The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Theosophical Doctrine of the Soul III: Soul and Spirit

[ 1 ] Let me begin this third lecture with an image through which Plato expresses his thoughts on the eternity of the human spirit.

[ 2 ] Socrates stands before his students in the face of death. In the coming hours, the great teacher’s final moments will unfold. In the face of his own death, Socrates speaks about the eternity of the spiritual core of human existence. What he says about the indestructibility of what lives within a human being makes a profound, powerful impression. In a few hours, there will be no more life in the body standing before his students. In a few hours, the Socrates whom one can see with one’s eyes will no longer be. In this situation, Socrates makes it clear to his students that the one who will no longer stand before them in a few hours, whom they will no longer have, is not the one who is so precious to them; that this Socrates, who still stands before them now, cannot be the one who has imparted to them the great teaching of the human soul and the human spirit. He makes it clear to his students that the true sage, through his contemplation of the world to which he has devoted himself, has made himself independent of the entire sensory world. Everything that sensory impressions, that sensory desires and longings can provide him with, fades away precisely through a truly wise view of the world. For the wise man, the only thing of value is that which the senses can never provide. But when only that which stands before the senses passes away, then that which no senses can reach remains unchanged. Evidence, even if it were the most compelling and the most stirring, could hardly have a more powerful, more overwhelming effect than the conviction expressed in the immediate feeling that wells up from the heart of the wise man at the very moment when the external sensory situation seems to completely contradict what the mouth of Socrates says. This is a conviction uttered with a death sentence, a conviction which, simply by being uttered in this situation, testifies to the mighty power to which this view has risen within the wise man, so that he overcomes the event that will befall him in a few hours.

[ 3 ] And what effect did this conversation have on the students? Phaedo, the student, says that at that moment he was in a state in which those who experience such an event are not usually found. Neither pain nor joy passed through his heart. He was elevated above all suffering and all pleasure. With a blissful calm and serenity, Phaedo received the teachings that were imparted to him in the face of death.

[ 4 ] When we hold this image before our minds, two things come to mind. Plato, the great sage of Greece, seeks to support his conviction regarding the eternity of the human spirit not only through logical proofs and philosophical arguments, but by having a highly developed individual express it in the face of death. This conviction expresses itself as an experience, as something that lives directly within the human soul. By this, Plato wished to suggest that the question of the eternity of the human soul is one to which we are not capable of giving an answer in every situation, but one to which we can give an answer only when we have developed ourselves to the spiritual height at which stands a personality such as Socrates, who devoted his entire life to the inner contemplation of the soul; a sage who possessed knowledge of what is revealed when a person turns their gaze inward. Such a person presents to us the power of the immediate conviction that something lives within them which they know to be indestructible, because they have recognized it. That is what matters. No one with insight in this field will ever claim that proof of the immortality of the human soul can be provided in every situation; rather, the conviction of the eternity of the human spirit must be acquired; the human being must have come to know the life of the soul. And when he knows this life, when he has delved into its characteristics, then he knows—just as one knows about any other object when one knows its characteristics—then he knows about the human spirit, and the power of conviction speaks within him. And not only that, but at a crucial, pivotal moment, Plato has Socrates express this conviction: at a moment when all sensory impressions seem to contradict the truth that has been spoken.

[ 5 ] And the students—how do they understand this great teaching? How does it become clear to them? It becomes clear to them because they are lifted above pleasure and pain by the power of Socrates’ words; they are lifted above that which binds human beings to the immediately transitory, to the sensual, to the everyday. This is meant to convey that man does not know the nature of the spirit in every situation, but only when he rises above that which binds him to the everyday, when he has cast off pleasure and pain, as they arise from the impressions of the everyday, when, in a moment of celebration, they can look up to where the everyday no longer speaks, where events that would otherwise cause sorrow no longer cause sorrow, and those that would otherwise cause joy no longer cause joy. In such moments, human beings are more receptive to the highest truths.

