The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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.

As we may have gathered from yesterday's reflections, it is important for today's human being to orient themselves in the developmental process of humanity in order to imbue themselves with an awareness of what the present state of the soul must be so that the human being can be human in the true sense of the word.

The day before yesterday I used a comparison to point out the importance of the sense of time. I said that the insect has the task of always undergoing certain transformations within itself, coinciding with the course of the year. The insect undergoes the course of the year in its own transformation. It has very specific bodily functions in spring, summer, autumn and winter, and it completes the cycle of its life in connection with this course of the year. Thus, I said, the human being must find a way to consciously place himself in the present moment, not in a short period of time, but in the whole course of the earth, in the historical course of the earth. He should know how his soul experiences had to be shaped in ancient times, how they had to be shaped in medieval times, and how they have to be shaped today.

When we look back to the early days of human development and see how humanity drew its strength from the Mysteries, the strength to know, the strength to live, we find that those who were to be initiated into the Mysteries were always, as it were, given a very definite indication of the goal of their initiation. The initiates must realize that they will have to undergo exercises that ultimately lead to the experience of death; within their earthly existence, the human being must pass through death in order to gain the other knowledge of his own immortal, eternal being from this experience of knowing death. This, I would like to say, was the secret of the ancient mysteries: to gain the conviction of the human immortal being from the experience of knowing death.

Now we have seen in these days where this comes from. It comes from the fact that in those older times, man could not have come to his human self-knowledge otherwise than by realizing what happened to him immediately after death. Man of those ancient times only became the thinking, free being that he knows himself to be today in his earthly existence after death. Only after death could man in the early days of human development say: I am truly a being on my own, an individuality on my own. - Look beyond death, the ancient sages might say to their disciples, and you will know what a human being is.

That is why man in the mysteries should undergo dying in the image, so that he may receive from dying the conviction of eternal life and being. So essentially, the search for the mysteries was a search for death in order to find life.

Now things are different for people today, and therein lies the most important impulse in the development of humanity. What people went through in the old days after death, that they became a thinking being for themselves, that they became a free being for themselves, that is what people today must find in the time that lies between birth and death. But how do they find it there? He finds his thoughts first of all when he practises self-knowledge. But now we have found that throughout the time in which we have been dealing with the nature of man from a certain point of view, these thoughts, namely the thoughts that man has developed since the first third of the 15th century, since the time of Nicholas Cusanus, are actually dead as thoughts, they are corpses. That which lived lived in the pre-earthly existence. Before man descended to earth as a soul-spiritual being, he was in a spiritual life. This spiritual life died with the beginning of life on earth, and he experiences what is dead in him as his thinking. The first thing that man must recognize is that although in more recent times he can come to real self-knowledge, to a knowledge of himself as a spiritual-soul being, but that what surrenders to this self-knowledge is dead, spiritually corpse-like, and that it is precisely into this dead, into this spiritual corpse that what comes from the will must flow, from that will of which I said yesterday that it is actually in the nothing from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, anchored in the astral body and in the I. The I must shoot into the dead thoughts and must revive them.

Therefore, in the old days, all the care during the initiation was basically directed towards dampening something in the person. Actually, the old initiation was a kind of calming of the inner human abilities and powers. If you follow the course of the old initiation, you will find that in essence, the human being underwent an initiation training that led him to calm his inner excitement, to dampen the inner emotionality that would otherwise be present in ordinary life, so that what the human being had in ordinary life, the filling of his entire being with the divine-spiritual powers that permeate and animate the cosmos, would be subdued and he would consciously sink into a kind of sleep, so that he could then awaken in this subdued consciousness to a kind of sleep, which he otherwise only experiences after death: calm thinking, feeling himself as an individuality. The old system of initiation was thus a kind of system of quieting.

In the present time, this longing for reassurance has remained with man in many ways, and he feels comfortable when old initiation principles are warmed up and he is led to them again. But this no longer corresponds to the essence of the modern human being. The modern human being can only approach initiation by asking himself with all depth and intensity: When I look into myself, I find my thinking. But this thinking is dead. I no longer need to seek death. I carry it within me in my spiritual-soul nature. While the old initiate had to be led to the point where he experienced death, the modern initiate must realize more and more: I have death in my soul-spiritual life. I carry it within me. I do not have to look for it. On the contrary, I have to enliven dead thoughts out of an inner, willed, creative principle. And everything I have presented in 'How to Know Higher Worlds' is aimed at this enlivening of dead thoughts, at this engagement of the will in the inner life of the soul, so that the human being may awaken. For whereas the old initiation had to be a kind of lulling to sleep, the new initiation must be a kind of waking up. What the human being unconsciously experiences during sleep must be brought into the most intimate soul life. Through activity, the human being must awaken inwardly.

To do this, it is necessary to grasp the concept of sleeping in all its relativity. One must be clear about what anthroposophical knowledge is actually present with regard to this idea of sleep. If we place side by side two people, one of whom knows nothing of the things presented in anthroposophical knowledge, and we place next to him a person who has really taken in the anthroposophical with inner interest, with inner interest, not just with passive listening or passive reading, but with inner interest, the anthroposophical ophorophical has been presented, and we place beside it a person who has really taken in the anthroposophical with inner participation, with inner interest, not just with passive listening or passive reading, but with inner interest: then the person who has not taken in the anthroposophical is like a sleeper compared to the one who has taken in the anthroposophical and is awakened in the anthroposophical, as a person is awakened in the morning when he enters his physical body from unconsciousness. And we can only find the right place for ourselves within anthroposophy, we can only find the right orientation for the anthroposophical movement if we look at it in such a way that it gives us something like waking up in the morning, if we compare approaching anthroposophy in the right way with what we feel when we pass from the unconsciousness of sleep into the perception of an external world. If we can also have this in our feelings: just as immersing ourselves in the physical body when we wake up gives us a world, not just knowledge, but a world, so immersing ourselves in anthroposophical knowledge gives us a world, a knowledge that is not just knowledge, but a world, a world into which we wake up. As long as we regard anthroposophy as just another world view, we do not have the right feeling towards anthroposophy. We only have the right feeling about anthroposophy when the person who becomes an anthroposophist feels that he is awakening in anthroposophy. And he awakens when he says to himself: the concepts and ideas that the world has given me before are conceptual and ideological corpses, they are dead. Anthroposophy awakens this corpse for me.

If you understand this in the right sense, then you will come out on top in the face of all the things that are often said against anthroposophy and the understanding of anthroposophy. People say: Yes, a person who is not an anthroposophist is learning something in the world today. That is being proven to him. He can understand that because it is being proven to him. In anthroposophy, mere assertions are made that remain unproven - so the world says very often. But the world does not know what the reality is of what it considers to be proven. The world should realize that all the laws of nature, all the thoughts that man forms out of the world, that when he experiences them correctly, they are something dead. So what is being proved to him is something dead. He cannot understand it. Only when one begins to perceive what is today the ordinary world view as something dead, then one says to oneself: I do not understand what is being proved to me, just as I do not understand a corpse, because it is what is left over from a living being. I understand a corpse only when I know to what extent it was permeated by life.

And so we have to say to ourselves: what is considered proven today cannot in fact be understood if we look at it more deeply. And it is only when we allow the spark of anthroposophy to strike that which is otherwise offered by civilization today that we can truly understand it. — Those who, let us say, say to a mere natural scientist of today who comes to them and says, “I can prove my case, you cannot prove it,” are right. They then reply, “Of course you can prove anything in your way, but the very thing you have proved to me will only become intelligible to me when I allow the spark of anthroposophy to strike it.” That should be the information that an anthroposophist, speaking from a heart full of living spiritual life, can give to a non-anthroposophist. The Anthroposophist would have to say: You are falling asleep with your knowledge of nature; you are falling asleep to such an extent that you say: I have limits to my knowledge of nature, I cannot wake up at all, I can only state that with my knowledge of nature I do not approach the spiritual at all. You still have a theory for your sleep, for the justification of your sleep. But I want to refute precisely this theory of the justification of your sleep by bringing what is there sleep to wakefulness.

I pointed this out in the first chapter of my book 'Von Seelenrätseln'. There I expressed what has been repeated in lectures over and over again, namely that a person who remains with the present civilization simply says that there are all kinds of limits to knowledge that cannot be crossed. So he calms down. But this calming down means nothing other than that he does not want to wake up, he wants to remain asleep. The one who now wants to enter the spiritual world in the modern sense must begin to wrestle with the inner soul tasks precisely where the other person sets the limits of knowledge. And by beginning the struggle with these ideas, which are set at the boundary, the view of the spiritual world gradually opens up to him step by step. One must take what is presented in anthroposophy as it is intended.

Take this first chapter of 'Mysteries of the Soul'. It may be imperfectly written, but you can at least find out the intention with which it was written. It is written with the intention that you say to yourself: If I stop at present civilization, then the world is actually boarded up for me. Knowledge of nature: you move on, then the boards come, the world is boarded up for me. What is written in this first chapter, 'On Soul Mysteries', is an attempt to knock away these boards with a spade. If you have this feeling that you are doing a job, to knock away with a spade the boards with which the world has been boarded up for centuries, if you see the words as a spade, then you come to the soul-spiritual.

Most people have the unconscious feeling that a chapter like the first, 'On Soul Riddles', is written with a pen that flows with ink. It is not written with a pen, but with the spades of the soul, which would like to tear down the boards that cover the world, that is, eliminate the boundaries of knowledge of nature, but eliminate them through inner soul work. So, when reading such a chapter, one must work with it through soul activity.

The ideas that arise from anthroposophical books are quite remarkable. I understand these ideas, often do not contradict them, because they have their value for the individual; but take for example the “Geheimwissenschaft”. People have come to me who think they can do something for this 'Occult Science' of mine if they paint the whole 'Occult Science' so that it would stand before people in pictures. This longing has arisen. There have even been samples of it. I have nothing against it; if these samples are good, then one can even admire them, it is indeed quite beautiful to do such things. But what longing does it arise from? They arise out of the longing to take away the most important thing that is developed in “occult science” and to put images in front of people that are just boards again. Because what matters is - the way our language and the awful writing has become, this terrible writing or even the way it is printed - to take it as it is, not to rebel against what civilization and to take it in such a way that the reader can also overcome it immediately, that he can immediately get out and make all the images himself that have flowed into the awful ink, thus creating them himself. The more each person individually creates these images for themselves, the better it is. If someone else anticipates this, they are in turn walling up the world for him. I do not want to deliver a diatribe against the pictorial elaboration of what is presented in the Imaginationen of “Geheimwissenschaft”, of course not, but I would just like to point out what is fundamentally necessary for everyone as a living assimilation of this matter.

These things must be understood in the right way today. One must come to the point where one does not just take anthroposophy as something that one delves into in the same way that one delves into something else, but one must take it as something that requires a change in thinking and feeling, that requires one to become different from what one was before. So if, for example, an astronomical chapter is presented from the perspective of anthroposophy, one cannot take this astronomical chapter and compare it with ordinary astronomy and then start to prove and refute back and forth. That makes no sense at all. Instead, we must be clear about one thing: the astronomical chapter drawn from anthroposophy can only be understood when the rethinking and re-sensing is in place. So if a refutation of some anthroposophical chapter appears somewhere today and then a written defense appears that has been written with the same means as the refutation, then nothing has been done, really nothing at all, because one talks back and forth with the same way of thinking. That is not what is important, but that Anthroposophy be carried by a new life. And that is absolutely necessary today.

It is quite remarkable what ideas arise from reading anthroposophical books. I understand these ideas, often do not contradict them, because they have value for the individual; but take for example “Geheimwissenschaft” (Occult Science). People have come to me who think they can do something for this Secret Science by painting the whole work so that it would stand before people in pictures. This longing has arisen. They have even delivered samples. I have nothing against it; if these samples are good, one can even admire them, it is indeed quite beautiful to do such things. But what longing does it arise from? It arises from the longing to take away the most important thing that is developed in “occult science” and to put images in front of people that are just boards again. Because what matters is - the way our language and the awful writing has become, this terrible writing or even the way it is printed - to take it as it is, not to rebel against what civilization has brought, and to take it in such a way that the reader can also overcome it immediately, that he can immediately get out and make all the images that have flowed into the hideous ink himself. The more individually each person creates these images, the better it is. If someone else anticipates this for him, he in turn wallows the world. I do not want to deliver a diatribe against the pictorial expression of what is presented in the “occult science” in imaginations, of course not, but I would just like to point out what is fundamentally necessary for everyone as an active assimilation of this matter.

These things must be understood in the right way today. We must come to the point where we do not take anthroposophy as something we delve into in the same way we delve into anything else, but we must take it as something that requires a change in thinking and feeling, that requires us to become different people than we were before. So if, for example, an astronomical chapter is presented from the perspective of anthroposophy, one cannot take this astronomical chapter and compare it with ordinary astronomy and then start to prove and refute back and forth. That makes no sense at all. Rather, we must be clear about one thing: the astronomical chapter drawn from anthroposophy can only be understood when the rethinking and re-sensing is there. So if a refutation of some anthroposophical chapter appears somewhere today and then a written defense appears that has been written with the same means as the refutation, then nothing has been done, really nothing at all, because one is talking back and forth with the same way of thinking. That is not what is important, but that Anthroposophy be carried by a new life. And that is absolutely necessary today.

It is urgently necessary to talk about these things in this phase of the Anthroposophical Society, because these things are beginning to be misunderstood in the most fundamental way. To this end, let me today look back a little at the way in which the Anthroposophical Society has developed. You see, it came into being not through seeking it, but through arising out of the circumstances of life; it came into being by being in a certain loose, external connection with the Theosophical Society at the beginning of our century. This Theosophical Society has always endeavored to bring old principles of initiation into the present. Fate decreed that it was precisely within theosophical circles that anthroposophy could first be spoken of. I have often discussed the reasons for this, and I will not repeat them today. I did hint at them in the first essay I wrote in the series 'The Goetheanum in its first ten years' (in GA 36).

