Psychoanalysis in the Light of Anthroposophy

By Rudolf Steiner
Translated by May Laird-Brown
From Bn/GA numbers 143, 178 & 205
In these five lectures, later published under the title Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology, Steiner lays the
foundations for a truly spiritual psychology. The first two lectures constitute a critical examination of the principles
of Freud and Jung. The last three lectures begin with a description of the threefold structure of human consciousness
(reflective or mirror consciousness, supra-consciousness, and sub-consciousness) and go on to outline a psychology
that takes into account both the soul's hidden powers and the complex connections between psychological and
organic, bodily processes.
These lectures were given in different locations and at widely different times, but are grouped together under one
topic. Three different Bn/GA numbers are represented in this First Edition of this grouping of lectures. This volume
is presented here with the kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland. From
Bn 178, 153, and 205 and GA 178, 153, and 205.
Copyright 1946
This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:
The Anthroposophic Press

CONTENTS

Anthroposophy and Psychoanalysis I

Dornach, November 10,1917

Anthroposophy and Psychoanalysis II

Dornach, November 11, 1917

Reflections in the Mirror of Consciousness,

Superconsciousness and Subconsciousness

Munich, February 25, 1912

Hidden Soul Powers

Munich, February 27, 1912

Connections Between Organic Processes and

the Mental Life of Man

Dornach, July 2, 1921

Anthroposophy and Psychoanalysis

I
LECTURE BY DR. RUDOLF STEINER, DELIVERED AT THE
GOETHEANUM IN DORNACH, SWITZERLAND, NOVEMBER 10, 1917.

on this occasion the lectures which I am having to give just now in

Zrich, [Anthroposophy and the Science of the Soul (Nov. 5), Anthroposophy and
Spiritual Science (Nov. 7), Anthroposophy and Natural Science (Nov. 12),
Anthroposophy and Social Science (Nov. 14).] I am freshly reminded that one can
hardly come into touch with the spiritual life of that city in any broad sense at
present without giving some attention to what is now called analytical psychology, or
psychoanalysis. And various considerations connected with this realization have decided me
to introduce what I have to say today with a short enumeration of certain points in analytical
psychology, in psychoanalysis. We shall link it then with further remarks.
ONSIDERING

We have often noted how important it is for the researcher in the field of
anthroposophical spiritual science, to connect his considerations with what is offered by the
moving forces of our own age. It may be said that all sorts of people who feel drawn to
psychoanalysis today are earnestly searching for the spiritual foundations of existence, for
the inner realities of the soul of man. And it may be called a curious characteristic of our
own time that so many of our contemporaries are becoming aware of quite definite, and
most peculiar forces in the human soul. The psychoanalysts belong to those who, simply
through the impulses of the age, are forced to hit upon certain phenomena of soul life.
It is especially important also not to remain entirely oblivious of this movement,
because the phenomena of which it takes cognizance are really present, and because in our
own time they intrude themselves for various reasons upon the attention of human beings.
Today they must become aware of such phenomena.
On the other hand it is a fact that the people who concern themselves with these things
today lack the means of knowledge required for the discussion and, above all, for the
understanding of them. So that we may say: psychoanalysis is a phenomenon of our time,
which compels men to take account of certain soul processes, and yet causes them to
undertake their consideration by inadequate methods of knowledge. This is particularly
important because this investigation, by inadequate methods of knowledge, of a matter that
quite obviously exists and challenges our present human cognition leads to a variety of
serious errors, inimical to social life, to the further development of knowledge, and to the
influence of this development of knowledge upon social life.
It may be said that even less than half-truths are, under certain circumstances, more
harmful than complete errors. And what the psychoanalysts bring to light today can be
regarded only as an assortment of quarter-truths.

Let us consider a few excerpts from the research magazine of the psychoanalysts. What
is called psychoanalysis today had its origin in a medical case observed by a Vienna interne,
a Dr. Breuer, in the eighteen-eighties. Dr. Breuer, with whom I was acquainted, was a man
of extraordinarily delicate spirituality besides what he was as a physician. He was interested
to a high degree in all sorts of aesthetic, and general human problems. With his intimate
manner of handling disease, it was natural that one case, which came under his observation
in the eighties, was particularly interesting to him.
He had to treat a woman who seemed to be suffering from a severe form of hysteria. Her
hysterical symptoms consisted of an occasional paralysis of one arm, dreamy conditions of
various kinds, reduction of consciousness, a deep degree of sleepiness, and besides all this,
forgetfulness of the usual language of her every day life. She had always been able to speak
German; it was her native language, but under the influence of her hysteria could no longer
do so; she could speak and understand only English.
Breuer noticed that when this woman was in her dreamy condition she could be
persuaded, by a more intimate medical treatment, to speak of a certain scene, a very trying
past experience. Now I will make clear to you from the description of the case given by the
Breuer school, how the woman in her half-conscious condition, sometimes artificially
induced, gave the impression that her hysteria was connected with a severe illness of her
father, through which he had passed a long time before. Breuer could easily hypnotize a
patient, and when he had placed her under hypnosis and encouraged her to speak of it, she
told of an experience she had had during her father's illness. She had helped with the
nursing, and always came back to this definite experience. I will quote from the report: [The
following quotations are translations of passages from C. G. Jung's Die Psychologie der
unbewussten Prozesse. Ein Ueberblick ber die moderne Theorie und Methode der
analytischen Psychologie, Zrich, 1917.]
On one occasion she was watching at night in great anxiety and tension, for the sick
man had a high fever, and a surgeon was expected from Vienna to perform an operation.
Her mother had left her for a time, and Anna (the patient) sat by the sickbed, her right arm
across the back of the chair. She fell into a kind of waking dream, and saw, as if issuing
from the wall, a black snake approaching, to bite her father. ...
Men of the present day are always stricken by materialism, so we find in the report at
this point the following suggestion, which is of no value whatever:
(It is very probable that in the meadow behind the house there were a few snakes which
had frightened the girl previously, and which now furnished material for the hallucination.)
That is only an interpolated remark, to which you may attach importance, or not it
does not matter. The point is that the snake seemed to her to come out of the wall to bite her
father.
She wanted to fight off the creature, but was as if paralyzed; the right arm hanging over
the back of the chair had gone to sleep and became anaesthetized and paralyzed and, as she

looked at it, the fingers changed into little snakes tipped with skulls.
All this was beside her father's sick bed.
She probably tried to chase away the snake with the lamed right hand, and so
associated the anaesthesia and lameness with the snake hallucination. When this had
disappeared she wished, in her fright, to pray, but every language failed her. At last she
remembered an English nursery rhyme, and could continue to think and pray in this
language.
The whole illness originated from this experience. From it there had remained the
paralysis of one hand, reduction of consciousness in varying degrees, and inability to
express herself in any language but English. Dr. Breuer then noticed that the condition was
ameliorated whenever he had her tell this story, and he based his treatment upon this fact.
By means of hypnosis he drew from her little by little all the details, and really succeeded in
bringing about a marked improvement in her condition. The patient got rid of the matter, as
it were, by uttering and communicating it to another.
Breuer and his collaborator Freud, in Vienna, who were both influenced, as was natural
at this period, by the school of Charcot [Jean Martin Charcot, French M.D. (1825-1893).] in
Paris, diagnosed this case as a psychic trauma, a psychic wound, what is called in England a
nervous shock. The psychic shock was supposed to consist of this experience at her
father's bedside, and to have had an effect upon the soul similar to that of a physical wound
upon the body.
It must be noted that from the beginning Breuer conceived the whole affair as a soul
illness, as a matter of the inner life. He was convinced from the beginning that no
anatomical or physiological changes could have been shown, no causes, for example, such
as changes in the nerves leading from the arm to the brain. He was convinced from the start
that he was dealing with a fact within the soul.
They were inclined in these early days to regard these cases as induced by wounds of
the soul, shocks, etc. Very soon, however, because of Dr. Freud's active interest, theories
took on a different character. With Freud's further development of the subject Dr. Breuer
was never fully in accord. Freud felt that the theory of soul wounds would not do, did not
cover these cases, and thus far Breuer agreed with him. I will remark in parenthesis that Dr.
Breuer was a very busy practicing physician, thoroughly grounded in science, an excellent
pupil of Nothnagel [Hermann Nothnagel, M.D. (1841-1905).] and because of external
circumstances alone never became a professor. We may well believe that if Breuer, instead
of remaining one of the busiest physicians in Vienna, with little time for scientific research,
had obtained a professorship and so been able to follow up this problem, it might have
assumed a very different form!
But from then on Dr. Freud took especial interest in the matter. He said to himself: the
theory of trauma does not explain these cases. We need to determine under what conditions
such a soul wound develops. For it might be said with justice that many girls had sat beside

a father's sickbed with equally deep feelings, but without producing the same results. The
unscientific layman deals with such problems promptly by the extraordinarily profound
explanation that one is predisposed to such symptoms while another is not. Although very
profound, this is the most absurd solution that can be arrived at, is it not? For if you
explain things that occur on the basis of predisposition, you can easily explain everything in
the world. You need only say: the predisposition for a certain thing exists.
Of course serious thinkers did not concern themselves with such ideas, but sought the
real conditions. And Freud believed that he had discovered them in cases like the following.
You will find innumerable similar cases in the literature of the psychoanalysts today, and it
may be admitted that an immense amount of material has been collected in order to decide
this or that point within this field. I will describe this one case, making it as comprehensible
as possible. Its absolute historical accuracy is not important to us.
There was a woman with other guests at an evening party, a gathering of friends to bid
good-bye to the mistress of the house, who had become nervous and was about to leave for
a health resort abroad. She was to leave on that evening, and after the party had broken up,
and the hostess departed, the woman whose case we are describing was going with other
supper guests along the street when a cab came around the corner behind them (not an
automobile a cab with horses), driven at a great pace. In the smaller cities people
returning home at night often walk in the middle of the street instead of on the sidewalk. (I
do not know if you have noticed this). As the cab rushed towards them the supper guests
scattered to right and left on to the sidewalks, with the exception of this one woman whom
we are considering. She ran along the street in front of the horses, and all the driver's
cursing and swearing and the cracking of his whip could not deflect her. She ran until she
came to a bridge where she tried to throw herself into the water in order to avoid being run
over. She was rescued by passersby, and returned to her party, being thus preserved from a
serious accident.
This performance was of course connected with the woman's general condition. It is
due, undoubtedly, to hysteria if a person runs along the middle of the street in front of
horses, and the cause of such an action had to be discovered. Freud, in this and similar
cases, examined the previous life back to childhood. If, even at an early age, something
happened that was not assimilated by the soul, it could create a tendency which might be
released later by any sort of shock.
And in fact such an experience was found in the childhood of the woman in question.
She was taken driving as a child, and the horses became frightened and ran away. The
coachman could not control them, and when they reached the river bank he sprang off,
ordering the child to jump too, which it did, just before the horses plunged into the river.
Thus the shocking incident was there, and a certain association of horse with horse. At the
moment when she realized her danger from the horses she lost control of herself, and ran
frantically in front of them instead of turning aside all this as an after-effect of the
childhood experience. You see that the psychoanalysts have a scientific method, according
to present-day scientific ideas. But are there not many who have some such experience in
childhood without such a reaction, even with the association of horse with horse? To this

single circumstance something must be added to produce a predisposition to run in front

of horses, instead of avoiding them.
Freud continued his search, and actually found an interesting connection in this case.
The woman was engaged to be married, but was in love with two men at the same time. One
was the man to whom she was engaged, and she was sure that she loved him best; but she
was not quite clear about that, only halfway so; she loved the other also, this other being the
husband of her best friend, whose farewell supper had taken place that evening. The hostess,
who was somewhat nervous, took her departure, and this woman left with the other guests,
ran in front of the horses, was rescued, and brought back quite naturally into the house she
had just left. Further inquiry elicited the fact that in the past there had existed a significant
association between the lady and this other man, the husband of her best friend. The love
affair had already taken on certain dimensions, let us say, which accounted for the
nervousness of her friend, as you may easily imagine. The physician brought her to this
point in the story, but had difficulty in persuading her to continue. She admitted at last that
when she came to herself in her friend's house, and was again normal, the husband declared
his love to her. Quite a remarkable case, as you see!
Dr. Freud went after similar cases, and his researches convinced him that the hysterical
symptoms, which had been attributed to a psychic trauma or wound, were due instead to
love, conscious or unconscious. His examination of life experiences showed that
circumstances might greatly differ, indeed in the most characteristic cases, that these love
stories might never have risen into the consciousness of the patient at any time.
So Freud completed what he called his neurosis theory or sexual theory. He considered
that sexuality entered into all such cases. But such things are extraordinarily deceptive. To
begin with, there is everywhere at the present time an inclination to call sex to your aid, for
the solution of any human problem. Therefore we need not wonder that a doctor who found
it to be a factor in a certain number of cases of hysteria set up such a theory.
But on the other hand, since analytical psychology is carrying on a research with
inadequate tools, this is the point at which the greatest danger begins. The matter is
dangerous first, because this longing for knowledge is so extremely tempting, tempting
because of present circumstances, and because it may always be proved that the sex
connection is more or less present. Yet the psychoanalyst Jung, who wrote Die Psychologie
der unbewussten Prozesse (see the above quotations that are translations of passages from
C. G. Jung's Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse. Ein Ueberblick ber die moderne
Theorie und Methode der analytischen Psychologie, Zrich, 1917.), Professor Jung of
Zrich does not share the opinion that Freud's sexual neurosis theory covers these cases.
He has instead another theory.
Jung noted that Freud has his opponents. Among them is a certain Adler. This Adler
takes a quite different viewpoint. Just as Freud tested large numbers of cases, and settled
upon sex as the original cause (you can read it all in Jung's book), so Adler approached the
problem from another side, and decided that this side is more important than the one that
Freud has placed in the foreground.

Adler I will only generalize found that there was another urge that played quite as
important a role in the human being as the sexual impulse emphasized by Freud. This was
the desire for power, power over one's environment, the desire for power in general. The
will to power is even regarded by Nietzsche as a philosophical principle, and as many
cases may be found to support the power-impulse theory as Freud found for his sexual
theory.
One need only begin analyzing hysterical women to find that such cases are not at all
rare. Assume for example that a woman is hysterical and has spasms heart spasms are a
favorite in such cases as well as all sorts of other conditions. The home is stirred up, the
whole environment, everything possible is done, doctors are summoned, the patient greatly
pitied. In short, she exercises a tyrannical power over her environment. A reasonable person
knows that in such a case there is really nothing the matter, even though such patients are
aware of their condition and suffered from it. They are in reality perfectly healthy but ill
when they wish to be. You may diagnose them as well and ill at the same time. They do of
course fall down when they faint in a heart spasm, but they fall as a rule on the rug, not on
the bare floor! These things may be observed.
Now this subconscious lust for power leads very easily to hysterical conditions. Adler
investigated the cases at his disposal from this particular standpoint, and found everywhere
when hysterical symptoms appeared that somehow the lust for power had been aroused and
driven into unhealthy extremes. Jung said to himself: Oh well, one cannot say that Freud is
wrong; what he observed is there, and one cannot say that Adler is wrong; what he observed
is also there. So it is probably sometimes one way, and sometimes the other!
That is quite reasonable; it is sometimes one way and sometimes another. But Jung built
upon this a special theory. This theory is not uninteresting if you do not take it abstractly,
simply as a theory, but see in it instead the action of our present-day impulses, especially
the feebleness of our present knowledge and its inadequacy. Jung says: there are two types
of people. In one type feeling is more developed, in the other thinking.
Thus an epoch-making discovery was made by a great scholar. It was something that
any reasonable man could make for himself within his own immediate environment, for the
fact that men are divided into thinking men and feeling men is sufficiently obvious. But
scholarship has a different task: it must not regard anything as a layman would, and simply
say: in our environment there are two types of people, feeling people and intellectuals it
must add something to that. Scholarship says in such a case: the one who feels his way into
things sends out his own force into objectivity; the other draws back from an object, or halts
before it and considers. The first is called the extroverted type, the other the introverted.
The first would be the feeling man, the second the intellectual one. This is a learned
division, is it not? ingenious, brilliant, really descriptive up to a point that is not to be
denied!
Then Jung goes on to say; In the case of the extraverted type (that of the man who lives
preferably in his feelings), there exist very frequently in the subconscious mind intellectual
concepts, and he finds himself in a collision between what is in his consciousness and the

intellectual concepts that float about subconsciously within him. And from this collision all
sorts of conditions may arise, conditions mainly characteristic of the feeling type.
In the case of those who occupy themselves more with the mind, the men of reason, the
feelings remain down below, swarm in the subconscious, and come into collision with the
conscious life. The conscious life cannot understand what is surging up. It is the force of the
subconscious feelings, and because man is never complete, but belongs to one of these two
types, circumstances may arise that cause the subconscious mind to revolt against the
conscious, and may frequently lead to hysterical conditions.
Now we must say that Jung's theory is simply a paraphrase of the trivial idea of the
feeling and the reasoning man, and adds nothing to the facts. But from all this you needs
must realize that men of the present are at least beginning to notice all sorts of psychic
peculiarities, and so concern themselves that they ask what goes on within a man who
shows such symptoms. And they are at least so far along that they say to themselves: These
are not due to physiological or anatomical changes. They have already outgrown bare
materialism, in that they speak of psychic phenomena. So this is certainly one way in which
people try to emerge from materialism, and to reach some knowledge of the soul.
It is, however, very peculiar, when you look at the subject more closely, to see into what
strange paths people are led by the general inadequacy of their means of cognition. But I
must emphatically point out that men do not realize into what they are being driven, and
neither do their supporters, readers, and contemporaries. Thus, rightly regarded, the matter
has actually a very dangerous side, because so much is not taken into consideration. In the
subconscious mind itself there is a commotion, it is the theories which agitate in the
subconscious. It is really strange. People set up a theory in regard to the subconscious, but
their own subconsciousness is agitated by it. Jung pursues the matter as a physician, and it is
important that psychological questions should be handled from that standpoint,
therapeutically, and that many should be striving to carry over the matter into pedagogy. We
are no longer confronted by a limited theory, but by the effort to make it into a cultural fact.
It is interesting to see how someone like Jung, who handles this matter as a physician,
and has observed, treated, and apparently even cured all sorts of cases, is driven further and
further. He says to himself: when such abnormal psychological symptoms are found, a
search must be made in order to discover any incidents of childhood which may have made
such an impression on the human soul life as to produce after-effects. That is something
especially sought for in this field: after-effects of something that happened in childhood. I
have cited an example which plays quite a role in the literature of psychoanalysis: the
association of horse and horse.
Later, however, Jung came upon the fact that in many of the cases of genuine illness it
cannot be proved, even if you go back to his earliest childhood, that the patient as an
individual is suffering from any such after-effects. If you take into consideration everything
with which he has come in contact, you find the conflict within the individual, but no
explanation of it. So Jung was led to distinguish two subconsciousnesses: first the individual
subconsciousness, concealed within the human being. If in her childhood the young woman

jumped out of a carriage and received a shock, the incident has long since vanished from her
consciousness, but works subconsciously. If you consider this subconscious element (made
up of innumerable details), you get the personal or individual subconsciousness. This is the
first of Jung's differentiations.
But the second is the superpersonal subconsciousness. He says: There are things
affecting the soul life which are neither in the personality nor in the matter of the outside
world, and which must be assumed therefore as present in a soul world.
The aim of psychoanalysis is to bring such soul contents into consciousness. That is
supposed to be the healing method: to bring everything into consciousness. Thus the
physician must undertake to extract from the patient, not only what he has experienced
individually from his birth on, but also something that was not in the outside world and is of
a soul nature. This has driven the psychoanalysts to say that a man experiences, not only
what he goes through after his physical birth, but also all sorts of things that preceded his
birth and that all this creates disorder within him. A man who is born today experiences
thus subconsciously the Oedipus Saga. He not only learns it in school; he experiences it. He
experiences the Greek gods, the whole past of mankind. The evil of this consists in the fact
that he experiences it subconsciously. The psychoanalyst must therefore say and he does
go so far that the Greek child also experienced this but, since he was told about it, he
experienced it consciously. Man experiences it today, but it only stirs within him in the
thoughts of the extraverted man, in the subconscious feelings of the introverted type. It
growls like demons.
Now consider the necessity that confronts the psychoanalyst if he is true to his theory.
He would have to take these things seriously and say simply that when a man grows up and
may be made ill by his relation to that which stirs within him a relation of which he
knows nothing that this connection must become conscious, and it must be explained to
him that there is a spiritual world inhabited by different gods. For the psychoanalyst goes so
far as to say that the human soul has a connection with the gods, but it is a cause of illness
in that the soul knows nothing of it.
The psychoanalyst seeks all sorts of expedients, sometimes quite grotesque. Let us
assume that a patient comes and displays this or that hysterical symptom, because he is
afraid of a demon let us say a fire demon. Men of earlier periods believed in fire
demons, had visions of them, knew about them. Present-day people still have connections
with them (the psychoanalyst admits that), but these connections are not conscious; no one
explains that there are fire demons, so they become a cause of illness.
Jung however goes so far as to assert that the gods, to whom man is unconsciously
related, become angry and revenge themselves, this revenge showing itself as hysteria. Very
well, it amounts then to this: such a present-day man who is mistreated by a demon in his
subconscious mind, does not know that there are demons, and cannot achieve any conscious
relation with them because that is superstition! What does the poor modern man do then,
if he becomes ill from this cause? He projects it outwardly, that is to say he looks up some
friend whom he had liked quite well, and says: This is the one who is persecuting and

abusing me! He feels this to be true, which means that he has a demon which torments him,
and so projects it into another man.
Often psychoanalysts, in treating such a case, deflect this projection upon themselves.
Thus it often happens that patients, in a good or evil sense, make the doctor into a god or a
devil.
So you see the physician of the present day is forced to say to himself: Men are
tormented by spirits, and because they are taught nothing about them, cannot take
possession of them in consciousness, they become therefore tormenting spirits among
themselves, project their demons outwardly, persuade one another of all sorts of demoniacal
nonsense, etc. And how disastrous this is assumed to be by the psychoanalysts is shown by
the following case which Jung describes. He says: Certain of my colleagues claim that the
soul energies that spring from such torment, must be deflected into another channel. Let us
turn back then to one of the elementary cases of psychoanalysis. A patient comes, whose
illness was caused, according to her psychoanalytical confession, by her having been in
love, many years before, with a man whom she did not get. This had remained with her. Of
course she might be annoyed by a demon, but in most cases observed by the doctors it turns
out that something has happened in the individual subconsciousness, which they classify
separately from the super-personal subconscious. The doctors try to divert this immature
fantasy or to transform it. If a love-thirsty soul can be persuaded to make use of her
accumulated affections in humanitarian services, perhaps as head of a charitable institution,
it may turn out well. But Jung himself says: It is not always possible thus to divert this
energy. Energies so implanted in the soul have often a certain definite potential which
cannot be directed. Very well, I have no objection to this expression, but wish only to point
out that it is a translation of what the layman often discusses, and the way in which he often
expresses himself. But Jung describes a case which is interesting, and a good example of the
fact that these potentials cannot always be directed.
An American, a typical man of today, a self-made man, the efficient head of a business
that he had built up, having devoted himself to his work and achieved a great success,
thought then: I shall soon be forty-five, and have done my bit! Now I will give myself a
rest. So he decided to retire, bought himself an estate with autos and tennis courts, and
everything else that belonged to it, intending to live in the country, and simply to draw his
dividends from the business. But when he had been for a time on his estate he ceased to play
tennis or to drive his car, or to go to the theater. He took no pleasure in the gardens that
were laid out, but sat in his room alone, and brooded. It hurt him there, and there,
everything hurt him. Actually his head hurt, then his chest, and then his legs. He could not
endure himself, ceased from laughter, was tired, strung up, had continual headache it was
horrible. There was no illness that a doctor could diagnose! It is often that way with men of
the present, is it not? They are perfectly healthy, and yet ill. The doctor said: "This trouble is
psychic. You have adapted yourself to business conditions, and your energies will not
readily take another course. Go back to business. That is the only suggestion that I can
make. The man in question grasped this, but found that he was no longer any good at
business! He was just as ill there as at home.

