10. What Does Theosophy Mean For People Today?

What is proclaimed today as Theosophy is by no means a new spiritual doctrine. What is new is that people are speaking and working publicly in its spirit, and that societies are being founded for its cultivation, to which anyone can have access. Previously, its work was done in societies that did not go public. Only those persons were admitted to them who had given a guarantee through their proven abilities that they were absolutely up to certain tasks that fell to them, and whose character offered the certainty that they would place their lives completely in the service of the school of thought that opened up to them.

It was not arbitrary that the teachings and work of such societies were kept secret. This was only because the public would not only have been useless but also harmful. All higher goods and goals of life depend on these teachings and this work. The owners of such knowledge are promoters of the salvation of mankind, caretakers of true health and the noblest progress of humanity. But only those who have the necessary qualities and abilities can work in this sense. Those who do not have these qualities and abilities will not be entrusted with the corresponding knowledge by the keepers of this knowledge, just as one would not entrust the operation of a machine to an incompetent or inexperienced person, who would only cause harm to himself and his surroundings. The possession of the power to bring about the salvation and development of humanity is connected with the knowledge of it.

Today many people smile at assertions of this kind. But they have no knowledge of what is really going on in the higher spiritual life. They only want to see life on the surface and close their minds to its secrets. Those who recognize their task as being to communicate a part of the higher knowledge of the world today will know how to bear being called visionaries and dreamers. That is what has always been done to those who had such tasks. They act in their own way only because they have to.

Only a part of the “secret knowledge”, the elementary part, is made public as theosophy. For the other areas, the old way of working must continue. The Theosophical Society, founded thirty years ago, is one of the institutions for the publication of a part of higher knowledge, but by no means the only one.

Those who work in the spirit of theosophy today are convinced that many of their fellow human beings justifiably desire the corresponding knowledge, because without it they would have to sink into spiritual desolation and poverty. Theosophy is directed at those who are searching for the truth about the highest and noblest goods of humanity with the deepest earnestness, and who cannot achieve this goal by the paths they have taken so far.

It is not to be claimed that the fruits of higher knowledge were withheld from humanity in earlier times and were only the special property of those united in secret societies. The keepers of knowledge have always sought ways to make their power useful to the world. Those who engage in theosophy and accept what it has to offer will soon learn to think differently about many things in life than they have done so far. One of these things is religious striving. In this striving, the great masses of people have sought enlightenment about the fate of the soul, about the goals of life; and they have found what they needed. Now things have changed; the number of those who see themselves beset by the spirits of doubt at every turn is growing ever greater. In earlier times, the custodians of science were also the leaders of religious life. They embodied the full harmony of faith and knowledge, religion and insight. Today, a part of science has detached itself from faith. And the two have gone their separate ways. But this has brought discord into human souls. And in many cases it has done so precisely in those who take the truth most seriously.

Of course, there are still a great many people today who have not been led astray by the newer spirits of doubt. For such people, the theosophist will probably continue to use a language that is incomprehensible and seems useless to them. But their number is decreasing daily. Countless people absorb the discordant note in their childhood. They have to take in one explanation of the world through religious teaching and another through natural science. Both stand in contradiction to them; and they take the break in their soul with them into later life as the source of a sad inner fate, or – which is probably even worse – as indifference towards the spiritual goods of life. Perhaps they do not even realize what they have lost in a higher sense.

And not least are those seized by doubt and uncertainty who, by virtue of their abilities and training, are called to be leaders in spiritual life. This is only natural, for they are the ones least able to escape the triumphal march of scientific doubt. And so no strength or influence passes from them to the spiritual life of others. Anyone who today still lives in his village or otherwise in the closest circle, without being touched by a breath of contemporary thinking, may tomorrow be confronted by a freethinking speaker or get hold of a book that pulls the ground from under his feet, the ground of his convictions that constituted his salvation. The newer science has such a shattering effect because its results are based on the most gross testimony, that of the external senses. It can prove what it claims through these witnesses. The senses not only fail to provide evidence for religious truths about the spiritual world, but they even seem to contradict them. But mankind owes its external well-being and the great material goods of life to science, which is based on the facts of sensory perception. This science has armed the eye so that it can look into the farthest regions of the stars; it has made innumerable living beings visible in the smallest drop; it has conquered the globe with its natural forces and treasures. It is therefore understandable that it is able to exercise a tremendous power, and it is to be expected that this power will grow in the future. What seems to be in contradiction to it has been deprived of trust. And this happened to religious convictions that were unable to justify themselves before the judgment seat of this science.

