The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. On the Paths to Understanding the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul

Ladies and gentlemen!

[ 1 ] What I have to present to you today regarding spiritual science, as it is understood here, certainly cannot offer anything that might be convincing from the outset. The aim is simply to offer some food for thought—more or less to draw attention to what is intended by this spiritual science, as it is understood here.

[ 2 ] It is precisely those who stand on the ground of this spiritual research who know that many prerequisites are necessary to enter into those paths of spiritual insight and spiritual activity that make it possible to regard what is the very essence of this spiritual research—I would say—as no longer merely a vain fantasy or a daydream. And it goes almost without saying that such insights take hold first and foremost when one receives the initial impulses precisely from this scientific direction.

[ 3 ] The starting point, ladies and gentlemen, for this spiritual research is that it must hold the view that, in the realm of spiritual life, the impulses inherent in human development have, as of our time, created conditions similar to those that have existed for the past three to four centuries—since the dawn of the modern scientific worldview—with regard to nature and its phenomena.

[ 4 ] In truth, this spiritual research aims to be nothing other than a genuine continuation of the scientific way of thinking. And it seeks to arrive at findings regarding psychological and spiritual facts—based on the same concepts of truth—indeed, I would say, or perhaps better put—based on the same attitude toward truth, the same attitude toward knowledge—just as the natural sciences arrive at findings regarding natural phenomena and their interrelationships. However, this also requires an understanding of something for which one must first acquire a spiritual understanding.

[ 5 ] Anyone who holds the—and I say this explicitly—justified view that the methods of the natural sciences and the basic, intuitive conceptions of nature have gradually become something of a model for the practice of science will all too easily succumb to the belief that all research, absolutely all research into reality—including research into mental and spiritual life—must proceed in exactly the same way as research into nature and the pursuit of its results. If, for this very reason, spiritual research must take a different path than the external natural sciences, this is certainly something that cannot be readily acknowledged from the outset.

[ 6 ] Now, after these introductory remarks, distinguished guests, I do not wish to dwell any longer on abstract matters, but would like to get straight to the heart of the matter.

[ 7 ] The first point to be made is that spiritual research, as understood here, is indeed based on observation—on the observation of facts; indeed, in a certain sense, one could even say it is based on the conduct of experiments—but only in such a way that all observation and all experimentation take place within the innermost life of the soul itself. It cannot be for spiritual science the way experiments are conducted in a laboratory, nor the way observations are made in zoology, botany, and so on—using the external senses and the intellect, which is bound to the brain. What guides the spiritual researcher to insights into spiritual-soul life are pure, inner experiences. And here, too, it is difficult to understand that purely inner insights can completely shed the character of all that is subjective and individual and become truly objective—that is, become such that they can provide insights into facts.

[ 8 ] The field of research, then, is not something that can be perceived by the external senses; nor is it something that can be understood in any way—or, to put it better, grasped—by the intellect as it is employed in ordinary science. Rather, spiritual research must first bring forth the powers and abilities within the human soul that lead to the observation of spiritual facts in much the same way that the external senses—and the external senses equipped with instruments—lead to the observation of facts and to external experiments.

[ 9 ] The point is that the first thing that must be developed is an inner capacity of the soul that lies latent—dormant, one might say—in both ordinary everyday life and the ordinary scientific method. In all ordinary life and in all scientific life, this first capacity is [nevertheless] not actually applied. And one can initially characterize it externally by saying: Everything one does in terms of external handling, external observation, and thinking about external observation in everyday life and in ordinary science leads to a certain result. It leads to one’s forming a mental image—through a concept or idea, or whatever one wishes to call it—of what one believes one has recognized as the laws of nature. And then, once one has reached this point—by exerting the soul in the process of observation, experimentation, and reflection—and arrived at results, one has reached a certain conclusion, a kind of end, with regard to external life and ordinary science.

[ 10 ] What is regarded there as an end, what is considered complete in terms of external development and external life—that, esteemed audience, is, in essence, only the beginning for spiritual science as it is understood here. It is from this point that all further development of the inner powers of the soul must begin. This means that the methods used in conventional science, the results obtained, and the unique experiences of thought to which one arrives—these serve as preparatory steps, preparing the human powers of the soul for what they must become if one wishes to look into the spiritual world. Thus, one must begin the development of spiritual research at the point where conventional scientific inquiry ends.

[ 11 ] In earlier lectures I have had the privilege of delivering in this city, I have already spoken at some length about the fundamental principles of how the soul must train itself internally in order to reach the point where it can observe the spiritual world. However, since there are many esteemed listeners here today who were not present at previous lectures, I must—at least very briefly—mention some fundamental points regarding what the soul must do to arrive at true spiritual research.

[ 12 ] Of course, ladies and gentlemen, I can mention here only the most fundamental principles; you will find everything else in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* or in the second part of my so-called *Secret Science*. There, it is explained in detail what inner processes—purely spiritual and soul-related processes—the soul must undertake in order to achieve what I now wish to discuss only in principle.

[ 13 ] First and foremost, this concerns a very specific development of human thinking capacity. I am not saying “thinking,” but rather “thinking capacity.” And essentially, one can say: What is at stake is such a development of human thinking ability—that this thinking is internally strengthened and empowered, and thus not only grows in intensity compared to ordinary thinking, but also, as it gradually becomes empowered, takes on a different quality in a certain sense, becomes more scientific, and develops into an entirely different ability.

[ 14 ] Technically, what the soul is to undertake here is called concentration or meditation. But I ask you to note that in spiritual research, as understood here, these terms do not entirely correspond to what is usually meant by them; [I therefore ask you to note] that here these terms refer only to what is about to be briefly explained.

[ 15 ] The point is that—while in ordinary life and in ordinary science a person’s mental faculties extend across a certain field, moving from one thing to another, and over time shifting from one to another—the point is that, in order to prepare oneself for spiritual research, one must concentrate on a single point of perception, I would like to say first of all. One’s entire life of imagination and perception must, so to speak, be strengthened through the constant exercise of inner willpower—which one must first train oneself to use—as I have shown in the books mentioned; it must be practiced and thereby strengthened.

[ 16 ] I will begin by mentioning just one of the principles through which this can happen. Let us—as I said, in a purely technical sense—place a certain idea at the center of one’s imaginative life, in—as one might say—one’s overall consciousness.

