The
Questions of Free Will and Immortality
Berlin, 20 April 1918
In
this talk, I have connected two significant riddles of the
human soul life with each other not by chance, but I hope to
show that the enclosing questions of free will and immortality
belong intimately together from the spiritual-scientific
viewpoint and are considered together best of all. However, it
especially strikes just in case of this consideration that a
spiritual-scientific discussion must take ways that are
somewhat different from those of a usual scientific
consideration, simply because another scientific consideration
can point mostly to the results that are there immediately. A
spiritual-scientific consideration needs to show more exactly
on which way the researcher gets to his results; and how it has
to be considered as proof of the matter.
You
know that one has also dealt and deals with the questions of
free will and immortality from the oldest times of human
reflection up to now. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, one regarded these two questions almost as arisen from
a childish viewpoint of human thinking. One has abandoned from
doing this in the last time. One has become more careful, but
the central issue has not changed. One can say, the
philosophical beholders of these questions do not advance
further even if they are careful than to a kind of confession
that the human methods of thinking are not sufficient to
recognise something certain about these questions. I do not
want to go further into it, but I would like to consider my
topic from that viewpoint which has been asserted in all these
talks here. However, I would like to say in advance that,
nevertheless, it strikes that not more results with serious
application of all human means of thinking, of any astuteness
for the usual philosophy than a kind of doubt mania concerning
these questions. This does not surprise you especially if you
think that the highest revelations of the human being have to
emerge from the innermost core of the human being, and that
this innermost core has to be searched in the supersensible.
Hence, it is not surprising that, before one enters into the
spiritual-scientific consideration, just about these questions
little explanation can be given. The researchers always
experience that they work with inadequate cognitive means. They
feel, without realising it clearly, that in the human being a
supersensible life is contained that, however, everything that
this human being can consider with the help of the usual
organism is directed either upon the sensory world or is
abstracted from it. Hence, considering the innermost human core
you find yourself in a situation that you can compare with that
in which the human eye is.
The
eye can perceive the things round itself but not itself.
Because the eye is an outer sensory apparatus, an outer object,
the eye can observe another human being of course, as far as it
is a sensory object. However, one thing is clear: you can
observe the human eye if you can take this point of view beyond
this eye. In a similar position is the beholder of the human
self, of the human core. He would have to be beyond the human
soul being if he wanted to observe it. There one cannot say
that another human being can observe this human soul life
because to the other human being the human corporeality
appears. It is not sufficient that another directs his
attention upon the soul being; it is necessary that the
beholder of his own being could really manage to get out of his
own being to observe it.
Maybe another comparison can illustrate that which should be in
the object of the today's consideration. There is still a
possibility to see the human eye: looking at it in the mirror.
Then you have the picture of this eye only before yourself.
This comparison matches what I want to explain while you have
to put yourself in a position by the spiritual-scientific
methods which shows that what you experience as a human being
in yourself and at yourself first in a picture, and that you
put yourself with your real human nature in a position which
changes that into a picture what you have, otherwise, as a
living reality before yourself.
To
observe the own human being, it is necessary to leave the own
being. Since even if you want to have the own being as a
picture before yourself, you have to stand beyond the picture.
You can do this only with those research methods about which I
have spoken with all considerations in this winter as of a
fundamental tone: while you apply those inner performances to
the soul — one calls them “exercises” or as
you want — which cause the soul to be brought out of
itself, so that it faces itself objectively. In the last talk,
I have explained some of these things that the human soul has
to do with itself to get to this life in cognition beyond the
body. I have shown all that in the book How Does
One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, in the
second part of Occult
Science. An Outline and in
The Riddle of Man.
It
concerns that the everyday soul life is strengthened, is
“awoken,” that is to a state which relates to the
everyday consciousness as this relates to the vague dream
consciousness. As you wake from the dream to the full day life,
it is possible to wake to a higher consciousness that I have
called the “beholding consciousness.”
If
you succeed in strengthening the soul life by concentration of
thinking, feeling and willing in such a way that you can enter
into this beholding consciousness, then you can refrain from
everything that, otherwise, the human being perceives with the
senses. You have advanced beyond this sense perception. You
live in another inner soul being, in the Imaginative
consciousness at first. I call it Imaginative consciousness,
not because something unreal should be expressed, but because
the soul is fulfilled in this consciousness with pictures that
are, however, pictures of a reality. The soul knows that the
pictures are not real, but are pictures of a reality, and it
knows that it is in the real world context that it does not
weave these pictures from nothing, from any inspirations, but
from inner necessity. Since the soul has put itself in the real
world context and does not create pictures from this in such a
way, as for example the mere imagination, but so that the
pictures have the character of reality.
