The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. What Does Modern Man Find in Theosophy?

[ 1 ] The theosophical worldview is intended for those who need a more solid foundation for their concepts and ideas regarding the supersensible world, and for those who seek such a deeper foundation for their knowledge of the soul and spirit. Indeed, there are quite a few such people in our time. We see that cultural science has long sought to explore the origins of religions. Cultural studies seeks the origins of religions among primitive peoples, among the so-called indigenous peoples, in order to understand how religious concepts have developed over time; and these religious concepts essentially contain what humanity has conceived of as ideas and notions about the supersensible, soul, and spiritual worlds throughout the various epochs. Here we see how, on the one hand, researchers strive to trace all religions back to a worship of nature arising in simple, childlike, naive human beings. On the other hand, we see other researchers attributing the origin of religions to the fact that the simple, naive human being sees how his fellow human being ceases to live, how he ceases to breathe, how death comes upon him, and how he cannot conceive that nothing should remain; how, from his various experiences—which the primitive human being has to a greater degree than the civilized human being from the supersensible world—from his dream experiences and spiritual experiences, he forms the idea that the ancestor who has died is actually still there, that he is active as a soul, spreading out his hand in protection, and so on. Some researchers thus trace the origin of religions back to ancestor worship and soul worship. We could cite a whole series of other such studies intended to explain how religion came into the world. Through this, people today seek a firm foundation for the question: Are our conceptions of life after death, of a realm beyond the sensory world, and of eternal life firmly grounded? And how do people arrive at such conceptions? — This is one way in which people today attempt to ground these conceptions of the supernatural.

[ 2 ] The theosophical worldview does not seek to offer this explanation to present-day humanity in the same way. While cultural research looks to the experience of the primitive, simple, naive, childlike human being, the theosophical worldview instead inquires into the religious experience of the most perfect human being—that is, the one who has reached a higher stage of spiritual perception—and what such a person can develop as their perception, their experiences, and their insights into the supersensible world. That which the human being who has developed his inner life, who has acquired certain powers and abilities not yet accessible to the average person of today, is capable of experiencing regarding the higher world—this is made the foundation of what the theosophical worldview seeks to contribute as the basis for its perspective. The experience that goes beyond the sensory, that is based on the so-called self-knowledge of the soul and the spirit—it is this higher experience that underlies the theosophical worldview. What is this higher experience? What does it mean to experience something of the spiritual and soul world? This will be somewhat difficult for a large part of present-day humanity to grasp. That was not the case in earlier times. Today, however, human beings, with their experiences, are drawn to what we call the sensory world, the world of external appearances. In this world of external appearances, modern human beings feel at home. They ask: How does this look to the eye? How does that feel to the touching hand? How can one grasp this or that with the intellect? They see only the world of external appearances. Thus this world of sensory experiences lies open before them.

[ 3 ] Let us consider what this sensory experience can offer us. Let us clarify how this sensory experience presents itself to us. Let us consider something that belongs to these external phenomena. Let us consider any being, any object in the world. We can demonstrate with regard to all these things in the world that they once came into being; they were formed and were not there at one time. They are either created by nature or by human hands, and after some time they will have disappeared. This is the characteristic of all things that belong to external experience: that they arise and pass away. We can say this not only of inanimate things, but also of all living things, indeed of human beings themselves. They come into being and pass away when we regard them as external phenomena. We can say the same of entire peoples. One need only cast a brief glance at world history to see how peoples who have set the tone for centuries, who have accomplished great and mighty deeds, have also vanished from world history—for example, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. And let us move from there to the phenomena we call human creations, to that which is perceived as the highest, the most magnificent in the realm of human achievement. If we consider a work by Michelangelo or Raphael, or if we look at something else—a significant work of technology—you will have to say to yourself: Such a work lasts for centuries or millennia; and while human eyes may feel satisfied at the sight of the works of Raphael or Michelangelo, and human hearts may be delighted at the sight of such works—you cannot shut out the thought that what is revealed here in its outward appearance will one day perish and vanish into dust. Nothing remains of what is called outward appearance. Yes, we can go even further. Today, natural science teaches us that our Earth, that our Sun, came into being at a specific point in the development of the world, and physicists already claim that one can almost calculate when that point must have occurred at which our Earth has reached the end of its development, at which it falls into a state of rigidity, so that it can no longer possibly develop further. Then the end has come in the outer appearance. Then everything that has lived as a sensory perception, that has in any case acted and created, will have disappeared. And so you can trace the entire realm of what is called outer forms, what is called outer appearances—you will find everywhere in this world: arising and passing away; or when we ascend into the realm of the living, we call arising and passing away: birth and death. Birth and death reign in the realm of figures or forms, in that realm which is accessible to sensory experience.

