Anthroposophy : Goodwill Knowing

 

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, October 8, 1906

A week ago we considered the view of the world based on the science of the spirit in so far as it can have meaning for people today. modern people will of course first of all base themselves on observations made through the senses and on their rational minds. They may also base themselves on modern science, which is also based on observations made through the senses and rational thinking. We have shown that it is possible to meet all objections to the science of the spirit that may arise from the present-day scientific approach. Please do not misunderstand the reasons for considering the subject in this way. It was not done so that we might go out and enter into discussion with people who have not yet given a thought to the science of the spirit. There can be no question of this. Anyone who has not yet a mind to consider it and also is not inclined to do so will first of all have to learn to put his mind to it. It is not a question, therefore, of having arguments available for use in discussions, but everyone may in his own heart and mind raise objections that may come up in the light of modern popular science or modern life in general. You need to be reasonably sure of yourself. This, then, has been the purpose of the things we considered the last time.

It can simply never be the mission of the spiritual scientific movement merely to satisfy people’s curiosity or thirst for knowledge. It is true that among many theosophists this curiosity, or, to put it more politely, this thirst for knowledge, has been and still is the reason why they made contact with theosophical endeavours. However after a time anyone who has come purely from curiosity will be disappointed. Not that the science of the spirit does not have the amplest means of satisfying people's thirst for knowledge, down to the deepest depths of existence, but the knowledge we are concerned with in the theosophical movement will only serve a purpose if it becomes active knowledge, knowledge out of which one takes action, putting it into practice in everyday life. People should therefore at least have the urge to make this knowledge part of life.

When someone comes to the science of the spirit he can easily find himself on the horns of a dilemma. You need to see this dilemma clearly. Many of the people who come to theosophy fall into two categories. Some will say: I want to help, I want to be of value to society. They think the theosophical movement should give them the means to do this, so that they can start right away. Others may perhaps only have the illusion of wanting to help. In reality they merely want to satisfy their curiosity and hear of things they find sensational. Neither of these two categories will be the right kind of members for the Theosophical Society. Those who want to start helping right away fail to consider that you have to learn things first and acquire skills if you are to be able to help. One has to tell them that they need to be patient and develop the powers and skills that will make them helpers of humanity. They have to limit their ambitions. The people who merely want to satisfy their curiosity will have to understand that not one of the means and abilities given to them should be accepted unless they are prepared to be part of and serve the whole of human evolution. This will need a long time. The Theosophical Society should first of all generate secure knowledge and awareness of eternity and existence in the spirit. Someone who has this awareness then says to himself: It is not my intention to launch right away, from my present imperfect standpoint, into all kinds of enterprises to reform humanity, and so on.

Patience is called for on the one hand, and on the other the will to be part of and serve the whole of human evolution. The method of the Theosophical Society lies between these two things. And we must not concentrate on just one of them but pay heed to both. We need to have both patience and the will to be active, but not as an arithmetic mean of the two, for they need to be developed separately in our hearts and minds. Do not confuse the two things! It is a very different thing if one has an arithmetic mean or has the two things separately in one’s heart and mind.

The theosophical view of the world was brought to life some decades ago to meet these two requirements and has since been there for humanity. The knowledge we have taken in over the years, everything that has so far been said, is brought back to mind once more, for the more often we do this, the better it is. Knowledge should become a living power of intent. This means that some of the older members will hear some things again which they have heard before, perhaps in another context, and perhaps merely to refresh their memories. This is the way in which the theosophical view of the world was brought to life some decades ago. What was it before that? It was something we call secret or occult teaching, that is, something done in small groups by people specially admitted to them. In earlier times students were subjected to severe tests of their will intent, feeling and thinking before they were admitted to those closed groups, the esoteric or occult brotherhoods. The influence of those brotherhoods is something which in future will come from a larger group of people. More and more people will be called to have such an influence. A small group of the elect thus always had the influence which the theosophical movement is now to gain. Whether they were the disciples of Hermes or the pupils of the Eleusinian mysteries, occult schools in Egypt or Christian Gnostic schools, or the Rosicrucians in Europe—in every case, small, carefully defined brotherhoods were a major influence. Modern people with their intellectualized science know nothing, or practically nothing of this, but it is a fact that all cultivation of the mind and through this also all material civilization came from such brotherhoods.

It has been said on a previous occasion that all material civilization, everything people create using hammer, saw, axe and so on, has its foundation in cultivation of the mind. You may consider everything in this light, however large or small. Take one of the great engineering feats of our time, the Simplon Tunnel or the St Gotthard Tunnel. Very few people ever realize that these could never have been built if it had not been for a man called Leibniz.³⁶ The tunnels could not have been built if it had not been for differential calculus. The idea which at one time inspired those thinkers to do such subtle calculations has made all these things possible in the physical world. Everything that happens on the physical plane ultimately goes back to thoughts and ideas. It is a dreadful illusion for people to think that there is anything in civilization that does not ultimately go back to the spirit, the mind. Take what you will in the fields of art, of technology, industry or trade—the most practical, most commonplace and most everyday things ultimately go back to something that happened in the human soul.

Where do the great impulses, ideas, mental creativeness originate? Here we come to a sphere in which we can begin to understand how the occult brotherhoods of earlier centuries and millennia worked. Take an example, though a modern materialistic thinker would never think of it. An ardent, enthusiastic youth living in the 18th century, someone with the gifts for great things, needed just the stimulus of something that may look like a chance happening, something utterly insignificant. He met, as if by chance, someone who seemed indifferent. This person said a few words to the young man that appeared to make no special impression. I am saying ‘appeared’, for something did happen in the enthusiastic young man’s soul. The encounter during which those seemingly insignificant words were said did have significance after all. So what did actually happen? Something of the greatest significance for civilization came from an insignificant incident that appeared to be a matter of chance. The brothers who are the true and greatest guardians of humanity’s treasure of wisdom are in this world. They may be walking about among us; we may meet them. But they wear a magic hat as far as ordinary people are concerned. It is up to them to recognize a brother, for the brothers never identify themselves. In past centuries they were even harder to recognize than they are today. What mattered, however, was their influence. Imagine such a brotherhood of occult initiates. One of the brothers approaches the young man as though by chance. But chance events like these are brought about by the wisdom of this world. A few insignificant words ignite a spark in the young man’s mind that is of the greatest conceivable importance for our civilization. The young man was Jean-Jacques Rousseau.³⁷ An event that seemed of no significance sowed a seed that led Rousseau to develop his philosophy. There is nothing random about the powerful impulses that came into our civilization with it. They are not apparent in the ordinary history of civilization but quietly let the stream of wisdom continue that is in the care of the brotherhood. The decision as to what will serve the needs of humanity is made in the brotherhood. The brothers are wise, they are prophets. They know what humanity needs. And when the need arises they'll send one of the brethren into the world to bring a new impetus into evolution.

Another example is one I have given before. It concerns the German theosophical philosopher Jakob Böhme and can be found in any Jakob Böhme biography.³⁸ As a boy he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. One day the master and his wife had gone out. They had told him not to sell anything, but merely look after the shop. Someone came in who made a deep impression on the boy. The stranger wanted to buy something but Jakob was not permitted to sell him anything. When the man had gone, Jakob heard his name called. He went to the door and the man said to him: ‘Jakob, you’re small now but one day you'll be great. You'll be someone people will be amazed at.’ This man gave the impulse for the things Jakob Böhme later wrote about.

You'll see even better what this is about if we take another example that may take you even more deeply into the secrets of the brotherhoods. Imagine that someone who is unknown—unknown in the outside world, well known to the initiates—writes a letter to a powerful privy councillor or a minister. The letter may be about something of no great importance, perhaps asking for a minor request to be granted. If an initiate were to read this letter, someone able to read it very differently from the way an ordinary person would read it, he would note something very special about it. It may be that one has to leave out every third word from the beginning of the letter, or every fourth word counting from the end. The words which remain have considerable significance, influencing the will of the person to whom it is addressed. This person may merely have read a request to have some refuse removed. But in reality the letter says something of tremendous importance. Now you may say: ‘But the man did not read that.’ That is not true. The surface self-awareness did not take it up, but the secret of such a code is that the right words remain and impress themselves on the ether body, on the subconscious mind, and the person concerned will have taken them in after all.

