Supersensible Knowledge. Lecture 1 of 2.
Rudolf Steiner, Vienna, September 26, 1923:
Anyone who
speaks today about supersensible worlds lays himself open at once to the quite
understandable criticism that he is violating one of the most important demands
of the age. This is the demand that the most important questions of existence
shall be seriously discussed from a scientific point of view only in such a way
that science recognizes its own limitations, has a clear insight into the fact
that it must restrict itself to the sensible world of our earthly existence, and
would become the victim of a certain fantastic blunder if it should attempt to
go beyond these limits. Now, precisely that type of spiritual-scientific
conception in accordance with which I spoke at the last Vienna Congress of the
Anthroposophical Movement [West and East: Contrasting
Worlds] and shall speak again today, affirms with regard to itself
not only that it is free from hostility toward scientific thinking and the
scientific sense of responsibility of our times, but also that it does its work
in complete harmony with what may be proposed as objectives by the most
conscientious scientific demands of those very persons who take their stand on
the platform of the most rigid scientific research. It is possible, however, to
speak from various points of view in regard to the scientific demands of the
times, imposed upon us by the splendid theoretical and practical results in the
evolution of humanity which have come about in the course of the last three or
four centuries, but especially during the nineteenth century. I shall speak,
therefore, today in regard to supersensible knowledge to the extent that this
tends to fulfill precisely this demand, and I wish to speak in the next lecture
about the supersensible knowledge of the human being as a demand of the human
heart, of human feeling, during the present age.
We can observe
the magnificent contribution which has been bestowed upon us even up to the most
recent time through scientific research — the magnificent contribution in the
findings about interrelationships throughout the external world. But it is
possible to speak also in a different sense regarding the achievements which
have come about precisely in connection with this current of human evolution.
For instance, we may call attention to the fact that in connection with the
conscientious earnest observation of the laws and facts of the external world of
the senses, as this is afforded by natural science, very special human
capacities have been developed, and that just such observation and
experimentation have thrown a light also upon human capacities themselves. But I
should like to say that many persons holding positions deserving of the greatest
respect in the sphere of scientific research are willing to give very little
attention to this light which has been reflected upon man himself through his
own researches. If we only give a little thought to what this light has
illuminated, we see that human thinking, through the very fact that it has been
able to investigate in accordance with basic principles both narrowly restricted
and also broadly expanded interrelationships — the microscopic and the
telescopic — has gained immeasurably in itself, has gained in the capacity of
discrimination, in power of penetration, the ability so to associate the things
in the world that their secrets are unveiled, the capacity to determine the laws
underlying cosmic relationships, and so forth. As this thinking is developed, we
see it confronted with a demand — with which it is faced, indeed, by the most
earnest research scientists: the demand that this thinking must develop as
selflessly as possible in the observation of external nature and in
experimentation in the laboratory, in the clinic, etc. And the human being has
achieved tremendous power in this respect. He has succeeded in setting up more
and more rules of such a character as to prevent anything of the nature of inner
wishes of the heart, of opinions, perhaps even of fantasies regarding one's own
being, such as arise in the course of thinking, from being carried over into
what he is to establish by means of the microscope and the telescope, the
measuring rule and the scales, regarding the interrelationships of life and
existence.
Under these
influences a type of thinking has gradually developed of which one must say that
it has worked out its passive role with a certain inner diligence. Thinking in
connection with observation, with experiment, has nowadays become completely
abstract — so abstract that it does not trust itself to call forth anything of
the nature of knowledge or of truth out of its own inner being.
It is this
gradually developed characteristic of thinking which demands before everything
else — so it appears at first — the rejection of all that the human being is in
himself by reason of his inner nature. For what he himself thus is must be set
forth in activity; this can really never exist wholly apart from the impulse of
his will. Thus we have arrived at the point — and we have rightly reached this
point in the field of external research — of actually rejecting the activity of
thinking, although we became aware in this activity of what we ourselves signify
as human beings in the universe, in the totality of cosmic relationships. In a
certain sense, the human being has eliminated himself in connection with his
research; he prohibits his own inner activity. We shall see immediately that
what is rightly prohibited in connection with this external research must be
especially cultivated in relationship to man's own self if he wishes to gain
enlightenment regarding the spiritual, regarding the supersensible, element of
his own being.
