38. How do the Forces of the Lower World Relate to Beings in a Higher World?

The following question is asked: “In a lecture it was recently said that the forces in a lower world – on a lower plane – correspond to beings in a higher world – on a higher plane. How should we visualize this?”

In order to see this matter in the right light, we must start from an analogy. Let us think, for example, of a human being. He acts out of his intentions and purposes as a conscious being. Now let us assume that an animal judges a human being according to his own abilities. It will perceive the activities of the human being, but not the intentions and concepts of purpose from which they arise. The animal thus perceives an effect without being able to see through the associated cause. Now let us further assume that the animal does not even see the acting person in a given case, but is merely confronted with the result of the person's activity, for example a table. It will not be further prompted to consider the causes by which the table came about, or to seek the being that made the table.

In a very similar case, man, with his observation limited to the world of the senses, is confronted with natural phenomena. He perceives effects without seeing the causes. For these lie in higher worlds. Man perceives light, heat, electrical phenomena and magnetic effects, and so on. These appear before him as, for example, the table in the above example appears before the eyes of the animal. The causes that physicists and chemists attribute to these phenomena are nothing more than mental images. For moving atoms, molecular forces, etc. are concepts that are borrowed from the ordinary world of the senses and are then projected into a world that cannot be perceived by the senses. If the physicist believes in such inventions as true realities, he is indulging in a superstition that in many respects is lower than the fetish worship of so-called primitive peoples. Our present-day natural science, in so far as it builds theories and does not limit itself to mere observation, is full of idolatry and superstition. The atomic theory is nothing more than superstition if it is taken as more than a provisional, useful working hypothesis.

The secret researcher, however, is able to ascend from the so-called natural forces to the real causes of the sensual facts. He then finds that electrical phenomena are nothing more than the results of the actions of certain beings who have their existence in higher worlds. Just as an animal sees a table without being able to form a correct idea of the maker of the table, so the observer who is limited to the sensory world has electrical facts before him without being able to form a correct concept of the higher beings whose actions these phenomena are. Certain heat-producing entities really correspond to the phenomena of heat. Likewise, there are light entities that regulate the world of light and color, etc. One cannot come to an understanding of these entities through speculation, but only through the development of one's own higher abilities, which are then similar to those of the higher beings, just as an animal could only understand the nature of a human being if it acquired a human intellect for itself.

However, man will only admit this at the moment when he has acquired the insight that a higher development of man is possible. Before that, he will naturally regard the speaking of spirits of light, warmth and electricity as a “falling back into the superstitious ideas of mythology”. But anyone who acquires real knowledge must, on the contrary, equate the atomic theory, etc., with the worship of a block of wood or stone. The African negroes have idolatry in religion, we in the West have idolatry in materialistic science. The mystic scorns the latter idolatry and superstition no more than the former, but he understands the one as well as the other. Just as certain peoples were bound to arrive at fetishism at a certain stage of development, so the European scientific materialists were bound to arrive at atomism.

All these things are also discussed in a very scientific way in my introductions to Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's “Deutscher Nationalliteratur”, in my “Philosophie der Freiheit” and in my book on “Goethe's Weltanschauung”. But the thinkers and scientists of our time, who are caught up in materialistic or so-called positivistic ideas, cannot understand these arguments. They must even consider them to be dilettantism. I myself have never been surprised by this. For I know that people do not judge according to reasons, but according to habits of thought and public suggestions. And I also know that a time will come when people will judge the materialism of our present age, for example in the form of Wundt's philosophy, in the same way that people today judge the “childish” idols of African primitive peoples. It was necessary to start from an analogy for the purpose of these discussions. It is natural that any analogy can only approximate the things. But one must proceed in this way if one wants to make things clear.