Basic Concepts of Theosophy. Soul and Spirit of the Human Being
Berlin, 19th October 1905
It
was not at all that long ago that one considered as something
unscientific in certain circles to speak about the human soul
as a particular entity. The least understanding is there today
if one speaks even about the mind or spirit besides the soul.
The subject, which we set ourselves today, is rather extensive.
I am only able to show some outlines. Within the
spiritual-scientific worldview we are led to that older
division of the human being, which is a trichotomy compared
with that which has still validity almost entirely in the
consciousness of the present humanity, compared with the
division in two parts of body and soul. The trichotomy to which
the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview has to go
back again is that of body, soul and mind or spirit. Let us
come to an understanding first of all about what we understand,
actually, by body, soul and mind or spirit. The body of the
human being is something about which we do not require many
ideas to understand it. However, on the other side, the idea of
the physical, of the external physical is so much the only
thing that occupies our present humanity that the understanding
about the difference of soul and mind and already about the
entity of the soul is rather difficult. Today we have to be
mindful — in contrast to some other talks I have held
here — of a rather intimate exactness of our concepts and
ideas which we want to develop here and, hence, I ask to be
allowed to engage your attention to finer distinctions in the
human ideas.
If
a human being stands before you, you will admit without further
ado that in the space, which the concerning person fills, his
body exists. Because your senses attest this human body to you.
However, the human being can look at himself with his senses at
least partially, and we can say without thinking, the human
being is a bodily being for another sensory-gifted human being.
However, in the space, which the human being fills, even more
exists certainly, than what your senses can see. It is maybe
for the human life — understood in its entirety —
the least that the other human being can see with his eyes and
touch with his hands. For if the human being speaks about his
life, he speaks very seldom about his bodily appearance
perceptible to the senses. Then he speaks about his destiny,
about joy and sorrow, about pain and everything that lives
inside and is not perceptible to the senses at first.
A
human being may stand before you and another beside him. What
your senses perceive of both human beings is not the essential
at first, but it is to be added that perhaps in the one human
being a sad soul lives and in the other human being a joyful,
happy soul exists. In both cases, the internal being of the
person fills the space somewhat different from the physical
existence. If you put a blind person before another person,
this blind person does not perceive the bodily existence of the
other person at first. He may be tempted to state under
circumstances — if he does not take notice with his sense
of touch or in another way — that nobody is in the room
because his eye is unable to see. One just needs senses to be
convinced of an external sensory existence, senses that are
able to perceive this external bodily existence.
Now
we must ask ourselves, would this external bodily existence not
be there if one did not perceive it? Would I not stand also in
this place if on all sides nothing but blind and deaf people
were who cannot see and hear me? As for me, I would be there, I
would be in myself. Just as I am in myself according to my
bodily existence, and this must be distinguished from the
perception by the others. We have now to soar a view that the
same difference exists for that which I have called the second
way of existence, for the desire and pain, for the life, which
fills the space, but this space fulfilling is not perceptible
to the senses. If a person stands before a blind person and
this blind person becomes suddenly sighted, the external
existence becomes a discernible existence for him. Then the
question arises: could not be joy and pain, rage and passion
— not perceptible to the senses at first, but living also
in the human being like his red blood, his nerves and bones
— a discernible entity perceptible to the other human
beings?
The
human being knows what he can perceive. He is a developing
being, a being that has developed from imperfect levels in a
distant past to his present existence. All organs, which are at
and in the human being, have developed gradually. The abilities
of seeing and hearing developed bit by bit; the external
physical world became a discernible world for the human being,
a world that he knows, that he can observe. If the human being
develops that way, could we not ask there, whether he is not
also able to improve himself further? May it become discernible
to him what is not discernible to him even today? — Just
as the room in which a human being stands is dark for a blind
person at first and he starts perceiving colours and the
physical figure if he becomes sighted, nonetheless, it could
also be that that which still lives in the room what flashes
through the soul would also be made visible, discernible. The
human being was led to his external, sensuous visibility by the
external forces of the world. He has added nothing there. He
was put on the physical plane by the order of nature, equipped
with senses to perceive the sensuous world. However, the human
being himself can take in hand his further development; he can
make himself able to experience other things except the
sensuous world round him.
