The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Spiritual Knowledge as the Highest Form of Liberation

Man's share in the higher worlds

[ 1 ] I am delighted to welcome you all back after such a long time, both the members of the branch and the others who have gradually gathered here over the course of the past year. Let us hope that this winter season will once again advance our work and our spiritual movement and that we will be able to deepen our immersion in the spiritual world a little further.

[ 2 ] We have not seen each other for a long time, but in a certain sense this time also belongs to all those with whom we have not been together externally. For the members of the local branch have a profound interest, in the most eminent sense, in ensuring that this spiritual movement not only enters their own hearts, but also spreads throughout the world. What would all theosophical striving be other than a refined egoism if we did not want others out in the world to hear about this movement and take part in it as much as we ourselves like to participate in it?

[ 3 ] The speaker has recently had the opportunity to speak to a wider audience and to a wide variety of people, and it is gratifying to see that members of all social circles and classes feel the longing for spiritual life as expressed in the existence of the theosophical movement.

[ 4 ] Perhaps we can devote a brief review to this circle at the starting point of our winter reflections. The journey I was permitted to undertake to spread the theosophical movement took me to Leipzig, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Alsace, Switzerland, and Bavaria. I was able to give lectures in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Colmar, Strasbourg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Heidelberg, Basel, Bern, St. Gallen, Regensburg, Nuremberg, and Weimar. These lectures also included longer cycles. The Leipzig cycle comprised fourteen lectures. The Stuttgart cycle lasted more than fourteen days, during which those interested in the Theosophical Movement had to meet daily. It was precisely such cycles in other cities that perhaps proved most effective in giving the Theosophical Movement a deeper foothold in our time. When one comes to this or that city and is allowed to give one or two lectures for inspiration, it is not so easy to convey the theosophical movement in a sufficiently intensive way. But those who are introduced to this spiritual life over a period of fourteen days get a sense that a new world is opening up for them. When you give individual lectures, you can clearly see that interest in spiritual life and a deep longing for it continue to exist and that there is a need for it. But there are countless obstacles that stand in the way of people and prevent them from approaching spiritual science and living with it. One must engage more deeply with what we have become accustomed to calling theosophy. Only then does something open up in the heart that awakens an inkling, a feeling, a sense that one is dealing here with a real, higher world. At first, everything that confronts people here is taken not only as something incomprehensible, but as something fantastical, and people struggle to move away from the widespread view that what is presented in theosophy is dreamy and fantastical, to the realization that our spiritual movement is dealing with something that lies at the very foundation of the true world. Many believe that people who talk about such things are far removed from practical life. Gradually, however, one becomes accustomed to the point of view that is to be gained, and one then also learns that one is dealing with the true practice of life, which does not live in a cloud cuckoo land, but in the deeper layers, and which imparts strength, knowledge, and truth. This enables us to truly solve the great tasks that fall to human beings in the world. These are prejudices when Theosophy is taken as something that is supposed to be hostile to life, life-denying. One may hear: Theosophy is something that presents the world in a rather beautiful light, that conveys high ideals, but that nevertheless leads away from life, that alienates one from the true enjoyment of life and the true joy of life. It has even been claimed that what theosophists say is beautiful, but it is not digestible.

[ 5 ] This kind of prejudice will perhaps be the slowest to wear away. There will easily be people who understand what theosophical literature and theosophical lectures convey in terms of teachings. It is more difficult to wriggle out of ingrained feelings and habits than out of learned prejudices. Feelings and habits are much more difficult to overcome than thoughts that one should cast aside. One may even encounter the experience of someone saying: Certainly, we want to devote ourselves to theosophy, but we also do not want to spoil the enjoyment of life for those who want to enjoy life. One must consider, for example, that young people should also enjoy life. Of course, it depends on what one enjoys; it depends on asking the question a little more deeply, namely that it could be a matter of seeking more beautiful and noble objects of joy and cultivating them into a more noble life. Then we will give life new meaning and will not need to spoil young people's enjoyment of life if we provide them with a new kind of joy, a new kind of pleasure. People often cannot imagine that anyone could find the pleasures that people today find entertaining to be dull: going to the movies and spending time with entertainment that has nothing to do with real life. Perhaps there may still be times when people will speak of today's trivial popular amusements as if they were a pipe dream.

