Dornach, 17 June 1923
Today we will have reached
a kind of conclusion in our deliberations. Clearly that will
have to include the consequences which arise for the
future activities of the Anthroposophical Society. In order to gain a
better understanding of what these activities might be, let us take
another look at the way anthroposophy emerged in modern
civilization.
From the reflections of the
last eight days, you will have realized how an interest in
anthroposophy was at first to be found in those circles where the
impulse for a deeper spiritual understanding was already present.
This impulse came from all kinds of directions. In our context,
however, it was only necessary to look at the way homeless souls
were motivated by the material which Blavatsky presented to the
present age in the form of what might be called a riddle.
But if
the Anthroposophical Society can be traced back to this impulse,
it should, on the other hand, also have become clear that this
material was not central to anthroposophy itself. For
anthroposophy as such relies on quite different sources. If you
go back to my early writings, Christianity
As Mystical Fact and Eleven
European Mystics, you will see
that they are not based in any way on material which came from
Blavatsky or from that direction in general, save for the forms
of expression which were chosen to ensure that they were
understood.
Anthroposophy
goes back directly to the subject matter which is dealt with in
philosophical terms in my The
Philosophy of Freedom, as well
as in my writings on Goethe of the 1880s. [ Note
1 ]
If you examine that material, you will see that its essential
point is that human beings are connected with a spiritual world
in the most profound part of their psyche. If they therefore
penetrate deeply enough, they will encounter something to which
the natural sciences in their present
form have no access, something which can only be seen as
belonging directly to a spiritual world order.
Indeed,
it should be recognized that it is almost inevitable that turns
of phrase sometimes have to be used which might sound
paradoxical, given the immense spiritual confusion of language
which our modern civilization has produced. Thus it can be seen
from my writings on Goethe [ Note
2 ]
that it is necessary to modify our concept of love, if we are to
progress from observation of the world to observation of the
divine-spiritual. I indicated that the Godhead has to be thought
of as having permeated all existence with eternal love and thus
has to be sought in every single being, something quite different
from any sort of vague pantheism. But there was no philosophical
tradition in that period on which I could build. That is why it
was necessary to seek this connection through someone who
possessed a richer, more intense life, an inner life which was
saturated with spiritual substance.
That was
precisely the case with Goethe. When it came to putting my ideas
in book form, I was therefore unable to build a theory of
knowledge on what existed in contemporary culture, but had to
link it with a Goethean world conception, [ Note
3 ]
and on that basis the first steps into the spiritual world were
possible.
Goethe
provides two openings which give a certain degree of access into
the spiritual world. The first one is through his scientific
writings. For the scientific view he developed overcomes an
obstacle in relation to the plant world which is still unresolved
in modern science. In his observation of the vegetable realm, he
was able to substitute living, flexible ideas for dead concepts.
Although he failed to translate his theory of metamorphosis into
the animal world, it was nevertheless possible to draw the
conclusion that similar ideas on a higher level could be applied.
I tried to show in my Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethes World Conception
[ Note
3 ]
how Goethe's revitalizing ideas made it possible to advance to
the level of history, historical existence. That was the one
point of entry.
There is, however, no direct
continuation into the spiritual world, as such, from this
particular starting-point in Goethe. But in working with these
ideas it becomes evident that they take hold of the physical
world in a spiritual way. By making use of Goethe's methodology,
we are moving in a spiritual environment which enables us to
understand the spiritual element active in the plant or the
animal.
But
Goethe also approached the spiritual world from another angle,
from a perspective which he was able to indicate only through
images, one might almost say
symbolically. In his Fairy
Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,
[ Note
4 ]
he wished to show how a spiritual element is active in the
development of the world, how the individual spheres of truth,
beauty and goodness act together, and how real spiritual beings,
not mere abstract concepts, have to be grasped if we want to
observe the real life of the spirit.
