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Awakening to Community
GA 257

27 February 1923, Stuttgart

Lecture VI

The background mood out of which I shall be addressing you today is not the same as that that prevailed on earlier occasions when I was privileged to speak here. Since New Year's Eve 1922, that mood is conditioned by the dreadful picture of the burning Goetheanum. The pain and suffering that picture inevitably causes anyone who loved the Goetheanum because of its connection with anthroposophy are such that no words can possibly describe them.

There might seem to be some justification for feeling that a movement as intent on spiritual things as ours is has no real reason to grieve over the loss of a material expression of its being. But that does not apply in the case of the Goetheanum we have lost. It was not an arbitrary building for our work. During its erection, a process that went on for almost ten years, I often had occasion to explain that a structure that might suitably have housed some other spiritual or similar movement would not have been appropriate for our Anthroposophical Movement. For, as I have often said, we are not just a spiritual movement, which, as its membership increased, found itself with a number of people in its ranks who wanted to build it a home in some conventional style or other. The point here was that anthroposophy is built on a spiritual foundation that is not one-sidedly religious or scientific or artistic. It is an all-embracing movement, intent on demonstrating every aspect of mankind's great ideals: the moral-religious, the artistic, and the scientific ideals. There could, therefore, be no question of erecting any arbitrary type of building for the Anthroposophical Movement. Its design had to come from the same source from which anthroposophical ideas receive their shaping as an expression of the spiritual perspective gained on the anthroposophical path of knowledge, and it had to be carried out in artistic harmony with that outlook. For almost ten years many friends worked side by side with me trying to incorporate and demonstrate in every single line, in every architectural and sculptural form, every choice of color, what was flowing from the wellsprings of anthroposophical investigation, anthroposophical life, anthroposophical intention. That was all incorporated there, and the building was intimately associated with the artistic and scientific striving in the Movement. Friends who attended eurythmy performances in the Goetheanum will surely have felt how, for example, the architectural forms and decoration of the auditorium harmonized with and responded to eurythmic movement. It was even possible to have the feeling that the movements of the performers on the stage there were born of those architectural and plastic forms. If one stood on the podium speaking from the heart in a truly anthroposophical spirit, every line and form responded and chimed in with what one was saying. That was our goal there. It was, of course, a first attempt, but such was our goal, and it could be sensed. That is why those who worked on the Goetheanum at Dornach have the sensation that the very feelings they put into their efforts went up in the flames of New Year's Eve. It was just this intimate connection of anthroposophical feeling and will with the Goetheanum forms—forms that were artistically shaped by and for spiritual contemplation and that can never find a substitute in any thought forms or words—that makes our grief at the loss we have suffered so immeasurably deep.

All this ought to become part of the memories of those who grew to love the Goetheanum and to feel the intimate connection with it just described. We must, in a sense, build a monument to it in our hearts in memory form. Even though the very intimacy of our connection with it is the reason why we are now shelterless, we must seek the more intensively for a shelter in our hearts that will replace the one we have lost, We must try with every means at our disposal to rebuild in our hearts, for all eternity, this building that has been lost as an external source of artistic stimulation. But the terrible flame into which all the lesser flames of New Year's Eve were drawn is there in the background of every effort yet to be made in the field of anthroposophy. Though living, spiritual anthroposophy came to no harm in the fire, a great deal of work that we had been trying to accomplish for anthroposophy in the present day world was brought to naught.

I do believe, though, that if what we experienced on that occasion becomes properly rooted in our members' hearts, the grief and pain we suffered can be turned into strength to support us in everything we are called upon to accomplish for anthroposophy in the near future. It is often the case in life that when a group of people find themselves faced by a common disaster, they are united by it in a way that gives them strength and energy to go on together in effective common action. Experience, not grey theories or abstract thoughts, should be the source on which we draw for the strength needed for our anthroposophical work.

My dear friends, I want to add these comments to those I will be making in connection with the theme I have had to choose for this conference, to a description of the conditions that must prevail in anthroposophical community building. I would like to include them not only because they are graven on my heart, but because they point to a fact on which we would do well to focus our attention in these coming days. A great deal of sacrifice and devotion went into the work on the Goetheanum. The impulses from which that sacrifice and devotion sprang have always been there to count on in the two decades of our work, wherever anthroposophy really lived. They were born of hearts filled with enthusiasm for anthroposophy, and the Goetheanum was the product of deeds done by anthroposophically-minded individuals. Though, for a variety of reasons, we are thinking—are having to think—today about how to regenerate the Society, we should not forget on the other hand that the Society has been in existence for two decades; that a considerable number of people have undergone experiences of destiny in their common work and effort; that the Society is not something that can be founded all over again. For history, real history, history that has been lived and experienced, cannot be erased. We cannot begin something now that began twenty years ago. We must guard against any such misconceptions as these as we proceed with our current deliberations. Anyone who has found his way into the Society over the years certainly sees plenty to find fault with in it, and is justified in doing so. Many a true and weighty word has already been uttered here on that score. But we must still take into account the fact that the Society has been effective and done things. There are certainly people enough in the Society who can express the weight of their grief and sorrow in the words, “We have suffered a common loss in our beloved Goetheanum.”

It makes a difference whether a person joined the Society in 1917 or later, and whether one's relation to it is such that these grief-stricken words issue from long and deep experience in it. That should influence our deliberations. It will do much to tone down the feelings that some of our friends had good reason to express here. I heard someone say (and I certainly felt the justice of the remark), “After what I have listened to here I will go home unable to continue speaking of anthroposophy as I used to when I was still full of illusions.” Part of what that sentence conveys will disappear if one considers how much those individuals who have been anthroposophists for two decades have gone through together, and how much they have had to suffer with each other recently, because that suffering is the product of a long life in the Anthroposophical Society. The load of worry we are presently carrying cannot wipe out all that human experience; it remains with us. It would still be there even if events here were to take a much worse turn than they have taken thus far. Are we to forget the depths for the surface? That must not be allowed to happen in a spiritual movement born of the depths of human hearts and souls. What has come into being as the Anthroposophical Movement cannot rightly be called sunless. Even the sun sometimes suffers eclipse.

Of course, this should not prevent our dealing with the situation confronting this assemblage in a way that enables us to provide anthroposophy once again with a proper vehicle in the form of a real Anthroposophical Society. But our success in that depends entirely on creating the right atmosphere.

It will, of course, be impossible for me to cover the whole situation today. But in the two lectures I am to give I shall try to touch on as much of what needs to be said as I possibly can. Some things will have to be left out. But I do want to stress two matters in particular. Those are the pressing need for community building in the Society and the symptomatic event of the entrance into the Anthroposophical Movement of the exceedingly gratifying youth movement. But in anthroposophical matters we have to develop a rather different outlook than prevails elsewhere. We would not have taken our stand on ground that means so much to many people if we could not see things in a different light than that in which the modern world habitually views them.

Community building! It is particularly noteworthy that the community building ideal should be making its appearance in our day. It is the product of a deep, elemental feeling found in many human souls today, the product of a sense of definite relationship between person and person that includes an impulse to joint activity.

A while ago, a number of young theologians came to me. They were preparing to enter the ministry. They were intent above all else on a renewing of religion, on a renewal permeated through and through by the true Christ force, such as to be able to take hold of many people of the period in the way they long to be taken hold of but cannot be by the traditional confessions as they are today. I had to bring up something that seemed to me to have vital import for the development of such a movement. I said that a suitable method of community building must be found. What I had in mind was to develop a religious and pastoral element capable of really uniting people. I told these friends who had come to me that religious community could not be effectively built with abstract words, the usual kind of sermon, and the meagre remnants of a divine service, which are all that most contemporary churches have to offer. The prevailing intellectualistic trend that is increasingly taking over the religious field has had the effect of saturating a great many present day sermons with a rationalistic, intellectualistic element. This does not give people anything that could unite them. On the contrary, it divides and isolates them, and the social community is reduced to atoms. This must be easy to see for anyone who realizes that the single individual can develop rationalistic and intellectualistic values all by himself. Simply attaining a certain cultural level enables an individual to acquire increasingly perfect intellectual equipment without depending on anyone else. One can think alone and develop logic alone; in fact, one can do it all the better for being by oneself. When one engages in purely logical thinking, one feels a need to withdraw from the world to the greatest possible extent, to withdraw from people. But the tendency to want to get off by oneself is not the only one man has. My effort today to throw light on what it is in the heart's depths that searches for community is called for by the fact that we are living in a time when human nature must go on to develop the consciousness soul, must become ever more conscious.

Becoming more conscious is not the same thing as becoming more intellectualistic. It means outgrowing a merely instinctual way of experiencing. But it is just in presenting anthroposophy that every attempt should be made to portray what has thus been raised to a clear, conscious level in all its elemental aliveness, to offer it in so living a form that it seems like people's own naive experiencing and feeling. We must make sure that we do this.

Now there is one kind of community in human life that everyone over the entire globe is aware of, and it shows that community is something built into humankind. It is a type of community to which a lot of attention is being given in modern cultural and even political and economic life, and this in an often harmful way. But there is a lesson of sorts to be learned from it, though a primitive one.

In a child's early years it is introduced into a human community that is absolutely real, concrete and human, a community without which one could not exist. I am referring to the community of human speech. Speech is the form of community that we might say nature presents to our contemplation. Speech—and especially our mother tongue—is built into our whole being at a time when the child's etheric body is not yet born, and it is our first experience of the community building element. We can lay it to the rationalism of our age that though people nowadays have some feeling for languages and nationality and conceive folk groups in relation to the language they speak, they do so from the political-agitational standpoint, without paying any heed to deep and intimate underlying soul configurations, to the tremendous aspects of destiny and karma attached to a language and to the spirit behind it, all of which are the real and intrinsic reason why human beings cry out for community. What would become of us if we passed one another by without hearing resounding in the other's words the same life of soul that we ourselves put into those same words when we use them? If everybody were to practice just a little bit of self-knowledge, we would be able to form an adequate picture, which I cannot take the time to develop now, of all we owe to language as the foundation of a first, primitive building of community.

But there is a community building element still deeper than language, though we encounter it more rarely. On a certain level, human language is indeed something that unites people in community life, but it does not penetrate to the deepest levels of soul life. At certain moments of our life on earth we can become aware of another community building element that transcends that of language. A person feels it when his destiny brings him together again with others whom he knew as children. Let us take an ideal example. Someone finds himself in later life—in his forties or fifties, say—in the company of several companions of his youth or childhood whom he has not seen for decades but with whom he spent the period between his tenth and twentieth years. Let us assume that good relationships prevailed among them, fruitful, loving relationships. Now imagine what it means for these individuals to share the experience of having their souls stirred by common memories of their youthful life together. Memories lie deeper than experiences on the language level. Souls sound more intimately in unison when they are linked by the pure soul language of memories, even though the community experience they thus share may be quite brief. As everyone knows from such experiences, it is certainly not just the single memories that are summoned up to reverberate in the souls of those present that stir such intimate soul-depths in them; it is something quite else. It is not the concrete content of the particular memories recalled. An absolutely indefinite yet at the same time very definite communal experiencing is going on in these human souls. A resurrection is taking place, with the countless details of what these companions experienced together now melting into a single totality, and what each contributes as he enters into the others' recollections with them is the element that awakens the capacity to experience that totality.

That is how it is in life on earth. As a result of pursuing this fact of soul life into the spiritual realm, I had to tell the theological friends who had come to me for the purpose described that if true community were to come of the work of religious renewal, there would have to be a new form of worship, a new cultus, suited to the age we live in. Shared experience of the cultus is something that quite of its own nature calls forth the community building element in human souls. The Movement for Religious Renewal understood this and accepted the cultus. I believe that Dr. Rittelmeyer spoke weighty words when he said from this platform that such a development of community could conceivably become one of the greatest threats to the Anthroposophical Society that the Movement for Religious Renewal could present. For the cultus contains a tremendously significant community building element. It unites human beings with one another. What is it in this cultus that unites them, that can make a commonality out of separate individuals atomized by intellectuality and logic, and that most certainly will create commonality? For that is surely what Dr. Rittelmeyer had in mind, that this is the means of building community. Since community, however, is also a goal of the Anthroposophical Society, the Society will have to find its own way of building it if the Movement for Religious Renewal is not to pose a threat to it from that angle.

Now what is the secret of the community building element in the cultus developed for the Movement for Religious Renewal with that specific end in view?

Everything that comes to expression in the various forms of worship, either as ceremonial acts or words, is a reflection, a picturing of real experiences, not earth experiences, of course, but real experiences in the world through which man makes his way before he is born; in other words, experiences of the second half of his path between death and rebirth. That is the part of the cosmos he passes through from the midnight hour of life after death to the moment when he descends again into life on earth. In the realm thus traversed are found the beings, the scenes, the events faithfully reflected in all true forms of worship. What is it, then, that a person is experiencing in the cultus in common with others whom some karma or other has brought together with him? For karma is so intricately woven that we may ascribe all encounters with our fellow men to its agency. He is experiencing cosmic memories of pre-earthly existence with them. They come to the surface in the soul's subconscious depths. Before we descended to earth, we and these others lived through a cosmic lifetime in a world that reappears before us in the cultus. That is a tremendous tie. It does more than just convey pictures; it carries super-sensible forces into the sense world. But the forces it conveys are forces that concern man intimately; they are bound up with the most intimate background experiences of the human soul. The cultus derives its binding power from the fact that it conveys spiritual forces from the spiritual world to earth and presents supernatural realities to the contemplation of human beings living on the earth. There is no such reality for man to contemplate in rationalistic talks that have the effect of making him forget the spiritual world, forget it even in subconscious soul depths. In the cultus he has it right there before him in a living, power-pervaded picture that is more than a mere symbol. Nor is this picture a dead image; it carries real power, because it places before man scenes that were part of his spiritual environment before he was incarnated in an earthly body. The community creating power of the cultus derives from the fact that it is a shared, comprehensive memory of spiritual experiences.

