123. The Fundamental Conflict Between the World Views of the Occident and the Orient

This weekly journal has often pointed out the profound conflict between the world views of the Occident and the Orient. How understanding between the two cultural areas will come about depends on whether there is real insight into this contrast. And this understanding is necessary for the further development of humanity on earth. Economic cooperation can only develop on the basis of spiritual understanding. For this understanding, it is not necessary for one area of the world to adopt the spiritual character traits of the other. Only fanaticism could demand that. Understanding can only be achieved by having an unprejudiced view of the other and working together with him, without underestimating his peculiarities or wanting to suppress them.

The contrast is evident in a wide variety of fields. It is particularly pronounced in the views that people on both sides have of the human soul. The Orient has a culture that is based entirely on the inner experience of the soul. In the soul, the world reveals itself in its truthfulness and reality. Wisdom is not knowledge of anything. It is essence. It is life. And its life speaks from the depths of the human soul. The outer nature has only a value as the womb of the soul. Western culture has developed an eye for the intrinsic value of nature. The soul gives itself its value by penetrating the laws and secrets of nature. Wisdom is the reflection of these laws and secrets.

But all this is only the surface of the soul life. The soul does not reveal its essence through ideas, but through the emotional experiences that arise from its depths. There are undercurrents of the soul. The consciousness has no clear ideas about them, only more or less dark moods. But these form the basic coloration of the human being. The person feels them as his or her state of mind. He experiences them in their effect on the conscious soul life.

From this point of view, both the will and the thought are different for the Oriental than for the Occidental. For the feelings of the Oriental, something similar to the air we breathe is contained in the thought. The senses are [breaks off]