The Value of Thinking E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 504

Beschreibung

'As soon as you start thinking about the living sphere, you have to make the thought itself mobile. The thought must begin to gain inner mobility through your own power.' – Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Steiner divides these absorbing, previously-untranslated lectures into three sections, opening with 'The Value of Thinking'. Here, he discusses the quality of thinking itself, contrasting 'dead physical cognition', 'living imaginative cognition', 'inspired cognition', and the latter's connection with previous periods of human and planetary development. He clarifies how 'visionary clairvoyance' can relate to individual intelligence, and also speaks of the submergence of ideas – the effects of sad or joyful experiences and feelings – into the unconscious. These can be 'life-promoting' or 'life-inhibiting'. In the second section he speaks about 'The Relationship between Spiritual Science and Natural Science', using a contemporary publication as a case study for how texts can be fruitfully analysed. He characterizes the spiritual-scientific method as allowing facts or personalities to speak for themselves, rather than making personal judgements. Finally, he deliberates on 'Episodic Observations about Space, Time, Movement' – kinetic formula and concepts such as the speed of light – introducing, directly from his spiritual observations, notions such as 'light ether'. The lectures are supplemented with an introduction, comprehensive notes, line drawings and an index. Eleven lectures, Dornach, Aug.–Oct. 1915, GA 164

Leseprobe

THE VALUE OF THINKING

FOR A COGNITION THAT SATISFIES THE HUMAN BEINGTHE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPIRITUAL SCIENCEAND NATURAL SCIENCE

Eleven lectures given in Dornach on 20 August and between17 September and 9 October 1915

TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BYCHRISTIAN VON ARNIM

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 164

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2023

Originally published in German under the title Der Wert des Denkens für eine den Menschen befriedigende Erkenntnis. Das Verhältnis der Geisteswissenschaft zu Naturwissenschaft (volume 164 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the second German edition (2006), edited by Hella Wiesberger with the assistance of Hans Huber for Part I, and Gian A Baiaster and Maurice Martin for Part II

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2006

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 646 3

Cover by Morgan CreativeTypeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, IndiaPrinted and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Christian von Arnim

I

THE VALUE OF THINKING FOR A COGNITION THATSATISFIES THE HUMAN BEING

FIRST LECTURE

DORNACH, 17 SEPTEMBER 1915

The difficulty of entering a relationship with the spiritual world. The question of the value of thinking. The human path of cognition in the sense of the Aristotelian words: There is nothing in the intelligence which did not first pass through the senses. Leibniz’s addition. Thinking, an activity of the etheric body. Question about the reality of thoughts. Intellectual activity: dead images. Forgotten ideas as life-promoting and life-inhibiting forces. World of possible memories: imaginations. World of the unconscious life of ideas: inspirations.

Pages 3-18

SECOND LECTURE

18 SEPTEMBER 1915

The submergence of ideas into the unconscious; a threshold process. Memory. Difference between the review exercise and ordinary memory. The mobile thoughts in the etheric body using the example of Goethe’s thoughts about metamorphosis. The development from unconscious imaginative cognition via physical to conscious imaginative cognition: a descent and a renewed ascent. The world of coming into being and passing away and the world of wrath and punishment.

Pages 19-35

THIRD LECTURE

19 SEPTEMBER 1915

Atavistic, visionary clairvoyance: a regression to the Old Moon intelligence. (Example: the figure of Theodora in the Mystery Dramas.) Imaginative cognition in Jakob Böhme and Saint-Martin. Living one’s way into the inspired world: an experience of the Old Sun facts. The Old Moon existence continues to work in embryology, the sun existence in artistic inspiration. Intuitive cognition, a return to the Old Saturn existence. The progress from moon existence to earth evolution. The creative concepts of the angels on the Old Moon and their connection with the forms of the present animal kingdom. The progression of the earth human being to emotionless, objective concepts.

Pages 36-50

FOURTH LECTURE

20 SEPTEMBER 1915

Summary of the aforesaid: dead physical cognition, living imaginative cognition, inspired cognition and its connection with the Old Moon and Sun existence. The objective laws of the experiences of inspiration. Feeling the facts of nature as matters of a person’s own heart. The distinction between deeds and personality in judging people. Wrong tendencies in modern jurisprudence. The task of the spiritual scientist: not to judge a person’s deed but to understand it. Necessary effort of the soul to reach higher knowledge. Humour as a counterweight. The linkage of the human organization with the Old Sun development through air and warmth. The relationship between breathing and inspiration.

Pages 51-66

II

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPIRITUAL SCIENCE AND NATURAL SCIENCE

Discussion of the pamphlet Science and Theosophy by F. von Wrangell as an example of how texts can be discussed in branches

FIRST LECTURE

DORNACH, 26 SEPTEMBER 1915

Wrangell’s characterization of the materialistic-mechanistic worldview. The spiritual-scientific method of characterization by letting facts or personalities speak. Discussion of the first chapters of Wrangell’s pamphlet: ‘The basic assumptions of a materialistic-mechanistic worldview—Examination of these basic assumptions—Freedom and morality—The riddle of the universe—Origin of the idea of conformity with laws—Freedom of the will cannot be proven experientially—Epistemological review.’

