The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. The History of Spiritualism

[ 1 ] Today, it falls to me to speak to you about a subject that, on the one hand—we may safely say—has millions of enthusiastic followers around the world, but on the other hand has encountered the fiercest opposition; not only opponents who vehemently combat this field of so-called spiritualism, but also those who ridicule it, who lump it together with the darkest superstition—or with what they call dark superstition; opponents who seek merely to dismiss it with empty words of wit and scorn.

[ 2 ] Well, it may not be entirely easy to speak about such a topic, especially in our time, when the “pros and cons” tend to immediately ignite the most intense passions. And I would like to ask those of you who may be enthusiastic followers of Spiritism, if any of the remarks I will be compelled to make do not seem to fully correspond to your views, not to pass judgment too quickly, bearing in mind the fact that we representatives of Theosophy are, in any case, united with the Spiritists in one respect: the intention to explore the higher spiritual worlds, those worlds that go beyond what one can hear with the ears, see with the eyes, or grasp with the hands in everyday life. On this we are in agreement. On the other hand, however, I would also like to ask scientists to be clear that the movement in whose name I myself speak has chosen as its motto—not merely as a slogan or empty phrase, but in the very truest sense of the word—the following: No human opinion takes precedence over the truth. — I would like to suggest that perhaps scientists, too, should take into account how scientific views have been subject to change over time, and how even what is considered scientifically established today cannot be regarded as established for all time.

[ 3 ] So, without taking sides, and bearing in mind that no human opinion can surpass the truth, let me briefly outline the development of the spiritualist movement.

[ 4 ] Above all, I would like to emphasize that the founders of the Theosophical Movement, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and the great organizer, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, themselves came from the spiritualist movement, were well-versed in the spiritualist movement, and only turned to the Theosophical Movement after they had previously searched energetically for the truth within the spiritualist movement but had not found it.

[ 5 ] For Theosophy, the point is not to oppose Spiritism, but to seek the truth wherever it may be found.

[ 6 ] There is one more thing I would like to emphasize, which may surprise some, but will likely come as no surprise at all to others who are in the know. Let me put it this way: You will never hear the final word on spiritualism and similar matters from people who, like me, are compelled to speak about them. You know that in all sciences there is a principle that is simply justified by scientific methods, and that is the principle that the results of science should be presented in a popular manner to a wider audience. If one wishes to become more intimately acquainted with these results, if one wishes to know the deeper truth, then a longer path is necessary: a path through the various methods into all the details. As a rule, researchers are not in a position to present in popular lectures what takes place within the laboratories, in the innermost recesses of the observatories. If this is the case for physical science, then in the great spiritual movements of the world, with regard to what are called spiritual insights, there is a requirement for the discerning individual—for the one who is permitted to speak the words—to withhold the final word, since the final words are of an entirely different nature. They are of a nature that can scarcely be discussed in public. And so you will never be able to hear the very last word on this matter from one who calls himself an occultist—unless you are able and willing to follow his ways in the most intimate sense—. But for those who are well-informed on the matter itself, the manner in which something is said will also shed light on what is said not only between the lines, but perhaps also between the words.

[ 7 ] Following this introduction, let me turn to the subject itself, which must undoubtedly have immense cultural and historical significance, even for those who wish to ridicule it. Let me speak about the matter in a way that truly sheds light on it, namely from the following perspective: What is modern spiritualism seeking? Is it seeking something new, or is it something ancient? Are the paths it is exploring entirely new, or have these paths also been trodden by humanity for centuries or even millennia? — When one considers these questions, one arrives at the heart of the matter regarding the history of spiritualism most quickly. What spiritualists seek is, without a doubt, first the knowledge of those worlds that lie beyond our sensory world, and second, the significance of these worlds for the goal, for the destiny of our human race.

[ 8 ] Let us ask ourselves: Have these problems not been the tasks of humanity ever since it began striving and pursuing its goals on this earth? — We must answer: Yes. — And since these are undoubtedly the highest of tasks, it would seem absurd from the outset if something entirely new had emerged in world history with regard to these questions. When we look around at the spiritualist movement, both the old and the new, it seems as though we are dealing with something entirely new. Its strongest opponents claim that it has brought something entirely new into the world, and other opponents say that never before have people felt such a need to combat this movement as they do today. There must have been a change in humanity regarding the way of looking at things. This becomes clear to us in a flash when we realize that humanity has related to the issues we now call spiritualism in three distinct ways.

[ 9 ] There we have one approach that can be found throughout antiquity, an approach that only changed in Christian times. Then we have a second way of approaching these questions, throughout the Middle Ages and into the 17th century. It is not until the 17th century that what we are justified in calling spiritualism today begins, in essence, to take on a definite form.