From this Jung rightly concludes that you cannot easily deflect energy from one
potential to another, nor even turn it back again when you have failed. This man came to
him for treatment. (You know many people come to Switzerland bringing such illnesses and
non-illnesses!) But he could not help this American. The trouble had taken too strong a
hold; it should have been handled earlier.
You see from this that the therapy of deflection has also its difficulties, and Jung himself
offers this example. Important facts are met everywhere which I now may say will be
successfully dealt with only by spiritual science or Anthroposophy, in accordance with
exact knowledge. But there they are, and people notice them. The questions are there. It will
be discovered that the human being is complicated, and not the simple creature presented to
us by the science of the 19th century. The psychoanalyst is confronted by a remarkable fact
which is quite inexplicable by the science of today. In Anthroposophy, together with the
information given in my lectures, you will easily find an explanation, but I can come back
to the point in case you do not find it. It may happen, for example, that someone becomes
hysterically blind, that is, his blindness is an hysterical symptom. This is possible. There are
hysterically blind people, who could see, yet do not who are psychically blind. Now such
people are sometimes partially cured partially; they begin to see again, but do not see
everything. Sometimes such an hysterically blind man recovers sufficient sight to see
people, all but their heads! Such a half-cured person goes along the streets, and sees
everyone without a head. That really occurs, and there are even stranger symptoms.
All this may be dealt with by spiritual science anthroposophically oriented spiritual
science and in a lecture that I gave here last year you may find an explanation of the
inability to see the heads of people. [Lecture given at Drnach, August 5, 1916.] But the
present psychoanalyst is faced by all these phenomena. And so much confronts him that he
says to himself: It may be quite disastrous for a man to be connected with the superpersonal
unconscious; but for God's sake (the psychoanalyst does not say for God's sake, but
perhaps for science's sake) do not let us take the spiritual world seriously! It does not enter
their minds to consider the spiritual world seriously. Thus something very peculiar happens.
Very few notice what strange phenomena appear under the influence of these things. I will
call to your attention something in Jung's book Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse,
[see the above quotations that are translations of passages from C. G. Jung's Die
Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse. Ein Ueberblick ber die moderne Theorie und
Methode der analytischen Psychologie, Zrich, 1917.] recently published, which will show
you where the psychoanalyst lands today. I shall have to read you a passage.
According to this example (these are examples showing that a man has within him,
not only the contents of his present personal life, but far-back connections with all sorts of
demonic, divine, or spiritual forces, etc.) According to this example of the genesis of
new ideas from the store of the primeval pictures (here he does not call them gods but
primeval pictures) we will take up the further description of the transference
processes. We saw that the libido, in those apparently preposterous and curious fantasies,
had seized upon its new object, namely the contents of the absolute unconscious. (The
absolute unconscious is the superpersonal unconscious, not the personal.) As I have
already said, the uncomprehended projection of the primeval pictures upon the physician

involves a danger for the further treatment that must not be under-estimated. (The patient
transfers his demons to the doctor. That is one danger.) The pictures contain not only the
best and greatest of all that mankind has thought and felt, but also every infamous and
devilish deed of which men have been capable.
Just think! Jung has come so far as to perceive that a man has subconsciously within
him all the most fiendish crimes, as well as the most beautiful of all that mankind has been
able to think and feel. These people cannot be persuaded to speak of Lucifer and Ahriman,
[Compare Rudolf Steiner, The Luciferic and Ahrimanic Influences in their Relation to Man,
1918, reprinted in Anthroposophie, Vol. 17, Book 2, p. 159.] but they agree upon the
preceding statement, which I shall read to you once more:
The pictures contain not only the best and greatest of all that mankind has thought and
felt, but also every infamous and devilish deed of which men have been capable. If the
patient cannot distinguish the personality of the physician from these projections, then every
possibility of mutual understanding is lost, and the human relationship becomes hopeless. If,
however, the patient avoids this Charybdis he falls into the Scylla of the introjection of
these pictures, that is to say that he attributes their qualities not to the physician but to
himself. (Then he himself is the devil.) This danger is equally serious. In projection he
staggers between an extravagant and morbid adulation and a hateful contempt for his
physician. In introjection he falls into a ridiculous self-deification, or a moral selflaceration. The mistake that he makes each time is in attributing to himself the contents of
the absolute unconscious. So he makes himself into a god or a devil. Here lies the
psychological reason why men have always needed demons, and were never able to live
without gods except a few particularly clever Western specimens of yesterday and the
day before, supermen whose god being dead, have made gods of themselves, rationalistic
pocket size gods with thick skulls and cold hearts.
Thus you see, the psychoanalyst is driven to say: The human soul is so made that it
needs gods, that gods are necessary to it, for it becomes ill without them. Therefore it has
always had them. Men need gods. The psychoanalyst ridicules men, saying that when they
lack other gods they make gods of themselves, but rationalistic pocket size gods with thick
skulls and cold hearts. The idea of God (he says further), is simply a necessary
psychological function of an irrational nature. ...
To describe the necessity of the God-concept in these terms is as far as one can go by
the methods of natural science! Man must have a God; he needs him. The psychoanalyst
knows that. But let us read to the end of the sentence:
The idea of God is simply a necessary psychological function of an irrational nature, which
has nothing to do with the question of the actual existence of God.
When you read the complete sentence you run upon the great dilemma of the present
day. The psychoanalyst proves to you that man becomes ill and useless without his God, but
says that this need has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of God. And he
continues:

For this latter question (namely, of the existence of God,) belongs to the most stupid
questions that can be framed. Man knows well enough that he cannot conceive a God, much
less imagine that he really exists, or that there can be any occurrence not conditioned by
natural causes.
Now I beg of you, here you find here you are standing at the point where you may
catch at things. The things are there, knocking upon the doors of knowledge. Seekers are
also there. They admit an absolute necessity, but when that necessity is stated as a serious
question they consider it one of the stupidest that can be suggested.
You see, you have there one of the points in the cultural life of today from which you
may note exactly what is always avoided. I can assure you that, in their examination and
knowledge of the soul, these psychoanalysts are far ahead of what is offered in current
psychiatry by the universities. They are not only far beyond ordinary university psychiatry
and psychology, but in a certain sense they are right to look down upon this dreadful socalled science. But one may catch them in any such passage, showing as it does what
mankind is actually facing in the attitude of contemporary science.
Many do not recognize this. They do not realize the force of belief in authority. There
has never been such faith in authority, nor has it ever reigned so absolutely as in the
subconscious mind today. One asks again and again: Just what do you do as physicians
when you handle hysterical cases? You seek something in the subconscious mind that is not
solved within consciousness. Yes, but you find repeatedly just such a subconscious content
in the case of the theorists. If you lift it into full consciousness it turns out to be exactly
what has been murmuring in the subconsciousness of the modern doctors and their patients.
And all our literature is so saturated with it that you are in daily and hourly danger of
imbibing it. And since it is only through spiritual science that men may become aware of
these things, many take them up unknowingly, draw them into their subconsciousness,
where they remain.
This psychoanalysis has at least pointed out that the reality of the soul is to be accepted
as such. They do that. But the devil is everywhere at their heels; I mean that they are neither
able nor willing to approach spiritual reality. Therefore you find in all sorts of places the
most incredible statements. But present humanity has not the degree of attention necessary
to perceive them. We should naturally expect any reader of Jung's book to fall off his chair
under the table at certain sentences, but men of the present do not do that; so only think how
much of it must lie in the subconsciousness of modern humanity. Yet for this very reason,
because these psychoanalysts see how much there is in the subconscious and they do see
it they look upon many things differently from other people. In his Preface Jung says
something, for example, part of which is not bad.
The psychological processes which accompany the present war, above all the incredible
depravity of public opinion, the mutual calumnies, the undreamed of fury of destruction, the
flood of lies, and men's inability to halt the bloody demon, are all adapted to set before the
eyes of thinking humanity the problem of the restlessly slumbering, chaotic realm of the
subconscious. This war has shown pitilessly to the cultured man that he is still a barbarian,

and at the same time what an iron rod of correction awaits him should it again occur to him
to hold his neighbor responsible for his own bad character. The psychology of the single
individual corresponds to the psychology of the nations.
And now comes a sentence which makes you wonder what to do with it.
What the nations do is done by each individual, and so long as the individual does it the
nation will do it too. Only a change in the attitude of the individual can bring about a change
in the psychology of the nation.
These sentences, placed side by side, show how destructively this thinking works. I ask
you if it is sensible to say: What the nations do is done by each individual? It would be
equally reasonable to ask: Could an individual do it without nations doing it too? It is
nonsense, is it not, to say things like that. The unfortunate thing is that even prominent
thinkers are impressed by it. And this sort of thinking is not only to become therapy, but
take the lead in pedagogy. This again is founded upon the justifiable longing to introduce
into pedagogy a new soul and spiritual element. Are conclusions to be accepted which were
reached by entirely inadequate methods of cognition? These are nowadays the important
questions.
We shall return to the matter from the standpoint of anthroposophical orientation, and
throw light upon it from a broader horizon. Then we shall see that one must set about it in a
much bigger way, in order to succeed with these things at all. But they must be handled
concretely. The problems which as yet have been investigated only by the old, inadequate
methods, must be placed in the light of anthroposophical knowledge.
Take, for example, the problem of Nietzsche. Today I will only suggest it; tomorrow we
shall consider such problems more thoroughly. We know already from former lectures:
[Lectures given at Drnach, October 14, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28; November 2, 3, 4, 1917.] from
1841 to 1879 battle of spirits above; from 1879 on, the fallen spirits in the human realm. In
future such and similar things must of necessity play a role whenever a human life is
studied. For Nietzsche was born in 1844. For three years before he descended to earth his
soul was in the spiritual realm in the midst of the spirit battle. During his boyhood
Schopenhauer was still living, but died in 1860, and only after his death did Nietzsche
devote himself to the study of Schopenhauer's writings. The soul of Schopenhauer
cooperated from above in the spiritual world. That was the real relationship. Nietzsche was
reading Schopenhauer, and while he was absorbing his writings Schopenhauer was working
upon his thoughts.
But how was Schopenhauer situated in the spiritual realm? From 1860 through the years
when Nietzsche was reading his books, Schopenhauer was in the midst of the spiritual battle
that was still being fought out on that plane. Therefore Schopenhauer's inspiration of
Nietzsche was colored by what he himself gathered from the battle of spirits in which he
was involved. In 1879 these spirits were cast down from heaven upon the earth. Up to 1879
Nietzsche's spiritual development had followed very curious paths. They will be explained
in the future as due to the influence of Schopenhauer and of Wagner. In my book Friedrich

Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time, you may find many supporting details. Wagner had
up to that time no particular influence except that he was active on earth. For Wagner was
born in 1813; the battle of spirits only began in 1841. But Wagner died in 1883, and
Nietzsche's spiritual development took its peculiar direction when Wagner's influence
began. Wagner entered the spiritual world in 1883, when the battle of spirits was over, and
the defeated spirits had been cast to earth. Nietzsche was in the midst of things when the
spirits began to roam around here on earth. Wagner's post mortem influence upon Nietzsche
had an entirely different object from that of Schopenhauer.
Here begin the super-personal but definite influences, not those abstract demonic ones,
of which the psychoanalyst speaks. Humanity must resolve to enter this concrete spiritual
world, in order to comprehend things which are obvious if only the facts are tested. In the
future Nietzsche's biography will state that he was stimulated by that Richard Wagner who
was born in 1813, and took part up to 1879 everything that led to the brilliant being whom I
described in my book; that he had the influence of Schopenhauer from his sixteenth year,
but that Schopenhauer was involved in the spiritual battle that was fought upon the superphysical plane before 1879; that he was exposed to Wagner's influence after Wagner had
died and entered the spiritual world, while Nietzsche was still here below, where the spirits
of darkness were ruling.
Jung considers this a fact: that Nietzsche found a demon, and projected it without upon
Wagner. Oh well projections, potentials, introverted or extraverted human types all
words for abstractions, but nothing about realities! These things are truly important. This is
not agitation for an anthroposophical world-conception for which we are prejudiced. On the
contrary, everything outside of anthroposophy shows how necessary this conception is for
present-day humanity!

Anthroposophy and Psychoanalysis

II
LECTURE BY DR. RUDOLF STEINER, DELIVERED AT THE
GOETHEANUM IN DORNACH, SWITZERLAND, NOVEMBER 11, 1917.

designated what is called analytical psychology or psychoanalysis as an effort to

gain knowledge in the soul realm by inadequate means of cognition. Perhaps nothing is
so well adapted to show how, at the present time, everything urges the attainment of the
anthroposophically orientated spiritual science, and how on the other side, subconscious
prejudices lead men to oppose a spiritually scientific consideration of the facts.
Yesterday I showed you by definite examples what grotesque leaps modern erudition is
obliged to take when it ventures upon soul problems, and how to detect these leaps in the
mental processes of modern scholars. It was pointed out that one of the better psychoanalysts
Jung divided patients into two classes: the thinking type, and the feeling type. From
this starting point he assumed that in cases of the thinking type, subconscious feelings force
their way up into consciousness and produce soul conflicts or in the opposite type, that
thoughts in the subconscious mind arise and conflict with the life of feeling.
HAVE

Now it might be suggested that these things will be fought out in scientific discussion,
and that we might wait until people make up their minds to overcome the subconscious
prejudice against anthroposophical spiritual science. But passive waiting becomes impossible
in that such things do not confine themselves to the theoretical field, but encroach upon life
practice and cultural development. And psychoanalysis is not content to occupy itself with
therapy alone, which might be less dubious since there seems to be little difference I said
seems between it and other therapeutical methods; but it is trying to extend itself to
pedagogy, and to become the foundation of a teaching system. This forces us to point out the
dangers residing in quarter-truths in a more serious manner than would be called for by mere
theoretical discussion.
Much that relates to this matter can be decided only with the passage of time, but today
we shall have to enlarge the scope of our examination in order to throw light upon one aspect
or another. First of all I wish to call to your attention that the facts which lie before the
psychoanalyst really point to an important spiritual sphere which present-day man does not
wish to enter in an accurate and correct manner, but would prefer to leave as a sort of
nebulous, subconscious region. For our present sickly, materialistically infected approach,
even in this domain, likes nothing better than a vague, mystical drifting among all sorts of
incomplete or unexecuted concepts. We find the most grotesque, the most repulsive
mysticism right in the midst of materialism, if you take mysticism to mean a desire to swim
about in all sorts of nebulous thinking, without working out your world-conception into clear,
sharply outlined concepts. The domain into which recognized facts are pushing the
psychoanalysts is the field of extra-conscious intelligence and reasoning activity. How often I
have dealt with these matters without going into details, but merely mentioning them,
since they are taken for granted by students of spiritual science. How often I have reminded
you that reasoning, intellectual activity, cleverness are not confined to the human

consciousness, but are everywhere, that we are surrounded by effective mental activity as we
are surrounded by air, interwoven with it, and the other beings as well.
The facts before the psychoanalyst might easily refer to this. I quoted to you yesterday
the case described by Jung in his book, Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prosesse. It had to
do with a woman who, having left an evening party with other guests, was frightened by
horses, ran in front of them along the street to the river where she was rescued by passers-by,
brought back to the house that she had left, where she had a love scene with her host. From
the standpoint of Freud or Adler the case is easily explained on the basis of the love-drive or
the power-drive, but this diagnosis does not reach the vital point. Its foundation is reached
only by realizing that consciousness does not exhaust the cleverness, calculation, the
artfulness of what penetrates man as intelligence, and by realizing that the laws of life are not
limited by the laws of consciousness.
Consider this case. We can at least raise the question: What did the woman really want,
after she had been one of the party, and had seen her friend depart for the health resort? She
wanted the opportunity for what actually happened, she wanted a legitimate excuse to be
alone with the master of the house. Of course this had nothing to do with what was in her
consciousness, what she realized and admitted. It would not have been proper, as we say.
Something had to be brought about that need not be avowed, and we shall reach the real
explanation by allowing for her subconscious, designing intelligence, of which she was
herself unaware. Throughout the entire evening she had wanted to bring about a conversation
with her host. If one is less clever a poor choice is made of means, if more clever a better
choice. In this case it may be said that in the woman's ordinary consciousness, which
admitted scruples as to what was proper or improper, allowed or not allowed, the right means
could not have been chosen for the end in view. But in that which was stored below the layer
of the ordinary consciousness the thought was incessantly active: I must manage a meeting
with the man. I must make use of the next opportunity that presents itself in order to return to
the house.
We may be sure that if the opportunity with the horses had not offered itself, supported
by association with the earlier accident, she would have found some other excuse. She
needed only to faint in the street, and would have been brought back to the house at once, or
she would have found some other expedient. The subconsciousness looked beyond all the
scruples of the ordinary consciousness, taking the attitude that the end justifies the means,
regardless of whether they would or would not harmonize with ideas of propriety and
impropriety.
In such a case we are reminded of what Nietzsche, who surmised many of these things,
called the great reason in contrast with the small reason, the all-inclusive reason that does not
come into consciousness, that acts below the threshold of consciousness, leading men to do
many things which they do not consciously confess to themselves. Through his ordinary
outer consciousness the human being is in connection first with the world of the senses, but
also with the whole physical world, and with all that lives within it. To the physical world
belong all the concepts of propriety, of bourgeois morality, and so forth, with which man is
equipped.