Pages 69-91

SECOND LECTURE

27 SEPTEMBER 1915

Poems, life and personality of Marie Eugenie delle Grazie as a testimony of the materialistic-mechanistic worldview being taken really seriously. Discussion of more of Wrangell’s chapters: ‘Formation of concepts—Ideas of space and time—The principle of causality—Application of the idea of arbitrariness to the environment—Observation of uniformly proceeding phenomena—Essence of all science—Astronomy, the oldest science—Uniform motion—Measuring—The principle underlying clocks.’

Pages 92-115

THIRD LECTURE

2 OCTOBER 1915

Recapitulation of what has been said so far. Discussion of more of Wrangell’s chapters: ‘Limit of error in measuring—Absolute validity of logical and mathematical truths—All laws of nature are taken from experience, therefore have only conditional validity—Chemical laws—Physical laws—Knowledge progresses from the simple to the intricate—Extension of the mechanistic conception to the organic—Difference between inanimate and animate bodies—Consciousness—Spiritual phenomena—The occult faculties of the human being—Essence of the teaching of Jesus.’

Pages 116-143

FOURTH LECTURE

3 OCTOBER 1915

Continuation of the discussion of Wrangell’s chapters: ‘Essence of the teaching of Jesus—Essence of the theosophical teachings—Secret teachings—Difference between sensory science and spiritual science—Theosophy, a religion.’

Pages 144-160

FIFTH LECTURE

4 OCTOBER 1915

The meaning of materialistic culture on the basis of Wrangell’s last chapters: ‘Materialism—Doubts about the materialistic worldview—Agnosticism—The sources of the error of occult perceptions lie in the subject as well as in the object—Continued existence of the soul after death—Reincarnation and karma—Lessing’s view of the teaching of rebirth—Brief summary of the line of reasoning.’ The atomistic model of the world. The need for a School of Spiritual Science. The engagement with contemporary science in Rudolf Steiner’s public lectures.

Pages 161-185

SIXTH LECTURE

9 OCTOBER 1915

The examinations of criminal brains by the criminal anthropologist Moriz Benedikt. The too short occipital lobe in criminals and its corrective through appropriate education. The psychological research results of the school of Avenarius: it is not the truth of a worldview that determines the acceptance of the same but the emotional predestination.

Pages 186-201

III

EPISODIC OBSERVATIONS ABOUT SPACE, TIME, MOVEMENT

DORNACH

20 AUGUST 1915

Pages 205-218

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THE lectures collected in this volume were given during the First World War to a group of co-workers and members at the Goetheanum in Dornach, whose number had been greatly reduced by the circumstances of war. At the time, some confusion had been created by a pathological personality within the community. This incident lies behind occasional hints in these lectures—comments that were probably intended to clarify this confusion. For this reason, it was likely already being considered to publish them at the time, for there are some textual corrections in Rudolf Steiner’s hand and three drawings inserted by him in the typewritten transcripts of lectures 1 to 5.

Introduction

MENTION Rudolf Steiner to someone and, if they recognize the name and happen not be an anthroposophist, they will probably most likely associate it with the practical fields of activity inspired by anthroposophy: Waldorf education, the Camphill communities for people with special needs or biodynamic agriculture. Probe a bit further and they might also have heard of anthroposophy—spiritual science—itself, as something to do with the acceptance of a spiritual reality and the paths by which knowledge of the spiritual world that surrounds us and all its beings might be achieved.

But while the value of the practical achievements are often recognized, the systematic underpinnings of anthroposophy, because it deals with the spiritual world and calls itself a science of the spirit, tend to be seen as something rather wishy-washy and not possessing the rigorous thinking of natural science. Much of the criticism of anthroposophical medicines, for example, and indeed of some of the methods of biodynamic farming, is based on the allegation that they are pseudoscientific and have no foundation in science—by which it means no foundation in natural science. (The fact that there are by now quite a number of academic studies showing the efficacy of anthroposophical medical therapies, for example, when assessed with the appropriate methods is not seen as relevant by such criticism.)

Yet all of the critique of Steiner’s lack of scientific rigour and understanding of modern science ignores the fact that Steiner, through his studies in the sciences at the Vienna University of Technology and his subsequent career, was in fact well versed in the science and general culture of his time, and when he sought to extend natural science into the spiritual realm he was speaking from a position not of ignorance but of familiarity with materialistic science. If there is one thing that can be said about Rudolf Steiner it is that he always sought to engage with the thinking of his time.

In his early career he worked in a conventional academic and intellectual setting and once he started to develop anthroposophy and spiritual science he always wanted to connect it with the mainstream. He saw anthroposophical medicine, for example, as complementing and extending conventional medicine, not seeking to replace it. In education, too, he sought to intervene positively in the social conditions of his time with the foundation of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart for the children of the workers at the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory, and his thoughts about the threefold nature of the social organism formed the basis of extensive ideas as to how to reform society to create better social conditions.

As he emphasized repeatedly himself, in setting out the ideas of spiritual science he sought out the intellectual currents of his time with which he could connect. Spiritual science, Steiner says, seeks to immerse itself in the facts and to allow the facts to speak for themselves. Thus he states quite unambiguously in the present lectures that unless anthroposophists can engage in the debate about the validity of spiritual science on the basis of a thorough understanding of modern conventional science and intellectual currents in general, they will merely make themselves appear ridiculous.

So while in the first series of lectures in this volume Steiner discusses the nature of thinking and cognition itself in the context of human and planetary evolution, the second series of lectures is a detailed analysis of the pamphlet Science and Theosophy by an author with impeccable scientific credentials. As well as his intention of illustrating how contemporary ideas can be discussed in the anthroposophical branches—indeed that they should be discussed there rather than just ‘internal’ anthroposophical topics—this look at theosophy from the outside, setting it against a materialistic view of the world, was used by Steiner as something against which the ideas of anthroposophy could be measured and developed.

