The Rudolf Steiner Archive

22. Insights into the Higher Worlds III

[ 1 ] I would like to briefly outline once again what we began last time, so that we can then build on it. You will recall that I attempted to explain to you the various degrees of higher perception, breaking them down into those activities that lead us up into the higher realms—the realms of the higher beings—which we must consider if we truly wish to trace the entire history of human development through the various planets. I ask you to bear in mind that in such a consideration one must necessarily remain quite sketchy; one must discuss many things that are truly quite difficult to express in ordinary, everyday terms, for we are dealing here with things for which ordinary language was not actually created. Ordinary language is meant to describe what is sensually real—that which surrounds us. Therefore, it is quite inadequate for all the things we wish to bring to mind today.

[ 2 ] In the schools where, for centuries—or more precisely, since the fourteenth century—such ideas have been developed in Europe in the same way that we are now freely permitted to discuss them publicly, in these schools—especially at the higher levels—one did not speak in the language of everyday speech, but rather in what is known as a symbolic language. First, one had to master a specific language. First, one had to master a specific way of expressing oneself, which then made it possible to characterize things in that distinctive manner that is necessary if one wishes to venture into such supersensory realms.

[ 3 ] Now let me briefly repeat what I hinted at last time. I told you that, first of all, our ordinary, everyday way of looking at things—and this is also the approach taken by our science—is what is known as material knowledge. This has its object outside of ourselves. Its object lies in the sensory world, and it initially builds knowledge with the help of the image, then moves from the image to the concept, and from the concept to the “I.” In our material cognition, we are thus dealing with: object, image, concept, and “I.” These four elements must be taken into account.

[ 4 ] If we are now to advance to the first stage of higher knowledge, then the object must be set aside; the external sensory object must be eliminated. Thus, of what we possess within our ordinary knowledge, only image, concept, and “I” remain. In place of external objects no longer stimulating us, of external objects no longer acting upon our sensibility, and of sensation no longer being present—in place of all this comes illumination, which forms images from within for our ordinary images, so that they are not visions, not illusions, but become what mystics of all ages have called “imaginations.” If one wishes to form a correct concept of what is here called “imaginations,” then one must already be able to disregard—truly disregard—everything that still requires a reference to an external object. I believe I mentioned last time that this often causes great disappointment for students whom one seeks to train in this mode of cognition. People expect that if a higher form of knowledge is to be offered to them—one that appears as it does in ordinary life—it will approach them from the outside. That was also the mistake in spiritualism. I do not wish to speak against spiritualism. The mistake lay solely in the method. The error is that the spiritualist perceives things as if they were earthly objects that stimulate the senses. That is why, fundamentally, spiritualism is not a good preparatory school for a desire for higher knowledge, even though I know very well that many of our best Theosophists have passed through spiritualism. But in the days before the Theosophical Society popularized these higher insights at their elementary levels, there were no schools. They did not build upon the spiritualist method at all. They set out directly to transform people in such a way that they would be capable of truly ascending into the supersensible world without external prompting. The spiritualist attempts to bring the supersensible world down to the level of his ordinary perception. He tells himself: I can recognize that external objects stimulate me; if the higher world is to be a reality, then the beings of a higher world must appear to me just as ordinary beings do. They must fit into my sphere of perception. The occultist, however, says: “No, the objects and beings of a higher world do not descend here—not to the realm where one sees with the eyes and grasps with the hands—but one must ascend to them; one must develop within oneself the faculties necessary to see in the higher world.” Therefore, for humanity today, a far better training—than any external activity—to attain higher vision is the path—however strange it may seem to those who expect something else—the path through the arts. What a person—if not passing directly through the school of clairvoyance—should make use of in order to return to a deeper form of seeing, to attain imagination, is immersion in what art can offer, and indeed art in all its forms. Here we must be clear about the role art has long played in the course of human development. Through such things, many things become clear to us that would otherwise be extremely difficult to understand.

