13. The Relationships Between Spiritual Science and Individual Academic Subjects III

With these few words I have only hinted at how spiritual science does indeed open up a completely organic path, one that is not built on some kind of fantasy but on a true observation of human nature, and one that penetrates to the innermost core. It is truly not the result of arbitrary assertions or vague beliefs when the spiritual researcher says: That which is spiritual-soul in man is not bound to the physical organization, but to the physical disorganization, thus to that which must give way so that the spiritual-soul can arise. It is therefore no wonder that one can follow the spiritual-mental processes in the nervous organs, for to the same extent that any spiritual-mental process occurs, it must displace the corresponding physical organization, which even manifests itself as a physical breakdown. And we will only then arrive at a real connection between the spiritual-soul and physical-bodily processes when we no longer seek the physical-bodily processes as corresponding to the soul processes, but understand them as processes of disorganization, of dissolution, of secretion. If we follow these traces of the physical-bodily excretory processes, we have the true correlate of the mental-spiritual processes; and it is precisely this that guarantees their special individuality and independence in a truly scientific way.