Lecture II

From what has been said we can well see that the ascent into the spiritual worlds depends upon the strengthening of the inner forces of the soul-life, so that through the exercises which a person undertakes for the purpose of penetrating into the higher worlds, he develops forces in his soul which far surpass those needed in ordinary life. This requirement is shown by the fact that when the soul becomes independent of the physical body in ordinary life, i.e. in sleep, it falls at once into unconsciousness. This means that in normal life the individual lacks sufficient force to unfold inner activity and maintain consciousness when, as in sleep, the physical and etheric bodies are not helping him to do so. The other members of the human organism, the ego and the astral body, must be worked upon and illuminated through the exercises of meditation, concentration and contemplation, so that they become capable of conscious experience when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies, as in ordinary sleep. The stronger-than-ordinary soul-forces that a man develops are what enable him to reach the stage we spoke of yesterday. They give him the power, after he has confronted the Void, to enter a new world which he can experience through the fact that—as the spider spins its web out of itself—he pours out into space the spiritually substantial content of his soul, and receives into it the spiritual worlds which then present themselves to him.