49. Path of Knowledge

The flower that is cut from the stem withers. Had it been left on the stem, it would have turned the forces within it to seed formation; and the life of the plant to which it belongs would have been renewed in another. - What has the cut done to the stem? — Has it not transformed one way of being into a completely different one? Has it not robbed certain forces of the possibility of forming that to which they were called according to the order of nature? — Even after it has been cut off, forces still act on the flower. But these are different from those that previously called it into existence and that would have led it to fruit formation afterwards. They are forces under whose influence it gradually decays. The flower has passed into a different realm of forces. Into the realm that can produce no growth and no reproduction, but only chemical and physical effects. With the cut in the stem, a stream of life has been interrupted. And the flower has been taken up by another stream of existence. This current destroys what the flower is destined to become. The flower belongs to one realm of existence. And only in this realm can it become what it is meant to become. It becomes something else when it is snatched from this realm and transferred to another. And then a current that is only at home in its realm is destroyed. The flower must give up its plant character. The aims of the world into which it now enters do not lie in the formation of seeds and fruits. They have nothing to do with growth and reproduction. They impose a direction on the substances of the flower that is not in the nature of the flower.

In nature, therefore, a thing can be snatched from the ends towards which it tends, and its existence can be directed in another direction, one which is not in its nature.

What can happen to a plant can happen to every being, including humans. And it can happen with all the forces that are active in a person. Only with humans is everything less simple, less clear than with the other realms of nature. And everything becomes all the more complicated the more one ascends to the spiritual powers of man. But if we are able to see simplicity in complexity, we can see that the same thing can happen to the human spirit that happens to a blossom when it loses its connection to the stem.

What lives in the spirit of man can be compared to the current that, passing through the plant, constitutes its particular essence. And man experiences this current as the content of his soul. In this soul content he finds the direction and goal of his being. It is his inner life. If he lacked this inner life, he would be like the flower cut off from the stem. He would have to succumb to currents of power that are not his in the truest sense. But the essence of man is not as clearly defined as that of a flower. It has countless gradations. And it acquires its special character from the fact that man himself works on shaping this inner life. It becomes all the more meaningful the more man works on himself.

A person who does not work on themselves lacks inner life. They become entirely what their outer nature makes of them. The impressions of the outer world shape their soul. Yes, that is precisely the breaking away of man from his spiritual roots when he abandons himself to these impressions. The inner life only begins where man really adds something of his own to what he receives from the outside.

How many speak of their inner life and mean nothing but the reflection of the outside world within them. People live busy with what everyday life brings. They learn from the demands of everyday life what they themselves do. They suffer from the events of daily life, or rejoice in them. Depending on whether one or the other is the case, they act in their actions. Yes, their whole character is probably only a reflection of the outside world. One need only recall the differences between the inhabitants of the mountains and the plains, between those of the cities and the countryside, and one will admit that man bears the imprint of the outside world. And yet this imprint arises only when his inner self cooperates. A firm boundary between what the external nature imprints on man and what he forms from within cannot be drawn. But the character traits of the human being that are formed from the inner nature of his soul stand out clearly from those that are impressed on him from outside. Just as the essence of the flower consists in its progression towards the fruit and the seed in its growth, so the essence of the human being lies in the internalization of his life. This inwardness is the ideal towards which he strives to advance. There are many stages of development on the way to this ideal. From the savage to Goethe there are many such stages. The savage can set only a small inner strength against the influences of the outer world. He is torn this way and that by the forces that affect him. Goethe, on the other hand, forms a soul content from a few external impressions that creates a higher world. One need only seriously compare the lives of the two. One will find that the savage's inner life directly reflects the effects of the external world; while Goethe draws from the depths of his soul something that fills the reflection with a content that makes it richer and more exalted than the external object it reflects. Just as plants take substances from the chemical and physical world and imprint their own essence on them, so humans take in impressions from the external world and, through the power of their soul, channel them towards higher developmental goals. Thus, the relationship between the physical and chemical realms and the plant realm can be compared to a similar relationship in the human being: between the realm of external impressions and that in which the inner power of the soul unfolds its effects. And just as the plant part can lose itself in the chemical and physical realm, so the human being can lose himself in outer life.

What is brought about by an artificial intervention in the example of the plant exists in man as the essence of his character. At earlier stages of his development, he is cut off from his inner life; at later stages, he reaches it. In this way, he gradually moves upwards into higher realms. His nature strives for these higher realms. Through this striving, he must find the goal that is inherent in his soul. The lower the stages of his development, the more alien they are to the nature of his soul. The more the goals of the corresponding realms lie in different directions than his own. Man thus finds himself more and more by developing into the higher realms.

Two realms are most clearly distinguished from each other. The realm of external nature, which forms man according to itself; and the inner, spiritual realm, which gives the formation of external nature a character that could never come from it itself. — Nature and spirit: man belongs to both. If he were all nature, he would be only the outer imprint of a human being, not a human being himself. If he were entirely spirit, he would have to have already reached the goal of his development. He stands between the two.

