The Essence of Anthroposophy

And now, through direct perception, the human being experiences what he has gone through spiritually and soulfully before he connected with the physical human body as a spiritual and soulful being. In this moment of inner soul-searching, the great and powerful occurs: the spiritual and soulful in itself, in its own essence, appears before the soul's vision; one sees the soul as it was in a purely spiritual-soul world before it united with the physical-bodily substances and forces through birth or conception, which are given to it through the hereditary powers of parents and ancestors.