The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Thoughts always remain somewhat alien to sensory reality; they can only be understood if one recognizes their origin in a spiritual realm. With thoughts, one is already in the spirit. A person who wants clarity about the spiritual must not flee from the experience in the thought. They must be able to live in the thought. There is no support, no point of rest, as there is when one simply deals in the realm of imagination with what is communicated by natural processes and human life. Thinking can spin out of itself nothing but empty thoughts; but in the experience of thinking, this does not remain empty.

In the continuous life, with appropriate attention, one can see how living forces are at work in thoughts and how what we call conscious thinking is only the soul illuminating objective thinking.

Comparison with traces of footsteps.

Impossibility of finding the spirit in matter.

The thinking self-awareness is not in the material processes.

The origin of sensory perceptions.

Knowledge first mediated by matter; waking up and spiritual awakening. Then perception (looking) in the being that has made the body a mirror of the whole physical course of life. Looking at life against the background of death.

In sensory perception, partial death lies behind the perception - which is always compensated for when the senses are at rest.

In the perception of the human life cycle, behind the gaze lies death and behind this lies the supersensible world, which gives us the supersensible consciousness from the forces that also reveal themselves in the material world.

In general, people lack the calm and inner strength to experience the spiritual. He has the most vivid desire to know something about the spiritual, but he likes to avoid bringing about the situation through which he might learn something about it. His thinking tool has been wrested from the context of the spiritual, while the rest of the human being remains in contact with it. Therefore, when the spiritual comes into consideration, he likes to rely on feeling.

The spiritual can only be experienced. The insight needed here arises when man realizes that the idea - the thinking - is as little conditioned in the body as the footprints found on a path are from the earth on which they are found. But here one cannot gain the right insight by examining the ground, but by knowing the being that left the footprints.

In the material world, man only notices what he can perceive, not what is effective in perception; in the spiritual, he loses himself in activity and does not come to perceive this activity.

For the one who has awakened to intuitive knowledge, matter ceases to be matter; it becomes flowing activity - which is no longer as foreign to one's own being as the perceived matter. But the imagination ceases to be the activity that is enthroned above things, looking down on them: it is immersed in a powerful reality. One must experience how the spirit works in matter. One must experience that in developing one's inner life, one does not become estranged from the world, but connects with it. However, this connection is not possible with the perceived material, but with that which works in this material.

When a person remembers an event that he has experienced, something that was separated from him but is stored in his body is before his soul; in the material world, something that was separated from him but is stored outside his body is before his soul.

To bring thinking so far that one has handed it over to the world process and can watch its fate there.

There is a being within man that unconsciously confesses to the ordinary consciousness the truths that spiritual science expresses; if this being were not in man, he would have to abstain from thinking and willing.

By observing nature, one can only gain knowledge of nature, that is, of material processes. It is different with that which the soul develops within itself by allowing knowledge of nature to take effect on it. Then the processes behind the material reveal themselves to it, with which it itself is related, but not to its sensual capacity for knowledge. Therefore, one should not interpret and allegorize on the basis of natural phenomena – but rather allow the soul to develop through knowledge acquired through these phenomena. The naturalist is reluctant to progress from thinking about nature to experiencing knowledge of nature.

In religious experience, the soul is directed towards the spiritual world – but there it attains only consciousness of the spiritual, not knowledge of this spiritual – the situation is different with that which the religious consciousness desires in the soul when it becomes strong and powerful – it then produces desire for spiritual science. The representative of religion is often averse to letting religious consciousness become so strong that it demands knowledge.

Spirit and matter confront each other in the human experience of existence. To recognize how they relate to each other is the endeavor of every person who awakens from the dull life that asks no world riddles. And there is a feeling in the soul that, having attained such knowledge, one will face the events of the world differently than by merely accepting them from the point of view of: this happened today, that happened yesterday. And yesterday's happened to me like that; today's happens to me like that. One need not say with Schopenhauer: Life is an unfortunate thing; I have decided to endure it by reflecting on it. But one can admit to oneself: Life is full of riddles; I want to find myself and myself in it by taking it so seriously that its riddles are an incentive for me to deal with them.

If a person delves into the phenomena of the material world, he can gain rich insights; but these insights remain silent when the soul asks about its own nature.

When man awakens a true consciousness of his own inner being, he can feel the strengthening power of the spirituality living in him; but this consciousness must also ask: Why is it transferred into the material world, whose nature thereby becomes so important for its own nature?

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science arises in the human soul when, on the one hand, the reason why knowledge of the material world remains so mute is understood; and when, on the other hand, the self-sufficiency of a consciousness in the spirit becomes the endeavor to penetrate from the spirit to its manifestation in the material world.

In order to experience the material world as his own, man must be so interwoven with it that he is matter himself with a part of his being. He is this with his senses and the thinking body that is connected to the sense life. While he is awake and devoted to them, his spiritual being lies outside the circle of his attention. What takes place in the senses is itself of a material nature. Through his senses, man plunges into the essence of matter. If the whole essence of man were given in this way, he could never have a consciousness of himself. He would be a sum of processes that matter settles with itself.

Self-awareness is acquired outside of matter. But as soon as the processes of matter cease in ordinary life, self-awareness also ceases. This is the case in sleep. Man knows of his self through matter; but in the self he experiences spirit. He brings himself, what he is, to consciousness through matter. In the ordinary waking up, it is true that man's knowledge is awakened, but not his essence. That this essence can also awaken can only be proved through experience, through direct realization. It can be proved. Man can awaken to life in the spirit, not merely to life in matter.

In such an awakening, one does not merely experience a kind of repetition of material perceptions, but a spiritual world. One experiences the essence of the human being, which not only produces the processes that lead to sensory phenomena, but the essence that makes the body a mirror for the psychological phenomena that take place between birth and death. Against the background of death, life reveals itself. But death does not merely show its surface, but its deeper content: the supersensible world, which has ceased to function when the soul enters physical life, and with the onset of death, just as the living and constructive powers of the body enter into action, as opposed to the activities through which sensory perceptions arise. Death, as it were, becomes transparent on its surface and shows its interior, which is the creative spirituality. If the body did not carry within itself the forces that cause death, life could not be brought to self-awareness. Just as the painter's brushstrokes would never produce a painting if they did not meet on the canvas.

