12. Spiritual Science as a Life's Work

When we consider that the soul can only ascend to the stages of spiritual knowledge that I have described in my “Occult Science” and in “How to Know Higher Worlds” as the stages of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge, only by continuously developing inner activity, then we will understand that spiritual scientific research can only provide people with knowledge that also requires a special kind of understanding. I have repeatedly pointed out that in order to understand what the spiritual researcher explores in the spiritual worlds, one does not need to be a spiritual researcher oneself, although the books mentioned show that in our time, to a certain extent, anyone can become a spiritual researcher. For there is an immediate, secret language in every soul through which it can understand what the spiritual researcher says, even if it cannot itself be active as a spiritual researcher, just as one can understand a picture even if one is not a painter. But even this understanding must be struggled for by the soul of the present-day human being; for nothing is more natural to the present-day human being than to say: Truth must come to me; I must remain passive toward it, it must be given to me! One feels downright insecure when one is supposed to do something first, when one is supposed to train the soul first in order to recognize the truth. Therefore, it is very easy to object to the spiritual researcher: You are establishing concepts of truth that are not the same as the concepts of truth in external life or external science; and these concepts of truth say: I believe what is confirmed to me by the facts, what is revealed to me, so to speak, by the facts.