How
Does One Defend Spiritual Science?
Prague, 25 March 1912
The
previous talk should provide the basic mood for the today's
explanations. In that talk, I wanted to show in particular that
in the basic mood of the theosophist nothing of fanaticism
should be contained. It has maybe arisen from the whole tone of
the last talk that one should not consider the reasons against
theosophy, as if one should disprove them bit by bit in this
talk. One should rather consider them in such a way that they
show a part of those thoughts, sensations, and feelings that
arise to someone who approaches theosophy from the today's
consciousness. Putting it another way, one should not consider
the arguments against theosophy as unjustified but as highly
entitled arguments in the sense of modern consciousness, as
those which arise as real and not only as putative
difficulties. However, from it I feel justified to speak in
this talk in such a way that everything that I argue for
theosophy today is considered in the same light as the
refutations of theosophy I gave “tentatively” as it
were in the previous talk.
I
have there characterised the contents of theosophy briefly with
few words, and I have said how one has to think about the
origins of theosophy, about the real origins of that knowledge.
These origins do not arise to the usual normal consciousness,
but they arise only if the human being submits himself to
certain inner exercises that reach beyond the normal
experience, and cause that condition which happens, otherwise,
while falling asleep — but in completely different way —
that all the outer impressions are quiet and also all thoughts
and sensations which evoke them. Unless then by the processes
of the soul life the unconsciousness of sleep occurs, but such
strong inner forces are unfolded that the consciousness
remains, and if forces are brought up from the soul which
slumber, otherwise, under the surface of the consciousness,
then a higher intuitive faculty appears in the soul. Then such
a soul is on a higher level in the same situation as a
blind-born who is successfully operated and sees the world of
light and colours spread out. In the same sense, all things and
beings of the spiritual world are around us of which theosophy
or spiritual science speaks. However, they can dawn on us if
the spiritual eyes, the spiritual ears are woken from
slumbering as it were by inner mental-spiritual energy. Then a
new world appears before us.
I
have said that the outer science must take offence at such a
thing just because it strives seriously and conscientiously for
making the contents of knowledge independent from the human
subject. Since one argues rightly that that which the human
being experiences in his inside is nothing but something
subjective that everybody experiences different which can have
an individual subjective validity only. If the human being may
get from his subjective soul experiences to convictions about
another world different from the physical world — an
opponent of theosophy may say —, he may sort that out for
himself. For one cannot prove this in the same way as those
things which we get as knowledge with experiments, scientific
observation or historical research. — Hence, some people
will probably accept these things and say, indeed, the outer
research has its limits; it cannot lead us into the areas that
are maybe the most valuable ones to us; but everybody has to
sort out for himself what exceeds the outer research, because
everybody must have an individually coloured picture of that
which exceeds sense perception.
However, if this were right, one could not maintain theosophy,
then everything would be only something that every single human
being would have for himself as his subjective conviction, and
theosophy could not at all claim any objective validity.
However, this is not in such a way. The human being can only
find out this if he does the soul exercises to get to such
origins of the supersensible knowledge.
In
such an orienting talk, I can indicate only sketchily, what it
concerns. From the comparison of the waking state with the
sleeping one arises that the forces of our soul can grow weak
with falling asleep and do no longer bring up cognitive forces
from the depths. Hence, the darkness of unconsciousness spreads
out while falling asleep. Therefore, that who wants to go
through this state consciously has artificially to cause such
moments of seclusion from the outside world in which he still
has an inner experience. He has to evoke strong inner forces.
You attain them by meditation and concentration of thoughts,
feelings, and sensations. Unless we consider that only which
the outer world gives us as a mediator of knowledge or as
impulses of our action, but if we start delving into important,
strong impressions of the outside world at first, while we
solve these strong impressions from the outside world using
them not directly, but taking them in our souls —
separated from the outside, then we gradually develop forces
slumbering in the soul. I would like to show that at an
example.
