The Story of My Life
GA 28
Chapter XI
[ 1 ] At the close of this first stage of my life it became a question of inner necessity for me to attain a clearly defined position in relation to certain tendencies of the human mind. One of these tendencies was mysticism. As this passed in review before my mind at the various epochs in the evolution of humanity – in Oriental Wisdom, in Neo-Platonism, in the Christian Middle Ages, in the endeavours of the Kabalists – it was only with the greatest difficulty that I, with my different temper of mind, could establish any relationship to it. [ 2 ] The mystic seemed to me to be a man who failed to come into right relation to the world of ideas, in which for me the spiritual has its existence. I felt that it was a deficiency in real spirituality when, in order to attain satisfaction in one's ideas, one plunges into an inner world void of all ideas. In this I could see no road to light, but rather a way to spiritual darkness. It seemed to me a powerlessness in cognition when the mind seeks to reach spiritual reality by an escape from ideas, which, indeed, the spirit does not actually reside, but through which it enters into human experience. [ 3 ] And yet something attracted me toward the mystical strivings of humanity. This was the character of the inner experience of the mystics. They desire living contact with the sources of human existence, not merely a view of these, as something external, by means of ideal observation. And yet it was also clear to me that one arrives at the same kind of inner experience when one sinks down into the depths of the soul accompanied by the full and clear content of the ideal world, instead of stripping off this content when thus sinking into one's depths. I desired to carry the light of the ideal world into the warmth of the inner experience. The mystic seemed to me to be a man who cannot perceive the spirit in ideas and who is therefore inwardly chilled by ideas. The coldness which he feels in ideas drives him to seek through an escape from ideas for the warmth of which the soul has need.
[ 4 ] As for myself, the warmth of my soul's experience increased in proportion as I shaped into definite ideas the previously indefinite experience of the spiritual world. I often said to myself: “How these mystics fail to understand the warmth, the mental intimacy, which one experiences when one lives in association with ideas permeated by the spiritual!” To me this living association had always been like a personal intercourse with the spiritual world.
[ 5 ] The mystics seemed to me to strengthen the position of the materialistically minded observer of nature instead of weakening it. The latter objects to the observation of the spiritual world, either because he does not admit the existence of such a world, or else because he considers human understanding adapted to the physically visible one. He sets up boundaries of knowledge at that point where lie the boundaries of the physically perceptible. The ordinary mystic is of the same opinion as the materialist as regards human ideal knowledge. He maintains that ideas do not extend to the spiritual, and therefore that in ideal knowledge man must always remain outside the spiritual. Since, however, he desires to attain to the spirit, he turns to an inner experience void of ideas. He thus yields to the materialistic observer of nature in that he restricts ideal knowledge to the knowledge of the merely natural.
[ 6 ] But if anyone enters into the interior of his own soul without taking ideas with him, he thus arrives at the inner region of mere feeling. Such a person then says that the spiritual cannot be reached by a way which is called in ordinary life a way of knowledge, but that one must sink down from the sphere of knowledge into the sphere of the feelings in order to experience the spiritual.
[ 7 ] With such a view a materialistic observer of nature can declare himself in perfect agreement unless he considers all talk about the spirit as a fantastic playing with words which signifies nothing real whatever. He then sees in his system of ideas directed toward the things of sense the sole justifiable basis for knowledge, and in the mystical relation ship of man to the spirit something purely personal, to which one is either inclined or not inclined according to one's temperament, but of which one can never speak in the same way as one speaks of the content of a “positive knowledge.” Man's relation to the spiritual must be relegated entirely, he thinks, to sphere of “subjective feeling.”
[ 8 ] While I held this before my mind the forces within my soul which stood in opposition to the mystic grew steadily stronger. The perception of the spiritual in inner mental experience was to me far more certain than the perception of the things of sense; to place boundaries of knowledge before this mental experience was to me quite impossible. I objected with all positiveness to mere feeling as a way into the spiritual. [ 9 ] And yet, when I thought of the nature of the mystic's experience, I felt once more a remote kinship between this and my own attitude toward the spiritual world. I sought association with the spirit by means of spirit-illuminated ideas, in the same way as the mystic seeks this through association with the non-ideal. I also could say that my view rests upon “mystical” ideal experience.