[ 6 ] This helps us understand how Theosophy views the eternity of the soul. It does not speak of immortality in the sense that it attempts to prove this immortality as if it were just another fact. No, it provides guidance and instructions on how a person can gradually place themselves in that state and condition of mind in which they truly experience the spirit within themselves, coming to know its qualities by attempting to immerse themselves in spiritual life. And then it is clear that the conviction of the eternity of this spirit springs directly from the perception of the spirit. Just as we do not recognize an object that appears before our physical eyes through proof, but rather because it simply reveals its qualities to our physical eyes through perception, so the theosophist poses the question of the immortality of the human soul in a completely different form than is usually heard. He asks: How can we perceive inner, spiritual life? How do we delve into our inner being so that we may hear the spirit within us speak?

[ 7 ] At all times and in all places where attempts have been made to guide students toward an understanding of these questions, those students were first required to undergo a period of preparation. As you probably all know, Plato required his students to have grasped the spirit of mathematics before attempting to take in his teachings on the spiritual life. What was the purpose of this Platonic preparation? The student was to have grasped the spirit of mathematics. In the first lecture, we heard what this spirit of mathematics offers us. It offers us, in the most elementary way, truths that are sublime above all sensory truths; truths that we cannot see with the eye, nor grasp with the hands. Even when we illustrate the theory of the circle or the theory of numerical ratios through the senses, we all know that we are merely providing an illustration. We know that the theories of the circle and the triangle are independent of this sensory perception. We draw a triangle on the blackboard or on paper, and through this sensory triangle we try to arrive at the theorem that the three angles of a triangle add up to one hundred and eighty degrees. But we know that this theorem is true for every triangle, whatever shape we may give it. We know that this theorem makes sense to us once we have become accustomed to grasping such theorems independently of sensory impressions, independently of any sensory perception. It is the simplest, the most trivial truths that we acquire in this way. Mathematics provides only the most trivial transcendental truths, but it does provide transcendental truths. And because it provides the simplest, the most trivial, and therefore the most easily attainable transcendental truths, Plato demanded of his students that they learn from mathematics how to arrive at transcendental truths. And what does one learn by arriving at transcendental truths? One learns thereby to grasp a truth without pleasure or pain, without immediate, everyday interest, without personal prejudices, without that which we encounter at every turn in life. Why does mathematical truth present itself to us with such clarity and invincibility? Because no interest whatsoever, no personal sympathy or antipathy—that is, no prejudices—come into play in its comprehension. We are completely indifferent to the fact that two times two equals four; we are indifferent to how large the angles of a triangle may be, and so on. This freedom from all sensory interest, from every personal desire and aversion—that is what Plato had in mind when he demanded that his students immerse themselves in the spirit of mathematics. And once they had become accustomed to looking up to the truth with disinterest, once they had become accustomed to striving toward the truth without pleasure or pain, without the interference of passion and desire, without the interference of everyday prejudices, then Plato considered his students worthy to see the truth even regarding those questions about which people are usually burdened with the greatest prejudices.

[ 8 ] What person could initially treat other questions with as little interest, as free from pleasure and pain, as the mathematical truth that two times two equals four, or that the sum of the angles of a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees? But not until man has brought himself to view the highest truths about the soul and spirit in a similar, disinterested light, free from pleasure and pain, not until then was he deemed ready to approach these questions. Man must treat these questions without pleasure or pain. He must rise above that which arises in his soul daily, at every opportunity, at every turn. Where pleasure and pain and personal interest intrude into our answer, there we cannot answer the questions objectively, not in the true light. This is what Plato also meant when he had the dying Socrates speak about the immortality of the human spirit. So the point is not to prove immortality in every situation, but simply this: How does one come to perceive the qualities of the human soul, so that, once one has attained this perception, the power of conviction flows of its own accord from our soul?

