The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner
1904
During the spring and summer of 1903, Rudolf Steiner had lived at Schlachtensee, Berlin, but he moved in the autumn to 17 Motzstrasse, then still a suburban locality. In this building during the next few years lectures for members were held, and the publishing center, later established, was also located here.
As in the case of many other great personalities, Dr. Steiner did not escape external worries. These he accepted as something inevitable, for his lecturing work as well as his other scientific-spiritual activities served a selfless purpose. A benignant destiny, however, gradually brought together a small circle of persons anxious to smooth his path by their unselfish cooperation. There were numerous and varied tasks to be performed—in connection with his correspondence, his rapidly expanding lecture activity and multiplying tours, proofreading of the magazine and of books, printing and circulation of announcements, and many other things. He later narrated in playful humor how the first magazines and books to be mailed had often to be carried to the post office in a laundry basket—or in more than one laundry basket and on more than one trip. But the first foundation stones were laboriously laid by an organization which was later to keep busy multitudes of persons. His own never failing kind and friendly attitude helped his collaborators to forget the external difficulties of their tasks. An employee of the publishing center later established gave me a characteristic example of how the simplest people loved Rudolf Steiner because of his unassuming goodness of heart. When the publishing center was removed from the first location, the one thing requested by the overworked postman was one of Rudolf Steiner’s books as a souvenir.
It was in this year, 1904, that Dr. Steiner wrote and published one of his fundamental books, the study of which is essential for a comprehensive knowledge of his work—Theosophy. Introduction to a Supersensible Cosmology and the Destiny of Man—and issued in his magazine chapters of a second—Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, published later in book form. The former gives in outline the content of his knowledge in that area, the second the method of its attainment. In this book the contrast is already manifest between Rudolf Steiner’s method and that of others who have been able to use the faculty of spiritual vision, or clairvoyance. These others have offered their fellowmen the results of their vision as such, not susceptible to being tested, leaving their findings to be believed or not. In contrast with this, Rudolf Steiner from the beginning gave the exact method by which such results had been obtained, and how these results may be obtained by any one willing to tread the path of systematic training indicated by the author. It is due to lack of knowledge of the subject, therefore, when many of his opponents put the clairvoyance practiced by Rudolf Steiner on the same level with the faculty similarly named which appears now and then today, and which was much more common in earlier ages. In these others it consists, so to speak, of an atavistic gift bestowed by nature; whereas in Rudolf Steiner it is the result of spiritual-scientific training developed in an exactly defined method, clearly subject to test at all stages.
The prefaces to various editions of Theosophy (so far 45,000 copies have appeared in the original and many in translations) gave a valuable insight into the purpose of the author and the difficulties with which he had to cope in blazing a trail so new. He says:
“This book is intended to portray certain sections of the supersensible world. Whoever is willing to recognize only the sense world will regard this portrayal as a meaningless fantasy. But he who is willing to seek for the way out of the sense-world will learn at once to understand that human life gains value and meaning only through insight into another world. Man is not estranged from the ‘real’ world, as so many fear, by such insight. For he learns only by its means to stand firmly and securely in this life. He comes to know the causes behind life; whereas, without it, he ‘feels’ his way through the effects as in blind-man’s buff. It is only through knowledge of the supersensible that the ‘reality’ of the senses acquires meaning. Consequently, one becomes fitter and not less fit for life through this knowledge. Only he can grow to be a truly ‘practical’ person who understands life.
“The writer of this book portrays nothing for which he is unable to give testimony from experience; from such experience as is possible to one in this sphere. Only personal experience in this sense will be offered.
“This book cannot be read in the manner customary in our time. In a certain sense, each page, even many sentences, must be worked over by the reader. This condition has been deliberately aimed at. For only so can the book become for the reader what it is intended to become. One who simply reads it through will not have read it at all. The truths contained in it must be experienced. Spiritual science is of value only in such a sense.”
In The Course of My Life he says, with particular reference to Chapter two of the book just mentioned:
“Very difficult for one who wishes to remain scientific becomes the presentation of repeated earthly lives and destiny determined by these. If it is not desired at this point to speak merely from spiritual perception, it is necessary to resort to ideas which result, to be sure, from a subtle observation of the sense-world, but which people fail to grasp. ... I faced these difficulties in full consciousness; I battled with them. Any one who will take the trouble to review the successive editions of my Theosophy and see how I recast again and again the chapter on repeated earthly lives, for the very purpose of bringing the truth of this perception into relation to those ideas which are taken from observation of the sense-world, will find what pains I took to do justice to the recognized scientific method.”
A special difficulty was created by the problem of finding for the new kind of subject matter a terminology adapted to the consciousness-level and the scientific way of thought characteristic of the present-day Western humanity. This was a problem which intruded also every time Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture. Since he faced the necessity to speak to persons accustomed in large part to the terminology of Theosophy and of Oriental writings, whereas he himself desired to develop spiritual science independently of such sources, he had to create a kind of transitional situation, in which he solved the problem by using to a large extent for some years the old terminology. We find numerous terms such as pralaya, manvantara, manas, buddhi, atma, etc. Gradually and systematically, however, he educated his listeners to attach the correct concepts to the terminology newly created by him, and thus to grow independent in time of the Eastern way of expression. The first edition of the book Theosophy provided the old terms in brackets after the new ones, whereas later editions used only the new terms. In the same book, the first chapter, on The Nature of Man, begins with a quotation from Goethe, a further clear indication of the historical sources in Western culture with which Rudolf Steiner wished to maintain his connection.
Whereas the last chapter of this book finishes with a presentation of The Path of Knowledge, in the series of articles on Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, of which the earliest ones appeared in the magazine in 1904, this path of training is now presented in detail. Man must learn not only to practice experimentation and research in the laboratory, but also to investigate in a manner no less exact his own psychospiritual nature and to subject this to well tested systematic experimentation with clearly recognizable results. In the terse sentence with which this work begins, every word is significant: “In every human being there slumber faculties by which he is able to gain knowledge of higher worlds.” The faculties arc there, and Rudolf Steiner wished to awaken them. They are given to every man. This distinguishes his method fundamentally from that of the Oriental Theosophists and all mystics and others who regard these faculties as being a gift only of the select few and who guard them as such. Rudolf Steiner through his attitude places everyone from the beginning on a basis of freedom, which he had already postulated in his work Philosophy of Spiritual Activity as the only basis worthy of man. He thus avoided that form of dependence which, in other systems, is only too apt to arise in the relation between the advanced teacher and the pupil. He warned his listeners and his students repeatedly, therefore: “I beg you not to lean any more on the principle of authority.”
