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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Occult Science - An Outline
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Occult Science - An Outline
The Character of Occult Science
An ancient term Occult Science is applied to
the contents of this book. The term is likely to evoke the most
contrary feelings among the people of our time. To many it will be
downright repugnant, calling forth derision, a supercilious smile,
even contempt. A way of thought they will opine which
thus described itself, must surely rest on idle dreams, and the mere
arbitrary play of fancy. Its claim to be a science can only be a
blind, behind which is the wish to revive all manner of superstitions,
justly eschewed by those who are familiar with the scientific spirit,
the quest of genuine knowledge. Others are differently affected. They
feel that what is signified by this term will bring them something
unattainable in any other way, something to which they are drawn
according to their disposition by a deep inner longing
for knowledge or a refined curiosity of soul. Between these two
sharply divergent opinions there are a multitude of intermediate
views, implying conditional rejection or acceptance of the diverse
things which people think of when they hear the term Occult
Science.
For some people, undeniably, it has a magic ring because it bids fair
to satisfy their craving for information, inaccessible by
straightforward methods, about something beyond our ken
something mysterious, nay perhaps vague and confused. Or there
are those who do not want to meet the deepest longings of the soul
with anything that is capable of being clearly known. In their
conviction, beyond what is knowable there must be something more in
the world that eludes our knowledge. It is a strange contradiction,
which they fail to notice. Precisely where the deepest yearning for
knowledge is concerned, they would set aside clear knowledge and want
to cherish what is incapable of discovery by natural and sound
research. Whoever speaks of Occult Science will do well to
bear in mind the likelihood of misunderstandings due to the efforts of
such champions, who in reality desire, not a true science but the
reverse.
The contents of this book are addressed to readers who will not let
their openness of mind be impaired because, for a variety of reasons,
a word tends to awaken prejudices. Of knowledge claiming to be
occult in the sense of secret accessible only to a
few, by special favor or good fortune there will be no mention
here. The reader will do justice to our use of the term Occult
Science if he considers what Goethe had in mind when he spoke of
the manifest secrets in the phenomena of Nature. Whatever
remains secret, that is to say unmanifest in these
phenomena when we apprehend them only with the outer senses and with
the intellect that is bound to the outer senses, will here be treated
as the subject-matter of a
supersensible way of knowledge.1
Needless to say, for anyone who will admit as science only what is
manifest to the senses and to the intellect that serves them, what is
here named Occult Science can be no science. Such a man,
however, if willing to understand his own position, should candidly
admit that his categorical rejection of any kind of Occult
Science springs not from reasoned insight but from an ipse
dixit, due to his own individual feeling. To see that it is so, he
need only reflect how sciences arise and what is their significance in
human life. How a pursuit comes to be a science cannot in the nature
of the case be ascertained from the subject-matter to which it is
devoted, but only by recognizing the mode of action of the human soul
while engaged in scientific endeavor. What is the attitude and
activity of the soul in the elaboration of a science? this is
the thing we must observe. If one is used to apply this mode of
activity only where sense-data are concerned, one easily slides into
the idea that sense-data are the essential factor. One misses the real
point, which is that a certain inner attitude of the human soul has
been applied to the revelations of the senses. For we can go beyond
the self-imposed limitation. Apart from the special case to which it
is here applied, we can envisage the character of scientific activity
as such. Such is the underlying idea when in this book the knowledge
of non-sensible World-contents is spoken of as scientific.
The human mind here sets to work at these World-contents, as in the
other case it does at the World-contents given to Natural Science.
