Spiritual Science and Natural Sciences — their
Relationship to the Riddles of Life
Part 1
Karlsruhe, 1 March 1913
In
the present, one does not speak about something popular and
accepted if one speaks about spiritual science in the sense as
it is meant here, and this is comprehensible. As a
representative of spiritual science, one would be more
surprised if this spiritual science met with universal approval
than if it evokes opposition of most people everywhere. This is
comprehensible because the strength of our time and of
everything that has led to this strength is based by no means
on the reasons on which spiritual science has to be based.
The
triumphs of humanity are in that area which arises from natural
sciences and their knowledge. As the single human being if he
should completely devote himself to an activity has often to
divert his attention from everything else and has to
concentrate upon that which he should do, it is also with the
genius of humanity. This genius of humanity had to devote
himself, because of a historical necessity, to the outer
sensory knowledge that is bound to the reason that depends on
the brain. He had to devote himself completely to that
worldview; he had to turn his attention completely to that.
Therefore, it happened that from it habitual ways of thinking
have gradually developed which are hostile to research results
from the area of spiritual life.
One
cannot only criticise this fact disparagingly; one has to
understand it. One has to understand that it is comprehensible
if considerations as those of today only cause disparaging
remarks of those who are not closer to the thing, no matter
from which side these remarks come. Spiritual science does not
concern those areas with which the scientific knowledge deals
in our time at first. Spiritual science differs from this
scientific way of thinking not only by that which is
considered, but it also differs especially by the whole way in
which one considers. Just this way is quite unpleasant,
actually, to our contemporaries.
Spiritual science completely acknowledges natural sciences.
They have to deal with that which approaches the human being
from without, and they have to look at his outside. They cannot
penetrate into the inside of the things just because of their
strength — for reasons which we get to know this evening.
However, this is the task of spiritual science, because of its
nature, to penetrate into the inside of the things. Once again,
I would like to remember a Goethean word about knowledge which
goes back again to the word of the great naturalist Haller
(Albrecht von H., 1708-1777), one could say that, actually,
with this Goethean word he leads from the outer view of nature
to the inner one, the Goethean way of consideration. The
naturalist Haller had said:
No created mind penetrates
Into the being of nature.
Blissful is that to whom she shows
Her appearance only!
and
Goethe who was completely pervaded by the spiritual said
against it:
I hear that repeatedly for sixty years,
I grumble about it, but covertly,
I say to myself thousand and thousand times:
She gives everything plenty and with pleasure;
Nature has neither kernel nor shell,
She is everything at the same time.
Examine yourself above all,
Whether you are kernel or shell.
Indeed, Goethe had the right to speak this way. However, one
must say, at the same time he led from the outer view of nature
to the view of spirit. If he says in this poem:
everywhere we are inside,
we
can still say, we are only inside of nature if we can recognise
the creative spirit behind the physical that she has in her
core. Then we stand inside of nature. Then the question is
only: how has one to imagine this penetration into the inside
of nature in the spiritual-scientific sense?
With the cognitive way with which one looks at the things in
the usual life and which one takes as a basis of the usual
actions which are also valid in science one cannot penetrate
into the spiritual inside of the things. Therefore, one has to
say, this way of knowledge belongs to the outer view of
nature.
For
the consideration of the spirit self-education of the soul is
inevitable to get another way of knowledge and a quite
different state of soul or consciousness The soul has to make
something different of itself than it is in the usual life and
in the usual science if it wants to investigate the spiritual
depths. Which development, which self-education has the soul to
go through if it wants to appropriate those forces which do not
exist in the usual life and with which one penetrates into the
inside of the things?
To
get to an understanding with each other I have to ask you to do
a comparative consideration with me which is meant, however, by
no means as a comparison, but which leads us really into the
inside of our whole point of view, as it should be developed.