[ 4 ] We ask ourselves: Is this realm the only one available to us? We ask ourselves: Is the realm in which birth and death reign ceaselessly the only one accessible to human beings? For those who accept only sensory perception, who want nothing to do with self-knowledge of the spirit, with abilities that can go beyond the mere observation of forms, beyond the observation of external phenomena—for such people, it may well seem as though everything is in a state of ebb and flow, of arising and passing away, of birth and death. Nor can one arrive at a higher perspective by observing nature and the spirit in the same way that one gains external experience. One cannot transcend birth and death in the same way, through the senses. This requires immersion in higher spiritual faculties; not in abnormal spiritual faculties that only certain people possess, no, but only immersion in those soul forces that lie, so to speak, hidden beneath the outer, superficial layer. When someone enters that region of the soul, they will be able, through meaningful, deeper contemplation, to gain a different perspective on things and beings. Consider the simplest example: plant life. There you see birth and death eternally alternating. You see a lily emerge from the seed and then see the lily disappear again after it has delighted the eye and gladdened the heart for a time. When you no longer see with the eye of the body but with the eye of the spirit, then you see even more. You see that the lily develops from the seed, that after the stage of development it becomes a seed again, and that then a new lily arises, which in turn sprouts a seed. Consider a single seed; there you see how form arises and passes away in this world, but how every form already contains within itself the seed and the sprout for a new form. That is the nature of the living; that is the nature of what is called power, which goes beyond mere form and mere shape.

[ 5 ] Here we enter a new realm that we can see only with the eyes of the spirit, a realm that is just as certain and real to the eye of the spirit as the external form is to the physical eye. Forms arise and pass away; but what appears again and again, what is always present with every new form, that is life itself. For you cannot grasp life intellectually through any natural science or through any external observation. But you can see it flowing through the arising and passing forms by means of spiritual perception. What is the nature of life? It appears again and again. Just as birth and death are the characteristics of external phenomena, of forms, so is rebirth, continual renewal, the characteristic of life. The form we call living contains within itself the power—the very same power—that is capable of bringing a new form into being in a new birth in place of the old. Rebirth and rebirth again is the essence, the defining characteristic of the realm of the living, just as birth and death are the defining characteristics of the realm of forms, of external figures. And when we ascend to the human being, when the human being contemplates himself, casts a glance into his soul, then he will find that there is something within him that represents a higher stage than the life we have observed in the plant; but that this life must possess the same quality as the life in the plant, which rushes from form to form.

[ 6 ] We have said that it is the power that brings the new form into being from the old. Look at the tiny seed; it is unremarkable in its outward appearance. But what you cannot see is the power, and this power—not the outward appearance—is the creator of the new plant. From the inconspicuous seed emerges the new lily, because within the seed lies the power for the new lily. When you look at a seed, you see something inconspicuous to the outer eye, and from the way life has shaped it, you can form an idea of the power. But when you look into your own soul, you can see the power through which this soul acts, through which this soul is active in the world of forms; then you can perceive the power within yourself with the eyes of the spirit.

