The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner
1912
There are certain years the spiritual hallmarks of which attain eminence not merely by reason of external chance. There is such a thing as a time-organism of history in which law is inherent and which possesses rhythm and structure like all else that is living. Rudolf Steiner endeavored repeatedly to awaken a consciousness of the inward obedience to law of great human lives. He showed how the rhythm of thirty-three years which characterized the life of Christ, secret and yet open to cognition, is incorporated in the rhythm of world events; that again and again in history the period of thirty-three years may bring maturity and fulfillment to a spiritual genesis. Thus he demonstrated also by reference to a diversity of world-historical phenomena that the year 1879 must be regarded in esoteric teaching as a point of time at which a decisive spiritual revolution came to pass, which at the same time denoted the opening of a new world epoch. Greater detail will be given in what follows. Up to the year 1912, thirty-three years had passed since that turning point, a germ had matured, a fruit had ripened, able to bring forth new seeds, new fruit. Once more, it was certainly no accidental occurrence that Rudolf Steiner published for the first time in 1912 a calendar—The Calendar of the Soul. It begins with the Easter festival of 1912, the time in the course of the year when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, and it bears the motto “1879 after the birth of the I am.” As he explains in the foreword, “these calendar indications are reckoned from the year 33 of the Christian era,” and just 1,879 years had passed since that epoch in which He had said of Himself “I am the ‘I am’ ” who united Himself upon Golgotha with the Spirit of the Earth forever. The superficial human being may pay no attention to this phenomenon in world history: for him the “I am” may be a perplexing self-evident fact, the ego-consciousness of the human being an unimportant attribute of existence—indeed, according to the Darwinian world conception, even an accidental product of a hypothetical evolution. But spiritual-scientific knowledge indicates that in this regard also world history brings to light decisive events, planned impulses, bestowals from God; and that there were connected with the life, words, and deeds of Christ possibilities and capacities for humanity which profoundly modified the ego-consciousness—indeed, brought this to birth within us as a new force.
It is surely no accidental matter, in turn, but a phenomenon in accord with spiritual law that a movement such as Anthroposophy, placing as it does the spiritual being and activity of the ego-consciousness in the center of its research, was incorporated in the spirit-body of a social community in the year 1912. For this was the year which saw the birth of the Anthroposophical Society. Whoever is willing to contemplate its history without prejudice will recognize that in this there is nothing of an arbitrary or accidental character; that, indeed, threatened with grievous birth pangs and hindrances, a living being was here embodied in earthly relations and that this living being had now to accomplish this step if earthly tasks were to be fulfilled stage by stage in accordance with earthly and spiritual laws. This development we shall have to depict in what follows.
In the year 1912, Rudolf Steiner made a gift to the world in two works which, in two aspects, bring before the minds of men the spiritual situation and the tasks of future humanity: A Path to Self-Knowledge and the Mystery Drama, The Guardian of the Threshold. He himself calls the former a supplement to his works: Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment; Theosophy; and Occult Science—an Outline. Whereas, however, those earlier works showed the reality and action of the spiritual world, giving the path of research in that world universally valid for all men, in this work of 1912 a path is described in eight meditations, for an individual person who approaches through meditative thinking the threshold at the frontier of those spiritual realms and leading into them. He consequently stresses that the title is not The Path, but A Path to Self-Knowledge:
“In my Theosophy and in the Occult Science—an Outline the attempt has been made to present things in the aspect in which they appear to research which aims at the spiritual. The presentation in those works is of a descriptive character whose process is prescribed by the conformity to law which is revealed in things. In this Path to Self-Knowledge, the presentation is different. In it has been stated what experience is possible for a soul entering upon the path to the spiritual in a particular way. This writing may be regarded, therefore, as a portrayal of soul experience. Only, it must be noted that the experience which can be encountered in the way here described, in the case of an individual soul according to its own particular nature, must assume an individual form. The endeavor has been made to do justice to this fact, so that it may be possible to imagine that what is described has been the experience of a particular soul in the precise manner presented. For this reason the title is A Path to Self-Knowledge. Just for this reason the work may serve the purpose of enabling other souls also to enter livingly into that which is described and to reach corresponding goals. This work is thus also a supplement and extension of what is found in my book Knowledge of the Higher World and Its Attainment.”
