The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Let me begin this third lecture with an image Plato used to express what he had to say about the eternity of the human mind.

Socrates facing death stands before his pupils. During the next hours the end of the great teacher must happen. Facing his death, Socrates speaks about the eternity of the spiritual core in the human being. What he has to say about the indestructibility of that which lives in the human being makes a deep impression. In few hours, life will no longer be in the body which stands before his disciples. In few hours, Socrates whom one can see with eyes will no longer be. In this situation, Socrates makes it clear to his disciples that he who will no longer stand before them in few hours whom they will no longer have is not that who is so valuable for them; that this Socrates who yet stands before them cannot be that who transmitted the great teaching of the human soul and the human mind to them. He makes it clear to his disciples that the true sage has made himself independent of the whole sensuous world. Everything disappears that the sensory impressions, that the carnal desires and wishes can supply to him just by means of a really wise world view. That is only valuable to the sage which the senses can never give. If only that disappears which stands before the senses, then this remains unchanged to which no senses can get. Proofs—they may be the sharpest, the most brilliant ones—would hardly have a stronger effect than the conviction which expresses itself in the immediate sensation, which comes from the heart of the sage at the moment when the external sensuous situation seems to be completely contradictory to his words. This is a conviction which is expressed with the consecration of death, a conviction which simply testifies because it is expressed in this situation how powerful this view has become in the sage, so that he defeats the event which befalls him in few hours.

Which effect has this conversation exerted on the disciples? Phaedo, the disciple, says that he was at this moment in a situation in which normally those not are who experience such an event. Neither pain nor joy penetrated his heart. He was above any grief and desire. With peaceful rest and equanimity Phaidon took up the teachings which were handed over to him in view of death.

If we put this picture before our souls, we think of two things. Plato, the great sage of Greece, tries to support his conviction of the eternity of the human mind not only using logical proofs or philosophical arguments, but while he let a high developed human being express it in view of death. This conviction expresses itself as something that lives immediately in the human soul. Plato wanted to suggest this way that the question of the eternity of the human soul cannot be answered in every situation. We can answer it only if we have developed to the height of mind like Socrates who dedicated his whole life to the internal consideration of the soul; a wise man who possessed knowledge of that which reveals itself if the human being directs his look to his inside. He shows us the strength of the immediate conviction that something lives in him about which he knows that it is imperishable because he has recognised it. It depends on that. Every reasonable human being in this field will never say that a proof of the immortality of the human soul can be given in any situation, but the conviction of the eternity of the human mind must be acquired; the human being must have got to know the life of the soul. If he knows this life, if he has become engrossed in its qualities, he knows as exactly as one knows of another object if one knows its qualities, he knows about the human mind, and the strength of conviction speaks in his inside. Not only this, but in an important, essential moment Plato lets Socrates express this conviction: at a moment when any sensory impression seems to be contradictory to the expressed truth.

Why do the disciples understand this great teaching, why does it make sense to them? It makes sense to them because they are lifted over desire and harm by the power of Socrates’ speech; over that which ties the human being to the immediately transient, to the sensuous, to the everyday life. Thus it should be expressed that the human being does not know about the qualities of the spirit in any situation, but only if he rises above that which ties him to the everyday life if he removed desire and harm coming from the impressions of the everyday life, if he can look up to a solemn moment when the everyday life does no longer speak when the events which cause harm or joy otherwise do no longer cause harm or joy. The human being is more receptive for the topmost truth at such moments.

This gives us the sense to understand how theosophy thinks about the eternity of the soul. It does not speak in this sense of immortality that it tries to prove this immortality like another matter. No, it gives instructions how the human being can transport himself gradually into that position and condition of the spirit in which he experiences the mind in his own inside really, gets to know it according to its qualities, while he tries to transport himself into the life of the spirit. Then it realises that from the view of the spirit immediately the conviction of the eternity of this spirit comes to the fore. As well as we do not recognise an object which is before our sensory eye by a proof, but because it shows its qualities simply through perception, the theosophist puts the question of the immortality of the human soul in another form than one normally hears it. He puts the question: how can we perceive internal, spiritual life? How become we engrossed in our inside, so that we hear the spirit speaking in our inside?

At all times and places where one tried to bring up disciples for understanding of these questions, one demanded from these disciples first of all that they go through a preparation time. Plato demanded—as you probably know—from his disciples that they had penetrated into the spirit of mathematics before they tried to take up his teachings about the spiritual life. Which sense did this Platonic preparation have? The disciple should have understood the spirit of mathematics. We heard in the first lecture what this spirit of mathematics offers. It offers truths in the most elementary way which is elated above all sensory truths; truths which we cannot see with the eyes and cannot seize with the hands.

Even if we illustrate the teaching of the circle, the teaching of the numerical ratios to ourselves sensually, we know that we make an illustration with it only. We know that the teaching of the circle, of the triangle is independent of this sensuous view. We draw a triangle on the board or on paper to us, and by means of this sensuous triangle we try to get to the sentence that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. However, we know that this sentence is true for any triangle whichever shape we may give it. We know that this sentence makes sense to us if we are used to find such sentences disregarding the sensuous impressions disregarding any sensuous view. We acquire the simplest, most trivial truths this way. Mathematics only gives the most trivial super-sensible truth, but it gives super-sensible truth. Because it gives the simplest, the most trivial and super-sensible truth which is got the easiest, Plato demanded from his disciples that they learn in mathematics how one gets to the super-sensible truth. What does one learn by the fact that one gets to super-sensible truth? One learns to conceive a truth without desire and harm, without immediate, everyday interest, without personal prejudices, without that which meets us in life wherever we go.

Why does the mathematical truth appear with such clearness and invincibility? Because no interest, no personal sympathy and antipathy play a role in its knowledge. That means that no prejudices are contributory factors. We do not care completely that two times two are four; we do not care how big the angles of a triangle may be et cetera. It is this freedom of any sensuous interest, of any personal desire and listlessness, which Plato had in mind when he demanded from his disciples that they become engrossed in the spirit of mathematics. After they had got used to looking up to truth without interest, without interference of passion and desire, without interference of everyday prejudices, then Plato considered his pupils worthy to behold the truth of those questions against which people normally have the biggest prejudices.

Which human being could treat other questions at first also uninterested, without desire and harm, as the mathematical truth two times two four, or, the sum of angles of a triangle is 180 degrees? But not before the human being was able to see the highest truth of soul and spirit in a similar, uninterested light free of grief and desire, he was mature to approach these questions. Without desire and grief the human being must treat these questions. He must be beyond that which appears in his soul every day, at every opportunity, wherever he goes. Where desire and grief and personal interest interfere in our answer, there we cannot answer the questions objectively, in the true light. Plato also wanted to say this when he let the dying Socrates speak about the immortality of the human mind. It cannot be a matter of proving immortality in any situation, but it only concerns the question: how does one get the perception of the qualities of the human soul, so that—if one gets it—the strength of conviction flows from our soul by itself?

This also formed the basis of all those teaching sites in which one tried to lead the students to the highest truth in an appropriate way. It is only a matter of course that the questions: does the human mind live before birth and after death? And: which is the destination of the human being in time and in eternity? that these questions cannot be treated by most human beings without interest. It is a matter of course that any personal interest, any hope and fear accompanying the human being constantly are connected with the question of the eternity of the spirit. One called mystery schools in ancient times those sites where the highest questions of the spiritual life were taught and answered to the students.

In such mystery sites the pupils were not taught about such questions in the abstract. Truths were handed down to them only if they were able according to their state of soul, of mind, and of the whole personality to see these questions in the right light. They were in this state beyond desire and harm, beyond fear and hope which tie the human being to themselves day by day, hour for hour. These passions, these contents of feeling had to be removed from the personality at first. Without fear and hope, purified of them, the pupil had to approach the mystery site.

Purification was the preparation which the pupil had to go through. Without this, the questions were not answered to him. The purification of passions, of desire and harm, of fear and hope was the precondition to climb up to the summit on which the question of immortality can be treated. Because one was clear to himself about the fact that then the pupil can look in the eye of spirit as well as somebody who delves in a mathematical field sees in the eye of pure objective mathematics: without passion, without being tormented by fear and hope.

We have seen in the last lecture that desire and harm are the expressions of the human soul above all. The inner experience, the very own experience of the person is desire and harm. Desire and harm must go through purification first, before the soul can get to the spirit. Desire and harm are bound to the everyday impressions of the senses, to the immediate experiences of the person, to the interests concerning his person. What does desire normally do to us, what does harm do to us? That which interests us as a personality. That causes desire and harm which disappears with our death more or less. We must leave this narrow circle of that which causes desire and harm in order to get higher knowledge. Our desire and harm must be separated, must be drawn off from these everyday interests and be taken up to quite different worlds. The human being has to lift desire and harm, the wishes of his soul over the everyday, the sensuous things; he must bind them to the highest experiences of the spirit.

He must look up with these wishes and desires to that to which one attributes a shadowy or abstract existence usually. What could be more abstract for the human being of the everyday life than the pure, unsensuous thought? The human beings of everyday life who stick to their personalities with desire and harm already flee from the simplest, most trivial super-sensible truth. Mathematics is widely avoided just because it is not accompanied by any interest, desire, and harm in the everyday sense of the word. The pupil had to be purified in the mystery schools from this everyday desire and harm.

What lived only as an image of thought in his inside and flitted away like a shadowy formation, he had to be attached to it, and he had to love this like the human being is attached to the everyday with his whole soul. One called the change of the passions and desires metamorphosis. There is a new reality for him afterwards; a new world makes impressions on him. That which leaves the usual person cold which touches him as something sober and cold is the world of ideas. It is this to which his desire and harm are bound now, at which one looks like something real, and which becomes a reality now like table and chairs.

Only if the human being has progressed so far that the world of ideas, usually called abstract, moves, enchants, soaks up his soul, if this shadowy reality of thoughts surrounds him in such a way that he lives and works within this world as well as the everyday person moves in the everyday, sensuous reality which he can see and feel—if this metamorphosis of the whole human being has happened, he is in the state in which the spirit in the environment speaks to him; then he experiences this spirit like a living language, then he perceives the Word that has become flesh and expresses itself in all things.

If the everyday person looks out and sees the lifeless minerals around him, he sees them controlled by physical laws, controlled by the laws of gravitation, magnetism, heat, light et cetera. The human being realises the laws to which these beings are subject using his thoughts. But just these thoughts do not speak to him with the same concrete reality, do not mean that which his hands touch what his eyes see. After this metamorphosis of the human being has taken place, he thinks not only of shadow-images like of the physical laws, then these shadow-images start speaking the living language of the spirit to him. The spirit speaks to him from the surroundings. From the plants, from the minerals, from the different genera of the animals the spirit of the surroundings speaks to the human being who lives without desire and harm.

Theosophy points to a development, not to an abstract truth, to a concrete truth, not to logical proofs, if it speaks about the world of ideas, of the spiritual world. It talks about that which the human beings should become; it does not speak about proofs. Nature speaks to a human being differently who has purified his soul, so that it does no longer stick to the everyday; does not have the everyday pains and joys, but higher pains and higher joy and higher bliss at the same time which flow from the pure spirit of the things. The theosophical ethics expresses that pictorially. It expresses in two marvellous pictures that the human being can recognise the highest truth only at the moment when he has lifted his senses over the everyday pain and the everyday joy of the things. As long as the eye sticks to the things with joy and pain, in the everyday sense of the word, as long it cannot perceive the spirit round itself. As long as the ear still has the immediate sensitiveness of the everyday life, as long it cannot hear the living word through which the spiritual things round us speak to us. That is why the theosophical teaching of development sees the demand in two pictures which the human being has to put to himself if he wants to attain the knowledge of the spirit.

Before the eyes can see,
They must be incapable of tears.
Before the ear can hear,
It must have lost its sensitiveness ...

(Mabel Collins Light on the Path)

The eye which cherishes the spirit can no longer have tears of joy and tears of pain in the everyday sense. Because if the human being has advanced to this level of development, his self-consciousness speaks in a different, in a new way to him. Then we look into the covered sanctuary of our inside in a quite new way. Then the human being perceives himself as a member of the spiritual world. Then he perceives himself as something that is pure and beyond any sensuous because he has taken off desire and harm in the sensuous sense. Then he hears self-consciousness in his inside speaking to him as the mathematical truth speaks indifferently to him, but in such a way as mathematical truth also speaks in another sense. Mathematical truth namely is true and eternal in certain way. What appears to us in the language of mathematics, which is free of sensuality, is true regardless of time and space. Regardless of time and space that speaks in our inside to us which appears before our soul when it has purified itself up to desire and harm of spiritual matters. Then the eternal speaks to us in its significance. The eternal with its significance spoke to the dying Socrates that way, and the current of the immediate spirituality went over to the disciples. From that which he received as an experience from the dying Socrates the disciple Phaedo expresses that desire and harm in the usual sense must do damage if the spirit wants to speak directly to us.

We can observe this in the so-called abnormal phenomena of the human life. These phenomena are apparently far from our considerations of the first part of my lecture. However, considered in the true sense of the word, they are very close to these considerations. These are the phenomena which are called abnormal conditions of the soul, like hypnotism, somnambulism and clairvoyance.

What does hypnosis mean in the human life? Today it cannot be my task to explain the various performances which have to be carried out if we want to transport a human being into the condition similar to sleep which we call hypnosis. Either this happens—I want to mention this only by the way—by looking at a shining object whereby the attention is concentrated in particular, or also by simply speaking to the person concerned in suitable way, while we say: you fall asleep now.—Thereby we can produce this condition of hypnosis, a kind of sleep, in which the everyday waking consciousness is extinguished. The human being who has been transported into hypnotic sleep that way stands or sits before the hypnotist, motionless, without impression in the usual sense of the word. Such a hypnotised person can be stung with needles, can be hit, his limbs can be moved to other positions—he perceives nothing, he feels nothing of that which would have caused pain or maybe a pleasant sensation, a tickle, we want to say, to him under other circumstances, with waking consciousness. In the usual sense desire and harm are eliminated from the being of such a hypnotised person. However, desire and harm are the basic qualities of the soul, the middle part of the human being, as I have explained in the last talk. What does hypnotism eliminate? It basically eliminates the soul of the three parts, body, soul and mind. We have eliminated the middle part of the human being. He is not active, he does not feel desire and harm in the usual sense; it does not hurt him what would hurt him if his soul functioned normally.

How is the being active now in such a person if you speak to such a hypnotised person, if you give him some orders? If you say to him: get up, do three steps, he carries out these orders. You can still give him more intricate, more manifold orders—he carries out them. You can put down sensuous objects to him, for example, a pear, and say to him, this is a glass ball. He will believe it. What lies sensually before him has no significance for him. It is decisive for him that you say to him, it is a glass ball. If you ask him: what do you have before yourself? He will answer to you: a glass ball.—Your mind, what is in you if you are the hypnotist and what you think, what comes as a thought from you has a direct effect on the actions of this person.

He follows the orders of your mind with his body automatically. Why does he follow these orders? Because his soul is eliminated, because his soul does not intervene between his body and your mind. At the moment when his soul is active with its desire and harm again, when it is able to feel pain, to perceive again, at this moment only the soul decides whether these orders are to be carried out; whether it has to accept the thoughts of the other. If you face another person in normal condition, his mind works on you. But his mind, his thoughts work on your soul first of all. It works on you like desire and harm, and you decide how to react to the thoughts, to the will actions of the other. If the soul is silent, if the soul is eliminated, then it does not position itself between your body and the mind of the other, then the body follows the impressions of the hypnotist, the impressions of his mind will-lessly as the mineral follows the physical laws. Elimination of the soul is the essential part of hypnosis. Then the foreign thought, the thought located beyond the person, works with the strength of a physical law on this person who is in a condition similar to sleep. That works like a physical law which inserts itself between this spiritual natural force and the body, and this is the soul. Between your own mind and your own body the soul inserts itself. We carry out what we grasp as a thought what we grasp thinking in the everyday life only because it transforms itself into our personal wishes that it is accepted, is found right from our desire and our harm that, in other words, our mind speaks to our soul at first and our soul carries out the orders of our own mind.

Now one may ask: why does not the highest member of the human being, the mind, face the hypnotist if the soul is eliminated, if the hypnotist faces the hypnotised? Why does the mind of the person slumber, why is it inactive?—We get this clear in our mind if we know that for the human being during his earthly incarnation the interaction of mind, soul and body is essential that the mind of the human being understands the environment, the sensory reality only because the soul provides this understanding. If our eye receives an impression from without, the soul has to be the mediator, so that this impression can penetrate up to our mind. I perceive a colour. The eye provides the external impression for me because of its organisation. The mind thinks about the colour. It forms a thought. But between the thought and the external impression the reagent of the soul inserts itself, and that is why the impression becomes only its own inner life becomes an experience of the soul. The mind can speak only to the own soul, to the personal soul in the earthly human being. If you eliminate the soul by means of hypnosis, then the mind is no longer able to express itself in the hypnotised person.

You have taken away the organ of the mind by which it can express itself by which it can be active. You have not taken away the mind from the person. You have eliminated his soul and made it inactive. But because the mind can be active in the human being only in the soul, it cannot be active in the body. Hence, we say, he is in an unconscious state. That means nothing else than: his mind sleeps. Now we understand why the hypnotised person becomes so receptive to the mental impressions which go out from the hypnotist. He becomes receptive because nothing psychic inserts itself between him and the hypnotist. There the thought of the other becomes an immediate natural force, there the thought becomes creative. The thought is creative, and the spirit is creative in the whole nature. It only does not appear directly.

Eliminating the soul at the same time we have made the consciousness of the hypnotised person inactive like in other similar abnormal states. We have transported the person into an unconscious state. We can get an image of this process, if we imagine that we bring a sleeping person from one room into another and let him sleep there some time. Impressions are round him, but he does not perceive them. He knows nothing about his surroundings. If we bring him, without he has awoken, back into the room in which he has slept before then he has been in another room without knowing it, then he has not perceived anything of the other room. It depends on the fact that we perceive our surroundings if we want to call these surroundings “real.” A lot may be round us, may be real, and may be essential—we know nothing of it because we do not perceive it. We do not comply with it, our activity is not relating to it because we perceive nothing.

In such a state the hypnotised person faces the hypnotist. Forces go out from the hypnotist; forces are effective which are mind-impregnated with the thoughts of the hypnotist. They go out from him and have an effect on the hypnotised. But the hypnotised knows nothing about it. He speaks, but he speaks only according to the mind of the hypnotist. He is active, so to speak, without being his own spectator—like people in the everyday life—without observing the object of his activity at the same time. He is, so to speak, in the same situation concerning the mind of the hypnotist as the sleeping person who was transported into another room and knows nothing of that which takes place round him. The human being can be transported into surroundings time and again where the spirit speaks to him. He can be in surroundings where the spirit speaks to him. Now and at every moment you are also in surroundings in which the spirit speaks to you, because everything round us is done by the spirit. The physical laws are spirit, only that the human being perceives this spirit in the shadowy reflection of the thoughts in the usual view. This spirit is spirit just as the spirit which is active in the hypnotist if he works on the hypnotised person.

Compared with his spiritual surroundings the human being is also in the normal, in the everyday waking state in a state in which his senses and his perception are not open for the spirit, even if he is not in such a mental condition like the hypnotised. If this perception is open for the spirit which is in the environment if the things of the spiritual world which are round us speak a loud, clear language to us, then this can only happen if we are in the normal life in a similar situation like the hypnotised toward the hypnotist. The hypnotised person experiences no pain, he does not perceive needle stings, and he does not perceive a blow. Desire and harm in the usual sense of the word are extinguished.

If we get in our everyday life, in the waking consciousness to that state which I have described in the first part of my lecture—because the theosophical world view should consider a higher developmental state of the human being like Plato, like the mystery priest demanded it from his disciples—If we remove that which touches us as an everyday desire or harm which moves our eyes directly to tears or makes our ears sensitive, which fulfils us with fear and hope—If we remove what constitutes our everyday life, if we make ourselves free from this world and experience the described metamorphosis of the mind then we can get to a similar state toward the spiritual world—but consciously—like the hypnotised toward the hypnotist in the abnormal sense. Then our eyes and ears are active in the same way as before; we have our waking consciousness, but we do not allow to be touched by the everyday objects within this waking consciousness. This metamorphosis must take place with the human being. He has to perceive the spiritual environment, the language of the spirit in this environment without desire and grief like the hypnotised hears the thoughts and words of the hypnotist in his unusual state.

Only experience of this field can be the determining factor. If the great basic principles of the theosophical ethics are fulfilled to a certain degree, if the human being has got to the state where he faces spiritual truth really as the human being faces the mathematical truth in his everyday life, objectively, without desire and grief, then the spirit of the environment speaks to the human being, then the spirit is not engaged to the impressions of his senses, as little as the hypnotised is tied to that which works on his senses. The hypnotist works only on the hypnotised person who does not have desire and grief, and the spirit has the same effect only on the clairvoyant human being who does not have desire and grief. In order to have such sensitivity of the environment with waking consciousness it is necessary to have gone through a development, so that we are able with correctly functioning mind, with correctly active reason to pass between the things and still to let speak the spirit to ourselves. Clairvoyance is called that level the pupil has attained on which he is able to perceive the world round himself free of desire and grief. If the human being has developed so far that his passions and desires are silent in him and loves this state without passion and desire as the everyday human being loves the things round himself, then he has become mature to perceive the spirit round himself. Then he does no longer wish what he wished in the everyday life, and then he wishes in the spiritual world.

Then, however, his thoughts, saturated with his higher wishes, also become effective forces with his purified soul. The thoughts of the human being are only abstract thoughts, because the everyday human being inserts the soul with its personal wishes between himself, between his spiritual inside and everything else.

Only this is the reason why our thoughts must be taken up by the soul, why our thoughts must be transformed into the personality to become effective. Personal wishes approach the thoughts of the individual human being. If I have an ideal, I want to convert this ideal into reality according to my personal wishes. As a personality I must have an interest—it is in the everyday life in such a way—in that which a thought illuminates to me if I should carry out it. As a person I have to consider a thought, a will as desirable. My personal wish binds itself to the thought which would be, otherwise, independent of time and space because what is true in the thought is true at all times. If we go far beyond these personal wishes, we develop in the sense as the mystery priests demanded it from their disciples, then our wishes are transformed in such a way that we bind the whole strength of our soul not to our personal interest, but we follow up that which lives in the spiritual realm more affectionately and more devotedly. Then this thought, the mind which lives in us does not become dull and abstract like in the everyday person, it does not have to penetrate the outside world by means of the soul experiences, then it flows into the outside world, so to speak, from the innermost mind of the human being without being touched by the immediate self, without having to go through the personal self. It does not become dull by the outside world, it moves up to us like a natural force; it moves up to us like the force of crystallisation, like the magnetic force which goes out from the magnet and arranges the pattern of the iron filings. Like these forces which surround us in nature as reality the thought free of wishes works on our surroundings, on the reality around us. Knowledge of our environment, knowledge of our fellow men becomes fertile in quite different sense if we have advanced to such thoughts disregarding our personal wishes. Then that appears which merges as a strength of thought of this developed human being into his fellow men.

Then the thought appears as an organising natural force with really unselfish human beings. About the great, true sages—not only with the scholars, but with those who brought wisdom to humankind , it is told to us that they were healers at the same time that a strength went out from them which provided help, release of physical and mental sufferings to their fellow men. This was the case because they had advanced to such a development through which the thought becomes a strength through which the mind can stream directly into the world. The knowledge which is free of wishes this way which is unselfish knowledge which streams into the human being as the strength which, otherwise, only serves the self, such strength enables the human being to heal spiritually.

Only in principle I can indicate the preconditions of such a spiritual healing. A precondition of the so-called spiritual healing in the theosophical sense can be that the human being goes beyond his limited, everyday self. In a certain sense the human being has to eliminate his own soul-life if he wants to become clairvoyant, a healer, extinguishing what belongs preferably to him as a personality. Such a human being does not become completely insensible and dull that way. O no, on the contrary, such a human being becomes sensitive in a higher sense and more sensitive than he was before. Such a human being develops a susceptibility which is not, however, that which the senses supply in the everyday life, but he develops a susceptibility of a much higher type. Is the susceptibility of the human being lower than that of the lower animal which has a pigmentation mark only instead of an eye by which it can have a light impression at most? Is it different with the human being because he transforms the impression which he receives in the visual purple into the perception of the colour in the environment? As the eye of the human being relates to the pigmentation mark of the lower animal, the spiritual organism of the clairvoyant relates to the organism of the undeveloped human being. The elimination of the personality is the sacrifice. The effacement of the personality releases the voice of spirit in our environment. The effacement of the personality solves the riddles of nature for us. We have to efface our soul-world. We have to overcome desire and grief in the everyday sense of the word. This is necessary to get to a certain knowledge and higher development.

Now, however, an effacement of the own personality in certain sense is also necessary with a single task which has an infinite importance for the everyday human life, with the human educational system. In every adolescent human being, from the birth of the child, through the development years, it is the spirit in the innermost core of the human being which should develop; the spirit is hidden within the body at first, it remains a secret within the movements of the soul of the adolescent human being. If we face this spirit, we make the adolescent human being dependent of our interests—I do not even want to say of our desires and passions, then we let our mind flow into the human being and we basically develop what is in us in the growing human being. But I do not even want to speak of the fact that we let our wishes and desires be active with the education of an adolescent human being, but only that the educator lets speak his mind only too often, yes that it is almost a rule that the educator asks his reason above all what has to happen concerning this or that education measure. But he does not take into consideration that he has a growing mind before himself which can form only according to its nature if it can develop according to this nature universally freely and without restrictions, and if the educator gives it the opportunity of this development. We face a strange human mind. We must allow a strange human mind to work on ourselves if we are educators. As we have seen that in hypnosis, in the unusual state the spirit has a direct effect on the human person, the developing mind of the child works and must work in another form directly on us if we have the child before ourselves. However, we can develop this mind only if we are able to extinguish ourselves, just as with other higher performances, if we are able—without interference of our self—to be a servant of the human mind entrusted to our education if this human mind is given the opportunity to develop freely. As long as we allow our selfish concepts and demands to flow against the mind, as long as we set our self with its peculiarities against this mind, as long we see this mind just as little, as the eye which is still involved in desire and grief sees the spirit of the environment clairvoyantly.

On an everyday level the educator has to fulfil a higher ideal. He fulfils this ideal if he understands the mysterious, but obvious principle of the complete selflessness and understands the effacement of the own self. This effacement of the own self is the sacrifice by means of which we perceive the spirit in our environment. We perceive the spirit in unusual states if we become free of desire and grief in unusual way. We perceive the spirit clairvoyantly if we are without desire and grief in the normal state, with full waking consciousness. We lead the spirit in the right thinking if we lead it unselfishly within education. This unselfish ideal as an attitude which the educator has daily to strive for has to illuminate his work. But just because an immediate necessity of our cultural development is in this field because in this field a true, unselfish attitude must be produced for the purposes of our culture, therefore, it is the field of the educational ideals above all where theosophy can appear as something creative where it can render humankind a most valuable service. Somebody who is devoted to the theosophical life who learns bit by bit to open the senses to the spirit by the development of selflessness has the best basis for a pedagogic activity, and he will work on the educational task of humankind in the theosophical sense. The educator needs to follow only this, above all. Apart from that, he does not need to show theosophical dogmas or principles at every opportunity. It does not depend on dogmas, principles and teachings; it depends on the life and on the transformation of the forces which flow from selflessness and thereby from the perception of the spirit. It depends on it and not on the fact that the educator has taken up the teachings of theosophy. He is theosophist because he sees something like riddles in every developing human life which appears like a being before the soul whom he has to develop as a mind, while he has to train the mind. A riddle of nature which he has to solve should be any growing human being to the educator. If he is an educator with such an attitude, then the educator is a theosophist in the best sense of the word. He is it because he approaches any human being, any adolescent human being with a true, holy shyness and understands the words of Jesus: “anything you failed to do for one of these, however insignificant, you failed to do for me.” You did it to me, to God who has become a human being because you recognised and cultivated the divine spirit in the least of my brothers.

Somebody who penetrates himself with such an attitude faces as a human being other human beings quite differently. He sees the divine spirit, the developing spirit in the least of his brothers. His relation to his fellow men fulfils him in another sense with seriousness and dignity, with shyness and respect if he considers any human being as a riddle of nature, as a holy riddle of nature on which he must not intrude this way and to which he has to establish a relationship, so that from this seriousness the respect of the divine spiritual core may arise in every human being. If the human being has such a relationship to his brothers, he is on the way, even if he is still so far away from the goal. The goal which we set in such a way stands before us in infinite distance. He is on the way which the theosophical ethics indicate with the nice, great words:

Before the eyes can see,
They must be incapable of tears.
Before the ear can hear,
It must have lost its sensitiveness ...

If a school of thought should be successful in the course of human evolution, a school of thought, which does not find acceptance or may even not enjoy the knowledge of the so-called authoritative circles, of the ruling spiritual circles, then it has to fight with the reluctant powers all the time which distinguish themselves within the human civilisation.

We only need to remind of that which happened as Christianity had to assert itself against old ideas, against an old spiritual current in the world. We need only to remind that in the beginning of the new school of thought Galileo, Copernicus, Giordano Bruno had to fight against the so-called authoritative circles. We are allowed to suppose that the school of thought inaugurated by Giordano Bruno had to fight against traditions.

In a similar situation is today that school of thought that is represented under the name theosophy in the literature, in talks and the like since several years. If you remember of the destiny of such schools of thought more or less unknown at the moment of their appearance, you find that the way how the ruling circles, the so-called authoritative circles face them, indeed, changes with the fashions of civilisation that, however, the essential part, the lack of understanding, combined with a certain narrow-mindedness, appears over and over again. It is no longer standard today to burn heretics, and in particular liberal circles would protest to be lumped together with such people who burnt heretics. But it may less depend on that. Today the burning of heretics is no longer really trendy. But if we examine the attitude, from which the persecution of heretics arose, and the reasons of such a persecution and compare it with that which takes place in the soul of somebody who fights against the theosophical school of thought more or less today or opposes against it, then we find a similar attitude and similar inner soul processes with the adversaries.

We do not want to enter into discussion with the whole circle of the adversaries of the theosophical world view. We want to confine ourselves rather to that which is connected with our contemporary scholarship; we want to consider the relation of our contemporary scholarship to the theosophical or spiritual-scientific world view as I call it since some time.

Perhaps, it is not meaningless if one starts this consideration with small symptoms. I start with a very widespread small encyclopaedia, a so-called pocket encyclopaedia, which says on its title-page or at least in its preface that it is collated by the best scientific people. If we open it under the catchword “Theosophy,” we find as an explanation only two words: “God-seeker, dreamer.” Such a kind of learnt consideration of the theosophist is now no longer common in all similar reference books, of course. But somebody does probably not become cleverer from this short remark who wants to get to know something about theosophy also not from the other similar reference books.

I have tried to examine in the real philosophical reference books at least externally what is to be found there. I do not want to give an anthology of quotations from such reference books. I would like to give an example only what is to be found in the Dictionary of Philosophical Concepts and Terms, published in Berlin in 1900. In one of the newest works which lists the most of theosophical concepts the following you can read: [Gap in the shorthand notes.] ... these are about three lines with these names. Who wants to get an idea of theosophy from this short representation has to say to himself: also in such philosophical dictionaries we find nothing else than a not correct translation of the term and some names.

Also, otherwise, it does not look especially good if we want to orientate ourselves about that which is represented here as theosophy what the contemporary scholarship knows about that. But the easier this contemporary scholarship wants to condemn theosophy on account of a few little things which it has picked up from any theosophical brochure. We can make the strange experience: a shrug and the remark, “what the theosophical literature spreads is nothing else than warming up a few Buddhist concepts,” or: “it is nothing else than spiritistic superstition expressed somewhat differently.” You can hear such things in abundance. What you hardly hear, however, is a real answer to the question: what is, actually, theosophy? You will find—maybe not only in coffee parties—that which has really happened in a coffee party recently which is, however, not at all so untypical for the standpoint of our contemporaries to theosophy.

There a lady said to another: how is it that you have become a theosophist? This is something terrible, something awful. Take into account what you do to your family; consider how you are in contradiction to that which other people think.—She was silent for a few seconds and said then: what is really theosophy? This did not happen in learnt circles, but you could find something of that kind also in the learnt circles. You can find the judgement again and again that theosophy is nothing scientific at all that it is only enthusiasm of some fantastic people that they bring forward assertions which one cannot prove.

I want to criticise by no means where I want to characterise the relation of our scholarship to theosophy, not even our relation to the circles of scholars. Because nobody else than that who has an overview of our present bringing up of scholars from the theosophical point of view knows better that from this education, from the concepts and ideas of it nothing else can arise than a high-spirited and a somewhat snooty shrug about that which theosophy asserts and which can really appear to that scholarship—because it cannot understand it better—as rapture and as a completely unscientific gossip.

We really want to be fair towards this scholarship. The theosophist stands on a point of view and has to stand on one which I want to show at an example which has not taken place on theosophical ground which could have taken place, however, easily on theosophical ground. The theosophist is in a similar position to the contemporary scholarship rejecting the sneering and the reproach of rapture, as just in the example the recently deceased philosopher Eduard von Hartmann to the materialistic-Darwinist interpretation of nature. I do not want to take sides of the Philosophy of the Unconscious by Eduard von Hartmann.

