The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophical Cosmology: First Lecture

[ 1 ] The series of lectures on the basic elements of theosophy, which I announced some time ago, will have to be postponed until later, when there may be more interest. I have postponed these lectures and decided to fill the Thursdays of the coming period with some developments on cosmology, world development, that is, on the doctrine of the origin of the world and the formation of man within this world in the theosophical sense.

[ 2 ] Now, I am well aware that I am about to deal with one of the most difficult chapters of theosophical teaching, and I can tell you that some of our lodges have decided not to deal with this chapter at all for the time being because it is too difficult. Nevertheless, I have decided to do so because I believe that the hints I am able to give may be of use to some. Even if we cannot immediately penetrate such a difficult subject completely, we will at least be able to gain inspiration that may serve us later on in delving deeper into this matter.

[ 3 ] Those who have been involved in the theosophical movement for some time will know that the questions: How did the world actually come into being? How did it gradually develop to the point where beings such as ourselves can inhabit it? – that these questions are among the very first to have been addressed in the theosophical movement. Not only one of the first books to draw attention in the West to ancient worldviews, H. P. Blavatsky's “Isis Unveiled,” dealt with such questions of the origin and development of the world, but also the book to which we perhaps owe the majority of our oldest followers, Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism.” How is a solar system formed, how are the planets and star groups formed? How did our Earth develop, what stages has it gone through, and what stages may still lie ahead? These are questions that are dealt with in great detail in Esoteric Buddhism. Then, at the end of the 1880s, Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine appeared, and in the first volume it again deals with the question: How did the world system develop? - and in the second volume with the question: How did the human race develop within our Earth?

[ 4 ] Now I need only point out one single point to show the whole difficulty. If you open the first volume of Blavatsky's “The Secret Doctrine,” you will find that a certain part of the assertions contained in Sinnett's “Buddhism” are described as erroneous and partially corrected. Some of these things had been misunderstood by theosophical writers, and some had been presented in a misleading way. Mrs. Blavatsky therefore had to correct these views. She said that there had been a kind of Babylonian confusion of languages with regard to theosophical cosmology and that the leading figures [of the Theosophical Society] were by no means equally knowledgeable about these questions.

[ 5 ] You all know that the teachings of the “Secret Doctrine” were communicated by great exalted masters who are far ahead of our average development. Even before the “Secret Doctrine,” a book had been published in which Sinnett, the author of “Esoteric Buddhism,” published a series of letters from a Mahatma. From this we can see the difficulties that stand in the way of understanding this secret doctrine, and we understand how those who, like Sinnett and Blavatsky, were eager to receive these teachings, literally sighed under the difficulty of understanding the teachings that were presented to them. Oh, said one teacher, you who are accustomed to understanding with a different mind, you cannot understand what we have to say, even though you make the greatest effort to comprehend it. When we consider this statement, the difficulties become clear to us. Wherever cosmology has been taught, misunderstandings have arisen. Well, this is well-founded, so I ask for your indulgence as I now attempt to contribute something to this teaching.

[ 6 ] Now I would like to preface this with something that clarifies the position of theosophical cosmology in relation to today's science and its methods. Someone might come along and say: Look at the progress our astronomers have made; we owe this to telescopes, mathematical and photographic methods, which have led us to knowledge of distant stars. — Modern science, with its careful methods, seems — in its opinion — to have the sole right to determine anything about the development of the world system. It seems to have the right to condemn what others say about the development and origin of the world system. Some astronomers will object: What you theosophists tell us about cosmology are ancient teachings that were taught by the Chaldeans or the Vedic priests and belong to the oldest wisdom of mankind; but what significance can something have that was said thousands of years ago, when it was only since Copernicus that the teaching of astronomy has taken on a reasonably reliable form? So, what is written in the first volume of Blavatsky's “The Secret Doctrine” seems to contradict only what astronomers armed with telescopes and so forth make clear to us. But the theosophist does not have to contradict what the astronomer claims. That is not necessary, although there are theosophists who believe they must fight today's astronomy in order to make room for their own teachings. I know very well that the leading minds of the theosophical movement believe they can teach astronomers. Let us illustrate the theosophists' point of view in relation to that of the astronomers with a simple example.