Steiner does not reject materialism and all that materialistic science has revealed about the world out of hand. It is fully justified in its place and necessary at a certain time in human development but needs to be extended and to reach beyond itself if we are to understand reality, including spiritual reality, to its full extent. That is where spiritual science comes in. Where he is critical of materialism is when it refuses to go further and acknowledge the reality of anything beyond itself. It should be a method of research and not a worldview, Steiner argues.

The final lecture in Part III of this volume, ‘Episodic Observations about Space, Time, Movement’, was actually given before all the others and might almost be seen as a kind of preparation for the discussion of sections of the pamphlet on Science and Theosophy. Both this lecture and parts of that discussion about the pamphlet often give the impression of being more in the nature of a science lesson for his listeners, tying in with his attempt to make them understand that that they must engage with the wider world and be scientifically literate rather than just cocooning themselves in anthroposophy. The spiritual scientific movement had to extend its threads out into the world in general—spiritual science was not something apart but had to be integrated into the fabric of the world.

And clearly he was not convinced that his listeners were always making the best use of their time in his lectures. At one point he urges them not just to painstakingly—in his own words—‘scribble down’ every word he says but that it would be much more productive for them if they rather concentrated on listening properly to what he was saying. Enough material has already been published to work with in the branches, he tells them, and it would be better if they made good use of that and in the meantime listened seriously to what he was saying.

In short, he wanted the members of the Anthroposophical Society to engage properly with the world around them because that was essential for any serious spiritual striving—not to dismiss it because in their view they were concerned with much more serious spiritual matters; and, to put it crudely, he wanted them to think for themselves a bit more. Lastly, and very importantly, he wanted them to do so with a sense of humour. As he put it in the last lecture of the first section in this volume, keeping the soul free and open to humour is a good way to take the serious matter really earnestly: ‘Otherwise you debase yourself, the serious matter turns into a lie through sentimentality, and sentimentality is the worst enemy of real earnestness for the serious things of life.’

Christian von Arnim

March 2023

I

THE VALUE OF THINKING FOR ACOGNITION THAT SATISFIESTHE HUMAN BEING

FIRST LECTURE

DORNACH, 17 SEPTEMBER 1915

FOR research in and contemplation of the physical world it is above all what we may call a matter of the heart for human beings to find their bearings in the relationships between the physical world—in which they spend their existence between birth and death—and the higher worlds to which they actually belong. We are, after all, quite clear about the fact that in the human being, however vague their thinking, there nevertheless lives an eminently clear feeling, a clear sense, that they should know at least something about these relationships in some form. For no matter how vaguely the human being may think about the higher worlds, no matter how much they may, for various reasons, despair of being able to know anything about them, it is simply natural and appropriate to human feeling and sensibility to relate to a higher world.

Certainly, we might object that there are nevertheless numerous people, especially in our present materialistic age, who either deny in some form or other that there is a spiritual world at all, or at least deny that the human being can know anything about it. But we can also say that a person first has to learn to behave ‘negatively’ towards the spiritual world, so to speak; for it is not ‘natural’ for human beings to deny a spiritual, a supersensory world. They first have to get there through all kinds of theories; they must first be ‘mistaught’, we might say, in order to deny a spiritual world with any degree of seriousness. So that when we speak of the natural human being, we can nevertheless do so in such a way that it is appropriate to their feeling to turn the soul’s gaze upwards in some way to the spiritual worlds.

However, if there is even just a possibility that there are people who want to know nothing at all about spiritual worlds there must be something in human nature that makes it difficult to determine the relationship with the spiritual world. And this relationship seems to be difficult, difficult to think about. For we see that in the course of history, which we can trace, a very great number of all kinds of philosophies and worldviews have appeared which seem to contradict each other. But I have often explained that it only seems to be so, for if it were easy for human beings to determine their relationship with the supersensory world, then seemingly contradictory worldviews would not fill the history of worldviews. So it is already clear from this that it is difficult in a sense to determine the relationship with the spiritual world. And therefore we can ask where this difficulty comes from, what is actually present in the soul of the human being, that they find it difficult to relate to the spiritual world.

Now, if we examine all the attempts that are made outside a spiritual-scientific worldview, that is, let us say, in plain philosophy or in external science, and ask ourselves what these attempts are actually aiming at, what underlies them, then we must say: If we study these attempts, if we look at what kind of soul power people mainly use to find out about the relationship between the physical and the spiritual world, then we find that people again and again—discounting isolated attempts, let me say—see above all in the thinking that soul ability, soul activity, which, properly applied, could lead to saying something, to determining something about the relationship of the human being to the supersensory worlds. It is therefore necessary to consider the thinking, the thinking work of the soul, and to ask ourselves: What is it about the thinking, about giving thought, regarding the relationship of the human being who lives in the physical world with the spiritual worlds? What is it about this relationship of the thinking with the spiritual worlds?

So the question: What is the value of thinking for a cognition that satisfies the human being? I would like to consider this question today in preparation for the discussion of other questions with you. I would like us to prepare ourselves, as it were, for a worthy discussion by considering the question of the value of thinking for cognition.

