The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Concept of Evolution and Involution Underlying Secret Societies

[ 1 ] So far, I have spoken in a series of lectures about secret schools and secret societies, and it now seems to me the right thing to do to conclude this entire cycle of lectures on esoteric societies before we move on to something else next time. In eight days, I will speak about the significance of the feast days that follow Christmas in the church year; above all, about the less significant feast of New Year’s Day and the significant feast of Epiphany [I will speak], that is, about the feasts that follow Christmas. So today I would like to give a more concluding lecture.

[ 2 ] You might ask: What is the deeper meaning of such esoteric societies, and what is their overall purpose in relation to the development of the world? If I were to answer that, I would say that they are connected to the entire way in which beings develop in general, to how beings make progress in the world. If you wish to develop yourselves, you know that various exercises are necessary and available for this purpose. You have heard of Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, and other exercises; you have heard of various esoteric societies that have initiated their members in a wide variety of ways, and so on.

[ 3 ] One might say that all of this could be achieved even without such secret connections. But I can reply to that—and you will come to see in the course of this lecture that this is indeed the case—that the world simply cannot function without such connections. But it is impossible—to put it bluntly—to speak publicly in the style of, for example, the Masonic Manifesto, which I read to you fourteen days ago.

[ 4 ] One cannot attain what is commonly understood as immortality without engaging in the esoteric sciences. However, the findings of the esoteric sciences find their way into the world in a wide variety of ways. A large part of this esoteric knowledge is present in the religions, and all those who live with inner devotion within a religious community also share in this knowledge and prepare themselves to partake in full immortality. But it is something else entirely to maintain, through concrete experience and with full consciousness, the knowledge of this immortality and the sense of belonging to the spiritual world.

[ 5 ] You have all lived many times before; but not all of you are aware that you have lived so many times. You will gradually attain this awareness, and it depends on whether you live your life with full consciousness. That was not the purpose of the secret knowledge—to impart to people a dull continuation of life—but rather to impart a full, clear, and consciousness-filled continuation of life in the spirit as insight. And there is a great law—namely, a law that states what the progression of consciousness depends on in all future stages of life. For everything that a person does—not solely for the sake of attaining this consciousness for themselves—contributes to the development of consciousness. This is seemingly a paradoxical statement: Everything that a being does—without intending it to contribute to the development of its own consciousness—contributes to the preservation [development?] of that being’s consciousness.

[ 6 ] For example, imagine a builder constructing a house. He isn’t building this house for himself; rather, he sets out to build it for a reason that has nothing to do with himself. You know that this is rarely the case. It seems that a great many people do not work for themselves; but in reality, they do work for themselves.

[ 7 ] Take a lawyer, for example. On the surface, he works for his clients. Some of his work may be altruistic; but the real driving force behind it all is the pursuit of a livelihood. For to the extent that his entire business conduct is directed solely toward his own livelihood—to the extent that a business is merely a means to the end of sustaining life—that much is inevitably lost as spiritual gain. In contrast, everything that is incorporated into objectivity, everything that is connected to another, contributes to the preservation of our consciousness in future development. That much is clear.

[ 8 ] Now take the Freemasons. In their original concept, they instilled this very idea in people: Build structures that contribute nothing and have nothing to do with one’s own livelihood. — What has remained to this day of the good old Freemasonry are certain charitable institutions. Even now—after the secret knowledge, that living connection to ancient wisdom, has been lost to the lodges—the charitable institutions that still exist reveal a humanity that, though perhaps hollow, is still present and nurtured through tradition. But this is something that was part of Freemasonry: acting selflessly! What Freemasonry originally did was to urge its members to work in the service of humanity, to contribute to the objective world.

