The
Mission of Occult Science in Our Time
Berlin, 10 October 1907
Someone who speaks about occult science
today, or even of the mission of occult science in our time,
may probably prepare himself for meeting the most different
attitudes. On one side, we have to admit that the term
“occult science” causes the opinion of our
contemporaries that it concerns something dark to the highest
degree or something mystic in the worst sense that only can
originate or excite interest with persons with unclear
thinking, at least only with such people who have no idea of
the big progress in the field of knowledge. How many people say
to you, only such human beings use the term “occult
science” who stand apart from the big progress of natural
sciences or other knowledge in our time.
If on one side already by
pronouncing the term “occult science” some
opposition arises, we are not at all allowed to deny that such
opposition is justified to a considerable degree. Since, as
weird as it may appear, one has to say the following. The real
occult scientist who is aware of the progress of the so-called
science or knowledge in our time and who only wants to go
beyond the scope of certain superficialities must say that such
opponents may be for him less dangerous contemporaries, less
detrimental ones than others who count themselves among the
followers, even among the apostles of the so-called occult
science. It is weird that one pronounces such a thing, is it
not? However, it is true. The term occult science has something
tempting for many people. The opponents reproach the occultist
so easily that people come running if one speaks about
something mysterious, so that those who are of unclear mind or
too lazy to put themselves on the ground of knowledge or too
weak to open themselves to knowledge are of full interest if
talk is of anything dark, full of secret. Thus, one says, the
occultist is very popular, and in certain sense, he counts on
this strange instinct in the human nature, on the pursuit of
the spiritual in the worst sense of the word.
I do not deny that there
are many people in our chaotic time who are only driven by this
dark instinct of the human nature to occult science. If then
the opponents of occult science see what such ostensible
followers cause, what they often assert and how they relate to
the knowledge of our time, then one does not need to be
surprised if our opponents come to the just characterised
judgement. If the occultist were afraid, one could maybe make
the absurd, but true assertion that he would have to be much
more afraid of a big number of his followers than of his
opponents. For these opponents will have to accomplish such
turnabout which I characterise maybe already in the course of
this talk, however, in particular in the next talk about
natural sciences. For today, it is my task to clarify the
significance and mission of the so-called occult science in our
time. I do that in narrative way.
If you see through the
program of the winter talks, you see the term changed. With
some talks, you read “occult” science, with other
“spiritual” science. This has happened at every
single place with full care, although the spiritual science, as
I represent it here, is synonymous with occult science. Do not
understand the word “occult” in the composition of
occult science in such a way, as if with it anything secret and
dark is meant. The talk itself shows you why I just use this
term occult science for the sum of truth and knowledge about
which we want to speak in the course of the winter.
If we want to say what
occult science is based on, we must give a quite simple answer
at first. We must say, the occult science rests on two
convictions: first on the conviction that behind that which our
senses show in the outside world which our mind can take up in
sense-perception and experiences, behind that which eyes can
see and hands can seize, there is a higher world, an invisible
supersensible one. This is one conviction. The other conviction
is that the human being is able to grasp and behold this
supersensible, invisible world developing his own cognitive
forces and abilities. If we pronounce these both things, we
have said on what any so-called occult science is
based.
Straight away, however,
our contemporaries raise important objections here. Firstly,
our education has a direction which says there, we do not need
it at all to speak of any supersensible world, any invisible
world; these are yesteryear's prejudices — thank God! Many
people say so. And it is not yet long ago — today, indeed, such
voices become quite rare — that those who considered themselves
to be the most enlightened, the most advanced ones said, the
orientation to invisible, to supersensible backgrounds of the
things belongs to a childish, naive age of the human
development. In those days, one did not yet stand firmly on the
ground of scientific knowledge when one still believed to solve
the riddles of existence by all kinds of fiction and
imagination.