But a second
element in the nature of man has been obliged to manifest its special aspect,
which is alien to humanity even though friendly to the world, in modern
research: that is, the human life of sentiment, the human life of feeling. In
this modern research, human feeling is not permitted to participate; the human
being must remain cold and matter-of-fact. Yet one might ask whether it may not
be possible to acquire within this human feeling forces useful in gaining
knowledge of the world. If it must be said, on the one hand, that inner human
willfulness plays a role in feelings, human subjectivity, and that feeling is
the source of fantasy, it must be answered on the other hand that, although
human feeling can certainly play no important role as it exists at first in
everyday life or in science, yet, if we recall — as science itself has to
present the matter to us — that the human senses have not always in the course
of human evolution been such as they are today, but have developed from a
relatively imperfect stage up to their contemporary state, that they certainly
did not express themselves in earlier periods so objectively about things as
they do today, an inkling may then come to birth within us that there may exist
even within the life of subjective feeling something that might be evolved
therefrom, just like the human senses themselves, and which might be led over
from an experience of man's own being to a grasp upon cosmic interrelationships
in a higher sense. Precisely as we observe the withdrawal of human feeling in
connection with contemporary research must the question be put as to whether
some sort of higher sense might unfold within feeling itself if this were
specially developed.
But very
obviously do we find in connection with a third element of the being of man how
we are driven by the altogether praiseworthy scientific view to something
different. This is the will aspect of the life of the soul. Whoever is at home
in scientific thinking knows how impossible it is for such thinking to proceed
otherwise in grasping the interrelationships of the world than in accordance
with causal necessity. We connect in the most rigid manner phenomena existing
side by side in space; we associate in the strictest sense phenomena occurring
in succession in time. That is, we relate cause and effect according to their
inflexible laws. Whoever speaks not as a dilettante but as one thoroughly at
home in science knows what a tremendous power is exerted by the mere
consideration of the realms of scientific fact in this manner. He knows how he
is captivated by this idea of a universal causality and how he cannot then do
otherwise than to subject everything that he confronts in his thinking to this
idea of causality.
But there is
human will, this human will which says to us in every moment of our waking life
of day: “What you undertake in a certain sense by reason of yourself, by reason
of your will, is not causally determined in the same sense applying to any sort
of external phenomena of nature.” For this reason, even a person who simply
feels in a natural way about himself, who looks into himself in observation free
from preconception, can scarcely do otherwise than also to ascribe to himself,
on the basis of immediate experience, freedom of will. But when he directs his
glance to scientific thinking, he cannot admit this freedom of will. This is one
of the conflicts into which we are brought by the condition of the present age.
In the course of these two lectures we shall learn much more about these
conflicts. But for one who is able to feel this conflict in its full intensity,
who can feel it through and through — because he must be honest on the one side
as regards scientific research, and on the other side as regards his
self-observation — the conflict is something utterly confounding, so confounding
that it may drive him to doubt whether life affords anywhere a firm basis from
which one may search for truth.
We must deal
with such conflicts in their right human aspect. We must be able to say to
ourselves that research drives us to the point where we are actually unable to
admit what we are every day aware of; that something else must somehow exist
which offers other means of access to the world than what is offered to us in
irrefutable manner in the order of external nature. Through the very fact that
we are so forcibly driven by the order of nature itself into such conflicts, it
becomes for us human beings of the present time a necessity to admit that it is
impossible to speak about the supersensible worlds as they have been spoken
about up to a relatively recent time. We need to go back only to the first half
of the nineteenth century to discover that personalities who, by reason of a
consciousness in harmony with the period, were thoroughly serious in their
scientific work called attention, nevertheless, to the supersensible aspect of
human life, to that aspect which opens up to the human being a view of the
divine, of his own immortality; and that in this connection they always called
attention to what we may at present designate as the “night aspects” of human
life. Men deserving of the highest regard have called attention to that
wonderful but very problematical world into which the human being is transferred
every night: to the dream world. They called attention to many mysterious
relationships which exist between this chaotic picture world of dreams,
nevertheless, and the world of actuality. They called attention to the fact that
the inner nature of the human organization, especially in illness, reflects
itself, nevertheless, in the fantastic pictures of dreams, and how healthy human
life enters into the chaotic experiences of dreams in the forms of signs and
symbols. They pointed out that much which cannot be surveyed by the human being
with his waking senses finds its place in the half-awake state of the soul, and
out of such things conclusions were drawn. These things border upon what is the
subject of study also today for many persons, the “subconscious” states of the
life of the human soul, which manifest themselves in a similar way.
But everything
which appears before the human being in this form, which could still give a
certain satisfaction to an earlier humanity, is no longer valid for us. It is no
longer valid for us for the reason that our way of looking into external nature
has become something different. Here we have to look back to the times when
there still existed only a mystically colored astrology. Man then looked into
the world of the senses in such a way that his perception was far removed from
the exactness which we demand of science today. For this reason, because he did
not demand of himself in his sense life that complete clarity which we possess
today, he could discover in a mystical, half-conscious state something from
which he could draw inferences. This we cannot do today. Just as little as we
are able to derive today from what science gives us anything else than questions
in regard to the true nature of man, just so little can we afford to remain at a
standstill at the point reached by science and expect to satisfy our
supersensible needs in a manner similar to that of earlier times.
