The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Questions and Answers

[ 1 ] The following question arises: If we are to acquire new abilities through ever-new incarnations in successive races, and if, furthermore, nothing that the soul has acquired through experience is to be lost from its storehouse, — how can it be explained that in humanity today, absolutely nothing remains of the abilities of will, imagination, and mastery of natural forces that were so highly developed in those times?

In fact, none of the abilities that the soul has acquired during its passage through a stage of development are lost. But when a new ability is acquired, the one acquired previously takes on a different form. It is then no longer expressed for its own sake, but as the foundation for the new ability. Among the Atlanteans, for example, the faculty of memory had been acquired. Modern humans can, in fact, form only very faint notions of what the memory of an Atlantean was capable of. Everything that appears in our fifth root race as, so to speak, innate concepts was first acquired in Atlantis through memory. Concepts of space, time, numbers, etc., would pose entirely different difficulties if modern humans were to acquire them from scratch. For the ability that modern humans are to acquire is the combinatory intellect. The Atlanteans had no logic. Yet every soul power acquired earlier must recede into its own form, sinking below the threshold of consciousness, if a new one is to be acquired. The beaver would have to transform its ability to intuitively construct its artificial structures into something else if, for example, it were suddenly to become a thinking being. — The Atlanteans, for example, also had the ability to control the life force in a certain way. They constructed their marvelous machines through this power. But they possessed none of what the peoples of the fifth root race have to recount as a gift. There were still no myths or fairy tales among them. It was through the guise of mythology that the Atlanteans’ life-mastering power first manifested itself among the members of our race. And in this form, it was able to become the foundation for the intellectual activity of our race. The great inventors of our race are incarnations of “seers” from the Atlantean race. In their ingenious ideas, something comes to life that is grounded in something else—something that was within them as a life-creating force during their Atlantean incarnation. Our logic, knowledge of nature, technology, and so on grow out of a foundation that was laid in Atlantis. If, for example, an engineer could transform his power of synthesis back, the result would be something akin to what the Atlanteans were capable of. The entire body of Roman jurisprudence was transformed willpower from an earlier time. The will itself remained in the background, and instead of assuming forms on its own, it transformed into the thought-forms that find expression in legal concepts. The Greeks’ sense of beauty is built upon the foundation of immediate forces, which found expression among the Atlanteans in a magnificent cultivation of plants and animal forms. In Phidias’ imagination lived something that the Atlanteans used directly to transform real living beings.

[ 2 ] Another question is this: What is the relationship between the science of the spirit (theosophy) and the so-called occult sciences?

Esoteric sciences have always existed. They were cultivated in what were known as secret schools. Only those who underwent certain tests could learn anything about them. They were always told only as much as was appropriate to their intellectual, spiritual, and moral capacities. This had to be the case because higher knowledge, when properly applied, is the key to a power that, in the hands of the unprepared, is bound to lead to abuse. Through spiritual science, some of the elementary teachings of the secret sciences have now been popularized. The reason for this lies in the current state of affairs. Humanity today, in its more advanced members, has reached such a level of intellectual development that, sooner or later, it would arrive on its own at certain concepts that were previously part of esoteric knowledge. However, it would acquire these concepts in a stunted, caricatured, and harmful form. For this reason, initiates have decided to share a portion of esoteric knowledge with the public. This will provide the opportunity to measure the human progress occurring in cultural development against the standard of true wisdom. Our understanding of nature, for example, leads to ideas about the causes of things. But without an esoteric deepening, these ideas can only become distorted images. Our technology is advancing through stages of development that can only benefit humanity if people’s souls are deepened in the spirit of the spiritual-scientific view of life. As long as the peoples had no access to modern knowledge of nature and modern technology, the form in which the highest teachings were communicated—through religious imagery, in a manner that appealed solely to the emotions—was beneficial. Today, humanity needs these same truths in a form accessible to the intellect. The spiritual-scientific worldview did not arise from arbitrariness, but from an understanding of the historical facts presented. — Certain parts of esoteric knowledge, however, can even today be communicated only to those who submit to the trials of initiation. And even with the published portions, only those who do not limit themselves to a superficial acquaintance but who truly internalize these things—making them the substance and guiding principle of their lives—will know how to make use of them. What matters is not to master the teachings of spiritual science intellectually, but to permeate one’s feeling, sensibility—indeed, one’s entire life—with them. Only through such permeation does one come to experience something of their truth value. Otherwise, they remain merely something that “one can believe or not believe.” Properly understood, the truths of spiritual science will provide a person with a true foundation for life, enable them to recognize their own worth, dignity, and essence, and give them the greatest courage to face existence. For they enlighten them about their connection to the world around them; they point them toward their highest goals and their true purpose. And they do this in a way that meets the demands of the present, so that one need not remain caught in the conflict between faith and knowledge. One can be a modern researcher and a researcher of the spirit at the same time. However, one must then be both in the true sense.