German Theosophists at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century
Berlin, 15th March 1906
It
is a frequently mentioned fact that it is exceptionally
difficult to obtain an understanding concerning the
spiritual-scientific movement with our academic leaders in
scientific circles. This is a fatal fact that science is today
surrounded by such a big belief in authority. Everything that
is scientific exercises such an impressive power in all
directions that a spiritual movement has a hard furrow to
plough if the predominating part of the scholars, one can say,
almost any academic circle treat such a movement like our
spiritual-scientific one in such a way, as if it were
dilettantism, blind superstition or anything else.
It
may be deplorable, but understandable in any case, if one hears
the judgements of such academic circles about theosophy or
spiritual science. If one examines these judgements, it is
obvious that they belong to the judgements that were obtained
without any expertise. If we then still ask the so-called
public opinion, as it is expressed in our journals, we need not
to be surprised, if it faces the theosophical movement not
quite understanding. For this public opinion is controlled
completely by the impressive power of the scientific authority
and is completely dependent on it.
There are different reasons, which make this clear to us. We
can see one of these reasons concerning the German cultural
life simply in the fact that the academic circles, actually,
left an important impact on our German cultural life, a
culminating point of our deepest life of thought completely out
of consideration. Indeed, you find some notes about this in any
manual of philosophy, in any history of literature; but a
really penetrating understanding of this most significant side
of our cultural life and of that which around the turn of the
18th to the 19th centuries the most important German thinkers
performed does not exist. In particular, there is a lack of
understanding how these results of the German life of thought
are rooted in the general German cultural life a hundred years
ago.
If
this fact were not such a one, if our academic circles were
concerned with that deepening of the German life of thought
around the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries, there would
be, for example, an understanding of Fichte's, Schelling's, and
Hegel's great life of thought among our philosophers. The
compendia of philosophy would not contain only single
inadequate extracts of the works, but one would know what
generally thought achieved in Germany. Then one would also
obtain access to the spiritual-scientific movement from the
point of view of scholarship.
Of
all pre-schools of theosophy or spiritual science which one can
go through today this school of the German thought of the turn
of the 18th to the 19th centuries is the very best for the
present human beings. Indeed, it is not accessible to anybody,
because how should the bigger national circles understand the
great German thinkers really if the university circles, the
academic circles lead the way to this understanding so little,
if they do so little to cause a real popularity of these
thinkers. One is not allowed to reproach the big audience,
those who should turn to theosophy that they are not able to do
it. To those, however, whose occupation it would be to let flow
in the spiritual treasures of the West in the national culture,
to those must be said that they fulfil their obligations in
this respect in no way.
I
do not name unknown names to you, but I maybe have to represent
the peculiar fact that one can relate names, which you find in
every philosophical compendium, with theosophy. It is peculiar
that one likes to say that it is senseless to use the title
“Secret Doctrine.” The Western researchers, for
example, who concerned themselves with Buddhism, have
repeatedly denied that Buddhism contains a secret doctrine that
anything would exceed what you can read in the books.
It
is not at all surprising that such academic circles assert such
things. For one can conclude from it that the most important
things have remained a secret doctrine to them. How should they
know that there is a secret doctrine, because they have never
found access to it! The most important that was performed in
connection with the great German thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte
is to the majority, also even today, a deep secret doctrine. It
is true, as deplorable as it may appear, the German spiritual
life of the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries originated
from the so-called Enlightenment. We may characterise this
Enlightenment with a few words. It was a necessary event in the
modern spiritual development. The most significant spirits of
the 18th century had taken up the cause of it. Kant says,
enlightenment simply means what can be summarised in the
sentence: “Dare to use your own reason” (first
by Horace: sapere aude). This enlightenment was nothing
else than an emancipation of the personality, the relief of the
personality from the traditions. What one has thought for
centuries, what everybody has taken up from the common
spiritual substance of the people should be checked. Only that
should be valid which the single personality affirms. You know,
great spirits developed from the Enlightenment. One only needs
to remind of the name Lessing to call one of the best.
Everything that is connected with the name Kant is nothing else
than a result of the Enlightenment.
