Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit

Diagram 5 Click image for large view

There is something else, something in the nature of a human-psychic experience, that is connected with the ego. It is the power of reasoning. This enters with the ego. If you visualize this picture, you will really be able to understand only the phenomenon of surprise, of interest, not the reasoning activity of the ego. The latter cannot possibly enter the process from the direction of the past, and unless the ego can enter simultaneously with desire, it is impossible for reasoning to meet the future-past current. What is indispensable if reasoning activity is to enter with the ego current? A reflection, and this must come about in such a way that the ego has the unconsciously flowing visualizations positively behind itself.

That would be the case if the ego current entered from the direction indicated by the arrow in the diagram, but were then to change its course within the body to that shown by the other arrow, toward the future. Now the ego has joined the current of the etheric body, has entered the etheric body — has itself, so to speak, become a mirror. This tallies strikingly with the facts. If the ego has the unconsciously onward-flowing visualizations behind itself, what does it encounter in front, toward the future? Imagine you are looking into a mirror. If nothing is behind you, you see nothing but an endless void, and at first that is man's view of the future. When do you see something there? Only when something out of the past appears. You see the past, not the future; the mirror shows you the objects that are behind you. Now, if the ego is reflected inwardly at the moment when the child arrives at self-consciousness, the entire soul life from then on signifies that experiences and impressions of the past are reflected as well. That is why you can remember nothing that occurred before the ego became a means of reflection. If something out of the past is to be seen in the mirror, you naturally see nothing of the future, just as you see nothing behind the quicksilver that lines the mirror.

It should be noted here that the child, when it is reflected in the etheric body at the inception of the ego, remembers nothing that happened previously. Everything is explained by the one essential fact that the human ego, in so far as it enters the etheric body and receives visualizations out of the past, itself becomes a reflecting apparatus impressionable to everything it receives from that time on.

Now let us recall the fact, already mentioned, that there are two kinds of memories, the one resulting from the external repetition of a perception, the other called up out of the soul by the power of the ego, without external repetition. What must occur if the ego is to reflect past events? We can say that, if you receive an outer impression through a picture you have seen before and which you encounter for the second or third time, the raying of the reflection from the other side is thereby held back in such a manner as to make it strike the inner soul mirror. What if no repetition of the outer impression occurs? In that case the ego itself must gather what is to be reflected from within, that is, it must create a substitute for what is otherwise effected by the outer impression.

What is this ego primarily as it appears in physical human life? It is the inner fulfillment of the etheric body. It must therefore itself be transformed into a mirror within the etheric body, and this is accomplished through the delimitation of the etheric body. With regard to your outer sense impressions you are sequestered by reason of being in a physical body, and it is due to this fact that what lives in the etheric body can be reflected. There must be, however, another force to account for what you remember freely. The etheric body must have a foil, like a mirror, and this is provided for the memories, which are called forth by the new impression, by the sense organs, the physical body.

In the absence of anything acting from without, we must seek the foil elsewhere. The only alternative is to employ as an auxiliary force what approaches the ego at right angles, that is, desire, or the current flowing toward us. This we use as a foil for the mirror. Only by appropriately strengthening the astral body can we call in the force of desire and develop out of the ego a force capable of recalling to our memory those visualizations that otherwise refuse to appear. Only by strengthening the ego, as it expresses itself in the physical world, are we able actually to use the current flowing out of the future and to make a mirror-foil of it. Solely by strengthening the ego, by making it master of what comes to us out of the future (astral body), can we do anything about the visualizations that refuse to be mirrored, refuse to surrender to us. If we cannot recall the visualization, it is because our desire lacks the requisite strength. We must take out a loan in order to be able to reflect it.