We take a big change in nature as starting point that faces us
yearly, the development of the plant in the course of the year,
in the seasons. We know that without sunlight, without forces
that flow from the outside towards the plants the earth could
not produce them. We see the relationship of the earth to these
cosmic world surroundings if we see the plant sprouting in the
spring. In autumn, those forces withdraw which elicit the
plants. We see these world forces kept away as it were from
that part of the earth where winter is; then we see the earth
left to its own resources.
Let
us now assume that a human being is organised in such a way
that at the beginning of the spring he is stunned with
something and experiences a kind of sleeping state during the
spring and the summer that he wakes up then in autumn and gets
to know that only which autumn and winter offer. Let us assume
that this may happen anyhow. Let us also assume that the earth
is inhabited by such beings only that see the earth only in its
lifeless state; they would only see the earth if it held the
seeds of the plants; and that which is outside would remind at
most in the perennial plants of the fact that there is also a
spring, a summer. Such beings would believe that the earth is
something else for the human being than it is. They would see
its winter side only and would regard the earth as that which
produces lifeless things. Imagine once how the view of the
earth would be for such beings.
If
we extended the view even further, we could say, such beings
would walk around the earth to experience the winter on one
half of the earth and then on the other half of the earth, so
that they would never experience the summer. Then they did not
need sleep. Then they would always look away from life. They
would get to know the earth only in the state of death. We turn
the view at that which would be hidden to such beings.
Everything that reveals itself to the human being at summertime
that makes the earth a source of living existence would be a
concealed world to such beings.
Not
concerning the earth, but concerning something else this
phenomenon exists on earth about which I have here spoken,
namely this phenomenon appears in the human being himself.
However, the field of observation is not the earth but the
human being. Self-knowledge of the human being for the usual
life is in a way as the earth knowledge would be to a being as
I have brought in now. Why?
If
we consider the human being in his everyday life, this everyday
life changes between a sleeping state and a waking one. We want
to look at the human being how he represents himself in sleep.
All his experiences that surge up and down in him from
awakening to falling asleep, all desires, passions, ideals,
feelings, and the like are quiet. We consider what is outwardly
visible at the sleeping human being. What do we face there? A
being that we can probably compare to a plant. We face a being
that completely has the value of a plant. About such a being,
we must say that it has its living in a similar way as the
plant cover of the earth has it. As we can only understand the
plant cover of the earth if it sprouts under the impression of
the cosmic forces, we can also understand this sleeping human
body only if we imagine it as the plant. If one wants to
imagine that in the human being life sprouts, one normally
takes a quite wrong viewpoint: one normally compares the wake
life of the human being from morning up to the evening to the
sprouting plant life from spring until autumn. However, this
does not correspond to reality if one assumes that the human
being merges into a kind of plant state when he falls asleep.
That means that the spring comes when he falls asleep and that
he goes into the summer, the longer he sleeps at night. If
awakening is approaching, it is autumn in the human being, and
from awakening up to falling asleep, so in the wake day life,
we have wintertime in the human being.
Even natural sciences have got on to verify this. We have
wintertime in the wake human being because the day life works
destroying - as well as the winter must be restored for the
earth —, and must be restored at night by everything that
is sprouting life. As well as the winter works destructively
across the earth, the wake day life works destructively in
life, and at the soul summertime when the human being is in the
plant state that is caused in him which is like the sprouting
life of the plants on earth at summertime.
Hence, we can say, that which the human being unfolds in his
wake state relates to his whole being in such a way as that
which the cosmic world forces work on the earth during
wintertime. From it, we can only understand our wake imagining
life. It is as the life on earth at wintertime. It is the wake
life of the soul wintertime. This is the real consideration of
the human being.
Now
we return to our first mental picture. The human being goes
through a soul summertime, and when he enters into this time,
he becomes unconscious — as well as a being that falls
asleep in the spring would never see the plant growth and would
face a concealed world in the summertime. As the cosmic forces
do not intervene in the life on earth at winter, as they are
not suitable in winter to draw what reveals itself in the plant
growth, the winter forces of the human being, his thoughts, his
sensations, and his conscious life are not able to make
summertime in the human being.
