300a. Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner I: Third Meeting
26 Sep 1919, Stuttgart Translated by Ruth Pusch, Gertrude Teutsch |
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Particularly when we begin with anthroposophy, we dare not develop anything inappropriate, certainly not develop anything too early. We will, therefore, have two stages. |
The verses contained in prayer books are often trivial, therefore, you should use verses from the Bible and also those verses we have in anthroposophy. In anthroposophy, we have many verses you can use well in this anthroposophical religious instruction. |
Second, we need to comprehend our responsibility toward anthroposophy as well as the social movement. And, third, something that we as anthroposophists must particularly observe, namely, our responsibility toward the gods. |
300a. Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner I: Third Meeting
26 Sep 1919, Stuttgart Translated by Ruth Pusch, Gertrude Teutsch |
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[The meeting began with a discussion of some children Dr. Steiner had observed that morning.] Dr. Steiner: E. E. must be morally raised. He is a Bolshevik. A teacher who was substituting in the first grade poses a question. Dr. Steiner: You should develop reading from pictorial writing. You should develop the forms from the artistic activity. A teacher suggests beginning the morning with the Lord’s Prayer. Dr. Steiner: It would be nice to begin instruction with the Lord’s Prayer and then go on to the verses I will give you. For the four lower grades I would ask that you say the verse in the following way:
The children must feel that as I have spoken it. First they should learn the words, but then you will have to gradually make the difference between the inner and outer clear to them.
The first part, that the Sun makes each day bright, we observe, and the other part, that it affects the limbs, we feel in the soul. What lies in this portion is the spirit-soul and the physical body.
Here we give honor to both. We then turn to one and then the other.
This is how I think the children should feel it, namely, the divine in light and in the soul. You need to attempt to speak it with the children in chorus, with the feeling of the way I recited it. At first, the children will learn only the words, so that they have the words, the tempo, and the rhythm. Later, you can begin to explain it with something like, “Now we want to see what this actually means.” Thus, first they must learn it, then you explain it. Don’t explain it first, and also, do not put so much emphasis upon the children learning it from memory. They will eventually learn it through repetition. They will be able to read it directly from your lips. Even though it may not go well for a long time, four weeks or more, it will go better later. The older children can write it down, but you must allow the younger ones to learn it slowly. Don’t demand that they learn it by heart! It would be nice if they write it down, since then they will have it in their own handwriting. I will give you the verse for the four higher classes tomorrow. [The verse for the four higher grades was:]
[The texts of the verses are exactly as Dr. Steiner dictated them according to the handwritten notes. It is unclear whether he said, “loving light” (liebes Licht) or “light of love” (Liebeslicht).] [Lesson plan for the independent anthroposophical religious instruction for children:] Dr. Steiner: We should give this instruction in two stages. If you want to go into anthroposophical instruction with a religious goal, then you must certainly take the concept of religion much more seriously than usual. Generally, all kinds of worldviews that do not belong there mix into religion and the concept of religion. Thus, the religious tradition brings things from one age over into another, and we do not want to continue to develop that. It retains views from an older perspective alongside more developed views of the world. These things appeared in a grotesque form during the age of Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Modern apologies justify such things—something quite humorous. The Catholic Church gets around it by saying that at that time the Copernican view of the world was not recognized, the Church itself forbade it. Thus, Galileo could not have supported that world perspective. I do not wish to go into that now, but I mention it only to show you that we really must take religion seriously when we address it anthroposophically. It is true that anthroposophy is a worldview, and we certainly do not want to bring that into our school. On the other hand, we must certainly develop the religious feeling that worldview can give to the human soul when the parents expressly ask us to give it to the children. Particularly when we begin with anthroposophy, we dare not develop anything inappropriate, certainly not develop anything too early. We will, therefore, have two stages. First, we will take all the children in the lower four grades, and then those in the upper four grades. In the lower four grades, we will attempt to discuss the things and processes in the human environment, so that a feeling arises in the children that spirit lives in nature. We can consider such things as my previous examples. We can, for instance, give the children the idea of the soul. Of course, the children first need to learn to understand the idea of life in general. You can teach the children about life if you direct their attention to the fact that people are first small and then they grow, become old, get white hair, wrinkles, and so forth. Thus, you tell them about the seriousness of the course of human life and acquaint them with the seriousness of the fact of death, something the children already know. Therefore, you need to discuss what occurs in the human soul during the changes between sleeping and waking. You can certainly go into such things with even the youngest children in the first group. Discuss how waking and sleeping look, how the soul rests, how the human being rests during sleep, and so forth. Then, tell the children how the soul permeates the body when it awakens and indicate to them that there is a will that causes their limbs to move. Make them aware that the body provides the soul with senses through which they can see and hear and so forth. You can give them such things as proof that the spiritual is active in the physical. Those are things you can discuss with the children. You must completely avoid any kind of superficial teaching. Thus, in anthroposophical religious instruction we can certainly not use the kind of teaching that asks questions such as, Why do we find cork on a tree? with the resulting reply, So that we can make champagne corks. God created cork in order to cork bottles. This sort of idea, that something exists in nature simply because human intent exists, is poison. That is certainly something we may not develop. Therefore, don’t bring any of these silly causal ideas into nature. To the same extent, we may not use any of the ideas people so love to use to prove that spirit exists because something unknown exists. People always say, That is something we cannot know, and, therefore, that is a revelation of the spirit. Instead of gaining a feeling that we can know of the spirit and that the spirit reveals itself in matter, these ideas direct people toward thinking that when we cannot explain something, that proves the existence of the divine. Thus, you will need to strictly avoid superficial teaching and the idea of wonders, that is, that wonders prove divine activity. In contrast, it is important that we develop imaginative pictures through which we can show the supersensible through nature. For example, I have often mentioned that we should speak to the children about the butterfly’s cocoon and how the butterfly comes out of the cocoon. I have said that we can explain the concept of the immortal soul to the children by saying that, although human beings die, their souls go from them like an invisible butterfly emerging from the cocoon. Such a picture is, however, only effective when you believe it yourself, that is, when you believe the picture of the butterfly creeping out of the cocoon is a symbol for immortality planted into nature by divine powers. You need to believe that yourselves, otherwise the children will not believe it. You need to arouse the children’s interest in such things. They will be particularly effective for the children where you can show how a being can live in many forms, how an original form can take on many individual forms. In religious instruction, it is important that you pay attention to the feeling and not the worldview. For example, you can take a poem about the metamorphosis of plants and animals and use it religiously. However, you must use the feelings that go from line to line. You can consider nature that way until the end of the fourth grade. There, you must always work toward the picture that human beings with all our thinking and doing live within the cosmos. You must also give the children the picture that God lives in what lives in us. Time and again you should come back to such pictures, how the divine lives in a tree leaf, in the Sun, in clouds, and in rivers. You should also show how God lives in the bloodstream, in the heart, in what we feel and what we think. Thus, you should develop a picture of the human being filled with the divine. During these years, you should also emphasize the picture that human beings, because they are an image of God and a revelation of God, should be good. Human beings who are not good hurt God. From a religious perspective, human beings do not exist in the world for their own sake, but as revelations of the divine. You can express that by saying that people do not exist just for their own sake, but “to glorify God.” Here, “to glorify” means “to reveal.” Thus, in reality, it is not “glory to God in the highest,” but “reveal the gods in the highest.” Thus, we can understand the idea that people exist to glorify God as meaning that people exist in order to express the divine through their deeds and feelings. If someone does something bad, something impious and unkind, then that person does something that belittles God and distorts God into something ugly. You should always bring in these ideas. At this age you should use the thought that God lives in the human being. In the lower grades, I would certainly abstain from teaching any Christology, but just awaken a feeling for God the Father out of nature and natural occurrences. I would try to connect all our discussions about Old Testament themes, the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and so forth, to that feeling, at least insofar as they are useful, and they are if you treat them properly. That is the first stage of religious instruction. In the second stage, that is, the four upper grades, we need to discuss the concepts of fate and human destiny with the children. Thus, we need to give the children a picture of destiny so that they truly feel that human beings have a destiny. It is important to teach the child the difference between a simple chance occurrence and destiny. Thus, you will need to go through the concept of destiny with the children. You cannot use definitions to explain when something destined occurs or when something occurs only by chance. You can, however, perhaps explain it through examples. What I mean is that when something happens to me, if I feel that the event is in some way something I sought, then that is destiny. If I do not have the feeling that it was something I sought, but have a particularly strong feeling that it overcame me, surprised me, and that I can learn a great deal for the future from it, then that is a chance event. You need to gradually teach the children about something they can experience only through feeling, namely the difference between finished karma and arising or developing karma. You need to gradually teach children about the questions of fate in the sense of karmic questions. You can find more about the differences in feeling in my book Theosophy. For the newest edition, I rewrote the chapter, “Reincarnation and Karma,” where I discuss this question. There, I tried to show how you can feel the difference. You can certainly make it clear to the children that there are actually two kinds of occurrences. In the one case, you feel that you sought it. For example, when you meet someone, you usually feel that you sought that person. In the other case, when you are involved in a natural event, you have the feeling you can learn something from it for the future. If something happens to you because of some other person, that is usually a case of fulfilled karma. Even such things as the fact that we find ourselves together in this faculty at the Waldorf School are fulfilled karma. We find ourselves here because we sought each other. We cannot comprehend that through definitions, only through feeling. You will need to speak with the children about all kinds of fates, perhaps in stories where the question of fate plays a role. You can even repeat many of the fairy tales in which questions of fate play a role. You can also find historical examples where you can show how an individual’s fate was fulfilled. You should discuss the question of fate, therefore, to indicate the seriousness of life from that perspective. I also want you to understand what is really religious in an anthroposophical sense. In the sense of anthroposophy, what is religious is connected with feeling, with those feelings for the world, for the spirit, and for life that our perspective of the world can give us. The worldview itself is something for the head, but religion always arises out of the entire human being. For that reason, religion connected with a specific church is not actually religious. It is important that the entire human being, particularly the feeling and will, lives in religion. That part of religion that includes a worldview is really only there to exemplify or support or deepen the feeling and strengthen the will. What should flow from religion is what enables the human being to grow beyond what past events and earthly things can give to deepen feeling and strengthen will. Following the questions of destiny, you will need to discuss the differences between what we inherit from our parents and what we bring into our lives from previous earthly lives. In this second stage of religious instruction, we bring in previous earthly lives and everything else that can help provide a reasoned or feeling comprehension that people live repeated earthly lives. You should also certainly include the fact that human beings raise themselves to the divine in three stages. Thus, after you have given the children an idea of destiny, you then slowly teach them about heredity and repeated earthly lives through stories. You can then proceed to the three stages of the divine. The first of these stages is that of the angels, something available for each individual personally. You can explain that every individual human being is led from life to life by his or her own personal genius. Thus, this personal divinity that leads human beings is the first thing to discuss. In the second step, you attempt to explain that there are higher gods, the archangels. (Here you gradually come into something you can observe in history and geography.) These archangels exist to guide whole groups of human beings, that is, the various peoples and such. You must teach this clearly so that the children can learn to differentiate between the god spoken of by Protestantism, for instance, who is actually only an angel, and an archangel, who is higher than anything that ever arises in the Protestant religious teachings. In the third stage, you teach the children about the concept of a time spirit, a divine being who rules over periods of time. Here, you will connect religion with history. Only when you have taught the children all that can you go on, at about the twelfth grade, to—well, we can’t do that yet, we will just do two stages. The children can certainly hear things they will understand only later. After you have taught the children about these three stages, you can go on to the actual Christology by dividing cosmic evolution into two parts: the pre-Christian, which was really a preparation, and the Christian, which is the fulfillment. Here, the concept that the divine is revealed through Christ, “in the fullness of time,” must play a major role. Only then will we go on to the Gospels. Until then, to the extent that we need stories to explain the concepts of angel, archangel, and time spirit, we will use the Old Testament. For example, we can use the Old Testament story of what appeared before Moses to explain to the children the appearance of a new time spirit, in contrast to the previous one before the revelation to Moses. We can then also explain that a new time spirit entered during the sixth century B.C. Thus, we first use the Old Testament. When we then go on to Christology, having presented it as being preceded by a long period of preparation, we can go on to the Gospels. We can attempt to present the individual parts and show that the four-foldedness of the Gospels is something natural by saying that just as a tree needs to be photographed from four sides for everything to be properly seen, in the same way the four Gospels present four points of view. You take the Gospel of Matthew and then Mark, Luke, and John and emphasize them such that the children will always feel that. Always place the main emphasis upon the differences in feeling. Thus, we now have the teaching content of the second stage. The general tenor of the first stage is to bring to developing human beings everything that the wisdom of the divine in nature can provide. In the second stage, the human being no longer recognizes the divine through wisdom, but through the effects of love. That is the tenor, the leitmotif in both stages. A teacher: Should we have the children learn verses? Dr. Steiner: Yes, at first primarily from the Old Testament and then later from the New Testament. The verses contained in prayer books are often trivial, therefore, you should use verses from the Bible and also those verses we have in anthroposophy. In anthroposophy, we have many verses you can use well in this anthroposophical religious instruction. A teacher: Should we teach the Ten Commandments? Dr. Steiner: The Ten Commandments are, of course, in the Old Testament, but you should make their seriousness clear. I have always emphasized that the Ten Commandments state that we should not speak the name of God in vain. This is something that nearly every preacher overdoes since they continually speak vainly of Christ. Of course, this is something we must deepen in the feeling. We should not give religious instruction as a confession of faith, but as a deepening of feeling. The Apostles’ Creed as such is not important, only what we feel in the Creed. It is not our belief in God the Father, in God the Son, and in God the Holy Spirit, but what we feel in relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What is important is that in the depths of our soul, we feel that it is an illness not to know God, that it is a misfortune not to know Christ and that not to know the Holy Spirit is a limitation of the human soul. A teacher: Should we teach the children about historical things, for instance, the path of the Zarathustra being up to the revelation of Christianity, or the story of the two Jesus children? Dr. Steiner: You should close the religious instruction by teaching the children about these connections but, of course, very carefully. The first stage is clearly more nature religion, the second, more historical religion. A teacher: Then we should certainly avoid teaching about functionality in natural history? Schmeil’s guidelines for botany and zoology are teleological. Dr. Steiner: With regard to books, I would ask that you consider them only as a source of factual information. You can assume that we should avoid the methods described in them, and also the viewpoints. We really must do everything new. We should completely avoid the books that are filled with the horrible attitude we can characterize with statements such as “God created cork in order to cork champagne bottles.” For us, such books exist only to inform us of facts. The same is true for history. All the judgments made in them are no less garbage, and in natural history that is certainly true. In my opinion it would not be so bad if we used Brehm, for example, if such things are to be up-to-date. Brehm avoids such trivial things, though he is a little narrow-minded. It would be a good idea to copy out such things and use stories as a basis. Perhaps, that would be the best thing to do. The old edition of Brehm is pretty boring. We cannot use the new edition written recently by someone else. In general, you can assume all school books written after 1885 are worthless. Since that time, all pedagogy has regressed in the most terrible way and simply landed in clichés. A teacher: How should we proceed with human natural history? How should we start that in the fourth grade? Dr. Steiner: Concerning human beings you will find nearly everything somewhere in my lecture cycles. You will find nearly everything there somewhere. You also have what I presented in the seminar course. You need only modify it for school. The main thing is that you hold to the facts, also the psychological and spiritual facts. You can first take up the human being by presenting the formation of the skeleton. There, you can certainly be confident. Then go on to the muscles and the glands. You can teach the children about will by presenting the muscles and about thinking by presenting the nerves. Hold to what you know from anthroposophy. You must not allow yourselves to be led astray through the mechanical presentation of modern textbooks. You really don’t need anything at the forefront of science for the fourth grade, so perhaps it is better to take an older description and work with that. As I said, all of the things since the 1880s have become really bad, but you will find starting points everywhere in my lectures. A teacher: I put together a table of geological formations based on what you said yesterday. Dr. Steiner: Of course, you should never pedantically draw parallels. When you go on to the primeval forms, to the original mountains, you have the polar period. The Paleozoic corresponds to the Hyperborean, but you may not take the individual animal forms pedantically. Then you have the Mesozoic, which generally corresponds to Lemuria. And then the first and second levels of mammals, or the Cenozoic, that is, the Atlantean age. The Atlantean period was no more than about nine thousand years ago. You can draw parallels from these five periods, the primitive, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, the Cenozoic, and the Anthropozoic. A teacher: You once said that normally the branching off of fish and birds is not properly presented, for example, by Haeckel. Dr. Steiner: The branching off of fish is usually put back into the Devonian period. A teacher: How did human beings look at that time? Dr. Steiner: In very primitive times, human beings consisted almost entirely of etheric substance. They lived among other things but had as yet no density. The human being became more dense during the Hyperborean period. Only those animal forms that had precipitated out, lived. Human beings lived also with no less strength. They had, in fact, a tremendous strength. But they had no substance that could remain, so there are no human remains. They lived during all those periods but only gained an external density during the Cenozoic period. If you recall how I describe the Lemurian period, it was almost an etheric landscape. Everything was there, but there are no geological remains. You will want to take into account that the human being existed through all five periods. The human being was everywhere. Here in the first period (Dr. Steiner points to the table), “primitive form,” there is actually nothing else present except the human being. There are only minor remains. There the Eozoic Canadensa is actually more of a formation, something created as a form that is not a real animal. Here in the Hyperborean/Paleozoic period, animals begin to occur, but in forms that later no longer exist. Here in the Lemurian/Mesozoic period, the plant realm arises, and here in the Cenozoic period, Atlantis, the mineral realm arises, actually already in the last period, in these two earlier periods already (in the last two sub-races of the Lemurian period). A teacher: Did human beings exist with their head, chest, and limb aspects at that time? Dr. Steiner: The human being was similar to a centaur, an extremely animal-like lower body and a humanized head. A teacher: I almost have the impression that it was a combination, a symbiosis, of three beings. Dr. Steiner: So it is, also. A teacher: How is it possible that there are the remains of plants in coal? Dr. Steiner: Those are not plant remains. What appears to be the remains of plants actually arose because the wind encountered quite particular obstacles. Suppose, for instance, the wind was blowing and created something like plant forms that were preserved somewhat like the footsteps of animals (Hyperborean period). That is a kind of plant crystallization, a crystallization into plantlike forms. A teacher: The trees didn’t exist? Dr. Steiner: No, they existed as tree forms. The entire flora of the coal age was not physically present. Imagine a forest present only in its etheric form and that thus resists the wind in a particular way. Through that, stalactite-like forms emerge. What resulted is not the remains of plants, but forms that arise simply due to the circumstances brought about by elemental activity. Those are not genuine remains. You cannot say it was like it was in Atlantis. There, things remained and to an extent also at the end of the Lemurian period, but as to the carbon period, we cannot say that there are any plant remains. There were only the remains of animals, but primarily animals that we can compare with the form of our head. A teacher: When did the human being then stand upright? I don’t see a firm point of time. Dr. Steiner: It is not a good idea to cling to these pictures too closely, since some races stood upright earlier and others later. It is not possible to give a specific time. That is how things are in reality. A teacher: If the pistil is related to the Moon and the stigma to the Sun, then how do they show the movement of the Sun and Moon? Dr. Steiner: You must imagine it in the following way (Dr. Steiner draws). The stigma goes upward, that would be the path of the Sun, and the pistil moves around it, and there you have the path of the Moon. Here we have the picture of the Sun and Earth path as I drew it yesterday. The Moon moves around the Earth. That is in the pistil (Dr. Steiner demonstrates with the drawing). It appears that way because the path of the Moon goes around also, of course, but in relationship, not in a straight line. The path of the Sun is the stigma. This circle is a copy of the helix I drew yesterday. It is also a helix. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] A teacher: You have told us that the temperaments have to do with predominance of the various bodies. In GA 129, you said that the physical body predominates over the etheric, the etheric over the astral, and the I over the astral. Is there a connection with the temperaments here? In GA 134, you mention a figure that gives the proper relationship of the bodies. Dr. Steiner: That gives the relationship of the forces. A teacher: Is there a further relationship to the temperaments? Dr. Steiner: None other than what I presented in the seminar. A teacher: You have said that melancholy arises due to a predominance of the physical body. Is that a predominance of the physical body over the etheric? Dr. Steiner: No, it is a predominance over all the other bodies. A question arises about parent evenings. Dr. Steiner: We should have them, but it would be better if they were not too often, since otherwise the parents’ interest would lessen, and they would no longer come. We should arrange things so that the parents actually come. If we have such meetings too often, they would see them as burdensome. Particularly in regard to school activities, we should not do anything we cannot complete. We should undertake only those things that can really happen. I think it would be good to have three parent days per year. I would also suggest that we do this festively, that we print cards and send them to all of the parents. Perhaps we could arrange it so that the first such meeting is at the beginning of the school year. It would be more a courtesy, so that we can again make contact with the parents. Then we could have a parent evening in the middle of the year and again one at the end. These latter two would be more important, whereas the first, more of a courtesy. We could have the children recite something, do some eurythmy, and so forth. We can also have parent conferences. They would be good. You will probably find that the parents generally have little interest in them, except for the anthroposophical parents. A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to say something about the popularization of spiritual science, particularly in connection with the afternoon courses for the workers [at the Goetheanum]. Dr. Steiner: Well, it is important to keep the proper attitude in connection with that popularization. In general, I am not in favor of popularizing by making things trivial. In my opinion, we should first use Theosophy as a basis and attempt to determine from case to case what a particular audience understands easily, or only with difficulty. You will see that the last edition of Theosophy has a number of hints about how you can use its contents for teaching. I would then go on to discussing some sections of How to Know Higher Worlds, but I would never intend to try to make people into clairvoyants. We should only inform them about the clairvoyant path so that they understand how it is possible to arrive at those truths. We should leave them with the feeling that it is possible with normal common sense to understand and know about how to comprehend those things. You can also treat The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity in a popular way. There you have three books that you can use for a popular presentation. Generally, you will need to arrange things according to the audience. Several children are discussed. Dr. Steiner: The most important thing is that there is always contact, that the teacher and students together form a true whole. That has happened in nearly all of the classes in a very beautiful and positive way. I am quite happy about what has happened. I can tell you that even though I may not be here, I will certainly think much about this school. It’s true, isn’t it, that we must all be permeated with the thoughts: First, of the seriousness of our undertaking. What we are now doing is tremendously important. Second, we need to comprehend our responsibility toward anthroposophy as well as the social movement. And, third, something that we as anthroposophists must particularly observe, namely, our responsibility toward the gods. Among the faculty, we must certainly carry within us the knowledge that we are not here for our own sakes, but to carry out the divine cosmic plan. We should always remember that when we do something, we are actually carrying out the intentions of the gods, that we are, in a certain sense, the means by which that streaming down from above will go out into the world. We dare not for one moment lose the feeling of the seriousness and dignity of our work. You should feel that dignity, that seriousness, that responsibility. I will approach you with such thoughts. We will meet one another through such thoughts. We should take that up as our feeling for today and, in that thought, part again for a time, but spiritually meet with one another to receive the strength for this truly great work. |
Eurythmy as Visible Singing: Introduction to the Third English Edition
Translated by Alan P. Stott |
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‘The development of anthroposophical activity into the realm of art resulted out of the nature of anthroposophy.’ The art of eurythmy, however, occupies a unique position as the newly-born daughter of anthroposophy itself. |
Art—‘even the nature of major and minor melodies’ - can bring life to the connection between man and cosmos (in other words, anthroposophy); to what might appear as dead form. Steiner warns ‘that these things are not a skeleton of ideas!’ |
Steiner claims that this lecture, already in 1888, contains ‘a sound foundation for anthroposophy and the anthroposophical way of thinking’ (Preface to the second edition, 1919). The lecture suggests an acid test for what is truly new. |
Eurythmy as Visible Singing: Introduction to the Third English Edition
Translated by Alan P. Stott |
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The musical element When speaking of the arts, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) emphasizes that the musical element increasingly belongs to the future of humanity.1 In the following words he points to the mission of music:
This passage also witnesses to Steiner's own particular mission at the beginning of the twentieth century: to sow seeds in the cultural life which could enable humanity to find its way from estrangement to cooperation with the world of spirit. This concept is of immense practical importance in a century which has allowed the forces of technology and finance to encroach into the realm rightly belonging to the free human spirit. About the time of these lectures, Steiner was responding to requests from many professional quarters for advice which would provide creative stimuli. Lecture courses were given to experts seeking renewal in their particular fields: science, medicine, agriculture, religion, the arts, education and therapeutic education. ‘The development of anthroposophical activity into the realm of art resulted out of the nature of anthroposophy.’ The art of eurythmy, however, occupies a unique position as the newly-born daughter of anthroposophy itself.3 For Steiner, it is not only music; all the arts are to become more musical. Steiner is concerned with living, creative activity. He communicated this vision most succinctly in a far-reaching lecture in Torquay. (See Note 1) Like J. M. Hauer (1883–1959), whose theoretical writings were known to him, Steiner uses the Greek Melos (‘tune’) for pure pitch (Melodie—‘melody’, of course, includes rhythm and beat. See also Steiner's own lecture notes, p. 10). Both Hauer and Steiner use Melos to indicate the actual creative principle in music. ‘Melos is the musical element,’ Steiner claims (Lecture 4). In this translation I have retained Melos where it is employed. In speech, Melos only ‘peeps through’. But it ‘poured into’ oriental architecture, which ‘really did transpose music into movement’. ‘Oriental architecture has within it a great deal of eurythmy,’ we read in Lecture 5. The word ‘rhythm’ comes from the Greek rhuthmos (measured motion, time rhythm), from rhe-ein (to flow). The word ‘eurhythmy’ is an architectural term: ‘beautiful proportion, hence beautiful, harmonious movement’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Laurens van der Post mentions the ‘eurhythmic grace’ of certain beautiful animal movements in his African writings. ‘Eurythmy’ and Melos, accordingly, have existed and do still exist both in nature and in human culture. Both worlds unite in the art of eurythmy, which cultivates Melos, and was brought to birth through Rudolf Steiner. (Otto Fränkl-Lundborg claims the spelling of ‘eurythmy’ without the ‘h’ is philologically correct; rho as suffix loses its aspirate. See Das Goetheanum, 49. Jg., Nr. 30, 26.7.70, p. 246). Steiner, like Hauer, uses the expression das Musikalische (‘the musical’) more often than die Musik (‘music’), and in this way emphasizes the inner activity before the technicalities of the craft come into consideration. This is a supremely important detail. In English we have to extend this to phrases like ‘the musical element’, or ‘the realm of music’, which may be clumsy, but they are accurate. What Steiner has in mind and continuously refers to is the musical essence. This is not only the concern of musicians but it is the underlying creative, transforming force of life itself, present in all vital human expression. Moreover, it bears a direct relationship to the path of mankind's inner development. This development can be prepared and assisted by the inner activity of individuals on the path of initiation, which is described by Steiner as a process of development through God's grace, involving Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition (spiritual vision, inner hearing and a higher life).4
We may sense that Steiner channelled his own musicality into his work as a teacher of humanity, and this he confirmed more than once:
The art of eurythmy has been given to us as a gift from the future. Its evolution depends upon each individual eurythmist, musician and speaker developing an inner listening with his or her artistic feeling. This must be developed, not in an ecstatic way, but as a spiritual path the individual undertakes while within the body. This inner activity, Steiner insists (in answer to Hauer), can be revealed in art by raising sensory experience.7 The present lecture course may prove to be the best companion on such a path, which is akin to the practising of a musician. This is a demanding exercise, but however small the progress, it forms the substance of true art, and can be offered as nourishment to a world in need.8 One of the questions today concerns recorded sound (see Appendix 6). After following the arguments concerning recordings, it can be refreshing to return to the present course of lectures. Though modestly described as ‘only a beginning’, Steiner begins where many of the great musicians of his time, and the ensuing decades, leave off.9 Music's turning pointSteiner characterizes music as the art which ‘contains the laws of our ego’.10 If we could consciously dive down into our astral body, the musician in us, we could perceive the cosmic music that has formed us: ‘... with the help of the astral body, the cosmos is playing our own being ... The ancients felt that earthly music could only be a mirroring of the heavenly music which began with the creation of mankind.’ Modern humanity has been led into the muddy, materialistic swamp of darkness and desire, which obscures this music. But there is a path of purification leading to perception of the music of the spheres once again. When we hear a symphony we dive with soul and spirit into the will, which is usually asleep in daytime consciousness. Art—‘even the nature of major and minor melodies’ - can bring life to the connection between man and cosmos (in other words, anthroposophy); to what might appear as dead form. Steiner warns ‘that these things are not a skeleton of ideas!’ hinting that his Theosophy was written musically, not schematically. The present lectures on eurythmy represent Steiner's greatest contribution to musical studies. When he gave them in 1924, he advised the eurythmists to study Hauer's theoretical writings. Hauer was a musician who discovered atonal melody, or twelve-note music, at the same time (or even just before) as Schönberg did by a different route. Both composers endeavoured to get beyond the materialistic swamp through spiritual striving.11 By 1924 Hauer had published his own attempt at a Goethean theory of music,12 and his Deutung des Melos (Interpretation of Melos, questions to the artists and thinkers of our time) includes an appreciation of Goethe's Theory of Colour.13 In these eurythmy lectures, Steiner appears to agree with Hauer's diagnosis of the modern situation as ‘noise’; Wagner's music, for example, is ‘unmusical music’, though it has its justification. Steiner seems to agree with Hauer's spiritual principle of Melos, ‘the actual musical element’ (to Hauer ‘movement itself’, or the ‘TAO’, the interpretation of which is ‘the only true spiritual science’). He reproduces Hauer's correspondence of vowels and intervals, writing in his notebook Hauer's list of examples (Notebook, p. 10), and he retells the story of the Arab listening to a contrapuntal piece, who asks for it to be played ‘one tune at a time’. But Steiner certainly does not agree with Hauer's answer to the challenge of materialism. ‘Those who deride materialism are bad artists, bad scientists,’ Steiner declares.14 Instead of criticism, he offers help. In his profound study on Bach, Erich Schwebsch suggests that eurythmy arrived just at the right time in the evolution of mankind.15 His justification of music eurythmy is unlikely to be supplanted. With the founding of music eurythmy, a new beginning opens up for the art of music too. This thought was also expressed by the musician and eurythmist Ralph Kux.16 It remains for me to draw attention to the counter-phenomenon accompanying this new beginning. The counter-tendency, so strongly marked in Hauer's thought and life, artificially separates itself from the human roots of music. Steiner's answer to Hauer's dissatisfaction with western culture was to give a further impetus to music eurythmy (already born but still in its infancy) by tracing the origin of music back to the human being. Through a conscious ‘turning inside out’ within the organism, at the point of departure in the collar-bone, the cosmic music that formed us (flowing in between the shoulder-blades) is released and made available for artistic ends.17 Music today, he implies, is not a purely spiritual, meditative affair, leading (as later in Hauer's career) a reclusive life. The music of the spheres sought along the old paths ‘out there’ in the cosmos leads to an abstract caricature today. The living connection is to be found on earth, in the human being.18 Steiner was in all things concerned with living, creative activity. The arts are the means whereby inner activity and experience become outer expression: ‘to present the soul and spirit in fullest concentration ... is basically the highest ideal of all art.’19 The arts remind us of the meaning in our earthly destiny. Steiner's meditative verse, written for Marie Steiner at Christmas 1922, begins: ‘The stars once spake to man’—but what leads to the future is ‘what man speaks to the stars’.20 Albert Steffen expresses it clearly: there is a splitting of the way ‘concerning the life or death of music as such ... The whole of humanity stands before this alternative. There is no way back. Every individual has to go through it or come to grief.’21 In one of his most inspired articles, H. Pfrogner (a musicologist and authority on twentieth-century developments) characterizes the one path of experience as the way of ‘universal concord’, and the other as ‘ego concord’.22 The former path leads to universal spirituality, to a dissolving of the self. The latter path leads to a maturing of the self. Pfrogner accociates the former spirituality with the impulse emanating from the conspiracy of Gondishapur (seventh century AD - further details can be found in Ruland).23 which echoes on in Islamic culture; the maturing spirituality he associates with the Christian west. All inclination to ‘dissolve the ego’, whose new richness of content was brought by Christ, spiritually subscribes to Arabism, whereas all steps toward strengthened responsibility follow the latter path. But this latter path leads to an extension of the diatonic system, ‘that resounding image of the human being pure and simple’ (Pfrogner). The path to overcome materialism, further elucidated by Pfrogner,24 will not be reached by avoiding the swamp of man's egotism and hastily ‘reaching for the stars’ (the arrangement of twelve) to the exclusion of the diatonic system (based on the number seven). Lurking in such a counter-reaction to romanticism (which, like Viennese classicism, arose in the age of materialism as a protest) is an implied denial of the Christ-event. ‘Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolution in human nature, based on the retention of the ego's full consciousness. He inaugurated the initiation of the ego,’ Steiner explains.25 ‘With Christ,’ F. Rittelmeyer reminds us in his last book, ‘the whole orientation of humanity is changed. And from now on we no longer look back with longing to the past, to a "golden age" of the primal beginning, but look forward toward fulfilment, creating the future ...’26 There is a path through the swamp which has been trodden by composers such as Bartok, Hindemith, Messiaen, Martinu, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich, Britten, Tippett, Hartmann, Henze, Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Pärt and many others (following in their own ways the example of the modern ‘Prometheus’, Beethoven).27 Musical art of the futureOn more than one occasion, Steiner, speaking of the future of music, pointed to ‘finding a melody in the single note’.28 In the eurythmy lectures he points out that this does not mean listening to the acoustic ‘chord of overtones’ in a single note—on which Hauer and Hindemith base their theoretical work. It is a supersensible experience. One of the climaxes of the investigations of Pfrogner and H. Ruland (one of the former's successors), is the working out of Steiner's hints of a development of our tonal system.29 Here mention should be made of two other pioneers in musical studies whose work is acknowledged by Ruland in his Expanding Tonal Awareness. Ernst Bindel developed the relationship between mathematics and music.30 (Without some mathematics there can be no responsible step towards a musical future.) The other pioneer is H. E. Lauer,31 whose account of the evolution of tonal systems has subsequently been considerably developed by Ruland. We conclude with a suggestion regarding ‘artistic longing’, made by Steiner some months before the lectures translated here:
Steiner wrote in his Notebook (see p. 131 below) for the present eurythmy course:
Artistic people often think more naturally in evocative images, rather than with philosophical or technical concepts about ‘the spiritual human being’ or ‘the heavenly archetype’. And ultimately the inner life cannot express itself other than in images. Artistic readers looking for direction to surmount materialism may be able to grasp the necessity for decisive action more directly in the form of a picture. It may be appropriate to recall a passage from one of Selma Lagerlöf's novels to show the precision of Steiner's statement. An image of the Christ-child is kept in a basilica run by Franciscan monks. An Englishwoman plans to steal this image and replace it with a cheap imitation. When the copy was ready she took a needle and scratched into the crown: ‘My kingdom is only of this world.’ It was as if she was afraid that she herself would not be able to distinguish one image from the other. And it was as if she wished to appease her own conscience. ‘I have not wished to make a false Christ-image. I have written in his crown: “My kingdom is only of this world”.’33 Stourbridge, Michaelmas 1993
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349. Colour and the Human Races: Color and the Human Races
03 Mar 1923, Dornach Translated by Mabel Cotterell |
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That is very remarkable. We in Europe develop Anthroposophy out of the Spirit. Over there they develop something that is a kind of wooden doll of Anthroposophy. |
Then he will have something to say very similar to European Anthroposophy. One can say that we in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the American develops it in a natural way. |
—But he did not go on to say: “We must develop towards Anthroposophy:” he said: “Give us corpses so that we may dismember them.” [ 39 ] You see, that was all he could say: Give us corpses! |
349. Colour and the Human Races: Color and the Human Races
03 Mar 1923, Dornach Translated by Mabel Cotterell |
