Theosophy E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 276

Beschreibung

Given his energetic involvement in practical initiatives and extensive lecturing, Rudolf Steiner had little time to write books. Of those he did write - belonging almost entirely to the earlier years of his work - four titles form an indispensable introduction to his later teaching: Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, Occult Science, The Philosophy of Freedom and Theosophy. Theosophy focuses on a psychology based not on the usual duality of body and mind, but on the more ancient division of body, soul and spirit. Steiner describes in detail the functions and organs of these three aspects of the human being, and the objective realms to which they belong. Just as the body derives from and belongs to the material world, so do the human soul and spirit belong to their own specific realms. These are the dimensions through which all human beings travel in the life after death, and in which - after passing the 'midnight hour' - we prepare to seek our destiny, or karma, in a new life. Theosophy features one of the most comprehensive and condensed of all Steiner's accounts of these realms, and of the experiences which our immortal being undergoes in passing through them. The book ends with a chapter on the modern 'path of knowledge', in which Steiner describes the exercises through which every person may develop the latent powers of perception which are necessary for a knowledge of metaphysical worlds.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

THEOSOPHY

AN INTRODUCTION TO THESUPERSENSIBLE KNOWLEDGEOF THE WORLD AND THEDESTINATION OF MAN

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Translated by M. Cotterell and A.P. Shepherd. Re-edited by Rudolf Steiner Press for this special edition to mark the 150th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s birth.

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

First published in English in 1922

Originally published in German under the title Theosophie, Einführung in übersinnliche Welterkenntnis und Menschenbestimmung (volume 9 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation is based on the 28th edition, and is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978 1 85584 295 3

Cover by Andrew Morgan DesignTypeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

Contents

Publisher’s Note

Foreword by Matthew Barton

Preface to Revised Edition

Introduction

1.  The Nature of Man

The Corporeal Being of Man

The Soul-being of Man

The Spiritual Being of Man

Body, Soul and Spirit

2.  Re-embodiment of the Spirit and Destiny

3.  The Three Worlds

The Soul-world

The Soul in the Soul-world after Death

Spiritland

The Spirit in Spiritland after Death

The Physical World and its Connection with the Soul-world and Spiritland

Thought-forms and the Human Aura

4.  The Path of Knowledge

Addenda

Notes

Further Reading

Publisher’s Note

At first glance the title of this book may be somewhat misleading for the British reader. It may suggest to him associations with Anglo-Indian theosophy and the Theosophical Society founded by H.P. Blavatsky.

Rudolf Steiner, however, uses the term independently and with different and much wider connotation. In earlier centuries, particularly in Central Europe, ‘theosophy’ was a recognized section of philosophy and even of theology. Jacob Boehme was known as the ‘great theosopher’. In English the term goes back to the seventeenth century.

Ultimately it leads us back to St Paul who says (1 Cor. 2: 6-7): ‘Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world... But we speak the wisdom of God [Greek Theosophia] in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory.’

In the present book Rudolf Steiner has described on the basis of independent research certain fundamental facts of this ‘hidden wisdom’ concerning man and universe. He considered it right that the ancient, time-honoured term ‘theosophy’ should be used for this purpose and the word restored to its original and universal significance.

Foreword

When this book was first published in 1904, Rudolf Steiner had been General Secretary of the German branch of the Theosophical Society for two years. To many of his former associates in the cultural and scholarly circles of Berlin, it seemed incomprehensible that he had abandoned all his former academic pursuits to join a ‘semi-religious, pseudo-philosophical group with few if any pretensions to respectability’.1 Yet for Steiner himself, now in his early forties, the move away from a comfortable academic niche was entirely consistent with the pursuit of his real task as a spiritual teacher. With characteristic fearlessness, he relinquished the outer trappings of status and material security to hearken to this task, answering what he felt to be an urgent contemporary need. In the remaining 21 years of his life, Steiner went on to fulfil his life’s work with extraordinary dedication and breathtaking energy. Yet though his wide-ranging vision underwent deepening and development over forthcoming years, the group of books that he wrote in his early forties2 were in a very real sense the foundation for everything else that subsequently emerged.

