The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday I endeavored to show how what is to be presented here about Goethe's innermost and most intimate opinion and view of the development of the human soul can be gained and that nothing in his works and especially in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily is arbitrary, that nothing has been arbitrarily secreted into it. I have tried to show how the whole basis for the explanation of the “fairytale” and Goethe's world view can be gained from an historical consideration of Goethe's life, from the historical pursuit of Goethe's most important ideas and impulses. An attempt has been made to substantiate what is to be given on the subject today in a more freely formulated way.

If we allow the fairy tale we discussed yesterday to come to mind, it does indeed seem to us to be completely immersed in mystery, and one might say: either we have to assume that Goethe wanted to incorporate many, many secrets into this fairy tale, as in Faust, according to his own words, or that we could regard this fairy tale as a mere play of the imagination. If the latter were not already excluded by Goethe's whole way of thinking and being, one would have to say that such an assumption is particularly prohibited by the fact that Goethe placed this fairy tale at the end of his story “Conversations of German Emigrants”. For it is the same thought that is characteristic of Goethe's entire life, which also lies in his conversations with German emigrants, and from what immediately precedes it, we can once again take the theme for this fairy tale.

We are presented with the conversations of people who have been forced to emigrate due to events in their French homeland, which look back in the most diverse ways on their sad experiences. The whole story is focused on showing what people who have been uprooted from their environment can go through as a result of this uprooting, in terms of the loneliness of the soul; what people in this situation can gain by reflecting on their psychological experiences, by observing themselves. We can only highlight a few examples to show how Goethe wanted to focus everything on revealing how the soul that wants to observe itself, that asks: What kind of guilt have I accumulated, how have I blocked the paths to development? First of all, we meet an Italian singer who is to reveal her destiny to us because in this destiny a human soul appears before us that must cling to the surface of the world view, which, although it follows what is going on around it attentively because it is forced to do so by is forced by the processes of life to do so, but is not yet mature enough to distinguish between what may be called chance and the spiritual necessity of things, a soul that does not know how the phenomena of life must be connected, if we assume the spirit in the environment. She has behaved towards a man in such a way that he has become seriously ill as a result of her repulsive manner and is dying because of her behavior. She is summoned to his deathbed, but she refuses to come. He dies without having seen her. After his death, all kinds of things happen that give the soul just described food for thought. 'How should I behave towards this?' she wonders. After the man's death, something very strange happens. She hears very strange things in the room, the furniture dances, she is slapped in the face by an invisible hand, and she is always forced to ask herself: Is the dead man somehow there, wanting to assert himself because I refused him? The top of a cupboard bursts, and at the same moment a cupboard in her own apartment in France, made by the same carpenter, goes up in flames. Goethe did not want to express that there was anything in such events that could give rise to the assumption of hidden spirits or the coming of the dead, but he only wanted to say that there could be such spirits that interpret all kinds of events in such a way that they are not sufficiently superstitious to say that the dead are certainly rumbling; they only come into an indefinite feeling and cannot get over it. What happens to the souls in the outside world according to their level of development is what Goethe wants to draw attention to. He then shows how one comes to the position of healing a lady from sensuality and passion; he takes the path of asceticism. This is again an indication of what the soul can go through in order to experience development. Goethe then leads upwards in stages. First a soul digging in the dark, then a more real thing in the lady just described, because many come to a cleansing of their soul through fasting. We are already entering more into a reality. And through the third of the things mentioned by Goethe, we enter completely into reality. He shows how a person is initially somewhat unscrupulous, he is in a subordinate soul development and says: What belongs to my father also belongs to me. He commits theft. Then conscience awakens, the soul rises, and precisely through the unrighteous deed he becomes a kind of moral center for all the people around him. He shows a soul development that signifies an ascent from a subordinate level to a higher level of knowledge and world view.

We are dealing with soul forces that are represented by the figures, the beings of the “fairytale”, and with the play of soul forces that is to be purified into harmony, into a symphony of soul forces in the deeds that the persons perform. At first we are confronted with will-o'-the-wisps that are ferried across the river by a ferryman. These will-o'-the-wisps are initially filled with gold, but the ferryman does not want their gold as a reward because everything would end in wild tumult. He much prefers to have fruits of the earth: three cabbages, three artichokes and three large onions. The will-o'-the-wisps have the ability to create a golden haze around themselves. They meet the snake, the aunt of the horizontal direction. For her, the gold is fertile and beneficial. She becomes inwardly radiant through the gold pieces. She can now illuminate what she could not see before.

When I tried more than twenty years ago to gain access to this fairy tale in every possible way, it was above all a rewarding thought in the tangle of questions of the “fairy tale” when it became clear that above all one had to follow the gold. Gold plays a role in different ways. The will-o'-the-wisps scatter it around. There it is not something blessed in a certain respect. In the snake, it becomes beneficial. Then we encounter gold again in the golden king, on the walls of the hut of the old man with the lamp; the will-o'-the-wisps lick it down, making themselves thicker. Once we are pointed to the human soul quality that gold has something to do with when we are pointed out that the golden king represents the giver, the bringer of wisdom. Goethe himself tells us: the golden king, in comparison to the others, represents the giver of wisdom. So gold must have something to do with wisdom. Gold is what makes the king wise, what enables him to endow the youth with wisdom:

Recognize the Most High!

Gold is something that the giver of wisdom is able to instill in man. The will-o'-the wisp must therefore represent the powers of the soul that are capable of receiving wisdom and that can also shake wisdom off. It must be shown how the gold can be stored; it is stored for a long, long time in the walls of the hut. We will have no choice but to see soul forces in individual persons, because we know how well it is founded. We can describe the will-o'-the-wisps as the abstract mind, the abstract thinking, which is capable of acquiring a certain amount of wisdom. Now we also understand why knowledge in the pure power of reason plays such a role in will-o'-the-wisps. Those who absorb what science is with their bare minds absorb it in order to have something personal about it, in order to be able to use it personally.

Goethe often congratulates himself on not officially representing science as a teacher. He congratulated himself on being able to give of his wisdom to the world only when he was inwardly compelled to do so, rather than being forced to cast it aside, as is necessary when one is destined to be a teacher or mere abstract dispenser of wisdom. Goethe presents such people in the will-o'-the-wisps, who have abstract knowledge. The abstract intelligence can absorb a vast amount of knowledge, but it leads to vanity. It is also spoken in Goethe's sense: However cleverly we think, however many abstract concepts we have, as long as we have ideas that are not drawn from the depths of life, they are unsuitable for ultimately leading us into the secrets of the eternal riddle of existence. Where we need something that goes straight to the heart of the eternal ideas of existence, we need something other than abstract concepts. When we come to the boundary of the physical world and the realm of spirituality, we are repelled by all abstract concepts and ideas. Indeed, all these abstract concepts and ideas are not even capable of making us understand, so to speak, what is closest to us. How far removed the abstraction is from even the most mundane things that surround us. It is incapable of giving anything to the stream through which we must pass if we want to enter the supersensible world. And if we want to approach the very source of life, it rears up when we come up with mere intelligence. The will-o'-the-wisps are from the vertical line, while the snake is from the horizontal line. This indicates that man, with abstract ideas, removes himself from the ground, from the ground of everyday life. We see how vividly the will-o'-the-wisps are formed. But are ideas and concepts, philosophical expositions, under all circumstances that which separates us from the true source of existence? No, it is not that; for if man has the ability to live in such a way that he combines his own life forces with things, that he does not rise up into the realm of abstract concepts and ideas, but moves quietly in things, such a spirit becomes, as Faust is one when he says:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not in vain
Turn thy face to me in the fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
The power to feel and enjoy it. Thou dost
You only allow coldly amazed visitors,
Allow me to look into their deep chests,
As into the bosom of a friend,
You lead the line of the living
Before me and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.