[ 17 ] It is not necessary—indeed, it is even better—not to take a concept that has an external truth content. It does not matter at all whether the concept one takes means anything in the external world, whether it represents something or expresses something. For what matters is the exercise of thinking, not—at first—the knowledge of anything. Therefore, it is best to use—let us say—allegorical, symbolic ideas. Their truth value is irrelevant. What matters are the powers one develops through the inner exertion of one’s thinking. Let me give an example.

[ 18 ] Let’s say someone imagines: a flood of light, and within that flood of light, wisdom. Certainly, this is not an image that one can initially say signifies anything in terms of an external truth—an external truth to which one is accustomed. But that is not really what matters; what matters is that one now concentrates all one’s powers of thought, all one’s imagination, on this one idea, and learns to persevere in it—that is, to direct one’s entire soul in this one direction.

[ 19 ] The reason why the truthfulness of a statement is irrelevant becomes clear from what follows. I would like to use an analogy, distinguished audience, to illustrate what really matters. Let us suppose that we perform an external task—some kind of activity—an activity that is part of our trade, our business, through which we seek to make our way in the world. We perform this task—today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow—often the very same task. Everyone knows, however, that what happens here is not merely the result of our action, but that our skill grows, that we become better and better at the task, and that our activity and our ability increase. This is a side effect. When it comes to the manifestations of ordinary life, we know quite well that this is a side effect.

[ 20 ] This accompanying aspect of thinking is what matters. One can completely disregard what one thinks during the preparation. For spiritual research, it is essential to learn to gradually focus one’s attention on this inner intellect, on this inner development of the power of thought.

[ 21 ] So I say explicitly: What matters is not the intellectual aspect, nor the acumen of ordinary logic; one [possesses] that acumen from the outset if one is predisposed to it. What matters is that one becomes aware of this intensification of inner thinking power, that one learns to grasp it as something real at work.

[ 22 ] Such exercises, ladies and gentlemen, are by no means effective if they are done only temporarily. Certainly, some people believe that if they have spent some time doing such exercises, they must achieve a result. It also takes different amounts of time for different people to achieve a result: for some, months; for others, years.

[ 23 ] There is no need to spend much time on the details. We will see shortly why this is not necessary. In fact, I would say that spending a lot of time each day on such exercises is not always beneficial. But the point is specifically that such exercises are repeated over and over again—to the extent that the same meditative content arises again and again in the soul—so that, little by little, the meditative content itself becomes quite irrelevant, and the activity itself, aimed at strengthening and invigorating the mind, comes to the fore in a very special way.

[ 24 ] Ladies and gentlemen, once you have undertaken such exercises for a while—practicing them earnestly every day and mustering that energy—which you will soon come to realize is necessary when performing such exercises—you will, after some time, come to notice that thinking actually becomes something entirely different. Above all, the force at work in thinking is experienced as something much more real inwardly than what exists in the ordinary physical [world] or in ordinary external research.

[ 25 ] However, at first one has strange experiences—experiences that can be discouraging. And inner courage is, after all, necessary to continue progressing in the appropriate way. This discouragement consists, for example, in the fact that, precisely by doing such exercises, one notices how, little by little, one becomes more and more—one might even say—a slave to those thoughts one once formed. Reminiscences of the soul’s life, memories of the soul’s life—they gradually come to the surface more and more. And one also feels that by contemplating these—such reminiscences of the soul’s life—one lives with one’s soul in the midst of an army of thoughts consisting entirely of reminiscences. The point is that one continues nonetheless; for one then gradually reaches a certain point—only experience can truly shed light on these matters—one reaches a very specific point. One comes to have, more and more, a comprehensive overview of the life—the life one has lived since one began to think consciously—before one’s eyes. Truly, endless details emerge—details one had never even noticed before! One learns something quite remarkable: one learns just how much one actually goes through in life without one’s consciousness being so intensely engaged that one pays attention to it. Much of what has remained unconscious and subconscious now comes to the fore; but one does not recognize it as such.

[ 26 ] Going into details would take us too far afield. But the experience is that one not only learns to recognize one’s conscious inner life—which one has lived through—but also, in fact, many other things, and ultimately, as in a glimpse, everything that is at work in one’s subconscious inner life. One learns, so to speak, to see through oneself. But one discovers that, particularly in one direction, the entire power of thought—the power of thought itself—changes, and that for that activity—which now emerges from thinking like a rebirth of a certain inner power—one completely loses—or rather, never actually possessed—what is called “memory” in ordinary thinking and in ordinary scientific thinking.

[ 27 ] This is an experience one must have. The experiences that press themselves upon us then pass before the soul; but one knows: they pass by like fleeting experiences, which are characterized precisely by the fact that they do not imprint themselves on the memory in the same way as experiences gained through the senses or ordinary imagination. They flood past, and one could not have them a second time unless something else were to occur. And I ask that you bear this in mind.

[ 28 ] What occurs is something one did not know at all beforehand. We are familiar with memory; we know that memory retains thoughts—I do not wish to go into the inner workings of memory here—but memory does retain thoughts. And something that was once an experience of thought reemerges at a later time—I would say—from the depths of the soul’s life, crossing the threshold and entering consciousness.

[ 29 ] This is not the case with these experiences that one can have in this way; rather, it is somewhat different: what one experiences—the imaginative experience—cannot be evoked again at all; but the activity, the inner soul activity, that one performed while the experience was taking place can be. One can return only to one’s own activity. One can relive what one did inwardly in the soul while having the experience. And one knows this quite precisely. And what matters is that, instead of memory—which one now recognizes as a faculty for external physical life—one acquires a completely different faculty: the faculty of an inner tendency to evoke these inner activities once more; and: that through the evocation of these inner activities, the experience once again presents itself to the soul—not merely as an ordinary memory, but as something that approaches us anew. Perhaps you would like to be led from ordinary soul life into this entirely different kind of soul life, esteemed audience.

[ 30 ] And let me—really just by way of comparison, not to prove anything, but simply to explain—let me cite something that is not exactly what is meant here, but which, in a sense, gave rise to what is meant here.