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[ 1 ] Now, Gentlemen, I have not yet fully answered the last question about colors. We will take it a little further or complete it. [ 2 ] First of all, today we have to consider a most interesting question, namely, the human color itself. You know, of course, that over the face of the earth are people showing skins differing in color. The Europeans to whom we belong are called the “White Race.” Well, we know indeed that a man in Europe is not quite healthy when he is cheese-white. He is healthy when he shows his natural, fresh color, created by himself inwardly, through the white. [ 3 ] But now besides this European coloring we have four other principal colors of the skin. We will consider this a little today because one actually understands the whole of history and the whole social life, even modern social life, only if one can turn to the race-characteristics of humanity [see drawings]. Only then can one rightly understand the spiritual element if one first studies how the spirit works in man precisely through the skin-color. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] [ 4 ] I should now like to put the racial color before you in this way. Let us start from Europe where we ourselves are living. Here we have therefore—I can draw it for you only roughly—first Europe; bordering on Europe: Asia, England, Ireland; here Japan, China; further India, India proper, Arabia; here we have Africa. Thus: Europe, Asia, Africa. Now we will sketch in the men as they are in the corresponding regions. We call ourselves in Europe the white race. If we go over to Asia we have the yellow race, principally in Asia. And when we go over to Africa there we have the black race. Those are the original races. All others living in these regions are the consequence of migration. So if we ask: What races belong to these parts of the earth?—Then we must say: To Asia belongs the yellow race, the Mongolian; to Europe belongs the white race or the Caucasian race, and to Africa belongs the black or Negro race. The Negro race does not belong to Europe and it is naturally only mischievous that it now plays so great a role in Europe. These races are, as it were, at home in these three parts of the earth. [ 5 ] Now we will consider the color of these three races. I have already told you that color has to do with light. When one sees the black of universal space through the illumined universe, then it appears blue. When one sees light, illumination through the dark air, it appears reddish, as in the glow of morning and evening. [ 6 ] Let us just simply consider colors on ordinary objects. You first distinguish—let us say—black and white. These are the most striking colors, black and white. What is the position then with a black body? A black body assimilates in itself all the light that falls upon it and mirrors back none at all. So if you have a black body, it takes the light that falls on it, absorbs everything into itself, and gives none back. It therefore appears black because it reflects no light. When you have a white body it says: I do not need the light, I will only use what is in myself, I send all the light back. It is therefore white. Thus a white body sends back all light and we see its surface light, white. A dark body absorbs all the light and also all the warmth and throws back no light, no warmth at all, and therefore appears black. [ 7 ] You can study that more closely if you consider the following. Suppose there is some object on the earth which takes up all light. In the first place it gives back a little light and so appears bright. But it allows itself time and takes up the most light possible. When it can take up no more and one brings it into the light, then it appears black. [ 8 ] Now, suppose there is a tree. It stands at first on the earth's surface and takes up a certain amount of light. But it absorbs a good deal of both light and warmth. That goes on until the time when it falls below the earth. When, for a length of time,—but that means thousands or millions of years—it has remained beneath the earth, what does it become? Black coal. It becomes black because it took up light and warmth into itself when it was a tree. It does not give that out unless we destroy it. If we burn it then it yields it, but if we only bring it into the air for a time it keeps it. It has taken up so much light and warmth that it gives nothing out—we must destroy it. That is the condition of coal. [ 9 ] Let us suppose that the object does not take up further light, it sends all back again, then something of such a nature will be white. That is the snow in winter. It reflects all light, it takes up no light and no warmth and thus becomes white. You see by this difference between coal and snow the relation that exists between objects on earth and universal space. [ 10 ] Let us apply that to man in universal space. Let us look just at the blacks in Africa. These blacks in Africa have the characteristic of absorbing from the universe all light and all warmth. They take it up. Now this light and this warmth in the universe cannot go through the whole body because a human being is always a human being even if he is a black one. It does not go through the whole body but stops short on the surface of the skin, and therefore the skin itself becomes black. Thus a black man in Africa is one who absorbs the most possible warmth and light from the universe and assimilates it in himself. Through the fact that he does this the forces of the cosmos work over the whole man like this [see drawing]. He takes up light and warmth everywhere and uses it in himself. Now there must be something which helps him in this assimilation. Well, you see, what helps him in particular is his posterior brain. In the Negro the posterior brain is specially developed. That goes through the spinal cord and can work over all the light and warmth that is in him. Hence all that is connected with the body and metabolism is strongly developed in the Negro. He has, as one says, a strong desire-life, instinctive life [see drawing]. And since he actually has the sun-like, light and warmth, on the surface of his skin, his whole metabolism proceeds as if there were a cooking by the sun itself in his interior. Hence comes his desire-life. There is really a continuous cooking going on within him, and what stokes the fire is the posterior brain. [IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW] [ 11 ] Sometimes man's organization throws off further byproducts. That is to be seen just in the Negro. The Negro not only has this cooking in his organism, it not only boils there, but he also has a frightfully crafty and observant eye. He peers craftily and very observantly. You can easily take this as a contradiction. But it is like this: If there in front is the nerve of the eye [see drawing], the nerves go just into the posterior brain; they cross there [see drawing]. The nerve goes into the posterior brain, and since that is specially developed in the Negro therefore he peeps out so craftily, is such a sly observer of the world. [ 12 ] If one begins to understand the matter, it all becomes clear. But modern science does not make such studies as we do and so it knows nothing about these things. [ 13 ] Let us now pass over from the black to the yellow man. Yellow is already related to the red, and so light is reflected to some extent but much is absorbed. However, the yellow man throws back more light than a black. The black man is an egoist, he takes up all light and all warmth. The yellow Mongolian gives indeed some light back, but he absorbs a great deal. That makes him what he is [see drawing]. Thus he takes up much light but gives some back. He contents himself with less. This less amount of light cannot work in the whole metabolism, and so the metabolism must be referred to its own force. That works chiefly in the breathing and blood-circulation. Thus in the yellow race—Japanese, Chinese—the light and warmth work principally in breathing and blood-circulation. If you have ever met a Japanese, you will have noticed how he pays attention to his breathing. When he talks to you he keeps himself under restraint so that his breathing may be in good order. He has a certain feeling of well-being in breathing. This means that less is worked over in his interior, it is principally worked upon in the breast [see drawing]. This causes the yellow man to develop strongly, not the posterior brain, but the middle brain. It is there that his breath and blood-circulation are maintained. The yellow Asiatic lives rather less in the metabolism. You can notice that too by his walking. He has a less energetic walk. He does not work so strongly with the limbs and the metabolism. The Negro is more to the fore in racing and outer movement that is governed by desires. The Asiatic, yellow man, develops more an inner dream life and therefore the whole Asiatic civilization has this dreamer-element. Thus he is not only living more in himself; he absorbs something from the universe. And so it comes about that the Asians have such wonderful poems about the whole universe. The Negro has not got this quality. He takes everything into his metabolism and really he only digests the universe. The Asiatic breathes it into himself, has it in his blood-circulation. And so he can also give it out from himself when awake. For speech is in fact only a metamorphosed breathing. Yes. Gentlemen, they are beautiful, wonderful poems. The Asians are altogether an inward people. They scorn the European today because they say: They are external people. We shall see why immediately. That then is the yellow race [see drawing] and it is connected with color in the way I have told you. [ 14 ] Now let us look at ourselves in Europe. We are a white race in regard to the universe, for we must give back all external light. We give back all light and, in fact, all warmth too. The warmth has to be very powerful if we want to take it into us. And when it is not there we are stunted, as we see by the Eskimos. There is the human being [see drawing] of such a nature that he throws back all light and warmth. He absorbs them only when they become powerful. He throws them back and develops only the light and warmth that arise in his inner being through his own inner activity. Yes, neither breathing nor blood-circulation comes to help him, nor the creation of warmth; but he must himself work out light and warmth through his brain, that is, through his head. We actually throw back all external light and warmth. We ourselves must give the color to our blood. That then presses through the white and so we obtain the human color of the Europeans. It is from within. And so indeed we are such a white body as assimilates everything within and throws back all light and warmth. And whereas the Mongolian mainly needs the middle brain, we Europeans use the frontal brain, the anterior brain. Through this fact the following is shown. The man with the posterior brain has mainly the desire-life, life of instinct: the one here with the middle brain has the feeling life, situated in the breast; and we Europeans, we poor Europeans, have the thought-life that sits in the head. Thereby, as it were, we do not feel our inner man at all. For we feel the head only when it is ill. Otherwise we do not feel it. But this makes us aware of the whole outer world and we easily become materialists. The Negro becomes no materialist, he remains man inwardly, only he develops the inner desire-life. Nor does the Asiatic become materialist, he remains at the feeling-life, he does not bother about external life as the European does. Of the latter he says: He is only an engineer, concerning himself only with outer life.—He is, in fact, since he must develop his frontal brain, assigned to the outer world, and everything is connected with that. [ 15 ] Thus we are the white race, inwardly the white is colored through our blood. Then there is the Mongolian, the yellow race; and then there is the black race. And we can understand that quite well when we start from the colors—then the whole thing is explained. [ 16 ] Now you only need to consider how that is. The Negroes live on a part of the earth where the sun oppresses them very much indeed, penetrates into them. So they give themselves up to it, absorb it fully into their bodies, become friendly with it, reject nothing. With the Asians—more comes to them from the heat of the earth. They do not give so much back. They are no longer so friendly with the sun. And with the Europeans—here the fact is that they would actually obtain nothing from the sun if they did not evolve their own human element. Europe has therefore always been the starting point for all that develops the human element in connection with the outside world. Inventions have very seldom been made in Asia. They can be assimilated, but inventions themselves, by which the Asians can apply what is produced through practical experience with the outer world—these the Asians cannot make. [ 17 ] For instance, this is what once happened with a screw-steamer. Some Japanese had learnt about it through stealthily watching Europeans, and they also wanted to manage it alone. Previously the Europeans had always been in charge and directed things. Now the Japanese wanted to manage the steamer alone. The English remained behind on the shore. Suddenly the Japanese who were on board fell into evident despair, for the steamer continually revolved round itself. They could not make out how to bring the proper forward motion to the revolving movement. The Europeans who knew how to do it naturally grinned tremendously on the shore. This independent thought which the European develops in familiarity with the environment is not possessed by the Asiatic peoples. The Japanese will therefore develop all European inventions, but they will not think out something by themselves. As regards the human race, men all over the earth are actually dependent on one another. They must help each other. That is a consequence of their natural ability. [ 18 ] That is connected, you see, with the whole of man's development. Think for a moment of a black man; his desire-life is especially evolved, all that boils in the interior. This gives much ash, and the ash is deposited in the bones. He is therefore more developed in his bones than a man of the white race. The latter rather directs to the blood what he has inwardly and his bones are more finely developed. Thus the Negro has coarsely developed bones, the European has more finely developed bones. And the Asiatics, the yellow race, stand in between. [ 19 ] You can observe by the manner in which a Japanese stands and walks that in his bone-structure he stands between the European and the African. The Africans have these strong bones continuously in movement. The European has more the blood system. The Japanese has all that acts on the breathing and from the breath on the blood-circulation. [ 20 ] But now, Gentlemen, men on earth do not simply remain where they are. If one were to go back into ancient times, one would already find that the yellow race belonged to Asia, the white race to Europe and the black race to Africa. But it has also always happened that people have wandered out. And it can happen that either the yellow wander to the East or the blacks wander to the West. And that was once done. The yellow have always wandered eastwards. There they have come to those islands which lie between Asia and Australia [see scheme]. When the yellow wander over to the East they become brown. There arose the Malayans who became brown. Why? Yes, why do they become brown? What does it mean to become brown? Well, when they are yellow they throw back a definite degree of light; the rest they absorb. When they become brown through the different way in which they now live in the sun—for they come from another part of the earth—then they throw back, reflect, less light. They take more light into themselves. So these brown Malayans are migrated Mongolians, but who now, since the sun works on them differently, accustom themselves to absorb more light and more warmth. But consider how they have not the nature tor this. They have already accustomed themselves to have a bony structure which limits them to a definite degree of warmth. They have not the right nature for taking up so much warmth as they now take up as Malayans. The result of this is that they begin to become unusable people, people who break to pieces in the body, whose body dies away. This is in fact the case with the Malayan population. They die of the sun. They die of the Fast. One can say that whereas the yellow, the Mongolians, are still men in full strength, the Malayans are already a dying race. They are dying out. [ 21 ] In ancient times the Negroes wandered over to the West—today circumstances are different, they can do it less—but they wandered westwards in ancient times; there had always been a ship passage, and there were still islands over the whole Atlantic Ocean, for earlier this was in fact a continent. Now when the blacks wandered west they could no longer absorb so much light and warmth as in their native Africa. Less light and warmth reaches them. What is the result? Their nature is organized to take up as much as possible of light and warmth and actually in that way to become black. Now they do not get as much light and warmth as they need in order to become black. So they become copper-red, become Indians. That comes from the fact that they are obliged to reflect something of light and warmth. That gleams a copper-red. Copper is itself a body which must reflect a little light and warmth. They cannot hold out against this and so die in the West as Indians. They are again a race that is going under, they die from their own nature which gets too little light and warmth. They die from the earthly, and the earthly element of their nature is their desire-life. They can no longer develop that properly, whereas they still get strong bones. Since much ash goes into their bones these Indians can no longer hold out against it. Their bones become frightfully strong, but so strong that the whole man goes to pieces by reason of his bones. [ 22 ] You see, this is how things have developed, so that these five races have come about. One might say: Black, yellow, white in the center: as a side-branch of the black the copper-red, and as a side-branch of the yellow the brown: those are always the dying-out parts. [ 23 ] The whites are actually those who evolve the human element and so they are assigned to themselves. When they migrate they somewhat take on the characteristics of the other regions, yet they do not go to pieces as a race, but rather as individuals. But instead they do something else altogether. You see, all that I have been describing to you are things that go on in man's body, and the soul and spirit are more independent of it. And so soul and spirit can be most active in the European, since they make most claim on him. He can more easily bear going into different parts of the earth. Hence it also once came about that starting from up above there [see scheme] a great migration of people went over as far as India. A stream of white people struck into a region where the population was yellow. Thus arose the Hindus, a mixture of Mongolian and Caucasian. Hence came the very beautiful Indian poetry, the most beautiful in existence. But again at the same time something of which one notes that it has already become inert, because the white element is not in its own territory. [ 24 ] And so one can say that the white man can go everywhere, today even to America—and all the white inhabitants of America have come from Europe. The white element therefore comes into American regions, but something happens to man when he comes to America from the Europe for which he is naturally constituted. It means that some demand must be made on the posterior brain. As European in Europe he has made demands chiefly on his frontal brain. Now in America there flourish those people who were once actually decadent Negroes—that is to say, they do not flourish, they are going to pieces—the Red Indians. When one comes there a conflict always arises in the head between the anterior and the posterior brain. It is found that if a family moves to America and settles there, then the descendants have the peculiarity of acquiring somewhat longer arms. The arms and legs grow rather more when the European settles in America—not in himself, of course, but in his descendants. That comes from the fact that things move over through the middle brain to the posterior brain when as European one comes to America. [ 25 ] But at the same time something very peculiar comes about in the American. Now the European lives entirely in his inner being, does he not—especially if he is a thinker. If he is no thinker, he barely reflects at all, but that produces a life which is not quite filled up. But as soon as the European settles in America he no longer is such a brooder. So the following arises: When you read a European book, things are always proved. One cannot get away from the proving. One reads through a whole book, reads through 400 pages, only proofs. Even if it is a novel there is always proving. For the most part, nothing is proved at the end on the 400th page. The American does not do that. When you read an American book everything is put forward as a statement. There again it is a going-back, nourished by the instinct. The animal proves nothing; the lion does not prove that he will devour another animal, he will devour it. If the European wants to do anything, it must first be proved. Today that is the great difference between the European and the American. Europeans prove, Americans affirm. [ 26 ] But that is not to say that what they affirm cannot be just as true, it is even realized more through the whole man. The Americans have that in advance of the European. On the one hand they approach decadence—the American Indian is decadent—but when one begins to go to pieces one becomes clever. So the Europeans become clever when they go over: they disaccustom themselves from the proving. [ 27 ] This wanting to prove is not exactly a quality to bring one forward. If one is to do something in the morning, one can begin with proving, and at night on going to sleep one can still not do it, because one still must prove. The American will not do that, because he has not been trained at all to prove. And so it comes that America will quite certainly go ahead of Germany in some things. One can make quite interesting observations. If one takes up a European book it proves somewhat as follows—let us say it is a book about the digestive system of the cockchafer—such books are indeed written. It begins by proving: “The animal species of the cockchafer contains also digestive organs, they only withdraw from ordinary observation, one must penetrate deeper into the whole organization of the cockchafer.”