Erich Gutkind : as prophet of the New Age

or in some way to our advantage to do so—why should we not share these freely with others in the spirit of Max Stirner, when he says ‘Bring out from yourselves what is in you.’ To give, in the sense of self-sacrifice and with a feeling of virtue attached to it, is relatively easy, for the separate ego is thereby enhanced, and it is consequently a valueless gesture in our present age. But to make our possessions common property with others is far more difficult. It requires, as Gutkind observes, ‘the most strongly developed personality’, for such a one takes on himself'a much wider responsibility for his fellow men and ultimately for the whole of mankind. ‘For when the “I” steps beyond “world”, it draws the whole seraphically into itself and takes upon itself the whole as its task and no longer merely itself”.

This deed of abandoning the imagined security of fixed ideas and the limited ego, and allowing oneself to expand into a world of life and movement and uncertainty, both in one’s own thoughts and feelings and in relationship with others, feels like the death of the self. And in a sense it is a death. But it is also victory over death. ‘I escape death’ says Gutkind, ‘when I expand into the universal. Death is not the end of life, but stands in the midst of life. In my finite being I experience the death which is destruction, but through my divine seraphic deed I must win eternity even in the midst of life .. . God enacts death by emptying himself into the zero-point and into mankind. Man enacts death by casting himself seraphically into Godhead in rapture of blessedness. Death, the “Iam not’, is the highest deed of humanity, just as the “T’’ was the highest goal of

nature.’

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