The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Conditions for Occult Training

[ 1 ] The conditions for entering occult training are not those that are arbitrarily set by anyone. They arise from the nature of occult knowledge. Just as a person cannot become a painter if he does not want to pick up a paintbrush, so no one can receive a occult training if he does not want to fulfill what the occult teachers specify as a necessary requirement. Basically, the occult teacher can give nothing but advice. And in this sense, everything he says must be taken on board. He has gone through the preparatory paths to recognizing the higher worlds. He knows from experience what is necessary. It depends entirely on the free will of the individual whether he wants to walk the same paths or not. If someone wanted to demand that a teacher should give him a occult training without wanting to fulfill the conditions, such a demand would be quite similar to: teach me to paint, but free me from touching a brush. - The occult teacher can never offer anything if he is not met by the free will of the recipient. But it must be emphasized that the general desire for higher knowledge is not enough. Of course, many will have this desire. Those who only have this desire, without wanting to respond to the special conditions of occult training, can initially achieve nothing. This should be borne in mind by those who complain that occult training is not easy for them. Those who cannot or will not fulfill the strict conditions must renounce occult training for the time being. Although the conditions are strict, they are not hard, as their fulfillment should not only be a free act, but must be.

[ 2 ] For those who do not consider this, the demands of occult training can easily appear to be a compulsion of the soul or conscience. After all, the training is based on an education of the inner life; the occult teacher must therefore give advice that relates to this inner life. But nothing can be regarded as coercion which is demanded as the expression of a free decision. - If someone were to demand of the teacher: share your occults with me, but leave me with my usual sensations, feelings and ideas, he is asking something quite impossible. He then wants nothing more than to satisfy his curiosity, his instinct for knowledge. With such an attitude, however, occult knowledge can never be attained.

[ 3 ] The conditions for the occult disciple will now be developed in turn. It must be emphasized that none of these conditions requires complete fulfilment, but merely the striving for such fulfilment. No one can completely fulfill the conditions; but anyone can set out on the path to their fulfillment. It only depends on the will, on the mindset, to embark on this path.

[ 4 ] The first condition is to focus on promoting physical and mental health. How healthy a person is does not, of course, initially depend on them. Everyone can strive to promote themselves in this direction. Healthy knowledge can only come from a healthy person. The occult training does not reject a person who is not healthy; but it must demand that the student has the will to live healthily. - In this the person must attain the greatest possible independence. The good advice of others, which - mostly unsolicited - is given to everyone, is as a rule quite superfluous. Everyone must endeavor to take care of themselves. - In physical terms, it will be more a question of keeping out harmful influences than anything else. In order to fulfill our duties, we often have to impose things on ourselves that are not conducive to our health. Man must understand that, in the right case, duty should be placed higher than concern for health. But what cannot be omitted with a little good will! Duty must in many cases take precedence over health, indeed often over life; enjoyment must never do so with the occult disciple. For him, pleasure can only be a means of health and life. And in this respect it is absolutely necessary to be completely honest and truthful with oneself. It is of no use to lead an ascetic life if it springs from similar motives as other pleasures. A man may enjoy asceticism as another enjoys drinking wine. But he cannot hope that this asceticism will lead him to higher knowledge. - Many blame everything that seems to hinder them from furthering themselves in this direction on their situation in life. They say: "I cannot develop in my living conditions." It may be desirable for many in other respects to change their life situation; no one needs to do this for the purpose of occult training. To achieve this goal, you only need to do as much as possible for your physical and mental health in the situation you are in. Any work can serve the whole of humanity; and it is much greater for the human soul to realize how necessary a petty, perhaps ugly work is for this whole than to believe: "This work is too bad for me, I am called to something else." - It is particularly important for the occult disciple to strive for complete mental health. An unhealthy mental and intellectual life will definitely lead away from the path to higher knowledge. Clear, calm thinking, secure perception and feeling are the basis here. Nothing should be further from the occult disciple than a tendency to the fantastic, to excitement, to nervousness, to exaltation, to fanaticism. He should acquire a healthy eye for all aspects of life; he should find his way through life with confidence; he should allow things to speak to him calmly and have an effect on him. He should endeavor to do justice to life wherever necessary. He should avoid anything exaggerated or one-sided in his judgments and feelings. If this condition were not fulfilled, the occult disciple would enter the world of his own imagination instead of the higher worlds; instead of the truth, his favorite opinions would assert themselves. It is better for the occult disciple to be "sober" than exalted and fantastic.

