Growing Old : Going To Seed

Rudolf Steiner:

"When we study life through the knowledge given by initiation, we see that the human being's soul-spiritual core directs the experiences of life more and more toward its inner center, abstracting them from the external world. We understand and we can see how the soul-spiritual part gradually retreats from the external world. We can see the face getting old and wrinkled, and we obtain the immediate impression: Whereas our physical body begins to fade, after we have reached the climax of life, and even our brain decays, so that the soul can no longer express its own content, and even the soul itself seems to decay, we see on the other hand that the part that can no longer express itself outwardly gradually withdraws to the person's inner being, and concentrates its forces, so that everything which we have experienced, suffered, and achieved is gathered within the soul, and is at its strongest, its most powerful, when the body releases our soul-spiritual part. If we follow this process, we find that this strongest force within us becomes united with forces of the supersensible world, forming the prototype of a new incarnation, of a new body for a new life on Earth."

"Die, and Become"

the inscription on the Holy Grail