4. The Human Soul and the Human Spirit

Here again, I would say, a half or sometimes even completely selfish prejudice interferes with what the spiritual researcher actually wants to say. People say: the spiritual researcher can do something that other people cannot – and then they transfer this to his human value, they transfer this to his significance as a human being. But he has nothing in him that is different from what every ordinary person has in him. Because what he discovers as prenatal is always in human nature, and it does not become different for him just because he acquires knowledge of it. What goes out through the gate of death is present in the spiritual researcher as it is present in every human being. And the knowledge that the spiritual researcher acquires is no more real to the soul and spiritual existence of man than the knowledge of natural science is to the external world of nature. It would even be good if in literature dealing with such subjects certain words were not taken so literally that one inwardly, so to speak, scatters incense, as it were, and inwardly experiences something very special in one's feelings. Often, someone who can see into the spiritual world is called an initiate. But when the word 'initiate' is spoken, it is associated with something as if one were now dealing with a very special person. This should be avoided, but one should take things as they are to be taken in accordance with the descriptions just given. And the spiritual researcher himself is convinced: only the prejudices mentioned at the beginning prevent his results from being accepted just as they are by common sense, as the results of the chemist, the physicist and so on are accepted. For in principle there is no difference.