Someone who has broken with this Enlightenment in a peculiar
way is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If I say, he has broken in
peculiar way with this Enlightenment, and then you do not
believe that I am determined to represent Fichte as an opponent
of the Enlightenment. He has broken in the way that he examines
all results of the Enlightenment and has continued building on
its basis, but Fichte went quite thoroughly beyond that which
is only enlightenment, beyond the trivial. Just Fichte gives
somebody who has the possibility to become engrossed in his
great lines of thought something that one can obtain among the
newer spirits only from him.
After we have heard many merely popular talks, we want to hear
a talk today, which seems to be far off the usual way, which
our spiritual-scientific talks take in this winter. I will
endeavour to show something as comprehensibly as possible that
took place in the German life of thought, actually, at that
time, around the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries. It
can only be sketchy what I have to say. At first this German
life of thought impeded the access to the real spiritual world
and then to the living and immortal essence of the human being.
Today I cannot go into the worth or worthlessness of Kant's
philosophy. The official philosophy calls Kant the destroyer
and regards his system of theories as a philosophical action
first-rate. Today I would like only to remind of a word which
is known perhaps also with those who do not have the
opportunity to penetrate deeper into the matter, to the word of
the “thing in itself.”
The
human cognitive faculties are limited in the sense of Kant's
philosophy. They cannot penetrate to the “thing in
itself.” Whichever ideas and concepts we form, whatever
we get to know in the world, we deal with phenomena and not
with the true “thing in itself” in the sense of
Kant's philosophy. This is always concealed behind the
phenomena. With it, blind speculation is encouraged — and
we have seen it in the spiritual development of Germany very
well — which wants to define and restrict the human
cognitive faculties in all directions. However, at the same
time the trend of the human being to penetrate to the true, to
explore the depths of existence should be stopped.
It
should be shown that the human being cannot automatically
approach the primary sources of existence. Now it may be true
that such an attitude was necessary in the course of the
spiritual life of the 18th century. However, Kant's philosophy
put big obstacles in the way of the further development of the
spiritual life. Indeed, I know very well that there are people
who say, what did Kant different from all those great spirits
who have always emphasised that we deal with phenomena that we
cannot come to the “thing in itself!” That is
apparently right, however, it is wrong. The real spiritual
researchers of all times state quite different that the world
only consists of phenomena.
No
true spiritual researcher has ever denied that in such a way,
as we investigate the world with senses, understand it with the
intellect, it offers us only phenomena. However, higher senses
are to be woken in us that go beyond the usual, which penetrate
deeper into the sources of existence, can, and must lead slowly
and gradually to the “thing in itself.” No Eastern
philosophy, no Platonic philosophy, no self-understanding
worldview penetrating into the spirit has ever spoken of the
world as Maya in another sense. They always said only, to the
lower human cognition, a veil is before the “thing in
itself,” to the higher human cognition this veil is torn,
the human being can penetrate into the depths of existence. The
Enlightenment reached a blind alley concerning the question in
certain respects, and this is characterised best of all with a
remark which you find in the preface to the second edition of
Kant's main work Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and with
which the Enlightenment can be caught at its despondency
because it does not want to advance further.
One
reads: “I had to override knowledge to create space for
faith.” This is the nerve of Kant's philosophy and of
that thinking to which the 18th century came and beyond which
our philosophical scholarship has not yet come which still
suffers from it. As long as it suffers from this illness,
philosophy is never destined to understand theosophy. What does
that mean: “I had to override knowledge to create space
for faith”? Kant says, the thing in itself remains
concealed, consequently also the thing in our breast. We do not
know what we ourselves are; we can never come to the true
figure of the things. As from uncertain worlds the so-called
categorical imperative sounds: you shall do this or that.
—We hear it, we cannot prove it, however. We just have to
believe it. We hear about the divine being. We have to believe
it. Just as little as we know about the destiny of the soul,
about immortality and eternity. We must believe them. There is
only faith in these matters that connect the human being with
the divine, because no knowledge can penetrate into the divine.
The human being believes knowledge if he presumes to penetrate
into the divine. This divine is thereby falsified, is cast in a
wrong light due to wild speculation.
