MYSTICS OF THE
RENAISSANCE
AND
THEIR RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT
INCLUDING
MEISTER ECKHART, TAULER, PARACELSUS,
JACOB BOEHME, GIORDANO BRUNO,
AND OTHERS
BY
RUDOLF STEINER
Ph.D. (Vienna)
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY
BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY, M.A. (Cantab.)
[Illustration: Printer’s Logo]
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1911
COPYRIGHT, 1911
BY
MAX GYSI
MAX GYSI, Editor,
“Adyar,” Park Drive,
London, N. W.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD v
INTRODUCTION 1
MEISTER ECKHART 52
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 81
CARDINAL NICHOLAS OF CUSA 133
AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM AND THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS 182
VALENTINE WEIGEL AND JACOB BOEHME 223
GIORDANO BRUNO AND ANGELUS SILESIUS 246
AFTERWORD 269
FOREWORD
The matter which I am laying before the public in this book formed
the content of lectures which I delivered during last winter at the
Theosophical Library in Berlin. I had been requested by Gräfin and
Graf Brockdorff to speak upon Mysticism before an audience for whom
the matters thus dealt with constitute a vital question of the utmost
importance. Ten years earlier I could not have ventured to fulfil such
a request. Not that the realm of ideas, to which I now give expression,
did not even then live actively within me. For these ideas are already
fully contained in my _Philosophy of Freedom_ (Berlin, 1894. Emil
Felber). But to give expression to this world of ideas in such wise
as I do to-day, and to make it the basis of an exposition as is done
on the following pages--to do this requires something quite other than
merely to be immovably convinced of the intellectual truth of these
ideas. It demands an intimate acquaintance with this realm of ideas,
such as only many years of life can give. Only now, after having
enjoyed that intimacy, do I venture to speak in such wise as will be
found in this book.
Any one who does not approach my world of ideas without preconceptions
is sure to discover therein contradiction after contradiction. I have
quite recently (Berlin, 1900. S. Cronbach) dedicated a book upon the
world conceptions of the nineteenth century to that great naturalist,
Ernst Haeckel, and closed it with a defence of his thought-world.
In the following expositions, I speak about the Mystics, from Master
Eckhart to Angelus Silesius, with a full measure of devotion and
acquiescence. Other “contradictions,” which one critic or another may
further count up against me, I shall not mention at all. It does not
surprise me to be condemned from one side as a “Mystic” and from the
other as a “Materialist.” When I find that the Jesuit Father Müller has
solved a difficult chemical problem, and I therefore in this particular
matter agree with him unreservedly, one can hardly condemn me as an
adherent of Jesuitism without being reckoned a fool by those who have
insight.
Whoever goes his own road, as I do, must needs allow many a
misunderstanding about himself to pass. That, however, he can put
up with easily enough. For such misunderstandings are, in the main,
inevitable in his eyes, when he recalls the mental type of those who
misjudge him. I look back, not without humorous feelings, upon many a
“critical” judgment that I have suffered in the course of my literary
career. At the outset, matters went fairly well. I wrote about Goethe
and his philosophy. What I said there appeared to many to be of such
a nature that they could file it in their mental pigeon-holes. This
they did by saying: “A work such as Rudolf Steiner’s _Introduction to
Goethe’s Writings upon Natural Science_ may, without hesitation, be
described as the best that has been written upon this question.”
When, later, I published an independent work, I had already grown
a good bit more stupid. For now a well meaning critic offered the
advice: “Before he goes on reforming further and gives his _Philosophy
of Freedom_ to the world, he should be pressingly advised first to work
himself through to an understanding of these two philosophers [Hume and
Kant].” The critic unfortunately knows only so much as he is himself
able to read in Kant and Hume; practically, therefore, he simply
advises me to learn to see no more in these thinkers than he himself
sees. When I have attained that, he will be satisfied with me. Then
when my _Philosophy and Freedom_ appeared, I was found to be as much in
need of correction as the most ignorant beginner. This I received from
a gentleman who probably nothing else impelled to the writing of books
except that he had not understood innumerable foreign ones. He gravely
informs me that I should have noticed my mistakes if I had “made more
thorough studies in psychology, logic, and the theory of knowledge”;
and he enumerates forthwith the books I ought to read to become as wise
as himself: “Mill, Sigwart, Wundt, Riehl, Paulsen, B. Erdmann.” What
amused me especially was this advice from a man who was so “impressed”
with the way he “understood” Kant that he could not even imagine how
any man could have read Kant and yet judge otherwise than himself. He
therefore indicates to me the exact chapters in question in Kant’s
writings from which I may be able to obtain an understanding of Kant as
deep and as thorough as his own.
I have cited here a couple of typical criticisms of my world of ideas.