Impulses can be given in this way to make people do things, and it is possible to convey instructions in secret ways without people being aware of it. This is, of course, only a minor example compared to things of enormous significance that exist in the world. An initiate is able to go about in any form. He has the means of influencing not only people’s everyday level of consciousness but also the other levels of the human mind.

You know about the German philosopher and mystic Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.³⁹ His teacher was Johannes Tritheim, abbot at Sponheim.⁴⁰ The abbot wrote books which to modern materialistic minds seem either romantic or highly Baroque, certainly something one would not find very interesting. It is thought that these works also met with an indifferent response in the days of Johannes Tritheim of Sponheim. But there is a key to reading these books. If you omit certain things from the beginning and others from the end, something remains, and this residue represents a large part of what is today presented as elementary theosophy. Reading these books one therefore is truly reading also with the subconscious mind, reading the material which today is presented as theosophy. For centuries, many people thus unknowingly took theosophy into their hearts and minds. These have been significant influences in our civilization that may be considered together with the kind of processes we discussed a week ago concerning the effects of copper and lead.

You can see from these examples that occult brotherhoods were active in the world through the millennia for the benefit of humanity. This was right for those past times but it will no longer be right in the future. Initiates who know the meaning and significance of evolution will therefore say: ‘What happened in the past is no longer right for the future.’ It would be a poor kind of inspiration that would always look for the truth in the past and not know its living reality, which is that the truth always changes for the future. Someone who is truly inspired will not only seek to learn from the earliest teachers of humanity but reshape the truths he is given, being alive to the present time. Something that must rise up against this old form of occult work in every human soul is the idea of freedom, the idea of its value and the dignity of man. People are unfree if influences are brought to bear on them in that way. Freedom, however, and this has been shown before, is not something finished and complete but something human beings struggle to gain in the living process of evolution. Freedom is the goal of humanity and not a birth right. And freedom depends on insight. There is no other way of overcoming the old influences that came from the brotherhoods than to make occult knowledge itself widely known. The basic aim of the theosophical movement is to make people free as they learn the spiritual truths that used to be the preserve of the occult brotherhoods. In the old days, the world knew nothing that went beyond the physical plane, and today it knows hardly any of it. Only when the world comes to know the things that go beyond the physical plane will people be able to have the mysterious influences and forces that play between one human being and another, between one nation and another, truly under their own control. That is the human mission for the future and therefore really also the mission of the theosophical movement.

The science of the spirit thus shows itself to be something very different from all other present-day movements. Many questions now arise for human beings, the facts force them to face them. Above all there is the social question, which comes up in all kinds of different forms. It includes matters of personal freedom, nationalism and racism and the colonial issue. All these issues, and also, most important, the issue of education, are shown in a special light, a different light, with the science of the spirit than is otherwise possible at the present time. Why is that so? A small example may show this. There is a movement in psychiatry today that is little known to lay people. But as newspaper articles now present everything to the world, some of you will have taken some notice. This truly touches on important matters. Look at the latest book publications. You'll find an interesting small volume on Robert Schumann’s illness. A psychiatrist⁴¹ has decided to go for Robert Schumann—and also other people—and show that he suffered from the condition which alienists call dementia precox meaning premature dementia.⁴² You may know that not only Robert Schumann but other great people have also been investigated for their mental state—Goethe, Heine and quite a few others. There are even two publications which are not without interest, though they are about investigations of the person of the Christ in this respect.⁴³ All this is possible in our materialistic age. One such alienist says that if a mind comes to abnormal expression this is due to an abnormality in the person’s organization.⁴⁴ One thing modern alienists are sure of is that such conditions cannot be influenced by reasoning with people. You'll see what I mean in a minute. For a time it was thought that if someone suffered from a particular form of mania that came to expression in abnormal religious ideas, it would be possible to correct this by talking sense to them, presenting sensible arguments to them. Mania sometimes takes quite a specific form. Someone imagines he is being persecuted, for example. The alienist considers this to be a symptom.⁴⁵ Persecution mania is just a symptom to him, with an abnormality of the brain the true problem. You cannot overcome someone’s delusions by explaining that he is not being persecuted at all, for you cannot change the way the brain is organized Up to this point, the alienist is in fact right The spiritual scientist does not intend to judge someone else from an amateur point of view. You may present sensible ideas to the person concerned, but you'll not cure his mania. At the most it will then take another form.

Let us take the case of Hölderlin, another person who is studied by alienists.⁴⁶ Hölderlin was destroyed by his longing for ancient Greece. An alienist would say that he suffered from a disease of the brain, and that everything else is symptomatic evidence. The disease may have been hereditary in origin. It is therefore believed that it is not possible to influence the constitution of the organism, primarily the constitution of the brain, out of the life of mind and spirit. You see, these researches in psychiatry take one to fathomless depths. The physical body is accepted as something that is given, and the mind and spirit is like a kind of vapour rising from that body. Even the greatest mental achievements, the work of people of genius—if it is abnormal, materialistic scientists will ascribe it to abnormal brain functions. That is what your alienist, your psychiatrist, will tell you. Whatever you may say to contradict him, he will insist that the whole life of the mind and spirit depends on the physical organization. As far as it goes, the positive statement is correct, but these people do not understand what is really involved here; they have no idea.

This brings us to something of which you should take careful note. It concerns an extraordinarily important secret, though perhaps not everyone would consider it to be such. The truth is that the human organ which performs its function has originally been created by that function itself. The brain has originally been created by thoughts. The blood develops the life of feelings. There can be no life of feelings without warm blood. It is a fact that the blood has originally been created by the life of feelings. This is a completely new way of looking at these things. Now we may say to ourselves that we certainly cannot change the human brain with the ideas people produce in their brains today. But behind that brain are different thoughts, thoughts unknown in materialistic science and these have originally created the brain. This is the world of thoughts we must get to know; it is the world of creative ideas. We thus have to distinguish between ordinary thoughts and a world of thoughts that floods—truly floods—the world. It is because the brain has been born out of the world of thoughts that the human mind is able not only to produce the kind of thoughts that come from the brain’s world of thought but also to have a part in the world of thoughts that lies behind the physical organization. With this, one learns to govern the life of thoughts. And so one also does not cure people by producing logical reasons but by entering much more deeply into the realm of mind and spirit. It is possible, with thoughts taken from the true world of the spirit, to change the physical organism purely out of the realm of thoughts and make a sick organism well again.

The spirit thus exists in two ways. We have the spirit that first of all presents itself outwardly in the phenomena of nature, in art, science and the economic products of engineering and industry. This spirit is a product of physical life. But behind it is its creator, and that, too, is spirit. An image may help to show this. Imagine I have some water here and I apply a particular procedure to cool it down so that it turns to ice. If we heat some of the ice so that it turns to water again, we have three things—the original water all around, the ice, and something that is turning to water again. You may look at the human brain like this. The spirit which fills the whole world has condensed into the brain as water does to ice. Thoughts are brought forth from the brain just as water is from ice when this is heated. Essentially, therefore, you may take all matter to be condensed spirit, contracted spirit and you can see the things of the mind and spirit that show themselves in the world to have come from the physical. Materialistic thinking considers only the condensed matter and has forgotten that the spirit is behind the world of matter, that a spiritual world exists beyond the physical that creates matter. The theosophical movement should take people back again to the spirit that is behind the material world.

