The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. On the So-Called Dangers of Occult Development

[ 1 ] When speaking of occultism or the occult development of human beings, it is necessary first of all to agree on how the cultivation of such a thing relates to the actual theosophical work in the world. Since its inception, the latter has fulfilled its task precisely by making a certain amount of occult truths accessible to humanity. These truths about the supersensible worlds, which can be learned from theosophical literature and lectures, are essentially ancient. But until the last third of the 19th century, it was neither customary nor necessary to communicate these truths to the world in the form in which they exist today as theosophical truths. The cultivation of these truths was a matter for the so-called secret schools and secret societies.

[ 2 ] Anyone who wanted to know something about the ancient truths concerning the inner world had to be, as they say, an accepted disciple, a disciple of the great teachers of humanity; and it was unheard of for anyone to go out, as we must do today, to communicate certain elementary truths to the world. Those who were admitted had to pass certain tests of their character, their intellectual and other abilities, and there was a very strict grading system within the school. It was impossible, for example, for someone who had just been accepted to be told the secrets of higher grades. In short, everything was strictly regulated, and the outside world knew nothing of the existence of such a secret science, which is, after all, the only true occultism.

[ 3 ] Who were those who found their education there? As a rule, they are not known at all; one was a blacksmith, one a cobbler, a court counselor, a carpenter. One knew only what he represented in the world; one did not know that these people were wise men who could look deeply into the spiritual and supersensible world. This changed in the last third of the 19th century; today it is necessary that at least the elementary part of the secret sciences be communicated to the public in theosophical writings and lectures and elsewhere. We will see in a moment that this is possible and why this is so.

[ 4 ] Let us first take a look at that ancient time, which actually lasted until the 14th century and partly into the last third of the 19th century. What is happening now—the publication of certain elementary teachings of occultism—has been prepared by the occult movement founded in the 14th and 15th centuries by a highly esteemed individual who became known to the world under the name Christian Rosenkreutz. Only the initiated know who this Christian Rosenkreutz is or who is behind him. One thing is certain: he belongs to the most advanced individuals of modern times, who had to shape the occult knowledge of the Middle Ages in such a way that it fits into modern life.

[ 5 ] In the last third of the 19th century, some were to go forth to proclaim to humanity what it needs to know today. Theosophy is nothing other than the elementary teaching of occultism.

[ 6 ] If we now look back to those distant times when occultism was practiced in secret, there were three ways in which human beings could come into contact with the supersensible worlds: first, as initiates; second, as clairvoyants; and third, as adepts. In ancient times, these were three strictly separate types, and if we want to understand what the occult development of human beings is all about, we must keep these three concepts clearly in mind.

[ 7 ] What is meant by a clairvoyant is actually well known. I would like to emphasize that the clairvoyant is the more important of the two, because he has higher senses. It is very easy to explain what a clairvoyant is. Hidden abilities lie dormant in every human soul. These can be developed, enabling the human being to see into the world that is hidden from the ordinary senses. There are secret scientific methods for doing this. When a person applies them to themselves, they are not unconscious in the same sense as ordinary people when they are asleep. These methods enable the astral body, when it pushes itself out with the ego, to perceive the spiritual world around it. At first, this appears as a flood of light, as light and color phenomena, then the person begins to hear in the night.

[ 8 ] This is a real experience that people have for themselves: that in this transitional stage they initially have a spiritual world around them just as they have a physical one. This is the beginning of true clairvoyance.

[ 9 ] Those who truly want to reach the stage of clairvoyance must become able to carry over into their daytime consciousness what they initially see at night, for it would only be half a achievement if they could only see into the astral world at night. If they can truly attune themselves to seeing not only what is physically present in humans and animals, etc., but also perceive as a radiant aura what humans and animals feel and sense, then they have reached the stage of modern clairvoyance. Thus, the clairvoyant is someone who truly sees into the spiritual world and can tell about it. Suppose there is a region where no one has ever seen a railroad, and a person from there is transplanted to a place where there are railroads. That person will know about railroads from personal experience. He can then tell about it at home from his own experience—in the same way, the clairvoyant can bear witness to the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] But someone who is a clairvoyant is not yet what one would call an adept, nor is he what one would call an initiate. If such a person, who has learned about a railroad through his own perception according to the above examples, now returns home, he will not be entrusted with building a locomotive. The same is true of the clairvoyant. He cannot yet do what someone who has practice and knowledge in the supernatural world can do. This is how the clairvoyant who has merely seen what is in the higher worlds behaves toward the adept.

