# Introduction to the Basics of Theosophy

## GA 111 — 5 March 1908, The Hague

### XVII. The Initiation of the Rosicrucian

In our time, Theosophy seeks to be a spiritual movement that will deepen our entire spiritual life and steer man away from the sensual and back to the supersensible. It does not bring humanity something absolutely new – no, it stands on the ground of earlier times. It is based on what previous generations have worked for us. But even what earlier generations did and knew was not something new; these were also conceptions of the general and great fundamental truths. Each generation and each time expresses what it can understand of it in its own way, adapting to the spirit and circumstances of the time. Theosophy in our time means the realization of the basic truths in the form in which they are useful for our time.

Now let us think back to a culture like that of 600 to 700 years ago. At that time there were not a lot of channels through which anyone who wished could gather knowledge, as is now the case in schools, libraries and so on. We have now undergone the development for this in the last century. The sciences have spread, one always wants to know more and more and to express everything in scientific forms and terms, because man dresses his thoughts in forms to which he is accustomed. Now the time has come when everyone wants to know, learn and read for themselves, and they can also find the way to do so.

In ancient times there were also a few preachers of wisdom and a great multitude who believed them at their command. (The speaker means that the large circle of people who know a little and who currently exist could not be found at that time, besides the individuals who knew more, whose number is not large even now, any more than it was in the Middle Ages.) Those who knew more of the great truths of life, of this great wisdom, which in its present form we call 'Theosophy', were called initiates or adepts, because they had a great and certain experience behind them. And those who have this experience behind them do not speak of these things as if they were speaking of another world, but as if they were constantly living in this world. And that is the case, because this world has become their own. There are always other worlds around us, spiritual worlds, other beings are always at work around us, and they relate to the sensual and physical life of a person in the same way that the colorful splendor of the world of light relates to a blind person. What the initiate has gone through can be compared to the experience of a blind person who has been born blind, has undergone an operation and been given the ability to see the light.

The Rosicrucian method of initiation presents the experiences that a person undergoes when the world of the spirit opens up to him.

As for the Rosicrucians themselves (the speaker does not say it in so many words, but implies that this is the name of an order or association of initiates who practice the same wisdom teachings as those found in Theosophy) - this name has been much discredited by people who knew very little about it and not much more than a few external forms. What one can find here and there in old writings about the Rosicrucians was not calculated to command respect from the outside world. But all this was very natural, because what was really Rosicrucian was actually kept secret until the end of the nineteenth century, because it was only in this century that it was destined to benefit humanity in general. It is only the present-day theosophical movement that is destined to absorb and disseminate the wisdom of the Rosicrucians.

Now (said the speaker) we are not dealing with the history of the Rosicrucians, but with living Rosicrucianism. The system we are talking about was only founded in the fourteenth century, arising from various spiritual seeds.

Rosicrucianism should not be confused with Theosophy in general: it is only one method. But when it comes to linking Theosophy to modern science, the Rosicrucian method is probably the most suitable.

And how is this method presented? In seven degrees (stages) man is led to the knowledge of spiritual truths.

These seven degrees are:

> 1. Degree: study  
> 2. Degree: imaginative knowledge  
> 3. Degree: knowledge through the occult scriptures  
> 4. Degree: (what is called) the search for the philosopher's stone  
> 5. degree: the study of the correspondence between man and the great world outside (microcosm and macrocosm),  
> 6. degree: merging into the macrocosm,  
> 7. degree: that which follows from the preceding degrees: beatitude.

Let us take a closer look at these different degrees:

First degree, “Study”: This is the acquisition of elementary knowledge of the higher worlds; for, above all, one needs some elementary knowledge before one can actually feel at home in it. But the higher worlds can only be known through an opening of the soul: Then man becomes a seer, in a certain sense already an initiate. Now, not every person can find the way out of themselves – at least not easily – but every person who is an explorer, gifted with common sense, can find their way through study, which would not have been so easy to find on their own. This is a kind of guidance, like using a map to find your way around an unfamiliar area. In this way, many have found what they previously searched for in vain: a coherent body of knowledge that never fails to provide a logical answer.