It was thus possible to
build on this element of Goethe's world view. But that made
something else all the more necessary. For the first thing we
have to think about when we talk about a conception of the world
which will satisfy homeless souls is morality and ethics. In
those ancient times in which human beings had access to the
divine through their natural clairvoyance, it was taken for
granted that moral impulses also came from this divine spiritual
principle. Natural phenomena, the action of the wind and the
weather, of the earth and of mechanical processes, represented to
these ancient human beings an extension of what they perceived as
the divine spiritual principle. But at the same time they also
received the impulses for their own actions from that source.
That is the distinguishing feature of this ancient view of the
world. In ancient Egyptian times, for example, people looked up
to the stars in order to learn what would happen on earth, even
to the extent of gaining insight into the conditions which
governed the flooding of the Nile to support their needs. But by
the same means they calculated, if I may use that term, what came
to expression as moral impulses. Those, too, were derived from
their observation of the stars.
If we look now to the modern
situation, observation of the stars has become purely a business
in which physical mathematics is simply transferred into the
starry sky. And on earth so-called laws of nature are discovered
and investigated. These laws of nature, which Goethe transformed
into living ideas, are remarkable in that the human being as such
is excluded from the world.
rot
= red; gelb = yellow; hell = light colouring
If we think in diagrammatic
form of the content of the old metaphysical conceptions, we have
the divine spiritual principle here on the one hand (red). The
divine spirit penetrated natural phenomena. Laws were found for
these natural phenomena, but they were recognized as something
akin to a reflection of divine action in nature (yellow). Then
there was the human being (light colouring). The same divine
spirit penetrated human beings, who received their substance, as
it were, from the same divine spirit which also gave nature its
substance.
What happened next, however,
had serious consequences. Through natural science the link
between nature and the divine was severed. The divine was removed
from nature, and the reflection of the divine in nature began to
be interpreted as the laws of nature.
For the ancients these laws
of nature were divine thoughts. For modern people they are still
thoughts, because they have to be grasped by the intellect, but
they are explained on the basis of the natural phenomena which
are governed by these laws of nature. We talk about the law of
gravity, the law of the refraction of light, and lots of other
fine things. But they have no real foundation, or rather they are
not elevating, for the only way to give real meaning to these
laws is to refer to them as a reflection of divine action in
nature.
That is
what the more profound part of the human being, the homeless
soul, feels when we talk about nature today. It feels that those
who talk about nature in such a superficial way deserve the
Goethean — or, actually, the Mephistophelean —
epithet: and mock themselves unwittingly. [ Note
5 ]
People talk about the laws of nature, but the latter are remnants
from ancient knowledge, a knowledge which still contained that
additional element which underlies the natural laws.
Imagine a rose bush. It will
flower repeatedly. When the old roses wither away, new ones grow.
But if you pick the roses and allow the bush to die the process
stops. That is what has happened to the natural sciences. There
was a rose bush with its roots in the divine. The laws which were
discovered in nature were the individual roses. These laws, the
roses, were picked. The rose bush was left to wither. Thus our
laws of nature are rather like roses without the rose bush: not a
great deal of use to human beings. People simply fail to
understand this in those clever heads of theirs, by which so much
store is set in our modern times. But homeless souls do have an
inkling of this in their hearts, because the laws of nature
wither away when they want to relate to them as human beings.
Modern mankind therefore
unconsciously experiences the feeling, in so far as it still has
the capacity to feel, that it is being told something about
nature which withers the human being. A terrible belief in
authority forces people to accept this as pure truth. While they
feel in their hearts that the roses are withering away, they are
forced into a belief that these roses represent eternal truths.
They are referred to as the eternal laws which underlie the
world. Phenomena may pass, but the laws are immutable. In the
sense that anthroposophy represents what human beings want to
develop from within themselves as their self-awareness, natural
science represents anti-anthroposophy.
We need still to consider
the other side, the ethical and moral. Ethical and moral impulses
came from the same divine source. But just as the laws of nature
were turned into withering roses, so moral impulses met the same
fate. Their roots disappeared and they were left free-floating in
civilization as moral imperatives of unknown origin. People could
not help but feel that the divine origin of moral commandments
had been lost. And that raised the essential question of what
would happen if they were no longer obeyed? Chaos and anarchy
would reign in human society.
