Spiritual Science and the Future of Humanity
Zurich, 24 February 1911
Spiritual science or “theosophy” is widely unknown
even today. You may probably hear some judgement and criticism
about this spiritual science, but only few people deal really
with it. One surely knows a little about it in the circles of
our educated people. Those few people deal most seriously and
in quite scientific sense with the questions of the spiritual
life, take the most elementary phenomena of this spiritual life
as starting point and go up then to the highest questions which
the human being can put to himself, to the questions of death
and life, of the development of the whole humanity, even
questions of the evolution of our planet or planetary system.
Such questions find a widespread prejudice by which people
think to be entitled not to get themselves into such attempts.
Since what, they mean, can one suppose behind it? Any sect
based mainly on dilettantish ideas. — They know very
little that the human beings who belong to this supposed sect
study the important questions with scientific seriousness and
thoroughness after methods and authorities that are just quite
unknown to most of our present educated people. They do not
suspect that talking about spiritual science as something
sectarian is equally reasonable, as if one considered chemistry
or botany as something sectarian.
Since one believes, scientific methods are not at all possible
compared with these questions, and believes to be offhand about
such attempts. Today, indeed, one admits that one has to do
preliminary studies in chemistry or botany, has to go to the
resources to understand something of them, but one does not
admit that it is necessary or even possible to do that
concerning the highest questions of the spiritual life of
humanity. Indeed, one is in case of spiritual science still in
another situation than compared with chemistry or botany. These
sciences treat things and questions that concern special fields
of life and one can make use of that which they give within
these special relations of life. However, we have to regard
that which is done with scientific thoroughness in the area of
spiritual science as questions of big significance for the
human future, for our whole life praxis, for the firmness and
confidence of our whole life.
If
one considers the question of the significance of spiritual
science for the future, I have to point with some words to the
whole being of this spiritual science at first. This is
necessary, although I already had the honour several times to
speak about these questions and about the method of spiritual
science in this city. If there is talk of science today, one
has that science in mind which is based on our senses and on
everything that one can attain with the reason, which is bound
to the outer instrument of the brain. The question always
originates concerning the highest areas of existence how far
one can penetrate with such a science into these areas which
tell something about the questions: how is the nature of life?
How is the nature of death? Which is the nature of humanity
generally and its development?
Spiritual science argues that there is not only an outer
science, which is connected with a particular level of human
cognitive faculties, but that these cognitive faculties are
capable of development, so that — if we only want it
— we can unfold higher cognitive faculties than those are
which observe in the sensory-physical world with the senses and
understand with the reason bound to the brain. As well as the
present science points to the experiment, to attempts with
outer, mechanical means, spiritual science points to an attempt
which can be done solely with the means of our soul itself. Our
soul behaves in the normal life in a particular way. However,
one can change this way, so that we can also put questions to
the spiritual world as we put them to the phenomena of nature
with experiments. Not with outer attempts and tools we can
penetrate into the spiritual world, but while we wake
slumbering soul forces. There are particular soul exercises
— they are discussed in detail in my writing How Does
One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? —,
intimate performances of our soul which can strengthen our
will, so that we can perceive contents in our soul or by our
soul where we perceive nothing in the so-called normal life.
Then we experience moments by such soul exercises that you can
compare, on one side, with falling asleep, that are quite
different on the other side. What do we experience at first if
we fall asleep? We experience if we observe only externally
that the outer impressions stop and, finally, unconsciousness
spreads out in us.
There that technique to which spiritual science refers shows
that we have to talk of unconsciousness in this case of falling
asleep only because we cannot develop so strong forces if all
outer impressions stop, that the soul feels its own being and
that it cannot establish a relationship to its environment in
which it is then and which is spiritual. If now the human being
opens himself to particular contents of thought and feeling, he
can also feel as a being if all outer impressions are quiet.
Then he is in the same situation as someone is who sleeps, and,
nevertheless, his situation is radically different. He can
exclude all outer impressions consciously and by his will and
everything that speaks, otherwise, in the wake state to him by
the senses and the reason. Then he is not unconscious but lets
the full contents of the soul life light up.