[ 5 ] The second condition is to feel a part of the whole of life. Much is included in the fulfillment of this condition. But everyone can only fulfill it in their own way. If I am an educator and my pupil does not correspond to what I wish, I should not direct my feelings against the pupil, but against myself. I should feel as one with my pupil to such an extent that I ask myself: "Isn't what is not enough for the pupil the result of my own actions?" Instead of directing my feelings against him, I will then rather think about how I myself should behave so that the pupil can better meet my demands in the future. This kind of attitude gradually changes a person's whole way of thinking. This applies to the smallest as well as the greatest. For example, I look at a criminal differently out of such an attitude than I would without it. I hold back my judgment and say to myself: "I am only a human being like this one. The education that I have received through circumstances has perhaps alone saved me from his fate." I then probably also come to the conclusion that this human brother would have become a different person if the teachers who have put their effort into me had given it to him. I will consider that something has come to me that was taken from him, that I owe my good to the very fact that it was taken from him. And then the idea will no longer be far from me that I am only a member of the whole of humanity and share responsibility for everything that happens. This is not to say that such a thought should immediately translate into external agitational deeds. But it should be cultivated quietly in the soul. Then it will gradually take shape in a person's outward behavior. And in such matters, everyone can only begin to reform themselves. It is of no avail to make general demands on mankind in the spirit of such thoughts. It is easy to form a judgment about how people should be, but the occult disciple works in the depths, not on the surface. It would therefore be quite incorrect to associate the demands of the occult teachers indicated here with any external, even political demands, with which the training of the spirit can have nothing to do. Political agitators usually "know" what to "demand" from other people; they are less likely to make demands of themselves.

[ 6 ] And the third condition for occult training is directly related to this. The pupil must be able to rise to the realization that his thoughts and feelings have as much significance for the world as his actions. It must be recognized that it is just as pernicious when I hate my fellow man as when I hit him. Then I also come to the realization that I am not only doing something for myself when I perfect myself, but also for the world. The world benefits from my pure feelings and thoughts just as much as from my good behavior. As long as I cannot believe in this world significance of my inner self, I am not fit to be a occult disciple. Only then am I filled with the right faith in the significance of my inner being, my soul, when I work on this soul in such a way as if it were at least as real as everything external. I have to admit that my feeling has just as much of an effect as the action of my hand.

[ 7 ] This actually already expresses the fourth condition: the adoption of the view that man's actual essence lies not in the external, but in the internal. He who regards himself only as a product of the external world, as a result of the physical world, can achieve nothing in the occult training. Feeling oneself as a soul-spiritual being is a basis for such training. Whoever penetrates to such a feeling is then able to distinguish between inner obligation and outer success. He learns to recognize that the one cannot be measured directly against the other. The occult disciple must find the right balance between what external conditions dictate and what he recognizes as the right thing to do. He should not impose something on his surroundings which they cannot understand; but he should also be completely free from the addiction to do only what can be recognized by those around him. He must seek recognition for his truths solely in the voice of his honest soul, which strives for knowledge. But he should learn as much as he can from his surroundings in order to find out what is pious and useful to them. In this way he will develop within himself what is called the "spiritual scales" in occult science. On one of its scales lies an "open heart" for the needs of the outside world, on the other "inner firmness and unshakeable perseverance".

[ 8 ] And this points to the fifth condition: steadfastness in following a decision once it has been made. Nothing may cause the occult disciple to deviate from a decision he has made except the realization that he is in error. Every decision is a power, and even if this power does not have an immediate success where it is initially directed, it works in its own way. Success is only decisive when an action is performed out of desire. But all actions performed out of desire are worthless in relation to the higher world. Here, only the love for an action is decisive. In this love everything that drives the occult disciple to an action should be lived out. Then he will not tire of putting a decision into action, no matter how often he may have failed. And so he will come to not wait for the external effects of his actions, but to satisfy himself with the actions themselves. He will learn to sacrifice his deeds, indeed his whole being, to the world, however it may receive his sacrifice. Anyone who wants to become a occult disciple must be prepared to make such a sacrifice.

[ 9 ] A sixth condition is the development of the feeling of gratitude towards everything that comes to man. One must know that one's own existence is a gift from the whole universe. What is necessary for each of us to receive and live our existence! What do we owe to nature and other people! Those who want occult training must be inclined to such thoughts. Those who cannot surrender to them are unable to develop the all-love that is necessary to attain higher knowledge. Something that I do not love cannot reveal itself to me. And every revelation must fill me with gratitude, for I become richer through it.

[ 10 ] All the conditions mentioned must be united in a seventh: to understand life incessantly in the sense that the conditions demand. In this way the pupil creates for himself the possibility of giving his life a unified character. His individual expressions of life will be in harmony with each other, not in contradiction. He will be prepared for the peace to which he must come during the first steps in the occult training.