But over and over again one would have to point to the way how he faced his adversaries.—In 1869, the Philosophy of the Unconscious appeared, a book of which the theosophist not needs to take sides exactly, a book which was, however, a courageous action at that time. Just the relation of this book to the scholarship of that time can give an example how today the spiritual scientist or theosophist faces his adversaries. This Philosophy of the Unconscious was a courageous action in a certain way. At that time, the waves of the materialistic science surged when the materialistic science had grown up into a kind of materialistic religion,

Books like Energy and Matter by Büchner, other books by Vogt, Moleschott and the like who considered energy and matter, the purely sensuous existence as the only one, they caused great sensation, have experienced many editions and conquered hearts and souls. In that time, everybody was regarded as being a poor devil and a fool who did not join in this choir of materialism who spoke about a self-creative spirit. In this time, when one was of the opinion that Darwin’s work delivered the scientific way of thinking for materialism, in this time, when philosophy itself was a word which one considered as something that was overcome, in this time, Eduard von Hartmann let his Philosophy of the Unconscious appear, a philosophy which has one advantage in spite of its big shortcomings that it attributes the world directly to something spiritual everywhere, looks for the basis of something spiritual in all phenomena, even if the spiritual is considered as something unconscious, even if it takes a particularly high rank.

One thing is certain: there the spirit offers sharp resistance to the materialistic attitude. While at that time the Darwinist school of thought explained nature completely from energy and matter, Eduard von Hartmann tried to understand it in such a way that the spirit should become evident as the inner effectiveness of a spiritual work.—Then those came who believed to be entitled to look down with a shrug on everything that spoke of spirit and judged: there was never anything dilettantish like this Philosophy of the Unconscious. A man speaks there, actually, who has learnt nothing about all the phenomena which Darwinism now explains so scientifically.

There was a lot of counter writings at that time. One also appeared by an unknown author. Its title was The Unconscious from the Standpoint of the Theory of Evolution and Darwinism. It was a thorough refutation of the Philosophy of the Unconscious. The author showed that he was familiar with the latest development of natural sciences. Ernst Haeckel said in a brochure that it would be a pity that the author did not call himself, because he himself could have presented nothing better against Eduard von Hartmann than what is in this writing. Oscar Schmidt wrote a brochure and said that no naturalist would have been able to say anything better against the limitless dilettantism of Eduard von Hartmann than the anonymous author of this brochure. “He may reveal his name to us and we consider him as one of ours.”—The brochure was soon out of stock and the second edition appeared with the name of the author. That was enough to silence the people. It was Eduard von Hartmann. Since that time the chorus was silent of those who had written about the dilettantism of the Philosophy of the Unconscious.

You can argue something against such a procedure, but you cannot deny that it was thoroughly effective. Somebody who was regarded at first as a man who knows nothing has shown to the scientific circles that he could be cleverer than they could ever be. Let me use this trivial expression, it would be good even if somewhat anachronistic to do the same. But that who is at the summit of the theosophical world view could also easily, very easily write together all that stuff which one can today produce against theosophy. This has to be emphasised above all: theosophy is nothing that is directed against the real, true science if it is properly understood. Theosophy is able to understand the true, real science any time as Eduard von Hartmann could understand his adversaries. The reverse is not so easy in the one and the other case. However, we have also to understand where from this could come that way.

If I held a lecture only about that which our scholars know about theosophy, then this lecture could have become rather short, and I would have hardly needed to stand before you longer than for a few seconds. But I would like to go deeper; I would like to speak of the reasons why our contemporary scholarship can know so little about theosophy which opens a new way of thinking about the matters of the world.

If we look around today in our contemporary scholarly literature, we find that these considerations differ, already externally, from all the literature about hundred years ago. If we take a book which has, for example, the title: “The Origin of the Human Being, the Human Being and His Position to the World,” we hardly find anything else than that once the human being did not live on earth that he began his existence on earth in a childish, half animal condition. Then we are made aware of the fact that animal ancestors lived before this time on earth and that these developed to the present-day human being.—If we take another book which should inform us about the secrets of the universe, then we find that it deals with that which you can see through the telescope and what you can achieve with mathematics. In other words: everywhere something that I have called factual fanaticism in my book Goethe’s World-View, that factual fanaticism which keeps to the sensuous facts—to the sense-perceptible facts, at most to that which the armed senses can perceive.

Everything belongs to that which is presented today in the most detailed way in any possible popular writing, and what the human being is solely able to provide of the riddles and secrets of the world on account of scientific facts. If we look around in the circles which draw their knowledge only from such books, then we find that there are, actually, all kinds of intermediate stages that, however, these intermediate stages are to be found between two extremes. The one extreme is the sober scholars. They only accept as scientific what they can see and infer with their reason from the seen. There the world is explored with instruments in all directions. There one searches for written documents, there the time and the development of humankind is investigated according to pure facts. The one is said to be natural sciences, the other is said to be history.

In history you find quite strange things sometimes. In particular if one deals with experiences of spiritual science. You find that there are people who write thick books about the old Gnostics, for example, or about any branch of ancient spiritual wisdom who do not want at all to know anything about this spiritual wisdom itself. They look at this purely historically; they only register the written documents and are contented with it. Today one does not need to be a gnostic to write about Gnosticism. Today scholarly circles regard this almost as a principle. And as the best principle is regarded to be possessed as little as possible from the matters about which one writes, actually. If you take this factual fanaticism on one side, you have nearly what induces such scholarly circles to say: we can notice these matters, we know these matters; what goes beyond them is the object of faith. Everybody can believe or not believe what he wants.—The result of this attitude is a certain indifference to all the objects, thoughts and beings which go beyond the only sensuous facts. Then one says: if anybody needs them for his faith, we leave them to him, but science has nothing to do with them.

A thick dividing wall is raised there between science and faith, and science should be nothing else than what can be perceived purely with the eye and with the ear, nothing else than the consideration of facts and what one abstracts from it. Anything else should not be investigated.—Then, however, something else appears which possibly says: it is not right that science stops anywhere, but this is right that the human being develops more and more and that he unfolds more and more forces in his works, so that he can know everything that there are no limits of knowledge. Indeed, the last objects of knowledge are to be attained only in infinite distance, but they are in such a way that we can approach them more and more. Limits must not be raised anywhere. It seems to be a summit of arrogance if such representatives appear who claim that this ability slumbers in every human being. Develop it and you will see that the objects which once were objects of your faith can become objects of your knowledge, of your wisdom. It is not different with the objects which refer to the immortality of the soul, to the spiritual world, to the big and to the small world in space and to the whole development of the human being; it is not different from the matters which we also meet in the usual natural sciences.

Or, what does a human being, who takes a popular book about astronomy, know from own experience about that which the book says to him? I ask you: how many knowing people are among those who believe in the materialistic history of creation? How many are among those who swear on the materialistic spirit who have seen through a microscope and know how to investigate these matters? How many are there who believe in Haeckel and how many who know in this field? Everybody can become a researcher if he has the time and the energy for it. This also applies to the spiritual matters.

It is brainless if one says that the matters come to an end. It is brainless as well if one says that you have to believe what is in Haeckel’s history of creation, that you yourselves cannot investigate this. In no other sense theosophy speaks of objects and matters of the higher world. One has been accustomed to use the term theosophy for this spiritual science. Not because it has God solely as the object of its consideration, but because it makes a distinction between the external sensuous human being who sees, hears, smells, tastes with his five senses, and combines the sense-perception with his reason—and the other human being who lives in this bodily human being who slumbers in it and can be woken and uses such spiritual organs, spiritual sensory tools, as the body has the physical sensory tools. As the body sees with the physical eye, the mind sees with the spiritual eye. Like the body hears with the physical ear, the mind hears with the spiritual ear.

If the human being takes care of his spiritual development himself, these spiritual organs of perception can be trained, so that the inner human being is able to look into a spiritual world. Because one calls such an inner human being the divine one, I make the difference. What the external sensuous human being beholds, gives sensuous wisdom, what the inner divine human being beholds is, in contrast to sensuous wisdom, theosophy, divine wisdom. Thus it is meant if one speaks of theosophy. One does not speak of theosophy, because God is the object of research, because God is something that becomes obvious to the occultist only at the end of the things, on the summit of perfection. The theosophist will dare least of all to investigate God, although we know that we live, work and exist in Him.

Just as little as somebody, who is sitting on the beach and dives his hand in the sea, believes that he can exhaust the whole sea, the theosophist believes just as little that he can embrace God. However, like somebody, who is sitting on the beach and gets out a handful of water, knows that the scooped water is of the same being as the whole big encompassing sea, the theosophist also knows that he carries a divine spark in himself that is of the same kind and being as God. The theosophist does not claim that his being can embrace God, he does also not claim that in his human soul the infinite God lives, or that the human being himself is God.

He will never come up with such a thing. However, what he says, what he can experience and get to know is something different, this is just this that in the human being a part of God lives, which is of the same kind and being as the whole godhead, as well as the handful of water is of the same kind as the whole encompassing ocean. As the water in the hand and the water in the sea are of the same kind and being, also that which lives in the soul is of the same kind and being as God. Therefore, we call heavenly what is inside of the human being, and we call the wisdom divine wisdom or theosophy which the human being can investigate in his innermost core.

This is a thought process which everybody would have to admit if he wanted to think only logically. Often someone objects to theosophy: you demand that the human being goes through a development. However, not everybody is able to verify everything the theosophy maintains.—Somebody who understands the matters will never maintain that any human being if he can have only the necessary patience, force and endurance cannot get to that condition which single human beings have got in the course of human development. But something else is in the so-called proofs of theosophical truths. Something is to be found in the theosophical literature and in theosophical talks or can be heard, otherwise, somewhere within the theosophical movement about which somebody who has a modern education says to himself: these are assertions. One can accept them, but no theosophist does prove them; he just maintains them.—This speaking of proofs is something that appears over and over again that one objects to theosophy over and over again. How is it?—It behaves as follows.

What theosophy spreads as a higher spiritual wisdom can be investigated if those forces which slumber in every human soul are woken. These forces and abilities, which we call the forces and abilities of the seer, of the spiritual beholding, are necessary to investigate the matters. If one wants to investigate, to discover the facts of the spiritual world, these abilities and forces are necessary. However, it is something different to understand what the spiritual researcher has found. Mind you, one needs the forces of the seer to find the spiritual truths, but that one only needs the clear, logical human mind going up to the last consequences to understand them.

That is essential. Someone who states that he cannot understand what theosophy maintains has not yet thought enough about it. On the contrary, we can better understand what science maintains today. Just what we understand, if we stop at true science, about the facts of nature, about the matters of the apparently lifeless and of the living nature—even if we take the facts of the history of civilisation—if we want to understand them, we can never understand them if we approach them only with the materialistic scholarship which is nothing else than materialistic fantasy. We can understand what true science delivers to us if we know the true science of the spiritual world. To somebody who sees deeper science as it is presented by Ernst Haeckel, for example, becomes only understandable if one has theosophy as a precondition, as a basis.

A comparison should make clear what I want to say. Imagine that you have a picture before yourselves which shows any scene, any saint’s legend. You can try to understand this picture in double way. Once you place yourselves before the picture and try to let revive in your soul what has lived in the soul of the painter. You try to rouse in your soul what the picture shows as spiritual contents. Something lives in it that raises your soul, makes it lofty, and invigorates it. However, you can still react differently to this picture. You can go and say that this does not interest you. Also what the painter has imagined does not interest you particularly. However, you want to get to know how he mixed the paints which substances are mixed in the paint which he painted on the canvas. You want to test how this is there on the canvas, how much of the red and green paints were used where straight and where crooked lines were applied.

These are two different approaches to a picture. It would be brainless to say about the one: you look at something that is false.—No, he looks at something that is absolutely true. He looks how the paint sticks to the canvas and how it is composed. He looks whether and how the paints have cracked et cetera. This can be real truth. Then there the other comes and says to the first: this is not the right thing what you think. This is only a thought. You can objectively find what I investigate.

I want to give an additional example, so that we understand each other precisely. Somebody plays a sonata on a piano. You listen to this sonata with musical ear; you indulge in the marvellous realm of sounds which this sonata delivers to you. This is a way how you can investigate what takes place here. However, another way could also be the following. Anybody comes there and says that this does not interest him which one hears with the musical ear. But there stands a piano, in it strings are stretched. These strings move. I want to hang up little paper tabs on these strings. They jump off if the string moves and thereby I can study where the strings move and where they are in rest. I want to completely refrain from that which you hear there with your ear. One cannot prove that objectively.

As well as this second viewer behaves to the first viewer; the characterised scholars behave to the theosophists. No theosophist thinks of denying scholarship. Just as little as that who goes into raptures about the spiritual contents of a picture says that that is not true which the other investigates about the paints, just as little that who has a musical ear will say that that is not true which the other investigates with the little paper tabs—because it is true, it is true what the naturalist investigates about his material. Nothing should be argued against it. But that escapes these natural sciences which is essential in the world process. Just as that which is essential escapes somebody who looks only at the little paper tabs and what also escapes somebody who only investigates the paint and maybe still the material, the canvas.

Then some people come and say: there is something subjective, this lives only in the soul and cannot be proven objectively. One has to investigate what can be really found. Outside only the oscillatory etheric matter, the oscillatory substance exists. Indeed. One answers as a theosophist to such people: if you only investigate the matter, you only find your matter outside, as well as that who blocked his ears can only find what one can see in the little paper tabs.

Still a few years ago one got up the objectivity of science to mischief. It is this the so-called atomistic theory where one calls that subjective which the human being perceives as sensory sensation what he perceives as sound, colour et cetera, and traces it back to objective processes. These processes should be oscillations of any substance. At that time—as an example—one called it always only red. Red, one said, is only in your eye. Outside in space is nothing else than an oscillation of the ether of so and so many millions oscillations.—This pseudoscience, which is no longer science but religion, transformed the world of perception into a huge sum of atoms which are in oscillatory movements.

This nonsense of transforming everything that we experience as colour-fresh and lively contents into abstract processes which are nothing else than calculated things, nothing else than results of brooding and speculation, this nonsense lately withdraws somewhat. We see that already the atom and its oscillatory movement is regarded by reasonable naturalists only as a calculation approach and in the better circles of thinkers one does no longer take care of the inaccuracy of the atomic hypotheses et cetera. But it has collected in the brains of the human beings to look at the world as an objective nothing, as only materialistic oscillation processes, so that it has penetrated the theosophical movement and theosophy itself in the first years. We had to experience that the most spiritual movement was severely infected by materialism. We had to experience that one could read in the most different theosophical books over and over again that this is this or that vibration. In particular the English books did not get tired to talk about vibrations.

It is a characteristic of our time that this materialistic tendency could come into the most spiritual movement. We still have much to do for long time to overcome this childhood disease of theosophy. However, only if the time has come when within theosophy one no longer speaks about moving atoms, then that cleverly thought-out construction of monads has disappeared which whirl down from the heights and take in everything—an absurd materialistic idea.

One has to realise that theosophy concerns the recognition of the spiritual as such and one has to be aware of the fact that one lets the materialistic science have the swinging little paper tabs and lets it investigate the paints and the canvas. Theosophy deals with the development of the higher senses, the knowledge of the higher senses, it includes what the human being sees, summarises, surveys with the higher soul forces, and what he hears with the musical ear—the swinging string expresses it spatially. If you have understood this, you know to some extent what theosophy is.

Hence, we have also to completely renounce to believe that a kind of harmony is possible between the modern scholarship and theosophy. It is not possible.—This harmony only comes if scholarship itself has progressed so far that it can understand theosophy. Indeed, we have to do it with the chemical investigation of the paints, with the investigation of the lines, with the investigation of the canvas, with the investigation of the little paper tabs on the moved strings, but this does not exclude that with the higher development of the spiritual forces the higher spiritual is revealed to us in that which we investigate externally. The modern scholarship is far away from understanding this matter.

One becomes mild towards this scholarship if one sees, for example, that somebody who has been born out of this scholarship cannot understand anything that is scholarly in the deepest sense and has originated from spiritual science at the same time. I know that I say something extremely offensive for many listeners who have learnt physics. But it is something symptomatic about which I have to speak. Which physicist would not disparage what one calls Goethe’s theory of colours. It is a matter of impossibility to speak about it, but times will come—and they are not far , when one recognises the objections against Goethe's theory of colours as outdated prejudices. You can read further details about Goethe’s theory of colours in my book about Goethe’s World View.

Goethe’s theory of colours was born out of a spiritual world view and for that who can understand this, this theory of colours is the proof of Goethe’s deep thinking. But it does not start from the prejudice that colour is an oscillatory ether. It stands rather on a ground which can be circumscribed as I try it now. I ask you to follow me in my subtle thought process. If anybody sees the red colour outside, his eye sees red at first. Now there comes the physicist and says: this red colour is only subjective. This is a process in space or in the brain. However, what is real outside is nothing but an oscillatory movement of the ether.

If now anybody comes who says: what you see there is only an oscillatory movement of the ether, then reply the following: try to imagine this oscillatory movement of the ether. Is this colourless? It must be colourless, because you want to explain the colour from the oscillations. Hence, what is outside must be colourless. Then I ask: does it still have maybe other qualities; does it maybe have the quality of heat? There the physicist answers: heat even comes from oscillatory movement. However, these people are funniest if they say: these oscillations do not have sensory qualities, but only those qualities which we can think.

If one regards now that which the senses say as subjective, one must also regard that which one thinks as subjective. Then one must also say: what you have calculated there as an oscillatory nebulous mass is subjective all the more, is never perceived, but is only calculated. Everything is calculated subjectively. Who realises that that which we experience in ourselves is objective and that the objective can become the most subjective has a right to speak about the fact that also the calculated has an objective existence. He also does not regard red and green, C sharp and G as only subjective phenomena.

Now I have said a number of matters which are dreadful heresies to scientifically thinking people. One talks a lot that times have changed. Yes, times have changed since Giordano Bruno. At his time the dogma of infallibility was not yet valid. Today the dogma of infallibility is valid, as you know, in certain Catholic circles. But this dogma of infallibility is not born only out of Catholicism. It came into being as an external law, as an external dogma. However, the infallibility dogma also lives as an attitude in the minds of the materialistically thinking, monistic freethinkers. They regard themselves—I do not say that everybody regards himself as a little pope—but as so infallible that they regard everything as superstitious that does not come from their circles. If one counters these infallible physicists and psychiatrists—they do not say that they are infallible, but one feels it , then he is dismissed. He is no longer burnt, but he is made a fool with the means which is trendy today.

The theosophist does not necessarily look for approval. Compared with truth approval is something indifferent. Who has understood the truth of a mathematical theorem does not care whether a million people agree or not. Truth is not decided by majority. Someone who has recognised a truth has recognised it and needs no approval. Thus the theosophical movement prefers the careful supporters. It does not want to have children but such human beings who form a judgement, with all care, after the most profound examination. The demand to be careful is something that gives me the deepest sympathy.

From that which I have tried to show you can infer that theosophy is far away to criticise the contemporary scholarship. Should the theosophist fight against it? He would do something very foolish, because it would be as if that who looks at a picture with displeasure wanted to fight against somebody who studies the chemical composition of the paints. If, for example, an appearance like Ernst Haeckel is defended from theosophical side, this does not need to be wrong. One can defend him if one recognises him from a higher point of view sees how he appears there and knows how to classify the matters in the world evolution. The theosophist is able to give the right position to the contemporary development in any field.

Thus the relation of the newly arising spiritual current is which tries to look at the world in such a way as single extraordinary spirits looked always at it. But it was not possible during the last centuries to give this spiritual science as it was given once. What one calls theosophy today is a small part of encompassing world wisdom, of occult science. This is something that has always existed with extraordinary human individualities since millennia, even since there are human beings. In the form, however, as single great spirits have owned it, it could not been given to the big mass. Nevertheless, it was not withheld from the big mass.

If you check the legends and myths of the nations impartially, you see that these legends and myths are the metaphorical expressions of a science which contains more wisdom than the present-day science offers. This science would regard it as fantasy if one said that wisdom is in these fairy tales. This world wisdom has been announced in the most different religions; depending on how the one or the other people needed it according to its temperament and the climate. If we have an overview of everything that was given to humankind in the most different forms, we are led to a common core, to encompassing world wisdom. Today not everything can be already handed over to the bigger part of humankind, because somebody who rises toward this world wisdom has to go through particular inner ordeals. This world wisdom can be handed over only to somebody who goes through these ordeals. In former times also the elementary part was handed over only in the closest circle to well prepared pupils with the corresponding intellectual, moral and mental qualities. There are even today persons who regard it as wrong to deliver the occult profundities by theosophy to the big mass of the human beings. However, the reproach is unfounded because there is no alternative today. Who understands the structure of the spirit of the present age knows that inner truth and wisdom of the religious world view feel alienated because one can no longer understand them.

This was different once. Then the wisdom which is announced today by theosophy was the property of the single human being. One gave the big mass the appropriate wisdom in pictures. The feeling nature of the big mass was suited to take it up in the pictures. The big mass could live with these pictures only. Truth was in the religions, truth was in the basic religious views. Theosophy only makes this clear again to us in the deepest way. The human being could understand it with his feeling in ancient times. Our time demands that he can also understand what is contained in the religions.

Thus occult science is forced to come out a little bit, to contribute something to the verification of the religions, to give the elementary part of spiritual truth at least. A time would be dreary and desolate if humankind were alienated from all knowledge of the spiritual worlds and from any relation to them. Only that who does not understand the case can believe that humankind could exist without relation to the spiritual, without belief in spirit and immortality. Like the plant needs food juices, the soul needs something spiritual that forms its basis. Theosophy does not want to found a new religion. But it wants to bring truth home to the human being again in a form which is suited to the modern human being, in the form of thinking comprehension. Thus theosophy brings the old truth in new form to our contemporaries, unperturbed by those who, going out from the materialistic superstition, turn against this spiritual current.

As well as the external natural science rests upon that which it investigates and calculates with the help of the microscope and telescope, theosophy uses the most significant instrument of which Goethe speaks: what the skilled ear of the musician is, this is the human soul compared with all tools , and further:

Nature, mysterious in day’s clear light,
lets none remove her veil,
and what she won’t discover to your understanding
you can’t extort from her with levers and with screws.

Faust I, verses 672–675

Who understands the world is the most perfect instrument, and supported on the spiritual beholding theosophy will produce such instruments more and more.

The answer to the question: what do our scholars know about the real basis of theosophy is: nothing.—They can know nothing because all their ways of thinking can bring them to nothing else than to look at theosophy as a fantastic stuff. Who has understood, however, that scholarship cannot get involved in theosophy, which has gone out from quite different bases, also understands that this scholarship will be in need to illuminate the structure of spirit more intensely. This scholarship provides such flowers. But a real comprehension of the soul only can make such things comprehensible, which the modern scholarship knows.

Or: what has somebody to think who regarded Goethe, Schopenhauer, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and others as great spirits if this materialistic scholarship has brought it so far that you can find in a little book about Goethe’s illness, about Schopenhauer’s illness—also in other works—these illnesses considered from the point of view of the materialistic psychiatry? One calls a particular type of insanity manic depression, schizophrenia another, and paranoia a third one. These three forms of insanity are taken to show that one can also find symptoms of insanities with the great spirits who are regarded as leaders of humankind. One found the symptoms of manic depression with Schopenhauer, paranoia with Tasso, Rousseau and others. Indeed, the same author has called an even bigger number of people feeble-minded. He is the author of the book On the Physiological Idiocy of Women which concerns one half of the whole humankind. It would be easy to consider the author from his own viewpoint and to scrutinise him.—However, one must not laugh at these matters. The materialistic science must get to this because these are partial truths. But one can get only to the right insight if one sees the spirit working behind it. Then one sees that often a higher spiritual development must be purchased for the same symptoms, as on the other side health for other symptoms. One is able to do this only if one explains them from the theosophical standpoint.

I would like to tell something else. You know that I have pointed to ancient times of development when our civilisation did not yet exist when there has been a continent between this Europe and America, the continent of the old Atlantis. I have already pointed to the fact that this Atlantis has been found again by the naturalists. In the magazine Kosmos, 10th issue, a naturalist speaks of animals and plants which lived on this Atlantis. Indeed, such a naturalist admits this, but he does not admit that other human beings lived in those days. He does not admit that the old Atlantean land was covered by a wide nebulous sea that the ground was not covered by such an air as it forms our atmosphere today, that the expression which the old Central European peoples have in their myths: Niflheim, nebulous home, means something real that our Atlantean ancestors lived in a nebulous country. I have sometimes pointed to that.

Few days ago a lecture was held in a famous society of naturalists in which was pointed out to the fact that most probably in the time of our Atlantean ancestors on the earth very large land masses were covered with fog. One concludes this speculatively from different other phenomena. Above all, it is pointed out to the fact that the plants, which need sunshine which grow in the desert, are of a later date and did not yet exist at that time, while those, which need little sunshine which could exist at Niflheim, the nebulous home, are the older ones.

Here you see that natural science lagging behind says to you what theosophy has said before. We have a time ahead when also the other matters must be gradually admitted by these natural sciences. Theosophy does not have to get used to the fantastic, objective atomic theories, but the facts which theosophy announces from the higher standpoint will be proven by the external natural sciences. This is the course of the future development. Even if the modern scholars know nothing about it, their own progress leads them to it.—No thinker should doubt that one can see more, can behold more with a developed soul than with mere senses and mere intellect.

It is the recognition of the developed human being as the most perfect instrument to investigate the world—theosophy wants this to be accepted. Everything else results automatically. If you say that the human being has reached the highest levels and will not keep on developing, then you do not need theosophy. If you say, however, the laws which have held sway in the past, will also hold sway in the future, single human beings have always stood higher than others of their surroundings—if you admit this, then you have already a theosophical attitude, in principle. One does not become a theosophist because one uses the words theosophy, brotherliness, unity et cetera. Brotherliness is something that all good people understand.

If I see people always talking about brotherliness and then also behold them feeling an inner lust if they talk about brotherliness, harmony, unity, then I always think of the oven and the first principle of the Theosophical Society which demands to establish the core of a general human fraternisation. It is for nothing if one says to the oven: dear oven, heat the room and make it warm.—If one wants that the oven gives off heat, then one must put heating material into it and kindle it. One must put heating material into it. This is the spiritual force, the ability to behold on account of the development of the higher worlds. By the development of the spiritual world that truth and wisdom in the human souls take place which must lead as wisdom and knowledge automatically to the general human brotherhood. Then we arrive at that which is expressed in the first principle of the theosophical program if the human being can be an instrument to behold into the spiritual worlds. If the organs of perception concealed in the human being are got out of the soul, theosophy is a progress which one is able to pursue. If one compares this theosophical attitude with the attitude of theosophists, of great, lofty personalities who lived in prehistoric time, then we find it also in a sentence from Herder’s pen: our tender, feeling and sensitive nature has developed all senses which God has given it. It cannot do without them, because that which results from the whole use of the organs shines to all. These are the vowels of life and so on.

Even if we only take the external physical senses into consideration, we can say in the theosophical sense, nevertheless: the physical and spiritual senses must be developed, because by the harmony of the spiritual and physical organs of perception the vowels not only of life, but also those of the eternal, infinite, spiritual life are kindled.

You read in Goethe’s poem The Secrets:

From the power which ties all beings
escapes that human being
who overcomes himself.

The human being is neither free nor not free, he is developing.

Notes:

Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), German philosopher

Eduard Oscar Schmidt (1823–1886), German zoologist. Goethes Verhältnis zu den organischen Wissenschaften (1853), Descendenzlehre und Darwinismus—The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism (1873)

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825–1898)), Swiss poet and historical novelist

manic depression: Steiner uses the obsolete term “zirkuläres Irresein” (circular insanity, French: folie circulaire). This form of insanity is today called manic depression or bipolar disorder.

author of the book On the Physiological Idiocy of Women: Paul Julius Möbius (1853–1907), German neurologist. Über das Pathologische bei Goethe (1898). Über Schopenhauer (1899)

Atlantis: cf. R. Steiner CW 11 Cosmic Memory

Kosmos: Theodor Arldt (1878–1960), German geographer. Das Atlantisproblem

Today it is my task to speak about a topic that has millions of enthusiastic followers in the world, on one side, that has found the most violent adversaries, on the other side, not only adversaries who combat this field of the so-called spiritism the sharpest, but also those who ridicule it who lump together it with the darkest superstition or what they call dark superstition; adversaries who want to ignore it only with empty words of joke and scorn.

It may be not easy to speak just in our present about such a topic where as a rule with the “pros and cons” the most violent passions are aroused straight away. I would like to ask those listeners among you who may be enthusiastic followers of spiritism not to roundly condemn me immediately, if to you any of my explanations seems to correspond not completely to your views, because we representatives of theosophy, nevertheless, are combined with the spiritists in one matter in any case: we have the intention to investigate the higher spiritual worlds, those worlds which are beyond the everyday sense-perception. We are in agreement on that. However, on the other side, I would like to ask the scientists also to realise that that movement in whose name I myself speak has not chosen the slogan only like a signboard, as a phrase, but in the most serious sense of the word: no human opinion is higher than truth.—I would also like to ask the scientist to keep in mind that he may take into consideration that the views of science were subjected to change in the course of times, and that is why the scientific views of today cannot be regarded as being fixed.

Let me now outline the development of the spiritistic movement without taking sides, because no human opinion is higher than truth.

I would like to emphasise above all that the founders of the theosophical movement, Mrs. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, and the great organiser, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, went out from the spiritistic movement. They were experts of the spiritistic movement and turned to the theosophical movement only, after they had vigorously searched for truth before within the spiritistic movement, but had not found it.

Theosophy does not want to combat spiritism, but to search for truth where it is to be found.

I would like to emphasise something else that will surprise some of you, however, that will not at all surprise others who are in the know. Allow me to express it: you can never hear the last word about spiritism and similar matters from people like me who are forced to speak about that. You know that there is in any science a rule which is simply justified by the scientific methods, and the rule is that one shows the results of science before a bigger audience in popular way. If one wants to do more intimate acquaintance with these results, if one wants to get to know the more intimate truth, then a longer way is necessary: a way using the different methods in any detail. As a rule the researchers are not able to report in popular talks what takes place inside of the laboratories, of the observatories. That applies to the physical science. On the other side, in the great spiritual movements of the world somebody who is reasonable and allowed to express the words with regard to the spiritual views has to withhold the last word because the last words are still of quite different kind. They are of such a kind that they can hardly be discussed publicly. That is why you can never hear the very last word of this matter from an occultist—unless you are able and want to go his ways most intimately. But to those who are in the know of the matter something becomes clear from the way how a matter is said, what is said not only between the lines, but perhaps also between the words.

After this introduction I would like to move on the topic which certainly has a tremendous cultural-historical significance even for somebody who wants to make it ridiculous. I would like to speak about the matter in a sense which really throws light from this point of view: what does spiritism search for today? Does it search for something new, or is it something ancient that it searches? Are the ways on which it looks absolutely novel, or has humankind gone on them since centuries or even since millennia?—If anybody puts these questions to himself, he reaches his goal concerning the history of spiritism the fastest. What the spiritists search for is at first the knowledge of those worlds which are beyond our sensory world, and secondly the significance of these worlds for the goal, for the determination of our human race.

If we ask ourselves: were these problems not the tasks of humankind, since it strives on our earth and wants anything?—Then we must say to ourselves: yes. And because they are certainly the highest tasks, it would already appear as something absurd from the beginning if in the world history something absolutely new had appeared with regard to these questions. It seems if we look around in the old and new spiritistic movements, as if we deal with something absolutely new. The strongest adversaries refer to the fact that it has brought something absolutely new into the world, and other adversaries say that the human beings had never needed to combat this movement like nowadays. There a change must have happened in humankind with regard to the way to look at the case. This is illuminated to us like lightning if we get clear in our mind that humankind has behaved in three different ways to the questions which we call spiritistic today.

There we have one way which we can find in the whole antiquity, a way which changes only in the Christian times. Then we have the second way to position ourselves to these questions, the whole Middle Ages through, till the 17th century. Only in the 17th century spiritism basically starts taking on a certain form that one can rightly call spiritism today.

The questions that the spiritist wants to answer today were the object of the so-called mysteries the whole antiquity through. I try only to characterise with few lines what one has to understand by mysteries. It was not the custom in antiquity to announce wisdom publicly. One had another view of wisdom and truth. One believed the whole antiquity through that it is necessary to train super-sensible organs to the knowledge of the super-sensible truth at first. One realised the fact that in every human being spiritual forces slumber which are not developed with the average human being, that spiritual forces slumber in the human nature which one can wake and develop by means of long exercises, through steps of development, which the disciples of the mysteries describe as very difficult. If the neophyte had developed such forces in him and had become a researcher of truth, one was of the opinion that he is to the average human being in such a way as a sighted is to a blind-born. This was also the goal within the holy mysteries. One aimed to achieve something similar in the spiritual field as today the doctor aims to achieve with the blind-born if he operates him that he becomes sighted. One was clear about the fact that—like with a blind-born who is operated the colours of the light and the forms of the things appear—a new world appears to somebody whose internal senses are woken, a world which the everyday reason cannot perceive. Thus the follower of the mysteries tried to develop a human being of lower level to one of higher level, to an initiate. Only the initiate should be able to recognise something of the super-sensible truth by immediate beholding, by spiritual intuition. The big mass of human beings could get the truth by means of pictures. The myths of antiquity, the legends about gods and world origin, which simply appear today—indeed, in certain sense rightly—as childish views of humankind, they are nothing but disguises of the super-sensible truth. The initiate informed people in pictures of that which he could behold within the temple mysteries. The whole Eastern mythology, the Greek and Roman mythologies, the Germanic mythology and the mythologies of the savage peoples are nothing but metaphorical, symbolic representations of the super-sensible truth. Of course, only somebody can completely understand this who occupies himself not in such a way as anthropology and ethnology do it but also with their spirit. He sees that a myth like the Hercules legend shows a deep inner truth; he sees that the conquest of the Golden Fleece by Jason shows a deep and true knowledge.