—Well, so it goes on. One has to prove everything. The American begins with: “When one dismembers a cockchafer then one finds in it that and that”—he affirms as he observes. And so you see in the case of the Europeans: they no longer develop their racial character on behalf of their whole organization. They develop rather the qualities of soul and spirit. For this reason they can penetrate into all other parts of the world. The process of becoming decadent is naturally a slow one. [ 28 ] The sun always sends more or less of warmth and light down to the earth. Now we have the Vernal Point in the Fishes, as I have told you. Previously it was in the Ram, Aries. After some time it will be in Aquarius: only then will the true American civilization come. Before then civilization will go more and more over to America. One who will, can already see today how powerful the Americans are becoming and how Europe is getting increasingly impotent. And the reason why no kind of peace can now come to Europe is because Europe no longer actually understands its own land. Now all civilization moves over to America; it will take a long time, but when the sun's vernal point has entered the Sign of Aquarius then it will send down its rays to earth just in such a favorable way that the American culture and civilization will be especially powerful. That is already to be seen today. [ 29 ] It is very remarkable: In Europe over here what we call Anthroposophy can be developed. It must be developed out of the Spirit—that does not come at all out of racial characteristics. It must be developed out of the Spirit. And the men who are unwilling to approach the Spirit will plunge Europe into disaster. [ 30 ] The Americans do not yet need it, especially those who travel over there. For they can still maintain themselves on racial characteristics. And so over in America, curiously enough, arises something remarkable. Anyone who reads American books really attentively, who reads parliamentary speeches, one who takes a general interest in what goes on in America today, will say to himself: Good gracious! That is very remarkable. We in Europe develop Anthroposophy out of the Spirit. Over there they develop something that is a kind of wooden doll of Anthroposophy. Everything becomes materialistic. But for one who is not a fanatic, there is something similar in American culture to what is anthroposophical science in Europe. Only everything there is wooden, it is not yet alive. We can make it alive in Europe out of the Spirit: those over there take it out of instinct. [ 31 ] You see, one cart notice that in all detail. The time will one day come when this American “wooden man”—which actually everyone is still—when he will begin to speak. Then he will have something to say very similar to European Anthroposophy. One can say that we in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the American develops it in a natural way. Therefore when I explain anthroposophical matters I can so often point out: Well, that is how it is anthroposophically, and that is the American caricature of it [sketch]. That is the caricature of it. [ 32 ] But if someone is a fanatic and has come to Anthroposophy not through the inner life but through fanaticism, then he finds the very sharpest invectives for Americanism because—well, man abuses the apes chiefly—since the ape is like himself—as a caricature. And so it is really such a remarkable affair as between North and South Pole, between what we achieve spiritually in Europe and what is gained over there in America in a natural way. [ 33 ] Books on natural science in America do not look at all as they do in Europe. They really talk continually of Spirit, but they represent it to themselves in the crudest, most material way. Hence Spiritism has also arisen in America in recent times. For what does Spiritism do? It wants to talk of the Spirit and imagines it as cloud-phenomena, would prefer everything to be like cloud-phenomena. And so Spiritism is an American product, it aims at the Spirit but in a materialistic way. It is in fact so interesting that in America materialism simply flourishes, but actually on the way to the Spirit; while in Europe if someone becomes a materialist he dies as human being. The American is a young materialist. In fact, all children are at first materialistic, and then grow to what is not materialism. So too will the American blatant materialism sprout to a spiritual element. That will be when the sun rises in the Sign of Aquarius. [ 34 ] Now, you see, in this way we can realize what we as Europeans have as a task. Our task as Europeans is not at all always to abuse the Americans, but naturally we must found over the whole earth a civilization which is put together from the best. [ 35 ] If one thinks about things as the Prince of Baden does who has been taken in by the American European Wilson, then it does not do. For Wilson was not a true American. He had actually taken all his theories from Europe and therefore made things so dreadfully theoretic. But genuine Americanism will one day unite with Europeanism which will have taken a more spiritual path. When one studies something in this way one sees the attitude one should take in the world. [ 36 ] And so it is really quite interesting: On the one hand we have the black race, which is most of all earthly. When they go westwards, they die out. We have the yellow race, which is between earth and cosmos. When they go to the East they become brown, connect too much with the cosmos, die out. The while race is the future one, is the race creating in the Spirit. When they moved over to India they developed the inward, poetical and spiritual Indian culture. When they now go to the West they will develop a spirituality which does not so much grasp man's inner being, but turns to the spirituality of the outer world. [ 37 ] And so in the future, purely out of the racial characterization those things will emerge which one must know in life so that one takes the right stand. Men are getting less and less adjustment in life. They want indeed to have everything fall from the skies and not actually to learn. [ 38 ] This has come about through the fact that in the last third of the 19th century nothing more of a human element was provided in education, particularly in scientific education. Knowledge of man is so difficult to present nowadays. Materialistic scholars themselves realize this, they get no farther. It was very interesting at the last Natural Science Conference. One of these scientists had especially realized it—one does not advance, one learns nothing of the human being through science today.—But he did not go on to say: “We must develop towards Anthroposophy:” he said: “Give us corpses so that we may dismember them.” [ 39 ] You see, that was all he could say: Give us corpses! People want to have more corpses, they want to study the dead man. That was a right catchword: Give us corpses!—Whereas we here can do without corpses, for we want to observe and study the living man. For that it is only necessary to open one's eyes and through one's eyes somewhat the soul, for one finds the living man everywhere. One meets nothing but living men. Only one must be able to live with them, so that they may make known to one what a human being is. But the learned scholars of today have really quite weak eyes; they do not see man. And then they fervently beg “Give us corpses!” Then they can study them. Give us corpses! This was the position in educational centers in recent years, recent decades. People have taken in nothing there pertaining to man. And so knowledge of man has disappeared from all science. [ 40 ] That is why I dealt with this question in the first chapter of my “Threefold Commonwealth.” I had to show how those who had not been occupied with science but with work had advanced and now naturally wanted science. But the others, the bourgeois, could not give them this, which they appeared to have. And thus arose the great calamity in civilization. The workers demanded science and it was not there, because only a science was there that is devoid of man. I have shown that in the first chapter of the “Threefold Commonwealth” because that must first be understood if one talks of the social question. So that it was in fact necessary for the “Threefold Commonwealth” to begin with it in the first chapter. [ 41 ] Now, we have dealt with colors somewhat further today. |
344. The Founding of the Christian Community: Fifteenth Lecture
20 Sep 1922, Dornach |
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The second thing is to live the word with the spirit, and that is precisely the point that will found your free relationship to anthroposophy. For it is basically anthroposophy that has inspired you to such a re-founding, to a religious renewal in general. And there is, after all, much that you can gain from Anthroposophy in terms of enlivening the gospel message, which you will certainly have to reshape in one way or another for your own purposes, casting it in a different form, but which must be the basis for a lasting, friendly relationship with Anthroposophy. |
This is all you have to do in your movement, going beyond what anthroposophy will essentially remain as teaching and knowledge and what should not, to some extent, be adapted to the individuality of each person: counseling individuals with regard to what can inwardly trouble them in their soul condition as a result of sinful human nature. |
344. The Founding of the Christian Community: Fifteenth Lecture
20 Sep 1922, Dornach |
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My dear friends! The first thing you need to take with you on the way to your work is enthusiasm, which must live in you all through the decision you have made. The second thing is to live the word with the spirit, and that is precisely the point that will found your free relationship to anthroposophy. For it is basically anthroposophy that has inspired you to such a re-founding, to a religious renewal in general. And there is, after all, much that you can gain from Anthroposophy in terms of enlivening the gospel message, which you will certainly have to reshape in one way or another for your own purposes, casting it in a different form, but which must be the basis for a lasting, friendly relationship with Anthroposophy. And the third thing, which I spoke about yesterday, is what, when understood in the right sense, must be called the healing of sins. For only when you allow everything you draw from the Act of Consecration of Man, everything you imbue your teachings with, everything that lives in your own heart, to culminate in the healing of sins, will your office become truly priestly. That is why I had to explain to you yesterday what the healing of sins consists of. Let us now consider once more from a different point of view what this healing of sins consists of. We look first into human nature and compare it with what it is in its earthly environment. Let us imagine for a moment this duality before the soul: earthly human nature, that is, the inner nature of earthly human nature, and now the whole earthly environment. We cannot do otherwise if we proceed calmly than to imagine, in the sense of a truly spirit-imbued cosmology - which is also a Christian cosmology - that this environment of ours, if we want to use religious terms, is a revelation of the divine that permeates this earthly environment. But it will not be difficult for you to imagine that within human nature, something else is at work than in the earthly environment of man. In his inner nature, man is actually only completely similar to the outer world in what are intermediate earthly processes, which take place between water and air on the one hand and between water and solid earth on the other. Processes are constantly taking place in the outer world between the airy and the liquid, which play into the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Processes take place between water and the earth, external processes that natural science observes as geology, geognosy, mineralogy, paleontology, but also as biology, and which, insofar as they take place between the solid and the aqueous, play into human nature almost unchanged. All that takes place in this interplay between the airy and the watery and between the watery and the solid, and what also takes place in this relationship in the environment of man, was described by an earlier clairvoyant art, which, however, was able to see through these things to a higher degree than the mercurial. Now, however, we also have those processes that take place between air and warmth, air and light, which, to a certain extent, lie above the mercurial. These are processes that take place primarily in the human head and are quite different from those processes that take place between air, warmth and light outside of the human being. Only the middle earthly processes, the mercurial ones, are almost the same outside and inside the human being. What takes place, on the other hand, in the sulphuric processes, as they were called in earlier times – for solid sulphur is indeed a Maja image of the actual effects of sulphur – which essentially take place between air, warmth and light and also in the life ether, these are processes that take place within human nature in a very different way. And the processes that take place in the middle human being, which are quite similar to external natural processes, undergo a strong metamorphosis in the human mind, so that something completely different takes place in the mind than outside of it. Likewise, the metabolic processes that extend into the movement processes of the limbs involve completely different processes than those outside in nature. The external natural processes that, for example, lead to the formation of phosphoric acid lime in nature are quite different from those processes that take place within the human body to form phosphoric acid lime in the bones or teeth. Such processes, which, for example, cause a human thigh bone to develop in such a way that it appears as a wonderful framework, these processes, which form the phosphoric acid lime and the carbonic acid lime as mineral processes in the human being, are not found in the external natural world. But such processes, which are not found in nature, which are found in the head processes and in the organization of movement in the human being, are, because they are also connected with the soul and spirit of the human being, now also dangerous for this soul and spirit again, and indeed the head processes become dangerous in the luciferic sense, the metabolic-limb processes in the ahrimanic , and external healing can only be brought about – as I described yesterday – by supplying the head processes with the salt that remains almost unchanged in the human nutritional process and the limb processes with the volatile, fluctuating phosphorus present in grape juice, which then continues to work in the metabolic organization and permeates the limb system. Thus we have [in humans] a chemo-biology that brings about something quite wonderful, namely that something happens to the salt that in the external world has actually only been done by the gods. For we have to imagine that in the human environment the Luciferic and Ahrimanic are not present in the same way as in the human being; after all, it works from the human being into nature and is present in the salt effects [of nature]. By consuming salt, we therefore send a decisive fight against the luciferic processes into our head, while by absorbing the phosphorus and causing it to overflow into our limbs, we send a fight against the ahrimanic into them. This is the outer process, which the believing person must also follow in his inner soul processes. If it is the outer process that you bring about in the souls of the faithful through Communion, then Communion can naturally only work in the right way if the inner inspiration is also renewed again and again from time to time. This must be done by taking the healing of sins in the broadest sense, so that everything that can be a temptation to sin through the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic in human nature is now truly healed through the priestly work. And so the priestly work must add to the communion, if not to everyone, then at least now and then, that which is no longer preserved in its purity in the Catholic Church, but only in a terrible distortion . It is necessary to add the counseling of the person that precedes Communion, that which in the Catholic Church has become confession, especially auricular confession, which is an entirely Ahrimanic distortion of what needs to be willed. That is what makes up the difficulty with respect to Catholicism. If, for example, a Catholic anthroposophist asks whether he can participate in the overall practice of the Catholic Church, one is always confronted with the Ahrimanic aspect of auricular confession, which one cannot advise the [anthroposophical] Catholic to take; but by doing so, one deprives him of Holy Communion, because the Catholic Church has the coercive law that Communion can only be given if auricular confession has been made beforehand. This is, of course, the most difficult of spiritual requirements. But if you handle the counseling, which must be linked to Communion at certain intervals, correctly, you will not only be able to appear as enthusiastic priests proclaiming the word, but also as priests who forgive sins, and you must be clear about what you can also be as a counselor to your parishes. You will need to take a stand on the matters with which your parishioners come to you as their inner soul concerns. You will not, of course, introduce compulsory confession, but you will notice when the community is properly established how much the community members will come to you with trust and will entrust you with the most diverse inner matters, and how most of them will even feel a certain relief in being able to entrust these matters to you. This is all you have to do in your movement, going beyond what anthroposophy will essentially remain as teaching and knowledge and what should not, to some extent, be adapted to the individuality of each person: counseling individuals with regard to what can inwardly trouble them in their soul condition as a result of sinful human nature. Of course, you will achieve the least if you indulge in general, theoretical and didactic phrases when counseling your parishioners before Communion. At this moment, anything doctrinal is actually the least appropriate. Only a priest who, when he is such a “confessor”, can put himself in the position of how the difficulties in the soul of the penitent actually arose, what role they play, and how far back they go in time, will give this advice correctly. In short, I would say that you will have to implement in a pure form what has already emerged as nonsense in the development of culture because the churches have withdrawn from it. The Catholic Church has so thoroughly Ahrimanized confession that the confession of children and young people is often a source of moral aberration in the Catholic Church. There are areas where what Catholic children are supposed to do in the so-called examination of conscience is preprinted - I cannot say in small “booklets” because it is usually four pages long - where the possible sins that someone might have are printed in advance, so that some boys, who see through these things, simply cross out what they do not want to have sinned and then just read their confession according to the form. But this also leads to great harm in many other respects. These forms often state, for example, that the child should ask itself whether it has the habit of keeping its hands under the blanket. You can imagine that, from a very early age, the child is made aware of sexual mischief precisely through the obligation required of him by confession. In short, what has become of auricular confession is already a great, great difficulty. That is one side of it; the other is the following. People live strangely blindly in the world. You know that in Spengler's “Decline of the West” it is said that the priest actually has no influence on world events, that he is a kind of theorizing, contemplative person, and that the world is basically run by people of the nobility, princes and so on. Spengler really talks as if he did not know that there are confessors, that princes, before they come to their decisions, first sit with their confessors, and that from the way the auricular confession is handled there emanates the greatest possible influence on the great affairs of the world. You must realize that in the world, the origins of the most important events must be sought with the confessors. But people are blind; they describe what happens on the outside and have no sense of where things come from. No, you must not forget that this is something that tends to be extremely secretive and that it is something through which one can rule the world in a very wonderful secretive way. The Pope sits in Rome, the Archbishop N.N. in some very distant place and has his archdeacons, canons, provosts and the lower clergy; all of whom, through the confessional, have access to the most intimate affairs of those people who are subject to them. Of course, the Pope in Rome does not need to know what the individual penitent says to the confessor, but he knows that he has someone sitting in these places who carries out the Roman orders with an enormous amount of in-depth knowledge. In this way, the Catholic Church has made confession extraordinarily difficult, both for the individual and for the whole world context. And the Protestant Church? It is not just one Protestant preacher, but a whole series who, in the course of my life, have been with me and said: We long to have something that is like the Catholic confession; we need a method to gently enter into the matters of the heart with which people come to us; we need a kind of active catechesis. Some Protestant pastors have clearly presented this to me. I then advised them to develop the idea from “How to Know Higher Worlds,” whereby, if adopted from the priestly side, one could actually arrive at a tactful confession. That was too difficult for them. So some of them came to me and said: Yes, insofar as these instructions morally coerce, I can agree with them, but where it becomes a matter of inner technique for a person, we certainly do not need such a thing in religion. — In short, the difficulty is this: First one is asked: what should we do? —, one says so, and then the person concerned replies: We have no need of it. This shows that precisely these innermost things point to something that must come. And because it is not offered to people by either the Catholic or the Protestant side, psychoanalysts do it. Familiarize yourself with the methods of psychoanalysts, to whom people flock in droves today, and see how psychoanalysis is praised by outstanding writers. You will see: What psychoanalysis wants to give to people in a crude way is what the churches of all denominations actually withhold from them. Today we have a psychoanalysis that is spreading more and more every day, from a neglect that can be attributed to the churches. Take any English weekly or monthly magazine. I have convinced myself: you will find an essay on psychoanalysis in it almost every time. This is the materialistic degeneration of what should have been the duty of the pastor, and the matter takes on its serious character when one then comes to what takes the place of communion at the psychoanalyst. One cannot think of the development of Christianity without thinking of all that has been left out of the development of denominations out of human complacency. You must be aware of these things. You must educate yourself to be able to live with the inner difficulties that people approach you with. You can only do this if you approach everything humanly, without emotion, if both joy and indignation essentially remain silent, and if you can immediately raise the judgment of what you have to approach to a higher sphere, to the sphere of spiritual life. Then you will find that even in the most specific details you have the opportunity not to teach theories or doctrines to the penitent, but to formulate little by little what is indeed doctrine, always in the specific case, and thus to bring it into your teachings. You must, of course, make it clear to the penitent how he has an inner tendency to sin in the Ahrimanic and Luciferic sense, but do not speak of Luciferic and Ahrimanic every time; rather, the treatment of each individual case must always be an essentially individual matter, formulated in concrete terms. You must make it clear to the penitent how the person belongs to another earth, from which he has brought in the Ahrimanic and Luciferic as an inclination, and how he helps himself by really experiencing the means of his religious community to overcome what gives him difficulties within. In this direction you must become an adviser. You must be able to advise the penitent on some point of difficulty, so that he may rise above it. This will come to you if you apply yourself to a constant and careful study of human nature, in the sense in which it is possible today. The various representations that have been given on an anthroposophical basis contain so many indications of how one or the other aspect of human nature is connected with karma, with the individual destiny, and even with the physical human organization, that they will shed light on many things for you if you study the subjects not just by take a book or a cycle, read it and then be able to say what you have read, but when you study it in such a way that, immediately after you have read it, you bring it to life in your own thoughts, bring it to life as it lives in one or other case during earthly existence, when you study it in a lively way. This is how anthroposophy should be studied. I often have to say to people: you should not read an anthroposophical book like any other book, but in such a way that you feel you want to 'eat it up', so that it then works in you as a force. The comparison can really be taken to the extreme: what you have eaten up has disappeared for the others. That is how one would like an anthroposophical book to disappear, to no longer be there, but to go through a process in the person. If it is read in this way, one learns to understand human nature in a concrete way. In this way, an enormous amount can be done in the preparation for the act of communion. And every such consultation should actually, I would say, end with a half or three-quarters ritual, in that the penitent is released in a living way with a thought that I would like to put before your souls in the following six lines. It is not necessary for you to express this thought in a formulaic way to each person after every confession, as the Catholic Church does, but the direction that the end of every communion counseling should take is indicated in these six lines.