[ 9 ] We are now living in what we might call the mineral round. And our task in it is to permeate this entire mineral world through and through with our own spirit. Let’s look at this more closely. You’re building a house. You take the building blocks from some quarry. You cut them to size so they fit into the house, and so on. What do you imbue the raw material—which you extract from the mineral kingdom—with? You imbue the raw material with the human spirit. When you build a machine, you have imbued that machine with your spirit. The individual machine will indeed perish; it will turn to dust; it will one day be crushed. No trace of it will remain. But what it has accomplished does not pass without a trace; rather, it penetrates right down into the atoms. Every atom bears a trace of your spirit and will carry this trace forward. It is not a matter of indifference whether an atom was once inside a machine or not. By virtue of having been inside the machine, the atom has been transformed. And this change that you have imparted to the atom will never be lost to it. Furthermore, by changing the atom, you have connected your spirit to the mineral world; you have thereby left a lasting imprint on the collective consciousness. Just as much of this is carried over from us into the other world.

[ 10 ] It is therefore the case that all esoteric knowledge consists of the realization of how one must act selflessly toward others in order to achieve the greatest elevation of one’s consciousness within oneself. Consider that those who knew this very clearly were so selfless that they ensured their names would not be passed down to posterity. One example of this is the Theologia deutsch. No one knows who wrote it. On the cover, it simply says: “The Frankfurt Man.” He thus ensured that not even his name could be guessed. He worked in such a way that he merely contributed something to the objective world, without making any claim to honor or to the preservation of his name. To compare this to something else, let me mention: The Masters are generally not exactly historical figures; they sometimes incarnate—or incorporate themselves—into historical figures when necessary; but to a certain extent, this is a sacrifice. Their level of consciousness is no longer compatible with acting for their own sake. And acting for one’s own sake is, in itself, the preservation of one’s mere name.

[ 11 ] This rule is difficult to grasp. But you will now understand that Freemasons aim to do as much as possible in the world in such a way that their deeds are enshrined in grand cathedrals, in social institutions and organizations, or that their deeds are present in charitable institutions. For selfless deeds are the true foundation of immortality: this is the reflection of selfless deeds in the external world. The deeds need not be very grand. If someone selflessly gives another person a penny, that is a deed to be understood in the same way. But only as much of it carries over into immortality as there is selflessness involved. And very few people are selfless. If, for example, it gives one a sense of well-being, then doing good can be very selfish. Doing good often stems from selfish interests. If a poor person living among us has no roast for Christmas, and I feel the need to give him something so that I can feel justified in eating my own roast, then that is simply selfish.

[ 12 ] In the Middle Ages, it was not possible to say of many cathedrals and paintings that this or that person had built or painted them. It is only in our subrace that people have begun to attach such great value to an individual human name. In earlier times, less importance was placed on individual human names. Those times were still more spiritual. And spirituality is directed toward reality, whereas our time is directed toward appearances and seeks to preserve what is immediately temporal.

[ 13 ] I just wanted to show you what mattered most to such secret societies. What mattered to them was to completely set themselves aside—insofar as they were individuals—and to let the effects of their actions speak for themselves. And now you will also recognize the crux of the mystery. It is much less a matter of keeping anything secret; it is a matter of keeping one’s own share secret. By keeping one’s share secret, one secures immortality. The rule is therefore clear and unambiguous: As much as you yourself put into the world, so much does the world give back to you in consciousness. — This is connected to the very greatest laws of the universe.

[ 14 ] You all have a soul, and you all have a spirit. This soul and this spirit are destined to reach the highest levels of perfection. But you were already there before your physical body existed; indeed, you were there before you existed in your first physical incarnation. In physical incarnation, you first existed in the previous races during the time of the Hyperborean and Polar races. Before that, however, you were purely spiritual beings. And as spiritual beings, you were a part of the World Soul, and as spirits, you were a part of the universal World Spirit. The World Spirit and the World Soul were spread out around you, just as nature is now. Just as the mineral world, the plant world, and the animal world are now around you, so too were the world of the soul and the world of the spirit spread out around you. And what was once outside is now your soul: you have internalized what was initially external. What is now your inner self was once spread out externally. But that has now become your inner soul. And once upon a time, the spirit was also spread out in this way. And what is now spread out around you will become your inner life. What is today the mineral kingdom, you absorb, and it will become your inner self. The plant kingdom will become your inner self; you absorb it. You appear with what surrounds you in nature as if it were your inner self,

