The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It could be called frivolous if we first tried to refute Theosophy and then tried to justify it, since the lecturer apparently does not believe in the refutation itself.

But I believe in it in all seriousness! It is not a matter of refuting refutations for me, but rather I would like to use it to point out important things about great riddles of knowledge. In a certain sense, I believe in the correctness and weight of the objections raised. To illustrate what I mean, I would like to tell you a little story.

In a village, the young son of a family was chosen to get the daily rolls needed for the family from the baker. He was always given [ten] kreutzers for the trip. This young son was not very good at math and therefore didn't care much about how many rolls he got for the six kreutzers. Now, however, a foster son came to live with the family for a while, and he was good at math. This foster son now started calculating how many rolls he could get for six. Since a roll cost two kreutzers in that town, he should have gotten five rolls. But the boy had brought six rolls. The foster son was surprised and said: “That's not right, two times five is ten. So he only gets five rolls.” But the next day there were six rolls again, despite the foster son's correct calculation. How did this fit together? It was customary in that place to give a roll for every ten kreutzers. There the puzzle was solved. So it was true, even though the calculation was correct. The result of the calculation had nothing to do with the correctness of the matter. Both were correct in themselves, although they did not agree with each other. Just as I myself believed in the correctness of the calculation as the little boy I was, so I also believe today in the correctness of the objections to Theosophy that I put forward. Objections and refutations have a certain quality, namely that they can be correct without the matter itself necessarily being wrong. Perhaps I will be reproached for one thing, namely, that I present some things in a lively way and speak with the same pathos for and against.

But if the things themselves are right, then they can also be presented with the same vivacity. It is generally easier and more convenient to criticize than to justify. I would like to illustrate this with an example.

The editor-in-chief of a major newspaper had the intention of publishing an interesting weekly supplement. However, there were only a few suitable editors for such a paper who could write in a witty and interesting enough way to really captivate the audience he was aiming for. But since he was a clever man, he knew how to help himself. A number of talented young gentlemen were employed to do nothing all week but sit in coffee houses and read newspapers, and then they simply had to refute every article that interested them. With what was collected, the man filled his weekly paper, and it was read with pleasure and sold well, because a witty critique is something that appeals to people. Something of a critic tingles in every soul. In this occupation, the young gentlemen have all become brilliant polemicists and some of them now hold respected positions.

This is to show that it is not at all difficult to refute something, to criticize it, if you don't want anything more.

Our task today is more difficult, because we want to show how to establish the theosophy.

Let us first address the objection that it is amateurish to assume that an etheric body should be added to the physical body. I would remind you of what has been said about the life force theory, which has long been scientifically overcome. When it became possible to assemble material structures in the laboratory, the way was clear for the displacement of the life force. And it may be said that a time will come when it will also be possible to chemically produce higher and highest organic structures in laboratories. Therefore, it can only be described as ignorance when, in the face of such scientific progress, Theosophy still talks about a completely superfluous ether or life body.

However, one point should be emphasized. Many people consider the great Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to be an especially enlightened mind. Furthermore, one would certainly subscribe to the following sentence today: No one can be considered enlightened who is not opposed to belief in ghosts. But now Lessing says the following:

We no longer believe in ghosts? Who says that? Or rather, what does that mean?

[...] In this matter, on which almost as much can be said for as against it, which is not decided and cannot be decided, the currently prevailing way of thinking has given the reasons against it the upper hand; a few have this way of thinking, and many want to ; they make the noise and set the tone; the greatest multitude remains silent and indifferent, thinking one way or another, hearing in broad daylight with pleasure about the ghosts mocking and telling with horror at dark night.

There is no evidence against it, only our thought patterns have changed. The same applies to the life force theory. Our thought patterns about it have changed. However, this does not provide any proof against it.

And the same applies to the scientific objection: we do not need an etheric body. That is also just a change in thinking, which can change again into the opposite, as we can see often enough. In the past, people even believed that they could artificially create a whole, small human being, the so-called homunculus. Nevertheless, the above objection would apply even more, since we see that it is precisely the homunculus-believing human race that completely believes in a supernatural world. In a room with a lot of dirt, there are usually a lot of flies. In the past, this was explained by assuming that the flies came from the dirt. Now we know that dirt only creates the conditions; it makes it easy for flies to enter.

In the same way, owing to different habits of thought, it was formerly easy for the supersensible to enter into the sphere of human activity.

By chance I bought a Freidenkerkalender (Freethinker's Calendar) the other day, in which I found an essay by a freethinking person. This man is not opposed to Theosophy, of which he hopefully knows nothing, but he is against teaching children from an early age to believe in a supernatural world. Before falling asleep, one prays with them that a divine spirit will protect them, and so on. This is nonsense, against which the man seems to be very much opposed. He rails against it and says that today we should not want to force things on children that children do not have of their own accord. — It can only be recommended that we draw the obvious conclusion from this. Children do not come up with language on their own either. Therefore, the man should actually be opposed to teaching children language. But why has the man not drawn such conclusions? The reason is that this man is simply extremely opposed to everything supernatural. He wants to prove everywhere the falsity of the supersensible and therefore does not pay attention to logical arguments. To condemn everything supersensible has become a habit of thinking that he cannot get out of, even if he wanted to - but he does not want to. This is often the case in life. In the end, it is not logical arguments that decide the matter, but habits of thinking.

This raises the question: Is there a way to develop such thinking habits that can be developed into justified habits? Real science posits the principle that only those things should be put forward by the scientist that can be verified by anyone at any time. According to modern science, this is precisely what Theosophy cannot do. For Theosophy refers to sources that the soul develops through itself through the means of meditation. Intimate inner processes transform the soul, and then spiritual eyes and spiritual ears awaken in it. One no longer judges with the ordinary sensory instruments that are accessible to everyone. But strict science must exclude precisely what has only subjective validity.

This is an objection that can only be decided through experience. It must therefore be determined, firstly, whether it is true that science only decides objectively. Secondly, is it true that spiritual science decides subjectively?

Now, the first requirement does not apply to scientific research everywhere. In mathematics, for example, not everyone can verify the matter at any time. Everyone knows that the Pythagorean theorem is correct. But not everyone needs to be able to verify it. However, those who cannot verify it because they do not understand enough mathematics do not prove anything against it.

Mathematics, however, only brings truths that relate to relationships. But whether the results of mathematical science also relate to and prove true in the objective world [...] depends on other things.

Mathematical structures do not occur in nature. There is no such thing as a triangle in itself, nor a mathematically correct circle, and so on. This can never be represented externally, but it can be calculated and imagined internally.

Does this not agree with clairvoyant experience? [Only the lowest levels of the soul experience appear subjective. Those who go further always come to the same experiences. Mathematics is regarded as a living factor in the supersensible worlds, as Plato and others felt.

It can be said that the human organism is “I-ized” in the same way that one can say that God “geometrizes”.

I would like to give you an example of the effectiveness of the supersensible in the physical body. If we observe a person who strives for knowledge - not just a scientist, but a searching, wrestling, internalized soul - when we see such a person again after not having seen him for ten years, we notice a change in his features. We see, then, how the relatively small amount of supersensible work is externally imprinted on his body. Such a change can even indicate a certain kind of inner struggle to the psychologist. But there is a limit to the elasticity of the body. When there is no more room for the outer transformation of the features, then the solutions to the riddles with which one has been struggling come to the person. This can be clearly stated. Inner experience first expresses itself in the outer sensory world of the human being, only then can it enter into consciousness.

How does this compare to the experiences of a student of spiritual science?

The clairvoyant training must create conscious sleep states. By making consciousness possible even during sleep, it can bring powers into consciousness that would otherwise be too weak to do so. So only will-ideas that are not stimulated by anything external. Such training can take a long time. But when it becomes effective, a certain experience can be determined. For the student, inner experiences come, at first like a dream that cannot be grasped. One then feels a resistance from one's own brain. This gradually gives way. Then comes the time when one can transform what one has sensed into concepts. At first it is like a child, one does not really know about it, then it gradually increases to a conscious experience. The clairvoyant then experiences things that present themselves through themselves inwardly as immediate certainty, as inwardly objective. And all clairvoyants experience the same thing in this.

So what is spiritual science based on? Not on something that can be verified by everyone, but on the fact that there is a possibility to grow into the spiritual being itself and thereby draw truth directly from our inner being. Once you have realized that there is a supernatural, then the objections to it are quite different. They are objectively correct objections that cannot be refuted.

Take, for example, the objection that the theosophical explanation for the sleeping state is not needed at all because the self-regulator theory explains the processes much more simply. But there are other self-regulators besides sleep. The clock, for example, is an excellent self-regulator, but – as no one will deny – it can only come about through the activity of thought, through the mind of the watchmaker. Why should the same not also apply to humans? We see, then, that the objection itself is correct, but that it is not at all applicable, since nothing can be decided by it.

But there are still the ethical and moral objections to Theosophy. What about them? The objection to the doctrine of karma, that it can lead to selfishness because good deeds are followed by reward and bad deeds by punishment, is in a way true. It can lead to someone not doing good for the sake of good, but for the sake of reward. Now Schopenhauer once said: “Preaching morality is easy, justifying morality is difficult.” With a mere moral sermon that man should do good, you won't achieve much in general. It's a bit like if someone were to say to the stove: “Dear stove, it is your destiny, your moral duty, to heat the room; so please, be so good and act accordingly.” If nothing else happens, it will probably remain cold inside the stove. But if you take wood and light a fire in the stove, you will achieve the purpose of the stove more quickly and effectively.

Of course, preaching helps people a little more than a stove, but usually not much more. Justifying morals – igniting the inner fire in people – is more important. So let the law of karma first quietly work on people's selfishness and thus ignite them for good. The main thing is that the purpose is achieved. One could also say of a couple that they only educate their children well out of selfishness. Should they therefore rather not do so? The main thing is that the children become well-behaved people as a result of the good education. Even if the parents have only thought of themselves and the personal comforts that well-behaved children can bring them, love for the educational work will come naturally. Thus, goodness can initially arise from selfish motives, and then, through the habit of doing good, selflessness will arise naturally from selfishness.

Now, let us take the case of someone who says, “We will come back anyway, so why bother now? I want to enjoy my life now, I still have time in later life to become a decent person.” If we believe in the law of karma, we must realize that such an attitude will have its consequences for the next life. The consequence will be that his present behavior, even his intention to become decent, will make it difficult for him.

Then we have other objections. It is said that the clairvoyant borrows his ideas only from the physical world, just as in hallucinations. These are only reminiscences of ordinary sensual things, but clothed in fantastically confused form, just as, for example, primitive religions derive their idea of God from man, and so on.

Now, however, a spiritual connection between three people can be proven by clairvoyance, one of whom is dead. There are many such well-attested experiences. I will tell you, as I always do, only one real event that happened exactly as it happened and can be verified.

A couple lived with their son, but the son became ill and died after one day. That was a heavy blow for the parents. They were therefore very busy with the son. After months, both parents dreamt the same dream. The son appeared to them and told them that he had been buried alive. They told each other about the dream the next morning, and it turned out that they had both experienced the same thing in their dream, that they had both had the same dream. They now wanted to be sure and have it dug up. Unfortunately, the authorities prevented the digging, but the fact remains that both had the same dream. Now a dream is not yet reality, but in such cases dreams are the realization of what shines into consciousness from the supersensible worlds.

How this is to be understood can be seen from the well-known dream of the farmer's wife who, in her dream, seems to hear an edifying sermon by the pastor and, upon awakening, hears the cock crow that has awakened her and thereby, in the returning consciousness of a sermon, has aroused the image of a sermon, since she had thought of the pastor's edifying words before falling asleep. Dream images are determined by our attitudes and experiences. From this it is clear that even clairvoyant descriptions, despite being given in everyday images, can contain correct, supersensible experiences. Otherwise one could also say: I see nothing in a book but black letters and printer's ink. What you read from it, I cannot find in it at all.

This may be true for someone who cannot read within, but in terms of content, it is out of the question for someone who has learned to read.

We now come to the religious objections: from the self-deification of man through theosophy. The fact that one transfers God into one's own inner being, while true religiosity requires devotion to an external God, leads to self-exaltation, in that it tempts man to say: I am a god myself.

This is again a not entirely unjustified objection. But we can also say what, based on a living feeling, expresses the theosophical truth. You have a divine spark within you, undeveloped, in a germinal state. You must develop this more and more. It is therefore a breach of duty against the God in you if you do not constantly strive for perfection.

It is not enough for the theosophist to passively surrender to God – as some pious Christians do – but he must demand active devotion, as the Pauline saying goes: “Not I, but the Christ in me”.

So then, deification looks somewhat different, because it constantly leads to impulses for perfection, transforming man's self-righteousness into an eternal imperative of duty.

Here again you see: the objection need not be refuted, nevertheless what Theosophy has to say stands on solid ground. For it is true: the seeking soul does not have to deny itself when it longs for immortality, but finds outside what lives within itself.

From the lectures that I have been privileged to give here over the course of many years, it will have become clear that the world view from which the content of these lectures was drawn is based on a very specific, one might say, attitude, or at least that at least one such attitude is associated with that world view, which can be more closely defined by saying: It is not possible to give a correct lecture within theosophy or spiritual science if the soul is not imbued with a certain tolerance towards every system of belief, an inner tolerance that can bring a devoted understanding to every kind of belief. For the actual school of thought that comes into consideration within spiritual science only makes sense if it is kept far removed from everything that can be called fanaticism and sectarianism. Such things are so widespread in our time that when someone views the world from his own point of view, he is apt to think that anyone with a different line of thought must be a blockhead, or at least lacking in earnest sense of truth or in powers of perception and conscientiousness. For external reasons alone, it would be a pity if Theosophy were to pay homage to such fanatical sentiments, because it must be admitted that, to gain a thorough and comprehensive grasp of the Theosophical world-view, a great deal of patience and time is necessary for those who wish to penetrate deeply into it. large part of our contemporaries who draw their convictions from spiritual science or theosophy do not do so on the basis of a thorough knowledge of all the underlying principles of truth, but rather, understandably, form their convictions out of certain emotional and sentimental interests. This does not mean that the latter are denied their right! Naturally, everyone has a personal right to their own conviction, but it is equally impossible to thoroughly defend the spiritual science world view if the conviction has been gained only in this way. Moreover, since it is only possible to become familiar with spiritual science through difficult, dedicated work, it is understandable that some of our contemporaries feel repelled by Theosophy, and as a rule these are not the people with the worst sense of truth.

We must find it understandable that, as things stand, those of our contemporaries who draw their convictions from science and culture will have difficulties upon difficulties to come to Theosophy; for such people in particular, refutations and contradictions pile up in abundance in the face of what confronts them as Theosophy. But to speak of ill will would be contrary to the tolerance that Theosophy should always practice. Therefore, the task for this evening should be to give a picture of the doubts that may confront the honest seeker of truth when he approaches Theosophy, and then the task for the lecture the day after tomorrow - “How to Justify Theosophy” - is how such doubts can be dispelled.

Even if today's lecture appears to be somewhat disconcerting, that is because it is intended to put itself in the opponent's shoes and present the main lines of his well-founded doubts and refutations. This will also best achieve what is to be shown, namely that the objections of the opponents should be taken as seriously as possible. I do not want to present my opinion, but to make a serious attempt to put myself completely in the position of the opponent, without touching on those lightly-worded objections that are already answered by saying that the opponent should try to get to know Theosophy more closely. Thus, I do not want to address the immature, but rather the concerns that really arise for those who, from the culture of the present, want to take note of the theosophical worldview and then cannot go along with Theosophy, because otherwise they would have to break with everything with everything that arises from the culture of the present, a culture whose reasons cannot be refuted, and which must rather raise justified and thoroughly justified objections, which Theosophy as such must recognize without being able to refute them to the same extent.

Therefore, I would first like to present an extract of the theosophical worldview to you, in the way that it has already been explained in as much detail as possible in many lectures. First of all, in Theosophy you will find the assumption of a supersensible world behind the world of the senses and the mind. Then Theosophy invokes certain methods of research that differ from what is taught in our time by the methods of research and thinking. The world of the senses, it is said, teaches that it is explainable from within itself and for this purpose does not need to seek a supersensible world behind it. Or the opinion is expressed by others that a supersensible world must indeed be assumed behind the sensory world, but that man cannot penetrate it, hence the limits of knowledge must be assumed.

Theosophy emphasizes that man, with his ordinary consciousness, is dependent on the external world of the intellect and, in addition to this, on that of the inner observation of the soul, but that it is also possible to bring the inner life of the soul to a high level of development. When this happens through certain inner exercises, the practitioner, if he practices in the right way and with sufficient persistence, will encounter a high transcendental world from the depths of his soul as he develops his spiritual and mental faculties, so that the sufficiently advanced researcher in the field of the spiritual world can recognize transcendental facts. Then a person developed in this way will be able to think about the nature of man differently than the ordinary consciousness is able to do, which can only recognize the part of the environment that can be perceived by the senses.

Now, however, Theosophy teaches that with heightened consciousness, three supersensible parts can be recognized in the human being itself. Namely, the “etheric body” is said to still be active in the physical human body as the actual animator and shaper of the physical body, which can also be found in animals and even in plants, and which works to ensure that the substances composing the outer body do not follow their otherwise inherent forces and laws as long as they are under the influence of the ether body in the organism, but only after death, when they are left to themselves again. Theosophy or secret science recognizes a third aspect of human nature in the so-called astral body; every living being that develops consciousness does so through the powers of the astral body, which permeates the physical and etheric bodies, which we find in humans and animals, but not in plants. Human nature, however, has a fourth element, the so-called ego, which elevates man from animality and thereby presents him as the crown of earthly creation.

Further pursuit and deeper penetration into the knowledge of man reveals that man differs essentially from the sleeping when awake; spiritual science teaches that in the latter, the astral body with the ego separates from the physical and etheric bodies, and these latter two go into the spiritual world. But in this world, both are then surrounded by darkness from falling asleep to waking up, since for the normally developed person without his physical-etheric tools and without the tool of his mind, nothing is perceptible, and with these only in the physical world, because he does not yet possess any organs for recognizing the spiritual world.

In this view of waking life, spiritual science points out that everything a person has experienced through his senses in his mind, and everything that has happened to him as luck or misfortune, has been deposited in his soul, which carries it through the gate of death in the higher spiritual limbs of the human being. These remain with the human being in a certain way, namely as the I, the astral body and as the essence of the etheric body. With these elements of his being, the human being undergoes experiences in the spiritual world after death, in which he then gathers strength from everything and processes it in a unique way, in order to then, after a longer or shorter time, be able to move back into a physical body that is made available to him within the line of inheritance. In this way it will receive certain qualities from the parents, but the essential abilities will be formed in it, that is to say in its physical body and the next higher members, by its own spiritual-soul core, which his life between death and a new birth, in the purely spiritual world, under different physical and earthly conditions, had further experiences that led him to develop powers that made him suitable for a new life on earth. Everything that the person has experienced in the way of important thoughts, impulses and feelings carries over into a new life, so that this, in its peculiarity, is partly a consequence of the previous life(s).

The various elements of human nature belong to several worlds; the spiritual-mental is of earlier origin than the physical-etheric part, so that we can speak of a spiritual-mental world preceding the physical world, which is, as it were, an earlier embodiment of our earth planet. We must turn our gaze to this and many other things, as well as to the future formations of the same, in order to get an idea of the basis of theosophical science.

If a person with a serious scientific mind approaches such ideas, they will get the impression that everything that the humanities and science of the last few centuries have researched has been turned upside down, for example the fact that the physical body, in all its organs, is permeated by an etheric body, which is seen as the carrier of life. Should not anyone who has immersed themselves in science, especially that of the last two centuries, say that with such a view, Theosophy adopts an amateurish position that is not justified by anything, because what is this etheric body if not the resurgence of the vital force that has been broken since the eighteenth century? The chemical compounds, mixtures and separations can be explained by the forces that can be recognized in chemistry and physics! Apart from these, certain compounds of substances are also seen to occur that are only seen to form in the living organism, not in the external, non-organic nature; hence it was said in the past that there is a life force in the living organism that permeates the organs of the same in a peculiar way.

In the nineteenth century, science made progress with Liebig and Wöhler, namely in that these two researchers also produced in their laboratories those compounds that apparently could only form in the living organism, without claiming the organism's supposed life force. What was more natural than to assume that, once such compounds had been produced outside the organism, they would also have come about inside the living organism without the help of the assumed life force? If science were sufficiently developed, there would be no reason to assume that further, more complicated substances could not be produced in the future, and indeed in the laboratory, without the help of the so-called life force.

If we continue this train of thought, we must eventually be convinced that the living organism also contains only those forces that can be found in the natural world, so that with sufficient scientific progress, even simply organized living beings could be represented! It should be readily admitted that the fact that this possibility does not yet exist does not in any way contradict the possibility of such hopes at a later stage. What, then, is the etheric body of theosophy other than a transfer of the life force long since rejected by science? What else is apparent than that theosophy does not know the above-indicated scope of scientific discoveries and the well-founded prospects associated with them? Nothing but pure lay thinking, only dilettantism is the assumption of an etheric or life body.

This objection is fully justified from our intellectual culture, and a serious scientist cannot lightly dismiss it.

But if we now look at what we have characterized as the astral body, the vehicle of consciousness, we see that these appearances of consciousness present themselves as supersensible experiences, and everything we know of thoughts, sensations, feelings, and impulses of the will belongs to the supersensible world. Nineteenth-century natural scientists also went this far; one need only recall the famous speech given in 1872 by Du Bois-Reymond in Leipzig on the limits of natural knowledge. According to the then prevailing view, the brain was thought to be composed of atoms, so it was not possible to penetrate to an understanding of how the appearances of consciousness should arise from the constant or changing position of these atoms. This radical difference between external appearances was already seriously noticed by natural scientists at that time, who took into account substances and supersensible soul experiences. The latter were regarded as constant accompaniments of the former. The life of ideas changes, for example, with a greater or lesser influx of blood to the brain, so that the phenomena of consciousness are bound to material processes, and the natural scientist therefore finds no difference between such phenomena and, for example, the force of gravity, which is also supersensible and can only be perceived in its effects, not itself, just as supersensible as consciousness. It is bound to substances that attract each other in inverse proportion to the square of the distances and in direct proportion to the masses [...].

Accordingly, for example, Benedict says in his 'Seelenkunde': The phenomena of consciousness within our soul life are no different in their attachment to the substances of our body than gravity, magnetism, [electricity] and the like; why should not such or similar forces emanate from our brain as those forces as accompanying phenomena of material processes? The sentence cannot be defended against exact scientific reasoning, that the phenomena of the soul are something other than the accompanying phenomena of matter. And we must admit: Benedict's principle is one that a person from the point of view of contemporary culture cannot easily get away from, but instead would have to accept that the soul forces of man would be released in death, and in the same way, gravity would have to be be able to break away in the destruction of the material, in order to pass in the meantime into a special realm, a kind of gravity realm [gravity heaven], until it finds an opportunity to reincarnate in a new material. That is a logical objection that a scientific conscience cannot easily get over.

Let us turn to what Theosophy says about the phenomena of sleeping and waking; in contrast to this, the modern scientist believes that the explanation is completely in the air that a supersensible part of the being emerges from the sleeping person. We will therefore try to explain sleeping and waking on the assumption that soul processes are bound to the substances of the body like gravity is bound to every physical substance. We therefore assume that the waking activity, through its wear and tear, leads the human organism to a state where the individual organs are no longer able to maintain waking consciousness, namely in such a way that certain poisons are produced and accumulated, which ultimately cause the person to fall asleep. Because consciousness is thus extinguished during sleep, the purely [animalistic], or rather, [vegetative] activity of the human being sets in, which works out the fatigue or toxin substances again, so that he is regenerated and can enter into the consciousness of waking again.

Thus, we would have a self-regulating mechanism in sleep and wakefulness throughout life. This is an explanation that is entirely in line with our materialistic way of thinking. Hypotheses of this kind can be justified in detail, if erroneous, but because of materialism; it depends here mainly on whether they can be thought logically without the assumption that when you fall asleep something goes out of the person and returns to him when he wakes up. So, from its point of view, scientific thinking must reject the theosophical explanation of sleeping and waking.

In the doctrine of repeated lives on earth, we find ourselves on completely uncertain ground with regard to the latter conditions, while spiritual scientific thinking can only conceive of the present life as the effect of previous lives. But there are also models in natural science thinking that point to this, so that, for example, according to the so-called biogenetic law, all animals and humans must go through all stages of their ancestors' earlier development. human germ shows fish forms 21 days after fertilization, indicating that in times long past, his bodily ancestors were fish-like; thus, there is a certain indication in the present developmental process of earlier bodily conditions. This is how one could characterize old developmental states. Nevertheless, it soon becomes apparent that it is not possible to explain all the characteristics of a person from his ancestors, but only by assuming a spiritual-soul core of being, for example by pointing out that children of the same parents should actually be much more similar than twins usually are.

But all this will not suffice for scientific thinking, which objects that every human being must arise from the mixing of the characteristics of father and mother in their mutual interaction, so that accordingly children of different ages of the parents would have to take different forms, since they would have arisen from the most diverse mixing ratios. Furthermore, at the present stage of advanced research, or precisely despite it, scientific thinking can say: Who should be able to assess the fine structures of the mixing germ?

In addition, it seems frivolous to the modern, materialistic thinker to want to trace the most diverse properties back to earlier lives; because first you would have to eliminate everything that happened in early childhood. Thus, for example, in the case of a sculptor, one would be tempted to trace an outstanding talent back to a past life, whereas it could just as easily be explained by the fact that the person in question had frequent and stimulating contact with sculptures and artists in his youth. (We no longer know for sure, but it had an effect on the subconscious.) You can never be too careful in gathering all the relevant information, in order to provide the appropriate and correct explanation.

In science, there is something called a useful working hypothesis. For example, sunlight used to be seen as the radiation of a fine luminiferous substance that travelled from the sun to the planets, including our earth. But since this could not explain all the phenomena of light, the hypothesis or theory of the cosmic ether was adopted, although no one can directly prove whether a substance flows or the ether moves in waves. But if the undulation theory is correct, then it can be used to explain the phenomena of light and colors and to predict them under certain conditions. Even if the processes take place differently, this theory proves to be useful. It is similar with the Darwinian theory, which cites fish as an intermediate link in the development of humans; it is, after all, possible to understand, for example, the fins of fish as the original limb for the locomotor organs of higher animals and so on, and to bring the lower animals in their development to higher ones in the most diverse organic areas through this explanatory hypothesis with humans in connection.