But the soul itself is not contained in the body - not in material processes. It is merely effective in them. And what it has achieved is not exhausted in the traces that arise in the material; it lives on in the soul itself - will impress itself on the soul like memory of past activity. The memory that remains on the surface of the soul is a reflection of the memory that is rooted in the deeper layers of the soul and carries the experiences of the soul through death.

Plato believes that “a life without research is not worth living”.

K. Rosenkranz finds the thought “devastating”: “what would happen if this world did not exist”. The anthroposophically oriented spiritual science sets itself tasks in such a way that it takes into account the progressive development of humanity. The forces with which man tries to solve the great riddles of the world are different in the successive ages.

In the present age, we are particularly aware of the world riddle that is encapsulated in the opposition of “spirit and matter”.

We will start from two images:

G. Th. Fechner, who approaches what he calls the “night view”.

K. Rosenkranz, who trembles at the thought: “What would become of me if this whole world did not exist?”

Personalities such as these turn to the insights of an age to give people the strength to face life with understanding. For behind the intellectual riddles of the world stand those of the soul. Contemplation of the joys and sorrows of life, its changing destinies. It would be a sad state of affairs if man were to seek and accept only those ideas that correspond to his desires. But underlying all such striving is the endeavor to recognize the truth, even if it is painful, for it is a better support in life than illusion.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science first draws attention to the essence of thought. It recognizes the spiritual nature of thought. And at the same time it recognizes the reality of thought. This is all something that can be understood with ordinary consciousness.

But when one has recognized the reality of the world of thought, then one gains the possibility of actively engaging in it. This, however, leads continuously to the experience of the spiritual world.

Man, who makes use of material processes, is now placed in the spiritual world.

The spiritual researcher can be understood; for if the one who listens to him properly has the right idea, then he also has the matter.

It is recognized: the soul causes the material process in the bodily tool. When this causing has passed, consciousness first arises. Behind this are processes of dissolution.

In spiritual knowledge, the soul is grasped in its processing of the material bodily processes. —

From there it arrives at the knowledge of the continuous production of physical life between birth and death. Against the background of death, [life] appears. But death does not now represent its surface, but its interior.

Manuscript, undated, c. 1917

Anyone who wants to talk about the immortality of the soul in the age of the scientific worldview must take a perspective that can satisfy the prevailing type of thinking in the field of scientific research. His approach must not be less rigorous than that of serious science. That is to say, he must adduce proofs that can be conclusive in the forum of natural science. It must be borne in mind, however, that these proofs may still meet with the most violent opposition in our time. This is only natural. For many a person has formed certain ideas about how a proof must look at present, believing that he knows how physics, chemistry, biology, etc. prove their findings. He then finds that spiritual science, as it is meant here, has no scientific proofs to offer, but only a belief that is peculiar to religions. Such an opinion is perfectly understandable to someone who is himself familiar with this spiritual science; and he will find nothing strange or surprising in it if his explanations are currently still criticized as subjective beliefs.

Only the future will bring a more general understanding of how things stand in this field. For this understanding, it is necessary to learn to imagine how differently the field of the spirit must be investigated than that of nature. It will have to be recognized that the evidence for any fact to be cognized spiritually, e.g. for the independent life of the soul after the death of the body, must take quite different forms from those for a physical fact. Precisely because that evidence is to be as rigorous in its field as this is in its own, it must take different forms. It is not a matter of adducing proofs for the immortality of the soul, as they are justified in chemistry, but solely of how such proofs of immortality must be shaped for the cognitive need of a person who is able to properly appreciate the scope and significance of chemical or biological research. For those who do not want to admit this, even the insights into the soul that are held to be true spiritual science will be mere belief. And yet, in no sense is it intended to speak here from the point of view of belief, but from the standpoint of a science, which is this for the spiritual realm as natural science is for nature.

Now, many phenomena in present-day spiritual life can give the impression that many people, even those who stand on the ground of the strictest science, have lost the old prejudice that only natural science is a true science. Strict researchers and serious thinkers are beginning to investigate the continuation of the soul's life after death. Societies have been founded for such research, which aims to transfer the question of immortality from the realm of faith to that of strict science. There are already enough people of insight today who no longer consider anyone who devotes themselves to a scientific examination of such questions to be backward.

But these very researches usually show in the clearest way that one does not consider how different spiritual-scientific evidence must be from natural-scientific evidence if they both arise from the same scientific way of thinking. Such thinkers, who have formed their opinions about science through natural science, try to approach the spiritual world in the same way that one approaches nature. They want to conduct experiments in the field, as they do in the laboratory. I do not want to talk here about the attempts of the so-called spiritualists. People should not come into consideration who do not want a sufficient judgment about a scientific control in investigations. But at present, personalities may be mentioned in this field who have the will and seriousness for scientific research. Of course, the experiments and observations of Gurney, Myers, Podmore, Hodgson, Oliver Lodge, James, Wallace and many others may be considered prejudiced, perhaps even childish; but only someone who is thoroughly prejudiced can deny these men scientific spirit.

However, the experiments made in this direction clearly show how little understanding there still is today for developing the scientific way of thinking in such a way that it can seriously be considered for the spiritual realm. The natural scientist is accustomed to his field of research unfolding outside of his own soul. He must endeavor to accept as knowledge only what this field of research reveals, while keeping out of his own soul everything that comes from its own experience. He can only recognize as natural laws what is justified by facts independent of himself and his thoughts, and what exists independently of human ideas. Therefore, he also only wants the results of revelations in the spiritual realm that do not come from ordinary human consciousness. He believes, for example, that he can only learn something about the soul that may exist after death if it manifests itself within the world of facts in the same way that a physical force manifests itself. This leads him to his experiments with so-called mediums. These are persons in whom ordinary human consciousness is eliminated through certain events. The physical body of such persons behaves like that of a sleeping person, except that they develop an activity in response to questions or other stimuli, in which their own conscious soul life is uninvolved. It is then as if a foreign spirit were speaking through such persons, or, as in automatic writing, were using their hand to make itself known. If one could recognize in such manifestations that they must come from the soul of a deceased person, then this would be a kind of proof of the continuation of the soul that the scientifically minded person would want to accept as objective. Efforts are indeed being made to obtain evidence of the continuation of the soul in this way.

