The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Saying from the soul calendar (22nd) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the soul calendar (23rd) by Rudolf Steiner
“The Element of Life“ by Friedrich Hebbel
Saying from the soul calendar (24th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little Dance” by J. $. Bach (children's group with eurythmists)
Saying from the soul calendar (25.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Sommerbild“ by Friedrich Hebbel
Saying from the soul calendar (26.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Scherzo” by Hendrika Hollenbach
Cosmic prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“V. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“VI. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“Soldatenliedchen“ (children's group)
From the ‘Vormittags-Skizzenbuch’ by Christian Morgenstern
“Ein Rätsel” by Rudolf Steiner
“Schwalben” by Christian Morgenstern
“Two Roots“ by Christian Morgenstern
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Northward” and “West-East” by Christian Morgenstern
Prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
The “Magpie” series by Christian Morgenstern

Dear attendees,

As on previous occasions before these eurythmy exercises, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words in advance today. This is not done with the intention of somehow explaining artistic performances, that would be inartistic - art must speak for itself - but it is done because what is presented here as the eurythmic art is based on certain sources for artistic creation that have not been used in the same way before, and also on a certain formal language that has not been used in art in this way either. The basis of this eurythmy is a kind of visible language, but not a sign language or anything mimetic - anything gestural or mimetic must be avoided here.

Rather, you will see [this language] expressed through the individual human being moving in his limbs – or through the movement of the human being in space or also through the movement of the mutual positions of groups. So you will see movements that are visible linguistic expression in the same way that expression is ordinary language in an audible way. So eurythmy is based on emotional life expressed in a visible language.

What the artist then seeks to shape is, of course, something that is first built on this special language. This special language has not come about in some arbitrary way, through the fixation of this or that movement for the individual sound, for the individual word or for some sentence or some rhythm, or from some other context. Rather, the basis for the eurythmic art has come about through careful study, but on the basis of what Goethe calls sensuous-suprasensuous vision.

Our speech organs – the larynx and the other speech organs – are in constant motion. Everyone knows that they are in motion when we speak, because the sound is simply conveyed through the air by the air being vibrated by the movement of the speech organs. But it is not this movement that is important here, but rather the tendency to move, which in turn underlies this vibratory movement. And this tendency of movement, which can be studied for every sound, for every inflection, and also for that which underlies the expression of speech in the soul, has all been studied and is transmitted from a single organ or a group of organs, such as the larynx and its neighboring organs, to the movements of the whole person.

This is done entirely out of Goethe's world view. Goethe sees the whole plant only as a complicated expression of a single organ, the leaf. This is an expression of Goethe's important theory of metamorphosis, which has not been sufficiently appreciated scientifically by a long way. Just as Goethe's morphology of form thus sees the whole plant as a complicated, developed leaf, so we try, as it were, to place the whole human being on the stage like a modified, moving larynx. And then, in the artistic realm, what has been begun is further transformed. The artistic aspect only really begins when what has been gained through the study of the secrets of human speech is shaped.

Of course, from today's point of view, it is very easy to say: Yes, what movements are performed, that cannot be understood. My dear audience, a new-born child does not understand language either. Language must first be listened to. And for eurythmy this is not as easy as it is for speech. When a person simply abandons themselves to the form of movement on which the art of eurythmy is based, they have an instinctive, intuitive knowledge of it. Every human being has the potential to understand human language; but it must be clear, for example, that poetry first emerges from ordinary spoken language by formally transforming and developing this spoken language in terms of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and so on. So what can be learned eurythmically as a basic formal language must first be artistically developed. Those of the honored audience who have been here often will notice how we have progressed in recent months in terms of the artistic development of eurythmy. You may have seen how much at that time still recalled facial expressions, ordinary gestures, but how we worked our way out of that, so that little by little there is actually nothing left in what is done in eurythmy but what the poet makes out of the linguistic content. And the further we get at shaping what the poet first makes out of the linguistic content, the more the eurythmic art will develop. The artistic element in eurythmy is to the movement of speech, to visible speech, as poetic language is to language.

The task now is to present a self-contained work of art through the inner laws of eurythmy, just as one creates a musical work of art through the succession of tones or the poetic art through the artistic design of the vocabulary of language. They will become a completely independent art because that is still necessary today, until eurythmy has achieved a certain emancipation, being a completely independent art. However, this may take a very long time, perhaps decades. Today you will still see musical elements presented in parallel, where some soul element is revealed through the sound, through the musical art – and at the same time the same soul element through the eurythmic art – or mainly poetic elements. And here it must be taken into account that when the eurythmic is accompanied by recitation, the recitation itself is forced to return to the earlier, more artistic forms of recitation, which have been more or less lost in our thoroughly unartistic times.

Today, something special can be seen in such recitation, which essentially goes back to the prose of the poem's content and actually takes back what the poet has made from the material of the poem. That is why the poet creates something out of language in rhyme, rhythm, beat and so on. When reciting, this does not have to be taken back by reciting according to the content of prose, according to the pure logic that underlies it. This is considered a sincere, soulful recitation. However, it has become an unartistic recitation. We are therefore trying to shape the art of recitation in a eurythmic way again, namely to give what is already eurythmic in poetic language in recitation as well, to bring out the rhythmic, the pictorial, imaginative, the rhyme and so on. It is precisely in such things that eurythmy, in the wake of which such views must arise, can in turn have a fruitful effect on other artistic endeavors. And that will be of very special importance in our time.

It is already the case, as I have said, that eurythmy is in the early stages of its development. We ourselves are most aware of the mistakes we still make today; but it will perfect itself. Today it must be said that this eurythmic art has, firstly, the artistic on the one hand; on the other hand, however, it has an essentially pedagogical-didactic and hygienic element in it. And in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, we have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject.

One day, when people think about these things more objectively than they do today, they will see that when children are taught eurythmics, they actually add something to ordinary gymnastics that can be called soulful gymnastics, because every movement also comes from the soul. In this way, what is merely physiological gymnastics - that is, something derived only from the physical laws of the human body - is enriched by movements that come from the soul. This has a very strong influence on the whole development of the growing human being. While ordinary gymnastics actually only trains the body, eurythmy - you will also see some examples of children's eurythmy today - has an effect on the child and its development that awakens and appropriately fosters willpower, the soul's initiative. And this is of the greatest possible importance for our time, for the present and the near future, since our age has brought about catastrophic events precisely because people lack awakened souls.

So then, eurythmy has various sides to it: an artistic side, a pedagogical-didactic side. But all this is actually only just beginning today. Hopefully it will be further developed, probably by others, no longer by us. For the one who can really see through the world form language of eurythmy knows what still needs to be done. Then it will be seen that it can stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully justified art. In this sense of a beginning, perhaps also of an attempt at a beginning, I ask you to take up such ideas from the eurythmic art as we want to present to you again today.

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (24) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (25) by Rudolf Steiner
“Prooemion“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“l. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“Parabasc” by J. W. v. Goethe
“II. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“Epirrhema” by J. W. v. Goethe
“III. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“Antepirrhema” by J. W. v. Goethe
“]V. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“The Treasure-Digger” by J. W. v. Goethe
Evoe with music by Max Schuurman
A cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: ‘The Lamb Cloud’; ‘The Stations’; ‘The Salm’ with music by Jan Stuten

Dear attendees! We are taking the liberty of showing you another sample of the eurythmic art today. This art is based on certain artistic sources that are to be newly opened and aims to become a kind of new artistic formal language. For this reason, you will allow me, as I usually do before these performances, to send a few words in advance today - not to explain the performance, but rather, artistic things must work through themselves in the immediate impression, but to suggest the formal language and sources from which what is presented to you here as the eurythmic art comes.

The basis of the art of eurythmy is a kind of visible language. The whole human being performs movements in his gestures, or: he performs movements in space or groups of people perform movements in space. All this could be understood as an ordinary, even representational, ordinary art of dance, but it is neither of these, but is based on a careful study of the ordinary language of the human being. This is what is perceived by the human ear. But at its basis lies a certain tendency of the larynx and other speech organs to move. These tendencies of movement are to be understood as what is communicated as a vibrating weaving of the air: It is not something more highly developed than thought, but something more deeply rooted, something that takes place in a seemingly simpler way than the vibrations of the air, but which is expressed through the vibrations of the air when the tone that underlies this movement tendency expresses itself.

We can study what the larynx and speech organs do when a sound is produced, how they behave in a whole word, in a sentence transition, how they behave when certain sound sequences play out, and so on. All this can be studied – allow me to use this Goethean expression – through sensory-supersensory observation. Then, what is otherwise only assessed – that is why I said: movement tendencies – what is otherwise only assessed in the larynx and the other speech organs, is transformed into small vibrations as it develops, and then transferred. And then what language describes, what the human being performs in his movements or in movements in space, or what groups of people perform, that means what can be experienced, can be experienced on the one hand through language, and on the other hand through the visible language of eurythmy. One can express through this eurythmy what musical creation is – you will also see rehearsals today – one can also express what poetic creation is.