[ 10 ] To achieve for this mental conflict within myself the clarification which at length came about was not a matter of great difficulty; for the real perception of the spiritual casts light upon the range of applicability of ideas, and this assigned proper limits to the personal. As an observer of the spiritual, one knows that the personal ceases to function in man when the very mind itself becomes an organ of perception of the spiritual world.
[ 11 ] The difficulty, however, consisted in the fact that I had to find forms in which to express my perceptions in my writings. One can by no means easily find a new mode of expression for an observation which is unfamiliar to the reader. I had to choose between putting that which I found it needful to say either in those forms which are generally applied in the field of nature-observation, or in forms which are used by writers inclined toward mystical experiences. By the latter method the resultant difficulties seemed to me to be unavoidable.
I reached the conclusion that the form of expression in the sphere of the natural sciences consists in content-filled ideas, even though the content was materialistically thought out. I desired to form ideas which bore in the same way upon the spiritual as the natural-scientific ideas bore upon the physical. In this way I could preserve the ideal character for that which I had to say. This seemed to me impossible with the use of mystical forms; for these do not refer to the reality outside of man, but describe only subjective experiences within man. My purpose was, not to describe human experiences, but to show how a spiritual world is revealed in man through spiritual organs.
[ 12 ] Out of such fundamental considerations I gave form to the ideas from which my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity later evolved. I did not, in the forming of these ideas, permit any mystical rhapsodies to become dominant within me, in spite of the fact that I perceived clearly that the ultimate experience of that which would manifest itself in ideas must be of the same character within the soul as the inner awareness of the mystic. Yet there was the difference that in my presentation of the matter man surrenders himself and the external spiritual world comes to objective manifestation, whereas the mystic strengthens his own inner life and in this way effaces the true form of the objective spiritual.
Chapter XI
[ 1 ] Am Ende dieses meines ersten Lebensabschnittes stellte sich in meinem Innern die Notwendigkeit ein, zu gewissen Orientierungen der Menschenseele ein deutlich sprechendes Verhältnis zu gewinnen. Eine dieser Orientierungen war die Mystik. So wie diese in den verschiedenen Epochen der geistigen Entwickelung der Menschheit, in der orientalischen Weisheit, im Neuplatonismus, im christlichen Mittelalter, in den kabbalistischen Bestrebungen, mir vor das Seelenauge trat, konnte ich, durch meine besondere Veranlagung, nur schwer ein Verhältnis zu ihr gewinnen.
[ 2 ] Der Mystiker schien mir ein Mensch zu sein, der mit der Welt der Ideen, in der sich für mich das Geistige darlebte, nicht zurecht kommt. Ich empfand es als einen Mangel an wirklicher Geistigkeit, wenn man mit den Ideen, um zur seelischen Befriedigung zu gelangen, in das ideenlose Innere untertauchen will. Ich konnte darinnen keinen Weg zum Lichte, sondern eher einen solchen zur geistigen Finsternis sehen. Wie eine Ohnmacht im Erkennen erschien es mir, wenn die Seele die geistige Wirklichkeit, die in den Ideen zwar nicht selbst webt, die sich aber durch die Ideen vom Menschen erleben läßt, durch die Flucht vor den Ideen erreichen will.
[ 3 ] Und dennoch zog mich auch etwas zu den mystischen Bestrebungen der Menschheit hin. Es ist die Art des inneren Erlebens der Mystiker. Sie wollen mit den Quellen des menschlichen Daseins im Innern zusammenleben, nicht bloß auf diese durch die ideengemäße Beobachtung als etwas Äußerliches schauen. Aber mir war auch klar, daß man zu der gleichen Art des inneren Erlebens kommt, wenn man mit dem vollen, klaren Inhalt der Ideenwelt in die Untergründe der Seele sich versenkt, statt diesen Inhalt bei der Versenkung abzustreifen. Ich wollte das Licht der Ideenwelt in die Wärme des inneren Erlebens einführen. Der Mystiker kam mir vor wie ein Mensch, der den Geist in den Ideen nicht schauen kann, und der deshalb an den Ideen innerlich erfriert. Die Kälte, die er an den Ideen erlebt, zwingt ihn, die Wärme, deren die Seele bedarf, in der Befreiung von den Ideen zu suchen.