[ 7 ] Take a poet whose work we enjoy and find uplifting. This poet may find a biographer in another personality, and this biographer will try to make us understand and explain the spiritual and mental qualities that the poet has within him. But there is another way of looking at it, namely the physiological, scientific way. Let us suppose that a natural scientist studies the poet. Naturally, he studies only those physiological and physiognomic aspects of the poet that are of interest to him; he studies him from a scientific point of view, and he will tell us what he can see and combine with his scientific understanding. We as theosophists would say that the natural scientist describes and explains the poet from the standpoint of the physical plane. But this natural scientist will not tell you a single word about what we call the poet's biography, about his soul and spirit. So we have two parallel approaches, but they do not necessarily conflict with each other. Why should not the scientific view coexist alongside the spiritual-soul view, each valid in its own way? After all, one does not interfere with the other.

[ 8 ] The same is true of scientific cosmology, of what our astronomers tell us about the structure of the world and the development of the world system. They will say what can be perceived by the outer senses. But alongside this, a spiritual-soul approach is also possible, and if one understands the structure of the world in this way, one will never conflict with astronomy; on the contrary, both approaches will sometimes support each other, because they go hand in hand and are independent of each other. For example, when scientific brain physiology was still far from as advanced as it is today, there were already people who provided biographies of important minds. The astronomer cannot therefore object that the occult approach is outdated and impossible because Copernicus placed astronomy on a different basis. The occult sources are quite different; they existed long before the eye was trained to observe the heavens through telescopes and before photography was advanced enough to photograph stars. Copernican research has something quite different to say than occult research, and one force in the human soul is by no means dependent on the other. The power that gives us insight into the spiritual and soul aspects of life goes back so far that no historian can tell us where this way of looking at the structure of the world actually began. It is not possible to find out how the leading minds came to these occult views.

[ 9 ] Occult schools already existed in Europe before the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875. However, at that time, the knowledge we talk about in popular terms today was only shared within small circles. There was a strict law that this knowledge should not be allowed to spread beyond the confines of these schools. If one wanted to enter a school, one had to work hard on oneself before the first truths were imparted. It was generally assumed that a person had to be mature enough to receive these truths. There were many degrees in the schools, through which one had to progress, examination degrees; and those who were not considered mature enough had to continue their preparation. If I were to describe these degrees to you, you would be dizzy at the severity of this path. Matters concerning world development were considered to be of the utmost importance, and only at the highest levels were they communicated to people. In the 17th century, which had a great influence on culture, this knowledge was in the hands of the Rosicrucian movement. This originally stemmed from Eastern knowledge, and this knowledge was communicated to European followers at various levels at that time. At the end of the 18th century and especially at the beginning of the 19th century, these occult schools disappeared from European culture and the last Rosicrucians withdrew to the Orient. It was an age in which people had to organize their living conditions according to external knowledge; the invention of the steam engine, scientific research into cells, and so on came to the fore. Occult wisdom had no say in this, and those who had reached the highest level of this wisdom, the highest graduates, withdrew to the Orient. There were still occult schools later on, but they are of little interest to us now; however, I must mention them because Mrs. Blavatsky and Mr. Sinnett, when they received cosmological knowledge from the Buddhist-Tibetan secret schools, went to the primary sources at that time.

[ 10 ] A long spiritual development in Europe had brought the European brain, the European capacity for thought, to such a point that it was difficult to grasp occult truths. These truths were now only difficult to understand. When this first knowledge of theosophical cosmology became public, partly through Esoteric Buddhism and partly through The Secret Doctrine, the followers of the occult schools took notice, and it seemed wrong to them that the strict rule of not letting anything leak out beyond the boundaries of their schools had been broken. The followers of the theosophical movement, however, knew that it was necessary to communicate something of it. Western science, however, could not make sense of what had been said, because no one was able to verify what Mrs. Blavatsky and Sinnett had written. In particular, no one knew what to make of that magnificent cosmological song consisting of the so-called Dzyan stanzas, which precedes the two volumes of Mrs. Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine.” The authenticity of these stanzas, which tell us the history of the universe, was questioned; no natural scientist could make sense of them; at first glance, they seemed to contradict everything European scholars knew. There was one researcher, an Orientalist whom I greatly admire, Max Müller, who energetically championed Oriental wisdom. Max Müller made all the Oriental wisdom available to him accessible to Europeans. But neither Max Müller nor other European researchers knew what to make of what Madame Blavatsky proclaimed. At that time, it was said that what was written in The Secret Doctrine was pure fantasy. The scholars had found nothing about it anywhere in the books of the Indians.

