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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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An Outline of Occult Science
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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An Outline of Occult Science
THE CHARACTER OF OCCULT SCIENCE
OCCULT science, an ancient term, is used for the contents of this
book. This term can arouse in various individuals of the present day
feelings of the most contrary character. For many, it possesses
something repellent; it arouses derision, pitying smiles, perhaps
contempt. These people imagine that the kind of thinking thus
designated can only be based upon idle, fantastic dreaming, that
behind such alleged science there can lurk only the
impulse to renew all sorts of superstitions that are properly avoided
by those who understand true scientific methods and
pure intellectual endeavor. The effect of this term upon
others is to cause them to think that what is meant by it must bring
them something that cannot be acquired in any other way and to which,
according to their nature, they are attracted by a deep, inner longing
for knowledge, or by the soul's sublimated curiosity. In between these
sharply contrasting opinions there exists every possible kind of
intermediate stage of conditional rejection or acceptance of what this
or that person imagines when he hears the term, occult
science. It is not to be denied that for many the term, occult
science, has a magical sound because it seems to satisfy their fatal
passion for knowledge of an unknown, of a mysterious, even
of an obscure something that is not to be acquired in a natural way.
For many people do not wish to satisfy the deepest longings of their
souls by means of something that can be clearly understood. Their
convictions lead them to conclude that besides what can be known in
the world there must be something that defies cognition. With
extraordinary absurdity, which they do not observe, they reject, in
regard to the deepest longing for knowledge, all that is
known and only wish to give their approval to something that
cannot be said to be known by means of ordinary research. He who
speaks of occult science will do well to keep in mind the
fact that he is confronted by misunderstandings caused by just such
defenders of a science of this kind defenders who are striving, in
fact, not for knowledge, but for its antithesis.
This work is intended for readers who will not permit their
impartiality to be taken away from them just because a word may arouse
prejudice through various circumstances. It is not here a question of
knowledge which, in any respect, can be considered to be
secret and therefore only accessible to certain people
through some special favor of fate. We shall do justice to the use of
the term, occult science, employed here, if we consider what Goethe
has in mind when he speaks of the revealed secrets in the
phenomena of the universe. What remains secret unrevealed in
these phenomena when grasped only by means of the senses and the
intellect bound up with them will be considered as the content of a
supersensible
mode of knowledge.1
What is meant here by
Occult Science does not constitute science for anyone who
only considers scientific what is revealed through the
senses and the intellect serving them. If, however, such a person
wishes to understand himself, he must acknowledge that he rejects
occult science, not from well-substantiated insight, but from a
mandate arising from his own personal feelings. In order to understand
this, it is only necessary to consider how science comes into
existence and what significance it has in human life. The origin of
science, in its essential nature, is not recognized by means of the
subject matter it is dealing with, but by means of the human
soul-activity arising in scientific endeavor. We must consider the
attitude of the soul when it elaborates science. If we acquire the
habit of exercising this kind of activity only when we are concerned
with the manifestation of the senses, we might easily be led to the
opinion that this sense-manifestation is the essential thing, and we
do not become aware that a certain attitude of the human soul has been
employed only in regard to the manifestation of the senses. It is
possible, however, to rise above this arbitrary self-limitation and,
apart from special application, consider the characteristics of
scientific activity. This is the basis for our designating as
scientific the knowledge of a non-sensory world-content.
The human power of thought wishes to occupy itself with this latter
world-content just as it occupies itself, in the other case, with the
world-content of natural science. Occult science desires to free the
natural-scientific method and its principle of research from their
special application that limits them, in their own sphere, to the
relationship and process of sensory facts, but, at the same time, it
wants to retain their way of thinking and other characteristics. It
desires to speak about the non-sensory in the same way natural science
speaks about the sensory. While natural science remains within the
sense world with this method of research and way of thinking, occult
science wishes to consider the employment of mental activity upon
nature as a kind of self-education of the soul and to apply what it
has thus acquired to the realms of the non-sensory. Its method does
not speak about the sense phenomena as such, but speaks about the
non-sensory world-content in the way the scientist talks about the
content of the sensory world. It retains the mental attitude of the
natural-scientific method; that is to say, it holds fast to just the
thing that makes natural research a science. For that reason it may
call itself a science.