[ 9 ] This was also the foundation of all those educational institutions that sought to guide students toward the highest truths in an appropriate manner. Since the questions: Does the human spirit live before birth and after death, and what is humanity’s destiny in time and eternity? — cannot be treated by most people without interest is only natural. It is natural that everything a person can muster in terms of personal interest, everything he can muster in terms of hope and fear—these two passions that constantly accompany human beings—becomes inextricably linked for him to the question of the eternity of the spirit. In ancient times and places, the sites where the highest questions of spiritual life were taught to and answered for the students were called mystery schools. And in such mystery schools, the students were not taught about such questions in an abstract manner. The truths were only handed down to them when their soul, their spirit, their entire personality was in a state where they could see these questions in the right light. And this state was none other than being beyond pleasure and pain, being beyond that which chains a person day by day, hour by hour: fear and hope. These passions, this emotional content, had first to be removed from the personality. The student had to approach the teachings free from fear and hope, purified of them. Purification, then, was the preparation the student had to undergo. Without this, the questions were not answered for the student. Purification from the passions, from pleasure and pain, from fear and hope—that was the prerequisite for ascending to the summit of the mountain where the question of immortality can be addressed. For it was clear that only then could the student look the Spirit in the eye just as one who, in spirit, immerses himself in a mathematical field looks pure objective mathematics in the eye: dispassionately, fearlessly, without being tormented by hopes.

[ 10 ] In the last lecture, we saw that pleasure and suffering are, above all, expressions of what we call the human soul. Pleasure and suffering are the inner experience, the very essence of the person’s experience. Pleasure and suffering must first undergo a process of purification before the soul can attain the spiritual realm. In the ordinary person, pleasure and suffering are bound to the everyday sensory impressions, bound to the immediate experiences of the personality, bound to that which interests the person for its own sake, for the sake of their personality. What usually gives us pleasure, what causes us suffering? That which interests us as a personality. That which gives us pleasure and suffering is what more or less disappears with our death. It is this narrow circle of what gives us pleasure and suffering that we must leave behind in order to attain higher knowledge. Our pleasure and our suffering must be separated, must be detached from these everyday interests and led up to entirely different worlds. Man must lift pleasure and pain, must lift the desires of his soul above the everyday, above the sensual; he must chain them to the highest experiences of the spirit. With these desires and longings, he must look up to that which is usually attributed only a shadowy or, as one otherwise says, an abstract existence. What could be more abstract to the person of everyday existence than the pure, non-sensual thought? The people of everyday life, who cling to their personal lives with pleasure and suffering, already flee even the simplest, the most trivial supersensory truths. Mathematics is shunned in the widest circles precisely because it carries nothing within it that leads to interest, to pleasure and pain in the everyday sense of the word. In the mystery schools, the student had to be purified of this everyday pleasure and this everyday pain. He had to cling to that which lived within him only as a mental image and flitted by like a shadowy form; he had to love it just as a human being clings with his whole soul to the everyday. The transformation of the passions and drives was called the metamorphosis. There is a new reality for him thereafter; a new world makes an impression on him. That which leaves the ordinary person cold, which touches him soberly and coldly, is the world of ideas. And that is what pleasure and suffering now cling to in him, what one looks upon as something real, and which now gains a reality like tables and chairs. Only then, when the human being has reached the point where the world of ideas—which is called abstract in the ordinary sense—moves his soul, captivates his soul, absorbs it, when that which, in the ordinary sense of the word, has only a shadowy reality of thought, surrounds him in such a way that he weaves and lives within it, just as the everyday person moves within the ordinary sensory reality that he can see and touch—when this transformation has taken place in the whole person, then he is in a state in which the Spirit speaks to him through the environment; then he experiences this Spirit as a living language, then he hears the Word made flesh, which expresses itself in all things.

[ 11 ] When the ordinary person looks out and sees the lifeless minerals around him, he sees them governed by the laws of nature—the laws of gravity, magnetism, heat, and light. Man understands the laws that govern these entities through his thoughts. But these very thoughts do not speak to him with the same tangible reality; they do not signify what his hands touch, what his eyes see. But when this transformation I have spoken of has taken place within a person, then he no longer thinks merely of mere shadows such as the laws of nature; then these shadows begin to speak to him in the living language of the spirit. From his surroundings, from the world around him, the spirit speaks to him. From the plants, from the minerals, from the various species of animals, the spirit of the environment speaks to the human being who has become free of desire and suffering.

