Erich Gutkind : as prophet of the New Age

that we should give up the things of this life for the sake of an after-life beyond is equally inappropriate. For it is exactly in this life and in this body that the next step forward has to be taken. Indeed Max Stirner, with his declaration of the sovereignty of the self, is far nearer to Gutkind’s sidereal birth than either of these views, when he says ‘only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the finite ego is really I’ and ‘IfI set my cause upon myself, the unique one, then my cause rests on its transitory mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say: I have set my cause on nothing’. For Stirner, like Gutkind, does not preach. Both of them set a Zen test which is in accordance with the original spirit of Zen far more than some of the modern Zen cults. As is also the sayin: of the Gospel that ‘he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it’, which is no preaching of poverty, but an invitation to unbounded riches.

“The new supra-personal realm of nature for which we are searching’ says Gutkind in World Conquest, ‘is the real human love, the true Socialism’, which he further describes as ‘the new spontaneity which ensues when the zero-point of pure isolated individuality has been passed’. This socialism has nothing to do with any present-day political creed. The miserable grasping after material wealth, which is what socialism stands for today, differs from capitalism only by the difference of opinion about who should possess it. It has no new message for mankind. Both the grasping of capitalism and the egalitarianism of so-called socialism are essentially poverty-stricken ideas and cannot even lead to the abundance of material wealth which it is both possible and necessary that we should now have, so that we can press on to new needs.

“True socialism’ says Gutkind, ‘does not aim at riches for the individual, but rather at holy poverty for the individual and riches for the community’. When the individual gives away to his fellows all that he has, keeping no reserve for himself, because he feels in himself an overwhelming sense of wealth and knows that in giving to others he is giving to himself, because he and the others are the same co-human person; only that giving, which is felt not as impoverishment but as enrichment, is true socialism. And this giving does not apply only to material wealth. Our learning, our thoughts, feelings and desires, which nowadays we express only within the bounds of convention or so far as we consider it prudent

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