But at that time anthroposophy had to struggle out of the modern conception of the spiritual, which, I might say, tended more towards theosophy in the broadest sense: towards the reintroduction of old methods of initiation. The grotesque way in which these old methods of initiation do not correspond to the demands of modern civilization was shown very clearly when, around the years 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, this spiritual movement, which had a theosophical character, approached the Christ problem. Then the theosophical movement produced the absurdity of an incarnated Christ Jesus in a present-day human being. And all the other absurdities that the theosophical movement produced were based on that. From the very beginning, anthroposophy, in contrast to theosophy, had to lead to a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore, in the first period of anthroposophical life, the explanation of the Gospels was given preference, the guidance to a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And at a time when the other spiritual movement, with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha, fell into the worst absurdities, the anthroposophical movement approached more and more a real, real conception of the Mystery of Golgotha and went its way with this conception of the Mystery of Golgotha, while the theosophical movement could no longer be connected to it.

That was the first phase of anthroposophical endeavor. There was the significant cohesive impulse to connect the anthroposophical movement in the right way with the Mystery of Golgotha. And it can be said that at the moment when it was possible to write my Mysteries, this phase had come to a kind of preliminary conclusion. It was a general conviction among anthroposophists at the time that the anthroposophical movement had to be connected with a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And the momentum that the anthroposophical movement had up until around 1908, 1909 and so on, came from the fact that a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha was gained in a new spiritual way, everything was oriented so that the Mystery of Golgotha could be at the center of understanding. That is how the Anthroposophical Society acquired its character at that time.

But the things that are part of real life outside are going through a period, and something that should be full of inner life, like the Anthroposophical Society, goes through a period at a faster “pace than others.

An important phase in the anthroposophical movement, for example, when anthroposophy had already become completely independent of theosophy, was when I gave the lecture cycle on “Occult Physiology” in Prague and more and more, I would say, also the knowledge of the world could be conquered through anthroposophical knowledge. In this way it could be shown to the world: this Anthroposophy is not something in cloud-high altitudes, only mystically hovering, but it really takes hold of modern consciousness. It takes into account the emergence of the development of consciousness souls. It ventures into areas that can only be grasped with spirituality, but which are the areas of the human world around us.

And so, after the Mystery of Golgotha was, so to speak, established within the anthroposophical movement, a scientific movement that was only possible if the Mystery of Golgotha was taken completely seriously took its first steps.

This was difficult to maintain during the period when everything in Europe was going haywire and the world war broke out. We were in the second phase of the anthroposophical movement. We had, so to speak, left behind us the fact that we had borne witness to the fact that we wanted to be firmly connected to the Mystery of Golgotha. We had just begun to work on expanding the anthroposophical impulse across the various fields of world civilization. And now came the time when people in Europe became so deeply divided from one another, the time when mistrust and hatred ran rampant. A time came when everything that was not allowed to live within an anthroposophical community came to life if it was to develop its true life impulse. And in a way, we really did succeed, despite the difficulties that existed at the time, in continuing the Anthroposophical Society.

Let us consider the difficulties that existed. One major difficulty was that the original foundation of anthroposophy had started from central Europe, that we had our Goetheanum here in a neutral area, and that, I would say, any collaboration between people from the most diverse European regions was viewed with enormous mistrust from many sides. Every interaction and every journey between different sides was, of course, an enormous difficulty at that time. But the difficulties were overcome at the time because they were treated – my dear friends, it must be said – because they were treated from an anthroposophical spirit. I know that many who were part of the anthroposophical movement at the time also criticized some things, even resented them, because it was not always immediately apparent what had to be done in the face of the divisive judgments that had been made about the world in order to ensure the cohesion that can only exist in an anthroposophical spirit! And so we were able to guide the anthroposophical movement through the difficulties that arose during the European crisis, and in a sense keep it pure. Those people who were downright mistrustful during that time could in many cases be brought to trust, to the point where they said to themselves as complete outsiders: Anthroposophy, however one may feel about it, is something that cannot be dismissed as a thing to be mistrusted, even if it works with the most diverse nations.

Even as the war was drawing near, and despite the fact that it was misunderstood by many, and that some people got involved in this or that issue that began to divide people in Europe at the time, and despite the fact that some people criticized much of what was done in the spirit of anthroposophy out of some national furor, it was still possible, if I may say so, the anthroposophical ship could be steered through the great difficulties that existed, and it was possible to continue working on our Goetheanum.

One would like to say: This second phase, in which Anthroposophy was no longer an embryo, as it was until 1908 or 1909, this second phase lasted until about 1915 or 1916. Of course, its after-effects remained in many ways.

But then a time began when the child naturally had to mature: the third phase of the anthroposophical movement, starting around 1916. Yes, my dear friends, what kind of time was that? It is the time when all kinds of personalities in the anthroposophical movement, which had grown significantly by then, had ideas, ideas that then grew particularly badly in the post-war period.

It is in the nature of such a movement that the individuals in it must have ideas, because such a movement must mature within itself. As it grows, leading personalities must gradually emerge within it. And then it was indeed right that individual personalities should have such ideas. But what was necessary was that these personalities should cling with iron will to these ideas, so that they should not be adopted merely as a program and then abandoned, but should be held fast by these personalities with an iron will.

The ideas that have sought to be realized to this day have all been good. What has not been good and what must change is the behavior of the personalities in relation to them: it is precisely a matter of gaining perseverance in the pursuit of ideas. A new element necessarily emerged.

Take the first phase of the anthroposophical movement. When anthroposophy was still in its infancy, people could approach it by simply absorbing what was offered. In the first phase, all that was required was to absorb, to join the movement, to take in what was offered.

In the second phase, it became necessary for the assimilation to be mixed with an understanding; for example, people from the world came who really knew this outside world, knew it as scientists, knew it as practitioners; who could therefore judge that what was offered to them by anthroposophy also had value for science and life practice. But you didn't have to be active yourself, you just had to take in the anthroposophical with a healthy judgment of the outside world. In the first phase of anthroposophy, one only needed to be a person with a warm heart and a healthy understanding to be able to say yes to anthroposophy. Of course, this must be the case throughout all phases of the anthroposophical movement, that such people with a warm heart and a healthy understanding take up anthroposophy. But there must always be some people who know the other world thoroughly and can judge from the point of view of the other world, whether scientifically or as practitioners, what is carried down from the spiritual worlds into anthroposophy.

Now, when the third phase came, people were needed who could act, people who would work with their will, but with a persistent will, on the things that had arisen in them as ideas. Just as one cannot succumb to the illusion that a child who has turned 16 is still twelve years old, one should not succumb to the illusion that the Anthroposophical Society in 1919 could still be the same as it was in about 1907. It was in the nature of things that every intention was met. But it was also always emphasized that such volition is only justified if one perseveres, if one remains steadfast in one's will. Now, this has often been lacking. I say this not as a criticism, but as something that points to what must come. But I have often pointed out what must come to pass in individual cases. Only in one instance was my attention paid to by the leadership! That was when I realized that it was necessary to intervene in a certain field, and then our friend Leinhas took over this intervention. Only in this one case has what I have repeatedly and repeatedly described as a necessity in one area or another actually been observed in recent times – I now expressly say: described as a necessity of the third phase of the anthroposophical movement. Because basically I did not need to make a special effort to explain what the impulses of the first phase and the second phase were. They were ongoing. They could be safely left to spiritual karma. It was different with what had emerged through the ideas of individual personalities as a good thing in itself, but which can only continue to be good if the persevering will of the individual personalities really intervenes in the matter. But they must not be allowed to develop in the way they have in many cases in recent times.

Let me give you an example. Among the many things that arose from ideas, let us assume that there was also the so-called Hochschulbund. Yes, my dear friends, this Hochschulbund either had to contain within it a serious will that did not weaken, or it was a stillborn child. This is something that I already said explicitly when it was founded.

What is the meaning of such a statement, my dear friends? It means only that people should be made aware: you must know that if you slacken your will, the matter will go wrong. What has become of the University Federation? In Germany it has become something that only annoys the representatives of the old ways and makes enemies of them, because the will was not behind it. In Switzerland, the Hochschulbund was never really born at all; therefore, a far-reaching will could not flash through something like that which gave the first events within our perished Goetheanum their character: the college lectures. They have basically remained quite ineffective because there was no driving force behind them. But they made enemies. And a large part of the third phase of our anthroposophical movement consisted of this: the arousal of enmity and opposition that is not necessary when there is a strong will behind the cause. Of course, enmity arises; but it is ineffective if it is not justified in a certain way. And it must always be the case that it can be said: however many enmities arise, they must not even have the appearance of justification, however vehemently they arise.

I have repeatedly pointed this out, including here, but let us see how it has come about. It is only natural that young people should approach the movement that arises from the burgeoning of the development of the consciousness soul. We should be glad that young people are approaching it. But what do young people think today about what the Anthroposophical Society is? Young people today think that it cannot be taken seriously. I don't want to talk about whether this judgment is justified or not, but it is there, and you have to deal with the facts in life.

I would like to give you just one external, factual testimony to this fact. Some time ago, a group of young people came together in Stuttgart to truly surrender themselves to the anthroposophical movement with all their hearts. These people had the best intention of devoting themselves to the anthroposophical movement. I was busy here and couldn't be there on the first day after they had gathered in Stuttgart, and so I expressed to one of the members of the central Council the wish that he should represent me by giving a lecture to the young people on the first evening. He went there and proposed the motion to them. They said: We thank you very much, we do not want a lecture from you.

Now, my dear friends, you may say: That was rude. — For my sake, say that; but it has no validity if you say it. The fact was that the people were convinced from the outset: No understanding is possible; he does not tell us something that strikes at our hearts. And I found in Stuttgart that the youth had gathered and that the previous anthroposophical leadership was actually completely out of touch with them. The people were left to their own devices, and they really approached the anthroposophical movement with warm hearts.

This way of relating to others was perfectly possible in the first and second phases of the anthroposophical movement; in the third phase it was no longer possible because in the third phase it began to depend on the individual person in the anthroposophical movement. And as I said, all this is not said to criticize anyone, all this is not said to criticize; all this is said because it caused me endless suffering, because I saw that the personalities who wanted to take the helm here or there in the Anthroposophical Society did not want to rule entirely out of the anthroposophical spirit. And I have always assured them that it is unspeakable what I had to suffer from the fact that it could be stated: This third phase of the anthroposophical movement does not want to progress as it should, because there are too many mere ideas and the energetic will behind them is lacking.

It is indeed a certain fateful connection that when we were struck by the great misfortune here at the Goetheanum, it became particularly clear that the real damage to anthroposophy lies in inaction, in not wanting to take action. And so we have been driven into the very conflicts that now exist in the bosom of the Anthroposophical Society, and which should lead to nothing other than an all the more powerful recovery. But for that to happen, it must first be truly and honestly recognized what is necessary. Above all, it is necessary not to harbor illusions about the facts that have gradually driven us into a kind of cul-de-sac. It would certainly be an illusion if we were to see the damage as lying in anything other than the failure of certain personalities to take a stand. But the Anthroposophical Society can no longer tolerate illusions today. It cannot tolerate the mere unfruitful criticism of the past, but only the actual pointing out of what is necessary. And that is to recognize that desire is not will, that one must not say, 'I have the best will', when in three weeks' time this best will proves to be nothing but will at all, but that one then sat down on one's chair and was, in title, what one is on this chair, but had only passive good will. But passive good will is a contradiction in terms. The will is only good will when it is active. The anthroposophical movement in its third phase cannot tolerate resolutions such as: We make ourselves available. It is the worst misunderstanding to pass such resolutions, the worst misunderstanding of the actual tasks.

What is at stake is for each of us to intervene where we stand, and not to stop at desire, but to develop the will. It might seem, my dear friends, as if I wanted to paint a gloomy picture of what is in the bosom of the anthroposophical movement today. I do not want to do that. But on the other hand, I must not create any illusions, or contribute to the creation of any illusions. Because the point is that we can only move forward if we grasp such an awareness as has been characterized.

But, my dear friends, I am only saying that the second phase of the anthroposophical movement has brought with it the necessity to spread the word about the outer world. I also said that those who have learned from the world in science or practice must come forward as judges. In the third phase, numerous such personalities then found themselves saying, “Yes, now we have to do something, now we have to start doing something!” They also made resolutions. But action is not part of it.

In the third phase, well, I don't want to say how many researchers in the most diverse scientific fields are among us. I don't want to say how many! If I told you the total, you would be amazed. These researchers are, in their opinion, motivated by the best will. In my opinion, they are extremely capable. Here, too, I believe that there is no lack of ability. On the contrary, in recent years we have even managed to bring together the most capable people through a wonderful selection process, here and in Stuttgart. The excuse that abilities are lacking does not hold water. What is lacking is the will. And as soon as one talks about this will, the strangest things happen.

We experienced it at the local science course when a lecture by one of our researchers was announced. He didn't come! But as if in mockery, he arrived a few hours later. Yes, my dear friends, if there is no sense of obligation within the Anthroposophical Society, then it just won't work. And if you want to tackle things, then, oddly enough, they slip out of your hands; they really do slip out of your hands. For example, I wanted to tackle this 'problem', as I would call it, that one of our researchers simply absents himself, skips his lecture – I wanted to deal with this in the appropriate way; I got the answer that he doesn't even really know how he came to be on the program in Dornach! Yes, my dear friends, when problems slip out of our hands like that, then there is truly no longer any concerted, energetic will.

But that is precisely what we need. We do not need a disintegration of all kinds of wishes and all kinds of what is often called goodwill; we need a dutiful will. All things can flourish if people approach them in the right way. Because what does not have the possibility of flourishing within it will not be undertaken, even within the anthroposophical movement. But we need the will, the truly good will, that is, the strong will of the personalities involved. We cannot tolerate curule chairs, but we need active personalities.

My dear friends, I did not bring about the situation that I have to express this, but rather it is the personalities themselves who have made themselves available to do everything possible. It has grown out of something else. Therefore, the issue today is that responsibilities should also be defined as broadly as possible, that they should really be nurtured and cherished, and that they should also be demanded.

That is what I wanted to tell you, because we are still not finished with the current trips to Stuttgart. I have to go back there tomorrow. The next lecture will be next Friday. This afternoon there will be a eurythmy performance here at 5 o'clock. I ask once again not to shy away from the second route; the preparations for the trip made it necessary for this lecture not to follow the eurythmy performance, but to be held in the morning.