It
is particularly important to consider this first level of
spiritual experience exactly, because an error can arise in two
directions. On the one hand, one can confuse this Imaginative
world with those pictures that arise from a pathological
consciousness. However, from my former explanations you have
seen how already the spiritual researcher takes every
precaution on his way to the spiritual that strictly reject the
uncertain life in all kinds of visionary. The vision enters
into the soul so that you do not feel involved in its
realisation. It appears as a picture, but you cannot take part
in the realisation of the picture. Hence, you do not know its
origin. The visionary picture comes always only from the
organism, and what emerges from the organism is not anything
mental-spiritual, maybe it is a cover of anything
spiritual-mental. You have exactly to distinguish the whole
unaware life in all kinds of visions from that which the
spiritual researcher considers as Imaginative consciousness.
This consists in the fact that you are completely involved with
your thinking going from thought to thought in everything that
appears there as pictures. You can only penetrate into the
spiritual world if the activity with which you enter it is as
conscious as the most conscious life of thought. There is only
the difference that the thoughts are shadowy as those and that
they are acquired with outer things or emerge from memory
anyhow, while the soul weaves the Imagination when it
appears.
You
have only to cherish that you must not confuse this Imagination
with imagination on the other side. What it weaves is also
woven from the subconscious; however, this binds itself often
to inner laws of the real life. However, the human being is not
in that which he weaves in his imagination in such a way that
he is aware of his weaving. While forming the figment of the
imagination he is left to an inner real necessity. In the
Imaginative experience, however, he is left to an objective
world necessity. It is very important to know that that which
forms the basis of the work of a spiritual researcher appears
as an objective factuality in his consciousness that is neither
visionary nor is imagination, but that it has to be
distinguished as something midway of these two — I would
like to say polar — contrasts. In the Imaginative life
you are in a similar position, as if you face your sensory
being in a mirror. You know: that who stands there is a reality
of flesh and blood, but from this reality, nothing transitions
into the mirror. In the mirror is only a picture; but this
picture is a likeness, and you know its relation to
reality.
Now, however, you are in the spiritual-mental world. But you
know at the same time that the first thing that faces you is an
imagery, an Imaginative world, and you also know that this
Imaginative world has a relation to reality, as well as the
reflection is related to the human being of flesh and
blood.
This Imaginative knowledge is the first level to enter in the
spiritual world. That which the soul experiences in the
Imaginative knowledge is a certain increase of the usual soul
life, because you know at every moment, because you live in the
Imaginative consciousness: if you refrain from own activity if
you interrupt the consciousness anyhow, the view of the
Imaginative also stops at the same time. This gives a special
nuance of the consciousness life that the consciousness feels
internally strengthened and feels in an activity perpetually
going out from itself from which it must not refrain and
towards which the consciousness must not flag at no moment. The
imagination of the usual everyday consciousness is supported by
the outer impressions, can be left to them, and, hence, does
not demand from the soul to work as intensely as it must work
in the Imaginative consciousness. The Imaginative consciousness
is not found in the usual consciousness. This is the first
level that the spiritual researcher reaches if he wants to
penetrate into the spiritual world.
On
the second level, he must attain the ability to become aware
not only of the pictures but also of the just described
activity that must be never refrained, while one does research
Imaginatively. He must develop an increased self-consciousness.
However, something particular thereby appears. You succeed,
actually, only in grasping the complete significance of the
Imaginative knowledge.
Since you can know if you have prepared your soul sufficiently
you attain pictures only with the Imaginative consciousness;
you face an imagery, not reality. While you advance somewhat
further in your spiritual development, while you divert the
attention of the soul somewhat from the pictures and turn it
more to the own activity, to the increased self-consciousness,
you get to something with which the usual day consciousness is
less familiarised than with the Imaginative world. You realise
that the pictures disappear gradually. What you have evoked at
first disappears gradually. However, reality does not
disappear. Instead of the pictures, which you have beheld
spiritual-mentally at first something appears that manifests
itself from the pictures, that “speaks” from them.
The pictures are ensouled as it were; they say such a thing as
the colours and tones of the outer objects say. While you have
only had pictures first, a spiritual-mental reality appears
from the pictures and a second level of supersensible
consciousness comes into being, the Inspirative
consciousness.
