The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Character of the Occult Science

[ 1 ] An old word: "secret science" is used for the contents of this book. The word can immediately evoke the most opposite feelings in different people of the present day. For many it has something repulsive about it; it evokes ridicule, pitying smiles, perhaps contempt. They imagine that a way of thinking that calls itself such can only be based on idle dreaming, on fantasy, that such "supposed" science can only conceal the urge to renew all kinds of superstition, which is rightly avoided by those who have come to know "true science" and "genuine striving for knowledge". For others, the word has the effect that what it means must bring them something that cannot be achieved in any other way and to which, depending on their disposition, they are drawn by a deep inner longing for knowledge or a refined curiosity of the soul. Between these sharply opposing opinions there are all possible intermediate stages of conditional rejection or acceptance of what one or the other imagines when he hears the word "secret science". - It cannot be denied that for some people the word "secret science" has a magical ring to it because it seems to satisfy their fatal addiction to a knowledge of the "unknown", the mysterious, even the unclear, which cannot be attained by natural means. For many people do not want to satisfy the deepest longings of their souls through that which can be clearly recognized. Their conviction is that there must be something beyond what can be recognized in the world that eludes cognition. With a strange absurdity, which they do not realize, they reject everything that is "known" for the deepest longings for knowledge, and only want to accept something that cannot be said to be known through natural investigation. Those who speak of "secret science" would do well to bear in mind that they are confronted with misunderstandings caused by such defenders of this kind of science; by defenders who do not actually strive for knowledge, but the opposite of it.

[ 2 ] These remarks are addressed to readers who do not allow their impartiality to be taken away by the fact that a word evokes prejudices due to various circumstances. There will be no mention here of knowledge that is in any way to be regarded as "secret", accessible to some only through the special favor of fate. One will do justice to the use of the word meant here if one thinks of what Goethe has in mind when he speaks of the "revealed secrets" in the phenomena of the world. What remains "secret", unrevealed, in these phenomena when they are grasped only through the senses and the intellect, which is bound to the senses, is regarded as the content of a supersensible kind of knowledge. ^{1It has happened that the expression "secret science" - as it has already been used by the author of this book in earlier editions - has been rejected for the very reason that a science cannot be something "secret" for anyone. One would be right if the matter were meant that way. But that is not the case. As little as natural science can be called a "natural" science in the sense that it is "inherent by nature" to everyone, so little does the author think of "secret science" as a "secret" science, but rather one that refers to that which is "secret" in world phenomena that is unrevealed to the ordinary way of knowing, a science of the "secret", of the "revealed secret". But this science should not be a secret for anyone who seeks its knowledge in the ways that correspond to it.} Anyone who only accepts as "science" what is revealed through the senses and the intellect that serves them can of course not consider what is meant here as "secret science" to be science. But if such a person wanted to understand himself, he would have to admit that he is not rejecting a "secret science" on the basis of a well-founded insight, but on the basis of a power play stemming from his purely personal feelings. To understand this, it is only necessary to consider how science arises and what significance it has in human life. The emergence of science in essence cannot be recognized by the object that science takes up. It can be recognized by the mode of activity of the human soul that occurs in scientific endeavour. How the soul behaves in acquiring science is to be seen. If one acquires the habit of putting this mode of activity into action only when the revelations of the senses come into consideration, then one easily falls into the opinion that this revelation of the senses is the essential thing. And then one does not draw attention to the fact that a certain behavior of the human soul has only been applied to the revelation of the senses. But one can go beyond this arbitrary self-restriction and, apart from the particular case of application, consider the character of scientific activity. This is the basis for speaking here of the knowledge of non-sensible world contents as "scientific". The human mode of imagination wants to work on these world contents in the same way as it works on the scientific world contents in the other case. Secret science aims to detach the scientific mode of research and research attitude, which in its field adheres to the connection and course of sensory facts, from this particular application, but to retain it in its intellectual and other characteristics. It wants to speak about the non-sensible in the same way that natural science speaks about the sensible. While natural science remains in the sensuous with this way of research and thinking, secret science wants to regard the soul's work on nature as a kind of self-education of the soul and apply what it has learned to the non-sensuous realm. It wants to proceed in such a way that it does not speak about sensory phenomena as such, but about the non-sensory contents of the world in the same way as the natural scientist speaks about the sensory ones. It records the mental state of the scientific process within this process, i.e. precisely that through which knowledge of nature first becomes science. It can therefore call itself science.

