VII. The Questions of Life and the Riddle of Death I

Now you start understanding that something spiritual forms the basis of the human being. If you have experienced once how you can be separated from the body how you do not exercise power over this body and, nevertheless, your consciousness is maintained, you understand something else. You understand that this is something embryonic, nevertheless, that assists in the creation of the body. Then one looks quite scientifically at the human life in such a way as one sees a plant growing. If a [living being] were born with the roots of a plant and died after flowering, it would have no notion of the fact that the seed which develops in the blossom starts a process again and that you have to imagine the whole plant concentrated in the seed. If you have recognised the human inside, you understand the dictum of Goethe: in old age we become mystics.—The rich soul life is like the seed of the plant.