Where man truly enters into communion with nature, the same concepts that alienate him from the world when he deals with abstractions serve him to penetrate ever deeper into existence. We must not simply turn around and say: because the abstractionist distances himself from reality, concepts and ideas are worthless in general. If there is a soul-power in them, which lives in and with things, then they become full of light at the same time. This is why gold becomes such a blessing for the snake, which lives in crevices and has a horizontal direction, and does not become alienated. When man loves things, when he mystically immerses himself in things, then ideas are the light that can help him through. Therefore, it can be experienced that sometimes scholastically presented philosophy seems frosty and sober. But when we encounter the same ideas in lonely nature lovers, in herb and root gatherers, and so on, we see how, in fact, in the serpents, in those who make contact with things, the ideas become full of light, which are sober in the abstractions. The snake thus points to the power of the soul, which has the mystical urge to submerge itself mystically in things everywhere. This is represented when the snake moves through the crevices. Man, who does not move in abstract things, comes close, like the snake, to the underground temple. If a person has a sense for the mysterious workings of the forces of nature, he comes to the heart of nature; he can experience something of what lives outside in nature in things, even if he does not have the ideas. The snake shows us the people who can live without ideas in an emergency, but who, by lovingly immersing themselves in things, come to grasp the riddles of the world. But when a balance is created, in that ideas and concepts are immersed in these mystical soul forces, then it comes about that the person who is lovingly inclined towards things can also illuminate with his own light what was previously only sensed from the sources of existence. Goethe says meaningfully:

If the eye were not solar,
How could we behold the light?
If not the divine power of God lives in us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

He immediately points out how we must respond to the light of nature's secrets if these secrets of nature are to shine back again. Man must have the inner sense, the open heart, he must have cultivated the recognition of the spiritual. Only then can he also see the spiritual in his environment. Then the snake enters the underground temple. Such underground places exist for the life of the soul. These things can only be characterized if they go into the strange workings of the human soul in development in a little more detail. Can it be felt that before the soul is able to perceive the spirit in the outer world, it has the inner certainty: Yes, there is a primary source from which everything flows? It can have this certainty and still not be able to see the spirit everywhere. Oh, it is a great goal to see the spirit everywhere. [Feeling: I myself have emerged from the spiritual. To do this, man must awaken.] Man must first develop the highest soul powers within himself. He must first evoke in himself the supersensible that sleeps in ordinary, normal consciousness. First he must ascend to higher levels of development.

First, the human being must have an inkling that something like this exists. Then he comes to another realization: I can only achieve my ultimate goal if I see how my whole existence is permeated by the spirit. I have been crystallized, born out of the spiritual, out of the supersensible, without my being involved in this birth out of the supersensible, which I can ultimately achieve through knowledge. In a mysterious way I am born out of the land that I can only reach again in the end. This characterizes the land of the beautiful lily, from which man also comes. The ferryman brings him over. Man is brought over by secret powers. The ferryman who brings to this shore must never bring anyone back again. The same real way by which we are brought over from the supersensible through birth cannot be the way by which we consciously return. Other paths must be taken.

Then the will-o'-the-wisps ask the snake how they can enter the realm of the beautiful lily, that is, how a single soul force can ascend to the highest. Two means are indicated: firstly, when the snake crosses the river at noon. But the will-o'-the-wisps do not like to travel there. It is quite beyond the scope of the Abstract Being, who wants to live entirely in ideas and inferences, to cross over in the way represented by the snake, through devotion to things, through mystical communion with things. This mystical communion cannot always be achieved. A great mystic of the Alexandrian school confesses that he has only achieved a few moments in which the spirit of the infinite has entered the soul, where the God in the breast is experienced by the human being himself. These are moments at midday when the sun of life is at its highest, when something like this can be experienced. For the Abstractlings, who say to themselves: Once you have the right thinking, it must lead to the highest, such midday hours of life, which one must await as a grace of life, are not hours in which they can travel; for them, what they are looking for must be achievable at any time. Then the snake points out to them that the shadow of the giant, who is powerless by himself, will fall across the river, and that is when they can cross over. If we want to understand the giant, we must bear in mind that Goethe was well aware of the powers of the soul that lie below the threshold of consciousness, which in the normal person only emerge in dreams, but which belong to the subordinate clairvoyant powers. These are powers that are not acquired through the development of the soul, but that occur particularly in primitive souls in intuitions, second sight, in all that is connected with less advanced souls, from which a primitive clairvoyance emerges.

Through such clairvoyant powers, man arrives at some notions of supersensible worlds. Many people today still prefer to come to the supersensible world through such intuitions or through spiritualistic shadow images than through the actual development of the soul. Everything that belongs to the realm of the subconscious, to the realm of the soul, that is not illuminated by clear understanding, by the light of insight, of self-control, everything that expresses itself like dream-like knowledge, is represented by the giant. In truth, one can recognize nothing through this consciousness, for it is very weak compared to real knowledge. It is something that one cannot control. It is best personified by a person who cannot carry weight, because through this realization nothing can be recognized that has weight for a worldview. But the shadow of this subconscious plays a great role in life. Only one word needs to be said to characterize this shadow: superstition. If countless people did not have superstition, the shadowy image of the subconscious that operates in the twilight of knowledge, they would have no idea of the supersensible world. For countless people today, superstition is still the shadow of the subconscious that leads into the supersensible. I need only emphasize how people can say that Theosophy, spiritual science, is something that only those people can grasp who put a lot of effort into raising the soul to a higher level. That is an uncomfortable thing. If the spirits want to be there for us, they should descend to us. This is where all the abundant superstitions in the field of modern superstition come from, which even today scholars pay homage to, who absolutely do not want to admit that the soul can become part of the spiritual through development. They are readily available to a medium who can give them some gift from the spiritual world. This is not to say that these things cannot be based on truth, but the distinction between error and truth is extremely difficult here and only possible for the initiated.