Occult Science seeks to free the scientific method and spirit of
research, which in its own domain holds fast to the sequence and
relationship of sense-perceptible events, from this restricted
application, while maintaining the same essential attitude and mode of
thought. Thus it would speak of the non-sensible in the same spirit in
which Natural Science speaks of the sensible. While Natural Science,
in the employment of scientific thought and method of research, stops
short within the sense-perceptible, Occult Science would like to
regard the work of the human soul on Nature as a form of
self-education, and apply the faculties, thus educated in the soul, to
the realms of the non-sensible. Such is its method and procedure. It
does not speak of sense-phenomena as such, but of the non-sensible
World-contents in the same mood as does the natural scientist of those
accessible to sense-perception. It preserves the essential bearing
which the soul maintains in scientific procedure i.e. the very
element whereby alone our knowledge of Nature becomes a science. Hence
it may justly call itself a science.
Whoever ponders on the significance of Natural Science in human life
will find that its significance is by no means exhausted in the
acquisition of so much detailed knowledge about Nature. The detailed
items of knowledge can, in effect, only lead to an experience of what
the human soul is not. The soul is living, not in the finished
propositions about Nature, but in the process of scientific knowledge
concerning Nature. In working upon Nature, the soul experiences her
own conscious life and being, and what is livingly acquired in this
activity is something more than so much information about Nature. It
is an evolution of the Self that is experienced in building up our
scientific knowledge of Nature. It is this gain in self-development
which Occult Science seeks to activate in realms that lie beyond mere
Nature. Far from misjudging Natural Science, the occultist thus values
it even more than does the scientist himself. He knows that he can
found no science without the integrity of thought with which Natural
Science is imbued. And what is more, he knows that this integrity,
once gained by really penetrating into the spirit of
natural-scientific thinking, can by the requisite inner strength be
maintained for other realms of being.
One thing, admittedly, can make one hesitate at this point. In
contemplating Nature the soul is guided by the object of her study in
a far higher degree than in the contemplation of non-sensible
World-contents. The purely inner incentive whereby the essence of the
scientific way of thought is maintained, must be far stronger in the
latter case. Many people unconsciously imagine that it
can only be maintained by holding to the leading-strings of natural
phenomena. Hence they incline to decide ex cathedra that as
soon as these leading-strings are left behind, the scientific endeavor
of the mind and soul will needs be groping in the dark. Such people
have never consciously faced the question: What is the essence of
scientific procedure? They usually base their judgment on the
inevitable aberrations which occur when scientific thinking has not
been adequately strengthened by working at the phenomena of Nature,
and the soul nevertheless sets out to contemplate the non-sensible or
super-sensible domains of the World. Needless to say, much
unscientific talk concerning these World-contents arises in this way.
The reason is, however, not that the subject must in the nature of the
case be outside the pale of science; it is only that in the given
instance there has not been adequate self-discipline through the
scientific study of Nature.
With due regard to what has just been said, those who would speak of
Occult Science must indeed have a watchful eye for all the vagaries
that arise when the manifest secrets of the World are
treated in an unscientific spirit. It would however be unfruitful if
we were to deal with all these aberrations at the very outset of our
exposition. In prejudiced minds, no doubt these aberrations bring
discredit on any form of research into Occult Science. Their very
existence and they are only too numerous is taken to
justify the conclusion that the whole effort is fallacious. Yet as a
rule the rejection of Occult Science by scientists or scientifically
minded critics is only due, in the last resort, to the aforesaid,
ex cathedra decision. The reference to aberrations is but a
pretext, howsoever unconscious. Lengthy initial argument with such
opponents will therefore not be very fruitful. After all, they can
observe with perfect justice that on the face of it there is no
telling whether in seeing how others are caught up in error we
ourselves are standing on the requisite firm ground. Therefore the
claimant to Occult Science can do no other than simply bring forward
what he has to say. Others alone can judge if he is right
though it must be added, only those others who will refrain from ex
cathedra pronouncements and enter with open mind into the tenor of
his communications about the manifest secrets of the
World. It will then be for him to show how what he brings forward is
related to the existing achievements of life and knowledge. He must
meet possible objections and point out where the external,
sense-perceptible realities of life confirm his statements. Nor should
he ever speak or write in such terms as to rely on eloquence or on the
arts of persuasion rather than on the pure content of his
descriptions.
