The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Basic Concepts of Theosophy: The Human Soul and Spirit

[ 1 ] Not long ago, in certain circles it was considered unscientific in the most fundamental sense to speak of the human soul as a distinct entity. And to speak of a spirit alongside the soul—that meets with the very least understanding today. Now, the topic we have set for ourselves today is quite broad in scope. I will likely only be able to outline a few main points. Within the spiritual-scientific worldview, we are led to that older classification of the human being, which is a threefold division—in contrast to what is almost exclusively accepted in the consciousness of people today: the twofold division of body and soul. The threefold division to which the theosophical or spiritual-scientific worldview must return is that of body, soul, and spirit. Now, let us first come to a basic understanding of what we actually mean by body, soul, and spirit. The human body is something about which it will not take much explanation to reach a common understanding. But on the other hand, the concept of the physical, the concept of the external physical, is today so very much the only thing that preoccupies our present-day humanity that reaching an understanding of the difference between soul and spirit—and even of the very nature of the soul itself—is quite difficult. Today, in contrast to some of the other lectures I have given here, we must pay close attention to the precise nuances of the concepts and ideas we wish to develop, and I must therefore ask you to focus your attention, for the time being, on the finer distinctions in human concepts.

[ 2 ] When a person stands before you, you will readily admit that within the space occupied by that person, the person’s body is present. For your senses provide you with evidence of this human body. Now, however, a person can perceive themselves, at least in part, through their own senses, and we can therefore say that a person is, for another sentient being and for themselves, a physical, corporeal being. But in the space that a person occupies, there is undoubtedly much more present than what your senses can perceive. Perhaps, when considered in the context of human life as a whole, what another person can see with their eyes and touch with their hands is the very least of it. For when a person speaks of their life, they very rarely speak of their physical, sensory exterior. Instead, they speak of their fate, of joy and sorrow, of pain, and of everything that lives within and is not immediately perceptible to the senses. One person may stand before you, and another beside them. What your senses perceive in these two people is not, at first, the most essential aspect; rather, it may be that one person harbors a sad inner spiritual life, while the other possesses a thoroughly joyful, pleasure-filled spiritual life. In both cases, as you can see, a person’s inner being fills the space somewhat differently than their physical existence. If you place a blind person in front of another person, the blind person will not initially perceive the other’s physical presence. Under certain circumstances, unless their sense of touch or some other means specifically draws their attention to it, they may be led to conclude that no one is in the room, because their eyes reveal nothing to them. To be convinced of an external, sensually perceptible existence, one needs senses—senses capable of perceiving this external physical existence. Now we must ask ourselves: Would this external physical existence not still be there even if it were not perceived? Would I not still be standing in this very spot even if I were surrounded by nothing but blind and deaf people who could neither see nor hear me? For myself, I would be there; within myself, I would be there. And just as I am present within myself in terms of my physical existence—and this must be distinguished from the perception on the part of others—so must we now also rise to the possibility of making this same distinction for what I have listed as a second kind of existence: for pleasure and pain, for the life that fills space without the senses perceiving what fills that space. If a person stands before a blind person and that blind person suddenly regains sight, then external existence becomes a perceptible existence for the blind person, and the question arises: Could not the existence of pleasure and suffering, of pain and joy, of anger and passion—which is initially imperceptible to the physical senses, yet lives within a person just as much as their red blood, nerves, and bones—also exist as something perceptible to another person?

[ 3 ] Human beings know only what they can perceive. Human beings are beings in the process of evolution, beings who have evolved from imperfect stages in the distant past to their present existence. All the organs found on and within the human body have developed gradually. Gradually, the abilities to see and hear have developed in relation to external existence; gradually, the external physical world has become a perceptible world for human beings—a world they know and can observe. If human beings are in such a state of development, might we not ask whether they could continue to develop further? Couldn’t that which is not yet perceptible to him today become perceptible? — Just as the space in which a person stands is at first dark and gloomy to the blind person, and then, when he regains his sight, the blind person begins to perceive colors and physical forms, so too might it be that what still lives within that space—what flashes through the soul—could also be made visible and perceptible. Human beings have been guided to their external, sensory visibility by the external forces of the world. They have done nothing to bring this about. They have been placed on the physical plane by the order of nature, equipped with sensory organs to perceive the sensory world. But human beings can take their further development into their own hands; they can enable themselves to experience more than just the sensory world around them.