The assumption of repeated lives on earth could prove fruitful in explaining happy or unhappy physical and social living conditions. But seriously, one cannot treat reincarnation and karma in the same way that a natural scientist proceeds with his working hypotheses, because in natural science we have only one explanation for many phenomena; we trace many phenomena back to a single principle. Thus, as already indicated, the higher animals can be traced back to fish-like ancestors, an assumption that can be elevated to a law through an infinite number of cases and traced back to a single principle. On the other hand, with every human being, we would have to come up with a new hypothesis for each of the many previous lives; if a natural scientist were to attempt this in his field, it would be declared absolutely inadmissible, since, on the contrary, he endeavors to find a common explanation for as many individual events as possible. The idea that all human beings live according to karma is only an abstraction, because each person must be traced back to their own past life. In this way, one could, in the most diverse ways, create justified difficulties from conscientious thinking, raising countless objections from a scientific point of view.

But special objections arise for the materialistic-scientific thinker when he observes how the spiritual researcher invokes a higher, spiritual vision, which the researcher tells him can only be formed through higher soul powers, whereby this spiritual scientific method of the researcher is diametrically opposed to the materialistic-scientific requirement that at any place, at any time and for any person, provided that the essential prerequisites are met, a verification of the established claim should be possible, quite independently of the processes in the interior of his soul. These are completely irrelevant for the scientific researcher for the application of his research method; rather, the second and third researchers should be able to determine the same as the first. This fundamental requirement is contrary to the spiritual scientific method, according to which something can be researched by developing subjective psychic powers; but this is unacceptable to the scientific researcher; the results of such a research method are unprovable to him. He can therefore only classify them in the realm of mere belief, to which everyone can relate as they wish. Thus, all this appears unacceptable to the materialistically thinking person, and to anyone who approaches Theosophy with his own methods and then experiences what and how it researches and teaches.

Numerous other objections arise in the moral, religious and spiritual spheres of life. It is objected that in the theosophical view, what we experience is a consequence of previous lives, and the thoughts and actions of the present life are the cause of the phenomena of the coming life; it is objected that such a view leads to an egotistical morality and conduct if evil is to lead to something that must be compensated for by pain and so on, while good would bring happiness and joy. Would not a selfish morality develop if, for the reasons indicated, one refrained from evil and practiced good? Compared to such a selfish conception of morality, what we encounter from the materialistic view of morality seems like heroism, which assumes that with death the phenomena of consciousness are extinguished like a flame whose fuel has been consumed; a view that assumes that the deeds of the individual gain nothing for himself, but that their consequences, good and evil, flow only in the general world process. Even if this theory can be refuted, it still depends on external reality, not on logical reasons, but on the effect that such a theory has in life.

Among noble minds in the West, we find the views of materialistic morality described above, for example in the Munich Frohschammer, who put forward a very noteworthy moral objection when he said: What does the constant recurrence of a spiritual-soul core lead to? To the view that precisely that which we here in life regard as one of the noblest relationships, namely the love between the sexes, provides the cause for repeatedly, without end, imprisoning one soul after another in a physical body; therefore, I consider reincarnation morally reprehensible. Anyone who devotes themselves to the contemplation of the transcendental world, who turns away from the external world and falls into a state of estrangement from it through a life-denying asceticism, will by no means consider reincarnation to be an ethical or moral teaching. The personal experiences of the spiritual researcher can and will easily be met with contradiction, and how can we be sure that these subjective experiences are not just an illusion?

Such a view is also theoretically refutable, but for anyone who is trying to decide whether or not to turn to Theosophy, such doubts weigh very heavily on the soul, especially when they are combined with Kepler's example, who, as we know, also practised astrology, a peculiar form of astronomy involving high spiritual concepts. We learn from him how he was repeatedly compelled to cast horoscopes for prominent personalities, and then wondered anxiously whether he should explain the future events in full or rather communicate them in veiled terms. So we can see that even the great Kepler, despite his scientific conscience, sometimes comes close to charlatanry. Abysses of a peculiar kind open up at the transition from an old to a new science, at the boundary of which stands the figure of Kepler. If such a significant man is, as is thought, not always protected from dubious obscurities, how is an ordinary person to develop the steadfast qualities when he reaches supersensible insights in an unfree and often immature state, in order to be the bearer of an immovable sense of truth under all circumstances!

Thus, the fear arises that clairvoyant qualities, when penetrating into higher spiritual worlds, lead to dishonesty as a side effect of such abilities, and opponents of Theosophy therefore say: “Morally contestable is even the method, not the development itself, which is supposed to lead to seeing into higher worlds.” Thus, for example, we see how Faust is accompanied by Mephistopheles, the bearer of magical powers; we can sense how close this comes to him when Goethe has him say:

If I could remove magic from my path, forget the spells altogether...

What is not readily within a person thus approaches him from outside as a temptation to immorality.

In religious terms, it is one of the noblest or perhaps the noblest view of man that he stands before a divine being that has created and redeemed him. What does Theosophy make of this supreme divine being? It regards the soul and spiritual core of the self as a spark in the totality of the divine being; the human ego does good and evil, bears the redemption within itself and does not look up to the God of retributive justice, who is instead relocated in one's own soul and can lead the human being to a delusion of unjustified esteem. The core of feeling and perception of religion, the sense of childship, is therefore in danger of being perverted into a worship of self-righteousness.

Thus we have seen how the theosophical line of reasoning and general view of the world and life, and so on, is incompatible with that of other thinkers. For example, human conscience cannot be understood externally, but here the scientific thinker says – compare the book on conscience by Dr. Paul Ree – that conscience is the final result of human development. In the face of this view, spiritual science has to develop an inner tolerance and not describe the opponent as a drip or even as a malicious person, but it should respond to his objections, which seem worthy of consideration due to their weight. Present-day scientists are indeed demanding completely different ways of proving the supersensible truths of the higher worlds, for example in the way shown by Ludwig Deinhard in the first half of his book 'The Mystery of Man', where he leads to the assumption of survival after death and to an understanding of the survival of the same individuality, which is identical with that of the physical-earthly life. This path has often been tried by honest scholars, and we can see that all of them are led from the same established phenomena to the same hypothesis, that after death man exists as a spirit.

For example, the so-called cross-correspondence could make a significant impression on researchers working in this field, in which two or more people, prompted from the depths of their souls, write down the same thing, which then collectively points to a recently deceased personality who was a leader or enthusiastic participant in a movement that had set itself the goal of researching such relationships and it borders on the conscientiousness of the argumentation and the completeness of the same, as the natural scientist demands in his field of phenomena, when in such a cross-correspondence a lady in India sends the messages from the spiritual world that have come to her through the use of her hidden powers of the soul to a personality in London, at an address that is given to her in the same occult way and vice versa. Now there are two types: on the one hand, there are people who allow themselves to be convinced of the existence of a transcendental world by means of processes that border on scientific methods, such as Weber and Zöllner; on the other hand, there are people like the philosopher Wundt, who believed that the researchers mentioned earlier are not entitled to draw such momentous conclusions from the observed phenomena, that the scholar is too gullible and naive for observation and judgment, and that the conjurer is the most suitable examiner for this. He points to the events in a meeting in which samples of excellent mind reading were demonstrated by a medium who had both eyes carefully bound, and in which the impresario was given the information to be transmitted on pieces of paper. The impresario then apparently energetically signaled the medium what was written down and then asked what was on the piece of paper. The medium then stated this with great certainty. Careful observation ruled out any agreed signals, and yet the medium reproduced the most peculiar and intricate messages. The explanation of this phenomenon was provided by a conjurer who recognized the impresario as a ventriloquist whose medium, without speaking herself, only moved her lips during the messages. Professor Weber, who, as already indicated, was keenly interested in the study of occult phenomena and supersensory worlds, had convinced himself of their reality through his experiments; he once saw a sleight of hand artist operating with a banknote, which he made grow to enormous size before the eyes of his audience, without the help of four-dimensional forces, but only by using his sleight of hand skills. Weber was extremely affected when he saw this. Therefore, skepticism may arise when it comes to scrutiny by scholars.

In the first-mentioned experiment of cross-correspondence, one does not even need to raise the objection that someone in India might have read the address of a lady in London without remembering it, and might unconsciously remember this fact from it; one could indeed completely repeat the whole experiment to eliminate such doubts. But apart from that, if one wants to prove something through experiments with such writings, especially that a deceased personality still lives as an individuality in a spiritual world, one is easily tempted to want to prove too much, since the possibility must be admitted that the effect, even of a deceased person, on people still living as a spiritual movement that continues to vibrate after their death, and therefore the premature proof of identity has been questioned. Just as electric waves can be spread over the whole earth by wireless telegraphy, so it is conceivable that the activity and thinking of a person could continue to have an effect for years after his death without the help of mechanical aids, without it being necessary to assume the survival of a human individuality after death.

Thus, as we have already heard in the short time of this lecture, there are objections upon objections, without these themselves being chosen as easy objections, so that one would have to take the view that Theosophy cannot be reconciled with present-day science. In the next lecture, the attempt will be made to show whether this test cannot be made in another way.

To illustrate this in advance, it may be recalled that when Hartmann's “Philosophy of the Unconscious” was published in 1867, in which, among other things, the unsuitability of the purely materialistic view, for example that of Darwin, was shown, there was a storm of indignation among natural scientists, in which the arguments of Hartmann's work were described as dilettantism. Many refutations appeared, among them one entitled: “The Unconscious from the Point of View of Descent...”. In it, everything that could possibly be said against the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” was collected. This writing appeared as the best against Hartmann's presumptions, and Ernst Haeckel said that he himself could not write anything better than the anonymous author of this excellent refutation. Then Eduard von Hartmann himself named himself as the author, the storm of approval soon ceased, and people no longer wanted to recognize him as a member of the materialistic school of thought after he had shown that he could say everything that could be said by the opposing side if he were to take the position of his opponents.

But is it the case that such objections can or cannot be upheld, or, in the former case, is there a possibility for Theosophy to establish its case and refute the objections? We must therefore try to gain a point of view within spiritual science from which Theosophy can be established. If this is possible, then it will become clear whether the arguments put forward in this way are appreciated by the opponents of Theosophy, whether it is actually able to refute the objections of these loyal opponents and to show what it still has to say.

If, the day before yesterday, we tried to put ourselves in the position of our opponents of the theosophical or spiritual scientific worldview, and if today the latter worldview is to be presented to you in its main forms, , I would ask you not to interpret my task as an attempt to dismantle piece by piece what was built up the day before yesterday, that is, to play a kind of game with concepts; for that would seem frivolous to me. It has already been emphasized that it was not a matter of randomly listing what is said in lightly-worded objections to Theosophy by people who have no good will to familiarize themselves with the content and essence of these worldviews , but it has been emphasized that only those reasons should be put forward that must be regarded as serious, weighty objections and that make it difficult for today's cultured people to approach Theosophy with their innermost convictions, despite their goodwill.

But since those who have heard me give lectures of a theosophical nature before can assume that I am not trying to refute Theosophy, today everything presented should be seen as a kind of refutation of the day before yesterday, and I ask that you bear in mind that I have to strike a different tone than I would for other lectures explaining the theosophical truths. Otherwise, factual evidence was presented to support the Theosophical truths; what will be said today is to be countered more in a logically judgmental way to that of the day before yesterday, from a more abstract point of view, which will appear quite understandable in view of the objections that have been raised, within certain limits, as justified.

In itself, it seems strange to try to present arguments for and against a matter that is claimed to be and must be part of our cultural heritage; strange because it could easily lead to the judgment that a conviction established for one person cannot be assumed for others. The decision is often quite difficult, so that first of all attention must be drawn to the question of the conclusiveness of human reason for or against a matter. Only then is it possible to ask whether so much really depends on the conclusiveness of human reason alone, whether this alone can decide for or against a matter with its reasons, or whether this does not happen in such an immediate way.

Everyone knows that something can be put forward with great acumen until one realizes that the evidence that initially seems so convincing is no longer sufficient when the scope of vision is broadened. Therefore, the question arises as to whether it is the evidence alone that leads people to decide whether to accept or reject something. It might seem easy to judge that a thing is right when the evidence speaks for it and wrong when it speaks against it, but we recognize from cultural history that, over the course of time, people have by no means been decisive in the evidence that could be presented for or against a thing, but it came and still comes down to things that are more decisive than evidence of human reason when it comes to believing that something is true.

This may be illustrated by the following example: This year, for the first time, a so-called freethinker's calendar appeared, in which there is also an argument from an author whose love of truth should be unconditionally recognized; this author says that one should not teach one's children anything that is based on ideas of divine or other transcendental things. The writer of the article in question takes a monistic-materialistic point of view and believes he must speak out against beliefs of a supernatural kind, such as the existence of the soul, God and so on. In doing so, he refers to something that can be said to carry great weight for many thinking people, namely, that children should be taught nothing but what could be developed from their natural human nature; on the other hand, to bring something from supersensible worlds into their development is something alien, because left to themselves, they would come to the sensual world. This makes sense to modern pedagogical people who do not see the child as a sack that can be randomly filled with ideas and so on.

Such views may seem quite natural and appropriate to anyone, and such a presentation will also appear to the reader of the calendar as absolutely flawless evidence. But as difficult as it is to refute the author with all the means of his point of view, the judgment changes when one broadens one's horizons. If, for example, a child were raised on a desert island where one could prevent it from learning the language of people, the question seems quite natural: Should one maintain the principle established earlier and offer the child nothing but what his nature already provides by itself, it would be almost impossible for such a child to learn to speak. It follows that when thinking, all relevant factors must be taken into account.

Great people have always recognized as a fundamental principle the endeavor to keep their thinking free and independent in this direction, to grasp their ideas on the broadest possible horizon. An example of the way such people think, which should apply to thinkers and personalities who are undoubtedly regarded by most as very impartial thinkers, and whom the most enlightened minds of the present are accustomed to recognize as theirs, easy to cite a multitude of examples from experience that demonstrate that human superstition clings to many things that actually exist but are only conceived erroneously; for example, many people believe in spirits that are independent of the physical body. By contrast, it seems obvious to some that one must be bereft of all enlightenment if one does not doubt the existence of such disembodied spirits. Many of those who accuse such believers of crass superstition invoke Lessing as the pioneer of modern thought; we can fully endorse this assessment in the sense that he derived the nature of his thinking from a broad horizon. He says:

We no longer believe in ghosts? Who says so? Or rather, what does that mean? Does it mean something like this: We have finally come so far in our insights that we can prove the impossibility of it; certain irrefutable truths that contradict belief in ghosts have become so common knowledge, are so constantly present even to the meanest man, that anything that argues with them must necessarily appear ridiculous and absurd to him? That cannot be what it means. We do not believe in ghosts now, so it can only mean: in this matter, about which almost as much can be said for as against it, which is not decided and cannot be decided, the currently prevailing way of thinking has given the reasons against it the upper hand; a few have this way , and many seem to want it; these make the noise and set the tone; the majority is silent and indifferent and thinks one way today and another tomorrow, hearing with delight in broad daylight mocking of ghosts and telling of them with horror in the dark of night. What are we to say about a legend of modern thought presented in this way? Does he have a crass superstition if he wants to accept other views and fields of knowledge as logically reasoned arguments, if he expresses his opinion to the effect that these gain or lose weight depending on whether one broadens or narrows one's horizons? In the former case, completely new possibilities immediately arise. It is not the weight of the evidence that has decided the question in favor of the existence of spirits, but the habit of thinking, which is directed to facts that take away the evidence of their existence. So you have to try to convey what leads people to give their views a probative force, a weight.

What matters are our thought habits, and here we will be able to see that there would and actually are apparently weighty reasons against rejecting the etheric body as taught by Theosophy.

Spiritual science tells us that this etheric body permeates the physical body and treats its own and absorbed substances in such a way that the organism can live. The objection was raised that chemical science is capable of producing certain chemical compounds outside of a living organism in the laboratory, and that it is therefore concluded that all of these processes and compounds that can be observed in a living organism are now also caused by the same external forces, and that it is expected that at least the simplest living organisms can be produced in the laboratory at some point. On the basis of these facts and considerations, the concept of the etheric body is therefore considered unscientific; for no one has the right to doubt that science will not be able to produce life phenomena and living things in the future.

All this is not based on reasons and proofs, but on habits of thought. This can be proved historically. In the past, no one doubted the supernatural origin of life, because the alchemists, for example, and all the other scholars of earlier centuries believed that they could produce a whole “homunculus” from the necessary substances in the laboratory; a strange phenomenon! What was necessary for such thinkers – who we should not simply dismiss out of hand as fools, considering that in the future we will not be seen as greater fools for having been short-sighted enough to consider them as such – what was necessary for them to assume so that we would no longer see an insoluble contradiction? We must embrace the idea that life is everywhere, not only limited to living organisms and their possibilities of inheritance, but that it can occur in all suitably combined substances, where one need only assume that life is present - if only given the opportunity to unfold in one way or another. If anything alive comes into being, it cannot be assumed that only what is present in a particular place comes into being, just as flies do not simply arise out of the dirt, which they soon appear on. If we bring together the necessary substances under the appropriate conditions in the laboratory, we can do nothing but provide the opportunity for life to come to them. In doing so, however, we must not limit the concept of life to the living organisms that have crystallized out of the available substances, since life is omnipresent and takes every opportunity to express itself, for example, as a germ in properly arranged substances.

Such a view is unusual for our time, but it cannot be logically dismissed. In a way, it is difficult to arrive at a comprehensive idea of life through the methods of Theosophy; to help you, I would like to start with a point made the day before yesterday to lead you to the concept and acceptance of the etheric body.

It has been said that there is a way to explain waking and sleeping differently than Theosophy does, by stating that the astral body with the ego slips out of the physical body, which remains united with the ether body, and that these latter two parts of the being are then united in the spiritual world during sleep. In contrast to this, it seems perfectly logical when the phenomenon of sleep is presented in such a way that during waking hours in the sensory world, through his intellectual and muscular activity, man accumulates so-called fatigue substances in his organs, which no longer enable him to develop the strength to continue to live while awake. The countervailing forces of the organism then assert themselves, the consciousness of being awake extinguishes, and those forces then restore the organism during sleep, so that it is able to work again with full vigor with all its organs and so on. Many naturalists think that the alternating state of sleeping and waking is based on a self-regulation of the healthy organism, so that it is not necessary to assume that, to explain sleep, a spiritual part separates from the physical-etheric body, removes from it, and both parts unfold a restorative activity - without any actual self-awareness.

Such an objection can be a stumbling block for someone who wants to turn to theosophy, and such an objection should therefore not be underestimated by a conscientious person. But even if we assume that the organism is a self-regulating system in terms of sleeping and waking, that the disturbances caused in the organs by fatigue are compensated for by the restoration of the vital forces, the question must still be raised, and as a matter of principle and fundamental: What can the organism do for its organs during sleep? It must be the result of a special life activity when the eyes, ears, brain, nervous system and other internal organs are endowed with new life force during sleep. But what is the nature of this restoration of organic activity? Is it something like that which is otherwise in the organism, for example, that of the constantly active human lungs, which take care of breathing, since they must also be imbued with the inner organic life with nourishment and organic forces? This inner organic activity, which nourishes the lungs, cannot alone be the cause of the movement; and the absorption of oxygen from the air by the lungs themselves cannot be replaced by this inner nutrition, for it has nothing to do with it. The same applies to the brain and nervous system, which are also supplied and nourished internally. But the internal restoration of the brain and nervous system that occurs during sleep has just as little in common with the sensations and perceptions that flow through our senses and the thoughts that flow through our brain.

Thus, the inner organic activity cannot give anything that makes the senses and brain thinking, feeling organs, otherwise something could be provided by the sleeping person in relation to his soul, just as if one wanted to determine something about the inner nature of oxygen through the inner organic nutrition of the lungs. Therefore, we can rightly say: by supplying its organs with inner organic power, our organism has given nothing that is capable of filling them with their own ideas, and so it has given the lungs nothing at all to supply them with oxygen again and again. Thus, what is felt, what is the content of the soul, comes to man from a completely different source.

Accordingly, it is indisputable to speak of the fact that something absolutely different is present in the waking person than in the sleeping person, just as water (H> O) is present in the form of the separate parts hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O); water cannot be represented if only hydrogen (H) is present without oxygen (O). So we must also supply the sleeping person, who is present without spiritual content, that is, from the outside, which complements him to wakefulness.

Now we must be clear about the fact that even the positivist thinkers such as [Hume] do not claim that what we call “I” can be found in any kind of organic activity. In itself, it always finds only warmth, cold, pleasure, pain, joy, pain, affection, aversion, and so on. The ego thus lives and is bound to such activities; it must draw these into the organism when it wakes up, as oxygen must be brought to hydrogen (O + 2H = H, O) to form water.

With such considerations one remains in agreement with the natural scientific views and methods; other world views, which do not act in this way, are thereby in contradiction with their own facts, with the correctly observed facts of natural science and the methods of the same, which they literally sin against. Theosophy does not pay homage to dualism, just as one will not call a person a dualist who sees in water not an absolute unity but a substance that has formed from hydrogen and oxygen or can be broken down into these two. There is no contradiction between theosophy and natural science; both stand on the firm ground of facts, but it depends on their interpretation.

From this point of view, we are justified in saying that everything that has direct existence in itself must be examined in isolation from the organism, so that we must therefore approach the human spiritual content separately from its physical organism.

This brings us to the justification of what asserts itself as the esoteric method of Theosophy, but which, in accordance with its peculiar nature, must break with the demand of natural science to a certain extent, namely, that spiritual life should be able to be observed at any time and by any person. One can only look at it in its own inherent laws. The spiritual researcher must bring about a process in his own spiritual life that is uninfluenced from the outside, by bringing certain ideas into his observation through meditation, concentration and his will, which alone appear to be suitable for esoteric research. He detaches the soul from its connection with the body, as it were, dissecting the soul and thereby making a process from the inner life of the soul that can be clearly seen and need only be symbolic. [Otherwise, the person is stimulated by external processes, but in order to free the soul from the physical, one uses one's own will to place an idea, preferably symbolic ideas, at the center of one's mental activity in meditation.] The only difference from external knowledge is that the relationships of the mental activity to something else are not taken into account in terms of content. For example, in meditation the thoughts need not depict something that really exists, as the so-called Rosicrucian cross, a black cross framed by seven red roses, does not need to be, but we only ask: What does such an idea do in the soul, what does it contribute to our development? What the thoughts accomplish in our soul is what matters.

When we allow such things to take effect on us, we get to know the activity of the soul in the spiritual world. A state similar to that of sleep occurs for the soul, without, however, consciousness ceasing; the content of this is given to it as a supersensible one, whereby the researcher recognizes the supersensible world in its reality. It could be objected that this is only a subjective process of the soul, but for the real connoisseur of such processes this objection does not apply: for him, these are just as the insights of mathematical truths, such as for example that the sum of the three angles of a plane triangle is always equal to 2 R = 180°, a truth that one recognizes purely within the soul; the fact that others also consider it to be true or not contributes nothing to the knowledge of this mathematical truth; it proves itself in itself. It is just as foolish to say that when someone comes to mental processes through certain exercises, it is only a subjective certainty of their own soul.

When someone begins with exercises of a mental nature, they initially encounter all sorts of pitfalls, errors, and self-deceptions; only these are subjective. Beyond that, after sufficient progress, the certainty arises that one has something objective before one, or rather experiences it within oneself. These are no longer subjective convictions. This would be an objection as if one wanted to say that one should not do mathematics, because it causes difficulties of a subjective nature; nevertheless, something objective can be demonstrated at the end of the path.

But someone might raise yet another objection, namely, that the path to supersensible knowledge cannot be compared to that of mathematical knowledge, because the latter only has a formal value. The realization that 3 x 3 = 9 does not prove that there are 3 x 3 things = 9 things in the world, or that the sum of the three angles in a plane triangle is equal to 180°, would not exist in reality in this way, so there must be no supersensible facts corresponding to the inner-soul processes. Are such facts present or not?

It would have to be shown that not only do we humans think mathematics, but that mathematics itself also works outside of us, as Plato says, for example: “God does geometry!” If we acknowledge this, then the mathematical laws are real and present in the world. So, too, the correctly perceived soul processes must be present outside as real things. Thus, for example, we find only within us what we call an “I” in its inner development and what coincides with our soul content of thoughts, feelings, will and so on. Is it not just something subjective? What guarantees its objectivity? Does it also work and weave in the outside world? Between birth and death, human beings develop in such a way that they remember back to a certain point in their youth. Their memory does not reach back to before this point, although no one would claim that it did not arise until the fourth or fifth year of life; after all, they had already been alive for several years before that. Human consciousness must develop in such a way from that point on that it first had to arise.

But what was in the human being before as ego content? We can answer this: In the first years of childhood, the human being develops the convolutions of his brain, and only when this work is done, when the tool of the intellect has been chiseled out by the individuality, only then does the ego consciousness arise for the human being himself; it corresponds to the tool that is now available and this to the developing ego. Thus, Theosophy shows that everything that is later experienced purely internally was previously worked out by our brain. The child's first life shows that its brain is “I-ized”; what later becomes the content of the soul was previously creatively present in the human being, in the first years as an external aura and later as an internal one.

These processes fulfill what we need to prove, namely externally, what was previously there internally. The following experiment may clarify this: When the spiritual researcher applies all his exercises to himself and places his soul under the influence of the same, he will eventually notice that he awakens with his soul slipping out of the physical-etheric body sheaths - a process that was otherwise only possible by falling asleep. In the first stage, the spiritual researcher experiences independence from his physical body. He then knows that he experiences the following within himself: I perceive a content independently of the organs of my body, but I cannot conceptualize this content because these are bound to the brain, and it is a tormenting inner state for me, which is also taken over into the ordinary bodily consciousness. In terms of the expression of his higher spiritual experiences, man then has something idiotic.

If the required exercises are continued with iron energy, then what has been released in the increasingly independent soul in terms of supersensible experiences goes as a force effect into the physical body and expressed in concepts what was previously experienced only spiritually without the involvement of the brain, just as the child gradually develops its brain to express what it later wants to express as an experience. - So one proceeds in stages. The spiritual and soul essence must have been present from the very first formation of the body, since it is supposed to work from the spiritual world on its further development. And so it works into the physical organization with its forces, which it draws from the stored and processed resources of previous earthly lives.

Thus we see: anyone who wants to arrive at an understanding of the self must necessarily deal with the objections of the doubters in order to recognize their true significance, and he is forced to seek out broader points of view. But no one should lightly condemn those who cannot approach theosophy.

