The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear friends!

In keeping with the promise we made at the Christmas Conference to provide updates on the work of the Medical Section at the Goetheanum, we are sending this first newsletter to those associated with us in the field of medicine. It is inspired by the attitude that united us during the medical courses in the New Year. It would like to convey to each word something of the feelings for suffering humanity, from which not only devotion to the art of healing must arise, but also its real power.

It was in ancient times
There lived in the initiate's soul
The powerful thought that every man is sick
By nature.
And education was regarded
As the healing process,
Which, as the child matured,
At the same time brought health
For life's completed humanity.

It is good to let such powerful thoughts, gained from the contemplation of ancient instinctive wisdom, come before our soul when we want to prepare our soul in the right inner contemplation to grasp the healing effects.

Let us not forget that the healing process must be given a soul, since it must not only turn to a body but also to a soul. The more young doctors grasp such thoughts, the more that which the thoughtful doctor longs for when he perceives the limitations of the current state of his art will flow into medical life, and the patient will experience it as a blessing during the healing process.

Dear friends, you who were here in January, you accepted with open hearts what was offered to you with such good will. We will never forget how this shone in your eyes and how it was conveyed in your warm words. Our thoughts were with you, and today, for the first time, they are turning to you in response to the questions you have raised.

We are sending the following to individual addresses and ask those who receive direct mail from us to ensure that it is forwarded to the addresses we have provided.

Goetheanum, March 11, 1924.

Questions and Answers.

I. In response to a question about the difficulties that aspiring doctors today face in studying both conventional medicine and medical courses in the anthroposophical movement, we can only reply that it is precisely our intention, by communicating these circulars, to overcome these difficulties over time. The meditation referred to in the letter as supplementary is available from Dr. Ita Wegman for those who need it.

II. Regarding study at the Goetheanum.

Practical study should, of course, be provided for wherever possible, but we ask for patience in this regard. We will indicate in these newsletters the time from which registrations will be possible.

III. Regarding the request for the presentation of certain topics for co-workers in the Medical Section [of the School of Spiritual Science], we note that we would like to work in this direction. However, it will be more effective to discuss such topics in individual correspondence rather than in this newsletter. But here, too, we ask for a little patience; we will come ever closer to achieving our goals, but we can only proceed step by step.

We would also like to add that in the future, therapeutic questions that are asked for very specific cases will not be answered in the newsletter. We naturally welcome general therapeutic questions that arise in relation to the medical courses that have taken place, as well as questions that relate to physiological and anatomical problems, to the study, and to the physician's human and moral attitude.

IV. For those individuals who have asked us whether they can come here in the near future to participate in the work of the college, or who – after passing their exams, for example – have a desire to do so, we note that three to five further lectures are to be held immediately after the Easter lectures from April 19-22, in which those concerned can initially receive guidelines for their further work.

Topic: The nature of man and world orientation with regard to education and healing, as well as the particularly important human tasks in this area.

V. The establishment of home pharmacies with our remedies would of course be desirable, but cannot be implemented for the time being, as the law only allows homeopathic remedies to be dispensed by the city doctors themselves. Once we are in the same position as these homeopathic physicians (i.e. in terms of legal recognition), we will be able to do the same. For the time being, we have to be content with distributing the remedies through pharmacies.

VI. In answer to the question of whether information about the mode of action of the remedy should be given to the patient, it can be said that the effect is indeed impaired if the knowledge of it is absorbed in thought. However, the impairment is less severe if the thoughts are only intellectual, more severe if they are pictorial, and most severe if the patient is able to follow the entire course of the healing process within himself. But this should neither prevent the patient from being given any desired information about the mode of action nor prevent a knowing patient from being cured. For what is lost through knowledge can be fully regained if the patient develops reverence for the healing methods. Care must be taken to communicate this.

VII. Questions about the type of injections.

Injections should generally be made under the skin. Only if the patient does not respond to repeated attempts should intravenous injections be given, in highly potentized doses. In this case, the effect of the first injection must be awaited.