[ 4 ] This development toward a higher life has been constantly nurtured and cherished in certain human communities since time immemorial. Just as human beings initially have physical eyes and physical ears, so too has the ability to perceive through spiritual eyes—if I may put it that way—and through spiritual ears been continually developed in individual human beings through their own efforts. Just as it is true that when the eye opens, it perceives a world of color around itself where there was otherwise darkness and gloom, so it is also true that through appropriate training the spiritual eye is opened, so that what lives in the emotions, in pleasure and suffering, becomes perceptible. The instruction that leads to such a higher development of the human being differs from ordinary schooling. Specifically, our ninth lecture will discuss what can be publicly discussed at all regarding this inner development. Those who wish to know more about this inner development will be able to learn further details. Today I can only refer you to the ninth lecture. However, the most essential points shall be outlined,

[ 5 ] Today’s material culture knows very little about the kind of education a person must receive in order to develop spiritual eyes and ears. And of what can be learned, only a small part is known. But it is precisely the spiritual-scientific worldview that is called upon to awaken an understanding of the supersensible, because it is a necessary requirement for culture. Today, all education is aimed at absorbing as much content as possible for the intellect and for reason. But this means nothing other than that a world of ideas is awakened within us that relates to the external sensory world. Our external sensory perception continues to expand ever further. But this is not so necessary; for our present-day culture—as magnificent as its achievements may be—it is not what gives people depth. Throughout the ages, there has been a different kind of education—one that does not focus on the outward breadth of the sensory world, but rather aims at the depth of our existence in the world. You can get an idea of what this is if I describe it to you in just a few words.

[ 6 ] Everything you currently read in scientific writings has come about through external sensory observation. Science regards—to a greater or lesser extent—anything that has not come about through external observation as something that has no place there. It is assumed that human beings should remain as they are, that they already possess the capacity to absorb what this science has to offer. Essentially, however, the situation is entirely different when it comes to the instruction intended to lead to the development of a person’s spiritual perceptive abilities. In such schools, something different is taught. There, the student is not initially given teaching material designed to convey as many concepts as possible; rather, the process has traditionally been such that a student would come to, let us say, a master and, based on his or her entire character, be deemed ready to develop the inner senses. Then he did not have to absorb much new content; rather, he first had to become a completely different person. He was not given a book or specific content, but rather, first and foremost, a so-called eternal thought content—something eternal that originated from those people who were further along in their development than the rest of civilized humanity.

[ 7 ] We must first agree on what we mean by such an “eternal content of thought.” Try looking within your soul and asking yourself: How much of the ideas and thoughts that live within me, of the feelings and everything else in my soul, is tied to the time and place in which I live? — Try to reflect on what fills your soul from morning to night, and what would be different—completely different—if you were in Moscow instead of Berlin, and if you were living not at the beginning of the 20th century but at the end of the 18th century. Subtract from the contents of your soul everything that you have in this way removed from the space and time in which you live. Try to figure out how much of what you imagine would also apply to a person in another place and at another time. It is not much. But there are things that apply not only to today and to Berlin, but also to other places and other times. As we ascend in this sense, we find more and more that, as if guided by a great spiritual leader of humanity, our attention is directed above all toward such eternal concepts. The religious scriptures of all ages are full of such things that are independent of space and time. And to name the most trivial example, I can say that mathematics is something that is independent of space and time. That which deals with the temporal and the spatial is itself temporal and transitory. But when the soul engages with the imperishable, it becomes eternal and imperishable and absorbs what is immortal. Therefore, the Master first gives the soul an eternal subject of thought—one that can be given to anyone, regardless of whether they live in America, Japan, or at the southern tip of Africa—a subject of thought that is related only to the innermost core of the soul.