My dear friends!

Before I come to today's reflection, please allow me a few words. It may not have remained unknown among our friends that it would correspond to my inclination to speak most gladly about the factual theosophical things from the very beginning, namely about the objective matters of the spiritual world. But sometimes it turns out to be necessary to address a word to our friends that does not belong to the matter at hand, but to our affairs. Much as I dislike it, it sometimes has to be done. It had to be done in the most diverse ways during the period when the affairs that led to the free-standing Anthroposophical Society; and unfortunately it is necessary from time to time, again and again. Therefore, allow me today to say a few words to you before we come to the subject of our consideration.

It is always the case, though, that you don't really know where to start. But it happens time and again that these or those misunderstandings, these or those things open to misunderstanding, creep into our ranks. The one who can understand this best, the one who can really understand this well, is really myself. But if nothing were said at all, it would not work either. I do not want to bother you with matters that have been discussed often enough. Because I feel, I would like to say, up to a kind of creepy feeling, I have been told more often by these or those lately: Thank God! Now that we have the Anthroposophical Society, we no longer have to worry about the matter, now we can have peace and quiet. It is a nice feeling to have peace and quiet. But it is creepy when there is this exaggerated need for peace and quiet if there is no peace from the other side. And there are enough other people around us to ensure that we do not give peace a chance! That is why I would like to make a heartfelt request to you not to live too much by this need for peace. Misunderstandings arise easily, understandably. And if I had always been understood since 1907, many things would not have come about that quite understandably did come about. If only they had had the will to represent what I tried to do with a certain clarity, to see it, to understand some of what was in what I tried to do, then they would have acquired a certain power of discernment since 1907, perhaps even earlier.

Please forgive me for discussing these matters in such a dry, seemingly presumptuous way; but it has to be done because no one else is saying it. I would rather not say it. If we had acquired the ability to distinguish between things wherever work was considered important for the further progress of our cause, then the case could not always arise that, in addition to what we are trying to do, which, as our friends know, we are trying to do out of seriousness, out of real seriousness about occultism on the one hand and about the occult situation at the time, which I I tried to characterize in a general way the day before yesterday, if one had acquired a proper sense of the seriousness with which we should actually take the matter, it would gradually have become self-evident that much of the selfish stuff – if you will allow the expression – even such selfish stuff that came from Adyar in the years mentioned would simply have been viewed in the right way.

It has caused me, I must say, a certain sadness - do not misunderstand the expression, the occultist in a sense knows no sadness - but yet I must say: It has caused me a certain sadness that in the way things are tried, the question could arise: How does the view presented here of the Christ problem or similar things square with what Miss Besant presents? It saddens me because it shows that the seriousness with which these matters are treated here is not appreciated in the right way, is not understood in the right way. Since no one else is saying it, I have to say this, although I would rather not because it could be misunderstood. I had hoped that people would not just look at the differences, but at the inferiority, the whole inferiority that is found in occult stuff, which has sometimes been taken up as if it were necessary to deal with it. I had hoped that discernment would arise for what one has discernment for in other fields! These are the words I would most like to avoid saying myself. If someone does something with seriousness and dignity and someone else does a botched job, you don't ask: How does what was done with seriousness and dignity deal with the botched job, with what openly bears its inability on its forehead!

Thus it was necessary, at the starting point of our anthroposophical movement, to address a heartfelt request to you not to live too much in the need for calm and indifference in the face of what is sufficiently done in the world to throw dust in the eyes of our contemporaries about what is reality. It is not enough for us to acquire knowledge of these or those things with a certain curiosity – but it is necessary because there are other people living around us to whom we must gain access with what needs to be done in the spirit of the time mission. It is not enough to inform oneself with a certain curiosity about the monstrous things happening in the Theosophical Society and otherwise rest on the cushion of the Anthroposophical Society, but it is necessary to gain the appropriate attitude in one's soul. Because if this appropriate attitude is not gained, what must be done as a highly necessary defense will always be distorted in the most outrageous way. One should not believe that those people who are now trying to distort everything that must come from us as a necessary defense, or who are trying to simply accept such outrageous attacks in a seemingly noble way, one should not believe that either of these people are right. What is being done against us often comes from people whose actions show the kind of spirit behind it. Therefore, I would like to ask you not to let old comradely feelings prevail where the truth is concerned. In the course of my endeavors in developing the German Section, I have always had to come into conflict with the increasing inability to distinguish. And even if our friends had developed more and more discernment between the stuff that is spreading and what is being tried here – it is unpleasant for me to say this – and even if our friends had tried to apply discernment, it would not have been possible to come to me with every piece of nonsense that comes from the other side.

Those who are familiar with the work that has been done by this side know that this is not based on intolerance, but on [painful] necessity. Inability has always had to be dealt with: examples can easily be given. For example, one should not have believed that so much was possible, as was expressed in the General Assembly, that something even more outrageous would be added to the outrageous! After the Jesuits were criticized from Adyar, one would have thought that these outrageous acts could not be surpassed. Miss Besant has made it possible to surpass these improprieties by managing, in her publication, which until recently was itself still being read in some of our lodges, not to retract the Jesuit accusation, but to reinforce it and justify it by referring to three people. The system is not to take back the untruths, but to refer to three others who have told the untruth.

We must find it within ourselves to respond to these outrageous acts, and to subsequent ones. At the beginning of the German Section's work, a certain personage wrote me a card containing the following words, which were meant to sound friendly: “We are all pulling in the same direction, after all.” I could not for a moment think of pulling with this personality in one direction; because it would have been a violation of our serious work to pull with this personality in one direction. So such personalities had to be shaken off; because they did not want help to improve their incompetence, but they wanted to push themselves forward with their incompetence. This personality is one of those who now raise the Jesuit accusation, one of those on whom Mrs. Besant relies, a personality who, like Mrs. Besant, upholds this Jesuit accusation.

As unpleasant as it is to talk about these things, it cannot be spared. The soul must find the opportunity to take a stand on these things. We cannot allow the belief that something is justified because it calls itself Theosophy to serve our contemporary world in this way.

Another person, who had once been introduced to me by a Theosophist, sent me a writing of his that had nothing to do with what had to be done out of the seriousness of our movement. I also had to reject this person, which this personality wrote about a series of writings that are published by a certain publisher; anyone with discernment could see from this preface how incapable such a personality is of rational thought. There are many such personalities. The matter required that the personality discussed be rejected. That is the second of the personalities on which Mrs. Besant relies. I must keep emphasizing such things. It should be understood that it is not a license for anything if a person calls himself a Theosophist. The rejection of the Jesuit accusations that originated in Germany and which Mrs. Besant has recently allowed herself to be guilty of was easily seen through. What I said in Berlin was easily seen through. One could have found that it is not a matter of thinking about a matter in one way or another, but that the whole matter is not true, that the whole matter is untrue! The person who has been designated by Adyar as the General Secretary of the German Section finds the opportunity to have the following printed: Dr. Steiner and his followers reject this with indignation. Why this indignation, actually? Is it dishonorable to have dealings with Jesuits, or is it criminal to be dogmatic?

So, my dear friends, the man who wrote this dares to write this to throw dust in people's eyes – I won't say he intends to, but it happens because of it. If someone says to me, “You broke stones in your youth,” and I say, “It's not true,” is it a retort when someone says, “Breaking stones is an honest occupation after all”? It doesn't matter if it's an honest occupation; what matters is that it's not true! We have to get into the habit of not engaging in such things. There are still people who say, “It's not meant to be so badly, he has justified himself.” It depends on the fact that it is not true! For this we must acquire a sense of discernment, so that we cannot see such stuff without inwardly taking a stand on it, without feeling how outrageous such things are. It is easy to carry out journalistic skirmishes over and over again if you leave what it is about undisturbed and write about something that has nothing to do with the matter, because people who do not feel the obligation to acquire discernment are deceived by it.

There is another page that I would like to read to you, but the whole brochure is like that again! I have included in the “Mitteilungen” in the General Assembly report that I was written to by the man who then became the General Secretary in Germany: It would be incomprehensible to him how Krishnamurti could have gone through all that he was supposed to have gone through, but that is not the point; people in the West have no understanding of what an adept is. That is why Mrs. Besant chose the path of calling the one with whom she parades – those are his words – the Christ. In response to this account, one dares to write: “Something else, a fourth way of using the word ‘Christ’ – I can only ever serve you with one use of the word, though – was the [my writing of July 4, 1911, that Mrs. Besant uses the word “Christ” occasionally, based on the idea of Paul, but in a more exact sense, namely for an “adept” or “master who has already reached the goal of human perfection. Since the present-day cultural world knows no other model for this than Jesus, it is justified to use the term 'Christ' under certain circumstances also for the human being in whom the Christ-being reveals itself in its full abundance. But the present time is such that people read this without thinking.

Much to my regret, I had to mention it here: because I must point out that it is part of the essence of the theosophical sentiment to feel that what is being done here under the flag of theosophy is actually the most outrageous thing! It would be the most outrageous thing if anyone harbored the belief that such people could still be converted! The question arises again and again: what could be done to teach this or that person a better opinion. The assumption arises again and again that it can be a matter of that at all! Those who have raised the Jesuit accusation in this way cannot be converted. It would be the most impossible undertaking to even want to negotiate with such a person!

This is one of the theosophical misunderstandings. The real issue is that we should not allow our fellow human beings to be put off by things that are said because of human laziness!

It was necessary for me to make these few remarks. I made them reluctantly. It never ceases to amaze me how even now, within the Anthroposophical Society, the belief can sometimes arise that some kind of work of initiation is to be developed on that side. I have learned many things about Adyar matters that I will not discuss here.

The founding of the Anthroposophical Society began with such accusations being made from the other side. I understand the love for the cushion. But we also have the obligation to represent our cause without camaraderie, without regard to the person, if that person is dominated by such motives, as is the case here. We see how it begins; it is not yet complete. We will have many opportunities to sit on our pillow of rest if we close our eyes. It is right that we only take care of our own business, represent our cause positively and do not look to the right or left; it is right when we are the aggressors. But when it comes to our defense, I have to admit that it saddens me – now that it is about our sacred cause – that the days are filled with dealing with individual personalities, but that I have no time to defend our sacred cause against such outrageous attacks. And since this sorrow sometimes really has to befall me within the most necessary activity for our individual members, it was probably necessary to talk about these things here once. It will not happen too often that these things are spoken about, because I will wait and see if souls find the opportunity to truly confess themselves, which actually lies in the fact that today, in our time of crass materialism, in this time when there is so little sense of duty to examine the truth, that a matter that is so seriously meant may be attacked in such a way. For the sake of the cause and for the sake of the path that the cause must take into the hearts and souls of our contemporaries, it is necessary to write such things into our hearts. This is truly our holy cause! And I would not have spoken these unpleasant words if I had not been urged on by the whole assessment of the matter. I would feel obliged to continue to do what I have been doing for years within the movement, undeterred by what can happen in such a way. But if one feels such an obligation, one may still direct one's attention to it, so that souls may find the possibility to find the unheard of also unheard of, to find a position to the unheard of, not to allow that our present is approached with such things.

My dear friends, with all my warmth, with the deepest friendship, I say to you: we will work, I will work with you on what needs to be done. When souls find the right position, the right thing happens in the outside world; all action develops out of the right attitude. I will wait.

Address by Rudolf Steiner on the eve of the first Anthroposophical College Course at the Goetheanum.

My dear friends!

With the start of the School of Spiritual Science here in Dornach tomorrow, we are undoubtedly standing at a very important stage in our movement in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And even if it is only very briefly, I would like to be allowed to say a few words today about the development of this spiritual science, after I already did so to a certain extent here some time ago, a few months ago, due to [opposing] attacks. Nevertheless, today I would like to draw your attention to a few things in this regard.

We will open this course for spiritual scientific knowledge in the Goetheanum itself, in the construction of the Goetheanum, in a building that is still unfinished but has progressed so far that work will be able to begin in it in the next few weeks. And when I now consider the name 'Goetheanum', which was given to this building in the way you know, I cannot help thinking of one of the starting points of this movement. As I have often indicated, and also printed in a few sentences in the introduction to my book Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life, our movement originates from the lectures I gave in Berlin at the beginning of the century to a small circle. This inner circle in Berlin consisted partly of people who at that time called themselves Theosophists; but it also included such personalities who were quite distant from what the others called Theosophy. This circle met once a week in the house of Countess Brockdorff in Berlin, and there lectures were given from the most diverse areas of intellectual and public life; some artistic activities were also cultivated. Once I was invited to give a lecture in this circle. And I accepted, although I had never been in this circle before and did not know whether I had met one or other of the personalities in this circle; in any case, I did not know the lady of the house or the master of the house. But there are moments in life when one is polite. So after I had agreed through an intermediary to give the requested lecture on Nietzsche - it was, after all, quite some time after the writing of my essay “Nietzsche, a Fighter Against His Time” - it occurred to me: You have to be polite, you are now going to the housewife and the head of the household. So I first wrote a letter to Countess Brockdorff, asking her for permission to pay a courtesy call before giving the lecture at the house. Countess Brockdorff wrote back to me that it was not necessary, I should just come to the lecture – I no longer remember on which day it was, just the next lecture [evening]. And so I came into this circle and gave a lecture on Nietzsche. At the end of this lecture, I was invited to give another lecture during the winter season. And I immediately said: Yes, I would give a lecture on the same topic that I had written about in the “Magazin für Literatur”, which I was editing at the time, for Goethe's hundred and fiftieth birthday.

I had written on the occasion of Goethe's hundred and fifth birthday: “Goethe's Secret Revelation”. I said that I wanted to speak about this topic, “Goethe's Secret Revelation”, at the lecture evening to which I had been invited. The lecture took place. And I tried to present everything that can be connected to Goethe's “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” in this lecture at the time.

That was actually, I would say, the original cell of this movement, my dear friends. The original cell was that lecture on Goethe's secret revelation. I have to mention this when we begin an important stage in our movement here at the Goetheanum tomorrow. Actually, it is very nice that this movement is returning to its beginning – at least for me and what I have to do in the movement.

It began with Goethe, and tomorrow we begin something extraordinarily important in the building that was given its name by Goethe. So you see, there is something of consistency and continuity in the whole course of our movement.

