14. How Can We Know About Supernatural Worlds?

One will therefore not only have to understand the questions dealt with in “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?”, but also have to understand the “how” of the proof in the proper manner. Otherwise, it is like trying to square the circle. One may already find the doctrine of repeated earthly lives “more comforting, more just, and more probable,” but still not be able to bring oneself to accept it. However, one will be able to bring oneself to accept it when one realizes that one cannot speak this way only to spiritual researchers. These things must indeed be researched by spiritual researchers, but once they have been researched, they are such that the physical mind can understand them; it is not evidence by its means that counts here, but evidence in the same way that one can understand a picture without being a painter oneself. It is the case with the spiritual world that one can compare its nature with the physical mind: underground, the mines and ores could not form on the surface of the earth, where the sun directly touches the ores. Thus, the results of spiritual research cannot be found through ordinary thinking and ordinary science. This requires the soul forces that have been described. But when it is researched and then described, what would happen if sunlight shone down into the depths of the earth onto the ore, which would only then be able to appear in its splendor and beauty, can occur. In this way, the physical mind can truly understand what spiritual science brings. But it must be researched by the soul that has been educated as described. What has been understood in this way forms a power in the soul, not just knowledge, for this knowledge is immediately transformed into a very definite certainty of the soul, which gives it inner stability. It thus bears fruit in a very definite way of thinking, a very definite way of feeling, a very definite way of willing towards oneself and the world.