However, the newer
time has taught the human beings that the research using the
experience of the external senses does not need to fall back on
such supersensible forces or beings, but that the world, as we
see it by the senses, is explicable of its own terms. If we can
explain the world from itself — so the materialists and monists
say and many of our contemporaries are such — if we can
discover the sensuous causes within the sensuous world, we have
no reason to refer to extrasensory beings. This radical
direction generally wants to break with all views of the
supersensible. One cannot deny that this view has to allege
weighty reasons for itself. Who wants to misjudge the enormous
progress of the external natural sciences in the course of the
last centuries and in particular in the last century? Who does
not admire these research results, on one side going up to the
phenomena of the starry sky, and on the other side diving down
to the secrets of the smallest living beings, into the secrets
of the substances and the sensuous existence? Who does not
stand admiring even before ambitious speculations, as they go
out from such great discoveries of single researchers as those
of the radium? Moreover, who will not see that it has something
brilliant if now those standing on the ground of such a radical
positivism or materialism say, the researcher is still far away
from solving all riddles of existence by sensuous
investigation. However, have patience; the time will come when
natural sciences make clear that which a thick veil still
covers today. The time will come when the scientists unravel
the past world in the layers of the earth and when they
recognise nature in her creating, when the wholly sensuous
research will illumine the past.
The time will also come —
someone will say rightly who stands on the ground of research —
when one adds certain materials to unliving substances in the
laboratory, so that one will succeed in producing living
substances in the laboratory. Perhaps, this still appears a
bold idea today; however, the development goes in this
direction, and then you, occult scientist, can pack up and go
home because you do no longer have the right to speak of
supersensible things when we have shown that even life
originates by a combination of materials and forces.
The whole series of the
talks has to give the answer to such objections. It would be
careless to want to give an answer already today. I want only
to say one thing that should show typically how ambiguous the
objections are which one makes against the apparently arcane
occult science. While the natural sciences assert with a
certain right that once the time comes when from only unliving
substances life comes into being, and this research thereby
believes to state something that brings the occult science
completely down, it is true that occult science has always
known this! Yes, because it has known this, it could stand so
firmly! One misjudges the true character of occult science
completely if one makes such allegations against it. The entire
answer will arise in the course of the talks.
There are other
contemporaries who say, it may be quite good that there is
something supersensible behind our sensory world; but the human
being can know nothing of such a supersensible world with his
talents and capabilities and, hence, he is not allowed to speak
about it if should be talk of science.
This is an opinion that
is much more widespread. One does not want generally to decide
the question of the supersensible, one wants to leave it quite
uncertain, to make it the object of a wholly subjective,
arbitrary faith whether there are senses to be able to perceive
the supersensible. The human being cannot look behind the
external nature and he leaves the ground of knowledge, moves
into the field of arbitrary faith if he tries to overstep the
limits of the external nature.
Occult science faces this
view in the following way. It says, you have examined the
cognitive faculties of the human being. You have shown that he
cannot come — applying his cognitive faculties — behind nature
where the supersensible begins. Now you say, because we have
proved this, occult science or the science of the supersensible
is impossible. — Someone who speaks in such a way assumes that
occult science disagrees with him. However, this is not the
case. Occult science completely agrees with him, it stands
accurately on the same point of view. Occult science says, you
have examined your cognitive faculties; you have shown exactly
how far one can come with them. You have shown that one cannot
come with it in the supersensible realm. You are completely
right; but you only make one mistake, the mistake that you do
not keep to the positive that you do not claim only what you
know, but also what you cannot know, while you state that
nobody can know it.
Here we meet a
characteristic of our contemporaries standing on the so-called
scientific base that does not come from science, from knowledge
but from a general feeling, an unspoken instinct of our time.