The lecture I gave [at that time] on Goethe's secret revelation then led to me having to present the essentials of what is now contained in my essay 'Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life' in connection with modern natural science in that circle during the following winter. Thus, having arisen from Goethe, it was then continued in that writing. I then presented to a wider circle what is contained in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”.

What is contained in my book “Mysticism” has already led to a large part of this “mysticism” being translated into English. And that led to me being invited to give lectures on what, in its various forms, was the “Theosophical Society”.

Now I will never allow anyone to take away the right to give lectures, to give what I have to advocate in order to advocate it, where I am invited to do so. Therefore, I also gave lectures for those who called themselves Theosophists, among other lectures, but which, as I told everyone from the outset who wanted to or should hear it, did not contain anything that had not arisen from my own research.

I then took part in various Theosophical congresses. In the meantime, this movement, which had come into being in this way, had gained members within Central Europe, members who stuck together mainly because of the world view that I had already advocated at the time. When I gave the lecture on Goethe's Secret Revelation, it didn't mean much that what was advocated there was advocated at the invitation of the Theosophical Society.

At one of the congresses in London, I also saw Olcott, the president of the Theosophical Society. He said to me at the time, “Yes, with this German Section, it's an awkward business.” I said: Why? – Yes, the membership lists are so difficult for us. – I said: I am not interested in the membership lists, I am more interested in the members; and if the members are there, I don't really care if they are on the list. – Well, similar comments were made more often.

After going through various stages [a congress was held in Munich – it was 1907 –] with the other Theosophists. And at that time, people were very surprised that this movement had sprung up so quickly within Central Europe, as it was put. For there was a dictum that had been passed from one to the other among members of the Theosophical Society, especially in the circles of those who were “advanced” - that's what they called those who directed something here or there; and this dictum, which was constantly being uttered among these people, was: Germany is not ripe for this.

Now, this dictum was somewhat suppressed in Munich at the time. But actually, this dictum did not seem entirely unjustified to me; because we were not ripe for what the Theosophical [Society] held in its bosom, nor are we today, and I don't think we care about it at all.

What this “immaturity” led to was that we did not mature to recognize this Hindu boy, Alcyone – or something like that was his name – who had been chosen to carry the soul of Christ Jesus, when others who had been chosen as suitable candidates for the incarnation of the soul of Christ Jesus had proved unsuitable. We proved ourselves to be completely immature. And so we were thrown out.

And so, more and more developed outwards into the clarity that is the Anthroposophical Movement. But it simply developed outwards only what was originally, very originally there.

You see, I had just been invited to lecture at the Theosophical Society, and I had just founded a German Section in Berlin in 1902; but during the founding, founding negotiations, founding meeting, I had to leave because I had to give a lecture in another venue that was part of a cycle called “Anthroposophical Reflections on World History”. And so you see that while the Theosophical Society was founding its German Section, I was speaking about anthroposophy.

Today there is nothing else there but what actually arose from this original cell, 'Goethe's Secret Revelation'. And the Anthroposophical Society is just that, even in its external name, which was always intended by me.

In 1909 there was a Theosophical Congress in Budapest. At that time all kinds of curious things were already simmering in the center of the Theosophical Society, the Adyar Center. I believe that a part of the more reasonable people at the time had split off from the Theosophical Society, and this part needed a name. They turned to me. I did not think the time had come then to come out openly under the real flag of the Anthroposophical Movement. And so I said at the time: I already know a name that should be given when this movement takes on a reasonable form; but I need it later, I don't want it misused yet. So I said in 1909. I had in mind the name “Anthroposophical Society”.

And then in 1913 the Anthroposophical Society was founded. Those who were then there as members, insofar as they were still members of the Theosophical Society, were thrown out of the latter, lock, stock and barrel.

These things must be faced if we want to see the whole continuity of what is before us today, my dear friends; for here beginning and end are truly connected. And in the course of development, too, you will basically not perceive any breaks if you do not artificially construct them.

Then came the time that had often been pointed out in our anthroposophical lectures, the time when the decline of modern civilization became most evident: the terrible years since 1914 came, and with them the collapse of Central Europe, which in reality is a collapse of modern civilization as a whole. And it was necessary to include this in the current of our anthroposophical movement, which now, I would say, is moving as a social wing within this movement.

Anyone who follows the movement internally can see how the threefold social order movement has grown out of this anthroposophical movement in a completely organic way.

The threefolding movement brought all sorts of new elements into the anthroposophical movement. However, the personalities who were the bearers of these elements were already there at the same time; admittedly, others were added, but as I said, the personalities who were the bearers of these elements were there at the same time. But for a number of personalities, the idea of threefolding had the effect of awakening a new impetus, a new impulse in them. It is not clear to me how this impetus could have arisen from within the Theosophical Society. Because, you see, when I consider these real, actual moments of the genesis of the anthroposophical movement, I always think of such things, as I have mentioned before.

I was once at a Theosophical event in Paris. There, for the most part, the people who were “advanced” spoke. And afterwards, people would express their judgments about what had been said. I can't say they talked about what had been said, but the advanced ones, especially the ladies, moved around partly nimbly, partly a little drowsily, and declared everywhere: There were such wonderful vibrations in this room while so-and-so was speaking! And everywhere you heard praise for these very brilliant “vibrations”.

And from everything that had been said behind the various lectures, I could only imagine that one actually did not use one's ears as a mediator for what was going on in the hall, but it seemed to me that one's nose was used. Because the way people talked afterwards was actually as if they had smelled these “vibrations”. So that one actually had to smell theosophy.

But I have to say: I don't think that much of a social nature could have been sensed from these reports, from these speeches! For there was nothing in all of this that was native to it, nothing of an impact that would have gone so far as to directly grasp the living existence, the full humanity.

The need to grasp this full humanity, however, came to the fore with great force in the second decade of the twentieth century. And if the anthroposophical movement had not sensed that it had to absorb social elements within itself, or rather, had to allow them to emerge from itself, then it would have proved to be just any old sect standing in the corner, but not as that which it was meant to be from the very beginning: the renewal of spiritual life from the original spiritual source for the developmental needs of modern humanity.

This should be fully understood within our movement. And above all, it should be understood that if anthroposophy is to fulfill its task, then it must actually pour its currents into all the individual branches of modern knowledge, it must take hold of all science.

In this respect, nothing was similar in all that had been achieved on anthroposophical ground to what had been achieved on the ground of the Theosophical Society. Because, you see, there they had also made all kinds of compromises with science, but they were compromises. If, on the other hand, you could impress people in Italy or England or elsewhere with a professorial conquest that you had made in this or that, of course, brilliant name, then you were happy: Professor so and so became a member of the Theosophical Society – a brilliant achievement! That's how you drew the line to the sciences.

But the anthroposophical movement should not draw its lines in this way. Of course, one could have some success by bowing and scraping to ordinary science, but we did not do that. So I made myself unpopular, at least in that respect. I could give many examples, but I will give only one.

There was a man [...] within the Theosophical Society who was actually quite charming. He once came to a place where we had an anthroposophical branch. He was a botanist. I was always interested in those things that I thought might incidentally interest him. And so I spoke to the professor of botany, and I talked about some details of botanical science. He was not at all interested, not in the least. He was even a little annoyed, because he was fond of “theosophy” and he assumed that it would not interfere with his botany. He thought to himself: “A botanist – that's someone in the style of modern scientific development. It's a matter of course that everything is in order there. And then, if you have any needs on the side, you also take up theosophy. But there you have two neatly separate drawers: here botany, here theosophy. And there the one does not interfere with the other. Therefore, it became extremely uncomfortable for him to hear about botany from an anthroposophical point of view. One example among many.

But we could not refrain from pouring into everything that comes from the sources of anthroposophical research, into the specific activity of life, into everything that belongs to the world. This became unpleasant for many people, quite unpleasant. Because, right, you could be a good botanist in the sense of the demands of the time, because you had graduated from high school, then did your specialized studies, wrote your dissertation, then became a private lecturer, wrote your book, became a professor – well, you also had your botanical collection – it was all in order; you had that behind you. Why interfere in any way? But because it was unsatisfactory, something was needed for the other needs of the human being. So one took up Theosophy. It was easy to grasp in relation to the many books one had studied before finally becoming a university professor. So one bought a few more, that is, Theosophical books. Now one also had something for the other. The circles should not be disturbed.

But we couldn't do it that way. I, in particular, could not become that well-behaved, my dear friends. And so I was obliged to speak out against this from an anthroposophical basis, to tell people: No, this is not right; we do not need to approach things with a hide; instead, each of the other subjects needs to be properly cleaned up; everything has become dead and must come to life again.

The whole matter is connected with our social demands. For if we had not this ghastly specialization in individual sciences alien to life, if we did not have this lack of understanding of life through these separate individual sciences, then we would not have been driven into the misfortune of recent years. And we must get out of it by starting at the right end and properly penetrating into the pigeonholes. So that the spirit, which alone can carry the development of humanity, is also present in all the individual activities of the life of knowledge. And everything that was to emerge from this life of knowledge was in our anthroposophical movement. And when the new elements came, who felt inspired by the idea of threefolding and by many other things that have been going on in the anthroposophical movement in recent years, the impetus also came to take the path that now leads to what is to begin tomorrow as our anthroposophical college course here.

Above all, it was Dr. Boos, the founder and leader of the Swiss Threefolding Union, who had the inner strength that led to what we will begin tomorrow.

In a certain way, one had to be completely immersed in the realization of the necessity to fertilize all scientific, all artistic, all social life from anthroposophy. You had to be equipped with the inner audacity to really combine absolutely clear, sharply defined thinking with the necessary intuition that sees that what flows through the currents of anthroposophy can really deliver what needs to be delivered to the sciences. Then you have to have that sacred fire that is dedicated to such work. This has been done in a way for which we cannot thank our friend Dr. Roman Boos enough, and it is actually thanks to him that we have his work in front of us, this anthroposophical university course that is to begin tomorrow.

Of course, we must not forget all those who have worked and contributed in abundance; but a driving force must be behind all of this. And this driving force must, I would say, be a social impetus. That was necessary above all. We have had that in relation to these enterprises, and I would just like to wish that we still had many more ventures with Dr. Boos; then we will certainly make progress.

And so we can follow the growth of what I took the liberty of presenting to you today in the original cell, how it branched out into the life of the individual sciences, how it summoned all the friends whom we cannot greet warmly enough and who will now devote themselves as lecturers to the development of anthroposophy in the individual sciences and branches of life. If we can show the world how Anthroposophy is working in the individual branches of science, we will also gain the necessary momentum for the social work of Anthroposophy.

And that, my dear friends, is what should inspire us as we experience this course of the anthroposophical higher education system. We hope that many new seeds will arise from everything that is done, spoken and shown here.

[The following remarks are not directly related to the history of the society from 1902 to 1913:]

"According to the program, we will begin tomorrow with this anthroposophical college course. The first event tomorrow will be what is intended to be the starting point, so to speak. We will begin tomorrow at five o'clock with a musical prelude by our friend Stuten. Then there will be a series of addresses, which I am supposed to open with one about science, art and religion, but which will hopefully lead to a whole series of addresses that briefly point out the significance of the moment, which is so embedded in the present that from here, from this Goetheanum, we are really trying to lead that impulse into the world, which, above all, aims at a renewal of scientific life.

Then there will be a rehearsal of the musical settings of our friend Schuurman, namely his setting of a poetic insertion in the “Chymischen Hochzeit des Christian Rosenkreutz”. Then there will be a break. After a break, declamations and other musical performances will follow. Then this morning celebration will close with a eurythmic performance. So we will first point out the different lines of activity that are to be cultivated here at this Goetheanum.

Today, my dear friends, it would probably be our task first of all to think about how to accomplish the work that falls to us, since we have to ensure that the entire three-week event runs in a dignified but also practical manner. To do this, the gentlemen from our Swiss threefold social order, the gentlemen from the Goetheanum, from the Association of Goetheanism and so on, the ladies and gentlemen, need to be supported by a number of other personalities who - please don't be offended by me, I don't always mean it to sound so bad - order, right, because if they have already been standing outside the entrance before, it is really not necessary to spend another hour until everyone is sitting in their seats, but to make sure that everyone finds their seat as quickly as possible, that what is done is that which leads to sitting still and listening as soon as possible. I have to say that I am actually sorry that I have to speak tomorrow: I would much rather be a steward, because you can develop such wonderful talents when you are a steward. Firstly, a steward, if he is really agile, if he is not clumsy, when he gets a ticket in his hand – excuse me, I don't mean any harm – first looks at it from all sides, just like a clumsy clumsy postal clerk at the counter with the letter, so that you get desperate until you get your ticket for a registered letter, but with a quick movement you immediately know: there is the place - so that the person in question can walk and immediately get to his seat. So direct them quickly, but calmly, and be charming at the same time, not rough, so that the person who is directed to the seat is very happy; so that no one can think: You're being snarled at. So I think this is a good opportunity to develop your best talents; it's actually extremely desirable. And so I ask the gentlemen in particular to be charming. I think it will be especially nice in this case if the gentlemen are officially charming, so to speak; the ladies without office are charming in between. I ask the gentlemen to strive for two things: to get the blue ribbon here, which is to distinguish the folder, into the buttonhole. I think that it will really be a worthwhile goal, especially for those who come from monarchical states, where nothing else is available now in the buttonhole, will be a contemporary ideal. So we will adorn all those who endeavor to view the tickets so quickly, to show them to their seats and to be charming, with a blue ribbon - not a red one, for example, so that the Swiss don't think we're socialists or something like that; right, you can get into all sorts of trouble with the minister Kully if you give people red ribbons; so you will get blue ribbons and all of you will be charming and nimble ushers. I ask you to consider this from these two points of view. The one point of view is that if you know you are one of those who can be nimble and charming, then don't refrain from helping to maintain order. And if you should know that you may have absorbed too much militarism in the course of the last few years, so that you cannot develop such qualities - but this is only said in parenthesis and really not meant badly - so if someone in the course of the last few years has absorbed too strong military tendencies , which are then not suitable for being charming and the like, so if you have got into the habit of commanding too much, then you may practice anthroposophical self-restraint and refrain from participating in the ordering. But as I said, I am only saying this as one would say in the old science: “for the sake of wilderness.” I will present alternatives in a moment. One must be complete in science. We have a scientific course now. Right? There's no need to be as radical as the one person from the neighborhood who, when she came up here for the first time, didn't want to miss the opportunity to reprimand us right away because we — who wanted to be an “innovator” wanted to be – now, wherever you look, we have “old hat, as the Berliners say, about doctor titles and so on; if you are going to start renewing, the personality said, then you should leave out such titles.

