57. On Human Knowledge

Human knowledge can be: path, truth and life.

Mute, speaking only through gestures, the human being is surrounded by the world.

Thinking begins. It perceives itself as the speech organ of the world and determines to express its gestures clearly in words. The eternal word thus comes to appear in time. At this stage, cognition is the path. The cognizer is thereby a researcher, the seeker a scientist.

Cognition continues to progress. It perceives itself as a reflection of the world, as an idea that expresses what is hidden in the essence of reality. Cognition has reached the level of truth. And the cognizer is now a philosopher.

Cognition can go even further. It then arrives at another concept of reality. What it has previously called the world becomes an image, a mirror image of the All-Spirit; and what the mere seeker of truth has called a mirror image is filled with spiritually living content; the view into the divine perspective opens up. The Word becomes flesh in man; truth is no longer merely known, but experienced; man no longer says “I” to his transitory self, but to the “Eternal”, whose rays shine into his mirror of reality (the body). He who knows something of this third step of knowledge has experienced the inner Christ; knowledge has served him as the way to life through truth. He who knows has become a theosophist.