The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Nature of Divinity from a Theosophical Perspective

[ 1 ] Knowledge of the source of all things is something the theosophist does not readily dare to speak of. Theosophy is, after all, meant to be the path that leads us to finally grasp this concept with our intellectual faculties; it is meant to show us the way that leads us to gain clarity, to the extent that it can be attained, regarding this idea. This path is long and passes through many stages, and each individual stage is not merely to be passed through, but at each one we must pause and learn.

[ 2 ] But it is not only the starting point that is important, but also the culmination. Keeping this in mind, we must first and foremost examine the nature of theosophical life in order to see how Theosophy relates to the concept of God. Theosophy, as it has been pursued since 1875 in the Society founded by Madame Blavatsky, is something other than what is called Western science, something other than what our Western culture and its scholarship strive for in external life. The nature of Western knowledge differs fundamentally from what constitutes theosophical wisdom. Theosophical wisdom is ancient, as old as the human race, and anyone who delves into the course of human development will increasingly wish to learn more about the starting point of humanity than what our cultural history of the last few decades has so readily believed—that humans originated from a state of barbarism and ignorance. Let us see how it really is when we delve into the life of primeval times. There we see that human spiritual development originated from a high spiritual power of vision, that at the beginning of human development true divine wisdom was present everywhere. Whoever studies the ancient religions receives the light of this wisdom. Our time, in accordance with the meaning of our lives, now offers the theosophist a renewal of this spiritual life that flows through all of humanity.

[ 3 ] Our Western intellectual life is based, first and foremost, on our intellect; it is based on one-sided thinking. If you examine our entire Western culture, you will encounter our great discoveries and inventions, our sciences, and what they have done to shed light on the mysteries of the world. You will encounter thinking, rational thinking, observation through the senses, and so on. In this way, the Western intellect spreads its knowledge in all directions. It explores the heavens with instruments, with the telescope, and penetrates the smallest physical world with the microscope. It connects all of this with the intellect. As a result, our Western knowledge spreads in all directions; we know more and more about what surrounds us, but we never achieve a deepening of our knowledge—namely, a penetration to the very essence of things. Therefore, we should not be surprised that Western science cannot come to terms with the concept of God. We must penetrate to the source of existence, to the spiritual being. It cannot be combined nor perceived through the senses; it must be perceived in another way.

[ 4 ] Those who know that there is a path other than the one our Western world is following seek to attain wisdom in a completely different way. Go back to the wisdom of the Egyptian priests, back to the Greek mysteries, back to India; go back to all these religions and worldviews, and you will find that those who sought wisdom did so in a way entirely different from European scholarship. Self-education, self-development—that was what the seekers of wisdom sought above all else. They sought self-education through the honest struggle of the human soul, and through it they sought to attain higher wisdom. From the very beginning, they were convinced that human beings, just as they are born into the world, are destined for ascent, for higher development. They were convinced that human beings are not complete, that they cannot attain the highest degree of perfection immediately in a single lifetime, that a development of the human being and their soul’s capacities must take place, much like in a plant, where the root remains even as the leaves and flowers wither. It is much the same when we properly take charge of self-education, which brings forth blossoms and fruit in earthly life if we work at it diligently. Thus did the student of wisdom strive. He sought out a guide. This guide gave him pointers on how he could develop his astral organs through a life lived accordingly. Then he developed step by step upward. His soul became ever more far-seeing, ever more sensitive to the primal sources of existence. At every new stage he gained new insights. With each stage he drew nearer to the Being whose concept we are to discuss today. He saw that he could not grasp God with the intellect. So, above all else, he sought to elevate himself. He was convinced that the divine essence is to be found in all of nature and also in the human soul. This divine essence is never a finished, complete entity; it is a process of development in all living beings, in all things. We ourselves are this divine essence. We are not the whole, but we are a drop of the same quality, of the same essence. Deep within us, in hidden abysses and depths that do not lie on the surface of the day, lies our true divine essence. We must seek it out and bring it to the surface. Then we also bring forth something that stands above our ordinary existence; then we also bring forth within ourselves that which is divine in us. Each of us is, as it were, a ray of the Divine or, let us say, a reflection of the Divine. If we were to imagine the Divine as the sun, then each of us is like a reflection of the sun in a drop of water. Just as the drop of water reflects the sun completely, so every human being is a true, genuine reflection of the divine essence. The divine essence rests within us, but we are unaware of it; we must draw it out of ourselves. We must first draw closer to it. Goethe says: He could not understand how anyone could wish to penetrate directly to the divine. — We must draw closer and closer to it. Self-development leads us gradually to an understanding of the foundation of life.