[ 6 ] It may be rare for someone to envy another for their inability to enjoy themselves, but it does happen. In one city, we have a small theosophical circle. One of our theosophists, who is very interested in spiritual science and has also embraced a certain theosophical way of life, lives in constant communion with another who is also attracted to spiritual science but cannot yet break away from the enjoyment of suckling pigs, which he loves to eat. When he sits in front of a suckling pig, he feels remorseful that he is still attached to this pleasure. Then he thinks that the other person is lucky because he no longer enjoys suckling pigs. The other person's needs have simply changed. It could come to the point where those who no longer seek everyday pleasures are regarded as the true role models, and people look to them for guidance.

[ 7 ] Much deeper are the prejudices that stand in the way of human progress, which is based on intelligence, cleverness, and erudition. You can find an article in a magazine that talks about epidemics among the people. A well-known researcher who deals with psychiatry and questions that lie between psychology and psychiatry discusses epidemics among the people and describes a phenomenon that lasted two hundred years, until the end of the Middle Ages, when exaggerated asceticism was practiced like a cult in wide circles, where people threw themselves to the ground, flagellated themselves, tortured themselves, and where their exaggerated imagination indulged in strange excesses. This can be regarded as an illness. Psychiatrists refer to it as hysteria, which occurred epidemically. They say that such hysterical people are often susceptible to suggestions that can no longer be controlled by our thinking. When a person sees another person who has injured their arm, they will feel compassion and offer help. There is no need to describe what happens in a normal person. But there are also people who themselves feel the pain in their arms, feel it abnormally, when the other person injures themselves. This is a suggestive effect that can add up considerably, that can lead people to a complete lack of control, so that they lead a disordered inner life that is devoted to all external impressions. When a materialistic psychologist speaks of such a phenomenon affecting entire communities, he is pointing to the public suggestion that emanates from individual circles — in those days from the monasteries — and spreads widely. A kind of zeitgeist arises. People are not inclined to ask, when confronted with something like this: How am I to take this? — They are completely under the influence of suggestion. Such a psychologist talks about it quite seriously, but he does not notice one thing: that a free person who can delve into his own self can recognize a different kind of epidemic popular disease and can sharply distinguish it. Today, it has taken hold of numerous circles, including educated and scholarly ones, and manifests itself in the fact that people live under certain positive and negative suggestions. If you approach such a person with spiritual-scientific truths, they will have a negative suggestive effect on them. They cannot understand them; they are something they cannot tolerate. Numerous materialistic prejudices that are widespread today have a positive suggestive effect. What do you find in the medical, theological, and law faculties? Suggestions that affect certain circles, which intensify to such an extent that they can be described as a kind of disease, just like that widespread disease.

[ 8 ] A prominent biologist wrote something very strange in a widely read magazine. It is strange—perhaps not so much for those who only read individual articles. But for those who follow the whole, it is something that confronts them in ninety-five percent of the entire scholarly world, and they find that in the future, one can speak of a kind of scholarly insanity, scholarly idiocy, just as one speaks of hysteria. The essay says: When a billiard ball rolls, hits another ball and pushes it forward, I cannot imagine that nothing at all passes from the first to the second. This scholar calls the peculiar ghost that emerges from the first billiard ball to creep into the second and set the second in motion under the influence of the first the “materia movens.” The person in question believes himself to be tremendously clever, but he is only under the materialistic suggestion that affects him in exactly the same way as the mass hysteria of the 16th century affected the masses. Now consider how such suggestions, to which man is subject, can live around him. The number of such suggestions is infinite. When they occur in large numbers—and one can list a large number—they can be pieced together into a picture that would represent a clinical picture of today's scholarship, just as one speaks extensively of dementia praecox.