I
can only indicate the soul exercises. With the usual mental
pictures, we can never develop such strong forces. Another kind
of mental pictures is necessary to put those forces in motion
in our soul; we can call them symbolic ones. We can open
ourselves to a picture so that we do not admit outer
impressions in our soul, quieten our recollections, and free
the soul as it were. I imagine, for example, a rose or
something else, and I let this symbol come to life in myself as
the only image to which I dedicate myself. This is not
appropriate to deliver usual, physical truths; however, it can
work like a seed in our soul. As a seed which is planted in the
earth stretches its roots in all directions, this image sends
out its different ramifications into the whole soul life, and
this image grows in us. Indeed, if we want to do such intimate
soul exercises, our soul life must have a steady hold; we are
not allowed to be dreamy, fantastic, confused people. We have
to know for sure what we do and that we have such an image in
our soul.
Let
us imagine, for example, three cases of actions out of
compassion, and from the comparison [of the actions] we try to
develop not an entire image of thought but an entire image of
feeling of compassion. Now we try to forget everything that
actions of compassion are in our world and let this impulse
solely be active in our soul. Then we have such a sensation,
from which the roots go out to rich, full contents of the soul.
Thereby we can reach that moment gradually which can be
compared with falling asleep, and which is, nevertheless, quite
different from it. The everyday impressions, joy and sorrow,
all thoughts have to sink down. Somebody who wants to become a
spiritual researcher has to exclude all outer impressions while
he has developed his will with such inner experiences. He has
to establish that condition which the soul experiences if the
body is in the state of unconsciousness. Then soul states are
created in which quite different states of consciousness exist
where the soul positions itself quite different to the outside
world where it is for the soul like for a blind-born who has
seen no colours and forms and sees them after an operation. In
this clairvoyant state he sees something else than that which
surrounds him, otherwise, in the physical world; he receives
new impressions from the spiritual world which forms the basis
of our physical-sensory world.
Then we may say, if the human being falls asleep in the
evening, the whole human being does not exhaust himself in that
which lies in the bed, but the core of the human being, the
spiritual-mental, has left this outer cover. This core has no
organs in the normal consciousness, but it has received
spiritual-mental organs by the soul exercises characterised
just now by which he feels moved into a new world. The real
experience in the spiritual-mental is thereby given; a new
world of observation is thereby given, and then from these
elementary facts of spiritual experience we ascend to the
highest facts. Now there are such single persons who do
exercises full of renunciation to develop their souls as tools.
If then these persons tell some people who are interested in
such matters what they have found out in other states of
consciousness, these believe it. With someone who becomes
familiar with theosophy only cursorily it is comprehensible if
he believes this, because if one knows only that which exists
on the surface of life, it is exceptionally difficult to form
an idea of how this spiritual science is practised. Hence, it
is comprehensible that most people misjudge it. I have to
emphasise this. One can understand that such persons only
believe those revelations of the spiritual world that one
attains in the described way. For most educated people it
immediately suggests itself to regard such persons as
daydreamers, romanticists, and sectarians.
However, one misjudges a particular fact: the developed soul,
the developed other consciousness is necessary to do research
in the spiritual world, to discover the spiritual truths. Even
if today few people can only develop their souls as tools to
behold into the spiritual world with them and then to inform
what they have grasped there, it is enough for those who
approach the matter with a certain sense of truth and with
impartiality.
The
trained soul of the spiritual researcher is necessary for
discovering such truths; for understanding the facts, only
unprejudiced logic is necessary. If such things are informed,
they agree for everybody who wants to think in much higher
degree with the whole life than any other philosophy does.
Hence, everybody can check the probative force of that which
the spiritual researcher informs. However, it is not enough to
familiarise yourself with the results, because the logic and
the whole system of concepts of the soul development to ascend
to the higher worlds is subtle and strict. You can say that
more strict demands are put on logic and comprehension than in
the usual science in any field. However, if one does not want
to judge the matters in a breath, but is anxious in the whole
soul to settle in the way of this new imagination to understand
what arises about the highest questions of existence, then this
settling does not possibly work like suggestion, but the soul
can pursue it consciously. Every soul can familiarise itself in
those areas where the highest questions of human existence, of
time and eternity are treated.
Does this proclamation of spiritual science or theosophy have
any meaning for the human civilisation of today and the future?