Though in themselves unimportant, yet they seem to me to point, as
symptoms, to facts which present themselves to-day as serious obstacles
in the path of any one aiming at literary activity in regard to the
higher problems of knowledge. Thus I must go on my way, indifferent,
whether one man gives me the good advice to read Kant, or another
hunts me as a heretic because I agree with Haeckel. And so I have
also written upon Mysticism, wholly indifferent as to how a faithful
and believing materialist may judge of me. I would only like--so that
printers’ ink may not be wasted wholly without need--to inform any
one who may perchance advise me to read Haeckel’s _Riddle of the
Universe_, that during the last few months I have delivered about
thirty lectures upon the said work.
I hope to have shown in this book that one may be a faithful adherent
of the scientific conception of the world and yet be able to seek out
those paths to the Soul along which Mysticism, rightly understood,
leads. I even go further and say: Only he who knows the Spirit, in
the sense of true Mysticism, can attain a full understanding of the
facts of Nature. But one must not confuse true Mysticism with the
“pseudo-mysticism” of ill-ordered minds. How Mysticism can err, I have
shown in my _Philosophy of Freedom_ (page 131 _et seq._).
RUDOLF STEINER.
BERLIN, _September, 1901_.
INTRODUCTION
There are certain magical formulæ which operate throughout the
centuries of Man’s mental history in ever new ways. In Greece one such
formula was regarded as an oracle of Apollo. It runs: “Know Thyself.”
Such sentences seem to conceal within them an unending life. One comes
upon them when following the most diverse roads in mental life. The
further one advances, the more one penetrates into the knowledge of
things, the deeper appears the significance of these formulæ. In many
a moment of our brooding and thinking, they flash out like lightning,
illuminating our whole inner being. In such moments there quickens
within us a feeling as if we heard the heart-beat of the evolution
of mankind. How close do we not feel ourselves to personalities of
the past, when the feeling comes over us, through one of their winged
words, that they are revealing to us that they, too, had had such
moments!
We feel ourselves then brought into intimate touch with these
personalities. For instance, we learn to know Hegel intimately when,
in the third volume of his _Lectures on the Philosophy of History_ we
come across the words: “Such stuff, one may say, the abstractions that
we contemplate when we allow the philosophers to quarrel and battle in
our study, and make it out to be thus or so--mere verbal abstractions!
No! No! These are deeds of the world-spirit and therefore of destiny.
Therein the Philosophers are nearer to the Master than are those who
feed themselves with the crumbs of the spirit; they read or write the
Cabinet Orders in the original at once; they are constrained to write
them out along with Him. The Philosophers are the Mystæ who, at the
crisis in the inmost shrine, were there and took part.” When Hegel
said this, he had experienced one of those moments just spoken of. He
uttered the phrases when, in the course of his remarks, he had reached
the close of Greek philosophy; and through them he showed that once,
like a gleam of lightning, the meaning of the Neoplatonic philosophy,
of which he was just treating, had flashed upon him. In the instant
of this flash, he had become intimate with minds like Plotinus and
Proklus; and we become intimate with him when we read his words.
We become intimate, too, with that solitary thinker, the Pastor of
Zschopau, M. Valentin Weigel, when we read the opening words of his
little book _Know Thyself_, written in 1578: “We read in the wise men
of old the useful saying, ‘Know Thyself,’ which, though it be right
well used about worldly manners, as thus: ‘regard well thyself, what
thou art, seek in thine own bosom, judge thyself and lay no blame on
others,’ a saying, I repeat, which, though thus used of human life and
manners, may well and appropriately be applied by us to the natural and
supernatural knowing of the whole man; so indeed, that man shall not
only consider himself and thereby remember how he should bear himself
before people, but that he shall also know his own nature, inner and
outer, in spirit and in Nature; whence he cometh and whereof he is
made, to what end he is ordained.” So, from points of view peculiar to
himself, Valentin Weigel attained to insight which in his mind summed
itself up in this oracle of Apollo.
A similar path to insight and a like relation to the saying “Know
Thyself” may be ascribed to a series of deep-natured thinkers,
beginning with Master Eckhart (1250-1327), and ending with Angelus
Silesius (1624-1677), among whom may be found also Valentin Weigel
himself.
All these thinkers have in common a strong sense of the fact that in
man’s knowing of himself there rises a sun which illuminates something
very different from the mere accidental, separated personality of the
beholder. What Spinoza became conscious of in the ethereal heights
of pure thought,--_viz._, that “the human soul possesses an adequate
knowledge of the Eternal and Infinite Being of God,”--that same
consciousness lived in them as immediate feeling; and self-knowledge
was to them the path leading to this Eternal and Infinite Being. It was
clear to them that self-knowledge in its true form enriched man with a
new sense, which unlocked for him a world standing in relation to the
world accessible to him without this new sense as does the world of one
possessing physical sight to that of a blind man.
