The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner
1909
Activity for 1909 commenced on the first day of the year with a peculiar lecture theme: Mephistopheles and the Earthquake. The external occasion for the second part of the theme lay in the earthquake of Messina, which had occurred three days previously and which, by reason of the enormous loss of fife, drew attention to the problem contained in the realm of forces within the body of the earth. Rudolf Steiner carried the mind beyond, to the spiritual and essential in cosmos, earth, and man. The forms of the Earth Spirit and good and evil Powers, in the sense of Goethe’s Faust, he presented by no means merely as imaginations of a vision revealed in pictures, but as Goethe himself had conceived them—as representing spiritual realities which are manifest both to artistic sensibility and to spiritual-scientific knowledge. The research and lectures given since the beginning of the century provided, in the first place, the basis for an understanding of these supersensible spheres. At that time, however, a considerable degree of courage was needed to speak in so concrete a manner of the connections between the cosmic-spiritual Powers and forces and the evolutions and revolutions of the physical events in the life of the earth.
Any one familiar with the scientific literature of the day can already find a great deal of research material, supported by observations and statistics, which affords proof that irregularities in the field of cosmic forces —for example, sun spots, eruptions in the sun’s corona, etc.—become manifest in abnormalities of human life processes, such as increased cases of sickness and death. Even effects upon the spiritual and psychic conditions in individuals and in social life are traceable to a relation with these world symptoms. Forty years ago, however, these facts had not been explored and were still regarded as non-existent, meaningless, or at least lying outside the realm of knowledge. It required the steadfast and consistent application of knowledge, which Rudolf Steiner was bringing to bear already in that period, to set forth not only the influence of cosmic forces upon earthly events but also the differentiation and interplay of spiritual processes in the world organism, the interweaving of cosmic and earthly, supersensible and sensible phenomena, even down to the level of concrete results. If at the present day, therefore, the temporal-spatial organic connection of cosmic evolutionary and radiant forces with the life-forces of the earth, and their mutations, rhythmic or irregular, can be scientifically explored; if it can, moreover, be established that these extend not only to the magnetic and electric fields of the earth, and similarly not only to the physical bodily structure of man, but also to his supersensible psycho-spiritual structure, then it must be acknowledged that something has today appeared in the realm of research which, even at that time, Rudolf Steiner sought to bring to the consciousness of man.
Yet not only the physical but, more important, the spiritual evolutionary processes of the cosmos bring about decisive turning points in the earthly life of man. For him who was destined through spiritual research and vision to recognize this process of evolution of the cosmic and spiritual forces and Powers—real Beings—the year 1909 brought an event of decisive significance, not even today to be fully estimated. Rudolf Steiner, who always first allowed such events and experiences to mature within himself before giving them out at times of spiritual need, gave expression only later on, in the year 1917, in the midst of the tremendous physical and spiritual suffering of the war, to what had already been set in motion in 1909, as a solacing occurrence for these human sufferings. He uttered this in the lecture cycle Cosmic and Human Metamorphoses in the words:
“Just as far removed in conduct as mankind seems today from being permeated with the Christ Spirit on the physical plane, just so near to human souls is the Christ, who is coming, if only they will open themselves to Him. And the seer is even able to indicate how, since about the year 1909, in a distinctly recognizable way, that which is to come has been in course of preparation: that, since the year 1909, we live inwardly in a very special time. Moreover, it is possible today, if this be sought for, to be very close to Christ, to find Him in a quite different way from that of previous times.”
Here we can only hint at what Rudolf Steiner later called the new action of Christ in the etheric world. He had, indeed, recognized that the assertions of certain circles of a physical reappearance of Christ contradicted both the significance and the nature of Christ, and of the uniqueness of the Event on Golgotha. Christ had appeared only once in the body on earth, but his spiritual Being and his power continue to work on the supersensible plane, and a new point in time has now dawned in which human beings, consciously rising to the supersensible world, can there encounter His present activity.