Admittedly, this instinct becomes only obvious if one checks
the events of our time a little as an impartial, quiet
observer. Look at any journal, any newspaper, and any popular
or even academic book that deals from any direction with such
questions, as I have put them. You will find nothing more often
than the saying that is from a higher spiritual point of view a
fateful one: we are only able to know this and that. One cannot
judge this or that. Convince yourselves whether you cannot
always find this “one” or “we” if talk
is of these things! It is rather insignificant, but it comes
from a deeply nested instinct. It is the belief that everybody
has a certain infallibility of knowledge because not only he
himself can understand but also the human beings generally what
“we” can know and cannot know. From this instinct,
our contemporaries cannot bring themselves to believe that
there can be a real development of recognising. Nevertheless,
how absurd is this view if the human being considers it in
relation to his own life! Imagine only, when does the point of
time occur for the single human being when he can decide where
the limits of his ability of discriminating are?
Is he able to decide where the limits of the
cognitive faculties are at the age of 25, 36, sixty or even
already of ten years? Is there not development in any life? Do
we not put up other assertions in childhood than in the later
life? Are we allowed to think that we cannot learn anything
from anybody in the world, that nobody in the world can know
more than we do? Nevertheless, this is as an instinct in the
nature of our contemporaries that everybody determines the
limits of the cognitive faculties of his own accord. This
assertion has not only has arisen from this instinct, but
numerous works, which deal on thousands of pages with it. They
start, if one looks behind the scenery, from nothing but the
belief that the human being lives in this instinct.
However, the occultist objects the following.
He says, concerning that knowledge from which you think that it
is clear to you, you are completely right, you cannot recognise
more there. However, there is a development of the cognitive
faculties. If you want to penetrate into the supersensible
world, you have to develop the extrasensory cognitive
faculties. This is possible! — Thus, the viewpoint of occult
science does not at all contradict to that which these people
say. It agrees with them. It says only, the human being still
has another cognitive faculty in himself that is without these
limits, and that he can develop. Now, does anybody have the
right to say that anything like the development of the
cognitive faculty is impossible if we consider it from the
viewpoint of clear logical thinking? What can he say? He can
only say, I do not know it, it is unknown to me. He can set the
limit to himself through which he cannot look into such a
development.
If he says, my limit of
cognitive faculties is not sufficient to do this, he has to
say, I do not know. — Then he is also not allowed to decide
anything on such facts. Anybody who knows nothing of the
extrasensory world is not allowed to say whether it exists or
not, but only somebody who knows something of it. Occult
science stands just on the viewpoint of positivism in its whole
universality. The occultist says, nobody has to decide on what
one can know or on what one cannot know, but everybody has only
to decide on what he himself knows.
With it, an aspect of
feeling is touched that is not without significance in our
occult science. One says, occult science leads to spiritual
arrogance because the spiritual scientists claim that they can
go beyond the usual knowledge. However, just the reverse is the
case. There is no bigger arrogance than that which wants to
decide on its own accord on not only what he is allowed to
know, but also wants to decide on what the human beings are
allowed to know or not to know. This arrogance places itself as
a norm for all human beings. Against it, it is spiritual
humility if anybody who stands on the ground of occult science
wants to decide on nothing else than what he can know. We do
not talk about that which lies beyond our limits of knowledge.
This is the attitude that leads to true humility. Hence, occult
science must always have a personal character. This is no
disadvantage. This also does not speak against the validity of
the spiritual-scientific truths. We must get clear about the
fact that the human being has to find what he wants to find and
should find of the highest and supersensible things in his
innermost soul by the power that he develops in the spiritual
life always on his own accord. However, if this is true,
everybody who wants to see the facts of occult science has to
turn to his own inside. Many opponents derive their objections
from this, while they say that something that is fathomed only
in the human inside can be left only to the faith, and is not
allowed to claim general validity.
This conclusion appears
narrow-minded to the impartial observer. There is something
that, admittedly, the least ones can use as comparison that
offers, however, a very good example to someone who can do it.