The
following question must be associated with this: is in this
soul summertime of the human being anything concealed that one
can compare with that which remains concealed to our
hypothetical beings that cannot perceive the plant growth of
the earth because of their sleeping state? This question can be
answered only if it is possible to change that unconsciousness
in which the human being lives in his soul summertime into
consciousness. That means if it is possible to cause a state in
him by which he can perceive in such a way that before him the
soul summertime spreads out with all its beings. Is it able to
do this? — Another question is: have we to assume rightly
that if the human being makes himself aware of the soul
summertime something reveals that can be compared not only with
the plant cover, but also with that which can be rightly called
a higher world? From the following consideration arises that we
are allowed to assume such a thing.
If
we consider the world, we find that the human being is placed
in the different realms of nature. It is not at all haughty if
the human being assumes that to his creation certain higher
forces are necessary which one does not find in the other
realms of nature. These creative or formative forces restore
the human being at night after we have worn our forces during
our day life. Indeed, we cannot realise from that which happens
at night immediately what the formative forces of the human
being are like. However, while we destroy human vitality during
the day and restore it at night, nevertheless, we find the
productive forces that only escape from our observation. Thus,
we can suppose that these formative forces of the human being
reveal themselves if we can consciously invade into the soul
summertime. Someone has to invade into the soul summertime
consciously who wants to become a spiritual researcher.
What are the mental pictures, ideas, and concepts to the
spiritual researcher that he has in the wake state? —
They are those inner beings of the human being that exist
towards the soul summertime. It is no special comparison but
reality: he has something in his soul summertime, when in him
everything is blossoming, that relates in his being as the seed
which rests in the bowels of the earth in winter to the fully
developed plants of the summer. If we can call the developing
winter seeds into life in ourselves, we do the same in reality
what happens with the earth when it develops the seeds towards
springtime.
That who consciously wants to penetrate into the soul
summertime would have to unfold that which is like the earth
lying fallow in the winter in the human being — thoughts,
sensations, and feelings —, to a vivid existence, as in
the spring and in summer the seeds of the plant cover of the
earth develop. What appears as a demand can really happen. We
can really consider, so to speak, our thoughts, as we
experience them consciously, as the seeds outliving the soul
winter, and we can do something to call these seeds into life.
This happens by concentration, contemplation, and
meditation.
At
first the spiritual researcher takes the feelings and
sensations as starting point which he has experienced in the
usual life, so at the soul wintertime, and which show nothing
of that into which they can evolve. The human being who wants
to become a spiritual researcher must arouse this winter seeds
of his soul to a more vigorous existence than they have in the
usual life. This happens by meditation, concentration, and
contemplation. One makes the particular discovery if one does
not use concepts, sensations, and feelings so that they depict
an outer existence only but that they live in our soul so that
we live with our souls in them and are taken up in them
completely.
We
take a simple mental picture to develop the full power. It does
not depend on the contents of this mental picture. While our
thoughts wander from mental picture to mental picture in the
usual everyday life, the spiritual researcher fully
concentrates on one mental picture, on one sensation. He rests
on it by a will impulse for some time. It is necessary for it
to abstain from outer sensory impressions, also from that which
we think, imagine, or remember, for example, worries and the
like. With a strong will development, the human being has to
advance so far to cause a state that is very similar to falling
asleep, and, nevertheless, is quite different from it. In this
condition, he does no longer use his limbs, allows the body to
rest like in sleep, does not perceive with the senses, allows
the mind to sleep, and manages with his own will to dedicate
himself to this mental picture and to rest on it for a while,
to experience it completely. Without asking what it signifies,
one has to pay attention only to that which it causes in the
soul, which it gives as power; one has to concentrate only upon
this mental picture.
