5. Ways of Knowing the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul

And, honored attendees, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is really only possible, I would say, after three to four centuries of natural scientific thinking has been incorporated into human development, into the spiritual development of humanity. It can only arise for similar reasons for which the Galilean, the Giordano Bruno, and the Keplerian achievements could only arise in their time. But what must be found for the present and for the future in a certain way through this spiritual science has always occupied the human soul. I cannot speak about it in detail now, because it would be going too far to explain how something similar to this spiritual science was developed in earlier epochs of human development. It was much more unconscious, one might say, much more instinctive, if I may choose an imprecise but descriptive word. But from the powers that people had at that time - which were not the powers that are, so to speak, beginning to develop humanity now - people also came to the point that I mean now, where one stands, as it were, at the entrance to the spiritual world. And they described the experience that one now has – has at the point I have described, and still has today and must have – they described this, dear honored attendees, with a word that one really understands when one has gone through the corresponding experiences, with a weighty word. They said: 'The human soul comes to a certain point in its development before it can enter the spiritual world, to the 'gate of death'.