Second Lecture

Throughout my writings, up to and including the book “The Riddles of Philosophy,” you will find attempts to prove that what is available to sensory perception is not reality; that when human beings are born into the world, their perception does not convey reality to them, and that this reality only appears before the soul when he generates the activity of thinking from within himself and contrasts the incomplete reality, the one side of reality, with the other, which belongs to this reality, that which is initially given to him in his mind as thinking. The fact is that reality only becomes a soul experience when human beings connect their perception with their thinking, which arises in their minds. Reality is something that comes about through recognition. Reality is not something we have to seek. Reality is something we create, in which we participate as creators; and the mystery of human beings lies in the fact that, when they are born, they are surrounded by a world that is not full reality, and that they are born to add something to what is presented to them in external sensory appearance that arises only within them. Only in this context, in this coexistence of what arises within him and what he perceives externally, does he live himself into reality.