[ 12 ] When theosophy speaks of the world of ideas, of the spiritual world, it points to a process of development, not to an abstract truth; to a concrete truth, not to logical proofs. It speaks of what human beings are to become, not of something that is to be proven. Nature speaks differently to a person who has purified their soul so that it no longer clings to the mundane; who no longer experiences ordinary pains and ordinary sufferings and joys, but rather higher pains and higher joys, and at the same time higher bliss, which flow from the pure spirit of things. Theosophical ethics expresses this in figurative language. In two beautiful, magnificent images, it expresses that only at the moment when a person has raised their senses above the ordinary pain and joy of things can they perceive the highest truths. As long as the eye clings to things with joy and pain, in the ordinary sense of the word, it cannot perceive the spirit around it. As long as the ear retains the immediate sensitivity of everyday life, it cannot hear the living Word through which the spiritual things around us speak to us. Therefore, theosophical doctrine of development sees in these two images the challenge that a person must set for themselves if they wish to attain knowledge of the Spirit.

Before the eye can see,
It must wean itself from tears.
Before the ear can hear,
Its sensitivity must fade ...
— Mabel Collins, “Light on the Path”

[ 13 ] The eye that is devoted to the spirit can no longer shed tears of joy or tears of pain in the everyday sense. For when a person has reached this stage of development, their self-awareness speaks to them in a completely different, new way. We then gaze into the veiled sanctuary of our inner being in a wholly new way. The human being then perceives himself as a member of the spiritual world. He then perceives himself as something that is pure and exalted above all that is sensory, because he has cast off pleasure and suffering in the sensory sense. Then they perceive a self-awareness within themselves that speaks to them just as mathematical truths speak to them dispassionately, yet also speaks to them in a way that mathematical truths speak in another sense. For mathematical truths are true in a sense of eternity. What appears before us in the non-sensual language of mathematics is true, independent of time and space. And independent of time and space, that which appears before our soul when it has purified itself to experience pleasure and pain in spiritual matters speaks to us from within. Then the Eternal speaks to us with its meaning of eternity. Thus the Eternal, with its meaning of eternity, spoke to the dying Socrates, and the stream of immediate spirituality passed on to the disciples. Based on what he received as an experience from the dying Socrates, the disciple Phaedo declares that pleasure and pain in the ordinary sense of the word must be harmful if the spirit wishes to speak to us directly.

[ 14 ] We can observe this in the phenomena of human life that are commonly referred to as abnormal. At first glance, these phenomena seem far removed from the considerations to which the first part of my lecture was devoted. Viewed in the true sense of the word, however, they are very closely related to those considerations. These are the phenomena commonly referred to as abnormal states of the soul, such as hypnotism, somnambulism, and clairvoyance. What does hypnosis mean in human life? It is not my task today to describe the various procedures that must be carried out if we wish to induce a person into the sleep-like state we call hypnosis. This is achieved—I will only mention this briefly—either by having the person gaze at a shiny object, which concentrates their attention in a very particular way, or by simply addressing the person in a specific manner, saying: “You are now falling asleep.” — In this way we can induce this state of hypnosis, a kind of sleep in which ordinary waking consciousness is as if extinguished. The person who has been put into hypnotic sleep in this way stands or sits before the hypnotist who put them into this sleep, motionless, unresponsive in the ordinary sense of the word. Such a hypnotized person can be pricked with needles, can be struck, their limbs can be moved into different positions—they perceive nothing of all this, they feel nothing of what, under other circumstances, with waking consciousness, would have caused them pain or perhaps a feeling of well-being, a tickle, let us say. In the ordinary, general sense, pleasure and pain are eliminated from the being of such a hypnotized person. But pleasure and pain are precisely what we described in our last lecture as the actual fundamental characteristic of the soul, the middle part of the human being. What, then, is eliminated in hypnotism? Essentially, of the three fundamental parts—body, soul, and spirit—the soul is eliminated. The procedure we have performed consists in eliminating the middle fundamental part of the human being from his being. It is not active; it does not experience pleasure and pain in the ordinary sense; it does not feel pain from what would cause him pain if his soul were functioning normally.

