An Outline of Occult Science

by Rudolf Steiner

Thus there arose, among these “New Initiates,” a knowledge embracing everything contained in the old form of Initiation; but the central point of this teaching was the higher knowledge concerning the Mysteries of the coming of the Christ. Such teaching could only filter through into the general life of the world in scanty measure while the human souls of the fourth period were further developing the faculties of intellect and feeling; therefore, while this lasted, the doctrine was in truth secret. Then began the dawn of the new period designated as the fifth. Its essential characteristic lay in the progress made in the evolution of the intellectual faculties, which were then developed to a very high degree, and will unfold still further in the future. This process has been slowly going on from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, becoming ever more rapid from the sixteenth century up to the present time.

Under these influences the evolution of the fifth period became an ever-increasing endeavour to foster the powers of intellect, while, on the contrary, the knowledge by faith of former times, and traditional wisdom, gradually lost its hold over the human soul. On the other hand, however, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries on, there developed that which may be called an ever increasing flow of cognition born of modern clairvoyant consciousness. This “hidden knowledge” flows even though [pg 392] at first quite imperceptibly, into the human concepts of that period. It is only natural that even up to the present time the purely intellectual forces should have maintained an antagonistic attitude toward this knowledge. But that which must come to pass will do so in spite of all temporary antagonism. That “hidden knowledge” which is taking possession of humanity more and more may be called symbolically, the “wisdom of the Holy Grail.”

For he who learns to understand this symbol in its deeper meaning, as it is told in story and legend, will find that it symbolizes the nature of what has been called above, the knowledge of the new Initiation, with the Christ Mystery as its central point. Modern Initiates may therefore be called “the Initiates of the Grail.” The preliminary stages of the path to the supersensible worlds described in this book, leads to the “Wisdom of the Grail.” It is a peculiarity of this wisdom that its facts can be investigated only when the necessary means, as described in this book, have been acquired. Once investigated, however, these facts can be understood by means of those very soul-forces which are the result of the evolution of the fifth period. Indeed, it will become more and more evident that to an ever increasing extent those forces find satisfaction through this knowledge. We are now living at a time in which this knowledge must be absorbed by human consciousness in general to a much fuller extent than was formerly the case. And it is from this point of view that the teachings contained in this [pg 393] Christ-event will grow ever more powerful in proportion as human evolution assimilates the Wisdom of the Grail. The inner side of the development of Christianity will more and more keep pace with the exoteric side. That which may be learned through imagination, inspiration and intuition, concerning the higher worlds, in connection with the Christ Mystery, will penetrate ever more and more human thinking, feeling, and willing. The “hidden wisdom of the Grail” will be revealed, and as an inner force will more and more permeate the manifestations of human life.

Through the whole of the fifth period, knowledge concerning the supersensible world will flow into human consciousness; and when the sixth period begins, humanity will be able to regain on a higher level that clairvoyance which it possessed at an earlier epoch in a dim and indistinct manner. Yet the new acquisition will take a form quite different from the old. What the soul knew of higher worlds in ancient times, was not permeated by its own forces of intellect and feeling. Its knowledge was instinctive. In the future it will not only have instincts, but it will understand them, and feel them to be the essence of its own nature. When the soul learns a fact concerning some other being or thing, its intellect will find this fact verified through its own nature. Or when some fact regarding an ethical law or human conduct presents itself, the soul will say to itself: “My feeling is only justified when I carry out what is implied in this knowledge.” Such a [pg 394] condition of soul will have to be developed by a large part of humanity in the sixth period.

In a certain manner, that which human evolution accomplished during the third period—the Egypto-Chaldean—is repeated in the fifth. At that time the soul could still perceive certain facts of the supersensible worlds, but this perception was disappearing. For the intellectual faculties were at that time beginning to develop and it was their mission to at first exclude man from the higher worlds. In the fifth period supersensible facts which in the third period were perceived in hazy clairvoyance, are again becoming manifest; but they are now interpenetrated by the intellectual and emotional life of the individual man. They are also imbued with what may be imparted to the soul by a knowledge of the Christ Mystery; therefore they assume a form totally different from that which they had previously.

Whereas in ancient times impressions from the higher worlds were felt as forces acting from out a spiritual world to which man did not properly belong, through development in later times these impressions are felt as those of a world into which man is growing, of which he more and more forms a part. Let no one suppose that a repetition of the Egypto-Chaldean civilization can take place in such a way that the soul would merely regain what then existed, and which has been handed on from that time. The Christ-impulse, rightly understood, impels the human soul which has experienced it, to feel and conduct itself as a member of a spiritual world, [pg 395] now recognizing it as a world to which it belongs, outside of which it previously existed.

In the same way that the third reappears in the fifth period, in order to become penetrated with those new qualities which the human soul gained during the fourth, so similarly the second period will revive within the sixth and the first, the ancient Indian, during the seventh. All the marvelous wisdom of ancient India which the great teachers of that day were able to proclaim, will reappear in the seventh period, as living truth in human souls.

Now the changes in the earthly environment of man take place in a manner which bears a certain relationship to his own evolution. When the seventh period has run its course, the earth will experience an upheaval which may be compared with the one which separated Atlantean from post-Atlantean times. And the transformed earth will again continue its evolution in seven divisions of time. The human souls which will then incarnate will experience, on a more exalted level, the kinship with the higher worlds which was possessed by the Atlanteans at a lower stage. But only those individuals will be able to cope with the new conditions of the earth who have built into their souls the qualities made possible by the influences of the Greco-Roman age, and of the periods following it,—the fifth, sixth, and seventh of the post-Atlantean evolution.

The inner nature of such souls will correspond to that which the earth has become by that time. All other souls must then remain behind, although up to [pg 396] that point they had been able to choose whether or not they would create for themselves the conditions necessary to advance with the others. Those souls alone will be ripe for the conditions arising after the next great catastrophe, who at the point of transition from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean period have attained the capacity for penetrating supersensible cognition with the forces of intelligence and feeling. The fifth and sixth are in a way the decisive periods. Those souls which have attained the goal of the sixth period will continue to develop accordingly in the seventh; but the others will, under the altered conditions of their surroundings, find but little opportunity to proceed with their neglected task. Only in a distant future will conditions again appear which will permit of this being done.

Thus evolution proceeds from period to period. Clairvoyance observes not only those changes in the future in which the earth alone takes part, but those also which take place in conjunction with the heavenly bodies in its environment. A time will come in which the terrestrial and human evolution will be advanced so far that those forces and beings which were compelled to detach themselves from the earth during the Lemurian period, so as to afford to earth-beings the possibility of further progress, will be able once more to unite with the earth. Then the moon will again be united with the earth. This will happen because a sufficiently large number of human souls will then possess the inner powers [pg 397] which will enable them to render the Moon forces fruitful for further development. And this will occur at a time when, side by side with the high development of a certain number of human souls, another development, that of those who have chosen the path of evil, will parallel it. These straggler-souls will have accumulated in their Karma so much sin, ugliness and evil, that at first they will form a separate community, a perverse and erring section of humanity, keenly opposing what we understand as “good.” The “good” humanity will acquire little by little the power of using the Moon forces, and will thereby so transform the evil section as to enable it to keep pace with the advance of evolution as a separate earth kingdom. Through these labours of the good part of humanity, the earth, then reunited with the moon, will be able, after a certain period of development, to again unite with the sun and also with the other planets.