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 said, at the very beginning: "This science presupposes an entirely new inner sense organ or instrument, by means of which there is revealed a new world which does not exist for the ordinary man." And he proceeded to give the following comparison to show how incomprehensible this doctrine of his must be when judged by means of conceptions founded on the ordinary senses: "Think of a world of people born blind, who therefore know only those objects and relations which exist through the sense of touch. Go among them and speak to them of colors and the other
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relations which exist only through light and for the sense of sight. Either you convey nothing to their minds, and this is the more fortunate if they tell you so, for you will in that way quickly notice the mistake and, if unable to open their eyes, will cease the useless speaking. …" Now those who speak to people about such things as Fichte deals with in this instance find themselves only too often in a position like that of a man who can see among the born blind. But these are things that refer to man's true being and highest goal, and to believe it necessary "to cease the useless speaking" would amount to despairing of humanity. On the contrary, one should not for one moment doubt the possibility of opening the eyes of everyone to these things, provided that he is in earnest in the matter. On this supposition have all those written and spoken who felt that within themselves the "inner sense-instrument" had grown by which they were 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 again and again spoken of. Those who have grasped something
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of it feel just as sure of their possession as people with normal eyes feel sure that they possess the conception of color. For them this "Hidden Wisdom" requires no "proof." They know also that it requires no proof for any other person who, like themselves, has unfolded the "higher sense." Such a one can speak as a traveler can about America to people who have not themselves seen that country, but who can form a conception of it because they would see all that he has seen if the opportunity presented itself to them.
But not only to such has the investigator of the higher truth to speak. He must address his words to all mankind. For he has to make known things that concern all humanity. Indeed he knows that without a knowledge of these things no one can, in the true sense of the word, be a "human being." And he speaks to all mankind 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 in which they will themselves be capable of spiritual investigation can bring a certain measure of understanding to meet him. For the Afeeling for
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truth and the power of understanding it is inherent in every human being. And to this understanding, which can flash forth in every healthy soul, he in the first place addresses himself. He also knows 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 that which is told it, is itself the magician which opens the "eye of the spirit." In darkness this feeling stirs; the soul does not see, but through this feeling it 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." For one person it may take a longer, for another a shorter time, but everyone who has patience and endurance reaches this goal. For although not every physical eye 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 essential to the unfolding of this "higher sense." It can be developed in the simpleminded person just as in the scientist of high
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standing. Indeed, what is often called at the present time "the only true science" can, for the attainment of this goal, be a hindrance rather than a help. For this science too often permits to be considered "real" only what is perceptible to the ordinary senses. And however great its merit is in regard to the knowledge of that reality, it creates at the same time a mass of prejudices which close the approach to higher realities.
In objection to what is said here it is often brought forward that "insurmountable limits" have been once and forever set to human knowledge, and that, since one cannot pass beyond these limits, all branches of investigation and knowledge which do not take them into account must be rejected. And a person who wishes to make assertions about things which many regard as proved to lie beyond the limits that have been set to human capacities of knowledge, is looked upon as highly presumptuous. Those who make 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
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such a development is, 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. One could say, "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?" But that is also the wrong way to look at it. One requires certain faculties to find out the things referred to; but if, after having been found out, they are made known, every person can understand who is willing to bring to bear upon them unprejudiced logic and a healthy instinct for truth. In this book the things made known are of no other kind than such as can produce the impression that through them the riddle of human life and the phenomena of the world find a satisfying explanation. This it can do on anyone who allows thinking that looks at all sides of a subject and is unclouded by prejudice, and a feeling for truth that is free, and sets no reserves, to take effect. Let one merely place himself in the attitude of asking, "If the things that are asserted here are true, do they afford a satisfying
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explanation of life?" and one will find that the life of each human being supplies the confirmation.
In order to be a "teacher" in these higher regions of existence, it is by no means sufficient that a person has developed the sense for them. For that purpose "science" is necessary, just as much as it is necessary for the teacher's calling in the region of ordinary reality. "Higher seeing" alone makes a "knower" in the spiritual just as little as healthy sense organs make a "scholar" in regard to the sensible realities. And because in truth all reality, the lower and the higher spiritual, are only two sides of one and the same fundamental essence, 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 responsibility that is immeasurable in him who, by a spiritual call, is destined to be a teacher in the spiritual regions of existence. It creates in him humility and reservedness. But it should deter no one from occupying himself with the higher truths, not even him whose other circumstances of life afford no opportunity for the study of ordinary science.
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[paragraph continues] For one can, indeed, fulfill one's task as a human being without understanding anything of botany, zoölogy, mathematics, and other sciences; but one cannot, in the full sense of the word, be a "human" being without having, in some way or other, come near to a perception of the nature and destination of man revealed in the "Higher Wisdom."