This happens if the activity of Imagination is so maintained
that by the forces of maintaining the pictures disappear as it
were and that which can speak as reality from them really
speaks to the human being. There you notice something
exceptionally significant, and it matters with all these things
that you accomplish every level of spiritual research
completely consciously. You realise that the whole imagery was,
actually, only the means to penetrate to reality. The visionary
describes his pictures. The Imaginatively recognising human
being also has pictures; but he describes them only in such a
way that they are the means to penetrate to reality. He will
not state, in the pictures reality is given, but at most:
something is given in the pictures like senses. The senses are
also something that leads to reality, but one does not look at
it while one looks at reality. One does not look at reality
this way, while one looks at the pictures or describes them,
but the pictures have to disappear first. As the eye if it were
not completely transparent if it were clouded and were itself
perceptible could not see any outer reality, spiritual-mental
realities can also not appear to the Imaginative pictures,
before these pictures have disappeared, have become spiritual
eyes and ears. That of which the pictures are only the means is
that which is already behind the pictures. What expresses
itself by the pictures is spiritual reality.
It
is a particular experience again which the consciousness has on
this level of knowledge. In the pictures, the consciousness is
tensed up; it has to maintain its activity. Now the
consciousness has got to an enclosing loneliness in a way just
because it concentrates its attention on this maintaining. With
its own activity, it gets gradually to an enclosing loneliness.
The pictures disappear, Imagination stops. However, to that
which speaks by Imagination, the consciousness relates more
passively. It recognises that which it adsorbs now as
originating from reality. It is put into a position, as if from
all sides effects of reality come, but one does not reach
reality itself. One is not in reality; one does not face
it.
It
is important again that you are aware that you have to deal now
with experiences not with effects of reality, with reality. The
Intuitive consciousness is necessary to get to reality. This
level of Intuitive consciousness is different from the usual
intuition. Since the Intuition meant here is an inner process,
is not a mere feeling or sensation. There it concerns that you
still ascend to the third level of consciousness where you are
neither as active as with Imagination, nor are in such a way
that from all sides the impressions of Inspiration flow in.
After already the liveliness of the pictures is erased, that
has to be eliminated from the consciousness which is there as
impressions from Inspiration. The consciousness must defend
itself with a certain increased inner force against
Inspiration. It has to get as it were temporarily — but
just temporarily — to a state where it loses itself in
that by which it was inspired. It has to put itself in the
position to eradicate itself as it were, to submerge in the
Inspirative to emerge again in such a way that now it only
knows that that which has appeared by Inspiration is spiritual
reality. You have to grasp that which you bring up as inner
experience different from that which you have brought down when
you have submerged in Inspiration. Only that which one has
brought up from Inspiration gives the full consciousness of the
reality of the Inspirative, and nothing can be considered as
spiritual reality that has not entered into the Intuitive
consciousness through those three levels. Then only this
Intuitive consciousness works after the soul has lost itself in
Inspiration. As the human being becomes lost in sleep in the
evening to appear again in the morning from sleep, the
consciousness becomes lost in the Inspirative, but it keeps the
force to ascend again, and brings that with it, which it has
experienced, in the Intuition.
In
the interaction of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition
everything is contained that is experience or knowledge of the
spiritual world. Everything that I have developed in these
talks here has originated, while I have really applied the
methods, which are totally unknown to most people today. Since
most people generally know nothing about these methods, by
which one really recognises the spiritual that lives in the
surroundings of our mind, as the sensory lives in the
surroundings of our senses. However, if you can penetrate into
this spiritual world with Imagination, Inspiration, and
Intuition, you find the spiritual being of the human being in
it, too. Only then, you find the innermost core, which lives in
the human being, which the human being is, and which only
manifests itself with the outer physical organisation, if you
face yourself if you have left your body. Then you can really
recognise your innermost being in such a way that it manifests
itself only in pictures, in Imaginations. Now the outer body in
which you have been becomes an Imagination of the
supersensible. You get to know the human being as we consider
him today, while he gives cause to the important questions of
free will and immortality.
In
1894, I tried to cope with the riddle of free will in my book
The
Philosophy of Freedom. At that time, I tried to
speak wholly philosophically, so that all those can read this
book who regard spiritual science as folly. I tried to answer
the question of free will starting from most obvious
observations, and I was urged to do what mostly is not done if
the free will is considered philosophically: I dedicated the
complete first part of the book to an immediate, unbiased
consideration of the human thinking itself, not of the
thoughts. I intended to ask once, how does it appear if the
human being realises, what is active in my soul, while I am
thinking? I asked, how does the activity of thinking appear to
the human being?
Although I did not take appropriate action in this book,
because the matter should be shown truthfully, I was already
urged at that time to point to the fact that this experienced
thinking is strictly speaking something that is experienced
internally and shifts for itself so that it cannot be compared
with the remaining soul life that is bound to the human
organisation. Since the spiritual scientist is aware absolutely
that he completely stands on the ground of the scientific way
of thinking. Someone who investigates the human soul life as it
is in the usual consciousness between birth and death realises
that this soul life is dependent on the human organisation.
