The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] What is to be presented here is mentioned in the announcement “Theosophy according to the Rosicrucian method”. This refers to the ancient and ever-new wisdom in a method appropriate to our present time, a method that has actually been known since the fourteenth century in the way it will be expressed here in the form of presentation. However, I do not want to speak of a history of Rosicrucianism in these lectures.

[ 2 ] You all know that today in elementary schools a certain geometry is taught, which includes, for example, the Pythagorean theorem. The elementary aspects of this geometry are learned quite independently of how the geometry itself came about, because what does the student who is learning the first elements of geometry today know about Euclid! And yet it is Euclidean geometry that is taught. Only much later, when one already knows the subject matter, does one perhaps learn from the history of science the form in which what is now universally accessible in elementary schools originally appeared in the development of mankind. Just as the student who is learning elementary geometry today is not concerned with the original way in which Euclid gave geometry to humanity, so we should not care how so-called Rosicrucianism developed in the course of history. And just as the student learns true geometry from the subject matter, so we want to look at this Rosicrucian wisdom from within.

[ 3 ] Those who are familiar with the history, and especially the outer history, of Rosicrucianism as set forth in the literature, know very little of the real content of Rosicrucian theosophy. What Rosicrucian theosophy is has been living since the fourteenth century as something that is true independently of its history, just as geometry is true and recognizable independently of the history of geometry and its gradual appearance. Therefore, only a few hints shall be given of what can be known from history.

[ 4 ] In the year 1459, a high spiritual individuality, embodied in the human personality who bears before the world the name Christian Rosenkreutz, first appeared as a teacher to a small circle of initiated disciples. In 1459, within a strictly closed spiritual brotherhood, the Fraternitas Roseae Crucis, Christian Rosenkreutz was raised to the rank of Eques Lapidis Aureus, or Knight of the Golden Stone. In the course of the lectures, it will become increasingly clear to us what this means. That high spiritual individuality, which entered the physical plane in the outer personality of Christian Rosenkreutz, repeatedly worked as a guide and teacher of the Rosicrucian current in “the same body,” as one says in occultism. We shall also learn the meaning of the expression “again and again in the same body” in the course of the next few hours, when we shall be discussing the fate of man after death.

[ 5 ] Now this wisdom, of which we speak here, was confined until well into the eighteenth century in a closely-knit brotherhood that had strict rules by which it closed itself off from the exoteric outside world.

[6] In the eighteenth century, this brotherhood had the mission of allowing something esoteric to flow into the culture of Central Europe through a spiritual path, and that is why we see many things emerging within an exoteric culture that may be outwardly exoteric but are in fact nothing more than an outward expression of esoteric wisdom. Over the centuries, many people have tried to somehow understand the wisdom that we call Rosicrucian; they have not succeeded. Leibniz, for example, tried in vain to get close to the source of Rosicrucian wisdom. But this Rosicrucian wisdom did shine forth like a flash of lightning in an exoteric writing that appeared when Lessing was approaching his fulfillment in the physical plan. It is Lessing's “Education of the Human Race”. One must read this writing only between the lines, then one will recognize in its peculiar sound — albeit only as an esotericist — that it is an external expression of Rosicrucian wisdom.

[ 7 ] This wisdom shone forth with particular splendor in the man who reflected the culture of Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century, and indeed its international culture: in Goethe. When Goethe came into contact with a Rosicrucian source at a relatively early age in his life, he received something of a highly remarkable, high initiation. It can easily be misunderstood to speak of an initiation of Goethe; therefore, it is perhaps appropriate here to point out how it relates to this peculiar kind of initiation. It was in the interim between leaving the University of Leipzig and going to Strasbourg that something very strange happened. He had a deeply soul-stirring experience, which manifested itself externally in the fact that during his last period in Leipzig he came very close to death. On his heavy sickbed, he had an important experience, a kind of initiation. Goethe was not aware of this at first; it worked as a kind of poetic current in his soul, and it was a most remarkable process to see how this current worked its way into his various productions. We find such a flash of light in the poem “The Secrets”, which Goethe's most intimate friends have described as one of his deepest creations, and it is indeed so deeply conceived that Goethe was never able to find the strength to shape the conclusion to this fragment. The cultural current at that time did not yet have the power to outwardly shape the full depth of life that pulses in this poem. This poem is to be understood as one of the deepest sources of Goethe's soul; it is a closed book to all commentators on Goethe. But then this initiation worked its way out more and more, and finally, after he had become more and more aware of this initiation, Goethe was able to create that remarkable prose poem that we know as the “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. It is one of the most profound writings in world literature; anyone who is able to interpret it in the right way knows a great deal about Rosicrucian wisdom.

