Life View and World View. The Laws.
The Philosopher's Stone
Esoteric World View
(2.1.7) Most people wander through life without asking themselves: Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? How is reality made up?
(2.1.8) The answers to the eternal questions of the Sphinx: Whence? How? and Whither?, are given in the following presentation, which is not a new doctrine but has always been available for serious seekers, for whom the answer has been vitally important.
(2.1.16) Esoterics teaches that material reality consists of a series of different atomic states, a series of successively higher kinds of matter. To them corresponds a series of different, successively higher kinds of objective consciousness. Thus a whole series of different kinds of logically correct apprehension of reality is obtained. Each kind of objective consciousness can acquire a correct apprehension of its own material reality. All the different —radically different— kinds of apprehension of reality are equally determined by reality, each kind within the given limits of its kind of matter. Anyone who lacks the exact apprehension of reality within a lower kind of matter cannot acquire an exact apprehension of reality within higher kinds.
(2.1.17) The esoteric world view must remain a hypothesis for those who lack higher objective consciousness. Even as a hypothesis, however, it makes up a logical system that by its freedom from inner contradictions, by its simplicity, clarity, rationality, universality is incomparably superior to any other metaphysical system. It demonstrates the suffocating narrowness of prevalent horizons and furnishes a total picture of reality that far surpasses the speculative resources of science and philosophy. But it does not pretend to be anything but a superstructure above the level of knowledge possible for man. On no single point does it conflict with reason based on facts, with the objective results of scientific research. On the contrary, it presupposes that research will some time achieve a direct connection to this superstructure.
(2.3.2) Matter is enormously more composed than the boldest hypotheses have ever dared to assume. Science knows of three states of aggregation of physical matter: solid, liquid, and gaseous. In fact, there are seven states of physical matter, and where physical matter ends a new kind of matter begins, which is inaccessible even to scientific instruments. Without the esoteric explanation the composition of matter remains an unsolvable problem.
(2.3.3) The energy theory of physics is erroneous. Principally thermodynamics suggested the immediate, fascinating, and erroneous idea of the indestructibility of energy. There is no energy without matter, independent of matter, or acting through anything but matter. Energy is energy only as long as it is motion. When motion ceases, energy as force is annihilated. Energy cannot be converted. No “form” of energy can be turned into another “form”. The apparent conversions thought to be observed are not processes of conversion but of parallelism. The latter concept is as yet lacking in scientific physics.
(2.3.4) What science calls force, or energy, is matter. Energy is matter, the action of higher matter on lower matter. All higher kinds of matter are energy in relation to lower kinds. Any kind of matter relates to its next lower kind as energy to matter. Matter dissolves, not into energy but into higher kinds of matter.
Esoteric Life View
(3.1.1) The world view is our total knowledge of the matter aspect of reality. The world view includes physical and natural sciences and their offshoots. The life view concerns the consciousness aspect of existence and is the sum total of man’s attitude to life, to its meaning and goal, and his view on mankind and man’s ways.
(3.1.2) Without a world view, knowledge of reality, the necessary basis of life view is lacking. A rational conception of reality is all the more important since the life view is of fundamental, indispensable importance. It is from his life view that man derives the bases of his valuations, his viewpoints for judgement, motives for action. The life view includes the conception of right and what is contained in the concept of culture.
(3.1.3) The present exposé of a life view means to orient in the jungle of life, to be Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth of life. Never before has the need for such a view been greater, for never before was disorientation greater. People recognize more and more clearly that traditional conceptions and historical views are fictitious and illusory, arbitrary constructions of ignorance. The all-demolishing powers, which frantically work for a return to the stage of barbarism, have unveiled their destructive tendency manifestly enough. The universal disorientation has resulted in a general sense of lawlessness and arbitrariness in all spheres of life, also in the world of material reality. A working hypothesis has been lacking, one unifying the scientist’s realistic view of existence with that of the seeking cultural man who strives to find a synthesis. Such a hypothesis would incorporate what is essential of mankind’s general experience of life and the indispensable idealism advocated by Platon.
(3.1.5) This Life View is termed esoteric since it is based on the esoteric world view and on esoteric facts about the goal of life. There is no such life view that suits everybody on any level of development. What is common to them all is the knowledge of the laws of life, which everybody applies according to his understanding of life. Anyone who in addition wishes to practise all manner of conventions may certainly do so for his own part.
(3.1.6) There are laws in everything: laws of nature or laws of matter in the matter aspect of existence; laws of life, or laws of consciousness, in the consciousness aspect. Anyone who knows about the laws has insight into reality and understanding of life. Before you can say how things ought to be you must know how things are. The laws of life grant freedom. The laws of life are no prohibitions. Those who need directions do not have knowledge and judgement of their own. In understanding the laws of life we make it possible for us to solve our problems of life rationally. By that the conditions of individual development are clarified.
FofLT 4
(14.38) The fundamental axiom of hylozoics says: There are laws on everything and everything is expressive of law. Law is the sum total of constant relations. Law is what does not change in a cosmos otherwise changing. Laws of nature concern mainly the expressions of the motion aspect through matter; laws of life concern the expressions of the motion aspect through consciousness. The knowledge of the laws of nature is the basis of the world view; the knowledge of the laws of life is the basis of the life view.