That form of
supersensible knowledge of which I shall speak here has an insight into
this demand of our times. It observes the form that has been taken on by
thinking, feeling, and willing in man precisely by reason of natural science,
and it asks on the other side whether it may be possible by reason of the very
thing which has been achieved by contemporary humanity in thinking, feeling, and
willing to penetrate further into the supersensible realm with the same clarity
which holds sway in the scientific realm. This cannot be achieved by means of
inferential reasoning, by means of logic; for natural science justly points out
its limitations with reference to its own nature. But something else can occur:
that the inner human capacities may evolve further, beyond the point at which
they stand when we are in the realm of ordinary scientific research, so that we
now apply to the development of our own spiritual capacities the same exactness
to which we are accustomed in connection with research in the laboratory and the
clinic. I shall discuss this first in connection with thinking
itself.
Thinking, which
has become more and more conscious of its passive role in connection with
external research, and is not willing to disavow this, is capable of energizing
itself inwardly to activity. It may energize itself in such a way that, although
not exact in the sense in which we apply this term to measuring and weighing in
external research, it is exact in relationship to its own development in the
sense in which the external scientist, the mathematician for example, is
accustomed to follow with full consciousness every step in his research. But
this occurs when that mode of supersensible cognition of which I am here
speaking substitutes a truly exact development of this thinking in place of the
ancient vague meditation, the ancient indistinct immersion of oneself in
thinking. It is possible here to indicate only in general principles what I have
said in regard to such an exact development of thinking in my books Occult Science: An Outline and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and
other books. The human being should really compel himself, for the length of
time which is necessary for him — and this is determined by the varying innate
capacities of people — to exchange the role of passive surrender to the external
world, which he otherwise rightly assumes in his thinking, for that different
role: that of introducing into this thinking his whole inner activity of soul.
This he should do by taking into his mind day by day, even though at times only
for a brief period, some particular thought — the content of which is not the
important matter — and, while withdrawing his inner nature from the external
world, directing all the powers of his soul in inner concentration upon this
thought. By means of this process something comes about in the development of
those capacities of soul that may be compared with the results which follow when
any particular muscles of the human body — for instance, the muscles of the arms
— are to be developed. The muscles are made stronger, more powerful, through use,
through exercise. Thus, likewise, do the capacities of the soul become inwardly
stronger, more powerful, by being directed upon a definite thought. This exercise
must be so directed that we proceed in a really exact way, that we survey every
step taken in our thinking just as a mathematician surveys his operations when
he undertakes to solve a geometrical or arithmetical problem. This can be done
in the greatest variety of ways. It may seem trivial when I say that something
should be selected for this content of concentration that one finds in any sort
of book — even some worthless old volume that we know quite certainly we have
never previously seen. The important point is not what the content of truth in
the thing is, but the fact that we survey such a thought content completely.
This cannot be done if we take a thought content out of our own memory; for very
much is associated with such a thought in the most indeterminate way, very much
that plays a role in the subconscious or the unconscious, and it is not possible
to be exact if one concentrates upon such a thing. What one fixes, therefore, in
the very center of one's consciousness is something entirely new,
something that one confronts only with respect to its actual content, which is
not associated with any experience of the soul. The matter of importance is the
concentration of the forces of the soul and the strengthening which
results from this. Likewise, if one goes to a person who has made some progress
in this field and requests him to provide one with such a thought content, it is
not well to entertain any prejudice against this. The content is in that case
entirely new to the person concerned, and he can survey it. Many persons fear
that they may become dependent in this way upon someone else who provides them
with such a content. But this is not the case; in reality, they become less
dependent than if they take such a thought content out of their own memories and
experiences, in which case it is bound up with all sorts of subconscious
experiences. Moreover, it is well for a person who has had some practice in
scientific work to use the findings of scientific research as material for
concentration; these prove to be, indeed, the most fruitful of all for this
purpose.