But when the recitation, that is, the artistic reproduction of the poetic, accompanies the eurythmy, then, for example, the recitation must take up the eurythmic element. Today, our age is somewhat inartistic, and one does not have the feeling that the real artistry of a poem only begins when the prose-like, the mere content, the literal content of a poem has been overcome. It is never about what the poet says, but how he says it, how he shapes it in meter and rhythm or how he artistically shapes it and is able to give shape to the image through the word. In the case of a poet like Goethe, for example, we can see how his poetic language has a plastic character, how he imaginatively conceived the transformation of the pictorial. In the case of Schiller, we know that before he wrote any poem, he had a kind of melody living in his soul. At first, it was all the same to him what should arise from this melody as a poem – “The Diver” or “The Fight with the Dragon”: He had it living in his soul as a melody, and the other simply lined up in the poem. That is how you can shape with the melodic, with the plastic poem.

All of this comes to light in a proper recitation. In our unartistic age, what is usually brought out is what is appropriate to the prose content, what is literal. What the poet has artistically done with the content is what is actually formally artistic in the recitation. And then what is offered in the poetry also coincides with what is offered in the visible language of eurythmy and in the recitation. You know how to shape this or that sound, this or that word formation and the like, so that something artistic comes about from the whole, and in particular, that the artistic element of the eurythmic performance is properly formed in parallel with the poetry, the artistic formation of a poem. That is a purely artistic activity. And we must distinguish between the elementary nature of the eurythmic language of form and what is artistically revealed in the process. But it is not the case that eurythmy is pantomime, mimicry or mere gesticulation or dance. Rather, everything is such that actually everything lies in the artistic sequence of movement forms, so that the melodious and musical lies in the sequence, in the interaction of the sounds. Likewise, an inner lawfulness in space and in the time of the eurythmy production underlies this.

Those of you who have been here before will have noticed how, over the past few months, we have been working to develop this element of artistic form-giving more and more in eurythmy, and how we are getting closer to capturing in artfully designed forms what the poet has made of the literal content. In this way one can adapt exactly to the humor or tragedy or ballad-like language or whatever characterizes a poem.

So this eurythmy initially offers something artistic. The human being is the instrument for their eurythmic performances. In the most eminent sense, this eurythmy achieves precisely what Goethe had in mind when he said: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit. To achieve this, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfection and virtue, invoking number, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. We should bear in mind that the visible and invisible worlds converge in his being, that all the forces at work in the visible and invisible are reflected in him in some way, are formed in him in miniature. And when the human being makes himself an instrument of artistic expression through his organism, what is particularly expressed is what then strives in the human being's soul towards movement. Eurythmy is an art that, when it arises directly and immediately, truly works out of the movements of the human being.

That is the artistic side of eurythmy. On the other hand, there is something about eurythmy that – quite apart from many other things – can be addressed as a therapeutic-hygienic element, but which I do not want to talk about now. But another element of eurythmy is the pedagogical-didactic element that it contains. At our Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is run by myself, we have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics.

One will only appreciate eurythmy as a compulsory subject once one has overcome certain prejudices – which, from my point of view, I do not want to fight so much – regarding gymnastics. Gymnastics is purely physical. One may have one's own opinion about the movements that the physiologist derives from the physical make-up of the human being. I do not want to dispute them here, but it is nevertheless the case that ordinary gymnastics only has a physiological meaning for the harmonization of the physical body of man. Although I do not want to go as far as a naturalist who listened to my introductory words in this regard and who said: He would not even appreciate gymnastics as much as I do. He would not consider it to be something physiologically effective, but simply a barbarism. But the present, dear honored attendees, will object to that, especially if one has to evoke some hostility because of the other branches of one's activity, one would not want to go straight to such sentiments.

But this is what must be particularly emphasized, regardless of whether gymnastics merely trains the human body physiologically or whether it is also a barbarism: the powers of the soul, the initiative of the will, are in any case – and I emphasize this particularly – is trained in children through eurythmy, when the child, through this compulsory subject, becomes so immersed in these eurythmic movements, when they are performed in the right way, as a young child would otherwise naturally become immersed in spoken language. Eurythmy awakens activity in the human soul, so that the drowsiness in which the souls find themselves can be overcome. Otherwise it would get more and more out of hand in the most terrible way. If you imagine, let us say, the next generation, you have to admit that you can only get beyond these things by at least adding this soul-filled gymnastics to the usual external soulless gymnastics, in eurythmy.

Everything in eurythmy is still in its infancy, but you can be quite sure that we are our own harshest critics. We know what we lack and we are constantly striving to make more and more progress in this respect. I have often mentioned that we have made good progress, for example, in shaping the large forms. We will show you these large forms today in a Fercher poem, “Choir of Primordial Instincts”, which is being performed today and which really moves in a strange cosmic directing force, in that it - Fercher von Steinwand - poetically shapes you. When you see this 'Urtrieb' choir, you will perhaps notice how we have tried and are still trying to make good progress again and again. Over time, the art of eurythmy will be perfected more and more, either by ourselves or probably by others, so that it can establish itself as a fully-fledged newer art alongside the older fully-fledged arts.

Is it not, in essence, my dear friends, all of us who are here together for the purpose of our construction, not strange karma, now, in a harrowing event, to experience the connection between karma and seemingly external coincidence? We can already understand this when we take everything we have experienced in anthroposophy so far and turn it into a conviction: that human lives that are taken away early, that have not gone through the worries and sorrows, nor the temptations of life, that such human lives are forces in the spiritual world that have a certain relationship to the entire human life, that are there to have an effect on these human lives. I often said: the earth is not there as a mere vale of tears, as something where man is transferred, as it were, as a punishment, out of a higher world, the earth is there as a place of learning for human souls! - But if a life is short, with only a short period of learning, then there is just enough strength to work down from the spiritual world and to flow away...

We then also recognize the lasting value of the spiritual world's effects in such a life, which is snatched from us, like the good boy who was snatched from us for the physical plane. We honor him, we celebrate his physical departure in a dignified way, when we learn, learn a great deal, in the indicated and in many other ways from what has been experienced in the last days. Anthroposophy is learned by feeling and sensing. Then, when we face such a case, we look up into those spheres where the soul of the child whose body we have today given back to Mother Earth has been transported. What is now being sent out by many anthroposophical souls to people who sacrifice their personalities can also be spoken to those who have died for the earthly plan with a small change. For they too are reached by the request that we speak. These requests apply to the living and also to the dead. And when we are convinced that the soul has already left the body, then we speak the mantram, which most of our friends here are familiar with, with a small change, with the small change with which I will now forward it to the dear, good 7beo, to his soul, as it lives on in the spheres as a sphere-man:

Spirit of his soul, active guardian,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
To your trusted spheresman,
So that, united with your power,
Our request may helpfully shine
On the soul that lovingly seeks it.

Dear fellow sufferers!

After the kind words of the pastor, I have to be the interpreter for those hearts that have been lovingly received by the dear one who has passed away from us. First, I would like to address my dear, dear partner, dear father and dear children, and then all of you who are gathered here to accompany the earthly shell of our beloved friend to her final resting place.

It has been a short time since we walked the same path and promised the dear companion of the deceased to share her pain, to share the pain that we did not want to comfort her about, but rather promised her that we would share it.

And today we are in a position to have to try to keep the promise of sharing the increased, the magnified pain with our dear friend and with the others with whom the dear departed was so close. Over time, he has become ever closer and closer to us, drawing on the most profound human strengths, the strengths that we can come closest to with another human being, the best strengths of our spiritual striving.

This time, too, I would like to express nothing more with these words than I did when we stood at the grave of our dear child: that we want to bear, faithfully bear the pain that so justifiably follows the cover to the grave, that will last, but that must be borne bravely and courageously in the knowledge that from the spiritual worlds, where the human soul is received after death, space and time separate us, but that nothing separates us from the spiritual worlds when souls want to be connected to these spiritual worlds through the powers they carry within themselves and through which they can, in faithful connection with these worlds, triumph over space and time. We knew our friend Albert Faiss in such striving. Years ago he came into our midst, tested, severely tested by the outer life. It is fair to say that his lot was work, hard work and laborious striving. But when you got to know his soul, how it lived, how it looked out of those kind, faithful eyes so confidently, you saw that this soul had found support and security in itself, was able to bear heavy, laborious work and worries of life because it knew itself to be firmly on the secure ground of spiritual life.

The one we loved had to travel far away, and even in the far distance he did not find his goal and rest, but in his own heart, in his own soul, he found it. He found it, and we appreciated the strong cohesion of the striving that he developed in his soul, with our own striving. We appreciated what must be so infinitely valuable to us, my dear mourners.

If someone finds the connection with us that our friend Faiss found, it is because this connection is already prefigured in the eternal grounds, because he sought with us only what he always sought in his own soul. This also gave our friend that wonderfully beautiful, unified nature that those who came close to him could observe in him again and again.