In his subconsciousness man is connected with an entirely different world, of which Jung
says: the soul has need of it because it is related to it, but he also says that it is foolish to
inquire about its real existence. Well, it is this way: as soon as the threshold of consciousness
is crossed, man and his soul are no longer in merely material surroundings or relations, but in
a realm where thoughts rule, thoughts which may be very artful.
Now Jung's view is quite correct when he says that modern man, the so-called man of
culture, needs particularly to be mindful of these things. For present culture has this
peculiarity, that it forces down numerous impulses into the subconsciousness, which then
assert themselves in such a way that irrational acts as they are called and irrational
general conduct result. When the power-urge or the love urge are mentioned, it is
because in the moment that man and his soul enter the subconscious regions they come
nearer to the realm where these instincts rule; not that they are in themselves causes, but that
man with his subconscious intelligence plunges into regions where these impulses are
effective.
That woman would not have gone to so much exertion for anything that interested her
less than her love affair. It required an especial preoccupation for her subconscious cunning
to be aroused. And that the love impulse so often plays an important role is due simply to the
fact that the love interest is so very common. If the psychoanalysts would only turn more of
their attention in other directions, cease to concentrate upon psychoanalytic sanatoriums,
where the majority of the inmates seem to me to be women (the same reproach is cast
upon anthroposophical institutions but, I think, with less justice), if they were more
experienced in other fields, which is of course sometimes the case, if there were a greater
variety of cases in the sanatoriums, a more extensive knowledge might be obtained.
Let us assume that a sanatorium was equipped for giving psychiatric treatment especially
to people who had become nervous or hysterical from playing the stock market. Then the
existence of other things in the subconscious mind could be established with as much reason
as the love-urge, introduced by Freud. Then it would be seen with what detailed cunning, and
artful subconscious processes, the man acts who plays the stock market. Then, through the
usual methods of elimination, sexual love would be seen to play a very small part, yet the
subtleties of subconscious acuteness, of subconscious slyness, could be studied at their
height. Even the lust for power could not always be designated as being the primary impulse,
but altogether different instincts would be found ruling those regions, in which man
submerges himself with his soul. And if in addition a sanatorium could be equipped for
learned men who had become hysterical forgive me! it would be found that their
subconscious actions seldom lead back to the love-motive. For those with any thorough
knowledge of facts in this field realize that, under present conditions, scholars are seldom
driven to their chosen science by love, but by quite different forces which would show
themselves if brought to the surface by psychoanalysis. The all-inclusive fact is that the soul
is led from the conscious down into the subconscious regions where man's unconquered
instincts rule. He can master these only by becoming aware of them, and spiritual research
alone can lift them into consciousness.
Another inconvenient truth! For of course it forces the admission, to a point far beyond

what the psychoanalyst is prepared to admit, that man in his subconscious mind may be a
very sly creature, far more sly than in his full consciousness. Even in this field, and with
ordinary science, we may have strange experiences. There is a chapter on this subject in my
book Riddles of the Soul [Rudolf Steiner, Von Seelenrtseln, not translated (yes it is).] In it I
deal with the strictures upon Anthroposophy, found in a book entitled Vom Jenseits der
Seele, [Beyond the Limits of the Soul. (This book has not been translated into English. Ed.)]
and written by that academic individual Dessoir. This second chapter of my book Riddles of
the Soul will be a nice contribution to thinking people who would like to form an opinion of
present scholarly ethics. You will see when you read this chapter what kind of opposition
must be encountered. I will mention, of all the points therein indicated, one or two only
which are not unconnected with our present theme.
This man makes all sorts of objections to this and that, founded upon passages taken from
my books. In a very neat connection he tells how I distinguish consecutive periods of culture:
the Indian, the old Persian, the Chaldean-Egyptian, the Graeco-Latin, and now we live in the
sixth, he says, according to Steiner.
This forces us to refute these misstatements in a schoolmasterly manner, for it shows us
the only way to get at such an individual. How does Max Dessoir come to assert, in the midst
of all his other nonsense, that I said we are living in the sixth postatlantean culture period? It
may be easily explained if you have any practice in the technique of philological methods. I
was connected for six years and a half with the Goethe Archives in Weimar, learned there a
little about the usual procedure, and could easily show, according to philological methods,
how Dessoir came to attribute to me this statement regarding the sixth culture period. He had
been reading my book Occult Science, an Outline, in which there is a sentence leading to a
description of our present fifth postatlantean culture period. In it I say that there are long
preparations and, in one section, that events taking place in the 14th and 15th centuries were
prepared in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. About five lines further on I say that the
sixth century was a preparation for the fifth culture period. Dessoir, reading superficially,
turned back hastily as scholars do, to the place that he had noted in the margin, and confused
what was said about the culture period with what had been stated further back about the
fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. Thus he says sixth culture period instead of fifth because
his eye had moved backward a few lines.
You see with what a grand superficiality such a person works. Here we have an example
of how such scholarship may be philologically shown up. In this literary creation such
mistakes run through the entire chapter. And while Dessoir affirms that he has studied a
whole row of my books, I could prove, again philologically, which ones of mine compose
this whole row. He had read and but slightly understood The Philosophy of Spiritual
Activity, for he devotes a sentence to it that is utter nonsense. And he read Occult Science,
but in such a way as to bring out the kind of stuff that I have described. He read in addition
the small work The Spiritual Guidance of Man, and the little pamphlets on Reincarnation
and Karma, and Blood is Quite a Special Fluid. These are all that he read, as may be shown
by his comments. He read nothing else. These are our present ethics of scholarship. It is
important once in a way to expose, in such a connection, the erudition of the present day. Out
of the long list of my books he chooses a very small number, and founds upon them, with

quite perverted thinking, his whole statement. Many of our scientists today do exactly the
same thing. When they write about animals, for example, they usually have for a foundation
about as much material as Professor Dessoir extracted from my books.
Quite a pretty chapter could be written from observations of Dessoir's subconscious
mind. He himself, however, in a special passage in his book, permits us to take account of his
subconsciousness. He relates rather grotesquely that when he is lecturing it often happens
that his thoughts go on without his full conscious direction, and that only by the reaction of
his audience does he recognize that his thoughts have taken a line independent of his
attention. He tells that quite naively. But only think! From this fact he embarks upon
extended consideration of the many peculiarities of human consciousness. I have pointed out
somewhat gently that Dessoir thus strangely reveals himself. I said at first: It cannot be
possible that he means himself. In this case he must simply be identifying himself with
certain clumsy lecturers, and speaking in the first person. It would be imputing to him a good
deal to suppose that he is describing himself. But he really does exactly that. Well, in the
discussion of such matters many odd things must be noted.
He disposed of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity by one remark, with the addition of a
sentence that is Dessoirish, but did not originate with me. The whole matter is crazy. He says
at the same time Steiner's first book, the The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. This forces
me to point out that this book forms the close of a ten year period of authorship, and to offer
this incident as an example of academic ignorance, and ethics. I know of course that although
I have shown how incorrect his statements are, people will say again and again: Well,
Dessoir has refuted Steiner. I know it very well. I know that it is speaking against walls
to try to break through what men imagine they have long since got rid of belief in
authority!
But this chapter alone will prove the difficulties against which spiritual science must
struggle because it insists upon clear, sharply outlined concepts, and concrete spiritual
experiences. There is no question of logic with such an individual as Dessoir, and a lack of
logic characterizes in the broadest sense our present so-called scientific literature.
These are the reasons why official learning, and official spiritual trends, even if they
work themselves away from such inferiority as the university psychiatry or psychology, are
not in a position to make good because they lack the smallest equipment for a genuine
observation of life. So long as it is not realized how far from genuine research and from a
sense for reality that really is which poses as scientific literature I do not say, as science,
but as scientific literature and often forms the content of university and especially of
popular lectures so long as this authoritative belief is not broken through, there can be no
cure. These things must be said, and are compatible with the deepest respect for real
scientific thinking, and for the great achievements of natural science. That these things are
applied to life in such contradictory fashion must however be recognized.
After this digression let us return to our subject. Dessoir takes the opportunity to combine
objective untruth with calumny in his remark regarding the little pamphlet Spiritual
Guidance of Man. He feels it to be especially irritating that I have indicated important

subconscious action of spiritual impulses by showing that a child while building its brain
manifests greater wisdom than it is conscious of later. A healthy science ought to take its
starting point from such normal effects of the subconscious, yet it needs something in
addition. If you take up the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds you will find mention of
the Secret of the Threshold. In the explanation of this secret it is stated that in crossing the
threshold into the spiritual world a kind of separation takes place, a sort of differentiation of
the three fundamental powers of the soul: thinking, feeling, and willing. Remember in the
part dealing with the Guardian of the Threshold, the explanation that these three forces,
which act together in ordinary consciousness in such a way that they can hardly be separated,
become independent of each other. If I sketch them, this narrow middle section (see drawing)
is the boundary between the ordinary consciousness and that region in which the soul lives in
the spiritual world. Thinking, feeling, and willing must be so drawn as to show this as the
range of will (red), but bordering upon the realm of feeling (green), and this in turn borders
upon the realm of thinking (yellow). But if I were to indicate their direction after crossing the
threshold into the spiritual world, I should have to show how thinking (yellow) becomes
independent upon the one hand; feeling (green, right) separates itself from thinking, will
becomes independent too (red, right), as I sketch it here diagrammatically, so that thinking,
feeling, and willing spread out from one another like a fan.
You will find this described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. That these
three activities, which before passing the threshold border upon each other but work
separately, interact in the right way and do not come into confusion is due to the fact that the
threshold has, so to speak, a certain breadth in which our ego itself lives.

If our ego acts normally, has perfect soul health, then the interaction of thinking, feeling, and
willing is so regulated that they do not collide with one another, but mutually influence each
other. It is the essential secret of our ego that it holds thinking, feeling, and willing beside
each other, so that they can affect each other in the right way, but do not mix in any
accidental fashion. Once across the threshold into the spiritual world there is no danger of
this since the three faculties then separate.
Certain philosophers (such as Wundt, for example), insist that the soul must not be
described as threefold because it is a unity. Wundt, too, confuses everything. The facts are
that in the spiritual world thinking, feeling, and willing originate in a threefold manner, yet in
the soul on earth they act as a unity. That must be taken into consideration, and if it be
claimed, as recently reported, that Anthroposophy recognizes three souls though there exists
but one, and that Anthroposophy has therefore no reasonable argument then the answer
must be that the unity of man is not impaired by the fact that he has two hands.
But now we are considering the relation of the ego to the soul-forces that work within it,
and their action beyond the threshold of consciousness in the spiritual world. (Drawing,
middle and right). An opposite condition may be brought about if the ego has been weakened
in any way. Then the threshold is crossed, as it were, in the opposite direction (See drawing,
left). Then thinking swerves aside (yellow, left), mingles with feeling (green, left), and
willing (red, left), and confusion results. This happens if thinking is exposed in any way to
the danger of not being properly confined, so that it asserts itself unwarrantably in the
consciousness. Then, because the ego is not working as it should, thinking slides into the
sphere of feeling or of will. Instead of working side by side, thinking mixes itself with
feeling, or will, the ego being for some reason unable to exert its normal power.
This is what has happened in the cases described by the psychoanalysts as hysterical or
nervous. Thinking, feeling, and willing have swung to the opposite side, away from the
healthy direction that would lead them into the spiritual world. If you have any gift for
testing and proving you may easily see how it comes about. Take the case of the girl sitting
by the sickbed. Her strong ego-consciousness was reduced by loss of sleep and anxiety. The
slightest thing might cause thinking to leave its track alongside of feeling and to run over into
it. Then thought would be at once submerged in the waves of feeling, which are far stronger
than the waves of thought, and the result in such a case is that the whole organism is seized
by the tumult of feeling. This happens in the instant that thinking ceases to be strong enough
to hold itself apart from feeling.
It is seriously demanded of the human being that he learn more and more to hold his
thinking apart from the waves of feeling and will. If thinking takes hold subconsciously of
the waves of feeling something abnormal results. (See drawing: at the right is the
superconscious, in the middle the conscious, at the left the subconscious). This is extremely
important.
Now you may readily imagine that in this modern life, when people are brought into
contact with so much that they do not properly understand and cannot appraise, thoughts
continually run over into feelings. But it must be remembered that thinking alone is oriented

upon the physical plane; feeling is no longer confined to the physical plane, but stands in
connection, by its very nature, with the spiritual plane as well. Feeling has really a
connection with all the spiritual beings who must be spoken of as real. So that if a man with
inadequate concepts sinks into his feeling-life, he comes into collision with the gods if
you wish to express it thus but also with evil gods. And all these collisions occur because
a man is submerged with no reliable means of knowledge. He must so submerge if he spends
more time in the sphere of feeling than in the ordinary sphere of reason. In the sphere of
feeling man cannot emancipate himself from his connection with the spiritual world. Even if,
in this materialistic age, he does free himself in the realm of the intellect, he always enters
the region of feeling with inadequate concepts, and so he must become ill.
What then is the real remedy, and how are men to be restored to health? They must be
guided to concepts that reach out to include the world of feelings; that is to say that modern
man must again be told of the spiritual world, and in the most comprehensive terms. Not the
individually adapted therapeutic instructions of the psychoanalysts are meant, but the
spiritual science which is applicable to all humanity. If the concepts of spiritual science are
really accepted for not everyone takes them in who only listens to lectures, or reads about
them but if they are really absorbed there will be no further possibility of the chaotic
intermingling, in the subconscious, of the three spheres of the soul: thinking, feeling, and
willing, which is the basis of all the hysteria and nervousness noted by the psychoanalysts.
For this, however, a man needs the courage to approach a direct experience of the
operation of spiritual worlds, the courage to recognize that we are living now in a crisis that
is connected with another (the established date being 1879), another crisis with painful
consequences from which we are still suffering. I told you yesterday that many things must
be considered from standpoints other than the materialistic ones of our own time, and I chose
Nietzsche as an illustration.
Nietzsche was born in 1844. In 1841 the battle began in the spiritual world, of which I
have already spoken, and Nietzsche was for three years in the midst of it, absorbing from it
all possible impulses, and bringing them down with him to earth. Richard Wagner, born in
1813, took at first no part in it. Read Nietzsche's early writings, and notice the combative
tone, almost every sentence showing the after-effects of what he experienced spiritually from
1841 to 1844. It gave a definite coloring to all the writings of Nietzsche's first period.
It is further of importance as I have also explained that he was a lad of sixteen
when Schopenhauer died, and started at that time to read his works. A real relation ensued
between the soul of Schopenhauer in the spiritual world and that of Nietzsche on earth.
Nietzsche read every phrase of Schopenhauer so receptively that he was penetrated by every
corresponding impulse of their author. What was Schopenhauer's object? He had ascended
into the spiritual world in 1860 when the battle was still raging, and wanted nothing so much
as to have the power of his thoughts continued through his works. Nietzsche did carry
forward Schopenhauer's thoughts, but in a peculiar way. Schopenhauer saw when he went
through the gate of death that he had written his books in an epoch threatened by the
oncoming spirits of darkness, and with the struggle before him of these spirits against the
spirits of light, he longed to have the effects of his work continued, and formed in Nietzsche's

soul the impulse to continue his thoughts. What Nietzsche received from the spiritual world
at this period contrasted strikingly with what was happening upon the physical plane in his
personal relations with Richard Wagner. Nietzsche's soul life was composed in this way, and
his career as a writer.
The year 1879 arrived. The battle that had been going on in the spiritual realms began to
be transferred to earth after the fall of the spirits of darkness. Nietzsche was exposed by his
whole Karma (in which I include his relations with the spiritual world), to the danger of
being driven by the spirits of darkness into evil paths. He had been inspired by the
transcendent egoism of Schopenhauer to try to carry on his work. I do not mean to say that
egoism is always bad. But when Wagner rose into the spiritual world in 1883 the spirits of
darkness were below, so he came into an entirely different atmosphere, and he became
Nietzsche's unselfish spiritual guide. He let him enter what was for him the proper channel,
and allowed him to become mentally deranged at exactly the right moment, so that he never
came consciously into dangerous regions. That sounds paradoxical, but it was really the
unselfish way in which Wagner's soul affected Nietzsche from the purer realms above, rather
than the manner in which Schopenhauer's soul acted, he being still in the midst of the battle,
up in the spiritual world, between the spirits of darkness and the spirits of light. What
Wagner wanted to do for Nietzsche was to protect him, so far as his Karma permitted, from
the spirits of darkness, already descended upon earth.
And Nietzsche was protected to a great extent. If his last writings are read in the right
spirit, eliminating the things that have sprung from strong oppositions, great thoughts will be
discovered. I tried in my book Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time, to show the mighty
thought impulses, detached from all his resisting impulses.
Yes, the world is deep. There is really some truth in Nietzsche's own saying: The
world is deep, and deeper than the day divines. So we must never try to criticize the wide
regions of the spiritual life by means of our ordinary consciousness. The wise guidance of the
worlds can be understood only if we can enter into that guidance, free from egoistic thoughts,
even if we can fit the development of tragic happenings into the scheme of wisdom. If you
wish to look into the heart of things you will come upon many uncomfortable places.
In future whoever wishes to evaluate a life like Nietzsche's will make no progress if he
describes only what happened in Nietzsche's environment on earth. Our view of life will have
to extend to the spiritual world, and we shall be pushed to this necessity by the kind of
phenomena that the psychoanalyst today tries to master by such inadequate means of
knowledge, but never will control. Therefore human society might be driven into regions of
great difficulty if it yields to psychoanalysis, particularly in the field of pedagogy.
Why should this be? Consider the fact that thinking slips down into the sphere of feeling.
Now as soon as a man lives with his soul in the sphere of feeling, he is no longer in the life
that is bounded by birth and death or by conception and death, but lives in the whole world,
the extended world. This represents the usual life span (See drawing, a); within the realm of
feeling he lives also in the period from his last death to his birth into this present life (See
drawing, b); and with his will he lives even in his previous incarnation (Drawing, c).

Think of the relation to pupil or patient of an instructor who wishes to proceed by the
method of psychoanalysis. When he tries to deal with soul contents which have slipped down
into the realm of feeling he lays hold, not only upon the man's individual life, but upon the
all-inclusive life which extends far beyond the individual. For this all-encompassing life,
however, there are between men no connections that may be handled by means of mere
ideas. Such connections lead instead to genuine life-relationships. This is very important.
Imagine the existence of such a connection between a psychoanalytic instructor and pupil.
What takes place could not be confined to the realm of ideas which are conveyed to the
pupil, but real karmic connections would have to be established because one is really
encroaching upon life itself. It would be tearing the individual in question out of his karma,
changing the course of his karma. It will not do to handle that which extends beyond the
individual in a purely individual manner. It must be treated instead in a universally human
way. We are all brought together in a definite epoch, so there must be a mutual element
which acts as soon as we go beyond the individual. That is to say: a patient cannot be treated
by psychoanalysis, either therapeutically or educationally, as between individuals. Something
universal

must enter, must enter even the general culture of the period, something which directs the
soul to that which would otherwise remain subconscious; and that which draws the
subconsciousness upward must become the milieu not a transaction between individuals.
Here, you see, lies the great mistake that is being made. It has a terrific range and is of
immense importance. Instead of trying to lead them to the attainable knowledge of the
spiritual world which is demanded by the times, the psychoanalysts shut all the souls who
show any morbid symptoms into sanatoriums, and treat each one in the individual manner. It
can lead only to the forming of confused karmic connections what takes place does not
bring to light the subconscious soul content, but simply forms a karmic tie between doctor
and patient because it encroaches upon the individual.
You understand: we are dealing here with real, concrete life, with which it does not do to
play, which can only be mastered if nothing is striven for in this field except what is humanly
universal. These things must be learned by direct relations of human beings with the spiritual
world. Therefore it would be useful if people were to stop talking abstractly as Jung does,
saying that a man experiences subconsciously everything that mankind has been through,
even all sorts of demons. He makes them into abstract demons, not realities, by saying that it
is stupid to discuss their possible existence. He makes them into abstract demons, mere
thought demons that could never make a man ill. They can exist only in consciousness, and

can never be subconscious. That is the point: that people who give themselves up to such
theories are themselves working with so many unconscious ideas that they can never happen
upon the right thing. They come instead to regard certain concepts as absolute, infallible; and
I must ever repeat that when ideas begin to become absolute, men get into a blind alley, or
reach a pit into which they fall with their thinking.
A man like Dr. Freud is obliged to stretch the sexual domain over the entire human being
in order to make it account for every soul phenomenon. I have said to various people with
psychoanalytic tendencies, whom I have met: A theory, a world-concept must be able to hold
its own when you turn it upon itself, otherwise it crumbles into nothingness. The simple
fallacy, if you extend it far enough, is an example. A Cretan says: All Cretans are liars. If it is
said by a Cretan, and it is true, then it would be a lie, which causes the saying to annul itself.
It will not do for a Cretan to say All Cretans are liars, expecting the sentence to pass
unchallenged. That is only a sample of absolutizing. But a theory should not crumble when
turned upon itself. Just as the statement that all Cretans are liars would be a lie if made by a
Cretan, so does the theory of universal sexuality crumble if you test it out by applying it to
the subject itself. And it is the same with other things. You can understand such a principle
for a long time without applying it vigorously, in accordance with reality. But it will be one
of the particular achievements of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, that it cannot
be turned in this manner against itself.

Reflections in the Mirror of Consciousness

Superconsciousness and Subconsciousness
LECTURE BY DR. RUDOLF STEINER, DELIVERED IN MUNICH,
FEBRUARY 25, 1912
Be sure to compare this with another version of thisLecture, which is included next
Taken from: Reflections of Consciousness, Super-consciousness and Sub-consciousness.

and the day after tomorrow I propose to discuss a few of the more important
facts relating to consciousness and to karmic connections.

