Spiritual Teachings Concerning the Soul

GA 52 — 30 March 1904, Berlin

X. Theosophical Doctrine of the Soul III: Soul and Spirit

Let me begin this third lecture with an image through which Plato expresses what he had to say about the eternity of the human spirit.

Socrates stands before his disciples in the face of death. In the next few hours, the end of the great teacher must take place. In the face of his death, Socrates talks about the eternity of the spiritual core of human beings. What he says about the indestructibility of what lives in human beings makes a deep and powerful impression. In a few hours, there will be no more life in the body standing before his disciples. In a few hours, the Socrates that can be seen with the eyes will no longer be there. In this situation, Socrates makes it clear to his disciples that the one who in a few hours will no longer stand before them, whom they will no longer have, is not the one who is so precious to them; that this Socrates, who now still stands before them, cannot be the one who has imparted to them the great teaching of the human soul and the human spirit. He makes it clear to his disciples that the true sage, through contemplation of the world to which he has devoted himself, has made himself independent of all the sensory world. Everything that sensual impressions, sensual desires, and wishes can provide him with fades away precisely through a truly wise view of the world. For the wise man, only that which the senses can never provide is valuable. But when only that which stands before the senses passes away, that which no senses can reach remains unchanged. Evidence, even if it were the most compelling and the most compelling, could hardly have a more powerful and formidable effect than the conviction expressed in the immediate feeling that springs from the heart of the wise man at the moment when the external sensory situation seems to completely contradict what Socrates' mouth says. This is a conviction that is expressed with the consecration of death, a conviction that, simply by being expressed in this situation, testifies to the powerful force with which this view has prevailed in the wise man, so that he conquers the event that will befall him in a few hours.

And what effect did this conversation have on the students? Phaedo, the student, says that at that moment he was in a state that is not usually experienced by those who undergo such an event. Neither pain nor joy passed through his heart. He was exalted above all suffering and all pleasure. With blissful calm and serenity, Phaedo accepted the teachings that were imparted to him in the face of death.

When we picture this scene in our minds, two things come to mind. Plato, the great sage of Greece, seeks to support his conviction of the eternity of the human spirit not only through logical proofs and philosophical discussions, but also by having a highly developed human being express it in the face of death. This conviction is expressed as an experience, as something that lives directly in the human soul. Plato wanted to suggest that the question of the eternity of the human soul is one to which we are not able to give an answer in every situation, but only when we have developed ourselves to the height of spirit attained by a personality such as Socrates, who devoted his entire life to the inner contemplation of the soul; a wise man who had knowledge of what is revealed when man turns his gaze inward. Such a person gives us the power of immediate conviction that something lives within him that he knows to be indestructible because he has recognized it. That is what matters. No one with insight in this area would ever claim that proof of the immortality of the human soul can be given in every situation, but rather that conviction of the eternity of the human spirit must be acquired; man must have come to know the life of the soul. And when he knows this life, when he has immersed himself in its characteristics, then he knows, just as one knows about another object when one knows its characteristics, then he knows about the human spirit, and the power of conviction speaks within him. And not only that, but at an important, crucial moment, Plato has Socrates express this conviction: at a moment when all sensory impressions seem to contradict the truth that has been spoken.

And the students, how do they understand this great teaching, how does it dawn on them? It dawns on them because they are lifted above pleasure and pain by the power of Socrates' speech; lifted above that which binds human beings to the immediately transitory, to the sensual, to the everyday. This is to say that man does not know about the qualities of the spirit in every situation, but only when he rises above that which binds him to the everyday, when he has cast off pleasure and pain as they arise from everyday impressions when they can look up in a moment of celebration to where the everyday no longer speaks, where events that otherwise cause grief no longer cause grief, and those that otherwise cause joy no longer cause joy. In such moments, humans are more receptive to the highest truths.

