The Development and Education of the Human Being in the Light of Anthroposophy

As we look more and more towards the end of the normal human life, we see how, on the other hand, the spiritual-soul being of the spiritual post-mortal human existence emerges in contrast to the dying spiritual human life of prenatal existence. In every moment of earthly life we see a measure of what the human being has brought with them from the eternal worlds into earthly existence, what they are forging in order to carry it through the gateway of death into a spiritual world; cognitively we advance to immortality. The path I am describing to you, in order to arrive at an understanding of the human being by going beyond mysticism and natural science, is not one that can be dismissed by casually labeling it “clairvoyant.” This is a path in which one knows how each step follows the previous one, just as the mathematician knows how one mathematical derivation follows another. The path that I have been able to sketch for you – with reference to the books mentioned – is the path of anthroposophy, the path that leads to the unborn and immortal nature of the human soul in a way that could be explained to a strict mathematician, and which shows how one does not have to stop at the world in order to penetrate into the human being, as one does not have to stop at the human being in mysticism in order to penetrate into the world, but how one can connect the knowledge of the world with the knowledge of the human being. If enough natural science and enough mysticism is pursued in this way, then the possibility will arise for the future spiritual civilization of humanity to fulfill the word that approaches man so powerfully admonishing, the word “know thyself!”