The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism I

[ 1 ] The aim of these lectures is to provide an overview of what we are accustomed to calling Theosophy. This Theosophy must become a new cultural impulse in the broadest sense; it is something that humanity has longed for a long time and must provide answers to the burning question that humanity is asking from all sides. But in our time it is still often regarded not only as something to be refuted, but as something questionable, even as something crazy, like the dreams of a few fantastic minds.

[ 2 ] Of course, if you ask these visionaries themselves what they want with theosophy and what they expect from it, then the answer is quite comprehensive. Above all, what is today regarded as dreamy is seen by those who have recognized its lifeblood as something that will certainly have an enormous significance for human feeling, thinking, willing and doing in twenty to fifty years.

[ 3 ] There is nothing into which this Theosophy could not shine as an impulse and to which it would not be called to shine.

[ 4 ] It is well known that today there are the most diverse questions in our time: questions of health, social issues, women's issues, educational issues. And there is an even greater abundance of answers. But if you examine all these questions and their answers objectively, you come to the conclusion that the questions are indeed correctly posed by our contemporary culture – they are posed by the conditions of the times – but that the answers to these questions cannot be given by our time without further ado.

[ 5 ] It is clear to anyone who closes their eyes and ears to the questions of the time that obstacles will arise for them wherever they go. The time will come when people will realize that there are many more questions: the fact of the inner and outer war of humanity, of pain and suffering, of crushed hopes in all areas, raises these questions. Only Theosophy can provide the answer.

[ 6 ] People who hang their heads, who do their duty but do not know why they are doing all the work, and in whom this distracted mood develops into despair, even into their physical health, into the phenomena of neurasthenia, are becoming more and more numerous.

[ 7 ] All this is only to be hinted at here. The main idea should come to our mind: Theosophy is not something that should take place within a few idle minds that have nothing better to do, but it should intervene in practical life.

[ 8 ] Of course, the Theosophical Society, too, has had to go through its teething troubles and all sorts of things in the thirty years of its existence that have cast doubt on its significance; but it will work its way out of these difficulties and show what it is capable of achieving. Theosophy must become an all-encompassing, universal matter, because it should provide the answers to the questions that are ultimately the fundamental questions of all existence, and point out how today's man should understand these questions; understand why there are religions and sciences in the world at all. Whatever we do, it comes back to certain fundamental questions, if there is to be art, science and practical work, and these fundamental questions must be resolved in some way. All religions were attempts to provide answers to these questions, but an answer that was always adapted to the intellect and the cultural level of the peoples.

[ 9 ] Theosophy does not want to be a religion, it has nothing to do with a sect, it does not agitate.

[ 10 ] Religion, as you know, is as old as human endeavor. When we look at the different religions of different peoples, we come to the conclusion that all the different religions have tried to answer the questions: What is, first of all, the essence of man? Secondly, what is man's destiny? Thirdly, what extends beyond this physical existence?

[ 11 ] In relation to these questions, we modern people in particular have had a strange time, which has caused many people to lose their faith in religion. Let us ask ourselves: how many people are there today who need religion but cannot have it? Some of us can still look back to times when religion was a truly felt life, when religion had much more validity, yes, to a much greater extent than it is the case with individual particularly religiously inclined natures even today. In the latter, there is still something of the warm feeling that has gone through millennia. The need, the yearning for that which we call the spiritual world, that is, the yearning for religion, still exists today; indeed, in the truest natures this yearning for satisfaction has become ever greater. Such a person will say: When I was a child, I still had the right faith. But then it changed. I became acquainted with so-called science and its facts, and I had to, since these tell quite differently how the world was created, for example, deeply doubt what I had believed as a child! - And then came the other: a deeply sad mood of life, where the soul is as if torn apart, where the soul looks bleakly into the world and receives no enlightenment about the inner conflict. Hence the conflict between religious longing and the satisfaction of the soul, hence today's tragedy. But perhaps this is still the better thing that takes hold in these souls, better than the other: that man no longer questions at all, that questioning is completely abandoned, that he becomes superficial and merely lives in the everyday existence.

[ 12 ] Is it the fault of the religions that it has come to this? No! It is obvious that this is not the case; for every religion, even the old myths and legends, have the means and ways to lead the heart back, to bring every soul back to life if it only wants to. Who would have believed that such powerful impulses could arise from the old myths, which seemed to have been extinct for thousands of years and led an almost hidden, unknown existence, as in the dramas of Richard Wagner?