[ 11 ] Mrs. Blavatsky said that where she had obtained her secrets, there were still great treasures of ancient literature, but that the most important aspects of this wisdom had been kept hidden from the eyes of European scholars. Even the little that could be communicated was not understood because of the European way of thinking; the commentaries that contained the key to understanding were missing. The books that showed how the individual sentences should be understood were carefully guarded by the educated native Tibetans, at least according to Madame Blavatsky. But other advanced individuals also claim that this literature provides historical evidence that there was a primordial wisdom that was far superior to anything the world knows today in spiritual and intellectual matters. The Oriental sages say that this primordial wisdom is contained in the books they have carefully preserved, and that this primordial wisdom has not been handed down to us by people like ourselves, but that it originates from beings of a higher order, that it originates from divine sources. The Orientals speak of a divine primordial wisdom. But Max Müller said in a lecture to his students that research does not make it possible to claim that such primordial wisdom has existed. When a great Brahmin Sanskrit scholar heard of Max Müller's opinion from Madame Blavatsky, he said: “Oh, if only Max Müller were a Brahmin and I could take him to a temple site, he could convince himself that there is an ancient divine wisdom.”

[ 12 ] The things that Blavatsky communicates through the Dzyan stanzas have been drawn in part from such hidden sources that she has tapped into. If Madame Blavatsky had invented these stanzas herself, then we would be faced with an even greater miracle.

[ 13 ] However, we are not dependent on taking the occult messages about the creation of the world from the ancient writings. There are powers within man that enable him to see and explore the truths himself, if he trains these powers in the right way. And what can be experienced in this way corresponds to what Madame Blavatsky brought back from the Far East. It turned out that occultists in Europe had also preserved knowledge that had been passed down from generation to generation of teachers to students and never entrusted to books. The occultists were therefore able to test what Blavatsky had communicated in The Secret Doctrine against their own knowledge, especially that which they had acquired through their own abilities. Even those who have been trained in the European way can bring themselves to verify what is written in Blavatsky's “The Secret Doctrine.” It has been verified and confirmed, but it is still difficult for European occultists to come to terms with it. Just one thing should be mentioned: European occult knowledge has been influenced in a very specific way by Christian and Kabbalistic influences and has therefore taken on a one-sided character. However, if one disregards this and goes back to the roots of this knowledge, then it is possible to find complete agreement with what has been revealed to us by Madame Blavatsky.

[ 14 ] Although it was possible to examine what Madame Blavatsky brought us in terms of cosmology, it is difficult to make scholars understand what is meant when occult knowledge is used to discuss the creation of the world. It is, of course, astonishing what scholars have achieved in deciphering ancient documents, how they have struggled to decipher Babylonian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics; but Max Müller himself says that what they have found in these inscriptions does not yet give a picture of the history of the creation of the world. We see how scholars are working on the shell, so to speak, but are not getting to the core. Nothing should be said against the great care and fine mosaic work of the scholars. I only want to point to the books that have been published on the occasion of the Bible-Babel controversy. These are all mosaic works, but the scholars remain stuck on the shell. One senses that they have no idea of the paths that lead to the key to these mysteries. It is like when someone begins to translate a book written in a foreign language into their own language. At first, it is imperfect. So it is with the translations of ancient creation myths by our modern scholars. They are mutilations of the ancient wisdom teachings as they have been passed down to us from generation to generation in the secret schools. Only those who had reached a certain degree of initiation could know anything about them. At the end of these lectures, I will come back to this again.