[ 8 ] Then the student had to detach himself from the external sensory world and live with what lives within him as a force. The immersion into the innermost depths of the human soul had to take place with immense patience. The inner being of a human being is a living entity, and just as the marvelous structure of the physical eye arose from the mere mass of cells, so too does the spiritual eye arise in the soul through the eternal content of the spirit when the soul immerses itself in this way and lives in meditation. The physical eye was not always there. It arose through the convergence of external physical forces. Within the soul, a person is able to awaken the soul’s eye when they allow themselves to develop further through the soul’s content. Such students, who had to devote a large part of the day to their exercises, waited patiently, and waited. There were times in civilization when this was possible. Thus they waited until the inner forces awakened through spiritual deepening gave them the perception of what filled the space—in the form of pleasure and suffering, instincts, passions, and drives.

[ 9 ] A physical eye sees when an external light source casts rays onto an object. Without light, one cannot see. The eye and light belong together. In the external sensory world, the eye and light are two separate things. In the soul, the spiritual eye is awakened, and this is at the same time the source of a new spiritual light. We ourselves must radiate this light, which makes the spiritual realm before us visible. When you have attained this inner light in this way—through contemplation of your inner self and the associated awakening of inner life—your own astral body begins to shine from within and illuminates everything in truth and reality, just as the sun illuminates objects. But you do not illuminate the external world; rather, you illuminate what is spiritual, what lives within the human being as emotion; this then becomes visible to you through the rays that you yourself emit. In this way, a person can make perceptible to themselves that which exists but is not perceptible externally.

[ 10 ] All the great leaders of humanity who have spoken to us from the soul: do not believe that they had only empty phrases and words in mind. If one believes only in the sensory world, one knows nothing of the depths that have moved and shaped human culture. People usually speak from direct perception. Consider, for example, the relationship between soul and body—as I have just discussed—and you must tell yourself that this relationship is such that the physical body standing before us is permeated and infused by a spiritual element. And just as it is true that this body, which you call your own, is nourished from the outside by food and thereby enlivened and replenished from the outside, so too is it true that this body is enlivened, illuminated, and permeated by the soul. When this body sleeps, the soul is not initially within it; it is then separated from it, existing outside of it. In that case, we cannot speak of the soul flowing into the body. A German theosophist, a profound thinker, has spoken about this relationship between soul and body in a wonderfully captivating way, which can only be properly understood if one accepts the premises we have just laid out. This theosophist—as we may call him—speaks of sleep, when the soul is not in the body, in a peculiar way. He says: “Sleep is the digestion of the soul; the body digests the soul. Waking is a state in which the soul’s stimulus takes effect—the body enjoys the soul.” This is a wonderful comparison. Just as one savors food when eating, so—according to this theosophist—the body savors the soul that lives within it. And just as the body, after having savored the food, digests it, so the body, in the state of sleep, digests what the soul has poured into it. This statement by our German poet-theosophist Novalis is very beautiful. In him you can find a source of the most beautiful spiritual-scientific wisdom. He can only be understood from the perspective of a spiritual-scientific worldview. I could cite countless examples from the German spiritual world that would show you how the great seers of humanity spoke with expertise about the soul and the body and their relationship to one another.

[ 11 ] The third thing we must discuss is the mind. Pleasure and suffering, pain and joy, passion, instinct, and desire—and whatever else we might call by similar names—we summarize under the term “soul.” And if one asks what the soul is, then we say: That which first comes into living existence within us—that is the soul. Anyone who has received the training I have just described can gain an awareness of this soul. The spirit is not only present within human beings; in fact, through a very simple exercise of reason, one can convince oneself that it is present everywhere in the world. All people in the world think—they think about what is around them. Through their thoughts, they gain knowledge of the world around them. These thoughts are not only an expression of what lives in the external world, but also of something that does not live in the external world. When you survey the universe, your senses perceive a vast number of stars and phenomena—an entire world of stars—and then your thinking steps in and forms a concept of this world of stars. When your senses see a drop of water, your reasoning forms a concept of that drop of water. In short, you are not content merely to perceive things; you also want to understand them. This is something different from mere sensory perception. If you have a glass with no water in it, you cannot scoop any water out of it. If there were no thoughts and no concepts in the world outside, then one could not extract any from it either. It would be an illusion to think about the world if the world were not built upon thoughts. The stone that you think about and comprehend must have come into being through a thought; otherwise, the thought could not be extracted. If you do not want to entangle yourself in grotesque contradictions, you must admit that the thoughts in the world outside are just as real as the thoughts inside your head. You think, and the thoughts that live within you are none other than those that have constructed the world.