[ 15 ] How does the essence operate within such a person when you address a hypnotized individual and give them commands? If you say to them, “Stand up, take three steps,” they carry out these commands. You can give them even more complicated, varied commands—they will carry them out. You can place tangible objects before them, for example a pear, and tell them it is a glass ball. They will believe it. What lies before them in tangible form has no significance for them. The fact that you tell them it is a glass ball is what matters to them. If you ask him: What do you see in front of you? — he will answer you: A glass ball. — Your mind, that which is within you when you are the hypnotist, what you think, what emanates from you as a thought, directly influences this person’s actions. He automatically follows the commands of your mind with his body. Why does he follow these commands? Because his soul is switched off, because his soul does not interpose itself between his body and your mind. The moment his soul becomes active with its pleasure and its suffering, the moment his ability to feel pain and to make simple perceptions reappears—at that very moment, the soul alone decides whether these commands are to be carried out, whether it must accept the thoughts of the other. When you face another person in a normal state, their mind affects you. But their mind—what they think, what they want—first affects your soul. This affects you as pleasure and pain, and you decide how to respond to the other person’s thoughts and volitional acts. If the soul is silent, if the soul is shut off, then it does not interpose itself between your body and the other person’s mind; then the body follows the hypnotist’s suggestions, the suggestions of that mind, without will, just as a mineral follows the laws of nature. The shutting off of the soul—that is the essential point upon which hypnosis depends. Then the foreign thought—the thought located outside the person—acts upon this person, who is in a sleep-like state, with the force of a law of nature. That which interposes itself between this spiritual force of nature and the body acts like a law of nature itself, and that is the soul. For the soul interposes itself between your own mind and your own body. And what we grasp as a thought, what we grasp intellectually, we carry out in everyday life only by transforming it into our personal desires, by having it accepted and deemed correct by our pleasure and our suffering—in other words, by our mind first speaking to our soul, so that our soul carries out the commands of our own mind.

[ 16 ] Now the question may be raised: Why is it that, when the soul is suspended—when the hypnotized person faces the hypnotist—the third and highest component of the human being, the spirit, does not face the hypnotist? Why does it slumber? Why is the human spirit inactive? — This becomes clear to us when we realize that for human beings during their earthly incarnation, the interaction of spirit, soul, and body is essential; that the human spirit understands the environment and sensory reality only through the soul, which mediates this understanding. When our eye receives an impression from the outside, the soul must act as a mediator so that this impression can reach our spirit. I perceive a color. The eye conveys the external impression to me through its structure; the spirit reflects on the color. It forms a thought. But between the thought and the external impression, the soul’s response intervenes—that which transforms the impression into the soul’s own inner life, making it an experience of the soul itself. The spirit can speak only to one’s own soul, to the personal soul, in the earthly human being. If you shut down the soul through hypnosis, then the spirit can no longer express itself in the hypnotized person. You have thereby taken away from the spirit the organ through which it can express itself, through which it can be active. You have not taken the spirit from him; you have only shut down his soul and rendered it inactive. But because the spirit in a human being can only be active in the soul, the spirit cannot be active in the body itself. That is why we say the person is in an unconscious state, which means nothing other than: their spirit is inactive. Now we understand why, under hypnosis, a person becomes so receptive to the spiritual impressions emanating from the hypnotist. They become receptive because nothing of the soul interposes itself between them and the hypnotist. There, the other’s thought becomes an immediate force of nature; there, thought becomes creative. Thought is creative, and the spirit is creative throughout all of nature. It simply does not manifest itself immediately.

[ 17 ] Now, in the case of hypnotized individuals and other similar abnormal states, we have simultaneously rendered the consciousness—the very essence of the human spirit—inactive along with the suppression of the soul. We have placed the person in an unconscious state. We can get a sense of what is actually happening if we imagine, for example, that we carry a sleeping person from one room to another and let them sleep there for a while. Impressions surround him, but he does not perceive them. He knows nothing of his surroundings. If we bring him back, without his having awakened, to the room where he was sleeping before, then he has been in another room without knowing anything about it; he has received no perception of this other room. It depends on our perceiving our surroundings if we wish to call these surroundings “real.” Much may be around us, may be real, may be substantial—we know nothing of it because we do not perceive it. We do not orient ourselves toward it; our activity has no connection to it because we perceive nothing.