[ 31 ] The poet Grillparzer had already developed the idea—and even the details—for his poem “The Golden Fleece”; it was fully formed in his mind; but he had forgotten it. — This is a well-known phenomenon; one familiar to anyone who is thoroughly acquainted with Grillparzer’s biography. He had forgotten it, and he truly could no longer recall what he had conceived as his poetic treatment of “The Golden Fleece.” — And lo and behold, when he once again played some piano pieces—which, as it turned out, he had played back when he was conceiving *The Golden Fleece*—the content of *The Golden Fleece* once again came to the forefront of his mind. That is to say: When he engaged in the same activity that had taken place in his soul during the time he was conceiving the “Golden Fleece,” what had been in his soul back then resurfaced. It was, therefore, the activity itself that actually emerged once more within him.

[ 32 ] And this is essentially what is meant here, in a broader sense. So we are not dealing with a memory, but with a rekindling of the activity and a new experience.

[ 33 ] This is the change that occurs in the inner powers of the soul when such exercises are performed.

[ 34 ] A second point to be made specifically regarding this matter, ladies and gentlemen, is that one now experiences how what normally takes place in one’s thought life becomes something entirely different. One now truly comes to know a soul experience that one did not know before. When one normally faces one’s thought life, one has the awareness that these thoughts must be something that is merely of an imaginal nature. If the thoughts we form about the external world were not of an imaginal nature, well, then they would not actually help us; for we do not want to gain through them anything that is added to the external world—even if in an epistemological sense, but that is not the issue here, and I do not wish to speak of it now—but rather something that merely faithfully reproduces this external world. As little as possible must these thoughts be anything new in relation to the external world.

[ 35 ] That is, after all, the point of recent research into truth: to treat thoughts critically so that they do not contribute anything to external reality. So that one has the feeling that, in one’s inner life, one simply has the external world as an image, as if it were something passive.

[ 36 ] But this comes to an end as soon as one experiences the forces that—as mentioned—emerge from the life of thought through a kind of consciousness, in the sense intended here. It must be said: By experiencing these new inner soul capacities, one enters a world that differs from the life of thought precisely in that it is experienced as a reality—a surging, living reality.

[ 37 ] And that is also—I would say—the harrowing experience that the soul must endure. When one describes these things, it really does look as if one were describing mere fantasy. Yet anyone who is compelled to describe facts otherwise unknown must not be deterred by the description of what seems unbelievable. If one were to imagine that the thoughts that are otherwise passively present in consciousness begin to live inwardly, to have a life of their own, then one has roughly what the spiritual researcher, who has just been mentioned, is getting at.

[ 38 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have described to you—I would say—in simple terms something that is extraordinarily significant to experience in the soul, because it is truly connected, step by step, with inner upheavals and inner experiences that bring something new and surprising time and again.

[ 39 ] One can know that, to a certain extent, one has proceeded precisely in the direction described so far: when one has a very specific experience—an experience that has, in fact, been described by a certain word for millennia, a word whose full meaning is understood only by those who know something of this experience.

[ 40 ] You see, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is indeed such that it can only emerge now; just as, for example, Galileo’s view of nature and the Copernican view first emerged, but out of different spiritual forces into the epoch of humanity where the souls had to act differently. There is always something that led certain people, who had prepared themselves for it, to look into the spiritual world. And such people—about whom little is known in external science or external history—already knew how to designate the point one reaches when proceeding along the path meant here. And they describe this point with the words: “Man arrives”—but I emphasize here expressly: he arrives there initially only through his inner soul life—“man arrives at the gate of death.”

[ 41 ] And this experience, which is referred to as “arriving at the gate of death,” is a deeply moving one, for one now comes to know it precisely as an inner experience. And from the moment one reaches this point, one knows through inner experience—one knows through inner experience—what it means to engage in an activity that is no longer carried out through the instrument, through the tool of the physical body; one knows from that moment on that one can weave and live through spiritual-soul experiences in something that has separated from the physical body, something that, in essence, proves to be detached from the human physical body.

[ 42 ] Whatever one calls it—since names usually give rise to the most controversy, let us set that aside entirely—whatever one calls it, it does not matter. But if, from a certain point onward, one perceives that within the human being who is subject to external science—that is, to external sensory observation [...], that within this physical human being there is another, finer human body—“body” is perhaps used somewhat improperly; one can apply “body” only to the physical—that a finer organization is contained within it, and that thus the measures now taken in the life of the soul have led to the detachment of this inner organization from the coarser, physical organization. However, one now stands before the outer physical body just as one would otherwise stand before an external object or an external event observed with the senses, and in relation to which one is the one who holds it in one’s hand. Now one stands before one’s own physical organization. Now one knows: It is you who have stepped out of your physical body and are surveying your physical body. Everything that took place before now unfolds within it. — We will see shortly that this is very important. And because, as one who leads an independent inner life in relation to the outer physical body, one has this outer physical body beside oneself as an external thing, one experiences this as approaching the gate of death—although this is meant theoretically as an experience— [one] knows what it means to live outside the body. One learns to recognize the phenomenon of dying. One learns to recognize that something lives within the human being, even when this physical body has been surrendered to the element of earth, in inner experience, in inner perception.

[ 43 ] But first of all, if the exercises that have been described were to lead to nothing other than what I have explained, a significant inner imbalance—indeed, a danger, not of a physical nature, but a danger concerning error and truth—would arise if, parallel to what I have described, something else were not taking place within the soul. But if one performs the exercises exactly as they are described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, then the very manner in which these exercises are carried out prevents one from [arriving] in this one-sided way—as I have described—at what is referred to with a weighty term: arriving at the gate of death. For if the exercises were to reach precisely this point in the manner I have indicated—and if nothing else were happening in parallel—one would find oneself unable to sustain this inner experience. From the very beginning, it would feel like being consumed; one would simply feel it slipping away, falling away. That is precisely what one would feel as long as one lives in one’s physical body: [This physical body is constantly willing, always capable of drawing life to itself, and yet it cannot bring it forth.] In short: The attempts to experience the spiritual world would be continually unsuccessful attempts.

[ 44 ] Meditation and concentration, my dear friends, must not lead solely to a strengthening and invigoration of thought; rather, this must go hand in hand with a strengthening of the power of the will and of feeling—the emotional strength of the soul. That which resides in the will must also change in the course of the exercises. And if the exercises described in the aforementioned book are performed correctly, this will indeed happen.

[ 45 ] I would like to point out once again how the soul’s volitional disposition, its volitional mood, must change. Just as we experience the will in everyday life—I would say—though the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter for our consideration in this case—I would say that, for our perception, the will always slips away into activity when we exert our will to move our hands, to walk, or to perform some external action.