This development of a higher life was always nourished and
cherished in certain human communities from times immemorial.
Just as the human beings have sensuous eyes and sensuous ears
at first, the ability to perceive with the eyes and ears of the
soul — if I may express myself this way — was
developed by the own activity of single human beings. As true
as it is that the eye if it opens perceives a coloured world
round itself, where, otherwise, darkness was, it is also true
that the mental eye is unlocked by a suitable training, so that
that which lives in the affects, in desire and grief becomes
discernible. The instruction that leads to such higher
development of the human being is different from the usual
lessons. Our ninth talk will discuss that in detail what one
can generally discuss on this internal development publicly.
Somebody who wants to know more about this internal development
can find out more about that. Today I can refer only to the
ninth talk. However, the most necessary should be
suggested.
The
present external civilisation knows very little about those
instructions, which the human being must receive to get mental
eyes and ears. Only marginal knowledge is there. However, just
the spiritual-scientific worldview is appointed to rouse an
understanding of the supersensible because it is a necessary
requirement for the culture. Today all lessons intend to fill
the mind and reason mostly. However, this means that a world of
ideas is woken in us that is connected with the external
sensuous world. Our external sensuous knowledge attracts more
and more increasing attention. However, this is not such
necessary; it does not deepen the human being, as splendid as
the achievements of our civilisation may be. There was another
instruction at all times, an instruction that does not aim at
the external expansion of the sensory world, but at the
deepening of the world being. I describe it to you only with a
few words to give an idea of it.
Everything that you read in the scientific writings today has
come about by external sensuous observation. Science considers
it more or less as something that must not contain what has not
come about by external observation. One presupposes that the
human being should remain, as he is that he already has the
ability to absorb what this science can offer him. However, it
is completely different if it concerns the instruction, which
should lead the human being to the ability of mental
perception. In such schools, one taught something else. At
first, no teaching material is handed over to the student that
contains as many concepts as possible. Rather a student went to
a master and the master accepted him if he considered his
disposition as ripe for developing the internal senses. Then he
had not to take up much new contents in himself, but he had to
become another human being at first. He did not get a book, not
special contents, but so-called eternal contents of thought at
first, something eternal that was due to those human beings who
were further in their development than the remaining civilised
human beings were. We have to come to an agreement about what
we understand by such eternal contents of thought.
Try
once to look around in your soul and to ask yourselves: how
much of the ideas and thoughts living in me, of the feelings
and what is, otherwise, in my soul, belongs to the time and the
place in which I live? — Try once to think about what
moves your soul from the morning up to the evening, and what
would be different, completely different, if you were in Moscow
instead of in Berlin, and if you did not live at the beginning
of the 20th century, but at the end of the 18th century.
Subtract everything that you have taken this way from space and
time in which you live, from your soul contents. Try to
understand how much of that which you imagine would also apply
to a person in another place and time. It is not much. However,
there are things, which do not only apply to today and to
Berlin, but also to other places and other times. If we ascend
in this sense, we detect more and more that our sense is led,
like by a great spiritual guide of humanity, to such eternal
contents of thought.
The
religious scriptures of all times are full of such things,
which are independent of space and time. To mention the most
trivial I can say that mathematics is something that is
independent of space and time. What deals with time and space
is itself temporal and transient. However, if the soul devotes
itself to the imperishable, it becomes everlasting and
imperishable and absorbs what is immortal. Hence, the master
gives everlasting contents of thought to the soul at first. The
contents that are only related to the core of the soul can be
given to everybody, indifferently whether he lives in America,
in Japan or in Africa.
