Answers to Questions
If we are to acquire new capacities through
repeated incarnations in the successive races, if in addition nothing
of what the soul has acquired through experience is again to be lost
from its storehouse, &$151; how is it to be explained that in
mankind of today absolutely nothing remains of the capacities of the
will, of the imagination, of the mastery of natural forces which were
so highly developed in those periods?
It is a fact that of the capacities which the soul
has acquired in its transition through a stage of development,
nothing is lost. But when a new capacity is acquired, the one
previously gained assumes a different form. It then no longer
manifests itself in its own character, but as a basis for the
new capacity. Among the Atlanteans for instance, it was the faculty
of memory which was acquired. Contemporary man indeed can form only a
very weak conception of what the memory of an Atlantean could
accomplish. But all that appears as innate concepts in our
fifth root race, in Atlantis was only acquired through the memory.
The concepts of space, time, number, etc. would present difficulties
of a quite different order if contemporary man were obliged to be the
first to acquire them. For the faculty which this contemporary man is
to acquire is the combinatory understanding. Logic did not exist
among the Atlanteans. But each previously acquired power of the soul
must withdraw, in its own form, become submerged beneath the
threshold of consciousness if a new one is to be acquired. For
example, if the beaver were suddenly to become a thinking being, it
would have to change its capacity for intuitively erecting its artful
constructions into something else.
The Atlanteans also had for example, the capacity
to control the life force in a certain way. They constructed their
wonderful machines through this force. But on the other hand, they
had nothing of the gift for story-telling which the peoples of the
fifth root race possess. There are as yet no myths and fairy tales
among them. The life-mastering power of the Atlanteans first appeared
among the members of our race under the mask of mythology. In this
form it could become the basis for the intellectual activity of our
race. The great inventors among us are incarnations of
“seers” of the Atlanteans. In their inspirations of
genius is manifested what has as its basis something else, something
that was like life-producing power in them during their Atlantean
incarnation. Our logic, knowledge of nature, technology and so forth,
grow from a foundation which was laid in Atlantis. If, for instance,
an engineer could transform his combining faculty backward, something
would result which was in the power of the Atlantean. All of Roman
jurisprudence was the transformed will power of a former time. In
this the will as such remained in the background, and instead of
itself assuming forms, it transformed itself into the forms of
thought which are manifested in legal concepts. The esthetic sense of
the Greeks is built up on the basis of directly acting forces which
among the Atlanteans were manifested in a magnificent breeding of
plant and animal forms. In the imagination of Phidias lived something
which the Atlantean used directly for the transformation of actual
living beings.
What is the relation of the science of the
spirit, of theosophy, to the so-called secret sciences?
Secret sciences have always existed. They were
cultivated in the so-called mystery schools. Only the one who
underwent certain tests could learn something of them. He was always
told only as much as was appropriate for his intellectual, spiritual,
and moral faculties. This had to be so, for when properly used, the
higher insights are the key to a power which must lead to misuse in
the hands of the unprepared. Some of the elementary teachings of
mystery science have been popularized by the science of the spirit.
The reason for this lies in the conditions prevailing in our time.
With respect to the development of the understanding, mankind today,
in its more advanced members, has progressed to the point where
sooner or later it would of itself attain certain conceptions which
were previously a part of secret knowledge. But it would acquire
these conceptions in an atrophied, caricatured, and harmful form.
Therefore some of those who are initiated into secret knowledge have
decided to communicate a part of it to the public. It will thus
become possible to measure human advances which take place in the
course of cultural development, with the measuring rod of true
wisdom. Our knowledge of nature, for example, does lead to ideas
about the causes of things. But without a deepening through mystery
science these ideas can only be distortions. Our technology is
approaching stages of development which can only redound to the good
of mankind if the souls of men have been deepened in the sense of the
spiritual scientific conception of life. As long as the peoples had
nothing of modern knowledge of nature and modern technology, the form
was salutary in which the highest teachings were communicated in
religious images, in a manner which appealed merely to the emotional.
Today mankind needs the same truths in a rational form. The world
outlook of the science of the spirit is not an arbitrary development,
but results from an insight into the historical fact just
mentioned.
However, even today certain parts of secret
knowledge can only be communicated to those who undergo the tests of
initiation. Only those will be able to make use of the published part
who do not limit themselves to an external noting of it, but who
really assimilate these things internally and make them the content
and the guiding principle of their lives. It is not a matter of
mastering the teachings of the science of the spirit with the
understanding, but of permeating feelings, emotions, the whole
life with them. Only through such a permeating does one learn
something of their truth. Otherwise they remain something which
“one can believe or not believe.” When correctly
understood, the truths of the science of the spirit will give man a
true foundation for his life, will let him recognize his value, his
dignity, and his essence, and will give him the highest zest for
living. For these truths enlighten him about his connection with the
world around him; they show him his highest goals, his true destiny.
They do this in a way which corresponds to the demands of the
present, so that he need not remain caught in the contradiction
between belief and knowledge. One can be a modern scientist and a
scientist of the spirit at the same time. But, however, one must be
one and the other in a true sense.
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