Goethe wants to point out this shadow of the subconscious, this realm in the human soul, but not like a polemicist, which Goethe never was. Goethe is clear that every power of the soul has its significance at its level; he even finds it useful here to have the snake give advice to the will-o'-the-wisp. But superstition plays a major role in drawing attention to and directing the human mind to the supersensible world. Goethe, who wanted to depict the entire spectrum of the soul's powers in their symphonic harmony, shows how this superstition has its good basis in the soul, in the powers that do not always come up with sober, clear concepts, but say to themselves, the things are rich, we just want to sense secrets for now, not frame them in sharp contours. This intuitive sense is something tremendously important that is to play a role in the overall consciousness and life of our soul development.

What was so clearly expressed in external nature for Goethe plays into the development at a higher level.

Goethe saw a certain law in all natural activity like a leitmotif. It is a law of balance that nature has a certain measure for all things and can give rise to all possible beings from unity. Goethe sought the law in all of nature in order to see in harmony everything that is embodied one-sidedly in the external world. When Goethe uttered this sentence, he was seen as just a poet, an amateur. The sentence only caused a stir when Cuvier, in his dispute with Geoffroy St. Hilaire, also drew attention to this law. Goethe, who lived in an understanding of nature that saw one-sidedness everywhere and wanted to grasp the whole by harmonizing the one-sided, also saw something in the soul that he wanted to combine by harmonizing. There are people who represent one-sided soul forces. The false prophets, who want to apply their wisdom everywhere, are the will-o'-the-wisps; then there are serpents and so on. He wanted to show that man can reach higher levels by representing the type of human being within himself. Thus, the sense that senses the supersensible in the sensible must be connected with abstract intelligence. One must not let the sober intelligence be subjugated by the sense, but nor should one emphasize the abstract concepts one-sidedly and refuse to understand how full of content is that which lives and moves in things. Goethe wanted to show how man can become one-sided, but how he must strive for the beautiful lily, for the inner, balancing human soul.

After the snake has received the inner glow, it enters the temple. The powers that must inspire the human soul give the strengths that man must have within him if he wants to ascend to higher existence. Goethe shows that there are certain powers of the soul that the soul must have if it is to ascend to higher levels. But if a person wants to attain the higher levels without having found the right path at the right time through inspiration, through the world powers, then this world view is something that can kill him, confuse him in his soul, paralyze him. Therefore, the youth who is not mature will be paralyzed at first, or even killed by complete exposure. So, what wants to free the mind without giving us control over ourselves, that has a killing effect, says Goethe. All our striving must be directed towards making us mature, towards shaping us so that the soul receives the highest in the right mood, in the right state. So the youth is killed at first. He is to be prepared by the endowment of soul powers by the kings. We have already seen from the golden king that he is the spiritual power that can be kindled in the soul and that gives wisdom in the right way when it harmonizes with the other soul powers. The silver king represents piety. For Goethe, beauty and the cult of art are closely related to piety. Beauty is that which makes us inwardly pious. The power of the soul that draws us through our feelings to the spiritual world is represented by the second king. The power of the soul of will [to do good] is represented by the brazen king.

But these soul powers must enter into the soul in such a way that we can distinguish them, that they enter into us in the right way, that we can master them, separate them; the life of feeling from the life of wisdom, and likewise the life of will from the life of feeling and the life of wisdom. These powers, which thus appear separately, condition the higher life of wisdom. The lower life is represented by the mixed king. Every human being has these three soul powers within them, but mixed. A higher age in the development of humanity will only begin when this chaotic mixing of soul forces ceases, when they are no longer mixed in such a chaotic way as in the fourth king, but are clearly separated from each other, with the area of soul power permeated with wisdom, and that permeated with beauty, and that permeated with the will to do good. Then the time comes when man may say to himself: “It is time.” Something else must precede this. A soul that has been led unprepared through wisdom, beauty and power would hardly see anything special.

Another soul force must guide us, which is represented by the man with the lamp. The lamp can only shine where there is already light. It is the light of faith that radiates from our hearts, even if we have not yet penetrated into things. It is what is brought as faith to things. It is a light that can only shine where there is already another light: religion can only generate faith where it is adapted to what people feel in a particular climate, in a particular cultural epoch, and so on. There the serpent, which wants to penetrate to wisdom, beauty and strength through the mere inner soul power, must encounter the light of faith that prepares the soul. Thus Goethe shows that the right time must approach, that first the soul must be guided by the light of faith, and that we can then come up to a direct grasp of the soul forces in being separate and in direct interaction. On this side of the river, then, man must prepare himself. On the other side it is shown how man, if he connects with the soul forces unprepared, damages his soul.

A strange figure is the old man's wife with the lamp, who is described as human, all too human, vain and so on, who is chosen to pay the ferryman with the fruits of the earth. This is primitive human nature, which has the power to be connected to the light of faith. We are shown: that the light shining from the lamp of the old man transforms stones into gold, wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones. The pug is transformed into a precious stone. This shows the power of faith, this very wonderful power of faith, oh, how it is able to show us all things in such a way that they really show us their divine in a certain way, show us what is in them. Dead stones turn to gold, showing themselves to be endowed with wisdom. Faith already senses this in things, how all things are not what they appear to us through the senses. This is shown by the transformation through the lamp. Man, when he remains in his healthy nature, when he cannot attain to science, has something within him that leads much more to the boundary of the supersensible. The scientist becomes a doubter, a skeptic, and one tries to see how certain some original nature, represented by the old woman, is able to give facts to the flow as the will-o'-the-wisps cannot. Such natures have an original feeling that connects them to the supersensible, which weaves and lives in everything; and one can see in such people how a compassionate smile appears when scientists talk, saying, we know something that you cannot know, that brings us together with what we are created from. This is shown by the fact that the woman can pay.

The temple must be transported from below the earth up into the upper realm, it must rise above the river. And it is conceivable that a soul has gone up the steps in such a way that it can experience, feel the midday moments of life; so that it is achieved through a higher soul development, that not only special spirits can cross the river. That is what is achieved in the new culture through spiritual science. And Goethe behaves like a prophet in the new culture by pointing out that not only special minds can find the transcendental realm, but that there is a soul development that everyone can undergo; so that everyone can walk over and across when what is the actual secret has occurred.

“How many secrets do you know?” – “Three,” replied the old man. “Which is the most important?” asked the silver king. “The obvious one,” replied the old man.

The expression “the revealed secret” often occurs in Goethe because, like all true mystics, he believed that the connection between the material and the spiritual is evident everywhere; therefore, it is not so important for man to seek the spiritual in all sorts of detours, but to really connect with things as the snake connects with them. The revealed secret of all three is that which can be found everywhere, and which requires only a certain maturity of soul. The three secrets are simply these: wisdom, piety and virtue. A fourth is still needed for this, the snake whispers into the old man's ear; the old man cannot know that. But he can know that it is now time. What does the snake say now? That she is willing to sacrifice herself to be a bridge over the river. There you have the whole secret of the sacrifice of the lower soul forces. You can find this sacrifice further in Goethe's words:

And so long as you do not have this,
this dying and becoming,
you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.

