257. Awakening to Community: Lecture V
22 Feb 1923, Dornach Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
That will perhaps be brought about if we continue to do as we have been doing these past few weeks in regard to other subjects under study and enquire how earlier periods of human evolution went about pursuing a scientific, artistic and religious ideal. |
Their symbolical-allegorical expression of divine forms through the various media was the life underlying the ideal of art. In their re-telling of what the gods had told them lived the ideal of science. |
It was one thing for the Greek to picture his gods as human beings and quite another for modern man to conceive a divine man under the influence of a degraded anthropomorphism. For to the Greek, man was still a living proof of his divine origin. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture V
22 Feb 1923, Dornach Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Today I want to point once again to an ideal associated with the Goetheanum, which we have just had the great misfortune of losing. My purpose in referring to it again is to make sure that correct thinking prevails on the score of a step about to be taken in Stuttgart in the next few days, a step in the direction of making a new life in the Anthroposophical Society. Whatever anthroposophy brings forth must be built on a solid foundation of enthusiasm, and we can create the right enthusiasm only by keeping oriented to that ideal that every anthroposophical heart should be cherishing and that is great enough to unite all the Society's members in its warmth. It cannot be denied that enthusiasm for this ideal of anthroposophical cooperation has dwindled somewhat during the three successive phases of anthroposophical development, though the ideal itself remains. As we stand grieving beside the ruins of the building that brought that anthroposophical ideal to eloquent external expression, it becomes the more important that we join forces in the right common feeling toward it. Shared feeling will lead to shared thoughts and beget a strength much needed in view of the constantly increasing enmity that confronts us. Therefore, instead of continuing to discuss matters that have been the focus of my lectures of the past several weeks, you will perhaps allow me to recall an outstanding memory that has a connection with the Goetheanum and is well-suited to restoring the kind of relationships between members that we need in the Anthroposophical Society. For to hold common ideals enkindles the love that every single anthroposophist should be feeling for his fellow members and that can be relied on to dissipate any hard feelings that members of the Society could be harboring against any others, even if only in their thoughts about them. You may remember that when we started the first High School course at the Goetheanum, I gave a short introductory talk stressing the fact that what people were accomplishing there represented a new kind of striving whereby art, science and religion were to be united in a truly universal sense. What was being striven for at the Goetheanum, what its forms and colors were meant to convey, was an ideal, a scientific, artistic and religious ideal. It should be the more deeply graven on our hearts now that it can no longer speak to us through outer forms and colors. That will perhaps be brought about if we continue to do as we have been doing these past few weeks in regard to other subjects under study and enquire how earlier periods of human evolution went about pursuing a scientific, artistic and religious ideal. If we look back at the tremendous, lofty spiritual life of the ancient Orient, we come to a time when the spiritual content of everything revered by these Oriental peoples was immediate revelation to them—a time when they had no doubt whatsoever that the things their senses perceived were mere tracings in matter of divine realities that had been revealed to a visionary capacity none the less real to them for its dreamlike quality. That way of beholding, instinctive though it was, was at one time such that people in certain specific states of consciousness could perceive spiritual beings in the universe in all their immediate reality, just as with their bodily senses they perceived things and creatures of the three natural kingdoms. The Oriental of an older time was just as convinced by immediate perception of the existence of the divine-spiritual beings connected with the human race as he was of the existence of his fellow men. This was the source of his inner religious certainty, which differed in no way from his certainty concerning things in nature round about him. He saw his god, and could therefore believe in his existence just as firmly as he believed in the existence of a stone, a plant, clouds or rivers. What modern science dubs animism, picturing the ancients relying on poetic fantasy to endow nature with a living spiritual element, is an invention of childish dilettantism. The fact is that people beheld spiritual beings in the same way they beheld the world of nature and the senses. This was, as I said, the source of the certainty in their religious life. But it was equally the source they drew on for artistic creation. The spiritual appeared to them in concrete form. They were familiar with the shapes and colors assumed by spiritual elements. They could bring their perception of the spiritual to material expression. They took such building materials as were available, the materials of sculpture and of the other arts, and applied such techniques as they had to express what was spiritually revealed to them. The reverence they felt in inner soul relationships to their gods was the content of their religious life. When they imprinted on matter what they had beheld in the spirit, that was felt to be their art. But the techniques and the physical materials at their disposal for expressing what they thus beheld fell far short of their actual visions. We come upon a period in the evolution of the ancient Orient when the divine-spiritual—or, as Goethe called it, the sensible-super-sensible—that man beheld was exceedingly lofty and gloriously beautiful. People's feelings and fantasy were powerfully stirred by their perception of it. But because techniques for dealing with material media were still so rudimentary, artistic creations of the period were but primitive symbolical or allegorical expressions of the far greater beauty human beings perceived with spiritual eyes. An artist of those ancient times describing his work with the feeling-nuance we have today would have said, “What the spirit reveals to me is beautiful, but I can bring only a weak reflection of it to expression in my clay or wood or other media.” Artists in those days were people who beheld the spiritual in all its beauty and passed on their vision in sense perceptible form to others who could not behold it for themselves. These latter were convinced that when an artist embodied what he saw spiritually in his symbolical or allegorical forms, these forms enabled them, too, to find their way into the world beyond the earth, a world that a person had to enter to experience his full dignity as a human being. This relationship to the divine-spiritual was so immediate, so real, so concrete that people felt that the thoughts they had were a gift of the gods, who were as present to them as their fellow men. They expressed it thus, “When I talk with human beings, we speak words that sound on the air. When I talk with the gods, they tell me thoughts that I hear only inside me. Words expressed in sounds are human words. Words expressed in thoughts are communications from the gods.” When human beings had thoughts, they did not believe them to be products of their own soul activity. They believed that they were hearing thoughts whispered to them by divinities. When they perceived with their ears, they said they heard people. When they heard with their souls, when their perception was of thoughts, they said they heard spiritual beings. Knowledge that lived in idea form was thus communication from divine sources in the experiencing of ancient peoples, perception of the Logos as it spoke directly through the gods to men. We can say, then, that men's beholding of the gods became the inner life of the religious ideal. Their symbolical-allegorical expression of divine forms through the various media was the life underlying the ideal of art. In their re-telling of what the gods had told them lived the ideal of science. These three ideals merged into one in ancient Oriental times, for they were at bottom one and the same. In the first ideal, men looked up to divine revelation. Their whole soul life was completely suffused with religious feeling. Science and art were the two realms in which the gods shared mankind's life on earth. The artist engaged in creative activity felt that his god was guiding his hand, poets felt their utterance being formed by gods. “Sing to me, Muse, of the anger of the great Peleid, Achilles.” It was not the poet speaking; it was, he felt, the Muse speaking in him, and that was the fact. The abstract modern view, which attributes such statements to poetic license, is a grotesque piece of the childish nonsense so rampant today. Those who adopt it do not know how truly Goethe spoke when he said, “What you call the spirit of the times is just your own spirit with the times reflected in it.” If we now turn our attention from the way the threefold ideal of religion, art and science lived in ancient Oriental man to consider how it was expressed by the Greeks and the Romans who were such a bare, prosaic copy of them, we find these three ideals in a further form of development. The divine-spiritual that had revealed itself to man from shining heights above was felt by the Greeks to be speaking directly through human beings. Religious life attached itself much more closely to the human, in the sense that a Greek not only experienced his inner life, but his very form, as god-permeated, god-suffused. He no longer looked up to shining heights above him; he looked at the marvellous shape of man. He no longer had the ancient Oriental's direct contemplation of divinity; his beholding was only a weak shadow of it. But anyone who can really enter into Greek poetry, art and philosophy perceives the basic feeling the Greek had, which led him to say that earthly man was more than just a composite of the material elements that his senses perceived in the external world; he saw in him a proof of the existence of divinity. This man of earth whom the Greek could not regard as of earthly origin was for him living proof that Zeus, that Athene ruled in spiritual worlds. So we see the Greeks looking upon the human form and man's developing inner life as sublime proof of the gods' governance. They could picture their gods as human because they still had such a profound experience of the divine in man. It was one thing for the Greek to picture his gods as human beings and quite another for modern man to conceive a divine man under the influence of a degraded anthropomorphism. For to the Greek, man was still a living proof of his divine origin. The Greeks felt that no such thing as man could exist if the world were not permeated through and through by the divine. Religion played a vital part in conceiving man. A person was revered not for what he had made of himself, but just because he was a human being. It was not his everyday achievements or an ambitious earthly striving to excel that inspired reverence; it was what had come with him as his humanness into life on earth. The reverence accorded him enlarged to reverence for the divine-spiritual world. The artistic ideal entertained by the Greeks was, on the one hand, a product of their feeling for the divine-spiritual element they embodied and to which their presence on earth testified. On the other hand, they had a strong sense—unknown to the ancient Oriental—of the laws governing the physical world of nature, the laws of consonance and dissonance, of volume, of the inertia or the supporting capacity of various earth materials. Where the Oriental handled his media awkwardly and was unable to go beyond a crudely symbolical-allegorical treatment of the spiritual reality that overwhelmed and overflowed him, so that the spiritual fact he was trying to give expression to in some work of art was always far more glorious and grand than the awkward representation of it, the Greek's striving was to embody all the fulness of his spiritual experience in the physical medium he had by this time learned to handle. The Greeks never allowed a column to be any thicker than it had to be to carry the weight it was intended to support. They would not have permitted themselves to represent anything of a spiritual nature in the awkward manner characteristic of ancient Oriental art; the physical laws involved had to have been perfectly mastered. Spirit and matter had to be united in a balanced union. There is as much of spirit as of material lawfulness in a Greek temple, and a statue embodies as much of the spiritual element as the expressiveness of the material allows. Homer's verses flow in a way that directly manifests the flowing of divine speech in the human. The poet felt as he shaped his words that he had to let the laws of language itself be his guide to the achieving of perfect control over every aspect of his utterance. Nothing could be left in the awkward, stammering form typical of ancient Oriental hymns. It had to be expressed in a way that did full justice to the spirit. The goal, in other words, was so fully to master the physical laws inherent in the artistic medium employed that every last vestige of what the spirit had revealed was made manifest in sense perceptible form. The Greeks' feeling that man was evidence of divine creation was matched by their feeling that works of art, like temples and statues, also had to bear witness to divine governance, though that was now conceived as acting through the agency of human fantasy. Looking at a temple, one could see that its builder had so mastered all the laws of his medium that every least detail of their application reflected what he had experienced in his intercourse with the gods. The earliest Greek tragedies were plays in which the dramatis personae represented spiritual beings such as Apollo and Dionysos, with the chorus an echo of sorts, an echo of the divine that ruled in nature. Tragedies were intended to bring to expression through human beings as an adequate medium events transpiring in the spiritual world. But this was not conceived as in ancient Oriental times, when man had, as it were, to look up into a higher realm than that where the work of art stood. Instead, it was thought of as taking place on the level on which the tragedy was being enacted, making it possible to experience in every gesture, every word, every recitativ of the chorus how a spiritual element was pouring itself into sense perceptible forms beautifully adapted to it. This constituted the Greek ideal of art. And the scientific ideal? The Greek no longer felt as livingly as the Oriental had that the gods were speaking to him in ideas and thoughts. He already had some inkling of the fact that effort was attached to thinking. But he still felt thoughts to be as real as sense perceptions, just as he felt earthly human beings with their human forms and inner life to be walking evidence of divinity. He perceived his thoughts in the same way that he perceived red or blue, C # or G, and he perceived them in the outer world in the same way that eyes and ears receive sense impressions. This meant that he no longer experienced the speaking of the Logos quite as concretely as the Oriental did. The Greeks did not compose Vedas, of which the Orientals had felt that the gods gave them the ideas they expressed. The Greek knew that he had to work out his thoughts, just as someone knows that he has to use his eyes and look about him if he wants to see the surrounding world. But he still knew that the thoughts he developed were divine thoughts impressed into nature. A thought was therefore earthly proof of the gods' speaking. Whereas the Oriental still heard that speaking, the Greek discerned the human quality of language, but saw in it direct earthly proof of the existence of divine speech. To the Greeks, science was thus also like a divine gift, something obviously despatched to earth by the spirit, exactly as man with his divine outer form and inner experiencing had been sent here. So we see how the religious, artistic and scientific ideal changed in the course of humanity's evolution from the Oriental to the Greek culture. In our epoch, which, as I have often explained, began in the first third of the fifteenth century, Western man's development has again reached a point where he is confronted with the necessity of bringing forth new forms of the venerable, sacred ideals of religion, art and science. This development was what I had in mind when we were launching the first High School course at the Goetheanum. I wanted to make it clear that the Goetheanum stood there because the inner laws of human evolution require that the religious, artistic and scientific ideals be clothed in magnificent new forms transcending even those of Greece. That is why one feels so overwhelmed by grief as one's eye falls on ruins where a building should be standing and indicating in its every form and line and color the new shape that the three great ideals should be assuming as they emerge from the innermost soul of an evolving humanity. Grief and sorrow are the only emotions left to us as we contemplate the site that was meant to speak so eloquently of the renewal of man's three great ideals. Ruins occupy it, leaving us only one possibility, that of cherishing in our hearts everything we hoped to realize there. For while another building might conceivably be erected in its place, it would certainly not be the one we have lost. In other words, it will never again be possible for a building to express what the old Goetheanum expressed. That is why everything the Goetheanum was intended to contribute to the three great ideals of the human race should be the more deeply graven on our hearts. In our day we cannot say with the clairvoyant Oriental of an older time that the divine-spiritual confronts us in all its shining immediacy as do the creatures of the sense world, or that the deeds of the gods are as present to our soul perception as any sense perceptible acts that may be performed in the external world in everyday living. But when we quicken our inquiry into man and nature with the living quality with which anthroposophical thinking and feeling endow such studies, we see the world for the cosmos, or the universe clothed in a different form than that in which the Greeks beheld it. When a Greek made nature the object of his study or contemplated human beings moving about in the world of the senses, he had the feeling that where a spring welled up or a mountain thrust its cloud-crowned peak into the sky, when the sun came up in the rosy brilliance of the dawn or a rainbow spanned the heavens, there the spirit spoke in these phenomena. The Greeks beheld nature in a way that enabled them to feel the presence of the spirit in it. Their contemplation of nature really satisfied them; what they saw there satisfied every facet of their beings. I have often emphasized how justifiably people speak of an advance in natural science, and anthroposophy is in a unique position to recognize the real significance of the scientific progress of recent centuries. I have often stressed this. Anthroposophy is far from wanting to denigrate or to criticize science and scientific inquiry; it honors all truly sincere study. In the course of recent centuries, my dear friends, people have indeed learned an enormous amount about nature. If one goes more deeply into what has been learned, the study of nature leads, as I have often stated from this platform, to insight into man's repeated earth lives, insight into the transformation of nature. One gets a preview of the future, when man will bring to new forms of life what his senses and his soul and spirit are experiencing in the present moment. If one undertakes a suitably deeper study of nature, one's total outlook on it becomes different from that that the Greeks had. It might be said that they saw nature as a fully matured being from which the glory of the spiritual worlds shone out. Modern man is no longer able to look upon nature in this light. If we survey everything we have come to know and feel about nature's creations as a result of making use of our many excellent devices and instruments, we see nature rather as harboring seed forces, as bearing in its womb something that can come to maturity only in a distant future. The Greek saw every plant as an organism that had already reached a perfect stage for the reason that the god of the species lived in each single specimen. Nowadays we regard plants as something that nature has to bring to still higher stages. Everywhere we look we see seed elements. Every phenomenon we encounter in this unfinished nature, so pregnant with future possibilities, causes us to feel that a divine element reigns over nature and must continue to do so to ensure its progressing from an embryonic to an eventually perfect stage. We have learned to look much more precisely at nature. The Greek saw the bird where we see the egg. He saw the finished stage of things; we, their beginnings. The person who feels his whole heart and soul thrill to the seed aspects, the seed possibilities in nature, is the man who has the right outlook on it. That is the other side of modern natural science. Anyone who starts looking through microscopes and telescopes with a religious attitude will find seed stages everywhere. The exactness characteristic of the modern way of studying nature allows us to see it as everywhere creative, everywhere hastening toward the future. That creates the new religious idea. Of course, only a person with a feeling for the seed potentialities that each individual will live out in other, quite different earthly and cosmic lives to come can develop the religious ideal I am describing. The Greeks saw in man the composite of everything there was in the cosmos of his own period. The ancient Orientals saw in man the composite of the whole cosmic past. Today, we sense seeds of the future in human beings. That gives the new religious ideal its modern coloring. Now let us go on to consider the new ideal of art. What do we find when we subject nature and its forms to a deeper, life-attuned study, refusing to call a halt at externalities and abstract ideas? My dear friends, you saw what we find before your very eyes in the capitals of our Goetheanum pillars and in the architrave motifs that crowned them. None of this was the result of observing nature; it was the product of experiencing with it. Nature brings forth forms, but these could just as well be others. Nature is always challenging us to change, to metamorphose its forms. A person who merely observes nature from the outside copies its forms and falls into naturalism. A person who experiences nature, who doesn't just look at the shapes and colors of plants, who really has an inner experience of them, finds a different form slipping out of every plant and stone and animal for him to embody in his medium. The Greek method, which aimed at completely expressing the spirit through a masterly handling of the medium, is not our method. Our way is to enter so deeply into nature's forms that one can bring them to further, independent metamorphosis. We do not resort to the symbolical-allegorical Oriental treatment or strive for the Greek's technical mastery of a medium. Our method is so to handle every line and color in the work of art that it strives toward the divine. The Oriental employed symbolism and allegory to express the divine, which rayed out like an aura from his works, rayed out and welled over and submerged them, speaking much more eloquently than the forms did. We moderns must create works where in the form element speaks more eloquently than nature itself does, yet speaks in a manner so akin to it that every line and color becomes nature's prayer to the divine. In our coming to grips with nature we develop forms wherein nature itself worships divinity. We speak to nature in artistic terms. In reality, every plant, every tree has the desire to look up in prayer to the divine. This can be seen in a plant's or a tree's physiognomy. But plants and trees do not dispose over a sufficient capacity to express this. It is there as a potential, however, and if we bring it out, if we embody in our architectural and sculptural media the inner life of trees and plants and clouds and stones as that life lives in their lines and colors, then nature speaks to the gods through our works of art. We discover the Logos in the world of nature. A higher nature than that surrounding us reveals itself in art, a higher nature that, in its own entirely natural way, releases the Logos to stream upward to divine-spiritual worlds. In Oriental works of art the Logos streamed downward, finding only stammering expression in human media. Our art forms must be true speech forms, voicing what nature itself would say if it could live out its potential. That is the new artistic ideal that comes to stand beside the religious ideal that looks at nature from the standpoint of its seed endowment. The third is our scientific ideal. That is no longer based on the feeling the Orientals had that thoughts are something whispered straight into human souls by gods. Nor can it have kinship with the Greek ideal, which felt thoughts to be inner witnesses to the divine. Nowadays we have to exert purely human forces, work in a purely human way, to develop thoughts. But once we have made the effort and achieved thoughts free of any taint of egotism, self-seeking, subjective emotionality or partisan spirit such as colors thoughts with prejudiced opinions, once we have exerted ourselves as human beings to experience thoughts in the form they themselves want to assume, we no longer regard ourselves as the creators and shapers of our thoughts, but merely as the inner scene of action where they live out their own nature. Then we feel the largeness of these sefless and unprejudiced thoughts that seem to be our own creations, and are surprised to find that they are worthy of depicting the divine; we discover afterwards that thoughts that take shape in our own hearts are worthy of depicting the divine. First, we discover the thought, and afterwards we find that the thought is nothing less than the Logos! While you were selflessly letting the thought form itself in you, your selflessness made it possible for a god to be the creator of that thought. Where the Oriental felt thought to be revelation and where the Greek found it proof of divine reality, we feel it to be living discovery: we have the thought, and afterwards it tells us that it was permitted to express divinity. That is our scientific ideal. Here we stand, then, in the ongoing evolution of the human race, realizing what point we have reached in it. We know, as we look at the human head with the ears at the side, at the larynx and the distorted shoulder blades, that we must be able to do more than just contemplate them. If we succeed in transforming these shapes of nature, a single form emerges from a further development of the shoulder blades and a growing-together of the ears and larynx: a Luciferic form, composed of chest and head, wings, larynx and ears. We reach the point of perceiving the artistic element in nature, the element that endows its forms with life, allowing a higher life of form to emerge than that found in nature itself. But this also puts us in the position of being able to trace nature's own activity in the metamorphoses whereby it transforms the human being, and we are able to apply this same artistry in the pedagogical-didactic field. We bring this same creative artistry to pedagogical work with children, who are constantly changing. For we have learned it at hand of an art that we recognize to be the Logos-producing nature-beyond-nature. We learn it from springs that are more than springs, for they commune with the gods. We learn it from trees that are more than trees; for where the latter achieve only a stammering movement of their branches, the former disclose themselves to modern artistic fantasy in forms that point to the gods with gesturings of branch and crown. We learn it from the cosmos as we metamorphose its forms and re-shape them, as we tried to do in our Goetheanum. All these studies teach us how to work from day to day with children to help support the process that daily re-shapes, re-creates them. This enables us to bring artistry into the schooling of the human race, and the same holds true in other areas. That is the light in which the three great ideals of humanity—the religious ideal, the artistic ideal, the scientific ideal—appear, re-enlivened, to the contemplating soul of the anthroposophist. The forms of the Goetheanum were intended to fill him with enthusiasm for experiencing these lofty ideals in their new aspect. Now we must quietly engrave them on our hearts. But they must be made a source of enthusiasm in us. As we acquire that enthusiasm and are lifted toward the divine in our experiencing of the three ideals, earth's highest ideal develops in us. The Gospel says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself, and God above all.” Another way of putting it is, “If one looks upon the divine in the light of the present day aspect of the three ideals, as a modern human being must, one learns to love the divine.” For one feels that one's humanness depends on devoting oneself with all the love at one's command to the three ideals. But then one feels oneself united with every other individual who is able to do likewise and offer up the same love. One learns to love the divine above all else, and, in loving God, to love one's neighbor as oneself. That keeps any hard feelings from developing. That is what can unite and make a single entity of the separate members of the Society. That is the present need. We have had the experience of going through a phase in the Society in which anthroposophy was poured into separate channels, such as pedagogy and other practical concerns, into artistic activities, and so on. Now we need to pull together. We have first-rate Waldorf School teachers and other professionals. Everyone who is giving of his best at a special post needs to find a way to bring the sources of anthroposophical life to ever fresh flowing. That is what is needed now. Since that is our need, since the leading anthroposophists need to prove their awareness of the present necessity of re-enlivening the Anthroposophical Society, we have arranged a meeting on these matters. It is to take place in Stuttgart in the next few days. Those who mean well by the Society should be cherishing the warmest hopes for what will come of that occasion. For only if the individuals present there can develop the right tone, a tone ringing with true, energetic enthusiasm for the three great love-engendering ideals, only if the energy and content of the words they speak guarantee this, can there be hope of the Anthroposophical Society achieving its goal. For what eventuates there will set the tone for the turn things will take in wider circles of the Society. I will know, too, what my own course must be after seeing what comes of the Stuttgart conference. Great expectations hang on it. I ask all of you who cannot make the journey to Stuttgart to be with us in supporting thoughts. It is a momentous occasion that calls for participation and wholesomely based, energetic effort on behalf of the great ideals so essential to modern humanity. We are informed of them not by any arbitrary account set down by human hand, but in that script graven by the whole course of evolution, the whole import of man's earthly development, which declares itself to us every bit as plainly as does the sun to waking human beings. Let us set about kindling this enthusiasm in our souls; then it will become deeds. And deeds are essential. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture VI
27 Feb 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
That is where the first true understanding of anthroposophy sets in. Yes, it is indeed necessary to base our understanding of anthroposophy on what can be called a waking up in the encounter with the soul and spirit of another person. |
As things are now, I see two parties, two separate groups of human beings sitting in this room, neither of which in the least understands the other, neither of which is able to take the first small step toward mutual understanding. |
I say this with an anxious, a very anxious heart; for surely no one will deny that I understand what it is to feel concern for our anthroposophical undertaking and know what it means to love it. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture VI
27 Feb 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
The background mood out of which I shall be addressing you today is not the same as that that prevailed on earlier occasions when I was privileged to speak here. Since New Year's Eve 1922, that mood is conditioned by the dreadful picture of the burning Goetheanum. The pain and suffering that picture inevitably causes anyone who loved the Goetheanum because of its connection with anthroposophy are such that no words can possibly describe them. There might seem to be some justification for feeling that a movement as intent on spiritual things as ours is has no real reason to grieve over the loss of a material expression of its being. But that does not apply in the case of the Goetheanum we have lost. It was not an arbitrary building for our work. During its erection, a process that went on for almost ten years, I often had occasion to explain that a structure that might suitably have housed some other spiritual or similar movement would not have been appropriate for our Anthroposophical Movement. For, as I have often said, we are not just a spiritual movement, which, as its membership increased, found itself with a number of people in its ranks who wanted to build it a home in some conventional style or other. The point here was that anthroposophy is built on a spiritual foundation that is not one-sidedly religious or scientific or artistic. It is an all-embracing movement, intent on demonstrating every aspect of mankind's great ideals: the moral-religious, the artistic, and the scientific ideals. There could, therefore, be no question of erecting any arbitrary type of building for the Anthroposophical Movement. Its design had to come from the same source from which anthroposophical ideas receive their shaping as an expression of the spiritual perspective gained on the anthroposophical path of knowledge, and it had to be carried out in artistic harmony with that outlook. For almost ten years many friends worked side by side with me trying to incorporate and demonstrate in every single line, in every architectural and sculptural form, every choice of color, what was flowing from the wellsprings of anthroposophical investigation, anthroposophical life, anthroposophical intention. That was all incorporated there, and the building was intimately associated with the artistic and scientific striving in the Movement. Friends who attended eurythmy performances in the Goetheanum will surely have felt how, for example, the architectural forms and decoration of the auditorium harmonized with and responded to eurythmic movement. It was even possible to have the feeling that the movements of the performers on the stage there were born of those architectural and plastic forms. If one stood on the podium speaking from the heart in a truly anthroposophical spirit, every line and form responded and chimed in with what one was saying. That was our goal there. It was, of course, a first attempt, but such was our goal, and it could be sensed. That is why those who worked on the Goetheanum at Dornach have the sensation that the very feelings they put into their efforts went up in the flames of New Year's Eve. It was just this intimate connection of anthroposophical feeling and will with the Goetheanum forms—forms that were artistically shaped by and for spiritual contemplation and that can never find a substitute in any thought forms or words—that makes our grief at the loss we have suffered so immeasurably deep. All this ought to become part of the memories of those who grew to love the Goetheanum and to feel the intimate connection with it just described. We must, in a sense, build a monument to it in our hearts in memory form. Even though the very intimacy of our connection with it is the reason why we are now shelterless, we must seek the more intensively for a shelter in our hearts that will replace the one we have lost, We must try with every means at our disposal to rebuild in our hearts, for all eternity, this building that has been lost as an external source of artistic stimulation. But the terrible flame into which all the lesser flames of New Year's Eve were drawn is there in the background of every effort yet to be made in the field of anthroposophy. Though living, spiritual anthroposophy came to no harm in the fire, a great deal of work that we had been trying to accomplish for anthroposophy in the present day world was brought to naught. I do believe, though, that if what we experienced on that occasion becomes properly rooted in our members' hearts, the grief and pain we suffered can be turned into strength to support us in everything we are called upon to accomplish for anthroposophy in the near future. It is often the case in life that when a group of people find themselves faced by a common disaster, they are united by it in a way that gives them strength and energy to go on together in effective common action. Experience, not grey theories or abstract thoughts, should be the source on which we draw for the strength needed for our anthroposophical work. My dear friends, I want to add these comments to those I will be making in connection with the theme I have had to choose for this conference, to a description of the conditions that must prevail in anthroposophical community building. I would like to include them not only because they are graven on my heart, but because they point to a fact on which we would do well to focus our attention in these coming days. A great deal of sacrifice and devotion went into the work on the Goetheanum. The impulses from which that sacrifice and devotion sprang have always been there to count on in the two decades of our work, wherever anthroposophy really lived. They were born of hearts filled with enthusiasm for anthroposophy, and the Goetheanum was the product of deeds done by anthroposophically-minded individuals. Though, for a variety of reasons, we are thinking—are having to think—today about how to regenerate the Society, we should not forget on the other hand that the Society has been in existence for two decades; that a considerable number of people have undergone experiences of destiny in their common work and effort; that the Society is not something that can be founded all over again. For history, real history, history that has been lived and experienced, cannot be erased. We cannot begin something now that began twenty years ago. We must guard against any such misconceptions as these as we proceed with our current deliberations. Anyone who has found his way into the Society over the years certainly sees plenty to find fault with in it, and is justified in doing so. Many a true and weighty word has already been uttered here on that score. But we must still take into account the fact that the Society has been effective and done things. There are certainly people enough in the Society who can express the weight of their grief and sorrow in the words, “We have suffered a common loss in our beloved Goetheanum.” It makes a difference whether a person joined the Society in 1917 or later, and whether one's relation to it is such that these grief-stricken words issue from long and deep experience in it. That should influence our deliberations. It will do much to tone down the feelings that some of our friends had good reason to express here. I heard someone say (and I certainly felt the justice of the remark), “After what I have listened to here I will go home unable to continue speaking of anthroposophy as I used to when I was still full of illusions.” Part of what that sentence conveys will disappear if one considers how much those individuals who have been anthroposophists for two decades have gone through together, and how much they have had to suffer with each other recently, because that suffering is the product of a long life in the Anthroposophical Society. The load of worry we are presently carrying cannot wipe out all that human experience; it remains with us. It would still be there even if events here were to take a much worse turn than they have taken thus far. Are we to forget the depths for the surface? That must not be allowed to happen in a spiritual movement born of the depths of human hearts and souls. What has come into being as the Anthroposophical Movement cannot rightly be called sunless. Even the sun sometimes suffers eclipse. Of course, this should not prevent our dealing with the situation confronting this assemblage in a way that enables us to provide anthroposophy once again with a proper vehicle in the form of a real Anthroposophical Society. But our success in that depends entirely on creating the right atmosphere. It will, of course, be impossible for me to cover the whole situation today. But in the two lectures I am to give I shall try to touch on as much of what needs to be said as I possibly can. Some things will have to be left out. But I do want to stress two matters in particular. Those are the pressing need for community building in the Society and the symptomatic event of the entrance into the Anthroposophical Movement of the exceedingly gratifying youth movement. But in anthroposophical matters we have to develop a rather different outlook than prevails elsewhere. We would not have taken our stand on ground that means so much to many people if we could not see things in a different light than that in which the modern world habitually views them. Community building! It is particularly noteworthy that the community building ideal should be making its appearance in our day. It is the product of a deep, elemental feeling found in many human souls today, the product of a sense of definite relationship between person and person that includes an impulse to joint activity. A while ago, a number of young theologians came to me. They were preparing to enter the ministry. They were intent above all else on a renewing of religion, on a renewal permeated through and through by the true Christ force, such as to be able to take hold of many people of the period in the way they long to be taken hold of but cannot be by the traditional confessions as they are today. I had to bring up something that seemed to me to have vital import for the development of such a movement. I said that a suitable method of community building must be found. What I had in mind was to develop a religious and pastoral element capable of really uniting people. I told these friends who had come to me that religious community could not be effectively built with abstract words, the usual kind of sermon, and the meagre remnants of a divine service, which are all that most contemporary churches have to offer. The prevailing intellectualistic trend that is increasingly taking over the religious field has had the effect of saturating a great many present day sermons with a rationalistic, intellectualistic element. This does not give people anything that could unite them. On the contrary, it divides and isolates them, and the social community is reduced to atoms. This must be easy to see for anyone who realizes that the single individual can develop rationalistic and intellectualistic values all by himself. Simply attaining a certain cultural level enables an individual to acquire increasingly perfect intellectual equipment without depending on anyone else. One can think alone and develop logic alone; in fact, one can do it all the better for being by oneself. When one engages in purely logical thinking, one feels a need to withdraw from the world to the greatest possible extent, to withdraw from people. But the tendency to want to get off by oneself is not the only one man has. My effort today to throw light on what it is in the heart's depths that searches for community is called for by the fact that we are living in a time when human nature must go on to develop the consciousness soul, must become ever more conscious. Becoming more conscious is not the same thing as becoming more intellectualistic. It means outgrowing a merely instinctual way of experiencing. But it is just in presenting anthroposophy that every attempt should be made to portray what has thus been raised to a clear, conscious level in all its elemental aliveness, to offer it in so living a form that it seems like people's own naive experiencing and feeling. We must make sure that we do this. Now there is one kind of community in human life that everyone over the entire globe is aware of, and it shows that community is something built into humankind. It is a type of community to which a lot of attention is being given in modern cultural and even political and economic life, and this in an often harmful way. But there is a lesson of sorts to be learned from it, though a primitive one. In a child's early years it is introduced into a human community that is absolutely real, concrete and human, a community without which one could not exist. I am referring to the community of human speech. Speech is the form of community that we might say nature presents to our contemplation. Speech—and especially our mother tongue—is built into our whole being at a time when the child's etheric body is not yet born, and it is our first experience of the community building element. We can lay it to the rationalism of our age that though people nowadays have some feeling for languages and nationality and conceive folk groups in relation to the language they speak, they do so from the political-agitational standpoint, without paying any heed to deep and intimate underlying soul configurations, to the tremendous aspects of destiny and karma attached to a language and to the spirit behind it, all of which are the real and intrinsic reason why human beings cry out for community. What would become of us if we passed one another by without hearing resounding in the other's words the same life of soul that we ourselves put into those same words when we use them? If everybody were to practice just a little bit of self-knowledge, we would be able to form an adequate picture, which I cannot take the time to develop now, of all we owe to language as the foundation of a first, primitive building of community. But there is a community building element still deeper than language, though we encounter it more rarely. On a certain level, human language is indeed something that unites people in community life, but it does not penetrate to the deepest levels of soul life. At certain moments of our life on earth we can become aware of another community building element that transcends that of language. A person feels it when his destiny brings him together again with others whom he knew as children. Let us take an ideal example. Someone finds himself in later life—in his forties or fifties, say—in the company of several companions of his youth or childhood whom he has not seen for decades but with whom he spent the period between his tenth and twentieth years. Let us assume that good relationships prevailed among them, fruitful, loving relationships. Now imagine what it means for these individuals to share the experience of having their souls stirred by common memories of their youthful life together. Memories lie deeper than experiences on the language level. Souls sound more intimately in unison when they are linked by the pure soul language of memories, even though the community experience they thus share may be quite brief. As everyone knows from such experiences, it is certainly not just the single memories that are summoned up to reverberate in the souls of those present that stir such intimate soul-depths in them; it is something quite else. It is not the concrete content of the particular memories recalled. An absolutely indefinite yet at the same time very definite communal experiencing is going on in these human souls. A resurrection is taking place, with the countless details of what these companions experienced together now melting into a single totality, and what each contributes as he enters into the others' recollections with them is the element that awakens the capacity to experience that totality. That is how it is in life on earth. As a result of pursuing this fact of soul life into the spiritual realm, I had to tell the theological friends who had come to me for the purpose described that if true community were to come of the work of religious renewal, there would have to be a new form of worship, a new cultus, suited to the age we live in. Shared experience of the cultus is something that quite of its own nature calls forth the community building element in human souls. The Movement for Religious Renewal understood this and accepted the cultus. I believe that Dr. Rittelmeyer spoke weighty words when he said from this platform that such a development of community could conceivably become one of the greatest threats to the Anthroposophical Society that the Movement for Religious Renewal could present. For the cultus contains a tremendously significant community building element. It unites human beings with one another. What is it in this cultus that unites them, that can make a commonality out of separate individuals atomized by intellectuality and logic, and that most certainly will create commonality? For that is surely what Dr. Rittelmeyer had in mind, that this is the means of building community. Since community, however, is also a goal of the Anthroposophical Society, the Society will have to find its own way of building it if the Movement for Religious Renewal is not to pose a threat to it from that angle. Now what is the secret of the community building element in the cultus developed for the Movement for Religious Renewal with that specific end in view? Everything that comes to expression in the various forms of worship, either as ceremonial acts or words, is a reflection, a picturing of real experiences, not earth experiences, of course, but real experiences in the world through which man makes his way before he is born; in other words, experiences of the second half of his path between death and rebirth. That is the part of the cosmos he passes through from the midnight hour of life after death to the moment when he descends again into life on earth. In the realm thus traversed are found the beings, the scenes, the events faithfully reflected in all true forms of worship. What is it, then, that a person is experiencing in the cultus in common with others whom some karma or other has brought together with him? For karma is so intricately woven that we may ascribe all encounters with our fellow men to its agency. He is experiencing cosmic memories of pre-earthly existence with them. They come to the surface in the soul's subconscious depths. Before we descended to earth, we and these others lived through a cosmic lifetime in a world that reappears before us in the cultus. That is a tremendous tie. It does more than just convey pictures; it carries super-sensible forces into the sense world. But the forces it conveys are forces that concern man intimately; they are bound up with the most intimate background experiences of the human soul. The cultus derives its binding power from the fact that it conveys spiritual forces from the spiritual world to earth and presents supernatural realities to the contemplation of human beings living on the earth. There is no such reality for man to contemplate in rationalistic talks that have the effect of making him forget the spiritual world, forget it even in subconscious soul depths. In the cultus he has it right there before him in a living, power-pervaded picture that is more than a mere symbol. Nor is this picture a dead image; it carries real power, because it places before man scenes that were part of his spiritual environment before he was incarnated in an earthly body. The community creating power of the cultus derives from the fact that it is a shared, comprehensive memory of spiritual experiences. The Anthroposophical Society also needs just such a force to foster community within it. But the ground this springs from need not be the same for the Anthroposophical Movement as for the Movement for Religious Renewal. The one by no means excludes the other, however; the two can co-exist in fullest harmony provided the relationship between them is rightly felt. But that can be the case only if we acquire some understanding for a further community building element that can be introduced into human life. Memory, transposed into the spiritual realm, rays out to us from the form the cultus takes. The cultus speaks to greater depths than those of intellect: it speaks to man's inwardness. For at bottom the soul really does understand the speech of the spirit, even though that speech may not be fully consciously perceived in present day earth life. Now, in order to grasp the further element that must come to play a corresponding role in the Anthroposophical Society, you will not only have to contemplate the secrets of language and memory in their relationship to community building; you will also have to consider another aspect of human life. Let us study the condition in which we find a dreaming person and compare it with that of someone going about his daytime activities wide awake. The dream world may indeed be beautiful, sublime, rich in pictures and in significance. Nevertheless, it isolates people here on earth. A dreaming person is alone with his dreams. He lies there asleep and dreaming, perhaps in the midst of others awake or asleep, the content of whose inner worlds remains completely unrelated to what is going on in his dream consciousness. A person is isolated in his dream world, and even more so in the world of sleep. But the moment we awake we begin to take some part in communal life. The space we and those around us occupy is the same space; the feeling and impressions they have of it are the same we have. We wake at hand of our immediate surroundings to the same inner life another wakes to. In waking out of the isolation of our dreams we awaken, up to a certain point at least, into the community of our fellowmen, simply as a result of the way we are related to the world around us. We cease being completely to ourselves, shut in and encapsulated, as we were when absorbed in our dream world, though our dreams may have been beautiful, sublime, significant. But how do we awaken? We awaken through the impact of the outer world, through its light and tones and warmth. We awaken in response to all the various impressions that the sense world makes on us. But we also wake up in ordinary everyday life in the encounter with the external aspects of other human beings, with their natural aspects. We wake up to everyday life in the encounter with the natural world. It wakes us out of our isolation and introduces us into a community of sorts. We have not yet wakened up as human beings by meeting our fellow men and by what goes on in their innermost beings. That is the secret of everyday life. We wake up in response to light and tone and perhaps also to the words someone speaks in the exercise of his natural endowment, words spoken from within outward. In ordinary everyday life we do not wake up in the encounter with what is going on in the depths of his soul or spirit, we wake up in the encounter with his natural aspects. The latter constitutes the third awakening, or at least a third condition of soul life. We awaken from the first into the second through nature's impact. We awaken from the second into the third at the call of the soul-spiritual element in our fellowmen. But we must first learn to hear that call. Just as a person wakes up through the natural world surrounding him in the right way in everyday life, so do we wake up rightly at a higher level in the encounter with the soul-spirit of our fellowmen as we sensed light and tone on awakening to everyday life. We can see the most beautiful pictures and have the most sublime experiences in our isolated dream consciousness, but we will scarcely be able to read, for example, unless highly abnormal conditions prevail. We are not in a relationship to the outer world that would make such things possible. We are also unable to understand the spiritual world, no matter how many beautiful ideas we may have garnered from anthroposophy or how much we may have grasped theoretically about such matters as etheric and astral bodies. We begin to develop an understanding for the spiritual world only when we wake up in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in our fellowmen. That is where the first true understanding of anthroposophy sets in. Yes, it is indeed necessary