When we consider the significance of natural science in human life, we
shall find that this significance cannot be exhausted by acquiring a
knowledge of nature, since this knowledge can never lead to anything
but an experiencing of what the human soul itself is not. The
soul-element does not live in what man knows about nature, but in the
process of acquiring Knowledge The soul experiences itself in its
occupation with nature. What it vitally achieves in this activity is
something besides the knowledge of nature itself: it is
self-development experienced in acquiring knowledge of nature. Occult
science desires to employ the results of this self-development in
realms that lie beyond mere nature. The occult scientist has no desire
to undervalue natural science; on the contrary, he desires to
acknowledge it even more than the natural scientist himself. He knows
that, without the exactness of the mode of thinking of natural
science, he cannot establish a science. Yet he knows also that after
this exactness has been acquired through genuine penetration into the
spirit of natural-scientific thinking, it can be retained through the
force of the soul for other fields.
Something, however, arises here that may cause misgivings. In studying
nature, the soul is guided by the object under consideration to a much
greater degree than is the case when non-sensory world contents are
studied. In the latter study, the soul must possess to a much greater
degree, from purely inner impulses, the ability to hold fast to the
scientific mode of thinking, Since many people believe, unconsciously,
that this can be done only through the guidance of natural phenomena,
they are inclined, through a dogmatic declaration, to make their
decisions accordingly; as soon as this guidance is abandoned, the soul
gropes in a void with its scientific method. Such people have not
become conscious of the special character of this method. They base
their judgment for the most part upon errors that must arise if the
scientific attitude is not sufficiently strengthened by observation of
natural phenomena and, in spite of this, the soul attempts a
consideration of the non-sensory regions of the world. It is
self-evident that in such cases there arises much unscientific talk
about non-sensory world contents. Not, however, because such talk, in
its essence, is incapable of being scientific, but because, in such an
instance, scientific self-education in the observation of nature has
been neglected.
Whoever wishes to speak about occult science must certainly, in
connection with what has just been said, be fully awake in regard to
all the vagaries that arise when, without the scientific attitude,
something is determined concerning the revealed mysteries of the
world. It would, however, be of no avail if, at the very beginning of
an occult-scientific presentation, we were to speak of all kinds of
aberrations, which in the souls of prejudiced persons discredit all
research in this direction, because they conclude, from the presence
of really quite numerous aberrations, that the entire endeavor is
unjustified. Since, however, in the case of scientists, or
scientifically minded critics, the rejection of occult science rests
in most instances solely upon the above mentioned dogmatic
declaration, and the reference to the aberrations is only an often
unconscious pretext, a discussion with such opponents will be
fruitless. Nothing, indeed, hinders them from making the certainly
quite justifiable objection that, at the very outset, there is nothing
that can definitely determine whether the person who believes others
to be in error, himself possesses the above characterized firm
foundation. Therefore, the person striving to present occult science
can simply offer what in his estimation he has a right to say. The
judgment concerning his justification can only be formed by other
persons; indeed, only by those who, avoiding all dogmatic
declarations, are able to enter into the nature of his communications
concerning the revealed mysteries of cosmic events. To be sure, he
will be obliged to show the relationship between his presentations and
other achievements in the field of knowledge and life; he will have to
show what oppositions are possible and to what degree the direct,
external, sensory reality of life verifies his observations. He
should, however, never attempt to present his subject in a way that
produces its effect by means of his art of persuasion instead of
through its content.
The following objection is often heard in regard to the statements of
occult science: These latter do not offer proof; they merely
assert this or that and say that occult science ascertains this.
The following exposition will be misjudged if it is thought that any
part of it has been presented in this sense. Our endeavor here is to
allow the capacity of soul unfolded through a knowledge of nature to
evolve further, as far as its own nature will allow, and then call
attention to the fact that in such development the soul encounters
supersensible facts. It is assumed that every reader who is able to
enter into what has been presented will necessarily run up against
these facts. A difference, however, is encountered with respect to
purely natural scientific observation the moment we enter the realm of
spiritual science. In natural science, the facts present themselves in
the field of the sense world; the exponent of natural science
considers the activity of the soul as something that recedes into the
background in the face of the relationships and the course of sensory
facts. The exponent of spiritual science must place his soul activity
into the foreground; for the reader only arrives at the facts if he
makes this activity of the soul his own in the right way. These facts
are not present for human perception without the activity of the soul
as they are although uncomprehended in natural science; they enter
into human perception only by means of soul activity. The exponent of
spiritual science therefore presumes that the reader is seeking facts
mutually with him. His exposition will be given in the form of a
narration describing how these facts were discovered, and in the
manner of his narration not personal caprice but scientific thinking
trained by natural science will prevail. It will also be necessary,
therefore, to speak of the means by which a consideration of the
non-sensory, of the supersensible, is attained. Anyone who occupies
himself with an exposition of occult science will soon see that
through it concepts and ideas are acquired that previously he did not
possess. Thus he also acquires new thoughts concerning his previous
conception of the nature of proof. He learns that for an
exposition of natural science, proof is something that is
brought to it, as it were, from without. In spiritual-scientific
thinking, however, the activity, which in natural-scientific thinking
the soul employs for proof, lies already in the search for facts,
These facts cannot be discovered if the path to them is itself not
already a proof. Whoever really travels this path has already
experienced the proving in the process: nothing can be accomplished by
means of a proof applied from without The fact that this is not
recognized in the character of occult science calls forth many
misunderstandings.