[ 4 ] Mir ging die innere Wärme des seelischen Erlebens gerade dann auf, wenn ich das zunächst unbestimmte Erleben der geistigen Welt in bestimmte Ideen prägte. Ich sagte mir oft: wie verkennen doch diese Mystiker die Wärme, die Seelen-Intimität, die man empfindet, wenn man mit geistdurchtränkten Ideen zusammenlebt. Mir war dieses Zusammenleben stets wie ein persönlicher Umgang mit der geistigen Welt gewesen.
[ 5 ] Der Mystiker schien mir die Stellung des materialistisch gesinnten Naturbetrachters zu verstärken, nicht abzuschwächen. Dieser lehnt eine Betrachtung der geistigen Welt ab, weil er eine solche entweder überhaupt nicht gelten läßt, oder weil er vermeint, daß die menschliche Erkenntnis nur für das Sinnlich-Anschaubare tauglich ist Er setzt der Erkenntnis dort Grenzen, wo solche die sinnliche Anschauung hat. Der gewöhnliche Mystiker ist in bezug auf die menschliche Ideen-Erkenntnis gleichen Sinnes mit dem Materialisten. Er behauptet, daß Ideen nicht an das Geistige heranreichen, daß man deshalb mit der Ideen-Erkenntnis stets außerhalb des Geistigen bleiben müsse. Da er aber nun doch zum Geiste gelangen will, so wendet er sich an ein ideenfreies inneres Erleben. So gibt er dem materialistischen Naturbetrachter Recht, indem er das Ideen-Erkennen auf die Erkenntnis des bloß Natürlichen einschränkt.
[ 6 ] Geht man aber in das seelische Innere, ohne die Ideen mitzunehmen, so gelangt man in die innere Region des bloßen Fühlens. Man spricht dann davon, daß das Geistige nicht auf einem Wege erreicht werden könne, den man im gewöhnlichen Leben einen Erkenntnisweg nennt. Man sagt, man müsse aus der Erkenntnissphäre in die der Gefühle untertauchen, um das Geistige zu erleben.
[ 7 ] Mit einer solchen Anschauung kann sich der materialistische Naturbetrachter dann einverstanden erklären, wenn er nicht alles Reden vom Geiste als ein phantastisches Spiel mit Worten ansieht, die nichts Wirkliches bedeuten. Er sieht dann in seiner auf das Sinnenfällige gerichteten Ideenwelt die einzige berechtigte Erkenntnisgrundlage und in der mystischen Erziehung des Menschen zum Geiste etwas rein Persönliches, zu dem man neigt oder nicht neigt, je nachdem man veranlagt ist, von dem man aber jedenfalls nicht so sprechen dürfe wie von dem Inhalt einer «sicheren Erkenntnis». Man müsse eben das Verhältnis des Menschen zum Geistigen ganz dem «subjektiven Fühlen» überlassen.
[ 8 ] Indem ich mir dieses vor das Seelenauge stellte, wurden die Kräfte in meiner Seele, die zur Mystik in innerer Opposition standen, immer stärker. Die Anschauung des Geistigen im inneren Seelen-Erlebnis war mir viel sicherer als diejenige des Sinnenfälligen; Erkenntnisgrenzen gegenüber diesem Seelen-Erlebnis zu setzen, war mir eine Unmöglichkeit. Den bloßen Gefühlsweg zum Geistigen lehnte ich mit aller Entschiedenheit ab.
[ 9 ] Und dennoch - wenn ich darauf blickte, wie der Mystiker erlebt, so empfand ich wieder ein entfernt Verwandtes mit meiner eigenen Stellung zur geistigen Welt. Ich suchte das Zusammensein mit dem Geiste durch die vom Geiste durchleuchteten Ideen auf dieselbe Art wie der Mystiker durch Zusammensein mit einem Ideenlosen. Ich konnte auch sagen: Meine Anschauung beruhe auf «mystischem» Ideen-Erleben.
