6. Intuitive Insight in the Happy and Serious Hours of Life

Because this is so, I have often mentioned here in these lectures an experience that the spiritual researcher can undergo. After all, happiness and joy always — or at least mostly — come to our soul from outside. They are like something that comes from outside. When we become absorbed in our pain and suffering, we withdraw into ourselves. We would like to grasp happiness, we would like to flee pain; but we could only escape it by clenching ourselves up into ourselves. Now one could ask the one who has gathered some spiritual knowledge in his soul: What would you rather do without in your life: what you have experienced in terms of happiness and joy – or what you have experienced in terms of pain and suffering, even in terms of failures themselves? And the spirit-discerner will answer: I am grateful, very grateful to the spiritual worlds for sending me my happiness and joy; but if I have to choose what I would rather do without in my life – happiness or pain, I would rather do without happiness; because I can thank my luck for a lot, but the light I have gained about the world I owe to my lived-through failures; and what I have become with my knowledge, I have become through my experienced pains, and in the true sense of the word I must say: I have found myself through my pains, harmoniously ordered to the world through my pain experiences!