First, a person must go through all that has led him through life. But what he has gained, what he has experienced through the lower soul life, he must be able to sacrifice in order to ascend.

Jakob Böhme, whom Goethe knew very well, expressed this secret beautifully:

He who does not die before he dies, will perish when he dies.

He who enters the supersensible world before he has died for the lower self would not yet be able in this embodiment to see correctly the spiritual after death.

He who does not die before he dies, will perish if he dies.

The soul protects itself from ruin in the lower self, says Goethe, when it becomes like the snake that sacrifices itself, that is, there is a soul force in us that can connect with the forces of nature and that must be sacrificed: that which, as lower selfishness, is necessary to achieve human freedom. Therefore, that which has led us becomes the way into the beyond. We enter the supersensible world through that which we have sacrificed ourselves. The will-o'-the-wisps are now able to unlock the door of the temple. Science has the key to the realm of the supersensible, but it cannot lead into the real secrets, because it only leads to the gate of the temple, just as Mephisto has only the key to the realm of the mothers, but cannot penetrate it himself. So we see how the will-o'-the-wisps actually fulfill their role to the end and how Goethe captures the meaning of soul development in each individual case.

What remains of religious belief? The tradition in our cultural processes. Go to the libraries, look up how much of the gold is stored there, and see how the abstractions lick the gold down and make new ones out of the old books, as a librarian once said. Goethe shows that the will-o'-the-wisps can feed on that. How many scholars walk around full of what comes straight from these sources. The pug dog dies from it, it makes him feel worse. But he can be revived by the lily, as he has passed through death. Whoever wants to endure contact with the lily must first have passed through the lower death. The youth is only ready to unite with the beautiful lily when he has suffered the last misfortune, is completely dead, has fully felt the effect of what happens when one unites with the supersensible while still immature. The snake sacrifices itself, which has an immediate effect on the details of natural existence. When all this has happened, the youth can then be led into the temple. Then the soul is led upwards to the realization that everything is permeated and animated by the spirit. Then the temple is led upwards, the soul endowed with that which leads to the supersensible. Wisdom gives him that which is characterized by:

Recognize the Highest

and by the oak wreath; the golden king gives that. The silver king says:

Feed the sheep,

in memory of the pious shepherd,

Feed my lambs;

is an expression of piety. The iron king gives him a sword and a shield and says:

The sword on the left, the right free!

Stand strong and firm on your feet when it comes to defending human dignity and human dignity, but do not be aggressive. Now the young man is allowed to connect with the lily. The powers of the soul may be illuminated with truth and love, which the soul only finds when it connects with the spirit. The young man feels the love, of which it is said last: wisdom, beauty, piety and virtue, they promote the development of the soul, love forms the soul, harmonizes everything. When man ascends into the temple in which knowledge can be experienced, he comes, in holy awe, to see, like a small temple in the great temple, the highest, the secret of man himself, who passes from the spiritual world into the world of this world. The ferryman's hut is placed as a small world in the great temple; when the soul advances to higher knowledge, then it attains what Goethe felt as Spinozian love of God, it comes to the riddles, the secrets of the world. But as the highest of the mysteries, as that which he in turn sees like a small temple in the great one, that is the mystery of the existence of man himself in connection with the divine being.

The giant comes last and becomes something like an hour hand that indicates the time. Our knowledge becomes spiritual, shedding all that is external consciousness as we ascend; all forces that work mechanically, that are a remnant of the subconscious. All this may remain only in one, when we look up at what is the most external for our inner being. Thus, the merely mechanical, which has not yet been elevated to higher knowledge, has a right to exist. Goethe could have had in mind all the superstitions that have been practiced with the art of numbers and all the prevailing beliefs from old worldviews. But one thing remains behind, to form a kind of chronometer for what knowledge gives it. Thus everything is transformed into a plastic image, right down to the last detail, which Goethe felt was the law of human education.

Today I was only able to explain the main features, but if you read the “fairy tale” with this in mind, you will find that every page, indeed every half-sentence, can be proof of its correctness. One can only hint at this symbolically, in richly symbolic images. We must be aware that what is contained in Goethe's “Fairytale” is infinitely richer than what could be said, and that everything said today is only a suggestion of how to search and feel about a symbolic fairy tale. It is not possible to give more than a hint. But perhaps you have gained a sense of the great and immeasurable productive power with which Goethe created, how right he was when he said that only beauty and art can be an expression of truth. This is also what lived as a conviction in Goethe and led him from stage to stage in restless pursuit. But this is also what led us so to Goethe. Goethe is one of those minds that work in a way that only the greatest minds can. You read a work by Goethe and think you have understood it. Each time you read it again later, you believe that you have finally understood it correctly. Finally, you say to yourself: I still don't understand it, I have to wait until I become more and more mature. This is only the case with the most exquisite minds. This assures us that in Goethe we have one who belongs to the leaders of mankind. Thus, in summarizing what is to be characterized here, one may say of Goethe's spirit:

They shine like stars
in the heaven of eternal being
The spirits sent by God.
May all human souls succeed
in the realm of earthly becoming
To see their flames of light.

Somebody who speaks about spiritual science today cannot count on general approval. Since all habitual ways of thinking of our time have grown out of a ground which is different from that of spiritual science.

Since the aurora of modern natural sciences, the essential progress of human mind is based on the observation of the outer world and on the application of the reason to this outer world. Spiritual science has completely to acknowledge natural sciences and their results. However, today we live again in a time in which mind and soul of the human being long more and more for an answer of those questions that exceed the sensory view and rise to the creative powers of existence, and look for them in the spiritual.

Spiritual science is based not only on quite different requirements but also on another way of research than natural sciences apply. However, one must not believe that spiritual science contradicts natural sciences in any sense. On the contrary. Even if it takes its starting point from quite different requirements and research methods, spiritual science—understood properly—completely complies with the scientific results.

Natural sciences are based on the outer view. They have achieved great things also with the development of those tools that enable us to look into the physically smallest things. However, if natural sciences want to do their task, they have to limit themselves to that which approaches the human being from without which one can grasp with the senses and understand with the reason. Knowledge of spirit can establish only on an inner deepening of the human soul by which the soul discovers cognitive abilities and forces in itself that exist neither in the usual day life nor in the outer science. Yes, if this usual science were intermingled in ambiguous way with spiritual-scientific methods, it would get only to unjustified results in its area. Still one will find if one deeper invades into the matter that the same kind of thinking, the same logic that our natural sciences apply one also applies in spiritual science. However, we have to realise that the human soul itself is the only instrument to invade into the supersensible world. It is not allowed to stop at the everyday life, but requires that it can deeper invade into the things from the point of view of the everyday life. So that this can happen, so that the human being can become a spiritual researcher, it is necessary that the soul behaves in its whole inner life different than it was accustomed before it entered the way to spiritual research.