Well, we get behind the thinking, so to speak, if we go about it in the following way. After all, we have already indicated in the course of the last lectures1 that certain peculiarities of the thinking, or better still, of the thoughts, need to be considered. I have pointed out how there are many people who see it as a downright mistake in all scientific thinking if this scientific thinking is not just a mere copy, a mental photograph of an external reality. For these people say: If thinking is to have any relationship at all with what is real, with reality, then it must not add anything of itself to this reality; for at the moment when thinking adds something to reality, we are not dealing with an image, with a photograph of reality, but with a fantasy, with a fantasy image. And so that we do not have to deal with such a fantasy image, we must strictly see to it that no one includes in their thoughts anything that is not a mere photograph of external reality.

Now, an easy line of thought will immediately lead you to say to yourself: Indeed, for the outer physical world, for what we call the physical plane, this seems to be quite correct and self-explanatory. It seems to correspond to a quite correct feeling that we must not add anything to reality through the thinking if we don’t want to have fantasy images instead of an image of reality. For the physical plane we can indeed truly say that it is absolutely correct to abstain from adding anything through the thinking to that which we receive from the outside through perception.

Now I would like to draw your attention to two philosophers, Aristotle and Leibniz, in relation to the view that is found in what has just been said.

Aristotle—who to a certain extent summarizes the Greek worldview—is a philosopher who himself was no longer initiated in any way into the secrets of the spiritual world but who lived in the very first period after what I might call the ‘age of initiation’. Whereas before, all philosophers were still somehow affected by their initiation when they expressed philosophically what they knew as initiates—Plato, for example, who was a kind of initiate of the highest degree but expressed himself philosophically—with Aristotle we have to say that he no longer had any trace of initiation but that there still existed all kinds of after-effects of initiation. So here we have a philosopher who speaks only philosophically, without initiation, without any impulse of initiation but who gives in his philosophy by way of reason what the initiates who went before him gave in a spiritual way. So here we have Aristotle.

Aristotle is the source of the words2 we now intend to consider. [Writes on the blackboard:]

There is nothing in the intelligence which did not first pass through the senses.

So let us consider these words: There is nothing in—we can add—‘human’ intelligence that is not in the senses.

These words of Aristotle must not be interpreted in any kind of materialistic way, for Aristotle is far removed from any worldview that is even remotely materialistically tinged. In Aristotle, these words are not to be taken in terms of how we see the world but epistemologically. That is, Aristotle refuses to believe that we can obtain knowledge of any world from within but claims that we can have knowledge only by turning the senses towards the external world, by receiving sense impressions and then forming concepts from these sense impressions with our reason; but he does not of course deny that we receive spiritual things with the sense impressions. He thinks of nature as being permeated by the spirit; only, he says, we cannot arrive at the spiritual if we do not look out into nature.

Here you can notice the difference to the materialist. The materialist concludes: There are only material things outside, and we only create concepts of material things. Aristotle thinks of the whole of nature as being filled with spirit, but the way of the human soul to reach the spirit is such that we must start from the sense perception and process the sense impressions into concepts. If Aristotle himself had still been touched by an impulse of initiation, he would not have said this; for then he would have known that if a person frees themselves from sense perception in the way we have described, they will attain knowledge of the spiritual world from within. So he did not want to deny the spiritual world but only to show the path that human knowledge must take.

These words then played a major role in the Middle Ages and were reinterpreted materialistically in the materialistic age. We need only change one small thing in these words of Aristotle—there is nothing in the world for the intellect that is not in the senses—and we have immediately formed materialism from it. It is the case, after all, that we need only make that which, in the sense of Aristotle, is the human path of knowledge into the principle of a worldview and then we have materialism.

Leibniz came up with similar words, so let us look at them as well. Leibniz is not yet that far in the past; in the seventeenth century. Let us now also consider these words of Leibniz. So Leibniz now says: There is nothing in the, we can again say, ‘human’ intelligence—I only add ‘human’—that is not in the senses, except the intelligence itself, except the intellect itself.

[Writes on the blackboard:]

There is nothing in the human intelligence that is not in the senses, except the intelligence itself, except the intellect itself.

So the intellect that the human being has working within themselves is not in the senses. In these two sentences in particular you see proper textbook examples of how we can be completely in agreement with the formulation of a sentence, and yet how the sentence can be incomplete.

Now I don’t want to dwell on the extent to which this sentence of Leibniz is also philosophically incomplete. Let us first note that Leibniz was of the opinion that the intellect itself is not somehow already founded in the senses but that human beings must add the work of the intellect to what the senses give them. So that we can say: The intellect itself is an inner activity that has not yet passed through the senses.

If you have followed the last lectures, you know that this inner work is already free of the senses and takes place in the etheric body of the human being. In our language we can say: There is nothing in the intelligence working in the etheric body that is not in the senses, except the intelligence itself working in the etheric body; what is at work there does not enter from the senses.

But thinking as such is in reality, if we look at it in true self-knowledge, such work in the etheric body, and this is what the philosophers call the intellect. So this thinking is work, working we can say. And because for our spiritual-scientific insight Leibniz, even if he is not absolutely right, is nevertheless more right than Aristotle, we can say: This thinking—or rather, this thinking activity, this thinking work in the human being which is an activity of the etheric body—is not in the outer reality of the physical plane. For the physical plane reaches its limit in what it lets us recognize through the senses. So, by placing ourselves as human beings on the physical plane, we introduce the intellect into it which, however, is not itself in the physical world.