[ 10 ] Diesem Seelenkonflikt im eigenen Innern diejenige Klarheit zu schaffen, die schließlich über ihn erhebt, bestand keine große Schwierigkeit. Denn die wirkliche Anschauung des Geistigen wirft Licht auf den Geltungsbereich der Ideen, und sie weist dem Persönlichen seine Grenzen. Man weiß als Beobachter des Geistigen, wie im Menschen das Persönliche zu wirken aufhört, wenn das Wesen der Seele sich zum Anschauungsorgan der geistigen Welt umwandelt.
[ 11 ] Die Schwierigkeit ergab sich aber dadurch, daß ich die Ausdrucksformen für meine Anschauungen in meinen Schriften zu finden hatte. Man kann ja nicht sogleich eine neue Ausdrucksform für eine Beobachtung finden, die den Lesern ungewohnt ist. Ich hatte die Wahl: was ich zu sagen für notwendig fand, entweder mehr in Formen zu bringen, die auf dem Felde der Naturbetrachtung gewohnheitsmäßig angewendet, oder in solche, die von mehr nach dem mystischen Empfinden neigenden Schriftstellern gebraucht werden. Durch das letztere schienen sich mir die sich ergebenden Schwierigkeiten nicht hinwegräumen zu lassen. Ich kam zu der Meinung, daß die Ausdrucksformen auf dem Gebiete der Naturwissenschaft in inhaltsvollen Ideen bestanden, wenn auch zunächst der Inhalt ein materialistisch gedachter war. Ich wollte Ideen bilden, die in ähnlicher Art auf das Geistige deuten, wie die naturwissenschaftlichen auf das sinnlich Wahrnehmbare. Dadurch konnte ich den Ideen-Charakter für das beibehalten, was ich zu sagen hatte. Ein gleiches schien mir bei dem Gebrauch von mystischen Formen unmöglich. Denn diese weisen im Grunde nicht auf das Wesenhafte außer dem Menschen, sondern sie beschreiben nur die subjektiven Erlebnisse im Menschen. Ich wollte nicht menschliche Erlebnisse beschreiben, sondern zeigen, wie eine geistige Welt durch Geistorgane im Menschen sich offenbart.
[ 12 ] Aus solchen Untergründen heraus bildeten sich die Ideengestalten, aus denen dann später meine «Philosophie der Freiheit» erwuchs. Ich wollte keine mystischen Anwandlungen in mir beim Bilden dieser Ideen walten lassen, trotzdem mir klar war, daß das letzte Erleben dessen, was in Ideen sich offenbaren sollte, von der gleichen Art im Innern der Seele sein mußte wie die innere Wahrnehmung des Mystikers. Aber es bestand doch der Unterschied, daß in meiner Darstellung der Mensch sich hingibt und die äußere Geistwelt in sich zur objektiven Erscheinung bringt, während der Mystiker das eigene Innenleben verstärkt und auf diese Art die wahre Gestalt des objektiven Geistigen auslöscht.
Chapter XI
[ 1 ] At the end of this first phase of my life, the need arose within me to gain a clear relationship to certain orientations of the human soul. One of these orientations was mysticism. As it appeared before my soul's eye in the various epochs of humanity's spiritual development, in Oriental wisdom, in Neoplatonism, in the Christian Middle Ages, in Kabbalistic endeavors, I could, due to my particular disposition, only with difficulty gain a relationship to it.
[ 2 ] The mystic seemed to me to be a person who could not come to terms with the world of ideas in which the spiritual was presented to me. I felt that it was a lack of real spirituality if, in order to achieve spiritual satisfaction, one wanted to immerse oneself in the unimaginative inner world with ideas. I could not see this as a path to light, but rather as a path to spiritual darkness. It seemed to me like a powerlessness in cognition when the soul wants to reach the spiritual reality, which does not weave itself in the ideas but which can be experienced by man through the ideas, by fleeing from the ideas.
[ 3 ] And yet something also drew me to the mystical endeavors of humanity. It is the kind of inner experience of the mystics. They want to live together with the sources of human existence inwardly, not merely look at them through idealistic observation as something external. But it was also clear to me that one arrives at the same kind of inner experience when one immerses oneself with the full, clear content of the world of ideas in the depths of the soul, instead of stripping away this content during the immersion. I wanted to introduce the light of the world of ideas into the warmth of inner experience. The mystic seemed to me like a person who cannot see the spirit in the ideas and who therefore freezes inwardly at the ideas. The coldness that he experiences in the ideas forces him to seek the warmth that the soul needs in the liberation from the ideas.