This was
juxtaposed with another question: How do these commandments work?
Where do we find their roots? Yet again, the sense of something
withering away was inescapable. Goethe raised these questions,
but was unable to answer them. He presented two starting-points
which, although they moved in a convergent direction, never
actually came together. The
Philosophy of Freedom was
required for that.
It had to
be shown where the divine is located in human beings, the divine
which enables them to discover the spiritual basis of nature as
well as of moral laws. That led to the concept of Intuition
presented in The
Philosophy of Freedom, to what
was called ethical individualism. Ethical individualism, because
the source of the moral impulses in each individual had to be
shown to reside in that divine element with which human beings
are connected in their innermost being.
The time had arrived in
which a living understanding of the laws of nature on the one
hand and the moral commandments on the other had been lost;
because the divine could no longer be perceived in the external
world it could not be otherwise in the age of freedom. But that
being so, it was necessary to find this divine spiritual
principle within human beings in their capacity as individuals.
That produced a conception of the world which you will see, if
you only consider it clearly, leads directly to anthroposophy.
Our purpose must be to gain
access to the spirit, not in an outer materialistic way, but
through the real recognition of the essential human self.
In fact
The
Philosophy of Freedom also
represents the point when anthroposophy came into being, if our
observations are guided by life rather than by theoretical
considerations. Anyone who argues that this book is not yet
anthroposophical in nature is being rather too clever. It is as
if we were to say that there was a person called Goethe who wrote
a variety of works, and this were then to be challenged by
someone claiming that it was hardly a consistent view, on the
grounds that a child was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1749 who
was blue at birth and not expected to live, and that Goethe's
works had no logical connection with that child. That is not a
particularly clever standpoint, is it? It is just as silly to say
that it is inconsistent to argue that anthroposophy developed
from The
Philosophy of Freedom. The
Philosophy of Freedom continued
to live, like the blue baby in Frankfurt did, and anthroposophy
developed from it.
Those who are involved in
the contemporary development of so-called logic and philosophy
have lost the capacity to include real life in their
considerations, to incorporate what is springing up and sprouting
all around them, what goes beyond the pedantic practice of logic.
The task, then, was to make
a critical assessment of those representatives of contemporary
life who were endeavouring to bring progress to human
civilization.
As you are aware, I
concentrated on two important phenomena. The first was Nietzsche,
who, in contrast to everyone else, was honest in his response to
the direction in which modern thinking was developing.
What was
the general verdict in the 1890s? It was that natural science
was, of course, right. We stand on the terra firma of science and
look up at the stars. There was the instance of the conversation
between Napoleon and the great astronomer Laplace. [ Note
6 ]
Napoleon could not understand how God was to be found by looking
at the stars through a telescope. The astronomer responded that
this conjecture was irrelevant. And it was, of course, irrelevant
when Laplace observed the stars with a telescope. But it was not
irrelevant from the moment that he wanted to be a human being.
Microscopes allowed the investigation of micro-organisms and the
smallest components of living things. You could look through a
microscope for as long as you wished, but there was not the
slightest trace of soul or spirit. The soul or the spirit could
be found neither in the stars nor under the microscope. And so it
went on. This is what Nietzsche came up against.
Others responded by
accepting that we look through a telescope at the stars and see
physical worlds but nothing else. At the same time they said we
also have a religious life, a religion which tells us that the
spirit exists. We cannot find the spirit anywhere, but we have
faith in its existence all the same. The science which we are
committed to believe in is unable to find the spirit anywhere.
Science is the way it is because it seeks reality; if it were to
take any other form it would be divorced from reality. In other
words, anybody who undertakes a different type of research will
not find reality! Therefore we know about reality, and at the
same time believe in something which cannot be established as a
reality. Nevertheless, our forefathers tell us it should be
reality.
Such an attitude led to
tremendous dilemmas for a soul like Nietzsche's, which had
maintained its integrity. One day he realized he would have to
draw the line somewhere. How did he do that? He did it by arguing
that reality is what is investigated by natural science.