Thirty years after the decisive spiritual events of the year 1879, the time was now ripe and the possibility was given for recognition, not only traditionally or in blind faith, but through conscious spiritual experience, of the intervention of the Christ Being in earthly destiny. Dr. Steiner, with his tremendous reverence for what is sacred, yet with unerring sense of responsibility, led the way during the following years to a comprehension of these truths. As an introduction to a knowledge of the organization of Spiritual Powers according to Hierarchies—the Good Powers but also their Adversaries—we now find, probably for the first time in this manner, that, in describing these adversary Powers in that lecture of January 1, 1909, Dr. Steiner spoke of Ahriman as a Cosmic Being in antithesis to another Cosmic Being, Lucifer. Whereas previously a connection had been shown in the duality of Ormuzd and Ahriman, referred to in the ancient Persian records, now for the first time in the revelation of the Cosmic Powers by means of spiritual research, the polarity of Lucifer and Ahriman was made more and more clear. At the beginning of this year, so important in spiritual evolution, this naturally took place at first in intimate circles. In the work Occult Science—an Outline, completed in this year, Dr. Steiner for the first time published a description of the great Triad, Christ between Lucifer and Ahriman, which he ultimately brought to expression in his statue of the Christ at Dornach. This Triad has been described in his works since 1909 in so many aspects in its influence upon cosmos, earth, and man that we need to give here only a reminder of this as a spiritual-historical fact.
When Rudolf Steiner referred to these good and evil Powers, in the sense in which Goethe caused them to appear to Faust in the guise of the Spirit of the Earth and Mephistopheles, he stressed the fact that Goethe, as a person open to the supersensible worlds, had in fact discerned in their activities actual Beings but had also, in relying too much upon tradition, failed to differentiate these Opposing Powers sufficiently in the one figure of Mephistopheles. But also in the realm of the Mights and Powers there rules the law of polarity which Goethe recognized as the primal law of all evolution. As Rudolf Steiner showed, it is man’s task to recognize and to tread the middle path between the spiritual polarities of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers—Lucifer luring man into the realm of the beautiful, the semblance, the visionary, world renunciation, and alienating him from his earthly duties; Ahriman, in contrast, aiming to sever man from the discernment of the supersensible, to harden him, to imprison him in the sheaths of his earthly form and shut him up in a state of consciousness in which he sees himself exclusively as the physical and earthly being in a purely material existence.
To join battle on two fronts, as it were, against these two Adversaries was the task with which Rudolf Steiner saw himself confronted in a truly concrete way in the year 1909. On the one hand, was the materialistic thinking of the sciences, hardened in the dead intellectualism of the nineteenth century; on the other hand, the opposite danger, originating in the propensity of wide circles of people, under the sway of the world-alien and misunderstood doctrines of the Orient—particularly of Buddhism, negating everything earthly—to escape from the tasks of the twentieth century—as happened for example, at the hands of those Theosophists surrounding Mrs. Besant as well as other circles which had established their headquarters in India in the belief that, from this remote distance, they would be able to rescue Europe. If we survey Rudolf Steiner’s lecturing activities, definite utterances and efforts in the year 1909 and the period following, we perceive how this polarity of the spiritual Adversaries and their entirely concrete influences upon the thoughts, actions, and aberrations of man were clearly discerned by him and how he took up the fight methodically and purposefully in order to lead man back to the middle path.
The realm in which earthly and spiritual spheres meet and intermingle, and in which the battle ground lies, is human thinking. A methodical training in thought, capable of grasping earthly and spiritual reality and of leading to a new unity, was the point of departure, therefore, for Rudolf Steiner’s work. Having prior to the turn of the century laid the foundations in his philosophical works, and having developed them subsequently in a consistent manner, he now gave at the beginning of the year 1909 a lecture which is a characteristic example of the trend of his work—namely, that under the title Practical Training in Thought. This was but one seed among many sown at that time in the consciousness of man; but let it be said that in the meantime the small book in which this lecture was published has reached total editions of no less than 45,000 copies, has been translated into numerous languages, and has already exerted its influence upon human consciousness.
After this lecture, delivered during a trip into southern Germany, he spoke in a number of cities on the bodily-psychic force-structure of the human being under the title The Mystery of the Human Temperaments. While lecture series were being continued for members on Spiritual-Scientific Knowledge of Man, the public was being introduced into the same area of knowledge through lectures on such themes as Questions of Health in the Light of Spiritual Science; The Invisible Members of Man’s Being and Practical Life; The Circuit of the Human Being within the Worlds of the Senses, the Soul, and the Spirit. Life after Death, a Fact in Reality. For members also he spoke on Illness and Karma; Rhythms in Man’s Nature; More Intimate Questions of Reincarnation.