[ 10 ] The questions that Spiritists seek to answer today were the subject of the so-called Mysteries throughout antiquity. Let us try to clarify, in just a few strokes, what is meant by the term “Mysteries.” In antiquity, it was not the custom to proclaim wisdom publicly. People had a completely different view of wisdom and truth. Throughout antiquity, it was believed that in order to perceive supersensory truths, one must first develop supersensory faculties. It was clearly understood that spiritual powers lie dormant in every human being, which are not developed in the average person; that spiritual powers lie dormant in human nature, which can be awakened and developed through long exercises and stages of development described as very difficult by the followers of the mysteries. Once one had developed such powers within oneself and become a seeker of truth, it was believed that the seeker of truth related to the ordinary person in the same way that a sighted person relates to one born blind. This was the very aim of the sacred mysteries. In the spiritual realm, the aim was something similar to what a doctor aims for today with a person born blind when he operates on them to enable them to see. It was clearly understood that, just as the colors of light and the forms of things emerge for a person born blind who undergoes surgery, so too would a new world emerge for the one whose inner senses are awakened—a world that the ordinary mind cannot perceive. Thus, the follower of the Mysteries sought to transform a person of a lower nature into a person of a higher stage of development, an initiate. And only the initiate was to be able to discern the supersensible truths through direct vision, through spiritual intuition. To the great masses, the truths could only be communicated through images. The myths of antiquity, the legends about gods and the creation of the world, which today—and in a certain sense rightly so—simply appear to us as childish conceptions of humanity, are nothing other than disguises of supersensible truths. Through imagery, the initiate communicated to the people what he had been able to perceive within the temple mysteries. The entire body of Eastern mythologies, the Greek and Roman mythologies, Germanic mythology, and the mythologies of the barbarian peoples are nothing other than pictorial, symbolic representations of supersensible truths. Of course, this can be fully understood only by those who engage with these myths not merely as is customary in anthropology or ethnology, but also with their spirit. Such a person sees that a myth like the myth of Hercules represents a deep inner truth; he sees that Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece represents a profound insight to be perceived in its truth.

[ 11 ] Then, with the advent of our calendar, a different era began. I can only sketch out, in broad and rough strokes, the outline of what I have to say. A certain foundation of higher, spiritual truths was established and made the focus of religious communities, particularly the Christian one. And this foundation of spiritual truths was now removed from all human inquiry, removed from immediate human striving. Those who have studied the history of the Council of Nicaea will know what I mean, as will those who understand the words of St. Augustine, who says: I would not believe in the truth of divine revelation if the authority of the Church did not compel me to do so. — Faith, which establishes a certain foundation of truths, takes the place of the ancient mystery truths that captured them in images. And now follows the epoch in which the great masses no longer receive those truths that were meant to shed light on the supersensible world through images, but simply through authority. This is the second way in which the masses and those who were to lead them related to the highest truths. The mysteries were conveyed to the masses through contemplation; in the Middle Ages, they were conveyed through faith and upheld by authority.

[ 12 ] But alongside those whose task it was to keep the masses bound by faith and authority, there were also those in the 12th and 13th centuries—they have existed in every age, though they did not appear in public—who sought to ascend to the highest truth through their own direct perception. They sought it along the same paths along which it had been sought within the mysteries. Thus, in the Middle Ages, alongside those who were merely priests, we also find mystics, theosophers, and occultists—those who speak in a language that is difficult, almost incomprehensible, to today’s materialists and rationalists. We find those who had penetrated to the mysteries by paths that elude the senses. And in even more incomprehensible language spoke those who, as mystery priests, held the guidance of the spirit in their hands. Thus we hear of one who claimed to have the ability to send his thoughts over distances of miles; another boasted that he could turn the entire sea—if it were permitted—into gold. We hear yet another speak of being able to construct an instrument, a vehicle, with which he could move through the air.

[ 13 ] There were times when people did not know what to make of such statements, as they had no idea how to interpret them. Moreover, prejudices against this kind of research had been widespread since ancient times. We will soon understand where these prejudices came from. When, in the first centuries of our era, Christian culture spread across the lands of the Mediterranean, it became apparent that the religious rites and ceremonies of Christianity, as well as most Christian dogmas, corresponded to ancient pagan traditions, and were not so very different—albeit in a diluted form—from what had taken place in the ancient pagan temples of Mithras. Then those whose duty it was to defend the reputation of the Church said: Evil spirits had instilled these beliefs in the pagans; they had imitated within the pagan world what God had revealed to the Christian Church. — But it is a strange imitation, one that precedes the original! The whole of Christianity has been imitated in the pagan mysteries—if we use the accusers’ own words—that is, what the Church later discovered! It is understandable that any path other than the one that passed through Christianity via authoritative faith, as Augustine characterizes it, has been regarded as incorrect and, over time, even as one not inspired by good powers; for it was the Church that was to mediate the good powers.