[8] But at the time when Rosicrucian wisdom was to be incorporated into general culture, it happened that, in a way that I need not go into here, a kind of betrayal of Rosicrucian wisdom was committed, so that certain ideas of Rosicrucian wisdom found their way out into the wider world in an exoteric way. This betrayal on the one hand, and on the other hand the necessity that the culture of the Occident remain uninfluenced on the physical plane by esotericism for a time during the nineteenth century, these two things led to the necessity that the sources of Rosicrucian and above all the great founder, who had always been on the physical plane since that time, seemingly receded, so that in the first half and also in a large part of the second half of the nineteenth century, not much of the Rosicrucian wisdom could be discovered. Only in our time has it become possible again to tap the sources of Rosicrucian wisdom and to let them flow into the rest of our culture. When we look at this culture, the reasons will become clear to us why it had to be so.

[ 9 ] Now I would like to give you two characteristic things that distinguish Rosicrucian wisdom and that are important for its world mission. One is connected with the whole position of man towards this Rosicrucian wisdom, which is something other than the occult form of Christian-Gnostic wisdom. We must touch lightly on two facts of spiritual life for the time being, if we want to clearly visualize this remarkable position of Rosicrucian wisdom. The first of these two facts is what is called the position of the disciple to the teacher, and we have to consider two things in relation to this position. We will discuss, first, what is called clairvoyance and, second, what is called belief in authority. The word clairvoyance, which is actually an imperfect expression, encompasses not only spiritual vision but also spiritual hearing. In these two lies the source of all wisdom that seeks to teach us about the hidden wisdom of the world, and from no other source can real knowledge of the spiritual worlds come. Now, for the Rosicrucian method, there is an essential difference between finding spiritual truths and comprehending them.

[ 10 ] No one can find spiritual truth directly in the higher worlds without having developed a high degree of spiritual ability, that is, clairvoyance. For the discovery of spiritual truth, clairvoyance is the necessary prerequisite. But only for the discovery, because to this day and also long into the future, no true Rosicrucianism will be taught exoterically, which cannot be grasped with the ordinary, general logical mind. That is what matters. If someone objects to this Rosicrucian form of theosophy by saying that one needs clairvoyance to understand it, then they are wrong. It is not about the ability to perceive. Those who cannot grasp the Rosicrucian wisdom with their thinking have simply not yet developed their logical mind enough. If you absorb everything that contemporary culture has to offer, everything that can be attained today, if you have patience and perseverance and are not too lazy to learn, then you can grasp and understand what the Rosicrucian teacher teaches. Anyone who doubts such Rosicrucian wisdom in any way and says, “I cannot grasp it,” is to blame not for not being able to grasp it, but for not wanting to exert his logical mind enough or for not wanting to draw on sufficient experiences from ordinary educational life to really grasp it.

[ 11 ] Consider the tremendous popularization of wisdom that has taken place from the advent of Christianity to the present day, and try to picture to your mind's eye what Christian Rosicrucianism was like in the fourteenth century. Consider how the individual living in the world in those days stood in relation to the teachers. Only by word of mouth could any work be done. One does not usually realize how tremendous an evolution has taken place since that time. One has only to think of the invention of printing. Think of the thousands upon thousands of channels through which, by means of this invention, what is achieved at the cutting edge of intellectual life can flow into general cultural life. From books to the latest newspaper headlines, you can follow an infinite number of channels through which a vast amount of ideas flow into public life. These are paths that have only been opened up to humanity since that time, and they have caused the intellect of Western culture to take on completely different forms. Since that time, the Western intellect, the mind, has functioned quite differently.