Here in the physical world, things correct people when they make a mistake: we would find our way here even without a map, even if it were less convenient. In any case, we would clearly see where we could not go and where there would be serious obstacles. This is not the case in the higher worlds: there you have to find your own guidance.

Once a person has absorbed the basic features of higher knowledge, they can be guided to the second degree of “maginative knowledge”. This is the knowledge that behind everything we perceive lies the truth of things, and that the (sensually) perceived things are only parables for the real spiritual (things).

Everything that is understood in science is in itself only a concept of the mind, it only exists in an idea. The task of the Rosicrucian is to recognize things not only in the idea, in the concept, but in the image.

We will give an example in the form of a dialogue, as it might have been held by a Rosicrucian teacher to his disciple:

The teacher: “Observe how the plant grows out of the ground, as an example of its own development, [observe] how it becomes: stem, blossom, fruit. And then understand that all these environmental conditions were necessary for the plant to develop in this way: air, light, earth and all the substances in it.

And now turn your gaze to the human being: a being formed differently. Flesh has come in place of plant substance, and instead of chlorophyll, the red blood flows through this being.

Sensually, the plant also has a consciousness, roughly that of a human being during sleep. The human being has a consciousness that is elevated to great heights. But this consciousness he has had to purchase at the price of being permeated by desires, instincts and passions. That which the plant contains and which grows into a fruit is pure; but on the other hand, consciousness is narrow and limited. And now grasp the pure plant on the one hand, and man on the other, with his higher development, permeated by the stream of passions."

The Rosicrucian (continued the speaker) must come to feel that it is the stream of passions that transforms the plant substance into muscle tissue, the green plant sap, the chlorophyll, into the red blood.

And then it was said: As a human being, you must rise to a higher ideal. Development does not end with this state. If it is to continue, then the human being and his consciousness must take on other forms, become a higher consciousness. He then returns to the chaste, pure plant substance at a higher level. Then the blood without passions has become like the plant sap again. Just as the plant produces fruit without desires, so the human being will then have become a being again whose organs produce without desires.

This ideal is called the ideal of the “Holy Grail”, the image of the cup in which the blood from the wounds of Christ was caught. As soon as the red blood has become chaste and pure like chlorophyll, it will be the blood of the pure human being.

There is a folk legend that tells how the bees came to suck honey from the wounds of Christ on the cross, just as they do from flowers. This image gives us an idea of what is meant. Everything that prevents man from rising above the plant must be killed. To represent this ideal, a symbol was chosen: the black cross with red roses around it. – The symbol of the spiritual ideal.

And it was of this spiritual ideal that an initiated man, a poet, spoke when he said: He who does not have this remains an ever-gloomy guest on our dark earth. (Goethe - see the same quotation in the lecture in Amsterdam.) It is clear that this is something quite different from intellectual knowledge. When we try to look at the whole world through this image, it makes a different, warmer impression on us than intellectual knowledge. It leaves us cold.

When we then face the world with such images, we feel what is happening in the world. Who can look at the black cross surrounded by red roses without shuddering with inner experience and feeling a flood of feelings within themselves? Feelings are creative forces. Because of them, new thoughts are born, a new world opens up for the person, as for the blind man who has been operated on and now sees the light. A new world opens up for the initiate through imaginative knowledge. These are things that are just as exact as the laws of nature.

Third degree: The appropriation of occult writings. In them, one not only gets to know the laws of nature, but also how to penetrate them with the will. An example of this: two experiences of the soul that are well known to us are shame and fear. If a person wants to hide something, then it is called shame, and the person blushes. If a person sees danger and fears being overwhelmed by it, then he feels fear. And then the person pales. These are two examples of how the inner state of mind results in a change in the physical, outer state. A world view is currently coming to us from America that seeks to explain everything the other way around, namely from material things. According to this, for example, a person does not cry because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries, because the eyes and lacrimal glands are under such material influences that tears are produced. This is: completely reversing the truth.