[ 9 ] There you have the measure of bondage in which the person who is under the influence of suggestion lives. A little has changed since the Middle Ages. Only the theosophist can understand to what extent. In the Middle Ages, when something other than the person himself spoke from within, people spoke of possession. Today, people laugh at possession and regard it as a kind of illness. This form of possession, as it occurred in the Middle Ages, has receded somewhat in recent times. It now only occurs in certain circles. However, another form of possession, of real, genuine possession, is much more widespread. Medieval possession was astral possession, whereas today's possession is mental possession. In the Middle Ages, people were possessed by beings who, when examined through spiritual research, were found to be on the astral plane. But the beings that inhabit scholars today and possess them are on the mental plane, the devachanic plane. They express themselves in the world that is considered the only real one only as thoughts, and therefore they are only attributed a thought existence. Just as the world of human feelings, sensations, passions, instincts, and desires is not merely an outflow of physical existence, but something independent, true, and real in itself, so too is the world of thoughts a reality in itself. Only in the way that human beings have their thoughts are they not reality. These human thoughts are only the shadow images of real thoughts, just as human passions and feelings are only the shadow images of something completely different. We have often discussed here how things are connected. We know that what we can observe in human beings with our physical senses, namely the physical body, is only one part of the human being. We know that muscles and nerves, bones and blood are only part of this human being. What we call the components, the elements of the physical body, belong to the physical world. But human feelings and thoughts belong to another world, namely the astral world.

[ 10 ] This is where contemporary logic, with its prejudices, makes some very strange leaps. Contemporary people do not even realize that their own thinking, their own logic, should actually tell them how impossible the conclusions they continually draw are, and that they are introducing public suggestions into their thought processes. It is incredibly easy, and completely trivial thoughts are sufficient, so that an audience has to agree with you for five minutes when you present them with a “compelling train of thought.” But they do not notice that this is overlaid with the debris of old life and old feelings. This is how it is with “compelling trains of thought.”

[ 11 ] A person born blind who is among us would be right from his point of view to regard us as fantasists when we talk to him about light and color. That has never been a reality for him. He will object: Things can only be felt. He does not need to believe what we tell him. Nevertheless, he is wrong. But the point is not that he is wrong, but that he lacks the organ for perceiving light and color. The moment he acquires this organ, a new world will open up around him. True theosophy will never accept another world; it will only perceive it in a different way. What theosophists call higher worlds are here around us, just as the world of colors is for the blind. Those born blind who are operable can retain the use of their physical eyes. Theosophy claims nothing else when it says that it is possible to train the inner eyes. Just as the artistic eye could be woven, so it is also possible to weave organs from what lives in human beings in terms of passions, instincts, and feelings—organs of perception through which new worlds truly open up around human beings. It is thus possible to educate and develop human beings so that they themselves are able to look into these other worlds, just as they otherwise look into the physical world. In this sense, Theosophy speaks of an astral world that is as real within the outer world as the world of colors is within the world of the sense of touch.

[ 12 ] No one who knows nothing about such worlds should object to them. It should be clear to everyone that they can only make statements about things they know something about, and that they should never say anything about things they know nothing about. Therefore, all judgments made against spiritual science that are based on the assumption that these are worlds about which nothing can be known are a hopeless logical absurdity. One must never make the judgment: A world does not exist for me because I know nothing about it! — This characterizes the prejudices that are held against us. These are the scientific suggestions of the present day. And how many people are under the influence of these scientific suggestions! How difficult it is today to fight against these suggestions! A spiritual scientific lecture is heard once, and then hundreds and thousands of things are brought before people's eyes again, which are presented to them as highly significant facts, but always interwoven with what springs not from materialistic science, but from the materialistic interpretation of science.

