Everything is fruit, and everything is seed

 

"Behold, I make all things new"

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, March 8, 1904

The theosophical worldview is for those who need a more solid foundation for their concepts and mental images regarding the supersensible world, and for those who strive for such a deeper foundation of knowledge about the soul and spirit. There are certainly not so few of them in our time. We see that cultural studies have long sought to explore the origins of religions. Cultural studies seek the origins of religions among primitive peoples, among the so-called indigenous peoples, in order to understand how religious mental images have developed over time. These religious mental images essentially contain what humans have conceived of as mental images about the supernatural, spiritual, and mental world throughout various epochs. On the one hand, we see researchers striving to trace all religions back to a simple, childlike, naive reverence for nature. On the other hand, we see other researchers tracing the origin of religions back to the fact that simple, naive human beings see how their fellow human beings cease to live, how they cease to breathe, how death comes upon them, and how they cannot imagine that nothing will remain; how, from their various experiences, which primitive people have to a greater extent than civilized people from the supernatural world, from their dream experiences and spiritual experiences, they form the mental image that the ancestor, the forefather who has died, is actually still there, that he is active as a soul, spreading his protective hand and so on. Some researchers therefore trace the origin of religions back to ancestor worship and soul worship. We could cite a whole series of other such studies that seek to explain how religion came into the world. In this way, people today seek a firm foundation for the question: Are our mental images about life after death, about a realm beyond this world that is not confined to the sensory world, are our mental images about eternal life firmly grounded? And how do people arrive at such mental images? — This is one way in which people today attempt to justify these mental images about the supernatural.

The theosophical worldview does not seek to offer this justification to contemporary humanity in the same way. While cultural research draws on the experience of primitive, simple, naive, childlike human beings, the theosophical worldview asks instead about the religious experience of the most perfect human beings, those who have reached a higher level of spiritual perception, what they can develop as their perception, their experiences, their adventures in the supersensible world. That which the human being who has developed his inner life, who has acquired certain powers, certain abilities that are not yet accessible to the average human being of today, that which such a human being is capable of experiencing about the higher world, becomes the basis of what the theosophical worldview wants to contribute to the foundation of its view. The experience that goes beyond the sensory, that is based on the so-called self-knowledge of the soul and the spirit, this higher experience is what underlies the theosophical worldview. What is this higher experience? What does it mean to experience something of the spiritual and soul world? This will be somewhat difficult for a large part of humanity today to comprehend. This was not the case in earlier times. Today, however, human beings are drawn by their experiences to what we call the sensory world, the world of external appearances. Today's human beings are at home in this world of external appearances. They ask what this looks like to the eye, how that feels to the touching hand, how this or that can be understood with the mind. They see only the world of external appearances. Thus, this world of sensory experiences lies open before them.

Let us take a look at what this sensory experience can give us. We want to become clear about how this sensory experience confronts us. Let us consider anything that belongs to these external appearances. Let us consider any being, any thing in the world. We can prove that all these things in the world came into being at some point; they were formed and did not always exist. They were created either by nature or by human hands, and after some time they will disappear. It is the nature of all things that belong to external experience that they come into being and pass away. We can say this not only of inanimate things, but also of all living things, even of human beings themselves. They come into being and pass away when we consider them as external phenomena. We can say the same of entire peoples. One need only take a brief look at world history to see how peoples who set the tone for centuries and accomplished great and mighty deeds have also disappeared from world history, for example, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. And let us move on from there to the phenomena that are referred to as human creations, to what is perceived as the highest, the most magnificent in the realm of human achievement. If we consider a work by Michelangelo or Raphael, or any other significant work of technology, we must say to ourselves: Such a work lasts for centuries or millennia; and human eyes may feel satisfied when looking at the works of Raphael or Michelangelo, human hearts may be delighted when looking at such works — but you cannot close your mind to the thought that what is revealed here in its outward appearance will one day perish and disappear into dust. Nothing remains of what is called external appearance. Yes, we can go even further. Today, natural science teaches us that our Earth, that our Sun, came into being at a certain point in the development of the world, and physicists already claim that it is almost possible to calculate when that point in time must have occurred at which our Earth reached the end of its development, at which it fell into a state of rigidity, so that it can no longer possibly develop further. Then the end will have come in its outward appearance. Then everything that has lived in a way that can be perceived by the senses, everything that has had an effect and achieved something, will have disappeared. And so you can follow the whole realm of what we call outer forms, outer appearances, shapes — you will find everywhere in this world: arising and passing away; or when we ascend into the realm of the living, we call arising and passing away: birth and death. Birth and death reign in the realm of forms, in that realm which is accessible to sensory experience.