[ 46 ] Philosophers know this very well; otherwise, they would not discuss the will so much. The concept of the will always slips into action. One places it before what the will accomplishes. But one cannot actually trace the will as it flows into action. As I said, to put it briefly, this is a very important, a very significant aspect of inner spiritual life, which could be discussed philosophically in great depth if there were enough time—if there were sufficient time, as I have said.

[ 47 ] The point now is to truly bring this will—which otherwise always slips away in life, this will that is constantly slipping away—into the contemplation of the soul; to truly learn to contemplate the will, to truly learn to have it before oneself—in a spiritual sense: to have it before oneself.

[ 48 ] This can be achieved, distinguished audience, by now also engaging in exercises through which we observe the inner processes of soul life in the same way that we otherwise observe natural phenomena. [Just consider, for example, how different what might be called “self-observation of nature”—which we do, after all—is from the ordinary, external observation of nature.] We observe nature in its processes; for we are always inclined to separate from the observation of natural processes everything that moves us merely subjectively. Here we are always inclined—compelled by objectivity—to arrive at a certain kind of objectivity ourselves. If one now practices not only observing natural processes objectively, but—it is strange that this is precisely what is necessary, yet it is necessary—but elevating what one might otherwise call the theoretical, cold aspect of nature observation [so that one now] does so with heartfelt interest, with deep inner interest, to the point of heartfelt love for natural processes [...]; so that [one now], even while objectively immersing oneself in the laws of nature—including the laws governing mineral processes, plant growth, and animal processes—by immersing oneself in them, one also develops an inner shared experience, a step-by-step accompaniment of what unfolds as a lawful process, just as one would otherwise do only in relation to a being of the world. When one learns to observe natural phenomena with the deepest engagement, without allowing one’s objectivity to be clouded—when one remains as objective as only the external natural scientist can be, and yet is able to accompany this sober study of nature with an inner experience, I would say: by slipping inwardly into what one is investigating—then one attains the ability to adopt a completely different attitude toward the will than in ordinary life and in ordinary science.

[ 49 ] But as I said, this is a slow process. One must cultivate within the innermost life of the soul what is actually meant here. And from that, one can acquire a very specific ability in this way. At a certain stage, at a point one reaches there, one notices the following.

[ 50 ] I must start with an aspect of everyday life to illustrate what one notices within oneself. Isn’t it true that in everyday life, this is how it goes: We fall asleep; we wake up. Our everyday life unfolds in this rhythm. As we fall asleep—I need not describe the individual phenomena of falling asleep or waking up, but everyone knows what happens in their own life during the transition from conscious waking life to subconscious or unconscious sleep—what happens within them occurs without their volition, at least initially. Volition plays only a very minor role in this rhythm in everyday life.

[ 51 ] If one practices in this way, as I have described, one will be able to bring about at will that transition—which otherwise always occurs involuntarily—between the state of sleep and the state of wakefulness, between wakefulness and sleep. That is to say: to be able to command oneself to bring about that cessation of all sensory activities, of all manifestations of the mental, imaginative, and sensory processes that take place during the course of the day; to command a cessation of the activities that are otherwise simply there, and yet not to slip into a state of unconsciousness, as occurs in sleep, but rather to step out of one’s physical body once again in full consciousness, to enter a state that would be—again, it is strange to describe it, but this strangeness must be described precisely because it is a reality— one attains a state that would exist if one were to [wake up] fully conscious, but does not wake up by returning to one’s body and seeing and hearing external reality through the eyes and ears, but rather by holding one’s body outside of oneself and remaining in that in which one is—for one now realizes that during sleep one has essentially stepped out of oneself—, one wakes up outside the body, in that state one is in between falling asleep and waking up, but is consciously present within it.

[ 52 ] Through this act of will, one has gained the ability to strengthen the will in such a way that one is consciously present in one’s true nature—a state in which one is otherwise unconscious, between falling asleep and waking up—by attaining this parallel guidance of the soul forces through meditation and concentration. The first ability one has acquired takes shape [by deriving something new from the power of thought and something new from the will]. And only now does one live outside the body, with the ability to truly perceive the spiritual world around oneself—a world that is always there, that is there for everyone, and to perceive which one must first train oneself, train oneself inwardly, and practice oneself.

[ 53 ] Once again, it is a profoundly subjective experience that marks the transition in one’s inner life toward this culture of the will. Once one has first—I would say—in theory, but in a theory experienced firsthand, learned to grasp what dying must mean, one now comes to know something as the will transitions to an inner experience outside the body. One now learns to recognize that which, at the foundation of all being and all becoming, is pain and suffering. One becomes acquainted, in an unexpected and shattering way, with the pain that pervades all existence. One learns to recognize how unwise it is to ask why all existence is based on pain.

[ 54 ] Existence—if one observes it and has a heart and a sense for existence—esteemed attendees, it is beautiful and grand and sublime here and there, and one would not be “human” in the fullest sense of the word if one had no sense of the grandeur and beauty of existence. But just as the flower springs from the root in a plant, so must everything that is beautiful and grand in life arise from the foundation of pain and suffering. And one comes to realize that it is precisely the most beautiful things that must rise from this soil of pain and suffering. One consistently experiences an inner cosmic process. One also comes to recognize that anyone who might wish to criticize—claiming that wise providence did not arrange things as well as he believes in his [own] wisdom—cannot, even without the foundation of pain, bring about the corresponding result, one comes to realize that this demand is roughly equivalent to someone demanding of a mathematician that he intervene to ensure that the sum of the three angles in a triangle does not equal 180 degrees. This is connected to a law—to inner laws. But one now comes to know these laws. And thus, by—as I would say—gaining a new understanding of inner soul life from the concepts of pain and death, one has drawn out of thought and will those entities of the soul which, as one now lives within them, show one what one is like in the spiritual world, what lies beyond birth—or let us say conception—and beyond death in the human being.

[ 55 ] Now the idea that we were something before we were born—or, let’s say, conceived—ceases to be merely theoretical. Likewise, the idea that we will still be something once we have passed through the gates of death ceases to be merely theoretical.

[ 56 ] And in the same way, another conception with very concrete content will be fulfilled. There is nothing speculative left in these concepts; rather, the soul has developed powers within itself to experience vividly what one might call its immortality—to experience within itself those powers and beings that pass through birth and death.

