1. Lucifer

A significant legend has been placed at the beginning of the modern era by the struggling human spirit. The legendary figure of Doctor Faust stands at the beginning of the age to which the present humanity still belongs, like a symbol of the shock that Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler caused in the feelings and thoughts of mankind. It was said of this Doctor Faust that he “put the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench for a while... he did not want to be called a theologian again, became a man of the world, and called himself a doctor of medicine. Was it not inevitable that humanity, which had grown up in the medieval world of ideas, should feel this way when confronted with the names of Copernicus and Galileo? Did it not seem as if those who believed in their new teachings about the structure of the world had to “put the holy scriptures behind the door” for a while? Do not the words which Luther hurled at the Copernican view sound like a cry of the heart threatened in its faith: “The fool wants to reverse the whole of astronomy, but Holy Scripture tells us that Joshua made the sun stand still, not the earth”?

At that time, conflicting feelings penetrated the human soul with a tremendous force. For views appeared in the field of perception that seemed to contradict what had been thought about the secrets of the world for centuries. - And have these conflicting feelings since come to rest? Is not the man who is serious about the highest needs of knowledge more than ever before confronted with anxious questions when he looks at the course of the scientific spirit? The telescope has opened up the spaces of the heavens to us, the microscope tells us of tiny beings that compose all life accessible to our natural sight. We try to look back to long-gone eras on earth with creatures that were still of the most imperfect kind, and we wonder about the conditions in which man, evolving from subordinate stages of existence, began his earthly life. But when it comes to what is to be called the highest destiny of man, then the thinking of the present reaches a state of almost desperate uncertainty. A lack of courage and confidence has taken hold of it. One would like to assign the needs of “faith”, the religious longings of the heart, a field of their own, in which scientific knowledge has no voice. It is said to be in the nature of man that he can never penetrate with his knowledge to where the soul has its home. Only in this way do people believe that “religious truths” are protected from the presumptuousness of scientific reason. Your knowledge can never penetrate to the things of which 'faith' speaks, so the natural scientists are told, who dare to speak about man's highest goods. The theologian Adolf Harnack, who made a deep impression on many of our contemporaries with his “Essence of Christianity”, sharpens this: “Science is not able to embrace and satisfy all the needs of the mind and heart” ... “How desperate would humanity be if the higher peace for which it longs and the clarity, security and strength for which it struggles were dependent on the extent of knowledge and understanding” ... “Science is not able to give life a meaning – it answers the questions of where we come from, where we are going and what we are doing as little today as it did two or three thousand years ago. It may well teach us about facts, uncover contradictions, link phenomena and correct the illusions of our senses and ideas.” ... ”It is religion, namely the love of God and of our fellow human beings, that gives life a meaning.” Those who listen to such words do not know how to interpret the signs of the times. And even less are they able to understand the demands of the struggling human spirit. It is not important that there are still millions today who feel satisfied by such talk. Those who believe that if those who should know say it, then we do not need to put our book of faith “behind the door”. For then the ideas that the learned have about the sun, the moon and the nebulae, about the smallest living creatures and the course of the earth's development, are of no concern to the faithful. But it is not these millions who shape the thoughts of future humanity. Those who continue to develop the structure of the mind ask completely different questions. There may be few of them at present. It is up to them to prepare the ground for the future. They are the ones who seek the meaning of life, the whence, whither and why in what science says today. In doing so, they accomplish the same thing that the Egyptian priest-wise men accomplished thousands of years ago, who sought this meaning of life in the course of the stars, in the structure of man. They do not want a conflict between knowledge and faith.