[ 11 ] And yet another is the initiate. Again, a comparison: Imagine a person who sees all colors and lights, and another who is completely nearsighted. The first knows nothing about the laws of the world of light, while the other, who cannot see far, knows all the laws very well as a trained physicist and scientist. There are people who are highly initiated, even though they are not clairvoyant; at least this is true of all the old schools, though not to the same degree today. In the past, it was possible to work in this way, because you must not forget that it is a long process to train clairvoyants or initiates. Many incarnations are necessary for some.

[ 12 ] Nowadays, such cooperation between clairvoyants and initiates is no longer really possible; that is why the Rosicrucian school no longer strictly separates these things. For modern humanity no longer has any concept of the selflessness that used to prevail in the secret schools. Such cooperation was particularly common in the Egyptian secret schools. But this complete trust no longer exists today; modern humanity cannot even imagine it. For this reason, the Rosicrucian schools have only developed initiates and clairvoyants to a certain degree. On the other hand, one must be very careful with adeptship; it would only harm the world. For people are very averse to believing that spiritual forces are at work in everything. A storm would be unleashed, and the result would be that the preparatory understanding would be greatly endangered. First, clairvoyants and initiates must proclaim the occult knowledge, and only then will the adepts gradually appear.

[ 13 ] What is an adept? There are adepts in all fields. Consider the human being himself. The human being consists essentially of the physical, etheric, astral bodies and the ego. The various elements of human nature develop very differently with each stage of life. This is a very important chapter. For the occultist, the human being is born repeatedly, first physically from the physical mother. There the physical body is enclosed by the physical womb; the various blood streams and juices pass from the mother to the child. When the child is physically born, this physical womb is, as it were, detached from the child all around. This is the first birth. At this point, the etheric body is not yet born. This second birth only takes place with the change of teeth in the seventh year of life. Until then, the etheric body is surrounded by the etheric sheath, which does not actually belong to the child's specific etheric body. In the seventh year of life, the etheric body is actually born. The sheath is pushed back, and the outer expression of this event is the appearance of the teeth, which the human being retains. As the teeth emerge, the clairvoyant sees how the etheric body is born from its mother's shell. Until sexual maturity, the human being is still enveloped by its astral mother, who is there from the beginning and remains there even after the seventh year of life. Then this astral mother is pushed away, and only now is the astral body born, as the physical and etheric bodies were born earlier. The rise of the human being to sexual maturity signifies the birth of the astral body. It is only between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight that the I is fully born.

[ 14 ] Once people know how such a development takes place, it will become clear what influence this will have on education. I have described this in my book “The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science.” In this booklet you will find all the rules that need to be taken into account in this case. Now, you see, a teacher who would master this system would be an adept in the field of education. This practical work from the spiritual worlds is what adeptship is. Up to the age of seven, a kind of solidification of forms takes place in the human being. All the forms of the brain and the bone structure are created by the age of seven. They continue to grow, but what is not there by the age of seven is irretrievable. Thus, what is irretrievable can be neglected in education. From then on, the etheric body becomes free. Now you can see how the teeth that humans get are an expression of whether this consolidation and the formation of the etheric body that is just being born are in the right proportion to each other. The two things are connected: the formation of the teeth and the formation of the etheric body. Everything that is growth and reproduction depends on this. If one is not in order, the other will not be either. Here we can see how spiritual science explains the connection between the teeth and the etheric body. For example, women with bad teeth are more likely to suffer from childbed fever.