It is something that we must experience just as the
spiritual-scientific truths in our inside; any external can be
nothing but an example, a suggestion to us: the mathematical
profundities. These are the most common truths at the same
time. Who can use them by way of comparison will find this
comparison completely suitable. The mathematical truth is
something that the human being can never find by the external
senses. You can measure the three angles of a triangle as often
as you want, you can never find the steadfast truth that these
three angles are together 180 degrees. You must recognise this
inside. Thus, it is with all geometrical and all mathematical
truths.
One has to consider two
things compared with such truths that one recognises inside.
The first is something unpopular in the strictest sense today.
One says, how is one able to count with something that lives
only inside of the human being on the approval of the fellow
man? How can we believe that something is true that we
recognise only in ourselves? — However, just the reverse is
right. The majority decides nothing at all on truth. If you
have convinced yourselves of any mathematical theorem, then two
things are valid for you. First, if a million human beings
contradict you and are not of your opinion, this does not shake
you at all. Secondly, you are clear in your mind that everybody
who produces the same conditions in himself as you do must have
the same opinion as you have, even though you have found the
truths inside. As true it is that majority decides nothing on
mathematical truths, as true it is that — if the conditions are
produced properly, and this can be taught to everybody —
majority can decide nothing on the results of occult
science.
We can find them in our
inside, and nothing external can dissuade us from them if we
have recognised them once in our inside. In ancient times, the
followers of occult science, the Gnostics, called this occult
science mathesis, not because they understood it as
mathematics, but because this occult science has the character
of mathematical truth. However, it is long ago that one looked
at the character of occult science in this purity. It is
unfortunate that many things accumulated there which cloud the
look, so that those who stand on the viewpoint of science get a
horror if they meet something like occult science.
Thus, we come to
questions that point us to two concepts, which the human beings
cannot apply often enough in the present: knowledge and faith.
One says that one can know something of the matters on which
science works, of the other things one can only believe
something, this is a personal matter. Only because those can
say this who do not see how one produces the conditions, so
that any faith can become knowledge. Someone who cannot prove
mathematically that the three angles of the triangle amount to
180 degrees must believe it. Who is not able to prove the life
of the human being between death and new birth has to believe
these matters. However, he will also find the possibility to
prove for himself as we still see it in the course of the
talks.
Many people object that
it is sinful to investigate the objects of the supersensible
world, they are something that can never come from the human
nature, the human being must trust in a higher revelation, and
it is presumptuous to fathom this. Then one has to reply that
it is a sin to let lie fallow what exists in the world in a
seminal state. For the divine primordial ground has sown the
seeds in the world, so that they sprout, so that they yield
blossoms and fruit. To someone who wants to limit the human
power of cognition saying the human being should not be so
presumptuous one can answer that it is just a sin to obliterate
the power of cognition. We shall not obliterate it, but develop
it; that is why we have it. Somebody who can bring to his mind
what a sin it is against the human nature to let the forces lie
fallow, to cordon off the supersensible world soon recognises
this objection as quite impossible. Thus, occult science with
its attitude positions itself in the currents of the
time.
Today, I do not want to
prove but to tell how occult science presents itself in our
time. Its object and basis are rather unknown in wide sections
of the population. It is unknown that there have always been
single persons in the human development who devoted themselves
to this occult science most seriously who from own experience
knew the experiences which one can have in the supersensible
world, to whom personal experience was what I want to show in
these talks. It is also unknown that there are persons still
today who are able to behold in the spiritual world this
way.
You can ask now, why was such a thing hidden
from the masses, why is there anything that was not announced
in general? We shall see if we speak of the dangers of occult
science why the true occultists had the principle to make
occult science known only to those who had made themselves ripe
by certain qualities of their life. Today, however, one has
views about the spreading of knowledge that are quite different
from the views, which were always usual in occult science. If
anybody knows anything today, he can hardly expect to let it
flow out in printed form into the world. However, the
occultists had their reasons to hand over their knowledge only
to those who had prepared themselves.
