Knowledge of Soul and Spirit

GA 56 — 12 December 1907, Berlin

The So-Called Dangers of Initiation

It is not the only accusation made against secret science that it is fantastical and dreamlike, but many also believe that there are dangers associated with it for those who approach this secret science or Spiritual Science. In certain circles, there are downright adventurous views about these so-called dangers of Spiritual Science. First of all, much is generally said about such dangers without even attempting to characterize the alleged dangers in more detail or to specify what they consist of; for where so much is sometimes said about these dangers, there is just as often a profound ignorance of what secret science actually entails. People only have a vague mental image that it involves something dangerous. Nor is there any discussion of what really needs to be discussed: whether the secret science itself is dangerous, or whether it is only the deeper penetration into it, through familiarization with the methods and exercises that lead people into the spiritual world surrounding us, invisible and imperceptible to the ordinary senses, but perfectly perceptible to the higher senses. Anyone who wants to speak of dangers in this area must make this distinction. However, as I said, it is often not a matter of pointing out specific dangers, but rather of saying: Oh, this secret science or this theosophy makes people unworldly, distances them from what they should actually be concerned with in life, from what they should be interested in. And some circles find it extremely regrettable that this or that member is apparently being snatched away from them because they are beginning to take an interest in theosophy or the secret science on which it is based. This has probably also given rise to the often-expressed judgment that Theosophy makes people impractical, distracts them from the immediate duties of life, and drives them to asceticism and unworldliness.

Although it has already been mentioned here by one side or the other, it may be worth pointing out once again that the most unfair and at the same time most impossible accusation that can be made against the Secret Science and its work is that it somehow makes people unworldly, detached from the world, or seduces them into asceticism. It must be emphasized again and again that because our world of the senses our world of physical life is based on a spiritual world with its beings and forces that constantly influence our sensory world, those who do not care about the true and actual forces of existence and want to limit themselves only to the outer world, to what the senses say and what they can enjoy, must be called unworldly and detached from the world. There is no question of theosophy urging its adherents to lead an ascetic life, to practice self-denial, or to be unworldly. It is true, however, that those who develop an interest in what flows from the secret science, in what it has to offer, must have different desires, different sympathies and antipathies than many people have.

In a large number of cases, however, it is not the case that those who approach the occult science acquire this interest, these sympathies and antipathies, within an occult or theosophical circle. People usually bring their feelings with them; their interests carry them into theosophical circles, and what theosophy or secret science wants or should offer them is nothing other than what they demand. That is not why they are driven away from the circles that say: ... they are becoming strangers to us — because they are taken away by theosophy, but because these circles, with their apparent devotion to the world and their selfish interests, make them feel more and more alienated. When such a circle complains that this or that member is being taken away from it, it should ask itself: Has Theosophy taken this member away from me, or have we driven him away through boredom? If one compares life as it should be in a Theosophical circle with life in a “worldly” circle that says one should not indulge in asceticism, that one must take life as it is, the answer is that the theosophist does not withdraw from certain things because he wants to tear himself away from life, to escape from life, but because he wants to enter into true, genuine life.

There is no greater asceticism, no more terrible deprivation for those who are interested in Spiritual Science than to devote themselves to the hustle and bustle that many circles call “life.” If one calls life: getting up in the morning, reading one's newspaper, pursuing this or that which one can see has a practical use, participating in this or that banality in the evening — if one calls that life, then there is indeed an “asceticism” for the theosophist, a terrible deprivation, namely, when one is forced to participate in this life. If, therefore, despite all opposing forces, interest in theosophy and in what may be made public from the secret science is growing ever greater today, this is only proof that there are more and more people who want to escape the “ascetic” life of ordinary pleasures and throw themselves into the arms of real life. People would have to realize this if they would only consult with themselves, for life in the Secret Science is certainly not one of whining and moaning under suffering and deprivation. And the practice of life is a chapter that has already been discussed in the various lectures.