However, someone who goes to his work conscientiously and
unprejudiced finds that, indeed, everything is dependent on the
human organisation but not the real thinking. In the thinking,
the human being can lift himself out of his organisation. This
is based on the fact that the human being does not have that
only in his organisation which is progressive evolution. I have
explained during the last months that the whole matter is
considered unilaterally by such a view and that one has brought
in with it all wrong viewpoints to the scientific thinking. One
has to look also at a retrograde evolution, at a devolution.
The human organism is really a miraculous construction; it is
not only in a certain ascending development; rather the human
nature takes up a retrograde development in itself, and the
strongest retrograde development is in the senses, in the
head.
It
would be very tempting to point to everything that could be
stated by the today's science for the fact that the human
organisation shows a progressive development that, however,
this development abstains, and that in the head a retrograde
development exists. This expresses itself approximately by the
fact that the head is the most ossified part of the human being
that shows the biggest involution of the sprouting life. The
head thereby is just the organ of the usual consciousness
because in it the development does not progress but is
withdrawn. The nervous activity of the head, generally the
whole activity of the head and the senses is based on the fact
that the human being is mineralised in this area; he
deteriorates, it is a slow dying. Look once at the human being,
how he faces you in abounding, progressive life and how he
takes up that descending life in his organisation; thus this
destruction creates space, and while it creates space, his
mental-spiritual can take place. The human being does not think
because the forces of growth are active in the head and in the
whole mental organisation generally, no, he thinks because
these forces disappear and make way for that which replaces
that now which causes unconsciousness of the remaining organism
in the flowing, surging blood. One realises once that the human
being develops his free thinking because he does not straight
continue the development in the head, but that the development
must become retrograde to unfold thinking. Then one will
understand the connection of the human organisation and
thinking. One will understand how thinking intervenes in the
organisation, that, however, the human organisation must be
decomposed first, so that it can intervene.
I
know that I have to be contradictory to that what the
naturalists say today; but I know that somebody who considers
that properly which the naturalists have discovered will find
confirmation of that in physiology and biology what I can only
indicate now. Because it is in such a way, the human being is
in that peculiar relation to his thinking that, indeed, it is
observed, but cannot be seen according to its own inner being
if one does not consider what I have explained now.
If
the human being abandons himself to his mental pictures, you
can pursue exactly how a mental picture associates with the
another. One can pursue how this is dependent on the organism.
The psychologists call it association of mental pictures. One
can let this association of mental pictures to the naturalists
to investigate them, because it really turns out as that where
the organism has a say. However, the human being also knows
that often in life moments have to take place where he does not
let the association take its course. Since there would never be
a logical control of thinking if one had to follow the
association blindly. One knows, it is something different how
the mental pictures emerge and associate with each other and
something different to control them logically, so that they
become “right.” You only need to read one of the
most popular manuals about this field, then you realise that
the human beings are already aware how something intervenes in
the natural course of the mental pictures that does not belong
to the organism. What intervenes there is that what can only be
there in the human being if the organism withdraws with its
functions first if it adds the retrograde evolution to the
progressive evolution.
I
refer there to a chapter that is also taboo today; but it will
not last very long, until an inner necessity leads the human
beings to this. You need only to remember the important speech
that during the seventies of the last century the famous
physiologist Du
Bois-Reymond held about the “borders of the
knowledge of nature” in which he spoke about the
“world riddles.” Du Bois-Reymond was inclined in a
certain respect to consider carefully not to be completely
immersed in materialism. He put up two such limits of
knowledge: consciousness and matter. He said rightly, in the
material life the same happens which happens in the brain.
Atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon move according to
certain principles; however, the soul becomes aware of this,
and one cannot derive the simplest sensations that appear in
the consciousness from the movements of the atoms, one also
cannot derive any coherence of the movements of the atoms and
the sensations. Then he says, and this is important: if one
knew what is there where matter haunts in space, one would also
know maybe how matter thinks. Indeed, he does not know what it
is about which he thinks that it “haunts” there in
space. In a certain respect, he is right, but he also is right
with that what he means for his science as
“limits.” Since one develops mental pictures,
sensations, thoughts with the usual consciousness. However, all
that is, actually, rather far from the processes in the
material life. That is why Du Bois-Reymond could just point to
the following: one does not know what haunts as matter in
space; if one knew this, one could also find out what as
spiritual life is associated with a material process. In some
sense, he is right, although his way of thinking is quite
materialistic: the fact that one is far away with the usual
thinking from the processes of the spiritual life. One does not
figure them out, these are more shadowy things, and one does
not penetrate into the processes.
