The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Speech on White Lotus Day

[ 1 ] For the first time since the German Section was established within the Theosophical Society, we are celebrating today the day that actually falls on May 8 but had to be moved to today for certain reasons.

[ 2 ] I hope that this day, just as it has become a day of celebration in the other countries where the Theosophical Society has spread, will also become more and more of a day of celebration for us in the years to come. It goes without saying that once we have come to recognize the full significance of this festive day, we will always celebrate it on the correct date in the years to come.

[ 3 ] May 8 is an important day for the Theosophical Movement. On this day thirteen years ago, the individual through whom the currents of spiritual life—which have been pulsating through Theosophy in recent times—first flowed passed into another state of existence.

[ 4 ] Madame Blavatsky died thirteen years ago on May 8. Indeed, I need only utter the name “Madame Blavatsky,” and it will likely evoke the most diverse and varied thoughts in many people. But what the name Blavatsky signifies in modern spiritual life will only gradually and slowly become clear and distinct. And if someone were to speak to you today who has never seen Madame Blavatsky’s personality on this physical plane, who has never had any personal relationship with her, please do not regard that as a shortcoming. Nor can I myself regard it as a shortcoming, for we Theosophists are well aware that what we call death is merely the transition to another state of existence, and that the essence of highly developed individuals does not cease to act at the moment we designate as death. In a certain sense, we may refer to the day on which Madame Blavatsky died as a “Lotus Day”—the day on which the various petals of the flower that comprises the personality fell away, leaving, so to speak, only the fruit that developed within the flower, which continues to work through its fruitful power. This fruitful power, which presents itself to us as the eternal individuality of the human being, must be even more important, even more powerful to us than that which fell away thirteen years ago from the founder of the Theosophical Movement.

[ 5 ] Perhaps those who never met Madame Blavatsky in person may still have a more accurate picture of her than those who knew her for a long time. Do not attribute this to the fact that Madame Blavatsky made an impression on many people that—as you all know, whether rightly or wrongly—is not portrayed in the best light; rather, attribute it to general human weakness, which is so easily deceived by appearances. The people who lived around Madame Blavatsky had before them, in the flesh, an individuality that far transcended what manifested as her personality. But human beings are too weak to overlook what they perceive with their eyes, and so the perspective of many of those living around Madame Blavatsky may have been clouded by immediate appearances. This may be why Madame Blavatsky found herself in particular difficulties and had to reveal certain personal traits of a combative nature that may have misled some. Thus, many misconceptions may well have arisen, especially among those closest to her.

[ 6 ] We should not be surprised if, to our spiritual gaze—once stripped of all earthly attachments—Mrs. Blavatsky’s individuality appears in an even more radiant light than she was portrayed by some of her contemporaries. And the person who saw deepest into Madame Blavatsky’s soul—the person who shared the most intimate spiritual communion through their personal association, the person who is the successor to her great work and the soul of the Theosophical Movement—was acquainted with her for only a short time. She did not get to know Madame Blavatsky until her later years, and it was only in those later years that she was able to draw from the deep wellspring of this enigmatic personality. She looked deep into this personality and drew profound insights from it. One thing in particular she gained through her insight into Madame Blavatsky’s work: she gained the conviction of the greatness of the task that had been placed upon Madame Blavatsky’s soul—and of the faithfulness and love with which Madame Blavatsky undertook that mission. And when a personality like Annie Besant—who is able to look into the human soul as deeply as few others can—can be convinced of her loyalty and truth, then that speaks louder than many other things are capable of saying. And we, who are bound in loyalty and love to this soul of our Theosophical Movement, who know what a treasure Annie Besant is to us, who know that in Annie Besant’s presence we feel something we rarely experience in the world, who know what spiritual source emanates from her, we would thoroughly misunderstand our relationship if she were not conveying something through the childlike love she has for Madame Blavatsky: the great individuality who stands before you today, like the spirit through which our movement exists, whose immortal, eternally living essence stands before you, who is able to see with eyes other than those with which we perceive colors and forms. Whoever has sensed the spirit that presents us with riddles, whoever has looked behind the scenes of our existence, will—from the outset, whatever may be said—regard her with a judgment entirely different from that applied to any other personality.

