10. Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being

Thus, when spiritual science speaks of the immortality of the soul, it takes a different path from that which mere conceptual philosophy can take. Spiritual science does not approach the question of immortality by seeking to prove immortality, but rather by first seeking ways to find the soul itself, seeking the paths to the soul, to the essence of the soul. And once you have the soul, once you know how it experiences itself inwardly, then you do not need to devise external philosophical proofs for the immortality of the soul. For then one realizes: what leads beyond death, what passes through a life between death and rebirth and leads to a constantly renewed earthly life, is already within us in the life between birth and death, and by recognizing it within ourselves, we simultaneously recognize it in its immortality. This is as certain in life as we know from the plant seed: it will develop by producing a new plant being. So we can know that the soul is immortal. But we know from the plant seed that it can be used for human nourishment. Such an external removal cannot be perceived in the human soul core; but it is certain that what lives in the soul is at the same time the entitlement to subsequent earthly lives, and thus the entitlement to the immortality of the soul, and cannot be used for anything else, as may be the case with a plant seed. Therefore, one may speak of the immortality of every soul.