HOW TO BECOME A SPIRITUAL-SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHER
If you are interested about the basic preconditions for those who want
to perform a spiritual-scientific investigation of nutrition, then you need
to know that “one might easily presume that to be someone who can enter into
the spiritual (behind the realities of existence) one must of necessity
become a spiritual researcher. This is not necessary,
although it is written a great deal in the book
How to Know Higher Worlds (Knowledge of the Higher Worlds)
about what the soul must do in order to enter there. Anyone can do this to
some extent today, but not everyone needs to do so. What you develop in your
soul is an entirely inner affair; but what it leads to is that the truths
being researched can be formulated into concepts, so that you can clothe in
thoughts and ideas what a spiritual researcher tells you. It is something
that can be communicated. One of the laws of spiritual research is that it
does not matter whether you have found these things out through your own
research or whether you have been informed about them by a reliable source.
It is not a matter of finding these things out yourself, for the important
thing is that you have them and develop them within yourself.
It is, then, a misunderstanding to assume that everyone must become a
spiritual researcher. But nowadays someone who is a spiritual researcher
will have the need to give an account of the path he has followed for his
research. This is not only because anyone today can to some extent tread the
described path without coming to any harm but also because anyone has the
right to ask: What did you do to arrive at these results?” [1]
Spiritual research demands development of new senses which enable us to
see behind the veil of physical sense impressions. While “by clairvoyance
the facts of spiritual science are investigated, man acquires a new sense
when he enters with his whole thought and feeling into what has already been
discovered by clairvoyant methods, and regulates his life accordingly. That
is the essential point. What is of importance is to study the conclusions of
spiritual science, not to satisfy curiosity for clairvoyance.”
[2]
This means that everyone who undertakes a serious study of
spiritual-scientific literature is already a spiritual-scientific
researcher. For “in reading about spiritual scientific knowledge, you are active in a
different way than you are in reading accounts of sense-perceptible
facts. If you read accounts of the sense-perceptible world, you read
about them, but if you read accounts of supersensible facts in the right
way, you immerse yourself in the stream of spiritual existence. By
taking in the results of spiritual research, we also set out on our own
inner path toward discovering these results for ourselves. People
imagine entering the spiritual world to be much too similar to a sensory
experience, and so they find their experiences in reading about this
world much too thought-like. But if we are truly absorbing these things
as thoughts, we are already in the midst of the spiritual world and must
only realize that we are already experiencing – although we do not
notice it – what we believed we were merely receiving in the form of
thoughts communicated to us.” [3]
When we really understand something we are not yet clairvoyant;
nevertheless we are in the first phase of supersensible perception which
can be called ‘clair-cognizance’ – that is, clear perception of wisdom
that exists behind the things. For we need to grasp that “no man could
actually attain clairvoyance if he did not have a tiny amount of it
already in his soul. It is generally supposed that men as they are, are
not clairvoyant. If that were true they could never become clairvoyant
at all.” We must “already be a little clairvoyant in order to be able to
develop and extend it more and more.” In our possession we have the key
for the entrance into the spiritual world, when we “understand that
there is really no one among us who does not have this starting-point of
clairvoyance, though people may not be conscious of it. All of you have
it. None of you is lacking in it.” [4]
However, what we possess “is something not generally regarded or
valued as clairvoyance.” For example, if somebody who he is colour blind
sees a pearl among other round stones he will not recognise its value. Most people
today are similar to such person. “They do not value the pearl that lies
there in full view before them. What they value is something quite
different. They value their concepts and ideas, but no one could think
abstractly, could have thoughts and ideas, if he were not clairvoyant.
In our ordinary thinking the pearl of clairvoyance is contained from the
start. Ideas arise in the soul through exactly the same process as what
gives rise to its highest powers. It is immensely important to learn to
understand that clairvoyance begins in something common and everyday.
We
only have to recognize the supersensible nature of our concepts and
ideas. We must realize that these come to us from the supersensible
worlds; only then can we look at the matter rightly.” [5]
Main Characteristics of Spiritual-Scientific Research
Here are given the main characteristics of the spiritual-scientific
approach to the investigation of the questions of nutrition used in the
preparation of this website. A whole chapter could easily be written about
each of them, but initially short characterisations taken from
spiritual-scientific literature should suffice. [6]
The Complexity of the Human Being
“We understand the human being only if we place him in the world not
merely as a being of nature, but as a spiritual being. The invisible nature
of man – his ego, his soul body, his life body – work through his visible
nature. If we work our way bit by bit through the various parts of this
complicated process, and place them all together, we shall, in the end,
attain an overall view of the being of man. Even this, though, will always
remain incomplete, for the being of man is infinitely complex.”
From Broad Views to Details
“Everything in the human organism works upon everything else. But we will
get nowhere if we have only general abstract ideas of this interpenetration;
we will reach a result only if we can evolve a concrete idea of our
constitution and of how everything that is around us participates in our
make-up. In spiritual science the procedure must differ from that adopted in
other systems of thought. Spiritual science must first present a broad view
of the facts and realities of life and then elaborate the details. The
difficulty is that the field of spiritual science as a whole is so extensive
that it is never possible to present more than a part of it.”
Characterisations instead of Definitions
“In order to understand the things of the earth, definitions may be
helpful; but when it is matter of understanding realities – above all
supersensible realities – one cannot define, one must characterise; for then
it is necessary to contemplate the facts from every possible vantage-point.
Definitions are always one-sided and inadequate and all that can be done is
to characterise. The word is handled in such a way that one really feels
each word as something insufficient, every sentence as something
insufficient, that one has the urge to characterise that which one wishes to
place before humanity from the most varied aspects.”
Observing from Different Perspectives
“What a thing is must be characterized from different points of view,
such as a tree that is photographed from different perspectives. Similarly,
truth cannot be gained from an understanding that seeks to encompass an
object in a single glance, but only from putting together the true views
resulting from different perspectives. To say something that is incorrect is
not the worst thing that can happen, for the world itself will soon put one
right about it; but it is really serious to regard a one-sided truth as an
absolute truth and to persist in so regarding it. It is always essential to
look at truths not only from the one side but also from the other.”
Understanding instead of Rules
“One thing is characteristic of spiritual science, and this one thing is
its attitude. Every thought is permeated by this attitude. Spiritual science
wants to understand and follow everything in life and in the life of the
spirit in an unbiased way. It does not want to apply the standards of
sympathy or antipathy, but rather to understand everything in human life and
in the spiritual world in an unprejudiced way. Spiritual science is
concerned with understanding. Spiritual science does not give rules, but
only wants to explain how things really are. It does not stand for this or
that kind of diet – what it actually does is to enable people to understand
any form of diet. Then each may arrange his life as he wills, according to
these great laws of existence.”
Proofs of Life instead of Belief
“It is important for the science of the spirit to be presented in such a
way as to be based on the smallest possible extent on belief in authority.”
All explanations presented on this website can and should be tested by “your
capacity for intelligent examination. Only the thought must be really
accurate and comprehensive! It must be prepared to relate the phenomena of
life to what spiritual science confirms. We must be ready to test, free from
prejudice, the teachings of spiritual science by the experience of life.
Spiritual-scientific truths are best recognised by their fruits. Those who
apply the knowledge of spiritual science correctly will find that it proves
itself in life by making life strong and healthy.”
For a more detailed explanation of the spiritual-scientific approach to research see:
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