At the beginning of February, he undertook the first of the numerous journeys made by him during 1909. These began in Switzerland, where he spoke in Basel between February 2 and 6 on The Meaning of Christianity for the Present Time and in Bern on Goethe’s Significance for the Present Time. In Bern, on February 6, the Johannes Group, founded in 1907, was consecrated by Rudolf Steiner. At the end of March, another journey took him to Italy, where he gave an introductory course of seven lectures in Rome on his world conception, this being a prelude to the important journeys and lectures in Italy of the following two years.
Dr. Steiner’s activity during the year 1909 was now concentrated upon an effort to set up as a contrast to certain Orientalizing tendencies the Western system of knowledge of the spiritual world of the Hierarchies, formulated in the spirit of Western esotericism and Christianity. Thus we already find in a lecture on March 22 a description of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences upon the human being already referred to, but it was only later in Cycle VII at Dusseldorf during April 12—18, 1909, that he gave for the first time a comprehensive introduction to the subject under the title Spiritual Hierarchies and Their Reflection in the Physical World (Zodiac, Planets, Cosmos).
By way of introduction, he stressed that “such a lecture cycle as this will demonstrate to you that all knowledge and all wisdom aim essentially at solving the great—indeed, the greatest—riddle, the riddle of man himself.” Here was to be given an Anthroposophy which places man in the wisdom-filled structure of cosmic and earthly Beings and their plan of earthly evolution. That ninefold Hierarchy of Beings, Spheres, and Forces known in the old European Mysteries and introduced into the Christian world conception as the tradition of Dionysos the Areopagite, was here put into Western terminology, but now the action of these spiritual Beings in the kingdoms of nature, in the planetary and earthly spheres, and in man was illuminated. At the conclusion of this series of lectures, which presented what was meaningful and purposeful in the cosmic order, he explained also what task is allotted to man in this Hierarchical world and its never ending metamorphosis:
“And what is there to be said of man if we are to place him among the Hierarchies? After the Archangels and the Angels—the Arch-Messengers and Messengers—there are to be placed next in order in the ranks of the Hierarchies the Spirits of Freedom, or Spirits of Love; and this, commencing from above, is the tenth of the Hierarchies, which is certainly in a process of development but belongs to the spiritual Hierarchies.
“There is no question of repetition in the universe; every time a Round is complete, something new is introduced into world evolution. To introduce this new factor is always the mission of the particular Hierarchy which stands at the human stage.”
Other lectures also clearly showed the trend before the final rupture with those who were seeking to introduce into the Occident a form of thinking drawn from the past wisdom of the Orient. Public lectures were given between April 19 and May 6 on The Appearance of Christ in the Occident; The Bible and Wisdom; Isis and Madonna; Clairvoyance in Ancient Europe; European Mysteries and Their Initiates. In the first lecture of the Dusseldorf cycle on The Spiritual Hierarchies, he had already said:
“Nothing, nothing at all that is available to us in the wisdom of the East is lacking in the wisdom of the West. The only difference—if one is to speak of such a difference—is that the wisdom of the West has to gather together the whole of Eastern teaching, the whole of Eastern wisdom, the whole of Eastern research and, without allowing any of this to be lost, to illuminate it with the light which has been kindled in mankind through the Christ impulse.”
He then demonstrated again and again in new aspects and from historical sources how Christ’s Act of Redemption had been foreseen and, in its appointed power of influencing humanity, had even been prepared for in the European Mysteries, in their initiation centers and their radiations in the history of the West. He once more delivered, therefore, between May 9 and 21, 1909, an introductory course of twelve lectures in Scandinavia, at Christiania, on the realm of thought of the Apocalypse, the Gospel of St. John, the Johannine Christianity.
The decision regarding a final rejection of the Orientalizing trend of Theosophy represented by those circles which were induced through a misunderstood Buddhism to adopt an anti-Christian attitude, now occurred on the occasion of the Budapest Congress, at the end of May 1909. It was the last Congress of this kind in which Rudolf Steiner took part, before the complete outward separation—with the purpose once more of making those persons also aware of the entirely different kind of world conception which he himself had represented from the very beginning in his presentation of Anthroposophy, and to open to them the possibility of arriving at a free decision. One may ask why he did not earlier discard an association which was neither needful nor helpful to his teaching, and regarding which, as has been seen, he not only emphasized his independence from the beginning but maintained it. It has been related, however, how he recognized in the earliest years following the turn of the century an earnest and sincere seeking within these circles for views and values that were spiritual; and desired, therefore, to provide the numerous individuals striving after such knowledge with the possibility to form judgments and to make decisions for themselves. According to his methods as a teacher, he gave them seven years to reach mature decisions.