The Anthroposophical Society also needs just such a force to foster community within it. But the ground this springs from need not be the same for the Anthroposophical Movement as for the Movement for Religious Renewal. The one by no means excludes the other, however; the two can co-exist in fullest harmony provided the relationship between them is rightly felt.

But that can be the case only if we acquire some understanding for a further community building element that can be introduced into human life. Memory, transposed into the spiritual realm, rays out to us from the form the cultus takes. The cultus speaks to greater depths than those of intellect: it speaks to man's inwardness. For at bottom the soul really does understand the speech of the spirit, even though that speech may not be fully consciously perceived in present day earth life.

Now, in order to grasp the further element that must come to play a corresponding role in the Anthroposophical Society, you will not only have to contemplate the secrets of language and memory in their relationship to community building; you will also have to consider another aspect of human life. Let us study the condition in which we find a dreaming person and compare it with that of someone going about his daytime activities wide awake.

The dream world may indeed be beautiful, sublime, rich in pictures and in significance. Nevertheless, it isolates people here on earth. A dreaming person is alone with his dreams. He lies there asleep and dreaming, perhaps in the midst of others awake or asleep, the content of whose inner worlds remains completely unrelated to what is going on in his dream consciousness. A person is isolated in his dream world, and even more so in the world of sleep. But the moment we awake we begin to take some part in communal life. The space we and those around us occupy is the same space; the feeling and impressions they have of it are the same we have. We wake at hand of our immediate surroundings to the same inner life another wakes to. In waking out of the isolation of our dreams we awaken, up to a certain point at least, into the community of our fellowmen, simply as a result of the way we are related to the world around us. We cease being completely to ourselves, shut in and encapsulated, as we were when absorbed in our dream world, though our dreams may have been beautiful, sublime, significant. But how do we awaken? We awaken through the impact of the outer world, through its light and tones and warmth. We awaken in response to all the various impressions that the sense world makes on us. But we also wake up in ordinary everyday life in the encounter with the external aspects of other human beings, with their natural aspects. We wake up to everyday life in the encounter with the natural world. It wakes us out of our isolation and introduces us into a community of sorts. We have not yet wakened up as human beings by meeting our fellow men and by what goes on in their innermost beings. That is the secret of everyday life. We wake up in response to light and tone and perhaps also to the words someone speaks in the exercise of his natural endowment, words spoken from within outward. In ordinary everyday life we do not wake up in the encounter with what is going on in the depths of his soul or spirit, we wake up in the encounter with his natural aspects.

The latter constitutes the third awakening, or at least a third condition of soul life. We awaken from the first into the second through nature's impact. We awaken from the second into the third at the call of the soul-spiritual element in our fellowmen. But we must first learn to hear that call. Just as a person wakes up through the natural world surrounding him in the right way in everyday life, so do we wake up rightly at a higher level in the encounter with the soul-spirit of our fellowmen as we sensed light and tone on awakening to everyday life. We can see the most beautiful pictures and have the most sublime experiences in our isolated dream consciousness, but we will scarcely be able to read, for example, unless highly abnormal conditions prevail. We are not in a relationship to the outer world that would make such things possible. We are also unable to understand the spiritual world, no matter how many beautiful ideas we may have garnered from anthroposophy or how much we may have grasped theoretically about such matters as etheric and astral bodies. We begin to develop an understanding for the spiritual world only when we wake up in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in our fellowmen. That is where the first true understanding of anthroposophy sets in. Yes, it is indeed necessary to base our understanding of anthroposophy on what can be called a waking up in the encounter with the soul and spirit of another person.

The strength needed to achieve this awakening can be created by implanting spiritual idealism in human communities. We talk a lot about idealism these days, but it has become a threadbare thing in the culture and civilization of the present. For true idealism exists only where man reverses the direction he takes when, in presenting the cultus, he brings the spiritual world down to earth; when, in other words, he consciously makes himself capable of lifting to the super-sensible-spiritual, the ideal level, what he has seen and learned and understood on the earthly level. We bring the supernatural down into a power-permeated picture when we celebrate the ritual of the cultus. We lift ourselves and our soul life to the super-sensible level when our experiences in the physical world are experienced so spiritually and idealistically that we come to feel we have experienced them in the super-sensible world itself and that what we perceive here in the sense world suddenly comes all alive on being lifted to the ideal level. It comes alive when properly permeated with our wills and feeling. When we ray will through our inner being and infuse it with enthusiasm, we carry our idealized sense experience in a direction exactly opposite to that taken when we embody the super-sensible in the ritual of the cultus. Whether the anthroposophical community be large or small, we can achieve what I am characterizing when, infusing living power into the spiritual ideas we form, we put ourselves in a position actually to experience something of that awakening element, something that doesn't stop at idealizing our sense experience and leaving it at the stage of an abstract thought, but that endows the ideal with a higher life as we live into it and make it the counterpart of the cultus by raising it from the physical to the super-sensible level. We can achieve it in our life of feeling by taking care to imbue everything we do for anthroposophy with thoroughly spiritualized feeling. We do this when, for instance, we feel that the very doorway we reverently enter on our way to an anthroposophical assemblage is consecrated by the common anthroposophical purpose being served in the room it leads to, no matter how mundane the setting. We must be able to feel that everybody joining with us in a communal reception of anthroposophy has the same attitude. It is not enough to have a deep abstract conviction of this; it must be inwardly experienced, so that we do not just sit in a room where anthroposophy is being pursued, a group of so and so many individuals taking in what is being read or spoken and having our own thoughts about it. A real spiritual being must be present in a room where anthroposophy is being carried on, and this as a direct result of the way anthroposophical ideas are being absorbed. Divine powers are present in sense perceptible form in the cultus celebrated on the physical plane. Our hearts and souls and attitudes must learn similarly to invoke the presence of a real spiritual being in a room where anthroposophy is being talked of. We must so attune our speaking, our feeling, our thinking, our impulses of will to a spiritual purpose, avoiding the pitfall of the abstract, that we can feel a real spiritual being hovering there above us, looking on and listening. We should divine a super-sensible presence, invoked by our pursuit of anthroposophy. Then each single anthroposophical activity can begin to be a realizing of the super-sensible.

If you study primitive communities, you will find another communal element in addition to language. Language has its seat in the upper part of man. But taking the whole man into consideration, you will find that common blood is what links members of primitive communities. Blood ties make for community. But what lives there in the blood is the folk soul or folk spirit, and this is not present in the same way among people who have developed freedom. A common spiritual element once entered groups with common blood ties, working from below upward. Wherever common blood flows in the veins of a number of people, there we can discern the presence of a group soul.

A real community spirit is similarly attracted by our common experiencing when we study anthroposophy together, though it is obviously not a group soul active in the bloodstream. If we are able to sense this, we can form true communities.

We must make anthroposophy real by learning to be aware in anthroposophical community life that where people join in anthroposophical tasks together, there they experience their first awakening in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in their fellows. Human beings wake up in the mutual encounter with other human beings. As each one has new experiences between his encounters with these others, and has grown a little, these awakenings take place in an ever new way as people go on meeting. The awakenings undergo a burgeoning development.

When you have discovered the possibility that human souls wake up in the encounter with human souls, and human spirits wake up in the encounter with human spirits, and go to anthroposophical groups with a living awareness that only now have you come awake and only now begin to grow together into an understanding of anthroposophy, and on the basis of that understanding take anthroposophical ideas into an awakened soul rather than into an everyday soul asleep to higher things, then the true spirit of community descends upon the place where you are working. Is truth involved when we talk of the super-sensible world, yet are unable to rise to awareness of a spiritual presence and of this reversed cultus? We are firmly grounded in our understanding of things of the spirit only when we do not rest content with abstract spiritual concepts and a capacity to express them theoretically, but instead grow into a sure belief that higher beings are present with us in a community of spirit when we engage in spiritual study. No external measures can bring about anthroposophical community building. You have to call it forth from the profoundest depths of human consciousness.

I have described part of the path that leads to that goal, and tomorrow we will follow it further. Descriptions of this kind are intended to show that the most important thing for any further development of the Anthroposophical Society is that it become absorbed in a true grasp of anthroposophy. If we have that grasp, it leads not only to spiritual ideas but to community with the spirit, and an awareness of community with the spiritual world is itself a community building force. Karmically preordained communities will then spring up as an outcome of true anthroposophical awareness. No external measures for achieving that can be indicated, and a person who offers any such is a charlatan.

Now these matters have been understood to some degree during the two decades of anthroposophy's development, and quite a good many members have also understood them in a spiritual sense. I will perhaps return to this subject and discuss it more fully tomorrow when I continue with these reflections and go on to point out a further goal. For now, I would like to add just a few words on matters that may have been occupying you after hearing my description of the spiritual bases of anthroposophical community life. On the one hand, things in the Anthroposophical Movement are really such as to necessitate my describing them as I have done. The Anthroposophical Society may present this or that appearance in a given phase. But anthroposophy is independent of anthroposophical societies and can be found independently of them. It can be found in a special way when one human being learns to wake up in the encounter with another and out of such awakening the forming of communities occurs. For one undergoes ever fresh awakenings through those with whom one finds oneself foregathered, and that is what holds such groups together. Inner, spiritual realities are at work here.

These matters must be increasingly understood in the Anthroposophical Society. Every consideration brought up in connection with the Society's welfare ought really to be pervaded with forces intimately related to anthroposophy itself.

It was deeply satisfying to me, after spending weeks attending larger and smaller conclaves where preparations were being made for these delegates' meetings, and listening there to debates reminiscent of the ordinary, everyday kind of rationalistic considerations in which parliaments and clubs engage, to go to an assemblage of young people, a meeting of young academicians. They, too, were pondering what ought to be done. For a while the talk was about external matters. But as time passed, it changed, all unaware, into a truly anthroposophical discussion. Matters that first appeared in an everyday light took on aspects that made anything but an anthroposophical treatment impossible.

It would be ideal if, instead of dragging in anthroposophical theories in an artificial, sentimental, nebulous way, as has so often happened, a down-to-earth course were to be pursued. Taking life's ordinary concerns as a starting point, the discussion should lead to the conclusion that unless anthroposophy were called upon, no one would know any longer how to go about studying such subjects as physics and chemistry. This spirit could serve to guide us.

But no solution will be found by tomorrow evening if things go on as they have up to this point; they can only lead to a state of tremendous, tragic chaos. The most important thing is to avoid any sentimental dragging in of all sorts of matters, and instead fill our hearts with anthroposophical impulses, conceived in full clarity.

As things are now, I see two parties, two separate groups of human beings sitting in this room, neither of which in the least understands the other, neither of which is able to take the first small step toward mutual understanding. Why is this the case? It is because what one side is saying issues inevitably from the experience of two whole decades, as I explained briefly earlier today, and the other side takes no interest whatsoever in that experience. I say this not in criticism, but in a spirit of concerned pleading. There have been occasions in the past when well-meaning people, in their own way genuinely enthusiastic about anthroposophy, have simply cut across our deliberations with such comments as, “What possible interest can these reports have for us when they keep on being served up at a moment when the important thing is that people unacquainted with the great dangers the Society faces want to learn about them?” Here, on the one side, we see an elemental, natural interest in the life of the Anthroposophical Society, a life that may have certain familial characteristics, but that has the good aspects of the familial as well. On the other side we find no interest in that life, and instead just a general conception of an Anthroposophical Society.

As things stand today, both points of view are justified, so justified that unless we can quickly develop a wholly different form of discussion, the best thing we could do (I am just expressing my opinion, for the decision will have to be made by the Society) would be to leave the old Society as it is and found a union of free anthroposophical communities for those who want something entirely different. Then each party could carry on in the way that suits it. We would have the old Society on the one side, and on the other a loose but closely related confederation of free communities. The two societies could work out ways of living together. It would be better to solve the problem this way than to continue on in the hopeless situation that would present itself tomorrow evening if the discussion were to go on as it has thus far. So I ask you to put on the agenda the further question whether you would not prefer to avoid the false situation that would develop from keeping the two groups welded together, regardless of whether things stay as they have been or undergo some modification. If the situation remains as it is, with each side failing to understand the other, let us go ahead and set up the two suggested groups within the one movement. I say this with an anxious, a very anxious heart; for surely no one will deny that I understand what it is to feel concern for our anthroposophical undertaking and know what it means to love it. But it is better to have two devoted sisters, each going her own way and united only by a common ideal, than to settle for something that would again lead in short order to a state of chaos.

My dear friends, you simply must not let yourselves overlook the fact that it is the various single enterprises that are causing our troubles. That should have been worked out in clearest detail. I am certainly not stating that the last Central Executive Committee accomplished a great deal more, materially, than the one before it, not any more, that is, than I accomplished when I was similarly active at the center in my role as General Secretary. But that is not the question. The real question is: What should have happened, anthroposophically speaking, after all the various enterprises were started here in Stuttgart? This will have to be answered. We cannot at this point dissolve what has been brought into being. Once these enterprises exist, we must find out how to keep them flourishing. But if we fail, as we have in the past four years, to learn how to go about this in an anthroposophical spirit, if we introduce enterprises as foreign bodies into the Anthroposophical Movement, as we have done, these institutions that have been in existence since 1919 will ruin the whole Anthroposophical Movement. They will ruin any Central Executive Committee, no matter what name it is given.

We should therefore keep our discussions objective and impersonal, and try to reach some clarity on what form the Society ought to take, now that it embraces all these institutions, and among them one as wonderful as the Waldorf School. Not a single word has yet been spoken on this subject, for those who are most familiar with what is going on in Stuttgart have thus far kept fairly silent. I would particularly like to hear what the two members of the Central Executive Committee would say to this. [The members of the Central Executive Committee were Ernst Uehli, Emil Leinhas, Dr. Carl Unger.] (I am not including Herr Leinhas, the third member, as he was the only one who helped me in a problematical situation and who continues to help. Indeed, for his sake I hardly like to see him go on devoting himself to the Central Executive Committee, ideally fitted for it though he is.) It is not a question of these two gentlemen defending themselves, but simply of saying what they think about the future shaping of the Anthroposophical Society, which is capable of amalgamating the enterprises that have been in existence since 1919; otherwise, it would have been an irresponsible deed to launch them. We cannot leave it at that, now that they exist.