The year 1912 opened with a New Year festival on January 1, devoted to the great Scandinavian epic Olaf Åsteson. This is one of the noblest documents connected with the seership of the northern European peoples, which struggled through purification and suffering to vision of the spiritual world, and called to the minds of men of that age through imaginations and pictures the lost, yet re-attainable, spiritual revelation. Esoteric tradition had always guarded this knowledge and kept it alive in a form appropriate to the prevailing stage of consciousness. Following upon this lecture of Rudolf Steiner, Marie von Sivers gave a recitation of this ancient Nordic epic.
On the same day the lecture cycle on The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit came to an end. On January 4 lectures at the Berlin Architektenhaus and the Philharmonic Building were resumed, leading from the Origin of Man to a prophetic vision of Christ and the Twentieth Century. In Munich, Rudolf Steiner spoke on January 9 on World Ego and Human Ego. In this lecture he brought to light the battle of Christ with the Luciferic Powers, the Opposing Powers, tending toward alienation from the world, egoism. Lucifer, who brought with freedom of choice also its perils, struggles in every human being against the force of the higher ego, which has been born in man through Christ. This basic motif of the soul-struggles of the present day is made evident also in the Mystery Dramas.
During January 12—16, Dr. Steiner was in Switzerland, which he visited several times during the year. He lectured during this period in St. Gallen, Winterthur, and Zurich on the way From Paracelsus to Goethe; on Death and Immortality; and on The Way of Knowledge.
The period between February 6 and 13 was spent in Austria. The topic of a public lecture in Vienna was The Nature of Eternity and the Nature of the Human Soul, and of a lecture to members Human Life in the Light of the Karma Idea. The work begun during the previous year in Klagenfurt and Graz was further assisted, and the Group in Graz, named in honor of the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling, was formally opened on February 12, on which occasion Rudolf Steiner gave a public lecture on this poet for whom he had such a great affection.
Further lectures during February and March, in German cities, conduced to a deepening of knowledge on reincarnation and karma, with the inclusion of many new details. In contrast with the Eastern representatives of this teaching, who were content for the most part with a very generalized affirmation, Rudolf Steiner from the very beginning entered into a concrete description of the individual metamorphoses through which man passes in the course of his reincarnations. Rejecting the conception of a merely selfish and personal interest, he concentrated upon accurate research in the individual phenomena, from which a picture could then be obtained of the law-conformity of the metamorphoses arising in the human spirit, soul, and body through reincarnation. On the basis of this research, he was then in a position at the end of the year to supplement the preceding description of human metamorphoses during the life on earth in a lecture cycle on Life Between Death and Rebirth in Relation to Cosmic Facts. Descriptions of so methodical a kind showing each separate phase of this process, are not to be found either in the literature inherited from the past or in any other writings of the present. This research could be accomplished only by one who had carried further Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis, who had made the scientific methods and knowledge of the present day his own, and who had systematically developed at the same time the capacity of supersensible clairvoyant vision.
The public lectures in Berlin during these months dealt with The Origin of the Animal Kingdom in the Light of Anthroposophy; The Origin of Man; Death in Man, Animal, and Plant; as well as questions relating to the history of the sciences, under topics such as Copernicus and His Age; Darwin and Supersensible Research.
