20. How Does the Soul Find Its True Essence?

The times are past, dear friends, when souls did not feel this disharmony, expressed in the fact that the heart has an inner certainty of a supersensible home, while the intellect claims to be unable to reach this home. It is precisely for this reason that spiritual research in our time feels that what must become part of general culture is the realization that the forces that have been drawn out of humanity through centuries of work on natural phenomena make it possible, when used in the right way, to truly penetrate the spiritual worlds, just as external knowledge, which is bound to the senses and the brain, can penetrate the natural world. However, this assertion still encounters opposition today. It encounters misunderstanding. Yes, it is fair to say that if one wants to speak of spiritual science in the sense meant here, one must use such unfamiliar terms that it seems quite understandable, especially when one is involved in it oneself, that countless people who today believe they stand on the firm ground of scientific thinking must still oppose this spiritual science. But just as a change in thinking habits had to occur three or four centuries ago, when the natural sciences brought about a completely different way of thinking about the spatial world, so too will a change in thinking habits take place in human souls, which is necessary if more and more understanding is to spread for the truths that I will attempt to outline in this lecture.