12. Spiritual Science as a Life's Work

Now, through what unfolds during sleep, the human being can basically only restore what we have used up. During sleep, as spiritual science shows and as has often been explained here, the soul is removed from the physical body of the human being; the spiritual-soul is in its own world, in the spiritual world. And this different relationship of the soul to the body, as opposed to what is the case in waking life, is connected with the invocation of healing forces. Spiritual research, as we have seen, calls upon the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being to become free from the physical, from the bodily — for there is no other way to investigate the spiritual-soul aspect. Everything that the spiritual researcher investigates is investigated outside the physical body. When he puts what he has investigated into concepts and words, and when the human soul truly acquires an understanding of what he has to say, then a very special influence will be exerted on this soul, which is not itself engaged in spiritual research, but only responds with understanding to the messages conveyed. This soul will strive inwardly to summon those powers that can be called powers of understanding for the results of spiritual research. These are powers that are more or less independent of the physical body. By bringing to understanding what the senses offer us, what the mind offers us, which is bound to the brain, we remain dependent on our physicality even with this understanding, we strain the body, wear it out, let our activity run its course in the whole sphere from which illness also comes. If, on the other hand, we use our understanding — but our living understanding — to enter into what spiritual science offers, we live and weave in the sphere of healthy forces.