The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Special Note Regarding the Statements Made in These Lectures About the Atom in Connection with Freemasonry

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner’s complete works contain a wide variety of statements on atomism, the atom, and future new forces of nature. To avoid serious misunderstandings, these various statements must be evaluated with due distinction. Above all, a distinction must be made between his criticism of atomic theory as a worldview and his statements on the nature of the atom from the standpoint of occultism.

[ 2 ] His critique of atomic theory as a worldview, which had already begun in two of his earliest treatises, “The Only Possible Critique of Atomistic Concepts” (1882) and “Atomism and Its Refutation” (1890),^{1Reprinted in “Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe,” No. 63, Michaeli 1978.} aims to show that it is unacceptable to regard the atom as “the fundamental principle of all existence.” Just as, in the case of a telegram, wires and electricity are merely mediators of the thing itself, so too could atoms be understood only as mediators or carriers of spiritual effects. This fundamental stance runs through his entire body of work. Even in one of his last writings, his autobiography My Life (Chapter 32), he states: “Atoms or atomistic structures can only be the results of spiritual influences, of organic influences.”

[ 3 ] The remarks about the “atom” in these lectures. Here, for a very small circle, the atom was discussed from the perspective of occultism as the primordial building block of nature in connection with Freemasonry. For just as the service to nature was originally intended to be sanctified through Masonic ritual symbolism, so Rudolf Steiner sought, through the ritual-symbolic section of his Esoteric School—which he had prepared with these lectures—to awaken an understanding that “the laboratory table must in the future become an altar” and that the impulse of selflessness must be instilled in all of social life, lest our culture—dominated by the principle of utility—perish in selfishness. For this reason, he simultaneously published at that time the “principle of social life” for the future, derived from occultism, which reads: “The well-being of a community of cooperating people is all the greater the less the individual claims the fruits of his labors for himself—that is, the more he shares these fruits with his colleagues and the more his needs are satisfied not by his own labors but by the labors of others.” ^{2In the essay “Theosophy and the Social Question” (October 1905) in Luzifer-Gnosis, Bibliographic No. 34, also published as a separate print under the title “Spiritual Science and the Social Question.”}

[ 4 ] The impetus to speak about the atom from an occult perspective—an impetus that did not stem from occultism but from external science—arose from a foresight of what the latest physical discoveries at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century would bring to humanity. The realization that modern scientific understanding of nature and technology were rushing toward stages of development that could only benefit humanity if people’s souls were deeply rooted in the spiritual-scientific view of life had fundamentally determined Rudolf Steiner to advocate for the public dissemination of esoteric knowledge. Rudolf Steiner recognized that physics was then beginning to explore the connection between the atom, electricity, and the ether as an immensely important turning point in the development of human thought, because, as an occultist, he knew that “a new starting point would emerge from the atom and extend into the mineral-physical world.” (December 16, 1904, in this volume.)

[ 5 ] For this reason, he attached extraordinary importance to a speech by the then British Prime Minister Balfour that pointed in this direction. This speech, delivered on August 14, 1904, at the British Association, was published in German that same year under the title “Unsere Weltanschauung” (Our Worldview), Leipzig 1904. By the time Rudolf Steiner referred to this speech in his lectures in December 1904, he had already discussed it in the November issue of his journal “Luzifer-Gnosis.” (See Bibliography No. 34.)

[ 6 ] With the prediction, made in the three lectures on December 9, 16, and 23, 1904, that humankind would learn to think down to the level of the atom and be able to harness its power, this prediction is not only accompanied by a warning of the grave dangers that threaten if this power is not selflessly placed in the service of the whole, but also by the suggestion—as the “most important thing for the future”—that atoms, as “the smallest building blocks,” will be used for construction in times to come.

[ 7 ] This second hint, which is not elaborated upon, becomes somewhat clearer in the notes from October 21, 1905, and the appended supplement from the lecture of October 21, 1907, according to which the occultist is capable of causing the atom to “grow.” ^{3Many years later, in the lecture given in Berlin on June 22, 1915, in Human Destinies, National Destinies, Bibliographic No. 157, GA 1960, Rudolf Steiner again addressed the topic of atoms in connection with the development of Jupiter and mentioned the lectures now published here. The exact wording there is: “I have spoken before about the atom as having been formed from the entire cosmos. You can find this in those earlier lectures, which were given at the very beginning of our work in Berlin.”} At the same time, he also speaks of the ability to make things smaller. These ideas were not entirely unfamiliar to the listeners at that time. For in the literature of the Theosophical Society, particularly that of C. W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant, there was much discussion of the power of enlargement and reduction as a capacity of etheric clairvoyance that needed to be specifically developed; mostly in connection with descriptions of clairvoyant investigations of atoms. In 1905, in particular, Annie Besant had spoken and written about this on various occasions. A study on “Occult Chemistry” published jointly by the two in 1895 had also been reissued at that time.^{4Later expanded and published in German with the additional title “Atomlehre” (Theory of the Atom). A copy is held in Rudolf Steiner’s library.} Rudolf Steiner rejected this mode of presentation as materialistic spiritualism just as much as he rejected scientific atomism as the foundation of a worldview, for even in this theosophical literature, atoms were regarded as the fundamental principle of existence rather than being recognized as the results and mediators of concrete spiritual effects.

[ 8 ] For the same reason, he did not speak of a purely external technique of etheric enlargement and reduction, but rather of the fact that, beginning in our 20th century, etheric clairvoyance would slowly and gradually emerge as a new natural human ability, and through this, Christ, reappearing in the etheric realm, would be able to be perceived. ^{5See “The Event of the Christ’s Appearance in the Etheric World,” Bibliographic No. 118, GA 1977.} Then there will also be chemists and physicists who will no longer teach that there are only material atoms, but rather that matter is structured in the sense that “Christ has gradually arranged it.” ^{6See “The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity” (Chap. II), Bibliographic No. 15, GA 1974.}

[ 9 ] That the suggestion—that in the future it will be possible to build with atoms—refers to the mastery of the ethereal, living forces becomes clear from the lecture of January 2, 1906 (in this volume). In a lecture given somewhat later (Munich, December 4, 1907, included in GA 98), this is once again stated quite clearly, as follows:

[ 10 ] “... Once a person has worked on themselves to the point where they have reached the first stage of clairvoyance, the life of plants and the laws of life will be just as clear to them as the laws of the mineral world are to us now.

[ 11 ] If you assemble a machine or build a house, they are constructed according to the laws of the mineral world. A machine is built according to the laws of the mineral world, but we cannot build a plant in that way. If you want a plant, you must leave this work to the beings that underlie nature. In the future, it will be possible to create plants in the laboratory, but only when this becomes a sacrament—a sacred act—for humankind. Humankind will be permitted to create living beings only when it has become so serious and purified that the laboratory table becomes an altar. Until then, not the slightest detail will be revealed about how living beings are put together. In other words: The “I” as a knowing entity lives in the mineral kingdom and will ascend to the plant kingdom, where it will learn to comprehend it just as it does the mineral kingdom today. Later, it will also learn to comprehend the laws of the animal kingdom and then those of the human kingdom. All people will learn to comprehend the inner nature of plants, animals, and human beings; these are prospects for the future. What one truly comprehends, one can also represent—for example, a clock. Modern man will never be able to represent anything from living nature without the help of the beings who stand behind nature, as long as it does not become a sacramental act for him.”

—Hella Wiesberger