Those who relied on such science came to believe that the old traditions of spiritual life contained only the “fictions” of a childlike, unscientific imagination. Indeed, many of those who upheld these ancient traditions felt compelled to apply the standards of this science to religious teachings themselves; they examined the religious documents: and bit by bit, what had opened up a view of a higher world to mankind was lost; and what remains has not the power to truly give the soul the security it needs. For it must be realized that many so-called free directions in religion, which seek to make peace with modern science, will prove to be completely ineffective from a religious point of view.

But all other attempts to create a substitute for the old traditions and to satisfy the irrepressible longing for the spiritual world have also failed. Until recently, it was still possible to believe that a substitute for the old traditions could be found in the new science. Many noble people built up a kind of scientific creed for themselves as “free thinkers”. They accepted the teachings of “natural” development in the sense of materialistic science, because they thought that these were “reasonable”, and that the so-called “supernatural” story of creation contradicted reason. They considered the soul to be a product of the brain, and they devoted themselves with a certain enthusiasm to the hope that when their bodies disintegrated, they would live as little as they had lived before their birth, according to their view. They replaced their devotion to any religious demands with a service to humanity in the sense of earthly well-being and progress. Nowadays, this “free-thinking” has been refuted by science itself. The ideas from which it arose were the results of a premature “scientific belief”. And anyone who still wants to profess such a belief today is not only sinning against religious traditions, but also against genuine advanced science itself. What science has brought to light in recent years cannot be reconciled with the freethinking that has been characterized. Only a few of the old materialists, who have blinded themselves with the power of prejudice, still cling to such views.

A new path is necessary for the truth-seeking soul today. And this is the path that the theosophical spiritual movement has taken. It will show that the spiritual world, which has been the subject of faith for so long, is also accessible to knowledge. And it will achieve this by publishing a part of the higher knowledge. It is one of its most important realizations that the beliefs of faith are not creations of a childlike, unscientific imagination, but rather of the highest human wisdom. Religions were not created by children, but by wise leaders of humanity. But they gave their messages the form that suited the times and peoples to whom they were addressed. If the religious documents did not express wisdom in its most direct and original form, but clothed it in images and stories, it was because it was thus more accessible to people at a certain level of understanding than in the form of pure concepts. They had to speak to the emotions and the imagination, because these attain their perfection before reason. In the secret schools, however, the great teachers imparted to their intimate disciples in undisguised form what they had to say to humanity. And in these schools this undisguised form was passed on from century to century. From time to time, the initiates passed on to the outside world what they considered necessary, and in the manner that seemed to them to be the most appropriate and that would protect them from misuse and confusion. In this way, the world came to know as faith what the leaders possessed as knowledge. And it was right to leave it at that as long as it could not be shaken by knowledge of the external physical world. The last few centuries have seen this come to pass; and in recent times this knowledge has progressed to such an extent that it is now possible to lift the veil from part of the secret. Further silence would rob humanity of all prospects of a spiritual world. Even those who have climbed to the highest summits of physical science have not been able to find out for themselves how the highest truths are hidden behind the images of religious teachings. They had to take it on faith. Now Theosophy comes in and reveals from the treasure of secret knowledge as much as is necessary to satisfy the needs of the human soul. It shows religions and all traditions of a spiritual life in a completely new light. It is able to give them a form so that a theosophist can be a believer in science and religious teachings at the same time in the fullest sense of the word. For through theosophy, one acquires ideas about a spiritual life in such a way that one is in harmony with the strictest science. There can be nothing for this kind of thinking within the current thinking that could not be answered and accounted for.

Thus, if properly understood, the theosophical spiritual tradition can fulfill the most necessary mission in today's spiritual life. Therefore, anyone who has sought peace of mind in vain through other paths may seek advice from it. But even those who are not yet plagued by doubts will find it beneficial, for it will bring clarity to the objects of their faith, it will deepen the life of the soul.