[ 14 ] Thus, these traditions persisted throughout the Middle Ages. Those who sought to arrive at the highest supernatural truths on their own, independent paths were regarded as sorcerers, as allies of evil or of evil spirits. The turning point is the Faust legend. Faust is the representative of those who seek to uncover the mysteries through their own knowledge, and who must therefore fall prey to evil forces. Research should be conducted only in the traditional scriptures; only faith in authority should lead to the supernatural powers. Nevertheless, initiated minds, even though they were slandered and persecuted as sorcerers, realized that the time must come again when one must advance toward the truth through one’s own, human means.

[ 15 ] Thus we see that, from the middle of the Middle Ages onward, secret societies began to emerge again in Europe, guiding their members toward the development of higher intuitive powers in the same way that the ancient mysteries had done. Thus, within such secret societies—I mention only the one that was the deepest and most significant, that of the Rosicrucians, founded by Christian Rosenkreutz—the path to the highest truths was embarked upon in the manner of the mysteries. This development can be traced strictly historically well into the 18th century. I cannot go into detail about how this happened; I can only cite one example, the great representative of esoteric science in the 16th and 17th centuries, Robert Fludd. He demonstrates to those who have insight into these realms, in all his writings, that he knows the paths by which one arrives at the truths, that he knows how such powers must be developed—powers that are of a completely different nature than the powers within us that perceive some sort of light body before them. He shows that there are mysterious paths to the highest truths. He also speaks of the Rosicrucian Society in a way that makes the relationship clear to every initiate.

[ 16 ] I would like to present just three questions to you to show how veiled the discussion of these questions was at the time—questions which, he says, anyone who has reached the lowest level must be able to answer with understanding. To rationalists and materialists, these questions and their answers will seem quite meaningless. The first question that must be answered by anyone who wishes to rise in a worthy manner to higher spiritual spheres is: Where do you dwell? — And the answer to that is: I dwell in the Temple of Wisdom, on the Mountain of Reason. — To truly understand this single sentence, to have the inner experience of it, already means having opened certain inner senses.

[ 17 ] The second sentence was this: Where does the truth come from? — And the answer to that is: It comes to me from the Creative —, and now comes a word that cannot be translated into German at all: from the Highest . . ., the mighty Universal Spirit who spoke through Solomon and who wishes to instruct me in alchemy, magic, and the Kabbalah . . . — That was the second question.

[ 18 ] And the third question is this: What will you build? — And the answer is this: I want to build a temple like the Tabernacle, like Solomon’s Temple, like the Body of Christ, and ... like something else that cannot be spoken of.

[ 19 ] You see—I cannot and do not need to go into these questions further—that for all the uninitiated in such societies, what are called supersensible truths have been shrouded in a mysterious, enigmatic darkness, and that the uninitiated must first prove themselves worthy and have reached a moral and intellectual peak. Anyone who had not passed the tests, anyone who did not have the strength within to find the experiences within, was not deemed worthy and was not admitted to initiation. It was considered dangerous to know these truths. It was known that this knowledge is connected with an immense power, with a development of power that the average person cannot even imagine. Only those who have attained that moral and intellectual height are capable of possessing these truths and this power without danger to humanity. Otherwise, it was said: Without having attained this height, one who possesses these truths and this power behaves like a child sent into a powder magazine with matches.

[ 20 ] Throughout all these ages, people also regarded the accounts of apparitions—as they are recounted in popular tradition everywhere and as they have been recounted for millennia—as possible only for those who possess the highest supernatural truths. The things that modern spiritualism acknowledges today are not new, but ancient. In ancient times, it was said that human beings are capable of influencing others in ways that are otherwise impossible: certain people cause knocking sounds to be heard in their surroundings, cause objects to move—contrary to the laws of gravity—with or without contact, cause objects to fly through the air without the application of physical force, and so on. Since the earliest times, it has been known that there are people who can be put into certain states—today these are called trance states—in which they speak of things they could never speak of in their waking consciousness, and in which they also convey messages about realms beyond our sensory world. It was known that there are people who communicate through signs about what they see in such supernatural worlds. It was also known that there are people capable of seeing events miles away and reporting on them; people who, through their prophetic gift, can foresee and predict future events. All of this—let us not examine it today in terms of truth—is ancient tradition. Those who believe they can accept it as truth regard it as a matter of course. Such non-physical, non-sensory phenomena were held to be true throughout the entire Middle Ages. Although the medieval Church regarded them as if they were caused by black magic, that is not our concern here. In any case, during the 17th and 18th centuries, the path to the supernatural world was not sought through these phenomena. Until those times, no one claimed that a dancing table or a ghost appearing in any form—whether seen with the eyes or otherwise in a trance—could reveal anything about a supernatural world. Even if someone claimed to see a conflagration in Hanover from here, it was believed; but no one saw in it anything that could seriously have provided insight into the supernatural world. Those who wished to have supernatural perceptions sought them through the development of inner powers in secret societies. And among the discerning, it was taken for granted that the supernatural could not be sought in that way.