We
can see how one human being helps the other. This can cause
such a strong impulse of compassion in our souls that this
impulse moves us to tears. We may be minded in such a way that
we get such an impulse of compassion every time when we see
such an action. This can be increased in us in such a way that
we ourselves act benevolently if we see the hardship of a
fellow man that we can have empathy with him and are stimulated
to an action of compassion from the impression of the outside
world. Perhaps we can advance so far that we unfold the same
feeling that expresses itself in the tears even if we have
faced a picture of such an action only. There are numerous
people who, for example, if they read a novel get to a passage
where only the picture of human misery and human compassion is
conjured up before their souls, and then tears appear. They are
touched by that which is only a picture of outer reality so
that in their souls a similar impulse is released as it can be
released, otherwise, only by an outer impression of physical
reality.
However, if we assume now that we think in the usual
consciousness simply about such an action, then we will already
notice that this impulse is endlessly weaker that we are not
able to increase it in such a way that it moves us to
tears.
If we are able by soul exercises to think a thought which is
associated with compassion, with helpfulness, with empathy
without being induced from the outside world anyhow,
If we let such a thought emerge freely and can delve into it in
such a way that we completely identify with it,
If we let this picture become strong so that it shakes our soul in
such a way as it can happen, otherwise, only by an outer
impression,
We have made a start with a “feeling meditation.”
If
you let such a feeling meditation be active in yourself not
once, not fifty times, but over and over again, you notice that
such a meditation conjures up forces into such feelings from
our soul which develop it internally. To someone who does such
exercises these pictures appear which are still vivid in
another way than possibly pictures of usual imagination are. If
you delve into such meditations repeatedly, you experience
yourself really in such a way, as if you were full of inner
life as you only feel, otherwise, if you have impressed the
inwardness into your outer body. — Yes, while the soul is
stressed and penetrated with that which the meditation emits
and immediately enters our consciousness, you experience
something so that you say to yourself, I live now with
everything with which I have secluded myself, otherwise, in
sleep from my physical body. I live in it so strongly and
vividly as I only can live if I am in my physical body and my
eyes and ears and the other senses carry the outer impressions
to me.
What I characterise here one cannot prove anyhow theoretically
but only experience. After one has experienced it, it is
available in our consciousness as an immediate feeling: Now you
are free of your outer body; now, however, you do not live in
nothing, but in a spiritual-mental essentiality that is as real
as the experiences of the physical body. — Such a
consciousness has to exist before doing research in the
spiritual world. Someone who has attained such a consciousness
is possibly as far as somebody who has prepared everything for
an outer experiment, so that he only needs to set all things in
motion to recognise a physical principle by this experiment.
Then he is so far that he can penetrate into the origins of the
spiritual world that are always around us.
However, I have to stress repeatedly that such soul exercises
are only necessary to do research to experience in the
spiritual world; however, they are not necessary to understand
what the spiritual researcher gets down from the spiritual
worlds and tells as results. Since the messages of theosophy
can be understood with the natural feeling of truth and with
healthy logic. The spiritual researcher can only investigate
the facts and beings of the spiritual world, however, every
unprejudiced person can understand them with natural feeling of
truth and healthy logic.
Thus, we have to say, the origins of this worldview that we
call theosophy are gained only by developing the soul. If now
anybody wants to argue, everything that the human being
produces this way as knowledge that is not controlled by the
outer reality is the opposite of scientificity in modern sense
because it is something individual and, besides, every human
being must get to something different. On the other side, one
has to stress that it is, indeed, completely right which is
said this way but only for certain preparatory levels of soul
development. The human being has to survive some serious fights
and many a thing that only is significant for himself if he
wants to advance to such knowledge. He probably gets to know
how difficult it is to separate himself from the world to which
we belong anyway with these subjective soul experiences.
Immense difficulties thereby arise. There many things happen in
us that apply only to us.
Then, however, you reach a point of soul development where you
know immediately: now I am way beyond the subjective; now I
experience truth, which is free of everything subjective. Now
one has the immediate feeling, one has penetrated into the
world of spiritual-mental realities. A simple consideration
shows that there is also within our usual sciences a
particularly prominent one with which knowledge is gained in
such a way, as I have just characterised: mathematics. Already
with the simplest mathematical operations, you can convince
yourself that truth is gained with entire isolation of the
soul. He who has found, however, such a truth knows that
everybody who carries out the same operations must get most
certainly to the same results. Nobody can recognise the theorem
of Pythagoras — even if one visualises the operations of
thought on the board — other than that one experiences
the suitable relations internally. Someone who has worked once
internally on the theorem of Pythagoras knows that everybody
must get to the same result. Thus, it is with the mathematical
cognition. Now we can say that the method of spiritual research
takes place after the same principle as in mathematics that one
considers as the surest science. Millions of people may think
different about a mathematical theorem, somebody who has
experienced it in his inside once knows that it is true. That
also applies to the knowledge that you attain in the spiritual
world.