We can now also return to something I mentioned the last time we met. I talked about writing. We write something down, let us say the word ‘spirit’. Someone who has no concept of the spirit clearly would not write the word. But someone else may come along who has no concept of the spirit, who is altogether unable to read, and he would describe a line curving down, then up again, then down again and so on. No one would get the idea that this means ‘spirit’, for the person giving the description is unable to read. That, however, is how the facts are described in science today. For the word to be written, a meaning had to be there that was poured into this piece of writing. The writer may go away, someone else may come along, look at what has been written, and know what the writer wanted to say. That is also how it is with the original spirit in relation to our physical world. This physical world is like writing, simply writing. In ordinary everyday science, the individual objects in this world are described in the way I said. An occultist would know, however, that these individual objects mean something else as well, apart from the description given in outer terms and that they can be read, being letters of the spirit. If we look at this world as the writing of the spirit, if we consider everything in the world around us—minerals, plants, animals and people—to be letters written by the spirit, we enter into the world of the spirit of our own accord as we read the physical world.

It is not too easy, however, to read like this. To give you an example, let me tell you the following. A chemist may take blood, analyse it and say it consists of such and such constituents. He has now done his job and he knows what blood is. Reading in the spiritual scientific and occult sense, however, you find that blood could not have come into existence in the form in which we have it if there were not the phenomena behind it which we call astral phenomena. The spirit of the world acts on matter through the astral phenomena. There could never have been such a thing as blood in the physical world if the astral world did not exist behind the physical world. All kinds of things could exist, but blood is only possible because there is the astral world behind it. You thus read the astral in the blood, just as you read the world ‘spirit’ in these letters. Reading the letters that exist here in the physical world leads to perception of the astral sphere.

This is altogether the right way of entering into the world of the spirit—to give heart and mind to the world around us. It may be less of an effort to enter the world of the spirit in a number of other ways, but it is a more certain way of doing it if we study the phenomena that surround us. A mineral has something different to say, a plant something different again, an animal, a person—all of them are indeed different letters. If you bring your heart and mind to them, they will tell you of the world of the spirit. You will therefore find study of our world one of the first things you are directed to do in Rosicrucian schooling—devoted, dedicated study of the world. When we started our theosophical movement, some people said: ‘The things he is telling us can be found in any book on science. He is talking about origins, the struggle for existence, and so on; but we want to hear of the things that go on in the world of the spirit.’ There may in fact be more of these things in it than the people who asked to hear are able to cope with. But we should start with secure insight into our immediate reality, not mere description but real understanding.

Take what follows as an important fundamental truth—it has always been considered to be such in Rosicrucian occult schooling. The sense-perceptible world presents itself in the way our external physical senses are able to perceive it. Things look different in the astral world, very different. And they look completely different again in the devachanic world. That is how it is with our perceptions. The thoughts and logic we use to grasp the physical world, the astral world and the devachanic world are the same. Right thoughts are right in the devachan, on the astral plane and on the physical plane. If you learn the right way of thinking on the physical plane this will give you a reliable guide in all worlds. It means, however, that we have to learn to think in a way that has real significance, meaning and depth. No one should therefore save themselves the trouble of entering into this physical world with his thoughts and considering this world to be letters, writing that tells of a higher world of the spirit.

In the great process of liberating humanity, our prime concern is therefore to gain a meaningful approach to the significance of physical phenomena. They are the gate that leads to the world of the spirit. The work calls for a great deal of self-denial but it has to be undertaken. If human beings truly take on this task and gradually ascend to the world of the spirit in doing so, learning to grasp things from the point of view of that world, they play a part in the great tasks of culture and civilization. They can only do so if they are free human beings. As soon as people would seek to develop a civilization for the future on any basis other than freedom their products would all be stillborn, with ideas belonging to the past taken into the future. The tremendous difference from earlier ways will be that human beings and not principles or institutions are the active agent. It is true, in the past, too, things were done by human beings only. However it was only a small group whose principles came to be generally accepted. Some would praise those principles, believing them to be original. People were speaking of something they had derived from principles. But this was merely the impulse that had come from the initiates. Take the initiation of Heraclitus,⁴⁷ for instance, in early times. He presented the truths he had discovered in external formulas that were further elaborated by countless people. They thought they were thinking original thoughts; but that was not the case. You only learn to think original thoughts by seeing what lies behind things and grasping their real significance.

I hope you have developed something of a feeling for the way human beings should make themselves part of the process of civilization, being able to walk through between one pillar, which is patience, by being prepared to learn and not act too soon, and the other pillar, which is the will to serve the progress of human evolution. They can do this if they allow things to come alive to them more and more through the senses and in this way penetrate to the creative spirit. This is something you have to feel inwardly, be alive to inwardly, and then you are a theosophist. People must reach a much greater level of freedom in future than they have in the past, and there have to be many more of them. Not that long ago only very few people in Europe were really free. Civilization radiated into the world from small centres, reaching others in the form of views and opinions, so that they came to believe everything else to be erroneous. Rousseau, too, thought he was only presenting his own views, his inmost being, when in fact he was influenced from quite a different source.

The initiates knew that life between birth and death, which is encompassed in the phenomena we perceive through the senses, is governed by forces that do not cease at death; that forces which exist also before birth merely assume a different form during physical life. This enabled the initiates to give impulses, being able to see what lies behind death. The glass standing here will never be able to move of its own accord. And what lies between birth and death is equally unable to move of its own accord. The forces which move what lies between birth and death are always present; they are the eternal. The initiates know them and a large part of the human race will have to get to know them in the future.

Make this an inner feeling, for this inner feeling is important Without it, you will not progress in occult studies. It will depend on this if you join the ranks of the theosophical movement as a rightful member. This inner feeling will also give you a degree of certainty in guiding you through something which you perceive all around you. We perceive chaos in our civilization. That is true. Theoretically speaking, materialism holds chaos in it. It is monstrous that when someone opens a book today he is presented with a mass of unconnected individual insights. Nothing but details, and chaos everywhere, also in the social life out there.

What is someone who is not part of the theosophical life going to do? He'll offer suggestions as to how things may be done in a better way. Think of the many recipes for social relationships humanity has known! The theosophical movement differs from all other movements in that it does not offer recipes, and does not say how things might be done in a better way. Efforts to find recipes do nothing for our future culture and civilization. Nor do discussions on how to create peace in the world. Setting up programmes is something that belongs to the past. The future depends on the existence of people who act in the right way out of their own resources. In theosophy we do not say what is the right thing to do, but show people how they can learn to do the right thing. If thirty people come together, it would not be theosophy to say that if they have a particular constitution they will live together in peace. Instead, every individual is shown how he needs to reach a level of inner development where he'll find the right way out of his own resources in his relationship with others. That is the mission of theosophy in a movement that serves the future.

Taking a broad view, we have been considering the world situation, and above all war and peace, in various lectures,⁴⁸ also the issue of women’s rights and the social question. As he becomes free, torn away from the compulsions of his environment, man is at the same time taken into the higher worlds, for he needs to be truly free to enter those higher worlds. No one can ever enter the higher world under compulsion. Here we see the good side even of chaos. If our whole civilization had not fallen into chaos, individuals could not have unfolded freely out of their own resources. They would always have been bound to their environment. The old order must break apart and become chaos. We face great changes in this respect and no one can hope to reform anything in the world except by means of inner development. Anything else would be amateurish prophecy.

We have tried in these two sessions—the last one and this one—to grasp the significance of the spiritual scientific movement as a movement for civilization. The next time we'll consider how human karma comes into play within the whole progress of civilization and look at individual karmic relationships of the human being. In other words, we'll consider what human beings take from one incarnation to the next and how they take part in the world process as they progress from incarnation to incarnation. This is the task we intend to take on in a week’s time.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive October 8, 1906

 

The extremely harmful effect of popular science

  

Rudolf Steiner, speaking in 1906:  "Popular science, busy as it is, has an extremely harmful effect because it is presented with an air of authoritative infallibility that can only be shown in its true light at some future date. People today have no idea how much they are subject to suggestion presented with an authoritative air."