When you descend into the Imaginative consciousness, you get
also closer to the material processes — namely at first
to those of the own body. Then you are no longer far from them
as, otherwise, with the usual shadowy mental pictures. The
usual consciousness has no means to say how mental pictures and
thoughts relate to the processes in the brain. Hypotheses about
hypotheses have been put up; but nowhere anything appeared that
would have really satisfied, apart from certain
anatomical-physiological investigations, which, however, are
also far away from the true being of the things. However, while
you move into another consciousness, you have to get closer to
the usual imagining.
There you get to that which sounds paradoxical to many people
today, which is only experienced with the Imaginative
consciousness. Someone who can experience thinking who can look
with the beholding consciousness at that which proceeds,
actually, in the thinking gets closer also to the material
processes He is forced, actually, to a kind of materialism, but
it is only a kind of materialism that finds the spirit in the
matter. He learns to recognise that that which underlies the
material process in the brain is a sensation of hunger living
in the brain, which is not spread out, however, about the whole
body. Thereby he discovers the destruction, the retrograde
development. This appears as hunger, and the counter-image of
hunger in the soul is thinking and imagining.
It
concerns that a quite normal process of our organism causes
this devolution so that we are always in a partial hunger
during our whole awake life, and we owe our consciousness to
this hunger. As we become aware of our hunger if the stomach
rumbles, we are aware of our thinking by the fact that the head
starves.
Something appears there that can be a kind of historic evidence
of that which I have just said. You know that certain ascetics
who follow no spiritual-scientific path but a wrong one also
starve to get to the spiritual life. This abnormal starving
induces the people to be more aware of that which goes forward
in them. This evokes a stronger self-consciousness and a
stronger spiritual experience in abnormal way. This instinct of
having spiritual experiences by hunger experiences is based on
the exaggeration of the facts that the normal consciousness and
its imagining and thinking are based on a sensation of hunger
of the head. As said, if one discovers this, one gets on that
this retrograde process exists that really destruction forms
the basis, and the thinking is not based on a progressive
development, but forces back the organic life and replaces it.
If one figures this out once if one really penetrates to the
self-knowledge and grasps the human being in such a way that
one can say: what appears in it, you have to owe to the
sensation of hunger in the human organism, — if you
penetrate to the concrete this way, you notice — strange
to say — that thinking is an unaware Inspiration in the
human being.
This thinking with its effects approaches the human being while
he can control the mere associations of mental pictures as
something outer because an unaware inspiration approaches him.
The spiritual researcher penetrates into the activity of
thinking that appears when the organism regresses, and he
recognises, you are concerned with an Inspiration. If one
investigates what forms the basis of this Inspiration, that is
one submerges in the Inspiration and emerges again, then this
is the way to discover the spiritual-mental being of the human
being before birth or conception to discover what has combined
with that what descends in the line of heredity from the
ancestors. You get to that which embodies itself at conception;
which is the spiritual-mental past of the human being compared
with his presence in the body. One gets to an immediate view of
the everlasting in the human being.
If
you penetrate up to Intuition in this area, you even get to the
view of that which as a former life on earth forms the basis of
the present one. Talking about repeated lives on earth is based
not on speculative fiction but on careful research that
prepares the soul first to behold what goes forward in the soul
phenomena.
If
we try to grasp the thinking free of sensuousness in
Imaginative knowledge, which disappears, however, because this
thinking itself is an Inspiration, we get to know: the human
being was, before he has taken the earthly body, in a spiritual
world into which he entered from the previous life on earth.
One gets to know what is beyond conception and is everlasting.
While one is able to behold the thinking as that which
destructs what comes just from father and mother what requires
just devolution, one gets to know how the life in the body is
the result of the everlasting in the human being. Another view
is to be added to that view, which was usual even if only in
religious ideas, and it will not only ask: what happens with
the human being after death? However, it will add the other
question: from which state of the spiritual-mental life does
the human being come, while he lives here on earth? The
question of immortality will be much more important in future
because one recognises that life is to be understood here as a
continuation of something spiritual-mental. The first that one
discovers as an unaware Inspiration is thinking which is based
on the retrograde development.