His patience and faithfulness brought their fruit. With many of his pupils an inner decision had ripened by the time the Budapest Congress took place, and the external course of the programs there, which had been arranged by other circles and not, as in the previous year at Munich, by Rudolf Steiner and his friends, gave ocular demonstration of the existing differences. Once again—in the last of their rare meetings—Rudolf Steiner and Mrs. Besant appeared before their audience with the contrasting content of their lectures. They never met each other again. The Congress to take place in Genoa two years later did not occur. But already the entire character of the arrangements at Budapest was unlike what Rudolf Steiner had inaugurated in Munich in the previous year. The artistic atmosphere which he had devised as an appropriate background for the activities in Munich was here lacking, where his influence was unable to turn the scale. He indicated this in a very mild way at the General Meeting of the German Section in October, when he said:
“The Budapest Congress disregarded what we aimed at in Munich and what may in a certain way be called harmonizing of the external milieu and that which takes place within our hearts. At that time we made a beginning of bringing to expression in surrounding space that which moved our hearts. For it is not a matter of indifference what kinds of thoughts are stimulated from without by the space in which the thoughts are to be experienced and stimulated from within.”
This harmonizing principle—bringing the external space into unison with the content in lectures and in art to be fostered within it—was cultivated in an increasing degree within the working Groups until he could realize it completely in the creation of the Goetheanum building, at Dornach.
At that final Congress, in Budapest on May 30, 1909, Mrs. Besant, who had her headquarters in India, spoke on the aim of the work as this hovered before her. Other members at the Congress presented their own conceptions in the five official languages of the Congress—Hungarian, German, French, English, Italian. But friends were present from other countries also —Scandinavia, Russia, Finland, and elsewhere. On the second day, May 31, Rudolf Steiner delivered his Congress lecture, and it is extraordinarily characteristic, in view of the whole aspect of affairs as indicated, that he chose for his subject From Buddha to Christ. In other words, he once more placed in the center that to which the one-sided Orientalists present did not wish to give a central position—the Christ Event. He confirmed completely that there existed great initiates and leader-personalities in the history of all parts of the world. Thus he placed in the greatest prominence the figures of Scythianus, Buddha, Zarathustra, Manes; but he pointed out the decisive difference between the historically important teaching of those initiates and the Deed of Christ, unique in world history. The former had taught the wisdom of the Divine Beings and their actions; Christ had lived it out and made it the Act of Redemption for the whole of mankind. Christ, therefore, is not simply to be compared with other leaders of mankind. These were the ambassadors and preparers of the way, while He was the fulfillment. Through this exposition Rudolf Steiner showed for those who would listen what was the essence of the matter. He then left to them freedom to recognize and to choose.
The further proceedings of the Congress were of less importance. The essential decisions did not come out of the discussions, in which Rudolf Steiner took no part, owing to his belief that good results do not come out of theoretical discussions of fundamental matters during a Congress, but that people must know and perform these things—and this he then did in a comprehensive degree. The fundamental decisions of this Congress occurred within the hearts of those present and, in all quietness, in the final conversations between Rudolf Steiner and Mrs. Besant.
Frau Marie Steiner, who took part in these conversations, condensed in the following words the outcome in her preface to Rudolf Steiner’s lecture cycle on The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness: “Annie Besant became the tool of an anti-Christian movement. In the summer of 1909, in Budapest, Rudolf Steiner had to tell her that their paths inwardly parted. This conversation was the point at which their outward separation began. A battle for and against Christ began here also. ‘A Theosophy which lacks the means of grasping Christianity is entirely valueless for the culture of the present day.’ Rudolf Steiner spoke these words in 1910.” Frau Marie Steiner confirmed verbally to the author that the Budapest Congress constituted the end of the initial experimental transition stage of the Movement. The paths had already separated, as was frankly admitted; soon afterward, the outward parting took place. Still in connection with the Congress, Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture characteristic even in its title, The Western Paths of Initiation.
