Self-love – it does not sound good. We are convinced that it is others who practise it, not us, but if you ask your neighbour or your companion in life, you may hear a similar opinion of yourself. Whoever lives in self-love basks mostly in his own attention, and though everyone is a little narcissistic, one in whom this turns pathological is hard company to bear.
Self-love is not to be denied or done away with, but ennobled and refined. From loving our own egoism, from self-adulation and groundless conceit, we must arrive at authentic self-knowledge. We recognise the spiritual being in others when we regard ourselves in the same way; that is, we must learn to see into our own soul as well.
Delving into the soul, the science of the soul, seeing into the soul – so many expressions, and not everyone is interested in them. One person is not, because he lives in the spirit of denial. Materialist and purely biological psychology does grant that there are so-called spiritual phenomena, but in its view their basis – a substance distinct from the body, the soul – does not exist. By contrast, there is also a scientific view that treats as fact the soul's influence and existence outside the body and reaching beyond it.
Another is so taken up and contented with bodily existence that he pays no heed to his soul. The everyday view in any case identifies the notion of the soul with man's world of feelings and thoughts, his mental sphere. When someone speaks of his spiritual world, he mostly means his feelings.
Others regard the soul as the sum of certain bodily functions – thinking, feeling, will and the like – and this is a kind of quasi-atheism, which still leaves the spiritual substance aside but takes a lively interest in certain subtler phenomena of human existence.
A half-spiritual view is one that holds the soul to be a distinctive centre of force, a source of energy, the focus of the body-soul-spirit sphere, and yet in the end understands it merely as an impersonal field of force, without personal traits, or indeed even individual existence. The pantheist view helps us understand that the soul is part of the universe, a sharer in a world consciously and harmoniously ordered and artistically built. Most fitting of all is the idea of mutual embeddedness, in which man may be discovered in the world and the world may be discovered in man.
When people see only the world-spirit and posit the existence of this sole principle, separate personality or individual existence cannot be accounted for. A further view understands the individual soul as a being with a metaphysical identity, a conscious soul-spark springing from the great fire. A particle of energy from the source of the universe, we may say, God's eternal companion, at once identical with him and different from him, for the non-divine would never seek the divine. Thus the soul is the bearer of life, the essence of man, a transcendent, spiritual energy, bound to its source, God, by the beginningless bond of kinship.
According to Hermes Trismegistus – how poetic! – the tear of God is the soul of man…
The birth of souls is a fall; souls fall from the sky like stars, like God's sowing. Human souls fly through the world like meteor swarms through the Earth's atmosphere. (Heraclitus)
How do you see yourself? As a heap of matter condemned to death, or as a soul-spark with an eternal calling? If you truly love yourself, strive to serve yourself with the noblest ideals you can. Do not serve only your perishable part; nourish your imperishable part as well.