Source: October 1, 1906

Anthroposophy : Radiant Love

 

Rudolf Steiner:  "All our seeking in anthroposophy would be just a refined form of egoism if we were not also interested in having other people in the world hear of the movement and take an interest in it, just as we ourselves love being part of it."

Source: October 1, 1906

What the world needs now is anthroposophy: The human being's share in the higher worlds

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, October 1, 1906

I am delighted to see you again after such a long time—the branch members and those of you who have joined the meetings in the course of the year. Let us hope that the winter which lies ahead will take our work and our spiritual movement some way forward again, and that we'll gain a little more depth in finding our way to the world of the spirit and living in it.

We have not seen one another for a long time but in a way this period is like all those other times when we were not together in outer terms. For the members of this branch are deeply and most eminently concerned to see this spiritual movement spread in the world as well as letting it enter into their own hearts. All our seeking in theosophy would be just a refined form of egoism if we were not also interested in having other people in this world hear of the movement and take an interest in it, just as we ourselves love being part of it.

The speaker has been able to talk to wider audiences and all kinds of different people in recent times, and it is good to know that people from all levels of society and of all classes have a longing for the world of the spirit, something which is also evident in the fact that the theosophical movement exists.

Perhaps we may just make a brief review of those wider audiences as we start our winter studies. The tour I was able to undertake to make the theosophical movement more widely known took me to Leipzig, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Alsace, Switzerland and Bavaria. I was able to speak in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Baden-Baden, Colmar, Strasbourg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Heidelberg, Basel, Bern, St. Gallen, Regensburg, Nurnberg and Weimar. In some places I gave lecture courses. The course in Leipzig consisted of fourteen lectures, the one in Stuttgart took more than a fortnight,³⁰ during which time people interested in the theosophical movement had to meet daily. Such courses are probably the most effective way of helping the theosophical movement gain deeper entry into our time. It is not so easy to spread the theosophical movement with sufficient intensity if one can only give one or two lectures and arouse initial interest But when people are given an introduction to life in the spirit for a whole two weeks, they can begin to realize that a new world can open up for them. There are, of course, infinitely many obstacles that prevent people from getting closer to the science of the spirit and from living with it One does have to go more deeply into the approach we have come to call theosophy, for only then will hearts and minds begin to get an idea, a feeling, that this higher world is something very real. Initially everything they hear is taken to be not only incomprehensible but also pure fantasy. People do not find it easy to let go of the accepted view that the things we speak of in theosophy are mere dreams and fantasies and to realize now that our spiritual movement is concerned with something that in a most profound sense is the very basis of the real world. Many think that people who talk of these things are remote from the realities of life. However one gradually comes to see the point of view that can be gained, and realize that this is something down-to-earth, not living in cloud-cuckoo-land, but is at deeper levels, giving us strength, insight and truth. It enables us to find genuine ways of achieving the great tasks humanity has been given in this world. It is prejudice to say that theosophy is inimical to life, that it denies life. One hears people say: ‘Theosophy presents the world in a very nice light, offering great ideals, but it deflects people from life itself, from the true enjoyment of and pleasure in life.’ It has even been said that theosophists may have nice things to tell, but that these are not wholesome.

This kind of prejudice will probably take longest to disappear. It will always be possible to find people who understand the things presented in theosophical literature and lectures. It will be harder for them to find their way out of the kind of inner responses and feelings that are part of their upbringing and acquired prejudices. Inner responses and feelings are harder to overcome than are thoughts that need to be discarded. You may even hear someone say: ‘Yes, of course, we want to devote ourselves to theosophy, but we also don't want to spoil things for people who want to make the most of life.’ They'll say that we must remember that young people should enjoy life. It is a question, of course, of what we take pleasure in, and the issue must really go deeper. For it is possible to look for better and more noble objects of pleasure and to work with these to take life to a nobler level. We can give life a new content and there is no need to spoil young people's pleasure in life, for we shall give them new kinds of pleasure and enjoyment. People often find it hard to understand that one may find the things others consider entertaining rather uninteresting—going to the cinema, and spending one's time talking about things that have nothing to do with the reality of life. Perhaps a day will come when we speak of today's popular amusements as of a cloud-cuckoo-land.

It probably does not happen very often that someone envies someone else the inability to enjoy things, but it does happen. We have a small theosophical group in one particular city. One of our theosophists, who takes a tremendous interest in the science of the spirit and has also adopted a certain theosophical life style, is living with someone else who is also interested in the science of the spirit but cannot yet give up his predilection for roast suckling pig, that is, he really loves to eat roast suckling pig. Sitting there eating his suckling pig he then gets pangs of conscience because he is still much given to this enjoyment. And he thinks the other individual is lucky because he no longer has a taste for suckling pig. The point is that the other individual has developed different needs. And the day may well come when people who are no longer looking for common amusements will be considered true examples, and people will look to them for the good.

Much deeper down lie the prejudices that come from learning and intelligence and prove an obstacle to humanity's progress. You can find an article in a journal about national epidemics. A well-known academic³¹ who works in the field of psychiatry and deals with issues that lie between psychology and psychiatry, writes about mass epidemics. He refers to a phenomenon that existed for 200 years, to the end of the Middle Ages, with excessive asceticism widely practised as a ritual, with people throwing themselves to the ground, scourging and torturing themselves, their fantasies going to extremes and leading to strange excesses. This may be seen as a disease. The psychiatrist calls it hysteria of epidemic proportions. He goes on to say that hysterics of that type are often open to suggestions that cannot be evaluated by thinking. When a person sees someone else who has hurt his arm, he'll feel compassion and do what he can to help. We need not go into the things that go on in normal people's minds. But there are others who feel the pain in their own arm, abnormally so, when someone gets hurt. This is due to suggestion. It can reach such levels that the individual is completely out of control, his inner life lacking all order and given up to all impressions coming from outside. When a materialistic soul expert speaks of such a phenomenon affecting whole populations, he is referring to public suggestion coming from particular groups—in medieval times from the monasteries—and becoming widespread. A kind of ‘disease of the age’ develops. People are not inclined to ask what they should think about such a thing when it comes up. They are wholly caught up in the suggestion. Such an expert will speak of the matter in all seriousness, but he fails to notice one thing, which is that an independent person who is capable of insight into himself will be able to recognize and clearly distinguish another kind of epidemic among the masses. This has reached many social groups today, even highly educated people. It consists in people living under the influence of specific suggestions, both positive and negative. If you speak of the truths to be found in the science of the spirit to such people, the truths will act as a negative suggestion on them. Such people cannot understand them; they will find them intolerable. Many materialistic prejudices that are widespread today act as positive suggestions. What do you find in medical, theological and law faculties? Suggestion that influences specific social groups and goes so far that one is perfectly justified in calling them a kind of disease, just like the kind of mass epidemic of which I spoke.