However, the large amount of work that has been devoted to such investigations cannot satisfy the judgment of the strictly thinking person. The objections that can be made are all too easy to come by, even when only the most serious works are considered. First of all, the communications that one would like to relate to the deceased are of little value in terms of content. Souls whose carriers were astute in life express themselves after death in a manner that is not very astute, often childish, petty, etc. Also, their messages are of such a nature that one cannot gain the slightest insight into a world in which one might suspect them after death. One may admit that they speak about things that take place far away from the place where the experiments are being done, or that they deal with things that neither the medium nor the people involved know anything about: the things themselves are insignificant. It is not possible to refute the objection: Why do only revelations come to light in this way that are so uninteresting to a more sophisticated human intelligence? Why are they so different from those that could be of interest to a deeper spiritual mind?

Another objection also carries a great deal of weight. Why should forces not be at play in such experiments that may indeed lie outside the field of ordinary nature, but which have nothing to do with souls that continue to exist after death? Let us assume that a dead person speaks through a medium about a personality who lives in a distant place, or who has herself died long ago, about whom neither the medium nor any of the observing persons knows anything. It will certainly be a seductive fact if it turns out that the stated fact and the person to whom it refers are known only to the supposedly dead person.

But why should there not be forces that have nothing to do with the soul after death, and which carry knowledge of facts into the soul of the living medium through channels unknown to the ordinary consciousness? If one has no other proofs of the continued existence of the dead than those characterized, then it is truly more befitting for human thought to conclude on unknown mediators between facts and souls on earth than on mediators in a questionable hereafter.

Another objection that has been raised – and with some justification – is that the messages from alleged deceased persons who inspire confidence stop relatively soon after their death. Indeed, the longer the time that has passed since the death of the persons making themselves known through mediums, the more questionable the revelations become. Well-meaning people who want to attach importance to the facts of these observations will therefore have no choice but to admit that these facts actually only speak for a short afterlife of the soul's expressions, so to speak an after-swinging, not for a true immortality.

On deeper reflection, one will not be able to agree with those who say that these investigations have only been carried out in a truly scientific way for a few decades: one must hope that the currently still unsatisfactory results will later lead to satisfaction. Rather, this deeper reflection shows that through these investigations one seeks a way into the realm of the spiritual that cannot promise success.

Just as one should not expect ghosts to enter a house in their true form if one makes other entry points instead of doors and windows, so one should not believe that spiritual beings reveal themselves through human bodies or through other entities of the physical world. It should be obvious that manifestations of spiritual beings can only take place in the spirit of man himself. But then one must seek these manifestations nowhere else than in the activities of one's own soul. Even the true essence of the soul of another person can only be revealed to the soul of the observer.

On the basis of this insight, another kind of spiritual research seeks its results precisely where the natural scientist does not want to look if he does not want to modify the meaning of research in line with the spiritual realm. This other spiritual science asks whether the human soul can find the spiritual realm through its inner life, how it finds the memories of past experiences through this inner life. The way in which these memories emerge from the hidden depths of the soul into consciousness is a purely inward one. Is it not possible for a spiritual world, if there is one, to enter the soul through inner experience? Is it impossible for a purely spiritual, disembodied being to speak directly to the soul, as a thought emerging in memory speaks to it?

Even the possibility of such a state of affairs initially repels the human being. He is, after all, of the opinion that everything that comes into his consciousness in this way can only be thoughts. He cannot imagine that thoughts can come into his soul that do not depend on being justified by something other than himself. When he becomes aware of something that merely speaks to his inner being, he will demand that it speak to him in some other way as well, so that he does not have to consider it merely a thought. But what if, of all that man can experience, the idea, the thought, the inner experience, is the only thing in which a disembodied spiritual world can make itself known?

Now the ordinary inner experience, the ordinary thought, is certainly not of that kind. The spiritual science referred to here does not dispute this. But it cannot find in any other human experience a suitable means for exploring the spiritual. So then it must ask: Is not the inner experience capable of development? Does it not carry within itself the possibility of unfolding in such a way that it can express the /Text breaks off]

Notes 5456-5461, undated, circa 1917.

Life itself creates the human riddle. – The soul decays without spiritual nourishment. While self-deception is possible, actual death is not. – The animal is incorporated into the evolution of the world; but not the human being. – He must incorporate himself.

There is progress in modern science that was hoped to help solve the riddles of existence.

The advances in physics and chemistry. The path led to the atom. It was hoped that the facts of the external world could be understood from the way atoms fit together.

Where did we end up: “that an iron atom must be more complicated than a Steinway grand piano” - A. Rowland based on spectral-analytical observations. (Kolbe calls van 't Hoff's stereometric formulas “hallucinations”.)

And in biology: Nägeli:

The ovum contains all the essential characteristics of the species just as much as the developed organism does, and as ovums the organisms differ from each other no less than in the developed state. The hen's egg contains the species just as completely as the hen does, and the hen's egg is just as different from the frog's egg as the hen is from the frog.

Thus, we encounter the same world in miniature. Therefore, we will not be able to answer the questions that arise in the context of the world of ordinary observation by looking at the world of the microscopic.

Likewise, we encounter nothing in the astronomically or geologically large that is not also present in the terrestrial world.

People who receive a feeling from this fact arrive at philosophy. This seeks to arrive at a solution to the human riddle from the concepts developed in the ordinary world. But these concepts only lead to the insight that they are powerless to answer the questions that man must ask.