It would be difficult to find a better description of the import
of this new sense than the one given by J. G. Fichte in his Berlin
Lectures (1813):
“Imagine a world of men born blind, to whom all objects and their
relations are known only through the sense of touch. Go amongst
them and speak to them of colours and other relations, which are
rendered visible only through light. Either you are talking to them of
nothing,--and if they say this, it is the luckier, for thus you will
soon see your mistake, and, if you cannot open their eyes, cease your
useless talking,--or, for some reason or other, they _will_ insist
upon giving some meaning or other to what you say; then they can only
interpret it in relation to what they know by touch. They will seek to
feel, they will imagine they do feel light and colour, and the other
incidents of visibility, they will invent something for themselves,
deceive themselves with something within the world of touch, which
they will call colour. Then they will misunderstand, distort, and
misinterpret it.”
The same thing applies to what the thinkers we are speaking of sought
after. They beheld a new sense opening in self-knowledge, and this
sense yielded, according to their experiences, views of things which
are simply non-existent for one who does not see in self-knowledge
what distinguishes it from all other kinds of knowing. One in whom
this new sense has not been opened, believes that self-knowing, or
self-perception, is the same thing as perception through the outer
senses, or through any other means acting from without. He thinks:
“Knowing is knowing, perceiving is perceiving.” Only in the one case
the object is something lying in the world outside, in the other this
object is his own soul. He finds words merely, or at best, abstract
thoughts, in that which for those who see more deeply is the very
foundation of their inner life; namely, in the proposition: that in
every other kind of knowing or perception we have the object perceived
outside of ourselves, while in self-knowledge or self-perception we
stand within that object; that we see every other object coming to us
already complete and finished off, while in ourselves we, as actors
and creators, are weaving that which we observe within us. This may
appear to be nothing but a merely verbal explanation, perhaps even a
triviality; it may appear, on the other hand, as a higher light which
illuminates every other cognition. One to whom it appears in the first
way, is in the position of a blind man, to whom one says: there is
a glittering object. He hears the words, but for him the glitter is
not there. He might unite in himself the whole sum of knowledge of
his time; but if he does not feel and realise the significance of
self-knowledge, then it is all, in the higher sense, a blind knowledge.
The world, outside of and independent of us, exists for us by
communicating itself to our consciousness. What is thus made known must
needs be expressed in the language peculiar to ourselves. A book, the
contents of which were offered in a language unknown to us, would for
us be without meaning. Similarly, the world would be meaningless for us
did it not speak to us in our own tongue; and the same language which
reaches us from things, we also hear from within ourselves. But in that
case, it is we ourselves who speak. The really important point is that
we should correctly apprehend the transposition which occurs when we
close our perception against external things and listen only to that
which then speaks from within. But to do this needs this new sense. If
it has not been awakened, we believe that in what is thus told us about
ourselves we are hearing only about something external to us; we fancy
that somewhere there is hidden something which is speaking to us in the
same way as external things speak. But if we possess this new sense,
then we know that these perceptions differ essentially from those
relating to external things. Then we realise that this new sense does
not leave what it perceives outside of itself, as the eye leaves the
object it sees; but that it can take up its object wholly into itself,
leaving no remainder. If I see a thing, that thing remains outside
of me; if I perceive myself, then I myself enter into my perception.
Whoever seeks for something more of himself than what is perceived,
shows thereby that for him the real content in the perception has not
come to light. Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), has expressed this truth
in the apt words: “If I were a king and knew it not, then should I be
no king. If I do not shine forth for myself in my own self-perception,
then for myself I do not exist. But if for myself I do shine out,
then I possess myself also in my perception, in my own most deeply
original being. There remains no residue of myself left outside of my
perception.”
J. G. Fichte, in the following words, vigorously points to the
difference between self-perception and every other kind of perception:
“The majority of men could be more easily brought to believe themselves
a lump of lava in the moon than an ‘ego.’ Whoever is not at one with
himself as to this, understands no thorough-going philosophy and
has need of none. Nature, whose machine he is, will guide him in all
the things he has to do without any sort of added help from him. For
philosophising, self-reliance is needed, and this one can only give to
oneself. We ought not to want to see without the eye; but also we ought
not to maintain that it is the eye which sees.”