Everything else is invalid. Christianity teaches that Christ
should not be sought in the reality which is investigated with
the telescope and the microscope. But there is no other reality.
As a consequence there is no justification for Christianity.
Therefore, Nietzsche said, I will write The Anti-Christ.
People accept the ethical
commandments which are floating around or which authority tells
us must be obeyed, but they cannot be discovered through
scientific research. Under his Revaluation of Values
Nietzsche therefore wished to write a second book, in which he
showed that all ideals should be abandoned because they cannot be
found in reality.
Furthermore, he argued that
moral principles certainly cannot be deduced from the telescope
or the microscope, and on that basis he decided to develop a
philosophy of amorality. Thus the first three books of
Revaluation of Values should have been called: first book,
Anti-Christ; second book, Nihilism or the Abolition of
Ideals; third book, Amorality or the Abolition of the
Universal Moral Order.
It was a
terrible stance to adopt, of course, but his standpoint took to
its final and honest conclusion what had been started by others.
We will not understand the nerve centres of modern civilization
if we do not observe these things. It was something which had to
be confronted. The enormous error of Nietzsche's thinking had to
be demonstrated and corrected by returning to his premises, and
then showing that they had to be understood as leading not into
the void but into the spirit. The confrontation with Nietzsche
[ Note
7 ]
was thus a necessity.
Haeckel,
too, had to be confronted in the same way. [ Note
8 ]
Haeckel's thinking had pursued the approach of natural science to
the evolution of physical beings with a certain consistency. That
had to be utilized in my first anthroposophical lectures with the
help of Topinard's book. [ Note
9 ]
This kind of procedure made it possible to enter the real
spiritual world. The details could then be worked on through
further research, through continuing to live with the spiritual
world.
I have said all this in
order to make the following point. If we want to trace
anthroposophy back to its roots, it has to be done against a
background of illustrations from modern civilization. When we
look at the development of the Anthroposophical Society we need
to keep in mind the question: Where were the people who were open
enough to understand matters of the spirit? They were the people
who, because of the special nature of their homeless souls, were
prompted by Blavatsky and theosophy to search for the spirit.
The Theosophical Society and
anthroposophy went alongside one another at the beginning of the
twentieth century simply because of existing circumstances. That
development had been fully outgrown in the third stage, which
began approximately in 1914. No traces were left, even in the
forms of expression. Right from the beginning the thrust of
anthroposophical spiritual work included the aim of penetrating
the Mystery of Golgotha and Christianity. The other direction of
its work, however, had to be to understand natural science by
spiritual means. The acquisition of those spiritual means which
would once again enable the presentation of true Christianity in
our age began in the first phase and was worked on particularly
in the second one.
The work which was to be
done in a scientific direction really only emerged in the third
stage, when people working in the scientific field found their
way into the anthroposophical movement. They should take
particular care, if we are to avoid the repeated introduction of
new misunderstandings into the anthroposophical movement, to take
full cognizance of the fact that we have to work from the central
sources of anthroposophy. It is absolutely necessary to be clear
about this.
I believe
it was in 1908 that I made the following remarks [ Note
10 ]
in Nuremberg, in order to describe a very specific state of
affairs. Modern scientific experimentation has led to substantial
scientific progress. That can only be a good thing, for spiritual
beings are at work in such experimentation. The scientist goes to
the laboratory and pursues his work according to the routines and
methods he has learnt. But a whole group of spiritual beings are
working alongside him, and it is they who actually bring about
results; for the person standing at the laboratory bench only
creates the conditions which allow such results to emerge
gradually. If that were not the case, things would not have
developed as they have in modern times.
Whenever discoveries are
made they are clothed in exceedingly abstract formulae which
others find incomprehensible. There is a yawning gap today
between what people understand and what is produced by research,
because people do not have access to the underlying spiritual
impulses.