Steiner himself did not have an easy time with many of the theosophists, though clearly he felt that they alone offered him a space to develop his ideas and work. Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society, had ‘received’ many of the teachings current in theosophical circles from ‘the Masters’ while in a mediumistic, trancelike state; and though Steiner felt that there was much valuable insight, particularly, in her book The Secret Doctrine, he was profoundly opposed to the widespread interest in spiritualism, ‘automatic writing’ and seances of the time, calling spiritualists ‘the worst materialists of all’ because of their efforts to manifest spiritual realities in physical effects. Steiner had grown up at a time when figures such as Darwin and Marx were gaining ascendancy over human minds, along with a view of the human being as a kind of mere ‘thinking animal’. He was fully aware of the thirst which large swathes of the population felt for some other, redeeming reality, which the traditional Churches seemingly could not quench, and which led people up blind alleys such as spiritualism or revolutionary redistribution of merely material wealth. Right up to 1904 he had continued to give lectures on all manner of subjects at the working men’s college in Berlin, trying to bridge the gulf that had opened up between the outer reality of people’s lives and the inner desolation of their thwarted and very often unconscious search for meaning. In the spring of 1903, after it had been made clear that he was no longer welcome as a lecturer at the Giordano Bruno Society, which upheld a strictly scientific and anti-religious spirit, Steiner turned to the Theosophical Society, which was founded on ideals of universal human fraternity and on some insight, at least, into spiritual realities. Later, of course, after insuperable divisions and disagreements, he left this movement to found the Anthroposophical Society.

This book uses much of the terminology current in theosophical circles of the time. And yet Steiner never allowed any received wisdom or dogmas to alter or colour his own perceptions, and never spoke out of anything other than his own, direct vision. In the theosophical movement he found nothing more than a starting point, where his unique insights could meet with some understanding and receptivity. He often commented that he could only teach and develop his work if people came towards him in some way, seeking what he could offer them, asking him questions. In fact, this is the stance of any authentic teacher. No one will truly learn anything of value if they do not first find their own relationship to what is taught, seeking it and connecting with it. The pupil gives a gift of receptivity to the teacher, without which he cannot teach; and so the teacher can give his gift in turn.

In this sense all books, too, are dependent on the readers’ openness and willingness to absorb them. But this particular book, it seems to me, is unusually exemplary in this way. There’s an old Scandinavian folk tale in which the god Thor must accomplish the task of emptying a giant drinking horn. The level of water in the horn scarcely goes down, despite Thor’s immense draughts from it—and we eventually learn that this is because the horn is connected to all the world’s oceans. It seems to me, similarly, that Steiner’s Theosophy connects directly with inexhaustible spiritual oceans upon which all life draws, whether or not we know it. By reading it with an open mind, our ‘unconscious knowledge’, as Steiner says, starts to ‘rise to meet spiritual facts discovered by another’.

I don’t think it is merely wishful thinking to suggest that this book is profoundly educative and transformative. At least, that is my experience while reading it. Speaking very personally for a moment, I do indeed get the sense while reading (and, importantly, making a concerted effort to do so) that things just out of the corner of my eye or just beyond my conscious grasp start to move dynamically within me, connecting me with the words on the page in a very living way; and at the same time, at such moments, I feel a great sense of calm and reassurance—of a widening panorama, a fabric of connections slowly swimming into focus within me.