[ 13 ] Only those who look more deeply into spiritual life can know how difficult it is to fight against these suggestions with reason. Popular scientific activity is something that has an extremely detrimental effect because it presents itself with an authoritative infallibility that only future times will be able to judge in the right light. People today have no idea to what extent they are subject to the suggestions emanating from the authorities. Consider what I am saying merely as a characteristic, and think how paradoxical it is when peoples fight to shake off one authority only to fall victim to another. When people were previously subject to suggestions, when their ego was devoted to what was working within them, these were true beings, which can be seen by those who can look into the higher worlds. People's thoughts relate to certain beings of a so-called devachanic world like shadows relate to a real object. The thought images you have are the shadow images cast from the devachanic or mental world. The thought that lives within you is nothing but such a shadow image — self-contained. The seer who has trained his higher sense organs sees it in connection with a being. When you see the shadow image on the wall, you can only understand it if you relate it to its object. It is the same with your thoughts. Without something else to refer back to, your thoughts are shadows. They relate to beings that are just as real in a higher world as this hand here. Just as this hand casts a shadow on the wall, so the higher beings cast their shadows into this world. And these shadows are your thoughts. The human being as he stands before us is actually the scene of events that take place outside the physical realm. As a physical being, he is first and foremost a self-contained entity. As such, he lives in a self-contained world. In order to understand the human being as a physical being, we must remain in the physical world. If, for example, you want to examine and understand blood as a physical substance, you must remain in the physical world. But if you want to understand what feelings, sensations, and passions are, you must either use figures of speech or relate these things to beings that are behind the physical world, to a world that relates to this one as the world of colors relates to the world of touch. And you must seek to understand the world of thoughts in a similar way. Thus you see how human beings participate in the higher worlds, how the astral body extends into these worlds, and how the Devachan world in turn casts a kind of shadow image into this world. If human beings know nothing of these higher worlds, they are devoted to them like slaves who are powerless against those who pull their chains. Just as the physical personality becomes free only by developing its will within itself and being able to face others freely, so the astral being of the human being can become free only by recognizing its connection with the entire astral world. As long as the human being lives only in ordinary sensations, the astral being pulls him along as if on a leash: he is always possessed by it. They become free when they recognize it. Just as we recognize the physical world around us, we must face these beings, spiritual eye to spiritual eye, and know who we are dealing with. The same is true of the human world of thought. This leads to true freedom, to seeing through our surroundings. In order to recognize things in the right measure, we must look at what lies behind the physical. The beginning must be made by studying these things, by the world studying these things.

[ 14 ] Many people rightly object: What good does it do us if this or that person tells us about those worlds if we cannot see into them ourselves? — That is precisely the first step toward seeing into the higher worlds ourselves. Why is it the first step? Because the physical world then reveals itself to the insightful as something other than what it is to the materialistic mind. A comparison can make it clear to us what other point of view the theosophist should take toward the physical world, a comparison taken from ordinary writing. This writing can be seen by someone who cannot read and by someone who can read. Both see the same thing; there is no difference in what they see. The one who cannot read will say: I see lines going up and down, larger and smaller lines. He can then describe them. But the one who can read finds meaning in them. He does not describe the form of the letters, but finds meaning in them. So it is with the whole world in the spiritual scientific view. Take today's science, on the other hand: it describes the world in the same way that someone who has not learned to read describes the written word. For the other person, all things in the world become letters, they take on meaning, he learns to read. It is not wrong for someone who cannot read to describe the shape of the letters. Many people say: You are dreamers because you still see a special meaning in the word or in the world. — Of course, this cannot be disputed, because it is the everyday view of things. Beyond that, however, there is a view in which every flower becomes a letter, every genus of flower can be regarded as a word, and the world as a great script. The world contains something that is not exhausted in the physical realm. However, the signs for this have no mouth, so the meaning must be put into them. In Devachan, a whole new world opens up to those who learn to read the script of plants. You can also regard every animal in the world as a letter. Gradually, you will be able to decipher these letters. When you understand the animals in their expressions of life, you stand before them as one who can read, and not as one who does as materialistic science does, which only describes the letters. If you learn to recognize the animal as a word, you will see behind the physical world into a completely different one, the astral world. If you learn to regard the plant world as letters, you will gain the ability to look into the mental world. This is not something unreal, but on the contrary, something that is entirely grounded in reality and actually teaches us to recognize the rich meaning of life: In fact, it is only when we compare it to reading that we realize the true significance of spiritual knowledge of the world. What would be the point of me drawing and describing something on the board here if it had no meaning? It acquires meaning when we recognize its significance. And so it is with the world. We gradually learn to recognize why the world is there, what it can be for human beings, and what human beings themselves are in it.

[ 15 ] I did not want to tell you anything new with all this. Those who have heard about theosophy before know all this. I have told you this to give you a weapon against the claim that theosophy is not scientific, and to arm you against objections that appeal to logic. Only logic that is too limited has objections to spiritual science. Logic that searches to the furthest corners of the logical will not be able to object to its absolute rationality. So it must be clear that those who oppose Theosophy from a scientific standpoint do so not for logical reasons, but out of suggestion. When one is freed from these suggestions and knows that thoughts are nothing but shadow images of devachanic beings, and when one then experiences how a professor, under influences from the mental world, claims that a billiard ball is moved by materia movens, which is transferred to the other billiard ball—then one can look behind the scenes and see that he is being influenced by other entities.