[ 18 ] In such a state, the hypnotized person is in the presence of the hypnotist. Forces emanate from the hypnotist; forces that are imbued with the hypnotist’s thoughts. They emanate from him and act upon the hypnotized person. But the hypnotized person is unaware of this. He speaks, but he speaks only what lies and lives in the hypnotist’s mind. He is, so to speak, active without being—as is the case with people in ordinary life—his own observer, without simultaneously observing that which is the object of his activity. He is, so to speak, in the environment in which he finds himself, facing the hypnotist’s mind, just like a sleeping person who has been taken into another room and knows nothing of what is happening around him. Thus, a person can be placed again and again in environments where the spirit speaks to him. He can be in environments where the spirit speaks to him. Right now and at every moment, you, too, are in environments where the Spirit speaks to you, for everything around us is made by the Spirit. The laws of nature are Spirit, only that in the ordinary view of things, man perceives this Spirit only in the shadowy reflection of thoughts. This Spirit is Spirit, just as the Spirit that is active in the hypnotist when the hypnotist acts upon the hypnotized person.

[ 19 ] Now, in the normal, everyday waking state, although a person is not in the same mental state as someone under hypnosis, they are, in a sense, also in a state with regard to their spiritual environment in which their senses—their capacity for perception—are not open to the spirit. If this capacity for perception is open to the spirit that is present in the environment, if the things of the spiritual world that surround us speak to us in a loud, audible voice, then this can only be the case when, in normal life, we are in a situation similar to that of the hypnotized person in relation to the hypnotist. The hypnotized person is free from suffering and pain. They do not perceive needle pricks or blows. Pleasure and pain in the ordinary sense of the word are extinguished. If, in our ordinary life, in our waking daily consciousness, we attain that state I described in the first part of my lecture—for the theosophical worldview is meant to consider a higher state of human development, the one Plato demanded of his students, the mystery priests of their pupils— if we shed that which touches us as everyday pleasure and everyday suffering, that which immediately brings tears to our eyes, makes our ears sensitive, fills us with fear and hope—if we cast off that which constitutes the object of our everyday existence, free ourselves from this world, and undergo that transformation of the spirit which has been described—then we can—but now fully conscious — enter a state toward the spiritual world similar to that of the hypnotized person toward the hypnotist in the abnormal sense. Then we will use our eyes and ears in the same way as we normally do; we will have our waking daytime consciousness, but within this waking daytime consciousness we will not allow ourselves to be affected by everyday objects in the ordinary sense. This transformation must take place within the human being. He must perceive the spiritual environment—that which speaks through things—with the same indifference and apathy as the hypnotized person in an abnormal state perceives the thoughts and words of the hypnotist; through this indifference and apathy, he perceives what the language of the spirit is in his environment.

[ 20 ] Only experience can be the deciding factor in this area. When the fundamental principles of theosophical ethics have been fulfilled to a certain degree, when a person has reached a state in which they truly approach spiritual truths in the same way that people ordinarily approach mathematical truths—objectively, free from pleasure and pain, then the Spirit of the environment speaks to human beings; then the Spirit is no more bound by the impressions of the senses than the hypnotized person is bound by what acts upon their senses. The hypnotist acts only upon the hypnotized person who has become free from pleasure and pain, and so the Spirit acts only upon the clairvoyant who has become free from pleasure and pain. To possess such sensitivity to the environment while in waking daytime consciousness, it is necessary to have undergone a process of development so that we may move among things with a fully functioning intellect and fully active reason, yet still be able to allow the spirit to speak to us. That is it: Clairvoyance means nothing other than having brought the human being to a stage of development through which one is able to perceive the world around oneself free from pleasure and suffering. When a person has developed to the point where their passions and desires are silent within them, where that which they shadowy call a thought—and to which they cling with such devotion, with such attachment, as a person clings to the sensory impressions of their immediate surroundings—is silent; when a person can love this passionless, desireless state as much as the ordinary person loves the things around them, then they have become ripe to perceive the spirit around them. Then they no longer desire what is desired in everyday life; then they desire in the realm of the spiritual world.

