4. The Spirit, Soul, and Body of Man

First and foremost, there is one thing — which I have already pointed out from other perspectives in these lectures — that many contemporary researchers of the soul believe that certain things are simply impossible, even though they are essential goals of spiritual research. How often do we hear researchers of the soul say today that the actual life of the soul cannot be observed? It is pointed out, for example, that delicate feelings cannot be observed because they slip away when one approaches them with the observing activity of the soul. It is rightly pointed out how disturbed we feel when, for example, we have learned something by heart, recite it, and want to observe ourselves. This is presented as if it were a fundamental peculiarity of the life of the soul. But it is necessary to realize that what is presented as an impossibility, as a characteristic inability of the life of the soul, must be striven for precisely as a spiritual scientific method. What the biologist and the physiologist do for the body, the spiritual researcher does for the spirit, striving to rise from mere everyday and mere mystical self-observation to that true observation of the soul whose impossibility is to be demonstrated by the aforementioned reference to the fact that we cannot observe ourselves when reciting a poem because we disturb ourselves in doing so. Now, it is not necessary to achieve self-observation in such external things as reciting memorized material, although this is also a necessity for those who want to become spiritual researchers. But it is necessary for the researcher of the spirit and soul to achieve real self-observation by actually having a sequence of ideas, a sequence of thoughts, and also the sequence of impulses of the will and states of mind before him in such a way that, in a sense, while this is taking place in his soul, he stands by as his own spectator and really learns to observe himself inwardly, learns to observe himself in such a way that the observer and the observed actually fall completely apart. This possibility is often presented as something very easy, and those who present it as something very easy, although they naturally do not strive for it in all its difficulty, are also those who believe that, while natural science is subject to strict methods, spiritual science is something that can be attained easily and lightheartedly. However, true spiritual research, which is able to say what is important for spiritual life, requires the same methodical, rigorous, patient, and energetic progress in a certain way, albeit applied only in the spiritual realm, and not only as happens in the external field of natural science, but in such a way that those who are familiar with both natural science research and spiritual science research must say that, compared to the often years of effort necessary to arrive at serious spiritual scientific results, the methods of natural science can basically be acquired in a much easier way.