Then another way came with our calendar. I can indicate only roughly what I have to say. A certain basis of higher, spiritual truth was determined and made the object of the confessions, in particular of the Christian. And now this basis of spiritual truth was removed from any human research, from the immediate human striving. Those who studied the history of the Council of Nicaea know what I mean, and also those who understand the words of St. Augustine who says there: I would not believe in the truth of the divine revelation unless the authority of the church forces me.—Faith that determines a certain basis of the truth replaces the old mystery truth which retains it in pictures. Then follows the epoch when the big mass is no longer informed about the truth of the super-sensible world in pictures, but simply by authority. This is the second way how the big mass and those who had to lead them behaved to the highest truth. The mysteries provided it to the big mass on account of experience; it was provided by faith and fixed by authority in the Middle Ages.

But beside those who had the task to retain the big mass by faith and authority were also those in the 12th and 13th centuries—they existed at all times, but they did not appear publicly—who wanted to develop by immediate own beholding to the highest truth. These searched for it on the same ways on which it had been searched for within the mysteries. That is why we find in mediaeval times beside those who are only priests, also the mystics, theosophists and occultists, those who talk in an almost incomprehensible language hard to be understood by modern materialists and rationalists. We find people who had reached the secrets on the ways which avoid the senses. In an even more incomprehensible language those people spoke who had the guidance of the spirit as mystery priests. So we hear from one that he had the ability to send his thoughts miles away; another boasted that he could transform the whole sea into gold if it was permitted. Another says that he could construct a vehicle with which he would be able to move through the air.

There were times when people did not know how to do with such sayings, because they had no notion of how they were to be understood. Moreover, prejudices flourished against such a kind of investigation since the oldest times. That becomes clear to us at once where these prejudices came from. When in the first centuries of our calendar the Christian culture spread over the countries of the Mediterranean Sea, it appeared that the cult actions and the ceremonies of Christianity and also most of Christian dogmas agreed with ancient pagan traditions, and were not so different—even if in a watered way—from that which had took place in the old pagan Mithras temples. There said those who had the task to defend the reputation of the church: bad spirits gave the pagans these views; they aped within the pagan world what God revealed to the Christian church.—However, it is an odd imitation which leads the way of the original! The whole Christianity was aped in the pagan mysteries—if we apply the word of the accusers, what the church has later found! It is comprehensible that every other way than that of the authoritative Christian faith, as Augustine characterised it, was wrong and in the course of time it was regarded as such which was not given by good powers; since the church had to provide the good powers.

Thus these traditions continued through the whole Middle Ages. Those who wanted to come on their own ways, independently to the highest super-sensible truth were regarded as magicians, as allies of the bad or of the bad spirits. The mark stone is the Faust legend. Faust is the representative of those who want to get by own knowledge to the secrets. Hence, the bad powers must have captivated him. One should only do research in the writings handed down from earlier times, only the trust in authority should lead to the super-sensible powers. In spite of that, initiated minds realised—even if they were defamed as magicians and were prosecuted—that the time must come again when one has to progress to truth on own, human ways.

Thus we see occult brotherhoods originating in Europe from the middle of the Middle Ages on which led their members on the same ways as the old mysteries had done this to the development of higher intuitive forces. So that within such occult brotherhoods the way to the highest truth was taken like in the mysteries—I mention only that of the Rosicrucians, the deepest and most significant one, founded by Christian Rosenkreutz. This way can be investigated strictly historically till the 18th century. I cannot explain in detail how this happened; I can only give one example, the great representative of the occult science of the 16th and 17th centuries, Robert Fludd. He shows for those who have insight into these fields in all his writings that he knows the ways how to get to truth that he knows how to develop such forces that are of quite different kind than the forces in us which see any body of light before themselves. He shows that there are mysterious ways to get to the highest truth. He also speaks of the Rosicrucian Society in such a way that the relationship is clear to any initiate.

I would like to present three questions only to you to show you how these questions were discussed in veiled form at that time. He says of them that everybody who has arrived at the lowest level must be able to answer them with understanding. These questions and also their answers may appear quite futile to the rationalists and materialists. The first question which anybody must answer who wants to rise in worthy way to higher spiritual spheres is: where do you live?—The answer is: I live in the temple of wisdom, on the mountain of reason.—Understanding this sentence really, experiencing it internally means already to have opened certain inner senses.

The second sentence was: where truth comes from to you?—The answer is: it comes to me from the creative , and now there comes a word which cannot be translated at all into German: from the highest ..., mighty all-embracing spirit who has spoken through Solomon and wants to inform me about alchemy, magic and the kabala ...—This was the second question.

The third question is: what do you want to build?—The answer is: I want to build a temple like the tabernacle, like Solomon's temple, like the body of Christ and ... like something else that one does not pronounce.

You see—I cannot go into these questions further—that one veiled the super-sensible truth in a mysterious darkness for all non-initiates in such brotherhoods, and that the non-initiate should make himself worthy at first and had to get to a moral and intellectual summit. Somebody who had not stood the trials who did not have the force in himself to find the experiences inside was not judged as worthy, was not admitted to the initiation. One considered it as dangerous to know this truth. One knew that knowledge is connected with a tremendous power, with a power as the average human being does not suspect at all. Only somebody is able to possess this truth and power without any danger for humankind who has got to that moral and intellectual height. Otherwise one said: without having reached this height he behaves with this truth and power like a child that is sent with matches into a powder magazine.

Now one was of the opinion in these times that only somebody who is in the possession of the highest super-sensible truth can explain the phenomena as they are told everywhere and since millennia in a popular way—phenomena which the modern spiritism shows again. The matters were nothing new but something ancient that spiritism recognises today. In ancient times one spoke about the fact that the human being can have such an effect on the human beings as it is not the case, otherwise: certain human beings cause that knocking sounds are to be heard in their surroundings that objects move, contrary to the laws of gravitation, with or without touch that objects fly through the air without applying any physical force et cetera. Since the oldest times one knew that there are human beings who can be transported into certain states, today we call these states trance states, in which they speak about things about which they can never speak in the waking consciousness that they also tell about other worlds not belonging to our sense-perceptible world. One knew that there are human beings who communicate by signs about that which they see in such super-sensible worlds. One also knew that there are human beings who are able to see events which are far away from them and also to report about that; human beings who could foresee and forecast future events with the help of their prophetic gift. All that—we do not verify it today—is an ancient tradition. Those who believe to be able to accept it as truth consider it as something natural. Such not physical, not sense-perceptible phenomena were regarded as true through the whole Middle Ages. Indeed, they were considered by the church of the Middle Ages in such a way, as if they were caused by means of bad skills, but this should not touch us. In any case, the way to the super-sensible world was not searched for on the way of these phenomena in the time of the 17th and 18th centuries. Nobody claimed till those times that a dancing table, an anyhow appearing ghost which is seen with eyes or in any way in trance could reveal anything of a super-sensible world. Even if anybody told that he saw a blaze in Hanover from here, one believed it; but nobody saw anything in it that could seriously give information about the super-sensible world. Reasonable people considered it as a matter of course that one could not look for the super-sensible world that way. Those who wanted to get to super-sensible perception searched for it by developing inner forces in the occult brotherhoods.

Then another time came in the development of the West, in which one started looking for truth scientifically. There came the Copernican world view and the researches of physiology; technology, the discoveries of the blood circulation, of the ovum et cetera. One attained insights into nature with the senses. Somebody who does not approach the Middle Ages with prejudices but wants to get to know the world view of the Middle Ages in its true form, convinces himself soon that this medieval thinking did not imagine heaven and hell as localities in space, but that they were something spiritual to it. In mediaeval times no reasonable human being thought to advocate that world view which one attributes to the medieval scholars today. Copernicanism is nothing new in this sense. It is new in another sense; in the sense that since the 16th century sense-perception became decisive for truth; what one can see what one can perceive with the senses. The world view of the Middle Ages was not wrong as one often shows it today, but it was only a view which was not got with bodily eyes. The bodily sensualisation was a symbol of something spiritual. Also Dante did not imagine his hell and his heaven in the earthly sense; they were to be understood spiritually.

One broke with this point of view. The real psychologist of the human development finds out this. The sensuous was raised, and now sensuality conquered the world gradually. However, the human being got used to it without noticing it. Only the searching psychologist rushing behind the development is able to make a picture of it. The human being gets used to such changes. With his feeling, with his senses he looks at everything, and accepts the sensuous only as true. Without knowing it, people considered as a principle of the human nature to accept only what they can see in any way of what they can convince themselves by sensory inspection. People did not think much of such circles that spoke of an initiation and led to super-sensible truth on occult ways; everything had to be sensually shown.

What about the super-sensible view of the world? How could one find the super-sensible in the world in which one wanted to seek for truth only in the sensory effects? There were rare, so-called abnormal phenomena which were not explicable by means of natural forces known till then; phenomena that the physicist, the naturalist could not explain, and which one simply denied because one wanted to accept the sensually explicable only. There were these phenomena which were handed down through millennia to which the human being sought refuge now: now one went to them. Simultaneously with the urge to keep only to the sense-perceptible appearance the urge for the super-sensible resorted to such phenomena. One wanted to know what scientific criticism could not explain; one wanted to know how it is. When one started searching for evidences of another world in these matters, the birth of modern spiritism took place. We can give the hour of birth and the place where it happened. It was in 1716; there a book was published by a member of the Royal Society, a description of the western islands of Scotland. Everything was collected in it that was to be found out about the “second sight.” This is that which one cannot perceive with the usual eyes, but what one could find out only by super-sensible research. Here you have the precursor of everything that was later done by the so-called scientific side to the investigation of the spiritistic phenomena.

Now we also stand already at the gate of the whole spiritistic movement of the newer time. That person from whom the whole spiritistic movement started is one of the strangest of the world: Swedenborg. He influenced the whole 18th century. Even Kant argued with him. A person who could bring to life the modern spiritistic movement had to be disposed like Swedenborg. He was born in 1688 and died in 1772. In the first half of his life he was a naturalist who stood at the head of the natural sciences of his time. He encompassed them. Nobody has a right to attack Swedenborg as an illiterate man. We know that he was not only a perfect expert of his time, but he also anticipated a lot of scientific truths that one discovered on the universities only later. So he stood in the first half of his life not only completely on the scientific point of view which wanted to investigate everything by the appearance to the senses and by mathematical calculations, but he also was far ahead of his time in this regard. Then he completely turned to that which one calls visionariness. What Swedenborg experienced—you may call him a seer or visionary—was a particular class of phenomena. Somebody who is only somewhat initiated in these fields knows that Swedenborg could only experience this class of phenomena.

I only give a few examples. Swedenborg saw a conflagration in Stockholm from a place which was removed sixty miles from Stockholm. He informed the guests, with who he was in a soirée, about this event, and after some time one heard that the fire had happened in such a way as Swedenborg had told it. Another example: a high-ranking person asked for a secret which a brother had not completely told before his death because he died before. The person turned to Swedenborg with the strange demand whether he could not discover him and ask what he wanted to say. Swedenborg ridded himself of the order in such a way that the person in question could have no doubt that Swedenborg had penetrated into this secret.

Still the third example to show how Swedenborg moved within the super-sensible world. A scholar and friend visited Swedenborg. The servant said to him: you have to wait for some time, please. The scholar sat down and heard a discussion in the next room. However, he heard always only Swedenborg speaking; he did not hear answering. The case became even more noticeable to him when he heard the discussion taking place in wonderful classical Latin, and particularly when he heard him intimately talking about states of the emperor Augustus. Then Swedenborg went to the door, bowed before somebody and spoke with him but the friend could not see the visitor at all. Then Swedenborg came back and said to the friend: excuse that I let you wait. I had lofty visit—Virgil visited me.

People may think about such matters as they want. However, one thing is certain: Swedenborg believed in them, regarded them as reality. I said: only a person like Swedenborg could get to such a kind of research. Just the fact that he was expert naturalist of his time led him to this view of the super-sensible nature. He was a man who got used to accepting nothing but the sensuous, the sense-perceptible in the time of the dawning natural sciences. Everybody knows it who knows him; the reasons become clear in the talk which I hold next time here about the topic “Hypnotism and Somnambulism”—and that is why he also depended on it as such a man who sees the spiritual in the world. As well as he insisted to recognise only as right what he could calculate and perceive with senses, the super-sensible was brought by him into the shape which it had to have for him; the super-sensible world was pulled down to a deeper sphere under the influence of the ways of thinking of natural sciences. Because it approaches us in such way like the views of the sensory world, I cited the reasons. We hear next time how such a thing comes about. However, the preconditions are given by the own spiritual development of the human beings who got used to the sense-perceptible.

I do not want to speak now about the significance and core of truth of Swedenborg’s visions, but about the fact that somebody sees—as soon as he enters this field which forms the basis of Swedenborg's views—his dispositions in this area, what he has developed in himself. A proof of it may be a simple example.

When the wave of spiritism spread in the second half of the 19th century, one also made experiments in Bavaria. It became apparent there that with the experiments at which also scholars were present and took place at different places quite different spiritual manifestations happened. In such an event one asked whether the human soul is received via heredity from the parents, so that also the soul is hereditary, or whether it is made new with every human being. In this spiritistic séance it was answered: the souls are made new. Almost at the same time the same question was put in another séance. The answer was: the soul is not created, but is passed on from the parents to the children.—One thought that at one séance followers of the so-called creation theory were, and at the other séance some scholars were present who were followers of the other theory. In the sense of the thoughts which lived in them the answers were given. Whichever facts may be there, whichever reasons of these facts may be there, it became clear that the human being receives as a manifestation what corresponds to his view. It is irrelevant whether it faces him only as an intellectual manifestation or as a vision; what the human being sees is founded in his own dispositions.

This search for sensuous-extrasensory proofs became just a child of the natural sciences of the materialistic time. The principle was actually drawn up that one had to seek for the extrasensory world as one had to seek for the sensuous one. Just as somebody convinces himself in the laboratory of the reality of forces of magnetism or light, one wanted to convince oneself of the super-sensible world by the appearance to the senses. People had forgotten how to behold the spiritual in purely spiritual way. They had forgotten how to develop the belief in super-sensible forces and how to learn to recognise what is neither sensuous nor analogous to the sensuous, but what can be seized only by spiritual intuition. They had got to be used to get everything on the sensory way, and that is why they also wanted to get these matters on the sensory way. Research moved on this way. Thus we see Swedenborg’s direction going on. What appears offers nothing new to us; spiritism offers nothing new! We take an overview of this later and understand it then also better.

All the phenomena which spiritism knows were explained that way. There we see the South German Oetinger who elaborated the theory that there is a super-sensible substance which can be seen as a physical phenomenon. Only, he says, the super-sensible matter does not have the raw qualities of the physical matter, not the impenetrable resistance and the row mixture. Here we have the substance from which the materialisations are taken.

Another researcher of this field is Johann Heinrich Jung called Stilling who published a detailed report on spirits and apparitions of spirits and described all these matters. He tried there to understand everything in such a way that he did justice to these phenomena as a religious Christian. Because he had tendencies to be a religious Christian, the whole world seemed to him to manifest nothing but the truth of the Christian teaching. Because at the same time natural sciences made claims, we see a mixture of the purely Christian standpoint with the standpoint of natural sciences in his representation. Esotericism explains the phenomena by the intrusion of a spiritual world into our world.

You see all these phenomena registered in the works of those who wrote about spiritism, demonology, magic et cetera in which you can also find something that goes beyond spiritism, like with Ennemoser, for instance. We see even carefully registered how a person can enable himself to perceive the thoughts of others who are in distant rooms. You find such instructions with Ennemoser, also with others. Already in the 19th century you find with a certain Meyer who wrote a book about the Hades from spiritistic standpoint as a manifestation of spiritistic manipulations and stood up for the so-called reincarnation theory. You find a theory there to which theosophy has led us again, and which shows us that the old fairy tales are expressions of the higher truth prepared for the people. Meyer got this view on account of sensuous demonstrations.

We find all the spiritistic phenomena with Justinus Kerner. They are significant because of the moral weight of the author. There we find, for example, that near the seeress of Prevorst things—spoons et cetera—are repelled by her; it is also told that this seeress communicated with beings of other worlds. Justinus Kerner registered all the communications which he got from her. She informed him that she saw beings of other worlds which went through her, indeed, but which she could perceive and that she could even behold such beings which came in along with other people. Some people may say about these matters: Kerner fantasised and was fooled a lot by his seeress. However, I would like to say one thing: you know David Friedrich Strauss who was friendly with Justinus Kerner. He knew how it stood with the seeress of Prevorst. You also know that that which he performed goes in a direction which runs against the spiritistic current. He says that the facts of which the seeress of Prevorst reports are true as facts—about that cannot be discussed with those who know something about it, he considered the matters as being beyond any doubt.

Even if a bigger number of human beings existed who were still interested somewhat in such things, the interest decreased, nevertheless, more and more. This could be led back to the influence of science. It refused to look at such phenomena as true manifestations in the time of the forties when the law of energy conservation was discovered forming the basis of our physics when the cell theory was drawn up when Darwinism prepared. What came up in this time could not be favourable to the pneumatologists. Hence, they were strictly rejected. That is why one forgot everything that these had to say.

Then an event took place which meant a victory for spiritism. The event did not happen in Europe, but in the country where materialism celebrated the biggest triumphs in that time where one had made oneself used to consider only as true what hands can seize. This happened in America, in the country where the materialistic way of thinking intimated by me had strongly developed. It went out from the phenomena which belong in the broadest sense to those which one has to call abnormal but sensual. The well-known knocking sounds, the phenomena of moving tables and the knocking through them, the audibility of certain voices which sounded through the air accompanied by intelligent manifestations for which no sensuous reason existed—they pointed to the super-sensible so clearly in America, in the country where one attaches much value to the outer appearance. Like by storm the view gained recognition that there is a super-sensible world that beings which do not belong to our world manifest themselves in our sensory world. Like a storm this went through the world.

A man, Andrew Jackson Davis, who concerned himself with these phenomena, was called upon for explaining these matters. He was, in similar way as Swedenborg, a seer; he only did not have the deepness of Swedenborg. He was an unlearned American grown up as a farmer boy and Swedenborg was a learnt Swede. He wrote a book in 1848 (?): The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse. This work arose from the most modern needs which had originated within the modern battle in which one wanted to accept the sensuous only in which everybody wanted to put his personal egoism forward, in which everybody wanted to grab so much to himself, wanted to become as happy as he only was able to. In this world one was no longer able to have sense for a faith which leads beyond the sensuous world, according to the ways of thinking which were tied to the material only. One wanted to see and one wanted to have such a faith which satisfies the needs and desires of modern humankind. Above all Davis says plainly that modern people cannot believe that a quantity of human beings is blessed, another quantity condemned. It was this what the modern could not stand; there an idea of development had to intervene. Davis was informed of a truth which shows an exact image of the sensuous world. It may be characterised by an example. When his first wife had died, he had the idea to marry a second wife. However, he had doubt, but a super-sensible manifestation caused that he gave himself the permission. In this manifestation his first wife said to him that she had married in the sun-land again; that is why he felt to have the right also to marry a second time. In the beginning of the first part of his book he informs us that he was educated as a farmer boy like a Christian, but he realised soon that the Christian faith can deliver no conviction, because the modern human being must understand the what, the why and the where to of the way.

I was sent out—he tells—to the field by my parents. There came a snake. I attacked it with the hayfork. But the tooth broke off. I took the tooth and prayed. I was convinced that the prayer must help. But ... [gap in the transcript]. How can I believe in a God who allows that I experience such a thing? He said to himself. He became an unbeliever. By the spiritistic séances in which he took part he got the ability of trance and became one of the most fertile spiritistic writers. He emphasises that the appearance of that world is approximately the same as that of the sensory world. It would be an unbelief that a good father does not care for his children, because the father makes long journeys for this purpose et cetera.

You see that the earthly world is transferred to the other world. Therefore, this way of thinking spread like a wildfire all over the world. In short time one could count millions of followers of spiritism. Already in 1850 one could find thousands of media in Boston, and one could also pay 400,000 $ in short time to construct a spiritistic temple. You will not deny that that has a great cultural-historical significance. However, with regard to the modern way of thinking this movement had only prospects of success if science took hold of it, that means if science believed in it.

If I held a lecture about theosophy, I could speak in detail of the fact that still quite different powers stand behind the staging of the spiritistic phenomena. Behind the scenery deep occult powers are at work. But this cannot be my task today. I tell another time who is, actually, the true director of these phenomena. But this is certain: if this occult director wanted to presuppose that these phenomena convinced the materialistically minded humankind of the existence of a super-sensible world thoroughly if it should believe in it in the long run, the scientific circles had to be conquered. These scientific circles were not so hard to conquer. Just among the most reasonable, among those who could think thoroughly and logically were many who turned to the spiritistic movement. These were in America Lincoln, Edison, in England Gladstone, the naturalist Wallace, the mathematician Morgan. Also in Germany was a big number of excellent scholars, they were experts in their fields, and were convinced of the spiritistic phenomena by media, like Weber and Gustav Theodor Fechner, the founder of psychophysics. Friedrich Zöllner also belongs to them about whom only those who understand nothing of the matter can say that he became mad when he did the famous experiments with Slade. Then, however, also a personality who is yet underestimated: this is the Baron Hellenbach, deceased in 1887. He presented his experiences in spiritistic fields in his numerous books in such a brilliant way. For example, in his book about biological magnetism and in the book about the magic of figures, so that these books are true treasure troves to study which way this movement has taken—in particular in more inspired heads—in the second half of the 19th century.

A European impulse came to the American movement and this went out from a man who stood in the European culture, from a disciple of Pestalozzi, and it originated at a time which is already significant because of its other discoveries. This spirit is Allan Kardec who wrote his Spirits’ Book in 1858, in the same year in which many other works appeared epoch-making for the western education in different fields. We only have to call some of the works to indicate the significance of the mental life in this time. One is Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; the other is a basic work about the psycho-physical field by Fechner. The third one is a work of Bunsen which familiarises us with spectral analysis and which gives the possibility to discover something of the material composition of the stars for the first time. The fourth one was the work of Karl Marx: The Capital. The fifth one was a work of Kardec, a spiritistic work, but of quite different kind as the American works. He represented the idea of reincarnation, the re-embodiment of the human soul. This French spiritism had as numerous supporters as the American one in short time. It spread over France, Spain and especially also over Austria. It was completely in accord with the ancient teachings of wisdom of theosophy. Also spirits like Hellenbach, an Austrian politician, could accept it. He represented the scientific form of spiritism Kardec had founded. Hellenbach played a prominent role in important political matters of Austria in the sixties and seventies of the last century and proved to be a clear and keen thinker at every step. Spiritism got a scientific form in Germany that way. Also such spirits founded the scientific spiritism in Germany who did not want to speak like Hellenbach or Gladstone, Wallace, Crookes who assumed angelic spirits of the old Christendom but who wanted only to speak about the reincarnation of the human being and the intrusion of beings unknown to us whose forms Hellenbach leaves open. But also those who generally do not want to know anything about a yonder world were no longer able to not accept the facts as such. Even people like Eduard von Hartmann who wanted to know nothing about the theories of the spiritists, however, said that the facts could not be denied. They let themselves not be swayed during the period of the exposures. The most famous one was that of the medium Bastian by the Crown Prince Rudolf and the archduke Johann of Austria. The media, which had convinced our scientific circles, were exposed with the medium Bastian. Everybody who simply has some insight in this field knows that Hellenbach is right when he says: nobody will claim that there are no wigs. Should one also believe that there is no real hair because one has discovered wigs?—To somebody who works in occult fields the sentence applies that one can prove to many a bank that it is a corrupt bank; yes, but did not this bank do also honest banking business once? The assessment of the spiritistic truth hides behind such comparisons.

We have seen that the scientific and materialistic ways of thinking since the 18th century—we can call 1716 the natal year of spiritism—have completely adapted themselves to the modern thinking, also to the materialistic views. A new form was sought for to be able to approach the higher, super-sensible truth, and everybody who faced these facts tried to understand them in his way. The Christian faith found a confirmation of its ancient church faith; also some orthodox have accepted it to find favourable proofs of their case. Others also found confirmation from the standpoints of the material thinking which assesses everything only according to the material relations.

Also those who were thorough scientific researchers like Zöllner, Weber, Fechner and also several famous mathematicians like Simony et cetera tried to get closer to the case, while they moved from the three-dimensional on the four-dimensional. The philosophical individualists who could not believe that in the spiritual world also an individualistic development exists like in the physical one were led by means of thorough investigation to understand that the human way, this sensory way to be—to see with bodily eyes to hear with bodily ears—is only one way of many possible ways. The representatives of a super-sensible spiritism like Hellenbach found their ideas confirmed on account of the spiritistic facts. If you imagine a person who knew to deal with the peculiarities of every single medium who knew how to adapt himself to the most difficult circumstances, so that it was a relief to meet him, Hellenbach was such a man. Also those who spoke only about a psychic force of which one does not and needs not think a lot also these followers of a psychic force, like Eduard von Hartmann or also spirits like du Prel of whom I will speak next time, they all explained the facts in their ways. There were many theories, from the popular interpretations for the people who looked after the manifesting spirits, after writing media, after communications by knocking sounds et cetera, from these religious seekers in old way up to the most enlightened spirits: everybody explained these phenomena in his way. This was in the time when this lack of clarity prevailed in every field, in the time when the phenomena could no longer be denied—but the minds of the human beings proved to be absolutely incapable to do justice to the super-sensible world.

In this time the ground was prepared to a renewal of the mystic way, to a renewal of that way which was taken in former times in the occult science and in the mysteries, but in such way that it is accessible to everybody who wants to go it. The Theosophical Society was founded by Mrs. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky to open an understanding of the ways. The theosophical movement revived the investigation of wisdom as it was nurtured in the mysteries and by the Rosicrucians in mediaeval times. It wants to spread what one has searched for in recent time on other ways. It is based on the old movements, however, also on the newest researches.

Somebody who gets a better understanding of the theosophical movement will find that the way of theosophy or spiritual science which leads to the super-sensible truth is on one side really spiritual, on the other side, that it answers the questions: where does the human being come from, where does he go to, what is his vocation?

We know that one had to speak in certain way to the human beings of antiquity, in more different way to those of the Middle Ages, and again in another way to the modern human beings. The facts of theosophy are ancient. But you convince yourselves if you seek on the way of theosophy or spiritual science that it satisfies any demand of modern scientific nature if it is understood in its very own figure. He would be a bad theosophist who wanted to give up any of the scientific truths for theosophy. Knowledge on the bright, clear way of true scientific nature—yes, but no knowledge which limits itself to sensory things which limits itself to that which takes place in the human being between birth and death, but also knowledge of that which is beyond birth and death. Spiritual science cannot do this without having the authorisation of it—just within a materialistic age. It is aware that all the spiritual movements must converge at a great goal at last which the spiritists will find in spiritual science in the end. However, it searches the spiritual on other, more comprehensive ways; it knows that the spiritual is not found in the sensory world and also not by arrangements of sensory nature only, maybe by means of a beholding which is analogous to the sensory looking. It knows that there is a world of which one receives an insight only if one goes through a kind of spiritual operation which is similar to the operation of a blind-born that is made sighted. It knows that it is not right if the modern human being says: show me the super-sensible like something sensory.—It knows that the answer is: human being, rise up to the higher spheres of the spiritual world, while you yourself become more and more spiritual, so that the connection with the spiritual world is in such a way as the connection is with the sensuous world by means of your sensory eyes and ears.

Theosophy or spiritual science has that viewpoint which a believer of the Middle Ages, a deep mystic, Master Eckhart, expressed, while he characterised that the really spiritual cannot be searched for in the same way as the sensuous. In the 13th, 14th centuries, he expressed meaningfully that one cannot receive the spiritual by sensuous performances, by anything that is analogous to the sensuous. Therefore, he says the great truth leading to the super-sensible: people want to look at God with the eyes, as if they looked at a cow and loved it. They want to look at God as if He stood there and here. It is not that way. God and I are one in recognition.

We do not want to behold a higher world by means of events like knocking sounds or other sensuous arrangements. It is called a super-sensible world, indeed, but it is similar to the sensuous world round us.—Eckhart characterises such apparently super-sensible events saying: such people want to behold God as they look at a cow. However, we want to behold the spiritual developing our spiritual eyes like nature developed our bodily eyes to let us see the physical. Nature has dismissed us with outer senses to make the sensuous perceptible to us. The way, however, to develop further in the sensuous to the spiritual to be able to behold the spiritual with spiritual eyes—we ourselves have to go this spiritual way in free development, also in the sense of modern development.

Notes:

In the title of the talk, the term spiritism is used instead of the more common term spiritualism. Allan Kardec used it for the first time in his book The Spirits’ Book. Since then it is used outside the English speaking world to distinguish spiritism and spiritualism (Spiritualismus). The latter term is applied to the opposite of (philosophical, religious) materialism.

St. Augustine (354–430): Evangelio non crederem, nisi me ecclesia commoveret auctoritas (Contr. Epist. Manich., 5)

Christian Rosenkreutz (1378–1484), cf. CW 130

Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse: Being an Explanation of Modern Mysteries (1853). Davis dictated his first and most significant book in trance in 1845: The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind.

Robert Fludd (1574–1637), English philosopher and physician, Rosicrucian
Apologia Compendaria, Fraternitatem de Rosea Cruce … (1616)
Microcosmi Historia (1619)
Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae (1633)

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) in his Divine Comedy

It was in 1716: M. Martin Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, London 1703
Martin Martin (?–1719), Scottish writer

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), Swedish scientist and philosopher

Stockholm: the place from which Swedenborg saw the conflagration was Goteborg, 400 km away from Stockholm.

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702 -1782), Swabian theologian and theosopher

Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817), German pietistic-mystic author

Joseph Ennemoser (1787–1854), physician and mesmerist

Johann Friedrich von Meyer (1772–1849), Protestant theologian, politician
Hades, a Contribution to the Theory of Spirits (1810) (link to German page as the article in the English wikipedia is insufficient)

Justinus Kerner (1786–1862), German physician, poet, author
History of Two Somnambulists (1824), The Seeress of Prevorst. Revelations of the Human Inner Life and about the Penetrations of the Spirit World into ours (1828), Leaves from Prevorst (1831–1839), The Somnambulistic Tables (1853)

Seeress of Prevorst: Friederike Hauffe (1801–1829), somnambulist, born in a little village, named Prevorst

David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), German theologian and writer of The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1846)

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), 16th President of the United States

Thomas Edison (1847–1931), American inventor and businessman

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), British politician, Prime Minister

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), British naturalist

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), British mathematician and logician

Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878), German physician, founder of experimental psychology

Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), German philosopher and experimental psychologist, the founder of psychophysics

Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (1834–1882),German astrophysicist. He explains that the spiritistic phenomena are caused in a four-dimensional space and appear as shadows in the three-dimensional space: Transcendental Physics (1878)

Henry Slade (1835–1905), fraudulent medium

Baron Lazar von Hellenbach (1827–1887), Austrian politician, philosophical and socio-political writer, famous spiritist. On the Magic of Figures (Vienna, 1882).

Allan Kardec (pen name of Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, 1804–1869), French spiritist, systematiser of spiritism

Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (1858–1889)

Archduke Johann Nepomuk Salvator of Austria (1852–1890?) Einblicke in den Spiritismus (Insights into Spiritism) (1885)

Oskar Simony (1852–1915), Austrian mathematician and physicist: On Spiritistic Manifestations from the Scientific Standpoint (1884), cf. R. Steiner mentions him in CW 169 Toward Imagination (Anthroposophic Press, 1990), lecture 6

Master Eckhart (~1260–1327), German Dominican monk and mystic, c f. R. Steiner CW 7 Mystics after Modernism

Today I have to speak to you about a chapter of the newer cultural history which, indeed, repeats an ancient history in a certain form, but in such a peculiar, typical way that perhaps nothing is more suited than this chapter to show how difficult it is to bring certain great phenomena in the life of the spirit, in the life of the human being generally, closer to the official scholarship. Just today some—maybe a little bit harsh—words are necessary with regard to this chapter. Do not accept any word which I say in this direction in such a way, as if passion or emotion dictates it. I can assure you that I have the greatest respect to many a scholar with regard to his researches and his scientific ability, and that to him, nevertheless, some—I would almost like to say—painful word must be said speaking about the chapter of hypnotism in a short historical outline. At the same time we want to give short information of something related, of somnambulism.

A lot of people believe today that hypnotism is something quite new that it is something that science has conquered at most since somewhat more than half a century. You allow me to give you evidence from the 17th century. The evidence which I would like to give you is from a book which one reads today a little, from the book of the Jesuit Father Athanasius Kircher, and comes from the year 1646. I would like to inform of the words of this Jesuit father in fairly modern language. They are in a book with which Goethe dealt in detail in his history of the theory of colours because this father plays a quite important role also in the history of the theory of colours. In this book it is also spoken of that which the Jesuit father calls actinobolism. This would mean approximately: the radiating imagination. “This very big force of imagination appears even with the animals. The chickens have such a strong imagination that they get motionless and a peculiar daze if they only see a string. The following experience shows the truth of this assertion: Miraculous experiment about the imagination of the chicken. Lay a chicken, whose feet are tied together, on any floor, feeling caught it will try in the beginning to throw off the chain in any way, flapping its wings and moving its whole body. But, in the end, it will calm down after vain endeavours, despairing to escape, as it were, and submit to the arbitrariness of the winner. While now the chicken lies there quietly, draw a straight line of the same form as the string from its eye on the soil with chalk or any other paint, then let it alone after you have undone the chains: I say, the chicken, although it is relieved of the chain, does not fly away at all, even if one provokes it. The explanation of this behaviour is based on nothing else than on the lively imagination of the animal which takes that line drawn on the soil for its chain with which it is tied up. I made this experiment often to the surprise of the spectators and I do not doubt that it also succeeds with other animals. Nevertheless, the reader eager to learn may inform himself about it.”