[ 5 ] If we develop in this way, then we are doing nothing other than living the theosophical life. Everything that spiritual science teaches and recommends we live by, all the great laws it makes clear to us and which its students—those who truly wish to cooperate—make into a living truth within themselves, the teachings of reincarnation and karma, the law of destiny, of the intermediate beings, of the Primordial Ground and the Universal Being that governs the entire universe—this is the inner world, which we call the astral and the mental, the buddhi world and the atma world. We learn something of all those worlds, and what we learn of those worlds are steps toward wisdom that lead us to the Highest. If we seek to climb these steps, then this is a long journey. Only those who have reached the highest summit of human development will one day be able to see that they may have a glimpse of the scope of that concept which we wish to discuss in outline today.

[ 6 ] Hence the caution with which Theosophy speaks of the concept of God. The Theosophist speaks of these concepts in much the same spirit as a Hindu speaks of Brahma. If you ask him, “What is Brahma?”—he might answer: Mahadeva, Vishnu, and Brahma. Brahma is one of the divine entities, or rather an expression of the divine entity. But behind all this, for the Hindu, there lies something else. Behind all the beings to whom he attributes the primal act of the world, there lies something he designates as Brahma or as Brahman. Brahman is a neuter noun. And if you ask him what lies behind the entities of which he speaks, he says nothing about it. He says nothing about it, for one can no longer speak of this. All that a human being can say in this regard are pointers, pointers toward that perspective at the end of which the divine entity stands for us. — That is also where what we call the motto of our Theosophical Society leads. You may be familiar with this motto. It expresses nothing other than what I have just tried to hint at in a few words. Usually, this motto is translated as: “No religion is higher than the truth.” — Let us see to what extent the entire theosophical endeavor is directed toward this. — What do we know about human striving? Human knowledge must always aim, within the various philosophies and worldviews, to penetrate the mysteries of existence and to find the primordial sources of life.

[ 7 ] Let us take a look at the various religions. On the surface, they seem to contradict one another; but they only contradict one another when viewed superficially. If we examine them more deeply, we see that they are interconnected. They do not, however, share the same content. They do not share the same content: Christianity, Hinduism, Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism—and modern science does not share the same content either. And yet—all these different worldviews represent nothing other than attempts by the human spirit to approach the source of existence. There are various paths to the summit of a mountain. A landscape looks different from different vantage points, and so the ultimate truth also appears different when viewed from different perspectives. We are all different from one another. One person has this character, another that; one has this spiritual development, another that. But we all also belong to a race, a tribe, an age. It has always been so. But because we belong to a tribe, a race, an age, and possess a character, we possess a sum of diverse sensations and feelings among human beings. These form the various languages in which people pose questions to one another and communicate about the enigmatic questions of life. The Greek could not form the same concepts as modern man, because the perspective through which he viewed the world was entirely different. Thus, the theosophist sees everywhere different aspects, different kinds of wisdom. If we seek the reason for this, we see that we possess within us a hidden yet ever-revealing primordial wisdom that is identical with divine wisdom.

[ 8 ] So what have people formed over the course of time, and what will they continue to form? They will form opinions. It is opinions that we are dealing with. One opinion differs from another; one stands higher than the other. And we have a duty to rise to ever higher and higher opinions. But we must be clear that we must rise above the sea of opinions. Truth itself is still hidden within opinions at present; it is still veiled; it still reveals itself in various forms and aspects. We can, however, certainly hold these opinions within us, provided we adopt the correct standpoint, the correct perspective, toward the opinions and truths themselves. We must never presume to believe that we can grasp the truth—which Goethe identifies with the Divine—with our limited faculties. We must never presume to believe that a final conclusion of thought is possible. But if we are aware of this, then we feel something that goes beyond it; then we possess something of what Theosophy, in the higher sense of the word, calls wise humility.

