20. How Does the Soul Find Its True Essence?

Just as an aside, I would like to mention—not to boast about it, but because it can now be mentioned as a fact—that there is already some understanding of this world, which is to be revealed to human beings as spiritual science, as the truly divine-spiritual world in which the soul is truly rooted. The fact that an understanding is beginning to stir in the world is attested to by the fact that, with relatively large resources, a place for this science is now being built at one point in Switzerland, in Dornach near Basel. we call it a “College of Spiritual Science,” a place that is to be built more than for any other reason so that, in terms of style and artistry, we may have a building that also expresses in its outer forms what flows into the soul of divine spiritual life when it explores its true essence. The building already stands in its form, it only needs to be completed externally and internally, as a two-domed wooden structure, and it will express externally and artistically what spiritual science aims to achieve. A number of friends of spiritual science have joined forces to raise the not inconsiderable funds for this building. It would be desirable, however, that this building not be understood as described in a newspaper article that has just appeared in Paris and is circulating around the world, but rather that it be understood as a first site dedicated to the science of the spirit, the science of the divine origin of the soul, the science of the soul of true being, just as the spiritual researcher, according to his knowledge, must believe that this science is already longed for today by souls, by numerous souls who do not yet know it, but who nevertheless long for it, just as it must be longed for more and more and will be longed for in the future by the human soul. It is with a certain satisfaction that we can point to this outward symbol, the imposing building we have been able to erect, as evidence of the impression that spiritual science has already made on individual souls, even though misunderstanding after misunderstanding is still encountered today when this spiritual science is discussed.