VIII. In a letter, reference is made to two lines, one running in the direction of the spine and the other running down from the head, indicating the hyoid bone, mandibular arch, thyroid cartilage, and lateral part of the ribs. And the question is what the significance of this line direction is. The latter line corresponds to what is formed out of the most solid substances in the animal through the astral body. In the human being, this line is brought in that direction by the upright posture, in which it forms an oblique angle with the vertical. This is oriented by the ego organization, in such a way that in the course of the spinal vertebrae the earthly ego appears, so to speak, hypertrophically; the forming ego, which then remains after death, hypertrophically orients the cartilaginous part of the ribs and the breastbone. Because in such spiritual beings as Lucifer the human aspect is skipped, both the dorsal column and the cartilaginous part of the ribs with the breastbone must be omitted. Therefore, the questioner has a pointed chest and lateral rib tendencies in the Lucifer sculpture.

IX. Regarding a question about the cavities of the head and their significance, we have the following to say: The physical and etheric parts of the head are arranged in such a way that in certain places the physical, in other places the etheric predominates; in these places the cavities show themselves. They are the actual thought-carriers, while the physically full places are the carriers of life in the head and the suppressors of thought life. If their activity is too strong, fainting or hallucinations and the like occur.

X. Regarding the question of medial predisposition.

A person's mediumistic disposition is based on the incomplete engagement of the astral body and the ego in the abdominal and limb tract of the etheric and physical body in a trance state. As a result, the limbs and the abdomen are connected to the etheric and astral environment in an irregular manner, so to speak, as sensory organs. This results in spiritual perceptions; however, at the same time, the moral and conventional impulses that normally act through these organs are eliminated, just as they are eliminated by the ordinary sense organs. The eye sees blue, but not slander. It is extremely difficult to physically heal mediums. It could only be brought about by highly potentized tobacco injections into the part of a sensory organ, for example, into the interior of the Eustachian tube or into the cornea of the eye, which is of course very dangerous. A psychic healing requires that the healer has a stronger will than the medium except for the trance and that he can work through wax suggestion.

XI. Regarding the question whether an abortion performed to save the mother's life encroaches upon the mother's karma and the child's karma, it must be said that although both karmas are quickly steered in a different direction, they soon return to their own course in the corresponding direction, so that from this point of view it can hardly be said that karma has been encroached upon. On the other hand, there is a strong intervention in the karma of the person taking the action. And this person must ask himself whether he consciously wants to take upon himself what brings him into karmic connections that would not have existed without the intervention.

But questions of this kind cannot be answered in general terms, but depend on the specifics of the case, just as in many cases, even in purely mental cultural life, an intervention in karma means and can lead to deep, tragic life conflicts.

XII. A question regarding cod liver oil.

Cod-liver oil can be avoided if the causes of the corresponding ailment are diagnosed and the remedies we have indicated are used:

Waldon I: vegetable protein, vegetable fat.
Waldon II: vegetable protein, vegetable fat, silicic acid iron.
Waldon III: vegetable protein, vegetable fat, silicic acid iron and Calcarea carbonica.

XII. For injuries that have come into contact with the ground, Belladonna 30D together with Hyoscyamus 15D will be of use, even if only a single injection is given.

XIV. Regarding the case of a 35-year-old diabetic. For this diabetic, the rosemary cure would undoubtedly be the best. It could be supported by adding silica in the 10th decimal.

XV. A question about the treatment of ringing in the ears. For ringing in the ears, poppy juice to 6 decimal places is generally recommended. If the personality can muster sufficient strength to convert passive surrender to the buzzing into active imagination, as if one were causing it oneself, improvement can be brought about after some time. The ringing in the ears is due to a weakening of the astral body in relation to the etheric body in the bladder area.

XVI. Case of brain fever with after-effects.

We should try to inject the 38-year-old patient, who is not responding to the remedies used, with the consequences of the flu, with Fliegenschwamm D 30 and ensure that he is in a confidently cheerful mood after the injection.

Rudolf Steiner
Dr. I. Wegman

In the letter that the Committee of the Free Anthroposophical Society sent to the members of that society in response to my announcement of a youth section, there is a reference to the fact that I consider “being young to be so important that it can become the subject of a spiritual scientific discipline in its own right”.