What I have here described forms the contents of a science in
principle. About that, you find additional details in my books
How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?
and Occult Science. An Outline. Here I can indicate the
things only in principle. It is important that the soul
dedicates itself to a single mental picture some time. One has
to delve deeply into the mental picture; it does not need to
take much time. One must grow together with the mental picture.
However, it is not enough to do such a thing few times, but one
has to continue such exercises for years, according to the
talent of the person concerned. If the soul repeatedly
dedicates itself to such exercises, one makes the discovery
that the feelings and mental pictures of the usual life are as
seeds that can develop that can produce something new,
something special. One gets around by such a strong
self-education to forming his images and feelings gradually in
such a way that one can realise a world internally which is not
bound to the outer senses, but is conjured up as seeds that
outlive the soul wintertime. Then we experience the rising of
the soul spring, the soul summertime. The spiritual researcher
has to experience this consciously. He has to experience how he
wakes up a soul springtime, a soul summertime in himself, how
he places another world in the world that he has, otherwise, in
the soul wintertime. Then he realises a new world, indeed, a
world that he has not known before.
Only one thing is necessary: that he learns to behave towards
this world that he realises now as he behaves, otherwise,
towards the world of the soul wintertime.
I
said, this inner world rises at the soul summertime. However,
at first this world resembles another world which meets us to
our sorrow and which is due to pathological soul states. The
resemblance is only an outer one because that which I have just
described is quite different from that which arises from
pathological states like hallucinations, delusions and the like
because it can arise only from a healthy soul life. They are
only externally similar to each other because both ascend from
the soul.
However, the phenomena that arise from pathological states are
a quality, which we have often to deplore. They work
overpowering on the human life, even beguiling. Since the soul
does not regard a hallucination as a reflection of its being,
but it regards it as an objective-real world. This is a big
error! We know how strongly this error can work. Somebody who
lives with such persons knows that one can never persuade them
from their hallucinations. This is in such a way because
— if the human being exceeds the normal soul life —
something appears from it that exists, otherwise, also in him.
We return to our comparison, which is, however, more than a
comparison.
When the human being feels spring and summer approaching, and
if he is gifted for the manifestations of nature, his heart
would like to shout out, then his heart is attached to this
sprouting life; he is given away to it. The devotion to that
which faces us increases if we go from the snowy earth to the
sprouting life of the spring and the summer. However, that also
happens if we face that which ascends in the soul as a world
that is not the usual world of the soul wintertime. If at the
horizon of the pathological soul life visions, hallucinations
emerge which do not exist in the usual life in the soul winter
life, then the soul feels at first attracted and given away to
that which arises there like a new world. However, this is
nothing but the outflow of the soul itself. If the human being
likes the outer activities towards the spring and the summer,
he loves himself in that which emerges from his own soul. This
is the secret. From this life, which emerges from the inside,
his concealed own life faces him. Therefore, he is attached to
these phenomena, cannot break free from them.
One
notices only in this area how strongly the human being loves
himself. One can understand this if one knows that the human
being faces himself [in his visions]. He would have to
extinguish himself, so to speak, if he did not believe in his
visions. The increased self-love works like a power of nature
that makes the visionary believing in his visions.
It
does not matter that that who becomes a spiritual researcher
produces new feelings from those feelings, which outlive the
soul winter, but that he cultivates his will. Since the
spiritual researcher has immediately to say to himself that
which the ill soul never says to itself, which only the soul
says to itself if it is healthy if the world, which I have just
described, appears before him. He has to defeat the increased
self-love. He has to extinguish this not only in thoughts, but
also with a strong will, which the spiritual researcher
develops by training. Not before he is successful, he is
correctly prepared for spiritual science.