to base our understanding of anthroposophy on what can be called a waking up in the encounter with the soul and spirit of another person. The strength needed to achieve this awakening can be created by implanting spiritual idealism in human communities. We talk a lot about idealism these days, but it has become a threadbare thing in the culture and civilization of the present. For true idealism exists only where man reverses the direction he takes when, in presenting the cultus, he brings the spiritual world down to earth; when, in other words, he consciously makes himself capable of lifting to the super-sensible-spiritual, the ideal level, what he has seen and learned and understood on the earthly level. We bring the supernatural down into a power-permeated picture when we celebrate the ritual of the cultus. We lift ourselves and our soul life to the super-sensible level when our experiences in the physical world are experienced so spiritually and idealistically that we come to feel we have experienced them in the super-sensible world itself and that what we perceive here in the sense world suddenly comes all alive on being lifted to the ideal level. It comes alive when properly permeated with our wills and feeling. When we ray will through our inner being and infuse it with enthusiasm, we carry our idealized sense experience in a direction exactly opposite to that taken when we embody the super-sensible in the ritual of the cultus. Whether the anthroposophical community be large or small, we can achieve what I am characterizing when, infusing living power into the spiritual ideas we form, we put ourselves in a position actually to experience something of that awakening element, something that doesn't stop at idealizing our sense experience and leaving it at the stage of an abstract thought, but that endows the ideal with a higher life as we live into it and make it the counterpart of the cultus by raising it from the physical to the super-sensible level. We can achieve it in our life of feeling by taking care to imbue everything we do for anthroposophy with thoroughly spiritualized feeling. We do this when, for instance, we feel that the very doorway we reverently enter on our way to an anthroposophical assemblage is consecrated by the common anthroposophical purpose being served in the room it leads to, no matter how mundane the setting. We must be able to feel that everybody joining with us in a communal reception of anthroposophy has the same attitude. It is not enough to have a deep abstract conviction of this; it must be inwardly experienced, so that we do not just sit in a room where anthroposophy is being pursued, a group of so and so many individuals taking in what is being read or spoken and having our own thoughts about it. A real spiritual being must be present in a room where anthroposophy is being carried on, and this as a direct result of the way anthroposophical ideas are being absorbed. Divine powers are present in sense perceptible form in the cultus celebrated on the physical plane. Our hearts and souls and attitudes must learn similarly to invoke the presence of a real spiritual being in a room where anthroposophy is being talked of. We must so attune our speaking, our feeling, our thinking, our impulses of will to a spiritual purpose, avoiding the pitfall of the abstract, that we can feel a real spiritual being hovering there above us, looking on and listening. We should divine a super-sensible presence, invoked by our pursuit of anthroposophy. Then each single anthroposophical activity can begin to be a realizing of the super-sensible. If you study primitive communities, you will find another communal element in addition to language. Language has its seat in the upper part of man. But taking the whole man into consideration, you will find that common blood is what links members of primitive communities. Blood ties make for community. But what lives there in the blood is the folk soul or folk spirit, and this is not present in the same way among people who have developed freedom. A common spiritual element once entered groups with common blood ties, working from below upward. Wherever common blood flows in the veins of a number of people, there we can discern the presence of a group soul. A real community spirit is similarly attracted by our common experiencing when we study anthroposophy together, though it is obviously not a group soul active in the bloodstream. If we are able to sense this, we can form true communities. We must make anthroposophy real by learning to be aware in anthroposophical community life that where people join in anthroposophical tasks together, there they experience their first awakening in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in their fellows. Human beings wake up in the mutual encounter with other human beings. As each one has new experiences between his encounters with these others, and has grown a little, these awakenings take place in an ever new way as people go on meeting. The awakenings undergo a burgeoning development. When you have discovered the possibility that human souls wake up in the encounter with human souls, and human spirits wake up in the encounter with human spirits, and go to anthroposophical groups with a living awareness that only now have you come awake and only now begin to grow together into an understanding of anthroposophy, and on the basis of that understanding take anthroposophical ideas into an awakened soul rather than into an everyday soul asleep to higher things, then the true spirit of community descends upon the place where you are working. Is truth involved when we talk of the super-sensible world, yet are unable to rise to awareness of a spiritual presence and of this reversed cultus? We are firmly grounded in our understanding of things of the spirit only when we do not rest content with abstract spiritual concepts and a capacity to express them theoretically, but instead grow into a sure belief that higher beings are present with us in a community of spirit when we engage in spiritual study. No external measures can bring about anthroposophical community building. You have to call it forth from the profoundest depths of human consciousness. I have described part of the path that leads to that goal, and tomorrow we will follow it further. Descriptions of this kind are intended to show that the most important thing for any further development of the Anthroposophical Society is that it become absorbed in a true grasp of anthroposophy. If we have that grasp, it leads not only to spiritual ideas but to community with the spirit, and an awareness of community with the spiritual world is itself a community building force. Karmically preordained communities will then spring up as an outcome of true anthroposophical awareness. No external measures for achieving that can be indicated, and a person who offers any such is a charlatan. Now these matters have been understood to some degree during the two decades of anthroposophy's development, and quite a good many members have also understood them in a spiritual sense. I will perhaps return to this subject and discuss it more fully tomorrow when I continue with these reflections and go on to point out a further goal. For now, I would like to add just a few words on matters that may have been occupying you after hearing my description of the spiritual bases of anthroposophical community life. On the one hand, things in the Anthroposophical Movement are really such as to necessitate my describing them as I have done. The Anthroposophical Society may present this or that appearance in a given phase. But anthroposophy is independent of anthroposophical societies and can be found independently of them. It can be found in a special way when one human being learns to wake up in the encounter with another and out of such awakening the forming of communities occurs. For one undergoes ever fresh awakenings through those with whom one finds oneself foregathered, and that is what holds such groups together. Inner, spiritual realities are at work here. These matters must be increasingly understood in the Anthroposophical Society. Every consideration brought up in connection with the Society's welfare ought really to be pervaded with forces intimately related to anthroposophy itself. It was deeply satisfying to me, after spending weeks attending larger and smaller conclaves where preparations were being made for these delegates' meetings, and listening there to debates reminiscent of the ordinary, everyday kind of rationalistic considerations in which parliaments and clubs engage, to go to an assemblage of young people, a meeting of young academicians. They, too, were pondering what ought to be done. For a while the talk was about external matters. But as time passed, it changed, all unaware, into a truly anthroposophical discussion. Matters that first appeared in an everyday light took on aspects that made anything but an anthroposophical treatment impossible. It would be ideal if, instead of dragging in anthroposophical theories in an artificial, sentimental, nebulous way, as has so often happened, a down-to-earth course were to be pursued. Taking life's ordinary concerns as a starting point, the discussion should lead to the conclusion that unless anthroposophy were called upon, no one would know any longer how to go about studying such subjects as physics and chemistry. This spirit could serve to guide us. But no solution will be found by tomorrow evening if things go on as they have up to this point; they can only lead to a state of tremendous, tragic chaos. The most important thing is to avoid any sentimental dragging in of all sorts of matters, and instead fill our hearts with anthroposophical impulses, conceived in full clarity. As things are now, I see two parties, two separate groups of human beings sitting in this room, neither of which in the least understands the other, neither of which is able to take the first small step toward mutual understanding. Why is this the case? It is because what one side is saying issues inevitably from the experience of two whole decades, as I explained briefly earlier today, and the other side takes no interest whatsoever in that experience. I say this not in criticism, but in a spirit of concerned pleading. There have been occasions in the past when well-meaning people, in their own way genuinely enthusiastic about anthroposophy, have simply cut across our deliberations with such comments as, “What possible interest can these reports have for us when they keep on being served up at a moment when the important thing is that people unacquainted with the great dangers the Society faces want to learn about them?” Here, on the one side, we see an elemental, natural interest in the life of the Anthroposophical Society, a life that may have certain familial characteristics, but that has the good aspects of the familial as well. On the other side we find no interest in that life, and instead just a general conception of an Anthroposophical Society. As things stand today, both points of view are justified, so justified that unless we can quickly develop a wholly different form of discussion, the best thing we could do (I am just expressing my opinion, for the decision will have to be made by the Society) would be to leave the old Society as it is and found a union of free anthroposophical communities for those who want something entirely different. Then each party could carry on in the way that suits it. We would have the old Society on the one side, and on the other a loose but closely related confederation of free communities. The two societies could work out ways of living together. It would be better to solve the problem this way than to continue on in the hopeless situation that would present itself tomorrow evening if the discussion were to go on as it has thus far. So I ask you to put on the agenda the further question whether you would not prefer to avoid the false situation that would develop from keeping the two groups welded together, regardless of whether things stay as they have been or undergo some modification. If the situation remains as it is, with each side failing to understand the other, let us go ahead and set up the two suggested groups within the one movement. I say this with an anxious, a very anxious heart; for surely no one will deny that I understand what it is to feel concern for our anthroposophical undertaking and know what it means to love it. But it is better to have two devoted sisters, each going her own way and united only by a common ideal, than to settle for something that would again lead in short order to a state of chaos. My dear friends, you simply must not let yourselves overlook the fact that it is the various single enterprises that are causing our troubles. That should have been worked out in clearest detail. I am certainly not stating that the last Central Executive Committee accomplished a great deal more, materially, than the one before it, not any more, that is, than I accomplished when I was similarly active at the center in my role as General Secretary. But that is not the question. The real question is: What should have happened, anthroposophically speaking, after all the various enterprises were started here in Stuttgart? This will have to be answered. We cannot at this point dissolve what has been brought into being. Once these enterprises exist, we must find out how to keep them flourishing. But if we fail, as we have in the past four years, to learn how to go about this in an anthroposophical spirit, if we introduce enterprises as foreign bodies into the Anthroposophical Movement, as we have done, these institutions that have been in existence since 1919 will ruin the whole Anthroposophical Movement. They will ruin any Central Executive Committee, no matter what name it is given. We should therefore keep our discussions objective and impersonal, and try to reach some clarity on what form the Society ought to take, now that it embraces all these institutions, and among them one as wonderful as the Waldorf School. Not a single word has yet been spoken on this subject, for those who are most familiar with what is going on in Stuttgart have thus far kept fairly silent. I would particularly like to hear what the two members of the Central Executive Committee would say to this. [The members of the Central Executive Committee were Ernst Uehli, Emil Leinhas, Dr. Carl Unger.] (I am not including Herr Leinhas, the third member, as he was the only one who helped me in a problematical situation and who continues to help. Indeed, for his sake I hardly like to see him go on devoting himself to the Central Executive Committee, ideally fitted for it though he is.) It is not a question of these two gentlemen defending themselves, but simply of saying what they think about the future shaping of the Anthroposophical Society, which is capable of amalgamating the enterprises that have been in existence since 1919; otherwise, it would have been an irresponsible deed to launch them. We cannot leave it at that, now that they exist. These are very, very serious questions. We have to deal with them and discuss them objectively and impersonally. I meant what I said objectively, not as an attack on any member or members of the Central Executive Committee. Nobody is being disparaged, but in my opinion these problems, thus again sharply enunciated by me, had to be brought up. If the two proposed societies are to be established, the group that would be a continuation of the old Anthroposophical Society could make itself responsible for the projects the Society has undertaken, and the other group, that feels no interest in them, could pursue a more narrowly anthroposophical path. This is what I wanted to put before you in a brief sketch. Tomorrow at twelve I shall speak in detail about matters of business. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture VII
28 Feb 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
But for the moment the thing of chief interest to us is that this person does not understand the others, and unless they are looking at him from a medical pathological angle they cannot understand him either. |
Some people are unwilling to do this. That resulted in my never being understood when I said that there were two ways of occupying oneself with my book, Theosophy, for example. |
Those who acquaint themselves closely with the intentions underlying the work of our Research Institute will see that wherever this technique is applicable, we, too, apply it. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture VII
28 Feb 1923, Stuttgart Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
I would have liked to follow my usual procedure in lecturing to the kind members of the Anthroposophical Society and to have addressed this gathering on purely anthroposophical matters. The whole course the meetings have taken, however, and the things that have been happening in the past few days have made me decide to confine my comment to questions of immediate interest to this assemblage. I hope there will be other opportunities to speak on more specifically anthroposophical subjects, if not to all of you at once, then at least on several occasions to smaller groups. The goal of this pair of lectures is to show how anthroposophy can really become wisdom to live by, how it can influence our day-to-day intentions and attitudes. I shall, therefore, devote myself to laying an anthroposophical foundation on which to approach the problems we shall be dealing with here. Yesterday I spoke from that angle about community building in the Anthroposophical Society; today I want to continue and to add something on the subject of the contribution that an anthroposophical view of the world makes to living life in a more adequate way than one could do without it. In order to show you the opposite side of the matters discussed yesterday, I am taking as my starting point something well-known to everybody familiar with the history of societies built on foundations similar to those on which our own sciety is based. A little later on I will also characterize some of the differences that distinguish the Anthroposophical Society from every other. But for the moment I want to point out that there have been a great many societies that have based their existence on one or another method of attaining insight into the spiritual world, though the level reached was influenced considerably by various historical settings and the particular characteristics and capacities of the groups of people who participated. One finds every shading and level in the wide variety of societies, which covers the whole range from a really serious and significant level down to that of charlatanism. But one thing is well-known to anyone acquainted with the history of such socities. That is, that a certain moral atmosphere is always created—and indeed, necessarily so—when certain conditions exist. One could describe this atmosphere as being that of a real, genuine striving for brotherliness among the members of such a society. This goal is usually listed among the precepts or in the statutes of these societies, and—as I said—necessarily so, brotherliness being one goal and insight into the spiritual world the other. Now the thing that people familiar with the history of such societies know is that these societies built on brotherliness and spiritual insight are the worst beset with conflicts. They present the widest opportunities for fighting, for partings-of-the-way, for splitting up into separate factions within the larger group, for group resignations, for sharp attacks on those who stay and those who leave, and so on. In short, human strife is at its most rampant in groups dedicated to brotherhood. This is a strange phenomenon. But anthroposophical insight enables us to understand it. What I am presenting in these two lectures is also part of the system of anthroposophy, if you will forgive me the pedantic term. So, though this lecture will not be a general discussion, it will still be an anthroposophical one, shaped with special reference to our meetings. If we return to the matters brought up yesterday, we find three levels of experience among the phenomena of human consciousness. We find people either asleep or dreaming, who, in a state of lowered consciousness, experience a certain world of pictures that they take to be real while they are sleeping. We know that these people are isolated from others inhabiting the physical world in common with them; they are not sharing common experiences. No means exist of conveying what they are experiencing. We know further that a person can go from this state of consciousness to that of everyday awareness, can be awakened to it by external nature, and this includes the natural exterior of other people, as I described yesterday. A certain degree of community feeling is awakened simply as a result of natural drives and the ordinary needs of life, and languages come into being in response to it. But now let us see what happens when these two states of consciousness get mixed up together. So long as a person continues in completely normal circumstances and is able, by reason of a normal psychic and bodily condition, to keep his isolated dream experience separated from his shared experience with others, he will be living acceptably in his dream world and in the world of reality. But let us assume that, due to some psychological quirk, and it would have to be considered such, a person finds himself in a situation where, though he is in a day-waking state of consciousness involved in a common life with others, he is not having the same feelings and ideas as his companions. Let us assume that the pathological condition he is in causes him to project into his waking consciousness a world of feelings and ideas similar to those of dream life. Instead of developing logically ordered thoughts, he produces a pictorial world like the picture world of dreams. We call such a person mentally ill. But for the moment the thing of chief interest to us is that this person does not understand the others, and unless they are looking at him from a medical pathological angle they cannot understand him either. At the moment when the state of mind prevailing at this lower level of consciousness is carried over to a higher level, a person becomes a crass egotist in his relations with his fellow men. You need only think this over to see that a person of this kind goes entirely by his imaginings. He comes to blows with the others because they cannot follow his reasoning. He can commit the wildest excesses because he does not share a common soul world with other human beings. Now let us move on from these two states of consciousness to the two others. Let us contrast the everyday state of consciousness, to which we are guided by the natural course of external events, with that higher one that can, as I showed yesterday, awaken through the fact that a person wakes not just in the encounter with the natural aspect of his surrounding but also in the encounter with the inner being of the other person. Though one may not ordinarily be fully and immediately aware of it, one does waken to such a higher level of consciousness. Of course, there are many other ways of entering the higher worlds, as you know from my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But for the period of time one is privileged to spend with others in that way, one can find oneself in a position to understand and witness things one would otherwise not understand or witness. One is presented with the possibility of living in the element that those who know the spiritual world describe in terms applicable to that world—the possibility of speaking of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego, of repeated earth lives and their karmic aspects. Now at this point there is a possibility of the whole state of mind of ordinary consciousness being carried over into the spiritual world one thus enters and applied to it. This is the same thing that happens on another level when the state of soul of a person absorbed in dream pictures is projected into ordinary life: one turns into an egotist in the most natural way. This occurs if one fails to realize that everything in the higher worlds of the spirit has to be looked at in an entirely different way than one looks at the sense world. One must learn to think and feel differently. Just as dreamers have to switch over into a totally different state of consciousness if they want to share a life with others in an ordinary state of waking, so must there be similar awareness of the fact that the content of anthroposophy cannot be approached with the attitude of soul one has toward the things of ordinary experience. That is the root of the problem of reaching any understanding and agreement between the everyday consciousness, which is also that of ordinary science, and the consciousness anthroposophy makes possible. When people come together and talk back and forth, one with the ordinary consciousness exemplified in the usual scientific approach and the other with a consciousness equal to forming judgments that accord with spiritual reality, then it is exactly as though a person recounting his dreams were trying to reach an understanding with someone telling him about external facts. When a number of people meet in an ordinary state of consciousness and fail to lift themselves and their full life of feeling to the super-sensible level, when they meet to listen in a merely ordinary state of mind to what the spiritual world is saying, there is a great—an immeasurably great—chance of their coming to blows, because all such people become egotists as a natural consequence. There is, to be sure, a powerful remedy for this, but it is available only if the human soul develops it. I am referring to tolerance of a truly heartfelt kind. But we have to educate ourselves to it. In a state of everyday consciousness a little tolerance suffices most people's needs, and social circumstances put many a situation right again. But where the ordinary everyday state of mind prevails, it often happens that people talking together are not even concerned to hear what the other is saying. We all know this from our own personal experience. It has become a habit nowadays to give only scant attention to somebody else's words. When a person is part way through a sentence, someone else starts talking, because he is not the least interested in what is being said. He is interested only in his own opinion. One may be able, after a fashion, to get by with this in the physical world, but it simply cannot be done in the spiritual realm. There, the soul must be imbued with the most perfect tolerance; one must educate oneself to listen with profound inner calm even to things one cannot in the least agree with, listen not in a spirit of supercilious endurance, but with the most positive inner tolerance as one would to well-founded utterances on the other person's part. In the higher worlds there is little sense in making objections to anything. A person with experience in that realm knows that the most opposite views about the same fact can be expressed there by, let us say, oneself and someone else. When he has made himself capable of listening to the other's opposite view with exactly the same tolerance he feels toward his own—and please notice this !—then and then only does he have the social attitude required for experiencing what was formerly merely theoretical knowledge of the higher worlds. This moral basis is vital to a right relationship to the higher realms. The strife that I have described as so characteristic of the societies we are discussing has its root in the fact that when people hear sensational things, such as that man has an etheric and astral body and an ego as well as a physical body, and so on, they listen for sensation's sake but do not undertake to transform their souls as these must be transformed if they are to experience spiritual reality differently than they would a chair or a table in the physical world, and one experiences even these objects differently in the physical world than one does in dreams. When people apply their ordinary soul habits to what they think they are understanding of teachings about the higher worlds, then this inevitably develops strife and egotism. Thus it is just by grasping the true nature of the higher worlds that one is led to understand how easily societies with a spiritual content can become involved in conflicts and quarreling, and how necessary it is to educate oneself to participation in such groups by learning to tolerate the other person to an immeasurably greater degree than one is used to doing in situations of the physical world. To become an anthroposophist it is not enough to know anthroposophy from the theoretical side: one's whole approach has to be transformed in certain ways. Some people are unwilling to do this. That resulted in my never being understood when I said that there were two ways of occupying oneself with my book, Theosophy, for example. One way is to read or even study it, but with the usual approach and making the judgments that approach engenders. One might just as well be reading a cookbook as Theosophy for all the qualitative difference there is. The value of the experience is identical in both cases, except that reading Theosophy that way means dreaming rather than living on a higher level. When one thus dreams of higher worlds, the impulses one receives from them do not make for the highest degree of unity or the greatest tolerance. Strife and quarreling take the place of the unity that can be the reward of study of the higher worlds, and they keep on spreading. Here you find the cause of the wrangling in societies based on one or another method of gaining insight into the spiritual world. I said that the various paths described in part in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds lead into the spiritual world. Now when a person has to concern himself intensively with seeking knowledge of those higher worlds, this requires his developing a certain attitude of soul, as you will understand from what I have been explaining in this pair of lectures, though in quite another connection. A true spiritual investigator has to have a certain attitude of soul. One cannot find one's way to truth in the spiritual realm if one is constantly having to give one's attention to what is going on in the physical world in ways quite proper to that sphere, if one has to occupy oneself with matters requring the kind of thinking suited to the physical realm. Now you will agree that a person who gives his fellowmen a reliable account of things in the spiritual world, a person justified in calling himself a spiritual investigator in the sense in which the other sciences use that term, needs a lot of time for his research. You will therefore find it natural that I, too, need time to do the research that enables me little by little to present anthroposophy or spiritual science in an ever widening perspective in my lectures. Now if one goes one's way alone, one can of course make time for this within the framework of one's destiny. For a person who is a genuine spiritual investigator and wants to give his fellowmen a trustworthy account of what he discovers in the spiritual world will, as is natural, form the habit of ignoring his opponents. He knows that he has to have opponents, but he is not bothered by their objections to his statements; he could think up the objections himself. So it is natural for him to take the attitude that he is simply going to go his own positive way without paying much attention to anyone's objections, unless there is some special reason to do so. But this attitude is no longer tenable when one has joined forces with the Anthroposophical Society. For in addition to the responsibility one feels toward the truth, one has a further responsibility in relation to what the Society, of which it is often said that it makes itself an instrument of that truth, is doing. So one has to help carry the Society's responsibilities. This can be combined to a certain extent with the proper attitude toward opponents. Until 1918 that situation obtained with the Society and myself. I paid as little attention as possible to objections, and did so, paradoxical though this may seem, as a consequence of maintaining the tolerance I have been describing. Why, indeed, should I be so intolerant as to be constantly refuting my opponents? In the natural course of human evolution everything eventually gets back on the right track anyhow. So I can say that up until 1918 this question was justified, to some extent at least. But when the Society proceeds to take on the activities it has included since 1919, it also takes on the responsibility for them. Their destiny becomes involved with that of the Society, and the Society's destiny becomes involved with that of the spiritual investigator. The spiritual investigator must either assume the burden of defending himself against his opponents—in other words, of occupying himself largely with matters that keep him from his spiritual research, since they cannot be combined with it—or else, to get time for his research, turn over the handling of opponents to those who have accepted a certain responsibility for the peripheral institutions. Thus the situation in our Society has undergone fundamental changes since 1919, and this for deeply anthroposophical reasons. Since the Society, as represented by certain of its members, decided to launch these institutions, and since the foundation on which they are all based is anthroposophy, that foundation must now be defended by people who do not have to carry full responsibility for the inner correctness of the material that genuine research has to keep on adding, day by day, to the previous findings of spiritual investigation. A large proportion of our opponents consists of people in well-defined callings. They may, for example, have studied in certain professional fields where it is customary to think about things in some particular way. Thinking the way he does, such a person simply has to oppose anthroposophy. He doesn't know why, but he has to be an opponent because he is unconsciously on the leash of the profession in which he has had his training and experience. That is the situation in its inner aspect. From the external standpoint, the question whether what has been established as the Anthroposophical Society is to flourish or decline requires that these opponents be dealt with. But the real leaders of the opposition know full well what they are about. For there are some among them who are perfectly familiar with the laws that govern spiritual research, even though their view of those laws and that of anthroposophy may differ. They know that their best means of keeping a person who needs peace to pursue his spiritual research from doing his work is constantly to bombard him with hostile writings and objections. They know very well that he cannot give his attention to both refuting them and carrying on his research. They try to put obstacles in his path with their opposition. The mere fact of their putting these attacks in writing is the hostile act. The people who know what they are doing are not so much concerned with the contents of such books as they are with using them as weapons to hurl at the spiritual investigator, and they are particularly intent on tricking and otherwise forcing him into the necessity of defending himself. These facts must be looked at completely objectively, and everyone who really wants to be a full member of the Anthroposophical Society ought to know them. A good many people are, of course, already familiar with what I have just been saying. The trouble is that some informed members habitually refrain from mentioning any such matters outside their circle. Experience has long shown that such a course cannot be maintained in the Society. The Society used to publish lecture cycles labeled, “For members only.” Here in Germany, and probably elsewhere too, one can go to public libraries and borrow these same cycles. All the cycles are available to non-members. One can tell from writings of our opponents that they too have them, though it may sometimes have been difficult to get hold of them. But people of this sort are far less apt to shy away from difficulties than is sometimes the case with anthroposophists. The secrecy that many societies still find it possible to maintain is simply out of the question in the Anthroposophical Society, due to its special character as an institution based on the most modern concept imaginable. For its members are meant to remain free individuals. They are not bound by any promises; they can simply join the Society as honest searchers after knowledge. I have no desire to make secrecy an aim. If that interested me, I would never suggest setting up a loose confederation of groups alongside the old Anthroposophical Society. For I predict, though without implying condemnation, that a great many more escape channels will be opened to the world at large by such a confederation, allowing egress to material that older members believe should be kept in their own cupboards. But the innermost impulse of anthroposophy cannot be grasped by people unwilling to see it put to work in complete accord with the most modern human thinking and feeling. It is, therefore, the more essential to understand what the prerequisites of such a society are. Now I want to bring up something that I will illustrate with an example taken from my own experience, though not in a spirit of foolish conceit. Last summer I gave a course of lectures at Oxford on the educational methods of the Waldorf School.1 An article appeared in an English journal that, though I cannot quote it verbatim, made the following point. It began by saying that a person who attended the lectures at the Oxford educational meetings without prior awareness of who Dr. Steiner was and that he had some connection with anthroposophy would not have noticed that a representative of anthroposophy was speaking. Such a person would simply have thought him to be a man speaking about pedagogy from a different angle than the listener's own. I was exceedingly delighted by this characterization because it showed that there are people who notice something that is always my goal, namely, to speak in a way that is not instantly recognized as anthroposophical. Of course, the content is anthroposophical, but it cannot be properly absorbed unless it is objective. The anthroposophical standpoint should lead, not to onesidedness, but, on the contrary, to presenting things in such a way that each least detail can be judged on its own merits and its truth be freely recognized. Once, before the Oxford lecture cycle was delivered and the article about it written, I made an experiment that may not seem to you at all significant. In June of this year I attended the Vienna Congress and gave two cycles comprising twelve lectures.2 I undertook to keep the word anthroposophy out of all of them, and it is not to be found there. You will also not find any such phrase as “the anthroposophical world view shows us this or that.” Of course, despite this—and indeed, especially because of it—what was presented was pure anthroposophy. Now I am not making the philistine, pedantic recommendation that anthroposophists should always avoid using the word “anthroposophy.” That is far from my intention. But the spirit that must inspire us in establishing right relations with the rest of the world can be found by looking in that general direction. That spirit should work freely in leaders active in the Society; otherwise I will again be held responsible for unanthroposophical things that are done in its name. Then the world would have some justification for confusing the one agent with the other. Here too the objective spirit of anthroposophy needs to be properly grasped and, above all, manifested in what is done. We will first have to undertake some degree of self-education to that end. But self-education is needed in anthroposophical circles; countless mistakes have been made in the past few years for want of it, with the launching of the peripheral institutions contributing to the problem. I state this simply as an objective fact, without meaning to accuse anyone personally. If the Anthroposophical Society is to flourish, every single one of its members is going to have to become fully aware of these facts. But this cannot happen under present day social conditions unless an effort is made to set up a lively exchange, even if only in the form of some such medium as a news sheet conceived as a link between the Society's various centers of activity. But again, that would require every such circle, even if not every individual member, to develop a living interest in the concerns of the whole Society, and particularly in its ongoing evolution. There has been too little of this. If the Anthroposophical Society did not exist, there would presumably still be a certain number of books on anthroposophy. But one would not have to be concerned, as a society is, with the people who read them. These people would be scattered all over the world, singly or in groups, according to their karma, but one would not have to have any external contact with them. The spiritual investigator is not in any fundamentally different situation, even in a society such as ours was up to 1918. But the situation changed at the moment when the Anthroposophical Society assumed responsibility for things that existed on the physical plane. I am putting all this in a much more plain spoken way than I have on other occasions. But say them I did, in one form or another, when the peripheral institutions were being launched. I couldn't, of course, whisper them in every member's ear, and I don't know whether it would have helped if I had done that. But the Society existed and had leaders. They should have seen to it that conditions in the Society were such that it could include the various institutions without jeopardizing spiritual research. I will call this the negative aspect of community building in contrast to the positive aspect I presented yesterday. I would like to add that everyone interested in creating community of the positive kind that I described from the standpoint of the prerequisites of its existence must be aware of the matters discussed today in relation to the Anthroposophical Society's life and progress. They must all be taken into consideration as affecting the various areas of anthroposophical life. In this connection let me cite the following instructive example. I come back again to the tragic subject of the ruined Goetheanum. In September and October 1920 we held a three week course there, the first of the so-called High School courses. Yesterday, I described how the Goetheanum was built in a definite artistic style that was the product of an anthroposophical approach. How did this style originate? It came into being as a result of the fact that persons to whom we cannot be grateful enough undertook, in 1913, to build a home base for what existed at that time in the way of anthroposophical works in a narrower sense, and what, again in that narrower sense, was still to issue from anthroposophy. They wanted to create a home for the staging of mystery plays, for the still germinal but nevertheless promising art of eurythmy, and, above all, for presentations of anthroposophy itself as these projected cosmic pictures derived from spiritual-scientific research. That was my intention when these persons asked me to take initiatives in this connection. I saw it as my task to erect a building designed in a style artistically consonant with the work that was to go on in it. The Goetheanum was the outcome. At that time there were no scholars or scientists in our midst. Anthroposophy had indeed taken some steps in a scientific direction. But the development that was to include activity in the various professional fields among the Society's functions had not yet begun. What developed later came into being as a direct outgrowth of anthroposophy, exactly as did the Waldorf School pedagogy, the prime example of such a process. Now an artistic style had to be found to suit each such development. It was found, as I believe, in the Goetheanum. The war caused some delay in building. Then, in 1920, I gave the course of lectures just referred to. It was given at the behest of the professionals who had meanwhile joined the Society and were such a welcome addition to it. They arranged a program and submitted it to me. In my belief, complete freedom reigns in the Anthroposophical Society. Many outsiders think that Steiner is the one who decides what is to go on in it. The things that go on most of the time, however, are such as Steiner would never have thought up. But the Society does not exist for my sake; it exists for the members. Well, I sat there, all attentiveness, at this lecture series of September and October 1920—this is just an aperçu, not a criticism—and let my eyes range over the interior of the Goetheanum. In the Goetheanum Weekly I described how, in eurythmy for example, the lines of the Goetheanum continued over into the eurythmists' motions. But according to the original intention, this should have been the case with everything done there. So I let my inner eye test whether the interior decoration, the architecture, the sculptured forms, the painting, harmonized with what the speakers were saying from the podium. I discovered something that people did not at that time have to be faced with, namely, that everything I may call in the best sense a projection of the anthroposophical outlook, everything that had its origin in pure anthroposophy, harmonized marvellously with the Goetheanum. But in the case of a whole series of lectures, one felt that they should have been delivered only when the Goetheanum reached the point of adding a number of further buildings, each so designed that its style would harmonize with the special studies and activities being carried on inside it. In its destiny of almost ten years, the Goetheanum really shared the destiny of the Anthroposophical Society, and one could readily become aware, by feeling out the way the architectural style harmonized or failed to harmonize with what went on in the building, that an inorganic element had indeed insinuated itself into the pure ongoing stream of the anthroposophical spiritual movement. Now this is not said to blame anybody or to suggest that things should have been done differently; everything had to happen as it did, naturally. But that brought another necessity with it: The necessity of bringing about a complete rebirth of chemistry, physics, mathematics, and so on, through anthroposophy, to give consciousness the quick forward thrust I described it as needing. For the ordinary way of looking at things simply does not provide a basis for anthroposophical presentations. But that forward thrust was not always in evidence. Its lack could be felt in the testing that the artistic style of the Goetheanum gave it; in the Anthroposophical Society it manifests itself in the phenomenon of the clouds that have gathered and hung over us these past days. Now that a most welcome destiny has brought science into the anthroposophical stream, we face the immediate and future task of bringing it to rebirth through anthroposophy. No purpose is served by losing ourselves in all kinds of meaningless polemics; the urgent task is rather to see to it that the various disciplines are reborn out of anthroposophy. We had to make do somehow during the period when substitutes were the order of the day. I was often called upon, in response to a need somewhere, to deliver cycles of lectures to this or that group on subjects which, had anthroposophical life been progressing at a normal tempo, might better have waited for future developing. Then these cycles became available. They should have been put to use in the first place as a means of helping the various sciences to rebirth through anthroposophy. That lay in the real interests of anthroposophy, and its interests would have coincided fruitfully indeed with those of the Anthroposophical Society. People have to know all these facts. You see, my dear friends, in the course of the various seminars held here and there under the auspices of the High School, I repeatedly assigned problems that needed solving. At the last address I gave in the Small Auditorium of the Goetheanum during the scientific course, which was held at the end of 1922 and was to have continued there into 1923, I gave the mathematical physicists an assignment. I discussed how necessary it was to solve the problem of finding a mathematical formula to express the difference between tactual and visual space. There were many other occasions when similar matters were brought up. We were confronted with many urgent problems of the time, but they all needed to be worked out in such a thoroughly anthroposophical way as to have value for every single group of anthroposophists, regardless of whether tactual and visual space and the like meant anything to them. For there are ways in which something that perhaps only one person can actually do can be made fruitful for a great many others when it is clothed in some quite different form. Thus, the difficulties that have proliferated are a consequence of what I must call the exceedingly premature steps taken since 1919, and, in particular, of the circumstance that people founded all sorts of institutions and then didn't continue sharing responsibility for them—a fact that must be stressed again and again. These difficulties have given rise to the problematical situation now confronting us. But none of them can be laid at the door of anthroposophy itself. What my kind listeners should be aware of is that it is possible to be quite specific as to how each such difficulty originated. And it must be emphasized that it is most unjust to dismiss anthroposophy on account of the troubles that have arisen. I would, therefore, like to append to the discussion of just such deeper matters as these a correction of something that was said from this platform yesterday; it disturbed me because of my awareness of the things we have been talking about here. It was stated that people were not aware that the Anthroposophical Movement could be destroyed by our opponents. It cannot be. Our opponents could come to present the gravest danger to the Anthroposophical Society or to me personally, and so on. But the Anthroposophical Movement cannot be harmed; the worst that could happen is that its opponents might slow its progress. I have often pointed out in this and similar connections that we must distinguish between the Anthroposophical Movement and the Anthroposophical Society. My reason for saying this was not that the Society no longer needed to be taken into account, but that the Society is the vessel and the Movement its content. This holds true for the single member as well as for the Society. Here too, full clarity and awareness should reign. Anthroposophy is not to be confused with the Anthroposophical Society. Nor should the fact go unrecognized that developments of the past three or four years have meant, for members, a close interweaving of the unfolding destiny of anthroposophy with the Society's destiny. The two have come to seem almost identical, but they must nevertheless be sharply differentiated. There could, theoretically, have been a Waldorf School even if the Society had not existed. But that could not have happened in reality, for there would have been no one to found and steer and look after the school. Real logic, the logic of reality, is quite a different thing than abstract logical reasoning. It is important that members of the Society understand this. A member ought to have some rudimentary realization, even if only on the feeling level, that insight into higher worlds has to be built on an awareness that super-sensible experience differs greatly from experience of the ordinary physical world. Something in the physical world can seem just as right as a dream content does to the dreaming person. But the carrying over of things of one's dream life into situations of everyday waking consciousness nevertheless remains an abnormal and harmful phenomenon. It is similarly harmful to carry over into the consciousness needed for understanding the spiritual world convictions and attitudes quite properly adopted in ordinary waking consciousness. I can give you an instructive example. As a result of the way modern man has become so terribly caught up in intellectuality and a wholly external empiricism, even those people who are not especially at home in the sciences have taken up the slogan: Prove what you are saying! What they are stressing is a certain special way of using thought as a mediator. They know nothing of the immediate relationship the soul of man can have to truth, wherein truth is immediately apprehended in just the way the eye perceives the color red, that is, seeing it, not proving it. But in the realm of reason and intellect, each further conceptual step is developed out of the preceding one. Where the physical plane is concerned, one is well advised to become a bright fellow who can prove everything, and to develop such a good technique in this that it works like greased lightning. That is a good thing where the physical plane is concerned, and a good thing for the sciences that deal with it. It is good for the spiritual investigator to have developed a certain facility in proving matters of the physical world. Those who acquaint themselves closely with the intentions underlying the work of our Research Institute will see that wherever this technique is applicable, we, too, apply it. But if you will permit me the grotesque expression, one becomes stupid in relation to the spiritual world if one approaches it in a proof-oriented state of mind, just as one becomes stupid when one projects a dreamer's orientation into ordinary waking consciousness. For the proving method is as out of place in the spiritual world as is an intrusion of the dream state into the reality of waking consciousness. But in modern times things have reached the point where proving everything is taken as a matter of course. The paralyzing effect this trend has had in some areas is really terrifying. Religion, which grew out of direct vision, and in neither its modern nor its older forms was founded on anything susceptible of intellectual-rational proof, has now become proof-addicted rationalistic theory, and it is proving, in the persons of its extremer exponents, that everything about it is false. For just as it is inevitable that a person become abnormal when he introduces dream concerns into his waking consciousness, so does a person necessarily become abnormal in his relationship to higher worlds if he approaches them in a way suited to the physical plane. Theology has become either an applied science that just deals practically with whatever confronts it or a proof-minded discipline, better adapted to destroying religion than to establishing it. These, my dear friends, are the things that must become matters of clear and conscious experience in the Anthroposophical Society. If that is not the case, one takes one's place in life and in human society simply as a person of many-sided interests who functions sensibly at all the various levels, whereas from the moment one concerns oneself with the material contained in innumerable cycles, one cannot exist as a human being without spiritual development. The spiritual investigator does not need to rely on proof in meeting his opponents. Every objection that they might make to something I have said can be taken from my own writings, for wherever it is indicated I call attention to how things stand with physical proof as applied to super-sensible fact. Somewhere in my books one can always find an approximation of the opponents' comments in my own statements, so that, for the most part, all an opponent need do to refute me is to copy passages out of my writings. But the point is that all these details should become part of the awareness of the members. Then they will find firm footing in the Society. To occupy oneself with the anthroposophical outlook will mean finding firm footing, not only in the physical world but in all the worlds there are. Then anthroposophical impulses will also be a fountainhead of the capacity to love one's fellowmen and of everything else that leads to social harmony and a truly social way of life. There will no longer be conflict and quarreling, divisions and secedings among anthroposophists; true human unity will reign and overcome all external isolation. Though one accept observations made in higher worlds as truth, one will not wander about like a dreamer in the physical world; one will relate to it as a person with both feet set firmly on the ground. For one will have trained oneself to keep the two things separate, just as dream experience and physical reality must be kept separate in ordinary life. The key need is for everyone who intends to join with others in really full, genuine participation in the Anthroposophical Movement within the Society to develop a certain attitude of soul, a certain state of consciousness. If we really permeate ourselves with that attitude and that consciousness, we will establish true anthroposophical community. Then the Anthroposophical Society, too, will flourish and bear fruit and live up to its promise.