[ 21 ] Then came a new era in the development of the Western world; it was the era when people began to seek all truth through the method we now call the scientific method. The Copernican worldview and research in physiology emerged; technology emerged, along with the discovery of blood circulation, the discovery of the egg cell, and so on. Insights into nature were gained through the senses. Anyone who approaches the Middle Ages without prejudice, but seeks to understand the medieval worldview in its true form, will soon be convinced that medieval thinking did not conceive of heaven and hell as physical locations in space, but rather as spiritual realms. No discerning person in the Middle Ages would have thought to espouse the worldview that is today attributed to medieval scholars. It is not in this sense that Copernicanism is something new. It is new in a completely different sense; in the sense that since the 16th century, sensory perception has become the decisive factor for truth; that which one can see, that which one can perceive with the senses. The worldview held by the Middle Ages was not false in the sense that it is often portrayed today, but rather it was simply one that was not viewed with physical eyes. Physical sensation was a symbol for something spiritual. Dante, too, did not imagine his Hell and his Heaven in an earthly sense; they were to be understood spiritually.

[ 22 ] This perspective was abandoned. This is what the true psychologist of human development discovers. The sensory realm was elevated, and sensuality gradually took over the world. But people grew accustomed to it without even noticing. Only the inquiring psychologist, rushing to keep up with this development, is able to form a picture of it. People grow accustomed to such changes. They view everything through their feelings and senses, and now only the sensory is accepted as the truth. Without anyone realizing it, it became a principle of human nature to accept only that which one can see in some way, that which one can verify through sensory perception. No one thought much of those circles that spoke of initiation and led to supersensory truths by secret paths; everything had to be demonstrated through the senses.

[ 23 ] What, then, became of the supersensory view of the world? How could one find the supersensory in a world where people sought truth solely in sensory experiences? There were individual phenomena that could not be explained by the forces of nature known up to that point—rare, so-called abnormal phenomena; phenomena that the physicist and the natural scientist could not explain, and which were simply denied in a world where only what could be explained through the senses was accepted. It was these phenomena, handed down through millennia, to which people now turned: they now sought them out. In contrast to the impulse that clings only to outward sensory appearances, the impulse toward the supersensible took refuge in such phenomena. What could not be explained by scientific criticism, people wanted to know; they wanted to know what the matter was. When people began to seek in these things evidence of another world, the hour of modern spiritualism’s birth had struck. We can specify the hour of its birth and the place where it occurred. It was in the year 1716 that a book appeared by a member of the Royal Society, a description of the western islands of Scotland. It contained everything there was to know about “clairvoyance.” This, then, is what cannot be perceived with the ordinary eyes, but could only be known through supersensory research. Here you have the precursor to everything that was later undertaken from the so-called scientific side to investigate spiritualist phenomena.

[ 24 ] And now we have already reached the threshold of the entire modern spiritualist movement. The figure from whom the entire spiritualist movement originated is one of the most remarkable in the world: Swedenborg. The entire 18th century stood under his influence. Even Kant engaged with his ideas. Given Swedenborg’s character, it was inevitable that he would be the figure capable of giving birth to the modern spiritualist movement. He was born in 1688 and died in 1772. In the first half of his life, he was a natural scientist who stood at the forefront of the natural sciences of his time. He encompassed them. No one has the right to attack Swedenborg as an uneducated man. We know that he was not only a fully qualified expert of his time, but also anticipated many scientific truths that were only discovered later at the universities. Thus, in the first half of his life, he not only stood firmly on the scientific standpoint that sought to explore everything through sensory perception and mathematical calculations, but he also far outpaced his time in this regard. Then he turned entirely to what is called spirit-seeing. What Swedenborg—call him a seer or a visionary—experienced there was a very specific group of phenomena. And anyone who is even somewhat initiated in this field knows that Swedenborg could experience only this group of phenomena.

[ 25 ] Let us cite just a few examples here. Swedenborg saw a conflagration from a place sixty miles away from Stockholm. He immediately shared this with the company he was in, and some time later it was heard that the fire had unfolded exactly as Swedenborg had described it. Another example. A high-ranking official inquired about a secret that a brother had not fully revealed before his death, as he had died before doing so. The official approached Swedenborg with the request that he find the brother and ask him what he had intended to say. Swedenborg carried out the task in such a way that the official could have no doubt that Swedenborg had penetrated this secret.

[ 26 ] Here is a third example to illustrate how Swedenborg moved in the supernatural world. A scholar and friend visited Swedenborg. The servant said to him, “You’ll have to wait a moment.” The scholar sat down and heard a conversation coming from the next room. But he heard only Swedenborg speaking; he heard no replies. The matter became even more striking to him when he heard the conversation unfolding in exquisite classical Latin, and especially when he heard them conversing intimately about the circumstances of Emperor Augustus. Then Swedenborg went to the door, bowed, and spoke with someone whom the friend could not see at all. He then returned and said to the friend: “Please excuse me for keeping you waiting. I had a distinguished visitor—Virgil was with me.”