If the penitent experiences what lives in these words through you, then you have certainly achieved something with the confession. In this way, you have developed the whole meaning of Johannine Christianity at the end of each confession and can then lead your penitent to Communion with what really inspires them in that Communion. That is what essentially needs to be said about what confession should become through you, what makes confession a real sacrament in connection with Communion. It will then be my task tomorrow to familiarize you with the last rites and perhaps with some of the things you have notified yourself. But then I will have given you everything I think you need to start your work. After tomorrow's session, we will only need to complete the fundamental issues we have discussed in our joint deliberations, and it will be necessary to say a mass before you leave, with communion for the others. A participant asks a question about the confession formula. (The stenographer did not note down the wording of the question. Rudolf Steiner: The difficult sentence of the creed was already felt by me in its difficulty, but it already had a little history from us. The point is that we formulate it - in the real it is not about craziness, but about activity - so that this is expressed in a sentence in the creed: He who joins this community recognizes that what he has become through this community, can only initially become through this community; that is to say that he receives the rituals and what radiates from the rituals from this community and also receives from it the right, in the sense of these rituals, to found communities. So that the person in question has received the evaluation from the supreme leaders and leaders of this community for everything he does on behalf of this community, and that he acknowledges that he has no right to carry out these rituals other than as a member of this community. But you must not make that dependent on whether his will is to recognize this today and may be different in three years, but you must decide today that his will must not be different in three years. So it would not be for him to decide, but for the community. He would have to acknowledge that, with regard to everything he has received on behalf of the community, the community can decide in its superiors, and also that he renounces deciding on it himself in the future. That is the meaning of the matter. We cannot get around this meaning, otherwise you make the rituals a free gift, otherwise you do not establish something, but teach something, and it is gradually carried into the world in dilution, in change, without connection to what it started from. So what I am saying now should be taken into account in some way. But I only want to be available to advise on these matters. Then someone asked me what the relationship between the community and the Waldorf school teachers will be, since they not only teach the children but are also active in the religious services in the Sunday and other celebrations; and since at the beginning of this course there was the view that Mr. Uehli should not participate in this course, there was something dubious about this relationship. A real basis for such things must be found within the constitution. I do not know whether there is still a rule for this within the community, but there must be. For it is undoubtedly the case that the Waldorf School - and it would be very similar in other schools set up in this way - already has religious education in the sense sought here, and also religious practice. You should be aware that the whole of the teaching in a Waldorf school is imbued with this, so that at least something should be struck in this respect. A participant: How should we imagine the early development of the work in the community? How should the community be led, and who should take part in the first service? How should we counter the accusation of stealing the mass from the Catholic Church? Rudolf Steiner: With such things, we have to be clear about how the natural process will be. So let's start with this case of the mass. Here we must place ourselves on very firm ground. The Catholic Church regards the reading of the Mass as something that is an outgrowth of apostolic succession. It therefore recognizes as having the right to read a valid Mass only that person who can prove his apostolic succession in the way that the Catholic Church understands this apostolic succession. The Catholic Church interprets succession in such a way that it only recognizes it if it itself effects it, so that in the sense of the Roman Catholic Church only those can read masses who can trace their authority back to a priest ordained by the church itself. Among the Old Catholics, the Old Catholic priests themselves claim that they also fulfill the apostolic succession, also in the sense of the Roman Catholic Church, that they can trace it back to those who were ordained by the Roman Catholic Church in the sense of the apostolic succession. That is what will lead to the Catholic Church not recognizing your masses as valid. But you cannot expect that either. Since there is no Catholic among you or, insofar as there is one here, he is not a priest – a Catholic priest is not with you, otherwise the whole thing would have had to take a different course, we would have had to count on the Catholic priest, but we did not need to – so it is therefore a matter of the Catholic Church not being able to apply the disciplinary measures it has against a renegade Catholic priest who has been deprived of the right to say mass and who then does say it anyway. So there remain the Catholics who are within your community; you must have some. These Catholics naturally expose themselves to excommunication. One must realize quite clearly that the Catholic Church will also apply the disciplinary measures it has, and there is no objection at all within the Catholic Church to excommunication for reading Mass and hearing confessions. If the Catholic Church now decides that it would be wise not to make a fuss about it, then that would be wise of her. That may well be the case as long as you have not exceeded the third thousand, because the Catholic Church does not concern itself with trivialities. If you do not sit together too much or too intensely on one point, you are a bagatelle for the Catholic Church. It already said in 1909: As long as the anthroposophical movement is small, we will only observe it, but not deal with it. But in 1919, she found that she had to deal with it very strongly. And it will also come about that all Catholics who read mass or hear confessions [at your place] will be excommunicated. Of course, she will also take issue with priestly ordinations in the first place, while she will take less offense at all other ceremonies. That is the one thing that can happen, and a theoretical justification that the Catholic Church itself got the mass from somewhere else is of no significance at all; it does not recognize that and it decides it as a mere question of power. So any theoretical objections would naturally be ignored by the Catholic Church with a wave of the hand. The important thing is that you simply have to accept the excommunication and count on those who are your followers remaining so despite being excommunicated Catholics. That is the real process. The more you enter into the real practice of religion, the more you have to get rid of Protestant theorizing, which aims to prove something to someone. This has even less significance for the Church than it has for the sciences. In the real world, 'proving' something has basically no real meaning. So you can't make anything dependent on the fact that you want to prove to the Catholic Church that you are reading the mass “by right”. You are reading it in the sense of the Catholic Church absolutely wrongly, and you can put forward the most cunning or spiritual proofs, so that would not be able to help you the slightest bit on this point. You cannot take any other direction than the one in which you succeed in getting more and more people to recognize that you are right to read the mass. You cannot do this in any other way than by winning your followers through the three means I have mentioned. In general, this will not be particularly difficult for you at the present time. If you look at the matter superficially, you will find that there is a very strong yearning for worship in humanity today throughout the civilized world, except that this yearning for worship and also for confession is not being met in the right way by the religions. Of course, you can deal with the faithful by making an impression of truth through your whole behavior, through the way you work and through the inspiration of your work, when you tell them in the appropriate way: The property of the Catholic Church is the Latin Mass; this has taken on a dead character because the Latin language itself is dead. We do not in the least deny that the Latin Mass was once the right Mass; but we must point out that only the German Mass - or the French Mass or the English Mass and so on - which we read, is the present form of the Mass, and that we hold this in the sense of the living Christ, just as the Roman Catholic Church reads the Latin Mass in the sense of mere remembrance of Christ. And you must make this concept understood. It is important that you do everything so that this concept simply prevails. That is not so difficult. Because there is a deep need in humanity for a renewal of the forms of worship. The Latin Mass is also felt by Catholics today as something insufficient. The only thing you have to do is to show by your whole behavior that you have a spiritual impact, that your holding of Mass is not from men, but from God. With regard to the Mass, you have only one task with regard to those who join you as parishioners. Even in Luther's time, it was possible to discuss with the Roman Catholic Church, as Luther did. Of course, you can't do that anymore, but you can only gather followers who assert what you yourself assert. The Catholic Church today no longer enters into a discussion in the same way as it did in Luther's time. So I think that everything depends on your strength, whether you can get the reading of the mass recognized or not. I have already told you this in connection with other things a long time ago. You must be clear about one thing: a movement like the one you have in mind has the peculiarity that it should only be started when you are sure that it will succeed! And as far as this certainty is based on your own inner strength, it depends on you simply not letting up. You must have this certainty. And for that you will need a certain broad-mindedness today, both in the way you deal with religious matters and in the way you deal with the faithful, and especially in administrative matters. I can only express such things radically, they are perhaps a little gentler in reality. You feel today that Breitbrunn has bound you together. It has done that, and you must hold on to it. But if you do not continue what you began in Breitbrunn, then the picture of a large part of you hitting your heads in no time at all is not so far-fetched. You must therefore realize that you need to keep that which you believe to be firmly established in constant exercise and liveliness. For think for yourselves how it is with those who join you – after all, you will not always remain just these forty. You must bear this in mind when you begin to found your communities. You have already begun. A large number of you will return to these communities, but for another part the communities will have to be sought. And above all, you will first have the task of dealing with the proclamation of the word in a somewhat freer way, in connection with advising the people who come to you. And if you succeed in speaking about Christ as you speak, if you take into account everything that we have been going through for a long time, especially in these days, then you will see that you will win your followers through your speaking, much more easily than followers can be won on the basis of anthroposophy, where you have to speak in different terms. And you will find that precisely because you are also taking on the task of healing sins, you will be able to retain these followers as very loyal ones. You must be satisfied with every small flock, for only by being satisfied with a small flock will that small flock gradually become larger. This is not possible in any other way. Those who want a large flock right away will not get one. So you have to be satisfied with everything that arises out of the world as a possibility, and you will see what can be meant by this loyalty in the first instance. And if you are careful enough with the teaching and with the confession-like treatment of the faithful, you will be able to move on to the cultic acts very soon. It is much easier to move on to the cultic acts than the Protestant preacher or the one who wants to become one imagines. The more naturally you let the community arise, the better it will be. That is it, [what is to be said about it,] how just such a thing would be treated, which lies in such questions as they have been asked here. I will begin to answer the other questions this evening. A participant: What about the criteria for worship and what would be advisable for the beginning of worship? In Bremen, for example, people are already prepared for it, and there is even a church available. Would it be advisable to exclude the public? Rudolf Steiner: The early Christians also had guidelines, but they did not formulate them, because it was often necessary for the early Christians to hold services underground in order to create the possibility of holding them at all. It has happened that such a longing was present in the first priests to hold services that they held the service even when they were tied hand and foot, but were surrounded by a wall of believers who prevented anyone from watching. And only gradually did it actually emerge in the post-Constantinian period that services could be held in public. I find it hard to believe that you will have any particular luck if you say a German mass in a public church in front of unprepared people. On the other hand, I think it's a very good thing that you say this mass as soon as possible in front of people who will all say yes. So you have to prepare your people, and for a long time you will simply be forced to say your mass in such a way that you only say it in front of prepared people and only allow prepared people. Because of course, if a dyed-in-the-wool atheistic social democrat goes into your mass today and afterwards starts his things, which he will most certainly start, then you will see that you will most certainly have difficulties that you should actually avoid. You have to take such things into account and you have to look out into the world in what you do every day. The smaller the movement still is, the more you will be able to do that. The more it grows quickly, the more others will do what you shouldn't do. |
252. The History of the Johannesbau and Goetheanum Associations: The Ninth Annual General Meeting of the Association of the Goetheanum
24 Jun 1922, Dornach |
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We couldn't have changed that. For it is precisely in the circles where anthroposophy is widely discussed today that we have basically done nothing, but have endeavored to maintain the original impulses, to work more and more in a positive way towards the given treasure. |
So the material success is actually not lacking. You can't even say that people don't want anthroposophy, because they do want it, and those who enter into the other alliances are sometimes very good anthroposophists, they just don't join us. |
Of course, they may disagree with this or that; they fully recognize the practical work of anthroposophy, but when it comes to whether they join us or somewhere else, they join somewhere else, because, after all, [gap in the text]. |
252. The History of the Johannesbau and Goetheanum Associations: The Ninth Annual General Meeting of the Association of the Goetheanum
24 Jun 1922, Dornach |
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My dear friends! Allow me to say a few words, which are meant to be, so to speak, an interpretation of the moral and financial balance sheet that has been presented to you today. I would like to tie in a few things that I am convinced are intimately connected with this balance sheet, but the connection cannot always be seen immediately if things are not considered thoroughly. I would like to start from something very obvious, and draw attention to something else here: the fact that the anthroposophical movement, of which the Goetheanum here is the external representative, has recently become very widespread without the movement itself having done very much directly to popularize it. Little by little, anthroposophy has actually become something that is widely taken into account, and this is precisely because people have become aware of it from the outside and have studied it. As a result, it is really already part of all the various efforts and struggles that are being waged within civilization today. This can be seen quite clearly. We couldn't have changed that. For it is precisely in the circles where anthroposophy is widely discussed today that we have basically done nothing, but have endeavored to maintain the original impulses, to work more and more in a positive way towards the given treasure. And of course it would have been different – despite some enmities arising from the movement – it would have been different than it is now, when we are exposed to the broadest public to such an extraordinary degree. But this factor simply has to be reckoned with, and in this respect the recent Congress of Vienna was particularly characteristic. There we were, if I may say so, in full public view, and we were also in public view in front of numerous people who, with regard to what is necessary to build civilization, to rebuild civilization, are also asking themselves questions. It is quite clear today – and this must also be said in this circle – that one thing is quite clearly noticeable when one observes life on a large scale. It is noticeable today that in Western countries there is a conviction, perhaps not yet very strong, but clearly emerging, that the old cultures that have developed within Central Europe must be ferments for a spiritual reconstruction. The West's antipathy towards the spiritual life in Central Europe will decrease, while political antagonisms are currently still on the increase. Although other symptoms seem to indicate the opposite, political antipathies are steadily increasing. The same is not true – even if it is less noticeable – of the sympathies for that which can become effective in the spiritual realm in Europe for a healthy building up of civilization. Yes, my dear friends, there are many things to be considered. I will first draw attention to just one detail. I will single out the special reception that the three eurythmy performances have now found in Vienna. If you have an ear for these things, you can distinguish between them. The reception of eurythmy in Vienna was the warmest imaginable, the warmest that has existed so far; even if it was not perhaps the most outwardly striking, it was still the warmest because people were able to see the artistic aspect in general and because did not think of all the things that we ourselves - and I in particular in every introduction to the performances - emphasize; because it did not occur to them, because they were able to take it all in as an artistic disposition of the heart. The reception of eurythmy in Vienna is actually something that marks an epoch-making event within the anthroposophical movement. And here we must take into account the fact that there is a strong urge today for the artistic element in anthroposophy to be developed. We ourselves cannot exert a direct influence on many things because of our working conditions, because we are absorbed by the things that already need to be done. But when, for example, a number of younger people feel the need to train in the art of recitation and declamation, and also in the elements of dramatic art, when it has become necessary for Dr. Steiner to hold a course here for young people in the art of recitation, declamation and mime, at the request of young people, then it is at least a sign that the striving, however little it may be apparent today, is present. All these things must be treated with an extraordinarily strong objectivity, because, of course, the impulses that live in such things can also be expressed in a negative way, and in the moment when, for example, the artistic is led only a little on an inclined plane, in that moment all possible luciferic and ahrimanic forces are immediately set loose, and the matter leads into a false channel. Therefore, it is necessary, especially on this point, to pay attention to the experiences gained so far, as could be gained through the previous operation. These experiences must be carefully considered, and in this area in particular, the always inhibiting criticism and even derogatory discussion, which is very common in our circle, must be avoided, as it leads to nothing but hindrance in the real advancement of the matter. Because, of course, something can be objected to in everything, and the critic can always know better. I don't mean that ironically at all; sometimes it can be better in theory, but it can't be carried out under the conditions that we are given. But it can't be carried out at all because it is mere theory and not really artistic practice. Such things must certainly be taken into account: that attention is paid to what the personalities have experienced so far and what ideas they have formed [about] how things could proceed, personalities who have so far mainly been involved in the issues. And the others should help them more so that they do not experience inhibitions at every turn due to knowing better and the like, which can always be very easy. These are things that are much more connected with what you have actually encountered here in the balance than is usually believed. I would like to point out another fact. You see, it is now very natural that when such congresses or university courses and the like are held, as was particularly the case in Vienna, people talk about it everywhere. It is only natural that the education should be discussed, that the principles on which it is based should be expounded, and so on. The Vienna Congress is of such great significance because, if it is properly followed through, the success we have had, first of all with the general public, can indeed prove a great blessing for the anthroposophical movement. 