|
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture VIII
02 Mar 1923, Dornach Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
We arrived at a certain definite conclusion, which seemed inevitable under the conditions that prevailed. It will be essential to an understanding of what came about that I give you a sketch of how things developed. |
The first group understands immediately, but does nothing. The second category understands nothing; they only give promise of eventually understanding everything; they are full of energy and feeling, but they do the things at once. |
But it was at once apparent that my proposal had been understood after all, quite correctly understood. Now the details could be profitably discussed. It had become clear that something could really be done on the basis proposed. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture VIII
02 Mar 1923, Dornach Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
The meetings at Stuttgart came to a close two days ago, and you are probably thinking that I ought to give you a report on some of the things that happened there. We arrived at a certain definite conclusion, which seemed inevitable under the conditions that prevailed. It will be essential to an understanding of what came about that I give you a sketch of how things developed. You know from comments I have been making these past several weeks that lengthy preparations preceded the Stuttgart meetings. The aim of these preparations, which proved extremely tiring to all concerned, was to try to create a situation in which the life-needs of the Anthroposophical Society could be met, thus ensuring the Society's continuance in the immediate future. In everything that follows it should be kept in mind that what went on in Stuttgart did not have its origin in the sad events surrounding the Goetheanum fire, nor was it influenced by them. For I had already talked with a member of the Executive Committee early in December and discussed with him the necessity of doing something to consolidate the Society, and he was given the assignment of getting the whole Executive Committee and various others to take on the problem. So what occurred in Stuttgart was a direct consequence of the talk I had on December tenth with Herr Uehli to acquaint him with my observations on the current state of affairs in the Society. The burning of the Goetheanum came as a most painful experience while we were in the midst of these developments. But even if we still had the Goetheanum standing here in its pristine form, these things would have happened exactly as they did. For what was it we faced? We were facing the fact that the Anthroposophical Society had taken on a form in the past two decades that had undergone considerable modification since 1919 as a consequence of including various enterprises among its concerns. My words could easily be taken as deprecating these undertakings, but nothing of the sort is intended. I need only mention the name of the Waldorf School, which is one of the enterprises I was referring to, to convince you that my remark was made for quite a different purpose than to express some superficial judgment. It implied no reflection on the worth and significance of any of these enterprises or on anyone responsible for their guidance. The transactions in Stuttgart were meant to—and indeed did—concern themselves solely with the Anthroposophical Society from the aspect of its whole configuration and how it should be shaped. Now it is not an easy matter to describe this configuration as it really is, since it branches out in so many directions. But I believe that everyone of you has some idea of how the Society has developed up to the present, and can picture things for himself with the help of the comments I have been making here in the past several weeks to round out the picture. One of the especially important developments that have taken place in the Society's life has been the incurring by leading individuals—or at least by a considerable number of them—of quite specific anthroposophical tasks for the Society that have grown out of the work. These tasks have been waiting for completion since 1919, but they were not carried out. When the problem this caused became only too plain, I had to speak to the Central Executive Committee in Stuttgart as I did on December tenth last. One of the latest undertakings to grow out of the soil of the Anthroposophical Movement was the Movement for Religious Renewal, which has contributed heavily to the current crisis in the Society. That is one aspect of the facts that have developed in the Society's life. The other aspect is that youth has approached the movement—youth full of deep inner enthusiasm for anthroposophy and everything it includes, and university youth has also come into the picture with quite different expectations, with a quite definite picture of what is to be found in the Society, with quite definite feelings. One might say that these academic young people approach the Society with strong heart impulses and a special sensitivity to the way the anthroposophists reacted to them, and that they took everything not so much from a rational angle as in a spirit of keen feeling-judgment. Now what lay behind all this? The fact is, my dear friends, that young people today are having soul experiences that are making their first appearance on the stage of human evolution. This fact is not to be summed up in abstract, superficial phrases about a generation gap. That gap has always existed in some sense, and been especially marked in strong personalities while they were young and preparing themselves for life at an educational institution. We need only recall certain characteristic examples. You can read in Goethe's Truth and Science how, when he was a student in Leipzig, he stayed away from lectures because he found them so terribly boring, and went instead to the pretzel bakeshop across the street to chat with companions while Professor Ludwig and others held forth in the lecture halls on learned doctrines. But despite the ever-present generation gap, even these somewhat radical members of the younger generation eventually took over their inheritance from their elders. The geniuses among them did likewise. Goethe most certainly remained an incomparable genius to the day he died. But when it came to taking part in the life of his time, he became not simply Goethe the genius but the fat privy councillor with the double chin. That must also be recognized. These things have to be looked at in a completely unprejudiced way. Until the last third of the nineteenth century, the generation gap about which people talk superficially today was always there, but it was resolved in good philistine style, with youth gradually absorbing more and more philistine characteristics and entering, as it always had, into what its elders passed on to it. Today, however, that is no longer possible. If one were to use terminology borrowed from Oriental wisdom, one would have to say that it became impossible when Kali Yuga ended, because from that time forward social life was no longer ruled by the principle of authoritarianism as it had been heretofore. Mankind's involvement in the consciousness soul phase of its development took ever more marked effect. This lived in the souls of people born in the 1890's and in the first few years of the twentieth century, perhaps not in a sharply defined form, but nevertheless in an extremely strong instinctive way. This inner life of theirs has to be really lovingly contemplated by older people if they want to understand it. That takes quite a bit of doing. For our culture, our civilization has assumed a form, especially in educational institutions, which makes the resolving of problems between youth and age that always used to take place no longer possible. Young people of the present feel this; it is their inner destiny. It shapes every aspect of their lives, and means that they approach life with a quite definite craving or demand. This predisposes present-day young people to become seekers, but seekers of a wholly different stripe than their elders. This holds true of them in every area of life, and especially in the spiritual area. It is very strange how the older generation has been reacting to them for some time past. I have not neglected to call your attention to characteristic instances. Let me remind you of the lecture I gave on Gregor Mendel. Every now and then, scientists of the twentieth century have rather vehemently stated it as their opinion that Gregor Mendel, a Moravian, the solitary schoolmaster who later became an abbot, was a genius who had made remarkable contributions to the work of determining the laws of heredity. If we review Gregor Mendel's relationship to the educational institutions he attended, we cannot miss the fact that when he was old enough to take his examinations for the teaching profession he failed them by a wide margin. He was thereupon given time to prepare himself for a second try. Again he flunked. At that time—I am speaking of the 1850's—people were a lot more tolerant than they became later. So, in spite of his two failures to pass his teacher's examinations, Mendel was appointed to a secondary school position, and he became the man who accomplished something regarded as one of the greatest feats in the field of modern natural science. Let us take another case closer at hand: that of Röntgen. Nowadays nobody doubts that Röntgen is one of the greatest men of modern times. But he was dismissed from secondary school as a hopeless case. He had the greatest trouble getting a position as a tutor because he couldn't finish school; he had been thrown out, and later just barely managed to get into a college, where he finally graduated. But even then he was unable to get a tutorial post in the field in which he sought it. In spite of this, he performed one of the most epoch-making feats in the fields of practical and theoretical science. These examples could be multiplied ad infinitum. On every hand we find indications of the unbridgeable gap between what older times had to offer and what lives in youth in an indefinable way. Putting the matter in rather radical terms, one can say that modern youth could not care less how many Egyptian kings' graves are opened; they are not much concerned with that. But they do care about finding far more original sources of serving human progress than the opening of ancient kings' graves offers. Youth feels that we have entered upon a phase of mankind's evolution in which much more elementary, more original sources will have to be drawn upon for its furthering. Now we can certainly say that young people with this longing have done a great deal of searching during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Then they came to know of anthroposophy and felt at once that it led to the primal sources of their seeking, to the deepest origin of humanness. They then approached the Anthroposophical Society. And last Monday or Tuesday a representative of these young people said in Stuttgart that they had received a shock on approaching it, that the contrast between the Anthroposophical Society and anthroposophy had startled them. This is a very weighty fact, is it not? It cannot simply be dismissed. You have to consider what young people, especially those from the universities, have had to suffer. Let us say, for example, that they wanted to take a doctorate in one of the freer branches of learning and teaching, such as the history of literature. How were things done in the last third of the nineteenth century? Where did most of them get the themes for their dissertations? For brevity's sake I will have to put it rather radically. The professor had undertaken to write a book about the Romantic school. So he assigned one student Novalis, another Friedrich Schlegel, a third August Wilhelm Schlegel, and a fourth Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann—if they were lucky. If they weren't, they were assigned dissertations on Hoffmann's punctuation or his use of parentheses. The professor then read through these dissertations and took the substance of his book from them. It had all become quite mechanical. The young person was just part of a mechanism, a learned mechanism, and if I may repeat myself, after the end of Kali Yuga everything that lived in an elemental way in the youthful soul rebelled against this sort of thing. I am citing just one of countless possible examples of the same phenomenon. Now here we have these two factors side by side: the Anthroposophical Society, in the form it had assumed during its two decades—a form I need not describe, as everyone can picture it for himself from his own standpoint—and the young students. But what the Society was encountering in these young people was simply the keenest and most radical fringe of an omnipresent element. This fact stood out only too plainly at the Stuttgart meetings. On the one hand, the leaders of the old society were committed to what had gradually taken on fixed forms. One was perhaps a Waldorf teacher, another an office manager at “Der Kommende Tag.” We have to give all due weight to the fact that all these people were overwhelmed with work. Everybody in the Society who had any free time had been drawn into these enterprises. Rightly or wrongly, this caused a certain bureaucratic spirit to spring up in the Society. Among these undertakings was the “Union for the Threefold Membering of the Social Organism.” Right from the moment of its founding in 1919, it had a director, and after I had worked awhile with this Union I was compelled to say that I could not go on, that I would have to withdraw. As I said in Stuttgart recently, I had to strike out and simply declare that I could not go on. Then another director, an excellent man, took things over. I was unable to get to Stuttgart for several weeks, but when I eventually arrived, I was anxious to find out what had been happening. There were a number of matters awaiting disposition, so a meeting was held and I was informed about what had transpired. I was told, “Well, we've been setting up a card file. We have small cards on the lower right-hand section of which we clip the smaller newspaper items, and then we file them in cabinets. Then there are larger cards made of heavier paper to which we attach longer magazine articles, and there are other cards of still another size for filing letters that come in.” This went on and on. Hours were spent describing the way the card file was set up, the sacrifice and devotion with which people had been working on it for many weeks, what it contained, how everything had been so neatly stowed away in it. Now I had a mental picture of this card file with all the various sizes of cards in it, and the marvellous record there of everything that had been going on in the Society and what our opponents had been up to. It was all beautifully recorded! There must have been a simply huge pile of these cards stacked up in layers. But the people sitting there vanished as though they were ghosts; only the card file was real. Everything had been recorded! I said, “Well, my dear friends, do you have heads as well as a card file? I am not in the least interested in your files, only in what you have in your heads.” I am sure you will understand that I am not criticizing, just reporting, for the people who had arranged the files were groaning under the tremendous burden of their work. But on the other hand, just imagine youth coming there with their hearts on fire with enthusiasm for ideals that encompassed the whole future, only to be told the story of the card files. I am not saying that it was superfluous to have files or that they were of no value; I am saying that they were excellent and vitally necessary. But that is not the way things should be going. Hearts were needed to go out to hearts. Now this created all sorts of impossible situations. These and many other problems finally reached a point where a reorganization of the Society had to be considered. There had to be a chance for the Society to provide human beings with opportunities to work in it, to live out their special individual capacities, to find and breathe an atmosphere in which they could go on developing. These were absolutely fundamental problems that the Society was facing. A complete revision of all the conditions surrounding its life was indicated, and that it has a tremendous life-potential is shown in the fact that youth has now approached it full of teeming inner life. But the contrasts grew and grew. Of course, there were some individuals in the older group who had never taken any interest in the card files (if I may use the files as symptomatic of the whole approach in question). Some of these others may have been very old indeed, but still not have wanted to bother with things like the files, which had gradually become a necessity. There were definitely such members who had joined the Society as early as 1902 or 1903, who, though they may have been very different from the young people in many other respects too, had also never concerned themselves with what I will term the history of the Society. So we faced extraordinarily difficult problems at the preliminary meetings. An incalculable weight of worry burdened one's soul. But we don't need to talk about those sessions now. The Delegates' Conference, a summons to which was the outcome of the preparatory meetings, was held in Stuttgart last Sunday. The first order of business was to hear what the provisional steering committee, which was made up for various reasons of members of the erstwhile Central Executive and called the Committee of Nine, had to say about the past and present and future of the Anthroposophical Society. Then the German and Austrian members were to be given a hearing in the persons of their delegates. Well, things proceeded as planned. But since I want to give you just a brief sketch of what led to the final decision, I will refrain from describing what amounted to a veritable hailstorm of motions. Scarcely was one taken care of and the business of the meeting resumed than two or three more fairly flew up to the chairman's table. It can only be described as a hailstorm, and there seemed to be no end to the discussion about them. But I will skip over all this and stress instead that absolutely excellent talks were given, penetrating, deeply anthroposophical talks. Albert Steffen spoke wonderful, heartfelt, profound words. Mr. Werbeck gave a masterly description of the categories of our opponents and of their relationship to the Anthroposophical Movement and to the rest of civilization. Dr. Büchenbacher gave a vivid account of the way people who entered the Society from about 1917 on responded to what they encountered in it. As to the fact that not everything said was first-rate and as to some lesser contributions in between, it is probably better to maintain a courteous silence. But excellent, magnificent contributions were interspersed among what I will refer to as “others.” In spite of this, Sunday and Monday and Tuesday passed, and by Tuesday evening a point was reached where one could see clearly that if the next day, the final one, were to be anything like the preceding ones, the delegates would leave as they had come. For almost nothing of what lived in the many individuals assembed in the hall had really come out, even though much anthroposophical substance had been contributed in excellent speeches. This was an assemblage of human beings and the speeches all dealt with realities, but there was no living reality in the meetings, just abstraction; they were a classic example of life lived in the abstract. By Tuesday evening real chaos reigned. Everybody was talking past everybody else. Now I had no choice but to decide to make a proposal of my own directly after the Tuesday lecture that had been scheduled for me—a proposal based on what lived in the people represented there—and almost the entire membership of the German and Austrian Societies was present. But one had to get at what was real there and pull it together. I was to speak on Tuesday about community building, a theme called for by much that had been said. So I made a proposal. I said that we could see how everyone was talking past the others and that nothing that was being said was bringing the underlying realities of the situation to the surface. Leaving other aspects aside for the moment, one could distinguish two types of feeling, two differing viewpoints, two sets of opinions. One type is represented by the old Anthroposophical Society and the committee speaking for it; the other is made up of individuals who, to put it as exactly as possible, have no real interest in the stand taken by the committee representing the Society. They are individuals completely without interest in what the committee had to say, though they are fine anthroposophists: One can scarcely imagine anything finer than the contributions made by the young people at the Stuttgart conference; they reflected an energetic, wonderful spirit. The soul of youth made a noble impression as it urgently stormed the gates of anthroposophy. But here too there was no interest in what the Society was as a society, or in what it stood for. A phenomenon like this has to be taken as a reality. We have to learn to see it as a fact; there is no use acting like blind men and closing our eyes to it. So I had no choice but to say that since we were confronted there with these two types, any abstract talk about reaching agreement was simply false. The old society cannot be other than it is, nor can the second group. The Society as a whole will therefore have the best chance of continuance if each faction goes its own way, with the old aristocracy—no, let me rather call them the members of the older society, laden down with history—forming one group, and the stormily progressive old and young forming another. There is in existence an ancient draft of a constitution for the Anthroposophical Society. I can recommend its study to both parties! Each of them can carry out its provisions quite literally, but the outcome will be entirely different in the two cases. That is the way things are in real life, no matter how they may look in theory. So I made the proposal that the old Anthroposophical Society continue with its Committee of Nine. I characterized things in the following way. I said that the old society included the prominent Stuttgart members who carry on their separate undertakings in exemplary fashion and do a tremendous lot of work; in fact, one of their outstanding characteristics, demonstrated during the four days of the conference, was the weariness they brought with them from their previous labors. I said that when I come to Stuttgart and find something needing to be done, I have only to press a button; that is the way it has been in recent years. These leading personalities in Stuttgart are extremely insightful. They grasp everything immediately without one's having to say very much. There would never be time enough to discuss everything at length. Theirs is a lightning grasp; one need only touch on a matter to have it absolutely clear to them. But for the most part they do nothing about it. Then there is the other party, full of anthroposophical soulfulness, whole-heartedly immersed in anthroposophy. I can also say something to the leaders of this group. They understand nothing of what I am saying, but they do it that very instant. That is a tremendous difference. The first group understands immediately, but does nothing. The second category understands nothing; they only give promise of eventually understanding everything; they are full of energy and feeling, but they do the things at once. They do everything without understanding it. So there will have to be two quite differently constituted groups in the Society if it is to stay united. One group should never be allowed to get in the way of the other's functioning. There is the one group—what name shall I give it, since we have to have one? It's just a question of terminology, of course. Let's call it the conservative, the traditional party, the neatly-filed members (not to limit the term to just a set of cards), the party that occupies the curule seats. People in this party have titles: president, vice president, and so on, and administer the Society. They sit there and have a routine procedure for everything. I see a man in the audience looking at me significantly who, while I was still in Stuttgart, was in a position to inform me what such procedures sometimes lead to. For example, a credit slip for a sum like 21 marks was sent out, and it cost 150 marks to send it. That is what it costs these days to send mail to foreign countries: 150 marks. If one wants to write somebody that a credit of 21 marks has been entered on the books to his account, it costs 150 marks to do it properly. That is the way things go in an orderly ABC set-up. So there we have the party of routines, the old Anthroposophical Society. One can belong to it and be a good member. Then there is the free union of individuals who care not a whit for all that sort of thing, who simply want a loose association based on a purely human element. These two streams should now be acknowledged. I started by giving just a thumbnail sketch of this, a mere indication. That same evening a speech was made, maintaining that it would be the worst thing that could possibly happen, for it would split the Society in two, and so on. But that was the reality of the situation! If a move were to be made that fitted the facts rather than the way people thought—for what they think is seldom as significant as what they are—it had to be the one suggested, for that would fit the realities involved. As I said, a speech was instantly made about it, warning of the terrible consequences that would ensue if anything of the sort were to prove necessary, and so on. Even in an external, purely spatial sense, the outcome was chaos. The hall was crammed with people huddled in groups, leaving no loopholes to squeeze through between them, and they all stopped me to ask what this or that had meant. The inner chaos of the situation had become outer chaos by eleven o'clock that Tuesday evening when I tried to leave the assembly hall. I arrived, rather weary, at the place where I was staying. At midnight someone came to fetch me. I wasn't quite on the point of going to sleep. Someone came and said that a meeting was underway down in the Landhausstrasse. I was stopped again on my way to the floor where the meeting was in progress, and drawn into a side-meeting, so that it was nearly one o'clock in the morning by the time I arrived where I was supposed to be. But it was at once apparent that my proposal had been understood after all, quite correctly understood. Now the details could be profitably discussed. It had become clear that something could really be done on the basis proposed. Certain doubts were expressed, as was perfectly natural. It was said, for example, that there were members who sympathized with the young people and wanted to go along with their aims, but who nevertheless belonged historically to the old society and even held positions in it, which they wanted to keep so they could go on working there. I said that this could easily be solved. The only problem in the case of individuals who join both sections is to arrange that they pay only one membership fee. Surely some technical means of doing this can be worked out. There should be no question of anyone being excluded from one of the sections because he is a member of the other. In all such matters, we should simply see to it that the realities of a situation have a chance to be recognized. I went on to say that the various institutions can also accommodate both directions. I can easily conceive the possibility of a Waldorf teacher leaning toward the looser association and becoming part of it while a colleague feels drawn to and joins the more tightly organized group. They will, of course, still work together at the Waldorf School in a perfectly harmonious spirit. Yesterday some people were wondering how life in this or that branch of the Society would be affected. I asked why adherents of the two groups should not be able to sit beside each other at branch meetings. But the inner realities must always be given a chance to live themselves out. When a thing is conceived in a realistic spirit, there is always a way of working it out, and this makes for unity. It took only until 2:15 a.m. for the young people to become clear on essentials. There were, however, some white-haired young ones among them who could look back over a span of quite a few decades. It became clear, as Tuesday night changed into Wednesday morning, that the proposal would work. Wednesday was devoted to discussing these plans. And Wednesday evening witnessed their adoption—I will give you just the résumé, and then add a few supplementary comments to this report. So there we now have the old Anthroposophical Society with its Committee of Nine as described, and the other looser, freer Anthroposophical Society whose chief striving it is to get anthroposophy out into the world and to work for a deepening of man's inner life. Tomorrow and the following day I will review the most important aspects of the two lectures I delivered in Stuttgart. They are intimately bound up with the life in the Anthroposophical Society, for the first lecture was on the subject of community building and the second on the reasons why societies based on brotherliness are so given to quarreling. A provisional committee was formed for the loose association. It was made up of Herr Leinhas, Herr Lehrs, Dr. Röschl, Herr Maikowski, Dr. Büchenbacher, Herr Rath, Herr von Grone, Rector Bartsch from Breslau, and Herr Schröder. You notice that not all of them are extremely young; their number includes dignified patriarchs. So the radicalism of youth will not be the only standpoint represented, but it will certainly be able to make itself felt. That is the way things came out. Now they need only be rightly managed. The loose association undertook specifically to form smaller, closer communities—to work for anthroposophy exoterically on a big scale, and to work esoterically on a small scale forming communities held together not so much by any set system of external organization as by inner, karmic ties. These, then, were the two groupings we came out with. I will have something more to say about them tomorrow and the next day. It was a very necessary development! Anything that is alive refuses to let itself be preserved in old, preconceived forms; arrangements must change with and adapt themselves to the living. You remember my saying as I left for Stuttgart that the Society's whole problem was really one of tailoring. Anthroposophy has grown, and its suit, the Anthroposophical Society—for the Society has gradually become that—has grown too small. The sleeves scarcely reach to the elbows, the trousers to the knees. Well, I won't labor the analogy. The suit looked grotesque, and this was apparent to any wholehearted person who has recently joined the Society. Now we shall have to see whether this effort to make a new, more fitting garment rather than take the old one apart—for it would certainly get torn—will succeed. It definitely has the inner capacity to do so. We shall have to see whether people develop the strength essential to this way of working. Real life presents very different possibilities from those of theory, and that holds true in this case also. We will have to create something that can really stand the test of life. Now there we have Herr von Grone, who is a member of both committees, the committee of the free and the committee of the more tightly organized; he will serve on both. Things will work out best if we let everybody function in his own way, either as a patriarch or as a young enthusiast, and if someone wants to be both at once, why should he not be a two-headed creature? It is absolutely vital that people's energies develop freely. Certain things won't work, of course. I was told about one such situation, where the chairman of a group once had the startling experience of yielding the floor to someone who launched out on a flaming address only to have another person talk at the same time. The chairman said, “Friends, this is impossible!” “Why that?” was the answer. “We're trying to live a philosophy of freedom here! Why should one's freedom be limited by allowing only one person to speak? Why can't several talk at the same time?” You will agree that some things won't work, but fortunately they're not always specifically called for. I, for my part, am thoroughly convinced that things will work again for awhile. Not for always, though; nothing can be set up for eternity. As time passes we will again find ourselves confronted with the necessity of devising new garments for the anthroposophical organism. But every human being shares that destiny; one can't keep on wearing the same old clothes. An organization is actually never anything more than a garment for some living element. Why, then, should one make a special case of social organisms and try to tailor them for eternity? Everything living has to undergo change, and only what changes is alive. In the case of something as particularly teeming with life as the Anthroposophical Movement we must therefore shape a life-adapted organization. Of course we can't attempt reorganization every single day, but we will certainly find it necessary to do so every other year or so. Otherwise the chairs occupied by the leading members will really become curule seats, and when some people make a specialty of resting on the curule seats, those not occupying them begin to itch. We must find a way to make sitters on curule seats itchy too. In other words, we're going to have to start jostling these chairs a little. But if we find the right way of arranging things, everything will go beautifully. My dear friends, my intention was to give you a report. I certainly did not feel it to be a joking matter. But things of real life are sometimes just exactly those most suited to a slightly humoristic treatment. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture IX
03 Mar 1923, Dornach Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Yesterday I undertook to give you a sort of report on the events that took place in Stuttgart. I went on to say that I would like to convey something of the substance of the lectures I delivered there. |
It shows itself in many kinds of discontent and psychic instability. But underlying them is the desire to be a distinct personality. The truth is, however, that no one can get along on earth without other human beings. |
For ours is a time when intellectual elements and forces have come especially strongly to the fore throughout the entire civilized world, with the result that there is no understanding for what a whole human being is. The longing for that understanding is indeed there, particularly in the case of modern youth. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture IX
03 Mar 1923, Dornach Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Yesterday I undertook to give you a sort of report on the events that took place in Stuttgart. I went on to say that I would like to convey something of the substance of the lectures I delivered there. So I will do that today, and tomorrow try to add further comment supplementing yesterday's report. The first lecture on Tuesday was conceived as a response to a quite definite need that had developed and made itself clearly felt during the discussions of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday; they have been described to you at least from the standpoint of the mood that prevailed there. The need I refer to was for a survey of the essentials of community building. Community building by human beings working in anthroposophy has recently played an important role in the Society. Young people in particular—but other, older ones as well—entered the Society with a keen longing to meet others in it with whom they could have a type of experience that life does not afford the single individual in today's social order. To say this is to call attention to a thoroughly understandable longing felt by many people of our time. As a result of the dawning of the age of consciousness, old social ties have lost their purely human content and their purely human strength. People always used to grow into some particular community. They did not become hermits; they grew into some quite specific community or other. They grew into the community of a family, a profession, a certain rank. Recently they have been growing into the communities we call social classes, and so on. These various communities have always carried certain responsibilities for the individual that he could not have carried for himself. One of the strongest bonds felt by men of modern times has been that of class. The old social groupings: those of rank, of nationality, even of race—have given way to a sense of belonging to a certain class. This has recently developed to a point where the members of a given class—the so-called higher classes or aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat—make common cause. Thus communities based on class have transcended national and even racial and other such loyalties, and a good many of the elements witnessed in modern international social life can be ascribed to these class communities. But the age of the consciousness soul, which began early in the fifteenth century and has come increasingly to the fore, has recently been making itself felt in human souls with growing urgency and vehemence. This has made human beings feel that they can no longer find in class communities any elements that could carry them into something beyond merely individual existence. On the one hand, modern man has a strong sense of individuality and cannot tolerate any interference with his life of individual thought and feeling. He wants to be recognized as a personality. That goes back to certain primal causes. If I may again resort to the terminology I used yesterday, I would say that since the end of Kali Yuga—or, in other words, since this century began—something has been stirring in contemporary souls, no matter how unconsciously, that could be expressed in the words, “I want to be a distinct individual.” Of course, not everybody could formulate it thus. It shows itself in many kinds of discontent and psychic instability. But underlying them is the desire to be a distinct personality. The truth is, however, that no one can get along on earth without other human beings. Historic ties and bonds like those that unite the proletariat in a sense of class belonging, for example, do not supply anything that on the one hand can satisfy the urge to be a distinct individual and on the other unite individuals with their fellowmen. Modern man wants the purely human element in himself to relate him to the purely human element in others. He does indeed want social ties, but he wants them to have an individual character like that experienced in personal friendships. An endless amount of what goes on between human beings in contemporary life can be traced to a craving for such human communities. It was quite evident a while ago when a group of younger people came to me wanting to bring about a renewal of Christianity. It was their belief that such a renewal could be achieved only by making the Christ impulse very much alive in the sense that anthroposophy has demonstrated. This longing felt by younger theologians, some of whom were just completing their training and were therefore about to assume pastoral duties, others of whom were still studying, was the element that gave birth to the latest offshoot of our Society, the Movement for Religious Renewal. Now quite a variety of things had to be done for this Movement for Religious Renewal. It was of first concern to bring the Christ impulse to life in a way suited to the present. To do this meant taking very seriously indeed the fact I have so often stressed: that the Christ not only spoke to human souls at the beginning of the Christian era but has carried out the promise that he made when he said, “I will be with you always, unto the very end of the earth.” This means that he can always be heard whenever a soul desires it, that a continuing Christ revelation is taking place. There had to be an ongoing evolution from the written Gospels to immediately living revelation of the Christ impulse. This was one aspect of the task of religious renewal. The other was one that I had to characterize at once by saying that religious renewal must bring communities into being, that it must build religious communities. Once a community has equipped an individual with knowledge, he can do something with it by himself. But that direct experience of the spiritual world, which is not based on thought but rather on feeling and is religious by nature, this experience of the spiritual world as divine can only be found by forming communities. So a healthy building of community must, I said, go hand in hand with the healthy development of religious life. The personalities who undertook the launching of this Movement for Religious Renewal were, at the outset, all Protestant theologians. Their attention could be called to the fact that it was just the Protestant denominations that had recently been tending to lay increasing emphasis on sermons, to the neglect of ritual. But preaching has an atomizing effect on communities. The sermon, which is intended to convey knowledge of the spiritual world, challenges the individual soul to form its own opinions. This fact is reflected in the particularly pronounced modern antagonism to the credo, the confession of beliefs, in an age when everyone wants to confess only to his own. This has led to an atomization, a blowing apart of the congregation, with a resultant focusing of the religious element on the individual. This would gradually bring about the dissolution of the soul elements of the social order if there were not to be a renewed possibility of building true community. But true community building can only be the product of a cultus derived from fresh revelations of the spiritual world. So the cultus now in use in the Movement for Religious Renewal was introduced. It takes mankind's historical evolution fully into account, and thus represents in many of its single details as well as in its overall aspects a carrying forward of the historical element. But its every aspect also bears the imprint of fresh revelations, which the spiritual world can only now begin to make to man's higher consciousness. The cultus unites those who come together at its celebration. It creates community, and Dr. Rittelmeyer said quite rightly, in the course of the Stuttgart deliberations, that in the community building power of the cultus the Movement for Religious Renewal presents a great danger—perhaps a very grave one—to the Anthroposophical Society. What was he pointing to when he said this? He was calling attention to the fact that many a person approaches the Society with the longing to find a link with others in a free community experience. Such communal life with the religious coloration that the cultus gives it can be attained, and people with such a longing for community life can satisfy it in the Movement for Religious Renewal. If the Society is not to be endangered, it must therefore also make a point of nurturing a community building element. Now this called attention to a fact of the greatest importance in this most recent phase of the Society's development. It pointed out that anthroposophists must acquire an understanding of community building. An answer must be found to the question whether the community building that is being achieved in the Movement for Religious Renewal is the only kind there is at present, or whether there are other possibilities of attaining the same goal in the Anthroposophical Society. This question can obviously only be answered by studying the nature of community building. But that impulse to build community, which modern man feels and the cultus can satisfy, is not the only one that moves him, strong though it is; there is still another. Every human being of the present