If this is
continued for a relatively long time, even for years perhaps — and this must be
accompanied by patience and endurance, since it requires a few weeks or months
in some cases before success is achieved, and in some cases years — it is
possible to arrive at a point where this method for the inner molding of one's
thoughts can be applied as exactly as the physicist or the chemist applies the
methods of measuring and weighing for the purpose of discovering the secrets of
nature. What one has then learned is applied to the further development of one's
own thinking. At a certain point of time, the person then has a significant
inner experience. This consists in the fact that he feels himself to be involved
not only in picture-thinking, which depicts the external events and facts
and which is true to reality in inverse proportion to the force it possesses in
itself, in proportion as it is a mere picture; but one arrives now at the point
of adding to this kind of thinking the inner experience of a thinking in which
one lives, a thinking filled with inner power. This is a significant
experience. Thinking thus becomes, as it were, something which one begins to
experience just as one experiences the power of one's own muscles when one
grasps an object or strikes against something. A reality such as one experiences
otherwise only in connection with the process of breathing or the activity of a
muscle — this inner active something now enters into thinking. And, since one
has investigated precisely every step upon this way, so does one experience
oneself in full clarity and sober-mindedness of consciousness in this
strengthened, active thinking. If the objection is raised, let us say, that
knowledge can result only from observation and logic, this is no real objection;
for what is now experienced we experience with complete inner clarity, and yet
in such a way that this thinking becomes at the same time a kind of “touching
with the soul.” In the process of forming a thought, it is as if we were
stretching out a feeler — not, in this case, as when the snail stretches a
feeler into the physical world, but as if a feeler were stretched out into a
spiritual world, which is as yet present only for our feelings if we have
succeeded to this stage, but which we are justified in expecting. For one has
the feeling: “Your thinking has been transformed into a spiritual touching; if
this can become more and more the case, you may expect that this thinking will
come into contact with what constitutes a spiritual reality, just as your finger
here in the physical world comes into contact with what is physically real.”
Only when one
has lived for a time in this inwardly strengthened thinking does complete
self-knowledge become possible. For we know then that the soul element has
become by means of this concentration an experiential reality.
It is possible
then for the person concerned to go forward in his exercises and to arrive at
the point where he can, in turn, eliminate this soul content, put it away, in a
certain sense render his consciousness void of what he himself has
brought into this consciousness, this thought content upon which he has
concentrated, and which has enabled him to possess a real thinking constituting
a sense of touch for the soul. It is rather easy in ordinary life to acquire an
empty consciousness; we need only to fall asleep. But it requires an intense
application of force, after we have become accustomed to concentrating upon a
definite thought content, to put away such a content of thought in connection
with this very strengthened thinking, thinking which has become a reality. But
we succeed in putting aside this content of thinking in exactly the same way in
which we acquired at first the powerful force needed for concentration. But,
when we have succeeded in this, something appears before the soul which has been
possible previously only in the form of pictures of episodes in one's memory:
the whole inner life of the person appears in a new way before the eyes of his
soul, as he has passed through this life in his earthly existence since birth,
or since the earliest point of time to which one's memory can return, at which
one entered consciously into this earthly existence. Ordinarily, the only thing
we know in regard to this earthly existence is that which we can call up in
memory; we have pictures of our experiences. But what is now experienced by
means of this strengthened thinking is not of the same kind. It appears as if in
a tremendous tableau so that we do not recollect merely in a dim picture what we
passed through ten years ago, for instance, but we have the inner experience
that in spirit we are retracing the course of time. If some one carries out such
an exercise in his fiftieth year, let us say, and arrives at the result
indicated, what then happens is that time permits him to go back as if along a
“time-path” all the way, for instance, to the experiences of his thirty-fifth
year. We travel back through time. We do not have only a dim memory of what we
passed through fifteen years earlier, but we feel ourselves to be in the midst
of this in its living reality, as if in an experience of the present moment. We
travel through time; space loses its significance, and time affords us a mighty
tableau of memory. A precise picture of the life of the person is now created
out of that which appears in an episodic manner, even according to scientific
thinkers, when anyone is exposed to great terror, a severe shock, at the moment
of drowning, for instance, when for some moments he is confronted by something
of his entire earthly life in pictures appearing before his soul — to which he
looks back later with a certain shuddering fascination. In other words, what
appears before the soul in such cases as through a natural convulsion now
actually appears before the soul at the moment indicated, when the entire
earthly life confronts one as in a mighty tableau of the spirit, only in a
time order. Only now does one know oneself; only now does one possess
real self-observation.
It is quite
possible to differentiate this picture of man's inner being from that which
constitutes a mere memory picture. It is clear in the mere memory picture that
we have something in which persons, natural occurrences, or works of art come
upon us as if from without; in this memory picture what we have is the
manner in which the world comes into contact with us. But in the
supersensible memory tableau which appears before a person, what
confronts him is, rather, that which has proceeded from himself. If, for
instance, at a certain definite point of time in his life he began a friendship
with a beloved personality, the mere memory picture shows him how this person
came to him at a certain point of time, spoke to him, what he owes to the
person, etc. But in this life tableau what confronts him is the manner in which
he himself longed for this person, and how he took every step at last in such a
way that he was inevitably led to that being regarding whom he had the knowledge
that this being was suited to himself.