Therefore, Kant wanted to save all spiritual for the mere faith
and apply cognition — what one can know — only to
the external impressions, to the appearance. Whatever you may
read and study, otherwise, about Kant's philosophy, this
thought is the essentials that it depends on. This thought
became the essentials in the further development of Kant's
thinking. However, someone who broke with this thought
definitely out of a courageous attitude was Johann Gottlieb
Fichte (1762-1814).
It
is a peculiar thing that the theosophical thinkers of modern
India, the renovators of the Vedanta philosophy made an
astounding discovery — namely that the Germans have a
great thinker, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. An Indian says this who
writes under the name Bhagavan Das (1869-1958). I have got to
know German theosophists who have only found out from him that
Johann Gottlieb Fichte is a deep German thinker.
You
can experience a lot in this regard. Weeks ago, I was in a
South German city. One of the theosophical friends there said
to me, now we have a university lecturer here who means, it
would be good if people studied Fichte, because he got the idea
that many deep thoughts were in Fichte. — That is a
strange confession of a German university professor! If more
than one century after Fichte a German university professor
makes the discovery that Fichte achieved something great,
throws a characteristic light on this kind of German
scholarship.
Fichte represented the doctrine of the ego, of the human
self-consciousness not speculatively, but out of the whole
depth of his being, among his Jena students in the last decade
of the 18th century. He did not represent it in the same way as
we do it today from the spiritual-scientific point of view. He
represented it in such a way that a number of persons would
have come to theosophy if they had educated themselves
according to his great conceptual demands; they would have come
to it in a healthy way, illumining the real inside brightly.
Not without reason his speeches inspired the Jena students in
those days. For the following lived in him. Although he walked
on the heights of thought, although he spoke in the purest,
clearest, and logically sharpest thoughts, a quite warm and
deep immediate personality and being expressed themselves in
his thoughts at the same time. He himself pronounced the word
that characterises him deepest that everyone has a philosophy,
depending on which sort of a person he is.
If
one expresses this trivially, one could say, it does not depend
on whether anybody can think logically well or badly, because
one can reason a hollow philosophy very logically, it does not
depend on astuteness but on the internal experience, on that
which one has fathomed with all his soul forces. This expresses
itself in the language. If one is also a flat materialist,
nevertheless, he can be a sharp logician, and on the other
hand, someone can be a spiritualist and be logically weak. One
proves no worldview, but the worldview is the expression of the
innermost human being, the inner experience. Fichte pronounced
this not only, but lived it also. Kant stimulated him. However,
as one is stimulated by that to which one can add the drawback
in his inside — because there the deepest organs emerge
in the human being —, nevertheless, this was clear to
Fichte.
Now
follow me, I would like to say, for a short moment into the
icy, but not less important regions of thoughts from which
Fichte got the being of self-consciousness. I do not describe
with his own words, because this would be too difficult here,
but in outlines, which do not contain less truth. I would like
to say what he conjured before his Jena students at that time:
there is one thing for everybody in which the “thing in
itself” announces itself to him, in which he expresses
himself. That is his own inside. Look into it and you discover
something that you can discover nowhere else at first. —
We see that Fichte knew that not anybody discovers what he has
to discover there, because he says a very nice word, even if it
is rude to most human beings. He says, if the human beings were
able to come to real self-knowledge, they would find the most
significant in themselves. However, a few are successful,
because they rather regard themselves as pieces of lava on the
moon than as self-conscious beings.
What is self-consciousness for our time? One shows it as a
conglomerate of cerebral atoms. However, one does not strive
for recognising himself; one does not do this. There is no
great difference whether one says that it is a conglomerate of
cerebral atoms or molecules or a piece of lava on the moon.
— Here Fichte draws attention clearly to the fact that
that knowledge of the inside which only wants to observe how it
is not the right knowledge of the inside. For the nature of the
human being differs in its inside from any other being. By
which does it differ? It differs by the fact that decision and
action belong to the nature of the human being. From this icy
region of thoughts, we want to come to flowery fields soon.
