Lecture III

Let us now turn to the soul. I tried to indicate the nature of the soul when I referred you to Aristotle. In speaking of the soul we must realize that Aristotle's ideas were not far removed from the truth, for the psychic life, that which pertains to the inner life, originates more or less with each individual. Aristotle, however, lived in an age when he could no longer fully comprehend the soul's relationship to the Cosmos. He declared that with the birth of a human being a new soul is created. He was an advocate of “creationism”, but accepted that after death the soul continues to survive in some undefined way. He did not enter into further details because in his day knowledge of the soul had already become somewhat nebulous. The manner in which the soul lives after death is in fact bound up with what is called, more or less symbolically, “original sin”—or whatever we prefer to call it, the terminology is not of the slightest importance—for “original sin” has undoubtedly modified the whole life of the soul. Consequently, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the souls of men were in danger of such wholesale corruption that they could not find their way back to the Kingdom of Heaven. They were chained to earthly existence, to the destiny of the Earth. This psychic life therefore follows its own separate path which will be described in further detail later.