Anthroposophy is therefore based on what is developed in man through an awakening with the help of the invigoration of thinking. In the physical, the spiritual becomes spiritually perceptible. Thinking, which is otherwise only produced in the physical world as a dead thing, is thereby truly connected with the soul life. Together with the soul, it interacts differently with the outside world. Anthroposophy thus comes to experience the etheric body.

Instinctively, Troxler's “Riddle of Man” p. 94 and I. H. Fichte ibid. p. 82ff.

Secondly, anthroposophy comes to recognize that this being can also be observed. The ether body is found when the thought process is detached from external perception. The soul body is found when the will is detached from the drives, affects, etc. In connection with these, it is blind; when it is detached from them, it sees spiritually. There is an “inner man.” Ed. v. Hartmann pointed to him as a hypothesis.

The fate of his philosophy.

The “inner man” can be found in a more recent philosophy as the “subconscious” (subliminal consciousness).

James calls this “the discovery made for the first time in 1886”.

Anthroposophy seeks the means to make use of this consciousness.

G. Tyrrel (translated into German in 1909 by E. Wolff. Between Scylla and Charybdis) speaks of a “sphere of dark knowledge and darkly knowable objects”.

Just as in the physical world, past experiences are brought into the present consciousness through memory, so the experiences of the subconscious person are brought into the realm of ordinary consciousness. (Otherwise they only come up in the form of dark impulses).

What a philosophy like Hartmann's instinctively postulated comes about: ordinary consciousness participates in the interaction of the “inner man” with the “spiritual world”.

Insight into the details of the spiritual world is not sought; it arises as a consequence. (Example of how some want the one without the other.) (Verification is absurdly demanded by those who do not understand.)

In the experience of thinking, the world is experienced - that which is sought through knowledge. However, the questions are not put aside. One does not have to enter into another world; one is constantly in it. One must develop a spiritual eye for this other world.

One must not step out of the spirit, but experience the rhythm of the world in the spirit. (Comparison with a person traveling in a train. The inner experiences in different ages.)

Anthroposophy has a different starting point from the mystical endeavors of the past, with which it is often confused. These were based on religious experiences. They therefore led to sectarianism. Because they have subjective content. Followers gained only through authority. Anthroposophy is based on scientific experiences. Also from scientific needs. It leads to religious experience. Therefore, it has a different effect than modern natural philosophy and philosophy. One will understand theology again. He does not really love Christianity who believes it endangered by knowledge. “On the Riddle of Man” $. 273.

J. Böhme:

All this is Babel, which clashes with each other and argues about the letter; for these all stand in one root, the Spirit of God. Who judges the birds in the forest, who praise the Lord with many a voice, each in its own way? All their sounds proceed from God's power, and before him they play. Therefore men, who quarrel and despise each other about science and about the will of God, are more foolish than the birds of the forest and more useless than the meadow flowers, which nevertheless keep silent to the Spirit of God and let him reveal his wisdom and power through them. What should they quarrel about for long around that in which they live and whose essence they themselves are?

Arrhenius:

Sometimes we hear it said that we live in the “best of all possible worlds”; it is difficult to say anything well-founded about that, but we - at least the natural scientists - can say with complete certainty that we live in the best of times. We can say, with the great connoisseur of nature and man, Goethe, in the firm hope that the future will only get better:

It is a great delight
to place oneself in the spirit of the times.
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have then ultimately come so gloriously far.

But Faust (alone):

How can I not despair when I think
Of all the empty stuff I know,
How I dig for treasure with my greedy hand,
And am glad when I find earthworms!

It is a great experience
to rise to the spirit of the times
to hear how so many a true sage speaks:
Only by striving do we reach the light!

Kolbe: van 't Hoff had “mounted Pegasus (apparently borrowed from the veterinary school)” to announce: “how the atoms in space appeared to him on the chemical Parnass he had scaled by bold flight.”

Goethe:

Man in himself, insofar as he uses his healthy senses, is the greatest and most accurate physical apparatus that can exist, and that is precisely the greatest misfortune of modern physics, that one has separated the experiments, as it were, from man, and recognize nature only in what artificial instruments show, yes, what it can achieve, thereby limiting and wanting to prove.

But

But man stands so high that the otherwise unrepresentable is represented in him. What is a string and all its mechanical divisions compared to the musician's ear? Yes, one can say what the elementary phenomena of nature themselves are compared to man, who has to tame and modify them all in order to assimilate them to some extent.

O. Hertwig:

The principle of utility, the conviction of the necessity of unrestricted commercial and social competition, and materialistic schools of philosophy are forces that played a major role in the [modern] development of humans even without Darwin. Those who were already under their influence welcomed Darwinism as a scientific confirmation of ideas already familiar and dear to them from other sources. They could now see themselves, as it were, in the mirror of science.

The interpretation of Darwin's theory, with its imprecisions and ambiguities, also allowed for a wide range of applications in other areas of economic, social and political life. From it, everyone could, as from a Delphic oracle,

depending on what he wanted, draw his conclusions about social, political, hygienic, medical and other issues and, to support his assertions, invoke the science of biology, reworked in a Darwinian way, with its unalterable laws of nature. But if these supposed laws are not such, should there not also be social dangers when they are applied in other areas? One should not believe that human society can use phrases such as “relentless struggle for existence” [1], “selection of the suitable” [2], “the useful” [3], “the expedient” [4], improvement by natural selection [5] etc. in their transfer to the various fields, like daily bread, without being influenced more deeply and lastingly in the whole direction of their idea formation!

1. unrelenting struggle for existence: fruitful harmony of souls
2. Selection of the suitable: Cultivation of every justified aspiration
3. of the useful: Recognition of the usefulness of the spiritual
4. of the expedient: of that which elevates life
5. Perfection through breeding selection: Perfection through the mutual complementation of people

Anthroposophy conducts its research in a field that is not presented to humanity by fanciful arbitrariness of enthusiastic personalities, but that stands questioning before every healthy human feeling, so that man can indeed close himself off from these questions by numbing his soul: But the impulses of the inner being will awaken again and again from the stupor and bear witness to the fact that dealing with these questions is a necessity of life. The feeling of being closed in then appears as an illness, and the healthy person strives for its cure as for the cure of physical illnesses.