One often hears it objected that works on Occult Science do not prove
what they adduce; they merely make their statements and declare:
This is what Occult Science teaches. It would be a
misunderstanding to think that anything put forward in these pages was
intended in this spirit. Our purpose is different; it is to encourage
what is developed in the human soul through the knowledge of Nature to
go on evolving, as indeed it can do by its own inherent power. We then
point out that through this evolution the soul will encounter
supersensible realities. The premise is that every reader, able to
adopt this course, is bound to meet with these realities. There is
however an important difference, the moment we enter the
spiritual-scientific realm, as compared with natural-scientific study.
In Natural Science the facts lie spread out before us within the
sense-perceptible world. The scientist who describes them regards his
own activity of mind and soul as something that recedes into the
background over against the given sequence and relationship of the
pure facts of the sense world. The spiritual scientist, on the other
hand, puts the activity of the soul into the foreground and cannot but
do so, for the reader will only reach the facts when by appropriate
methods he makes this activity of soul his own. In Natural Science,
the facts however little understood are there for man's
perception even without the soul's activity. Not so the facts of
Spiritual Science. They only enter the realm of man's perception by
dint of the soul's activity. Thus the exponent of Spiritual Science
has to presume that the reader is looking for the facts together with
him. This will determine the character of his descriptions. He will
narrate the discovery of the facts; and yet the style of his narration
will be dominated not by any idiosyncrasies of his own but by the
purely scientific spirit, trained and developed through Natural
Science. Hence he will also be obliged to speak of the means and
methods whereby man rises to a contemplation of the non-sensible
that is to say, the super-sensible.
Anyone who really enters into the descriptions of Occult Science will
presently perceive that in the process he acquires ideas and concepts
he did not have before. He begins to have quite unexpected thoughts
concerning what he formerly imagined to be the essence of a
proof. In natural-scientific thinking it is different.
Here, the activity which is applied to the proof in natural-scientific
thinking, already lies inherent in the seeking for the facts. One
cannot even find the facts without the path towards them carrying its
own inherent proof. Anyone who really goes along this path will in so
doing have experienced the proof, and nothing more can be achieved by
any added proof from outside. Failure to recognize this essential
feature of Occult Science gives rise to numerous misunderstandings.
All Occult Science must spring from two thoughts thoughts which
can take root in every human being. For the occult scientist in our
sense of the word, they express facts which every man can experience
if he makes use of the proper means. Admittedly, for many people, even
these thoughts will appear as statements highly questionable, or even
liable to direct refutation.
The two thoughts are as follows. First, that there is behind the
visible an invisible world, hidden to begin with from the
senses and from the kind of thinking that is fettered to the senses.
And secondly, that by the due development of forces slumbering within
him it is possible for man to penetrate into the hidden world.
There is no such world, says one. The world man perceives with his
senses is the one and only world, and the riddles it presents are
soluble within its own domain. However far mankind may be as yet from
the ability to answer all the problems, sensory observation and the
science founded on it will in due time provide the answers.
No, says another, it cannot be said that there is no hidden world
behind the visible; our human faculties of knowledge, however, cannot
reach it. They are beset with insurmountable limitations. Let the
longing for religious faith have recourse to such a world; genuine
science, based on the ascertainable facts, can have no dealings with
it.
There is still a third party, who deem it presumption for man to want
to penetrate with his own active cognition into a region with regard
to which he should resign the claim to knowledge and modestly content
himself with faith. Those who adhere to this idea feel it wrong for
weak humanity to want to press forward into a world which should
belong to the religious life alone.
And then again it is argued that a universally accepted knowledge of
the facts of the sense-world is possible; here there is common ground
for all men. As to the super-sensible, on the other hand, it can only
be a question of the individual's personal opinion; it is fallacious
to allege any universally valid certainty upon these matters.
Others put forward many other viewpoints.
