We are able to recognize the life world behind physical nature when we begin to have a moral perception of the world lying around us.

Spiritual science does not merely signify the acquisition of knowledge; it signifies most preeminently an education, a self-education of our souls. We make ourselves different; we have other interests. When one imbues oneself with spiritual science, the habits of attention for this or that subject that one had developed in previous years alter. What was once of interest is of interest no longer; what was of no interest previously now begins to be interesting in the highest degree.
 I am speaking to those who have, to some extent, accepted spiritual science. Therefore I may take it for granted that you know that immediately behind what meets us externally as human beings—behind what we see with our eyes, touch with our hands, and grasp with our understanding in ordinary human anatomy or physiology, behind what we call the physical body—we recognize the first supersensible human principle. This supersensible principle of the human being we call the etheric body, or life body. […]
 We can do something similar with regard to the nature around us. Just as we can investigate a human being to see whether there is not something more than the physical body and then find the etheric body, so, too, we can look at external nature in her colors, forms, sounds, and kingdoms—in the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms, insofar as these meet us physically. We discover that just as behind the human physical body there is a life body, so there is a sort of etheric body, or life body, behind the whole of physical nature…
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