[ 27 ] People may think what they will about such things. But one thing is certain: Swedenborg believed in them and considered them to be real. I said: only a figure like Swedenborg could have arrived at this kind of research. It was precisely the fact that he was well-grounded in the natural sciences of his time that led him to this view of the supernatural. He was a man who, in an era when the natural sciences were flourishing, had become accustomed to accepting only the sensory and the visible—everyone who knows him is aware of this; the reasons for this will become clear in the lecture I will give here next time on the topic: “Hypnotism and Somnambulism”—and so he was also compelled to do so as one who sees the spiritual in the world. Just as he insisted on recognizing as true only what he could calculate and perceive with his senses, so too did he shape the supersensible into the form it had to take for him; under the influence of the habits of thought of natural science, the supersensible world was drawn down into a deeper sphere. I have cited the reasons why it approaches us in this way, similar to the perceptions of the sensory world. Next time we will hear how this comes about. The prerequisites for this, however, are provided by the spiritual development of human beings accustomed to the sensory-visible world.

[ 28 ] I do not wish to speak now about the significance and the kernel of truth in what Swedenborg saw, but rather about the fact that, as soon as one enters this realm that underlies Swedenborg’s views, one sees in that realm what one is oneself predisposed to; one sees what one has developed within oneself. A simple example can serve as proof of this.

[ 29 ] As the spiritualist movement spread in the second half of the 19th century, experiments were also conducted in Bavaria. It turned out that during these experiments—which took place in various locations and were attended by scholars—a wide variety of spiritual manifestations occurred. At one such event, the question was asked whether the human soul is received from the parents through heredity, so that the soul is also inherited, or whether it is created anew in every human being. In this spiritualist society, the answer was: Souls are created anew. Almost at the same time, the same question was asked in another society. The answer was this: The soul is not created, but is inherited from parents to children. — It was found that in one society there were adherents of the so-called creation theory, and in the other society there were some scholars present who were adherents of the other theory. The answers were given in accordance with their own views, in accordance with the ideas that lived within them. Whatever the facts may be, whatever the reasons for these facts may be, it has been shown that what a person receives as revelation corresponds to how they view these things. Whether it appears to them merely as an intellectual manifestation or as a vision is irrelevant; what a person sees is rooted in their own dispositions.

[ 30 ] Thus it came to pass that this search for sensory and supersensory evidence became a product of the natural sciences of the materialistic era. And indeed, the principle was established that the supersensory world should be sought in the same way that the sensory world is sought. Just as one convinces oneself in the laboratory of the reality of magnetic forces or the forces of light, so one sought to convince oneself of the supersensible world through sensory appearances, through what unfolds before the eyes. People had forgotten how to view the spiritual in a purely spiritual way. They had forgotten how to develop faith in supersensible forces and to learn to recognize that which is neither sensory nor analogous to the sensory, but which can only be grasped through spiritual intuition. They had adopted the habit of having everything conveyed to them through the sensory path, and so they also wanted to have these things conveyed to them through the sensory path. Research was moving in this direction. Thus we see how the Swedenborgian tradition continues. What is presented to us offers nothing new; spiritualism offers nothing new! We will survey this later and then understand it more clearly.

[ 31 ] All phenomena known to spiritualism have been explained in this way. Here we see the South German Oetinger, who proposed the theory that there is a supersensible substance that can be seen as a physical phenomenon. However, he says, supersensible matter does not possess the coarse properties of physical matter, nor does it have the impenetrable resistance and coarse mixture. Here we have the substance from which materializations are taken.

[ 32 ] Then there is another, Dr. Johann Heinrich Jung, known as Stilling, who published a detailed account of spirits and spiritual phenomena and described all these things in it. He attempted to understand everything in such a way that, as a devout Christian, he could do justice to the apparitions. Because he was predisposed to be a Christian believer, the whole world seemed to him to reveal nothing other than the truths of Christian doctrine. And because, at the same time, the natural sciences were asserting their claims, we see in his account a blending of the purely Christian standpoint with that of the natural sciences. On the path we call the occult, the phenomena are explained by the intrusion of a spiritual world into our own.

[ 33 ] You will find all these phenomena documented in the works of those who have written about spiritualism, demonology, magic, and so on; in these works, you may also find material that goes beyond spiritualism, as in the case of Ennemoser, for example. We even see carefully documented how a person can put themselves in a position to perceive the thoughts of others who are in distant rooms. You will find such instructions in Ennemoser, as well as in others. As early as the 19th century, you will find a certain Meyer, who wrote a book from the perspective of spiritualism regarding Hades as a revelation of spiritualistic manipulations, advocating the so-called doctrine of reincarnation or the doctrine of re-embodiment. There you will find a theory to which theosophy has led us back, and which shows us that the old fairy tales are the expression of higher truths prepared for the people. Meyer arrived at this through sensory manifestations.