Our soul life proceeds in such a way that we think and feel certain things, that we have mental pictures in our soul. Which sense and purpose do we connect with this soul life? We mostly connect the purpose with it to get to know the outer world and to orient ourselves in this sensory world. The spiritual researcher is concerned with something else. He has to select single mental pictures, sensations, ideas, or impressions that can be useful for him. I would like to take a comparison.

Let us assume that we compare the whole soul life that proceeds in manifold mental pictures, which change at every moment, with many corns that exist in ears on a field. The owner of the field selects some of the corns. While he lets the other corns achieve their goal to serve as food, he selects single ones that should serve as seeds and have to produce new fruits.

In a quite similar way, the spiritual researcher has to behave with his soul life. While, otherwise, the mental pictures proceed without surveying them, he has to select single mental pictures that he does not use for the outer cognition of the world. One calls that concentration, meditation, and contemplation. Which sense does one connect with these words? We want to figure out the process that the spiritual researcher carries out.

At certain times, the spiritual researcher must try to turn away his attention completely from the outside world. Then he also suppresses all worries of life, all desires, affects, and passions. He has to empty the soul, to cause a kind of empty consciousness. He selects single mental pictures of his soul life or of spiritual science whose contents do not matter and is engrossed in these mental pictures—not in their contents, they do not matter. However, the spiritual researcher behaves in such a way that he moves a mental picture arbitrarily in the centre of his consciousness, and calls all soul forces and retains this one mental picture in his consciousness, namely for longer time and with all inner strain. It only matters that the soul makes an effort that everything is concentrated upon one point. If you have to do any work where you have always to strain your arm and if this work has a purpose, you must exert yourself constantly to fulfil the purpose of this work. However, if you want to strengthen your muscles, it may just mattes not to reach this or that purpose, but to evoke the forces that exert the muscles, so that they develop. That also applies to the soul forces with meditation and concentration, namely with forces which are different from those which one applies in the usual everyday life. We never exert our souls, so to speak, concerning the forces that we consider here if we live in the everyday life. We have to evoke deeper soul forces to concentrate on a mental picture. That is the point that we strain the soul in such a way that we also have the inner will for it.

If we get a mental picture because we can be stimulated from without, then the mental picture is caused in our soul without our assistance. It is there—we have not produced it. The mental pictures that are attached to worries, to desires, and passions originate without any effort. They are to no avail to us if we want to make our soul the instrument of the higher world. Not that is the point that we have a mental picture, but that we exert ourselves to move the mental picture in the centre [of our consciousness]. If the human being calls his deepest soul forces in patience and perseverance this way, something new happens for the soul. You can find the details about that in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?. This is something that today many people do not want to believe that for the soul something new can happen. We can compare this new to a moment which takes place in the human soul life [at a certain time]. The little child lives up to the second, third years consciously, but not self-consciously. One may say in a way that the consciousness of the child sleeps, before in the child the moment comes where it knows: I am an ego. This is a kind of awakening. It is a kind of awakening also if in the described way the soul is raised to another level of existence if it is made an instrument to behold into the spiritual world.

What you experience in your soul if you carry out such exercises can be compared with something with which it is similar on the one hand and from which it is, on the other hand, quite different: with falling asleep. How does this usual sleeping state approach the human being? I do not go into the details of the scientific hypotheses of sleep. Without special scientificity, I talk only about that which the human being experiences in the everyday life falling asleep.

We know that at the moment of falling asleep the senses no longer deliver impressions. The mind starts darkening. The human being transitions into a state in which his body is not active. At first spiritual science has to say—what logic already confirms—that the whole human being does not exist in the sleeping human being, but that the real human being leaves the body in sleep and is free from the body, that the human being is beyond his body. Now this is a hypothesis at first, but spiritual science verifies this hypothesis as a reasonable truth. Natural sciences more and more approach that which spiritual science has to say at this point. Du Bois-Reymond states that natural sciences can understand the sleeping but never the conscious-wake human being.

If one does not want to be so illogical to state that every evening all desires and passions disappear and originate anew in the morning from nothing, one has to suppose that they are still there. However, within the physical body they do not exist. This means that the human being is with his inner being beyond his body. However, this inner being is of supersensible nature, hence, one cannot see it.

There may be people who say that just certain things take place in the human being and cause other processes so that the soul life takes place.—Someone who speaks that way is in the same position as someone who believes that one can understand the nature of the air investigating the lung and its activity. One can understand the air if one investigates it beyond the body. Then it penetrates into the human body; the lung is there to use the air. Natural sciences will just discover more and more that one can compare the inner activities of the human body during sleep with the inner activities of lung and heart. It is an inner bodily work. However, just as little as the lung produces the air, just as little is that which penetrates as soul life the organism more and more a product of the body; rather it penetrates into the body, and it is beyond the body from falling asleep up to awakening.

One can still argue many things against that. One can understand these things only really, if one can prove by facts that that is something essential which leaves the body in sleep as one supposes it.

This just happens with the spiritual researcher if he does those soul exercises that I have discussed just now. Thereby he causes that soul condition which is free of the body. While the spiritual researcher refrains from that which his body provides for him, he causes that—completely awake—he leaves the body unexploited. During the soul activity, the body must not be active like in sleep. The senses must be quiet; the worries and passions that the outer life stimulate must be quiet as they are quiet, otherwise, only in sleep. The spiritual researcher causes a completely empty consciousness. Then, however, he puts one single mental picture in the centre of his soul life. For it, he needs forces that slumber, otherwise, in the depths of the soul and that he strengthens now by exercises so that he can perceive them.

What the spiritual researcher experiences he has just to experience if it should be conceded as fact. It resembles the sleep under the mentioned circumstances: it is connected neither with the movements of the body nor with the outer senses and the reason. While such state is caused, otherwise, only in sleep, the spiritual researcher gets around to getting to know his soul from a new side with his exercises. He knows, there is an inner life of the soul, even if the soul renounces everything that comes from the body. One may prove ever so much with some outer reasons that the human soul cannot live free of the body—the insight that, nevertheless, it is able to do it originates only if the body-free state is caused. Then one knows that one has a soul life that is completely different from the former soul life that the body has caused. One would like to say, this is a basic experience which the spiritual researcher attains if he has done such exercises long enough if he has already conjured up strong forces from his soul. In my book How Does One Attains Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, you can read up further details about that. I would like to describe the typical of this experience.

If one has carried out the exercises long enough, a particular inner experience appears. Either one awakes from the depth of sleep, or, one feels tempted to pause in the middle of the day life. What happens then is a kind of pictorial experience. Then you have the feeling that something goes forward, as if a lightning has struck you. What goes forward?

The human being thinks possibly that way: now you feel what you have always felt as your body, filled with physical elements, and is taken away from you.—Indeed, you realise now that strong forces are necessary to keep upright compared with such an experience. One feels that which one has always called approaching the gate of death. One is vividly acquainted with that which appears at death. Indeed, now changed feelings and mental pictures appear in the soul. Now you know what it means to stand no longer by yourself as it was the case before. Now you feel the soul transformed so that you know, it is not dark and quiet, but is internally active if you renounce any co-operation of the physical body.