Fichte calls self-knowledge not brooding in oneself, not
looking into oneself, no, Fichte regards it as action. This
word leads you from the wrong self-knowledge to the true
self-development. The human being is not able to look simply
into himself in order to recognise who he is. He has to give
that to himself, which he shall become. He must become
engrossed in the divine of the world and get the sparks from
the divine with which he has to kindle his self perpetually. We
look at a stone. It is what it is. We recognise it. We look at
the plant. It is what it is. We look at our own body, our
etheric body, and astral body. They are also that which they
are. The human being is only that which he makes of himself,
and self-knowledge is an intimate activity, no dead knowledge.
While Fichte uses the (German) word “Tathandlung”
(~ self-conscious action and result of the action), he
says something that only the old Vedanta philosophy says in
this significant kind. He reached the point that just the
theosophists seek again. Often and often, I have said here that
theosophy wants to show how the human being soars the divine,
how it should stimulate the divine strength slumbering in the
human being with which then he also becomes aware of the divine
round himself. Fichte completely strives for the same. The
wrong self-knowledge, he says, consists of the fact that one
says, look into yourselves and you find the god in
yourselves.
The
right self-knowledge says something completely different. It
says, if you brood in yourself, it is in such a way, as if you
look into your own eye. However, this is not the task of the
eye. We get to know the light with the eye. Thus, we also get
to know the light of the ego with the soul. One can compare the
eye with waking the inner self. As little as you find the soul
in the organism, the light in the eye, just as little you find
the god in yourselves. However, we find the possibility to
develop the organs to find this god. The activity in the ego,
which develops our spiritual organs, is the being that the
human being gives himself. This is the
“Tathandlung,” this is Fichte's self-knowledge.
From this point, Fichte advances gradually. If you completely
settle down, you educate yourselves to his thoughts, then you
find a healthy access to theosophy, and nobody has to regret it
one day if he settles down into the clear lines of thought of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, because he finds the way to the
spiritual life.
However, there is a peculiar fact. When Johann Gottlieb Fichte
has ascended to these etheric heights of thought, he lacks the
view to which he did not come at that time, which the
spiritual-scientific worldview brought back like a solution of
the world riddle: the teaching of karma and reincarnation. If
you see this, then you know to apply it to your own
development. The human beings would like to judge all times,
according to the same pattern. However, the human spirit is in
perpetual development, and every age has other tasks. That
century whose end forms in conceptual respect Johann Gottlieb
Fichte had the task to emancipate the human personality. This
was the good side of the Enlightenment. However, the
personality is that member of the human nature, which just does
not return, as well as it is. Our deepest essence that
expresses itself within the personality returns in the various
earth-lives. However, the single life on earth expresses itself
in the personality.
Let
us consider the being of the personality properly. We have four
human covers basically that are not to be imagined, however,
like onion skins: the physical body, the etheric body, the
astral body and in them that which the human being works for,
his refined astral body, that part on which the human ego has
already worked. We have these four covers. However, in them
only the imperishable everlasting essence of the human being,
the so-called spiritual triad exists: manas, buddhi, and atman
— spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. These go from
earth-life to earth-life and ascend then to higher states of
existence. The last external cover expresses itself in the
personality. It has still another importance and it has
received it more and more in the human development. If we go
back to the old times, we find that the human beings
appreciated the individuality during the former centuries less
and less; instead, the personality became more and more
powerful. Today one easily confuses the concepts of
individuality and personality. The individuality is the
everlasting that runs through the earth-lives. Personality is
that which the human being develops during an earth-life.
If
we want to study the individuality, we have to look at the
bottom of the human soul. If we want to study the personality,
we have to observe how the essence expresses itself. The
essence is born into the people, into the occupation. All that
determines the inner being, it personifies it. With a human
being who is still on a subordinated level of development one
can perceive a little of the work on his inside. The mode of
expression, the kind of the gestures and so forth is just in
such a way as he has them from his people. However, those are
the advanced human beings who give themselves the mode of
expression and gestures from their inside. The more the inside
of the human being is able to work on his appearance, the
higher this develops the human being.
Now
one could say, the individuality is expressed in the
personality. Someone, who has his own gestures, his own
physiognomy, has a peculiar character in his actions and in
relation to the surroundings, has a distinct personality. Is
that lost at death forever? No, this does not get lost.
