dramatic action can be linked to a sensory perception. But you will always notice that the sensory perception in the dream is in some way symbolically, pictorially reinterpreted. An ordinary sensory perception does not live in the dream life.

In the same way, bodily processes can be symbolized in dreams. We dream of a boiling oven, wake up and know that this dream has been caused by an unusually rapid heartbeat. We experience moods of the soul, reminiscences of life, things that may lie far back in the past, coming to life in dreams. We also experience dreaming things that may surprise us greatly. Everyone is familiar with these different categories of dream life. If we want to enter into a characteristic of dream life, as we want to do later, one thing must be particularly clearly noted: it is clear that dreams lack two sides of ordinary human experience.

Anyone who follows the dream life will find that dreams lack what we call the logical course of our ideas in our ordinary conscious daily life. The dream excludes logic. Sometimes one would like to contradict this statement; but the contradiction would not stand up to close observation. A dream can proceed logically; but then the logical course is not brought about by the application of the logical power in the time of dreaming, but rather we dream some event that we have once followed logically in itself. We dream along with the logic, but do not reason. This gives the appearance of being able to dream logically. One can dream the logical as reminiscence; but one cannot realize the logical as the power of logical reasoning.

The other characteristic is that moral standards and moral judgment are absent from our relationship to dream images and also from the genesis of dream images. Everyone knows that in dreams they do things about which their conscience is silent, which they would condemn, would never do if they actually happened in their waking lives. This is significant for the assessment of the world of dreams: logic and moral judgment are actually excluded from dream life. The other thing that is of real importance is that while we dream, we are in the same relationship to our environment as we are in dreamless sleep.

This is very important. In dreamless sleep we experience nothing of what is going on around us through our senses, nor do we experience anything of what is happening in our own body or what else wants to flow out of this body into the soul life. In a sense, we withdraw into the soul life, which initially remains unconscious, in dreamless sleep. If the dream images flow into this dreamless sleep, our relationship to the environment does not change. This is essential. We can speak of sensory stimulus dreams themselves, but what affects us through the senses does not do so through the process that takes place in the senses, but much more inwardly affects the human soul life; it works in such a way that the sensual is already symbolized, that it is already in a certain way spiritually transformed. We do not enter into a relationship with our environment through dreams in the same way as through rational sensory perception, and we do not do so with our own body either. We do not experience the conditions in our body in the same way as we experience them when we are awake; we experience them in a transformed way, in a way that is shaped by the soul. We experience them in a symbolized way or something similar, and that is the essential thing in dream life: that it conjures all kinds of things into consciousness, but that the person always enters into an equally closed relationship with their environment, despite dreaming, as in dreamless sleep.

This is, on the surface, the reason why we are always able to put the dream into the right perspective in its course in our waking day life [and] why we cannot be deceived by the dream into thinking that it has any meaning within our waking day life, that it sets up any unjustified claims in practical life. From this point of view, the very characteristic of a healthy psychic life is that we are not in a position to place the dream in the wrong context in our waking daily life. While the dream itself does not reason or moralize, we are always able to fully establish the logical and moral relationship of the dream itself to our waking daily life.

This is what distinguishes the dream in relation to its relationship to waking life from all personal experiences that one can now have with the second kind of unconscious, with the somnambulistic phenomena and all that goes with it, the hypnotic phenomena, the phenomena of mediumship and so on, and so on. This area is one that is of particular interest to the present day, because it is believed that in the abnormal phenomena that come to light, a gateway can be found out of the ordinary life of the senses, a place where something unknown can be glimpsed and revealed in the ordinary life of the soul.

And so it happens that people who are not only to be taken seriously as scientific and other researchers believe that one can approach the true spiritual through research in this field, or also that true researchers - sometimes great researchers in their field - because they also have the general yearning, they judge wrongly that which can be summarized in the wide field of somnambulant phenomena, and believe that by observing these somnambulant phenomena they can really approach a spiritual life in the beyond.

Now, in the realm of somnambulism and related phenomena – and I am mentioning everything related here – one has to distinguish between everything that arises in a visionary, hallucinatory way from the inner life of the soul, so that one can judge: it arises from the inner life of the soul. Even Eduard von Hartmann was unable to distinguish the image that appears in a dream from that which, for example, is a hallucination. And so he says that every dream image has something of a hallucination. But there is a fundamental difference between a dream image and a hallucination: the person, in their waking consciousness, has full control over the dream image, and is always able to integrate it correctly into the ordinary course of their waking daily life. A hallucination, on the other hand, takes away the ability to relate to it objectively. It takes control of the person's consciousness. The same applies to a vision. And the fact that they occur simultaneously means that something is taken from the person of that power which makes it possible to integrate what arises in the right way into waking day life. ... [space] The illusory character of dreams.