[ 21 ] Then, too, his thoughts—imbued with his higher desires—become effective forces through his purified soul. Human thoughts are merely abstract thoughts only because the ordinary person interposes the soul—with its joys and sorrows, with its personal desires—between himself, his inner spiritual self, and that which is thought, idea, and spiritual reality, and everything else.

[ 22 ] That is precisely why our thoughts must first be taken up by the soul, why our thoughts must first be translated into the personality in order to become effective. It is personal desires that approach the thoughts of the individual. If I have an ideal, then I will translate that ideal into reality in accordance with my personal desires. As a personality—and this is how it is in ordinary everyday life—I must have an interest in what shines before me as a thought if I am to carry it out. As a person, I must find a thought, a decision of the will, desirable. My personal desire binds itself to the thought, which would otherwise be independent of time and space, for what is true in thought is true at all times. If we go beyond these personal desires, if we develop in the sense that the mystery priests demanded of their pupils, then our desires will become such that we do not chain the full power of our soul to our personal interests, but rather we will pursue with greater love and devotion that which lives in the purely spiritual. And then this thought that lives within us, the spirit that lives within us, will not be dull and abstract as in the everyday person; then it will not have to penetrate the outer world through the means of soul experiences; then it will, so to speak, flow out into the outer world from the innermost spirit of the human being, without being touched by the immediate self, without having to pass through the personal self, flow out into the outer world. It will not be dulled by the outer world; it approaches us like a force of nature; it approaches us like the force of crystallization, like the magnetic force that emanates from the magnet and arranges the iron filings into patterns. Just as these forces, which surround us in nature as reality, so does the desireless thought act upon our surroundings, upon the reality around us. An understanding of our environment, an understanding of our fellow human beings, becomes fruitful in a wholly different sense when we have brought it to such thoughts, detached from personal desires. Then what arises is the power of thought that passes from this developed human being to his fellow human beings.

[ 23 ] Then what emerges in truly selfless people is thought—thought as an organizing force of nature. In the case of the great, true sages—not merely the scholars, but those who have brought wisdom to humanity—we are told everywhere that they were also healers, that a power emanated from them which brought help to their fellow human beings, liberation from physical and mental suffering. This was only the case because they had attained a state of development in which thought becomes a force through which the spirit can flow directly into the world. Knowledge that is in this way free from desires—selfless knowledge—which flows into the human being as a force that is otherwise directed solely toward the service of the self; such a force enables the human being to heal in a spiritual sense.

[ 24 ] Today I can only hint at the prerequisites for such spiritual healing in general terms. In the theosophical sense, a person’s transcendence of the narrowly defined, everyday self can be a prerequisite for what is known as spiritual healing. In a certain sense, therefore, if a person wishes to become a clairvoyant or a healer, they must extinguish their own inner life—that which belongs primarily to them as a personality. This does not mean that such a person becomes completely insensitive or dull. Oh no; on the contrary, such a person becomes, in a higher sense, more sensitive and perceptive than they were before. Such a person develops a receptivity that is certainly not the same as that provided by the senses in everyday life, but rather a receptivity of a much higher order. Or is human receptivity any less than that of a lower animal, which instead of an eye has only a pigment spot through which it can perceive at most an impression of light? Is it any different for human beings because they transform the impression they receive in the visual purple into the perception of color in the environment? Just as the human eye relates to the pigment spot of the lower animal, so does the spiritual organism of the clairvoyant relate to the organism of the undeveloped human being. The suppression of the personality is the sacrifice. The extinction of the personality triggers the voice of the spirit in our environment. The extinction of the personality solves the mysteries of nature for us. We must extinguish our soul world. We must overcome pleasure and suffering in the ordinary sense of the word. This is necessary for the sake of a certain insight and higher development.