A strengthening of the ego can be brought about in two ways. In everyday life, for example, you experience things simply by following the continuous stream of experience. When a bell tolls you hear the first tone, the second, third, and so forth, in order; in a play you hear the various parts one after another, then you've finished. With your ego you live along in the continuous stream of etheric life but, if you systematically set about to experience the opposite stream of life, you follow the astral current. For instance, in the evening recall the events of the day in reverse order, or recite the Lord's Prayer backwards. You are then not following the usual ego current, which lives because the ego fills the etheric body, but the opposite one, and the consequence is that you incorporate forces out of the astral current. That is an extraordinarily good exercise for strengthening the memory.

There is another exercise for the same purpose. If someone suffers from a particularly poor memory, he can combat the condition by trying with all his might to take up some occupation of his youth. Supposing he is forty, and he tackles a book that had entranced him at the age of fifteen. If he keeps on trying religiously to become absorbed in it with the feeling of that earlier time, he draws strength from the backward-flowing current. You recall the same facts you did in the past, then the current out of the future comes to your aid. Why, for example, does an old man like to recall the occupations of his youth?

Such considerations can show you that actually your ego must fortify itself from the astral current that flows to meet the etheric current if it would strengthen the memory. If one were to pay careful attention to such matters in teaching, the effect would be highly beneficial. For example, seven school classes could be so arranged as to comprise a middle class, the fourth. In the fifth would be repeated in modified form what was studied in the third, in the sixth the subjects of the second, in the seventh, of the first. That would be an excellent way of strengthening the memory, and if people would put such things into practice they would see that ideas of that sort derive from the laws governing life.

From all this we perceive that in our ego visualization, our ego perception, we have something that must first come into being. . It arises in early childhood through the inward reflection of the etheric body. No wonder there is no ego visualization in the night, for when the ego is out in space during sleep, it naturally cannot be reflected in the etheric body. That is why it must submerge in unconsciousness at night. The etheric body is the current continuously flowing in time, and in the course of time it receives the ego visualization through the circumstance that what flows forward in the etheric body is illuminated from the other side by the astral body.

All that we have in the way of ego visualization is exclusively in the etheric body; it is merely the entire etheric body seen from within, reflecting itself within itself. Only the ego visualization is active in the etheric body, not the ego itself. What is the ego? It is the power of reasoning striking in at an angle. If you would comprehend the ego you must not turn to the ego perception but to reasoning. In relation to all else, reasoning is independent, and we must clearly distinguish between visualizing and reasoning. “Red” is not a verdict; reasoning stops at the sense perception. The moment, however, the verdict “red is” is pronounced — when the “red” is endowed with “being” — the ego stirs, the reasoning that is directed toward the spiritual. When the ego passes judgment based upon outer impressions, the latter are objects of judgment.

Now, if the ego is a being apart from all its visualizations and perceptions, as well as from self-perception (just as a reflected image is not identical with the object reflected), and if, further, it is the impetus of self-perception, a verdict must be possible in relation to which the ego, as in all reasoning, feels itself master, and not dependent upon outer perception. This occurs at the moment, not when you have the ego visualization, but when you pronounce the judgment “I is.” Thereby you have filled out with reasoning capacity what otherwise lives in the “I” without achieving consciousness. What was previously an empty bubble is now filled with the power of reasoning, and when the ego thus fills itself out the spirit is encompassed by reasoning.

Let us recall that reasoning is an activity of the soul, an inner activity; that soul activities arise within, in the inner soul life; that they lead to visualizations. Among the visualizations that appear, the ego visualization is one. True, we found that the ego visualization leads to a conception of the ego, but aside from that we could learn nothing about the ego. What we did learn, however, is that the ego visualization, though having the same character as other visualizations entering from the physical world, cannot originate in the outer world, the physical world. This being the case, and since reasoning, which is one of the elements of the soul life, must be applied to the ego, it follows that the ego must enter the soul life from the other side. This is conclusive evidence that just as the conception “red” enters the soul life from without and is then encompassed by a verdict, so something in the ego appears from the other side and acts in the same way.