[ 4 ] I was struck by the inner warmth of the soul's experience precisely when I shaped the initially undefined experience of the spiritual world into specific ideas. I often said to myself: how these mystics misjudge the warmth, the soul intimacy that one feels when one lives together with spirit-soaked ideas. For me, this coexistence had always been like a personal contact with the spiritual world.
[ 5 ] The mystic seemed to me to strengthen, not weaken, the position of the materialistically minded observer of nature. The latter rejects a consideration of the spiritual world, either because he does not accept such a consideration at all, or because he assumes that human cognition is only suitable for the sensually perceptible. The ordinary mystic is of the same mind as the materialist with regard to the human cognition of ideas. He maintains that ideas do not reach the spiritual, that therefore one must always remain outside the spiritual with the knowledge of ideas. But since he wants to reach the spirit after all, he turns to an inner experience free of ideas. He thus proves the materialist observer of nature right by restricting the cognition of ideas to the cognition of the merely natural.
[ 6 ] But if one goes into the inner soul without taking the ideas with one, one reaches the inner region of mere feeling. It is then said that the spiritual cannot be reached by a path that in ordinary life is called a path of knowledge. It is said that one must immerse oneself from the sphere of knowledge into that of feelings in order to experience the spiritual.
[ 7 ] The materialistic observer of nature can agree with such a view if he does not regard all talk of the spirit as a fantastic game with words that mean nothing real. He then sees in his world of ideas, which is directed towards the sensible, the only legitimate basis of knowledge and in the mystical education of man towards the spirit something purely personal, to which one is inclined or not inclined, depending on one's disposition, but of which one should in any case not speak in the same way as of the content of a "certain knowledge". Man's relationship to the spiritual must be left entirely to "subjective feeling".
[ 8 ] When I placed this before my soul's eye, the forces in my soul that were in inner opposition to mysticism became stronger and stronger. The perception of the spiritual in the inner experience of the soul was much more certain to me than that of the sensual; it was impossible for me to set limits to my knowledge of this soul experience. I resolutely rejected the mere emotional path to the spiritual.
[ 9 ] And yet - when I looked at how the mystic experienced it, I again felt a distant kinship with my own position in the spiritual world. I sought communion with the spirit through the ideas illuminated by the spirit in the same way as the mystic through communion with an idea-less one. I could also say that my view was based on a "mystical" experience of ideas.
[ 10 ] There was no great difficulty in bringing clarity to this conflict of souls within oneself that would ultimately rise above it. For the real view of the spiritual sheds light on the scope of ideas, and it shows the personal its limits. As an observer of the spiritual, one knows how the personal ceases to work in man when the nature of the soul is transformed into an organ of perception of the spiritual world.
[ 11 ] The difficulty arose, however, from the fact that I had to find the forms of expression for my views in my writings. One cannot immediately find a new form of expression for an observation that is unfamiliar to readers. I had the choice of expressing what I found necessary to say either more in forms that are habitually used in the field of natural observation, or in forms that are used by writers more inclined to mystical feeling. The latter did not seem to me to remove the difficulties that arose. I came to the conclusion that the forms of expression in the field of natural science consisted of ideas with content, even if the content was initially conceived materialistically. I wanted to form ideas that would point to the spiritual in a similar way to the way the natural sciences point to the sensually perceptible. This enabled me to retain the character of ideas for what I had to say. The same seemed impossible to me with the use of mystical forms. For these basically do not point to the essence outside the human being, but only describe the subjective experiences within the human being. I did not want to describe human experiences, but to show how a spiritual world reveals itself through spiritual organs within the human being.
[ 12 ] It was out of such backgrounds that the ideas were formed from which my "Philosophy of Freedom" later grew. I did not want to allow any mystical impulses to prevail in me when forming these ideas, although it was clear to me that the final experience of what was to be revealed in ideas had to be of the same kind within the soul as the inner perception of the mystic. But there was the difference that in my depiction the human being surrenders himself and brings the outer spiritual world within himself to an objective appearance, while the mystic intensifies his own inner life and in this way erases the true form of the objective spiritual.