How
would a human being be who could not extinguish as a spiritual
researcher arbitrarily what spreads out there? Such a human
being would be in the area of the spirit like a person who
faces an object in the sensory world, looks at it, but could
then never look away from it as if he were tied up to this
object. Thus, a spiritual researcher would be who would leave
that standing which emerges from his soul summertime. He has to
be able to extinguish all pictures that ascend there. The right
instruction just leads to that which can arise only in a
completely healthy soul to extinguish everything that ascends
there. As we would never face the plant world properly if we
could not freely turn our eyes from one point to the other, we
would never approach a spiritual world if we could not turn
away from that which I have just described. This is a necessary
quality of the real spiritual researcher that he must have
defeated the selfishness to such degree by self-education that
he is able any time to extinguish the world which he has
conjured up with strong inner power. That means to extinguish
himself because it is his own soul world.
Defeating oneself is the first stage on the way into the
spiritual world.
If
this great experience has taken place, the spiritual researcher
experiences an objective spiritual world. Then the objective
spiritual world appears after the spiritual field has been
cleared by extinguishing. Here is the abyss that the soul must
cross if it enters into the spiritual world. If the soul has
crossed this abyss if it has defeated self-love, then the world
that it faces can also give it something.
One
can say if one has only materialist ideas and ignores what
spiritual research can offer, how do you differentiate what
ascends there in the soul from the outer reality?
Only life decides such things, as well as in the outer life
only life itself decides whether anything is percept or mental
picture. One can distinguish this. I have always appreciated
Schopenhauer completely. I myself wrote an introduction to his
works. However, if Schopenhauer says that the world is only our
idea or mental picture, one can easily disprove that. If one
has a piece of red-hot iron, one may say, this is only my
mental picture. If, however, one touches it, one perceives very
well whether it is only a mental picture or reality. There is
not a logical proof of the just said; there only life decides
this. Spiritual research induces us in spiritual field to
distinguish percept and mental picture that is to distinguish
reality and imagination correctly.
We
realise by which spiritual research differs from natural
sciences. Natural sciences stop at the cognitive forces that
the human being brings with him into life and develops in life.
Spiritual science only attains something while the human being
goes through the described stage; that is he develops his soul
so far that you can compare it with the soul condition of the
child in the third, fourth years if it awakes to
self-consciousness. Everybody knows this awakening where the
consciousness of the child becomes self-consciousness. On a
higher level, something similar happens with the spiritual
researcher: he awakes to such higher spiritual life, compared
with which the usual wake day consciousness is a kind of
sleeping state.
The
soul has to experience a second awakening to penetrate into a
new world. The human being is — if he really does
research in the spiritual — in the same state in which
the sleeping human being is, nevertheless, he is in a contrary
condition. The sleeping lets his body rest completely. He does
not let any sensory impression get into himself. The spiritual
researcher is in the same state, save that that which is
unconscious with the sleeping is conscious in him and perceives
the spiritual world.
If
the human being perceives the spiritual world this way, he does
not get to know the spiritual in general only, but he also gets
to know single facts and single beings. People forgive in the
least today that one speaks not only of soul and spirit, but
also of single beings. Today materialism is declining, and
people already concede that one speaks of spirit and soul. One
already permits that one speaks of single phenomena in nature
and says not only, nature, nature, and nature. However,
concerning the spiritual, one does not permit even today that
spiritual science speaks of single beings and says not only,
spirit, spirit and soul, soul. The spiritual researcher
penetrates into a spiritual world full of beings that is added
to the outer sensory world as a new world. There he beholds the
forces that shape the outer world, he realises what forms the
basis of the outer world as a spiritual. He really penetrates
into the inside of nature at first, however, in his own inside.
He is immediately in his own inside.
I
have pointed out how the spiritual researcher has to extinguish
what he has conjured up in his soul summer at first. He can
extinguish this, or more precisely, he can extinguish himself
in the world that appeared as a new one to him. However, he
cannot extinguish something of it. A rest always remains. If
the spiritual researcher settles in this rest, he gets to know
his inner being. This is his real essence. If he goes through
the described processes and attains real self-knowledge, he
gets to know his core as someone who finds the zygote of a
lower animal in a mud pool. If then the lower animal
originates, the person concerned knows that from the zygote the
lower animal has originated. The animal embryo must only have
been there; it has attracted the matter, but the lower animal
would never have originated unless a zygote had existed.