If those who often pride themselves so much on their practical approach to life were to say that theosophy, with its unworldly ideas, only puts nonsense into people's heads, and that people who devote themselves to such things would never achieve anything real in life, if they were to take just one look at the world and at what is called, on the one hand, practicality and, and impractical idealism on the other, they might speak differently. It was a German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who said the beautiful words: Idealists know just as well as so-called practical people, perhaps even better, that ideals cannot be applied directly in life. But the fact that certain people cannot see that all life flows from the ideal of life, from what is not yet there, from what is yet to come, only shows that, as Fichte puts it, they are not counted on in the plan for the ennoblement of humanity. May the deity therefore grant them rain and sunshine, food, and wise thoughts at the right time! The theosophist may take comfort from an objective view of life when the danger of so-called impracticality is pointed out. For an example of what practicality is, we can cite that wise college of practitioners in a country in southern Germany. When they wanted to build the first railroad in Germany, they asked them whether it would be good to build this railroad. The group said—and anyone can verify that the document exists—that no railroad should be built, because people would suffer serious damage to their nervous systems; but if there were people who still wanted to ride a railroad, and if it were to be built, high wooden walls would have to be erected on both sides of it so that those passing by would not suffer concussions. That was not so long ago! It was also not so long ago that a man who was not a practitioner but an “impractical teacher” advised introducing cheaper postcards instead of expensive postage stamps. It was Rowland Hill, the non-practitioner. But there was a postmaster who said: I cannot really see that introducing postage in this way would be an advantage, because if traffic were to develop in such a way, the post office building would no longer be sufficient to accommodate and transport all the letters and postal items. - This is how some of the judgments made today by people who are hostile to theosophy appear.

The dangers described there are similar to those that people have experienced with the railroad after decades of using it. The future will prove this. Just as the Bavarian Medical Association was unable to prevent the construction of the railroad, and the Postmaster General in London was unable to prevent the expansion of postal traffic, so too can the spread of Theosophy, which has proven necessary in our time, not be stopped by similar objections.

However, many of the concerns are not directed at the general public; there is a sense that something special is afoot. It is therefore permissible to speak publicly about what may be causing such concerns and talk of dangers. First of all, we must not forget one thing: something that is supposed to have an effect, that is supposed to have meaning and power in the world, affects different people in different ways. It has an effect in the way that people allow themselves to be influenced and impressed by it. Now, theosophy and the secret science are something like a cleansing storm in our spiritual atmosphere, and will increasingly become so. What fills this spiritual atmosphere? It is filled with all kinds of confident and optimistic judgments, which appear all the more confident the less deeply they introduce us to the nature of things. In particular, it is materialistic thinking and feeling, the materialistic attitude, which, with an enormous opinion of its own infallibility, with enormous arrogance and conceit, today considers itself the only doctrine that can bring salvation and pours scornful laughter on everything that points to the spiritual world, as if it were only a matter of fantasies.

Of course, those who train their thinking in the logic necessary to master the realms that lie beyond the sensory world are always in danger of being made ill by the logic of today's materialists. The superficial judgments that are formed today, that are commonplace today and appear with unparalleled certainty and infallibility, are sometimes very short-lived, and when they are confronted with the logic that proceeds from concept to concept with inner patience of thought, as is necessary when one cannot advance on the bridge of external sensory experiences, but instead sets out to find a secure support within oneself and an inner certainty, then their flimsiness very soon becomes apparent. Already in this respect, thinking as it flows from secret science for the present must often appear to us like a cleansing thunderstorm. It appears so to the great masses of people and also to the individual. We cannot help but emphasize that this is not a danger. For the great masses, the danger is at most that it brings uncertainty into judgments that are worthy of being made.

