10. The Supernatural Human Being III

This is the way in which everything can be found that natural science can never find with regard to these two questions — freedom of will and immortality of the soul; and the less it claims to intervene in these areas, the more it will remain good natural science. But it remains science that intervenes in this way in the spirit and in spiritual life. Humanity in earlier centuries and millennia, which still had a different spiritual life, did not yet need this science. But today we are approaching more and more the time when full consciousness must come about of what underlies human life. Human beings will increasingly need what the science of supersensible life can give them. I have often said that only the spiritual researcher can penetrate into the supersensible life, but what he says can be tested with ordinary consciousness, and one can accept it even if one is not a spiritual researcher oneself, although anyone can become one today. When the spiritual researcher presents his findings to ordinary consciousness, they can be understood with ordinary consciousness, provided one is not misled by what is fully justified on its own ground but constantly oversteps that ground when it seeks to prohibit research in territories other than those of mere natural events. Admittedly, many things distract from spiritual research, and anyone who believes that the spiritual researcher may have the slightest inclination toward fantasy is very much mistaken. Anyone who thinks that it is easy to penetrate the spiritual world and that, in contrast, ordinary research in clinics and laboratories is difficult has no idea of the real circumstances. Basically, all the efforts made in the field of external science are insignificant compared to what is required for real research if one wants to penetrate the areas described today.