[ 5 ] Follow this advice so that you may fully grasp what I have to say. Let me take you on a journey into what are known as the Greek Mysteries—the Greek Mysteries—from the time before Homer wrote his poems. Those were the times when this Greek spirit and seer recited ancient dramas that the greatest minds sought out. But because they were unable to look back clairvoyantly and found no positive science in them, what they achieved appears more like a hunch than true knowledge. But if you go back to those earlier times—the ones Nietzsche, for example, sought to glimpse when he conceptually distinguished the Dionysian from the Apollonian—if we go back to those times, we see how teachers led their students to hidden cultural sites and prepared them to witness the primordial drama there. What did they see there? They saw the mystery of the world’s existence and the world’s evolution. What we strive to clarify with many words was experienced by these students through astral vision, through true insight: the descending Deity who sank into the material world, who sank into the material world in primeval times. And then the transformation of this original form of matter into the forms that surround us today—into minerals, plants, and animals. It was shown there how, long ago, the invisible, supersensible Deity was creating in the cosmos, and how it formed and condensed those fruits from which our creation arose, how, as it were, the physical emerged from the spiritual out of cloud-like formations, and how, from the initial forms, the more complex ones gradually developed, culminating in the microcosmic human being. This entire process of the world’s becoming was presented to the students. This was called “the great world tragedy.” First, the great living deity that sank into matter, was buried within it, only to come to life again in the human being—the deity that is buried alive and comes to life again. And now it was made clear to the student: This process takes place within you; it has taken place within you and continues to do so. You were already present in those forms that came into being in time immemorial. In those forms, you were at the beginning of becoming, and they transformed and transformed until they reached your present form. Today you must feel how that which lives within you as soul, as spirit, rises again; how that which has sunk into matter—the divinity—rises again as from a grave from which the divinity is resurrected; and that when you then utter “I,” the divinity expresses itself within you. All of this was presented with complete clarity. And through this, things that have long since been lost to modern humanity were reunited. This was made possible by placing these students in a state of consciousness entirely different from that in which human beings find themselves in everyday life, so that they were surrounded by the living images of the entire process of world-becoming. The point, then, is that the students felt, so to speak, the consciousness that made the objects of everyday life visible to them shining within themselves. The external objects faded away around them, but what one sought to show them appeared within them in far more vivid colors than the objects of nature could ever present themselves. The fire of the deity stood before their souls. And the fire, which underwent a metamorphosis so that everything else emerged from it, was there in a way similar to how a dream appears to the dreamer on a superficial level.

[ 6 ] If you interpret this dream as something that possesses regularity and harmony—and, to a large extent, as that which surrounds us in the external world—then you have a faint idea of what was going on in the soul of such a student of the primal drama. It was said of such a student that he had seen the world in twilight. Into these images then resounded the world event, this entire process of the world’s becoming. An imprint of such imagination, of such images around us, is the visual arts. It relates to this imagination, to this vision, just as a shadow relates to the actual object. It thus shares a kinship with clairvoyant imagination, whereas our material vision has no kinship with clairvoyant imagination.

[ 7 ] Artistic imagination is a shadow of the imagination. This is not to say [that I intended to portray artistic imagination as inferior to clairvoyance]. Back then, when people could still awaken their clairvoyant abilities—so that they could see into the distant past—art did not yet exist. What was experienced then was at once religion, art, and science. Everything that led people into the higher worlds was contained therein. Later, these three separated. Humanity had to go through this phase. And since that time, art has been an outer shadow image. Outer art is inner imaginative vision. It is part of the course of development that humanity lost this original vision for a time. What has been awakened as a result is a different state of consciousness. And this presents art in a tangible, visible form in a later present. That is why artistic vision is so beneficial for imaginative vision. This is the first stage: illumination.

