The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Theosophy of the Rosicrucians

[ 1 ] In this cycle, it will be my task to present to you a picture of the theosophical worldview, and this will be done from the perspective of the so-called Rosicrucian method. And I ask you not to misunderstand this term, “Rosicrucian method,” to mean that we are going to talk about the historical development of Rosicrucianism or give a historical account of it. The term “Rosicrucian method” simply means that theosophy will be presented according to the method that has always been used in the secret schools of Europe since the 13th and 14th centuries, and which is called Rosicrucian training.

[ 2 ] You know that “theosophy” is what poured forth in ancient times as truth about humanity in order to form a foundation of human knowledge in hearts everywhere. But the further back we go, the more secret these insights are kept. Why? I will return to this in these lectures, why this universal wisdom was imparted to individuals who were found to be ready for it in secret schools and places of care. Individuals who not only had to learn, but also had to undertake something that transformed their whole soul so that they became clairvoyant. This gave them insight into higher worlds. And such individuals were then sent out, as messengers, so to speak, who were called to guide and lead others. Now, however, progress consists in the fact that there are more and more people who, through their judgment and understanding, are capable of comprehending this wisdom. It has therefore become necessary that more and more of what was formerly kept secret be made public.

[ 3 ] In the course of the 19th century, external circumstances, which we will learn about later, made it necessary to make a large amount, a significant sum of knowledge from the secret science available to the public for the salvation and progress of humanity. In the 19th century, the guardians of this knowledge said to themselves: In earlier times, the messages about spiritual things, as they came to people through religion or in other ways, were sufficient to satisfy human needs in relation to the eternal. But the needs of humanity are changing. And so these guardians of ancient wisdom had to recognize that in the future there would be more and more people whose souls could no longer be satisfied by the old forms of communicating spiritual matters. For such people, it is now possible to find satisfaction in Theosophy. Theosophy, this new form of communication, springs from the perception of a human need observed in recent times. The guardians of secret knowledge knew, of course, that such times would come, but only at a certain point in time was it necessary to make preparations for allowing this wisdom to flow in and to say to themselves: We must ensure that these secrets can also be grasped by the minds of the 19th and 20th centuries. This happened in the 13th and 14th centuries. Very few people in Europe were aware of this moment of preparation at that time. They were the first Rosicrucians, those who gathered around a significant individual known by the pseudonym “Christian Rosenkreutz.” It was Christian Rosenkreutz who was able to say in the clearest sense: “We have received knowledge in the mysteries, a treasure of wisdom from the supersensible world.” Let us leave it at that, and we may hope that in the future we will be able to continue doing what we have done until now: sending out individuals who have matured in our schools, once they have learned and seen the secrets of the ancient wisdom, to teach others. This ancient method of spreading the ancient wisdom should be continued, but other things must also be prepared. He was able to say to himself: A far greater number of people will come who will demand the wisdom of the primordial world. We could impart it to them in the form we now have for it. But to accept it in this way requires a high degree of faith and recognition of our authority, which will disappear more and more from humanity. The more people's power of judgment grows, the less they will believe teachers as they did in the past. - Faith and trust were prerequisites for the earlier form of communication. Now we had to say to ourselves: People will come who will want to examine for themselves what is communicated to them. They will say: We want to apply the same logical mind that we use when observing the sensory world to what you tell us. Admittedly, something else is necessary to investigate the spiritual world besides this mind, but we want to test it with the same mind. That is why it was necessary at the beginning of our era to cast the ancient wisdom into new forms. That was the work of the Rosicrucians: to shape the ancient wisdom in such a way that it could gradually adapt to the modern spirit and the modern soul.