Then the student had to cut himself off the sensuous outside
world and to live with that which lives as strength in him.
With immense patience, the deepening had to happen on the
inside of the soul. The human inside is something living, and
as from the mere cell mass the wonderful construction of the
physical eye has originated, the spiritual eye originates in
the soul from the everlasting spiritual contents if it becomes
engrossed that way and lives in meditation. The physical eye
was not always there. It has originated from the confluence of
the external physical forces. The human being is able to wake
the spiritual eye in the soul if he can be developed by the
spiritual contents. Such pupils awaited and awaited in
patience, they had to use a big part of the day to their
exercises. There were times in which this was possible. Thus,
they waited until the internal forces woken by the mental
deepening gave them the perception of that which filled the
space as desire and grief, as instincts, passions, and
impulses.
A
physical eye sees because the external source of light throws
rays on an object. One cannot see without light. Eye and light
belong together. In the sensuous outside world, eye and light
are two separate things. In the soul, the spiritual eye is
woken, and this is at the same time the source of a new mental
light. We ourselves must emit this light which makes the mental
visible that stands before us. If you have received the inner
light this way, by sinking in your inside and the awakening of
the internal life linked with it, your own astral body starts
shining from the inside and lights up everything in truth and
reality like the sun the objects. However, you do not light up
the external world, but that which is mental which lives in the
human being as an affect; this becomes visible by the rays,
which you yourselves emit. Thus, the human being is able to
make discernible for himself what is not discernible
externally.
All
great guides of humanity who have spoken to us about the soul
— do not believe that they had empty phrases and words in
mind only. One knows nothing of the depths that have moved and
caused the human culture if one believes only in the sense
world. One normally speaks from the immediate view. Envisage,
for example, the relation of soul and body as I have just
discussed it, then you must say to yourselves, this relation of
soul and body is such that something mental penetrates the
bodily that stands before. As true as it is that this body that
you call your own is fed from the outside by foodstuffs and is
thereby animated and supplemented from outside, as true it is
that this body is animated, penetrated and lighted by the
mental. If this body sleeps, the mental is not in it at first,
then it is separated from it, it is outside it. Then we cannot
speak of the fact that the mental streams into the body. A
German theosophist, a deep spirit, characterised this relation
of soul and body in a wonderfully attractive way, which one
understands only properly if one makes such requirements as we
have just done. This theosophist — we are allowed to call
him a theosophist — speaks about the sleep, when the soul
is not in the body, in a peculiar way. He says, “Sleep is
the digestion of the soul; the body digests the soul. Being
awake means the effective state of the soul — the body
enjoys the soul.” It is a wonderful comparison. As one
enjoys the food with the absorption of nutrients, the body
enjoys — this theosophist thinks — the soul, which
lives in it. As well as the body, after it has enjoyed the
food, digests it, the body digests in the sleeping state what
the soul has sunk into it. This saying of our German poet and
theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg,
1772-1801, poet) is very beautiful. You can find a source of
the most beautiful spiritual-scientific wisdom with him. Only
the spiritual-scientific worldview can understand him. I could
state countless things of the German culture that would show
you how the great seers of humanity spoke of soul, body, and
their relation to each other with expertise.
The
third thing about which we have to speak is the mind or spirit.
We summarise desire and grief, pain and joy, passion, instinct
and avidity and what else under the name “soul.” If
one asks what the soul is, then we say, what gets the living
existence inside at first. Someone can attain the perception of
this soul who has received an education as I have just
described it. Mind or spirit exists not only inside of the
human being, but also everywhere in the world. You can convince
yourselves of that by a very banal thinking activity. All human
beings in the world think, think in that which is round them.
They get knowledge of the world round them with their thoughts.