Thus the perception of oneself is also the awakening of oneself. In
our cognition we combine the being of things with our own being. The
communications, which things make to us in our own language, become
members of our own selves. An object in front of me is not separated
from me, once I have known it. What I am able to receive from it
becomes part and parcel of my own being. If, now, I awaken my own
self, if I become aware of the content of my own inner being, then I
also awaken to a higher mode of being, that which from without I have
made part of my own being. The light that falls upon me at my awakening
falls also upon whatever I have made my own from the things of the
outside world. A light springs up within me and illumines me, and with
me all that I have cognised of the world. Whatever I might know would
remain blind knowledge, did not this light fall upon it. I might search
the world through and through with my perception; still the world would
not be that which in me it must become, unless that perception were
awakened in me to a higher mode of being.
That which I add to things through this awakening is not a new idea, is
not an enrichment of the content of my knowing; it is an uplifting of
the knowledge, of the cognition, to a higher level, where everything is
suffused with a new glory. So long as I do not raise my consciousness
to this level, all knowledge continues to be for me, in the higher
sense, valueless. The things are there without my presence. They have
their being in themselves. What possible meaning could there be in my
linking with their being, which they have outside and apart from me,
another spiritual existence in addition, which repeats the things over
again within me? If only a mere repetition of things were involved, it
would be senseless to carry it out. But, really, a mere repetition is
only involved so long as I have not awakened, along with my own self,
the mental content of these things upon a higher level. When this
occurs, then I have not merely repeated within myself the being of
things, but I have brought it to a new birth on a higher level. With
the awakening of my self, there is accomplished a spiritual re-birth of
the things of the world.
What the things reveal in this re-birth did not previously belong
to them. There, without, stands the tree. I take it up into my
consciousness. I throw my inner light upon that which I have thus
conceived. The tree becomes in me more than it is outside. That in it
which finds entrance through the gate of the senses is taken up into a
conscious content. An ideal replica of the tree is within me, and that
has infinitely more to say about the tree than what the tree itself,
outside, can tell me. Then, for the first time there shines out from
within me, towards the tree, what the tree is. The tree is now no
longer the isolated being that it is out there in space. It becomes
a link in the entire conscious world that lives in me. It links its
content with other ideas that are in me. It becomes a member of the
whole world of ideas that embraces the vegetable kingdom; it takes its
place, further, in the series of all that lives.
Another example: I throw a stone in a horizontal direction away from
me. It moves in a curved line and after some time falls to the ground.
I see it in successive moments of time in different places. Through
observation and reflection I acquire the following: During its motion
the stone is subject to different influences. If it were subject only
to the influence of the impulse which I imparted to it, it would go
on flying for ever in a straight line, without altering its velocity.
But now the earth exerts an influence upon it. It attracts the stone
towards itself. If, instead of throwing the stone, I had simply let it
go, it would have fallen vertically to earth; and its velocity in doing
so would have constantly increased. From the mutual interaction of
these two influences arises that which I actually see.
Let us assume that I could not in thought separate the two influences,
and from this orderly combination put together again in thought what
I see: in that case, the matter would end with the actual happening.
It would be mentally a blind staring at what happened; a perception of
the successive positions which the stone occupies. But in actual fact,
matters do _not_ stop there. The whole occurrence takes place twice.
Once outside, and then my eye sees it; then my mind causes the whole
happening to repeat itself again, in a mental or conscious manner. My
inner sense must be directed upon the mental occurrence, which my eye
does not see, and then it becomes clear to that sense that I, by my own
inner power, awaken that occurrence as a mental one.
Again, another sentence of J. G. Fichte’s may be quoted which brings
this fact clearly before the mind. “Thus the new sense is the sense
for the spirit; that for which there exists only spirit and absolutely
nothing else, and for which also the ‘other,’ the given being, assumes
the form of spirit and transforms itself into spirit, for which
therefore _being_ in its own proper form has actually disappeared....
There has been the faculty of seeing with this sense ever since men
have existed, and all that is great and excellent in the world, which
alone upholds humanity, originates in what has been seen by means of
this sense. It is, however, not the case that this sense has been
perceived or known in its difference and its contrast with that other,
ordinary sense. The impressions of the two senses melted into one
another, life fell apart into these two halves without a bond of union.”
The bond of union is created by the fact that the inner sense grasps
in its spirituality the spiritual element which it awakens in its
intercourse with the outer world. That which we take up into our
consciousness from outside things thereby ceases to appear as a mere
meaningless repetition. It appears as something new over against that
which only external perception can give. The simple occurrence of
throwing the stone, and my perception thereof, appear in a higher
light when I make clear to myself the kind of task which my inner sense
has to perform in regard to the whole thing. In order to fit together
in thought the two influences and their modes of action, an amount of
mental content is needed which I must already have acquired when I
cognise the flying stone. I therefore apply a spiritual content already
stored up within me to something that confronts me in the external
world. And this occurrence in the external world fits itself into the
spiritual content already present. It reveals itself in its own special
individuality as an expression of this content.
