From the Akashic Record
GA 11
Translated by Steiner Online Library
Prejudices Arising from “Science” (1904)
[ 1 ] It is certainly true that there is much in contemporary spiritual life that makes it difficult for those seeking the truth to embrace the insights of spiritual science (theosophy). And what is said in the essays on the “Life Questions of the Theosophical Movement” may serve as a hint at the reasons that exist in this regard, particularly for the conscientious seeker of truth. Many of the statements made by the spiritual scientist must seem utterly fantastical to those who test them against the certain judgments they believe they must form based on what they have come to know as the facts of scientific research. Added to this is the fact that this research is able to point to the immense blessings it has brought—and continues to bring—to human progress. How overwhelming it is, indeed, when a person who wishes to build a worldview based solely on the results of this research is able to utter these proud words: “For there is an abyss between these two extreme views of life: one for this world alone, the other for heaven.” To this day, however, human science has found no trace anywhere of a paradise, of an afterlife, or of a personal God—this relentless science that probes and dissects everything, that shrinks from no mystery, that explores the heavens beyond the nebulae, that analyzes the infinitely small atoms of living cells as well as chemical compounds, that breaks down the substance of the sun, liquefies air, will soon even transmit telegraphic messages wirelessly from one end of the earth to the other, already sees through opaque bodies, introduces navigation under water and in the air, and opens up new horizons for us through radium and other discoveries; this science, which, having demonstrated the true kinship among all living beings and their gradual transformations of form, is now drawing the organ of the human soul—the brain—into the realm of its thorough research.” (Prof. August Forel, Life and Death. Munich 1908, p. 3.) The confidence with which one believes one can build upon such a foundation is revealed in the words Forel adds to the above remarks: “By proceeding from a monistic view of life, which alone takes all scientific facts into account, we set aside the supernatural and turn to the book of nature.” Thus, the serious seeker of truth finds himself confronted with two things that pose significant obstacles to any inkling he may have regarding the truth of the spiritual scientific communications. Even if he harbors a feeling for such communications—indeed, if through a more subtle logic he perceives their inner justification—he may be compelled to suppress such impulses if he must acknowledge two things. First, the authorities, who recognize the persuasive power of established facts, maintain that everything “supernatural” stems solely from fantasy and unscientific superstition. Second, I run the risk of becoming an impractical person, useless in life, through my devotion to such supernatural phenomena. For everything accomplished in practical life must be firmly rooted in the “ground of reality.”
[ 2 ] Not everyone who finds themselves caught in such a dilemma will easily work their way through to an understanding of how things really stand with regard to the two concepts described. If they could, they would see, for example, with regard to the first point, that the findings of spiritual science are in no way contradictory to scientific fact-finding. Wherever one objectively examines the relationship between the two, something quite different becomes apparent in our time. It turns out that this fact-based research is heading toward a goal that, in the not-too-distant future, will bring it into full harmony with what spiritual research must establish from its supersensible sources in certain areas. Of the hundreds of cases that could be cited as evidence for this assertion, let us highlight one characteristic example here.
[ 3 ] In my lectures on the evolution of the Earth and humanity, I have pointed out that the ancestors of today’s civilized peoples lived in a region that once covered the part of the Earth’s surface now occupied by a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean. In the essays “From the Akashic Records,” more attention has been given to the soul-spiritual qualities of these Atlantean ancestors. In spoken presentations, descriptions have also often been given of what the surface of the Earth looked like in the ancient land of Atlantis. It was said that at that time, the air was permeated with water vapor. People lived in a mist that, in certain areas, never cleared to the point where the air became completely pure. The sun and moon could not be seen as they are today, but were surrounded by colored halos. There was no distribution of rain and sunshine at that time as we experience it today. One can explore this ancient land through clairvoyance: the phenomenon of the rainbow did not exist back then. It first appeared in the post-Atlantean era. Our ancestors lived in a land of mist. These facts have been gleaned through purely supersensible observation; and it must even be said that the spiritual researcher does best to meticulously divest himself of all conclusions drawn from his scientific findings; for such conclusions can easily lead him astray from the unbiased inner meaning of spiritual research. Now, however, let us compare such findings with certain views to which some natural scientists today feel compelled to subscribe. There are researchers today who, based on the facts, find themselves compelled to assume that at a certain stage in its development, the Earth was embedded in a mass of clouds. They point out that even today, cloudy skies predominate over clear ones, so that life is still largely subject to the influence of sunlight that is attenuated by cloud cover; therefore, one cannot say that life could not have developed within that former cloud cover. They further point out that those organisms in the plant kingdom that can be counted among the oldest were ones that could develop even without direct