I do think this matter is so important. Anyone who reads the account of my life in the weekly journal 'Goetheanum' will understand why I think so. When I myself was as young as those who speak in this letter, I felt lonely with the state of soul that I now find alive in broad circles of young people. My contemporaries felt differently than I did. The life of civilization, of which this letter says that it no longer allows young people to develop a worldview through any profession, and that young people can no longer be led to any profession by their “striving for a worldview,” was on the rise at that time. Young people saw it as the flowering of the latest stage in human development. They felt 'liberated' from the extravagances of the quest for a world view and secure in the prospect of professions that rose from the 'safe' foundations of 'science'.

I too saw the “blooming” of this civilization. But I could not help feeling that no genuine fruit of humanity would be able to emerge from this bloom. My contemporaries did not feel this. They were carried away by the experience of “blooming”. They did not yet lack the fruit because they wasted their enthusiasm at the sight of the barren bloom.

Now everything has changed. The flower has withered. Instead of the fruit, an alien structure has appeared that freezes humanity in man. Youth feels the cold of civilization without a worldview.

In my youth comrades, there lived an upper class of consciousness. It could rejoice in its fruitless blossoming because its fruitlessness had not yet revealed itself. And the blossoming was radiant “as a blossom”. The joy of radiance covered the deeper layers of consciousness; the layers in which the yearning for true humanity lives inexorably in man. The youth of the present can no longer find joy in the withered blossom. The upper layers of consciousness have become barren, and the deeper layers have been laid bare; the longing for a worldview is evident in the hearts, and it threatens to wound the soul life.

I would like to say to young people today: do not scold the “old people” who were young with me forty years ago too much. Of course, there are superficial people among them who even today vainly flaunt their emptiness as superiority. But there are also those among them who, in resignation, bear the fate that has denied them the living experience of their true humanity.

This fate placed them in the last phase of the “dark” age, through which the grave of the spirit was dug in the experience of matter.

But youth is placed at the grave. And the grave is empty. The spirit does not die and cannot be buried.

Being young has become a mystery for those who experience it today. Because in being young, the longing for the spirit is laid bare. But the “light” age has dawned. It is just not felt yet, because most people still carry the after-effects of the old darkness in their souls. But anyone with a sense for spiritual beings can know that it has become “light”.

And the light will only become perceptible when the riddles of existence are reborn in a new form.

Being young is one of the first of these riddles. How do you experience being young in a world that has become frozen in old age? That is the question of feeling that lives in the young people of the present.

Because being young has become such a human riddle, it can only find its living solution in “a spiritual scientific discipline of its own”.

In such a discipline, being young will not be spoken of in empty phrases, but the light that must fall on being young will be sought in it, so that one can perceive oneself in one's humanity.

Today, being young means wanting a worldview that can fill one's life's work with warmth. It fears the professions that a civilization without a worldview has created. It wants to see the profession grow out of humanity, not humanity being killed by the profession. To find one's way in the world without losing one's humanity in the search, requires a living relationship between soul and world. But this can only come about through the experience of world-view. It is in this spirit that the announcement of the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society was made. It is in this spirit that the Council would like to unite young anthroposophists in a youth section to work towards a life of true humanity.

But there is one more thing I would like to say to the younger members. If we succeed in giving the Youth Section the right content, those who have understood in anthroposophical life how to grow old in the right way will want to make common cause with the youth. Let us hope that the young will not then say: we will not sit at the same table with the old. For Anthroposophy should have no age; it lives in the eternal that brings all people together. Let the young find in the Anthroposophical Society a field in which they can be young. But the “old” will, if they take up anthroposophy in their whole being, feel the pull towards youth. They will find that what they have conquered through old age is best communicated to young people. After all, young people will struggle in vain for true humanity if they flee the humanity into which they must one day enter. In the course of the world, the old must rejuvenate itself again and again if it does not want to fall prey to the formless. And young people will be able to find what they need with the genuine “old” anthroposophists if they do not want to arrive one day at an age of their own, from which they would like to flee but cannot.

(continued in the next issue).

Wherever the “youth movement” appears today, it reveals that it lives out of deprivation. What does the young person, who becomes aware of his or her youth, lack? After all, there is so much to “learn” in today's civilization. Not only is there a wealth of knowledge, but an overabundance. It is tempting to think that young people are confused because of this overabundance, that they cannot “understand” the content of the overabundance. But experience shows that this belief is wrong. Young people “understand” quite well what civilization offers them. One can understand what can be grasped in thought. And despite its overabundance, our present-day civilization can almost be grasped entirely in thought.