Even if they do not realize what it is that spurs them on to such a desire, they have a sense of what is right. They at least have an inkling that all so-called faith has its origin in what some age or other has gained as its treasure of knowledge. Go back to earlier times. In the “actual” that man perceived, he also saw the spiritual world powers at work, which guide the book of fate to its destiny. His guides of knowledge led him from the crawling worm to his God. His “faith” was only his knowledge on the higher steps of this ladder. And today one wants to tell him: Whatever you learn about this “actual” new, it should not distract you from the faith of your fathers. How would they themselves, placed in our time, respond to such a request? They would have to say: We struggled with all our might to find a belief that was in complete harmony with everything we knew about the world. We have passed on to you our faith and our knowledge. You have grown beyond our knowledge. But you lack the strength to bring harmony into your faith and knowledge, as we did. And because you lack this strength, you declare the faith that you have taken from us to be inviolable by your knowledge. But our faith belonged to our knowledge as the head of a person belongs to his body. We sought the same source of life in both. And with the same attitude we have passed on our knowledge to you as we have passed on our faith. You cannot possibly know as your eyes and instruments teach you, and believe as our thinking spirit taught us. For then your science would be born from your soul, but your faith from ours. What do you do when you proceed in this way? Basically, you do nothing other than keep your knowledge capable of building steam engines and electric motors; but ours is to satisfy the needs of your heart.

No, it is not such a conflict that corresponds to human nature, but the invincible urge to seek out the paths that lead to the homeland of the soul from knowledge. Therefore those who consider conflict to be necessary cannot work for the future.

Rather, it is the task of those who seek knowledge that reveals the meaning of life. Knowledge that enlightens man about the whence, whither and wherefore, and that has the power of religion within it.

Our ideals only have their full power of direction and tension when they are transfigured into religious feeling. And our knowledge, our insight, only has meaning and significance when it develops the seeds for our ideals, which determine our value in the world. What a dull life it would be in a knowledge from which no ideals shine! The great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte harshly judged those who lead such dull lives. “We know as well as they, perhaps better, that ideals cannot be realized in the real world. We only claim that reality should be judged according to them, and modified by those who feel the strength to do so. Even if they cannot convince themselves of this, they lose very little by it, once they are what they are; and humanity loses nothing by it. It merely becomes clear that they are not counted on in the plan for the ennoblement of humanity. Humanity will undoubtedly continue on its path; let kind nature rule over them, and give them rain and sunshine, wholesome nourishment and an undisturbed circulation of the juices, and at the same time – clever thoughts! To fully agree with this judgment is not the direction of this journal. If it is granted a longer life, it will rather show that every human being is reckoned with in the plan of the ennoblement of mankind, and that everyone loses something who does not make his soul the dwelling of ideals. Fichte's words should be quoted here to show how a great thinker speaks of people whose minds do not possess the germinating power of the ideal; and no less to indicate that such a thinker is fully aware of the relationship between ideals and life. Life must be shaped according to ideals, so that harmony between ideal and life must be possible.

The same life that animates not only human beings but also plants and animals, that gives crystals their forms, creates in human beings the ideals that give meaning and significance to their existence. Whoever does not recognize the kinship of these ideals with the forces in the silent rock, in the sprouting plant, will soon become weary if he is to believe in the determining power of these ideals. If the laws of nature are something separate from the laws of our soul, then it is all too easy to lose our certainty in the latter. The natural sense of observation, which does not allow us to deny our eyes and ears and our intellect, compels us to have confidence in the laws of nature. Only when the laws of spiritual existence appear in vital harmony with these laws that inspire confidence, will we have the same certainty in relation to them. Then we will know that they rest just as securely in the universe as the laws of light, electricity and plant growth. This is why Goethe once rejected what was presented to him as faith by a friend. He said that he preferred to rely on his own observations, as his great teacher Spinoza had done. If a person's path of knowledge leads him from the contemplation of nature to what he discerns in his soul as the guiding God, then it will ultimately become a matter of conviction for him that his ideals must be lived just as the sun must circle in its orbit. A sun that strays from its course disturbs the entire universe. This is easy to see. That a person who does not live his ideals will also do so is only fully recognized by those who recognize how the same spirit is active in the sun's course and in the soul's paths. He who cannot find the bridge between the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him, who separates knowledge from faith, will soon find that one disturbs the other. Rejection of one or the other, or at least indifference towards one, seems inevitable.