We ask ourselves: Is this realm the only one that exists for us? We ask ourselves, is the realm in which birth and death reign incessantly the only one accessible to human beings? For those who accept only sensory perception, who want to know nothing of self-knowledge of the spirit, of abilities that can go beyond the mere observation of forms, beyond the observation of external appearances, it may well seem as if everything is in a state of ebb and flow, of arising and passing away, of birth and death. Nor can one arrive at a higher view through the same observation of nature and spirit through which one gains external experience. One cannot transcend birth and death in the same way, through the senses. This requires immersion in higher spiritual abilities; not in abnormal spiritual abilities that only special people have, no, only immersion in those soul forces that lie, so to speak, beneath the outer superficial layer. If someone transports themselves into that region of the soul, then through meaningful, deeper contemplation, they will be able to gain a different view of things and beings. Consider the simplest thing: plant life. There you see birth and death alternating eternally. You see a lily emerge from the seed and then disappear again after delighting the eye and gladdening the heart for a while. When you see no longer with the physical eye but with the eye of the spirit, you see even more. You see that the lily develops from the seed, that after reaching the stage of development it becomes a seed again, and that then a new lily emerges, which in turn sprouts a seed. Consider a seed; there you see how form arises and form passes away in this world, but how each form already contains the seed and the germ for a new form. This is the nature of living things; this is the nature of what we call power, which goes beyond mere form and shape.

This brings us into a new realm that we can only see with the eyes of the spirit, which is as real and true to the spirit's eye as the outer form is to the physical eye. Forms arise and pass away; but what appears again and again, what is always there with every new form, is life itself. For you cannot grasp life intellectually with any natural science, with any external observation. But you can see it flowing through the arising and passing forms by observing it with the spirit. What is the character of life? It appears again and again. Just as birth and death are the characteristics of external appearances, of forms, so rebirth, continual renewal, is the characteristic of life. The form that we call alive has within itself the power, the same power that is capable of creating a new form in a new birth in place of the old. Rebirth and rebirth again is the essence, the characteristic feature of the realm of the living, just as birth and death are the characteristic features of the realm of forms, of external shapes. And when we ascend to the human being, when the human being looks at himself, takes a look into his soul, then he will find that there is something within him that represents a higher stage than the life we have traced in the plant; but that this life must have the same characteristic as the life in the plant, which rushes from form to form.

We have said that it is the power that causes the new form to be reborn from the old. Look at the seed; it is inconspicuous in its outward appearance. But what you cannot see is the power, and this power, not the outward appearance, is the creator of the new plant. The new lily emerges from the inconspicuous seed because the power for the new lily lies dormant in the seed. When you look at a seed, you see something inconspicuous to the outer eye, and from the way it has shaped life, you can form a mental image of its power. But if you look into your own soul, you can see the power through which this soul works, through which this soul acts in the world of forms, and then you can perceive the power within yourself with the eyes of the spirit.