A well-known biologist has written something rather strange in a widely-read journal.³² It is strange—perhaps not so much for someone who only reads a bit here and a bit there, but for someone who studies the whole it is something he finds in 95% of the whole academic world. He will find that in future it will be possible to speak of a kind of academic madness, academic feeble-mindedness just as we now speak of hysteria. In the essay it says: ‘If a rolling billiard ball strikes another and makes it move, I cannot imagine that nothing passes from the one to the other.’ The scientist calls the peculiar spectre which emerges from the first billiard ball, creeping into the second one and setting it in motion under the influence of the first ball, the materia movens. He thinks he is enormously clever but is in fact only under the influence of materialistic suggestion, which affects him just as mass hysteria influenced people in the 16th century. Now just think how the suggestions to which a person is subject are apt to live around him. Their number is infinite. If they occur in large numbers—and it is possible to list a great many of them—they may be brought together in a picture that would be a disease picture of modern academic knowledge like that of dementia precox, which we keep hearing so much about.³³

There you see the unfreedom of those who are governed by suggestion. A little bit has changed since the Middle Ages. Only a theosophist is able to realize this. In medieval times people would speak of possession when something spoke out of a human being which was not that person himself. Today people laugh at the idea of possession and speak of an illness instead. This kind of possession, which existed in medieval times, has grown a little less today. It only shows itself in particular circles today. Another kind of possession, real and genuine possession, is however widespread today. The medieval kind of possession was astral by nature, today it is mental. The spirits to be found in academics today, spirits that possess them, are on the mental, the devachanic plane. In the world which is considered to be the only real world they come to expression as thoughts and are therefore also said to exist as thoughts. Just as the world of human feelings, inner responses, passions, drives and desires is not merely something arising from existence in a body, but is something independent, true and real in its own right, so the world of thoughts, too, is a distinct entity. It is just that the thoughts which human beings have are not real. These human thoughts are but shadow images of the real thoughts, just as human passions and feelings are only shadow images of something completely different. We have often spoken about the way these things are connected. We know that things we are able to observe in human beings through the physical senses are indeed the physical body, which is only part of the whole human being. We know that muscles and nerves, bones and blood are only part of the whole human being. These things, which we call the parts, the elements, of the human body, are part of the physical world. In the same way, however, human feelings and thoughts belong to another world, the astral world.

This is where modern logic takes the strangest leaps. People do not realize at all today that their own thinking, their own logic, should really tell them how impossible the conclusions are which they are drawing all the time, and that they are including things in their trains of thought that are obvious suggestions. It is terribly easy and it only needs some very commonplace ideas for an audience to accept what one is saying if for five minutes one presents them with an inevitable sequence of conclusions. They fail to realize that the debris of old life and of old ways of seeing things covers it all. That is the way it is with 'inevitable conclusions'.

Someone who was born blind and might be among us would be quite right in thinking we were indulging in fantasies when speaking of light and colour. This has never been a truth to him. He'll object that things can only be known by touch. He need not believe what we tell him, but he would nevertheless be wrong. What matters here is not that he is wrong but that he does not have the organ to perceive light and colour. The moment he is given that organ a new world will exist around him. True theosophy will never assume another world; it will merely approach it in a different way. The higher worlds of the theosophists are here around us, just as the world of colours is around the blind person. Someone born blind whose condition is operable may regain the use of his physical eye. We are saying no more than this in theosophy when we say that it is possible to develop the inner eyes. Just as it has been possible to achieve the physical eye, made with such art, so it is also possible to create organs out of the passions, instincts and feelings that live in us, organs of perception that will truly open up new worlds around the human being. It is thus possible to help human beings to achieve and develop this, so that they will be able to look into these other worlds just as they otherwise do into the physical world. This is the astral world of which we speak in theosophy. Within the outside world it is as real as is the world of colour within the world given by the sense of touch.

Someone who knows nothing of these worlds should not raise objections to them. It should be a general principle for everyone that we may only speak of things that we know something about and should never make statements about things about which we know nothing. All opinions about the science of the spirit based on the idea that those worlds must remain unknown to us are therefore a logical monstrosity that does no good at all. No one should ever say: ‘Any world I do not know about does not exist for me.’ So much to characterize the prejudices we meet. These are the suggestions made in today's academic world. And many, many people are subject to these suggestions. A lecture based on the science of the spirit is heard once, after which people continue to hear hundreds and thousands of things said to be highly significant, but they always involve elements that come not from materialistic science but from the materialistic interpretation of science.

It is hard to combat these suggestions with good sense, and this is something only someone able to see more deeply into the intellectual life of today is able to know. Popular science, busy as it is, has an extremely harmful effect because it is presented with an air of authoritative infallibility which can only be shown in its true light at some future date. People today have no idea how much they are subject to suggestion presented with an authoritative air. Take what I am saying merely as a characterization and consider how odd it is that nations struggle to rid themselves of one authority yet at the same time fall prey to new ones. In the past, people would fall for suggestion, with their I given up to something that was active in them, but someone able to look into the higher worlds would see real entities. Human thoughts relate to certain spirits in the ‘devachanic’ world the way shadows do to the actual objects. The thought images you have are shadows cast by spirits in the devachanic or mental world. The thought that lives in you is but such a shadow image, all by itself. Someone with vision, someone who has developed his higher sense organs, will see it in connection with a spirit. If you see a shadow cast on a wall you can only understand it if you relate it to the object which cast it. It is the same with your thoughts. Without anything to relate them to, your thoughts are shadows. They relate to spirits that are as real in a higher world as this hand of mine is here. Just as my hand casts a shadow on the wall, so do the higher spirits cast their shadows in this our world. And these shadows are your thoughts. The human being, as we see him before us, is really the scene of events that take place beyond the physical world. As a physical entity, man is in the first place complete in himself, and as such he lives in a physical world that is complete in itself. To understand the human being as a physical entity we have to remain in the physical world. To investigate and understand blood as a physical substance, for instance, you have to remain in the physical world. To understand the nature of feelings, inner responses and passions, you will either have to use empty phrases or relate these things to spirits that are behind the physical world, to a world that relates to this one as the world of colour does to the world of touch. Also you have to use a similar approach to understanding the world of thought. So you see that man has a share in the higher worlds, that the astral body extends into those worlds, and that the devachanic world for its part casts a kind of shadow into this world. Someone who knows nothing of those higher worlds is subject to them like a slave, powerless against powers that control the chains. Just as the physical person can only be free if able to develop the will to face another person in freedom, so can the astral nature of man only be free if it recognizes its connection with the whole astral world. For as long as people live only in their ordinary inner feelings, their astral nature has them on leading strings, as it were. They are always possessed by it. They come free when they recognize it. Just as we perceive and know the physical world around us, so we must face those spirits, spiritual eye to spiritual eye, and know who we are dealing with. It is the same for the world of human thoughts. This is the way to real freedom, seeing through the world around us. To gain the right measure of understanding we have to consider what lies behind the physical aspect. A beginning has to be made and you need to study these things; the world must study these things.

There is some justification for the following objection, which is also raised by many people: What good it is to us to hear someone tell us of worlds which we ourselves are unable to see? You see, it is the first step towards being able to see into those worlds oneself. Why is it the first step? Because the physical world appears in a somewhat different light to someone who has gained insight than it does to materialistic minds. A comparison may show the different standpoint a theosophist should gain in relation to the physical world. We may take our example from ordinary writing. Someone unable to read may look at it and so may someone who is able to read. They both see the same thing; there is no difference in what they actually see. The person who is unable to read will say: I see lines going down and up, longer and shorter lines. He'll be able to describe them. Someone who is able to read however will find that the lines have meaning. He'll not describe the shape of the letters but find meaning in them. That is how it is with the whole world when it is seen from the spiritual scientific point of view. Compared to this, take our modern conventional science. Here the world is described in the way someone who has not learned to read describes the letters. For the other person all things in the world become letters; they gain significance and he learns to read them. When someone unable to read describes the shapes of the letters, this cannot be said to be wrong. Many people say our ideas are divorced from reality when we say that the word or the world also holds a specific meaning. You cannot say anything against this objection; it is the everyday view of things. But there is another way of looking at things where every flower becomes a letter, every plant species a word, and the world a great book. The world holds something within it that goes beyond its physical aspects. The signs for this have no lips, however, and therefore meaning has to be given to them. A completely new world opens up in the devachan for someone able to read the writing of the plants. You can also think of every animal in the world as a letter, and you will gradually be able to decipher these letters. If you understand what comes to expression in animal lives you will relate to them as someone able to read and not as someone who merely describes the letters, which is the way of modern conventional science. Learning to recognize the word that lies in the animal you are able to see another, completely different world behind the physical world—the astral world. Learning to see the plant world as letters you gain the ability to see into the mental world. This is not something divorced from reality. Quite the contrary, it is something firmly based on reality that teaches us to see the abundant meaning of life. It truly is the case that we only perceive the true significance of spiritual insight into the world if we compare it with reading. What would be the point if I were to draw something on the board here and describe it if there was no meaning to it? It gains meaning in that we perceive its significance. And that is how it is with the world. We gradually come to realize why the world exists, what it can mean to human beings and what human beings themselves are within the world.