[ 9 ] The theosophist reaches beyond himself with his feelings and his thoughts. He tells himself: I must have opinions, for I am merely a human being, and it is my spiritual duty to form thoughts and concepts about the mysteries of existence; but I have something within me that cannot be confined to a limited concept; I have something within me that is more than thought, that goes beyond thought: that is life. And this life is the divine life that flows through all things, that also flows through me. — It is that which carries us forward, that which we can never fully comprehend. We will never be able to grasp it. But if we admit that in the most distant times we will have attained higher and higher things than we have now, then we must also admit that in the most distant times we will still have other opinions that are higher than those we have now. But you cannot have the living life that is within us any other way. You cannot have it any other way; for this life is the divine life itself, which leads to the higher thoughts that are yet to come to us, which we too will one day possess. If we have this feeling toward our concepts, and if we have it above all toward the concepts of the divine Being, then we say to ourselves: The True is identical with the Divine; the Divine lives in my veins. It lives in all things, and it also lives in me. — And when we think this thought within ourselves, it is divine, but it is not God Himself and cannot encompass the Godhead. Here we must tell ourselves: beyond every human opinion, beyond every opinion of time and people, lies the primordial truth that reveals itself in all of you, which we must feel, and which we must seek with an aspiring heart. But no human opinion stands higher for us than this living sense of the unfathomable wisdom and divinity expressed in what I have just said. Let us be convinced that we are embraced by the Divinity, that God works within us when we are living beings. This is the meaning of the theosophical motto: No human opinion stands higher than the living sense of divine wisdom, which is ever-changing and can never be fully represented in its entirety. — Then we must not be surprised if, when we view the matter in this way, Goethe’s saying proves true:

As a man is, so is his God;
That is why God was so often mocked.

[ 10 ] Certainly, we humans cannot form any conception of the divine being other than one that is adapted to our respective capacities. But if we look at the matter as we have just done, we must say: We also have a right to form an appropriate conception of the divine. Only one thing is necessary, and that is: to have the good will not to stop there. To believe that we have attained primordial wisdom would be presumptuous. It is also presumptuous of science to believe that it has now explained the concept of God. In this regard, our contemporary culture is indeed once again at one of those low points where humanity sometimes finds itself. As you know, our contemporary culture is somewhat presumptuous when it comes to the concept of God. And it is precisely those who want a new Bible, a so-called natural account of creation, who have often been found to be in a presumptuous state that prevents them from moving forward. There is a work by David Friedrich Strauss titled *Old and New Faith*, published in 1872, which directly asserts that it is a new Bible in contrast to the old Bible, that what emerges from the natural sciences is true. For what the Bible recounts shakes it so profoundly that these concepts must be cast aside.

[ 11 ] Believe me, it is the best among us who are caught up in such delusion today; it is the best who, in good faith, believe that through the dissemination of human knowledge—through what confronts us as matter and force—we can arrive at the primordial essence of existence. What is this materialistic belief in God that confronts us? It is often outstanding personalities who have come to say: Matter is our God. — These swirling atoms, which attract and repel one another, are supposed to bring about that which constitutes our own soul. What is this materialistic belief in God? It is atheism! This can be compared to a stage of religion that otherwise also exists in the world, but which we can only truly identify if we have the characteristic concepts of this new materialistic belief. Dead matter and dead force are what the materialist offers and worships. Let us look back to the times of ancient Greece, and consider not the profound mystery religions, but the popular religion of the Greeks. Their gods were human, idealized human beings. If we go back to earlier stages of existence, we find that people worshipped animals, that plants were symbols of the divine to them. But all these were beings that possessed life within themselves. These were higher stages than what the completely savage peoples had, who encountered a lump of stone and worshipped it as if it were alive. The lump of stone differs in nothing from what is merely force and matter. As incredible as it sounds, the materialists stand on the same level as such fetish worshippers. They say, of course, that they do not worship force and matter at all. When they say that, we reply: They have no real concept of what the fetish worshipper feels toward his fetish. The fetish worshippers are not yet capable of rising to a higher conception of God. Their culture does not allow it. For them, it is a legitimate belief to worship an image they have created for themselves. This view is held today not only by savages, but also by materialists. But anyone who is a scientific fetishist today, who creates for himself an image of matter and force and worships it, is at fault. By virtue of the cultural level we have attained, he could see, if only he wanted to, at what low level he has remained.