What are the powers of the soul? These powers, which cannot be compared with other powers, but are on a higher level and are not identical with the sprouting life force of the plant, these powers are — to summarize in broad strokes all that we call soul life —: sympathy and antipathy. Through these, the soul acts in life and performs actions. Why do I perform an action? Because I am driven by some sympathy within my soul. And why do I feel aversion? Because I feel a force within me that can be described as antipathy. If you try to understand this constantly fluctuating life of the soul through inner contemplation, you will find these two forces in the soul again and again and can trace them back to sympathy and antipathy. This must lead the thoughtful observer of the soul to ask: What is actually going on here? What forces must be at work in the soul? If you ask: What did the lily come from? — and were to say: This lily came from nothing — then you would not imagine that it came from the seed, in which the power of the existing plant was already laid; then you would not assume that a new form could arise from the seed. The new form owes its existence to the old, dead, past form, which left behind nothing but the power to create a new one. Just as we can never understand how a lily comes into being unless another lily has released the forces necessary for the emergence of a new one, so too can we not understand how the ebb and flow of the soul life, which is composed of sympathy and antipathy, could exist if we did not trace it back to its origin. Just as we must be clear about the fact that every plant in its form must be traced back to a previous one, so we must also be clear that the force cannot have arisen out of nothing. And just as the force of the lily cannot disappear into nothingness, so the force of the soul cannot disappear into nothingness. It must find its effect, its further formation, in external reality. We find rebirth in the realm of the living, and we also find it in the realm of the soul through intimate soul contemplation. We need only keep these thoughts in mind in the right way. We need only form a mental image of that infinite consequence, and we will easily be able to move from the idea of rebirth to the power that must animate the soul, without which the soul cannot be conceived at all, unless one wants to imagine that a soul arose from nothing and will disappear into nothing. This brings us to rebirth in the life of the soul, and we need only ask ourselves: What must rebirth in the life of the soul be like? — The point here is not to cling to sensory perception, but to develop within ourselves the perception of spiritual life in order to grasp the eternal change of forms in connection with the unchanging life. All you need to do is allow a great German spirit to work its effect on you, and you will gain a mental image of how to view life flowing from form to form with the eye of the spirit. All you need to do is pick up Goethe's scientific writings, which are so gracefully written, where you have observations of life seen in a lively way with the eye of the spirit, and you will see how life must be viewed. And if you apply these observations to the view of the life of the soul, you will come to say that our sympathies and antipathies are developed, that they have emerged from a seed, just as the plant has emerged from a seed in relation to its form. This is the first primitive mental image that underlies a main thought of the theosophical worldview, the idea of the reincarnation of the soul life. What we ask ourselves from the standpoint of meaningful reflection is: How are we to imagine the complicated life of the soul if we do not want to believe in the reincarnation of the soul? — One might object: Yes, it would be a spiritual miracle, it would be spiritual superstition, if I were to admit that the soul life within me arose suddenly and that it must also have an effect. — One might object: Yes, but the previous form of the soul does not need to have been on our earth, and its effect does not need to be on this earth in any way. — But even here, with a little thoughtful reflection, you can get past the apparent cliff. The soul enters the world; the soul has a sum of predispositions, these are developed and did not arise out of nothing. Just as little as the soul is made of the physical, just as little as the soul is made of the material, as a rainworm can arise from mud. Just as life can only arise from living things, so the soul can only arise from the spiritual. The origin of the soul cannot lie anywhere other than on our earth. For if its abilities originated in distant worlds, they would not fit into our world, and the soul would not be adapted to life in the phenomenal world. Just as every being is adapted to its environment, so the soul is directly adapted to its environment in its emergence. Therefore, you do not have to look for the preconditions for the present life of the soul somewhere in an unknown world, but in this world. With this, we have grasped the idea of reincarnation.

Thus, anyone who truly wants to delve deeply into the matter can arrive at the idea of the reincarnation of the soul through pure, meaningful reflection. You see, this is what compelled all the outstanding minds who understood living nature to arrive at the idea of the transmigration of souls in this sense, in the sense of a transmigration of souls from form to form, a transmigration of souls that we call rebirth, reincarnation, or reincarnation.

I would like to refer to one of the most outstanding minds of modern times, Giordano Bruno, who, in his view of humanity, expressed the reincarnation of the soul as his creed. Bruno suffered martyrdom for openly agreeing with Copernicus, the father of modern science. You will admit that he understood how to judge the outer form in its sensual appearance. But he understood even more. He understood how to observe the life flowing from form to form, and this naturally led him to reincarnation. — And if we go further, we find this doctrine of reincarnation presented by Lessing in “The Education of the Human Race.” We also find it touched upon by Herder. Finally, we find it hinted at in various forms by Goethe, even though Goethe, in his cautious manner, did not express himself very clearly. Jean Paul and countless others could also be cited. What has led the modern minds on whom our entire cultural life depends, and who have also influenced the most important mental images, is not only the desire to satisfy human beings, but also the fact that this doctrine alone has created a mental image that makes it possible to explain the world. The soul is constantly undergoing rebirth. Sympathy and antipathy have always existed and will always exist. That is what can be said about the soul in the theosophical worldview.