Something else confronts the retrograde evolution in the human
organisation. As everything that I have characterised now is
based on devolution which withdraws the evolution, everything
that is connected with the development of the human limbs
— hands and feet and everything that is a continuation of
the extremities inwards, it is a lot —, is another
extreme in the human being and his organism. Since that which
forms the basis of the human extremities suffers no devolution;
but it shows the peculiarity that it exceeds the measure of the
evolution of the organism — with the exception of the
head. The extremities are overdeveloped; they exceed the point
up to which the head and the rest of the organism go. As the
remaining organism degrades, the extremities develop a kind of
inertia; they overshoot the usual measure.
That which is connected physiologically with the evolution of
the human extremities represents an over-development. This
knowledge results concerning the human organisation that is
connected with the wonderful construction of the extremities
that one can only cope with it if one ascends to the
Imaginative knowledge. Not until one does no longer consider
the extremities in such a way as the outer physiology can
consider them, but if one gets to the spiritual subsoil of the
extremities, one discovers that also there something spiritual
is contained. However, as that which is in the thinking already
announces itself as a rudimentary Inspiration, it is with the
extremities. But here that which causes over-development can be
grasped only pictorially; it can be viewed only this way. Of
course, one does not need to stop with this knowledge at the
picture, but one takes the picture and tries to figure it out.
There is the true reality only. One penetrates from the picture
to the corresponding Inspiration and Intuition. What do you
discover there? You discover what exists as an unaware
Imagination in every human soul what, however, represents the
essential if you grasp its being with Inspiration and Intuition
what goes into the spiritual world if the human being passes
the gate of death. There is the spiritual part of our future.
These seeds are the breeding ground of that what we need after
death. That is why over-development is there because,
otherwise, the development would stop at death. This is the
reason of over-development that one needs to have a
spiritual-mental organisation after death.
The
human being is removed, actually, from Imagination. Hence, that
appears what I have now described for the human organisation in
the usual consciousness in such a way that the Inspirative
thinking — and every true thinking is Inspirative —
remains a riddle. One can explain it only as I have explained
it today. One does not at all investigate that in philosophy
but one accepts it. One writes books on logic, which arrange
the ascending, not-binding thinking. However, one does not find
out where from the soul has it that it unfolds logic. One gets
to that only if one recognises that the soul was in the
spiritual world and has brought the guideline of thinking from
there, and that our logic is not at all developed in the
present. All these contents originate from the existence before
birth or conception; they have not passed. We live the
everlasting life; we have not come off the everlasting life.
This inspires us if we soar the thinking exceeding the mere
imagining. This is a proof, but one does not figure the facts
out. Hence, one gets to riddles in this area but not to
answers.
In
the Inspiration, the human being gets already somewhat closer
to the matter because he approaches it with feeling.
Subconsciously he has the Imagination that is shown in relation
to the extremities. Hence, the philosophers also talk a little
about the antenatal life because it can only recognised in a
higher area, which less enters into the usual consciousness.
The thinking that is closest to the Imaginative emerges
vaguely. Hence, one talks much easier and much more usually
about that which remains as immortality, but avoids the forces
that inspire in the soul, and also the forces that we find
Imaginatively, so that the pictures transition into the
spiritual world and from the pictures the preparation of the
next life on earth is accomplished. We go into the spiritual
world with the pictures. That which we bring in there shows our
future in a way.
The
kind of knowledge about which I have spoken which ascends
through Imagination and Inspiration to Intuition makes it
possible to survey the human life vividly, to penetrate
thereby, however, into the reality of this life. However,
something strange appears if you experience everything that
belongs to the antenatal and the postmortal life: while you
come off the own corporeality, while the own corporeality
becomes pictorial, the self-experience of the ego scatters. It
is a dangerous moment for the knowledge where the usual ego
scatters. You are scattered to the four winds as it were, you
feel being without consciousness.
This feeling is a significant knowledge. One notices that that
which one has left behind was the basis of the usual ego. The
physical organisation is the basis of the ego, which the human
being calls his “ego” in the usual life. This ego
begins with conception, with birth; later the consciousness of
it begins. This ego is bound to the organism; one cannot find
it if one leaves the organism. However, one experiences this
ego as self-contained. It would be dreadful if the human being
experienced that as his ego, which the spiritual researcher
experiences as the scattering ego when he has left his body.
How does one experience this ego? One experiences that it just
has submerged; since if it has not submerged in the physical
body, the human being sleeps; then the ego has left the body
and he does not experience it. One experiences it in the body,
namely in that part of the human organisation which is not the
deteriorating head organisation and not the organisation of
limbs exceeding the normal development; but it is stimulated in
the remaining part of the human organisation by the activities
of lungs and heart. It is stimulated by the fact that the human
being is in his organism.