[ 15 ] There must be something of the principle of solidification and something of the principle of softening; there must be harmony between the principles of solidification and softening. Rickets, for example, develops when the principle of softening is stronger. Now suppose that the principle of solidification prevails, then the seeds are sown for tuberculosis and arteriosclerosis. The moment a person is able to control the etheric body and the physical body through supernatural causes, they become an adept in the field of child rearing, just as Paracelsus, who is not understood today, was an adept because he could see the invisible principles at every moment. Now you can imagine what a storm would break out if such teachings were introduced at the university. Humanity must first be prepared gradually, then it will also come to demand of its spiritual leaders that they confirm their teachings with works from the spiritual world. The fact that there are initiates is connected with the fact that the spiritual world can be explored and found according to its governing laws through clairvoyance. But once it has been found and spoken of, then everything the clairvoyant says is comprehensible to the ordinary human mind, and anyone who claims that they cannot understand it does so not because they are not clairvoyant, but because they are unwilling to use their ordinary human mind sufficiently.

[ 16 ] One can therefore be an initiate without being clairvoyant, but one must then rely on the clairvoyant. And in a certain sense, the theosophical movement wants to help in such a way that everything that is to be proclaimed must be obtained through clairvoyants. What do we want from the public? We want to put them in a certain relationship with initiates who understand without being clairvoyant themselves.

[ 17 ] That is the task of the theosophical movement; that is also the correct relationship between the teachings that are proclaimed and how they are conveyed to the general public. Now, this real penetration into the supersensible worlds is based on very specific methods. I have already spoken here in detail about the Rosicrucian method, so I will only mention a few points.

[ 18 ] If one wants to lead a person up into the higher worlds, if one wants to make him clairvoyant, it is necessary that the forces already present in him—thinking, feeling, and willing—be developed first. This already includes much of what constitutes the first elementary stages of difficulty that are mentioned when one wants to draw attention to the dangers. Clairvoyance is too beautiful a thing for certain people today, and those who hear something about theosophy are eager to become clairvoyants. They are not very impressed when one tells them that it is necessary to learn something before they can achieve this.

[ 19 ] The first thing a person must consider is that they must train their thinking, train it thoroughly, and do so here, before they become clairvoyant. It is extremely difficult today to explain what is meant by training the mind. For when you are able to look into the higher worlds through the opening of the higher senses, you will see that these worlds look completely different from what you imagine here. As a rule, those who cannot yet see into these worlds will find it difficult to imagine what can be experienced there, what the impressions are like, and even less so in relation to the world of clairaudience and the harmony of the spheres. But one thing remains the same throughout all worlds: logical thinking. If you have learned this here, it will be a sure guide in the astral and spiritual worlds. The impressions are very different, but the logic is the same; it only begins to change in the highest worlds.

[ 20 ] What is offered in theosophical works and books is thinking free of sensuality. If you do not accept this, you expose yourself to a certain danger. You can cause someone to see into the astral world, but it must not be forgotten that if you are not firmly grounded in healthy thinking, it is extremely difficult to distinguish truth from deception there. And those who cannot distinguish are simply insane, they are not mentally healthy and therefore expose themselves to the danger of losing their balance when the astral world collapses upon them.

[ 21 ] One gradually learns to grasp the astral world by working on one's feelings, and this is done through the imagination. I want to show you how this approaches people, trains them, and leads them into the astral world. This happens because all the ideas that are otherwise given to people in dogmas and abstract concepts are transformed into images, so that they appear pictorially. What we think, speak, and learn are abstract concepts, which are initially speculation. This does not lead anyone into the higher worlds. Only when concepts are transformed into images does the human being gradually gain access to the higher worlds.

[ 22 ] How does the transformation of thoughts into images take place? In the Rosicrucian school, the teacher says to the student: Look at the plant. With its roots, it strives into the ground, the stem rises straight up, and at the top are the flower and the fruit. Now compare the plant with the human being. With superficial thinking, one might be tempted to compare the flower with the head of the human being, and what is at the bottom of the plant with the feet of the human being. In truth, the head of the plant is the root, and what the plant chastely holds up toward the light, the organs of fertilization, is exactly the opposite in the human being. The flower has turned these organs toward the light. Imagine this clearly: if you were to hold the plant's reproductive organs not upward but toward the center of the earth, they would be permeated with desire and passion. Thus, in humans we have the inverted plant, which is at the same time permeated with desires and passions. Thus, the human body is flesh, and the plant body, which is chaste, is a body that has not yet developed into flesh.

[ 23 ] And now look at the animal: it stands between the plant and the human being. The plant, the animal, and the human being above form the cross that runs through all of nature. Now one says to the student: Look at the plant, how it turns its chalice upward, kissed by the sun, by the ray of light called the holy lance of love. Man has had to exchange the plant body for flesh permeated with desire, but he has a high ideal before him.

