The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] It is now my task, so to speak, to discuss in a series of episodes certain topics that relate directly to practical life and to external human existence in general, in order to shed a little light on precisely what spiritual science must have in our time: a direct relationship to life. We will, I hope, also come to topics that deal more with inner human life. Overall, the focus of our current reflections is the goal of gaining an understanding, based on the foundations of spiritual science, of the position of the human being—of each individual human being—in practical life, that is, even in practical professional life. I would like to refer to all these lectures I have been giving for some time now as “On the Karma of the Profession.” To do so, however, it is necessary to establish a broader foundation, and I must address certain matters that are connected to our questions in a broader sense.

[ 2 ] We have come to realize that what a person achieves for the world in any profession is by no means something that should be dismissed as merely prosaic, but rather something that, as we have seen, is intimately connected even with humanity’s most distant cosmic future. Human beings integrate themselves, in a certain sense, into the social order of life. They are driven by their karma toward a particular profession—none of which should be regarded as more prosaic or poetic than another when we discuss this question—and we know: What a person accomplishes within the social order is the first seed of something that is significant not only for our Earth but will continue to develop as the Earth passes through the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan stages. What might be called the “understanding of one’s profession” and the “recognition of the significance of immediate human life”—these can become quite clear to us through such reflections. And it is precisely the task of our spiritual scientific endeavors not merely to convey theories that sound pleasant, but to allow that which is capable of placing us correctly—and correctly in the sense of the spirit of our time, the ark of our time—into life to approach our souls, each person in the place where they are placed. That is why our truths also possess a character that will always be strong enough to ensure that, through our truths, life—that which confronts us in life—can truly be assessed. We do not wish to revel in all manner of pleasant notions, but rather to embrace ideas that carry us through life.

[ 3 ] If we recall something I have often emphasized, we will see how even our scientific endeavors are directed toward bringing what is truly meaningful in life closer to our souls. I have often pointed out a very significant fact of life—a fact that, if those whose task it is to pursue scholarship do not act too obtusely, could play a major, significant scientific role in a relatively short time. Isn’t it true that today there is a great deal of emphasis on what is related to heredity in human life, and that educators who speak today of “vocation” speak—because, of course, they mostly parrot the scientific worldview—of inherited traits that the educator must take into account when forming a judgment about this or that question regarding the future profession of a person entering life. But today this heredity is treated only in the sense that one says: Children inherit certain characteristics from their parents, and also from more distant ancestors—and in doing so, people today think more or less of physical heredity, of heredity that is entirely confined to the physical line. People in today’s mainstream science are not yet ready to accept the idea of repeated earthly lives or the carrying over of human characteristics from earlier incarnations. They speak of heredity. However, one will only be able to form a correct opinion on this question of heredity if one considers it in connection with what we can already know—even if we merely understand the content of the little book: The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science. There we learn that human life unfolds in such a way that it has a first phase lasting until about the age of seven, until the teeth begin to change; a second phase lasting until the age of fourteen; a third phase lasting until the age of twenty-one; and so on, let us say until the age of twenty-eight and beyond. More detailed information, however, can be found in a small brochure that summarizes the content of a lecture I recently gave in Liestal, in which I sought to highlight, from yet another perspective, these truths regarding human development—divided into seven-year periods—between birth and death. We know that, essentially, between birth and the change of teeth, the physical body develops internally in a certain way; that the etheric body develops until the time of maturity; and that the astral body then undergoes its development.

[ 4 ] Let us now turn our attention to this period, which extends from the age of fourteen to sixteen; of course, it varies depending on climate, nationality, and so on. As we know, it is during this period that a person matures to the point of being able to produce offspring. It will now become clear that, particularly for a scientific theory of heredity, the consideration of this period is of immense importance; for by this point, a person must have developed all the characteristics that enable them to pass on traits to their offspring of their own accord; they cannot develop these abilities only afterward. There is thus an important stage in life—the stage at which a person’s ability to pass on characteristics to their offspring ceases. Certainly, in a secondary sense, characteristics acquired later can also be passed on to offspring, but from a scientific perspective, human beings are constituted in such a way that by the age of fourteen to sixteen, they are fully mature in terms of heredity. One cannot, therefore, say that the essential elements entering human development after this point are significant specifically for the question of heredity. Natural science will thus have to investigate the reasons why, from this point onward, humans cease to develop hereditary material within themselves. For animals, the situation is quite different. For animals, the situation is such that, throughout their entire lives, they essentially do not progress beyond this point. This is what must be taken into account.