And now let us return to our starting point. Let us say once again that we have seen that form changes into form, shape into shape in our sensory world, that everything is creation and decay, birth and death. We have seen that even the most wonderful works that are created pass away. But let us ask ourselves: Is it only the work that is involved in the work? In the creation of a Raphael or Michelangelo, or in the simplest, most primitive human creations, is there nothing else involved than this work? — We must distinguish between the work and the activity that the human being has used, the activity that some being has used to bring about a work, a creation, or anything that can be called a creation. The work is given over to the outer world of shapes and forms, and in this outer form, the work is also subject to the fate of these outer forms, to coming into being and passing away. But activity, the activity that takes place within the being itself, that which once took place in the soul of a Raphael or a Michelangelo when he created his works, this activity is also that which the soul, so to speak, withdraws back into its own being; that is the activity that did not flow out into the work. Like an imprint on a seal, this activity has remained in the soul; and this brings us to something that does not remain in the soul for only a short time, but remains in the soul forever. For let us consider Michelangelo some time later. Did his activity pass fruitlessly? No! This activity contributed to the enhancement of his inner abilities, and when he approaches a new work, he creates not only with what was previously within him, but also with the power that has arisen through his activity in earlier works. His powers have been enhanced, strengthened, and enriched by his initial activity. Thus, the activity of the soul creates new abilities, which in turn are translated into the work, become active again, retreat back into the soul, and give strength for new activity. No activity of the soul can be lost. What the soul develops as activity is always the origin, the cause of an elevation of the soul's being, of the unfolding of new activity.

This is what lies in the soul as activity, as life; this is the imperishable, this is what is truly formative; this is not only form, not only life, this is creative power. Through my activity, I create not only the work, but also the cause for new activity, and I always create a new activity through the preceding one.

This is the basis of all great worldviews. An ancient Indian scripture describes in a very beautiful way how to form a mental image of this activity within a being. It tells how all forms disappear in an endless world of forms, how birth and death reign in the outer world of forms, and how the soul is born again and again. But even if lily upon lily arises, there will come a time when no new lily arises, there will come a time when the soul no longer lives in sympathy or antipathy. The living is reborn again and again; but what does not cease is the activity that always increases, intensifies, that is imperishable.

This is the third stage of existence, the ever-increasing activity, and this stage of existence and the characteristic of the spirit is at the same time marked by the fact that neither the transitory nor the ever-creative clings to it. In the first stage, our form is a sensual being, it is a being that is reborn again and again as a soul, and it is an imperishable, higher being as spirit. That sympathy and antipathy must also arise and pass away, even if their time of existence is much longer than that of the outer form, is evident from the consideration of the spiritual itself and its demands. What does the spirit demand of man when he immerses himself in this spirit? This spirit has one thing about it that it constantly reminds us of, that it reminds us of with energy and strength: that it can never be satisfied with the mere soul, with sympathy and antipathy. This spirit tells us that one sympathy is justified and the other is unjustified. This spirit is our guide in the realm of sympathy and antipathy, our guide in the realm of the soul. And if we want to develop as human beings, we are called upon to adjust our sympathy and antipathy to the demands of spiritual life, which is to lead us to the heights of development. Thus, from the outset, the spirit is granted supremacy over the mere world of sympathy and antipathy, over the mere soul, and when the spirit continually overcomes the world of unjustified, lower sympathy and antipathy, this represents an ascent of the soul to the spirit. There are initial states of the soul; there it is entangled in the forms of external reality. There its sympathy went to external forms. But the more highly developed soul is the one that listens to the demands of the spirit, and thus the soul develops from its inclination toward the sensual to its inclination toward sympathy for the spirit itself.

You can follow this in another way. The soul is initially a desiring being. The soul is filled with sympathy and antipathy, with the world of desires, with the world of longing. But after a while, the spirit shows the soul that it does not have to merely desire. When the soul has overcome desire through the decision of the spirit, it is not idle; just as desire flows from the undeveloped soul, love flows from the developed soul. Desire and love are the two opposing forces between which the soul develops. The soul still entangled in sensuality, in outward form, is the desiring soul; the soul developing its connection, its harmony with the spirit, is the one that loves. This is what guides the soul in its course from rebirth to rebirth: that it becomes a loving soul from a desiring, longing soul — that its works become works of love.

We have thus described the third form of feeling, and at the same time we have developed the basic characteristics of the spirit, described its effectiveness in human beings, and shown that it is the great educator of the soul from desire to love, and that it draws the soul upward toward itself as if with magnetic force. Now, we see on the one hand the world of shapes and forms, on the other the world of the imperishable spirit, and both connected with each other through the world of the soul.

