Spiritual Teachings Concerning the Soul

GA 52 — 3 October 1903, Berlin

II. The Origin of the Soul

Anyone who speaks about the nature of the soul today exposes themselves to misunderstandings and attacks from two sides. Above all, theosophists who speak from their point of view, that is, from the point of view of knowledge and recognition, will experience these attacks from the official side of science, but also from the followers of various religious denominations.

Science today wants to know little about the soul, not even the science that bears its name, psychology or the study of the soul. Even psychologists would prefer to disregard what is actually called the soul. Thus, the slogan could be coined: the study of the soul without the soul. The soul is supposed to be something so questionable, something so indefinite, that one simply examines, for example, the appearance of various mental images, just as one examines a natural process; but one wants to know nothing about the soul itself. Today's natural science cannot possibly accept something like a soul. It says that human mental images are subject to the laws of nature just like everything else in nature, that man is nothing more than a higher-order natural product. So we should not ask what the soul is. In doing so, one refers to Goethe's words:

According to eternal, iron,
great laws
we must all
complete the cycles
of our existence.

Just as a stone moves when it starts rolling, so must humans develop according to eternal laws. On the other hand, there are religious beliefs based on tradition and revelation.

Theosophy is not hostile to either religion or science. Like researchers, it seeks to arrive at the truth through knowledge, and it does not dispute the fundamental truths of religious beliefs.

These fundamental truths are often little understood by those who represent religious beliefs. All religions are based on original, eternal truths. Today's creeds have developed from these, but they have been overgrown by later additions. Their deeper truth has been lost. The core of truth lies behind them. Science, however, has not yet progressed to the point where it has risen from matter to spirit. It has not yet reached the point where it applies the same zeal to spiritual research as it does to natural phenomena. The core of scientific truth lies in the future. Thus, this higher truth of religion has been lost and has not yet been found by science. Today, theosophy stands between them. It reaches back into the past, to what has been lost, and seeks to explore in the future what has not yet been found. For this it reaps attacks from both sides. Habits and external customs today are different from those of earlier times, but despite the much-praised tolerance of the present age, attempts are still made to intimidate those who hold uncomfortable opinions. Those who speak of the soul today in the same way that natural scientists speak of external facts are no longer burned at the stake, but there are still ways to harass and oppress them.

And yet, looking to the future offers some consolation when we measure today's circumstances against the events of the past. When, in the 17th century, the Italian researcher Redi claimed that lower life forms did not simply arise from inanimate matter, he narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. At that time, it was generally believed that lower life forms developed from inorganic matter. Today, Redi's view is generally accepted, and anyone who denied the statement “nothing living can arise from non-living matter” would be considered backward. Today, Virchow's statement “only life can arise from life” is generally accepted. — But the statement: “Only the spiritual can come from the spiritual” is still not accepted today. However, just as knowledge has progressed to the insight that life can only arise from life, science will one day adopt the statement: “Nothing spiritual can come from the non-spiritual.” — Then people will look down on the limited science of our day just as they do today on the opinions of Redis' contemporaries. Today, we stand in the same position with regard to the soul as the natural scientists of the 17th century did with regard to living beings. According to today's view, the spiritual should develop out of the merely living; the soul should emerge automatically from the animal world. In later times, this view will be looked down upon with a pitying smile, just as today we smile at the view that living beings arise from non-living beings. Our time has progressed so wonderfully far that it denies the existence of its own soul. To restore faith in itself to this time, to revive its belief in the eternal and imperishable within us, in the divine core of our being, that should be the task of our movement.