The young person becomes aware when he begins to develop a relationship with civilization that he understands. And a right instinct tells him that this understanding, this thinking grasping should also be his further destiny. But it is not possible to be young with “understanding” alone. One can only be young when one experiences with one's whole heart and soul what awaits understanding. And as a young person, one senses that one will grow old when one gradually leads the experienced into the understood.

Today's youth absorbs something from civilization that allows them to grow old, but not to be young. This civilization has almost nothing to give to the first age of life. One would have to enter the earth at the age of twenty today, then one could imbue oneself with the content of civilization.

This civilization has lost its spirit. It only brings matter into thoughts. These thoughts cannot be experienced; they can only be understood. And once they have been understood, they lie in the soul, as hard as stone, incapable of transformation. They are already fully ripe when they arise; they cannot grow because of this. But the young person must grow; and he wants what he takes up into his soul to be able to grow with him.

A real spiritual science can only reveal itself in thoughts. But these thoughts can be seen and experienced; they can be taken up by no one with a higher degree of maturity than he himself has. But they are akin to the human being. They grow and mature with him. If someone gives me material thoughts when I am eighteen years old, I take them in the same way as I would if I were forty or fifty years old. If someone allows me to experience thoughts that arise from the spirit, then they may be seventy years old; if I myself am only eighteen years old, they will harmonize with my eighteen-year-old state of mind and grow as I myself grow.

The materialistic way of thinking and looking at things demands that young people fill themselves inwardly with “old” things. But young people want to experience their youth. Therefore, “experiencing age” becomes a deprivation for young people. The Youth Section at the Goetheanum wants to give young people a living knowledge that can be used to grasp being young in a living way. Today's civilization has no thoughts with which one can experience “being young”. A real spiritual science will have such thoughts.

If you are an older person today and hear young people speak, you often have the feeling: Oh, how old the speeches sound that come out of young mouths! But these are the words that young people find among the “old” today. They absorb them, but do not unite them with themselves. In wanting to experience them, they feel untrue. They speak what cannot have truth in them; and they carry their truth within them, without being able to reveal it to themselves. It chokes them; it becomes a nightmare coming from within.

The young want freedom of breathing in a living spiritual life, so that the nightmare will disappear. They want to awaken to a healthy mental outlook so that their consciousness can be filled with the experience of being young.

Young people want to be awake when they are young; but the thoughts of materialistic civilization only allow them to dream of it. But one can only dream if one has dulled one's consciousness. So the consciousness of youth must walk through the mechanical reality in a dulled state. Its hammer blows, its electric waves pierce into dreams. But they cannot bring about awakening. For they are not human; they are extra-human.

Spiritual science can be for souls that want to awaken. It does not just want to impart knowledge to people, but to bring them closer to life. Then it will be given to their freedom to transform life into knowledge.

People who believe they are poets, but who are really just philistines, object: Take away the dreams of youth, bring them to awakening, and you take away the best of their youth. Those who speak thus know not that dreams attain their full value only when illuminated by the light of waking. Mechanistic civilization does not bring the dreams of youth to their joyful revelation, but rather wears them down as they emerge, so that they become oppressive and burdensome.

Only in such images can it be said here what the Youth Section wants to achieve. It will not publish a “programme”; it will not give an explanation of the “nature of youth”. It will try to bring to life what its founders themselves can experience of the deprivations of young people today. This will give rise to a “youth wisdom” that can unfold anew in life every day.

Immediately after the announcement of the Youth Section and ever since, young people living at the Goetheanum have expressed their desire to work within this section. Enthusiasm speaks from these expressions. In the first call, I said that the Youth Section will be able to work if it is understood for what it is meant. I truly believe that enthusiasm can bring about the right “understanding”. Not the “understanding” of which I have spoken here, and which is lacking in youth, but the kind of understanding that is designated by the same word but is quite different. An understanding that comes not from the intellect but from the whole human being.

The longing of the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society can only be to feel a receptive enthusiasm. Then it may hope that the life force of spiritual science is sufficient to give this enthusiasm what it would like to take. This board would like to live with young people in such a way that they can lead their youth towards old age in true humanity, because it believes that in doing so it is addressing what young people lack and long for with all their hearts.