He had chosen a profession that brought him into contact with nature. He had managed to make his profession, at least in his mind, into what every profession should be and what can be made of every profession from the security of the intellectual life. He managed to achieve higher aspirations within his profession. When he spoke in this way and wanted to penetrate the forces that the earth develops to produce food in his profession that could best serve humanity, when he inquired which plant was better suited for this or that human need, then one saw how he understood how to develop service to humanity out of his profession. It was a beautiful part of his nature that he never thought of pursuing his profession for personal reasons, but tried to make it into a service to humanity and thus into a form of worship. He tried to imbue human activity with the consciousness of divine activity.

That is our task, and our friend Albert Faiss devoted himself to this task with heartfelt dedication, with all the strength he had at his disposal. That which lived so in his soul, which he knew so lovingly and intimately to penetrate with his whole being, and everything that lived so in him, oh, that brought him the love, the intimate love of those who lived near him. We all know Frau Faiss, we know how she was united with the dear departed in intimate love and common striving, we appreciate the harmonious interaction of these two people, and since we know this, we will also find ways to share with her the pain for which there are hardly any words of comfort.

I can think of no better way to express the wonderful beauty with which the powers expressed in our friend's soul were able to acquire active love than to say a few words about the child who has fallen asleep.

When the father went to war and the mother was alone with the children, the dear departed child – the oldest of them – spoke as she worked faithfully by her mother's side: Now that father is gone, I must work especially hard to be a support to my mother. That is laborious love, such as is acquired by the noble powers of mind that the dear departed possessed. This child will now receive the soul of the departed friend in an appropriate way; they will work together in the spiritual world, and we should unite with them in the spirit that we believe we are grasping.

Strong are the thoughts of the dear ones who send them from the other side to those they have left behind; they expect us to direct our soul's gaze to them. We will often think about how the dead, the so-called dead, can know how the souls here look after them, how the souls here are united with them. So let us cultivate the loving service with the deceased in intimate, loyal friendship with those left behind, knowing that he was united with us in the same striving.

Yes, dear friend, dear soul, you knew how to walk the path of the spirit from your very nature. You did not take a step in your daily life here on earth without knowing that everything your eyesight embraces, your hands grasp, is given by God the Father, the eternal God, in all your earthly work. You knew that you were woven into the eternal of God.

And so was your work, dear friend, dear soul, that it had to seek for the knowledge that was appropriate to it, that it might be imbued with the essence that first gave meaning to the earth, with the essence of Christ. You knew that. And that is what you sought when you took your last earthly steps in this region, when you wanted to unfold your activity in harmony with our spiritual striving near the building through which we want to develop this spiritual striving.

So you sought in your own way to penetrate the eternal in you, already during your life on earth with that power that strives to grasp the meaning of the earth, and you sought to gain that knowledge which strives to gain the meaning of life on earth, which the Christ Jesus has given. In this way you knew that you were connected with your eternal, divine part in Christ Jesus himself, knew that you were interwoven with him. And so you also knew that you would one day die in Christ Jesus, and knew that you would carry the aspiration to live with the spirit, with which we are all united, through the gateway of death.

So you lived with God, lived with Christ, so you died in Christ and so your soul will be united with him and we may look up to you in spirit.

In this consciousness of being united with You, we often direct our thoughts to the realms in which Your soul is now active, for we believe that the dead are alive, alive with us, as they were in earthly life when they were still connected to us in the physical body. And we know that What we now feel for him is also interwoven here on earth with what flows down from the spiritual planes into which the dead have entered. United with Your powers, we know those powers, those soul powers, which are beyond space and time.

We give you this as a promise to stand faithfully by those you have left behind here, with whom we will try to bear their pain, looking up to you, who will receive from the soul of the dear child with whom we are united. In eternal spheres, not only in death, we feel united with you, and we may, full of this consciousness, call out to your soul: farewell, farewell in spirit, and let us, as far as we are able, live with you!

Still under the impression of the “Faust” performance, something may be expressed at first, to which the soul can urge in this moment.

Indeed, as a result of the momentous events of our time, we have seen many a soul pass over from the physical plane into the spiritual world, and join the circle held together by our spiritual science. Even those who belong to us have become victims of this time, which demands so much pain and sadness. And there is much we could say about what we have experienced as a result of the sad events that have caused our dear friends to depart in this way.

But here we have a special duty to commemorate the ascension of the soul of a friend who worked faithfully with us in this place to help build the structure we want to dedicate to the pursuit of our spiritual science. And because he was so faithfully united with us in his soul and had such a wonderful aspiration to work with us in erecting this monument of our time, it is our special duty, but certainly also the impulse of our special love, to remember him at this hour, which may stand under the after-effect of the mystery of the ascent of the human soul, of the immortal in man into the spiritual world.

Our dear friend Kramer, the younger, left the physical plane after uniting with us in order to place what he had attained through his endeavors in the outside world, through his desire to learn and work, at the service of our cause. After he had found the opportunity to work selflessly with us here in the sun of his most beautiful feelings and his highest devotion to our cause, he was recalled, and his soul ascended into the spiritual worlds after his physical shell fell victim to the warlike events in the east. Just as we could see into his soul, how it felt so completely at home with the stream of spiritual life that we seek through our spiritual science, and how it was more and more completely at one with this stream, and how its earnestness grew ever greater and greater, so we may say that we hoped for much, much from our friend Kramer, even for this physical plane.

But we submit, my dear friends, with him himself to the external necessity of karma. We know that he is among us. We even know, since we got to know him, that he is with us with special love even now that his soul has gone to the spiritual worlds. We know that he longs to return to the place with which he, I would say in solemnity, combined his knowledge and ability before he left for the place where duty called him. And so we know that we are also united with him after he has only changed the form of his work by withdrawing his soul from the physical plane into the spiritual world.

And in love, in sorrow, in genuine warm friendship and brotherhood, we direct our soul, we lift our spiritual eye to the protecting spirit that guides him from incarnation to incarnation, and call after him the words that we want to find to such protective spirits, through the human soul, want to find their way into the spiritual-soul worlds, sending up pleas for help for these spirits.

To do this, we rise:

Spirit of his soul, effective guardian,
May your wings bring
Our souls' pleading love
To the man of the spheres, familiar to thy care;
That, united with thy power,
Our prayer may help to radiate
The soul that lovingly seeks it.

My dear friends!

Today I feel the need to speak once more about the great loss we have suffered; not so much because I believe that after what I had to say yesterday, we committed our dear friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, to the fire elements, but rather because I truly believe that focusing our thoughts on the very unique essence of this woman for our souls, for our hearts, can and should be of great importance, especially at this moment.

We may, as Mrs. Gertrud Noß stood among us, truly regard her as an exemplary personality, and we may carry the view of her being as something through our further life, which is suited to equip us with powers that can have deep significance for our lives.

My dear friends, death, when it comes before us, is, one might say, the most profound phenomenon in human life, and when it comes before us in such a way that it means for the living: You will no longer be able to look into an eye that you were so often allowed to look into, you will no longer be able to hold a hand in yours, which you so much wanted to feel again and again in yours for a long time, you will no longer be able to face a personality with whom you were intimately connected in life. If death approaches us as a manifestation of life, then this approach really connects us for a shorter or longer time, depending on what we are capable of, with the eternal, with the sources of the spiritual.

Now, with the death of our dear friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, we have every reason to anchor this thought very deeply in our souls. We have had to watch, in quick succession, how Mrs. Gertrud Noß herself stood before the last mortal remains of her beloved son, who, as one of our hopes, stood so beautifully in our midst. And at least some of us – but many of us should know this – were able to experience how the death of a deeply beloved close friend affected our friend herself at the time. Some of us were touched by the great change that had taken place in this woman's soul after the deeply meaningful, deeply painful death of a close friend had passed her by.

From the depths of my soul, my dear friends, I spoke yesterday the word that this death for our friend was a kind of consecration of the spirit. You could see from our friend's soul how close she had come to an intimate spiritual understanding in a very natural way, precisely since death had passed by her in such a painful way. I have often said that it can never be the task of someone who has to speak words when death comes upon us to comfort the surviving friends, that it can never be the opinion of the one who has to speak on the occasion of a death to want to give comfort that is supposed to ease the pain. For to assuage pain would be to speculate on the weakness of human life. The pain we feel in such a case is fully justified, and the one who wanted to assuage it did not in reality reckon with the deepest demands of life. So it cannot be the task in this our case either to want to assuage the pain of those who are seized by pain in this moment.

