2. On the forming of Destiny

Now, many who to-day oppose what we call Spiritual Science, cannot fail to feel the entirely different nature of that which Spiritual Science must advocate, in contradistinction to that which is otherwise upheld among the so-called ‘normal’ people of to-day. And here we need only observe, if we wish to understand this correctly, how the first announcement of Christianity was completely opposed to that which was upheld among the Romans, the normal men of those times: with such a thought we must make ourselves acquainted, for it is again and again leveled against us that with the accepted means of cognition man cannot reach worlds such as those with which we are concerned. We must really so grasp the more intimate work in our groups as to be able to say: This life in our groups is not useless. It is not without significance to this cause of ours, that we should meet together in such groups, and again and again renew, not only acquaintance with the theoretical results of our doctrine, which is not of importance, but also renew our warm feelings and sensations for the actual things and beings of the spiritual world. Thereby we accustom ourselves to that manner of psychic sensing and feeling which above all makes it possible for us to take up spiritual truths in a different way from those who are unprepared. In our group meetings there must occasionally be imparted to you something from the higher and later parts of spiritual knowledge. We cannot always start afresh from the beginning. But this intimacy within the life of the groups must make it possible for a number of our friends to take into themselves, into their souls, such things as I pointed out in the last lecture, namely, the special manner of verifying our spiritual knowledge, and of taking it into oneself. We cannot verify these things in the same manner as man does in the external world when he contacts things with his eyes: but he who has a feeling for such facts as I pointed out last time, will, even if he does not himself see into the spiritual world, feel that through the mutual support of spiritual truths the value of these truths is intensified. Therefore I shall yet again draw attention to the very significant fact that on the one side, through many years of study, the definite point of view is reached, that a third of our life between birth and death—in time—is again lived through after death; while now on the other side a quite different point of view is discovered—namely, that in reality we experience our sleep life in a special form during the time we call Kamaloka, and that this time also occupies a third of the life on the physical plane. These two points of view are quite independent of each other and have been discovered from different starting points. We have also shown on other occasions how, from three or four different points of view, one always comes to the same conclusion. Thus do the truths support each other. But for this, we must ourselves acquire the right feeling. This will produce something like a natural elemental feeling for the truth of this spiritual knowledge. I must often appeal to this, otherwise I could not give out the later and higher truths in the various group-meetings.