The soul did not grow out of the primordial ground of the merely living; the soul arose from the spiritual. And just as life takes on the form of the animal in order to manifest itself, so the soul once took on the animal form in order to spread itself. Our knowledge is woven into the stream of external reality, and we forget what should concern us most. The soul is infinitely close to us. We are it ourselves. When we look within ourselves, we see the soul. People find this so difficult to understand. Our observation is mainly directed at what is outside ourselves. But should what we see outside be closer to us than what we ourselves are? Today, people are clear about external research, but they are strangers to themselves. How is it that people so easily grasp the truths of external research and overlook what is closest to them? The soul is surely much more familiar and closer to them. Every natural phenomenon must first pass through the senses. These often alter and distort the image. A color-blind person sees colors very differently from how they really are. And apart from such exceptional phenomena, we know that all eyes are different; no two people see colors in exactly the same shades. Depending on the eye of the beholder, on the ear of the listener, impressions vary. But the soul is ourselves; we are able to seek it at any moment. It is peculiar that this realization—how much closer our soul touches us than anything outside ourselves—is based mainly on the influence of a great poet. Tolstoy's pathos is based on this realization, which shook him to the core. From this perspective, he wages a battle against culture, fashions, and whims.

The only reason we do not see our soul is because we have become accustomed to not looking at it in its own form. Today, our belief in the material world is strengthened, while our thinking habits have become dull to the spiritual. And even those who do not adhere to religious beliefs make themselves comfortable with research. Goethe is often quoted to justify this. One should think and research as little as possible. “Feeling is everything; names are smoke and mirrors.” With these words of Goethe, people want to drive the reasons of the soul researchers into pairs. Everyone should find everything in their feelings; in a state of uncertainty, a state of ignoring it, people believe they must preserve themselves. A kind of lyrical approach seems to be considered most suitable for the spiritual. Because everyone is so close to the soul, everyone believes they can understand everything from their feelings. — Are these really Goethe's own views, which he has Faust express in these words? The playwright must have the right to let his characters speak according to the situation. And if these words, which Faust uses in relation to the childlike Gretchen, were to be his creed, would Goethe then have Faust explore all the wisdom of the world? "Now have, alas! Philosophy" and so on. It would be a strange denial of his research, his doubt. If we wanted to resign ourselves to the soul with nothing but vague feelings, would we not resemble a painter who, in his picture, offered no clear outlines, no image of what he had seen outside, but was content merely to express his feelings? No, the soul cannot be explained by vague feelings.

Theosophy seeks to proclaim genuine scientific wisdom and, in doing so, addresses itself no more exclusively to feelings than science does when it describes electricity. Theosophy does not seek to promote knowledge of the soul in a sentimental manner. No, it appeals to a sincere desire for knowledge. It leads those who seek to explore their own soul to those who have sat at the feet of the Masters.

Since the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875, it has cultivated genuine soul science. It seeks to teach people to see the soul. Today, everyone wants to talk about the soul and the spirit without having made a serious effort to understand them, wanting to gloss over the difficulties that stand in the way, and the most amateurish endeavors are becoming widespread. Theosophy wants to help those who thirst for spiritual wisdom and wants to pursue the study of the soul as seriously as one scientifically researches nature. These are the difficulties that confront the soul researcher: today, when anyone who has not studied natural science is forbidden to talk about it, yet everyone who has not researched the soul talks about spiritual matters.

Of course, the method of research is completely different. The natural scientist works with physical apparatus. With it, he penetrates ever deeper into the secrets of the nature that surrounds us. In psychology, the saying applies that secrets cannot be unlocked with levers and screws. The more the field of observation expands, the more natural science can progress. All that is needed for these observations is ordinary common sense. But what the researcher applies in the laboratory is essentially no different from what is required in commercial or technical enterprises; it is only slightly more complicated, but it is not a different procedure.

Spiritual truth does not deal solely with common sense; it appeals to other powers that lie deep within the human soul. It requires the development of the faculty of knowledge. The possibility of this development has always existed. The origin of all religions leads back to it. What Buddha, what Confucius, what all the great founders of the various religions taught, leads back to this deeper spiritual truth. At the moment when the human race was as it still is today, the soul was also there, and it could be explored through the development of the faculty of cognition. It was less necessary to expand knowledge than to develop inner recognition in order to see what lies in the soul. In the field of external sciences, everyone depends on the time in which they live. Aristotle, the great scholar of antiquity, was unable to make many scientific observations in the 4th century BC that are only possible today with the aids of modern science. But the soul has always been there, and the only reason we are further from this knowledge today than our ancestors in ancient times is that we do not want to explore our own souls. The Theosophical Society exists to develop this good will. It is not doing anything new. Rather, this has been done throughout the ages. But just as it is easier to explore what is physically present to us, so too are the soul and spirit more difficult to recognize and not so easily accessible and tangible to everyone. But even in ancient times, people observed this diversity, this multi-faceted nature of the soul.