[ 3 ] Whoever reflects on the significance of natural science in human life will find that this significance cannot be exhausted with the acquisition of knowledge of nature. For these insights can never, ever lead to anything other than an experience of that which the human soul itself is not. The soul does not live in what man recognizes in nature, but in the process of recognition. The soul experiences itself in its activity in nature. What it develops in this activity living is something else than the knowledge of nature itself. It is self-development experienced in the knowledge of nature. The secret science wants to confirm the gain of this self-development in areas that lie beyond mere nature. The secret scientist does not want to misjudge the value of natural science, but to recognize it even better than the natural scientist himself. He knows that he cannot justify science without the rigor of the mode of conception that prevails in natural science. But he also knows that if this rigor is acquired through a genuine penetration into the spirit of scientific thinking, it can be retained by the power of the soul for other areas.

[ 4 ] There is, however, something that can give cause for concern. In the contemplation of nature, the soul is guided by the object under consideration to a much greater extent than in the contemplation of non-sensory world contents. In the latter, it must have the ability to hold on to the essence of the scientific mode of perception to a greater degree out of purely inner impulses. Because very many people unconsciously - believe that this essence can only be held on to by the guiding principle of natural phenomena, they are inclined to decide in favor of it by a power move; as soon as this guiding principle is abandoned, the soul gropes in the void with its scientific procedure. Such people have not made themselves aware of the peculiar nature of this procedure; they usually form their judgment from the aberrations that must arise when the scientific attitude towards natural phenomena is not sufficiently firm and the soul nevertheless wants to set about contemplating the non-sensible world realm. Naturally, much unscientific talk about non-sensible world contents arises. But not because such talk cannot be scientific in nature, but because, in this particular case, it has lacked scientific self-education through the observation of nature.

[ 5 ] Whoever wants to speak of secret science must, however, with regard to what has just been said, have a watchful sense for everything that is misleading that arises when something is made out about the revealed secrets of the world without a scientific attitude. Nevertheless, it would not lead to anything worthwhile if, right at the beginning of secret-scientific explanations, we were to talk about all possible aberrations which, in the souls of prejudiced persons, bring any research in this direction into disregard, because such persons conclude from the existence of truly quite numerous aberrations that the whole endeavor is unjustified. However, since the rejection of secret science by scientists or scientifically-minded judges is usually only based on the above-mentioned power play and the reference to the aberrations is only an - often unconscious - pretext, an argument with such opponents will initially be of little use. After all, nothing prevents them from making the certainly quite justified objection that nothing can determine from the outset whether the solid ground described above is really present in those who believe others to be caught up in error. Therefore, the person striving for a secret science can only simply demonstrate what he believes he is allowed to say. The judgment about his justification can only be formed by others, but also only by those persons who, avoiding all pretensions of power, are able to engage with the nature of his communications about the revealed secrets of world events. It will, however, be incumbent upon him to show how what he has presented relates to other achievements of knowledge and life, what oppositions are possible and to what extent the immediate external sensory reality of life provides confirmation for his observations. But he should never strive to keep his presentation in such a way that it works through his art of persuasion rather than through its content.