[ 12 ] When we are surrounded today by this downright paralyzing conception of God, we say to ourselves: This is a reason to speak about the conception of God. — Therefore, perhaps I may draw attention to a book. It is said that one of the great merits of Feuerbach, the philosopher, is that he advocated a so-called “fantastic” God. For in 1841, Feuerbach published a book in which he argued that we must reverse the statement “God created man in his own image” and say instead: “Man created God in his own image.” — We must be clear that human desires and needs are such that people like to see something above themselves. Thus, their imagination creates an image of itself. The gods become images of man. — With this, Feuerbach is said to have expressed a lofty, sublime wisdom. But let us go back to the times of ancient Greece, back to Egypt, and so on; time and again, people have imagined the gods as they themselves were. Thus, they could also form images of gods as bulls and lions: if people were bull-like in their souls, then the bulls became their gods, and they became bull-like; if they were lion-like, then the lions and lion-like images became their gods. This is therefore no new wisdom. It is a wisdom that is merely spreading once again in our time.

[ 13 ] But is it not true that man actually creates his own gods? Is it not true that our opinions about the gods spring from our own hearts? Is it not true that when we look around the world, we do not see the divine with our eyes, nor with our senses? He who wishes to see with the senses and comprehend with the intellect will speak as, for example, Du Bois-Reymond, the great physiologist, does: I would believe in a ruler of the world if I could prove his existence; if I could prove him just as I can prove the existence of the human brain. But then, just as I can prove the existence of nerve fibers in the human body, I would also have to be able to prove their existence out in the world. — In the external world, as Du Bois-Reymond and the modern thinkers would have it, we cannot find the deity. These opinions of theirs are already created from within their own breasts, as Feuerbach says.

[ 14 ] But one might also ask: What is it that speaks within the human soul when that human soul forms opinions and thoughts? — We know that we ourselves are a part of this divine being; we know that God lives within us. We know that we humans, of all things that surround us in this physical world, are, so to speak, the final link, the noblest and most perfect being within this world. Must we not then say that the human being, insofar as he develops physically, develops in the image of God as the most perfect being? Who would not agree with Goethe when he expresses his opinion in these beautiful words: “When the healthy nature of man functions as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified, and worthy whole, when harmonious contentment grants him pure, free delight: then the universe, if it could perceive itself, would exult as having reached its goal and admire the summit of its own becoming and being.”

[ 15 ] Human beings form thoughts; thoughts spring from the human breast. But what speaks from the human breast? God Himself speaks from it—provided that the human being is willing to listen selflessly to this inner voice, without allowing it to be drowned out by the interests and inclinations of everyday life. That is it: though it is the human voice, God’s voice is within the human voice. Therefore, it is not surprising that we find in the human voice various aspects, various views regarding the primordial divine wisdom. A higher, spiritual humility is what must permeate the theosophist if he wishes to make this concept of God his own. Above all, he must be clear that life is an eternal learning process, that he never settles on a single opinion; that everything is in a state of development. The human soul, too, is in a state of evolution. It then follows naturally that there are souls at lower and higher levels. There are also souls that have not yet advanced far in their conception of God, and then again there are souls that have long since gone beyond the ordinary and, along with lofty concepts of the world, have also acquired sublime concepts of God.

[ 16 ] It is European and American knowledge that considers itself wise and exalted, so wise and exalted that nothing surpasses it. Everyone believes they possess the sum total of all wisdom. Quite different is the one who clings to Oriental wisdom and the one who clings to theosophical wisdom. He tells himself: What you have achieved, you can surpass every day if you continue on the path. Everything you have achieved is your inner treasure. But you must not rest; you must go further and listen to the voice in nature and in your own heart.