For the individual, the situation is worse. Something comes into play that works in the most secret depths of the soul, a disharmony between human feeling and judgment. And this disharmony is greatest today among those people who believe themselves to be most secure in some materialistic creed. A materialistic creed has the peculiarity that, in the final analysis, it can only satisfy the intellect, only abstract judgment. The deeper interests of the soul, all desires, all feelings, all sensations are much truer and much deeper in all human beings than their judgment often is. And while everyone remains stuck on the surface with their judgments, their materialistic concepts, and their materialistic attitudes, deep in their souls—often completely unconsciously—there lives a longing and a yearning for the spiritual. For keen observers of human nature, this sometimes becomes quite apparent when one sees how much disharmony there is in people's speeches and utterances. One can see that they do not actually feel in accordance with what they say. To a small extent, what a poet grotesquely expressed in the words he puts into the mouth of one of his characters is the case with a large percentage of people today: As sure as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist. This is, expressed in a radical and grotesque way, the emotional clinging to something traditional and the clinging to a superficial judgment of radical negation. In this radical form, it occurs in few people today. But for those who can observe more closely, almost every conversation offers example after example of how people live in their souls today.

Under what conditions can one live like this? One can live like this on the condition that one remains superficial in one's soul life. For no one who descends into the depths of their soul will be able to tolerate such disharmony as is so prevalent today. For those who are accustomed to logic, this is evident in the entire scope of materialistic or — as it is more nobly called — monistic literature. Let us take a person who is embedded in the atmosphere of our time and does not strive to escape from it out of inner freedom or a strong inner urge: he remains embedded, he lives a general, dull but contented life. But today it no longer depends on the things that many people want to hold on to whether a person can live such a dull life, whether it is possible for him to live such a dull life. For many people, it is no longer possible. And what popular literature—magazines, popular books, even newspapers—has to offer is, for more refined minds and deeper souls, by no means something that resembles an answer to the great riddles of existence, but serves only to generate new questions.

Yes, even today's science itself, as it appears with its adherence to facts: it provides answers only for the superficial mind. For the deep-minded person, for the refined-minded person, this science is something completely different. It is a sum of question marks. And where many believe that they can be finished when they construct a worldview out of scientific facts, for many people the questions are just beginning. Only those who believe they are finished do not notice this. Today, you see numerous people reaching for a book like Haeckel's “The Riddle of the Universe” in order to have the riddles of the universe solved. Once they have read this book, they begin to raise the big questions. For it is not solutions that are raised there, but questions. Such minds and such heads can then, in one way or another, be led to theosophy.

Now they are confronted with theosophy and the secret science with its rigorous, internally logical thinking, which has the source of certainty, like mathematics, within itself, and they are confronted with an enormous disharmony between what they have been accustomed to from the outside world and the demands that are suddenly placed on them. Until now, they have clung to the surface of things; now they see into abysses. They have often lost half their lives and more. They are concerned whether the rest of their lives will be enough to pour everything that confronts them into the holes in their souls that the world has beaten into them. Or they come from this or that social circle and cannot break away from it; then the most terrible obstacles arise for them. The most practical and secure path for them would be to engage in esoteric research, but a thousand threads pull them back. They are confronted with the disharmonies that must arise when the deep, that which the soul longs for, is opposed to the superficial, the external. A peculiar phenomenon emerges in some people, which we can best understand by means of a comparison. Imagine that a corner of a room has not been cleaned for weeks and is very dirty — forgive the analogy. If there is no proper lighting in this room, those who look inside may believe that everything is clean. But once it is properly lit, the disorder becomes apparent. It just depends on whether it is properly lit.

So it is with the soul. It is accustomed to following the usual course of sloth. It may be forced to be superficial among superficial people. But now it comes to the light that illuminates this superficiality, that reveals this superficiality in all its inferiority. If this soul is sensitive, what happens to it? If it is accustomed to superficial judgment, then the light that falls upon it must all the more confuse it. Therefore, we see that numerous souls, through contact with the truths of secret science, may at first be thrown into confusion or even into something more than confusion. Is secret science to blame for this? Truly, anyone who thinks logically will not blame secret science, which is the light, but rather the fact that the soul has surrendered so completely to superficiality of judgment.