Furthermore, the day before yesterday, important objections were raised in the ethical, moral and religious sense; it was argued that belief in karma, with its rewards and punishments, could make people selfish, and it must be admitted that such narrow views can in some way lead to selfishness. But here I would like to refer to Schopenhauer, when he says:

It is easy to preach morals, but to establish morals is difficult!

The latter means to present those things that lead to moral behavior. If this is possible for Theosophy, then outsiders may say that karma produces egoists, considering that this need only be a transitional state, with the awareness of a sense of poetic justice through different lives on earth. For example, parents want to educate their children properly so that they can support and care for them in their old age. This is selfish, but it does have the effect that such children become proper people, that parents see their hopes fulfilled and experience joy in the children's hard work; thus their selfishness is transformed into an inclination for the unselfish joy of their children's good progress and personal development.

Thus, for example, in a somewhat crude illustration of karma, it is said that a person's good deeds bring reward, while evil deeds result in pain and suffering. If a person acts accordingly, even if he is also influenced by selfishness, the good will have a reciprocal effect on him, and he will gradually become a non-selfish person.

Morality can only be justified by starting from true, egoistic human nature and taking karma into account; this then gradually transforms the egoistic person into a moral, selfless one.

If someone were to raise a different moral objection, namely, that some parents love their children as part of themselves, as heirs to their own qualities, and that it would be unreasonable or even impossible for them to accept or even imagine that a spiritual-soul core that is foreign to them would come down from spiritual worlds to oppose, as it were, their physical parents, we can reply that a deep inner affinity existed which led the child to this particular couple as a consequence of loving relationships of a higher kind that existed even before birth and developed the powers that enabled the spiritual-soul part of the being to reach its parents in particular – powers that developed from earlier earthly lives and also enable further favorable further development only with the body inherited from its parents.

If someone says that by reincarnation man ascribes a kind of self-righteousness to himself, without emphasizing his childship to God, and thus places himself in opposition to the just God, then with a broader horizon one can say: If man feels that the divine power is at work in him, it would be would be downright incomprehensible not to ascribe to oneself a divine essence that must and can be developed ever higher from life to life, because otherwise one commits a sin as soon as one thinks one should deny the spark of God within oneself, when, instead of developing it, one distorts it into a caricature. So the most possible approach to the divine ideal is a sacred religious duty of the theosophist.

We want to take into account all the objections of our opponents, but we also want to note in the pros and cons that this is not easily overcome by proofs and contradictions, but by broadening our horizons in our soul life beyond all narrowness in our culture. This is what Theosophy or spiritual science should bring to people of our culture and then lift them up beyond the mere physical-sensual world.

If someone now attempts to draw on the supersensible world in further developing and closely connecting with laboratory methods for their results and insights, they may apply some of these successfully but fail with others. This would be the same as when doubts arise about certain scientific facts and it is realizes that individual details are not correct in their interpretation and application; but in this way the view gained can, when the various facts are lined up, condense into a justified hypothesis, which is varied, gradually develops better and better and, in its entirety, supported by more frequent confirmation, ultimately becomes a theory. Then we have to say that the objection that some people make, that such hypotheses of supersensible worlds contradict all previous views, is just as weighty as that of a famous Academy of Sciences [in Paris], which wanted to reject the existence of meteorites when they were reported to have fallen, even if the stones themselves were presented.

Thus, in this case from the distant past, as in the present, it is not the facts that need to be corrected, but the perceptions; that is, the horizons of people must expand under the influence of spiritual science in their research and conviction. We are dealing here with a spiritual realm that has its own laws, which are different from those of the material realm, for the latter only show coming into being and passing away. If we emphasize the seemingly trivial fact that the soul processes in the brain work in a certain way like gravity in the material masses, then we can also admit that this gravity, if the earth could sleep, would show itself independently, and furthermore rightly assume that it will outlast matter as an independent force. We can also express those truths in this way:

The things in the vastness of space speak to the human soul;
the soul can hold them in the course of time!
But the human soul lives in knowledge,
unlimited by the vastness of space
and unperturbed by the course of time,
In the realm of eternity
And finds in the spirit realm
The very deepest reason for its own being.

Today I have the task of saying something about the nature of spiritual-scientific knowledge. The point is that here we have been speaking of spiritual-scientific knowledge in such a way that it is not so much the field that has been considered as the nature of the knowledge. For example, today's psychology is not a spiritual science in our sense, because the way psychology is treated and practised today, as only external observation, is actually a soul teaching without soul. In the official science of the soul, one finds how ideas connect to sense perception, etc. But for those who demand spiritual science in a different sense, official psychology is barren; one cannot know anything about the fate of the soul, for example after death, through it. It is possible to penetrate into the nature of the spiritual and human soul to such an extent that one can say something about the fate of the soul.

Spiritual science is misunderstood from many sides, from those who believe they are standing on the firm ground of a religious system or of science. Spiritual science, as advocated here, has basically nothing to do with religious beliefs and all religious systems. Spiritual science regards what lies in religious beliefs as a field of research and seeks what lies within them. You could just as easily call botany a meadow or a field, as you called theosophy a religious confession.

300 to 400 years ago, natural science was in such a state that great thinkers [such as] Kepler et cetera had abandoned sensory observation. Sensory observation cannot lead to truth in the field under discussion. Spiritual science wants nothing more than to fathom the highest, most valuable insights using the same logical paths as scientific insights. The botanist must bring the end of plant formation into a whole organic entity with the beginning: development from seed to flower and fruit and again to seed, etc. Goethe expressed the development of man towards old age and the decision. The spiritual and soul-like is like a seed; he says that in old age one becomes a mystic. But Goethe did not mean by “mystic” what is today understood as nebulous, but rather that man becomes more and more mature through his experiences and actions, he matures and forms the fruit of his life. We recognize this particularly by what we do wrong, but usually cannot repeat it. Experience and strength accumulate in man, which he does not use, and these strengths have their highest elasticity and are most mature immediately before death; they form the seeds, the spiritual-soul germs. The ideas and impulses in man do not pass away; they have inner effectiveness, inner activity and must continue to work. These combine to form the spiritual and soul germ, and that which has inner activity, inner strength and inner truth is what Goethe calls the mystical, and the person who grows old is what he calls a mystic.

It is different in youth: then we see what lives in the soul shooting outwards; it pushes outwards; one is an idealist, active, effective, not a mystic; from the first hour of physical existence, the soul shoots into outer activity, into outer formation, education, like the germination power in the plant. This fact escapes external psychology, the view that a spiritual-soul core lives in us, which becomes more and more impulsive towards old age and then undergoes an intermediate state, in order to penetrate into external life again afterwards. The consistent development of the methods of today's psychology, as begun by Franz von Brentano, of strictly scientific methods, will and must lead to the doctrine of reincarnation. However, for this to happen, it is necessary for man to transform himself into an instrument.

How do we understand, recognize anything at all? If we can know how things, how a work of art, is composed, if we are able to follow it in its becoming, in composition, when man himself is present. But it is not so with nature, as Goethe says; not the becoming, the become, appears before us, and the other meaningful word of Goethe's is: we do not understand the become.

But there is something where we are present in the process of becoming. Man alternately passes through the state of sleep and the state of wakefulness. What tires him? It tires him when he wears out part of his conscious activity. There is no fatigue when you let your thoughts wander freely, consciously dreaming while awake; that does not tire you. But thinking, where the conscious will is involved, it is the conscious will that makes us tired, that wears us out. Sleeping in a railroad car is not the same as resting in bed at home. Here the organism rests, while in the railroad the body remains in motion. The imposed movement contradicts the innate forces of the organism. Every time an activity is imposed on the organism from the outside that it does not have by its own nature, fatigue sets in; this is also the cause of seasickness. Every night during sleep, a becoming, an arising occurs in our organism that restores what we have previously worn out. We are in the process of becoming, but we are not aware of it.

But this is what spiritual science strives for: that people develop in such a way that they can be consciously aware of this becoming. Through meditation and concentration, they can consciously fall asleep – which, of course, is not falling asleep: you live within yourself without using your thoughts or your organism. But at first he experiences this as a miserable state, because he perceives his own brain, for example, as an obstacle; he must first work on the brain from the spiritual-soul, so to speak rework it, in order to express through the brain what one experiences spiritually and soulfully. In this process, the teacher is consciously involved in the process of becoming and works in the same constructive way on the body and the organism as the soul and spirit work on the child's organism in the process of becoming.

If one compares children whose parents are still living with those whose parents have already died, the trained observer can make many an interesting observation. For example, the teacher wants to stimulate something in a child who has lost his father early, and cannot make any progress. The sympathies and antipathies that the father had are incorporated into the child's state of mind. One can rediscover the father's sympathies or antipathies towards the mother or towards others, or the sense of how the father wanted to educate the child. Thus, pronounced antipathies, etc., occur in a striking way in the child, as a continued effect of the dead. It is the spiritual soul of the father that affects the spiritual soul of the child.

Spiritual science will not be guided by prejudices or aversions, but these will be guided by the impulses that spiritual science gives to human life.

Raphael's father was not a great painter, but when he died – Raphael was eleven years old at the time of his death – he was able to live out and develop what was in him that could not have developed in the material realm, unhindered by the physical, and this radiated into the spiritual and soul life of the boy Raphael and enabled him to overcome obstacles.

Just as our hearts and lungs do not tire because they are in harmony with the rhythm of the world, so our soul and spirit, when they live in the spiritual world, are brought into harmony with the rhythm that is their own; our feeling, sensing, thinking is imbued with this rhythm; Theosophy has a healing effect. Man is provided with a spiritual leader, which no longer lets him rush along unconsciously like a driverless locomotive, but spiritual science can be something for the soul: that it knows that it is integrated into the spiritual-soul world, and that its thoughts are connected to world thoughts, will.

Faust wants to expand his self into a kind of spiritual organism; he feels within himself the forces of the cosmos. [So one can say:]

In your thinking live world thoughts, etc.

When spiritual science is discussed today in the sense in which it is meant here, one can often experience that people not only express opposing views on this or that conceptual point, but also turn against it in an almost passionate way, as if it were something that would arise from the arbitrariness of this or that person and should only be brought into the world through this arbitrariness. Anyone who has a little overview of intellectual life as it has developed up to the present day, as it has been preparing for a long time, will very soon be able to see that this spiritual science or spiritual research is not just about something that merely needs to arise from the arbitrary intentions of some mind, but something that wants to meet the urge, the longing of the time. And anyone who is perhaps able to look a little deeper into this urge, this longing of the time, will also be able to perceive, with some attention, how those impulses that lead, indeterminately and still today as if instinctively, , will in the future become ever more definite and definite, ever more significant and ever more intense; so that spiritual research, in the way it is meant here, corresponds to an urge of the times. It is the task of today's and tomorrow's lectures, which I have the honor of giving to you, to present this.

It is basically quite easy to understand that today people carry around many popular beliefs and ideas that they have constructed for themselves in order to build a world view; but they object when spiritual research wants to enter into the spiritual life of the present day and assert that, in addition to what human understanding can comprehend, in addition to what the ordinary mind, which finds its fulfillment in the comprehension of scientific research, can comprehend, that in addition to all this, there is something in man that is designated by names that are so horrible for many, such as “etheric body,” “astral body,” and “ego carrier,” so that man does not only consists of the substances of the external world, but that he should also carry within himself supersensible elements, such as the supersensible etheric body, or the astral body, which is completely supersensible and underlies the physical organization, and the carrier of the actual ego, the deepest fundamental essence of man.

It is just as easy to scoff, just as easy to construct apparent refutations from popular concepts against such knowledge; and when, in addition, spiritual scientific research wants to use its methods to explore the conditions of life and existence of human nature, wants to show that it wants to reach beyond birth and death, beyond what the senses and ordinary science can explore, then such an assertion seems to contradict everything we are accustomed to reading or hearing today.

And yet, through this spiritual research, attention must be paid to what Lessing has already more or less externally incorporated into our spiritual life; and it must be enlivened by spiritual research.

This spiritual research must show man that in his supersensible members there are powers to be found that extend beyond this earth-life; so that one has to speak not only of one, but of repeated earth-lives, so that man man, in his entire existence, has to survey his being through spiritual science: forward beyond birth, initially into his spiritual existence; then into earlier earth lives, and again into the future, into later earth lives.

For spiritual science, the entire existence of a person can be broken down into successive earthly lives, which are separated from one another by that which lies between death and a new birth: by a purely spiritual existence in supersensible worlds.

At first, modern man may have many objections to this penetration into the spiritual world; it seems quite fantastic to him. And precisely those who know the conditions and foundations of spiritual science will find it understandable that much resistance can arise in the modern soul against such assertions. And so we find among the objections the assertion: We overlook existence, and what first presents itself to our senses shows us that we have a closed world in sense existence, which can be known from within ourselves.

That was the endeavor of a number of great, serious thinkers in the second half of the nineteenth century: to exert all the powers of thought to explain from within what presents itself to the intellect of man! Much has been done in the course of the nineteenth century to establish such a worldview, to give it moral supports, moral goals, and also to give comfort to the human soul from it. And it is not the worst souls that have striven for a materialistic, positivistic worldview.

This is one of the types of resistance that one encounters when talking about spiritual research or spiritual science.

The second is something that one finds in people who have a different conviction, namely that behind this sensual world lies a supersensible world, people who recognize such a supersensible world but who cannot admit that the powers of human knowledge and the possibilities of human research are suitable for penetrating into the supersensible existence.

Whether they are doubts or objections from the philosophical side, esteemed attendees, the great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte said everything necessary against all these objections many years ago, a century ago, , when he, in the way that one could say it at the time, gave lectures at the newly founded University of Berlin in 1811 and 1813 and clothed in words that which can be seen through the spirit. Right at the beginning, Johann Gottlieb Fichte said to his audience: Imagine a crowd of people who were born blind and still live as blind people, and one of them would be a seer who speaks of light and colors. Then these people would say: He is talking about something fantastic that does not exist.

From their point of view, they are right, because what can be known about a world depends on whether the person has the organ to perceive it. A supernatural world can only be admitted by someone who, as Goethe put it, has the spiritual eye to see this world as a reality.

Now, the way in which this spiritual science or spiritual research is presented in modern literature is not limited to merely presenting the results, or what has just been indicated in a few words. The literature not only presents the results of the research, but you can also find, for example, in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds,” and in the second part of my “Occult Science in Outline,” how the human soul comes to truly develop within itself the organ to look into the spiritual world. And this organ is accessible to everyone if they only go the right way.

If someone is born blind, it can be said that he may be denied the ability to recognize light and colors for life. With the spiritual eye, however, it is possible for everyone to awaken it; there are powers within everyone that are dormant.

Since today we are to speak about the “task of spiritual science for the future”, we can only briefly touch on what the goals and nature of this spiritual science itself are. Something of what is pushing towards this spiritual science is, so to speak, everywhere [decided], wherever you look, especially in the best minds of the preparing new time, the preparing spiritual future.

Among the many things that could be mentioned, let me just quote the well-known saying of Goethe, where he says, based on a long life of experience, through a penetrating observation of the reality of existence – you can find the passage in “Conversations with Eckermann” – he said: “One may have gone through many things in life, may have faced existence in many ways – in old age one will become a mystic.

And because Goethe held this view, he also had his Faust end as a mystic at the end of the second part of “Faust”, even though he also portrayed him as a practical soul.

What does Goethe actually mean when he says that people become mystics in old age? Basically, anyone can experience this by comparing the whole mood, the whole state of their soul, in their youth and then when they reach a certain age: you have gone through life, formed a certain view, certain inner views, to which you develop a very specific relationship, an emotional and sensory position.

In youth, [goals and] ideals, worldviews can gush forth – views of the world gush forth; one can have the feeling: they are there, raised up out of you. And when one looks back to childhood in particular, one can see how one cannot yet speak of how the soul and the body give rise to activity and expressiveness. What the human being can observe in himself in youth emerges from the indeterminate foundations of the soul life.

Later on, we can see that what we have achieved within ourselves emerges from the soul. But then comes the time when more and more of what is unfolding in the world around us is consciously reflected in the soul, and we know that what we have experienced is now drawing together in our soul in such a way that it can shed light on other things. You become richer inside.

How fresh you feel inside in old age indicates what kind of views you projected out of yourself in your youth. In old age, you become much more independent of the physical. One has an inner experience that every human being can have, even without spiritual science: the experience of becoming independent of one's soul, of one's physicality, of one's personality. And this inwardness, Goethe sensed it when he said that one becomes a mystic in old age. He meant: one has a spiritual form from which one can shed light on the outside world.

And if you examine, I would say, the intention of this Goethean soul, especially at this point, you can say: He felt it, as in youth, so to speak in the earlier human ages, one lives in harmony with what one is also externally, physically. The body grows, becomes stronger and stronger; all the individual functions become stronger. This happens in every life. Every human being reaches what can be called a peak in life, and every human being reaches what can be called a decline. We all feel the decline of life. But it is precisely during the decline of physical life that we feel more and more this inner richness, as we are allowed to ascribe more inner judgment to the world; we feel the inner independence from the outer decline.

If we have developed healthily, we feel that we become fuller, richer in content, when we describe the descent of life. That is where the question comes from, independently of all things, the question of what comes after death, after we have passed through the gate of death - after we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world?

The objective, independent of the personal, is precisely that you say to yourself: You accumulate a wealth in your entire life that is ever increasing. And when life has become richer and richer, more and more full of content, then it loses the body. Does what one has collected go through one's whole life, does it go into nothingness? That is the question - not the one that is caused by the fear of death, or by some subjective feeling, but when such forces become ever richer and richer, then the question arises: should they disappear into nothingness when a person walks through the gate of death? No. We can perceive in ourselves how, basically, something within us, which is our inner soul core, works on our outer, physical existence throughout our entire life. We can best recognize this when we observe the changing states between waking and sleeping and ask ourselves what occurs there.

An external, experimental science cannot answer this. But how does spiritual science answer it? We enter the human being as he falls asleep, and he feels how he becomes more and more alienated from the forces through which he moves his limbs; he feels himself escaping from the earthly-bodily. But at the moment this happens, consciousness is extinguished. Spiritual research says: something very special is happening: the physical body and the etheric body remain in bed; but what we call the astral body and the ego carrier withdraw from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up. Only the inner forces of these are not awakened; that is why the darkness of unconsciousness then spreads around the person.

Spiritual research shows that the forces in this astral body and this I-bearer of the human being, which are so weak in ordinary everyday life that the person cannot be aware of them during sleep, can be kindled.

This is done by means of real spiritual methods. It is done through what is called meditation and concentration. If a person brings it upon themselves to make themselves an instrument for the truths of the spiritual world, they can do so through meditation and concentration.

Much is needed for this. Only one example will be given here. Imagine that you have a glass that is empty and one that is a quarter full of water, and you pour water from the full glass into the empty glass, and you now imagine that that this happening does not bring about what usually happens, namely that the glass from which he pours becomes emptier, but that by pouring into the other glass, the glass from which he pours becomes fuller and fuller!

We have to form such allegorical ideas ourselves, without claiming that they are real. If a person always remains within his reason and is aware that his idea is allegorical, he can have a certain feeling about it. This can then express a higher truth, for example about human love.

Love is a concept that is virtually impossible to penetrate. But you can express individual qualities of love in symbols.

He who pours the mild powers of his love into a heart in need of love will notice that he loses none of his power of love, but that through this giving his power becomes greater and greater. He will be able to use the symbol of the glass for this love, which does not become emptier by pouring into another, but fuller.

And when man then draws together all his thoughts, concentrating them on such a symbol, when man has the patience to concentrate his soul forces again and again on such an inner life of thought, then he evokes the slumbering forces from his soul and attains a state in which he becomes a true instrument for beholding the world behind sense perception.

In this state, the human being then comes to truly experience, outside of his body, that in which he otherwise only exists in sleep; and he can bring about states that are not sleep but are similar to sleep in that he is outside of himself, having moved out of himself with the astral body and the ego. Then he is in the spiritual world. The spiritual world then reveals itself to him. The self-experiment is then also proof that he lives in the supersensible reality. And then the person realizes that he is that which does not depend on the instrument of the body, but rather forms this very form of the body.

And when this spiritual eye opens, then he notices, as the child enters the world through birth, this supersensible working and forming in man.

Only then are the things that external research brings to light explained, when we are able to notice how the more and more distinct physiognomy of the child develops out of the more and more distinct physiognomy of the child, how speech develops, how the brain develops more and more, how the upright gait is achieved.

The spiritual researcher shows who is actually the real worker in the whole process of human development.

The spiritual does not develop out of the physical, [not out of a single germ] at birth or conception, but the spiritual researcher can observe how the spiritual emerges from the spiritual world and how it first creates the physical body.

In this way, one follows the human being beyond the bounds of life, as one does in nature, as one does with plants, where one follows the germ from one year to the next; one follows the end and connects it to the beginning. One follows the germ as it develops into the plant. The spiritual researcher does not merely follow the supersensible human being in its life between birth and death, but follows it beyond the gate of death. What Goethe says, the mystical, is followed by the person who knows that what reproduces itself is the spiritual. And he sees how it becomes more and more independent and independent when the body decays.

Just as the seed remains when everything else withers and then develops into a new plant, so it is with the spirit. And while more and more of our physical shell is lost with age, this spiritual part becomes stronger and stronger, and in such a way that it has become rich through all its experiences, and is now able to do what it could not do at the beginning of life.

At the beginning of life, it has built a [certain] body. During life, one experiences that one can no longer use this in death. But in the inner soul, there are the seeds for building a new life. And by passing through the gateway of death, we can see how the forces for building a new life have grown stronger.

And so, through spiritual research, we can see how man is ready to build a new body by gathering strength between birth and death to build a new body for himself.

The spiritual researcher applies exactly the same methods that are used to observe nature externally; only he applies them in such a way that the person who wants to apply them must develop the organs for supersensible vision. Then what he explains becomes comprehensible to those who cannot yet see into the spiritual world, comprehensible from everything that is in harmony with the phenomena of external life.

Thus it becomes comprehensible that this teaching of the return of man, of the creative soul that lives in him and is not limited by birth and death, may at first seem fantastic. Then, from today, man reaches a certain point in his view of the world, to that point that is like the dawn in which Giordano Bruno stood.

How did he stand there - Giordano Bruno - when he made his knowledge independent of science? If today natural science must rely on that which is based on the external, then one need only say: Even before Copernicus, before Kepler, before Galileo, people directed their minds out into space and found the law of the world just as it took place outside their external senses; and he - Giordano Bruno - replaces the external law with his inner vision. They stopped at the sensory view, those who observed the spreading of the wide celestial spheres and saw the blue vault of heaven as resting on a disk.

What did Giordano Bruno say against this view? He said: What you see as the blue vault of heaven is only through the limitation of your eye. From every point, the eye looks into an infinite world! He said that on the basis of Copernicus. And Copernicus had not prepared a system based on sensory experience, but what Copernicus gave in his system, he had through thinking, through the inner power of the human soul.

Thus the soul must not rely on what science presents as knowledge. And on the basis of the inner powers, Giordano Bruno was able to say: What you perceive with your senses, this outer vault of heaven, is nothing more than the boundary of your vision!

The spiritual researcher says: the boundary of birth and death, and that we believe that human beings are enclosed within these boundaries, can certainly be compared with the “borders” in the sky that were assumed on the basis of sensory perception before the Copernican worldview. And just as Giordano Bruno does, spiritual science points out into the infinite vastness of the human soul. And just as the blue vault of heaven comes from the fact that the senses do not see further, so the belief that life is limited by death comes from the fact that limited vision does not see further than physical death.

Many today stand with spiritual science at the same point where natural science stood three centuries ago; and the longing of the present time, of our time, pushes against these processes. Whoever follows the course of thought in recent times sees how natural science and thinking have progressed from triumph to triumph - thinking that is linked to natural science and to external perception. Anyone who follows this path will certainly be an admirer of natural science when it comes to the development of the scientific, and nowhere is the spiritual science concerned with struggling against the wonderful successes of natural science. But when this natural science comes before your soul, then something else comes before the human being in relation to human life.

I do not want to theorize here; let us consider a specific case. It was in February 1901 when a star suddenly appeared in the sky, only to disappear the very next day. After appearing brightly lit, the next day it had hardly any perceptible light left.

No matter how right the scientific hypothesis may be, how does the scientific mind view this star? It imagines that there is a double star, that one star will collide with the other and spray and dissolve into a nebula. A bright flare-up from the collision, then a brightening, a dimming from the spraying.

And how does the scientific mind approach this strange mystery? If we think entirely in the stream of thought that has been woven through Giordano Bruno and Copernicus, then two world bodies collide. Giordano Bruno describes the view into the infinite vastness, the sun with its planets, on which beings live. Worlds collide there. Millions of creatures may perish in such a collision. All this life is founded in what is a flicker and in the spraying and is destroyed. What does science possibly tell us about what is going on up there in the external mechanical collision? There, cosmic bodies disintegrate into nebulae, and from this nebula a new solar system will form, plants will develop, later animals, human forms - until such a collision occurs again.

Such knowledge is available to the thinking that is linked to science. - One should not say anything against the greatness of this thinking. How can one not admire this thinking — what has been achieved in the nineteenth century through spectral analysis, through the advances in biology. But in addition to this, which we have just placed before our souls, there is something else that can show us how powerless all thinking is, which has just formed itself on this flashing and dispersing star event.

When we see a mother living with her child, we see her experiencing how the soul of the child works its way up; we see this mother connected with the first stages of maturation, the attempts at speaking and walking; we see her united with the child in love; we then see this mother at the child's deathbed, seeing the child die. We see the mother's grief and feel the question arise within us: Why was it born? And what is it about the soul that entered into the birth, that gave me such intimate joy, that has now disappeared into nothingness?

There we have the question of life. And we know, my dear attendees, that we encounter such questions at every turn, questions that cannot be answered by the outer senses, but that can be seen living in a corner of the soul.

And now let us look beyond what natural science can tell us about the entire world system, and we feel powerless in the face of the questions concerning the human soul. Such things cannot be dispelled by impassive staring; such things are what life repeatedly presents to our soul.

When millions of living beings are dead, perish through a collision - what science can tell us about all this coming into being and passing away of beings and what they are, it does not come close to what a human heart asks when it sits at the deathbed of a loved one and wonders about the fate of life!