[ 16 ] The world is shaking in a certain sense. It presents us with great tasks. There are questions that arise from the serious demands of the times. The social question, which has already cost so much blood, cannot be solved with the suggestions of our time. Even the parties that want to solve the social question are under such suggestions. They are possessed by mental entities. Those who are able to see beyond the physical can see the demon behind many a party supporter. It will never be any different than with Robert Owen, who, as a noble man and philanthropist, as a good connoisseur of social conditions in England, wanted to introduce a kind of model economy by attracting good and bad workers and attempting to establish a social community on a larger scale. He started from the understandable prejudice that people are good by nature and only need to be placed in adequate circumstances. If such circumstances were created, they would develop a life as they themselves desired. But this philanthropist himself ultimately had to admit that his efforts for social progress could not begin with practical measures, but only with teaching and enlightenment.

[ 17 ] Those who look into the spiritual world recognize the connections that underlie the physical plane. They see people living together: some in deepest misery, poor and oppressed by work and hardship, others feasting in abundance, enjoying this or that. It is easy to imagine how this could be changed if one remained solely on the physical plane. This is what most of those who feel called upon to reform today do. They are not in the same position as the blind man who has been successfully operated on and suddenly sees the world around him in colors, for otherwise they would see the manifold beings behind everything physical. If they try to realize their well-intentioned reform plans while ignoring the spiritual beings, then in fifty years' time things will be much worse than they have ever been before. All of today's social ideals would be grotesquely at odds with the astral world in fifty years if this astral world, human passions, desires, and wishes did not undergo a change at the same time. General misery, terrible world turmoil, and a horrific struggle for existence would replace today's already terrible struggle. One need only look into the spiritual world to see what this is all about. Human beings are not just bodies that need to be fed; they are also spirits, and they are in contact with other spirits. It is the task of the occult worldview to make them aware that they are companions of higher worlds. You can imagine a human being with a few beetles crawling around on them: these beetles will have no idea that this human being, this entity, is anything other than themselves. They describe the form, for example the nose. In the same way, human beings describe the sky, Mars, the sun, Mercury, and the other stars. Just as the beetle has no idea that the nose belongs to a soul, today's astronomer describes Mercury, Mars, and the sun. He describes them as he sees them, like a beetle on the world cosmos. Only then will we learn to describe things realistically again, when we recognize that the stars are animated, that spirit is everywhere, that the entire universe is animated. The spiritual-scientific worldview aims at nothing else; it is that logical. Prejudices, which are nothing more than suggestions, make it difficult to bring to the consciousness of all people today what this spiritual worldview is actually about.

[ 18 ] This introductory lecture was intended to show the resistance encountered by those who think in terms of spiritual science and represent spiritual science to the world. Each of you may find yourself in a position where you have to show firmness in the face of views that come to you from outside . It is part of the work of the branches to help their members achieve this steadfastness. They should be so inwardly steadfast that, despite everything they encounter in the world, they experience the certainty of the spiritual world within themselves and are thus armed against any contradiction. It is not the extent of theosophical knowledge that counts, but inner consciousness, inner life, and inner certainty. We do not need to fight against what we encounter in the world. Many representatives of other movements come and want to discuss with us, want to present the wisdom that Theosophy itself can express. They repeatedly say things that theosophists have long since discarded. They characterize, but do not criticize. They do not engage in propaganda in the usual sense, for that cannot be our task. Only those who come to theosophy voluntarily should be welcomed. Propaganda and agitation are not the task of theosophy. Therefore, it is also not its task to refute others. One seeks to characterize the standpoint of spiritual science itself. The other must accustom himself to it. Agitation—if one counts a public lecture as such—consists in telling people: this and that is what Theosophy has to offer; and those who are meant to come to it will come. The Theosophist has no opinions or views to represent. He recounts facts about the higher world, and facts are not disputed. Anyone who, as a theosophist, spreads the spiritual scientific worldview refrains from expressing his own opinion. What we proclaim as theosophists is the ancient wisdom that all sages have attained. There are not two who disagree when they have arrived in the higher realm. At most, one of them may not have gone far enough. — This is a kind of attitude that theosophists can develop within themselves. They should not be pushy about it, but they should definitely experience it within themselves in order to convey it just as definitely to the world. Those who know will also find the words for what lies within them as knowledge.