sunlight. Thus, among the forms of this older plant kingdom, there are none that, like desert plants, required direct sunlight and dry air. Indeed, with regard to the animal kingdom as well, a researcher (Hilgard) has pointed out that the giant eyes of extinct animals (such as the ichthyosaurs) indicate that twilight-like lighting must have existed on Earth during their era. It does not occur to me to regard such views as not in need of correction. They interest the spiritual researcher less for what they establish than for the direction in which factual research finds itself compelled to move. After all, some time ago, the journal Kosmos—which takes a position more or less in line with Haeckel’s views—published a noteworthy essay that, based on certain facts from the plant and animal kingdoms, pointed to the possibility of a former Atlantic continent. — If one were to compile a larger number of such examples, one could easily demonstrate how true natural science is moving in a direction that will, in the future, lead it to merge with the stream that can already be nourished today from the sources of spiritual research. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough: spiritual research is in no way at odds with the facts of natural science. Where such a contradiction is perceived by its opponents, it does not refer to the facts at all, but rather to the opinions, which these opponents have formed and which they believe, to necessarily follow from the facts. In truth, however, Forel’s opinion cited above, for example, has not the slightest connection with the facts regarding nebulae, the nature of cells, the liquefaction of air, and so on. This opinion presents itself as nothing other than a belief that many have formed out of their need for faith rooted in the sensory-real, and which they place alongside the facts. This belief has a strongly dazzling effect on people today. It leads to a very particular kind of inner intolerance. Those who adhere to it delude themselves into regarding their own opinion as the only “scientific” one and viewing the perspectives of others as arising solely from prejudice and superstition. It is indeed strange, then, to read the following sentences in a recently published book on the phenomena of mental life (Hermann Ebbinghaus, Outline of Psychology): “The soul finds help against the impenetrable darkness of the future and the insurmountable power of hostile forces in religion. Under the pressure of uncertainty and in the terror of great dangers, ideas naturally come to mind—by analogy with the experiences one has otherwise had in situations of ignorance and helplessness—as to how help might be found here as well, just as one thinks of life-saving water in a fire or of a helping comrade in the heat of battle.” “At the lower stages of civilization, where people still feel very powerless and beset at every turn by eerie dangers, the feeling of fear—and, accordingly, the belief in evil spirits and demons—understandably predominates. At higher stages, on the other hand, where a more mature understanding of the interconnection of things and greater power over them give rise to a certain self-confidence and stronger hope, the feeling of trust in invisible powers also comes to the fore—and with it, the belief in good and benevolent spirits. But on the whole, both—fear and love—coexist, remaining a constant characteristic of human feelings toward their gods, though their relationship to one another varies depending on the circumstances.” — “These are the roots of religion... Fear and distress are its mothers; and although it is essentially perpetuated by authority once it has arisen, it would have died out long ago if it were not constantly reborn from those two.” — How everything in these assertions has been shifted, everything thrown into confusion; how this confusion is illuminated from the wrong perspectives. Furthermore, how strongly is the person expressing this opinion under the influence of the belief that his opinion must be a universally binding truth? To begin with, the content of religious imagination has been conflated with the content of religious feeling. The content of religious imagination is drawn from the realm of the supernatural worlds. Religious feeling—for example, fear and love toward supernatural beings—is readily made the creator of the content, and it is accepted without any hesitation that religious imagination does not correspond to anything real at all. Not in the remotest way is the possibility considered that there could be a genuine experience of the supersensible worlds—and that feelings of fear and love cling to the reality revealed by such an experience afterward, just as, after all, no one in the midst of a fire thinks of the water that will save them, or in the heat of battle of the comrade who will help them, unless they have known the water and the comrade beforehand. In such a line of reasoning, spiritual science is dismissed as fantasy precisely because religious feeling is allowed to become the creator of entities that are simply regarded as nonexistent. This way of thinking completely lacks the awareness that it is possible to experience the content of the supersensible world just as it is possible for the external senses to experience the ordinary sensory world. — A peculiar phenomenon often arises with such views: they fall into the very kind of reasoning for their beliefs that they portray as objectionable in their opponents. Thus, in Forel’s aforementioned work, we find the following sentence: “Do we not live anew, in a hundred times truer, warmer, and more interesting way, in the ‘I’ and in the souls of our descendants, than in the cold and misty mirage of a hypothetical heaven, amid the equally hypothetical songs and trumpet blasts of supposed angels and archangels, whom we cannot imagine anyway and who therefore mean nothing to us?” Yes, but what does “what one” finds “warmer” or “more interesting” have to do with the truth? If it is indeed true that a spiritual life should not be derived from fear and hope, is it then right to deny this spiritual life simply because one finds it “cold” and “uninteresting”? The