8. What is the Purpose of Spiritual Science and How is it Treated by Its Opponents?

When spiritual science speaks of “higher cognitive abilities,” it does so, however, from a point of view that is still doubted from many sides in the present day. But just take what is said about these abilities without prejudice! They are abilities that lie entirely within the developmental line of ordinary human soul forces. When a person voluntarily develops their thinking, feeling and willing from the point to which these have developed without their intervention, something similar happens as in the case of a child, which transitions from the abilities of its first years into those of its later years. Just as the child learns to use the faculties of his soul in such a way that his body becomes a good tool for him to experience the world of the senses, so can the human being develop his powers of knowledge further, so that he finds himself in a state of soul free of the body. In this state he then experiences the processes of a spiritual world and knows that he is surrounded by spiritual beings, just as he knows that he is surrounded by beings of sense in the world of the senses. That this is possible can be seen by anyone who opens himself to what is set forth in my book, “How to Know Higher Worlds.” He who does not want to open himself to it can deny the possibility of a soul-life free from the body, just as someone could say, “I do not believe in the existence of hydrogen,” when he is not interested in the fact that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. Just as the chemist demonstrates hydrogen apart from water, so the spiritual researcher demonstrates the insights of the soul freed from the body. The mode of presentation of spiritual science is the same as that of natural science; only this mode of presentation is applied to the spiritual realm.