If we observe the thinking and activity of the time, today, in relation to these things, a great change presents itself to us in comparison to the past. We need only go back to the time of Goethe to see how even the most enlightened researchers - apart from the French moralists - affirm something similar to the history of creation and say: It was simply the life of what is presented today as knowledge. What was in the Mosaic creation story then?

Man is in the spiritual world, and only later is the material added. This world view gave man a picture of the world in which man was already in it, and it was such that it said to this human soul: What so wonderfully enters into life belongs to the first substance of the earth - and you yourself belong to it.

And more and more, a world view is emerging in its place that only sees mechanical world events. You see a star formation disintegrate and imagine that a new world is forming, just as you imagine that a new planetary system is forming. I have often used the image of what happens when you take a certain substance, an oily substance that forms drops, cut a sheet of paper in half and push it through the large droplet as an equatorial plane, then stick a needle into the sheet of paper, start turning it, and then see how small droplets actually separate. And in this way you actually see something like a planetary system unfolding on a small scale, as it unfolds on a large scale outside. And who wouldn't believe in it?

It has only one fault: when showing something, one must not forget the most important things, one must not forget that nothing would come into being if the teacher were not there and turning! So one does not fully represent it if one forgets the main factor: the driving force! So even theoretically this “world system” has a hole.

But then it becomes completely inexplicable how this world soul can tie itself to what is developing, so that it may one day step out of its nothingness onto this scene.

And more and more, this view has developed that only the mechanical is called upon to explain the world. From ancient times until our own, it has become more and more a kind of belief that all phenomena need only be explained mechanically. The whole of human life itself has gradually become mechanical.

And so it has come about that the time has come when the soul, with its questions, stands incomprehensibly before what modern thinking is able to see, and knows of no bridge to what science says. And while the soul wonders – spiritual science has an answer!

There was a time in the nineteenth century when it was seriously believed that thoughts arise from the brain, when one spoke of thoughts as brain vibrations. How could it ever come about that movements in the brain could be directly related to thoughts? Where did all this mechanical science come from in the first place?

And so it came about that in more recent times, due to the necessary conditions of this time, the ability of the old times to look into the spiritual was lost. People did not recognize the essence of thoughts; they did not know how to look at a thought. And so one could believe that in the physical body, where the soul is embedded, alone the essence of man lies. But even if one disputes this soul away, it is still there, and it presents itself in the modern progress of the world. - Therefore, in the course of time, the urge had asserted itself to consult other effective beings than the mechanical ones.

How did an important historian and art connoisseur, Herman Grimm, face life in his time? He knew nothing of spiritual science, but he had set himself a great task, which he shared with those who wanted to listen to him. He once explained this plan to me; everything he gave us in detail was only to be part of a larger plan. He wanted to work on a great work in which he wanted to explain that it is not mechanical forces that are at work in the whole of the existence of the world, but “creative imagination”! That which is creative imagination in man is creative power outside of him - so he said.

And there was a philosopher in the nineteenth century: Jakob Frohschammer, in Munich, who sought to present this human imagination as the most essential thing. When he shows that not only the forces in which the microscopist believes today are formed in the embryo, but also suspects creative imagination as a formative force, this corresponds to the urge at that time to also find something spiritual, to turn one's gaze to the active, the creating spirit, which shows itself as going beyond arising and ceasing, in the midst of the triumphs of science. For arising and passing away is tied to the appearance of nature; while the creative spirit is that which remains.

And in our time we see how serious people feel that, although one must proceed in accordance with modern science wherever natural phenomena are concerned, the soul cannot but rise up into the spiritual that lives and permeates the world.

Today, one can observe an interesting phenomenon. In every train station bookstore, you can now get a strange book: This book, despite containing many inaccuracies, is an important phenomenon of the time; it is called: “On the criticism of time,” by Walter Rathenau. This book was written by a “practitioner of life” who sees this mechanization everywhere in scientific and intellectual life with the naked eye and who, especially in the first chapters of this book, presents a magnificent account of how human concepts have become mechanical, how social life has become mechanical.

He presents all this with the stylus of the man of sense, of the man who looks at reality. But it is precisely such a practitioner of life, who is seized by the living essence of the soul, who shows us the urge and yearning for the spiritual in our time. There you will find, for example, meaningful passages. The soul calls out for what is spiritual:

It longs for a meaning that lies beyond what can be proven [...]. The time is looking [...] for its soul.

It is looking for its soul, the time - so he thinks,

and will find it; admittedly against the will of mechanization. This epoch

—ours—

was not interested in developing the soul in man; it aimed to make the world usable and thus rational, to push back the boundary of wonder and to conceal the otherworldly —

to understand the truths.

Nevertheless, we are surrounded by mystery as ever. It emerges from every smooth surface of thought, and from every everyday experience it takes just one step

to penetrate

to the center of the world. The three emanations of the soul: love of creature, of nature, and of divinity, could not be robbed by mechanization of the individual life; for the life of the whole, it was volatilized into insignificance. Humanitarianism sank to cold pity and compulsory welfare, and yet it signifies the ethical summit of the entire epoch; love of nature became a sentimental Sunday pleasure; love of God, obscured by the regimentation of mythological-dogmatic rituals, entered into the service of interests in this world and the next and was thus suspected not only by ignoble natures.

There is probably no single path by which it would not be possible for a person to find his soul [...]. But humanity will not take any detours. There will be no prophets and no religious founders [...]. No unified art of the world will bring its soul, because art is [already] a mirror [...] of the soul, not its originator.

So a “life practitioner” speaks of the soul's yearning and longing. Much in the book is wrong; but one thing is true: those who feel this way feel that the truth of the soul is no longer spoken of in our time. Religious founders are rejected. He feels that even an exoteric teaching is no longer accepted.

But the striving of the time itself is to reconnect the soul to the spiritual.

And this longing is met by what spiritual science has to offer. Spiritual research shows that man can find within himself such an unfolding of the forces slumbering in his soul that he can directly immerse himself in what surrounds us supernaturally. And then the gaze into these vastness conquers the material.

We look out and feel not only the human body embedded in physical existence, but through it the soul embedded in spiritual existence. We expand our view beyond birth and death.

Just as natural science has broadened our view beyond the blue vault of heaven – just as natural science says: this limit that man has set for himself must be broadened, so spiritual science says: what the mechanical science, what the mechanical worldview — which only comes from limited human knowledge itself —, expanded human knowledge will go beyond that, will go beyond this boundary, just as natural science went beyond the boundary of the blue vault of heaven.

Just as spiritual science sees the urge and yearning for its soul in our time, just as “time seeks its soul”, so it will continue to develop the life of this soul, will strive for a further development of it.

A world view built on fantasy cannot endure; Herman Grimm's problem could never have been solved. But we see how, in those who have retained the freshness of this yearning of the soul, the desire arises to look out into the spiritual and soul that is outside in the world. And we know that we are part of it, just as our body is part of the material.

Spiritual science wants to give people what the soul desires. And if we ask: What will spiritual science have to do in the future? When all people who feel a longing in themselves for the soul's origin and destiny ask questions, we will point not to abstract concepts, but to the hungry souls, and seek to give these hungry souls what they clearly show they desire.

Spiritual science does not speak of vague brotherly love, but of standing by people in such a way that it wants to give what is longed for by the human soul. Then one may hear this or that objection, ridicule and worse – one will find it understandable precisely as a spiritual researcher, will be able to understand the people who, from their point of view, cannot do otherwise today than the opponents of natural science did centuries ago: holding heresy trials. Of course, they do not build bonfires anymore, but they act according to the fashions of the time: they treat people who are striving for the truth as fantasists and seek to vilify them through ridicule and blasphemy.

But that does not bother those people, because for them, the only thing that matters about the truth is that it - the truth - shows itself to the soul as justified through its own essence, and that it can indeed promote, fertilize, and elevate this life, and endure before life.

That the latter can happen will be the subject of tomorrow's lecture, which will in a sense be a continuation of today's.

With regard to the truth, it can be said that the one who presents the truth as has just been discussed can say to himself: Of course, all human striving has always been subject to error, and much of it will easily be able to creep into what the spiritual researcher seeks, even for him, as an error. He is well aware that error can creep in more easily than in the external world of the senses. But no matter — if only the mind is there to seek the truth, then even the smallest thing that happens in this field can be compared with the great things that have happened in the service of science. Whether people ridicule the truth or not is not important. For only two things are possible: either what is being spread is error – then it will be eradicated by the striving, truth-seeking mind, by the truth-seeking mind of man, for the truth-seeking human will not tolerate error – or if it is the truth, then no ridicule, no unjustified personal objections, nothing at all will be able to stop this truth, which has the power to triumph!

In world history, it is also the case that [it sometimes happens that] things [and] beings can be proclaimed. But with regard to the truth, it may be said: No matter which way you turn your back on it, no matter where people may oppose it, and however deeply the truth may be buried in the deepest shafts, all this will be overcome! For the truth has always found a way to penetrate back into humanity and be useful and beneficial and continue its triumphal march through the development of the human spirit.

Dear attendees! In yesterday's lecture, I tried to show that the aims and essence of spiritual research, as it is meant here, correspond to the urge and yearning of the present time, that they essentially meet the needs of human souls, which have been preparing for a long time up to our present day and which are now clearly perceptible to everyone who wants to see, to everyone who just wants to understand themselves correctly. One can now, especially when considering the question of the significance of this spiritual research or spiritual science for life, for the immediate, one might say fully active life of the human being, take up yesterday's remark, because one can best understand the significance of a thing for life when one first sees certain urges and needs arising from life that this thing demands. Today, many people expect a [satisfying] worldview. Spiritual research or science will provide it.

What the soul needs when its I wants to develop its character is what many people today expect from a kind of conclusion that can be drawn from the truly advanced natural science of our time. For certain things this is certainly justified; however, an attentive observation of what is happening in our time clearly shows us how many things cannot be achieved in this way, how the life of the present so longingly, so strongly longs for a research, for the spirit.

Many facts could be cited; only one of the most recent will be presented here. On September 18 at the Naturalists' Assembly in Münster, Professor von Wettstein gave a lecture on the importance of biology, the science of life, for culture and life; that is, [he pointed out] with complete justification, how one could see in the course of the nineteenth century that a worldview should be given in a popular way that should be based on the achievements of natural science. And he emphasized how natural science has progressed steadily, and how it had to be broken by science with what was to be shown for the human soul in the materialistic age; and with full justification, he endeavored to remain calm in observing the fact and not to draw hasty conclusions about those world-view questions that may very much enter into the realm where human thinking goes astray into what is indeed unjustified.

In fact, spiritual science wants nothing more than to follow such advice in its own way and in its own field; not by arriving at the truth of life through all kinds of conclusions and circumstantial evidence of the world view from external sensual facts , but by awakening the slumbering powers of the soul, that which Goethe describes as “spiritual eyes”, observing what is behind the world of the senses, behind being in the senses in general, and with which the human soul thinks itself connected.

This is what our time and life craves. And if spiritual science is about fathoming the truth, then the way in which it can relate to life in a way that fertilizes and heals it must be such that every soul finds satisfaction. Therefore, this demand may well be made in response. And here one thing can be said: spiritual science must fulfill one thing if it is to meet the needs of life: it must have the power, independently of a certain higher education, independently of the development of this or that fact of science, independently even of a certain height of philosophical worldview, to also enter into the simplest mind that has to do its daily work as a human being and does not have time to deal with this or that individual science in a detailed way. Spiritual research must be generally accessible. In order to avoid being misunderstood, I would like to add that spiritual research must be in complete harmony with the science of the time, and must not contradict its just demands. The strictest researcher with his strictest demands may come, and spiritual science must be able to answer to him. And anyone who engages with the serious literature of spiritual science will see how this can be.

But it is also important that it brings things to light that every soul, regardless of education, can understand. And here I would like to respond, not with a theory, but with a kind of fact. I would like to mention not a fact that is taken directly from spiritual science itself, but a fact that actually points to something that happened before spiritual science emerged, but which shows how souls that long for an inclination towards the spiritual world understand each other in a remarkable way, regardless of their level of education. I will cite something that bears witness to such understanding, and which will occur to an increased degree when spiritual science becomes more and more established in the souls that need it.

Moriz Carriere, one of the most amiable and thoughtful philosophers of the present day – it can only be noted here that he was one of those who always held philosophy's idealism in high regard at a time when materialism was sweeping in over the great questions of world view – of his work on the cultural development of humanity, he not only shows how the spiritual works in the development of humanity, but also how true science can be reconciled with the genuine needs of the soul in terms of the big questions of existence, and with the relationship between world view and religion. Now Moriz Carriere himself relates a remarkable experience that he had just as he was trying to show how the spiritual works in the pursuit of human development, and how the great figure of Christ Jesus in particular fits into human development. Then he received a series of manuscript pages in the mail. They came from a simple man. His name was never known either. His name was Karl Zeuner. At a time when the waves of revolutionary life were running high, he had somehow broken the law and was imprisoned. He was thrown into prison. And now he tells how he despaired of the friends who had striven with him for external goals, of the remnants of what was left to him from the religious education of the school, how he was lonely. He recounts how he then heard a familiar song from afar in his prison. He recounts how that inspired his soul, how special powers stirred in his soul. He wrote down thoughts that gradually came to his reawakening soul in prison.

Right when you start reading these pages, you come across strange sentences, especially at the beginning. He says something like: “When I look at my own soul and then at what surrounds me, I feel in my soul the same essence that lives in all things outside, and I feel in my own soul like a part of the whole world soul.” And from there he starts to form his ideas about the course of world history, describing how the spirit in people, who have gradually developed, is active.

Why did Moritz Carriere find this so surprising? It is surprising when you compare these pages of the simple man with what Moritz Carriere wrote based on a knowledge of contemporary science and studies of the cultural development of the world. If you take his main ideas, they are almost an agreement down to the last word between the two, the simple man and the highly educated philosopher. The simple man in his solitude, who only calls upon his innermost soul forces, writes something that is the same as what the philosopher draws from the wells of learning. That is, when he comes to questions of worldview, if a person only wants to search, there is an understanding between the one who searches in his soul and the one who searches this path on the basis of comprehensive learning.

This shows us how understanding through the spirit is possible between the most educated and the simplest, most primitive soul. And if in a particular case it was possible even without spiritual science, on the basis of certain concepts and ideas, then we may say: Firstly, the promotion of such an agreement corresponds to an urge of our present life. It corresponds to the spirit of our time that souls of all stations and degrees of education should communicate about their deepest needs; and secondly, such communication will be all the more necessary when souls need not come to the spirit through concepts and ideas that they squeeze out of their inner being – which are like shadows compared to what spiritual science has to give – but through spiritual science, this will be achieved all the more.

This means that our time in particular is faced with the challenge of finding a way to achieve general understanding of the fundamental questions of existence, and we have arrived at the gateway to their practical solution through spiritual science.

This means that spiritual science is able to intervene directly in life. However, there is an objection to this spiritual science, as some people emphasize, especially when it comes to putting this generally understandable knowledge in its proper perspective. They say: Yes, but first it is taught that the one who penetrates into the spiritual world awakens the slumbering soul. And what is said in my “Knowledge of Higher Worlds” requires a long journey before one can gain insight into this spiritual life. How can one speak of general comprehensibility when only one who has transformed one's soul can penetrate it?

This objection is understandable and yet not entirely justified, because this is a necessary requirement for the spiritual researcher to establish the facts of the spiritual world for himself. The spiritual researcher can investigate spiritual facts that are important for life. He can then formulate them, express them in words, concepts and ideas, and communicate them to the general public. Spiritual training is necessary for research; but when these facts are there and, formulated in concepts, words and ideas, then even the simplest mind can understand them, anyone can understand them. Nothing more is needed than to surrender to these ideas, concepts and words without prejudice; for it is the case with these spiritual facts that when we let these ideas take effect on us, they prove themselves. They can give us everything we need from them for the purposes of practical life — the upliftment, strengthening and recovery of our health that we require from them. What true spiritual researchers can give to the world can always be tested by science! These things may not, of course, stand the test of superficial criticism, but they can stand the true test. But what more or less everyone says and feels is that they have to admit a general turning of human knowledge towards the higher world. But as soon as one goes into the details of spiritual research, as soon as one begins to describe the observations of the spiritual world, to describe what happens between death and a new birth, what is called the development of humanity, according to the impulses given by spiritual science. In short, when details are given, our contemporaries still often recoil. They seek a general indication, without this - they admit - human life, the strengthening, healthy one, could not exist. But when one goes into details, when one describes the nature and things of the spiritual world, then the same objection immediately arises: no one can penetrate up there, we cannot know anything about that. Here we are at the point, honored attendees, where spiritual science will first have to make itself understood to what are indeed expressed needs of life, but what one only wants in generalities.

Let me give you another specific example of how humanity is seeking a new answer to the needs of the soul. The former president of Harvard University, USA, spoke of it, calling it the need for a new religion. Spiritual science does not want to found a new religion; spiritual science has nothing to do with forming sects; it wants to understand the old ones, wants to explore in the spiritual what the human soul needs. Our contemporaries believe that this urge for spiritual research is an urge for a new religion. Dr. Eliot has pointed out how our needs in life are pushing us towards spiritual science. Dr. Eliot, who was at the forefront of science for a long time and was president of a university, expressed the following in essence: People have always assumed that the soul is different from the body, although it is inherent in it. Everyone believes that there is in man a living, ruling, peculiar essence or spirit, which is himself. This is something as fundamentally real as the body. It is the most active part of the human being and is recognized as such: and this has always been the case and will always be the case.

When one hears such words, one can conclude that even people who have a broad education have this urge and aspiration.

Many examples could be given; everywhere one will see that the spirit is indicated out of the need for life, not out of knowledge, but in a peculiar way that shows what aversion still exists to the details of how they are to be presented through spiritual science.

When someone, like Dr. Eliot, points out the needs of the time, then this reference is somewhat as if one were to say with regard to natural science: No one can deny that there is a nature, a nature that brings forth beings in space, a nature that causes events to occur in time that have a beginning and an end, and so on. Someone who points to nature in this way can be compared to someone who points to the spirit as Dr. Eliot does. But can anyone be satisfied with the fact that there is a nature with various living beings and events?

What is satisfying is that a person can go out and perceive the individual concrete entities. Not the abstract satisfies people, but the details; facts must come before our soul. What could never satisfy anyone in relation to nature is what should still satisfy many in relation to the spiritual – an empty generality, an abstraction.

But people still refuse to go into the details, the details, the facts of the spiritual world, which shine out of spiritual science just as the individual facts of nature shine out of natural science.

Spiritual science today stands on the same ground as natural science did four centuries ago, when it began to look at nature through its means. While yesterday it was pointed out that one goes into the details of natural scientific matters, today it must be pointed out that one must first get used to thinking about the details of spiritual life in the same way as about the details of natural processes; and how it is not enough to know that there are general natural products, how the natural scientist must distinguish, for example, between oats and wheat, so man will also need more and more the details of spiritual facts. Just as one cannot approach natural needs in the same way with wheat and oats, so one cannot approach spiritual needs with general references to the spiritual world. When this or that consolation is needed or when this or that character trait is to be poured into the soul, then details and facts must be given. This is the path that spiritual science has to take. And because this tendency towards the general dominates the world today, we see from the individual things that are demanded how, although people admit that their present life contains a yearning for the spirit, which has a fertilizing effect on the soul that it fills when it is satisfied, no one can say anything accurate about the most essential things, because people generally resist the individual.

From this speech by Eliot, we can also take out another sentence in which he talks about how the spiritual worldview that is being built seems to apply to all the scientific achievements of the new era, and will deal with joy and life.

He thus opposes old age, death, and so on. We have before our eyes a distancing from death and mourning, death and sin, on the part of those who tell people what the life of the soul should be when they have passed through the gate of death. Dr. Eliot demands that all this is unnecessary in the new world view, that it should be concerned with life and joy. This is entirely in keeping with the outlook of our time, which focuses on the living deed and sees reasons to make life strong and joyful. That is fully justified. It is also justified to say that the new view of life must deal with life and joy; and in contrast to this, the sentence sounds wonderful: the new world view should ignore death and mourning. There is still a weighty objection: however much human thinking does not want to deal with it, death and mourning will deal with man and show their existence to man, and life will always demand, so that one can understand it, to know something about death and its riddles, and joy will demand forces that lift us up again when mourning weighs us down.

But this is precisely the aim of spiritual science: to awaken in the soul that which brings one to the justified, certain conviction that what is human existence in its true nature is not part of the external sensual world, but is of an eternal nature, passing from life to life. And this realization of the deepest life in its individual life will only bring the knowledge of true life that Eliot demands, because as knowledge it knows how the truly living always conquers death. And this knowledge will know how to draw out of the depths of the soul the forces that arise from the spiritual and that know how to lift us up again when the outer life depresses us through grief or something else.

We can take a fact from human life, a fact from the spirit of our time, and then draw our conclusions as to what the life of the individual can get from the results of spiritual research.

Everyone experiences that their life has a youth, progresses, and that a point of culmination is finally reached, and that they then descend again. They experience how gradually withers that which they call their physical body. A superficial science has just concluded from this fact that the spiritual depends on the physical. Because the brain withers so that an external stimulus of the intellect is not possible, one draws the conclusion that the soul-spiritual withers with the physical. This is as if one concludes from the unusability of a piano that the player would no longer be there.

If spiritual science is allowed to flow in, what it knows from the spiritual world, then the soul will have powers towards old age, which intervene in life in a healing way. In my little writing about the education of the child, you can see how spiritual science also intervenes in the details of practical education. How often one hears people giving all kinds of educational advice. Those who know life are often alarmed by such general sentences and rules, and those who follow the literature attentively will see how inadequate these reformist ideas of today are for the growing human being. But when one knows from spiritual research how, under completely different conditions, the human being grows up in the different years and periods of his life, how the physical body develops up to the seventh year, how then the educational measures have a completely different effect in the seventh to fourteenth years, when the etheric body is forming, and from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, when the astral body develops. Only when one knows how these epochs in human life are differentiated, and how the human being progresses in precisely differentiated stages, only then is one able to establish such principles from the nature of the human being that truly bring forth what lies in the soul. The future will show how life can be enriched by such pedagogy, which is taken from spiritual science; for anyone who approaches life in such a way that the conditions are created for us to give the soul the forces that awaken life at certain times must then always see for himself what spiritual science can become for all people. Wherever the human being stands, he cannot only acquire theoretical knowledge. Instead, spiritual science gives the human soul truly spiritual substance, spiritual nourishment that works in the soul and is digested, if I may use the trivial expression, and always keeps the soul soft, inwardly active, full of content, and aware of itself. This is knowledge that is needed in life and will be needed more and more.

Then, when life begins to decline, when wrinkles start to appear on our faces and our hair begins to turn white, then we not only have theosophical knowledge, but, through a spiritual-scientific view of life, we carry within us a living core that is full of content, experiences itself more and more as the outer shell falls away, and the human being feels within: You lay aside the shell and the body, the physical, but within you carry the strength to go through the spiritual world, to get new strength there for building a new life. Saying this to yourself inwardly gives security.

This applies in general to all people. In a sense, spiritual science will help people more and more to overcome what must naturally arise if one does not feel the living spirit.

Another fact that is particularly important in our time is nervousness. In a certain way, everyone today feels what is meant by the age of nervousness, because it is inwardly connected with certain concepts that have been formed. How often does a person feel this or that powerlessness, this or that fault, this or that vice, in the sense of the materialistic world view, so that the person looks at his ancestors, at his line of inheritance.

In poetry, it is often depicted how a person, feeling burdened by his ancestors, says to himself: This is inherited disposition, this cannot be changed. The product of such a state of mind is weakness, desolation - no observer should fail to see how this actually makes people weak.

Today, one encounters strange experiences. Materialistic researchers, in particular, speak of the nervousness of our time, as materialistic explanations have always done. Only recently a book was published by an Austrian scholar who, curiously enough, attributes the whole predisposition with one expression: that everything in man is based on the physical and chemical composition of his organism, even his character. And if you read the book further, something strange happens: the author gives advice. You would think that you could expect some kind of remedy to be taken to help with the chemical-physical imbalance; the gentleman in question does not recommend any pills, at least not for many cases, but rather recommends strengthening the character through moral means, through all kinds of soul things!

We do not want to argue with our time in such areas. We want to focus our attention on the question: where should the things be taken from that make a person who is desolate with this or that ailment - physical-chemical conditions that make up his character - where should the means be taken to make him a fighter against his nervousness, against his neurasthenia?

Spiritual science will answer: When people realize that it was just as much a mistake to claim that the complex of characteristics of the child arises solely from the inheritance from the parents, when one draws that conclusion, it is just as much an error of observation as it once error of observation when in the sixteenth century, and even in the seventeenth, it was said, and not only laymen but also learned researchers believed it, that higher animals, even fish, can arise from inanimate substance.

And there was a great revolution when the Italian naturalist Francesco Redi stated: Living things can never arise from non-living things. Living things can only arise from living things. With great difficulty, Francesco Redi escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno.

The same must be said for the spiritual and soul: the spiritual and soul can only emerge from the spiritual and soul. We look back to the spiritual and soul, which is the seed in earlier times for our present life. We feel the injustice of what we carry within us as fate, as predispositions, as spiritual-soul possessions, being supposed to be only something inherited from our ancestors, and we recognize that it is rooted in the spiritual that we acquired in earlier times. Then the human being becomes aware that there is something in him besides the inherited traits. And to the extent that he recognizes this, he need not look at his inherited traits and say to himself, “I have to bear these.” No, the spiritual researcher, when he has recognized his soul core, must seek to strengthen his powers and help them develop.

In this way spiritual science will have an effect on life, making it healthy, and the individual will place himself firmly in life.

This basically indicates the other result of life research: the social. Our time has initially only the tendency - albeit justified - to study the external arrangement, how one should make this or that institution so that people can find their existence. The inner tendency brings spiritual science, how people should bring their inner being out, in order to grow into life and stand in life.

All this will include the fact that this time must become aware that it is not dealing with dead theory in spiritual research, but that life forces themselves are being awakened. As a result, the age will recognize the reality of what comes from spiritual science, will experience it, because spiritual science will grasp itself in life. Thus the human being who carries spiritual science within himself will face life in a different way, which is impossible without spiritual science, but which life will foster more and more. When the spirit, the soul, is grasped as reality, when it is realized that the soul is reality, then there will no longer be a lack of understanding for the serious fact of life that out of a healthy, powerful grasp of the soul's core, forces also flow that can protect the outer physical body from damage, weakness, and even illness.