After the departure of those not connected with his particular work, he gave to the numerous friends still remaining a ten-day lecture course on Theosophy and Occultism of the Rosicrucians the intention of which has already been explained. The Movement henceforth took its course on the basis of the sphere of Rudolf Steiner’s own destiny and activity. On June 14, he spoke again on the subject From Buddha to Christ, and there followed between June 24 and July 7 in Cassel the weighty lecture course on The Gospel of St. John in Relation to the Other Three Gospels, Especially the Gospel of St. Luke.
On August 22, the specially cultivated union of work in spiritual science and art of the Munich Group was resumed, with a presentation of Schuré’s The Children of Lucifer, regarding the choice of which Rudolf Steiner said in Cycle XVIII, of 1911:
“When I myself could consider that the time had come when my spiritual endeavors should be brought into connection with what may be called spiritual science, or Anthroposophy, the gateway through which I sought to lead the way into Anthroposophy was provided by a discussion which occurred in connection with the drama The Children of Lucifer; and then we allowed to pass by a seven-year period of development of the Anthroposophical work we planned. But the seed which was planted in our souls at that time through those words spoken about The Children of Lucifer developed meanwhile in complete quiet in our hearts, in the seven-year period conforming with law. After seven years, we had gone so far as to be able to present Schuré's drama as an introduction to our Munich undertakings.”
There followed between August 23 and 31a cycle of nine lectures entitled The East in the Light of the West, with the subtitle, alluding to the previous work, The Children of Lucifer and the Brothers of Christ. In precisely these lectures is shown with complete clarity that Rudolf Steiner by no means rejected the inclusion of the significant values bequeathed to mankind in the ancient Eastern wisdom. Indeed, these as well as numerous later lecture cycles proved that he had things to say regarding the spiritual substance of this wisdom of the East which penetrated and illuminated the history of mankind far more than was done by those who were ready to be entirely bound by it. Notable European personalities had rendered important service in publishing the great books of Oriental wisdom and others in translating them. Gifted philosophers had sought to interpret them. Certain Theosophical circles desired to make ancient texts a foundation for the present-day life even of Europe. Rudolf Steiner, on the contrary, looked upon them and explored them from the point of view of the law of spiritual metamorphosis. For him they were valuable documents and imprints of a past stage of human consciousness, showing us to what heights wisdom had already attained thousands of years before the proud intellectualism of the nineteenth century, and how intimate was the contact, now lost, which men of those ancient times had with the divine spiritual world. On the other hand, he opposed, in the spirit of Goethe’s principle of metamorphosis and enhancement, the taking over of the ancient truths in unmodified form. He not only expected the broadest and deepest research in these ancient documents of human wisdom, but himself provided this. Yet at the same time he demanded of our age that it should restore upon a new stage of consciousness, and out of its own knowledge of the supersensible, the contact with the spiritual worlds and their guidance.
It was clear to him that such an endeavor could only very slowly bear fruit. He said, therefore, in the first lecture of this cycle:
“All human work can accomplish nothing unless at the same time it is accompanied by patience and the ability to wait; unless the word ripen plays a certain role. . . . Just as we were able to wait seven years for this ideal, so we shall be able to wait for other things, for much that is destined to come about through our Movement, until it has grown to ripeness in the lap of time. “Look at your failures—they appear to be the death of your creations;
“Look from your failures to the Cross, and remember that on the Cross was the source of eternal life, which conquers temporal death, not for self but for all mankind. . . .
“We must be able, when once we have recognized the rightness of an idea, not to be led away from our conviction of the rightness of the idea.”
He then pointed to the Western spiritual stream which has guarded and nurtured and enriched the ancient wisdom:
“A wonderful, glorious legend of humanity tells how a jewel fell from Lucifer’s crown as he plunged from Heaven to the earth. Out of this jewel— so runs the tale—was made the vessel in which Christ Jesus partook of the Lord’s Supper with his Disciples; the vessel into which the blood of Christ flowed from the Cross; the vessel brought by angels to the Western world and there received by those who desired to progress to a true understanding of the Christ Principle. There came from the stone that fell from the crown of Lucifer—there came from this the Holy Grail.”