Nevertheless, in the age of scientific thinking, this field was only illuminated by a few isolated flashes of light: for example,

Fortlage: (Eight psychological lectures Jena 1869):

When we call ourselves living beings and thus ascribe to ourselves a property that we share with animals and plants, we necessarily understand the living state to mean something that never leaves us and that always persists in us, both when we are sleeping and when we are awake. This is the vegetative life of nourishment of our organism, an unconscious life, a life of sleep. The brain is an exception here in that this life of nutrition, this sleep life, is dominated in it by the life of consumption during the breaks in waking. During these breaks, the brain is exposed to a great deal of consumption, and [consequently] enters into a state which, if it extended to the other organs, would bring about the absolute enfeeblement of the body or death. [...] Consciousness is a small and partial death; death is a great and total consciousness, an awakening of the whole being in its innermost depths.

Fortlage wrote a lot: such flashes of thought remain isolated in his writings. And Ed. v. Hartmann criticized him for having them. They come from the fact that flames of insight shine up from the depths of the soul, which would otherwise be over-illuminated. Anthroposophy consciously wants to steer towards the light and turn it into a science about a field that cannot become a science in any other way.

It must come to powers of knowledge that appear to ordinary life as powers of imagination, as dream powers. But in the depths of the human being, a “second man” works. And if he can only be dreamt of, then what otherwise remains in dreams must be raised to luminous knowledge, otherwise this second man remains something that is overslept throughout life. In order to become complete in its own field, natural science must develop those insights that only extend to the fields where access to the spiritual world opens up. One consciously comes to these fields when one lives with natural science. When one consciously develops inner life at its borderline places. Then a state unfolds that can be compared to what one has to imagine in the case of lower organisms that develop sensory organs from within. One arrives at the process of forming spiritual organs of touch. This life at the border areas can be observed again in energetic cognitive natures.

Vischer:

No spirit where there is no nerve center, where there is no brain, say the opponents. No nerve center, no brain, we say, if it were not prepared from below on countless levels; it is easy to mockingly talk about the spirit's churning in granite and limestone, no more difficult than it would be for us to mockingly ask how the egg white in the brain soars to ideas. The measurement of the differences in levels is fading from human knowledge. It will remain a mystery how it comes about that nature, under which the spirit must slumber after all, stands as such a perfect counterpoint to the spirit that we bump into bumps on it; it is a direction of such an appearance of absoluteness that with Hegel's otherness and being beside oneself, however witty the formula, it says next to nothing, and simply covers up the crudity of the apparent dividing wall. The correct recognition of the cutting edge and the thrust in this counterblow can be found in Fichte, but no explanation for it.

Inner experience must come to the fact that with such thoughts the soul lives at the border of knowledge. Here it can become aware of its life independent of the body, the life that is otherwise overslept. But a twofold insight must open up here. One must recognize the nature of thinking that is gained from the sensual world.

Gideon Spicker: (Philosophical Confession of a Former Capuchin Friar):

Whatever philosophy one professes – dogmatic or skeptical, empirical or transcendental, critical or eclectic – all, without exception, start from an unproven and unprovable proposition, namely, the necessity of thinking. No examination, however deep, can ever get behind this necessity. It must be accepted unconditionally and cannot be justified by anything; every attempt to prove its correctness always presupposes it. Below it yawns a bottomless abyss, a dreadful darkness illuminated by no ray of light. So we do not know where it comes from or where it leads. Whether a gracious God or an evil demon has placed it in reason, both is uncertain.

Philosophy as a science of the supernatural has often believed that it could solve the human essence riddle in thinking itself. But such an attempt to overstretch thinking leads to a kind of malnutrition of the soul. Only the realization that so-called metaphysics is a hunger for knowledge can save us.

A second insight, which is particularly important in more recent times, is that sensual knowledge can only lead to satiety of the soul. Here it is important to come to the realization that the spirit is the creator of the body; the latter is neither the tool of the body nor a parallel phenomenon associated with the body. What can be observed sensually in the body has its laws in the past workings of the spirit. In the present workings of the spirit, the germ of future bodily activity is present. It is not knowledge as such that man strives for in knowing, but the shaping of future life. Remembrance is brought about by a process that still has a relationship to the processes that represent growth, in which heredity has an effect. But in the process of waking imagination, there is also a mental side process that prepares the germ from which the spiritual entity that passes through death is formed.

One must be content to gain knowledge of the immortal human being through imagination. For in this, everything mortal is eradicated for perception. And only the immortal is retained in them.

Only with such imaginations can the soul live in the supersensible realm. It can know in this way that what it does and thinks in a later period of time represents a coexistence of itself with the spirit in an earlier one. It becomes familiar with a world in which it recognizes spiritual realms just as one recognizes material realms in the natural realm.

We just have to gain a correct understanding of the soul's relationship to the body. The wonderful ramification of the nervous system contains the element into which the human being is constantly dying. Death resides in the nerves. The breakdown of organic processes resides there.

I would like to call what I have in mind anthroposophy, preferably Goetheanism. In Goethe, the concepts gained from nature are still such that they can be digested by the soul. He himself has only come to a conception interwoven with nature. But anyone who penetrates his way of thinking will undergo a metamorphosis of soul phenomena: will, feeling, thinking. Psychologists have at best arrived at a classification. Feeling is will transformed; but this is done by the body. Thinking is transformed from will and feeling. If you discover feeling in thinking, then you are dealing with supersensible beings. With those who have been involved before one has gone through birth to sensual existence; if one discovers the will, then the previous earth life. The will of which one is aware in ordinary life, which moves limbs, etc., the will that one finds in the supersensible nature of the ideas, comes from previous earth lives.

Just one thing should be mentioned regarding the practical fruitfulness of anthroposophy. In 1914, financiers expressed the conviction that the war would only last a few months because economic resources would not last longer. A respected teacher of international law hopes that they were not mistaken regarding reconstruction. But there will only be no helplessness if reality is grasped. And reality includes the spirit. For economics touches the area where nature reaches its limits: in hunger, in education, etc., man must see essential things that he cannot conquer with the ideas gained from nature. A weak beginning has already been made with the insight into spiritual impulses.