That which has
taken place through the unfolding of the forces of the soul comes to meet one
with exact clarity in this life tableau. Many people do not like this precise
clarity, because it brings them enlightenment in regard to much that they would
prefer to see in a different light from the light of truth. But one must endure
the fact that one is able to look upon one's own inner being in utter freedom
from preconceptions, even though this being of oneself confronts the searching
eye with reproach.
This stage of
cognition I have called Imaginative knowledge, or Imagination.
But one can
progress beyond this stage. In that which we come to know through this memory
tableau, we are confronted by those forces which have really formed us as human
beings. While confronting this tableau of life, we know: “Within you those
forces evolve which mold the substances of your physical body.” Within you,
especially during childhood, those forces have evolved which have plastically
molded approximately up to the seventh year the nerve masses of the brain,
which did not yet exist in well-ordered form after your birth. We then cease at
last to ascribe what works formatively upon the human being within to those
forces which inhere in material substances. We cease to do this when we have
this memory tableau before us, when we see how there stream into all the forces
of nutrition and of breathing and into the whole circulation of the blood the
contents of this memory tableau — which are forces in themselves, forces without
which no single wave of the blood circulates and no single process of breathing
occurs. We now learn to understand that man himself in his inner being consists
of spirit and soul.
What now dawns
upon one can best be described by a comparison. Imagine that you have walked for
a certain distance over ground which has been softened by rain, and that you
have noticed along the way tracks or ruts made by human feet or wagon wheels. Now
suppose that a being should come from the moon and see this condition of the
ground, but should see no human being. He would probably come to the conclusion
that there must be all sorts of forces underneath the earth which have thrust up
these traces and given this form to the surface of the ground. Such a being
might seek within the earth for the forces which have produced the tracks. But
one who sees into the thing knows that the condition was not caused by the earth
but by human feet or wagon wheels.
Now, any one who
possesses a view of things such as I have just described does not by any means
for this reason look with less reverence, for example, upon the convolutions of
the human brain. But, just as he knows that those tracks on the surface of the
earth do not derive from forces within the earth, he now knows that these
convolutions of the brain do not derive from forces within the substance of the
brain, but that the spiritual-psychic entity of man is there, which he himself
has now beheld, and that this works in such a way as to cause our brain to have
these convolutions. This is the essential thing — to be driven to this view, so
that we arrive at a conception of our own spirit-soul nature, that the eye of
the soul is really directed to the spirit-soul element and to its manifestation
in the external life.
But it is
possible to progress still further. After having first strengthened our inner
being through concentrating upon a definite content of thought, and then having
emptied our consciousness, so that, instead of the images we ourselves have
formed, the content of our life now appears before us, we can now put this
memory tableau out of our consciousness, in turn, just as we previously
eliminated a single concept, so that our consciousness was void of this. We can
now learn to apply the powerful force so as to blot out from our consciousness
that which we have come to know through a heightened self-observation as a
spirit-soul being. In doing this, we blot out nothing less than the inner being
of our own soul life. We learned first in concentration to blot out what is
external, and we then learned to direct the look of our soul to our own
spirit-soul entity, and this completely occupied the whole tableau of memory. If
we now succeed in blotting out this memory tableau itself, there comes about
what I wish to designate as the truly empty consciousness. We have
previously lived in the memory tableau or in what we ourselves have set up
before our mind, but now something entirely different appears. That which lived
within us we have now suppressed, and we confront the world with an empty
consciousness. This signifies something extraordinary in the experience of the
soul. Fundamentally speaking, I can describe at first only by means of a
comparison what now appears to the soul, when the content of our own soul is
blotted out by means of the powerful inner force we apply. We need only to think
of the fact that, when the impressions of the external senses gradually die
away, when there is a cessation of seeing, hearing, perhaps even of a distinct
sense of touch, we sink into a state closely resembling the state of sleep. In
the present case, however, when we blot out the content of our own soul,
although we do come to an “empty” state of consciousness, this is not a state of
sleep. We reach what I might call the state of being merely awake — that
is, being awake with an empty consciousness.
We may perhaps
be enabled to conceive this empty consciousness in the following way. Imagine a
modern city with all its noise and din. We may withdraw from the city, and
everything becomes more and more quiet around us, but we finally enter, perhaps,
a forest. Here we find the absolute opposite of the noises of the city. We live
in complete inner stillness, in soundless quiet. If, now, I undertake to
describe what follows, I must resort to a trivial comparison. We must raise the
question whether this quiet, this stillness, can be changed still further into
something else. We may designate this stillness as the zero point in our
perception of the external world. But, if we possess a certain amount of
property and we subtract from this property, it is diminished; as we take away
still more, it is further diminished, and we finally arrive at zero and have
nothing left. Can we then proceed still further? It may perhaps be undesirable
to most persons, but the fact is that many do this: they still decrease their
possessions by incurring debt. One then has less than zero, and one can still
diminish what one has. In precisely the same way we may at least imagine that
the stillness, which is like the zero point of being awake, may be pushed beyond
this zero into a sort of negative state. A super-stillness, a super-quietness
may augment the quietness. This is what is experienced by one who blots out his
own soul content: he enters into a state of quietness of soul which lies below
the zero point. An inner stillness of soul in the most intensified degree comes
about, during the state of wakefulness.