[ 8 ] The second stage was the one in which the image also disappears, where we are dealing only with concepts and the “I,” and where [in place of the image] inspiration takes its place. Inspiration is present for a person when the so-called continuity of consciousness sets in. Continuity of consciousness means that a person is not only conscious during everyday life but continues this consciousness into sleep. As you know, a partial brightening of sleep is dream consciousness. The ordinary person experiences this dream consciousness only in a chaotic manner. For those who develop toward clairvoyance and illumination, the dream images begin to become regular and orderly. In their dreams, they see truths that they would not see unless they cultivate this dream life into a regular practice. For such undeveloped individuals, dreamless sleep always remains a state of consciousness. There are, therefore, clairvoyant individuals who have progressed to the point where they have filled a portion of their sleep with regular dreams that reveal new worlds. This marks the beginning of this stage of illuminative clairvoyance, the imagination. Then they also see how other people, who do not possess this ability, live within their dreams.

[ 9 ] Now, the person guiding such an individual must help him—this student—to bring his dream visions into everyday reality; that is, to enable him to perceive in everyday life what he perceives in these dream visions. Let’s be very clear about this. The ordinary dreamer: What does he see? He has experienced something during the day. This appears to him as a reminiscence in his dream. It is an echo of his daytime experiences. Or else, he perceives his surroundings in some way. He hears a train rushing by. He wakes up and realizes that he has symbolically perceived the clock ticking next to him as a train. Or the moods a person is in can also express themselves symbolically in a dream. For example: A person runs a fever and dreams of a boiling stove. I am telling you facts here that actually happened once. Please keep in mind that I am citing only events that actually occurred as examples. Now let’s assume a person dreams of ugly animals. Under the guidance of the secret teacher, this chaos then ceases, and the student begins to perceive things that do not originate from everyday life. Things are then revealed to him that he does not know from our world. Only when the student is able to carry this over into everyday life do we make what he experiences the subject of occult wisdom.

[ 10 ] So how is what I have described as chaotic made into something orderly? It starts with the basics. For example, you dream under the guidance of the teacher. The exercises are performed as meditations, and they have the effect of making you actually see a suffering person in your dream. The suffering person is before you in a certain situation. You very soon become convinced that you were not dreaming, nor that it is real—but rather, you become convinced that you were with a friend who is suffering or has suffered. You did not see anything sensory there, but rather you experienced the soul, the true life of the soul. You will then experience not only a single soul life of this kind, but soon you will experience soul life in abundance. You must find your way into the diversity of these visions. You must learn to grasp them properly. This is a long, patient process, but we must undertake it. Then we will carry this over into our everyday life.

[ 11 ] You will then be able to see the same thing in everyday life while maintaining full consciousness. You will then see not what is physical, but what is spiritual. You must imagine that you will be surrounded by the spiritual. When you, as a clairvoyant, stand face to face with a person, at first you will see nothing more than any other person sees. But when you turn your attention to their soul, they become spiritually transparent to you. This, however, must be preceded by the proper dream state. Then the rest will follow, for these are, after all, very specific stages.

[ 12 ] The next stage is one in which consciousness no longer fades—or at least does not need to fade—where dreamless sleep is experienced while conscious, where you are able to wake up early in the morning knowing that you have had experiences all night long, truly lived through them. This experience of dreamless sleep does not take the form of such symbols. At first, it cannot be compared to the world of images that surrounds us in dream-filled sleep. What first appears here in dreamless sleep is a world of sounds and speech, a world of tones and words. Dreamless sleep is initially filled with words. You see, in the early stages of this clairvoyant development, you initially experience this only sporadically and in isolated instances. You simply know in the morning that something was said to you. You remember what was called out to you. You know quite precisely: Something like this could not be called out to you in your present life, in your ordinary life. It is perhaps a great truth that you could not experience in ordinary life. This calling out, this hearing, was something spiritual. It becomes more and more widespread until, finally, the entire life of dreamless sleep is a continuous conversation with other beings.