[ 5 ] Today, without going into many of the details that would need to be discussed in this matter, I would like to point out right away what actually underlies the issue from a spiritual-scientific perspective. When we consider the moment of birth, we have before us the longer period of time that a human being spends in the spiritual world between their last death and this birth. It is there that the processes take place which I have often described in a certain sketchy way. Everything that occurs during the period between death and a new birth naturally has an effect on the human being. Now, in what takes place between death and birth, there is above all much that relates to everything the human being works through in connection with their physicality between birth and the ages of fourteen and sixteen. Precisely what the human being works through here largely in the unconscious, they work through between death and the new birth from the perspective of a higher consciousness. So let us be clear about this: here on this earth, a human being looks through their eyes and their other senses at the mineral, plant, and animal worlds, and so on. When they are together in the spiritual world with angels, archangels, Archaei, Exusiai, and with those human beings who have passed through the gate of death and who may be close to them in some way—their attention, when they look down, is directed primarily toward what pertains to human life during this period. From this perspective, as I have already explained in exoteric lectures, everything that underlies heredity is also determined. We know from an observation I made last week that, as a remnant of the processes between death and a new birth, what results from a previous professional life also manifests itself, so to speak, physiognomically and in gestures, as well as in the entire hereditary constitution, so that during this time one can truly see in a person—even in the way they walk, move their hands, and behave in general—what is the result of their professional life from the previous incarnation.

[ 6 ] But then begins the period from the age of fourteen to twenty-one, which, in a certain sense, stands in opposition to the preceding period. During this period, as you have heard, hereditary impulses cannot continue to exert their influence in the same way, for that phase is over; the time has passed when the human being has developed these hereditary impulses. Conventional natural science does not yet take such questions into account. But if it does not wish to be completely divorced from reality, it will have to take them into account. This is also the time when a person is guided toward their new vocation by impulses that act in an indeterminate and unconscious manner; and the events that lie between death and a new birth have less of an influence here than the impulses arising from the previous incarnation. The impulses of the previous incarnation are particularly effective during this period. People believe—and others believe as well—that as circumstances develop in such a way that a person is driven toward this or that profession, it is only these external circumstances that are at work. But in reality, these external circumstances are subconsciously connected to what lives within our human soul—and specifically, at this very moment, directly from the circumstances of the previous incarnation. Note the difference: In the preceding period, from the seventh to the fourteenth year, the previous incarnation—fertilized by what takes place between death and rebirth—enters our physical constitution and makes us a reflection of our previous profession; in the subsequent period, these impulses no longer act within us, no longer impose gestures upon us, but rather guide us along the paths leading to our new profession.

[ 7 ] You can see from this what an infinitely fruitful idea must emerge from these reflections for pedagogy—for the entire educational system of the future—once the outer world culture is finally able to accept the reality of repeated earthly lives and cease to formulate fantastical theories, which must necessarily be fantastical for the simple reason that they do not take reality into account, but only that which is not reality—merely a fragment of reality—namely, the immediate present life between birth and death. Here, too, we must gain an insight into just how immeasurably important it will be for spiritual science to find its way precisely into those circles that are concerned with the formation and development of the human being, but which are also concerned with influencing life within the external social order. Of course, we are looking toward broad perspectives here, but perspectives that are thoroughly connected to reality, for in the evolution of the world there is no chaos; rather, there is truly order—or even disorder—but what prevails is precisely that which can only be explained from within spiritual life. And so, the one who knows the laws governing repeated earthly lives can, as they say, face life in a completely different way—in thought and action—and can speak of or even bring about things that must be connected to the course of life.

[ 8 ] Now consider that, in a certain sense, everything in the world unfolds cyclically. We are, after all, familiar with the great cycles of the post-Atlantean era: the Proto-Indian, the Proto-Persian, the Chaldean-Egyptian, the Greek-Latin, our own cycle, and the one that will follow. Human souls are reborn in all these cycles—some many times, others just once. But life on our Earth does not proceed cyclically only in this broad, general sense; rather, it proceeds cyclically in such a way that certain conditions can be identified if one is able to assess earlier conditions correctly. For example, if someone can correctly assess what was spiritually active during the first centuries of Christian development—say, from the 3rd century into the 7th century—so that they understand the spiritual impulses, then they can in turn assess which social needs may be active in our time. Cyclical developments take place. And the issue is that one makes a person unhappy who may be precisely destined to engage with the cyclical development in a certain way, and to whom one gives the advice that they should behave differently in life. But since, especially in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, people must engage with life with ever greater awareness, knowledge of the corresponding laws must also emerge more and more. It must be possible for a person to learn to view themselves in relation to what is taking place and at work in their surroundings. This does not merely amount to learning how to guide children toward the right profession, but also to being able—since we know that thoughts are realities—to develop the right thoughts about one’s own relationship to the world, regardless of one’s place in life. In the future, it will become increasingly important what a person thinks about their connection to what is happening in the world around them in accordance with the development of the spirit of the age, the Arche. The human soul will have to become more and more aware of this.

[ 9 ] Now, do you recall how I tried to characterize the trends that emerged during the fifth post-Atlantic period? I have shown you how, in the Western regions, the current that turns people into—we have described this with a general, I would say, approximate term—the “bourgeois” has gained greater momentum, and how bourgeoisie has manifested itself in Western Europe and also in America. We have contrasted this ideal of bourgeoisie with the Eastern ideal—which is still, for the time being, merely an ideal because it expresses itself less clearly—since Western culture is relatively more advanced, while Eastern culture is more backward—namely, the ideal of the pilgrim. These two ideals—the bourgeois and the pilgrim—stand in opposition to one another, and without understanding what significance this has for life, it is impossible to come to terms with an understanding of life that is increasingly dawning upon us. People in earlier centuries and millennia could face life without understanding because they were guided by divine-spiritual powers. The more we develop toward the future that is now beginning, the more they must face it with understanding.