[ 7 ] What are the powers of the soul? These powers, which cannot be compared to other forces but stand on a higher level, and are not of the same nature as the sprouting life force of a plant—to summarize, in broad terms, all that we call the life of the soul—are: sympathy and antipathy. Through these, the soul acts in life and performs deeds. Why do I perform an action? Because some sympathy within my soul drives me. And why do I feel aversion? Because I feel a force within me that can be called antipathy. If you try to grasp this ceaselessly surging life of the soul through inner contemplation, you will find these two forces in the soul time and again and can trace them back to sympathy and antipathy. This must lead the discerning observer of the soul to ask: What is actually the nature of this? What forces must be at work in the soul? — If you ask: From what did the lily arise — and were to say: This lily arose from nothing —, then one would not imagine that it arose from the seed, in which the power of the former plant was already contained; then one would not assume that a new form could arise from the seed. The new form owes its existence to the old, dead, past form, which left behind nothing but the power for the emergence of a new one. Just as we can never comprehend how a lily comes into being unless another lily had released the forces necessary for the emergence of a new one, so too can we not comprehend how the ebb and flow of the soul’s life—composed of sympathy and antipathy—could exist if we did not trace it back to its origin. Just as we must be clear about the fact that every plant in its form must be traced back to a preceding one, so too must we be clear that the force cannot have arisen out of nothing. And just as the force of the lily cannot vanish into nothing, so too the force of the soul cannot vanish into nothing. It must find its effect, its further form, in external reality. We find rebirth in the realm of the living; we also find it in the realm of the soul through deep soul-contemplation. We need only keep these thoughts in mind in the right way. We need only imagine that infinite consistency, and we will easily be able to move from the idea of rebirth to the power that must animate the soul—without which the soul cannot even be conceived, unless one wishes to imagine that a soul should have arisen from nothing and should vanish into nothing. Thus we also come to rebirth in the spiritual life, and we need only ask ourselves: What must rebirth in the spiritual life be like? — The point here is not to cling to sensory perception, but to develop within oneself a perception of spiritual life in order to grasp the eternal transformation of forms in connection with the unchanging life. All you need to do is allow a great German mind to truly take effect upon you, and then you will gain an idea of how one can observe, with the eye of the spirit, the life flowing from form to form. You need only take up Goethe’s scientific writings, which are so gracefully written, where you find observations on life presented in a vivid manner, seen through the eye of the spirit, and you will see how one must view life. And when one applies these observations to the view of the life of the soul, one comes to say that our sympathies and antipathies are developed, that they have emerged from a seed, just as the plant has emerged from a seed in terms of its form. This is the first primitive conception underlying a central idea of the theosophical worldview: the idea of the reincarnation of the soul life. What we ask ourselves from the standpoint of rational reflection is: How are we to conceive of the complex soul life if we do not wish to believe in the reincarnation of the soul? — One might object: Indeed, it would be a spiritual miracle, it would be spiritual superstition, if I were to admit that the soul life existing within me is supposed to have arisen all at once, and that it must also have its effect. — One might object: Yes, but the soul’s previous form need not have been on our Earth, and its effect need not be on this Earth in any way. — Yet even there, with a little thoughtful reflection, you can navigate past the apparent obstacle. The soul enters the world; the soul possesses a sum of predispositions, which are developed and did not arise out of nothing. Just as little as the spiritual arises from the physical, so little does the spiritual arise from the material, just as an earthworm cannot have arisen from mud. Just as life can only arise from the living, so the soul can only have arisen from the spiritual. Nor can the origin of the soul lie anywhere other than on our Earth. For if these capacities originated from distant worlds, they would not fit into our world; the soul would not be adapted to life in the phenomenal world. Just as every being is adapted to its environment, so is the soul, in its origin, directly adapted to its environment. Therefore, you need not initially seek the preconditions for present-day soul life somewhere in an unknown world, but rather in this world. With this, we have grasped the concept of reincarnation.

[ 8 ] Thus, anyone who is truly willing to delve deeply into the matter can arrive at the idea of the reincarnation of the soul through pure, meaningful reflection. That, you see, is what compelled all the outstanding minds who understood how to grasp living nature to the idea of the transmigration of souls in this sense—in the sense of a transmigration of souls from form to form, a transmigration of souls that we call rebirth, reincarnation, or re-embodiment.