[ 12 ] Thus, we find within our soul something that, while not perceptible through the senses, is not merely an inner life, but leads us to an understanding of the entire universe. You must admit that our ideas and concepts are not perceptible through the senses, for otherwise human beings would already possess the concepts of the starry world—concepts that they must first form within their souls. Thus, the concept lives within, and it also lives in the outer world. We call that which is contained within the soul. Pain belongs to our own inner being. Its boundaries lie within the boundaries of our soul. What I feel—what I experience as suffering and joy—is something that interweaves with and permeates my inner being, but which, at first, has little to do with the starry realm. What flashes up in my mind as a thought has something to do with the entire external world. This is, first of all, spirit out there in the world, and then the repetition of that spirit within my own soul.

[ 13 ] Thus we have a threefold division: The sensible world, the physical, material existence, perceived through the external senses; the soul, which we experience and which the soul—trained in the manner I have described—can likewise perceive; and the spirit, which we presuppose to permeate the entire world as a fluid that flows through it and as that which first reveals to us the essence of things. Human beings can first perceive this Spirit where it appears as such. What they can perceive there is its outer physiognomy—the way in which the Spirit expresses itself in external sensory reality. One does not see the Spirit in the world, but rather that through which the Spirit brings itself into sensory expression.

[ 14 ] Human beings think in their minds. Although thought exists in the world, human beings cannot see it. They can only think it. Just as you yourself think about the world, and just as a spiritual reflection of the world forms within you, so too does it form within every other person. And this other person is not merely instinct and passion; within them, too, lives this spiritual reflection of the world. This, in turn, can be perceived through the eyes and ears of the spirit for a higher understanding. It is true that the inner training of which I have spoken not only produces the ability to perceive the human soul, but a person can also develop within themselves the ability to see another’s thoughts, to comprehend and perceive their worldview and their entire environment. Then, when a person perceives not only the outer image of this thought but the thought itself—when he is able to open his spiritual ears to the universe— so that he can perceive not only the starry sky through his senses but also that which has given rise to all the sensible world—for which the sensible world is the outward manifestation—then he will truly and genuinely perceive the thoughts, the spirit of the world. The star then appears to him not merely as a star, but the star speaks to him. Stones—rock crystal, for example—appear to him not only as clear as water, but they also reveal their essence to him, and it is possible that through such deepening as has been suggested, a person may encounter every single thing in an entirely new way, so that the things around him speak resoundingly, tell him their innermost name, and reveal their very essence to us. This is what the ancient Pythagoreans meant—those who had undergone such training and who initiated others into this way of hearing the world—when they spoke of the music of the spheres. It was not a mere comparison; it was the direct perception and realization of what is otherwise hidden behind things. This veil of nature shatters before the spiritual ears, and the harmony hidden behind this veil resounds. This is also what Goethe means with his words in the “Prologue in Heaven.” What is written there is not merely a phrase. It would be a phrase if Goethe were speaking of a “resounding sun.” But no, he says: “The sun resounds in the ancient manner with a song of competition in the brotherly spheres, and it completes its prescribed journey with a thunderous roar.” These are the words of the World Spirit resounding from the music of the worlds. Goethe continues this theme later, where he says: “Resounding, the new day is already born for spiritual ears.” When a person develops this ability, the spiritual becomes conscious to them. Then the thought lies before their soul as perceptibly as the body does for the ordinary person.