ODAY

If you cast even a superficial glance at that which exists in your soul from
awaking in the morning to falling asleep at night in the form of ideas, moods,
impulses of will, adding of course all the impressions that approach the soul from without
then you have everything that may be called the objects of ordinary consciousness.
It must be clear to us that all these details of our conscious activity are dependent, under
ordinary conditions, upon the instrumentality of the physical body. The immediate,
irrefutable proof of this is that one must awake in order to live within these facts of the
usual consciousness. For us this means that the human being must submerge himself in the
physical body with what is outside it during sleep, and his physical body must be at his

disposal with its instruments. He must be able to make use of them if the activities of the
ordinary consciousness are to go on.
The following question then arises: In what way does the human being, as a soul and
spiritual entity, make use of his physical instruments, his organs of sense, his nervous
system? In what way does he use his bodily organs in order to exist in his ordinary
consciousness? In the outer, materialistic world there is, first of all, the belief that the
human being possesses in his physical instruments that which produces the facts present to
consciousness. It has been frequently pointed out that this is not the case; that it is no more
sensible for us to imagine that our inner corporeality, our sense organs or brain, bring forth
the details of consciousness than to imagine that a candle creates the flame. The relation of
what we call consciousness to the bodily mechanism is quite otherwise. We might compare
it with the relation of a man to the mirror in which he sees himself. When we sleep our state
of consciousness is comparable, let us say, to walking straight ahead in a certain space. If
we do this we do not see ourselves, how our nose or forehead looks, and so forth. Only
when someone steps forward with a mirror and holds it before us do we behold ourselves.
But then we are confronted by what has always belonged to us. It is then there for us. It is
the same with the facts of our ordinary consciousness. They exist continually within us, and
have, as they exist there, nothing whatsoever to do with the physical body as little as we
ourselves have to do with the mirror mentioned above. The materialistic theory in this field
is simply nonsense; it is not even a possible hypothesis. For the materialist in this field
affirms nothing less than would be asserted were someone to declare that because he sees
himself in a mirror the mirror created him.
If you wish to give yourself up to the illusion that the mirror creates you because you
see yourself only when it is held before you, then you may also believe that parts of the
brain or the sense organs produce the content of your soul-life. Both statements are equally
intelligent and true. That the mirror creates the human being is just as true as that the brain
produces thoughts. The facts of our consciousness persist. It is necessary for our ordinary
organization that we be able to perceive these existing details of consciousness. To this end
we must encounter that which reflects them our physical body. We have thus in our
physical body what we may call the reflecting apparatus for the facts of our ordinary
consciousness. These facts exist in our soul and spiritual entity. We cannot perceive them
psychically any more than we can perceive ourselves without a mirror. We become aware of
that which lives within us and is a part of us by having held before us the mirror of our
bodily nature. That is the actual state of things, except that one has not to do with a passive
reflector in the case of the body, but with something that contains processes of its own.
Thus it may be imagined that instead of the mirror which is silvered to produce reflection,
the physical body has behind it all sorts of processes. The comparison suffices to show the
relation of our spirit and soul being to the body. We will hold before our minds the fact that
for all we experience in normal, everyday consciousness, the physical body is an adequate
reflector. Behind or, let us say, below all the details of this usual consciousness lie the
things that rise up into our ordinary soul-life, and which we must designate as facts within
the hidden depths of the soul.
Some of that which exists in the hidden depths of the soul is experienced by the poet or

the artist who knows if he is a genuine poet or artist that he does not conceive his
works by means of logic or outer observation. He knows instead that they emerge from
unknown depths, and are there, really there without having been gathered together by the
forces of ordinary consciousness. But from these hidden depths of soul-life other things also
emerge which, although in everyday life we are unaware of their origin, play a part in our
everyday consciousness.
We saw yesterday that we can go down deeper, into the realm of half-consciousness, the
realm of dreams, and we know that dreams lift something up out of the depths of soul-life
which we cannot lift up by straining the memory in the simple usual way. When something
long buried in memory stands before a human soul in a dream picture which happens
again and again the individual in most cases could never, through recollection alone, lift
these things up from the hidden depths of soul-life because the ordinary consciousness does
not extend so far down. But that which is inaccessible to this surface consciousness is quite
within reach of the subconsciousness, and in the half conscious dream state much that has
remained or been preserved, so to say, is brought up or rises up.
Only those things strike upwards that have failed to produce their effects in the way
usual to that emanation of human experience which sinks into the hidden depths of the soul.
We become healthy or ill, moody or gay, not due directly to our ordinary course of life, but
because a bodily condition results from that which has sunk down from our life experience.
It is no longer remembered, but there below in our soul this sunken something works, and
makes us what we become in the course of our lives. Many a life would be quite
comprehensible to us, if we but knew what hidden elements had descended throughout its
course into these subconscious depths. We should be able to understand many a man in his
thirties, forties, or fifties, should know why he has this or that tendency, why he feels so
deeply dissatisfied in certain connections without being able to say what causes this
discomfort. We should understand a great deal if we were to follow the life of such a man
back into childhood. We should be able then to see how in his early years his parents and
environment had affected him, what was called forth of sorrow and joy, of pleasure or pain,
perhaps entirely forgotten, but acting upon his general condition. For that which rolls down,
and surges out of our consciousness into the hidden depths of soul life continues its
operation there. It is a curious fact that the force, acting in this way, works primarily upon
ourselves, does not leave, so to speak, the sphere of our personality. Therefore when the
clairvoyant consciousness descends, (and this happens through what is called imaginative
cognition), when the clairvoyant consciousness descends to the realm where, in the
subconsciousness, things rule which have just been described, the seeker always finds
himself. He finds that which exists and surges within him. And that is good; for in true selfknowledge the human being must learn to know himself in order that he may observe and
become acquainted with all the driving forces that work within him.
If he gives no heed to these facts; if when he gains clairvoyant consciousness through
exercises in imaginative cognition, and forces his way down into the subconscious if he
does not recognize that in everything working within him he finds only himself then he
is exposed to manifold errors. For he cannot become aware of this in any way comparable to
the ordinary activities of consciousness. There arises for the human searcher the possibility,

at one step or another, of having visions, of seeing shapes which are quite new and do not
resemble those with which he has become acquainted in average experience. This may
happen, but to believe that such things are part of the outer world would be a serious
mistake. These phenomena of the inner life do not present themselves as in the ordinary
consciousness. If one has a headache it is a fact of the ordinary consciousness. One knows it
to be located in one's own head. If anyone has a stomachache he is aware of it within
himself. If we descend into what we call the hidden depths of the soul, we remain absolutely
within ourselves, and yet what we encounter may present itself objectively, as if it were in
the outside world.
Let us consider a striking example: Let us assume that someone has a longing to be the
reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. (I have already stated that I have counted during my
lifetime twenty-four such Magdalenes!) Let us assume also that this wish is not as yet
admitted: we do not need to admit to ourselves our own wishes, that is not necessary. But a
woman reads the story of Mary Magdalene, and it pleases her exceedingly. The desire to be
Mary Magdalene may arise at once in her subconscious mind while in the surface
consciousness nothing is present but the attraction of this character. It pleases the person in
question. In the subconsciousness, unknown to its possessor, there is a growing desire to be
this Mary Magdalene. This individual goes through the world, and as long as nothing
intervenes in her upper consciousness, that is to say, as far as she knows, she is simply
pleased with Mary Magdalene. The ardent desire to be Mary Magdalene is in her
subconscious mind, but she knows nothing about that, so it does not trouble her. She is
guided by the details of the ordinary consciousness, and may go through the world as
though she had no such injurious subconscious desire. But let us assume that, as a result of
employing this or that occult method of reaching the subconscious, this woman succeeds in
descending into herself. She might not become aware of a desire to be Mary Magdalene as
she would of a headache. If she did her attitude towards her desire would be the same as
towards a pain: she would just try to get rid of it. But in the case of an irregular penetration
this desire presents itself as something outside the personality. The vision pretends to say:
Thou art Mary Magdalene! It stands before her, projecting itself as a fact, and a human
being, as evolution is today, is unable to control such a condition with the ego. With good,
correct, and careful schooling this cannot happen, for then the ego goes along into every
sphere; but as soon as something enters the consciousness without the accompanying
presence of the ego it is produced as an objective fact. This observer believes that she
recalls events surrounding Mary Magdalene, and identifies herself with her.
This is a real possibility. I emphasize this today in order that you may gather from it the
fact that only careful schooling, and caution in regard to your entrance into the domain of
occultism can save you from falling into error. It is to be understood that you must first see
a whole world before you, must note objects around you, excluding however that which you
relate to yourself, or which is within you, even though it appears as a world tableau if
you know that it is well to regard what you first see only as the projection of your own inner
life, then you have a good corrective for the errors along the way. This is the best of all:
regard, as a general rule, everything as phenomena emanating from yourself. Most of them
arise out of our wishes, vanities, from our ambitions, in short, from characteristics relating
to the egotism of humanity. These things project themselves, for the most part, outward, and

you may now raise the question: How can we avoid these errors? How can we save
ourselves from them?
We cannot save ourselves from these errors by the ordinary facts of consciousness. The
deception arises from the fact that, although the human being is confronted in reality by a
world-tableau, he cannot escape from himself, is all entangled in himself. From this you
may see that it depends upon our coming, in one way or another, out of ourselves that we
learn to differentiate: here you have a vision and there another. The visions are both outside
ourselves; one is perhaps only the projection of a desire, the other is a fact, but they do not
differ as radically as in ordinary life when someone else says he has a headache, and you
have it yourself. Our own inner life is projected into space, just as the inner life of another
person. How shall we learn to distinguish the one from the other?
We must undertake research within the occult field, and learn to distinguish true from
false impressions, although they appear confused and all make the same claim to
authenticity, as though we looked into the physical world and saw besides ordinary trees,
imaginary ones. The real objective facts and those which arise from our own inner life are
mixed together. How are we to learn to separate two realms which are so intermingled?
We do not learn this primarily through our consciousness. If we remain entirely within
the confines of our mental life there is then no possibility of differentiation. This possibility
lies only in the slow occult training of the soul. As we go on further and further we acquire
real discrimination. This means that we learn to do in the occult realm what we would have
to do in the physical world if trees born of phantasy and genuine trees stood side by side. If
we run against phantasy-trees they let us pass through without resistance, but if we
encounter real trees we bruise ourselves against them. Something similar, although of
course only as a spiritual fact, must confront us in the occult field.
We can, if we go about it properly, learn in a comparatively simple way to distinguish
between the true and false within this field, not however through ideas, but by resolution of
will. This resolution may be brought about in the following way: If we look over our life we
find in it two distinctly different groups of occurrences. We often find that this or that in
which we succeed or fail is related to our abilities. That is to say, we find it comprehensible
that in a certain field we do not succeed very well because in it we are not particularly
bright. Where we assume on the contrary that we have ability, we find success quite natural.
Perhaps we need not always discern so distinctly the connection between what we carry
out and our abilities. There is also a less definite way to realize this connection. If, for
example, anyone in his later years is pursued by this or that blow of fate and, thinking back
says to himself: As a man I did little to make myself energetic or must say to himself:
I was always a careless fellow he may also say: Well, the connection between my
lack of success and my other omissions is not immediately apparent, but I do see that things
cannot really succeed for a careless, lazy person to the same degree they are possible for one
who is conscientious and industrious. In short, there are successes and failures which we
can comprehend and find natural, but there are others which happen in such a way that we
cannot discover any connection, so that we say to ourselves: Although in accordance with

certain abilities this or that should have succeeded, it nevertheless did not succeed. Thus
there is distinctly a type of success or failure whose connection with our capacities we
cannot see.
That is one thing. The other is that in regard to some things in the outside world which
strike us as blows of fate, we can sometimes say: Well yes, that appears to be just, for we
furnished all the predisposing conditions; but some other things that happen we cannot
discover that we are in any position to explain. We have thus two types of experience; those
whose relation to ourselves and our capacities we realize, and the other type just
characterized, for which we cannot see that we are responsible. Our external experiences
fall likewise into two classes: those of which we cannot say that we have produced the
determining conditions, in contrast to others which we know we have brought about.
Now we may look around a little in our lives. That is a useful experiment for everyone.
We could gather together all the things whose causes we cannot see, whose success led us to
say a blind chicken has found a kernel of corn things whose success we cannot
attribute to ourselves. But we can remember and collect also failures in the same way, and
those seemingly accidental outer events for which we know of no modifying influence. And
now we make the following soul experiment: We imagine that we constructed for ourselves
an artificial human being who, through his own abilities, brought about all our successes
whose cause we do not understand. If something succeeded for us requiring wisdom just
where we ourselves are stupid, then we conceive a person who is particularly clever in this
field, and for whom the enterprise simply had to succeed. Or for an outer event we proceed
in this way: let us say a brick falls on our head. We can see no reason, but we conceive
someone who brought it about by running up to the roof and loosening the brick, so that he
needed only to wait a little for it to fall. He runs down quickly, and the brick strikes him.
We do this with certain events which we know have not been brought about by us in any
ordinary way, and which happen very much against our will. Let us assume that at some
time in our life we were struck by someone. In order that we may not find this too difficult
we may place this event back in our childhood; we can pretend that then we contrived to be
beaten by someone, that is, we had done everything to bring it about. In short, we construct
for ourselves a human being who brings down upon himself everything for which we cannot
account. You see, if progress in occultism is desired many things must be done which run
contrary to ordinary events. If you do only what generally seems reasonable you get no
further in occultism, for that which relates to higher worlds may seem to ordinary people
quite foolish. It does no harm if the method does seem foolish to the prosaic outer man.
Well, we construct for ourselves this human being. At first it seems to us a merely
grotesque performance, something the object of which we perhaps do not understand; but
we shall make a discovery about ourselves, in fact everyone will who tries it, namely the
astonishing discovery that he no longer wishes to detach himself from this being which he
has himself built up, that it is beginning to interest him. If you try it you will see for
yourself: you cannot get away from this artificial human being; it lives within you. And in a
peculiar way: it not only lives within you but it transforms itself and radically. It changes so
that at last it becomes something quite different from what it was originally. It becomes
something of which we are forced to say it really does exist within us.

This is an experience which is possible to everyone. We admit that what has just been
described which is not the original self-created being of phantasy, but that which this has
become is a part of what is within us. Now this is just what has, so to speak, brought
about the apparently causeless things during our lives. We find within ourselves the real
cause of what is otherwise incomprehensible. That which I have described to you is, in other
words, the way not only to peer into your own soul-life and find something, but it is the way
out from the soul-life into the environment. For what we fail to bring off does not remain
with us, but belongs to our environment. So we have taken something out of our
environment which does not harmonize with the facts of our consciousness, but presents
itself as if it were within us. Then we gain the feeling that we really have something to do
with what seems so causeless in real life. A person acquires in this way a feeling of his
connection with his destiny, with what is called Karma. Through this soul experiment a real
way is opened to experience within himself, in a certain manner, his own Karma.
You may say: Yes, but I do not understand exactly what you have said. If you say that
you do not fail to understand what you imagine, but you lack understanding for something
which even a child can grasp, but about which you simply have not thought. It is impossible
for anyone who has not carried out the experiment to understand these things. Only he who
has done this can understand. These things are to be taken only as the description of an
experiment that can be made and experienced by anyone. Each one comes to the realization
that something lives within him which is connected with his Karma. If anyone knew this
beforehand no rule would need be given him for the attainment of this knowledge.
It is quite in order that no one grasps this who has not yet made the experiment; it is not
however a question of understanding in the ordinary sense, but an acceptance of information
regarding something that our soul may undertake. If our soul follows such paths it
accustoms itself not to live within itself only, in its own wishes and desires, but to relate
itself to outer happenings, to consider them. Exactly the things which we ourselves have not
desired, we have built into that which is here considered. And when we have come to face
our Destiny so that we can calmly take it upon us, and think in regard to what we usually
murmur and rebel against: We accept it willingly, for we ourselves have decreed it, then
there arises a state of mind and heart in which, when we force our way down into the hidden
depths of soul, we can distinguish with absolute certainty the true from the false. For then is
shown with a wonderful clarity and assurance what is true and what false.
If you behold any sort of vision with the mental eye, and can as it were by a mere look,
banish it, drive it away, simply by the use of all the inner forces with which you have
become acquainted then it is just a phantasm. But if you cannot get rid of it in this
fashion, if you can banish at most that which reminds you of the outer world; if the really
visionary quality, the spiritual thing remains like a solid fact then it is true. But you
cannot make this distinction until you have done what has been described. Therefore
without the above-mentioned training there can be no certainty in the differentiation
between the true and false upon the super-sensible plane. The essential thing in this soul
experiment is that we always remain in full possession of our ordinary consciousness in
regard to what we desire, and that by means of this experiment we accustom ourselves to
look upon what we in our ordinary consciousness do not at all want, and is repugnant to us,

as something willed into existence by us. One may in a certain sense have reached a definite
degree of inner development; but unless, through such a soul experiment, we have learned
to contrast all the wishes, desires, sympathy and antipathy which live in the soul with our
relation to what we have not wished, then we shall make mistake after mistake.
The greatest mistake in the Theosophical Society was first made by H. P. Blavatsky; for
although she fixed her spiritual attention upon the realm where Christ may be found, in the
contents of her upper consciousness, in her wishes and desires, there was a constant
antipathy, even a passion against everything Christian or Hebrew, and a preference for all
other spiritual cultures on earth, and because she had never gone through what has been
described today she conceived of the Christ in an entirely false way. That was quite natural.
It passed over to her nearest students, and has been dragged along, although grotesquely
coarsened, to the present day. These things extend to the highest spheres. One may see
many things upon the occult plane, but the power of discrimination is something different
from mere sight, mere perception. This must be sharply stressed.
Now the problem is this: When we sink down into our hidden soul-depths (and every
clairvoyant must do this,) we first come into what is fundamentally ourselves. And we must
learn to know ourselves by really making the transition, by having a world before us, of
which Lucifer and Ahriman always promise to give us the kingdoms. This means that our
own inner self appears before us, and the devil says: This is the objective world. That is
the temptation that even Christ did not escape. The inner illusions of the inner world were
presented, only He, through His inherent power, recognized from the very beginning that it
is not a real world, but a world that is within. It is through this inner world alone, which we
must separate into two parts in order to get rid of one our own personal part and have
the other remain, that we pass through the hidden depths of our soul-life out into the
objective super-sensible world. And just as our spiritual-soul kernel must make use of our
physical body as a mirror for outer perception, for the facts of ordinary consciousness, so
must the human being make use of his etheric body as a reflecting apparatus for the supersensible facts which next confront him. The higher sense organs, if we may so describe
them, open within the astral body, but what lives in them must be reflected by the etheric
body, just as the spiritual and soul activity of which we are aware in ordinary life is
reflected by the physical body. We must now learn to manage our ether body, and it is
entirely natural since our etheric body is usually unknown to us, although it represents what
vitalizes us, that we must become acquainted with it before we can learn to recognize that
which enters us from the super-sensible objective world and may be reflected by this ether
body.
You now see what we experience when we descend into the hidden depths of our soul
life. It is primarily ourselves, and the projection of our wishes is very similar to what we
usually call the life in Kamaloca [Region of Burning Desire, or of Cleansing Fire; also
Purgatory.] It differs from it only in that when anyone in ordinary life thus pushes forward
into imprisonment within himself (which is what it may be called,) he has still his physical
body to which he can return. But in Kamaloca the physical body is gone, even part of the
etheric body the part which most immediately reflects for us but the universal lifeether surrounding us serves as an instrument of reflection, and mirrors everything that is

within us. Thus in the Kamaloca period our own inner world is built up about us as an
objective world, all our wishes, desires, all that we feel, and to which we are inwardly
attuned.
It is important to understand that the primary characteristic of the life in Kamaloca is our
imprisonment within ourselves, and this prison is the more securely fastened by the fact that
we cannot return to any sort of physical life to which our whole inner activity has been
related. Only when we live through this Kamaloca period in such a way as to realize
gradually (we do come to this gradually,) that it all may be got rid of by experiencing ourself otherwise than through mere desires and so forth, only then is our Kamaloca prison
opened.
How is this meant? In the following way: Let us suppose that someone dies with a
definite wish; this wish belongs to that which projects itself outward and is built up around
him in some kind of imagery. Now as long as this desire lives within him it is impossible, in
regard to it, to open Kamaloca with any sort of key. Only when he realizes that this wish
cannot be satisfied except by discarding it, when his attitude towards it becomes the
opposite to what it has been, then gradually with the wish everything that imprisons us in
Kamaloca will be torn from the soul. Only then do we come into the realm between death
and rebirth which has been called the devachanic [Devachan = Heaven.], and which may be
entered also through clairvoyance when we have recognized that which belongs to the self
alone. In clairvoyance it is reached through a definite degree of development; in Kamaloca
through the passage of time, simply because time so torments us through our own desires
that at last they are overcome. By this means that which has been dangled before us as if it
were the world and its splendor is destroyed.
The world of super-sensible realities is what is usually called Devachan. How does this
world of super-sensible facts appear before us? Here upon this earthly globe we can speak
of Devachan only because in clairvoyance, when the self has been really conquered, we
enter at once into the world of super-sensible facts, which are objectively present, and these
facts coincide with those of Devachan.
The most important characteristic of this devachanic world is that in it moral actualities
are no longer separable from the physical, that moral and physical laws are one and the
same. What does that mean? Well, is it not true that in the ordinary physical world the sun
shines upon the just and the unjust? Whoever commits a crime may be put in prison, but the
physical sun is not darkened. That is to say: in the physical world there is a realm of moral
and physical laws, leading in two very different directions. It is not so in Devachan, not at
all; instead of this, everything proceeding from morality, from intelligent wisdom, from the
aesthetically beautiful, and so on, leads to growth (is creative,) and that which arises from
immorality, intellectual falsity, and aesthetic ugliness leads to withering and destruction.
And there the laws of nature are such that the sun does not shine upon the just and the unjust
alike but, if we may speak figuratively, it darkens upon the unjust; so that the just, passing
through Devachan, have there the spiritual sunshine, that is to say, the influence of the
fertilizing forces that bring about their forward progress in life. The spiritual forces draw
back from the dishonest or ugly human being. The following is possible there which is

impossible here on earth. When two people just and unjust walk here side by side, the
sun cannot shine upon one and not upon the other; but in the spiritual world the effect of the
spiritual forces depends absolutely upon the quality of the individual concerned. That is to
say: the laws of nature and the spiritual laws do not follow two separate roads, but one and
the same. That is the fundamental, essential truth. In the devachanic world the natural,
moral, and intellectual laws act together as one.
As a result the following occurs: If a human being has entered and lives through the
devachanic world he has within him what is left over from his last life of justice and
injustice, good and evil, aesthetic beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood. All this residue
acts however in such a way that it takes immediate possession of the natural laws. We may
compare the law there with the following in the physical world: If anyone in the physical
world had stolen or lied and, seeking the sunlight, found that the sun did not shine upon
him, could not find it anywhere, and thus through lack of sunshine developed a disease ... or
let us rather assume as an example that someone in the physical world who was a liar had
difficulty in breathing; that would be an exact parallel with what would be the case in the
devachanic world. To the person who has burdened himself with this or that, something
happens in his spiritual and soul nature so that the natural law at once and absolutely
expresses the spiritual law. Hence, if the further development of this personality is brought
about in this way, as he progresses gradually and is more fully permeated by these laws,
such characteristics develop in him that he becomes an expression of the qualities which he
brought over from his past life. Just let us suppose that someone has been two hundred years
in Devachan, and has gone through it, having been in his last life a liar: the spirits of Truth
withdraw from him. There dies in him that which in a truthful soul would be invigorated.
Or let us assume that someone with a pronounced quality of vanity which he has not
given up goes through Devachan. This vanity in Devachan is an extraordinarily evilsmelling emanation, and certain spiritual beings avoid a personality who gives out the
offensive evaporation of ambition or vanity. This is not a figurative statement. In Devachan
vanity and ambition are extremely evil exhalations, and lead to the withdrawal of the
beneficent influence of certain beings who retreat before this atmosphere. This could be
compared to the placing in the cellar of a plant which thrives only in sunlight. A vain person
cannot thrive. He will grow up with this characteristic. When he reincarnates he lacks the
strength to build in the good influences. Instead of developing certain organs in a healthy
way, he forms an unhealthy part in his organism. Thus not only our physical limitations, but
our moral and intellectual ones as well show us the kind of human beings we become in life.
Only when we emerge from the physical plane do natural and spiritual law go side by side.
Between death and a new birth they are a single whole. And in our soul are implanted the
natural forces which destroy if they are the result of the immoral deeds of past lives, but
which fructify if they are the result of noble ones. This is true not only for our inner
constitution, but also for that which falls upon us from without as our Karma.
In Devachan the essential fact is that no difference exists there between natural and
spiritual law, and it is the same for the clairvoyant who really penetrates to the supersensible worlds. These laws of the super-sensible worlds are radically different from those
which rule upon the physical plane. It is simply impossible for the clairvoyant to