And the matter goes much further. We see people who are no longer able to cope with our complicated culture; they are sickened by our complicated culture, and why? They can no longer find their way with their judgment! Theosophy or the secret science is the means of finding one's way in our culture, and it can have a healing effect on those whom our culture has made sick. But can't something else happen as well? We can also make this clear to ourselves by means of a comparison. A food may be healthy on the outside, but someone may have a totally spoiled stomach. Even if the food is quite healthy for the healthy person, the spoiled stomach may not be able to tolerate this healthy food under certain circumstances. And so it is in many cases when people with sick souls come out of our culture into the cheerful and blissful air of secret science. Then it can happen that with their sick souls they cannot tolerate the healthy food. However, these are exceptional cases.

But it is about them that most is written in the world. It is said: Theosophy is something that drives people crazy. — It cannot be denied that it can also have a disturbing effect on this or that soul, just as healthy food can on a diseased stomach. But did the healthy food spoil the stomach? Many so-called derailed souls come to Theosophy; it is striking how many derailed souls come to it. Those who are compelled to work in this movement could tell you many sad stories, could tell you how cries for help come from here and there: I can no longer find my way in the world, I no longer know how to satisfy the longing of my heart. — The most pitiful cries for help, they come in greater numbers every day. This is the result of our materialistic culture, our materialistic attitude, which has given people — forgive the trivial expression — stones instead of bread. The superficiality of judgment could sometimes be satisfied. The desires and interests that lie dormant in the soul could not be satisfied. For a while, they can be suppressed and dulled, but then they push their way to the surface, and people come with their cries for help. It is undeniable that for some, it is then too late.

Today, however, Spiritual Science cannot be practiced in such a way that it is directed only at a select few. Things must be brought before the general public. No one can be denied the elementary basic concepts, and not even the initial principles of initiation, as indicated in the last lecture, can be denied to anyone today. If today, individuals who have been ruined by contemporary culture approach Theosophy and, as souls that have gone off the rails, are initially thrown even more into disorder by the cleansing storm, should the remedy be withheld from all souls just because a few individuals have been brought to spiritual unhappiness by their wrong way of thinking? This is by no means fanaticism speaking, but rather the experience in the field of spiritual life in our time.

Of course, on the other hand, there is a serious danger for the relationship between our contemporaries and the esoteric worldview. This danger is brought about by the fact that our contemporaries, with their worldview and the characters that our time has bred, approach the secret scientific worldview. What prejudices, what superficial judgments do they not bring into this spiritual scientific worldview! How great is the danger that, initially, the secret science, the theosophical worldview itself, will be corrupted here and there by the currents of our time! Herein lies a danger. And here we must point out individual details so that we can look deeper and deeper into the so-called and the real dangers of the secret scientific endeavour.

There are spiritual worlds around human beings — we have described this in previous lectures, and we will delve deeper and deeper into this wisdom — worlds that relate to the ordinary sensory world as the world of color, brilliance, and light relates to the world of touch for the blind; and there is a world that is much higher than what the blind person experiences when he undergoes an operation and light and color begin to shine out of the darkness and desolation. This exists in the higher realm. These worlds are around us. But these worlds are not only worlds of paradise, not only worlds of bliss, although paradise and bliss are in them, but they are also worlds that can be terrible for human beings, dangerous because of facts and entities. If human beings want to gain knowledge of the greatness and bliss of these worlds, they cannot do so without also becoming acquainted with the dangers and terrors they contain. One is not possible without the other.