[ 13 ] There is no need to found a new religion, for the time for that has passed; but a new attitude of man towards it, a new understanding of it, has become necessary. What has changed is the human mind, the human soul, the human heart.

[ 14 ] If we try to visualize the process of development of the human soul, we shall be convinced in the course of these lectures that our souls have often been here on the physical plane, that they have only gradually developed to the stage at which they stand today. This may seem grotesque to you at first, but all our souls have often heard the profound truths as they are presented to us today in their previous lives.

[ 15 ] For example, you will learn about the doctrine of reincarnation here; but the way you are listening to me today is the way your souls listened to the Druids who lived and taught in our area. These ancient Druid teachers already cultivated the doctrine of reincarnation in narrow circles, this ancient wisdom about the riddles of life. They went out to those who felt in their souls the need for deeper knowledge. But if these old teachers had spoken then as I speak today, then their souls would not have been able to understand it at the time, because the mind had not yet developed to do so. At that time there was no logical thinking for the human mind. But what there was, was the possibility of grasping through images. And that is why these teachers expressed themselves in images, and these images are what you know today as legends and myths. If our souls had not heard these teachings then, we would not be able to understand it today if the truth were taught to us in a new form.

[ 16 ] Thus the soul makes tremendous progress over thousands of years, constantly taking on new forms, and therefore the truth must also be brought to it in ever new forms, proclaimed to it. I will give you a second example.

[ 17 ] Let us go back in the evolution of mankind to the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Babylonians. When these were the bearers of culture, they did not regard the sun and stars as purely physical bodies. When a materialistic astronomer looks at the heavenly bodies today, he sees only physical bodies in them, but nothing else. For him, the Earth is also just such a physical world body, on which people crawl around like mosquitoes on our hands.

[ 18 ] It was quite different for the ancient Egyptian astronomers. When the ancient Egyptian astrologer looked at a star, he did not think of a purely physical body, but the star meant something quite different to him than it does to today's man. When he spoke the name Mercury, for instance, he did so with reverence. He did not think of addressing the physical heavenly body at all, any more than you think of addressing a body made of papier-mâché. For that time, everything that the eye saw was only the external expression of a spiritual reality. So for the ancient astronomers, the physical star Mercury was the expression of the spirit of Mercury. You must not grasp this intellectually, but with the mind, otherwise you have no conception of the soul content of such an astronomer. There was nothing that was not the expression of a spiritual for him. He said: Everything is spirit, and I as spirit am a part of this spirit.

[ 19 ] You must keep this feeling in mind. The wise men of earlier times must be understood, what they knew about the processes of spiritual space must be understood. And anyone who delves into this feeling knows how infinitely superior this view is to our present materialistic view. We must first understand the sages of that time, we must fathom what they knew about the processes of spiritual space; only then do we realize how enormous the difference is and how infinitely meaningful those ancient wisdom teachings were. This may seem ridiculous to the materialistic mind of our time, which only knows the purely physical view of astronomy, but it is SO.

[ 20 ] How is it that man has now lost his sense of the spiritual life that underlies all physical life? And why did it have to come to this?

[ 21 ] Let us turn our gaze to what surrounds us at close quarters. If you could compare the things that surrounded people at that time with what surrounds people today, you would find that back then people had only the most basic means of making a living on this earth, but in return they had a greater sense of the spiritual. This sense for the spiritual world had to recede in order to give man the opportunity to gain his present mastery over the earth. All our progress in technology and industry was only possible because our world view became materialistic, and because the spiritual, the supersensible world, receded. Thus, in the course of the last few centuries, man gained mastery over the physical world at the expense of the spiritual. It is an eternal law of humanity that abilities acquired in one field can only be gained at the expense of abilities in another field. Man would never have been able to create today's means of transport, for example, if other abilities had not been neglected. In order to acquire everything that surrounds us today, the sense of the spiritual had to recede. In order to conquer the physical world, therefore, that which man was once imbued with had to recede.

[ 22 ] Thus we see around the sixteenth century people losing their connection with the spiritual world and materialism taking hold of humanity. And anyone who believes that he is not in the midst of this materialism is mistaken.

[ 23 ] The task of spiritual science is not to negate anything; it does not criticize today's bad world; rather, it shows that the descent into matter was a necessity. The broad horizon of humanity's spiritual life had to take a back seat for so long; and it is also connected with the fact that the old way of understanding spiritual things has been lost. The truths were there in those old, earlier formations. But how they can be made accessible to the understanding of people today is what spiritual science wants to show. That is what matters to it. Thus, Theosophy is nothing more than an instrument for making the deepest truths comprehensible to the human mind of today, for grasping them in their depths.