Another German writer, Caspar Schott, gave a similar communication of the condition of animals approximately at the same time in a book entitled Entertainment of the Human Imagination. In it the concerning author who was a friend of Athanasius Kircher says to us that he took the instructions of this book from numerous attempts of a French medical writer. What is reported in this book is nothing else than what we call hypnotism of animals. I have already spoken in a former talk about the relations of hypnotism and somnambulism; hence, I recapitulate this chapter only briefly today.

You know that one understands hypnotism as a state similar to sleep in which the human being is brought artificially by different means to which we still want to point in the course of the lecture. In this sleep-like state the human being shows different qualities he does not show in the waking consciousness and also not in the usual sleep. You can sting a person in the hypnotic trance with needles, for instance; he proves insensitive. You can lay down a person if he is in a certain state of sleep and stretch his limbs; then they become so stiff and solid that you can lay the person on two chairs, and the heaviest man can still stand on this rigid body.

Those who saw the experiments of the really extraordinary hypnotist Hansen in the eighties of the 19th century know that Hansen laid the people, after he had transported them into hypnotic sleep, with a very small under-surface on two chairs and stood then on them, this heavy Hansen! These hypnotised bodies behaved almost like a board.

It is also known that somebody who has transported a person into such a sleep-like state can give him so-called suggestive commands. If you have transported a person into such a state, you can say to him: you get up now, go to the middle of the room and stop there like spellbound; you do not go on; you are not able to stir!—He carries out everything and then he stops like spellbound. Yes, you are able to do even more. You can say to the person concerned in a room full of people: here in this room is not one person excepting me and you.—He will say to you: here is nobody, the room is quite empty.—Or you may also say to him: here is no light—and he sees nobody. These are negative hallucinations. However, you can also give him hallucinations of other type. You can say to him, while you give him a potato: this is a pear, take and eat it!—And you can see that he thinks to eat a pear. You may give him water to drink, and he thinks that it is champagne.

I could still give a lot of other examples, but I still want to give some especially strange matters only. If you cause a visual hallucination in such a hypnotised person and say to him, for example: you see a red circle there on the white wall, he sees a red circle on a white wall. If you show him then, after he had this hallucination, the red circle through a prism, this hallucination appears refracted exactly according to the refraction laws of the prism, just like another phenomenon. The visual hallucinations produced with hypnotised people follow the external refraction laws; they still follow other optical laws, but it would go too far if we wanted to give them in detail. Especially significant is to know: if we give a command to such a hypnotised person which he should carry out not straight away, but only after some time, this can also happen. I transport a person into hypnosis, say to him: tomorrow you come to me and say hello to me and then ask me for a glass of water.—If the experiment is carried out so that all preconditions are fulfilled, he knows nothing about the experiment after waking up; but tomorrow he feels in the time which I said to him an irresistible urge and carries out what I posed for him. This is a posthypnotic suggestion. This may apply to strange cases, in particular also to date suggestions. I can suggest to a hypnotised person to carry out a particular action in three times ten days; however, a lot of actions must be carried out before. Do not get a fright from it. Perhaps only an occultist is able to have an overview of the preconditions which are necessary; nevertheless, the person concerned will carry out the command which was given to him in three times ten days on time.

These are phenomena which are not denied by the fewest, also not by scholars who have occupied themselves with these questions. Somebody who studied the matters may hardly deny the information which I have given. However, what goes beyond that is denied by many people. But we have also seen that in the last decades such a sum of matters has been added from the part of the physiologists and psychologists, so that one cannot know how much is still added to the admitted matters.

I have shown you that such abnormal states of consciousness are also found indicated in the books of the 17th century about which I have spoken. I could also explain with regard to other phenomena that knowledge of the hypnotic state has existed with the occultists of all times. However, the proof cannot be produced that the ancient Egyptian, in particular, the ancient Indian priest sages knew only what I have reported to you as the phenomena of hypnotism—and they are the most elementary ones: these sages knew even more. Because they knew even more, they were prevented to inform the big masses of their wisdom. We still see why. However, one thing is strange. The Jesuit Kircher is said to have received his wisdom indirectly from India. Keep in mind this story of the 17th century that this wisdom was transmitted from India.

The following centuries, since the 17th century, were not especially convenient for such matters in the external science. This external science made good progress in particular in the fields of physics, astronomy, and the investigation of the external sense-perceptible facts. I have already explained last time which significance this progress had for the human thinking. I have shown that above all this progress made people used to only look for the real knowable, the truth in the sense-perceptible matters, so that the human being got used to not accepting what cannot be seized with the hands, seen with the eyes, conceived with the inferring reason. It is the age of Enlightenment to which we approach, that age in which the human average mind set the tone in which one wanted to recognise everything in the way as one recognises the physical phenomena. With physical phenomena the experiments must succeed if only the preconditions are properly produced. Everybody can fulfil these preconditions. However, in the field of hypnotism something else is necessary. The immediate influence of life on life is necessary there, yes, the immediate influence of a human being on a human being or of a human being on a living being is necessary. The procedure which the human being has to carry out with the chicken, like in the experiment which already the Jesuit Father Kircher explained to us in the 17th century, this procedure had to be carried out by a human being. Also all the other matters of which I have spoken must be carried out by a human being to another living human being or being. It may be—and this is the most important question—because the human beings are very different from each other that the human beings would have such different qualities that they have an effect of quite different type on other living beings, above all on other human beings. Thus it could probably also happen because the human being is necessary to produce hypnotic phenomena that a person does not have the qualities which are necessary to hypnotise a human being, whereas another person has them. We not needed to wonder if this were that way. We know that an interaction takes place with the concerning matters, comparable to that of a magnet and iron filings. The iron filings remain at rest if you put wood into them; however, if you put a magnet, these filings position themselves in particular way.

We have to assume that human beings are so different from each other that the one can cause particular effects like the magnet, and the other can cause no effect like the wood. The purely rational clarification does never admit such a view. It supposes that one human being is like the other. The average scale is put onto the human being, and one does never admit that anybody can be a significant scholar, but has no ability, does not have the qualities to produce the hypnotic state. Nevertheless, there may be the case that it depends less on the human being who is hypnotised, but more on that who hypnotises who is active. The qualities may be even caused artificially in a human being who wields such a power on the other that such phenomena happen of which we have spoken, yes that much more important phenomena may happen. The rational clarification that makes no difference between human being and human being does not admit this. Those, however, who have concerned themselves with these matters, were aware of that up to the age of Enlightenment. Somebody who follows the course of history finds another view of science than we have it today. Sometimes these are only oral traditions which were passed on from school to school. There is never spoken about the state of the hypnotised person, about the state of that who should be hypnotised; it does not depend on him at all. However, methods are given to us which enable another person, the hypnotist, to cause such forces in him that he can exert such an influence on his fellow men. In the occult schools particular methods are given with which the person receives such a power over his fellow men. However, one also demands in all schools that that who develops such a power in himself has to go through a certain development occupying the whole human being. There does not help the merely intellectual learning, there does not help only thinking and science. Only those who know and practice the mysterious methods who work the way up to a lofty level of moral development who go through the most different probations in intellectual, spiritual and moral respect rise above their fellow men and become priests of humankind. Their development makes it impossible to use such a power in another way than for the benefit of their fellow men. Because such knowledge gives the highest force because it happens by means of a transformation of the whole human being, it was kept secret. Only when other views gained acceptance, there one also obtained other views about these phenomena, other intentions. Occult traditions form the basis of the question for centuries, and it does not depend on something else than on that: which requirements has anybody to meet whom is given such a power, which methods are necessary, so that a human being can attain such an influence on his fellow men?

Thus this question was till the age of Enlightenment. Only in the daybreak of Enlightenment from such a side like that of the Jesuit father of whom I have spoken something of these phenomena could be divulged in popular scientific way. In former times anybody who knew the case and the way would never have had the audacity to speak about these phenomena in public books. Only by indiscretion something of this matter could come to the general public. Only when one did no longer know what a tremendous importance the saying has: knowledge is a power, only at this point in time, when one played—like the child plays with the fire—with a knowledge rather fateful under circumstances and did not know what to do with it. Only in such a time it was possible to discuss this knowledge, which means nothing else than dominion of the mind over the mind, in popular way. Hence, it is not surprising that the real official scholarship, which is a child of the last centuries, did not know what to do with these phenomena.

In particular, it did not know what to do when it was confronted by Mesmer with these phenomena in a strangely surprising way at the end of the 18th century. Mesmer was a much defamed man, on the other side he was praised to the skies. This person made the question flow freely for the scholarship. The term Mesmerism comes from him. It was a quite peculiar person, a person as they may have appeared in the 18th century in bigger number than this could be the case today; a person who, as we will see, had to be inevitably misjudged by many people, however, who was able to make this question flow freely because of his fearlessness—which admittedly appears to the outsider as adventurousness, as charlatanism.

In 1766, a treatise appeared by Mesmer about the Influence of the Planets on Human Life which the modern scholar must regard as a quite fantastic thing. Darwin’s biographer, Preyer, esteemed by me—take this word seriously, because it concerns not a prejudice, but characterises him—showed an enormous impartiality just of this question what I have to appreciate, and, hence I choose him as a particular example of how little the changed science of the 19th century can do justice to that which was written from quite different preconditions in the 18th century. Preyer dealt with Mesmer’s works with all good will and could find nothing else than empty words in them. Who does not assess such matters fantastically but with expertise, understands it, and he will even meet somebody with mistrust who believes to be able to protect Mesmer against Preyer. If one wants to judge correctly, the preconditions of such a judgment are more profound than one normally believes. However, this first treatise should not occupy us, because it shows to the insightful person nothing else than that Mesmer understood to master the science of his time from a lofty point of view and with a comprehensive look. I want to emphasise this, so that the faith does not appear that he dealt as a dilettante with such matters. No doubt, Mesmer was a perfect young scholar when he wrote his doctor thesis, and you can find what he wrote in countless theses of people who became quite well-behaved and competent scholars of the 18th and still the 19th centuries.

Mesmer appeared with the so-called magnetic cures in Vienna in the last third of the 18th century. He made use of certain methods to these magnetic cures at first which were common practice at that time, actually. It was in those days the tradition which never completely has died down that one can achieve healings by means as I will mention them. This tradition has come to life in that time. He made use of a method which had nothing captious: steel magnets were put on the ill part of the body or were brought near to it, supposedly or really they caused relief or healing of pains. Mesmer made use of such magnets in his institute for a longer time. Then, however, he noticed something particular. Perhaps he has not noticed that at this time, perhaps he has also already known it and wanted to use a more usual method only as a hiding means. He threw the magnets aside and said that the force went out from his own body that it is merely transferred as a healing force from his own body to the ill body in question, so that the healing is an interaction between a force which he develops in his body and another force which is in the ill body of the other. He calls this force animal magnetism. I tell this roughly; if I explained it in detail, it would take too much time. He had differences in Vienna very soon—about the results of his cure we do not want to talk. He had to leave the city and turned to Paris. At first he had quite extraordinary results there. He was unusually popular. However, the scholars could not get over that Mesmer earned 6,000 Francs monthly what is something awkward from a doctor's viewpoint if anybody earns so much. This should go without saying on the part of science striving for progress and tending to materialism.

You know that we are in the 18th century in the age of Enlightenment that in France the emotions were running high and that one wanted to accept nothing that one cannot see with eyes, cannot touch with hands, and cannot deduce with reason. You understand that the official science, which was influenced more or less by the materialistic school of thought, took offence at matters which one could not understand. Hence, Mesmer’s healings became a public scandal. People said to themselves: these must be no real, but only imaginary illnesses, so that hysterical people are cured only in their imagination, or that sick people were relieved of pains in their imagination. In any case, one denied Mesmer’s method. The result of the fact was that by order of the king two corporations were asked to give an expert opinion about Mesmerism. I would like to state that to you, so that you see how in those days science really faced these things; so that you see that one must not look at these matters with passion, but also see at the same time how in those days one had to misjudge the stance necessarily which one had to take toward Mesmer.

A woman was blindfolded, and one said to her that one has got Monsieur d'Elon who would magnetise her. Three of the representatives of the commission were attending: one to ask, one to write, one to mesmerise. The woman was not mesmerised. After three minutes the woman felt the influence, became stiff, stood up from the chair and stamped with the feet. Now the crisis was there. One spoke of this crisis also with Mesmer’s healings, one ascribed the success to it.

One brought a hysterical woman before the door and said to her that the mesmerist were in the room. She started shivering, and the crisis came.

The commission had stated that there is something strange, something that the commission could not expect. It had stated something after which it could make no other judgement, as that the whole procedure of Mesmer were a swindle. Everybody who understood a little bit of it had been able to forecast that they would come with a probability of 95 to hundred to this result, and that they could come with their preconditions to no other explanations. But, nevertheless, the commission was able to come to other results! Is this nothing at all that a woman only grasps the thought of a person, gets to all the states which are told to us here about the woman inside in the room like about the woman outside? Above all we have to ask, and this commission should have asked itself in those days also honestly and sincerely: could they expect such an effect of the thought according to their rationalistic point of view? Would have they had any possibility with their materialistic means to explain the effect of the thought on the bodily states? Even if we concede the right to the commission to condemn Mesmer, one never can concede the right to it that it left this case. The case had to be investigated further, just by the commission, because there is a particular scientific question without doubt.

I would still like to emphasise a fact which is significant for that who knows answer which has been assessed, however, only disparagingly. A big sum was offered to Mesmer, so that he hands over his secret to other people. It was also said that the sum was paid to him, but he would have kept the secret for himself and would not have informed others. This is understood by many as a swindle. But short time after so-called hermetic societies appeared all over France in which the same arts were used to a certain degree. One did not say that he had betrayed the secret, but there were found those who exercised his methods. Who knows something about these matters understands that he only informed trustworthy persons of his secrets. It says nothing at all that he did not publish his secrets in the newspapers. Associate this statement with the fact that those who really know something of such matters do not inform of them, because it does not depend on informing but on developing certain qualities which produce these phenomena.

You understand now where the societies came from. It does not depend at all on the experiments; the experiments are still to be forbidden if they are carried out by unauthorised people. It depends merely on developing the hypnotist. Actually, the scientists could hardly give themselves any explanation of these phenomena at that time. Hence, these phenomena were thrown to the dead at first, as by the French Academy and also by the whole science. However, they appeared over and over again. In Germany such phenomena were discussed perpetually. Newspapers were founded specially for it. People who believe that such an influence can be exerted from person to person explain the fact assuming a fluid, a fine substance that goes from the hypnotist to the hypnotised person and exerts the influence. But even those who do not deny the influence cannot exceed materialism. They say to themselves: substance remains substance, no matter whether it is coarse or fine.—One could imagine the spiritual-effective as nothing else than something material. It is a result of the fact that one tried to interpret them in the materialistic age that these phenomena were interpreted that way

I cannot describe the different decades which followed Mesmer in detail. I only want to mention that the phenomena have never been forgotten completely, that even again and again people appeared who took these phenomena very seriously. There were also university professors who have described these phenomena in detail and already knew different matters, which we today subsume under the concept of hypnotic phenomena. They knew of the so-called verbal suggestion. They stated, for example, a lot more than what modern science wants to admit. One asserted of a scholar that he could read a book very well with shut eyes; that he could read with the heart and could read the words in such a state merely touching a book page. One asserted that one could also get to artificial somnambulism to see distant events, that is to become a clairvoyant.

All these phenomena were revived—and it is the strange fact that the scholars of the 19th century were forced to encounter it—by wandering hypnotists like Hansen who wandered in America during the forties who showed phenomena before the big audience and were paid for it. They often caused tremendous effects in their spectators. One called them soul tamers. In particular Justinus Kerner calls these people soul tamers because they produced soul effects by means of mere staring and looking. However, calling attention to the phenomena has dangerous aspects because on one side dangers exist for the experimental subjects, on the other side, certain swindlers fooled the audience in the most unbelievable way.

I would like to speak of an experiment which was often made and of which I am convinced personally that it perplexed and cheated souls in big public gatherings again and again. The experiment consists in the following: here sits a blindfolded medium. It can see nothing. The concerning impresario walks around in the audience and says at the end of the hall: say something in my ear or put a question, and we want to see whether the medium can know something of it. Or write down a word or a sentence to me on a piece of paper. The one or the other happens, and after a short time the medium at the table, very far from the impresario, says the word which is whispered or is written down. Nobody excepting the two human beings knows anything about it, and the concerning impresario can show the piece of paper or allow the person concerned to ask whether the information of the medium is right. In truth nothing else than the following happened in many cases where I was present: the man who walked around was a very skilful ventriloquist. The medium moved the lips at the moment at which it should pronounce the word. The whole audience looked at the lips of the medium, and the impresario himself said the word or sentence in question. I have experienced again and again that in each case hardly two human beings were in the hall who could explain this experiment. Of course, such cases were mixed up repeatedly with flawless facts. One must be in the know there to be not fooled by wandering mesmerists. Hence, it is unfortunate that this case has to be pointed out to the scholars. There are ventriloquists who can produce whole melodies, piano playing et cetera by ventriloquism. Who knows these matters is not easily fooled concerning these questions.

In the forties and fifties the attention of the scholars was called to it once again by wandering soul tamers. In particular, it was a certain Stone who caused great sensation and became a talking point. Already some time before, however, such a showman had induced a scholar to scrutinise these phenomena once again. This scholar gave us scholarly treatises about these phenomena from the forties. They referred chiefly to the method of fixation, to staring at a brilliant object. This scholar has drawn attention straight away to the fact that with all these phenomena no specific influence goes out from the hypnotist to the persons to be hypnotised. Just this experiment of fixation was so significant to him because he wanted to show that these phenomena concern an abnormal state of the experimental subject. He wanted to show that no interaction takes place, but that everything that happened is nothing else than a physiological phenomenon caused by a cerebral process. He wanted to show that Mesmerism is absurd with which the concerning person must have the particular qualities. Thus the tone was given basically in which from now on these questions were treated by the official science for the second half of the 19th century. Only with few exceptions this question was understood in such a way as if it could be treated like an everyday scientific experiment, as if it concerned nothing else than a fact which has significance only if it can be brought about again like another scientific experiment which can be performed and repeated any time. This requirement was also put to this experiment. Under this condition science also deigned to study the phenomena. However, the study was carried out in a rather unfavourable age. To characterise to you how unfavourable the age of the fifties, sixties was, I want to state something else that is the most significant for the observer of the development of the 19th century that is ignored, however, by the official science as a rule.

Long time before Stone, before the academic scholarship, a man appeared in Paris who was a Catholic priest before, who had gone then to the Brahmans to India, and who used the methods which he had got to know in India, hypnotism and suggestion, also the inspiration of person to person, to his healings. This man, called Faria, explained all the phenomena in another way. He said that it would depend only on one matter; it would depend on the fact that the hypnotist can cause a particular mental condition in the person to be hypnotised that he was able to transport the masses of ideas of the person to be hypnotised into a state of concentration. If this concentration is achieved if the whole mass of ideas of the person concerned is concentrated upon a particular point, the concerning state must happen. Then the other phenomena must also happen, and also the more intricate ones, which Faria shows.

There you have an explanation and interpretation from somebody who understood the case really. But he was not understood. He is simply overlooked. This is also explicable.—I have said that the Jesuit Father who discussed this case first and who got his wisdom from India indicated the explanation in the heading. However, the scholars did not understand a lot of it, so that the learnt Preyer said still in 1877 if the church attributes these phenomena to imagination, this shows only how much imagination the church has. He got personal about the Catholic priest to have become a Brahman. However, one always finds that hypnotism was used to healings and to soothe the pain with operations. Those who had relationship to Faria managed that a person to be operated did not perceive pains by means of mental influence. In 1847, chloroform was discovered; a means of which the materialistic researchers could believe and also said rightly that it prevents pain with operations. Thus the understanding of the other analgesic had got lost for long time. Only single, really thinking researchers also dealt with these phenomena in the next time. Who observes more exactly finds again and again that the doctors know the appropriate methods very well, but here and there they let it show that behind the phenomena is something that they do not understand. And those who are more reasonable expressly warn generally about dealing with these phenomena, with this field which is so subjected to deception that even great scholars can be fooled; hence, it cannot be warned enough about it.

Certain scholars, for whom one had to have, otherwise, the highest respect, had this standpoint. I only mention the Viennese researcher Benedikt, much appreciated by me, who pointed to these phenomena again and again, already during the seventies. He is the same researcher who established the idea of the so-called moral insanity which is normally not understood. One does not need to agree to the theory, also not to that which he speaks about hypnotism and magnetism. Already as a young man he paid attention to Mesmerism and thought that something is behind it; but he never dealt with it in such a way as for example Liébeault and Bernheim of the Nancy school. Benedikt was that who sharply opposed and emphasised that even Charcot warned about attempts of interpreting these phenomena. You can nowhere find a plausible reason with Benedikt for his opposition against the whole theory of hypnosis, but his instinctive utterances are moving in a strangely correct line. He always says only: who carries out experiments in this field must realise that the persons, with whom he carries out such experiments, may fool him as well, maybe without knowing it, as they can also provide something true for him.—He emphasised on the other side that in the way as science wants to take hold of the matters no results can be got.

After again a wandering hypnotist, Hansen, had demonstrated the most horrendous experiments to the people which scholars copied in the laboratory and were partly successful, we see magazines taking hold of the case. Thick books are written which are cannibalised by journalism, and these matters become questions of the day and popular writings are published, so that everybody can have instructions of these matters in his vest pocket. These were in particular the scholars of the Nancy school, Liébeault and Bernheim, who interpreted these phenomena scientifically. A quality had to be ascribed to these phenomena which makes them synonymous and belonging to the other scientific phenomena. Thus we see then that the exterior which is not denied by the materialists should be decisive for causing hypnosis. Bernheim has managed to exclude all methods and admitted the verbal suggestion only: the word which I speak to the person concerned has an effect in such a way that he gets to this state. Hypnosis itself is an effect of suggestion. If I say: sleep!—Or: lower the eyelids!—Et cetera, the corresponding image is caused and this causes the effect.

Thus materialism had happily put the phenomena of hypnosis in a coffin; thus that retreated into the background which all those know who know a lot about these matters: that it depends on the effect of a person on the other person; that a person has either the natural disposition or develops it using particular methods and develops to a powerful person important for his fellow men.

It was completely disregarded that this personal influence had an effect. The point of view of the average mind should be applied with which all people are on a par which does not want to accept a development of the human being to a certain height of moral and intellectual education. That which is important was put in a coffin.

From this point of view the whole modern literature is written. In particular it is the philosopher Wundt who knows nothing to do with it who says that a particular part of the brain becomes ineffective. Also a friend of mine whom I hold in high esteem, Hans Schmidkunz, wrote a psychology of suggestion in which he explains in detail that these processes are only an increase of phenomena to be observed in the everyday life which are caused naturally that one does not yet know, however, where the explanation must be searched for.

While we have considered the history of this fact, we have entered a kind of dead end. Nobody can find anything else in the contemporary literature about this chapter than a more or less big aggregation of simple, elementary facts. The effect of a person on another person is explained more or less insignificantly in a materialistic way. But one will convince himself of the fact above all that the official science did not cope with these facts, and that nothing is more unjustified than if today medicine presumes to put these phenomena in a coffin for itself if it claims that it should be the field of medicine only, that it should be a privilege of medicine to deal with these facts. To any really reasonable person it is clear that modern medicine knows nothing to do with these facts and that, above all, those are right who point to the danger of these matters. Not without reason people like Moritz Benedikt warned about a scientific study of these matters. Not without reason they said that even Charcot has to pay attention because these states which he causes as an objective observer could overcome him subjectively. Not without reason they wanted to protect science against the treatment as the Nancy school has usually done which has achieved nothing for the really reasonable person but worthless attempts of registration or explanation which basically mean nothing. Quite rightly Benedikt pointed to the fact that one cannot distinguish in the whole literature of the Nancy school which is a superficial or a positive performance and whether one has abandoned himself to self-deception or has been cheated.

This is the instinctive judgement of Benedikt whom certain, in particular deeper medical minds of today appreciate. This judgement is typical because it reproaches us instinctively with the true facts. Instinctively Benedikt points to that which it depends on. The first one is that these matters—and Benedikt expresses this with clear words—must not be lumped together with other to experiment with them. Hence, he only investigates those facts which approach him without his help. If anybody gets to natural hypnosis and suffers no change by the hypnotist, we have investigated these phenomena scientifically. However, as soon as we exercise an influence on our fellow men in this regard, then we do it from person to person, from the force of a person to that of the other, then we change the state of the other person, and then it depends on it what clings to our person how this person is in a certain way. Those know this who know the higher methods which science does not have at all. If you are a bad human being, an inferior human being in a certain way, and you exercise a hypnotic influence on your fellow men, you do harm to them. If you want to exercise such an appropriate influence so that with it encompassing cosmic forces have no harmful effects, then you have to be acquainted with the secrets of the higher spiritual life, and you are able to do this only if you have developed your force to a higher level. It is not a matter of experimenting here and there. These phenomena are those which are exercised perpetually round us. When you enter a room and there are other people, then interactions take place. Those are analogous to hypnotical phenomena. If such an influence is exerted consciously, one must be worthy and capable to exert such an influence.

Therefore, a healthy life will be in this field only again unless the demand exists to study these phenomena according to science, but if the old method is renewed again that somebody who has aroused the power in himself who can be the hypnotist must develop particular higher forces in him first. One knew this once. One knew how the phenomena are. It was a matter of preparing the human beings that they were able to carry out such phenomena. Only if our medical education is another again if the whole humankind is led again to a higher moral, spiritual and intellectual level and the human being has proved himself worthy, only if the test is carried out in this sense, one can speak of a prosperous development of this field. Hence, nothing is to be hoped from the modern academic treatment of hypnotism and suggestion. They are understood in a quite wrong way. They only must be considered correctly again. If this happens, one sees that these phenomena are basically more common than one thinks usually. Then one understands a lot of our surroundings. Then one also knows that one cannot popularise these phenomena beyond a certain degree at all because these phenomena belong to the human inner development then. The highest power is not acquired by vivisection of the spirit but by the development of forces in us. Moral, mental, spiritual higher development is that which makes us again worthy to speak a clear word in these fields.

Then we also understand our ancestors again who did not want to show these matters in their deepest significance to the secular world. One wanted to say nothing else if one spoke of the veiled picture of the Isis that nobody is allowed to lift her veil if he is guilty. With it one wanted to make it clear that the human being can recognise the highest truth only if he makes himself worthy. This will throw a new meaning and a new light on the saying: knowledge is power.—Certainly, knowledge is power. And the higher the knowledge, the bigger is the power. The guidance of the world history is based on such power. It is the caricature of it which science wants to show us today. But one is allowed to attain such knowledge which wakes up the hearts, such a power which is allowed to intervene in the hearts and freedom of others by an insight which is good fortune for the human being at the same time before which he stands there reverentially. Our ideal must be that our knowledge seizes our whole being that we stand before the highest truth and recognise that the truth which we experience in ourselves is a divine revelation at which we look as something holy. Then we again experience knowledge as power if knowledge is again a communion with the divine. That who unites in knowledge with the divine has a vocation to realise the saying: knowledge is power.

Notes:

Athanasius Kircher (1601 or 1602–1680), German Jesuit scholar and polymath. Ars magna lucis et umbrae (1646)

Miraculous experiment… This experiment had been already described by Daniel Schwenter (1585–1636, mathematician) in his book Deliciae physico-mathematicae (1636). Schwenter, however, had taken it from another book Recreationes mathematicae (1624), written by the French (medical writer) mathematician and philosopher Jean Leurechon (1591–1670), S. J.

Caspar Schott (1608–1666), S. J., German mathematician and physicist

Karl Hansen (~1833–1897), Danish hypnotist

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), German physician. De planetarum influxu in corpus humanum (The Influence of the Planets on the Human Body) (1766)

William Thierry Preyer (1841–1897), English-German physiologist. The Discovery of Hypnotism (1890)

induced a scholar …Presumably James Braid (1795–1860), Scottish surgeon and scientist. Neurypnology or the Rationae of Nervous Sleep, Considered in Relation with Animal Magnetism (1843)

Abb銠 Faria (1746–1819), Goan Catholic monk. The method of hypnosis used by Faria is command, following expectancy: De la cause du sommeil lucide ou étude de la nature de l’homme (On the cause of Lucid Sleep in the Study of the Nature of Man) (1819)

Moritz Benedikt (1835–1920), Austrian neurologist: Psychophysik der Moral (Psychophysics of Moral) (1874), Hypnotismus und Suggestion. Eine klinisch-psychologische Studie (1894)

Ambroise Auguste Liébeault (1823 -1904), French physician, Founder of the Nancy School or Suggestion School: Le sommeil et les états analogues, considérés surtout du point de vue de l'action du moral sur le physique (Sleep and its analogous states considered from the perspective of the action of the mind upon the body (1866)

Hippolyte-Marie Bernheim (1840–1919), French physician and neurologist: De la Suggestion et de son Application à la Thérapeutique (1887) [ Suggestive Therapeutics: A Treatise on the Nature and Uses of Hypnotism (1889)]

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), French neurologist

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), German physician, psychologist, physiologist and philosopher: Hypnotismus und Suggestion (1892)

Hans Schmidkunz (1863–1934), Austrian psychologist and philosopher: Psychologie der Suggestion in gemeinfasslicher Darstellung (Psychology of Suggestion Intelligible to Everybody) (1893)

Eight days ago I tried to show what the modern human being can today find within theosophy. Before I continue this cycle of talks, the special question of theosophy is to be discussed and its relation to the big tasks of the present civilisation, to the significant spiritual currents of our time. That is why I would like to enter into the so important question whether theosophy is unscientific.

This is that reproach which affects the theosophical movement most seriously in a time, in which science has the conceivably biggest authority, maybe the only real authority. However, in such a time this misunderstanding weighs a lot. Thus it must upset the theosophist particularly if the reproach is done repeatedly from the part of science, in particular from the part of those who want to create a configuration of life and world on scientific basis that theosophy is unscientific. A phenomenon of the last years, which must be symptomatic of the interests of our time to us, shows that the majority of people look just for this authority of science. However, the question which I only want to touch now will be exactly discussed in the talk on science. Nevertheless, I would like to point to the big sensation which Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe made to show that just the teachings of this book make obvious to someone who recognises its value as I do where the interest lies. This book wants to build up a whole world-picture on the basis of natural sciences. More than ten thousand copies of it were sold; then a cheap popular edition was organised for one mark, and more than hundred thousand copies of this edition were sold during few years since its appearance.

The book is translated into almost any important language. However, this seems to me less significant than that which I say now. Haeckel received more than 5000 letters concerning scientific questions. The letters contain almost the same questions, and we see that with it an important central need has been met. A supplement of the book The Riddle of the Universe is the book The Wonders of Life. In the preface Haeckel tells to us what I have just said. In this book you can also read the reproach which is done to theosophy, the reproach to be unscientific. The question is a burning one.

Hence, we have to understand how the whole position of our theosophical spiritual movement is compared to science. Who only has an overview of the last centuries cannot at all get it clear in his mind. One has to go back to the origin of human knowledge, to a time which is far away from our time, to the daybreak of human knowledge or at least to that which we call human knowledge today.

To understand completely how immense the contrast is between the view of the scientific problems today and in that daybreak of human knowledge, we have to realise that modern science declares itself to be absolutely incapable to answer the big questions of existence. In the preface of The Wonders of Life you find repeated what Haeckel has often said: he represents the standpoint of science against the medieval superstition and the revelation. Between truth and superstition there is no mediation, there is only either-or possible. He states with it that that which he has gained on the basis of his scientific studies is the only truth and that everything that other millennia produced is error, superstition and unscientific, already because the researchers of the former centuries knew nothing about the big discoveries of the 19th century.

The natural sciences of our time declare to be unable to answer particular questions. Indeed as I have indicated already in the previous talk, these natural sciences try to lead us back to bygone times, they try to find the primeval animals and plants and lead us back to the point in time when probably the first life came into being on earth. But the questions, these important central questions which Bois-Reymond put and Haeckel tried to answer in the book The Riddle of the Universe, the questions of the origin of life find no answer in natural sciences. Today, of course, the naturalist tries to give an answer to these questions, in particular Haeckel attempts it. He shows how the earth came from a fire-liquid state, cooled off bit by bit, became more solid, how then water could form and collect, and how finally the conditions were there that the living beings originated. He tries to show how one could imagine that life has come into being from the lifeless. This is what he wanted to oppose to all older convictions: that life once came into being from the lifeless and that everything that depends on life—also the human being—is nothing else than a product of the inorganic matter that it is based on nothing else than what we have in physics and in chemistry. However, Haeckel tries in vain to show that the human being is nothing else than the result of the miraculous dynamics and mechanics of the human organism. Because the big question comes now. The naturalist approaches the point in time when on our earth the conditions should have existed that the first living being originated from the lifeless matter. And there you find a concession with the researchers, even with Haeckel: we cannot form any mental picture of the condition in which our earth was at that time when the first life appeared. We do not know how the external nature was at that time, and, therefore, we cannot say how at that time the lifeless changed into life.

This is one group of the researchers. They had many followers in the first third of the 19th century, as well as even today. If, for example, the great English researcher Darwin was asked for his opinion in the first time when one said that one must understand life from matter, he himself would have conceded that it is impossible to understand life from lifeless. Huxley said, on account of his study of comparative anatomy, in the last time of his life that we are just within the world evolution; why should we not be able to think that that which we see round ourselves could not develop higher? We cannot declare the realm of beings finished; we have to look up from the lower beings to the higher beings which are not accessible to us, because we do not have senses for them. The reasonable naturalists made such thoughts and objections to themselves.

