Self-education in the Light of Spiritual Science

But by directing our self-education in this way, we also work on those parts of our spiritual organism that lead us to harmony with the external world that surrounds us. But if we only work internally with thought concentration and so on, which can be found in bookstores today, we work in isolation from the world in this limited soul, which is not in harmony with the world, but which derives its meaning precisely from its isolation. It is true that those who expose themselves to external dangers and seek to overcome them practice better self-education than those who buy books on self-education and then begin to do exercises to achieve fearlessness, dispassion, and so on. Certainly, such easy things can lead to a person gaining all kinds of personal advantages, but always by developing what separates them from the world, while the former characterizes them as placing themselves selflessly into the world. I said that there may now be some who claim: So you are speaking against fearlessness, dispassion, and against all things that could be said to belong to the education of the human being. — But this must be emphasized only in one case, when it comes to the development of the will for the outer physical world, when the human being wants to educate himself to strengthen and fortify the will in the outer world, because these things only have an inner effect and are wrongly applied to the education of character, to the education of the will. They are rightly applied to the education of our knowledge.