This makes it clear that Rudolf Steiner’s purpose was to view the wisdom of the East in the light of the West, not the reverse. The contrary charge made against him is without any foundation.
On September 15, the Gospel cycle began in Basel on The Gospel of St. Luke. As an introduction, Dr. Steiner called to mind the cycle on the Gospel of St. John, delivered also in Basel. He pointed to the fact that the author of the Gospel of St. Luke gives the report of those “who were the eye-witnesses and servants of the Word.” Thus the synoptic evangelists report to us something which they had seen, not only with the physical eye but with the eye of the spirit, for in that age these men still had the gift of clairvoyance. The author of St. John’s Gospel, however, spoke out of the faculty of inspiration and intuition, as an initiate. But just for that reason these four documents of mankind supplement one another, to form a comprehensive picture of true earthly and spiritual events, if what is there said is not approached and examined only intellectually but by the application of the same methods of knowledge. And such a consideration shows them to possess eternal value for all levels of consciousness in the future.
In this cycle on The Gospel of St. Luke in Basel, he provided also the solution of one of the greatest riddles confronting Gospel research, which has wrestled for centuries with apparently irreconcilable contradictions in the accounts of the childhood of Jesus in Matthew and Luke respectively. Rudolf Steiner unveiled here for the first time the secret of the nature of the two Jesus boys, one presented through genealogy, early history, and development in Matthew, the other in Luke. In this way was explained one of the most significant apparent contradictions which hitherto had confronted Gospel research with regard to the being of Jesus Christ and the source of Christianity, and the fundamentals of this event were made accessible to humanity. From what we have said above regarding the spiritual significance of the year 1909—regarding the commencement of the influence of the Christ on the etheric plane—it becomes clear at the same time that no mere accident made this spiritual gift to humanity possible at just this point of time, in this particular year.
We may point here to the special significance of geography in such events. For space and time are essential factors in the impress of such events. Just as the year 1909 provided—even demanded—the temporal opportunity for the utterance of certain truths, so likewise is it no coincidence from an esoteric point of view that as the place for the unveiling of many of the deepest Mysteries of Christianity, that spiritual atmosphere was specially chosen which, in the sense of world history, is woven in and around the region of Basel, and still breathes there. For it was here that Rudolf Steiner gave three of his Gospel lecture cycle; that he spoke in June 1914 on The Four Christ Sacrifices; the Three Prior Steps to the Mystery of Golgotha, describing the deeds of Christ before His earthly incarnation, to which reference is to be made later; that here many an important impulse found its point of expression, expansion, or fulfillment. And when, four years later on September 20, 1913, Dr. Steiner laid the foundation stone for the Goetheanum building on the Dornach hill close to Basel, he said: “Led by karma, we stand at this moment at a place through which significant spiritual currents have passed.”
After the cycle on St. Luke’s Gospel, he gave the next two Gospel cycles in Bern, in 1910, and in Basel in 1912. In September 1909, occurred two public lectures in Basel, on The Riddle of Goethe’s Faust (Exoteric and Esoteric). The resumption of the courses in the Berlin Architektenhaus for the winter brought a series of lectures, some of which, under the title Metamorphoses of the Life of the Soul, have appeared in print including chapters on “The Mission of Anger,” “The Mission of Truth,” “The Mission of Reverence,” “Human Character,” “Human Conscience,” “The Mission of Art.” Still other lectures in this general series appeared later under the general title Paths in the Soul’s Experience. In these he spoke, for example, on the nature of Asceticism and Illness, calling attention to the fact that asceticism signified in the original Greek sense self-exercising, and in this sense was intended to “shift into activity forces which are sleeping,” for the purpose of bringing about a right relation among spirit, soul, and corporeal being, whereas this relation in later centuries has been disturbed through a false asceticism. He dealt in detail with the manner in which these influences work. In these introductory lectures, he spoke also on The Nature of Egoism; The Nature of Prayer; The Positive and the Negative Human Being. Through these lectures the hearers were given systematically a spiritual-scientific picture of the life of the human soul: how this cannot merely be known as a phenomenon but can also be developed through methodical spiritual discipline to new levels of experience.
It is noteworthy that the 1909 General Meeting, on October 24, was framed in by four lectures of Rudolf Steiner bearing the title Anthroposophy. Just as seven years previously the lecture on Anthroposophy was an accompaniment to the foundation of the Section in 1902, so there stood at the beginning of the second period of development of the Movement he had founded this same basic content of his activities.