differentiate in the manner of the materialistic mind when someone says: That is only a law
of objective nature. Behind this objective natural law there exists always in reality a
spiritual law. A clairvoyant cannot cross a scorched meadow, for example, or a flooded
district, cannot perceive a volcanic eruption without thinking that behind the facts of nature
are spiritual forces, hidden spiritual beings. For him a volcanic eruption is at the same time
a moral deed, even though its morality may lie in an entirely different, undreamed-of realm.
Those who always confuse the physical with the higher worlds will say: Well, when
innocent human beings are destroyed by a volcanic outbreak, how can one assume that it is
a moral deed? We do not need to worry about that. Such a judgment would be as cruelly
philistine as the opposite idea: namely, to regard it as a punishment from God upon the
people who are settled around the volcano. Both judgments are possible only to the narrowminded standpoint of the physical world. Such is not the question, which may have to do
with much more universal things. Those who live on the slope of a volcano, and whose
property is destroyed by it, may be for this life entirely innocent. It will be made up to them
later. This does not make us hardhearted and unwilling to help them (that again would be a
narrow-minded interpretation of the matter). But in the case of volcanic eruptions the fact is
that in the course of the earth evolution certain things happen through human deeds which
retard human evolution, and just the good gods must work in a certain way for a balance
which is sometimes achieved through such natural phenomena.
This application of the law is to be seen only in occult depths: that compensation is
created for what is done by men themselves against the genuine development of humanity.
Every event, whether a mere activity of nature or not, is at bottom something moral, and
spiritual beings in the higher worlds are the bearers of the moral law behind the physical
fact. If you simply conceive a world in which no separation of natural and spiritual laws can
be considered, a world in which, with other words, justice rules as a natural law, you have
then the devachanic world. Therefore one need not think that in this devachanic world
through any sort of arbitrary decision an unworthy action has to be punished, because in that
realm the immoral destroys itself as inevitably as fire consumes inflammable material, and
morality is self-stimulated, and advances itself.
We thus see that the essential characteristic, the innermost nerve of existence, so to
speak, is quite different for the different worlds. We gain no idea of the several worlds if we
do not consider these peculiarities which differ so radically upon different levels. We may
thus correctly characterize physical world, Kamaloca, and Devachan: in the physical world
natural and spiritual law run side by side as two series of facts; in Kamaloca the human
being is confined within himself, as if in a prison of his own being; the devachanic world is
the complete opposite of the physical; there natural and spiritual law are one and the same.
These are the three characteristics, and if you consider them carefully, striving sensitively to
realize how very different from our own a world must be in which the moral, intellectual,
even the law of beauty are at the same time natural law, then you will gain an acute
impression of conditions in the devachanic world.
In our physical world when we meet an ugly or a beautiful face we have no right to treat
the ugly person as if he must be psychically revolting, or the beautiful one as if he must
necessarily be worthy of high esteem. In Devachan it is quite otherwise. There we meet no

ugliness that is not deserved, and it will be impossible for anyone who, because of his
preceding incarnation, is obliged in this one to wear an ugly face, but who strives
throughout this life to be true and honorable, to meet us in Devachan with any sort of
unpleasant appearance. He will have transformed his ugliness into beauty. But it is equally
true that he who is untruthful, vain, or ambitious in this life will wander about in Devachan
with some hideous form. And something else is also true: In ordinary physical life we do
not see that an ugly face continually robs itself, nor that a beautiful one contributes
something to itself, but in Devachan it is like that; ugliness is an element of progressive
destruction, and we cannot perceive beauty without assuming that it is the result of an
equally continuous furtherance and help.
We must feel quite otherwise towards the devachanic or mental world than towards the
physical world. And this is necessary: to differentiate in these sensations, to see the essential
which matters, in order that you may appropriate not only the description of these things,
but that you may take away feelings, sensitivity towards that which is described in spiritual
science. If you try to soar upwards to an appreciation of a world in which morality, beauty,
and intellectual truth appear with the inevitability of natural law then you have the feeling of
the devachanic world; and this is why we must, so to say, collect so much material and work
so much, in order that the things which we work out for ourselves may at last be merged
into one feeling.
It is impossible for anyone to come easily or lightly to a real knowledge of what must
gradually be made clear and comprehensible to the world through spiritual science. There
are many different movements that say, Oh why must so many things be learned in
spiritual science? Are we to become pupils again? Feeling is all that matters. It does
matter, but it must be the right feeling, which must first be developed! This is true of
everything. It would be pleasanter, would it not, for the painter if he did not have to learn
the technique of his art, if he did not have to bring out upon the canvas, at first slowly, the
final result, if he needed only to exhale in order to have his finished work before him! In our
world today it is a curious fact that the more the realm of the soul is in question, the harder
it is for people to realize that nothing is accomplished by mere exhaling! In music it would
not be admitted that one could become a composer without learning anything of
composition; there it is quite obvious. This is so also with painting, though people admit it
less easily, and in poetry they admit it even less, otherwise there would be in our own time
fewer poets. For actually no time is as unpoetic as our own though there are so many poets.
If it is not necessary to have studied poetry, but only to be able to write (which naturally has
nothing to do with poetic art) and of course to spell correctly we need only to be able to
express our thoughts! And for philosophy still less is required. For today, that anyone may
judge straight away anything concerning the conceptions of life and the world is regarded as
a matter of course, since everyone has his own point of view. One finds again and again that
no value is set by such people upon the carefully worked out personal possession of the
means and methods of cognition and of research in the world, gained through every
resource of inner work. Instead, it seems to them obvious that the standpoint of one who has
labored long before venturing to give out even a little about world secrets has no greater
value than that of the one who simply takes it upon himself to have a standpoint. Anyone
can count nowadays as a man with a world conception.

This, on the contrary, is what really matters, upon which everything depends; that we
labor with all our energy in order that what we work out for ourselves we may at last gather
together and carry over into feelings, which through their coloring give the highest, the
truest knowledge. Struggle through, by working towards a feeling, an impression of a world
in which natural and spiritual law coincide. Then if you work seriously no matter though
people believe you to have learned only theoretically, although you have striven hard in
working through this or that theory you will realize that it makes an impression upon the
devachanic world. If you have not simply imagined a feeling, but evolved it by years of
careful work, then this feeling, these nuances of sensibility, have a strength which will bring
you further than they could reach of themselves; for through earnest, eager study, they have
become true. Then you are not far from the point where these nuances burst asunder, and
there lies before you the reality of Devachan. For if the nuances of feeling are truly worked
out they become a power of perception.
Therefore, if work along these lines is undertaken by student groups upon a basis of
truth, honesty, and patient practice, outside of all sensation, their meeting places become
what they should be: schools to lead men into spheres of clairvoyance. And only those who
cannot wait for this, or who will not co-operate, can have an erroneous view of these
matters.

From: Anthroposophic News Sheet

3rd Year: No. 17: April 28, 1935

REFLECTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS,
SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS AND SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS
Lecture #2552
(Lecture by RUDOLF STEINER, held at Munich on February 25th, 1912.)
Today and the day after tomorrow it will be my task to discuss some of the more important
facts concerning consciousness and also karmic connections.
I should like to connect the essential points with the explanations given yesterday in my
public lecture. [Munich, Feb. 24, 1912. Public Lecture: The Hidden Depths of Soul Life (not yet translated ...
there is another lecture of the same name given on November 23rd, 1911 that is available at the Archive).] When
public lectures are held for a larger public, certain things must be dealt with differently than at
Group-meetings, because the members of a Group who have worked together and have studied
these matters for some time, are prepared to accept such things differently than a larger public.
Yesterday we saw that we can speak of hidden aspects of man's soul-life and we must place these
hidden sides of human soul-life against the facts ascertained through ordinary, everyday
consciousness.

If you were to observe superficially what lives in your soul, from the morning when you
awake until the evening when you fall asleep what lives in it in the form of ideas, feelings or
moods, and impulses of the will-including of course all that enters the soul from outside through
sense-perception if you observe all this, then you will obtain all that can be termed as forming
the contents of ordinary consciousness. We must now realise that everything which is thus
contained in the life of our consciousness, is dependent as far as this ordinary consciousness is
concerned upon the instruments of the physical body. The nearest and most obvious fact proving
what has just been said, is that man must awake in order to live within the course of events,
ascertained through an ordinary consciousness. This signifies that man must dive into the
physical body with that part of his being which is outside the physical body during sleep, and
that this physical body with its instruments is then at his disposal. He should be able to use these
instruments in order to ascertain the happenings which are accessible to ordinary consciousness.
The following question immediately arises: How does man, as a spirit-soul being, use his
bodily instruments the sense-organs and the nervous system? How does he use his bodily
organs in order to live within his everyday consciousness? In materialistic spheres it is held that
the physical or bodily instruments constitute for man something which produces the facts of his
consciousness. I have often pointed out that this is not the case; we should not imagine that the
inner structure of our body, namely the sense-organs or the brain, produce the facts of
consciousness, just as a candle, for instance, produces a flame. The relationship of what we call
consciousness to the bodily instruments is entirely different; we may compare it with the
relationship of a man who sees his reflection in a mirror, to this mirror. When we are asleep, we
live within our consciousness as if we were walking, so to speak, in a straight line. If we are
walking in a straight line, we do not see what our forehead, etc. looks like but the very
moment that someone holds a mirror in front of us, we can see ourselves. Then that which is
already a part of us, comes toward us; it begins to exist for us. The same thing occurs in the case
of the facts in our ordinary consciousness. They live in us continually, but in reality they have
nothing to do with our physical body. Just as we ourselves have nothing to do with the mirror, so
the facts in our consciousness have nothing to do with our physical body. The materialistic
theory in this sphere is not even an acceptable hypothesis it is sheer nonsense! For in this
connection the materialist states something which may be compared to nothing less than this
namely, that someone who sees himself in a mirror, declares that he has been produced by the
mirror. If you wish to delude yourself that the mirror has produced you, because you can only
see yourself when a mirror is held before you, then you may also believe that various parts of the
brain, or your sense-organs produce the contents of soul-life. Both things are equally clever and
equally true. The truth, that a mirror can produce a man, has just the same value as the other
truth, that a brain can produce thoughts. The facts that live in our consciousness have their own
existence. It is necessary however that our ordinary organisation should perceive these existing
facts of consciousness. To render this possible, we must be faced by something which reflects
the facts of consciousness namely, our physical body. Thus we possess in our physical body
something which we may call a mirroring apparatus for the facts of our ordinary consciousness.
These live in our spirit-soul being, and we perceive them because the mirror of our corporeality
is held in front of what lives in us and is part of us, but cannot be perceived by us through the
soul (just as we cannot see ourselves unless a mirror is held before us). This is the true aspect of
things, But the body is not merely a passive mirroring apparatus it is something in which
processes take place. You may therefore imagine at the back of this mirror instead of the dark
coating which brings about the reflections all kinds of happenings which take place there,

behind the mirror. This comparison may be used to characterise the true relationship between our
spirit-soul being and our body. Hence we must bear in mind that the body is a mirroring
instrument for everything we experience within our normal, everyday consciousness and that
moreover the physical body is a true mirror. Behind or if you like beneath these normal
facts of consciousness, lie all those things which rise to the surface of our ordinary soul-life,
which must be designated as the facts contained in the hidden depths of the soul.
Something of what lives in the hidden depths of the soul is experienced let us say by
the poet, by the artist. If he is a real poet, a real artist, he will know that he does not attain what
comes to expression in his poetry in the usual way he does not attain it through logical
thinking, or in the way in which we come to the facts of consciousness through outer perception.
He knows that things arise out of unknown depths and are there, really exist, without having
been formed by the forces of ordinary consciousness. But other things also arise out of these
hidden depths of soul-life. These are things which play a part in normal consciousness, although
we do not know anything about their origin, as far as ordinary life is concerned. But yesterday
we saw that we can descend more deeply into soul-life as far as the region of semiconsciousness, the region of dreams, and we know that dreams lift something out of the hidden
depths of soul-life which we would be unable to lift up in the usual, normal way, through an
effort of consciousness. If something, which has been buried in memory long ago, rises before a
man's soul in the form of a dream-picture, as happens again and again then, in most cases, this
man would never have been in a position to lift these things out of the hidden depths of his soullife by trying to recollect them because ordinary consciousness does not reach as far as this.
What can no longer be reached through normal consciousness, can however be reached through
sub-consciousness. In this semi-conscious state during dreams, many things are brought to the
surface which have remained behind, as it were which have been stored. They surge up but
only those things surge up which could not become active, in the same way as other things
become active, which dive down into hidden soul-depths, from out the experiences gained in life.
We acquire health or we grow ill, we become bad-tempered or glad but this takes place so
that we do not notice it in the normal course of life, because it constitutes bodily conditions,
determined by what has dived down into the soul out of our life-experiences something which
we cannot remember, but which is nevertheless active in the depths of soul-life, making us into
what we then become during the course of life. We would understand many human lives if we
were to know what has entered the hidden depths during the course of life. We would understand
many a human being in his 30th, 40th, 50th year we would know why he has this or that
inclination, why he feels so deeply the cause of his dissatisfaction we would understand many
things if we were to trace the life of such a man back to his childhood. In his childhood, we
would see how parents and surroundings influenced him; what was called forth during childhood
in the form of sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure things perhaps that are completely forgotten,
but influence a man's entire state of health and of mind. For what surges and rolls down into the
hidden depths of soul-life out of our consciousness, continues to be active there below. The
strange part of it all is that these forces which are working there, first work upon ourselves and
do not abandon so to speak the sphere of our personality. Hence, when clairvoyant
consciousness descends to these depths (this occurs through imagination, through what we call
imaginative knowledge), when it descends to the depths where these forces are active in subconsciousness, as just described, then man always finds his own self. He finds what surges and
lives within him. And this is a good thing. Indeed, in a true self-knowledge, man must learn to

know himself; he must contemplate and learn to know all the impulses which are active within
him.
If man does not pay attention to this fact, if he pays no attention to the fact that first of all he
will find his own self with all that constitutes it and is active within it, he will be exposed to all
kinds of errors when his clairvoyant consciousness penetrates into sub-consciousness through the
exercises of an imaginative knowledge. Through a form of consciousness resembling the
ordinary consciousness, man cannot be aware at all that he comes across his own self when he
descends into the depths of soul-life. At a certain stage of development it will be possible to have
visions let us say to see shapes which are unquestionably something new, when we
compare them with what we have learnt to know through the experiences of life. Such a
circumstance can indeed arise. But if we were to imagine that such things belong to the outer
world, this would be a great illusion. These things do not arise in the same way in which the facts
connected with our inner life generally arise in ordinary consciousness. If we have a headache,
this is a fact which enters usual consciousness. We know that the pain is in our own head. If we
have a stomach-ache, the pain is experienced within our own self. If we descend to the depths
which we call the hidden soul-depths, we can only be within our own self yet we can see
things which appear to us as if they were outside our own selves. Let us take, for instance, a
striking case. Let us suppose that someone desires most intensely to be the reincarnated Mary
Magdalene, (I once mentioned that I have already met twenty-four reincarnated Magdalenes in
my life); let us assume that someone desires most intensely to be Mary Magdalene. But let us
also assume that this person does not confess this wish to himself (we need not confess our
wishes to ourselves this is unnecessary). Well someone may read the story of Mary
Magdalene and may like it immensely. In his sub-consciousness the desire to be Mary
Magdalene may now immediately arise. He is aware of nothing in his usual consciousness except
that he likes this character. The person in question has a liking for this character. He is aware of
this in his upper consciousness. But in his sub-consciousness lives the burning desire to be
himself this Mary Magdalene yet he knows nothing about this. He does not bother about this.
He is guided by the facts of his usual consciousness; he can go through the world without being
compelled at all to become aware of this erroneous fact in his consciousness the intense wish
to be Mary Magdalene. But let us suppose that such a person has attained, in some way or other,
a kind of occult training. This would enable him to descend into his sub-consciousness but he
would not become aware of the fact, in me lives the desire to be Mary Magdalene he would
not become aware of this in the same way that he becomes aware of a headache. If he were to
notice this desire to be Mary Magdalene then he would be sensible and assume toward this desire
the same attitude as toward a pain namely, he would try to get rid of it. But through an
irregular descent into sub-consciousness, this does not take place, because his desire acquires the
form of something which is outside his own personality, and to the man in question it appears as
the vision: You are Mary Magdalene. This fact stands before him, is projected outside his own
being. Moreover, a human being at this stage of development is no longer able to control such a
fact through his Ego. This lack of control cannot arise when we undergo a regular, sound and
absolutely careful training; for then the Ego accompanies all experiences in every sphere. But as
soon as the Ego no longer accompanies all our experiences, the fact described above can arise in
the form of an objective outer happening. The observer believes that he can remember the events
connected with Mary Magdalene and feels himself identified with this Mary Magdalene. This is
unquestionably possible. I emphasize this possibility, because it shows you that only a careful

training and the conscientiousness with which we penetrate into occultism, can rescue us from
falling into error. If we know that we must first see before us an entire world, that we must see
around us facts, not something which we apply to our own selves, but something that is in us,
and yet appears like the picture of a whole world if we know that we do well to consider what
we first see before us is the projection of our own inner life then we possess a good shield
against the errors which can beset us along this path. The best thing of all is to consider at first
everything that rises out of our inner being as if it were an exterior fact. In most cases these facts
arise out of our desires, vanities, ambition in a few words, out of all the qualities connected
with human selfishness. These things above all project themselves outside and now we may ask:
How can we escape from such errors? How can we save ourselves from them?
It is not possible to save ourselves from error through the usual facts of consciousness. Error
arises because we cannot, so to speak, come out of ourselves at the moment when we are being
faced by a world picture; we remain entangled within ourselves. This will show you that the
essential thing is to come out of ourselves, to distinguish in one way or another that here we have
before us one kind of vision, and there another. Both visions are outside; one is perhaps merely
the projection of a wish, and the other one is a real fact. Yet they do not differ as much as things
differ in ordinary life for instance, when one person states that he has a headache and we
ourselves have a headache. For our own inner life, as well as that of another man, are both
projected outside into space. How can we discriminate between them?
We must learn to investigate the occult sphere we must learn to distinguish a true
impression from a false one, although all impressions are mixed together and arise as if they
were all equally entitled to be taken for true impressions. It is just as if we were to look into the
physical world and were to see there, beside the actual trees, other imaginary trees, and as if we
were unable to discriminate between them. The true facts outside and the facts which arise only
within ourselves are mixed together, just as if false and true trees were standing side by side.
How can we learn to distinguish one sphere from the other? We do not learn this at first through
our consciousness. If we remain only within the life of thoughts we cannot possibly discriminate,
for this possibility is given to us only through a slow occult training of the soul. If we progress
more and more, we reach the point where we learn to distinguish one thing from another that
is, we do in the occult what we would have to do if we were to see actual trees beside imaginary
ones. If we walk toward imaginary trees, we do not strike against them, but we do collide with
real trees! Something similar also occurs but as a spiritual fact, of course in the occult
sphere. If we proceed in the right way, we can learn to discriminate in a comparatively easy
manner between what is true and false in this sphere; but we cannot do this through thoughts
only through a decision of the will. This decision of the will can arise as follows: If we survey
our life, we find in it two distinct groups of events. We often find that this or that thing in which
we succeed or fail, is connected quite normally with our capacities. In other words we can
understand our failure in a certain direction because we are not particularly clever in that sphere.
On the other hand, we can understand our success in this or in that direction because we know
that we have certain capacities which account for it. Perhaps it may not always be so strictly
necessary to realise this connection existing between our actions and our capacities. There is also
a less clear way of realising it. For instance, when misfortune strikes someone at some later stage
in life and he then thinks about this, he may say to himself: I have been a man who has done
very little in order to become more active . . . Or else he may admit to himself: I have

always been such a happy-go-lucky fellow . . . In both cases he will be able to say that he did
not realise immediately the connection between his failure and his past actions, but he did realise
that a light-hearted lazy man will not succeed in all things as well as a conscientious, diligent
one, There are things where we can see quite well their connection with our successes or failures,
but there are others where it seems impossible to find a connection where we must say: In
spite of this or that capacity which should have guaranteed our success in this or in that direction,
we have not succeeded. Evidently there are also certain kinds of successes or failures where we
can not see at once the connection with our capacities. This is one aspect. The other one is that in
the case of certain things which we encounter, such as blows of destiny, we may sometimes say:
Well, this seems justified; for we ourselves have supplied the conditions for it. But for other
occurrences we find that they happen without our being able to discover anything which could be
indicated as their cause. Thus we have two kinds of experiences experiences which come
from us, and where we can see the connection with our own capacities and the other kind of
experience which has just been described. In the case of some experiences which come to us
from outside, we find happenings of which we cannot say that we ourselves have given rise to
them, and again there are others of which we know that their foundation lies in us. Let us look
about us in life and make an experiment which is very useful for every human being. This
experiment can be made as follows. We place together all things the causes of which are
unknown to us, and also all the things in which we have succeeded and of which we can say that
they have happened in some unaccountable way things for the success of which we are not
responsible at all. But also failures which we can remember may be placed together in this way.
Then we look upon outer events which have met us by chance, for which we cannot find any
influence on our part. Now we may make the following soul-experiment. Let us imagine that we
build up in thoughts an artificial man (bear in mind that first of all we make this grotesque soulexperiment) we construct this artificial man; he is made in such a way that all the things in
which we have succeeded in an unaccountable way are brought about through his capacities.
Hence when we find that we have succeeded in something which requires wisdom, whereas we
are stupid in this very thing, we build up an imaginary man who is particularly wise in this very
sphere and who would therefore have met with success in it. We may also apply this experiment
as follows in the case of an outer event. Let us assume that a brick falls on our head. At first we
cannot realise the cause of this. Let us now construct an imaginary man who brought about the
falling of this brick, as follows: First of all he ran up on to the roof and pulled out a brick so
that it would necessarily fall down soon afterwards. Then he quickly ran down again and the
brick struck him. This is exactly what we do in certain happenings, although we know quite well
in accordance with the usual course of events that we have not caused them; in fact these
happenings may even be very much against our will. Let us suppose that someone has struck us
at a certain time in our life. To facilitate matters, let us place this occurrence in our childhood; let
us suppose that someone engaged to look after us, has beaten us. And let us imagine that we did
all we could to deserve this beating. In short, we now construct an imaginary person in whom all
those things are centred which are impenetrable to our understanding. You see, if we wish to
progress in occultism, we must carry out several things which are in contrast to ordinary facts.
But if we only do what appears to be sensible in the usual meaning of the word then we do not
come much further in occultism, for the things connected with the higher world may at first seem
foolish to an ordinary human being. But it does not matter if the method may appear foolish to a
superficial sober-minded man. Let us therefore construct this imaginary human being. At first
this may appear grotesque, and perhaps we do not realise its purpose. Yet we shall make a