This gives us a sense of how theosophy thinks about the eternity of the soul. It does not speak of immortality in the sense that it tries to prove this immortality like any other thing. No, it gives guidance and instructions on how people can gradually put themselves in that state and condition of mind in which they truly experience the spirit within themselves, get to know its qualities by trying to put themselves in the spiritual life. And then it is clear that the conviction of the eternity of this spirit springs directly from the perception of the spirit. Just as we do not recognize an object that appears before our sensory eye through proof, but rather because it simply shows its characteristics to our sensory eye through perception, so the theosophist asks the question of the immortality of the human soul in a completely different form than one usually hears. He asks the question: How can we perceive inner, spiritual life? How do we delve into our inner selves so that we can hear the spirit within us speak?

At all times and in all places where attempts have been made to train students to understand these questions, these students were first required to undergo a period of preparation. As you probably all know, Plato required his students to have penetrated the spirit of mathematics before attempting to absorb his teachings on spiritual life. What was the purpose of this Platonic preparation? The student was to have grasped the spirit of mathematics. In the first lecture, we heard what this spirit of mathematics offers us. It offers us, in the most elementary way, truths that are sublime above all sensory truths; truths that we cannot see with our eyes or grasp with our hands. Even if we illustrate the doctrine of the circle and the doctrine of numerical ratios in a sensory way, we all know that we are only making an illustration. We know that the doctrines of the circle and the triangle are independent of this sensory perception. We draw a triangle on the blackboard or on paper, and through this sensory triangle we try to arrive at the theorem that the three angles of a triangle add up to one hundred and eighty degrees. But we know that this theorem is true for every triangle, whatever shape we may give it. We know that this theorem is obvious to us once we have become accustomed to grasping such theorems independently of sensory impressions, independently of any sensory perception. It is the simplest, the most trivial truths that we acquire in this way. Mathematics provides only the most trivial supersensible truths, but it does provide supersensible truths. And because it provides the simplest, the most trivial, and therefore the most easily attainable supersensible truths, Plato demanded of his students that they learn from mathematics how to arrive at supersensible truths. And what does one learn by arriving at supersensible truths? One learns to comprehend a truth without pleasure or pain, without immediate, everyday interest, without personal prejudices, without what we encounter at every turn in life. Why does mathematical truth appear before us with such clarity and invincibility? Because no interest, no personal sympathy or antipathy, that is, no prejudices, play a part in its recognition. We are completely indifferent to the fact that two times two equals four; we are indifferent to how large the angles of a triangle may be, and so on. It is this freedom from all sensual interest, from all personal pleasure and displeasure, that Plato had in mind when he demanded that his students immerse themselves in the spirit of mathematics. And once they had become accustomed to looking up at the truth without interest, once they had become accustomed to striving toward the truth without pleasure or pain, without the interference of passion and desire, without the interference of everyday prejudices, then Plato considered his students worthy to look at the truth even in relation to those questions about which people are usually most prejudiced.

What person could initially treat other questions with the same disinterest, the same lack of desire and suffering, as the mathematical truth that two times two is four, or that the sum of the angles of a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees? But not until man has brought himself to see the highest truths about the soul and spirit in a similar, disinterested light, free from pleasure and pain, not until then was he found ripe to approach these questions. Man must treat these questions without pleasure or pain. They must be above what arises in their soul every day, at every opportunity, at every turn. Where pleasure and pain and personal interest interfere with our answer, we cannot answer the questions objectively, in the true light. This is what Plato meant when he had the dying Socrates speak about the immortality of the human spirit. So it cannot be a matter of proving immortality in every situation, but only of how to perceive the qualities of the human soul, so that when we reach this perception, the power of conviction flows naturally from our soul.