Telling you all this, I did not mean to present something new. Those of you who have heard about theosophy on several occasions will know it all. I have been telling it to you to give you a means of rebutting the statement that theosophy is unscientific, to arm you against objections reputed to be logical. Only someone using a shortsighted logic has objections to raise against the science of the spirit. A logic that explores every nook and cranny will show that no objection can be raised but that it is absolutely sensible. It has to be understood therefore that people who base themselves on a scientific point of view in their attacks on theosophy are doing so not for logical reasons but on the basis of suggestion. When you are free of such suggestion and know that thoughts are but the shadows cast by devachanic spirits, and if you then hear a professor who is under the influence of the mental world say that a billiard ball is moved by materia movens, which transfers to a second billiard ball—you can see behind the scenes and see that he is influenced by other spirits.

The earth is atremble, in a way. It presents us with major tasks. Questions arise from the serious challenges of our time. It will not be possible to solve the social question, which has already caused so much bloodshed, with the suggestions people are making at present. The political parties seeking to solve the social question are also under the influence of such suggestions. Someone able to see behind the physical aspects sees the demon who stands behind many a party supporter. It can never be otherwise than it was in the case of Robert Owen,³⁴ a noble and caring person with good knowledge of social conditions in England. He wanted to create an example of an economy where he asked good and bad workers to join him in establishing a social community. He based himself on the understandable prejudice that people are essentially good and one only needed to put them in a situation where they had a chance to earn a proper living. In such a situation, he believed, they would be able to have the kind of life they desired. But this philanthropist finally had to admit that it was not possible to start with practical measures in one’s efforts for social progress but that one had to teach people first, addressing their understanding.

Someone able to see into the world of the spirit perceives what lies behind the physical plane. He will see how people live together, some in the greatest misery, poor and oppressed by labour and need, and others indulging in superabundance, enjoying all kinds of things. If one does not go beyond the physical plane it will be easy to imagine how the situation can be changed. This is what most people do when they feel they are called to be reformers today. They do not find themselves in the same situation as someone who was born blind and after a successful operation suddenly sees the world around him to be full of colour. For then they would see all kinds of different spirits behind everything physical. When they try to bring their well-meant plans for reform to realization but take no heed of the spirits behind it all, the situation will be much worse fifty years later than it has ever been. All the social ideals of today would go grotesquely against the astral world unless this astral world of human passions, desires and wishes were to change as well. General misery, a terrible ferment in the world, a dreadful struggle for existence would then take the place of today's struggle which is terrible enough as it is. You need only look a little bit into the world of the spirit and you can see the situation. Human beings are not just bodies to be provided with food; human beings are also spirits, and they are in touch with other spirits. The task of those able to see the occult world is to make them aware of being comrades, members, of higher worlds. Imagine a human being, and a few beetles crawling around on this human being. The beetles can have no idea that this human being, this spiritual entity, is something different from themselves. They will describe the shape, e.g. of the nose. That is how human beings describe the heavens, Mars, the Sun, Mercury and the other stars. A modern astronomer is just like a beetle which has no idea that the nose belongs to a soul when he describes Mercury, Mars, the Sun. He describes them just the way he sees them, like a beetle crawling around in the cosmos. We shall only know how to describe the reality of things when we realize that the stars have souls, that spirit is present everywhere, that the whole universe is ensouled. That and nothing else is the aim with the science of the spirit. It is as logical as that. Prejudices, being sheer suggestion, make it difficult to make people aware of what this spiritual view of the world is really about.

The aim of this introductory lecture has been to show the resistance met by people who think in terms of the science of the spirit and who in the eyes of the world represent this science. Each of you may find yourself in a position where you have to show firmness in the face of views presented to you from the outside. It is part of the work in our groups to help members to stand firm. They should be sufficiently sure inwardly that in spite of everything they come up against in the world they have a living inner certainty of the world of the spirit and are thus armed against any objection that may be raised. It is not the amount of theosophical knowledge we have but our inner awareness, inner life and inner certainty that matter. Many people who represent other approaches want to enter into discussion with us, wanting to offer wisdom which theosophy already has. They keep saying things which a theosophist has long since left behind. He will characterize but not criticize. He will not make propaganda in the usual sense, for that cannot be our task. People must come of their own free will if they are to join our ranks. To make propaganda and agitate is not the theosophists' task. It therefore also is not for them to refute others. One seeks to characterize the standpoint of spiritual science itself. The other person has to enter into the spirit of it. Agitation—if a public lecture may be said to be such—consists in telling people: theosophy has this and that to offer. Anyone destined to come to it will come to it. A theosophist does not have to offer views and opinions. He speaks of realities in a higher world, and realities, facts, are beyond dispute. A theosophist presenting the spiritual scientific point of view will stop himself from presenting his own opinions. As theosophists we speak of ancient wisdom that has always been known to wise people. You'll never have two people having different opinions once they have entered the higher realm. At most it may be the case that one of them has not penetrated far enough. This is the kind of attitude a theosophist can develop. He should not impose himself on others, but he should be sure in his heart and sure of himself in presenting theosophy to the world. Someone who knows will also be able to find words for the knowledge he has in him.

This, then, is the way the theosophical approach, and other approaches which are in opposition to it, should be characterized and not criticized. If we develop this attitude more and more, we'll have the best possible means of being active theosophists in the world. We shall understand the world around us more and more and investigate it in the spirit. That is the theosophical way of doing things.

In conclusion one more example, one of those that will shock people when it is referred to in public. These things are simply true and can be found with the means of our spiritual research. I would like to describe a phenomenon of our time to you, and you'll see how we come to understand the world around us if we really penetrate the things which the science of the spirit has to offer. Please do not take my words amiss, for one will have to get used to the fact that there are things of which we do not yet have the least idea. Who would have thought fifty years ago that there is a substance where it just needs a tiny granule to damage our health? Fifty years ago no one knew anything about it. There are things that have an effect before people know about them and understand them. This substance is called radium. In this case, people did not yet have the physical instruments to understand it. When it comes to things of the spirit, people lack the spiritual instruments.

There are members of the socialist movement who are extraordinarily radical and would really like to hit out and destroy everything. Other members are to some extent conservative in their views. You find all kinds of different trends among them. One group within the socialist movement is a closed group with a remarkably homogeneous, like-minded view and the same way of doing things. They have been the least radical people. Basically this is the trade, the occupational group, which gave rise to the socialist union movement—the printers.³⁵ They were the first to develop a more formal set of rules within the social movement. Rates of pay were agreed on for the relationship between workers and employers. It has even gone so far that a newspaper is produced for the printing trade the editor of which is not a socialist at all, having been thrown out of the socialist party. This shows how moderate the group is.

Now it is possible to ask if we can investigate the spiritual causes of these things just as we can physically investigate the actions of radium. Yes, we can. Do not be too surprised at the answer given in the science of the spirit to the question as to why there is such a group within the socialist movement. It is due to the action of lead on the human soul. All things in the world around us, be they small or large, are the physical bodies of spiritual principles. Gold, silver, copper, everything that lives around us is body for a spiritual principle. Lead, too, is the visible body of a particular spirit. And anyone working with lead is dealing with the metal not just in its chemical sense but also in its spiritual nature. Lead not only affects the lungs; it also has quite a specific effect on the rest of the human being. So there you have the source of the unusual views held in this occupational group.