All this may sound nebulous, and inevitably is. Steiner says that ‘feeling at first sees nothing but is itself the magician which opens the eye of spirit’. In his own introduction to this book he states that our longing for the ‘supersensible world’—in other words, the many domains of reality our earthbound senses cannot perceive—is itself a power that can draw deeper insights into it, as our lungs are related to and draw in air. This book starts with us where we are: in the dark mostly, blindly feeling our way towards understanding the worlds we inhabit. Like a true teacher, who never forgets his own efforts when he first penetrated what he now seeks to pass on, Steiner honours these small beginnings of capacity in us, nurturing our dim understanding so that it can grow. Patiently, respectfully, perceptively, the teacher Steiner guides us not only with careful intellectual arguments where needed, but also with wonderfully telling images that often give the open-minded reader what one might call an ‘Aha’ experience: Yes, that’s right, I recognize what he says and connect with it at some deep, though as yet perhaps not clearly perceived, level within me. Like a true teacher, also, he knows that pupils must be stretched a little to exercise and develop their capacities. Only acknowledging the existence of higher worlds if we should see them, he says, is a hindrance to this very seeing: like only acknowledging as truth what you already know (or think you know) to be true. This is clearly a very self-limiting approach, though one that we easily succumb to under what Steiner here calls the ‘materialistic spell’. One of his telling images or metaphors is that seeing ourselves only as physical beings is like looking at a great painting and seeing only the canvas and paint it is composed of, rather than the depth and subtlety of its artistic composition. Personally, at such moments I feel the materialistic spell is broken, and a tide of relief and reassurance wells up in me—a sense of potential meaning and depth in all things: my breathing deepens, and my lungs draw in more air ...

At such moments, too, I rather wish I could have been a pupil in a class taught by such a teacher. Yet this book in some ways ensures we can be. It is not just a book. It is alive, and its author is alive in it. It is a journey through an unfolding landscape with a patient, attentive guide. By engaging openly with the words written by someone clearly so familiar with what may seem to us a foreign country, we actually attract to ourselves the better, more perceptive part of us. The map is also the terrain. The guidebook is also the territory itself and can really help take us there, like a picture in a dream perhaps that we realize is coming alive as we look at it.

This is not however to underrate the hard work required to accompany the author through what may initially seem like a thicket of terminology, a book of seven seals, of categories and levels of spiritual reality. Yet because Steiner develops this guidance so slowly, patiently and carefully, we can carry on walking with him as he illumines the landscape. What at first seems a forbidding, close-ranked, impenetrable forest opens as we make the effort to enter it, allowing us space to breathe and to distinguish its different qualities of light and shade, and also the diverse plants and creatures it shelters. Although hard work is needed to penetrate it, as we do so we can sense an answering peace and stability growing ‘underfoot’ in the soul: a certainty that this guide is to be trusted and will not lead us astray.

That is why I say this is not just a book but a body of energies, a living being brought into existence, like all living beings, by the influx of reality. The author himself has first accomplished what he urges us to try: to become a vessel for the world to flow into and speak through, connecting us beyond our confines of self-absorbed or narrowly materialistic perception with the great ocean of reality we can, through the gift of this book, increasingly sense and see.

Matthew Barton

January 2011

Preface to the Revised Edition

This book has been carefully and thoroughly revised by me for each new edition. The substance of the first edition remains, it is true, unaltered; but in certain parts I have sought to bring the mode of expression more and more into accord with the content of spiritual vision. I have specially endeavoured to do this in the chapter on repeated earth-lives and destiny (karma).

Descriptions of the supersensible world must be treated differently from descriptions of the sensible. They appeal to the reader in a different way. They demand more from him; he must work with the author, in thought, more intensely while he is reading. The author needs his cooperation to a far higher degree than does one who writes descriptions drawn from the regions of the sense world. Many critics will perhaps complain, because I have made special efforts to comply with this demand in my description of the spiritual world. The spiritual world, however, has not the defined outlines of the physical; and if anyone were to represent it so as to give the impression that this was the case, he would be describing something false. In describing the spiritual world of facts, the style must be in accordance with the mobile, flowing character of that world.

Inner truth, for descriptions of the spiritual world, belongs alone to what is expressed in flowing, mobile ideas; the peculiar character of the spiritual world must be carried over into the ideas. If the reader applies the standard to which he is accustomed from descriptions of the sense world, he will find it difficult to adapt himself to this other method of description.

It is by inner exertion of soul that man must reach the supersensible world. That world would indeed have no value if it lay spread out complete before his consciousness. It would then be in no way different from the sense world. Before it can be known, there must be the longing to find what lies more deeply hidden in existence than do the forces of the world perceived by the senses. This longing is one of the inner experiences that prepare the way for a knowledge of the supersensible world. Even as there can be no blossom without first the root, so supersensible knowledge has no true life without this longing.