Well, that's not true, you can have different opinions about whether you want to do this or that, whether you should dress in a new style; but we don't want to see our ideals in outward appearances, and that's why I mentioned the second point for the sake of completeness, and I sincerely hope that it was not necessary for me to mention it.

Now, that would be part of what we have to complete today, if the personalities concerned, who, as stewards, now feel particularly called upon to do so after what has been said, let us know that they want to get this blue ribbon in their buttonhole for the next few days, and especially for tomorrow. Perhaps it could be the case that Dr. Boos himself or someone he appoints will take the names of those who feel called to such a high office at the end, after all the others have been addressed. That will be one thing.

The other thing would be for me to ask those of the honored gentlemen who are presenting and are already here today to perhaps contact me at the end of this evening, because there is still a lot to be discussed.

That is what I have to say for the time being. And now, since I have only been here since today and have not been able to participate in the rather extensive preparations that were necessary to launch this course, I will ask Dr. Boos to take over the management of this evening and to suggest to us what else needs to be done in this direction.

But then, when we have completed the things to be discussed for tomorrow and the following “days”, we will have to discuss some other things for this evening that relate to some other events. But first we want to discuss the agenda for the course.

Dr. Boos introduces the necessary measures and arrangements for discussion.

At the end, Dr. Steiner takes the floor again:

"I would just like to mention for those friends from out of town who have come as members of the Anthroposophical Society that, as before, anthroposophical lectures will take place on Saturday and Sunday when I am present in Dornach, and I also believe there will be eurythmy performances on Saturday and Sunday. The lectures will take place after the eurythmy at eight o'clock or, if there are no performances on Saturday and Sunday, at half past seven, and if we can accommodate everyone, here in the carpentry workshop, otherwise over in the building. The eurythmy performances will also be here in the carpentry workshop.” Dr. Boos reports on various activities that are intended to incite and slander, and calls for a statement to be made regarding a proposal that has been made to him to send something to the press from the meeting, which is now already in session.

Dr. Schmiedel says that the number of guests should be indicated.

Dr. Boos says that he had also considered drafting a resolution through a mass meeting here, in which those not yet present here could also be included according to the mood; one does not need to come up with numbers; a resolution would be extremely effective in a concise, short form. Adoption of the resolution is proposed. Since no amendments have been proposed, he will ask again. There is unanimity. This matter is thus also brought to a conclusion with regard to this resolution.

Rudolf Steiner: “I do not think it is necessary to say much about the meeting that apparently took place here in Dornach and was evidently convened by the machinations of Pastor Kully and Pastor Arnet, I think it is not necessary to say much about this meeting after the press report.

Certain things have been reported that might perhaps lead one to notice this or that. For example, it is a remarkable fact that these gentlemen, who now, out of absolute untruthfulness and dishonesty, collect all kinds of things that are not true, that these gentlemen are, or at least are supposed to be, able to have accurate reports, for example, of the celebration of our laying of the foundation stone and the like. All the signs are that our people, our members, are basically willing to give the two gentlemen, who are the soul of the counter-action and the emerging movement, just about anything the gentlemen want.

My dear friends, it will soon be nonsense to hold closed meetings when everything from our circle is carried to Father Kully and similar people. It has to be said, because things express themselves. The assembly itself is no concern of ours; what people want to decide among themselves, they may decide among themselves, they may be as indecent as they like; they were indecent enough, as we already know. The thing that the resolution we have just been proposed by Dr. Boos is directed against is precisely what they have excreted as garbage, and what has even been spread by a Swiss newspaper. Of course we have to take a stand against that. Let them decide among themselves what they decide among themselves. Unless we hear that it is happening through spiritual-scientific communications from our members, about things that should be kept within our circles. It is said, for example, that the gentleman who is reported to have spoken in original Swiss German, that he is said to have spoken such filth that people are now said to have felt compelled to simply leave out the dirty bits. But as I said, people can discuss whatever they like among themselves, that's none of our business for the time being. I notice that they should really settle it among themselves. Because those who did not belong and are said to have gone to that meeting were shown in a very indecent manner that they had no business talking, and they were thrown out in an indecent manner. So that in the end, or at least during part of the meeting, some people who did not belong to the group do not appear to have been present at all. There may have been only a few there.

On the other hand, I would like to warn against being too lulled and again giving in to the sleep that has often been characterized here. This sleep in the face of the dangers that come to us from that side is the very worst thing that could actually happen in our ranks. And there is a lot of sleep in this direction.

Today, too, after I barely returned, I heard again that news is spreading in a certain comfort that the Catholics' behavior in such a disgraceful way, as it has happened, has brought us good friends everywhere among the non-Catholics. So for a large number of our members it is not a matter of facing the facts, but of finding another excuse for themselves to lie comfortably on their backs, on the other side, when one ear what is negotiated in the Dornacher “Ochsen” - in that meeting, of which it is said - I don't know if it is true, I emphasize this expressly - of which it is said: Such a great “Ochsen” event has never taken place in Dornach before. - But that was only because the meeting was in the “Ochsen”.

But to those who would like to go back to their cozy comfort zone, I would like to recommend paying attention to a certain statement in the report that has been written about this meeting, a statement that is already intended to be understood and that could show how significant the attacks actually are. It is said there – I don't have it verbatim right now, but it is in one of the reports – that the way Pastor Kully spoke at that Catholic gathering was quite remarkable. The person reporting this was apparently strangely touched, struck by Pastor Kully's particular turn of phrase. He says: “A unified thought did not go further through the speech; the speech did not make much sense either; but it was made up of nothing but individual images, which were presented to the people in a certain way, and which were only summarized by everything that hatred could do to present these images and these imaginations to the people, held together by the element of hatred. Anyone who is aware of the nature of the methods and polemics on certain sides also knows that such a message means an extraordinary amount, and that these things are effective.

It is necessary, or at least would be necessary, that finally, after decades of practicing anthroposophy, it could be known on our side that such things cannot be ignored, and that one cannot calm oneself by saying: Now they are being stirred up on that side, and stirred up in a very shameless way... This only wins us special friends on the other side. The point is to try to look things squarely in the eye; because the people - I have said this before - the people who are fighting on that side, they know very well what they want, they know very well how they should work, and how they should escalate things, and how they should then finally reach their goal through this clever escalation and sentiment.

So it would be better to try to face the matter squarely and realize that the situation is indeed a very dire one for us, here where we have just put what should be most sacred to us. And it would be necessary to consider that we should wake up, and to consider that it is always possible that things that should remain among us are immediately also carried to Father Arnet. Or is it not very strange, for example, when there is a message here: Pastor Arnet has spoken of how many people have been seriously affected in their health by the effects of my exercises; if he wanted to talk further about what is being reported to him, he would have to violate the seal of confession.

So, it would be a good idea to keep an eye on what is coming to the surface again and again as a result of such things, even within our ranks.

Furthermore, I consider it unworthy of us to concern ourselves with the assembly; because, right, certain things simply cannot be negotiated about anymore. When they begin to consider a certain level below decency as their own, you can no longer negotiate, you can no longer talk about the matter seriously at all. But that should not encourage anyone not to be vigilant about what comes from there.

I don't think we have anything else to discuss today. I would therefore ask those honored friends who wish to acquire the blue ribbon in their buttonhole to report to Dr. Boos.

And in a few minutes I will be back here and ask those friends who will be speaking in the next few days and are here today to come together for a very short meeting to discuss a few points on which we need to agree. So I will be back here in a few minutes.

If I were to follow my inclinations, I would no longer speak out in the matter of the exclusion of the German Section from the Theosophical Society. The work that I have attempted in the German Section, and in which broader circles of the Theosophical movement have also participated, has actually passed over into the Anthroposophical Society. In no objectively relevant direction has the slightest interruption occurred in this attempt at work, which for years has wanted to take on such a character that it should express what the theosophical movement can be under the conditions of the present. From all that I have presented so far in this matter, I believe I have shown for anyone who wants to examine the facts impartially that the true reason for the exclusion of the German Section was the intolerance of the system currently prevailing in Adyar towards independent life within this Section. The means used to bring about this exclusion can be recognized in their true character from my previous statements. They went to excess in their unlawfulness when the President, on the occasion of the last General Assembly of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, dared to make the absolutely objective truth directly contradictory, even absurd, assertion that I had been educated by the Jesuits and had not been able to shake off this fatal influence and so had not been able to allow freedom of expression in the Section. Since this claim is absolutely untrue, indeed the opposite of the truth, it is clear that the current president of the Theosophical Society is saying things in the most improper way, without even the slightest sense of obligation to take any care about the truth of what she says. It seems to me that one could have had enough with this one fact alone. For my person has nothing whatever to do with it as such. Whatever differences of opinion there may have been between the president and me is no longer in question when faced with the outrageousness of the fact that the person at the head of the society makes such a serious claim at the society's general assembly, a claim that is the objective opposite of the truth. But this act of the president's was only the crowning of a corresponding edifice. For me personally, this claim had a very special connotation. On the occasion of the Budapest Congress of European Sections in 1909, Mrs. Besant and I had a conversation in which the following was touched upon. Mrs. Besant spoke to me of a personality who had various objections to me. When I asked her why this person had something against me, she said that this person thought I was a Jesuit, and to emphasize how much she, Mrs. Besant, was amused by such an assertion, she added that this same person had already thought she, Mrs. Besant, was a Jesuit. So in 1909 Mrs. Besant knew that the accusation of being a Jesuit was a ridiculous one and considered it to be foolishness; in 1912, before the General Assembly of the Theosophical Society, the same Mrs. Besant makes the same accusation in order to prove that I am incapable of respecting free speech within the German section! Perhaps this little story can also help to show how well-founded the allegations of the President of the Theosophical Society sometimes are, of which President Mr. Leadbeater said he had stood before the director of Globus. Perhaps it is still allowed – even if only in a very modest way – to express the opinion that one could learn a different way of handling the truth from the director of Globus.

It may seem understandable that further illumination of a matter in which one has already experienced such things is not something one would seek out. After all, it would seem that the matter is truly settled simply by the presentation of this one fact.

However, there are a number of things that make it necessary to say a few more things. Among other things I could mention, the following is important. I have assumed that once the exclusion of the German Section and its background had become known, the feeling must arise quite naturally in everyone who had gained understanding for the way I tried to work that I should not be allowed in future to give internal lectures for the Anthroposophical Society to personalities who still regard themselves as members of the Theosophical Society led by Adyar. Nevertheless, concerns arose here and there that all members of the Theosophical Society under Mrs. Besant's leadership should initially be excluded from all internal events of the Anthroposophical Society.

Since such a judgment could be formed, and since it is still considered possible by some individuals that I would give internal lectures to members of the Theosophical Society, and since there are many other reasons, I must once again select a few facts from the abundance of evidence in order to perhaps counter some of these misunderstandings.

It should be started with a circular, which Mrs. Besant sent in response to my presentation of the facts and also had printed in “Theosophist”.

I emphasized in my account that Mrs. Besant wrote to me in 1909 regarding the Dr. Vollrath affair: “Since an appeal has been made to me, I, as President, approve the action of the German Section...” and that, on the other hand, Mrs. Besant wrote in 1912: “Dr. Vollrath made no appeal to me; therefore I had no duty to pay attention to right or wrong in this matter, and to this day I do not know it.” In order to “shed light” on these two directly contradictory assertions, Mrs. Besant now does the following in the aforementioned circular (dated January 12, 1913). First, she introduces the little word “it” into the fray. She fights with this “it” in relation to her words of May 8, 1912, which read: “A few years ago, the German Section expelled Dr. Vollrath, and the General Secretary informed me of the matter. Expulsion from a section does not mean expulsion from the Theosophical Society. I was not asked to ratify this (it) and thus make it – here the battle word “it” appears again – an exclusion from the Society. Dr. Vollrath did not appeal to me. ...” In her latest circular she now says about this: ‘It is quite obvious that the ad, which ’ch was not asked to confirm, was the ”exclusion from the TS. Dr. Vollrath had appealed to me merely against his expulsion from the German Section, and his letters dealt with that only. («It is fairly obvious that the it which «I was not asked to ratify» was expulsion from the TS. Dr. Vollrath had appealed to me merely against his expulsion from the German Section, and his letters dealt with that only.»)

Let us first limit ourselves to simply reading the two sentences one after the other, the one that Mrs. Besant wrote in May 1912 and the one she writes in January 1913, not only that, but the one she writes on the same page (repeating the first one) one after the other:

May 1912: “Exclusion from a Section does not mean exclusion from the Theosophical Society. I was not asked to confirm this, and thus make it an exclusion from the Society.

January 1913: “It is quite evident that the ‘iv, which ’I was not asked to certify‘ was the ’exclusion from the TS.

So Mrs. Besant claims that she was not asked to confirm the “exclusion from the Theosophical Society”; insert this explanation into her sentence from May 1912, and it reads: “I was not asked to make this - that is, the exclusion from the Theosophical Society - an exclusion from the Theosophical Society.” Anyone who accepts such a justification truly deserves to remain a follower of the one who justifies himself in this way. It is clear to anyone but the most obtuse that only someone who wants to save himself from having to defend objectively untrue assertions that he has made would resort to such a blatant sophistry. But that could still be dismissed as a formal matter. But now the actual facts. Who asked Mrs. Besant to turn the expulsion from the German section into an expulsion from the Theosophical Society? I did not ask her for anything. In 1908, I simply reported the expulsion to her. This mere report contained nothing, not even the slightest suggestion that she should also expel Dr. Vollrath from the Theosophical Society. And when she then sent me Dr. Vollrath's appeal in a letter in which she touched on this exclusion from the Society in general, I wrote to her, “As far as Dr. Vollrath is concerned, I am far from wanting to have any influence on what you, as president, consider to be right to do in this case. I only said further that in the event that she, as president, now accepted Dr. Vollrath as a member of the Theosophical Society, it could easily be said that the president was disavowing the German Section. I expressly added that I was not worried about what Dr. Vollrath might say about me in the future, but that it was important to avoid the interpretation that the German Section had been disavowed by the President of the Society. After all, this interpretation would still be possible on the opposing side.

