Overcoming Materialism: Thought, Feeling, and Social Transformation

GA 266I — 3 March 1906, Hamburg

Esoteric Lesson

Anyone who wants to become an esoteric in the theosophical sense must train their mind to think every thought through thoroughly. Short, overly brief thinking is a characteristic of materialistic people. Theosophical esoterics must not fall into this comfortable way of thinking.

Take the idea of social democracy: change the conditions, and people will improve their social working and living conditions. This is a belief of materialism, short-sighted and beguiling. This belief is extremely paralyzing for any consideration of [real] social life.

How can a theosophist free himself from this materialistic belief that existence, even morality, would improve if only external conditions were improved?

Let us begin by considering that every change must be brought about by human beings and that, accordingly, every state brought about for the social order results from human thoughts and feelings. Once you have grasped this idea firmly, you can free yourself from the materialistic view that everything is brought about by external circumstances.

You must come to experience such facts. You must also experience how paralyzing is the belief that man is a product of external circumstances.

The next step is for the budding esotericist to gather evidence that bringing about better external conditions does not improve the world. One does not have to go far to find sufficient illustrative material, since the world improvers shout it from the rooftops everywhere that all that is needed is to change external conditions. It is not so easy to follow the thoughts of these world improvers and not allow oneself to be discouraged. Many people think, and their thoughts and feelings turn them into world improvers. Now one is ready to think further.

The following thought is this:

Does it matter whether a good person or a bad person thinks and feels about improving the world?

Theosophy tells us that the social order is created by human beings and that it is the result of human thoughts and feelings.

So it is human thoughts and feelings that must be cultivated, not the social order that must be changed.

What will a true social democrat do if he wants to change something? He will change the laws so that inexperienced people are not at the mercy of this or that person.

Examine in each individual case how a law comes into being. The social democrat does not want to teach humanity, i.e., purify its thoughts, cultivate its feelings, and ennoble its emotions in order to create an experienced humanity that is self-determined in its actions.

The esotericist asks: Where does this state of affairs, which is in need of change, come from? And if the state is not imposed by nature, he recognizes that it was brought about by the thoughts and impulses of will of the people who lived before him. Conditions are therefore as they are now because people with their inadequate thoughts and inadequate feelings have made them so.

If the social democrat, as the most radical social theorist, wants to create new conditions, these conditions will be just as inadequate as the previous ones, because he draws on the same inadequate thoughts and feelings as those who brought about this state of affairs before him.

So what does spiritual science want? It wants to bring about a powerful education of our innermost soul forces so that social life can be shaped by different thoughts and feelings. This means nothing other than that spiritual science has no patent remedy for how this or that should be done in this or that position; it does not dictate anyone's judgment, but has the unconditional confidence that everyone will come to the right judgment when they are imbued with the fundamental truths.

And I will write down for you one such sentence from the fundamental truths: Misery, poverty, and suffering are nothing other than a consequence of egoism.

This is to be understood as a law of nature. But this statement is not to be understood as meaning that it must occur in an individual human being. It can appear in completely different places.

Here, too, it is important not to think in a narrow way, but to consider the broader context of such a statement.

I have already said publicly: People already live according to the principle of selfishness as soon as they live according to the principle: I must be personally rewarded; I must be paid for what I do. Or hidden selfishness: you must be personally rewarded, because you must be paid for what you do.

Esotericists must now consider whether work really is what sustains life. Work as such has no meaning unless it is guided by “wisdom”! Only through the wisdom that humans bring to it can that which serves humanity be brought forth and created. Anyone who does not understand this and sins against it in even the smallest way sins against the social thinking of our time.

Thinking this through in all its possible phases is what makes thinking strong. Those who, like the Social Democrats, think about how to create work in order to abolish unemployment are thinking in a highly antisocial way. What matters is that work is used solely and exclusively for people to create valuable goods.

And this brings you to the age-old saying of every esoteric: In a social community, the drive to work must never lie in the individual personality of the person, but solely in their devotion to the whole.

It follows that true social progress is only possible if I do what I earn in the service of the whole. In other words, what I work for must not serve myself. Social progress depends solely on the recognition of this statement, that one does not want the fruits of one's labor in the form of personal remuneration.

As long as social democracy causes the working class to think that man must claim the full fruits of his labor, humanity will continue to sink into worse and worse conditions.

The spiritual science must develop the opposite from thinking and feeling: man must not want anything for himself from what he has earned. Man owes work to the social community. Conversely, man must limit his existence solely to what the social community gives him.

The counterpart to such social thinking must now also be pursued precisely. You know the example of a seamstress who works for cheap wages and of social democracy persuading the workers: You are being exploited! But then the seamstress goes and buys a cheap dress to go dancing on Sunday. She demands a cheap dress. But why is the dress cheap? Because another worker has been exploited. So who is ultimately exploiting the worker? Surely it is the seamstress who wears the cheap dress to go dancing on Sunday.

Anyone who can think clearly here has already moved beyond the distinction between rich and poor, because this has nothing to do with wealth and poverty.

Therefore, the conditions must first be created so that in the future people will work diligently and devotedly without thinking of their own self-interest.

Imagine that someone invents a cure and immediately patents it. What does this show? It shows that he immediately thinks of his own self-interest and was not guided by love for this creation of the cure, that he is not filled with love for all of humanity. For if the health of people were most important to him, he would be happy if others also produced the remedy in order to serve humanity. Yes, he would be eager for it to become known what the remedy contains and how it is produced. And something else would happen: he would be convinced that this remedy, produced by him with his attitude, was the better one.

And here we have reached an important sentence that plays a major role in esotericism:

Means must be found to ennoble the soul.

Those who use their thinking to achieve beneficial progress must above all direct the power of their thinking toward the ennoblement of the human soul.

This brings us to the conclusion of the Rosicrucian motto:

From the power that binds all beings,
The human being who overcomes himself is freed.