This was also the basis of all those educational institutions that attempted to lead students to the highest truths in an appropriate manner. It is only natural that the questions: Does the human spirit live before birth and after death, and what is the destiny of man in time and eternity? — that these questions cannot be treated without interest by most people. It is natural that everything that human beings can muster in terms of personal interest, everything they can muster in terms of hope and fear, these two passions that constantly accompany human beings, is linked for them to the question of the eternity of the spirit. In ancient times and places, mystery schools were the places where the highest questions of spiritual life were taught and answered for students. And in such mystery places, students were not taught about such questions in an abstract way. The truths were only handed down to them when their soul, their spirit, their whole personality was in a state where they could see these questions in the right light. And this state was none other than that of being beyond pleasure and pain, of being beyond that which chains people day after day, hour after hour: fear and hope. These passions, these emotional contents, had to be removed from the personality first. Without fear and hope, purified of them, the student had to approach. Purification was therefore the preparation that the student had to undergo. Without this, the questions would not be answered for the student. Purification from passions, from pleasure and pain, from fear and hope, was the prerequisite for climbing to the summit of the mountain where the question of immortality could be addressed. For it was clear that then the student could look into the eye of the spirit as one who is immersed in the spirit in a mathematical field looks into the eye of pure, objective mathematics: dispassionately, fearlessly, without being tormented by hopes.

In the last lecture, we saw that pleasure and pain are above all the expression of what we call the human soul. The inner experience, the most personal experience of the individual, is pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain must first undergo a purification before the soul can attain the spirit. In ordinary people, pleasure and pain are chained to everyday sensory impressions, chained to the immediate experiences of the personality, chained to that which interests people for its own sake, for the sake of their personality. What usually gives us pleasure, what causes us suffering? That which interests us as a personality. That which gives us pleasure and suffering is that which more or less disappears with our death. It is this narrow circle of what gives us pleasure and suffering that we must leave behind in order to attain higher knowledge. Our pleasure and our suffering must be separated, must be detached from these everyday interests and led up to entirely different worlds. Human beings must lift their desires and suffering, the desires of their soul, above the everyday, above the sensual; they must chain them to the highest experiences of the spirit. With these desires and longings, they must look up to that which is usually considered only a shadowy or, as they say, an abstract existence. What could be more abstract for people in their everyday existence than pure, non-sensual thought? People in everyday life, who cling to their personal desires and sufferings, flee even the simplest, most trivial supernatural truths. Mathematics is shunned in the widest circles precisely because it carries nothing with it that leads to interest, pleasure, or suffering in the everyday sense of the word. The student in the mystery schools had to be purified of this everyday pleasure and suffering. He had to cling to what lived only as a thought image within him and flitted by like a shadowy figure; he had to love it as much as a person clings to everyday life with their whole soul. The transformation of passions and drives was called metamorphosis. After that, a new reality exists for him, a new world makes an impression on him. What leaves the ordinary person cold, what touches him soberly and coldly, is the world of ideas. And that is what his pleasure and suffering are now chained to, what one looks at as something real, and which now gains a reality like tables and chairs. Only when a person has reached the point where the world of ideas, which in the ordinary sense is called abstract, moves his soul, captivates his soul, absorbs him, when that which in the ordinary sense of the word has only a shadowy reality of thought surrounds him so that he weaves and lives within it, just as the everyday person moves in the ordinary sensory reality that he can see and touch — when this transformation has taken place in the whole person, then he is in a state in which the spirit speaks to him in his environment; then he experiences this spirit as a living language, then he hears the Word made flesh, which expresses itself in all things.

When the ordinary person looks out and sees the lifeless minerals around them, they see them governed by the laws of nature, governed by the laws of gravity, magnetism, heat, and light. The laws to which these beings are subject are made clear to the person through their thoughts. But these very thoughts do not speak to him with the same tangible reality, do not mean what his hands touch, what his eyes see. But when this transformation I have spoken of has taken place in man, then he no longer thinks only of mere shadow images such as the laws of nature; then these shadow images begin to speak to him in the living language of the spirit. The spirit speaks to them from their environment, from the world around them. From the plants, from the minerals, from the various species of animals, the spirit of the environment speaks to the human being who has become free of desires and suffering.