It is interesting that the German biologist Preyer has come because of his studies which were based on Darwinism to quite different views about life. He did not consider that life has developed from the lifeless, but he got to the result that at that time when the earth developed the first living being of our type the earth was not lifeless but one single living being, and that at that time generally nothing lifeless existed on our earth. The lifeless has developed only from life. You see that the Darwinist Preyer transformed the view, which other naturalists represented, just into the opposite, considering the earth as a huge living being. This was, as Preyer assumes, millions of years ago. A huge living being was our earth which you can compare with a human organism or an animal organism of today. Today also the human being has life and something apparently lifeless in him. Our bony system is apparently something lifeless. It separated from the living as something lifeless. Preyer imagines approximately that the earth was once a huge living being, and that the living earth has precipitated the lifeless, the dead, the rock and the rock masses, as the human being the skeleton. This is an important step which the naturalists and the philosophers have done in the last time.

And this step has to lead inevitably to an additional one; it has to lead to the step that not only the lifeless has developed from life, but that also all physical, the living and the lifeless have developed from the higher, from the spiritual. If the researchers pursue the way which they have taken today initially, they get to the sentence: not only the lifeless developed from life, but life itself developed from the spiritual. The spiritual was first, it separated life at first, and then life separated the lifeless. However, this is nothing else than the basis of the theosophical world view. The theosophical world view differs from the present, materialistic-scientific view because it makes the spirit the first and everything else dependent of the spirit. The materialist makes matter the first and derives everything from matter. I have already suggested last time that the teaching of the senses points to the reason why the modern naturalist wants to insist on his sentence that life can be derived from the lifeless, from the spiritless. I have pointed to the great sentence that the physiologist Johannes Müller and other significant physiologists expressed first. Helmholtz and then Lotze put it in the formula: the world round us would be dark and dumb if we did not have eyes and ears, which transform the oscillations of the air into that which is colours and sounds to us.—Natural sciences themselves say to us that everything that we see in the physical world round us is dependent on us. If we did not have particular eyes and ears, we could not see and hear the world in this particular way. The physiologist can give the reasons to us why the eye and the ear form in a particular way. This is due to the fact that we take part in the physical world with our eyes. Theosophy now shows the basic concepts of which I speak in eight days. We see a thing because we put the eye in the correct position to the thing which we want to see. We understand a thing because we have reason and apply it to get a world view from the pictures of the objects. Hence, we are able to make a world view to ourselves. Theosophy expresses this that way: the human being is aware of the physical world.

However, we have now to put the question: does the human being live only within the physical world? By way of a hint we can explain to ourselves this question if we imagine that anybody has no ears; he does not hear the sounds of his fellow men. They could produce sounds and words, but without ears you would not perceive the sounding manifestations of the external physical world. You must have ears to realise the physical world.—Does the human being consist, however, only of such physical manifestations? No, you know that within the body, in which the human being and also the animal are enclosed, not only physical activities exist, but that in the human being also feelings, desires, passions, and wishes exist. These desires, wishes, impulses and passions are also realities like the physical functions, the physical activities. Just as you digest and speak, you feel, wish and desire. Digesting and speaking are physical manifestations, and we can perceive them with physical senses for our physical consciousness. Why can we not perceive the other reality, which is also in us, the wishes, desires, emotions and passions? It is spoken fully in line with natural sciences if we say: we cannot perceive them because we have no senses for them.

However, just the world view underlying the theosophical movement shows that the human being can not only become aware of a physical, but also of a higher world. If we look at the manifestations of this higher world, then the wishes, desires, passions and impulses are as discernible realities as the physical perception is, as language is the physical expression of a physical activity. Then one says that the consciousness of the so-called astral world has awoken. The human being stands then as a being of impulses, of desires and of passions before us as he awakes as a physical being and can throw back the light impressions for our physical eye. How these higher senses awake how the human being can attain the higher consciousness, we hear this in the lecture cycle about The Basic Concepts of Theosophy. The human being lives in this higher world, but his consciousness, in so far as he is an average modern human being, has not awoken for this higher world.

Then there is still a third world, a world of thinking, and a world of the higher spiritual life which lies above the passions, desires, wishes and impulses. This world of thoughts, the world of spirituality, is still less accessible to the physical consciousness. Anybody should not deny this world of the pure spirit who stands on the standpoint of modern philosophy, but take into account that only the modern human being is lacking the organs to perceive it. The human being lives also in this third world. He thinks in this world, but he cannot perceive it.

Hence, we have to say: the human being lives in three worlds. We call these three worlds: the physical world, the psychic world and the mental world. In the common theosophical parlance we call them: the physical world, the astral world and the spiritual world. The human being is only aware of the first, the physical world, and, hence, he can only find something of the physical world scientifically. He can find anything of the other worlds only if he sees, perceives and is conscious in them as he is in the physical world today.

So we have in the human being a threefold living being before ourselves which forms a whole of body, soul and mind which is aware, however, only in the physical world. Therefore, the naturalist doing research within the physical world can look back only as far as the physical world presents itself to his scientific eye. Also to the scientific eye, equipped with any means of science, no other world comes up than that which comes up to the usual sensory life. Even if he looks back to the evolution of the earth for millions of years, he looks back to the point where from the astral daybreak—it is more luminous than any physical light—the physical has gradually condensed.

Only the eye which has become clairvoyant can penetrate to those evolutionary conditions where the physical from the astral and the astral from the spiritual have arisen; where the spirit gradually condensed to the living and later to the lifeless. That is why the physical researcher can no longer use his method of research where as it were the physical flashes where it has developed from the psycho-spiritual. That is why the physiologist rises to the periphery, to that condition where the living becomes the spiritual. To a more distant past the spiritual researcher rises and with it he creates a more encompassing world-picture, a world-picture which extends far beyond that which the physical researcher knows.

We have shown that the theosophical world view does not need to be unscientific, because it designs a somewhat different world view than the physical research. Other experiences are underlying it—the awakening on the spiritual plane. As you have to move in a room which is dark groping the way and perceive touching, and as another impression originates if the dark room is illuminated, everything appears new to the spiritual researcher, whose eyes are opened, in new activity, in another light. This researcher did not become unscientific because his experience was enriched. The logic of the theosophist is as certain as the logic of the best naturalist. Only this logic moves in another field. It is a strange ignorance if one wants to deny the scientific nature of our research, before one has tested it. We think in the same way on the higher planes as the physical researcher does on the physical plane; this harmonises the theosophical method of research and the physical one.

Now we have to explain why the modern researcher expresses this hard either-or and rejects everything that is not physical. The theosophical researcher realises why this has to be that way: this is connected with the development of humankind. Because the theosophist considers the development of humankind in a higher light and because he can perceive the events, so to speak, in the spiritual realm, the theosophist is able to recognise by the development why the sole authority is attributed to the physical intellectual science. What one calls science today has not always been there. Exactly the same way as any plant, as any animal has developed, as the genders and human races have developed, the spiritual life has also developed. Modern science itself has not always been in the same stage. It is a product of development. However, there was in the oldest times a way of human consideration although it was not scientific in the modern sense. Therefore, one has to go back to that time when the rudiments of our human life come into being.

Everything is in development. The human race was more different from that of today millions of years ago than one imagines it. This difference comes also up in the talks about the Basic Concepts of Theosophy. Another human race, the Atlantean one, has led the way of the human race of today. Plato still tells about it. This race is a fact that cannot be denied by the natural sciences. It has differently imagined, differently lived, and developed other forces than the humankind of today. Who wants additional information, can read up more about this human race in my magazine Luzifer. After the decline of this human race, this “root race,” such imagination, such thinking and looking developed finally as it is today. Within our present root race we distinguish seven sub-races again according to the theosophical view from which our own is the fifth one.

Humankind of today developed slowly, the cultural life developed slowly. If we go back to the spiritual life of the first sub-race of our root race, this spiritual life presents itself quite differently than our present-day spiritual life. The thinking of these human beings was different. It cannot be compared with our inferring rational knowledge at all. This thinking was spiritual, which came about by intuition, by a kind of mental instinct—but also this is not the correct term, it is more a spiritualised kind of thinking. This spiritualised kind of thinking contained all the other human mental activities like in a germ, lying side by side today, harmoniously in itself. What is separated today as imagination, as religious devoutness, as moral feeling and at the same time as scientific nature was a unity in those days. As well as the whole plant is enclosed in the seed, in a unity, that which is separated in many mental activities today was enclosed in a unity. Imagination was not that imagination which we regard as an unreal one. Imagination was fertilised by the spiritual contents of the world, so that it produced truth. It was not what we call artistic imagination today; it was that which contained truth in its images at the same time. The feeling and the ethical will were connected intimately with this imagination. The whole human being was a unity, a spiritual cell. We can imagine it externally if we check what has still remained to us.

If you study the ancient cultural products, as for example the Vedas of the ancient Indians, you find art, poetry and spirit flowing like from a spring. At that time truth, poetry and sense of duty flow like from a single centre of the human being, from common intuition. We can also study the images which have remained from the oldest druidic times which form the basis of ours,—and we find that the temple constructions, the stone settlements of the druids are modelled on cosmic measures. Everything shows us a former development.

Then we come to the next sub-races. There we see that the mental activities separate that they have spread out in the beginning like the branches of a tree. We see later, in the Chaldean-Egyptian age, that the science of astronomy separates from the purely practical science; that part by part separates from that which was a uniform view and becomes special attempts. We can pursue a particular law in our fifth root race: the human being of this fifth root race gradually conquers all fields of the physical world. If we consider the just described spiritual human being of the outset of our age, we see that everything is spirit with him.

The old Vedic priest did not yet know the tendency to the physical. The physical was something unworthy to him; he only looked at the eternal course of the events, his look was directed to the heaven, the earthly matters hardly touched him. In our time this Vedic view appears like an anachronism; we see that these views do no longer cope with the physical, and that just the Indian people suffers from the fact that its inner look gets darker, is forced back by a world which can no longer understand this view. The human being had to conquer the physical world with his mind; the human being has dived in the physical world and has to work on the physical world more and more.

The look was directed to the inner self at first, then, with the Chaldeans and Egyptians, it was directed to the stars. If we progress to the Greeks, we see how with them bit by bit that which was once united, philosophy, religion and art meet us as three completely separate mental activities. The ancient Vedic priest was a poet, researcher and religious prophet at the same time; if we progress to Hellenism, we see the philosopher, the artist, the priest appearing apart. What has happened according to the law of development in ancient Greece? The physical world was first conquered by means of one of the mental activities, by imagination. The tremendous Greek art is the conquest of the physical world with the means of imagination.

We progress to the first Christian time. It prepared already in the Old Testament, in the antiquity, but the new field was only conquered by the spirituality of the Christian time. It is the ethical field, the moral life. If you go to the older Greece, you see the moral appearing not separated from the general world view. Only with Socrates and Plato it begins that the moral being separates itself. Christianity conquers the moral world. As well as the old Hellenism conquered the physical in the art by imagination spiritually, Christianity conquered the physical morality, the moral life on earth, spiritually. This is the second phase of development.

If we skip over some time, we see around the turn of the 15th century to the 16th century splitting again what was combined once. We see the world viewer, the philosopher, and the researcher separating. There was still no separation between philosophers and scientific-physical researchers before. Look back at the first time of the Middle Ages, look at Scotus Eriugena, at Albertus Magnus, at those who cared for the cultural life in the world, you will see that there everything goes hand in hand. Between spiritual-philosophical researchers and purely physical researchers was no separation. You can still find reminiscences of the unity of philosophy and science with Descartes and Spinoza. The philosophical thinking went once hand in hand with the natural sciences. In the 15th, 16th centuries this separation takes place: science separates from philosophy; science becomes independent. A new field of the physical life is conquered: the field, which is to be conquered by physics, astronomy et cetera, briefly by purely physical rational science. Now we see what was united once—science, art, philosophy, religion, ethics—going separate ways.

Attempts were made later repeatedly to reunite what was a unity once. We see this aspiration also with Goethe. We see him trying hard to create spiritual natural sciences and to find a bridge between science and art. A sentence shows this: “The beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature which would have remained hidden to us without its appearance.” Also Richard Wagner tried to combine the myth of the religions in a new art form which should be more than the art founded on pure imagination.

These attempts remind of something that existed at all times. Beside the separate ways which religion, art, science and ethics have gone there was always what one calls the big unity. Beside science, art and philosophy there were the mysteries. The whole world view was performed to the initiate of the mysteries. One did not explain to him scientifically what was once and how the world laws are: an image of life was created there. In the Dionysus drama one revealed to him how the human being, the spirit-man, has submerged into the physical matter how the spiritual has condensed to matter to rise to the spiritual again in future. In great pictures this piece of art, this Dionysus drama, was performed in the ancient Greek mysteries. It was shown how Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Semele, is saved by Pallas Athena and how his heart is saved by Zeus. This is the performance of a great human drama; it should show nothing else than the life within our earth. It should be shown how the human being has dived in the physical body how he has saved his soul with the help of the spiritual in his innermost being and how he develops again to a new divine existence.

In the Greek culture then appears that separate which constitutes a unity in the deepness of the mystery temples. What Socrates tells and what Plato shows in his philosophy is nothing else than an external image, a separation of that which was found in the mysteries. If you read Plato, you see the philosophical presentation of the mystery drama; if you read the tragic destinies of the heroes, you have a weak reflection of the mystery drama in these heroic dramas. Philosophy has developed from the ancient art. In our time the last separation happened: the rational science which is limited to the physical world has conquered the world; the microscope and the telescope have conquered the world. As well as the Christian art conquered the internal feeling world the physical science conquered the outer nature. This was the task, the big world mission: to conquer what was a unity once in separate fields.

It is the mission of a new dawning time to pave the way for the unity of all four, of science, philosophy, ethics and art; theosophy wants to prepare the mission of new humankind. That is why the first significant work, the Secret Doctrine by Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, appeared with the subtitle: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy.—The theosophical world view behaves that way to the single branches which bury the mental life today. You see why it cannot find consolation, if the scientific world view confronts it with an either-or.

You see why the theosophist who looks at the whole can look reconciling at science and can almost expect an additional rise in the scientific sphere from the future development of science. This is the ideal of theosophy. Because humankind is a whole in every single human being, this ideal is the big human ideal of our time. On separate ways the human beings of our root race had to arrive at their goal. However, the big world law is that the ways go apart for a while; then they must reunite. Now it is the time of reunification.

A unifying world view can be only a tolerant world view. That is why the big principle of tolerance stands at the head of our movement. It would be a misunderstanding if one wanted to assess the theosophical movement on account of any truth. We do not unite on account of a particular single truth, of a dogma, not of that which this or that person has recognised or believes to have recognised. Anybody who expresses a truth in the theosophical movement, even if resolutely and energetically, does not express it in the sense as others demand that one must confess to it. Have a look at the single confessions, also at the schools of scientific thinking, materialism, monism, dualism et cetera, everywhere you can see one thing: the follower of such a confession or school believes to own the only truth and eliminates everything else. Either-or is the motto. The quarrel of the sects, of the views is the result. Theosophy differs quite basically from that. Truth has to develop in every single human being. Who expresses his knowledge, expresses it only to stimulate his fellowmen. The theosophical teacher is aware that in every human being truth has to be got out. In doing so, absolutely tolerant human beings unite in brotherliness to a common big goal; they unite in the Theosophical Society, in the spiritual-scientific movement. The most tolerant attitude, tolerance in feeling and thinking is to be found in this movement.

The theosophist realises, just if he has advanced in his way of knowledge, that in the breast of any human being the truth core rests that he only needs to be surrounded with a spiritual atmosphere to develop. It is all the cooperation on which it depends. Where theosophists unite, they create that atmosphere round themselves in which the single human germ can thrive. They regard this cooperation as their proper task. This distinguishes the theosophical movement basically from all others. Others combat each other—but we unite. Others are monists and consider dualism as wrong; however, we know that dualism and monism find a unity in an even higher harmony if anybody goes on searching spiritually in himself.

The great spirits have expressed this, also Goethe—connecting with his words to old masters—how in the human being the divine truth must develop how it has to come forth from the single human heart. He headed one of his scientific works with the following motto that could be also a motto of our theosophical movement:

Were not the eyes like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Did not God’s own force live in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Theory of Colours. Didactic Part

Notes:

William Thierry Preyer (1841–1897), English physiologist. The Hypotheses of the Origin of Life in Naturwissenschaftliche Thatsachen und Probleme (1880)—Scientific Facts and Problems.

Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858), German physiologist

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), German physician and physicist

Hermann Lotze (1817–1881), German philosopher and logician. Grundzüge der Psychologie (The Principles of Psychology) (1880)

The Basic Concepts of Theosophy: contained in CW 53 The Origin and Goal of the Human Being

This lecture is intended to discuss one of the most popular prejudices about the theosophical movement: that theosophy is nothing but Buddhist propaganda. One has even coined the word for this movement: New Buddhism. It is without doubt that our contemporaries would have to argue something against the theosophical movement if in this prejudice were anything right. Someone who stands, for example, on the Christian point of view asks himself rightly: what does a religion like Buddhism mean to somebody who has a Christian confession or is educated in a Christian surrounding. Is Buddhism not a religion that was intended for quite different circumstances, for another people, for quite different conditions? And someone who stands on the point of view of modern science may say to himself: which important matters can Buddhism deliver to us who we live with the scientific concepts which have been obtained in the course of the last centuries, because everything that it comprises belongs to a range of thoughts which originated many centuries before our calendar?—Today we want to deal with the question how this judgement could originate, and which value it has, actually.

You know that the theosophical movement was brought to life by Mrs. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott in 1875 that it has spread since that time over all civilised countries of the earth that thousands upon thousands of people who look for the solutions of the questions of life have found satisfaction in the deepest sense that it has produced researches which deeply speak to the soul of the modern human being. This movement has a rich literature and has produced a number of men and women who are able to independently speak in its sense. You cannot deny this. And we have to ask ourselves: how is the relation of this movement to the religions of the East, to Hinduism, and in particular to Buddhism?

The title of one of the most popular books in our field is to blame considerably for this prejudice which I have mentioned. It is the book by which countless human beings were won over for the movement, the Esoteric Buddhism by Sinnett. It is an unfortunate coincidence that the title of this book could be misunderstood so thoroughly. Mrs. Blavatsky says about this book that it is neither Buddhist nor esoteric, although it is called Esoteric Buddhism. This judgement is exceptionally important for the assessment of the theosophical movement. However, Buddhism stands on the title-page of Sinnett’s book, but this Buddhism would not have to be spelt with two d’s, as if it came from Buddha, but with one d, because it comes from budhi, the sixth human principle, the principle of enlightenment, the knowledge. Budhi means nothing else than what was called Gnosticism during the first Christian centuries. Knowledge by the internal light of the spirit, doctrine of wisdom.

If we understand the term “Budhism” in such a way, we are soon able to admit that the teaching of Buddha is nothing else than one of the manifold forms in which this teaching of wisdom is spread in the world. Not only Buddha, but all great teachers of wisdom have spread this Buddhism: the Egyptian Hermes, the old Indian Rishis, Zarathustra, the Chinese teachers of wisdom Laozi (Lao Tse) and Confucius, the initiates of the old Jews, also Pythagoras and Plato, and, finally, the teachers of Christianity. They have spread nothing else than Budhism in this sense, and esoteric Buddhism is nothing else than the internal teaching, in contrast to the external teaching. All great religions of the world made this difference between internal and external teaching.

Christianity knew this difference between esoteric and exoteric content, in particular in the first centuries. The esoteric differs quite substantially from the exoteric. The exoteric is that which a teacher announces before the community, what is spread by means of words and books. It is that which everybody understands who is on a certain level of education. The esoteric teaching is not spread by means of books; the esoteric part of every religion of wisdom is spread only by mouth to ear and still in quite different way. There must be an intimate relation of the teacher to his pupil to bring esoteric contents to a human being. The teacher must be a guide to his pupil at the same time. An immediate personal band has to exist between teacher and pupil. This relation between teacher and pupil has to express what goes far beyond the mere information, beyond the mere word.

Something spiritual has to be in this relation between teacher and pupil; the mental power of the teacher must have an effect on the pupil. The will exercised in wisdom lets something stream into that which moves on the pupil or the little community immediately which shall partake in the esoteric lessons solely as a little community. This little community shall be taken up step by step to the higher levels. One cannot recognise the third level if one has not adopted the first and second completely. Esotericism comprises not only a study, but a complete transformation of the human being, a higher education and discipline of his soul forces. The human being who has gone through the esoteric school has learnt not only something; he has become more different concerning his temperament, feeling nature and character, not only concerning his insight and knowledge.

What is entrusted to the external world or to an external book can be only a weak reflection of a real esoteric instruction. Hence, Mrs. Blavatsky says rightly that Sinnett’s book is no esoteric Buddhism, because whenever any teaching is generally given by a book or publicly, it is no longer esoteric; it has become exoteric, because the peculiar shading caused by the finer soul forces, the whole spiritual breath which must penetrate and warm up that which esotericism comprises, all that has disappeared from the information that a book delivers.

However, one thing is possible: somebody whose slumbering abilities can be easily aroused, and who has the intention and the tendency to read not only between the lines of a book, but to suck as it were at the words, that can suck out from a book what as esotericism forms the basis of this exoteric book. One can come under circumstances up to a lofty degree in the esoteric teaching without receiving immediate personal esoteric lessons. But this changes nothing of the fact that an immense difference is between any kind of esotericism and exotericism. The Christian Gnostics of the first centuries tell that in the words of Origen, of Clement of Alexandria if they spoke to their intimate pupils, the immediate soul fire, the immediate spiritual force had an effect, and that these words had another life then, as if they were spoken before a big community. Those who got the intimate lessons of these great Christian teachers know to tell how their souls were completely transformed and changed.

In the last third of the 19th century it became necessary to wake up the spiritual life in humankind as a counterbalance for the materialistic world view which has not only seized the scientific, but also the religious circles, because the religions have taken on a completely materialistic character. It had become necessary to revive the internal spiritual life. This internal life can be aroused only by somebody who goes out in his words from the force that is created in esotericism. It had become necessary that some people spoke about the matters again who knew not only from books and instructions, but from immediate personal observation something about the worlds which are above the physical plane. Just as somebody can be an expert in the fields of the natural sciences, somebody can also be an expert in the fields of the soul-life and the spiritual life. One can have immediate knowledge of these worlds.

At all times there have been such human beings who had spiritual experiences; and those who had such experiences were the important rulers and guides of humankind. What has flowed in as religions onto humankind has come from the spiritual and psychic experience of these religious founders. These religious founders were nothing else than envoys of the great brotherhoods of sages who have the real guidance of the human development. They transmit their wisdom, their spiritual knowledge into the world every now and then to give a new impulse, a new impact in the progress of humankind. To the big mass of the human beings it is not visible where from these inflows come to humankind. However, those know where from these impulses come who can do own experiences, who have the connection with the advanced brothers of humankind, who have arrived at a level which humankind reaches only in distant times. This connection itself by which the word of the spirit speaks to the co-brothers and co-sisters from within through the advanced brothers of humankind is esoteric. It cannot be attached by an external society; it is attached immediately by the spiritual force.

From such a brotherhood of advanced individualities a current of wisdom, a new spiritual wave had to flow in again onto humankind in the last third of the 19th century. Mrs. Blavatsky was nobody else than an emissary of such higher human individualities who have attained a lofty degree of wisdom and divine will. Of such kind as they come from such advanced human brothers were also the communications which form the basis of the Esoteric Buddhism.

It happened now—due to a necessary, but not yet easily understandable concatenation of world-historical spiritual events—that the first influence of the theosophical movement went out from the East, from oriental masters. But already when Helena Petrowna Blavatsky wrote her Secret Doctrine, not only oriental sages as great initiates provided the teachings, which you can find in the Secret Doctrine, to Mrs. Blavatsky. An Egyptian initiate and a Hungarian one had already added what they had to contribute to the new big impact. Since that time some new currents have still flowed into this theosophical movement. That is why for somebody who knows what proceeds behind the scenery from own knowledge—it proceeds inevitably behind the scenery because it can penetrate the theosophical current only slowly—it does no longer make sense to maintain that in this theosophical movement only a new Buddhism is contained today.
Not only the average human being is depending on his surroundings, on his age and his nation, but also the most advanced human being. Also somebody who has attained a lofty level of wisdom and divine will is still depending on his surroundings in certain way. The great sages of the movement emphasised that immediately in the outset of this movement. The great sages had come from oriental knowledge, from the oriental world. They belonged to a brotherhood which is rooted in that which one calls the profound Buddhism of the East. This brotherhood has its roots not in the so-called southern Buddhism which you can find in particular on Ceylon, but in the northern Buddhism which comprises not only the pure and noble doctrine of moral and justice of the southern Buddhism, but also a sublime doctrine of the spiritual life of the world. This northern Buddhism can be regarded in certain sense as a kind of esoteric doctrine, in contrast to the southern Buddhism.

Why had the renewal of the spiritual life to be stimulated from this side? Was this necessary? We are not fooled by the whole state of affairs which is here, but we express it in such a way as it presents itself to the impartial knower.

All great world religions and all great world views come from envoys of these great brotherhoods of advanced human beings. But while these great religions do their wandering through the world, they must adapt themselves to the different national views, to the reason, to the times and the nations. Our materialistic time, in particular since the 15th, 16th centuries, has not only materialised science, but also the confessions of the West. It has forced back the understanding of the esoteric, of the spiritual, of the real spiritual life more and more; and thus it happened that in the 19th century only very little understanding was there of a more profound wisdom. Nevertheless, with regard to the origin of the European religion we have to say that those who have a spiritual conscience looked for the spiritual but that they found very little stimulation in the Protestant confession of the 19th century that they were dissatisfied with that which they could hear from the confessions and theologians.

Just those who had the deepest religious needs found the least satisfaction in the confessions of the 19th century. These confessions of the 19th century were revived in the core by the esoteric core of the universal teachings of wisdom. Theosophy led countless people back to Christianity who had turned away from Christianity because of the interesting scientific facts. The theosophical movement has deepened this Christianity again, it has shown the true, real form of Christianity, and it also has led many of those to Christianity who had no longer been able to satisfy their souls and hearts with it. This is because theosophy does nothing else than to renew the internal core of Christianity, and to show it in its true figure. However, it was necessary that the stimulation went out from the little circle of the East in which still a continuous flow had been preserved from the times of an advanced spiritual life in the beginning of our root race.

From the Middle Ages up to the modern times there were great sages also in Europe; and there were also such brotherhoods. I have to mention the Rosicrucians over and over again; but the materialistic century could only accept little from this Rosicrucian brotherhood. Thus it happened that the last Rosicrucians had already united with the oriental brothers at the beginning of the 19th century who then gave the stimulus. The European civilisation had lost any spiritual power, and that is why the big stimulations had to come from the East at first. Hence, the word: ex oriente lux.—Then however, when this light had come, one found the spark again, so that also in Europe the religious confessions could be kindled.

Today we do not in the least need to adhere to the reminiscences of Buddhism. Today we are able to show the matter absolutely from our European culture, from the Christian culture without pointing to Buddhist springs or origins or other oriental influence. It is noteworthy what one of the most significant theosophists of India said about the world mission of the theosophical movement on the congress of religions in Chicago. Chakravarti delivered a speech and said: also in the Indian nation, the old spiritual life has got lost. The western materialism has also entered in India. One has also become haughty and refusing in India towards the doctrines of the old Rishis, and the theosophical movement has acquired the merit of bringing the spiritual teaching also to India.—So little it is correct that we spread Indian world view that just the reverse holds true: that rather the theosophical movement brought the world view, which it has to represent, to India again.

The scholars who dealt with the investigation of Buddhism in the course of the 19th century argued from their point of view against the term “esoteric Buddhism.” They said: Buddha never taught anything that one could call esotericism. He taught a popular religion which preferably concerned the moral life, and spoke words which can be understood by everybody; however, a secret doctrine is out of the question with Buddha. Hence, some also said that there cannot be an esoteric Buddhism at all. A lot of incorrect things were written about Buddha and Buddhism. You can see this already from passages of the little book which appeared with Reclam. There you can read: “that is even more which I recognise and do not announce than what I have announced to you. And truly I have not announced this to you because it brings you no profit because it does not promote the holy life because it does not lead to the resistance, not to the suppression of desire, not to peace, knowledge, enlightenment and nirvana. That is not why I have announced that to you. What have I announced to you? This is the suffering, this is the origin of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering, and this is the way which leads to the cessation of suffering. I have announced this to you.”

Such a passage shows us immediately that Buddhism is a doctrine which was not announced publicly. Why it was not announced publicly? Because an esoteric teaching cannot be announced publicly! Buddha wanted nothing else from his people than to announce uplifting ethics and moral doctrine with which everybody can become mature to be accepted to a school of wisdom, to esotericism, after he had developed the necessary virtue, temperament and character. Buddha announced to his most intimate disciples what he had to say beyond the exoteric.

The northern Buddhism has preserved this secret doctrine of Buddhism and all great religions of wisdom in a living spiritual flow. That is why that influence which has led to the foundation of the Theosophical Society could go out from them. In particular our contemporaries are reluctant to receive any favourable influence, whether from Buddhism, from Hinduism or any other oriental religion. As we meet there a prejudice of the most unbelievable kind, one could also prove with regard to countless other matters how little the oriental confessions have been understood in Europe, and how those talk about these confessions in Europe who have never taken pains to penetrate into them and behave in such a way, as if anything completely strange to the western wisdom has to flow into the West.

Thus one says that Buddhism leads to asceticism that it leads to estimate non-existence higher than life. One says also that such asceticism, such hostility to life does not befit the active modern human being. They say: what does such asceticism mean to us? One only needs to report a passage of the Buddhist writings to show how little reasonable the reproach of asceticism is with regard to Buddhism. The term “Bhikshu (Bhikkhu)” signifies a pupil in Buddhism. If any Bhikshu deprives a human being of his life, holds a eulogy on death or stirs up others to suicide and says: what is this life of use for you? Death is better than life!—If he gives reasons for the post-mortal life that way, he has fallen off and belongs no longer to the community.—A strict order of Buddhism reads that way and a ban to speak to anybody of the fact that death is more valuable than life: this is one of the biggest sins in the true Buddhism. If you take such a thing, you can estimate, from there going out, how little appropriate the ideas are which are announced over and over again by those who have dealt with this matter insufficiently.

It is difficult to get rid of prejudices which have nested in such a way. One can only point to the true figure of these matters time and again. Indeed, one has spoken then, but the same objections come soon again. One can say a hundred times that the nirvana is not non-existence, but fullness and wealth of being that it is the highest summit of consciousness and being that there is no passage—also not in the exoteric writings—from which it follows that a true expert imagines nirvana as non-existence: one can repeat a hundred times, but over and over again people speak of renunciation of life. Nirvana is exactly the same about which also Christianity speaks. But only those who were initiated into the deeper secrets of Christianity can point to it.

One cannot deny that the true Christians that the scholastics and mystics were deeply influenced by Dionysius the Areopagite. You find with him that if one speaks of the divine being with which the human must unite at the end of the evolution one should attribute no predicate which is got from our earthly conceptions to this highest being. We have obtained everything that we can say about qualities in this world. If we attribute such a quality to the divine being—as this Christian esotericist says , then we say of the divine that it is identical to the limited, it is identical to that which is in the world. Hence, Dionysius the Areopagite speaks in his writings of the fact that one should not even say God, but Super-God, and that one has to take care above all not to attribute any worldly quality to this divine being to preserve the holiness of this concept. One has to realise that the divine being cannot have the qualities we can experience in the world but much more.

The great cardinal Nicholas of Cusa renewed this view in the 15th century, also the Christian mystics, Master Eckhart, Tauler, Jacob Böhme, generally all mystics who had received insight of the big riddles of existence from immediate experience. Thus the western Buddhists also spoke of nirvana. We may get a better idea of nirvana if we look for the European, Christian terms of it.

Somebody who goes back to the 16th century and examines the words of that time finds that it is more difficult to detect their sense. Hence, it is also completely incorrect what is said about nirvana from philological side. That who speaks of the theosophical movement as of a Neo-Buddhist movement is not able to say anything correct about the Buddhist school of thought. Those who have spread the prejudice do not know at all of what they talk. For it is not necessary to resort to the oriental sources. Only the first stimulation went out from this oriental spring. What we have today does not pour out to us from Buddhism. On the contrary, since the first times of the theosophical movement the life, the immediate spiritual life has become more and more active in the theosophical spiritual current. If today anybody who wants to announce the original theosophical doctrine wanted to announce a Buddhist confession only, it would be just in such a way, as if anybody who wants to teach mathematics today does not teach what he himself knows but to teach the old Euclid or the old Descartes.

This is the important feature of the theosophical movement that the first great teachers were only the great initiators, and that since then men and women appeared who have really spiritual experience, who are able to impart the spiritual knowledge. What are to us Zarathustra, Buddha, Hermes et cetera? They are to us the great initiators before whom we stand in reverence and admiration because if we look at them the forces are stimulated in us which we need. Knowledge cannot be conveyed by the greatest sages on account of their authority. There is good reason, if we still are in another relation to Buddha, Zarathustra, Christ than to the great teachers of mathematics or physics. What is announced as a principle of wisdom becomes immediate external life in the human being.