[ 17 ] Nothing is as destructive to Western intellectual culture as our rampant criticism. For it is never approached from the perspective that one must continue to develop, that one must never arrive at a final judgment on a matter. The Theosophist will never have this. With boldness and courage, he will declare what he has recognized as true: I evoke in all who are willing to listen the same feeling—that I yearn, again and again, for higher stages and higher peaks of existence and wisdom. — This is what the Theosophist will say to himself. We will never arrive at the end of the soul’s development; we will never have a closed world. We will seek the path that leads us to insights beyond our senses into the higher worlds, but above all gives us a true sense of things. No matter how highly developed each of us may be, we must look ever deeper into the world, perceive the sources of life more deeply than we can today, while standing within Western life and sensibility. We should conduct ourselves as higher human beings. That is precisely why it is so difficult to live up to the wisdom flowing to us from highly developed beings—beings who have already reached a higher stage on the ladder of human development than the average person. These are beings who have much to say. We must have a sense of where sublimity lies; then we will learn to listen and to listen intently.

[ 18 ] With this mindset, Theosophy seeks to establish a spiritual movement in order to draw together a core group of humanity that once again sincerely and truly believes that the human soul is a product of evolution. If, millions of years ago, the worm that lived at that time had said, “I have reached the highest peak of existence,” then the worm could not have evolved into a fish, nor the fish into a mammal, nor the mammal into an ape, nor the ape into a human. Unconsciously, they believed that they would outgrow their current state, that they must grow to ever higher and higher heights. They believed in something that would lead them beyond their own being, and that is the very force of their becoming. We humans cannot actually feel against nature. We should feel with nature. That which nature unconsciously possesses within itself as the power of becoming—which we should make more and more conscious to ourselves—this consciousness should be the power of our development. We must be clear about this: that we must develop beyond ourselves. Just as in the world of animal life the imperfect mammal lives alongside the perfect one—just as one has, so to speak, remained at a lower stage while the other has already reached a higher stage yet still lives alongside the lower one—so it is with human beings. Within humanity, different people at different stages of development live side by side.

[ 19 ] We must admit that our concept of God is a petty one compared to that held by a sublime being. We must also admit that our current concept of God will be a petty one compared to the one humanity will develop over millions of years as it continues to evolve. Therefore, we must place the concept of God in an infinite perspective, carrying it within us as a living life. The fact that we must approach this, that we must strive toward it, is what distinguishes the theosophical concept of God from all others. We do not deny any of these concepts. We are clear that they are all valid, depending on human capacities. But we are also clear that none is exhaustive. We are clear that we cannot align ourselves with those who sow discord between the various opinions. The various religious traditions must exist side by side, not in opposition to one another.

[ 20 ] And now we come to what we call the concept of God. It is not pantheism, not a pantheistic concept, not an anthropomorphic concept, not a defined concept. We do not worship this or that god; we worship Brahman behind Brahma, whom the Hindu reveres—the Hindu who still has a sense of those things toward which he knows only silence. We are clear that we can experience this divine being in life. We cannot imagine it, but it lives within us as life itself. This is not knowledge of God, nor is it the science of God; nor is Theosophy theology. Theosophy seeks to find the path; it is the search for God.

[ 21 ] A German philosopher had only a few, but apt, words to say on this matter. Schelling said: Can one prove the existence of existence? — The various proofs of God’s existence cannot serve as guides to God; at most, they lead us to a conception of the deity. A true proof is necessary only where a thing must first be grasped through our concept. God lives in our deeds, in our words. It is therefore not a matter of proving the existence of God, but only of forming opinions about Him and striving to make them ever more perfect. That is what is at stake, and the “Theosophical Society” has set itself the goal of contributing to this.

[ 22 ] Those who hold theological views today have no sense, no idea, of the guiding sentiments that existed in this regard in times past. I would like to remind you of a leading figure of the 15th century who was, in fact, already a theosophist back then—a theosophist entirely in our sense of the word. He was a Catholic cardinal. I would like to recall the subtle theosophist Nicholas of Cusa, because he can serve as a model for us theosophists today. He stated that there is a core in all religions, that they are different aspects of a primordial religion, that they should be reconciled, and that they should be deepened. One should seek truth within them, but not presume to be able to grasp the primordial truth itself.