Through the understanding of my inner sense, there is thus disclosed
to me the nature of the relation that obtains between the content of
this sense and the things of the external world. Fichte would say that
without the understanding of this sense, the world falls apart for me
into two halves: into things outside of me, and into pictures of these
things within me. The two halves become united when the inner self
understands itself and consequently recognises clearly what sort of
illumination it throws upon things in the cognitive process. And Fichte
could also venture to say that this inner sense sees only Spirit. For
it perceives how the Spirit enlightens the sense-world by making it
part and parcel of the spiritual world. The inner sense causes the
outer sense-world to arise within itself as a spiritual being on a
higher level. An external object is completely known when there is no
part of it which has not thus undergone a spiritual re-birth. Thus
every external object fits itself into a spiritual content, which,
when it has been grasped by the inner sense, shares the destiny of
self-knowledge. The spiritual content, which belongs to an object
through its illumination from within, merges itself wholly, like the
very self, into the world of ideas, leaving no remainder behind.
These developments contain nothing which is susceptible or even in need
of logical proof. They are nothing but the results of inner experience.
Whoever calls into question this content, shows only that he is lacking
in this inner experience. It is impossible to dispute with him; as
little could one discuss colour with a blind man.
It must not, however, be contended that this inner experience is made
possible only through the special endowment of a few chosen people.
It is a common property. Every one can enter upon the path to this
experience who does not of his own will shut himself against it. This
closing up of oneself against it, is, however, common enough. And in
dealing with objections raised in this direction, one always has the
feeling that it is not so much a matter of people being unable to
attain this inner experience, as of their having hopelessly blocked the
entrance to it with all kinds of logical spiders’ webs. It is almost as
if some one looking through a telescope and discovering a new planet
should yet deny its existence because his calculations have shown that
there can be no planet in that position.
But with all this there is still in most people the clearly marked
feeling that all that really lies in the being of things cannot
be completely given in what the outer senses and the analysing
understanding can cognise. They then believe that the remainder so
left over must be just as much in the external world as are the
things of our perceptions themselves. They think that there must be
something which remains unknown to cognition. What they ought to
attain by again perceiving with the inner sense, on a higher plane,
the very object which they have already cognised and grasped with
the understanding,--this they transfer as something inaccessible and
unknown into the external world. Then they talk of the limits of
knowledge which prevent our reaching the “thing-in-itself.” They talk
of the unknown “being” of things. That this very “being” of things
shines out when the inner sense lets its light fall upon the things, is
what they will not recognise. The famous “Ignorabimus” speech of the
scientist, Du Bois-Reymond, in the year 1876, furnished a particularly
blatant example of this error. We are supposed to be able to get
in every direction only so far as to be able to see in all natural
processes the manifestations of “matter.” What “matter” itself is, we
are supposed to be unable to know. Du Bois-Reymond contends that we
shall never succeed in penetrating to wherever it is that “matter”
leads its ghostly life in space. The reason why we cannot get there
lies, however, in the fact that there is nothing whatsoever to be
looked for there. Whoever speaks like Du Bois-Reymond must have a
feeling that the knowledge of Nature yields results which point to a
something further and other which Nature-knowledge itself cannot give.
But he refuses to follow the road,--the road of inner experience,
which leads to this other. Therefore he stands at a complete loss
before the question of “matter” as before a dark riddle. In him who
treads the path of inner experience, objects attain to a new birth;
and that in them which remains unknown to outer experience then shines
forth.
In such wise the inner being of man obtains light not only as regards
itself but also as regards external things. From this point of view an
endless perspective opens out before man’s knowledge. Within him shines
a light whose illumination is not restricted to that which is within
him. It is a sun which lights up all reality at once. Something makes
its appearance in us which links us with the whole world. No longer
are we simply isolated, chance human beings, no longer this or that
individual. The entire world reveals itself in us. It unveils to us
its own coherence; and it unveils to us how we ourselves as individuals
are bound up with it. From out of self-knowledge is born knowledge of
the world. And our own limited individuality merges itself spiritually
into the great interconnected world-whole, because in us something has
come to life that reaches out beyond this individuality, that embraces
along with it everything of which this individuality forms a part.
Thinking which does not block up its own road to inner experience
with logical preconceptions always comes, in the long run, to a
recognition of the entity that rules in us and connects us with the
entire world, because through this entity we overcome the opposition
of “inner” and “outer” in regard to man. Paul Asmus, the keen-sighted
philosopher, who died young, expressed himself as follows about this
position (_cp._ his book _Das Ich und das Ding an Sich_, p. 14 _et
seq._):--“Let us make it clear by an example: imagine a piece of sugar;
it is square, sweet, impenetrable, etc., etc., these are one and all
qualities which we understand; one thing, however, hovers before us
as something totally different, that we do not understand, that is
so different from ourselves that we cannot penetrate into it without
losing ourselves; from the mere surface of which thought starts back
afraid. This one thing is the unknown bearer of all these qualities;
the thing-in-itself, which constitutes the inmost self of the object.