When theosophy speaks of the world of ideas, of the spiritual world, it refers to a development, not to an abstract truth, to a concrete truth, not to logical proofs. It speaks of what human beings should become, not of something that should be proven. Nature speaks differently to a person who has purified their soul so that it no longer clings to the everyday; who no longer has the usual pains and the usual sufferings and joys, but higher pains and higher joys and at the same time higher bliss, which flow from the pure spirit of things. Theosophical ethics expresses this in figurative language. In two beautiful, magnificent images, it expresses that only at the moment when a person has lifted their senses above the ordinary pain and ordinary joy of things can they recognize the highest truths. As long as the eye clings to things with joy and pain, in the ordinary sense of the word, it cannot perceive the spirit around it. As long as the ear still has the immediate sensitivity of everyday life, it cannot hear the living word through which the spiritual things around us speak to us. Therefore, theosophical developmental theory sees in two images the demand that man must make of himself if he wants to attain knowledge of the spirit.

Before the eye can see,
It must wean itself from tears.
Before the ear can hear,
Its sensitivity must fade ...
— Mabel Collins, “Light on the Path”

The eye that is devoted to the spirit can no longer shed tears of joy and tears of pain in the everyday sense. For when a person has reached this stage of development, their self-awareness speaks to them in a completely different, new way. We then look into the veiled sanctuary of our inner being in a completely new way. Man then perceives himself as a member of the spiritual world. He then perceives himself as something that is pure and exalted above all that is sensual, because he has cast off pleasure and pain in the sensual sense. Then they perceive a self-awareness within themselves that speaks to them as mathematical truths speak to them dispassionately, but also as mathematical truths speak in another sense. Mathematical truths are true with a sense of eternity. What appears before us in the non-sensual language of mathematics is true, independent of time and space. And independently of time and space, that which appears before our soul when it has purified itself to desire and suffer spiritual things speaks to us from within. Then the eternal speaks to us with its eternal meaning. Thus the eternal spoke with its eternal meaning to the dying Socrates, and the stream of immediate spirituality passed to his disciples. From what he received as experience at the dying Socrates, the disciple Phaedo expresses that pleasure and pain in the ordinary sense of the word must be harmful if the spirit wants to speak directly to us.

We can observe this in the phenomena of human life that are usually called abnormal. These phenomena seem far removed from the considerations to which the first part of my lecture was devoted. But considered in the true sense of the word, they are very close to these considerations. These are the phenomena that are usually called abnormal states of mind, such as hypnotism, somnambulism, and clairvoyance. What does hypnosis mean in human life? It cannot be my task today to describe the various procedures that must be carried out if we want to put a person into the sleep-like state we call hypnosis. Either this is done — I will only mention it briefly — by looking at a shiny object, which concentrates the attention in a very special way, or by simply addressing the person in an appropriate manner, saying: You are now falling asleep. — In this way, we can induce this state of hypnosis, a kind of sleep in which ordinary daytime consciousness is extinguished. The person who has been put into hypnotic sleep in this way stands or sits motionless, in the ordinary sense of the word, unresponsive, in front of the person who has put them into this sleep as a hypnotist. Such a hypnotized person can be pricked with needles, can be beaten, their limbs can be moved into different positions — they hear nothing of all this, they feel nothing of what would have caused them pain or perhaps a feeling of well-being, a tickling sensation, let's say, under other circumstances, when they were awake and conscious. In the usual, general sense, pleasure and pain are eliminated from the nature of such a hypnotized person. But pleasure and pain are what we described in our last lecture as the actual fundamental characteristics of the soul, the middle part of the human being. What is eliminated in hypnotism? Essentially, of the three fundamental parts, body, soul, and spirit, the soul is eliminated. What we have done is to eliminate the middle fundamental part of the human being from its essence. It is not active, it does not feel pleasure and pain in the usual sense; it does not feel pain that would hurt it if its soul were functioning normally.