One has to put this question. Since one could argue, there can
be people who are interested in such things because of certain
longings, but they are mavericks who prefer to contemplate in
their rooms, but would have nothing to do with the big
processes in the human civilisation. — One cannot say
this if one surveys the course of human development with
understanding so that just the time at which we live now faces
our soul after its being.
Our
time has developed from that which humanity has experienced
from prehistory up to now. From the present developmental level
again the experiences of the future human beings develop. If we
look back at the human states of consciousness, you realise
that you are prejudiced if you believe that the whole soul
condition, the way of thinking, the way how he forms ideas and
concepts of his environment, that the states of the human
consciousness are almost the same at all times. That is not the
case. Indeed, one applies the word development to the
transformation of the outer forms, but seldom to the human soul
life, and just concerning the human soul life, is the concept
of development something that points us deeply to the most
important questions of humanity.
The
spiritual-scientific investigation of the human soul and the
conclusions, which you can draw from it, show that. Since at
ancient times the human consciousness lagged far behind, it was
different from that of today so that we can speak of times of
the human development at which the human soul lived even in a
kind of clairvoyant state of consciousness. However, it was not
in such a way, as it is with the today's trained spiritual
researcher. The clairvoyant state of the today's trained
spiritual researcher takes place with full consciousness that
he also has in the normal life. That was not the case with the
old clairvoyant. He had a more dreamy clairvoyance, a dreamlike
consciousness. It was in such a way that we can say, what the
human being experiences today in his dreams is an atavistic
rest of the ancient state of consciousness. While today dream
images mostly mean nothing particular for the reality of the
outside world, those old states of consciousness were images
that you can compare, indeed, to our dream images,
nevertheless, they were different from them. The images that
were often symbolic were the contents of an old clairvoyant
consciousness, which was not penetrated with modern
intellectuality. In the soul of the prehistoric human beings,
these images surged up and down. The prehistoric human beings
possibly did not always have such pictorial consciousness. Wake
states and sleeping states also alternated, but while these
merge into each other with us and a mostly meaningless dream
state is between them, the third state of consciousness existed
in ancient times, the state of such a pictorial consciousness,
in which our sensory images did not surge up and down in the
soul but symbols as art has them at most in weakened form.
These symbols surged up and down with full liveliness in these
three states of consciousness, and they were not like our dream
images that we must not refer them to a reality, but they were
clearly directed upon a reality, so that the outer reality was
recognised with them, even if only in symbols. One experienced
a spiritual world that was behind the sensory world. Thus, the
prehistoric human beings had a picture consciousness, so that
they did not need our today's intellectuality and wisdom of the
wake consciousness. For it, they beheld into a spiritual world
in the pictures of a dreamlike clairvoyance.
Now
one may ask, is there anything in the outer world that proves
that to some extent what you spiritual researchers behold
there, if you look back at prehistory? Is there anything that
can deliver a document that once humanity could behold into the
spiritual worlds? — Oh, there is such a thing! However,
the human beings have to learn to interpret this thing in right
way. What is preserved of the prehistoric attempts to penetrate
into the inner being of the things? With the prehistoric
humanity, we look in vain for a science as we have it today,
but legends and myths have been preserved. Now the present
enlightened human being says that this corresponds to the
childish imagination of the ancient humanity; we have entered
into the manhood of science now. However, someone who delves
into the myths of the various peoples experiences something
else than such a superficial rater, he experiences that these
images are associated in miraculous way everywhere [with the
spiritual life of humanity]. If one penetrates into these
images, deep connections with this spiritual life of humanity
and its culture present themselves. One gets more and more
respect for the wonderful arrangement of the pictures in the
ancient myths and legends, so that you often say to yourself,
what are all philosophies of the present compared with the
wonderful pictures that the myths have preserved. They agree
all over the world and they comply with that which the
spiritual researcher can find with his method in the spiritual
world, so that we have to ask ourselves, where from do these
old images come which can be found all over the world?.
A
conscientious research finds the explanation only if it
supposes that these things are remains of an ancient
clairvoyance. One judges wrong if one says, the myths of the
ancient peoples have arisen from childish imagination. No, we
can understand them only if we assume that our ancestors beheld
with their clairvoyant picture consciousness [into the
spiritual world].