In this discussion, I have merely taken into account a meaningful self-observation that every human being is capable of seeing with the eye of the spirit, if they find the necessary peace within themselves and are not merely entangled in external observation. But those who have developed higher spiritual abilities within themselves, occultists, learn something quite different. They not only know how to reach these three worlds through meaningful contemplation, but they also have a view of life and spirit, just as the outer eye has a view of outer sensory reality. Just as the eye distinguishes between light and darkness, just as the eye distinguishes between different colors, so the spiritual, developed, open eye of the occultist distinguishes the higher, shining light of the spirit, which is not a sensory light, but a bright, radiant light in higher worlds, in higher spheres, and this radiant light of the spirit is as real to the occultist as our sunlight is real to our perception. And we see in individual things that sunlight is reflected back. Thus, the occultist distinguishes the radiant self-luminescence of the spirit from the peculiar glimmer of light that is reflected back from the world of forms as a soul flame. Soul means reflected spiritual light; spirit means radiating creative light. These three realms are the spirit world, the soul world, and the world of forms, for this is how they appear to the occultist. Not only are the realms of existence different — for the occultist, the outer form is emptiness, darkness, that which is basically nothing, and the great, sole reality is the sublime, radiant light of the spirit. And that which we feel as shining light, which surrounds the forms and is absorbed, is the world of the soul, which is born again and again until it is reached by the spirit, until it has been drawn up completely and united with it. This spirit appears in manifold forms in the world, but the form is only the outer expression of the spirit. We have recognized the spirit in its activity, in its ever-increasing activity, and we have called this activity karma.

Now, what is the actual significance and characteristic of this activity of the spirit? In its activity, this spirit cannot remain unaffected by the deed it once performed at the stage it once occupied. I would like to explain to you how this activity of the spirit must have its effect. Consider the following: Imagine you have a vessel of water in front of you and you throw a warm metal ball into this vessel. This ball heats the water; this is the work of the ball. But through the same action that the ball has caused, it has itself undergone a change. The change remains until a new change occurs. Once the ball has done its work, it bears the imprint of that work, and it carries this imprint with it. If you sink the ball into a second vessel, it will not be able to heat this second water as a result of its first activity. In short, how it works the second time is a consequence of how it worked the first time. This simple parable illustrates how the mind works in its activity. When the mind performs a certain task in its activity, not only is this task imprinted with the mark, but the activity of the mind itself is imprinted with the same mark. Just as the ball has cooled down and thereby retained something permanent, so the mind has permanently retained its signature, its mark, from its action. Whether good or bad, deeds do not pass without leaving a trace on what remains in the soul. Just as the deed was, so is the stamp that the deed has received and which it bears from then on.

This is what leads us to recognize that, as the great mystic Jakob Böhme says, “every deed is stamped with a mark that cannot be removed from it, unless a new deed, a new experience, replaces the old stamp with a new one.” This is the karma that the individual experiences. As the soul progresses from rebirth to rebirth, the deeds remain imprinted on it, the signature, the mark it has acquired during the deeds, and in a new experience, only old experiences can be followed. This is the strict doctrine of karma, which develops the concepts of cause and effect, as presented to us in the theosophical worldview. I am the result of my past deeds, and my present deeds will have their effect in future experiences as they continue. With this, you have expressed the law of karma for human beings, and those who want to consider themselves completely as spirit in their actions must consider themselves in this sense, must be clear that every action has an effect, that the law of cause and effect exists in the moral world just as it does in the external sensory world of forms.

These are the three fundamental laws of the theosophical worldview: birth and death prevail only in the world of forms; reincarnation prevails in the world of life; and karma, or the eternally shaping and increasing activity, prevails in the realm of the spirit. The form is transitory, life is born again and again, but the spirit is eternal.