Oskar Hertwig: (The Development of Organisms. A Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance):

The interpretation of Darwin's theory, which is so ambiguous with its vagueness, also allowed for a wide range of applications in other areas of economic, social and political life. From it, everyone could, as from a Delphic oracle, draw their own conclusions about social, political, hygienic, medical and other issues, as they wished, and refer to the science of Darwinian biology with its unalterable laws of nature to support their assertions. But if these supposed laws are not such, should there not also be social dangers in their versatile application to other areas? Do they really believe that human society can use phrases such as “relentless struggle for existence”, “selection of the suitable, the useful, the expedient”, “perfection through breeding” etc. in their transfer to the most diverse areas, such as daily bread, for half a century without being influenced more deeply and lastingly in the whole direction of their idea formation! The proof of this assertion would not be difficult to obtain from many phenomena of modern times. Precisely for this reason, the decision about the truth or error of Darwinism also reaches far beyond the scope of the biological sciences.

Goetheanism has a view of nature that leaves room for the peaceful harmonizing influence of the spirit in the natural struggle for existence; the development of what is most suitable instead of the selection of what happens to be suitable; of what is ethically valuable and transcends mere utility; of what is spiritually willed in what is merely functional; of the perfection of the spirit in addition to that achieved through natural selection. But all this cannot be recognized by conveniently transferring the laws of nature to the spiritual realm. It must be investigated in the spiritual realm, as the laws of nature are investigated in the natural realm.

Why do people resist this? Between the natural and spiritual realms lies a field that must be worked through. If one wants to know immortality, one must go through the knowledge of death. When one is no longer afraid to overcome the fear of knowing death, one will be able to partake of the satisfaction that comes from life in immortality.

1. Introduction: On the spiritual necessity of anthroposophy.
2. It has always been there as flashes of inspiration from individuals. Continued.
3. What cognitive powers are necessary. Science cannot develop them.
4. The development of cognitive powers at the “places of knowledge” - Vischer.
5. The inability of mere thinking: G. Spicker. 6. The inability of sensory experience. 7. What the body – the nervous system – is. 8. Why only in imaginations. 9. The ramification of the nervous system and death. 10. Goetheanism. 11. Metamorphosis of soul life.
12. A practical perspective.
13. Why does one not want anthroposophy.

Anthroposophy is fully aware of its changeability over time.

Anthroposophy is linked to natural science, to being its complement and completion. It is not a doctrine of faith alongside other doctrines of faith, but the science of the spirit. Its origin in this way must be taken into account.

Thus its connecting power is not sectarian either. Yet such a connection is necessary because of the “secret”. But it must not be in the sense of the old mystery cults. In the “borderland” illusions must be distinguished from reality. “Inner opponents”.

Anthroposophy must grasp the meaning of the concepts differently than external science and also religion. It characterizes through the concepts. The so-called reality and the ideals.

In this way, anthroposophy comes to recognize the phenomena of the human spirit. Thomism. It stands in contrast to the most diverse recent attempts at creating religion. It recognizes how the forces that create religion are limited. The scientific disciplines that focus on the external world have repeatedly made such attempts at creating religion. Strauß. Ed. v. Hartmann.

For anthroposophy, sensual reality is an image of the spiritual. For this very reason, it leads the mind back to religious need. In this, too, it points man to something other than mere natural science: Mach.

The natural science direction always comes to treat religion like a prejudice. “Fear and adversity are the mothers of religion.” “Churches fill up and pilgrimages increase in times of war and devastating epidemics.” Attempts to make morality independent. - In 1873: cities, rural communities, the church faithful, one third of the French people. Albert Sorel: Histoire diplomatique de la guerre franco-allemande. W. James. Subliminal self.

Conflicts arise not from the essence of religion but from the former state of connectedness and non-separation. As late as 1822 the decrees against Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler were only repealed. Pater Secchi. In this subject, anthroposophy and religion will meet; in the soul experience they go different but parallel paths, each with equal right. Again and again I am confronted with the objection that Anthroposophy is not in harmony with the aims of certain schools of thought that strive for an internalization and deepening of Christian experience.

Bishop Ireland: “Religion needs new forms and ways of understanding in order to get in touch with modern times. We need apostles of thought and action.

The criticism is that the impulse for altruism is missing. Fate and repeated lives on earth. People say: an impersonal concept of God.

Through baptism, he saw how darkness prevailed around him and was able to speak in such a way that the darkness recognized his nature and fled. To do this, he demanded trust. He had to speak of the kingdom of God and work from it. He had to do things that aroused the opposition of those who were outside his kingdom. His kingdom is increasingly being recognized; he gains a beginning. But he can only give what he has to give to the elect within. Those who do not accept the kingdom within must not know its secrets. He must emphasize the otherness of that kingdom even to his own. Only in his kingdom should the light be lit. Only for the others, when their opposition has become apparent. He shows that the opposition is a legion of demons and belongs in the animalistic. He finds within himself the strength to transform the disease into health. The others must not know this secret, otherwise they would be masters at transferring it and applying it badly.

His essence lives in those who have “faith”. He sends the twelve to found the Kingdom of God. John is killed – he has judged, Jesus radiates power.

The Parousia has occurred. The spiritual power is at work. The 5000 are fed. Jesus appears to the disciples by the lake. The 4000 are fed in an even more spiritual way. The Kingdom of God is now at work, the scribes are excluded from it. They shall have no sign. He now also works on that which is beyond the Jewish people, if they have “trust”. But only on this. The “blind man” is healed. Peter speaks of him as the Christ. But when he is supposed to understand that he must speak of the Kingdom of God, he still does not understand. The transfiguration, when Peter, James and John enter into the Kingdom of God, is taking place. Elijah has returned. But this must be understood. One can only be healed by one who fasts and prays. The Kingdom of God must be felt “disembodied”. (Pluck out your eye and hand). Man must surrender to it completely. Even in childhood. The Kingdom of God requires a different order.