How does the essence function in such a person when you address a hypnotized person and give them commands? If you say to them, “Stand up, take three steps,” they will carry out these commands. You can give them even more complicated and varied commands, and they will carry them out. You can place sensual objects in front of him, for example a pear, and tell him that it is a glass ball. He will believe it. What lies sensually before him has no meaning for him. The fact that you tell him it is a glass ball is decisive for him. If you ask him, “What do you have in front of you?” he will answer, “A glass ball.” — Your mind, what is inside you when you are the hypnotist, what you think, what emanates from you as a thought, has a direct effect on this person's actions. His body automatically follows the commands of your mind. Why does he follow these commands? Because his soul is switched off, because his soul does not interpose itself between his body and your mind. The moment his soul becomes active with its desires and sufferings, the moment its ability to feel pain and make simple perceptions reappears, at that moment the soul decides whether these commands are to be carried out, whether it has to accept the thoughts of the other person. When you face another person in a normal state, his mind has an effect on you. But their mind, what they think, what they want, initially affects your soul. This affects you as pleasure and pain, and you decide how to respond to the thoughts and volitional actions of the other person. If the soul is silent, if the soul is switched off, then it does not interpose itself between your body and the spirit of the other person, then the body follows the impressions of the hypnotist, the impressions of his spirit, without will, just as a mineral follows the laws of nature. Switching off the soul is the essential thing in hypnosis. Then the foreign thought, the thought outside of the person, acts on this person, who is in a sleep-like state, with the power of a law of nature. What intervenes between this spiritual force of nature and the body, namely the soul, acts itself like a law of nature. The soul intervenes between your own mind and your own body. And what we perceive as a thought, what we perceive intellectually, we carry out in everyday life only by transforming it into our personal desires, by accepting it and finding it right for our pleasures and pains, in other words, by our mind first speaking to our soul, and our soul carrying out the commands of our own mind.

Now the question may be raised: Why, when the soul is switched off, when the hypnotized person faces the hypnotist, does the third, the highest part of the human being, the spirit, not face the hypnotist? Why does it slumber, why is the spirit of the human being inactive? — We can understand this when we realize that during their earthly incarnation, the interaction of spirit, soul, and body is essential for human beings, that the human spirit can only understand the environment, understand sensory reality, when the soul conveys this understanding to it. When our eye receives an impression from the outside, the soul must act as a mediator so that this impression can reach our spirit. I perceive a color. The eye conveys the external impression to me through its structure. The spirit thinks about the color. It forms a thought. But between the thought and the external impression, the reagent of the soul intervenes, that which makes the impression become its own inner life, that which makes it an experience of its own soul. The spirit can only speak to its own soul, to the personal soul, in earthly human beings. If you switch off the soul through hypnosis, then the spirit can no longer express itself in the hypnotized person. In doing so, you have taken away the organ through which the spirit can express itself, through which it can act. You have not taken away the spirit, you have only switched off its soul and rendered it inactive. But because the spirit can only be active in the soul in human beings, the spirit cannot be active in the body itself. That is why we say that it is in an unconscious state, which means nothing other than that its spirit is inactive. Now we understand why hypnosis makes people so receptive to the spiritual impressions emanating from the hypnotist. He becomes receptive because nothing spiritual comes between him and the hypnotist. The other person's thoughts become an immediate force of nature; thoughts become creative. Thoughts are creative, and the spirit is creative throughout nature. It just does not appear immediately.

Now, in hypnotized people and other similar abnormal states, we have simultaneously rendered the consciousness, the actual spirit of the human being, inactive by switching off the soul. We have put the person into an unconscious state. We can get an idea of what is actually happening if we form a mental image, for example, of moving a sleeping person from one room to another and letting him sleep there for a while. There are impressions around him, but he does not perceive them. He knows nothing of his surroundings. If we bring him back to the room where he was sleeping before, without him waking up, then he has been in another room without knowing anything about it, then he has not perceived this other room. It depends on our perceiving our surroundings if we want to call these surroundings “real.” There may be many things around us that are real, that exist – but we know nothing about them because we do not perceive them. We do not orient ourselves towards them, our activities are unrelated to them because we do not perceive them.