[ 10 ] You see, matters such as these—which I have outlined to you as the two currents, one based on heredity and the other on redemption—must be thoroughly examined if one is to form any judgment at all about contemporary life, for they present themselves as self-evident. This is not merely my assertion that these things demand attention; rather, it is something that can be said based on the reality of the present, and something that people—who face life not with apathy or lethargy, but with full engagement—have in fact felt for a long time and, to a certain extent, already know. I have already pointed out to you what constitutes the distinctive character of our time. There are many people in our time who certainly have a sense of the things that are emerging in life, but they lack the ability—remember what I explained regarding Jaures—to rise to an understanding of repeated earthly lives and karma, neither individual karma nor world karma, and therefore cannot see through what they do perceive. But at numerous points in recent history we find people who had an open eye for the things that were happening, even though they were never able to develop the capacity to explain the matter from the standpoint of repeated earthly lives; and even though, precisely because they did not do so—and thus failed to accept the concept of repeated earthly lives—they themselves contributed greatly to bringing about the very things they sharply criticized. This is precisely what is peculiar about people today, even the most clairvoyant among them; they criticize what exists today, yet they themselves contribute to the very emergence of what they then criticize—what they judge correctly. Thus, unconscious impulses come into play in human life.

[ 11 ] Let us take, for example, a person who truly saw many things with extraordinary clarity, who looked clearly at the life around him—specifically, his surroundings. One such person was John Stuart Mill, who was born in 1806 and died in 1873—a famous English philosopher who is regarded by many people in modern times as the innovator of logic, the one who further developed logic, but who also developed social insights on a very broad scale. He turned his gaze to social development, particularly in the world he knew—the world around him. And he sought to answer the question that took on a tragic character for him: Where is the present heading? Where is the social character that initially imposed itself on 19th-century life heading? — And he said: The type of person that emerged in the 19th century is the bourgeois. In what way, according to John Stuart Mill, does the bourgeois differ from earlier types of people that have emerged over the course of time? — He asks himself this, and he answers: The bourgeois differs in that, in earlier times, the individual human being held greater significance. By “earlier human beings”—I’ll now put it in terms more familiar to us, though John Stuart Mill essentially expressed the same idea in his own terms—by “earlier human beings,” there was more individuality, more of a certain striving of the soul to rise above the immediate external physical reality. The bourgeois type works toward leveling, toward making all people equal within the social order. But what, John Stuart Mill asks, results from this leveling? Not equality in the greatness of the human soul, but equality, John Stuart Mill argues, in the trivialities of the human soul. — And so John Stuart Mill sketches a future for humanity in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, of which he says: People, in their coexistence, will increasingly become—as he puts it—the “pressed caviar” of bourgeois trivialities. — He perceived this as a tragic realization.

[ 12 ] But depending on whether people are born into Western or Eastern culture, they perceive such things in different ways. It was the Russian thinker Herzen who made these observations and insights—these characterizations—widely known through the work of John Stuart Mill. It had a very different effect on his soul. The Western thinker describes this perspective of bourgeois existence—one might say—with a kind of nonchalance; the Eastern thinker, Herzen, suffers terribly from the fact that Europe is paving the way—as John Stuart Mill and Herzen claimed at the time—into “Chineseness.” For Mill and Herzen—as you can gather from Herzen’s 1864 work—one with an Eastern slant, the other with a Western one, they regard what has emerged in Chinese culture thus far as something already achieved at a certain stage of development, in contrast to what Europe is heading toward: toward a new form of Chinese culture—a late stage of Chinese culture—in which people become the “caviar paste” of bourgeois trivialities. A narrowing of the mind will come, says John Stuart Mill—a narrowing of the mind and of vital energy. A blunting of the personality—all that which must lead to leveling. A constant, as he puts it, “flattening” of life, a constant exclusion of general human interests from life, says John Stuart Mill; and Herzen confirms this, speaking solely from a tragically sensitive mind: a reduction to the interests of the commercial office and bourgeois prosperity. — This is what John Stuart Mill and Herzen were already saying back in the 1860s! And John Stuart Mill, speaking initially about his own country, said: England is on its way to becoming a modern China. — And Herzen said: Not only England, but all of Europe is on its way to becoming a modern China. — From Herzen’s 1864 book, one can gather that Herzen and Mill were in broad agreement at that time regarding what Herzen articulates: Unless an unexpected upsurge occurs in Europe that leads to the rebirth of the human personality and gives it the strength to overcome the bourgeoisie, Europe—despite its noble ancestors and its Christianity—will become China. These words were spoken in 1864!

