The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] The first thing necessary for us to be able to view human beings from the three perspectives—the occult, theosophical, and philosophical—will be to speak from the occult perspective; and it would be advisable today to begin by speaking of this occult perspective in such a way as to describe how, throughout the entire course of human development to date, one person or another has come to elevate themselves to this occult perspective, to the occult view of the world.

[ 2 ] As we already mentioned in the preparatory introductory lecture, throughout the course of human development, it has naturally always been the case that only a few were deemed ready to participate in the rituals of the Mysteries, in the activities of the occult schools and training centers that led people toward occult insight. So let us first speak of the development of these few.

[ 3 ] It is clear from the spirit of many other lectures I have given that we are now at a point in time when, due to the popularization of theosophical ideas, more and more people must participate in the occult life—far more than the few who have done so in the course of humanity’s past development. Thus, what we are considering today concerns everyone interested in theosophy, every person who feels in our time that occult knowledge—knowledge of the hidden aspects of existence—must, in a certain sense, no longer remain hidden in the future, but must, in accordance with the demands of a further-developed humanity, become increasingly widespread.

[ 4 ] The person who was now to come to occult knowledge had, above all, to turn his gaze from the outer world to his own soul forces. But since he remained an active person in the outer world, his occult development was, so to speak, his own affair—a matter he had to deal with on his own. In the outer world, he remained a human being among other human beings, a human being with the duties that life had once placed upon him. This was already expressed in a particularly strong way in the very first thing the occultly developing human being had to do with regard to his soul power.

[ 5 ] The first thing such a person had to do, to put it in words, was to reconcile himself with his karma in regard to everything pertaining to his will. Thus, reconciliation with his karma—his destiny, we might also say—was the first thing required of the person developing occultly.

[ 6 ] Now, you need not think that this reconciliation with one’s karma requires a particularly comprehensive theory of karma. What is referred to in this context as “reconciliation with one’s karma” is rather a special kind of culture, of education, of self-education of one’s sensations and feelings. If you consider that a person begins their occult development at some point, you will admit that before the moment they began their development, they lived in the manner of ordinary people, lived just as people live among other people; that is to say, they have assumed this or that position in life, have had to make these or those thoughts their own, because these thoughts gave them the means to truly carry out the external actions they had to perform for their profession or for their other position in life. Furthermore, they have recognized certain duties, a sphere of obligations, which custom or their community has imposed upon them. It can be assumed from the outset that a person who was not exactly in harmony with what the world around him demanded of him—that is, who was not a dutiful person—will not have the urge to develop occultly. As a rule, the people who could be called upon for occult development were those who possessed real skills for their life situation and who were also inclined to adapt to the sphere of duties prescribed by custom and social order. But in what is within the human being—his abilities, his skills in his life situation—and in what surrounds the human being—the sphere of duties he acknowledges—lies, in fact, the positive karma into which the human being has been placed. This is where his karma is expressed.

[ 7 ] The first thing that was demanded and required of the one who was, so to speak, to step out of this mere position in life and enter into the exploration of the spiritual world was that he maintain his life karma in a certain way, that is, to give a promise—first and foremost, mind you—to himself and to those who offered him a hand to enter the occult world, that he would not use what is gained in the field of occult research in his outer life situation; rather, he was to direct his will in such a way that a person standing outside and observing one who is developing occultly would perceive no noticeable difference between the way the occultly developing person previously behaved in their daily life and how they behave later, after having already taken a few steps in occult research.

[ 8 ] Therefore, do not use what occult research provides to interfere with external life on the physical plane: this is reconciliation with one’s karma; it is the acceptance that one cannot gain advantages in one’s external life through occult means.

[ 9 ] We shall see that a certain degree of progress in one’s external life will nevertheless occur in a regular, proper manner. But that is not the point of the conscious commitment that one who has been admitted to the occult path had to undertake. “You shall not use your occult development to gain an advantage over your fellow seekers in outer life, but you shall conduct yourself in outer life according to the same rules by which you have conducted yourself up to now”—this was impressed upon those undergoing occult development time and time again. This constituted the first sacrifice that the occult initiate had to make, for in doing so, he had immediately renounced, from the very outset, the use of the means of the occult life for selfish ends.

[ 10 ] You must understand what has just been said very precisely and literally; one might say, without taking anything away or adding anything. Then you will notice that it refers to what the person in question is initially capable of accomplishing in the outer world—or is obligated to do—as a result of the karma imposed upon them.

[ 11 ] This, however, excludes the egoistic will of the human being from all occult striving from the very outset. It has been deliberately excluded. This fact alone, as a given reality, brings about a change in the human being’s state of mind. For to understand this, simply consider the following. Until now, for the person entering into occult development, the sphere of external duties, the external position in life, was, so to speak, the only thing to which they devoted themselves, the only world in which they lived. Now they commit themselves to living in this world, for the time being, according to the same rules by which they had lived until now, and yet to save their strength for something else.

[ 12 ] This draws a clear line for him from the outset between the two spheres of influence in which he operates. A whole new world opens up for him—one he has never paid any attention to before, one in which he has had no interest whatsoever. This is extraordinarily important. For every person, a new phase of life begins when new interests enter their life—interests that seek to establish their own domain.

[ 13 ] Thus it was a given from the very beginning that the human mind, the entire world of sensation, and the sphere of human interests would be drawn into a new world—a world in which humanity had not yet existed. This fact, which I have just described to you, finds external expression in the fact that the older mysteries and secret schools in particular—the centers of occult development—were very strict about ensuring that human beings, so to speak, were not brought into conflict or disharmony with their external sphere of interests. Therefore, they strictly required of him that, with regard to everything imposed upon him by his profession, by the duties of the state or other communities in which he stood, he fulfill his duty to the fullest extent, and people who in any way showed that they did not wish to do so, that they rebelled against their external obligations, were not admitted to the occult schools at all.

[ 14 ] I am simply telling you the facts about the history of occult development. That is why you will find that people who, in a certain sense, already behaved in their external lives in such a way that they rebelled in one direction or another against the order within which they lived were not members of any mystery school or occult institution.

[ 15 ] The second issue at hand was something far more difficult. Let us consider the person as he was when he had made the promise just mentioned—to himself and his teacher, so to speak. Then he had to tell himself: I will not allow what comes to me as the result of occult research to influence my will, as that will manifests itself on the physical plane. — But with everything else that came to him as a human being—that is, with all his soul powers that he could use, just as he had used them before, with the exception of the will—he could still be active on the physical plane. His will was bound by the fact that he had made the specific promise, but everything else at his disposal on the physical plane—that is, his power of judgment, his imagination, his memory, his emotions, and so on—with which he had previously been active on the physical plane, he could still use; with them he could still be active on the physical plane.

[ 16 ] Let us take the intellect, for example. The intellect is the soul’s faculty, the soul’s power, which enables us to distinguish and to form judgments about the facts of life. Without this intellect, we cannot function in external life on the physical plane. We must, so to speak, apply this intellect of ours at every turn. Now, let us assume that when one became a member of an occult society or an occult school, one gained occult research results and insights into what one did in one’s external life. One was not permitted to apply them through one’s will. But initially, nothing prevented one—provided one exercised restraint regarding one’s will—from using one’s intellect in such a way that one intelligently observed the things outside and the people one encountered on the physical plane, employing all the higher means now available from occult research. So while one could not incorporate the results of occult research into one’s actions or volitional decisions, the way one, as a student of occultism, assessed the beings of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, the way one assessed other people, and the way one used one’s intellect in the ordinary world—all of this could initially be influenced by occult research.

[ 17 ] You will notice that this necessarily involves a high degree of self-discipline on the part of the occultist. For what could be more obvious for a person who, in life, is called upon to face and interact with other people than to act in accordance with his life’s position—that is, to apply what he knows; for example, to act accordingly when he perceives with his intellect that he is dealing with a morally inferior person. That is surely the most self-evident and natural thing we will do in the world.

[ 18 ] The occultist is not capable of doing this. Although he can use the tools provided by occult research to sharpen his intellect and, better than he could before, gain insight into the character of a fellow human being and know that he is a morally inferior person; he can also adjust what he does to this person accordingly, for he has not committed himself in relation to this person, but only in relation to his own life position; he has not committed himself to refraining from exercising his will in regard to what he does for the other person. But for what he does for himself, he has committed himself to being reconciled with his karma and not to apply the insights that present themselves to him when he uses his intellect, supported by the means of occult research.

[ 19 ] Let us consider a specific case: suppose someone has attained the level in the occult realm that I am now referring to. If he had not become an occultist, he might encounter another person and fail to recognize that this person is morally inferior. The consequence of this would be that they would allow themselves to be taken advantage of by this person in some way. It goes without saying that this can happen. You will admit that such things have already happened in the world, that people have been deceived in the world to the extent that they considered a person to be better than they truly were, and, as we say in German, “fell for it”—that is, allowed themselves to be deceived by them.