[ 57 ] But something else is also experienced. What is experienced, dear friends, is that one comes to know—by learning to observe the will—that in an intimate way one learns to recognize something within the will—yes, what one comes to recognize there, when characterized in this way, appears as if one were merely breaking down an image, a sum, or something imagined; but that is not the case. When one truly succeeds in having the will within oneself as has been indicated, then one realizes: Within this will lives the essential core of the human being; a second human being lives within it—but a conscious second human being, a human being with an entirely different consciousness still, whom we carry within us. As I said, this is not a mental image; nor is it a reality that we possess within us in the same way that we physically possess a heart; yet as true as it is in its unfolding, there is an active inner human being in our inner will who is conscious—one whom we now set aside as an external observer, a spectator; but such a spectator that we recognize we can unite his consciousness with our own only when we come to know that power of thought which is learned in the manner just described.

[ 58 ] Thus, in what one finds in the will, one comes to know a second human being; but a human being—as observation reveals, as experience and inner feeling reveal—one comes to know a human being who lives spiritually and soulfully within the human being, just as the plant seed lives physically within the plant and flower, just as it lives in the plant as a seed, and one knows: within this plant seed lies something that, depending on the prevailing external conditions, can become a new plant. That is inherent in the nature of the seed! Thus, dear friends, one knows through the direct experience of inner observation that this observer, whom one has found as a reality within oneself, is that which the individual human beings carry through the gate of death, that which is carried through the spiritual world, and which must in turn be carried into a new earthly life. For this is formed within just as the new plant is formed within the plant seed. And while the plant seed can perish due to external circumstances—as we know once we have found this core—in the spiritual world there are no such external obstacles; the human being returns and will live in the outer world. And one also comes to recognize that this life, which one is now exploring here, is the consequence of earlier earthly lives. What Lessing and other brilliant minds perceived as necessarily arising from the conception of modern spiritual life becomes a fact that can be rigorously explored from within: repeated earthly lives!

[ 59 ] One simply has to familiarize oneself with it—that is, when one immerses oneself in the spiritual world to such an extent that one then perceives things differently than one does in the outer world. In the outer world, one perceives things because they stand before one, and one stands face-to-face with them and looks at them. Those who initially wish to form a conception, based on the trivial concepts of everyday life, of what this “new” thing is—the subject discussed here today—think that the spiritual world is merely a finer, ethereal repetition of the ordinary sensory world, and they imagine that beings in the spiritual world appear to them out of mist or finer substances. No, it is not so, esteemed audience; rather, everything that comes before you—when properly investigated—appears in such a way that, in the course of your investigation, you suddenly find yourself moving through the spiritual world among countless spiritual beings. The developed will reveals spiritual beings that fill the world—how whole multitudes of spiritual beings fill the world. So what is at stake here is perceiving a multitude of concrete spiritual beings in the spiritual world—you perceive them! Let us suppose that a soul who has passed through the gate of death lives in the spiritual world. At first, one perceives this soul in such a way that one truly knows: it is now, as it were, entering one’s own sphere of will; it unites with the consciousness one discovers within one’s own self-awareness; and one experiences one’s own consciousness merging with the consciousness of the other being. Through consciousness—through this new consciousness discovered through the sphere of the will—one enters the world of spiritual beings.

[ 60 ] Although, I would say, what I have already mentioned is eccentric enough, I do not wish to shy away from presenting—I would say—even more compromising material in this area. Of course, one must then turn to personal experience. And citing an external experience is done neither out of immodesty nor for any other reason. For example, it is simply that, out of the vast array of experiences that could be cited here, I would like to mention just one very simple one.

[ 61 ] The point is that I was engaged in certain artistic endeavors that required, I might say, a degree of inventiveness. Now, the fact is that many years ago, a person died whose soul was precisely filled with intentions and inclinations toward such an artistic endeavor. She had passed through the gate of death. Just as, dear friends, one learns to distinguish in ordinary physical life—and can distinguish—that the flower one sees outside oneself is not created by oneself, not by one’s own eye, so too does one learn in this spiritual realm to distinguish what is objective from what is merely subjective creation. And so I knew that I had to accomplish certain artistic tasks—for which something like inspiration was necessary—and that what came from this departed soul was taking root in my consciousness.

[ 62 ] In other words: Living together with these departed souls can be observed in the same way that one can observe interaction with external beings. Of course, in this case it would be even more appealing to one’s vanity to say that it all stems from one’s own imagination! But one arrives at entirely different views of the spiritual world when this spiritual world can gradually be understood through exercises of the soul’s powers.

[ 63 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, precisely because of the misunderstandings surrounding this kind of spiritual research—as we mean it here—there are a few things that need to be mentioned.

[ 64 ] Anyone who approaches spiritual research as a spiritual researcher with a scientific worldview will, of course, be able to present an infinite number of arguments to show that everything I have described to you so far is, in essence, nothing more than a collection of illusions, hallucinations, and so on. If the person with a scientific mindset now believes that someone grounded in spiritual science will come and say to him, “You are wrong!”—and then begins to argue with him—the scientist is completely mistaken! The spiritual researcher is, in essence, full of appreciation for what the natural scientist has to say, right down to the exploration of the borderlands between the realm of the soul and the purely external natural realm. The spiritual researcher does not even need to reject in the slightest anything that has been achieved on the basis of experimental psychology, for example. But I do not wish to go into that further now.

[ 65 ] But anyone who, based on a scientific worldview, objects from the outset—I will now point out the most common objections—: “Well, look here: some people believe they can prove the immortality of the soul; they then turn to the present-day nature of how thinking, feeling, and willing take place; they believe they can fathom something through ordinary logic; they perhaps believe they can achieve something through some form of mysticism that points to the immortality of the soul.” But now, scientific research—and as I said, the researcher of the spirit stands here entirely on the ground of scientific research, even more so than the natural scientist himself—shows that human beings develop from childhood onward. Just as the external organs and organ systems develop gradually, so too do the mental functions grow. And conversely, when the external organs begin to deteriorate with age, the mental and soul functions also decline. Indeed, one can demonstrate how, when any part of the psychic system—the central nervous system—is impaired, very specific mental and psychic functions suffer. “Don’t you see,” the natural scientist might ask the spiritual scientist, “don’t you see how closely the mental and psychic life is bound to organic functions and to the body’s physical instruments?”