'If it is not capitalized on, it can of course - because it has led to things being so widely publicized - lead to a situation in which all the things that are now coming out of all corners with it will increase the opposition considerably. You only have to consider the following in this context: in Vienna, despite the fact that such things were not sought – on the contrary, people were somewhat shy about them – outsiders have already published quite objective descriptions of what happened at the congress. But you must not forget that at the moment when something like this occurs on one side, the malicious and harmful opposition in particular makes full use of it. I will mention just one fact. When I was traveling back, I had a somewhat longer stay in Linz, where I bought a newspaper. You do it in such a way that you go to the kiosk, pick up a newspaper, and you can have the most interesting experiences. There was an article in it called “Steinerism”, and the article was written in such a way that it wanted to show that the congress in Vienna could show the harmful aspects of Steinerism in particular, because if you go to Germany, things are worked a little more tightly there, and then more of the beneficial aspects come out. But when you come to Vienna, everything is immersed in sloppiness, the writer of the article says, and so you perceive the special form of sloppy Steinerism. And so you can see in the sloppy Steinerism just what is really wanted. And then it is peeled out; what is actually striven for in Waldorf school pedagogy, and in fact in the form that is said: the essence of Waldorf school pedagogy consists in homosexuality. Now, my dear friends, you see, this is carried out in every detail, and so in a relatively widely circulated daily newspaper, people are taught the judgment: Don't make any sacrifices for this Waldorf school movement, because it's just a mask for spreading homosexuality. Now, my dear friends, these things must of course be carefully observed. I could also illustrate what I am saying to you with other examples. One need only be led, by chance or by one's karma, to become aware of such things. For example, I once had to wait for something to happen in Vienna during the last days, so I went to a coffee house to avoid waiting on the street. As I still find it most useful on such occasions, I took a fair number of newspapers. The Congress had just ended. The newspapers had a lot to say about the conclusion of the Congress. But a large part of what appeared there in the way of reports was not written in such a grotesque style as the article that I then found in Innsbruck – not in an Innsbruck paper, but in a Viennese one. This grotesque style was not achieved, but nevertheless nice things were said from various sides. And some of the newspapers that had previously published objective reports then thundered from a completely different corner. I emphasize this because it should be understood that the word has a much greater significance; that I always say that one should know how things live in our age, how things work, otherwise one cannot really [be familiar with the realities]. Of course, in anthroposophy the impulses are so strong that one does not need to take out one's earplugs, but can go through the world with them in. But one can no longer do that when the anthroposophical movement has spread so much without our doing. And so we must see to it that we ourselves find the possibility of finding our way, while remaining constantly alert and constantly taking into account everything that is happening. We must simply come to find our way. When you look at the bigger picture, it is quite confronting. That civilization cannot continue as it is today, as many people think, is becoming fully clear to other people. That is why the most beautiful alliances are being formed today, with the most beautiful programs. Now I have been completely convinced of the following in recent times: We have certainly also found a certain number of people at our Congress of Vienna who, through this Congress of Vienna, have become aware that we are not making any progress with the old way of thinking, that it is necessary for a completely new and spiritual approach to come. It is precisely because of what was done and implemented at the Congress of Vienna that numerous people, certainly enough people for such a congress, have come to this conclusion. If these people have now come to this conviction and now want to translate this conviction into practical life, then, my dear friends, what has always been there on a small scale also emerges again: these people do not join the Anthroposophical Society, but they do join another of the covenants, whose external leadership, whose external organization, whose external collaboration of members they like better. So that we actually - we can say it, and today I am saying it quite decidedly, because it has come to me so decidedly in recent times - so that we actually now often work in such a way that we thoroughly win people over for the facts, but they do not join us, but enter into the other covenants that are currently being founded. So the material success is actually not lacking. You can't even say that people don't want anthroposophy, because they do want it, and those who enter into the other alliances are sometimes very good anthroposophists, they just don't join us. I'll leave it to you to think about the reasons for this, because that will be the useful thing in working out an opinion for yourself. But now I would like to start calculating. I believe that a great deal of money is being spent today to stage such alliances, and quite a lot of money is flowing into them. I am convinced that we could have this money if our cause were properly managed. We don't get them. We could very well build the Goetheanum with them and continue to operate it if only we understood that people really join us, and don't join other [societies] after they have been convinced by us. To do this, however, we must really pay attention to the only specific thing, we must not pass by the single specific thing. And so it must be said: other alliances are relatively successful in raising and collecting sums of money from the broadest circles. If you were to see in detail how we have been offered the opportunity to continue our work at the Goetheanum in recent times, then, apart from the respectable beginnings in raising larger sums from individual smaller contributions, the main thing that has helped us so much comes from a very few individuals, who must be approached again and again, and who have indeed given their all. So we should not be deceived by drawing up statistics according to country and so on. It is individual people who have actually helped us decisively so far. And that is what prompts me to think with an extraordinary feeling of gratitude of those individual personalities who have really understood in an extraordinarily sacrificial way to make possible the continuation of the Goetheanum building and what is connected with it. But since I am convinced that many people who have worked in this extraordinarily sacrificial way have actually given their all, I also believe that we are currently in a particularly critical and that attention must be drawn to the moral foundations of our balance sheet, in such a way that we should take into account just such things as those I have just mentioned. You see, my dear friends, the fact of the matter is that, given our membership, it would be absolutely possible for the journal Das Goetheanum, which appears here – and which, of course, viewed from the outside, has emerged quite respectably in relation to how other journals emerge – but that a journal like this, which actually provides an extraordinarily good picture from week to week of what is happening spiritually here, it would be possible, through our membership, for this journal to have ten times more readers than it actually has, if it were sufficiently taken into account. If people were sufficiently aware of what is actually involved in the simple fact that this magazine, Das Goetheanum, exists and is so well managed by our dear friend Steffen, if people were aware of all that is involved for our anthroposophical administration, I would say, then I would be able to do something extraordinarily good through these moral impulses, I would say. For there is no doubt that someone could easily say that they know better: one article should have been published, the other should not have been published, and so on. I do not disagree with someone who says something like that, of course. But if the necessary support were there, which would simply consist of our being in the thick of it, really making DasiGoaheanam min an extraordinarily widespread magazine, then, in turn, the support that would be provided by that would of course make it possible to do better and better. These are, of course, things that point to the remote, but they are related to what should actually be considered above all: that we now interest the world in our sense, so that people also learn to know what the reality is of something like Waldorf school education and the like. Do not underestimate this: if – well, I cannot say anything very decisive in this regard – but if, for all I care, a hundred thousand people read after the Congress of Vienna has concluded: It has become quite clear in Vienna that Waldorf school education is based on homosexuality. So it has been read by a hundred thousand people, and it only helps if we do not have these hundred thousand people, but other hundred thousand people who now approach things as they really are. It is much less a matter of repeatedly dealing with people who cannot be convinced, but rather of reaching the others who do not absorb the opposing poison in this way. There is no need to deal so intensively with those who might express such views, unless it is a matter of defense. No one can believe that someone who expresses such views can ever be convinced. Not true, I have discussed it on a variety of occasions; I have discussed it very clearly when some person has once again spread the nonsense here about my magical effects on the German Kaiser and so on: there is no point in dealing with those people, whose worth is known from the outset, because they have such an immoral basis for their judgment. It is just as necessary, of course, that we spread our good things among people in every direction on the other side. And in this direction, we cannot say that the first condition, an awareness of these things, is present. There is no awareness of what it actually means to have something like the magazine Das Goetheanum. I think it is absolutely necessary to become aware of these things first, then we will really make progress. Our work begins with becoming aware of them. In Vienna, we discussed with friends from various countries the possibility of financing the construction of the Goetheanum to such an extent that the sum is available annually that is not only necessary for the expansion, but also to to avoid constantly going around with a collection plate for every single thing, such as for eurythmy; so that the Mystery Dramas can be performed again, and so on. In doing so, it is really necessary first of all to consider these things in such a way that one does not say: the Mysteries should be performed. They will be performed as soon as it is possible. But this possibility really also requires that one does not, I would say, always have to worry from eight days to eight days about how to raise what is needed for the construction, or how to stretch and so on. Rather, it would be necessary for us to find ways of approaching the people who, I might say, are springing up like mushrooms; people are saying: There is nothing to be gained from all the economic chatter and all the politicians are doing; the task today is to create spiritual movements. People who say this are springing up like mushrooms all over the place today. Of course, they may disagree with this or that; they fully recognize the practical work of anthroposophy, but when it comes to whether they join us or somewhere else, they join somewhere else, because, after all, [gap in the text]. Think for yourself about things, how sometimes things approach in such a strange way, how often they are so strangely barricaded, so full of clauses, not in the principles, of course, but in practical application. It is difficult for some people to get through some of the things that come their way when they should approach our movement. Of course, we really have to pay attention to this if we don't want to have to start the managing director's report last year by saying that last year it was pointed out that the progression is declining and that we can only talk about adding around 290,000 francs to the value of the Goetheanum. Since the construction of the Goetheanum was stopped, we have only had to account for the administration of the remaining funds up to the last few months before the construction of the Goetheanum was stopped, now to those people who are still interested in the past. Please do not take this as an exaggeration. If things are not taken in hand energetically, a report like this may well be the beginning of a new tradition. For the critical moment to which I have referred has certainly arrived. But I have had to point this out in previous years as well, for I would say that the basis of our accounting is more spiritual than material. I am always extremely reluctant to have to make such a statement, which some might call a diatribe, but it is absolutely necessary, and I am fully convinced that it is fully compatible with my deepest gratitude to those who work with me at the Goetheanum. It is indeed the case in the anthroposophical movement that a group of co-workers has come together in the most dedicated way in all fields, artistic and non-artistic, and now works in the most self-sacrificing way, so that resistance in the work of this group can never be found in earnest. I am often confronted with the fact that whenever I ask why this or that has not been done, the answer is always: We didn't think of that! It will be done the next day; there is always the will to get things done. But it is more important, above all, to consider that things should be done more rationally, more economically. You see, if I may speak for myself: the corrections for my books are very high! I can't get to them, for the simple reason that there are always other things to be done. It is quite natural that there are other things to be done; but when you look at a lot of things in more detail, the fact is that I am very often not asked at the decisive moment about things that are being conceived somewhere, that are being done somewhere. Then they happen. Then, after some time, they do not go any further, and then one is asked about the details. That is, of course, an endless matter. I am not at all annoyed when I am asked about all sorts of things, but it must be the main things. It should not be the case that I am not asked about the main issues, and then have to negotiate about the secondary issues in endless meetings, by which I do not just mean those of the “coming day” and the “future”; it is not the case that I am referring to these in particular. Rather, I mean that it is necessary, now that we are really facing such enormous demands from the public, that we now do things with a certain rationale, that they are considered, and that they are done in such a way that they are not just done out of momentary ideas, but that they are really done with a certain overview. Otherwise, the same thing will happen that has already become a calamity within the anthroposophical movement. You see, something like the Congress of Vienna is particularly evident. The Congress of Vienna is closing; the most urgent requirement is to make it count. This commercialization consists, of course, in evoking a correct judgment in the world as to what the Congress had as its content. And then it is a matter of this being done by people who are collaborators. At the moment when one needs new collaborators, because the old ones have simply been overworked, it is no longer possible. In our case, the matter very often comes to a halt due to the fact that we have a number of exceptionally good workers in a particular field; when their number reaches a certain size, the result is not that the circle expands, but that people overwork, as is the case with such bodies, say, as the Waldorf school teaching staff and the like. People overwork themselves; and of course, overwork does not make a person more resilient, but less so. Today, of course, there is the very aggravating fact that if it were a matter of founding new Waldorf schools, we would face a major difficulty. If someone were to give me, say, fifty million francs to found new Waldorf schools immediately, then things could be done very well. But if there are constant calls for Waldorf Schools to be founded without the fifty million francs being available, for instance through the establishment of a world school association, then we face the greatest difficulty of all: we cannot find teachers. If you want to found Waldorf schools today, you have to create teachers who are truly capable practically out of thin air. It is even extremely difficult to expand the teaching staff of a Waldorf school in an appropriate way. My dear friends, I would like to illustrate to you why this is the case: You see, with the current state of the anthroposophical movement, it is simply not possible for me to deal with each individual teacher as much as is necessary to hire a single teacher here or there. It is absolutely impossible. It is not possible. The moment we are in a position to offer a joint course again for, say, a hundred or three hundred teachers, then we can do it again as it was done at the beginning of the founding of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Then the matter is settled; then we can move on. But for that to happen, we really need to be able to hold courses that are embedded in the bigger picture. As the movement stands today, it is impossible to fragment our energies in the way that they are fragmented when things go the way they do today. So if there are fifty million available to found Waldorf schools, then many can be founded; because teachers are available, they just need to be trained first. You need a teacher training background and so on. And those who are the best teachers in the world today need to be trained first. If someone wants to become a teacher today, they say: they want to take the course that was held for the Waldorf school back then. That is all well and good, but it is not the same as three weeks of real teacher training! Then you would have the opportunity to establish a whole series of Waldorf schools. But if you have to do something on the side in the meantime, you face the greatest difficulties, then it simply does not work. And so you will simply end up having to keep replying, “I don't have any teachers,” to these constant small advances. What is important is not the utopia that I am creating here, but rather my firm conviction that it can be done; but the most important things always fall through, they are rejected. The World School Association was clearly rejected in its founding. They didn't want it. But it could have helped us, because if we had really launched the World School Association as it was meant at the time, we would not have membership fees for the World School Association of fifty francs, but of five or even one franc. If there is the necessary reality behind it, then we can move forward, we can form public opinion, and that is where it must start. That is where the matter lies. We must be able to form a public opinion. Now the matter always comes to a halt because we can, to a certain extent, place personalities in the places where they need to be placed, that they overwork themselves there, and that we cannot draw on forces from outside, because of course that depends on the most diverse circumstances. But, my dear friends, these conditions also mean that, in each individual case, when you want to bring in this or that personality, you are faced with the question: how do you pay them? And that is where it stops. You simply cannot pay them under the current conditions. You have to let them go. These are the things that must therefore be taken into account.
Rudolf Steiner: That is not quite what I meant. When one says “to go with the collection bag”, it does not mean that one actually goes from one person to the next with the collection bag.
Rudolf Steiner: Going around with the collection bag means that the money is raised from corners that would otherwise not give anything, but which have to be sought in such a way because people do not think about the fact that these things also have to be provided for. By “collection bag” I mean that the funds have to be raised. If, as unfortunately happens time and again, a eurythmist is appointed far away and people realize how much it costs when they see the bills, then the money has to be found somehow if the people are to be sent there. That is how I mean it, that you are constantly worrying about how to get the money together for the most important things.
Rudolf Steiner: It is indeed the case that things have to be done in this way all the time.
Rudolf Steiner: But they are very beautiful!
Rudolf Steiner: Those who grumble are the ones who can pay the bills! Isn't it true that we actually have to go around with the collection bag for the most important things – I don't mean that in a derogatory way – that we have to go around collecting. We have to go around with the collection bag for the most important things. If I express myself in this direction, then the collection bag will also be abolished, but don't think that it offers a very uplifting sight when I now have the collection bag in front of me every time I leave the carpentry workshop! I am not saying that – except in special cases – anything of significance goes into it, it is not really noticeable. But in any case, it is not an uplifting sight. However, I would like to add, when making such a comment, that it should not lead to the elimination of the collection bag at the door or even just for oneself. Yes, it is the case that recently we have found the courage for everything except for the things on which the anthroposophical movement was built. We have found the courage for many peripheral things, but not for the things on which the anthroposophical movement was built, and of course these are the things that would have to be taken into account in a very decisive way. I do not have high hopes when I say this, because I have said it here almost every year and people simply do not believe it. They think it is a propaganda speech, like the ones they already hold! But now, the things that are happening are, on the one hand, extremely encouraging, but on the other hand they are really not being seen in the way they should be. Yesterday, for example, I was confronted with a fact that really speaks volumes. I was confronted with a fact in the most beautiful way, so that I have to acknowledge that it was brought to my attention; but it does have its downsides. It told me yesterday: It would really be appropriate for a pedagogical course to be held for Swiss teachers. This is something that is of the utmost necessity. Yes, my dear friends, not too long ago I held a pedagogical course for Swiss teachers in Basel. There was almost no one in it. Here, too, such a course was added at Christmas. Everything was there; they just failed to even look at the things, to take into account that they were there! They didn't even bother to look at them. But that's not true, you really can't just think of a pedagogical course for Swiss teachers, where there would certainly be a number of people. But it would still not lead to what I mentioned earlier – that you could really win over teachers and make progress in the Swiss school movement. There must be an echo, a support within our movement. People must take an interest in what is happening. And this interest is of course lacking, despite everything, it is not there. And that is why, for example, something like this will not be reported, will not become known in the world, that eurythmy in Vienna has had such an elementary success and the like. Our members also go there and are witnesses to such things. But at most they find that the clothes were not beautiful enough, that they could be even more beautiful, but then they do not pay for the expensive clothes. The positive things are not emphasized, which should really be presented to the world, when we are on the other hand obliged to go before the great public. Of course, it is due to some things that are already connected with our anthroposophical movement! But it must be emphasized again and again, so that something is thought in this direction after all, so that one really understands when something like this is demanded of us, that we have to work under the most unfavorable conditions. We will work. But the damage will become apparent, and the damage will not lie in the matter, but in the fact that we will only ever be able to have a small circle of employees who overwork and ultimately cannot catch their breath. And then we find no interest in the fact that things are like that, but then the criticism sets in, and that this is considered to be in the matter after all, not in the surrounding conditions. This is what I would like to see propagated, I would like to say, to tell people again and again. Otherwise, we end up with a report like this: After we completed the construction of the Goetheanum so and so many months ago, at this year's annual meeting we can only report on the administration of the last funds. Repairs cannot be carried out because we have no money. We are therefore also faced with the sad fact that what has already been built will fall into disrepair and so on. Serious thought should be given to how such a report can be avoided! I regret that I have spoken out of turn again this year. But those who have been devoted co-workers in all areas should accept my most heartfelt thanks. Because it is not at all a question of not working extremely hard, but rather of the fact that we see ourselves as being constrained in every way when it comes to really drawing the consequences of what one begins. It is certainly the case that the things that are done are good. But when something arises – I don't want to mention a positive thing – when something arises that is supposed to come out of the anthroposophical movement, then the money for it has to be sought from outside, from those who are outside. But the reasoning is always done in such a way that with each new foundation, the anthroposophists are now being shelled out and thus, of course, have no. have any money for the things the Anthroposophical movement was actually built on. I don't want to cause misunderstandings by not naming the individual things, but it always comes back to the fact that this or that is justified and that one says: It is an urgent necessity of the time. If it is an urgent necessity of the time, then one should approach those people who are not exactly anthroposophists, but for whom one wants to fulfill an urgent necessity! And when you point out this urgent necessity, people come back and say: No one has given us much, the amounts are quite minimal; but with the anthroposophists, we have repeatedly found the opportunity to get this or that out of it. That has been the order of the day lately. Then it comes about that there is money for everything, but not for what the Anthroposophical movement is actually based on. We are put before the public and have to fulfill the conditions of the public. We have to get to the point, my dear friends, where those who approach us say: Well, yes, there is so much evil talk about anthroposophy in the world, but actually they are quite nice people, and you can even talk to them, while everyone thinks: They are such arrogant people that you can't talk to them at all. You can see for yourself: It is possible to talk to them. But as a rule it is not so, rather one hears again and again from the outside: I had the best will to deal with this or that person, I also approached him, but, oh dear! He has done a number on my corns! Yes, that is something with which I hint to you in pictorial form what I find in many cases, namely that people say: Anthroposophists always hold their heads so high, they are so arrogant that they then don't know where they are stepping, and then they usually always step on your corns. We prefer to go where they curtsy and don't step on our corns. That is, in a very narrow-minded picture, what is repeatedly found. The chapter “The arrogance of anthroposophy” is something that could fill very thick books, not just individual essays. And if I were to tell you more details – I will take good care not to – but if you ask: Who has been arrogant again?, then those are named who, when I speak of arrogance in general here, are terribly astonished at how it can be! That is what one very often experiences. Please do not consider this address as a diatribe, but as a confidential message that is not given because someone wants to give someone a piece of their mind, but because they would like them to work together in the right way, and it is believed that in the future they will think less about their own interests and many other things, but more about the problems of other people.