That is
how things are. Let us return once more to that excellent person,
Julius Robert Mayer. [ Note
11 ]
Today he is acknowledged as an eminent scientist, but as a
student at Tubingen University he came close to being advised to
leave before graduating. He scraped through his medical exams,
was recruited as a ship's doctor and took part in a voyage to
India. It was a rough passage; many people on board became ill
and he had to bleed them on arrival.
Now doctors know, of course,
that arterial blood is more red than venous blood which has a
bluer tinge. If one bleeds someone from the vein, bluish blood
should therefore spurt out. Julius Robert Mayer had to bleed many
people, but something peculiar happened when he made his
incisions. He must have cursed inwardly, because he thought he
had hit the wrong place, an artery, since red blood appeared to
be spurting out of the vein. The same thing happened in every
case and he became quite confused. Finally he reached the
conclusion that he had made his incisions in the right place
after all but, as people had become sick at sea, something had
happened to make the venous blood more red than blue, nearer the
colour of arterial blood.
Thus a modern person made a
tremendous discovery without in any way seeking the spiritual
connections. The modern scientist says: Energy is transformed
into heat and heat into energy, as in the steam engine. The same
thing happens in the human body. Since the ship had sailed into a
warmer, tropical climate, the body needed to burn less oxygen to
produce heat, resulting in less of a transformation into blue
blood. The blood remained redder in the veins. The law governing
the transformation of matter and energy, which we recognize
today, is deduced from this observation.
Let us
imagine that something similar was experienced by a doctor not in
the nineteenth, but in the eleventh or twelfth century. It would
never have occurred to him to deduce the mechanical concept of
heat equivalence from such observations. Paracelsus, [ Note
12 ]
for instance, would never have thought of it, not even in his
sleep, although Paracelsus was a much more clever, even in sleep,
than some others when they are awake. So what would a
hypothetical doctor in the tenth, eleventh or twelfth centuries
have said? Or someone like Paracelsus in the sixteenth century?
Van
Helmont [ Note
13 ]
speaks about the archeus,
what today we would call the joint function of the etheric and
astral bodies. We have to rediscover these things through
anthroposophy, since such terms have been forgotten. In a hotter
climate the difference between the venous and the arterial blood
is no longer so pronounced and the blue blood of the veins
becomes redder and the red blood of the arteries bluer. The
eleventh or twelfth century doctor would have explained this by
saying — and he would have used the term archeus,
or something similar, for what we describe as astral body today —
that the archeus
enters less deeply into the body in hot climates than in
temperate zones. In temperate climates human beings are permeated
more thoroughly by their astral bodies. The differentiation in
the blood which is caused by the astral body occurs more strongly
in human beings in temperate zones. People in hotter climates
have freer astral bodies, which we can see in the lesser
thickening of the blood. They live more instinctively in their
astral bodies because they are freer. In consequence they do not
become mechanistically thinking Europeans, but spiritually
thinking Indians, who at the height of their civilization created
a spiritual civilization, a Vedic civilization, while Europeans
created the civilization of Comte, John Stuart Mill and Darwin.
[ Note
14 ]
Such is the view of the
anthropos which the eleventh or twelfth-century doctor
would have concluded from bleeding his patient. He would have had
no problem with anthroposophy. He would have found access to the
spirit, the living spirit. Julius Robert Mayer, the Paracelsus of
the nineteenth century if you like, was left to discover laws:
nothing can arise from nothing, so energy must be transformed; an
abstract formula.
The
spiritual element of the human being, which can be rediscovered
through anthroposophy, also leads to morality. We return full
circle to the investigation of moral principles in The
Philosophy of Freedom. Human
beings are given entry to a spiritual world in which they are no
longer faced with a division between nature and spirit, between
nature and morality, but where the two form a union.
As you can see, the leading
authorities in modern science arrive at abstract formulae as a
result of their work. Such formulae inhabit the brains of those
who have had a modern scientific training. Those who teach them
regard as pure madness the claim that it is possible to
investigate the qualities of red and blue blood and progress from
there to the spiritual element in human beings.