[ 66 ] Certainly, all these things are convincing. But precisely when the researcher of the spirit has reached the point I described—when I spoke of the culture of the life of thought, the inner education of the life of thought, and the inner practice of the life of thought—he describes how all thinking, feeling, and willing that takes place in ordinary life is bound to the physical organs; that which appears as thinking, feeling, and willing in the physical world between birth and death cannot, of course, occur without the physical organs. This is precisely what spiritual research demonstrates. [And it is based on the premise that one cannot gain any insight into the immortal soul through speculative theory or mysticism.] Progress in the field of natural science, in particular, will show that what appears as thinking, feeling, and willing in ordinary life is a manifestation of processes that have meaning only between birth and death, because in their appearance—as they arise in consciousness—they are bound to the external organs. But within thinking, feeling, and willing, the researcher of the spirit discovers something that is not bound to the organs—something he can only discover in such a way that he knows: This is present in every human being—one must first become aware of what is still bound to the organs—as if it were something else, something that enters through the gate of death, something connected to it. That which is not bound to the organs must first be sought out!

[ 67 ] Therefore, the researcher of the spirit fully agrees with the natural scientist—and it is a fundamental error to repeatedly assert that there is some kind of contradiction between natural science and true spiritual research. True spiritual research is grounded precisely in ordinary natural science when it comes to interpreting ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing. Even if what underlies this natural science is still largely an ideal, it does exist; and the natural scientist can today, based on his worldview, identify certain abnormal conditions in human life.

[ 68 ] A very prominent psychologist and natural scientist has identified certain states that occur—and indeed underlie even the realm of dreams—which are particularly fundamental to hypnotism, all forms of clairvoyance, and so on; he has called these “rigid states of consciousness.”

[ 69 ] One must certainly not believe that the spiritual researcher could in any way confuse what he is aiming for with what is described from this perspective as pathological states of soul development! This is precisely the significant point: in true spiritual research, as understood here, the soul life that develops—as a different, extracorporeal soul life, as has been described— —that this soul life unfolds not as a transformation of ordinary soul life, but rather as something that exists alongside it. And the healthier it is to view this Hellschian approach—as it has been described today—the healthier it is for the one who develops toward it to cultivate this visionary faculty in such a way that everything else—thinking, feeling, and willing, all of so-called social soul life—continues alongside it! Except that, in the very moment when he is engaged in vision, he maintains a normal overview of it.

[ 70 ] Consider any states that occur in a pathological mental life: How do they manifest? They manifest in such a way that the so-called normal mental life ceases and, even if only for a short time, gives way to the pathological mental life. The person afflicted with some illness of the psyche—if I may use this expression, which is of course imprecise in itself—the person afflicted with some illness is characterized precisely by the fact that, in the midst of the illness, he cannot look upon his healthy psyche; otherwise, he would not be ill!

[ 71 ] The essential point here is that the person who becomes a true spiritual researcher does not, as it might seem, move from a healthy spiritual life into another spiritual life, but rather that the two spiritual lives stand side by side, clearly and with full consciousness. The spiritual researcher moves through the spiritual world by observing it with developed insight. And in ordinary life, in all the tasks of ordinary life, he thinks, feels, and acts just as other rational people do. This ability to see through—that is the essential point.

[ 72 ] Therefore, dear friends, it is not particularly beneficial for beginners in spiritual research—as it were—to enter into the world of spiritual science with all manner of enthusiasm, driven by certain comforts of life or, one might say, certain passions of life, and thus, much like converting from one religion to another, they enter into an entirely different inner life and simply forget the first one. On the contrary, it particularly fosters the right inner disposition for beginners when everything that the person was before—how they previously thought and lived—is continued as much as possible, and when the new is placed alongside it in such a way that they can fully survey the first.

[ 73 ] Special institutions—such as those, dear attendees, that are established to cultivate spiritual research, which is taken from ordinary social life into all sorts of colleges so that it may enrich life as much as possible—actually lead, at the very least, to nonsense. [At the very least, something that is particularly conducive to the health of spiritual life for those engaged in spiritual research is being overlooked!] Certainly, one might consider preparing a certain number of people for spiritual research and, so to speak, placing them in colleges where they can, as it were, put the external life they have led up to now on the back burner; but then those concerned would, in a certain sense, have to become so unfree that what they have been accustomed to would now be subordinated to a new life that is not adapted to the outer world. That already has its dangers. The very best thing is for a person to remain as sensible in ordinary life as they were before, with spiritual research simply coming alongside it, so to speak.

[ 74 ] But this is also the fundamental difference from all pathological mental states. And if someone endowed with a sound scientific mindset were to fully comprehend, for example, the exercises for developing the soul’s powers in the direction indicated in *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*, he would see that it is precisely the person who wishes to engage in true spiritual research and its methods who is made aware of—and remains attentive to—those elements that, in one direction or another, could lead not only into pathological states but even into nebulous spiritual aberrations.

[ 75 ] However, many misunderstandings arise regarding the humanities. Not only are these theoretical misunderstandings on the part of those who, for example, stand on the ground of the natural sciences, on the ground of a natural-scientific worldview; but they arise—I would say practically—because people want to enter the spiritual world in a very different way, a much more convenient way than has been described, and then, in fact, instead of attaining a science of the supersensible—which could be achieved in the way I have described—they attain a science of the subsensible, that is, they attain something of what is so often referred to in the ordinary sense as clairvoyance or the like. This clairvoyance, what is commonly called by that name, is in fact diametrically opposed to spiritual research. It is something that arises precisely because the human being becomes even more closely bound to his or her personality than is already the case in ordinary social life. I need only—though this is, of course, said only comparatively, for the sake of explanation—point out the following: When we teach ourselves to perform any kind of intervention, we sense the affected area with our consciousness, especially when something pathological has organized itself within us, particularly in the stomach. If we have developed something in this way within our nervous system or elsewhere, then our consciousness turns toward it in a pathological, abnormal manner. But through this, all sorts of things can also be “seen.” What arises is precisely what, from the standpoint of natural science, is rightly called hallucinations, illusions, and so on. This arises precisely because the opposite of what occurs in true spiritual research—as described today—takes place. It is a strong attachment to the body. And in what is referred to in everyday life, or even in a delusional manner, as “clairvoyance,” dear friends, one is dealing with something that has far less eternal or spiritual value than what one can experience in normal soul life, where the soul is united with the body in its entirety, whereas in pathological clairvoyance, pathological hypnotic states, states of suggestion, or the like, one is connected only to a part of the whole. There one comes to grasp the sub-sensory—that which has less reality than what one sees in ordinary life. Whereas true clairvoyance consists in becoming independent of all physicality, looking back at physicality, observing how it has remained normal in relation to the external physical world, and stepping beyond physicality—so that one arrives at the supersensible, not the subsensible.