In view of these facts, Mrs. Besant now writes on January 12, 1913: “Dr. Steiner replied objecting to Dr. Vollrath being a member of the Theosophical Society at all, and saying that it would be very awkward for him if I allowed Dr. remain in the Theosophical Society since he had been expelled from the Section.“ (”Dr. Steiner replied objecting to Dr. Vollrath being a member of the TS at all, and saying that it would be very awkward for him, if I allowed Dr. Vollrath to remain in the TS when expelled from the Section.") Compare this sentence with what I have quoted above, and you will see that it contains a complete objective untruth. I have explicitly emphasized that I personally do not care about any attacks; Mrs. Besant writes that I said it would be very awkward for me if she allowed Dr. Vollrath to remain a member of the Society. So let the facts be what they may, Mrs. Besant does not trouble about facts; she announces to the world what she wants, without any regard for the facts.

And now for the appeal. The appeal that Dr. Vollrath addressed to Mrs. Besant is five pages long. It is so composed that it does not clearly show how Dr. Vollrath wants his affiliation to the Theosophical Society to be handled in general; but at the end it contains the words: “If you, dear Madam President, consider it necessary to submit this case to the General Council, then I request that you do so.” In her letter of 1909, Mrs. Besant says: “Having been appealed to by Dr. Vollrath, of Leipzig, against his expulsion by the German TS.”

Nowhere in the correspondence of 1909 was there any mention of an expulsion from the Society, and to claim in January 1913 that the appeal could only mean an expulsion from the Society in general is as absurd as can be. Dr. Vollrath's appeal was in protest against his expulsion from the German Section, and it was full of accusations against me, which will be touched upon later, and it certainly could not have been otherwise if Dr. Vollrath had sought membership in the Theosophical Society. Yet in 1912 Mrs. Besant says, “Dr. Vollrath did not appeal to me.” In order to prove that she was allowed to write this after all, she does the following in her circular of January 1913. She presents the matter as if Dr. Vollrath had not made an appeal to her because his appeal was not one for his admission to the society in general. But there was never any question of such an appeal. But since Mrs. Besant did write to me in 1909: “As an appeal to me has been made,” she now presents the matter in the following words: “The appeal was from Dr. Steiner to confirm the local action of the Section and from Dr. Vollrath against that confirmation.” This sentence is, again, as far as I am concerned, an objective untruth. I never made an appeal to Mrs. Besant for the confirmation. Such an appeal would not have made the slightest sense. The German Section considered itself fully entitled to expel Dr. Vollrath. She did not for a moment assume that this action required the president's confirmation. Rather, Mrs. Besant wrote two unsolicited documents – in response to my notification of the expulsion, not to an appeal – which are included in the preceding notifications – in which she confirmed the expulsion from the German section. At the time, I considered these documents to be so inconsequential that I did not include them in our reports. Why print on paper documents that were completely unfounded.

So in January 1913, Mrs. Besant does nothing less than turn Dr. Vollrath's 1908 appeal to her into an appeal that I am supposed to have made, but which I never made.

The highlight of this January 1913 circular, however, is the sentence that Mrs. Besant dares to write: “As to the pamphlet – meaning Dr. Vollrath's pamphlet, which was printed in the January 1913 issue of the Mitteilungen – I had assumed that it contained something important, since Dr. Steiner was obviously very annoyed by it, saying that if its assertions were true, “not a dog would take another piece of bread from us. If, as Dr. Steiner now says, it was merely a reheating of the original points at issue, which were stated in his letter to me, then the expression seems a little strong.“ (”As to the pamphlet, I had supposed that it contained something important, as Dr. Steiner was evidently very angry about it, saying that if its statements were true “a dog would not take food from us”. If, as Dr. Steiner now says, it was merely a rehash of the original quarrels, stated in his letter to me, the language seems a little strong."

Mrs. Besant takes the liberty of writing down this sentence in view of the following fact. Dr. Vollrath claimed in his letter to her in 1908: 1. That I feared his (Dr. Vollrath's) opposition, for example, in that I had pushed through receiving a fixed salary of 2000 Marks from the section treasury. (I was always opposed to my being paid out of the Section funds.) 2. That I did not want him in the Section because he could not share Mrs. Wolfram's views, which are: Dr. Steiner is a high initiate and the only initiator for Europe and must therefore be elected at the next presidential election. (Mrs. Besant finds the expression I used, a “little strong”. I would like to know whether I would really be worthy of “a dog taking a bite of bread from me” if I had ever wanted to have a personality in the section not approved of the above crazy demands that I should make. Of course, Ms. Wolfram could not have made such absurd claims. 3. That I did not want him in the section because he had privately expressed the opinion that the hysteria of some Leipzig students of Dr. Steiner was probably due to the occult exercises that lead to a loosening of the etheric body. And Dr. Vollrath adds that he himself knows of some exercises that I give, but that they serve more to develop strength and neglect the development of virtue. (Had I heard such a “private” remark by Dr. Vollrath, which I did not even hear, it would have seemed to me to be truly irrelevant, since it would be just as foolish as if someone said that I had stolen silver spoons. Mrs. Besant does not find it “of some importance” that Dr. Vollrath writes such things.) These and other similar assertions were contained in the “appeal” that Dr. Vollrath addressed to Mrs. Besant in 1908. This will suffice to prove that I was absolutely right in what I said, and what Mrs. Besant's circular refers to, namely that Dr. Vollrath, as early as 1908, made similar allegations against me in a letter to Mrs. Besant herself, as can be found in his later pamphlet. Therefore, I stated that Mrs. Besant's claim that she was unaware of this pamphlet was irrelevant, because she was aware of the way in which Dr. Vollrath was acting against me and yet she made him an official in a matter she represented in Germany. It is now characteristic of the way Mrs. Besant assessed me that she later even emphasized that she had again worked for the dismissal of Dr. Vollrath as secretary of the Star in the East when she realized that his election was “seen as antagonistic to the general secretary.” So I am surprised that I could ever feel offended when she made an opponent of mine her official. That was never the point, but merely that the German section — not I — perceived Dr. Vollrath's appointment as a vote of no confidence against me by Mrs. Besant, and that I was deprived of the opportunity to defend myself if she did so. Apart from the fact that such an imposition made it clear how little Mrs. Besant is able to pay attention to the finer things of the heart, I must confess that I myself regarded the appointment of Dr. Vollrath as a matter of complete indifference to me, and that I only felt truly offended when Dr. Vollrath was dismissed on the assumption that I approved of or even desired this dismissal. On the contrary, I felt it was wrong to dismiss Dr. Vollrath because it was thought that I did not approve of him. For me, the fact that Mrs. Besant behaved in the way she did was proof that my words are air to her. And I could not change this judgment by subsequently doing Dr. Vollrath an injustice by deposing him, because it was believed that this would be a service to me. Because – according to my feelings – it is wrong to first appoint someone and then dismiss them because they are unpleasant to someone else.

I think I am now in a position to summarize how I feel about the whole matter of the exclusion of our section, and the preceding remarks and those already contained in the “Mitteilungen” serve as proof. I would have to write a detailed paper if I wanted to add to this evidence everything that has been in preparation and taking place for years.

When I was elected General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society years ago, I saw myself working within the framework of this society for the dissemination of the results of spiritual scientific research, and in connection with this, leading the office of General Secretary in a way that arises from the consequences of this research. I knew that I was in full agreement with the principles of the Theosophical Society. I tried to work in a way that was natural in this field: I expressed what I thought the results of my research were, and I waited quietly to see what this or that person would say about it. I organized my work so that no one could take pleasure in what I advocated who did not see what I said as correct on the basis of his or her own judgment. I did not put forward anything other than what I had to acknowledge as true on the basis of my own research, or what was accessible to me through spiritual sources. It came about that within the German Section, and then also in other circles of the Society, there were personalities who, on the basis of their own convictions, were interested in my research results, a current within the Theosophical Society that felt independent of other currents in that Society. This group did not demand anything except to be able to develop and operate freely within the Society in accordance with its statutes. Within the German Section, there were circles that wanted nothing to do with us. They held different views. We let them be. They could work in their way, just as we wanted to work in ours. No attempt was made to interfere with their work through my will.

From the time when Mrs. Besant showed more and more that she had no understanding for what we wanted, it became more and more necessary for me not to count on our being supported by the central leadership of the Theosophical Society. We had to get used to counting only on our own resources. This led to the fact that in free agreement with Mrs. Besant on the occasion of the Munich Congress in 1907, it was determined that the current within the Society that was interested in my research results should develop as an independent and self-contained circle. Such independence could exist regardless of the fact that within the German Section, branches with a different type of work developed freely and also created new structures. Anyone who knows my way of representing spiritual science will find the claim completely absurd that anyone could have been disturbed in the representation of a different opinion by this representation.

Some time after the Munich Congress, the claim of the “coming Christ” as represented by Mrs. Besant emerged in the Theosophical Society in a form that I initially had to consider amateurish based on my research results. I presented my results and did not care about the effect of Mrs. Besant's claims. Then came the time when Mrs. Besant “paraded” with Krishnamurti, to use Dr. Huebbe-Schleidens expression. Everything connected with this, I had to, according to what I had come to know, no longer consider merely amateurish, but reprehensible. It became my duty, when asked, to express my thoughts on the matter seriously. And it also became my duty to adhere to what I had recognized. As late as the summer of 1912, I was still expected to do the following by Mrs. Besant's followers: I could say: I do not agree with Mrs. Besant's opinions, but I should still recommend her books by saying that they represent different views from mine. I had to reply that I would be acting against my convictions if I were to do so in relation to Mrs. Besant's more recent writings. For I do not consider them merely to be works that represent “different” opinions, but I consider them to be bad and full of easily verifiable errors, which I could not say are merely a different opinion. I could not be dissuaded from this appropriate behavior by Mrs. Besant's occasional emphasis that she was in favor of the free development of my opinion and her encouragement to read my writings. From what I could verify myself of what Mrs. Besant said about my “opinions,” it was clear to me that she did not understand them. It would have seemed to me to be a lie to admit that I did not want to have anything in common with Mrs. Besant's doctrines. In a spiritual movement, truthfulness must prevail. And it would have seemed true to me if Mrs. Besant had not praised me, but had sharply criticized me from her point of view. There would have been no need to prevent my research results from establishing their validity through their inherent value.

For example, a follower of Mrs. Besant wrote to me that Krishnamurti would now first complete his studies and then perhaps also be sent to my school, with the strange addition: “After all, Jesus could have learned something from the Essenes,” I mention this only in passing.

The “Star in the East” movement came. I would have had to deny everything I believe to be right and healthy if I had wanted to have anything to do with this movement. I had to ignore it. It was transplanted to Germany. Its representatives behaved in such a way that their actions consisted of outright attacks against the German Section. It was spread that the German Section was intolerant of any opinion that differed from mine. These attacks originated with individuals who had always been treated within the German Section in the same way as all those who were now presented as blind followers of my opinion. I was written that those who presented from our circle only repeated word for word what I said. Similar things were printed. Things happened that, if one assumes full awareness on the part of the people involved, would have to lead to a rather dire characterization. My writings were incorrectly reproduced and then polemicized against the caricature of my statements, which they themselves had first made, in an outrageous manner. Nothing was clearer than that only a strict separation and the strictest possible ignoring of the “Star in the East” movement was necessary for us.

Now it became apparent that Mrs. Besant always speaks of tolerance and free speech, but that her whole being wants to exclude from society any opinion that differs from her own. She then made a series of objectively untrue allegations about the German section and about me, some of which have already been discussed. Her followers blindly repeated these allegations. It became necessary to write a lengthy defense, which I sent to the general secretaries of the various sections and to the General Council. Of all the General Secretaries, only the Scandinavian one responded to my defense. What the others said amounted to a complete disregard for what I presented, not in terms of views, but of objective facts. I had spoken completely into the air.

The behavior of the Star in the East movement forced the German Section to declare that it could not regard the personalities belonging to this movement as members of the German Section; not because of their opinions or their program, but because of their behavior, which violated the highest principles of the Theosophical Society. This measure, which was initially imposed on the German section as a kind of self-defence, was then taken by the General Council – ignoring all the facts that had been presented against Mrs. Besant's ability to preside – as an opportunity to make a decision that amounted to the exclusion of the German section from the Theosophical Society. This exclusion was then carried out by letter of Mrs. Besant (which will be communicated below).

All these things, when viewed impartially, cast a thick veil over the true facts of the matter. These are that the current leadership of the Theosophical Society only wants Mrs. Besant's views and cannot tolerate any other way of thinking or working. My research results were perceived as heretical and could not be tolerated within the Society. The fact that they did not want our way of working was twisted into the claim that we did not tolerate any other opinion. And so the almost unbelievable fact took place that the Theosophical Society expelled a working group from itself under the pretext that this working group was intolerant. As if this were not even a contradiction in terms. Any other way of working could have developed alongside us according to its strength.

Now, anyone who can be unbiased wonders whether I may continue to give internal lectures in front of personalities who want to continue to belong to a society that excludes me as a heretic. The Theosophical Society has spoken, and anyone who continues to belong to it speaks in the same way: We don't want you in our ranks. Anyone who demands of me that I should give internal lectures before the members of the Theosophical Society should realize that his demand would be the same as saying: We expel you from our house; but we demand of you that you continue to behave towards us as before.

Furthermore, it has always been a strict duty in all occultism not to impose teachings on anyone who does not want them. The Theosophical Society has said that it does not want what I have to say; I would be violating my duty if I did not say at this moment: So I am not allowed to give lectures for members of the Theosophical Society for which I have been expelled from it.

It must seem incomprehensible how anyone can think that it would only be possible for me to give internal lectures to members of the Theosophical Society. It is completely impossible to speak of intolerance on the part of the Anthroposophical Society, since anyone who does not dispute its origin can join it. But anyone who, by belonging to the Theosophical Society, declares their agreement with Adyar's ban on heresy disputes its origin.