Why do single human beings appear today and
report about the results of occult science? This has its good
reasons. It is connected with the entire spiritual progress of
humanity. What everybody can know by popular writings that are
based on our quite usual sensory knowledge is, properly
applied, a good preparation for occult science. On the other
side, one completely misunderstands the facts if one believes
that our natural sciences must lead to the denial of the
supersensible. Rather these natural sciences, properly
understood, lead to the full recognition of the supersensible!
He who takes up the scientific facts properly^, which are
accessible to everybody, and pursues them comes directly to the
sphere of the supersensible and invisible. However, someone who
continues this scientific truth wrongly comes to the
materialistic world that does not yet unnerve today's humanity
maybe so much but the future humanity most certainly.
Therefore, it is
necessary today to show how to use the scientific truths, as
far as they are accessible. During former centuries, it was not
in such a way. Everybody had to go through a long preparation
in which he trains his reasoning power, his logic, and his
character. Today, the scientific thinking, properly applied, is
already a training to understand the publications of occult
science. This scientific thinking can become a boon for
humanity.
We shall get to know
three ways to the supersensible world gradually. If I speak of
these three ways, I expose myself to the risk that people
regard me as a dreamer and as a fool in particular if I
describe the third way, although those who judge in such a way
know nothing at all about that matter. Three ways are shown:
Imagination or clairvoyance, Inspiration and Intuition
(the spiritual-scientific concepts are capitalised to
distinguish them from the usual ones).
These three ways exist
since millennia in the human development and were always
pursued. There have always been human beings who could walk on
the way to the supersensible world using the methods, which are
taught.
Who are such initiates?
Imagine that there are human beings who live in a distant area
where no railways and no machines exist. Now one comes along on
the way to Europe and sees that there are railways and
machines. He goes home and tells his experiences, what he
himself has seen. Then he is someone who is initiated in these
matters. There are also such initiates with regard to
supersensible things. They are led in the secret schools to an
insight into the supersensible, invisible world and can tell
about what they have found out there.
One divides these
initiates into two classes: in real initiates and in
clairvoyants. What is now an initiate in the narrower sense?
There we have to familiarise ourselves with a quality of occult
science which will not be recognised in general which still
exists. For it is not necessary to be a clairvoyant to
understand the spiritual-scientific truths after they have been
announced to the human beings.
For clairvoyance is
necessary for discovering, but not for understanding the occult
truths. Everything that will be said in this winter course as a
result of the research in the higher world could not be found
without clairvoyance, not without developing the spiritual eyes
and ears slumbering in every human being. I give further
details here in connection with the initiation. However, if
these results have been pronounced once and have been dressed
in such forms that they correspond to the today's thinking,
then everybody can understand them. The objection can never
count that one has to be clairvoyant to understand the things
which occult science informs. They are incomprehensible not to
the non-clairvoyant one, but to someone who does not want to
apply his logical mind completely. One can see everything if it
is pronounced once, up to the highest areas.
Somebody who realises
everything that occult science says without being clairvoyant
is an initiate. However, someone who can enter these invisible
worlds is a clairvoyant. In olden times that are not so long
ago, a strict separation existed of clairvoyants and initiates
in the secret schools. One was able as an initiate to ascend to
the knowledge of the higher worlds without being a clairvoyant
if one applied the mind only in right way. On the other side,
one could be a clairvoyant without being an initiate to an
especially high degree. It will become already clear to you how
I mean this. Imagine two persons, a much-learnt man who knows
everything that physics and physiology have to say about the
light and its phenomena, but is so shortsighted that he can
hardly see ten centimetres away. He does not see a lot,
however, is initiated into the principles of the light. Thus,
somebody can be initiated into the supersensible world and sees
badly in it. Another can see excellently in the external
sensuous world, but knows practically nothing about that what
the learnt man knows. Thus, there can also be clairvoyants who
behold in the spiritual worlds but have no science, no
knowledge of them. Hence, one differentiated clairvoyants and
initiates for a long time. In order to comprise the fullness of
life, one often needed not one but many human beings. Some were
not made clairvoyant to advance further. The others got the
spiritual eyes and ears. What existed in occult science has
come about by communication and exchange of ideas between
initiates and clairvoyants.