But something else is what the words press onto our tongues when we are faced with such an event. We have seen how death touched our dear friend, and we ourselves then had to be touched by the death of that friend. The death of a person close to us brings us, as it has brought our friend close, close to the spiritual world; under all circumstances it brings us in some way closer to the feeling, to the real grasp of the spiritual world. For the very closest, the most obvious thing we feel and experience in the face of death is that we say to ourselves: When we face a person in life, there are perhaps many conditions that nuance our feelings towards that person in this or that way, so that they can easily change again at a later time. There are many, many conditions that, after we have formed a judgment, a judgment of life about a person, cause us to change that judgment about the person later on as a result of something that person does or says. We may not think about how we make a change in this sense, but we do change many things. Everyone who has thought about life knows, and anyone can know it if they just think about life a little: We often change our feelings and perceptions of people and always have the belief, I would say, in an incomplete judgment. When we face death, we instinctively feel that what is then thrusting into our soul is a kind of involuntary review of life, which we have experienced with him, felt about him. When we face the moment of death, we instinctively feel that what then forces its way into our soul, what then seems like an involuntary review of the life we have lived with the person, is something lasting, something that now stands as a conclusion in our soul, something we only have no feeling of dissatisfaction when we know: we form these thoughts in such a way that they can remain in our soul in a certain way. — Yes, we have the feeling from the outset that we may form only such judgments and feelings that can remain in our soul and take root so that we can keep them. We feel this as a sacred obligation to the dead person; we feel a certain responsibility awakening in our soul to be completely true to the dead person, and we also feel when we know that the dead person is now actually beginning to be much closer to us. We may not say to ourselves that he is beginning to be much, much closer to us, but in a subconscious way we have in our thoughts, in our feelings, the realization that we want to be closer to the person now than we were when he was alive.

During our lifetime we were aware that we could not fathom human beings, not even in our thoughts. Now that we are face to face with the dead person, we get the feeling that, step by step, he grows into our thoughts with that which, in his nature, passes from the temporal into the eternal. We must not think anything untrue about him, if we do not want to stand before him as a liar through what we think; we must not think anything about him that is distorted for our own feelings by our own feelings, which are often dominated by resentment and envy towards the living, without us knowing it. So when we stand before the so-called dead person, the thoughts about what we experienced with him come over us; we are summarized, as it were, into a kind of conclusion that we have within us involuntarily when forming the words, a greater responsibility, so that we feel a greater responsibility than was the case with the living. And we also have to come to terms with our feelings towards the dead person in a certain way. He stands there, as it were, having passed from the temporal into the realm of the lasting, into the realm of the enduring for us. He stands there so that he now becomes for us something that looks at us unchangingly. Our feelings towards the dead person must become selfless because we now know that we cannot express the love we feel for him on the earth plane in any earthly way so that he can find it in return.

That, my dear friends, means a great deal. We enter into a new relationship with a soul that we have come to love.

Herman Grimm, whom I have often spoken of here, was once at the funeral of a friend, and when he then had words printed about the deceased, there was a sentence within these words that was obvious but extraordinarily meaningful.

Yes, my dear friends, the souls who have passed through the gateway of death now belong to that light, fine cloud themselves and no longer to the reality from which the dead person has departed. But we can meet the needs of the dead more and more fully if we fill the light cloud with what we have experienced in close connection with the dead.

My dear friends, we are talking about the mortal, physical remains of a person; we can also talk about those remains of a person that the soul leaves behind on earth. And this soul on earth is embedded in coarser things, which are our hearts, our souls themselves, as long as we are embodied in the earthly body. The thought stones, the thought bricks made of this coarser material are the thoughts that we take with us through life from those with whom we have been brought together by life. For a personality such as our friend had, we can perhaps say, we may say, take with us thoughts that will further invigorate our life on earth. The attitude that our deceased friend developed from her spiritual familiarity before her passing was moving. For in her case, in the last months of her life, one must speak of spirit communion. As I said, the attitude was touching. What would now happen to her, how she herself would continue her existence in the great cosmic context, was permeated by a basic feeling, especially in the last days, when it was already clear to her that the scales were very much in balance between life and death on earth. A basic feeling pervaded her attitude, that was the feeling of surrender, of surrender to what was to come, be it life or death; for so firmly rooted was the conviction of the wisdom that pervades the world in the soul of our friend, who was detaching herself from the body, that she knew, however it might turn out: Everything corresponds to this wisdom that pervades the world. Everything, however impenetrable it may be for the individual human soul, must be right in the eyes of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. This feeling was a deeply meaningful force in our friend's soul. Therefore she could look back at the earthly world with a calm and serene gaze and look into the spiritual world with a calm and serene gaze.

By looking at the earthly world with a calm and serene gaze, the attitude that she always carried through life proved itself. I was allowed to speak of this at her funeral. The attitude can be expressed with the words: She tried to extinguish herself wherever she could, in order to do for others what was necessary for them to live. During her last days she did not consider a possible continuation of life on earth as a personal need for her own yearning, but only as an opportunity to continue to care for those people who were close to her and with whom, in the narrower sense, she had to fight the battle of life. She only thought how different it would be for them when they would have to live without her, when she could no longer be their leader and helper. Those were her thoughts; not the thought, not the need, to still live here on earth herself. She had always lived mainly in what she did for others and in what she was allowed to be for others, and so, before her earthly departure, the images arose before her eyes of those who would be there and who would now have to take up the struggle in life without her, who would now stand without her in this earthly life, while they had received the warming, regulating light from her for so long.

Then probably also the thoughts of her previous son came into her mind, who had remained in close contact with her soul and with whom she was connected even more intimately since he had parted from his earthly shell. And then there lived in her that which is so difficult to express, my dear friends, which certainly did not come before our friend's soul with a distinct thought, but which lived in her and spread the quiet, calm, awe-inspiring serenity over her entire being in her last days, the thought that looked from the living to the dead, from the dead to the living, from the spiritual to the earthly, from the earthly to the spiritual, and which, as a matter of course, knew how to unite the two worlds into one.

She had truly struggled to such a basic feeling, which glorified her death so much, through the way she lived here on earth. And much, much of how she lived makes her a role model for everyone, and we would do wrong to the feelings and sensations that blossom from the spirit in the being when we do not dare to express on such an occasion what we are able to recognize in human value and human dignity through spiritual science, through its deepening in relation to the individual person.

I know, my dear friends, that the simple, inner greatness and great modesty of our friend would never have allowed what was not possible during her time on earth to be said about her. But that is also one of the peculiarities of the death experience in others, since our tongues may be loosened with regard to it. If we ask ourselves what exactly made our friend of such greatness in the face of her immediate confrontation? Then we have to say that because our friend tried to

explore life, one might say, to remedy the difficulties of this life in others in a self-evident way. She never had to ask herself whether she should intervene when she was able to help. Instead, she always had the same question before her soul: How can I best intervene? How can I learn the conditions so that I can intervene in the best possible way, so that I can do the best thing in such a way that it also benefits the people it should relate to?

This woman's heart, out of its original, elemental goodness, always knew how to find it.

We see, my dear friends, so many natures in life that are intent above all on changing the people they meet, on wanting to teach the people they meet something that should change these people. We see so many people saying: How can I help this or that person? And they actually only have their eye on how they can help themselves, because they cannot stand that this or that person is different from them. Our friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, was never of that kind. She never had the desire to make any person different from what he or she is. She never had the desire to reduce the difficulties that arise in relationships with people by first wanting to change the person before entering into a relationship with him or her. She knew all too well from her original wisdom how little one can actually change in life about people. But she also knew, and sensed it with a sure instinct, that people can still be changed, and that they change most of all when you don't want to change them, but at the appropriate moment do what you feel is right for that person at that moment. When we first transform our ability to help people into deeds, into a deed that corresponds to the person at that moment, we approach him without wanting to change him in this moment, if we do everything in such a way that we leave people as they are and do the right thing, perhaps the thing we ourselves do not want but what they want, then the deeds we perform in the context of life will also become causes for other people in certain directions. This is what is meant when it is said that we contribute most to changing the people who, according to our judgment, should be changed, when we do not want to change them at all, but when we do the right thing at the right moment.

My dear friends, when I myself often faced our friend Gertrud Noß in life, a thought arose in me that I felt was a matter of course precisely with regard to this woman. In the book in which I have summarized the thought forms that I had gained through my research into life up to the 1990s – I am referring to The Philosophy of Freedom – you will find a chapter that deals with the rhythm of life, with the transition of our morals and ethical principles into that which is expressed in life as the natural rhythm of life, where in man, as in a habit, what regulates his life relationships with other people comes to light, where it has become self-evident to man what he should do in this or that situation in life, so that he does not need to think about why he should do this or that, and yet does it in such a way that it becomes right in life. This must strengthen people's faith in life again and again, that there are people who have such a sense of life, who, I would say, always know in a nutshell what is necessary in life, who have a sense of morality and a sense of life. This is what was spread over our friend's entire being like an imprint, so that one could say that when one met Gertrud Noß without prejudice, one saw much that could awaken faith in the values and meaning of life. Those people who awaken faith in life and radiate certainty are the ones who most readily allow those sources to flow within them, so that they cannot be accused of having anything devious in what they do. It really takes a warped mind not to immediately recognize in Gertrud Noß, when she encountered someone, that what she poured out over the surface of her actions and behavior came from the very innermost part of her soul; she had the gift of putting soul into every word and every look. And a beautiful soulfulness was expressed in her actions and also in all her relationships, which she had to establish with people. This gives a sense of security, a sense of security in dealing with such people, to those who are allowed to get close to such people. Where could the thought or feeling arise in the minds of those who are straightforward when they have come close to Gertrud Noß: You are unsure about the feelings that this woman has for you? Well, they give you the certainty that what they give in the moment is also deeply rooted in all the following moments of life; they give you the certainty that if you can be connected to her soul once, you could never be abandoned by her soul again. Being with such people and forming a life bond with them gives life security, the security that life needs, and this security also arose when one was face to face with Gertrud Noß in the most sacred matters of her life. Yesterday I already mentioned how she did not join our spiritual movement out of blind faith and with a light heart, how she was perhaps even repelled by the first impressions of our spiritual movement, but how she then grew into this spiritual movement, and from the way she grew into it and how we got to know her within it, we may again have that certainty of life which we also need in our spiritual movement and which we must appreciate in our spiritual movement. It consists in the fact that man is connected with the spiritual world in a natural, elementary way and not in a sentimental-egoistic way. Gertrud Noß will never want to impose this teaching in any external way on those who are not initially attracted to it. Gertrud Noß knew how to talk about our teaching when it was right to do so, and she knew how to remain silent about our teaching when it was right to do so. That is also the beautiful, right rhythm of life.