What is this ego that scatters, otherwise? This ego becomes
conscious because it submerges in the organism. The spiritual
researcher recognises it as an unaware Intuition. This is the
Intuition which is attained, while the true ego which does not
at all appear submerges in the organisation, namely in the
middle organisation of the human being. The consciousness of
the ego is based on unaware Intuition. Hence, you can often
hear speaking of “intuition,” but much less of
Imagination and Inspiration. However, just of this highest
which appears as a process of spiritual research taking place
except the body a vague consciousness exists. This
self-consciousness ascends from the organisation. Unconscious
Imaginations go from the thinking that is free of sensuousness
to that part of the human being, which is embedded in the part
of extremities, and go from there to the future. That which
lives in the present self-consciousness scatters. It gets free
from scattering in future. One realises this just if one
pursues the matter further. Since now one has something
threefold in the human nature, namely the three members of the
human everlasting nature: the past, being before the earth
embodiment, which settles in the unaware Inspiration of the
organism; then that which is experienced during the life on
earth in the unaware Intuition; and thirdly that which is
anticipated as nature of the human being in the Imagination
after death. These are three members of the human being, and
they always co-operate in him. In truth, the human being is not
the simple monad-like being, but three egos co-operate in the
human being: the Inspirative one that lives in our thinking
that is carried over from the spiritual world and from the
preceding life on earth; the Intuitive ego that lives in the
present corporeality; and the Imaginative one that is carried
over to the spiritual world after death.
Now
that action, the act of volition, can appear which is connected
internally with the organisation of the limbs. It can appear in
such a way that it follows from the organisation. Ascribing
free will to the trivial life, to the instinctual life would be
nonsense. Hence, I made a point asking in the Philosophy
of Freedom: which actions are free? Since one
discovers that those actions originating from the associations
of mental pictures are not yet free. The human being is free
concerning some actions, but not concerning other actions. The
free element of the action develops only from the human being,
that is only those actions are free which originate from the
thinking, which is free of sensuousness, from the Intuitive
thinking. There the human being has to develop something to
launch such actions, which lead him out of himself. Since the
thinking that is free of sensuousness does not originate from
the organisation of the organism, but it is based on
destruction. What originates from the desires and instincts
comes from the organisation. The human being has to leave
himself, even if unconsciously.
However, in what way does he leave himself already in the usual
consciousness? If he does actions, in which he is less involved
with his desires and instincts while he has the free thought:
“it must happen,” and, nevertheless, only feels as
tool of the events. Someone who can really check the human life
finds that such actions position themselves in life as we face
a person whom we love. If we love him really, we take him as he
is, we look at him, exceed ourselves. Actions that have love as
the innermost impulse are free actions if this love is carried
by the insight that is based on the Intuitive thinking.
Twenty-five years ago, I have shown this in the Philosophy
of Freedom from observations, today I show it from
the spiritual-scientific standpoint. Therefore, we have the
triad of a free action: free Intuitive thinking, love, and
action. However, it must emerge in the usual consciousness.
That which I have described now has to form its basis as it
were.
However, the human being who acts freely is not yet a
clairvoyant; he has not yet attained the beholding
consciousness. As the spiritual life enters in poets and
artists, it enters in him by the moral imagination as I have
called it in my book. If you beheld the spiritual counter-image
of the moral imagination in the spiritual world, you would have
Imaginations. Since the moral impulses do not live in us. You
feel the reflection of it in your conscience; the reflection of
it in the consciousness is the moral imagination that has the
moral impulses. Spiritual-scientifically, one says, the moral
impulses not only are in us, but they are taken from the
spiritual world; but they come into our consciousness as moral
imagination. That forms the basis of the free will.
We
look once again at that which is expressed in the higher
organisation of the limbs. This is not for the life, which
leads to death; it contains the impulses that become
significant after death. They exist, live in the human being,
do something that is significant after the usual life; they are
not founded in the organism. Since the organism must exceed its
measure of organisation, while it wants to produce this. There
it causes something in the human being that has nothing to do
with an only scientific necessity, because this scientific
necessity looks at the human being only between birth and
death. However, if that appears which works, indeed, here, but
receives its full reality only after death, and then it is the
“future ego” if I may so express myself. What does
this future ego grasp? I said: the free thinking. The past ego
that the human being brings in at his incarnation, which
inspires his soul life, accomplishes that we have free thinking
which is free from mere imagining which also provides the
impulses of moral actions.
However, this would remain passive. Nevertheless, this must be
seized by lively impulses. They are from the future ego. In
every free action, the immortal nature of the human being acts
out. Since into the present ego, which lives by the body, which
receives its significance in future, only by that which
prepares itself by the spiritual-mental the future ego works
with all impulses, all active forces which seize the free
thinking of the past ego. In the present human being, the
immortal human being works in harmony with the future human
being. That is why the human being is a free being.