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209. Nordic and Central European Spiritual Impulses: Father-consciousness and Christ-consciousness
07 Dec 1921, Berlin |
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But this is shrouded in the greatest misunderstanding, especially among theologians. They even find it 'offensive' that anthroposophy connects the Christ with the sun and with the outer cosmic world in general. Why do they find this offensive? |
But we know that theology has become materialistic, and therefore it can only see the material world in the cosmos. But anthroposophy shows how this material world is spiritualized everywhere. However, theology is unable to detach itself from the material, and therefore it feels offended when anthroposophy speaks of Christ as a being of the sun. |
But the mysterious is not lost by being brought to view; and anthroposophy aims to lead from that which is only communicated or believed to that which makes itself understood in contemplation. |
209. Nordic and Central European Spiritual Impulses: Father-consciousness and Christ-consciousness
07 Dec 1921, Berlin |
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What I have to say today will be somewhat related to the remarks I was allowed to present here last time, and will therefore also have to tie in with some of the ideas presented then. Today I would like to speak about the materialism of present-day religious creeds, but I would like to do so in connection with a certain aspect of the Christ problem. It is precisely with the Christ problem that a whole series of misunderstandings about anthroposophical research work begins. Although the dispelling of these misunderstandings is not to be expected from those who reveal them with a certain interest, a great deal may depend on it with others. In the latest phases of the development of Western civilization, we have seen all sorts of inclinations towards distinctly atheistic views of the world. It cannot be my task today to point out the various nuances of the atheism that has emerged; but I would like to draw attention to something that is a common basis of every atheistic world view. This is the failure to look at the source of the content of the consciousness of God. The consciousness of God cannot come from the contemplation of external nature alone, but from the whole of man's coexistence with external nature, with the world of the senses. It may seem paradoxical that I say that the consciousness of God must come from man's coexistence with the world of the senses. But this God-consciousness must not be taken as the fulfillment of a moment, so to speak, but as the content of earthly life from birth to death. In this earthly life, we feel ourselves to belong to nature through heredity. We entered this earthly existence as physical human beings through purely natural processes. As we go through this earthly existence, we perceive a certain development of what we have received through our birth into this existence. Now it is a matter of whether we are careful enough - of course I do not mean this only intellectually, but also in terms of feeling and from the will impulses that we also have and must experience - whether we gain a certain awareness of our consciousness for living together with the outer world of the senses in the course of our earthly existence. If we summarize purely through popular experience what the world of the senses can give us, we will certainly never come to feel our full human nature if we do not think spiritually about the world of the senses and what it can be with us. No matter how carefully we examine all the secrets that the external sense world can give us through sensory perception, we can never come to understand that the human being is also placed in this sense world. But since we, as physical beings on earth, have nevertheless emerged from this sense world, but can never find ourselves as human beings in its ingredients, it simply follows that for a healthy consciousness, this consciousness is filled with the divine being, or rather, with the contemplation of the divine being. This is precisely what modern natural science, despite its great and comprehensive achievements, has brought to humanity: that because it refuses to recognize a spiritual element within the world of sense-perception, it effectively excludes the human being from the totality of existence that it seeks to embrace. I have already expressed this before you by saying: If we consider, for example, the in many respects tremendous theory of evolution of modern times, we do not actually find it treated of man as 'man', but as the conclusion, as it were, the crowning of the animal world. If we ask natural science, as it is constituted today, about the essence of man, it does not actually answer us, if we understand it correctly. It only answers the question: What is the highest of the animals? That is, it only considers man in relation to his animality. In many respects she is right in what she has to say about this, but in so doing she places man, as it were, outside the sphere of her consideration. She cannot answer the question about the essence of man with her means; indeed, she can only understand herself correctly if she declares this question about the essence of man as being outside her realm. This is, of course, only an indication of the feeling that arises from the wholeness of a healthy person, that precisely in so far as he regards himself in connection with the whole of nature, he must actually come to the consciousness of God, but only to the consciousness of God, not to the consciousness of Christ. Thus, by applying his healthy understanding and healthy intuitive perception, man can by no means be an atheist. I have already expressed this here by saying that even if, of course, not every slight illness can be diagnosed by ordinary means, it is nevertheless clear to anyone who can distinguish the healthy person from the sick person that, first of all, atheism can only find its place in a morbid disposition of human nature as a whole. Therefore, one could say that denying God is actually the result of being sick. But now the following applies: We arrive at this awareness of God in the present epoch of human development, I would say, only in a wavering, doubting way when we survey everything; for here attention must be drawn to a significant defect in our present pedagogy, the defect that the Waldorf school movement, for example, seeks to correct. When one speaks of the decline of present-day civilization, one cannot actually ignore the present youth movement. This youth movement means much more than is usually thought, and I consider it to be something extraordinarily significant that, at a number of events of our anthroposophical movement in recent times, including the last Stuttgart congress, a impressive number of members of the youth movement had actually come and made the very positive decision, from the point of view of the youth movement, to join forces with what is intended by the anthroposophical spiritual movement. Whatever one may think of the details of this youth movement, one must recognize that in a large part of our youth the authority of the older generation has faded, and that someone must guide the young. No matter how much one may criticize today's youth, one cannot ignore the fact that when young people say that they can no longer recognize any authority, then it is not only the youth who can be blamed for it, but also the older generation, who should be the guides of the youth. Recently, during a lecture I gave in Aarau, Switzerland, the very question of the lack of authority among today's youth was discussed. After the lecture, a religious representative appeared who thoroughly scolded the current youth. But scolding does not really achieve much when dealing with something that is so elementary. You have to understand things. It was interesting when a very young lad from the cantonal school stood up afterwards — the cantonal school there is definitely a secondary modern school — who, in my opinion, actually gave the best speech in the discussion. He spoke with great fire and said: We want authority, we actually crave authority, but when we look to the old people, do we see anything other than that no authority can come from these old people? We see how they quarrel with each other at every opportunity, how they fight. – And then he listed all sorts of things that today's youth notice about their elders, and in the end he said: We do crave authority, but we cannot have it! But if you look at what it is about, you find that today's civilization has become highly intellectualistic, that actually everything that considers itself to be leading and authoritative today has become intellectualistic, purely intellectual. Basically, natural science and intellectual culture belong together. Natural science is the objective, intellectual culture is the subjective. But intellectualism only occurs naturally at a certain age. You cannot be an intellectual as a child. Children are not intellectuals. Intellectualism can only occur after sexual maturity. And since humanity has now fully grown into intellectualism, everything is dominated by it today. Those aspirations that often reject intellectualism today and grumble about it do so only out of a different intellectualism. Today, all those who claim intellectualism are abstract beings. But one only grows into intellectualism at a later age, and because we are overwhelmed by it, children no longer understand us and cannot have anything left for the forms of thought that we adopt under the influence of intellectualism. We ourselves no longer feel what we took in when we were children. Childhood is no longer fully alive in us. We have become so terribly intellectually clever that childhood no longer plays any role in us. But we cannot be educators or teachers if we have been thoroughly abandoned by what we ourselves experienced as children. So we no longer have anything to say to children, and they grow up without any special care for their being. We declaim that we have to be vivid, but the vivid is only the objective side of intellectualism. Thus we create an abyss between us and the youth, and this is what we encounter in the youth movement. But again, nothing is done by just scolding intellectualism. For it has now entered Western civilization as a necessary phenomenon since the last three to five centuries, actually since the 13th to 15th century. It had to arise so that humanity could truly live into the impulse of freedom. So it is not a matter of merely criticizing the intellectual impulse, but of understanding it in the right way, in order to be able to strive for further development through understanding in a way other than the intellectualistic one. And now we must say: What is the essence of this intellectualism? It is actually already indicated by the fact that one points to the connection of this intellectualism with the feeling of freedom. And the feeling of freedom is in turn inconceivable without the full development of the human ego. It is actually the development of the ego that has emerged in a certain way in modern times in humanity and takes hold of the ego from the consciousness soul. This is the essential factor that provides the impulse for modern Western civilization. However, this I, of which human beings have become fully aware over the past three, four, five hundred years, can initially only come from the human body. The experience of the I between birth and death can only come from the human body; this can be examined in particular through anthroposophical spiritual research. One of the most significant moments for the whole of life after death is the moment of dying itself. This moment of dying is, of course, only known to the earthly human being on the outside. It must be recognized from the inside out of the consciousness that the dead person has between death and a new birth. Whether this occurs more or less later after death is not our concern now. Today we want to consider in general the consciousness that a person has between death and a new birth. This consciousness depends entirely on whether the person has an extraordinarily significant impression at the moment of dying. Consider, for a moment, that during the whole of life between birth and death, the human being only comes out of his physical and etheric body with his ego and his astral body, and that is in a state of sleep; so that during life between birth and death there is a constant, uninterrupted connection between the physical body and the etheric body. At death, the human being leaves his physical body with his etheric body – you know that he remains with his etheric body for days – so that he only has this experience of his full physical body at the moment of dying. If you want to have knowledge of something, you cannot have it otherwise than by having what you want to know outside of you. What they have in mind, you do not see, you only see what is outside the eye. So you also do not see spiritually-mentally anything that you have within you. You must first go out of yourself with the spiritual-mental part of your being, then you see the outside of your body. This happens in the moment of dying in relation to the separation of the etheric body and the physical body. When falling asleep, the human being never has a conscious, complete view of his physical and etheric bodies. These two remain behind when falling asleep. This is why, when one attains the conscious view during sleep, one can only see the human head and part of the trunk, and that one cannot actually see the limb-human being in ordinary sleep. Only in death, in dying, is the moment when man, in relation to his physical body, has himself completely as an object before him, and the whole time from death to the new birth, this impression remains, I might say, as the end of perspective, to which one looks back after death. One sees this moment of dying, for one would not recognize an ego for oneself if one were no longer, if one did not have the ego as an object in that one has before one, as the object of knowledge at the moment of dying, that which one brings to consciousness here in the physical world, namely the full physical body. This tremendous impression, that one can say to oneself: What your ego-consciousness has given you, your whole, your total physical body, you have seen that at the moment of dying! — that remains and forms the content of the ego-consciousness between death and the new birth, where everything becomes temporal, where the spatial, in a certain respect, is no longer there. After death, one looks back from that point and sees, as an important point, the direction then continues, but the rays cross at the moment of the final death, that moment of dying. This is what, as a “time element”, I would like to say, has the same effect after death as the spatial physical organism gives the sense of self between birth and death. So that we can say: The sense of self here in earthly life actually comes from the physical body. Now the following is present. You look out through your senses into the external nature. You see the three kingdoms of external nature, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and in addition the physical human kingdom. You see clouds, rivers, mountains, stars and so on. Everything you can see can be considered 'nature', and what you cannot see is continually supplying the elements that also penetrate the human organism, both in the physical and in the etheric. With food, you take in substances from the physical and sensory world. These substances unfold their physical and chemical forces and activities even when they are in the human organism. In terms of his physical organism, the human being is, so to speak, what he takes in from the outside world. The minerals, plants and animals are, if I may put it this way, allowed to be “nature”. They have the right to be nature. But when what is present in them enters the human organism with food, breathing and so on, it becomes something other than nature. Then, in the human organism, it can be said that What lives in nature must not, if man is to remain 'human', allow itself to remain nature. Nature beings have the right to be only outside of man; within man, nature becomes a destructive element. It seeks to continually dissolve the human being and to bring about a state in which the soul can also acquire powers that work towards destruction. In this respect, the older instinctive consciousnesses of men saw much more correctly than today's intellectualism. Today's intellectualism starts from concepts, not from facts, and when the facts do not agree with the concepts, it reinterprets the phenomena according to its concepts. Today, people do not talk about the fact that plants, animals and humans come to an end, but they say that death should be examined. The fact that the end of plants, the end of animals, the end of humans could be something completely different, that cannot be grasped under the common concept of the “dead”, is not considered by anyone today. You become grotesque for today's world, you become paradoxical when you draw attention to such things. But it is absolutely the case in this regard. Today someone says: a knife is a knife – and then he gets a razor and wants to carve his meat with it, because – a knife is a knife! Today, when we believe that we have both feet firmly planted in reality, it is important to realize that reality cannot be grasped through abstract concepts. Intellectualism does not take this into account, starting only from concepts instead of from facts. It therefore also fails to recognize how justified it was from older levels of consciousness to speak of the fact that nature, in its effects and processes, by continuing its existence in man, no longer has the right to remain nature, but that it should be transformed, and that in man, if it is to retain its validity as nature, it becomes “sin”. The concept of sin in connection with natural phenomena is no longer understood at all. The connection between the natural and that which is rooted in the human being as spiritual-soul is not considered. The animals, plants and minerals have the right to be outside in nature; that which moves from them into the human being must be transformed by the human being, because if it remains nature, it would be transformed into destruction. That is to say, if it is mere nature and man has not the strength to transform it, it becomes illness, and in imparting itself to the soul, sin. If now man, who looks at his relationship to the world of the senses without prejudice, consults with himself and takes into account everything that can be taken into account, he must say the following to himself: When I look out into nature and first consider my origin from it, I cannot be an atheist. But on the other hand, precisely as a man of the present, as a man of the newer epoch, I cannot but attribute my ego-consciousness to the mere physical body, to the natural existence in me. What I express here in thought is present in feeling and emotion in every healthy person who is not afraid of coming to self-knowledge today. He comes, if only he does not avoid it out of fear or comfort, to look into his own soul, to this conflict, that he says to himself: If I consider myself as a being of nature, emerging from nature, then a divine being must underlie the whole world, which also contains me. But this healthy sense is actually contradicted by the modern development of the ego, because this can only come from the natural existence of the physical body and - as I have even shown you - through the impression that dying makes on a person. Thus nothing less follows from this than that modern man must instinctively come into doubt about God-consciousness, not because something in the observation of nature leads away from God-consciousness, but because in the present epoch, when one considers his entire being in terms of body, soul and spirit, man cannot be completely healthy because of his ego-consciousness. Because: nature in man, if it remains as it is and has an influence on the soul, means something that causes illness, and on the soul it has the influence of aberration, of sinning. Of course, this should not be viewed in a philistine way, but rather, one must keep in mind the facts as they speak from existence. In other words, if we go back to ancient times, when the sense of self did not yet exist, the divine being — regardless of whether it was imagined as modified in one way or another — was always conceived under the concept of the Father. One could not imagine the divine essence other than as a unified divine essence, which more or less embraced the world, which one sought to grasp from the concept of the Father; and since the sense of self was not yet there, since it can only arise from the natural, nothing disturbed this Father-consciousness. Modern man can only have this father consciousness if he perhaps through moral reinforcement, but nevertheless dampens his ego and withdraws somewhat, but which must arise through the development of freedom, with the development of modern humanity. Therefore, man as he lives today cannot be satisfied with the one consciousness, the father consciousness. He must say: I would have this father-consciousness if I could still be instinctive like that humanity that existed before the heightened sense of self developed. But as a person of the present, this sense of self prevents me from fully confronting myself in dependence on the father-consciousness. This is where what the modern human being can very well experience by reflecting on his ego comes into play, when he is clear that the ego, if it does not have the body, extinguishes itself. It extinguishes itself when falling asleep; in death, it only maintains itself by having the contemplation of the dying body. The human being knows that it is precisely through his consciousness of self that he is turned away from the divine consciousness of the Father. But he must feel this as a sickness, and when he feels this in the right way as a sickness, the impulse arises for him that leads him to the Christ present today. The consciousness of the Son must arise out of the inner soul experience to the consciousness of the Father. This son-consciousness can only come into us through an act of freedom. And we must always bear this in mind: if atheism is actually a manifestation of illness, then what can be called agnosticism in the face of the mystery of Golgotha, agnosticism in the face of the present Christ in particular, is a misfortune, a stroke of fate! You don't have to be completely healthy if you are abandoned by the Father-consciousness – but in this respect, modern humanity is not completely healthy –; but you need an act of freely finding the Christ-spirit if you want to come to the Christ. Two experiences are absolutely necessary: First, the consciousness of the Father, but I would like to say that in the present development of humanity, there is a clouded consciousness of the Father. If I had not acquired the consciousness of the I in the course of the development of humanity, the divine consciousness of the Father would be there; but because the consciousness of the I actually wells up and must well up from that which, is