(continued in the next issue).

Once again, I would like to address the younger friends in the Anthroposophical Society in particular regarding the reasons for the formation of the Youth Section. It seems that two opinions are facing each other within the circles of our youth. One feels that being young is something to be sought. They feel drawn to anthroposophy because they hope to find satisfaction for their search there. She has realized that this search must go to the depths of the soul, and that contemporary civilization cannot lead to these depths. There are young people who seek esotericism in this way because they have intuitively discovered that the true content of the human being can only be experienced in esotericism.

These young people will easily find the way to what the board of the Anthroposophical Society is striving for with the Youth Section. And this board will not interfere with anyone's independent endeavors. It will have a heart for this independence. But it will also be mindful of the fact that the cultivation of esoteric life has become its task. This concern will be his first. He will lead the Youth Section in such a way that esotericism is given its due, and he believes that from true esotericism he can also find true 'youth wisdom'.

But there is another youth opinion. This is easily tempted to take being young in such an absolute sense that even the pursuit of esotericism seems to them like the ingestion of a foreign body. They want above all, unperturbed by anything that comes from outside, to immerse themselves in their own youth and to understand it.

In the Anthroposophical Society, young people who hold this opinion also hope to find something. Otherwise they would not be there at all. But they believe that they must first bring the right spirit to anthroposophy through the activity of their young selves. The leadership of the Anthroposophical Society is far from criticizing this part of the youth in a philistine way. But it could easily happen that its intentions are seen in such a light by some young people. For it cannot deviate from its gained insight that the stream of eternity flows through the esotericism attempted by the Anthroposophical Society, towards which the youth aspires. He cannot fall into the error of believing that esotericism must first take on its true form through youth, since he knows that in esotericism youth will find the right paths to be able to be truly “young”.

I am saying this not because I want to point out a contradiction between part of the youth and the board. I do not see any; and in the face of a practical world view there could never be any. For the leadership is aware that its tasks come from the spiritual world; and in everything it will have to follow the paths that are shown to it from there. There can be no “contrast” for it in the field of its work.

But it would be possible for youth itself to be drawn into contradictions if one part emphasized its striving one-sidedly in relation to the other. And that could do immeasurable damage to the anthroposophical youth movement. However, this will not happen if youth pays more attention to something they have learned from the “all-too-old” civilization than they often do. There is a certain tendency towards abstraction, towards talking in mere concepts. I expressed it in the last issue of this newsletter how little good this abstraction does to youth. In truth, no one in the youth movement wants that either. But in talking about being young, about the ideals of youth, it is there. There is even a worrying amount of “age” in today's youth. If, on the other hand, young people reflect on their true experiences, they will find that these are like questions, and that the esotericism of the Anthroposophical Society at least offers them attempts at answers.

On the basis of such practical insight, an understanding will certainly grow between the various different opinions in our youth movement.

Contact with esotericism can become an experience for young people themselves. If this happens, young people will realize that it is precisely through this contact that they can realize what they often have before their eyes in an indeterminate ideal form. If it does not happen, it could easily be that some young people, not out of innate, but out of externally absorbed “old talk”, draw a theoretical curtain over the experience hinted at.

If young people understand themselves, they will also understand the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society.

(continued in the next issue).

This institution cannot come about from abstract considerations from “above”. It must arise from the needs of our membership from “below”. The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society has conceived the plan to form a Youth Section because it corresponds to what young people in our Society are seeking from the depths of their beings. And it will shape it in such a way that these needs can be met as they arise.

The same must be true for the other sections. But for this to happen, the needs that arise within our membership must also flow through the whole society and ultimately unite in what is expected of the executive council at the Goetheanum. We must therefore become more and more aware that the purpose of the Christmas Conference was not to form a mere “administrative council”. Of course, the “administration” must be there, and it should not be forgotten that it is necessary and that it must develop care and accuracy. But the main thing will be that the attitude of the members of the board at the Goetheanum really places it at the center of the spiritual interests of the society. It should bring together all the spiritual interests that exist.