[ 25 ] Yet, in a certain sense, the suppression of one’s own personality is also necessary for a single task that is of infinite importance to the most ordinary aspects of human life: the education of human beings. In every growing human being, from the child’s birth through the formative years, it is, after all, the spirit at the very core of the human being that is meant to develop; the spirit that initially lies hidden within the body, hidden within the soul’s stirrings of the developing human being. If we confront this spirit with our interests—I do not even want to say desires and cravings—if we make the growing human being dependent on our interests, then we allow our spirit to flow into the human being, and we are essentially developing within the growing human being what is within us. But I do not even wish to speak of the fact that we allow our wishes and desires to play an active role in the education of a growing human being, but only of the fact that all too often—indeed, that it is almost the rule—the educator lets his intellect speak, that the educator asks his reason above all else what must be done for the sake of this or that educational measure. In doing so, he fails to take into account that he has before him a developing spirit, which can only form itself in accordance with its nature if it can unfold freely and unhindered in every respect in accordance with that nature, and if the educator gives it the opportunity for this unfolding. We have before us a foreign human spirit. We must allow a foreign human spirit to act upon us when we are educators. Just as we have seen that in hypnosis, in an abnormal state, the spirit acts directly upon the human being, so too, in a different form, when we have the child before us, the child’s developing spirit acts directly upon us and must act upon us. However, this spirit can only be shaped by us if, just as in other higher tasks, we are able to efface ourselves; if we are capable of being a servant of the human spirit entrusted to us for education without the interference of our own self; if this human spirit is given the opportunity by us to unfold freely. As long as we allow our selfish concepts and demands, which suit us, to flow against the spirit, as long as we oppose this spirit with our ego and its character traits, we will see this spirit just as little as the eye, still entangled in pleasure and pain, sees the spirit of the environment clairvoyantly.

[ 26 ] In everyday life, the educator must live up to a higher ideal. And he will fulfill this ideal when he grasps the mysterious yet manifest principle of complete selflessness and understands the extinction of the self. This extinction of the self is the sacrifice through which we perceive the Spirit in our environment. We perceive the Spirit in abnormal states when we become free of pleasure and pain in an abnormal way. We perceive the Spirit clairvoyantly when, in a normal state and with full daytime consciousness, we become free of pleasure and pain. And we guide the Spirit through right thinking when we guide it selflessly within the educational process. This selfless ideal, which the educator must strive for daily, can only shine before the educator as a disposition. But precisely because there is an immediate necessity for our cultural development in this area, because a true, selfless attitude must be fostered here in the spirit of our culture, it will be above all the realm of educational ideals where Theosophy will be able to act creatively, where it will be able to render the finest services to humanity. Whoever is devoted to the theosophical life, whoever gradually learns to open the senses to the spirit through the development of selflessness, will have the best foundation for educational work, and will work on the educational task of humanity in the theosophical sense. That alone is what the educator must keep in mind above all else; he does not, for the rest, need to display theosophical dogmas or theosophical principles at every opportunity. Dogmas, principles, and teachings are not what matter; what matters is life itself and the application of the powers that flow from selflessness and, through that, from the ability to perceive the spirit. That is what matters, and not whether the educator has adopted the teachings of Theosophy. He is a Theosophist by virtue of the fact that in every human life in the process of development he sees something like a riddle before his eyes, which appears before the soul as a being that he must develop as spirit by nurturing the spirit. Every human being in the making should be a riddle of nature for the person who wishes to be an educator—a riddle he must solve. If he is an educator with such a mindset, then the educator is a theosophist in the best sense of the word. This is what makes him so: that he approaches every human being, every growing human being, with a true, sacred reverence, and understands the words of Jesus: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” You did it for me, God made man, because you recognized and nurtured the divine spirit in the least of my brothers and sisters.

[ 27 ] Anyone who imbued with such a mindset approaches other people in a completely different way. He sees in the humblest of his brothers the Spirit of God, the evolving spirit. And that which lives within him in relation to his fellow human beings will fill him, in a wholly different sense, with solemnity and dignity, with reverence and awe, with respect, when he regards every human being in this way as a mystery of nature, as a sacred mystery of nature, which he must not impose upon, but which he must at most solve, and with which he must establish a relationship such that from this seriousness reverence and respect for the divine spiritual core in every human being might spring forth. If a person stands thus among his brothers, then he is on the path, however far he may still be from the goal. The goal we thus set for ourselves lies in infinite distance before us. He is on the path that theosophical ethics suggests with the beautiful, monumental words:

Before the eye can see,
It must wean itself from tears.
Before the ear can hear,
Its sensitivity must fade ...