[ 9 ] I would also like to refer to one of the most outstanding minds of modern times, Giordano Bruno, who, through his view of humanity, proclaimed the reincarnation of the soul as his creed. Bruno suffered a martyr’s death for having been the first to openly endorse Copernicus, the father of modern natural science. You will thus admit that he knew how to judge the outer form in its sensory manifestation. But he understood even more. He understood how to contemplate the life flowing from form to form, and this naturally led him to reincarnation. — And if we proceed further, we find this doctrine of reincarnation presented in Lessing’s *The Education of the Human Race*. We also find it touched upon in Herder. Finally, we find it hinted at in various forms in Goethe, even though Goethe, in his cautious manner, did not express himself very clearly; Jean Paul and countless others could also be cited. As for the modern thinkers upon whom our entire cultural life depends, and who have also influenced the most important ideas—what led these thinkers to this is not merely the desire to satisfy humanity, but because this doctrine, above all else, creates a concept that makes an explanation of the world possible. The soul is constantly undergoing rebirth. Sympathy and antipathy have always existed and will always exist. This is what can be said about the soul in the theosophical worldview.

[ 10 ] And now let us return to our starting point. Let us say once more that we have seen that form follows form, shape follows shape in our sensory world, that everything is becoming and passing away, birth and death. We have seen that even the most marvelous works that are created pass away. But let us ask ourselves: Is the work alone involved in the work? In the creation of a Raphael or a Michelangelo, or in the simplest, most primitive human creations, is there nothing else involved besides this work? — We must, after all, distinguish between the work and the activity that the human being has employed, the activity that any being has employed, in order to bring about a work, a creation, or anything that can be called a creation. The work is consigned to the external world of forms and shapes, and in this external form, the work is also subject to the fate of these external forms—to coming into being and passing away. But activity—the activity that takes place within the being itself, that which once occurred in the soul of a Raphael or a Michelangelo as he created his works—this activity is also that which the soul, so to speak, draws back into its own being; this is the activity that has not flowed out into the work. Like an imprint in a seal, this activity has remained in the soul; and this brings us to something that remains in the soul not merely for a short time, but that remains imperishable within the soul. For let us consider Michelangelo some time later. Has his activity passed fruitlessly from him? No! This activity has contributed to the elevation of his inner capacities, and when he approaches a new work, he creates not only from what was previously within him, but from that power which first arose through his activity in earlier works. His powers have been elevated, strengthened, and enriched by his initial activity. Thus the soul’s activity creates new capacities, which in turn are realized in the work, become active again, withdraw back into the soul, and provide strength for new activity. No activity of the soul can be lost. What the soul develops as activity is always the origin, the cause of an elevation of the soul’s being, of the unfolding of new activity.

[ 11 ] This is what lies within the soul as activity, as life; this is the imperishable; this is what is truly formative; this is not merely form, not merely life—this is creative power. Through my activity, I create not only the work, but also the cause for new activity, and through the preceding activity I always create a new one.

[ 12 ] This is the foundation of all great worldviews. An ancient Indian text describes in a very beautiful way how one should imagine this activity within a being. It tells how all forms disappear into an endless world of forms, how birth and death reign in the outer world of forms, and how the soul is born again and again. But even if lily follows lily, a time will come when no new lily arises; a time will come when the soul no longer lives in sympathy or antipathy. The living is born again and again; but what does not cease is the activity that ever increases, intensifies, and is imperishable.