These thoughts are not only expression of that which lives in
the outside world, but also of something that does not live in
the outside world. If you oversee the universe, your sense sees
an enormous sum of stars and processes, and then there comes
your reflection and gets a concept of these stars. If your
sense sees a drop of water, your reflection gets a concept of
this drop of water. Briefly speaking, you are not contented to
perceive the things; you also want to understand them. This is
something different from mere sensuous perceiving. If you have
a glass without water in it, you cannot pour out water from it.
If no thought and no concept were in the space outside, one
could also not get out them. It would be illusionary to think
about the world if the world were not built up according to
thoughts. The stone about which you think and which you
understand must have originated from a thought, otherwise the
thought could not be got out. If you do not want to get
involved in absurd contradictions, you have to admit that the
thoughts are as true in the world outside as the thoughts in
your head inside. You think, and the thoughts that live in you
are not different from those, which have built up the
world.
Thus, we have three aspects:
-
The sensuous in the world, the
material existence, perceived by the external senses;
-
The soul which we experience and
which that soul, which is instructed in that way about
which I have spoken, can also perceive, and
-
The mind or spirit that we assume
all over the world as that which flows through it like a
fluid and announces the being of the things to us at
first.
The
human being can perceive this spirit first of all where it
appears as such. What he can perceive is its external
physiognomy, its sensuous expression. You do not see the spirit
in the world, but its sensuous expression.
The
human being thinks in the spirit. Indeed, the thought lives in
the world, but the human being cannot see it. He can only think
it. As true as you yourselves think about the world and as true
as a spiritual mirror of the world forms, as true it also forms
in every other human being. This other human being is not only
desire and passion, but this spiritual mirror of the world also
lives in him. One can perceive this with the spiritual eyes and
ears. It is true that that internal training about which I have
spoken produces not only the ability to perceive the soul of
the human being, but the human being can also develop the
ability in himself to see the thoughts of his fellow-man, to
understand and perceive the worldview, the whole environment.
When the human being perceives not only the external portrayal
of his thought, but the thought itself, when he is able to open
his spiritual ears to the universe, then he will really
perceive the thoughts, the spirit of the world. Then the star
appears to him not only as a star, but the star says something
to him. The stones, the rock crystal, for example, appear to
him not only water-clear, but it also announces its being to
him. Then the human being can face everything in a new way with
such a deepening, as it has been suggested, so that the things
speak sounding round him, say their innermost names to him,
announce their being to us.
The
old Pythagoreans meant this. They had such a training and
initiated into such a hearing of the world speaking of the
sphere music. It was not a mere comparison; it was the
immediate percipience and the bringing to awareness of that
which is hidden, otherwise, behind the things. The spiritual
eyes disperse this veil of nature, and the harmony that is
hidden behind this veil starts sounding. Goethe also means that
with his words in the Prologue in Heaven (Faust I). You
read no phrase there. It would be a phrase if Goethe spoke of
the sounding sun. However, no, he speaks: “In ancient
rivalry with fellow spheres the sun still sings its glorious
song and it completes with thread of thunder the journey it has
been assigned.” These words sound from the world music of
the world spirit. Goethe continues this later once again, where
he says, “Hearken! Hear the onrush of the Horae! In these
sounds we spirits hear the new day already born.” If the
human being develops this ability, he becomes aware of the
spiritual. Then his soul perceives the thought as distinctly as
the usual human being perceives his body.
Body, soul, and spirit are the three members of the human
being. He is a bodily, physical being at first. In his inside,
the mental existence lives and develops. In this the spirit of
the whole world — as far as the human being can grasp it
— is reflected and lives as the third member. From the
outside into the inside and from the inside again to the
outside, this is the way, which the human being walks from the
body through the soul to the spirit. What gives us generally
the possibility to have such a mental existence? We owe this
possibility to the fact that we can live in the soul. We live
in desire and grief, in pain and joy even if we do not perceive
it externally. We also live in our body, but we perceive it
also from the outside. It is a difference between these two
fields of existence. In the spiritual-scientific worldview, one
calls that which one has round himself as one has the external
bodily round himself: existence of complete consciousness. Our
consciousness combines with the bodily existence first. This
consciousness lives only on the physical plane that way and we
call that the physical plane, which spreads out round us to the
senses. What lives in our soul is different. One calls it life,
and one calls this life existence on the so-called astral
plane. The physical plane and the astral plane are both realms
in which the human being lives. On the physical plane, the
human being is aware, on the astral plane, he lives only. There
he forms the things that are outside him not yet consciously.