It is not the intention of this board to restrict the initiative of the individual parts of the Society in any way. But it should increasingly be seen as a necessity that everything that arises in the Society be brought to the attention of this board. It can then harmonize what is wanted in one place or by one group of people with what is intended by another. This board will not want to act in a one-sided way like an authority “from above”; it will make it its business to have an open heart and an understanding mind for everything that strives for realization from within the membership. In this respect, he would also like to be able to count on understanding in the sense that he will be met halfway, actively met halfway, when he wants to implement something out of his own initiative, out of the aims of the anthroposophical movement. In this sense, I said at the Christmas Conference: This board should be an initiative board.

If this board is increasingly seen in this light, then it will be able to properly advise on all matters concerning the association. And it wants to be an “advisor”; because it knows that it would fundamentally contradict the spirit of the Anthroposophical Society if it wanted to be a “decider”. In his advice, he will appeal to nothing other than the free insight of the members; but he will only be able to be a true “advisor” if he is placed in the right frame of mind to understand the intentions and aspirations of the members.

The Executive Council at the Goetheanum would like to see a connection established, as far away as possible, in paragraphs and programs, with the work in society; it would like to see the direct human element, which can also work individually in every detail, come into general validity within society. And above all, it would like to achieve this in everything that is to be done for the School of Spiritual Science.

(continued in the next issue.

During the anthroposophical events in Prague described above, the School of Spiritual Science was able to unfold its activity outside the area of the Goetheanum for the first time. In two events of the first class of the General Anthroposophical Section, I was able to present the first steps of the supersensible quest for knowledge to the souls of those personalities who had decided to become members of this class. These esoteric events took place on April 3 and 5. What was experienced at the first such event at the Goetheanum was also brought before the members of the school in Czechoslovakia.

The number of those personalities who, upon their declaration to that effect, were allowed to become members was over a hundred. This showed that the society in Czechoslovakia has a core of loyal members who, over the course of many years, have made anthroposophy the guiding force of their soul life. It was deeply satisfying for me to be able to look into the souls of those I had long faced at the Prague events. In the eyes of many, I could see their intimate connection to the anthroposophical life content. I became aware of many open-minded hearts. These are necessary for the cultivation of esoteric life. For reason is powerless here if it does not receive strength from the understanding heart. This understanding of the heart is truly no less 'logical' than that of the head. It is just not given such recognition in ordinary life because in this life it has no need to unfold the inner power of a supersensible 'logic'. In such cases, logic is replaced by the intellect, and the heart is allowed to follow its own path untouched by logic, because it can be corrected by the intellect. The fear that often arises when the logic of the heart is ignored is based on the belief that when it does so, the heart loses the warmth that is otherwise its own. But this fear only exists as long as one has not grasped the warmth that the soul experiences when it stands in understanding before the ideas of a spiritual world. He who does not feel this warmth does not live in the ideas of the spirit; he only thinks the ideas he has first killed in his soul, which he hears in the words into which someone who has seen into the spiritual world has poured his spiritual-real experiences.

The lectures that are now being given for the general anthroposophical part of the Free University are intended to provide an outlook on the experience of the “threshold” between the sensual and the supersensible world. It is necessary for those who are truly seeking knowledge of the human being to see through how everything that “nature” reveals of beauty, greatness and sublimity cannot lead to the human being. For the inner man, who creates in the outer, has his source not in the natural but in the spiritual world. But the senses and the intellect bound to the brain cannot penetrate into the latter. These must first cease to function if the human being is to face the world of his origin. But where this activity ceases, the human being initially faces an inability to perceive anything at all. He looks at his surroundings and, as if they were 'nothing', the darkness that is there because of the inability to perceive appears to him. This inability can only give way to spiritual-vision abilities when the human being becomes aware of higher powers within himself, which train the 'senses of the spirit' in the same way that the physical powers of the organism train the senses of the body. This presupposes a complete transformation of the inner man from one form of existence into another. In this transformation, however, man must not lose one form of existence before he gains the other. The right transformation is the result of the right experience at the “Threshold”. Knowledge of man in his true essence is only possible from a point of view beyond the threshold. If one wishes to accept with common sense the messages of one who has knowledge, coming from the field beyond the threshold, one must also have some conception of what the knower has experienced on the threshold. Only by knowing the conditions under which the knowledge of this supersensible reality is gained can one be in a position to judge it aright.