[ 15 ] Now you will understand how this relates to the first example: You build the church for others, not for yourself. You can take in a great, beautiful, and glorious world if you make it great, beautiful, and glorious. Doing something for the higher self is not selfish, because you are not doing it merely for yourself. This higher self will, after all, be united with all other higher selves, so that it is for everyone at the same time.

[ 16 ] This is what the Freemasons knew. The Freemason knew that if he contributed to the spiritualization of the mineral world—and “building” means nothing other than spiritualizing the mineral world—this would one day become the substance of his soul. This is what is significant: God once created nature for us—the mineral, plant, and animal worlds that surround us. We will take these into ourselves. We are not responsible for their existence; we can only make them our own. But what we ourselves create in the world—that is what, through us, will constitute our future being.

[ 17 ] We perceive the mineral world as such; what we make of it is what we will become in the future. What we make of the plant world is what we will also become in the future. The same is true of the animal world and of the human world. If you establish a charitable institution or contribute to one, you will become what you contribute. If a person does nothing that they could in this way absorb back into their soul from the outside, their soul remains empty. Therefore, humanity must have the opportunity for the three realms—or the four realms of nature, since humanity is also part of them—to be imbued with spirit as much as possible. This has been the task of the secret societies of all times: to bring spirit into the entire external world.

[ 18 ] You understand that this is how it must be. Take a child who is just beginning to learn to read and write. At first, the materials are spread out around the child. Today, the child begins to learn to read. Nothing is there within the child yet, but the teacher, the primer, and everything else are there. This continues until what was outside enters the child. And the child acquires the ability to read. It is the same with nature. What is spread out around us in nature will later be within us. We are souls, descended from the World Soul, and we absorbed it when it was spread out around us. The spirit was absorbed in this way as well, and nature will likewise be absorbed by us, so that it may remain within us as an active capacity.

[ 19 ] This is the central idea underlying the secret societies: that all progress is based on involution and evolution. Involution is the drawing in; evolution is the giving out. All states of the world alternate between these two. Right now, you are taking nature in by seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting it. What you see does not pass you by without leaving a trace. The eye perishes, the object perishes; but what you have seen remains. Now you will understand that at certain times it may be necessary to have an understanding of such things. We are heading toward a time in which, as I hinted at recently, understanding will penetrate down to the atom. People will come to realize—even in popular opinion—that the atom is nothing other than congealed electricity. Thought itself is made of the same substance.

[ 20 ] In fact, even before the fifth saucer is finished, we will have reached the point where we will be able to influence the atom itself. Once we can grasp the material reality between thought and the atom, we will soon understand how to influence the atom. And nothing will be off-limits to certain types of action: I will be able to stand here and, unnoticed, press a button I carry in my pocket to blow up an object far away—say, in Hamburg—just as you can already send wireless telegraph messages by generating a wave motion here and transmitting it to a specific location in a specific way. This will become possible the moment the occult truth—that thought and the atom consist of the same substance—is put into practice in everyday life.

[ 21 ] It is impossible to imagine what would happen in such a case if humanity had not by then attained selflessness. Only by achieving selflessness will it be possible to save humanity from the brink of ruin. The downfall of our present root race will be brought about by a lack of morality. The Lemurian race perished by fire, the Atlantean by water; ours will perish through the war of all against all—evil—through the struggle of human beings against one another. People will destroy themselves in this mutual struggle. And what will be most disheartening—more so than other forms of destruction—is that people themselves will bear the blame for it.

[ 22 ] A small remnant will make the transition to the sixth root race. This small remnant will have developed into complete selflessness. The others will apply every refinement in the harnessing and utilization of the physical forces of nature, but without having attained the necessary degree of selflessness. They will usher in a struggle of all against all, and this will be the cause of the downfall of our root race.