It is not external knowledge like mathematics or natural sciences, but it is a lively life. What the science of wisdom conveys speaks to the whole human being. It runs through the whole human being up to the fingertips. If it flows out of him, wisdom itself flows out; it flows out from one being to the others. However, we stand to Jesus, Hermes, and Buddha not in such a way as we stand to science, but in such a way that we stand with them in a common life that we live and work in them. On the other hand, they are the initiators only. If wisdom has become ours, they consider their task as fulfilled. That is why it does not depend on dogmas, not on doctrines or on anything you find in books but on the fact that the lively life is in movement, is pulsating. Somebody who does not know in his deepest heart that a lively life penetrates any single member, any single human being who belongs to the theosophical movement, that he is flowed through by lively spiritual currents does not understand the theosophical movement in the right way. We do not have a book in the hand and announce the tenets of the book, we are life, and we want to impart life. As much life we impart, as much theosophy will work.

If we understand this, we also realise that it does not depend on the text of the doctrine, but on the immediate spiritual experience which somebody has to announce which he himself has to tell. This is the big misunderstanding that one believes that one has to swear on the words of any masters in theosophy, or one has to repeat these or those dogmas or tenets which come from higher individualities, and then this is theosophy. One believes that somebody is a theosophist if he speaks of the astral world and of devachan, and spreads what he reads in the books. This does not yet make anybody a theosophist. It does not depend on that which is announced, but how it is announced that it is announced as immediate life. Hence, somebody who lives the life correctly which comes from these books Mrs. Blavatsky or somebody else wrote lives this life individually.

This is the best stimulation which somebody can receive which he can also attain from Blavatsky if he is able to receive something spiritual in himself and to spread it again. We need human beings who know how to announce out of themselves what they have experienced in the higher worlds. Then it is a matter of indifference whether it happens in words of the East, in words of Christianity, or with the new-coined words. In the true theosophist words and not concepts do live, the spirit lives in him. The spirit has neither words nor concepts, it has immediate life. All concepts and words are only external forms of this spirit living in the human being.

This will be the progress of the theosophical movement. It becomes the more theosophical, the more we have men and women who understand the theosophical life who understand that it does not depend on speaking about karma and about reincarnation, but on that: to make the spirit, which lives in them, the moulder, the creator of the words. Then we do not speak at all with the words which were valid in the theosophical movement, and, nevertheless, we are better theosophists. We do not have orthodox adherers and heretics again in the theosophical movement. If we distinguished orthodox adherers and heretics, we would no longer have understood the theosophical movement at the same moment. For no other reason we can have neither a Hindu confession nor a Buddhist one. We speak to every human being in such a way that he can understand it according to his progress and the conditions of time.

It is not correct if we speak to our Europeans in Buddhist phrases because for our European hearts and souls Buddhism is something strange in its form. We really have to put ourselves in the souls, but not to force anything strange on them. It would be contrary to the sense of the theosophical movement if we wanted to force a foreign religion which is not rooted in the people’s life. This was just the secret of the teachers of wisdom that they found words and concepts to speak to everybody, so that he understood them.
Among the teachers of wisdom Hermes, Moses, Pythagoras, Buddha, Christ Jesus show that to us. They announced to the peoples what they could understand at their places and at their times. Hermes would never have taught anything else than what was suitable for the Egyptian heart. Buddha would never have taught anything else than what was for the Indian heart. And we have to teach what is for the western heart. We must cling to what already lives in the people. This was the secret of the great teachers of all times. We deepen the core of wisdom of the great religions that way again and above all we find access to every heart. We must forget to swear on dogmas, forget to look for the right thing recognising a tenet.

We have to look at life only. Then we no longer give grounds for such prejudices, as if we wanted to announce a new Buddhism, as if we wanted to do Buddhist propaganda. Those who understand theosophy as a modern spiritual movement speak to the Christians in Christian images, to the scientists scientifically. The human being can err in detail, but in his deepest inside he must find truth in whichever form it expresses itself. But one talks, as if one wants to give stones that somebody who looks for bread if one speaks to him in strange forms.

This gives us a hint at the same time how wrong and inaccurate it is if we make any dogmatism in the sense of an old church to that which we are based on. We have no such dogmatism. Those who know how it really stands with the theosophical movement do not look at dogmas. What we have to teach is deeply inscribed in any soul. The theosophist does not have to look for that which he has to announce in a book or in a tradition, this issues from no dogma, this issues from his heart only. He has to do nothing else than to get his listeners to read what is inscribed in their souls. Somebody who wants to help has to be an initiator.

Thus the theosophist stands before the life of any single soul, and wants to be nothing but the initiator who helps to self-knowledge. More and more people will understand the theosophical movement that way and then achieve it by positive work that such a prejudice can no longer exist like that that we want to do Buddhist propaganda, as if we wanted to inoculate anything strange to Christianity. No, the past is dead unless it is revived. Not that has life which we read in the books and documents, but that which comes into being in our hearts every day anew. If we understand this, we are right theosophists only. Then is in our society theosophical freedom, theosophical self striving of everybody, no oath on any dogma, merely research, merely striving, merely longing for own knowledge. Then there is no heresy, also not anything that could be recognised as not accessible, not fight, but combined striving to always united spiritual life! This was always the attitude of the great spirits. This was also Goethe’s attitude he nicely expressed in the words:

He only merits freedom and existence
who wins them every day anew.

Faust II, verses 11575–11576

Notes:

Budhi—Buddhi: the correct spelling of the sixth human member is buddhi.

Bhikkhu: cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhikkhu

Dionysius the Areopagite: in his writing On the Divine Names (De divinis nominibus)

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), German theologian, philosopher, astronomer, cf. CW 7 Mystics after Modernism (Anthroposophic Press, 2000, 71ff)

Life and Form are the two principles that must guide us through the labyrinth of the manifested world, in multitudinous forms, life is forever changing, coming to expression in manifold variety. Life could not manifest outwardly or present itself in the world if it were not to appear in constantly new forms. The form is the revelation of the life. But all life would vanish, would be lost in the rigidity of form, were it not ever and again to become seed for the building of new forms out of the old. The seed of the plant grows into the developed form of the plant and this plant must again become seed and give a new form existence. So it is in nature everywhere and so it is in the spiritual life of man. In the spiritual life of man and of mankind the forms also change; life maintains itself through forms of infinite variety. But life would lose all power were the forms not perpetually renewed, were not new life to spring forth as seed from old forms. Just as the epochs change in the course of human history, so also do we see life changing in infinitely diverse forms during these epochs. In the lecture on Theosophy and Darwin¹ we heard of the diverse forms In which the civilisations of mankind have come to expression. We heard something of the forms that existed in the ancient Vedic civilisation of India, changing perpetually through the ancient Persian, the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian-Egyptian, the Greco-Roman and finally through the Christian civilisation until our own time. But the significant point about spiritual development in our own time is that a common life flows more and more into external forms, for this reason it may be called the epoch of forms, the epoch when on every hand man is taught to devote his life to form.

Wherever we look we see the predominance of form. Darwin is the most brilliant illustration of this. What was it that Darwin investigated and bequeathed to humanity in his theory? The origin and change of the forms of animals and plants in the struggle for existence. This confirms that the attention of science is directed to the outer form, And what did Darwin openly declare? He asserted that the plants and animals live out their lives in the most manifold forms but that originally, according to his conviction, there were forms into which life was breathed by a Creator of worlds. This is what Darwin himself says. His eyes are directed to the evolution of forms, of the outer form, and he himself feels that it is impossible to penetrate into what imbues these forms with life. He takes this life for granted and does not attempt to explain it. He pays no heed to it, the question for him being merely the shape and form which life assumes.

Let us consider life in another domain, in the domain of art. I will mention one characteristic phenomenon only, in its most radical form. What a storm of dust was raised in the seventies and eighties of last century by the catchword Naturalism! I do not mean this in any derogatory sense, for this catchword is entirely in keeping with the character of our time. Naturalism emerged again in its extreme form in Zola, the Frenchman. His descriptions of human life are powerful and magnificent. Yet for all that his gaze is not focused upon human life itself but upon the forms in which it manifests. How life comes to expression in mines, in factories, in city districts where immorality is the undoing of men, and so forth. Zola describes all these various manifestations of life, and fundamentally speaking, all naturalists do the same. Their attention is focused, not upon life itself, but upon the forms in which life takes expression.—And now think of our sociologists who are concerned with giving details about the forms which life has assumed and ought to assume in the future. Catch-phrases about the materialistic conception of history and about materialism are much in evidence. But what is the approach of the sociologists? They do not concern themselves with the soul of man, with his inmost spirit. They study external life as it presents itself in the field of economics, how trade and industry prosper in one district or another, and how the human being is obliged to exist as a result of these configurations of life. That is how the sociologists study life. They say: Ethics and the idea of morality are no business of ours! Create better outer conditions for human beings and the standard of living will automatically improve.—in terns of Marxism, modern sociology has declared that the external forms of the economic life, not the forces of ideas, are of paramount importance in human life.

All this indicates that we have reached a phase of evolution when attention is focused primarily on the forms of outer existence. If you think of the greatest writer at the present time you will perceive how his gaze is riveted on the forms of outer existence because, since he is also filled with the warmest feeling for the life of the soul, for a free inner life, he has been reduced to despair by these outer forms of existence. I refer to Henrik Ibsen.² He is one who depicts life in most diverse forms, who shows us how life in form always evokes obstacles, how souls go to pieces and are destroyed by the forms which life assumes. The way in which he concludes the poem When We Dead Awaken, is symbolic of the prevailing forgetfulness of the soul find spirit. It is as though Ibsen wished to say: We men, of modern civilisation are completely caught up in the external form of life we so often censure ... and when we awaken, how does the life of soul present itself to us in the tightly knit forms of society and thought in the West?—That is the fundamental trend in Ibsen's dramatic works.

Certain flashlights have now been thrown on the form-culture of the West. In considering Darwinism we saw how this culture is bound up with the outer, mechanical life of nature and how the soul is yoked to rigidly circumscribed forms of life and of society. We saw how this state of things has been reached by slow degrees, how our Fifth Race (the Aryan Race), starting from the spirituality of the ancient Vedic culture which recognised by direct Vision that life is filled with soul, has passed through the Persian, the Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian culture-epochs and then through Greco-Roman culture with its view—shared even by the Greek philosophers—that the whole of nature is ensouled. In the 16th century Giordano Bruno still recognised the life that fills the whole of nature, the whole universe and the great world of stars. But in later times, life has become wholly entangled with external form. This is the lowest standpoint. Again I do not say this in a derogatory sense, for every standpoint is necessary. What makes the plant beautiful is the external form, that which comes forth from the seed. Our cultural life has become externalised in every possible way. It is inevitably so, and least of all would it be fitting for theosophists to censure. Just as a culture imbued with spirit and with life was once necessary, so is a form-culture necessary for our age. In science we have the Darwinian view, in art the naturalistic, and in sociology a culture of form.

At this point we must pause and ask ourselves: According to the principles of spiritual science, what must happen when a form is actually present? It must be renewed, must again be imbued with new germinating life!

Those who from this point of view study Zola's contemporary, Tolstoy, attentively and without bias, find in Tolstoy the artist, the observer of the various types among the Russian people—the type of the Russian soldier, the martial type described in War and Peace, and later in Anna Karinina—a keynote quite different from that prevailing in the naturalism of the West. Tolstoy looks everywhere for something else. He describes the soldier, the official, the human being belonging to some class of society, family or race ... but everywhere he is looking for the soul, for the living soul that comes to expression in one and all, although not in the same way. He portrays the simple, straightforward workings of the soul—but at different stages and in different forms. What is life in its diverse forms, in its thousand-fold variety?—this is the basic question running through Tolstoy's works. And then he is able to understand life even when it seems to annihilate itself in death. Death is still the great stumbling-block for the materialistic view of the world. How can a man who regards the outer material world alone as real, grasp the meaning of death, how can he get the mastery over life when death stands at its end like a barrier, filling it with anxiety and terror? Even as an artist Tolstoy has surmounted this standpoint of materialism. In the novel The Death of Ivan Ilyitsch you can see with what artistry materialism in its roost extreme form is transcended, how in this figure of Ivan Ilyitsch there is complete inner concordance. We have a sick man before us, not one who is sick in body, but in soul. In everything Tolstoy says, one thing is clear: he is not of the opinion that there dwells within the body a soul that has nothing to do with the body; it is obvious from his words that he regards the constitution of the body as the expression of the life of soul; the soul, when it is itself sick, causes sickness in the body; it is the soul that pours through the veins of the body. This is a portrayal of how life comes to its own. And here we find a remarkable understanding of death, not as theory or dogma but in the life of feeling. This conception of the soul makes it possible to think of death not as an end but as an outpouring of the personality into the universe, a merging into infinitude, and the rediscovery of the self in the great primal Spirit of the world. The problem of death is here solved by the artist in a wonderful way. Death has become a blessing in life. a dying man feels the metamorphosis from the one form of life to the other.

As a contemporary of the naturalists in the domain of art, Leo Tolstoy was one who sought for life, who enquired into the riddle of life in its different forms. This riddle of life—in its scientific as well as in its religious aspect—lay at the very centre of his soul, at the very core of his thinking and feeling. He strove to fathom this riddle, seeking for life wherever it encountered him. Hence he has become the prophet of a new era that must supersede our own, an era that in contrast to the trend of natural science will again experience and know the reality of life. In Tolstoy's whole judgment of Western culture we see the expression of a spirit who represents fresh, childlike life, a spirit who strives to imbue this life into evolving humanity, a spirit who cannot rest content with a mature, nay an over-mature culture manifesting in external forms. This indicates the nature of Tolstoy's antagonism to Western culture. It is from this point of view that he criticises the forms of society and of life—indeed everything else—current in the West; this is the point of view on which his judgment is based.

In Darwinism, as we heard, Western science succeeded in grasping the forms of life. But Darwin himself declared that he was not able to understand anything of the life he postulates as a given reality. The whole of Western culture is founded on the observation of form—external form in the evolution of mineral, plant, animal, man.—Open any book on Western science and you will find that it is form which is everywhere brought into prominence. Western researchers have themselves declared that they are confronted by the riddle of life and are unable to fathom it. Ever and again, when information about life is expected from scientists, we hear the words: Ignoramus, ignorabimus (we do not know, we shall never know). Science is able to say something about how life is expressed in forms, but knows nothing about the operations of life itself. It despairs of being able to solve this riddle and merely says: Ignorabimus we shall never know. Tolstoy discovered the true principle for contemplation of life. I will read an important passage from his essay On Life,³ which will show you how he emphasises the principle of life as contrasted with all science of the forms of life.—

“The false science of our day” (i.e. in the West) “assumes that we know what we cannot know, and that we cannot know the one thing we really do know. A man with this false knowledge assumes that he knows all that presents itself to him in space and time, and that he does not know what his reasonable consciousness tells him.

Such a roan imagines that good in general, and his own good in particular, are the most unknowable of all things for him; his reasonable consciousness seems to him almost equally unknowable, he himself as an animal seems rather more knowable, animals and plants more knowable still, and inanimate and infinitely diffused matter seems to him the most knowable of all.

Something similar happens with regard to man's sight. A man always unconsciously directs his look first to objects that are farthest away and which therefore seem simplest in colour and outline: the sky, the horizon, the distant fields and woods. The farther those things are away the more definitely and simply do they present themselves, while the nearer an object is the more complex are its outlines and colour.” ... “Is it not the same with man's false knowledge? What is indubitably known to him, his reasonable consciousness, appears to him unknowable because it is not simple, while what la certainly incomprehensible to him—illimitable and eternal matter—seems to him to be the most knowable of all things because its very remoteness from him makes it appear simple*

In reality it is just the reverse.” (p. 53)

The Western scientist looks first and foremost at immobile, lifeless matter. Then he perceives how plants, animals and human beings are built out of this as the result of the working of chemical and physical forces, be perceives how lifeless matter is stirred into movement, conglomerates and finally gives rise to the movements of the brain. Only he cannot grasp how life itself comes into being, for what he is investigating is nothing but the form in which life is manifesting. Tolstoy says in effect: Life is our immediate concern, we are within life, nay we are life; if we think that we shall understand life by investigating and observing it in form, we shall never do so. We need only contemplate life in ourselves, we need only experience life—and then we have grasped it. Those who believe that it is impossible to grasp the reality of life itself do not understand it at all.—Tolstoy investigates what the human being is able to apprehend as his life, although the overcomplicated mode of thinking cannot grasp it in the broad outlines of simple thought.—If you would truly understand form, you must look into its innermost essence. If you are willing only to investigate the laws of nature in their outer expression, how can you hope to discover how life that is subjected to reason differs from life that is not? Organisms are healthy and become sick in accordance with identical laws; the sickness and the health of a human being are governed by exactly the same laws.—Again Tolstoy speaks significant words in his essay On Life:

“However strong or rapid a man's movements may be in his death struggle, in madness, in delirium, in drunkenness or even in a paroxysm of passion, we do not recognise life in him, we do not treat him as a living man, we only admit the possibility of life in him. But however weak and motionless a man may be, if we see that his animal personality is in subjection to reason, we recognise life in him and treat him accordingly.” (p. 62)

Tolstoy means that the outer form has significance only when we do not merely study it from outside but grasp that which is not form, which is only spirit—the inmost essence. If we try merely to understand the form we can never penetrate to the actual life; but we shall understand the forms if, starting from life, we then pass to the form.

But Tolstoy did not approach his problem from the scientific side alone; he approached it from the moral and ethical side as well. How, as human beings, do we reach this true life with its law that extends into the outer form? Tolstoy asks himself: How do I, how do other men satisfy the needs of our own well-being? How can I achieve the satisfaction of my own personal life? If his starting-point is that of animal life, a man has no other question than: How do I gratify the needs of the external form of life?—This is an inferior viewpoint. A somewhat higher one is held by those who say: It is not a matter of the gratification of the needs of an individual; the individual has to lend himself to the common weal, to be a member of society—moreover to care not only for what satisfies the form of his own external life but to see to it that the needs of this form of life among all living beings are satisfied. We must be members of a community, we must make our needs subordinate to its needs. Subordination of the needs of the individual to those of the community—this is regarded as the ideal by many moralists and sociologists in Western culture. But—says Tolstoy—this is not the highest viewpoint, for what have I still in mind except the external form? How one lives in the community, how one participates in it—this, after all, is a matter only of the external form. And these external forms are perpetually changing. If my own personal life is not to be the aim, why should the life of the many be the aim? If the welfare of the single individual's form of life is not an ideal, no ideal of common welfare can be produced by an accumulation of individuals. The ideal cannot be the welfare of an individual, nor can it be the welfare of all, for this is a matter only of the forms in which life is contained. Where is life to be recognised? To what are we to put ourselves in subjection, if not to the needs dictated by our lower nature? If not to what common welfare or humanity prescribes?

That which in the individual and in the community alike craves for well-being and happiness is the life itself in the most manifold forms. It therefore behoves us not to shape our ethical, our innermost, ideal according to external forms, but according to what is vouchsafed as the ideal to the inmost essence of the soul itself by the indwelling God. That is why Tolstoy reaches out again for a higher kind of Christianity which he regards as the true Christianity.—Seek not the kingdom of God in outer manifestations—in the forms—but within you. What your duty is will become clear to you when you knowingly experience the life of the soul, when you allow yourself to be inspired by the God within you, when you give ear to the utterances of your soul. Let not the forms engross you, great and impressive though they may be! Go bade to the original, undivided life, to the divine life within you yourself. When a man does not take the ethical ideals, the cultural ideals, into himself from outside, but lets that which arises in his heart, that which the Godhead has imbued into his soul, stream forth from his soul, then he has ceased to live only in form; then he is moral in the true sense. This is inner morality, and inspiration.

From this standpoint Tolstoy strives for a complete renewal of all conceptions of life and of the world in the form of what he calls ‘original Christianity.’ In his view, Christianity has been externalised, has adapted itself to the diverse forms of life produced by culture and civilisation in the different centuries. And he awaits an era when form will be vibrant with new, inner life, when life will again be apprehended in direct experience. Therefore he is never tired of exhorting in ever new connections that it is a matter of experiencing the simplicity of the soul's existence, not the complex existence which all the time is trying to learn something new. The ideal prescribed by Tolstoy is that the simplicity of the soul must be maintained, that the intricacies of external science, of external artistic presentation, the luxury-adjuncts of modern life. must be resolved Into the simplicity inherent in the soul of every human being, no matter in what form of life and society he is placed. And so Tolstoy is a stern critic of the various forms of Western European culture, of Western science. He declares that this science, like theology, has little by little stiffened into a body of dogmas and that Western scientists give one the impression of being outright dogmatists, filled with wrongly directed intellect. He passes stern judgment on these scientists, above all on the ideal striven for in these forms of science, and on those who regard the final goal of all endeavour to be our material welfare. For centuries past mankind has been at pains to make forms preeminent, regarding external possessions, external well-being as the highest goal. And now—we know that this should not be censured but regarded as inevitable - well-being must not be limited to particular ranks or classes, but shared by one and all.—Certainly there is no objection to be made to this, but it is against the form in which Western sociology and Western socialism endeavour to achieve it that Tolstoy directs his attacks. What does this socialism proclaim? Its aim is the transformation of the external forms of life. Material culture itself is to lead men to a higher level, to a higher standard of life. And then, so it is believed, those whose conditions improve, whose, prosperity increases, will also have a higher ethical standard. All ethical endeavour on the part of socialism is directed toward revolutionising the outer form of the conditions of existence.—

It is this attitude which Tolstoy attacks, For the obvious result of the evolution of culture has been the development of the most manifold differences of rank and class. Can you possibly believe that if you make this culture of form preeminent, you will actually produce an ideal civilisation? No, you must take hold of the human being where he himself creates form. You must enrich his soul, imbue his soul with divine-moral forces, and then, acting from the very source of life, he will change the form. That is Tolstoy's socialism and it is his view that no renewal of moral end ethical culture can ever arise from any metamorphosis of the form-culture of the West, but that this renewal must be brought about by the soul, from within outwards. Hence he is not a preacher of dogmas but the champion of a complete transformation of the human soul. He does not say: Man's ethical standard is raised when the outer conditions of his life improve ... but he says: It is just because you have based yourselves on outer forms that you have brought upon yourselves the wretchedness of your existence. Not until you transform the human being from within will you be able to surmount this form of life. In sociology, as well as in Darwinism, we have the last offshoots of the old form-culture. But then we have, too, the preliminary factors for a new culture of life. Just as in the former case we have the line of descent, here we have the line of ascent. As little as an aged man who has already attained his settled form of life is capable of complete self-renewal, as little can an old culture produce a new form of life. It is from the child with its fresh forces of growth that the new form of life springs—inwardly quickened—from what is as yet undifferentiated and able to unfold into infinite diversity. Hence in the Russian people Tolstoy sees a people not yet entangled in Western forms of culture; it is within this people that the life of the future must germinate. From his observation of the Slav people who still regard the European ideals of culture—European science as well as European art—with apathetic indifference, Tolstoy declares that in this people there lives an undifferentiated spirit which must become the bearer of the future ideal of culture. It is there that he sees the hope of the future. His judgment is based on the great law of evolution, on that law which teaches us the principle of the change of forms and the perpetually new, germinal up-welling of life,

In the tenth chapter of his essay On Life, he says:

“And the law we know in ourselves as the law of our life is the same law by which all the external phenomena of the universe are ordered, only with this difference, that in ourselves we know this law as that which we must ourselves fulfill, while in external phenomena we know it as the law by which things take place without our participation.” (p. 47)

Thus Tolstoy himself bears witness to life that is evolving, that is eternally subject to change. We should be very poor representatives of spiritual science were we unable to understand such a phenomenon aright and were only to preach ancient truth. Why do we study the ancient wisdom? Because this ancient wisdom teaches us to understand life in its depths, because it reveals to us how the Divine manifests ever and again in an infinite variety of form. Anyone who becomes a dogmatist, who speaks only about the ancient wisdom without ears or words for happenings of the immediate present, is anything but a worthy representative of spiritual science. The ancient wisdom is not taught to us in order that we shall repeat it in words but in order that we shall live it, and learn to understand what is round about us. The development of our own race, which has been separating into different forms from the time of the ancient Indian civilisation up to our own, is accurately described and portrayed in that ancient wisdom, which speaks, too, of the development to come in the future, in our own immediate future. It tells us that we are standing at the starting-point of a new world-era. Our reason, our intelligence, have developed as this result of the passage through the different domains of existence. The powers of our physical intellect have attained their greatest triumph in the form-culture of our time. Intellect has penetrated the natural laws of form and has achieved mastery of them in the stupendous advances made in applied technology, in the standards of our life. We stand now at the starting-point of an epoch when something must pour into this intellect, something that must lay hold of and mould the human being from within outwards. That is why the Theosophical Movement has chosen as its guiding principle and aim, the establishment of the kernel of universal brotherhood among men without distinction of creed, class, sex or colour: it is the life that is to be sought in all these forms. The spiritual ideal hovering before us is an ideal of Love, an ideal which the human being, when he becomes conscious of divinity, experiences as the other divine principle that is within himself. The culture of intellect, of the spirit, is called by Theosophy, Manas; Buddhi is the principle that is inwardly pervaded by love, the principle that arrives only for such wisdom as is filled with love. And just as our race has produced a culture founded on intellect the next stage will be a culture where the individual, filled with love, acts out of his inner, divine nature, without losing his bearings in the chaos of the external world, be it in the domain of science or the social life. If we have this conception of the spiritual ideal we may claim to have understood it rightly—and then we shall not fail to recognise a personality who, living among us, is striving to instill into the evolution of humanity the Impulse of a new life.

Much of what Tolstoy says about the essential nature of man is in perfect accord with this. Let me read just one more passage that is particularly characteristic of his ethical and moral ideal:

“The whole life of such people is directed to the supposed increase of the welfare of their personality. And the good of their personality appears to them to consist in the gratification of its needs; and these needs are all those conditions of individual existence to which their attention is directed. The needs of which they are conscious—those to which they have directed their attention—always grow to infinite proportions as a result of this attention, and the gratification of these overgrown needs hides from them the demands of their true Life.” (pp. 82/3)

Tolstoy therefore says in effect: The reasoning consciousness is not enclosed within the confines of the personality. Personality is a quality of the animal and of man as an animal. Reasoning consciousness is an attribute of man alone. Not until man learns to become impersonal, to let the impersonal life hold sway in him, will he grow out of a culture of form into a culture of life—despite the continuing development of outer form. Man learns to live on rightly into the future when his being is steeped in the eternal, the imperishable. The culture based on intellect must be superseded by Buddhi, the culture based on wisdom. The most important factors here are those forces which operate in life itself.⁴

It behoves us to recognise and understand such a truth. The greatness of Leo Tolstoy lies in this: he has shown that the ideals are not to be found outside, in the material world, but can spring forth from the soul.

See also: The following passage is from Lecture VI of the Course The Gospel of St. John in relation to the other three Gospels, especially the Gospel of St. Luke:

“... Such a thinker merits the very greatest respect, above all in the West, where whole libraries are filled with lengthy philosophical dissertations on the same thing which Tolstoy expounds with greatness and power in a single work such as his essay On Life. There are pages in Tolstoy's writings where with an elemental force, certain deep knowledge of theosophical truth is set forth.”

See also: Tolstoy and Carnegie. Lecture given 28th Jan. 1909.

• 1. Berlin, 27th Oct., 1904. German text in Nachrichtenblatt, Vol. 23 (1946) Nos. 10 – 12, also in Gegenwart, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (April, 1956)
• 2. See also Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies. Vol. II, lecture XVI.
• 3. All the quotations are from Tolstoy's work On Life and essays on religion. Translated by Aylmer Maude. O.U.P. 1934.
• 4. At the end of a lecture given in Berlin, 30th September, 1905, (the fifth of the so-called “Thirty-one” Lectures, Dr. Steiner says: “Buddhi-Manas must now be developed. Man must learn to do something more than mere speaking. With his speaking he must combine another force, such as is found in the works of Tolstoy. What Tolstoy actually says is of less importance than the fact that behind what he says there is an elemental force which has in it something of Buddhi-Manas. The reason why Tolstoy's writings make such a strong impression is that they contain, in contrast to Western European culture, something new and rudimental. The element of uncouthness in Tolstoy's writings will be leveled out as time goes on. Tolstoy is merely an instrument of a higher spiritual force which was also behind the Gothic Initiate Wulfila. This spiritual force uses Tolstoy as its instrument.”

Recently I have endeavored to sketch the being of man and the three worlds surrounding him, namely, the actual physical world, the soul world and the spirit world. Later on, I plan to speak about the main anthroposophical concepts regarding the origin of man, the earth and the heavenly bodies in general. Thus, the overall outlook on the theory of life as developed by anthroposophy will have been outlined.

Today however, I would like to present a few suggestions on how man's inner development must progress if he desires to reach conclusions of his own concerning the statements proclaimed by an anthroposophical world outlook. It must be kept in mind that there is a great difference between arriving at an understanding of the concepts presented by a spiritual scientist as truth gained through his cognition and experience, and the inner development of the human soul and spirit that enables a person to attain to such cognition and perceptions on his own. One has to distinguish between an elementary level of development leading to comprehension of an experienced spiritual teacher's statements, following them as it were in thought and feeling and acknowledging them as truth within certain limits, and an advanced level on which one attains the personal experiences in soul and spirit realm. This elementary level shall be the subject here. The advanced level concerns actual clairvoyance and to the extent that indications pertaining to such actual clairvoyance can be given at all in public, they will form the topic of a later presentation. The problem of how one may gain personal comprehension of anthroposophical truths shall occupy us today.

Only a few mere hints can be given here since the training that the human soul and spirit must undergo for attainment of the understanding mentioned above is an extensive one. It requires a long period of inner study and the many necessary details involved in such training can certainly not be elaborated upon in the course of a brief lecture. The information that can be related here is but a scant outline of what would be conveyed in personal instructions. Thus it must initially be noted that most people require the aid of a personal teacher in this field. Some might be of the opinion that a person can develop in himself inner abilities, soul forces and spiritual perception by his own attempts, and it might seem unfortunate that in this vital area of life personal guidance is supposedly necessary. The nature of such guidance, however, gives sufficient guaranty that no person comes by any means under any sort of dependence upon another. Nobody evaluates and honors the dignity of man and the respect for the individual more highly than the occult teacher. The instructor of mystical and anthroposophical development never gives anything but advice. Indeed, the greatest teachers in this field never did more than advise and suggest. It is left entirely to the judgment of the individual to what extent, if at all, he intends to follow such advice. It is left up to the individual what task he sets before his soul and spirit; the consideration of human freedom is too pronounced on the part of the teacher to do more than advise and guide. Everything that can be conveyed in any manner in this area must be understood with this reservation.¹

Another important point is that the main part of this schooling does not express itself in any particular external formalities, nor does it require any definite external measures. This schooling is, rather, a completely intimate development of the human soul, and all the significant degrees of development one must undergo take place in the innermost depth of being. Precisely here a transformation takes place in a person, but nobody, not even his closest friend, need notice anything different. Thus, in privacy, tranquility and seclusion the mystic trains himself to acquire understanding of soul and spirit worlds. It cannot be emphasized enough that nobody devoting himself to inner spiritual development needs to change his everyday occupation in any respect whatever, nor neglect his daily duties in any sense, nor take time away from them. On the contrary, he who is of the opinion that a special amount of time must be spent on his inner training and consequently neglects his ordinary duties and, by his attempts at insight into spiritual worlds, becomes an anti-social, inferior member of human society, will soon discover that by these means least is achieved.

This inner training quietly progresses without undue haste in complete inner tranquility. I must stress at this point that no “extra-special” rules or directions are being given here but rather the descriptions of such a path of inner development. The directions when followed do require one thing of the aspirant without which no higher personal experience can ever be attained. That is endurance. He who has no patience and endurance, who cannot persevere over and over again and follow with complete calm the inner rules that are applicable here, will generally achieve nothing at all. There is one rare exception that allows for success without compliance to these rules. This is the case in which an individual is far advanced on his path of evolution as a human being. The course that the inner training takes is quite different and much shorter in the case of an individual who in a former incarnation had already attained to a certain level of clairvoyance. He who gives the corresponding rules for inner development will soon be aware of this fact and his task will then be only one of eliminating the obstacles blocking the path to enlightenment.

Since the directions for the road to enlightenment vary with each individual, it is as a rule not advisable to seek mystic development without personal guidance. He who sets forth the guide-lines must be closely acquainted with his pupil, not in the ordinary sense of the word but in a spiritual sense. While the occult teacher need not know anything about his pupil's profession, manner of living, family members or experiences, he does need to acquire an intimate knowledge of his soul and spirit conditions and their level of development. It would lead too far today to disclose the ways and means by which the occult teacher acquires this knowledge. They will be discussed in future lectures on clairvoyance.

Inner development is connected with certain definite consequences for those who set out on this path and they must realize that, resultingly, certain definite qualities will appear in their personality. These qualities are symptoms and direct results of the level of inner development and require careful observation. The occult teacher must know how to interpret these symptoms so as to assure the proper manner of progress of this inner development.

The development of the inner man is birth on a higher level. It is the birth of soul and spirit, not in a figurative, allegorical sense, but as a fact in the literal sense of the word. Even in this area a birth is not without consequences and the occult teacher must know how to deal with them. All this had to be mentioned in advance.

After initial acquaintance with some of the basic teachings of anthroposophy such as reincarnation and karma—the teaching that the human soul has in the past been incarnated repeatedly in a physical body and will continue to return in future incarnations, and the teaching of karma, of compensatory justice—most people will ask how one can comprehend these teachings and how one can acquire an understanding of these on one's own. This is the big question that now confronts each person. There is one golden rule that must be followed that will eventually lead anybody to the desired comprehension This has been the common experience of all who have earnestly subjected themselves to the exercises in question. There is nobody who cannot in the easiest manner possible acquire this comprehension of reincarnation and karma. One is inclined, however, to say with Goethe, “Though it is easy, the easy is hard.” This is so because few are those who resolve to call forth the will-power, endurance and patience necessary for achieving certain definite conditions of soul and spirit essential for this comprehension. The golden rule is this, “Live your life as if reincarnation and karma were truths and they will become truths for you.” It appears as if this is to be achieved by a form of self-suggestion but this is not the case. The mystic symbol of the snake that bites its own tail is a familiar one. This symbol has several profound meanings but among the many interpretations it contains is the one expressed here in the golden rule.