The year’s lectures began with a religious theme and a scientific theme. Dr. Steiner spoke on January 4 on The Gospels; on January 9 on Atlantis. The findings of spiritual research contained in the second lecture were enlarged and deepened in the later writing Our Atlantean Ancestors and in many lectures. The lead taken by Rudolf Steiner in this direction was followed later and supplemented by some of his students. A few of the spring lectures given in comprehensive connections may here be mentioned: The Evolution of the Natural-Scientific Ideas of the Nineteenth Century, January 12; Literature, February 23; Science of the Soul (Seelenlehre), March 16; History, in April; and Cosmology May 26. Concurrently with these courses, he commenced a series on January 21 under the title The World of the Spirit, or Devachan, combining both in title and in content the Eastern and Western terminology.
A further lecture course in the spring was devoted to characterizing and warning against a number of spiritual movements, both past and present, which sought by wrong or futile methods to carry out research in the spiritual world. In this connection, he lectured on February 1 and May 30, 1904, on The History of Spiritism; on June 6 on The History of Hypnotism and Somnambulism.
It is important to remember, as is made clear by the facts, that Rudolf Steiner from the very beginning drew a clear line of demarkation before all forms of experience which aimed at bringing men into contact with spiritual phenomena through a subduing of the consciousness or by unhealthy or abnormal soul conditions. He regarded this as the worst form of materialism, because the attempt is made in mediumism and spiritism to draw the spiritual into the sphere of the material-sensible, whereas he took a diametrically opposite direction, making it a condition of all spiritual research and schooling that man’s consciousness be awakened, strengthened, and extended with the same accuracy to the supersensible realm as the scientific training of the West has developed a consciousness for the phenomena of the sense-world. If some of his opponents, through ill will or negligence, later insisted on connecting him with hypnotism or spiritism, or even mentioning his name in the same breath with such things, this merely proves that they did not take the trouble even to study his life or methods or any of his works, thus violating the first law of scientific thinking and judgment.
After this necessary clarification, Rudolf Steiner could now devote himself in the spring of 1904 again to the purposes to which he was applying his efforts. He spoke a number of times from a new point of view regarding Goethe’s esoteric fairy tale; and, during lecture trips to Weimar, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Erfurt, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, and Hannover, he lectured on what was to be affirmed on the basis of the Theosophical world view, then represented by him, in regard to the world views of Goethe and Herder, the spiritual content of the Gospels, the problems of birth and death. Such journeys contributed to the building of working Groups and Branches in various places during this early period. He began also the practice of speaking during the festivals of the seasons, a practice which came to its culmination in the year 1923.
At Whitsuntide in 1904, he gave a cycle of lectures between May 26 and June 9 on Cosmology, which he supplemented in the autumn with a cycle on Planetary Evolution. In these lectures he entered in greater detail into the content of a spiritual-scientific cosmology, the basic principles of which he had dealt with in the 1903 lectures referred to previously. Such a cosmology sees the psycho-spiritual evolution of man, in its potential stage, even during the primal beginnings of cosmic evolution, and not merely, like present-day natural-scientific cosmology, the development of the physical corporeality of nature and man, out of which soul life is then supposed to arise. It shows how the original purely psycho-spiritual entity of man’s being takes on in the course of evolution a gradually concentrating physical corporeality, thereby entering out of cosmic into earthly evolution. Man’s spiritual nature had thus already passed through certain evolutionary processes when it became involved in earth-evolution. The earth itself, however, had already passed during the same period through several phases of gradual densification out of primeval spiritual conditions, this condensing process of the earth’s substance not being accomplished in one continuous fine of development, but rhythmically ordered, in periods of condensation and embodiment, followed by those of spiritual realization and dematerialization. Rudolf Steiner here used the simile of ice, which can condense out of water and gaseous conditions and then melt and evaporate into these once more. The details of this rhythmical process of evolution were presented completely in 1909 in his work Occult Science—an Outline. But already in the lectures of 1904 there is sketched the knowledge that the spirit-germ of man accompanies this cosmic-earthly evolution from the beginning, developing step by step definite stages of consciousness, receiving then its differentiation and spiritual structure, and finally being immersed in the physical form, but still developing more and more out of this creative process as an individual being and thus becoming able to fulfill its true mission.
Rudolf Steiner pointed out that this spiritual cosmology had been known in its essential aspects to an earlier humanity, endowed with the capacity of clairvoyance, and had left its impressions in many documents and traditions of both the Orient and the Occident.
The findings of this and other research began to be presented by Dr. Steiner after the turn of the century. To follow the stages in the development of his research, and the methods by which he gradually brought home to his hearers its results, is most instructive. In his lecture of June 9, he announced a second volume of his book Theosophy, in which this cosmological knowledge was to be communicated, but he changed his mind later and, instead of this second volume, published the special work entitled Occult Science—an Outline, which presents the cosmology comprehensively as a single whole, as the result of further research carried on between 1904 and 1909.
During the first journey to Switzerland, in April 1904, Dr. Steiner visited Lugano as a guest of the well known industrialist, Guenther Wagner. This led him to visit other Swiss cities; and, for the whole of the next twenty-one years until his death in 1925, he was united in heartfelt destiny with that land. From 1904 onward, he was active there every year, giving single lectures and important lecture cycles until, in 1913, he settled permanently in Switzerland, the crown of his life’s work being the erection there of the Goetheanum, with all the activity associated with this building.
In June, the month of his first article on Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, in the magazine, he traveled to Holland to take part in the Conference at Amsterdam of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society. The theme he selected for his lecture once again sheds light on the vast span of his experience in research and the manner in which he was able to view at once apparently polarically opposite spheres of life. His theme was Mathematics and Occultism.