On March 19 occurred a lecture on The Earthly and the Cosmic Man. In the preface included by Marie Steiner in the later printed edition, we find the following reference to the content of those lectures and to the character of the times in which Rudolf Steiner gave them:
“These perspectives penetrating to the cosmic origins through the grey mists of primordial human history, but casting a brilliant light upon our present age, show up in sharp relief in those lectures given to members of the Anthroposophical Society, which were delivered with certain interruptions, but in always recurring rhythm, in places where Rudolf Steiner had his permanent residence, from which, however, he made many journeys. At least a small group of people were to have their consciousness aroused to the tasks of the present time for the tremendously significant moment through which we lived before the World War and are still living. ... Every series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner for this purpose seems to us of tremendous significance for newcomers to spiritual science, not only as regards their content but also in their chronological aspect, for only thus can one experience the livingly organic nature of the process of building. The remarks on daily events of that period, scattered through the lectures—already remote for a later period—have so much moral force and educational value as to give them a lasting significance.”
In the case of a personality such as Rudolf Steiner, there is importance in the precise time when his utterances were made. The catastrophe of a World War was only two years distant, although unsuspected by most persons, and this was to split mankind into two passionately battling groups. At least a certain number of human beings had to be once more impressively reminded of the common earthly and cosmic origin and mission of mankind as a whole. Simultaneously, a battle had to be waged against the blindly materialistic conception of the nature of man in the West and the visionary tendency in the East.
The lectures of that period contain often characterizations of certain signs of the times of a negative character, through which Dr. Steiner aimed to warn people and awake them, so that much of what he said can be understood today only when the conditions of that period are taken into consideration. But today also we are at a point in time when the same hostile forces are at work, and mankind will thus succeed in avoiding a repetition of similar catastrophes only if resolved to regard the destiny of the world from the vantage point of those higher aspects which were held out during those years to humanity as content of knowledge. One who takes reincarnation seriously, who regards a human being not simply as belonging to one group or another but as a being who, by means of reincarnation, has his share in the totality of the earthly and cosmic spirit-organism, will approach the questions of the day, its struggles and its needs, with an entirely different and comprehensive point of view. He will offer a solution impossible to be found within the narrow horizons of present-day conceptions. Rudolf Steiner spoke in this lecture cycle of the imperative need to strengthen the knowledge of reincarnation within Western culture, and he even gave concrete information regarding the reincarnations of definite historical personalities.
These lectures reached their climax in a description of the significance of the development of individuality in the present phase of historical evolution. Indeed, this important aspect was placed especially prominently in the forefront in the lectures and publications of the year 1912. It was in the last of these lectures that Rudolf Steiner made that reference also to Christian Rosenkreuz, who emerged in the fourteenth century as the guide to independent human individuality, and who founded a spiritual movement whose aim was to free man from the realm of group-soul life and thinking and make him self-dependent.
Between April 3 and 19, Dr. Steiner turned his activity to northern countries, which he visited several times during the year. To begin with, he gave in Finland’s principal city, Helsingfors (Helsinki) the fundamental lecture cycle on The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature. This course of lectures is a magnificent fulfillment of Goethe’s challenge to a recognition of “God-Nature” in its spiritual substance, a challenge to which Rudolf Steiner was eminently qualified to do justice on the strength of the spiritual science which he himself had founded. He could speak concretely of the action of real Beings working into the elements and forces of cosmos, earth, and man. The degree of their intervention in the kingdoms of nature is described, and man’s place in this world of being, force, and substance is displayed in such a manner that the human being is able to find in this world-plan the field of work most worthy of him. Not only the boundaries of earthly realms but also the apparent boundaries of present-day natural science are abolished, enabling man’s vision to expand into the realms of an omnipresent spiritual plan. The human being begins to realize himself as an ego-being within a cosmic system in whose evolution Hierarchical Beings, far above him, but also nature beings and elemental beings which have remained at a stage below him, are constantly at work in every gradation of consciousness, mode of forces, and creative power. When he has recognized that the “human” stage of consciousness is a transitional phase which other lofty Beings have passed through and surmounted before him, and which still other beings will achieve after him, he will then, in the spirit of Goethe’s “three venerations”—for what is above him, equal to him, and beneath him—become aware in reverent knowledge, love, and compassion of his mission in the process of unfoldment of the Hierarchies and their cosmic and earthly spheres. He will trust himself to the spiritual guidance watching over him; and, from being the object of occurrences, will mature into a collaborator in the symphonic development of the world. Thus does every thought, word, and deed of earthly existence receive new substance, power, and direction. He beholds the destiny of the ages, the peoples, and humanity from a new standpoint. His evaluations, judgments, and purposes will be required henceforth to justify themselves before a different tribunal of spiritual authority, and he will make decisions regarding his way of life for which he will feel a responsibility not merely within the narrow horizon of the personal, local, or regional field of activity, but before a loftier sphere of spiritual guidance.