There are enough of the indifferent among us. They enjoy the light and warmth of the sun, they satisfy their everyday needs, which have been implanted in them by the forces of nature. And when they have done that, they may at most delight in superficial literature and art, which are nothing but a reflection and mirror image of these everyday needs. They shy away from the global issues that have moved the flower spirits of humanity for thousands of years. They are not particularly moved when they hear about the “eternal” needs of mankind, about what Johann Gottlieb Fichte meant when he spoke of man's destiny in the words: “I raise my head boldly to the threatening rock mountains, and to the raging waterfall, and to the crashing clouds floating in a sea of fire, and say: I am eternal and I defy your power! Break all down on me, and you earth, and you heaven, mingle in wild tumult, and you elements all, — foam and rage, and in wild battle grind to dust the last particle of the body which I call mine: — my will alone, with its firm plan, shall boldly and coldly hover over the ruins of the universe; for I have seized my destiny, and it is more enduring than you; it is eternal, and I am eternal, as it is.)

And why are so many indifferent to this destiny? Because they do not feel the same compelling force in the laws of the soul as in those of physical existence. Basically, today feeling has only taken on a different form, which was linked to the Faustian figure by the people of the sixteenth century because of the separation of faith and knowledge. Faust wanted to reach the spirit as a knower. But the people wanted that one should only believe in the spirit. In the Faust book it is therefore said that one can “obviously feel from Faust's fate where security, presumption and curiosity ultimately drive a person and that they are a certain cause of the apostasy from God...”

The indifferent do not believe that one is damned if one surrenders to the spirit. They are of the opinion that one cannot know anything about the spirit; or if they do not realize this clearly, then at least they do not care about it. — Knowledge of nature therefore progresses, and with it everything that is carried and developed by it. Knowledge of the spirit withers, and at best it feeds on the inherited feelings of the fathers, which one person unthinkingly feels, another allows to exist within himself indifferently, and a third smiles at or condemns as overcome.

And it is not even always mere indifference or critical thinking that causes our contemporaries to behave in this way. Many a person in the hustle and bustle of today's world would only need to take half a day to consult with himself, and he would find hidden corners in his soul where voices speak that are only drowned out by the confusion of the outside world. A half-day of quiet and solitude could make this inner voice audible, which speaks: Is it really man's only destiny to be absorbed in the concerns of life, only to be consumed by it again just as quickly? But isn't this concern what we call today “human progress”? But is it progress in the higher sense that we have in mind? The uncivilized savage satisfies his need for food by making simple tools and hunting the nearest animals in the forest, grinding the grains that the earth gives him with primitive means. And what he experiences as “love” and enjoys in a simple way that is not much different from that of animals beautifies his life. The civilized man of today uses the finest “scientific” spirit to design the most complicated factories and tools to satisfy the same need for food. He covers the drive of “love” with all kinds of sophistication, perhaps even with what he calls poetry, but whoever is able to lift the various veils will discover behind all of this the same thing that lives as a drive in the savage, just as he discovers the common need for food behind the “scientific spirit” embodied in factories.

It seems almost crazy to say such things. But it only seems that way to those who do not suspect that their entire way of thinking is nothing more than a habit inculcated by their age, and who nevertheless believe that they are able to judge things quite “independently and autonomously”. - After all, we have, according to general opinion, come so far in “culture”. No one could deny the truth of what has been said if they really wanted to consider how a purely material civilization differs from savagery and barbarism, if they really wanted to treat themselves to the silence of half a day. Is it really so different in the higher sense whether one grinds grain with a rubbing stone and goes into the forest to hunt animals, or whether one sets up telegraphs and telephones to obtain grain from distant places? From a certain point of view, does it not ultimately mean the same thing whether one relative tells another that she has woven so much linen this year, or whether hundreds of newspapers report every day that representative X has made a wonderful speech about building a railroad here or there, even if that railroad ultimately serves no purpose other than to supply region Y with grain from region Z. And finally: is it so much better when a novelist tells us in how refined a manner Eugenius has won his Hermine, than when the servant Franz naively tells how he came to his Katharine?

People who like to avoid thinking about such things can only smile at these thoughts. They see those who have them as dreamers and unworldly enthusiasts. They may be “right” in a certain judgment. One is always “right” in this way when one defends the trivial against what is “only attainable in thought.”