These are very, very serious questions. We have to deal with them and discuss them objectively and impersonally. I meant what I said objectively, not as an attack on any member or members of the Central Executive Committee. Nobody is being disparaged, but in my opinion these problems, thus again sharply enunciated by me, had to be brought up. If the two proposed societies are to be established, the group that would be a continuation of the old Anthroposophical Society could make itself responsible for the projects the Society has undertaken, and the other group, that feels no interest in them, could pursue a more narrowly anthroposophical path.

This is what I wanted to put before you in a brief sketch. Tomorrow at twelve I shall speak in detail about matters of business.

Sechster Vortrag

Die Stimmung, aus der heraus ich heute zu Ihnen spreche, ist nicht dieselbe, aus der es mir vergönnt war, es in früheren Zeiten zu tun; denn seit dem Silvesterabend des Jahres 1922 auf 1923 steht im Hintergrunde dieser Stimmung das furchtbare Bild des brennenden Goetheanums. Es ist ja so, daß der Schmerz, das Leid, das verbunden sein muß für denjenigen, der aus der Sache der Anthroposophie heraus dieses Goetheanum liebte, ein so großer und so gearteter ist, daß er durch Worte nicht ausgedrückt werden kann. Es könnte vielleicht scheinen, als ob die Empfindung berechtigt wäre, daß eine ins Geistige blickende Bewegung, wie es unsere anthroposophische ist, keinen so tiefen Grund haben sollte, zu trauern über ein äußeres Denkmal ihres Wesens. Aber mit dem Goetheanum, das wir verloren haben, steht es doch etwas anders. Es war nicht ein beliebiger äußerer Bau für unsere anthroposophische Sache. Ich habe es oftmals während der fast zehnjährigen Arbeit am Bau auseinanderzusetzen gehabt, wie das, was bei einer andern, ähnlichen Gelegenheit, bei dem Bau eines Heimes für eine geistige oder sonstige Bewegung sonst wohl hätte der Fall sein können, nicht hat sein können bei unserer anthroposophischen Bewegung. Denn hier handelte es sich nicht nur darum, so sagte ich oftmals, daß man eine geistige Bewegung hat, die durch ihre Vergrößerung in einer Reihe von opferwilligen, hingebungsvollen Persönlichkeiten die Absicht hervorbringt, ihr eine eigene Heimstätte zu bauen, die in diesem oder jenem herkömmlichen Stile hätte aufgeführt werden sollen. Hier handelte es sich darum, daß Anthroposophie auf einem geistigen Boden steht, der nicht in einseitiger Weise irgendeine religiöse oder Erkenntnis- oder künstlerische Bewegung ist, sondern eine umfassende Bewegung, die sich nach diesen verschiedenen Seiten der größten Menschheitsideale, dem religiös-moralischen, dem künstlerischen und dem Erkenntnisideale offenbaren will. Und so konnte gar nicht die Absicht entstehen, einen beliebig gestalteten Bau der anthroposophischen Bewegung zu errichten, sondern es mußte aus denselben Quellen, aus denen die anthroposophischen Ideen gestaltet werden als Ausdruck geistiger Anschauung für die Erkenntnisbewegung der Anthroposophie, auch in künstlerischer Weise dieser Bau aufgeführt werden. Und während fast zehn Jahren haben viele Freunde, mir zur Seite stehend, in jeder einzelnen Linienform, in jeder äußeren Gestaltung des Architektonischen und Plastischen, in jeder Farbengebung das äußerlich zu verkörpern, zu verbildlichen gesucht, was aus den Quellen anthroposophischer Anschauung, anthroposophischen Lebens und anthroposophischen Wollens kommt. In jede Linienführung, in jede plastische Form, in jede Farbe war hineingelegt diese Anschauung, dieses Leben. Und innig verbunden war dieser Bau mit demjenigen, was auch sonst nach der Erkenntnisseite, nach der künstlerischen Seite innerhalb der anthroposophischen Bewegung arbeiten, wirken wollte. Die Freunde, welche zum Beispiel Eurythmievorstellungen im Dornacher Goetheanumbau gesehen haben, sie werden wohl den Eindruck bekommen haben, wie gewissermaßen alles dasjenige, was aus der inneren Architektur und aus der Innenbildlichkeit des Zuschauerraumes, des Bühnenraumes antwortete auf die Bewegungen der Eurythmie, in innigster Harmonie mit diesen Bewegungen stand. Man konnte wohl den Eindruck haben, daß aus den Bau- und plastischen Formen heraus die Bewegungen der Menschen auf der Bühne selber geboren werden. Stand man am Podium und sprach man so recht herzlich aus dem anthroposophischen Geiste heraus, so war jede Linienführung, jede Formgestaltung dasjenige, was einem entgegenkam, was mitsprach. Das war angestrebt worden. Gewiß, es ist für das erste Mal ein Versuch gewesen, aber es ist angestrebt worden, und es konnte wohl empfunden werden. Und darum ist es so, daß derjenige, der seine Arbeit an dieses Dornacher Goetheanum gewendet hat, die Empfindungen, die er hineingelegt hat in diese Arbeit, mit von den Flammen, die da sengten am Silvesterabend, selbst verzehrt findet. Gerade das intime Zusammensein anthroposophischen Fühlens und anthroposophischen Wollens mit diesen Formen, die so sehr aus der unmittelbaren Anschauung und für diese Anschauung künstlerisch gestaltet waren, die sich niemals ersetzen lassen durch irgendwelche Gedankenformen, durch irgendwelche Interpretationen, das macht den Schmerz über den Verlust zu einem so ungeheuer tiefen. Das muß aber auch einziehen in die Erinnerung, die diejenigen haben können, welche das Goetheanum liebgewonnen haben, welche diesen intimen Einklang empfunden haben. Und in einer gewissen Weise müssen wir es aufrichten als eine Erinnerung in unseren Herzen. Wir müssen gewissermaßen, während wir auf der einen Seite durch die erwähnte Intimität obdachlos geworden sind, ein geistiges Obdach in unseren Herzen um so intersiver suchen an Stelle desjenigen, was wir verloren haben. Wir müssen mit allen Mitteln danach streben, in unseren Herzen für die Ewigkeit diesen Bau aufzurichten, der uns für das äußere künstlerische Empfinden genommen worden ist. Aber im Hintergrunde von alledem, was weiterhin gewirkt werden kann auf dem Felde der Anthroposophie, steht dennoch diese furchtbare Flamme, in die alle Teilflammen zusammenschlugen um Mitternacht vom 31. Dezember zum 1. Januar. Und es verbrannte schon, wenn auch nicht ein Stück der lebendigen geistigen Anthroposophie, so doch ein großes Stück Arbeit, welche zu leisten wir bestrebt waren für das Anthroposophische in unserer Gegenwart.

Ich glaube, daß dasjenige, was da erlebt worden ist, vor allen Dingen, wenn es in der richtigen Weise sich einwurzelt in den Herzen unserer anthroposophischen Freunde, aus dem Schmerze, aus der Trauer heraus doch auch eine Kraft wiederum geben kann zu alledem, wozu wir für die anthroposophische Arbeit in der nächsten Zeit aufgerufen sind. Es ist im Leben doch schon so, daß wenn eine Anzahl von Menschen sich sagen muß, wir haben ein gemeinsames Unglück getragen, das auch in einer gewissen Weise bindet, so daß von der andern Seite wiederum Stärke und Kraft kommen kann zu gemeinsamem, wirksamem Tun. Und aus Erlebnissen heraus, nicht aus grauen Theorien, nicht aus abstrakten Gedanken sollen ja die Kräfte kommen, welche uns beseelen sollen zu anthroposophischem Wirken.

Meine lieben Freunde, ich möchte diese Dinge doch hinzufügen zu jenem Thema, das ich mir für diese beiden Tage wählen mußte, zu der Schilderung der Bedingungen einer anthroposophischen Gemeinschaftsbildung. Ich möchte sie deshalb hinzufügen, weil sie, abgesehen davon, daß sie so tief eingegraben sind im Herzen, auf eine derjenigen Tatsachen hinweisen, die wir gar sehr vor unser Seelenauge stellen sollten in diesen Tagen. In das Goetheanum ist viel von Opfersinn, viel von hingebungsvoller Arbeit hineingeströmt; und die Impulse zu diesem Opfersinn, zu dieser hingebungsvollen Arbeit, sie sind in den zwei Jahrzehnten, seit wir Anthroposophie treiben, überall da, wo eben Anthroposophie gelebt hat, entstanden. Sie gingen hervor aus den Herzen, die für Anthroposophie begeistert waren. Und das Goetheanum war eine Tat der Gemeinschaft anthroposophisch gesinnter Menschen. Wenn heute aus verschiedensten Untergründen heraus nachgedacht wird und nachgedacht werden muß, wie die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft regeneriert werden soll, so darf auf der andern Seite nicht vergessen werden, daß die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft ein zwei Jahrzehnte langes Leben hatte, daß da manches Schicksalserlebnis in gemeinsamem Tun und gemeinsamem Trachten von immerhin einer großen Anzahl von Menschen sich zugetragen hat, daß Anthroposophische Gesellschaft nicht etwas ist, was wir heute etwa neu gründen können; denn Geschichte, wirkliche Geschichte, erlebte Geschichte, gewirkte Geschichte läßt sich nicht auslöschen. Es läßt sich heute nicht ein Anfang mit einer Sache machen, die vor zwei Jahrzehnten angefangen hat. Vor einem diesbezüglichen Mißverständnisse sollten wir uns hüten, wenn wir hier an den Verhandlungen teilnehmen. Derjenige, der im Laufe der Zeit sich hinzugefunden hat zur Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, der hat gewiß an ihr Mannigfaltiges auszusetzen, und mit vollem Recht. Und rechte und gewichtige Worte sind in dieser Hinsicht hier gesprochen worden. Aber zu bedenken ist doch, daß Anthroposophische Gesellschaft etwas ist, was gewirkt hat. Und es gibt immerhin in dieser Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft genug Menschen, welche heute als gewichtiges, inhaltsschweres, weil lebensschweres und trauer- und leidschweres Wort aussprechen können: Uns ist gemeinsam unser liebes Goetheanum verbrannt.

Es ist doch ein Unterschied, ob man 1917 in die Gesellschaft eingetreten ist und später oder ob man so zu ihr gestanden hat, daß man dieses leiddurchtränkte Wort aus einem längeren, tiefsten inneren Erleben heraus heute zu sich sagen kann. Unter dem Eindruck dieser Tatsache sollten eigentlich unsere Verhandlungen stehen. Dann wird dennoch etwas, und zwar Bedeutungsvolles hinwegschwinden von denjenigen Empfindungen, die wiederum aus berechtigten Untergründen heraus manche unserer Freunde hier in diesen Tagen gesprochen haben. Es klang an mein Ohr - gewiß, ich fühlte die Berechtigung - das Wort: Nach alledem, was ich hier gehört habe, kann ich jetzt, wenn ich nach Hause komme, nicht mehr in derselben Weise von Anthroposophie sprechen, wie ich das konnte, als ich noch voller Illusionen war. Ich sage, es schwindet doch etwas weg von diesem Worte, wenn man bedenkt, was Menschen, die seit zwei Jahrzehnten Anthroposophen sind, miteinander erlebt und in der letzten Zeit miteinander erlitten haben, weil dieses Leiden das Endglied eines langen Seins in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft war. Und das sollte man auch empfinden, daß das auch jene Sorgen nicht hinwegwischen können, die wir jetzt in diesen Tagen empfinden. Das ist doch etwas, was bleibt. Das würde selbst bleiben, wenn die Ereignisse hier noch viel schlimmer verliefen, als sie sich gezeigt haben. Müssen wir denn gleich über der Oberfläche das Tiefere vergessen? Wir dürfen es gerade nicht innerhalb einer geistigen Bewegung, die aus den Tiefen des menschlichen Herzens und der menschlichen Seele hervorgeht. Sonnenlos - auch die Sonne verfinstert sich -, sonnenlos in der entsprechenden Bedeutung des Wortes ist dasjenige nicht, was in die Welt als anthroposophische Bewegung getreten ist. Das hindert natürlich nicht, daß jetzt doch die Dinge so genommen werden müssen innerhalb dieses Kreises, wie sie sich darbieten, gerade um für Anthroposophie das richtige Gefäß in einer wirklichen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft wiederum zu gewinnen. Aber die Stimmung brauchen wir, aus der heraus das allein getan werden kann.

Ich kann natürlich heute nicht alles berühren, was in Betracht kommt. Ich will mich bemühen, in den beiden Vorträgen so viel als möglich zu berühren von dem, was jetzt gesagt werden soll. Es kann aber nicht alles gesagt werden, doch möchte ich auf zwei Dinge ganz besonders hinweisen: auf die drängende Not nach Gemeinschaftsbildung innerhalb der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft und auf jenes Symptom, welches hineingekommen ist in diese anthroposophische Bewegung durch die außerordentlich befriedigende Jugendbewegung. Aber auf anthroposophischem Boden muß eben manches anders angesehen werden als anderswo. Man wäre eben nicht auf diesem von vielen so ersehnten Boden, wenn man nicht die Dinge anders ansehen könnte, als sie sonst im heutigen Leben angesehen werden.

