The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Foreword to the First Edition

[ 1 ] At Christmas 1912, the first official gathering of those followers of a theosophical school of thought took place in Cologne, who were not willing to submerge themselves in a dogmatic Indian movement, but, taking into account the achievements of modern spiritual life and the radical impact that the Christ event had had on earthly history, could only recognize a spiritual training for the West that was appropriate to the stage of development of today’s European humanity.^{1This is the full preface from the first German edition. In later editions it was condensed and moved to an appendix.} They recognized in Rudolf Steiner the spiritual researcher and thinker who was equal to all the demands of modern science, who had grasped the interconnections of historical events as no one before him had, and whose expositions on the human being revealed factual connections that spoke their own language, rather than being imposed doctrines. He had always called his study of humanity “Anthroposophy.” And this was the name now chosen by the followers gathered in Cologne—followers of a science founded on a spiritual understanding of humanity, which sought to approach the knowledge of the divine by striving to grasp the divine seed within the human being—its “I.”

[ 2 ] In order to penetrate the most hidden aspect of the human being—the “I”—with conscious thought, there had to have been a prior confinement within the personality; there had to have been a severing from a spiritual universe in which one rested in a state of dullness, yet felt secure. This journey of humanity through the desert, foreshadowed in the trial of that people who were to be the first to develop the seed of the ego in the soul, took place during the centuries designated as the beginning of the new era. In the Middle Ages, it came to pass that even within the realm of the mysteries, humanity lost contact with the divine hierarchies, and that the exploration of the spiritual all too often descended into a passionate search for visible results in regions that led many astray. The honest, sober search gradually turned, with resignation, to the exploration of nature, thereby fulfilling the task of the hour of the world. The most earnest mystery tradition, which listened for the hour’s signal, supported precisely these endeavors demanded by the moment.

[ 3 ] While, on the one hand, the study of nature as an external world separate from humanity was pursued, the inner life of the human being developed as a “second aspect” that had not yet been considered in this way—as absolute selfhood. However, in order for this internalization to be achieved, it had become necessary for humanity to be deprived, for a time, of the knowledge of reincarnation and karma. Wise guidance of the world here as well! Christianity so powerfully filled souls with its moral greatness and sublimity! The following of Christ, which was striven for and practiced with all intensity and fervor by the best among them, naturally allowed the old Eastern wisdom to sink into oblivion. Early Christianity celebrated its greatest flowering in the internalization of the life of feeling. Yet opposing forces could not be kept at bay; shadow beings grew in the bright light, and the abuse of power reared its head. The intellect and spirit of those who witnessed these all-too-glaring excesses rebelled against them; moral feeling and intellect demanded their due. The Reformation arose, and with it the battle of the spirits for freedom of conscience, for the right to one’s own opinion and perspective. The rationalist age had begun. It gradually led to materialism, into which thought, the Church, and life itself were submerged. That was the journey of the human spirit through the desert.

[ 4 ] Now our souls are desolate. They thirst for the living water, just as that people once did on their journey. We have been forced so deeply into our inner selves that we can no longer bear the compression and constriction, and we break within ourselves if we cannot transcend ourselves. Life within the personality has been turned upside down. It must find its cosmic context once again. But it can no longer return to dullness. The personality cannot relinquish the fruits of its insights. These insights are what it rightly calls its highest happiness. It must now expand, purify, and elevate them until it comes to grasp its deep essence, which, initially hidden, awaits its awakening through the self-acting will of the human being.

[ 5 ] Anthroposophy aims to show the way forward. It does not wish to relinquish any of the new abilities we have acquired, but it seeks to rescue them from the forces of death to which they fall prey if they are not infused with new life.

[ 6 ] This new life can spring forth even from the summary and overview of human events and development, for it reveals the divine wisdom behind the governance of the world.

[ 7 ] It also reveals to us the fact that from the moment our ego is left to its own devices, we ourselves take our destiny—the destiny of humanity—into our own hands; we ourselves work to shape it.

