Sixth Lecture

To appropriate human self-awareness in the right sense means to consciously visualize it inwardly. And when we begin to sense what we can extend our consciousness to, how wide the horizon of the riddles of the world is, we will take care not to fall for the proud thought: O man, how you are actually a summary of the whole cosmos! — I believe that precisely such a thought must be very far from us. On the other hand, the other thought will be close to us: How little we know in our consciousness of what is knowable! — Infinity is necessary to put together the human being; but we have never gone further than knowing a very small piece of it. Modesty and humility are what descends into our soul precisely from knowledge as it expands. One can never learn more about the spiritual world than one already knows without also learning that what can be known is infinite. And the more one knows, the more vividly one senses this infinity. And one learns to understand how a part of life consists in allowing oneself to be seized by the great, mighty riddles and secrets that pulsate through existence.