The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preface (1925)

[ 1 ] Now that fifteen years have passed since the first appearance of this book, I think I may say a few things to the public about the state of mind from which it emerged.

[ 2 ] Originally, my plan was to add its essential content as the last chapter to my book "Theosophy", which had appeared long before. That did not work out. At that time, when "Theosophy" was completed, this content did not round itself out in me in the same way as that of "Theosophy". In my imagination I had the spiritual being of the individual before my soul and was able to depict it, but the cosmic connections, which were to be depicted in "spiritual science", were not already before me at that time. They were there in detail, but not in the overall picture.

[ 3 ] Therefore I decided to let "Theosophy" appear with the content that I had seen as the essence of the life of an individual human being, and to carry out "Secret Science" in the near future in all tranquillity.

[ 4 ] The content of this book had to be given in thoughts that are suitable further developments of the thoughts used in the natural sciences, according to the mood of my soul at that time. It will be evident from the "Preliminary remarks to the first edition" reprinted here how strongly I felt responsible to natural science for everything I wrote about spiritual knowledge at that time.

[ 5 ] But such thoughts alone cannot represent what is revealed to spiritual vision as the spirit-world. For this revelation does not enter into a mere thought content. Anyone who has experienced the nature of such revelation knows that the thoughts of ordinary consciousness are only suitable for expressing what is perceived by the senses, but not what is spiritually seen.

[ 6 ] The content of what is spiritually seen can only be expressed in images (imaginations), through which inspirations that stem from intuitively experienced spiritual essence speak. (The necessary information about the nature of imagination, inspiration and intuition can be found in this "secret science" itself and in my book "How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds".

[ 7 ] But the performer of the imaginations from the spirit world cannot merely present these imaginations. He would be representing something that would stand as a completely different content of consciousness next to the cognitive content of our age, without any connection to it. He must fill the present consciousness with that which another consciousness, looking into the spirit-world, can recognize. Then its representation will have this spirit-world as its content; but this content appears in the form of thoughts into which it flows. This makes it fully comprehensible to ordinary consciousness, which thinks in terms of the present but does not yet see into the spirit world.

[ 8 ] This comprehensibility only fails to materialize if we place obstacles in front of it. When one adopts as one's own the prejudices that time has formed from a misconceived view of nature of the "limits of cognition".

[ 9 ] In spiritual cognition, everything is immersed in the intimate experience of the soul. Not only the spiritual gazing itself, but also the understanding that the non-gazing ordinary consciousness brings to the results of the gazer.

[ 10 ] Of this intimacy he has no idea who dilettantishly speaks of the fact that he who believes to understand suggests understanding to himself.

[ 11 ] But it is so that what is lived out within the comprehension of the physical world merely in concepts as truth or error becomes experience in relation to the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] Whoever allows the assertion to flow into his judgment that what is spiritually seen cannot be grasped by the ordinary, not yet seeing consciousness - because of its limitations - lays this perceiving judgment like a darkening cloud before the grasping; and he really cannot understand.

[ 13 ] But to the unbiased non-seeing consciousness, what is seen is fully comprehensible if the seer brings it into the thought-form. It is understandable, just as the finished picture of the painter is understandable to the non-painter. And indeed, the understanding of the spirit world is not an artistic-emotional one as with a work of art, but a thoroughly intellectual one as with the knowledge of nature.

[ 14 ] But in order to make such an understanding truly possible, the performer of the spiritually seen must bring his visions to the point of a proper casting into thought form, without them losing their imaginative character within this form.

[ 15 ] This was all before my soul when I worked out my "Secret Science".

[ 16 ] In 1909 I then felt that with these premises I could produce a book which: firstly, brought the content of my spiritual vision to a certain, but initially sufficient degree, cast in thought form; and secondly, which can be understood by any thinking person who places no obstacles in front of understanding.

[ 17 ] I say this today by saying that at the time - in 1909 - the publication of the book seemed to me to be a risk. For I knew that the required impartiality could not be mustered by those who pursue natural science professionally, nor by all the numerous personalities who depend on it for their judgment.

[ 18 ] But it was just the fact before my soul that in the time in which the consciousness of mankind had moved furthest away from the spirit-world, the communications from this spirit-world correspond to a most urgent necessity.