Gemeinschaftsbildung! Es ist vor allen Dingen im höchsten Grade merkwürdig, daß das Ideal der Gemeinschaftsbildung ganz besonders in unserer Gegenwart auftritt. Aus einer elementarischen, aus einer tiefen Empfindung vieler Menschenseelen heraus ergibt sich heute das Ideal der Gemeinschaftsbildung, eines ganz bestimmten Verhältnisses von Mensch zu Mensch mit dem Impuls des Zusammenwirkens. Als vor einiger Zeit eine Anzahl jüngerer Theologen zu mir kam, die auf dem Wege nach dem Seelsorgerberufe waren, da war vor allen Dingen der Impuls in ihnen nach einer religiösen Erneuerung, nach einer solchen religiösen Erneuerung, die durchströmt wird von der wirklichen Christus-Kraft, einer religiösen Erneuerung, die viele Menschenseelen der Gegenwart so ergreifen kann, wie sie ergriffen sein wollen, wie sie aber nicht ergriffen werden können innerhalb der traditionellen religiösen Bekenntnisse der Gegenwart. Und ich mußte ein Wort aussprechen, auf das mir außerordentlich viel anzukommen scheint bei der Entwickelung dieser religiösen Erneuerungsströmung, ich mußte das Wort aussprechen: Es muß in rechtem Sinne gesucht werden nach Gemeinschaftsbildung, nach einem Elemente im religiösen und Seelsorgerwirken, das Menschen an Menschen bindet. - Und ich sagte zu den Freunden, die zu mir gekommen sind: Mit abstrakten Worten, mit der Predigt im gewöhnlichen Sinne, mit den spärlichen gottesdienstlichen Handlungen, die vielfach heute noch übriggeblieben sind in dem oder jenem Bekenntnisse, kann man nicht gemeinschaftsbildend auf religiösem Boden wirken. - Dasjenige, was auch in dem Religiösen immer mehr und mehr nach dem Intellektualistischen sich hinbewegt, hat bewirkt, daß wahrhaft eine nicht geringe Anzahl heutiger Predigten ganz und gar durchsetzt von einem rationalistischen, intellektualistischen Element ist. Durch dasjenige, was heute so an die Menschen herankommt, werden diese nicht zusammengebunden, sondern im Gegenteil vereinzelt, ihre soziale Gemeinschaft wird atomisiert. Und das muß begreiflich erscheinen dem, der ja weiß: das Rationelle, das Intellektuelle, das kann ich mir erwerben als einzelne menschliche Individualität. Ich kann mir, wenn ich nur eine bestimmte Bildungsstufe in meiner individuellen menschlichen Entwickelung erreicht habe, ohne mich anzulehnen an andere Menschen, das Intellektualistische erwerben und kann es in mir immer weiter und weiter vervollkommnen. Denken kann man allein, Logik treiben kann man allein, und man wird es sogar vielleicht um so vollkommener tun, je mehr man es allein tut. Man hat sogar das Bedürfnis, möglichst sich zurückzuziehen von der Welt, auch von der Welt der Menschen, wenn man in rein logischem Denken verharrt. Aber der Mensch ist zu solcher Einsamkeit denn doch nicht allein veranlagt. Und wenn ich mich heute bemühen will, in bildhafter, nicht intellektualistischer Weise dasjenige zu verdeutlichen, was in den Tiefen der Menschenherzen nach Gemeinschaftsleben sucht, so muß das aus dem Grunde geschehen, weil wir im Übergange zu der Ausbildung der Bewußtseinsseele in der menschlichen Natur leben, weil unser Leben immer bewußter und bewußter werden muß. Bewußter werden heißt nicht intellektualistischer werden. Bewußter werden heißt, man kann nicht mehr beim bloß instinktiven Erleben stehenbleiben. Aber gerade auf anthroposophischem Boden muß versucht werden, dasjenige, was in bewußte Klarheit heraufgehoben wird, dennoch in vollem elementarischem Leben, ich möchte sagen in einem Leben, das gleichgeartet ist für menschliches Empfinden dem naiven Wahrnehmen und Empfinden, darzustellen. Das muß gelingen. Nun gibt es eine Art von Gemeinschaft im menschlichen Leben, die für alle offenkundig ist, die über den ganzen Erdball hin zeigt, daß die Menschheit auf Gemeinschaft angelegt ist. Eine Gemeinschaft, auf die auch im heutigen Kultur-, ja politischen und wirtschaftlichen Leben überall, und zwar zumeist in einer sehr schädlichen Weise hingewiesen wird, von der man aber lernen kann, wenn auch in primitiver Weise.

Das Kind in den ersten Lebensjahren wird in eine menschliche Gemeinschaft hineingeführt, die eine reale, konkrete menschliche ist, ohne die es nicht leben kann. Es ist die Gemeinschaft der menschlichen Sprache. In der Sprache haben wir, ich möchte sagen, die uns von der Natur vor das Seelenauge gestellte Gemeinschaftsform. Durch die Sprache, insbesondere durch die Muttersprache, die sich dem menschlichen Gesamtwesen einimpft in der Zeit, da noch der kindliche Ätherleib ungeboren ist, wird das erste Gemeinschaftsbildende an den Menschen herangebracht. Und es ist nur Schuld unseres rationalistischen Zeitalters, daß man zwar in agitatorisch-politischer Weise heute die Sprachen der Völker empfindet und die Volkstümer nach den Sprachen empfindet, daß man aber gar nicht die tiefen, intimen Seelenkonfigurationen, die ungeheuren Schicksalswerte und Karmawerte, die an die Sprache und ihren Genius gebunden sind, beachtet als die natürliche Grundlage des Schreiens des Menschen aus seiner Naturanlage heraus nach Gemeinschaft. Was wären wir, wenn wir aneinander vorbeigehen müßten, ohne daß wir das gleiche Seelenleben ertönend finden in einem gleichlautenden Worte bei einem andern, in einem Worte, in das auch wir hineinlegen können dieses unser eigenes Seelenleben? Und wir brauchen ein jeder nur ein wenig Selbsterkenntnis zu üben, so werden wir das erreichen können, was ich hier der Kürze der Zeit willen nicht entwickeln kann, eine Überschau über alles dasjenige, was wir für eine erste, primitivste menschliche Gemeinschaftsbildung der Sprache verdanken.

Aber es gibt etwas Tieferes noch, wenn auch zwar seltener im Leben Auftretendes als die menschliche Sprache. Die menschliche Sprache ist wohl etwas, was auf einem gewissen äußeren Niveau die Menschen zum Gemeinschaftsleben bindet, aber nicht ganz tief in die intimsten Untergründe des Seelenlebens dringt. Für das irdische Leben merken wir in gewissen Momenten noch etwas anderes Gemeinschaftsbildendes als die Sprache, etwas über die Sprache Hinausgehendes. Und das empfindet derjenige, welcher mit andern Menschen, die er als Kinder schon gekannt hat, einmal, wenn das Schicksal es fügt, sich im späteren Leben zusammenfindet. Denken wir uns den idealen Fall, daß jemand durch das Schicksal sich zusammenfinden konnte mit drei, vier, fünf Jugendgenossen, Kindheitsgenossen im späteren Lebensalter, vielleicht im vierzigsten, fünfzigsten Lebensjahre, mit Genossen, mit denen er nicht beisammen war durch Jahrzehnte, mit denen er aber vielleicht die Zeit durchlebt hat, die zwischen dem zehnten und zwanzigsten Lebensjahre liegt. Nehmen wir gute menschliche Beziehungen, fruchtbare menschliche Beziehungen, liebedurchtränkte menschliche Beziehungen zwischen diesen Menschen und versetzen wir uns im Geiste in den Gedanken, was es bedeutet, wenn solche Menschen nun gemeinsam ihre Seelen gegenseitig berührt werden lassen von den Erinnerungen an jene Zeit, die sie in der Kindheit miteinander durchlebt haben. Erinnerung liegt tiefer als alles dasjenige, was auf dem Niveau der Sprache liegt. Und die Seelen klingen intimer zusammen, wenn die reine seelische Sprache der Erinnerungen Mensch an Mensch binden kann, wenn auch vielleicht nur zu kurzer Gemeinschaft. Und es sind gewiß nicht — derjenige, der Erlebnisse auf diesem Gebiete hat, kann das wissen -, es sind gewiß nicht bloß die einzelnen Tatsachen, die man aus der Erinnerung hervorruft und die von Seele zu Seele hinschlagen, wenn jenes ungeheuer Intime, Tiefe in den Seelen der Menschen auftritt, das in einem solchen Idealfall auftreten könnte, wie ich ihn eben konstruiert habe. Es ist etwas ganz anderes. Es ist nicht der konkrete Inhalt der Erinnerungsgedanken, es ist ein ganz unbestimmtes und doch wieder so bestimmtes Erleben, gemeinschaftliches Erleben in diesen menschlichen Seelen, es ist ein Wiederauferstehen desjenigen, mit dem man einmal zusammen war in hundertfältigen Einzelheiten, die aber zu einer Totalität zusammenschmelzen, und es ist alles dasjenige, was von der andern Seele kommt an Miterinnerung, das Erweckende für ein Totalerlebnis.

Das ist so für das irdische Leben. Und aus einer Verfolgung dieser seelischen Tatsache in das Geistige hinein mußte ich dazumal jenen theologischen Freunden, welche mit der gekennzeichneten Absicht zu mir gekommen sind, sagen: Wenn wirkliche Gemeinschaftsbildung bei der Arbeit in der religiösen Erneuerung auftreten soll, dann braucht man einen für die Gegenwart anwendbaren und abgestimmten Kultus. Das gemeinsame Erleben des Kultus, das gibt etwas, was in der Menschenseele die Gemeinschaftsempfindung einfach durch seine eigene Wesenheit hervorruft. Und die Bewegung für religiöse Erneuerung hat verstanden, sie hat diesen Kultus angenommen, und ich glaube, es war ein gewichtiges Wort, das in diesen Tagen hier von dieser Stelle aus Dr. Rittelmeyer gesagt hat: Von dieser Seite der Gemeinschaftsbildung erwächst vielleicht eine der größten Gefahren für die anthroposophische Bewegung von seiten der Bewegung für religiöse Erneuerung her. Denn in diesem Kultus liegt ein ungeheuer bedeutsames Element der Gemeindebildung. Er bindet Mensch an Mensch. Ja, was ist denn an diesem Kultus, was da Mensch an Mensch bindet, was aus den einzelnen, die atomisiert worden sind durch das Intellektualistische, Logische, wiederum Gemeinde machen kann und ganz sicher Gemeinde machen wird? Das hat offenbar Dr. Rittelmeyer gemeint; da ist vorhanden das Mittel für die Gemeindebildung. Da aber auch die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft nach Gemeinschaftsbildung hintendiert, so wird sie finden müssen das für sie geartete Mittel, wenn ihr nicht von der Bewegung für religiöse Erneuerung eine gewisse Gefahr drohen soll.

Nun, was ist das Geheimnis des Gemeinschaftserzeugenden im Wesen des Kultus, wie er namentlich gerade mit diesem Ziele für die Bewegung für religiöse Erneuerung gefunden worden ist? Dasjenige, was sich in den Kultformen, seien sie nun gegeben in der Zeremonie, seien sie gegeben im Worte, ausspricht, das ist ein Abbild von wirklichen Erlebnissen; allerdings nicht von wirklichen Erlebnissen, die hier auf der Erde durchgemacht worden sind, sondern von wirklichen Erlebnissen in jener Welt, die der Mensch in seinem vorirdischen Dasein durchmacht, wenn er auf dem zweiten Teile des Weges zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt ist, aus jener Welt, die der Mensch durchschreitet von jenem Zeitpunkte, der da liegt in der Mitternachtsstunde des menschlichen Daseins zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, bis zum Herabsteigen zum Erdenleben. In dem Gebiete, das da der Mensch durchmacht, liegt die Welt, liegen die Ereignisse, liegen die Wesenhaftigkeiten, die ein wirkliches Abbild finden in den echten, wahren Kultformen. Was empfindet daher derjenige, der den Kultus miterlebt, mit dem andern, mit dem er von irgendeinem Karma zusammengeführt wird - und das Karma ist so verwickelt, daß man durchaus überall Karma voraussetzen darf, wo wir mitMenschen zusammengeführt werden? Gemeinsame Erinnerungen an das vorirdische Dasein erlebt er mit ihm zusammen. Das taucht in den unterbewußten Tiefen der Seele auf. Wir haben, bevor wir zur Erde heruntergestiegen sind, zusammen eine Welt durchlebt, die hier im Kultus vor unserer Seele auf Erden steht. Das ist eine mächtige Bindung, das ist ein wirkliches Hereinholen nicht nur der Bilder, sondern der Kräfte der übersinnlichen Welt in die sinnliche. Das ist aber ein Hereinholen derjenigen Kräfte aus der übersinnlichen Welt in die sinnliche, die den Menschen intim angehen, die verbunden sind mit den intimsten Hintergründen der menschlichen Seele. Deshalb bindet Kultus, weil im Kultus heruntergetragen ist aus den geistigen Welten dasjenige, was Kräfte dieser geistigen Welten sind, weil der Mensch das in seinem Erdenleben vor sich hat, was überirdisch ist. Nicht hat er es vor sich in dem rationalistischen Worte, das das Vergessen an die geistige Welt bewirkt, auch in den unterbewußten Seelengründen, sondern er hat es vor sich in dem lebendigen Bild, das kraftdurchsetzt ist, das nicht bloß Sinnbild, das nicht totes Bild, das Kraftträger ist, weil er dasjenige vor sich hat, was zu seiner geistigen Umgebung gehört, wenn er nicht im irdischen Leibe ist, Eine umfassende, ins Geistige hinüberzielende gemeinsame Erinnerung, das ist es, was die gemeinschaftsbildende Kraft des Kultus ist.