This experience is very significant. It is a dramatic experience for the soul. It is something about which the soul says, whatever I have experienced up to now in life, I cannot compare the significance of this experience that sometimes shakes the soul. A lot of that which I have felt up to now only as slumbering in the backgrounds of existence of which I believe that I can only anticipate it, takes place before my eyes. Hence, I know now: yes, the human being is connected in his innermost core with that world which is behind the sensory world and which, actually, the sensory world veils only.

However, you know something else. You know that it was necessary to do such exercises, to strengthen the soul. You know this, because you realise that to the experience of the described a certain faculty of judgement is necessary and a kind of moral courage to maintain yourself. The soul forces that you have taken out of its depths give this courage and faculty of judgement. You find the further details of this way again described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?. If you have arrived at this point, you just know: unless you have prepared yourself, you would approach this event with two qualities which are doubtful to the highest degree if they appear in the context with these experiences and which you get to know only at this point of soul development: self-love, or more precisely, self-sense, and a certain fear and insecurity of those regions which are behind the sensory world. Self-sense or self-love plays a big role in the usual life, but the soul can always master them. Bad habits appear in our souls, and we can change them. Unless we want to change them, we can at least feel that we could change them. Compared with a force of nature, flash and thunder, we do not have the feeling that we can change it. If we entered without preparation into the state that I have just described, you would realise that you have strengthened, indeed, your soul forces, but that you have also brought out something else, namely reinforced self-love. Only if you have also strengthened the other soul force, you are able to decrease this self-sense. Just as little as you are able to resist flash and thunder, just as little you are able to resist self-sense, to snatch it away from the soul life.

However, if you have made the soul an instrument for the spiritual world in the right way, then the survey of the picture enables you to recognise this self-sense in its true form. Since this picture shows something else than one could describe it with few words. It shows everything that we have called our ego, our soul up to now as put beyond ourselves. It shows what we have wanted up to now from which you suffer, with which you are pleased. Now you know: I have to place down all that from myself if I want to develop that out of myself, which can lead me into the supersensible world.

You get to know yourself as soul at this point of existence only. You know now what it means to face yourself with true self-knowledge; you know that you retain nothing of that for a higher knowledge which you have called your ego up to now—you have to cast off it and retain it as something external. Facing yourself objectively, considering yourself as another person or as an object is a preparation for penetrating into the spiritual world. However, this requires that you have also developed the strong forces to defeat the reinforced self-sense. Someone who has not done this would experience infinite pain if he realised that he has to cast off and renounce everything that he has suffered in order to behold into the spiritual world.—Nothing of that which serves to you in the world seems suitable to lead you into a higher world.

Hence, it is necessary that you defeat self-sense. Something else yet appears. If the human being does this experience, he notices that his whole security of life was contained in that which you have to set aside from yourself, which you ignore now. There fear seizes you, because you must leave behind for a while what gave you security up to now. Now it is as if you lose ground. Only if you have attained other forces, you do not have fear but courage to penetrate into the unknown land of spirit. What lives there in the soul as fear appears quite different to you. The soul life is something very complex. Only a part of it is aware; another part rests always down in the depths of the soul that the spiritual researcher brings out with his power. The human being only knows a part of his soul life; other parts work into the usual soul life. However, the human being knows nothing about them. Yes, the usual soul life often is there to blanket what rests in the concealed depths of the soul. The human being helps himself to get over them, while he deceives himself. For that who knows the soul a phenomenon is very interesting which appears to the human being of the present paradoxical, but it is true.

In the present, we see people, materialists, who do not want to search the spirit in its true figure on the way of spiritual life. Why does one become a materialist? If you understand, why this is the case, you become tolerant on one side towards the materialist because you realise that under certain conditions the soul cannot be different if it does not receive the suggestion to come out of materialism. Since that who investigates the soul of the materialist notices that in its depths nothing but the fear of the spiritual world prevails.

It is that way. Even if the materialists resent that, it is in such a way. They are afraid in the depths of their souls without knowing it; they are afraid of the spiritual world because they have a dark feeling of the fact that they lose ground if they leave the sure ground of reason. They are afraid of it, and, therefore, they blanket this fear with materialist theories, as one dazes himself against fear. The materialist monism is nothing but dazing fear in the depths of the soul. The true psychologist will be able to recognise this always. In the materialist-monistic theories is not only that which the materialists say, but always fear is visible between the lines. The reinforced soul power must overcome this fear, and then the human being dares to jump over the abyss and to penetrate into the spiritual area.

Then the human being becomes aware that, indeed, his soul life splits for the experience of the spiritual world in a way. What does this splitting mean? Expressly I would like to emphasise that the true spiritual researcher should not be a dreamer or romanticist who wants now to leave the sensory world completely and to live in the spiritual world. He has to attract that again about which he knows that he must cast off it for the spiritual world. The spiritual researcher must manage to move about freely between beholding the spiritual world and living in the sensory world, otherwise he is no spiritual researcher but a daydreamer for the outer world. He reaches this if he takes a healthy soul life as starting point.

Hence, you can convince yourselves that the real spiritual researchers are sober in the everyday life because they have realised objectively, not only subjectively that it is necessary to consider everything soberly to be no romanticists. They position themselves in the usual life as practical people. They know how to keep the balance between the usual life praxis and the life in the spiritual world. It is very important just to stress this point because the soul life must split, as well as a big number of corns are separated from a few which are not consumed, but are used as seeds.

Thus, the human being realises that his soul life is not completely separated from himself. He sees as it were a part of this usual soul life beside himself; he feels it as something that cannot place him in the spiritual world: the corns that serve as food. However, the other part bridges the abyss. This is that part which develops from concentration; it is that part which is used as seeds for the soul life that goes to the spiritual world. So that it develops healthily, it is necessary that the spiritual researcher is able at this point to behave different from that who—with a pathological soul life—has reached this special point which he learns to feel as very painful.

That which approaches the spiritual researcher if he has fulfilled all preconditions is that he does no longer need from a certain time on to concentrate upon certain mental pictures, but they appear spontaneously from his empty consciousness which show a new world. A new world fills his consciousness. For the outer viewer this world becomes very similar to the pathological hallucinations. However, they are only externally similar. A pathological soul life leads to hallucinations. The healthiest soul life of the spiritual researcher leads to the world of pictures or Imaginations. We realise with that who sees an imagery emerging with an unhealthy soul life that he believes with an inner force in their reality that he believes that his delusions are true. Many of us know that one can dissuade a person who is ill this way often from that which he sees with the eyes but not from the “reality” of his hallucinations. Why is this the case? Because just in such pathological soul life which appears with such strong force also the self-sense increases. The person concerned is one with his mental pictures; he produces them from his soul; they are the silhouettes of the soul life, they are compressed imagination. Because he himself is that, he believes so firmly in them. Since the human being must believe absolutely in himself if he wants to stand firmly in the world—and then he believes in his visions like in an objective world.