When we say “I is,” we receive an impression out of the spiritual world and encompass it with a verdict. “Red” corresponds to physical conditions of existence. The verdict “red is” can, as such, come about only within the soul life through the agency of the physical world. “I is” comes from the other direction; so we say that this impression comes from the spiritual world. “I is” is a fact of the spiritual life, just as “red is” is a fact of the physical life. The usage of speech expresses this coming from the other side by exchanging “is” for “am”: I am. The ego can be admitted to have being [Sein, the infinitive “to be,” used here as a noun. Ordinarily it could be translated with “existence,” but here that would be a half-truth. The linguistic connection with “I is,” “I am,” etc., must be retained.] only when it can be encompassed by a judgment; when, just as in the case of “red,” something approaches the soul that can be encompassed by a verdict in the same way as can something coming from the physical world.

When I now draw a line indicating the fourth direction, upward from below, you will not be surprised that this represents a physical force. Graphically represented, the impressions of the physical world proceed upward from below and manifest themselves in the soul as sense impressions. In one plane the ego and its bodily-physical sense organs are opposed, in the other, the currents of the etheric and of the astral bodies. When the ego makes contact with the physical body through the eye, the ear, etc., it receives impressions of the physical world. These are then carried on in the soul by reason of the latter's possessing consciousness, which in turn arises through the impact of the etheric and astral bodies upon each other. The whole picture shows that a comparatively good diagram of the co-operation of the various worlds in the human soul can be had by opposing the ego and the physical body in one plane, and at right angles, the etheric and astral bodies.

Innumerable riddles will be solved for you if you will thoroughly work your way through this diagram. You will see that precisely this cross, intersected by a circle, gives you a good picture of the soul life as it borders below on the physical, above on the spiritual world. Now you must imagine the stream of time, and you must rise to a visualization of it, not as something flowing along smoothly, but as meeting the life of the senses. You must see that the life of the ego can be comprehended only when thought of as striking at right angles into the stream of time. With this in mind you will readily understand that quite different forces meet in our soul. Our soul is the stage, so to speak, where these forces encounter each other from many directions.

As an example, take someone in whom the reasoning ego preponderates. He will find it difficult to endow abstract concepts with sufficient body to make them appeal directly to feeling; that is, a man like Hegel, who is strong in reasoning, will not easily give in full measure of what speaks to the feelings. On the other hand, one whose every tendency tells of a rich astral life, who is full of interests that flow against the continuous current of the physical life, will bring with him into the world the gift for living

Diagram 6 Click image for large view

concepts, because he is open to the stream coming out of the future. He will not appear on the physical plane as a man of thought, but rather, he will prove how readily he can clothe his inner experiences in words that speak powerfully to men. Such a one was Goethe.

If you think of a man as bringing over from a former incarnation a tendency toward the one current or the other, you must imagine in Goethe's soul a predisposition for the stream out of the future. When he yields himself to it, he quite naturally gathers ideas of the future as vital concepts. Once Goethe permits all this to come into conflict with what has only been acquired in this incarnation, with the visualizations of the recently acquired etheric body, the result is something like what we designated worthless in his Wandering Jew.

On the other hand, when a Hegel brings with him the gift for extracting mighty conceptions from his reasoning, he struggles with the current that streams from the future into the past. The fact is, we incessantly place our ego in such a position as to cover up the continuous stream. The ego covers it and lets the endless current of desire come to meet it, and into this focal point we peer as into a mirror.

I have been able to evoke for you but little out of the infinite realm of psychosophy, but you will find the answers to many riddles of life by taking into account the presence of the unconscious visualizations of the etheric body. The physical body is in constant communication with the etheric body, and just because the visualizations are unconscious they can develop their lively activity in the other direction toward the physical side. Furthermore, precisely those visualizations that our consciousness is unable to call up out of our unconscious soul life are in this way immeasurably destructive; they develop destructive forces that penetrate our corporeality. It is a fact that something a person has experienced at the age of ten or twelve, and totally forgotten — something he is incapable of raising into consciousness because the ego lacks sufficient strength — continues to act in his etheric body and can impair his health. That means that in the etheric body there live visualizations that can cause sickness.