discovery within ourselves; everyone who makes this experiment will discover that it is
impossible to get rid of this man whom we have built up in our thoughts he will begin to
interest us. Indeed, when we make this experiment, we will find that we cannot rid ourselves any
more of this artificial man he lives in us. Strange to say, he does not only live in us, but
transforms himself within us; he changes greatly. He transforms himself so that in the end he
differs entirely from what he was before. He becomes something, of which we cannot but say
that after all it is contained in us. This is an experience which we all can have. What has now
been described not the imaginary human being which we have first constructed, but what has
become of him may be designated as a part of what is contained within ourselves. It is exactly
that part which has, so to speak, brought about those things in life which apparently have no
cause. Thus we find within ourselves something which really brings forth the things that cannot
be explained otherwise. What I have described to you constitutes in other words a way enabling
us not only to gaze into our own soul-life and to find something in it, but also to tread a path
leading out of this soul-life into the surrounding world. For the things in which we fail do not
remain in us, but become a part of the world around us. We have taken from it something which
is not in keeping with the usual facts of our consciousness. But we have obtained something
which appears as if it were contained within us. Then we feel as if we had after all some
connections with the things that apparently arise with no real cause. Thus we begin to feel how
we are connected with our destiny, with what is called karma. This soul-experiment is a true
path, enabling us to experience karma in a certain way.
You may argue: I cannot quite understand what you say. But when you say this, it is not
because you think that you cannot understand; you say it because you fail to understand
something which is in reality quite easy to understand but you do not think about it. It is
impossible to understand such things unless we have carried out the above mentioned
experiment. Hence, these things can be looked upon merely as the description of an experiment
which can be made and experienced by everybody. Through this experiment we can all realise
that in us something lives which is connected with our karma. If we were to know this
beforehand, it would not be necessary to be given directions showing us how to attain it. It is
quite natural that this cannot be realised unless we have made the experiment. However, it is not
a question of understanding things in the usual meaning of the word, but of accepting a
communication concerning something which our soul can experience. If our soul treads such
paths, it will grow accustomed to live not only within itself, within its wishes and passions, but it
will grow accustomed to look upon exterior happenings and to connect them with its own self.
Our soul will grow accustomed to this. The very things which we have not desired are those
which we ourselves have brought into the occurrences. Finally, if we are able to face our whole
destiny so that we accept it calmly, if in the case of things about which we generally grumble and
protest, we think instead let us accept them gladly, for we ourselves are responsible for
them if we are able to do this, then we develop a particular frame of mind. This frame of
mind will enable us to distinguish the true from the false when we descend into the hidden
depths of soul-life, to discriminate with absolute certainty; then what is true and what is false
will appear with wonderful clearness and certainty.
If we look upon a vision with the spiritual eye and are able to dispel it simply through the
fact that we dispel or conjure away all the forces which we experience as our inner being and
which we learn to know anew in this form if we can dispel them as it were through a mere

glance then this vision is nothing but a phantasm. But if we can not eliminate it in this way
and are able to dispel only that part which reminds us of the outer sense world that is the
visionary part if the spiritual element remains as an undeniable fact, then the vision is a true
one. This distinction however cannot be made before we have accomplished what has already
been described. Hence, on the super-sensible plane the true and the false cannot be distinguished
with certainty unless we have undergone the above mentioned training. The essential fact during
a soul-experience is that our usual consciousness is in reality always contained in what we desire,
so that through this soul-experiment we become accustomed to consider as our own will what we
do not wish at all as far as our ordinary consciousness is concerned what usually goes against
our will. In a certain connection we may have reached a definite stage of inner development; if
however such a soul-experiment does not induce us to place this connection with what we have
not wished, against the wishes, pensions, sympathies and antipathies living within our soul, then
we shall make one mistake after another. The greatest mistake of this kind was made just in the
Theosophical Society by H. P. Blavatsky. She observed the field where the Christ may be found,
and because her wishes and desires in a few words all that constituted her upper
consciousness contained antipathy, indeed hatred for everything Christian and Jewish,
whereas she had a predilection for all that had spread over the earth as spiritual civilisation,
excluding the Christian and the Hebrew, and because she had never passed through the training
described today she was faced by an entirely false idea of the Christ. This is quite natural. She
handed this idea over to her more intimate disciples and it is still alive today, coarsened into a
grotesque picture. These things reach into the highest spheres. We can see many things on the
occult plane, but the capacity of distinguishing them is higher than merely seeing or perceiving
them. This must be emphasized sharply.
Now the following problem arises: When we dive down into our hidden soul-depths (every
clairvoyant must do this), we first reach our own self. We must learn to know ourselves by
passing really and truly through that stage where we are at first faced by a world in which
Lucifer and Ahriman continually promise us the kingdoms of the world. This signifies that we
are placed before our own inner world and that the devil tells us this is the objective world.
This is the temptation which even the Christ could not escape. The illusions of the inner-world
were placed before Him. But through His own strength He was able to see from the very
beginning that this was not a real world, but something contained in man's inner world. Through
this inner world, in which we must distinguish two parts one which we can eliminate, namely,
our true inner content, and another which remains we reach the objective super-sensible world
through the hidden depths of our soul-life. Just as our soul-spiritual kernel must use the mirror of
the physical body in order to perceive the things outside, or what constitutes the facts of ordinary
consciousness, so the human being must use his etheric body as a mirror, as far as his soulspiritual kernel is concerned, in order to perceive the spiritual super-sensible facts which he at
first encounters. The higher sense-organs, if we may use this expression, appear in the astral
body, but what lives in them must be reflected through the etheric body, just as the soul-spiritual
content which we perceive in ordinary life is reflected through the physical body. We must learn
to use our etheric body. Since our etheric body is generally unknown to us, although it is that part
which really gives us life it is quite natural that we should first learn to know this etheric body
before we learn to know what enters into us from the super-sensible world outside, and before
this can be reflected through the etheric body.

You see, what we thus experience by reaching the hidden depths of our soul-life when we
experience, so to speak, our own self and the projection of our own wishes this very much
resembles the life which we usually call Kamaloca. It differs from Kamaloca-life through the
fact that during our ordinary life we progress as far as an imprisonment (for we may call it thus)
within our own self; yet our physical body is there and we can always return to it, whereas in
Kamaloca the physical body no longer exists. Even a part of the etheric body no longer exists
that part which during life throws back to us a reflection; we are surrounded by the general lifeether which is now the reflecting instrument and mirrors everything that is contained in us.
During the Kamaloca-period our own inner world is built up around us, with all its wishes and
passions. All that we experience and feel within us, is now around us as our objective world. it is
important that we should realise that Kamaloca-life can first of all be characterised through the
fact that we are enclosed within ourselves and that this constitutes a prison; all the more so, as
we cannot return to any form of physical life, which constitutes the foundation of our whole
inner life. When we experience our Kamaloca-life so as to realise gradually (we gradually realise
this) that everything contained in it can only be eliminated when we begin to feel in a different
way, when we no longer have within us passions etc. only then do we break through the walls
of our Kamaloca-prison.
In what sense can this be understood? In this sense: let us suppose that someone dies
cherishing a certain wish. This wish will be part of what is then projected outside; it will be
contained in one of the formations that surround him. As long as this wish still lives in him he
will not be able to open the gates of Kamaloca with any key, as far as this wish is concerned.
When he realises that this wish can be satisfied only by eliminating it, by giving it up, by not
desiring any more only when this wish has been torn out of the soul and he assumes toward it
the very opposite attitude, only then everything that imprisons him in Kamaloca, including this
wish, will be torn out of the soul. At this stage between death and a new birth we reach the
sphere which is called Devachan: we can also reach it through clairvoyance if we have learned to
know what forms a part of us. Through clairvoyance we reach Devachan, when we have
obtained a definite degree of maturity; during Kamaloca we reach Devachan in the course of
time, just because time torments us through our own desires, so that they are gradually
surmounted in the course of time. Through this, all that is conjured up before us, as if it were the
world and its glory, is burst asunder.
The world of real, super-sensible facts is what we generally call Devachan. How do we
generally encounter this world of real, super-sensible facts? Here on the earth we can speak of
Devachan only because we can penetrate through clairvoyance (if the Self has really been
overcome) into the world of super-sensible facts which actually exist, and these facts coincide
with what is contained in Devachan. The chief characteristic of Devachan is that moral facts can
no longer be distinguished from physical facts, or physical laws; moral laws and physical laws
coincide. What is meant by this? In the ordinary physical world the sun shines over the just and
the unjust; one who has committed a crime may perhaps be put in prison, but the physical sun
will not be darker because of this fact. This signifies that the world of sense-reality has both a
moral order of laws and physical one; but they follow two entirely different directions. In
Devachan it is otherwise there, this difference does not exist at all. In Devachan everything
that arises out of something moral, or intellectually wise, or esthetically beautiful, etc., leads to a
creation, is creative whereas everything that arises out of something immoral, intellectually

untrue, or esthetically ugly, leads to destruction, is destructive. The laws of Nature in Devachan
are indeed of such kind that the sun does not shine equally brightly over the just and the unjust.
Speaking figuratively, we may say that the sun actually is darkened in the case of an unrighteous
man, whereas the righteous man who passes through Devachan really finds in it the spiritual
sunshine, that is, the influence of the life-spending forces which help him forward in life. A liar
or an ugly-minded man will pass through Devachan in such a way that the spiritual forces
withdraw from him. In Devachan an order of laws is possible, which is not possible here or earth.
When two people, a righteous and an unrighteous one, walk side by side here on the earth, it is
not possible for the sun to shine upon one and not to shine upon the other. But in the spiritual
world the influence of the spiritual forces undoubtedly depends upon the quality of a human
being. In Devachan this signifies that the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws do not follow
separate directions, but the same direction. This is the essential thing which must be borne in
mind in Devachan the laws of Nature and the moral and intellectual laws coincide.
As a result of this, the following will arise: When a human being enters Devachan and
lives there, with all that is still contained in him from his last life on earth righteousness and
unrighteousness, good and evil, esthetic beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood all this
becomes active in such a way that it immediately takes possession of the laws of Nature existing
in Devachan. We may perhaps compare it to the following fact in the sense-world. Let us
suppose that someone has stolen, or has told a lie here on earth and then goes out into the
sunshine; but the sun no longer shines upon him, he cannot find sunshine anywhere, so that
through the want of sunlight he gradually becomes ill . . . Or let us suppose this can also serve
as a comparison, that someone who has told a lie here on earth cannot breathe any more all
these cases would be similar to what actually happens in Devachan. One who is guilty of this or
that sin, will find there, as far as his soul-spiritual being is concerned, that the laws of Nature
coincide with the spiritual laws. Consequently, when this man continues to develop in Devachan
as described above, and he progresses more and more, then such laws and qualities will live in
him, that what he now becomes in Devachan, corresponds to the qualities which he has brought
with him from his preceding life. Let us suppose that someone lives in Devachan for 200 years;
he has peered through Devachan, and if he told many lies during his life on earth, then the Spirits
of Truth will withdraw from him in Devachan. Something in him will then die, whereas in
another truth-loving soul this will instead flourish and come to life.
Let us suppose that someone passes through Devachan with a pronounced vanity, which he
has not set aside. In Devachan this vanity will be a most foul exhalation, and certain spiritual
beings avoid such an individuality that exhales these foul odours of ambition or vanity. This is
not described figuratively. Vanity and ambition are indeed most foul exhalations in Devachan, so
that certain beings, who withdraw because of this, cannot exercise their beneficial influence. It is
just as if a plant were to grow in a cellar, whereas it can flourish only in the sunshine. The vain
person cannot prosper. He develops under the influence of this quality. Then, when he
reincarnates, he has not the strength to take into himself the good influences. Instead of
developing certain organs soundly, he develops an unsound organic system. Thus, not only our
physical condition, but also our moral and intellectual condition, show us what we will become
in life. On the physical plane, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws go separate ways. But,
between death and a new birth they are one the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws are one.
Destructive forces of Nature enter our soul, as the result of immoral deeds during a preceding

life; but life-spending forces enter it, as the result of moral deeds. This is not only connected with
our inner configuration, but also with what we encounter in life, as our karma.
The characteristic element of Devachan is that there is no difference between the laws of
Nature and spiritual laws. The clairvoyant who really penetrates into the super-sensible worlds
experiences this. The super-sensible worlds differ very much from the worlds here on the
physical plane. It is simply impossible for a clairvoyant to make the distinction usually made by
a materialistic mind, namely, that there are merely objective laws of Nature. Behind the objective
laws of Nature there are in reality always spiritual laws; and a clairvoyant cannot, for instance,
cross a dry piece of meadow land, or a flooded region, or perceive a volcanic eruption, without
realising that spiritual powers, spiritual beings, are behind all phenomena in Nature. A volcanic
eruption is for him also a moral deed, although the moral element may perhaps lie on an entirely
different plane than we may, at first, imagine. Those who always confuse the physical and the
higher worlds will say: If innocent people perish through a volcanic eruption, how can we
suppose this to be a moral deed. But at first, we need not consider this opinion; for it would be
just as cruelly narrow-minded as the opposite one namely, to consider this eruption as a
punishment inflicted by God upon the people who live near the volcano. Both opinions are only
the result of the narrow-minded mentality here on the physical plane. But this is not the point in
question; far more universal things must be taken into consideration. Those people who live on
the slopes of a volcano and whose possessions are destroyed through an eruption, are perhaps
without any guilt in this life. But this will find its balance later on, and does not imply a
merciless attitude on our part (to consider it as such would again be a narrow-minded
interpretation of the facts). In the case of volcanic eruptions, for instance, we find that in the
course of the evolution of the earth human beings cause to certain things; and because these
things occur, the entire evolution of humanity is held up. For this very reason, good Gods must
work in a certain way in order to establish the balance and such phenomena in Nature
sometimes bring about such a balance. Very often, this connection can be seen only by
penetrating into occult depths. Thus, adjustments occur in the case of things brought about by
human beings things which are in opposition to the spiritual course of mankind's true
development. All events, even if they are mere phenomena of Nature, have something moral in
their depths, and the bearers of this moral element; which lie behind the physical facts, are
spiritual beings. Thus, if we imagine a world where it is impossible to speak of a division
between the laws of Nature and spiritual laws in other words, a world where justice rules as a
law of Nature then this world would be Devachan. And in Devachan we need not think that
actions which deserve punishment are punished arbitrarily; for there, the immoral element
destroys itself and the moral one progresses, with the same necessity with which a flame sets fire
to combustible material.
Thus, we see that just the innermost characteristics, the innermost nerve, so to speak, of
existence, varies in the different worlds. We cannot form a picture of the various worlds unless
we bear in mind these peculiarities which differ radically in each world. Hence, we may
characterise the physical world, Kamaloca, and Devachan, as follows: in the physical world, the
laws of Nature and the spiritual laws constitute a series of facts which take their course in
separate directions. In the world of Kamaloca, the human being is imprisoned within his own
self, enclosed in the prison of his own being. The world of Devachan is the very opposite of the
physical world. There, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws are one and the same thing.

These are the three characteristics; and if we bear them carefully in mind, if we try to feel the
radical difference between our world and one where the intellectual laws, and also the aesthetic
laws, are at the same time laws of Nature, then we shall have an inkling of what is contained in
Devachan. If we meet an ugly person, or a beautiful one, here in the physical world, we have no
right to treat the ugly man as if he had something repulsive in his soul-spiritual being, nor can we
place a beautiful human being on a certain height, from a soul-spiritual aspect. But in Devachan
it is entirely different. There, we never meet anything ugly, unless it has been caused by
something; and the human being who owes his ugly face to his preceding incarnation, but strives
to be true and upright in this life, cannot possibly meet us in Devachan with an ugly face. Such a
human being will indeed have transformed his ugly face into beauty. On the other hand, it is just
as true that one who tells lies and is vain and miserly wanders about in Devachan with an ugly
form. Something else, however, must also be borne in mind. In ordinary physical life we do not
find that something is continually being destroyed in an ugly face, and that a beautiful face
continually adds something to its beauty. But in Devachan we see that ugliness is a destructive
element, and whenever we perceive something beautiful we are compelled to realise that it
brings about a continual growth, a continual fructification. Hence, in the world of Devachan we
must have entirely different feelings than in the physical world.
It will be necessary to find the essential element in these feelings, and to acquire the capacity
of adding to the outer description of things these feelings and experiences which are described in
spiritual science. If you strive to experience a world wherein the moral, the beautiful, and the
mentally true elements appear with the same necessity as a law of Nature, you will attain the
experience of Devachan. It is for this reason that we must collect so many facts and work so
hard, in order to melt down to a living experience what we have thus acquired through study.
Without effort it is impossible to attain a true knowledge of the things which must gradually be
made clear to the world through spiritual science. Today there are undoubtedly many people who
argue: Why should we learn so many things through spiritual science? Must we become
schoolboys again? Feelings or experiences seem to be the most important thing in it. Indeed,
feeling is precisely what should be taken into consideration but, first of all, the right kind of
feeling must be acquired. The same thing applies to everything. A painter also would find it far
more pleasant if there were no need for him to learn the elements of his art, and so forth, and if
he were not obliged to paint his final picture slowly and gradually on the canvas. It would be far
more pleasant if he could just breathe on the canvas, and so produce his finished picture! The
peculiar thing in the world today is this that, the more we reach the soul-spiritual sphere, the
more people fail to understand that a mere breathing on the canvas does not suffice! In the case
of music, few people will admit that a man who has learnt nothing at all can be a composer; this
is quite obvious to them. They will also admit this in the case of painting although less strictly
than in the case of music and in the case of poetry they will admit still less that study and
training is necessary. This is why there are so many modern poets. No age has been so unpoetical
as our present age, in spite of its many poets! Poets need not learn much they are simply
expected to write (although this has nothing to do with poetry) at least orthographically; it
suffices if they are able to express their thoughts intelligibly! And less still is expected from
philosophers. For it is taken for granted that anyone may express his opinion concerning all kinds
of things which belong to a conception of the world, or life-conception. Everybody has his own
point of view. Again and again we find that careful study, entailing the application of all means
available to an inner activity, in order to investigate and know at least something of the world,

counts for nothing in the present day. Instead, it is taken for granted that the standpoint of one
who has toiled and worked in order, to venture to say at least a few things concerning the secrets
of the universe is equivalent to the standpoint of one who has simply made up his mind to have
an opinion! Hence today everybody has, so to speak, his own conception of the world. And a
Theosophist above all others! In the opinion of some people, still less is required to be a
Theosophist. In their opinion, all that is needed is not even to acknowledge the three principles of
the Theosophical Society, but only the first one and this entirely according to their own
liking! Since all that is required is to admit with more or less truthfulness that love toward others
suffices whether or not one is really filled with love does not count so much it is easy
enough to be a Theosophist, and then of course one has the right kind of feeling! Thus we
descend continually. We begin with an estimation of music and expect a certain standard from
those who wish to have an opinion on music we descend continually and require less and less,
until we finally reach Theosophy, where least of all is required! For we think that what is
generally considered inadequate in the case of painting, for instance, is sufficient in the case of
Theosophy no effort is needed here, yet we lay the foundation for a universal brotherhood,
and then we are Theosophists! We need not learn anything else! But the essential point is this
we must strive with all our might to transform into living experiences what we gather in the form
of study for the shadings of these feelings will give us the highest and truest knowledge. You
should direct all your efforts toward the attainment of an experience such as the impression
derived from a world where the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws coincide. If you work in
full earnestness (let the people believe that you have only studied theoretical facts!), if you have
spared no effort in comprehending this or that theory, then an impression will be left behind in
Devachan. If an experience, a real feeling, exists not only in your fancy, but you have really
acquired it through careful work, then this experience, these nuances of feeling, will reach
further than they can reach merely by themselves they will become real through earnest,
diligent study. And then you are not far distant from the point where this nuance of feeling will
acquire life, and Devachan will really lie before you. For this nuance of feeling becomes a
perceptive capacity if it is worked out truthfully. Our groups, our working centres, are what they
should be, only if the work within them is really carried out without any sensation and on an
honest basis. In this case our groups and centres are schools which are meant to lead man into the
spheres of clairvoyance. Only someone who does not wish to attain this and is unwilling to work
can have a false opinion concerning these things.

Hidden Soul Powers

LECTURE BY DR. RUDOLF STEINER, DELIVERED IN MUNICH,
FEBRUARY 27, 1912

spoken recently of many things concerning the existence of hidden soul

depths, and it will be well in any case to continue to occupy ourselves with
various details of this subject which it may be useful for an anthroposophist to
know. Generally speaking, it must be said that a complete clarification of these
things is possible only if it can be worked out on the basis of anthroposophical
knowledge.
E HAVE

We have considered what may be called the human organization from the most diverse
viewpoints. Therefore, when we wish to point out something in hidden soul depths, it will be
easy for each one to relate it correctly to what was shown regarding the human structure as
we know it from the more or less elementary presentations of the anthroposophical worldconception.
It has been repeated that everything included in our visualizations and percepts, our
impulses of will, our feelings, in short, all that goes on in our souls under normal conditions
between awaking in the morning and falling asleep at night, may be called the activities,
peculiarities, and powers of the ordinary consciousness. Now we shall indicate by a diagram
all that falls within this ordinary human consciousness, all that is known and felt and willed
between waking and sleeping, within these two parallel lines (ab).
In this section (ab) belong, in addition to our visualizations, every sort of percept. Thus,
if we put ourselves into correspondence with the outer world through our senses, and procure
thereby in every possible sense-impression a picture of this world, remaining in connection,
in touch with it, then that belongs also to our ordinary consciousness. But since all our
feelings and impulses of will belong to it as well, one might say that in the area indicated by
the parallel lines (ab) everything belongs of which our normal soul activities give us
information in everyday life.
The point is for us to know with certainty that to this so-called soul life the physical body
is assigned as an instrument, including the senses and the nervous system. If we add two
more to these parallel lines we may indicate the physical sense organs and the nervous
system, which we may call the tools of this consciousness the sense organs chiefly, but
also to a certain extent the nervous system.