The highest to which a man is able to look up he calls the "Divine." And he has in some way or other to bring his highest destination into connection with this Divinity. For this reason the higher wisdom which reveals to him his own being, and with it his destination, may very well be called "Divine Wisdom," or theosophy.
From the point of view here indicated there will be sketched in this book an outline of the theosophical interpretation of the universe. The writer of it will present nothing that is not a fact for him, in the same sense as an experience of the outer world is a fact for eyes and ears and the ordinary intelligence. Indeed, experiences will be dealt with which become accessible to each person who is determined to tread the "path of knowledge" described in a special section of this work.
CHAPTER I
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING
The following words of Goethe's describe, in a beautiful manner, the starting point of one of the ways by which the constitution of man can be known: "When a person first becomes aware of the objects surrounding him, he observes them in relation to himself, and rightly so, for his whole fate depends on whether they please or displease him, attract or repel, help or harm him. This quite natural way of looking at and judging things appears to be as easy as it is necessary. Nevertheless, a person is exposed through it to a thousand errors which often cause him shame and embitter his life. A far more difficult task do those undertake whose keen desire for knowledge urges them to strive to observe the objects of nature in themselves and in their relations to each other, for they soon miss the gauge which helped them when they, as persons,
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regard the objects in reference to themselves personally. They lack the gauge of pleasure and displeasure, attraction and repulsion, usefulness and harmfulness; this gauge they have to renounce entirely. They should, as dispassionate and, so to speak, divine beings, seek and examine what is, and not what gratifies. Thus the true botanist should not be affected either by the beauty or by the usefulness of the plants. He has to study their structure 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 gauge for this knowledge, the data for his deductions, not out of himself, but from within the circle of things which he observes."
The thought thus expressed by Goethe directs attention to three kinds of things. First, the objects concerning which information continually flows to man through the doors of his senses, those that he touches, smells, tastes, hears, and sees. Second, the impressions which these make on him, and which record themselves as his pleasure and displeasure, his
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desire or abhorrence, according as he finds one harmonious, another inharmonious, one useful, another harmful. Third, the knowledge and the experiences which he, as a so-to-speak "divine being," gains concerning the objects—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 and accepts as a given fact. Through the second way he makes the world into his own affair, into something that has a significance for himself. The third way he regards as a goal toward which he has unceasingly to strive.
Why does the world appear to man in this threefold way? The simplest consideration will explain that. I cross a Meadow covered with flowers. The flowers make their colors known to me through my eyes. That is the fact which I accept as given. I rejoice in the splendor of the colors. Through this I turn the fact into an affair of my own. By means of my feelings I link the flowers with my own
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existence. A year after 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 species as those I saw the year before; they have grown in accordance with the same laws as did the others. If I have enlightened myself regarding this species and these laws, I find them again in the flowers of this year as I recognized them in those of the former 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 the former year and recognize again this year, will remain as long as such flowers grow. That is something that revealed itself to me, but which 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 of me in the world."
Man continually links himself in this threefold way with the things of the world. One
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should not for the time being read anything into this fact, but merely take it as it presents itself. It makes it evident 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. He who connects any preconceived meanings, or even hypotheses, with these three words will necessarily misunderstand the following explanations. By body is here meant that by which the things in the environment of a man reveal themselves to him, as in the example just cited, 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. 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, and spirit.
Through his body man is able to place himself for the time being in connection with the things; through his soul he retains in himself the impressions which they make on him; through his spirit there reveals itself to him
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what the things retain in themselves. Only when one observes man in these three aspects can one hope to gain light on his whole being. For these three aspects show him to be related in a threefold way to the rest of the world.
Through his body he is related to the objects which present themselves to his senses from without. The materials from the outer world compose this body of his; and the forces of the outer world work also in it. And just as he observes the things of the outer world with his senses, he can also observe his own bodily existence. But it is impossible to observe the soul existence in the same way. All occurrences connected with my body can be perceived with my bodily senses. My likes and dislikes, my joy and pain, neither I nor anyone else can perceive with bodily senses. The region of the soul is one which is inaccessible to bodily perception. The bodily existence of a man is manifest to all eyes; the soul existence he carries within himself as HIS world. Through the spirit, however, the outer world is revealed to him in a higher way. The mysteries of the outer world, indeed, unveil themselves in his inner being; but he steps in spirit out of himself
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and lets the things speak about themselves, about that which has significance not for him but for them. Man looks up at the starry heavens; the delight his soul experiences belongs to him; the eternal laws of the stars which he comprehends in thought, in spirit, belong not to him but to the stars themselves.
Thus man is citizen of three worlds. Through his body he belongs to the world which he perceives through his body; through his soul he constructs for himself his own world; through his spirit a world reveals itself to him which is exalted above both the others.
It is evident that because of the essential differences of these three worlds, one can obtain a clear understanding of them and of man's share in them only by means of three different modes of observation.