Christianity knows for sure that this is not the case. What one
understands by resurrection of the flesh or of the personality
is nothing else than the preservation of the personal in all
following incarnations. What the human being has gained as a
personality remains to him because it is attached to the
individuality and this carries it further into the following
incarnations. If we have made something of our body that has a
peculiar character, this body, this strength, which has worked
there, resurrects. As much we have worked on ourselves, as much
we have made of ourselves, we do not lose it. Generating
awareness of this knowledge is something that has not yet
happened. This happens by theosophy. However, it was the task
of the Enlightenment to acquire an uncertain feeling. It showed
the task of the personality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte has put the
idea of the personality in its everlasting importance in his
construct of clear ideas. There the right thing immediately
emerges for the epoch of the recognition of the everlasting and
imperishable in the personality. Fichte accomplished that.
One
has often said, the great human beings have the big mistakes of
their big virtues, and because Fichte was able to measure out
the personality with the thought uniquely, he did not penetrate
to the individuality; also not his successors. However, they
have implanted the thought in the personality. Someone who
finds it there carries it in a healthy way through the repeated
earth-lives if he approaches spiritual science. It does not
depend on dogmas, but on the education that we can obtain in
his spirit. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was an educator in the
proper sense.
It
does not depend on the fact that we become servile students of
such a man, but that we also go through that strength which he
went through. Then we may get other thoughts by his forces in
another age. One faces such a spirit in this way. This was
expressed in a certain way at his time. His personality can
educate us and find pleasant expression in the distant
future.
Spiritual science is so little dogmatic that it leads to the
great human beings and shows that we can learn from them even
more than what they have said. The expression of that which
they are is the language. However, more than the expression
lives in every human being, the immortal soul lives in them to
which we can rise as to the true essence. Therefore, Fichte was
already in the highest degree stimulating for those, at the end
of the 18th century, who were sitting at his feet and listening
how he measured out the human personality with world-spanning
lines of thought. He inspired them to penetrate conceptionally
to the soul and to acquire still quite other treasures from it
than Fichte himself did.
One
of those who sat at Fichte's feet and looked reverentially to
him, one of those who got out the philosophical ideas, was the
young short-lived German theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of
Friedrich von Hardenberg, German Romantic poet and author,
1772-1801). He died around the turn of 18th to the 19th
century, not yet thirty years old. Who becomes engrossed in his
works goes through the finest training of theosophy. Perhaps it
could be to that who is educated in the western science a much
better elementary training to go through his tremendous light
flashes, than through the Bhagavad Gita or similar writings
that remain more or less strange to the West. Just now, it is
possible to become engrossed completely in that which this
great soul achieved.
He
wrote a book in which he describes how a young person is
introduced in the subterranean structure of the earth, in the
geologic layers of the rocks and minerals by great geologists
and mineralogical works. There he readily gets thoughts such
as, you, rocks, I look only for you, however, what you say I
look for continually. — Runes, letters, words were the
stones to him, which he investigated as a miner underground;
spiritual beings created in the earth and produced every single
rock. He saw the spirit and soul in the earth, and every stone
was to him the expression of that which the earth has to say to
him. Mineralogy and geology became a runic science to him, and
he attempted to penetrate to the spirit of the earth, while his
great teacher made the layers and resemblances of the rocks
clear to him. Just those who work in the depths of the earth
are often led to deeper worldviews. Not least, miners did deep
looks into the spiritual world. Staying underground has a
peculiar effect on the spiritual experience.
However, something else appeared with Novalis. To understand it
we only need to remember that at the front gate of Plato's
school one could read the words: let none but geometers enter
here. — The Platonic school demonstrated its elementary
knowledge in geometrical forms, and Novalis, who illumined the
secrets of existence with so big light flashes, revered
mathematics like a religion. It is something sacred to him.
Take this as a psychological phenomenon of peculiar kind. These
strange human beings are able to feel something sacred and
something like music with the abstract lines of mathematics and
geometry. How circles and angles form a group together, how the
different forms like polyhedra, dodekahedra and such build
themselves up, then one can feel something that comes from
Novalis speaking about mathematics. However, you can only take
up that if you do not take up it in such a way as in our
schools, but if you become engrossed in the inner music of
space. Mathematics is the access to the infinite truth.
