Self-education in the Light of Spiritual Science

Joy and suffering, as experienced by the human personality, are the most intimate, the most innermost aspects of experience. When we have another person in front of us and an impulse arises in us that reflects their suffering or joy, then we are not merely living within ourselves, but within the other person. And all philosophical speculation that something is triggered in us in some way by sensory impressions cannot lead us beyond the reality that something active is created in us through sharing in the joys and sufferings of others. When we feel their joy and suffering in an intimate way, we have stepped outside ourselves and entered into the innermost sanctum of the other person, into what we feel within ourselves as our very essence. And now we need only imagine, since we cannot cross over with our consciousness into the consciousness of another, which no one will deny: If, at the moment when we feel compassion or joy in a soul separate from our own, we were to experience ourselves in a state of powerlessness in the soul of the other, then there would be no way to pass from one personality to the other without losing ourselves in the process. As strange as it sounds, it is significant for life: we penetrate a foreign being, and no powerlessness overwhelms us; we penetrate out of ourselves and live inside the other, and we do not become powerless in the process.