V. Can a method of gaining insight into spheres beyond the sense-perceptible world be given a scientific basis?

GA 73/1918-10-08/p019 ·1918-10-08 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

When a true spiritual scientist investigates this approach he finds that he recognizes and respects limits in the mystic approach just as much as in the natural scientific approach. And again he would ask himself: What prevents us from going down into the depths of our own souls, making us unable to gain insight into ourselves by using the mystic approach? One finds that if we were able to gain such insight with this approach, if ordinary mysticism was not almost always delusion, if we were to find our own eternal nature by using the approach of ordinary mysticism, we would not have the human capacity for remembering things. The element in us which enables us to remember things, something with a certain power of striking back in us which holds the memories of past events, prevents us from penetrating to those depths with the powers of a mystic. We need the ability to remember for a healthy life on this earth, from birth to death, and mysticism therefore cannot be the true approach to investigation in the search for self knowledge.

Read this passage in another edition
DEoriginalENEnglish
Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/73/1918-10-08/p019.json
Cite: GA 73/1918-10-08/p019 · edition English