It would however be a mistake to suppose that the ideas of the supersensible world arise, as an illusion, out of this longing. The lungs do not create the air for which they long, neither does the human soul create out of its longing the ideas of the supersensible world. But the soul has this longing because it is formed and built for the supersensible world, as are the lungs for the air.

There may be those who say that this supersensible world can only have significance for those who already have the power to perceive it. This is not so, however. There is no need to be a painter in order to feel the beauty of a picture. Yet only a painter can paint it. Just as little is it necessary to be an investigator in the supersensible in order to judge of the results of supersensible research. It is only necessary to be an investigator in order to discover them. This is right in principle; in the last chapter of this book, however—and in detail in others of my books—the methods are given whereby it is possible to become an investigator, and thus be in a position to test the results of investigation.

Rudolf Steiner

April 1922

Introduction

When Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in the autumn of 1813, gave to the world his Introduction to the Science of Knowledge, as the ripe fruit of a life wholly devoted to the service of truth, he spoke at the very outset as follows: ‘This doctrine presupposes an entirely new inner sense organ or instrument, through which is revealed a new world which has no existence for the ordinary man.’ And he showed by a simile how incomprehensible this doctrine of his must be when judged by conceptions of the ordinary senses: ‘Think of a world of people born blind, who therefore know only those objects and their relations which exist through the sense of touch. Go among them, and speak to them of colours and the other relations which exist only through light and for the sense of sight. You will convey nothing to their minds, and it is luckiest if they tell you so, for you will then quickly notice your mistake and, if unable to open their eyes, will cease talking to them in vain...’ Anyone who speaks to people about such things as those Fichte is pointing to in this instance finds himself only too often in the position of a seeing man among those born blind. Yet these are things that relate to a man’s true being and his highest aims, and to believe it necessary ‘to cease the useless speaking’ would amount to despairing of humanity. Far rather, one should never despair of opening the eyes of everyone to these things, provided he has good will. It is on this supposition that all those have written and spoken who have felt within them the growth of the ‘inner sense-instrument’ by which they have become able to know the true nature and being of man, which is hidden from the outer senses. This is why from the most ancient times such a hidden wisdom has been spoken of again and again. Those who have grasped something of it feel just as sure of their possession as people with normal eyes feel sure that they possess the conception of colour. For them, therefore, this hidden wisdom requires no proof. They know also that this hidden wisdom requires no proof for any other person like themselves, in whom the ‘higher sense’ has unfolded. To such a one they can speak as a traveller can speak about America to people who have not themselves seen that country but who can form an idea of it, because they would see all that he has seen if the opportunity presented itself to them.

But it is not only to investigators into the spiritual world that the observer of the supersensible has to speak. He must address his words to all people. For he has to give an account of things that concern all people. Indeed he knows that without a knowledge of these things no one can, in the true sense of the word, be ‘man’. And he speaks to all people, because he knows that there are different grades of understanding for what he has to say. He knows that even those who are still far from the moment when first-hand spiritual investigation will be possible for them can bring to meet him a measure of understanding. For the feeling for truth and the power of understanding it are inherent in every human being. And to this understanding, which can light up in every healthy soul, he addresses himself in the first place. He knows too that in this understanding there is a force which, little by little, must lead to the higher grades of knowledge. This feeling which, perhaps, at first sees nothing at all of what is related is itself the magician which opens the eye of the spirit. In darkness this feeling stirs; the soul sees nothing but through this feeling is seized by the power of the truth, and then the truth will gradually draw nearer to the soul and open in it the higher sense. In one person it may take a longer, in another a shorter time, but everyone who has patience and endurance reaches this goal. For although not everyone born blind can be operated on, every spiritual eye can be opened, and when it will be opened is only a question of time.