Dr. Steiner’s treatment of the subject of mathematics appears in two aspects. He surveyed in great detail the content of modern mathematics and its application in practice, and gave many suggestions for their methodical and practical extension. At the same time, he considered mathematics from the point of view of its affording one of the best preparations for the exercise of a sense-free thinking, which is necessary for a methodical development of the capacity for higher knowledge and for the experience of the supersensible. It is possible for man to bring into practice through mathematical training a condition of consciousness necessary for the grasp of purely spiritual content. He pointed, therefore, in this particular lecture of June 1904 to “the position assigned by Plato to mathematics within the sphere of human knowledge.” To him it was one of the gateways to the realm of ideas through which he instructed his pupils “to move in the world of pure spiritual being through cognition.”
“Plato regarded the mathematical approach as an educational medium for living in the sense-free world of ideas. For mathematical forms hover on the borderline between the sense-world and the pure spirit-world. Suppose one thinks of a circle. One does not think of a particular material circle that one may have drawn on paper, but of any and every circle possible to be drawn or to be met with in nature. And it is the same with all mathematical forms. They may refer to sense-perception, but they are not exhausted by the sense-experience. They hover above countless and various sense-forms. When I think mathematically, I think about things of sense; but, at the same time, I do not think within the sensible. It is not a sensible circle that teaches me the laws of the circle, but the ideal circle which lives only in my spirit, and of which the sensible is but an image...”
Hence mathematics and geometry were practiced in the Mystery centers of the ancients, especially in the Greek epoch, not only because of their educational value, but because of their providing the first steps in spiritual training. “He shall learn to become sense-free through the elementary truths of mathematics, so that later he may also become free where higher questions enter in.” It is a question, therefore, of recognizing the great significance, but also the limitations, of mathematical thinking. Rudolf Steiner for this reason portrayed in the lecture here mentioned the further historical stages in its application:
“What eminent personalities have said regarding the relation of mathematics to natural science should give rise to thought. That there is just so much true science in the knowledge of nature as there is mathematics has been said by Kant and others. Nothing else is thereby signified than that, through a mathematical formulation of nature’s processes, a knowledge of these is gained which extends beyond sense-perception, which comes, indeed, to expression through sense-perception but which is seen in spirit. The manner of functioning of a machine is seen only when one has brought the process to expression in mathematical formulae. To express the processes noted by the senses in such formulae is the ideal of mechanics and physics and, to a growing extent, of chemistry also. But it is possible thus to express mathematically only what exists in time and space, what has extension in that sense. As soon as one rises to the higher worlds, in which it is not only a question of extension in that sense, then mathematics is found wanting in its direct form. Yet the manner of perception upon which mathematics is based must not fail here. We must win the ability to speak freely about the living, the psycho-spiritual, etc., and as independently of single perceptible forms as we speak about the circle independently of the single circle drawn on paper.”
Dr. Steiner then entered thoroughly into the important step which mathematical science has taken in our time “with the analysis of the infinite, which we owe to Newton and Leibnitz.” He characterized the nature of the differential and integral calculus and the further progress that has been achieved, for example, by Gauss, Riemann, and others. Only a bare reference is here possible. In a survey of these historical events in knowledge, he said:
“Whatever objection may be raised in detail against these endeavors, the fact that such thinkers have carried the conception of space beyond the three-dimensional, that they calculated in areas which are more universal and comprehensive than sensible space, is the result of mathematical thinking emancipated from the sensible by the infinitesimal calculus.
“Significant pointers are given thus for spiritual science. In other words, there remains in mathematical thinking, even if it ventures beyond the sense-perceptible, the strictness and the certainty of tested thinking.”
We find such a strict thought-testing prescribed as the most important point of departure, and as a demand on the student, in the exercises for attaining accurate knowledge of the psychic and spiritual. For the way “leading from sense-filled to sense-free thinking” carries the practitioner to the next step: “He must find also the transition from sense-free thinking in form to formless thinking. The concept of a triangle, circle, etc. still has form, even when the form is not directly sensate.” But certain spheres of the spiritual-creative are to be cognized only “if we proceed from what lives in transitory form to what has as yet no form, but contains within itself the potentiality of creating form.” This next step is especially necessary when perception penetrates to the sphere of the creative forces in the living. Here Rudolf Steiner pointed particularly to the important step of Goethe in cognition which led him to the nature of the archetypal plant (Urpflanze).
“As one creates mathematical equations in which are included particular values only in order to bring within a universal formula a multitude of separate examples, so did Goethe seek for the archetypal plant, all-embracing in qualitative and spiritual reality, regarding which he wrote to Herder in 1787: ‘Moreover, I must confide to you that I have come very close to the secret of the generation and the organization of the plant, and that it is the simplest thing imaginable. . . . The archetypal plant becomes the most wonderful creation in the world, which nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, one is able henceforth to invent at once plants without end which are bound to be consistent—that is, which, if they do not exist, could none the less exist.’ That is to say, Goethe seeks for the still entirely formless archetypal plant and strives to obtain from it the plant-forms in the same way that mathematicians obtain from an equation the particular forms of lines and surfaces.”
Mathematical training remains of value, therefore, even when knowledge penetrates to the sphere of the living and the spiritual, where the content and the laws of mathematics as such are no longer valid—that is, for a research
“which proceeds in the spirit of mathematics where mathematics itself leaves off. For mathematics, in its immediate significance, has to do only with the quantitative; its domain ends when the qualitative begins.
“But the question then arises of conducting research in a strict sense in the domain of the qualitative also. In this sense Goethe opposed with particular severity any over-estimation of mathematics. He did not want to see the qualitative hampered by a purely mathematical treatment. Yet he wished everywhere to think in the spirit of the mathematical, according the pattern and example of the mathematical.”
Only a few indications have here been included from the lectures then given by Rudolf Steiner, in order to show in what manner he guided from strict sensate perceptions to sense-free thinking, capable of being trained by the practice of mathematics, and then by the same strict method advancing to a knowledge of the living, the becoming, ultimately advancing in research to the spheres of the supersensible, the psychic and spiritual, the creative. He avoided altogether just what is elsewhere falsely designated as mysticism and occultism.