[ 19 ] I counted on the fact that there are also people who more or less perceive the distance from all spirituality so severely as an obstacle to life that they reach for messages from the spirit world with inner longing.

[ 20 ] And the following years have fully confirmed this. "Theosophy" and "Secret Science" were widely distributed as books that required the reader to be willing to accept a difficult stylization.

[ 21 ] I have quite consciously aimed not to give a "popular" presentation, but one that makes it necessary to enter into the content with real effort of thought. I have thus given my books such a character that reading them is itself the beginning of training the mind. For the calm, prudent effort of thought that this reading requires strengthens the powers of the soul and thereby enables it to come closer to the spiritual world.

[ 22 ] The fact that I gave the book the title "Secret Science" immediately gave rise to misunderstandings. Some people said that what wants to be "science" must not be "secret". How little thought was given to such an objection. As if someone who publishes content wanted to do something "secret" with it. The whole book shows that nothing should be described as "secret", but should be put into such a form that it is understandable like only any "science". Or, when one uses the word "natural science", does one not want to imply that it is about knowledge of "nature"? Secret science is the science of that which takes place in the "secret" insofar as it is not perceived outside in nature, but where the soul orients itself when it directs its inner being towards the spirit.

[ 23 ] "Secret science" is the opposite of "natural science".

[ 24 ] My visions in the spiritual world have repeatedly been objected to as being altered renditions of what people's ideas about the spirit world have emerged in the course of older times. It was said that I had read some things, absorbed them into the subconscious and then presented them in the belief that they arose from my own vision. I am said to have gained my depictions from Gnostic teachings, oriental wisdom poems and so on.

[ 25 ] By asserting this, one has remained entirely on the surface with one's thoughts.

[ 26 ] My insights into the spiritual, of which I am fully aware, are the results of my own seeing. At all times, in all details and in the great overviews, I have strictly examined myself to see whether I am taking each step in the process of looking further in such a way that full consciousness accompanies these steps. Just as the mathematician moves from thought to thought without the unconscious, autosuggestion and so on playing a role, so - I said to myself - spiritual vision must move from objective imagination to objective imagination without anything living in the soul other than the spiritual content of clearly prudent consciousness.

[ 27 ] The fact that one knows from an imagination that it is not merely a subjective image, but an image-reproduction of objective spiritual content, is achieved through healthy inner experience. One arrives at it in a spiritual-mental way, just as one correctly distinguishes imagination from objective perceptions in the area of sensory perception with a healthy organization.

[ 28 ] So I had the results of my seeing before me. They were initially "views" that lived without names.

[ 29 ] If I wanted to communicate them, I needed word names. I then later searched for them in older depictions of the spiritual in order to be able to express what was still wordless in words. I used these word designations freely, so that hardly any of them coincide in my use with what they were where I found them.

[ 30 ] But I always looked for such a way of expressing myself only after the content had dawned on me in my own contemplation.

[ 31 ] I knew how to eliminate what I had previously read through the state of consciousness I have just described in my own exploratory contemplation.

[ 32 ] Now one found echoes of older ideas in my expressions. Without going into the content, one kept to such expressions. If I spoke of "lotus flowers" in the astral body of man, this was proof that I was reproducing Indian teachings in which the expression is found. indeed, if I spoke of "astral body" itself, this was the result of reading medieval writings. If I used the expressions: Angeloi, Archangeloi and so on, I was simply renewing the ideas of Christian gnosis.

[ 33 ] I found myself repeatedly confronted with this kind of thinking, which was completely superficial.

[ 34 ] I also wanted to point out this fact when the new edition of "Geheimwissenschaft" reappeared. The book contains the outlines of anthroposophy as a whole. It is therefore particularly affected by the misunderstandings to which it is exposed.

[ 35 ] Since the time in which the imaginations which the book reproduces have flowed together in my soul into an overall picture, I have continued to develop my inquiring gaze into the human being, into the historical development of humanity, into the cosmos and so on; I have always come to new results in detail. But what I outlined in "Secret Science" fifteen years ago has not been shaken in any way. Everything I have been able to say since then, when added to this book in the right place, appears as a further elaboration of the outline I gave then.

Goetheanum, January 10, 1925
Rudolf Steiner