2. The Human Soul, Destiny and Death from the Point of View of Spiritual Science

The point is that one takes up images, which initially need have nothing to do with an external reality, that one takes up symbolic images, ideas, not in order to reflect on these ideas as such in terms of their content, but in order to concentrate all the soul's inner forces, which would otherwise be scattered over external reality, onto one inner point, the point that one has steered into the center of the soul's life with an image. Then one is completely within oneself; but one is not calm within oneself. Then one is inwardly actively experiencing. Whoever continues such an inner concentration of thoughts for a sufficient length of time – a sufficient length of time does not mean a few hours, but weeks, years, in repeated inner activity – whoever continues this for a sufficient length of time, walks a path in his soul that ultimately leads him to experience a reality. Just as in ordinary observation one starts from reality and progresses to soul experience, so in spiritual research one starts from concentrated inner experiences and arrives at a new spiritual reality. This new spiritual reality cannot be made inward. What can be made inward is merely preparation for spiritual observation. This spiritual reality must approach man at the end of the path of preparation. While knowledge is otherwise acquired as a result of looking at external reality, in spiritual research reality is attained on the basis of inwardly working, inwardly active knowledge. No one can somehow inwardly do in the spirit what he then comes to. What he can do in the spirit is go the way that leads there.