[ 7 ] What Madame Blavatsky had to accomplish is something that encompasses the demands of centuries; it is something that could not be achieved with a perspective that penetrates only our sensory, our material world. A person who had to accomplish this had to look deeply into those realms we call the realms of causes—where the threads, the spiritual threads of becoming and existence, are woven; where no sensory eye can see, no sensory ear can hear—where a person enters, having crossed a dangerous, highly dangerous threshold, into the realm that Goethe calls the realm of the mothers, into the realm where we feel we are losing the ground beneath our feet, where all the judgments that hold our ordinary world together cease—in this world of causes, where the [facts] that unfold before us hourly, daily, annually, throughout all ages—into this world such a personality had to gaze, and in this world a very different sense of human individuality, of human strength, human steadfastness, and loyalty is required than what we ourselves call the strongest character within the sensory world. One may have the utmost respect for someone who possesses a strong, faithful character, and certainly everyone will bow before one who has become strong within the sensory world. But those who have never sensed anything of that world which lies beyond ours, beyond our sensory world—that world where judgments of good and evil cease, where judgments of true and false cease, as we are accustomed to hearing and making every day—from that world where an entirely different kind of judgment begins, from that world where, regarding many things—let us take this only half-seriously—that are called noble and beautiful, a mocking laugh rings out because of the terribly tragic sacrifices that must be made for many things that appear beautiful and great here.

[ 8 ] Anyone who is called upon to work beyond this world—whose soul is destined to work beyond this world because this century has set that task before them—must be judged by a different standard than the ordinary person. It is simply out of place in every respect to characterize a personality such as Madame Blavatsky in the usual way.

[ 9 ] So I cannot characterize her personality; I must characterize her place in world history and what was placed upon Mrs. Blavatsky’s soul.

[ 10 ] It was at the end of the eighteenth century, at the end of the Age of Enlightenment, when human beings had to trust in themselves on a completely different scale than before, to obey their intellect—focused on the sensory world—and their reason, and to regard them as decisive, it was then that Europe and America began to lay the foundations for that dawn of external material culture, which bore such great and mighty fruit in the nineteenth century. “Dare to make use of your reason,” the Königsberg philosopher Kant told us, [as did] Voltaire and Rousseau. The entire materialism, the entire culture of the nineteenth century, and everything that has been achieved in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity are founded on this mindset. These three great tenets of the French Revolution—they rest upon this way of thinking. They are grounded in that which can be grasped through the sensory world, in what the reasoning intellect was able to ascertain about nature. The limited intellect grew in the nineteenth century, and it is a profound law of spiritual development that materialism and spiritualism behave like two weights: as soon as one grows larger and pulls the scale down on one side, the other must spring up on the other side. Just as the rational, calculating mind of the nineteenth century pressed down the pan of material culture, so the other pan had to rise.

[ 11 ] There were only a few minds in the nineteenth century who had retained any sense of the spiritual. It was precisely those who had looked most deeply into the material world who denied the spirit. And so, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when authoritative words were spoken, we see material substances and material forces regarded as the only things that mattered in the world. The spiritual and the spiritual realm were precisely what people denied. Sensation and feeling were denied. And at the end of the [eighteenth] century, individual great spiritual personalities had emerged like shining stars at twilight. These were individuals whom people did not understand, and of whom no one knew what they meant when they spoke of a spiritual world—even though they provided evidence that such a world exists. They shone like meteors. But they were not understood. One such figure was the much-misunderstood St. Germain. There was also such a figure in Germany. Those who knew something of spiritual life had to conceal it behind external symbols and allegories, as we see in Goethe; and in a figure known to the world only through a mask—Kortum, known as the poet of the Jobsiade but unknown as a spiritual personality—there still lived the individual who knew the secrets of Rosicrucianism. It was a depth of spiritual life that was most significant and most profound in the mid-nineteenth century. But spiritual life never withdraws completely from any culture. It is merely pushed even further into secrecy when, outwardly, culture takes on a material character, and those individuals who are still imbued with spiritual life keep themselves strictly hidden. Thus, the great sources of spiritual life in the West—which once flowed so abundantly, as in the works of Jakob Böhme and Angelus Silesius—were deeply hidden. Hidden were the spiritual sources that had flowed through Rosicrucianism for centuries. They seemed to have withdrawn into regions that did not belong to Western culture—regions where something of spiritual life had still been preserved and where people knew how to preserve it—which I can only hint at here. It was said that the Rosicrucians had emigrated to the Orient and had joined forces with the great brotherhoods in Asia. If, in those days of the nineteenth century, a longing for spiritual life or for higher spiritual insights dawned on someone, then he had to turn toward the East and seek out Oriental sources.