After this course of lectures in Finland on the Spiritual Hierarchies, Rudolf Steiner spoke in Stockholm between April 16 and 19, 1912, on External Human Evolution and Inward Progress of Mankind. He now traveled to the south of Europe, lectured in Austria, and then returned to the north, his activity during this year covering eight countries of Europe. It was as if he intended to draw together in spirit once more the countries and peoples of this continent before they fell apart in hatred and disunion.
During April 28—30, he spoke in Prague on The Hidden Depths of the Soul Life and on The Nature of Eternity and the Nature of the Human Soul. Always the polarity between the macrocosmic environing world and the microcosmic within us were brought near to one another and clarified in their union.
During the early part of May, Dr. Steiner continued his lectures in several German cities. In Berlin he gave the cycle on The Earthly and the Cosmic Man. On May 6, the new premises of the Group in Cologne were inaugurated in a ceremony which Rudolf Steiner dedicated to the spiritual art of Raphael. The Cologne Group, founded in 1904, was one of the oldest and the most active of the Groups, and had contributed much of essential value to the Movement. On June 17, there followed the dedication of a new meeting place of the Hamburg Group. Among the oldest Groups in Germany were those of Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Stuttgart, Weimar, Hannover, Leipzig, Dresden, Nuremberg, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, and Freiburg in Breisgau. But in the year 1912 there were already 53 Groups in various parts of the country. In a public lecture in Cologne, Dr. Steiner spoke on Christ and the Twentieth Century, and during the spring he spoke in various towns before groups of members on the subject of the annunciation and heralding of the Christ—especially as embodied in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, and Novalis. Members were introduced also to the Calendar of the Soul, a new contribution of the year 1912, as an instrument of spiritual training during the course of the year.
At the end of May, Dr. Steiner went again to Scandinavia, to supplement the lectures of the spring in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. He spoke on May 23, 24 in Copenhagen on The Meaning of Life, and on May 28-30 at Norrköping on the Morality, in its spiritual-scientific aspects. These questions also were treated according to his particular scientific method and not after the manner of theorizing ethics. He began by revealing the historical developments, how these were incorporated in the esoteric schools of the earliest antiquity, then in personalities such as Plato, Aristotle, or Francis of Assisi, and other spiritual figures in pre-Christian and Christian times. He then explained the way of life which is to be gained through spiritual science also in regard to these pressing moral problems, and in the light of the concrete spiritual, psychic, and physical structure and potentialities of the modem human being. The summary of these guiding principles in a broader aspect followed in the course of lectures given between June 2 and 12 in Christiania, under the title Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy, and Philosophy. The prevailing one-sided method of illuminating or darkening these questions during the past century was here changed to a knowledge of the totality of the human being, as this comes to view out of the cosmic-spiritual and Christian aspects presented by Anthroposophy. The coordination of the separate organs and members of man and of their inner forces with the forces of the cosmos, and the conscious immersion of the psychic-spiritual entelechy in the microcosm of the human structure were systematically set forth, and the direction given to enable man consciously to hold the balance between physical and spiritual demands and to become master of himself.
The months of August and September, 1912, were in many ways a decisive period for the Movement. For they led from the artistic events of Munich and from the spiritual decisions regarding the birth of the Anthroposophical Society at the beginning of September, to the turning point at Michaelmas 1912, as Rudolf Steiner stood for the first time on the Dornach hill.