[ 13 ] A prerequisite, however, for not succumbing to illusions in this world is that one has already attained a certain higher degree of inner selflessness. Those who criticize a lot, who like to speak disparagingly about the world and its phenomena, will very often—perhaps at this stage of development—be exposed to the most terrible, deceptive ideas. Therefore, the teacher will, above all else, repeatedly impress one thing upon the students. He will tell the student: Try, over and over again, to simply ask questions and let the answers come to you from this state. This is something quite different from what one actually does in ordinary life. In life, one is quick to come up with an answer. Try once to view life from this perspective. Everyone today says, “I mean this,” or “That is my view.” That is how people speak today. The occultist, however, who wishes to rise to this stage, should never speak that way. But once he has prepared himself, he should be able to speak differently inwardly. He should pose questions to the world and learn to completely refrain from giving an answer himself. This is a state of mind that Goethe, who knew it, describes in simple words. He says: We are not created to answer the problem, but to pose the problem, to raise it quite clearly, and then to await what follows with reverence. Creating this frame of mind is immensely important for the student at this stage of development. Therefore, it is very useful at this stage for the student to possess the self-restraint and selflessness to undertake a truly important task and to refrain from forming any opinion. For what he can say is, as a rule, only what corresponds to his ordinary cleverness. He is already at this point. But he wants to go beyond it, and therefore he should completely refrain from answering and wait to have the answer given to him. In this state of dreamless sleep, it is whispered to him. From this state springs a world that grows ever deeper and deeper—a world of conversation.

[ 14 ] I would like to draw attention to one such passage—that profound statement made by one of our most distinguished minds, Goethe. Those who have read or heard Goethe’s fairy tales will recall a passage that reads:

“What is more magnificent than gold?” asked the king. “Light,” replied the snake.

“What is more refreshing than light?” he asked. “Conversation,” replied the

[ 15 ] In this passage, Goethe points out that he knew everything we have discussed here. This conversation, which takes place beyond the light—that is what he is referring to. So then one brings what one has experienced in this way in a dreamless state into everyday life. Some will be tempted to believe that the clairvoyant no longer sleeps without dreaming at all, but rather sees continuously. That need not be the case. It is not a matter of how much of the night is filled with such experiences. There can still be long periods of the dreamless state in between.

[ 16 ] It is true—I believe I have already hinted at this: Anyone who can experience something in this way during dreamless sleep hears all the objects around them. They hear the glass of water; they hear every single thing that whispers to them. This is the third stage of cognition: inspiration.

[ 17 ] This is how the writings known as “inspired” came into being. Today, theologians and scholars challenge the method of inspiration as applied to the writings of the initiated. Just imagine what has been written about whether the Gospel is inspired or not—and by teachers who have no idea that such a thing as revelation even exists. Inspired writings are for those whom one will one day make disappear as painlessly as possible. The largest portions of the three Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John were written from a state of clairvoyance. They are inspired. We are not dealing here with a miracle, nor with a dictation from God, but with this state of mind. Therefore, only those who know something about how truths emerge in such states can understand them.

[ 18 ] The next stage is intuition. It expresses itself clearly to you in that you now feel: you are inside things, no longer outside them. You now creep into every thing. That is the state of intuition. The ordinary person experiences the state of intuition only in relation to his or her ego. When a person has developed to this extent, he or she is immersed in every thing.

[ 19 ] Human beings perceive the spirits of twilight on the first level, the level of imagination. On the level of inspiration, human beings perceive the spirits of fire or of the fiery mist. At the level of intuition, one perceives the spirits of personality—the spirits that lie hidden everywhere as the foundation of the world-I’s. Once one has reached this stage, one can truly plunge into the depths.

[ 20 ] But there is also a transcendence of this state. This consists in the fact that human beings no longer merely perceive, but actively participate with humanity. This is, in fact, a point where even those who have progressed as far as the level of intuition may find it difficult to follow. From that point on, they will no longer be able to follow so easily. It is only through comparison that one can come closer to what I am now saying.