[ 12 ] The European and American brotherhoods that still exist did not, for certain reasons, have the strength or the mission to stem the tide of material life. Anyone who looks behind the scenes of external material life knows that in the times when such things took place—as in the mid-nineteenth century—a truly turbulent, truly stormy life prevailed behind the scenes. And a life of anxiety prevailed among the spirits who had still retained their spirituality. A sense of foreboding about the future prevailed among all spiritual brotherhoods as spiritual life dried up completely due to material culture. Even for those most deeply initiated into the mysteries, it was no easy task to determine what should be done in the face of the ominous signs of the times. A great question began to spread among the occult societies: How can it be made clear to humanity that the space surrounding us has a spiritual foundation in its effects? It is not only necessary for humanity to always look up to the world of causes, it is also dangerous at certain times—and especially at a time when material culture, ways of thinking, and attitudes had taken such a deep hold on people’s minds as they did in the mid-nineteenth century, and were taking an ever-greater hold on those minds—far more so than the individual might be inclined to admit. Those who see more deeply know what this current brought upon the human race in the nineteenth century. In such a time, however, it is also dangerous to reveal the sources of spiritual life to people. For just as a child behaves toward fire, so too does one who is familiar only with the material world behave toward the world of causes—toward the world that unfolds behind the scenes of external sensory events. Therefore, even those who understood the signs of the [times] had to ask themselves: Are we not playing with fire when we show people something of a higher world? It was a difficult question to resolve: How can humanity truly be introduced to the higher spiritual worlds? How can the core of existence—which lies in the spiritual—be revealed once more to a humanity accustomed to matter and materialistic religion, to a religion of power and substance? One had to try in the highest realms. And the first attempt was to show the eye accustomed to the sensory world—the eye that was no longer capable of perceiving the spiritual directly—in a sensory way, in a childlike, sensory way, that the spiritual exists. Just as people gather around a [physical] or chemical experiment to see how electricity and magnetism work—so that they may then believe that they do work—so, as a first attempt, one sought to teach them—through immediate sensory perception—the existence of higher spiritual forces. That was the first attempt made with spiritualism. Spiritualism and Spiritism have deep roots. They were employed as a test to see how the eye, accustomed to the material world, could be redirected toward something higher.

[ 13 ] Soon those who keep watch over the times—that is a technical term—had to realize that something entirely different was necessary than the sensory observation of spiritualist phenomena. They had to realize that the innermost self of the human being must be guided and transformed, so that the human being would learn to see not only with the physical eyes but also with the spiritual eyes. While spiritualism had sought to reveal the spiritual to the physical eye, the difficult task now lay before them: How do we lead people to spiritual vision themselves; how is it possible to lead people to spiritual vision?

[ 14 ] There, where—to use an expression I have employed before—the spiritual forces had taken refuge, there, too, the first trace of a new ideal had emerged. In the Orient, in a sister lodge of the Orient, where spiritual life has been cultivated for millennia, there the ideal had emerged: to once again allow a wave of spiritual life to flow into humanity, to once again allow something of the higher teachings to flow in, so that those people who, through spiritualism, had indeed gained a conviction of a supersensory world but had not themselves become supersensory in their perception, might themselves arrive at that point—so that they might not merely form a picture of the immortality and divinity of the world through [sensory] perception, but could experience them for themselves.

[ 15 ] Therefore, these thoughts, too, had to be conveyed to human beings through physical personalities, for everything that exerts an influence on our sensory world must be brought about through physical personalities. This is—do not misunderstand it—an important statement. Everything that is to take effect in our sensory world must be brought about through sentient personalities. If higher spiritual powers are to bring about something in this world that is to take effect through human beings and their knowledge, then they must do so through earthly, personal messengers. The one who speaks to human beings must be the one whom human beings can most easily understand. That is the human being himself.

[ 16 ] Anyone who can compare true spiritual life with purely material life—as it developed in the nineteenth century—knows that it was not easy, especially in the last third of the nineteenth century, to find the individual through whom humanity’s spiritual wisdom could once again be proclaimed. It was incredibly difficult. That was the situation. Imagine one of those individuals who, at that time, would have stood at a highly developed human level and possessed within themselves the spiritual knowledge and wisdom of the world. Had such a person appeared in Europe and spoken at that time—from the standpoint of material culture, what flowed from the lips of such a highly developed individual would rightly have been called folly or madness. Individuals who far surpassed the spiritual development of their time—[who far surpassed] what our age knows—and who understood something of the true causes could—particularly in the 1870s and 1880s of our last century—be understood only with great difficulty. An intermediary was therefore necessary—a person who, on the one hand, was capable of understanding what outstanding individuals had to proclaim. A European scholar, despite all his erudition, would not have been capable of this. I have the highest regard for the work of the distinguished scholar Max Müller. The scholarship that Max Müller developed ranks among the most significant achievements of European intellectual culture. And the body of scientific knowledge he has bequeathed to humanity is a marvel. But spiritual life remained alien to him. And not a single spark of this spiritual life emanates from the marvelous edifice that this, one of our most eminent scholars, was able to construct so magnificently. Never would the spark of inspiration have emanated from this body of work that could have given Western humanity a truly spiritual life. And yet these works are the most significant thing that scholarship has been able to create regarding spiritual life.