Below the threshold of this ordinary consciousness lies everything which we may
describe as the hidden aspects of soul-life, or the subconscious. (See diagram, bc.) We shall
get a good idea of all that is, so to speak, embedded in this subconsciousness if we remember
having heard that the human being, through spiritual training, attains to imagination,
inspiration, and intuition; [These three terms as used by Rudolf Steiner denote three supersensible faculties. (Tr.)] so we must substitute for the thoughts, feelings and impulses of will
belonging to the surface consciousness, the imagination, inspiration, and intuition of the
subconsciousness. We know, however, also that the subconscious activity is not aroused by
spiritual training alone, but that it may exist as inheritance of an old, primitive atavistic state
of the human mind. Under these conditions there arise what we define as visions, and visions
of this naive consciousness would correspond to imaginations gained through training.
Premonitions arise; and these might be primitive inspirations. We can show at once the
difference between an inspiration and a premonition by a significant example.
We have already mentioned that in the course of the 20th century there will occur in
human evolution what may be called a sort of spiritual return of Christ, and that there will be
a number of persons who experience this working of Christ from the astral plane into our
world in an etheric form. We may acquire knowledge of this event by authentic training,
recognizing the trend of evolution, and also that this must come about in the 20th century. It
may, however, happen, as it often does at the present time, that individuals here and there are
gifted with a natural, primitive, clairvoyance which is, so to speak, a kind of obscure
inspiration which we may call a premonition of the approach of Christ. Perhaps such people
might not have accurate knowledge of the matter involved, but even such an important
inspiration may arise as a premonition, though in the case of a primitive consciousness it may
not retain its premonitory or visionary character. The vision constitutes some sort of picture
of a spiritual event. Let us say, for example, that someone has lost a friend whose ego has
passed through the gate of death. This friend now dwells in the spiritual world, and a kind of
bond establishes itself between this person and the one still living in this world. It may be
that the person in this world cannot rightly understand what the deceased desires and has a
false idea of what is being experienced by the departed. The fact that such a condition exists
presents itself in a vision which, as a picture, may be false though founded upon the fact that
the dead is really trying to establish a bond with the living, and this gives weight to the
presentiment so that the living person who experiences it knows certain things, either about
the past or future, which are inaccessible to normal consciousness. If the human soul

acquires, however, a definite perception, not a vision which may, under the circumstances, be
false, but a factual perception an occurrence, let us say, of the sense world, but in this case
in a sphere invisible to the physical senses, or an incident in the super-sensible world it is
called in occultism deuteroscopy, or second sight. With all this I have described to you only
what takes place although subconsciously, within the human soul, whether developed by
correct training or appearing as a natural clairvoyance.
The phenomena enumerated when contrasting the subconscious with the ordinary
consciousness, differ considerably from those confined to the conscious mind. The relation
of this ordinary consciousness to the underlying causes of its activities has already been
described in one aspect by this phrase: the impotence of ordinary consciousness. The eye
sees a rose, but this eye, which is so constituted that in our consciousness the image of the
rose arises has, like the consciousness itself, no power over the blooming, growth and fading
of the rose in spite of its perception and the resultant image. The rose blooms and fades
through the activity of the forces of nature and neither the eye nor the consciousness has any
control beyond the sphere which is accessible to their perception.
This is not the case regarding subconscious happenings. We must hold fast to this fact,
for it is extraordinarily important. When we perceive something through the use of our eyes
in normal sight, pictures in color or anything else, we can alter nothing in the objective facts
by mere perception. If nothing happens to harm our eyes they remain unchanged by the mere
act of seeing; only by crossing the boundary between normal and blinding light do we injure
our eyes. Thus it may be said that if we confine ourselves to the facts of the normal
consciousness, we do not react upon ourselves. Our organism is so constituted that changes
are not ordinarily induced in us by this consciousness.
It is quite otherwise with that which appears in the subconscious. Let us assume that we
are forming an imagination, or that we have a vision which may be the response of a good
being. This good being is not in the physical, but in the super-sensible world, and let us
imagine this world where such beings exist and which we perceive, perchance, through an
imagination or a vision, to be between these lines (bc). In that world we have to seek all
objects of subconscious perception. But if we identify anything in that other world as an evil
or demonic being, either through an imaginary image or a vision, we are not, in regard to this
being as powerless as we are with the eye in regard to the rose. If in a super-sensible
imagination or vision of an evil being we develop a strong feeling that it must depart, it is
bound to feel as if it were powerfully thrust from us. It is the same when we form an
imagination or vision of a good being. If in this case we develop a sympathetic feeling, the
being feels impelled to approach and to connect itself with us. All beings who in one way or
another inhabit that world feel, when we form visions of them, our attracting or repelling
forces. With our subconsciousness we are in a position resembling somewhat that of the eye
if with it we were able not only to see a rose, but by means of simple sight could arouse a
desire that the rose approach and could draw it toward us or, if the eye, seeing something
disgusting, could not only form such a judgment but could remove this object by mere
antipathy. The subconscious is in touch with a world in which the sympathy and antipathy
which are present in the human soul can take effect. It is necessary for us to impress this
upon our minds.

Sympathy and antipathy, and in general all subconscious impulses, act in the manner
described not only upon their own world, but above all upon what is within ourselves; and
not only upon a part of the etheric body, but upon certain forces of the physical body. We
must consider here as enclosed between these lines (bc) that living force within the human
being which, pulsing in his blood, can be called the blood warming power and, also, the force
residing in our healthy or unhealthy breathing power, conditioned more or less by our whole
organism. (See diagram bc.) To all this, upon which the subconscious works within us,
there belongs in addition a large part of what is called the human etheric body. The
subconscious or hidden soul powers work within us so as to affect our blood heat upon which
depend the pulsation, the liveliness or sluggishness of our circulation. It may thus be
comprehended that our subconsciousness is directly connected with the circulation of our
blood. A slower or a more rapid circulation depends primarily upon the subconscious powers
of the individual.
An influence upon the demonic or beneficent beings inhabiting the outer world can only
be exerted if the human being has visions, imaginations, or some other sort of subconscious
perception of a certain clarity. That is to say, if they really stand before him; only then can
his sympathy or antipathy set in motion subconscious powers that act like magic in this outer
world. This distinct standing-before-the-soul in the subconsciousness is not necessary for the
effect upon our own inner organism as described above. (See diagram bc). Whether the
person in question knows or does not know which imaginations correspond to a certain
sympathy, this sympathy nevertheless affects the circulation of his blood, his breathing
system, and his etheric body.
Let us assume that during a certain period of his life someone has a tendency to have
feelings of nausea. If he were subject to visions or had imaginative sight, he would recognize
these visions and imaginations as perceptions of his own being; they would appear projected
into space, but would, nevertheless, belong to his own inner world. They would represent the
sort of inner forces that produced the feelings of nausea. But even if he could not practice
this kind of self-knowledge and were simply nauseated, these inner forces would act upon
him nevertheless. They would influence the warmth of his blood and his forces of breathing.
It is actually the case that a human being possesses more or less healthy breathing and
circulation, according to the character of his subconscious feelings. The activity of his etheric
body and, indeed, all his functions, are dependent upon the world of feelings existing within
him.
When, however, the facts of the subconscious mind are really experienced by the soul, it
is shown not only that this connection exists, but that because of it a continuous effect is
produced upon the general human organism. There are certain feelings, certain states of
mind, that work down into the subconscious and, because they call forth definite conditions
of blood, of the breathing power, and of the etheric body, affect the organism beneficially, or
obstruct the entire life. Thus, as a result of what works down into the subconscious,
something is always arising or subsiding. The human being either deprives himself of his life
forces, or adds to them through what he sends over from his state of consciousness into the
subconscious conditions. If he takes pleasure in a lie he has told, if he is not horrified at it
this being the normal feeling about lies if instead he feels indulgence, or even satisfaction,

then what he feels about it is sent down into his subconscious. This injures the circulation,
breathing, and the forces of the etheric body. The result is that when this human being goes
through the gate of death he will have become stunted, poorer in forces, something will have
died in him which would have lived had he felt the normal horror and disgust at his lie. In the
latter case, his disgust would have worked against the lie, transformed itself into the forces
here indicated (see diagram), and he would have succeeded in sending something enlivening,
creative, into his organism.
We see from the fact that forces are continually transferred from the conscious to the
subconscious, that the human being contributes from this subconscious to his own
invigoration or deterioration. True, he is not yet strong enough in his present state to spoil out
of his soul, so to speak, any other parts of his organism except the circulation of his blood,
his breathing system, and etheric body. He cannot injure the coarser and more solid portions,
but is able to affect detrimentally one part only of his organism. What he has injured is most
distinctly visible when what remains of the etheric body has been influenced in this way; for
the etheric body is in constant connection with the warmth of the blood and the constitution
of the breath. It is impaired by evil feelings. Through good, normal, and sincere feelings it
gains, however, fertilizing, strengthening and maturing powers. We may say, therefore, that a
human being, through his subconscious activities works directly, creating or depleting, upon
the factual reality of his organism by descending from the level of his powerless surfaceconsciousness, into the region where something arises or perishes within his own soul, and
thereby in his entire organism.
We have seen because the subconscious may be experienced more or less consciously by
the soul and something may be known about it, that it achieves an influence in a sphere
which we may describe by an expression used throughout the Middle Ages as the elemental
world. A human being cannot enter directly into any kind of connection with this elemental
world; he can do so only indirectly through those experiences within himself which are
effects of the subconsciousness upon the organism. But when he has for a time learned to
know himself so as to be able to say: if you feel this, and send down this or that emanation
from your conduct into your subconsciousness, you destroy certain things or cripple them; if
you have other experiences and send down a different sort of reaction you improve yourself,
if a human being for a time observes within himself this ebb and flow of destructive and
beneficent forces, he will become ever riper in self-knowledge. This is the genuine form of
self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge gained in this manner is as definite in its effect as would be a scorpion's
sting on our toe every time we felt in the physical world the impulse to lie or were tolerant of
lying. We may be sure that one observing such an immediate result would cease to lie. If the
direct physical effect upon us should be a more or less serious mutilation it would resemble
what actually happens, although unperceived, through what is sent down into the
subconscious mind from these daily experiences. What is sent down because of our tolerant
attitude toward a lie is such that it does bite off and take away from us something the loss of
which injures us and which through our future karma we must regain. If we send down a
right feeling into the subconscious mind there is naturally an almost endless scale of
feeling which may descend we grow within ourselves, create new life forces in our

organism. Such an observation of our own up-building or deterioration is an immediate result

of true self-knowledge.
It has been recently reported that many do not understand how to distinguish a genuine
vision or imagination [This term as used by Rudolf Steiner, denotes a super-sensible faculty
(Tr.)] belonging to something objective from that which appears in space but is the creation
of our own subjective nature. Well, it cannot be said: write down this or that and you will
then be able to make the distinction. There are no such rules. One learns gradually through
development; and the ability rightly to distinguish that which belongs to ourselves alone from
that which, as outer vision, belongs to a genuine entity can be attained only when we have
endured the continual gnawing of deadly subconscious activities. We are then equipped with
a certain assurance. Then also the condition arises in which a human being, confronting a
vision or imagination may ask himself: Can you penetrate it through the power of your
spiritual sight? If the vision persists when this active force is turned upon it then it is an
objective fact, but if this concentrated gaze extinguishes the vision it is proved to be only his
own creation. Anyone who, in this respect, does not take precautions may have before him
thousands of pictures from the Akashic Record; if he does not test them to see whether or not
they can be extinguished by a resolutely active gaze, the akashic pictures which may give so
much information, count only as images developed by his own inner nature. It could happen,
for example, that such a person sees nothing beyond himself, externalizing himself in quite
dramatic images which he believes to extend throughout the entire Atlantean world,
throughout generations of human evolution but which may be, in spite of such apparent
objectivity, nothing but the projection of his own inner self.
When the human being has passed through the gate of death the obstructions no longer
exist by which something within himself becomes an objective vision. In ordinary life of the
present day what is subconsciously experienced, sent down by the individual human being
into his subconscious mind, does not always become vision and imagination. It becomes
imagination through correct training, and vision in the case of atavistic clairvoyance. When
the human being has passed through the gate of death his collective inner self becomes at
once an objective world. It is there confronting him, Kamaloca [Region of Burning Desire, or
of Cleansing Fire; also Purgatory.] being in essence nothing but a world built up around us
out of that which is experienced within our own soul. This condition is reversed only in
Devachan. [Devachan = Heaven]
Thus we can easily comprehend what has been said regarding the effect of sympathy or
antipathy present in visions, imaginations, inspirations and premonitions: that these act in all
cases upon the objective elemental world. Upon this point it has been stated that in the
physically incarnate personality only that which he has developed into vision and
imagination acts upon this elemental world. In the case of the dead the forces affect the
elemental world which were present in the subconscious mind, and which are always taken
along when a human being passes through the gate of death, so that everything experienced
after death influences in reality the elemental world. As surely as waves are aroused in a
stream by whipping it do the subconscious experiences transmit themselves after death to the
elemental world; as certainly as waves that are whipped extend in flattening circles, or a
current of air passes undeterred on its way, do these forces spread over the elemental world.

Therefore this world is constantly filled with that which is aroused by the content of the
subconscious mind which mortals take with them through the gate of death. The point
concerning us here is that we gain the ability to bring about the conditions necessary for sight
in the elemental world. One need not wonder at the clairvoyant when he recognizes quite
correctly that occurrences in that world are activities of the dead. It is even possible, as you
will see, to follow the effects of these after-death experiences into the physical world of
course under certain conditions. When the clairvoyant has gone through all that has been
described, and acquired the ability to perceive the elemental world, he reaches then after a
time a point where he may have strange experiences.
Let us suppose that a clairvoyant looks at a rose with his physical eyes, and receives a
sense impression. Let us further suppose that he has trained himself so that the color red
gives him a definite shade of feeling. This is necessary, for without it the process goes no
further. Unless colors and tones produce definite nuances of feeling when clairvoyance is
directed at an outside object, the sight progresses no further. Suppose that he gives the rose
away. Then, if he is not clairvoyant, what he felt would have sunk into his subconscious
mind, and would be working, either beneficially or detrimentally, upon his health, and so on.
But if he is clairvoyant, he would perceive just how the image of the rose acts in his
subconscious mind. That is to say, he would have a visionary picture, an imagination of the
rose. He would perceive at the same time as has been explained how his feeling about
the rose affected, either beneficially or detrimentally, his etheric or his physical body. He
would observe the action of all this upon his own organism. When he has this image before
himself he will be able by its means to exert an attractive force upon the being which we may
call the group-soul of the rose and which underlies its existence. He will be looking into the
elemental world, seeing the rose's group-soul in so far as it dwells there.
If the clairvoyant goes still further, has emerged from perception of the rose, has given it
away, has followed his own inner procedure in concentrating upon the rose and its results,
and has reached the point of seeing something of it in the elemental world then there
appears in place of the rose a wonderful shining image belonging to the elemental world.
Then, if the procedure has been followed up to this point, something special happens. The
clairvoyant can now disregard what is before him. He can then give the command to himself:
Do not look with your inner sight at what seems to be a living etheric being going out into
the world. Do not regard it! Then, strangely, the clairvoyant sees something which, passing
through his eye, shows him how the forces act which form it, how they issue from the human
etheric body and build up the eye. He sees the formative forces belonging to his own physical
body. He sees his own physical eye as he ordinarily sees an external object. That is in fact
something which may occur. A way may be followed from the outer object up to the point
where, in absolute inner darkness no other sense impressions being admitted what the
eye looks like is seen in a spiritual picture. The human being sees his own inner organ. He
has entered the region (see diagram), which is really formative in the physical world: the
creative physical world. It is first perceived by the clairvoyant in observing his own physical
organization. Thus he follows the way back to himself. What sent such forces into our eye
that we see it giving out rays of light which really express the essential nature of sight? Then
we see the eye surrounded by a sort of yellow glow; we see it enclosed within us. This was
brought fourth by the entire process that brought the human being finally up to this point.

The forces that may issue from a dead person follow the same course. The human being
takes with him the contents of his subconscious mind into the world that he inhabits after he
passes through the gate of death. Just as we enter our own physical eye, do the forces sent out
by the dead from the elemental world reenter the physical world. The deceased has perhaps
an especial longing for someone whom he has left behind. This longing, at the time lying in
the subconscious, becomes at once a living vision and in this way affects the elemental
world. What was only a vision in the physical world becomes a power in the elemental
world. This power follows the way indicated through the longing for the one who is living
and, if the conditions permit, it may create some disturbance in the physical world near the
living, who may notice rapping sounds or something of the kind. These are heard just like
any physical sounds. Occurrences of this kind, originating in this way, would be noticed
more frequently than is usually the case were people more observant of the times favorable to
such activities. The times of gradual going to sleep and of similar awaking are the most
favorable, but no attention is paid to them; yet there are few, if any, who have never received
during such moments of transition what were really manifestations of the super-sensible
world, ranging all the way from disturbing noises to audible words.
All this has been pointed out today in order to show both the reality and the nature of the
connection between human beings and the world. Impressions of an objective sense-world,
received by the ordinary consciousness, are powerless and without any real relation even
to that world; but as soon as the human experience descends into the subconscious the
relation with realities is established. The helplessness of the former consciousness passes
over into a delicate magic, and when the human being has passed through the gate of death
and is released from the physical body, his experiences are such that they are effective both
in the elemental world and, under favorable circumstances, even upon the physical plane
where they may be observed by the ordinary consciousness.
In describing what may take place, only the simplest example has been used, because it is
best to begin with the simplest case. Of course we shall since we have left ourselves time
for it work out also what we need to know in order to proceed to more complicated
matters which may lead us into the more intimate relations between the world and humanity.

Connections Between Organic Processes and the

Mental Life of Man
LECTURE BY DR. RUDOLF STEINER, DELIVERED AT DORNACH,
July 2, 1921

I shall have something to add to what was stated yesterday. I am reminding

you of something which most of you have already heard from me. When the human
being passes through death the physical body remains behind within the earthforces, the etheric body dissolves within the cosmic forces, and the human being
finds his continuing life, his existence, throughout the realms which lie between
death and a new birth. I said that we can follow up the formative forces within the human
being himself which project from one life into the other.
ODAY

