World Mysteries and Theosophy

GA 54 — 15 March 1906, Berlin

German Theosophists of the Early 19th Century

It is a frequently noted fact that it is extremely difficult to gain any understanding from our learned leaders in scientific circles with regard to the Spiritual Science movement. On the one hand, it is a very unfortunate fact that in our time science is surrounded by such a great belief in authority and that everything scientific exerts such an impressive power in all directions that a spiritual movement that is intended to be and wants to be influential naturally has a very difficult time when the vast majority of scholars, one might say, almost without exception, all scholarly circles treat a movement such as our Spiritual Science as if it were dilettantism, blind superstition, and so on.

It is perhaps saddening, but in any case understandable, to hear the judgments of such scholarly circles on theosophy or Spiritual Science. But when one examines them, it becomes apparent that they are judgments made without any expert knowledge whatsoever. If we then consult so-called public opinion, as expressed in our journals, we need not be surprised if this too is not particularly sympathetic to the theosophical movement. For this public opinion is entirely under the imposing power of scientific authority and is completely dependent on it.

This may be saddening, but it is entirely understandable. There are various reasons that make this understandable to us. One of these reasons, in relation to German intellectual life, can simply be seen in the fact that an important aspect of our German intellectual life, a height of our deepest contemplation, has actually been completely ignored by our scholarly life. Admittedly, you will find a few notes on what this is all about in every philosophy handbook and every history of literature, but there is no truly penetrating understanding of this most significant aspect of our intellectual life and of what the most important German thinkers achieved at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. In particular, there is a lack of understanding of how these results of German intellectual life are rooted in general German intellectual life about a hundred years ago. If this were not the case, but if our scholarly circles were to really engage with that deepening of German intellectual life at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, then, for example, our philosophers would have an understanding of the great intellectual life of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and the compendiums of philosophy would contain more than just a few inadequate excerpts from their works. If people knew what these thinkers had actually achieved in Germany, then they would also find their way into the spiritual science movement from the standpoint of scholarship.

Of all the preparatory schools for theosophy or Spiritual Science that one can attend today, this school of German thought from the turn of the 18th to the 19th century is the very best for contemporary people. Admittedly, it is not accessible to everyone, for how could the wider public really understand the great German thinkers when university circles and academic circles do so little to promote this understanding, when they do so little to bring about a real popularity of these thinkers? The general public, those who are supposed to turn to theosophy, cannot be blamed for not being able to do so. But those whose profession it is to incorporate the intellectual treasures of the West into the culture of the entire population must be told that they are not fulfilling their obligations in this regard at all.

I will not have to mention any unfamiliar names, but I may have to defend the peculiar fact that names found in every philosophical compendium can be associated with theosophy. It is peculiar that people are so fond of saying how nonsensical it is to use the title “Secret Doctrine” in any way. Western researchers who have studied Buddhism, for example, have repeatedly claimed that it is nonsense to say that Buddhism contains a secret doctrine, something that goes beyond what is written in the books. It is not particularly surprising that such scholarly circles make such claims. For the fact that they do so shows that the most important things have remained a secret doctrine to them. How could they know that there is a secret doctrine when they have never found access to it! Basically, the most important thing that has been achieved since the great German thinker Johann Gottlieb Fichte is still a thoroughly profound secret teaching for the majority of people today. It is true, as sad as it may seem, that this German intellectual life grew out of the so-called Enlightenment at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. We can describe this Enlightenment in a few words. It was a necessary event in the development of the modern spirit. It is what the most significant minds of the 18th century wrote on their banners. Kant says that Enlightenment simply means what can be summed up in the sentence: “Have the courage to use your own understanding.” This Enlightenment was nothing other than an emancipation of the personality, a stepping out of traditions and conventions. What had been believed for centuries, what everyone had absorbed from the common intellectual substance of the people, was to be examined. Only that which the individual personality agreed with was to be valid. As you know, great minds developed out of this Enlightenment. One need only recall the name Lessing to name one of the best. Basically, what is associated with the name Kant is nothing other than a result of what is called the Enlightenment.

