This essay was originally published by Julius Evola in Bilychnis in June, 1928. It is a review of the Neugeist movement in Germany, which was derived from the New Thought movement in USA that had been developing previously. Now “Neugeist” is the German translation of “New Thought”, but, following Evola, I have sometimes translated it as “New Spirit” … Evola sometimes uses the German term, and others the Italian Spirito Nuovo, a convention which I have followed. The essay will be presented in two parts. This first part is a general introduction. The second part will describe the actual exercises recommended by the New Thought Alliance.

These early articles from Evola that I have been posting demonstrate his spiritual quest, and are quite removed from the later preoccupations with politics, race, etc. It is clear, if readers will look back over the many reviews translated here, that Evola was willing to accept a form of Christianity that was “practical”, mystically inclined, and aligned more with Eastern teachings. Apparently, he was never able to find it, since he subsequently turned away from that quest. He even rejected what he, not incorrectly, called the “vedantized Christianity” of Guido De Giorgio.

The other failed quest was Evola’s search for “special” powers, whether in the Tibetan Buddhists, yogis, or even the “New Spirits”. It is clear, given the number of references to them, that he was obsessed with the idea. Once again, all the magical exercises probably did not create those powers in the expected way. His correspondence with Rene Guenon, which was have made available, show this.

As for the German New Spirits, they seem to have disappeared without a trace; I am only familiar with Driesch, but only in a different context. I am sure that they were more intellectually sophisticated than their American counterparts. Since New Thought owed a certain intellectual debt to German philosophy, the Neugeist movement probably found a point of contact in it.

Of course, in a sense, they were on the right track. Thoughts do control our lives, that is why we deem it so important to understand one’s own thought process. However, they seemed to have been inventing stuff on the fly without ties to a formal tradition. They retained the language of Christianity, but not its essence. As Guenon makes clear, the esoteric cannot be divorced from the exoteric, something that the New Spirits believed they could do. That is why the movement had to fail. On the other hand, a Valentin Tomberg, for example, managed to keep the esoteric and the exoteric together. That is the path to the future, the worthwhile way to “change your life”; this path is immune to the petty criticisms of the dominant — and only — Western tradition that are heard in some circles.

In contemporary central Europe one of the spiritual currents that is gaining more ground, is that of the New Thought Alliance (Neugeistbund).  In essence, it is an offshoot of that reaction against religious dogmatism and scientific materialism, that that had already given rise to other more or less spiritual and mystical movements, like New Thought [in English in original], neo-Rosicrucianism, Christian Science, Anglo-Indian Theosophy and even spiritism. In regards to Neugeist there is however a sense of seriousness and enthusiasm not very common in most of these sects.

Not that it represents actually something original and united: on the contrary, there are clearly found in it ideas from Hindu yoga, medieval mysticism, and even classic German thinkers like Herder, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, while on the practical side, the influence of the studies on autosuggestion brought in vogue by Coué and Baudouin is very clear. In spite of all this syncretism, in Neugeist there is a certain impulse that in a good measure unifies such elements close to an experienced need to bring man to recapture the sense of interiority and spiritual force.

The movement has its center in Pfullingen (Württemberg), where the editor J. Baum publishes the review Die Wiesse Fahne and a collection of small volumes among which in fact there are enough good ones (e.g., F. Eberspaecher, Der Giest sie Führer, K. O. Schmidt, Selbst und Lebensbemesterung durch Gedankenfraft and Wie knonzentrire ich mich?, etc.). From Pfullingen, the movement extends especially toward Switzerland, Hungary, and Austria, where it has another organ: Das Neue Licht, edited by F. V. Schöffel. There are among the adherents some rather noted names, such as Prof Verweyen and the vitalist H. Driesch.

Neugeist intends to be essentially a practical spiritualism, an active mysticism, with disdain for everything that is simple theory or belief. “Neugeist”, says Eberspacher, “as vision of the world proceeds from this principle: that no knowledge has value if it is not applied practically; that the best ideas serve no purpose, if they are not transformed into action. Men must instill practically every day in life the teachings of a vision of the world.”

The first opposition is naturally to materialism; in the second, to the ancient concept of faith and religion, which it wants precisely to replace with the New Spirit (Neugeist). According to this ancient concept, says the author cited above, “faith is nothing more than believing in undemonstrated propositions. Instead, for the New Spirit, faith is a force, by means of which the highest energies can be awakened.” Dogma and confession are enemies and lethal for the spirit. Neugeist wants to be an “undogmatisches Tatchristentum”, i.e., an active Christianity without dogmas.

At the center of its praxis, there is the concept of the sovereignty and power of thoughts. “First of all, the most powerful of all forces lies in the force of though. The entire cosmos, all forms, and all phenomena, starting from the atom up to the solar system, are nothing if not materializations of the thought of God. Thoughts construct character, form bodies and faces, regulate health, determine our external relations, our destiny, happiness, or misfortune, the joy or sorrow of men. That which we form, shape, produce, is our creation from the inside—thoughts are the seeds, and the fruit is our fate, our good or our evil.” (Schöffel in Das Neue Licht).

That said, it is clear that attention is then brought to the techniques to make oneself master of thought in order to act, by means of it, in the direction of spirituality, elevation, and strength, on which it depends. Hence, the noted connection of Neugeist with the teaching of Yoga, with the modern practices of suggestion and autosuggestion, with the mystical disciplines of silence and meditation, purified however of their devotional or moral coloration and undertaken only from the point of view of their practical efficacy.

The inner journey given by Schmidt (Wie konz, ich mich?) is divided into four major phases.

1. Concentration. This includes liberation, internal calm, “Silence” and the concentration of thinking, feeling, and willing into a single point.
2. Meditation, understood as the highest level of concentration in which man begins to direct thought onto a determined goal (concentrated meditation) and to make himself capable of keeping, this direction (pure meditation) fixed above everything,
3. Contemplation, or inner mystical absorption, where the ear is turned to the “inner voice” to which then one must try to identify oneself, proceeding then to the next level
4. Realization, or self-completion, the level that precedes “making oneself Christ” (Durchchristung), that is the highest stage of all the practices of the “new Spirit”. It is the same as “cosmic consciousness” and “being one with God” of all mysticisms.

The German New Thought Movement: Exercises ⇒