It is not our business to argue with anyone. We only state what we believe to be the truth; and we wait until the echo is found in the hearts of others. For we are convinced that as soon as a person's voice speaks to him of his eternal destiny, he will listen. As far back as the times of which the traditions of the peoples tell us, this voice has always spoken. What zeal has been expended in interpreting the truth of the Bible, which Faust then wanted to put “behind the door” for a while. In the quiet monastery cell, the lonely monk racked his brain to fathom the meaning of the written word; before the altar, he had worn his knees raw in nightly exercises to find enlightenment about this word. Then he climbed up into the pulpit to proclaim in fervent speech to the people struggling for their eternal destiny what the solitude of his heart had given him. And other, less beautiful images present themselves to us when we look at the human spirit thirsting for truth. The stakes of the Inquisition, the persecutions of the heretics, come before our soul, in which the sense of the “Word” lived itself out, becoming fanaticism or perhaps also hypocrisy and lust for power. - Again we look at the figure of Faust. The people of the sixteenth century let him be taken by the devil, because he wanted to become a knower, and not a mere believer. Goethe grants him redemption because he did not remain in dull faith but always strove to improve himself. The significant symbol of wisdom, which is given to us through research, is Lucifer, the bearer of light. All those who strive for knowledge and wisdom are children of Lucifer. The Chaldean astrologers, the Egyptian wise priests, the Indian Brahmans: they were all children of Lucifer. And the first man himself became a child of Lucifer, since he allowed himself to be taught by the serpent what was “good and evil”. And all these children of Lucifer could also become believers. Indeed, they had to become believers if they understood their wisdom correctly. For their wisdom became a “glad tidings” for them. It told them of the divine origin of the world and of man. What they had discovered through their power of knowledge was the holy secret of the world, before which they knelt in devotion, it was the light that showed their souls the paths to their destiny. Their wisdom, seen in devout veneration, became faith, became religion. What Lucifer brought them shone before the eyes of their souls as divine. They owed it to Lucifer that they had a God. It is called dividing the heart with the head when one makes God the opponent of Lucifer. And it is called paralyzing the enthusiasm of the heart when one does it like our educated people, who do not raise the knowledge of the head to religious devotion.

Many stand stunned before the discoveries of science. The telescope, the microscope, Darwinism: they seem to speak differently about the world and life than the holy books of the fathers. And Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin speak with convincing power. They are children of Lucifer of our time. But they cannot be a “glad tidings” for themselves alone. They do not yet carry their light up to the heights to which mankind once looked when it sought the home of the soul. That is why they may still appear to the pious as evil spirits who, like Faust, plunge man into spiritual ruin. Lucifer may still be before their eyes as the adversary of God. But those who are only filled with what Lucifer proclaims to them on the paths of “modern” science are truly seduced by him into indifference towards their divine mission. To them, Lucifer is indeed only the “prince of this world”. He tells them how the planets revolve around the sun, how imperfect living beings became human beings; but he does not speak to them of that which defies the “looming cliff, the clouds floating in a sea of fire” within them. — Astronomy has transferred cold, sober forces of attraction to the place where seraphim once made the celestial bodies revolve out of love for God. When the great naturalist of the eighteenth century, Carl von Linné, spoke of the fact that there were as many species of plants and animals as divine power originally created, today natural science convinces us that these species have changed from the imperfect to the perfect by themselves. Lucifer seems to have become a very dull companion. His message seems unsuitable to inspire devotion in the heart. Has he not led people to opinions such as those expressed not long ago by a “freethinker” who was popular with many: “Thought is a form of power. We walk with the same power with which we think. Man is an organism that transforms various forms of energy into the power of thought, an organism that we keep active with what we call “food” and with which we produce what we call thoughts. What a wonderful chemical process that could transform a mere quantity of food into the divine tragedy of a “Hamlet”!

Only those who do not listen to the speeches of modern Lucifer to the end are able to speak in this way. But all too many follow him, and are perhaps even glad that their teacher left Lucifer's school too early.

