12. Spiritual Science as a Life's Work

But one will find that: if one actively takes up what spiritual science has to offer to human beings, and if one acquires habits of thinking and ways of imagining that are completely different from the usual ones, one will notice that the powers that were formerly the powers of memory do indeed diminish as one grows older, but that they are replaced by something that is a much better memory. Gradually, what can be called a looking back on events emerges from the spiritual depths of the soul. Just as we normally look at things in space, we gradually learn to look at things in time. The powers that memory does not otherwise develop, because it usually has a reserve fund in the immediate physical body, remain hidden until we reach a certain age. These hidden, dormant powers of memory are brought forth from the soul: powers of perception of the past. And when we properly immerse ourselves in spiritual science, we cultivate something over the course of our lives that continues our ordinary, acquired memory, whereby a person who truly grasps spiritual science in a living way remains equipped much longer with the ability to overview the past, as well as the opportunity to draw guiding forces for the future from the past, than someone who does not want to engage with spiritual science. Anyone who delves into such things in their finer distinctions will already notice how memory becomes something else, but not something less faithful, rather something that works more faithfully than the memory that is innate to us through our physical powers.