It is evident that the supposition inherent in this golden rule negates itself in a sense in like manner as the snake that curls up around itself. How are we to understand this? If reincarnation is a fact, then certain efforts made by man that have an effect on his soul cannot be made in vain, but should become the soul's nature later on. One of the great laws of man that must be intimately tried out on his own self, is expressed in an ancient Indian text, “What you think today you will be tomorrow.” He who believes in reincarnation must realize that a quality that he develops within himself, a thought that he imprints in himself by constantly holding it in his mind, becomes something permanent in his soul that will emerge ever again. Therefore, a person seeking mystical development must first of all make the attempt to give up certain formerly held inclinations. Then, new inclinations must be acquired by constantly holding the thought of such inclinations, virtues or characteristics in one's mind. They must be so incorporated into one's being that a person becomes enabled to alter his soul by his own will-power. This must be tried as objectively as a chemical might be tested in an experiment. A person who has never endeavored to change his soul, who has never made the initial decision to develop the qualities of endurance, steadfastness and calm logical thinking, or a person who has such decisions but has given up because he did not succeed in a week, a month, a year or a decade, will never determine anything within himself about these truths.

Such is the intimate path the soul must tread. It must be able to acquire new characteristics, thoughts and inclinations. A person must have the ability to emerge in due time with brand new habits acquired through sheer force of will. A formerly careless person must get accustomed to being neat and exacting and this he must accomplish not through any external pressure but by steadfast resolve of will. It is particularly effective in the case of insignificant characteristics and small matters. The clearer the issues that a person perceives concerning himself, the better his comprehension in the area of truth. If, for example, a person is able to objectively observe a gesture, a facial expression or some other insignificant habit, if he becomes aware of it as if observing another person, and then by sheer will-power puts in the place of the habit or gesture something of his own choosing, incorporating it into himself, such a person is well on the way to comprehending the great law of reincarnation on his own. A chemist can give descriptions of processes taking place in a laboratory. Similarly, a person can establish directions to be tried on himself. Through insignificant alterations the loftiest heights are indeed reached.

Regarding karma, the great law of just compensation, perception and understanding of it can be gained if one lives one's life as if karma was a fact. If a disaster or a sorrow befall you, try keeping in mind the thought that this sorrow or accident has not occurred by some miraculous chance but that there must be a cause, a reason for it. You need not probe for the cause. Only he who clairvoyantly can command a view of karma would be able to actually perceive the cause of a joyful event, a sorrow or some mishap. You do need a mood, a certain feeling to which you can surrender yourself so that you can sense how a given sorrow or joy must have a cause and, in turn, can cause future events. He who permeates himself with this mood and looks at his life and all that happens to him as if karma was a fact, will find that his existence becomes increasingly comprehensible to him. He who suppresses his anger when something annoying happens to him and thinks instead that just as a stone rolls if pushed so the annoying matter must have come about due to some inevitable set of laws of the universe, attains to comprehension of karma. As certain as it is that you will wake up tomorrow morning, provided circumstances and your health remain unchanged, so it is equally certain that you will comprehend the laws of karma if you view life in this manner.

These are the two prerequisites for a person desirous of spiritual schooling; the aspirant must view life in these ways. He does not, however, have to give himself up to these thought attitudes as if they were the gospel truth. On the contrary, he must leave it open as to whether or not they are really true. He must have neither doubt nor superstition because these two are the worst obstacles. Only a person who views life thus with an open mind is prepared to receive mystical instruction.

Still a third aspect must be considered. No occult teacher will ever instruct a person who is filled with superstition or common prejudice, or one who is prone to senseless judgment or apt to fall prey to any illusion. The golden rule applying here is that, before even taking the first step in the direction of higher learning, a person must free himself from any flighty thinking or possibility to mistake illusion for reality. Above all an aspirant for spiritual enlightenment must be a person of common sense wire only devotes himself to disciplined thinking and observations. If a person leans toward prejudice and superstition in the world of sense reality, it soon tends to be corrected by sense reality itself. If, however, a person does not think logically but indulges in fantasies, correction is not so simple. It is essential, therefore, that one have one's thought-life completely in hand and be able to exercise strict control over one's thoughts before ever venturing into soul and spirit worlds. One who easily leans to fantasies, superstitions and illusions is unfit to enter into the schooling prerequisite for spiritual teaching. It would be simple to reiterate that one were free of fantasies, illusion and superstition. But it is easy to deceive oneself here. Freedom from fantasies, illusions, prejudices and superstitions is gained by stern self-discipline. Such freedom is not easily attained by anyone. It must be remembered to what extent most people tend to sloppy, careless thinking and are unable to control their thought-life through their own will-power.

In pondering the demands everyday life makes it becomes clear that it is an impossibility to completely free one's mind from outside impressions. To do so, it becomes necessary, therefore, to set aside a short period of time every day. This short time, which is needed and which must not conflict with one's obligations, is sufficient. Even five minutes or, indeed, even less is enough. For this brief period, a person must be able to tear himself away from all sense impressions, from what flows into him through his eyes, ears and his sense of touch. For this brief duration of time he must become blind and deaf to his outer surroundings. Everything that crowds into us from the outside world unites us with sensuality and the ordinary everyday world. All this must be silenced and total inner calm must take its place. When this inner silence, this shedding of all sense impressions has occurred, all memory of past sense impressions must in addition be extinguished. It suffices to ponder for a moment how completely we are tied up with matters of time and space, with all that is temporal and mortal. Check the thought that passed through your head a moment ago and see if it is not associated with something of a transitory nature. Such thoughts have no value for inner development.

So all thoughts that connect us with finiteness and transitory matters must be silenced. Then, when such silence has been produced in the soul and for awhile all our surroundings, be they of the era, the nation, the race or the century we live in, are subdued and eliminated, the soul will begin to speak of its own accord. This will not happen immediately. First, the soul must be prepared for this point and there are means and directions that will call forth this inner sounding. Man must give himself up to thoughts, concepts and sentiments that originate not in the temporal but in the eternal. Their content must be true not only for today, yesterday, a century or tomorrow but forever. Such thoughts are found in the various religious books of all people. They are found as an example in the Bhagavad Gita, the hymn of human perfection. Too, they are found in the Old and New Testaments, particularly in the Gospel of St. John beginning with the thirteenth chapter. Again, effective thoughts are to be found in the first four sentences of the book, Light on the Path, by Mabel Collins, familiar to members of the Theosophical and Anthroposophical Movements.²

These four sentences, which are carved into the inner walls of every temple of initiation, are not dependent on time and space. They belong not to one man, one family. They are not part of one generation or one century, but they extend over the whole of evolution. They were true thousands of years ago and will be true thousands of years hence. They awaken the slumbering soul faculties; let them arise out of the inner realm. Certainly this has to be correctly understood. It is not sufficient to assume that one comprehends the meaning of these sentences. One must allow such sentences to quicken and come to life in one's inner self. One must permit the whole significance of such sentences to radiate in one's inner being, must surrender oneself to it completely. One must learn to love such sentences. If a person believes that he comprehends them, then only has the right moment arrived to let the sentences rise resplendent again and again in himself. The intellectual comprehension is not important; the love for such a spiritual truth is. The more the love for such inner truths streams through us, the more the power of inner sight grows in us. Such sentences must not occupy us one or two days, but weeks, months and years until finally such powers of soul awaken in us. Then at last comes a certain definite moment when still another illumination takes place.

He who proclaims spiritual truths by his own experiences is familiar with this contemplative inner life. The great spiritual truths that he proclaims day by day are part of a vast spiritual world panorama that he can view with the inner power of his soul and spirit. He turns his gaze into soul and spirit realms. He turns his sight away from earth to the solar systems to explore them. This inner power would, however, soon be extinguished if he did not give it new nourishment every new day. This is the secret of the spiritual investigator that the immense panorama of universe and humanity, which he has let pass through his soul hundreds and hundreds of times, must pass through his soul anew every morning. Again, it is not important here that he comprehends it all but that he learns to love it more and more. Thus he performs a divine worship every morning during which he gazes up in reverence to the great Spirits. He has learned to survey the whole panoramic picture in a few minutes. Thankfulness for what it has given his soul permeates him. Without treading this path of reverence one does not arrive at clarity. It is essential that the spiritual investigator's utterances are formed out of this clarity. Only if this has become the case is he truly appointed to speak about the truths of mysticism, the truths of anthroposophy and spiritual science. In this way does the spiritual investigator function and thus must everybody begin, that is, in the simplest, most elementary manner until he comes to comprehension of these teachings.

Human individuality and that of cosmic beings is profound, unfathomingly profound. One cannot achieve anything in this area save by patience, perseverance and loving devotion toward the cosmic powers. These are forces which, like electricity in the external world, are powerful in the internal world. They are not only moral forces but forces of cognition. When the aspirant for enlightenment has become proficient in allowing such truths to dwell within his being for some time, if he has accepted them in thankfulness toward those who revealed them to him, then he will at last reach a special point, which sooner or later becomes available to everybody who has allowed tranquility and silence to come to fruition in his soul. This is the moment when his soul begins to speak, when his own inner being begins to perceive the great, eternal truths. Then, suddenly the world around him lights up in colors never seen before. Something becomes audible that he had never heard before. The world will radiate in a new light. New sounds and words will become audible. This new light and radiance ray toward him from the soul realm and the new sounds he hears come to him from the spirit realm. It is characteristic of the soul world that one “sees” it. It is equally characteristic of the spirit world that one “hears” it.

If self-development is sought for in this area, then part of it comes about through obedience to and observation of a great sum of rules and directions. Here I could only sketch in sweeping lines how something like this comes about and is experienced. These individual rules must be followed diligently, just like the chemist must weigh and measure with the most delicate instruments the minutest substances needed for a chemical compound. A description of the rules that can be made public will be found in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. These rules offer specific instructions for treading this path. They, too, require most diligent patience and perseverance.

The rules presented in this book were never made public in former times when, it must be understood, occult instruction was only taught in occult schools. Such instruction is still being given out in occult schools today because it is an intimate teaching process that takes place between two persons. It does no good to seek instruction on one's own initiative by hearing or reading special rules in fragmentary form in one place or another. All the instruction that one can receive from various places, and there are indeed shops advertising such instructions, are no more than tiny fragments torn from the great book of occult schooling. A person who makes use of them must realize that he is leaving himself open to certain dangers. It is not expedient to be introduced to matters that refer to an actual alteration of the soul, that relate to the most profoundly important aspects of soul life, through commercial channels. Occult training methods that are advertised for monetary gain are not only worthless but can be dangerous under certain circumstances. This had to be said because in this present age so much of this sort of thing confronts man. Precisely because so many so-called occult methods crowd the scene today, it has become necessary to present a picture of the truth.

The rules that are put down in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, stem from ancient traditions. Because it is essential that the truth become known, the guiding spirits of evolution have given permission for the publication of these rules. Still, it is only possible to publish a certain amount. The rest had to be excluded because the most important rules can only be disclosed by word of mouth.

What is found in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment is apart from other books of instruction in that it is harmless. Only those guide lines are disclosed that cannot do damage to a person, even if they are not followed with patience and perseverance. They can do no harm even if a person practices them improperly. This had to be mentioned because the question has arisen as to why and by what authority a set of esoteric rules was published.

Another point of consideration is that in order to awaken in the soul world, one must have sense organs for this soul world just as one has sense organs for the material world. Like the body, which possesses eyes and ears, the soul and the spirit must possess organs to perceive the radiance of the soul realm and the soundings of the world of spirit. A person with experience in this field, who is clairvoyant, can actually perceive the process of development of such soul organs in a person engaged in inner training. They are perceived in his aura enveloped in a cloud of light. The aura of a spiritually undeveloped person is seen like a nebulous cloud formation. When a person sleeps, the aura hovers above the physical body because the astral body³ separates in sleep from it. The aura's appearance is that of two entwined spirals like rings of mist. They wind around one another and disappear in continuous spirals into indefinable realms. When a person undertakes occult training, his aura becomes increasingly definable. The indefinable ends of the spirals disappear and the two entwined spiral formations become clearly organized. They become increasingly defined, compact structures. Certain organs appear in the aura that are called chakrams in esoteric language. These are the sense organs of the soul. Their structure is delicate and in order to come into bloom they must be cared for and guarded. Under no other circumstances can they develop. He who rails in this will never enjoy true spiritual perception. A person must suppress all negative sensations and feelings within himself in order to nurture these soul eyes. The chakrams cannot emerge if a person becomes angry at every opportunity. Equanimity must be preserved, patience must be practiced. Anger and fury prohibit the soul eye's appearance; nervousness and haste will not permit its development.

Furthermore, it is necessary that man rid himself of something that is difficult to cast aside in our civilization, namely, the urge to learn “what is new.” This has tremendous influence on the soul-organ. If one cannot get hold of a newspaper fast enough and tell the news to somebody else, if a person also cannot keep what he has seen and heard to himself and cannot suppress the desire to pass it on, his soul will never achieve any degree of development. It is also necessary that one acquire a certain definite manner of judging one's fellowmen. It is difficult to attain an uncritical attitude, but understanding must take the place of criticism. It suppresses the advancement of the soul if you confront your fellowman immediately with your own opinion. We must hear the other out first, and this listening is an extraordinarily effective means for the development of the soul eyes. Anybody who reaches a higher level in this direction owes it to having learned to abstain from criticizing and judging everybody and everything. How can we look understandingly into somebody's being? We should not condemn but understand the criminal's personality, understand the criminal and the saint equally well. Empathy for each and everyone is required and this is what is meant with higher, occult “listening.” Thus, if a person brings himself with strict self-control to the point of not evaluating his fellowman, or the rest of the world for that matter, according to his personal judgment, opinion and prejudice and instead lets both work on him in silence, he has the chance to gain occult powers. Every moment during which a person becomes determined to refrain from thinking an evil thought about his fellowman is a moment gained.

A wise man can learn from a child. A simple-minded person can consider a wise man's utterances in like manner as a child's babblings, convinced that he is superior to a child and unaware of the practicality of wisdom. Only when he has learned to listen to the stammering of a babe as if it were a revelation, has he created within him power that wells forth from his soul.

Finally, one cannot expect the soul eyes to open immediately. A person who combats rage, anger, curiosity and other negative qualities, is first of all removing hindrances that walled up his soul. Ever and again must this effort be repeated. A clairvoyant person can evaluate to what extent the delicate soul organs are emerging. When human utterances have lost their edge and have become kind and filled with understanding for fellowmen, the spiritual organ located in the vicinity of the larynx is awakened. It takes long practice, however, before a person becomes aware of this himself. It took millions of years for the physical eye to develop in man, from tiny pin-points to early beginnings of a lens to the complicated structure of the eye. The soul eye does not take as long. It requires several months in one, longer in another person. One must have patience. The moment when these delicate soul structures first begin to perceive comes to everybody sooner or later. That is, if a person continues the exercises and particularly if he develops certain virtues, which sometimes the hardships of life itself can develop. There are three virtues in particular that must be developed that nearly turn man into a clairvoyant. Only they must he practiced with the necessary intensity and emphasis. They are: Self-confidence paired with humility, self-control paired with gentleness, and presence of mind coupled with perseverance. There are the great levers of spiritual development.. The three first-mentioned virtues, however, will lead to dreadful vices if they are not each coupled with the three other virtues, humility, gentleness and perseverance.

All this must be taken in the sense of broad outlines. They are examples of the directions that the spiritual pupil must follow on the three levels toward spiritual awakening. The three stages of occult schooling are called preparation or catharsis, enlightenment and initiation. During the first stage or level, man's being is prepared in such a manner as to allow the delicate structures of the soul to emerge. On the level of enlightenment man gains the means of perceiving in the soul realm, and through initiation he attains the faculty of expressing himself in the spirit realm. What I have had to say today might be considered as difficult to understand by some, and though it is really easy, it does hold true here that the easy is difficult.

Everybody can tread the occult path; it is not closed to anybody. The secrets lie in each person's own inner being. Only earnest inner endeavor is required and man must make the attempt to free himself from all the fetters obstructing this inner life. We must realize that the loftiest and grandest truths come to us in the most intimate way. The greatest sages of mankind did not discover the great truths by any other than the path described above. They found these truths because they found the path leading into their inner being and because they knew that patience and perseverance were required in practicing the various exercises.

Thus, when a person reaches down to the depth of his being, when he turns away from the thoughts that assail him from outside and instead arises to the thoughts belonging to eternity, he kindles the flame within himself that will light up the soul worlds for him. When a person develops within himself the qualities of equanimity, inner calm and peace, as well as the other virtues mentioned above, he nourishes this flame with the right sustenance. If a person is able to keep silent and utter only significant, lofty thoughts, if he lives a love-filled existence and his life becomes one of divine worship, all the world around him will begin to “sound.” This is what Pythagoras called, “Music of the spheres.” This is by no means meant symbolically, it is a reality.

Only mere hints could be given here that point the direction to the path leading to a narrow gate. Everybody can reach this narrow gate and to him who is not afraid of trials and hardships, the gate will be opened. Then he will find what all the great religious and philosophical ideologies have proclaimed: The Eternal One Truth and the Way of Life!

• 1. In a foreword to the 1918 edition of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, Rudolf Steiner wrote in regard to the matter of personal instruction: “The statement that the student needs personal instruction should be understood in the sense that this book, itself, is personal instruction. In earlier times, there were reasons for reserving such personal instruction for oral teaching; today we have reached a stage in evolution of humanity in which spiritual scientific knowledge must become far more widely disseminated than formerly. It must be placed within reach of everyone to a quite different extent from what was the case in older times. Hence, the book replaces the former oral instruction ...”
• 2. The first four sentences ofLight on the Path are: "Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness. Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters it must have lost the power to wound. Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart."
• 3. See Theosophy: an Introduction to the Super-sensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man for a clarification of this, and other, anthroposophical terminology.

In this lecture I want to develop the relation of the theosophical movement to the big cultural currents in the present, and on the other side I would want to design a picture of the theosophical world view in the talks which are entitled: The Basic Concepts of Theosophy. Hence, I ask you to consider this lecture absolutely as an initiating one and to accept as such.

What I have to discuss today should be the question what, actually, the present human beings find within the theosophical movement, which needs of the present human being can find their satisfaction within the theosophical movement. And in this manner I want to approach the other question: why do we have something like a theosophical movement today? I want also to approach the question, why that which theosophy wants, strives for is misunderstood and misjudged by so many people.

Whoever wants to understand the theosophical movement in its whole being has to be aware above all which task it has to fulfil in the present. It has also to be clear to him to whom it wants to speak today. What is then, actually, the present human being about whom we are just talking? I consider somebody as this present human being who has familiarised himself with the questions occupying the present, who lives not only in the everyday, but has also concerned himself with the cultural tasks of our time and is familiar with it, to whom the questions which our civilisation puts are needs of heart and mind. Briefly, I would like to understand the human being as somebody who tries hard to tackle the questions of education and knowledge of our time. I would like to put the question in his sense and answer it roughly: what does he find in the theosophical movement? Is something generally to be found within theosophy that he needs inevitably?

We have to look back to the time in which the theosophical movement has entered the world if we want to understand its task. We have to realise that this movement is three decades old and that when it entered the world approximately thirty years ago it took a shape which was determined by the relations of that time. Who wants to understand why it took this shape has to imagine the development of education and pedagogy of the last years. We still stand in the currents which the 19th century has produced, and those who brought the theosophical movement to life believed to give something to the world that it needs. And those who teach theosophy today believe that it is also something that leads into the future.

Today it has become almost a phrase, and, nevertheless, it is true: what has settled down into the souls of our contemporaries has brought a fissure in many of the contemporaries, a conflict between knowledge and faith, which expresses itself in a longing of the heart. This conflict is characteristic for the second half of the 19th century. It means not only for some people, but for a big part of the human beings generally that which separates humanity and causes a contradiction in the individual human soul. Science had come, up to the last third of the 19th century, to a height which is admirable, indeed, for someone who has an overview of the centuries. This science is something that fulfils the 19th century with just pride. It is the big heritage which the 19th century is able to hand over to all the coming ones. But this science has apparently thrown old traditions out at the same time. It has apparently brought in a disturbance to that which as old religious contents performed so big services to the souls in former times. Above all, these were those who had looked at science deeper who did no longer believe to be able to harmonise the scientific knowledge with that which religion had offered to them. The best of them believed that a quite new confession must take place and that it has to replace the old religious contents. Thus we see a true revolution of the human thinking gradually taking place.

The question was even put whether it is generally still possible that the human being can be a Christian; whether it is still possible to retain to the ideas which gave consolation at death and which have shown to the human being for so long time how he had to understand his determination which should reach beyond death, beyond the limited. The big question “where from” and “where to” should be taught in a new way illuminated by science. One spoke of a “new faith” and thought that it has to be the opposite of the old one. One did no longer believe that one could form a world view from the old religious books. Yes, there were not a few who said that there childish images are given which are only possible at the childhood age of humanity; now, however, we have become adults, and that is why we have also to have adult views. Many also said that they wanted to adhere to the old religious images; they did not want to be converted to the radical point of view of the new ones.

But the course of the mental development of humanity does not depend on these human beings. There were always a few, there were always those who stood at the summit of their time and gave the keynote of the future development. Thus it happened that those who wanted to know nothing about the “new faith” also thought to not take care of the conflict between faith and knowledge; but one could also imagine and say that that would be different in the future. David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874, German theologian, The Old and the New Faith, 1872) elaborated his new faith at that time that there is nothing else in the world than what happens between birth and death, and that the human being has to fulfil his task here on earth. One can see that in the present the consolation of the religious images dies down to many people, and one can suppose that our children and grandchildren have nothing more of it. Hence, those may have seen uneasily into the world who believed that salvation depends on these religious images. They were the best.

The 19th century has even produced the fruits of that which was sowed in the preceding century. Everything has prepared during the previous centuries. This is to be attributed, above all, to those who strove for the extension of the human ken from the middle of the 15th to the 16th century, and also to the popularisation of education. Look back and you will see that the religious element formed quite differently during the past centuries. Apparently, the world view was totally changed. The human beings have formed wrong concepts about anything because the thinking is basically different from that which one thought centuries ago.

However, the consciousness that the human actions work on all human beings and all times had just got lost to those who were the bearers of education in the last centuries and the most significant people in the 19th century. People had designed world views to themselves in quite different way than in former times. Astronomy had shown them how one can collate world views from the mere sensory observation. Copernicus taught the human beings to look out into the worlds and to create a world view which does not contain, however, the human being. Look back at the old world views: the human being had a role in them; he had a place in them. Now, however, he had a system of stars before himself which was obtained with the means of science. But this contained the earth only as a small being. It appeared like a dust particle under that sun which is only one among countless suns.

Under the effect of that all it was impossible to answer the question: what about the human being, this small inhabitant of the earth, of this dust particle in the universe? That is why science had to investigate the world of life. It investigated the composition of the plant, the human and the animal bodies the smallest living beings with the microscope and found that they are built up from the smallest structures which one calls cells. Again one had advanced a further step of sensory knowledge, but again only something was understood that was a sensuous view, something that made the physical existence more explicable. But again something was eliminated a little bit that the human being has to ask for most intimately: what is the soul and its determination? One could not ask the new teaching where the soul came from and where the soul goes to. Then we see how one left the old world views and the question was answered with the means of science.

In geology one investigated the sensuous origin of the human being. The different layers which there are on our earth became known. Once one had spoken of the fact that the earth developed on account of immense revolutions and went through different states; states of particular kind, so that one could imagine only that spiritual powers had gradually brought about what we know today. Today one believes that the same forces, which build the earth even today, have also built it in old past. We see the river flowing from the mountain and picking up scree and creating thereby land and plains. We see the wind carrying sand over open regions and covering large parts with sand. We see the climate and also the earth's surface gradually changing by such influence. And now the geologists say: as well as the earth is today changed, it was also changed in former ages; and thus one also understands how bit by bit the earth has formed. Everything that is not perception for physical instruments, for the calculation and for the human senses was eliminated from the explanation of the earth. One investigated the different layers of the earth and recognised that not only that is found in them which was deposited as lifeless products; one also found beings which lived millions of years ago on our earth. In the lower layers one found the most imperfect beings, more on top one found more perfect beings and even more on top one found the layers in which the human being appears. The human being appears only in relatively young earth periods. If we apply this picture which I have just outlined, if we kept to this picture, one could imagine nothing else than that the human being has developed from below that he has only done a little jolt and he was nothing else before than an higher animal.

Then that came which is called Darwinism which says that everything that lives on earth is related with each other that something perfect develops from something imperfect and that this development is based on certain laws which find complete expression within the sensuous existence. The catchword of the “struggle for existence” arose. One said that any animal and any plant are variable. They can develop in this or that way whether the beings are adapted or not to the external conditions of life. Those beings develop and keep best of all which are adapted best of all to the conditions of life. However, one could not find why the conditions of life are better with the one than with the other. One was dependent on chance. The being survived which was the better by chance; the less developed one was destroyed in the struggle of all against all.

Thus we have an astronomical view and a view of life which science has outlined to us. But the human being is not there and, above all, that is missing which one called the divine determination before. The divine origin and the divine goal are missing. A statement is characteristic which a great naturalist made, who contributed mostly to the design of the universe: when Laplace (Pierre Simon L., 1749–1827, French astronomer) faced Napoleon I and explained the view of the sun and the planets to him, Napoleon said: but in such a world view I find nothing of God.—Laplace answered: I do not need such a hypothesis.—The astronomical world view did not need the hypothesis of a spiritually working being, of God. And also the other sciences do not need one. Is anything of spiritually working forces contained in their view of life? Such a thing is nowhere contained in the view which science has outlined and has outlined rightly. If we look for an explanation, we find that the human being with his mental qualities is an orphan child of sorts. Indeed, science has found enthusiastic words how miraculous the forces are which steer the stars how miraculous the forces are which have developed life up to the human being. However, we see that in this sublime view science has nothing of those ideas which were so valuable for the human beings for so many centuries. And from whom the human being could have expected the answer to the questions: where from do I come? where to do I go?, unless from science? The answer to these questions was always given by science.

Go back to the first centuries of Christianity, take Origen and the other first church teachers. You find there that with them not only believing, not only suspecting and meaning held good, but that these were men who had the whole education of their time, who answered the worldly worldly, but were able at the same time to ascend to the spiritual. They answered the spiritual in accordance with the science of their time. Only the last century knows the conflict between science and faith. However, this conflict must be resolved. The human being cannot endure it: faith on the one, knowledge on the other side.

Those who found no other way out than to put a new scientific faith against the old faith were, nevertheless, significant men. We cannot call these men unscientific or non–religious who said: the religious ideas are contradictory to our knowledge, and, therefore, we must have a new faith. We see the scientific materialism developing which considers the human being as a higher disposed animal, as a member of the physical-natural creation, as a small unimportant being, as a dust particle. You have this being before yourselves in that which the freethinkers and those have developed who try to solve the various riddles of the world in this sense as you can see in the sensational book by Haeckel (Ernst H., 1834–1919), German zoologist and philosopher) about the Wonders of Life (1904). There you have a view developed by science which is not able to produce harmony with the views of the previous centuries.

This was the situation at the end of the 19th century; this was the only thing that the 19th century could have given as a legacy to the 20th century unless another impact had come. This impact prepared itself and came into the world in the theosophical movement as a fruit. That was prepared which we recognise in the theosophical movement as the essential part, by the fact that one got to know the true physical figure of the universe and the evolution of life on one side, because the old religious images were no longer sufficient, and was prepared on the other side by the fact that one subjected the spiritual development to a study. So not only the evolution of life was subjected to a study, but also the spiritual development itself. As well as one investigated the forces from which living beings developed, one also investigated the spiritual forces, the spiritual contents of humanity as we observe them in the course of the historical and also prehistoric development. One not only turned to that which happened before the sensory eyes, but also to that which people believed. It was clear that modern science was something radically different from the old religions. Only our time of investigations made the mental development of humanity clear to the human being. One investigated ancient religious ideas according to their true form and content, and there one found something particular. On account of the deciphering of the documents of the Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Babylonians, and Assyrians one was able to penetrate into these ancient human ideas. As well as science brought light to the natural sciences, science now brought light into the religious ideas of ancient peoples. One recognised that something is contained in them that, indeed, one has thought of only a little in our age and with our freethinking being.

One had believed that humanity went out from ignorance, from certain mythological ideas, from poetic images which one had formed about God and soul in imperfect, primitive way. One approximately imagined that humanity would have developed from the imperfect to the delightfully perfect state of our time. But one did not know the ideas of the ancient peoples, and when one got to know them, they aroused astonishment and admiration, not only with religious people but also with the researchers. This admiration has been expressed over and over again, the more they were investigated. The farther we go back in the life of the ancient Egyptians, in the life of the ancient Indian, Babylonian and Assyrian or even Chinese spiritual world, the more we see that there exist so sublime world views as only a human thought can grasp and a human heart can feel. There we see human beings who deeply have beheld, indeed, not into the appearance which natural sciences explain to us today, but into the internal spiritual.

Confucius gave profound moral philosophies and created commandments of the social living together. Compare yourselves what in the present time philosophers have produced in moral philosophy, compare Herbert Spencer (1820–1903, English philosopher, biologist, sociologist) or the moral philosophy of Darwinism, and compare the modern moral philosophies with those of the Egyptians, with the ideas about ethics of Laozi (Lao Tse), of Confucius, of Zarathustra. Then you must say to yourselves that the new conceptions are commensurate, indeed, with our time that we look up, however, admiring to the sublime moral philosophies of the ancient peoples which cannot be compared with our science. Max Müller (1823–1900, German Orientalist and language scholar) says about the Tibetan moral philosophy: if this people may be ever so far from the so-called cultures of our time, in front of the sublime moral of Tibet I bend my head in reverence! The Orientalist and objective scientist Max Müller spoke approximately that way. He could no longer believe that humanity went out from ignorance. His researches rather supplied to him the result which can be summarised in the words that, indeed, this wisdom cannot be understood with the reason, not with the senses that, however, humanity must have gone out from such wisdom. Then the researcher gradually learnt to speak of “primal revelation”, of “primal wisdom”. This was the one, the positive side.

The other side was that which the criticism, the investigation of these religious images made its task. Then it became obvious that the most important documents did not withstand to the scientific criticism if one takes them in such a way as one was used to take these documents since centuries. I want to refrain from everything else, and also not to deal with a criticism of the Old Testament, but only to point with a few words to that which this criticism has performed concerning the Gospels. The historical criticism now asked concerning the Gospels in which one had still read hundred years ago with quite different eyes: when did they come into being, and how did they originate? Science had to take away piece by piece from the old authority of the Gospels. It has shown that they came into being much later than one had believed; it had to show that they are human work and cannot claim the authority one ascribed to them.

Let us take together these three matters: on one side the progressive natural sciences, on the other side the knowledge of the miraculous contents of all ancient religious images and at the same time the criticism which relentlessly tackled what one thought once about the history of the religious documents. This brought the human being in a fairway that he became uncertain and could hardly move his ship forward in the old way. Someone who wanted to consult science from all sides lost his faith in the spirit. The cognition of the human beings was that way at the end of the 19th century.

There came the theosophical movement, just with the intention to give something to those who were in this uncertainty, to bring a new message to those who could not harmonise their new knowledge with the old faith. They should get answer to the question why this Gospel has such a deep content, and why it lets its moral philosophy speak to the human beings in such a divine-lofty way.

This theosophical movement was much misjudged, because it speaks a language that has developed in the last century. In the first time when the theosophical movement entered, the world could hardly understand it. What did the theosophical movement give to humanity? I only note something: on account of certain studies two books, Esoteric Buddhism by A. P. Sinnett (1840–1921) and Isis Unveiled by Helena Petrowna Blavatsky (1831–1891) appeared. Then a 2-volume work, the Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky was published. These were books which designed another world view than science had done it up to now, also another world view than the world views of the religions were. This world view had a characteristic. Just the scientific person, who approached these books with good will who did not take them with arrogance without denying and criticising them from the start, found that he got something that could satisfy his needs. There were not few people who received the books with great interest immediately after their publication. People who were able to academically think but had just lost their belief in the scientific progress in the course of time, just in that which science could offer. Now these saw in the new works Esoteric Buddhism, Isis Unveiled, Secret Doctrine something that satisfied the deepest needs of their hearts, of their knowledge and of their scientific conscience. Where did this phenomenon come from and who were those who felt such a satisfaction in the new theosophical works? If we want to understand these few people, we must have a closer look at the further progress of the scientific development.

Science had designed an astronomical world view, a view of the life on earth up to the understanding of the physical human being. At the same time, it had worked out the method to investigate the physical realm with all miraculous tools which the recent time has created. It investigated not only the smallest living beings with the microscope, no, this science has done more. It has contrived to calculate the planet Neptune, long before it was seen! Today science is also able to take a photo of heavenly bodies which we cannot see. It can give a scheme of the conditions of the heavenly bodies with the help of spectral analysis, and it has shown in extremely interesting way how the heavenly bodies hurry through space at a speed of which we had no idea before. If the heavenly bodies pass us, we can see the movement. If they move, however, away from us or to us, they seem to rest. Science has contrived to measure the movement of these heavenly bodies with an especially interesting method. This is an argument where this knowledge can lead us. We are thereby also enabled to closer study the physical nature gradually. There something resulted that is still more important for the human mind than that which he had put as new science to the place of the old one.

