Psychological Aphorisms

He who in ordinary consciousness sums up the characteristic color of the soul experiences with the word “I” does not yet understand what is expressed by this word. He only comes to this when he gradually learns to place the I-experience in the series of other inner experiences in inner vision. He can observe how the experience of hunger in its first stage relates to the experience of satiety. The sense of self is heightened by the experience of hunger and dulled by the experience of satiety in these first stages. The need for rest after satiation is connected with this. It is only at the further stages, when hunger intervenes destructively in the organization, that it becomes different. In the further pursuit of this observation, the realization arises that the word 'I' does not denote a fulfillment of the soul's life, but rather a longing, a desire-like quality that awaits fulfillment. Thoughts that one cherishes only strengthen the sense of self when they are ideals, when desire lives in them. The “I” is experienced by ordinary consciousness in the sphere of desires. Therefore, at this stage, it is a desire for fulfillment, a source of selfishness.

The “I” can also be called the “night of ordinary consciousness”. The more man fills himself with thoughts about the world, the more the I-experience recedes. But if the 'I' is to be strongly experienced, then the thoughts about the world must come out of the soul. In these thoughts, however, man experiences himself as in his 'inner day'; in the 'I' he experiences himself at first as in the 'inner night'. But the inner day does not solve the riddle of the night for him. Another light must shine in the inner night. The “I” cannot satisfy its longing for light from the sunshine of the outside world. But it longs for sunshine. It lives in the longing for sunshine, intuitively. As self, the “I” longs for fulfillment from selflessness. — It is always on the way to bringing forth the stream of selflessness from the source of selfishness.

The desire for spiritual knowledge is the content of the experience of the self. No matter what one may think about the “I”; every interpretation, every definition of the “I”, however they may be formulated, they are only descriptions of this desire. These descriptions can often express the opposite of reality. Then they are as if a hungry person were to reinterpret his hunger as something else. As long as the sense of self is experienced in ordinary consciousness, it remains a desire for spiritual fulfillment. It only ceases to be this when the light of sense knowledge is penetrated by the light of spirit knowledge. Soul experience from the sense world makes the self into desire; soul experience from the spirit world makes the self into the content of being. The first human experience of the spiritual world lies in the moral impulses. These do not come from the world of the senses. They are willed in a thinking that originates outside the world of the senses. They are willed in the light of “pure thinking”. Living in true moral impulses is the beginning of experiencing the spiritual world. The continuation of the activity in which the soul dwells in the experience of moral impulses leads to the knowledge of the spiritual world. Every human being who wants to do so thus views the methods of spiritual research. It is only necessary that he also recognize them. Then the selfishness of the ego melts away into the selflessness of the knowledge of the spiritual world.

Is the “I” in the human body? — No. — The body, with all its activities, only creates the desire for the I. Ordinary consciousness confuses this desire with the I itself. One must lift oneself out of the body with a mental jolt in order to satisfy the desire that the body creates in the spirit. The body is inconceivable without the spirit, for it is only the manifestation of the desire for the spirit. — Those who understand the body correctly develop the ability to experience the spirit as a matter of course. Scientific materialism arises from a lack of knowledge of the material world. — A lack of knowledge of the human body leads to the assumption that the body summarizes its experiences in the word “I”; it only summarizes its desire in this word. Understanding of the bodily basis of the “I” transforms itself through itself into understanding of the spiritual nature of the “I”. The sense of self that the body develops is the revelation of selfless devotion to the spiritual world, which reveals the true character of the “I”.

The life of the physical is the desire, the hunger for the spiritual. If the hunger is not satisfied, the physical is destroyed. A physical body that wants to be independent fights against its own nature. Therefore, one can only speak of a spiritless nature if one wants to see it as a departure from its own nature. If one reflects on the fact that a physical nature can only be a longing for the spirit, then one goal of knowledge of nature arises: either-or. Either he must ask of nature: has it fallen away from its own nature? And what will become of it through this apostasy? Or he must ask, what is in it that even its apparent lack of spirit ultimately makes appear as a longing for the spirit? But this allows all questions about nature to converge into one: is the lack of spirit in inanimate nature not the revelation of a hidden hunger for the spirit?

In economic life, man is raised above animality by the fact that he transforms the instinct-determined economy of animals into one that is soul-determined. The animal remains within the determination of nature with its organization of labor and its accumulation of capital. Man first elevates the organization of labor to the level of soul-determination. He cannot do this completely with the natural basis of the economy. But because his instincts do not work with the same power as those of animals, a part of economic life disappears from his conscious economic organization, just as the ultra-red parts of the spectrum disappear from the effect of illumination. It can therefore be seen how the knowledge of the natural given in economic life is not fully transparent to the national economy built on consciousness. The organization of labor belongs to the light of consciousness, as does the middle part of the spectrum. The accumulation of capital and its effects, however, elude conscious thought. What arises economically in the world as the effects of capital goes beyond the scope of ordinary economic thinking, as the ultraviolet part of the spectrum goes beyond light. — Economic science strives beyond the ordinary scientific methods like the spectrum beyond its light part. — One will therefore need a striving for knowledge to a complete economic science, which finds the spirit in the instincts of nature and the transition to nature-like facts in the soul-determined capital effects.

Knowledge of the I gives true knowledge of nature. True knowledge of nature culminates in knowledge of the I. Natural science and spiritual science must greet each other as sisters if they understand themselves aright. And human life, of which the economic is only a part, cannot do without the agreement of the two sisters. Humanity has come to specialization in science and work; today, for their own good, the parts demand union into a whole. Spiritual science must see spirit as creative, not abstract; but then it sees created nature in the creative spirit; natural science must see the desire for spirit in nature; then, by investigating nature, spirit comes to meet it. For true knowledge, the path to spirit is through natural science, and spiritual science is the eye-opener to the secrets of nature.