[ 12 ] The new form of wisdom had to take this into account. A form had to be created that would withstand what flows into the general life through the thousand channels. The Rosicrucian wisdom is one that completely withstands every objection that can arise from any popular or even the highest level of science. In itself, the Rosicrucian wisdom has the sources of self-support against every objection of science. A correct understanding of modern science, not that dilettantish understanding that can be found even among university professors, but an understanding that works free of all abstract theories and materialistic fantasies, that stands strictly on the ground of facts and does not go beyond them, such an understanding provides piece by piece the proofs for the Rosicrucian spiritual truths, straight out of science.

[ 13 ] The second aspect of Rose Croix wisdom – in the position between teacher and student – is that, in contrast to the other initiations, the relationship between the student and the “guru”, the oriental teacher, is essentially different. The way in which the disciple stands in relation to the guru cannot really be described as belief in authority within the Rosicrucian wisdom. I will illustrate this with an example from ordinary life. The Rosicrucian teacher does not want to stand in relation to his disciple any differently than the knowledgeable mathematician does to the mathematics student. Can it be said that the mathematics student clings to his teacher out of a belief in authority? No! Can it be said that the mathematics student does not need the teacher? Yes, many could say that, because they may have found their way to self-study through good books. But here the path is only different from sitting across from each other chair to chair. In principle, of course, one could. Likewise, when a person rises to a certain level of clairvoyance, he could find all spiritual truths, but each person will find it unreasonable to reach the goal by a detour. It would be equally unreasonable to say: My inner being must be the source of all spiritual truths. If the teacher knows the mathematical truths and transmits them to the pupil, then the pupil no longer needs to believe in authority, then he sees the mathematical truths through their own correctness, and he needs nothing else but to see them correctly. It is no different with the whole occult development in the Rosicrucian sense. The teacher is the friend, the adviser, who exemplifies the occult experiences and lets the student live them. Once you have them, you need to accept them on authority no more than you need to accept the mathematical theorem that the three angles of a triangle are 180 degrees. In Rosicrucianism, all authority is not actual authority, but rather that which is necessary for the shortening of the path to the highest truths.

[ 14 ] That is one side of it. The other side is that which relates to the relationship of spiritual wisdom to general spiritual culture. In the presentations that will be shown here in the next few days, you will see that spiritual truth can flow directly into practical life. We are not setting up some kind of system that can only be used in theory, but something that can be used if you want to recognize the deep foundations of our current world knowledge, if you want to let spiritual truths flow into our everyday life. Rosicrucian wisdom must enter not only the head, nor merely the heart, but the hand, our manual abilities, that which man does daily. It is not a sentimental sympathy, it is a working out of the abilities to function within the general service of humanity. Imagine some society were to arise and make brotherhood its sole aim, doing nothing but preaching brotherhood. That would not be Rosicrucianism, for the Rosicrucian says: Imagine a man who has broken his leg and is lying in the street in front of you. If fourteen people stand around feeling warm and compassionate but there is no one around who can set the leg back in place, then all fourteen are less important than the one person who steps up, who may not even be sentimental but who has the ability to set the leg back in place and does so. And this is the attitude that permeates the Rosicrucian. What matters is working knowledge, the possibility of intervening in life on the basis of knowledge. All talk of compassion is even somewhat dangerous to the Rosicrucian wisdom, because to them, a constant emphasis on compassion seems like a kind of astral lust. What the lower sense of pleasure is on the physical plane, that is on the astral plane this way, which always only wants to feel and not to recognize. Active knowledge, which can intervene in life - not in the materialistic sense, but brought down from the spiritual planes - that enables us to work practically. From the necessary realization that the world should move forward, harmony flows by itself, and it flows all the more surely because it arises by itself when one realizes. Of the one who can set a leg, one could say: if he is not a philanthropist, he may leave the one who is lying there. — This is possible with mere knowledge on the physical plane. But with spiritual knowledge this objection is not possible. There can be no spiritual knowledge that would not flow into practical life.