[ 13 ] This is the third stage of existence, the ever-increasing activity, and this stage of existence and the characteristic nature of the spirit are simultaneously defined by the fact that neither the transitory nor the ever-creating clings to them. In the first stage, our form is a sensory being; it is a being that is born again and again as a soul, and it is an imperishable, higher being as spirit. That sympathy and antipathy must likewise arise and pass away, even though their duration of existence is much longer than that of the outer form, is evident from the consideration of the spiritual itself and its demands. What does the spirit demand of the human being when he immerses himself in this spirit? This spirit has one thing about it that it repeatedly holds up to us, that it holds up to us with energy and strength: that it can never be satisfied with the mere soul, with sympathy and antipathy. This spirit tells us that one sympathy is justified, the other unjustified. This spirit is our guide in the realm of sympathy and antipathy, our guide in deliberation within the realm of the soul. And if we wish to develop as human beings, we are called upon to align our sympathies and antipathies with the demands of spiritual life, which is meant to lead us to the heights of development. Thus, from the outset, the spirit is granted supremacy over the mere world of sympathy and antipathy, over the mere soul, and when the spirit continually overcomes the world of unjustified, lower sympathy and antipathy, this represents an ascent of the soul toward the spirit. There are initial states of the soul; there it is entangled in the forms of external reality. There its sympathy was directed toward external forms. But the more highly developed soul is the one that heeds the demands of the spirit, and thus the soul develops from a tendency toward the sensual up to a tendency toward sympathy for the spirit itself.

[ 14 ] You can explore this further in other ways. The soul is, first and foremost, a desiring being. The soul is filled with sympathy and antipathy, with the world of desires, with the world of longing. But after some time, the spirit shows the soul that it is not meant merely to desire. When the soul has overcome desire through the spirit’s resolve, it is not idle; just as desire flows from the undeveloped soul, love flows from the developed soul. Desire and love—these are the two opposing forces between which the soul develops. The soul still entangled in sensuality, in outward form, is the desiring soul; the soul that develops its connection, its harmony with the spirit, is the one that loves. This is what guides the soul in its course from rebirth to rebirth—that it may become, from a coveting, desiring soul, a loving soul, so that its works may become works of love.

[ 15 ] We have thus described the third form of emotion, and at the same time we have explored the fundamental characteristics of the spirit, illustrated its influence in human beings, and shown that it is the great educator of the soul, guiding it from desire to love, and that it draws the soul upward toward itself as if by magnetic force. Now, on the one hand we see the world of figures and forms, on the other the world of the imperishable spirit, and both connected by the world of the soul. In this discussion, I have taken into account only a meaningful self-observation that every human being, if they find the necessary inner calm and are not entangled solely in external perception, is capable of seeing with the eye of the spirit. But the one who has developed the higher spiritual faculties within himself, an occultist, learns something quite different. He not only knows how to reach these three worlds through sensory observation, but he has a perception of life and of the spirit, just as the outer eye has a perception of external sensory reality. Just as the eye distinguishes between light and darkness, just as the eye distinguishes between different colors, so does the spiritual, developed, and opened eye of the occultist distinguish the higher, radiant light of the spirit—which is not a sensory light, but a brighter, more resplendent light in higher worlds, in higher spheres— and this radiant light of the spirit is just as much a reality for the occultist as our sunlight is a reality for our perception. And we see in individual things that sunlight is reflected back. Thus the occultist distinguishes the radiant self-illumination of the spirit from the peculiar glimmer of light that is reflected back from the world of forms as a soul-flame. Soul means reflected spiritual light; spirit means radiating creative light. These three realms are the world of the spirit, the world of the soul, and the world of forms, for this is how they appear to the occultist. Not only are the realms of existence different. — For the occultist, the outer form is emptiness, darkness, that which is essentially nothing, and the great, sole reality is the noble, radiant light of the spirit. And that which we perceive as a shining light, which surrounds the forms and is drawn into them, is the world of the soul, which is born again and again until it is reached by the spirit, until the spirit has drawn it entirely up to itself and united with it. This spirit appears in manifold forms in the world, but the form is only the outer expression of the spirit. We have recognized the Spirit in its activity, in its ever-increasing activity, and we have called this activity karma.