[ 15 ] Body, soul, and spirit are the three components of the human being. Human beings are, first and foremost, physical beings. Within them, the soul lives and develops. And within the soul, in turn, the spirit of the entire world—to the extent that human beings can grasp it—is reflected and comes to life as a third component. From the outside to the inside and from the inside back out again—that is the path that human beings take from the body through the soul to the spirit. What, then, gives us the very possibility of having such a soul life? We owe this possibility to the fact that we can live in the soul. We live in pleasure and suffering, in pain and joy, even if we do not yet perceive this outwardly. We also live in our body, but we perceive it from the outside as well. There is a difference between these two realms of existence. In the spiritual-scientific worldview, what surrounds us—just as the external physical world initially surrounds us—is called “existence of complete consciousness.” Our consciousness is initially connected to physical existence. This consciousness exists only on the physical plane, and by the physical plane we mean what unfolds around us for the senses. Something else exists within our soul. This is called life, and this life is referred to as existence on the so-called astral plane. The physical plane and the astral plane are the two realms in which human beings live. On the physical plane, human beings are conscious; on the astral plane, they merely exist. There, they are not yet consciously aware of the things that exist outside of themselves. But they live in the soul or astral realm.

[ 16 ] The third form of existence is spiritual existence. As people living in the present, we generally do not yet live in this form—or, at most, only partially. But as we immerse ourselves in the spirit, this spirit itself gradually unites with our soul, and we might say that this soul spreads out over the entire environment, growing ever larger and larger. When a human being grasps the external world, comprehends the meaning and spirit of the external world, then he is no longer merely confined within himself, but boldly steps out of himself and connects with the things around him. Compare, in this regard, the animal with the human being. The animal, so to speak, lives entirely within its soul. It does not form concepts of the environment. It does not extend its soul beyond the spiritual realm of the world. This is also what distinguishes human beings from animals. The animal, so to speak, lives and moves within its own inner world. Human beings, however, step out of their inner world. We could also describe this in the following terms: Human beings step outside of themselves. Human beings always possess a soul and an inner life. This inner life is always present. But human development consists in the fact that they extend this inner life beyond their environment, beyond what surrounds them, beyond the spirit, so that it flows out and radiates throughout the entire world. When this happens, the human soul unites with the Eternal. Then this marriage of the human soul with the Eternal, the World Spirit, takes place. Then, when this union of the human being with the eternal World Spirit occurs, this entire sum of pleasure and suffering, this entire world of drives, desires, and passions within us—the entire astral body of the human being—is transformed. Those pleasures, those instincts of the human being that are given to him just as he emerged from the hand of nature—which he shares with the animal—all of this soul life disappears and fades away and, as such, belongs to the transitory. Try to imagine for a moment what kind of instincts, sufferings, and joys live within a human being and how this life unfolds within them. They are connected to the transitory.

[ 17 ] Now human beings begin to step out of the sphere of the transitory. They refine their instincts and desires, their passions; they cease to find pleasure or displeasure solely in what is bound to a particular place and time. He rises to what lies behind things and is hidden by the veil of the sensory world. This is significant when a person begins to find joy not only in what his eyes present to him, but also in what descends into his soul from the spiritual world through the impressions of his eyes. This is a great moment in human development, when a person no longer merely follows his sensory instincts but is guided by supersensory motives, by moral ideas and concepts that penetrate not from the outside but from the spirit. Just as the body is permeated by the soul, so the soul is permeated by the spirit. Consider human beings at certain earlier stages of development; there you will find them as physical beings, and these are permeated by the soul. While the human being stands before you as a body, he lives out his existence through his drives and passions. More and more of the supersensible enters into the soul. It becomes permeated with the spiritual. This latter process—that is, when the soul is gradually permeated by the spiritual—lifts the soul out of time and space; and to the extent that there is something sublime in the soul that transcends time and space, to that extent there is something imperishable within it, and to that extent it remains as an imperishable effect of itself. Thus you see that just as the soul is embedded in a body, so the spirit is embedded in the soul. And just as the soul’s embodiment in the body points to a distant past in which they were gradually united, so the soul’s union with the spirit points toward the future of humanity. This development takes place in stages. It begins with the spirit increasingly permeating the soul.