[ 17 ] In order for cs to flow forth, something else was necessary; it required a personality whose heart and mind had opened up to true spiritual life. When Madame Blavatsky stood face to face with the highly developed individuals of the Orient, the words likely flowed from her on more than one occasion: “Whatever we may say, the ways of thinking and the modes of imagination that you have in the West are incapable of understanding us.” There was truly a gulf that had persisted for millennia between Eastern spiritual culture and what modern spiritual culture has produced.

[ 18 ] Let me say a few more words about the significance of Madame Blavatsky. To all who possessed occult knowledge, she was a figure who hovered over them like a mystery—a figure about whom they knew that something important was bound to happen through her. It is a spirit of such a high order that ordinary people can probably rarely even have a mental image of it. They were at a loss as to how to make use of this spiritual power that was incarnated in Madame Blavatsky. Technically speaking, this would mean: It was difficult to say how to interpret the signs of the times that appeared through the personality of Madame Blavatsky. She was a mystery even to many highly developed individuals. And among those highly developed individuals—and this is precisely what matters for the understanding that is still necessary and perhaps possible today; it is precisely what I am about to say that matters—among those personalities who at first did not know how to make use of the spiritual power incarnated in Madame Blavatsky, there was also Madame Blavatsky herself. At first, she was a mystery of the most profound kind. From this, it will be clear to you that many who would prefer to wait a little longer to firm up their judgment—but who nevertheless must speak about Madame Blavatsky—remain cautious in their assessment of this enigmatic figure, Madame Blavatsky, and of this enigma that she initially was to herself and, to a certain extent, remained for quite some time.

[ 19 ] We cannot speak about this mystery today. But we can speak about what this mystery has brought about in the spiritual life of recent decades; we can speak about how, through Madame Blavatsky, a wisdom and a body of knowledge were revealed to humanity that had not previously existed within modern culture. Whatever those who claimed that a work such as The Secret Doctrine was compiled from various works of contemporary culture may have said—whatever may have been said on that account—for the truly discerning, it is out of the question. I’ll let anyone who wishes to do so go snooping around and look up individual sentences from The Secret Doctrine here and there in works found in this or that library, and I’ll gladly admit that much of what is compiled in The Secret Doctrine can be found scattered throughout Western mystical literature. But that is not the point. It does not matter what the phrases in the Esoteric Doctrine are called; it does not matter how this or that truth is expressed in the Esoteric Doctrine; rather, what matters is that Madame Blavatsky’s Esoteric Doctrine imparts a certain knowledge through which true spiritual power flows, and from what may not be stated literally therein, nor even implied between the lines, but rather what emerges from this “Esoteric Doctrine” for those who begin to read it in a much higher sense—it is from this that the most valuable aspect of Madame Blavatsky’s “Esoteric Doctrine” is composed. This provides truths that truly send a shiver down people’s spines—truths that I would like to characterize more specifically as truths concerning the causes that lie behind the scenes. These truths that are presented to us are completely independent of Madame Blavatsky’s personality. We can test them using the means and methods we can learn, and we can find confirmation of the most important and essential points in the “Esoteric Doctrine.” We can kindle our own spiritual life through the “Esoteric Doctrine.” And once we have kindled this spiritual life, we suddenly see something entirely different; we see that spiritual life still exists even today, even though it has withdrawn behind the material culture of the nineteenth century.

[ 20 ] Thus, we may describe Madame Blavatsky’s true achievement as follows: Through her, the gate through which spirituality can reach us has been reopened. And this is an achievement of such immense significance that everything else that might be said for or against it pales in comparison. One must, however, judge this achievement from the perspective of spiritual life. If one does so, then everything that could be said against Madame Blavatsky pales into insignificance in the face of this immense achievement. And when we regard Madame Blavatsky as a great messenger of a higher life that has been reopened, then we gain the proper perspective on her; then we also gain the ability to judge her to some extent; then we begin to see something of the immense difficulties she encountered along her path.