The whole of occult science must spring from two thoughts that can
take root in every human soul. For the occult scientist, as he is
meant here, these two thoughts express facts that can be experienced
if we use the right means. For many people these thoughts signify
extremely controversial statements about which there may be wide
differences of opinion; they may even be proved to be
impossible.
These two thoughts are the following. First, behind the visible
there exists an invisible world, concealed at the outset from the
senses and the thinking bound up with the senses; and second, it is
possible for man, through the development of capacities slumbering
within him, to penetrate into this hidden world.
One person maintains that there is no such hidden world, that the
world perceived by means of the human senses is the only one, that its
riddles can be solved out of itself, and that, although the human
being at present is still far from being able to answer all the
questions of existence, a time will surely come when sense experience
and the science based upon it will be able to give the answers.
Others state that we must not maintain there is no hidden world behind
the visible, yet the human powers of cognition are unable to penetrate
into it. They have limits that cannot be overstepped. Let those who
need faith take refuge in a world of that kind: a true
science, which is based upon assured facts, cannot concern itself with
such a world.
There is a third group that considers it presumptuous if a man,
through his cognitive activity, desires to penetrate into a realm
about which he is to renounce all knowledge and be content with
faith. The adherents of this opinion consider it wrong for
the weak human being to want to penetrate into a world that is
supposed to belong to the religious life alone.
It is also maintained that a common knowledge of the facts of the
sense world is possible for everyone, but that in respect of
supersensible facts it is only a matter of the personal opinion of the
individual, and that no one should speak of a generally valid
certainty in these matters.
Others maintain still other things.
It can become clear that the observation of the visible world presents
riddles that can never be solved out of the facts of that world
themselves. They will never be solved in this way, although the
science concerned with these facts may have advanced as far as is
possible. For the visible facts, through their very inner nature,
point clearly to a hidden world. Whoever does not discern this closes
his mind to the riddles that spring up everywhere out of the facts of
the sense world. He refuses to perceive certain questions and riddles;
he, therefore, thinks that all questions may be answered by means of
the sensory facts. The questions he wishes to propound can indeed all
be answered by means of the facts that he expects will be discovered
in the future. This may be readily admitted. But why should a person
wait for answers to certain things who does not ask any questions?
Whoever strives for an occult science merely says that for him these
questions are self evident and that they must be recognized as a fully
justified expression of the human soul. Science cannot be pressed into
limits by forbidding the human being to ask unbiased questions.
The opinion that there are limits to human cognition that cannot be
overstepped, compelling man to stop short before an invisible world,
must be replied to by saying that there can be no doubt about the
impossibility of finding access to the invisible world with the kind
of cognition referred to here. Whoever considers that form of
cognition to be the only possible one cannot come to any other opinion
than that the human being is denied access to a possibly existent
higher world. Yet the following may also be stated. If it is possible
to develop another kind of cognition, this then may well lead into the
supersensible world. If this kind of cognition is considered to be
impossible, then we reach a point of view from which all talk about a
supersensible world appears as pure nonsense. From an impartial
viewpoint, however, the only reason for such an opinion can be the
fact that the person holding it has no knowledge of this other kind of
cognition. Yet how can a person pass judgment upon something about
which he himself admits his ignorance? Unprejudiced thinking must hold
to the premise that a person should speak only of what he knows and
should not make statements about something he does not know. Such
thinking can only speak of the right that a person has to communicate
what he himself has experienced, but it cannot speak of the right that
somebody declare impossible what he does not know or does not wish to
know. We cannot deny anyone the right to ignore the supersensible, but
there can never be any good reason for him to declare himself an
authority, not only on what he himself can know, but also on all that
a man can not know.
In the case of those who declare that it is presumptuous to penetrate
into the domain of the supersensible an occult-scientific exposition
has to call attention to the fact that this can be done, and that it
is a transgression against the faculties bestowed upon man if we allow
them to stagnate, instead of developing and making use of them.
