The
reflections which we are beginning today are intended to encourage all those
who have found their way to anthroposophy to think about their current
position. They will present an opportunity for contemplation, for
self-reflection, through a characterization of the anthroposophical movement
and its relationship to the Anthroposophical Society. And in this context may
I begin by speaking about the people who are central to such self-reflection:
yourselves. There are those who found this path through an inner necessity of
the soul, of the heart; others, perhaps, found it through the search for
knowledge. There are many, however, who entered the anthroposophical movement
for more or less mundane reasons; but through a deepening of the soul they
have subsequently perhaps encountered more within it than they at first
anticipated. But there is something which all those who end up in the
anthroposophical movement have in common. And that is that they are initially
driven by their inner destiny, their karma, to leave the ordinary highway of
civilization on which the majority of mankind at present progresses, to
search for their own path.
Let us think for a moment about the
conditions in which most people now grow up. They are born to parents who are
French or German, Catholic or Protestant or Jewish, or who belong to some
other faith, and may hold a variety of beliefs. But among parents is the
almost unquestioned assumption, which remains unspoken and sometimes
unthought, that their children will, of course, grow up like themselves.
These kinds of feelings naturally engender a social ambience, indeed social
pressures, which more or less consciously push children into the kind of life
which has been mapped out by these more or less clearly defined beliefs. The
life of a child then follows its natural course of education and schooling.
And during this time parents once again have all kinds of beliefs which exert
a decisive influence on their children's lives. The belief, for instance,
that my son will, of course, enter the secure employment of the civil
service, or that he will inherit the parental business, or that my daughter
will marry the man next door. It simply lies in the nature of social
circumstances that they are governed by impulses which arise in this way.
People have no choice in the matter because that is the effect of the beliefs
which govern life. It may not always be obvious to parents, but schooling and
all the other circumstances of childhood and youth imprison the human being
and determine his position in life. The institutions of state and religion
make the adult.
If the majority of people were asked
to explain how they got where they are today, they would not be able to do
so, because there would be something unbearable about having to think deeply
about such matters. This unbearable element tends to be driven underground into
subconscious or unconscious areas of our soul life. At best, it will be
dredged up by a psychiatrist when it behaves in a particularly recalcitrant
manner down there in those unknown provinces of the soul. But mostly one's
own personality, the Self, is simply not strong enough to assert itself
against what one has grown into in this way.
Occasionally people have the urge to
rebel when their situation as a trainee, or even following qualification,
unexpectedly dawns on them. You might clench your fist in your pocket, or, if
you are a woman, create a scene at home because of such disappointed life
expectations. These are reactions against what people are forced to become.
We also frequently seek to anaesthetize ourselves by concentrating on the
pleasant things in life. We go to dances and follow this with a long lie-in,
don't we? Time is then filled up in one way or another. Or someone might join
a thoroughly patriotic party because his professional position demands that
he belong to something which will reflect his values. We have already been
enveloped by the state and our religion; now that must be supplemented by
surrounding what one has unconsciously grown into with a sort of aura. Well,
there is no need for me to go into further detail. That is roughly the way in
which the people who move in the mainstream of life have grown into their
existence.
But those who find it difficult to
accept this end up on many possible and impossible byways. And anthroposophy
is precisely one of these paths on which human beings are seeking to realize
themselves; on which they want to live with such an understanding of
themselves in a more conscious manner, to experience something which is under
their control to a certain extent at least. Anthroposophists are for the most
part people who do not walk along the highways of life. If we investigate
further why that should be, we find that this is linked with the spiritual
world.
Having relived the course of their
lives in the spiritual world after death human beings enter a region where
they become increasingly assimilated into the spiritual world, where their
lives consist of working together with the beings of the higher hierarchies,
where all their acts are related to this world of substantive spirit. But a
time arrives when they begin to turn their attention to earth again. For a
long time in advance of their birth, human beings unite on a soul level with
the generations at the end of which stand the parents who give birth to them
� not only as far back as their great-great-grandparents, but much further
down the line of preceding generations. The majority of souls nowadays look
down, as it were, to earth from the spiritual world and display a lively
interest in what is happening to their ancestors. Such souls move in the mainstream
of contemporary life.