But this cannot
be attained unless it is accompanied by something else. This can be obtained
only when we feel that a certain state associated with the picture concepts of
our own self passes over into another state. One who senses the first stage of
the supersensible within himself, who views this, is in a certain state of
well-being, that well-being and inner blissfulness to which the various
religious creeds refer when they call attention to the supersensible and at the
same time remind the human being that the supersensible brings to him the
experience of a certain blissfulness in his inner being. Indeed, up to the point
where we exclude our own inner self, there was a certain sense of well-being, an
intensified feeling of blissfulness. At that moment, however, where the
stillness of soul comes about, this inner well-being is replaced completely by
inner pain, inner deprivation, such as we have never previously known — the
sense that one is separated from all to which one is united in the earthly life,
far removed not only from the feeling of one's own body but from the feeling of
one's own experiences since birth. And this signifies a deprivation which
reaches the degree of tremendous pain of soul. Many shrink back from this stage,
lacking the courage to make the transition from a certain lower clairvoyance
and, after eliminating their own content of soul, to enter into that state of
consciousness where resides that inner stillness. But, if we pass into this
stage in full consciousness, there begins to enter, in place of Imagination,
that which I have called in the books previously mentioned Inspiration —
I trust you will not take offense at these terms — the experience of a real
spiritual world. After one has previously eliminated the world of the senses and
has substituted an empty consciousness, accompanied by inexpressible pain of
soul, then does the external spiritual world come to meet us. In the state of
Inspiration we become aware of the fact that the human being is surrounded by a
spiritual world, just as the sense world exists for his external senses.
And the first
thing, in turn, that we behold in this spiritual world is our own pre-earthly
existence. Just as we are otherwise conscious of earthly experiences by
means of our ordinary memory, so does a cosmic memory now dawn for us: we look
back into pre-earthly experiences, beholding what we were as spirit-soul beings
in a purely spiritual world before we descended through birth to this earthly
existence, when as spiritual beings we participated in the molding of our own
bodies. So do we look back upon the spiritual, the eternal, in the nature of
man, to that which reveals itself to us as the pre-earthly existence, regarding
which we now know that it is not dependent upon the birth and death of the
physical body, for it is that which existed before birth and before conception,
which made of this physical body derived from matter and heredity a human being.
Now for the first time does one reach a true concept also of physical heredity,
since one sees what supersensible forces play into this — forces which we
acquire out of a purely spiritual world, with which we now feel united, just as
we feel united with the physical world in the earthly life. Moreover, we now
become aware that, in spite of the great advances registered in the evolution of
humanity, much has been lost which belonged inherently to more ancient
instinctive conceptions such as we can no longer use. The instinctive
supersensible vision of the humanity of earlier ages was confronted by this
pre-earthly life as well as human immortality, regarding which we shall
speak a little later. For eternity was conceived in ancient times in such a way
that one grasped both its aspects. We speak nowadays of the deathlessness of the
human soul — indeed, our language itself possesses only this word — but people
once spoke, and the more ancient languages still continue to show such words, of
birthlessness as the other aspect of the eternity of the human soul. Now,
however, the times have somewhat changed. People are interested in the question
of what becomes of the human soul after death, because this is something still to
come; but as to the other question, what existed before birth, before
conception, there is less interest because that has “passed,” and yet we are
here. But a true knowledge of human immortality can arise only when we consider
eternity in both its aspects: that of deathlessness and that of
birthlessness.
But, for the
very purpose of maintaining a connection with the latter, and especially in an
exact clairvoyance, still a third thing is necessary. We sense ourselves truly
as human beings when we no longer permit our feelings to be completely absorbed
within the earthly life. For that which we now come to know as our pre-earthly
life penetrates into us in pictures and is added to what we previously sensed as
our humanity, making us for the first time completely human. Our feelings are
then, as it were, shot through with inner light, and we know that we have now
developed our feeling into a sense organ for the spiritual. But we
must go further and must be able to make our will element into an organ
of knowledge for the spiritual.