The spiritual researcher has to attain defeating the self-sense that he has now to remove that imagery arbitrarily again which can work so blissfully on him. If anybody does the exercises in the right way about which I have spoken, he attains the ability to extinguish this imagery—which appears really as a spiritual world as in the morning the sun appears on the horizon. The exercise has to consist of the special will training that one not only gets around to evoking this imagery but also to extinguishing it again—any knowledge is based on it in the higher world. This is the difference compared to the pictures of the pathological soul life. If the exercises are done, the human being attains the peculiar force to make his will gradually stronger and then to diminish it again. One does not have this ability in the usual life. One can make efforts and refrain from them. One has to learn this only by training that one makes the will as strong as I have described it. If the whole imagery has emerged, one must consciously weaken the will more and more which has conjured up this world and must be able to let sink this whole world. However, one is able to do this only after defeating the self-sense.

Think only what you demand from your soul. You demand that you assert yourself at first to evoke such a world; then, however, you must extinguish it again. You cannot enjoy it. You must see the whole world, which we have developed by external strains, sinking in the depths of your consciousness as mental pictures that you have forgotten. If you have attained this, you enter only into the true spiritual world, the world of spiritual beings and facts. The spiritual researcher knows by the preceding exercises that he lives now in the spiritual world. If he did not have acquired this ability to let disappear all that again, he could not be a free observer of the spiritual world. You can compare that with a situation where you look at a thing and cannot turn away from it. Turning your attention to and away from something corresponds in the area of spiritual observation to attaining the impressions and removing them. If the human being has come to this point, not only the splitting takes place which I have already described but he faces two separate areas as it were. From one area he experiences that he has to set aside it from himself; he feels, it is that which he has estimated up to now as his only possession about which he also recognises that he casts off it at death. A certain courage is necessary to grasp this in real knowledge. Since the human being recognises that he must learn to deprive himself of something willingly to which he is attached and which is snatched away from him usually only at death.

Then he gets to know that as it were the fruit that is chosen as seed is the human essence which is not taken up in the physical body, but which is only the basis of it. The essence is due not to the ancestors, but originates from the spiritual world; it uses what the parents give to the external-bodily existence.

Spiritual science points out that in the human being probably the qualities of the ancestors live that, however, it is an inexact consideration if one says that the human being is only composed of that which he inherited from the parents. Physically the human being bears the characteristics of his physical heredity, but something spiritual-mental can come only from something spiritual-mental. You can get to know the spiritual-mental core this way. Because the human being is an internally closed individuality, you are not concerned with something generic. That is, the spiritual-mental core is rooted in the individual of the human being. However, with it we realise that teaching of repeated lives on earth.

This spiritual-mental that we bear in ourselves and through the gate of death is rooted in a former life on earth and further ones, until there comes a time when it lived for the first time. What rests in this part of our being walks through the gate of death and lives then in a supersensible existence. From this, the human being enters into a new earthly life while he proceeds towards the line of heredity.

You realise, the logic is completely the same as in natural sciences. He who wants to fight against it does only not know about which he talks, actually. Since if that who stands on scientific ground wanted to say: nevertheless, one can prove that the qualities are inherited from the parents—, one must answer to him: as far as natural sciences can prove it, one can only say: it is true!—If, however, the materialist monist says, because one has inherited these qualities from the ancestors, they could not be due to that which the human being has acquired in a former life as forces which appear in his current life again, then one has to answer, one can say just as well, the human being is wet because he has fallen into water.—The one is true because the other is true. It is true that the human being has inherited certain qualities from his ancestors—it is true, however, also that he was attracted by these parents because he has to appropriate the forces which he can get just from these parents. Something spiritual causes something spiritual only.

Someone who wants to look properly at this matter admits that today spiritual science has to go forward as Francesco Redi did who had to establish the sentence as a scientific truth: life can only originate from life.—Spiritual science will experience the same destiny with reference to the acceptance of this truth. People did not accept this sentence with pleasure. Only by the skin of the teeth, Francesco Redi escaped from the destiny of Giordano Bruno. Today one does no longer talk of heresy, but today one calls the persons daydreamers who have to announce something new. Today one has milder methods than burning at the stake to prevent what must come into our civilisation. However, it will happen in such a way as it always happened in such cases. What one called pipe dream at first becomes self-evident afterwards.

I have already said, one is not surprised about opposition. The thing is in such a way that not only those who deal a little with these things, but also those who want to enter into the spiritual world with good will do not yet want to understand the teaching of the repeated lives on earth.

With the teaching of reincarnation, we face the question of immortality quite unlike if one judges it concerning an infinite time. Then you face immortality in such a way that you see it establishing link about link. One speaks of the fact that the soul lives on because one realises that in one life on earth the seed of another life is enclosed

We see a human being growing up from his earliest childhood in affectionate surroundings, and we see another human being growing up in surroundings that can work only badly on him. Why is it that way? There we must consider the one and the other life caused by a former life on earth. Even if it sounds hopeless, on the one hand, that every misfortune is self-inflicted, one has to say, and nevertheless that good luck and misfortune concern something else if one considers good luck and misfortune from the only entitled viewpoint.

What I mean with it, I would like to show by an example. An eighteen-year-old young man whose father was very rich led a loose life. He wanted to learn nothing, enjoyed life only, and was on the way to become a scapegrace. Then his father died, and at the same time, his property got lost. The young man was thereby forced to learn something, to work, and he became a capable person. There he had to say to himself, what seemed to be misfortune was good luck for me.

Thus, we have to say to ourselves in a misfortune, we have determined ourselves for this misfortune from a former life; we have led ourselves to this destiny. Then it is unjustified to judge a misfortune, while we experience it. One has to consider it as the result of a former imperfection. We have to say to ourselves, the soul would not be able to develop completely if it did not experience this misfortune. The misfortune can be a school of perfection.

If anybody has already here attained a knowledge that he has gained in life, and we ask him, you have experienced grief and pain, joy, and bliss—which experience would you rather give away?—If the human being contemplated about the true issue, he would answer: I accept joy and bliss gratefully; but from the sufferings, I have just received my knowledge: I would never have become that who I am.—One judges suffering different from the viewpoint of the usual sensations. Thus, one must not call the teaching of repeated lives on earth hopeless. What is given to us with this teaching? The question of immortality and the question of destiny. The question of immortality is solved because we know that this life carries the seed of the following life in itself. Thus, the whole life combines to an immortal one quite scientifically. The question of destiny is solved because destiny is necessary for development. Trying to understand death and pain means strictly speaking that you develop interest for the big riddles of life.