Eine solche Kraft braucht auch die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft, damit in ihr Gemeinschaftswesen auftauchen kann. Aber anders geartet kann der Grund zur Gemeinschaftsbildung in der anthroposophischen Bewegung sein als in der Bewegung für religiöse Erneuerung, obwohl das eine das andere nicht ausschließt, sondern das eine mit dem andern in der schönsten Harmonie stehen kann, wenn die Beziehung empfindungsgemäß richtig verstanden wird. Aber es muß eben auch erst verstanden werden, wie ein anderes gemeinschaftsbildendes Element in das menschliche Leben hereintreten kann. Eine ins Geistige umgesetzte Erinnerung strahlt uns entgegen aus der Kultgestaltung. Die Kultgestaltung spricht zu Tieferem als dem menschlichen Intellekt, die Kultgestaltung spricht zu dem menschlichen Gemüte, denn das menschliche Gemüt versteht im Grunde genommen die Sprache des Geistigen, obwohl für dieses Erdenleben zunächst diese Sprache des Geistigen nicht ins unmittelbare Bewußtsein hereintritt. Und nun, um das andere Element, das eine entsprechende Rolle spielen muß in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, zu verstehen, ist vor allen Dingen notwendig, daß Sie nicht nur nach dem Geheimnis der Sprache und der Erinnerung mit Bezug auf das Wesen der Gemeinschaftsbildung hinschauen, sondern daß Sie noch auf etwas anderes hinschauen im menschlichen Leben. Nehmen Sie den Zustand des träumenden Menschen, und vergleichen Sie diesen Zustand des träumenden Menschen mit dem vollwachen Menschen im Tagesleben.

Die Welt des Traumes, sie mag schön, sie mag großartig, sie mag bilderreich, vielbedeutend und vieldeutig sein, aber sie ist eine Welt, die für das irdische Leben den Menschen isoliert. Mit der Welt seiner Träume ist der Mensch allein. Da liegt der eine Mensch, schläft und träumt, andere sind um ihn herum, meinetwillen schlafend oder wachend, die Welten, die in ihren Seelen sind, sie haben zunächst für dasjenige, was er im Traumbewußtsein erlebt, sie haben mit seinem Traumbewußtsein nichts zu tun. Der Mensch isoliert sich in seiner Traumwelt, noch mehr in seiner Schlafenswelt. Wachen wir auf, leben wir uns hinein in ein gewisses Gemeinschaftsleben. Der Raum, in dem wir sind, in dem der andere ist, die Empfindung, die Vorstellung dieses Raumes, die er hat, haben wir selber auch. Wir erwachen an unserer Umgebung in einem gewissen Umfange zu demselben inneren Seelenleben, wie er erwacht. Indem wir aus der Isoliertheit des Traumes erwachen, erwachen wir bis zu einem gewissen Grade in menschliche Gemeinschaft hinein einfach durch dieses Wesen unserer Beziehung als Mensch zur Außenwelt. Wir hören auf, so entschieden in uns selbst, so eingesponnen und eingekapselt zu sein, wie wir in der Traumwelt eingesponnen und eingekapselt waren, auch wenn wir noch so schön, so großartig, so vielbedeutend und vieldeutig träumen. Aber, wie wachen wir auf? Wir wachen auf an der äußeren Welt, wir wachen auf an dem Lichte, wachen auf an dem Ton, an den Wärmeerscheinungen, an allem übrigen Inhalte der Sinneswelt, wir wachen aber eigentlich auch - wenigstens für das gewöhnliche alltägliche Leben - an dem Äußeren der andern Menschen auf,an der Naturseite der andern Menschen. Wir wachen für das alltägliche Leben an der natürlichen Welt auf. Diese weckt uns auf, diese versetzt uns aus der Isoliertheit in ein gewisses Gemeinschaftsleben. Wir wachen noch nicht auf - und das ist das Geheimnis des alltäglichen Lebens - als Mensch am Menschen, am tiefsten Inneren des Menschen. Wir wachen auf am Lichte, wir wachen auf am Ton, wir wachen auf vielleicht an der Sprache, die der andere zu uns spricht als zugehörig zum Natürlichen am Menschen, wir wachen auf an den Worten, die er von innen nach außen spricht. Wir wachen nicht auf an dem, was in den Tiefen der Menschenseele des andern vor sich geht. Wir wachen auf an dem Natürlichen des andern Menschen, wir wachen in dem gewöhnlichen alltäglichen Leben nicht auf an dem GeistigSeelischen des andern Menschen.

Das ist ein drittes Erwachen oder wenigstens ein dritter Zustand des Seelenlebens. Aus dem ersten erwachen wir in den zweiten hinein durch den Ruf der Natur. Aus dem zweiten erwachen wir in den dritten Zustand hinein durch den Ruf des Geistig-Seelischen am andern Menschen. Aber wir müssen diesen Ruf erst vernehmen. Genau so, wie man in der rechten Weise für das alltägliche Erdenleben aufwacht durch die äußere Natur, gibt es ein höherstufiges Aufwachen, wenn wir in der richtigen Weise an dem Seelisch-Geistigen unseres Mitmenschen aufwachen, wenn wir ebenso in uns fühlen lernen das Geistig-Seelische des Mitmenschen, wie wir fühlen in unserem Seelenleben beim gewöhnlichen Aufwachen das Licht und den Ton. Wir mögen noch so schöne Bilder in der Isoliertheit des Traumes schauen, wir mögen außerordentlich Großartiges erleben in diesem isolierten Traumbewußtsein - lesen zum Beispiel werden wir kaum zunächst, wenn nicht besonders abnorme Zustände folgen. Diese Beziehung zur Außenwelt haben wir nicht. Nun, wir mögen noch so schöne Ideen aufnehmen aus der Anthroposophie, aus dieser Kunde von einer geistigen Welt, wir mögen theoretisch durchdringen alles dasjenige, was von uns vom Äther-, Astralleib und so weiter gesagt werden kann, wir verstehen dadurch noch nicht die geistige Welt. Wir beginnen das erste Verständnis für die geistige Welt erst zu entwickeln, wenn wir am Seelisch-Geistigen des andern Menschen erwachen. Dann beginnt erst das wirkliche Verständnis für die Anthroposophie. Ja, es obliegt uns, auszugehen von jenem Zustande für das wirkliche Verständnis der Anthroposophie, den man nennen kann: Erwachen des Menschen an dem Geistig-Seelischen des andern Menschen.

Die Kraft zu diesem Erwachen, sie kann dadurch erzeugt werden, daß in einer Menschengemeinschaft spiritueller Idealismus gepflanzt wird. Man redet ja heute viel von Idealismus. Aber Idealismus ist heute innerhalb unserer Gegenwartskultur und Zivilisation etwas ziemlich Fadenscheiniges. Denn der wirkliche Idealismus ist nur vorhanden, wenn der Mensch sich bewußt werden kann, daß er genau ebenso, wie er, indem er die Kultusform hinstellt, eine geistige Welt ins Irdische hinunterhebt, er etwas, das er im Irdischen erschaut, im Irdischen erkennen und verstehen gelernt hat, in das Übersinnlich-Geistige hinaufhebt, indem er es ins Ideal erhebt. In das kraftdurchsetzte Bild bringen wir das Überirdische, wenn wir die Kultusgestalt zelebrieren. In das Übersinnliche heben wir uns mit unserem Seelenleben hinauf, wenn wir dasjenige, was wir erleben in der physischen Welt, spirituell-idealistisch so erleben, daß wir es empfinden lernen als erlebt im Übersinnlichen, wenn wir so empfinden lernen, daß wir uns sagen: Dasjenige, was du hier in der Welt der Sinne wahrgenommen hast, wird plötzlich lebendig, wenn du es zum Ideal erhebst. Es wird lebendig, wenn du es in der richtigen Weise durchdringst mit Gemüt und Willensimpuls. Wenn du dein ganzes Inneres vom Willen durchstrahlst, Begeisterung auf es wendest, dann gehst du mit deiner sinnlichen Erfahrung, indem du sie idealisierst, den entgegengesetzten Weg, wie du ihn gehst, wenn du das Übersinnliche in die Kultusgestalt hineingeheimnißt. Denn, haben wir eine kleine, haben wir eine große anthroposophische Gemeinschaft, so können wir dasjenige, was in dieser Charakteristik gegeben ist, in einem gewissen Sinne erreichen. Wir können es dann erreichen, wenn wir tatsächlich imstande sind, durch die lebendige Kraft, die wir hineinlegen in die Gestaltung der Ideen vom Geistigen, etwas von einem Erweckenden zu erleben, etwas von dem, was nicht bloß das sinnlich Erlebte so idealisiert, daß das Ideal ein abstrakter Gedanke ist, sondern so, daß das Ideal ein höheres Leben gewinnt, indem wir uns in es hineinleben, daß es das Gegenbild des Kultus wird, nämlich das Sinnliche ins Übersinnliche hinauferhoben. Das können wir auf gefühlsmäßige Weise erreichen, wenn wir uns angelegen sein lassen, überall dort, wo wir Anthroposophisches pflegen, diese Pflege von durchgeistigter Empfindung zu durchdringen, wenn wir verstehen, schon die Türe, schon die Pforte zu dem Raum - und mag er sonst ein noch so profaner sein, er wird geheiligt durch gemeinsame anthroposophische Lektüre - als etwas zu empfinden, was wir mit Ehrerbietung übertreten. Und die Empfindung müssen wir hervorrufen können, daß das in jedem einzelnen der Fall ist, der sich mit uns vereinigt zu gemeinsamem Aufnehmen anthroposophischen Lebens. Und das müssen wir nicht nur zu innerster abstrakter Überzeugung bringen können, sondern zu innerem Erleben, so daß in einem Raume, wo wir Anthroposophie treiben, wir nicht nur dasitzen als so und so viele Menschen, die aufnehmen das Gehörte oder aufnehmen das Gelesene und es in ihre Gedanken verwandeln, sondern daß durch den ganzen Prozeß des Aufnehmens anthroposophischer Ideen ein wirkliches real-geistiges Wesen anwesend wird in dem Raume, in dem wir Anthroposophie treiben. Wie in den in der sinnlichen Welt sich abspielenden Kultformen die göttlichen Kräfte auf sinnliche Art anwesend sind, müssen wir lernen, mit unseren Seelen, mit unseren Herzen durch unsere innere Seelenverfassung übersinnlich anwesend sein zu lassen eine wirkliche Geistwesenheit in dem Raume, in dem das anthroposophische Wort ertönt, und unsere Rede, unser Empfinden, unser Denken, unsere Willensimpulse müssen wir einrichten können im spirituellen Sinne, das heißt nicht in irgendeinem abstrakten Sinne, sondern in dem Sinne, daß wir uns so fühlen, als schaute herunter auf uns und hörte uns an ein Wesen, das über uns schwebt, das real-geistig da ist. Geistige Gegenwart, übersinnliche Gegenwart müssen wir empfinden, die dadurch da ist, daß wir Anthroposophie treiben. Dann fängt die einzelne anthroposophische Wirksamkeit an, ein Realisieren des Übersinnlichen selbst zu werden.

Gehen Sie in die primitiven Gemeinschaften, da gibt es noch etwas anderes als bloß die Sprache. Die Sprache ist dasjenige, was im oberen Menschen sitzt. Fassen Sie den ganzen Menschen ins Auge, so finden Sie in primitiven Menschengemeinschaften dasjenige, was Mensch an Mensch bindet, in dem gemeinschaftlichen Blute. Die Blutsbande halten die Menschen zur Gemeinschaft zusammen. Aber in dem Blute lebt das als Gruppenseele oder als Gruppengeist, was bei einer freien Menschheit sich nicht in derselben Weise findet. In eine Gruppe von Menschen, die durch Blutsbande zusammengebunden war, war eingezogen ein gemeinsames Geistiges, gewissermaßen von unten herauf. Da, wo gemeinsames Blut durch die Adern einer Anzahl von Menschen strömt, ist ein Gruppengeist vorhanden. So kann auch durch dasjenige, was wir gemeinsam erleben, indem wir gemeinsam Anthroposophisches aufnehmen, zwar nicht ein solcher Gruppengeist durch das Blut, aber doch ein realer Gemeinschaftsgeist herangezogen werden. Vermögen wir diesen zu empfinden, dann binden wir uns als Menschen zu wahren Gemeinschaften zusammen. Wir müssen einfach Anthroposophie wahr machen, wahr machen dadurch, daß wir ein Bewußtsein hervorzurufen verstehen in unseren anthroposophischen Gemeinschaften, daß, indem die Menschen sich finden zu gemeinsamer anthroposophischer Arbeit, der Mensch am Geistig-Seelischen des andern Menschen erst erwacht. Die Menschen erwachen aneinander, und indem sie sich immer wieder und wiederum finden, erwachen sie, indem jeder in der Zwischenzeit ein anderes durchgemacht hat und etwas weitergekommen ist, in einem gewandelten Zustand aneinander. Das Erwachen ist ein Erwachen im Sprossen und Sprießen. Und wenn Sie erst die Möglichkeit gefunden haben, daß Menschenseelen an Menschenseelen und Menschengeister an Menschengeistern erwachen, daß Sie hingehen in die anthroposophischen Gemeinschaften mit dem lebendigen Bewußtsein: Da werden wir erst zu so wachen Menschen, daß wir da erst Anthroposophie verstehen miteinander, und wenn Sie dann auf Grundlage dieses Verständnisses in eine erwachte Seele - nicht in die für das höhere Dasein schlafende Seele des Alltags - die anthroposophischen Ideen aufnehmen, dann senkt sich über Ihre Arbeitsstätte herunter die gemeinsame reale Geistigkeit. Ist es denn Wahrheit, wenn wir von der übersinnlichen Welt reden und nicht imstande sind, uns aufzuschwingen zum Erfassen solcher realen Geistigkeit, solches umgekehrten Kultus? Erst dann stehen wir wirklich im Ergreifen, im Erfassen des Spirituellen drinnen, wenn wir nicht nur die Idee dieses Spirituellen abstrakt haben und etwa sie theoretisch wiedergeben können, auch für uns selbst theoretisch wiedergeben können, sondern wenn wir glauben können — aber glauben auf Grundlage eines beweisenden Glaubens -, daß Geister im geistigen Erfassen geistige Gemeinschaft mit uns haben. Sie können nicht durch äußere Einrichtungen die anthroposophische Gemeinschaftsbildung hervorrufen. Sie müssen sie hervorrufen aus den tiefsten Quellen des menschlichen Bewußtseins selbst.