[ 4 ] What is Theosophy according to the Rosicrucian method? Theosophy itself is always and everywhere the same. A Rosicrucian theosophist today is a theosophist of the 19th and 20th centuries. His wisdom is adapted in its forms precisely to what people today want to understand and what they need to have. What is specific to our time? The course of human development has been such that people have had to become more and more familiar with the outer physical reality. Look back to ancient times, for example to ancient Egyptian culture, and see with what simple means and forces people worked, built their own structures, and satisfied their personal needs. Compare this with our life today, with all its sophisticated efforts to achieve physical comfort. What an enormous amount of mental energy and thought is wasted on daily physical needs! It was, of course, necessary, indeed the very task of the Western world, to shape the outer culture and master the outer nature in such a way that the physical plane is truly dominated by the human spirit. A world such as ours has become needs different means to absorb the wisdom of the secret schools than those ancient times. If, on the other hand, we compare the knowledge of the Chaldeans and their insights into spiritual knowledge with our knowledge today, then the Chaldeans tower above us. Today we admire Copernicus, Galileo, and the achievements of external science, but all this is child's play compared to the ancient wisdom of the Chaldeans. For today's researchers, for example, the planet Mars is simply an external body whose course and movement can be measured; but the Chaldeans also knew what forces and beings were connected with Mars, what divine will guided it all, and what connection existed between these forces and human beings. The mystery, the working of these spiritual forces, was known to them. That is why today's researchers are so helpless in the face of the inner nature of this ancient Chaldean culture. They have the external means to investigate it, but not the internal ones. Theosophists and Rosicrucians have the spiritual inner means to penetrate their spirit.

[ 5 ] The great names of our scientific authorities, whom we read about today excavating clay cylinders and shards on which ancient Babylonian wisdom is engraved, stand before them like a three-year-old child before an electrical apparatus. The researcher does not know what to do with what he excavates: so vast, so far-reaching was the spiritual knowledge of that time. But it was only possible for external science, with the intellect and the external means of our culture, to achieve what we today—and rightly so—admire as the great cultural advances of the last centuries. Such a time, however, requires a different way of thinking and feeling in order to understand the spiritual. Perhaps a word of warning should be added here. Today, there is much talk of higher or lower degrees of development. People argue about whether Buddha or Christ was greater. But that is completely irrelevant. It does not matter. It is not important whether Assyrian wisdom is higher or ours is deeper. We live in a materialistic age and we need spiritual knowledge to flow into our culture so that humanity's longing for it can be satisfied. And the Rosicrucian wisdom gives people this knowledge in the way that people today need it. What is being said here may sound a little daring, but please accept it for now; everything will become clear later. After all, Rosicrucian wisdom has been misunderstood more than anything else in the world.

[ 6 ] As things unfolded, it happened that the great individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz foresaw what demands for understanding would actually come from rational-minded people, and how it had already become necessary at that time to cast all spiritual knowledge into a form that would develop into what is required today. We must realize that the Rosicrucians had a much more difficult time than any similar movement in the past, because their initial work in the 13th and 14th centuries fell into a time when materialism was rapidly advancing. All the modern achievements, such as steam engines, the telegraph, and so on, had to bring people completely down to the physical plane. The Rosicrucians had to work for an age that had to think mathematically. They had to make their preparations in this sense, and therefore had to be misunderstood the most. That is why you cannot learn about Rosicrucianism from what is publicly known about it. Nothing of what was cultivated in Rosicrucianism can actually be found in this literature. The deepest spiritual truths of the Rosicrucians were interpreted as if spiritual things could be prepared in alchemical kitchens with retorts and so on. This view of alchemy gave rise to the materialistic caricature of Rosicrucianism that is presented today. The Rosicrucians had to prepare a science through which they could gradually impart their wisdom to the world.

[ 7 ] From all this you can see that when we present theosophy to people today, we must present them with Rosicrucian theosophy. By using older forms, we might win over some people, but these would have to be people who are not connected with the present world and culture with every fiber of their being. There are egoists who shirk the task of the present, but we want to take the present and its forms seriously. We must accept our age as it is, but seek to influence it spiritually. It is in this sense that Rosicrucian theosophy must understand its task.

[ 8 ] During the course of the congress, you have had the opportunity to see how fruitful this theosophy can be; for example, how it intervenes in medicine. Just let medicine continue to develop in such a materialistic way: if you could look forty years ahead, you would be horrified at the brutal methods this medicine would employ, at the forms of death to which people would be cured by this medicine. How does medicine today research the effects of its remedies? Well, on the human material it finds in hospitals and elsewhere, that is, through external observation. Spiritual wisdom, however, is such that it works into the inner connections of the spiritual, knowing what corresponds to the spiritual in the physical. A complete re-creation of all medical knowledge will come from what is called Rosicrucianism. But this is only one area. Compare our complicated living conditions today with those of the ancient Chaldeans. Think of the amount of intellectual power and combinatorial ability that is required to cash a check issued in New York in Tokyo. A time of this nature, which has spun such a culture across the globe with such means, requires different spiritual methods than earlier times. The occultist knows this. Today's thinking is simply not enough to overcome the chaos of external circumstances and tasks into which human beings will increasingly find themselves. Thinking will become rigid. Today we are in a transitional period, but soon thinking will no longer be fluid and flexible enough to grasp and transform the complicated conditions. So why do we spread Theosophy? To achieve practical results. Theosophical thoughts make thinking more elastic and fluid, enabling a quicker overview of larger contexts. In this way, Rosicrucianism has the power to enrich all areas of life. To see how practical theosophy is, take the little booklet I wrote on “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science.” You cannot know what is contained in it without Rosicrucian theosophy. It should not remain theory, but should become a practical guide to everyday life. Look for this in earlier forms of theosophy: it is simply not there. Rosicrucian theosophy is there to satisfy the spiritual longings of human beings and also to allow the spirit to flow into daily activities. Rosicrucian theosophy is not there for the salon or the hermit, but for the whole of human culture.