[ 18 ] Consider what the beginning of mental content is like in the soul. Imagine you have an object in front of you. You look at it as a sensory object. You turn around: the sensory object is no longer in front of you. But an image of this sensory object remains in front of you. We call this the mental image of the object—in a certain sense, the memory of it. This remains in the soul. This is the first element of how the spirit takes hold in the soul. It occurs in the form of memory. We could not take in anything of the spirit of our environment if we were not able to still know something about objects even when they are no longer before us. In memory, the first element of the spirit lives within the human being. And just as it is with regard to the objects of the environment, so it is with regard to one’s own soul. Let us just once make clear to ourselves what role memory plays in our inner life. The animal lives entirely in the present. Of course, the stages I describe and the distinctions I draw are more extreme than they actually are. Animals, too, must undergo a certain spiritual development, but one must resort to a certain degree of exaggeration in order to make the point clear. What the animal feels and experiences today is the most important thing for it. What initially constitutes the spiritualization of the entire being for human beings is their ability to live beyond the present. By bringing memory from our spiritual realm into our present, into our “today,” we spiritualize ourselves more and more; through this, we grasp the Spirit in its first element. I have the spiritual before me when I recall yesterday’s experiences. Memory is one of the most important factors in the spiritualization of the soul life. Memory now ties the thread to the spiritual-soul existence connected to the external world, which extends from birth to the present. If we could not remember past days, we would have very little spiritual content. There are still peoples today who lack such a memory. There are still peoples who forget the experiences they have in the cold and therefore must seek a protective covering anew every evening. To take up this memory and develop it more and more—that is what the person who strives for higher development seeks. Here begins the possibility of looking beyond our transitory existence, which is confined between birth and death.

[ 19 ] Imagine that you have made it a principle to bring meaning and reason into your life through remembrance—not merely to live in the present, but to learn more and more to view your entire life as a tableau before you, with the awareness that only from this—your entire temporal being—can flow what you wish to accomplish. If that is the case, and if this, in turn, is used to awaken inner forces—as I indicated earlier when I spoke of reviving the contents of the soul through contemplation—then we can push the retrospective view ever further, trying to make it more and more concrete, and trace it back to birth. It is possible to do this. But it requires infinite patience; we will, of course, discuss these methods further. Then one also perceives, from the soul, that which did not occur between birth and death. Then one learns to connect what takes place within this life—between birth and death—to other things. There, through my own inner contemplation in memory, I learn to connect my “today” to “yesterday” and to meaningfully link today’s effect with yesterday’s cause; there I learn to trace the inner thread of cause and effect within my soul. Then the very same force that guides me back into my present life leads me beyond birth. Because I have learned to observe cause and effect within the soul itself, what existed before birth—how a person lived before birth—becomes a lived experience. Through the gradual development of this sense, a person gains insight into previous lifetimes, and the law of reincarnation becomes a true reality for them. By sharpening our perception of the temporal aspect within the inner world, we acquire the spiritual capacity to make reincarnation a reality for ourselves. What do we do in this case? In this case, we imbue the soul with that which connects us to the soul-world. And thus our inner vision expands. While we grasp the spirit of the outer world through our understanding of it and pour out and spread our soul over the outer world, we spread awareness of the soul-world itself by transcending the limits of birth. In this way, our perspective expands more and more, and thus we look beyond what is bound to place and time toward what follows one after another in the sequence of time. From there, we then take hold of the core essence of the human being, which is imperishable and eternal.

[ 20 ] Human beings are becoming more and more spiritual. The first stage is when they move beyond the pleasures and sufferings of existence and develop feelings—something akin to pleasure and suffering—for the supersensible. The more they cultivate this, the more Plato’s beautiful saying rings true for them: The body is transitory because it feeds on the transitory, but the spirit is imperishable because it feeds on eternal nourishment. — Such is the relationship between body, soul, and spirit. The body perishes. What can be seen of a human being is returned to the earth at death. But what lives within a human being as pleasure and suffering—the soul—did not come into being at birth, but is linked to something that extends beyond birth. Thus, the existence of the soul extends beyond the boundaries of birth and death. But that which a human being takes in by stepping out of their soul once more and uniting with the spirit—that is what connects the soul itself to the eternal sources of existence. This deifies the soul. Thus, the human soul becomes visible outside the body. To the extent that it is bound to the body and is one with it, it is something transitory. When the soul unites with the spiritual, it thereby becomes more and more eternal and imperishable. This brings us to the point where we understand what human self-knowledge is, what true knowledge of the human inner being is.