Rudolf Steiner.

by Marie Steiner

The content of the lectures which are published here can be taken as complementing the material which Rudolf Steiner included in his autobiography The Course of my Life. They were delivered in a lively, informal and conversational tone, and as such were not conceived of in book form. But because of their exceedingly important content and historical context, their significance should not be underestimated. This is true not only insofar as it applies to anthroposophists, who will find illuminated the background of the movement to which they belong and who will thus acquire a firm standpoint through their insight into the necessity of events which need no justification. It also applies to those who have only come across superficial descriptions by others, or in dictionaries. They might well be thankful for the opportunity to gain real insight into the facts. After all, there will be increasing numbers of souls who will want to grasp the opportunities which allow them to see that there are answers to the questions which they inwardly perceive as riddles, and that they can be shown the ways to find these answers ... This book will provide the relevant information to those who are interested in the historical development of the movement; it also provides the necessary and simple explanation for a situation which arose as a natural consequence of the given circumstances: namely, the original co-operation with the Theosophical Society, which was looking for an initiated teacher.

If a person is summoned, and the conditions he lays down are accepted, why should he not respond and help? A request went to Rudolf Steiner and at no time did he hesitate to point out what the consequences of his work with the Theosophical Society would be: the re-learning process, the need to awaken to the requirements of the time, the sensitivity to progressing events and to the tasks of the West. In such a situation why should he, who was certain of his path, not seek to help those who were searching without a guide and show them how to find their divine helper and their individual freedom? ...

Although Rudolf Steiner says in the present lectures that the legacy of the Theosophical Society had been overcome by the end of the second phase of the anthroposophical movement, it is nevertheless true that certain less happy symptoms keep reappearing in our Society because of the influx of new generations and many theosophical members; symptoms which it was his great concern that they should not be allowed to fester.... It is our duty to reflect on what we are doing. Let us not make ourselves out to be better than we are. We do not need to be coy about our mistakes, but we must allow the light of self-reflection to arise powerfully out of their darkness. Communal awareness is difficult. We can only develop a strong communal I to the extent that we can rouse ourselves, are willing to work for knowledge, and have the courage to face the truth. That cannot be won in secrecy; it has to be fought for communally. Honest struggle will do us no harm and will earn us the respect of everyone with good will. Those who are ill-disposed towards us should think back to what the Church has suffered as a community despite the strong outer discipline which it imposes, the extent to which its ideals had to suffer from flaws and contradictions. They will then see that the leader who gives a movement its impulse cannot be held responsible for the mistakes of those who follow his teachings, but that it is human beings as a species who cannot avoid the many detours, the climbing and back-sliding, the renewed scrambling upwards before they reach their goal.

Anthroposophy is a path of schooling. The Anthroposophical Society is certainly no paragon of how to live anthroposophical ideals. It might even be true to say that in certain respects it is an infirmary which is not surprising in a time of human sickness. All those in need of help, all those who have been crushed by the need of our time flock towards it. But why should there only be infirmaries for the physically ill? Is there not a duty to have places where people can recover their spiritual equilibrium? That is what has happened here in the widest sense. There have been a great many letters and words of gratitude in which people testified that it was only anthroposophy and its teacher who made life worth living for them once again. But in order for them to find anthroposophy there had to be a society in which such work was done.

Thus the Anthroposophical Society was a workshop in which an immense amount of work took place. Anthroposophy had a fertilizing influence in all areas of life, in the arts, the sciences, and also in practical endeavours. At the time of severe economic crisis, anthroposophists were frequently unable to realize the ideals which stood before them, but they were struggling against twice the odds. The people, however, who flocked to the Society and began to represent it to the outside when it was already established in the world in a representative way, were people moulded by our time rather than by corresponding to any ideal of anthroposophy, and thus many of them fell prey to the temptations and habits of the age. The young people, who were disappointed by what they experienced and failed to find in the organized youth movements, here discovered the answers to the questions which were puzzling them, and sought to realize their endeavours in the new community of Anthroposophia; but they also brought their habits into the Society, including some things which should have been overcome by them if they wanted to make a new start in anthroposophy. Thus the Anthroposophical Society cannot yet be a model institution; it remains a place of education. Do we not, however, need such places of schooling, in the wider context of mankind also, if we are to make progress towards a better future?

Whichever way we look at it, the Society is a necessity. It has to school itself and it has to provide the opportunity to be a place of education for mankind. The vital forces with which it has been imbued can achieve that if strong, capable and devoted people gather together within it who know that it is necessary to join together in order communally to serve mankind in the wider sense; that one must not isolate oneself for the sake of self-indulgence; who know that it would be ingratitude simply to accept passively the lifeline which has been thrown; who know that with it comes the obligation to pass it on to those others whose ship of life is in danger.

Address by Rudolf Steiner before and after the cycle “What significance does the occult development of the human being have for his sheaths and his self?” (GA 145)

My dear Theosophical friends!

We are gathered here for the first time for a cycle after those of our friends who were able to recognize the current state of our Theosophical endeavors joined with the members of the former German Section of the Theosophical Society who – there is no other way to put it – were expelled from our Theosophical Society. It is necessary, my dear friends, at this moment, when I have the honor of welcoming you to this particularly solemn cycle, to add a few words to this warm, theosophically sincere greeting. This is necessary because our friends may often have the opportunity in the near future to speak a word here or there about the true facts of the events that have taken place recently among us and our friends.

We have been able to see from a variety of letters and statements that here and there it has not been felt as natural that we had to choose the mode for our events, for our internal events, not to admit members of the Theosophical Society, insofar as it is administered from Adyar, to these our internal events. It has been shown that this necessary measure has not been perceived as such everywhere, and that in some places it has been thought that we would have done better not to take this measure so strictly in order to maintain peace or the like. Nevertheless, my dear friends, when you really consider everything that has happened, you will be able to, and indeed must, defend to everyone that this measure had to be taken at the appropriate moment. You must only consider that the German Section did not, as one could formally interpret it, leave the Theosophical Society, but in reality was nevertheless expelled, expelled again for a reason that can be formally defined in the very special way that one could even dare to say that the German Section had violated some statutes of the Theosophical Society! For one will say: This German Section has expelled the members of the Star of the East, thus expellers of a particular opinion, from their body. It must be borne in mind that everything had previously been done from the other side, that the German Section could not help but no longer admit to the events of the German Section, not only the members of the Star of the East, but also the personalities who came into consideration within Germany as members of the Star of the East. For the moment the 'Star of the East' made its entry into Germany, it set itself with the declared intention of being hostile to the German Section; in particular, it endeavored to express the system which, among other things, was also expressed in such a - one might say - hidden, peculiar way in the last March 'Theosophist'. The personalities who had adopted the flag of the Star of the East tried to present our work to the world as if it had ever been our intention to exclude any spiritual opinion or point of view from our endeavors.

Thus, a full-scale attack, based solely on objective untruth, was launched against the German Section. And all the measures that were of a milder nature had remained ineffective against this subversive work, which repeatedly and increasingly came to the point of vilifying the entire character of our efforts before the whole world, so that we were forced, for the sake of the possibility of our work, to declare that we could not work with those personalities in Germany who had joined the “Star of the East”. Similar attacks were indeed made by personalities of the “Star of the East” from abroad. The measure that was then taken against the “Star of the East” was nothing more than a defensive measure, and anyone who presents it differently is not telling the truth about it. A necessary defensive measure, provoked by the fact that our work would not only have been disrupted but simply made impossible if we had not resorted to this measure. Our work can truly be characterized by pointing out that there were indeed lodges among us that worked quite differently than we did, but that not a hair on their heads was touched. We “chartered” all the lodges that took a completely different position from the one we ourselves held. But when, with the subversive activities of the Star of the East in mind, lodges were to be founded that were already attacking in their title, not only our work but also the truthfulness and honesty of our Theosophical beliefs, then the defensive measure was necessary for the reason that we would have become untrue people if we had somehow created such lodges.

Thus we were forced to either become untrue deep inside or take this defensive measure against the members of the Star of the East. The tactic can always be presented in a strange light if one first wants to force someone to act and then describes this action as unlawful. It may be said that it has actually happened in few measures in the world that one has behaved in such a way; but that was reserved for the present Theosophical Society to such a high degree.

If you also read the letter that Mrs. Besant wrote to the General Secretary of the Section at that time regarding the impending expulsion of the German Section, you will see this letter as nothing other than a real expulsion. You will have to say to yourself: If the German Section had not seen it that way, then it would have been on false ground.

But then you have to bear in mind that this was preceded by a circular letter from me to the General Secretaries, in which the actual state of affairs was explained in detail. This circular letter contained real documents for the assessment of the situation. It was a distressing experience that apart from the General Secretary of the Scandinavian Section, who has since resigned, there was not a single person in the body of General Secretaries and the General Council who was willing to respond to what I had put forward. Everything that came from the General Secretary was worded in such a way that it was assumed from the outset that all the representations from Adyar were the only authoritative ones that could serve as a basis for assessing the facts. It is a sad fact that resulted from my circular letter at the time. One could say that one might be overcome by a justified sense of pain at the fate of the Theosophical Society when one sees the general deafness of an entire body to the facts that have been openly stated.

And the crowning touch to the whole system was provided by a speech delivered by Mrs. Besant at the representative assembly at Adyar during this convention, in which she showed how completely she lacks any ability to gain a relationship with that necessary sense of duty that one must have to first examine the facts and then make an assertion. Mrs. Besant has, as is well known, made the assertion that my education was conducted by Jesuits. One cannot say anything that would more absurdly and foolishly belie the truth than this claim, which was hurled into the assembly by the leadership of the Theosophical Society at the same time when we had our lecture cycle in Cologne, in the presence of numerous friends, including some from this country, in which we were once again able to affirm how we were trying to stand firmly and truly on the good ground of the old Theosophical Society. My dear Theosophical friends, you should feel the full anomaly of such a fact. Not only that this had happened, but Mrs. Besant had the audacity, the unenviable audacity, to carp an answer to the facts I had presented in the booklet of “Mitteilungen,” where I was first forced to describe the facts, at the end of which she placed the words, these are her last words in this matter.

My dear Theosophical friends, based on our experiences so far, it is possible that there are still people in the Theosophical Society who could add something to this answer. In this answer, one could look for a word that would correspond to objective truth: one would find nothing, because in this answer, almost everything is turned upside down, and in such a way that with an enormous verbiage, this turning of things upside down has been carried out. It is truly wonderful that someone can be found who is capable of turning things upside down in such a way; each sentence includes something that is the opposite of what has taken place.

I did not refer to this document at all at the Berlin General Assembly or the meeting of the Anthroposophical Society, so as not to take up even more of the already heavily taken up time. And I do not want to go into this document today either, which everyone only needs to read to see the spirit in which it was written. I would like to go into just one point, because it cannot be immediately seen from the document itself. At the end there is a sentence that goes something like this: Dr. Steiner says that the pamphlet by Dr. Vollrath – he is referring to the printed pamphlet that was so unpleasantly discussed at the previous general assembly – contains nothing more than certain remarks that Mrs. Besant addressed to me regarding his expulsion. Anyone who can read can see. Here she says that this document from Dr. Vollrath's appeal... was present... indeed she says more, she says: “If that pamphlet contains nothing more than the document that Dr. Vollrath addressed to me, then it must be very harmless.” But the fact that she claims that the pamphlet must be harmless, that the repeated accusations contained in Dr. Vollrath's appeal to Mrs. Besant at the time, because she says that they were harmless. Well, these accusations included, for example, the point that Dr. Vollrath should have turned against me because I greedily enjoyed a large salary and because my exercises were so strongly black magic in nature that numerous people had become ill, some had even died... and that all those exercises were intended only to acquire magical powers and not knowledge and the like. Dr. Vollrath claims that he is willing to prove all these things if Mrs. Besant demands it. That was the document that Vollrath sent to Adyar. ... This letter

was produced by Mrs. Besant, and the above was an integral part of it. Mrs. Besant says about it: “If Dr. Steiner claims that this pamphlet contains only repetitions of that appeal of his, then this pamphlet must be very harmless.” So Mrs. Besant makes the world believe that the accusations that Dr. Steiner had wanted to enrich himself while refusing any salary, and that he had given exercises that were of a black magical nature, that made people ill and even killed them, these accusations, which were indeed made at the time, were called harmless by Mrs. Besant, in order to present the case to the world in her own way. Such are the things that Mrs. Besant has recently been dishing up to her followers in the February issue of “The Theosophist.”

I don't want to add anything else to these things for the moment; after all, the more you add, the less tolerable things become – I just want to ask whether our feelings in Berlin when our friends decided to work towards finally drawing a line under it were justified, whether we can assume, take for granted, that our friends would feel: It is impossible for me to speak to those who continue to call themselves confessors of Misses Besant. It would be a violation of all occult principles to speak to those people who have thrown one out – the expression may be used – who have presented one in such a way as Misses Besant has liked.

I am so reluctant to go into things like the March Theosophist that I don't want to do it. Because what is dipped in sugar-sweet sauce is the most hidden attack that can be imagined.

In principle – as you have seen from the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society – we take the view that anyone can join us. But those who are unable to see the truth of the matter we are dealing with declare in principle, even if [they want to join us], that they actually wanted to leave our organization. And the way the general secretaries have behaved proves that it would be untruthful of us to have taken other measures now than to have drawn a line between what we want and what is being done within this Theosophical Society, not according to the principles, but contrary to all the principles, of the old Theosophical Society.

But I may also say the other side of the matter, my dear Theosophical friends, to the whole affair. And actually it was only necessary so that our friends are not, so to speak, embarrassed when this or that is spoken in the future; it was only necessary to say the words that have just been spoken, as it were, as a background to what I have to say to you further as a kind of greeting. Actually, my dear Theosophical friends, I must admit that I myself, if I may speak to you for a moment – and the friendship you have shown me entitles me to do so to some extent – I myself feel that, in addition to everything that has been bitter and painful, I also feel it as a great liberation, as a liberation from a narrowness that has weighed heavily on me for years in the life of the Theosophical Society since that Congress of European Sections in Munich, where an attempt was made to bring a new note, then still timidly emerging, into the Theosophical Society, not on the basis of some national and one-sided opinion, but on a really broad basis of the present day. There one could hear the judgment: What you have done is not Theosophy, it is something quite different.