But this is the essence of hallucination: logic is silent, the hallucinating person combines the matter with the waking day life and is not able, by succumbing to the hallucination, to place what occurs in the hallucination in the right way into the course of the waking day life. We speak of another form of somnambulism when a person is able not only to have hallucinations and visions arising from within himself, but when he changes his sensory life in a certain way so that things become perceptible to him through this sensory life, by analogy with this sensory life, that would otherwise not be perceptible.

One may think of these phenomena as one wills – I do not want to go into a discussion of principle of these phenomena, nor into the question of whether one is justified in ascribing a scientific character to what is accepted in this field in the broadest circles. What matters to me is to show you how, regardless of the objective justification, respected researchers want to gain insight into the supernatural world through this field! It may be said that, however one may feel about these things, there are people who are to be taken very seriously indeed, who are clear about the fact that certain people have the ability to perceive things in their environment that are not perceived through ordinary sensory activity, in the broad field of “remote viewing” and thought transfer.

All this is well known today. They belong here, and I will show by a particular example how a researcher who is to be taken seriously in the highest sense believed that it was precisely through the development of human personalities, I might say to a refined sensuality, to an increased sensuality, that he could approach the other world, the unconscious, the supersensible. Rarely has anything in this field caused such a stir as the fact that Sir Oliver Lodge, who is known throughout the world as a natural scientist to be taken very seriously, has written a thick book about a field that must certainly be counted among the somnambulant phenomena by the spiritual science represented here, but which he has taken as a way to enter the supersensible world. Without committing myself to an explanation, I will first describe what happened to Sir Oliver Lodge.

Oliver Lodge's son fell at the French front during the course of this war. The remarkable thing was – and Sir Oliver Lodge describes all of this and everything related to it in his book in such a way that one gets the impression from every page: Here a person is describing with the conscientiousness of a scientific method. He draws on everything that somehow demands scientific caution. The strange thing was that even before his son fell, Sir Oliver Lodge received a message from the Americans that a medium had said that a long-dead friend of Sir Oliver Lodge would take care of him during an event that would befall Sir Oliver Lodge's son. At first, this was a very vague message, because, of course, it could be interpreted in any direction. One could say: Sir Oliver Lodge's son had gone to war. Anyone can fall there, and any friendly, superstitious side can now send a message that is as vague as possible to Sir Oliver Lodge. Sir Oliver Lodge could have interpreted this to mean that his son's life was in danger and that a deceased friend from the supernatural world would protect his son.

The other interpretation could have been that the son would fall and that the friend who had already preceded him in death years before would take care of him in the supersensible world. It happens all too often that such preliminary communications in this area are left as vague as possible. People are gullible; they are very inclined not to consider whether what is said fits whether the event happens in this or that way. But the son has fallen. The only possible interpretation was that the message was that Sir Oliver Lodge's friend in the other world would take care of the son.

Now all sorts of things were dragged to Sir Oliver Lodge - but he proved them in a truly scientific sense - all sorts of so-called trustworthy somnambulant mediums were dragged in, and many things came out of it, from which Sir Oliver Lodge, despite his scientific mind and conscientiousness, believed he recognized that his deceased son was speaking through the revelations of the mediums, and through him his protective friend. I will not present what Sir Oliver Lodge describes in the thick book, except for one thing, which can be understood in a way that is otherwise referred to as a cross experiment, which really approached people in such a way that it caused a tremendous sensation. One might say that skeptical people were actually led to believe by these things: Something from the beyond, from the soul that has passed through death, must resonate with the Father, with the whole family, wanting to speak through the mediums.

This experiment consisted of a medium describing a photograph taken by the son of Sir Oliver Lodges before he was killed. He had himself photographed with a number of comrades. The medium stated that it was said through her that this photograph was taken. The individual comrades were described in the seating arrangement, and it was said: several pictures were taken of this group. The seating arrangement was changed a little; but in one shot, it was said: the way the son places his hand on his neighbor's shoulder is different from the hand position in the other shot. Now the strange thing was that exactly this photograph was described by the medium. The other strange thing was that, scientifically speaking, no one – neither the medium nor any of the participants – could have known anything about this photograph, because it had not yet been sent from France to England and did not arrive in England until at least a fortnight later. No one could have known anything about it, yet it turned out that the medium's description was absolutely correct in the most remarkable way.

It is perhaps extremely seductive for a scientifically minded person, and it caused the utmost sensation, as mentioned, making even the most skeptical people think. Because people said to themselves: No one could have known anything. There could be no question of thought transference. It could only have come from the soul of Sir Oliver Lodge's son himself. This was an experience that happened not to a gullible spiritualist but to a conscientious naturalist, and it led him to fully acknowledge that the experiment had provided proof that his son's soul had revealed itself from the unconscious into the conscious. We will discuss Sir Oliver Lodge's error later.

