The encounter of the one I with another I is an art. It is not a technique, not a science, not an economic principle, not based on thoughts about advantage or disadvantage - it is an art. Not everyone is a born artist; it has something to do with the past. But everyone has the talent, because it is the human talent par excellence. The only thing we need to develop this talent to an art is the will.
This will to develop the art makes life a challenging experience. For we can practice this art every day, in every encounter - it will show that it is the practicing of love itself.
The human I is the spirit on earth, it is the only spiritual being that everyone bears in her/himself and that can be recognized with the everyday faculties of will, feeling and thinking. It can be recognised in one's own I and in another's I. Thus, every human being has spiritual knowing practice, even if he is the deepest materialist. The difference between a materialist and a spiritual thinking person is the fact that the materialist has totally forgotten that his mind is a spiritual entity, and the spiritual thinker hasn't forgotten it.
If we could all become aware that the I is the spirit in itself, we wouldn't need any religion anymore, because we would be convinced that the spirit exists in a natural way. We would then feel the need to get to know the diversity of the spiritual world just as we feel the need to know the diversity of our natural world. Without any dictates we would want to develop a spiritual science that would take the place of the different religions.
The more feeling side of religion, the need of comfort, of consolation, of trust in the future can also be replaced by the love between the one I for the other I. We only have to change the direction in which comfort and consolation go. It is not a matter of being consoled, it becomes the joy of charity, of consoling, of loving-kindness. That must be practiced of course, this reversal of feelings. In the beginning it is no joy at all to comfort others and stay uncomforted oneself. But that will change...
In this way we develop equality and brotherhood - that is, the purification of feeling and the purification of will. But these purifications create the need for a spiritual science. And by getting to know the spirit better and better one's own spirit grows in its forces. Through this spiritual knowing, or through the spiritualization of knowing we develop something that has to be the force of the I itself, fully based on itself: it is freedom.
Freedom will never be reached by waiting or by doing nothing. Freedom is an inner capacity that is based on inner activity. The I turns its look inward, to itself. It recognizes the I as the active thinker. There is no I in itself if it does not think. The I is there in the encounter and in Samaritan activities - it cannot exist in itself, unless it becomes active in thinking. But then it is there, knowing that it is there - and this is the act of freedom.
Francis of Assisi, primal image of the purification of the soul.
The threefold spiritual ideal of the human being by Mieke Mosmuller