We lose the human being from our field of vision if we do not fix the eye
of the soul upon his entire nature in all its life-manifestations. We
should not speak of man's knowledge, but of the complete man manifesting
himself in the act of cognition. In cognition, man uses as an instrument
his sense-nerve nature. For feeling, he is served by the rhythm living in
the breath and the circulation of the blood. When he wills metabolism
becomes the physical basis of his existence. But rhythm courses into the
physical occurrence within the sense-nerve nature; and metabolism is the
material bearer of the life of thought, even in the most abstract thinking,
feeling lives and the waves of will pulsate.
The ancient Oriental entered into his dream-like thinking more from the
rhythmic life of feeling than does the man of the present age. The Oriental
experienced for this reason more of the rhythmic weaving in his life of
thought, while the Westerner experiences more of the logical indications.
In ascending to super-sensible vision, the Oriental Yogi interwove
conscious breath with conscious thinking, in this way, he laid hold in his
breath upon the continuing rhythm of cosmic occurrence. As he breathed, he
experienced the world as Self. Upon the rhythmic waves of conscious breath,
thought moved through the entire being of man. He experienced how the
Divine-Spiritual causes the spirit-filled breath to stream continuously
into man, and how man thus becomes a living soul. The man of the present
age must seek his super-sensible knowledge in a different way. He cannot
unite his thinking with the breath. Through meditation, he must lift his
thinking out of the life of logic to vision. In vision, however, thought
weaves in a spirit element or music and picture. It is released from the
breath and woven together with the spiritual in the world. The Self is now
experienced, not in connection with the breath in the single human being,
but in the environing world of spirit. The Eastern man once experienced the
world in himself, and in his spiritual life today he has the echo of this.
The Western man stands at the beginning of his experience, and is on the
way to find himself in the world. If the Western man should wish to become
a Yogi, he would have to become a refined egoist, for Nature has already
given him the feeling of the Self. which the Oriental had only in a
dream-like way. If the Yogi had sought for himself in the world as the
Western man must do, he would have led his dream-like thinking into
unconscious sleep, and would have been psychically drowned.
The Eastern man had the spiritual experience as religion, art, and science
in complete unity. He made sacrifices to his spiritual-divine Beings. As a
gift of grace, there flowed to him from them that which lifted him to the
state of a true human being. This was religion. But in the sacrificial
ceremony and the sacrificial place there was manifest to him also beauty,
through which the Divine-Spiritual lived in art. And out of the beautiful
manifestations of the Spirit there flowed science.
Toward the West streamed the waves of wisdom that were the beautiful light
of the spirit and inspired piety in the artistically inspired man. There
religion developed its own being, and only beauty still continued united
with wisdom. Heracleitos and Anaxagoras were men wise in the world who
thought artistically; Aeschylos and Sophocles were artists who moulded the
wisdom of the world. Later wisdom was given over to thinking; it became
knowledge. Art was transferred to its own world. Religion, the source of
all, became the heritage of the East; art became the monument of the time
when the middle region of the earth held sway; knowledge became the
independent mistress of its own field in man's soul. Thus did the spiritual
life of the West come to existence. A complete human being like Goethe
discovered the world of spirit immersed In knowledge. But he longed to see
the truth of knowledge in the beauty of art. This drove him to the south.
Whoever follows him in the spirit may find a religiously Intimate knowledge
striving in beauty toward artistic revelation. If the Western man beholds
in his cold knowledge the spiritual-divine streaming forth below him and
glancing with beauty, and if the Eastern man senses in his religion of
wisdom, warm with feeling and speaking of the beauty of the cosmos, the
knowledge that makes man free, transforming itself in man into the power of
will, then will the Eastern man in his feeling intuition no longer accuse
the thinking Western man of being soulless, and the thinking Western man
will no longer condemn the intuitively feeling Eastern man as an alien to
the world. Religion can be deepened by knowledge filled with the life of
art. Art can be made alive through knowledge born out of religion.
Knowledge can be illuminated by religion upheld by art.
The Eastern man spoke of the sense-world as an appearance in which there
lived a lesser manifestation of what he experienced as spirit in utter
reality within his own soul. The Western man speaks of the world of ideas
as an appearance where there lives in shadowy form what he experiences as
Nature in utter reality through his senses. What was the Maja of the senses
to the Eastern man is self-sufficing reality to the Western man. What is
the ideology constructed by the mind to the Western man was self-creating
reality to the Eastern man. If the Eastern man finds today in his reality
of spirit the power to give the strength of existence to Maja, and if the
Western man discovers life in his reality of Nature, so that he shall see
the Spirit at work in his ideology, then will understanding come about
between East and West.
In hoary antiquity the humanity of the Orient experienced in knowledge a
lofty spirituality. This spirituality, laid hold upon in thought, pulsated
through the feeling; it streamed out into the will. The thought was not yet
the percept which reproduces objects. It was real being which bore into the
inner nature of man the life of the spiritual world. The man of the East
lives today in the echoes of this lofty spirituality. The eye of his
cognition was once not directed toward Nature. He looked through Nature at
the spirit. When the adaptation to Nature began, man did not at once see
Nature; he saw the spirit by the way of Nature; he saw ghosts. The last
residues of a lofty spirituality became, on the way from East to West, the
superstitious belief in ghosts. To the Western man, a knowledge of Nature
was given as Copernicus and Galileo arose for him. He had to look into his
own inner nature in order to seek for the spirit. There the spirit was still
concealed from him, and he beheld only appetites and instincts. But these
are material ghosts, taking their place before the eyes of the soul because
this is not yet inwardly adapted to the spirit. When the adaptation to the
spirit begins, the inner ghosts will vanish, and man will took upon the
spirit through his own inner nature, as the ancient man of the East looked
upon the spirit through Nature. Through the world of the inner ghosts the
West will reach the spirit. The Western ghost superstition is the beginning
of the knowledge of spirit. What the East bequeathed to the West as a
superstitious belief in ghosts is the end of the knowledge of spirit. Men
should find their way past the ghosts into the spirit and thus will
a bridge be built between East and West.