[ 20 ] As an occultist, one has a certain advantage. One recognizes the inferiority of this person, but one has initially—and I ask that the word “initially” be understood correctly, that is, heard—committed oneself not to apply this occult knowledge to one’s will, that is, to one’s own life stance. One may know: This is an inferior person; yet one must behave as one would have behaved in the past. One must socially tolerate from him what one would have had to tolerate from him had one not received the occult insights through one’s intellect.

[ 21 ] Here you can see clearly and distinctly marked the degree of self-restraint the aspiring occultist must practice; how he must make a sharp distinction between what he can perceive without occult research and what could give him an advantage in life through occult research. Anyone who, by virtue of his natural gifts or special circumstances, is fortunate enough to know the inferiority of others without being an occultist will always be inclined to regard the aspiring occultist as a fool, because the latter forgoes advantages that pertain to himself. It is certainly the rule that certain people, either through favorable circumstances in life or otherwise, see through what the occultist also sees through, but do not act upon it because they are bound not to act upon it. This will always happen, just as the opposite can happen—that one or the other who has made a promise does not keep it; but that is their own business. One might consider the aspiring occultist a fool because he allows himself to be taken advantage of by another person. But this must by no means lead us to assume that he lacks the means to see through people.

[ 22 ] So, in a sense, this is a second stage: that, by refraining from using our will for our own selfish ends, we apply our intellect to the external physical world. At the stage just described, the ancient occult teachers actually left their students to their own devices for quite some time. For a long time, the students had to go through the world in such a way that, using their intellect, they learned to observe not only other human beings but also the other realms of nature in a deeper sense than before, so that they could penetrate more deeply and yet continue exactly the same course of life they had followed previously. Through this, not only was strong self-discipline achieved, and not only did the individual learn not to put the advantages offered by his spirit in the service of egoism, but a completely different kind of progress was also made possible for these people.

[ 23 ] For if, immediately after the intellect has spoken, the will follows and, so to speak, carries out the actions initiated by the intellect, then the development of this intellect, the power of this intellect, goes much less far than if this intellect were applied for a time in isolation, as it were, chemically distilled from the sphere of the will. When a person essentially excludes himself as an egoistic being from a realm into which he enters by applying his intellect—as has just been characterized—to the entire world surrounding him, but while refraining from the exercise of the will, subtle distinctions are thereby revealed to him. The intellect is refined. The power of judgment and the power of discernment grow ever stronger as we proceed in this manner, and in this way we have then completed the second stage of occult development, namely what one might call the cultivation of the intellect emancipated from the will; and to be perfectly precise, one could say: the cultivation of the intellect emancipated from the egoistic will.

[ 24 ] The next step, however, was that the individual—precisely because he had exercised his intellect in the most rigorous manner over a long period of time—had to begin, in this very area, to refrain from using his intellect. You see, now comes an even more difficult matter; now the human being must, so to speak, take it upon himself to judge as he always judged before he became an occultist. With regard to the things of the outer physical plane, he must apply only that power of judgment and intellect that he applied before. What he has now gained for his intellect, what he has now conquered, and what stands as an immense advantage and progress of the spirit, the human being must exclude from his spiritual activity; that is to say, he may proceed only in a strictly scientific manner. What he has strived for over a long period with all his energy and acuity—namely, to bring his intellect to greater powers—he must cast aside again; he must tear it completely out of his soul, insofar as it is the conscious application of the intellect, and must say to himself: As you go through your actions and positions on the physical plane, you must think and discern just as you thought, discerned, and behaved before your occult development, according to your level of intelligence at that time. — That is to say, one must step back, must, so to speak, be as foolish as one was before the sharpening of one’s intellect.

[ 25 ] And what is to become of this reason, which he has renounced? He may no longer use this reason; he has used it for a long time, but he may no longer use it. What happens now to the results of reason, of the faculty of judgment, when we set aside their immediate application?

[ 26 ] Then they pass into our memory, into our recollection. This is the next step, namely: everything that a person has learned through the power of their sharper intellect must become a memory for them. They must no longer proceed in their cultural development or in the further training of their intellect; they must refrain from applying their heightened intellect in any way, or from seeking to know this or that through their sharper intellect regarding the connections of the world; and he must repeatedly seek out in his memory only what he has already acquired through this sharper intellect; this must arise again and again in his memory. He must strive more and more to ensure that what he has gained there for his intellect becomes for him something like the things he may have conceived in life ten or twenty years ago—things he does not think of now, but merely remembers.

[ 27 ] You see, in such occult schools—such as the Pythagorean school in antiquity, or certain secret schools in the Near East—the students were initially selected in such a way that only those deemed mature enough to keep the vow were accepted: namely, not to allow the means of intellectual cultivation they were to attain to be absorbed into their egoistic will. Then these students were educated for a long, long time in such a way that they were repeatedly urged in every possible way to distinguish things more sharply, and then to learn to bring them back together with the power of judgment, as is possible in ordinary external life. Over a long period of time, the greatest emphasis was placed on cultivating this power of judgment in the schools of antiquity and also of the Middle Ages, which rightly existed.

[ 28 ] Then the student had to take, so to speak, a second vow. This second promise, which the students made to themselves and to their teacher, was that they would cease to judge the things they saw out there on the physical plane using the judgments they had formed with their intellect. Nor were they allowed to be critical of the teachings their teacher presented to them. They were only permitted to compare what their teacher presented with what they had previously acquired through their power of judgment. They were not allowed to exercise criticism, but had to become the kind of listeners who always compared what they were now hearing with what they had previously gained through their sharper intellectual faculties. This, in turn, belonged to the next stage of occult development, and one could call it the exclusion of the sharper powers of the intellect and the restriction of the inner life of the soul—insofar as one considered oneself—to memory and recollection. Only that which the imagination could produce in symbols and allegories from these remembered judgments, concepts, and ideas was still permitted to be expressed.

[ 29 ] Thus, memory and imagination were the powers of the soul that were now, so to speak, coming into their own, that were now to become particularly active at this higher level. So that they might, as it were, distill themselves cleanly from the rest of the soul life and not be constantly influenced by the judgments of the intellect, they were to assert themselves alone.

[ 30 ] With this, the student had then entered a further stage of his occult development. The time during which the student was required to pass through this stage was mostly filled by presenting to the students, in conceptual form, the occult insights already known as teachings and incorporated into theosophy; so that, as it were, the students were there with the powers they had previously gained through their power of judgment, always remembering them and, in a sense, allowing what was presented to them by their teachers to meet them and take effect within them.

[ 31 ] It goes without saying that the period during which the students underwent this development varied greatly among the different mysteries, depending on what was deemed necessary, in accordance with the general needs of human development, to impart more or less of the occult secrets to those whom one wished to train in the occult in this way, so that they might then be made into guides for humanity in an appropriate manner. In the occult schools, the period during which this was undergone usually lasted quite a long time.

[ 32 ] The next thing the occult student had to turn to was striving with all the strength at his disposal to erase—that is, to wipe from his consciousness—not only the memories and the imaginative elaborations into symbols or the like, but also, mind you, the concepts he had acquired through his own self. This was indeed an extraordinarily difficult task, and one generally does not have a mental image of a student being able to master this difficult task. That the students were nevertheless able to master this task— namely, to spread complete forgetfulness over everything they had acquired through their own power—you can get a mental image of this if you consider that such students had learned, with regard to external actions, to subdue their will and had attained such strong self-discipline that they always behaved only as described above.

[ 33 ] By not allowing the will—which is otherwise free to act outwardly—to run its course, but instead being compelled to restrain it so strongly, one developed powerful reserves of willpower within. That was certainly the case. One becomes stronger and stronger within when one is compelled to restrain one’s will externally in such a way that none of the benefits offered by spiritual development are allowed to flow into one’s egoistic will. This makes one ever stronger, and it is precisely through this that one attains the strong resolve of will needed to now suppress and erase what one has acquired within occult training and what one previously recalled. Just as one erases a mental image that is of no use in life, so must what has just been discussed be erased. That was an absolute requirement.

[ 34 ] Do not think, however, that those who were occult students in this way became blind, authority-worshipping individuals toward their teachers. That was by no means the case. Those who are authority-worshipping are those who always use their ordinary intellect in a rather superficial way to judge what they hear. But those people who have first sharpened their powers of judgment will always retain in their memory only what they have acquired through these sharpened powers of judgment. Those who, through their memory and their entire imagination, allowed the occult teachings to take effect upon them certainly did not become blind followers of authority, but accepted what the occult teachings offered them just as one accepts nature itself. Thus, the occult students accepted the occult teachings at all only after they had gone through the corresponding preceding stages. Indeed, the teachers themselves ensured that their words would affect their students like nature itself, so that they would not need to command the students to hold this or that opinion. It was the case that, through what they had previously undergone in terms of discernment and intellectual development, the students had reached a stage in the next step—that of recollection— they were ready to face the words as one faces a sunrise, as one faces a sea whipped by the wind, as one faces any other natural phenomenon that one observes in order to get to know it, but which one does not approach critically; for then one does not get to know it.

[ 35 ] Those who merely regard a natural phenomenon with sympathy or antipathy are the least likely to come to understand its inner power. Just as one observes nature itself, so did the occult student observe what occult instruction presented to him.

[ 36 ] But then, after they had maintained this for a time in the manner described—so that only recollection, imagination, and memory were active, and the students directed their intellect solely toward their external vocation in life—they had to enter the period of inner peace of mind, of forgetting their own powers, and of putting their own achievements to rest. Only then had the time come for them when they could attain complete inner peace of mind, when the memories and imaginative images gained through their own powers during their previous occult life had been erased from consciousness itself.

[ 37 ] In a certain sense, the soul was emptied, and because it was emptied—because the egoistic will, the egoistic mind, the egoistic memory, and the egoistic imagination had been removed from this soul—it was opened up to a truly new world. This was necessary so that this new world could truly penetrate the soul.

[ 38 ] Now you must come to terms with the fact that a new world has indeed entered the soul, which was previously emptied of its egoistic spiritual power. A new world. You should not be surprised, therefore, if the nature of this new world is strange. For what is strange? Strange is that which a person experiences in a way that contradicts their previous experiences. Why, then, do people reject this or that? Look around the world wherever something is being discussed; there people reject it, saying: There is a contradiction in what is being claimed. — That is to say, based on what one has been able to judge so far, one finds it to be in contradiction to everything one knows and understands; and one immediately believes that, in relation to the other person who is presenting something in this way, one has the upper hand and is in the right if one can demonstrate a contradiction.

[ 39 ] In fact, public discussion of issues essentially consists of pointing out contradictions, of saying here and there: “That must be wrong; there is a contradiction there.” — That refutes most things. We must face the fact that we encounter contradictions because we are approaching something that can bear no resemblance whatsoever to our world up to now, to what we have experienced so far. We must recognize that we actually have to come to terms with nothing but contradictions when the new world approaches us, a world characterized in such terms that we can say: Yes, these are all contradictions. That the new world is characterized to us in contradictions must be so, for the new world would not be a new world if it corresponded to the old and showed no contradictions.

[ 40 ] So you should not be surprised if the first characteristic of the world that a person enters upon reaching the peace of mind that follows the stage of forgetfulness can only be described with words that seem contradictory to the ordinary world in which we live.

[ 41 ] There are three things that a person experiences once they have reached the stage described above. Three things that we can only describe by using words that are in themselves contradictory to everything a person knows about the external world. A person comes to know three things when they truly enter what can be called a supersensible world.

[ 42 ] The first thing he comes to know is the unrevealed light. Look around and see if you cannot see light everywhere in the world. That is the nature of light: that it reveals itself. But the first thing a person encounters in the supersensible world is the unrevealed light, the dark light, the light that does not shine.

[ 43 ] The second thing a person encounters in the supersensible world is the ineffable word. In the ordinary world, a word does not exist unless it is spoken. A word that is not spoken is not a word. We have a complete contradiction when we say: The second thing one encounters in the supersensible world is the unutterable word.

[ 44 ] And the third is consciousness without a known object. Just remember that when you develop a consciousness, when you know this or that, you have an object, a subject of knowledge. But the consciousness that confronts us as the third when we enter the supersensible world is consciousness without an object, consciousness without a subject matter.

[ 45 ] These three things, which can only be described in contradictory terms, are what the student encounters when, through the preparation we have described, he enters the actual realm of the occult. For these are, in a sense, the first three truly occult things we come to know:

first, the unrevealed light,
second, the ineffable word,
third, consciousness without knowledge of an object.

[ 46 ] This is then the most significant event that can initially occur for the budding occultist: learning to connect something with what appears to him to be a contradiction to everything he has experienced so far. The moment a person is able to connect anything from their inner experience with the three ideas of the unrevealed light, the ineffable word, and consciousness without knowledge of an object, they have become a true occultist. The aspiring occultist has then truly entered the path of occult knowledge.