And when we now look at what connected both those who were intimately and closely connected with our friend in life, who were closest to her, and those of us who were connected with her through a shared world view, when we look at that, one thought in particular comes to mind: The pain of the death of Mrs. Gertrud Noß.

This woman passed away from us at an early age. She was one of those people who make us think: what might have been in terms of a shared life together if we had been allowed to look into the sunny eye for longer, if we had been able to enjoy sunny company for longer, if we had been able to be with her for longer here in this life. She is, so to speak, one of the prematurely deceased. When we know her as we were able to get to know her, we say to ourselves: As she undoubtedly would have become more and more serene and serene, she could have done much, much for the inner well-being of those with whom she was connected during this earthly life. But she left us, and we remember, in the sense of our teaching, how this earthly life is followed by life in the spiritual worlds. We also consider how each earthly life, in the way it is spent, is the preparation for future earthly lives. And now we

ask ourselves: What was the state of mind of our dear friend with regard to one of the vital nerves of our teaching, with regard to repeated earthly lives?

I can imagine that there may be many people who, out of a certain vanity, might harbor the belief that they are closer to the teaching of repeated earthly lives than Gertrud Noß was, because they occupy themselves with this teaching much, much more with regard to their own lives. I believe I may say that nothing was further from our friend Gertrud Noss than thinking about herself. When considering repeated lives on earth, to think of herself as this or that embodiment, as this or that historical personality, and at the same time to think of Gertrud Noß – it is impossible. And why? It is impossible because our friend held this teaching far too sacred to link it directly with her own life. And in this, more than in her dragging this sacred teaching down into her personal life, I see the intimate familiarity with the spiritual life. Our friend had a solemn sense of the spiritual world in the highest sense, that solemn sense in which one can be sure that even in one's inmost heart the contemplation of the spiritual world can never be abused. That Gertrud Noß could ever drag down into the realm of personal fantasy that which is sacred to us was inconceivable, due to the character and noble nature of this friend, and anyone who came close to her must also have considered it inconceivable. This revealed a great certainty in our dealings with our friend Gertrud Noß.

That was her loyalty to what she had found within our spiritual movement. She is one of those who enrich our spiritual movement, who have something to contribute to it in the way of a secure, inner attitude of the soul, in, as I said yesterday, a straight, inner sense of truth. She knew and never ceased to know that as long as man is embodied in the physical body, he has to fulfill his duties in the earthly body, that he must not become alien to this life of the earth. And so she never lost her grounding, she was never one of those who want to live in the stars here on earth and then, because they do not respect the conditions of earthly life, get into all kinds of things, which a spiritual world view should never lead to. So what Gertrud Noß brought into our movement was, above all, a healthy, hearty, healthy soul life. And in this respect she is exemplary, undoubtedly exemplary for many.

My dear friends, we do not only learn from those who speak to us with words of teaching, we learn much more when we have to make ourselves learners. You could learn a lot from Gertrud Noß if you were just eager to learn, because life itself is an even greater teacher than any word or teaching. But life speaks modestly, in such a way that one must first prepare the ear of the soul to be able to hear. Dealing with Mrs. Gertrud Noß was a lesson, a deep lesson. And among the many things that the death of this noble woman should remind us of, so that they remain with us, is also that we should not pass up opportunities where life can be our teacher. One often speaks of balance in life. But in our times, we have forgotten how to feel this balance in life in the right way. You see, when we encounter what grows in the meadow, we will take it for granted that we can distinguish the beautiful flower from the less beautiful one, without wanting to blame the less beautiful flower for not being the more beautiful flower, because we see in the beauty of the flower not only the expression of what is directly before us, but the expression of divine-spiritual activity. We must really struggle to the realization that it is divine-spiritual work when so much beautiful work is expressed in a person, as it has been expressed in our friend. We must learn to form the concept of divinely gifted people again.

Yes, my dear friends, and then the thought of compensation comes, then we may well wonder, when such people have passed through the gate of death, what the compensation will be in such a case, and there we, like our friend, who passed through the earthly gate of death prematurely, has an earthly life behind her that touches us, especially when we speak of repeated earthly lives, so much so that we say: This life had passed so that the one who was blessed with this life has given much, much to him who was attached to it. when we speak of repeated lives on earth, so touched that we say: This life had passed so that the one who was blessed with this life has added much, much of what can be carried over into a later life, great and beautiful, for further earthly development.

And how could we then escape the thought of the divine spiritual real wisdom of the world, when we see on the one hand people who appear to us to be divinely graced, and on the other hand people who show us how they take on the effort and work of life precisely because of this and seek out all possibilities to benefit from life and to create life forces. And how do we see how we can most intensely recognize, I would say, in such a person's work the significance of one earthly life for the following ones in reality. In what she did and how she did it, Mrs. Gertrud Noß expressed how she thought and felt about the connection between her present earthly life and the one to follow. And that is the healthy, firm standing in life and at the same time in spiritual vision. That is also what compelled me to utter the words at the cremation of Frau Gertrud Noß, that the traces she has left in our movement here during her life on earth will not be able to fade within our movement for so long as this movement itself exists. And just as we thought, when our dear Fritz Mitscher died, how he is a helper to us in his spirituality, so we also think so now, so we think, the best help for our spiritual movement will arise for us when such soul beings as Gertrud Noß were united to us. And if we should ever entertain the thought that our movement could perhaps be based on error or aberration, then we can always take comfort in the fact that souls of such health, such uprightness, such a sense of truth wanted to connect with our movement as Gertrud Noß did. And so we remain, we want to remain, closely, intimately connected to her. We only want to admit to ourselves that her loss in earthly life is deeply painful for us, that we do not want to be consoled by it. But we also want to admit to ourselves that we want to become worthy of having such souls among us who can give such certainty for the whole of human life.

We will no longer be able to look into her dear eyes, we will no longer have her wonderfully human kindness before our physical eyes, but we will remain united with her in our souls, because we have the certainty that we have found each other with her in such a way that we face her in such a way that she will not leave us. And that will be an important, essential, significant thing for us.

I would like to ask those who, even if only as the two representatives of those who were close to our movement in life as well as otherwise, were close to our Mrs. Gertrud Noß, the two of her relatives and those present among us today, I would like them to know that the union of the spirit that Gertrud Noß has sought will keep this love and loyalty for our friend, will always give her love and loyalty, that we cling to her with them, insofar as we have recognized her. I ask you to believe us, those of us who have met Gertrud Noß. And if pain, which should not be cured by easy consolation in this case either, must be experienced because we can no longer live in the physical proximity of a loved one, in which we would have liked to have continued to live, if such pain, which is so deeply justified in life, can be alleviated by sharing it, then I ask those who were so close to our dear Mrs. Gertrud Noß to believe that they will find fellow-bearers of this pain, fellow-bearers of this suffering, that they will not stand alone in humanity with their suffering. It is out of this spirit, my dear friends, that we begin to develop those thoughts that have become second nature to us in life, that, if we have been close to Gertrud Noß, are in our soul and should continue to live in our soul. Once more we let the thoughts pass through our soul, which I had to convey to our souls yesterday, when we stood before the earthly remains of our dearly beloved friend and saw her beautiful soul ascending into the spiritual world. It is a good feeling for all of us when we see such a soul ascending into the spiritual world, much as it was for Friedrich Rückert when he directed his thoughts to the soul of her who had preceded him in death. There Friedrich Rückert, who had drawn and shaped so much from the spiritual world, especially in terms of feelings and emotions, expressed a beautiful thought, and the thought arose in me when I had to think about how the heavenly-spiritual part of this woman united with a physical body, with a physical human life, through which she brought happiness to many, to bring about a grace-filled earthly existence. This union of the spiritual with the physical could present itself to the soul in the same way as it presented itself to the soul of a man as spiritual as Rückert, when he had to direct his thoughts to his wife who had preceded him in death:

I dreamt that I stood as a vine
In the ground of a grave,
The roots are directed towards the ground,
While the crown reaches for the sky.

And from the grave, through the root,
The lifeblood rises, which waters the vine,
Which, poured out through the vine's eyes,
Becoming solid tears, gives grapes.

Then a dove flies out of heaven,
And from the tearful vine's stem
She plucks the berry-rich grape
And carries it up where an angel
Smilingly receives it and in Eden's bower
Counts the tears from the land of want.