Even in thoughts and feelings, the Kingdom of God is in conflict with the environment. When Jesus speaks to his disciples about the Kingdom of God, he characterizes it by speaking of the decline of the un-realm.

Mary Magdalene is already completely in the Kingdom of God, acting accordingly. Jesus is now approaching death.

Judas betrays. From that point on, Jesus is no longer in conflict with the ideas of the scribes about Scripture, but with Scripture itself.

After his capture, he is only the “King of the Jews” —

the people are only emotionally moved; physically, they cry, “Crucify him!”

The general education of the present time has brought the knowledge of the body to a high level – the knowledge of the spiritual has not progressed equally. However, if this unconscious does not penetrate into consciousness, then all human life remains an illusion.

But it does enter: 1.) In the free concept, which is a spiritual one – to which nothing else corresponds but itself – if it could not actualize itself, then nothing would actualize it.

2.) In sense perception, for which I have nothing within me; if I could not experience the external world through myself, I would have no experience at all. Therefore, the judgment can only be experienced, not proven. But therefore, there is also no sharp boundary between feeling and will for the inner self (Brentano) – the judgment simply connects the body to the external world; the will connects it to the spiritual world.

The soul experiences in the imagination what it has become; in the will, what it is to become. I can only imagine what I can imagine by virtue of my body; I will what the spirit predisposes in me. The will that works in the imagination is soul; the imagination that works in the will is soul; that will is corporeal; this imagination is spiritual.

The body is will-bearing matter. The soul is the spirit that acts upon perception.

Actual perception arises when unconscious matter meets with corporeal matter in sensory perception. Actual will arises when the conscious soul meets with the spirit that acts upon perception in the voluntary decision.

In the very general concept, the body immediately reveals a spiritual aspect.

In the material process, which corresponds to a volitional impulse, the spirit immediately reveals itself materially.

No matter how much one may resist it, the mathematical judgments are revelations of the substance. And likewise, the chemical processes of the organism are spiritual: in mathematics, the substance is so spiritual that we no longer notice it. In digestion, the spirit is so material that we no longer notice it either.

In ordinary feeling, the imagination and the will meet in such a way that they harmonize.

In pain, the imagination cannot find a will equal to it. In pleasure (joy), the imagination lags behind the will.

Pessimism arises from a lack of imagination. Optimism is a sign of a wealth of imagination. The average thinker discusses pessimism. The humanities scholar takes it as a sign of a lack of imagination. And he finds that pessimism is rooted in a body that is not sufficiently spiritually active. He regards optimism as a sign of a body that is so well formed that it reflects the will. —

Does man really perceive nothing spiritual? Or has he been educated only to forbid himself to recognize the spiritual? —

Whether the spirit in the universe also works directly materially?

Whether the material directly reveals itself spiritually?

That is, whether man can will something that is not merely earthly? “My kingdom is not of this world”.

Whether the spirit accomplishes something that shows the extraterrestrial? “I and the Father are one”.

Many religions - could the “second coming” reconcile them? If it became clear to others that the Christ is just as universally human as the sun. — The Jesus mystery would have to be individual, the Christ mystery could then become universal. Detachment of the Christ from a particular religious form. Seeing the essential in a spiritual event. Not to convert, but to share. — The peoples who have embraced Christianity needed it as a counterweight to their materialism. Those who have not accepted it have not needed it – those who are of the earth will not understand each other; those who are of the sky will. “What is the Christ to us? The same one from whom you have your religion. To you he gave it from the extraterrestrial. To us in the earthly. He revealed himself to you as Father, to us as Son. If they are one, then we are one.” The heresy of filioque.

From Notebook 21, undated, around 1917

The sense impression (physical) dies away in the sense organ - meets the physical there (this is where the physical mirror image is created); this mirror image is inwardly enlivened in the image body - it then runs in the nervous system - the ether process coming from outside - this comes up against the physical body at the nerve endings – it runs in the breathing system – the astral process – this comes up against the physical body at the end of the inhalation system – the I-process runs right into the metabolism – there it is reflected.

The opposite process: the metabolic process forms and collides with the ego process – it then penetrates as a movement into the breathing – collides with the astral process – penetrates through the breathing into the nervous process, collides with the ether process.

The middle process: the inhalation brings the formless substance, which meets with the ether process - then penetrates as an astral process and encounters the physical body - is detached from the exhalation, which underlies the astral - the astral remains in the person; the etheric goes further into the nervous process - remains there - and the physical (exhaled air) goes outwards. In the nervous process, the disconnected, I would say the killed thoughts, are the only ones that can be in the human body - the spiritual researcher must represent in thoughts which have not undergone this transformation through the body.

Who knows the essence of the life of imagination?

Schopenhauer's “the world is my imagination” is as if someone were to say of a person standing before him in the fullness of life: “this person is a corpse”. —

Ordinary thinking is such that the power of imagery inherent in the sensations is taken away; if it were not, man would not be able to distinguish himself from the external world - the power of the ether must flow into thinking - in which thinking is fulfilled through imagination. -

As the sensation becomes an idea, the inner ether process paralyzes the outer one - and in the imagination, the disconnected, paralyzed ether process comes to a continuous effect in the nerves - in the nerves, the after-effects of the ethereal processes: now one can animate thought to imagination – precisely at the thought processes that lead to boundaries – such boundaries represent the attempt to approach spiritual reality; but one cannot approach it because one has dead thoughts.

The belief must not arise that materialism has already spoken its last word; it will only have that after about six centuries. If “knowing ones” now want to claim that materialism has spoken its last word in the realm of their people, then a real effect is to be exerted by this, regardless of whether the originators of this claim are aware of its scope. That which abandons man in death shall come under the spell of earthly life – the originators want to connect themselves post mortem with their brotherhood sites – and thereby detach all earthly life from its origin.

The etheric Christ would thereby be excluded from his earthly region, and another being would be substituted for him; on the other hand, the Christ would also be excluded from the earthly sphere by the propagandists of the sixth period, but he would take on the true form. Men would withdraw with him from the physical world.