In such a state, the hypnotized person is opposite the hypnotist. Forces emanate from the hypnotist; forces are at work that are imbued with the hypnotist's thoughts. They emanate from him and have an effect on the hypnotized person. But the hypnotized person knows nothing about this. He speaks, but he only speaks what is in the mind of the hypnotist and lives there. He is, so to speak, active without being his own observer, as is the case with people in ordinary life, without observing at the same time what is the object of his activity. He is, so to speak, in the environment in which he finds himself, facing the spirit of the hypnotist, just like a sleeping person who has been taken to another room and knows nothing of what is going on around him. In this way, a person can be brought again and again into environments where the spirit speaks to him. He can be in environments where the spirit speaks to him. Now and at every moment, you too are in environments where the spirit speaks to you, for everything around us is made by the spirit. The laws of nature are spirit, only that in the ordinary view, man perceives this spirit only in the shadowy reflection of thoughts. This spirit is spirit, just like the spirit that is active in the hypnotist when the hypnotist acts on the hypnotized person.

Now, in the normal, ordinary waking state, humans are not in the same state of mind as the hypnotized person, but in a sense they are also in a state in which their senses and their perception of the spirit are not open to their spiritual environment. If this perception of the spirit that is in the environment is open, if the things of the spiritual world that are around us speak to us in a loud, audible language, then this can only be the case when we are in a similar situation in normal life as the hypnotized person is in relation to the hypnotist. The hypnotized person is free of suffering and pain. They do not perceive pinpricks or blows. Pleasure and pain in the ordinary sense of the word are extinguished. If, in our ordinary life, in our waking consciousness, we reach the state I described in the first part of my lecture — for the theosophical worldview should consider a higher state of human development, which Plato demanded of his students and the mystery priests demanded of their pupils — if we strip away what touches us as everyday pleasure and everyday suffering, what immediately brings tears to our eyes, makes our ears sensitive, fills us with fear and hope, if we strip away what constitutes the object of our everyday life, free ourselves from this world, and undergo the transformation of the spirit that has been described, then we can — but now fully conscious — enter into a similar state in relation to the spiritual world as, in an abnormal sense, the hypnotized person does in relation to the hypnotist. Then we will have our eyes and ears in the same activity as we otherwise have them; we will have our waking daytime consciousness, but within this waking daytime consciousness we will not allow ourselves to be affected by everyday objects in the ordinary sense. This transformation must take place within the human being. He must perceive the spiritual environment, that which speaks in things, as indifferently and apathetically as the hypnotized person in an abnormal state perceives the thoughts and words of the hypnotist; through indifference and apathy he perceives what is the language of the spirit in his environment.

Only experience can be decisive in this area. When the monumental principles of theosophical ethics are fulfilled to a certain degree, when the human being has reached the state where he truly faces spiritual truths as the ordinary human being faces mathematical truths, objectively, free from pleasure and pain, then the spirit of the environment speaks to people, then the spirit is not bound to the impressions of its senses, just as little as the hypnotized person is bound to what affects his senses. The hypnotist only affects the hypnotized person who has become free from pain and pleasure, and so the spirit only affects the clairvoyant person who has become free from pain and pleasure. In order to have such sensitivity to the environment while awake and conscious, it is necessary to have undergone a development so that we can pass between things with a fully functioning mind and fully active reason, and yet still be able to let the spirit speak to us. That is it: clairvoyance means nothing other than having reached a stage of development of the human being through which the human being is able to perceive the world around them free of pleasure and pain. When a person has developed to the point where their passions and desires are silent within them, where what they call shadow-like thoughts are silent, and to which they cling with such devotion and attachment as a person clings to the sensory impressions of their immediate surroundings; when man can love this passionless, desireless state as much as the ordinary man loves the things around him, then he has become ripe to perceive the spirit around him. Then he no longer desires what is desired in everyday life, but desires in the realm of the spiritual world.