In contrast, there are a number of
souls, particularly at present, whose interest is concentrated less on
worldly happenings as they approach a new life on earth than on the question
of how they can develop maturity in the spiritual world. Their interest lies
in the spiritual world right up to the moment before they find their way to
earth. As a consequence, when they incarnate they arrive with a consciousness
which has its origins in spiritual impulses. With their spiritual ambitions
they outgrow their environment, and are thus predestined and prepared to go
their own way.
Thus the souls who descend from
pre-earthly to earthly existence can be divided into two groups. One group,
to which the majority of people today still belong, comprises those souls who
can make themselves remarkably at home on earth; who feel thoroughly
comfortable in their warm nest, which so fascinated them long before they
came down to earth, even if it does occasionally appear unpleasant � but that
is only appearance, maya.
Other souls, who may pass patiently
through childhood � appearance is not always the decisive thing � are less
able to make themselves at home, are homeless souls, and grow beyond the
warmth of the nest much more than they grow into it. This latter group
includes those who are subsequently attracted to the anthroposophical
movement. It is therefore clearly predetermined in a certain sense whether or
not one is led to anthroposophy.
The things which are being sought by
these souls on the byways of life, away from the major highways, manifest
themselves in many ways. If the others did not find it so agreeable to take
the well-trodden paths and did not put such obstacles in the way of homeless
souls, the numbers of the latter would be much more obvious to their
contemporaries. But it is widely apparent today how many souls have a hint of
such homelessness about them.
The tendency to such homelessness
could be anticipated: the rapidly growing evidence of a longing in homeless
souls for an attitude to life which was not laid out in advance; a longing
for the spirit in the chaos of contemporary spiritual life. In sketching an
outline of this gradual development, you can find in it, if you reflect, a
little something of what I would like to describe as the anthroposophical
origins of each one of you.
By way of introduction today I will do
no more than pick out in outline some characteristic features. If you look
back at the last decades of the nineteenth century � we could take any number
of fields, but let us take a very characteristic one the cult of Richard
Wagner began to take a hold. It is certainly true that much of this cult
consisted of a cultural flirtation with new ideas, sensationalism and so on.
But all kinds of people gathered in Bayreuth. One could see people who
thought of the long journey to Bayreuth as a kind of modern pilgrimage. But
even among the less fashionable there were those who were also homeless
souls.
Now the essential effect of
Wagnerianism on people � I speak not only about the musical element but about
the movement as a cultural phenomenon � was to offer them something which
went beyond all the usual offerings of a materialistic age. This gave people
a feeling that here there was a gateway to a more spiritual world, a world
differing from their normal environment. What went on in Bayreuth led to a
great longing for more profound spiritual aspirations.
It was, of course, difficult at first
to understand Richard Wagner's characters and dramatic compositions. But many
people felt that they were created from a source very different from the
crude materialism of the time. And the homeless souls who were driven in this
particular direction were prompted into all kinds of dark, instinctive
intuitions through what I might call the suggestive power of Wagnerian drama
and specifically through the way of life that it introduced into our culture.
Indeed, it is true to say that subsequent interpretations by theosophists of Hamlet
or other works of art are very strongly reminiscent of certain essays which
were written by Hans von Wolzogen, who was not a theosophist but a trained
Wagnerian, in the Bayreuther Bl�tter. [ Note 1 ]
Thus one can say that Wagnerianism was
the reason why many people, possessed of a homeless soul, became acquainted
with a way of looking at the world which led away from crude materialism
towards something spiritual; and all those who became part of such a current,
not because of a superficial flirtation with the idea but because of an inner
compulsion of the soul, wanted to develop their experience of a spiritual
world because they felt this kind of inner longing. They were no longer
concerned with the certain evidence which underpinned the materialistic world
view. That was true irrespective of their position in life, whether they were
lawyers or artists, cabinet ministers, officials, parliamentarians or
whatever � even scientists.
As I said, such homeless souls can be
found everywhere. But Wagnerianism provides a particularly characteristic
example of the presence of very many such souls.
I then encountered several of those
people, whose first spiritual taste had been the Wagnerian experience, in
Vienna [ Note 2 ] in the late 1880s, in a group which
consisted entirely of such homeless souls. People no longer really appreciate
the way in which that homelessness was visible for anyone to see even then,
because many of the things which at that time required a great deal of inner
courage have today become commonplace.