In our time, this strict
separation of clairvoyants and initiates can no longer be
maintained. Today, it is necessary that everybody who has
attained a certain degree of initiation at least has the
possibility to attain a certain degree of clairvoyance. For the
complete trust from human being to human being cannot be
brought about in our time. Today, everybody himself wants to
know and see. That deep faith full of devotion, as it has
prevailed once from human being to human being, made it
possible that one heard from a special kind of clairvoyants
what they perceived in the higher worlds. Then others ordered
systematically what these had perceived. Today, a kind of
harmony is created in the development of the initiatory and
clairvoyant abilities. Hence, a third kind, the adepts can
withdraw very strongly. Our time is hostile to these adepts to
the highest degree. You can get an idea of the difference
between an adept and an initiate if you imagine the following:
imagine a region where are railways and you have seen them. Now
I ask you, are you able to construct a railway after you have
been convinced by own looking that such a thing exists.
Practise and still some other things are necessary in order to
construct it.
Someone is an adept in
contrast to a clairvoyant who has acquired not only clairvoyant
knowledge but also practical handling of spiritual forces by
exercises of which the modern human being hardly has any idea.
A much longer preparation belongs to it than even to the
clairvoyant. In addition, our present cultural development is
still much more hostile to the use of spiritual forces than to
the aspiration to penetrate by knowledge into the spiritual
world.
It is the mission of
occult science to generate awareness of the possibility to
penetrate on these three ways into the higher worlds, to attain
a deeper knowledge than the usual one is and to extend it. If
we ask ourselves, is it curiosity, is it mere desire of
knowledge which lead us to occult science, then we must answer:
no, it completely concerns something els! It concerns something
that deeply slumbers in the sensuous science of our time that
can never come out, however, about which we can speak in the
talk on natural sciences. Many human beings coming to occult
science do not know it clearly but they have a dark idea of it.
It concerns not recognising but life, the continuation, and the
increase of life. Many people are afraid that occult science
turns them away from the immediate life. However, just the
opposite is right. It makes the human beings competent and puts
them in life. They must only have the ability and strength to
enter occult science.
Already for many years, I
have held talks on manifold objects here. Discussions joined
these talks. I do not amplify these discussions. However, if we
speak of the mission of occult science in our time, I should
mention a phenomenon because it is especially typical. It faced
us especially lively when we spoke about
Bible and Wisdom.
There it was not only one person, but numerous ones who
objected something to these matters out of the depth of their
hearts. These objections came from deep sensations. Among them,
one was just like the following. Occult science tells a lot of
the seven-membered human nature, of reincarnation and karma, of
the stay of the human beings in the supersensible world between
death and new birth, of the development of the human being
through the different planetary states et cetera; demands are
put on our mind, on our thinking. However, we search not so
much satisfaction of the mind but deepening of the soul, of
inner life. We want to find the divine in the feeling, in the
sensation.
This objection is done
out of the depth of sensations, and just the human beings who
stand firmly in the occult science can appreciate the
significance of such an objection completely which says there:
give us soul! We know that the divine that lives in us leads us
into our own hearts, but does not bring mental pictures of the
human being and the world, of birth and death; we do not search
the spiritual.
Those human beings who
say this have no idea that they are even the biggest obstacles
for the solution of the question that is very dear to their
hearts. They have no idea that by that which spiritual science
gives their minds just their souls receive what they demand.