Then he heard Fichte, and from him the great truth of the ego
as a personality. Then we see in this strange spirit almost the
whole occultism reflected in certain ways. For someone who has
knowledge in this respect Novalis is a peculiar personality. He
is a personality who had already experienced the deepest
initiation in former incarnations. Everything was a
recollection that he experienced in the last, the third decade
of his life. It becomes apparent in his life that it was more
recollection of former incarnations than of the current one.
This comes out in his imagination. The former incarnations
completely became imagination in Novalis because they cast
their shadows and found their expression as pieces of art.
Thus, we have to understand Novalis as a peculiar, tender, and
intimate being. If Fichte arranges his razor-sharp thoughts and
carries us off by this sharpness, then Novalis is wonderfully
gentle and shows the spiritual life from a completely different
side. Thus, he is the necessary supplement for someone who
wants to go through the German preliminary stage of theosophy.
Our best went through this pre-school in those days. We can
call names of many people who attempted to penetrate in their
kind, according to their character in those days into the truth
which spiritual science gives humanity back today. These are
names that are known more or less, however, whose bearers one
has to deeper consider.
At
first, we have Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Sch., German
philosopher, 1775-1854). If we open ourselves to his youth
writings, where he became independent, he works so strongly on
that who gets involved with him because he expressed a thought
of Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim,
German-Swiss physician, occultist, 1493-1541) in the way usual
at that time. This thought was expressed not only by Schelling,
but also by the great Steffens (Henrik St., Danish philosopher,
1773-1845), and in particular by the naturalist Oken
(originally Lorenz Okenfuß, 1779-1851), by the great
predecessor of the modern theory of evolution and founder of
the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians. This thought
is an eminently theosophical one.
It
was usual in natural sciences, also in the philosophy of
Schelling and Steffens, also in that of Novalis. These thinkers
said: if we look out at the world, we see a number of animals.
Every animal shows certain human qualities one-sidedly
developed. What the amphibians have, what the snails have is
also found in the human being. Those snails, amphibians and so
on have something one-sidedly physical. If one makes, however,
a whole of it, one gets the harmoniously developed human body
that summarises everything that is spread out outdoors. As
Paracelsus says, we find letters outdoors in nature, and if we
compose them, they yield a word and this word is the human
being. A great theosophist — not a German one — of
the 18th century (presumably Claude de Saint Martin,
1743-1803) just took this principle as the
basis of his theosophical investigating. Therefore, he came so
far to say, if we look at the human being, we see the remaining
animal realm. This is the opposite principle of that how one
studies these things today. The theorists of evolution of that
time said something different from those of today.
They said, if you face a person about whom you do not know that
he is, for example, a great watchmaker, and then you are not
able to recognise the person. At first, you have to become
engrossed in his astuteness that makes him create what he
produces. What he produces, that is the point. However, nature
has produced the human being as a keystone. There you have the
compendium of the whole nature. If you understand this in such
a way, you understand nature. — One must recognise the
remaining nature from the human being and not the human being
from nature. If you carry out that really, you also understand
how it could emerge as a certain reflection with Schelling and
Oken. With Schelling and Oken you can read, the snail is a
groping animal, the insect is a light animal, the bird a
hearing animal, the amphibian a feeling animal, the fish a
smelling animal. Thereby they express how the senses are spread
over the single animals. They are harmoniously contained in the
human being. One only needs to distribute the qualities of the
human being to understand the remaining nature.
In
1809, Schelling published a writing, which is of big
significance for theosophy. He had got to know the deep German
thinker Jacob Boehme. He became engrossed in him, and thus he
got to know the nature of the bad and its coherence with
freedom. You find this in his Philosophical Inquiries into
the Essence of Human Freedom. There he shows that God is
the light and that from the light everything comes that shines
that, however, the light has to shine into the darkness and
that where light is shadow originates. Only by this comparison,
one can realise what one reads in this writing. If you let the
sun shine into darkness, there originates shadow; shadow must
appear if the light is there, but the light does not generate
it. Hence, he says, from the divine primal ground of the light
everything great arises in the world. However, as well as the
light is opposed to the darkness, the non-ground faces the
primal ground, and from this the shadow of the good emerges,
the bad. This is the indication of an infinitely deep
involvement. Again, you can educate yourselves to the
theosophical life if you take up that in yourselves.
