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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Work of Secret Societies in the World
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Work of Secret Societies in the World
The Atom as Coagulated Electricity
A lecture by
Rudolf Steiner
Berlin, December 23, 1904
Bn/GA 93
The lecture presented here is also known as: Evolution and
Involution as they are Interpreted by Occult Societies: Berlin,
23rd December 1904.
The significance of occult knowledge in promoting conscious
prolongation of life, immortality. The universal law of the
development of consciousness. The task of our epoch to permeate
the mineral world with human spirit. Spiritualised natural
kingdoms as future soul-content of man, resting on the law of
evolution and involution. Future penetration of man's spirit
into the atom. Relationship of the atom, thought and electricity.
The destruction of the fifth Root Race through the War of All
against All. The significance of forms in connection with future
stages of development. Their correspondence with the Higher
Degrees of Freemasonry. The fifth Sub Race as epoch of pure
intellect, as epoch of egoism and its necessary defeat.
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IN a series of lectures I have been speaking about occult
schools and their ramifications and I think it right today to bring this
whole course of lectures to a close before we pass on to a different
subject next time. A week from now I shall speak about the meaning of the
days connected in the Church Calendar with the Christmas Festival —
the less important New Year's Festival and the extremely important Feast of
the Epiphany. The lecture today, therefore, will be more in the nature of a
conclusion.
The question might be
asked: What is the deeper significance of secret societies and of their
aims in world-evolution? To such a question my answer would be that they
have a real connection with the way in which beings in the world evolve and
make progress.
As you know, different
kinds of exercises are necessary for self-development, and such exercises
are actually available. You have heard of Hatha-Yoga, Rajah-Yoga, and other
exercises of different kinds, by means of which societies and brotherhoods
connected with occult science have initiated their members. Somebody may
say: All this, surely, could be attained without these secret societies.
But I can tell you — and in the course of the lecture you will
realise it — that the world cannot do without such societies. To put
it bluntly, it is quite unjustifiable to speak in public in the style of
the manifesto of the Freemasons which I read to you a fortnight ago. That
is only one example. Men cannot reach what is usually known as immortality
unless they are to some extent familiar with the occult sciences. The
fruits of occult science do, of course, find their way out into the world
along many channels. A great deal of occult knowledge exists in the various
religions and all those who participate deeply and sincerely in the life of
a religious community have some share in this knowledge and are preparing
themselves for the attainment of immortality in the real sense. But to
reach the knowledge of immortality in full consciousness, as a concretely
real experience, to have the feeling that one belongs in very truth to the
spiritual world — that is a very different matter. All of you have
lived many times; but not all of you are conscious that you have lived
through these many lives. This consciousness, however, will gradually arise
and without it man's life is lived out with incomplete consciousness. It
has never been the aim of occult science to inculcate into men a dim
feeling of survival but to impart a clear, fully conscious knowledge of
on-flowing life in the spiritual world.
There is a certain law
which governs the progressive development of consciousness in all future
stages of life. It is this: Nothing that a human being does not himself
accomplish for the attainment of this consciousness, contributes towards
its development.
There is a maxim — on the face of it rather
perplexing — that whatever is achieved in the way of development of
consciousness in the world does something to further the evolution of the
consciousness of every single being, even if such a being has not actually
worked at the development of his own consciousness.
And now try to think
of an example of really objective human action. — An architect builds
a house; he does not build this house for himself, but undertakes the task
of building it for reasons which he believes to be entirely impersonal. You
know well that the reasons are very seldom impersonal. There are many
people who, to all appearances, are not working for themselves; and yet in
reality are. A lawyer, for example, is to all intents and purposes working
for his clients. Part of his work may well be selfless, but the real
question is one of earning his living. Whatever men do in business merely
for the sake of their own livelihood, to the extent that their business
only serves that end, just so much is lost in the way of spiritual gain. On
the other hand, everything that is performed without regard to self, that
is connected with the interests of another, helps to intensify and to
strengthen our consciousness in the future struggles for existence. —
I hope that this is clear.
And now think of the
Freemasons. When they were true to their original, fundamental principles,
they gave this injunction to their members: The buildings you erect are to
contribute nothing at all to your own means of subsistence. What has still
survived of the good old Freemasonry takes the form nowadays of charitable
institutions and foundations. And although the Lodges have lost their
living roots in the ancient wisdom, and the occult knowledge once in their
possession, these charitable institutions are evidences of a
humanitarianism which, while it is empty of real substance, still persists
and is cultivated as tradition. Selfless activity is, in very truth,
something that has belonged to Freemasonry. Freemasonry did indeed urge its
members to work in the service of humanity, to work in the world
objectively and selflessly.