During the last years science has lost its faith in its own preconditions. Just because it has become so perfect, it has overcome itself, it has undermined its own foundation in certain way. It stated that the struggle for existence has caused the perfection of the living beings. Now probably, the naturalists have investigated the matters, and just because they have investigated them, it became obvious that all the conceptions, which they had formed about them, could not be maintained. Now one speaks of a “powerlessness of the struggle for existence.” Thus the natural sciences have undermined their knowledge foundation with their own methods. And thus it went on bit by bit. When in the last decades the human being became more and more attentive to the way how he has developed on our earth, one came to the idea at the end that the human being has developed from the advanced animals. That is why it happened in the last decades that careful and more reasonable naturalists have spoken of the impossibility to understand the spiritual world, which must be behind our sensory world, with the scientific means. The famous address of Du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896, German physiologist)) gave the first impulse in Leipzig (1872) in which he expressed that the natural sciences are not able to solve the most important riddles of the world and to answer questions regarding this. Science stops where the issues of the origin of substance and of the origin of consciousness begin. We will not be able to know anything with scientific means: “ignorabimus.” Ostwald (Wilhelm O., 1853–1932, German chemist), a good disciple of Haeckel, who already spoke on the naturalists' congress in Lübeck of overcoming the scientific materialism, has openly expressed in a presentation at the last naturalists' meeting that the methods with which one wanted to come behind the riddles of the world are to be regarded as failed. Natural Sciences and World View is the title of his book. Just the natural sciences want to go beyond themselves and to have a higher observation point of the world view.

As well as these naturalists stand today before the whole objective research, few people stood already with the beginning of the theosophical movement. It was clear to them that that which natural sciences say is something indestructible, is something which we must rely on. But at the same time it was clear to them also that these natural sciences themselves must lead to a development where they can no longer give answer to the higher questions with their means. They found this answer, however, in the mentioned theosophical writings. They found it, not making profession to a faith, but by the way of thinking and feeling which express itself in the theosophical movement. This is the significance of the theosophical movement for the modern human beings that it can fully satisfy those who look for the harmony of knowledge and faith in science who do not want to live in struggle against science, but to live with science.

One still believed few years ago that science were contradictory to the old religious images. One spoke of a new faith in contrast to the old faith. The theosophical movement has taught us that, indeed, the old times expressed themselves differently than modern science, that, however, that which the ancient peoples taught about the spiritual forces, about what is not to be seen with eyes what is not to be heard with ears, is for us something that can satisfy the religious need just as the need of the most modern science. Indeed, you have to become absorbed without prejudice, with good will and impartially in the old images; you have to really believe that the farther you penetrate into them, the more you can also gain from it.

Then something appears. Natural sciences still taught something else to us in the course of the 19th century. They showed us the structures and functions of our own organs. They showed us how the eyes must be arranged, so that they see light and colours; they showed us that the eye is a physical apparatus which transforms that which proceeds outside round us into the coloured world which we have before us. One has said that it depends on the nature of the eye, as well as on the world itself. Imagine that the world would be inhabited by not sighted beings. Then the world would be without colours! The 19th century developed physiology in all directions. We realise that the world would be dark and silent around us if we had no eyes and ears. Unless we had our senses, the world, which we do not see and hear, would not be there in its causes which have an effect on us through the senses. There cannot be effects on a human being for whom the organs are missing under usual circumstances. Or may there be effects, nevertheless, on a human being for whom the organs are missing under usual circumstances? This was the question which natural sciences had to put to themselves! This question is really scientific.

Also in this field the theosophical movement produced works of basic significance. It not only delivered a world view, but it also produced works which gave instructions for the development of higher organs, of higher capacities. If the human being develops these higher capacities in himself, he faces the world in a new way. Transport yourselves just a moment into a dark world in which a bright light shines, and imagine that you unlocked an eye: suddenly the world has a new quality! The world also existed when it was dark and you saw no light. Now, however, you can perceive it. If you were able to develop higher organs, you would experience that even higher worlds are there, are effective because you can perceive them now.

Light on the Path (1885 by Mabel Collins, theosophical author, 1851–1927) is such a work which was produced by the theosophical movement, too. It is an instruction how the human being can develop spiritual eyes and ears to behold and to hear spiritually. Thus the theosophical movement claimed to solve the riddles of the world in a quite new way. Not only because it makes the capacities accessible to the human being which he already has but also because it wakes up those which are slumbering in him. We perfect ourselves this way, as this has happened since primeval times; we penetrate only into the secrets of the worlds around us. The life that remains concealed to the external senses is revealed to us that way. Even if natural sciences could penetrate ever so far, even if they could achieve the most marvellous things, nevertheless, they would have to admit that there is yet something with that they do not get to grips. However, science may teach humanity this using the methods theosophy has given. Because humanity could scientifically investigate the world extensively but never in its deepness, theosophy provides assistance to modern science. This science has been enlarged; however, the theosophical world movement has to deepen it.

It became now clear and understandable why the human being must stand admiring also as a scholar before the ancient religions. It became clear that always perfect beings lived beside imperfect ones in the world. It became also clear why the idea of revelation was academically destroyed and was given back to the human being, on the other side, in a brighter light. It became also clear that the Gospels and other old religious documents have not come from lack of wisdom, but from wisdom. They have come from forces that rest in every human breast, that were already developed in single human beings at that time and that revealed that world showing us the determination of the soul and the eternity of the human life. What had been recognised by such spiritual eyes is kept to us in the religious documents. What you cannot find if you look at the world you can really find in these religious documents.

We understand now why the answer of Laplace had to be as it had been. What had Laplace observed? The external sensory world! He had no longer understood the spiritual world in which the earth is embedded. Hence, he was right answering that he could not find the divine in the world with his instruments. One had taught once to use the spiritual senses in order to observe the spiritual world. What you read in the scientific documents was not got from the stars. But what is written in the biblical documents was from those who beheld with spiritual eyes. One needs spiritual eyes to behold into the spiritual world as well as one needs the senses to look at the sensory world.

Even if anybody lost his faith in science a sure support was now won. One recognised the big spiritual connections which are clear before the soul of the human being if he only tries to find the ways there. The theosophical movement tries to provide the adequate ways.

Now you will understand above all what this theosophical movement wants and why it was misunderstood at first. It must be misunderstood. This is connected with the development of the age. Let me touch the deepest reason of misunderstanding in modern science. People believed that the “struggle for existence” brought the human beings on a lofty level of development. But it is characteristic that this world view has already appeared in the beginning of the 19th century as Lamarckism: Philosophie zoologique (1809) by Antoine de Lamarck, 1744–1829. Darwin taught nothing substantially new. But only since Darwin this view spread farther. This is connected with the living conditions of the 19th century. Life had changed. The social life itself had become a struggle for existence. When Darwin's theory spread generally, the “struggle for existence” was reality, and still today it is reality. It was struggle for existence at that time when the Indian tribes were eradicated in America and it is also a struggle for existence today with those who try hard to achieve external prosperity. Nobody thought of anything else than: how can “welfare” be achieved best of all? “If the rose decorates itself, it also decorates the garden” by the contentment of every human being the contentment of all should be achieved.

Then one came to the strange doctrine of Malthus (Thomas Robert M., 1766–1834, Essay on the Principles of Population, 1798), to that doctrine which says that the number of human beings increases much more than the necessary quantity of food, so that it must come bit by bit to such a struggle for existence in the human realm itself. One believed that the struggle is necessary because the foodstuffs do not suffice. One might consider as sad that it is in such a way, but one believed that it has to go this way. Malthusianism was the starting point of Darwin's doctrine. Because people believed that the human being must struggle for existence, they believed that the struggle also has to go in the whole nature that way. The human being has brought his social struggle for existence to the realm of life, to the heavenly realm.

People were very proud saying to themselves that the new human being has become modest. He should be nothing more than a small being on the dust particle earth, while he once strove for redemption. However, the human being has not become modest! Projecting that social struggle in humanity into the world he has made the world the image of the human being. If the human being once considered his soul, he explored it from all sides to recognise the world–soul from there. He has now investigated the physical world and has imagined it in such a way that he sees an image of humanity with its struggle for existence in it. If the theosophical movement wanted to achieve anything, it had to understand this fact. If the human being rediscovers the divine really in himself, so that he finds God in his inside, then he can say to himself: God who is working in my inside is the God of the universe, is that who is working within and without me. I recognise Him and I am allowed to imagine the world in such a way as I am, because I know that I imagine it as something divine, because I know how I can attain this new knowledge from new depths of my soul and new feelings of my heart.

Thus one could also investigate the different religious systems with their profound truths. The religious researchers like Max Müller and his great colleagues initiated this theology, and theosophy had to continue it. The human being has to see with spiritual eyes and hear with spiritual ears what no physical eye can see and no physical ear can hear. The theosophical movement had paved the way for this. It would have been impossible to achieve anything in these two points really unless in the centre of this whole movement one thing had been pushed which is suitable to bear the new knowledge, the new science and the new faith from the human soul. The human being believed in the middle of the 19th century to get to perfection only through struggle and made thereby the struggle the big world principle. Now we have to learn to develop the opposite of struggle in our souls: love which cannot separate the happiness and the well-being of the individual from the happiness and the well-being of the fellow man. Love does not regard the fellow man as anybody on whose expenses we can make progress, but whom we have to help. If love is born in the soul, the human being is also able to see the creative love in the outside world. As the human being created a view of nature in the 19th century which went out from his idea of struggle, he will create a world view of love because he develops the seeds of love.

A reflection of that which has love in the soul will be the new world view again. The human being may imagine the divine again how he finds his own soul but love should live in this soul. Then he recognises that not struggle is the quality of the force system working in the world, but that love is the primal force of the world. If the human being wants to recognise God, creating love and pouring out love, he has to develop love in his soul. This is the most important principle which the theosophical movement made its own: forming the core of a general human brotherhood which is built on human love. The theosophical movement thereby prepares the human beings in comprehensive way for a world view in which not struggle, but love creates and forms. The sighted human mind will see the creative love approaching him. The creation of love in him leads to the knowledge that love created the world. And the Goethean thought is fulfilled:

The human being,
May he be noble,
Helpful and good!
For this only
Distinguishes him
From all beings
We know.

This legacy of the great poet is the impulse of our theosophical movement. The modern human being should develop the most significant factor of the advanced development in him through the theosophical movement. He should aim at the cooperation in the social life. Thereby he would become able to progress in wisdom and with energy, imbued with wisdom also in the spiritual worlds. Then the human being recognises his eternal being and determination more and more. He knows how he works on the “whirring loom of the time” (Earth Spirit in Faust I, verse 508), as a member in a spiritual not only sensuous world chain. He knows that he does his everyday job and that this work does not only consist of itself, but that it is a small link in a big human progress. He will know that every human being is a seed which needs a force to its blossoming and prospering, which pushes the germ out of the dark earth. What the soul creates must be got out of the spiritual earth as the plant sprout must be got out of the physical earth. As the physical sprout is got out by the sun to the sun, the blossoming and prospering human plant will be got out by a spiritual solar force, which theosophy wants to mediate and to teach the human beings. It will lead him to the marvellous and immense spiritual sun which one needs not only to express, but also to recognise and to understand. This is the spiritual sun which lives outside in the spiritual world which lives, however, inside the human being, too.

The theosophical movement has as its first principle that those who unite to this society develop the capacity in themselves to behold this spiritual sun which lives inside of the human being and in the big spiritual outside world. It is the propelling force in the spiritual realm and is really a force, like all the other physical forces, only a higher one and this is the force of creative love. A new divine knowledge will come to the fore. Then the human being recognises the creative love in the outside world if he allows this love in himself to become bigger and bigger. Then theosophy will deliver not only knowledge, but will also bring about the spiritual future with the growing and prospering love.

The talks on the basic concepts of theosophy should give a short outline of the world view and way of life which one normally calls theosophy. However, I have to say something in advance in order to prevent misunderstandings about this theosophy. Anybody could believe that the Theosophical Society or the theosophical movement propagates the world view which I will give as something dogmatic. This is not the case. What is reported in the Theosophical Society by single persons is a personal view, and the Theosophical Society should be nothing else as a union where such world views are cultivated which lead to the higher spheres of spiritual life; so that nobody should believe that theosophy means the propaganda of any dogmas.

Indeed, if today one speaks of ideological associations if one speaks of monistic or dualistic views, one understands by such associations or societies those which have united on account of any dogma unless they have committed themselves to any dogma whether it is a justified or an unjustified dogma. That does not apply to theosophy. However, one has to emphasise on the other side that only someone who has penetrated into the nature of the theosophical world view is able to represent his personal view of it.

For the theosophical world view is such that the individual human beings freely agree without committing themselves externally to a dogma. They not need to commit themselves because everybody who gets to know the facts must come to the same views. The differences between the single investigators are much slighter in these fields than in the fields of the sensuous-scientific investigation of the external facts. You will not hear if you really penetrate into these matters that this or that theosophist who really has the mastery over the method of the theosophical world view does not agree with any other in essential matters. For the errors do no longer happen which simply happen in the fields of the external sensuous facts if we ascend to the higher fields of existence. It is not possible that one theosophist produces this world view, the other theosophist another one. Only this is possible that the one is less advanced and can only represent a part of the theosophical world view. If he then believes that that which he has recognised is the whole of the world view, it may happen that he is apparently contradictory to those who are more developed. The theosophists standing on the same level will not be contradictory to each other.

Further I would like to emphasise in this introduction that it is a bad misunderstanding if one often supposes that the theosophical world view has to do anything with the propaganda of Buddhism or Neo-Buddhism as some like to call it. That is out of the question. When Mrs. Blavatsky, Sinnett and other theosophists spread the basic theosophical views, they got their first stimulation from the East, from India. From there the first great teachings came during the seventies. This was stimulation; but what are the contents of the view which lives within the theosophical movement is a common knowledge not only of all times, but also of all those human beings who have penetrated into these matters.

It would be wrong to believe that one must make a pilgrimage to India or become engrossed in Indian writings in order to get to know theosophy. This is not the case. You can find the same philosophies and the same theosophical teachings in all cultures. However, only in the Indian Vedanta nothing is dirtied as it were by the external sensory science. In certain way there has been preserved that core of the world view which has always lived as theosophy. So it does not concern Buddhist propaganda but a world view which everybody can get to know everywhere. Moreover, I would like to emphasise in particular that it has something strange, however, for the modern human being if he reads of the origin of this world view in theosophical books which were published in the beginning. Esoteric Buddhism by Sinnett was most spread and stimulated most people who have occupied themselves with it to continue their study of theosophy. In the first chapter of this book it is pointed to the great teachers from whom the theosophical teachings come. However, such a thing is a little bit unpleasant to the European civilisation. Nevertheless, it is for somebody, who thinks clearly and strictly, nothing that does not correspond with the generally accepted ideas. For who wanted to deny that among the human beings are more or less developed ones? Who wanted to deny the big distance between an African black and possibly Goethe? And why should there not be on this ladder upward still much more developed individualities?

It was basically only like a surprise that in our development really so advanced personalities are found as they are described in Sinnett's book. However, such personalities have a quite extraordinary knowledge, a universal wisdom. It would have been pointless to them appearing before the world. It is no strange idea if we say that the so-called masters are for us nothing else than great initiators in the spiritual fields. Indeed, their development goes far beyond the degree which the current culture offers. They are great initiators to us; however, they do not demand the belief in any authority, in any dogma. They appeal to nothing else than to the own human knowledge and give instructions how to develop forces and capacities using particular methods which exist in every human soul in order to ascend to the higher fields of existence.

So I give you an apparently personal view in the first talks, because I deliberately say nothing that I could not prove. On the other side, I have also convinced myself that that which I have to say that way absolutely corresponds with those who have represented the theosophical world view at all times and in particular with those who represent it today. They are like people who stand on different points and look at a city. If they draw a picture of the city, these pictures are somewhat different from each other, according to the perspective of the point of view in question. Also the world views are different which are described according to the own observations of the theosophical researchers, of course. But it is basically always the same. The world view, which I give, corresponds to the world views, which other theosophical researcher give. It absolutely corresponds and differs only in the perspective of the point of view.

In this talk, I will give a picture of the basic elements of the human being according to his physical and spiritual entity, at first in a more describing way. Then in the second talk, I move on to two essential concepts of the theosophical world view, on reincarnation or re-embodiment and on karma or on the big human destiny. Then in the following talks, I give a picture of the three worlds which the human being has to go through on his big pilgrimage from the physical world, which everybody knows, from the astral world, which not everybody knows which, however, everybody can get to know if he applies the corresponding methods in patient way and from the spiritual world, which basically the soul-being has to go through. Then I will give the theosophical world view on a large scale: origin and development of the world and of the human being, what one can call theosophical anthropology and theosophical astronomy. This is the plan.

Above all, the components of the human nature have to be clear to us. With a careful study which theosophy provides we get to know that of these components of the human being for the usual consideration only the first main part exists: the physical nature of the human being in the broadest sense of the word, that which we call body. The materialist considers this human body as the only component of the human being. The theosophical world view still adds two other components: what one has called soul at all times, and as the highest component the imperishable being of the human being, which has no beginning and no end in our sense of the word: the mind or spirit.

These are broadly the basic elements of the human being. Who learns to observe in the higher realms of existence learns to observe soul and spirit like the physical eye learns to observe the sensuous, the physical. Indeed, people have lost the consciousness and also the ability of observing in these higher psychic and spiritual realms to a large extent since the spreading of the pure sensory science in the West. It has remained restricted only to small circles. The last who spoke something of these higher fields of human observation from the podium was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great German philosopher. He still spoke in such a sense that one can recognise that he knew something about that which one can know. When he opened his talks in Berlin at the new-founded university he spoke quite differently than other professors of philosophy since the 17th century. He spoke so that one recognises: He does not only want to teach what one can understand with the reason, but he wants to point to the fact that the human being himself can develop that sensory perception is something secondary and that the human being can develop capacities in himself which simply do not exist in the everyday life. In the history of the German cultural development these lectures of Johann Gottlieb Fichte were epoch-making. Today, however, they can be important only for somebody who digs them out again. The following passage is unforgettable: “This teaching requires a totally new inner sense-organ with which a new world is given that does not exist for the everyday human being ... Imagine a world of blind-born to whom therefore only the things and their relations are familiar which can be touched. Go among those and talk to them about colours and about the other relations which exist only by the light for the sighted people. You talk to them of nothing, and this is the better case if they say it; for you will soon notice the mistake and stop speaking, unless you are able to open their eyes.”

The human beings should pay attention to the observation of soul and spirit. Theosophy is not at all in any contradiction to the generally accepted science. The theosophist does not need to deny only one of the tenets of modern science. All that holds good. Like people who are blind to blue can perceive everything that exists in yellow and red colour nuances, however, nothing in blue those who are spiritually blind cannot perceive soul and spirit. This becomes completely obvious if the blind person becomes sighted using appropriate methods. If he becomes sighted, a new world lights up around him which was there just as little for him as for the blue blind person the blue colour nuances were there, before he was able to see the blue beside the red after an ocular operation.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte knew that. The human beings also knew this in those times in which humanity was not yet dazed I do not say that in a reproving sense. The human beings of that time knew this, and with few of them the tradition was also kept always and the methods were developed. They knew that if one speaks of the entity of the human being one has to do it not only with the body, but that the soul can be also perceived, that the soul has laws and is also embedded in a world like the body. In higher sense it is also with the spirit. The human body is controlled by the same laws by which the other things round us are controlled. In the human body we have the same that we have in the physical world; we find the same chemical and physical laws also in the human body. This physical world is perceptible for the physical senses. It exists not only subjectively for the human being, but also objectively for his perception. The human being carries out his physical activity subjectively. He digests, he breathes, he eats and drinks, he carries out that internal physical activity of the brain which mediates the internal activity of thinking; briefly, the whole activity which biology, physics and the other physical sciences teach us is carried out by the human being. And one can also perceive that. If the human being faces his fellow man, he perceives immediately or by means of science what he is subjective, what he is also objective.

However, the human being is subjectively something higher; he is also a sum of feelings, of desires, of passions. Just as you digest, you feel, you long for. You are also that! A human being does not perceive this objectively under everyday circumstances. If he faces his fellow man, he does not see his feelings, desires and passions externally. If the human being were blind, he would not see a lot of physical activities. Only because he can carry out a physical sensory activity the physical-subjective is also objectively perceptible to him. Because he does not carry out a sensory soul-activity at first, the subjective part of the soul, the feelings, the desires, the passions exist subjectively in every human being. However, if he faces his fellow men, he cannot perceive this. He can develop his soul-eye to perceive the world of desires and passions in order to be able to perceive the soul objectively just as he has developed a physical eye to perceive the body activity.

We call this world the astral world or the soul-world in which the average human being lives today, indeed, without perceiving it. He can perceive it, however, if he develops the corresponding forces within himself using the appropriate methods. What our generally accepted psychology describes as soul is not what theosophy understands as soul-life, but only the external expression of it.

An even higher world than the astral one is the spiritual world. However, someone who is able to perceive the soul because his organs are opened to the soul cannot yet perceive the spirit in his environment. He can perceive the soul, but not the thought itself. The soul seer beholds desires and passions, but not the thinking, not the objective thoughts. Hence, those who cannot see the objective thought deny the objective thought generally. One did not understand Hegel when he spoke of the objective existence of the thought-world. And those who cannot perceive it are also right, of course, from their point of view if they deny it. However, they can say nothing else than that they do not see it, just as the blind-born states that he sees no colour.

Body, soul and spirit are the three basic elements of the human being. Every basic element has three components or graduations again. The body is not as simple as the materialistic researcher imagines. It is a composed thing which consists of three members or three components. The lowest, coarsest part is as a rule what the human being sees with his physical senses, the so-called physical body. This physical body has the same forces and laws in itself as the whole physical world round us. Modern natural sciences study nothing else of the human being than this physical body; for also our intricate brain is nothing else than a part of this physical body. The theosophist calls everything physical body that is room-fulfilling, what we can see with the bare eye or with the microscope, briefly, everything that is composed of atoms for the naturalist. This is the lowest component of the physical being. However, many researchers already deny the next member of the physical being, the etheric body. The term etheric body may not be the best. But it does not depend on terms. The fact that one denies the etheric body is only the result of modern scientific thinking. The denying of this etheric body is connected with a permanent scientific quarrel for a long time. I want to indicate provisionally only briefly what is to be understood by this etheric body. If you look at a mineral, a dead, lifeless body, and compare it with the plant, then you say to yourselves and all people have said this up to the turn from the 18th to the 19th century, because then the quarrel began because of the etheric body: the stone is lifeless, however, the plant is imbued with life. Theosophy calls etheric body what must be added, so that the plant is not a stone. This etheric body is probably better called life-force in future, because the etheric force or life-force is something that natural sciences have spoken of up to the 19th century. Modern natural sciences deny anything like the life-force or vital force.

Goethe has already mocked at those who do not accept that life requires something to its explanation that is higher than the lifeless. Everybody knows the passage in his Faust:

To understand some living thing and to describe it,
the student starts by ridding it of its spirit;
he then holds all its parts within his hand
except, alas! for the spirit that bound them together.
(Faust, verses 1936-1939)

Goethe meant the band of life-force. I have explained this case in my book Goethe's World View. Today there are some naturalists again who believe to not manage with the lifeless who assume at least anticipating what the theosophists call the etheric body. They are called neovitalists. I need to refer only to Hans Driesch (1867–1941, German biologist, representative of vitalism) and others to show how the naturalist comes again to this etheric body as something really existing, even if under another term. The farther natural sciences advance, the more they will also recognise that the plant already has such an etheric body, because, otherwise, it could not live. Also the animal and the human being have such an etheric duplicate body. That human being who develops the higher bodies can really observe this etheric body also with the simplest, most primitive organs of mental view. One only needs a quite simple trick; indeed, only the esoterically qualified theosophist can do it. You know the word suggestion. Suggestion consists in the fact that the human being can perceive things which are apparently not there. At first we are not interested in the suggestion with which one talks a person into believing something.

Another kind of suggestion is more important for us to behold the etheric body. Someone who has occupied himself with the theory of suggestion knows that the hypnotist is able to suggest things away from a person, so that he does not see the existing things. Imagine that a hypnotist would suggest to a person that here is no clock. Then the person concerned would see nothing here in the room. This is nothing else than diverting the attention to an unusual field, an artificial diverting of attention. Everybody can observe this process with himself. The human being is able to suggest away what is before him.

The theosophist must be able to carry out the following trick, and then he gets to the view of the etheric body: he has to suggest the physical body of an animal or a person away. If his spiritual eye is woken, then he does not see anything at that place where the physical body was, but he sees the room filled with particular colour pictures. This instruction must be carried out, of course, with the greatest care, because illusions of all sorts are possible in these fields. Who really knows with which care with which precision exceeding any scientific accuracy just the theosophical research is usually done knows about that. The room is fulfilled with luminous pictures. This is the etheric duplicate body. This luminous picture appears in a colour which is not included in our usual spectrum from infra-red to ultraviolet. It resembles possibly the colour of the peach-blossom. You find such an etheric duplicate body with every plant, with every animal, generally with every living being. It is the external, sensuous expression of that which the naturalist anticipates today again, of that which one calls vital force. Thus we have the second member of the physical body of the human being.

However, the physical body still has a third component. I have called it the soul-body. You can get an idea of it if you imagine that not any living body is also able to feel. I cannot enter into the discussion whether the plant can also feel, that is a different matter. You have to consider what one roughly calls feeling. We want to keep in mind how the plant differs from the animal. Just as the plant differs from the stone by the etheric body, the body of the animal is different as a feeling body again from the mere plant body. We call soul-body or astral body what goes in the animal body beyond mere growth and reproduction what makes sensation possible. In the physical body, in the etheric body and in the soul-body, the bearer of the sentient life, we only have the external side of the human being and the animal. Thus we have observed what lives in space.

Now we get to that which lives inside, what we call the feeling self. The eye has a sensation and leads it to that place where the soul can perceive the sensation. Here is the transition from the body to the soul if we ascend from the soul-body to the soul, to the lowest member of the soul which is called sentient soul. The animal also has a sentient soul, because it transforms to emotions, inner life or soul-life what the body prepares to it for sensation. The clairvoyant cannot separately perceive the soul-body and the sentient soul. These are, so to speak, inserted into each other and constitute a unity. Roughly one can compare what here forms a whole the soul-body as an external cover and the sentient soul within it with the sword in the scabbard. This forms a whole for the mental observation and is called kama-rupa or astral body in theosophy. The highest member of the physical body and the lowest member of the soul form a whole and are called astral body in the theosophical literature.

The second member of the soul encloses memory and the low reason. The highest member contains the consciousness in the proper sense. The soul as well as the body consists of three members. As the body consists of physical body, etheric body and soul-body, the soul consists of sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness-soul. Only someone can get the correct concept of it that develops the capacities which lead to the real beholding using the spiritual-scientific methods. What we feel of the things from without sticks to the sentient soul. What we call feeling, feeling of love, feeling of hatred, feeling of longing, so sympathy and antipathy, sticks to the second soul member, to the intellectual soul, to kama-manas. The third member, the consciousness-soul, is that which the human being can observe only in one single point. The child only has a consciousness of the two first soul members as a rule. It lives only in the sentient soul and in the intellectual soul, but it does not yet live in the consciousness-soul. In this consciousness-soul the human being starts living in the course of his childhood, and then this consciousness-soul becomes the self-conscious soul.

Those who know to observe their own lives well consider this point in their life as something especially important. You find this point described in Jean Paul's own biography (1763–1825, German Romantic writer), where he experiences the consciousness of the inner self. “Never will I forget the appearance in me not yet told to anyone where I stood at the birth of my ego-consciousness of which I can give place and time. In a morning, I stood as a very young child in the front door and saw on the left to a woodshed, when all at once the internal face: I am an ego! Like a thunderbolt from the heaven went before me and stood still luminously. There my ego had seen itself for the first time and for ever. Delusions of memory are hard to imagine, because no other stories could add anything to this occurrence which only in the veiled sanctum of the human being took place whose novelty only gave permanence to such everyday accidents.” Thus I have shown the highest member of the human soul to you.

Indeed, the clairvoyant can perceive the three members of the soul externally. Like the etheric body the three members of the soul really present themselves to the external soul observation. I already said that one cannot behold the sentient body and the soul-body separately. This higher part of the human being, the soul, shows itself in that which the theosophical literature calls aura. Who wants to have knowledge of it must learn to behold it. The aura is threefold. Three members are inserted into each other like three oval nebulous formations which wrap up and veil the human guise. In this aura, the soul-body of the human being presents itself to our observation. It gleams in the most manifold colours which can only be compared with the spectral colours. In these colours which are on the higher octave of red and violet the aura gleams in the most manifold way. The human being is embedded in this like in a cloud, and in this cloud the desires, passions and impulses of the human soul express themselves. The whole feeling organism of the human being expresses itself in the wonderful play of colours of the aura. This threefold aura is the human soul. This is the soul if one understands it objectively. Everybody can perceive it subjectively: everybody feels and desires and has passions. He lives them in such a way as he lives digesting and breathing.

But the external usual school of psychology only describes what I have called the soul-body, or it still describes the external expression of the soul-life at most, but not what theosophy regards as soul. What it understands of the soul is an objective fact. But one can indicate it as Fichte did when he called attention to the fact that in this world higher experiences exist toward which the only sensually perceiving human being is like a blind-born.

Thus we have described the three members of the human physical body and the three members of the human soul. Since the third member of the physical body forms a unity with a member of the soul, we have first two parts plus one plus two, so five parts: physical body, etheric body, soul-body, intellectual soul, consciousness-soul in which the ego lights up. This ego is a quite interesting point in the aura. At a certain place this ego becomes discernible. Within the outer oval you find a strange, blue shimmering or blue fluorescent place, also oval-shaped. It is real in such a way, as if you see a candle flame; but with the difference which the astral colours have compared with the physical colours it is in such a way, as if you see the blue in the middle of the candle flame. This is the ego which is perceived within the aura. And this is a very interesting fact.

If the human being develops ever so far, if he develops his clairvoyant capacities ever so far, at this point he sees this blue ego-body at first, this blue light body. This is an overcast sanctuary, also for the clairvoyant. Nobody is able to behold into the real ego of the fellow man. This remains a secret at first also for somebody who has developed his soul senses. Only within this blue shimmering place something new begins to gleam. There is a new flame which begins to gleam in the centre of the blue flame. This is the third member, the mind. This mind again consists of three members like the other components of the human being.

The Eastern philosophy calls these members manas, buddhi and atma. These three components are developed with the present-day human beings so that, actually, only the lowest part, the spirit-self this is the correct translation of manas is developed as a rudiment. This manas is connected as firmly with the highest member of the soul as the sentient soul with the soul-body, so that again the highest part of the soul and the lowest part of the mind form a whole because one cannot distinguish them. One just beholds in the aura the highest member of the soul in the centre of the blue shimmering place where the ego is, and one sees the mind lighting up within the ego. Today the mind is developed with humanity up to the manas. The higher parts, buddhi and atma life-spirit and spirit-man are developed as rudiments, and we will see how they will develop speaking about reincarnation and karma in the next lecture.

The highest part of the soul and the lowest part of the mind are bound together. The theosophical literature calls manas what cannot be observed separately. The two highest parts, buddhi and atma, are the core of the human being, are the immortal human mind. Thus we have three times three members of the human being whose third member is linked with the fourth one to a whole and whose sixth member with the seventh one. The notorious heptad, which you can read so often, thereby comes about in the composition of the human being. In reality, the human being consists of body, soul and mind and any member again of three parts; two times two members are combined to a whole so that seven instead of nine members result. The human being lives in the second of the three members, the higher one. He cannot perceive them with his outer senses.

I have already mentioned in the introductory talk that the theosophical literature gives not only a description of the different fields of life, but shows also the means and ways with which the human being can get the methods enabling him to perceive all that. However, a certain spiritual development is necessary to get a correct view of that which I have described just as the naturalist has to learn microscoping to gain insight into the physical nature. Everybody can get to know this; it is not the property of few favourite, but common property of everybody. Those who have got involved with the instructions of the Theosophical Society and have themselves come to these views can tell of their experiences like an Africanist tells of his experiences. These cannot be checked unless you yourselves go to Africa. However, the methods are normally not taken seriously enough. If that were carried out really and seriously which is given in the last chapter of my book Theosophy, then a person could come already very far in the observation of the higher fields of human mind.

Who can make a theosophical world view to himself understands something that he could not understand before in the usual course of life. In fact you cannot understand particular fields with Goethe unless you have any idea of theosophy. Only somebody understands Goethe's explanations of the plant realm who has an idea of that which Goethe calls life processes or metamorphosis of the plants. That Goethe was a theosophist follows from a “concealed” writing which exists, indeed, in every edition, however, is read by the fewest: from the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. This contains the whole theosophy, but in such a way as the theosophical truths have always been communicated. Only since the foundation of the Theosophical Society they have been expressed externally; in former times they could be shown only figuratively. The Fairy Tale is such a pictorial expression of the theosophical teachings. In Leipzig Goethe gained insight into that world of which we speak profoundly. Something in Faust points to the fact that Goethe belonged to the initiated theosophists. Something is with Goethe like the creed of a theosophist. I would like to finish this lecture with Goethe's words which could be like a motto of this lecture because they announce in general lines and in terse style that the world is not only physical nature, but also a psychic and a spiritual being. And Goethe expresses the fact that the world is a spiritual being where he allows the earth spirit to say the words which reveal the weaving of the spiritual life all over the world:

In the tides of life, in action's storm,
I surge and ebb,
move to and fro!
as cradle and grave,
as unending sea,
as constant change,
as life's incandescence,
I work at the whirring loom of time
and fashion the living garment of God.

(Faust I, verses 501-509)