[ 11 ] If someone has the earnest and sincere will to fulfill the stated conditions, then he may decide to undergo spiritual training. He will then be prepared to follow the advice given. To some, much of this advice may seem like something external. Such a one will perhaps say that he would have expected the training to proceed in less strict forms. But everything internal must be lived out externally. And just as a picture is not there when it exists only in the painter's mind, neither can a occult training be without external expression. Only those disdain strict forms who do not know that the inner must be expressed in the outer. It is true that it is the spirit of a thing that matters and not the form. But just as the form is void without the spirit, so the spirit would be inactive if it did not create a form for itself.

[ 12 ] The conditions set are suitable to make the occult disciple strong enough to fulfill the further demands that the training of the spirit must make on him. If he lacks these conditions, he will be apprehensive about every new requirement. Without them, he will not be able to have the trust in people that is necessary for him. And all striving for truth must be built on trust and true human love. It must be built on it, although it cannot spring from it, but can only spring from its own soul power. And love of man must gradually expand into love for all beings, indeed for all existence. He who does not fulfill the conditions mentioned will not have the full love for all building, for all creation, and the inclination to refrain from all destruction, all annihilation as such. The occult disciple must become such that he never destroys anything for the sake of destroying, not in actions, but also not in words, feelings and thoughts. For him there should be joy in creation, in becoming; and only then may he offer his hand to destruction if he is also able to promote new life from and through destruction. This does not mean that the occult disciple may watch how the bad overgrows; but he should even look for those sides of the bad through which he can transform it into a good. He becomes more and more aware that the most correct way to combat the bad and imperfect is to create the good and perfect. The occult disciple knows that nothing can be created out of nothing, but that the imperfect can be transformed into the perfect. Those who develop the inclination to create will soon find the ability to behave correctly towards the bad.

[ 13 ] Whoever embarks on a occult training must realize that it is intended to build and not to destroy. He should therefore have the will to work honestly and devotedly, not to criticize and destroy. He should be capable of devotion, for one should learn what one does not yet know. One should look reverently at what is revealed. Work and devotion: these are basic feelings that must be demanded of the occult disciple. Many a man will have to experience that he does not make progress in his training, even though he is, in his opinion, restlessly active. This is because he has not grasped work and devotion in the right sense. That work will have the least success which is undertaken for the sake of this success, and that learning will make the least progress which proceeds without devotion. The love of work, not of success, alone brings progress. And if the learner seeks sound thinking and sound judgment, he need not stunt his devotion through doubt and mistrust.

[ 14 ] One need not come to slavish dependence in judgment if one does not first bring one's own opinion to a communication that one receives, but a calm devotion and dedication. Those who have achieved something in knowledge know that they owe everything not to stubborn personal judgment, but to quiet listening and processing. One should always bear in mind that one no longer needs to learn what one can already judge. So if you only want to judge, you can no longer learn at all. In the occult training, however, it is the learning that counts. One should have the complete will to be a learner. If you cannot understand something, then it is better not to judge at all than to condemn. Leave the understanding for a later time. - The higher one climbs the steps of knowledge, the more one needs this quiet, devout listening. All recognition of the truth, all life and action in the world of the spirit becomes subtle and delicate in the higher realms in comparison with the activities of the ordinary mind and life in the physical world. The more man's circles expand, the more subtle become the actions he has to perform. Because this is so, people arrive at such different "views" and "standpoints" with regard to higher realms. However, there is in reality only one opinion about higher truths. One can arrive at this one opinion if one has raised oneself through work and devotion to really see the truth. Only he can arrive at an opinion that differs from the one true one who, not sufficiently prepared, judges according to his favorite ideas, his habitual thoughts, and so on. Just as there is only one view of a mathematical theorem, so too of the things of the higher worlds. But one must first prepare oneself in order to arrive at such an "opinion". If one were to consider this, the conditions of the occult teachers would have nothing surprising for anyone. It is quite true that truth and the higher life dwell in every human soul and that everyone can and must find them for himself. But they lie deep and can only be brought up from their deep shafts after obstacles have been removed. How to accomplish this can only be advised by those who have experience in the occult science. Spiritual science gives such advice. It does not impose a truth on anyone, it does not proclaim a dogma, but it shows a way. It is true that anyone could find this path on their own - but perhaps only after many incarnations - but what is achieved in occult training is a shortening of the path. The human being thereby reaches a point earlier where he can participate in the worlds where human salvation and human development are promoted through spiritual work.

[ 15 ] This indicates the things that are to be communicated first about the attainment of higher world experience. In the next chapter these explanations will be continued by showing what takes place in the higher members of the human nature (in the soul organism or astral body and in the spirit or thought body) during this development. In this way these communications will be placed in a new light and it will be possible to penetrate them in a deeper sense.