For example, I do not believe that
many people today could imagine the following. I was sitting in a circle of
such homeless souls and all kinds of things had already been discussed. One
person started to speak about Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, [ Note 3 ] and spoke in such a manner that the
group felt as if struck by lightning. A new world opened up: it was like
suddenly finding oneself on a new planet. That is how these souls felt.
In all these observations of life
which I am recounting by way of an introduction to the history of the
anthroposophical movement, I never lost my connection with the spiritual
world. It was always there. I mention this because it is the background
against which I speak: the spiritual world accepted as self-evident, and
human beings on earth perceived as images of their real existence as
spiritual beings within the spiritual world. I was involved and came to know
these people, not in order to observe them, but because that is how things
naturally developed.
Having passed through their Wagnerian
metamorphosis, they were involved in a second process of change. For example,
there were among them three good acquaintances, intimate friends even, of H.
P. Blavatsky, [ Note 4 ] who were keen theosophists in the way
that theosophists were when Blavatsky was still alive. But a peculiar quality
adhered to theosophists at that time, the period following the appearance of
Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. They all had
a desire to be extremely esoteric. They had nothing but contempt for their
normal life, including, of course, their work. The exoteric life, however,
was not something which could be avoided. That was accepted. But everything
else was esoteric. In that setting you spoke only to fellow initiates, only
within a small group. And those who were not considered worthy of talking to
about such things were seen as people with whom one spoke about the ordinary
things in life. It was with the former that you discussed esoteric matters.
They were people who, although they might be engineers from the moment they
stepped into practical life, would avidly read a book like Sinnett's Esoteric
Buddhism. [ Note 5 ] These people possessed a certain urge
� partly still as a result of their Wagnerian past � to explain from an
esoteric perspective everything which existed as legend and myth.
But as more and more of these homeless
souls began to appear at the end of the nineteenth century, it was possible
to see how the most interesting among them were not those who studied the
writings of Sinnett and Blavatsky � with at most a nine-tenths honest mind �
but those who did not wish to read for themselves because there were still
great inhibitions about such things at that time, and who listened with
gaping mouths when those who had been reading expounded on these things. And
it was most interesting to observe how the listeners, who were sometimes more
honest than the narrators, grasped these ideas with their homeless souls as
essential spiritual nourishment; spiritual nourishment which they were able
to transform into something more honest through the greater honesty of their
souls, despite the relative dishonesty with which it was being presented to
them. One could see in them the yearning to hear something completely
different from what was offered in the ordinary mainstream of civilization.
How they devoured what they heard! It was most interesting to observe how on
the one hand the tentacles of mainstream life kept drawing people in, and how
on the other they would appear at one of the meeting places � often a coffee
house � and would listen with great yearning. The point is that the honest
souls, the ones who had been subject to the vagaries of life, were there too.
The way in which souls unwilling to
admit to their homelessness were unable to find their bearings was
particularly evident towards the latter part of the nineteenth century. A
person might, for instance, listen with profound interest to an explanation
of the physical, etheric and astral bodies, kama manas, manas, buddhi and so
on. At the same time he was obliged to write the article his newspaper
expected, including all the usual goodies. It really became clear how
difficult it was for some people to leave the mainstream of life. For there
were several among them who behaved as if they wanted to slink away, and
would prefer that no one knew where they had gone when they wished to attend
what was most important and interesting to them in life. It was indeed
interesting how spiritual life, spiritual activity, the yearning for a
spiritual world began particularly to establish itself in European
civilization.
Now you have to remember that
circumstances in the late 1880s were really much more difficult than today.
Even if it was less harmful, it was nevertheless more difficult then to admit
to the existence of a spiritual world, because the physical world of the
senses with all its magnificent laws was proven of course! There was no way
of getting round that! All the proofs were there in the physics laboratories
and the hospitals; all the evidence declared in favour of a world for which
there was proof. But the world which could be proven was so unsatisfactory
for many homeless souls, was useless to the inner soul, to such an extent
that many crept away from it. And at the same time as this great contemporary
culture was on offer to them by the sackful � no, by the ton, in giant
quantities � they took what nips they could from what has to be seen as the
flow of the spiritual world into modern civilization. It was not at all easy
to speak about the spiritual world; a suitable point of entry had to be
found.