Then, however, his thoughts also become effective forces through their saturation with his higher desires and his purified soul. Human thoughts are only abstract thoughts because ordinary people insert the soul with its pleasures and pains, with its personal desires, between themselves, between their spiritual inner being, between what is thought, idea, spiritual reality, and everything else.

That is the only reason why our thoughts must first be taken up by the soul, why our thoughts must first be translated into personality in order to become effective. It is personal desires that approach the thoughts of the individual. If I have an ideal, then I will translate this ideal into reality in the sense of personal desires. As a personality — in ordinary everyday life, that is — I must have an interest in what shines before me as a thought if I am to carry it out. As a person, I must find a thought, a decision of the will, desirable. My personal desire chains itself to the thought, which would otherwise be independent of time and space, for what is true in thought is true at all times. If we go beyond these personal desires and develop ourselves in the way that the mystery priests demanded of their pupils, then our desires will become such that we do not chain the whole power of our soul to our personal interests, but we will pursue what lives in the purely spiritual with greater love and devotion. And then this thought that lives within us, the spirit that lives within us, will not be dull and abstract as it is in everyday people; then it will not have to penetrate the outer world through the means of soul experiences; then it will, so to speak, flow out into the outer world from the innermost spirit of the human being, without being touched by the immediate self. without having to pass through the personal self, into the outside world. It will not be dulled by the outside world; it will approach us like a force of nature; it will approach us like the force of crystallization, like the magnetic force that emanates from a magnet and arranges iron filings into shapes. Like these forces that surround us in nature as reality, so does the desireless thought affect our environment, the reality around us. An awareness of our environment, an awareness of our fellow human beings, becomes fruitful in a completely different sense when we have brought it to such thoughts, removed from personal desires. Then what occurs is that the power of thought passes from this developed human being to his fellow human beings.

Then what occurs is what, in truly selfless people, is thought, thought as an organizing force of nature. We are told everywhere that the great, true sages — not merely the scholars, but those who brought wisdom to humanity — were at the same time healers, that a power emanated from them which brought help to their fellow human beings, liberation from physical and mental suffering. This was only because they had developed to such an extent that thought became a force through which the spirit could flow directly into the world. Knowledge that is free from desires in this way, selfless knowledge, which flows into human beings as a force that is otherwise only used in the service of the self, enables human beings to heal in a spiritual sense.

Today, I can only hint at the preconditions for such spiritual healing. In the theosophical sense, the human being's transcendence of the narrowly limited, everyday self can be a precondition for so-called spiritual healing. In a certain sense, therefore, if a person wants to become a clairvoyant or a healer, they must extinguish their own soul life, that which belongs primarily to them as a personality. This does not make such a person completely insensitive and dull. Oh no, on the contrary, such a person becomes more sensitive and perceptive in a higher sense than they were before. Such a person develops a receptivity that is not the same as that provided by the senses in everyday life, but a receptivity of a much higher order. Or is human receptivity less than that of a lower animal, which instead of an eye has only a pigment spot through which it can at most receive an impression of light? Is it different for humans because they transform the impression they receive in the visual purple into the perception of color in their environment? Just as the human eye relates to the pigment spot of the lower animal, so the spiritual organism of the clairvoyant relates to the organism of the undeveloped human being. The sacrifice is the elimination of personality. The extinction of personality triggers the voice of the spirit in our environment. The extinction of personality solves the riddles of nature for us. We must extinguish our soul world. We must overcome pleasure and pain in the ordinary sense of the word. This is necessary for the sake of a certain knowledge and higher development.

