Things unknown and strange can be magically attractive to us. Something pushes us into the unknown experiences. “More, more!” screams the voice inside us. “Go further, go further!” the voice urges us.
Theodor Storm’s tale of the “Little Häwelmann” (*1), who travels to heaven in his rolling bed, reflects this inner impulse. The journey of the Little Häwelmann starts unexpectedly, and it must end abruptly. He is cast out of heaven. However, in today’s enlightened times, a sequel of this fairy tale can be written…
“More, more! “…
As a child, I was captivated by Theodor Storm’s fairy tale “The Little Häwelmann”. My parents said to me. It’s about a little boy called Häwelmann. He sleeps in a bed on wheels at night and also in the afternoons when he is tired. But when he’s not exhausted, his mum has to move him around the parlour in his rollaway bed, and he can never get enough of that. One night, little Häwelmann can’t fall asleep again. His mother tries her best. “More, more!” he screams incessantly until his mum eventually sinks exhausted into a deep sleep. But little Häwelmann doesn’t give up. He takes off his nightgown, holds his leg up like a mast and hangs his shirt on it as a sail. He starts blowing with all his strength. And the little bed starts to move over the floor, then – against all the laws of gravity – up the wall, then upside down along the ceiling and then down the other wall again. “More, more!” cries the little boy. Then the good old moon looks through the window and asks him: “Haven’t you had enough?” “No,” Häwelmann shouts, “more, more! Open the door for me! I want to ride through the city; all the people shall see me drive.” “I can’t do that,” says the good moon; but he lets a long beam of light through the keyhole; and then the little boy drives out of the house into the town, into the forest. But there it is quiet. Everyone is asleep, including the people and the animals; he doesn’t want to wait until the next day. With the help of the moon, he manages to travel to the “end of the world” and from there, on a ray, to the heavens.
This desire for “more”, this irrepressible urge to discover, touched me deeply even as a child. Aren’t we all more or less such “Häwel men” and “Häwel women”? An inner restlessness drives us out into the world, whether with a rucksack, in a campervan or by aeroplane. It can’t be too far or too foreign. We climb high peaks and discover distant coasts; we join adventurous projects and dare dangerous expeditions, driven by this “More, more!”
Yes, if we are honest, we can even say that our collective Western cultural history is reflected in this simple fairy tale of the little boy. Fuelled by an irrepressible expansionist urge, we have taken over the world. We took what we could get our hands on – mostly without regard for foreign customs and traditions, without regard for nature and climate. “More, more!” So, what happens next in the story of the little Häwelmann?
The sky stormer…
In the sky, little Häwelmann is getting more and more exuberant. He drives straight into the bright cluster of stars, causing the stars to tumble down from the sky to the left and right. Finally, he drives over the nose of his faithful companion, the moon, so that the moon has to sneeze. While sneezing, he blows out his lantern. The little Häwelmann suddenly finds himself in complete darkness and disorientation. He is totally on his own. The red light of the rising sun appears on the horizon. The sun looks at him with its glowing eyes and says: “Boy, what are you doing here in my sky?” And – one, two, three – she takes the little boy and throws him into the middle of the big water. There, he can learn to swim (*1).
As a child, I always had to swallow at this point. I found the relentless harshness of the sun to be cold, inhuman, and cruel. I was stunned. “He can learn to swim there!” The sun says. Now, he should see for himself how he can manage! But when I reread Theodor Storm’s fairy tale today, I discovered a hopeful ending which I didn’t remember as a child. It says there at the end of the fairy tale:
“And then? Yes, and then? Don’t you remember? If you and I hadn’t come and taken little Häwelmann into our boat, he could easily have drowned! (*1)
So, the little boy is not left entirely alone after all. A group of helping people rescue him from the sea and pull him into the boat. The little boy is caught in a “web of relationships”, in a web of helping forces.
As observers, we are immediately faced with the question: Has the little boy done something wrong? Does he have to experience something like punishment? After all, he has only followed the spiritual impulse in the company of the moon. He has followed the deep longing of his heart. And he even succeeds in his decision to penetrate the spheres of the heavens. But the little Häwelmann is still childlike and immature in the capacity of his consciousness.
He is still an immature conqueror of the heavens. Entirely focused on himself and his urge for “more and more,” he wants to be someone; he wants to be seen. His desire to expand encompasses everything, including the spiritual and celestial spheres. Totally unprepared, he wants to make them his own. This cannot and must not happen for the sake of his own protection from the sun, that is, from the sun, as a spiritual principle. Therefore, he must be pushed back and return to the earthly sphere. For the little Häwelmann, it is essential to learn the fundamental laws of his own world, the physical world. For him, this is the excellent first lesson he learns in real physical contact: the secrets of nature and matter. Only on this basis will he be able to fulfil his rightful place in the cosmos as well as his spiritual task.
We are this world – we are matter from within…
So, the story of the little Häwelmann needs a continuation. The maturing process that the little Häwelmann undergoes is the development of consciousness that a large part of humanity is currently facing. It is about entering into a conscious, feeling connection with the innermost part of creation, the innermost part of man, the innermost part of the earth, and the innermost part of the sun.
A Rosicrucian song says: “The heart must be opened first!” Here, in our heart, the secret of all creation lies hidden. The paradox is that everything earthly, that is, every kind of matter, is surrounded by emptiness —a sphere of non-being that energises and holds it together. Matter is not something separate from the human being or from the spirit; matter is not something “dead.” It is intensely alive at its core.
We are this world, we are its matter. This identity with the world is the object of our feeling. It is what feeling in depth is about. (*2)
The experience of being alive is the foundation of every ecological and spiritual understanding.