Erudition and scientific training are not preconditions for the unfolding of this higher sense. It can develop in the simple-minded person just as in the scientist of high standing. Indeed, what is often called at the present time ‘the only true science’ can, for the attainment of this goal, be frequently a hindrance rather than a help. For this science naturally allows only that to be considered real which is accessible to the ordinary senses. And however great its merits are in regard to the knowledge of that reality, when it decrees that what is necessary and healthful for itself shall also apply to all human knowledge it then creates at the same time a host of prejudices which close the approach to higher realities.

Against what is said here, it is often objected that insurmountable limits have been once and forever set to man’s knowledge, and that since he cannot overstep these limits all knowledge must be rejected that does not observe them. And anyone who makes assertions about things that most people accept as lying beyond the limits of man’s capacity for knowledge is looked upon as highly presumptuous. Such objections entirely disregard the fact that a development of the human powers of knowledge has to precede the higher knowledge. What lies beyond the limits of knowledge before such a development stands, after the awakening of faculties slumbering in each human being, entirely within the realm of knowledge. One point in this connection must, indeed, not be neglected. It might be said: ‘Of what use is it to speak to people about things for which their powers of knowledge are not yet awakened, and which are therefore still closed to them?’ Yet that is the wrong way to look at it. Certain powers are required to find out the things referred to; but if, after having been discovered, they are made known, every person can understand them who is willing to bring to bear upon them unprejudiced logic and a healthy feeling for truth. In this book only those things will be made known which can fully produce the impression that through them the riddles of human life and the phenomena of the world can be satisfactorily approached. This impression will be produced upon everyone who permits thought, unclouded by prejudice, and feeling for truth, free and without reservation, to work within him. Put yourself for a moment in the position of asking, ‘If the things asserted here are true, do they afford a satisfying explanation of life?’ and it will be found that the life of every human being supplies the confirmation.

In order to be a teacher in these higher regions of existence, it is by no means sufficient that simply the sense for them has developed. For that purpose science is just as necessary, as it is necessary for the teacher’s calling in the world of ordinary reality. Higher seeing makes a ‘knower’ in the spiritual as little as healthy sense organs make a ‘scholar’ in regard to the realities of the senses. And because in truth all reality, the lower and the higher spiritual, are only two sides of one and the same fundamental being, anyone who is unlearned in the lower branches of knowledge will as a rule remain so in regard to the higher. This fact creates a feeling of immeasurable responsibility in one who, through a spiritual call, feels himself summoned to speak about the spiritual regions of existence. It imposes upon him humility and reserve. But it should deter no one from occupying himself with the higher truths—not even one whose other circumstances of life afford no opportunity for the study of ordinary science. For one can, indeed, fulfil one’s task as man without understanding anything of botany, zoology, mathematics and other sciences; but one cannot, in the full sense of the word, be ‘man’ without having, in some way or other, come nearer to an understanding of the nature and destination of man as revealed through the knowledge of the supersensible.

The highest a man is able to look up to he calls the Divine. And in some way or other he must think of his highest destination as being in connection with this Divinity. Therefore that wisdom which reaches out beyond the sensible and reveals to him his own being, and with it his final goal, may very well be called ‘divine wisdom’ or theosophy. To the study of the spiritual processes in human life and in the cosmos, the term spiritual science may be given. When, as is the case in this book, one extracts from this spiritual science the particular results that have reference to the spiritual core of man’s being, then the expression theosophy may be used for this domain because it has been employed for centuries in this direction.

From the point of view here indicated, there will be sketched in this book an outline of the theosophical conception of the universe. The writer of it will bring forward nothing that is not, for him, a fact in the same sense as an experience of the outer world is a fact for eyes and ears and the ordinary intelligence. For one is concerned with experiences which become accessible to every person who is determined to tread the path of knowledge described in a special section of this work. The right attitude towards the things of the supersensible world is to assume that sound thinking and feeling are capable of understanding everything in the way of true knowledge which can emerge from the higher worlds and, further, that when one starts from this understanding, and therewith lays a firm foundation, a great step onwards has been made towards seeing for oneself, even though to attain to this other things must be added also. But one locks and bolts the door to the true higher knowledge when one despises this path and resolves to penetrate into the higher worlds only in some other way. The principle only to recognize higher worlds when one has seen them is a hindrance in the way of this very seeing. The will, first of all, to understand through sound thinking what can later be seen furthers that seeing. It conjures forth important powers of the soul which lead to this seership.