You can
see what it takes for real scientists who want to make their way
into anthroposophy. Something more than mere good intentions is
needed. They must have a real commitment to deepening their
knowledge to a degree to which we are not accustomed nowadays,
least of all if we have had a scientific training. That makes a
great deal of courage essential. The latter is the quality we
need above all when we take into account the conditions governing
the existence of the Anthroposophical Society. In certain
respects the Society stands diametrically opposed to what is
popularly acceptable. It therefore has no future if it wants to
make itself popular. Thus it would be wrong to court popularity,
particularly in relation to our endeavours to introduce
anthroposophical working methods into all areas of society, as we
have attempted to do since 1919. [ Note
15 ]
Instead, we have to pursue the path which is based on the spirit
itself, as I discussed this morning in relation to the
Goetheanum. [ Note
16 ]
We must learn to adopt such
an attitude in all circumstances, otherwise we begin to stray in
a way which justifiably makes people confuse us with other
movements and judge us by external criteria. If we are determined
to provide our own framework we are on the right path to
fulfilling the conditions which govern the existence of the
anthroposophical movement. But we have to acquire the commitment
which will then provide us with the necessary courage.
And we must not ignore those
circumstances which arise from the fact that, as
anthroposophists, we are a small group. As such we hope that what
is spreading among us today will begin to spread among a growing
number of people. Then knowledge and ethics, artistic and
religious development will move in a new direction.
But all these things which
will be present one day through the impulse of anthroposophy, and
which will then be regarded as quite ordinary, must be cultivated
to a much higher degree by those who make up the small group
today. They must feel that they bear the greatest possible
responsibility towards the spiritual world. It has to be
understood that such an attitude will automatically be reflected
in the verdict of the world at large.
As far as those who are not
involved with anthroposophy are concerned, nothing can do more
profound harm to the Anthroposophical Society than the failure of
its members to adopt a form which sets out in the strictest terms
what they are trying to achieve, so that they can be
distinguished from all sectarian and other movements.
As long as this does not
happen, it is not surprising that people around us judge us as
they do. It is hard to know what the Anthroposophical Society
stands for, and when they meet anthroposophists they see nothing
of anthroposophy. For instance, if anthroposophists were
recognizable by their pronounced sensitivity to truth and
reality, by the display of a sensitive understanding to go no
further in their claims than accords with reality, that would
make an impression! But I do not want to criticize today but to
emphasize the positive side. Will it be achieved? That is the
question we have to bear in mind.
Or one might recognize
anthroposophists by their avoidance of any display of bad taste
and, to the contrary, a certain artistic sense — a sign
that the Goetheanum in Dornach must have had some effect. Once
again people would know that anthroposophy provides its members
with a certain modicum of taste which distinguishes them from
others.
Such attitudes, above and
beyond what can be laid down in sharply defined concepts, must be
among the things which are developed in the Anthroposophical
Society if it is to fulfil the conditions governing its
existence.
Such matters have been
discussed a great deal! But the question which must always be in
the forefront is how the Anthroposophical Society can be given
that special character which will make people aware that here
they have something which distinguishes it from others in a way
which rules out any possibility of confusion. That is something
anthroposophists should discuss at great length.
These things are a matter of
conveying a certain attitude. Life cannot be constrained by
programmes. But ask yourselves whether we have fully overcome the
attitude within the Anthroposophical Society which dictates that
something must be done in a specific way, which lays down rules,
and whether there is a strong enough impulse to seek guidance
from anthroposophy itself whatever the situation. That does not
mean having to read everything in lectures, but that the content
of the lectures enters the heart, and that has certain
consequences.
Until anthroposophy is taken
as a living being who moves invisibly among us, my dear friends,
towards whom we feel a certain responsibility, this small group
of anthroposophists I must say this too will not serve as a
model. And that is what they should be doing.
If you had gone into any of
the Theosophical Societies, and there were many of them, you
would have encountered the three famous objectives. The first was to
build universal fraternity among mankind without reference to
race, nationality and so on. I pointed out yesterday that we
should be reflecting on the appropriateness of setting this down
as dogma.