[ 76 ] Once, dear friends, this distinction between the supersensible and the subsensible is grasped; once it is recognized that what the pathological clairvoyant does is of far less significance for human beings than that which—let us say—lives from birth to death and can be encompassed by the normal sensory life, and that only a developed soul life, freed from physicality, will lead into the supersensible world—then the misunderstandings raised against spiritual research by its opponents will disappear!

[ 77 ] And another area of these misunderstandings is, of course, that which is directed at spiritual science by adherents of various religious denominations. It must be said, ladies and gentlemen, that we are dealing here with an area where, for a sound understanding, a distinction must be made between the religious element and the scientific element. Spiritual science—when conducted scientifically—will have to investigate the spiritual and soul-related realms, extending as far as the immortality of the soul and the perception of spiritual-super-sensory worlds. But if it is understood correctly, it will interfere with religion just as little as external natural science has interfered with religion. I must say that a sentence spoken by a priest when he once assumed the rectorship at the university in the 1890s has always remained vividly in my mind. He gave a speech on Galileo—the theologian speaking on Galileo—and he said at the time: Certainly, in the era when Galileo lived, the Church persecuted him; but now the time has come when we can know that what Galileo said about the structure of the worlds leads only to the greater glory of the Divine, who is revered and worshiped by religion. Just as, out of a misunderstanding, people sought to find a contradiction with religious life—and even introduced it into practical, everyday life—at the time when the newer scientific worldview emerged, so too is it based on a misunderstanding to believe that spiritual research—which must be something similar for our time, [to what the natural sciences of Galileo, Kepler, and so on were for their time]—could in any way detract from religious life. In truth, this spiritual science, and this is what it aims to be, esteemed audience, is a continuation of the scientific way of thinking applied to the spiritual realm.

[ 78 ] But it is understandable. Precisely when one has a good grasp of the history of science, it is understandable that even today there are still few people who have a sense of what lies at the heart of this spiritual research. Only those who have sought to explore the course of truth through human evolution with a loving soul know that truth will make its way through human evolution, even through the narrowest cracks in the hardest rocks that human prejudices have piled up.

[ 79 ] And not to engage in propaganda—truly not—but merely to mention that even in the present there is at least a small circle of friends of the spiritual science movement, as it is understood here, I would like to point out the building that was erected through the self-sacrificing efforts of a number of adherents of our spiritual science—I would say— by students of our spiritual science—has been erected as a kind of college for spiritual science in Dornach, near Basel.

[ 80 ] But this building, too, is met with similar misunderstandings. In closing, let me briefly point out how spiritual science itself is met with misunderstandings in a wide variety of ways, just as this building is. There are even people who say that this building has something fantastical about it; that when one enters it, one sees all kinds of symbols and magical signs—there is even a row of seven columns inside, for example.

[ 81 ] Well, anyone who attempts to understand the entire building from within, my esteemed audience, may believe that those who have seen what is being built in Dornach—and then speak in such a way that they can hardly have looked at it at all, but merely believe that whenever something is created in any field they are not yet familiar with, it must be something enchanting, something magical, something wondrous— and it is from this belief that they make their characterizations.

[ 82 ] Look, ladies and gentlemen, let’s take, for example, something that—I would say—is evident in the sequences of columns on the left and right sides of the building. People think: These are superstitious people who have constructed a column arrangement based on the number seven, because they happen to have seven columns on each side! — Yes, such talk is exactly the same as if someone thought they could infer something symbolic or magical from the fact that on a violin there happen to be the E string, the A string, and so on. The inner nature of the matter demanded it! Just as light is divided into seven colors, appearing in the seven colors of the rainbow, and just as the tones unfold in the seven-part structure of the scale and the octave is the repetition of the fundamental tone, so it was that, by breaking with the customary architectural styles— out of our artistic conviction, a totality of art had to emerge—truly only because we broke with the notion that one capital is like the next when one has columns. Rather, if one has a column and a capital, the next one is different, and the third one is different again. But from this, it followed from the purely artistic principle that the seventh marked a conclusion—just as in the musical scale the seventh note, the seventh, marks a conclusion, and just as the octave is a repetition of the fundamental tone—; it arose quite of its own accord, with the same necessity as the seven colors of the rainbow arise by necessity. And so it is with everything in this building. There is no attempt at any kind of symbolic representation. Everything was to be poured out purely artistically into sculpture, architecture, and painting. Therefore, one will never be able to achieve an art that is in the spirit of spiritual science simply by, for example, painting or sculpting what one has come to know through spiritual science. This was not even attempted in our building in Dornach. However, there are many innate capacities within human beings that remain hidden in ordinary life, and not all of humanity’s innate capacities have yet emerged in the course of past epochs of human development. But because spiritual science leads to a living grasp of the living world, it is a source of inspiration—not of an idea—not something that, as a science, finds its way into symbolic artistic embodiment—that would be an inartistic approach—but rather, it must inspire artistic ability. And through this—because spiritual science itself introduces something new into humanity—a new art form, a new artistic principle, is also created. This, of course, seems just as surprising and confusing as the very novelty of spiritual science itself appears confusing and surprising.

[ 83 ] For example, attempts have been made—in the truest sense of the word—to convey, through architectural form, something that reveals, in the framing, in the inner shell of a space, what is happening within that space, what the space contains. But not symbolically; rather, by attempting to capture its inner life. For example, attempts were made to carry this forward in the shaping—in the sculptural shaping—of the walls [...]. [In ancient architecture, for example—and I want to emphasize this detail in particular—if one perceives the walls artistically, they appear to enclose through the very nature of their forms.] Our walls in Dornach are such that they do not enclose, but rather, through the moderation of their forms, evoke the sensation that they are permeable. And as one looks at them, one gains such artistic insights that one must actually train one’s vision to let it wander into the infinity of worldly existence. This is precisely what distinguishes it from an earlier artistic conception. But differences were bound to arise as well when the progression was made from ancient art, from antiquity to the Gothic period, and so on.