What is the soul? As long as we believe that the soul is something that merely dwells in the body and then leaves it again, we cannot come to a true understanding of the soul. No, it is something that is active and alive within us and permeates all the functions of the body. It lives in movement, in breathing, in digestion. But it is not equally present in all our activities.

We emerged from a small cell, just as a plant emerges from a seed. And just as a plant develops from organic forces, from a germ, so too does a human being develop from organic forces, from a small germ cell. It forms the organs of its body, just as a plant forms its leaves and flowers, and the growth of a human being is the same as that of a plant. That is why the ancient researchers also attributed a soul to plants. They spoke of the plant soul. And they found that this activity of building organs was common to all plant beings. That which builds all the organs in humans is something that corresponds to the plant soul. They called it the vegetative soul and saw through it the kinship of humans with nature, with everything organic. The first thing that forms humans is plant-like. Therefore, the plant soul was considered the first stage of the soul. It created the human organism. It built our body with its limbs, eyes, ears, muscles; it built our entire body. In everything that concerns the growth and development of our body, we are like plants, like every organic being.

But if we only had the plant soul, we would not be able to go beyond mere organic life. However, we possess the ability to perceive and feel. We suffer pain when we pierce one of our limbs with a needle, while a plant remains unaffected by a piercing, for example of a leaf. This points to the second degree of the soul, the animal soul. It gives us the ability to feel, desire, and move, which we share with the entire animal kingdom and therefore call the animal soul. This gives us the opportunity not only to grow like plants, but to become a mirror for the entire universe. With the vegetative soul comes the absorption of the substances that form the organism, and with the animal soul comes the absorption of the subordinate soul life. The life of feeling is built up from pleasure and pain. Just as our vegetative soul could not form organs if there were no substances around us in the world, so the animal soul can only draw feeling and desire from the world of desire and instinct around us. Just as no plant could develop from its seed without the driving force of the germ, so too could no animal being come into being if it could not fill its organs with impressions, if it could not fill its life with pleasure and pain. Our vegetative soul builds the organic body from the world of matter. From the world of desires, the Kama world or Kamaloka, the animal soul absorbs the substances of desire. If the body lacked the ability to absorb desires, then pleasure and pain would remain forever beyond the reach of the plant soul. Nothing comes from nothing.

Humans share the desirous soul with animals. Natural scientists are right to attribute lower soul qualities to animals as well. However, this is a difference of degree. The wonderful structures of bee and ant colonies, the beaver dams, whose regular arrangement corresponds to complex mathematical calculations, provide proof of this. But in other ways, too, the soul in animals rises to something similar to what we call reason in humans. Through training, especially in our domestic animals, skills can be awakened that humans consciously practice. However, there is a great difference between the two; in the lowest animal species, there is only a dull sense of feeling, but in the most developed species, there is already a high degree of what in humans is the intellect.

This third stage of human soul life now forms the intellectual soul. We would remain stuck in the animal realm if we only had an animal soul, just as we would not have progressed beyond the plant realm if we only had a vegetative soul. That is why the question is so important: Are humans really no different from higher animals? Is there no difference?

Anyone who asks themselves this question and examines it thoroughly will find that the human spirit does indeed transcend all animals. When the Pythagoreans wanted to prove the existence of the higher soul in humans, they emphasized that only humans have the ability to count. And even if something similar is found in certain animals, the enormous difference between animals and humans is clearly evident here, since in humans we are dealing with an innate ability of their soul organs, while in animals we are dealing with training. Humans differ from animals in that they can count, but also in that they go beyond what animals can achieve, beyond their immediate needs. No animal goes beyond the immediate needs of the temporal and the transitory. No animal rises to the real and the true, beyond the immediate sensory truth. The statement: two times two is four — must apply under all circumstances, even if the transitory truths of the senses lose their validity under other circumstances. Whatever beings may live on the planet Mars, whatever sounds they may hear through their organs, whatever colors they may perceive, the correctness of the calculation two times two equals four must be recognized equally by thinking beings on all planets. What man gains from his soul is valid for all time. It was valid millions of years ago and will be valid for millions of years to come, because it comes from the imperishable.