[ 34 ] In Justinus Kerner’s work, which carries significant moral weight due to the author’s reputation, we find all the phenomena associated with spiritualism. For example, we find that objects—spoons and the like—are repelled by the medium of Prevorst; it is also recounted there how this seer communicates with beings from other worlds. Justinus Kerner records all the messages she conveys to him. She herself tells him that she sees beings from other worlds who, although they pass right through her, she can nevertheless perceive, and that she can even see such beings who have entered with other people. Some might say of such things: Kerner was fantasizing and allowed his seer to lead him on. But I would like to say just one thing: You all know David Friedrich Strauss, who was a friend of Justinus Kerner. He knew the truth about the seer of Prevorst. You also know that his work runs counter to the spiritualist movement. He says that the facts communicated by the Seeress of Prevorst are true as facts—this is not open to debate among those who know anything about it—and he regarded these matters as beyond all doubt.

[ 35 ] Even though there was still a significant number of people who retained some interest in such matters, that interest continued to wane. This stemmed from the influence of the stance taken by science. It refused to regard such phenomena as true statements during the 1840s, when the law of conservation of energy was discovered and thus the foundation for our physics was laid, when cell theory was established, and when Darwinism was taking shape. What emerged during this period could not be favorable to the pneumatologists. They were therefore strictly rejected. Thus, everything they had to say was forgotten.

[ 36 ] Then an event occurred that marked a victory for spiritualism. The event did not take place in Europe, but in the country where materialism was celebrating its greatest triumphs at that time, where people had become mentally accustomed to regarding as true only that which their hands could grasp. This took place in America, the land where the materialistic mindset I have alluded to had become deeply ingrained. It stemmed from phenomena that, in the crudest sense, belong to those that must be called abnormal, yet still sensory. The well-known knocking sounds, the phenomena of tables moving and the accompanying knocking sounds, the audibility of certain voices that resounded through the air, accompanied by intelligent utterances for which there was no sensory basis—it was these that, in America, the country where great importance is attached to outward appearances, pointed so tangibly toward the supersensible. Like a storm, the view gained acceptance that there is a supernatural world, that beings who do not belong to our world can manifest themselves, can reveal themselves in our sensory world. It swept through the world like a storm.

[ 37 ] A man named Andrew Jackson Davis, who studied these phenomena, was called upon to explain them. He was, much like Swedenborg, a seer, though he lacked Swedenborg’s depth. He was an uneducated American who had grown up as a farm boy, whereas Swedenborg was a learned Swede. In 1848, he wrote a work titled *The Philosophy of Spiritual Communication*. In this work, he presented a text that emerged from the most contemporary needs, which had arisen within the modern struggle in which only the sensory was to be accepted, in which everyone sought to assert their personal egoism, in which everyone wanted to seize as much as possible and become as happy as they could. In this world, according to ways of thinking that were fixated solely on the material, one could no longer have any sense of a faith that leads beyond the sensory world. People wanted to see, and they wanted a faith that satisfied the needs and desires of modern humanity. Above all, Davis states plainly that modern people cannot believe that one group of people will be saved while another will be damned. That was what modern people could not tolerate; an evolutionary idea had to intervene. And so Davis was given a truth that represents a faithful reflection of the sensory world. Let it be characterized by an example.

[ 38 ] When Davis’s first wife had died, he considered marrying a second wife. He had reservations about it, but a supernatural revelation led him to grant himself permission to do so. In this message, his first wife told him that she had remarried in the Land of the Sun; thus, he considered himself justified in entering into a second marriage here as well. At the beginning of the first part of his book, he tells us that as a farm boy he was raised as a Christian, but soon came to realize that the Christian faith could not provide conviction, for modern man must understand the what and why, and where the path leads. I was—so he recounts—sent out into the field by my parents. Then a snake appeared. I went at it with the pitchfork. But the tine broke off. I took the tine and prayed. I was convinced that prayer had to help. But behold [the rest of the text is missing in the postscript]. How can I believe in a God who lets me experience such a thing?—he said to himself. And so he became an unbeliever. Through spiritualist séances he attended, he then became capable of entering a trance and became one of the most prolific spiritualist writers. He emphasizes that the world beyond looks roughly the same as the physical world. It would be blasphemous to believe that a good father does not care for his children, since the father travels great distances for this purpose and so on.