Still about 1800 numerous persons had a notion of the fact that
there was such pictorial wisdom and that the wonderful
spiritual voices from the myths of the various peoples tell of
a primeval wisdom. At that time they were still clear in their
mind that the peoples which one regards as decadent today have
only descended from a higher point of view that, however,
everything that humanity has as culture today goes back to
primeval times where the knowledge of the spiritual world was
still alive.
There were serious researchers who were convinced of this fact.
If we ask Aristotle, Plato, and the other Greek philosophers,
we find numerous passages where they speak about the fact that
any science goes back to the primeval wisdom that the gods had
given the human beings. Plato speaks of human beings of the
Cronus age who took over the old wisdom directly from the
spiritual world. The spiritual researchers do not only say to
us that this was in such a way, but also, why this ancient
clairvoyance gradually disappeared from humanity.
There we come to the important law that you can also observe in
nature that is especially obvious, however, in the spiritual
life of humanity: the fact that for the development of a
certain force at first another force has to withdraw. The
ancient human beings who could behold in certain states of
their consciousness into a spiritual world did not yet have our
intellect; they had no science, no civilisation in our sense.
Intellectuality had only to develop. Development is something
that leads us to the deepest questions of the soul life. Our
intelligence, the intellectual condition that we have today,
where we completely rely on the sensory perception and on the
reason bound to the brain could enter in the general human
consciousness only while the old clairvoyance withdrew for a
while, was drowned by the intellectual consciousness.
Somebody who knows something of the basic character of the
Middle Ages knows that the peculiar spiritual development of
the Middle Ages can be explained if one knows that the Middle
Ages were the time in which gradually the old clairvoyance
disappeared. The biggest impulse in the human development, the
Christ impulse that will once induce humanity to take up
clairvoyance completely had the task to make the old
clairvoyance withdraw. Thus, a peculiar phenomenon appears with
the advent of the new time: the old clairvoyance withdraws,
only the traditional truths remain which one had gained with
the old clairvoyance. Thus, the branches of knowledge
propagated in the Middle Ages which were gained on the basis of
the old clairvoyance. However, one did not know that, one had
only understood the ideas which were found in primeval times,
yes, one applied them even quite wrong at the end of the Middle
Ages.
One
example: Aristotle was already at the turning point of the
intellectual age, but he still saw back in dark notion at the
time in which the human being knew something by clairvoyance,
at the processes of human imagining and feeling, at the human
evolution, and he describes this. He did no longer have the
ancient clairvoyance; he had the tradition only. There he said,
if the human being is active in his soul, in his wake state, we
deal with the physical body at first, and this has its organs.
However, Aristotle would still have been reluctant to regard
the material body as the only member of the human being. He
pointed to a higher member that has its centre near the heart,
and from this supersensible member certain currents originate
which go up especially to the brain and spread as supersensible
currents in the human body. One still called these currents
“cold light” in the Middle Ages that pours forth in
particular into the brain to invigorate its physical organs.
Still in the Middle Ages people spoke of this cold light which
spreads out where the physical heart is.
One
can understand Aristotle only if one knows that that which he
lets originate from the heart is thought as supersensible
currents that he does not mean physical strands, organs, or the
like. Now the Middle Ages came. The people lost the
understanding of the old clairvoyance. They read Aristotle, and
through the Middle Ages the faith in Aristotle was like a faith
in the Bible. Aristotle was the basis of natural science, of
medicine, of everything. Everything was based on Aristotle.
However, people had no idea of that which, actually, Aristotle
had meant. Thus, a peculiar mental picture could develop just
with the most religious supporters of Aristotle, with those who
believed bravely in him, but did no longer understand him.
Since — as everybody knows — it is not necessary
that everything is understood that one believes. Mental
pictures could develop so that one did not mean supersensible
currents that originate in the heart but sensory strands. Thus,
Aristotle's believers believed that from the heart the nerves
originate.
Now
the great researchers and thinkers came at the end of the
Middle Ages, like Giordano Bruno, Galilei and others who
designed a new worldview on the basis of the worldview of
Copernicus. However, Aristotle's believers were not inclined to
accept this new worldview simply. Galilei and Giordano Bruno
pointed to the real world of the senses because now the time
began in which the human beings should develop their knowledge
by sensory observation and intellect. There it happened that
Galilei led a friend who was a good Aristotle believer in front
of a corpse and showed him that the nerves originate not from
the heart but from the brain. The friend saw this and said,
yes, it seems to be in such a way, as if the nerves originate
from the brain, but I read something different with Aristotle,
and if a contradiction exists, I believe Aristotle.