They have no idea that talking in such a way they reject just
what their souls need. Nothing instills the divine in the souls
more than the knowledge of the world evolution. If we know that
in such a way, as the rainbow has seven colours, the human
being has seven members and do not harden us against these
ideas, then just these ideas enliven our souls to overcome what
opposes the contemplation of the spiritual. You meet objections
of this kind, above all, with such people who mean it just as
deeply as they want to find the deepening of the soul
conveniently and who avoid penetrating into the real depth of
their souls.
The occultist cannot get
out the sensation from the souls of the human beings, but he
has to lead them into the spiritual world by knowledge, has to
show them how they can attain the highest deepening by
knowledge, which one can aim at. A longing for satisfaction of
the soul is the biggest enemy for the striving human being.
However, just that discouraged many people from theosophy and
spiritual science; they do not want to be immersed in the
vigorous mental work that is a refreshment of the soul at the
same time. Nothing raises the soul to the divine more than this
knowledge, than the deepening in the spiritual world. With it,
we are on the point where knowledge intervenes immediately in
life where the spiritual-scientific aspects of soul and heart
come to the fore. How many people are tormented by doubts, by
all possible tortures in relation to questions of existence and
world riddles. Then you can read in materialistic writings that
a brain cannot come without morbid changes to such views as the
spiritual science presents them. From the viewpoint of the
psychiatrist, one can exactly indicate the mental illness that
leads to such explanations as I give them here. If we wanted to
give ourselves the pleasure to work as the psychiatrists do, we
could range ourselves also in such a way that the scholar who
does this otherwise would be very delighted with us. You can
buy a booklet cheap, which reports something that is true. It
concerns the following: in a number of newspaper articles
arteriosclerosis was treated and the symptoms were given with
which you can notice this illness with yourselves.
The author of the
writing, a doctor, had to experience that many persons came to
him who pretended to have the symptoms of arteriosclerosis.
What is derived from that now? The fact that many people are in
a condition — because of the chaotic conditions of our
civilisation even if they imagine to have nerves like ropes —
that they catch fear straight away if they hear about such an
illness. They fall ill, even if in a psychic form. — One also
says that many people hearing only talks by professor So-and-so
or by the naturopath So-and-so get the illness about which one
speaks. However, what one does not regard is that already a
certain form of mental illness belongs to it to think generally
that way! This is a pathological trait that appears as
relatively harmless even today which, however, becomes more and
more detrimental. We still speak about such questions and facts
in the talks on the obsessions with illness and
health.
The reasons of certainty
on which the human being can be based must always come from the
inside. However, the spirit must be stronger there. It must
have the ability to find certainty in the inside. Mental
weakness is not to believe in oneself, not to believe that one
can find the reasons in oneself. Mental weakness is to believe
only what eyes see and hands seize and to be able to take truth
only with the hand. Materialism is a sign of spiritual
decadence, a hollow of the inside. If it were only a
theoretical hollow, it would be still relatively harmless.
However, this theoretical hollow subverts the mental health
first and then the physical one. The truth of this example is
that ill, wrong thoughts generate illnesses really. However, we
shall hear in the talks on the obsession with illness and
health how health and physical welfare depend on our true or
wrong thoughts.
We shall hear how
theosophy should spread healthy thoughts how theosophy should
distribute healthy life and provide useful human beings for the
world. Already if we remain within the soul life, we realise
that someone is unable to work who is perpetually tormented by
doubts who cannot attain knowledge of the questions that
concern his deepest soul needs. Finally, such a soul is
incapable to keep the body healthy. Occult science transforms
that only into action, into reality, which natural sciences
have also anticipated. For example, a scientist like Karl Ernst
von Baer (1792–1876, German-Baltic naturalist) says: it is a
thought that penetrates the whole world that orders the planets
that caused the living beings from matter which appears in its
letters and in the manifold forms of life and is life itself.