Now we must clarify to ourselves the extent to which there is a danger here. Imagine a person who, without knowing it, is near a powder magazine. He knows nothing about it. Suddenly, however, he finds out, and he becomes extremely frightened at the thought that he could be blown up if the powder magazine explodes. Nothing has changed outside, yet for him, life is different. The only thing that is different from before is that he now knows about the danger. This knowledge distinguishes him from those who know nothing. It is the same with the higher worlds. The danger, the terrible thing that is contained in them, is always around human beings. Yes, tremendous dangers lurk for the human soul in worlds of which people have no idea. The only difference between these dangers and terrors for those who have never approached Spiritual Science and those who have is that the latter are aware of this danger and the former are not. And yet this may not be entirely true, for the following reasons: We enter the spiritual world in which the spiritual is active. The powder magazine does not become dangerous because you are afraid that the powder will explode; but your fear means something in the spiritual world! It makes a difference whether you have it or not. The thoughts you harbor are incorporated into the spiritual world as something real. A feeling of hatred that you harbor toward a person is more real in the spiritual world and, for those who see through it, much more effective than a blow you strike at the person with a stick. Even if the terrible thing is not happening right before your eyes, it is still happening. Fear and anxiety, such negative feelings, are indeed something that can become disastrous when they emanate from a person who becomes acquainted with the corresponding spiritual beings and forces. This fear and anxiety are indeed something that puts people in a disastrous relationship with the spiritual world; for there are beings in the spiritual world for whom the fear and anxiety that emanate from people are like welcome nourishment. If people have no fear and no anxiety, then these beings go hungry. Those who have not yet delved deeper may take this as a comparison. But those who know about this matter know that it is a reality. If people radiate fear, dread, and recklessness, these beings find welcome nourishment and become more and more powerful. These are hostile beings for humans. Everything that feeds on negative feelings, on fear, anxiety, and superstition, on hopelessness and doubt, are forces in the spiritual world that are hostile to humans and that carry out cruel attacks on them when they are fed by them. Therefore, it is necessary above all that the human being who enters the spiritual world first of all fortify themselves against fear, hopelessness, doubt, and anxiety. But these are precisely the feelings that are so characteristic of modern culture, and materialism is conducive to this because it cuts people off from the spiritual world, invoking these forces hostile to human beings through hopelessness and fear of the unknown.

To put it quite clearly, I must say that at the moment when a person sees the gate through which one passes in death, they also see numerous forces that hinder them and even confront them in a destructive way. But most people attract these forces through their fear of death. The greater the fear of death, the stronger their power. The fear of death is part of the feelings of fear in general. These forces and powers appear like dried-up sacks when people make themselves strong and know that no fear of death can change the event of death.

Human beings can only overcome their fear of death and boldly face death when they know that there is an immortal, eternal core within them, for which death is only a transformation of life, a change in the form of life. As soon as a person finds the immortal core within themselves through secret science, they train themselves more and more to overcome all such feelings, and ultimately also to overcome what is called the fear of death. But the more materialistic a person becomes, the more fearful of death they become. No secret science can protect people from seeing the truth behind the scenes. It must show them how eternal life, how karma, brings about the great balance in spiritual life. This Spiritual Science must show them many things. It cannot show them the bliss behind the scenes of life without at the same time showing them the terrible powers, the enemies that lurk behind it. That is quite true. But it also shows them how they can overcome any fear of these enemies. It shows them how they can face all this with a free and bold eye. It teaches them to become objective and unbiased if they patiently submit to its education. But many come to ‘theosophy’ with the ordinary feelings of our present-day trends. What they hear sometimes affects them as something deeply depressing, something that attacks their soul terribly, because as a result of their materialistic way of thinking, they have fear and dread of life. This is the immaturity that many people bring into Theosophy and which can only be overcome gradually through theosophical work itself. Again, it is not the fault of theosophy or the secret science. It does its part not to shock people too much. For if it were to reveal the whole, full truth about some things that are very close to human beings, if it were to say how the fearful are separated from the fearless, and how great the number on one side and the number on the other , many would be shocked.