The individual spirit of man, his soul, is rooted in the All-Spirit. It is, in a sense, an illusion when the individual spirit sees itself as an absolutely independent being. However, this delusion is part of the nature of man on the stages of his imperfection. For the delusion would be no less great if the individual spirit, in its isolation, simply wanted to explain its essence as the All-Spirit. It would be as incorrect as if one wanted to mistake the image of the sun reflected by a concave mirror for the sun itself. The All-Spirit lives in every soul; but He lives in it in a special way. It is present in each soul in accordance with its nature. Therefore, one cannot directly recognize the All-Spirit as such. One can only live it within oneself, allow it to flow unimpeded within oneself. “I am the All-Spirit” is just as correct as it is wrong. For “I am the All-Spirit in a special way.” Only this special way in which the All-Spirit comes into being in me can I recognize. I should open my gates as widely as possible to the All-Spirit; I should prepare the places in my journey so that he may find his dwelling place in them in the freest possible way. He flows into me as widely and as universally as I offer him a dwelling place. He does not hold back; only I myself can erect obstacles for him. Man's development consists in removing these obstacles. He lives in veils; and he gradually imbues these veils with the light that he receives from the Universal Spirit. How this is to happen is determined by man's original disposition. The veils in which his soul is clothed are not at his discretion. He finds himself in them. The All-Spirit is in them. But it is not in them as man is meant to place it. First of all, there is the outer physical covering. It is subject to the laws in which the chemical and physical forces operate. This covering, taken by itself, is, in its way, absolutely perfect. There is a harmony in it as in the realm of the stars and of physical nature in general. Security and calm progress are the hallmarks of this realm. And if these formations only exist for themselves, only isolated in their realm, they only strive for the goals that are peculiar to this realm, then they live a perfect life. When we gaze up at the starry sky, we perceive the mood of the soul that streams forth from this realm when it is left to its own devices, when it is not a shell but an entity in its own right. From this primal source of world existence, the realm of the living, the organic, stands out. Beings with growth and reproduction arise within it. The laws originally active in it take on a different direction and assume different forms. Thus the structures of this realm become a shell. Their nature is determined by what they now contain within them. Their laws, which are complete within themselves, become servants of a higher lawfulness. They must adapt to this lawfulness. And this lawfulness itself can only work in such a way that it takes into account the nature of the chemical and physical. The chemical and physical is a substance with which the living works. It must achieve what it is meant to achieve according to its nature; but it can only do so if it finds the way in which the chemical and physical forces can correspond to this nature. An interaction occurs between what is called upon to arise as life forms and the chemical and physical laws. This interaction provides the basis for imperfection in world development. Imperfection could not arise in a realm unto itself. It can arise where the laws of one realm interact with those of another. For it is a matter here of a continual finding of the right way for this interaction. The variety of life forms arises from the fact that this interaction can be effected in the most diverse ways. From mushrooms to oak trees, we have different types of this interaction. And in one case more, in the other less, the outer form is dominated by the inner life formation, and is its true imprint. Where there is no harmony between the form required from within and that which the external physical laws allow, imperfection arises. It is not due to the physical and chemical laws as such that a plant malformation arises, but to the fact that the demands of the inner life do not do justice to these laws in their specificity. What constitutes the “lower nature” of a being is never imperfect in itself; imperfection arises when the “higher nature” pushes the lower nature in the wrong direction. It is not the shell that is imperfect, but the way it is used.

Just as life arises within the chemical and physical, so too does desire and repulsion arise within life, or the world of desire. And the living becomes the shell of desire just as the physical becomes the shell of the living. The laws of life become expressions of what a being finds desirable or what it wants to reject. The interaction that now comes to light will consist in pushing life in the direction of desire. The being in question will no longer merely live; rather, it will live in a way that befits its desires. A new source of imperfection arises.

The human soul is enclosed in three shells. It is in them that man is born as a thinking being. For it is only in his world of thoughts that his true inner being lies. These three shells are illuminated and permeated by this being. Each shell has its own laws; and each shell, in its own way, belongs to a particular realm.

The human being as a being of thought lives in the world of thought; this world of thought is first clothed in the shell of desire, which belongs to a special realm with its own laws; this shell of desire rests in the same way in the shell of life, and this in the physical shell. Man is not simple, but composed of a soul-core and three soul-covers: and his three soul-covers belong to three different worlds, into which he thus extends through his outer garments. And the core of the soul stands in the middle and gives meaning and character to the garments. The imperfection of man will consist in the fact that his soul cannot reconcile the demands of its essence with the laws of the shells, which are also the laws of the realms to which these shells belong. And the soul, what determines it, where do its laws come from? They are none other than the laws of the All-Spirit, only in a different form from that in which they find expression in the outer shells. The soul itself is a shell. Just as it is the core for the three outer shells, so it is itself a shell for the All-Spirit in other forms. And these forms correspond step by step to what has moved into the outer shells of the All-Spirit. Just as the master builder remains an independent person even after he has embodied his skill in the outer structure of the house, so the All-Spirit remains an independent spirit even after he has placed his essence in the three shells of the physical, the animate, and the desiring. Each of the three outer forms of the All-Spirit corresponds to an independent inner form of spirit: in order that the shell of the desiring nature might be laid around the beings, the Primordial Spirit had to develop within itself the form of the renouncing one. Desiring and renouncing belong together like warmth and cold. When warmth arises in one place, it must flow out at another, which thereby becomes colder. If beings arise that desire, their desire can only arise from a primal ground that forms renunciation in itself as its opposite. Likewise, life in the shell must correspond to its opposite in the spiritual primal ground. Life now consists of growth and reproduction, that is, in that which has life moves beyond itself. The opposite is complete inner stillness; beatitude. This is the second spiritual form of the primal ground corresponding to life. The third spiritual form corresponds to the cosmic, chemical and physical laws of the universe. These laws are spread out over space and time in an infinite variety of things. If we contrast this diversity with the unity that dominates it and finds expression in each of its forms, we are led to the unified spirit itself, which lives in the physical diversity. Spirit, bliss, and renunciation are the three forms of the primal source of things, which live externally in the three sheaths, the physical, the animate, and the desiring. The individual human soul is connected to these three basic forms of the primal spirit as if to its tribe. And just as the outer shells enclose them, so they in turn form the shell for renunciation, bliss and spirit. Thus, if the outer man extends into three outer realms, the soul extends into three spiritual realms. Man's own realm is in the middle between these six realms and together with them forms a seventh. Man's being is therefore sevenfold. And the seven realms give their laws to the fundamental parts that make up man: the physical, the living, the desiring, the thinking, the renouncing, the blissful, and the spiritual. Each of the seven realms has its own laws, through which it brings about what takes place in it. Take man's very own realm, that of thought. Thoughts combine within us according to laws that live within the world of thought. If that were not the case, the regularity of our [thought life] would have to be exactly the same as that of external things. But that is by no means the case. Otherwise, one could not speak of logical thinking. I understand a process or a thing only if I associate certain thoughts with them that make them understandable to me. If I left it to the thoughts that arise quite by chance in connection with the thing or the process, I could never arrive at a real understanding. It is an important proposition, originating in the Pythagorean school, that man differs from the animal in that he can count. By counting things, he arranges them according to aspects that are taken from the realm of thought. Things do not count themselves; and as they appear to us in mere perception, there is no immediate reason to count them. We count them because we want to summarize them according to the purposes of thought. And so it is with all the other forms in which thought deals with things. Man attributes the circular form to certain things. He cannot do so until he has explained to himself, by purely logical thinking, what a circle is. He could never gain a pure conception of the circle from the sense world. What one can learn about circles in the world of the senses are only approximate circles, imperfect circles. We recognize them as such because we have an idea of the circle from a purely ideal point of view. And so it is with all real thinking. Those who do real science always move on to ideas that are not present in their purity in the external world of the senses. They idealize. He develops something within himself that none of the senses can provide. He receives the laws for this from a world that is not the sensual one. The thoughts that we relate to external objects still point to another world. They are, to be sure, images of external things; but at the same time they are images of the laws of the spirit of these external things, which the senses cannot gain from them. In addition to the gates of the senses, we must also open the inner gates of the soul if we want to understand the essence of things. This could not be if what is called to us through the gates of the soul did not belong to the essence of things themselves. The thing that I perceive through the sense of sight is only one side of the thing; the other side is apparently absent when I merely open the eye; it hides itself from this organ. It becomes apparent when I open the inner organ of the soul. Then a thought-image enters through this. And this belongs to the external thing. It is the other side of the same thing. The thing is only complete when I familiarize myself with both sides of it. Thus, the essence of a thing is actually in the unknown source of things. And it reveals itself to me from two sides: externally through the senses, internally in the life of thought. A thing is only complete for those who, in addition to perceiving it with their senses, also reflect on it. People misunderstand the facts of the matter here if they believe that they already have the whole thing in what the senses provide and only want to allow themselves to repeat the external thing in thought. They do this because they consider everything that goes beyond external reality to be unreal, a mere figment of the imagination. They do not know that thought is an image that receives its content from two sides: from the external world, in which the external forms of things are, and from the higher spiritual world, in which the deeper meaning, the actual essence of things, lies. The world of thought lives in the middle between the three lower and the three upper realms. Things are both above and below. Everything that is below and tends more or less towards the physical, corresponds to something above that represents the actual spiritual essence of the lower. The two sides of things cast their rays; and these rays meet in the human soul, which thus gives images of things in its thoughts, which receive their luminosity and color from two sides.