The Indian sages have given up the fight; they have no interest in the etheric Christ – they want to introduce older forms instead, they want to work with the old gods, the etheric shells of the ancestors, which were taken over by these old gods. – The Anglo-Americans want to take possession of the dead. The dispute is actually about the Christ-being - it should be eliminated. It must not - through the connection of his will waves with electrical and magnetic waves, man must not be brought into too close a connection with the earth; he must not, through treatment by suggestion, realize the “latent earth” in him; he must not, by influencing birth, shape the earth ego as Ahrimanic. And not by replacing the regular angels with spirits of form, exiling the 6th epoch.

In the fifth post-Atlantic period, spiritual effects are breaking through the veil that shrouds the spiritual world. These effects come from the spirits of personality, just as the effects of the spirits of form occurred in ancient Lemuria. These spiritual effects want to be understood. They show themselves by causing phenomena to occur that, through their own essence, urge the will to view them spiritually. It is the relationships between people that should no longer be judged by what has become of them through the course of nature. What is reported for Russia about the relationship between descendants and ancestors is significant: a person comes into a relationship with the spirits of the personality while awake, which is an echo of a prenatal relationship.

Through the mechanisms that replace human strength, however, beings enter into development that contradict the spirits of personality revealing themselves as creators. From the connection with the mechanism springs a state of mind that drives into the most violent struggle against the newly revealing spirits of form. This new form of the spirits of darkness will have to be brought into the inner soul process of man - for through man the new spirits of personality will be able to take possession of the conditions of the earth - the earth conditions will cause difficulties for man in the future if he wants to adapt to them; he must adapt to spiritual conditions. On earth equilibrium would be necessary; but this equilibrium is the manifestation of a struggle – the struggle in the spiritual field is not evil; it is the element of life: man must find the means to transfer the struggle into his inner being; at first he still resists under the guidance of the spiritual powers that want to keep the struggle external. But the external is not to be spiritualized mechanically, but a new external is to grow alive out of a new spirituality - the spirits of form are to give up their forming and the spirits of personality are to take their place - the archangeloi are to enter into the personality, i.e., man is to learn to understand the spiritual order; the Angeloi are to give the power for this - but man is to find that he is not in his body; he can only do so if he understands it spiritually - in spiritual understanding he will slip away from it.

People feel that demands are being made of them by the spiritual realm, if their spiritual life is adapted to the fifth period; by pretending that they are dealing with fantasies, they want to keep people at the present stage of their development – the shaping of social life that depends on the mechanical order could serve this purpose.

We cannot continue to move the process of redemption behind the scenes, as churches and masonic societies want to do with rituals and dogmas of redemption: It must be summoned before the scene. One must have the courage to face the spirit. Symbolism must end and reality must take its place, that is, the contemplation of the spiritual. The strongest enemies of this process will be the keepers of the confessional and ritual traditions will be the strongest enemies of this process - they will use the unconscious moments to sneak in and pursue their business - they still have much that enables them to catch dull minds with this business. —

The astrological element is most likely to seduce one into helping the mechanism to gain control, for it draws on the last dying impulses. At present it can only be useful if it leads to a defensive council that refers to something that cannot be averted in any other way. Old Christianity is still full of astrology, but this must be recognized as a disguise. The world of men, not of nature, ordered according to the astrological mode of thinking, would be the death of the human race. The astrological classes, the keepers of ritual, the historical classes, etc., all represent residues; they all refuse to enter into the mode of thinking of the fifth period.

1.) Natural science creates the necessity for man to know himself. But it contains no means of acquiring such knowledge. Behavior of natural scientists: Nägeli, Hertwig, Ziehen.

2.) In discussions about scientific questions, e.g. about the life force, I am always on the side of the natural scientists: according to du Bois Reymond. But he too used a dictum to inhibit the transition into the spiritual realm.

3.) One cannot speak of a speculated life force, but one can speak of a perceivable body of formative forces. But in order for such perception to come about, mere imagining must be transformed into perception. The “seer” and the “non-seer”. —

4.) For a long time, only body and soul have been spoken of. This was acceptable as long as the soul was attributed spiritual properties. When this was no longer done, the natural consequence was “psychology without soul”.

5.) The spirit cannot be known through the usual soul experiences. Not even if these are “mystically” intensified.

The physiologist says: a chemical change in the blood is necessary for the feeling of hunger. The spiritual researcher says: for an idea to have a will-arousing effect, it must undergo a change in its imaginative content.

6.) One speaks of the phenomena of the soul in such a way that one regards as its laws precisely that which causes the spirit to perish: associations.

7.) Drawing from the “I”, which is “spirit” after all.

8.) In the soul, mere sensing, etc. of the truth, the soul allows a glimpse of a supernatural world, etc. The spirit allows it to be recognized: it is the eternal.

Du Bois Reymond believed that where supernaturalism begins, science ends: a future view of the world will only recognize a knowledge of nature to the extent that it is based on supernaturalism:

Where supernaturalism ends, science dies.

Because you have: atoms without content.

Laws without entities.

Apparitions of souls without ego entities, etc.

In ordinary life, the soul does not have the strength to know itself as “spirit”. It has even less strength to recognize the spirit in the outside world. In the outside world, the soul encounters the supersensible when it becomes more powerful within. When the ability to live in mere imagination is developed, when it is heightened to an imaginative cognitive faculty, then the world of life presents itself as an impression from the outside – one gets to know the different pace between one's own and the foreign course of life – for this it is necessary to go back 2-3 days in one's life – then behind it lies the true soul. This is no longer influenced by the remnants of sensation - to see it as a product of the brain would be like wanting to see the table or another person as a product of the brain, because one knows: with everything one is through the brain, one stands outside of this true soul. It includes practical realization: Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu nisi ipses intellectus. —

This “true soul” must not evoke dreams or fantasies, or even visions or hallucinations. For all these arise through the bodily organism: what is no longer bodily must be sensed like an external object -: one returns to the sensation - one senses the “spirit”.