I give this example because it belongs to those experiences in which something is perceived that otherwise cannot be perceived from the environment of the external world, through a modification of the sense life. This area includes everything that consists of the fact that what otherwise cannot be known through the senses and the processing of sensory impressions in space and time can be known by the human being. It includes everything that involves looking into such distances that cannot be seen with ordinary eyes, which includes predicting future phenomena and the like.

The third area that comes into consideration when speaking of the revelations of the unconscious is, of course, the area of artistic creation, and everyone is fully justified in being convinced that in the case of poetic, truly poetic or artistic creation, certain impulses from the unconscious or subconscious reveal themselves in the conscious, that what the true artist brings about cannot be explained in its entirety if one only considers what takes place in ordinary consciousness. That is why all those who have given it reasonable thought have come to the conclusion that in artistic creation, another world flows into the world of consciousness, a world that is unconscious to the ordinary world of consciousness. I do not need to characterize this area in detail, not because it is unknown and little observed, but because it is so obvious and so understandable to everyone that the unconscious reveals itself in this area.

A special area where, as already mentioned, one could deny the character of the unconscious, where the conscious and unconscious play together, can be understood as the area of human destiny. We face the guidance of our destiny in such a way that the individual events of this human destiny come about for most people in such a way that they say: Well, one thing and another happens to us. Most people are convinced that what occurs in their lives as fate is more or less due to chance, that it is a series of chance events, and that there is no inner, lawful sequence in the course of this fate.

However, this is contradicted by something else, which may only come to our consciousness in a vague and hazy way, but all too clearly nonetheless. Let us consider the relationship between our destiny and what we actually are in the concrete human life. If, at some point, we examine ourselves with even a modicum of clarity and not get stuck in abstractions, but look concretely at what we actually are, what we are capable of conceiving and giving these conceptions in terms of emotional coloration, and summoning up in terms of will energies, we will find that this actually emerges from our destiny. We look at the course of our destiny and, with clear self-observation, we know: we are a result of this destiny and we would have to deny ourselves if we wanted to deny the identity of our destiny with our soul life. We are nothing other than what fate has made of us, and if we do not want to acknowledge that we are nothing more than a play of forces, then the question of human destiny becomes a mystery.

The answer to the question: Is fate really just a series of coincidences? - depends on the other, how we are able to place ourselves in the whole world context. But from this, at least the suspicion arises in every reasonably sensible soul that in what we consciously experience and what seems to affect us more or less randomly in our destiny, that something prevails in it that remains unconscious for ordinary experience, but what can be brought into consciousness and proves to be something quite different than what occurs in ordinary consciousness.

And finally: the last area is the area of spiritual science, as it is meant here, itself, the area of the actual seeing consciousness, of which I said the day before yesterday that it can be observed in such a way that in it the human being feels as spirit in spirit, just as he feels here in the sense world as a body within the sensual beings and their appearances. The area of which I have said, that man enters when he, through the development of the otherwise hidden powers of his soul, comes to know: I stand with my I in the spirit, while otherwise I only stand in the body; I experience soul-life by separating myself from my bodily life and unfolding a self-conscious soul-life outside the body.

The phenomena and experiences that occur before this actual vision, which can only be called that, must be characterized in more detail, and before I describe the other borderlands, I would like to characterize this area of true vision first, because this is necessary for a better understanding of the other areas. What a person experiences as spiritual experience, as I said the day before yesterday, differs from experiences within the sensory world in that it actually surprises in every detail. One cannot gain any kind of judgment about what one experiences visually through what one has experienced in the sensory world. It always turns out differently than one might expect from what one is able to observe from the sensory world.

But the very way in which the spiritual world appears before one is able to perceive it visually is different from the behavior of the soul in ordinary consciousness. In our ordinary consciousness, we deal with our ideas and concepts. When speaking about the spiritual world, one must also express in concepts and ideas what can be observed. It can easily happen that one confuses ideas and concepts with the actual spiritual experiences that one encounters through the visionary consciousness.

Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference. We can remember ordinary perceptions, what we experience emotionally in and with the external sense world, in the ordinary sense of the word; but that is precisely a fundamental characteristic of truly experienced spiritual reality: just as it confronts us as spiritual, it cannot be remembered in the ordinary way. One could only believe that one had indulged in a fantastic imagination, that one had experienced something as a reminiscence of life, if one did not know the difference between a reminiscible conception and the non-reminiscible, seen, truly spiritual event. A truly spiritual event is not memorable.

One must not look at such a thing wrongly. Of course one can object: Then no one could speak of such an event; if he did not remember it, he would not be able to communicate it. Yes, just as we can transform an external sense experience into a concept that can then be remembered, so can someone who has trained for this purpose also bring a spiritual experience into the ordinary consciousness and transform it into a concept. The concept can then be remembered. But a concept is being remembered. I want to reject the objection that what is described as spiritual events is only something imagined. It is not, because if it were imagined, it would have to be memorable as such without having to be transformed first; but just as little as the sensual objectivity itself goes with us, so little does the spiritual experience go with us.