Just as it is true that thought reflects the truth because the truth of things illuminates it from two sides, it is also true that, in order to be fruitful, in order to have content, thought must be truly illuminated from two sides. We cannot recognize a plant through mere thought: we need sensory perception for that. Likewise, mere thinking is of little help if one wants to get to the essence of things, which lies in the spiritual. Thought must be illuminated from within, as it is illuminated from without, through the sensory properties of things. People who are up to these things have called this inner illumination enlightenment, inspiration or intuition. It is spiritual perception and the exact opposite of sensory perception. It is only through this that the true inner life of the human being in the higher sense begins. Through it, the soul sees into the spiritual world. And the sensual then appears to it as an external form of this spiritual one, not much more than the figure of a human being recreated in papier-mâché as compared to the real human being. The nature of illumination only becomes noticeable, however, in people who have particularly essential perceptions from the higher spiritual world; and only in them does one hear talk of illumination or inspiration. But it is not only present in them. A certain degree of it can be found in every human being. Something from the spiritual world dawns in every brain. It is just so weak in many cases that, compared to the vivid impressions of the outer world, it appears to many as nothing, as an illusion that only serves to make man understand in thought what the senses perceive.

The realm of life flows directly from the spirit. It carries within itself the germ of becoming separate. Individual life can arise within the All-life. One does not comprehend life if one does not grasp it in its universality and all-livingness. All wishing and desiring is still far from life. The living thing only becomes a separate current in the system of forces of the All. It does not force the other living things into its service. It does not desire or abhor. It takes only to give. It forms itself to give existence to other forms. It lives in transformation (metamorphosis). And it retains nothing, accumulates nothing in the intermediate stages of metamorphosis. Whatever is to be accumulated must arise from desire. Desires must form themselves around a center. Life does not challenge other living things. Desire creates a form that must be dissolved again. The realm of desires is the realm where the forms that gather around centers in this way influence each other. Where they interact. - In the realm of life, we only deal with individuals in a suggestive way; in the realm of desire, the individuals are distinct. Through his desires, man gives the realm of desires a touch that bears the character of his separate existence. Through his life, he gives only life, that is, he forms beings that bear nothing of his separate being, but only correspond to the general nature of life. The living person says only: man is there; and he also only produces men. The desiring human being says: “I, this individual, am here.” The realm into which this sound penetrates thus acquires the special coloration of this individual being. The individual is now here forever. Something has come into being that continues to have an effect. Even if I myself could be completely absent, annihilated, for a moment: I will encounter this effect of mine when I am back again. My new effect belongs to my old one. Both must influence each other.

It is now nature itself that has brought man so far that he animates the three lower realms from that of the thinking soul. Within the thinking soul slumber the parts, the inner cores of the soul, which man awakens in himself by working on himself, going beyond mere nature. Through this awakening, he continues the work of nature. He develops; and with this development, the processes of the three lower realms are brought into the corresponding connections with the higher ones. Into those that are predisposed in them by the fact that the life forms of the higher realms have assumed an external existence in the lower ones. Immediately below the realm of thoughts lies that of desire. An interplay between these two realms first takes place in man. Thoughts first serve desires. Desire can work as a blind force. The sensation arises that something gives pleasure, something else gives displeasure. Desire works according to pleasure.