One of those who, under the influence of the new natural science, fought against the “old faith”, David Friedrich Strauß, said: “That man's salvation should depend on believing in things of which some are certainly not true, partly uncertain whether they have happened, and only to a very small extent beyond doubt that they have happened, that man's salvation should depend on believing in such things is so absurd that it no longer needs refutation today.» But what can be said with such words alone has already been said much more beautifully by a confessor of the “old faith” in the thirteenth century. The great mystic Eckhart teaches: “A master says: God has become man, and the whole human race is elevated and dignified by this. We may rejoice in the fact that Christ, our brother, has ascended by his own power above all the choirs of angels and sits at the right hand of the Father. This master has spoken well; but truly, I do not care much about it. What good would it do me if I had a brother who was a rich man and I were a poor man? What good would it do me if I had a brother who was a wise man and I were a fool? If, however, the master Eckhart had heard Strauß's words, he would have been able to reply: “Your saying is true, and no other objection should be raised against it than that it is banal. But something else is equally self-evident: that of the truths that the telescope and the microscope, that of the ideas that Darwin had about the development of living beings, should follow something for the fate of the human soul, is “so absurd that it should no longer need refutation in the shortest time”. For Meister Eckhart added to his speech: “The heavenly Father gives birth to his only-begotten Son in himself and in me. Why in himself and in me? I am one with him, and he cannot exclude me. In the same work the Holy Spirit receives his being and becomes of me, as of God. Why? I am in God, and if the Holy Spirit does not take his being from me, he does not take it from God either. I am in no way excluded.” In this sense, one should say to the modern ‘free spirits’: The eternal world spirit gives birth to its essence as in the stars, as in the plants and animals, in me. Why in me? I am one with it, as stars, animals and plants are one with it; and it is in no way able to exclude me. In the same way, the Spirit of Truth receives its essence when I search my soul, as it receives it when I search the external world. What good would it do me if I searched the laws of the starry heavens and could not recognize how the forces that move the stars live on a higher level in my soul and guide them to their goals?

Those who wish to walk in the paths of the new natural science and thereby explore the laws of the soul should let the words of the seventeenth-century mystic Angelus Silesius speak to them in a renewed form:

“If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you will remain eternally lost.”

Today, we can say the same thing in a different way: the glory of the universe may reveal itself to you a thousand times, but if you do not find the law of the starry heavens living in your own soul, you will remain eternally lost.

This journal will deal with the facts of spiritual life. It will speak of that which the one who remains with Lucifer's words to the end hears. The true spirit of the new natural science should find in it not an opponent but an ally. As once the sages of Vedanta philosophy, as the Egyptian priest-researchers in their way, rose from their knowledge of nature to knowledge of the spirit, so it will rise from the truths held in the spirit of our time rise to the heights where knowledge becomes “good tidings”, where knowledge is received by the heart with devotion, where the ideals are formed that guide us further than the stars are guided by their forces.

And closer to man than any object of nature is that which is here spoken of: the human spirit. What is spoken of here by each one is none other than himself. He himself, who is apparently so close to himself, and whom the fewest know, and whom many have so little need to know. For those who seek the light of the spirit, Lucifer shall be a messenger. He will not speak of a faith that is foreign to knowledge. He will not flatter himself into the hearts in order to bypass the gatekeeper of science. He will show every respect to this gatekeeper. He will not preach piety or godliness, but he will show the paths that knowledge must take if it wants to transform itself from itself into religious feeling, into devotional immersion in the spirit of the world. Lucifer knows that the shining sun can only rise in the heart of each individual; but he also knows that only the paths of knowledge lead up the mountain where the sun lets its divine radiance appear. Lucifer should not be a devil who leads the striving Faust to hell; he should be an awakener of those who believe in the wisdom of the world and want to transform it into the gold

3 of God's wisdom. Lucifer wants to look freely into the eyes of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and Haeckel; but he also does not want to lower his gaze when the wise men speak of the homeland of the soul.

Meditation

Question: Do you strive for self-knowledge? Will your so-called self mean more to the whole of the world tomorrow than it does today, once you have recognized it?

First answer: No, if you are no different tomorrow than you are today, and your realization of tomorrow is just a repetition of your being today.

Second answer: Yes, if you are a different person tomorrow than you are today, and your new being tomorrow is the effect of your realization today.