Yet it is possible to realize quite clearly that the contemplation of
the visible world places riddles before man which can never be solved
out of the facts of this world alone, even when scientific knowledge
has advanced to the very utmost. The visible facts, by their very
nature, distinctly indicate a hidden world. The man who does not see
this, closes his eyes to the riddles which spring to view on every
hand out of the facts of the sense-world. He does not want to see
certain facts and problems; therefore he believes that all questions
can be answered by the sense-perceptible facts alone. The questions he
is willing to admit are indeed answerable by these facts, concerning
which he is persuaded that they will all be discovered in course of
time. We may concede this without controversy. But how should anyone
who asks no further questions, expect answers to them? He who aspires
to a science of the occult says no more than that for him these
further questions are spontaneously there. Why should they not be
recognized as a perfectly legitimate expression of the human soul?
Science can not be forced into a strait-jacket by forbidding man to
put questions freely.
To those who opine that there are limits to human knowledge which man
cannot transcend and which compel him to stop short of an invisible
world, the answer is: No doubt, with the mode of knowledge they have
in mind, man will never penetrate into an unseen world. If one
considers this to be the only mode of knowledge they have in mind, man
will never penetrate into an unseen world. If one considers this to be
the only mode of knowledge, one cannot but come to the conclusion that
the human being is denied access to a higher world if such a
world exists. And yet, supposing it to be possible to evolve another
mode of cognition, the latter may after all lead into a supersensible
world. If such a mode of knowledge is ruled out, then indeed one
arrives at a point of view from which any discussion of a
supersensible world must appear meaningless. Yet for an open mind the
only possible reason for this opinion is that the one who holds it is
unacquainted with the other form of knowledge. No man can judge of a
thing which from the very outset he declares to be unknown to him.
Unbiased thinking must admit that a man should speak of what he knows,
and refrain from making pronouncements on what he does not know. Sound
thinking can only admit a man's right to communicate what he has
really experienced; no man can claim the right to declare impossible
what he does not know or does not want to know. We cannot deny a man's
right not to concern himself with the supersensible; but he can
never have the right to declare himself competent to judge, not only
of what is known or knowable to himself, but of what he alleges to be
unknowable to Man in general!
As to those who think it presumption for man to penetrate into the
supersensible, the occult scientist will ask them to reflect, what if
man can? Is it not then a betrayal of faculties granted to man
if he lets them lie waste instead of evolving and making good use of
them?
Lastly, the one who thinks that any views about the supersensible can
only be a matter of personal feeling and opinion, denies the common
and uniting element in all human beings. It is quite true that each of
us can only gain insight into these things through his own efforts,
but it is equally true that all those who do, provided they go far
enough, reach no divergent views but come to the identical insight.
Divergencies exist only so long as men try to approach the highest
truths by arbitrary ways, instead of by a pathway that is
scientifically sure. Once again it must be unreservedly admitted that
he alone who is prepared to enter open-mindedly into the essence of
the occult-scientific method will come to recognize its rightness.
The path to Occult Science can be found in due time by every man who
perceives or even only divines or surmises in the
manifest the presence of a hidden aspect. Aware that his powers of
knowledge are capable of evolution, he will begin to feel that the
hidden can become manifest to him. Once he is led to it by such
experiences of the soul, Occult Science will open out to him the
prospect not only of discovering the answer to many questions prompted
by his thirst for knowledge, but the further prospect that he himself
will be able to outgrow whatever may be hindering or weakening his
life. For in a higher sense it does denote enfeeblement of life
even a kind of death to the soul when a man feels himself
compelled to turn away from the supersensible or to deny it. It may
even lead him to despair when he loses hope that the hidden will ever
be made manifest. This death and this despair manifold in the
forms they can assume are at the same time inner opponents of
man's striving towards Spiritual Science. They make themselves felt
when his inner strength begins to wane. If he is then to have any
strength for life, it has to be brought to him from outside. He
perceives the objects and events which confront his outer senses; he
analyses and dissects them with his intellect. They give him joy or
pain; they impel him to such actions as lie within his scope. For a
while he may go on in this way; sooner or later however, he will
inevitably reach a point where he begins to die an inner death. Sooner
or later, what the outer world can give him in this way becomes
exhausted. This is not mere assertion of any one man's personal
experience; it derives from an open-minded contemplation of all human
life. It is the hidden world, latent in the depths of things, which
preserves us from this exhaustion And when the power of fathoming the
depths, so as to draw forth from thence ever new strength for life, is
waning in man, the outer aspect too will in the end cease to sustain
him.