[ 15 ] This is what is called the second side of the Rosicrucian wisdom: that it can only be found through clairvoyant powers, but can be understood through ordinary human understanding. This seems to imply something very strange. In order to have experiences in the spiritual world, you have to become clairvoyant; but you do not need to be clairvoyant to understand what the clairvoyant sees. But anyone who descends from the spiritual worlds as a seer and recounts the things that take place up there, thereby bringing to light something that is necessary for present humanity, can be understood if the listeners want it, for man is such that it can make sense to him.

[ 16 ] First, we will now get to know the seven-part human nature according to the Rosicrucian method. We will get to know the whole nature of man as it stands before us. We will get to know the physical body that everyone believes they know and actually does not know at all. Just as little as one can see the oxygen in the water, but must first separate it from the hydrogen in order to recognize it, so little does one see the physical man before him when he sees another man. Man is just as much a mixture of physical body, etheric body and astral body and the other members of his higher nature as water consists of oxygen and hydrogen, and the combination of all these members you see before you. If you want to see the physical body alone, you must first lift out the astral body; you do that in dreamless sleep. Sleep is a kind of higher chemical separation of the astral body in union with the higher members of human nature from the etheric and physical bodies. But even then you do not yet have the real physical body before you. Only with death, when the etheric body has also withdrawn from the physical body, is the physical body alone left.

[ 17 ] This has an immediate practical significance. Let me give you an example to illustrate the point. Imagine any particular part of the astral body. In the distant past, what man could perceive in a dull, dim clairvoyance was quite different from today. These images were first imprinted on his astral body. We imagine that images of the three spatial dimensions, length, width and depth, were once imprinted on the astral body. This image of three-dimensional space, as it had once been imprinted on the astral body from an original dim clairvoyance, was further transmitted to the etheric body. Just as a seal is imprinted in liquid wax, so the astral image is imprinted in the etheric body, and this worked out the physical body's forms in three dimensions. In this way, the image of three-dimensional space works out an organ at a very specific point in the physical body. Originally, it was an image in the astral body of three perpendicular spatial lines. This was imprinted in the etheric body like a seal in sealing wax, and a certain part of the etheric body worked out a practical organ inside the human ear, and these are the three semi-circular canals. They all have these within them. If they are damaged, the person can no longer orient themselves in the three spatial lines. The human being is overcome by dizziness; he can no longer maintain himself within the spatial dimensions. Thus the images of the astral body are connected with the forces of the ether body and the organs of the physical body. The whole physical body of the human being in its plastic forms is nothing other than a result that has arisen from the images of the astral body and the forces of the ether body. Therefore, no one understands the physical body without first knowing the astral and etheric bodies. The astral body is the predecessor of the etheric body and the etheric body is the predecessor of the physical body. This is how complicated the matter is.

[ 18 ] The three semi-circular canals are a physical organ like the nose; all noses are different from each other, but you can find a similarity that exists between the noses of parents and children. If you were to study the three semi-circular canals in humans, you would find that there is the same diversity and similarity as with noses, and that a person can resemble their mother or father in relation to these canals. What is not inherited is the deepest spiritual, the eternal, which passes through human incarnations. What we call specific talents and abilities are not based on the brains. Logic is no different in mathematics than in philosophy or in practical life. The difference in abilities only arises when logic is applied in areas that have their cognitive organ, for example, in the semi-circular canals. Thus, mathematics expresses itself particularly in the human being who has particularly developed these organs. One example of this is the Bernoulli family, in which good mathematicians have appeared one after the other. No matter how many talents an individual has for music or other abilities, if they are not born into a human body that can pass on the necessary forms and organs, they cannot live out these abilities.

[ 19 ] Thus you see that you cannot physically recognize the world if you do not recognize how it is created. The Rosicrucian does not see his task in withdrawing from the physical world. That would be a terrible thing, for it is precisely his task to spiritualize the physical world. He must ascend to the highest regions of spiritual life and, with the insights that he gains there, work actively within the entire physical world and within human beings in particular. This is the Rosicrucian attitude, which follows directly from the wisdom. We want to consider such a system of wisdom that can make us understand the smallest things. And we want to remember that the smallest thing in the world is important for the greatest, and that the smallest thing, when put in the right place, can lead to the greatest goal.