[ 13 ] But Herzen had no way of accounting for karma and repeated earthly lives. And so he could only come to terms with such a realization amid the deepest tragedy of life. And he put it this way: “We are not the doctors of our time; we are the pains of our time, for what is approaching—perhaps it can be described even better with the English term that Herzen and Mill used back then than with a German one—is ‘conglomerated mediocrity.’” And Herzen expresses it, out of a tragic sense: a time will come in Europe when the realism of the modern scientific worldview will have progressed to such an extent that people will no longer truly believe in anything that belongs to another world, a supernatural world; when people will speak of the goal to be pursued as being solely the external physical realities, and where people will be sacrificed for the sake of physical realities, without opening up the perspective that those sacrificed might mean anything other than a bridge for those who follow. The individual is sacrificed to the future general polyp colony. — These are the words that were spoken back then. Europe, Herzen believes, has only one obstacle to becoming China quite quickly; that is: Christianity cannot be overcome quite so easily. — But he sees no prospect of this, for he also finds Christianity to have been reduced to a shallow form, reduced to revolution, and the revolution, as he says, reduced to the bourgeois liberalism of the 19th century, to “conglomerated mediocrity.” And with regard to what John Stuart Mill has stated, Herzen says, recalling the downfall of ancient Rome: “I see the inevitable collapse of old Europe; at the gate of the old world—Europe, he means—there stands not a Catiline, but Death.”

[ 14 ] Not without some justification, but also as someone who, while he sees many things happening around him in the present, is nevertheless quite unable to bring himself to embrace the fundamental concepts and ideas of the spiritual sciences—with some justification, I said, the contemporary Russian writer Merezhkovsky—who has recently learned much from Mill and Herzen—observes that in our time the cubit has taken the place of the scepter of earlier times, the ledger has taken the place of the Bible, and the counter has taken the place of the altar. — The mistake lies precisely in merely criticizing these things; for the fact that the cubit, the ledger, and the counter play the roles they do in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch—we know that this is how it must be, that it corresponds to an unconditional world karma. And the point is not to condemn these things, but to infuse this world of the cubit, the ledger, and the counter with the spirit that alone is equal to these things, and that is the spirit of spiritual science.

[ 15 ] The situation is serious, and I wanted to draw your attention—as I always try to do on such occasions—not to what I happen to have to say at the moment, but to the fact that what I say is in harmony with those people who have viewed life with an open mind and unwavering vigilance. Many people may have views and opinions, but what matters is how one stands within one’s own time with these opinions, whether they are rooted in the soil of that time, and whether one can truly substantiate them. What is important is the fact that time takes on a certain character, which people who wish to see can perceive, and that it is not a matter of arbitrarily ascribing a character to time, but rather of observing how humanity’s spiritual development progresses from cycle to cycle.

[ 16 ] I have pointed out that there are occult societies which, following time-honored traditions derived from ancient, atavistic secret teachings, possess knowledge of these matters. Now, as you know from earlier discussions, these societies—particularly in the West, though people in the East have also become their followers—have taken on a murky character. This does not, however, prevent them from preserving certain mysteries of existence. But they preserve them in a way that is no longer permissible today. It is precisely those who heed the spiritual message of our time and communicate that portion of spiritual science which, in keeping with the spirit of our age, can be shared with the public—the general public—today who encounter particularly strong resistance, which sometimes stems from murky sources. Yet this resistance is, after all, directed and guided everywhere by spiritual forces. One must certainly take this into account as well. And so it is entirely understandable that it is precisely against that spiritual science which is meant to live within our movement now that such matters are easily managed, resistance arises through the increasing emphasis on how, in our time, it should not be permissible for such a science to be made accessible to wider circles; and all manner of forces that enjoy popularity today are called upon to render this spiritual science ineffective. University professors travel from one country to another to explain that they must oppose my spiritual science in particular, on the grounds that the present age, as they say, must look to reality—and by that they mean the reality that they alone see—and not to things that lead people away from reality. And there is sometimes a great deal of method to such attacks. For anyone who is not blind can see how, depending on political constellations, people choose precisely the right places where they believe they can exert the greatest influence through their standing—as university professors, for example—and where they believe they can most effectively unseat someone. If they choose the right places and use the right words—not those that are right in and of themselves, but those that correspond to today’s passions—then they believe they will get the furthest.

[ 17 ] Today, however, all these things are part of a larger context. And what is, from a certain perspective, most—one might say—feared, though one might just as well say abhorred, is that a number of people today should learn something about the nature of life in the present. For there is—and this is especially true of those circles where those characteristic occult brotherhoods are found—the deepest interest in keeping people in the dark about what pertains to the true laws of life, because it is among such people that one can best exert one’s influence. One can no longer exert influence once people begin to understand their true position in the present. This is dangerous for those who wish to fish in troubled waters—those who want to keep their esotericism to themselves but use it to shape people within their social contexts exactly as they wish. And today there are members of occult brotherhoods who, within their own circles, are fully convinced that spiritual forces are at work everywhere around us, that a bond exists between the living and the dead. Within their occult brotherhoods, they speak of nothing other than the laws of the spiritual world—a portion of which, now to be published, we have in our spiritual science; they speak of these laws having adopted them from the old atavistic tradition. Then they write in newspapers, where they take a stand against the very same thing and denounce it as medieval superstition. It is often the very same people who, within their secret societies, practice spiritual science as an inherited doctrine, yet who, in public journals, speak out against it, labeling it medieval superstition, outdated mysticism, and the like. For they consider it right to keep this knowledge to themselves, while others remain ignorant and unaware of the principles by which they are guided. Of course, there are also all sorts of peculiar members of occult fraternities who see no more of the world than what lies right under their noses, and who then speak of the impossibility of publicly revealing the content of the mysteries to people today.

[ 18 ] Now, there are all sorts of ways to keep people, so to speak, in the dark; for just as—as I have hinted at in the Liestal lecture and in other public lectures—true spiritual science provides us with certain ideas and concepts through which we find entry into the spiritual world, as if by means of a key, in exactly the same way one can find certain concepts through which one is able to indoctrinate that segment of the population which cannot succumb to the “dumbing down” of the intellect caused by a natural-scientific worldview, as described by Mill and Herzen. After all, concepts can be shaped in a very specific way. And if some people knew how concepts are shaped in public today in order to prepare human souls in the right way, they would gradually begin to feel the urge to approach true spiritual science, which speaks of these things in an honest and sincere manner. I do not wish to delve today into all sorts of lofty concepts that are proclaimed to people as ideals—concepts that do not aim to achieve within people what these ideals embody, but rather serve an entirely different purpose. Instead, I want to use a simple example to illustrate how one can, so to speak, easily manipulate people who feel the need to satisfy certain mystical longings.

[ 19 ] I’ll choose the most trivial example possible. You see, someone might say, for example: Even the ancient Pythagoreans regarded numbers as containing the laws of the world. There is a great deal to be found in numerical ratios. Let’s take two numerical ratios, for example. Let’s take Nicholas II of Russia.

He was born in 1868
He took office in 1894
His reign lasted 22 years
He was 48 years old
Let’s add these numbers: 3832
If we take half of that, we get 1916

[ 20 ] 1916, the most significant year of the war. But this is established by a rather secret numerical connection. For let us take George V of England.

He was born in 1865
He has reigned since 1910
He has reigned for 6 years
His age is 51 years 3832
Halfway point: 1916

[ 21 ] The fates of these two people are intimately intertwined. Here you can see how the Pythagorean laws of numbers play a role in the world! But let’s also consider Poincaré, just for good measure.

He was born in 1860
He has been ruling since 1913
That is 3 years
He is 56 years old 3832
Halfway through: 1916

[ 22 ] You can see how the numbers match up among the three allies!

[ 23 ] It’s one of the silliest examples, of course, because if I were to go downstairs right now and ask one of the ladies—I won’t do it—when she was born, how long she’s been a member of the Anthroposophical Society, how old she is—as I said, I won’t do that—how many years she’s been in the Anthroposophical Society, and if I added up those numbers and took the average, I’d get the same number, exactly the same number. A perfect example! So that it’s a real-life example, let’s assume, for once, any woman or man—it could also be a man:

X.Y. was born in 1870
joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1912
so he would have been a member for 4 years
and 46 years old in 3832
half of that time would be 1916

[ 24 ] It’s a very silly example, but I can assure you that many things that involve searching for all sorts of numerical mysteries are based on nothing else; they’re just a bit more subtle than this example. And just as easily, one can take concepts from other fields, put them together in the right way, and throw them in people’s faces—simply by choosing the right methods and not letting people become aware of what lies behind them; for many people have fallen for the example cited as well. It is deeply regrettable that fate thus chose 1916; had we calculated it for 1914, it would have been the same—it would have coincided with the outbreak of war for these three allies! Just as one can arrange these numbers for these three allies, one can ultimately arrange any number. Some things, which are cobbled together solely from other conceptual foundations, are by no means more significant or clever; but one only notices this when the matter is somewhat more hidden, less obvious, and one can—if one also uses expressions like “world-deep,” “abysmally deep,” and, in particular, produces all sorts of numerical correlations—gain a tremendous number of followers and at the same time give the impression of speaking from the very depths of human knowledge. But there is something—and much more besides—in the methods employed by certain people to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Here and there, this or that concept is proclaimed, accompanied by this or that comment. The origin lies in some occult context that seeks to achieve something, that wants this or that. One need only be familiar with the paths that are taken. For such things to become impossible in the future, a certain number of people must not have the narrow-mindedness and limited life energy that Mill refers to, but rather the expansive mind and life energy that come from spiritual science and are meant to have a fertilizing effect on the human mind and human life energy, so that one approaches life in such a way that it cannot deceive one.

[ 25 ] These matters are also connected to the fact that there was a certain fear, but also a sense of dread, as the strange fact—which had been looming for a long time before it came to a head—spread from Eastern Europe to the West: that a figure as unique as Blavatsky, one might say, appeared as if out of the blue. I have pointed out on several occasions that this was, after all, a significant event for the course of the 19th century. And she appeared precisely at the time when the conflict was raging most fiercely between the so-called esotericists and the so-called progressive occultists. In this context, the reactionaries called themselves “esotericists.” Those who wanted to withhold everything—to keep the occult mysteries to themselves—were the ones who called themselves “esotericists”—that is why they used the word. Blavatsky’s life, so to speak, fell into this category. And the danger existed, due to the particular nature of her life—through which, after all, comprehensive forces were at work from the subconscious—that spiritual secrets might be revealed, that people might come to know something in the right way. The danger was real. People lived under this danger from the 1840s onward, in a sense ever since Blavatsky was born, ever since she was a child. From that time on, there was also always an effort to arrange matters so that Blavatsky would be placed in the service of the Western occult fraternities, so that through her only that which the Western occult fraternities deemed appropriate for them could come to light.

[ 26 ] But the whole thing has taken a strange turn. I told you how the “Grand Orient” initially tried to co-opt Blavatsky, and how, because she set conditions that could not be met—and the attempt thus failed—she then stirred up trouble again in an American Western brotherhood, because she always lost her temper when faced with what others wanted from her; how she was then expelled, and the only recourse left was to impose a kind of occult confinement upon her and subsequently bring her into the Indian occult brotherhood, whose practice of the occult was considered harmless to the so-called Western brotherhoods because it was in line with their own traditions. The thinking was: Well, if all sorts of things come to light from Indian sources, that is by no means likely to particularly disturb our circles. — Most of the occultists who worked with serious occultism said there: Well, what much will come of it, now that we have surrounded Blavatsky with all those images that shut her off from a true knowledge of the spiritual world! She’ll surely just pick up things that all sorts of male and female aunts gathered over tea have in common—and I quote!—and that won’t particularly disturb our circles.

[ 27 ] Things only became uncomfortable when our movement emerged—a movement that took matters seriously and opened the door to the sources of a true spiritual world. But you can also see that the roots of the conflicts that arose there ran quite deep. For in fact, there was something in Blavatsky of the impulses that must come specifically from the Eastern world, and there was also a certain necessity for a kind of synthesis with the Western world to take place. But the point was that, in more recent times, people had increasingly come to strive for certain aims and goals which, as I have already hinted, are not the goals of truth alone, but—as I have once again characterized it for you today—truly sometimes aimed at entirely different goals. And consider this: if one now knows how the human cycles unfold, what character the world must have now in accordance with its arche, given that in earlier times this or that was present at the appropriate stage of development, then one can indeed act accordingly in a certain way. If, on the one hand, one has traditional occult science and, on the other hand, this occult science is opposed in the public press and in public life as a medieval superstition, one can still work behind the scenes and achieve important things that one is specifically striving to achieve, for everything in the world is interconnected. People do not always need to know what the connection is; for many, the connection can play out in the subconscious. But it is crucial that, as I hinted at yesterday, one knows how to direct one’s gaze, so to speak, toward the right places. Sometimes something quite insignificant appears, but when viewed in the right context, this seemingly insignificant thing sometimes explains far more than what one considers to be significant. For it is truly the case in many other matters in the world, as Hamlet says of good and evil: Nothing is good or evil in itself; rather, it is the human mind that makes it so. — The same is true of many other things. One thing or another is not significant because of what it immediately appears to be to the external Maya—the great illusion—but rather, things must be understood in their significance by a person associating the correct concepts with them. I will give you an example from very recent times in this Europe, without wishing in any way to get involved in party politics or any political movement.

[ 28 ] There may be people in this Europe who, since everyone today tends to think in the short term, view the outbreak of the current war in a coherent light—I am not saying that this is wrong, nor am I saying that there is no truth to it—linking it to the assassination of the Archduke and heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand; they may use this to explain certain events that they trace back to that assassination in June 1914. But there may also be people who point out that a Western newspaper in January 1913 reported that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to be assassinated in the near future for the good of European humanity. I believe one can go back to the actual assassination; but one can also go back to what was already stated in a Western newspaper in January 1913: that he would be assassinated. One can also look back to the assassination of Jaurès—as I hinted at recently—which will probably never be fully revealed, on the evening of the last day of peacetime. But one can also go back far enough to point to the very same newspaper I just mentioned, which, almost just as far back—that is, as early as 1913—contained the sentence: “If conditions in Europe should lead to a war, Jaurès will be the first to meet his death.” — One can open a certain, so to speak, occult almanac that was sold for forty francs, and in that almanac—which was intended for the year 1913 and was therefore already printed in 1912—one can read the following sentences: In Austria, it will not be the one whom people believe will rule who will rule, but a young man whom people do not yet believe will succeed the old emperor. — This was printed in a so-called occult almanac for 1913—that is, it had already been printed in the fall of 1912. And again, in the same almanac for 1914—which had already been printed in 1913—the same remark was repeated, because apparently the assassination attempt had failed in 1913. For all such matters, once we come to view things more clearly, the connection will be revealed that exists between what happens in outward reality and what is concocted in hidden, murky sources. Many will recognize which threads run from public life into this or that brotherhood, and many will also recognize how foolish it is of other brotherhoods—especially those that still insist today that one must remain absolutely silent about certain mystical truths. Such people may be quite innocent, because they are children, even though they may be long-standing members of this or that Masonic lodge, for example, which also claims to have occult sources; nevertheless, they promote the darkness and gloom that reigns among humanity.

[ 29 ] Recently, I have cited an example—which I discussed in St. Gallen and Zurich—of a particularly enlightened pastor and professor, to whom I pointed out the discontinuity in his thinking. He is, however, also a member of an occult brotherhood. But he is among those who act through nothing other than their own narrow-mindedness, which they acquire in their occult brotherhood, where they are kept in a state of limitation; for some of the leaders in the occult brotherhood make this their task as well; and this often has an adverse effect. What is necessary is for people to truly open their eyes. But the eyes must first learn to see, and one can only learn to see if, so to speak, one allows the direction of one’s gaze to be determined by the initial enlightenment one has received about the spiritual world. After all, one always counts on qualities that rarely lead to miscalculations in human relationships. So—as I have already hinted at once—I myself was once supposed to be driven mad. I could have been appointed to a position at the same time that Alcyone was appointed to a position in the Theosophical Society. Everything that pulsates through our movement could have been neatly swept aside if I had gone along at that time with what had been strongly suggested to me: to become the reincarnated John! Then, from a certain quarter, the task would have been taken on to proclaim: “Alcyone is this, and he is the reincarnated John”—and the entire movement would not have had to experience what did in fact happen later.

[ 30 ] Among the many things that make people foolish is, of course, vanity; and if one addresses these vanities in the right way, one can achieve a great deal—especially if one also knows the methods for formulating certain concepts. I already mentioned yesterday that the Theosophical Society has gone about it far too amateurishly; the others are handling it more intelligently and appropriately. But of course, one cannot do much that is sensible when one has to deal with a personality under whom those closest to her have sighed so much—when one has to deal, for example, with a personality like Annie Besant, who is herself full of passions. One need only consider how those in Annie Besant’s circle have for years lamented the predicament into which she would yet lead them all, now that she, too, has fallen under the spell of a certain form of Indian occultism. She, in turn, had brought with her peculiar traits stemming from strange underlying motives, which were quite unwelcome to a number of people, particularly within the Theosophical Society. A number of people, mostly men—forgive me, but this is not meant to be an allusion—sighed because they were always trying to steer Annie Besant a little in the right direction so that things would work out. But there were women there as well, and they sighed too; yet they repeatedly submitted, for their primary aspiration was to practice Theosophy in the sense that it was practiced there, but to practice it in such a way that it would become something—albeit somewhat Theosophical—like “conglomerated mediocrity.” They wanted to introduce what John Stuart Mill calls “conglomerated mediocrity” into the practice of spiritual science.

[ 31 ] I myself witnessed how a representative of the Theosophical Society worked in a city that belonged to the section of which I was the general secretary at the time. I went to that city to give lectures, having even been invited by the emissary in question. But she told me: “We’re going to gradually phase out the lectures, because they don’t really serve a proper purpose. We need to organize tea parties and invite people so they can get to know one another over tea”—and she added: “It works best with little rolls!” But the lectures—and she said this with a certain dismissive expression—will gradually become less and less important. —One could say that, from a certain perspective, this person was also wrapped in the right guise, and there are indeed many, many just like her who act as emissaries, who sometimes have no idea at all how the strings are being pulled that control them. Sometimes you don’t even need wires; they can be thin cords, or even twine, for all I care. It’s truly a pity how, within humanity itself, the most sacred and serious matters of humanity are sometimes discussed.

[ 32 ] In particular, there was a tremendous fear that if Blavatsky remained in good health and nevertheless brought to the surface what lay beneath her, it could become dangerous—especially in a political sense—precisely because of her unique disposition and her special connection to her Russian heritage. And eliminating whatever it was that was at stake there was also a very special endeavor. And if what lived within Blavatsky had been able to come to the fore back then, starting in the 1860s and 1870s, then many things would have turned out differently—things that people like Mill and Herzen had a good understanding of. But at that time, certain Ahrimanic forces succeeded in thwarting many things. Well, we shall see how things may turn out for our spiritual science under the current sad circumstances. Those who have the opportunity to grasp its significance—especially in light of the great tasks of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch—will judge it rightly. To what extent our spiritual science truly relies only on what is purely Viennese, you could already know that. And I believe one could already recognize that there are indeed differences. For example, we have discussed and performed Goethe’s Faust on many occasions. For one does not need a national background when presenting Goethe’s Faust in its occult depths of humanity. But does one need a national background—perhaps even a very peculiar national background—when, as Maeterlinck has done most recently, calls Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing “mediocre minds” and writes lengthy essays on the mediocrity of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing—for which one wins over major newspapers around the world, in which such things can appear today—whether there are national reasons behind this, I leave it to you to decide! Perhaps even much deeper reasons than merely national ones!