We are living now in
the epoch of evolution that may be called the mineral epoch; and our task
is to permeate this mineral world through and through with the spirit
within us. Think of what this means. — You are building a house. You
fetch the stones from a quarry and hew them into the shapes required by the
building, and so on. What are you inculcating into this raw material
obtained from the mineral kingdom? You are inculcating human spirit into
the raw material. If you construct a machine, you have laid the spirit that
is part of you, into that machine; the actual machine does, of course,
perish and become dust; not a trace of it will survive. But what you have
done, what you have achieved, passes into the very atoms and does not
vanish without a trace. Every atom bears a trace of your spirit and will
carry this trace with it. Whether an atom has at some time been in a
machine, or has not been in a machine, is not a matter of indifference. The
atom itself has undergone change as a result of having once been in a
machine, and this change that you have wrought in the atom will never again
be lost to it. Moreover, through your having changed the atom, through the
fact that you have united the spirit in you with the mineral world, a
permanent stamp has been made upon the general consciousness of mankind;
just so much consciousness goes with you into the other world. Occult
science well knows in what way the human being can perform selfless actions
and how greatly his consciousness will be enhanced by them. Certain men,
who have been deeply imbued with this knowledge, have been so selfless that
they have taken steps to prevent even their names from going down to
posterity! An example of this is the work entitled Theologica Deutsch.
Nobody knows who wrote it. On the outside there are only the words: The man
from Frankfurt. He, therefore, was one who took care that his very name
should be unknown. He worked in such a way that he merely added something
to the objective world without asking for honour or for the preservation of
his name. And here let it be said that the Masters, as a rule, are not
personages known in history; they sometimes are embodied in historical
personalities — when it is necessary; but in a certain respect this
is a sacrifice on their part. The level of their consciousness is
incompatible with work for themselves, and preservation of a name does,
after all, involve this. It is difficult thoroughly to understand this rule
but it will now be clear to you why the aim of the Freemasons is to work in
the world in such a way that their deeds are hidden in social organizations
or charitable institutions. For selfless deeds are the real foundations of
immortality. In the outer world we see the reflex of such deeds. They need
not necessarily be of great account. If someone gives a coin to a poor man,
this may be an unselfish deed; but only to the extent that it was
absolutely selfless does it find its way to the sphere of immortality
— and very few deeds are selfless to this degree. An act of charity
may be extremely egoistical when, for instance, it gives rise to a
comforting feeling. Charity very often springs from selfish motives. If a
poor man living among us has no meat at Christmas and we feel bound to give
him some in order that we may feel justified in eating our own Christmas
dinner — that, after all, is egoism. In the Middle Ages it would have
been impossible to say who had built many of the cathedrals or painted many
of the pictures. It is only in our epoch of civilisation that people have
begun to attach such value to the human name; in earlier epochs, more
spiritual than our own, the individual name was of less importance.
Spirituality in those days was directed to reality; whereas our epoch
adheres to the delusion of thinking that what is a mere concern of the
moment should be preserved.
I have said this in
order to indicate the principle by which these secret societies were
guided. The members of such societies were at pains to efface themselves
altogether as personalities, and to allow what they did to produce its own
effects. And this brings us to the heart of the matter. The fact that some
particular thing is kept secret is of far less importance than that
everyone should keep secret his own share in the work; thereby he secures
for himself immortality. The rule is therefore clear and unambiguous: As
much as you yourself lay into the world, that much consciousness the world
will give back to you. The measure of what you yourself place into the
world is the measure of the consciousness that the world will give back to
you. This is connected with great and mighty laws of world-existence. Each
one of you has a soul, each one of you has a spirit. This soul and [this]
spirit are called upon to climb one day to the highest stages of
perfection. But the soul and the spirit were already there before your
physical body existed; they were present before your first physical
incarnation. You existed in physical incarnation in the early Lemurian,
Hyperborean and Polarian epochs. Before then, however, you were only beings
of soul. But as beings of soul you were part of the world soul; as beings
of pure spirit you were part of the universal world spirit. The world
spirit and the world soul spread out around you then as nature spreads out
around you today. Just as the mineral world, the plant world and the animal
world are around you now, so were the worlds of soul and of spirit once
around you. And what was then outside you, is now your soul; you have taken
into yourselves, made inward, what to begin with was outside and around
you. What is now your innermost being was once part of an external world.