Somebody who wants to do epistemological objections could say,
one attains the mathematical truths in the deepest inside of
the soul, but one cannot directly apply them to existence.
Indeed, we can figure relations out in reality with the
mathematical knowledge — somebody may say —, but no
mathematics can decide on whether beings really exist who carry
these mathematical principles in themselves; one has to
experience reality in other ways than with mathematical
judgements.
This objection is completely justified. It belongs even to
those, which one holds to the theosophist, so that he cannot
easily defend theosophy. However, with this objection, one has
to consider that the human being does not experience with
mathematical judgements what he experiences if he rises to a
supersensible world. No mathematical judgement can give the
view of the own ego as an object of the own ego, as if we leave
our personality and look at ourselves. We cannot find our ego
as an object with mathematical judgements. The view of the own
ego is essential. With the mathematical judgements, we remain
within our personality, with them we cannot penetrate into the
outer reality. At the moment when we face ourselves, we have
withdrawn from our body with a part of our being and have
entered into objectivity. We feel in the things, we are inside
of reality. This is the difference, the fact that mathematics
gets, indeed, to inner certainty, but does not reach reality.
Against it, the supersensible knowledge reaches reality. Hence,
someone who advances on the way of spiritual research also gets
to a new concept, a new idea of reality. Now with this new
concept of reality that is at the same time a visual conception
the human being can approach the consideration of human life.
We want to bring that home to ourselves with the help of an
example.
For
the sensory view, the human being enters existence at birth and
he finishes it at death. For the time before birth or
conception and for the time after death the outer sense
perception cannot recognise anything of man's objective nature.
However, if the human being faces himself and has learnt to
look from without at the human being in the just characterised
way, her realises at the same time that this outer nature,
which the senses can perceive, is based on something
supersensible that is the real creator of this sensory
organism. He realises that from the moment of birth on the
mysterious human development begins. There we can realise how
from a deep subsoil of human existence in the still uncertain
features of the child certain trains gradually impress
themselves, how his gestures and abilities develop more and
more certain from within outwardly. The brain, the tool of our
thinking, develops after birth still long; it is still
transformed and organised. Now, however, the brain is the tool
of our mental experience. If we look at this human life
spiritual-scientifically, we have to ask ourselves, when does
the moment take place in the human life where the
mental-spiritual is completely able to use its tool, the brain?
This is not yet the case in the first childhood years. Since,
otherwise, the child did not need to attain many things by the
impressions of the outside world and by imitation, and we did
not need to educate the child. Only in the course of the first
years, we can gradually use the tool of the brain. We can
express this spiritual-scientifically in such a way: our brain
becomes able first in the course of our life to become the tool
of the ego.
When we are somewhat older — twenty years or more
—, we have completely learnt to use our brain, to go back
to former life epochs, then the spiritual-scientific
observation shows that the brain has been only worked out
during the early childhood. It becomes obvious to the spiritual
researcher that that which is later in the human being to use
the brain is the same as that which has worked on the
development of the brain from forces that no sensory eye can
see. Someone who approaches these matters with reason can say,
so you state that you behold a childish spiritual atmosphere
around the child head and that from this childish atmosphere,
from a kind of head aura spiritual forces are emitted which
work on the brain of the child, so that it can later become the
tool of the ego. Then, you state, this head aura, which like an
astral form surrounds the child head, slips into the inside to
use this as tool from within on which it itself has worked in
childhood. Thus, you state that that which uses the brain is a
spiritual thing in childhood. It moves from without inwards, is
active in the human organism first, then it enters into its
inside and considers and understands as ego the world with the
tool which has come about with its own power. No tool can be
put into the service of the intelligent human culture that the
human intelligence itself has not produced.