For this
purpose, something must begin to play a role in human knowledge which, very
rightly, is not otherwise considered as a means of knowledge by those who desire
to be taken seriously in the realm of cognition. We first become aware that this
is a means of knowledge when we enter the supersensible realms. This is the
force of love. Only, we must begin to develop this force of love in a
higher sense than that in which nature has bestowed love upon us, with all its
significance for the life of nature and of man. What I shall have to describe as
the first steps in the unfolding of a higher love in the life of man may seem
paradoxical.
When you
undertake, with complete sober-mindedness as to each step, to sense the world
otherwise than is customary, you then come upon this higher form of love.
Suppose you undertake in the evening, before you go to sleep, to bring your
day's life so into your consciousness that you begin with the last occurrence of
the evening, visualizing it as precisely as possible, then visualizing the next
preceding in the same way, then the third from the last, thus moving backward to
the morning in this survey of the life of the day: this is a process in which
much more importance attaches to the inner energy expended than to the question
whether one visualizes each individual occurrence more or less precisely. What
is important is this reversal of the order of visualization. Ordinarily
we view events in such a way that we first consider the earlier and then the
subsequent in a progressive chain. Through such an exercise as I have just given
you, we reverse the whole life: we think and feel in a direction opposite to the
course of the day. We can practice this on the experiences of our day, as I have
suggested, and this requires only a few minutes. But we can do this also in a
different way. Undertake to visualize the course of a drama in such a way that
you begin with the fifth act and picture it successively through the fourth,
then the third, and so on back to the beginning. Or we may represent a melody to ourselves in the
reverse succession of tones. If we pass through more and more such inner
experiences of the soul in this way, we shall discover that the inner experience
is freed from the external course of nature, and that we actually become more
and more self-directing. But even though we become in this way more and more
individualized and achieve an ever increasing power of self-direction, yet we
learn also to give attention to the external life in more complete
consciousness. For only now do we become aware that the more powerfully we
develop through practice this fully conscious absorption in another being, the
higher becomes the degree of our selflessness, and the greater must our love
become in compensation. In this way we feel how this experience of not living in
oneself but living in another being, this passing over from one's own being to
another, becomes more and more powerful. We then reach the stage where, to
Imagination and Inspiration, which we have already developed, we
can now unite the true intuitive entrance into the other being: we arrive at
Intuition, so that we no longer experience only our self, but also learn
— in complete individualization yet also in complete selflessness — to
experience the other being.
Here love
becomes something which gradually makes it possible for us to look back even
further than into the pre-earthly spiritual life. As we learn in our present
life to look back upon contemporary events, we learn through such an elevation
of love to look back upon former earth lives, and to recognize the entire
life of a human being as a succession of earthly lives. The fact that these
lives once had a beginning and must likewise have an end will be touched upon in
the next lecture. But we learn to know the human life as a succession of lives
on earth, between which there always intervene purely spiritual lives,
coming between a death and the next birth. For this elevated form of love,
lifted to the spiritual sphere and transformed into a force of knowledge,
teaches us also the true significance of death. When we have advanced so far, as
I have explained in connection with Imagination and Inspiration,
as to render these intensified inner forces capable of spiritual love, we
actually learn in immediate exact clairvoyance to know that inner experience
which we describe by saying that one experiences oneself spiritually, without a
body, outside the body. This passing outside the body becomes in this way, if I
may thus express it, actually a matter of objective experience for the soul. If
we have once experienced in actual knowledge outside the body — ”clairvoyantly,”
I mean — this spiritual element in existence, we know the significance of the
event of laying aside the physical body in death, of passing through the portal
of death to a new, spiritual life. We thus learn, at the third stage of an exact
clairvoyance, the significance of death, and thus also the significance of
immortality, for man.
I have desired
to make it transparently clear through the manner of my explanation that the
mode of supersensible cognition about which I am speaking seeks to bring into
the very cognitional capacities of the human being something which works
effectually, step by step, as it is thus introduced. The natural scientist
applies his exactness to the external experiment, to the external observation;
he wishes to see the objects in such juxtaposition that they reveal their
secrets with exactitude in the process of measuring, enumerating, weighing. The
spiritual-scientist, about whom I am here speaking, applies his exactness to the
evolution of the forces of his own soul. That which he makes out of
himself for the purpose of causing a spiritual world and, with this, the eternal
being of man, the nature of human immortality, to appear before his soul, he
makes with precision, if I may use an expression of Goethe. At every step which
the spiritual-scientist thus takes, in order that the spiritual world may at
last lie outspread before the eyes of the soul, he feels obligated to be just as
conscientious in regard to his knowledge as a mathematician must be at every
step he takes. For just as the mathematician must see clearly into everything
that he writes on the paper, so must the spiritual-scientist see with complete
exactitude into everything that he makes out of his powers of cognition. He then
knows that he has formed an “eye of the soul” out of the soul itself with the
same inner necessity with which nature has formed the corporeal eye out of
bodily substance. And he knows that he can speak of spiritual worlds with
the same justification with which he speaks of a physical-sensible world in
relationship to the physical eye. In this sense the spiritual research with
which we are here concerned satisfies the demands of our age imposed upon us by
the magnificent achievements of natural science — which spiritual science in no
wise opposes but, rather, seeks further to supplement.