[ 16 ] Now, what is the truly significant and characteristic aspect of this activity of the spirit? In its activity, this spirit cannot remain unaffected by the deed it once performed at the stage it once occupied. I would like to make clear to you how this activity of the spirit must have its effect. Consider the following: Imagine you have a vessel of water in front of you and you throw a warm metal ball into this vessel. This ball heats the water; this is thus the work of the ball. But through the very thing the ball has caused, it has itself undergone a change. The change persists until a new change occurs. Once the ball has performed its work, it bears the imprint of that work; it carries this imprint with it. If you submerge the ball in a second vessel, it will not be able to heat this second water again as a result of its first action. In short, how it acts the second time is a consequence of how it acted the first time. Through this simple analogy, one can understand how the spirit acts in its activity. When the spirit performs a specific work in its activity, not only is the imprint pressed upon this work, but the same stamp is pressed upon the spirit’s activity itself. Just as the ball has cooled and thereby retained something lasting, so the spirit has permanently retained its signature, its imprint, from its deed. Whether good or bad, deeds do not pass without leaving a trace on what remains in the soul. Just as the deed was, so is the stamp that the deed has received and which it bears from then on.

[ 17 ] This is what leads us to realize that, as the great mystic Jakob Böhme says, every action “is imprinted with a mark that cannot be removed from it henceforth, except through a new action, through a new experience, whereby the old stamp is replaced by a new one.” This is the karma that the individual experiences. As the soul progresses from rebirth to rebirth, the deeds remain imprinted upon it—the signature, the imprint it has acquired during those deeds—and in a new experience, only the consequences of past experiences can be realized. This is the rigorous doctrine of karma, which develops the concepts of cause and effect, as presented to us in the theosophical worldview. I am the result of my past deeds, and my present deeds will have their effect in their continuation in future experiences. With this, you have articulated the law of karma for humanity, and whoever wishes to regard themselves entirely as spirit in their actions must view themselves in this sense; they must be clear that every action has an effect, that the law of cause and effect exists in the moral world just as it does in the outer sensory world of forms.

[ 18 ] These are the three fundamental laws of the theosophical worldview: birth and death prevail only in the world of forms, reincarnation prevails in the world of life, and karma—or the eternally evolving and intensifying activity—prevails in the realm of the spirit. The form is transitory, life is constantly reborn, but the spirit is eternal.

[ 19 ] These are the three fundamental laws of the Theosophical worldview, and with them you have also received everything that the Theosophical worldview can introduce into human life. The Spirit educates the longing soul in love. The Spirit is that which is felt by everyone within human nature when this human nature turns inward. The individual form has interest only in that which belongs to it as an individual form. This individual form therefore acts only for itself, and this acting for itself is acting out of self-interest; that is, acting out of egoism. And this egoism is the dominant law throughout the entire world of forms, of external shapes. But the soul does not exhaust itself within the individual form; it passes from form to form. It has a longing for ever-recurring rebirth. The Spirit, however, has the aspiration to develop that which takes on new form again and again ever higher, to shape it from the imperfect to the perfect form. Thus the soul, in its longing, moves from birth to birth; thus the spirit, in its education of the soul, leads it from the ungodly to the divine; for the divine is nothing other than the perfect, to which the spirit educates the soul. The education of the soul by the spirit from the ungodly to the divine—that is the theosophical worldview. And with that, you have also presented the ethics of the theosophical worldview. Just as the Spirit cannot help but educate the soul in love and transform desire into love, so the theosophical worldview has as its first principle the establishment of a human community built upon love. And thus the moral teaching of the theosophical worldview has come into harmony with the eternal laws of the Spirit. Nothing other than what the Spirit must recognize as its innermost essence—the transformation of desire into love—has led to the founding of a Theosophical Society that embraces all of humanity with the spiritual fire of love. This is what shines forth as the ethical worldview of the Theosophical Movement. And let us ask ourselves: Does the thinking person of today find satisfaction in this worldview? — Modern man is no longer accustomed to believing merely in external traditions, merely in external views, or in authority; rather, he is increasingly developing toward seeking a worldview that satisfies his thoughts, that satisfies what he calls the self-knowledge of his spirit. When modern man strives to attain this self-knowledge, there is nothing else for him but this theosophical view, which, in essence, excludes no creed but includes them all. For this theosophical view truly offers the soul what it seeks. The soul must ceaselessly ask itself questions about human destiny and its inequality. Can the sensitive soul bear that, on the one hand, innocent people live in bitterness and misery, while on the other hand, those who seemingly do not deserve it revel in happiness? This is the great question that the human soul must pose to fate. As long as we view life only between birth and death, we will never find an answer to this riddle. We will never find comfort for the soul. But if we consider the law of karma, then we know that all bitterness, all misery, are the results of causes that existed in past lives. Then we will say, on the one hand: What the soul experiences today as its fate is the effect of past experiences. It cannot be otherwise. This explanation becomes a source of comfort the moment we look to the future, because we say: The one who experiences pain today, or who experiences bitterness and sorrow, cannot merely complain about their fate, but must tell themselves: Bitterness, heartache—these have an effect on the future. What is your pain today relates to your future life in the same way that a child’s pain relates to falling down: through it, the child learns to walk. Thus, all sorrow is the cause of an elevation of the spiritual life, and the soul finds comfort immediately when it tells itself: Nothing is without effect. The life I experience today must bear fruit for the future.