This has become your soul. The spirit, too, once spread out around you. And
what is now around you will become your inner life. You will take into
yourselves what is now the mineral kingdom and it will become part of your
inner being; similarly the plant kingdom. What surrounds you in nature will
become your inner being.
You will understand
now how this is connected with the first example given. You build a church
for others, not for yourself. You can in very truth take into yourselves a
world of majesty, beauty and splendour if you experience this world as
such. To do something for the higher self does not partake of egoism
because it is not done only for the self; the higher self will be united
with all the others, so that what is done for the higher self is at the
same time done for all. — This is the truth that was known to the
Freemasons. When the Freemason was working with his fellow-builders, he
knew: In future times the mineral world will be spiritualized; to build
means nothing else than to spiritualize the mineral world. He knew that the
edifice would one day become the content of his soul.
God once gave us the
nature that surrounds us in the kingdoms of the minerals, plants and
animals. We take nature into ourselves. That nature exists is none of our
doing; all we can do is to make nature part of our own being. But what we
ourselves prepare and make ready in the world — that is what will
constitute our future existence.
We actually see the
mineral world, as such; what we do with the mineral world, that we shall
ourselves become in future times. What we do with the plant world, with the
animal world and with men, that too, we shall surely become. If you found a
charitable institution or have contributed something to its foundation,
what you have contributed will become an integral part of you. If a man
does nothing with what he can in this way [to] draw into his soul from
outside, then his soul remains empty. It must therefore be possible for
mankind to spiritualise — as far as this can be achieved — the
four kingdoms of nature, of which man is one. To bring spirit into the
whole external world — that has been the task of the secret societies
of every age.
It will not be
difficult for you to understand the following — Think of a child who
is learning to read and write. To begin with, all the accessories are
around him; the teacher is there, the books are there, and so forth, but
nothing is yet within the child. Work continues until what was once outside
the child has been instilled into him and he is able to read. And so too is
it with nature. In times to come we shall have within us what is now spread
out around us. As souls we spring from the world soul and when this world
soul was around us we drew it into ourselves. So too the spirit; and so too
it will be with nature. We take nature into ourselves from outside and
nature will be within us as a power. That is the great thought at the basis
of these secret societies.
All progress is the
result of involution and evolution. Involution is the in-taking, evolution
the yield, the out-giving. All states and conditions of world-existence
alternate between these two processes. When you see, hear, smell or taste,
you breathe nature into yourselves. The act of sight does not pass away
without leaving a trace behind. The eye itself perishes, the object seen
— that too perishes; but what you have experienced in the act of
sight, remains. It will not be difficult for you to realise that in certain
epochs it is necessary to make such things understood. We are going forward
to an age when, as I indicated recently, men will understand what the atom
is, in reality. It will be realised — by the public mind too —
that the atom is nothing but coagulated electricity. — The thought
itself is composed of the same substance. Before the end of the fifth epoch
of culture, science will have reached the stage where man will be able to
penetrate into the atom itself. When the similarity of substance between
the thought and the atom is once comprehended, the way to get hold of the
forces contained in the atom will soon be discovered and then nothing will
be inaccessible to certain methods of working. — A man standing here,
let us say, will be able by pressing a button concealed in his pocket, to
explode some object at a great distance — say in Hamburg! Just as by
setting up a wave-movement here and causing it to take a particular form at
some other place, wireless telegraphy is possible, so what I have just
indicated will be within man's power when the occult truth that thought and
atom consist of the same substance is put into practical application.
It is impossible to
conceive what might happen in such circumstances if mankind has not, by
then, reached selflessness. The attainment of selflessness alone will
enable humanity to be kept from the brink of destruction. The downfall of
our present epoch will be caused by lack of morality. The Lemurian epoch
was destroyed by fire, the Atlantean by water; our epoch and its
civilisation will be destroyed by the War of All against All, by evil.
Human beings will destroy each other in mutual strife. And the terrible
thing — more desperately tragic than other catastrophes — will
be that the blame will lie with human beings themselves.