We know that man is in essence a threefold being, with three independent members; I
mean, in regard to the formative forces of the physical body, the physical organization. We
have the system of the nerves and senses, which naturally is spread over the whole body,
but is located primarily in the head; we have the rhythmic system, including the rhythm of
the breath, circulation, and other rhythms; then we have the metabolic and limb
organization, which we consider as one because man's movements are intimately and
organically connected with his metabolism.
You know that each human being has a differently, an individually shaped head. If we
consider the forces which shape the human head of course you must not think of the
physical substances, but of the formative forces, of that which gives to the head its
physiognomy, its entire character, its phrenological expression if we consider these
forces, we find them to be those of the metabolic and limb system belonging to the previous
incarnation which have now become form. Thus we have in the head the transformation of
the earlier metabolic organism, and if we consider what we possess as a metabolic and limb
system in this present incarnation, these formative forces are found to be undergoing a
metamorphosis and shaping the head for our next incarnation. Therefore, if we understand
the building of the human form we can, as it were, look back, through a corresponding
development of the idea of metamorphosis, from the human head of today to the metabolic
system of the previous incarnation; and we can look from the present metabolic system
forward to the head formation of the next incarnation. [See: Guenther Wachsmuth,
Reincarnation as a Phenomenon of Metamorphosis, Anthroposophie Press, New York,
Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., London.]
This conception, which in our spiritual science and in the spiritual science of all ages
plays a certain role, these truths concerning repeated earth lives remain by no means without
substantiation, for whoever understands the human organism can read them directly from it.
But the present trend of natural science is as far removed as possible from embarking upon
the sort of investigation which would be necessary in this case. Of course one cannot
escape, through the study of anatomy and physiology alone, the foolish conclusion that the

liver and lungs may be investigated by the same method. One lays the liver beside the lungs
upon the dissecting table and regards them as organs of equal value, since both consist of
cells, and so on. In such a way one can obtain no knowledge of these things, and two
organic systems which are as different from one another as the lungs and liver cannot be
studied by an external comparison of their cellular configuration, as they must be according
to present ideas.
If we really wish to discover the pertinent details, methods must be employed through
which a conception of these things may be gained. If the methods which I have described in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment are sufficiently developed, then the
human power of cognition is greatly strengthened. I am repeating here certain statements
that I have already explained in lectures given last autumn in the Goetheanum building: Our
ordinary cognition is strengthened, through which we look out with our senses at our
environment, and through which we also examine our inner life, where we meet primarily
our thinking, feeling, and willing. And if we broaden our knowledge to the degree possible
through these exercises which have been often described, then our view of the outer world
changes, and in such a way that as a first result we realize the absolute folly of speaking of
atoms in the manner of present world-conceptions. What is behind sense perception, behind
its qualities, behind yellow and red, behind C sharp, g, and so forth, is not vibration but
spiritual essentiality. The outer world becomes ever more spiritual the further we press
forward in cognition, so that we really cease to take seriously all those constructions derived
from chemical or other ideas. All atomism is thoroughly driven from our minds when we
broaden our knowledge of the outer world. Behind the phenomena of the senses there is a
spiritual world.
If, on the other hand, through such an enlarged vision we look more deeply into our
inner life there arises not that confused mysticism which forms a justifiable transition,
pointed out and explained yesterday but there arises instead, when inner cognition is
developed, a psychic knowledge of the organs. We learn really to recognize our inner
organization. While our outer perception is more and more spiritualized, our inner
perception is, first of all, more and more materialized. Working in this inner direction, not
the nebulous mystic but the real spiritual researcher will become acquainted with each
single organ. He learns to know the differentiated human organism. We attain to the
spiritual world in no other manner than by this detour through the observation of our own
inner materiality. Unless we learn to know lungs, liver, and so forth, we do not gain on this
detour through our inner being any kind of spiritual enthusiasm which, freed of the
confusion of mysticism, works towards a concrete knowledge of the inner organs.
At all events, we gain a more exact knowledge of the configuration of the soul. To begin
with, we learn to give up the preconceived idea that our psychic constitution is merely an
adjunct of the sensory and nervous system. Only the world of representations is correlated
to the nervous system, the world of feeling not at all. The world of feeling is connected
directly with the rhythmic organization; and the world of will is adjusted to the metabolic
and limb system. If I will something, a corresponding activity is induced in my metabolic
and limb system, the nervous system being there only in order that concepts may be formed
in regard to what takes place in the will. There are no nerves of will, as I have often stated;

the division of nerves into sensory nerves and nerves of will is absurd. The nerves are all of
one kind, and the so-called nerves of will exist for no other purpose than the inner
observation of the processes of will. They too are sensory nerves.
If we study this thoroughly we come at last to consider the human organism in its
entirety. Take the lung organism, the liver organism, and so forth. Looking at them within,
you reach a point when you survey, as it were, the surface of the several organs, naturally
by means of spiritual sight. What exactly is this surface of the organs? It is nothing less than
a reflecting apparatus for the soul life. Our perceptions, and also what we elaborate in
thought are reflected upon the surface of all our inner organs; and this reflection makes
known our recollections, our memory during life. Thus, after we have perceived and
digested something in thought, it is mirrored upon the surface of our heart, liver, spleen, and
so forth, and what is thus thrown back constitutes our memories. And with a not very
extensive training you may notice how certain thoughts shine back in memory from the
whole organism. Very different organs take part in this. If it is a question of remembering,
let us say, very abstract conceptions, then the lung surface participates strongly. If it is a
question of thoughts colored by feeling, of thoughts which have a nuance of feeling, then
the surface of the liver is concerned. Thus we can describe very well, and in detail, how the
various organs take part in this reflection which makes its appearance as recollection, as the
power of memory.
When we concentrate upon the whole soul nature we must not say: In the nervous
system alone we have the organic correlate of the soul life, for the entire human organism is
the correlated organization for the life of the soul.
In this connection much knowledge, once present as instinct, has simply been lost sight
of. It still exists in certain words, but people no longer realize how wisdom is preserved in
words. For example, if anyone in the time of the ancient Greeks had a tendency to
depression when forming his recollections, they called it hypochondria, meaning a process
of cartilage-formation or ossification of the abdomen where, as a result of this rigidity,
reflection was brought about in such a way as to make memory a source of depression. The
entire organism is involved in these things. That is something which must be kept in our
minds.
When speaking of the power of memory, I drew attention to the surface of the organs. In
a certain sense everything experienced strikes the surfaces, is reflected, and that leads to
recollections. But something enters the organism at the same time. In ordinary life this is
transmuted, undergoes a metamorphosis, so that the organ produces a secretion. The organs
having this function are mostly glandular. They have an inner secretion, which during life is
changed into force. But not everything is thus transformed into organic metabolism, etc.
Certain organs take up instead something which becomes latent within them, and constitutes
an inner force; for example, all thoughts connected mainly with our perception of the outer
world through which we form images of outer objects. The forces developed in these
thoughts are, in a certain manner, stored up within the lungs.
You know that the inside of the lungs comes into activity through the metabolism, the

movement of the limbs, and these forces are so transmuted that during the life between birth
and death our lungs are somewhat of a reservoir of forces which are continually influenced
by the metabolic-and-limb system. We find that at the time of death such forces have been
stored up. The physical matter naturally falls away, but these forces are not wasted. They
accompany us through death, and throughout the entire life between death and a new birth.
And when we enter a new incarnation these forces which were in the lungs form our head
outwardly, stamp upon it its physiognomy. That which the phrenologist, the craniologist
study in the outer form of the skull would be found forecast within the lungs during the
previous incarnation.
You see how definitely, from life to life, the transmutation of forces may be followed
up. When this is done reincarnation will no longer be an abstract truth alone, but will be
studied concretely, as one can study physical things. And spiritual science becomes valuable
only when in this way we penetrate into concrete facts. If we speak only in generalities of
repeated earth lives, and so forth, then these are mere words. They have meaning only if we
can enter upon the single concrete facts.
If that which has been stored in the lungs is not controlled in the right way it is squeezed
out, as I said yesterday, much in the same way as a sponge is squeezed out, and then, from
that which should form the head only in the next incarnation, there arise mainly abnormal
phenomena which are usually called coercive thoughts, or described by some other term as
illusions. It is an interesting chapter of a higher physiology to study in lung cases the strange
notions which arise in the patient in the advanced stages of the disease. This is connected
with what I have just explained to you, with the abnormal pressing out of thoughts.
You will see undoubtedly that the thoughts which are pressed out under these conditions
are coercive because they already contain the formative forces. The thoughts which we
ought normally to have in consciousness should be pictures only, they must not contain a
formative force, and should not coerce us. Throughout the long period between death and
rebirth these thoughts do coerce us; then they are causative, formative. During earth life
they must not overwhelm us; they should use their power only during the transition from
one life to another. This is the point to be considered.
If you now study the liver in the manner I have just explained in regard to the lungs, you
will discover that there are concentrated in the same way within the liver all the forces
which in the next incarnation determine the inner disposition of the brain. Again by a detour
through the metabolic organism of the present life, the forces of the liver pass over, this
time not into the shape of the head, but into the inner disposition of the brain. Whether or
not someone is to be an acute thinker in the next incarnation depends upon how he behaves
in the present one, in order that thus, upon the detour through the metabolism there may
arise within the liver definite powers. But if these are ejected during the present incarnation
they lead to hallucinations or to powerful visions.
You see now concretely what I pointed out yesterday more theoretically: that these
things arise, having been squeezed out of the organs, then force their way into
consciousness. Out of the general hallucinatory life, which should extend from the end of

one incarnation into the next, they assert themselves within a single incarnation and, in this
way, make their abnormal appearance.
If you study in the same manner all that is connected with the kidneys and excretory
system you will discover that they concentrate within themselves the forces which, in the
following incarnation, influence the head organization preferably in the field of affective
emotions. The kidneys, the organs of excretion, bring forth in preparation for the next
incarnation essentially that which has to do with the temperamental tendencies in the
broadest sense, but by a detour through the head organization.
If these forces are squeezed out during the present incarnation they display all the
nervous symptoms connected with over-excitement of the human being, inner excitement
specifically, hypochondriacal symptoms, depression, in short all the conditions connected
particularly with this aspect of the metabolism.
In reality everything remembered with a strong ingredient of feeling or passion is also
connected with what is reflected from the kidneys. If we consider lung or liver reflections
we find them to be more often memory ideas, the memories proper. If we turn to the kidney
system we see what sort of lasting habits we have in this incarnation; and within the kidney
system are being prepared already the temperamental tendencies in the broadest sense
which, by a detour through the head organization, are intended for our next incarnation.
Let us study the heart with the same idea. For spiritual-scientific research, the heart is an
extraordinarily interesting organ. You know that our trivial science is inclined to treat
knowledge of the heart rather lightly. It looks upon the heart as a pump which pumps the
blood through the body. Nothing more absurd can be believed, for the heart has nothing to
do with pumping the blood. The blood is set in motion by the full agility of the astral body
and ego, and the heart's movement is only the reflex of these activities. The movement of
the blood is autonomous, and the heart only brings to expression the movement caused by
these forces. The heart is in fact only the organ that manifests the movement of the blood,
the heart itself having no activity in relation to this blood movement. The present natural
scientists become very angry if you speak of this. Many years ago, I think in 1904 or 1905,
on a journey to Stockholm I explained this to a scientist, a medical man, and he was furious
about the idea that the heart should not be regarded as a pump, that the blood comes into
movement through its own vitality, that the heart is simply inserted in the general blood
movement, participates with its beat, and so on.
Well, something is reflected from the surface of the heart which is not a matter of
memory or of habit. The life processes become spiritualized when they reach the outer
surface of the heart. For what is thrown back from the heart are the pangs of conscience.
That is to be taken simply, entirely as the physical aspect. The pangs of conscience which
radiate into our consciousness are that ingredient in our experiences which is reflected from
the heart. Spiritual cognition of the heart teaches us this.
But if we look into its interior we see gathered there forces which again stem from the
entire metabolic and limb organism, and because everything connected with the heart forces

is spiritualized that is also spiritualized within it which has to do with our outer life and
deeds. And however strange and paradoxical it may sound to anyone clever in the modern
sense, the fact remains that what is thus prepared within the heart are the karmic
propensities, the tendencies of our karma. It is revoltingly foolish to speak of the heart as a
mere pumping mechanism, for the heart is the organ which, through mediation of the limb
and metabolic system, carries what we understand as karma into the next incarnation.
You see, if we learn to know this organization we learn to differentiate and recognize its
connection with the complete life extending beyond birth and death. We look then into the
whole structure of the human being. We cannot speak of the head in relation to
metamorphoses, for the head is simply cast off, its forces having completed their activity in
the present incarnation. That which, however, exists in these four main systems, in lung,
kidney, liver, and heart, after making a detour through the metabolic and limb system,
passes over forming our head with all its predispositions and tendencies in the next
incarnation. We must seek within the organs of our body the forces which will carry over
into the next incarnation what we are now experiencing.
The human metabolism is by no means a mere simmering and seething of chemicals in a
retort which modern physiology describes. You need only to take a step in walking and a
certain metabolic effect is produced. The metabolism then taking place is not simply the
chemical process which may be examined by means of physiology and chemistry, but bears
within it at the same time a nuance of morality. And this moral nuance is in fact stored up in
the heart and carried over as karmic force into the next incarnation. To study the human
being in his entirety means to find in him the forces which reach over beyond earth life. Our
head itself is a sphere, and this form is modified only because the rest of the organism is
attached to it. Our head is formed out of the cosmos. When we go through death we must,
with the spiritual and soul organization which remains to us, adapt ourselves to the whole
cosmos. The whole cosmos then receives us. Up to the middle of the period between two
incarnations I have called it in one of my Mystery Dramas the Midnight of Existence
up to this time, if I may so express myself, we continue to spread out into our environment
and what thus goes out from us into the surrounding world gives the astral and etheric
configuration for the next incarnation.
All this, coming in essence from the cosmos, is determined by the mother. Through the
father and impregnation comes that which is formed in the physical body and in the ego.
This ego, as it is then, after the Midnight Hour of Being, passes over into an entirely
different world. It goes over into the world from which it can then follow the path through
the paternal nature. This is an extremely important process. The period up to the Midnight
Hour and the period from the Midnight Hour on both between death and rebirth are
really very different from each other. In my Vienna lecture cycle in 1914 I pictured these
experiences in their inner aspect. [Rudolf Steiner, Inner Nature of Man, Vienna, Easter
1914, six lectures.] If we look at them more from the outside, we must say: The ego is more
cosmic in the first half, up to the Midnight Hour, and prepares within the cosmos that which
then enters the next incarnation indirectly through the mother. From the Midnight Hour of
Existence on up to the next birth, the ego passes over into what the old Mysteries called the
netherworld; and on the detour through this netherworld it passes through impregnation.

There the two poles of humanity meet as it were, through mother and father, from the upper
world and from the netherworld.
What I am now saying was an intrinsic portion of the Egyptian Mysteries which came
out of the old instinctive knowledge, at least so far as is known to me. The Egyptian
Mysteries led particularly to knowledge of what they then called the upper and the lower
gods, the upper and the underworld of gods; and it may be said that in the act of
impregnation a polar equilibrium of the upper and the underworld of gods is brought about.
The ego between death and rebirth goes first through the upper and then through the lower
world. In olden times there was not the strange nuance which many connect today with
upper and netherworld. People of today nearly always look upon the upper as the good and
the netherworld as the bad. This nuance was not originally connected with these worlds;
they were simply the two polarities which had to participate in the general world creation.
Humanity in the direct experience of the upper world, viewed it more as the world of light,
the netherworld more as the world of gravity. Gravity and light were the two polarities
when expressed exoterically, and thus you see that such things may be described concretely.
In regard to the other organs I have told you that the overflowing of organic forces may
become hallucinatory life, especially that which is squeezed from the liver system. But if
the heart squeezes out its contents it is really the collected forces, ejected and brought into
consciousness, which call forth in the next incarnation that strange urge to live out one's
karma. If we observe how karma works, it may be said that a figurative description from the
human side might represent it as a kind of hunger and its assuagement.
That must be understood as follows: Let us proceed first from the standpoint of ordinary
life. Let us take a striking case: A woman meets a man and begins to love him. As that is
usually regarded, it is somewhat as though you were to cut out a small piece from the
Sistine Madonna, for example, a little finger from the Jesus boy and gaze at it. You have a
piece of the Sistine Madonna, but you do not see anything. Neither do you see anything if
you merely consider the fact that a woman meets a man and begins to love him. The matter
is not like that. You must trace it backwards. Before the woman met the man she had been
in other places in the world; before that she had been somewhere else, and still earlier
somewhere else again. You can find all sorts of reasons why the woman went from one
place to another. There is sense in it and, although it is naturally hidden in the subconscious,
there is a connection throughout, and we can, by going back into childhood, follow the way.
The woman in question and this is directed at no one in particular follows the path
from the beginning which culminates in the event under discussion. The human being at
birth hungers to do what he does, and he does not give up until he satisfies this hunger. The
pressing forward to a karmic event is the result of such an indescript spiritual feeling of
hunger. One is driven to it, as it were, by the whole self. The human being has forces within
him which lead to later events, in spite of the freedom which nevertheless exists, but acts in
a different field. Well, the forces which manifest in this way as hunger, leading to karmic
satisfaction, are concentrated in the heart; and when they are pressed out prematurely and
enter the consciousness during the present incarnation, they may create pictures which
produce a stimulus, and then frenzy results.

Frenzy is nothing but the outburst in this incarnation of a karmic force intended for the
subsequent incarnation. Think how differently we must accustom ourselves to look upon
world events, having understood these connections. People put questions such as: Why did
God create frenzy? Frenzy has plenty of good reasons for existence, but everything working
in this world may appear at the wrong time, and the displaced manifestation, due in this case
to Luciferic forces everything premature in the world is brought about by Luciferic
forces this precipitate appearance of karmic forces intended for a later incarnation
produces frenzy.
You see, what is to be carried over and continued in later incarnations may really be
studied in the abnormalities of the present life. You may easily imagine what an important
difference exists between what remains in our heart throughout our entire incarnation, and
the condition it will be in after it has gone through the long development between death and
rebirth, to appear then in a new life in the outer behavior of a human being.
However, if you look into your own hearts you can see pretty clearly, though of course
only in latency, not in a finished picture, what you will do in your next life. We need not
confine ourselves to the general statement: what will take effect karmically in the next life is
prepared in this one, but we can point directly to the receptacle in which the karma of
subsequent incarnations is stored. These are the things which must be concretely regarded if
we wish to practice genuine spiritual science.
You may imagine what enormous importance these things will attain when they are
studied and made a part of the general education. What does present medicine know of the
possibility of a liver or heart disease when it does not recognize the most important fact of
all, that is, the actual purpose of these organs! And it does not know that. It does not even
discover a correct connection between excitement hallucinations and the kidney system, nor
of the quiet hallucinations, those which simply appear and are present as I have just
explained, and are, so to say, liver hallucinations. Hallucinations which appear as though
crawling on a human being so that the victim wants to brush them off come from the kidney
system. These are the excitement hallucinations which have to do with the emotions and
temperament. From such symptoms a much more exact diagnosis can be made than by the
means in ordinary use today. And diagnoses based upon purely external evidence are very
uncertain in comparison with what they would be were these things studied with the abovementioned symptoms in mind.
Now all these things are connected with the outer world. The lungs, as an inner organ or
organic system, contain the compressed coercive thoughts with all that we receive and
concentrate in that organ through perception of outer objects. The liver has an entirely
different relation to the outer world. Because the lungs preserve the thought material they
are quite differently shaped. They are more closely connected with the earth element. The
liver, which conceals in particular the quietly appearing hallucinations, is connected with
the element of water; and the kidney system, paradoxical as it sounds, belongs to the
element of air. One thinks naturally that this ought to be the case with the lungs, but the
lungs as organs are connected with the earth element, though not with it alone. On the other
hand, the kidney system as an organ - belongs to the element of air, and the heart

system to that of warmth, being entirely formed out of that element. Hence, this element
which is the spiritual one is also the one which takes up the predisposition of our karma into
the delicate warmth structures of the warmth organism.
Since the human being as a whole stands in a relation with the outer world, you can
readily realize that the lungs have a particular relation to the outer world in connection with
the earth element, and the liver in regard to the watery element. If you examine the earthly
qualities of plants you will find in them the remedies for diseases which originate in the
lungs. (This is of course to be considered in its broadest implications.) If you take what
circulates in the plant, its circulation of juices, you will have the remedy for all disturbances
connected with the liver. Thus a study of the reciprocal relation of the organs with the outer
world offers in fact the foundation for a rational therapy.
Our present therapy is a jumble of empiric notes. One can reach a really rational therapy
only by studying in this way the reciprocal relations between the domain of the human
organs and the outer world. Of course the voluptuous longing for subjective mysticism must
then be overcome. If the aim is to reach no farther than the well-known little divine flame
of Meister Eckhardt, and so on; if only the outpouring of inner delight is the aim, and the
beholding of beautiful images without penetrating this element to the definite configuration
of the inner organs, then important therapeutic knowledge cannot be acquired. For this
knowledge is gained upon the path of genuine mysticism which advances to the concrete
reality of the inner human organism.
We learn, by the detour through this inner knowledge, to discern the passage through the
incarnations. In just the same way, when we regard the outer world, in penetrating this
carpet of the sense impressions, we attain to the spiritual. We rise into the world of the
spiritual hierarchies, which we did not reach through the detour of inner mysticism. The
hierarchies are found through a more profound contemplation of the outer world. Upon this
path there follow results which may be first expressed by analogies; yet they are not mere
analogies, for there exist deeper connections and relations.
We breathe, do we not? And I recently reckoned for you the number of inhalations
during twenty-four hours. If we count eighteen breaths to the minute we have in an hour 60
x 18, and in twenty-four hours 25920 inhalations in a day and night.

Let us take another rhythm in the human being, the rhythm of day and night. When you

awake in the morning you draw into your physical and etheric bodies the astral body and
ego. This is also breathing. In the morning you inhale the astral body and ego, and when
you fall asleep at night you exhale them again; thus one complete breath in 24 hours, in one
day. That is 365 such breaths in a year. And take the average age of a human being, 72
years, and you have approximately the same result. If I had not started with 72, but
somewhat lower, I should have reached the same figure. That is to say, if you take the entire
earthly life of a human being, and count each single day, each falling asleep and awakening,
as one breath, you have then in an entire life as many inhalations and exhalations of the
astral body and ego as you have in and out breathings in 24 hours. You make in the course
of your life as many in and out breathings of the astral body and ego as you make daily in
your in and out breathing of air. These rhythms correspond absolutely, and show us how
man is fitted into the cosmos. The life of one day from sunrise to sunset, as a single circuit,
corresponds with an inner sunrise and sunset that lasts from birth to death.
You see the human being becomes a part of the whole world organism; and I should like
to close these considerations by pointing out to you an idea, asking you to think about it
rather thoroughly, and to make it a subject of meditation. Science today postulates a cosmic
process, and within this cosmic process the earth once arose. In the end the earth, when the
entropy is fulfilled, will be consumed in cosmic heat. If today we form for ourselves a
concept such as the Copernican, or any modification of it, then we take into consideration
only the forces which formed the earth out of the primeval nebula, and human life really
becomes a sort of fifth wheel on the wagon; for the geologist and the astronomer do not
consider mankind. It does not occur to them to seek in any sense within mankind itself the
cause of a future world organism. The human being is everywhere present in this cosmic
process, but he is the fifth wheel on the wagon. The world process takes its course, but he
has nothing to do with it. Consider it in this way: the world process comes to an end, ceases,
is dispersed in space. It stops, and the causes of what ensues are always within the human
being himself, inside his skin; there they find their continuation.
The inception of what is now the world lies far back within man of primeval ages. It is
thus in reality. The books of ancient wisdom tell us this in their own language, and the
saying of Christ-Jesus points to these things: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
words shall not pass away. All that constitutes the material world is dissolved, but that
which issues from the spirit and soul and is expressed in words survives the destruction of
the earth and lives on into the future. The causes of the future exist within us, and need not
be investigated by geologists. We should seek them among the inner forces of our organism
which pass over into our next earth-life first, but then continue into other metamorphoses.
Hence when you search for the future of the world you must look within man. Everything
external perishes utterly.
The nineteenth century erected a barrier against this knowledge, and this barrier is
called: the law of the conservation of energy. This law carries forward the forces of man's
environment; but all these will dissolve and disappear. Only that which arises within
humanity itself can create the future. The law of the conservation of energy is the most false
imaginable. In reality its result is simply to make mankind a fifth wheel in the creative
process of the cosmos. Not the statement of the law of the conservation of energy is correct,

but that other saying: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
These two are in diametrical contrast; and it is simply thoughtlessness when today certain
members of this or that positive denomination wish to be believers in the Bible and, at the
same time, adherents of the theories of modern physics. This is sheer dishonesty which
claims today to be something culturally creative. This dishonesty must be driven from the
field of creative culture which it actually opposes if we are to emerge from these
forces of decline into ascending powers.