feels both kinds of longings, and it is most desirable that each and every one should have his need met by providing community building elements not only in the Movement for Religious Renewal but in the Anthroposophical Society as well. When one is discussing something, one naturally has to clothe it in idea form. But what I am about to present in that form really lives at the feeling level in people of our time. Ideas are a device for making things clear. But what I want to talk about now is something that modern man experiences purely as feeling. The first kind of community building that we encounter the moment we set out on earthly life is one that we take quite for granted and seldom think about or weigh in feeling. That is the community built by language. We learn to speak our mother-tongue as little children, and this mother-tongue provides us with an especially strong community building element because it comes into the child's experience and is absorbed by him at a time when his etheric body is still wholly integrated with the rest of his organism and as yet quite undifferentiated. This means that the mother-tongue grows completely at one with his entire being. But it is also an element that groups of human beings share in common. People feel united by a common language, and if you remember something I have often mentioned, the fact that a spiritual being is embodied in a language, that the genius of language is not the abstraction learned men consider it but a real spiritual being, you will sense how a community based on a shared language rests on the fact that its members feel the presence of a real genius of speech. They feel sheltered beneath the wings of a real spiritual being. That is the case wherever community is built. All community building eventuates in a higher being descending from the world of the spirit to reign over and unite people who have come together in a common cause. But there is another, individual element eminently capable of creating community that can make its appearance when a group foregathers. A common tongue unites people because what one is saying can live in those who are listening to him; they thus share a common content. But now let us imagine that a number of individuals who spent their childhood and early schooldays together find an occasion of the sort that could and indeed often does present itself to meet again some thirty years later. This little group of forty- or fifty-year-olds, every one of whom spent his childhood in the same school and the same region, begins to talk of common experiences as children and young people. Something special comes alive in them that makes for quite a different kind of community than that created by a common tongue. When members of a group speaking the same language come, in the course of meeting and talking, to feel that they understand one another, their sense of belonging together is relatively superficial compared with what one feels when one's soul-depths are stirred by entertaining common memories. Every word has a special coloring, a special flavor, because it takes one back to a shared youth and childhood. What unites people in such moments of communal experience reaches deeper levels of their soul life. One feels related in deeper layers of one's being to those with whom one comes together on this basis. What is this basis of relationship? It consists of memories—memories of communal experiences of earlier days. One feels oneself transported to a vanished world where one once lived in company with these others with whom one is thus re-united. This is to describe an earthly situation that aptly illustrates the nature of the cultus. For what is intended with the cultus? Whether its medium be words or actions, it projects into the physical world, in an entirely different sense than our natural surroundings do, an image of the super-sensible, the spiritual world. Every plant, every process in external nature is, of course, also an image of something spiritual, but not in the direct sense that a rightly presented verbal or ceremonial facet of the cultus is. The words and actions of the cultus convey the super-sensible world in all its immediacy. The cultus is based on speaking words in the physical world in a way that makes the super-sensible world immediately present in them, on performing actions in a way that conveys forces of the super-sensible world. A cultus ritual is one in which something happens that is not limited to what the eyes see when they look physically at ritualistic acts; the fact is rather that forces of a spiritual, super-sensible nature permeate ordinary physical forces. A super-sensible event takes place in the physical act that pictures it. Man is thus directly united with the spiritual world by means of the physically perceptible words and actions of the cultus. Rightly presented, its words and actions bring to our experience on the physical plane a world that corresponds to the pre-earthly one from which we human beings have descended. In just the same sense in which forty- or fifty-year-olds who have met again feel themselves transported back into the world they shared in childhood does a person who joins others at the celebration of a genuine cultus feel himself transported back into a world he shared with them before they descended to the earth. He is not aware of this; it remains a subconscious experience, but it penetrates his feeling life all the more deeply for that very reason. The cultus is designed with this intent. It is designed with a view to giving man a real experience of something that is a memory, an image of his pre-earthly life, of his existence before he descended to the earth. The members of congregations based on a cultus feel especially keenly what, for purposes of illustration, I have just described as taking place when a group comes together in later life and exchanges memories of childhood: They feel transported into a world where they lived together in the super-sensible. This accounts for the binding ties created by a cultus-based community, and it has always been the reason why it did so. Where it is a matter of a religious life that does not have an atomizing effect because of its stress on preaching but instead emphasizes the cultus, the cultus will lead to the forming of a true community or congregation. No religious life can be maintained without the community building element. Thus a community based in this sense on common memories of the super-sensible is a community of sacraments as well. But no form of sacrament- or cultus-based community that remains standing where it is today can meet the needs of modern human beings. To be sure, it may be acceptable to many people. But cultus-based congregations would not achieve their full potential or—more important still—reach their real goal if they were to remain nothing more than communities united by common memories of super-sensible experience. This has created an increasing need for introducing sermons into the cultus. The trouble is that the atomizing tendency of sermons as these are presently conceived by the Protestant denominations has become very marked, because the real needs arising from the consciousness soul development of this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch have not been taken into account. The concept of preaching in the older confessions is still based on the needs of the Fourth Post-Atlantean period. In these older churches, sermons conform to the world view that prevailed during the period of intellectual soul development. They are no longer suited to the modern consciousness. That is why the Protestant churches have gone over to a form of presentation that makes its appeal more to human opinion, to conscious human understanding. There is every good reason for doing this, of course. On the other hand, no really right way of doing it has yet been found. A sermon contained within the cultus is a misfit; it leads away from the cultus in a cognitive direction. But this problem has not been well recognized in the form preaching has taken in the course of man's ongoing evolution. You will see this immediately when I remind you of a certain fact. You will see how little there is left when we omit sermons of more recent times that do not take a Biblical text. In most cases, Sunday sermons as well as those delivered on special occasions take some quotation from the Bible for their text because fresh, living revelation such as is also available in the present is rejected. Historical tradition remains the only source resorted to. In other words, a more individual form of sermon is being sought, but the key to it has not been found. Thus sermons eventuate in mere opinion, personal opinion, with atomizing effect. Now if the recently established Movement for Religious Renewal, built as it is in all essentials on an anthroposophical foundation, reckons with fresh, ongoing revelation, with a living spiritual experience of the super-sensible world, then it will be just the sermon factor that will bring it to recognize its need for something further. This something is the same thing that makes fresh, ongoing, living knowledge of the spiritual world possible, namely, anthroposophical spiritual science. I might express it by saying that sermons will always be the windows through which the Movement for Religious Renewal will have to receive what an ongoing, living Anthroposophical Society must give it. But as I said when I spoke of the Movement for Religious Renewal at the last lecture I gave over there in the still intact Goetheanum, if the Movement for Religious Renewal is to grow, the Anthroposophical Society will have to stand by it in the liveliest possible way, with all the living life of anthroposophy flowing to it from a number of human beings as the channel. The Movement for Religious Renewal would soon go dry if it were not to have at least some people standing by it in whom anthroposophical cognition is a really living element. But as I said, many individuals are presently entering the Society, seeking anthroposophy not just in the abstract but in the community belonging that satisfies a yearning of the age of consciousness. It might be suggested that the Society too should adopt a cultus. It could do this, of course, but that would take it outside its proper sphere. I will therefore now go on to discuss the specifically anthroposophical way of building community. Modern life definitely has other community building elements to offer besides that based on common memories of pre-natal experience of the super-sensible world. The element I have in mind is one that is needed by the present in a form especially adapted to the age of consciousness. In this connection I must point out something that goes entirely unnoticed by most human beings of our time. There has, to be sure, always been talk of idealism. But when idealism is mentioned nowadays, such talk amounts to little more than hollow phrases, even in the mouths of the well-meaning. For ours is a time when intellectual elements and forces have come especially strongly to the fore throughout the entire civilized world, with the result that there is no understanding for what a whole human being is. The longing for that understanding is indeed there, particularly in the case of modern youth. But the very indefiniteness of the form in which youth conceives it shows that something lives in human souls today that has not declared itself at all distinctly; it is still undifferentiated, and it will not become the less naive for being differentiated. Now please note the following. Imagine yourselves back in times when religious streams were rising and inundating humankind. You will find that in those bygone periods of human evolution this and that proclamation from the spiritual world was being greeted by many people with enormous enthusiasm. Indeed, it would have been completely impossible for the confessions extant today to find the strength to carry people if, at the time of these proclamations, souls had not felt a much greater affinity for revelations from the spiritual world than is felt today. Observing people nowadays, one simply cannot imagine them being carried away by anything in the nature of a proclamation of religious truths such as used to take place in earlier ages. Of course, sects do form, but there is a philistine quality about them in great contrast to the fiery response of human souls to earlier proclamations. One no longer finds the same inner warmth of soul toward things of the spirit. It suffered a rapid diminution in the last third of the nineteenth century. Granted, discontent still drives people to listen to this or that, and to join one or another church. But the positive warmth that used to live in human souls and was solely responsible for enabling individuals to put their whole selves at the service of the spirit has been replaced by a certain cool or even cold attitude. This coolness is manifest in human souls today when they speak of ideals and idealism. For nowadays the matter of chief concern is something that still has a long way to go to its fulfillment, that still has a long waiting period before it, but that as expectation is already very much alive in many human souls today. I can characterize it for you in the following way. Let us take two states of consciousness familiar to everybody, and imagine a dreaming person and someone in a state of ordinary waking consciousness. What is the situation of the dreamer? It is the same as that of a sleeping person. For though we may speak of dreamless sleep, the fact is that sleepers are always dreaming, though their dreams may be so faint as to go unnoticed. What, I repeat, is the dreamer's situation? He is living in his own dream-picture world. As he lives in it he frequently finds it a good deal more vivid and gripping—this much can certainly be said—than his everyday waking experience. But he is experiencing it in complete isolation. It is his purely personal experience. Two people may be sleeping in one and the same room, yet be experiencing two wholly different worlds in their dream consciousness. They cannot share each other's experience. Each has his own, and the most they can do is tell one another about it afterwards. When a person wakes and exchanges his dream consciousness for that of everyday, he has the same sense perception of his surroundings that those about him have. They begin to share a communal scene. A person wakes to a shared world when he leaves dreams behind and enters a day-waking state of consciousness. What wakes him out of the one consciousness into the other? It is light and sound and the natural environment that rouse him to the ordinary day-waking state, and other people are in the same category for him. One wakes up from dreams by the natural aspects of one's fellowmen, by what they are saying, by the way they clothe their thoughts and feelings in the language they use. One is awakened by the way other people naturally behave. Everything in one's natural environment wakes one to normal day consciousness. In all previous ages people woke up from the dream state to day-waking consciousness. And these same surroundings provided a person with the gate through which, if he was so minded, he entered spiritual realms. Then a new element made its appearance in human life with the awakening and development of the consciousness soul. This calls for a second kind of awakening, one for which the human race will feel a growing need: an awakening at hand of the souls and spirits of other human beings. In ordinary waking life one awakens only in meeting another's natural aspects. But a person who has become an independent, distinct individual in the age of consciousness wants to wake up in the encounter with the soul and spirit of his fellowman. He wants to awaken to his soul and spirit, to approach him in a way that startles his own soul awake in the same sense that light and sound and other such environmental elements startle one out of dreaming. This has been felt as an absolutely basic need since the beginning of the twentieth century, and it will grow increasingly urgent. It is a need that will be apparent throughout the twentieth century, despite the time's chaotic, tumultuous nature, which will affect every phase of life and civilization. Human beings will feel this need—the need to be brought to wake up more fully in the encounter with the other person than one can wake up in regard to the merely natural surroundings. Dream life wakes up into wakeful day consciousness in the encounter with the natural environment. Wakeful day consciousness wakes up to a higher consciousness in the encounter with the soul and spirit of our fellowman. Man must become more to his fellowman than he used to be: he must become his awakener. People must come closer to one another than they used to do, each becoming an awakener of everyone he meets. Modern human beings entering life today have stored up far too much karma not to feel a destined connection with every individual they encounter. In earlier ages, souls were younger and had not formed so many karmic ties. Now it has become necessary to be awakened not just by nature but by the human beings with whom we are karmically connected and whom we want to seek. So, in addition to the need to recall one's super-sensible home, which the cultus meets, we have the further need to be awakened to the soul-spiritual element by other human beings, and the feeling impulse that can bring this about is that of the newer idealism. When the ideal ceases to be a mere abstraction and becomes livingly reunited with man's soul and spirit, it can be expressed in the words, “I want to wake up in the encounter with my fellowman.” This is the feeling that, vague though it is, is developing in youth today, “I want to be awakened by my fellowman,” and this is the particular form in which community can be nurtured in the Anthroposophical Society. It is the most natural development imaginable for when people come together for a communal experience of what anthroposophy can reveal of the super-sensible, the experience is quite a different one from any that the individual could have alone. The fact that one wakes up in the encounter with the soul of the other during the time spent in his company creates an atmosphere that, while it may not lead one into the super-sensible world in exactly the way described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, furthers one's understanding of the ideas that anthroposophical spiritual science brings us from super-sensible realms. There is a different understanding of things among people who share a common idealistic life based on mutual communication of an anthroposophical content, whether by reading aloud or in some other way. Through experiencing the super-sensible together, one human soul is awakened most intensively in the encounter with another human soul. It wakes the soul to higher insight, and this frame of mind creates a situation that causes a real communal being to descend in a group of people gathered for the purpose of mutually communicating and experiencing anthroposophical ideas. Just as the genius of a language lives in that language and spreads its wings over those who speak it, so do those who experience anthroposophical ideas together in the right, idealistic frame of mind live in the shelter of the wings of a higher being. Now what takes place as a result? If this line (Dr. Steiner draws on the blackboard) represents the demarcation between the super-sensible and the sense world, we have, here above it, the processes and beings of the higher world experienced in the cultus; they are projected by the words and ritualistic acts of the cultus into the physical world here below the line. In the case of an anthroposophical group, experience on the physical plane is lifted by the strength of its genuine, spiritualized idealism into the spiritual world. The cultus brings the super-sensible down into the physical world with its words and actions. The anthroposophical group raises the thoughts and feelings of the assembled individuals into the super-sensible, and when an anthroposophical content is experienced in the right frame of mind by a group of human beings whose souls wake up in the encounter with each other, the soul is lifted in reality into a spirit community. It is only a question of this awareness really being present. Where it exists and groups of this kind make their appearance in the Anthroposophical Society, there we have in this reversed cultus, as I shall call it, in this polar opposite of the cultus, a most potent community building element. If I were to speak pictorially, I would put it thus: the community of the cultus seeks to draw the angels of heaven down to the place where the cultus is being celebrated, so that they may be present in the congregation, whereas the anthroposophical community seeks to lift human souls into super-sensible realms so that they may enter the company of angels. In both cases that is what creates community. But if anthroposophy is to serve man as a real means of entering the spiritual world, it may not be mere theory and abstraction. We must do more than just talk about spiritual beings; we must look for the opportunities nearest at hand to enter their company. The work of an anthroposophical group does not consist in a number of people merely discussing anthroposophical ideas. Its members should feel so linked with one another that human soul wakes up in the encounter with human soul and all are lifted into the spiritual world, into the company of spiritual beings, though it need not be a question of beholding them. We do not have to see them to have this experience. This is the strength-giving element that can emerge from groups that have come into being within the Society through the right practice of community building. Some of the fine things that really do exist in the Society must become more common; that is what new members have been missing. They have looked for them, but have not found them. What they have encountered has instead been some such statement as, “If you want to be a real anthroposophist you must believe in reincarnation and the etheric body,” and so on. I have often pointed out that there are two ways of reading a book like my Theosophy. One is to read, “Man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc., and lives repeated earth lives and has a karma, etc.” A reader of this kind is taking in concepts. They are, of course, rather different concepts than one finds elsewhere, but the mental process that is going on is in many respects identical with what takes place when one studies a cookbook. My point was exactly that the process is the important thing, not the absorption of ideas. It makes no difference whether you are reading, “Put butter into a frying pan, add flour, stir; add the beaten eggs, etc.,” or, “There is physical matter, etheric forces, astral forces, and they interpenetrate each other.” It is all one from the standpoint of the soul process involved whether butter, eggs and flour are being mixed at a stove or the human entelechy is conceived as a mixture of physical, etheric and astral bodies. But one can also read Theosophy in such a manner as to realize that it contains concepts that stand in the same relation to the world of ordinary physical concepts as the latter does to the dream world. They belong to a world to which one has to awaken out of the ordinary physical realm in just the way one wakes out of one's dream world into the physical. It is the attitude one has in reading that gives things the right coloring. That attitude can, of course, be brought to life in present-day human beings in a variety of ways. They are all described and there to choose from in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But modern man also needs to go through the transitional phase—one not to be confused with actually beholding higher worlds—of waking up in the encounter with the soul-spiritual aspect of his fellowman to the point of living into the spiritual world just as he awakes from dreams into the physical world through the stimulus of light and sound, etc. We must rise to an understanding of this matter. We have to come to understand what anthroposophy ought to be within the Anthroposophical Society. It should be a path to the spirit. When it becomes that, community building will be the outcome. But anthroposophy must really be applied to life. That is the essential thing, my dear friends. How essential it is can be illustrated by an example close at hand. After we had had many smaller meetings with a varying number of people there in Stuttgart and had debated what should be done to consolidate the Society, I came together with the young people. I am not referring to the meeting I reported on yesterday, which was held later; this was a prior meeting, but also one held at night. These particular young people were all students. Well, first there was some talk about the best way to arrange things so that the Society would function properly, and so on. But after awhile the conversation shifted to anthroposophy itself. We got right into its very essence because these young men and women felt the need to enquire into the form studies ought to take in future, how the problem of doctoral dissertations should be handled, and other such questions. It was not possible to answer them superficially; we had to plunge right into anthroposophy. In other words, we began with philistine considerations and immediately got into questions of anthroposophy and its application, such as, “How does one go about writing a doctoral dissertation as an anthroposophist? How does one pursue a subject like chemistry?” Anthroposophy proved itself life-oriented, for deliberations such as these led over into it quite of themselves. The point is that anthroposophy should never remain abstract learning. Matters can, of course, be so arranged that people are summoned to a meeting called for the purpose of deciding how the Society should be set up, with a conversation about anthroposophy as a further item on the agenda. This would be a superficial approach. I am not suggesting it, but rather a much more inward one that would lead over quite of itself from a consideration of everyday problems to the insight that anthroposophy should be called upon to help solve them. One sees the quickening effect it has on life in just such a case as the one cited, where people were discussing the re-shaping of the Society only to end up, quite as a matter of organic necessity, in a discussion of how the anthroposophist and the scientific philistine must conceive the development of the embryo from their respective standpoints. We must make a practice of this rather than of a system of double-entry bookkeeping that sets down such philistine entries on one page as “Anthroposophical Society,” “Union for a Free Spiritual Life,” and so on. Real life should be going on without a lot of theory and abstractions and a dragging in of supposedly anthroposophical sayings such as “In anthroposophy man must find his way to man,” and so on. Abstractions of this kind must not be allowed to play a role. Instead, a concrete anthroposophical approach should lead straight to the core of every matter of concern. When that happens, one seldom hears the phrase, “That is anthroposophical, or un-anthroposophical.” Indeed, in such cases the word “anthroposophy” is seldom spoken. We need to guard against fanatical talk. My dear friends, this is not a superficial matter, as you will see. At the last Congress in Vienna I had to give twelve lectures on a wide range of subjects, and I set myself the task of never once mentioning the word “anthroposophy.” And I succeeded! You will not discover the word “anthroposophy” or “anthroposophical” in a single one of the twelve lectures given last June in Vienna. The experiment was a success. Surely one can make a person's acquaintance without having any special interest in whether his name is Mueller and what his title is. One just takes him as he is. If we take anthroposophy livingly, just as it is, without paying much attention to what its name is, this will be a good course for us to adopt. We will speak further about these things tomorrow, and I will then give you something more in the way of a report. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture X
04 Mar 1923, Dornach Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Even though that neighbor may be acting sensibly, it is possible for a dreamer under the influence of his dream pictures to say to him, “You are a stupid fellow. I know better than you do.” |
The point is that where it is a case of presenting knowledge of the super-sensible, not only are the matters under discussion different; they have to be spoken of in a different way. This must be taken into account. If one is really deeply convinced that understanding anthroposophy involves a shift from one level of consciousness to another, anthroposophy will become as fruitful in life as it ought to be. |
257. Awakening to Community: Lecture X
04 Mar 1923, Dornach Translated by Marjorie Spock Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Today I would like to report to you on the second lecture I gave in Stuttgart. It will not be so much a verbatim account of what was said there as a fresh discussion of the matters dealt with in that lecture, and I shall also want to include some comment on the Stuttgart conference itself. The purpose of the second lecture was to show the reasons why certain things that ought never to happen, particularly in a Society like ours, do nevertheless so easily occur and are such a familiar phenomenon to those acquainted with the history of societies based on a spiritual view of life. As you know, there have always been societies of this kind, and they were always adapted to their period. In earlier ages, the kind of consciousness required for entrance into the spiritual world was different from the kind we need today. As a rule people who joined forces to establish some form of cognition based on higher, super-sensible insight included among their goals the cultivation of a brotherly spirit in the membership. But you know, too, as do all those familiar with the history of these societies, that brotherliness all too easily came to grief, that it has been especially in societies built on spiritual foundations that the greatest disharmony and the worst offenses against brotherliness burgeoned. Now if anthroposophy is properly conceived, the Anthroposophical Society is thoroughly insured against such unbrotherly developments. But it is by no means always properly conceived. Perhaps it will help toward its fuller comprehension if light is thrown on the reasons for the breakdown of brotherly behavior. Let us, to start with, review the matters brought up yesterday. I pointed out that we distinguish between three levels of consciousness: that of ordinary waking life, that of dreams, and finally that of dreamless sleep. Man's dream pictures are experienced as a world he inhabits. While he is dreaming, it is perfectly possible for him to mistake his dreams for reality, for events just as real as those that take place in the physical world where he finds himself during his waking life. But as I said yesterday, there is a tremendous difference between dream experiences and those of waking. A dreamer is isolated in his dream experiences. And I pointed out that someone else can be asleep beside him and have quite different dreams, hence be living in a different world. Neither can communicate anything about his world of dreams to his fellow dreamer. Even if ten people are sleeping in a single room, each has only his own world before him. This does not seem at all surprising to one who is able to enter the often marvelous dream world as a spiritual scientist, for the world in which a dreamer lives is also real. But the pictures it presents derive in every case from factors of purely individual concern. To be sure, dreams do clothe the experiences they convey in pictures borrowed from the physical plane. But as I have often pointed out, these pictures are merely outer coverings. The reality—and there is indeed reality in dreams—hides behind the pictures, which express it only superficially. A person who explores dreams in a spiritual-scientific sense with the purpose of discovering their meaning studies not the pictures but the dramatic element running through them. One person may be seeing one dream scene, another an entirely different one. But for both there may be an experience of climbing or of standing on the edge of an abyss or of confronting some danger, and finally a release of tension. The essential thing is the dream's dramatic course, which it merely clothes in pictorial elements. This unfolding drama often has its source in past earth lives, or it may point to future incarnations. It is the unwinding thread of destiny in human life—running, perhaps, through many incarnations—that plays into dreams. Man's individual core is what is involved here. He is outside his body with his ego and astrality. That is to say, he is outside his body with the ego that he takes from one incarnation to another, and he is in his astral body, which means that he is living in the world that embraces experience of all the surrounding processes and beings in the midst of which we live before we descend to earth and find again when we return to live in a world beyond the senses after death. But in sleep we are also isolated from our physical and etheric bodies. Dreams clothe themselves in pictures when the astral body is either just coming back into contact with the ether body or just separating from it, that is, on awakening and on falling asleep. But the dreams are there, even though one has no inkling of their presence when in an ordinary state of consciousness. Man dreams straight through the time he is sleeping. This means that he is occupied solely with his own concerns during that period. But when he wakes, he returns to a world that he shares in common with the people about him. It is then no longer possible for ten individuals to be in one room with each living in a world apart; the room's interior becomes the common world of all. When people are together on the physical plane, they experience a world in common. I called attention yesterday to the fact that a shift in consciousness, a further awakening is necessary to enter those worlds from which we draw genuine knowledge of the super-sensible, knowledge of man's true being, such as anthroposophy is there to make available. These, then, are the three stages of consciousness. But now let us suppose that the kind of picture consciousness that is normally developed by a sleeping person is carried over into the ordinary day-waking state, into situations on the physical plane. There are such cases. Due to disturbances in the human organism, a person may conceive the physical world as it is normally conceived in dream life only. In other words, he lives in pictures that have significance for him alone. This is the case in what is called an abnormal mental state, and it is due to some illness in the physical or etheric organism. A person suffering from it can shut himself off from experiencing the outer world, as he does in sleep. His sick organism then causes pictures to rise up in him such as ordinarily present themselves only in dreams. Of course, there are many degrees of this affliction, ranging all the way from trifling disturbances of normal soul life to conditions of real mental illness. Now what happens when a person carries over a dream conditioned state of mind into ordinary physical earth life? In that case, his relationship to his fellowman is just what it would be if he were sleeping next to him. He is isolated from him, his consciousness absorbed by something that he cannot share. This gives rise to a special egotism for which he cannot be held wholly responsible. He is aware only of what is going on in his own soul, knowing nothing of what goes on in any other's. We human beings are drawn into a common life by having common sense impressions about which we then form common thoughts. But when someone projects a dreaming state of mind into ordinary earth life, he isolates himself, becomes an egotist, and lives alongside his fellowman making assertions about things to which the other can have no access in his experience. You must all have had personal experience of the degree of egotism to which this carrying over of dream life into everyday life can mislead human beings. There can be a similar straying from a wholesome path, however, in cases where people join others in, say, a group where anthroposophical truths are being studied, but where the situation I was characterizing yesterday fails to develop, namely, that one soul wakes up in the encounter with the other to a certain higher state, not of consciousness, perhaps, but of feeling awakened to a higher, more intense experiencing. Then the degree of self-seeking that it is right to have in the physical world is projected into one's conceiving of the spiritual world. Just as someone becomes an egotist when he projects his dream consciousness into the physical world, so does a person who introduces into his approach to higher realms a soul-mood or state of mind appropriate to the physical world become to some degree an egotist in his relationship to the spiritual world. But this is true of many people. A desire for sensation gives them an interest in the fact that man has a physical, an etheric and an astral body, lives repeated earth lives, has a karma, etc. They inform themselves about such things in the same way they would in the case of any other fact or truth of physical reality. Indeed, we see this evidenced every day in the way anthroposophy is presently combatted. Scientists of the ordinary kind, for example, turn up insisting that anthroposophy prove itself by ordinary means. This is exactly as though one were to seek proof from dream pictures about things going on in the physical world. How ridiculous it would be for someone to say, “I will only believe that so and so many people are gathered in this room and than an anthroposophical lecture is being given here if I dream about it afterwards.” Just think how absurd that would be! But it is just as absurd for someone who hears anthroposophical truths to say that he will only believe them if ordinary science, which has application only on the physical plane, proves them. One need only enter into things seriously and objectively for them to become perfectly transparent. Just as one becomes an egotist when one projects dream conceptions into physical situations, so does a person who projects into the conceptions he needs to have of higher realms views such as apply only to things of ordinary life, becomes the more isolated, withdrawn, insistent that he alone is right. But that is what people actually do. Indeed, most individuals are looking for some special aspect of anthroposophy. Something in their view of life draws them in sympathetic feeling to this or that element found in it, and they would be happy to have it true. So they accept it, and since it cannot be proved on the physical plane they look to anthroposophy to prove it. Thus a state of consciousness applicable to the ordinary physical world is carried over into an approach to higher realms. So, despite all one's brotherly precepts, an unbrotherly element is brought into the picture, just as a person dreaming on the physical plane can behave in a most unbrotherly fashion toward his neighbor. Even though that neighbor may be acting sensibly, it is possible for a dreamer under the influence of his dream pictures to say to him, “You are a stupid fellow. I know better than you do.” Similarly, someone who forms his conceptions of the higher world with pretensions carried over from life on the physical plane can say to an associate who has a different view of things, “You are a stupid fellow,” or a bad man, or the like. The point is that one has to develop an entirely different attitude, an entirely different way of feeling in relation to the spiritual world, which eradicates an unbrotherly spirit and gives brotherliness a chance to develop. The nature of anthroposophy is such as to bring this about in fullest measure, but it needs to be conceived with avoidance of sectarianism and other similar elements, which really derive from the physical world. If one knows the reasons why an unbrotherly spirit can so easily crop up in just those societies built on a spiritual foundation, one also knows how such a danger can be avoided by undertaking to transform one's soul orientation when one joins with others in cultivating knowledge of the higher worlds. This is also the reason why those who say, “I'll believe what I've seen there after I've dreamed it,” and behave accordingly toward anthroposophy, are so alienated by the language in which anthrosophy is presented. How many people say that they cannot bear the language used in presenting anthroposophy, as for example in my books! The point is that where it is a case of presenting knowledge of the super-sensible, not only are the matters under discussion different; they have to be spoken of in a different way. This must be taken into account. If one is really deeply convinced that understanding anthroposophy involves a shift from one level of consciousness to another, anthroposophy will become as fruitful in life as it ought to be. For even though it has to be experienced in a soul condition different from the ordinary, nevertheless what one gains from it for one's whole soul development and character will in turn have a moral, religious, artistic and cognitive effect on the physical world in the same sense that the physical world affects the dream world. We need only be clear as to what level of reality we are dealing with. When we are dreaming, we do not need to be communicating with or standing in any particular relationship to other human beings, for as dreamers we are really working on our ongoing egos. What we are doing behind the façade of our dream pictures concerns only ourselves. We are working on our karma there. No matter what scene a dream may be picturing, one's soul, one's ego are working behind it on one's karma. Here on the physical plane we work at matters of concern to a physically embodied human race. We have to work with other people to make our contributions to mankind's overall development. In the spiritual world we work with intelligences that are beings like ourselves, except that instead of living in physical bodies they live in a spiritual element, in spiritual substance. It is a different world, that world from which super-sensible truth is gleaned, and each of us has to adapt himself to it. That is the key point I have stressed in so many lectures given here: Anthroposophical cognition cannot be absorbed in the way we take in other learning. It must above all be approached with a different feeling—the feeling that it gives one a sudden jolt of awakening such as one experiences at hand of colors pouring into one's eyes, of tones pouring into one's ears, waking one out of the self-begotten pictures of the dream world. Just as knowing where there is a weak place in an icy surface enables a person to avoid breaking through it, so can someone who knows the danger of developing egotism through a wrong approach to spiritual truth avoid creating unbrotherly conditions. In relating to spiritual truth, one has constantly to develop to the maximum a quality that may be called tolerance in the best sense of the word. Tolerance must characterize the relationships of human beings pursuing anthroposophical spiritual science together. Looking from this angle at the beauty of human tolerance, one is immediately aware how essential it is to educate oneself to it in this particular period. It is the most extraordinary thing that nobody nowadays really ever listens to anybody else. Is it ever possible to start a sentence without someone interrupting to state his own view of the matter, with a resultant clash of opinion? It is a fundamental characteristic of modern civilization that nobody listens, that nobody respects anyone's opinion but his own, and that those who do not share his opinions are looked upon as