These are the three fundamental laws of the theosophical worldview, and with them you have also received everything that the theosophical worldview can introduce into human life. The spirit educates the longing soul to love. The spirit is that which is felt by all within human nature when this human nature sinks into its innermost being. The individual form is only interested in what belongs to it as an individual form. This individual form therefore acts only for itself, and this acting for itself is acting in selfishness, that is, acting in egoism. And this egoism is the dominant law in the whole world of forms, of outer shapes. But the soul does not exhaust itself within the individual form; it moves from form to form. It has the desire for ever-recurring rebirth. The spirit, however, has the aspiration to develop the ever-renewing form higher and higher, to shape it from the imperfect to the perfect form. Thus, the soul leads in its desire from birth to birth, and the spirit leads in its education of the soul from the ungodly to the divine; for the divine is nothing other than the perfect, to which the spirit educates the soul. The education of the soul by the spirit from the ungodly to the divine is the theosophical view of the world. And with that, you also have the ethics of the theosophical worldview. Just as the spirit cannot help but educate the soul to love and transform desire into love, so the theosophical worldview has as its first principle the establishment of a human community built on love. And thus the moral teaching of the theosophical worldview is in harmony with the eternal laws of the spirit. Nothing other than what the spirit must recognize as its innermost essence, the transformation of desire into love, has led to the founding of a Theosophical Society that encompasses all humanity with the soul fire of love. This is what shines forth as the ethical worldview of the Theosophical Movement. And let us ask ourselves: Does the thinking person of today find satisfaction in this worldview? — Modern man is no longer accustomed to believing merely in external traditions, merely in external views and authority, but is increasingly developing towards seeking a worldview that satisfies his thoughts, that satisfies what he calls the self-knowledge of his spirit. When modern people strive to attain this self-knowledge, there is nothing else for them but this theosophical view, which basically excludes no creed but includes all. For this theosophical view truly offers the soul what it seeks. The soul must constantly ask itself questions about human destiny and its inequality. Can the sensible soul bear that, on the one hand, innocent people live in bitterness and misery, while on the other hand, those who seemingly do not deserve it revel in happiness? This is the great question that the human soul must ask of fate. As long as we only consider life between birth and death, we will never find an answer to this riddle. We will never find comfort for the soul. But if we consider the law of karma, we know that all bitterness and misery are the results of causes that existed in previous lives. Then we will say, on the one hand, that what the soul experiences today as its fate is the effect of previous experiences. It cannot be otherwise. This explanation becomes a consolation as soon as we look to the future, because we say: Those who experience pain today, or who experience bitterness and sorrow, cannot just complain about their fate, but must tell themselves: Bitterness and heartache have an effect on the future. What is your pain today will be for your life in the future what the pain of a child is when it falls down: it learns to walk as a result. Thus, all sorrow is the cause of an elevation of the soul's life, and the soul finds comfort immediately when it says to itself: Nothing is without effect. The life I experience today must bear fruit for the future.

Now I want to mention another phenomenon: that of conscience. This phenomenon is inexplicable at first. It becomes immediately understandable when we grasp it in its development. When we know that every soul represents a certain stage of development, then we will admit that the urge for form lives in the undeveloped soul. But when the spirit has drawn it to itself, when the spirit has become more and more united with it, then with every development of sympathy and antipathy, the spirit speaks, and this speaking of the spirit from the soul is heard by the human being as the voice of conscience. This conscience can only arise at a certain stage of human development. We never see the voice of conscience in primitive peoples. Only later, when the soul has passed through various personalities, does the spirit speak to the soul.

This gives you the main concepts of the theosophical worldview, and you have seen how illuminating this view is for the world that appears to us as the world of outer forms. Yes, we would never understand this world of forms if we did not understand it from the spirit. But those who live only in the outer form, who allow themselves to be carried away by the world of forms, are on the level of the transitory, on the level where they develop selfishness and egotism, because our outer form is only interested in form. But they develop out of selfishness because the spirit becomes more and more eloquent. However, we will only recognize this spirit, which is the same in all people, when we rise to contemplate the eternally imperishable, innermost core of human beings. We will only recognize the innermost being of the human being when we penetrate to his spirit. When we recognize the innermost core of the human being, we recognize the spirit within ourselves. But only those who regard other people as brothers can understand the spirit in other people; they can only understand it when they have learned to fully appreciate brotherhood.

That is why the Theosophical Movement describes brotherhood as the ideal that the spiritual development of humanity aims to achieve under the influence of this worldview.

Ladies and gentlemen, modern man finds this in the Theosophical Movement. Because this movement offers modern man what he is looking for, it has spread throughout all countries of the world in the course of the twenty-nine years of its existence. We find it in India, Australia, America, and in all countries of Western Europe. It can be found everywhere because it gradually brings enlightening mental images to modern man. This is what theosophy offers to people today. It is something that modern man seeks, something that modern man feels, something that all those who knew how to look at nature and human life with a meaningful gaze have clearly and distinctly felt, and found what this view of the spirit presents and imprints, what gives satisfaction, comfort, courage, what gives life. It is the view that the transitory, that birth and death are not the only things, but that in this transitory, ever-changing form of external existence, the inner existence of the spirit lives itself out. Then we look confidently into the past and courageously into the future when this view has become our conviction. And then we say from the depths of our soul, comfortingly and courageously, what the poet has expressed with complete conviction:

Time is a blossoming field,
Nature is a great living thing,
And everything is fruit,
and everything is seed.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive