The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Theosophy of the Rosicrucians

[ 1 ] My task in this series will be to present to you a picture of the theosophical worldview, and I will do so from the perspective of what is known as the Rosicrucian method. And I ask you not to misunderstand the term “Rosicrucian method” to mean that we are going to discuss the historical development of Rosicrucianism or that a historical account of it will be given. The term “Rosicrucian method” simply means that Theosophy is to be presented according to the method by which it has always been taught in the secret schools of Europe since the 13th and 14th centuries—a method known as Rosicrucian training.

[ 2 ] You know that “Theosophy is that which, in ancient times, flowed forth as truth concerning humanity in order to form a foundation of human knowledge in hearts everywhere. But the further back we go, the more secret these insights are kept. Why? I will return to this in these lectures—why this universal wisdom was imparted to individuals deemed ready for it in secret schools and sanctuaries. To individuals who were not only to learn, but to undertake something that would transform their entire soul, so that they became clairvoyant. Through this, they gained insight into higher worlds. And such individuals were then sent out, as it were, as messengers, called to guide and lead others. Progress, however, lies in the fact that there are now more and more people who, through their judgment and intellect, are capable of comprehending this wisdom. Therefore, it has become necessary to make more and more of what was formerly kept secret publicly known.

[ 3 ] Over the course of the 19th century, external circumstances—which we will come to learn about—gave rise to the need to make a large body of knowledge from the esoteric sciences available to the public for the benefit and progress of humanity. In the 19th century, the guardians of this knowledge said to themselves: In earlier times, the teachings about spiritual matters—as they were conveyed to people through religions or other means—were sufficient to satisfy humanity’s needs regarding the eternal. But humanity’s needs are changing. - And so these guardians of ancient wisdom had to recognize that in the future there would be more and more people whose souls could no longer be satisfied by the old forms of communicating spiritual matters. For such people, it is now possible to find fulfillment in Theosophy. Theosophy, this new form of communication, springs from the recognition of a human need observed in more recent times. The guardians of the secret knowledge naturally knew that such times would come, but it was not until a specific moment that it became necessary to make preparations for the infusion of this wisdom and to say to themselves: We must ensure that these mysteries can also be grasped by the minds of the 19th and 20th centuries. — This took place in the 13th and 14th centuries. Very few people at that time were aware of this moment of preparation within Europe. They were the first Rosicrucians, those who gathered around a significant individual known by the pseudonym “Christian Rosenkreutz.” Christian Rosenkreutz—it was he who could say, in the clearest sense: “In the mysteries, we have received knowledge, a treasure of wisdom, from the supersensible.” If we leave it at that, we may hope that in the future we will be able to continue doing what has been done so far: sending out individual people who have matured in our schools—once they have learned and beheld the mysteries of primordial wisdom—to teach others. This ancient method of spreading primordial wisdom is to be continued, but other preparations must also be made. - He was able to tell himself: A far greater number of people will come who will seek the primordial wisdom. We could impart it to them in the form we currently use. But to accept it in this way requires a high degree of faith and recognition of our authority—a degree that will, however, disappear more and more from humanity. The more people’s power of judgment grows, the less they will believe the teachers as they did in the past. - Faith and trust were the prerequisites for the earlier form of communication. Now we had to realize: There will be people who will want to examine for themselves what is communicated to them. They will say: We want to apply the same logical reasoning that we use when observing the sensory world to what you tell us. Even if we admit that something other than this reasoning is necessary for exploring the spiritual realm, we still want to use it to examine it. - That is why, at the beginning of our era, it was necessary to cast the primordial wisdom into new forms. This was the work of the Rosicrucians: to shape the primordial wisdom in such a way that it could gradually adapt to the modern mind and the modern soul.

[ 4 ] What is Theosophy according to the Rosicrucian method? Theosophy in and of itself is always and everywhere the same. A Rosicrucian theosophist today is a theosophist of the 19th and 20th centuries. The forms of his wisdom are precisely adapted to what people today want to understand and what they need. What is unique about our time? The course of human development has been such that people have had to become more and more familiar with external physical reality. Look back to ancient times—for example, to ancient Egyptian culture—and see the simple means and forces people used to work, to erect their own buildings, and to satisfy their personal needs. Compare that, however, with our life today, with all its sophisticated effort expended on labor for physical comfort. What an immense amount of mental energy and intellectual labor is wasted there on daily physical needs! It was, of course, necessary—indeed, it was the very task of the Western world—to shape external culture and master external nature in such a way that the physical realm is truly governed by the human spirit. A world such as ours has become requires different means to assimilate the wisdom of the mystery schools than those of ancient times. If, on the other hand, we compare the knowledge of the Chaldeans and their insights regarding spiritual knowledge with our knowledge today, then the Chaldeans certainly tower far above us. Today we admire a Copernicus, a Galileo, and the achievements of external science, but all of that is child’s play compared to the ancient wisdom of the Chaldeans. For today’s researcher, for example, the planet Mars is merely an external body whose orbit and motion can be measured; the Chaldeans, however, also knew which forces and beings are connected to Mars, which divine will guides it all, and what connection exists between these forces and human beings. The mystery, the workings of these spiritual forces, were known to them. That is why today’s researcher is so helpless in the face of the inner essence of this ancient Chaldean culture. He possesses the external means for its investigation, but not the inner ones. “Theosophists and Rosicrucians possess the spiritual, inner means to penetrate its spirit.”

[ 5 ] The great names of our scientific authorities, whom we read about today as they excavate the clay cylinders and shards on which ancient Babylonian wisdom is inscribed, stand before them like a three-year-old child facing an electrical appliance. The researcher does not know what to make of what he is excavating: so immense, so far-reaching was spiritual knowledge back then. But it was only through external science—using the intellect and the external means of our culture—that we were able to achieve what we today—and rightly so—admire as the great cultural advances of the past centuries. Such a time, however, requires a different way of thinking and feeling in order to understand the spiritual. Perhaps a word of caution should be woven into this discussion here. Today, there is so much talk of higher or deeper levels of development. People argue back and forth about whether the Buddha or Christ was greater. But that is entirely irrelevant. It does not matter. It is not important whether Assyrian wisdom is higher or our own wisdom is deeper. We live in a materialistically minded present, and we need spiritual knowledge to flow into our culture so that humanity’s longing for it may be satisfied. And the Rosicrucian wisdom provides this knowledge in the way that people today need it. What is being said here may sound a bit bold, but please accept it for now; it will all become clear later. After all, Rosicrucian wisdom has been more misunderstood than anything else in the world.

[ 6 ] As events unfolded, it so happened that the great individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz once foresaw what demands for understanding would in fact come from rationally minded people, and how it had already become necessary even then to cast all spiritual knowledge into a form that would take shape as what is required in the present age. We must realize that the Rosicrucians had it much harder than any similar movement of the past, for their early work in the 13th and 14th centuries coincided with the era of ever-advancing materialism. All the modern achievements—such as steam engines, the telegraph, and so on—were bound to place humanity entirely on the physical plane. The Rosicrucians had to work for an age that must think mathematically. They had to make their preparations with this in mind, and consequently were also the most misunderstood. You cannot, therefore, learn about Rosicrucianism from what is publicly reported about it. Nothing of what was cultivated in Rosicrucianism can actually be found in this literature. The deepest spiritual truths of the Rosicrucians were interpreted as if spiritual matters could be prepared in alchemical laboratories with retorts and the like. This view of alchemy gave rise to the materialistic caricature of Rosicrucianism as it is presented today. The Rosicrucians were preparing a science through which they could gradually infuse their wisdom into the world.

[ 7 ] From all this you can see that when we present theosophy to people today, we must present Rosicrucian theosophy to them. By using older forms, we might win over a few people, but these would have to be people who are not bound by every fiber of their being to today’s world and culture. There are those egoists who shirk the task of the present; we, however, wish to take this present and its forms seriously. We must accept our age as it is, but seek to influence it spiritually. It is in this sense that Rosicrucian theosophy must understand its task.

[ 8 ] During the course of the Congress proceedings, you have had the opportunity to see just how fruitful this Theosophy can be; for example, how it influences medicine. Just let medicine continue to develop in such a materialistic way: if you could look forty years into the future, you would be horrified at the brutal methods this medicine will employ, and at the forms of death to which people will be “cured” by it. — How does medicine today investigate the effects of its remedies? Well, by observing the human subjects it finds in hospitals and elsewhere—that is, through external observation. Spiritual wisdom, however, is one that works into the inner connections of the spiritual realm, that knows what in the physical corresponds to the spiritual. A complete re-creation of all medical knowledge will spring from what is called Rosicrucianism. But this is only one field. Compare our complicated living conditions today with those of the ancient Chaldeans. Consider the sheer amount of intellectual power and analytical ability expended to cash a check issued in New York in Tokyo. An age such as this—which has spun a culture of this kind across the globe using such means—requires different spiritual methods than those of earlier times. The occultist knows this. Today’s way of thinking is simply not sufficient to overcome the chaos of external circumstances and tasks into which humanity is increasingly being drawn. Thinking will become rigid. Today we are in a transitional period, but soon thinking will no longer be fluid and flexible enough to grasp and reshape these complex circumstances. So why do we spread Theosophy? To achieve practical results. Theosophical ideas make thinking more flexible and fluid, enabling a quicker grasp of broader contexts. In this way, Rosicrucianism is meant to enrich all areas of life. To see how practically Theosophy works, take the little booklet I wrote on “The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science.” You simply cannot know what is contained therein without Rosicrucian Theosophy. It is not meant to remain theory, but rather to become a hands-on application to practical daily life. Look for this in the earlier forms of Theosophy: it simply isn’t there. Rosicrucian Theosophy exists to satisfy humanity’s spiritual longings and also to allow the spirit to flow into daily activities. Rosicrucian Theosophy is not meant for the salon or the hermit, but for the entire culture of humanity.

[ 9 ] Wisdom is always one. But just as each individual human being lives and continues to evolve, so too does humanity as a whole. And that is why the forms in which wisdom is revealed to them must change in accordance with the course of human evolution. The great teachers of humanity are at work among us today, as they always have been. We, too, who are now present here as souls, were once incarnated; we have passed through all periods of development—the Greco-Latin, the Egyptian-Chaldean, and further back in time—in order to take in ever new achievements and to learn ever new things. Imagine a soul that was incarnated when the gigantic pyramids and the mysterious sphinxes surrounded it in Egypt! How differently that must have affected that soul compared to what surrounds it today. As long as the Earth has something new to offer—and the Earth is constantly progressing—the soul will continue to absorb new things time and again. The soul is not incarnated on Earth for the amusement of the gods, but to learn. The Earth looked different when the soul first entered it in its first incarnation, and it will look different in its last. We will return to this Earth only when we can learn something new here; that is why the interval between incarnations is so long. Let us just imagine how different the northern region of Europe looked from today—in terms of landscape alone—at the time when Christ walked here on Earth. We do not set foot on Earth twice without being able to learn something new. Everything in the world is in a state of development. But development means processing and living out new things as they arise.

[ 10 ] But it is not only human beings who evolve; all beings do. Here we will have to seek the path to beings who stand on higher levels than humans, yet humans often come into contact with them even in this life. These higher beings, too, are subject to the law of evolution, and just as our souls were different millennia ago, so too were the beings who revealed themselves in earlier times. They, too, are constantly learning. And when we speak of one of the higher beings who have descended to us to reveal the mysteries of the higher worlds through spiritual means, we must tell ourselves: this is a sublime art that must be learned. Even if one is a god, one must learn this. For one must speak differently to the people of today than to those who lived ten thousand years ago. The higher beings undergo their own evolution just as human beings do. And what I said during the congress proceedings about the Damascus event shows how higher beings evolve. Suppose there had been a clairvoyant two thousand years before the appearance of Christ Jesus. A spiritual seer, after all, sees not only the external environment but also everything that belongs to the spiritual sphere of the Earth’s aura. Just as human beings are surrounded by an aura, so too are the celestial bodies. And one learns to see the spirit of a celestial body. A clairvoyant two thousand years ago would have seen something entirely different in the Earth’s aura than one from a thousand years ago or one who has become clairvoyant today. Just as the outward image of nature changes, so too does the image of the spiritual world around us, into which one looks.

[ 11 ] I want to speak of an event to which I will return later: the burning bush and the revelation on Mount Sinai. What does this mean? What happened to Moses there? His clairvoyant power had developed to a certain extent, and he perceived the supernatural within the physical world. Someone without clairvoyant powers would have simply perceived a natural phenomenon. Moses, however, saw in the burning bush the Being who revealed Himself to him as “I am who I am!” And he knew that this Being was there, that the fire was not merely an external fire, but that something spiritual lay hidden behind it. A being revealed itself to him who is intimately connected with the entire future development of humanity, a being who gave himself the name: “I am who I am.” What, then, did all of Moses’ disciples know? They had learned it in the mystery schools of that time: The very same Being who revealed Himself on Mount Sinai would descend to Earth, dwell in a human body, and speak through a human being for three years—and that human being would be Christ Jesus. The initiates knew this. Saul, who later became Paul, knew it as well. But he said to himself: Certainly, this Being exists, and it will descend to Earth. But I cannot imagine that it will meet a shameful death on the cross—that Being who revealed Himself as Yahweh in the burning bush. —What, then, could convince him? The event at Damascus. At the moment when he became clairvoyant and the earth’s aura became visible to him, and he saw within it the Christ—the living Christ, who revealed himself to him as the very one who had died on the cross—at that moment, Saul became Paul.

[ 12 ] But this could only be seen at that time. Earlier, two thousand years ago, the Christ was not yet in the Earth’s aura; He was still visible in the sun. Zarathustra saw the sun surrounded by an aura: he called it Ahura Mazdao, the great aura of Ormuzd. But this being descended, first revealing himself to Moses in the burning bush, and then dwelling among us as a human being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. “I am the light of the world,” Christ could therefore say of himself. Before that, no one could have spoken in this way, because the light of the world had not yet dwelt in anyone.

[ 13 ] We want to explore these matters until we fully understand them. Today, however, we will merely suggest that the Christ-being was not always able to reveal itself as it did, for example, in the case of Paul. The Christ-being first had to earn that ability; it had to develop its power to the point where it could reveal itself in that way. Two thousand years ago, this would not yet have been possible for it. Every soul makes progress in every incarnation. This is important; it is what matters when it comes to leading individualities. We must recognize that the Christ is not always the same; we must recognize him in his specific modes of action, in the way he, too, progresses from one stage of development to the next. And it is an overwhelming feeling of exaltation for human beings when they realize how—just as with their own souls, their incarnations, and their progress—spiritual beings, too, rise higher and higher and become more and more powerful. This gives a living sense of evolution. In Rosicrucian theosophy, it is precisely a matter of showing how such a being as Christ has worked in the past and in the present—as with Moses and Paul—and of seeing how even such a being continues to progress. This provides a deeper understanding of evolution.

[ 14 ] Let’s consider a child. It is born; it sees the light of day—as the technical term goes—it changes, and especially in the very first weeks of life, it changes particularly rapidly; the process of development proceeds most rapidly there compared to later stages. Even at this stage, external, materialistic science can observe many things. For example, when examining the brain—which can be determined by external means—it can observe how, at the top of the child’s head, in the area that remains soft for a long time, the parts of the skull do not fuse until later, and the brain gradually takes shape. The task of structuring and connecting is to form an instrument for what the child will only be able to do later: to think; it is meant to connect perceptions. The clairvoyant now sees in the child, during the very first days and weeks of development, how it is surrounded by powerfully acting forces that belong to the second part of the human being, the etheric body. We know that in modern humans this body is roughly the same size as the physical body, but in children it still extends far beyond the physical body, especially at the head. And it is here that the activity of these forces—which appears to the clairvoyant like a play of light—is particularly vivid. It is a marvel to behold how certain forces shoot up from the lower parts of the body, how they then radiate down from above—from the nape of the neck, from all sides—and, where the hair swirls, radiate outward in a living interplay of forces, becoming an astral-etheric play of light within the child’s etheric body, which then gradually fades away over time. Within this play of light lie the forces that create those physical connecting links in the brain. The brain is not formed until after the child is born, and it is formed from a spiritual substance. You can see forty to fifty streams of force working together there—the light body is composed of them—a marvelous spectacle when you observe the child in this way during the first weeks of life. Gradually, this light body penetrates into the child’s brain and settles there. At first, the child’s etheric body was outside, surrounding the head; it was quite primitive. It was surrounded by a light body from which it drew forces, and now it gradually enters the child’s head, residing there as a complex etheric organism. That is the marvelous thing about development: that everything physical is constructed from the spiritual world, fashioned from the spiritual, which we then take in ourselves. The soul has first fashioned the dwelling in which it then resides. Thus we see how this happens in the small world, in the child’s human brain; and so it is in the greater world as well. Consider a particularly advanced individuality such as that of Jesus of Nazareth, in whose body Christ dwelt as a soul for three years. Just as in a child the etheric body prepares the physical brain itself so that the Christ can later move into it, so too did the Christ first prepare the place in which he could dwell. But he first had to work this out for himself. At first, he was, so to speak, connected to the Earth only externally, but the Earth was not yet able to take him in. But the best among them worked upon it in such a way that Christ could come closer and closer to it, and Christ himself helped in this process. Who, then, transformed the body of Jesus of Nazareth and ultimately brought it to the point where it could receive Christ? Christ himself did this. First, he worked on it from the outside, and afterward Christ himself was able to enter into the human being.

[ 15 ] The same thing happens in the small world as in the large one. And it is only because these beings who stand above us also evolve that evolution is possible at all. It was only because Christ was able to reveal himself in a supersensory way that he became the planetary spirit of the Earth. The microcosmic always corresponds to the macrocosmic.

[ 16 ] Today I was unable to present even the first chapter of Rosicrucianism to you, but could only begin by describing the way in which people of the present day should learn to think and feel. For the true meaning of “Know thyself” lies in the fact that we follow the evolution of the world in this way. Where is our self? Surely not within us alone. To think so would be selfish. It is built up and born out of the entire universe, and our ascent, too, is meant to lead us to merge with the entire cosmos. Self-knowledge seeks to place the human being within the whole world in order to reveal to him there the true meaning of the phrase: self-knowledge.