[ 8 ] Individuals know this as far as it concerns them personally. The masses, the great whole, do not yet know it to the extent of its concrete significance for humanity as a whole. The catastrophic events of our time can have no other purpose than to bring people to an awareness of their true selves, to let them grasp their inner self, through which they may rediscover their connection with the Divine and thus find a way out of chaos.

[ 9 ] We owe the great teachings of reincarnation and karma to the East. These teachings once made possible the rise of great civilizations, which were built on the division of people into estates and classes. At that time, these differences did not carry as much weight, for earthly life was merely a brief, transient manifestation for the individual.

[ 10 ] As these truths receded from human consciousness, the West gave rise to the self-reliant individual, who now seeks to shape his own destiny, and then to so-called class consciousness, which, however, escalates into a struggle of all against all—even against a self-created specter of the divine.

[ 11 ] The Marxist view of history reduces the world to nothing more than the product of blind chance, the whim of the propertied classes and ruthless, strong-willed individuals.

[ 12 ] There was a man—Rudolf Steiner—whose historical accounts the workers listened to with enthusiasm. They wrote him letters of thanks because he assumed that they were concerned with more than just a piece of bread and a hard-earned penny. But for this very reason, he was removed from his teaching post. For—as one of the leaders said—we need reasonable coercion, not freedom of thought.

[ 13 ] The world was too dull to appreciate the scholarly and strictly philosophical presentation of his ideas. People had been unwilling to grasp the spirit behind these words.

[ 14 ] Only the followers of theosophical movements listened eagerly and asked him to take them under his wing, for they lacked a knowledgeable spiritual guide and had reached a dead end in their understanding.

[ 15 ] When he took this on, his literary friends withdrew, as did respected publishers who had previously commissioned him but now declined his services.

[ 16 ] When he brought to the Theosophical Society what it had been lacking and raised it above its former level, certain driving forces were alarmed; these forces had sought to reshape the otherwise declining movement into their own tool and now saw their own special purposes threatened. For their goal was not the synthesis of Eastern and Western wisdom for the general betterment of humanity, but rather the galvanization of Europe’s stagnant spiritual life with pre-Christian wisdom.

[ 17 ] Now there was one who brought new life from the depths of Christian esotericism, the synthesis of Eastern and Western thought, of wisdom from the past and the future.

[ 18 ] This had to be suppressed.

[ 19 ] And so a counter-image was set up to counter the longing for Christ that was reawakening in the souls of Europeans. A man of flesh and blood. Still a boy, with an exotic allure—a Hindu who was to be groomed for the role of the Messiah. I would like to spare the reader a description of the further Krishnamurti humbug at this point. Whatever advertising could devise, it did so to launch him. Using diplomatic skills, pleas, cunning, and threats, they worked their way into the theosophical sections to make them compliant with the new agenda. Members in various countries resigned in droves. The German section protested emphatically as a united whole. This led to its expulsion from the Theosophical Society. The external ties with this society were now also severed. The work for the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science continued in Europe in the same manner. Already several years earlier, Rudolf Steiner had made the complete autonomy and independence of his work from any theosophical leadership a condition for any further external collaboration. Now the Anthroposophical Association, in which many foreigners also participated—those who could not go along with the new phase of the Theosophical Society’s development—was transformed into an independent society.

[ 20 ] It was in the final days of December 1912 that the final discussions on these issues took place in Cologne. At that time, Rudolf Steiner chose as the topic for the lecture series he delivered in Cologne to the assembled anthroposophists: The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul.

[ 21 ] He then expressed the hope that the movement he had founded would not fall into the usual pitfalls that all too easily arise from pride, ambition, vanity, and dabbling in the occult. He set it on its path with Goethe’s guiding principle: “Wisdom lies only in truth.” He spoke these words straight to the hearts of his listeners:

[ 22 ] “Truth blossoms only when self-knowledge takes root in the human soul with the utmost seriousness. Where does all vanity come from? Where does all insincerity come from? They stem from a lack of self-knowledge. From what alone can truth spring forth? From what alone can genuine devotion to the divine realms and divine wisdom spring forth? They can only spring from true self-knowledge, self-education, and self-discipline.”

—Marie Steiner