Thus, the human being beholds into the objective world with his
spiritual-mental. He probably beholds how a human being
develops in mysterious way from the first hour of his existence
on and on. The features of the child, which are uncertain at
first, become more and more certain. Science knows that the
brain takes shape more and more plastically. From year to year,
the human body develops more. Then the human being looks at
father and mother, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on,
and he says to himself, I find these qualities with my
ancestors, however, that which forms the basis of these
qualities is the spiritual-mental core that has been discovered
on the way of spiritual research. Here spiritual research is at
a point where it has to perform something similar as natural
sciences had to perform for the present in the seventeenth
century when Francesco Redi, a great naturalist, said, life
cannot originate from anything lifeless - life can only
originate from something living. — Redi was pursued as a
heretic. Spiritual science is today in a similar situation. The
spiritual researcher is today compelled to say, the knowledge
of the human spiritual-mental essence shows that the human
being comes from a spiritual existence which he experienced
before birth, and that he experienced former lives on earth
before this spiritual existence. People do no longer say, this
is heresy, but they say, it is humbug. One tries also today to
silence those people who pronounce such things. One does not
burn them, indeed — the customs have become somewhat
milder, one also speaks of tolerance —, but today
strictly speaking only another method is applied to the same.
It was heresy of Redi in the seventeenth century what one
acknowledges today as a scientific fact. Even today, one
regards it as a pipe dream if spiritual science speaks of the
fact that the spiritual-mental essence of the human being is
not rooted in the line of physical heredity, but is rooted in a
spiritual-mental experience in former lives on earth. This life
on earth in which we live now is the beginning and the embryo
of a new life on earth.
What the spiritual researcher recognises as spiritual-mental
essence that he cannot extinguish is completely different from
that which you experience in the wake day life. This
spiritual-mental essence is as the developed plant compared
with the seed. It is the true mental-spiritual reality which
creates in the human being which receives what is given by
father and mother and unveils itself to get to a physical
existence, as the seed which was left from a preceding plant
and now develops again to a spiritual-mental being. This
spiritual-mental core exceeds birth and death.
Here spiritual research is at a similar point as the
naturalists Copernicus and Giordano Bruno were during former
centuries. They could look out into the cosmic space and say,
what the human being has believed up to now that the sky ends
with that which human eyes see, that is not true. Giordano
Bruno saw the world enlarged, and he recognised that these
borders exist only because the human cognition is weak. He
expanded the horizon of human cognition of the physical world.
The spiritual researcher has to perform the same today again.
He has to bring the knowledge to the present humanity that the
human being comes from a former life on earth and that he has
to live through other lives on earth. Spiritual science expands
the view to spiritual-mental infinity. As Giordano Bruno
postulated countless worlds in space, the spiritual researcher
has to extend time, which belongs to the human being in which
he unfolds his spiritual-mental core in many lives back and
forth.
Thus, spiritual science places itself beside natural sciences
without contradicting them but acknowledging them completely.
Yes, just from the same attitude, as natural sciences have it
compared with nature, spiritual research would like to come to
a science of the spirit. It would like to penetrate into the
inner forces of existence as natural sciences penetrate into
the outer forces of existence. It will become obvious if once
spiritual science will be accepted in the intellectual life of
our time that one can only grasp the complete reality, while
one approaches this reality from two sides, scientifically and
spiritual-scientifically. Thus, one finds the true reality,
while one co-operates from nature and from spirit in oppose
directions until both directions meet.
Natural sciences had their aurora, when Copernicus sent his
significant worldview into the world. Now spiritual science is
at the same point and faces the spirit with the same attitude.
If one investigates the outer life scientifically, and if one
investigates the mathematical laws, one comes to a certain
point, which one names with the word life. If the
naturalist investigates the plant, he wants to approach life
more and more. Life is like the big goal that one heads in
natural sciences. It is the big ideal of natural sciences to
investigate life. They dig in the tunnel this way.