[ 23 ] In the seventh subrace, in particular, this struggle of all against all will rage in the most terrible way. Powerful, immense forces will emanate from discoveries that will transform the entire globe into a kind of self-functioning electrical apparatus. In a way that cannot be spoken of, the small remnant will be protected.

[ 24 ] Now you will be able to imagine even more clearly than was the case after what I was able to say about this last time why the search is on for the right form and why Freemasonry is coming to realize that it must erect a structure that corresponds to selflessness. It is easier to carry oneself into the future—to that small group of the new humanity—using good old forms than it is to emerge from chaos.

[ 25 ] It is easy today to scoff at these empty forms, but they are nonetheless of great significance. They are adapted to the structure of our evolution. Ultimately, we are dealing here with necessary stages in human nature and spiritual development. Consider this: We are in the fifth subrace of the fifth root race; we still have two more subraces of the fifth root race to go through. Then come seven subraces of the sixth root race and seven subraces of the seventh root race, which we still have to go through. That adds up to sixteen stages of future development. Humanity still has to pass through these sixteen stages. Anyone who gains further insight into the states that are possible there is, to a certain degree, initiated. These degrees correspond in a certain way to the mysteries of future races.

[ 26 ] On our globe, there are seven root races, and each root race has seven sub-races. That adds up to forty-nine states. On the next globe, you again have forty-nine states. This provides you with specific stages for exploring the mysteries of the next phases of development. Originally, the high degrees of Freemasonry were meant to be nothing other than an expression of each future stage of human development. This means that Freemasonry actually offers something that was very beautiful, namely, that whoever had attained a degree knew how to position himself for the future, so that he could be a kind of pioneer. He also knew that those who held higher degrees could have a greater impact. So this division into degrees works very well, because it corresponds to reality.

[ 27 ] So if new content, along with new knowledge, could be poured back into these forms, that would be very good. Then Freemasonry would once again be imbued with a true spirit. But the whole consists of both content and form. Today, however, the situation is as I have said: The degrees are there, but no one has truly attained them. Nevertheless, it is not unnecessary for them to exist. They will be revived in the future.

[ 28 ] The fifth sub-race is a purely intellectual race, a race of selfishness. We are now at the height of egoism. The intellect is the most egoistic, and the intellect is the defining characteristic of our subrace. We must therefore rise through the intellect to the spirituality that once existed ... [gap].

[ 29 ] The secret of the secret, then, is that a person knows how to keep his ego hidden, that he regards not his ego but his actions as what matters. His actions and the overcoming of the ego through action—that is the true secret of the secret. The ego must remain hidden within the action. This belongs to the first degree: the eradication of the ego from ongoing karma. That which falls back from karma onto the ego is thereby erased by karma. Nation, race, gender, social class, religious affiliation—all these things contribute to human egoism. Only when a person has overcome all these things will he be able to become free of egoism.

[ 30 ] In the astral body, you can identify a very specific color for every nation, every race, and every age. Everywhere there you will find a basic color that a person possesses as a member of this classification, of these distinctions. This is what must first be shed. The Theosophical Society works to harmonize the colors of its members’ astral bodies. They are to become uniform in color—uniform with respect to this basic color. This basic color is formed by a certain substance ... [gap].

[ 31 ] To establish this balance, there will indeed be bloody wars—as well as those that play out as economic wars, as wars of exploitation, as financial and industrial ventures, and as acts of subjugation—in which it will become increasingly possible to set masses of people in motion through specific mechanisms, simply by forcing them. The individual will gain more and more power over certain masses of people. For the course of development is not that we are becoming more democratic, but that we are becoming brutally aristocratic, as the individual gains ever more power. If there is no refinement of morals, this must lead to the most brutal outcomes. This, too, will come to pass, just as the flood disaster came upon the Atlanteans.