If you know that, you also know that there is a remedy. It consists in robbing these visualizations of their power by deflecting them in another direction. You can help the sufferer, if he is not strong enough to do so himself, by providing him with associations that will bring these visualizations to consciousness. That accomplishes a great deal. It is really possible to bring a person's conceptions to his consciousness and thus call forth health-giving forces.

Some of you will say that that sort of thing is being tried at the present time and, indeed, there are psychiatric cures that consist in calling forth visualizations. I cannot here mention the name of the school I have in mind because its aim is to unearth only visualizations of the sexual life — visualizations to which the matter here under discussion does not apply. In such cases it is of no avail, and for that reason the Freudian School in Vienna is such as to produce results that are the exact opposite of what is aimed at.

You will have gathered that, if one goes to work conscientiously and intelligently in observing life on the physical plane, the knowledge acquired on the psychosophic path verifies what reaches us through clairvoyant research, but the latter does not seek the facts in order to see whether they tally with conditions on the physical plane. On the contrary, the clairvoyant seeker is often surprised himself to find the results of his research so beautifully borne out on the physical plane. If reversed, the process would hardly yield accurate information. Research practised on the physical plane alone tends to group things in a wrong way and to meet facts with a slap in the face. The fundamental impression I hope you have gleaned from these lectures is one of justified confidence in clairvoyant research.

That is why, in addition to all that I tell you from clairvoyant sources, I am at pains to draw your attention from time to time in a matter-of-fact way to the laws of the physical plane because we are placed on this plane in order that we may learn to know it. We have a twofold duty. On the one hand, we must study the physical plane upon which the great world powers have not placed us fortuitously, and we must really identify ourselves with it by renunciative thinking. On the other hand, we have already arrived at the stage of human development at which we are aware that we can no longer cope with the physical plane without the aid of occult research. Science must inevitably err without occult science as a guide to point the lines of approach to all that can be learned through physical research. After the establishment of physical research at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this necessarily remained the center of interest; now the time is ripe for another sort of research to intervene and indicate the lines of approach. If the occultist will not only learn this but count it among his duties, he will have fulfilled the demands of our time, namely, to spread the conviction that we base firmly on the physical plane. Certainly anyone who has grasped the idea of the astral current flowing in from the future can be depended upon in this matter. That this is true I have already proved to you by a fact.

Only one of the many psychologists of the present has, with no knowledge of occultism whatever, approached the study of the soul with a fine schooling. He is Franz Brentano. He took up psychology in the eighteen-sixties and, although what he did amounted to no more than scholastic speculating, it was like a child's first steps in the doctrine of desire, feeling, and reasoning. What he says is all askew, but the tendency is significant. It could have been right had it not been for his complete ignorance of every occult context. The first volume of his work appeared in the spring of 1874 and the second was due in the fall of the same year, but to this day (1910) it has not appeared. He was bound to become mired, and from these lectures you will understand why. He had already defined and indicated what the second volume was to contain; he had planned to deal with the ego, with immortality. The stream of occult research, however, failed to enter from the other side; the fructifying element was not forthcoming. Franz Brentano lived as a child of our time, that is, he began to arrange facts into groups, so he could not get on. He is now living in Florence, an old man.

Wundt also wrote a psychology, but it is nothing but a tangle of concepts. It contains nothing about the real soul life, nothing but the author's preconceived opinions. Such people thrash empty straw, even when dealing with the psychologies of peoples and of languages. All sciences would come to a similar impasse unless something came to meet them from the spiritual side.

My dear friends, you have identified yourselves with a movement in which your store of knowledge can increase if you think of your present knowledge as a karmic fact. In that way you will have arrived at a crossroads, a vantage point from which vigorous co-operation in this work is clearly discernible as a task enabling you now or in a future incarnation to serve humanity. Do not think of that as an abstract ideal, but keep constantly returning to it in a practical way. This work must be made to bear fruit.