Thus Hegel rightly says that the entire content of our perception is
related as mere accident to this obscure subject, while we, without
penetrating into its depths, merely attach determinations to what it is
in itself,--which ultimately, since we do not know the thing itself,
remain merely subjective and have no objective value. Conceptual
thought, on the other hand, has no such unknowable subject, whose
determinations might be mere accidents, but the objective subject
falls within the concept. If I cognise anything, then it is present
in its entire fulness in my conception; I am at home in the inmost
shrine of its being, not because it has no proper being-in-itself of
its own, but because it compels me to re-think its concept, in virtue
of that necessity of the concept which hovers over us both and appears
subjectively in me and objectively in the concept itself. Through this
re-thinking there reveals itself to us at the same time, as Hegel
says,--just as this is our own subjective activity--the true nature of
the object.” So can speak only a man who is able to illuminate the life
of thought with the light of inner experience.
In my _Philosophy of Freedom_ (Berlin, 1894, Verlag Emil Felber),
starting from other points of view, I have also pointed out the
root-fact of the inner life (p. 46): “It is therefore unquestionable:
in our thinking we hold the world-process by one corner, where we must
be present, if it is to come about at all. And that is just the very
thing we are here concerned with. That is just the reason why things
seem to confront me so mysteriously: that I am so without any share in
their coming into existence. I simply find them there; in thinking,
however, I know how it is done. Hence one can find no more original
starting point for a consideration of the world-process than that of
thought.”
For one who looks thus upon the inner life of man, it is also
obvious what is the meaning of human cognition within the whole
world-process. It is not a mere empty accompaniment to the rest of the
world happenings. It would be such if it represented merely an ideal
repetition of what is outwardly present. But in cognition something
is accomplished which accomplishes itself nowhere in the outer world:
the world-process sets before itself its own spiritual being. The
world-process would be to all eternity a mere half-thing, if it did not
attain to this confrontation. Therewithal man’s inner experience finds
its place in the objective world-process; and without it that process
would be incomplete.
It is apparent that only the life which is ruled by the inner sense,
man’s highest spiritual life in its most proper sense,--it is this life
only which can thus raise man above himself. For only in this life does
the being of things unveil itself before itself. The matter lies quite
differently in regard to the lower perceptive power. For instance,
the eye which meditates the seeing of an object is the theatre of a
process which, in contrast to the inner life, is exactly like any other
external process. My organs are members of the spacial world like other
things, and their perceptions are processes in time like any others.
Further, their being only appears when they are sunk into the inner
life. I thus live a double life; the life of an object among other
objects, which lives within its own embodiment and perceives through
its organs what lies outside this embodiment; and above this life
a higher life, that knows no such inside and outside, that extends,
stretching and bridging over both the outside world and itself. I shall
therefore be forced to say: at one time I am an individual, a limited
“self”; at another time I am a general, universal “Self.” This, too,
Paul Asmus has expressed in excellent words (_cp._ his book: _Die
indogermanischen Religionen in den Hauptpunkten ihrer Entwickelung_, p.
29 of Vol. I.):
“The activity of merging ourselves in something else, is what we
call ‘thinking’; in thinking, the ego has fulfilled its concept, it
has given itself up as a single thing; therefore, in thinking do we
find ourselves in a sphere which is alike for all, for the principle
of separateness which is involved in the relation of our ‘self’ to
that which is other than itself has vanished in the activity of the
self-cancelling of the single ‘self,’ and there remains then only the
‘Self-hood’ common to all.”
Spinoza has exactly the same thing in view when he describes, as the
highest activity of knowing, that which “advances from an adequate
conception of the real nature of some of the attributes of God to an
adequate knowledge of the nature of things.” This advancing is no other
than the illumination of things with the light of inner experience.
Spinoza describes in glowing colours the life in this inner experience:
“The highest virtue of the soul is to know God, or to obtain insight
into things in the third--the highest--mode of knowing. This virtue
is the greater, the more the soul knows things by this method of
knowing; thus he who can grasp things in this mode of knowing attains
the highest human perfection and consequently becomes filled with the
highest joy, accompanied, moreover, by the conceptions of himself and
of virtue. Thus there arises from this mode of knowing the highest
peace of soul that is possible.”
He who knows things in this way, transforms himself within himself;
for his single separated “self” becomes at such moments absorbed
by the universal “Self”; all beings appear not to a single limited
individual in subordinated importance, they appear to “themselves.”