One person who broke with this Enlightenment in a very peculiar way is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. When I say that he broke with this Enlightenment in a unique way, please do not think that I am trying to portray Fichte as an opponent of the Enlightenment. He broke with it in the sense that he examined all the results of the Enlightenment and built on their foundations, but he went beyond what is merely Enlightenment, beyond the trivial, in a very thorough manner. Fichte in particular gives those who have the opportunity to delve into his great trains of thought something that can only be gained from him among the newer minds.

After hearing many purely popular lectures, today we want to hear a lecture that seems to deviate from the usual path taken by our spiritual science lectures this winter. I will endeavor to show as clearly as possible what actually happened in German intellectual life at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. Some of what I have to say will only be sketchy. This German intellectual life first made access to the actual spiritual world difficult, and then also to the living and immortal core of the human being. I cannot go into the value and worthlessness of Kant's philosophy today. Official philosophy calls Kant the destroyer of everything and regards his teaching as a philosophical achievement of the highest order. Today I would just like to recall a term that may also be familiar to those who do not have the opportunity to delve deeper into the matter, the term “thing in itself.”

Human cognitive ability, in the sense of Kantian philosophy, is limited. It cannot penetrate the “thing in itself.” Whatever mental images and concepts we form, whatever we experience in the world, in the sense of Kantian philosophy we are dealing with appearances, not with the true “thing in itself.” That is always hidden behind appearances. This may encourage a blind thirst for speculation — and we have seen this enough in the intellectual development of Germany — which seeks to circumscribe and constrain human cognitive abilities in every direction. At the same time, however, the tendency of human beings to penetrate to the truth, to probe into the depths of existence, should be curbed. It was to be shown that human beings cannot readily approach the original sources of existence. Now, it may be true that this was necessary in the course of intellectual life in the 18th century. But seen in a broad, comprehensive style, Kant's philosophy has also created a great obstacle to the further development of intellectual life. I am well aware that there are people who say: What did Kant do that was fundamentally different from all those great minds who always emphasized that we are dealing with appearances, that we cannot reach the “thing in itself”? — This seems to be correct, but in truth it is wrong. In a completely different way, the real spiritual researchers of all times claim that the world consists only of appearances. No true spiritual researcher has ever denied that, as we explore the world with our senses and comprehend it with our intellect, it offers us only appearances, but that higher sense organs can be awakened within us that go beyond the ordinary, that penetrate more deeply into the sources of existence and slowly, gradually, but surely lead us to the “thing in itself.” No Eastern philosophy, no Platonic philosophy, no self-evident worldview that penetrates the spirit has ever spoken of the world in any other sense than as a maya. They have always said only this: for lower human cognition, there is a veil before the “thing in itself”; for higher human cognition, this veil is torn away, and man can penetrate into the depths of existence. In dealing with this question, the Enlightenment has, in a certain sense, reached an impasse, and this is best characterized by a statement found in the preface to the second edition of Kant's magnum opus, Critique of Pure Reason, in which the Enlightenment reveals its despondency because it cannot make any further progress. It reads: “I therefore had to suspend knowledge in order to make room for faith.” This is the nerve center of Kant's philosophy and of the thinking that the 18th century arrived at, and which our philosophical research still has not surpassed, and from which it still suffers. As long as it suffers from this illness, philosophy will never be called upon to understand theosophy. What does this mean: “I therefore had to suspend knowledge in order to make room for faith”? Kant says: The thing in itself remains hidden, and consequently so does the thing in our hearts. We do not know what we ourselves are; we can never arrive at the true form of things. As if from indeterminate worlds, the so-called categorical imperative resounds: You shall do this or that. — We hear it, but we cannot prove it. We just have to believe it. Likewise, we hear about the divine being. We have to believe the same thing. We know just as little about the fate of the soul, about immortality and eternity. We have to believe in them. For these things that connect humans with the divine, there is only faith, since no knowledge can penetrate the divine. Man believes in knowledge when he fails to penetrate the divine. This divine is thereby falsified, placed in an incorrect light by wild speculation. That is why Kant wanted to save everything spiritual for mere belief and refer knowledge — that which can be known — only to external impressions, to appearances. Whatever else you may read and study about Kant's philosophy, this idea is the essential point. This idea became central to the further development of Kant's thought. But the person who decisively broke with this idea, who broke with it out of a bold inner state of mind, was Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