And here we arrive at the difficulty of those philosophers who want to get to the bottom of the riddle of the universe through the intellect. These people must say to themselves: Indeed, when I think about it, the intellect does not belong to the world of the senses; but I am now in a peculiar position. I know of no spiritual world other than only the intellect; it is a spiritual world behind the senses. So where does that leave the intellect as far as I am concerned? After all, it can get nothing, no content, if it does not inform himself about the outer physical world through the senses. It only stands for itself. But then the philosopher is confronted with a rather peculiar thing. He has to consider: I have in me an activity, the activity of the intellect. Through this activity of the intellect I want to get behind the secrets of the sensory world. But I can only consider what is out there in the sensory world with thoughts; but these arise from something that does not itself belong to the sensory world. So how are these thoughts connected with the sensory world? Even if I know that the intellect is something spiritual, I must still despair of being able to approach anything that is reality with the spiritual thing that I have there.

Now I want to try to address the matter by means of a comparison. After all, we expressed the same thing in a different way in the last lectures3. We expressed it by arriving at the recognition that we have mirror images of reality in what we produce through our thinking, that these mirror images are actually an addition to reality and are not realities themselves.

You see, this is the same truth, only expressed differently philosophically here. We had to say: The intellect forms mirror images. These mirror images as an image of the reality that is being reflected are of indifference to reality, because the reality that is being reflected does not need these mirror images. So that we could come to doubt the whole reality, the whole value of the reality of the thinking, of intelligence, to ask ourselves: Does the thinking have any real meaning? Doesn’t it actually already add something to external reality through what it is? Does any single thought have any real value if it is actually nothing more than a mirror image in relation to reality?

But let us now endeavour to properly seek out the reality of the thought. In other words, we want to answer the question: Is a thought really something merely imaginary that has no real value? Or we can approach the question from another angle: Where then does thought have a reality? Well, as I said, I will try to illustrate this by a comparison. Here we have a clock; I pick up the clock, now have it in my hand. Everything that is the clock is external to the muscles and nerves of my hand. My hand and the clock are two different things. But let us assume that it is dark here, that I have never seen the clock and that I perceive the clock only by feeling, then I would perceive something of the clock by stretching out my hand and grasping it. If you direct your attention to the clock, you will say to yourself: I can experience something of the reality of the clock by having it in my hand, by grasping it. But let us hypothetically assume for a moment that I had only one hand and not two, I would not be able to grasp the first hand with the second as I can now grasp it in reality. I would probably be able to grasp the clock with one hand but I would not be able to touch the hand itself with my other hand—at most with my nose, but we’ll not do that right now. Nevertheless, the hand is just as real as the clock. How do I convince myself of the reality of the clock? By taking it in my hand, touching it. How do I convince myself of the reality of the hand? I could not convince myself by touching it if I did not have a second hand; but I do know with inner certainty that I have a hand, that I possess the thing I have on me to grasp the clock with just as much reality as I can vouch for the clock being real by grasping it. Do you notice the difference between the real hand and the real clock? I have to experience the reality of the hand in a different way from the reality of the clock.

You can transfer this comparison wholly to human thinking, to the intellect. You can never grasp the intellect’s comprehension so directly through the intellect itself; just as you cannot touch your own hand with the same hand. The intellect cannot perceive itself in the same way it perceives other things; but it is nevertheless convinced of its reality through inner certainty. It is an inner certainty whereby the intellect is convinced of its reality. But we must then understand this intellect, this work of the intellect, as an activity of the human subject; we have to be clear that the intellect is spiritually only a hand, as it were, that is stretched out to grasp something. We are speaking metaphorically here, but in very real images. And just as, on the one hand, my hand is able to convince me of the reality of the clock—namely by the fact that I am able, for example, to feel with my hand the heaviness of the clock, the smoothness of the clock; I am able, therefore, through the nature of my hand to learn everything that is real about the clock—so, on the other hand, I am able through the reality of the intellect to learn something about things other than what the senses learn. The intellect is therefore a grasping organ in the spiritual sense which we must perceive in ourselves not in the outside world.

And you see, here lies the difficulty for philosophers. They believe that when they have thoughts about the world, the thoughts must come to them from outside, and then they realize that they do not come in from outside at all but that the intellect makes these thoughts. And since they regard the intellect as alien to external reality, they must actually regard all thoughts as fantasy images. But we must ascribe a subjective reality to the intellect, a reality that is experienced internally. Then we have the realm of reality in which the intellect is perceived. Thus, by examining the actual nature of the intellect, we come to be able to say to ourselves: Yes, everything that the intellect brings about may or need only be a reflection of external reality, but this reflection has come into being through the work of the real intellect. It is a human activity. And its reality consists in that the human being is at work as they acquire knowledge of the reality of the intellect through the intellect. So that we can say that the intellectual activity of the human being works in the human being, but it works to begin with in such a way that it is quite justified to say: What this intellect works on has no meaning for the world in which it works—just as the hand has no meaning for the clock, because for the clock it is supremely irrelevant whether or not it is grasped by the hand—the intellect is something that is there for the human being and in the human being, so that they produce some kind of image of things for themselves through the intellect. With regard to the things of the physical plane, however, everything that this intellect works on is unreal, a mirror image, dead, nothing living. We can say that the images of the physical world worked on in the intellect are lifeless, dead images.

[Writes on the blackboard:]

Intellectual activity—dead images.