Now something else—something that happened to me just a few days ago. Someone I know well came to me who cannot explain why he is able to find analogies and see connections in his scientific work with a facility that is unusual even among academics. Such an ability is due to a highly mobile mental body. I thought I’d find out how this phenomenon comes about. After a time I was able to tell the man that he probably had a lot to do with copper. This proved to be true, for he plays the French horn. The small amount of copper in it had such an effect on him.

Now just think. Without knowing it, people are subject to all kinds of influences. I spoke of suggestion earlier. We now see the influence of the whole world of the spirit that is around the human being. And what is theosophy? It is a way of penetrating into the world of the spirit and its laws. And what does this mean? It means freedom, for only insight will give freedom. When we know something we can relate to it in the right way. Gaining insight in the spirit is therefore the greatest process of liberation we can ever possibly have. True development and progress lie in the things the science of the spirit can teach us. People will only come to the search for truth in the spirit when they want to be free. However, today they will not gain knowledge of the spirit, and we can see that it is impossible for them to do so, if they want to be free not only of social prejudices but also of everything else, including things they do not yet have the power of mind to understand. People who still depend on fashion and so on, will not be greatly inclined to consider the influence of the metals that exist around them. But a beginning must be made, a small beginning for something that is large, very large. What I wanted to do today was to take just a bit of a look at something in which the science of the spirit can hope to be a beginning.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive October 1, 1906

 

What the world needs now is Anthroposophy: Education based on spiritual insight

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, May 14, 1906

On a number of occasions I have taken the opportunity to reject the prejudicial view that the theosophical approach is far removed from practical life. Quite the contrary. We have often been able to show that theosophy should take us deeply into practical life, for it teaches us the laws of the spiritual principle that is continually shaping life all around us. People who only know the laws of life as it shows itself on the outside know only a small part of life. By far the greater part are the hidden things in life, hidden to the ordinary senses. I am sure it will not be very long before people come to realize more and more that in order to cope with life we have to study the hidden worlds. The materialistic view would lead to crises in all areas, above all in the sphere of health, and also in education, where the question arises: How should humanity educate its coming generation? Materialism would also lead to crises in everything connected with society, politics and civilization. Life would be such that one day people would no longer know how to help themselves. To explain what I mean let me say a few things on educational issues, for this will surely be of interest to everyone.

People who consider education from the materialistic point of view will only too easily arrive at a completely wrong set of rules. For they will never think of the way life follows its own strict rules and they will thus fail to realize that there are periods in life that have profound significance. They'll be quite unable to think, for instance, why the childhood period from the 6th to the 8th year differs fundamentally from the period that extends from the 7th or 8th year to sexual maturity. People who have no idea as to what happens to a young person at this time will also fail to realize how important it is to observe these periods most carefully. It matters that we know what the human being is in these three periods—the first, which is up to the 6th or 7th year, the second, up to the 14th or 15th year, and then again the period that follows for the next 7 or 8 years. These are three ages in human life that have to be studied with care, not just on the surface but also in occult terms, which has to do with the worlds that are hidden to the ordinary senses. You know that human beings consist not merely of this physical body but have a physical body, an ether body, which is the basis of the physical body and similar to it in configuration, and then the astral body, which to clairvoyant vision looks like a cloud in which the other two bodies are embedded. The astral body also holds within it the principle that bears human I-nature. Let us look at these three bodies as they are in the developing human being.

To get the right idea you have to understand that the periods in which a human being can be seen in physical existence are preceded by the period before birth when the human being is in the maternal womb. You need to distinguish in purely physical terms between life before birth and the periods that follow, and understand that a human being would not be able to live if he were born too soon, coming too early into the externally visible world. He would not be able to live in that world because his sense organs, through which he relates to the outside world, would not yet be fully developed. Our organs develop when we are in the maternal womb until we are born—eyes, ears and everything we need to live in the physical world. And a human being cannot take up contact with the physical world before his organs have been adequately prepared in the protective shelter of another physical body. Birth is the time when the human being has reached a level of maturity where he is able to be in contact with the world without a protective shelter. It will, however, be a long time before this is also the case for the ether body and the astral body. They have not yet reached the point where they can be in direct contact with the world around them. A process which is very similar to the one that happens when a human being is born in the physical body takes place for the ether body in the period from birth until about the 7th year. It is only then that we can say the ether body has been born. The astral body is only born in the 14th or 15th year, and is then able to develop independent activity in relation to the surrounding world.

So you have to understand that no serious demands should be made on the ether body up to the seventh year and none on the astral body up to the 14th year. If one were to expose a child's ether body to the brutal world, it would be just like putting him out into the outside world in the fifth month of his embryonic life, though it would not show itself with the same vehemence. The same applies to exposing the astral body to the outside world before the 14th year. This is something you must understand. Up to the 7th year, only the physical body has been born to the point where the surrounding world may fully influence it. The ether body has so much to do with itself up to the 7th year that we would damage it if we were to influence it from outside in any particular way. Up to this point, therefore, we should only influence the physical body. The education of the ether body may be taken in hand from the 7th to the 14th year, and it is only permissible to influence the astral body from outside in education from the 15th year onwards.

To influence the human physical body is to let the child gain external impressions. These will develop the physical body. Anything in this direction that has not been done by the 7th year can hardly be made up for later on. Up to the 7th year the physical body is at a stage where external sensory impressions should be brought to it to develop it. If the child's eyes see only beautiful things up to the 7th year, they develop in a such way that they will have a feeling for beauty for the rest of that life. Later on it will not be possible to develop a sense of beauty in the same way. The things you say to a child or the things you do are much less important in the first 7-year period than the kind of environment you create for the child and everything the child sees and hears. During that time, inner powers of growth need to be helped and supported by external impressions. The child's creative spirit will make a piece of wood, with a few dots and lines to mark eyes, nose and mouth, into a human figure. A doll that is as beautifully made as possible and given to the child will tie the child down; the inner powers of the spirit are then fixed on to something that is already laid down and not encouraged to be active themselves. As a result, the creative powers of imagination will be almost completely lacking in later life.

This is very much how it is with all impressions gained in the sense-perceptible world. What matters is what you yourself are in the child's world, anything children see and hear directly. They will be good people if they see good people around them. They imitate the things they perceive around them. It is this power of imitation, the influence of examples, that we must value most highly. The right approach will therefore be to do as many things as possible which your child can imitate. This, then, is where the emphasis should lie as we take care of the physical body in the 1st to 7th years. It is not yet possible to influence the higher bodies by deliberate educational measures at this age; during this time, when they are still very much caught up in themselves, you influence them by what you are. A wise person will bring wise thinking to effect in the child's mind just because he or she has that wisdom. Apart from this, anyone bringing up and educating a child should seek to be as complete as possible in themselves when with the child, to think good, noble thoughts, just as a healthy maternal body has a healthy influence on the child's body.

The time when you can influence the ether body by means of educational measures begins with the 7th year. Two things have to be considered—habits and memory, both connected with the ether body's development. A person shapes his ether body by his habits and by taking things up into memory. We should therefore try to give the growing young person a solid foundation in life that is based on good habits. Someone who does something different every day and does not have a secure foundation for his actions will lack character later in life. To develop a basic set of habits is therefore something to be done in the time from the 7th to the 14th year. And we must also influence the memory at this time. What is needed, therefore, is to give the child sound habits and a treasury of knowledge that has been memorized. It really is one of the errors of our materialistic age to think that children should be made to form their own opinions as early as possible. Quite the contrary, we should do everything possible to shield children from this. This is a time when children should still learn things that are given with authority. The people around a child should not merely influence him by example in his second 7-year period, but by direct instruction. Great powers of memory do not always develop with ‘why’ and ‘wherefore’ but by basing everything on authority. Children must therefore have people around them on whom they can depend, whom they can trust, and who make them feel they can believe in their authority. The young person should only be guided towards independent insight and judgement after this period. If you take away authority too soon you deprive the ether body of its opportunity to develop thoroughly. It is therefore best not to offer proof and opinions to children in their second 7-year period, but examples and parables. Opinions act only on the astral body, and this is not yet free to accept them. We should tell the child as much as possible about great people. The effect of considering such historical figures should be that the child seeks to emulate them. The question as to death and birth is also much better answered by means of examples. You might show the child a caterpillar, for example, how it makes its cocoon and how finally the butterfly emerges from the pupa. This is a truly beautiful example of how a child develops from its mother. Much can be achieved by taking examples from the natural world itself.