[ 24 ] Today, the mind must be pointed out again. We must not stop at saying how we have “come so gloriously far”. Truth is accessible at all times, and it can be grasped in different ways.

[ 25 ] If we turn our gaze back to ancient India, to Egypt, Greece, to the time of the founding of Christianity, we see that it is always the same old truths that appear in different forms. There have always been leaders of humanity who have taken precautions to ensure that at certain times the truths that had faded with the declining cultures were communicated to humanity anew. All the great religious founders belong to these leaders.

[ 26 ] Before our more recent era dawned, before Copernicus and that 16th century, precautions were also taken in Europe to lay the foundations for a new way of proclaiming the truth. Around this sixteenth century there were some people who understood how to interpret the signs of the time. As early as 1459, a higher spiritual individuality, known to very few people in the outer world as Christian Rosenkreutz, founded a secret school for the cultivation of wisdom, not a new wisdom, but the old wisdom in a form that people needed at that time. This is the wisdom of the Rosicrucians, which was cultivated first at that time. It is, as I said, nothing new; it is the ancient wisdom, but in the form in which present-day humanity needs it.

[ 27 ] How does this wisdom of the Rosicrucians relate to Christianity? There is no difference between the genuine Christian teaching and that of the Rosicrucians. One need only understand Christianity at its core to grasp the Rosicrucian theosophy. There is no need to found a new religion; rather, one must understand Christianity as the first Christians understood it. But very few people still know anything of the secrets of the first Christian development. Even official theology has no more knowledge of them. We find Paul himself as the deepest knower of the Christian secrets, who taught those mighty truths that were to guide humanity through the millennia. This Paul had founded a school in Athens, whose head was Dionysius the Areopagite. This Dionysius was a true disciple of Paul.

[ 28 ] Those teachings of Dionysius have always been alive and were always taught, especially to those who were to carry the living word of Christ out into all the world. If men had remained in that standpoint of Dionysius, no new form would have been needed. But the new era was dawning and with it the necessity to teach in such a way that Christianity would be established and that no science could object to it. This is the aim of Rosicrucian theosophy. Therefore, Rosicrucian theosophy is the form of religion that is appropriate for us today.

[ 29 ] Only he who understands Christianity aright can have any inkling of what its eternally living content is.

[ 30 ] If we were able to hear today from all sides what this Rosicrucian theosophy has to say about true Christianity, the scientific facts would not contradict the processes described there. What matters is that religion cannot be found to contradict scientific facts, and that these scientific facts are brought into harmony with it.

[ 31 ] What does this Rosicrucian theosophy have to offer us? Knowledge of higher worlds, that is, of those worlds to which man will still belong when our physical body has already disintegrated; knowledge of life, knowledge of the nature of death and of human evolution. Thus will they bring men to a reaffirmation of religious truths and religious life.

[ 32 ] Let no one say: I stand firmly on the ground of the old teachings, and these are enough for me. What do I care about the doubters! There is nothing more selfish and un-Christian than this judgment. For what may still be possible today, that a number of people may still be held back on the ground of the old religions, will no longer be possible in the not too distant future. He who is able to see into what the great social waves are about to stir up will not judge thus; he will see that the proclamation of 'Theosophy is not something to be fought over. Anyone who can think knows that spiritual science is there to answer the most burning questions, and that it can actually provide an answer to all questions. After all, you can prove and dispute anything, but that is not the point: you cannot dispute a remedy, it only depends on the success you have with it. And that is exactly how it is with spiritual science. Humanity needs spirituality as a remedy, and only when this remedy flows in can the recovery of humanity take place. It is a developmental factor and a life-giver for our culture.

[ 33 ] It is not done with external institutions; they are directed without exception only to the physical and bodily. The recovery of the soul and the spirit is what Theosophy strives for. Spiritual science is not arbitrary; it is demanded by the times and their problems. Everything it tells us is the common teaching of those who have researched in this field.

[ 34 ] Spiritual science will lead us into higher worlds, into which the physical eye cannot look, but where the causes of the effects in this physical world lie. It will bring us knowledge of the eternal in human nature, of the essence of each of us, of the spiritual worlds and their hierarchies. And by getting to know these, we will get to know the destiny of man. The true essence of human nature is what should occupy us. We will get to know worlds that exist but that cannot be grasped with our mere physical senses. Some might say: What you are telling us is all very nice, but we cannot know anything about it. Fichte has already given the answer to this objection. Imagine you are the only one who can see and you come into a world of the blind-born, and you tell them about colors, then they will also say: That is all nonsense, what you are talking about, that does not exist at all. But if one could operate the blind-born with success, then they would just experience this world of colors and light.