[ 6 ] One can often hear the objection to secret scientific explanations: they do not prove what they put forward; they only state one thing or another and say: secret science establishes this. The following explanations are misunderstood if one believes that anything in them is put forward in this sense. What is aimed at here is to allow that which is unfolded in the soul in natural knowledge to develop further in such a way as it can develop according to its own nature, and then to draw attention to the fact that in such development the soul encounters supersensible facts. It is assumed that every reader who is able to respond to what has been said will necessarily come across these facts. There is, however, a difference to the purely scientific view at the moment when one enters the field of spiritual science. In natural science, the facts are present in the field of the sense world; the scientific observer regards the activity of the soul as something that takes a back seat to the connection and course of the sense facts. The spiritual-scientific presenter must place this activity of the soul in the foreground; for the reader only arrives at the facts if he makes this activity of the soul his own in a legitimate way. These facts are not, as in natural science - albeit not understood - also without the soul activity before human perception; rather, they enter into it only through the soul activity. The spiritual-scientific expositor thus presupposes that the reader seeks the facts together with him. His presentation will be such that he tells of the discovery of these facts and that in the way he tells them, not personal arbitrariness, but the scientific sense trained in natural science prevails. He will therefore also be compelled to speak of the means by which one arrives at a contemplation of the non-sensible - the supersensible. - Whoever becomes involved in a secret-scientific presentation will soon realize that through it one acquires conceptions and ideas that one has not had before. In this way one also comes to new thoughts about what one previously thought about the nature of "proof". One learns to recognize that "proof" is something that is, so to speak, brought to the natural sciences from the outside. In spiritual-scientific thinking, however, the activity which the soul turns to proof in scientific thinking already lies in the search for the facts. These cannot be found if the path to them is not already a proving one. Whoever really follows this path has already experienced the end of proof; nothing can be achieved by a proof added from outside. the fact that this is misunderstood in the character of secret science causes many misunderstandings.

[ 7 ] All secret science must sprout from two thoughts that can take root in every human being. For the secret scientist, as he is meant here, these two thoughts express facts that can be experienced if the right means are used. For many people, these thoughts alone represent highly contestable assertions that are much debatable, if not something whose impossibility can be "proven".

[ 8 ] These two thoughts are that behind the visible world there is an invisible world, a world initially hidden to the senses and to thinking bound to these senses, and that it is possible for man to penetrate this hidden world by developing abilities that lie dormant within him.

[ 9 ] Such a hidden world does not exist, says one. The world that man perceives through his senses is the only one. Its riddles can be solved from within it. Even if man is still a long way from being able to answer all the questions of existence, the time will come when sensory experience and the science based on it will be able to provide the answers.

[ 10 ] Others say that one cannot claim that there is not a hidden world behind the visible one; but the human powers of cognition cannot penetrate this world. They have limits that they cannot transcend. The need of "faith" may take refuge in such a world: a true science, based on established facts, cannot deal with such a world.

[ 11 ] A third party is that which regards it as a kind of presumption if man, through his work of knowledge, wants to penetrate into an area in relation to which one should renounce "knowledge" and be content with "faith". The proponents of this opinion consider it an injustice if the weak human being wants to penetrate into a world that can only belong to religious life.

[ 12 ] It is also argued that a common knowledge of the facts of the sensory world is possible for all men, but that with regard to supersensible things only the personal opinion of the individual can come into question and that one should not speak of a generally valid certainty in these things.

[ 13 ] Others claim many other things.

[ 14 ] One can realize that the contemplation of the visible world presents man with riddles which can never be solved from the facts of this world itself. They will not be solved in this way even when the science of these facts has progressed as far as possible. For the visible facts clearly point to a hidden world through their own inner nature. He who does not realize this closes his mind to the mysteries that clearly emerge everywhere from the facts of the sensory world. He does not want to see certain questions and riddles at all; therefore he believes that all questions can be answered by the sensory facts. Those questions which he wants to ask are really all to be answered by the facts which he hopes will be discovered in the future. That can be admitted without further ado. But why should he wait for answers to certain things who asks no questions at all? Those who strive for secret science say nothing other than that such questions are natural to them and that they must be recognized as a fully justified expression of the human soul. Science cannot be confined within limits by forbidding people to ask unbiased questions.

[ 15 ] In response to the opinion that man has limits to his knowledge which he cannot transcend and which force him to stop before an invisible world, it must be said that there can be no doubt at all that one cannot penetrate an invisible world through the kind of knowledge meant there. Whoever considers this mode of cognition to be the only possible one cannot arrive at any other view than that man is denied the possibility of penetrating into any higher world that may exist. But one can also say the following: if it is possible to develop another kind of knowledge, then this can lead into the supersensible world. If one considers such a way of knowing to be impossible, then one arrives at a point of view from which all talk about a supersensible world appears as pure nonsense. In the face of an unbiased judgment, however, there can be no other reason for such an opinion than that the confessor of it is unaware of this other form of knowledge. But how can one judge that of which one claims not to know? Unbiased thinking must confess to the proposition that one speaks only of that which one knows, and that one states nothing about that which one does not know. Such thinking can only speak of the right that someone communicates a thing that he has experienced, but not of a right that someone declares impossible what he does not know or does not want to know. No one can deny the right not to care about the supernatural; but there can never be a real reason for someone to declare himself authoritative not only for what he can know, but also for everything that "a man" cannot know.