However, the elimination of one's own personality in a certain sense is also necessary for a single task that is of infinite importance for everyday human life: human education. In every growing human being, from the birth of the child through the years of development, it is the spirit that is to develop in the innermost core of the human being; the spirit that initially lies hidden within the body, hidden within the soul stirrings of the developing human being. If we confront this spirit with our interests — I don't even want to say desires and cravings — if we make the growing human being dependent on our interests, then we allow our spirit to flow into the human being and, basically, we develop what is within us in the developing human being. But I do not even want to talk about letting our desires and cravings influence the education of a growing human being, but only about the fact that all too often, indeed, that it is almost the rule, that the educator lets his intellect speak, that the educator asks his reason above all else what must be done for the sake of this or that educational measure. In doing so, he does not take into account that he has before him a developing mind, which can only develop in accordance with its nature if it can unfold freely and unhindered in all respects in accordance with this nature, and if the educator gives it the opportunity to do so. We have a foreign human spirit before us. We must allow a foreign human spirit to influence us if we are educators. Just as we have seen that in hypnosis, in an abnormal state, the spirit acts directly on the human being, so in another form, when we have the child before us, the developing spirit of the child acts directly on us and must influence us. However, we will only be able to develop this spirit if, as with other higher tasks, we are able to efface ourselves, if we are able to be servants of the human spirit entrusted to us for education without interfering with our own selves, if we give this human spirit the opportunity to develop freely. As long as we allow our selfish ideas and demands, which are in accordance with ourselves, to flow toward the spirit, as long as we oppose this spirit with our own self and its character traits, we will see this spirit just as little as the eye, which is still entangled in pleasure and pain, can clairvoyantly see the spirit of the environment.

On an everyday level, the educator must fulfill a higher ideal. And he will fulfill this ideal when he understands the mysterious but nevertheless obvious principle of complete selflessness and understands the annihilation of his own self. This annihilation of one's own self is the sacrifice through which we perceive the spirit in our environment. We perceive the spirit in abnormal states when we become abnormally free of pleasure and pain. We perceive the spirit clairvoyantly when we become free of pleasure and pain in a normal state, with full daytime consciousness. And we guide the spirit in right thinking when we guide it selflessly within education. This selfless ideal, which must be strived for daily by the educator, can only shine ahead of the educator as a mindset. But precisely because there is an immediate necessity for our cultural development in this area, because a true, selfless attitude must be created in this area in the spirit of our culture, it will be above all in the field of educational ideals that theosophy will be able to appear creatively, where it will be able to render the most beautiful services to humanity. Those who are devoted to theosophical life, who gradually learn to open their senses to the spirit through the development of selflessness, will have the best foundation for educational activity, and will work on the educational task of humanity in the theosophical sense. That alone is what the educator needs to pay attention to above all else. He does not need to display theosophical dogmas or principles at every opportunity. Dogmas, principles, and teachings are not important; what is important is life and the implementation of the powers that flow from selflessness and thus from the ability to perceive the spirit. That is what matters, not whether the educator has taken up the teachings of theosophy. He is a theosophist in that he sees in every developing human life something like a riddle that appears before the soul like a being, which he must develop as spirit by educating the spirit. Every developing human being should be a mystery of nature to be solved by the person who wants to be an educator. If he is an educator with such an attitude, then the educator is a theosophist in the best sense of the word. He is so because he approaches every human being, every growing human being, with a true, sacred reverence and understands the words of Jesus: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” You have done it to me, the God who became man, because you have recognized and nurtured the divine spirit in the least of my brothers.

Those who imbue themselves with such an attitude have a completely different attitude toward other people. They see in the least of their brothers the spirit of God, the developing spirit. And that which lives in him in relation to his fellow human beings will fill him with a completely different sense of seriousness and dignity, with awe and reverence, with respect, when he regards every human being in this way as a mystery of nature, as a sacred mystery of nature, which he must not impose himself upon, which he must at most solve, and with which he must establish a relationship such that this seriousness could give rise to reverence, to respect for the divine spirit core in every human being. If a person stands thus among his brothers, then he is on the path, however far he may still be from the goal. The goal we set ourselves lies infinitely far ahead of us. He is on the path indicated by theosophical ethics in these beautiful, monumental words:

Before the eye can see,
It must wean itself from tears.
Before the ear can hear,
Its sensitivity must fade ...