But immature people also bring other things to the theosophical movement in an immature way, by simply translating certain concepts given in theosophy, which originate from the secret science, into the common trivial language of today. Strange as it may sound, this sometimes poses a great danger in the relationship between theosophy and our contemporary world. Immature theosophists and those who approach theosophy superficially repeatedly say that the first requirement is to become selfless and overcome all egoism. Some people believe that when they want to say something truly theosophical, they can never emphasize enough: Everything I do, want, and desire is meant to be completely selfless. I only want to work for other people. — They usually have no idea how selfish this belief is. It is true that through acquaintance with the truths of the Secret Science, man gradually comes to what is so beautifully expressed in Goethe's words: “From the power that binds all beings, man frees himself who overcomes himself.” It is true, but almost everything that secret science has to offer, its highest and deepest insights, is needed to achieve this ideal. It is best achieved when one speaks as little as possible about it and strives for it as directly as possible.

Those who boast most of selflessness are the least selfless, just as those who use the word “truthful” after every third sentence are usually the most untruthful. This, too, is based on a profound law in occultism. First, it is a matter of delving deeper and deeper into the real truths and insights of secret science, and not setting oneself ideals such as: You must overcome your ego. — Such a phrase accomplishes nothing. Nothing is achieved, for example, if there is a stove here and I say to it: You must be a good stove, you must heat the room. You can stroke it and treat it lovingly, but that achieves nothing. Only when you put wood in the stove will it heat up. So it is of no use to preach virtue, selflessness, and freedom to the world. The right thing to do is to heat it up, to give people fuel; and that fuel is the secret scientific truths. Just as wood and coal warm up the stove, so the real secret scientific truths gradually make people selfless. And why? Because in many ways they divert interest away from the little point called the ego. Theosophical or secret scientific truths are so great, so powerful and significant, and demand so much of us that we gradually come to regard ourselves as individuals as highly uninteresting. One first learns how uninteresting the individual personality is. This learning, how uninteresting the individual human personality is, this learning about oneself, when brought about by the fuel of esoteric truths, leads people to liberation from egoism.

If you look at things from the ground up, then egoism is not at all something that, from a higher point of view, is not included in the divine world order. From a higher point of view, it is something very healthy. Just imagine if many people of our time, of our present human development, did not refrain from doing this or that out of egoism, if they did not do one thing or another out of selfishness because they know, purely for egoistic reasons, what the consequences would be — just imagine what a pestilence that would be for human development! Truly, the wisdom of the world has implanted selfishness in human beings in order to lead them beyond a stage of development, to grab hold of their self so that they can make it as meaningful and valuable as they possibly can.

It is a lofty truth on the one hand and a shocking phrase on the other when human beings are told: You must sacrifice your personality. — I will use an example to illustrate how this can be something very lofty in one instance and something clichéd in another. Imagine you ask a person who has ten cents in their pocket to sacrifice those ten cents for some cause. They will make this sacrifice easily. On the other hand, if you ask someone who happens to have twenty thousand marks on them — perhaps their entire fortune — to sacrifice what they have, that is a completely different matter. Asking someone who has not yet worked on themselves, who has not yet elevated their personality, who cannot yet be called a personality, to renounce their personality is quite different from asking someone who has worked on it for a long time to make it as capable as possible. One sacrifices a genius at the altar of human development, the other a fool. It is not a matter of sacrificing, but of what one sacrifices. In order to be able to restrain a personality for the sake of humanity, one must first develop that personality. So sometimes it is just a phrase to speak of the sacrifice of personality, and sometimes it is a great and significant truth. Therefore, it is of no use if theosophical books call for the sacrifice of personality without at the same time demanding that personality be made as strong and comprehensive as possible.

We learn this through real thinking that has its roots in the spiritual world. The logic that does not present one-sided laws, but knows that every sentence, like every coin, has two sides, perhaps even more sides, which teaches us to look from the outer to the inner, that is true theosophy, and it often teaches what is superficially called theosophy today. And only that which is not merely superficial but a real danger is called danger here.