[ 39 ] As you can see, the earthly world is being transposed onto the other world. That is why this way of thinking spread like wildfire throughout the world. In a short time, the followers of spiritualism numbered in the millions. As early as 1850, thousands of mediums could be found in Boston, and within a short time, a capital of 200,000 marks was raised to establish a spiritualist temple. You will not dispute that this has great cultural and historical significance. However, given modern ways of thinking, this movement had no prospect of success unless science took it up—that is, unless science believed in it.

[ 40 ] If I were to give a lecture on theosophy, I could speak at length about how there are entirely different forces behind the staging of spiritualist phenomena. Deep occult forces are at work behind the scenes. But that cannot be my task today. Another time I will speak of who the true orchestrator of these phenomena actually is. But this much is certain: If this occult orchestrator wanted to ensure that these phenomena thoroughly convinced materialistically minded humanity of the existence of a supersensible world—if they were to be believed in the long run—then the scientific circles had to be won over. And these scientific circles were not so difficult to win over. Precisely among the most discerning, among those capable of thinking thoroughly and logically, there were many who turned to the spiritualist movement. In America there were Lincoln and Edison; in England, Gladstone, the naturalist Wallace, and the mathematician Morgan. In Germany, too, there was a large number of outstanding scholars who were established in their fields and who allowed themselves to be convinced by the spiritualist phenomena through mediums, such as Weber and Gustav Theodor Fechner, the founder of psychophysics. This also includes Friedrich Zöllner, of whom only those who understand nothing of the matter can say that he had fallen into madness when he conducted the famous experiments with Slade. Then there is also a figure who is still underestimated today: Baron Hellenbach, who died in 1887. In his numerous books, in his book on biological magnetism, and in his book on the magic of numbers, he presented his experiences in the spiritualist field in such a brilliant manner that these books will be a veritable treasure trove for studying the path this movement took, particularly among more enlightened minds in the second half of the 19th century.

[ 41 ] The American movement received a European impetus, and this came from a man deeply rooted in European culture, a student of Pestalozzi, at a time that was already significant for its other discoveries. This figure is Allan Kardec, who wrote his *Theory of the Spirit World* in 1858, the same year in which many other works that marked a turning point for Western education appeared in a wide variety of fields. It suffices to name just a few of these works to indicate the significance of spiritual life during this period. One is Darwin’s *On the Origin of Species*; another is a seminal work on the psychophysical realm by Fechner. The third is a work by Bunsen that introduces us to spectral analysis and, for the first time, allows us to discover something of the material composition of the stars. The fourth was the work by Karl Marx: *Capital*. The fifth was a work by Kardec, a spiritualist work, but of a completely different nature than the American works. He advocated the idea of reincarnation, the re-embodiment of the human soul. This French spiritualism quickly gained as large a following as the American one. It spread throughout France, Spain, and especially Austria. It was this form of spiritualism that was in harmony with the ancient wisdom teachings of theosophy. It was a form that even thinkers like Hellenbach could engage with. And so the fundamental social politician Hellenbach, who played a leading role in important political matters in Austria in the 1860s and 1870s—a role that demonstrates at every single step what a clear and sharp thinker he was—advocated this form of spiritualism founded by Kardec: spiritualism in its scientific form. Thus it came to pass that in Germany, spiritualism took on a scientific form. Even those who, unlike Hellenbach or Gladstone, Wallace, and Crookes—who conceived of the spirits of ancient Christianity as angelic beings—wished only to speak of human beings reincarnating time and again and of the intrusion of beings unknown to us, whose form Hellenbach leaves open to interpretation—even such thinkers established scientific spiritualism in Germany. But even those who wanted to know nothing at all about an otherworldly realm could no longer avoid accepting the facts as such. People like Eduard von Hartmann, for instance, wanted nothing to do with the theories of the spiritualists, yet they said the facts could not be denied. Nor were they deterred by the period of debunking. The most famous of these was the case of the medium Bastian involving Crown Prince Rudolf and Archduke Johann of Austria. The mediums who had convinced our scientific circles were, in fact, exposed along with the medium Bastian. Anyone with even a modicum of insight into this field knows how right Hellenbach is when he says: No one will claim that wigs do not exist. Should one therefore also believe that there is no such thing as real hair, simply because wigs have been discovered? — And for those working in the occult field, the following applies: one can certainly prove that some banks are fraudulent; yes, but did not that bank also conduct legitimate business in the past? The assessment of spiritualist truths is obscured by such comparisons.