[ 19 ] This is how the theosophical attitude should be characterized today, and this is how the other attitudes that oppose it should be characterized, without criticism. If we develop this attitude more and more, we will have the best means of working theosophically in the world. We will understand our surroundings more and more and explore them spiritually. That is theosophical work.

[ 20 ] Finally, here is an example that belongs to those that shock people as soon as they are spoken of publicly. These things are simply true and can be found by means of our spiritual research. I would like to describe a contemporary phenomenon to you, and you will see how one learns to understand one's surroundings when one truly penetrates what spiritual research has to offer. You should not take what is now being said too badly, for we will have to get used to the fact that there are still things we have no idea about. Fifty years ago, who had any idea that there was a substance of which a tiny grain was enough to damage our health? Fifty years ago, no one knew anything about it. There are simply things that have an effect before people know about them and understand them. This substance is called radium. In the case of radium, it was physical instruments that people lacked. In the case of spiritual things, it is spiritual instruments.

[ 21 ] In the socialist movement, there are people who are extremely radical, who would like nothing better than to smash everything to smithereens. There are also those with a certain conservative sensibility. You find all kinds of different tendencies there. Within the socialist movement, there is an organization that, as a closed group, has always displayed a very strange, homogeneous, uniform attitude and a uniform approach. They were the least radical. Basically, it is a profession, a trade, from which the socialist trade union movement originated, namely the printers. They were the first to develop a kind of legality within the socialist movement. Tariffs were agreed upon for the relationship between workers and employers. It has even gone so far that there is a newspaper among the printers whose editor is not a socialist at all because he was expelled from the socialist party. This shows how moderate this group is.

[ 22 ] Now the question arises: Can these things be researched according to their spiritual cause in the same way that the effect of radium is researched physically? Yes, they can. Do not be so surprised at what spiritual scientific research gives us as an answer to the question of why such a group exists within the socialist movement. This is the effect of lead on the human soul. Everything in our environment, from the smallest to the largest, represents the body of a spiritual being. Gold, silver, copper, everything that lives is the body of something spiritual. Lead, too, is the outer body for a certain spirituality. And those who handle lead are not only dealing with lead in the chemical sense, but also with its spirituality. Lead not only attacks the lungs, but also has a very specific effect on the rest of the human being. There you have the origin of the peculiar mindset within this profession.

[ 23 ] Another experience that happened to me just a few days ago. A good acquaintance came to me who could not explain why, in his scientific work, he was able to find analogies and make combinations without any particular difficulty, to an extent that is extremely rare even among scholars. Such an ability is due to a slight mobility of the mental body. Now I also wanted to find out how this phenomenon comes about. After some time, I was able to tell the man that he probably had a lot to do with copper. This was indeed confirmed, for the person in question is a French horn player. It was the small amount of copper that had such an effect on him.

[ 24 ] Now consider what a being human beings are, without knowing it, subject to all kinds of influences! I spoke earlier about suggestion. Now we see the influence of the entire spiritual world surrounding human beings. And what is theosophy? It is penetrating into the spiritual world and its laws. And what does this penetration into the spiritual world mean? It means freedom, for only knowledge gives freedom. When you know something, you can bring yourself into the right relationship to it. Thus, spiritual knowledge is the highest process of liberation that we can undergo within ourselves. Real development is what spiritual science is meant to teach us. Only when people want to become free will they approach spiritual knowledge. But if they want to be dependent not only on social prejudices, but also on everything that they cannot comprehend with their thinking, then they will not yet approach spiritual science today, and we will understand that they cannot approach it. Those who are still dependent on fashion and so on will not be very inclined to recognize the influence of the metals around them. But a start must be made, a small start toward a great, very great thing. Today I wanted to take just a small look at what spiritual science would like to be a start toward.