In Munich, the newest Mystery Drama, The Guardian of the Threshold, was to have this time its first presentation, in addition to those Mystery Dramas already given. In all, four performances had to be prepared for; and, during the few available weeks, all concerned worked with the most intense concentration to achieve the desired goal.
Once more it is astonishing to observe how a group of persons relatively so small succeeded in releasing themselves from their ordinary occupations and duties for a brief time in order to devote themselves during this festival period with all the powers of soul and will to an activity of such an utterly different character: an extraordinary contribution in concentration, will power, and unselfishness in order that this work of art might be presented in its objective greatness. This concentration of forces, rising out of spiritual schooling, contributed to the experience of tension and strengthening that every one viewing the plays carried away into his life from these festival days. Just as true meditation is effective only when it has to be gained with difficulty for a few moments of the day from the utterly unlike duties of daily life, but then fills a reservoir of forces from which can always be drawn, so also such an event as that of the presentation of these Mysteries, brought about through the will power of persons schooled for this, will become a practice in meditation and concentration at a higher level and intensified, which fortifies the inner sources of strength in those participating and those experiencing the undertaking. And the knowledge of the “Guardian of the Threshold,” awakened in these Mystery Dramas renders so clear the way upon which one must enter, its dangers and hindrances, that the person thus aroused and armed goes forward differently into the battle of life.
The enhancement of these experiences began on August 18 with the repetition of Schuré's drama, The Mystery of Eleusis. On August 20, 22, and 24, the grand symphony of Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Dramas was experienced by an audience which had come together from many countries and was now presented with The Portal of Initiation; The Soul's Probation; The Guardian of the Threshold. The profound depths of reverence experienced by this audience of 800 persons at the last performance can be measured by the fact that the huge crowd left the building in complete silence. In a report of that time, it was stated: “Probably never before has it happened, as on August 24, that a worldly place of entertainment like the Gartnerplatz Theater was emptied of its audience in such complete silence.”
During this period a new artistic activity arising out of spiritual science was inaugurated of essential import for the development of art. This was the birth of Eurythmy in September, 1912. Here again it is characteristic of Rudolf Steiner that he did not press for the acceptance of this, but awaited the decisive moment in accordance with the working of spiritual law, until a concrete request was made of him by certain persons in this sphere for a gift from the treasury of his spiritual knowledge, which subsequently became for large numbers of persons the vehicle for their artistic furtherance and development; indeed, for many a life occupation. The very first indications which he gave to Lory Smits in Munich and Basel formed the point of departure for this many-sided development. Frau Marie Steiner, who henceforth nurtured and guided the art of Eurythmy from these delicate seeds to its full flowering, depicts the first gifts of Rudolf Steiner in September, 1912, in the following words:
“In the year 1912 he gave ten lessons to a girl seventeen years old who, after the death of her father, was obliged to help support her younger brothers and sisters. She greatly wished to devote herself to an art of movement which did not originate in the materialistic impulses of the time. This fact of life was the occasion for that gift out of which Eurythmy evolved. I was asked to take part in these lessons. They included the first elements of sound formation and some exercises which in essence have been incorporated since into the educational part of Eurythmy development—the basic principles for standing, walking, running, some special postures and attitudes, many rod exercises, and keeping time and maintaining rhythm. On these foundations, several young women who had become pupils of the first eurythmist developed the educational side of Eurythmy. They then went on to the elaboration of the sound aspect of poetry. This was the first phase in the development of Eurythmy. Now and again, when shown something of these things, Rudolf Steiner would give hints and corrections and answer questions. A second phase of the development began when the young art gained a foothold at the Goetheanum in Dornach.”
Regarding the nature and development of the art of Eurythmy, a great deal more will be said in connection with its first presentation in 1913 and its course of development in the succeeding years.