[ 21 ] Intuition, too, is a passive state. The person immerses themselves, yet remains passive in a certain sense. They only begin to become inwardly active when they rise to a higher inner level. They now participate in the world. The state I am now describing can only be attained if one has already reached the state of intuition. When someone has reached the point where they can fully immerse themselves in an object—where they have the feeling with everything that “this is you yourself,” so that with a dog or a tulip they feel as if they had crawled inside it, so that they not only hear it but feel its essence resonating within themselves—then they can move on to something else. They can first ascend to the realm of the animal kingdom. When they do this, their first task is to observe the animal world around them selflessly, focusing their attention on the various animal species. Then, having been inside individual animals through intuition, they will enter a stage where they step out of the individual animal but remain within the animal realm itself. Let’s say, for example, that he has been observing a dog. Through intuition, he is able to immerse himself completely in the dog, experience all its sensations, and empathize with all its pleasure and pain.

[ 22 ] Now there is a higher level. Here, the human being transcends things without losing any of them. But in doing so, the distinct individuality is lost. He rises above the individual being, yet remains within the animal realm. He loses interest in the individual being; the particular characteristics of that individual being disappear. As he gradually elevates himself in this way—while the essence of that being remains intact—forms emerge in his mind that he has not seen before. He first grasps the “I” of the individual being and then extracts this “I” from the being as if it were an essence. It takes shape and forms itself, and now he receives what Plato called “Ideas.” These are Plato’s Ideas. Here you no longer have a single dog, but rather a spiritual, living form before you. With this, you have more than the individual being. There you have the archetype for all these beings. You have what is called the “species soul”—not as an abstract concept, but as a living reality. You are surrounded by the species souls of the animals. You now live with them, just as you previously lived with the merely sensory animals. The space around you is not empty. But the beings you see there do not look like the beings running around us here. They are entirely new beings, and they do not apply to the individual being—to the individual dog—but rather to all of the same species. It is something much more abstract and much more alive than the physical. What you see there are the spirits of form. They belong to a higher spiritual world. One such spirit of form was Jehovah. He was the spirit of form that constituted the generic soul of humanity. The generic soul of humanity was the God Jehovah. At this level of the spiritual world, one can reach him; one can rise to what is called Jehovah in the Jewish mystery teachings—to the spirit of the human form.

[ 23 ] Another spirit had to join this spirit of the human form if something new and different was to develop. This spirit of the human form had made human beings such that they were like the soul of the species. Individual life would not have emerged. Individual life emerged when humankind struggled to attain the knowledge of good and evil. This is depicted on a grand and mighty scale in the Fall. Jehovah did not wish to go further than the form. He guided humankind up to that point. In connection with other beings, humankind then assumed leadership over the Jehovah principle. Thus you see humankind, with its arrogance in elevating itself above the animal world, sinking into what is called the world of forms.

[ 24 ] When a person has reached the point where he begins to sense this entity, he can then ascend to the next level. This stage consists in their learning once again to recognize in these beings what they had already learned to see and recognize at a lower level—in natural beings—when they go beyond form to life itself. The first thing you perceive—and this is why I must mention it—is that you initially see this group soul within the form. But you must rise to a higher level of understanding if you wish to see this world of forms in motion, in activity. You cannot do this if you merely immerse yourself in the animal world. This gift will be granted to you only when you immerse yourself devotedly in the plant world and do with it exactly as I have described with regard to the animal world. If you immerse yourself in the plant world through intuition, yet do not lose sight of the plant’s essence—so that the plant’s essence remains present and you understand how to merge with the plant’s entire essential nature—then you will succeed in experiencing, through the plant world, the great nature that both suffers and rejoices.