To grasp it means to be deeply interwoven with the entire material world. The experience of being alive and being a biological subject is the experience of being matter from within. And therefore, it is the experience of being the world. (*2)
Biology and modern physics (here, especially the quantum theory) come to the realisation that a living being, through its physicality, is not materially separated from the rest of the environment. Between all living beings, there is a continuous “entanglement”: a mutual change and influence through participation. Furthermore, there is the fundamental realisation of modern physics that a body, including that of a human being, is not solid matter at its core. Most of what makes us is emptiness.
Max Planck wrote:
There is no matter, but only a fabric of energy given form by an intelligent mind, whoever that is. This spirit is the origin of all matter. (*3)
The quantum physicist and philosopher Hans-Peter Dürr repeatedly emphasised that, at its core, the solidity of matter reveals itself as a relationship. And Andreas Weber, biologist and mystic, goes one step further when he writes:
But the relationship is not everything: in the depths, every relationship is fuelled by the desire for connection between the individual elements. This desire would, therefore, be the actual interior of bodies and, thus, also of all beings. In the deepest depths, the world is not a relationship but a desire for aliveness. This desire is not external, not structural, not abstract, but pure interiority: the interior of the desire for life to be. This desire is the centre, the beginning and the end of the cosmos. It forms the calyxes of the wild roses in June and speaks through the tone sequence of songs. (*4)
Fruitful identity is the joy of the matter in itself.
This is a view of the world in which everyone and everything are interrelated and intertwined. Every impression we leave somewhere in nature is recognised and perceived in all of nature. The experience of a personal self happens not only as an individual, separate identity, but one’s own identity can only develop fruitfully through interweaving with countless other identities. Developing one’s identity does not mean marginalising or excluding the other. Instead, it is about entering into a relationship with them, becoming the other to continue forming one’s own identity through them.
A key qualification of this identity formation is the feeling. Through feeling, we can experience our being as togetherness. We are all one and the same matter and are transformed by each other. The rock that I touch with my hands, the water that lifts me up as an ocean wave … everything is transformed by rubbing against each other. Feeling is not something self-centred that is only concerned with one’s own identity. The feeling is a sign of the extent to which an individual succeeds in being in the world and at the same time realising its uniqueness. Since this uniqueness can only be realised and arise through matter, it means that in-depth, the world can be characterised as the joy of matter in itself.
Representatives of modern deep ecology and quantum physics suggest that an organism that realises itself through its self-actualised, ongoing metabolism simultaneously creates space for the other. The self-realisation in this way is thus its own opposite in-depth, the non-self.
The universe is animated by the desire to give life and vitality…
Seen in a larger context, the natural history of the cosmos is not neutral, as science has always assumed.
The universe is about something. It has an urge to bring more vitality into the world. Reality is a potential that longs for development. In the beginning, there is the desire of the One to give itself away, to give life. It is conceivable that nothing more is needed than this cosmic longing to create fertility. […] The desire for inner fertility to manifest itself repeatedly in life leads to the splitting of the whole. The splitting up brings about an individual longing for connection and a desire that is also effective in individuals to continue creating their own lives. These two longings arise from a single one, namely, from the desire for life. They have the consequence that the infinite multitude of connections and transformations are explored, through which the individual parts linked in this way transform into each other again and again, back into the one, and into new individualities. (*5)
This creates an entirely new perspective on the “cosmic meaning” of being foreign. There is a primordial ground, an initial desire out of the emptiness to open up, to reveal oneself in forms, to differentiate and in this differentiation, to get to know oneself. The differentiation of the primordial continues to take place, following the desire to give life and bring the being into being. That desire arises through being foreign. The creatures rub against each other. The universe has the urge to increase liveliness. We can participate in this if we know the cosmic laws and observe the “instructions of the wise” that have been given to us from times immemorial. Then, we are truly creative.
Consciousness wants to awaken everywhere, right up to the inner essence of everything. Love exists in the depths of our hearts, the maternal power of matter, the Mater-Materia. The will, which is life, works in her. This Mater-Materia contains non-being, the inner space of motherhood itself.
We can sense and feel this love in our innermost being, in our heart, where we are one with the innermost part of the world and the innermost part of the sun. From this intimate heart connection, we can stand in the middle of the world with a longing to give ourselves completely, to be entirely of service, to be “edible” (*2). We can be fruitful when we are at rest with our non-being, with our inner emptiness.
Jesus, the Christ, says:
Take and eat this; this is my body for you; do this in remembrance of me!
The little Häwelmann has grown up at the moment when he is ready to be creative and fruitful in the universe when he can give himself completely into the earthly and this, as Rilke wrote in his Sonnet to Orpheus, “for the sake of nothingness”. Whoever has understood with feeling that the Eternally Flowing exists as a mystery in his own empty centre can truly love and serve with devotion.
Love is the greatest power there is because it is the only power in this world that is not of this world. (*6)
Literature:
*1 Theodor Storm, Der kleine Häwelmann (1849), from: Theodor Storm, Sämtliche Werke in vier Bänden (Complete Works in Four Volumes), Volume 1, Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag 1967, pp. 339-342. text (public domain): http://www.zeno.org/nid/20005726506
*2 Andreas Weber, Essbar sein (Being Edible), Klein Jasedow 2023, p. 127
*3 Max Planck, quoted from: https://manifestation-boost.de/max-plancks-gr%C3%B6%C3%9Fte-erkenntnis-es-gibt-keine-materie/
*4 Andreas Weber, Essbar sein, Klein Jasedow 2023, p. 129
*5 Andreas Weber, Essbar sein, Klein Jasedow 2023, p. 133
*6 Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, For Love of the Real. A Story of Life`s Mystical Secret, Golden Sufi Centre 2012