The artistic impression produced by the performance of the four Mystery Dramas in Munich in August, 1912, was at once fortified through a lecture cycle by Dr. Steiner under the title Initiation. Concerning Eternity and the Moment, Concerning Spirit Light and Life’s Darkness. In seven lectures, the archetype of the human being was traced in its transformation through evolution of the natural and moral world order, through the great spiritual figures in human history, and through indicating how it can be experienced by every one on earth through initiation, which he must bring about within himself. Whereas the Mystery Dramas presented visually through the medium of art the pathway to the “Know thyself” as a struggle carried on amid spiritual Powers of a hindering or helping character, appeal was now made to the power of thought and research, to the will to knowledge, and the search for truth in our time, to the inward and outward act which renders servicable to social tasks and aims what has been won for the self.
The experiences of these days were the right preparation for the significant event which was consummated during the first days of September 1912: the birth of the Anthroposophical Society. For it was in these days, from September 1 to 7, that there occurred thoroughgoing discussions among the numerous members who had come together from many Groups and countries and who unequivocally indicated their determination to work in future independently of the Theosophical Society, which had for a long time past, indeed, become estranged from the activity of Rudolf Steiner and his followers. These matters will be dealt with later in connection with the further discussions of September and the further details looking to the first General Meeting; but essential matters were decided during these September days, “as a result of which we were able to greet the newly born Anthroposophical Society,'3 as the record states, adding emphasis with the words: “A feeling of joy passed through all of us as, after long deliberation, a decisive word was uttered regarding the nature of this Anthroposophical Society and after its naming by Rudolf Steiner was accomplished.”
What was here consummated was the fruit of the creative spiritual activity of a great personality continuing since the turn of the century, a creation which, as we have shown, bore from the beginning the stamp of Anthroposophy, and now to operate within a social community, while at the same time constituting the germ of a great future toward which it advanced strongly through various transformations and stages of development.
Immediately after these conferences and decisions, Rudolf Steiner once more went to Switzerland, where he delivered the lecture course on The Gospel of St. Mark in Basel between September 15 and 24, thus bringing to a conclusion the symphony of the four Gospels. On the day following, he gave a public lecture on the subject The Tasks of Spiritual Science in the Future.
It was during this Gospel cycle in Basel in 1912 that Dr. Steiner paid a visit to the Dornach hill nearby, with which both destiny and free spiritual decision lastingly united him in the following year. This constituted a decisive turning point in karma and will be described when the events of 1913 come to be considered.
His next journey took him to Italy, where the artistic masterpieces in Florence made a profound impression upon him. Here the architecture of the past had reached its climax. Here had been the home of Giotto, who originated a new epoch in painting. Here he realized, as he reported, in connection with the works of Michelangelo that this great artist had succeeded, in his tomb for Lorenzo and Julius Medici, in bringing to expression even in plastic form the supersensible element of the members of the human being by day and by night.
In his lectures in Milan on October 26 and 27, Dr. Steiner developed the theme, prominent during the following months, The Life of the Soul after Death. On the journey to Austria, this was supplemented on November 3 by a lecture in Vienna on The Latest Results of Occult Research Regarding Life Between Death and a New Birth and he summarized this in a comprehensive course of lectures commencing on November 5 in Berlin under the title Life Between Death and a New Birth in Relation to Cosmic Facts.
The historical importance of this lecture cycle must be truly realized. Never before in the history of mankind had these questions been expounded in such a way as to include the details of actual events between death and reincarnation. In past centuries the existence of such a life had only been affirmed or denied in general. Rudolf Steiner had often in the previous decade referred to these facts as such and to certain aspects of that spiritual existence between a death and a new birth. But, just as in other realms of knowledge, he had displayed tireless patience as always in research while awaiting the hour when the fruits of his work could be presented as a higher unity.