[ 33 ] But now consider these two things together. In the course of these reflections, I have pointed out to you that Ku Hung-Ming, the Chinese, wrote a brilliant book in a certain respect, and that it describes how the only salvation for Europeans is for them to turn to Chinese culture, for thereby, according to Ku Hung-Ming, Europeans would be able to replace their worthless Magna Chartas of freedom with the Magna Carta of loyalty, which can come only from Chinese culture. And Ku Hung-Ming is a perceptive mind who confirms what John Stuart Mill and Herzen had already intuited, confirming it from a deep understanding of Chinese culture itself; he is also a mind that did not emerge from philology or from the classroom, but rather from a practical profession, much like Max Eyth, whom I mentioned earlier; neither a theologian nor a schoolteacher nor a philologist, but someone who was originally a merchant, who has worked in all sorts of professions, and who knows life. Ku Hung-Ming embodies Chinese culture and Chinese life. Today, one can gain an understanding from the incredibly vivid descriptions provided by Ku Hung-Ming, and one gets the impression: How right John Stuart Mill and Herzen were—one need only read Herzen’s book from 1864—when they called the teachings of Confucius and Laozi the ultimate consequence that must arise when so-called positivist realism, as they called it, carried by “conglomerated mediocrity” and “bourgeois insignificance,” takes hold of Europe! For the ultimate consequence of what is being pursued in universities today—and which is spreading among the people as the contemporary worldview—is “Chineseness,” which, as early as six hundred years before our era, had already arrived at this conclusion based on an earlier cultural history. Ku Hung-Ming clearly outlines what “Chineseness” is; Mill and Herzen charted the path being taken by that European culture which seeks to base itself solely on external positivist realism: from both sides—on the one hand, that Europe will embrace “Chineseness,” and on the other, that “Chineseness” is Europe’s only salvation.

[ 34 ] Perhaps there is a third side to this, and I would like to raise this question right at the end today: What if there were a side that would find it very convenient if, of all people, a Chinese person were to advise Europeans today to choose the only salvation that exists? What if it were no coincidence that precisely the teachings of Ku Hung-Ming are being introduced into Europe—teachings that are brilliant from the standpoint of Chinese culture, but which are quite capable of confusing people who do not receive them with clear senses, with senses awakened by spiritual science, and perhaps leading them precisely where one wants them to go: right into “Chineseness”? As John Stuart Mill and Herzen correctly recognized, the sails set forth by certain occult brotherhoods are heading in that direction and aim to establish a form of “Chineseness”; for it is into the “Chineseness” of Europe that one can best incorporate precisely what certain brotherhoods desire! Why should it not also be in accordance with the will of a brotherhood that it is precisely a Chinese who now advises Europeans to listen to all the beauties that might come precisely from “Chineseness”? Why should one not expect that it is precisely the so-called most enlightened who will be enthralled by what a Chinese knows how to advise, now that Europe itself no longer knows what to do?

[ 35 ] Having first told you how significant the Chinese book is, I feel quite obliged—precisely from the perspective that should always be cultivated here in the context of spiritual science—to point out that while one should certainly follow developments such as the book, or rather the books, by Ku Hung-Ming—two have already been published— but one must be aware that there are intentions behind them—far-reaching intentions. It is wrong not to familiarize oneself with them, but it is also wrong to fall for them. It is, however, of particular importance to look carefully at everything that presents itself today as mysticism or occultism, often emerging from rather murky sources. And those who will give consideration to what I have often expounded will also strive to see these matters clearly. For the modern world is still caught up in various other currents, and the question arises as to whether individual people have the will to see clearly and distinctly. For example, one must be able to weigh up the difference between this and a certain current that still wields more power today than one might believe or imagine—a current that originates from certain Catholic sources, behind which initiatory principles often already lie, even if, of course, those who bring them out into the world are being led by the nose. But let us now contrast what can indeed be contrasted: on the one hand, the Roman Church, and on the other, those occult brotherhoods. The Roman Church, which operates in the manner you are well aware of; those brotherhoods, which, of course, fight the Roman Church tooth and nail, but on the other hand go so far as to possess and make use of occult knowledge, while publicly denouncing it as medieval superstition in order to keep people within the “right” current so that they can exploit them. Contrast this with the Roman Church. Take, for example, the encyclical of December 8, 1864, in which the Roman Church proclaimed ex cathedra [the condemnation of] freedom of conscience and worship. It cites the propositions believed by some and then condemns them: It is said by some people that freedom of conscience and of worship is every person’s inherent right; this is a delirium—that is, madness. Thus, for the orthodox Catholic in the sense of the Roman See, it is madness—a delirium—to claim freedom of conscience and of worship! That is one current of thought. The other current believes that it is better not to say such things, but rather to do things that abolish freedom of conscience—above all, freedom of one’s own convictions and the integration of one’s own convictions into human life. Here, too, you have two contrasting movements that are very significant in the present and on which much depends.

[ 36 ] Such reflections—which form the basis of what I have to say today—are presented here so that those who are part of our spiritual science movement may grasp the inner impulse of the soul: not to be among the sleepers, but to be among those who wish to try to view life as it is. Simply absorbing and believing in the insights of spiritual science does not yet make one a spiritual scientist. One is a spiritual scientist in the true sense only when the truths of spiritual science make one a person who sees more clearly, but also a person who has the will to truly observe what is in one’s surroundings in the right way and at the right points, in order to form a judgment about the situation in which one is oneself placed in the world. This is an essential part of speaking fruitfully about the karma of one’s profession.

[ 37 ] We will continue these reflections shortly. Then the necessary light will be shed on what belongs more to everyday life—on immediate human life, the immediate karma of one’s profession.