In 1909, a great scholar, Charles W. Eliot, held a lecture about the future of religion. He admitted that the human being has to get from the natural processes to assuming spirit and soul; however, he also demanded that the future worldview must not take death and pain as starting point. He said, the worldviews of the past talked about pain and grief. The sufferings are reduced with joy. A worldview should talk only about joys and overcome pains.—One would like to agree with him, because, indeed, it would be desirable that the human being could speak also about a joyful material life. However, if the human being wants to refrain from death and pain and says, I do not want to build up a worldview on grief and pain, I want to accept a joyful life only, then one must answer to him, even if you accept a joyful life, death and grief come automatically, they approach you, they enter into your life. Only such a worldview can really cope with the riddles, which, like spiritual science, encompasses suffering and joy because both are means of perfection. A worldview can only cope with death if it understands that the spiritual-mental core has to cast off the cover that it has around itself as the plant seed has to cast off the withering leaves and blossoms. To enter into the next life we have to develop the spiritual-mental core that has to cast off the body, has to go through death.

There one copes with death because one recognises that one can get to a new life with it. One recognises death as the root of the immortal life. Not because one copes with the world riddles grief and death that one closes the eyes before them as Charles Eliot means, but that one recognises them as necessary like luck and life. I have just said that in the present many preconditions are not yet there to penetrate into these things. I would like to quote a man who tried to settle deeply in spiritual problems who delivered some wonderful, however, also often mystically-blurred things, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949, Belgian author). He approached the question of immortality in the last time. He got to know the teaching of reincarnation and karma. You can literally read in the translation of his newest work (La mort, On Death, 1913) about that which he regards as “faith.” He regards spiritual science as faith. He says: “Since there never was a faith, which is nicer, fairer, purer, more moral, more fertile, more comforting and more probable in a certain sense than this.”—He means the “faith” of theosophy.—

“With its teaching of gradual atonement and purification it only gives a meaning to all physical and spiritual dissimilarities, to any social injustice, to any outrageous injustice of destiny. However, the goodness of a faith is no proof of its truth, although 600 million people follow this religion. Although it is closest to the origins wrapped in darkness, although it is the only religion that is not spiteful and not vulgar, it would have had to do what the others did not do: to give us unquestionable proofs. Since what it gave us up to now is only the first shade of the beginning of a proof.”

There you see such a person who has approached spiritual science who finds, however, no possibility to provide a proof—what he calls a proof.

One has to say to that first: if he does not regard anything as proof, it does not mean that this view cannot be proved, but it means that this view has not penetrated him. It is typical for the present that it is so hard for people to find their way to something that once will be a matter of course.

Secondly, one has to say, if you just find such a statement like that of the brilliant Maeterlinck and you figure it out deeper, the thought suggests itself automatically: should this view of repeated lives on earth be proven? As well as I have today discussed that—even if sketchily—I have given what you can call a rationale. However, it may be that anybody demands something of a proof that one cannot demand at all from a proof.

I would like to remind of something else. There were always people who dealt with squaring the circle. Those persons who invented proofs over and over again have gradually become a real scourge of mathematical societies. Since they received a number of such proofs every year, which all were nonsense. However, one always believed that the proof would be found once. Finally, the Paris academy did not know how to escape and cast them into the wastebasket. Nevertheless, it was not allowed to suppose that the proof could not be found. Once one could reflect on squaring the circle, now no longer, because meanwhile one proved that this proof could not at all exist. The squaring the circle is not possible. Nevertheless, there are very simple means to transform the circle into a square. One takes a paper, cuts a circle out, carves it into small pieces; and puts them into a square. Then one has not done it with calculation but with an action. One cannot calculate it, but one can go forward this way. Nevertheless, the thing is true and reasonable, but one has searched the proofs in the wrong way. Maeterlinck does it that way. He demands something that requires a wrong way of thinking.

We realise from it which difficulties even today exist to acknowledge spiritual science. We realise just in this newest work of Maeterlinck that also such a man manages hard [with these thoughts]; we realise that it is difficult to introduce spiritual science into humanity.

One cannot say, well, if the thing is in such a way as you have told, then only the spiritual researchers can enter into the spiritual world. That is not the case. To be a spiritual researcher is only necessary to search the things in the spiritual world. If one has found them, however, one has to transform them into a thought-image as I tried it in my book Occult Science. An Outline. If then this thought-image is properly created, the common sense can understand it, and then one does not need to prove it in such a way, as Maeterlinck believes it. Everybody can understand spiritual science who considers that unbiasedly which the spiritual researcher has transformed into thought-images. As you do not need to be a painter to understand a picture, you do not need to be a spiritual researcher to understand the spiritual facts that the spiritual researcher has received from the spiritual world. The common sense is able to do this if it is not bound to prejudices. The soul needs that which the spiritual researcher has transformed into a picture for its security and strength. The spiritual researcher has still nothing of the spiritual world if he only walks around there; he has something only if he transforms that which he beholds into thought-images and ideas.

Although in our time everybody can become a spiritual researcher to a certain degree as I described it in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, so that he can convince himself directly of that which I have said today, it is not necessary that everybody is a spiritual researcher. It is as with a riddle that you have to solve; you have not to prove the solution if you find it out for yourself. If you face spiritual science properly, you combine with it from understanding, as well as one can find the solution of a riddle.

He who delves into spiritual science settles in it. Because the soul is destined for truth and not for error, we know if we have penetrated into the spiritual world by the messages of the spiritual researcher: we have understood it.—If the solution of a riddle is told to us, we believe not only that it is in such a way, but we also know it. This is the case with the understanding of spiritual science. It cannot be accepted only on authority, but as soon as it has been informed to us, our soul adjusts itself so that we also understand it. The spiritual researcher has a little bit more of this understanding if he has transformed the spiritual facts and truths into thought-images. Every human being who approaches spiritual science has the same for his soul; he has a new relationship to the riddles of life, to the question of death. This understanding is not only theoretic, but can serve as an elixir of life. If a human being is so educated that the spiritual-scientific concepts live in him, he will also feel towards age in such a way that he can probably understand the Goethean word “one becomes a mystic in old age.” Then he says to himself, if my limbs start withering if my body pines away, I am like the plant seed whose leaves wither. The spiritual-mental core arises in me. One will not only know about this essence, one will feel it as a force that goes through the gate of death and through a spiritual world to prepare a new life again. This solution of the question of immortality is practical for life. The human being will experience the immortal in himself.

Spiritual science will become an elixir of life this way; it will be able to give the human being strength and security. We know that today life is more complex because of the triumphs of natural sciences than it was once. We also realise that the soul sometimes needs a support that it cannot have from that which you can get spiritually from the past. Natural sciences continue to lead humanity from triumph to triumph. However, with it the human being will be torn more and more. Strong inner forces have to be there. Only spiritual science is able to strengthen the human beings enough not to get nervous by the effects of modern life. If, however, anybody really penetrates into spiritual science, he rises more and more to those viewpoints to which the true spiritual researcher rises already today.

The program shown in Frankfurt was also performed in Darmstadt, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden and Cannstatt; the Tübingen program was slightly different.

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