Whoever thinks, however, that the views concerning the supersensible
world must belong entirely to personal opinion and feeling denies what
is common to all human beings. It is certainly true that the insight
into these things must be acquired by each person for himself, but it
is also a fact that all human beings who go far enough arrive, not at
different opinions about these things, but at the same opinion.
Differences of opinion exist only as long as human beings wish to
approach the highest truths, not by a scientifically assured path, but
by way of personal caprice. It must again be admitted, however, that
only that person is able to acknowledge the correctness of the path of
occult science who is willing to familiarize himself with its
characteristics.
At the proper moment, every human being can find the way to occult
science who recognizes, or even merely assumes or divines, out of the
manifest world, the existence of a hidden world and who, out of the
consciousness that the powers of cognition are capable of development,
is driven to the feeling that the concealed is able to reveal itself
to him. To a person who has been led to occult science by means of
these soul experiences there opens up not only the prospect of finding
the answer to certain questions springing from his craving for
knowledge, but also the quite different prospect of becoming the
victor over all that hampers and weakens life. It signifies, in a
certain higher sense, a weakening of life, indeed a death of the soul,
when a human being sees himself forced to turn away from the
supersensible, or to deny it. Indeed, under certain conditions it
leads to despair when a man loses hope of having the hidden revealed
to him. This death and despair in their manifold forms are, at the
same time, inner soul opponents of occult-scientific striving. They
appear when the inner force of the human being dwindles. Then all
force of life must be introduced from without if such a person is to
get possession of any life force at all. He then perceives the things,
beings, and events that appear before his senses; he analyses these
with his intellect. They give him pleasure and pain, they drive him to
the actions of which he is capable. He may carry on in this way for a
while yet at some time he must reach a point when he inwardly dies.
For what can be drawn from the world in this way becomes exhausted.
This is not a statement derived from the personal experience of one
individual, but the result of an unbiased consideration of all human
life. What guards against this exhaustion is the concealed something
that rests within the depths of things. If the power to descend into
these depths, in order to draw up ever new life-force, dies away
within the human being, then finally also the outer aspect of things
no longer proves conducive to life.
This question by no means concerns only the individual human being,
only his personal welfare and misfortune. Precisely through true
occult-scientific observations man arrives at the certainty that,
from a higher standpoint, the welfare and misfortune of the individual
is intimately bound up with the welfare or misfortune of the whole
world. The human being comes to understand that he injures the whole
universe and all its beings by not developing his forces in the proper
way. If he lays waste his life by losing the relationship with the
supersensible, he not only destroys something in his own inner
being the decaying of which can lead him finally to despair but
because of his weakness he creates a hindrance to the evolution of the
whole world in which he lives.
The human being can deceive himself. He can yield to the belief that
there is no hidden world, that what appears to his senses and his
intellect contains everything that can possibly exist. But this
deception is only possible, not for the deeper, but for the surface
consciousness. Feeling and desire do not submit to this deceptive
belief. In one way or another, they will always crave for a concealed
something, and if this is withdrawn from them, they force the human
being into doubt, into a feeling of insecurity of life, indeed, into
despair. A cognition that reveals the hidden is capable of overcoming
all hopelessness, all insecurity, all despair, in fact all that
weakens life and makes it incapable of the service required of him in
the cosmos.
This is the beautiful fruit of the knowledge of spiritual science that
it gives strength and firmness to life, and not alone gratification to
the passion for knowledge. The source from which this knowledge draws
its power to work and its trust in life is inexhaustible. No one who
has once really approached this source will, by repeatedly taking
refuge in it, go away unstrengthened.
There are people who wish to hear nothing about this knowledge because
they see something unhealthy in what has just been said. Such people
are quite right in regard to the superficial and external side of
life. They do not wish to see stunted what life offers in its
so-called reality. They consider it weakness when a person turns away
from reality and seeks his salvation in a hidden world that to them
appears as a fantastic, imaginary one. If, in our spiritual scientific
striving, we are not to fall into an unhealthy dreaminess and
weakness, we must acknowledge the partial justification of such
objections. For they rest upon a healthy judgment that leads, not to a
whole, but only to a half-truth through the very fact that it does not
penetrate into the depth of things, but remains on the surface. Were
the striving for supersensible knowledge likely to weaken life and to
estrange men from true reality, then such objections would certainly
be strong enough to remove the foundation from under this spiritual
trend.
