10. The Supernatural Essence of Man and the Development of Humanity

But when one experiences within oneself what willpower, developed in this way, actually is, then one looks into the supersensible world in a different direction. Then you first experience: You behave in one of two ways towards people you come into social contact with; you do them good or you do them little good; you do them something purposeful or inappropriate; you act towards them in such a way that they experience the consequences of your action. By developing the powers of will as I have just described, we learn to recognize that we experience what lives through the astral body, through the actual spiritual-soul. The expression 'body' is just an expression. What we develop there carries our supersensible being through the gate of death; and we will experience the continuation of what we have developed in our relationships with people here in the physical world in the manner just described in the spiritual world after death. That is to say, in the spiritual vision, there is an immediate insight into the world that we experience when we have passed through the gate of death. That which connects man with the spiritual world becomes visible when he develops the powers of his soul as I have described. But then, my dear audience, these two powers come together. The power that develops out of thinking, out of living thinking, and the power that develops out of the will, they enter into an inner marriage, as it were. And then, then the contemplation of one's own development becomes something new for man; then something quite new becomes what we call the history of mankind. Oh, the ordinary, external knowledge knows little about this history of mankind, only the external facts. But what is called history today is actually nothing more than a fable convenante. What lives in history, what advances humanity through history, is only really learned in its truth, with the forces that I have just described to you. There one learns to recognize how the spiritual rules in the historical development of humanity.