Lecture III

On the other hand, people do speak of a spiritual soul, but in the way I have just discussed. And then they cannot somehow find a relationship between this spiritual soul and the bodily physical, the material physical. All kinds of theories have been proposed as to how the spiritual-mental is supposed to interact with the physical-material. But all these theories are just figments of the imagination. Before gaining insights into these things, it is absolutely necessary to be able to look at the whole person. In the whole human being, it is ultimately the case that no expression of soul or spirit occurs between birth and death that is not accompanied by a physical manifestation. And when we speak of the physical and the spiritual as opposites, we are talking in abstractions, for it is the same thing seen from different sides. But this is not realized, that it is one and the same thing, and one sees only the difficulties in constructing a theory of how the two interact. But only what we grasp in a truly heightened, trained observation is what helps in this field. And for this it is necessary to draw attention to the things that arise in such an observation. It is natural that a certain schooling in the sense I have described in “How to Know Higher Worlds” must precede exact observation in this field. But if one has the goal in mind, if one knows what has been observed there, one can indeed make use of one's common sense, if one really wants to, if one is willing to follow the ideas that are then brought to light through spiritual scientific observation, in their content properly to pursue.