Another writing by Schelling is still significant: Bruno or
On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things (1802/1843).
In pleasant dialogue form, like with Plato, he discusses here
about the coherence of soul and spirit in the theosophical
sense. Therefore, Schelling would be able to become a
theosophist. He understood how to practice inner sight.
Schelling was also an eager teacher at the Jena University
first, and then he worked still at other sites and, finally,
withdrew completely. In Munich, he lived a long time and was
together with Baader (Franz Xavier von B., philosopher and
theologian, 1765-1841), that spirit who renewed Jacob Boehme in
such a fine way in the 19th century again. He stimulated
Schelling. He wrote scarcely anything in that time. In 1809,
his writing about freedom originated. Then he wrote almost
nothing up to his call to Berlin by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV,
who may be challenged in certain ways, who is not yet
appreciated enough concerning insights into big, deep, and
internal spiritual connections. In 1841, Schelling was
appointed to Berlin. He should explain before the students what
he had lived through such a long time.
He
held two courses of lectures: about the Philosophy of
Mythology (1856) and about the Philosophy of
Revelation (1858). There he led into the essence of the old
mysteries and showed how Christianity originated from them and
what Christianity concerns. Then we who live more than half a
century later are led automatically to reincarnation and karma.
If you become engrossed in the philosophy of mythology and in
the philosophy of revelation, you find, this is theosophy.
However, all trivial people of that time railed against that.
They could not understand what Schelling reported at that time.
If the theosophists wanted to become engrossed in these
writings, they would see from which depths all that is
taken.
Fichte could speak of a special spiritual sense because he was
one of those who wanted to open the eyes of the human beings.
Fichte gave the definition of theosophy already in 1813. He
said, “Appear as a sighted man in a world of blind people
and speak to them of colours and light. Either you talk to them
of nothing — and this is the more fortunate case if they
say it, because in this way you soon notice the mistake and
stop talking without success — or the more gifted people
say, you are a daydreamer.” — All those experience
that who are gifted with a special sense. They appear like
among blind people. However, this sense can be evoked with
everybody, slowly with the one, faster with the other. By the
special sense, Fichte shows quite clearly that he knew what
depends on in theosophy. This was the real definition of
theosophy. Others scooped from such sources, from such currents
of the spiritual life.
However, I would like to remind of Hegel (Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich H., 1770-1831, philosopher) above all. I cannot get
involved to explain Hegel's peculiar view. I would also like to
remind of the name of an exceptionally gentle person, of
Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (1780-1860, physician and
naturalist), who wrote books about the essence of the soul.
Schelling wrote to Schubert still in 1850 when the sixth
edition of a book about the essence of the soul had appeared:
you are, actually, in a more fortunate position than I am. I
must get involved with the world-spanning thoughts, which
introduce in the spiritual life. However, you live the intimate
side that the human being meets if he investigates all
intimacies of the soul.
Schubert studied that soul life which is the border area
between consciousness, semi-consciousness and unconsciousness,
but also the border area between everyday consciousness, dream,
and clairvoyance. With Schubert, you already find explanations
about the principle that controls the dream world. About that,
you can find a lot with him. He studied Swedenborg (Emanuel S.,
1688-1772, scientist, philosopher, and mystic) in the time in
which it was possible to point to these characteristics of the
human spiritual life with great thoughts in a healthy way. He
represented the view that there is an etheric body and an even
higher etheric body than that which decomposes after death with
every human being. Schubert already pointed to that which the
Vedanta philosophy calls the “fine body”
(sukshma-shariram). He wrote a very nice consideration about
this higher body of the human being. You can find there fine
remarks with him.
You
can see how at that time already the single currents flowed
into each other, you can see this with a poet who interlaced
these things in his poetries, with Heinrich von Kleist
(1777-1811), who represented a peculiar prince in his Prince
of Homburg and created Katie of Heilbronn, a
peculiar figure, too. He was stimulated to them by talks on
somnambulism and on higher spiritual life.