[ 16 ] To those who declare it presumptuous to penetrate into the supersensible realm, a secret-scientific view must consider that one can do so and that it is a sin against the abilities given to man if he allows them to become desolate instead of developing them and making use of them.

[ 17 ] But he who believes that views about the supersensible world must belong entirely to personal opinion and feeling denies what is common to all human beings. It is certainly true that everyone must find insight into these things for themselves; it is also a fact that all those people who go far enough do not come to different but to the same insight about these things. The difference only exists as long as people do not want to approach the highest truths on a scientifically proven path, but on that of personal arbitrariness. However, it must be readily conceded again that only those who want to become familiar with the peculiarities of the secret scientific path can recognize its correctness.

[ 18 ] Any person can find the path to secret science at the appropriate time who recognizes or even only suspects or suspects the existence of something hidden from what is revealed, and who is driven by the awareness that the powers of knowledge are capable of development to the feeling that the hidden could reveal itself to him. To a man who is led to the secret science by these experiences of the soul, not only the prospect opens up that he will find the answer to certain questions of his thirst for knowledge, but also the quite different one that he will become the conqueror of everything that hinders and weakens life. And in a certain higher sense it means a weakening of life, indeed a death of the soul, if man sees himself forced to turn away from the supersensible or to deny it. Indeed, under certain conditions it leads to despair when a person loses hope that the hidden will be revealed to him. This death and this despair in their manifold forms are at the same time inner, spiritual opponents of secret scientific endeavor. They occur when man's inner strength fades away. Then all the power of life must be supplied to him from outside, if such power is to come into his possession at all. He then perceives the things, the entities and processes that approach his senses; he dissects them with his intellect. They give him pleasure and pain; they drive him to the actions of which he is capable. He may go on like this for a while, but he must reach a point where he dies inwardly. For whatever can be extracted from the world for man in this way is exhausted. This is not an assertion that comes from the personal experience of an individual, but something that arises from an impartial observation of all human life. What saves us from this exhaustion is what is hidden in the depths of things. If a person's power to descend into these depths in order to constantly draw up new life force dies, then ultimately even the outside of things will no longer be conducive to life.

[ 19 ] The matter is by no means such that it concerns only the individual, only his personal weal and woe. It is precisely through true secret-scientific contemplation that it becomes certain to man that from a higher point of view the weal and woe of the individual is intimately connected with the weal or woe of the whole world. There is a way in which man comes to the realization that he causes harm to the whole world and all beings in it if he does not develop his powers in the right way. If man desolates his life by losing his connection with the supersensible, he not only destroys something within himself, the withering away of which can ultimately lead him to despair, but through his weakness he forms an obstacle to the development of the whole world in which he lives.

[ 20 ] Now man can deceive himself. He can give himself over to the belief that there is no such thing as the hidden, that everything that can possibly exist is already contained in that which approaches his senses and his intellect. But this illusion is only possible for the surface of consciousness, not for its depth. Feeling and desire do not submit to this deceptive belief. They will always long for something hidden in some way. And if this is withdrawn from them, they push people into doubt, into uncertainty about life, even into despair. A recognition that reveals what is hidden is capable of overcoming all hopelessness, all uncertainty in life, all despair, in short everything that weakens life and makes it incapable of the service it needs in the world as a whole.

[ 21 ] This is the beautiful fruit of spiritual scientific knowledge, that it gives strength and stability to life and not only satisfaction to the thirst for knowledge. The source from which such knowledge draws strength for work and confidence for life is inexhaustible. No one who has once truly approached this source will go away unstrengthened by repeated recourse to it.