So we also felt how a spiritual dove united our friend's soul with life, and so we feel how this spiritual dove carries the spiritual seeds that she planted on earth, where an angel takes them smilingly and counts the tears from the land of shortcomings in the bower of Eden.

So let us, my dear friends, take up the thread of what we have made our own from the life of this woman, the thoughts that we will remain true to her in a loyal spiritual connection with her.

A bright human star
Faded from earthly vision;
It will shine in the spiritual splendor
shine in the eyes of the soul, which felt its beauty of light as a gift of life's happiness.

When did the joyful light of life shine brightest for us
from your faithful heart
? —
When did you create joy
the souls that needed joy
you invented.

When did your quiet
human greatness, shining with kindness, feel
life's most beautiful happiness?
When did you succeed in awakening the
warming light of happiness
on other people's paths through life.

So you yourself were happiness
For the souls that fate
In the struggle of life connected to you.
You carried the power of noble love
In your gaze and in your words,
In your work and in your thoughts.

Those who recognized you in the full force of life
In your worth,
It was revealed to him in you, How kind power and sense of truth From the depths of heart and soul Are embodied in human beings.

Those who followed your soul's release From bodily being and form, In holy awe, It was shown to them through you, How souls find each other in the spirit,
Who wanted to live striving as spirits.

You look at our sorrow;
We feel the mildness of Your gaze;
We feel the power of Your soul;
We need consolation in our suffering:
You Yourself console us
With loving spiritual words.

We are certain that you are near,
United with the power of your son,
Who now walks in the bright heights of the spirit
Towards you,
You will shine for us, not lost,
Another soul star in the spiritual realm.

When I last spoke to you here in this place, the person who is most intimately connected with this building was still among us: our dear Sophie Stinde.

You have commemorated the great, painful loss here, and in the time when Sophie Stinde's soul left us, you have evoked in your own souls those feelings that arose from the deep, intimate connection that existed between your souls and Sophie Stinde's soul in relation to our spiritual work. Nevertheless, my dear friends, I cannot resume these lectures here without mentioning the departure of Sophie Stinde's soul from the physical plane, which had such a profound impact on our lives. Only a few words are needed, for our souls, each one's soul, speaks to us so much when we think of the soul that has left us, and the more abundantly, the more fully perhaps the soul has to say to itself at this point, the shorter may be what is expressed with outer physical words.

My dear friends, for many years we here in the physical world were faithfully connected with this soul that had passed away from us in a way that we can say, in the highest sense of the word, was exemplary for us and to us. For the way in which Miss Stinde has placed herself in our spiritual endeavor is so connected with the deepest, most inner soul impulse of this personality, with that in this personality which, within this incarnation, constitutes its essential character of existence.

It was only a short time since we had begun our work in Central Europe, and our task was to establish this work in various places. In the house of Fräulein Stinde and her dear friend, Countess Kalckreuth, it was possible for me to speak the first intimate words to a community in Munich that was willing to receive them at that time. And from that moment on, Fräulein Stinde was with our work out of the very abundance of her beautiful will, was with our work in a sense that our work needs it.

For we must distinguish between two things. The content of our work must be taken from the spiritual world; if the earth is to reach its goal, it must belong to what will flow into the spiritual development of humanity in the course of future earthly ages. This is what we must humbly face in our soul. In our time we can be convinced of this content, or we can reject it. It is a matter that can be said to belong to something that may already now, but will certainly one day, flow into the spiritual development of humanity, even if our efforts, as they are being attempted by us in the present, should fail due to the resistance of souls that are too weak for our cause.

But working within our own circle, with those who strive with us to incorporate the spiritual content of our world view into the spiritual heritage of humanity, to bring this content to the souls and hearts of those who need it, is something else entirely within our society. There is no possibility of saying: if not now, then later. There is only the one possibility of committing oneself with one's whole, undivided soul. And anyone who is committed to this, who puts everything he has and can do at the service of the cause, as if this work were one of the most necessary things he has to do in life, can be said to have grasped the full meaning of how our work is to flow into the spiritual culture of the world through a socially organized circle.

For the time being, for the content of our world view, no goodwill is required of people; only the inner truth of the matter is needed. But it is true that under certain circumstances the matter can fail, and the time may lie further in the future when this content can be incorporated into the spiritual culture of humanity. There is nothing but understanding of the content, nothing but learning to recognize, there is no need to speak of trust, of this or that kind of will, there is only need to speak of the inner truth of the matter.

The situation is different when we look at the instrument through which this spiritual content is to enter the world. This has nothing to do with the truth content of our world view. But this truth must be carried into the present day in the mutual trust that the souls of the members have for one another, and the goodwill that is connected with the warmth and light of the cause must extend into that which, as if in a necessary stream of development, must be brought into the present day.

For those who, so to speak, have a special task to work on, there are many things to consider. The first thing is that they have the good will to gather together what karma has brought them in this incarnation up to the moment when they enter our spiritual house through the gate of our spiritual aspirations, so that they know how to transform and transmute everything that has presented itself to them in the present incarnation in order to put it at the service of our cause. Some will bring this, others that; some were capable when they came, others when they go. There is no path in the life of present-day humanity that does not lead to the center as if it came from the ends of a circle: to the place where the gate to that house stands.

And so was Fräulein Stinde. And she had important and essential things to bring, and she had goodwill, the best of intentions, to bring through our gate that which she has become with this incarnation. Among the many things we may remember in these days of the Christmas season, the world's earthly motto stands before our soul above all:

Revelation of divine powers in the heights
And peace on earth to men,
Who are of good will.

Yes, this soul was of good will. She had a goal in life when she came to us, and this goal was embraced by her artistic endeavors. A heartfelt artistic sense lived in her soul and expressed itself to all who came to know what this soul had attempted and created in the field of art through the heartfelt way in which she worked artistically. But it was of infinite value that she could bring this through the gate to our spiritual home. For that which blossoms in artistic fantasy may find its way more easily than from many other starting points to the spiritual secrets that must be brought down from the realms of imagination. And what this soul was able to experience, what it was able to acquire from art, it brought to us.

Only in this way was it possible to unfold that will, which then spreads and takes hold of many, that will to develop, which finds expression in this our building. Sophie Stinde was among the very first to whom the idea of this our building arose, and one can feel that we would hardly have found the way to this building from our Munich mystery thoughts if her strong will had not been at the starting point of the thought of this building.

A second thing, my dear friends, may come to our minds when we see Sophie Stinde's soul, which is intimately connected with the work and life in our society: her trust. Within the second, that is, within the context of where trust is necessary because cooperation is necessary, Miss Stinde can be an example to us. And where cooperation is necessary, mutual trust is necessary, quite independently of the teaching and the world view, which include the striving for truth and the striving for knowledge and not, for example, trust. But trust is part of working together.

Yes, those who knew how to work with Sophie Stinde were able to learn from her how the kind of trust that is needed for working together in our field is particularly special. I would like to say something here that I wish would sink into many souls so that they would fully understand it: When working together towards a certain goal, a goal that often only reveals itself to the outside world after a long time, that can only be manifested in the outside world after a long time, it is necessary to work together towards a goal that cannot be presented to others, but that wants to develop. People must work together who can trust each other to want to work together, even if the goal cannot be presented in a programmatic, abstract, theoretical way in a few sentences. Not trust in work, not trust in theories, but trust in souls, from which one feels and experiences that one will achieve with them what is to be achieved, even if one cannot yet determine it in the outer world, because it will show itself in the development itself. One must know, one is dealing with people who are not only able to grasp this deeper trust, which is not based on external formulations, but are also able to grasp the coexistence of souls that want to walk together, even if they do not know the goal. This goal will be the right one. That means: being connected to the living core of the work; that means: experiencing loyalty to the work in this core of life; that means: being selflessly connected to the work.

We will perhaps only agree with each other on the things that lie years ahead of us, which we would ruin now if we wanted to put them in front of us in an externally formulated way: you have to be able to say that to each other if you have trust in such a context, as our context should be. That such trust existed between them and Sophie Stinde was known to those who really got to know Sophie Stinde in this regard.

Thus, above all, the thought that comes to mind when we think about her is: because we know how she is with us in our souls, because we know how she belongs to those souls who, after passing through the gate of death, work in our midst with all the means of power that are then available to their souls and which are the flowering of what the souls have acquired here in earthly incarnation.

Their place in the external physical world will be empty in the future. But for those who have learned to understand her, this place will be the source of the idea of exemplary, dedicated, sacrificial work within our ranks. And this idea must live in particular in the rooms under the double dome, in the rooms where Sophie Stinde's soul already worked as her co-work during this incarnation on earth. If we grasp our relationship to her in the right sense, it will be impossible to turn our gaze to our forms without feeling connected to her, who first turned her gaze to him to whom she dedicated her own work, and in whom Sophie Stinde's soul will continue to work.