[ 35 ] The same applies to the above objection. Those who make such an objection are simply taking the same point of view as that of one who is born blind. Therefore, no one should say: “That does not exist.” For no man has the right to speak of “limits of knowledge,” as Du Bois-Reymond did in his time. There are as many worlds as we have organs to perceive them; infinitely many worlds; we just cannot perceive them today because we do not yet have organs for them. The world is not only infinite in space, but also in intensity: for every sense there is a world. Now they are unfathomable to us, but they are there; they are there where we ourselves are. We only need to open our eyes to them, for they are in the midst of us.

[ 36 ] The words of Christ: “Do not seek for the Kingdom of God, for the Kingdom of God is in the midst of you,” are to be understood quite literally. In this sense, spiritual science also speaks of the spiritual worlds. And there have always been initiates who knew the ways and means to enter these realms of heaven. All religions speak of them. Spiritual science is only the means to unlock this fundamental truth of all religions for us again. Everything we see and perceive around us here is a consequence and effect of what is going on in the spiritual worlds. Everything that manifests itself on earth is only the manifestation of what works and lives in the spiritual worlds.

[ 37 ] Official Christianity has long since forgotten how to understand the depths of religious documents. Thus spiritual science had to take on the task of providing the key to the forgotten treasures of knowledge and thereby offering the remedy to humanity, which is at a crossroads. But it knows no fanaticism; it merely recounts, it clarifies the nature of man and shows what his fate is after death, shows how his soul develops outside of the physical body. It describes what goes on in the higher worlds, speaks of the developmental phases of the earth and the other planets, and sheds light on the past and future path of human life. It points out what he will have to go through before he reaches the goal of humanity.

[ 38 ] We want to try to grasp the essence of man and of those worlds from which he comes. This is the realm of knowledge to which spiritual science leads us.

[ 39 ] One could now object: This is all only for the so-called seer, who can already see into the spiritual worlds. What use is that to us? They are not accessible to us!

[ 40 ] One can answer: There are indeed some methods of training that are suitable only for the spiritual researcher, and which make such an objection appear justified. But the path of the Rosicrucian training is different. To penetrate into the spiritual worlds, the eye of the seer and the ear of the initiate are indeed needed, but only ordinary logic is needed to understand. Everything the spiritual researcher says is accessible to the logical mind; ordinary common sense is enough to grasp these things. Those who cannot do so lack logic. The eye of the spiritual researcher is needed to discover the spiritual secrets. To understand what is described in terms of Rosicrucianism, ordinary logic is sufficient.

[ 41 ] Those who cannot see this must not blame their failure on the training. Their lack of understanding is not due to the fact that they are not seers, but rather that they lack a healthy grasp of the subject and do not think consistently. To many, however, logic is unknown. For example, a musician of the present day says that reflection is an awkward thing. Even our world of scholars only thinks a short way. But if man applies his intellect correctly, he will come to comprehend the higher wisdoms and truths as well, and bring them to life in himself. And if you ask further: What use is this to us? - the answer is: Nothing can be given to us that is of greater importance than the knowledge of spiritual science. Only through this do we become true human beings, and only through this do we also achieve a contented heart in the present, a soul that comes into harmony with itself.

[ 42 ] One does not get far with empty phrases; one must take the struggle for knowledge seriously and immerse oneself in the hardships and problems of life. One must constantly try to penetrate from one area of spiritual life to another: then insight into the whole of world and human development wells up from it. And the overwhelming grandeur of this event not only captures our hearts, it awakens new abilities in us, it makes us skillful for the tasks of daily life. For there is direct power in spiritual science, something that becomes an unfailing good and makes us creative people.

[ 43 ] Only when you get to know the spiritual world can you also understand the material world. Spiritual science is not for nerds, but for the most practical of practitioners.

[ 44 ] All existence is spirit. As true as ice is water, matter is spirit. Whether mineral, plant, animal or human, they are spirit in condensed form.

[ 45 ] In this sense, Rosicrucian theosophy leads us to an understanding of the spiritual foundations of the world. It does not turn us into misfits, but into friends of existence, because it does not look down on everyday life, does not alienate us from our earthly tasks, but connects us to them. It spurs us on to work, because it knows that every action, like every being, is an expression of the spirit.