However, he lives in the mental or astral.
The
third kind of existence is the spiritual existence. In general,
as present human beings we do not yet live in it or only
partially at most. However, while we settle in the spirit, this
spirit combines with our soul bit by bit. We could say that
this soul spreads over the whole environment, it becomes bigger
and bigger. If the human being seizes the outside world, grasps
the sense and the spirit of the outside world, then he is no
longer concluded in his inside. Then he walks daringly out of
himself and combines with the things around him. Compare the
animal with the human being in this respect. The animal lives,
so to speak, completely in the soul. It does not create
concepts of the environment. It does not spread its soul over
the spiritual of the world. This is also the difference between
the human being and the animal. The animal lives and weaves, so
to speak, in his inside. However, the human being emerges again
from his inside. We could also say, the human being exceeds his
self (German nonce word: sich
entselbsten). The human being has always soul, inner
life. This inner life is there. However, the development of the
human being consists of the fact that he spreads this inner
life over his environment, over that what is around him, over
the spirit; it streams out over the whole world. If this
happens, the human soul combines with the everlasting of the
human being. Then this marriage of the human soul with the
everlasting, the world spirit, takes place. When this union of
the human being with the everlasting world spirit takes place,
this whole sum of joy and grief changes, this whole world of
impulses, desires, and passions in our inside, the whole astral
body of the human being becomes different. That desire, those
instincts of the human being, which he got, when he arose from
nature's hand, which he has in common with the animal, all this
soul life disappears and passes and belongs as such to the
transient. Try to visualise once what lives in such instincts,
sufferings, and joys in the human being and how this life takes
place in the human being. They are connected with the
transient.
The
human being starts stepping out of the circle of this
transient. He refines his impulses and desires, his passions,
he ceases to appreciate or displease what is bound to place and
time. He rises to that which lies behind the things and is just
hidden by the veil of the sensuous. This is something important
if the human being starts enjoying not only what his eye gives
him, but also what the impressions of his eyes bring from the
spiritual world to his soul. This is a great moment in the
human development when the human being is no longer following
his sensuous instincts only, but is led by supersensible
motives, by moral ideas and concepts that do not penetrate from
the outside but from the spirit. Just as the body is
interspersed with the soul, the soul is interspersed with the
spirit. Consider the human being on certain former stages of
development, there you find his physical being, which is
interspersed with the soul. While the human being stands as a
body before you, he realises his existence in his desires and
passions. More and more comes from the supersensible into the
soul. It is infiltrated with the spiritual. This process lifts
the soul out of time and space. What is beyond time and space
is imperishable, remains as the everlasting in the soul. Thus,
you see that just as the soul is embedded in a body, the spirit
is embedded in the soul. As the imbedding of the soul in the
body points us to a distant past, in which they were connected
bit by bit with each other, the union of the soul with the
spirit points to the future of humanity. This development takes
place gradually. It takes place at first in such a way that the
spirit penetrates the soul more and more.
Consider how the beginning of the spiritual contents is in the
soul at first. Imagine, you have an object before yourselves.
You look at it as a sensuous object. You turn round: the
sensuous object is no longer before you. However, a picture of
this sensuous object is before you. We call this the idea of
the object, the memory of it in a certain respect. This remains
in the soul. This is the first element that the spirit gains
ground in the soul as memory. We could not absorb anything from
the spirit of our environment if we were not able to know
anything about the objects when they do no longer stand before
us. The first element of the spirit lives in the human being.