[ 22 ] There are people who do not want to know about such insights for the reason that they already see something unhealthy in what has just been said. For the surface and the exterior of life, such people are quite right. They do not want what life offers in so-called reality to be stunted. They see a weakness in people turning away from reality and seeking their salvation in a hidden world, which for them is like a fantastic, dreamed-up world. If one does not want to fall into morbid reverie and weakness in such a spiritual-scientific search, then one must recognize the partial justification of such objections. For they are based on a sound judgment, which only leads to a half-truth rather than a whole truth because it does not penetrate into the depths of things, but remains on their surface. - If a supersensible striving for knowledge were to weaken life and cause people to turn away from true reality, then such objections would surely be strong enough to pull the rug out from under this school of thought.

[ 23 ] But even in the face of these opinions, secret scientific endeavors would not go the right way if they wanted to "defend" themselves in the usual sense of the word. Here, too, they can only speak through their value, which is recognizable to every unbiased person, if they make it tangible how they increase the vitality and strength of life for those who live into them in the right sense. These aspirations cannot turn a person into an unworldly person or a dreamer; they empower the person from those sources of life from which he, according to his spiritual and mental part, originates.

[ 24 ] Other obstacles to understanding still lie in the way of many a man when he approaches secret scientific endeavors. It is indeed true in principle that the reader finds in the secret scientific presentation a description of soul experiences, through the pursuit of which he can move towards the supersensible contents of the world. In practice, however, this must be realized as a kind of ideal. The reader must first of all absorb a larger sum of supersensible experiences, which he has not yet experienced himself. This cannot be otherwise and will also be the case with this book. It will describe what the author thinks he knows about the nature of man, about his behavior in birth and death and in the bodiless state in the spiritual world; it will also describe the development of the earth and of humanity. Thus it might seem as if the assumption were being made that a number of supposed insights would be presented like dogmas, for which belief on authority would be demanded. But this is not the case. For what can be known of the supersensible contents of the world lives in the performer as living soul-content; and if one lives into this soul-content, then this living-in kindles the impulses in one's own soul which lead to the corresponding supersensible facts. One lives in a different way when reading spiritual-scientific knowledge than when reading communications of sensory facts. If one reads communications from the sensory world, one reads about them. If, however, one reads messages about supersensible facts in the right sense, one becomes part of the stream of spiritual existence. In taking in the results, one simultaneously takes up one's own inner path. It is true that what is meant here is often not even noticed by the reader at first. One imagines the entry into the spiritual world to be far too similar to a sensory experience, and so one finds that what one experiences when reading about this world is far too thought-like. But in the true mental perception one is already in this world and only has to realize that one has already experienced without noticing what one thought to have received merely as a thought communication. - One will then receive full clarity about the real nature of this experience when one practically carries out what is described in the second (last) part of this book as the "path" to supersensible knowledge. One could easily believe that the reverse is true: this path must be described first. But this is not the case. Anyone who, without directing the soul's gaze to certain facts of the supersensible world, only does "exercises" in order to enter the supersensible world, for him this world remains an indefinite, confusing chaos. One learns to live in this world naively, so to speak, by informing oneself of certain facts about it, and then one gives oneself an account of how - leaving naivety behind - one arrives fully consciously at the experiences of which one has been informed. If one penetrates into secret scientific representations, one will convince oneself that this is the only sure way to supersensible knowledge. One will also realize that all opinions that supersensible knowledge could first act as dogmas, so to speak, through suggestive power, are unfounded. For the content of these insights is acquired in such a soul-life which deprives it of all merely suggestive power and only gives it the possibility of speaking to the other in the same way in which all truths speak to it which are addressed to its prudent judgment. That the other does not at first notice how he lives in the spiritual world is not due to an imprudent suggestive reception, but to the subtlety and the unfamiliarity of what is experienced in reading. - Thus, by first absorbing the messages given in the first part of this book, one first becomes a co-recognizer of the supersensible world; through the practical execution of the soul's actions given in the second part, one becomes an independent recognizer in this world.

[ 25 ] According to the spirit and the true sense, no true scientist will be able to find a contradiction between his science, which is built on the facts of the sensory world, and the way in which the supersensible world is investigated. The scientist uses certain tools and methods. He produces the tools by processing what "nature" gives him. The supersensible way of knowing also makes use of a tool. But this tool is the human being himself. And this tool, too, must first be prepared for higher research. The abilities and powers initially given to him by "nature" without human intervention must be transformed into higher ones. In this way, man can make himself an instrument for the exploration of the supersensible world.