12. The Inner Voice
The so-called “Inner Voice”, the spiritual part in man to which he can listen, is intuition!
It is not for nothing that the saying goes: “The first impression is always the right one”. Just as there is profound truth in all these and similar sayings and proverbs, so is it here. Impression is consistently understood to mean intuition. What a person feels, for example, when meeting a stranger for the first time, is either a kind of warning to be cautious or complete repulsion, or something pleasant to the point of complete sympathy, or in some cases indifference. If, in the course of conversation and further intercourse, this impression is shifted or entirely blurred by the judgement of the intellect, so that the thought arises that the original intuition was wrong, it almost always turns out at the end of such acquaintances that the very first feeling was correct. Often to the bitter pain of those who had allowed themselves to be misled by the intellect as a result of the being deceived by others.
Intuition, which is not bound to space and time and is connected with the homogeneous, the spiritual, the eternal, immediately recognized the right kind in the other, did not allow itself to be deceived by the shrewdness of the intellect.
Error is completely excluded in intuition.
As often as it happens that people are misled, there are two reasons that cause the errors: Either intellect or feeling!
How often do you hear people say: “In this or that matter, I once let my feelings guide me, and I fell into it. One should only rely on one’s intellect!” Such people make the mistake of thinking that feeling is the inner voice. They praise the intellect and do not suspect that it is precisely the intellect that plays a great part in feelings.
Therefore watch out! Feeling is not intuition! Feeling emanates from the gross material body. This produces impulses which, guided by the intellect, give rise to feeling. There is a big difference with intuition. But the joint work of feeling and intellect gives birth to imagination.
So, on the spiritual side, we have only the intuition which is elevated above space and time. On the earthly side, first and foremost, is the gross material body bound to space and time. From the body emanates impulses which, through the cooperation of the intellect, are transformed into feelings.
The intellect, a product of the brain bound to space and time, is now again able, as the finest and highest of matter, to produce imagination with the cooperation of feeling. Imagination is therefore the result of the cooperation of feeling with intellect. It is of fine matter, but without spiritual power. That is why imagination can only be retroactive. It is only ever able to influence the feeling of its own producer, but never to send out of itself a source of power to others. It therefore only works backwards on the feeling of the one whose imagination it is, it can only kindle the person whose enthusiasm, but can never have an effect on one's surroundings. Thus the stamp of the lower stage is clearly recognizable. It is different with intuition. This carries spiritual power within itself, creative and invigorating, and thus has an emanating effect on others, rousing and convincing them.
So on the one hand we have intuition, on the other body-instincts-intellect-feeling-imagination.
Intuition is purely spiritual, above space and time. Feeling is fine gross matter, dependent on instinct and the intellect, thus on a lower level.
In spite of this fine materiality of feeling, however, a mixture with the spiritual intuition can never take place, thus also no clouding of the intuition. The intuition will always remain pure and clear because it is spiritual. It will also always be clearly felt or ‘heard’ by people if ... it is really the intuition that speaks! But the greatest number of people have closed themselves off from their intuition by placing their feeling in front of them like a dense covering, a wall, and then mistakenly take the feeling for their inner voice, whereby they experience many disappointments and then rely all the more on the intellect, not suspecting that they might be deceived precisely through the cooperation of the intellect. On account of this error, they hastily reject everything spiritual, with which their experiences had absolutely nothing to do, and attach themselves even more to the inferior.
The basic evil here, as in many others, is again and again the voluntary submission of these people to the intellect bound to space and time!
The human being who completely submits to his intellect also completely submits to the limitations of the intellect, which, as a product of the gross material brain, is firmly bound to space and time. Thus the human being then chains himself entirely to the gross material.
Everything that the human being does, happens from his side and voluntarily. Thus he is not chained, but he chains himself! He allows himself to be controlled by the intellect (for if he were not willing, it could never happen), which, according to its own nature, also binds him to space and time, no longer allowing him to recognize or understand what is spaceless and timeless. For this reason, the limited intellectual capacity forms a shell, a boundary firmly tied to space and time, over the spaceless and timeless intuition, and the human being is either no longer able to hear anything at all, his "pure, inner voice" has faded away, or he is only able to "hear" the feeling connected with the intellect instead of the intuition.
It creates a false concept to say that feeling suppresses pure intuition; for nothing is stronger than intuition, it is the highest force of man, can never be suppressed or only impaired by anything else. It is more correct to say: Man makes himself incapable of recognizing intuition.
Failure is always only due to the human being himself, never to the strength or weakness of individual gifts; for it is precisely the basic gift, the actual force, the strongest of all in the human being, which carries all life within itself and is immortal, is given to each individual equally! No one has anything over the other. All differences are merely in the way they are used!
Nor can this basic gift, the immortal spark, ever be tarnished or polluted! It remains pure even in the worst mud. You only have to burst the shell that you have imposed on yourselves through the voluntary limitation of the intellectual faculty. Then, without transition, it will blaze forth just as pure and clear as it was in the beginning, unfold fresh and strong and connect with the Light, the Spiritual! Rejoice in this treasure which lies untouchable in you! No matter whether you are regarded as valuable by those around you or not! Any dirt that has accumulated like a dam around this spiritual spark can be thrown off by honest good will. Once you have done the work and uncovered the treasure, you are as valuable as anyone who never buried it!
But woe betide anyone who, out of convenience, continually closes himself off from the willingness to do good! At the hour of Judgement, this treasure will be taken from him and he will cease to be.
Therefore, wake up, you who keep yourselves closed off, you who have covered your intuition with the blanket of intellect and the limitation of comprehension! Take heed and listen to the calls that strike you! Whether it be a tremendous pain, a strong emotional shock, great suffering, or high, pure joy, which is able to burst the darkening blanket of lower feeling, let nothing of the kind pass you by uselessly. They are aids that show you the way! It is better not to wait for them, but to set to work with earnest will for all that is good and for spiritual ascent. In this way the separating layer will soon become thinner and lighter again, until it finally flutters away and the still pure, unsullied spark bursts into blazing flame. But this first step can and must only come from the human being himself, otherwise he cannot be helped.
You must make a strict distinction between wishing and being willing. Nothing is done with the wish, it is not enough for progress. It must be the willing that also causes the deed, that already carries it within itself. With the serious willing the deed already begins.
Even if some people have to take many side paths because they have only been bound by their intellect for so long, they should not shy away from it. He too wins! For him it is a matter of clarifying his intellect, of slowly peeling away and releasing everything that inhibits him in the individual experience of all the byways.
Therefore, go forward undaunted. With a serious will, every path ultimately leads to its goal!