On this level there remains no difference between Plato and me; what
separated us belongs to a lower level of cognition. We are separated
only as individuals; the individual which works within us is one and
the same. But about this fact it is impossible to argue with one who
has no experience of it. He will everlastingly emphasise: Plato and you
are two. That this duality, that all multiplicity, is reborn as unity
in the outbursting life of the highest level of knowledge: that cannot
be proved, that must be experienced. Paradoxical as it may sound, it
is the truth: the idea which Plato conceived and the like idea which
I conceive are not two ideas. It is one and the same idea. And there
are not two ideas: one in Plato’s head and one in mine; but in the
higher sense Plato’s head and mine interpenetrate each other; all heads
interpenetrate which grasp one and the same idea; and this idea is only
once there as a single idea. It is there; and the heads all go to one
and the same place in order to have this idea in them.
The transformation that is brought about in the whole being of man
when he learns to see things thus, is indicated in beautiful words by
the Hindu poem, the Bhagavad-Gîtâ, about which Wilhelm von Humboldt
said that he was thankful to the fate which had allowed him to live
long enough to become acquainted with this work. In this poem, the
inner light declares: “An eternal ray from myself, having attained a
distinct existence in the world of personal life, draws around itself
the five senses and the individual soul, which belong to nature. When
the spirit, shining from above, embodies itself in space and time,
or when it quits embodiment, it seizes upon things and carries them
away with it, as the zephyr seizes the perfumes of the flowers and
bears them away with it. The inner light rules the ear, touch, taste
and smell, as also the emotions: it knits together the link between
itself and the objects of the senses. The ignorant know not when the
inner light shines forth or is extinguished, nor when it is married to
objects; only he who partakes of the inner light can know thereof.”
So strongly does the Bhagavad-Gîtâ insist upon the transformation of
the man, that it says of the wise man that he can no longer err, no
longer sin. If, apparently, he errs or sins, then he must illuminate
his thoughts or his actions with a light wherein that no longer appears
as error or as sin which to the ordinary consciousness appears as such.
“He who has raised himself and whose knowledge is of the purest kind,
he kills not, nor does he stain himself, even though he should have
slain another.” This points only to the same basic mood of the soul
flowing from the highest knowledge, of which Spinoza, after having
described it in his _Ethics_, breaks out into the passionate words:
“Here is concluded that which I aimed to bring forward in regard to the
power of the soul over its affections or in regard to the freedom of
the soul. Hence it is clear how very greatly the wise man is superior
to the ignorant, and how much more powerful than he who is ruled only
by his lusts. For the ignorant is not merely driven hither and thither
by external causes in many ways and never attains to the true peace of
soul, but he also lives in ignorance of himself, of God and of things,
and when his suffering ceases, his existence ceases also; while on the
other hand, the wise man, as such, feels hardly any disturbance in his
spirit and ever enjoys the true peace of the soul. Even if the road
which I have outlined as leading thereto appears very difficult, still
it can be found. And well may it be difficult, because it is so seldom
found. For how could it be possible, if salvation lay close at hand and
could be found without great trouble, that it should be neglected by
almost all? Yet all that is noble is as difficult as it is rare.”
Goethe has indicated in monumental form the point of view of the
highest knowledge in the words: “If I know my relation to myself and
to the outer world, I call it truth. And thus every one can have his
own truth, and yet it is always one and the same.” Each has his own
truth: because each is an individual, separate being, beside and along
with others. These other beings act upon him through his organs. From
the individual standpoint at which he is placed, and according to the
constitution of his power of perception, he builds up his own truth
for himself in intercourse with the things around him. He acquires his
relation to things. If, then, he enters into self-knowledge, if he
learns to know his relation to himself, then his special separate truth
is merged in the universal Truth; and this universal Truth is in all
the same.
The understanding of the raising of the individual, of the single self,
into the Universal Self in the personality, is regarded by deeper
natures as the secret which reveals itself in the inmost heart of man
as the root-mystery of life. And Goethe has found an apt expression for
this: “And so long as thou hast not that, this: Die and Become! Then
thou art but a melancholy guest upon this dark earth.”
Not a mere repetition in thought, but a real part of the world-process,
is that which goes on in man’s inner life. The world would not be what
it is if the factor belonging thereto in the human soul did not play
its part. And if one calls the highest which is attainable by man the
Divine, then one must say that this Divine is not present as something
external, to be repeated pictorially in the human mind, but that this
Divine is awakened in man. Angelus Silesius has found the right words
for this: “I know that without me God can live no instant; if I become
nothing, He must of necessity give up the ghost.” “Without me God
may make no single smallest worm: if I do not sustain it with Him,
then it must straightway perish.” Only he can make such an assertion
who presupposes that in man something comes to light, without which
external being cannot exist. If everything pertaining to the “worm”
were there present without man, then one could not possibly say that it
must perish if man did not sustain it.
The innermost kernel of the world comes to life as spiritual content in
self-knowledge. The experience of self-knowledge means for man working
and weaving within the kernel of the world. He who is permeated with
self-knowledge naturally carries out his own action in the light of
self-knowledge. Human action is--in general--determined by motives.
Robert Hamerling, the poet-philosopher, has rightly said (_Atomistik
des Willens_, p. 213):
“A man can indeed do what he wills--but he cannot will whatever he
pleases, because his will is determined by motives. He cannot will
whatever he pleases? Look again at these words more closely. Is there
any sensible meaning in them? Freedom of the will ought then to consist
in being able to will something without reason, without motive. But
what does willing mean other than the ‘having a reason’ for preferring
to do or endeavour to attain this, rather than that? To will something
without reason, without motive, would mean to will something ‘without
willing it.’ The concept of motive is inseparably bound up with that of
willing. Without a definite motive the will is an empty potentiality:
only through a motive does it become active and real. It is therefore
quite correct that man’s will is in so far not free as its direction is
always determined by the strongest motive.”
For all action that is not accomplished in the light of self-knowledge,
the motive, the reason for action, must needs be felt as a constraint.
But the matter is otherwise when the reason or motive is taken up
into self-knowledge. Then this reason becomes a part of the self.
The willing is no longer determined; it determines itself. The
law-abidingness, the motives of willing, now no longer rule over
the one who wills, but are one and the same with this willing. To
illuminate the laws of one’s action with the light of self-observation
means to overcome all constraint of motive. By so doing, will transfers
itself into the realm of freedom.
It is not all human action which bears the marks of freedom. Only such
action is free action which in its every part is lighted up with the
glow of self-observation. And because self-observation raises the
individual self up to the Universal Self, therefore free action is
that which flows from the Universal Self. The old controversy whether
man’s will is free or subject to a universal law, to an unalterable
necessity, is a problem wrongly stated. All action is bound which is
done by a man as an individual; all action free which is accomplished
after his spiritual re-birth. Man, therefore, is not, in general,
either free or bound. He is both the one and the other. He is bound
before his re-birth; and he can become free through this re-birth. The
individual upward development of man consists in the transformation
of unfree willing into will possessing the character of freedom. The
man who has realised the law-abidingness of his action as his own,
has overcome the constraint of this law-abidingness and therewith of
un-freedom. Freedom is not from the outset a fact of human existence,
but a goal thereof.
With the attainment of free action, man resolves a contradiction
between the world and himself. His own deeds become deeds of universal
being. He feels himself in the fullest harmony with this universal
being. He feels every discord between himself and another as the
outcome of a not yet fully awakened self. But such is the fate of
the self, that only in its separation from the whole can it find its
contact with this whole. Man would not be man if he were not shut off
as an individual self from everything else; but also he is not man in
the highest sense if he does not, as such a shut-off and isolated self,
widen himself out again into the Universal Self. It belongs through
and through to the nature of man that it should overcome an inherent
contradiction which has lain therein from the beginning.
Any one who regards spirit as, in the main, logical understanding,
may well feel his blood run cold at the idea that objects should be
supposed to undergo their re-birth in spirit. He will compare the
fresh, living flower, outside there in its fulness of colour, with the
cold, faded, schematic thought of the flower. He will feel himself
particularly ill at ease with the conception that the man who draws
his motives from the solitude of his own self-consciousness is more
free than the original, naïve personality which acts from its immediate
impulses, from the fulness of its own nature. To one who sees only
one-sided logic, another man who sinks himself into his own inner being
will appear like a mere walking scheme of concepts, like a mere ghost
in contrast with the man who remains in his own natural individuality.
Such objections to the re-birth of things in spirit are especially to
be heard from those whose power of perception fails in the presence of
things with a purely spiritual content; although they are well provided
with healthy organs of sense-perception and with impulses and passions
full of life. As soon as they are called upon to perceive the purely
spiritual, the power to do so fails them; they can deal only with mere
conceptual husks, when even they are not limited to empty words. They
remain, therefore, in what concerns spiritual content, men of “dry,
abstract understanding.” But the man who in things purely spiritual
possesses a gift of perception like that in things of the senses,
finds life assuredly not the poorer when he has enriched it with its
spiritual content. If I look out upon a flower, why should its rich
colours lose aught whatever of their freshness, because not only does
my eye see the colours, but my inner sense also perceives the spiritual
being of the flower? Why should the life of my personality become
poorer, because I do not follow my passions and impulses in spiritual
blindness, but illuminate them throughout with the light of higher
knowledge? Not poorer, but fuller, richer, is that life which is given
back again in the spirit.
MEISTER ECKHART