4. The Human Soul and the Human Spirit

In this way one becomes strong in love by strengthening the soul. One becomes light in spirit by strengthening the spirit. But by strengthening the spirit, one alienates oneself, on the other hand, from the connection with the inner reality of the body, with the reality that places one in the sense world, in the way I have described. Therefore, one must not become hostile to reality in a false way, because otherwise one could very easily become unrealistic with this removal in the direction of the spiritual, with the abandonment of corporeality. One could lose the connection that living thinking has with reality, even if it is not consciously realized, but only unconsciously experienced, as is the case in ordinary life. Then, through a digression of the spirit, one would come to the point where thoughts spin out of one another, but where one no longer lives so intensely in these thoughts that one has the connection with reality. One then enters into a mental process in which one can think, but one loses the connection with reality. One becomes a doubter, a skeptic. And if this increases to a certain degree, one can go through all the torments of skepticism, one can only consider what takes place in thinking as sophistry. One becomes a skeptic who does not draw his spiritual nourishment from the source of reality.