What opens the spiritual world to us is inner soul work

I gladly believe that today those people who feel the urge to experience something of the spiritual world would prefer if one could teach the ability of perceiving the spiritual world while one imposes them mystically or as the case may be. Some people believe this. Nevertheless, it is not that way. What opens the spiritual world to us is inner soul work. This inner soul work really leads to that which I have indicated. The human being who changes his soul into an organised soul knows that his soul gets free from the body, when pushing against the spiritual and perceives the spirit.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 72 – The Human Soul in the Supersensible Realm and Its Relationship to the Body -Basel, 18 October 1917

Rudolf Steiner and Annie Besant

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The portal of the spiritual world

Fundamentally speaking, every one who sets his foot on the path of spiritual science is waiting for the portal of the spiritual world to be opened to him sooner or later, as indeed it will be. It may be — indeed it often is so — that the entry to the spiritual world takes place by degrees. Then we grow slowly into the spiritual world. Nevertheless, very, very frequently it happens that the world is opened to us as by a kind of shock which breaks in upon our life — by a sudden and unexpected event.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 161 – Brunetto Latini – Dornach, January 30th, 1915

Translated by George Adams

Previously posted on October 1, 2017

Extraordinarily complex

As soon as the veil that is spread before man in order that he may see only the sense-world and not the spiritual world behind it, is drawn aside, life becomes extraordinarily complex.

It is found to begin with that man is influenced not only by those Beings and their physical reflections, the Stars, which can be directly observed, but that within earthly existence itself, supersensible Beings akin to those of the world of Stars have so to speak set up their abode in the earthly realm.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 219 – Man and the World of Stars: III: Man’s Relation to the World of the Stars – Dornach, December 3, 1922

Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

Previously posted on June 28, 2017

A seer can also be mistaken in some details

No one can describe the spiritual world in its entirety; it is more complex and vaster than our physical world. I admit that the spiritual researcher can be mistaken in some details, just as one can be mistaken in the physical world, if one wants to determine, for example, the height of a mountain. But no more than such a mistake in detail can be a reason to deny the physical world, no more, may the reality of the spiritual realm be rejected because of a flaw in some specific detail.

Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 88 – Über die astrale Welt und das Devachan – Berlin, October 28, 1903 (page 32)

Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger

Previously posted on April 27, 2020

Every form of life is spiritual

You will understand the physical world, only if you learn to know the spiritual world. Spiritual science is not meant for cranks, but for the most practical of the practical! Every form of life is spiritual. Even as ice is condensed water, so matter is condensed spirit. Mineral, plant, animal, or man — each is a condensed form of the spirit.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 100 – Theosophy and Rosicrucianism: Lecture I – Kassel, 16th June 1907 

Previously posted on September 20, 2016