[ 20 ] Now I would like to mention another phenomenon, namely the phenomenon of conscience. At first glance, this phenomenon is inexplicable. It becomes immediately understandable when we consider its development. If we know that every soul represents a certain stage of development, then we must admit that in the undeveloped soul the urge toward form is alive. But once the spirit has drawn it to itself, once the spirit has united with it more and more, then in every development of sympathy and antipathy it is the spirit that speaks, and this speaking of the spirit from within the soul is what the human being perceives as the voice of conscience. This conscience can arise only at a specific stage of human development. We never see the voice of conscience among primitive peoples. Only later, when the soul has passed through various personalities, does the spirit speak to the soul.

[ 21 ] You now have the main concepts of the theosophical worldview, and you have seen how illuminating this perspective is for the world that appears to us as the world of external forms. Indeed, we would never comprehend this world of forms if we did not grasp it through the spirit. But the one who lives only in the outer form, who allows himself to be carried away by the world of forms, remains on the level of the transitory; he is on that level where he develops selfishness and egotism, because our outer form is concerned only with form itself. But he grows out of selfishness because the spirit becomes ever more eloquent. We will, however, only recognize this spirit—which is the same in all human beings—when we rise to contemplate the eternally imperishable, the innermost core of being within the human being. We will only recognize the human being in his innermost being when we penetrate to his spirit. If we recognize the innermost core of being in the human being, then we recognize the spirit within ourselves. But the spirit in another human being is understood only by those who regard the other human being as a brother; they understand it only when they have come to fully appreciate brotherhood.

[ 22 ] That is why the Theosophical Movement describes brotherhood as the ideal that humanity’s spiritual evolution seeks to achieve under the influence of this worldview.

[ 23 ] This, ladies and gentlemen, is what modern man finds in the Theosophical Movement. Because this movement offers modern man what he seeks, it has spread throughout all the countries of the world over the course of the twenty-nine years of its existence. We find it in India, Australia, America, and in all the countries of Western Europe. It can be found everywhere because it gradually brings modern man insights that make sense to him. This is what Theosophy offers to people today. It is something that modern man seeks; it is something that modern man feels; it is something that all those have clearly and distinctly felt who knew how to look at nature and human life with a discerning eye and found that what presents itself to and imprints itself upon this spiritual perspective is that which gives satisfaction, comfort, courage, and life. It is the view that the transitory—that birth and death—are not the only reality, but that within this transitory, ever-changing form of existence of the outer being, the inner being of the spirit lives itself out. Then we look confidently to the past and courageously to the future, once this perspective has become our conviction. And then, from the depths of our souls, we speak with comfort and courage the words that the poet uttered with full conviction:

Time is a blooming field,
Nature is a great living entity,
And everything is fruit,
and everything is seed.