Ich habe Ihnen einen Teil des Weges dazu heute gezeigt; ich werde morgen in meinen Schilderungen darüber fortfahren. Ich möchte durch solche Schilderungen ein wenig hinweisen darauf, daß ja das Wichtigste ist für die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft, wenn sie sich weiterentwikkeln will, daß sie ergriffen wird wirklich von wahrem Verständnis für die Anthroposophie. Ist dieses wahre Verständnis für die Anthroposophie da, dann ist dieses Verständnis der Weg nicht bloß zu Ideen vom Geiste, sondern zu Gemeinschaft mit dem Geiste. Dann aber ist das Bewußtsein dieser Gemeinschaft mit der geistigen Welt auch gemeinschaftsbildend. Und die Gemeinschaften, die vom Karma vorausbestimmt sind, werden sich bilden. Sie werden eine Wirkung des rechten anthroposophischen Bewußtseins sein. Nicht äußerliche Mittel können angegeben werden. Wenn sie Ihnen ein Mensch schildert, schilderter Ihnen etwas Scharlatanhaftes.

Nun, bis zu einem gewissen Grade sind solche Dinge dennoch in den zwei Jahrzehnten anthroposophischer Entwickelung verstanden worden, verstanden auch von vielen in spirituellem Sinne, und ich werde darüber vielleicht noch morgen genauer zu sprechen haben, denn ich werde diese Betrachtung morgen fortsetzen und auf ein anderes Ziel hinweisen. Aber jetzt möchte ich nur mit ein paar Worten etwas anfügen an dasjenige, was vielleicht bei Ihnen durch diese Schilderung der spirituellen Untergründe anthroposophischen Gemeinschaftslebens erregt worden sein mag. Auf der einen Seite steht doch nun wirklich in der anthroposophischen Bewegung das darinnen, aus dem heraus solche Schilderungen kommen müssen, wie ich sie Ihnen eben gegeben habe. Da mag die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft in gewissen Epochen so oder so ausschauen — die Anthroposophie ist unabhängig von jeder anthroposophischen Gesellschaft und kann unabhängig von einer solchen gefunden werden. Sie kann aber allerdings auf besondere Art auch dadurch gefunden werden, daß Mensch an Mensch zu erwachen versteht und sich auf diese Weise, aus diesem Erwachen heraus Gemeinschaftsbildungen ergeben. Denn man erwacht mit den Menschen, mit denen man sich zusammenfindet, immer aufs neue, deshalb bleibt man mit ihnen zusammen. Da sind innere spirituelle Gründe da. Das muß immer mehr und mehr verstanden werden innerhalb der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft; und eigentlich müßte alles, was zum Gedeihen der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgebracht wird, durchdrungen sein von Kräften, die zuletzt doch überall hineinführen in das Anthroposophische als solches.

Ich war tief befriedigt, als ich neulich, nachdem ich wochenlang die Versammlungen mitgemacht hatte, kleinere und größere Versammlungen, in denen vorbereitet worden ist dasjenige, was jetzt in diesen Tagen auf der Delegiertenversammlung geschah, nachdem man da debattiert hatte, etwa wie man es in Parlamenten, wie man es in Vereinen und sonst macht aus den gewöhnlichen rationalistischen alltäglichen Erwägungen heraus, in eine Jugendversammlung, in eine Versammlung junger Akademiker kam. Da wurde auch gesprochen über dasjenige, was geschehen soll. Nun, man sprach eine Zeitlang über Äußeres; aber man war unversehens nach einer gewissen Zeit mitten in echt anthroposophischer Erörterung darinnen. Es floß von selbst die Angelegenheit des alltäglichen Lebens in eine solche Strömung hinein, daß man die Dinge nurmehr besprechen konnte, wenn man anthroposophisch sprach. Das wäre das Schönste, wenn man nicht in künstlicher, in sentimental-künstlicher, in nebuloser Weise, wie es oftmals auch geschah, an den Haaren anthroposophische Theorien herbeizöge, sondern wenn man auf einem selbstverständlichen Weg aus den gewöhnlichen Bedürfnissen des Lebens, aus der Besprechung derselben darauf käme: Jetzt weiß man nicht mehr, wie man studieren soll, wie man Chemie, Physik studieren soll, wenn man nicht anfängt, um sich über die Notwendigkeiten des Studiums zu informieren, von Anthroposophie zu reden. Das ist der Geist, der unter uns herrschen kann.

Aber wir kommen zu keinem Ergebnis bis morgen abend, wenn die Dinge in derselben Weise fortlaufen, wie sie bisher gelaufen sind. Wir kommen nur in ein ungeheures Chaos, in ein tragisches Chaos hinein. Denn wir müssen vor allen Dingen nicht sentimental allerlei an den Haaren herbeiziehen, sondern wir müssen anthroposophische Impulse in unsere Herzen gießen, anthroposophische Impulse in voller Klarheit. Dann werden unsere Verhandlungen fruchtbar verlaufen.

So aber, wie die Sachen jetzt sind, so sehe ich in diesem Saale zwei Menschenparteien, zwei Menschengruppen, die sich gegenseitig gar nicht verstehen und die zum gegenseitigen Verständnis auch noch nicht den allerersten Schritt haben vollziehen können. Warum? Weil auf der einen Seite geredet werden muß aus einem zwei Jahrzehnte alten Erleben, aus demjenigen heraus, was ich am Anfange heute ein wenig zu schildern mir erlaubte, und auf der andern Seite kein Interesse vorhanden ist für dieses Erleben. Das ist durchaus nicht in irgendeinem kritischen Sinne gemeint, sondern in dem Sinne eines besorgten Zusprechens nur. Haben wir es doch erlebt, daß sich Menschen gefunden haben, gutmeinende Menschen, für die Anthroposophie in ihrer Art begeisterte Menschen, die einfach unsere Erörterungen hier kupiert haben, indem sie gesagt haben: Was interessieren uns alle diese Referate, wenn sie uns weiter aufgetischt werden? - in dem Momente, wo es sich doch darum handelt, daß diejenigen, die sie noch nicht kennen, die schweren Gefahren kennenlernen wollen, denen die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft ausgesetzt ist. - Da ist auf der einen Seite ein elementares, naturhaftes, möchte ich sagen, Interesse für das Leben in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, ein Leben, das etwas Familienhaftes hat, aber auch die guten Seiten des Familienhaften hat; da ist auf der andern Seite dasjenige, was sich dafür nicht interessiert, was nur eine allgemeine Vorstellung von einer Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft hat. Beides ist so, wie die Sachen heute liegen, berechtigt, so berechtigt, daß, wenn wir nicht bald zu einer ganz andern Form unserer Diskussion kommen, es das allerbeste ist - ich spreche nur meine Meinung aus, denn dasjenige, was geschehen soll, muß aus dem Schoß der Gesellschaft hervorgehen -, wenn wir auf der einen Seite die alte Anthroposophische Gesellschaft ließen, wie sie ist, und daneben gründen für alle diejenigen, welche nun etwas ganz anderes wollen, eineVereinigung freier anthroposophischer Gemeinschaften. Die beiden könnten, jede Partei auf ihrem Boden, dasjenige, was ihr am Herzen liegt, pflegen. Wir hätten auf der einen Seite die alte Anthroposophische Gesellschaft, wir hätten auf der andern Seite eine lose, aber innig zusammenhängende Vereinigung freier Gemeinschaften. Die zwei Gesellschaften könnten einen Modus, miteinander zu leben, finden. Besser wäre es immerhin, daß dieses entstünde, als das Aussichtslose, das sich ergeben müßte für morgen abend, wenn die Diskussion in dieser Weise weiterlaufen wird, wie sie bisher verlaufen ist. Deshalb bitte ich Sie, auch diesen angedeuteten Gedanken bei der weiteren Diskussion hereinzuwerfen, ob Sie nicht eine Unwahrheit vermeiden wollen, die in einem Leimen bestehen würde, gleichgültig, ob man das Alte läßt oder es umformt. Wenn die Dinge so bleiben, daß die eine Seite die andere nicht versteht, so möge man diese skizzierten zwei Vereinigungen innerhalb der anthroposophischen Bewegung begründen. Das sage ich Ihnen aus einem besorgten, aus einem besorgtesten Herzen heraus; denn das wird mir ja niemand absprechen, daß ich verstehe, was es heißt, Sorge zu tragen für die anthroposophische Sache. Man wird mir ebensowenig absprechen, daß ich selber weiß, was es heißt, lieben die anthroposophische Sache. Aber besser ist es, zwei einander liebende Geschwister zu haben, ein jedes seinen eigenen Weg gehend, die sich nur zusammenfinden in einem gemeinsamen Ideale, als etwas zu haben, was nach kurzer Zeit dennoch wiederum ins Chaos hineinführen würde.

Meine lieben Freunde, Sie dürfen doch nicht übersehen, daß die Dinge, die uns die Schwierigkeiten machen, die einzelnen Begründungen sind. Das hätte sollen scharf herausgearbeitet werden. Ich will gar nicht einmal behaupten, daß der letzte Zentralvorstand im wesentlichen materiell an Arbeiten mehr geleistet hat als der frühere, jedenfalls nicht mehr, als ich auf zentralem Gebiet ähnliches geleistet habe, als ich Generalsekretär war. Aber darum handelt es sich nicht. Es handelt sich darum: Was hätte geschehen sollen im anthroposophischen Sinn, nachdem die einzelnen Begründungen hier in Stuttgart entstanden sind? - Diese Frage muß beantwortet werden. Denn heute können wir diese Gründungen nicht aus der Welt schaffen. Wir müssen uns informieren über ihre Lebensbedingungen, nachdem sie da sind. Aber wenn wir nicht verstehen lernen, im anthroposophischen Sinne zu gestalten, was wir nicht verstanden haben in den letzten vier Jahren, wenn wir sie hineinstellen als Fremdkörper in die anthroposophische Bewegung, wie es geschehen ist, dann ruinieren uns die Gründungen, die seit dem Jahre 1919 entstanden sind, die ganze anthroposophische Bewegung. Dann ruinieren sie jeden Zentralvorstand, mag er wie immer heißen. Daher handelt es sich darum, sachliche und nicht persönliche Diskussionen zu führen und sich klar zu werden, wie die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft zu gestalten ist, nachdem sie nun einmal diese Begründungen in sich aufgenommen hat, von denen die eine eine so wunderschöne ist wie dieWaldorfschule. Davon ist gar nicht irgendein Ton gesprochen worden, weil diejenigen, die bekannt und vertraut sind mit den Dingen, die in Stuttgart vorgehen, eigentlich bisher sich mehr oder weniger ausgeschwiegen haben. Ich möchte insbesondere wünschen, daß die beiden Herren vom Zentralvorstand - ich nehme den dritten Herrn, Herrn Leinhas, immer aus, der als der einzige in einer wichtigen Angelegenheit mir intensiv geholfen hat und hilft, bei dem kann ich nicht einmal wünschen, daß er sich dem Zentralvorstand widme, obwohl er im eminentesten Sinne hineingehört -, ich möchte wünschen, daß die beiden andern Herren des Zentralvorstandes sich zu dieser Sache äußern. Um Verteidigung oder dergleichen handelt es sich nicht, sondern darum, was sie zu sagen haben über eine solche zukünftige Gestaltung der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, die die Möglichkeit in sich hat, die Begründungen, die seit dem Jahre 1919 da sind, in sich aufzunehmen. Sonst sind diese Begründungen unverantwortlich geschehen. Das dürfen sie nicht, weil sie einmal da sind. Die Fragen sind im eminentesten Sinne ernst. Und wir müssen uns um sie bekümmern, wir müssen sachlich und nicht persönlich die Diskussion führen. Ich meinte die Worte, die ich jetzt hier spreche, durchaus sachlich, nicht so sehr an eine Person oder Personen im Zentralvorstand gerichtet. Persönlichkeiten sind nicht verunglimpft, aber ich meine, dasjenige, was ich jetzt wiederum scharf hingestellt habe, muß besprochen werden. Wenn eben die beiden Vereinigungen begründet werden, so könnte die, die die Fortsetzung der alten Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft ist, sich bekümmern, wie man sich bekümmern muß um dasjenige, was nun einmal aus dem Schoße der Gesellschaft hervorgegangen ist; und die andere könnte, weil sie sich nicht dafür interessiert, den anthroposophischen Weg im engeren Sinne nachgehen. Ich wollte das kurz skizziert hinstellen. Von dem Sachlichen werde ich dann morgen um zwölf Uhr eingehender sprechen.