[ 84 ] Of course, I would have a great deal to say if I were to address the misunderstandings that—I would say—arise from the still entirely elusive nature of the Dornach building, and if I were to discuss these misunderstandings at length. Yet I do not wish to leave unmentioned that I, in particular, esteemed audience, harbor no illusion that the Dornach building is anything other than a very first beginning, a completely imperfect beginning. But perhaps there lives within these primitive, initial forms—which may still be entirely misguided in some respects—a glimmer of a new artistic creative power. And that is precisely what it should be. For if spiritual science is to be something that can intervene vividly in human life—that can intervene in all branches of human life—and it is only external circumstances, I would say, that have caused it to penetrate artistic creation in this way at first—then it must develop the special gifts of humanity that are connected with this spiritual science today.

[ 85 ] As I said, I do not wish to promote what has just been mentioned, but only to draw attention to how the spiritual sciences also find artistic expression in this context.

[ 86 ] But, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to add that just as one need not be a chemist to grasp what chemical discoveries contribute to our worldview today, and just as one need not be an astronomer or a physicist to grasp the findings of astronomy and physics, so too does one not need to be a spiritual researcher oneself — although, as the book *How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* shows you, today every human being can, to a certain degree, become a spiritual scientist; every human being can develop the capacities inherent in their nature—but one need not be one oneself. Spiritual science can likewise present its findings to humanity, and because it is grounded in truth rather than error, it can be convincing. If one grasps these insights in the right way, one is led to conviction—to incorporating the findings of spiritual science into the soul’s sense of truth, into that which ultimately coalesces into a comprehensive conviction about the world and the soul, and the world and the spirit. But the fact that this spiritual research still faces misunderstandings: one can understand that, esteemed audience.

[ 87 ] One need only recall, for example, when the new worldview—the new natural science—had to be presented to humanity: Wasn’t it necessary, I would say, to present to humanity a view that was the opposite of what people had believed until then? A view that even contradicted what the senses perceived? — Throughout the entire Middle Ages, certain circles of humanity believed: Up there is the blue firmament, and the stars revolve around the Earth. That changed! The Earth, which had stood still in people’s consciousness, now had to be imagined as hurtling through space; and the blue firmament—one had to realize: It isn’t really up there at all; you create it yourself from your own perception. And the only reason you imagined this blue firmament was because that’s what you had believed until then! — That was the great turning point to which Giordano Bruno, for example, pointed: that in this blue firmament one sees nothing other than what is created by the human mode of perception itself; that what extends out into the vast infinities of the universe is the spatial cosmos itself.

[ 88 ] What happened back then, one might say, must happen again: It is a different firmament that humanity gazes upon today; but only through its own way of conceiving things. If a person looks, on the one hand, as far back as birth, and on the other hand, as far ahead as death—or let us say: on the one hand, as far back as conception, and on the other hand, as far ahead as death—it is like the firmament: there is no boundary. When the gaze [now] extends outward, what occurred back then in the realm of external natural science may occur for spiritual life: that the boundary between birth and death—or conception and death—is created by human soul life itself. Then one will look out into time and eternity, in which are embedded our repeated earthly lives and those lives we spend between death and birth in a purely spiritual world. And the spiritual world will open up to human beings just as surely as the spatial world opened up beyond the non-existent firmament.

[ 89 ] Anyone who has reached this very point in spiritual science will not be at all surprised if what he has said is still regarded today as fantasy, or perhaps even as a daydream. However, anyone familiar with the path that truth takes through human development and human history—and the spiritual researcher must certainly familiarize himself with this in our time—knows what I have already said: that truth finds its way through the finest cracks, which, like cracks in rock, extend into the rock of prejudice, and which human development—I say this neither critically nor reproachfully—[not only] can accommodate, but indeed must accommodate. For just as life has its judgments about how it can be lived, it also needs its processes, which must accumulate over a certain period of time. Life must unfold rhythmically within the course of the world, and for a time the scientific conception had to drown out everything else. Only now can the other wave—the other pole, as it were—arrive, driving that same sense of thought and truth into the spiritual world as well.

[ 90 ] In conclusion, I would like to summarize—as if in a profound feeling—what I have attempted to convey, not as something that can inspire conviction from the outset, but rather as something that can merely offer new insights:

[ 91 ] Anyone who tries to immerse themselves in this essence of spiritual science knows that it cannot be suppressed or eradicated any more than the scientific worldview—which emerged at the dawn of the modern era three to four centuries ago—could be driven out of the world by all opposing ideas. For they know: One can hate the truth; but those who have become so attuned to its nature also know that those who hate the truth cannot so easily suppress it.

[ 92 ] And even if, esteemed audience, the time has not yet come for this way of viewing the spiritual world—which has been discussed here today—to reach a wider audience, that time will surely come.

[ 93 ] The fact that the truth is hated for a time—which is a phenomenon that is humanly understandable—can never prevent this truth from emerging again and again, just as has been the case with the scientific worldview. The truth may also be reviled; but in the end, the words of revilement fall back upon those who utter them. And [those who] know the essence that—I would say—can be seen as embodied in the truth, know that it possesses such self-awareness that it knows how it is effective in the world, even in the face of all revilement. One may wish to suppress the truth, but one can never wish to destroy it!

[ 94 ] These are the feelings that permeate the soul of anyone who, based on the nature of spiritual research, has today developed a certain relationship to this field of study. And regarding truth, one must realize that precisely because it is rooted in the innermost essence of the human soul, one need only delve into that human soul accordingly, honestly apply one’s developed thoughts to the soul itself, and say to oneself: What we experience as willing, thinking, and feeling in ordinary life can be further developed; then what was truth for the finite world also leads to a power of truth for the infinite world, for the primeval power, for the eternal powers of humanity that pass through births and deaths.

[ 95 ] This truth will lead them to acknowledge it. Like a faith, like a conviction, this is what is expressed by the one who has fully come to know the inner character, the inner nature of spiritual science; he believes, with regard to the truth he thinks he has recognized, that it is rooted as deeply in the human soul as the love that is deeply rooted between one sister and another, when a true relationship exists. Yes, the human soul and the truth are sisters! And no matter how many misunderstandings might ever arise between the two, in the end there must be complete harmony between one sister and the other: between the human soul and the truth; they must remember a common origin, which lies in the World Spirit that reigns through all phenomena, that always and ever reigns and weaves behind mere sensory appearances—as the inner foundation, as the creative power, the spirituality that permeates and interweaves them—and what can be discovered through supersensory research.