It is surely not by chance that at the very time when his first article appeared in the magazine on methods of spiritual training under the title Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, he was giving the directive lines in lectures for the training of thought in accordance with the mathematics and natural science of the Occident.
In this year, Dr. Steiner gave another detailed lecture course on mathematics. He always advised his students, especially those seeking to develop a rigidly correct thinking, to take thorough training in mathematics, and he guided them in this. During later collegiate courses, it was an astonishing experience for persons questioning him in the expectation of finding gaps in this difficult area of science to find that he would immediately not only answer them thoroughly out of the area of the higher mathematics and geometry, but could even lay open important new perspectives.
It is impossible within the framework of this presentation to state in detail information given by Rudolf Steiner for specialized fields, but we must limit ourselves to a few indications. Rightly regarded, mathematics is presented as a first step in supersensible cognition (for example, in a lecture of March 9, 1923). It is suggestive to recall the remarkable statement in his autobiography about his boyhood: that he first learned to know happiness through geometry. In particular, he often emphasized that the newer projective geometry constitutes a splendid training for imaginative knowledge. In lectures during various years, he showed how the concept of geometrical space is brought to consciousness in the course of development of a human life, in that the forces which work at first on the bodily organism are set free from this work. In other connections, mathematics is represented as the final residue of the primal revelations to mankind. It is also to be noted that he gave helpful indications regarding the development of the mathematical equipment for the purpose of grasping the sphere of the formative forces, “the universal forces,” in contrast with the central forces, which today receive almost exclusive consideration. Answers to questions from the year 1921 in which are specified the realities underlying the positive, negative, and imaginary mathematical dimensions open an approach to a spiritual-scientific deepening of the mathematical sciences. Even suggestions for the construction of hypercomplex systems of numbers are available. Nor to be forgotten are the concrete examples by which Rudolf Steiner founded a sphere of activity today scarcely imagined, in which scientific geometry and artistic faculties are combined; here we have the question of developing a sense for form, the development of a language of geometric form. It is basically comprehensible that, even in such a definite specialized area, Anthroposophy can contribute a deepening as well as a broadening. The enhancement and strengthening of the inmost nature of man can bring about fruitful results in all his activities. A number of students of Rudolf Steiner have followed this line of research and achieved important results.
The mention of these details has grown out of the fact that Rudolf Steiner chose mathematics as the theme for his lecture at the Congress in Amsterdam. During that stage of his work, the month of August was generally one for a pause in lecturing activity and an opportunity to devote himself to his literary work. At a later stage it became the month of great artistic programs.
In September, Mrs. Besant came on a visit and delivered lectures in six German cities. Rudolf Steiner gave the substance of her lectures in the German language with complete objectivity, while not in agreement with much of their content. On September 26 he took part in a congress in Dresden, arranged independently of the Society, for Germans, Austrians, and Swiss interested in Theosophy. The public lecture he delivered dealt with the theme Theosophy and Modern Science.
During this year interest on the part of student circles began to broaden. Ludwig Kleeberg, a student of philology, who had met as a student in Munich two members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, inquired of Frl. von Sivers how the ideas of Rudolf Steiner could best be brought home to university students. Frl. von Sivers replied: “I believe it requires something of the courage of a hero for any one to do the pioneering there. But it is a high ideal. Whoever is ready to incur contempt and slander, the present weapons of the adversaries, may tread the path.” Kleeberg proposed to form a student association devoted to these questions, and Rudolf Steiner wrote to him on October 8, 1904:
“To begin with, I should like to say that this undertaking would be fully justified by the conditions of the spiritual life of the present day. Your merit will be great if you devote your strength to this, for a man best serves his age who understands how to guide in the right direction the forces which dwell in it. To exact observation, our natural-scientific research is today at a turning point. Everywhere—in chemistry, in the theory of evolution, in biology and physics—important things are in the making. Our young researchers will, it is true, still linger with their verdict for a while behind the obvious language of the facts. Still that physical science from below will soon seek a union with spiritual intuitive wisdom from above cannot fail to come about. Today both are plainly tending toward each other. Ostwald’s Energetics, Bunge’s Neovitalism, Reinke’s Dominant Theory, Verworn’s Psychomonism are indeed still faulty, but none the less clearly defined steps of natural scientific philosophers toward the all-embracing world-picture of Theosophy, with its ethical consequences making preparation for a better future. This is the tendency of the times, and in so far as you have felt in yourself the call to work in the direction indicated, you have taken upon yourself an important mission. It will give me pleasure to meet you personally upon my next sojourn in Munich (probably at the end of November). We can then discuss various matters. This is the right time for your purpose. Ten years ago would have been too soon for our universities.”
In these inquiries from student circles, the voice of destiny had once more made itself heard, and Rudolf Steiner did not fail to respond. As a student, Kleeberg sensed immediately that, in Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science, something quite different was to be found from the Oriental trend of Theosophy, that here was something built upon the foundation of Western science. His student acquaintances proceeded, therefore, to draw the attention of other student circles to this work, and he wrote: “The next day Hans Bunge went with our announcement to the Rector of the University of Munich, the mathematician Lindemann, to obtain permission to display it. Professor Lindemann read the notice three times, was most objective, and promised to reply ‘on Monday,...’ When Hans Bunge again went to the Rector, the permit was granted.” After a few necessary alterations in the text, the poster appeared upon the bulletin board of the famous university.
This was an event worth mentioning, because it shows that the free spiritual life had a home at that time in the universities, and was treated by the authorities in a manner quite exemplary.