[ 23 ] Cusanus seeks to clarify the concept of God in a profound way. If you understand Cusanus’s view, you will gain an appreciation of the fact that Christianity, even within the Middle Ages, had significant, profound minds—minds of a kind that we cannot even begin to comprehend today with our current concepts. Thus says Cusanus—and many other predecessors before him: We have our concepts, our thoughts. Where do all our human concepts come from? From what surrounds us, from what we have experienced. But what we have experienced is only a small manifestation of the infinite. And if we turn to the highest, let us take the concept of being itself. Is that not also a human concept? Where do we get the concept of being? We live in the world. It makes an impression on our sensory organs, on our eyes. And of what we see and hear, we say: it is. We attribute being to it. Basically, “a thing is” means the same as: I have seen it. — “Being” has the same root as “to see.” When we say, “God is,” we thereby attribute to the divine essence a concept that we have derived solely from our experience. We are saying nothing other than that God has a quality that we have perceived in various things. That is why Cusanus uttered a phrase that is deeply significant. He says: God does not have being; he has super-being. — This is not a concept we can grasp with our senses. That is why the sense of the infinite also lives in Cusanus’s soul. It is deeply moving how this cardinal says: I have studied theology my whole life, also pursued the sciences of the world and—insofar as they can be grasped by the intellect—also understood them. But then I became aware of myself, and through this I have come to know: within the human soul lives a Self that is increasingly awakened by the human soul. — Such is what you read in Cusanus. The significance of what he says goes far beyond what we think and imagine today.

[ 24 ] Just as it is necessary for us to arrive at clear and sharply defined concepts regarding everything we experience in the world, so too is it necessary that, when it comes to the concept of God, we remain conscious at every moment that our perception must go beyond everything we perceive with our intellect and our senses. Then we will be clear that we are not to know God, but to seek God. Then we will increasingly see what the path to the knowledge of God is, and develop toward it. If God is not a closed-off life within us, but living life itself, then we will wait until higher spiritual powers are developed through the paths taken by theosophy. God reigns not only in this world, but also in those worlds that can be seen only by those whose spiritual eye is open to all those worlds of which Theosophy speaks. And it speaks of seven stages of human consciousness. It knows that human development means: not remaining at the physical stage of consciousness, but advancing to higher and ever higher stages.

[ 25 ] Whoever does this initially experiences only a limited understanding of it. Nevertheless, we must never lose heart, but must be clear that we have the right to form opinions—and ever higher opinions—about the divine being; yet it is presumption to believe that any opinion will ever fully encompass the subject. We must be clear that we must have the right sentiments and feelings within us; then the feeling arising from contemplation will once again become devout, and we will once again become reverent. We have lost our reverence solely through European thought. Reverence and devotion are something that must be reawakened. But what could awaken our reverence more than that which exists as a divine being, as the primal source of existence! If we learn to develop reverence again, then our soul will be warmed and inflamed by something entirely different, namely by that which flows through the universe as the lifeblood. This will become a part of our being.

[ 26 ] Spinoza also speaks of this. In his *Ethics*, Spinoza developed concepts of the Deity, and he concludes his *Ethics* with a hymn to the Deity. He concludes it in this way: Only the person who has attained freedom, only the person who cultivates within himself a profound feeling—a feeling that allows the divine to flow into him, whose knowledge is united in love—has truly attained freedom. Amor dei intellectualis—intellectual love of God—that is to say: the love of the spirit for God, rooted in knowledge, is God’s love itself. This is not a concept, not a limited idea, but living life.

[ 27 ] Thus, our concept of God is not a science of God, but the convergence of everything we can experience as science, the unification of all this in a living feeling, in a life lived within the sense of the Divine. The word “theosophy” should not be translated as “divine knowledge,” but rather as “divine wisdom” or, even better: the search for a path to God, the search for ever-increasing deification. “The search for wisdom”—that is what it is.

[ 28 ] To a greater or lesser extent, those who have striven to reach higher levels of existence have always stood on this ground. Among them is Goethe, who was far more of a theosophist than is generally suspected, and who is, above all, the theosophical poet of the Germans. He can only be fully understood when illuminated by the light of theosophy. Among the many truths hidden within Goethe’s works lies the very maxim of theosophy itself. In a particularly striking passage, Goethe declared: No religion is higher than the truth! — Goethe was deeply imbued with this. Just as all existence has a form, so too are our thoughts formed. Just as every formed being is a parable, so too are our conceptions of God a parable of God—but never the Divine itself. Goethe’s words also apply to the concept of God, which is transitory, and to the image of God, which is imperishable:

[ 29 ] Everything that is transient is merely a parable.