Thus man can never be in the world without his own being, as he has created it for himself, staring at him. The individual cannot begin at one point of development. He must tie in with what he has previously brought into the world, starting from himself. Here we are looking at the ledger of life. We not only live our personal life within ourselves, within our personality, but we also live it outside of our personality. We can do this consciously or unconsciously. And we can do it more or less consciously. The intellectual person can only come to the general awareness that it is so: the intuitive person recognizes the items of his life book in detail. And they recognize them, looking both forward and back. Intuitive people speak of their calling, of their special mission. This is the result of looking forward. It is the realization of the special task that the All-Soul has assigned to them. As such realization opens up to them, the realization of the past also follows. They get to know the items that they entered earlier in their life account book. For they must bring both into harmony with each other. In another sense, what is later in development relates to what is earlier like the spirit to the forms in which it first lived itself out, revealed itself. What was earlier is the result of a confrontation between forces in different realms. These results are stored as effects. And what happens again can only be a new confrontation with these effects. Now two things can happen. The forces of desire aroused by the personality can have their center of gravity in this world of desire itself, and by giving the personality its character, not the other way around: the personality to them, this center of gravity can remain in the realm of desire. Or the personality can place the forces of desire in the service of the soul's inner life. They lose their center of gravity in the realm of desire and gain another in the superordinate realm. But in doing so, they also lose the character of separateness that prevails in their realm. They no longer collide like strangers; they resonate together, because each individual, separate desire is given such a direction that it does not conflict with the others, but rather delivers a harmonious result with them. Diversity is generated in the realm of desire. Thus this realm acquires full content in itself. The next higher realm, the realm of thought, of the soul, would remain without content if it did not fill itself with the content that it draws from the lower realm. The desires are released from the bonds of their own realm by the forces of the higher realm. This is the course of evolution: the forces of a particular realm are given full expression. In doing so, they take on forms that are an external expression of the original forces. In this way, the first realm withdraws some of its forces. It releases them from itself, externalizes them. The remaining part becomes even more inward, even more spiritual than the original was. This inward part now spiritualizes, as a soul, the form that it previously separated from itself, as a center. Thus what was previously a unity becomes a duality, and the two members of the duality work together. They produce a third. The third is a repetition of the first, only the two members, which were still undivided in the first, are divided and their unity now consists in their harmonious interaction. There are two kinds of unity: one in which the members are not yet separated and therefore work from a common center, and the other in which the members are separated and the unity therefore consists in the harmonious interaction of the separated.

The external experience that man has through the application of his senses and his mind is a school for the higher development of man. He learns the regular use of thought from it. External events constantly correct our thoughts when they take the wrong direction. The upheavals in the world of thought are as much proof of this as everyday experiences. If I see a black object in the distance and mistake it for a cat, then coming closer can teach me that I am only dealing with a balled-up piece of cloth. This is a common example of how the outside world regulates thought. The correction that Copernicus made to the thinking of his predecessors regarding the course of the stars is an example of the same in the great historical life of thought. The things of the inner life do not seem so compelling on the thought. The thought must already be completely clear with itself if it is to absorb the spiritual content in the same way as it absorbs the content of external perception. He must not make any mistakes, because it depends on his self-established correctness whether he can see the spiritual in the right context. The spiritual content needs consciousness as its mature vehicle. Consciousness must therefore work correctly if the spiritual content is not to be distorted. Even though the sensual is transitory and changing, it teaches man the forms of thought. And with these thought-forms he can then comprehend the eternal. These same thoughts belong both to the temporal and the eternal. But as a personal being, man himself belongs to the temporal. He is related to the temporal. He can rise to the Eternal only by taking his starting-point from the temporal. He must learn to think in terms of the temporal. When he has thus acquired the laws of the temporal in the right way, they will be his guide on the soil from which the fruits of the Eternal grow. Man must first think surely, clearly and aright, then he can unlock his thoughts to higher illumination. If he tries to do so earlier, he is like a child who wants to climb a mountain before he has learned to walk. First one learns to read and to calculate, and then one applies reading and calculating in order to comprehend the truths of the sciences. Likewise, one first learns to think in the temporal; then one applies this thinking to the processes in the eternal. One will only make uncertain steps if one ventures into the field of the eternal before one has acquired the prerequisites for doing so. The most important of these prerequisites is to develop, through careful observation of reality, a thinking that flows in a proper way; and with this, an uninhibited, free opening up of oneself to the higher contents of the world with this thinking.

Thoughts take physical form in the human being. Its existence is conditioned by the physical laws that govern the brain and nervous system. But it also comes into its own in different ways in its own realm. Just as it can be applied to external things and also to the individual processes of the inner spiritual life, it is not original. Take the thought of a tree, for example, an oak tree. In the moment when we stand in front of the oak tree, it is a very specific thought image of this very oak tree. In the realm of thought itself, we rise from this particular image to a much more general one. We arrive at a mental image of an oak tree that does not really exist anywhere in detail, and yet it is a lawful thought form. This thought form is in turn connected with others. And when we survey our field of thought, we see that everything in it is connected in a lawful, inner way. This life of thought is the shadow image of the true higher life, in which everything is unity, inner harmony of being. Thought is the image of the super-thought. The super-thought is the creative essence. We merge with it when we transcend thought. From it comes our enlightenment, our inspiration. In it we live and move and have our being. When we rise to this region, we experience what we otherwise merely think. We move in entities that have life as in the human world the physical entities. Only then are these entities not governed by the limiting laws to which physical entities are subject. And the formless thoughts, the exalted images, which do not yet bear the reflection of the lower spheres, are the language that these entities speak to man. These entities themselves, and with them the human souls, are hidden as if behind a wall. We perceive the language - the exalted thoughts; the entities themselves and we with them move and we behind this wall. But it is their power that speaks to us, and it is our power that listens to the speaking. When this happens to us, then our ear listens to the divine message that tells us about the essence of things; then our heart clings to the heart of the world and, while the ear listens, perceives the pulse of the eternal. Space and time cease to have meaning in such moments: What the human being hears applies to many times and many spaces. These are the defining moments of life, in which the human being thus feels at the heart of the eternal; and it is a high stage of development of the human being when he makes such hearing and feeling his whole being. Then the impressions of the lower worlds cease to have any significance for him; they are only small nuances of color and tone in the eternal picture that unfolds before his mind's eye. The small lines of life intertwine as insignificant tendrils with the eternal lines that entwine across time and space and express the laws of the cosmos in eternal harmony.