It will only be possible to give content to the words in which the supersensible result of the vision is expressed when one understands what the seer has gone through before he has the power to coin such words. If one does not understand this, it seems as if the words do not mean something supersensible but something sensible. But this gives rise to confusion. The words become deceptive; instead of knowledge, illusion arises.

These indications are intended to characterize the esoteric work of the Free University. The external members will receive the content in a suitable form as soon as our work, which was occasioned by the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum, has progressed to the point where such a step is possible. What is said here in exoteric terms will be developed esoterically in the School.

(continued in the next issue).

The underlying theme should be:

The place of education in personal and cultural life today.

My own topic for April 6-11 should be:

The methodology of teaching and the living conditions of education.

The teachers' council should determine topics and persons for the individual lectures and presentations in such a way that the above general topic is taken into account.

It should be demonstrated (by all possible means) how the Waldorf School, in its methodology and in the way it handles the conditions of education, strives for a pedagogical practice that seeks to meet the demands of the human being as well as the cultural demands of the present in the cognitive-artistic and religious life.

Currently being voted on by the board in writing:

Signatures: 1. Rudolf Steiner
2. Albert Steffen
3. Dr. I. Wegman
4. Marie Steiner
5. Guenther Wachsmuth
6. E. Vreede

A members' lecture and a class lesson of the general pedagogical section of the Free University were held during the pedagogical event in Bern. And during the anthroposophical course at the Goetheanum during Easter week, the members of the first class were also brought together for two such class lessons. Following this course, the medical section organized two lecture series, one for younger doctors and medical students and the other for practicing doctors. We will report further on the progress of these events, which are still ongoing. However, we can already express our deep satisfaction at how strongly the participants feel the need to enrich their professional training with a spiritual view of the human being as a whole and their art of healing with a spiritual healing will that is permeated by a true understanding of the human being.

In a eurythmy performance for the members of the Anthroposophical Society, we wanted to show how the impulses that were present at the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum can develop with a certain inevitability. The new impulse that entered anthroposophical work at this conference must also assert itself by not only bringing what has arisen in the moment to life in our events, but also by allowing what has been worked on earlier to develop further in subsequent events. The verses with which the spiritual foundation stone was laid in the hearts of the members of the Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas Conference were presented again at this Easter Conference in a eurythmic art performance. In connection with them, Albert Steffen's spirit-filled, soul-warm poems were eurythmized, which cast a consecratory mood over this conference. Further events, taking into account the Austrian mood, entwined themselves around this content of the eurythmy performance. We had such an Austrian celebration, into which our Christmas conference, which is so meaningful for society, resonated fully.

Despite the difficulties that arise for many members due to the current situation, our Easter conference was well attended. The somewhat uncomfortable way in which the audience has to participate in the events in our inadequate rooms may well trigger the wish that fate will soon grant us the opportunity to have a Goetheanum again at the site of the one that has been taken from us.

(continued in the next issue).

In the course for practising physicians, which unfortunately had to be cut short due to the impossibility for participants to stay at the Goetheanum for longer, the important question of the relationship between diagnosis and therapeutic measures in the sense of a truly rational medicine was discussed and explained using two case studies from the Clinical Therapeutic Institute under the direction of Dr. med. I[ta] Wegman. It became clear how such a rational medicine is only possible if one takes seriously the view that the physical organization of the human being is shaped and permeated by the soul and spiritual being, and accordingly strives to recognize the individual organs not only as physical formations, but also as spiritual configurations of forces.

In the course for younger doctors and medical students, the inner development of the doctor was particularly considered this time. If one develops the appropriate spiritual abilities, one can come to directly connect the nature of the sick person and that of the healing methods as a whole in one's view. In this way, however, the will to heal develops as the special soul mood that the doctor needs. The way in which the development of this will to heal has been presented in this course does not show it to be a separate, abstract human ability. Rather, it always arises in a completely individualized way, corresponding to the appropriate view of the disease; it identifies itself with the knowledge of healing in the individual case. Thus, anthroposophy does not bring a mystical fog into medical practice, but the opposite: an exact understanding of the disease and an exact therapeutic action that arises from it. The intensity with which the participants have grasped what is wanted here will ensure that in the near future some people will really seek the deepening and broadening that is so necessary for the healing arts.

(continued in the next issue).