It is a peculiar thing that among the theosophical thinkers of modern India, among the recent revivers of Vedanta philosophy, a very strange discovery has been made — namely, that the Germans have a great thinker and that his name is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. This is said by an Indian who writes under the name Bhagavân Dâs. I have met German theosophists who first learned from him that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is a profound German thinker.

A lot can happen in this regard. Weeks ago, I was in a city in southern Germany. One of my theosophical friends told me: We now have a university lecturer here who thinks it would be good for people to study Fichte because — he said — he had come to realize that there are many profound thoughts in Fichte. — A strange confession from a German university professor! If, more than a century after Fichte, a German university professor can make even the slightest discovery that Fichte achieved something great, this casts a peculiar light on this type of German scholarship. For Fichte did not represent the doctrine of the ego, of human self-consciousness, to his students in Jena in the last decade of the 18th century out of speculation, but from the depths of his being. He did not advocate it in exactly the same way as we advocate it today from a spiritual science perspective, but he advocated it in such a way that if a number of people had followed his approach, if they had educated themselves according to his great intellectual demands, they would have arrived at a healthy, clear form of theosophy that illuminated their true inner selves. It was not for nothing that Johann Gottlieb Fichte's speeches had such an inspiring effect on the students of Jena at that time. For the following lived in him. Even though he walked on the heights of thought, even though he spoke in the purest, most crystal-clear, and most logically sharp thoughts, these thoughts also expressed a very warm and deep, immediate personality and essence. As what most deeply characterized him, he expressed the idea that everyone has a philosophy depending on what kind of person they are. To put it trivially, one could say: It does not matter at all whether someone can think logically well or poorly, because one can very well logically justify a hollow philosophy; it is not acumen that matters, but inner experience, what one has experienced, what one has fathomed with all one's soul. This is expressed in language. Even if someone is a shallow materialist, they can still be a sharp logician, and conversely, someone can be a spiritualist and a weak logician. One does not prove a worldview; rather, the worldview is the expression of the innermost human being, of inner experience. This is what Fichte not only expressed, but also lived out. He was inspired by Kant. But Fichte understood how one is inspired by that to which one can add the opposite, the reverse side, within oneself — for that is where the deepest organs of the human being open up.