If
you have attained such a spiritual view that you behold the
spiritual-mental of the human being working on the
configuration of your figure as it develops in life, then you
can almost say to yourself: therefore, it is the
spiritual-mental that is involved in that which is its
physical. — You may still say to yourself, so we have to
acknowledge the mental-spiritual in such a way that it exists
before the physical-bodily because the physical-bodily has to
be developed only. — However, you have to advance with
observing and have to ask yourself then, is that
spiritual-mental which has formed the brain the same for all
human beings that works before birth on the human being?
Alternatively, is it anything individual for every human
being?
Of
course, a real observation of life cannot help admitting that
every human being is built individually that he has, hence,
individual abilities that depend on the use of his outer
instruments, on his outer forces, and, hence, he cannot be
built up by a general human nature but by a human
individuality.
That is, if we ascend to the creator of the human figure that
appears to the clairvoyant in the aura of the child, we have to
say, it is created completely individually. If we look as an
expert educator at the adolescent human being, we can see how
certain abilities appear, with one human being this way and
with the other that way. About these abilities, we have to say,
they search for that which is available just in a certain
cultural region, for example, one child has an artistic talent,
the other has a manual talent, a third an intellectual one, and
so on.
Where from does that originate which appears in our present
life? What urges the adolescent child to such performances that
are given in our culture? That has developed beyond the child
for which it strives. The child has this or that ability, this
or that particular talent. If, however, we want to recognise
this coherence, we have to go back in our culture to former
states. If such a child were not related to that which happens
on earth, it could be, indeed, inclined to something general,
but not to something particular that originated from our
cultural life. Hence, it is comprehensible that the child must
have acquired certain relationships with that which it searches
within the culture for its ability. Hence, we cannot think
different, the souls which embody themselves and show this or
that ability were already on earth once and have prepared
themselves at that time to that for which they develop such
affinity.
However, in the normal consciousness we can only think
this. Then, however, we realise that spiritual science
can ascend from this mere possibility of thinking to the view
of the facts. Now one can ask, where can one observe the
childish aura outwardly, which immerses itself in the inside to
use the brain as its tool?
Yes, this moment appears very clear. Every human being who
tries to remember his former living conditions gets to a
certain point only — then memory breaks off, and at most
still the parents or those who were around him can tell him
what was before. However, every human being has to suppose that
his ego also existed in the times that he cannot remember. To
the precise observer this time coincides with the time when the
human being learns as a child to say “I" to himself; that
is when the ego-consciousness appears. Up to this time, the
memory of a human being also goes back. What exists before the
awakening of the ego-consciousness escapes from memory. Here we
have the time: the child that has said: “John is
there”, “Mary is there”, says now: “I
am there.” At the time when the human being starts
feeling as an ego, the clairvoyant consciousness beholds the
childish aura moving into him.
From this fact, we may conclude that our memory is
determinative in no way of the existence of our ego. We are
also allowed to stress that beyond doubt there is a time in our
life where the ego exists and still the human being cannot find
this ego in his memory. However, someone who would like to
believe that the ego awakes only then or would be impressed
into the human being when the child learns to say "I", would
believe something absurd. If our ego extends more backward than
our memory reaches, we also are not surprised if spiritual
science states that it is possible to expand the ego even more
— behind birth to former lives. However, one just gets
gradually to the view of the ego in these stadia of development
which are not accessible to the normal consciousness, with
particular soul exercises, meditations et cetera. I would like
to describe the most elementary of such soul exercises
here.
The
human being has to develop a particular mood in himself that
one may call “calmness” if he wants to behold into
the future. If he can behold with calmness into the future, he
has reached a lot to attain the higher beholding. One can
describe this mood possibly in such a way: the human being says
to himself, the world may praise us, it may condemn us, this or
that may be imposed to us in future, dreadful or nice things
— I shall stand upright and accept everything that may
come with equanimity and face future intrepidly.
You
can describe this very easily — but you can attain it
only with long soul practise of meditative kind. If the human
being develops this mood in himself, he learns to push the gate
open at first that separates the usual consciousness from the
experiences of the first childhood; then he learns to look into
the first childhood years and then even further. Briefly, he
makes the retrospect of former lives on earth accessible to
himself. We bring in as a special method of it the achievement
of an intrepid mood for the future. With absolute calmness
toward the future, we acquire the possibility to pursue the
course of our ego up to the point where the ego-consciousness
appears in life. Then, however, the spiritual researcher does
not want to stop, but he can extend his consciousness beyond
the usual measure, and the repeated lives on earth can become
reality to him.