Schubert speaks of a pre-being of the soul; he also discusses
the question of reincarnation. At that time, he did not yet
regard it as Christian. However, he speaks of a pre-being whose
destiny he exactly pursues. Then from this, the brilliant book
originates by Justinus Kerner (1786-1862, practical physician,
poet and writer): The Seeress of Prevorst (1829). When
in the 19th century the book about this strange woman appeared,
he used a lot of theosophy for its explanation. The occultist
already recognises Justinus Kerner as an expert in the basic
definition that he gives about this seeress (Friederike Hauffe,
1801-1829). He was an expert because he lived in the time,
which had such thoughts as I characterised them. He says of the
seeress of Prevorst — she had two children and was
somnambulistic in the extreme — that the mental-spiritual
world was open round her and that she could observe the
spiritual side of the human beings. He describes her in such a
way: imagine somebody retained at the moment of death, so that
the peculiar state continues for some years; the emergence of
the etheric body and the odd relationship of the astral body to
the etheric body lasted for years. Because her soul condition
was in such a way, she was able to behold the still existing
part of the etheric body of someone who had lost a limb. She
could also perceive many things besides. Kerner gives
appropriate explanations even if they are not at the height of
our time.
You
can find explanations also with Eckartshausen (Karl von E.,
1752-1803, philosopher, mystic) who also wrote about the inner
spiritual development. Kosti's Journey or also The
Hieroglyphics of the Human Heart are writings that are
adapted to open the human soul to a higher vision. He also
described what he calls a soul body appropriately. Another
writer is sometimes rather stimulating: Ennemoser (Joseph E.,
1787-1854, physician, mesmerist) who wrote theosophy, too,
informed a lot of animal magnetism and the mysteries in his
works, and contributed much to show the Greek mythology in the
right light.
Thus, you see a painting of the first time of the 19th century,
from the first thoughts that can work educationally on the
human being up to the facts that bring theosophy together with
immediate spiritualistic experiences. At that time, you find
everything in a pure and sometimes nobler way expressed than it
was shown later by the respective authors. You can learn much
more about magic spiritual life there than in that which was
published by Schindler (Heinrich Bruno Sch., 1797-1859,
physician and author) and Albertus (?, perhaps hearing
defect, probably Carus, Carl Gustav C.,
1789-1869, physician, scientist, and
naturalist).
Later the interest changed more and more into an interest,
similar to curiosity, the mere urge for knowledge. In the first
half of the 19th century, even such spirits who could not go
very deeply had the desire of ascending to spiritual heights,
developing inner soul organs, and knew something concerning
self-knowledge and self-development. Novalis knew how to speak
in miraculous tones in his Heinrich of Ofterdingen about
that all. He put the big treasure of former initiation memory
in that which he has like a recollection of former lives. In
the Novices of Sais he shows how Hyazinth gets to
know the girl Rosenblüth (rose flower). Only the animals
of the wood know something of this extremely subtle love. A
wise man comes and tells about the magic life, about spiritual
secrets. Hyazinth and Rosenblüth get the desire to walk to
the initiation temple of Isis. However, nobody can give some
indication, which is the right way to the temple. He walks and
walks. There he sits down, tired among nice physical things, in
particular also because of that which nature speaks to him. He
drops off to dream in a ghostly way.
The
temple is round him. The curtain is lifted from the veiled
picture, and what does he see? Rosenblüth. He lovely
describes how Rosenblüth is that feeling of unity, that
uniform idea of the whole nature, how it extends over the whole
nature, and how he looks for the hidden secret that life often
shows to us that we only need to understand. This is
wonderfully indicated. Thus, you can prospect with Novalis
wonderfully if you get yourselves in how intimately he
expressed the experiences of the world at that time.
I
was allowed here to speak about Goethe, Herder, and Schiller
and to show how they were theosophists. In a theosophical way,
Novalis just pronounces what is a characteristic trait of that
time what controlled it like a theosophical motto spiritually.
It is included in the words: “Someone succeeded; he
lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. — However, what
did he see? He saw — miracle of miracles —
himself.”
Thus, the human being comes out, after he has developed the
spiritual organs in himself, and searches for himself all over
the world. He does not search for himself in himself, he
searches for himself in the world, and with it, he searches for
God. This search of God in the world, as he expresses it so
nicely in this saying, is theosophy.
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