[ 21 ] At first, a person experiences his soul within himself through pleasure and suffering, joy and pain. But then ideas arise in this soul, only to disappear again. Something comes to life there that is hidden from the mere senses. What comes to life in the soul, a person initially holds within himself as mere thought. But over the course of life, they connect this thought with their soul. They learn to feel and empathize with the spiritual, and ultimately come to cherish and love the spiritual, just as they previously cherished and loved only the sensory. Desire eventually extends to all that is spiritual. Selfishness transforms into selfless love for the imperishable. Selfishness captures a person’s love within the soul. But as we perceive it deeply within ourselves as spirit, it becomes clear to us that we find this self in the entire rest of the world, that we are connected to the entire rest of the world, and that just as we are born of the physical, it is equally true that, as spirit, we are born every moment from the spiritual universe, the spiritual-divine world. If, therefore, we seek our higher Self, which exists within us like a spark, then we will see the spiritual in our entire surroundings. This is the great wisdom that Vedanta philosophy has summarized in the saying: Tat tvam asi — That you are. — When a person becomes conscious of their spirit and begins their development by stepping out into the world, their self expands into the Spirit of the Universe, into a spiritual self-existence, and we are then, by our very nature, everywhere. Then what was merely intellectual understanding becomes, for us, spiritually resonant content, and this is the true elevation of the soul to the spirit—elevation into true spiritual life.

[ 22 ] There is a beginning to spiritual life, but it is barren and cold. There are people who are moved only by matters of the soul—people who rejoice and suffer only when it comes to matters of the soul, to pain and pleasure. They say that the spiritual remains something distant and cold. When they look up at the world of the stars, they find their thoughts about it abstract; but they remain barren and cold in their minds. But when the soul embraces the spirit, then we feel—we do not merely think with the universe—for then perception, through reason and understanding, is transformed into a spiritual grasp of the entire universe. What was once merely pleasure now becomes pleasure in the spiritual; what was love in the soul now becomes love for the spiritual-divine in the world. Our feeling, which we had locked away within, spreads out over the entire world. Our self flows out, and we become one with the Universal Spirit. We transcend the self, and we find ourselves once again in the Universal Spirit. This is something higher than mere thinking. In the realm of the soul, human beings have attained feeling. In the spiritual realm, they begin to be able to engage the intellect. But they will also reach the point where, through feeling, they will attain the Spirit. Then they will find themselves on the path to the Divine. This is the ladder they must climb through their own efforts to unite the soul with the Spirit, so that they may become one. This is true self-reflection. When we meet a friend and feel warmth in our hearts—not merely comprehending the divine Spirit that permeates the world with our intellect, but grasping, sensing, and feeling it with our hearts—then we advance through the mind and its wisdom toward the heart and its wisdom-love for the entire world. In this way we elevate ourselves by elevating our soul, and in this way we not only come to know our narrow-minded inner self, but we expand our self and find ourselves out in the world. It is often, often emphasized: Just look within yourself, and there you will find the God-man. — No, within oneself one can find only what one already possesses. If one wishes to find more within oneself, one must first develop this higher self, and one develops it by extending the higher self throughout the entire world. Those who have advised people to seek self-knowledge did not mean a idle contemplation of one’s inner self. This self-knowledge is meant as we have now understood it—as an ascent from the soul to the spirit. Then a person no longer feels any difference between themselves and an animal, a plant, or a stone. A universal sense of world brotherhood fills their heart. And then, and only then, when a person keeps this in mind, does he understand—as the ultimate goal of the development from the physical-soul to the spiritual-soul—the beautiful words of the poet, who was also a seer: “One succeeded; he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—himself!” And the theosophist adds: In this self, he finds the Divine, and that is precisely theosophy—divine wisdom—the act of lifting the heart and soul up to the Spirit in such a way that one succeeds in uniting wisdom with the Divine and possesses not merely understanding but a universal sense of the divine world.