When I have seen a tree and walk away, I can again actualize the mental image of the tree in my mind, I can remember by awakening the mental image within me, if I have already awakened it when seeing the tree. If I want to experience the tree again, I have to go back to it. It is the same with spiritual experiences. These do not accompany me on my journey through the soul's life, but only what I have imagined can I remember as an image. Only when one is aware of this can one distinguish between what one has experienced and what one has merely formed as an image.

Another important difference between the visionary experience and ordinary life is that in life, through what one does, one acquires habits. What we have done often becomes a habit. If humans were not given this ability to acquire skills by repeating things over and over again, what would this human life actually be without it?

It is strangely different when, through the exercises I described the day before yesterday, one comes to have spiritual experiences. It turns out that the more often one tries to bring about this spiritual experience, the less one is skilled at having this spiritual experience. I emphasize that this is important. The seer cannot recall the spiritual experience by mere memory; he can only evoke the idea. If he wants to face the spiritual experience a second time, he has to go through the same exercises and create the same conditions so that the spiritual arises as spiritual perception. But when you do this again and again, you experience that it becomes weaker and weaker.

The fact that one cannot acquire something habitual, but that something completely different is necessary to bring about the repetition of the spiritual event, is an experience made by very many who really embark on the path to the spiritual world. It is relatively easy to take a few steps into the spiritual world if one has patience and persistence; however, further steps are as difficult to achieve as I described the day before yesterday. But the first steps are not at all difficult for specially gifted people, and the first experiences come if one pays attention to some of what I have described in “How to Know Higher Worlds?” or in my “Occult Science”.

But such people who have taken the first steps experience that they have had the experiences once, and because they then do not apply the much stronger will, they are no longer able to come to these spiritual experiences, are then very unhappy, are disappointed. This is an experience that many people have. It is absolutely necessary not only to acquire the ability to have such experiences in the first place, but also to have the modified ability to attain them again and again after the event has occurred. Each time you want to attain it, you have new difficulties; each time you have to do more emphasized, different preparations if you want to face the spiritual with the same vividness as the first time.

A third thing that one experiences as a characteristic of the spiritual event is that it is necessary to have a certain quality of soul towards the spiritual experience. This can be cultivated in ordinary life, but very often people have not developed it. A spiritual experience, however strange it may sound, does not actually last very long compared to an ordinary event; it passes by so quickly that usually the situation is that the person has barely mustered the strength to observe the event before it is already over. The thing one must summon in order to have spiritual experiences is presence of mind. This can be trained in ordinary life; but very few people train it to the strength necessary to have experiences in the spiritual world. Those who are accustomed to brooding in their ordinary lives when they want to do something, who consider all sorts of things before making a decision, who are not accustomed to making instinctive decisions and exercising their will to stick to them, who do not train themselves to make such decisions in the presence of a situation, prepare themselves poorly for real experiences in the spiritual world.

On the other hand, what one brings into the spiritual world is what one has already trained in the ordinary world as presence of mind. One can say: the training of presence of mind in relation to sensory events prepares one well to observe as quickly as is necessary in the spiritual realm, and one can truly say: the ordinary reflection of everyday consciousness is of little use to oneself, through the power that is inherent in it, for the perception of the spiritual world. This ordinary reflection, which interposes itself between perception and action, is more harmful than useful for the perception of the spiritual.

The perception of the spiritual in the spiritual realm is similar to what is called a reflex action in natural science. When a fly flies towards my eye, I close my eyelid. In such an instinctive way, in such an exclusion of the usual conscious consideration, in such a return to reflex actions, much of what we need to look around us in the right way in the spiritual world lies. This does not mean, of course, that we should somehow shut out rational consciousness; but it is only after the spiritual perception has been made that what one has experienced can be brought into consciousness.

I could cite many more such peculiarities of the perception of the spiritual world. In such perceptions, in such perceptions that are already completely different from those of ordinary sensory consciousness, the one who knows himself as a spirit lives within the spiritual world that surrounds him, who knows that he as a spirit has self-awareness and that the world that surrounds him is the spiritual world, which he would never have been able to perceive within the body. These things are so.

Now, only someone who has really come to know the spiritual world through such developed vision is able to compare what he is able to observe in the spiritual world with what occurs in the characterized border areas. By mere philosophizing about dreams, however developed the power of judgment may be, one can never really know how dreams enter into ordinary personal life. One is unable to compare the dream that penetrates into ordinary consciousness with anything else; one can only describe it, and everything that natural science has to say about it is very useful, very valuable; but the actual significance of the dream in life can only be grasped by the one who is able to compare the dream with what he gets to know in the seership as the character of the spiritual world. And there he learns in relation to the dream that the dreamer, that is, the actual dreaming being in man, is no different from the one in which the mind consciously knows itself when it is in the spiritual world.

