XVIII. Spiritual Science and the Spiritual Goals of Our Time

How does one develop the spiritual organs through which the spiritual world becomes visible, audible and perceptible to man? Not tumultuous external processes, not experiments that can be carried out in the same way externally as in laboratories or clinics, bring about this change, but inner soul processes that the spiritual researcher can carry out with himself if he wants to gain insight into the spiritual world. What I have to say in this description may appear to many people to be extremely mundane. But it must be said: however mundane these things appear, in their execution they are among the most difficult that a person can undertake on this earth, including all his other activities. But we are not speaking of special wonders, of some things that in their simplest form not every person would know, when one has to speak of what the spiritual researcher must develop in his soul if he wants to come to the real exploration of the supersensible. The soul forces that the spiritual researcher has to develop are always there in the soul, but only in their beginnings, as they are needed for everyday life. The spiritual researcher has only to develop these qualities to an unlimited degree. Here I must call attention to something that is not only present everywhere in everyday life, but is also necessary in the most eminent sense. It is what is called attention: the attention of the soul to these or those things, the turning of interest to these or those things, as we have them in ordinary life.