Thus the images that the human being produces for themselves of the physical world are also dead images. We fail to understand the actual nature of this content of the intellect if we ascribe to it something other than that it can be a copy of the physical world.

But the matter immediately becomes quite different when the human being reaches the point of living with the experiences of their existence over time. When we confront the things of the outside world and form images of them through the intellect, we get dead concepts; but if we allow these concepts to be present in our soul, then after some time, when the experience of which we have formed an image has long passed, we can, through memory, as we say, bring up the image of that experience from memory. We can say: Well, I know nothing about the experience now; but when I remember, it arises. It may not have been in my consciousness before I remembered, but it is there, somewhere down in my soul, that is unconsciously, I just have to raise it from the unconscious first.

So the image of an earlier experience that I saw in the past is down there in the unconscious. Fine, it’s down there, I’ll raise it. But down there is not so devoid of meaning. You have only to take the quite ordinary difference between a conception which we receive from an experience such that it gives us joy, elevates us, and a conception from some experience which has given us no joy. Now we can push down into the unconscious a conception that has given us pleasure, and we can push down into the unconscious a conception that has not given us pleasure. Very few people think about what might be said about the difference between such a joyful and such a sorrowful, painful conception. But there is a huge difference. And this difference occurs especially when we try to get behind the reality value of such conceptions that have actually already faded from normal memory.

So let us keep to a conception which has given a person pleasure but which they have had no reason to think back to in later life, or a conception which has caused them pain and which they have also had little reason to think back to. They do not rise into their consciousness but they play a role in the unconscious life of the soul. If only people were willing to understand out of spiritual science what conceptions stored in the soul mean, even if they are completely forgotten. We are actually always the result of our experiences. The countenance we bear, especially in the more intimate gestures, is indeed a reflection of what we have experienced in this incarnation of ours. You can tell from the faces of people whether they have experienced a lot of sadness in their childhood. So what is going on down there is, in other words, involved in the life processes of the human being. Whatever inhibiting, sad ideas are pushed down into oblivion, into the unconscious, that wears us out, it cuts off our vitality. The joyful and uplifting things we have experienced revive us. And if we study the fate of our mental life in the unconscious, then we find how tremendously dependent the present mood, the whole condition of a person is on what rests there in their subconscious below.

Now compare the conceptions in our memory, the conceptions that have then already entered the unconscious soul life, with the conceptions that we currently have in our consciousness. Then you will say to yourself: The conceptions that we currently have in our consciousness are dead. Dead conceptions are not involved in our life process. They do not begin to be involved in our life process until they delve down into the unconscious, when they become life-enhancing or life-inhibiting ideas. So that the conceptions do not properly begin to live until they are forced down into the deeper recesses of the soul. I have always drawn attention to this in the lectures I have given in various places on the hidden grounds of the soul life.4 So the conceptions that are initially dead conceptions begin to live when they are implanted into our soul life; but the more unconscious they become for us, the more they begin to take on life.

If we now follow the process with spiritual-scientific cognition, then something very peculiar happens, which I can actually only describe in this way [begins to draw]:

Assume that this is the boundary between conscious and unconscious; this line is the boundary between ‘conscious’, which is above, and ‘unconscious’, which is below. And now we have formed all kinds of conceptions in our consciousness. Let me designate them schematically by various shapes. We have formed these conceptions; let’s assume that these conceptions go down into the unconscious. They go down here [draws arrows].

So, you see, if we now follow these conceptions with spiritual-scientific cognition, then they are transformed. Outwardly we have seen that they become life-enhancing or life-inhibiting; inwardly it becomes apparent through spiritual-scientific cognition that, in sliding down below the surface, as it were, they become imaginations. There in the unconscious or subconscious, everything that goes down becomes imagination, everything becomes an image. You can have the most abstract conceptions in your ordinary day-consciousness: when you go down below the threshold of ordinary day-consciousness, everything becomes imagination. That is to say, there is a process in the human being, a sum of events, which is always endeavouring—in that the dead conceptions of the earthly, ordinary, materialistic consciousness go into the subconscious—to transform in every human being, before they arrive at imaginative cognition, all the cognitions in their consciousness into images, into imaginations in the unconscious.

If, then, we wish to designate what we have of our conceptual life in the unconscious, if we wish to become acquainted with it, we must actually say: All of it consists of unconscious imaginations, and all the conceptions which we can in turn raise from the unconscious into consciousness we must raise by an activity which also remains unconscious to us. We must bring them back into consciousness but strip them of their image character, transform them back into abstract, non-pictorial conceptions. And when you are actively considering: Let me think, I experienced something; what was it?—and make an effort—you all know the process—to remember something, then that is the effort which you must make in order to strip the image that sits down there of its pictorial character and transform it back into the imaginative form of consciousness.

But from this you will see that when we push the conceptions down into the unconscious, they become more spiritual. So we have to say: If we take what the intellect offers us into the unconscious, then we have to characterize the conceptual world that is there in us and that we have pushed down as a higher, as a more spiritual world. So we have to say: The world of possible memories—please note that I say the world of possible memories; not all the conceptions that go down there need to be remembered again but they are all down there in the unconscious life of the soul—the world of possible memories actually consists in imaginations, in unconscious imaginations.

[Writes on the blackboard:]

World of possible memories—imaginations.

