Lecture VI

Spiritual science reveals that the mental picture we commonly have of our I is not at all identical with the one we find through spiritual science. This discovery is of the greatest significance. The I of which we form a mental picture is deprived in the present incarnation of inner effective life. Purely on the basis of this I we could not in truth say, I exist now, at this moment in time. The mental picture we have of our I is no guarantee that we exist now, in the present. There is a constant danger that somehow a combination of mental pictures is conjuring up the I. That is the uncertainty; that is why we feel that what we are faced with is a mere picture and no reality. Why do we experience our inner self in this way? Because the I of which we form a mental picture contains already forces for our next incarnation. In this life it must necessarily exist in the form in which we encounter it. When we depict the I, we are dealing with a force belonging not to this life, but a force that will only evolve in our next incarnation. It is comparable to a plant which, if it could sense the seed within would say, This seed is in reality not me; it is the plant that will grow only next spring. In a similar way there lives in what we depict as our I the force that will evolve in our next incarnation. It has to exist the way it does, for if we wanted it to become more in the present incarnation, then it would unfold too soon and could not remain seed-like till our next life. Thus, the I we depict in thoughts must remain weak; it cannot be active now, for it has to retain the seed-like forces for the next incarnation.