It is to the objects of the environment, as it is also to our
own soul. Get clear in your mind, which role memory plays in
our soul life. The animal completely lives in the present. Of
course, the levels or degrees, which I indicate, are more
extremely expressed than they are in reality. The animals have
also to go through a certain spiritual development, but I have
to express it somewhat extremely to bring the matter to
mind.
What the animal feels and experiences today is the central
issue for it. The spiritualisation of his whole being means to
the human being that he is able to live beyond the present.
While we take the memory with us from our spiritual into our
present, we spiritualise ourselves more and more; thereby we
grasp the spirit in the first element. I have the spiritual
before myself, if I remember the experience of yesterday.
Memory is one of the most important moments for the
spiritualisation of the soul life. Memory ties on the
spiritual-mental existence that is connected with the external
from birth up to the present. If we could not remember the past
days, we would have little spiritual contents only. There are
tribes even today that do not have such memory. There are still
tribes which forget the experience in the cold, and that is why
they must look for a protecting shelter for themselves every
evening anew. Somebody who strives for a higher development
takes up the memory and trains it more and more. Here begins
the possibility to look beyond our transient existence, which
is enclosed between birth and death.
Imagine that you have made a point of bringing in sense and
reason to life by memory, and of living not only in the
present, but learning more and more to have the whole life like
a tableau before yourselves, with the consciousness that that
can flow out only from your whole temporal being what you want
to accomplish. If this is the case and if this is used again to
wake up the internal forces as I have indicated this just now
when I spoke that you have to live up the soul contents by
contemplation, then you can try to extend the review farther
and farther, make it more and more concrete and go back to
birth. You can do this. However, infinite patience belongs to
it; we shall still speak of these methods. Then you also see
that of the soul which is not enclosed between birth and death.
Then you learn to tie in with other things what takes action
within this life between birth and death. There you learn to
tie in your present with your past by the very own
consideration in the memory and to reasonably connect the
effect of today with the cause of yesterday; there you learn to
pursue the inner thread of cause and effect in your soul. Then
the same strength, which leads you back to your present life,
leads you beyond birth. Because you have learnt to look at
cause and effect in the soul independently, you experience what
was before your birth, how you lived before your birth.
By
the gradual development of this sense, the human being gets
knowledge of his previous lives. The principle of re-embodiment
or reincarnation becomes a fact to him. Sharpening the sight
for the temporal in the inside world we attain the mental
ability to make reincarnation or re-embodiment a fact for us.
What do we do in this case? In this case, we penetrate the soul
with that which connects us with the mental. There our sight
extends inside. While we grasp the spirit of the outside world
by understanding the outside world, pour out our soul over the
outside world, and extend it, we spread the consciousness about
the mental itself coming beyond our birth. Thus, our sight
extends more and more, and thus we look from that which is
bound to place and time to that which follows each other in the
sequence of times. From there, we take possession of the
essence of the human being that is imperishable and
everlasting.
The
human being spiritualises himself more and more. The first
stage is if he comes out of joy and sorrow and develops
feelings for the supersensible, a sort of joy and sorrow. The
further he develops this, the more Plato's beautiful sentence
comes true to him: the body is transient because it subsists on
transient food; however, the spirit is imperishable because it
subsists on everlasting food. — The relationship of body,
soul, and spirit is this way. The body passes. What you can see
of the human being is handed over to the earth at death.
However, what lives as joy and sorrow in the human being, the
soul, has not originated at birth, but is tied together with
something that extends beyond birth. Thus, the soul existence
extends beyond the borders of birth and death. However, what
the human being absorbs in himself, while he goes out of his
soul again and combines with the spirit, connects this soul
with the everlasting springs of existence. This deifies the
soul. The human soul becomes visible outside the body. As far
as it is bound to the body and is one with it, it is something
transient. If the soul combines with the spiritual, it thereby
becomes more and more everlasting and imperishable. With it, we
come to the point where we understand what human self-knowledge
is, what true cognition of the human inside is.