In this respect, the view of our time is shown in the common use of a saying that is, however, increasingly dying out: “A healthy soul dwells in a healthy body,” which means that if you just make the body healthy, then a healthy soul dwells in the body. In spiritual science, this will be understood quite differently, that a healthy soul dwells in a healthy body, because the innermost soul, in its health, forms the physical life in the body. People will recognize the healing powers that spiritual science instills into the soul, although not with the means that people want to use for recognition today, because today they will look and say: There is a person who has studied spiritual science but still became ill. The answer to this is that spiritual science or spiritual research has not yet come very far in terms of its dissemination, and secondly, of course, nothing can be done directly against external damage to the physical body if this damage comes only from the physical, just as you cannot heal a broken leg from the soul.

But there is also something that we recognize through the peculiar way in which the insights of spiritual research work, that the soul transforms back to an external coexistence with existence, as it had before the alienation from nature. We see in the child, and also in the animal, an instinctive growing together with the existence of the spiritual world. We see how the animal does not eat too much, how the instinct is healthy, but we see how certain things are conditioned in the cultural human being by the fact that he is alienated from nature. Sometimes one can look at this with a shudder, how humanity is moving away from this direct experience and coexistence with existence. Just the other day I saw a person who weighed out a certain amount of food for each meal. In the current transformation into a purely mechanical science, we even treat the human stomach and digestive tract like retorts. There it remains - the mechanical - not only in science, there it goes over into the treatment of human life. In contrast to this is the stream of spiritual research. With knowledge, the human being returns to existence in such a way that he instinctively protects himself in the higher sense from that which should not be. And then, of course, the healing effect of spiritual research will have to be assessed somewhat differently than it is today.

If questions now arise, such as: How many illnesses does the healing of spiritual science actually protect us from? — is difficult to answer, because the illnesses don't come; nevertheless, it is more reasonable that man, by living in the instinct life, is protected by spiritual science from illnesses than that he has to heal himself afterwards. Thank God, it cannot be proven, because the result is that these damages no longer occur.

Thus we see how a return to nature, in the very modern sense, is brought about for life through spiritual science. Much more could be said; in the end everything would clearly indicate that spiritual science brings about healing, advancement in life, and the right place in life, in the natural context of life.

Thus not only knowledge, the most valuable possession, but significant consequences for life are brought about by spiritual science, consequences that one can only imagine when one considers them as they have been, albeit only briefly, hinted at today. But all this will come about because man will penetrate into the spiritual worlds, not only in general, but by recognizing the individual spiritual facts. Just as he speaks not only of general nature in nature, but recognizes the details, the individual minerals, the individual plants and the individual animals, so he will also recognize the spiritual world in its details. Then the spiritual nature around him will be as nature itself is meant to foster, fertilize and even sustain physical life.

Then man will feel himself embedded in the spirit as he otherwise feels embedded in the physical in the substances of nature. One will learn to feel that one lives in the spirit as one lives in the physical. Just as one feels the processes that take place outside in the universe in the physical organism, one will feel the spiritual relationships, to grief and joy, to suffering and desire, to desire and contemplation in their own world, and life will find that which promotes life and health from the spirit.

That is what can be hoped for from spiritual science, because this spiritual science is to fulfill the soul's desire to feel at one with everything that is going on in the universal spiritual realm. When man will no longer think that everything is just an event, a life, what is going on in him, and his will like a power that has no significance for the environment, when he will know that what is going on in him is as interconnected with the spiritual as with the physical of the physical body, then man will receive strength and power, health through such science health; then will man find what I sought to indicate in my drama 'The Test of the Soul', as a soul expresses this sense of security in the spiritual, that man knows himself in the spirit, experiences himself in the spirit, thinks in the spirit and really breathes in it and in this real breath of life attains a life-filled existence.

This soul health will emanate from spiritual science when it is fulfilled, when it is given through spiritual science, which is expressed in those words, where it is said what can take place in a seeking soul. What has been said today can be summarized in what a soul that feels at home in the spirit can say to itself:

In your thinking live world thoughts

— do not dwell in man merely temporarily, but are eternal world thoughts —

In your feeling weave world forces
In your will work world beings.
Lose yourself in world thoughts
experience yourself through cosmic powers,
create yourself from will-beings.
Do not end with what is worldly remote,
through the play of thought-dreams – –;
begin in the expanses of the spirit,
and end in the depths of your own soul: –
you will find divine goals,
recognizing yourself within yourself.

Dear attendees! Since I have repeatedly been allowed to speak in this city about topics of spiritual research, it will not be inappropriate to address the important question of where the truths of this spiritual research come from and where the sources of error lie. This must be recognized as something important, especially with regard to supersensible research, since orientation regarding truths and errors in every field of human life is of undeniable importance, and since, as is easy to see, in a field that takes us into such uncertain and error-prone regions, this orientation is of particular necessity. Spiritual research leads us to those areas from which the most important questions and riddles of life arise, initially less those questions and riddles of life that arise from the various fields of science - these are actually, insofar as we are dealing with science in the ordinary sense of the word, much more remote than the questions and riddles of spiritual research, which we encounter, so to speak, at every step we can take in life. In a sense, these riddles and questions of life can beset us at every moment of our existence. If we look at what spiritual research can give to life, albeit from a broad perspective, it initially comes down to two important questions. The first question is contained in the significant word 'man's fate'; the other is contained in the word that is so closely connected with all man's longings, with all his doubts, with all his hopes: the word 'immortality'. It is not as if spiritual research were exhausted by answering the two questions or riddles indicated, but the wide field of this research interests wide circles above all because its results are summarized in an appropriate answer to these questions.

Human destiny! What questions and what riddles lie in these words. We see a human being born into existence. We can predict from the little caring environment he has around him that hardship and misery will accompany his existence. And when we see him growing up with only limited mental abilities and emotional traits, we can say that he will perhaps become a rather unhelpful member of human society and that in many respects he will perhaps be a burden to himself and a torment to his soul. On the other hand, we see a person come into life surrounded by caring hands from the very beginning. We may see certain special gifts and abilities emerging in him early on, and we can predict that he may spend his life in happiness, that he can become a useful member of human society, that he may experience his life in enthusiasm and inner bliss, and all this suggests the question of why, which external science can answer so little.

The other question is that of immortality. It comes to us from life, but at first it confronts us in an egotistical way: that man desires survival after this life from his hopes, his longings, from a satisfied or unsatisfied life. Frequently, this question is raised out of selfish desires; but it need not be so. It can approach us as objectively as any other scientific question. We see this particularly when we consider how, in the course of the nineteenth century, more and more people had to break with the old traditions and beliefs, who not only doubted the survival of human activity after death, but who even believed that they had certainty that with death, consciousness of the human being closes forever, that the soul life, so to speak, gives itself up in it. Such people often belonged to spiritually highly striving beings. They said to themselves: I do not claim an egoistic survival after death; I can resign myself to the thought that what I have worked for will be handed down to humanity after my death. Selfless devotion of their acquired knowledge and the happiness they had experienced was their endeavor when the gate of death closed before them.

It is precisely in the face of such a world view that the question of immortality approaches us in a truly scientific way, for we can indeed say: Is it compatible with all that we otherwise know as the laws of existence, that the human being really is approaching a conclusion in his work and striving when the gate of death closes? Perhaps one could agree with such devotion for ethical reasons, but from the point of view of the laws of world economy it is different. We need only have a little feeling for what is achieved in the world by human souls, and we will say to ourselves: In the course of human life, the powers of the souls themselves create substantial facts, facts that, since the souls are individual, take on an individual character. We cannot readily see such individual creations, as they arise from the human soul, incorporated into the general stream of human development without having to admit that the world economy has a break, for we must feel that the best, the noblest, the most important thing our soul can work for is individual, in the sense that only the one soul can work for it within itself. We may give much to the general public, but our best would completely disappear from the world when the human being ceased to exist, when the gates of death closed. Without taking into account our desires, our hopes and longings, we are faced with the necessity of contemplating the immortal in human nature in the face of all that is mortal.

So the question arises before our soul, but if this question is to be answered, a science is needed that goes beyond the sensual, beyond the outer, physical nature. For nothing can give us an answer as to why these or those facts present themselves to us when we enter life. The question of destiny is not answered by physics and natural science. These must remain indifferent when they consider their facts, how these facts approach human hearts and souls. The why cannot fall within the scope of external science, nor can the question of immortality, since science depends on concepts of the mind that are bound to the instrument of the brain. What it can observe arises with death, disappears with death; if it cannot penetrate into the [gap in the transcript], we have no hope of seeing the question of immortality answered by it.

The way in which attempts are now being made to find answers to such questions in the present day (through spiritual science) is, however, not at all popular in the present day. Prejudice after prejudice favors a spiritual research activity; and perhaps the reasons will emerge from the lectures themselves, why there is so much resistance in the wider circles of the present, one may say, not only theoretical resistance, but even hatred, against what is emerging in a scientific way as spiritual research, in order to solve the characterized riddles of life and to find many other things that are connected with them.

Today we will talk about how man can truly look into the worlds from which the answers to such questions arise. We cannot get by in this world with the ordinary powers by which we know the outer world; and if man were not able to develop other powers than the ordinary powers of knowledge, there would be no possibility for him to penetrate into such worlds. All questions converge in the one: Is there a possibility for man to develop other powers of knowledge than those which [outer] science uses, which are thus exhausted in the observation of the senses and the mind bound to the brain? If man were only a being of the senses, it would be impossible for such powers to exist. Only someone who admits that the sense body of man, that which one can see with the eyes or grasp with the hands, is permeated by another entity, a supersensible entity, can come to the assumption of such powers. And basically, a logical certainty that it is so is provided by a very everyday observation, the kind of observation that is only rarely made because man does not consider what he experiences all the time to be worthy of special observation.

The mystery of death remains interesting for people because it comes unexpectedly, suddenly, and frighteningly; but what happens every day in the same way, the state of transition between waking and sleeping, is paid less attention to; nothing comes up to people that awakens uncertainty in them, because the same thing happens to them again and again in this state of transition. But for those who want to undergo a deeper observation of life, it is precisely the state of change [between waking and sleeping] that becomes particularly significant. We can say: Would it not be logically absurd to think that what takes place in the soul in terms of passions, drives and desires, longings and hopes, images and ideas from morning till evening, that all this sinks into nothingness when we fall asleep and is recreated from nothingness when we wake up? That would be absurd; nevertheless, no external sensory observation, no mind bound to the brain, will ever find in the sleeping human body that which surges up and down in the soul during wakefulness.

So at least initially the hypothesis can be put forward that there is a spiritual element in human nature that leaves it during sleep and moves back into it when we wake up, when the human body is then left by the soul, this inner truth moves into spiritual worlds during sleep. When sleep is over, the spiritual element comes back from the spiritual world into the physical body. This cannot be observed with the mind, but it will become clear if one only thinks logically. Now, of course, such an assumption can only be valid, only then convincing, if one can grasp that which is invisible and leaves the human body during sleep, if one can prove its real reality. How this happens is what we will now deal with.

Let us observe how a person presents themselves when they are asleep. We become unable to move our external limbs. All the senses die away, the body is overcome by a heaviness, the powers that it has in the waking state are withdrawn from it. We see, so to speak, our body falling away from us as we fall asleep. But we also perceive how consciousness dies with this loss of physicality, how it slowly fades and is then surrounded by complete darkness. But if the soul-spiritual, which permeates the body during the day, is present, then we have to say that it is not capable of developing inner forces during sleep, not even the kind of forces that could give it inner knowledge of itself. It is so weak in the normal human being that it cannot become aware of itself if it does not have the instrument of the body. If such a spiritual-soul element is present, for the real, that it feels that it is losing its body, then we must say: this is of such a nature that it needs the tool of the body to develop consciousness, to evoke forces. And when it is left to itself, it is not strong enough to develop an inner life; it can only do so if it opposes the resistance of the body.

But this does not mean that proof of its existence has been provided. This proof will only be provided if man can succeed in making this inner life, which otherwise makes use of the body, so strong that it can develop inner life and consciousness even without the bodily. Even for the proof of the spiritual and soul life, everything depends on whether the human being can develop a spiritual life without the help of this outer corporeality, of sensory perceptions. What would such a spiritual life be like? It would be something similar to sleep and yet different from it. When we fall asleep, we feel our inner life cease, our consciousness fade away. It fades away because the external sensory impressions are silent. We would have to be able to artificially induce this moment through arbitrariness, that is, be able to silence the external sensory impressions and still evoke a state that is not unconsciousness but is consciousness. This state is or would be similar to sleep in that we command all external senses and the brain to stand still and yet consciousness does not occur. The spiritual researcher must bring about this state in himself.

We will understand this best if we compare it to another state that is similar and yet quite different. When man is able to develop spiritual-soul forces outside of his body, to perceive in a spiritual world, then he penetrates into a world that lies beyond the mind bound to the brain, beyond the senses; then a supersensible world speaks to him in his being, as the senses speak to his being when he makes use of the senses. In this way man would become a spiritual researcher; and if such a world could be experienced in this way, then man would penetrate into the spiritual world, then proof would be supplied that everything outwardly visible is based on a spiritual substance. If this is the case, then this spiritual must always be there, then the visible world that surrounds us must be based on a spiritual. The only reason for this is that it does not show itself because we cannot perceive it. We experience the invisible spiritual world like a blind person experiences colors.

Now there is a state that is not considered in spiritual science, that is not applied by it, but that can serve us in our understanding of the actual spiritual state in the present, that is the state that is usually referred to by the term 'mediumship'. Please do not misunderstand me; the human being as a medium is not, as the spiritual researcher wishes, to come to a conclusion. How does human nature become a medium? Mediumistic experiences are brought about by the fact that the ordinary expressions of the soul, the life of will, the life of feeling, are suppressed by some process or other, so that the person is as if put into a kind of sleep. Under certain conditions, however, human nature can be induced to make statements, even to speak and write, without the person knowing about it and without consciously observing the processes. Thus, spiritual expressions can occur that can only be attributed to an entity whose intelligence has descended. Nor should one be advised to do what is called the development of mediumistic qualities. They are present in some personalities even without special training.

Let us consider again: What happens to a person who, in this way, comes to spiritual expressions as a medium? His own soul life is tuned down, completely extinguished, that is, his conscious soul life; he knows nothing of his revelations. We find something there that can otherwise only come from the conscious soul. We can say that we see there what is the everyday expression, how it spreads like a veil over the subconscious soul activity, which in turn is connected with the physical body and expresses itself when the conscious soul activity is suppressed. Thus, soul activity rests in the depths of human nature; we can bring it out when we make conscious soul activity completely passive.

This is not the way of spiritual science; but it shows us not only that there is soul activity where there is consciousness, but also that spiritual-soul activity is in human nature and shows itself when we suppress consciousness. This process, which produces the medium, is exactly the opposite of what should happen for the spiritual researcher. While the soul activity, the consciousness, is being reduced for the medium, it must be strengthened for the spiritual researcher, and this is done by the person evoking intense soul processes, soul processes that are usually referred to as 'concentration of thought', 'meditation' or 'contemplation'. These processes, which we shall endeavor to explain more fully, take place in an inwardly active spiritual life and ultimately lead to certain states of mind that represent three stages, three stages that one ascends to fully enter the spiritual worlds.

I ask you not to be put off by the words. The words used here are not used in the sense in which they are not liked to be heard in ordinary life. So you must not understand anything by them other than what I will explain afterwards.

We can describe the three stages as imagination, inspiration and intuition. All three stages are achieved by an increase in the life of the soul, by an inward strengthening. When a person lives in the ordinary, everyday life with nature and other people, he gets his impressions through the senses and then processes them with the mind. In this way, a person is concerned above all that what he imagines, senses and feels corresponds to external things; he forms such ideas to which he can attach the hallmark of truth through agreement with the outside world. As long as he remains in this state, an inner, spiritual life cannot develop. A certain concentration, meditation, that is, contemplation, must occur.

In order to avoid abstractions, we shall give a brief and precise description of how such an inward arousal of higher spiritual powers is achieved. (Please refer to my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds?”). What is described in this book will be hinted at here. Concentrated thinking proceeds in such a way that one first tries to free oneself from all external sensory impressions, to develop strong powers to keep one's eyes from colors and light. All sensory impressions must be suppressed so that one becomes completely inattentive and uninterested in the outside world. Then, through special training of the will, one silences all the memories that have accumulated in the course of one's life. One tries to become free of all worries and suffering; in a word, one tries to be within oneself. What kind of exercise of the will is needed to find such a state can also be seen in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?”.

It is possible to make the will so strong that the outer senses and the mind are silent. Just as one can learn in ordinary life to turn one's attention away from objects, so one can arbitrarily suppress all impressions from outside by strengthening one's willpower. On the one hand, this brings about a moment similar to falling asleep; however, it must not come to unconsciousness. This is achieved by taking, through the power of the soul, into one's own soul, images that one has prepared for oneself. Such images are best when they do not correspond to any external events or things.

We will now place such a particular image before our souls, an image that is one of many thousands that the spiritual researcher uses for himself, but which can show the principle: that a person imagines he has two glasses in front of him, one filled with water and the other empty. He pours, so we want to imagine, from the filled glass into the empty some water, but this would not make the filled glass emptier and emptier, but always fuller and fuller, and the more we pour out, the fuller it becomes. It is an absurd notion, but it can be an allegorical notion for something that confronts us enigmatically in life. What is meant here is what we call love. Does the loving soul, which lovingly gives to the needy, which, so to speak, gives from itself what is contained within it, does it become emptier because of this? No, what is given out of love always makes us fuller and richer. That is the quality of love, that we give our own being and yet become richer and richer.

If we imagine this property of love through the symbol of the water glasses just characterized, then we have done something similar to what we did in geometry. If we look at a circular medal, we can put it down and then imagine a circular shape. So you can be completely unaware of the intrinsic nature of a thing, but you can visualize and draw the circular shape and completely disregard what you have in front of you. In the circle, everything that relates to the circular nature becomes clear. Figuratively, you have extracted something that is in this thing. This is how one visualizes things in geometry, and one also does this in spiritual research in a higher sense.

You extract from a process the nature of love, which encompasses such mystery and unfathomability that no human being can exhaust it, you take out the quality of becoming ever richer and you focus the soul on the symbol. You can also form other symbols. Such images are better for the meditative life than representations taken from the external world; in them, the soul still clings to the external world. But if we choose such images that have nothing to do with the external world, then we can live with distraction from everything external in our inner life. We live there when we direct all our soul powers for a while towards the one image. We can also use other symbols for such inner work, and the spiritual researcher has to do such an exercise a thousand times. Wisdom as such is not luminous, but we can imagine it under the image of a luminous sun and surrender to the symbol that expresses the idea of inner warmth. We can experience something in the process that we also feel when we imagine wisdom inwardly. We can also imagine love for the warmth spreading throughout the world.

Many, many examples of such images could be given. Someone could easily come along and say: So the spiritual researcher wants to indulge in ideas that are not true! But they are also not there to depict something external; they do not want that, but they want to bring the soul life within them to activity. While in our everyday life, or when we are occupied with scientific matters, we may have content in our soul that we cannot see, while our soul life is spread over many things, in meditation we draw together all our soul forces and focus them on this one idea; this makes it particularly strong when we make an effort to hold on to this idea and do not let anything else into our soul for a long time.

For the actual accomplishment of the matter, comprehensive inner measures are necessary, which you can also find in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” Especially effective are moral intuitions, impulses of the will, which the soul symbolically visualizes and to which it surrenders with the same love and enthusiasm that are otherwise awakened by things that stimulate us from the outside and make an impression on us. All training for true spiritual research is based on this kind of strengthening of the inner life, [in a] gathering of all the soul into a single idea; at times one works on this idea. This is meditation. And this meditation rises to contemplation when we are able to dwell vitally in such an inner soul content for a longer period of time, as we are otherwise in a comfortable space with our physicality. When we come to bring ourselves equally consciously into such a voluntarily induced state of soul, then we live in inner contemplation. Through this, that which in human nature is not dependent on the tool of corporeality is inwardly activated.

This provides real proof that there is such an inner spiritual realm, and it brings us closer to proving that it is something real that withdraws during sleep, that it is only too weak in ordinary life, but shows itself inwardly animated when we bring it to inner activity through such exercises as those described.

When a person has practiced this for a while, the point is reached when he finds that even when he does not artificially conjure up such images, does not artificially conjure up the symbols, his inner life is prepared in such a way that it generates such images from the subconscious, so to speak. This is the important moment, it is like a rebirth of the soul's life when, without our artificially inducing it, we see image after image emerging from the depths of our soul, emerging before us like a second world, a world outside the world.

But now the important thing begins, so that man may be led to the truths and not to the errors of spiritual research. A world of images rises from the depths of the soul, a world of images that someone who is not familiar with these things, but is familiar with today's view of such conditions, will take as visions, hallucinations, delusions. Today's world view believes that in such things, which go beyond ordinary life, it can only perceive the pathological. But the path to the truth of spiritual research consists in the fact that it can only emerge from a practiced life of the soul that knows how to distinguish between delusions and realities, including those in the realm of the soul. Therefore, every genuine schooling in spiritual research must lead to the moment when the described occurs, a strong inner will can be made in the person who wants to become a spiritual researcher, a decision that will not be present if the condition occurs pathologically.

This can be seen by observing ordinary life. Many of you will have noticed how people with a morbid mental life, when they have delusions, are far more convinced of the truth, of the reality of their own ideas, than of the reality of the outside world. It is often easy to dissuade people from a conviction, but with someone whose mental life is a morbid one, it would be a wasted effort. What happens then? What happens is that what a person has created through the power of his own soul life, he loves out of a strong feeling; in his imagination he also brings with him the longing for it to be reality, and so a world is built up before him, but one that he has only created himself. As soon as a person takes such a world as truth, he cannot be a spiritual researcher. Such a strong willpower is necessary when, through meditation training, the images that we call imaginations arise; a strong resolve is needed that is precisely opposed to unhealthy ideas, that now says to itself: All that you feel rising up in you as a world of images, even without your intervention, is nothing more than a mirror image of your own soul life. What you have within you, you have brought forth through your own efforts, and it presents itself to you. They are nothing but shadowy images of your own being. And it is not only the ability that belongs to the spiritual researcher, that one can bring it to the point where imagination occurs, more important is the strong will training in the face of this world, to always hold fast to the images of enchanting beauty, that they are only shadowy images of our own self.

This mistake is repeatedly made by those who have not undergone proper training and who, for whatever reason, come to a certain inner vision of images: they mistake this world for a real world because it can be a beautiful one, because in it, the human being feels happy. A spiritual researcher must be able to dispense with such a way of thinking. What must be formed in the course of training is the strong decision, and when this decision itself is made into a kind of meditation, when one repeatedly immerses oneself in this decision and applies all the soul's powers to all as shadow images, then this determination is strengthened and one acquires the ability to erase the imaginative world again; one can erase it again through an inner strength; then one has reached an important stage of spiritual research.

What you can achieve is as follows: you can say that it can be compared to what we call forgetting our thoughts in ordinary life. You know that everything you have experienced rests in your consciousness. How could a person live if all his experiences, pain and joy, were always present in his memory? But you know that what has long been forgotten can from time to time be recalled in the soul. Just as an idea from ordinary life plunges into oblivion, so too must the whole imagination be pushed into oblivion, into the unconscious, through the strong willpower discussed. This requires a strong mastery of the human being over himself, because the human being is intimately connected with what he has produced through his power. He has achieved a strong victory over himself when he is able to erase everything he has produced on the first level of spiritual knowledge.

Only then do we live in our true self, only then have we developed stronger forces within us than before. If we cannot do this, we know that we are still too weak to truly penetrate into spiritual worlds. Experiencing truths in the spiritual world is only possible if the experiences are brought about through spiritual training. When we have succeeded in doing this, then the images come up again in a completely different way – like forgotten images come up again, but in the same way as they were – so the imaginations come up again in a changed way. Before, they were images, like visionary or fantastic images; afterwards, they come up in such a way that we know we are now dealing with a real world, with a supersensible world. Before, they were images; now they are processes that are real, like the processes of the sense world.

Now someone might say that one could indeed now indulge in self-suggestion. What gives us assurance that things are real when we have become so master of ourselves? Yes, the way we experience things - nothing else can give us assurance, but this is the same way that gives us proof of the realities of the external, sensual life. There is no other proof! This can best be appreciated by pointing out Schopenhauer's main error. One can fully acknowledge a mind like Schopenhauer's even when pointing out his main error. When he says that the world around us is only in our imagination, then he makes this mistake, because one can distinguish in the world - but only who distinguishes life - whether something is imagination or reality. Imagine glowing iron. You will not get burned by imagining it. But if you perceive and touch the real glowing iron, you will get burned by it. Nothing can prove reality to us as much as direct experience. Full experience is the only thing that gives proof of reality. It has been said: Why should not what comes before the soul be suggestion, since man so easily succumbs to suggestion? One can imagine drinking lemonade; there is no reality here, but one enjoys the taste of the lemonade as if it were reality. One can admit this, but it is not a matter of a partial experience, but of a full experience. One can experience the taste in one's imagination, but one's thirst is not quenched by it! The full experience, the quenching of thirst, presupposes reality, not imagination.

Just as man can only receive the evidence of reality through experience in the external sense world, so he only acquires the ability to distinguish between reality and deception in the spiritual world through strict spiritual training. In the manner described, the spiritual researcher comes to a stage where he is confronted with a new kind of being, of facts that lie behind the sense world. By strengthening the life of the soul, real spiritual eyes are created in one's own soul life, so that man may find a new world.

Also with regard to his own life, man can only come to reality through such imagination. If a person first forms such imaginations, as they have been described, with regard to his own life, if he imagines this or that in a symbolic way, what he has experienced, if he meditatively delves into his own past life, then this life can come to his soul in a kind of images. If he is then able to gain control over these images, if he can erase this life by conjuring it up before his soul, he has won the victory over himself. Just as he [now] sees something occurring externally that is real, but he has erased everything that is connected with his present life – when he follows this process, he comes to something that belongs to him but not to his present life. There he actually ascends to what we call his previous life on earth, and he arrives at the realization of his previous lives on earth. For this is what spiritual science leads us to: our previous earthly lives, and in so doing it provides us with proof that our entire life, in repeated earthly lives and in the intervening periods in the purely spiritual realm, is a continuous process. This idea may be unappealing to the mind, but it is something that will become part of our culture in the future.