My dear friends, spiritual science cannot be there to dull the pain that weighs on our soul when we suffer a great loss, for pain is a world principle. And the great and the sublime in the world, as we have explained in various places in our world view, arise as blossoms and fruits from the mother soil of pain. If we were to sin against pain, we would sin against the meaning of the world. But we may look up to the words that she spoke as Sophie Stinde's spirit, the words that we can learn from her: “I will be with you as I was with you! Our relationship will have changed as a result of passing through the gate of death, changed only, not changed, and one may think that our understanding of the connection with the departed souls may then increase our overall understanding of the human connection with the spiritual world. For the understanding that we may have of such personalities as Sophie Stinde is interwoven with and sustained by love and mutual trust.

I do not think that there will ever be a significant occasion within this building where we will not have to remember how Sophie Stinde's soul has prevailed at the starting point of this reasoning, how she has connected with it. Of course, souls of this kind, who clearly recognize the task that is inwardly incumbent upon those who unite with our work, must accept many misunderstandings and go through many difficulties; they are not easily understood by others, misunderstood by many. This must be borne. But there are enough souls in our ranks who, in their deepest inner being, carry a flame of love, a beautiful flame of love, which shines towards Sophie Stinde's soul. The flames of love that Sophie Stinde's nature has kindled in the hearts of our members appear to me especially before the soul.

Just think how many a soul has searched, has come to her, and with those words that it was able to speak, has found that love, loyalty and friendship that such a soul needs. And then the flames of love are kindled by such love, loyalty and friendship, and they are especially kindled to a lasting degree where they flare up in the right way, where they can be kindled by a soul that seizes what it has to seize for the world in the highest sense of duty, and whose sense of duty never speaks, even when it must speak in the negative, without this sense of duty being crossed by the mitigating love. We must never let ourselves be tempted by love to dispense with duty. Love must be warmed by duty, duty must be strengthened by love. This could be seen in Sophie Stinde's soul. And so she also ruled within these rooms, so she ruled for the benefit of our building, and so the spirit of her soul will continue to rule as the soul of our building. May the souls be quite numerous who look with understanding at the way Sophie Stinde's soul is connected to this, our spiritual work.

My dear friends, I did not want to speak again within these rooms, where Sophie Stinde's soul ruled, without first mentioning her. If we loved her when she walked among us in the physical body, we will love her as a spirit that warms and illuminates us without end. Let us seek her among those to whom we look up with particular loyalty in the times when the spiritual realms shine even more brightly than at other times of the year. Let us seek in particular those effective forces that emanate from Sophie Stinde's soul, and in relation to which we want to make ourselves so worthy that they can always be effective through our work, especially in these rooms.

My dear friends!

Yesterday I had to remember the deep sense of satisfaction I felt when I was able to return to the site of our building after a long time. This satisfaction was tinged with a bitter note of sorrow because, among the dear friends who have worked faithfully and with infinite devotion on the progress of this our workplace, Miss Wilson is no longer here on the physical plane. She undoubtedly belongs to those of our dear friends whose thoughts cannot fade away for those left behind on the physical plane, simply because these thoughts are prepared through deeply appropriate, selfless work, and cooperation with those who are serious, sincere, and honest about this spiritual movement that is necessary for the world. Those who knew Miss Wilson well are only too aware of what the movement, in so far as it is embodied in the physical plane, has lost by Miss Wilson's departure from the physical plane. And I feel impelled to say that a deep pain has pierced the souls of all those who learned of Miss Wilson's passing from the physical plane in recent times through the messages of friends here. Miss Wilson placed herself in our movement in her infinitely unassuming way, but with such deep understanding and such earnest devotion, not only in so far as this movement is a current of spiritual life that wants to absorb the soul, but Miss Wilson also placed herself in our spiritual movement with the deepest understanding of what this movement should be and wants to be and must be in the whole course of development, namely in the spiritual development of humanity. And with regard to this kind of understanding of our movement as a spiritual world movement, many of us will have known Miss Wilson as an exemplary personality in our ranks, and in this sense those who knew her will always turn to her in thought, but will also feel their way up to her, since she now has to continue her existence in the spiritual worlds. Miss Wilson energetically joined our movement by helping wherever she could. Miss Wilson was one of those natures who took up our movement with such a strong impulse that she was able to see beyond what could so easily cause divisions and splits in our movement due to the prejudices of our time in particular, but which can never happen and should not happen if there are enough souls who, like Miss Wilson, know how to strive primarily for that which flows as a spiritual impulse through our movement, to strive for it as something higher, as something that unites, in the face of all that comes into our ranks from the prejudices of the time. In this respect, too, Miss Wilson is undoubtedly a model personality in our ranks. And we want to hold fast and true to the ideas that began to connect us with Miss Wilson, so that this connection can never end. In the sense of what our spiritual convictions can derive from our views, we may say and I may express it, that we shall be able to count Miss Wilson, now working from the spiritual world, among those souls whom we can always look upon as collaborators in the most beautiful and sublime sense. And great, truly great is the pain that permeates those who knew her, because we no longer have her among us on the physical plane, because we can no longer live on the physical plane here in the beautiful aura of sincere, friendly disposition with which Miss Wilson was among us. But we will build firmly and securely on the thoughts that connect us with her as a loyal, dear, highly esteemed colleague from the spiritual world. We will remain loyal to her, as we are convinced that she will remain loyal to us, and that we will be united with this soul for all time through our mutual respect and finding each other, for which human souls can unite after they have found each other.

Furthermore, my dear friends, I have to inform you of the sad news that another dear co-worker soul left the physical plane in the last few days, so those who worked with this soul will no longer be found here among the co-workers on the physical plane either. Our dear friend Dr. Ernst Kramer was killed by two shots on the battlefield of the Somme on July 1, and succumbed to his grave wounds on July 10. Many of us will remember the great hopes we had for the work that we could rightly expect from Dr. Ernst Kramer, who had been among our colleagues in the humanities for a number of years and more recently among the colleagues working on the Dornach building. His penetrating mathematical mind, his mathematical circumspection, his quick way of grasping a technical situation and fitting it into the whole, is what will remain unforgettable for those who worked with him and what justifies our hope that he will be united with us in the work that we are granted to do, will be united with us in the work that we, insofar as we are granted to do it, want to do together with all those in the future who want to be united with us on the physical and on the spiritual plane.

Today our souls are filled with a painful sense of loss. We mourn the death of two friends, both of whom were deeply connected to what is to be achieved here in the spirit of the progressive spiritual life of humanity. The sorrowful events of our time have taken our friend Ludwig from us a few days ago, and yesterday our dear friend de Jaager passed very quickly through the gates of death.

In both our friends, we have lost workers within our spiritual life for the physical plane, whose work is faithfully carved into the structure erected here on Dornach Hill, friends of our endeavors and friends of our hearts, who have worked with deep love on the work that is so dear to us all. And so, in them, we lose collaborators of our cause in the physical realm; but we also lose two people who have become dear to us through the years of their lives that have flowed into our lives. When we experience the death of close friends, it suddenly becomes clear to us, suddenly an awareness of what they were to the world, what they did in the world, while we, as long as they walk among us, take what is graciously given to us with their lives more for granted. We, from the point of view of spiritual coexistence, which may be interrupted by death but is never separated, look at death as the introduction to a part of life that is, of course, different from the other kind of life that takes place in the physical. Although we may always be karmically connected with those with whom we are brought together in our earthly existence, we must also remember that in each new earthly existence, new threads of existence are spun with the people with whom we are brought together; and we feel these new threads of existence. When they change so much from year to year, from month to month, from week to week, from day to day, then we take it more for granted. But when what has been taken for granted comes more sharply into consciousness through the vision of the gate of death, then we feel the difference that exists between the experience that runs from day to day and that experience which lies beyond death and which, precisely through the power that spiritual science gives us, we can make into a truly living experience, one that is, in the deepest sense, imbued with the seriousness of existence. We feel the difference between this life and the one to come so that what was fluid in earthly existence becomes, as it were, fixed, so that we look back through the span of time to something that has become a human being to us, whereas previously it became something new for us every day. And the sight of the gate of death remains harrowing from this point of view as well, because we must first find our bearings for that time of preparation, which we have to go through, and after which we will find again those who have approached us, so that we may continue the threads in spiritual life that have spun themselves here in earthly life. Spiritual science will thus be well suited to connecting us more vividly and intimately, because eternally, with those who approach us in life. It will certainly not be able to lead us to trivial consolation for the justified suffering we feel when we see the gate of death before us in such a situation. Because, my dear friends, the riddle of life is not solved with theories. Life's riddles can only be solved through life itself. And every death presents us with a riddle, a riddle of life, a test of life; a riddle that we must solve while we are alive, a test that we must pass while we are alive – a riddle that, by solving it, we make ourselves more worthy of the All-Life, a test by which we learn to prove all the bonds of love that we are blessed to to tie with other like-minded souls or souls that have been brought to us by their karma. And only in the face of death do we realize what a blessing it was from the wise guidance of the world's existence that we were brought together with this or that person, with whom karma lovingly brought us together. One would like to say how mysterious the two deaths we are now under the impression of are. One has occurred in the atmosphere that surrounds us today in such a painful way, surrounded by a roar that humanity will first have to understand, learn to understand, in order to realize what has taken place through the occurrence of this painful event. And again and again we have to feel what a riddle of life stands before us when we see that today young human lives are being claimed by humanity itself. Thus, I would say, stands that which touches us painfully in the background of the one death.