Kleeberg reports in his memoirs: “On the morning of this day (November 23) Dr. Steiner went to the Rector in order to help remove any possible official opposition to our activities. As he afterward reported, Professor Lindemann was well disposed toward our endeavors, and he had questioned professors of theology, who had nothing to say against Theosophy.” There were similar experiences in the following year among the students at the university and also at a college in Marburg, when there was a question of finding a suitable hall for Rudolf Steiner to lecture in. Kleeberg writes: “I had an announcement put on the bulletin board that Dr. Rudolf Steiner, General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, would give a lecture in Marburg on the subject The Concept of the Spiritual in German Philosophy, to which the students were invited. This notice was signed by the Rector and is still among the souvenirs prized by me.” Contrary to the attitude of some modem universities, the feeling for the importance and the sacredness of the good old tradition of a free spiritual life was evidently still dominant. An interesting comment, and certainly in many respects an important one, is to be found in the notes of the Marburg student as he recorded his impressions of Rudolf Steiner as a personality who “resembles a humanist like Erasmus.” There are, indeed, portraits of Erasmus which exhibit a remarkable resemblance to Rudolf Steiner’s features. In other notes of the time he describes him as follows: “As he came down the street in his dark suit and hat, with the characteristic bow tie, with his umbrella under his arm, while he scanned the row of houses, looking for our number. ...” And elsewhere: “I noticed how passing persons stopped and looked back at him; for they must have thought ‘that man there must be something special.’ Steiner had an unusual appearance, anything but commonplace, which could not fail to be recognized among thousands of others.”
Regarding his experience of one of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures, he reports: “He began his lecture. His gaze, first turned outward, seemed now and then to be turned inward. He spoke out of an inner view. The sentences were formed while he spoke. There was power in his words. In his words dwelt the power to awaken to life the slumbering unison of hearts. The hearts sensed something of the power of which his words were formed, and felt a strengthening of that tie which, without their having previously been clearly conscious of it, connected them with the reality of a larger, broader, and richer world out of which he spoke. His talk went to the heart because it came from the heart that bore within it much of knowledge and of love. An unmistakable Austrian tinge in the speech gave it something original, possessed of primal power, something of the soil, and even lovable. Toward the end, compared with which the beginning had been slow, almost hesitating, as if he spoke in a dream, his speech increased to a symphonic power, until he reached the crowning point in a victorious final cadence, in the words of Goethe:
From that great Power which all beings bind
He frees himself who doth self-mastery find.
“These words as spoken by him sounded veritably like a call of the Good Powers to the struggling and battling human soul. Dr. Steiner spoke during the first evening on the fundamental truths of Theosophy, on reincarnation and karma. Any one could have understood him. He wanted to create a new understanding and to enable people to grasp this fact of life not through fantasy and mystic feeling but through the clear thinking of the scientific method, how to the uncultivated primitive reasoning of the .past and its type of consciousness is added today the power to progress through thinking.”
In Munich the lectures for members took place at number 49 Adalbertstrasse. In other towns new Groups were founded by active helpers and became living germs out of which the work grew. In the center of all this stood Frl. von Sivers, alertly conscious, gifted with exceptional power of organization and firmly anchored in spiritual ideas of Rudolf Steiner. She understood also how to unite and guide opposing influences toward a common goal. The second annual General Meeting took place on October 30, 1904. Dr. Steiner spoke on The Nature of Clairvoyance. In view of the misty and often wrong ideas prevailing, it was necessary to explain that he did not mean by clairvoyance some atavistic endowment from nature, but a faculty of spiritual perception of the supersensible and a resultant spiritual method of research, a faculty latent in man and capable of being developed by systematic schooling. Such an indication was given by him to his pupils in 1904 when, on May 23 at Whitsuntide and again on November 4, he spoke on The Mystery of the Rosicrucians. In order to prevent confusion and misunderstanding of Rosicrucianism, it was necessary to make quite clear the basic facts and concepts, to guard them against misuse, and to free the purely spiritual reality from the earthly impurities with which in some circles it had become mixed. The false or distorted picture of Rosicrucianism produced by these trends in the minds of Dr. Steiner’s contemporaries had to be restored to its original purity and made available in its true nature. From this purpose Rudolf Steiner never deviated during the twenty-one years of life still remaining to him. From 1904 until his death, along with his scientific, artistic, educational, and social activities, he also devoted his service to that spirit which is capable of being apprehended in meditation upon the sign of the Rose Cross, touched upon by Goethe in his poem The Mysteries, and whose forces, continuing out of the historic past into the future, still have so much to give to mankind.
Before entering into detail with regard to the principles of Rosicrucianism, followed through the centuries, it may be well to concern ourselves with the personality of the founder of this spiritual movement. According to historical data given at various times by Rudolf Steiner, it appears that Christian Rosenkreuz promoted the spiritual evolution of humanity through several centuries, consummating his actual earthly mission about the thirteenth or fourteenth century. He worked, that is, as helper and saviour precisely during that historical epoch which Dr. Steiner designated as the beginning of the profoundest “spiritual darkness,” because the evolution of human consciousness at that turning point of time had reached a stage when the intellectualism and materialism then emerging were leading to a darkening of man’s perception in relation to the spiritual world, so that not only the great mass of humanity at that time lost touch with the supersensible, but even those who were initiates no longer had access in direct experience to the spirit world, but were able to draw, as regards essentials, only upon traditional wisdom of earlier times. Even in the preceding centuries it had been possible only to clothe spiritual knowledge in pictures adapted to the level of contemporary consciousness, and we thus find active in the period from the seventh to the twelfth century, for example, those strange singers and rhapsodists who traveled through the land and brought to the castles and the villages news of the spiritual world in the form of mythical pictures. The teachers of these messengers lived in retirement from the world as “hermits of knowledge,” mostly unknown, guarding in quiet the spiritual tradition. In this circle the then embodied individuality of Christian Rosenkreuz went through a special initiation, which mediated to him, as it were, the accumulated spiritual wisdom of historic tradition. Focused in this unique personality as a total synthesis of all religious material and wisdom, there came once again to life the spiritual wisdom of the past.