[ 24 ] Here we must consider the human heart and larynx. There are two kinds of organs in the human being: those that are on the way to becoming imperfect and will gradually fall away, and those that are only in the process of development. All the lower organs, the sexual organs, will fall away. The heart and larynx, on the other hand, are organs that will only reach perfection in the future, that will only find their development in the future.

[ 25 ] I speak to you. My thoughts are within me. I clothe them in words. These come out of the larynx, produce sound vibrations, and thereby communicate my thoughts to your soul. The larynx is the apparatus for producing air waves and bringing out what is in the soul. If someone could invent a device that could solidify these waves, then you could pick up my thoughts, my words. In the future, the larynx will not only produce words, but will one day be the creative, generative organ that will produce beings similar to humans.

[ 26 ] At certain times, the plant nature of human beings had not yet been permeated by the lustful qualities of the flesh. The organs that developed last from animal nature are the first to disappear; these are the reproductive organs. These existed as plant organs long before human beings existed in flesh. This is why pictures of hermaphrodites with plant organs can be seen in collections. When the Bible tells of Eve's fig leaf, this symbol should in truth be understood to mean that these organs were the last to develop in the flesh. This is how we must understand the religious documents. The sexual organs are organs in decline, whereas the larynx is undergoing complete transformation, and when humans become chaste again, the larynx will turn back to the spiritual sun. The chalice of the plant developed into the passionate form of flesh, and again the larynx will become the chaste, pure chalice, fertilized by the spirit, held up to the holy spear of love. This is also the symbol of the Holy Grail, its high ideal.

[ 27 ] Compare this, try to feel all the shivers of these images; there you have just one of the images given to the Rosicrucian student. And as you wander through them, you will gradually notice that your feelings become reality for you. You perceive that these feelings radiate light. It is always streaming forth, but the lower human being does not see it. The person who experiences this mystery of the imagination learns to see his feelings. That is the beginning.

[ 28 ] But one thing must be clear here—from the moment you begin to transform your inner life into light, you will see everything emanating from yourself—you must also be able to bear what you see, and this requires a strength of character that very few people have. For example, if you lie without being clairvoyant, it is bad enough, but if you lie as a clairvoyant and you see how the lie becomes visible and what it means on the astral plane, then you understand why it is said that lying is murder there. And it is so. Suppose you have seen an event, formed an idea about it, and tell something that is not true, that is, something you have made up. The correct vibration emanates from the object and the false vibration emanates from you, and this collision is a terrible explosion; and every time you do this, you attach a horrible being to your karma that you cannot get rid of until you have made amends for what you have lied about.

[ 29 ] Everyone who wants to become clairvoyant must develop three virtues that are necessary. First: self-confidence; they must be sure of themselves. Second: self-knowledge; they must never shy away from seeing their mistakes, and third: presence of mind. For many things affect him on the astral plane, things that are always around us, but it is something else to see them. Therefore, these qualities must be developed above all else, and it is actually nonsense when schools or societies try to make people clairvoyant without guiding them in this way.

[ 30 ] If the student is influenced in a different way, namely through what is called occult writing, he is led up into the spiritual devachanic world, into hearing. There one must immerse oneself in the images one has of the course of human development. Let me give you an example of such an image.

[ 31 ] The physicist will say: there could be no human beings then. — Human beings descended from the deity at that time and formed themselves in the glowing masses. The transformation is a long process. If you could see what the seer perceives, you would see that he enveloped himself in a body of fire.

[ 32 ] Where has the fire that glowed on the earth gone? Where is it? — In your blood. All the warmth that has always been and is in humans and animals is the fiery glow of the earth. And when you are able to transform your blood so that it glows — this will be the case when the human larynx is transformed into the Holy Grail — then humans will once again send out glowing masses. When human beings immerse themselves in an image such as this, they can attain the ability to see and hear. I would like to draw your attention to the introduction to the Apocalypse of John, which reads: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants, as it must soon take place.” These are images that have been used for development in the Rosicrucian schools. The clairvoyant must learn to decipher such images. The development of the earth will be the Word, and the Word will be with man, and man will create man through the Word.