This time was ripe to dismiss what of the ancient clairvoyance
was handed down as tradition, because it was completely
misunderstood. At that time, there was a special impetus of the
intellectual development. Many physical concepts lead back to
the way of thinking of Galilei with which we still work today.
The material, mechanical thinking was directed immediately upon
the outer sensory world and upon its intellectual
understanding. The age of intellect was dawning in scientific
areas, and now we can observe from that time up to now
repeatedly how the human being wants to conquer this area of
the human soul life whose most important part was the conquest
of the outer reality with the intellect. The following shows a
particularly drastic expression how one could think solely
materially in the Middle Ages, but still had the old
tradition.
None of the old clairvoyant wise men would have come up with
the idea that the spiritual world is “on top,” that
there is a blue firmament, which encloses our world. The old
clairvoyants did not think this way; one only misunderstood
them later. There one pointed to the fixed starry sky as a kind
of bowl that surrounds our world. It was a great moment, when
Copernicus pulled the rug out from under the feet of the human
beings as it were. It was a great moment when Gordano Bruno
expanded this “bowl” into the infinity of the
physical space. However, Giordano Bruno put something else
beside the sensory picture. We need only to call a few words of
Giordano Bruno in mind and we realise that he accomplished the
great action to put a spiritual picture beside this sensory
picture. He said that everything that surrounds us in the
sensory world is rooted in the thoughts of the universal
spirit, which manifest in the outer forms, in that which we
perceive with the senses. If Giordano Bruno points to the
endless cosmic space and looks for the being of the things
manifest to the senses, this was for him, nevertheless, nothing
but the embodiment of the thoughts of the universal spirit.
Giordano Bruno calls the human mental pictures shades of the
divine thoughts, not shades of the outer things. If Giordano
Bruno turns the physical view to the outer world, the idea of
the universal spirit enters into his soul mysteriously, and the
human concepts are not shades of the outer sensory things but
the thoughts of the universal spirit.
It
is very important that we face Giordano Bruno as a great spirit
who points to the cosmic space but also strongly to that which
connects the human soul with the primeval spirit. You can
compare this attitude already with the intelligence and the
attitude of the today's science which was still fertilised,
however, by the traditions of the old clairvoyance. One may
say, a shade of the old clairvoyance and of the relationship
with the divine-spiritual world still lived in Giordano Bruno.
However, to us only the picture remained which he designed of
the outer sensory world, and no more that which was still alive
in him at that time. The picture of the old clairvoyance that
lived in him disappeared. You only need to pursue the
development without prejudice up to now, then you realise that
more and more the mere intellect spread in the normal
consciousness.
Hence, what has one to say about our age? There one may say
that we live so surely in the age of intellect, of reason and
its application to the sensory world. Now one has to
investigate the peculiar effect of the intellect in the sense
of spiritual science compared to the clairvoyant knowledge.
This differs substantially from the knowledge of the intellect
and the sensory observation. The difference consists in the
fact that any clairvoyant knowledge that anyhow enables the
connection of the human being with the spiritual world works on
our mood, and from it, a feeling of the position of the human
being in the whole universe arises. The clairvoyant knowledge
is powerful, it pours sensations and feelings in our souls, it
satisfies our longings, strengthens our hopes, kindles our
love. One cannot imagine that the human being participates in
the supersensible knowledge without changing it into feeling
and sensation. Hence, we realise how the pictorial legends and
myths were taken up in the images of ancient peoples not
indifferently, but in such a way that the whole soul either
could be delighted and given to a supersensible world or be
contrite about its own smallness. This also belongs to the
nature of intelligence that it darkens any supersensible
knowledge in a way. We can observe that in our usual soul life.
When any pictorial image which appears, as one says, intuitive
or on the way of inspiration is grasped in abstractions, the
deep emotional contents disappear which it gives the whole
personality and the whole soul life. Intellect brings
understanding largely, but extinguishes any immediate soul
effect of the supersensible knowledge.