With ordinary consciousness, one cannot judge whether it is the body or the soul that is actually dreaming. Only when one knows how one stands in the spiritual world, when one consciously grasps the self in spirituality, only then can one compare what one observes in oneself and in one's existence in the spiritual world with what occurs in dreams. And then, through direct observation, through direct spiritual insight, one can know: There is nothing else in us that dreams but what is also there when one has developed in fully conscious vision. Thus, through direct observation, one comes to the - if I may express myself pedantically - actual subject of the dream.

But one can learn even more. The one who gradually enters the spiritual world finds that his dream life gradually changes, that he no longer needs to let his dreams wash over him in such a helpless way, but that he can intervene within the course of the dream with his will, directing and guiding the dream images. It is evident, then, once again through direct observation, that what is gradually attained as the spiritual ego is itself the one that intervenes in the dream in a directing and orienting way. It is precisely through this change in dream life, through this observation of oneself becoming a spirit intervening in the dream, that one can see how the actual dreaming is nothing other than what one grasps when one is actually in the spiritual world.

And yet another aspect arises. You are aware that among the many endeavors that are now unfolding in relation to the unconscious, there is one that seeks to approach the spiritual world of man, which is called analytical psychology. This psychoanalysis, which is an exploration of a certain area of the soul, albeit with inadequate means, does not lead to an understanding of the true character of the areas under consideration. This psychoanalysis also works with the dream images of the human being. The psychoanalyst seeks to unravel the dreams and what they reveal about some hidden aspects of the soul life.

Now it is very strange that when I recently discussed the relationship of spiritual science to this method, I was reproached by several psychoanalysts. They claim that psychoanalysis is the true science, it only takes the dream in so far as it is symbolic, whereas I maintain that one ascends to the imaginations and intuitions, and I treat the dream in such a way that I grasp it in its reality. I make the mistake of taking the dream seriously, taking its imagery seriously, while psychoanalysis sees the symbolic character of dreams.

Well, one can be amazed at how misunderstood one is. What I represent as spiritual science adheres neither to the actual course of the dream nor to the symbolism to which psychoanalysis adheres. In fact, it does not adhere to content at all. The one who studies the world of dreams as a spiritual researcher comes to the following conclusion: You see, it can happen that ten people tell you about a dream, and if you are familiar with such things, you can be clear about the fact that these ten have dreamed very different things in terms of the dream sequence, but that exactly the same thing underlies the dream sequence in all ten as a spiritual reality. What matters is neither the symbolism nor the reality of what takes place in the dream, but it is clear to the spiritual researcher that what matters is the inner drama of the dream.

It may be that someone has unconsciously experienced an event in the spiritual realm. It also remains unconscious to him in relation to the dream. The event took place, taking place in the relationship of the human being as a spirit to the spiritual world. But what now occurs as a dream is an external transformation, in that what remains completely in the subconscious is used, what the person has as a sensory stimulus and so on. That is the garment that the dream drama is clothed in. That is the imagery. One can experience something that causes such tension, and this is released by confronting a spiritual event. One person may experience this by climbing a mountain and encountering an obstacle; another by being led to a door, into a labyrinth; a third person may experience the same event in a different way. What matters is not what the dream images say one after the other, but the inner drama, what lives behind the dream without images. This is a spiritual reality, and the spiritual researcher investigates what lies behind it by looking into the real spiritual.

Dreams themselves arise from the fact that what a person experiences in the purely spiritual realm is transposed into a somewhat irregular union of the eternal spiritual self with the physical body. I must assume that the real spiritual knowledge, that is, the possibility of observing human self-awareness as a spiritual being, shows people through direct observation that we are in sleep and dreamless sleep, not when falling asleep and waking up, but that we , albeit with a subdued consciousness, that we are outside our body in this sleep, that we really leave our body when we fall asleep and move back into it when we wake up, and that what moves out and moves in is a spiritual being. Vision consists in nothing other than that which otherwise remains unconscious in sleep is now raised to consciousness in the spiritual world. The dream arises from the fact that what is otherwise fully separated in the spirit, that which comes into a partially irregular connection with the bodily, arises from the fact that it comes into relation with the bodily, that it sinks into the bodily, but not so that it fills the full body, arises from the fact that that it partially sinks in, that the compulsion arises to clothe that which remains behind from becoming aware of processes in the spiritual world in that which one of the corners of corporeality gives, without one having already moved into the whole corporeality.

And so it is always a kind of darkening in the dream of what is truly eternal in man, of that which passes through birth and death, of that which, free of the body, prepares for what follows death, and also develops between birth and death in a germinal way for the next spiritual life. It is a darkening of this soul life, it is a clouding of the soul life caused by the incomplete approach to the body. Only if the human being were incapable of accomplishing what, in a healthy development of his being, he must always accomplish, of fully absorbing and thus appropriating what is attained through the body for the ordinary sense life, of controlling his involvement in the sense life, only if this did not occur would the dream life intrude into human life as something pathological!