Sixth Lecture

The mood in which I speak to you today is not the same as that in which I was privileged to do so in earlier times; for since New Year's Eve 1922/1923, the terrible image of the burning Goetheanum has been in the background of this mood. The pain and suffering that must be felt by those who loved the Goetheanum because of their involvement in anthroposophy is so great and so profound that it cannot be expressed in words. It might seem as if the feeling were justified that a movement looking into the spiritual, such as our anthroposophical movement, should not have such a deep reason to mourn the loss of an external monument to its essence. But with the Goetheanum that we have lost, the situation is somewhat different. It was not just any external building for our anthroposophical cause. During the nearly ten years of work on the building, I often had to deal with the fact that what might otherwise have been the case on another, similar occasion, such as the construction of a home for a spiritual or other movement, could not be the case for our anthroposophical movement. For here, as I often said, it was not just a matter of having a spiritual movement which, through its growth in a series of self-sacrificing, devoted personalities, gave rise to the intention of building it its own home, which should have been constructed in this or that conventional style. The point here was that anthroposophy stands on spiritual ground that is not one-sidedly any religious or cognitive or artistic movement, but a comprehensive movement that wants to reveal itself in these different aspects of the greatest human ideals: the religious-moral, the artistic, and the cognitive ideal. And so there could be no intention of erecting a building for the anthroposophical movement that was designed arbitrarily. Rather, this building had to be constructed in an artistic manner from the same sources from which anthroposophical ideas are formed as an expression of spiritual insight for the cognitive movement of anthroposophy. And for almost ten years, many friends, standing by my side, sought to embody and visualize in every single line, in every external architectural and sculptural design, in every color scheme, what comes from the sources of anthroposophical perception, anthroposophical life, and anthroposophical will. This view, this life, was incorporated into every line, every sculptural form, every color. And this building was intimately connected with everything else that wanted to work and have an effect on the cognitive and artistic side of the anthroposophical movement. Friends who have seen eurythmy performances in the Goetheanum building in Dornach, for example, will probably have had the impression that everything in the inner architecture and inner imagery of the auditorium and stage responded to the movements of eurythmy and was in the most intimate harmony with these movements. One could well have the impression that the movements of the people on stage were born out of the architectural and sculptural forms themselves. Standing on the podium and speaking warmly from the anthroposophical spirit, every line, every form was something that came towards you, that spoke to you. That was the aim. Certainly, it was an experiment for the first time, but it was the aim, and it could be felt. And that is why those who devoted their work to this Goetheanum in Dornach found the feelings they had put into this work consumed by the flames that burned there on New Year's Eve. It is precisely the intimate connection between anthroposophical feeling and anthroposophical will with these forms, which were so much based on direct observation and artistically designed for this observation, which can never be replaced by any thought forms, by any interpretations, that makes the pain of loss so tremendously deep. But this must also enter into the memory of those who have grown fond of the Goetheanum, who have felt this intimate harmony. And in a certain way, we must raise it up as a memory in our hearts. In a sense, while on the one hand we have been left homeless by the intimacy I mentioned, we must seek all the more intensely for a spiritual home in our hearts to replace what we have lost. We must strive with all our might to erect in our hearts for eternity this building that has been taken from us in terms of our outer artistic sensibility. But in the background of all that can still be accomplished in the field of anthroposophy, there remains this terrible flame, into which all the partial flames merged at midnight on December 31 to January 1. And it burned, if not a piece of living spiritual anthroposophy, then at least a large piece of the work we were striving to accomplish for anthroposophy in our present time.

I believe that what has been experienced, above all, if it takes root in the right way in the hearts of our anthroposophical friends, can, out of the pain and grief, also give strength to all that we are called upon to do for anthroposophical work in the near future. It is already the case in life that when a number of people have to say to themselves that they have suffered a common misfortune, this also binds them together in a certain way, so that strength and power can come from the other side for joint, effective action. And it is from experiences, not from gray theories or abstract thoughts, that the forces should come which inspire us to anthroposophical work.

My dear friends, I would like to add these things to the topic I had to choose for these two days, to the description of the conditions for forming an anthroposophical community. I would like to add them because, apart from the fact that they are so deeply rooted in the heart, they point to one of the facts that we should keep very much before our mind's eye during these days. Much sacrifice and devoted work has flowed into the Goetheanum, and the impulses for this sacrifice and devoted work have arisen in the two decades since we began practicing anthroposophy, wherever anthroposophy has been lived. They sprang from hearts that were enthusiastic about anthroposophy. And the Goetheanum was an act of community by people of anthroposophical disposition. When today, from a wide variety of backgrounds, people are thinking and must think about how the Anthroposophical Society should be regenerated, we must not forget, on the other hand, that the Anthroposophical Society had a life spanning two decades, that many fateful experiences took place in the joint activities and common aspirations of a large number of people, that the Anthroposophical Society is not something we can simply re-establish today; for history, real history, lived history, history that has been wrought, cannot be erased. We cannot start something today that began two decades ago. We should beware of misunderstandings in this regard when we participate in the proceedings here. Those who have found their way to the Anthroposophical Society over time certainly have many criticisms to make, and quite rightly so. And right and weighty words have been spoken here in this regard. But we must remember that the Anthroposophical Society is something that has had an effect. And there are still enough people in this Anthroposophical Society who can speak today with weighty, meaningful words, because they are words heavy with life, grief, and suffering: Together, we have burned down our beloved Goetheanum.

There is a difference between joining the Society in 1917 and later, or standing by it in such a way that one can say these sorrow-filled words today from a longer, deepest inner experience. Our discussions should really be guided by this fact. Then something meaningful will disappear from the feelings that some of our friends here have expressed in recent days, based on justified reasons. The words reached my ears – and I certainly felt they were justified: “After everything I have heard here, when I go home I will no longer be able to speak about anthroposophy in the same way as I did when I was still full of illusions.” I say that something does fade away from these words when one considers what people who have been anthroposophists for two decades have experienced together and suffered together in recent times, because this suffering was the final link in a long existence in the Anthroposophical Society. And one should also feel that even those worries that we are feeling these days cannot be swept away. That is something that remains. It would remain even if the events here had turned out much worse than they have. Must we immediately forget what lies beneath the surface? We must not do so within a spiritual movement that arises from the depths of the human heart and soul. Sunless – even the sun is eclipsed – sunless in the corresponding meaning of the word is not what has entered the world as the anthroposophical movement. Of course, this does not prevent us from having to take things as they are within this circle, precisely in order to regain the right vessel for anthroposophy in a real anthroposophical society. But we need the mood from which this alone can be done.

Of course, I cannot touch on everything that comes into consideration today. I will endeavor to touch on as much as possible of what needs to be said in these two lectures. It is not possible to say everything, but I would like to point out two things in particular: the urgent need for community building within the Anthroposophical Society and the symptom that has entered this anthroposophical movement through the extraordinarily satisfying youth movement. But on anthroposophical ground, some things must be viewed differently than elsewhere. One would not be on this ground, so longed for by many, if one could not view things differently than they are otherwise viewed in today's life.

Community building! It is above all extremely remarkable that the ideal of community building is particularly prevalent in our present time. Out of an elementary, deep feeling in many human souls today arises the ideal of community building, of a very specific relationship between human beings with the impulse of cooperation. When a number of younger theologians who were on their way to becoming pastors came to me some time ago, they were driven above all by the impulse for religious renewal, for a religious renewal imbued with the true power of Christ, a religious renewal that can touch the souls of many people today in the way they want to be touched, but which cannot be achieved within the traditional religious confessions of the present day. And I had to say something that seems to me to be extremely important in the development of this religious renewal movement. I had to say: We must seek, in the right sense, to build community, to find an element in religious and pastoral work that binds people to one another. And I said to the friends who came to me: With abstract words, with preaching in the usual sense, with the sparse worship services that in many cases still remain today in this or that denomination, it is not possible to build community on religious grounds. - The fact that religion is increasingly moving toward intellectualism has resulted in a truly considerable number of today's sermons being completely permeated by a rationalistic, intellectualistic element. What reaches people today does not bind them together, but on the contrary isolates them, atomizing their social community. And this must seem understandable to those who know that I can acquire the rational, the intellectual, as an individual human being. Once I have reached a certain level of education in my individual human development, I can acquire intellectualism without leaning on other people and can continue to perfect it in myself. One can think alone, one can pursue logic alone, and one may even do so more perfectly the more one does it alone. One even feels the need to withdraw from the world as much as possible, including the world of people, when one remains in purely logical thinking. But human beings are not predisposed to such solitude. And if I want to try today to illustrate in a pictorial, non-intellectual way what is searching for community life in the depths of human hearts, it must be done for the reason that we are living in the transition to the formation of the consciousness soul in human nature, because our life must become more and more conscious. Becoming more conscious does not mean becoming more intellectual. Becoming more conscious means that we can no longer remain at the level of mere instinctive experience. But precisely on anthroposophical ground, we must attempt to represent that which is raised to conscious clarity in full elemental life, I would say in a life that is similar in human perception to naive perception and feeling. This must succeed. Now there is a kind of community in human life that is obvious to everyone, that shows across the globe that humanity is designed for community. A community that is also referred to everywhere in today's cultural, indeed political and economic life, mostly in a very harmful way, but from which we can learn, albeit in a primitive way.

In the first years of life, the child is introduced to a human community that is real and concrete, without which it cannot live. It is the community of human language. In language, we have, I would say, the form of community that nature has placed before the eye of the soul. Through language, especially through the mother tongue, which is instilled in the whole human being at a time when the child's etheric body is still unborn, the first community-forming element is brought to the human being. And it is only the fault of our rationalistic age that today, in an agitational-political way, we perceive the languages of peoples and perceive the peoples according to their languages, but that we do not at all observe the deep, intimate soul configurations, the immense values of destiny and karma that are bound to language and its genius as the natural basis of man's cry for community arising from his natural disposition. What would we be if we had to pass each other by without finding the same soul life resounding in a word that sounds the same in another person, in a word into which we too can put our own soul life? And if we each practice just a little self-knowledge, we will be able to achieve what I cannot develop here for reasons of brevity: an overview of everything we owe to language for the first, most primitive formation of human community.

But there is something even deeper, albeit rarer in life than human language. Human language is something that binds people to community life on a certain external level, but does not penetrate deeply into the most intimate foundations of the soul. In certain moments of earthly life, we notice something else that creates community besides language, something that goes beyond language. And this is felt by those who, by chance, meet up again in later life with other people they knew as children. Let us imagine the ideal case that fate has brought someone together with three, four, or five childhood friends in later life, perhaps in their forties or fifties, with friends with whom they have not been together for decades, but with whom they may have lived through the period between the ages of ten and twenty. Let us take good human relationships, fruitful human relationships, love-filled human relationships between these people and imagine what it means when such people now allow their souls to be touched by the memories of the time they spent together in childhood. Memory lies deeper than anything that lies on the level of language. And souls resonate more intimately when the pure soul language of memories can bind people together, even if only for a brief moment of communion. And it is certainly not—as anyone who has experience in this area knows—it is certainly not just the individual facts that are recalled from memory and that strike from soul to soul when that tremendous intimacy and depth in the souls of human beings occurs, which could occur in such an ideal case as I have just constructed. It is something completely different. It is not the concrete content of the memories, it is a completely indefinite and yet so definite experience, a shared experience in these human souls, it is a resurrection of the one with whom one was once together in a hundredfold of details, but which merge into a totality, and it is everything that comes from the other soul in shared memory, that awakens a total experience.

This is true for earthly life. And from a pursuit of this spiritual fact into the spiritual realm, I had to say to those theological friends who came to me with the stated intention: If real community building is to occur in the work of religious renewal, then a cult applicable and tailored to the present is needed. The shared experience of worship gives something that, simply by its very nature, evokes a sense of community in the human soul. And the movement for religious renewal has understood this; it has accepted this cult, and I believe that Dr. Rittelmeyer said something very important here in recent days: From this aspect of community building, perhaps one of the greatest dangers for the anthroposophical movement arises from the movement for religious renewal. For in this cult lies an enormously significant element of community building. It binds human beings to one another. Yes, what is it about this cult that binds human beings to one another, that can and will certainly turn individuals who have been atomized by intellectualism and logic back into a community? This is obviously what Dr. Rittelmeyer meant; there is a means for community building. But since the Anthroposophical Society also tends toward community building, it will have to find the means that are right for it, if it does not want to be threatened by the movement for religious renewal.

Now, what is the secret of community-building in the nature of the cult, as it has been found specifically for this purpose in the movement for religious renewal? That which is expressed in the forms of worship, whether in ceremony or in words, is a reflection of real experiences; However, these are not real experiences that have been undergone here on earth, but real experiences in that world which human beings undergo in their pre-earthly existence when they are on the second part of the path between death and a new birth, from that world which human beings pass through from the moment that lies at the midnight hour of human existence between death and a new birth, until they descend into earthly life. In the realm that human beings pass through lie the world, the events, and the beings that find a true reflection in the genuine, authentic forms of worship. What, then, does the person who experiences the cult with the other person with whom he is brought together by some karma feel – and karma is so intricate that we can assume karma to be present wherever we are brought together with other people? He experiences shared memories of pre-earthly existence with him. This emerges from the subconscious depths of the soul. Before we descended to earth, we lived together in a world that stands before our soul here on earth in the cult. This is a powerful bond, a real bringing in not only of images, but of the forces of the supersensible world into the sensible world. But this is a bringing in of those forces from the supersensible world into the sensible world that intimately affect human beings, that are connected with the most intimate backgrounds of the human soul. That is why cult binds, because in cult what is carried down from the spiritual worlds is that which are the forces of these spiritual worlds, because human beings have before them in their earthly life that which is supernatural. They do not have it before them in rationalistic words, which cause them to forget the spiritual world, even in the subconscious depths of their souls, but they have it before them in living images that is imbued with power, that is not merely a symbol, that is not a dead image, that is a bearer of power, because he has before him that which belongs to his spiritual environment when he is not in his earthly body. A comprehensive, spiritual common memory—that is what the community-building power of the cult is.

The Anthroposophical Society also needs such a force so that a sense of community can emerge within it. But the reason for community building in the anthroposophical movement may be different from that in the movement for religious renewal, although the one does not exclude the other, but rather the one can be in the most beautiful harmony with the other if the relationship is understood correctly in terms of feeling. But it must first be understood how another community-forming element can enter into human life. A memory transformed into the spiritual radiates toward us from the design of the cult. Cult formation speaks to something deeper than the human intellect; cult formation speaks to the human mind, for the human mind basically understands the language of the spiritual, even though this language of the spiritual does not initially enter into the immediate consciousness of this earthly life. And now, in order to understand the other element that must play a corresponding role in the Anthroposophical Society, it is necessary above all that you look not only at the mystery of language and memory in relation to the nature of community building, but that you look at something else in human life. Take the state of the dreaming human being, and compare this state of the dreaming human being with the fully awake human being in daily life.