One can see that spiritual knowledge wants to say: everything that happens in the world is a consequence of the spiritual, which is the principle of this world; and man must experience for himself what happens outside in the great world, namely, by learning to understand how the spiritual is expressed in physical forms. You do not get to know the world by describing things and deducing the laws from them (abstracting), but by experiencing them inwardly.

(What followed here about the heart and its symbolic meaning was not sufficiently explained by the speaker to be more clearly reproduced.

Fourth degree: “The search for the Philosopher's Stone. Which involves no sorcery or deception, but something very natural. A writer who, incidentally, knew little or nothing about the secrets of the Rosicrucians, said something right about this point: the Philosopher's Stone is in the hand of every man - but he does not know it.

The significance of the breathing process is this: in the blood, oxygen combines with carbon to form carbonic acid, which the human being then exhales again. The plant inhales this carbonic acid through a process that is also a kind of breathing, even if we call it by a different name (assimilation process). The plant separates the carbon from the carbonic acid and returns the oxygen to man through evaporation. Without the plant world, human life on earth would be physically impossible, at least in the form in which we know it today. But then man must also realize that he is not an independent being; the plant belongs to him, just as his own limbs belong to him. That man could exist alone is an illusion.

And now we must consider that this material process is just as much based on a spiritual process as the feeling of shame is based on the blush of shame, and so on. This process is only an outward sign of an underlying spiritual process. We must understand that there is a real connection between humans and plants, and that changes in one must take place in the other as well, so that there must be a rhythmic connection between human breathing and that of the plant. There is actually a breathing rhythm in nature – but one cannot discuss this in public – which establishes a conscious contact between humans and plants.

But of this it can be said: When man consciously learns to direct the breathing process towards a goal, then he learns with his consciousness to carry out the process that the plant performs: the direct building of forms from carbon.

This is a completely true fact, even if it may sound strange: Man can learn to transform the carbon within himself, the transformation of matter.

The conquest of consciously transforming carbon into living substance is called the “philosopher's stone”. This is the path of the Rosicrucian: to use and master this greatest of all minerals. We now also understand what the man meant who said that we have all held the “philosopher's stone” in our hands without knowing it.

Now, in conclusion, we must again realize that the breathing process is based on and preceded by a spiritual process; that the transformation of carbon is a symbol of the transformation of man's inner being by ascending into the spiritual world; and also that what will be material in the future must first be spiritual.

Fifth degree: “The correspondence between man and the universe, between microcosm and macrocosm. This is based on the fact that everything that exists in the great world is also present in man as essence; and therefore man can find in himself everything that exists in the great world.

We owe our eye to the sun – its light. The eye is the creation of sunlight. And so the human being in his or her entire being is a creation of the universe. Just as we have to learn how to use our eye to see sunlight, we have to learn how to use our inner organs to receive spiritual light. Man must learn to recognize the relationship of external things to the spiritual world - the relationship of the microcosm to the macrocosm. And then he feels how roots expand out of him into the whole great world. Then he must come to forget his inner self completely: to forget the eye for the sake of the sun. Then it is as if the inner being of man has expanded into a whole universe.

Man learns to no longer say “I” in reference to himself, but in reference to the universe. This is the feeling through which man is absorbed in the macrocosm [- sixth degree].

The ideal of this knowledge is that everything eventually ends in a feeling that encompasses the world. And we cannot grasp this all at once, not with phrases like: Man must become selfless, but only along the long and arduous path of the Rose Cross initiation. To possess this feeling and thus understand the world, that is the initiation of the Rose Cross.

Everything that current science says can be understood in this light, but we do not stop at this science; we learn to understand the world and divinity [- seventh degree]. These are the preparatory teachings of Rosicrucianism.

We see that the teachings and methods of Rosicrucianism are based on the teachings of Theosophy, namely that there is a spark of God in man and that the goal is not to gather wisdom about God, but to learn to feel the pulse of the universe within oneself. Then man has become free. The knowledge that man can do this gives us a powerful impulse to act.

This concept is beautifully expressed by a man who knew (Goethe), in these words: “Man frees himself from the force that binds all beings by overcoming himself.”