dunces. But when a person expresses an opinion, my dear friends, it is a human being's opinion, no matter how foolish we may think it, and we must be able to accept it, to listen to it. I am going to make a highly paradoxical statement. A person whose soul is attuned to the intellectual outlook of the day has no difficulty being clever. Every single person knows the clever thing, and I am not saying that it isn't clever; it usually is, in fact. But that works only up to a certain point, and up to that point a smart person considers everyone who isn't yet of his opinion stupid. We encounter this attitude all the time, and in ordinary life situations it can be justified. A person who has developed a sound judgment about various matters really finds it a dreadful trial to have to listen to someone else's foolish views about them, and he can hardly be blamed for feeling that way. But that is true only up to a point. One can become cleverer than clever by developing something further. Supersensible insight can endow cleverness with a different quality. Then the strange thing is that one's interest in foolishness increases rather than decreases. If one has acquired a little wisdom, one even takes pleasure in hearing people say something foolish, if you will forgive my putting it so bluntly. One sometimes finds such stupidities cleverer than the things people of an average degree of cleverness say, because they often issue from a far greater humanness than underlies the average cleverness of the average of clever people. An ever deepening insight into the world increases one's interest in human foolishness, for these things look different at differing world levels. The stupidities of a person who may seem a fool to clever people in the ordinary physical world can, under certain circumstances, reveal things that are wisdom in a different world, even though the form they take may be twisted and caricatured. To borrow one of Nietzsche's sayings, the world is really “deeper than the day would credit.” Our world of feeling must be founded on such recognitions if the Anthroposophical Society—or, in other words, the union of those who pursue anthroposophy—is to be put on a healthy basis. Then a person who knows that one has to relate differently to the spiritual world than one does to the physical will bring things of the spiritual world into the physical in the proper way. Such a person becomes a practical man in the physical world rather than a dreamer, and that is what is so vitally necessary. It is really essential that one not be rendered useless for the physical world by becoming an anthroposophist. This must be stressed over and over again. That is what I wanted to set forth in my second Stuttgart lecture in order to throw light on the way individual members of the Society need to conceive the proper fostering of its life. For that life is not a matter of cognition, but of the heart, and this fact must be recognized. Of course, the circumstances of a person's life may necessitate his traveling a lonely path apart. That can be done too. But our concern in Stuttgart was with the life-requirements of the Anthroposophical Society; these had to be brought up for discussion there. If the Society is to continue, those who want to be part of it will have to take an interest in what its life-requirements are. But that will have to include taking an interest in problems occasioned by a constantly increasing enmity toward the Society. I had to go into this too in Stuttgart. I said that many enterprises have been launched in the Society since 1919, and that though this was good in itself, the right way of incorporating them into the Anthroposophical Movement—in other words, of making them the common concern of the membership—had not been found. New members should not be reproached for taking no interest in something launched before their time and simply seeking anthroposophy in a narrower sense, as the young people do. But it is these new enterprises that have really been responsible for the growing enmity toward our Movement. There was hostility before, to be sure, but we did not have to pay any attention to it. Now in this context I had to say something on the subject of our opponents that needs to be known in the Anthroposophical Society. I have talked to you, my dear friends, about the three phases of the Society's development and called attention to the fact that in the last or third phase, from 1916 or 1917 to the present, the fruits of a great deal of anthroposophical research into the super-sensible world have been conveyed to you in lectures. That required a lot of work in the form of genuine spiritual research. Anyone who looks dispassionately at the facts can discern the great increase in the amount of material gleaned from the spiritual world in recent years and put before you in lectures. Now we certainly have any number of opponents who simply do not know why they adopt a hostile stand; they just go along with others, finding it comfortable to be vague about their reasons. But there are a few leading figures among them who know full well what they are up to and who are interested in suppressing and stamping out truths about the spiritual world such as can alone raise the level of human dignity and restore peace on earth. The rest of the opponents go along with these, but the leaders do not want to have anthroposophical truth made available. Their opposition is absolutely conscious, and so is their effort to stimulate it in their followers. What are they really intent on achieving? If I may refer to myself in this connection, they are trying to keep me so preoccupied with their attacks that I cannot find time for actual anthroposophical research. One has to have a certain quiet to pursue it, a kind of inner activity that is far removed from the sort of thing one would have to be doing if one were to undertake a defense against our opponents' often ridiculous attacks. Now in a truly brilliant lecture that he gave in Stuttgart, Herr Werbeck called attention to the large number of hostile books written by theologians alone. I think he listed a dozen or more—so many, at any rate, that it would take all one's time just to read them. Imagine what refuting them would entail! One would never get to any research, and this is only one field among many. At least as many books have been written by people in various other fields. One is actually bombarded with hostile writings intended to keep one from the real work of anthroposophy. That is the quite deliberate intention. But it is possible, if one has what one needs to balance it, to foster anthroposophy and push these books aside. I do not even know many of their titles. Those I have I usually just throw in a pile, since one cannot carry on true spiritual research and simultaneously concern oneself with such attacks. Then our opponents say, “He is not answering us himself.” But others can deal with their assertions, and since the enterprises launched since 1919 were started on others' initiative, the Society should take over its responsibility in this area. It should take on the battle with opponents, for otherwise it will prove impossible really to keep up anthroposophical research. That is exactly what our opponents want. Indeed, they would like best of all to find grounds for lawsuits. There is every indication that they are looking for such opportunities. For they know that this would require a shift in the direction of one's attention and a change of soul mood that would interfere with true anthroposophical activity. Yes, my dear friends, most of our opponents know very well indeed what they are about, and they are well organized. But these facts should be known in the Anthroposophical Society too. If the right attention is paid to them, action will follow. I have given you a report on what we accomplished in Stuttgart in the direction of enabling the Society to go on working for awhile. But there was a moment when I really should have said that I would have to withdraw from the Society because of what happened. There are other reasons now, of course, why that cannot be, since the Society has recently admitted new elements from which one may not withdraw. But if I had made my decision on the basis of what happened at a certain moment there in the assembly hall in Stuttgart, I would have been fully justified in saying that I would have to withdraw from the Society and try to make anthroposophy known to the world in some other way. The moment I refer to was that in which the following incident occurred. The Committee of Nine had scheduled a number of reports on activities in various areas of the Society. These were to include reports on the Waldorf School, the Union for a Free Spiritual Life, Der Kommende Tag, the journals Anthroposophy and Die Drei, and so on, and there was also to be a discussion of our opponents and ways of handling them. Now as I said, Werbeck, who has been occupying himself with the problem of opponents, gave a brilliant lecture on how to handle them from the literary angle. But concrete details of the matter were still to be discussed. What happened? Right in the middle of Werbeck's report there was a motion to cut it off and cancel the reports in favor of going on with the discussion. Without knowing anything of what had been happening in the Society, it was proposed that the discussion continue. There was a motion to omit reports right in the middle of the report on opponents! And the motion was carried. A further grotesque event occurred. Very late on the previous evening, Dr. Stein had given a report on the youth movement. Herr Leinhas, who was chairman of the meeting, was hardly to be envied, for as I told you two days ago, he was literally bombarded with motions on agenda items. As soon as one such motion was made, another followed on its heels, until nobody could see how the debate was to be handled. Now the people who had come to attend the delegates' convention were not as good at sitting endlessly as those who had done the preparatory work. In Stuttgart everyone is used to sitting. We have often had meetings there that began no later than 9:30 or 10 p.m. and went on until six o'clock in the morning. But as I said, the delegates hadn't had that training. So it was late before Dr. Stein began his report on the youth movement, on the young people's wishes, and due to some mistake or other no one was certain whether he would give it, with the result that a lot of people left the hall. He did give his report, however, and when people returned the following day and found that he had given it in their absence, a motion was made to have him give it again. Nothing came of this because he wasn't there. But when he did arrive to give a report on our opponents, events turned in the direction of people's not only not wanting to hear his report twice over but not even wanting to hear it once; a motion to that effect was passed. So he gave his report on a later occasion. But this report should have culminated in a discussion of specific opposition. To my surprise, Stein had mentioned none of the specifics, but instead developed a kind of metaphysics of enmity toward anthroposophy, so that it was impossible to make out what the situation really was. His report was very ingenious, but restricted itself to the metaphysics of enmity instead of supplying specific material on the actual enemies. The occasion served to show that the whole Society—for the delegates were representing the whole German Anthroposophical Society—simply did not want to hear about opponents! This is perfectly understandable, of course. But to be informed about these matters is so vital to any insight into what life-conditions the Society requires that a person who turns down an ideal opportunity to become acquainted with them cannot mean seriously by the Society. The way anthroposophy is represented before the world depends above all else on how the Society's members relate to the enmity that is growing stronger every day. This, then, was the moment when the way the meeting was going should really have resulted in my saying that I couldn't go on participating if the members were solely interested in repeating slogans like, “Humanness must encounter humanness” and other such platitudes. They were paraphrased more than abundantly in Stuttgart—not discussed, just paraphrased. But of course one can't withdraw from something that exists not just in one's imagination but in reality; one can't withdraw from the Anthroposophical Society! So these matters too had to be overlooked in favor of searching for a solution such as I described to you on Saturday: On the one hand the old Society going on in all its reality, and on the other a loose confederation coming into being, eventuating in the forming of communities in the sense reported, with some bridging group to relate the two opposite elements. For we must be absolutely clear that anthroposophy is something for eternity. Every individual can therefore study it all by himself, and he has every right to do so, without taking the least interest in the Anthroposophical Society. It would be quite possible—and until 1918 this was actually the way things were—to spread anthroposophy entirely by means of books or by giving lectures to those interested in hearing them. Until 1918 the Society was just what such a society should be, because it could have stopped existing any day without affecting anthroposophy itself. Non-members genuinely interested in anthroposophy had every bit as much access to everything as they would have had through the Society. The Society merely provided opportunities for members to work actively together and for human souls to be awakened by their fellow souls. But on the initiative of this and that individual, activities going on in the Society developed into projects that are now binding upon us. They exist, and cannot be arbitrarily dissolved. The old Society must go on seeing to their welfare. No matter how little one may care for the bureaucratic, cataloguing ways and general orientation of the old Committee, it must go on looking after things it has started. No one else can do this for it. It is very mistaken to believe that someone who is only interested in anthroposophy in general—a situation such as also prevailed in 1902—can be asked to take on any responsibility for the various projects. One has to have grown identified with them, to know them from the inside out. So the old Society must go on existing; it is an absolutely real entity. But others who simply want anthroposophy as such also have every right to have access to it. For their satisfaction we created the loose confederation I spoke of yesterday, and it too will have its board of trustees, made up of those whose names I mentioned. So now we have two sets of trustees, who will in turn select smaller committees to handle matters of common concern, so that the Society will remain one entity. That the loose confederation does take an interest in what develops out of the Society was borne out by the motion to re-establish it, which was immediately made by the very youngest members of the youth movement, the students. So it has now been re-established and will have a fully legitimate function. Indeed, this was one of the most pressing, vital issues for the Anthroposophical Movement and the Society. An especially interesting motion was made by the pupils of the upper classes of the Waldorf School. I read it aloud myself, since it had been sent to me. These upper-class students of the Waldorf School made a motion more or less to the following effect. They said, “We have been developing along lines laid down in the basic precepts of the Waldorf School. Next year we are supposed to take our university examinations. Perhaps difficulties of some sort will prevent it. But in any case, how will things work out for us in an ordinary university after having been educated according to the right principles of the Waldorf School?” These students went on to give a nice description of universities, and in conclusion moved that a university be established where erstwhile pupils of the Waldorf School could continue their studies. This was really quite insightful and right. The motion was immediately adopted by the representatives of the academic youth movement, and in order to get some capital together to start such an institution they even collected a fund amounting, I believe, to some twenty-five million marks, which, though it may not be a great deal of money under present inflationary conditions, is nevertheless a quite respectable sum. These days, of course, one cannot set up a university on twenty-five million marks. But if one could find an American to donate a billion marks or more for such a purpose, a beginning could be made. Otherwise, of course, it couldn't be done, and even a billion marks might not be enough; I can't immediately calculate what would be needed. But if such a possibility did exist, we would really be embarrassed, frightfully embarrassed, even if there were a prospect of obtaining official recognition in the matter of diplomas and examinations. The problem would be the staffing of such an institution. Should it be done with Waldorf faculty, or with members of our research institutions? That could certainly be done, but then we would have no Waldorf School and no research institutions. The way the Anthroposophical Society has been developing in recent years has tended to keep out people who might otherwise have joined it. It has become incredibly difficult, when a teacher is needed for a new class being added to the Waldorf School, to find one among the membership. In spite of all the outstanding congresses and other accomplishments we have to our credit, the Society's orientation has made people feel that though anthroposophy pleased them well enough, they did not want to become members. We are going to have to work at the task of restoring the Society to its true function. For there are many people in the world pre-destined to make anthroposophy the most vital content of their hearts and souls. But the Society must do its part in making this possible. As we face this challenge, it is immediately obvious that we must change our course and start bringing anthroposophy to the world's attention so that mankind has a chance to become acquainted with it. Our opponents are projecting a caricature of anthroposophy, and they are working hard at the job. Their writings contain unacknowledged material from anthroposophical cycles. Nowadays there are lending libraries where the cycles can be borrowed, and so on. The old way of thinking about these things no longer fits the situation. There are second-hand bookshops that lend cycles for a fee, so that anybody who wants to read them can now do so. We show ourselves ignorant of modern social life if we think that things like cycles can be kept secret; that is no longer possible today. Our time has become democratic even in matters of the spirit. We should realize that anthroposophy has to be made known. That is the impulse motivating the loosely federated section. The people who have come together in it are interested first and foremost in making anthroposophy widely known. I am fully aware that this will open new outlets through which much that members think should be kept within the Society will flow out into the world. But we have to adjust ourselves to the time's needs, and anthroposophists must develop a sense of what it is demanding. That is why anthroposophy must be looked upon now especially as something that can become the content of people's lives, as I indicated yesterday. So, my dear friends, we made the reported attempt to set up looser ties between the two streams in the Society. I hope that if this effort is rightly understood and rightly handled, we can continue on the new basis for awhile. I have no illusions that it will be for long, but in that case we will have to try some other arrangement. But I said when I went to Stuttgart for this general meeting of the German Anthroposophical Society that since anthroposophy had its start in Germany and the world knows and accepts that fact, it was necessary to create some kind of order in the German Society first, but that this should only be the first step in creating order in other groups too. I picture the societies in all the other language areas also feeling themselves obligated to do their part in either a similar or different way toward consolidating the Society, so that an effort is made on every hand so to shape the life of the Society that anthroposophy can become what it should be to the world at large. then give you something more in the way of a report. |
258. The Anthroposophic Movement (1938): Homeless Souls
10 Jun 1923, Dornach Translated by Ethel Bowen-Wedgwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
And so this intolerable something is driven as far down as possible into the sub-depths of consciousness,—driven under into the sub-conscious, or unconscious, regions of the soul's life. And there it remains; unless the psychoanalyst happens to fish it up again, if it behave with more than usual pertinacity in these unknown soul-regions down below. |
At any rate, he came later, and began talking about Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov [Known in English under the title ‘Crime and Punishment’], and spoke of Raskolnivok in such a way that it struck like lightning into the company,—just like a flash of lightning. |
They had a contempt for the external life in which they were placed, and a contempt of course for their own profession in life; but were nevertheless under the obligation of mingling in external existence:—that lay in the order of nature. But, as for everything else,—that is ‘esoteric’; there one converses only with Initiates, and only within a small circle. |
258. The Anthroposophic Movement (1938): Homeless Souls
10 Jun 1923, Dornach Translated by Ethel Bowen-Wedgwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
My Dear Friends: The course of observations, upon which we are about to enter, has in view a kind of self-recollection amongst those persons who are met together for Anthroposophy. It will afford opportunity for a self-recollection of this kind,—a self-recollection to which they may be led by a description of the anthroposophic movement and its relation to the Anthroposophical Society. And so you must let me begin to-day by referring to the people to whom this self-recollection applies. And these people are you yourselves,—all those who, through one occasion or another, have been led to find their way to Anthroposophy. One person has found the way, as though, I might say, by an inner compulsion of the soul, an inner compulsion of the heart; another, maybe, for reasons based in the under-standing. But there are many again, who have come into the anthroposophic movement through some more or less exterior occasion, and have then perhaps, inside the anthroposophic movement itself, been led into profounder depths of the soul, and found more than at first they looked for. One characteristic, however, is common to all the people who find their way to the anthroposophic movement. And if one looks back through all the various years, and sums up what the characteristic feature is amongst all those who come into the anthroposophic movement, one finally can but say: They are people of a kind, who are forced by their particular fate,—their inner fate, their karma, in the first instance,—to turn aside from the ordinary highroad of civilization, along which the bulk of mankind to-day are marching, to abandon this highroad, and to seek out paths of their own. Let us but clearly consider for a moment, what the way actually is, in which most people in our day grow up into life from their childhood on.—They are born of parents, who are Frenchmen, or Germans, Catholics, or Protestants, or Jews, or belong to some other of the creeds. They are born perhaps of parents who hold peculiar opinions. But in any case, there is always some kind of pre-recognized assumption, directly the people are born at the present day, amongst the parents, amongst the members of the family into which these people are born out of their pre-earthly lives, there exists so to speak a pre-recognized assumption,—not indeed uttered, but which is felt, even though perhaps not thought, (and. thought too, very often, when occasion gives rise to it!) ... looking out generally upon life, they think as a matter of course: We are French Catholics, or German Protestants, and our children will naturally be so too. And the circumstance, that such a sentiment exists, naturally creates a social atmosphere,—and not a social atmosphere only, but a concatenation of social forces, which do then, in actual reality, work more or less obviously or non-obviously, so as to shove these children into the lines of life already marked out for them in advance by these sentiments, by these more or less definitely conceived thoughts. And then all rolls on to begin with as though by matter of course in the life of the child. As though by matter of course these children are supplied with their education, their school-training. And all the time again the parents are filled with all sorts of thoughts about the children,—thoughts which again are not uttered, but which give the presuppositions for life, which are extraordinarily determinative for life;—such thoughts, for instance, as, My son will of course be a civil servant with a pension; or, My son is heir to the family estates; or, My daughter is to marry the son of the man who owns the neighbouring property.—Well, of course it is not always so definitely materialized, but it gives a certain prospective outlook, and this again always prescribes a line of direction. And the lines of external life are as a matter of fact so mapped out to-day, that, even down into our present times of chaos (which are felt by people however, for the most part, to be unusual), this life does go on externally in obedience to impulses given to it in this way. And then there is nothing for it, but that the man should, somehow or other, grow up to be a French Catholic, or a German Protestant: he cannot grow up to be anything else, for the forces of life impel him that way. And though it may not come directly from the parents' side with quite such definiteness, yet still, life catches him fresh from school, lays its grip on the man whilst he is still quite fresh, emerging from young life, from a state of childhood, and plants him down in some post in life. The State, the religious community, draw the man into their vortex. And if the majority of people to-day were to try and account to themselves for how they came to be there, they would find it hard to do so. For too keen reflection on the subject would mean something intolerable. And so this intolerable something is driven as far down as possible into the sub-depths of consciousness,—driven under into the sub-conscious, or unconscious, regions of the soul's life. And there it remains; unless the psychoanalyst happens to fish it up again, if it behave with more than usual pertinacity in these unknown soul-regions down below. But, for the most part, the strength is wanting, to take any sort of stand in proper person, as an individual, in the midst of all this, that one has simply ‘grown into’ in this fashion. One has moments of revolt perhaps, when of a sudden one finds oneself quite unexpectedly realizing in life that one is, say, a clerk,—perhaps even a town-clerk! But then, most likely, one clenches one's fists in one's trouser-pockets; or,—if it happens to be a woman,—one makes one's husband a scene about a disappointed life, and so forth. ... Well,—there are these reactions against the things which a man simply grows into. And then very often too, you know, it happens, that there are the little pleasures attached to the various things, which deaden one's sense of the things themselves. One goes to public balls; and then the next day of course is occupied with sleeping them off; and so the time is filled up in one way or another. Or else one joins a strictly patriotic association. Because, being a town-clerk, you know, one must belong to something or other which absorbs one into its ranks. One has been absorbed into the ranks of the State, into the ranks of a religious community; and now one must needs shed a sort of halo in this way over the thing which one has inconsciently grown into.—Well, I need not pursue the description further. This is, in fact, the way, more or less, in which those people, who follow along the beaten highroad of life to-day, grow into their external lives. And the others, who are unable to go along with them,—they find themselves on side-tracks;—and this kind of people, who are unable to follow along most of the prescribed routes to-day, are to be found scattered about on any number of paths, possible and impossible. But, amongst these other paths, there is the anthroposophic path too, where the man is bent upon what lies within himself,—where he is bent on living through it in a more conscient fashion,—where he wants to live out his part consciently in something that lies to some extent at least in his own choice. They are people such as these for the most part, whose path does not lie along the beaten highroad of life, who are Anthroposophists. Whether they find their way to Anthroposophy in youth, or in older years, one form or other, they are people of this kind. And if one examines further what the origin of it is, then again one comes to circumstances connected with the spiritual world:— The souls, as they come to-day out of their pre-earthly state of life into their earthly one, have, for the most part, spent a long while in that condition preceding their birth, which I have often described in my lectures.—Man, after he has finished travelling over his life's road in the spiritual world between death and new birth, comes next into the region where he enters more and more into the life of the spiritual world, where his own life consists in working in company with the beings of the higher hierarchies, and where everything that he does is a work amidst this world of substantive spirit. But in the course of this passage from death to a new birth there comes a particular point of time, when the man, as it were, turns his eyes down again towards earth. There, in soul, the man begins, for a long time in advance, to unite himself with the successive generations, at the end of which stand finally the parent pair that give him birth.—So that a man looks down beforehand, not only upon his fathers' fathers, but to his ancestors of faraway back generations, and unites himself with the line of direction, with the current, that runs through the generations of his fore-bears. And so it happens with the majority of souls at the present day, that during the time when they are making ready to come down to earth again, they have a burning interest already in what is going on upon earth. They gaze as it were from the spiritual world upon the earth below, and are keenly interested in all that goes on with their forefathers on the earth. Souls of this kind become, in fact, what I have described as being the case with those who follow the stream along the broad highway of modern life. In contrast to these, there are, especially at the present day, a number of souls, whose interest, when their pre-earthly life begins to tend downwards again towards earth-life, lies less with what is going on upon earth, but for whom the subject of principal interest is: How are we maturing in the spirit-world? They continue to interest themselves down to the very last moment, so to speak, when they take their way back to earth, in the spiritual world. Whereas the others have a profound desire for an earthly state of existence, these souls have to the last a lively interest in the things that are going on in the spiritual world, and come upon earth accordingly, when they do embody, with a mind that draws its consciousness from spiritual impulses, and affords less inclination to the kind of impulses which I described as existing in the case of the broad highroaders. They outgrow the impulses of their surroundings; in particular, they outgrow their surroundings in their spiritual aspirations. And they are thus pre-destined,—ready prepared,—for going simply their own way. And so one might divide the souls into two kinds, which come down to-day out of their pre-earthly existence into earthly existence. The first kind, which still at the present day includes the majority of people, are remarkably ‘home-gifted’ souls, who feel so thoroughly at home as souls in their warm nest,—even though at times they may think it uncomfortable; but that is only in appearance, is only maya;—they feel comfortable in this warm nest, in which they have already taken an interest for so long, before coming down to earth. Others perhaps,—the external maya, is not always a good guide,—others, who may go through their child-life quite acquiescently as souls, are not so home-gifted, are homeless souls, grow out of the snug nest rather than into it. And to those of this latter species belong undoubtedly those souls too, who afterwards find their way into the anthroposophic movement. It is therefore certainly a matter, in one way or other, of predetermination, whether one is impelled by one's fate into Anthroposophy. It may truly be said, however, that the impulse manifests itself in all manner of ways, which leads these souls to search along side-paths, off the track of life's great highroad. And anyone, who has gone through life with a certain conscientness during the last twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century and the first twenty to thirty of the twentieth, will have observed, that everywhere, amongst the others, there were to be seen these homeless souls—soul-homeless souls, that is,—in numbers,—numbers relatively speaking, of course. A great many souls, in fact, to-day, have what I might call a certain streak of this homelessness. If the others did not find it so comfortable to keep along the beaten tracks, and did not put such difficulties in the way of the homeless souls, these homeless souls would be much more striking in their numbers to the eyes of their contemporaries. But even so, one can perceive everywhere, I might say, to-day a certain streak of this homelessness in a great number of souls. Only quite a short while ago, there was a report of an incident, which shows how even such things as this may happen. A professor at a certain university gave a set of lectures, a course of collegiate addresses, announced for schoolmen, with the title, ‘The evolution of mystic-occult philosophy from Pythagoras to Steiner’. And the report says, that when the course was announced, so many people came to the very first lecture, that he was not able to give it in one of the ordinary lecture-rooms, but had to hold it in the Great Auditorium, which as a rule is used only for the addresses on big University occasions. From facts such as this, one can see how things stand at the present day, and how in fact this tendency to homelessness has spread extremely deep into men's souls. And one could watch this thing, so to speak, which to-day grows week by week to an ever more intense longing in the souls of those who bear about this homelessness within them,—the longing for something which is not a ready planned, ready mapped-out post in life,—this longing for something spiritual,—which shows itself in this corner of life from week to week, one might say, with greater insistence and ever increasing force amid the chaotic spiritual life of the day one could watch all this growing up. And if to-day I succeed in sketching the gradual growth of it for you in a few brief touches, you may be able to find in this sketch, through a sort of self-recollection, just a little perhaps of what I might term the common anthroposophic origin of you all. To-day I will do no more than pick out some characteristic features by way of introduction.—Look back to the last twenty or thirty years of the nineteenth century. We might quite well take any other field; but let us take a very characteristic field; and here we find coming into prominence at a particular time what one may call ‘Wagnerianism’: the cult of Richard Wagner. There was, no doubt, mixed up with this Richard Wagner cult, a great deal of fashionable affectation, desire for sensation, and so forth. But amongst the people who showed themselves at Bayreuth, after Bayreuth was started, there were not only gentlemen in the latest cut of frock-coat, and ladies in the newest and smartest frocks; but at Bayreuth there was everything conceivable, side by side. Even then, one might see there gentlemen with their hair very long and ladies with their hair cropped short. People might be seen, who felt it like a sort of modern pilgrimage to travel from long distances to Bayreuth. I even knew one man, who, when he set out for Bayreuth, drew off his boots at a place on the road a very long way off, and pilgrimaged to Bayreuth barefoot. Amongst the people who turned up like this,—the gentlemen with the long, and the ladies with the short hair, there were undoubtedly many who belonged in some form or other to the homeless-soul class. But amongst those, too, who were dressed, if not in the very latest, yet at any rate in a fairly respectable fashion, there were also such as were homeless souls. Now, what made such an effect upon the people in this Wagnerianism,—what there actually was in it, (I am not talking now of the musical element only, but of Wagnerianism as a social phenomenon)—what made itself felt in Wagnerianism as a force, was something that in this Wagnerianism stood out quite distinct from anything else that the materialist age had to offer. It was something that went out quite peculiarly, and almost suggestively I might say, from this Wagnerianism, and acted upon people in such a way as to give them the feeling: It is like a door into another and more spiritual world, quite different from the one we usually have round about us. And round Bayreuth and all that went on there, there sprung up a whole crop of longing aspirations after pro-founder depths of spiritual life.—To understand Richard Wagner's personages and dramatic compositions was at first certainly difficult. But that they were the creations of quite another element than merely the crass materialism of the age,—this at any rate was felt by numbers of people. And if these happened to be persons, who as homeless souls were more particularly impelled in this direction, they were stirred up by what I might call a sort of suggestive force in the Wagner dramas, particularly in the life that the Wagner dramas brought with them into our civilization, and began to have all sorts of hazy, emotional intuitions. There were also, for instance, amongst the many people who came into this Wagnerian life, the readers of the Bayreuth Papers. It is interesting, historically,—to-day it has already all come to be history,—historically it is interesting to take up one of the annual sets of the Bayreuth Papers, and to look through it and see, how they start out with an interpretation of Tristan and Isolde, of the Nibelung Ring, of the Flying Dutchman even, how they start out from the dramatic composition, take the individual figures in the Wagner dramas, the incidents in them, and thence, in an extremely subjective and unreal way, it is true,—unreal even in the spiritual sense,—but nevertheless with a great yearning of spirit, how they attempt to arrive at a more spiritual aspect of the things and of human life in general. And one can truly say, that in the multifarious interpretations of Hamlet and other interpretations of works of art that have since been brought out by theosophists, there is much that reminds one of certain articles, written in the Bayreuth Papers, not by a theosophist, but by an expert Wagnerian, Hans von Wolzogen. And if you woke up one morning, let us say, and if, instead of a theosophist paper that you read perhaps fifteen years ago, some mischievous fairy had laid beside your bed a batch of the Bayreuth Papers, you might really mistake the tone and style of them for something you had come across in the theosophist paper,—if it happened to be an article of Wolzogen's, or one of the kind. So that this Wagnerianism, one might say, was for many persons, in whom there dwelt homeless souls, an opening, through which to come to some aspect of the world that led away from the crassly material that led them into a spiritual region. And of all these people who, not externally out of fashion-able affectation, but from an inner impulse of the soul, had grown into a stream of this kind, it may truly be said of them all, that whatever else they might be in life, whether they were lawyers, or lords, or artists, or M.P.s, or whatever else they might be, who had grown into this stream,—even the scientists, for there were some of these too,—they pursued the direction into the spiritual world from an inner longing of their souls, and troubled themselves no further about hard and fast proofs, of which there were plenty to be found everywhere for the world-conception of materialistic construction. As said before, I might have mentioned other fields as well, where homeless souls of this kind were to be found; one did find plenty of such homeless souls. But this Wagner field was especially characteristic; there these homeless souls might be found in numbers. Well, it was my lot, I might say, personally, to make acquaintance with a number of souls of this kind (but in company also with others), who had gone, so to speak, through their spiritual novitiate as Wagnerians, and were as I knew them, again in a different metamorphosis. These were souls whom I learnt to know towards the end of the eighteen eighties in Vienna, amongst a group of people, collected together entirely one might say out of homeless souls. How this homelessness displayed itself in those days, even on the surface, is something of which people no longer form any true conception at all to-day; for many things, which then required a good courage,—courage of soul,—have to-day become quite commonplace. This, for instance, is something, which I think not many people at the present day will be able to conceive.