Now for the normal consciousness of a person there is sometimes the possibility—and perhaps we will be able to talk about other such possibilities in the next few days—of bringing up into consciousness these images that would otherwise never pass from a possible memory into a real memory. Take the experiences that drowning people sometimes have! And if you could compare with this the experiences of people who have passed through the gateway of death, you would find that even there some conceptions, where the effort in ordinary physical life is not sufficient to bring them up again, then rise up as if of their own accord. But episodes, parts also rise up in the ordinary dream world. The dream, too, as it confronts us, is a complicated reality because the things which are experienced actually lie behind it in many instances. But the conceptions we wrap around it are taken from the memory. So the dream, the experiences of those wrestling with death, such as drowning people and the like, and experiences had immediately after passing through the gateway of death—these reveal this world of imagination which is a more spiritual world than the world of ordinary human intelligence on the physical plane.

But if you take what I described earlier, that these conceptions which have passed into the region of possible memories work to enhance life or inhibit life, you will say to yourself: There is some life in there. Whereas the conceptions of the ordinary intellect are dead, some life enters in there, but it is not a very strong life. But even there, ordinary experience can offer something that can show you that what happens with these conceptions that descend into the subconscious region can nevertheless mean an even stronger life.

I have already pointed out the very common fact that people who have to learn something by heart in order to recite it, learn it and sleep on it, and that this sleeping on it is part of making the memory more capable. This, however, is only a faint hint at something which spiritual science shows much more clearly, indeed completely clearly, namely that our entire conceptual world, in that we shape it and push it down into the subconscious, becomes more and more alive and vivid in the subconscious, while it is dead in the consciousness.

But now the conceptions that rise up again are not even those that are most involved in enhancing or inhibiting life, but it is those conceptions that are even more intimately connected with us.

Conceptions that we often only see as accompanying life, to which we don’t pay that much attention in life, they connect with our life-enhancing or life-inhibiting forces to a much greater extent. Let us assume for a minute that someone is engaged in spiritual science. They begin by taking it in, this spiritual science, as worked on by the physical intellect. That is what they have to start with. We have to build on what the physical intellect perceives through the senses. Otherwise I would not be able to speak about the spiritual world at all, because language is there for the physical world. But there is a difference in how we, I might say, take in such a conceptual world as it is clothed in life.

Suppose a person takes in the truths of spiritual science with seriousness and dignity such that they feel: seriousness, profound seriousness is involved. Another person takes in the ideas of spiritual science in such a way that they actually only listen to them theoretically and does not let them approach with any seriousness. The one receives them in an atmosphere of superficiality, as it were, the other in an atmosphere of seriousness. We do not need to be very aware of how we receive them; it is much more connected with how we go through life without always thinking about it. Those who are predisposed or accustomed to taking things seriously, and not frivolously or cynically, do not always think about how to take them; they behave seriously and naturally. Likewise the person who is only superficially inclined takes them superficially; they can’t help it. In this way, we accompany our conceptual life with something that we do not bring to mind, which is really something that runs in parallel to our consciousness. But the thing that runs in parallel with our consciousness goes much deeper into the unconscious than what we think consciously. So the way we form our conceptions goes down much deeper into the unconscious than what we consciously think. And when a person is asleep and their astral body and I are out of the physical and etheric body, then this way of forming conceptions plays an infinitely great role in the astral body and I. We can thus say: A person who takes in any conceptions with the necessary seriousness has these conceptions in their astral body and in their I in such a way that they are contained in them like the enlivening power of the sun is contained in the plant. They are truly enlivening forces to the highest degree. And they take into these conceptions that which is enlivening, enlivening and transcending the present incarnation, and creating the preconditions for the next incarnation. Here we already see through the creative soul that you have something in the subconscious that is more spiritual than that which can be raised through a dream.

Here we have a world of the unconscious conceptual life connected with the entire essence of a person’s being at its core. This way of taking life penetrates, as it were, into our spiritual life forces, and it is just like unconscious inspiration.

[Writes on the blackboard:]

World of the unconscious conceptual life—inspirations.

I will go on to explain to you—today we no longer have the time—how ordinary life already shows that these unconscious inspirations then unconsciously work in the human being even in the incarnation in which they are formed, but just unconsciously. Then I will further show you that there is still a higher world for human beings. But you can see from what has been set out today that the human soul life has an inner movement, that that which is experienced on the physical plane through the physical intelligence is experienced further down, that it then ascends into more spiritual regions, ultimately into even more spiritual regions, than we experience on the physical plane. [The arrows were drawn.] So the conceptual life is in inner movement, in an ascending movement. And now remember what I drew for you yesterday:5 how certain processes of the human being were represented in a descending movement. So that you can say to yourself: When I have the human being before me, there is a descending current and an ascending current in the human being, and they work together. How they work together will then be discussed tomorrow.

[Diagram on the blackboard]:

SECOND LECTURE

DORNACH, 18 SEPTEMBER 1915

ISPOKE yesterday about a kind of ascending movement that is rooted in human nature. And basically, through the contemplation of this ascending movement, we have found again everything that we already know; namely, on the lowest level, the knowledge that is only applicable to the facts of the physical plane, the physical knowledge which is called object knowledge in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it Achieved?6 So physical knowledge is what I want to call it today. We then got to know the next higher level of knowledge, the so-called imaginative knowledge; but we considered it as unconscious imaginative knowledge; conscious imaginative knowledge can, after all, only be present in a person who tries to attain it in the way described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it Achieved?. [The words ‘physical knowledge’, ‘unconscious imaginative knowledge’, ‘conscious imaginative knowledge’ were written on the blackboard, see diagram 4 page 33.]