That period was a turning point, not only in the spiritual, but also in the social life of humanity. It was the period of a rising intellectual culture, and at the same time of the gradually dominating position taken by the culture of the cities, of the increasing emancipation of man from the forces of the soil and of nature, the transition to that form of civilization which finally reached its peak in the nineteenth century. In the survey of this evolutionary trend then beginning, the initiates of the time recognized that in the coming social structure there would come about a complete separation of mankind from the spiritual knowledge, if those who guarded the ancient wisdom remained longer in seclusion as hermits, and if this knowledge, as a consequence, should remain hidden from mankind. A new method of mediating the spiritual must be found. In place of the old initiation in the seclusion of the Mysteries, a form of initiation had to be instituted which might be accessible to all those able to take on the new social pattern of life and who did not want to withdraw themselves from the world’s activity. The process of initiation must be so devised as to be compatible with every kind of external work, so that one could tread the path to spiritual knowledge and yet at the same time continue working actively in the world. Otherwise there would be the danger of humanity’s being split into classes: those doing the practical work of the world and the spiritual workers living a life isolated from the world. A form of initiation such as was no longer adapted to the future way of life had to be replaced. This was the core of the problem for the coming epoch.
When, therefore, the initiated individuality of Christian Rosenkreuz, as the spiritual teacher of a circle of men, inaugurated this new phase of initiation in the fourteenth century, three basic principles had above all to be considered anew: 1. the way of life of the pupil; 2. the relation with the teacher; 3. the method of training in knowledge leading to the supersensible cognition and vision.
The essential new feature of the Rosicrucian principles and Rosicrucian methods is, as Rudolf Steiner showed, that initiation now became modified in such a way as to avoid entirely the isolation peculiar to the old Mysteries and certain later religious forms, and was capable of being carried out in every kind of worldly activity. In this spirit, Rudolf Steiner published in 1904 the first magazine article on Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. In order to harmonize with the necessary change in the form of initiation, spiritual cognition had to be clothed in a form adapted to the consciousness level of our time: that is, capable of being grasped by the thinking of today. Whoever follows this method systematically arrives at clairvoyance, at perception. He who mediates to others that which is beheld must treat it in such a cognitional manner that it can be grasped by the modem man with his thinking. This is the first basic principle of true Rosicrucianism, which is quite apart from all those misuses of the name both in former times and today, which attempt to thrust spiritual cognition back into the sphere of mystical twilight within a restricted circle. Hence Rudolf Steiner expressed himself in one of his lecture cycles in 1907 in the following words:
“For the discovery of spiritual truth, clairvoyance is a necessary prerequisite. But only for its discovery; for today and also for the far future there will be taught esoterically nothing by true Rosicrucianism not capable of being grasped by the ordinary understanding. That is what matters.
“Whoever is unable to grasp Rosicrucian wisdom with his thinking has simply not developed his logical reason far enough. If one absorbs all that modern culture offers, all that is today obtainable, if only one possesses patience and endurance and is not too indolent to learn, it is possible to grasp what Rosicrucianism teaches. . . .
“There cannot be any spiritual cognition which would not fit into everyday life. What one means by Rosicrucian wisdom is that it is of such a nature that it can indeed by discovered by clairvoyant powers but can be comprehended by the ordinary human intellect.”
It follows from the above that the relation of the pupil to the spiritual teacher must be placed upon an entirely new footing. Rudolf Steiner said, therefore, in the same lecture cycle:
“The other side of Rosicrucian wisdom is that the relation between pupil and teacher is essentially different from that existing in other forms of initiation. The attitude of the pupil toward his teacher in Rosicrucian knowledge can by no means be described as faith in authority. I will illustrate this by an example from ordinary life. The Rosicrucian teacher desires to stand in no other relation with his pupil than that of the mathematics teacher with the student of mathematics. Is it possible to speak of the student of mathematics as being dependent upon belief in authority? No. Can one speak of the student of mathematics as not needing his teacher? It is open to any one to answer: yes. For, by means of good books, the way is open to self-tuition. Yet here the way is simply different from that in which one sits vis-a-vis. One can, of course, do this in principle. In the same way, every one who has reached a certain degree of clairvoyance might discover all spiritual truths, but there is nobody who would not think it unreasonable to seek the goal by the roundabout method. Just as unreasonable would it be to say: My inner being must be the source of all spiritual truths. If the teacher knows the rules of mathematics and passes them on to the student, then the student no longer needs to have belief in authority; he then sees into mathematical truths by reason of their inherent rightness, and he needs to do nothing else than to comprehend them aright. It is not different with the whole of spiritual development in the Rosicrucian sense. The teacher is the friend, the adviser, who precedes in the experiences and enables the student to experience these. If one has them once, one needs just as little to accept them on authority as one would the theorem in mathematics that the three angles of a triangle are equal to 180 degrees. The authority of Rosicrucianism really includes no real authority, but rather that which is necessary for the shortening of the road to the highest truths.”
We shall often revert to this basic principle of spiritual training in the true Rosicrucian sense, as consistently manifested at the present time in Anthroposophy, just because on the part of many opponents the unjustifiable reproach constantly appears regarding the so-called “belief in authority.” But only one can make this claim who is ignorant of the very elements of Anthroposophy and who confuses it, therefore, with other movements. From the outset, Anthroposophy was developed on the basis of every one’s cognitional power. Rudolf Steiner expressed this in a lecture course in 1910 as follows:
“I am reckoning upon this, that the revelations which are derived from Rosicrucianism shall not be believed, but shall be put to the test—not superficially by the shallow methods of much modern science, but more and more conscientiously. Accept all that the latest science with its latest methods is able to offer; take all that historical or religious research has produced; it will not worry me. The more you test, the more you will find verified what has been derived from this source. Take nothing on authority.”
Let us now revert briefly to earlier history. It is the destiny of all great renewers of spiritual activity to be attacked by the hostile forces of their time with all possible means. Hence Rudolf Steiner described the historical personality of Christian Rosenkreuz as the “great Martyr” and also named the reasons for the “passion” which that great spiritual helper and his work were compelled to suffer in history, for it was precisely his destined task in the world plan to be the guide to the independent human individuality.
“The sufferings which make him a great martyr resulted from the fact that human beings show so little determination to look into their own souls in order to seek for their growing individuality, and to submit to the inconvenience of not having truth served up to them ready-made on a platter, so to speak, but to win it by earnest striving, by fierce struggle and search. Nothing less than this can be demanded in the name of him who is designated as Christian Rosenkreuz. These demands are in conformity with the present time and with what the present time feels, even if this feeling is also greatly misinterpreted. The present time has an exact feeling that individuality will more and more become enhanced.”