It is, of course, important
that such an objective should exist, but it has to be lived. It must
gradually become a reality. That will happen if anthroposophy
itself is seen as a living, supersensory, invisible being who
moves among anthroposophists. Then there might be less talk about
fraternity and universal human love, but these objectives might be
more active in human hearts. And then it will be evident in the
tone in which people talk about their relation to anthroposophy,
in how they talk to one another, that it is important to them
that they too are followers of the invisible being of
Anthroposophia.
After all, we could just as
well choose another way. We could form lots of cliques and
exclusive groups and behave like the rest of the world, meeting
for tea parties or whatever, to make conversation and possibly
assemble for the occasional lecture. But an anthroposophical
movement could not exist in such a society. An anthroposophical
movement can only live in an Anthroposophical Society which has
become reality. But that requires a truly serious approach. It
requires a sense of alliance in every living moment with the
invisible being of Anthroposophia.
If that became a reality in
people's attitude, not necessarily overnight but over a longer
time-span, the required impulse would certainly develop over a
period of perhaps twenty-one years. Whenever anthroposophists
encountered the kind of material from our opponents which I read
out yesterday, for example, the appropriate response would come
alive in their hearts. I am not saying that this would have to be
transformed immediately into concrete action, but the required
impulse would live in the heart. Then the action, too, would
follow.
If such action does not
develop, if it is only our opponents who are active and
organized, then the right impulse is clearly absent. People
clearly prefer to continue their lives in a leisurely fashion and
listen to the occasional lecture on anthroposophy. But that is
not enough if the Anthroposophical Society is to thrive. If it is
to thrive, anthroposophy has to be alive in the Anthroposophical
Society. And if that happens then something significant can
develop over twenty-one years. By my calculations, the Society
has already existed for twenty-one years.
However, since I do not want
to criticize, I will only call on you to reflect on this issue to
the extent of asking whether each individual, whatever their
situation, has acted in a spirit which is derived from the
nucleus of anthroposophy?
If one or another among you
should feel that this has not been the case so far, then I appeal
to you: start tomorrow, start tonight for it would not be a good
thing if the Anthroposophical Society were to collapse. And it
will most certainly collapse, now that the Goetheanum is being
rebuilt in addition to all the other institutions which the
Society has established, if that awareness of which I have spoken
in these lectures does not develop, if such self-reflection is
absent. And once the process of collapse has started, it will
proceed very quickly. Whether or not it happens is completely
dependent on the will of those who are members of the
Anthroposophical Society.
Anthroposophy will certainly
not disappear from the world. But it might very well sink back
into what I might call a latent state for decades or even longer
before it is taken up again. That, however, would imply an
immense loss for the evolution of humanity. It is something
which has to be taken into account if we are serious about
engaging in the kind of self-reflection which I have essentially
been talking about in these lectures. What I certainly do not
mean is that we should once again make ringing declarations, set
up programmes, and generally state our willingness to be
absolutely available when something needs to be done. We have
always done that. What is at stake here is that we should find
the nucleus of our being within ourselves. If we engage in that
search in the spirit of wisdom transmitted by anthroposophy then
we will also find the anthroposophical impulse which the
Anthroposophical Society needs for its existence.
My intention has been to
stimulate some thought about the right way to act by means of a
reflection on anthroposophical matters and a historical survey of
one or two questions; were I to deal with everything I would run
out of time. And I believe these lectures in particular are a
good basis on which to engage in such reflection. There is always
time for that, because it can be done between the lines of the
life which we lead in the everyday world.
That is what I wanted you to
carry away in your hearts, rather like a kind of self-reflection
for the Anthroposophical Society. We certainly need such
self-reflection today. We should not forget that we can achieve a
great deal by making use of the sources of anthroposophy. If we
fail to do so then we abandon the path by which we can achieve
effective action.
We are faced with major
tasks, such as the reconstruction of the Goetheanum. In that
context our inner thoughts should truly be based on really great
impulses.
Thanks to The Rudolf Steiner Archive
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