I was still very young when I once sat with someone who had recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday in another country and who at that time shared my interest in my studies of Goethe. The man said at the time that he was worried about joining the ranks of writers. Although still relatively young at the time, he was already older than many who are still writing today. He came up with the idea: I will not write reviews. I want to write something else, because only those who have a great deal of life experience should write reviews; actually, only the elderly should criticize." In any case, that was a very good idea on the part of the man. Today, in the widest circles, there is no longer any judgment that maturity is necessary to be effective in the intellectual sphere. The further we grow into the times, the younger the people who write below the so-called line become, and since the reader generally does not think about it and has no means of investigating how young the person writing below the line is, he has no idea what he is getting himself into. Anyone who is familiar with such things knows that it is not difficult to write wittily today. Some people are still surprised that this or that person writes wittily. A person who has perhaps done nothing else since the age of fifteen or sixteen but read such material, who has thus learned the craft properly, need only publish something, and he can make a terrible impression with the radical or vague nature of his judgment. It is possible that a person has what can seriously be called mental deficiency. As strange as it sounds, someone today can be mentally deficient and yet write wittily for the world, so that they can be admired as a witty writer. This case is entirely possible. Decades ago, it was already a correct judgment when someone said: It is not difficult to write a good poem in our time; culture and language do the writing. Today this is even more true, so that some schoolgirls can write newspaper articles. It is quite different powers that judge, that use people for their own purposes. Humanity must increasingly come to demand maturity from those who are to have true judgments. True maturity is especially important in the field of Spiritual Science. Therefore, it is also necessary that those who are leaders of so-called secret schools first work within their circles and do not appear before the world before the age of about thirty-five to proclaim spiritual scientific truths. Before that, they can bring judgments from the field of philosophy into the world. But one only becomes mature enough to draw from the spirit at the moment when one no longer has to use one's spiritual power to build up the body. As long as the body is growing, the powers from which logical judgment is built up must go into the body. Therefore, it is possible that a poet may have written real poems before middle age. But people so easily fail to recognize that in order to really penetrate into the depths, so that one not only understands something for one's own satisfaction and development, but also comes to stand before humanity with full responsibility and represent spiritual science work, the highest maturity of life is required, which can only be achieved at an advanced age. But to spout theosophical phrases requires no maturity at all.

That is the peculiar thing about the highest things: if they are to be thoroughly worked on, maturity is required. But because they are easy to adopt as phrases, because many are not in a position to see their depth but remain with the phrase, they can also be used as phrases. Everything that can be disseminated in theosophy can be serious and profound in the highest degree; it can be a force of life. But if it is turned into its opposite, it can be the most barren phrase. That is why we experience so much in this field that phrase after phrase flourishes, and that it is precisely the immature, the most immature, that continues to have an effect. In doing so, those who represent the immature harm themselves even more than they harm the world. The world will in turn reject what comes from this side. If you engage in this direction, you are putting yourself in the way of your further development. You will not make progress. It is precisely the case that those who work outwardly in the field of Spiritual Science are making a sacrifice. It is one thing to guard Spiritual Science like a secret in a virgin soul, and quite another to throw it out into the world. What is said about the treasure hunter applies here: he must be silent. If a word is spoken, the treasure cannot be reached. In the same way, the depths of the higher world can be reached all the better the more one can remain silent. For those who have understood these things, there is no need to speak at all unless they are forced to do so, unless the world demands it of them. No one should speak unsolicited. The demand does not need to come from here or there; it can come from invisible, supernatural powers.