Something else becomes apparent when one considers the boundary of the dream life in relation to the world of seeing. The one who develops the gift of second sight learns to understand through the kind of experiences he has in the spiritual world, that he experiences them separately from the body, and learns to understand that this life between birth and death, this life in the sense world, the life in the physical body, must not be seen as a life in captivity. Spiritual science never leads to false asceticism. The student comes to recognize that, in the wise ordering of the universe, the sojourn in the sense body has its good meaning. The entire life of man, which flows between forms of existence in and out of the body between death and new birth, this entire life of man takes on different things.

The power to develop in oneself those impulses that contain logic and morality, this power the person must acquire here in his sensual body, in addition to everything else he receives from the universe, if he wants to acquire it at all. This, to think logically, could not be acquired in the spiritual world, for that we must embody ourselves. Then, through the gate of death, we carry those impulses, which can only be developed on earth, into the supersensible realm.

Now because the dream consists in the fact that one actually carries a spiritual experience into the physical world through the incomplete merging with the body – I cannot go into the details – but because the human being emerges from the spiritual world as a personality, he brings into the physical world from the spiritual world something that is both unlogical and amoral, which can only enter into the content of the dream. That is why the dream appears without any logical or moralizing. Only the seer can compare this peculiarity of the dream, how it relates to morality and logic. Thus I have indicated the possibility of comparing the dream life with what man can know as the content of the spiritual world. But this reveals that the dream is... gap); only the peculiar thing is that in the dream man does not face the eternal. His eternal is active, but what fills this eternal is what comes from the body. In dreams, the eternal in man is directed towards the temporal. But the fact that the eternal is present in these events is shown by a truly spiritual scientific consideration of the dream.

The situation is different when it comes to hallucinatory, somnambulant life. Here we are dealing with the fact that the human being also enters his physical body from the spiritual, that spiritual influences it, but that the spiritual enters the physical either because the inner physical life is in some way diseased, so that the spiritual enters a diseased physical body. Now, the human being can only develop a correct relationship if he immerses himself in the bodily world, which functions as a unified whole. If he submerges himself in such a way that no part of his physical body can fully participate in the development of sensory perception, then, through the elimination of a physical element, a spiritual element arises in part.

We would not see this spiritual if we did not see when our body was somehow diseased. By the fact that it is, the spiritual asserts itself. The spiritual researcher sees the spiritual by standing in the spiritual; the hallucinator sees a spiritual in a diseased, impossible way, actually, by partially switching off his normal physical for sensory perception. But this also means that the occurrence of a spiritual vision that we have no control over is always a sign of some kind of physical illness. One can say: It is understandable that people believe, that even researchers believe, that a real spiritual being is encountered in such a pathological physical condition; but it is to be rejected to do anything that leads to the illness of the physical body for the sake of a spiritual vision. The path that leads to the forced vision is to be rejected from the spiritual-scientific point of view, because it would be a promoter of the human organism becoming ill. And anyone who so misjudges the spiritual scientific methods, as they are described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” as if these methods could somehow seduce one to cultivate that which they specifically condemn, defames these spiritual scientific methods. They are defamed in the broadest sense.

But it can also happen that, to a certain extent, the sick body infects the senses, so that the senses come into a different relationship – I can only mention this in general terms – that the senses come into a different relationship to the usual environment. In everyday life, you perceive your surroundings as you know them. It may happen that through the change in the life of the senses, what is perceived in the environment is what otherwise eludes the senses. It will be what is not accessible to man through the higher spiritual life. But I will explain right away, perhaps better than by generalizing, what I mean by the example from before, by way of an example of what I mean by a somnambular life, by a refined sense life. What is otherwise understood as second sight falls under this category; I must say: it is remarkable, although Sir Oliver Lodge's book has a thoroughly scientific character, that a certain hidden dilettantism can generally be found in this book in particular. The phenomenon, which is presented as a cross experiment, is in fact nothing other than what anyone familiar with this field knows as a refinement of the sense life, so that this sense life is able to perceive things other than what is usually associated with it. If someone whose sensory life and sensory life interwoven with the intellectual life is such that the intellectual apparatus extends down into the senses, if someone has developed such a sensory life, it may happen that today he has the idea: I will ride in a fortnight and have an accident. That can happen. These things are known.