To awaken the higher ego in man and make it the artificer of earthly life, trained through spiritual cognition, is the mission of Christian Rosenkreuz, and Rudolf Steiner named him for this reason “the Great Servant of Christ.”
Before the appearance of this spiritual movement, there had existed in spiritual history many other paths to knowledge. In the East, for example, there was the path of Yoga, which many people have quite wrongly wished to bring to the West in our own time, although it is quite unsuited to present-day consciousness; in the West, the path of Gnosticism and that of Christian anachoretic seclusion of early centuries, and the pursuit of spiritual knowledge in restricted circles up to the Middle Ages. All of these are inadequate for the social structure of today. Rosicrucianism has replaced these since the fourteenth century by the new method of initiation described.
Its principles and methods of spiritual cognition retain their validity, but each succeeding epoch naturally has other content of knowledge to add. Thus the Rosicrucianism of the Middle Ages led to a renewed contact with the world of spirit, but had not progressed so far as to enlarge the sphere of research to include reincarnation and karma, which is the task of modern spiritual science. It is correct, therefore, only to a limited extent to give to spiritual science the name Rosicrucianism; for, so far as its contents are concerned, it has far outstripped those early beginnings and has meanwhile come to embrace in its research all that is today accessible to the modern stage of consciousness. Hence Rudolf Steiner recognized the right to associate spiritual science with Rosicrucianism only in the minds of persons familiar with both in their true forms and thus guarded against confusion and misinterpretation. He said expressly in two lecture courses of 1911:
“Thus the characteristic thing about our Movement is that we reach up to the most recent time with our information regarding the findings of research. In a certain sense, therefore, it is a calumny, even though unconscious, to call us Rosicrucians. . . . Why do we foster Rosicrucian principles? Because Rosicrucian centers of spiritual knowledge once existed, and because we are bound to take into our Movement the findings of Rosicrucianism which are existent and which have been developed. . . . Hence, besides all the rest, the findings of Rosicrucianism are also accepted. . . . We are a modem spiritual science just for the reason that we are not afraid to take up even the latest results of research. Or has some one heard by chance that I used the form of address: ‘My dear Rosicrucian friends’? Well, it is an unwitting calumny when our Movement is called Rosicrucianism. In such things, forbearance is required.”
Beginning with a lecture on November 11, 1904, and continuing during subsequent years, Rudolf Steiner followed on with further clarification and definitions, dealing next with Manicheism, and feeling it his duty to give a true account of the influence of such spiritual movements as Manicheism upon the evolution of human consciousness in a right and a wrong sense.
Manicheism set itself the task to overcome the evil of the world, not only by means of denial and exclusion, but by seeking it out in its own sphere and there redeeming it—a lofty aim that could in those times not be fulfilled and which must be reserved for a distant future. But in Goethe also this idea of overcoming and redeeming evil arises when he leads Faust through the depths of Mephisto’s world before turning to the sphere of Redemption. Rudolf Steiner observed:
“The Manichean teaching filtered through in various ways in later times even into the West, and became buried, so to speak, in its offshoots—then corrupted—as the Faust legend began in the sixteenth century to be written down. In the resuscitation by Goethe of the Faust legend, there is also something of a resuscitation through a gifted intuition of Manicheism.”
Our time must again approach, but in quite a different fashion and at its own level of consciousness, the nature of evil, its recognition and overcoming; and Rudolf Steiner repeatedly dealt with this important problem, as we shall see in his lectures of later years. This did not occur, however, through a continuation of the former Manichean teachings, but out of quite differently constituted forces of cognition, such as belong for the first time to the twentieth century. If the imputation was made later on that his teaching is a sort of resuscitation of the Manicheism, the ignorance of his life’s work thereby displayed was nothing short of culpable, for only a little study of his work is required to show upon what entirely different sources he has drawn. Judgment of such a lifework must not be made all too lightly.
In the winter season of 1904—05, in addition to the above special lectures, Dr. Steiner continued the course on The History of the Middle Ages up to the Time of the Great Inventions and Discoveries; and spoke on German Mysticism and Its Presuppositions, and on former and contemporary apocalypses; continued the introductory lectures in the Architektenhaus; and gave for members a series of lectures on The Planetary Evolution. Lecture tours to thirteen or more German cities brought an ever increasing number of persons into contact with the content of the Movement represented by him. People from other regions, both at home and abroad, came to attend meetings, while new Branches were being opened and personal instruction to individuals was continued. In order to render such spiritual instruction available to a growing circle—for Rudolf Steiner had the wish that this possibility should be open to all and not just his personal pupils—there appeared in his magazine in 1904 further articles on the theme of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, which were supplemented in later years by articles under the title Stages of Higher Knowledge. In these he enlarged the esoteric information for readers to test freely upon themselves.
It is the purpose of Anthroposophy not only to be a guide to knowledge, to add a limitless number of new findings to the plenitude of truths and facts already established. This it has, indeed, done; but the esoteric kernel of Anthroposophy is to be found in the spiritual training to be had through its means. The essential thing to note is that earlier methods of research are insufficient for the purpose of acquiring the new supersensible content of knowledge.
It has always been known to every spiritual leader of the past that he who desires to arrive at perception of the spirit world must first change himself. Present-day science cannot be said to be either moral or immoral; it is simply unmoral; in other words, it is indifferent as to what kind of person a researcher is. One can be ethically unsound and yet make the greatest technical inventions. Upon such a foundation, true supersensible research cannot possibly be built. The inner process of purification is an unconditional prerequisite. The stages of higher knowledge are thus, in the first instance, stages of inner self-transformation. In the Mystery centers of ancient times the training of novices was entrusted to initiates in strict seclusion from the outside world. This required a lengthy period of living apart from the outer world and in accordance with strict rules. It was thus easier to foster the inner change and to keep watch over it. The great problem for spiritual leaders of today is that a demand for seclusion can no longer be made upon those who are being taught. On the contrary, the pupil is expected to fulfill his ordinary daily tasks in even more than the usual measure. A second problem calling for a fresh solution is that the pupil has now to accomplish the process of transformation without the cultic aid or what was called formerly—in a good sense—the magic aid of the initiate. He must accomplish this entirely by means of his own forces. This crucial change in the old methods of initiation with all its determining consequences for mankind, has been presented by Rudolf Steiner in his mystery drama, The Souls' Awakening.