[ 15 ] It is therefore initiates who can arrive at these things through their own experience. You will ask: What actually is an initiate? There is so much talk in theosophy and occult societies about so-called initiates. An initiate is someone who has developed to a high degree the powers that lie dormant in every human being but can be developed by them. The initiate has trained these powers and acquired them to such a degree that he can understand the nature of the forces in the cosmos, in the structure of the world, that are relevant to what I am about to discuss. Now, you will say: We are always told that there are such occult powers slumbering in human beings, but we certainly do not know this. That is only due to a misunderstanding. The mystic, the occultist, claims nothing, absolutely nothing, that every scholar in his field cannot also claim. Imagine someone tells you a mathematical truth. If you have never studied mathematics yourself, then you do not have the knowledge to verify this truth. No one will dispute that one must first acquire the necessary skills to judge a mathematical truth. No authority can decide on such a truth; only the individual who has experienced it can judge it. Similarly, only those who have experienced such a truth themselves can decide on an occult truth. However, our contemporaries demand that the occultist prove what he has to say immediately and for every average mind. They invoke the principle that what is true must be provable and understandable to everyone. But the occultist claims nothing more than what every other scholar in his field claims, and he demands nothing that every mathematician does not also demand.

[ 16 ] Now one may ask: Why are occult truths being presented at all today? The path that the occult schools have taken up to now has been to preserve knowledge within narrow circles. The occultists of the “right” still follow this path. But those who have experience and recognize the signs of our times know that this is no longer correct today. And it is precisely because this is no longer right today that the theosophical world movement owes its existence. What is most developed in the present age is the intellect. We owe our successes in industry and technology to our combinatorial thinking in connection with the senses. This intellect, this intellectuality, celebrated its greatest triumphs in the 19th century. External, intellectual thinking has never been as dominant as it is today. When I said that the Eastern sages possessed a primordial wisdom, they possessed it in a form quite different from that of today's thinking. Even the greatest masters of the East did not have this sharpness of logical thinking, this pure logic; nor did they need it. That is why it was difficult to understand them. They had intuition, inner vision. True intuition is not obtained through logical thinking, not through combinatorial thinking, but rather a truth stands directly before the mind of the person concerned. He knows it. There is no need to prove it to him.

[ 17 ] Now the teachers of the theosophical movement have the right to impart a certain part of occult wisdom. We have the right to clothe the wisdom that has been transmitted to us in the form of intuition in the thought forms of modern life. Thought is a force like electricity, a force like steam power, like heat power; and for those who take in these thoughts presented within the theosophical movement, who devote themselves to them and do not treat them with suspicion from the outset, these thoughts are a force. The listeners do not notice it at first; the seed only sprouts later. No theosophical teacher demands anything other than to be listened to. He does not demand blind faith, but only listening. Neither believing acceptance nor incredulous rejection is the correct standpoint. The listener should only reflect on the thoughts communicated to him, free from belief and doubt, free from yes and no. They must adopt a “neutral” attitude and allow the teachings to work in their mind “on a trial basis.” Those who allow theosophical thoughts to work on them in this way not only have thoughts, but a spiritual power pours into them, which works on them and fertilizes them.

[ 18 ] Because Western European culture has developed thinking to such an extent, people find it easiest to access through thinking. Even the most devout church Christians today can no longer form a mental image of how people used to believe. This source of conviction no longer flows today. Today, we must fertilize our thoughts in a completely different way. Because thinking was not cultivated in the past, spiritual messages could only be imparted in secret schools. Today, we must turn to the power of thought with the spiritual, then we ignite the thoughts so that they live within us. The spiritual speaker addresses his listeners in a completely different way than the ordinary speaker. He speaks in such a way that a kind of spiritual fluid, spiritual forces, flow out from him. Without saying yes or no, the listener should accept a thought as something completely objective, live with this thought, meditate on it, and let it work on him. Then the thought will kindle power within us.

[ 19 ] Today we must proclaim the occult truths about the origin and formation of the world in the form of European thought and modern science. These lectures will deal with this subject: the conditions that preceded the formation of our Earth. We will be taken back to ancient times, when, out of the gravest twilight darkness, the entity that later became human beings was formed. We will be led to the stage where this human being was conceived by earthly forces, where he was surrounded by earthly matter, to the point where he stands today. We will learn about the pre-earthly and earthly development of our world structure and see how theosophy gives us a glimpse of the future; we will see where our world development is heading. We want to show all this without contradicting the mental images of today's astronomers. If we develop the powers that lie dormant within us, we will ourselves see the great goal towards which we are heading: the attainment of cosmological wisdom. Let us consider this cosmological wisdom in the next few hours.