Nor does this only concern the individual's personal weal or woe. More
than any other thing, the study of true Occult Science gives us the
ever-growing certainty that from a higher point of view the weal and
woe of the individual is bound up with that of all the world. Here is
a path whereby man reaches the insight that he does harm to the whole
world and to all other beings if he fails in the right development of
own powers. When a man renders his life waste and void by losing his
connection with the supersensible, he not only destroys within himself
something of which the death may ultimately lead him to despair; by
his own weakness he becomes a hindrance to the evolution of the entire
world in which he lives.
Now it is quite possible for man to deceive himself. He can give
himself up to the belief that there is no hidden side to things; that
that which meets his outer senses and his intellect is all-inclusive.
This delusion however is only possible on the surface of
consciousness, not in the depths. Our feeling-life, our aspirations
and desires, do not partake in the illusory belief. In one way or
another they will always crave for the hidden side; when it is taken
from them, they drive the human being into doubt and bewilderment,
even into despair, as we have seen. A way of knowledge which brings
the hidden to revelation is apt to overcome all hopelessness,
perplexity and despair in short, all that weakens human life on
Earth and incapacitates it from contributing its service to the cosmic
whole.
One of the fairest fruits of the pursuit of Spiritual Science is that
it lends strength and firmness to life, instead of merely satisfying a
man's craving for knowledge. Inexhaustible is the fountain head from
which it draws, giving man strength for work and confidence in life.
No man who has once truly found his way to this source will ever go
away unstrengthened, however often he may have recourse to it.
There are those who will have nothing to do with Spiritual Science
because they think there is something unhealthy even in what has just
been said. As to the surface, the outward aspect of life, they are not
altogether wrong. They do not want any neglect of the
realities of life, as they see them. They see it as a
weakness when man turns away from these realities and seeks salvation
in a hidden world, which for them is equivalent to a world of mere
dreams and fancies. If in the quest of Spiritual Science we are not to
succumb to morbidity and weakness, we must admit the partial justice
of such objectives. They rest on a sound enough judgment, but one
which only leads to a half-truth instead of to the whole truth,
inasmuch as it stops short at the surface and fails to penetrate into
the depths. If the striving for supersensible knowledge were such as
to weaken life and turn man away from reality, objections of this kind
would assuredly be strong enough to undermine it.
Here too, however, Occult Science would not be taking the right path
by seeking to defend itself, in the everyday sense of the word, as
against such opinions. Here too it can only try to express
recognizably to any open mind its own inherent value, making it
felt how it can enhance the strength and energy of life for those who
devote themselves to it. For the true quest of Spiritual Science will
never make a man a dreamer or an escapist from the world; rather will
it fortify him from those deeper founts of life from which as a being
of soul and spirit he himself proceeds.
There are yet other hindrances to understanding which for some people
bar the way to the pursuit of Occult Science. To mention one: it is
true in principle that the reader will find in the expositions of
Occult Science a description of experiences of soul which, if he
follows them, can lead him towards the supersensible realities. In
practice, however, this is an ultimate ideal. The reader must first
receive as simple communication a wealth of supersensible discoveries
which he cannot yet experience for himself. It cannot be done
otherwise, and will be so in this book. The author will be describing
what he believes himself to know about the being of man, including
what man undergoes in birth and death and in the body-free condition
in the spiritual world; also about the evolution of the Earth and of
mankind. It might then seem as though he were putting forward all
these alleged items of knowledge as dogmas, which the reader was being
asked to accept on the writer's authority. But it is not so. For in
reality, whatever can be known of the supersensible world, lives
as a living content of soul in the spiritual
investigator who expounds it, and as the reader finds his way into
this living content it kindles in his soul the impulses leading
towards the supersensible realities in question. The way we live in
reading the descriptions of Spiritual Science is quite different from
what it is when reading communications about sense-perceptible events.