One
can still argue a lot against that which I have indicated
today. However, I wanted only to give the ways on which you can
find the methods to defend theosophy. I could only break the
first ground, but the pursuit of this way can gradually lead to
defending theosophy against such attacks that are completely
justified, seen from the other side.
It
is similar if these attacks concern the moral area. There we
had to say that those have a certain authorisation who say,
your teaching of reincarnation almost supports egoism. Since
people may say to themselves, we have to do the good; since if
we do the bad, we have to harvest the fruits of the bad in the
future life. However, if we do the good, we harvest the fruits
of the good. It is subtle egoism only which arises from it. One
can expand this also to the work of karma. If we dwell on this
idea, we may possibly say the following, we consider a human
being, for example, who says to himself, I want to do the good,
because the good brings me good fruits, and it is not
advantageous to do the bad, because I have to carry the fruits
of the bad, so I abstain from it. — We compare such a
human being with another who thinks in a upright way about the
things with which he is concerned, we assume, for example,
parents who have the principle of educating their children to
competent human beings. If we could ask these parents, why they
do this, we would maybe get the answer, when we have grown old
once, we have children who are able to cope with life who can
support us then. — There we have a case that shows us
that the good is done because of the fruits, which are to be
expected once, because such an education is carried out
certainly also from a selfish viewpoint.
Where to may such a viewpoint still lead, even if it is
selfish? Since the fact that people have the viewpoint to
educate their children to capable persons, so that they have
support in old age, this is at first — quite objectively
considered — a thing that one cannot manage with moral
declamations. It is rather something that shows that the
proposition of the philosopher is true: preaching morality is
easy, founding morality is hard. — However, that is not
to say that one should not educate his children from such a
viewpoint, but that one recognises how the human beings have
become under such an influence. If the parents use any care to
educate their children to capable human beings, and then the
children become capable in life, they do not only help their
parents, but they are also useful members of the human society.
However, we can notice an additional effect. If the parents
start educating their children in such a way — even if
their viewpoint was selfish at first —, then something
unselfish awakes soon with such an education. That is reached
which could not be reached by mere preaching moral: life itself
educates us from egoism to altruism.
Just as with education, it is with the principle that we may
have if we do the good and omit the bad, so that we have the
fruits of the present life in the next life. This is selfish at
first, but we know that the human nature has such an egoism.
However, it does not concern that that is in such a way, but it
concerns the question: how does life overcome egoism?
There we can realise that a human being can accept the teaching
of karma in such a way that he says to himself, I abstain from
the bad because it brings me bad fruits, and I will do the good
because I have the good fruits. However, then under the
influence of this principle the selfish attitude changes
gradually into an unselfish one.
Hence, we have to say, if any ethics puts up ever so nice
principles, nevertheless, it resembles — if it only
preaches the good — a person who stands before an oven
and says, dear oven, you know that it is your nature to warm up
the room. — There you may preach long; it does not become
warm. However, if we spare our sermon and give coal and wood as
fuel into the oven, it makes the room warm, and then we found
its oven morality without preaching. That also applies to the
human beings. The expert of psychology is clear in his mind how
little is done in life by mere preaching morality. Morality has
to flow as a force into the human nature. If we give the soul
the karma doctrine as fuel material, then it is maybe accepted
at first because of egoism, but the soul forces are thereby
stoked up, so that then from egoism the unselfish action can
arise.
Thus, theosophy as doctrine does not only concern ethics, but
we understand it as a sum of ideas that work in the soul and
change us into other human beings. Nobody understands the karma
doctrine in such a way that he says, I still have many lives
before myself; I still have time up to the next life to become
a decent human being. — Nobody can think this way.
Someone who penetrates himself with the karma doctrine knows:
you experience the fruits of your current life in the next
life; now you lay the foundation for a decent, human being you
can be in the next life. However, if you do not create the
causes for a decent human being now, you cannot become one in
the next life.