The first experience Rudolf Steiner had of spiritual vision and conscious contact with the personalities of the dead occurred in his childhood. In his autobiography, The Course of My Life (chapter 3) he refers especially in regard to the year 1879, a period of life now thirty-three years in the past, to the fact that, in the midst of his philosophical and scientific studies, he had before him a spiritual vision of life after death:
“I felt at that time in duty bound to seek for the truth through philosophy. I had to study mathematics and natural science. I was convinced that I should find no relation with them unless I could place their findings upon a solid foundation of philosophy. But I beheld a spiritual world as reality. In perfectly clear vision the spiritual individuality of every one was manifest to me. This had in the physical body and in action in the physical world merely its expression. It united itself with that which came as a physical germ from the parents. The dead human being I followed on his way into the spiritual world...”
What had been known and confirmed through so many years in spiritual vision, research, and constantly repeated experience, that for which he had systematically developed the foundations in knowledge, had now in its clarity and maturity to be placed in a comprehensive form before humanity as a treasure of knowledge and as help in the mastering of the problems of life.
So he said in the first lecture of the cycle referred to that in the year 1912 the moment had arrived for him to speak about these spiritual facts in a new manner “because just in the course of the summer and autumn the task confronted me of subjecting this realm to renewed spiritual research and of also setting forth a point of view which could not be touched upon earlier.” Since Rudolf Steiner very rarely interpolated allusions of so personal a kind in presenting the content of knowledge, this reference to the spiritual-karmic significance of recent months is of particular importance. We have already referred to certain events coming to completion in the course of his life during these months. The manner in which the inner evolution of such a personality is connected with the karmic events in the earthly world flashes up here for a moment in its own special significance. The universally valid situation in evolutionary history out of which this now became possible, and a matter of duty, he characterized as follows:
“Only now is it possible to envision much of what exhibits to us the deep moral significance of the supersensible truths relevant to this realm. Besides all other prerequisites which have now only been hinted at, there is indeed another prerequisite—at least within our Movement—a prerequisite, one might say, which wounds the hearts of many persons in this proud and vain age of ours. Since one cannot permit oneself, however, to be deterred by such a consideration from the earnestness and truthfulness which we owe to our Movement, this prerequisite must continue to be held. This prerequisite consists in the fact that, in intimate and earnest work, really learning and devoting ourselves to the matter, we shall enter into what is obtained out of the spiritual worlds. We may affirm that for a number of years the relation of human beings on the physical plane to the spiritual world has changed from what it was, for example, during almost the whole of the nineteenth century. Until the last third of the nineteenth century, there was little access to the spiritual worlds. In proportion to the necessities in human evolution, very little content flowed into human souls out of the spiritual worlds. But now we are living in an age in which the soul needs only to be receptive, needs only to surrender itself and to be prepared for the revelations out of the spiritual worlds to flow into it. And more and more receptive are certain individual souls becoming for whom, through the fact that they are conscious of the mission of their age, the streaming in of spiritual knowledge is a fact. An additional requirement, therefore, for spiritual science is that it shall not shut itself off from what can flow at the present time in any manner whatever out of the spiritual worlds into the souls.”
The cosmic hour now rendered possible and also demanded openness for what desired to enter into the consciousness of the human being, and it has always been the task of the spiritual leader to arouse human beings in such a cosmic hour in order that at least some of them may confront the spiritual occurrence in wakefulness.
“The human being passes through the events of the spiritual world between death and a new birth in a very special manner. He experiences them, however, also upon earth through initiation; he experiences them also—if he has prepared his soul—already even during existence in the physical body, in that he becomes in this way a participant in the spiritual worlds. One may assert, therefore, that what happens between death and a new birth and what is, indeed, a living through of the spiritual world,—this can be beheld through initiation.”
One of the fundamental evolutionary truths of our age, to which Rudolf Steiner most impressively called the attention of human beings was that it might for a time have sufficed in a past epoch to believe in these things and find consolation in the belief that these truths would be experienced only after death, but that a stage in evolution had arrived when man has to become familiar with these forms of knowledge even during the sensible physical existence, because spiritual and earthly events interpenetrate each other ever more intensively, and disharmony and even illness must occur if man does not bring about consciously within himself a synthesis of both worlds even while on earth.