A tiny handful of men
will make good and thus insure their survival in the sixth epoch of
civilisation. This tiny handful will have attained selflessness. The others
will develop every imaginable skill and subtlety in the manipulation and
use of the physical forces of nature, but without the essential degree of
selflessness.
In the seventh epoch
of civilisation, this War of All against All will break out in the most
terrible form. Great and mighty forces will be let loose by the
discoveries, turning the whole earth-globe into a kind of
[self-functioning] live electric mass. In a way that cannot be discussed,
the tiny handful will be protected and preserved.
And now you will be
able to picture, more clearly than was possible when I spoke of the things
before, why the “good and proper form” as it has been called,
must be sought, and in what sense Freemasonry was aware of its duty to
build an edifice dedicated to selfless ends. It is easier to become one of
the tiny handful of men who ensure for themselves a place in the life of
the future by using the good old forms than by having to struggle out of
chaos. People nowadays may be inclined to jeer at “empty
forms,” as they say ... but those forms have nevertheless a deep
meaning and purpose; they are in line with the structure of our period of
evolution, and when all is said and done they are connected with necessary
stages in the development of human nature and of the human soul. Just think
of it. We are living in the fifth period of the fifth great epoch; we have
still to live through two more periods of this great epoch. Then will
follow the seven periods of the sixth great epoch and then the seven
periods of the seventh great epoch. This makes sixteen stages of evolution
in the future. Humanity has still to climb these sixteen stages. A man who
can experience something of the conditions of existence there possible, is
to a certain degree initiated. There is a correspondence between the
degrees of initiation and the secret of the epochs still to come. In the
life of our planet there are seven great epochs, and each of these seven
has seven sub-periods — forty-nine conditions, therefore, in all.
Thus there are
definite stages for the investigation of the secrets of future phases of
evolution. The high Degrees of Freemasonry originally had no other aim or
purpose than to be an expression, each one of them, of a future stage of
the evolution of humanity. Thus we have in Freemasonry something that has
been both good and beautiful. A man who attained one Degree knew how he
must work his way into the future; he could be a kind of pioneer. He knew
too that one who reaches a higher Degree can accomplish greater things.
This arrangement according to Degrees can well be made, for it corresponds
with the facts. If, therefore, it were possible to inculcate a new content
together with a new knowledge into these forms, much good would accrue, for
Freemasonry would then be imbued with real spirit once again. Content and
form, however belong to the whole. The state of affairs today is that the
Degrees are there but nobody has worked through them in the real sense! In
spite of this, however, they are not there without a purpose.
The fifth epoch of
culture is a purely intellectual age, an age of egoism. The intellect is
egoistical in the highest degree and it is the hallmark of our time. And so
we must make our way upwards through intellect to spirituality before we
can picture the spirituality that was once actively at work.
The essential secret,
therefore, is this: The human being must know how to keep silence about the
paths along which his “ I ” unfolds, and to regard his deeds,
not his personal “ I ” as the criterion. The real heart of the
secret lies in his deeds and in the overcoming of the “ I ”
through deed. The “ I ” must remain concealed, within the deed!
Elimination of the interests of the personal “ I ” from the
on-streaming flow of human karma — this belongs to the First Degree.
Whatever individual karma the “ I ” incurs in the process, is
thereby wiped out. Nation, race, sex, position, religion ... all these work
upon human egoism. Only when man has overcome them will he be free of
egoism. The astral body of every nation, every race, every epoch, has a
definite colour ... You will always find a colour which is fundamental in
the astral body of a human being who is [a] member of one of these
classifications. This specific colour must be eliminated. Anthroposophical
spiritual science works to level out the colours of the astral bodies of
its adherents. They must be of like colour — alike, that is to say,
in respect of the basic colour. This basic colour gives rise to a certain
substance called Kundalini which holds together, within the human being,
the forces which lead eventually to the spirit. This leveling-out process
will bring war and bloodshed in its train — war in the shape of
economic strife among nations, pressure for expansion, suppression in every
form, strife in the sphere of investment and profit, industrial
undertakings, and so forth. And by adopting certain measures it will
increasingly be possible to handle vast masses of people by sheer force;
the individual will acquire greater and greater power over certain masses
of the people. For the course of evolution is leading, not towards greater
democracy, but towards oligarchy of the brutal kind, in that the power of
the single individual will immeasurably increase. If morals are not
ennobled, this will lead to brutality in every possible form. This state of
things will come, just as the great water-catastrophe came to the
Atlanteans.
Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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