63. From the posthumous papers of Paul Asmus

At this point, we would like to give the floor to one of the best German thinkers of the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1872, at the age of only thirty, he was snatched from a promising life. Two of his writings have been printed: “The Ego and the Thing in Itself” and “The Indo-European Religions”. These are treasures of German intellectual life. If we can see the development of this intellectual life in its true light since 1870, it is only too understandable that Paul Asmus, who died so young, could find only a few readers. This period was devoted to the development of knowledge directed towards the sensual and factual. People wanted to process the results of experiments, of the microscope and the telescope, etc., as the basis of their world view. And Paul Asmus was one of those who wanted to explore the secrets of existence in the ethereal heights of pure thought. He is a true and noble disciple of the great philosophical idealists of the first half of the nineteenth century. Today, only a few are trained in the field of pure thought to ascend to these luminous heights. Few know the significance of these regions themselves and know that it is here, and not where mere sensory observation and experimentation is carried out, that the riddles of life are revealed. — In this magazine, which serves a worldview that is supposed to lead to the spirit, some of the estate of the prematurely deceased is certainly in place. The sister of the thinker, Martha Asmus, who has herself emerged in recent years with three small volumes of stories, has provided me with her brother's manuscript “ Die Willkür”. From this, what can be published is that which can give an idea of the way in which Paul Asmus approached one of the most important human problems.

In the next issue, I will give a brief description of the direction of Paul Asmus' ideas. I know that the flight of thought that this researcher has taken is one that few today are inclined to follow. Today, thinking demands convenience, and understanding Paul Asmus' ideas requires full working dedication. Yet the Theosophist knows that it is not research that must be adapted to man, but man to research; and that only complete devotion to its demands can lead to realization.

Few works have been written about Kant that match the quality of what Paul Asmus has written about him in his essay “The Ego and the Thing in Itself”. He does full justice to Kant; but at the same time he shows how impossible it is to stop at Kant, and how the great impetus given by the Königsberg philosopher to German thought must necessarily have led to the conceptions of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and others. Kant had shown, and this fact is one of the most significant in the history of modern thought, that the ordinary scientific methods of thinking never lead to a knowledge of the “thing in itself,” but always only to a knowledgeably dominating the world of the appearances given to man. But Kant pointed to the “thing in itself” in a very peculiar way. He assumed that in the categorical imperative, which speaks to man in the imperative of duty, a call sounds from the world of the “thing in itself.” But this call does not provide any knowledge of the Supreme, but only a belief in it, which gives man direction in the moral life. If man wants to consider himself a moral being and develop further and further in the direction of morality, he must believe in the reality of what the categorical imperative sends to him. But he cannot recognize what carries him so morally.

Now Fichte has tried to examine this call that sounds within man, and so he came to his “I-philosophy”. In the “I”, according to Fichte, a higher world opens up to man, which is just as real, indeed much more real, than the outer world of appearances. For this outer world of appearances only acquires meaning and significance when the human ego allows its own light to shine on it. Paul Asmus presents this process of Fichte's thinking emerging from Kant's in a very astute way. And in the same way that Hegel and Schelling then seek answers to the great riddles of existence from the “I”, from the human spirit, which no external sensory perception can solve.

And from here, Paul Asmus then found access to an understanding of religions, these manifold attempts by humanity to grasp the active spiritual forces of the universe from the depths of the human soul. It is not easy for many to follow Paul Asmus's significant discussions of “Indo-European Religions” because he is operating at the pinnacle of human thought. But anyone who learns to read the book by training their thinking will receive the purest possible enlightenment about the forms of human striving for truth. Our philosopher sees through to the spiritual core of religious thought everywhere through the imagery of religions and shows the connection and relationship between these cores. His book is therefore an interpretation of a great primal thought of the Indo-European peoples. No one will study it without being deeply impressed and realizing what the development of religious life is. But this puts Paul Asmus among those who, in the sense of Theosophy, pursue the essence of religions and philosophies of humanity.

The following is the conclusion of Paul Asmus' introductory discussions of “ arbitrariness”. His manuscript then continues with further discussions of the subject. We will also present the essentials of these in the following issues. What we have printed so far shows the path that the strong, sharp-sighted thinker has sought to take to the important problem of human freedom. Those who cannot move freely in the element of thought will call these discussions “abstract” and shadowy, and may even think that they are far removed from “real life” and that they contribute nothing to an understanding of the facts. But such a person has only not yet struggled through to life in the pure element of thought; he has not yet learned to dwell far from all sensuality, from all sensual imagining, in the ether region, where true life pulsates in the depths of man, which is a spark from the sea of light of eternal being. But anyone who has struggled to do so feels united with the divine world spirit in such a thought life; he lives in God at the same time as he lives in himself. Communion takes place with him in the spiritual realm. Thinkers like Asmus, who have developed out of the stream that German philosophical idealism gave from the first half of the nineteenth century: such thinkers understood to live in thought. In German intellectual life, historically speaking, what the theosophical mystic knows as a very specific inner life fact has taken place. The Kamic-Manasic thinking, in which the man of everyday life is caught, and in which, in particular, the European man of culture lives: this thinking throws off the Kamic veils and becomes pure Manasic thinking.

Whoever wants to go beyond a certain level in the field of knowledge must get to know this experience within themselves and let it become a fact. Those who cannot attain this stage either remain entangled in the fetters of a dim mysticism that only enables them to see the facts of the astral plane without understanding, or they have to content themselves with mere belief in the theosophical dogmas. Therefore, I consider it one of the tasks of this journal to present these samples of pure etheric thinking. Such thinking alone can provide inner, self-assured firmness and certainty for the researcher, guiding the theosophist between the Scylla of nebulous enthusiasm and the Charybdis of blind belief in dogma into the bright halls of wisdom. Those who not only think through what is given in pure thoughts, but bring it to the point of direct experience, will convince themselves of the truth of what has been said. But for the time being, only a few people in our culture can achieve what is called “living in thought”. And most people cannot even “think” the right thing when they hear the words “living in thought”. The theosophical movement, which is supposed to bring us back to spiritual life, will also have the task of understanding the spiritual thoughts of German idealism. And Paul Asmus, whose physical shell was appropriated by the earth so early, may well also make an impact with his wonderful thought-germs on the karma of the theosophical movement in Germany.