So one can say: Because our time is so unsuitable for thinking correctly about maturity and immaturity, something like theosophy is formed. It can be the highest; but in its inversion it is a caricature and a danger. That is not its fault. Little by little, it will replace the grotesquely false judgment with the correct judgment regarding maturity and immaturity. No one should be surprised that this is so. If they are surprised, then they should also be surprised that where there is great, strong light, there are also strong black shadows. Where there is less strong light, there are only slight shadows. Theosophy may cast black shadows; this is only proof that it is meant to be a strong light. Wherever people talk about the so-called dangers, it must be clear that there is a protective wall against the great danger simply because no real teacher in this field will expose people to this serious, great danger, and that everything that looks like a danger does not come from theosophy and secret science, but from what opposes them. If you know this, you will be calm, even if seemingly bad and terrible effects occur. These too can come. You can experience that people who are far removed from theosophy are reasonably decent people. When they come to theosophy, they become vain, ambitious, arrogant. Why? For a very simple reason. As long as a person stands out only slightly from what their environment judges, they cannot be particularly good, but also not particularly evil. But when they come to the original, the possibility of being good increases; but on the other hand, the possibility of being evil also strikes.

What already occurs in the ordinary theosophist can occur even more so in the student. In him, the faults that are present at the core of his being become very clear when he has to gain his free judgment—and he must gain it. But that is necessary. If someone wants to develop more quickly, then a whole host of bad qualities may come out in him from one day to the next. These traits might otherwise have been spread out over sixty years. When you dissolve something in a large body of water, you cannot see the color; in a drop, it may appear very colored. The same is true of the student. What is to come out in a few days becomes noticeable. But when something has sixty years to play out, you don't notice it. Yes, in the secret science itself, many a devil of pride comes to the fore. Very soon one had to experience that people who are not proud in themselves approach one with wishes. They then come and say: I want to start being a student and become an adept as quickly as possible. — One hears this quite often. It is something that experience shows, that the devil of pride seizes someone. They often become most arrogant in the presence of greatness, and then find it difficult to understand that this feeling is the greatest obstacle to their further development, and that the best thing for their further development is to renounce this feeling of arrogance. — But this is also connected with the fact that we are strong laughers and also strong talkers.

So I have spoken about the dangers of secret science. I have not concealed from you that such cases exist, and I have also tried to show where the more dangerous cases of such dangers actually lie. We have seen in the course of this cycle where these dangers are. Today, I would like to point out in general terms what can be found everywhere in Theosophy and in the secret science on which it is based. Those who seek secret science will not be deterred by its dangers, but will find salvation, the healing of the soul, precisely in secret science. They know that it does not cause harm, that it does not bring dangers, but that it reveals damage and shows dangers where they otherwise exist and where they would continue to eat away if they were not led to healing. Therefore, no one should be deterred by this so-called danger from entering the realms that we must call spiritual. As with all other considerations and points of view, we are led here too to become increasingly aware that for the person who wants to develop the powers and abilities that lie dormant within them, there is no deterrent to entering into nature. For what is material is a revelation of the spirit. And just as there are beings around us that we can perceive as terrible beings when we look into them, so too are they in nature. It is only by closing his eyes that man evades this fact. Those who have known something of the secret science also know this.

Even in his youth, Goethe heard many objections to penetrating the inner nature of things. He heard the words of the naturalist Haller, who said: “No creative spirit penetrates the inner nature of nature. Blessed are those to whom it shows only its outer shell.” Goethe, who dared to look inside, knew that human beings are capable of penetrating the essence of nature everywhere. That is why he was repeatedly compelled to say:

When observing nature,
Always regard everything as one.
Nothing is inside, nothing is outside,
For what is inside is outside...

And in his peculiar way, Goethe, even in his old age, rebelled against this saying, which limits human cognitive ability. He protested against it with words that are particularly suited to pointing out to the soul the practical effectiveness of the theosophical worldview. Goethe pointed this out by recalling Haller's words in his old age:

HOWEVER To the physicist “Into the innermost nature”
O you philistine! —
“No creative spirit penetrates.”
Me and my siblings
May you not remember
Such words!
We think: place by place
We are within.
“Blessed are those to whom
Only the outer shell is shown!”
I have heard this repeated for sixty years,
I curse it, but secretly;
Tell me a thousand thousand times:
She gives everything abundantly and gladly;
Nature has neither core
Nor shell,
She is everything at once.
Just examine yourself most of all,
Whether you are core or shell.