—I was sitting in a group of such homeless souls, and we had been talking of all sorts of things, when one of them came in, who either had been kept longer than the others by his work, or else maybe he had stayed sitting at home, busied with his own thoughts. At any rate, he came later, and began talking about Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov [Known in English under the title ‘Crime and Punishment’], and spoke of Raskolnivok in such a way that it struck like lightning into the company,—just like a flash of lightning. A new world opened up, a world which ... well, it was very much as though one were transported all of a sudden into another planet:—that was how these souls felt. Perhaps I may be allowed to say something:—In all these observations of life, which I am telling you by way of introduction to the history of the anthroposophic movement, during all the time that I was impelled by my fate to make these observations in life, there was for myself never any sort of interruption of the contact with the spiritual world. The direct association with the spiritual world was never in any way broken; it was always there. I am obliged to mention this, because this must form the background of these contemplations: namely, the spiritual world as a self-obvious reality, and the human beings on earth seen accordingly as the images of what they really are as spiritual individualities within the spiritual world. I want just to indicate this frame of mind, so that you may take it as spiritual background all through. Of course, ‘making observations’ did not mean sniffing about like a dog with a cold nose, but taking a warm, whole-hearted interest in everything, and not with the intention of being an observer, but simply because one is in the midst of it, in all good-fellowship and friendliness and courtesy, as a matter of course. So one really was in it all, and became acquainted with the people, not in order to observe them, but because it naturally came about in the course of actual life. And so I made acquaintance at the end of the 'eighties with a group of this kind, composed in other respects of people of every variety of calling, with every different shade of colouring in life, but who were all homeless souls of this kind; and of whom a number, as I said, had come over from the Wagner region, and were people whose spiritual novitiate, so to speak, had been made in the Wagner region. The man of whom I told you, who took off his boots in Vienna and walked barefoot to Bayreuth, he was one of them, and was, in matter of fact, a very clever man. For a while I used to come together with these people quite frequently, often indeed every day. They were now living, as I might say, in a second metamorphosis. Having gone through their Wagner metamorphosis, they were now in their second one. There were three of them, for instance; people who knew H. P. Blavatsky well, who had been indeed intimate acquaintances of H. P. Blavatsky, and who were zealous theosophists, as theosophists were at that time, when Blavatsky was still living. About the theosophists of that time,—the time just after Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and Secret Doctrine had appeared,—there was something quite peculiar. They all had a marked tendency to be extremely esoteric. They had a contempt for the external life in which they were placed, and a contempt of course for their own profession in life; but were nevertheless under the obligation of mingling in external existence:—that lay in the order of nature. But, as for everything else,—that is ‘esoteric’; there one converses only with Initiates, and only within a small circle. And one looks upon all the people, who, in one's opinion, are not worthy of conversing on such matters, as the sort of people, to whom one talks about the common things of life;—the others, are the people to whom one talks esoterics. They were readers, and good readers too, of Sinnett's newly-published book, Esoteric Buddhism, but all of them people eminently belonging to the class of homeless souls I have just described: people, namely, who, the moment they stepped into practical life, were engineers, electricians, and so forth, and yet again studied with deep interest, with the keenest eagerness, a book like Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism. And with these people too, there was a sort of tendency,—inherited partly from their Wagner phase,—to seize on everything available in the way of myths and legends, and explain, or interpret, them in ‘an esoteric sense’, as they called it. One might observe, however, as these homeless souls really began more and more to make their appearance with the close of the nineteenth century, that the most interesting of all were not those, who after all, if I may say so, with only nine-tenths honest minds—nine-tenths honest, at most — used to study the writings of Blavatsky and Sinnett, but the others,—those who would listen, but were not willing to read for themselves. (In those days people were still exceedingly shy of such things.) They were not willing to read the things personally, but would listen with open mouths, when the people, who had read, expounded them. And it was very interesting to watch how the listeners, who were often more honest-minded than the narrators, would drink in these things, in the homelessness of their souls, like a spiritual nourishment of which they were in need,—and who indeed, out of the comparative lack of sincerity with which this spiritual nourishment was presented to them, converted it into something absolutely sincere, through the superior honesty of their own souls. And the way they drank it in! One could see the longing there was in them, to hear for once something quite different from what is to be found on the ordinary highroad of civilization. How these people gulped down what they heard! And it was extra-ordinarily interesting to see, on the one side the long arms of the highroad life snatching up the people ever and again in their clutches ... and then again, you know, how these people would turn up afresh in some drawing-room where they used to meet,—often it was a coffee-house,—and there would listen with hungry eagerness to what somebody or other had just been reading in some book of this kind that had newly appeared,—and who often laid it on pretty thick with what he had read. But there were these honest souls there too, most unquestionably, who were tossed in this way to-and-fro by life. In the early days, especially, towards the close of the nineteenth century, one saw these souls regularly tossed to-and-fro, and unwilling really to admit to themselves their own homelessness. For there would be one of them, you know, listening with every sign of the deepest interest to what was being said about physical body, ether body, astral body, kama-manas, manas, budhi, and so on. And then, afterwards, he must go off and write the article the news-paper expected from him, into which of course he must stick the usual plums,—These people, truly, were the kind of souls that quite peculiarly showed, how difficult it really was, particularly at the commencement of the new spiritual period of evolution (which we must reckon really from the end of the nineteenth century), how difficult it was for many a one to abandon the broad highway of life. For indeed, from the way many of them behaved, it looked as though, when they wanted to go to the really important thing, to the thing which interested them above all else in life, they crept away on the sly as it were, and wanted if possible to avoid any one's knowing where they had crept to.—It really was most interesting, the manner in which, amid this European civilization, the spiritual life,—the spiritual volition,—the seeking for a spiritual world,—made its way in. Now you must consider: it was the end of the 'eighties, in the nineteenth century, and so much more difficult really even than to-day,—less detrimental perhaps than to-day, but more difficult,—to come out straight away with a confession of the spiritual world. For the physical, sensible world, with all its magnificent laws ... why, that was all demonstrated fact; how could one hope to be any match for it! It had on its side any number of demonstrable proofs. The laboratories testified to it, the physical test-room, the medical clinics,—all testified to this demonstrated world!—But the demonstrated world was, for many homeless souls, one so unsatisfying, one which, for the soul's inner life, was so altogether impossible, that they simply, as I said, crept aside. And whilst in huge masses,—not in buckets, but in barrels,—the great civilization of the age was laid before them, they turned aside, to sip such drops as they might catch from the stream which trickled in as it were out of the spiritual world into modern civilization.—It was, in fact, by no means easy to begin straight away to speak of the spiritual world. It was necessary to find something on to which to connect. If I may here introduce something which is again a personal remark, it is this: For myself ... one couldn't break so to speak into people's houses with the spiritual world; above all, one couldn't break into the whole civilized edifice with it! I had to take something to connect onto; not for an external reason; something that could be quite honestly internal. At this time, the end of the 'eighties, I took in many places, as connections for the remarks I had to make about more intimate aspects of the spiritual world, Goethe's Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily. That was something onto which one could connect; because, well, Goethe had, at any rate, a recognized standing; Goethe was, after all, Goethe, you know! It was possible, if one took something which had, after all, been written by Goethe, and where the spiritual influences running through it are so patent as in the Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily, it was possible then to connect onto these things. For me, indeed, it was the obvious course at that time to connect on-to Goethe's Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily; for I certainly could not connect onto the thing which was then being carried on as ‘Theosophy’, such as a group of at least very enterprising people towards the end of the 'eighties had extracted at that time out of Blavatsky and out of Sinnet's Esoteric Buddhism and similar books. For someone who proposed to carry over a scientifically trained mode of thought into the spiritual world, it was simply impossible to come in any way into association with the kind of mental and spiritual atmosphere which grew up in immediate connection with Blavatsky and the Esoteric Buddhism of Sinnet. And again on the other side the matter was not easy; and for this reason:—Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism no doubt is a book which one very soon found to be a spiritually dilettante work, pieced together out of old, misunderstood esotericisms. But to a work like Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine as a phenomenon of the times, it was not so very easy to arrive at a definite relation. For it is a work, which betrays after all in numerous passages, that what is said in them proceeds from direct and forceful impulses of the spiritual world; so that in numerous passages of this Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky's one finds the spiritual world revealing itself in fact through a particular personality,—which was the personality of Blavatsky. And here there was one thing above all, which could not but especially strike one, which struck one particularly in the course of the search so intently pursued by the people who had come in this way either to Blavatsky personally, or to Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. Through this book, The Secret Doctrine, a great mass of ancient truths had been voiced to the world,—old-world truths, obtained by atavistic clairvoyance in the pre-historic ages of mankind. It was like a re-awakening, as I might say, of old-world civilizations. One had there before one, coming to one from the world outside, not merely out of one's own self,—one had there, before one, a thing, of which one could but say to oneself: Here lies unearthed a vast treasure of ancient wisdom, which men once possessed, and which was a wondrous source of light to them. And, patched between it all, pieces of the most incredible kind, which continually amaze one; for the book is a slovenly piece of work, quite dilettante as regards any sort of scientific thinking, and nonsensical with respect to a lot of superstitions and similar stuff. Altogether a most extraordinary book, this Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky; grand truths, along with terrible rubbish. It was, one might say ... the sort of thing, which ... very well characterized the kind of soul-phenomena to which those were exposed, who were beginning little by little to grow up into homeless souls in the new age. And I really learnt in those days to know a great number of such souls, one could see these homeless souls gradually growing up on earth. After this, during the time that immediately followed, I was intensely busy with other things, in my time at Weimar. Although, there too, there was plenty of opportunity for observing such souls on the search. For during my Weimar time especially, every sort of person, if I may say so, came through Weimar to visit the Goethe and Schiller archives, and from all the leading countries of the world. One learnt to know the people quite remarkably, on the good and on the bad sides of their souls, as they came through Weimar. Queer-fish, as well as highly educated men of fine breeding and distinction: one learnt to know them all. My meeting with Herman Grimm, for instance, in Weimar is described by me in the last number but one of the “Goetheanum.” [‘A personal recollection etc.’ ‘Goetheanum’ Year 2. (1923), No. 43.] With Herman Grimm it was really so,—to my feeling at least,—that when he was in Weimar ... he came very often; for when he was on his way from Berlin to Italy or back, and at other times as well, he frequently came to Weimar; and I had grown to have the feeling: Weimar is somehow different, when Herman Grimm is in the place, and when he has left it. Herman Grimm was something that made one understand Weimar particularly well. One knew, what Weimar is, better when Herman Grimm was staying there, than when he was not there. One need only recall Herman Grimm's novel, Powers Unconquerable, to remark at once, that in Herman Grimm there is at any rate an unmistakably strong impulse towards spiritual things. Read the conclusion of this novel, Powers Unconquerable, and you will see how the spiritual world there plays into the physical one through the soul of a dying woman. There is something grand—tremendous—about it, that lays hold of one. I have spoken of it in previous lectures. And then, of course, there were queer fish too, that came through Weimar. For instance, there was a Russian State Councillor who was looking for something. One couldn't make out what it was he was looking for,—something or other in the second part of Goethe's Faust. In what way he exactly proposed to find it in the Goethe Archives, that one couldn't make out. Nor did anyone exactly know how to help him. They would have been very glad in the Goethe Archives to help him. But he always went on looking. He was looking for the Point in the second part of Faust; and no one could succeed in discovering what kind of a point he wanted. All one could ever learn was that he was looking for the Point, the Point. And so one could only let him look. But he was so talkative with this Point of his, that in the evening, when we used to be sitting at supper, and he drew near, the whisper would go round: ‘Don't look round you! The Councillor's prowling about!’ Nobody wanted to be caught by him. Well, next to him again, there sat a very curious visitor, who was a very clever fellow, an American, but who had the peculiarity that his favourite position was sitting on the floor, with his legs cocked one over the other; and he used to sit in this fashion with his books before him on the ground. It was a weird sight. But, as I said, one met with these things too there, and had, in fact, opportunities of seeing a sort of sample slice out of the life of modern civilization, and in an unusually striking way. Later on, however, when I went to Berlin, my destiny again led me more especially into a circle, made up of the kind of souls whom I spoke of as being ‘homeless souls’. Destiny led me indeed so deep into it that from this particular circle there came the request that I would give them some lectures, the same which have since been published in my book, Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought. (In the preface to the book I have also given an account of how these things came about.) This particular circle happened now to be people who had found their way into the Theosophical Society at a somewhat later period, as I may say, than my Vienna acquaintances. And they occupied a different position towards all that had been Blavatsky. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine was a work to which but few of them gave any study; but they were well-versed in all that Blavatsky's successor, Mrs. Annie Besant, was giving forth in her lectures as the Theosophy of the day. In this they were well-versed, these people, to whom I was saying something quite different in my lectures on ‘Mysticism’. They were very well-versed in it indeed; and I remember still, for instance, hearing a lecture by a member of this same group, which was based upon a little book of Mrs. Annie Besant's, in which Mrs. Annie Besant, on her part, had divided up Man into physical body, ether body, astral body, and so on. I can't help often recalling how awful, how appalling, this description seemed to me at the time, of the human being as drawn from Mrs. Annie Besant. I had not read anything of Mrs. Besant's. The first which I heard of her things was this lecture, given by a lady on the strength of Mrs. Annie Besant's newest pamphlet of the day.—It was quite awful, how in those days the different parts of the human being used to be told off in a string, one after the other, with, at bottom, very little understanding,—instead of letting them proceed out of the whole totality of man's being. And so once more, as in Vienna at the end of the 'eighties, I was in the midst of such homeless souls, and with every opportunity of observing them. And, as you well know, what since has come to be Anthroposophy first grew up in all essentials then, with as many as were there of these homeless souls,—grew up, not in, I would say, but with these homeless souls, who had begun by seeking a new home for their souls in Theosophy. I wished to carry our observations to this point to-day, my dear friends, and tomorrow will then continue, and try to lead you further in this study in self-recollection, upon which we have only just embarked to-day. |
258. The Anthroposophic Movement (1938): The Community Body and the Ego-Consciousness of the Theosophical Society. The Blavatsky Phenomenon
11 Jun 1923, Dornach Translated by Ethel Bowen-Wedgwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
And here arises the question whether it were not possible, even under the conditions under which the Anthroposophic Society was bound to enter the world,—whether, even under these conditions it were not possible for some such associated consciousness to grow up? |
In the lower grades, the people did not understand the things, but they accepted them as sacred dogmas. They did not really understand the things in the higher grades either. |
Only one can't rightly do much with what Schelling gives here briefly in his lectures.—But the people, all the same, understood nothing of it. It is not, after all, so very easy to understand, since the way is a dubitable one. |
258. The Anthroposophic Movement (1938): The Community Body and the Ego-Consciousness of the Theosophical Society. The Blavatsky Phenomenon
11 Jun 1923, Dornach Translated by Ethel Bowen-Wedgwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
In giving an account of the history of Anthroposophy in relation to the Anthroposophical Society, and of the life-conditions that determined it, there will be two questions from which one must set out, and which arise naturally out of the history itself. These two questions I may perhaps formulate in the following manner:—First, why was it necessary to connect the anthroposophic movement on to the theosophic movement in the way that was done? And secondly,—why does it happen,—on merely external grounds, as a rule,—that Anthroposophy down to this day is confounded by malevolent opponents with Theosophy, and the Anthroposophical Society with the Theosophical Society? The answers to these two questions can only really grow out of the course of the history itself. As I said yesterday, when one talks of an anthroposophic society, the first point for consideration is, what kind of people they are, who feel an impulse to pursue their search along the path of an anthroposophic movement. And I endeavoured yesterday to describe how the souls, who thus turn to Anthroposophy to find satisfaction for their spiritual needs, are, in a certain sort of way, homeless souls. Now at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, these homeless souls in actual fact were there. Many more of them were there than people are usually inclined to suppose. For many people were seeking, by many and various roads, to bring to development in some form the underlying man within them. One need only recall—quite apart from the attempts which proceeded from the new-age materialism and led into all the varieties of spiritualism,—how, quite apart from all this, numbers of souls found a kind of inner contentment through the perusal of writings such as those of Ralph Waldo Trine and others. What was it, then, that such souls were seeking, who at that period had recourse to writings like those of Ralph Waldo Trine?—They were trying, I might say, to fill up the human gap in them with something,—something for which they longed, which they desired to feel and realize in their inner lives, but which was not to be found upon the paved roads of modern civilization,—something which for these people was not to be found, either in the popular profane literature, or profane art, nor yet which they were able to find by means of the traditional religious faiths. I must begin first by giving you a few facts to-day, and leave it to the next lectures to draw the connecting lines between the facts. The first thing needed is to bring certain facts in the right form before the soul. Amongst all the many people who were seeking, whether along spiritistic roads or through Ralph Waldo Trine or others, amongst all these were the people who attached themselves to the various branches, then in existence, of the Theosophical Society. And if one puts to oneself the question: Was there any peculiar, distinctive feature in those people who more particularly attached themselves in some form to the Theosophical Society! some quality by which they were distinguished from the others, who became spiritualists, for instance, or who sought to find in Ralph Waldo Trine an inner mine of wealth?—was there any difference between them?—then one must certainly reply: Yes, there was a most distinctive difference. It was unmistakably a special variety, as I might say, of human search, which was going on in those persons, who were more particularly impelled in some form towards the Theosophical Society. As we know from the actual course of the Theosophical Society, it seemed probable, that what had to be sought as Anthroposophy at the beginning of this century would be most likely to find understanding amongst those circles which joined together at that time to pursue Theosophy. Rut to have the requisite light upon this, we must first place the facts properly before our souls. Now I should like, before going further, to devote a little while to describing the persons themselves, who came together in this way, and to give you some picture of what, was then, in those days, to be understood by Theosophical Society,—that theosophic association which, as you know, found its most marked and prominent expression in the English ‘Theosophical Society’. And this was the society, as you know, on to which was then joined what afterwards came forth as Anthroposophy,—or indeed, more truly speaking, it came forth at once as Anthroposophy. Looking at the ‘Theosophical Society’ and the whole intention of it, as actually presented before our eyes so to speak in a group of people, we must first look a little into the minds of these people, we must look into these people's souls and see what kind of consciousness these particular people had.—In a way, these people certainly lived out what was in their mind's consciousness. They came together, and held ‘meetings’, where they delivered lectures and carried on discussions. They met together also at other times, besides the ‘meetings.’ A great deal of conversation indeed went on amongst them in more private circles. It was not usual at General Meetings, for instance, for the time to be so filled up, as it was with us yesterday; they always found an opportunity to have a meal together, to drink tea, and so forth. Between times, indeed, they even found opportunities for changing their dresses, and things of that kind. There was always, at any rate, some sort of gleam from the outer world of what I might call social behaviour. All that, of course, is not so much what interests us. What is of interest for us is the mental consciousness of these people. And here the first thing at once to strike one strongly was that, between the different personalities, there were forces at play which were in remarkable contradiction to the personalities themselves. This contradictory play of forces struck one particularly, when the people held their meetings. They met together; but of every person there,—if one were not a theosophist sworn and signed,—of each single person, one kept trying to form two conceptions. That was the curious thing, that when one came amongst the ‘Theosophical Society’ it was simply unavoidable to have two conceptions of each person. First, there was the conception one formed from how he was as one actually met with him. Rut the other, was the conception which the rest had of each amongst them. This was the outcome of general views, views of a quite general and of a very theoretic character,—notions about Man in general, about universal love of mankind,—about the stage one had reached: being ‘advanced’, as they called it, or ‘not advanced.’,—about the kind of way in which one's mind must be seriously disposed, if one were to prove worthy to receive the doctrines of theosophy,—and so on. They were notions of a highly theoretic kind. And there must be something, they thought, of all this, existing in the people actually walking about before them in flesh and blood. So that what was really living amongst them, were not those conceptions I spoke of at first: the conceptions, namely, that one forms quite naively of the other person,—these conceptions had really no living existence amongst the members; but what lived in each of them was a picture of all the others,—a picture that was really born of theoretic notions about human beings and human conduct. In reality, no one saw the other as he actually was; he saw a sort of ghost. And so it was inevitable, when one met, say, with a Mr. Miller and naively formed for oneself a picture of Mr. Miller, and one then called to mind the sort of conception any other person might have of this same Mr. Miller, that one then raised a kind of ghost-conception; for the real conception of him did not exist amongst any of the rest, but each had in mind a ghost, theoretically constructed. And in this way one could not help having two conceptions of each person. Only, most of the members dispensed with the conception of the actual person, and admitted only the conception of the ghost. So that in reality, between the individual members there dwelt constantly their ghostly conceptions of one another. One met in the minds of the ‘members’, so to speak, with nothing but ghosts.—One required, in fact, to have an interest in psychology. One required, too, a certain largeness of mind and heart in order to enter into it all with real interest. And then, indeed, it was extremely interesting to enter into what went on, rightly speaking, as a kind of ghost-society. For, to the extent which I have just said, it was a society of ghosts that went on there. This was more especially forced upon one's eyes in the case of the leading personalities. The leading personalities lived quite a peculiar kind of life amongst the others. The talk, for instance, would be about some particular leading personality,—say X:—she went about at night as an astral form from house to house,—only to members' houses, of course!—as an Invisible Aid. And she emanated all sorts of things too.—They were, in part, uncommonly fine ghostly conceptions that existed of the leading personalities. And often then it was a striking contrast when one came to meet the same person afterwards in actual reality. But then the generally prevailing tone of mind took care that, as far as possible, only the ghost-conceptions should have a chance to live, and the real conceptions not be all too lively. Well, for this sort of thing, you see, it was undoubtedly necessary to have views and doctrines. For it is not so easy a matter, seeing that not everybody is clairvoyant,—though in those days there were an extraordinary number of people who gave themselves out at least to be clairvoyant (with what truth is a question into which we won't for the moment enter),—but since not all of them, at any rate, were clairvoyant, it was necessary to have certain theories, from which to put together these ghosts that were constructed. Now these theories all had about them something remarkably antique; so that one could not but have the impression of old, warmed-up theories, that were being used to put together these ghost-constructions of people. In many cases, too, it was easy to find in ancient writings the patterns from which these ghostly figures of men were traced. So, in addition to the ghostliness, there was also the fact that the people, whom one had as ghosts before one, were by no means people of the present day. They were really people of earlier incarnations, people who seemed to have risen out of the graves of Egypt or Persia, or from the graves of ancient India. The impression of the present time vanished, in a sense, altogether from one. But, added to this, there was something else, quite different.—These ancient teachings, even when wrapped in comparatively modern terminology, were very little to be understood. Now these ancient doctrines, very largely, were talked about in abstract forms of speech. Physical body, indeed, was still called ‘physical body’. ‘etheric body’ was taken from the form of the Middle Ages, and ‘astral body’, too, perhaps. But then at once came things like manas, kama-manas, and so forth,—things which were in everybody's mouths, but of which nobody exactly knew what they purported. And all this was clothed again in quite modern, materialistic conceptions. But within, contained in these teachings, there were whole chains of worlds and world-concepts and world-ideas; till one had the feeling: The souls are speak-ing as they did in far by-gone, earlier ages,—not hundreds, but thousands of years ago. This was carried very far. Whole books were written in this style of speech. These books were translated; and so everything was carried on further in the same form. There was, however, another side to it also. It had its beautiful side too. For all this, existing though it often did as mere words only, and not understood, left, nevertheless, something of its colouring upon the people. And if not in the souls themselves, yet one might say that in the soul-costumes of the people there was an immense amount of it all,—in their soul-costumes. The people went about really, as I might say, not exactly with a consciousness of aether bodies, or of kama-manas, but with a sort of consciousness of being robed in a series of mantles: one mantle is the aether-body, another Lama-manas, and so on. They attached some importance, too, to this set of mantles, this soul-costume. And this gave the people a sort of cement that held them together. All this was something, which welded the ‘Theosophical Society’ together in an extraordinarily solid manner into a whole, and which was really effective in establishing an immense feeling of corporate fellowship, that made each one feel himself a representative of the ‘Theosophical Society.’ This ‘Society’ was a thing in itself; beside the fact of the individuals in it, the Society itself was some-thing. It had, one might really say, a ‘Self-consciousness’ of its own. It had its own ‘I’. And this ‘I’ of the Society was so strong that, even when the absurdities of the leading personages came to the surface in an un-mistakably queer fashion, the people had so come to feel themselves a corporate body, that they held together with iron pertinacity, and had a sort of feeling that it was like treachery not to hold together, whatever the failings of the personages at the head. Anyone who has had opportunity to see something of the inner struggles that went on in some of the adherents of the Theosophic Society later on, long after the Anthroposophic Society was separated from it, what struggles went on in them, when again and again they recognized: ‘The things that the leaders are doing are quite monstrous; and yet, all the same, one can't separate from them!’ ... if one has watched these struggles that went on in the individual souls, then, although there was much about it which one can only condemn as excessively bad,—yet, on the other hand, one acquires a certain respect for this ‘I’-consciousness of the whole Society. And here arises the question whether it were not possible, even under the conditions under which the Anthroposophic Society was bound to enter the world,—whether, even under these conditions it were not possible for some such associated consciousness to grow up? In founding the anthroposophic society, all those, often very dubious methods had to be dispensed with, by means of which, in the theosophic society, the ‘I’-consciousness of the society had been obtained, and the strong tie through-out the whole. The ideal that was to hover before the anthroposophic society must be: Whom lies only in Truth. — These, however, are things, which have remained down to this day ideals. In this field especially, the anthroposophic society still leaves much to be desired; inasmuch as, until now, in respect to developing a corporate body, an associate ‘I’, it has not made even the first beginnings. The Anthroposophical Society is an association of persons, who, as individual human beings, may be very full of zeal; but as a society they do not as yet, truly speaking, exist; because there is lacking just this sense of ‘belonging together’; because only very, very few of the members of the Anthroposophical Society feel themselves representative of this society. Each feels himself a private individual, and quite forgets that an Anthroposophical Society is supposed to exist. And now that I have given a brief description of the public (which I will fill in more fully in these coming days), I should like to describe the matter now on its other side.—In what way, then, amidst this whole quest of the age,—for so I must call it,—did Anthroposophy now take its place? The fundamental principles of Anthroposophy are to be found already, by anyone who chooses, in my Philosophy of Freedom. There is only one I wish more especially to pick out to-day, which is, that this Philosophy of Freedom everywhere points in the first place and by inner necessity to a domain of Spirit; a domain of Spirit from which, for example, the moral impulses are drawn. So that, following the Philosophy of Freedom, it is not possible to stop short at the sense-world; one is obliged to go on further, to a spiritual domain grounded in itself. And this general existence of a spiritual domain takes further the very special and concrete form, that Man in his own innermost being, when he becomes conscient of his own innermost being, is connected, not with the world of Sense, but is connected in this, his innermost being, with the world of Spirit. These two things: first that there is a spiritual domain; and, secondly, that Man, with the innermost ‘I’ of his being, is connected with this spiritual domain,—these are the two fundamental points of the Philosophy of Freedom. And a time could not but come, when the question arose: Is it possible for that which has now to be proclaimed as a sort of message to the men of the new age from the spiritual world,—is it possible for one to proclaim it in this way? Is there here an opportunity for connecting it onto some-thing? For naturally, one could not just stand up and talk into the air.—Although indeed, in these days, all sorts of strange proposals are made to one. I once,—it was in the year 1918, during my stay in Vienna—received an invitation, by telegram indeed, to travel from Vienna to the Rax Alp, on the northern boundary of Styria, and there to plant my-self on the Rax Alp, and deliver a lecture to the mountains. The proposal was actually made to me at the time, and by telegram. I need hardly say, that I did not respond to the proposal.—However, one can't talk to the mountains or the air; one must find something existing in the civilization of the day, onto which one can connect. And there was, on the whole, even at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century, still uncommonly little there. People were there, whose search namely, at that time, was leading them into the Theosophical Society. These were, after all, the people to whom it was possible to speak of these things. But here, too, one required, not only to have a feeling of responsibility towards these people, as a public; one required on the other hand also to have a feeling of one's responsibility towards the spiritual world,—and, in particular, towards that form of the spiritual world which had come to expression at that particular time. And here I may perhaps be allowed to show you the way in which, out of this endeavour on my part, which as yet did not outwardly bear the name of Anthroposophy, there gradually grew up what became afterwards Anthroposophy. I want to-day merely to put forward a few facts, and leave it to the following days to trace you the connecting threads between them. To begin with, I could discern in the 'eighties of last century what I might call a kind of fata morgana: some-thing which wore quite a natural appearance in the physical world, but which, though only as an airy fata morgana, as a light-phenomenon, had yet, in a sense, a deeper significance. The fact was, that when one reflected upon the evolution in world-conceptions then taking place in the civilized world, as it struck one in what I may call its then-modern form (few people paid any heed to this evolution; but it was there), one might come upon something very curious. There,—if we confine our reflections for the moment to Central Europe only,—there was that great, I might say world-shaking philosophy, which aspired to be everything else as well, which aspired to being an entire world-conception: the idealist philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century. There were the after-echoes still of the philosophy of Hegel, say, of Fichte, of Solger; philosophies, which, at the time they were founded, meant really to many persons who became their disciples, quite as much as ever Anthroposophy can be to someone to-day. And yet, in the main, it was all abstract conceptions, a pile of abstract conceptions. Take a look into Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophic Sciences, the first of the four parts, and you will find a string of concepts, developed one out of the other. It starts with Real Being (Sein); then comes Nothing (Nichts); then comes Becoming (Werden); then comes Objective Existence (Dasein). ... Well, I can't, of course, give you an account now of the whole of Hegel's Logic, for it is a fat book, and it goes on in concepts like these. Finally, at the end, comes Purpose (Zweck). It never in fact gets further than abstract thoughts and abstract ideas.— Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence; Purpose. — And. yet Hegel called it: ‘God before the Creation of the World.’ So that one could only suppose that, if one asked the question: What was God like before the creation of the world? the answer was a system of abstract concepts and abstract ideas. Now there was living in Vienna, just at the time when I was young,—and that's long ago,—a philosopher of the Herbart school, Robert Zimmermann. And Robert Zimmermann said: ‘That is not permissible for us any longer to-day.’ (By ‘to-day’ he meant the last third of the nineteenth century.) ‘We cannot to-day think as Hegel and Solger and all those people thought.’—In what way, then did such people think? Zimmermann, you see, said to himself: ‘These people thought in the kind of way, as though they themselves were God.’ Zimmermann thought in a very curious way really for a philosopher, but very characteristically; he said: ‘Hegel thought in the same way, as though he himself were God.’—That might almost, as it was spoken, have come from the Theosophical Society of the period; for there was a member a leading member indeed, of the Theosophical Society, Franz Hartmann; and his lectures, which he used to hold, were all to this effect:—One must become aware of the God within oneself; every man has within him as it were a divine man, a God; and when this divine man begins to talk, then one talks Theosophy. Well, Franz Hartmann, when he let his divine man talk, said all sorts of things, about which I wish at the moment to express no opinion. But Hegel, when—according to Zimmermann's view—he let the God within him speak, said Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence; and then,—then the world began logically to hum; and then, it twisted over into its Other-State-of-Being, and lo! the natural world! Now Robert Zimmermann said: ‘There must be an end of that; for that is Theosophy! We can't have Theosophy any more in these days,’ said Robert Zimmermann in the 'eighties. ‘It is impossible for us in these days to accept the Theosophy of a Schelling, a Solger, a Hegel. We must not let the God in Man speak: that makes a theocentric standpoint, to which one can only aspire, if one is prepared to be like Icarus;—and you know what that means; one skids off the track in the Cosmos, and. comes tumbling down!—We must keep to a human standpoint.’—And so, in opposition to the ‘Theosophy’ of Hegel, Schelling, Solger and the rest, (whom he treats as ‘theosophists’ also in his History of Aesthetics), Robert Zimmermann wrote his book Anthroposophy. And from this Anthroposophy I afterwards took the name. It appeared at the time to me an unusually interesting book, as a sign of the times. Only ... this Anthroposophy of Zimmermann's ... it is made up of the most horribly abstract concepts. It is composed in three parts, too; and then there are subordinate chapters: 1, Logical Ideas; 2. Aesthetic Ideas; 3. Ethical Ideas. One looks, you see, as a human being,—putting aside for the moment the part on aesthetics, which deals with Art, and the Ethical Ideas, which deal with human conduct,—one naturally looks to find, in what is there presented to one as a conceptual view of the world, something from which a human being must draw inner satisfaction, something which enables him to say to himself, that he is connected with a divine, spiritual existence, that within him there is some-thing eternal. Robert Zimmermann set out to answer the question: When Man ceases to be merely a man of the senses, when he really wakes to conscious knowledge of his spiritual manhood, what does he then know?—He knows the logical ideas. Hegel wrote at least a whole book, full of such logical ideas; but then those are ideas such as only a God can think. But when it is not a god thinking in the man, but the man himself who is thinking, then the result is five logical ideas,—at least, with Robert Zimmermann. First idea, the Absoluteness of Thought; second, the Equivalence of two Concepts; third, the Synthesis of Concepts; fourth, the Analysis of Concepts; and fifth, the Law of Contradiction, — that is, a thing can only be some-thing-in-itself, or else another thing; a third alternative is not possible. Well, my dear friends, that is the total compass of what is given there, put together in the form of abstract ideas, as representing what a human being can know for certain, when he detaches himself from the world of sense, when he falls back upon his own mind and soul. If this ‘Anthroposophy’ were all and only what there was to offer to the human being, then one could but say: Everything must be regarded as superseded, whatever men once possessed in their different religious faiths, in their rites of worship and so forth; everything must be regarded as superseded, which is accepted as Christianity; since all these things again can only be deduced from history, etc. When man reflects on what he is able to know qu anthropos, on what he is able to know for certain, when he bestirs his own soul, independently of either sensible impressions or external history, it is this: ‘I can know for certain, that I am subject to the Absoluteness of Thought, to the Equivalence of Concepts, to the Synthesis of Concepts, to their Analysis, and to the Law of the Excluded Third (the third alternative that is self-excluded).’ With these, as people used to say, one must go to heaven. Besides this, there were certainly the Aesthetic Ideas. These were the ideas of: Perfection, Accordance, Harmony ...; there are five again of these ideas, and, .similarly, five Ethical Ideas.—The Aesthetic Ideas included also the ideas of Discord and the Accordance of Discord.