spiritual researcher finds himself in the following position vis-à-vis such individuals who claim to stand on the “solid ground of scientific facts.” He says to them: whatever you present in the way of such facts—from geology, paleontology, biology, physiology, and so on—I deny none of it. Admittedly, some of your assertions certainly require correction by other facts. But such correction will be provided by natural science itself. Apart from that, I say “Yes” to what you present. It does not occur to me at all to oppose you when you present facts. But your facts are only one part of reality. The other part consists of the spiritual facts, which alone make the course of the sensory facts understandable. And these facts are not hypotheses, not something that “one” cannot imagine, but the experience, the knowledge of spiritual research. What you put forward beyond the facts you have observed is, without your realizing it, nothing more than the opinion that such spiritual facts cannot exist. In truth, you offer nothing as proof of this claim of yours other than the fact that such spiritual facts are unknown to you. From this you conclude that they do not exist and that those who claim to know anything about them are dreamers and fantasists. The spiritual researcher takes nothing—absolutely nothing—away from your world; he merely adds his own to it. But you are not satisfied with this approach; you say—albeit not always clearly—“one” must speak of nothing other than what we speak of; we demand not only that others acknowledge what we know, but we also demand that everything we know nothing about be declared a mere figment of the imagination. Anyone willing to go along with such “logic” is, admittedly, beyond help for the time being. He may use
[ 4 ] Anyone who understands the development of the human soul will find it quite understandable that, due to the tremendous advances in the natural sciences, people’s minds are initially dazzled and today cannot find their bearings in the forms in which higher truths have traditionally been handed down. Spiritual science restores such forms to humanity. It shows, for example, how the days of creation in the Bible reflect things that are revealed to the clairvoyant gaze.11See: Rudolf Steiner, The Mysteries of the Biblical Creation Story, Complete Works, Dornach 1961. The mind bound to the sensory world finds only that the days of creation contradict the findings of geology and so on. In recognizing the profound truths of these days of creation, spiritual science is just as far from dismissing them as mere “mythical fiction” as it is from applying any kind of allegorical or symbolic interpretation. How it proceeds, however, is entirely unknown to those who still fantasize about the contradiction between these days of creation and science. Nor should it be believed that spiritual research derives its knowledge from the Bible. It has its own methods, discovers the truths independently of all texts, and then recognizes them again within them. This path, however, is necessary for many contemporary seekers of truth. For they demand a spiritual science that shares the same character as natural science. And only when the nature of such spiritual science is not recognized does one fall into bewilderment when it comes to protecting the facts of the supersensible world from the dazzling effects of opinions seemingly based on natural science. Such a state of mind was even foreseen by a man of warm spirit who, however, could find no spiritual-scientific, supersensible content for his feelings. Nearly eighty years ago, such a figure, Schleiermacher, wrote to Lücke, who was much younger than himself: “When you consider the current state of natural science, as it increasingly takes shape as a comprehensive understanding of the world, what does the future portend—I won’t even say for our theology, but for our Protestant Christianity... It seems to me that we will have to learn to do without much of what many are still accustomed to thinking of as inseparably linked to the essence of Christianity. I do not wish to speak at all of the six-day creation, but the concept of creation, as it is usually conceived... how much longer will it be able to hold its ground against the force of a worldview formed from scientific combinations, from which no one can escape? ... What is to become of it, my dear friend? I will not live to see that time, but can go to sleep in peace; but you, my friend, and your contemporaries—what do you intend to do?” (Theological Studies and Critiques by Ullmann and Umbreit, 1829, p. 489.) Underlying this statement is the view that the “scientific combinations” are a necessary consequence of the facts. If they were, then “no one” could escape them; and whoever is drawn by their feelings toward the supernatural world may wish to be granted the opportunity to “rest peacefully” before science’s onslaught against the supernatural world. Schleiermacher’s prediction has come true insofar as “scientific combinations” have taken hold in wide circles. But at the same time, there is now a possibility of coming to know the supersensible world in just as “scientific” a manner as the relationships among sensory facts. Anyone who familiarizes themselves with spiritual science to the extent that is already possible today will be spared from many forms of superstition, yet will be able to incorporate the supersensible facts into their mental imagery, and thereby shed not only all other forms of superstition but also the notion that fear and distress have created this supersensible world. — Anyone who is able to bring themselves to adopt this view will no longer be held back by the notion that engaging with spiritual science might alienate them from reality and practical life. They will then recognize how true spiritual science does not impoverish life but rather enriches it. It will certainly not lead them to underestimate the telephone, railroad technology, or air travel; but they will come to see many other practical aspects that are currently overlooked, since people believe only in the sensory world and therefore recognize only a part—not the whole—of reality.