If I may once again introduce a
personal note. I had to find a suitable opportunity on which to build. One
could not simply crash in on our civilization with the spiritual world.
Especially in the late 1880s, I linked the points I had to make about the
spiritual world, about its more intimate aspects, in many places with
Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
[ Note 6 ] If one used something which had been
created by no less a person than Goethe, and when it was as obvious as it is
in the Fairy Tale that spiritual impulses had flowed into
it, that was a suitable basis. I certainly could not use what was then being
peddled as theosophy, what had been garnered from Blavatsky, from Sinnett's Esoteric
Buddhism and similar books by a group of people who were undeniably
hard-working. For someone who wanted to preserve his scientifically schooled
thinking in the spiritual world this was simply impossible.
Neither was it easy in another
respect. Why? Well, Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism was soon recognized as
the work of a spiritual dilettante, a compendium of old, badly understood
esoteric bits and pieces. But it was less easy to find access to a phenomenon
of the period such as Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine. For this work
did at least reveal in many places that much of its content had its origins
in real, powerful impulses from the spiritual world. The book expressed a
large number of ancient truths which had been gained through atavistic
clairvoyance in distant ages of mankind. People thus encountered in the
outside world, not from within themselves, something which could be described
as an uncovering of a tremendous wealth of wisdom which mankind had once
possessed as something exceptionally illuminating. This was interspersed with
unbelievable passages which never ceased to amaze, because the book is a
sloppy and dilettantish piece of work as regards any sort of methodology, and
includes superstitious nonsense and much more. In short, Blavatsky's Secret
Doctrine is a peculiar book: great truths side by side with terrible
rubbish. One might almost say that it sums up very well the spiritual
phenomena to which those who developed into the homeless souls of the modern
age were subjected.
In the following period in Weimar [ Note 7 ] I was, of course, occupied
intensively with other things, although even then there were numerous
opportunities to observe such searching souls. For particularly during this
time all kinds of people came to the town to visit the Goethe and Schiller
archive. It was possible to become acquainted with the good and bad sides of
their souls in a remarkable way. I got to know some strange people, as well
as those who were highly cultivated, refined and distinguished. My
description of meeting Herman Grimm, [ Note 8 ] for instance, appeared recently in Das
Goetheanum. [ Note 9 ] One had a better understanding of
Weimar when Herman Grimm was there.
We need only think of his novel Un�tberwindliche
M�chte [ Note 10 ] to see how Grimm also exhibited a
strong drive for spiritual matters. If you read the end of his novel you can
see how the spiritual world intermingles with the physical through the soul
of a dying person. It is very moving, very magnificent. I have spoken about
this in previous lectures. [ Note 11 ]
Of course some strange people also
passed through Weimar. There was a Russian state councillor, for example. No
one could discover quite what he was looking for: it was something or other
in the second part of Goethe's Faust. Exactly how he hoped to achieve
that through the Goethe archive was impossible to elicit. It was also hard to
know what to do to help him. In the end he was simply left to continue his
search. Next to him was a very intelligent American, who loved to sit on the
floor with his legs crossed � a very peculiar sight. It was possible to see
such cameos of contemporary life in their most real form.
When subsequently I went to Berlin,
destiny once again introduced me to a group of homeless souls, and I became involved
to such an extent that this group asked me to hold the lectures which have
now been published in my Eleven European Mystics. [ Note 12 ] They were people who found their way
into the Theosophical Society at a somewhat later date than my Viennese
acquaintances. Only a few of them studied Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. But
these people were well-versed in what Blavatsky's successor, Annie Besant, [ Note 13 ] proclaimed as the theosophical ideas
of the time.
So I found myself once again in a
similar situation to the one in Vienna in the late 1880s, in which it was
possible to observe such homeless souls. And anthroposophy at first grew up,
one might say, together with � not in, but together with � homeless souls who
had initially sought a new home in theosophy.
Tomorrow I will try to lead you
further in this process of self-reflection which we have hardly begun today.
Continued in the next issue of SCR
Thanks to The Rudolf Steiner Archive
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