k_a_nitz

Buddhism, Hinduism, and most other religions place a huge amount of importance of the positions of the hands in ritual or devotional artwork.  These positions are often called mudras, which literally means “seals”.  Different mudras connote different things, cultivate different mindsets, or create different meanings in the world.

 

What happens has more worth than what I merely know.

Control yourself! This is the first rule of the human who wants to become a disciple of wisdom. The external world has given and chained to us such a powerful pseudo-ego that we no longer experience the inner, true ego at all. This inner ego, however, is our actual life. If we want to find this lost ego again, then we must subjugate and control the external pseudo-ego. Through that the inner-being receives the freedom to move, to show itself to us, and to reveal its sublime characteristics.

The common human lives for the outward appearance, for the shell, and does not worry about the content. The exterior is often splendidly dressed up, but the interior empty. Will the human never learn to recognise his own worth?

Self-control is only difficult in appearance. How often the human forces himself for the sake of small aims to obtain honour or gold, to deceive others or to satisfy a passion. How much the human is capable of overcoming himself when it gets serious for him! Only we lack the seriousness when we are not what we should be. We not virtuous and are not enlightened only because it has not gotten serious for us to be so. We are still wandering in the darkness only because we could not yet bring ourselves to desire and to seek the light in earnest. Should we wait yet longer in childish indecisiveness, or seek the good in earnest?

The determined criminal has more worth than such a half-creature who does not have the courage to be something whole, be it good or bad; for he is like a leaf which is driven by the wind here and there. Grasp the gravity, then you have won. Anyone who just shows himself the seriousness is certain of the goal.

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The idea of a continuous growth and progress of human nature is as an idea the most sublime thing which human fantasy has been able to dream up and which the understanding can imagine; the matter itself, however, is a far greater dogma than the ether-winged Adam of the Theosophers and Pietists. No species of all the products of nature delivers the slightest proof of the possibility for such a propaganda. The human alone wants in proud arrogance to know that his species, originating as a sort of animal, is developing into a seeming divinity.
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I ask where such a justness is if we assume our forefathers to be dependent children, us to be youths, and only our descendants after several thousand years to be men and in the state of maturity? If we then look further past the prime of man and see a senility in which humanity sinks down again to weakness and finally death?”

[Response:] Humanity cannot die anymore; it will continue to grow and cultivate itself always.

[Rejoinder:] And how far or how high does it climb in the end? Perhaps until it itself becomes God or at least to an ether-winged species, where it penetrates to the centre of the earth and then again circles around the world system in the flight of thought? Anyone who places the beginning too high goes astray. Anyone who assumes an eternity of growth deceives themselves twice over, because you do not find there any stopping anymore where a rational standstill is demanded. This is the outlook if we see history as a doctrine which should serve as the guide to climbing ever higher. We must find the truth within ourselves, all other paths lead to errors whose entire worth consists in being able to quarrel over them.

The human stands between earth and heaven. Creature and spirit are the poles. Both attract one another, or repel themselves according to their direction. — This direction shall be given through understanding and reason, and if these allow themselves to be seduced, by knowledge. The human has sufficient means of assistance and can therefore not lack to the extent he strives to use them appropriately and keeps creature and spirit in appropriate balance.

We discovered with the master carpenter another sort of instruction which surpasses everything that methods alone can achieve. — Here there is no teaching at all. From the mechanics of physical activity, the concept, the spirit must evolve. In this way you practise a matter first and then the cause explains itself. This is also an elemental process, but still simpler than the Deacon wishes. — Here everything rests on the being able, because without such no positive knowledge in conceivable. According to this principle you must first know how to count before you calculate. You must yourself be able to swim in order to specify in what way the limbs must be active for it. Only those who can fence know what the art of fencing is. Only the trained artist has a clear idea of the spirit of his art. — Would we after these inferences, to which a good many could be added, be making a conclusion too rashly if we said only the Christian, that is, only the person privy in practice to the nature of Christianity, is capable of recognising and comprehending the spirit of it? — Seen from this side, we know also straightaway what we have to think about the writings which speak against Christianity. — They are written by illiterates who are like the weak person who calls anyone an enthusiastic fool who believes in the art of swimming, since indeed man has no flippers. — Here only the words are lacking in order to explain myself convincingly enough, and that is why the categorical principle may suffice: that nobody can comprehend any matter before he has practised it. — Certainly we upset the operation of the current teachers of religion completely, where they think to educate the spirit by explanations. — Catechisms learnt by rote, alongside other religious and Biblical sayings, spoken with a pious demeanour, comprises the Christian nowadays; they want nothing to do with the prescribed tests of Christianity, and the most Christian person who takes the field against defamers of the gospels with fire and sword is easier to bring to accuse the evangelists of a false view than to confess the truth of the prescribed tests of a pure Christian faith.