Now follow me, I would like to say, for a brief moment into the icy but no less important regions of thought from which Fichte drew the essence of self-consciousness. I will not describe it in his own words, for that would be too difficult here, but with hints that are no less true for that. I would like to say what he conjured up before his students in Jena at the time: There is one thing for everyone in which the “thing in itself” announces itself, in which it expresses itself, and that is one's own inner self. Look there and you will discover something that you cannot discover anywhere else at first. — We see that Fichte knew that not everyone discovers what they have to discover there, because he says something very beautiful, even if it is a harsh word for most people. He says: If people could really come to self-knowledge, they would find the most significant thing within themselves. But there are few who do so, because they prefer to think of themselves as a piece of lava on the moon rather than as self-aware beings. — What is self-awareness in our time? Some describe it as a conglomerate of brain atoms. But they do not set out to discover themselves. It makes little difference whether one says conglomerate of brain atoms or molecules or a piece of lava on the moon. — Here Fichte clearly points out that the knowledge of the inner self, which merely wants to observe it as it is, is not the correct knowledge of the inner self. For the being of man in his inner self differs from any other being. How does it differ? It differs in that human existence involves decision, involves action. This is an icy region of thought, from which we soon want to move on to more flowery fields. Fichte does not call self-knowledge brooding within oneself, not looking at oneself; no, for Fichte it is action, doing. This is a word that leads one from false self-knowledge to true self-development. Man cannot simply look within himself to recognize what he is. He must give himself what he is to become. He must immerse himself in the divine nature of the world and draw from the essence of the deity the sparks with which he must continually kindle his own self. We look at a stone. It is what it is. We recognize it. We look at a plant. It is what it is. We even look at our own body, our etheric and astral bodies. They are also what they are. Man is only what he makes of himself, and self-knowledge is an intimate activity, not a dead insight. When Fichte uses the word “Tathandlung” (actual action), he is saying something that, in this meaningful way, is only said in the ancient Vedanta philosophy. He has reached the point that is now being sought again by theosophists. I have said here many times that Theosophy wants to show how man struggles upward to the divine, how it should stimulate the divine power slumbering within man, whereby man then also becomes aware of the divine around him. Fichte strives for exactly the same thing. False self-knowledge, he says, consists in saying: Look within yourself, you will find God there. — True self-knowledge says something else. It says: If you brood within yourself, it would be like looking into your own eye. But that is not the function of the eye. We learn about light through the eye. In the same way, we learn about the light of the self through the soul. The awakening of the inner self can be compared to the eye. Just as you cannot find the soul in the organism or light in the eye, you cannot find God within yourself. But we find the possibility of developing the organs to find this God. The activity in the I that trains our spiritual organs is the being that man gives himself. This is the TathandJung, this is Fichte's self-knowledge. From this point, Fichte ascends from stage to stage. If you live yourself in completely, if you educate yourself to his thoughts, then you will find a healthy entrance into theosophy, and no one will ever regret it if they live themselves into the crystal-clear trains of thought of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for they will find the way to spiritual life.

But there is a curious fact: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, precisely where he has ascended to these etheric heights of thought, lacks the insight that he did not arrive at at that time, but which has been brought back by the spiritual-scientific worldview as a solution to the riddle of the world: the doctrine of karma and reincarnation. One only needs to understand this, and then one will know how to apply it to one's own course of development. People would like to judge all ages by the same template. But the human spirit is in constant development, and each age has different tasks. The century that Johann Gottlieb Fichte represents in intellectual terms had the task of emancipating the human personality. That was the good side of the Enlightenment. But the personality is the element in human nature that does not return as it is. Our deepest core, which expresses itself within the personality, returns in the various earthly lives. But the individual earthly life is expressed in the personality.

Let us now take a closer look at the essence of personality. We basically have four human shells, but these should not be imagined in the mental image of onion skins: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and within it, that which the human being has developed himself, his refined astral body, that on which the human ego has already worked. We have these four shells. But within them lies the imperishable, eternal core of the human being, the so-called spiritual trinity: manas, buddhi, atma — spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. These pass from one earthly life to another and then ascend to higher levels of existence. The last outer shell is that which is expressed in the personality. It has another meaning, too, and this has become increasingly important in human development. If we go back to ancient times, we find that in earlier centuries people attached less and less importance to individuality, while personality became more and more powerful. Today it is easy to confuse the concepts of individuality and personality. Individuality is the eternal element that carries through from one earthly life to the next. Personality is what a person develops during an earthly life. If we want to study individuality, we must look at the depths of the human soul; if we want to study personality, we must see how the core of a person's being is expressed. The core of our being is born into our people and our profession. All of this determines our inner essence and personalizes it. In a person who is still at a lower stage of development, little of the work on their inner being will be noticeable. Their manner of expression, their gestures, and so on are just as they have learned them from their people. But those who are advanced are the ones who express themselves and gesture from within. The more a person's inner self can work on their outer self, the more highly developed that person becomes.

One could now say that this is how individuality is expressed in personality. Those who have their own gestures, their own physiognomy, and a unique character in their actions and in relation to their environment have a distinct personality. Is all this lost at death for later? No, it is not. Christianity knows very well that this is not the case. What is meant by the resurrection of the flesh or the personality is nothing other than the preservation of the personal in all subsequent incarnations. What a person has achieved as a personality remains with them because it is incorporated into their individuality, which carries it forward into subsequent incarnations. If we have made something of our body that has a unique character, then this body, this force that has worked there, rises again. As much as we have worked on ourselves, as much as we have made of ourselves, remains with us. Bringing this realization fully into human consciousness is something that has not yet happened. This will be accomplished through theosophy. But to bring it to an indefinite feeling was the task of the Enlightenment. It showed the task of the personality. In a crystal-clear structure of ideas, Johann Gottlieb Fichte presented the idea of personality in its eternal significance. And this immediately reveals what is right for the epoch of grasping the eternal in the personality, the imperishable in the personality. This was done by Fichte. It has often been said that great people have the great faults of their great virtues, and because Fichte understood in a unique way how to measure personality with thought, he did not penetrate into individuality; neither did his successors. But they have embedded the idea in the personality, and whoever finds it there will, when approaching Spiritual Science, also carry it through the repeated earthly lives in a healthy way. It is not dogmas that matter, but the education we can gain in his spirit. And Johann Gottlieb Fichte can become an educator in the true sense of the word.

It is not important that we become slavish disciples of such a man, but that we also pass through the power through which he passed. We will then perhaps come to different thoughts in another age through his powers.

This is the way to approach such a spirit. In his time, this found a certain expression. What kind of person he was can educate us and find beautiful expression in the distant future. Spiritual Science is so undogmatic that it leads us to the great individuals and shows us that we can learn even more from them than what they have said. The expression of what they are is language. But there is more than expression living in every human being; the immortal soul lives in them, and we can rise to it as the true core of our being. That is why Fichte was so inspiring to those who sat at his feet at the end of the 18th century and listened to him as he measured the human personality with his global threads of thought, and were thereby inspired to advance in their thoughts to the soul and extract from it treasures quite different from those that Fichte himself had done.

One of those who sat at Fichte's feet and looked up to him with reverence, one of those through whom philosophical ideas were thus brought forth, was the German “theosophist” Novalis, who died young. He died at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, not yet thirty years old. Those who immerse themselves in his works will undergo the most beautiful training in theosophy. Perhaps for those educated in Western science, it might initially be much better elementary training to go through Novalis' powerful flashes of insight than through the Bhagavad Gita or similar Oriental writings, which remain more or less foreign to the West. Right now, it is possible to immerse oneself completely in what this great soul has accomplished. A book of his has been published in which he describes how a young person, introduced by great geologists and mineralogical works to the structure of the world beneath the earth, to the geological layers of rocks and minerals, immediately has thoughts such as: I seek only you, rocks, but what you say, I seek incessantly. Runes, letters, words were to him the stones that he examined as a miner underground, for spiritual beings who create in the earth and bring forth each individual rock. He saw spirit and soul in the earth, and each stone was to him the expression of what the earth has to say to him. Mineralogy and geology became a study of runes for him, and he sought to penetrate the spirit of the earth while his great teacher explained the layers and similarities of the rocks to him. It is precisely those who work deep in the earth who are often led to deeper worldviews. It was not least miners who have gained deep insights into the spiritual world. Spending time underground has a peculiar effect on spiritual experience.

But something else stood out in Novalis. To understand this, we need only remember that at the entrance gate to Plato's school were the words: No one shall enter here who has not passed through geometry or mathematics. The Platonic school presented its elementary knowledge in geometric forms, and Novalis, who shed such great light on the mysteries of existence, revered mathematics as a religion. To him, it is something sacred. Consider this a peculiar psychological phenomenon. It is remarkable that some people are able to perceive something sacred and something like music in the abstract lines of mathematics and geometry. How circles and angles group together, how the various shapes—polyhedrons, dodecahedrons, and so on—are constructed—if one does not take this in as we do in our schools, but is able to delve into the inner music of space, then one can sense something of what Novalis means when he speaks of mathematics. For him, it is the gateway to infinite truth.

Then he heard Fichte, and from him the great truths about the self as personality. We then see how, in a certain way, almost the whole of occultism is reflected in this remarkable spirit. For those who have knowledge in this regard, Novalis is a peculiar personality. He is a personality who had already experienced the deepest initiation in earlier incarnations. Everything he went through in the last, third decade of his life was memory. This is evident in his life, which was more a memory of previous incarnations than of the present one. This is evident in his imagination. The previous incarnations became pure imagination in Novalis, because the previous incarnations cast their shadows and found expression here as works of art. We must therefore understand Novalis as a peculiar, delicate, and intimate being. This is how he stands before us. While Fichte presents us with his razor-sharp thoughts and captivates us with this sharpness, Novalis is wonderfully delicate and nuanced, showing the life of the spirit from a completely different angle. He is therefore the necessary complement for those who want to go through the German preliminary stage of theosophy. Our best minds went through this preliminary stage themselves in their time. We can name many who, in their own way and according to their character, attempted to penetrate the truths that Spiritual Science is now presenting to humanity. These are all names that are more or less well known, but whose bearers must be considered more deeply.

First we have Schelling. When we allow his early writings, in which he became independent, to have an effect on us, he has such a strong impact on those who engage with him because he expressed a thought of Paracelsus in the manner customary at the time. This idea was expressed not only by Schelling, but also by the great Steffens, and in particular by the natural scientist Oken, the great predecessor of modern evolutionary theory and founder of the German Natural Science Association. This idea is an eminently theosophical one. It was common in natural science, as well as in the philosophy of Schelling and Steffens, and also in that of Novalis. These thinkers said: when we look out into the world, we see a number of animals. Each animal represents certain human characteristics in a one-sided development. What amphibians have, what snails have, can also be found in humans. Those snails, amphibians, and so on have something one-sided about them physically. But if we combine them into a whole, we get the harmoniously developed human body, which brings together everything that is spread out in the outside world. As Paracelsus says, we find letters out there in nature, and when we put them together, they form a word, and that word is ‘human being’. A great theosophist — not a German one — of the 18th century made this very principle the basis of all his theosophical research. That is why he went so far as to say: when we look at human beings, we basically see the rest of the animal world. This is the opposite principle to how these things are studied today. The developmental theorists of that time said something different from those of today. They said: If you have a human being standing here and you do not know that he is, for example, a great watchmaker, then you will not be able to recognize the human being. First, you would have to delve into his acumen, which enables him to create what he produces. What he produces is what matters. But nature has produced the human being as its keystone. There you have the compendium of all nature. If you understand it this way, then you will understand nature. — One must recognize the rest of nature from man and not man from nature. If one really does this, then one also understands how it could have appeared in a certain reflection in Schelling and Oken. You can read about it in Schelling and Oken: The snail is the tactile animal, the insect is a light animal, the bird is a hearing animal, the amphibian is a feeling animal, the fish is a smelling animal. In this way they express how the senses are distributed among the individual animals. In humans, they are harmoniously contained. One only needs to divide up the characteristics of humans, then one understands the rest of nature.

In 1809, Schelling published a work that is of great importance to theosophy. He had become acquainted with the profound German thinker Jakob Böhme. He immersed himself in Böhme's work and thus learned about the nature of evil and its connection to freedom. You can find this in his “Investigation into the Essence of Human Freedom.” In it, he shows that God is light and that everything that shines comes from light, but that light must shine into darkness and that wherever there is light, shadows are created. Only through this comparison can one understand what is written in this work. When you let the sun shine into darkness, shadows are created; shadows must come when light is present, but light does not create them. Therefore, he says that everything great in the world comes from the divine source of light. But just as darkness opposes light, so the source is opposed by the non-source, and from this comes the shadow of good: evil. This is the hint of an infinitely deep conflict. And again, one can draw closer to theosophical life by taking this in. Another of Schelling's writings is significant: “Bruno, or On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things.” In a beautiful dialogue form, as in Plato, it deals with the connection between the soul and the spirit in the theosophical sense. Therefore, Schelling himself would have been capable of becoming a theosophist. He understood how to practice inner vision. Schelling was initially an enthusiastic teacher at the University of Jena, then worked in other places, and finally retired completely. He lived in Munich for a long time and was closely associated with the spirit that Jakob Böhme so beautifully renewed in the 19th century: with Baader. Schelling was inspired by Baader. He wrote very little during this period. In 1809, he wrote his treatise on freedom. Then he wrote almost nothing until he was summoned to Berlin by King Frederick William IV, who can be challenged in certain respects, but who is still not sufficiently recognized when it comes to insights into great, deep, and inner spiritual connections. So Schelling was summoned to Berlin in 1841. He was to present to his students what he had experienced for so long. He gave two series of lectures: on “The Philosophy of Mythology” and on “The Philosophy of Revelation.” In them, he introduced the essence of the ancient mysteries and showed how Christianity arose from them and what Christianity is all about. Today, more than half a century later, we naturally come to reincarnation and karma. If we delve into the philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of revelation, we find that this is theosophy. But all the shallow-minded people of that time were put off by it. They could not understand what Schelling was presenting at that time. If theosophists were to delve into these writings, they would see the depths from which all this is drawn.

Because he was one of those who wanted to open people's eyes, Fichte was allowed to speak of a special spiritual sense. Basically, Fichte already gave the definition of theosophy in 1813. He said: Enter a world of blind people as a sighted person and speak to them of colors and light. Either you are talking about nothing — and this is the happier option, if they say so, because in this way you will soon realize your mistake and stop your futile talk — or the more spiritual among them will say that you are a fantasist. — This is how it is for all those who are gifted with a special sense. They walk as if among the blind. But this sense can be awakened in everyone, slowly in some, more quickly in others. Through the special sense, Fichte clearly shows that he knew what was important in theosophy. That was the real definition of theosophy. Others have also drawn from such sources, from such currents of soul and spirit life.

Then, above all, I would like to remind you of Hegel. I cannot go into Hegel's peculiar view here. And I would also like to mention the name of an extraordinarily amiable personality, Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, who wrote books on the nature of the soul. In 1850, when the sixth edition of a book on the nature of the soul was published, Schelling wrote to Schubert: "It is you who are actually in a happier position than I am. I must engage with the global ideas that lead into spiritual life. But you live the intimate side that strikes people when they explore the soul in all its intimacies." Schubert studied the life and workings of the soul, which lies on the border between consciousness, semi-consciousness, and unconsciousness, but also on the border between everyday consciousness, dreams, and clairvoyance. In Schubert you will find explanations of the law that governs the world of dreams. You can find much about this in his work. He studied Swedenborg at a time when it was possible, through great thoughts, to point out these peculiarities of human spiritual life in a healthy way. He held the view that there is an etheric body and that there is an even higher etheric body than the one that dissolves in every human being after death. Schubert already referred to what Vedanta philosophy calls the “subtle body.” He wrote a very beautiful discussion of this higher body of the human being. You can find beautiful remarks on this subject in his work.

You can see how the individual currents flowed into one another at that time in the work of a poet who wove these things into his poetry, Heinrich von Kleist, who created a peculiar prince in “The Prince of Homburg” and also created “Käthchen von Heilbronn,” such a strange character. He was inspired to do so by lectures on somnambulism and a higher spiritual life.