[ 21 ] She had two major difficulties to overcome. Her spiritual and psychological disposition enabled her to receive higher knowledge from the higher spirits. However, she was so confined within her own personality—as she herself often said—that her intellect, though sharp, was unable to soar to ideal heights or to operate within the strict laws of logic; thus, this intellect, this capacity for thought, caused her great difficulty in comprehending and articulating the great truths. It was truly a tremendous task, one she perhaps did not feel entirely up to herself; therefore, she often felt close to despair that she could not succeed in soaring to the heights of which she had been told. And so, on the other hand, it may also have been no small effort to convey this knowledge in a manner acceptable to Western thinking.

[ 22 ] Thus, The Secret Doctrine has become a book that can only be understood if we realize that this twofold difficulty had to be overcome, if we realize what stood in the way of such a personality who had such a mission. And once we have gained some sense of what she had to accomplish—once we see her achievement in the proper light—then we will realize that this individual must under no circumstances be judged by the world’s ordinary standards. The world’s judgment must fall silent. External judgment is never decisive when it comes to Madame Blavatsky; it cannot and must not be decisive. Anyone who knows how to form a judgment from a higher plane also knows how one’s perspective changes and what one experiences when what is called the threshold to the supersensible world has been crossed; above all, they know what forces lurk beyond that threshold, and they know what steadfastness and fortitude are required to stand firm against the forces that are there—forces that storm toward us as powers of seduction and as powers with a drag-down force. What I have described to you as forces with a dragging-down power and a seductive power has its background here, and we encounter these forces with all their—sometimes diabolical—violence. We can often discern this when we are called upon to ascend to higher regions and higher worlds. There we can appreciate what Mrs. Blavatsky faced, which she had to withstand.

[ 23 ] But it is not only these forces. There are other forces as well. Above all, those that confront us in an entirely different form, such as in the question of whether the supersensible world is easy to bear. Those forces that creep up on us like descending powers and show us how our own powers relate to them are perhaps easier to bear than those that press upon us as constant reproaches, of which human beings in the sensory world have no inkling. Not only that which appears to us in the sensory world—whether it leaves us indifferent or brings us pleasure—but even that which gives us the impression of perfection has powerful, terrifying counterparts in these supersensory worlds. And even the one who has sought to attain a certain degree of perfection in this sensory world—who has sought to purify and refine his personality, who has sought to lead a pure way of life— to gain purer, higher insights—even such a person, upon crossing this threshold, realizes that forces lurk there that give rise to reproaches against his perfection in the sensory world, forces that might say: You have purchased your perfection with something that has cast other beings deep down into ruin. - This is the tragedy that befalls even those who have sought perfection in this sensory world. These are forces whose confrontation opens a window into the deeper workings of worldly existence. A person must be well-armed to withstand this onslaught to which they are exposed at this stage of insight. No one is exposed to this onslaught for their own sake—that is, before they are prepared, before they possess the moral strength to withstand it. No one is exposed to this onslaught for their own sake, but for the sake of humanity. For the sake of humanity, certain things become necessary; for the sake of humanity, some must take upon themselves what they would otherwise have faced only in a later incarnation. Some are subjected to terrible forces of temptation. Whoever is subjected to these forces of temptation in order to make a sacrifice for humanity—whoever is subjected to them as Madame Blavatsky was—must—let me say this again—must be judged by a completely different standard than other people. And whoever wishes to recognize such a person must be able to meet them with a gaze that penetrates even the dark depths of the human soul; they must face Madame Blavatsky as Annie Besant faced her—and who understood how to look at the facts from which we have taken our starting point in this reflection today. Only such a person can show us the right path to the individuality that was incarnated in Madame Blavatsky’s personality, so that we may increasingly raise our judgment to the exemplary judgment of the soul of the Theosophical Movement—to the judgment of Annie Besant. May the Lotus Day on May 8 remind us of this—that day which holds such special significance for the Theosophical Movement: that everything which must expose itself to the grave and great dangers posed by the forces for the sake of humanity; that the personality of Madame Blavatsky has fallen away from the immortal Individuality; that this immortal Individuality has taken upon itself a karma which eludes our judgment, which eludes the judgment of those who owe her the deepest gratitude. But that which lives as a continuing force within Madame Blavatsky’s individuality provides something enduring in this Theosophical Movement. We live by this. Above all, this is a part of the lifeblood—the spiritual lifeblood—that flows through our movement. This immortal part is at work in every word we speak within our Theosophical Movement. Let us remember anew each year on Lotus Day that it is at work. Let us draw strength from this day for the new year—new strength—and, renewed each year in the spirit that shed its mortal shell thirteen years ago, the spirit that lives within us, let us call out to it at any time on this day: “Let us speak through you.”