[ 42 ] We have seen that since the 18th century—we can consider the year 1716 to be the birth year of spiritualism—scientific and materialistic ways of thinking have become fully integrated into modern thought, including materialistic views. A new form was sought to approach the higher, supersensory truths, and everyone who encountered these facts sought to understand them in their own way. The Christian faith found in this a confirmation of its ancient church doctrine; some Orthodox believers also embraced it in order to find favorable evidence for their cause. Others, again, found their place in this from the standpoint of materialistic thinking, which judges everything solely according to material conditions. Even those who were thorough scientific researchers, such as Zöllner, Weber, Fechner, and also several well-known mathematicians like Simony and so on, sought to approach the matter by moving from the three-dimensional into the four-dimensional. The philosophical individualists, who could not believe that an individualistic development exists in the spiritual world just as it does in the physical one, were led by thorough investigation to realize that the human way of being—this sensory way of being—seeing with physical eyes, hearing with physical ears—is only one among the many possible ways of being. The proponents of a supersensory spiritualism, such as Hellenbach, also found their ideas confirmed by spiritualistic facts. And if you imagine a person who understood how to respond to the idiosyncrasies of each individual medium, who knew how to adapt to the most difficult circumstances, so that it was a blessing to meet him, it was a man like Hellenbach. Even those who spoke only of a psychic force—one that requires little thought and demands little of the mind—even these adherents of a psychic force, such as Eduard von Hartmann or spirits like du Prel, whom I will discuss next time—they all interpreted the facts in their own way. There were many theories, ranging from the popular interpretations of the people—who were concerned with manifesting spirits, writing mediums, speaking mediums, communications through knocking sounds, and so on—from these devout seekers of the old school, to the most enlightened minds: everyone interpreted these phenomena in their own way. This was during a time when such confusion reigned in all fields, a time when the phenomena could no longer be denied—yet the human mind proved utterly incapable of doing justice to the supernatural world.

[ 43 ] During this period, the foundation was also laid for a renewal of the mystical path—a renewal of the path that had been followed in earlier times within esoteric science and the mysteries—but in such a way that it is accessible to anyone who wishes to follow it. To open the way to an understanding of these paths, the Theosophical Society was founded by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The exploration of wisdom, as it was cultivated in the Mysteries and among the Rosicrucians in the Middle Ages, has been revived through the Theosophical Movement. The Theosophical Movement seeks to disseminate what has been sought in more recent times through other avenues. It is based on the ancient movements, but also on the latest research.

[ 44 ] Anyone who takes a closer look at the Theosophical Movement will find that the path of Theosophy, or spiritual science, which leads to supersensible truths, is truly spiritual on the one hand, and on the other hand answers the questions: Where does humanity come from, where is it going, and what is its purpose?

[ 45 ] We know that one had to speak in one way to the people of antiquity, in another to those of the Middle Ages, and yet in another way to modern people. The facts of theosophy are ancient. But if you seek along the path of theosophy or spiritual science, you will be convinced that, when understood, grasped, and penetrated in its very own form, it satisfies every requirement of modern scientific rigor. He would be a poor theosophist who were willing to abandon any of the scientific truths for the sake of theosophy. Knowledge on the bright, clear path of true scientific rigor—yes, but not a knowledge limited to sensory things, limited to what takes place in the human being between birth and death, but also knowledge and understanding of what lies beyond birth and death. Without having the right to do so, spiritual science cannot—especially within a materialistic age—achieve this. It is aware that ultimately all spiritual movements must converge toward a great goal, which the spiritualists will ultimately find in spiritual science. But it seeks the spiritual paths along other, more comprehensive paths; it knows that the spiritual cannot be attained in the sensory world, nor through events of a purely sensory nature, nor perhaps through a form of perception analogous to the sensory. It knows that there is a world into which one gains insight only after undergoing a kind of spiritual operation similar to that of a person born blind who is made to see. It knows that it is not right when modern man says: Show me the supersensible through the senses. — She knows that the answer is: Human being, rise to the higher spheres of the spiritual world by becoming ever more spiritual yourself, so that your connection with the spiritual world may then be as your connection with the sensory world is through your sensory eyes and ears.

[ 46 ] Theosophy, or spiritual science, takes the view expressed by a medieval believer and profound mystic, Meister Eckhart, who characterized the truly spiritual as something that cannot be sought in the same way as the sensory. In the 13th and 14th centuries, he significantly stated that one cannot attain the spiritual through sensory experiences, nor through anything analogous to the sensory. That is why he articulates the great guiding truth leading to the supersensory: People want to look at God with their eyes, as if they were looking at and loving a cow. They want to look at God as if He were standing there and here. It is not so. God and I are one in knowledge.

[ 47 ] Not through phenomena that seek to bring the higher world into our consciousness—phenomena that, though called “supernatural,” are nonetheless perceptible in the same way as the sensory world around us, through knocking sounds or other sensory phenomena—not through such seemingly supernatural phenomena, which he characterizes by saying: Such people want to see God as they see a cow—but rather through the development of the spiritual eyes do we wish to see the spiritual, just as nature has developed our physical eyes to enable us to see the physical. Nature has endowed us with external senses to make the sensory world perceptible to us. But the path by which we develop further within the sensory realm upward toward the spiritual, so that we may behold the spiritual with spiritual eyes—this spiritual path we must walk ourselves through free development, also in the sense of modern development.