But the spiritual continuity of esoteric training could not be allowed to become lost. In other words, an entirely new way of initiation had to be discovered, bringing within the reach of all the unfolding of the spiritual forces and organs and yet making possible at the same time an uninterrupted pursuit of wordly activity. Dr. Steiner discovered this new way of initiation, suited to our times, and made it accessible to the whole of mankind. It is described in his work Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, of which the first chapters appeared in 1904, and also in many other writings. What opposition and conflicts this revelation of the hitherto hidden path of initiation met with on the part of those conservative circles which still harbored some knowledge of these things we shall have to describe later. For in these matters also traditions exist which are firmly held to, in spite of their having been outstripped by the requirements of the age.
The relation also of teacher with pupil in matters spiritual required now an entirely new basis—that of freedom. The author of such a book as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity had naturally to avoid rigidly any possible form of dependence such as existed in the old Mysteries between priest and neophyte or in the Middle Ages between teacher and pupil. Indeed, this had to be discouraged particularly in the case of any pupil who might tend to lean upon the teacher. Whoever has had the good fortune to receive personally from Rudolf Steiner an introduction to the path of spiritual discipline has also experienced how consistently he referred the pupil back to his own resources and impulses. The good force of confidence, worthy of the human being, was permissible, and spiritual guidance and counsel based upon such confidence is, indeed, of special importance when, after the preparatory stages of knowledge have been achieved, the pupil nears the “Guardian of the Threshold”; but he who was unwilling to complete anew each single step by means of his own judgment and self-won insight could not justly appeal for support. Dr. Steiner might often leave such pupils to their own devices until the confidential relation was re-established on the basis of complete inner freedom. How unreasonable, therefore, barren of all sense of reality, was the reproach by some of his opponents that there existed a state of dependence of the student upon Dr. Steiner. Among the thousands of persons who occupied themselves with his teaching, there may have been one here and there who indulged in gossip. Dr. Steiner could as little enjoin silence as he could be everywhere at once. But whoever studies his writings and lectures discovers again and again impressive warnings and stipulations that the pupil must practice self-reliance and self-examination, and that he could tread the path of discipline which had been laid down only after having fulfilled these prior conditions. Indeed, this is the central point of his method for gaining knowledge of the supersensible worlds in the present age. Without self-discipline and ethical training, no true spiritual knowledge is possible.
Many persons who were not willing to acknowledge all the results of research announced by Rudolf Steiner bore witness, none the less, to the fact that the ethical suggestions set forth in his writings can be of the greatest value to anyone who uses them only in daily life, without pursuing the further path of training. All this was for him, however, only the first condition, the key with which to unlock the gate to the spirit worlds, the path along which men could develop, together with spiritual purification, the necessary perceptive organs for higher planes of knowledge. In those publications of the year 1904—05 such planes of knowledge were designated Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition—a terminology better adapted to the philosophically trained mentality of Western man than the expressions used in other systems. But, just as outdated terminology and methods were replaced by those suited to the age, so also was it made clear that thinking, instead of continuing to be the dead abstract philosophizing of the nineteenth century, could through the right schooling become a spiritual force in the supersensible organism of man, capable of developing spiritual organs of cognition.
In addition to the publications mentioned, there appeared in the magazine during the year 1904 articles entitled: Aristotle on the Mystery Drama; Kant’s Theory of Knowledge; Herder; but also articles of an entirely different character—Capacities Achieved in an Earlier Life or Their Inheritance from Parents; Questions on Reincarnation; and also the extremely informative articles under the title Out of the Akashic Record. As later published in book form these last include chapters on Our Atlantean Ancestors; The Lemurian Race; The Hyperborean and the Polarian Epoch; The Origin of the Earth; and others. In the volume Occult Science—an Outline, published in 1909, we find a comprehensive presentation of these findings from research.
During this year Dr. Steiner gave a completely new basis for an inclusive view of the history of the earth and of man. There existed at that time mainly two opposite methods of presentation of prehistoric evolution. One of these, then usual in contemporary science and paleontology, but later called in question, was based one-sidedly upon geological and other remains, leading to an attempt to reconstruct on these meager relics the form, character, social structure, and life-habits of prehistoric man. Opposed to this entirely materialistic theory was a point of view based only upon spiritual traditions, upon ancient Oriental texts and their more or less obscure interpretation, such as were imported, for example, by European Orientalists and, in specialized forms, by certain Theosophical circles.
A phenomenon of great historical significance now appeared, in that Rudolf Steiner combined within himself two faculties which were able unitedly to do full justice to both sides of the problem. He possessed the complete scientific equipment of Western culture—note, for example, references to his article on geology and on the origin of the earth in the contemporary Pierer Encyclopaedia—and was recognized as an expert on natural-scientific phenomena and theory. On the other hand, he was in the highest degree conversant with both Western and Eastern spiritual traditions, as is shown by his lectures and writings. At the same time, he had the unusual faculty of an exact, systematically trained clairvoyance, by means of which it was possible to approach prehistoric events, not only in thought or hypothetically, but with actual vision. Through this union of gifts the possibility occurred for the first time in the sphere of human cognition of giving a true picture of the prehistoric period in the life of the Earth and of man, combining both matter and spirit.
Only after the passage of one or two decades did modem science first begin to include the metaphysical—myths, spiritual traditions, etc.— in the sphere of prehistoric research. After the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century, a copious literature developed, much of it obviously based upon the results of Rudolf Steiner’s research, although often without acknowledgment of the source of information. In the cause of scientific truth and conscientiousness it is necessary, therefore, to remind the world that Rudolf Steiner had already guided research in that direction a quarter-century earlier, not in a hypothetical way, but with fully equipped expert scientific knowledge, supplemented by an exact clairvoyant observation. What is contained in his writings and lectures since 1904 constitutes the foundation for a new epoch in prehistoric research.