But then the question of fate dissolves in a strangely strange way, in that we know: this is not the first time we have lived this life and we still have many more lives on earth ahead of us. Back then, [in earlier lives on earth], we prepared ourselves for what now determines our destiny. And the question of immortality gains its proper illumination when we look at the gate of death in such a way that we pass through it, then live in a purely spiritual world, in order to enter a new life on earth with all that we have acquired, which yields the fruits of earlier lives. Then we are not talking in general terms about immortality, which is composed limb by limb. We gain from the certainty that we see our own lives, certain abilities that teach us to see that another and yet another life must follow. Thus genuine spiritual scientific research leads us to the truth, but the right path must be taken in the sense indicated.

All such knowledge then leads further to that stage where we not only see what arose in images, but also acquire the ability to experience in a non-pictorial way, so to speak: inspiration. Through inspiration, we penetrate into the meaning of things and entities, and through intuition, the next level of inner life, we become one with things, we experience what lies invisibly in things as spirit.

One can say in response to such an argument: Yes, when the spiritual researcher enters into a spiritual world and can say from this spiritual world how the riddle of fate is to be solved, can say: Yes, an immortal lives in you – this applies only to the spiritual researcher. That is not the case. The truth about the nature of spiritual research must also become clear if it is to become a factor in our culture.

What does the spiritual researcher gain when he enters higher worlds? He comes to recognize his essential soul core, to be able to say to himself: When the hair turns pale, when the body gradually withers, then a soul core weaves within me, which I feel becoming stronger and stronger, acquiring strength in life, then living in an intermediate life [between death and a new birth], and then coming to life again in a new earthly life. One could say: Only the spiritual researcher can experience this certainty. What then do other people have to gain from it, who can only use their intellect? If we want to recognize this, we have to realize that everything that the spiritual researcher brings is nothing other than the experience of the spiritual world. But an urge and an impulse asserts itself in him immediately; it is the urge to bring down everything one experiences in the spiritual world into the concepts of the real world. The true spiritual researcher is not satisfied with his journey into the spiritual worlds until he can clothe in logical forms what he knows from the spiritual worlds — so that his experiences are understandable to all people. And the spiritual researcher has no certainty about immortality, no certainty about destiny, until he can express his experiences in general ideas and concepts.

How does he relate to his ideas then? He relates to them as a painter who is learning to paint, who is learning how to handle colors, who is learning everything that belongs to the art of painting, relates to the picture that he brings onto the canvas. What the painter learns is all his own business at first. But then the picture is before us. Two people can stand before this picture. One may be inclined to spiritualize everything, then he will understand the secrets that the person has placed in the picture. The other would only look at the color combinations in the picture. Just as the painter relates to his picture and is not satisfied until his skill is reflected in it, so the spiritual researcher relates to his experience when he has conveyed it to other people in an understandable way. This picture, when it is painted by the true spiritual researcher, is such that every understanding observer who stands before it can understand it - explanations would only disturb, because the picture must be grasped inwardly. If a person has only enough impartiality and free power of judgment, he can accept it as a mental image, which he can absorb; he then has everything that the spiritual researcher was able to fathom in the spiritual world. One must be clear about the fact that in what the spiritual researcher puts into his picture, there is nothing that cannot be grasped with the mind, with the means of healthy thinking.

Everything we need for the strength of life, everything we need at all, cannot come to us through the research of science, but through spiritual science - through what we absorb when the spiritual researcher presents his perceptions in ideas. The strange thing is that the spiritual researcher does not receive what he needs for his life through his research, but through what he can have in common with ordinary people: Only when the spiritual researcher has made the seen comprehensible to other people does he gain security in life, orientation in relation to fate and satisfaction. Through spiritual research, one gains insights into the entire world; but what the research can be, the spiritual researcher cannot gain from it if it cannot be presented in comprehensible forms. And the spiritual researcher cannot be served by anything other than what he can make useful to the non-spiritual researcher. There must be spiritual researchers; and you will see from my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” that every person can come to a certain level of this knowledge. In order to acquire what the soul needs for the security of life, for the joy of living, for the security of its roots in the immortal, what the soul needs so that man can look forward to old age with peace of mind, can be recognized through the results of spiritual research, and in this the spiritual researcher attains nothing more than the other; and only then does the spiritual researcher have something of his ideas when he has presented them in the forms of common sense.

That is the truth about spiritual research; that is the truth about the relationship of spiritual research to life, and it must be firmly held that from this spiritual research itself only that has value which can be so placed in life. The spiritual researcher who can live in the spiritual world may see many things, but what he sees there has value only if he can also judge it. Some people can indeed come to visions through exercises if they do not go through everything that has been characterized as the true way today; they can come to see many things – but what value, what significance the vision has, whether it has any truth value, can be quite unknown to them personally. One must first be able to judge what one sees; one must first be able to appreciate it in its significance for life. But where does one gain this possibility? Through nothing other than the power of judgment and morality that one has already acquired in ordinary life before entering the spiritual world. He who has a moral sense will enter the spiritual world with it and be able to judge things rightly. The one who is foolish or immoral will only be able to judge what he sees wrongly. Therefore, a person's value is not increased if he is able to see the supernatural through all kinds of means. Even the spiritual researcher is only valuable through that which makes a person valuable, through sound judgment and moral strength. But the havoc that unhealthy judgment and immorality wreak when the spiritual researcher enters the spiritual worlds with them will be shown to us tomorrow when we speak of the errors of spiritual science.

The question could be raised: Yes, but what then are the truths of spiritual research? Just as it is impossible to list the truths of another science in an hour, it is equally impossible to list the truths of spiritual science in an hour. It should be shown how man comes to the truth in spiritual research and not to error, how man, through the development of the forces slumbering in him, creates spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, to use Goethe's words, in order to see into a spiritual world. Now one cannot say that this is a rule as truth, that this is a rule as error; one can only say that the soul of man will mature on this path to see truths and not errors. This path should be spoken of today. Tomorrow the sources of error will be clearly explained. Today's and tomorrow's lectures belong together. Today's lecture should show how the human soul can strengthen itself spiritually in order to perceive the spiritual world, just as the eye and the mind can perceive the sensual world. In this way, the human soul perceives everything. That it is born out of the external world of the senses and at the same time [is] in the spiritual being, a saying by Goethe tells us:

If the eye were not sunlike,
How could we behold the light?
If the power of God did not live in us,
How could we be enraptured by the divine?

It is true, in ourselves there must be an eye, with all its power, for us to behold the light; the eye must be solar. And for a person, there must be an inner activity of God's life so that he can perceive God.

But such a saying in the Goethean sense is not meant as it would be said by [Schopenhauer], for example: the world is a representation. We would be far from the meaning of Goethe's saying if we believed that we should create the whole external world only as an imitation of the inner world, as some philosophers claim. This must be said, as Goethe says: Man would have no eyes if sunlight did not permeate space. And just as it is true that we only recognize light through the eye, it is equally true that we only have an eye because light floods space, for it is light that has brought out the eye in the first place. Beings that had eyes but have lived in caves for many generations lose the organ of the eye, the eyes atrophy. The eye is a creature of light. Thus the fact that we have organs for light, through which we can have it, is at the same time proof of the existence of light. The fact that man can experience spiritual things in himself, that he can awaken supernaturality in himself, is proof that the supernatural is not only in him and that he does not dream it, but that the spiritual that interweaves all space and time has brought forth the spiritual in us in the first place, as light brings forth the eye.

Thus we can supplement Goethe's beautiful saying, which points us to our inner light and sun, to our inner divinity, with a saying that is from the inner spirituality of man for the outer reality of the spiritual. We can summarize the result of our reflection on the reality of that spiritual in which we rest, as we rest as sense beings in the material world; we can summarize it by juxtaposing Goethe's saying with the other saying:

If the world were not [endowed with the sun],
How could eyes blossom for the being?
If existence were not God's revelation,
How could people come to be filled with spirit?

Dear attendees! In the field of spiritual research, which was discussed here yesterday, it is even more necessary than in any other field of knowledge of life to search for the sources of error. It is especially necessary for the reason that on the paths of truth, of which we spoke yesterday, error lurks at every turn, so to speak, and because the nature of error in relation to the exploration of the spiritual worlds is quite different from that in the exploration of the sensual world in which man lives. It may be said that, to a certain extent, an old saying of the great philosopher Aristotle can serve as a motto for the seeker of truth on his way into the spiritual worlds. This saying sounds simple at first, but it is quite difficult to follow. It reads:

Only he can know the truth who has ceased to love his own opinion.

This saying applies to all of life's experiences and wisdom, but it applies to a particularly high degree in the field we are dealing with here. In our external life, what is contained in this saying is disregarded everywhere, so to speak. What do we hear people emphasize more often than: This is my point of view on any given matter, this is my opinion. And particularly in our time it is emphasized again and again that it is justified, and only justified, if every human being asserts his point of view, so to speak, his opinion about some matter. Of course, one can admit such a demand of life up to a certain limit, but to the real truth, namely to the truth in the spiritual field, such a point of view cannot lead. For one's own opinion – one has formed it in life entirely according to one's personal education, the personal circumstances in which one has lived, according to the part of the world that has just come across one; and it does not actually take much to realize that this opinion, which an individual personality has formed, can at least have only a narrow validity under all circumstances.

Now, in the realm of intellectual life, the fact that we bring our opinions, our view of life, our point of view with us when we engage in research intervenes in a completely different way than in any sensual realm. In ordinary life, where we are dealing with external things, we can say that error corrects itself at every turn. If we form a false opinion about this or that being or this or that process in the sensory world, we only need to let the appearance of this being or this fact itself affect us, and the incorrect judgment is, so to speak, eliminated. We cannot approach a matter with an incorrect judgment without the matter itself proving us wrong. In the spiritual realm, it is quite different. There it is a matter of course that all beings, all facts receive their very special coloration from that which we bring with us as our own soul constitution, as that which lives in our soul. And we carry a wrong opinion into the spiritual world with us; it lays itself like a veil over the corresponding observation. And if we want to hold on to this wrong opinion, then the spiritual fact, which is veiled by our opinion, cannot convict us of lying. It wraps itself in the garment of our wrong opinion and appears to us in a completely false form.

If, on the other hand, we want to point to mediumship as the antithesis of true spiritual research – without recognizing it as justified for spiritual research and without expecting to gain anything from it – then this is only for the sake of explanation. Those people who, in the manner already discussed yesterday, want to receive messages from the spiritual worlds through mediums or somnambulists are usually very concerned that their medium does not pick up, let us say, spiritual-scientific truths or any convictions from certain points of view about the spiritual world. For the people who make use of mediums are justifiably afraid that in the event that the medium has absorbed certain thoughts about the spiritual world into the ordinary consciousness and soul life, the fact that when the medium is put into his sleep-like state, what he has absorbed comes out again in his revelations, that, so to speak, the personal interferes with what the medium is supposed to reveal. And such people believe that they can only come to real, factual revelations of the spiritual world that stands behind the physical world when they have eliminated all personal feeling from the medium, when there is, so to speak, no predisposition at all to put anything personal into his revelations.

What do such people strive for? [They strive] to eliminate the personal, everything that comes from elsewhere than from the subconscious depths of the medium. That is why most is given to such revelations of mediums of which one can be certain that the mediums have not been in contact with the matter concerned in any way. If the medium speaks in a language of which one knows that it is unknown to him, then most is given to such revelations, and rightly so. What such persons strive for, who make use of mediums, can serve as an explanation. For even if spiritual research does not use anything that comes from this side, it is still true for the true spiritual researcher, who makes himself an instrument to penetrate into the spiritual worlds, that he must strip away the personal, that is, that which is only attached to his own soul life and is peculiar to his own soul life.

This is a more difficult task than is usually believed, because it requires something that is, so to speak, extremely difficult for ordinary consciousness to understand. It is necessary [that which] is called in spiritual research “the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold”. The threshold here refers to that which demarcates the realm of the sense world from the spiritual world. What is this “Guardian of the Threshold” if we start from ordinary life and its relationship to truth? Because basically, this Guardian of the Threshold is the sum of those forces and powers that prevent people from true self-knowledge in their ordinary lives and that lead them to this self-knowledge if they want to become a spiritual researcher. But in everyday life, self-knowledge is not an easy thing, and precisely because the human soul clings to what it has formed from its experiences, from everything it encounters. And this is precisely how the various points of view arise, the struggles of opinions, where materialism and spiritualism, realism and idealism, and many other points of view, which people advocate with devotion, but which make it impossible for people to understand each other, especially with regard to the most important things.

What is the actual situation regarding these points of view? Anyone who considers the human soul in relation to the rest of existence will be able to see, when he delves into the matter, that idealism, materialism, realism and so on arise as human opinions because man always has only a limited and then forms his opinion from this; and he loves this opinion of his, and it is actually love that inspires him for this opinion and makes him think that this opinion is the only possible one and fights against other points of view. This love is basically self-love. That which we have achieved, which is so closely connected with us that we actually become the thing itself - it is understandable that we love it. If we give it up, we give up ourselves. That is the significance of clinging to certain points of view in life: everyone feels that if they give them up, they give up themselves, because their whole self has taken on the coloration of the point of view. A person cannot but affirm this point of view.

There are people who, through their lives or the direction of their science, through their preoccupation with purely external things, which live in their ideas, people who are accustomed to only fix their eyes on what is material about things, become materialists; their attention is diverted from everything that is not material, and they are materialists, not because idealism is wrong. For anyone who really understands the arguments will soon see that materialists have good reasons for their assertions. But idealists also have good reasons for their views, and only someone who is biased in his materialistic direction actually sees bad reasons for idealism. Man only opposes idealism and insists on materialism when he adopts the habits of thinking that he only has to do with material things. Other people are, so to speak, less affected by the hardness and density of matter. They are more directly pointed to the struggles and victories of human life through their abilities and circumstances. Such people become idealists. They see the reasons that speak for idealism, and since they have never learned to pay attention to the reasons that speak for materialism, they regard materialism as the great error that must be fought.

And so one could characterize all spiritual directions; one would always have to lead them back to what the people have in the way of abilities and circumstances. But those who have come to a broader horizon, like Goethe, knew, and this is known by anyone who can look at the different worldviews impartially. Goethe knew that all points of view have a certain one-sidedness and that basically, for and against each point of view, much can be argued. Some people, however, also realize this, and then they easily come to the conclusion that the truths lie between the different points of view, so that a balance can be found, so to speak. But anyone who wants to know the truth in this area can be compared to a person who sits between two chairs. But the right thing would be to use both chairs, depending on the circumstances. To this end, he who is able to relate human opinions to their relationship to the all-encompassing world will come.

[Goethe says]: Truth does not lie between the different points of view, but between these lies the task, the path to truth. What does that mean? It means that when considering the individual world views, one must say that materialism is fully justified in the material realm, and that those who want to explain the material world with spiritualism will not uncover anything. Concepts of materialism belong in the world of materialism, and the mistake of materialism is not that materialism is used to explain the material, but that one also wants to explain the spiritual realm with materialism. It is the other way round for spiritualism. The enthusiastic idealist will speak everywhere of the spiritual and spiritual forces; he is like someone who looks at a clock and does not want to explain the mechanism of the clock in a mechanical way, but seeks a demon inside it that moves the hands forward. This is what one comes to and must come to if one wants to come to the truth about the different worldviews, which are only opinions after all: that one is able to see the justification and limitations of the different views.

What prevents man from doing this? Depending on the field of the world and of life, man loves his point of view with true self-love; he cannot get out of himself, cannot put himself in the place of another point of view. That is why it is so resented when one looks at Haeckel and puts oneself in his mind and does not everywhere have the tendency to fight Haeckel from a spiritual or ideal point of view, and when one turns to other minds and looks at them just as objectively. The true spiritual researcher must be able to put himself in the shoes of the positive and negative aspects of the various points of view. For it is a peculiarity of human nature that when a person applies such a method to his soul, as was discussed yesterday, then his opinions and points of view change with him. We can observe this very well, especially with the opposing points of view - idealism and materialism.

Someone who rejects everything spiritual, who is a strict materialist, will not apply any method to his soul as described yesterday; all of this is nonsense and folly to him. From his materialistic point of view, he is right. But the one who, as a spiritual researcher, not only sees the material effect in life, but can look into the whole mechanism of life, into the spiritual forces that stand behind the sensual, knows that it is not the material opinion that prevents this person, who rejects all methods of spiritual research, from coming to it. Man can deny the spiritual world if he wants. But this spiritual world does not only exist in a separate spiritual realm; this spiritual world is also present everywhere in the sensual, material world. Even in the matter that the materialist alone observes, spirit is present everywhere. But this spirit, which only lives in the material, is the spirit, the power that, when it works through man – and it does so when he has the thinking habits of moving only in the material – causes him to be incapable of directing his soul's reflection, his soul's direction, to the spirit at all. There is something in all material existence that has such an effect on us that it draws us away from the spirit, distracts us. There we see how error works.

In our studies of spiritual research, as they now try to engage in the spiritual cultural life of the present, we call this spirit, which lives in matter and works there as a force that darkens man's view of the spiritual world, the Ahrimanic spirit. This spirit is the same one that Goethe portrays in Faust as Mephisto, who accompanies Faust, who accompanies every human being, because every human being has to deal with the material world. This, then, is the power that darkens our view of the spiritual world. Materialists can indeed deny the spirit with their concepts, but it would be a serious mistake to believe that they can do any harm to the reality of the spirit. It takes revenge on them and obscures their views. This is the peculiar effect in the soul of the materialist, that this spirit erects a wall, that man cannot see the spiritual world; so the materialist denies the spiritual world because the spirit of matter inspires him to do so. You can deny him, but you cannot escape him, and what is buzzing around in the world as materialism is actually the inspiration of the [Ahrimanic] spirit. Goethe was right when he has Faust confront the mothers in such a way that Mephisto presents the spiritual realm as a nothing. But Faust says: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.” – The materialist should admit to himself that he belongs to a certain group of people about whom Mephisto says:

The devil this little group never sees

And even if he had them by the collar.

It is precisely the material spirit that the little people do not feel and that inspires their materialism. In this way, if we go deep enough, we see how materialism cancels itself out, because it is itself a product of the spirit.

Let us now take the idealist's point of view. He wants nothing to do with materialism; he has formed ideas and feelings that only lead him into spiritual spheres. It would certainly not occur to him to apply what has been said to himself, but the one-sidedness of the idealistic point of view is evident precisely in these points. If the idealist, who rejects matter, applies the method mentioned yesterday to himself and gains access to the spiritual world, his way of thinking and feeling, his whole attitude, confronts him there; he carries it into this world, and the result is that this person can enter the spiritual world, but he sees everything through the spectacles of his opinions and ideas, and [he sees] that there are a great many such beings in the spiritual world that are called demonic natures, which do not appear in the external world but live in the spiritual world. These beings are too insignificant for our world – and who distract man from the world to which he nevertheless belongs, since he is born as a human being in a physical body; so the idealist, if he is narrow-minded, is very easily driven into certain methods in the world that we call demonic. He is so firmly rooted in this that, whereas he used to understand nothing of matter, so to speak, he now shuns it. People then end up in all kinds of false ascetic directions. He wants nothing more to do with matter, and his error leads him to an estrangement from the world to which he really belongs. He falls into loneliness.

This example shows us that errors in the spiritual realm are more disastrous than in the sensual realm. In the sensual world, errors are corrected; in the spiritual realm, however, errors are like realities that confront us, although these realities themselves are brought in by us. We cannot get through them. All errors [in the spiritual realm] affect our personality like realities. In the sensual realm, one can become free of errors through refutation; in the spiritual realm, there is no way but through struggle, for one must fight against that which appears as real. In the field of spiritual research, therefore, the fight will not be a mere logical one, but an ongoing spiritual work, a fight against the powers of error, for there are the powers of error.

The question now arises: How can we find the way to become efficient fighters against error in the spiritual field? We can do this through true self-knowledge! How do we go beyond the one-sidedness of materialism, spiritualism, idealism and realism in our [ordinary] lives? By making the decision once in our lives to see how we actually came to our opinions. This is a momentous decision, less difficult to grasp than to carry out. When we trace our lives back in strict introspection and ask ourselves how we came to this or that school of thought, when we examine how our attitudes and opinions arose, then we, so to speak, put ourselves together, then there comes a point where it can become difficult for us, where our minds feel great resistance. Whether one was a materialist or idealist or insisted on some other opinion that one thought was the only right one – then one feels: one has only received this opinion through one's own experience. Then comes the moment when one first feels what opinions and worldviews actually are.

As long as you interact with the world without prejudice and carry your views with you, you don't even notice how much you love your opinions; but once you withdraw from the world and realize how you have become a materialist, how you have become a spiritualist, then you come to the point of saying to yourself: Yes, basically, when you no longer have these or those thoughts, what remains of you? Then you become completely empty? You feel how you gradually cut yourself out of yourself. What then comes is that terrible moment in life when you see yourself disappearing, when you turn your gaze to the formation of your opinion. But no one can come to a worldview who does not practice self-knowledge. Then you stop insisting on your opinion, only then do you understand the saying of the old wise man Aristotle:

Only those can recognize the truth who have ceased to love their own opinion.

Then you really start to love your opinion when you have to give it up, just as you really feel love for a being when you lose it. The moment you recognize the origin of your opinion and learn to give it up, that's when you really love it. That is what our mind experiences.

If you now come to the realization that all these points of view are valid, you feel for a while as if you are floating in the air between the different points of view, standing without a floor in the world with your soul's existence. It exercises self-knowledge if you look at it as worldly wisdom without crossing the threshold. But there is a direct path from this self-knowledge, if it is energetically carried out, really into the world, to which attention was drawn yesterday. For the one who is left with no play on words by what has been described, who experiences it inwardly, with inner pain, who experiences it with all his energy, who has warmth for what happens in the world, who cannot stand coldly before the world, such a person, in this self-inspection, will experience one of the meditations that were pointed out yesterday. Because such introspection is an important kind of meditation. If it is done often, then something arises that is similar to the imagination that was shown yesterday, but such an imagination that refers to ourselves. And what then arises as a result of the introspection of ordinary life, if one takes introspection that far – what then arises is: one sees how one is in one's own being. Before, you only knew your opinion, but now you see how far you have brought each part of the soul that lies below your conscious life, that goes from life to life, in the present life.

This then arises from the spiritual world itself. You come to realize what you actually are as a human being; you never came to this realization in ordinary life. We only rarely occupy ourselves with ourselves, but when we descend into ourselves, we spiritually face ourselves. This self-knowledge is what we have called “the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold”. For that which rests in the part of the soul that goes from life to life does not show itself in ordinary life, and as long as it does not show itself, we cannot enter the spiritual world. In ordinary life, our own nature veils the spiritual world from us; at the moment we want to enter the spiritual world, we have to have the aforementioned encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, we have to objectively face our own being, which we now face in a reincarnated being.

Then we come to see the depth of our own being, which we were spared in life, and it may be said: This world institution is beneficial, that this guardian of the threshold hides himself for ordinary life, because you can easily imagine that a person is not always strong enough to give up that which he must love most; a fear and terror of himself, so to speak, would overtake the unprepared and unripe person for true self-inspection to such an extent that it would have to bring irregularity into his inner soul life. Therefore, all true schooling for the path into the spiritual world is such that the disciple is made ready for the encounter with the “Guardian of the Threshold”. The mere enunciation of what has just been said can never be intimidating. It is only when one has one's own beingness before one that one feels that it is that which, if not faced and recognized, would prevent one from ever entering into truth into the spiritual world. We only see the spiritual world clearly when we have placed this Guardian of the Threshold within us, when we contemplate him as another being, that is, when we have been reborn. Only then can we judge how what we have been up to now is the source of all error.

Then the great, powerful fact arises before us, which can be formulated in the question: Where do the errors of spiritual research come from? They come from what we personally are; that is mixed with truth and error. We can only separate these when we can look at ourselves objectively. Only when we have ourselves in the world we are looking into, can we find a way to fight the powers of error. But there is still another difficulty, because the feeling of facing nothingness increases when one enters the spiritual world. As long as one is connected in some way with the external world, that external world is always the cause that one still loves one's own individuality too strongly. But when you look at yourself, when this peculiarity has become something like an object of the external world, then the evil temptation approaches us, that we are seized by an infinite love for our self - and never is the spiritual researcher more in danger of falling into error than now. Therefore, it takes all courage to tear all self-love out of the heart from this moment on; one must tear it out of the heart if one wants to fight errors.

So we can say that basically moral courage is the deciding factor at a certain level of spiritual realization when it comes to overcoming errors, and then we see how it becomes possible to fight the errors when we feel the source of the errors, our personal self, standing before us. If we can do this, then we will also be able to turn a healthy gaze back into ordinary life; then we will find that both those demonic powers and those Ahrimanic powers that inspire materialism, and also the enthusiastic powers, that all these spiritual powers and spiritual entities are the revelations of the spiritual world. Only then do we face the full reality. Only then do we gain a sound judgment of those who fall into errors of spiritual science, that they do not want to believe in real spiritual powers in the historical course of human development, but speak of ideas that guide the course of history.

In the nineteenth century, historians appeared who spoke of ideas in history. Those who understand the facts in this area know that ideas live in people, but that they cannot work to understand them. These ideas can no more work in history than a painter can paint a picture. And when in our time a doctrine arises that seeks to replace a historical and personal Christ, saying that one can believe in the idea of Christ, this doctrine is based on the view that ideas can have an effect, that ideas are not merely the expression of real beings. But only when we recognize the spiritual Powers standing behind them, can real life be understood.

When one accepts such a world-view, one need not be a spiritual researcher oneself to see whether his teachings are true. Man must pass through self-knowledge, for the assurance and elevation of his life. It is absolutely true that when the spiritual researcher forms and fashions what he has researched into human ideas, then everyone who is unbiased enough can understand these images. And that is why it must be emphasized that the true path of the listener to the spiritual researcher is not to devotedly surrender to the authority of the spiritual researcher, but rather the true relationship of the listener to the confessor is one that arises out of the free judgment of the listener. The spiritual researcher can only come to a correct judgment about what he sees if he applies his common sense, his healthy thinking, and if this thinking is morally and intellectually sound. But this brings us to the point where we can not only speak of the errors themselves, but also of the errors that arise in the dissemination of spiritual research, and these are very important. It is not possible to specify individual errors and how to avoid them. Rather, it can only be said that whoever advances more and more conscientiously to true spiritual research will avoid the errors that lurk everywhere. We will fight error when we recognize ourselves. Errors also arise when there is not the right relationship between those who profess and the spiritual researcher himself. Here too we have all kinds of points of view. A large number of our contemporaries reject everything that comes from spiritual research. The spiritual researcher can understand such points of view. That is why he finds so much opposition, because spiritual research is something that is new to our culture and that thinking is not yet attuned to. That is one way in which spiritual research is encountered today. A number of these people do come, however, when they realize the errors of materialism and gradually approach the results of spiritual research. It is different with the confessors. Just as much as criticism of the spiritual researchers, they experience, on the other hand, false confession, which recognizes authority and does not see that everything can be tested. The spiritual researcher does not shy away from a close examination, only from those examinations that arise from a superficial scientific approach, but not from a thorough one. It is the right approach to take what the spiritual researcher offers, to be inspired and then to examine it with the mind through which it can be examined. But besides the dismissive people, there are many who find it easier to simply believe instead of examining. And it is from these people that the kind of confession comes that leads above all to error after error in the spread of spiritual research. Because one does not check, but accepts what the spiritual researcher gives, the spiritual researcher is considered something of a higher animal by such a believing confessor. Because he looks into the spiritual world, he is considered a higher being.