As you see, it is all reduced to the uttermost form of abstraction. At the beginning stands: Outline of Anthroposophy. That a great deal was meant by it, you may see from the dedication with which it is prefaced. There are, I might really say, touching lines in this dedication. One reads in it,—I can't quote verbally, but something like this: To Harriet!—Thou it wast, who, when night began to darken round my eyes, didst lead me to gather the scattered thoughts, that long had lived within me, and bind them together in this book. And a willing hand was ready, too, to set on paper what my mind's eye had shown me in the dark-room.— In short, it is indicated in very beautiful words, that the author had had an eye-disease, had been obliged to spend some time in the dark-room, where he had thought out these ideas, and that a willing hand had offered to write them down. These dedicatory lines conclude very beautifully with the words:—No one then can deny, that this book, like light itself, proceeded out of darkness. It was just like a fata morgana, you see; most curious. Robert Zimmermann, out of Theosophy, brought forth an Anthroposophy, after his notions. But I don't think that, if I had lectured on this Anthroposophy, we should ever have had an anthroposophical movement. The name, however, was very well chosen. And this name I took over, when—for inherent reasons which will become apparent in the course of these lectures—I had, for inherent reasons, to begin by dealing with a variety of things; and in the first place, with the spiritual, and for every seer of the spiritual world clearly established fact, that there are recurrent earth-lives. But when one is not light-minded in such matters, but has a sense of spiritual responsibility, one must first find a point of connection. And one may truly say, that at that period,—the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century,—it was extremely hard to find any connection in the consciousness of the age for the recurrence of earth-lives. Points of connection, however, subsequently presented themselves. And I will begin by telling how I myself sought for these points of connection. There is a very interesting Compendium of the Truths of Anthropology, by Topinard. In the concluding chapter of this book,—it was a book of which more mention was made ;it that period, than to-day; to-day it is already somewhat antiquated as regards details, but it is cleverly written;—in the concluding chapter there is a very neat summary. And there one could find, put together in Topinard, in a way which of course every modern-minded person of the time endorsed, a summary of all the different biologic facts which led up to the conception of the various species of animals as proceeding out of one another,—as proceeding, the one out of the other. Topinard had, set out in full in his book, all the material which could be quoted in support. And one could thus find everything which had led to the conception of a progressive transformation of the different animal species, one out of another. And Topinard stops short with the facts, and says, after adducing, I think, some twenty-two points, that the twenty-third he has then to adduce is this Transformation of the Animal Species. And now we stand directly before the problem of Man. — That, he leaves unanswered: How is it with Man? Here, then, one might say, taking the evolution of the biologists seriously, quite seriously, and connecting onto an author, who is also really to be taken seriously: Here he leaves the question open. Let us go further; let us add to point twenty-two point twenty-three, and we get this: That the animals always repeat themselves on a higher grade in their species; with Man we must transfer this to the individual, and when the individual repeats himself, then we shall have repeated earth-lives. — I took as connection, you see, what I happened to have. That was altogether the form still at that time, in which I tried to make comprehensible to the whole world's understanding, what lies of course as a spiritual fact de facto before the soul. But to make it understandable to the surrounding world, one had to take what lay directly to hand, but which ended, not with a full stop, but with a dotted line. I simply connected on to the dotted line of natural-science. That was the first thing. And this lecture I delivered in the circle of which I told you yesterday. They did not have much understanding for it; because they were not, there, interested in natural science. They did not feel, there, the necessity for paying any consideration to natural science; and it naturally seemed to the people waste of time, to set to work to prove what they already believed. Well, what made the second thing, was, that, at the beginning of the century, I delivered a series of lectures in a circle which called themselves ‘The Coming Race’ (‘die Kommenden’), and where as a rule only literary themes were discussed. These lectures had for title From Buddha to Christ, and in them I tried to show the whole line of evolution from Buddha to Christ, and to sum up in Christ the total of all that lay in the previous aspects of conception. The series closed with that interpretation of the Gospel of John which sets out from the Waking of Lazarus. So that this Lazarus problem therefore, as it is found later in my Christianity as Mystical Fact, forms here the conclusion of this lecture-cycle From Buddha to Christ. This occurred at about the time when, from the same circle of people who had invited me to hold the lectures that are contained in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought, I now received a request to speak to an audience of theosophists on the very subject it was my aim and wish to speak on. And this came together again with the efforts being made to found a German Section of the ‘Theosophical Society’. And I found myself called upon,—before really I was a member, before I had even given the least sign of becoming a member,—to become General Secretary in the German Section of the ‘Theosophical Society’. At the time this German Section was being founded, I gave a lecture-cycle, at which there were, I think, only two or three theosophists present. The rest were mainly the same audience as in the circle in which I was holding the lectures From Buddha, to Christ. It was a circle called the ‘Coming Race’ (‘die Kommenden’). The names seemed to stick to me:—there must be some law connected with it. ‘Anthroposophy’ stuck to me from Robert Zimmermann. The ‘Coming Race’ reappeared in the name of the ‘Coming Day’ (‘der Kommende Tag’). Names of this kind stick to one,—old names. To this circle,—which, as I said, had been joined by two or three theosophists at most; and by these really out of curiosity, as you will see at once, for I spoke to this circle on the evolution of world-conceptions from the earliest Oriental times to the present day: or, Anthroposophy. This cycle of 1 Literally ‘Thought-dash’. 2 1901-2, in Berlin.—See too the ‘Story of my Life’ by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Chap. XXX. lectures, then, bore from the first as its proper title: ‘The history of mankind's evolution, as shown in its world-conceptions from the earliest Oriental ages down to the present times: or, Anthroposophy.’—This lecture-cycle, as I must again mention, was held by me contemporaneously with the founding of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. I used to go away, indeed, out of the meeting, and whilst the others were continuing their conference and continuing to discourse Theosophy, I delivered my series of lectures on Anthroposophy. One of the people, who afterwards, from theosophists became good anthroposophists,—one who became indeed a very good anthroposophist,—went out of curiosity at the time to these lectures, and said to me afterwards: ‘Yes, but what you have just been saying doesn't agree at all with what Mrs. Besant says and what Blavatsky says.’ To which I replied: ‘Well, no doubt that must be the case then.’—He was a good connoisseur of Theosophy and all its dogmas, who discovered, quite rightly, that ‘It doesn't agree.’—So even at that period, one could say: It is not in agreement; it is something different. Well, these are facts, which for the moment I have just put before you. And now there is another fact I should like to mention, drawn apparently from another quarter altogether, and to which I have already alluded yesterday. Take the books of Blavatsky, beginning with the principal books, first, the Isis Unveiled, and second, the Secret .Doc-trine. Now, one did not really need to have any very great weakness for the people who accepted everything in these books as sacred dogma; but all the same, if only for the reasons I mentioned yesterday, there was enough to make one find these books extraordinarily interesting,—above all, to find the phenomenon of Blavatsky herself an extraordinarily interesting one,—extraordinarily interesting, if only from a deeper psychologic standpoint.—And in what way? Well, there is, after all, a big difference, you see, between these two books, the Isis Unveiled and Blavatsky's other book, the Secret Doctrine; — there is a very big difference indeed. And you will recognize this difference most forcibly, if I tell you how the two books were judged at the time by the people who were connoisseurs in such things.—What do I mean, when I speak of ‘connoisseurs in such things’? My dear friends, there really exist traditions, which have come down from the very oldest mysteries and been pre-served since in various so-called Secret Societies. And the people too in certain secret societies had grades distributed to them accordingly. They moved up, from the first grade to the second, thence to the third, and so on. And, in these grades, such and such things were communicated to them always from the same traditions. In the lower grades, the people did not understand the things, but they accepted them as sacred dogmas. They did not really understand the things in the higher grades either. But though neither the lower grades, nor yet the higher grades, understood the traditions, it was nevertheless a firm belief amongst those who belonged to the lower grades, that those who belonged to the higher ones understood everything. This was a quite fixed belief that existed among them; but all the same there did exist among them also a preserved store of genuine knowledge. Verbally, they knew a very great deal. And you need only take up anything ... to-day, when everything is printed and everything obtainable, these things too are easy to obtain you need only take up what is printed on the subject, and put life into it again from what Anthroposophy can teach you (for there is no other way of giving the things life), and you will then see, even in the mangled form in which they are usually printed to-day, that these traditions do contain within them a vast hoard of ancient, awe-inspiring knowledge. Often the words sound all wrong; but anyone who knows a little, knows what is implied, and that an ancient hoard of old-world knowledge lies behind. Rut still, however, the special feature of these secret societies and their proceedings is this: that the people have a general feeling that in earlier ages there existed persons who were initiates, and who possessed an ancient lore that enabled them to give information about the universe,—about the cosmos and the world of spirits. And they knew, too, how to put words together, they knew how to talk about these things that had been handed down to them. There were plenty of such people. And now appeared the Unveiled Isis of Blavatsky. And the people, who had become possessed of the traditional knowledge through having attained to lower or higher grades in these secret societies, were the very people to have a terrible fright when the Unveiled Isis appeared. The reason of their fright was usually explained to be, that the times—they said—were not yet ripe, for these things, which had always been kept concealed in the secret societies, to be given out straightway to the mass of mankind through the press. That was what they thought. They were really indeed of this honest opinion, that the times were not ripe for these things to be communicated to the whole of mankind. There was, however, for individuals amongst them, another reason besides. And this reason can only properly be under-stood, if I call your attention to certain other facts again.—You must consider, that during the fifth post-atlantean period,—namely, in the nineteenth century,—everything, really, had passed over into abstract concepts and ideas; so that finally, as we saw, one of the profoundest and most powerful minds couched his whole world-outlook in the abstract concepts: Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence, etc., down to Purpose. Everything in this modern age has turned to abstract concepts and ideas. One of the first in Central Europe, who began with these abstract ideas, is the philosopher Schelling. At a time, when people were able to be enthused by such ideas, because they still had, latent in them, forces of human sentiment, and when, in Jena, Schlegel and Tieck were amongst the listeners when, with immense enthusiasm, such ideas were discussed,—at that time Schelling too had been one of those who taught these abstract ideas. Then, after a few years, Schelling no longer found any satisfaction in these abstract ideas,—plunged into all kinds of mysticism, more particularly into Jacob Boehme,—received from these ideas of Boehme's a new and fruitful impulse, and then, out of the ideas he had received from Jacob Boehme, produced some-thing, which now rang somewhat less abstracted and more substantial. No one can be said to have really any longer understood,—for it was not understood,—what Schelling had written in 1809, in his Human Freedom, and the Circumstances involved with it; but somewhere in the 'twenties, Schelling, who till then had been living for a long while in retirement, began to speak, and in a curious manner. You may find to-day in Reclam's Universal Library Series a little volume of Schelling's, called The Ages of the World. If you take up this little volume, you will get an odd feeling; you will say to yourself: ‘It's all quite hazy still, and abstract; and yet one has the strange feeling: How is it, that it doesn't occur to the man, to Schelling, to say what, for instance, has since been said on anthroposophic ground about the true facts concerning Atlantis; but that he almost, clumsily as it were, hints at them?’—So far he gets; to clumsily hinting at them. It is a quite interesting little volume, this of Schelling's, in Reclam's Universal Library, on The Ages of the World. And then, as you know, Friedrich Wilhelm IV appointed him in 1844 to the University of Berlin. There, accordingly, after Hegel had been dead for fourteen years, he became Hegel's successor. And there Schelling began to deliver his lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation. This, too, is still fearfully abstract, He speaks of three potentials, A', A', A' ... fearfully abstract! Then, however, he carries it on further, as far as to a kind of comprehension of the ancient Mysteries—as far as to a kind of comprehension of Christianity. And again, when he launches into these ideas, we have almost the feeling: It is an attempt, though in a still quite primitive fashion, to find a way into a real spiritual world. Only one can't rightly do much with what Schelling gives here briefly in his lectures.—But the people, all the same, understood nothing of it. It is not, after all, so very easy to understand, since the way is a dubitable one. In the mind of the age, however,—as this is a proof,—in the mind of the age, then, there did lie something which, like Schelling, hinted: We must search into a spiritual world. In another form, the same thing happened in England. It is extremely interesting to read the writings of Laurence Oliphant. Oliphant describes—in another way naturally, for Englishmen describe otherwise than Germans, more tangibly, in terms of things and senses,—he describes the picture which had risen before his mind of earliest ages of Man's evolution upon earth. And in a certain sense, and taking into consideration the difference of national genus, they are parallel phenomena: Schelling, in the first half of the nineteenth century, more from the idealist side; and Laurence Oliphant, more from the realist side; in both, a powerful kind of striving after the spiritual world, of striving after a comprehension of the world as revealed to man's sight from the spirit. If one examines what it is exactly that is so curious, in Schelling as well as in Oliphant (it is the same phenomenon really in both, only varied by country), one finds that it is this: These two people grew up,—the one in German, the other in English fashion,—into the civilization of their age,—struggled through till they reached a crowning perfection in the ideas, then held as the philosophic ideas of the age, about Man, about the Universe, and so forth. Schelling in his fashion, as well as Oliphant in his fashion, struggled their way through. Now, as you know from the anthroposophic descriptions which I have given you, Man's evolution to-day takes place during the first part of his life in such a way, that the physical presents an accompanying phenomenon to the evolution of his soul. This ceases later on.—With the Greeks, as I told you, their evolution still went on until they were in the thirties, in such a way that there was an actual, progressive evolution of the two, a parallelism of the physical and the spiritual.—With Schelling and with Oliphant it was again somewhat different from what it is with the average person of the present day. With them, what took place was this: their evolution went on at first as it does with a normal human being, ... for of course to-day one can be a philosopher, and in every respect a quite normal human being,—perhaps, indeed, a sub-normal one; but that's by the way! ... One just develops one's notions a little further, you know, and then one stops short, if one is a normal human being. Schelling and Oliphant didn't stop short; but with increasing age their souls became all of a sudden as lively as they had been in a previous earth-life, and there rose up a memory of things which they had known long ago, in earlier incarnations,—rose up in a natural way: distant memories, hazy memories. And now, a light suddenly flashes on one; now one begins to see both Oliphant and Schelling in a different light. They struggle their way through; become first normal philosophers, according to their different countries; then in their later years they acquire a memory of something they had known before in previous earth-lives,—now as a hazy memory. And then, they begin to talk about the spiritual world. It is a hazy, indistinct memory, that rises up in Schelling and in Laurence Oliphant; but still it was a thing of which there was a certain amount of fear amongst the people who had merely a traditional, old evolution, lest it might get the upper-hand, might spread. These people were horribly afraid lest men might come to be born, who would remember what they had lived through in times before, and would talk about it. ‘And then’—thought they—‘what will become of our principle of secrecy? We exact solemn oaths from the members of the first, second, third grades; but if people come to be born, in whom it all wakes up again as a living memory, what we've preserved so carefully and keep locked up, of what use then is all our secrecy!’ And now appeared Isis Unveiled. The curious phenomenon was this: This book brought a whole lot of what was kept secret in secret societies openly into the book-market. The great problem that now faced these people was: How have these things, which we have kept well locked up, and to which the people are sworn by solemn oaths,—how has Blavatsky got hold of them, and from what source? Amongst these people particularly, and all who were frightened, this book, Isis Unveiled, aroused great attention. It certainly was, for those people who took a conscient share in the spiritual life going on around them at the end of the nineteenth century,—it certainly was a problem, what had appeared here, with this book of Blavatsky's. And now there appeared the Secret Doctrine. Then the thing became really serious.—To-day, as I said, I am merely setting forward the bare facts.—A whole mass of the things, which properly in secret societies were reserved for the highest grades alone, were planted by this book before the world. And the people who had been scared already by the first book, and now in addition by this second one, coined various expressions for it at the time; for there was something terribly, especially for the so-styled Initiates, terribly upsetting in this Blavatsky phenomenon. Well, with the Isis Unveiled, things were not yet quite so uncanny,—for Blavatsky was after all a chaotic personality, who, along with the really profound wisdom, was constantly mixing up, as I said yesterday, all sorts of stuff that is absolutely worthless. At any rate, about the Isis Unveiled the alarmed, so-styled Initiates could still say: It's a book which, where it's true it isn't new, and where it's new it isn't true. And that was the judgment passed on this book to begin with. The people recognized that the unpleasant thing about it for them was: the things have been disclosed. (The book itself was named Isis Unveiled!) But they calmed their uneasiness by thinking: ‘What must have happened is, that—from some quarter or other—there has been an infringement, strictly speaking, of our rights.’ And then, when the Secret Doctrine made its appearance, in which there was a whole heap of things, that were not known even to the highest grades, then the people could no longer say: What is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true; for there were a whole number of things said in it, which had not been preserved by tradition. So that they were now faced in a most curious way with the very thing that they had been afraid of ever since Schelling and Laurence Oliphant,—coming now from a woman, and in a most strange and, moreover, perplexing fashion. For this reason, as I said, the personality is, psychologically, even more interesting than the books. It was certainly a significant and remarkable phenomenon for the spiritual life of the departing nineteenth century, this phenomenon of Blavatsky. This is the point down to which I wished to carry my facts. |
258. The Anthroposophic Movement (1938): The Mood of the Times and its Consequences
12 Jun 1923, Dornach Translated by Ethel Bowen-Wedgwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
Those societies I am speaking of, who kept a certain spiritual treasure under lock and key, and put their people under oath to betray no word of it, they knew better how to take care of things. |
But what the Scholastics still understood by Belief, is not understood by mankind to-day at all. And so one must be clear, I said, that Thomas Aquinas wanted to approach the Universe on its one side by this investigation and knowledge of the understanding but that, on its other side, he wanted to supplement and complete this investigated knowledge of the understanding by the displayed truths of revelation. |
To perceive the truth in such matters does, you see, amongst other things, require sound human understanding. About this sound human understanding, however, there are peculiar notions. Last year, when I was holding a fairly big course of lectures in Germany, I made frequent use of the expression ‘sound human understanding’, and said, that everything which Anthroposophy has to say from the spiritual world can be tested by sound human understanding. |
258. The Anthroposophic Movement (1938): The Mood of the Times and its Consequences
12 Jun 1923, Dornach Translated by Ethel Bowen-Wedgwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
In my attempt to describe the career of the various societies, or associations, with which the Anthroposophical Society has a certain connection (though one, which at the present day is much misunderstood), I was led yesterday to allude to the phenomenal appearance of H. P. Blavatsky, and I tried to give some idea of the manner in which this personality entered into the spiritual life of the closing nineteenth century. I was obliged to go back to this particular personality, because, after all, the impulse which, at the end of the nineteenth century, led to the association of the people, whom I classed two days ago under the name ‘homeless souls’, came from those works of which Blavatsky was the author. Although Anthroposophy, and its appearance on the scene, has in reality scarcely anything to do with the works of Blavatsky, still I do not merely want in these lectures to describe the historic aspect of the anthroposophic movement only; I want also to point out its associative features, as we have them before us in the anthroposophic movement to-day. And this makes it necessary to take such points to start from, as I have selected in the past two days. Now of course, as regards everything that may be said about Blavatsky, it is very easy to-day, if one wants to discredit the kind of spiritual aspirations that manifested themselves, say, in the ‘Theosophical Society’,—it is easy enough to dismiss a phenomenon like Blavatsky by pointing out the very dubious character of what one finds in this individual's personal biography. I might instance a great number of things. I only need allude to the notions, which arose amongst the society that had gathered round Blavatsky and her spiritual life, that certain information about the spiritual world had been made known through the transmission of physical letters, physical communications,—by means, that is, of writings on paper,—from a quarter not situated within the physical world. They used to call these documents ‘Masters' Letters’,—used to exhibit them, and declare them not to have been written in the ordinary way, or at least not conveyed in the ordinary way to the place from which they were then produced. It was therefore an affair which made a considerable stir, when subsequently, in the house in which these letters had been exhibited under H. P. Blavatsky's leadership, a whole conjuror's apparatus of sliding doors was disclosed, by means of which the letters could simply be pushed in, through these doors, in the ordinary physical way, but fraudulently, into the room where they then turned up as magic documents; and other things of the sort. It is, of course, exceedingly easy for people in our times to point to such things, and to find in them plain evidence that such a personality as Blavatsky's can be simply settled with the words: ‘She was just a swindler’.—Well, as to this aspect of the phenomena that. played around Blavatsky, we shall still have several things to say. But, for the moment, there is another standpoint still that we may take, namely, of not troubling ourselves for the moment with all that went on on the external side of the affair. Certainly, there are things in it which have raised objection. But let us just neglect these objections for a while; say that we don't trouble ourselves about all the things which went on on the exterior, and simply consider the written works themselves. And, if one does so, one will then come to the conclusion which I described to you recently,—to the conclusion, namely, that in Blavatsky's works one is largely dealing with a mass of chaotic, dilettante stuff, which has been scribbled down amongst the rest; but that, along with all this, there are things which unmistakably, when they come to be tested by proper methods, are in every way to be regarded as reproductions—by some means or other—of a very extensive knowledge of the spiritual world, or from the spiritual world. This is something which cannot be denied, despite any objections that may be raised. And here then arises the exceedingly important and, as I think, crucial question for the inner history of civilized evolution: How and from what cause could it happen that, at the end of the nineteenth century, from—let us say so far—a questionable quarter, there could come actual tidings from a spiritual world? that there could come revelations of a spiritual world, which at the least, when taken as occasions for examining into the state of the facts, do show themselves, even to a spiritual observation of the objective and scientific kind, to be in every way deserving of most studious attention?—revelations which, about the fundamental laws of the world, the fundamental forces of the world, have more to tell, than everything which in modern times has been brought to light about the world's secrets, either by philosophy, or by any other of the different tendencies of world-conception. The question may well seem a crucial one, And then, to face this, there is another problem again in civilized evolution, which must not be forgotten when speaking of the life-conditions of anything such as the Anthroposophical Society, or indeed in connection with any endeavours to find a way into the spiritual world. And this phenomenon of civilized evolution is: that the capacity for judgment, the power of conviction in any judgment, has altogether suffered very greatly in our age,—has gone back. People allow themselves to be deceived in this respect by the great steps that have been made in progress. But if one considers these very steps of progress, and what the connection has been between these great steps forwards, that have been made in our day, and the course followed by its spiritual life, in so far as the individual human personalities have intervened as judgmatic persons in this spiritual life's course,—then one gets a background, so to speak, for observing with what capacity our age approaches phenomena of any kind, that appeal to the human powers of judgment. There is really uncommonly much that might be mentioned. I will only pick out just a few instances. I would ask, for instance, those who have had anything to do with applied electricity, whether as professionals or amateurs,—I would ask them, what the so-called Ohm's Law means to-day for applied electricity? The answer would be, of course, that Ohm's Law forms one of the fundaments on which the whole system of applied electricity is built up.—When Ohm produced his first work, which was the basis for his later, so-called Ohm's Law, this work was rejected as ‘unusable’ by a distinguished learned faculty at one of the universities. Had things gone according to this learned faculty, there could be no applied electricity to-day. Again, to take perhaps something more directly obvious to you:—you all know what the telephone means for us to-day in the whole of our civilized life. When Reis, who was outside the ring of official science, put on paper for the first time his idea of the telephone, and sent in his manuscript to one of the best-known periodicals of the day, the Poggendorff Annals, the work was returned as unusable. So great, you see, is the power of conviction residing in people's judgment to-day,—and one might multiply such instances indefinitely. Great is the judgment of our times in its powers of conviction. One must simply look at these things with perfect objectivity. One may pick out anything, lying, so to speak, on our top-peaks of civilization, and one will find everywhere the same kind of thing. Or, if one goes more into the hidden corners, well, there too very pretty examples may often be found, to illustrate the capacity of judgment in those quarters which have the leading voice to-day in all that may be termed the management of spiritual life. And the public again, the mass of the public, who follow along the broad high-road of which I spoke two days ago,—they are entirely under the impress of all this, which is accepted as the recognized thing to-day.—Well, civilization is common to all countries; in no country is it better nor worse than in another. Take an illustration such as this: Adalbert Stifter is a poet of some distinction. I don't, however, want now to go into his distinction as a poet, but to tell something out of his life. He passed,—extremely well indeed,—through the classical side of the secondary school, and then studied natural science, with the intention of qualifying as a secondary school teacher. But he was judged to be quite unsuit-able for a secondary school teacher. His talents were not judged adequate for a secondary school teacher. In the judgment of the authorities he was not talented enough to become a teacher at a secondary school. Now strangely enough it happened, that a certain Baroness Muenk, who had nothing whatever to do with judging the qualifications of secondary school teachers, heard of the poet, Adalbert Stifter, made him read to her the poems which he had so far written, and to which he himself attached no great value, and downright compelled. him to publish them. They made at once a great sensation. And the authorities now said: We can have no better man to make school inspector for the whole country. And so it came about, that the very person, who but a little while before had been deemed incompetent to be himself a teacher, was now appointed chief superintendent over the whole of these teachers. It would be extremely interesting, some time or other, to describe a series of such things, collected from all the various departments of spiritual life, beginning with a phenomenon like that of Julius Robert Mayer. The law connected with his name, that of the conservation of energy, is one, as you know, which I am obliged to contest in certain of its fields of application. Modern physics, however, does not contest it; it upholds it indeed in every particular, and is altogether built up on this law of the conservation of energy. Julius Robert Mayer, who to-day figures as a hero (you have heard me mention others before, such as Gregory Mendel, who had a similar fate),—Julius Robert Mayer, born at Heilbronn on the Neckar, was always at the bottom of his class; and at the University, to which he went on,—it was Tuebingen,—he one fine day was advised, on account of his performances, that it would be better for him to with-draw from the university. It is certainly no merit of the university's, that he came upon his discoveries; for, at the university, they wanted to turn him out, before ever he had a chance to take his degree and become a doctor. Beginning with such things, down to the vast tragedy attending the name of that man, to whose immense desert it is owing, that puerperal fever,—which simply swept its people away until Semmelweiss appeared,—is to-day reduced to a minimum,—down to this whole vast tragedy of Semmelweiss, which finally resulted, as in the case of Julius Robert Mayer, in Semmelweiss' ending his days in a mad-house, despite the fact that he is one of mankind's greatest benefactors ... if one were to put all these things together, one would have an extremely important element in the history of civilization in recent times, and would thence be able to judge, how little power this externally progressive age had for hitting the facts, in its estimation of spiritual phenomena,—how little readiness there was, really, to enter into any signs that showed themselves on the horizon of its spiritual life. Such things as these have to be taken into account, if one wishes to form a true picture of the antagonistic forces opposed to the intervention of any spiritual movement. And then one learns to know, what capacity there is for any sort of judgment in this, our present age, which is so specially proud of these powers of judgment that it does not possess. Now it is really a remarkably symptomatic phenomenon, that what otherwise had only existed traditionally, hoarded up in all manner of secret societies, who had no intention whatever of letting it become public,—that all this hoarded store, or a great part of it, should suddenly appear openly published in the book of a woman, Blavatsky,—in a book bearing the title Isis Unveiled. Naturally, it gave alarm to all the people who said to themselves: ‘This book contains a whole mass of things, that we have always kept under lock and key.’ And these societies, I may say, paid more heed to their locks and keys than our present Anthroposophical Society does. In the Anthroposophical Society there most certainly was never any intention of keeping the contents of the cycles totally and absolutely secret; but what happened was, that, at a particular time, I found myself required to let those things, which otherwise I give by word of mouth, he made accessible to a larger circle. And since there was no time to go through the things and edit them, one simply let them be printed as ‘manuscript’ in the form they were in, which was not that in which one would otherwise have published them,—not, however, because one did not want to publish the material, but because one didn't want to publish the material in this form, and also because, after all, one wanted to see that these things should he read by people who have the preparatory training, for otherwise they are inevitably misunderstood. But in spite of this, every one of the cycles is to be had to-day by anyone who requires it for antagonistic purposes. Those societies I am speaking of, who kept a certain spiritual treasure under lock and key, and put their people under oath to betray no word of it, they knew better how to take care of things. And they knew, that something very particular must be behind it, when a book suddenly appears, which this time really gave something of importance, such as I indicated. As for the things which have no importance, you need only go down a side-street in Paris to pick up basketfuls of the writings of the secret societies on sale; but the publication of these writings will occasion no alarm to the people who have kept the traditional knowledge locked up in their secret societies; for as a rule they are very valueless things that one finds published in this way. Isis Unveiled, however, was not something valueless. This Isis Unveiled, indeed, delivered itself with a certain substantiality, that made the knowledge seem original which it imparted, and which had been so carefully preserved over from an ancient wisdom until now. Well, as I said, those people, who were alarmed, could but think that there was something very particular behind it,—a betrayal from some quarter. I do not so much want now, in these lectures, to emphasize the inner side of the affair, which I have repeatedly discussed at one time or another in previous lectures from this or that aspect. I want more to-day to deal with the outer side of it, as the world judged it, which is of special importance for the history of the movement,—to describe how the world judged it, rather than what went on as facts behind the scenes.—This, then, the people could tell: namely, that somebody or other, who was initiated in these things, who had received traditional knowledge of them, must for some reason,—not necessarily a particularly good one—have given hints to Blavatsky. This, it was very easy to tell, without being wide of the truth, that somewhere or other, from some secret society, or group of societies, there had been a betrayal; and that then Blavatsky had been the means of making the thing public. There would quite well, though, have been other ways of giving such things to the public, than by employing a lady of Blavatsky's kind as the means of publication. There was, however, a reason, of which again I will only give the outer aspect, for employing this particular lady. And here I come to a chapter in our spiritual history, which is really a very curious one. At that time, when Blavatsky and her books came on the scene, there was but very little talk of what is in everybody's mouth to-day, namely, of Psycho-Analysis. But I can assure you, my dear friends, that the people, who had any powers of judgment,—that these people experienced in living truth, through this same phenomenon of Blavatsky, something, compared with which all that ever yet was written by any of the leading lights of Psycho-Analysis is really—as I said lately in another connection—a dilettanteism to the second degree.—For what does Psycho-Analysis propose to show? In the point wherein Psycho-Analysis is in a sense right, it shows, that down below, at the bottom of the human being, there lives something, which,—whatever this ‘down below’ may be,—can be brought up to consciousness, and, when brought up, extends beyond what man has in his conscious-ness originally. So that one may say, if you like, that, hidden in the corporeal body, there is something which, when brought up into consciousness, looks like spirit. Through the corporeal body runs a rumble of spirit.—It is of course extremely elementary for the psycho-analyst in this way to fish up a few fragmentary leavings of life-experience from the bottom of the human being,—leavings, that is, remnants of life-realizations, which have not been lived through with quite sufficient intensity for the emotional requirements of the person in question,—which, as it were, have deposited themselves, form dregs in the man, and thereby bring him into a state of unstable, instead of stable equilibrium; and that then, what has thus collected during a man's life should be fished up, although it rumbles down below in unconsciousness, and when fished up into consciousness proves to be something spiritual, something which simply is not, so to speak, properly assimilated to the human being, and therefore rumbles in a disagreeable manner. When it becomes conscious, however, it can then be dispelled by the proper reaction, and so the man gets rid of the disagreeable rumbling. It is interesting, though, what a point this psycho-analytic, dilettante method of investigation has reached to-day. With Jung, particularly, it is extremely interesting. Jung has found out, that down below,—the ‘down below’ can't, of course, be very exactly determined, but somewhere down below (its whole being is after all very indeterminate!),—that somewhere then, man has within his being everything in the nature of undigested experience that he may have lived through since his birth; that there, down below, within his human being, he has all sorts of things, that go back to his early forefathers, that may take us back indeed all the way through the life-experiences of the various races, and further back still. So that it seems to the psycho-specialists to-day by no means improbable, for instance, that some experience which they met with, like the OEdipus problem say, in Greece, left an impression on the people; and that then it was transmitted by heredity, on and on. And to-day some poor devil comes to the psycho-analyst's clinic, and he psycho-analyses him, and gets up something that is seated so deep down in the patient, that it doesn't come out of his own, present life, but from his father and forefather and fore-forefather, and so on, away back to the time of the ancient Greeks who lived in the days of the OEdipus problem. And so it has run down through the whole blood-stream, and can be psycho-analysed out again to-day. There are the OEdipus sensations, rumbling about in the man, and can be psycho-analyzed out of him. And then they think that they will come on really very interesting trains of connection, and on something that will lead back far into the races, if they psycho-analyse it out. Only,—you see,—these are altogether dilettante methods of investigating. For you only need a little acquaintance with Anthroposophy to know, that it is possible to bring up a very great many things out of the under depths of man's life: his pre-natal life to begin with, his pre-earthly life, what the man went through before he came down into the physical world; that one can bring up out of him what he went through in previous earth-lives. There one comes out of dilettanteism and into actual reality! And there, too, one comes to recognize, that in Man the whole secret of the Universe is contained, involved, rolled up together, as it were, in him. It was the view, after all, of ancient times as well, that the secret of the Universe is un-rolled, when Man brings up from within him all that lies hid in his own inner depths. That was why they called Man a Microcosm, not for the sake of a fine phrase, such as people are so fond of to-day, but because it was a fact of actual experience, that from the bottom depths of Man every conceivable thing can be fetched up whatsoever, that lies spread as a secret through the width and breadth of the Cosmos. It is in reality the merest elementary dilettanteism, which one finds to-day as psycho-analysis. For, firstly, it is psychologic dilettanteism,—they don't know, that, when you get to a certain depth, physical and spiritual life are one. They merely regard the soul-life swimming on the top, and apply abstract notions to this surface soul-life; they never get down to those lower depths, where the soul-life lives creative, weaving, pulsing in blood and in breathing, where it is one, in fact, with the so-called material functions. They study the soul's life in a dilettante way. And again, they study the physical life in a dilettante way, inasmuch as they study it merely in its external appearance to the senses, and don't know that everywhere, in all sense-life, and above all in the human organism, there is hidden spirit. And when two dilettanteisms are so interwoven, that the one is used to throw light on the other, as is done in psycho-analysis, then the dilettanteisms do not merely add, but they multiply together, and one gets dilettanteism squared. Well, what displays itself in the form of this squared dilettanteism, was, in a way, to be seen unmistakably in the psychologic problem of Blavatsky. From some quarter or other there may have been something betrayed, which gave an incentment; and this incentment worked practically in the same way as though an invisible psycho-analyst—but a wise one this time!—had fetched up out of Blavatsky, by means, namely, of a sudden jerk, a whole mass of knowledge; which this time came from the actual person herself, and not from old writings that had been handed down by tradition from olden times. Something had here been brought to light out of the actual human being itself, by what I might call the invisible psycho-analyst. For, whether there was any traitor in the question, he, at any rate, was not the psycho-analyst; he only gave the jerk. The circumstances, however, themselves gave the jerk.—And what were the circumstances? Look back at the evolution of the ages, to about the fifteenth century, and you will find, my dear friends, that it still, indeed frequently, happened, if people were stirred and roused by something or other (it merely needed to be some external phenomenon, that specially struck them), that then out of their own inner being there rose up before them some revelation of world-secrets. Later on, this has become something mystical and legendary; and the story told by Jacob Boehme, of how he had a marvellous revelation from gazing at a pewter plate, is thought very wonderful, simply because people do not know how things were in earlier times, and that down even into the fifteenth century it was still possible, through a comparatively, to all appearance trifling occasion, to call forth out of the inner man stupendous revelations of world-secrets, which the man then saw in a vision. But ever more and more has the possibility decreased for men to have inner revelations through incentments of such a kind. This comes, you see, from the increasing ascendancy of intellectualism. Intellectualism, is of course, involved with a definite form of development in the brain; the brain becomes ... one cannot, of course, prove it physiologically in externals, by anatomic means, but one can prove it nevertheless spiritually ... the brain becomes in a way calcified, stiver. And, in matter of fact, the brains of civilized mankind have grown considerably stiver since the fifteenth century. And this stiff brain does not allow man's inner revelations to come to the surface in his consciousness. And now I must say something exceedingly paradoxical, but which nevertheless is true. This greater stiffness of brain showed itself, as a fact, mostly in male humanity;—which I do not say as a special ground of rejoicing for any particular female brain, for towards the last half of the nineteenth century the women's brains too began to be stiff enough;—still, the vantage in respect of intellectuality and stiffness of brain lay with the men. And with this is connected the decrease in judgment. Now this was the very time, when the practice of keeping secret the old knowledge was still very largely maintained. And the case then turned out to be, that the men were not much affected by this knowledge; for they learnt it by memory, in grades, and it did not much affect them;—besides, they kept it under lock and key. Supposing, how-ever, there were someone, who in some way wanted to set this old knowledge working once more with peculiar activity, then he might quite well make the peculiar experiment of administering this old knowledge (which he himself need not perhaps even understand), just in a small dose maybe, to a woman,—and to one moreover, whose brain was very specially prepared; for the Blavatsky brain was, after all, somewhat different from other woman-brains of the nineteenth century. And then it might be, that,—just from the contrast of it with everything else that was there as education in these woman-brains,—what was otherwise old, dried-up knowledge might catch fire and so,—just as the psycho-analyst gives some particular lead, that stirs up the whole human being,—so it might stir up the peculiar personality of Blavatsky. And. then, through this stir, she out of her-self discovered what had been altogether forgotten by the whole of mankind, except those who were in secret societies, and by the others, who were in secret societies, had been kept carefully under lock and key,—to a great extent indeed not even understood. In this way it could all come out, as though, one might say, through a cultural vent-hole. But at the same time there was no sort of foundation there, for the things to have been worked up in a reasonable form. For Madame Blavatsky was certainly anything but a logical reasoner. In logic she was exceedingly weak; and whilst in actual fact she could produce out of her total human being revelations of world-secrets, she was by no means also adequate to describing these things in a form for which one could be answerable to the scientific conscience, say, of the modern age. And now, consider for a moment. Seeing the scant measure of judgment that was brought to hear upon spiritual phenomena, what possibility was there for a thing such as this,—which only showed itself again one might say, twenty years later, in a quite primitive, dilettante fashion at most, in psycho-analysis, and then only in a very tiny field,—how was it possible for a thing such as this, that could grow to a living experience of gigantic size and grandeur, such as psycho-analysis will only one day be able to rise to, when it has been purified, clarified, when it is placed on a reasonable basis and conducted really scientifically, when people no longer psycho-analyse out of the blood, that comes from men who lived in the days of the OEdipus problem and has run through the veins down into our present generation, but when they really understand how the web of the world is woven ... yes, indeed, how could such a living experience, which, in the face of to-day's degenerate psycho-analysing, displays what I might call its grand, gigantic counterpart, freed of all its caricature,—how, at a time when the capacity for judgment was what I have described to you, how could this thing hope, in any wide circle of people, to meet with an adequate measure of under-standing? In this respect, one could really make many experiences as regards the comprehension to be met with in our days, when one made the least attempt to appeal to a somewhat larger measure of judgment. To give an instance as illustration. These illustrations are necessary, and you will see as the lectures go on, how necessary it is that I should enter into these seemingly quite personal matters. I should like to tell you an example of how hard it is in these modern times to make oneself at all understandable, directly there is some point about which one desires to appeal to a somewhat larger measured, larger hearted judgment. There was a time, about the turn of the century, in Berlin, where I was then living, when Giordano Bruno Associations used to be founded, and amongst others was a ‘Giordano Bruno League’. There were other Giordano Bruno Associations, but this, that was founded, was a ‘Giordano Bruno League’. It had in it truly admirable people, according to the fashion and notions of the time,—people really with a profound interest in every sort of thing in which one could possibly take an interest in those days, and round which one could centre the whole range of one's thoughts and feelings and will. Indeed, in the abstract fashion which is usual in modern times, there was even reference made in this Giordano Bruno League to the Spirit. A notable personage in this Giordano Bruno League prefaced its foundation with an introductory lecture on, ‘Matter is never without Spirit.’ But it was all so hopeless! For this ‘Spirit’, and all that went on there, was at bottom a pure abstraction, nothing which could ever get near any actual reality in the world. The whole way of thinking was terribly abstract!—What in particular seemed to me very irritating, was the way in which the people every moment, on every possible occasion, dragged in the word monoism: One must worship the one-and-only reasonable and man-befitting Monoism; and Dualism is a thing of the past. And then came always a reference to the way in which in these modern times we had emancipated ourselves from the Dualism of the Middle Ages. These, you see, were things which at the time I found uncommonly irritating. I found them irritating for the reason ... in the first place, all this gassing about monoism, and dilettante rejection of any dualism ... and then I found it irritating to talk about the Spirit in this general, pantheistic way,—that the Spirit is ... well, that there is, after all Spirit too everywhere,—until nothing was left of Spirit but the word. I found all this considerably irritating. As a matter of fact, after the delivery of the very first lecture on ‘Matter never without Spirit’, I came to words with the man who had delivered the lecture; which brought me already at the time into very bad odour. But this whole monistic business went on ever further, and grew more and more irritating,—interesting, but irritating,—until I decided once for all to lay hold of the people at a salient point, and so at least, as I hoped, shake up their powers of judgment a little. And after a whole series of lectures, through which the tirades had gone on about the darkness of the Middle Ages and the horrible dualism of the Scholastics, I determined,—it was just at the time, in which people now declare, at that very time, that I was a rabid Haeckelite!—I determined for once to do something which should give the people's judgment a little shaking-up. And so I held a lecture on Thomas Aquinas, in which—to put now into a couple of sentences what I then expounded at length—I said somewhat as follows: There was absolutely xiii justification,—I said,—as regards the spiritual life of the past and its ideas, for talking of the darkness of the Middle Ages and in particular of the Dualism of Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics; for that, if Monoism was the order of the day, I would undertake to show that Thomas Aquinas was a thorough monoist. Only then one must not give the name of Monoism only to what the present age understands by it, as materialistic Monoism; but one must give the name of Monoist to everyone, who looks on the Universal Principle as residing in a Monon, in a Unity. And that—I said—Thomas Aquinas most certainly did; for he obviously saw in the Unity of the Godhead the Monon underlying everything that exists as creation in the universe. Here—said I you have a basis of the purest Monoism. Only that Aquinas according to the method of those times, drew this distinction: that the one half could be comprehended by ordinary human knowledge, through the senses and the understanding,—the other half by means of another kind. of knowledge, which in those days was called Belief. But what the Scholastics still understood by Belief, is not understood by mankind to-day at all. And so one must be clear, I said, that Thomas Aquinas wanted to approach the Universe on its one side by this investigation and knowledge of the understanding but that, on its other side, he wanted to supplement and complete this investigated knowledge of the understanding by the displayed truths of revelation. And it was precisely by this means that he sought to penetrate to the Monon of the Universe. He only sought to proceed by two roads. And it was all the worse for the present age, I said, that this present age had. not sufficiently large-hearted ideas to look round about it a little in history. In short, I wanted to assist the dried-up brains to a little moisture. Rut it was all in vain; for the effect was a most extraordinarily curious one. The people could make nothing at all of the matter to begin with. They were all thorough-going evangelical protestants, and thought: here was an attempt to smuggle in Catholicism. It's a defence of Catholicism,—they thought,—with its horrible Dualism! It is really dreadful!—they said:—Here are we, taking every possible pains to deal Catholicism its death-blow; and now comes a member of this very Giordano Bruno League, and takes Catholicism into defence! Really, the people didn't know at the time, whether I had not gone mad in the night, when I gave this lecture. They could make nothing at all of the affair. And. they were really people of the most enlightened brains, at that time. In fact, there was only one, really, who afterwards came forward as a sort of apologist. It was the poet Wolfgang Kirchbach. He was the only one, who then devised a formula, under which the lecture could enjoy civic rights in the Giordano Bruno League. And this was the formula he devised: He said: What Steiner wanted, was not by any means to smuggle in Catholicism; but he wanted to show, that in that ancient scholastic wisdom of Catholicism there still lay something much weightier, than all that we have ourselves to-day in our superficial ideas. That was what he wanted to show. He wanted to show us, that the reason why Catholicism is such a powerful enemy, is because we are such weak opponents, that we must furnish ourselves with stronger weapons. That was what his lecture was intended to show. And this was the only formula, under which the lecture then, by one-third, by a minority, so far managed to obtain civic rights, that I was at any rate not excluded from the Giordano Bruno League. But with the majority I passed for a man, who had had his brain turned by Catholicism. Well, you see, this is just an episode out of the same period, at which I am now said. to have been a rabid disciple of Haeckel. Through such things, however, one gained practical experience as to the capacity of judgment, namely as to the largeness of judgment, with which anything was welcomed, which was not bent in the first place upon theoretic formulas, but was bent on actually pursuing the road to the spirit, on actually getting into the spiritual world. For, getting into the spiritual world really does not depend on what particular theory one has about Spirit or Matter, but on whether one is in a position to bring about an actual living experience of the spiritual world. As I have often pointed out before, the Spiritualists most certainly believe that all their proceedings make for the spirit; but their theories all the same are so empty of spirit!—they certainly do not lead men spiritwards. One may be a materialist even, and yet inspired with a great deal of spirit; it is real spirit, too, even though it be spirit mistaken in error. One need not of course set up self-mistaken spirit as something very valuable; but self-mistaken spirit, spirit which cheats itself by taking Matter to be the one and only reality, can at any rate be much richer in spirit, than that spiritual poverty which seeks the spirit after a material fashion, because it can find no spirit whatever within itself. In looking back, then, to its first beginnings, which must be rightly grasped in order to understand the whole meaning and life-conditions of the movement, one must know, in the lit st place, in what an exceedingly problematic manner the spiritual world's revelations made their entrance at first—if I may use the expression—into the earth-world, in the last third of the nineteenth century, and how little people's judgment in general was ripe for the reception of these spiritual revelations,—and then, above all, how strong the determination was in certain definite circles, that nothing whatever which really leads to the spirit should be allowed to get out amongst the people. Most undoubtedly, there were a large number of by no means negligible persons, on whom the apparition of Blavatsky could not fail to act with rousing effect. And that is what it did do at first. The attitude of the people who still preserved some judgment, was, that they said to themselves: This, after all, is something that speaks for itself: It is strange that it should come into the world just in the way it has now; but it is a thing that speaks for itself. One need only apply sound ordinary understanding to it, and it speaks for itself. There were, however, many people, as I said, whose interest it was, that just this kind of arousing influence should on no account be allowed to come into the world. And now the thing was there; there, in a person such as Blavatsky, who in a certain sense again was quite naive and helpless in the face of her own internal revelation. This can be seen from the very style of her writings.—The thing was there, then: and this was how she herself stood towards it: naive and helpless in a sort of way, and at the mercy of much that afterwards took place in her surroundings. For do you think it was especially difficult,—especially with H. P. Blavatsky it was not very difficult,—for people, whose desire it now was, so to manipulate the world that it should be proof against every sort of spirituality,—for these people to get at Blavatsky and form her surroundings. Just because she was so naive and helpless before her own internal revelations, she was in a way credulous. In the affair of the sliding-doors, for instance, through which were shoved letters ostensibly from the Masters, but which some person outside—whether B ... or another—had written and shoved in, it is by no means a necessary assumption that Blavatsky had said in the first instance to B ... : You shove them in!—but rather, she was again, in a way, native, and believed, herself, in letters of the kind. The same person, who shoved them in, deceived Blavatsky, It was then of course very easy to say before the world: The woman is a swindler. But don't you see, my dear friends, Blavatsky herself might very well be swindled. For there was a certain capacity in her for quite uncommon credulity, as a consequence just of this peculiar, let me say, non-hardness of her brain. The problem therefore is altogether an extremely complicated one; and really demands,—as everything genuinely spiritual does, which comes into the world to-day,—really calls for power of judgment, for a certain soundness of human understanding.—It is not exactly sound human understanding, when people first judge Adalbert Stifter not even competent to be a teacher, and then afterwards ... in this case again it was a woman,—probably one again with a softer brain than those committee-men all had in the government offices, or the school-boards, ... afterwards, when a hint came from this quarter, they then declared him qualified to inspect all the very people to whose ranks he might not even belong. To perceive the truth in such matters does, you see, amongst other things, require sound human understanding. About this sound human understanding, however, there are peculiar notions. Last year, when I was holding a fairly big course of lectures in Germany, I made frequent use of the expression ‘sound human understanding’, and said, that everything which Anthroposophy has to say from the spiritual world can be tested by sound human understanding. One of the critics, and by no means the worst of them, caught this up, and made the following criticism. He said, almost word for word: To talk of sound human understanding was, after all, bait for gudgeons; for everybody to-day, who has had any sort of scientific training, knows very well, that the human understanding, when it is sound, knows next to nothing; and when it fancies that it knows something, then it is not sound.—This was the sub-stance of a critical judgment, written with no lack of esprit. Put more into general words, then, this means, that anyone, who to-day is as clever as he should be, after all the steps that have been made in human progress, is aware that one can know nothing: if he thinks that he knows anything, he is mad.—So far have we come already in our reception of the gifts of the spirit. And now that I have given you some instances, before the anthroposophic movement began, of the capacity for apprehending a spiritual manifestation, and have given you now the judgment of an at any rate standard critic only a year ago, you have a tolerable picture of how this disposition of the age has pursued the whole movement. For, after all, seeing the general atmosphere of the age, and especially that a personage so hard to understand as Blavatsky was there in addition, to point to as an illustration,—there could but proceed from this atmosphere of the age the one judgment, which is simply the same as is repeated to-day in all manner of variations,—only that one person says it in one way, another in another: Everyone to-day, who is clever, who has sound human understanding, says, Ignorabimus. Everyone, who doesn't say Ignorabimus, is either mad, or a swindler. One must not look on this as simply proceeding from ill-will. In order to be able to take one's place rightly in the age, in order to perceive a few of the necessary life-conditions of the anthroposophic movement, or e must not see in all this merely the ill-will of private individuals, but one must recognize it as something that belongs to the colour of the times in all countries, amongst the whole of modern mankind, and that must be recognized for what it is. Then, it is true, in the whole stand which one takes up,—and which one must take up vigorously and boldly!—one will then also be able to mingle what must be there besides, when speaking about the age from the anthroposophic standpoint,—what, after all, must be present in all refutation, however sharp—sharp in soul,—of our opponents: and that is, compassion. One must, nevertheless, have com-passion, because the judgment of the age is clouded. How things now went with the anthroposophic movement, and were bound to go, circumstances being as they are,—of this we will speak more tomorrow. |
258. The Anthroposophic Movement (1938): Blavatsky's Spiritual but Anti-Christian Orientation
13 Jun 1923, Dornach Translated by Ethel Bowen-Wedgwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
And so it looked, in the innermost bottom of their souls, as though the men of modern times had no possibility, with an education such as they receive, of understanding the Christ, of actually comprehending Him; for rationalism and intellectualism have robbed men of the spiritual world. |
And so in time there came numbers of souls, with a quite definite need arising from these undergrounds of their being. Time really moves on; and. the men of to-day, as I have often insisted, are no longer the men of earlier times. |
And that this led to an immense one-sidedness, led, namely, to a form of Anti-christianity, is in every way quite understandable; just as it is quite understandable that a review of the modern Christianity, out of which he himself had grown, led to such an intense Anti-christianity in Nietzsche. |
258. The Anthroposophic Movement (1938): Blavatsky's Spiritual but Anti-Christian Orientation
13 Jun 1923, Dornach Translated by Ethel Bowen-Wedgwood Rudolf Steiner |
---|
When considering a phenomenon such as Blavatsky, especially when considering it from the aspect that will be clear to you from the remarks of the last three days, the first consideration naturally is the personality as such, regarded so-to-speak simply for itself, on the one hand. On the other hand, one has to consider it in the aspect of a means, by which a certain effect was produced upon a large number of people. Well, this effect was in part certainly one of a very negative kind. Those people, one may say, who heard anything of Blavatsky's publications, in so far as they were people, say of a philosophic or psychologic turn of mind, or literary, or scientific, or what one might call in general ‘educated’, as the term is used to-day,—such people were only too glad to be rid in any way of this new apparition, and not to be obliged to pronounce any sort of judgment on it. And they could attain this aim of theirs all the better, that there were circumstances, which I touched upon yesterday, under which they could say: It was a proven fact that there had been bogus practices, and one needn't trouble one's head further about anything, where this kind of thing is said to have been evidenced. And then, of course, more particularly, there were those people, who had possession of old, traditional wisdom,—a possession, of which I told you how little they understood it, but which they used in one direction or another as a means of power,—members of one or other of the secret societies. And one must never forget, that any number of things in the world are an effect of influences that go out from such secret societies. These people were not only glad not to need to pronounce any judgment, but they were above all things concerned to devise every conceivable means of preventing any more wide-spread effects resulting from this open demonstration of the spiritual world. For the things, as we saw, had been made public; they could be read by everyone, spread abroad by everyone. And thereby a good piece at least of the means of power, which these societies wanted to keep in their own hands, was taken from them.—And accordingly, behind things like those I described yesterday one finds of course associates of such societies,—particularly in the creation of opinion: there are bogus practices behind. But what must seem to us of more importance still for our present purpose, is that, in spite of all this, Blavatsky's writings, and all the other things attached to her person, did nevertheless create a certain impression with a large number of people of the day; and that thereby those various movements came into being, which bear the name, in a sense, of theosophical. In all that is here said, I beg you to note that I always try, as far as possible, to make the designations accord with the facts. To-day the very usage of the words alone makes this impossible for one,—impossible that is in many quarters. For it is only too easy for a person to-day, who hears a word, at once to establish what I might call a kind of lexicographal relation between himself and the word: he looks up some sort of verbal explanation, to spare himself as far as possible the trouble of going into the thing itself. This kind of literary gentleman,—and many people, too, who carry more weight than literary gentlemen,—when they hear of ‘theosophy’, look it up in the encyclopedia (or, which may be much the same thing, in their heads), and find out there what it is. Or they may go further, they are much more conscientious maybe, and study all sorts of documents in which such a word as ‘theosophy’ occurs; and then from this they take the grounds for their sub-sequent criticism. You must notice, with writings that deal with such things, in how far what they say is the out-come of this kind of procedure. But in direct contrast to all this, one might say: How did the particular society—or societies, indeed—that collected round the Blavatsky phenomenon, come by their name of ‘Theosophical Society’? One may have never so much,—and I have enumerated much that one may have,—against the Theosophical Society; but at any rate it certainly cannot be said about its origin at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that they took the dictionary meaning of the word ‘theosophy’, and founded a ‘Theosophical Society’ because they wanted to spread Theosophy as understood in the dictionary sense. That was most decidedly not the case. The case was, that a whole mass of communications were lying there from the spiritual world, that had come through Blavatsky,—lying there, ready, as communicated material. And the people now found them-selves, for reasons which I will discuss later, as good as compelled to execute the charge of this material by the method of a society. And then there came the need of a name. And then, the people who were ... well, everything is ‘debated’ to-day, and they ‘debated’ everything even in those days ... who were debating then, what name they should give it, asked themselves whether it should be called the ‘New Mystical Society’? or should it be called the ‘Rosicrucian Society’? or the ‘Magian Society’? And then they hunted up what other words there were, and finally hit on the word ‘theosophy’ and ‘theosophical’. So that the word in actuality has very little to do with what was spread abroad under it, so far as it is a word with an historic derivation. It has therefore not much sense, when people take the ‘meaning of the word’ as a basis for discussing the actual things,—and especially not for liking or disliking them. It is a question of these quite definite, concrete things, which came into the world either through Blavatsky's writings, or through other communications of hers. And it is the purest accident, one might say, that the associations which collected round these things took the name ‘Theosophical Society’. It was simply, that no better word occurred to them. This is a fact that must by no means be left out of account;—for naturally there exist not only historic judgments, as I might say, but also historic sentiments. Those, who have historically studied the course of development in some special branch of learning, find the term ‘theosophy’ turning up in a variety of places; but what they find turning up there, has nothing whatever to do in reality with what took again the name of ‘Theosophical Society’. Indeed, my dear friends, things like this must at any rate in the Anthroposophical Society be treated very seriously, and there should be, there at any rate, a certain dominant love of accuracy; so that in time a true instinct may grow up for all the quite unreal, superficially written stuff that has gradually collected round these things in the world. The question, however, that must occupy us most peculiarly is this: How did it come about, in spite of all, that a great number of people in these recent times have felt inwardly impelled towards these things that were thus revealed? For, here too is a point, from which we shall be led on to what is again of quite a different character, namely, to the anthroposophic movement. Now, when studying the phenomenon of Blavatsky, there is one peculiarity of this personage on which especially stress must be laid, for it is a very marked peculiarity. It is this, namely, that H. P. Blavatsky was absolutely, one may really say, anti-christian in mind,—absolutely anti-christian in her orientation. In her Secret Doctrine, the different impulses of a variety of primal religions, and the evolution of religions, are displayed by her in what might be called one grand splash. For objective demonstration she had simply no capacity. Everywhere, even in cases where one would rightly have expected an objective demonstration, she drags her subjective judgments, her subjective sentiments into the picture. And not only did she pass judgments, but she plainly shows throughout, that she has profound sympathy with every kind of religion in the world, excepting Judaism and Christianity, and, on the other hand, a profound antipathy to Judaism and to Christianity. Everything that comes from Judaism and Christianity is everywhere, quite sharply, represented by Blavatsky as being inferior and worthless, compared with the great revelations of the various heathen religions:—a quite pronounced anti-christian orientation, namely: but a quite pronouncedly spiritual one. There is the ability in her to speak of spiritual beings and spiritual events, as people usually speak of beings and events in the sensible world; and also to speak about many things of this world in such a manner, that one may truly say, she possessed the faculty for moving amongst actual spiritual agencies, as the man of to-day is accustomed to move amongst physical, sensible effects; spiritual phenomena are by Blavatsky talked of with the same feelings of reality, with which the things of the physical world are talked of usually by other people. A pronounced spiritual orientation, therefore; and a pronounced anti-christian orientation. With this, however, comes the further capacity for discovering the characteristic impulses in the different heathen religions, the different natural religions, and raising them to the surface and to people's understanding. Now there are two things which might surprise one: first, the appearance at all to-day (meaning ‘to-day’ of course in the historic sense) of a person whose orientation is in so pronounced a degree anti-christian, and who looks to this anti-christian orientation for the salvation of mankind. And secondly, one might find it surprising, seeing that, after all, very few people on the outside are heathen, but that people, on the outside, have mostly a Jewish or Christian orientation,—at least in our civilized regions,—that, nevertheless, despite their Jewish and Christian orientation, a very determinative and deep-reaching influence was exerted upon these people (especially on those of a Christian orientation,—less on those of the Jewish).—These are two questions that must present themselves to our souls in any discussion whatever of these life-conditions, by which modern spiritual life is attended amongst the wider masses of mankind. Now, as regards Blavatsky's own anti-christianism, I would only remind you, that there was another person, much better known in Central Europe,—better known in some circles at least,—who was at the least quite as anti-christian in his orientation as Blavatsky; and that was Nietzsche, One cannot well be more anti-christian in one's orientation, than the author of the Antichrist was. And unlike as Nietzsche is to Blavatsky, if only from the fact that Blavatsky, in respect of what is called the modern education of the day, was really more or less of an uneducated woman, whereas Nietzsche stood at the top of modern culture; yet, unlike as they otherwise were in the whole character of their souls, in this respect they present a remarkable similar-ity: that the orientation of both is eminently anti-christian. And it would be nothing short of superficial, my dear friends, if one did not make at least some enquiry into the reason of this anti-christian orientation in these two persons. One gets, however, no answer, without going somewhat deeper into the matter. One must be clear to oneself namely, that men to-day—and indeed, ever widening strata of mankind,—have come to be altogether cleft in two as regards their soul-life;—a cleft which people do not always make clear to themselves, which they try to smother over with their intellect, try to smother over through a sort of intellectual cowardice; but which only winds and weaves in these souls all the more deeply, in the subconscious feelings of the mind. One should only clearly recognize, what the human race in Europe, what the whole European race of mankind, together with their American appendage, have become, under the influence of the educational tendency of the last three, four, five centuries. One should only consider, how great the division is in actual reality, between all that to-day makes up the substance of worldly education, and that which dwells as a religious impulse in men. For, in truth, the majority of people are given to most terrible delusions in this respect. They are introduced, even from their first primary school, into this modern style of education. Every power of thought, every inclination of the soul, is directed into this modern style of education. And then, as an addition, they are given, besides, what is supposed to satisfy their religious desires. And between the two there opened up a terrible gulf. But people do not get so far as really to put this gulf plainly before their souls. They do not get to this. They prefer indeed to give themselves up in this respect to utter delusions. What, then, one must ask oneself was the historic process that led to the cleavage of this gulf?—There you must look back my dear friends, to those centuries, when as yet this modern education did not exist, to times where the learned life was pursued only by a small number of individuals, who had received a very thorough preparation. Be quite clear as to the fact, that at the present day, as regards exterior education, a twelve-year-old schoolgirl has more in her than any educated man of the eleventh or twelfth or thirteenth century. Such things must not be overlooked. And this is education has grown to rest upon a most extraordinarily i«tense feeling of ‘authority’, a downright invincible sense of authoritativeness. This education has come, in the course of the centuries, to have something ever more and more so to speak, at its command, which makes the belief in this authoritativeness of modern education ever greater and greater. More and more during the course of the centuries has this modern education come to be directed only to what the external senses tell men, or what calculation tells them. Now the less men go inwardly to council with themselves, the more plain it appears to them, that what is true, is what they see—as the saying is—with their five senses; or what can be seen in the sense of being calculated, such as: twice two are four: ‘What I see with my five senses, what is like twice two are four, that is true.’ And in course of rejecting everything else, and only at last taking up more and more into modern education what is true in the way those things are true which one sees with one's five senses or can count i»i one's five fingers, so gradually—since they are such great authorities this twice two are four and the five senses!—so it came about, little by little, that modern education, of which one can say, that it is as certain as twice two are four and what the five senses tell one,—that gradually this modern education came to be equipped with the sense of authoritativeness which it possesses. But thereby too there arose ever more and more a feeling, that everything which a man believes, everything which a man takes for true, must justify itself before the tribunal of this ‘quite certain’ modern education. And now, as this modern education passed over more and more into the Sensible and the Calculable, it became impossible ever to put before men at all, in a suitable way, any sort of truth whatever from those regions, where mathematics are no longer valid and the senses are no more of account. In what way, then, were truths of this sort put before men in earlier centuries, before this modern education existed? They were put before them in ceremonial images. In the spread of religion, throughout long centuries, the essence lay, not in the sermon, but in the ceremony, in the rites of the ritual. It was plainly recognized that: One can't speak through the intellect (which was not as yet developed in its present form at all), one must speak through the image. Just conceive for a moment, how it was still in the fourteenth, in the fifteenth centuries, in Christian countries for example. It was not the sermon there, that was the main thing: the main thing was the ceremony; the main thing was, that men grew at home in a world which they saw dis-played before them in sublime and splendid imagery. All round the walls were the painted frescoes, bringing home to them the life of the spiritual world; much as though, with our earthly life, we could reach up to the highest tops of the mountains, and then, could one but climb only a little higher, the spiritual life would begin. Pictorial,—speaking to the imagination,—or in the audible harmonies of music, or else, if words were used, then mantrical, in forms of prayer in forms of formula, was the language that told of the spiritual world. To those ages it was quite clear, that for the spiritual world one needs the image, not the abstract thought, — not that about which one may dispute, but the visible illustration, the pictorial likeness; that one needs what speaks to the senses, and yet speaks to the senses in such a way, that, through the sensible presentation, it is the spirit speaking. And now came the rise of the modern education, with its claims of the intellect, with the claim that everything should be justified, as the saying is, to reason. Now everything about Christianity too and about the mysteries of Christianity, as well as about the Mystery of Golgotha and its bearers, had all been told mainly in this picture form; and in so far as words were used, in picture-form also, namely, in the form of stories. And when dogmas began, they, too, were still something that the mind grasped pictorially. So that one may say that down to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, the teaching of Christianity was carried on in an altogether old-fashioned form. But this Christian teaching remained uncontested in its own domain from any quarter, so long as the intellectualistic education had not yet come on the field,—so long as people were not required to justify these things to reason. Only study it in its rise, historically, through the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries, with what a storm it burst in: this new demand in men to understand everything with the intellect! What a world-historic critical analysis begins! People as a rule to-day are no longer in the least fully aware, what a world-historic critical ;analysis it is, that there began! One may say then, that the man of to-day,—and really not only amongst the upper ten thousand, but throughout the very broadest grades,—is introduced in Christianity into a religious life too; but alongside it he is introduced also into an education of the modern style; and the two,—Christianity and modern education,—now dwell together in his soul. And it now turns out,—and it does so turn out in fact, although people may not clearly recognize it,—that with what this intellectualist education has brought men, the truths of Christianity cannot be proved. The truths of Christianity cannot be proved by it. And so, from childhood up, to-day, one learns the ‘Quite Certainty’ that twice two are four, and that one must apply one's five senses to this alone. One learns this Quite Certainty; and one discovers, that if one intends to abide by this Quite Certainty, ... that then, ... then, it will not do to bring Christianity and this Quite Certainty into connection. Those theologists,—the modern theologists,—who have tried to bring the two into connection, have ended by losing the Christ; they are no longer able to speak to the broad masses of the Christ; at most they speak of the person of Jesus. And so it keeps its ground during these latter centuries, in the same old forms, but forms, which the modern man simply fails in his soul any longer to accept;—so it keeps its ground, this Christianity, but loses all inner consistency, so to speak, in the soul.—What is the reason? My dear friends, look at everything that history has already brought forth in the form of Christianity. It is the greatest dishonesty, when modern theologians to-day try to explain this Christianity in any way rationalistically. It is quite impossible rationalistically to explain this Christianity. One cannot explain this Christianity, this Mystery of Golgotha and its bearers with rationalities; one is obliged to speak of spiritualities, if one would speak of Christ; to speak of Christ, one must speak of a spiritual world. One cannot possibly only believe in the Quite Certainty of one's five senses and that twice two are four, and then honestly speak of Christ as well. That is what one cannot do. And so it looked, in the innermost bottom of their souls, as though the men of modern times had no possibility, with an education such as they receive, of understanding the Christ, of actually comprehending Him; for rationalism and intellectualism have robbed men of the spiritual world. The Christ name, indeed, the Christ tradition, has remained; but without any aura, without the vision of the Christ as a spirit among spirits, as a spiritual being in a spiritual world. For the world which the modern astronomy, biology, natural science, has brought with it, is an un-spiritual world. And so in time there came numbers of souls, with a quite definite need arising from these undergrounds of their being. Time really moves on; and. the men of to-day, as I have often insisted, are no longer the men of earlier times. They cannot but ask themselves: I find myself joining together with a number of others for the cultivation of spiritual truths: Why do I do so? Why do you do so, each one of you? What drives you to do so? Now, what drives people to do this, has its seed for the most part so deep down in the sub-reasoning, unconscient grounds of the soul's life, that people as a rule are not very clear about it. But the question is one that must be raised here, in what, as I particularly said at the beginning, is intended as an exercise in Self-Recollection for Anthroposophists. When you look back into earlier times, it is a self-evident matter to people, that outside them there are not only material things and material proceedings, but that every-where through it all there are spirits. People found a world of spirit all about them, in their surroundings. And because they found a world of spirit, they could comprehend the Christ. With modern intellectualism one can nowhere find a world of spirit—if one is honest; consequently one cannot either really comprehend the Christ. And the modern educated man does not comprehend the Christ. The people who have living in them two different things. Yes, as a fact, are, in fact, quite definite souls. They are those souls, who have living in them two different things. Yes, as a fact, in most of these people who come together in societies such as we are speaking of, there are two things living, of a double kind. In the first place, there is a quite vague feeling which rises up in the soul, and which the people can't describe, but which is there. And if one examines this feeling by the means one possesses in the spiritual world, one finds it to be a feeling originating in earlier earth-lives, but earth-lives in which people still had a spiritual world round about them. Yes, indeed, my dear friends, people are beginning to come up to-day, in whose souls something is inwardly rumbling from earlier earth-lives. We should have no theosophists nor anthroposophists either, if there were not people of this kind, in whom there is a rumbling of earlier earth-lives. Such people are to be found in every grade of our modern population. They do not know that the thing comes from earlier earth-lives; but it does come from earlier earth-lives. And from this there arises the striving after a quite definite road, after a quite definite form of know-ledge.—Truly, my dear friends, the trees, as you saw them in earlier earth-lives, the external material substances, as you then saw them,—that does not work on after into this present life on earth; for, all that, you saw with your senses, and those senses are scattered to the dust of the cosmos; but what works on after, is the inner, the spiritual substance of your earlier earth-lives. Now, a person may stand here at the present day in two different ways. He may have a sense: There is something inside me ... he doesn't know that it comes from earlier earth-lives; but it is something coming from earlier earth-lives, and he has the sense: There is something inside me—it is working in me,—it is there; and however much I may know about the world of the senses, this thing cannot be 'described; for it has brought nothing over with it save what is spiritual; and if everything is now taken away from me at the present day that is spiritual, then this thing, which comes over from earlier earth-lives, remains dissatisfied.—That is one thing. The other thing living in men is that they have a vague feeling: ‘My dreams should really tell me more than the sense-world!’ It is, of course, an error, a delusion, when people fancy that their dreams should tell them more than the sense-world does. But what is the origin of this delusion?—this delusion which in reality has grown up in proportion with the growth of the modern style of education? For there is a peculiar circumstance about this modern style of education: when people to-day, who are ‘educated’ in the modern sense, come together in their educated society gatherings, then, well then, one is obliged to be ‘educated’; then one talks in the way befitting persons who have a proper schooling in the modern style. Should anyone begin to say anything whatever about spiritual agencies in the world, then one must curl one's lips sarcastically,—for that is the educated thing to do. In our public-school education it is not admissible to talk of spiritual agencies in the world. If one does so, one is a superstitious, uneducated person. Then one must curl one's lips; one must show that such things are proper to the superstitious section of the populace. Well, very often such society gatherings form into two groups. Usually there is somebody present who takes half a heart to talk about spiritual things of the kind. The company curls its lips, and the major part goes off, and goes to play cards or to some other pastime befitting human dignity. A few, however, grow inquisitive; and they withdraw into a side-room and there begin a long conversation about these things; while the rest play cards or do other things that I am not so interested to describe. And there sit the people in the side-room, listening with open mouths, and cannot have enough of listening to what they hear.—Only it must be in a side-room, otherwise one is not ‘educated’. And yet, all that the modern man can get to like this, is still more or less of the nature only of a dream. The things for the most part are as disconnected and chaotic as dreams, that he hears told in this way. And yet the man likes it all the same. Why does he like it? The others, too, would like it really, who have gone off to play cards; only that the passion for card-playing is more strong than the liking to listen,—at least they persuade themselves that it is. What is it, then, that makes men in this modern age so fond of going after dreams?—It is because they feel,—and again quite instinctively, without being clearly aware of it:—‘All this that I have in my thoughts, and that lies painted before my eyes in the outer, physical world,—it is all very well; but it gives me nothing for my own soul-life. Behind it all there must be something else. I feel it within me. There is a secret thinking and feeling and willing that goes on as uncontrolled in me even when I am awake, as my dream-life goes on uncontrolled in me when I am asleep.’—There is something in the background of men's souls that is really dreamed, even when awake. This the modern man feels. And he feels it, because in the outer world outside him the spiritual is failing; he can only still snatch at it in dreams. In earlier earth-lives he had it round about him in his surroundings. And now the time has come when souls are born, who, in addition to those impulses which rumble in them from earlier earth-lives, have also rumbling within them that which went on in their pre-earthly state of existence in the spiritual world. For this bears a relation to the inner dreaming; and this inner dreaming is an after-working of the living reality in the pre-earthly state of existence. Just consider to yourselves! The men of earlier times were conscious of spiritual surroundings; their earthly state of life did not, as it were, deprive them of the spirit. The men of the new times feel the spiritual within them-selves. But not only does the constitution of the soul in this age deprive them of the spirit, but, in addition, a form of education has come into the field which is hostile to the spirit, which argues the spirit away. If we ask, what is it that brings men together in societies of the kind we are here describing? it is because of these two properties of the soul:—because there is something rumbling within them from earlier earth-lives;—because there is something rumbling within them from their pre-earthly state of existence. With most of you this is the case. You would not be sitting here if there were not these two things rumbling within you. And if you think back into earlier states of society:—In quite ancient times the social institutions were altogether derived from the Mysteries, were in unison with the things that were spiritually transmitted to men. Man was interwoven with—we will say—a Social Being, which was at the same time one with the object of his own soul's desire. Take an Athenian. He looked above to the Goddess Athene. He felt within his own soul his inner relationship with the Goddess Athene. He made part of a common social life and being, of which the people knew: it was instituted in accordance with the designs of the Goddess Athene. It was the Goddess Athene who had planted the olive trees round about Athens; the laws of the State were inscribed at Athene's dictate. One had one's place as man in a social community which accorded completely with the voice of inner belief. Nothing was taken from a man there, which the Gods, so to speak, had given him. Compare this with the modern man. His position amid his social circumstances is such, that there is a cleft gulf between what he feels in his inward life, and the way he is outwardly entangled in these social circumstances. He seems to himself,—he does not clearly recognize it: it sits in his sub-consciousness,—as though his soul was in constant danger of having his body taken from it by external circumstances. He feels his own connection through those properties of the soul,—those impulses of which I spoke, from earlier earth-lives and pre-earthly existence;—he feels his own connection with a spiritual world. His body belongs to the external institutions. His body must behave in such a way as to satisfy the requirements of the external institutions. This exerts in his sub-consciousness a continual dread upon the modern man, lest in reality well, there are already modern States where a man may feel as though his own coat did not properly belong to him, because he owes it to the tax-office!—But, at any rate, you will agree, my dear friends, that in a large measure even one's physical body does not belong to one; for in fact it is claimed by the external institutions. This dread haunts the modern man, that every day, so to speak, he must deliver up his body to something which has no connection with what is in his soul. And so modern man becomes a seeker after something which belongs to quite other ages of the world, and which he knew in his earlier lives on earth;—so modern man becomes a seeker after something which does not belong to the earth at all, which belongs to the spiritual world, where he was in his pre-earthly existence. All this takes effect unconsciously, instinctively. Nevertheless, it takes effect. And truly, one may say that what our anthroposophic society has now come to be has really grown out of small beginnings. It had to work at the beginning in the most primitive fashion in quite small circles. One could tell a great many stories about the way in which the work was carried on from small circles. At one time, for instance, during the first years in Berlin, I had to lecture at erst in a room with the jingling of beer-glasses going on at the back, because it was a pot-house opening on to the street. And once, when this was not available, we were shown into something which was a sort of stable. And thither the people came,—the people who were, who are, of the particular constitution I have described to you.—In one German town I have lectured in a hall, which in part had no sort of flooring, so that one continually had to look out that one didn't tumble into a hole and break one's leg. But the people came together there all the same,—those that had these impulses in them. However, it is a movement which set out from the first to be a common human one; and so the satisfaction was just as great when the simplest minds turned up in places such as I have just described. Rut still, it was not felt to be all too disagreeable,—for, after all, that too was part of human nature!—when people turned up, more of the kind—as I might say—that then stood sponsors to the anthroposophic movement in an aristocratic style, as was the case in Munich. The door was not closed to any kind of human forms and fashions. But always the thing, my dear friends, which had to be regarded was this: that the souls who thus came together were of the kind that were constituted as I have described: so that, in reality, the people who came together in associations like these were people marked out by fate,—and are so still to-day: marked out by fate. If people of this kind had not been there, you see, a personage like Blavatsky would have met with no interest. For only with persons such as these did she meet with any interest. What was it then that these people more immediately felt? What was for them the all-important thing? What was it that responded, so to speak, to their own sentiments? Well, one of the two things rumbling in their souls found its response in the doctrine of recurrent earth-lives. Each one could say to himself now, ‘I live, as Man, in all ages of time; I am inwardly stronger than those powers, which day by day are trying to snatch my body from me.’ This most deep-seated and intimate feeling, that verged really on the nature of will in men, had to be met, then, by the doctrine of recurrent earth-lives. And the other thing: of feeling the soul's life really more like a dream, feeling it free from the body (even the simplest countryman has this sense of the soul's being free of the body), this, one could meet more and more with a form of knowledge that was not directed merely on the lines of material substance and material processes; for within this material substance and its processes there was nothing whatever that corresponded to what the man felt in his own soul-life, and that was an after-echo of his pre-earthly existence. This, one could only respond to, when one made it clear to him, that—startling though it may sound—‘Our deepest human being is woven as it were out of dreams.’ For what is woven out of us, as dreams are woven,—only that it has a stronger reality, a stronger existence,—has no likeness to the things which are in our physical surroundings. A man is like a fish that is taken out of water and expected to live in air, when, with what he bears within his soul, he is expected to live in the world that modern education conjures up before men's fancy. And just as the fish, when it can't breathe in the air, begins to gasp and snap its gills, because it can't live; so souls like these live in the modern atmosphere, gasping and snapping after the thing they need. And this thing which they need they don't find; because it is something spiritual. For it is the after-echo of what they knew and lived in during their pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world. They want to hear of spiritual things,—that something spiritual is there,—that the Spiritual is in the midst of us. Understand well, my dear friends, that these were the two most important matters for a particular section of man-kind: To have it explained to them that man lives beyond one single earth-life; and to have it explained to them that beings exist in the world at all of such a kind as man is: that there are spirits amongst the things and the pro-cesses of nature.—This was brought by Blavatsky in the first place. And this people required to have first, before, in the next place, they could understand the Christ. And now we have the curious fact that, with a note of compassion—one might say—for humanity, we find Blavatsky saying to herself: ‘These people are gasping after knowledge from the spiritual world. If we disclose the old heathen religions to them, we shall be disclosing what responds to their spiritual needs.’ That was the first thing to be done. And that this led to an immense one-sidedness, led, namely, to a form of Anti-christianity, is in every way quite understandable; just as it is quite understandable that a review of the modern Christianity, out of which he himself had grown, led to such an intense Anti-christianity in Nietzsche. Of this Anti-christianity and its remedy I propose to speak to you in the next lectures. I only wish distinctly to note that this Anti-christianity which showed itself in Blavatsky was, from the first, absent from the anthroposophic movement. For the first lecture-cycle ever held by me was the lecture-cycle From Buddha to Christ, as I mentioned before. Thereby the anthroposophic movement stands therefore on its own footing, as something inde-pendent in the midst of all these spiritual movements, through the fact that, from the very beginning, it has pur-sued the road that leads from the heathen religions towards Christianity. And one must no less understand, why it was that the others did not take this road. As I said, we will talk of this tomorrow. |