[ 9 ] Wisdom is always one. But just as the individual human being lives and continues to develop, so does humanity as a whole. And that is why the forms of wisdom revealed to them must change in accordance with the course of human development. The great teachers of humanity are working among us today as they always have. We too, who are now present here as souls, were incarnated in the past and have passed through all periods of development, the Greek-Latin, the Egyptian-Chaldean, and further back in time, in order to take on ever new achievements and to learn ever new things. Imagine a soul that was embodied when the gigantic pyramids and mysterious sphinxes surrounded it in Egypt! How different that must have been for that soul than what surrounds it today. As long as the earth has something new to offer—and the earth is constantly progressing—the soul will continue to take in new things. The soul is not embodied on Earth for the amusement of the gods, but in order to learn. The Earth looked different when the soul entered it in its first embodiment, and it will look different in its last. Only then will we return to this Earth, when we can learn something new on it; that is why the time between embodiments is so long. Let us just imagine how different the northern part of Europe looked at the time when Christ walked here on Earth, even if only in terms of the landscape. We do not enter the Earth twice without being able to learn something new. Everything in the world is in development. But development means processing and living out what is new at each stage.

[ 10 ] But it is not only human beings who develop; all beings do. Here we will have to seek the path to beings who stand on higher levels than man, but man already enters into relationship with them in many ways in this life. These higher beings are also subject to the law of development, and just as our souls were different thousands of years ago, so too were the beings who revealed themselves in earlier times. They too are constantly learning. And when we speak of one of the higher beings who has descended to us to reveal the secrets of the higher worlds by means of the spirit, we must say to ourselves: this is a sublime art that must be learned. Even if one is a god, one must learn this. For one must speak differently to people today than to those who lived ten thousand years ago. Higher beings undergo the same development as human beings. And what I said during the congress proceedings about the event in Damascus shows how higher beings develop. Suppose someone had been clairvoyant two thousand years before the appearance of Christ Jesus. A spiritual seer does not only see the external environment, but also everything that belongs to the spiritual sphere of the Earth's aura. Just as human beings are surrounded by an aura, so are the world bodies. And one learns to see the spirit of a world body. A spiritually perceptive person two thousand years ago would have seen something completely different in the Earth's aura than someone a thousand years ago or someone who has become clairvoyant today. Just as the external image of nature changes, so too does the image of the spiritual world that we see when we look into it.

[ 11 ] I want to talk about an event that I will come back to later: the burning bush and the proclamation on Mount Sinai. What does this mean? What happened to Moses? His clairvoyant power had developed to a certain point, and he perceived the supersensible in the sensible. Someone without clairvoyance would have simply perceived a natural event. But Moses saw in the burning bush the being who announced himself as “I am who I am!” And he knew that this being was there, that this fire was not only external fire, but that something spiritual was hidden behind it. A being revealed itself to him that was intimately connected with the entire future development of humanity, and that gave itself the name: “I am that I am.” What did all of Moses' disciples know? They had learned it in the mystery schools of that time: the same being that had revealed itself on Mount Sinai would descend to earth, dwell in a human body, and speak through a human being for three years, and this human being would be Christ Jesus. The initiates knew this. Saul, who later became Paul, also knew this. But he said to himself: “Certainly, this being exists, and it will descend to earth. But I cannot imagine that it will end in the shameful death on the cross, that being who revealed itself as Yahweh in the burning bush.” What could convince him? The event at Damascus. At the moment when he became clairvoyant and the earth's aura became visible to him, and he saw within it the Christ, the living Christ, who showed himself to him as the same who died on the cross, Saul became Paul.