And how different the other death is! Peace surrounded the dear dead yesterday, when I could only meet him after he had already passed through the gate of death, peace that radiates from a person even when life has been cut short in this way by karma, when, as in this case, a warm and earnestly striving human life gives up its physical body, as I would like to say, in voluntary conclusion of the earthly existence that one has been given for this time by one's earthly karma. And so it is a double riddle of life that we are facing. Not because spiritual science made us powerless to interfere, as in every such case death is only a transformation of life, as in every such case death is also only a change in our friendship, but because the solution that spiritual science certainly gives us in a satisfying way in such a case, because this solution first wants to be experienced.

Our friend Ludwig – what we could see of him through his life on earth, through the years he was with us, was truly able to show how a person from less than easy circumstances, who has faced many trials in life, can connect with the innermost nerve of our spiritual striving through a deep trait of his nature. Ludwig was a person whose innermost nature shaped all his thoughts and aspirations in such a way that, to a certain extent,

the idea of karma, the idea of human destiny conceived in the sense of karma, was always in the background. Without one being able to say that Louis was a fatalist, his soul was such that it always accepted with a certain peaceableness what fate brought it, and despite this connection to the powers of fate, he was always deeply interested in what life brought him. That was a fundamental trait in the character of the one who has now left us for the physical world: he accepted what life brought with a strong and steady attitude, but he was also able to give himself to the joys and exaltations of life with intense interest and understanding. I have just been given a “Abendlied” (evening song) that our friend Ludwig wrote, and we would like to remember him by reciting it.

I stand on the mountain summit,
I spread my arms.
The treetops are burning,
The sun goes home tired.
Its setting gilds the lands,
Its setting gilds the air.
The slanting rays' garment
Glows and glitters in the fragrance.
And all around it grows still, oh so still,
Yet so far and so near
The beings and things sing only one thing:
Gloria, Gloria!

And in such a deep understanding of feeling, our friend also absorbed everything that was to come out of the building and, so to speak, knew how to incorporate into his own destiny the destiny of our movement, insofar as it is embodied in the forms of our building, and he faithfully carved his diligence and love for our cause into these forms. The after-effect of this industry, the effect of this love, really radiated from his soul when he said goodbye to go to those places from which so many hopeful lives today do not return for this incarnation. Like a shadow of this intervention of fate in his life on earth, our friend Ludwig sensed what was about to happen to him in the subdued words of farewell at that time. Those who were close to him, who were able to get to know him, will hold his memory dear and precious. But also all those in whose midst he worked here, all those in whose midst he stood with his spiritual striving, united by like-minded spiritual work, will turn their thoughts to him faithfully and lovingly. For we are united with those who unite with us, namely also in faithful striving within our spiritual life, which we have chosen out of the contemplation of human karma.

And the way in which our friend Ludwig has joined the circle of loyal workers here is attested by the other poem of the two that were just handed to me, which he wrote as a farewell to his comrades in August/September 1914, that is, to those who were drawn to the same fields that he was later forced to go to, who had to leave, as he later had to, the workplace that had become dear to them. These are the words he gave these who went to war before him in his heart:

From the peace haven into the wide world,
which is engulfed in war all around,
So those who are joined here go,
There, there into the land.

The heavy hour of parting strikes,
Parting draws near.
Each one feels in the bottom of his soul:
Stand fast at your post!

Once more we look back
At forest and river and meadow,
Where we were united in the purest happiness
in the bosom of nature
So many hours united in faithfulness
Laughing, joking, thinking, weeping.

The bonds of memory entwine
Around that which moves us,
Which, like a piece of fairyland
Everyone cherishes within.

And when the world is writhing in pain
And when it steams in the blood
The great, difficult struggle
will ultimately bring us peace.

The die is cast,
The iron clinks,
The battle cry rings out,
The bullet whizzes.
What must be will happen now
In those pure ether heights,
Where we shall meet again one day.

And in this spirit, which was in his soul, we want to be faithfully united with this dear friend who has now gone through the gateway of death.

Our dear friend de Jaager has been called away from an artistic life in the most eminent sense. When we look at this death that has occurred so quickly, we will, however, above all, insofar as we can say that we have before our soul de Jaager's earthly life, bathed in true beauty, we will be able to experience a feeling of deep peace even in this painful hour. De Jaager was an artist with every fibre of his soul, but an artist who gave birth to all art authentically from a deeply pious perception and fulfilment of life. When you stood in front of de Jaager's sensitive creations, so full of thoughts and feelings in the most beautiful sense, you could feel how this soul searched for an appropriate embodiment of what it sensed, as if in a vision, on the fields where her soul's gaze was directed, and where souls encounter the effects, ripples and undulations of the great riddles of existence, encountering those souls who feel the urge to pour what they see in artistic form, to pour it into forms, into artistic experience. And when, as in de Jaager's work, the soul's will creates a connecting link between the spiritual, which it senses, beholds, and the physical, which the physical eye can see and on which physical life is focused, then this artistically shaped vision is imbued with a very special magic when we see it in connection with such shy, beautiful and profound reverence for life, for the very life that appears so deeply mysterious to the spiritual scientist, but whose secrets we want to solve with our earthly existence. An artistic nature that treated all life with reverence, that was respectful of all existence, and whose reverence for life and respect for existence was expressed so beautifully in everything she created, in every thought she harbored, in every impulse with which she wanted to imbue her art. We looked, my dear friends, into the wise face, permeated with feeling-thoughts and thought-feelings, looking vividly into the world, and we will never be able to fade from our souls how gently devout and yet deeply reverent that eye looked into the riddles of existence. And we must always remember how earnestly and sincerely worthy this hand always wanted to be to shape what the contemplative eye saw and sensed of the riddles and secrets of life.

Oh, my dear friends, when we see such a life, which is so prematurely cut short, and to which one would like to attach so many, many hopes for life, hopes for the general world, hopes for our own spiritual striving, when we see that hanging before the gate of death, then, then spiritual science encourages us to look for the positive and not for the negative. The idea of karma, the idea of fate illuminated by karma, is particularly meaningful to us in the face of such a life. All that lived in de Jaager's art, what lived in his artistic sensibility, it is good to try to lovingly engage with it, hardly to be separated from two elements that perhaps seem to be connected by tragedy in this case, by the tragedy of life, but which we nevertheless want to look at with the same reverence and the same reverence for life with which de Jaager looked at life. When the power that can arise from a whole human life, perhaps from a long human life and its fulfillment, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a what otherwise a long life gives; if, in other words, the strength that we gain from a full life on earth combines, through its seriousness, through its diversity, with what must flow from the warmth, from the idealism, from the vision of the first half of life, and so what would otherwise permeate the two halves of life is used by pouring the strength of one half of life over both. What can live in a person in this way lived in Jaager's life, who in the thirty-third year of this incarnation passed through the gate of death. And it lives in his art. We look to him as to a person who took that which otherwise permeates a whole life into the first half of life. And we see this as the meaningful, as the particularly meaningful, as the extraordinarily thought-filled outpouring of his artistic endeavors. And we also saw this in the loving, faithful devotion with which he carved his skill into the forms of our building; he felt connected to our work, to our ideals, through the power of his own work, the power of his own ideals. It is precisely through such feelings that we will truly give life to the thought that must now, from this hour on, replace the other thought that was so dear to us: to be allowed to have this soul in our circle to fulfill the hopes and longings that we have for our movement. A tenderness had been poured out upon de Jaager's existence precisely because of what I described as the tragic in this life. And this tenderness was felt by those who were close to this dear friend. And this tenderness will live on in the loving, faithful memories that we want to preserve for our friend. His spiritual work will become one with our work, with our efforts and aspirations. We want to be inseparable from his will and often think how we must be compensated for what he would have achieved by standing physically beside us and working with us, what we see as flowing down to us from spiritual heights as long as we ourselves are determined by karma to work, strive and create on this physical plane.

And so let us be faithful companions to those who were particularly close to these two deceased. Among us, my dear friends, is our dear member Mrs. de Jaager, who is standing at the gate of death of the one with whom she was able to hope to spend a long, long time on this physical plane. Let us unite our thoughts and feelings with those of our dear member Mrs. de Jaager, and in this hour let us imbibe everything what can arise in our soul in terms of loyal, warm, loving feelings for the two who have passed through the gate of death, what can arise in us at the thought, which may also arise in us, of how they will be received by those who have gone before us from our ranks into the spiritual world. Let us think of ourselves together with these souls in a truly spiritual sense. But let us also allow the power of this thinking to become the power of true love, which can connect us with such dear friends who were connected with us in life, beyond the portal of death, beyond whom we think of being connected with in eternal time periods, we continue what has been initiated through that which brought us together here in earthly life. Let us carry the love that has united us here with those whom we will no longer see physically, but whom we want to take into our thoughts all the more vividly, so that our thoughts flow to them and connect us with them unceasingly.