At
first, the human being experiences his soul in his inside
undergoing joy and sorrow. However, then this soul realises
images which disappear again. Something revives that is hidden
to the mere senses. The human being has as the bare thought in
himself what revives there in the soul. However, he connects
this thought with his soul in the course of his life. He learns
to feel and sympathise with the spiritual and, in the end, he
likes the spiritual with pleasure as he only liked the sensuous
with pleasure before. The desire applies, in the end, to
everything spiritual. Selfishness becomes the unselfish love of
the imperishable. In selfishness, the human love is grasped in
the soul. But while we grasp it deeply inside as spirit, we
realise that we find this self in the whole remaining world,
that we are connected with the whole remaining world and that
as we are born from the physical it is as true that we are born
as a spirit any time from the spiritual universe, the
spiritual-divine world. If we look for our higher self, which
exists like a spark in us, we see the spiritual in the whole
environment. This is the great knowledge of wisdom that the
Vedanta philosophy sums up in the saying: tat tvam asi —
Thou art that. — If the human being is aware of his
spirit and his development begins to go out into the world,
then his self extends to the spirit of the universe, to an
existence of a spirit self, and we are with our very own being
everywhere. Then that which was mere understanding becomes
emotionally related content, and this is the real elevation of
the soul to the spirit, the elevation to the real spiritual
life.
There is a beginning of the spiritual life; however, it is dry
and cold. There are people who only become warm if it concerns
something mental, human beings who are glad and suffer, only if
it concerns something mental, pain and desire. They say that
the spiritual is something dull and cold. If they look up to
the stars, they regard the thoughts about them as abstract; but
they are dry and cold in their intellect. However, if the soul
seizes the spirit, we feel, we think not only with the
universe, because then the view changes by reason and mind into
the mental conception of the whole universe. What was only
desire once becomes now the desire of the spiritual, what was
love in the mental becomes now love of the spiritual-divine in
the world. Our feeling, which we have closed inside, spreads
about the whole world. Our self flows out, and we become one
with the all-embracing spirit. We lose our selves and we find
ourselves in the all-embracing spirit. This is something higher
than the mere thinking. In the mental, the human being has got
the sensation. In the spiritual, he starts being able to
operate the spirit. However, he will also come there where he
reaches the spirit with the sensation. Then he is on the divine
stage. He has to climb up this ladder with his own strength of
connecting the soul with the spirit, so that they become one.
This is true self-consideration. If we grasp the divine spirit
flowing through the world not only with the reason but also
with the heart — as we meet a friend and feel warmth in
the heart — then we penetrate from the head and its
wisdom to the heart and its love of wisdom of the whole world.
Thus, we rise raising our soul, and we get not only to know our
narrow-minded inside this way, but we extend our selves and
find ourselves outside in the world. I have stressed it often
and often: Look at your inside only, there you find the divine
human being. No, you only find in yourself what you have in
yourself. If you want to find more in yourself, you must
develop this higher self first, and you develop it, spreading
out the higher self about the whole world. Those who advised
self-knowledge to a human being did not mean idle examining of
his inside. This self-knowledge is considered as we have
grasped it now, as an ascent of the soul to the spirit. Then
the human being no longer feels any difference between himself
and the animal, the plant and the stone. A general feeling of a
universal brotherhood permeates his heart. And then, and only
then if the human being has this in mind, he understands as the
last destination of the development from the bodily-mental to
the mental-spiritual the beautiful word of the poet and seer
(The Novices at Sais by Novalis, 1802): “Somebody
was successful to lift the veil of the goddess at Sais. —
But what did he see? He saw — miracle of miracles —
his self!” The spiritual scientist adds: he finds the
divine in his self, and this is just theosophy, divine wisdom
to raise the heart, the soul to the spirit, so that one
succeeds in connecting wisdom with the divine and to have not
only understanding, but the general feeling of the divine world.
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