[ 12 ] But this could only be seen at that time. Earlier, two thousand years ago, Christ was not yet in the earth's aura; he was still visible in the sun. Zarathustra saw the sun surrounded by an aura: he called it Ahura Mazdao, the great aura of Ormuzd. But this being descended, first revealed itself to Moses in the burning bush, and then lived among us as a human being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. “I am the light of the world,” Christ could therefore say of himself. Before that, no one could have spoken like that, because the light of the world had not lived in anyone before.

[ 13 ] We want to work out these things until we understand them fully. Today, however, we will only hint that the Christ being could not always reveal itself as openly as in the case of Paul, for example. The Christ being had to earn this first; it had to develop its power to such an extent that it could reveal itself in this way. Two thousand years ago, this would not have been possible. Every soul makes progress in every incarnation. This is important; it is what matters in leading individualities. We must recognize that Christ is not always the same; we must recognize him in his specific modes of activity, in the way he also progresses from development to development. And it is an overwhelming feeling of exaltation for human beings when they recognize how, just like their souls and their incarnations and progress, spiritual beings also rise higher and higher and become more and more powerful. This gives a living sense of development. In Rosicrucian theosophy, it is particularly important to show how such a being as Christ has worked in the past and in the present, as with Moses and Paul, and to see how such a being also progresses. This gives a more intimate understanding of development.

[ 14 ] Let us consider a child. It is born, it sees, as the technical term has it, the light of the world, it changes, and especially in the very first weeks of life it changes particularly quickly; the process of development proceeds most rapidly there compared to later epochs. External materialistic science can even ascertain many things there. For example, when examining the brain—which can be determined by external means—it can observe how, in the child's head, in the area that remains soft for a long time, the parts of the skull first join together and the brain gradually takes shape. Structure and connection have the task of forming an instrument for what the child will only be able to do later: thinking; it is intended to connect perceptions. The clairvoyant now sees in the child, in the very first days and weeks of development, how it is surrounded by powerful forces that belong to the second part of the human being, the etheric body. We know that in modern humans this body is about the same size as the physical body, but in children it still extends far beyond the physical body, especially at the head. And it is here that the workings of these forces, which appear to the clairvoyant as a play of light, are particularly vivid. It is wonderful to see how certain forces shoot up from the body from below, how they then radiate down from above, from the neck, from all sides, and where the hair swirls, radiating into a living play of forces, becoming an astral-etheric play of light in the etheric body of the child, which then gradually disappears over time. This play of light contains the forces that create the physical connections in the brain. The brain is only formed after the child is born, out of a spiritual substance. You can see forty to fifty streams of energy working together—the light body is composed of these—a wonderful spectacle if you observe the child in this way during the first weeks of life. Gradually, this light body penetrates the child's brain and is then inside it. At first, the child's etheric body was outside, surrounding the head, and was very primitive; it was surrounded by a light body from which it gathered forces, and now it gradually enters the child's head and sits there as the complex etheric organism. That is the wonderful thing about development, that everything physical is constructed out of the spiritual world, worked out of the spiritual, which we then take in ourselves. The soul first worked out the dwelling place in which it then lives. So we see how it happens in the small world, in the human brain of the child; so it is also in the large world. Look at a particularly advanced individuality such as Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body the soul of Christ dwelt for three years. Just as in the child the etheric body prepares the physical brain for itself so that it can later move into it, so Christ also prepared the place in advance where he could dwell. But he had to work for this first. At first, he was connected to the earth only externally, so to speak, but the earth was not yet able to take him in. However, the best among us worked on the earth so that Christ could come closer and closer to it, and Christ himself helped in this process. Who transformed the body of Jesus of Nazareth and ultimately brought it to the point where it could receive Christ? Christ himself did this. First he worked on him from outside, and afterwards Christ himself was able to enter into the human being.

[ 15 ] The same thing happens in the small world as in the large. And it is only because these beings above us also develop that development is possible at all. It is only because Christ was able to reveal himself supersensibly that he became the planetary spirit of the earth. The microcosmic always corresponds to the macrocosmic.

[ 16 ] I could not even present the first chapter of Rosicrucianism to you today, but only characterize the way in which people of the present day should learn to think and feel. For the true meaning of “Know thyself” lies in our following the development of the worlds in this way. Where is our self? Not in us alone. To think so would be selfish. It is built out of and born out of the entire universe, and our ascent should also lead us to merge with the entire cosmos. Self-knowledge wants to place human beings in the whole world in order to show them the true meaning of the word: self-knowledge.