Something that cannot be perceived through the ordinary temporal connection can be perceived by a person simply through an especially abnormal sense of life that has been infected from within. There are cases in which what is seen or suspected occurs with such inevitable necessity that precautions are taken and yet it happens anyway. Now, for someone who is familiar with such things, there is nothing different about somnambulism and the like than there is about a remote vision. What did the medium actually communicate in the case of Sir Oliver Lodge? Well, about a fortnight after the seance, the photograph arrived in the same room. Two weeks later, this photograph could be described with normal consciousness. Through a remote vision, the medium described what arrived later. The somnambulant medium perceived nothing from the hereafter, saw nothing but what later became an event, and the whole crucifixion experiment is objectively, in the facts, correct; the explanation is completely incorrect.

What is at issue is that one realizes that through a somnambulant human life, one can see differently than in normal sensory and mental life, but that in this way the human being is, so to speak, more intimately united with the external world. However, a real insight into the supersensible world of the senses, which man enters after death, in which man is always in touch with the Eternal, is not possible through such abnormal states of consciousness, but only when man really enters this spiritual world in full consciousness, so that he stands as a spirit in the spiritual world and can distinguish between what he can perceive through his corporeality. Wherever there is no real looking in, wherever the spiritual mixes with the bodily itself.

Somnambulism also has its dangers, if only because the soul is switched off – for the soul is switched off and remains switched off during the dream – because the person with the spiritual and soul is completely immersed in the body, a part is switched off, and then the person becomes an automaton. This can be interesting, but must not be cultivated, because only by making the right connections between the spiritual and the physical in the proper way does a person place himself in the right way in relation to the logical and moral world. When the spiritual world has an effect in an abnormal way, this effect, in which always excludes a part of the body, can lead to an incorrect relationship between the personality of the medium and the moral and logical, to moral decline, and to the interweaving of all kinds of lies in a cognitive way, and so on, and so on. We can conclude from the fact that man actually turns himself into an automaton in the artificially induced somnambulistic state that it must not be artificially induced.

Thus, spiritual science shows especially for this area how much man has to pay attention to the fact that these border areas can indeed be illuminated by spiritual science, but that, conversely, they cannot be used to enlighten spiritual life. Then spiritual science shows further that what flows out of the unconscious or subconscious into the human imaginative life actually has the eternal in human nature as its actual subject; only in both the dream life and in the somnambulist is the spiritual inclined towards the bodily.

In the artist, the spiritual-soul is inclined towards the spiritual. While it is inclined towards it, it remains in the unconscious. Then it enters in a proper way, so that the whole physical is taken up. While in sober consciousness such things are forgotten by the spiritual, in the artist the spiritual is carried in, but in such a way that it is not absorbed by a part of the physical, as in somnambulism, and thus weakened, but is brought into the right relationship to the ordinary course of life. Thus, in artistic creation, the eternal is unconsciously inclined towards the spiritual; the eternal towards the eternal. But because the human being is not consciously aware of what he experiences in the eternal, he brings it into the ordinary consciousness and transforms it, and thus it will take on an individual character.

This is the spatial difference between what is artistically created and what the seer, who is immersed in the spiritual world, has before him. The seer has something impersonal before him; he has something around him that has just as little to do with his individuality and just as much to do with it, namely, seeing from a point of view like the external sensory world. The one who perceives unconsciously what the seer sees in the spiritual world with an immediate part of consciousness and brings it into the ordinary world becomes an artist, a poet. That is why people have the well-founded opinion that true artists bring messages of the eternal into the sensual world, that the supersensible reveals itself out of the unconscious through true art into the sensual, into the life of ordinary consciousness.

Then, as I have indicated, the human being experiences his destiny in a peculiar way, consciously and unconsciously. Through what Scher experiences, something is now raised from the unconscious into the conscious that would otherwise always remain unconscious. In ordinary life, we are actually only fully aware of one part of our being, namely our perceptions and ideas. You can see this for yourself from a scientific description such as that of Theodor Ziehen. In contrast, what is called the emotional and will life remains down in the half or completely unconscious. What does the human being know in his ordinary consciousness that only takes place when he moves his hand! Theodor Zichen characterizes correctly when he says: We only have the ideas of what is taking place. That which mysteriously vibrates into the hand as we raise it is as unconscious to us as the events in sleep in ordinary waking day life. The whole real essence of the life of the will, which indeed rules in us, which permeates our eternal being, nevertheless remains unconscious, becomes conscious only through the representations of the arising ordinary consciousness, just as a dream becomes conscious out of sleep in ordinary consciousness; but what we know of the will is not what goes on in the will itself. What we know is as much as we know of a dream when we are awake.

Our emotional life, in which we are equally immersed, is not as unconscious as a dream. It is partly conscious and partly unconscious. The great esthete Vischer already suspected that the emotional life is related to the soul in the same way as the dream life. While the dream life unfolds in images, the emotional life unfolds in feelings, but these feelings arise from the subconscious. We form ideas about them, but we do not get closer to the reality of these feelings than we do to the reality of the dream in the dream, which has its subjective origin in the eternal of the human ego.