At the end of the lecture cycle, after having described the facts of spiritual existence, Dr. Steiner once more called attention to the inherent laws in spiritual research which led to these findings, and pointed out how at the beginning of the Anthroposophical work his book Theosophy presented these phenomena rather in the psychic aspect, whereas now in the course of time the cosmographic aspect, so to speak—the position of the human soul in the great facts of cosmic evolution—could be added as an element of knowledge:
“These are considerations which may show us how, within the presentation of the book Theosophy—only, in different words and in a different aspect—there is already contained what has been described from a cosmic point of view, cosmographically as it were, during this winter. You have only to imagine that in one instance the subject is dealt with from the point of view of the soul, and in another from the point of view of the great cosmic relations, and you can reconcile the two descriptions and find a complete agreement, a complete parallelism.
“The conclusion I wish to draw from this is that you can see how far-reaching spiritual science is, and its methods must be such that, from all possible directions, there is brought together whatever can throw light on the Spirit world. Even though something is added years later to what has been said in previous years, there need be no contradiction, for these things are not derived from philosophic systems or human speculation, but from spiritual research.”
Thus, together with the content of research, the path and the method were always set forth by Rudolf Steiner which led to these findings, and we are consequently able not only to receive a new world picture but to share in the experience of its genesis and development. For it is not sufficient for serious and conscientious persons to see the quantity of knowledge enriched by a further amount. It is for such a person by no means a matter of indifference how it came about that Aristotle or Kant, Copernicus or Darwin, Kepler or Goethe brought about a change in the human being in one particular century or another. He desires to comprehend also the meaning and plan of this process of development, to understand the spirit of that cosmic hour in each case. Only what is born at the right moment is able to survive. Thus the spiritual world, since the beginning of the twentieth century bestows upon man the knowledge of his supersensible spheres of existence; it extends the view for him beyond birth and death and unveils for him the laws of evolution in future development. He may accept or reject this, but he has been given a free choice between inner healing and strengthening on the one hand and lethargy and pessimism on the other. The Threshold can be crossed by man and the responsibility is handed over to him in accordance with his stage of maturity. The cosmic age has entrusted him alike with a new burden and a new dignity, and the development of the present century will show whether the question addressed to him will find its answer.
Besides the lectures on life between death and a new birth, Rudolf Steiner lectured in the winter of 1912 at the Berlin Architektenhaus on the theme How Is Spiritual Research Refuted? and How Is Spiritual Research Confirmed? In these lectures he presented and solved those theoretical and scientific objections in modern thinking with which he was only too familiar. In other lectures he spoke on The Tasks of Spiritual Research for the Present and the Future; Natural Science and Spiritual Research; and The Paths of Supersensible Knowledge.
From December 15 to 19 he sojourned once again in Switzerland where he spoke in Bern enlighteningly on the main theme of the year, Life Between Death and a New Birth as well as the subject Truth and Error in Spiritual Research. For Zurich he selected the theme Love and Its Significance in the World, whereas at Neuchatel on December 18 he continued his observations of the previous years on Christian Rosenkreuz and on spiritual history.
The year 1912 ended with a lecture course in Cologne. Before the beginning of the lectures, the members were asked whether they regarded themselves as members of the Anthroposophical Society inaugurated in September. This question was answered in the affirmative by all members present except three. The lectures took place thus expressly as a program of this institution, working within its own framework. Regarding the discussions from December 8 to 11 and the measures taken in relation to them, a report will be given in connection with the meeting in the following February.
The lecture cycle which brought the year 1912 to a close, The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, was devoted to the great West-East antithesis and synthesis. Once more the polarity and the mutual supplementation of the Orient and Occident, of pre-Christian and Christian world conceptions, confronted the listeners. This year had led to decisions against one-sidedness and at the same time to knowledge of the spiritual spheres which carry forward the time-bound and space-bound stages of the wisdom of millennia. It brought impulses which were to mediate to the twentieth century its own spiritual substance, conscious of tradition but also smoothing the way of progress in accordance with the acceptance of the cosmic hour.