Also concerning such points of view, spiritual-scientific endeavors
would not take the right path if they wished to defend
themselves in the usual sense of the word. Here also they can only
speak out of their own merit, recognizable to every unprejudiced
person, when they make evident how they increase the vital force and
strength in those who familiarize themselves with them in the right
way. These endeavors cannot turn man into a person estranged from the
world, into a dreamer; they give him strength from the sources of life
out of which his spirit and soul have sprung.
Many a man encounters still other intellectual obstacles when he
approaches the endeavors of occult science. For it is fundamentally
true that the reader finds in the presentation of occult science a
description of soul experiences through the pursuit of which he can
approach the supersensible world-content. But in practice this must
present itself as a kind of ideal. The reader must at first absorb a
comparatively large number of supersensible experiences in the form of
communications, experiences that he, however, has not yet passed
through himself. This cannot be otherwise and will also be the case
with this book. The author will describe what he believes he knows
about the nature of man, about his conduct between birth and death,
and in his disembodied state in the spiritual world; in addition, the
evolution of the earth and of mankind will be described. Thus it might
appear as though a certain amount of alleged knowledge were presented
in the form of dogmas for which belief based on authority were
demanded. This is not the case. What can be known of the supersensible
world-content is present in him who presents the material as a living
content of the soul, and if someone becomes acquainted with this
soul-content, this then enkindles in his own soul the impulses that
lead to the corresponding supersensible facts. While reading the
communications concerning spiritual-scientific knowledge, we live in a
quite different manner than we do while reading those concerning
external facts. If we read communications from the outer sense world,
we are reading about them. But if we read communications about
supersensible facts in the right way, we are living into the stream of
spiritual existence. In absorbing the results we, at the same time,
enter upon our own inner path to them. It is true that what is meant
here is often not at all observed by the reader. Entrance into the
spiritual world is imagined in a way too similar to an experience of
the senses; therefore, what is experienced when reading about this
world is considered to be much too much of the nature of thought. But
if we have truly absorbed these thoughts we are already within this
world and have only to become quite clear about the fact that we have
already experienced, unnoticed, what we thought we had received merely
as an intellectual communication. Complete clarity concerning the real
nature of what has been experienced will be gained in carrying out in
practice what is described, in the second and last part of this book,
as the path to supersensible knowledge. It might easily be
thought that the opposite would be the right way; that this path
should be described first. That is not the case. For anyone who only
carries out exercises in order to enter the supersensible
world, without directing the attention of his soul to definite facts
concerning it, that world remains an indefinite, confused chaos. We
learn to become familiar with that world naively, as it were, by
gaining information about certain of its facts, and then we account
for the way in which we ourselves, abandoning naiveté, fully
consciously acquire the experiences about which we have gained
information. If we penetrate deeply into the descriptions of occult
science we become convinced that this is the only sure path to
supersensible knowledge. We shall also realize that the opinion that
supersensible knowledge might at first have the effect of a dogma
through the power of suggestion, as it were, is unfounded. For the
content of this knowledge is acquired by a soul activity that takes
from it all merely suggestive power and only gives it the possibility
of appealing to another person in the same way in which all truths
speak to him that offer themselves to his thoughtful judgment. The
reason the other person does not at first notice that he is living in
the spiritual world does not lie in a thoughtless, suggestive
absorption of what he has read, but in the subtlety and unfamiliarity
of what he has experienced in his reading. Therefore, by first
absorbing the communications as given in the first part of this book,
we become participators in the knowledge of the spiritual world; by
means of the practical application of the soul exercises given in the
second part, we become independent knowers of this world.
In the spirit and true sense of the word, no real scientist will be
able to find a contradiction between his science built upon the facts
of the sense world and the method by which the supersensible world is
investigated. The scientist makes use of certain instruments and
methods. He produces his instruments by transforming what
nature offers him. The supersensible method of knowledge
also makes use of an instrument. This instrument is man himself. This
instrument, too, must first be made ready for higher research. The
capacities and forces given to man by nature, without his assistance,
must be transformed into higher capacities and powers. Man is thereby
able to make himself the instrument for research in the supersensible
world.
Footnotes:
-
It has happened that the term
occult science, as used by the author in earlier editions
of this book, has been rejected for the reason that a science cannot
be something hidden. That would be correct if the matter
were meant in this way. But such is not the case. The science of
nature cannot be called a natural science in the sense
that it belongs by nature to everyone, nor does the author
consider occult science as a hidden science, but one that
has to do with the unrevealed, the concealed, in the phenomena of the
world for ordinary methods of cognition. It is a science of the
mysteries, of the revealed secrets. This
science, however, should not be a secret for anyone who seeks
knowledge of it by the proper methods.
Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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