It is correct to not see such a spiritual researcher as a special being. The value of a spiritual researcher does not depend on his ability to see into a spiritual world, but on his moral and intellectual qualities. This is, so to speak, an area of purely human research, because its results are connected with all the hopes and longings of man, and just as one is not held in higher esteem for pursuing mathematical or geometrical science, so one should not be held in higher esteem for being a spiritual researcher. When one peers into the spiritual world, one does not yet need to have a judgment about what is seen; one can look in and see many things and tell the greatest nonsense and the greatest errors from this world. Only then, when one regards the spiritual researcher, so to speak, as nothing more than an instrument through which spiritual truths flow into the world, and then checks for oneself, only then does one have the right relationship to the spiritual world. Otherwise, how could charlatans so easily set themselves up alongside the real spiritual researchers? But those who do not want to examine cannot distinguish between what has been conscientiously gained and what has been gained by false and even fraudulent means.

The spiritual researcher can only save himself from his confessor by not being tempted to become overconfident in the faith that is placed in him. There are natures that, when they see that they are being regarded as something special, communicate all kinds of things that have only been obtained by false means. That is why charlatanry and humbug are often indistinguishable. And much less harmful in terms of the dissemination of spiritual research are the critical opponents, as long as they are not driven by their longing than the blindly faithful followers. In no other field is belief in authority worse and more harmful than in the field of spiritual research, and in no other field is this belief so at home. A healthy dissemination of spiritual research and spiritual science in our time, which wants to avoid errors within what it disseminates, must above all be concerned with eliminating blind faith from all dissemination of spiritual science.

However, we are still far from this ideal in many respects because of the complacency of the many, because they no longer check whether what the spiritual researcher says is justified. If they like what is offered, they accept it on blind faith in authority. It is always possible to apply common sense to what is presented in spiritual science, and when one sees that the spiritual researcher is endeavoring to place the results of his research in such strict [gap in the transcript] images, when does not tend towards enthusiasm on the one hand or carelessness on the other, but when one sees how he treats all matters of spiritual research in the same logical way as external matters, only then is he a true spiritual researcher. Then, when he sees more and more souls of the present and the future incline towards spiritual research in this way, then the objection cannot be raised that [Jelder should be a spiritual researcher. Just as not everyone needs to become a botanist to understand botanical research, not everyone needs to become a spiritual researcher either – although anyone can become one.

But the ideas of spiritual research must spread more and more, because we live in a time when souls long for what only spiritual science can give. Its facts are what souls long for today and will long for more and more. He who can grasp the spirit of the time knows that certain needs of the soul can only be satisfied if spiritual science finds its way to the hearts and souls. But since the time itself will ensure that there will be enough spiritual researchers, and since one only needs logical mind and a sense of truth [to see the results of spiritual research], then through these spiritual researchers one will find the way that open up the perspective for everyone to enter the spiritual worlds, that spiritual world from which man can come security, joy, hope for the life in which he is, and that which opens up when the gate of death closes. That security, which can develop with the approach of wisdom towards old age, when our body decays, to prepare to go through a spiritual existence, to come back to this earth to continue its work - that security, that certainty will these souls, these personalities find in the spiritual world.

This perspective will arise for more and more souls of the present and the future: the opportunity to look into this spiritual world. And a time will come when truly every single person, not just the spiritual researcher, will stand there in such a way that [he] will take a very simple stand against all denial of the spiritual world. These people will become so great as the force of the reasons for spiritual research [for the same] continues to grow. Such secure souls will behave towards the deniers of the spiritual world as Goethe once behaved when the philosophy that came from Greek thought, which could not come to terms with the laws of movement, came before his soul. They said that there was no movement, that it was only apparent, that when a body moves, it is actually at rest in every moment; but movement is not composed of rest, so there is no movement. There was such a school of philosophy! Goethe, when he heard about this philosophy, said:

They may see what they want,

You remain calm, remain silent;

And if they deny you movement,

Walk around in front of their noses.

In this way, movement is proven by the evidence of walking in front of their noses.

If one could delve a little into the certainty of the souls that must come, which will gradually feel the force of the spiritual-scientific proofs, such souls will then confront the deniers of the spirit just as surely as Goethe confronted the deniers of the movement. Such souls will then perhaps say to those who disdain to regard as foolishness the science of the spirit:

Adversity may arise,
but you remain calm, remain cheerful,
and if they deny the spirit,
do not brood over it.
Yes, in the end even agree with them,
their spirit is in a bad way.

Question and Answer

Question: Is the soul of the deceased aware of the life just concluded?

Rudolf Steiner: In “Occult Science”, we have attempted to characterize the nature of consciousness. Those who want to inform themselves must let the presentation given there take effect on them. [One can answer the question] with an absolute “Yes”, but this “Yes” needs to be explained, and that is only possible through a detailed presentation.

Question: Why are new embodiments always necessary, in other words, why is there never any rest?

Rudolf Steiner: The questioner probably regards rest as something desirable, which underlies the question. What can be meant by the concept of rest here? Rest that is the rest of death or some other kind of behavior? It is impossible to find out what is meant by 'calm' here. Of course, not all of life's mysteries can be solved in a lecture, and many things must remain unsaid. Of course, the embodiments do not continue uninterruptedly from eternity to eternity; they once took a beginning from a purely spiritual existence, and at the end of the earth we will be in a different spiritual state, no longer returning to the earthly existence. But in the meantime, we have to undergo incarnations. Repeated earthly lives are necessary because only in this way can a person approach the all-round development and realization of his potential, approaching his goal in an ascending and descending wave. That is precisely the course of earthly development; the earth never remains the same after a certain number of centuries; consider all that has changed, not only in culture, since the founding of Christianity! One experiences great intervals, not short ones, between two successive earthly lives. The soul is therefore in a position to always experience something new.

Question: In which incarnation will we be resurrected on Judgment Day, in the first or in the last?

Rudolf Steiner: Incarnation is not fixed; one must be clear about how the word “incarnation” is meant here: how “resurrection” is meant. One must first understand St. Paul's teaching on the spiritual body. This has nothing at all to do with the physical body. Only then can an answer to this question be given.

Question: What dreams at night, the soul or the brain?

Rudolf Steiner: This is easy to answer from what was said yesterday. The soul is in the astral world during sleep, and the human being experiences his dreams inwardly; of course it is not the brain that dreams, but the soul.

Question: What consolation can a person who is not clairvoyant find in the doctrine of reincarnation, since only the spiritual researcher can see his past incarnations and the other person would have to despair because he cannot see for himself?

Rudolf Steiner: In the lecture it was said: It does not depend on doing research in the spiritual worlds oneself, but rather, when these things are expressed in concepts, everyone can understand them and the spiritual researcher himself has no more from them than what he gains from his clairvoyance by expressing them in concepts. The doctrine of re-embodiment is something that gives life security and content. So this question is already answered in the lecture. One should also read the booklet 'Reincarnation and Karma'. Then one will find what can give the soul security and comfort, and that it has been ensured that the non-spiritual researcher also has the opportunity to understand it. Question: I have already taken part in two introductory courses, but I still do not understand how it is possible that some people are doing badly, some are doing well; often highly developed people are doing badly, while the rich libertine finds no punishment, but still lives a joyful life.

Rudolf Steiner: The latter does not follow from the doctrine of reincarnation, because it is not the case that life always advances, but [that] it ascends and descends, as [it] just [the] causes [it] yield. That a rich libertine would find an even more joyful life, such a question arises from a complete misunderstanding of the overall course of human life. If someone observes another person or themselves and finds another person noble or themselves quite noble, or afflicted by suffering and misfortune, the judgment they make in the given moment is by no means always decisive.

I will give you a comparison: Let us imagine a young person who has lived off his father's pocket until the age of eighteen, let us assume that it was not a bad life. When he is 18 years old, his father loses his fortune. He was not doing badly before, but he gets into this bad situation; now he has to learn something proper when he has not learned anything proper before. Now, at this time of his life, he will consider this stroke of fate as something quite difficult, quite undeserved. When he is 50 years old, he may look back and say to himself: If that hadn't happened back then, I would now be a good-for-nothing and would know nothing about the world. At 50 years old, he will judge [it] quite differently than at 18 years old.

We are usually not the right judges of our own clumsiness. Later, however, we will judge more objectively, especially from the spiritual world in the time between death and birth, or in subsequent earthly lives, when one can already look back; because everyone will achieve that; humanity is developing; everyone will be able to look back, which now only the spiritual researcher can do. Then one will say: That which seemed inexplicable at first, that was precisely the reason why I had to strongly resist, why I released forces that became the most important for further development, for ascent. In ordinary life one will see that already; one experiences many things. Many a person who, as a prospective spiritual researcher, looks at life more intimately and in more depth, will know how to tell about it. Then you look back on what brought you joy, pleasure and many other things, and you look back on the struggles, evil and pain you went through. You look back on all kinds of things. You will say to yourself: I am grateful to fate for the many joyful experiences I have had. But would you rather give up your joys or your sufferings? Then you may perhaps come to the realization: I would rather give up my joy and bliss, because I owe my pain and suffering my realization. You first have to know what becomes of the causes.

In short, one should not make the judgment of such a question so easy. Spiritual science has a deeply satisfying answer to all such questions.

Question: Would the same result be obtained if, for example, the astral body were perceived in the same way by several spiritual researchers?

Rudolf Steiner: This question cannot be answered meaningfully with a simple “yes” because what the spiritual researcher perceives in a kind of imaginary vision is only to some extent based on complete objectivity. What applies in the sensory world, that one can look at things from a different point of view, applies to a higher degree in higher worlds. If two people write a travelogue about the same area, there will still be a great difference. But one need not doubt altogether that these areas exist. And if we look into the ever-flowing, fleeting astral body, then it is understandable that the external image is different, even though the reality is quite the same. Therefore, one can answer this question in the affirmative, even if the external images are different, but no more different than when two people form an image of a physical-sensory object; seeing and representation are different in a certain way. Everything depends on the objectivity of the observer; it is always assumed that real spiritual researchers describe things.

Question: Must not the stripping away of the standpoint be taken so far that even what is peculiar to the human species is eliminated? [...]

Rudolf Steiner: The first question concerns the generic. What exactly is the generic? When we speak of the generic, we often imagine something quite abstract. But the concept of 'generic' can only be applied in the right sense to the realm of nature that is below the human being. Within the animal kingdom, the concept of the generic is fully justified because it cannot be a mere concept for a one-sided observation. For when people who are full of whims and fancies find that there are only individual dogs, and thus no such thing as “dog nature” or “wolf nature”, the retort is that if one only allows the individual being, for example the individual being “wolf”, to count, and not what reigns in it supersensibly, thus only recognizes the material, then the refutation is easily given. If a wolf only eats lambs, it shows that it does not become a lamb just because it eats lambs. But in the animal kingdom, we are interested in what lives in the species, just as we are interested in the individual, the ideal, in the human being. Therefore, only humans have a biography.

Some will find this strange because one can also have a biography of animals. It should not be denied that a mother dog can give a biography of her dogs, a mother cat a biography of her cats. But that is not the point. A teacher can also ask children to present the biography of their pens. But what is biographical in the individual is only found in humans. The concept of the species only makes sense in the case of humans if one lives in an abstract philosophy. On the other hand, the ideal in the human being is not exhausted in the species. What adheres to the human being through the people, the tribal characteristics, belongs to him in a different direction than to the animal. This species-like quality is even stripped away from the ideal; in the true sense of the word, one cannot even speak of it. At the beginning of the development of the earth, man was entirely a generic being, but in that lay the idea that individuals would all become ideal, so that the generic aspect plays a secondary role in man.

Question: Without doubt, the one who is to face the Guardian of the Threshold has to overcome great dangers that he does not know in advance; how can he protect himself, or is there no protection?

Rudolf Steiner: The path is followed in a concrete way if one follows what is given in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Through this, the qualities are also implanted in the soul to enable one to pass the encounter in the right way. There are still great difficulties, but one has also acquired stronger forces.

Question: What can be said about Mohammed and his mission? Why did he have to come 600 years after Christ?

Rudolf Steiner: It is not possible to answer this question briefly; it would lead to the greatest misunderstandings. The answer would have to be given from the fundamentals. 600 years after the Christ Impulse, Mohammed gave content to such a human community, which was predisposed, on the one hand, to the sometimes fantastical mind and, on the other, to the fine elaboration of the intellect. Compared to the Christ impulse, it was something of a setback, an atavism. This shows how development generally occurs: in advances and setbacks. The nature of this Mohammedanism must be understood from the whole nature of development: the Christ impulse, the greatest religious impulse, which must gradually become part of the evolution of the earth, while the Mohammedan impulse had to oppose it before.

Question: Are the Theosophists in favor of cremation? Rudolf Steiner: Theosophists do not take sides for this

or that party, but these things are a matter of knowledge. One says what is true and right, and then everyone can build their own view of what they want to take up into life as impulses of will.

Such questions cannot be answered in absolute terms. The various stages of human development are different, and the same is not best for all times, but people change, and with that, the emergence or lack of emergence of human institutions changes. On the whole, for the time that has passed, and for a large number of people in the future, cremation is not an important [right?] thing, although the propagandists of cremation are, so to speak, pioneers of the future. But people have to mature, everything has only relative validity, so also the question: bury or burn for one age or another. For spiritual contemplation, many things appear different than for external perception.

Question: How do you reconcile the view that all people have already experienced life on earth with the fact that the earth used to be less and less populated?

Rudolf Steiner: This is a mere mathematical calculation, and it will be seen that what has been said is simply a bold assertion. The question comes up almost after every lecture. The intervals between two lives are not the same for all people. Sometimes there are many more people embodied in one age than in another shortly before. Let us assume that in the seventeenth century 100 souls were incarnated and in the sixteenth century 100 as well, and the intervals between their embodiments were different, then in the nineteenth century the 100 from both groups may have incarnated again, so there are 200 in the nineteenth century. Because the intervals are different due to the entire karma of the souls, there is an increase in certain periods of time. The conscientious person cannot speak of anything else. The time since the last incarnation is on average longer than the time that separates us, for example, from the discovery of America. But if it is claimed that the number of people is increasing, then one must first ask: How can this be proven by external things? For example: Who has studied the increase for China; so what is the population of the whole earth; or what worlds have perished; or what was before the discovery of America, and long before America was discovered? So with conscientious research, this claim cannot be made in the physical world.

Question: What does the speaker say about Adventism, where the world history is explained from Daniel and Revelation of John, and now the time is coming when Christ promises his return and the world will change socially and politically?

Rudolf Steiner: It is a well-known phenomenon that the sects today take the “viewpoint of all viewpoints” and are completely in love with their point of view, to a much greater extent than is the case with other people. And to give someone who belongs to a sect an explanation for this or that symbol, or to dissuade them, or to make something understandable, is usually a pure impossibility for this incarnation. But anyone who fully grasps the Aristotelian principle that 'only by disregarding one's own opinion can one arrive at the truth' has the right point of view. Anyone familiar with spiritual science knows that when you look at things more deeply, they cannot be taken quite so literally and in quite such a way as they often are from such a point of view. Nevertheless, nothing should be said against the piety and the cozy intimacy of the souls who are caught up in such a point of view, and one can have the highest respect for it. But in such sects one does not go beyond the point of view, which narrows the truth. Those who look back at the development of mankind will find that there have always been sects that have said the same thing. They said: In fifty years the return of Christ will be here. He did not come, but that did not refute the teachings; and however often the refutation occurred through the facts, it did not harm the point of view. It was no means a means of somehow refuting such a “point of view of points of view”.

Question: Is there any contradiction between spiritual science and positive Christianity?

Rudolf Steiner: The questioner usually understands positive Christianity to mean what he understands by Christianity. I cannot go into this further, I would have to talk a lot about the Christ impulse, the Christ presence.

Question: How can the doctrine of rebirth be understood empirically or philosophically?

Rudolf Steiner: I must refer you to the literature, “Occult Science” and so on; because one lecture would not be enough to answer this question; even if I would be able to give some lectures this very night, some listeners might not be able to; I do not want to boast!

Question: Is there a third cognitive faculty?

Rudolf Steiner: Imagination, inspiration, intuition; I am a little surprised that questions are being asked as if it were a fact that the lecture had not been listened to at all; after all, my answer was a detailed response to this question.

Question: Is there a real and practical difference between soul and spirit?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it follows from Theosophy that they should not be lumped together. This lumping together happened quite recently in history; a council decreed that soul and spirit are not two different things, lumped them together; since then they have no longer been distinguished, not even in science; although science is not aware that it is following an ecclesiastical dogma. There is a real difference in the relationship to the body. The relationship of the spirit to the body is different from the relationship of the soul to the body and vice versa.

Question: Should not someone who grows up in the theosophical view, who first gets to the bottom of the view of this view, become free of it?

Rudolf Steiner: That is as if someone who has just eaten had to eat again immediately, because outwardly nothing has changed in this person, at least not in many cases, because he has just eaten. One attains self-knowledge when one stands outside of one's personal self; that is, one attains freedom through self-knowledge. If you now want to become free again, where you have already become free, this is even less justified than with the meal. But then you have already achieved liberation; there is no need to become free a second time after you have just become free. The point of view cannot be compared with mere materialism or individualism, because spiritual research uses all the different points of view, but not to stand on them, but to characterize them. And the truth is not in the middle, but by the reasons that can be given for it, these points of view appear to illuminate the real truth from different sides. Only those who get stuck in abstractions can apply what is applicable to one thing to another. But just as in real life you don't just have the general human characteristics, but are first a child, then a man, then an old man, and can't ask whether you have to shed the stage of childhood again, so the question of self-knowledge is there once, but not again. There is then knowledge in the world within, and from that point on, self-knowledge begins for the human being; that is the conclusion of self-knowledge, the self-knowledge that is acquired selflessly by the individual and thus has a selfless character.

If the question of truth and error is a deeply significant one in every area of human life, it may be said that in the field of spiritual research this question takes on a very special significance. This is probably because what spiritual research wants to give people and be is connected with those vital questions that not only approach the soul in the same way as the questions of one or other science, but approach the soul, one might say daily, and ultimately make up the interest of this human soul, make up everything that can give the soul consolation and hope on the one hand, and security and strength in life on the other.

The field of spiritual research is wide. It extends, so to speak, to the entire field of development of every entity with which man can be thought to be connected in any way, for everything that comes to man in these fields of spiritual research, one might say, is condensed into significant life riddles and life questions. A question that really confronts us every hour is contained in the momentous words of human destinies. On the one hand, we see the human being entering into existence, already surrounded by hardship and misery from the cradle, and we can predict that hardship and misery will perhaps accompany him throughout his life. If we find him endowed with few abilities in childhood, so that we can know in a certain way that he will initially be only a little useful member of the human community, so that is perhaps mysterious on the one hand; on the other hand, we need only compare how many others enter life blessed with goods of fortune or endowed with significant abilities, so that one can know he will become a useful member of humanity. Outer science is not at all in a position to raise such questions, for outer science with its presuppositions proves itself from the outset incapable of answering such questions. Finally, there approaches man the other, which so to speak spiritual research combines: the question [of immortality], which finally approaches the incomprehensibilities of the human being.

Perhaps it may be said, especially in our time, that this question does not approach man at all in the manner of scientific questions. How many desires, hopes and feelings, which must not intrude into a scientific question at all, are mixed up in this question. There have been and still are enough people in our time who do not believe in the survival of the human soul when the gate of life has closed, and who deny such a survival of the human soul after death, and it may be said that a materialistic way of thinking must come to this view. Noble natures in particular may say that it is selfish to want to live only on condition that this entity passes through the gate of death and then has another form of existence, while it is selfless to give up what one has gained to the general public. From this point of view, many truly noble natures have found the necessity that materialism presents here to be more unselfish than an egoistic need for survival after death.

If only human desires and longings, fear and the dread of life after 'death were decisive, then one could easily assume that one would have to come to more materialistic views precisely out of noble sentiments. But if one approaches the question more deeply, it develops as an eminently scientific question, even if science does not have the means to provide an answer. One need only be a connoisseur of the human soul to say that the most significant thing a person can achieve for his soul is a very individual life. The subtlety, the uniqueness that serves our powers best, that furthers most what we can achieve for ourselves, cannot be given away to anything; and if the soul had to give it away with death, it would have to be lost. From this would follow that significant riddle: it would be against the world order for such a loss to happen, that the best that the soul can achieve should disappear into nothing. Not that this is an answer to the question that has been raised. But it is necessary to raise this question. These are questions that cannot be called scientific in the usual sense, questions that may also be of little concern to some souls who live their lives indifferently.

But apart from whether we can answer these questions or not, the question of where the sources of truth and error can be found in this area is closely related to our inner soul life and destiny. I have often had the opportunity to speak here about the subject of what spiritual research has to offer. Of course, it is not possible to talk about any of them, not even in an introductory way, and it is not my job here to talk about what can be heard in other lectures or is available in the literature. I want to talk about how man comes to such questions, what the insights are, then what the sources are and how man can come to errors.

Because there is a certain necessity to spread the knowledge of spiritual science, it should not only be spoken of truth and error in the field of spiritual science, insofar as these lie on the path of the spiritual researcher himself, but also in relation to the dissemination of the knowledge of spiritual science. The fate of the human being cannot be known if we only look at what the world of the senses reveals, and anyone who is not very familiar with our science also knows that the intellect cannot explain the reasons why a soul is destined for this or that fate. He also knows that the intellect can tell us nothing about the soul's fate after death, because the soul dwells in the supersensible, invisible realm, if it still exists at all as such. The ordinary powers that man has at his disposal to know the world, these powers are not sufficient to answer these deepest questions.

This is where the question arises: Are there forces in the human soul that can penetrate beyond the ordinary senses, that are not dependent on the mind alone, which is bound to the human brain? If we come to the conclusion that the soul not only goes through one life on earth, but that this life repeats itself between birth and death, and that what the soul meets as fate is what it has earned in past lives, and that what we do now creates causes for a future life . It must be said: What enters through birth into physical existence carries with it the forces that it brings in through birth into the external worlds, and knowledge of these supersensible worlds can answer questions about why a soul comes into very specific life situations. Everywhere we are pointed to the necessity of such questions, to the necessity of investigating everything with the powers of the soul that our science cannot investigate.

But do such powers exist in the human soul? It will be easiest to understand how such powers can prevail in the soul if we start from everyday phenomena, which admittedly do not approach man in the same way as the dismaying, surprising event of death, for example, but which approach without man thinking much about them. It is well known that man only reflects on what surprises him; he reflects less on what falls within his daily habits, and yet it is precisely these that can point to the deepest depths of human life. One such phenomenon that occurs daily is the state of waking and sleeping. The state of sleep is mysterious. Every day we are forced to pass into unconsciousness, into a state that spreads darkness around us. This is a significant mystery.

Let us first consider this state purely externally. We see when we fall asleep how our physical body, so to speak, falls away from us, how we gradually become unable to direct our limbs as we do during the day. Finally, we see how our senses cease to be awake to us, how our minds become paralyzed, as it were, and then we pass into an unconscious state. It would be impossible for everything that takes place in the soul from morning to evening in the form of affects, suffering, drives and desires, to disappear when we fall asleep and then arise anew every morning. It must be there, even if the person is not aware of it.

Let us first hypothetically assume what spiritual research shows. It can only be pointed out now; it cannot be shown in detail. So let us hypothetically assume that in what we see with our physical eyes, in what we can grasp with our hands, there is a supersensible spiritual element, a spiritual-secluded supersensible element. This is the source of difficulties, of incipient passion and so on, and this spiritual-supernatural goes out of the dormant state into a spiritual world, so it is present. It should be explicitly stated that this is initially a hypothesis. We will see through our considerations that it has a certain justification. If this is the case, then we have to say that the soul and spirit are also present in sleep, but are unaware of themselves when they enter that world; after all, they use the brain to perceive and appropriate the external world.

We can therefore assume that the soul and spiritual aspects are not strong enough to lead a conscious life when separated from the physical body, that they are too weak for this. If this is the case, then there must be a way to strengthen these powers. It would have to be possible for a person to artificially induce a kind of sleep, so that a state of mind would arise that, on the one hand, resembles ordinary sleep but, on the other hand, is essentially different. The induction of such a state is indeed necessary, and only in such a state can real spiritual research take place. The question is therefore whether the soul and spirit in man can be made so strong that man can, as it were, put himself into a kind of artificial sleep that is not sleep. Then the human being should be able to bring about what is brought about in sleep, that his spiritual-soul life has nothing to do with the body, that the intellect is silent, that the human being is also outwardly physical as in sleep. During sleep, the human being is in a state in which his inner being is silent, subdued, and shrouded in darkness. If, however, a person can voluntarily free himself from his own soul forces, so that he can have experiences free of the body, as if disembodied, then he experiences in the spirit, but initially he can only remember himself as a spiritual being through inner experiences.

What today appears to the broadest sections of humanity as foolishness should be feasible. There can be no proof against its feasibility. People believe they have proof against it, but such people can only claim that with their present powers they cannot know about such things. However, one can only claim that something is known, but not that something is not known. Otherwise, such a worldview makes a logical mistake. But first of all, the strong development of will must be learned, to free oneself artificially from all sense impressions, to effect silence, to dampen all color and light impressions, to want to know nothing of all this, and likewise nothing of hearing impressions and all other impressions; thus to bring to a standstill the ordinary thinking and so on. All this must be brought to a standstill by exercise of the will, just as it is in sleep. Man must now make strong what is otherwise so weak in sleep. This is done through meditation and the like.