The
world of the spiritual researcher also has such a certain point
up to which one comes which one sees in the distance as it
were. This point that one approaches, as the naturalist
approaches life, is death for the spiritual researcher.
The
spiritual researcher has to reach a certain level where he says
to himself, I figure the spiritual world out to a certain
degree, which spreads out there before me. Then something
stands there that one is not allowed to touch with this inner
experience to which one must rather hand over the inner
experience. — One recognises all possible beings and
facts of the supersensible world, and one realises that death
stands at the end. One realises that our spiritual-mental
essence must go through death, as it has to go through the
spiritual world after death to live in this spiritual world.
Then it has to return to a new life. One realises how life
after life develops. The whole existence is composed of the
life in the spiritual world between death and a new birth and
the life in the physical world between birth and death.
One
copes with death just as little in the spiritual research as
one copes with life in natural sciences. The scientific
cognition approaches life, spiritual research approaches death
vividly recognising in spirit; it is the big goal of spiritual
research. Thus, spiritual research relates to death. This is
the other direction, it bores [the tunnel] from the other side,
and both certainly meet because they must meet. Death can only
be there because it originates from life — and vice
versa. One strives for the same goal from two sides. This is
something that has to place itself as attitude in the modern
spiritual life with which natural sciences and spiritual
science come to their own in the same way.
As
well as natural sciences strive for recognising the outer
world, spiritual science has to strive for recognising destiny,
and it can recognise destiny only in such a way that it sees
the cause prepared of the next life on earth in this life on
earth. The causes of destiny, good luck, and misfortune become
clear to us thereby. Life faces us as a transformation of
death. Immortality faces us in such a way that we know: while
we go through death, we bring our spiritual-mental essence to
the spiritual world to be active again in a new life.
No
empty infinity faces us, but an infinity in which links are
strung together, so that we know, why the human being must be
immortal. He must be immortal because life carries the forces
from birth to death in its spiritual-mental core to produce new
lives because we see the seed of the following life laid in one
life.
Thus, the big riddles of life are answered, while natural
sciences and spiritual science co-operate. Somebody who
believes there to have to stop on the ground of natural
sciences and wants to establish a worldview from this ground
resembles someone in a way who says, the ores down there in a
mine appear to me in the true light if I bore a hole and let
the sun shine on them. Indeed, everything is lighted up, but
the sun produces that only which is on the surface. The sun can
light up that only which rests there down in the earth, but it
cannot produce it.
Thus, that which unveils the human core may be taken away from
the merely outer science. Then it may come to light up it; then
the outer science can also understand that which the spiritual
researcher investigates.
Here we get to a point where I have to eliminate an objection.
Someone may say, what you tell to us there shows that spiritual
science is significant only for the spiritual researcher
himself. I must point there to my book How Does One
Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?.
You find closer explained in it that one is allowed to say,
every human being has advanced so far today that he can become
a spiritual researcher to a certain degree. However, it is
laborious; one can attain it only with much concentration.
However, as the ores arise from the earth and are lighted up
then by the sun, one can light up with the usual understanding
what the spiritual researcher has found. Then it can give the
soul what it needs compared with the riddles of life what it
needs for its security. The spiritual researcher also does not
have more than that which someone can have who listens to him
and reads his writings.
The
spiritual researcher beholds the spiritual world. However, it
is a science of the soul only if it is conceptualised so that
our common sense can understand it. Hence, it is also a
prejudice if one says, one cannot understand what spiritual
research produces. One can understand it very well and can
verify its results with the unbiased common sense. If people
are of the opinion that natural sciences disprove spiritual
research, they put a spoke in their own wheel.