I
bring in nothing made-up, nothing that you cannot read in
numerous books. There the representatives of intelligence point
to Buddha, to Christ, to Zarathustra, to Pythagoras and so on
and say, the human soul faces the big world, it grasps the
world in different way. The fact that the supersensible
knowledge reaches to the soul was connected with strong courage
for existence that caused the consciousness of our connection
with the spiritual of the world. Indeed, intelligence leads to
understanding on the surface of the things, but it cannot evoke
a feeling of inner courage. Thus, we see despondence,
feebleness toward the penetration of knowledge as a
characteristic feature of our time. Our time praises and
emphasises that which science accomplishes. They do that
rightly. However, where people believe to think deeper they say
that the human being does not come to the primal grounds of the
things. Neither Pythagoras, nor Christ, nor Zarathustra would
have known how to say something about these primal grounds.
Nevertheless, this proves very well that instead of the old
knowledge and confidence a knowledge of despondence
appeared.
There are two forms of resignation. The old clairvoyant could
say, as well as in my conditions, in my age the human abilities
have developed, they are not sufficient to behold into the
primal grounds of the things —- one has to resign.
— This was another resignation than that which we find
today. Why did the old clairvoyant resign? Because he realised:
as I am, I am not yet capable to attain knowledge. — He
resigns out of modesty, out of the consciousness that in him,
indeed, the highest forces are, but that he cannot unfold them
because of his imperfection. This is heroic resignation, full
of confidence; this is the human being to whom the gates of the
world riddles are not closed.
However, one says today, the human being cannot at all
penetrate [into the knowledge of higher worlds]; as well as he
is constituted; his cognitive faculties can never be so highly
developed. — This is a fundamental resignation. It
differs quite substantially from the heroic resignation; it has
something arrogant because it declares the level of knowledge
to be absolute. What it cannot recognise is generally beyond
the human knowledge.
The
age of intelligence is fulfilled with other sensations, with
sensations of negative kind because it cannot be productive, in
contrast to the times of the old clairvoyance. Humanity had to
come to this point if it should lose all old mental pictures,
also those of faith, and for that, it required the culture of
intelligence.
However, the inner life would become banal if only the
intelligence should be entitled to illumine the inner life of
the human being. Hence, spiritual science or theosophy appears
in the present and shows that it is possible again to bring out
forces from the depths of the human soul that penetrate the
intelligence with a higher cognitive power which leads the
human beings again into the spiritual worlds. Thus, the new
clairvoyant knowledge wants to be an incentive and a help to
the intellectual knowledge, and it gives humanity again that
which it needs to possess the light of intelligence not only
that leaves the soul empty, but also to possess such a
knowledge which again brings strength and confidence and hope
in our lives. Numerous human beings long for such knowledge
that can be changed into courage and power in our soul. Someone
who understands the whole spirit of the new development from
the aurora of the intellectual age up to its today's climax
will also understand that for the future of humanity the
fulfilment of the soul with contents is necessary. Since
intelligence only would be able to extinguish the soul, but
would not deliver new soul contents. Advanced people of the
present criticize the old mental pictures or register them at
most as history. One dives, so to speak, back to register the
old mental pictures. However, spiritual science will be,
— although it is true science — always such a
science, which gives the powerful feeling of the coherence with
the spiritual worlds. It wants to give our souls contents and
to fertilise them with contents.
With it spiritual science points to its future mission. Such a
science will again give sensation and feeling in the most
natural way. Indeed, intelligence builds the bridge from the
ancient times to the future, but the mission of spiritual
science is to penetrate this intelligence with the living value
of the spiritual life as food for the souls. Because in our
time intelligence has reached its highest development, just
this time was chosen by those who know how to interpret the
spirit of the time to attempt to intervene by spiritual science
to conquer [living soul contents for] the soul gradually
again.
Thus, spiritual science positions itself not as something
arbitrary or as something arbitrarily invented in our age, but
as something that has to get to know the real sense, the
deepest tasks, and riddles of our age. If the human soul opens
itself to spiritual science with complete impartiality, then it
will feel that spiritual science copes with any outer science
concerning logic and intellect that it develops the logic in
such a way that it appears as a force of love, of compassion,
of life security in our souls. Any soul will feel the high
sense of spiritual science and understand whose nature we can
summarise 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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