Then one is allowed to add: if this thought that can be only
found in the supersensible world is nourished and cherished, if
it finds entrance consciously in the human nature, it makes the
human beings healthy, strong, and competent. Does it not
dissipate the doubts first, calm minds, raise hearts and make
the human nature healthy? This is a deeper mission of occult
science in our time. — One has to attribute to a science that
remains on the surface of the sensuous that the human being is
hollowed out internally, and that the age of materialism is the
age of nervousness and lacking concentration. These states
would still worsen if those kept the upper hands who cling
tight on to the outer existence only. Occult science creates
certainty of the biggest riddles of existence. That is why one
calls it occult science, not because it hides anything, but
because its teachings must be found in the core. It is an
occult science just as mathematics is an occult
science.
I could only explain the
attitude and mission of occult science in this preliminary
talk. Occult science does not harbour illusions neither about
its followers nor about its opponents. It has to brush all
illusions aside. Thereby it gives the human being the big
harmonious health in all directions. This attitude forms the
basis of the single truths. This attitude matters. What does
this attitude attain joining real occult science? The winter
talks will show this, the today's talk should be only a kind of
announcement, a kind of program.
Many things will now be
argued against what I have said today maybe just from those who
regard themselves as very clever. Perhaps one says, look at
your followers! Nevertheless, they are not abreast with modern
science! Not before you have people who are abreast with modern
science, we believe in a future, believe in a mission of occult
science. — Who speaks in such a way does not know the secret
and intimate ways, which the spirit of humanity goes. He who
stands firmly on the ground that we have characterised as the
ground of occult science, who is aware that truth must be found
in the soul and that approval does not matter confesses to a
sentence that a great friend and researcher of truth
pronounced. Such a truth researcher was Leonardo da Vinci who
was a great researcher and a great painter and artist and knew
the mysterious currents and principles flowing through the
world. No thinking head believes that in his heart the real
occult-scientific attitude did not prevail.
At a passage, he
confesses the lonely found truth that has found its mission in
the world. It contains the confession: “The lie is so
despicable that if it tells great things about God it robs His
grace of its divinity, and truth is so sublime that it makes
quite low things precious if it praises them.” — Let us
make such a principle the innermost motive of our soul life,
and then we understand how someone who stands in the occult
science thinks about the mission of occult science in our
age.
The occultist faces two
pictures. Someone who surveys the great cultural creation of
Christianity today who wants to appreciate what Christianity
has done in the world puts two pictures before his soul: First,
the ancient imperial Rome in the first Christian centuries. He
looks there at the ruins of the ancient Rome that tell of the
events in the former educated world. He can summon up
consolation and certainty from this picture if one says that
the scholars and educated people want to know nothing about
theosophy or spiritual science. What did those want who lived
in these once magnificent, now decayed buildings? They wanted
to look at — the performances of the Colosseum! What did they
think of Christianity? They made the Christians links
and burnt them! Let us recall that
thoroughly.
We turn our look to the
other picture. However, we have to search it at another place.
We have to search it underground in the widespread catacombs of
Rome where laborious and laden people lived who were apart from
education and the predominant world. There they erected their
altars, there they buried their dead and offered their holy
sacrifices, and there we turn our look.
After we have evoked
these pictures in our soul, we ask ourselves, how did the
picture change in the course of the centuries? — Those, who
were below, carried in the soul what conquered the world and
what happened on top perished. It had to withdraw from that
which rose from below, from the concealed sites. The course of
the things was that way, and this is consolation and hope for
us. We know for sure that we can get nothing but scorn and
derision only because of the peculiar conditions of time. We
realise that we have to work quiet and simply in similar way
just with those whom the so-called enlightened ones maybe
despise. However, we also know that the picture will be a
similar one as at that time. We know that that which one
despised in former times will seize the others or go along with
them, or that it passes over them. A right viewpoint concerning
occult science transforms our attitude, our feelings, and
sensations. Thus, this first consideration gives us something
of spiritual health already, which arises from the intention to
work in the world, in the sense of the upward trend of
humanity. It is the mission of occult science to perform this
work in the sense of our present.
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