I am well aware
that everyone who undertakes to represent anything before the world, no matter
what his motive may be, attributes a certain importance to himself by describing
this as a “demand of the times.” I have no such purpose; neither shall I have
such a purpose in my next lecture; on the contrary, I should like to show that the demands of the
times already exist, and the very endeavor of spiritual science at every step it
takes is to satisfy these demands of the times. We may say, then, that the
spiritual-scientist whom it is our purpose to discuss here does not propose to
be a person who views nature in a dilettante or amateur fashion. On the
contrary, he proposes to advance further in true harmony with natural science
and with the same genuine conscientiousness. He desires truly exact clairvoyance
for the description of a spiritual world. But it is clear to him at the same
time that when we undertake to investigate a human corpse in a laboratory for
the purpose of explaining the life which has disappeared from it, or when we
look out into cosmic space with a telescope, we then develop capacities which
tend to adapt themselves at first solely to the microscope or telescope, but
which possess an inner life and which misrepresent themselves in their existent
form. When we dissect a human corpse, we know that it was not nature that made
the human being into this bodily form, but that the human soul, which has now
vanished, made it. We interpret the human soul from
what we have here as its physical product, and anyone would be irrational who
should assume that this molding of the human physical forces and forms had not
arisen out of that which preceded the present state of this human being. But
everything that we hold in the background while we investigate dead nature with
those forces in connection with which we rightly deny our inner activity creates
the potentiality, through this very act of holding in reserve, for a further
development of the soul forces of the human being. Just as the seed of the plant
lies out of sight under the earth when we have laid it in the soil, and yet will
become a plant, so do we plant a seed in the soul in the very action of
conscientious scientific research. He who is a serious scientist in this sense
has within himself the germ of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge.
He needs only to develop the germ. He will then know that, just as natural
science is a demand of the times, so is supersensible research likewise. What I
mean to say is that every one who speaks in the spirit of natural science speaks
also in the spirit of supersensible research, only he does not know this. And
that which constitutes an unconscious longing in the innermost depths of many
persons today — as will be manifest in the next public lecture — is the impulse
of supersensible research to unfold out of its germ.
To those very
persons, therefore, who oppose this spiritual research from a supposedly
scientific standpoint, one would like to say, though not with any bad intention,
that this brings to mind an utterance in Goethe's Faust all too well
known, but which would be applied in a different sense:
The little
man would not sense the Devil
Even if he held him by the throat.
Even if he held him by the throat.
Now, I do not care
to go into that. But what is contained in this expression confronts us in a
different application in that which exists today as a demand of the times: that
those who speak rightly today about nature are really giving expression, though
unconsciously, to the spirit. One would like to say that there are many
who do not wish to notice the spirit when it speaks, although they are
constantly giving expression to the spirit in their own words!
The seed of
supersensible perception is really far more widespread today than is supposed,
but it must be developed. The fact that it must be developed is really a lesson
we may learn from the seriousness of the times as regards external experiences.
As I have already said, I should like to go into the details next time; but we
may still add in conclusion that the elements of a fearful catastrophe really
speak to the whole of humanity today through various indications in the outside
world, and that it is possible to realize that tasks at which humanity in the
immediate future will have to work with the greatest intensity will struggle to
birth out of this great seriousness of the times. This external seriousness with
which the world confronts us today, especially the world of humanity, indicates
the necessity of an inner seriousness. And it is about this inner
seriousness in the guidance of the human heart and mind toward man's own
spiritual powers, which constitute the powers of his essential being, that I
have wished to speak to you today. For, if it is true that man must apply his
most powerful external forces in meeting the serious events awaiting him over
the whole world, he will need likewise a powerful inner courage. But such
forces and such courage can come into existence only if the human being is able
to feel and also to will himself in full consciousness in his innermost being,
not merely theoretically conceiving himself but practically knowing himself.
This is possible for him only when he comes to know this being of his as coming
out of that source from which it does truly come, from the source of the spirit,
only when in ever increasing measure, not only theoretically but practically, he
learns to know in actual experience that man is spirit, and can find his true
satisfaction only in the spirit; that his highest powers and his highest courage
can come to him only out of the spirit, out of the supersensible.
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