Dr. Steiner opened the meeting with the words:
“On this occasion it may be taken for granted that you have a feeling for what is called a cyclic evolution of events. So in that sense our gathering today signifies a special kind of festival and consecration after the completion of the first seven-year epoch.”
He called to mind the past seven years, the particular events of the year 1909, the lectures and artistic endeavors, as well as the difficulties and shadow sides of such work. Indeed, he points out the divergencies which had always existed, particularly at the Budapest Congress, between himself and Mrs. Besant, above all in regard to the decisive presentation of the activity of Christ: “In regard to the manner and the point in time, my own knowledge indicates something different from that of Mrs. Besant.”
He said:
“The Oriental teaching, the whole spirit of the East, is analytical. To ascend from the various incarnations of man to the Whole, to Oneness, is the path of the East. The task of the West is to develop the spirit of synthesis...
“If this Congress is compared with the earlier ones, it becomes clear that an enormous revolution has occurred in the manner of thinking and in the comprehension of the relation to science. This revolution has become perceptible in particular through the seven-year period of our work in Germany, and the help of our scientific collaborators, who have contributed essentially to this change of relation to science.”
He gave a renewed warning against “faith in mere authority”:
“There is nothing more harmful than when a teacher becomes the object of unbounded admiration. Through this, the blind believer does himself harm in that he does not develop himself; but he does still more harm to the one whom he blindly believes in, whom he blindly worships. Everything in the nature of blind devotion which is showered upon this spiritual researcher assumes for him the nature of a drag against which he has to wage a terrific struggle. There is nothing against which he has to battle harder than precisely such blind admiration, which literally throws stones across his path. This must be confided to you after this rotation of seven years. Those who are willing first of all to test things confront one as persons of good-will; with such people one can make progress. The other kind, however, continually throw a cloud of hindrances in front of one, against which one has continually to defend oneself.”
In accordance with this, he called upon the members again and again during this meeting to carry on their own work in cognition and the formation of judgment. The coming epoch should, indeed, establish the Society, including every member, in special degree upon an independent footing. Difficult decisions loomed ahead.
Frl. von Sivers again reported upon the gratifying increase of members from 1,150 in the spring to 1,500 in October. Rudolf Steiner brought the meeting to a close with the request to devote constantly increasing attention to the artistic development of the Movement also. He continued during the days that followed his course of lectures on Anthroposophy.
On the same day, October 25, he began a series of lectures on The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness. This was indeed the new element which had come about through the evolution of the West, and which was still lacking in Oriental wisdom of the past— the impulse of the “I am,” a gift from Christ to humanity. The central consciousness of the ego-being and its metamorphosis and enhancement, to be gained from personal insight and personal forces, became the core of future evolution, to be brought about by spiritual science.
On October 28 Dr. Steiner bestowed a special gift upon the artistic work in the Society through a lecture on The Nature of the Arts, in which he brought into consciousness the fact that all that is essential in art and in the great works of art is a manifestation out of the creative world revealed to the beholding human being.
November was filled with a great number of lecture tours in Germany and Switzerland (Bern, Zurich, St. Gallen) and Austria (Prague), during which he spoke on The Mystery of Death as Key to the Riddle of Life; The Gospel Texts; Questions Regarding the Law of Karma; as well as The Reincarnation of the Human Being and Destiny, all of these lectures as content of contemporary spiritual research. During December the lecture series mentioned above on The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness was continued, and during Christmas there was an address on The Christmas Tree, a Symbol.
The most important event of December 1909 was the completion by Rudolf Steiner of his work Occult Science—an Outline. With this he made public the fundamental work of his spiritual-scientific cosmogony. Of this volume 45,000 copies have already been published, as well as numerous translations. At that time, it represented the result of ten years of inner struggle, and this struggle was to lead to fulfillment in two respects. Dr. Steiner succeeded in lifting hitherto entirely unknown phenomena of cosmic evolution to the plane of exact knowledge by means of a new method of research. At the same time he had to master the equal difficulty of presenting these phenomena, differing so greatly from present processes in nature, in such a manner as to be accessible to modem thinking. He designated it as his task to formulate these phenomena in thoughts “which are further developments of the thoughts employed in natural science appropriate for the presentation of what is spiritual.”
