51. Spirit

So often the word “spirit” is used, without people knowing what spirit actually is. Some simply call spirit the inner life of a human being, others throw soul and spirit together, and is often used as well to speak of a person being spirited, thinking of nothing more than simple brainpower. There is talk of flashes of inspiration and many other things. But no has set out to explain what spirit really is. The highest thing that has been understood by it so far is the term: “God is spirit!” Everything is now derived from this consideration. Man sought thereby to understand God Himself through this assertion and to find an explanation about Him in it.
 
But this precisely had to branch off from reality again and therefore also entail confusion; for it is wrong to simply say: God is spirit.
 
God is Divine and not spiritual! Therein lies the explanation. One must never refer to the Divine as spirit. Only that which is spiritual is spirit. The previous error of perspective can be explained by the fact that man comes from the spiritual, and is therefore unable to think beyond the spiritual, so that for him everything spiritual is the highest. It therefore natural that he would now like to regard the most undimmed and perfect thereof as the origin of all Creation, that is, as God. Thus one can assume that the mistaken notion arose not only from the need to imagine his God as being of his own kind, even if perfect in every respect, in order to feel more intimately connected with Him, but the cause for this lies mainly in the inability to grasp the actual Summit of God.
 
God is Divine, only His Will is spirit. And out of this living Will arose the spiritual environment immediately closet to Him at the beginning, Paradise with its inhabitants. But out of this Paradise, thus out of the Divine Will that had become form, came man as a spiritual seed to take his course through further Creation, as a particle of the Divine Will. Man is therefore actually the bearer of the Divine Will, and therefore the bearer of the spirit in the entire Material Creation. For this reason he is also bound in his actions to the perfect Original Will of God, and must bear full responsibility for it if he allows it to be overgrown impurely by external influences of the World of Matter and, possibly under certain circumstances, to be completely buried.

This is the treasure or the currency that was to yield interest and compound interest in his hand. From the false premise that God Himself is spirit, that is, of the same nature as the origin of man himself, it is clear that man could never form a correct picture of the Godhead. He must not only imagine it as the most perfect of himself, but must go far beyond that to a nature that will always remain incomprehensible to him, because he will never be able to grasp it in his own spiritual nature.
 
Spirit is therefore the Will of God, the lifeblood of all Creation, which must be permeated by it in order to be sustained. Man is the partial bearer of this spirit, who, by becoming self-conscious, is to contribute to the uplifting and further development of the whole of Creation. This requires, however, that he learns to use the forces of Nature correctly and utilize them for their combined advancement.