Schubert speaks of a pre-existence of the soul; he also discusses the question of reincarnation. At that time, it did not yet seem Christian to him. But he speaks of a pre-existence whose fate he follows closely. This then gave rise to Justinus Kerner's inspired book, Die Seherin von Prevorst (The Seeress of Prevorst). When the book about this peculiar woman appeared in the 18th century, he had an extraordinary amount of theosophy to explain it. Above all, in the basic definition he gives of this seeress, the occultist recognizes the expert in Justinus Kerner. He was an expert because he lived in a time that had the kind of ideas I have described. He says of the seer of Prevorst, after she had two children and was somnambulistic to the highest degree, that the spiritual world around her was open and that she could observe the spiritual side of human beings. He describes her as follows: Imagine someone caught at the moment of death, so that the peculiar state lasts for several years; the emergence of the etheric body and the peculiar relationship of the astral body to the etheric body lasted for years. Because her spiritual state was such, she could, for example, when someone had lost a limb, see the etheric body of that limb, which was still present, in detail. She could also perceive many other things. Kerner, although not at the level of our time, gives beautiful, appropriate explanations. You can also find explanations in the works of Eckartshausen, who died in 1803 and who also wrote about inner spiritual development. “Kostis Reise” (Kosti's Journey) and “Die Hieroglyphen des Menschenherzens” (The Hieroglyphs of the Human Heart) are writings that are suitable for opening the human soul to a higher vision. He also described what he calls the soul body in an appropriate and beautiful way. Another author who is sometimes quite inspiring is Ennemoser, who also wrote about theosophy, communicated a great deal about the magnetism of life, and also presented some very beautiful ideas about the mysteries in his works. He also did a great deal to show Greek mythology in the right light. — So you see a picture of the early 19th century, from the first thoughts that can have an educational effect on people, to the facts that bring theosophy together with direct spiritualistic experiences. All of this is expressed in a pure and sometimes more noble way than was later presented by the relevant writers. One can learn much more about magical spiritual life here than in the works of Schindler or Albertus.

Later, interest increasingly shifted to something similar to curiosity, the mere thirst for knowledge. In the first half of the 19th century, even among those spirits who did not go very deep, there was a drive of the soul to ascend to spiritual heights, to develop inner soul organs, a knowledge of what is important for self-knowledge and self-development. Novalis knew how to speak about all this in wonderful tones in “Heinrich von Ofterdingen.” He presented the great treasure of former initiation memories in what he had as a memory of previous lives. In “The Apprentices of Sais,” he describes how Hyacinth meets the girl Rosenblüth. Only the animals of the forest know anything about this extraordinarily delicate love. A wise man comes and tells of magical life, of spiritual secrets. Hyacinth and she too feel a longing to walk to the initiation temple of Isis. But no one can tell them which is the right way to the initiation temple. He wanders and wanders. Tired, he settles down among beautiful natural formations, especially because of what nature speaks to him. In a ghostly way, he sinks into a dream. The temple is all around him. The curtain is lifted from the veiled image, and what does he see? Rosenblüth. He charmingly describes how Rosenblüth is that feeling of unity, the unified idea of all of nature, how it expands to encompass all of nature, and how he seeks the hidden mystery that life often presents to us, which we only need to understand. This is wonderfully and beautifully hinted at. And so you can really delve wonderfully into Novalis if you allow yourself to be drawn in by how intimately he expressed the experiences of the world at that time.

I have been able to speak here about Goethe, Herder, and Schiller and show how they were theosophists. In the most truly theosophical way imaginable, Novalis expresses what ran like a beautiful thread through the whole period, what dominated it spiritually like a theosophical motto. It is contained in the words: “One succeeded, he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself.”

Thus, after developing the organs of the spirit within himself, man steps out and searches for himself in the whole world. He does not search for himself within himself, he searches for himself in the world, and in doing so he searches for God. And this search for God in the world, as so beautifully expressed by this spirit, is theosophy.