Every event in the physical world is simultaneously an event in other spheres of the world. When I stretch out my hand, not only the physical process that I see with my eyes takes place, but at the same time a process takes place in the world of desires and another in the world of thoughts; not to mention the other worlds in which the corresponding processes also occur. The human soul dwelling in the physical body perceives only the physical process in its immediate form: of the other processes, it perceives only a kind of silhouette, a reflection that falls on this physical one from the other worlds. Only beings who spend their existence in the corresponding worlds can perceive the processes in these worlds as directly and in their original form as the physical person perceives physical existence. Our physical eyes see physical things; eyes that are made only of desire substance could perceive desires as physical eyes perceive flowers. And before a pure eye of thought, thoughts pass by as they do before human eyes, tables and cupboards. Those who cannot awaken a true feeling for these hidden worlds within themselves will not come to an understanding of what real human development means. Above the physical world lies the life world; and above that, the realm of desire: the place of wishes. Compared to physical matter, everything in this sphere is more subtle and fleeting. Of course, the laws of physics do not apply to this realm. Two beings of the same kind can be in one place, and distant things do not appear foreshortened as they do in the physical world. Colors are not opaque, as they are in the physical realm. They are opaque only because they appear on the opaque physical substance as its boundary. When this realm begins to reveal itself to man, he begins to realize how little he knows about the things of the world without knowledge of the same. How little he knows, above all, about himself and his fellow human beings. What man is otherwise able to keep locked in his bosom, his desires and feelings, his passions and temperament, in short, the whole world of his desires, reveals itself as a second organism in which the physical one is embedded, and which does not appear to the physical eye as color appears to the color-blind eye. The physical body alone can hide the world of feeling from the physical eye; it cannot do so from the eye that sees the organic cloud of desire in which the physical nature is embedded. Man's emotional life becomes an open book to this eye. Just as man spreads out his hands in the lower realm and thereby changes his form, so he sends out mobile rays when he has a desire. And just as his hand grasps a physical object, so the rays of his desires intertwine with the worlds that meet them in the realm of desires. Not hard as in physical space, desires collide in the space of desires; but they flow into each other, mix and mingle, and create complicated desire-forms, somewhat similar to how composite substances arise from simple ones in the physical world. Two people sit together. Their desire-rays flow into each other continuously. And when they leave the place, they have given existence to a being that now has an independent existence in the world of desire. No one can enter a place without leaving behind traces of their desires and feelings. And for our own being of desire, it matters who has entered the place before we do. We always, so to speak, lie down in the bed that our predecessor has prepared for us. People who have developed their sensitivity in this direction know this. And those who have not developed such sensitivity have no idea what others sometimes go through due to influences that are completely unknown to them. But such influences do not only emanate from people. In the world of desire, the receptive person encounters currents that were not previously at home in the physical world and that can only become so through him. He encounters the actual beings of desire that have no physical form. Almost all people are exposed to such encounters, but many are not aware of them. One must realize that much of what lives in the physical has its origin in the sphere of desire, and we just do not see the intrusion of their entities. For those who can perceive in this direction, much becomes evident in terms of its origins, of which the ordinary person sees only the effects. Man is almost always surrounded by extra-physical influences. The joker who tickles the funny bones of those around him is surrounded by a host of beings of desire and covetousness, who point his stories in the right direction. One sees the effect, but not the origin. Only pure intellectual beings lack this fleeting environment. A colorless cloud hovers around them, keeping out any influence from outside.

Man, realizing that he lives in such a world, cannot remain without an expansion of his outlook on life. His sense of duty and responsibility must undergo a significant broadening. Without such realization, he may believe that his “inner world” belongs to him alone, and that he is only responsible to physical realities. This will change when the third eye awakens. An ethic of desire will be added to his ethic of action. Just as he will deny himself actions that cause harm to the environment, so he will also deny himself desires and longings that must have an unfavorable effect on their realm. He will recognize duties in his heart just as he recognizes duties in the outside world and allows himself to be guided by the rules that can serve the prosperous coexistence of people.

The emotional life of a person who recognizes no higher duties is chaotic and disorderly. It is increasingly seized by noble harmony in those who grasp such a world of duties. Man then fits into the world quite differently. The chaotically surging feelings and passions are something fleeting and insubstantial, because they mutually cancel and destroy each other. Those who waste their feelings today in any direction, on any event, and tomorrow on something else, repeatedly destroy the results of their existence. Those who keep their feelings in strict harmony with each other shape their lives into a whole, which can therefore also be integrated as a whole into the world of desires. A chaotic life flows into the general world of desires like a dirty stream into the sea; one can still see the direction in which the dirt is moving, polluting the sea. A pure river flows into the sea and is absorbed into it without affecting its purity. And just as the sea must gradually overcome the dirt of the stream, so the world of desires must overcome the emotionally impure effects of life. A higher degree of human development brings consciousness to the way a person acts on the world of desires. What otherwise happens unconsciously and therefore completely randomly and arbitrarily, is then brought up into consciousness. Those who are able to do this will no longer desire unconsciously, just as the consciously aware human being acts consciously and not like an automaton in the physical world. Just as we commit harmful acts during our physical lives if we do not know the rules of action that lead to good, so too can we produce harmful effects in the realm of desire; and those who are completely unconscious of this realm become its playthings. The great religious founders of all times endeavored to give people rules for their inner life, so that their feelings and perceptions could become a harmonious link in the realm of desire: so that they would not work as troublemakers in this realm, but as members of its great whole. It is therefore only natural and understandable that such religious founders gave rules not only for external action, but also for the emotional life. How pleasure and pain should affect the heart, how renunciation and love are to be esteemed: these are the things that religious founders speak about, and those teachers of religion and wisdom who know something of the higher worlds. In the great, glorious song of human perfection, in the “Bhagavad-Gita,” one reads: “Respect pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory or defeat equally. Gird yourself for battle, and you will not fall into sin.” Or in another place: ‘It is the desire, the will, the strength that springs from passion. Get to know this all-consuming and devastating enemy.’ Such ethical principles do not refer to external action; they refer to the behavior of man in the world, where desires, longings, and cravings live. And the more a person delves into the depths of the soul, the more he is able to develop the ethics of the world of desires. The mystics of all times have worked on these ethics.