1. The Nature of Man

The following words of Goethe point in a beautiful manner to the starting point of one of the ways by which the nature of man can be known. ‘As soon as a person becomes aware of the objects around him, he considers them in relation to himself, and rightly so, for his whole fate depends on whether they please or displease, attract or repel, help or harm him. This quite natural way of looking at or judging things appears to be as easy as it is necessary. Nevertheless, a person is exposed through it to a thousand errors which often make him ashamed and embitter his life. A far more difficult task is undertaken by those whose keen desire for knowledge urges them to observe the objects of nature in themselves and in their relations to each other; for they soon feel the lack of the test which helped them when they, as people, regarded the objects in reference to themselves personally. They lack the test of pleasure and displeasure, attraction and repulsion, usefulness and harmfulness. This they must renounce entirely: they ought as dispassionate and, so to speak, divine beings to seek and examine what is, and not what gratifies. Thus the true botanist should not be moved either by the beauty or by the usefulness of the plants. He has to study their formation and their relation to the rest of the vegetable kingdom; and just as they are one and all enticed forth and shone upon by the sun, so should he with an equable, quiet glance look at and survey them all and obtain the test for this knowledge, the data for his deductions, not out of himself but from within the circle of the things which he observes.’

The thought thus expressed by Goethe directs man’s attention to three kinds of things. First, the objects concerning which information continually flows to him through the portals of his senses, the objects which he touches, smells tastes, hears and sees. Second, the impressions which these make on him, characterizing themselves through the fact that he finds the one sympathetic, the other abhorrent; the one useful, the other harmful. Third, the knowledge which he, as a ‘so-to-speak divine being’, acquires concerning the objects—that is, the secrets of their activities and their being which unveil themselves to him.

These three regions are distinctly separate in human life. And man thereby becomes aware that he is interwoven with the world in a threefold way. The first way is something that he finds present, that he accepts as a given fact. Through the second way he makes the world into his own affair, into something that has a meaning for himself. The third way he regards as a goal towards which he has unceasingly to strive.

Why does the world appear to man in this threefold way? A simple consideration will explain it. I cross a meadow covered with flowers. The flowers make their colours known to me through my eyes. That is the fact which I accept as given. I rejoice in the splendour of the colours. Through this I turn the fact into an affair of my own. Through my feelings I connect the flowers with my own existence. A year later I go again over the same meadow. Other flowers are there. New joy arises in me through them. My joy of the former year will appear as a memory. It is in me; the object which aroused it in me is gone. But the flowers which I now see are of the same kind as those I saw the year before; they have grown in accordance with the same laws as did the others. If I have informed myself regarding this species and these laws, then I find them in the flowers of this year again just as I found them in those of last year. And I shall perhaps muse as follows: ‘The flowers of last year are gone; my joy in them remains only in my remembrance. It is bound up with my existence alone. That, however, which I recognized in the flowers of last year and recognize again this year will remain as long as such flowers grow. That is something that has revealed itself to me, but is not dependent on my existence in the same way as my joy is. My feelings of joy remain in me; the laws, the being of the flowers remain outside me in the world.’

Thus man continually links himself in this threefold way with the things of the world. One should not for the time being read anything into this fact, but merely take it as it stands. There follows from it that man has three sides to his nature. This and nothing else will for the present be indicated here by the three words body, soul and spirit. Whoever connects any preconceived opinions or even hypotheses with these three words will necessarily misunderstand the following explanations. By body is here meant that through which the things in man’s environment reveal themselves to him, as in the above example, the flowers of the meadow. By the word soul is signified that by which he links the things to his own being, through which he experiences pleasure and displeasure, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow in connection with them. By spirit is meant that which becomes manifest in him when, as Goethe expressed it, he looks at things as a ‘so-to-speak divine being’. In this sense the human being consists of body, soul