One
has only to find out that the immortal nature of the human
being is in the free action to realise that natural sciences
are completely right if they do not speak about free actions;
since they do not consider — it is not their task —
the immortal nature of the human being. However, before one
does not realise this immortal being, one cannot penetrate to
that which emerges from the subconscious depths and manifests
itself in moral actions.
The
human will is not free in its desires, but the development of
freedom is contained in it. The human being is a being that
gets free more and more. The more that unfolds in him which
lives as an everlasting essence in him, the more he gains
freedom. We are free with that part of our being with which we
are immortal.
This is the way how this can be found what concerns free will
and immortality and what natural sciences can never find; they
will remain the more good natural sciences, the less they
arrogate to intervene in these areas. However, that remains
science, which intervenes in the spirit and in the spiritual
life this way.
The
humanity of former centuries and millennia that had another
soul life did not yet need this science. However, today we
approach the time more and more where full awareness of that
must arise what forms the basis of the human life. The human
being needs that more and more what the science of the
supersensible life can give him. I have often explained: only
the spiritual researcher is able to penetrate into the
supersensible life; but check what he says with your usual
consciousness, and you can accept it even if you yourself are
no spiritual researcher, although everybody can become one
today. If the spiritual researcher presents his results to the
usual consciousness, you can understand them with the usual
consciousness. Indeed, many things lead away from spiritual
research, and someone who possibly believes that the spiritual
researcher is allowed to have the slightest predisposition of
speculative fiction is very wrong. Someone who thinks there
that it is easy to penetrate into the spiritual world and that
against it the usual research is difficult in medical centres
and laboratories has no idea of the real relations. Strictly
speaking, all efforts of the outer science are minor compared
to that which forms the basis of the research in the areas
described today.
However, it is also necessary that you notice that that people
often believe to be unbiased, and, nevertheless, are biased. I
have to remember if I see repeatedly that philosophers treat
the questions discussed today in such a way that they say, the
human being consists of body and soul. You know that one does
not manage with the consideration of the human being if one
does not divide him in body, soul, and mind. Only spiritual
science does this today. Where from does it result that the
philosophers do not speak of body, soul, and mind today? They
believe to do research without presuppositions, but they follow
the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 (Fourth Council of
Constantinople). They do not know that it corresponds to
the dogma put up at that time that the human being must be
considered not as tripartite, but that one is allowed only to
talk of body and soul while the latter may have some spiritual
qualities. What was through the whole Middle Ages a true horror
has continued into modern times; and if today Wundt speaks
about body and soul, he believes to be unbiased, in truth he
obeys the guideline of the Eighth Ecumenical Council only.
Thus, the human beings are under the impressions of the
unconscious. However, the today's humanity is not
“trusting in authority,” and, therefore, it does
not mind whether these authorities attain their assertions from
such subsoil, or do unbiased science. That is one point that
the observer realises.
The
other point is that inner power is necessary to ascend to
Imagination to keep the reinforced consciousness in such a way
that it does not get perpetually lost. You must not believe
that you come to speculative fiction straight away if you do
not progress in the apron strings of the outer reality with
your experience if one dares from an inner necessity to stand
in the new experience. People lack this inner courage, but
spiritual research could easier penetrate. Faintheartedness and
the fear of loneliness are in the subconsciousness. Those who
have this faintheartedness and this fear call spiritual
research a pipe dream and believe that they could disprove
spiritual research with their reasons.
If
you check their reasons, you find unaware faintheartedness,
unaware fear, and timidity, which are blind to themselves and
want to daze themselves about the reasons they bring forward
against spiritual research. However, every spiritual researcher
knows that that who settles in spiritual science can get to an
understanding of the things. Truth finds its way — as a
spirited German thinker said — through the human
development even through the narrowest scratches and rock
crevices; it finds the way to humanity. Humanity will recognise
that it is a supersensible being and needs supersensible
knowledge more and more to the true self-knowledge, but also to
the real practical life. That is why one is allowed to call
attention to that prevailing power of truth and to this
always-living impulse if one brings forward such paradoxical
ideas of spiritual science if one does not regard the
misunderstandings. This induces me to say, not as a phrase, but
as a deadly serious conviction: May details be still imperfect,
as they are investigated today; the impulse of truth lives in
that which should flow from spiritual-scientific research.
Someone who is in it feels that. Therefore, he says it, not as
a phrase, but as an expression of a life connected with the
spirit: in spite of it all — truth will also be
victorious in this field.
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