If
you understand the karma doctrine correctly, you cannot carry
egoism too far. Ssince it will persuade us any time to
transform not only egoism into altruism, but also to realise
that we do not fatalistically build on that which destiny
imposes to us. We recognise that we ourselves have caused what
works then in our karma.
Now
I would still like to come on that which could be argued from
the religious view against theosophy. There one may say, the
theosophist acknowledges that in the human being something
highest lives, as a drop is from the sea of the divine. There
that which the human being can gain to himself is put, so to
speak, like a divine force into the human soul, and then with
such an attitude one cannot develop that devotion to that Being
that interweaves the world. The mood — anybody may say
— which the really religious human being feels in the
most unselfish devotion to God who penetrates the universe
would be impaired by the theosophical mood which transfers a
spark of the divine into the human being as his “higher
ego” which gradually struggles through to the viewpoint
of Paul: not I — but Christ in me. One has to say,
everything that the human being can recognise is got out from
that which interweaves the universe.
Is
not anything else possible? If one understands that which I
have represented in the best sense, you may say to yourself, so
a part of God's power lives in you. You are given not only to
yourself, but you stand there with a part of God's power. If
you have proceeded for a while — in this or in the next
life — then consider what was your duty there. It was
your duty to develop the seeds of God's power, which are laid
in you — in other words, to make yourself more and more
similar to that which this power demands from you. Gradual
development, gradual perfection becomes the duty, so that God's
power can arise in you more and more active. Theosophy does not
demand such a religious feeling that consists only of the mere
devotion to the divine, but such one that says to itself, I
have to work on my perfection. If I do not do this, I let God's
seeds in myself undeveloped, and then I do not become a
picture, but a caricature of the divine. However, this must not
happen. I have the duty to perfect myself.
That is active devotion to the divine. That is a religious mood
that calls on the human being to do more and more for his
knowledge, to care more and more for his moral, to be keener
and keener to develop those forces that have been put as divine
forces into his soul. Thus, we live with a religious mood in
the future that does not provide a passive devotion to the
divinity, but a mood that demands from us to make our egos more
and more divine. Toward the divine that interweaves and lives
in the universe, it would be the biggest breach of duty if we
left our egos imperfect. We are not allowed to leave the talent
unused that we have received; we have to make the most of our
talents. One has to take this active mood into consideration if
one speaks about the religious element that can come from
theosophy.
Thus, you can realise that there are many things, which one
brings in as elements to show that theosophy can strengthen
life on one side, can change egoism into altruism, and cause a
religious mood which can unfold an active piety for the future.
We considered the other side of the question last time. We may
say, the objections and refutations are entitled which one may
argue against theosophy, but then we can position ourselves
against these objections in such a way as I have stated now.
Then we can ask our whole human being, not only our mind and
our reason unilaterally, and we can say to ourselves,
nevertheless, maybe it is true that there are things that begin
where reason stops. Then we must set our whole human being in
motion, and he has to decide. However, every single soul can
decide this. Hence, theosophy is the spiritual element that
speaks most intensely to the human individuality, while it
calls upon the human individuality to the highest decision even
compared with reason.
If
the human being feels to be put into such living and holy
impulses, he gradually finds the way which reveals him: you
stand here on this earth; you belong as a physical-sensory
human being to the physical-sensory world, and you belong with
your soul and mind to a spiritual world.
You
receive your mission from the spiritual world, and you have to
impress into the whole earth development what you have brought
down from the spiritual world. You have the mission to be a
mediator between the earth process and the spiritual that
forces its way to the earth, which wants to flow into the earth
existence. If you learn to recognise by theosophical meditation
that it is in such a way, and you can change the theosophical
deepening into a disposition which gives you that infinitely
blissful fulfilment of your mind, of your heart which can
express itself in the consciousness of the connection with the
temporal, the transient as well as with the everlasting, then
you can say to yourself that you are rooted with your being in
the everlasting that you are bound, indeed, as a sensory human
being to the earth, but only to realise the everlasting in
earthly form with your mission.
Theosophy can become such an attitude, if it changes in the
human being with a basic mood that one can artistically express
with the words:
The things of cosmic space
Speak to the human senses,
They change in the course of time.
The human soul lives recognising,
Spatially unlimited and not
Confused by the course of time,
In the realm of the eternal spirit.
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