The Rudolf Steiner Archive

40. The Inner Development of Human Beings — The Future of Humanity

Article in the “Mühlheimer Zeitung”, No. 86, February 16, 1906

[ 1 ] Cologne, February 15. On Monday and Wednesday, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Secretary-General of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, spoke in the Isabellensaal at the Gürzenich on two topics that are of the utmost interest to us, as they deal with the inner development and the future of humankind. In his first lecture on “the inner development of humankind,” the speaker highlighted the aspirations and tasks of the Theosophical Society, which aim to form the core of a universal brotherhood of humankind—regardless of faith, nationality, social class, or gender— and to cultivate an understanding of the core truth of all religious life, as well as to explore the deeper spiritual forces that lie dormant in human nature and the rest of the world. One of the tasks of Theosophy is to foster and elevate the abilities and powers lying dormant within human beings in a systematic and educational manner. Although this must be regarded as a task of Theosophy, there is no requirement for every member of the Theosophical Society to undergo such inner training under the guidance of knowledgeable teachers; rather, it is left entirely to the discretion of the individual. Such training is desirable only when a person is driven toward it from the depths of their innermost being. The development of inner abilities in esoteric circles has been practiced since the earliest times, as it has always been. In antiquity, this took place in secret schools; later, it occurred primarily in more intimate circles within societies and orders. In esoteric schools, a systematic effort is made to explore the physical, mental, and spiritual forces that currently interact, so to speak, in a disorderly manner within the human being, so that the soul and the spirit may become masters of the individual and overcome the physical instincts. Theosophy teaches that human beings belong to three realms—the physical, the mental, and the spiritual—and that their nature is subject to the laws of these realms. Knowledge of these laws fosters a person’s inner development. First and foremost, it is necessary to listen to the teachings of those who are knowledgeable in spiritual matters without prejudice and to allow them to take effect; for one does not yet possess the spiritual tools to penetrate the higher worlds. Therefore, the first thing required of the student is unreserved, unbiased devotion. He must, as it were, be able to make himself an empty vessel into which the foreign world flows; he must become completely selfless and master of his desires and aversions. He should accept pleasure and pain with equanimity; furthermore, one more thing is required: he must strictly regulate his thinking, and this thinking should take on the inner character of the spiritual world. Plato required that anyone admitted to his school first complete a course in mathematics, so that their thought life might be a reflection of undisturbed mathematical thinking and reasoning; then the laws of the spiritual world flow into the student. They must then allow their thinking to influence their actions. Thus, nowhere is there any arbitrariness; only the lawful prevails. Then the human being becomes free from the entire sensory world; his spiritual self rises above the sensory shell. Thus he becomes a student of wisdom, a homeless being who lives only in the spirit; he no longer lives merely with the things shaped by the spirit, but with the shaping spirit itself. Immediately, all doubt and all superstition vanish, for he knows that the true nature of the spirit is freedom from personality, doubt, and superstition. To attain higher knowledge, a person must acquire four qualities. First, he must learn to distinguish the eternal from the temporal, and truth from mere inclination; second, to properly value the eternal and the real in contrast to the transitory and the unreal; third, six qualities: control of thought, control of action, perseverance, tolerance, faith, and equanimity; the fourth quality is the desire for liberation. Through these stages, the path leads to higher inner insights.

[ 2 ] In his second lecture, Dr. Steiner outlined a vision of humanity’s future based on the theosophical worldview. He explained that human destiny is not limited to what occurs between birth and death. Otherwise, one would have to regard it as an unjustifiable phenomenon that one person enters the world with all the prerequisites for a happy existence, while another, mentally and physically underdeveloped, has no prospect of a good life. These phenomena can only be explained if one does not regard life between birth and death as the only life a human being experiences. Human beings, said the speaker, must be viewed from the perspective of development. Just as there are individuals who are highly developed or underdeveloped, so too are there entire peoples who are more or less developed. These facts suggest that human beings have acquired abilities in previous lives, and that the abilities they acquire in this life will be carried over into future lives. Nothing in the world is without a cause; everything is connected in the closest chain of causality. Everything we possess today in terms of spiritual life we have acquired in previous lives through our own efforts. Theosophists call the law that determines our destiny the Law of Karma; it states that everything we have acquired through work and virtue, as well as every mistake and transgression we have committed, must become apparent in this or another life and, in accordance with the law, governs and determines our existence. This perspective is what first makes our existence understandable and allows us to recognize our relationships with the world around us. After death, the physical body—as an organism living on the mineral plane—returns to the mineral plane, to earthly matter, and dissolves into it; the soul, however, remains in the world of souls, to which it belongs, until the influences of a physical-sensual nature that the body has imprinted upon it have been purged. This initial period of the soul in the world of souls is a painful one for it, because it cannot act upon the desires, drives, and passions inherited from the physical body, since it lacks the physical organs to do so. It must overcome the physical-sensual aspect of its being; but once it has done so, the soul, too, dissolves into the world of souls, and the human spirit now has a clear path to enter the spiritual realm. There, it brings with it the experiences gathered during life; there, it purifies them by subjecting them to spiritual laws; and thus enriched, the spirit descends to a new life and to further tasks. Just as this occurs in the life of the individual, so it occurs in the life of nations—all with the ultimate purpose of increasingly animating matter. The work of humankind is nothing other than labor upon matter; it strives to bring about the spiritualization of one’s own body and the entire environment, to bring forth one culture within itself after another, one culture around itself after another, until all matter on the planet dissolves and the overall result achieved by the human spirit—the World Spirit—freed from earthly matter, creates new planets for itself and ascends to new, higher spheres of activity.