20. How Does the Soul Find Its True Essence?

The activity of attention must increase in an unlimited way for spiritual researchers, or rather for those who want to become spiritual researchers. While we otherwise come to develop our interest in this or that through external circumstances, the spiritual researcher must develop concentration in an inner, skillful way. Arbitrarily, through strong inner exertion of the soul's power, the spiritual researcher must draw together everything that is present in his soul and, as far as possible, direct it toward something that is not prompted by external influences, whether it be ideas formed in the soul itself or those suggested by knowledgeable spiritual researchers. One allows these ideas to arise arbitrarily in one's soul at certain moments; otherwise, one tries to put oneself in a state where the outer senses perceive nothing, as in sleep, where ordinary thinking comes to a standstill, as in sleep, except that the whole soul is directed with all its powers toward the single idea that one holds on to for as long as one can. This is called concentration. You can read more about this in the aforementioned books. The more one uses such ideas, which in a sense have no model in the external world, the better; the more one places symbolic ideas at the center of consciousness, the better. And now it is a matter of the spiritual researcher doing this exercise over and over again; depending on their abilities, some will achieve something in a short time, others only after years, but as it is presented to us, we achieve, so to speak — the present development of humanity makes this possible — the ability to increase something in the soul by behaving in this way. Powers that otherwise lie dormant in the soul, as if in its depths, are brought to the surface when we repeatedly and patiently, with perseverance, perform such exercises of concentration. One does not become a spiritual researcher in an external, tumultuous way, but through such processes in the soul as [they] are described in the increase of attention to the infinite.