The Mission of Esoteric Science in Our Time

Anyone who speaks of secret science today, or even, as is our topic today, of the mission of secret science in our time, must be prepared to encounter a wide variety of reactions. On the one hand, we must not hide the fact that the mere utterance of the words “secret science” is enough to provoke the opinion among a large number of our contemporaries that that this is something extremely obscure, or, as people like to say, mystical in the worst sense of the word, something that can only arise or arouse interest in people with unclear thinking, at least in those who have no idea of what we call the great advances in the field of knowledge in our time. How many will tell you that the term “esoteric science” is only used by those who stand apart from the great advances in natural science or other fields of knowledge in our time. If, on the one hand, the mere utterance of the word “secret science” provokes some opposition, we must not hide from ourselves that there is much that is justified in such opposition. For, strange as it may seem — the whole series of lectures will show you what is meant — one cannot help but say it: The true secret scientist, who is conscious of not being an obscurantist in relation to the so-called advances in science or knowledge in our time, who wants to stand firmly on the ground of our contemporary culture and only go beyond certain of its superficialities, must, yes, he must say, in accordance with his intellectual orientation and insight into the circumstances of the time, that those opponents who speak as we have just characterized them are perhaps the less dangerous contemporaries for him, less harmful to his intellectual current than others who, in a certain respect, even count themselves among the followers, indeed the apostles, of so-called secret science. It is strange when something like this is said, but it is true.