12. Philosophy and Theosophy

The image of this pure actuality is now found in man himself when he comes to the concept of the “I” from pure thinking. There he is in the ego with something that Fichte calls action. He comes to something within himself which, by living in actuality, simultaneously produces its matter with this actuality. If we grasp the I in pure thought, then we are in a center where pure thinking at the same time essentially produces its material being. If you grasp the ego in thinking, there is a threefold ego: a pure ego that belongs to the universals “ante rem”, an ego in which you are inside, which belongs to the universals “in re”, and an ego that you comprehend, which belongs to the universals “post rem”. But there is something else very special here: For the ego, it is the case that when one rises to a real grasp of the ego, these three “egos” coincide. The ego lives in itself by producing its pure concept and can live in the concept as reality. For the ego it is not indifferent what pure thinking does, because pure thinking is the creator of the ego. Here the concept of the creative coincides with the material, and we need only recognize that in all other cognitive processes we initially come up against a limit, except in the case of the ego: we encompass it in its innermost essence by grasping it in pure thinking.