The human soul belongs to an even broader realm than that of desires. It is the realm of thoughts. It is through this that man can truly snatch himself from the temporal and attach himself to the eternal. Thought is the most comprehensive element in man's being. But it also depends on man himself what he makes of the thought with which he lives. He can make it a servant of his desires and cravings; or he can use it to rise to the eternal laws or essences of things. While the beings of the desire realm surround the human being as if arbitrarily, as if they were only loosely connected, forming a unified realm, the world of thought appears as a well-planned, strictly regulated whole. Each link serves the other in a precisely defined way. The desire beings therefore place us in a small circle, the thoughts in a large one. And what lives in us from the world of thoughts forms a far more enduring core of our being than our desire organism. Just as our physical organism is embedded in the desire organism, so are both, the physical and the desire organism, embedded in our thought organism. And when the eye of thought opens, the thought organism can be recognized. It presents itself differently from the desire organism. This is something fluid and flowing, and only becomes more stable at higher levels of human development. The thought organism has a characteristic basic structure. Although the thought rays emanating from a person are variable, usually changing from moment to moment, a certain skeletal structure is always re-established, and this retains certain basic features from birth to death. It is, as it were, the keynote of the personality. This keynote also forms the center from which thought-effects of a certain nature always go out into the thought-environment, and upon which they impinge from without. Through this world of his thoughts man is a participant in a realm in which the effects go far beyond what is possible in the physical world and also in the world of desire. Through his thoughts the beings of this kingdom speak to him. They speak to him more definitely, more gravely, more inwardly than the beings of the desires. The effects that extend from the thought part of man into the thought environment are also accordingly. Now man can let his thoughts be influenced by his desires. He can use his thoughts to best satisfy these desires. Instead of freeing himself from the fetters of desires and passions through the elevating power of thought, he can make thought the servant of those lower forces. The result is an enrichment and intensification of the world of desire through thought. The world of desires is peopled with beings from the Thought Kingdom, whereas, on the contrary, the beings living in him should be liberated. Thus the world of separate existence is fostered. The beings that arise in this way retard the true progress of cosmic evolution. Conversely, he furthers this evolution when the creatures of the world of desire are seized by the power of thought and led to higher goals. Wishes and desires do not cease to be what they are, But they acquire a character that strives towards the goals of the world of thought. People who ennoble their desires in this way, through an idealistic direction of their being, present themselves to the seer in such a way that their desire organism is in beautiful harmony with their own thoughts and these in turn are in harmony with the cosmic world thoughts. Such a person lives harmoniously in the universe of the cosmic system to which he belongs. His wishes advance this system and his thoughts become helpers for the beings of thought that govern this system. A person has reached a higher level of development when nothing more of subordinate wishes and desires disturbs this harmony. A personality in whom this is the case can be the carrier of a being of thought, whose work is in complete harmony with the cosmic powers of will. In this case it is no longer the world of thoughts of the individual personality that speaks, but an all-embracing, superior entity. It then bears the body, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the beings to whom it has to communicate. For in what it has to think and will, nothing flows in of what the personality as such has to desire, to long for and to will. Everything their will is directed towards remains within the sphere of thought. Such beings have reached a summit of humanity. They have ascended to a level that those of a lower standing can perhaps attain through special efforts for a few supreme moments of stability in life. And when they have such moments, they encounter the traces of those highly developed beings whose power comes to meet them for their own further development. It must be man's highest aspiration to meet such traces of beings who have completely withdrawn from the physical and also the desire spheres, and who only embody themselves in human bodies because they are to be teachers of others; and because these others can only understand them when they speak to them with human lips, with a human tongue. For themselves, these beings represent a higher state of incarnation, which hovers over man like an ideal to which he should aspire. But only those who have matured to hear the language of thought, which speaks not of temporal but of lasting processes, can hear the voice of such personalities. To such a person they then impart the higher teaching in wisdom and make him acquainted with the far-reaching purposes of the Cosmos, in which he then learns to cooperate. The higher mystical teaching takes place entirely in this region. And all lower teaching is a preparation for this higher teaching.

The human soul has its own definite place in this realm. Through this place, it is a citizen of its cosmos. And its task is to gather from the lower realms that which is to be carried up from them into this higher realm. But all this must first be purified before it can fulfill its task here. As the blacksmith works the raw iron from nature into the appropriate forms, so the soul takes the raw passions and desires and forms them, purifying them, so that they can be integrated into the element of the world of thought. The human soul has descended from this higher realm to gather the honey of the spirit from the lower realms and return laden with it to its original home. In a state of innocence it was when it began its descent. In a state of purification it will be when it returns. It is an egg before its descent, which carries the germ of its later being within itself. This egg reveals itself gradually, the being with all its organic limbs reveals itself. And these limbs are related to the realms into which the being will be placed on its journey of development. It uses these limbs where their corresponding realm is; and it leaves the characteristics of these realms where they have their element. But it takes with it the results, the experiences. The task of man consists in filling his thought-germ with the honey that can be gathered in the three lower realms. Every train of thought can be such a gathering of honey. Thus, in man, the upper world argues with the lower world. This argument is threefold. The first takes place in the realm of desire. The desire is ensouled. The passions and desires take on an upward tendency. One can observe this tendency in people who have a leaning towards ideals. Their passions turn from passing, changing goals to lasting ideals. What takes place in them is only a shadow of a process that takes place in the purely spiritual, mental realm. Every time an ideal passion develops in a human being, their cosmos has received a jolt forward; an innocent thought-being has taken shape and body, has become in the true sense of the word. It has now become a link in the progressive development in the cosmos, whose power cannot disappear again. It can be taken up again by even higher realms; but its power does not fade in them. When the human being has gained the ability to carry the honey of the realm of desire upwards, he can descend to the actual realm of life. He now purifies the growth forces of his nature. In doing so, he reaches beyond himself as a personality. In a much more general sense than before, he now becomes a co-worker with the cosmos. Just as the plant, unlike the animal, does not desire or abhor anything for itself, but absorbs the substances of its environment in calm serenity in order to pass them on selflessly in growth and reproduction, so at this stage the human being makes himself a transitional being and a helper of the spiritual-cosmic forces of growth. A high level of human development has thus been reached. Man gives more than his body to higher powers than his desire could give. If he previously only hewed the stones to build the cosmic building, he is now working on the building plan itself. He has become a disciple (chela) of cosmic beings. He not only knows what is to be carried from the lower realms into the higher ones: he also knows how the details are to be fitted together. At this stage of development everything becomes clear, transparent and plastic. Space and time have not yet entirely lost their significance, but they have become mobile and their limiting and inhibiting power has dissolved. Now there is only one step left to be taken in the realm of thought. This step leads the various lines of force of the cosmos back to their centers. Man no longer learns only the plan; he learns the intentions of the whole structure. The basis, the framework of his cosmos is revealed to him. He now knows what holds and carries this cosmos of his. The level of mastery has been reached. A master being wills and acts out of the intentions of the cosmic system to which he belongs. These intentions are a great mystery to beings at lower levels of evolution; they are even a great mystery to disciples: the cosmic mysteries. Until now, all those who know something of such a world have often hinted at such degrees of development in isolated passages of their writings. These indications are subtle, but comprehensible to him who has an inkling of higher worlds. Read in Goethe: “In nature, not only the events, but above all the intentions are worthy of attention.”