In the preface to the first edition, written in December 1909, he refers to the initial stage of these ideas in the year 1879. A period of thirty years had elapsed, during which there ripened within him the ability to bring this knowledge to a certain conclusion. In 1879, as already indicated, he had commenced his scientific academic training at the Technical College in Vienna. Now he was able to supplement the world picture of material science by the addition, so imperatively urgent for the human experience of the world, of his exposition of spiritual evolution. From the final words of his introduction, it is evident that the time was not ripe even yet for all of this knowledge to be given to the public—before readers should have been schooled up to the next additional step, before the time destined for this in spiritual progress had reached maturity:
“One who is familiar with supersensible research will notice, no doubt, in reading the book that the endeavor has been made to keep a sharp distinction between what can or should be imparted at the present time out of the realm of supersensible knowledge and what should be presented at a later time or, at least, in a different form.”
As Rudolf Steiner himself reported, he had intended at first to incorporate these cosmogonal results of research as a final chapter in his book Theosophy, published in 1904:
This could not be done. At the time when Theosophy was worked out, this content had not taken on a rounded form within me as had that of Theosophy. In my Imaginations I had before me the spiritual being of the individual man and could set it forth; but the cosmic relations which were to be expounded in Occult Science did not at that time stand out in the same way before me. They were there in details, but not as a total picture.”
Only after years of further work enabled him to achieve all the necessary prerequisites did he proceed with the writing:
“In 1909 I felt that, with these prerequisites, I could produce a book which, in the first place, presented the content of my spiritual vision in a certain degree sufficient as a beginning, molded in the form of thought; and which, in the second place, could be comprehended by every thinking person who did not put hindrances in the way of his understanding.
“I say this today while at the same time admitting that, in 1909, there seemed to be a risk in publishing the book. For I knew, indeed, that the requisite degree of freedom from prejudice would be lacking on the part of just those persons who are professionally active in science, and in no less degree among the numerous other persons depending upon them for their judgment.
“But there stood clearly before me the fact that, in this age, when human consciousness had withdrawn farthest from the spiritual world, information regarding this spiritual world was the most imperative necessity.”
Later on, in private conversation, Rudolf Steiner told the author that this exposition of cosmic evolution, which led back to the very earliest beginnings in the origin of the cosmos, was not at first experienced sequentially in such a form as that in which he was able • ultimately to write it down, as a completed time sequence after the completion of his • research. He had first to trace these evolutionary phenomena step by step from their present temporal terminus backward into the past, back to their beginning, before he was in a position to record them in their correct temporal sequence from beginning to end. In another detailed conversation on the origin of Occult Science—an Outline, he drew attention to the fact that it would be possible to investigate such a cosmic evolution in entirely different aspects—for example, either by placing the dynamic processes, the development of the formative forces, the “etheric formative forces,” in the foreground or by stressing rather the development of the soul processes within the cosmogony, what he called “the astral.” His book Occult Science—an Outline was written, he said, rather from the point of view of the dynamic, the formative forces, the etheric; should destiny give him the time, he would write a cosmogony in the particular aspect of the psychic, the astral. His critics would then possibly put forward the assertion that the two contradicted each other, which would be false; for it would then be only a question of an exposition of the same phenomena seen in two different aspects. Meanwhile, he had given one description in a consistent manner, he said, and upon this it would be possible to build further.
Occult Science—an Outline is essentially divided into two parts. Following an introduction, which defines the nature of the human being who lives amid cosmic events and recognizes them, the first main section deals systematically with cosmic evolution from its very beginnings to the commencement of the so-called historical phases of evolution. In the second main section there follows a description of the historical cultural epochs from the standpoint of spiritual science, concluding with an elucidation of the methods for developing further and higher stages of consciousness. Material was now provided upon which future generations of scientists, historians, and all seekers after knowledge will be able to build, a cosmogony which contains an inexhaustible fund of facts and laws of evolution. Through repeated study, this is capable of opening up continually new aspects and insights into the coming into being of the world, earth, and man; and is at the same time a work enabling every one to work upon himself for the clarification of his relation to the universe.
It is by no means an accident but a matter of destiny, brought about by insight into a decisive hour of spiritual world evolution, that this work was bequeathed to humanity in the year 1909.