[ 25 ] When you speak to people today about these things—and the more scientifically minded they are, the more so—they laugh at you. But it is true, after all, that pleasure and suffering can be perceived in the plant world by those who can live with the plant world—not merely as a comparison, not as a symbol, but in such a way that they know how to perceive the expression of inner feeling, just as a person perceives a sensation when a tear flows from the eye. There is, therefore, a genuine level of insight where the dew beading from the plant reveals to you true life—a life such as that found in the tear that wells up from the eye. If you are able to see, in the sap that flows from the tree when you cut into it, a manifestation of life in nature—just as when you cut yourself and know that it hurts—then you have reached the point where you can ascend into the world of activity, into the world of movement. Then you can perceive that the beings you previously saw only in form are alive within. That is when the beings begin to speak. The generic souls tell you something.

[ 26 ] The next stage is the one that a person reaches when he is able to feel the same thing I said about plants toward the mineral kingdom, toward inanimate nature. True, Kant said: Two things fill him with a sense of awe—the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him. But this remains merely abstract as long as the abstract heavens fill us with awe, so that it is still enough for us that the lifeless starry sky speaks to us. But the fact that the dead crystal is not merely dead and silent, but that it also reveals to us the mysteries of nature—this is already shown to us by the materialist view. One can attain these mysteries through loving immersion in nature.

[ 27 ] Anyone who has experienced what I have described—who has suffered and rejoiced with the plant world—will also find it easy to understand the muted language of inanimate nature—although there is a gap there as well. It is relatively easier to understand the language of plants than the language of stones. Even at these higher levels, it remains true of human beings that they understand best what is akin to them. Now, what is akin to them is human feeling, human pain, and human pleasure. Even though the pleasure and pain that appear to us in the plant world are very different from human pleasure and

[ 28 ] human suffering; yet they share a subtle kinship that we do not recognize in the silent world of stone. But the new thing we recognize in the silent world of stone is precisely what would elevate us so high [above] that which makes us so weak. The silent world of stone has no more desires. There, the world of desire falls silent; it ceases before we cross over from the plant world into the world of stone. The plant and animal worlds end here. Plants still possess something analogous to desire, which intensifies in animals and comes strongly to the fore in humans. This is what makes humans impure, whereas stone is pure. Whoever comprehends the stone comes to know beings that are pure and free of desire. In the mineral kingdom, one comes to know a life free of desire and longing. When we can feel and perceive something in the mineral kingdom similar to what I have described in the plant kingdom, then we learn to recognize what it means to be a being that is chaste by its very nature. The chaste, silent world of stone—of which we no longer say that pleasure and pain are expressed through it in the same way as through a dewdrop or the resin dripping from a tree—but must say that it faithfully preserves itself in discreet, completely restrained silence and does not—if I may put it trivially— —does not shove what it experiences internally in everyone’s face. This is the immense reality we recognize within the world of stone. The world of stone reached its perfection so and so long ago. In truth, the world of stone is the greatest. What appears to us today as rock crystal once went through its period of impurity, if we look back billions of years. The wisdom of nature appears greatest to us when we examine it in the silent world of the stars, stones, and crystals.

[ 29 ] The stage of form leads us to the spirit of form. The second stage, which originates in the plant kingdom, leads us to the spirits of movement and activity, and this same stage of contemplation leads us to the spirits of wisdom. We cannot reach them until we have brought to life within ourselves the silent, chaste, self-contained, and life-filled essence of the mineral kingdom.

[ 30 ] If you would like a brief description of what goes on within human beings, let the following be said. First, a person must allow the external light around them to fade away; they must first stand before lifeless nature and set aside everything their senses tell them. Then, at first, there is darkness. When they now rise to the level of perception I have described, all beings begin to glow from within. An inner light illuminates and permeates all these beings and radiates from them. And this is the light of wisdom. These are the stages of perception that lead us upward to what I have described as the spirits of wisdom.

