Introduction to the Basics of Theosophy

GA 111 — 21 September 1907, Hanover

I. Secret Science

Secret knowledge has been applied since ancient times. Through it, one can fathom the essence of man and those conditions without which one could not gain an actual insight into the development of the worlds. Through [secret knowledge] we learn about life and death, karma, fate and all deeper questions into the future and from the past. It provides information about our dwelling place, the earth, and the world body system.

Thus, “theosophy” or “secret science” provides the means to gain insight into all these states. To this end, a person must follow the path of initiation. Two paths lead there: the Christian and the Rosicrucian path. The path of the Rosicrucians has been adapted to the Christian path through modifications. The best way for a person to acquire clairvoyance is to trust the seers and let them tell their stories. The Rosicrucians had the right way of understanding the truth. The truth is always the same, but the way people understand it changes as they develop. Thus, it had to be proclaimed to the Romans, Germans and so on in ever-changing ways. We must all feel great respect for the way the Egyptian priests taught about the deepest questions of existence. Copernicus' system based the consideration of the worlds on the physical plane, and people believe that they can recognize more and more of the things through refined instruments, while the Ptolemaic system used the astral plane for help. We cannot easily imagine how man's soul thought at that time. Without the spiritual influences, the language of the materialistic world view would have led to a quagmire in the nineteenth century. It would soon have become impossible to communicate in it.

The spiritual currents that strengthened good and curbed evil always emerged from the secret schools. A symbolic language is used there that is understood by the initiates of all secret schools. The ancient sages did not regard the heavenly bodies as dead bodies; as current science assumes, the stars were not material globes for them, but beings endowed with soul and spirit, and so it is in reality. Our sun is not a soulless fireball; it is the body of Christ, and He is its spirit. Beings endowed with power rush through the spaces; they are forces of will, not empty abstract forces of attraction. The gaze of these heavenly beings really penetrated the worlds. In the past, spiritual science shed its light over all the worlds; as a result, there were brilliant cultures on our earth, but buildings like the pyramids, which still amaze us, were built with primitive means.

Despite the eclipse caused by materialism, the secret schools have not ceased to exist. Humanity urgently needs them. The spiritual leadership emanates from the secret schools. In the fifteenth century, a small circle formed under the leadership of a great man, Christian Rosenkreutz; the effect extends into the nineteenth century.

If it is part of today's attitude that people cannot communicate quickly enough what they believe to be true, the occultist only communicates what he considers necessary to proclaim. There is a deep necessity for the presentation of occult science as a countercurrent to materialism.

Theosophy is Rosicrucian science. Occult attitudes are no more debatable than mathematics. It does not help to discuss a remedy, it must help. Theosophy is inner experience; man experiences inwardly what is outward, and the outer comes from the inner. An age in which people know that everything is ensouled will act differently than one of materialism. Nervousness is proof that the spiritual does not form the center of man; if it were not for spiritual influences, nervous epidemics might break out in thirty years, like other plagues, because people can never completely withdraw from their surroundings.

It is life-giving to relate the truth in every age in relation to the immediate life; it is hostile to life not to want to know about the spiritual forces.

A great deal of patience and perseverance is required to achieve clairvoyance; first you have to listen and absorb before you receive the means. A person's cognitive processes are not limited. No one has the right to decide about something they do not know. Those who have not studied mathematics should not presume to judge the correctness of a proof. Within the human being himself are the sources for looking into higher worlds.

Occultists fall into three categories: initiates, clairvoyants, and adepts. The initiate need not be clairvoyant, and the clairvoyant is not always an initiate, and neither needs to possess the adept. The paths are different. It is necessary to understand the laws up to the highest realms of existence – the secret of numbers and forms – in order to be an initiate. People are only told things when they are morally and spiritually ready for them, because otherwise it could have the most dire consequences for them. Humanity would then immediately be split in two, into good and evil.

A clairvoyant is a person who has highly developed spiritual senses, his spiritual eyes and ears are open, without his needing to understand the spiritual laws. One cannot imagine the trust and love that existed among the Rosicrucians. They complemented each other in a magnificent way, with one explaining what the other saw; thus, they gained insight and understanding of what they saw.

To be an adept, one needs goodwill and patient understanding, but it also requires that one be able to make sacrifices and keep quiet about things that are not beneficial to other people. The adept must know how to apply the powers, for which he acquires the ability in many incarnations. The adept works in secret. Our time demands that the initiate become a seer.