What kind of purely mental activities are these? For they are purely mental activities. A meditation is a kind of mental-spiritual experience; but it differs from everything else that a person is used to. Let us consider how this mental activity is perceived. It differs from all other human activities in that these are there to form concepts, ideas and feelings in order to inwardly perceive something external, to depict something external. Man seeks images and expressions in ordinary life. Only in this way can ordinary life be sustained. But the whole purpose of such institutions, which exist for ordinary life, cannot be decisive for the development of the soul, which has been spiritually demanded. For this development of the soul, everything that can be spiritually thought, imagined, felt, desired, is only there for inner self-education, to help the soul to progress, to equip the soul inwardly with forces, so to speak. not what one feels, what one recognizes as outer truth through one's thinking and feeling, that is what matters, but what this thinking, feeling and sensing brings forth in the soul, what it makes of the soul.

This brings us to a completely different level than that of ordinary life, of science. In a sense, the human being must become free of the meaning of his concepts, of the content of his feelings, and must devote himself entirely to some practice with his soul. It is best if the person does not take for meditation ideas that represent something external, because in doing so one feels dependent on the external world. Best for meditation are ideas that can live entirely in the soul alone.

An idea that will seem foolish to the external, material thinker: Imagine that someone has two glasses in front of them, one with water and the other empty. Now imagine that they pour water from the first glass into the second, and the partially filled glass does not become emptier, but rather fuller and fuller, and the more they pour, the fuller the glass becomes.

This is not an actual external process. Nor is that what is important here, but rather what it can evoke in the soul. It can be a symbol for the following: It points us to an area of life that, on the one hand, leads us again and again into its depths, and on the other hand, repeatedly presents us with life's riddles, that which we summarize as “love,” starting with passionate love and rising to the soul form of love. Enormous human suffering can be summarized in this idea, and love has one property: the property that when a loving person does something for another out of love, gives up his spiritual wealth, he does not become poorer and emptier, but fuller and fuller.

It is not so foolish to form such images and symbols. In other areas, people are accustomed to forming such symbols [like a] medal. The medal is circular. We need not worry about it, but draw a circle. All the properties of the circle apply to the medal.

It is not important to recognize an object in order to perhaps fathom the essence of love, but rather to have an idea that is emancipated from external reality. Consider what happens when you manage to empty the soul of all mental judgments, of all external impressions, and to concentrate the full extent of the soul's power only on such an idea, which you have brought into focus. Otherwise in life, we distribute the most diverse powers of the soul that we have within us among the most diverse ideas arising from the behavior of human beings. We often have the soul occupied with many things at the same time. We now empty the soul completely of them and concentrate completely on one such idea, for example, of goodwill, of kindness. We must concentrate exclusively on it, live in it, and if we have enough patience and persistence to do such exercises over and over again, then we will actually bring it about that dormant forces in our soul are awakened. We learn to transform ourselves from a usually suffering, passive being into an active being, and thus we first take hold of ourselves. It is not enough to do just a few such soul exercises, but it all depends on having the patience to prepare the soul so that it always feels active.

Then there comes a time when the soul feels as if it has been reborn, because it no longer needs to form such images, to present such ideas to itself, but these then arise as if from the depths of the soul itself, and the person then indeed lives as if in a new world emerging from the hidden depths. When man has reached this stage, then the actual schooling of the spirit begins, for then a new world appears before him. But what is this world? In order to understand what this world is, we want to point out that today's materialistic man, when it comes to the imaginative world, believes that these are illusions, fantasies, and that they are the same as what emerges in a sick, pathological soul.

When we realize that we are only at the beginning of spiritual research with this imaginative world, then we compare what the spiritual researcher has attained through meditation with what can be experienced in an unhealthy soul. We encounter a trait in sick people that you are well aware of: the trait that such people have the unshakable belief that they are facing an objective world, and it is in vain to try to talk them out of it. They put forward everything with the greatest ingenuity, things that have not even been thought of, and thus they master the thinking mind. If the spiritual researcher were never able to distinguish truth from error here, he would not differ from such a sick soul. The question is how to deal with this.

From this alone you can see that initially we are dealing with nothing more than images that arise from within, which therefore need not be anything other than reflections of what the person has within himself. The person has activated forces, awakened inner life that was not there before, but he has not lived in anything other than himself. What stands before him is initially nothing more than a reflection of his own inner being. Because this reflection is experienced by the human being in this way, it is extremely difficult to make the decision that the true spiritual researcher must now make. It is necessary to realize that one is dealing with nothing but the reflections of one's own inner being, of what one carries in one's soul. But it is not enough for the spiritual researcher to know that everything is only a reflection of one's own inner self; it is also necessary that he actually has the strength to suppress the whole imaginative world so that it is no longer there.

There is also the possibility that people come to such experiences without training. Such people are then usually in love with such experiences. A person is usually extremely happy when such a world arises in him. It is therefore only through strong will training that a person, if he wants to become a spiritual researcher, suppresses the whole imaginative world so that it is no longer there. He actually suppresses his own being, for which he has trained himself. Only then do you realize how much you are in love with yourself.

It takes one of the strongest volitional efforts to suppress these reflections. Man already lives in self-love in the outer life, and this intensifies when this inner life begins. Now one should suppress what one has striven for. But it must be done. Then, however, when you have completely suppressed these reflections by developing the strong will to extinguish them, you have replaced the imaginations and must wait until they come back. Then they will come back in a new form, so that it is then impossible to mistake them for anything other than the objective world. Anyone familiar with such things finds it understandable that many people simply deny this process, for the reason that it is not easy to carry out. But then, when a new world has emerged after the person has suppressed the first imaginative world, then one knows how to distinguish between fantasy and reality in this new world as well. For many, the world is our imagination. And if such a philosophy claims that one cannot get beyond imagination, then it would be all the easier to say: How can one then distinguish between imagination and reality? This sentence is easily refutable. It is a banality that I will say, but that does not matter. The taste of lemonade on the tongue with mere imagination - but that does not quench thirst.

There is no logical proof as to whether a thing really exists or is only an idea. Proof can only be provided by life. But experience also makes a precise distinction between idea, mere fantasy and what is real; or should a person be able to distinguish between a hot iron that is imagined and a real hot iron? The same applies to Kant's sentence that three real thalers contain no more or less than three possible thalers. You can pay a debt with real thalers, but not with possible ones.

You may say that it is different with spiritual things, that what you see could really be self-suggestion. Real life makes the difference. But one must first be in real life. Life alone decides on reality, and so it is also in the spiritual realm. The practice of the soul, the evocation of the power of knowledge in the soul, teaches us to distinguish between imagination and reality. In this way, man is able to evoke the state that is indeed similar to the state of sleep in that man does not use his body. Then, when man has reached this imaginative knowledge, it goes up to higher levels, where man actually begins to have what is called a spiritual world around him, and not only in the way between death and a new birth, but in such a way that it enters into his thoughts, which he remembers. Man comes to know truths about the world beyond. How the characterized questions are to be solved through meditation can be read in the literature. The point is that when man tries to gain knowledge in this way, error does not occur as it does in relation to external knowledge, but error then springs up everywhere. In the outer world we are corrected by many things to which we are accustomed. In this area, correction does not come so easily. The human being is dependent on himself.

There are two things that must be considered. Today they can only be presented as an empirical rule. These are two things that the human being carries into the spiritual world, because he carries his entire soul condition into it, the nature of his power of judgment, his moral condition. What does the human being bring into these spiritual worlds? What the human being develops as good or bad judgment contributes to whether the human being receives stimulation in the right way. A healthy power of judgment will stir his soul in the right way. What must live in his soul will be developed regularly, like our normal eyes and ears. Just as badly constituted senses relate to the world, so does what is cultivated in the soul when a person does not endeavor to maintain sound judgment. Those who want to enter the spiritual world must start from sound human understanding.

The second thing we have to bring with us is a healthy moral state of mind and soul, a soul mood and soul disposition that has, in a sense, managed to be free of soul moods. If a person brings immoral moods into it, then the effect is not one of unhealthy judgment, but rather the immoral mood has a numbing effect, not obliterating, but evoking bad images, untrue images. Mere deception of the soul world would be merely corrected by the power of judgment; what is evoked as a work of deception by an immoral state of mind is there and one believes in it if moral drive is not set in at the same time as spiritual training.

For in the training of the spirit, it must be taken into account that man must free himself from many things, which he can only free himself from with difficulty if he wants to search objectively. We want to start from ordinary life. There we find a phenomenon that can actually be studied everywhere. We find people who are materialists and believe only in nature and law. Such people think that anyone who believes in something other than nature is a fool, and that anything that cannot be explained in materialistic terms is nonsense. On the other hand, there are idealists who are less accustomed to dealing with matter. They are more accustomed to and respect more people with a pronounced soul life. They are therefore better suited to recognize the world and its immaterial conditions. There is realism and spiritualism, and the biggest mistake in ordinary life is that everyone swears by their “ism”. What is this “ism” other than what they have imagined: the expression of their own self. They therefore love it. The idealist loves his ideas, and so on. More far-seeing minds than Goethe's are not really in the mood to say, “I am an idealist, from my point of view things are like this.” Rather, we can see in Goethe's case how he is convinced of something that is actually considered foolish by the true materialist.

The world of material phenomena lives out itself before us, and one must study matter and the law – and one will realize that what matter grants has its justification. Thus, one must also explain that which belongs to the world and its material phenomena through these material phenomena. One can very well engage with the explanations that the materialist gives for matter. Goethe says: “Between the various one-sided directions, the path into truth opens up.” One must recognize that the world is an extremely diverse one and that one must grasp the various fields through the most diverse forms of thought and imagination. So one will always find that matter must be explained in a materialistic way. If you want to become a spiritual researcher, it is necessary that you already find your way in ordinary life. You get beyond that by practicing self-knowledge, which is often quite difficult. If you try to practice self-knowledge objectively, you soon realize what point of view you are taking. This has no further significance except in our soul life. One is then more inclined to also allow others such a point of view. Such ideas are necessary.

The spiritual researcher must recognize that points of view are there for areas of the world, and that one must, as it were, have the opportunity to grasp the world as a whole, to approach it from different sides with different points of view, just as one recognizes the shape of a tree by photographing it from different sides. A materialistic and an idealistic world view can both be correct. This insight must be gained through self-knowledge. Through self-knowledge, one seeks to overcome one-sidedness.

In practice, many things turn out differently than in theory, if one takes the trouble to carry them out seriously. You have conquered a point of view, and when you realize the limitations of it, you feel the ground shaking beneath you. The point of view we have conquered is our own self. And that is why you have to go through such feelings, otherwise you will not get away from your own self, otherwise everything remains subjectively formed. It is this “getting away from oneself” that is important. When we talk about misconceptions, we cannot say: these are truths and those are misconceptions. We become free of misconceptions through self-education, when we can let go of ourselves, when we can give up our point of view. There is nothing that people are more infatuated with than their point of view.

But he must go further. He must not only get away from what we call point of view, but get away from the subjective of his thinking and feeling. One must practice self-knowledge, but that comes naturally if the spiritual training is done in the right way.

When we are confronted with the spiritual world, we are outside of our ordinary life, in which we otherwise stand. We stand before ourselves, have become a thing ourselves. Otherwise we live ourselves, now we stand before ourselves as before an external thing. The spiritual researcher joins the spiritual things when he strives into the spiritual world. We compare ourselves with the spiritual world. This comparison is usually not favorable. This is easy to understand, because when a person begins to know himself, he then knows everything that is missing in him. Man shrinks back from self-knowledge. It is indeed true: self-knowledge is what we snatch from what we have loved. We are in the air. We have felt in a certain way so far; we have to see that as a narrowly limited personality. We have thought in a certain way – narrowly limited personality. Only now does a person realize how in love he is with himself. Self-knowledge is not only difficult because it is so hard to achieve, but also because it requires moral courage, because you put yourself out of yourself, put what you were aside; because you enter into a new state of mind that you are quite unaccustomed to.

To have experienced this mood is what is necessary to avoid error in the field of spiritual research. The errors come from within us. We must always be able to renew this impression, to place ourselves beside ourselves, then we know what to eliminate; then we know how to eliminate the errors. In the field of spiritual research, repeating an error is not the same as in the ordinary world. We have to fight errors at every turn; they are realities. In the spiritual realm, truths have to be gathered at every turn, because only when we understand all this can we agree on the value of insights into the spiritual world. After all, the objection can be raised that the spiritual world is only relevant for those who can see into it. This is not the case: only those who want to explore the spiritual world must be able to see into it. Any unbiased person can understand it.

How does the spiritual researcher relate to the ordinary state of mind? A painter must learn much before he can create a picture. When contemplating the painting, one person may see only the color combinations, while another looks for what the painter has put into it, and the person who experiences most deeply would be disturbed if a theorist came along and explained how colors are mixed, or if someone were to discuss art history and so on. You stand before the picture: if you can grasp what has been put into it, then you grasp it, and you need not be a painter. It is the same with what the spiritual researcher brings to light.

Then the spiritual researcher must express what he has researched in terms that are familiar to people of his time, that can be penetrated by a healthy mind; and then the other person, as listener or reader, receives it, only the person must not approach what the spiritual researcher has to say with prejudices. Then he will understand through a sound mind what the spiritual researcher has brought down. It is not the case that only what the spiritual researcher brings can be understood when one applies this power of judgment; what moves the soul is given in a sufficient way, even if she is not a spiritual researcher herself.

The spiritual researcher himself gains nothing from his research if he only stays there and looks at things, if he does not bring down what he sees so that he can communicate it to other people. In what can be given through spiritual research, the spiritual researcher and the person who only takes in things through a healthy sense of truth are exactly the same. Because this is so, a fruitful dissemination of the knowledge of spiritual research can only take place if this peculiarity of truth and error is taken into account. It must be emphasized here that the truth of what spiritual research has to say can be proclaimed by the spiritual researcher, and that everything can be understood by the ordinary mind if one is unbiased enough. The whole scope of science can be used to verify what is said through spiritual research, but not half-baked science. If it is true on the one hand that the natural sense of truth can always be convinced by what the spiritual researcher brings forth, it must also be said that this sense of truth must also be applied to the spiritual researcher, and here we are faced with the error in the dissemination.

One can understand those who reject spiritual research. These are not even the people who worry the spiritual researcher. They sometimes feel the obligation to test and the time will come when they will see from their feeling of having to test what many have already seen. The spiritual researcher is not worried about his opponents of this kind. He is much more concerned about some of his supporters.

As true as it is that some people reject without reason, it is also true that many people make themselves followers without reason, simply because of what is called belief in authority. That is why many do not apply common sense at all. For such people, there is no way to distinguish between a charlatan who talks about all kinds of things he doesn't really know much about, and someone who knows how to research conscientiously. For people of sound mind, these two phenomena are always known. It is known that the two have always gone hand in hand and that people have been little inclined to distinguish between them. People who are not morally stable are therefore exposed to a certain danger, because they are subject to temptation. This is because the spiritual researcher and anyone who can see into the spiritual world is seen as something very special. This is an unhealthy judgment in the dissemination of spiritual research, because by looking into it, he is nothing more than a researcher in this field, only what can be learned here is much more important than what can be researched in other fields. But a person is no different or higher or better because of this, and if you consider that the fool carries his follies and the clever man his cleverness, you will not consider someone who has something to share from spiritual research to be a higher being. You can judge him by what he has in common with others. The value of a person lies in his moral state of mind.

Those who recognize the life of the soul in a spiritual sense will know how the human soul's longing, human nature's urge, is directed towards the solutions that can actually only be provided by spiritual science. It is all the more necessary that this knowledge be spread in a healthy way, because it is intended to give people the opportunity to understand their destiny, but also the opportunity to experience their destiny in an appropriate way, so that they do not stand in life without a foundation.

What spiritual research has to offer is wisdom that strengthens and fortifies us for our existence. Those who lack the strengthening and fortifying effects of spiritual science will gradually find that they lack strength and power to live in general. Spiritual research is increasingly becoming a necessity in our time. It is all the more necessary to recognize its sources, truths and fallacies. When man opens himself to such directions and thoughts, as they could only be outlined today, then he arrives at that which will more and more be able to be this spiritual research for spiritual culture, and that will strengthen him inwardly in the acknowledgment of this research, in being penetrated by the truth of this research, and he will remain calm in the face of those who do not want to engage in this research. He remains calm so that this calmness of his appears to us as a sign of the evenly attained conviction through spiritual science. Then, when he has looked into and thought about the things himself, he understands the words with which we want to conclude today's reflection as a conclusion in line with our feelings, because the best with which spiritual science can conclude is what can be combined into a feeling; truth and error are rarely viewed in this way, as opposed to everything that can shake spiritual science and its power. We must face it as Goethe, for example, faced a matter that can be compared with the way the spiritual researcher relates to spiritual research. He once had to deal with a great philosophical school that denied movement, so that people said there was actually no movement.

Goethe, who was imbued with the insubstantiality of such views, found words that aptly expressed the refutation from a healthy sense of truth. He said:

Enemy powers may eye each other,
You remain calm, remain silent;
And if they deny you movement,
Go around in front of their noses.

Those who understand spiritual research in the right way can behave in a similar way to Goethe here in the face of the refutations of spiritual research.

The hostile attitude, the resistance against the spiritual movement, is most understandable to anyone who stands on the ground of our spiritual research. Schopenhauer also says: “Thus it is the fate of the poor truth that at the moment it appears it seems paradoxical at first, and yet it cannot help it; it has such great and wide flapping of its wings that individuality dies because of it.

Today, spiritual science has natural science as its opponent, but not the real natural science. In 1909, Charles Eliot gave a speech about the future of religions, in which he said: People have within themselves and must always have within themselves a physical and a spiritual core, which they can only explore with the knowledge of the soul-spiritual.

Two existential questions arise again and again: firstly, about man's destiny, which elevates man by crushing him, and secondly, the question of the nature of the human soul. These two questions gnaw and torment in the depths of the human soul. The hopelessness of finding an answer makes man sick right down to his physicality.

Two different circumstances arise at the birth of a human being: one is richly endowed, full of promise, while for the other it is hopeless. Such is the diversity of fate. And then there is the question of immortality. This gives rise to fear on the one hand and the desire for life to take a certain course on the other.

One can believe in immortality for selfish reasons, and not believe in it with the morality of sacrifice. But the individual, the personal, is the most valuable. Does it disappear with death? It would be a violation of the world economy if something were brought to the highest tension and then lost. External science is bound to the senses and the brain; the soul-spiritual cannot be researched with it. Spiritual science stands on the same ground as natural science. The plant consists of innumerable individual cells, [says Schleiden]. The human eye must use the microscope and the telescope for the stars. Man cannot penetrate the body of life. The essence of the human soul cannot be reached by such external means. Human knowledge comes to certain limits. It cannot fathom the actual existence of the soul. With the power of thought and other things, one cannot penetrate the essence of the soul after death and before birth.

However, the inner life of the soul can be strengthened and armed. It should just not be done with external methods, such as spiritualism. Some researchers try to get to the bottom of the soul with external experimental methods. Rochas, the serious researcher, examined the human being in whom the external aspects of the soul's life can apparently be demonstrated. He used a medium for this. A medium is like a human automaton. The active soul life is erased by magnetic lines. It can then relive another state of mind, for example, when it was ten years old, then the first experiences when it was just learning to write, then when it was an infant. Then it can be transported into a state before birth; a result as dark as chaos. One can go further and further; it can feel like an old man, then like a young child. In this way the researcher of the present wants to explore the spiritual when he has the object before him.

But the spirit cannot be brought down by external means, but only through pure soul experiences. Getting to know the soul is purely inward, and only possible through inward methods. One's own thinking, feeling and willing can be strengthened by intensifying the power of thought, which is bound to the outer senses in the waking state. This can be sharpened by means of meditation and contemplation. First, it is to be applied to the power of thought when one concentrates, out of one's innermost will, on thoughts that do not arise from external stimuli. These thoughts have a self-educating effect in that they strengthen our power of thought, through symbolic images – such as two glasses – to strengthen our soul life. This is so, even if it is called crazy, nonsensical. But there is something in life to which it relates: love. It is like geometry. This also works with symbols, symbols – [as with a] medal.

For some, it takes effect quickly, for others it takes many years. Through effort, the organs are made stronger; all soul power is concentrated on one point. This draws forces from the soul. You don't jump from one to the other as you usually would. Fifteen minutes or longer [is enough]. Every waking thought destroys a fine structure in the brain, which is restored by sleeping. Science already speaks of assimilation and dissimilation. The destructive process, when we think with the brain, reflects our thoughts to us. The materialistic thinker believes that our brain thinks. But it is an internal process. The brain is destroyed during ordinary thinking. Thought is reflected back by the brain and thus destructively intervenes in our brain. Through concentration, meditation, contemplation, one does not become sleepy. Only beginners complain about it. This is because it is difficult for the human mind to detach itself from the brain. Then we perceive the brain as something that is not being used. If a person wants to experience the mind as such, they have to free it from the brain. Then the person senses how the mind becomes a purely spiritual being. These experiences are the most unsettling.

When we are awake, we feel as if we are inside our skin. Now a feeling arises of being outside the body, of looking at it. What one previously called “I” becomes an object, its outer corporeality. This is connected with the feeling of being drawn to one's body with a hundred and more forces. Once this has been achieved, one knows two things: what one is in human life as a sleeping human being and what draws one to the body. Du Bois-Reymond, as he said, only understands the sleeping human being. But the nature of the air cannot be known through the life processes of the lungs. Waking up into the spiritual and soul life is taking oneself in; falling asleep is when the spiritual and soul life passes over into our surroundings, as when one breathes out air. The amount of air we have inhaled belongs to the atmosphere, and so does the spiritual-soul life of the spiritual-soul world. The spiritual researcher knows what happens outside the body, as if the air could look down on the lungs. The human being gets to know the connection of his soul-spiritual with the body, gets to know it in its independence from the physical body, gets to know it before birth that it previously lived in the spiritual world, how he even goes to the bodily embodiment, to a pair of parents, gets to know himself in the prenatal state, all through the independence of the power of thought.

The next soul power that can become independent is the power of speech, which flows outwards in truly spoken words. The human being has Broca's organ; speech prepares it so that it becomes what it is. Cause and effect are confused by science. Through motor forces, the larynx is set in motion when speaking, something reaches into the vibrating larynx, and from there the air is set in motion. Just as the power of thought is separated from the brain, so the power of speech is separated from Broca's system [organ] by allowing meditation to be imbued with feelings and sensations during meditation “In the light, luminous wisdom flows” [...].

This is not an external sensual effect, otherwise one would be considered a fantasist, but a fool. In this meditation, one would now like to unite oneself in enthusiasm with the shining, ruling wisdom, then the power of speech breaks free from the body. One lives in it silently and tacitly, keeping something inside, breaking off, experiencing in the soul what leads even further down than the first. One looks not only into one's own past life on earth [...] but one looks back on past lives on earth. This makes it certain that life on earth will be followed by a purely spiritual life, and that another life on earth will follow. The consciousness expands in repeated lives on earth. This is how the spiritual researcher, like the chemist, comes to his results. These are not arbitrary means, but means by which one arms one's soul life, just as the eye is armed by the microscope. Then another soul power is armed and strengthened: that which expresses itself in blood circulation and heart movement. In the ordinary life, shame and fear are spiritual-soul processes that intervene in the blood, in such a way that our blood must be released and made independent.

What happens when we add the element of will to meditation? “In that light the ruling wisdom rules and weaves.” With willpower, too, we must completely immerse ourselves in such meditation, then we release soul forces that reach into the entire cosmos and allow us to glimpse the origin and destiny of our earth. Then one sees: the successive earthly lives once had a beginning; the earth was once there for the first time. The earth was once born out of the spiritual state, and will again pass into a spiritual state. There are also many other methods to achieve such results. One must become a spiritual researcher in this way, which is briefly outlined here. But to make a painting, you have to be a painter; you don't have to be a painter to enjoy it. It would be a shame if it were only for the painters. To fathom spiritual truths, you have to be a spiritual researcher; to understand them, you just have to apply common sense, even though they may be considered heresy or fantasy.

But errors are also possible. One attains higher organs by training them as described. Thus, by awakening, one attains higher senses: spiritual eyes and spiritual ears - [as] Goethe [says]. But how do you attain healthy organs? With diseased eyes, one sees inaccurately, with an inclusion in the eye or in the twilight. One person saw incorrectly, saw what was in his own eye, in which he had an inclusion, and shot at it with a revolver. The freed thinking, feeling and willing must be healthy. This happens because the starting point is healthy, namely, that one applies a healthy power of judgment, without enthusiasm and reverie or fantasy. Otherwise, the released power of thought and speech will see ghostly things that belong to our own soul like an inclusion in the eye. A freethinker's calendar has said that children should not be taught religion because they do not come up with religion on their own. But that is not logical, because a person does not learn to speak on their own if they are placed on an uninhabited island. It depends on a perfectly sound understanding of human nature. Otherwise one faints, or it is like under anesthesia when consciousness does not function properly. It depends on a healthy moral constitution of the soul, on the moral strength of life. Otherwise man does not love what arises in spiritual life, but spiritual impotence. Otherwise we want to have everything in the spiritual realm [as we do] in the physical life. Then one perceives ghosts, like spiritualists or similar people.

The soul brings with it the soul forces from previous earthly lives, not from a previous generation. The present earthly life comes from previous earthly lives. We then understand our destiny when we understand our previous life: misfortune has made me the person I am now. The Alpine plant thrives only where it corresponds to its environment. This is how the questions of fate and immortality are solved. We grasp immortality in development; we experience development. A sound mind and sound morals lead to spiritual research. Giordano Bruno expanded the blue vault of heaven; so spiritual research expands the boundaries of human life through birth and death. Away with the firmament, which is limited by birth and death. It goes from transformation to transformation. When spiritual science intervenes in education, the human being will feel when he grows old that something lives in him that is arranging his next life; he will experience immortality, the germ and core of the following existence.

Finally, I would like to express a feeling, based on a saying of Goethe's about movement. It already occurred in Greece and has recently reappeared. It was said: Movement does not exist, the arrow is always in one place, then again in one place, again and again, but always at rest. Goethe refuted this theory as not logical, just as squaring the circle cannot be mathematically proven. It can be proved, but differently. Goethe says:

Enemies may eye each other,
You remain calm, remain silent;
And if they deny you movement
Go around in front of their noses.

Or you can also say:

Enemy events may occur,
but you remain calm, remain cheerful,
and if they even deny the spirit
you do not brood about it further.
In the end, even agree with them on that point,
their spirit may be in a very bad state.