If
people point to heredity, the spiritual researcher will
completely agree with them. They are fully right. However, by a
comparison I would like to bring to mind how, indeed, spiritual
research can stand beside natural sciences. It is like with two
persons who say something different; one does not refute the
other, the one is as true as the other is. If natural sciences
say, the human being has these and those qualities from his
ancestors, spiritual science agrees. However, as true it is
that the human being has these qualities because he has laid
the causes of them in a former life. The world will convince
itself that natural sciences must see their strength just in
the fact that they confine themselves to their fields and that
they can exist beside spiritual science which is concerned with
the spiritual in which we are interwoven with soul and body. In
physics, one can show with spectral analysis that one can find
the same substances here on earth as in the universe. As there
the view was extended materially to the immeasurable outer
space, we discern that in the wide world of the spirit the
spiritual beings and spiritual facts exist to which the
spiritual-mental nature of the human being is similar from
which it is created. As well as the human being knows that he
lives in the material substances which fulfil the whole
universe, he can feel secure in the universal spiritual which
spiritual science makes him understand. However, this will
cause that as well as natural sciences have changed our outer
existence, spiritual science will give humanity soul goods,
which it needs more and more.
If
once spiritual science seizes education deeply, it will educate
the human being in such a way that he will know not only in the
abstract that in him a mental core is, which goes through
death, but he will transform this knowledge of the spirit into
inner strength. He will feel this strength in himself vividly.
He will feel if his hair turns grey if his skin wrinkles up if
the limbs slacken that in him his spiritual-mental essence
develops more and more. As in the growing plant the seed
concentrates to become a new plant, the spiritual-mental
essence concentrates in the human being more and more, the more
we approach death. We feel it more and more distinctly; we
recognise how we develop as human beings, although our limbs
wither away as the foliage drops from a tree. This knowledge
will give the human being security in good luck and misfortune.
It will fulfil him internally with that which he needs, so that
he has strength for his work, so that the whole outer life can
prosper. Spiritual science is not mere science; it takes the
experienced as starting point and it stops at the
experience.
I
can today report these things about the contribution of
spiritual science and that of natural sciences only sketchily.
It has become obvious at the today's representation that the
kind of research in the spiritual is different from the kind of
research in the outer sensory area. However, if one considers
that certain habitual ways of thinking have developed under the
long-standing influence of natural sciences, then one is not
surprised that spiritual science cannot count on big acceptance
and that one can argue against that which it has to say. One
would be staggered of the contrary. It is true that
Schopenhauer's sentence is right concerning truth:
“During all centuries the poor truth had to blush about
the fact that she was paradoxical, and, nevertheless, it is not
her guilt. She cannot accept the figure of the sitting
enthroned general error. There she looks up sighing to her
tutelary deity, the time, that shows victory and fame to her,
but her wing beats are so big and slow that the individual dies
away in the meantime.”
However, time and its development are in such a way that truth
will be victorious. One regarded as truth later what was
paradoxical once. That will also apply to spiritual science.
Even if today opposition appears, one has to remind of Goethe's
sentence that expresses the relationship of the human being to
truth so nicely:
“You cannot disprove a wrong doctrine because it is based
on the conviction that the wrong is true. However, the opposite
can, must and should be pronounced again and again.”
It
has to be with the truth of spiritual research this way. You
cannot disprove the wrong teaching that spirit is only an
appendage of the material existence, because it is based on the
conviction that the wrong, the mere material existence, is
true. However, the opposite of it is — that the spiritual
forms the basis of the material existence and that the human
essence is a part of this spiritual. This is the teaching that
is not only more comprehensive than the one-sided teaching of
the mere material truth, but also this teaching shows the
truth, the true knowledge compared with this one-sided
knowledge. Thus, it will happen that those who have recognised
this truth can and must pronounce it in the
spiritual-scientific sense against any contradiction. Then the
genius of truth — the time — shows his power. Even
if his wing beats are slow ever so much, finally, truth will be
victorious. The genius of time will spread his wings over the
spiritually recognised truth, over the primordial grounds and
over the riddles of life.
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