A society based on occultism, even if individuals may free themselves from its limits and boundaries to a certain extent, still has forces that work psychically or spiritually, and it was simply not possible within the framework of the Theosophical Society to bring to bear in all its breadth and adaptability for our present cycle of humanity that which is justifiably called occultism. And I hope that if we are granted the opportunity to continue the Anthroposophical Society, our friends will be convinced that our liberation from the Theosophical Society will not lead to a narrowing, but rather to an expansion of our occult endeavors. Much of what was impossible to achieve within the Theosophical Society because of its prejudices, because it was opposed to narrowly defined traditions, can be achieved in the Anthroposophical Society, and those who want to see will see that the breadth of perspective that we need in our present time is to be tried out now, so that what flows down from the spiritual worlds in our time, in the way of spiritual wisdom and spiritual will impulses, can benefit a part of humanity that has an understanding for it. That is why this first cycle, which is being held here before you, my dear Theosophical friends, and which is the first cycle of the established Anthroposophical Society, seems to me to be particularly worthy of celebration.

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).

This book is the first volume of a new edition of all Rudolf Steiner's written work—Classics in Anthroposophy. It can be called a classic for several reasons that I will describe, and it contains an important presentation of Rudolf Steiner's Christology (his research into the Christ impulse in earthly and cosmic evolution). It is one of the best accounts of this teaching with which to begin ones study, and one to which we can profitably return again and again.

Steiner had little time to revise his lectures—even during the early years of the century—due to the sheer amount of his lecturing activity, which increased each year; he sometimes gave two or more lectures in twenty-four hours. Today, about 6,000 of these lectures are in print. In addition to his lectures, Steiner's days were filled with administrative and other teaching duties, as well as meeting the needs of people who sought his advice for personal concerns. The lectures in this book and those now published as The Mission of the Folk-Souls are the only lectures he was able to revise in all his years as a spiritual teacher. Rudolf Steiner often emphasized the qualitative difference between his written works and his lectures, which are unrevised stenographic reports. Indeed, he did not write many books, and most of those that he did write underwent at least one revision during his lifetime, as he sought constantly for the clarity and precision which epitomize his approach to spiritual science.

Originally he had not wanted the lectures to be published at all, but his students began to pass around lecture notes to facilitate their study. One must imagine their excitement in those days, when each cycle of lectures seemed to present new revelations from Steiner's research. It was natural for those who could travel to the various cities and attend the lectures to want to convey these esoteric treasures to their friends. On the other hand, Steiner lectured to each specific audience according to what he thought they needed to hear out of their karmic backgrounds, and many of the lectures that are now available to the general public were originally given for members of the Theosophical Society and, later, the Anthroposophical Society. Many listeners had been personal students of Steiner for some years and had acquired a familiarity with the general outlines of his teachings. In 1923, after the founding of the Anthroposophical Society, he decided to make all his lectures available to the public. The public lectures contained a note that some familiarity with fundamental anthroposophy was necessary for an intelligent reading, and that criticism not based on such knowledge would have to be disregarded.

Yet, in the case of this book, he undertook to revise the lectures he had given June 5–8, 1911 in Copenhagen. He spent about two weeks on the revision, and the lectures were printed only two months later, on August 26, 1911. In his preface, Steiner says there were reasons he allowed these lectures to appear when they did. We may ask what those reasons were.

Rudolf Steiner sought for many years a place where he could speak openly out of his spiritual insights. Accordingly, he accepted an invitation in 1900 to lecture to the Berlin Lodge of the Theosophical Society. The enthusiastic reception of these and other lectures led to his assuming the position of General Secretary of the German section of the Theosophical Society in 1902. From the beginning, he asserted his intention to teach from the results of his own research in accordance with the needs of Western humanity, and this freedom was granted. Within the organizational framework of the Theosophical Society, Steiner worked to serve those souls who sought a spiritual impulse they could not find in either the sciences or in the established churches. For several years, Steiner's relationship with the Society was largely cordial and fruitful, and he lectured in many European cities to the lodges of the Theosophical Society.

The Theosophical Society took an increasingly Eastern direction, both spiritually and geographically, The headquarters was moved to Adyar, India. The leaders of the Theosophical Society, at first the remarkable Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and then Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, as well as many members had strong feelings against Western spirituality and the Christian churches. In 1911, in Mrs. Besant proclaimed Jiddhu Krishnamurti, then a young boy, the incarnation of the Christ, and she created the Order of the Star of the East to promote this idea. This, of course, directly contradicted Rudolf Steiner' s perception that the physical incarnation of Christ could occur once during the history of the earth, for reasons carefully delineated in this book.

In 1912, some of the German members, opposed to the Order of the Star of the East, decided to form a new organization; Steiner, when asked, offered the name “Anthroposophical Society.” Steiner neither desired nor actively pursued the break with the theosophists but, recognizing that it was impossible to work within the increasingly hostile atmosphere of the Theosophical Society, he agreed to work with the new “anthroposophical” organization. The first meeting was held in 1913, after Mrs. Besant had excluded the German section. Readers new to anthroposophy may see these events as typical of the regrettable yet apparently inevitable infighting that occurs within spiritual organizations of all kinds. They take on quite a different coloring, however, when seen in the context of Steiner's struggle to insure that his unique teaching of Christian esotericism could find its proper audience and the necessary methods of presentation.¹

Thus it was that Rudolf Steiner revised these lectures—an important element in the initial exposition of his Christology—during the height of difficulties within the Theosophical Society, just before the inaugurations of the Anthroposophical Society. During these years he also wrote and produced his four mystery dramas, and began the work that later matured as eurythmy and speech formation². Rudolf Steiner introduced something quite foreign to the mode of theosophical meetings when he began to include artistic presentations, begun by Rudolf Steiner in 1907. The effect of his dramas, which included eurythmy and the new method of speech, gave the impetus to create a special building in which to perform them. Looking back, we can see how Steiner's studies in Christology and his artistic work in drama, painting, and sculpture culminated in the building of the first Goetheanum in Dornach.³

It is not surprising, then, to find that The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity reveals an extremely artistic composition. Rudolf Steiner weaves together the themes of the beings that guide humanity, the working of the Christ impulse before and after the Mystery of Golgotha, and our common soul experience in a way that can best be called musical. Each new expression brings a variation that imports new information and yet relates to what precedes it. In some of his other lectures, Rudolf Steiner builds mighty pictures of the earth and of the cosmos, and portrays the activities of spiritual beings whose deeds are revealed externally through the natural sciences and through history. Until one achieves a sufficient background through contemplative study of a variety of anthroposophical concepts and makes the effort to allow these concepts to create the inner organs for further work, these initial studies can be overwhelming in their complexity and seem quite dry. For that reason, this book can be most helpful, because Steiner relates the entire subject matter to the human soul, to observations and experiences we share as human beings. These can help us find an inner strength to begin to take' anthroposophy more deeply into our own soul life.

The first chapter begins with a description of how, in the first three years of life, the higher self in each of us works to establish three capacities. Unlike the animals, we learn to orient our body in space in a way that is not innate or instinctual. Next, we learn the use of language; and then comes the ability to work with thoughts, with ideas. Thus, in the time before we are aware of our “I”, we have already done our wisest work on ourselves. If, however, our higher, divine self continued to work in this way, we would remain as children and not have the possibility of freedom. This active working must fall away as we achieve our own self-consciousness, which is constantly subject to the lure of pride and deceit, but which also gives us the possibility of self-development. Indeed, if the higher self lived within us in our present constitution for longer than three years, our body would die. In the same way, when the cosmic Christ entered the body of Jesus during the baptism in the Jordan, it could live even in this special human body for only three years.

Even if the Gospels had not been written, Steiner asserts, this knowledge of the first years of childhood would reveal that Christ lives in us: “To perceive and understand the forces at work in our childhood is to perceive Christ in us.” Through inner striving, we can contact again the wisdom that worked so powerfully in our first years, and we can find the Christ because of his incarnation into humanity. Indeed, the goal of earthly evolution, of the existence of this planet and our life on it, is to gradually make our entire being an expression of these divine cosmic forces—of the Christ impulse. Childhood is a perpetual reminder of the higher self, and it reveals the spiritual guidance that also lives in the Gospels and in the great initiates.

In the second chapter, Steiner describes humanity's own childlike condition in ancient times, and then he outlines how the higher spiritual beings have passed through their own “human” stage in earlier incarnations of the earth. As recently as ancient Egypt, people could recognize the spiritual beings who spoke through their leaders and teachers. The focus of the chapter is on the angels, the beings closest to humanity, who guided human development during the Egyptian epoch and again during our time. He shows how some of the angels have progressed properly in their development, while others have developed more slowly. These two types of angels bring to humanity both the possibility for our own progressive evolution, and also the two kinds of evil: the tendency to ignore our earthly responsibilities and become dreamers and visionaries, and the increasing temptation toward materialism. While their activities cause trouble in the present life of humanity, these beings actually work together in the spiritual world to guide human development. With delicacy and beauty, Steiner indicates the necessity for these retarding spirits in our evolution, for without them, we would not have the opportunity to achieve full self consciousness, diversity and freedom. The more progressive beings could only have produced uniformity in human nature.

This chapter concludes with a caution against fanaticism. “The most beautiful things can seduce and tempt us if we pursue them one-sidedly.” To guard against this, he urges us to insure that clairvoyance is augmented by an effort to grasp conceptually just the kind of spiritual facts that are presented in this book. Spiritual science helps us to avoid error; clairvoyance should be accompanied by initiation, the training that allows “a clear assessment of what is perceived in the supersensible world.” This is the difference between seeing and understanding, by being able to distinguish between the different kinds of beings and events of the higher worlds. Most important, through the study of anthroposophy, we begin to meet the Christ with our higher soul forces.

In the final chapter, Rudolf Steiner surveys the sweep of the Post Atlantean Age, the present age of the world.⁴ He shows how the progressive spiritual beings have also met the Christ, but the retarding beings have not. These latter spirits have inspired the natural science that has formed the present world culture. In the future, scientists will perceive that the Christ has arranged every atom of the earth, and a new physics and chemistry will result. We can say, then, that in the future there will live in people's hearts a Christ-idea whose magnitude will be beyond anything humanity has believed to know and understand so far. What has developed through Christ as a first impulse and has lived on as an idea of him until now is—even in the best representatives of the Christ—principle only a preparation for a true understanding of Christ. Christ first entered human hearts through the pictures from his life on earth in a human body. Today we must prepare for a spiritual meeting with the Christ, similar to Paul's experience at Damascus. An essential part of this preparation is a strengthened consciousness and a sense of responsibility toward spiritual perception, and this vital discrimination can be enhanced through the careful study of such a book as this one.

In conclusion, one hopes that this new edition will find the active readership it deserves. Many people who first approach anthroposophy for the first time are suspicious and even resentful of Christianity as it has manifested in the past two thousand years, and when they discover that anthroposophy is Christ-centered, they may feel disappointed or even upset. For others, it is perplexing that Steiner's Christology puts forward quite radical elements when compared to the theology of his day or ours. In this book, Rudolf Steiner gives both a broad, sweeping picture of human and cosmic evolution and the central place of the Christ impulse in that development, and also relates this evolution to our inner life, to the experiences and insights that anyone with the good will to look within can have, and from which they can then follow these anthroposophical thoughts to the reality of the Christ experience. Here we are given a deeply rewarding perspective of the age in which we live and in which we are witnessing the rapid dissolution of our cultural life; here also we can find the inner sustenance to work toward building the culture of the new age. From this point of view, The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity is a “classic” work of spiritual science.

HILMAR MOORE

• 1. For further information, see Guenther Wachsmuth, The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner (Whittier Books, 1955) 158–193; and Stewart C. Easton, Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch (Anthroposophic Press, 1980), chapters 6 and 8. It should be noted that Krishnamurti publicly repudiated the claims of Besant and Leadbeater and dissolved the organization, called the Order of the Star of the East, in the 1920s. Stewart Easton has managed to portray with admirable clarity the issues and personalities which are of great importance in Steiner's work. In chapter five of his Man and World in the Light of Anthroposophy (Anthroposophic Press, 1975) he has provided a succinct presentation of Rudolf Steiners Christology.
• 2. Eurythmy. System of movement created by Rudolf Steiner expressing both music and the sounds of speech. See Marjorie Raffe et al., Eurythmy and the Impulse of Dance (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974). Speech. Steiner developed a particular mode of artistic speech in the production of his Mystery Dramas. See Rudolf Steiner, Speech and Drama (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press / London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1968). Also, Steiner, Four Mystery Dramas, trans. Ruth Pusch (North Vancouver: Steiner Book Centre, 1973), and Steiner, Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 3. The Goetheanum is the world headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland. Architecturally unique. See biesantz, The Goetheanum, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979) and Rex Raab et al., Eloquent Concrete, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979).
• 4. For a description of earth evolution, including post-Atlantean times, see Rudolf Steiner, An Outline Of Esoteric Science, trans. Catherine E. Creeger (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1997).

From the time of the Foundation Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society (Dornach, Christmas to New Year, 1923–24) until his death shortly before Easter, 1925, Rudolf Steiner wrote a Letter week by week, addressed to the members of the Society. The Letters were printed in the members' supplement to the Goetheanum Weekly and in the English edition of it, Anthroposophical Movement. The later Letters (forming a self-contained series from autumn 1924 onward) were published in book form in 1956, entitled The Michael Mystery (Vol. II of Letters to Members).

An urgent need has been felt for the earlier Letters in which Rudolf Steiner describes the character of the Society arising out of the Foundation Meeting and gives advice as to its conduct and its relation to the world. To meet this need, the Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung has issued these Letters in a separate volume entitled Das lebendige Wesen der Anthroposophie und seine Pflege: Briefe an die Mitglieder, and has given the Council of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain permission to publish the translation contained in the following pages (Vol. I of Letters to Members).

RUDOLF STEINER HOUSE
London, N.W.1, 1963