[ 31 ] Now, as you know, at the very beginning of Saturn’s evolution there are the spirits of will. If you wish to learn to recognize them, you need not turn in general to animals, plants, and minerals; rather, to grasp the spirits of will, you must possess something quite special. You may regard what I am about to say as utterly fantastical—but I hope that is not the case. If you wish to rise even higher—after you have more or less completed the other stages—you must approach something—it seems paradoxical—such as an anthill, in which animals are not merely united by species but also live in a wise interconnection, and immerse yourself in the spiritual interplay of these tiny creatures. The intellectual researcher does not do this. The clairvoyant, however, lives in harmony with the internally structured males, females, and workers, who interact in a wondrous way, so that he becomes inwardly one with them.

[ 32 ] This is the method for recognizing the will. Schopenhauer wrote a great deal about the will. But he could have written this chapter if, as a clairvoyant, he had stuck his head into an anthill. For there one learns to recognize what the will is by its very nature. There you learn to recognize what it means when you yourself utter the words “I will.” These words live deep within your own nature. Many forces interact within your own nature there. But you perceive only the result. The naturalist offers you a completely different perspective. What I am describing to you is drawn from life itself. If, on the other hand, you choose a beehive instead of an anthill, you are making a grave mistake. What lives in the beehive is something entirely different from what lives in the anthill.

[ 33 ] We have spoken of the spirits of will, the spirits of wisdom, the spirits of form, the spirits of motion, the spirits of personality, the spirits of fire, the spirits of twilight, and then of humans, animals, plants, and minerals. These entities are not plucked out of thin air; they are not invented; they are not speculations presented to you in the elementary occultism that goes by the name of Theosophy—rather, they are things acquired through experience.

[ 34 ] I could only offer hints as to how such a thing comes about—what is referred to as elementary theosophy or elementary occultism. In this way, one acquires the higher abilities that grant insight into the higher worlds.

[ 35 ] That, you see, is something that must be revived again in the future. There is truly much around us today that can be a cause for concern, and I believe that what can be a real cause for concern for those who are genuinely enthusiastic about human progress is also the fact that many do not keep their eyes open. Human beings should be pioneers in keeping their eyes open. What matters is not that individuals call themselves Theosophists, but that, in the great evolution of humanity, we find the ways and means to provide a new foundation for what would otherwise truly collapse.

[ 36 ] Let me conclude my reflections on the past year with this observation, which I have made before. Much destruction is taking place around us—much that could indicate to the attentive observer, even if he is not a clairvoyant, that we are at the beginning of a great process of destruction with regard to the external material world that developed over the past century, for material development only goes so far.

Addendum from notes by an unknown author

[ 37 ] But what is most troubling is that so many of our fellow human beings do not keep their eyes open to what humanity needs. The Theosophist, however, should be a pioneer in this work of keeping people’s eyes open. What matters is not that individuals sit back and develop themselves, but rather that they participate in the great evolution of humanity, finding ways and means to give new meaning to what would otherwise truly collapse. Much work of destruction is being carried out around us today. Much of it will point out to the attentive observer that we are at the beginning of a process of destruction—that of the material culture of the nineteenth century—for this culture did not bring about a corresponding spiritual development. We are capable of wireless telegraphy; now imagine this human ability developed just one small step further, so that one could take a horse-drawn carriage here in Berlin and, using a wave generator, drive down Friedrichstraße to destroy the entire Louvre in Paris through the corresponding wave emissions. In such a case, no one would be able to identify the perpetrator. All of our legal concepts will be completely powerless in a time that is easy to imagine; a time will come when purely material culture will, on the whole, reduce itself to absurdity, when it will have a destructive, annihilating effect.

[ 38 ] Only by allowing inner spiritual culture to take hold—so that people are no longer dependent on external circumstances, and even when the worst is done, only what is right happens—only in this way can help be provided. The path of development for humanity today is already showing its first signs. Only the path of inner, spiritual development can lead the way out again, and theosophy is a necessary new beginning for a cultural movement that can provide the necessary inner morality to complement, so to speak, the rapidly changing external culture—a morality that alone can lead us out, for human beings must cultivate their soul and spirit alongside the material. That is why the renewed, spiritual movements of the present are so necessary—so that the forces which would otherwise wither away may once again be exercised and nurtured.