Through his development, the human being increasingly shapes his will in the direction of the cosmic plan. As long as he only integrates the building blocks of the body of desire into this plan, it will not be able to depend on him for what he accomplishes. The plan of the whole hovers over him, and how he and his actions fit into this plan: he feels this as a commandment given from outside. He must submit to this law. This is how the idealistically minded person feels. To integrate his actions into the harmony of the whole is a sacred commandment for him: an ideal. What he accomplishes, he accomplishes out of duty. If he reaches the next higher level and thus becomes acquainted with the plan, then it becomes self-evident to him that he should proceed in a certain way in each individual case and not otherwise. He not only feels a commandment, a duty; he regards it as senseless to act differently. For it would awaken his disgust, which would arise if he did not act in the sense and direction of this plan. So with increasing knowledge, certainty grows in the behavior of the human being: He does what he is supposed to do out of inclination for the deed: He acts out of love. This is the way the disciple relates to his actions. However, this level must first be acquired. Anyone who believes that they are allowed to act out of love without the necessary level of knowledge will only act in the sense of their particular existence instead of in the sense and direction of their cosmos. And the interests of this particular existence do not necessarily have to coincide with the direction of the will of their cosmos. The right to act out of love must first be acquired through insight and wisdom. The Master reaches an even higher level in this respect as well. He fulfills the intentions of his Cosmos. He does not stand outside of these intentions, but within them. They are his. The idealist is driven by duty, the chela by love; he is driven by nothing, he only realizes his own nature in reality. The Master has arrived at acting out of freedom. It is quite erroneous to argue whether man is free or not. He is neither free nor unfree at any stage of development prior to the highest realm of thought; he is on the path of development toward freedom. Only the Master is completely free. Thus are the stages of man: that of the purification of the passions or that of the intuitive idealist, who forms the building blocks of the world of thought; that of recognizing the plan, working on this plan out of knowledge of it, or the stage of the disciple (Chelas); and finally, the realization of the intentions of the cosmos, the becoming one with the plan of this cosmos, or the stage of mastery. The idealist acts out of duty: he obeys a should. The disciple acts out of love, he realizes his will; the master acts in freedom, he lives out his essence.

Man rises to the Cosmos in insight and wisdom. This wisdom was originally in the Cosmos. Through knowledge, man comes to know the Cosmos, because the Cosmos is formed through knowledge. The knowledge laid in the Cosmos draws the human soul towards itself and becomes one with it. Therefore, everything the human soul does in this direction is a cosmic process. Man, at the lower and middle levels of his development, does not see it as cosmic because he does not see the process itself, but its shadow image, projection, as it can only be given by the brain consciousness. What appears to be taking place within the walls of the skull is not the real process. It is to this as the silhouettes on the wall are to the real people. In reality, the action that takes place there goes through the entire sphere of the world of thought and shakes the whole cosmos. When I move my hand, the eye sees a process of the physical realm in the hand movement. It appears directly in its true form. Even an emotion or passion no longer appears to a physical being in its true form, but in its effect, in its shadow image in the physical world. And this is even less the case with a process in which thought is involved. — Thus, what a person recognizes is limited by his or her respective stage of development, and accordingly, his or her will must also be determined in the same direction. In reality, the human being is always fully present. The original egg contains the whole human being, as formed within the sphere of thought. But this whole human being is only gradually revealed to himself. And he is basically only real to himself to the extent that he reveals himself. He acts out of the essence of his nature only to the extent that he has brought this essence into existence in the lower realms. This essence itself is as a force behind what is obvious to him. From the unknown, it shapes his activities. A being with senses for the higher forms of existence would be able to see what man can only recognize in his shadowy effects in the physical realm. Man thinks, but he does not see his thoughts; he feels, but he does not see his feelings. His consciousness encompasses only a part of his sphere of activity, which is the content of his being. Development proceeds in such a way that ever higher parts of this sphere of activity enter the field of consciousness. And with that, more and more is also done with consciousness; this changes the whole character of the activity. What a person accomplishes consciously is different from what goes on within him without him knowing how it is accomplished. His development thus consists in transforming the unconscious parts of his being into conscious ones. By attaining the higher degrees of consciousness, man also automatically attains the higher degrees in relation to his actions. Only those who unconsciously follow their desires are carried away by them to the wrong things: Those whose minds are awakened in the sphere of desire see what a feeling they harbor in this sphere can accomplish. It is only natural that they then shape their feelings accordingly. And to an even greater degree, this is the case with those who have become enlightened in the realm of thought. His cosmos becomes different for him than it is for the mere thinking person. Just as when someone steps out of a dark room, in which he constantly bumps into chairs and tables, into one brightly lit with intense light, so the life of the mere thinking person is transformed into that of the seeing-thinking person.

And with the awakening of the power of vision in the world of thought, all the essential influences that constantly surround man and of which he knows nothing without this power of vision, become manifest at the same time. To the uninitiated, the effects that flow to him from this sphere remain inexplicable because the causes are not apparent to him. The seer therefore speaks of the gods of the sphere of thought, of such entities that can only be perceived by him because they do not embody themselves down to the physical plane of existence; the outer shell they wear is a garment of thought, and this is related to them as man's physical body is related to man himself. Thus the seer understands the reason for what is often called the sudden appearance of a thought, an instantaneous enlightenment. At that moment a being from the sphere of thought whispers a truth to a person who is receptive to it. The person does not need to know more than that a certain thought has suddenly occurred: the seer sees behind the scenes of the cosmic stage and it is clear to him that a being floating in the sphere of thought is hovering around the person. The one who gains the ability to see into the world of thought enters a richly populated realm, a realm in which all physical experience is initially poor. However, it gains a new richness for the one who sees. For what he experiences in the higher sphere is woven into the physical one and infinitely elevates, beautifies and ennobles its existence. And contact with the beings of thought also reveals much about the physical and the world of desire, which must remain hidden within these themselves. Those who only know physical contact will naturally consider what is being spoken of here to be a figment of the imagination. From their point of view, they are right. He is only wrong in regarding his point of view as the only correct one and making no effort to reach a higher one. He will then also consider dealing with the thought beings to be a highly superfluous activity and talk about this contact to be something harmful that only distracts people from pursuing their real, practical goals.