We simply read about the latter; but when we read
communications of supersensible realities in the right way, we
ourselves are entering into a stream of spiritual life and being. In
receiving the results of research, we are receiving at the same time
our own inner path towards these results. True, to begin with, the
reader will often fail to notice that this is so. For he is far too
apt to conceive the entry into the spiritual world on the analogy of
sensory experience. Therefore what he experiences of this world in
reading of it will seem to him like mere thoughts and
nothing more. Yet in the true receiving of it even in the form of
thoughts, man is already within the spiritual world; it only
remains for him to become aware that he has been experiencing in all
reality what he imagined himself to be receiving as the mere
communication of thoughts.
The true character of the experience will be made fully clear to him
when he proceeds to carry out in practice what is described in the
later portions of this book, namely the path leading to
supersensible knowledge. It might easily be imagined that the reverse
was the right order the pathway should first be described. But
it is not so. One who, without first turning his attention to some of
the essential facts of the supersensible world, merely does
exercises with the idea of gaining entrance there, will
find in it a vague and confusing chaos. Man finds his way into the
world to begin with, as it were, naively by learning to
understand its essential features. Then he can gain a clear idea of
how leaving this naïve stage behind him he
will himself attain, in full consciousness, to the experiences which
have been related to him. Anyone who really enters into Occult Science
will become convinced that this and this alone is the reliable way to
supersensible knowledge. As to the opinion that information about the
supersensible world might influence the reader by way of
suggestion or mere dogma, he will perceive that this is
quite unfounded. The contents of supersensible knowledge are
experienced in a form of inner life which excludes anything in the
nature of suggestion and leaves no other possibility than to impart
the knowledge to one's fellow-man in the same way as any other kind of
truth would be imparted, appealing only to his wide-awake and
thoughtful judgment. And if, to begin with, the one who hears or reads
the description does not notice how he himself is living in the
spiritual world, the reason lies not in any passive or thoughtless
receiving of the information, but in the delicate and unwonted nature
of the experience.
Therefore by studying the communications given in the first part of
this book, one is enabled in the first place to share in the knowledge
of the supersensible world; thereafter, by the practical application
of the procedures indicated in the second part, one can gain
independent knowledge in that world.
A scientific man, entering into the spirit of this book, will find no
essential contradiction between his form of science, built as it is
upon the facts of the sense-perceptible world, and the way the
supersensible world is here investigated. Every scientist makes use of
instruments and methods. He prepares his instruments by working upon
the things which Nature gives him. The supersensible form
of knowing also makes use of an instrument, only that here the
instrument is Man himself. This instrument too must first be prepared
prepared for the purposes of a higher kind of research. The
faculties and forces with which the human instrument has been endowed
by Nature without man's active cooperation must be
transformed into higher ones. Thus can man make of himself the
instrument of research research into the supersensible world.
Footnotes:
-
Critics of earlier editions of this book have objected that
the expression Occult Science is a contradiction in terms,
since in the nature of the case a science cannot be kept
occult or secret. (The German for Occult
Science Geheimwissenschaft begins with the
adjective geheim, the ordinary word for secret. The
criticism would be just if this were the intention, but it is not so .
When we say Natural Science we do not mean a science that
is natural to everyone as it were, a natural
endowment. No more does the author think of Occult Science as a
science that is occult or secret. It is the
science of what to the ordinary methods of cognition is
present but unmanifest in the phenomena of the world. Occult Science
is a science concerning the occult or, to use Goethe's
words again, concerning the manifest secret. It has no
secret to conceal from anyone who is prepared to seek for occult
knowledge by the appropriate methods.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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