Thus, within our transience, within the animalistic, rests the imperishable, through which we are citizens of eternity. Just as the animal soul is built up from the substances of Kama, so the higher spirit soul is built up from the spiritual.

Nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle, the master of those who knew, but who was not an initiate, comes to the concept of the miracle when he speaks of the spiritual. He builds the body strictly according to the laws of nature, but he allows the soul to arise anew each time through a miracle of the Creator. For Aristotle, the soul is a creation out of nothing. Every soul is also a new creation for the exoteric Christianity of later centuries. But we do not want to accept the miracle of the creation of the soul each time. Just as the origin of the organ soul in the plant world and the animal soul in the world of instinctive life has arisen, so the spirit soul, if nothing is to arise from nothing, must arise from the spiritual world. And so we are led to the spiritual, to the soul of the universe, as Giordano Bruno expresses it in his work: On the Organic Forces of the Cosmos and on the Soul Forces of the Cosmos.

Why do we each have a special soul? Why does each soul have its own special characteristics? Science explains the special characteristics of animals by the natural development of species from species. But each animal species still has characteristics that indicate its origin from other animal genera.

The spiritual soul can only develop from the individual spiritual. And just as no one would think of believing that a lion arose directly from the cosmic forces of the universe, it would be equally absurd to assume that the individual soul developed from the general spiritual content of the universe, from the spiritual reservoirs of the cosmos. Theosophy stands on ground that also corresponds to a scientific view. Just as science develops species from species, so it allows soul to develop from soul. It also allows the higher to emerge from the lower. The individual soul develops from the universal soul, just as the animal was formed from the general principle of the animal. According to the principle of the soul, soul arises from soul. Every soul is the result of the soul and is itself again the cause of the soul. From the eternal origin arises the soul, which is itself eternal. Theosophy goes back to the so-called third human race, with whose appearance the higher soul was able to emerge as an impact on the organic. This human race is called Lemuria. Before that, the soul had its dwelling in the animal. For the animal world also originates from the soul. The soul first took possession of the animal in order to fulfill its functions. From there, it continues to work from soul to soul.

Education therefore means developing what lies dormant in each individual human being. The first principle of education is to awaken this higher soul that lies dormant in every human being. In animals, the individual animal coincides with the concept of the species; one tiger is essentially the same as another. But no two human beings can be described as identical with the same justification. Every human soul is different from that of another. In order to awaken the soul in human beings, the art of education must also be different for each individual. And since the awakening of the soul forces was the beginning of all education, higher natures must have already been present when that third human race rose to spiritual life. The soul did not develop out of wildness or ignorance. Millions of years ago, when humans rose from a purely instinctive state, this did not happen by themselves, but through the great teachers who stood by their side.

There must always be great teachers who stand out from the humanity around them and lift them up to a higher level. Even today, there are teachers who stand out above contemporary knowledge, who propagate the seed of the soul. Where these teachers come from will be discussed in a further lecture. People have always known about these leaders of humanity. One of the most outstanding philosophers, Schelling, who was not himself a theosophist, also speaks of them in one of his much-misunderstood works.

These great teachers, who can provide information about the spiritual, who are experts in the soul, whose wisdom is of an ethereal nature, who have spiritual knowledge, have promoted and guided humanity. The Theosophical Society wants to lead people back to these soul researchers. In their midst are those who can provide information about the nature of the soul. They cannot step out into the world and say, “Accept our truths,” because people would not understand their language. The great truth is hidden from most people. Leading people to the sources of wisdom is the task of the Theosophical Society. These goals lie before us in shining clarity.