Just as man's original egg derives its character from the realm of thought, so it also brings up the results of the three lower realms as their lasting legacy in the realm of thought. In this respect, everything that happens through man in the realm of thought is the cause of effects; and man has, so to speak, buried the fruits of his activity in the three realms in the realm of thought, his home. Only that which remains for the individual egg body as the fruit of its pilgrimage through the spheres of physical, life and desire can truly be the result of human development. This egg body is the permanent element in the changing phenomena that pass by the human being: but it is also the keeper of the lasting results: the carrier of all fruits. But only that which can really take on a lasting character is imprinted on this body. That which has only a temporary value dissipates as a wave in the physical or desire realm without leaving a trace in the lasting. For example, consider the development of a person at a fairly subordinate level. Such a person follows his desires and passions according to the strengths and characteristics they have. Only after a long period of time do thoughts arise from these desires and passions that are worth keeping. Thus, the thought core slowly forms within the various shells. When a person has reached the end of a lifetime, he will find himself in the following situation. The physical body is no longer able to maintain the cohesion of its parts through its own powers. It decays. This means nothing other than He steps out of the current in which he was absorbed by the human being and passes into the general physical realm. The parts of life and desire are equally temporary. They too must find the transition to the spheres to which they belong. Ultimately, however, something of the human being remains: the experiences, fruits, and results from the three realms during life, embedded in his original individual egg body. The cohesion of these results can no longer be destroyed. It is a link in the realm of thought of the cosmos to which the human being belonged. Is his task now exhausted and will he now have his entire continued existence in this realm of thought? One could believe this if the contemplation of the cosmos did not immediately reveal this further task. Within this cosmos, we see the permanent body continuing to evolve and descending again and again into the lower realms. The results of a previous life are increased, enriched and strengthened in subsequent lives. Human personalities with the most diverse degrees of development live on earth. This could not be the case if a single original, individual egg of a similar nature were embodied in each personality. But such would have to embody itself if the embodied one came directly from the pure realm of thought. The original thought-germ does not release from itself different perfections, but only equally perfect, i.e. innocent, original individuals. All diversity stems from the diversity of experiences during the passage through the three realms. If one wants to search for the reasons why a person has this or that disposition, one must not look for these reasons in the lofty realms of the realm of thought, but in life within the lower three realms. One personality becomes different from another because the individual bodies descending into the lower realms belong to different degrees of development, i.e., because they already have different life experiences. A life is therefore not explainable from itself. It only becomes comprehensible when it is understood as a repetition of other lives belonging to it. This law of repetition is found throughout nature. And just as it is found in the human kingdom, it is only a repetition of a law also present in the plant and animal kingdoms at a higher level.

Man advances further on his path of development by increasingly determining the goal and direction of his being himself. In the early stages, nature guides man according to its principles. The more the element of thought develops, the more man's self-activity also grows. For his original being is taken from the realm of thought. The more this moves in the realm from which it itself originates, the freer and more unveiled it becomes itself. Now, progress on this path to freedom involves working on certain qualities in the human being. The human being who reaches the stage where he develops his element of thinking more and more as a permanent element has certain qualities that must undergo a complete transformation if he is to achieve higher development. —

The first quality to be developed is determined by the very nature of higher development. This is a continuous ascent of life from the changing and the fleeting to the abiding and the lasting. The cognitive faculty must thereby acquire, to an ever-higher degree, the ability to recognize the lasting in the changing, to draw the fruits from the fleeting in order to carry them forward into the realm of the spirit. Every moment of life and every random thing can be used to develop this quality. For there are exactly two things to be distinguished in every thing: something fleeting and something lasting. We do not need to distinguish between the two as if there were a fixed boundary between them. That is not the case. Rather, they merge into one another without such a fixed boundary. The fleeting is more or less fleeting; the lasting is more or less lasting. Nor can one speak of the lasting as of something “eternal”. Eternal is the last thing to which one can arrive; what is below this “eternal” lasts longer than many a changing thing in the stream of time. But in the end, even the stream of time falls under such permanence and allows only its fruits to enter as links into a still higher, still more enduring realm. By developing this sense for the permanent, man's whole character is changed. And consequently, he seeks to overcome the changing, the temporary, everywhere. His striving takes the direction of the conceptual. What previously seemed particularly full of life and desirable becomes worthless to him, and what previously seemed empty and abstract gains meaningful life. If he previously only wanted the thought in order to get to know an external thing through it, now the external thing is nothing more than the cause of this or that thought. He seeks the thoughts for their own sake, and everything else for the sake of the thoughts. Whoever attains this perfection in his cognitive faculty will, as a result, change his emotional world all by himself. He can no longer attach his feelings to the transitory, since the lasting opens up to him everywhere. The change that takes place in a person as this second character trait develops in him can be seen in a transition of his entire being from small to large lines. He will give his actions a typical character, a certain lawful imprint. There will be constant currents of his will running through the small tasks of the day. More and more, a person who acquires these two basic traits, the ability to distinguish and character type, will distance himself from the passing interests that hold others captive. Something significant, weighty and fruitful takes possession of his thoughts and actions. Through the content of his thoughts and the motives of his actions, he himself becomes a significant link in the realm of thoughts. Once there, in order to develop further, man must cultivate certain further qualities. The realm of thoughts does not bear the one-sided, rigid, immovable basic trait that the physical and the realm of desires also have. Everything in the realm of thoughts is all-encompassing. A tree is by itself a single entity. In this sense, a thought is not by itself. It is connected with other thoughts and ultimately forms a link in the whole world of thoughts in such a way that it can only be fully understood if one understands the whole world of thoughts. The life in thoughts requires that one is aware that a thought must be illuminated by the other. “I am free” is a thought. In a certain sense, it applies to the ego. But the sentence “I am unfree” also applies. Only if one grasps both sentences and illuminates them with each other does one obtain the life that they determine in the world of thought. It should [manuscript breaks off]