Lecture II

One thing is necessary for men of today if they would attain to an inwardly-experienced truth. They must have once passed through the feeling of the fleeting nature of all outer transformations. They must have experienced the mood of infinite sadness, of infinite tragedy, and at the same time the exultation of joy. They must have felt the breath of the ephemeral that streams out from all things. They must have been able to fix their interest on this coming forth and passing away again, the transitoriness of the world of sense. Then, when they have been able to feel the deepest pain and the fullest delight in the external world, they must once have been absolutely alone—alone with their concepts and ideas. They must have had the feeling, “In these concepts I grasp the mystery of the worlds; I take hold of the outer edge of cosmic being,”—the very expression I once used in my The Philosophy of Freedom! This must be experienced, not merely understood intellectually, and if you would experience it, it must be in deepest loneliness. Then you have another feeling. On the one hand you experience the majesty of the world of ideas that is spread out over the All. On the other hand you experience with the deepest bitterness that you have to separate yourself from space and time in order to be together with your concepts and ideas. Loneliness! It is the icy cold of loneliness. Furthermore, it comes to you that the world of ideas has now drawn together as in a single point of this loneliness. Now you say, I am alone with my world of ideas. You become utterly bewildered in your world of ideas, an experience that stirs you to the depths of your soul. At length you say to yourself, “Perhaps all this is only I myself; perhaps the only truth about these laws is that they exist in the point of my own loneliness.” Thus you experience, infinitely enhanced, utter doubt in all existence.