It is equally important to teach the child not moral principles but moral parables. This is very evident in some of the sayings of Pythagoras. Instead of reciting: ‘In your undertakings, you should not concern yourself with things which you can see right away are bound to fail,’ he said pithily: 'Don't smite the fire with your sword!' This is a particularly good example. And to teach that one should not get mixed up in anything for which one is not yet sufficiently mature he said: 'Refrain from beans!' Apart from the purely physical there was also a moral aspect to this. Black and white beans would be distributed when decisions had to be made in ancient Greece, and a count would be made of how many white and how many black beans had been returned. Elections were also done in this way. And so instead of saying: 'You're not yet mature enough to get involved in public affairs,' Pythagoras simply said: 'Refrain from beans!'

This addresses the creative powers of imagination and not the powers of the intellect.Fld GA The more you use images the greater the influence on the child. Goethe's mother could not have done anything better than to tell her son beautiful moral tales.²⁸ She never preached at him. Sometimes she did not manage to finish a tale and he would then invent his own ending.

It is particularly bad if developing young people are urged to be critical before they reach their 14th year, to act according to their own opinions, so that they lose the beneficial powers of authority around them. It is extremely bad if there is no one to look up to. The ether body will wither, growing weak and sick, if it cannot hold on to great examples as it develops. And it is also particularly bad if they develop their own creed and want to have opinions about the world before they are ready for this. They will only be ready if their astral bodies can develop in freedom. The more we are able to protect them from forming opinions and taking a critical view too early, the better will it be for them. A teacher will be wise therefore to try to let reality show itself in the events themselves before the astral body has come free, and not invite young people to assume a fixed creed, though this is done over and over again in materialistic education. The chaos among the religious confessions would soon vanish if this principle were followed. Powers of judgement and logical thinking should be developed as late as possible and only when a feeling for individual nature arises as the astral body comes free. Before that human beings should not plump for anything individual; the object of their faith should be something given. But in the years that follow individual nature comes most powerfully to expression in the relationship between the sexes, when one individual feels drawn to another.

So you see, if we make a proper study of the three bodies of man we will indeed have a thoroughly practical basis for the proper education aid development of the human being. The science of the spirit is therefore not impractical, it is not something up in the clouds, but something that gives us the best possible directions on how to take action in life.

There is urgent need today to go more deeply into the science of the spirit, for otherwise humanity will come to a dead end. People are critical about earlier times today, saying children were not called on early enough to make their decisions on God and the world. But that was really quite a healthy instinct, and today we must return to this more and more deliberately. The instinctive insights of the past have gone, and with them a degree of certainty about individual things in life. It would be wrong, however, to ruin the human race all at once. If people had been utterly radical in following materialistic principles in education, in medicine, law and so on, our human order would have broken up long ago. But it was not possible to destroy it all; part of the past has remained. Materialism would take humanity into a dead end, and this is why we need the science of the spirit.

Teachers who really still have a feeling for a child's soul simply feel stifled by the standardization in the education system and by regulations that are a caricature of what they should actually be, based on the superstition that we are only dealing with the physical body. Even religious faith does not protect us from this. What matters is that people get a feeling for the spiritual, which really goes beyond the sphere of the senses. This is also why people who stick to external formulas for their principles of education will not find the right way. They cling to traditional church dogma and do not want to know about the evolution of the spirit. This is mainly what we have to deal with. The things we need today must come from spiritual worlds. For anything materialism has produced is fit only to make people sick in their physical and higher bodies. A serious crisis will be inevitable unless humanity goes deeper. Many things point very clearly to the important decisions now being made among humanity. You have to look at the inner aspects; external forms will not do. People's longing for and interest in the spirit cannot be killed. Spiritualism has been found to be an answer by some of the people who harbour such longings. There the aim is to demonstrate the reality of the spirit in a material way. And it is remarkable to see the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church which, after all, ought to be wholly given to the spirit, with every external action a reflection of something that exists in the spirit. But it is strange to note what happened just recently, which is that someone in the Church has been looking for external proof of the spiritual. A book by Lapponi, personal physician to the Pope, has appeared in which he is making a downright plea for spiritualism.²⁹ This is strange because the people for whom the book has been written clearly are no longer spiritually minded; they need tangible proof that there is a world of the spirit. It certainly is something to reflect on when the Pope's personal physician makes a plea for spiritualism. The longing for the world of the spirit is there, but no feeling for the teaching given about that world in their own sphere.

Materialism thus creeps into religious confessions which basically should not be the least bit materialistic. And you can see the importance of a movement that appeals to man's true insight into the spirit, a movement that is not ascetic, however, and removed from everyday life, but at every moment truly helps you really to understand the practical significance of this spiritual element.

Now we also should not ask: ‘How can I quickly develop all kinds of occult powers?’ or: ‘How can I spin a cocoon around myself so that I won't be touched by reality?’ People who ask such questions are egoists and nothing but spiritual gourmets. If they only want to enjoy the things that please them, they are simply doing, at a slightly more refined level, what someone who is a gourmet does even when it comes to his breakfast. A true theosophist seeks to understand life and to serve it. Parents take a theosophical approach when they consider it to be their task to help the child's development at every step. Don't ask: ‘How can we do that in this day and age?’ It is important to know that what matters is to keep firmly in mind that the soul is eternal. People are prepared to believe in an eternal life into which they enter after their death—immediately, if possible. But when someone is really and truly convinced of the soul's eternal nature, the time from his 2nd to his 80th year is simply a span of 78 years to him, and what is that compared to eternity? You then believe in the eternal nature of existence, and this is also something you must feel and which calls for patience. We must get in the habit of working to serve the whole of humanity, and it does not really matter at all if we can put anything we learn to immediate use or not. We must above all seek to put it into practice again and again, and everyone is bound to find some small area or other where he can do so. But nothing will ever happen if people merely go about criticizing everything. It is better to do just a very, very little, without complaining that we cannot apply the things we have learnt, than to do nothing at all. This should be the law governing our practice. Life changes of its own accord when we work with the science of the spirit in this way, and you are changing the world without actually noticing it when you become a theosophist. The main thing, and the wisest thing we can do, is first of all to grasp the essence of spiritual science and then to live by it as intensely as we are able. In that way we make it part of life; the rest will follow of its own accord. Mothers and teachers who are theosophists will do things differently without even noticing it compared to someone who has no idea. If you know the configuration of the human being, you will quite instinctively observe the different kinds of development in a young person. Above all genuine, deeper understanding of theosophy will put an end to the kind of hypocrisy where the grown-ups waste their time on all kinds of trivia and then enter the nursery with deadly serious intentions. This happens because people have no faith in the spirit.

We have seen once again that the science of the spirit offers a practical approach to life and that it is senseless prejudice for opponents to say that it is remote from life. In reality it takes us right into life. Today, solid middle-class citizens feel rather special at being able to talk about theosophy. A time will come, however, when people will see this differently. They will realize where keen interest in life really lies. A time will come when people will say: ‘People were completely reactionary when they clung to a stream in time that held no potential for the future, not wanting to know about the great practice in life that offered humanity the prospect of new insights in the spirit, insights of the kind given to us in the theosophical view of the world, insights that will grow firm in us and of increasingly greater practical value because the theosophical way of thinking has been kindled and has come alive in us.’

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive May 14, 1906