But as a fact, the content of imaginative knowledge, that is imaginations, is in every human being. So that actually the development of the human soul in this respect is nothing other than an extension of consciousness into an area that is always within the human soul. So we can say: This imaginative knowledge is no different from the way it would be with objects that are in an initially dark room. For in the depths of the human soul all the imaginations that first come into consideration for the human being are just as present as the objects of a dark room. And just as these are not increased by a single one when light is brought into the room, but just as all remain as they are, only that they are illuminated, so, too, after the consciousness of imaginative knowledge has awakened, there is no content in the soul other than what was there before; it is only illuminated by the light of consciousness. So, to a certain extent, we experience nothing more through the ascent to the imaginative level of cognition than what has long been previously present in our soul as a sum of imaginations.

If we look back once more at what became clear to us yesterday, we know that when our ideas, which we gain about the objects around us through our physical perceptions, sink down into the realm of possible memories—that is, are lowered into the unconscious so that we find ourselves in the position of not knowing anything about them for some time, not having lost them but being able to bring them up again from the soul—then we must say that we lower down into the unconscious that which we have in ordinary physical consciousness. The world of conceptions we obtain through physical knowledge of the outer world is therefore constantly absorbed by our spiritual part, by the supersensory; it continually slips into the supersensory realm. At every moment it is the case that we obtain conceptions of the outer world through the physical perceptions, and these conceptions are handed over to our supersensory nature. It will not be difficult for you to reflect on this after all that has been said over the years, because this is precisely the most superficial supersensory process that is conceivable, a process that is continually taking place: the transition of ordinary conceptions into conceptions we can remember. So it is natural to think, which is also true according to spiritual research, that everything that takes place when we perceive the outer world is a process of the physical plane. Even when we form conceptions based on the physical external world, this is still a process of the physical plane. But the moment we let the conceptions sink down into the unconscious, we are already at the entrance to the supersensory world.

This is indeed a very important point which must be taken into consideration by anyone who wants to attain an understanding of the occult world not through all kinds of occultist twaddle but through serious human effort of the soul. For there is already a quite essential fact hidden in the words which I have just spoken: when we as human beings face the things of the outer world and form conceptions, then this is a process of the physical plane. At the moment when the conception sinks down into the unconscious and is kept there until it is brought up again by a memory, a supersensory process, a real supersensory process, takes place. So that you can say to yourself: If we are able to follow this process, which consists in the fact that a thought which is above in the consciousness sinks down into the subconscious and is there below as an image, if we can, in other words, follow an idea as it is down in the unconscious, then we actually already begin to slip into the realm of the supersensory. For just think: When you carry out the ordinary process of recollection, the conception must first come up into the consciousness, and you then see it up in the consciousness, never down in the unconscious. You must distinguish ordinary recollection from following the conceptions down into the unconscious. You can compare what takes place in remembering with a swimmer who sinks below the water and whom you continue to see until they are completely submerged. Now they are down and you don’t see them anymore. When they come back up, you’ll see them again! [Draws.] It is the same with human conceptions: you have them as long as they are on the physical plane; when they go down, you’ve forgotten them; if you remember them again, then they come up again like the swimmer. But this process that I’m talking about now, which already points to imaginative cognition, could be compared to you submerging yourself and thus being able to see the swimmer below in the water, so that they do not disappear from your sight when they submerge.

But nothing less follows from this than that the line I drew earlier, the base, as it were,—below which the imagination sinks into the unconscious, into possible memories—is the threshold of the spiritual world itself, the first threshold of the spiritual world. This follows with absolute necessity. It is the first threshold of the spiritual world! Just think how close the human being is to this threshold of the spiritual world. [The words ‘threshold of the spiritual world’ were written next to the diagram.]

And now take a process by which we can try to get down there properly, to submerge. The process would be that you endeavour to pursue conceptions down into the unconscious. This can really only be done by trying. It can happen by doing something like the following. You have formed a conception of the outside world; you try to artificially evoke the process of memory independently of the outside world. Think of how this is recommended in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it Achieved?, in which the quite ordinary rule of looking back on the day’s events is given. When you look back on the day’s experiences, you practise entering, as it were, into the ways which the imagination itself takes by being submerged and rising again. So the whole process of recollection is designed to pursue the conceptions that have sunk below the threshold of consciousness.

It is further said there in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it Achieved? that we do well to trace back the conceptions we have formed in reverse, that is, from the end to the beginning; and if you want to review the day, to follow the stream of events backwards from evening to morning. As a result we have to make a different effort than is made by way of ordinary recall. And this different effort leads us to grasp below the threshold of consciousness, as it were, what we had as a conception of our experience. And in the course of trying, we come to feel, to experience inwardly how we pursue the conceptions, pursue them down below this threshold of consciousness. It is really a process of inner experiential trying that is under consideration here. But it is a matter of doing this review really seriously, not doing it in such a way that after a while we slacken in terms of the seriousness of the matter. But then, if we go through this process of looking back for a longer period, or in general go through the process of bringing up from memory an experience, a world of conceptions arising from our experience—so that we imagine the matter in reverse, that is, make more effort than we have to make when we remember in the ordinary sequence—then we now also have the experience that we are no longer in a position to grasp the conception from a certain point onwards in the way we have grasped it in ordinary life on the physical plane.