Thus, a person is only really aware of half of their waking day-to-day life; the other half remains subconscious. The seer brings it up. He perceives, not only through ordinary conceptions, what lives essentially in feeling and will, but he also forms, through the senses, what he sees in them. But then this experience is a very peculiar one, one that does not arise as it does in dreams or in the recollection of ordinary life, when the shearer follows his feelings - it is a human life or several human lives that arise before his soul; but it is not the life that he can follow when he looks back to birth; it becomes clear to him that past earthly lives play into this earthly life.

At the moment when the light of knowledge flashes through will and feeling, impulses of feeling and will from previous earthly lives make their impact felt. And what germinates in us for subsequent earthly lives flashes again in our life of will. However paradoxical it may sound, it is true that when one does not merely speak hypothetically about the will, as Schopenhauer did, but rises to an intuition of the essential nature of the will and feeling, then the repeated earthly lives become a fact within human consciousness; but then we learn to recognize how, through earlier earthly lives, we ourselves bring about, as it were, what happens to us from the outside. What we have experienced in the past forges the paths within us that lead us to our destiny. The individual earthly lives illuminate each other. What we experience as fate, half-dreamed, half-consciously, like a dream, and what befalls us as chance, all this is illuminated for us when what is unconscious reveals itself.

Talking about previous lives on earth and the lives we live in the spiritual world between death and a new birth is something that still seems as paradoxical to people today as it did in the days when people believed that the earth stood still and the sun and planets revolved around it. The reversal of this entire world view will take time. For a long time people did not want to believe it. For centuries there have been people who have regarded it as impossible; and of course there will also be people today who will receive such things, which occur in such a way, with scorn.

That may be. That is as self-evident as can be; but these things are, so to speak, at the gates of our cultural development. They are what can really illuminate the much sought-after field of revelations of the unconscious. The unconscious is a broad field. It also rests within the sensory world itself. By believing that it is not within this sensory world, one falls back on all sorts of methods to explain this sensory world from something other than the spiritual.

We can see how something like the Kant-Laplace theory comes about. I have often mentioned this before and will only refer to it today because it sheds light on our present-day field. Whether he is an astronomer or a geologist, man tries to guess from what is happening before his senses at the present time, from a calculation, what happened millions of years ago. One can do this without making the slightest mistake against any scientific laws; one can calculate a state of the earth that occurs after millions of years. Unfortunately, however, one is in the following case. For example, if you calculate from heredity what the human stomach goes through in the course of one, two, seven years, what changes it undergoes in three hundred years, you proceed in the same way as a geologist or astronomer, in the same way as the one who put forward the Kant-Laplace hypothesis. We can calculate in the same way as for the small changes that take place in the constitution of the stomach, what the stomach must have been like 300 years ago; only it had not yet come into existence at that time. In the same way, we can calculate what this stomach will be like in 300 years. The calculation may be correct, but the result is untenable. The calculation based on the changes in the rock can be correct and it can be scientifically established that the earth was in this or that state millions of years ago; only at that time the earth had not yet come into existence and will no longer exist in the millions of years that can be calculated by the same method, because it has inner laws of life through which it has developed out of the spiritual and will in turn develop back into it like man.

Today we are already on the verge of intuiting those spirits that are healthy, on the verge of intuiting a science that is meant to be spiritual science. While those who follow popular judgment in this field are far from a healthy view of these things, which healthy view would naturally lead to spiritual science, we also find others. An example may be given. Eckermann, who emerged from Goethe's view, wrote the following words: ... [space]

This is how a healthy person thinks, how someone thinks who is not completely numbed by what is officially recognized. But he who is compelled, by what his unbiased sense of truth suggests to him, to point out spiritual science in our time, also knows in what way he and his views fit into what the best minds of humanity developed, sensed and thought even before there was any science. In our time, we can repeatedly and again and again point to the prophetic way in which Goethe foresaw spiritual science. By dealing with how, through the development of the human soul, the human being comes to juxtapose the spiritual self as spirit with the spiritual, by linking what is spiritual in the universe with a bridge to what is spiritual in the human being, one is reminded of what Goethe wrote in his book on Winckelmann out of deep insight:

He who feels the healthy nature of man as a whole, who perceives himself in his environment as a great, valuable and dignified whole, would, if the universe could feel itself, reach its goal, exult and admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

Goethe, then, looked at something that can take place in the human mind, where the spirit of the universe directly beholds the spirit of the universe, where spirit confronts spirit.

Now, I can also summarize what I have said, albeit in a sketchy way, about the border areas by saying that spiritual science, when it is really strictly methodical, wants to show that even if a person only lives unconsciously, what is real is research is only raised into consciousness, that only what is always present and going on as the greatest secret in the depths of man reveals itself consciously, that the spiritual faces the spiritual, that the spiritual works with the spiritual, the spiritual recognizes the spiritual, and that the spirit creates and perceives the spiritual.