The man of the East feels I and sees World; the I
is the moon which reflects the world. The man of the West thinks the
World and radiates into the world of his own thought
I. The I is a sun which irradiates the world of pictures. If
the Eastern man comes to feel the rays of the sun in the shimmer of his
moon of wisdom, and the Western man experiences the shimmer of moon-wisdom
in the rays of his sun of will, then shall the will of the West release the
will of the East.
The ancient Oriental felt himself to be in a social order willed by the
Spirit. The commandments of the spiritual Power, brought to his
consciousness by his Leader, gave him the conception as to how he should
integrate himself with this order. These leaders derived such conceptions
out of their vision in the super-sensible world. Those who were led felt
that in such conceptions lay the main directions transmitted to them for
their spiritual, political and economic life. Views regarding man's
relationship to the spiritual, the relationship between man and man, the
handling of the economic affairs were derived for them from the same
sources, commandments willed by the spirit. The spiritual life, the
social-political order, the handling of the economic affairs were
experienced as a unity. The farther culture progressed toward the West, the
more relationship of rights between man and man and the handling of
economic affairs were separated from the spiritual life in human
consciousness. The spiritual life became more independent. The other
members of the social order still continued to constitute a unity. But,
with the further penetration of the West, they also became separated. 3y
the side of the element of rights and the state, which for a time
controlled everything economic, there took form an independent economic
thinking. The Western man is still living amidst the processes of this last
separation. At the same time, there arises for him the task to mould into a
higher unity the separated members of the social life the life of
the spirit, the control of rights and of the state, the handling of
economic affairs, if he achieves this, the man of the East will look upon
this creation with understanding, for he will again discover what he once
lost, the unity of human experience.
Among the partial currents whose interaction and reciprocal conflict
compose human history, there is included the conquest or labor by man's
consciousness. In the ancient Orient, man labored in accordance with an
order imposed upon him by the will of the Spirit, in this reeling, he was
either a master or a worker. With the migration of the life of culture
toward the West, there came into human consciousness the relationship
between man and man. into this was woven the labor which one performs for
others. Into the concepts of rights there penetrated the concept of the
value of work. A great part of Roman history represents this growing
together of the concepts of rights and of work. With the further
penetration of culture into the West, economic life took on more and more
complicated forms, It drew labor into itself when the structure of rights
which this had hitherto taken on was not yet adequate for the demands of
the new forms. Disharmony arose between the conceptions of work and of
rights. The re-establishment of harmony between the two is the great social
problem of the West. How labor can discover its form within the entity of
rights, and not be torn out of this entity in the handling of economic
affairs, constitutes the content or the problem, if the West begins to
advance toward this solution, through insight and in social peace, the East
will meet this with understanding. But, if this problem generates in the
West a stand in thinking which manifests itself in social turmoil, the East
will not be able to acquire confidence in the further evolution of humanity
through the West.
The unity between the spiritual life, human rights, and the handling of
economic affairs, in accordance with an order willed by the Spirit, can
survive only so long as the tilling of the soil is predominant in
economics, while trade and industry are subordinate to agricultural
economics. It is for this reason that the social thinking of the ancient
Orient, willed by the Spirit, bears with reference to the handling of
economic affairs a character adapted to agricultural economics. With the
course of civilization toward the West, trade first becomes an independent
element in economics. It demands the determination of rights. It must be
possible to carry on business with everyone. With reference to this, there
are only abstract standards of rights. As civilization advanced still
farther toward the West, production in industry becomes an independent
element in the handling of economic affairs. It is possible to produce
useful goods only when the producer and those persons with whom he must
work in this production live in a relationship which corresponds with human
capacities and needs. The unfolding of the industrial element demands out
of :he economic life associative unions so moulded that men know their
needs to be satisfied in these so far as the natural conditions make this
possible, To discover the fight associative life is the task of the West.
If it proves to be capable of this task, the East will say: Our life
once flowed into brotherhood. In the course of time, this disappeared; the
advance of humanity took it away from us. The West causes it to blossom
again out of the associative economic life. It restores the vanished
confidence in true humanness.
When the ancient man composed a poem, he felt that spiritual Power spoke
through him. In Greece the poet let the Muse speak through him to his
fellowmen. This consciousness was a heritage of the ancient Orient. With
the passage of the spiritual life toward the West, poetry became more and
more the manifestation of man himself. In the ancient Orient, the spiritual
Powers sang through man to men. The cosmic word resounded from the gods
down to man. in the West, it has become the human word. It must find the
way upward to the spiritual Powers. Man must learn to create poetry in such
a way that the Spirit may listen to him. The West must mould a language
suited to the Spirit. Then will the East say: The divine Word, which
once streamed for us from heaven to earth, finds its way back from the
hearts of men into the spiritual world. In the human word mounting upward
we behold with understanding the cosmic Word whose descent our
consciousness once experienced.
The man of the East has no understanding for proof. He
experiences in vision the content of his truths, and knows them in this
way. And what man knows he does not prove. The man of the West demands
everywhere proofs. Everywhere he strives to reach the content
of his truths out of the external reflection by means of thought, and
interprets them in this way. But what is interpreted must be
proven. If the man of the West releases from his proof the life
of truth, the man of the East will understand him. if, at the end of the
Western man's struggle for proof, the Eastern man discovers his unproven
dreams of truth in a true awaking, the man of the West will then have to
greet him as a fellow-worker who can accomplish what he himself cannot
accomplish in work for the progress of humanity.
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