The world of dreams may be beautiful, it may be magnificent, it may be rich in images, meaningful and ambiguous, but it is a world that isolates human beings from earthly life. In the world of his dreams, man is alone. There lies one person, sleeping and dreaming, others are around him, sleeping or awake for my sake, the worlds that are in their souls, they have nothing to do with what he experiences in his dream consciousness. Humans isolate themselves in their dream world, even more so in their sleeping world. When we wake up, we live ourselves into a certain community life. The space in which we are, in which the other is, the sensation, the idea of this space that he has, we also have ourselves. We awaken to our surroundings to a certain extent to the same inner soul life as he awakens. As we awaken from the isolation of the dream, we awaken to a certain degree into human community simply through the nature of our relationship as human beings to the outside world. We cease to be so decisively within ourselves, so cocooned and encapsulated, as we were cocooned and encapsulated in the dream world, even if we still dream so beautifully, so magnificently, so meaningfully and ambiguously. But how do we wake up? We wake up to the outside world, we wake up to light, we wake up to sound, to warmth, to all the other contents of the sensory world, but we also wake up – at least for ordinary everyday life – to the exterior of other people, to the natural side of other people. We wake up to everyday life in the natural world. This awakens us, this transports us from isolation into a certain community life. We do not yet wake up – and this is the secret of everyday life – as human beings to other human beings, to the deepest innermost part of human beings. We wake up to light, we wake up to sound, we wake up perhaps to the language that others speak to us as belonging to the natural part of human beings, we wake up to the words that they speak from within to without. We do not wake up to what is going on in the depths of the other person's soul. We wake up to the naturalness of the other person; in ordinary everyday life, we do not wake up to the spiritual and soulful nature of the other person.

This is a third awakening, or at least a third state of soul life. From the first, we awaken into the second through the call of nature. From the second, we awaken into the third state through the call of the spiritual-soul life in the other person. But we must first hear this call. Just as we awaken in the right way to everyday earthly life through the external nature, there is a higher level of awakening when we awaken in the right way to the spiritual-soul life of our fellow human beings, when we learn to feel within ourselves the spiritual-soul life of our fellow human beings, just as we feel the light and sound in our soul life when we awaken in the ordinary way. No matter how beautiful the images we see in the isolation of our dreams, no matter how extraordinary our experiences in this isolated dream consciousness, we will hardly be able to read at first, unless particularly abnormal conditions arise. We do not have this relationship to the outside world. Now, we may absorb beautiful ideas from anthroposophy, from this knowledge of a spiritual world, we may theoretically penetrate everything that can be said about our etheric body, astral body, and so on, but we still do not understand the spiritual world. We only begin to develop our first understanding of the spiritual world when we awaken to the soul and spirit of other human beings. Only then does a real understanding of anthroposophy begin. Yes, it is incumbent upon us to start from that state for a real understanding of anthroposophy, which can be called: the awakening of human beings to the spiritual and soul life of other human beings.

The power for this awakening can be generated by planting spiritual idealism in a human community. There is much talk of idealism today. But idealism is something rather flimsy in our present culture and civilization. For true idealism is only present when human beings can become aware that, just as they bring a spiritual world down into the earthly realm by establishing a form of worship, they also lift something they have learned to recognize and understand in the earthly realm up into the supersensible spiritual realm by elevating it to an ideal. We bring the supernatural into the powerful image when we celebrate the cult figure. We lift ourselves up into the supersensible with our soul life when we experience what we experience in the physical world in such a spiritual-idealistic way that we learn to feel it as experienced in the supersensible, when we learn to feel in such a way that we say to ourselves: What you have perceived here in the world of the senses suddenly comes alive when you elevate it to the ideal. It comes alive when you permeate it in the right way with your mind and will. When you radiate your whole inner being with will, when you apply enthusiasm to it, then you take your sensory experience, by idealizing it, in the opposite direction to the one you take when you mystify the supersensible in the form of a cult. For if we have a small or a large anthroposophical community, we can, in a certain sense, achieve what is given in this characteristic. We can achieve it if we are actually able, through the living power we put into the shaping of ideas from the spiritual, to experience something awakening, something that not only idealizes the sensually experienced in such a way that the ideal is an abstract thought, but in such a way that the ideal gains a higher life as we live ourselves into it, that it becomes the counter-image of the cult, namely the sensuous elevated into the supersensible. We can achieve this in an emotional way if we make it our business, wherever we cultivate anthroposophy, to permeate this cultivation with spiritualized feeling, if we understand that even the door, even the gateway to the room — however profane it may otherwise be — it is sanctified by shared anthroposophical reading — as something we cross with reverence. And we must be able to evoke the feeling that this is the case in each and every one who joins us in our shared reception of anthroposophical life. And we must be able to bring this not only to our innermost abstract conviction, but to our inner experience, so that in a room where we practice anthroposophy, we do not just sit there as so many people who absorb what they hear or read and transform it into their thoughts, but that through the whole process of absorbing anthroposophical ideas, a real spiritual being becomes present in the room where we practice anthroposophy. Just as the divine forces are present in a sensory way in the forms of worship that take place in the sensory world, we must learn to allow a real spiritual being to be present in the room where the anthroposophical word is spoken, through our souls, through our hearts, through our inner soul constitution, and we must be able to arrange our speech, our feelings, our thinking, our impulses of will in a spiritual sense, that is, not in some abstract sense, but in the sense that we feel as if a being hovering above us, who is really spiritually present, were looking down on us and listening to us. We must feel a spiritual presence, a supersensible presence, which is there because we practice anthroposophy. Then the individual anthroposophical activity begins to become a realization of the supersensible itself.

Go into primitive communities, where there is something else besides language. Language is what resides in the upper part of the human being. If you look at the whole human being, you will find in primitive human communities that which binds human beings together, in the communal blood. Blood ties hold people together in community. But in the blood lives what is found in a free humanity not in the same way, namely the group soul or group spirit. A common spirit had entered into a group of people bound together by blood ties, as it were from below. Where common blood flows through the veins of a number of people, a group spirit is present. In the same way, through what we experience together, by taking in anthroposophy together, we can draw upon not a group spirit through blood, but a real community spirit. If we are able to feel this, then we bind ourselves together as human beings into true communities. We simply have to make anthroposophy real, make it real by awakening a consciousness in our anthroposophical communities that, when people come together for common anthroposophical work, the spiritual and soul life of the other person first awakens. People awaken in each other, and by finding each other again and again, they awaken in a transformed state, because in the meantime each has gone through something different and has progressed a little further. This awakening is an awakening in sprouting and budding. And once you have found the possibility that human souls awaken in human souls and human spirits in human spirits, that you go into the anthroposophical communities with the living consciousness: Only then do we become such awake human beings that we understand anthroposophy together, and when you then take up the anthroposophical ideas on the basis of this understanding in an awakened soul — not in the soul of everyday life that is asleep to the higher existence — then the common real spirituality descends upon your workplace. Is it true, then, when we speak of the supersensible world and are unable to rise to the level of comprehending such real spirituality, such a reversed cult? Only then are we truly grasping, comprehending the spiritual within, when we not only have the idea of this spiritual in the abstract and can reproduce it theoretically, even for ourselves, but when we can believe — but believe on the basis of a provable faith — that spirits have spiritual communion with us in spiritual comprehension. You cannot bring about anthroposophical community building through external institutions. You must bring it about from the deepest sources of human consciousness itself.

I have shown you part of the way to this today; I will continue with my descriptions tomorrow. Through such descriptions, I would like to point out a little that the most important thing for the Anthroposophical Society, if it wants to develop further, is that it be truly seized by a true understanding of anthroposophy. If this true understanding of anthroposophy is there, then this understanding is the path not only to ideas about the spirit, but to communion with the spirit. But then the consciousness of this communion with the spiritual world also builds community. And the communities that are predestined by karma will form. They will be an effect of the right anthroposophical consciousness. No external means can be specified. If someone describes them to you, they are describing something charlatan-like.

Well, to a certain extent, such things have nevertheless been understood in the two decades of anthroposophical development, understood also by many in a spiritual sense, and I may have more to say about this tomorrow, for I will continue this reflection tomorrow and point to another goal. But now I would just like to add a few words to what may have been stirred up in you by this description of the spiritual foundations of anthroposophical community life. On the one hand, the anthroposophical movement really does contain the source from which descriptions such as the one I have just given you must come. The Anthroposophical Society may look one way or another in certain epochs — anthroposophy is independent of any anthroposophical society and can be found independently of such a society. However, it can also be found in a special way when people understand how to awaken to one another and, in this way, out of this awakening, communities are formed. For one awakens anew with the people with whom one comes together, and that is why one remains with them. There are inner spiritual reasons for this. This must be understood more and more within the Anthroposophical Society; and actually, everything that is put forward for the flourishing of the Anthroposophical Society should be permeated by forces that ultimately lead everywhere into anthroposophy as such.

I was deeply satisfied when, recently, after having attended meetings for weeks, smaller and larger meetings in which what is now happening at the delegates' meeting was prepared, after debating there, as one does in parliaments, as one does in associations and elsewhere, based on the usual rationalistic everyday considerations, I came to a youth meeting, a meeting of young academics. There was also talk about what should happen. Well, for a while they talked about external matters, but after a certain time they suddenly found themselves in the midst of a genuine anthroposophical discussion. The affairs of everyday life flowed into such a current that it was only possible to discuss things in an anthroposophical way. That would be the most beautiful thing, if one did not bring up anthroposophical theories in an artificial, sentimental-artificial, nebulous way, as often happened, but if one came to them in a natural way from the ordinary needs of life, from discussing them: Now we no longer know how to study, how to study chemistry or physics, if we do not begin to talk about anthroposophy in order to inform ourselves about the necessities of study. That is the spirit that can prevail among us.

But we will not come to any conclusion by tomorrow evening if things continue in the same way as they have been going so far. We will only end up in tremendous chaos, in tragic chaos. For above all, we must not sentimentally pull all sorts of things out of thin air, but we must pour anthroposophical impulses into our hearts, anthroposophical impulses in full clarity. Then our negotiations will be fruitful.

But as things stand now, I see two groups of people in this hall who do not understand each other at all and who have not yet been able to take the very first step toward mutual understanding. Why? Because on the one hand, people have to speak from a two-decade-old experience, from what I allowed myself to describe a little at the beginning today, and on the other hand, there is no interest in this experience. This is not meant in any critical sense, but only in the sense of a concerned encouragement. We have seen that people have come together, well-meaning people, people who are enthusiastic about anthroposophy in their own way, who have simply cut short our discussions here by saying: What interest do we have in all these reports if they continue to be served up to us? ' – at a time when it is important that those who do not yet know about it should learn about the serious dangers to which the Anthroposophical Society is exposed. On the one hand, there is a fundamental, natural, I would say, interest in life in the Anthroposophical Society, a life that has something of a family atmosphere, but also the good sides of family life; on the other hand, there are those who are not interested in this, who only have a general idea of an Anthroposophical Society. Both are justified as things stand today, so justified that if we do not soon arrive at a completely different form of discussion, it would be best—I am only expressing my opinion, because what should happen must come from within the Society—if we left the old Anthroposophical Society as it is and, alongside it, founded an association of free anthroposophical communities for all those who now want something completely different. Each party could cultivate what is close to its heart on its own ground. On the one hand, we would have the old Anthroposophical Society, and on the other, a loose but closely connected association of free communities. The two societies could find a way to live together. It would be better for this to come about than the hopeless situation that would inevitably arise tomorrow evening if the discussion continues in the same way as it has done so far. I therefore ask you to include this suggestion in the further discussion, if you want to avoid a falsehood that would consist in a deception, regardless of whether the old is left as it is or reformed. If things remain as they are, with one side not understanding the other, then these two associations within the anthroposophical movement should be established. I say this to you out of a concerned, most concerned heart; for no one will deny that I understand what it means to care for the anthroposophical cause. Nor will anyone deny that I myself know what it means to love the anthroposophical cause. But it is better to have two loving siblings, each going their own way, who come together only in a common ideal, than to have something that would nevertheless lead to chaos again after a short time.

My dear friends, you must not overlook the fact that the things that cause us difficulties are the individual justifications. That should have been clearly pointed out. I do not even want to claim that the last Central Executive Council has essentially done more work than the previous one, at least not more than I did in a similar capacity when I was General Secretary. But that is not the point. The point is: what should have happened in the anthroposophical sense after the individual foundations were established here in Stuttgart? This question must be answered. For today we cannot undo these foundations. We must inform ourselves about their living conditions now that they are there. But if we do not learn to understand how to shape them in the anthroposophical sense, which we have not understood in the last four years, if we insert them as foreign bodies into the anthroposophical movement, as has happened, then the foundations that have been laid since 1919 will ruin the entire anthroposophical movement. Then they will ruin every Central Council, whatever it may be called. Therefore, it is a matter of conducting objective and not personal discussions and of becoming clear about how the Anthroposophical Society is to be shaped now that it has taken on board these foundations, one of which is as wonderful as the Waldorf school. There has been no mention of this at all, because those who are familiar with what is going on in Stuttgart have more or less kept quiet about it so far. I would particularly like to see the two gentlemen from the Central Board – I always exclude the third gentleman, Mr. Leinhas, who is the only one who has helped me intensively in an important matter and continues to do so; I cannot even wish for him to devote himself to the Central Board, although he belongs there in the most eminent sense – I would like to see the other two gentlemen of the Central Board comment on this matter. This is not a matter of defense or anything like that, but rather of what they have to say about such a future structure of the Anthroposophical Society, which has the potential to incorporate the foundations that have been in place since 1919. Otherwise, these foundations have been laid irresponsibly. They must not be allowed to do so, because they are already there. The questions are serious in the most eminent sense. And we must concern ourselves with them; we must conduct the discussion objectively and not personally. I meant the words I am now speaking here to be entirely objective, not so much directed at any one person or persons on the Central Board. Personalities are not being disparaged, but I believe that what I have now sharply pointed out must be discussed. If the two associations are established, the one that is the continuation of the old Anthroposophical Society could concern itself with what has emerged from the bosom of the Society, as one must concern oneself with such things; and the other, because it is not interested in this, could follow the anthroposophical path in the narrower sense. I wanted to outline this briefly. I will then speak in more detail about the factual aspects tomorrow at noon.