left to itself, is ill in the human being, therefore the divine Father-consciousness is clouded for the present, and one must come to the consciousness of the Christ through a free deed that is different from finding the Father. These two experiences are not distinguished from each other in Western civilization, as I have already indicated here. Solowjow, in particular, strictly distinguishes the Father-consciousness from the Son-consciousness, which arises from a different kind of consciousness. In the West, the two are so little distinguished that a presentation of the essence of Christianity, which is decisive for many, could even say: The gospels do not belong to the Son, but only to the Father, the Son actually only as the teacher of the Father. - So there is no awareness that one can have two acts of experience: one in relation to the experience of the Father, which is clouded today, and the other in relation to the Son. Now, if one has this experience in relation to the son, one would initially only come to a present encounter with the Christ, and to this present encounter with the Christ, so to speak to the eternal Christ, everyone can come from the subjective relationship of the present. But anyone who rejects the present encounter with the Christ and lives dull, as in the earlier times of humanity, will not gain that inner constitution that leads him to the encounter with the Christ. But he who truly feels what the newer time can give him, comes to this inner deed of the meeting with the Christ and thereby proves that the Christ is there. But the historical Christ still remains to be investigated. There one must also have the possibility of looking at history from a different point of view than is possible today in the age of materialism for outer consciousness. I must draw your attention to something here that should be strictly observed. This upward shining into higher worlds is usually taken too much for granted. People still do not listen enough to how the one who speaks of the higher worlds must actually speak in a different style than one speaks of the physical world, and not just in a different external style, but in a different inner style. When we live here in the physical world and let this world have its effect on us, we distinguish, for today's consciousness, what is logical, I might say, right and wrong; we also call it true and false. And we test whether something is right or wrong, true or false, according to logical or external principles of reality. But in doing so, we enter into abstraction, into an intellectualistic life. For all logical distinguishing of whether something is true or false moves precisely in abstract concepts, if one only takes external sense perception, in observation or in experiment, as a basis. Nevertheless, with our cognition we still move in abstract concepts. We cannot retain the same abstractness of concepts when we go up into the higher worlds. There everything becomes much more alive and is perceived as something living, not merely as something thought. Therefore, he who beholds the higher worlds must not speak merely of true or false, right or wrong — of course one must do that too! But one must speak, for example, of something that is right here in its reflection in the physical world as something healthy, and of something that is wrong here in its reflection as something unhealthy. One is not quite right when speaking of true and false for the next higher world; one has to deal everywhere with healthy and unhealthy, wholesome or unwholesome. Therefore, anyone who speaks of the higher worlds with reference to abstract logic as if they were the physical world shows that he does not have a real conception of the higher worlds. Now, however, something very peculiar occurs in relation to the historical development of mankind. If we look at it impartially, it shows us ancient epochs full of wisdom, and if we have a healthy feeling, we will feel deep reverence for the ancient wisdom of these older epochs. If, for example, we consider the reflection of this in the Vedas and Vedanta philosophy, we find that the reasons for which this wisdom was revealed are so profound that one must have the deepest reverence for them. We approach this primal wisdom of humanity differently than the abstract scholarship of today is able to. But this primal wisdom is, as it were, increasingly dulled the further humanity advances in its development, and we see that the greatest dulling of this most original human consciousness, so full of wisdom, comes in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha takes place. There is no need to take into account the external records, insofar as these records, such as the Gospels, speak literally of the Mystery of Golgotha. One need only look impartially, but now with a higher gaze, at the historical development of humanity to find this primal wisdom becoming darker and darker in the human soul the further back one looks. What was fully expressed in the 15th century is already hinted at in the Greek, in the Latin-Roman epoch. Humanity basically only still has traditions of primordial wisdom; it no longer experiences them, and what is slowly emerging is the full consciousness of the self. In this respect, our external science has actually come up against little of what is to be studied in this epoch, which on the other hand includes the mystery of Golgotha. Enormous problems arise when, for example, we look at the Greek alphabet today, where the letters still have names, alpha, beta, gamma, and follow the path to the later Latin alphabet, where they no longer have names. These transitions, which point deeply to historical developmental states, are not at all taken into account. For example, no attention is paid to what our word “alphabet”, which is still taken from Greek, actually means. If we look into this, and a real linguist will be able to follow up these things, it will turn out that the Greek alpha basically expresses the same thing as is expressed in the Old Testament with the words: “The living breath was breathed into man” - so that in the breath, in the breathing, one will see that which first makes man. When the word Alpha, which is a word, is properly examined, it will be found that That is man! The first letter of the alphabet is nothing other than the expression of the human being. And the Beta is the “house”, and the beginning of the alphabet means: man in his house. — This view of the alphabet was completely lost in later times, when intellectualism developed more and more. Letters came to be used merely as a means of distinguishing external objects. What lay in the revelation of Primordial Wisdom was lost sight of; the “Word” of the Primordial Revelation was externalized, and people no longer understand what was revealed to humanity in the letters — and specifically in the words. In the traditional lodges and orders of today, people do talk about the “hidden word”; but little do people know of what this hidden word had as a reality, how the alphabet itself spoke of the hidden word, and how it has been atomized, divided. I could, of course, also start from something else to show what a deeply incisive developmental impulse was present at the time of Greek and Latin culture. How Greek culture tried to help itself through a special art to overcome this, I would say, illness that occurred in humanity, is palpable for those who want to see. I would just like to draw attention to one thing. Today, when people hear about drama, for example, they think: it is something to watch, something that belongs to the luxuries of life. You watch it and then call it beautiful. But the Greeks had the idea of catharsis for the most important thing that takes place in drama, the purification, the cleansing. This was something that not only meant an external, fantastic process, but also clearly pointed to its medical origin. Catharsis is the crisis that one overcomes, and through the tragedy of the Greeks, the soul was brought to the crisis, so that it underwent a purification in the experience of fear and compassion, in that it was surrendered to the effects of these opposing forces through the course of the drama. The Greeks did not think of their art in a banal sense, but rather as something healing. For they still perceived the rule of an ancient wisdom in it. For them, a healthy ancient wisdom still existed, but it was paralyzed in the course of time, and a kind of disease process then occurred. With his art, the Greek wanted to express something, and Nietzsche sensed this. You can read about it in his book The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. He said something like the following: There is something in humanity that can be healed. And the therapists, the Essenes, assumed everywhere that there was something in humanity that could be healed. And if the Mystery of Golgotha had not occurred in humanity, we would live today in such a way that I would have to speak as if the Mystery of Golgotha had never occurred, so we could only point to a process of illness in humanity. So that in view of the Mystery of Golgotha, something dawns on us when we apply the concepts of healthy and sick in relation to human history. That is the significant thing: you can apply all concepts in relation to right and wrong, but you come to a point in the course of development where you have to look at things differently. For when you enter the Greek epoch, you enter a time when humanity has become ill, and from which health emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha. Therapists have pointed this out and said: “There arises the great therapist, the savior, who in the literal sense has to heal humanity.” — It is only a matter of delving deeply enough into the course of human development and not stopping at the usual abstract concepts, but grasping historical life with medical concepts, according to the categories of healthy and sick. Then one will understand the necessity of a healing process and will also understand how the “Savior” - it is no other word than the “therapist” - intervenes in humanity. One will then understand how something must intervene in the development of humanity on earth that could not intervene through the forces that were present in humanity earlier. A new impulse from outside had to come to heal humanity. This is how one can and must look at historical development if one looks only at the configuration of how humanity has developed, without getting involved in the content of the historical documents. Then one comes to the concept of the extraterrestrial Christ, who connected with the evolution of the earth from extraterrestrial regions through the Mystery of Golgotha. This perspective must be adopted if we want to understand history. Those who do not want to apply this perspective to the development of history, according to the concepts of healthy and sick, should simply admit that history remains incomprehensible to them. They cannot understand how that which once lived in the Orient came to Africa and then became Greco-Roman. We see the Greek development, and rightly so, as an extraordinarily healthy one. And why? Because the Greek had the feeling that one has to fight disease and that he wanted to shape his life accordingly. And there is a particularly remarkable harmony between the individual Greek personalities in that they felt: here there is something to fight. And this feeling of no longer feeling and the ever-increasing descent into the abstract, which even makes the gods abstract, is the peculiarity of Romanism and remains its peculiarity. Europe was educated by Romanism until the 15th century, when it came to accepting the cosmic Christ into consciousness; before that, Christ was carried into the Occident through Romanism. I just wanted to contribute a few things today so that we can gradually come to understand what is written in the Mystery of Golgotha: how we cannot actually stop at something that has developed from ancient times to the Mystery of Golgotha. One then finds that, if one proceeds in this way, there is actually no longer any difference between what certain theologians have in their Jesus-logia and what a secular historian, such as Ranke, has. What certain theologians have in terms of the story of Jesus can no longer be distinguished from what a man like Ranke, for example, presents about it. But everything depends on our being able to see how the Christ, as an extra-terrestrial being, united with Jesus of Nazareth, who was born as a human being in the course of time. It is precisely here that something occurs which has led to the greatest misunderstandings with regard to this necessary path of anthroposophy to the Mystery of Golgotha. It was characteristic of all ancient instinctive wisdom that it did not separate the spiritual and the physical. For if one separates the two, one arrives at an impossible concept of matter in the physical and, in the spiritual, that is, in the spiritual experience of man, one arrives at abstraction, at the lifeless system of concepts. It has only become characteristic of more recent humanity to separate the material and the spiritual in this way. And so anthroposophy leads us back to an understanding of how we have to look at the whole of nature, I would even say, how we look at a physiognomy. We look at a physiognomy in such a way that we think of it as ensouled. We read from it the soul-imbued quality. This was once the case in ancient wisdom, and in the same way, today, the newer, light-imbued wisdom also leads us to a physiognomic view of the world of the stars, for example. This leads to something that allows us to speak of Christ as the being of the sun, although this means just as little that Christ is the physical being of the sun as man is the physical being of the body. But only in this way can it be recognized how something extraterrestrial was able to live in Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in Palestine. But this is shrouded in the greatest misunderstanding, especially among theologians. They even find it 'offensive' that anthroposophy connects the Christ with the sun and with the outer cosmic world in general. Why do they find this offensive? It is extremely characteristic. Anthroposophy says that it leads from the Christ back to the sun. But for these people, the sun is only the burning ball of fog out there; so it is offensive to associate this burning solar nebula with the Christ. But we know that theology has become materialistic, and therefore it can only see the material world in the cosmos. But anthroposophy shows how this material world is spiritualized everywhere. However, theology is unable to detach itself from the material, and therefore it feels offended when anthroposophy speaks of Christ as a being of the sun. From materialism, from the deepest materialism about the world building, precisely this point about Christology is found offensive. Here you can see how materialism permeates everything. It has now taken hold of theology, and because theology has become materialistic, it leads to misunderstandings about anthroposophy. Coming from the ordinary world, we can only be materialists, and when someone from this world talks about Christ in a materialistic way, it is bound to be taken in that way, and that is offensive. At this point, one must point out the materialization of the whole culture, which is only afraid of admitting its underpinnings. But we will not emerge from decline to a new ascent if we do not face these underpinnings quite impartially, fearlessly, without fear. We must get out of what European and Western humanity has brought into this movement of decline in the first place, what has led to these terrible catastrophes. For this, only fearless knowledge of everything that man can learn from the world is suitable. For this it is also necessary to approach the subject in an unprejudiced way, and to discard whatever is really useless from the sphere of intellectualism when entering into the higher worlds. Many people still say today: Yes, what is communicated from the higher worlds is strange; one must enter into these worlds oneself, otherwise one cannot understand it. — But it is not like that. People believe that it is so only because they absolutely want to abandon those concepts that only apply to the physical world, which we have between birth and death. For example, the belief prevails today, precisely because people everywhere develop everything out of concepts, despite believing that they are being inductive and empirical, that they think they can express themselves absolutely at all. Of course, we have to say: when a person falls asleep, the I and the astral body emerge from the physical and etheric bodies, and the person remains unconscious until awakening occurs. This is a very healthy message for present-day humanity, but it does not apply to the entire development of humanity. If we look back, for example, to the times from which Indian and ancient Persian culture emerged, we find that a different idea was prevalent everywhere, namely that when a person falls asleep, his ego and astral body descend deeper into his physical and etheric bodies than is the case when he is awake during the day. The old Indian did not say: Man goes out of his physical and etheric body with his ego and astral body when he falls asleep. Only the Theosophists try to make people believe that the Indian spoke in this way. He said: When people fall asleep, they go deeper into their physical and etheric bodies. And that is basically quite correct, because the situation is actually the same as if one were to say in an absolute sense that for the earth the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But that is not the case, because for the other half of the earth the process takes place in reverse. You can also call it east and west, but the directions are different. Therefore, it is quite possible that for a certain period of time the I and the astral body plunged deeper into the physical body and ether body, and that therefore the impression was quite different. That is why the Indian speaks quite differently, because the person was in a different state of consciousness, namely in that of which the modern person also has no full consciousness, in his rhythmic and metabolic functions. He has no consciousness of these, because it is quite the case, in terms of consciousness, for the modern person that he dreams his rhythmic functions, but sleeps through his metabolic functions. Therefore, one can say: It must be understandable that people at different times had to experience different things about something that people today believe they can speak about absolutely; and one only understands the development of history if one also lets the facts speak about these things, not the concepts that one has constructed for oneself. Today, when East and West, Occident and Orient, are confronting each other in such a burning way that a balance must be found, today humanity must be able to go back to these backgrounds; otherwise you can experience as many Washington conferences as you like, they will all end in failure if the fundamental impulses of human development are not taken into account. People today do not yet believe this, but it is true that if one wants to move from decline to ascent, one must address the issues that are most deeply moving humanity. What is demanded here seems impractical today. But people do not realize how impractical that is, which has proven itself as such, which has developed in its extreme, has become impractical from 1914 to 1918 and continues to be impractical. But in addition to all this, one must familiarize oneself with how religious consciousness can be illuminated and deepened by what anthroposophical insight is. Today I could only sketch one of the paths to the cosmic, extraterrestrial Christ. But you will see how a deeper understanding of history can develop from it later on, but one that regards humanity as a living being. And just as one otherwise speaks of a healthy and a sick being in the case of a living being, so one must also speak of a healthy and a sick humanity if one does not want to stop at materialism. One cannot say that it is difficult to come to the Christ when one sees how the corresponding paths have not been followed. A concrete, realistic view of history will try to approach the Mystery of Golgotha from the most diverse sides. Today, however, since one cannot come up with reasons against spiritual science, everything possible is used to denigrate its bearers: they become personal. And it is indeed - and I say this without rancor - a terrible indictment of those who today oppose anthroposophical spiritual science that they actually refrain from addressing the spiritual science, that they always approach it only from the outside, for example, portray the Christ event and the Christ experience as if anthroposophy rationalized the mysterious, as if it were to approach it in shy awe, in the sphere of ordinary rationalist knowledge. But just think: when you are face to face with another person and look at him, the mystery that every person is to us does not have to be lost just because you not only hear about him but are also able to look at him. The individual human being cannot be measured with rationalistic concepts, so how much less can we do so with that which confronts us as the highest meaning of earthly development: the Mystery of Golgotha! But the mysterious is not lost by being brought to view; and anthroposophy aims to lead from that which is only communicated or believed to that which makes itself understood in contemplation. Nothing is taken away from what constitutes the mystery. The mystery remains, but it is not merely to be 'spoken' of, but is to be presented to contemplative humanity. Thus today's criticism is rambling, instead of going into what is so literally contained in the anthroposophical literature itself. It is not necessary to get involved in every issue that comes from such quarters, but within anthroposophical circles there should be a strong awareness that the hatred for the anthroposophical movement will increase all the more the more it asserts itself. What they have done so far is quite a feat in terms of opposition; but you can be assured that it will be surpassed. And even if there is as much grumbling as there has been in recent days about eurythmy, then it seems to me that the only thing necessary is to say to yourself: It would only be worrying if there were praise from this quarter. I would then begin to ask myself: What needs to be done differently now? That is something those who want to be in the right way in the Anthroposophical Movement should acquire as a healthy feeling. What I wanted to present today is something that, in a certain respect, appears to be a supplement to what I was allowed to speak about during my last visit. Of course, that does not mean that it is finished. What I have hinted at today will also help you to make some progress in Christology. |
130. The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric: The Etherization of the Blood
01 Oct 1911, Basel Translated by Barbara Betteridge, Ruth Pusch, Diane Tatum, Alice Wuslin, Margaret Ingram de Ris |
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If only he has truly sharpened his vision through engaging himself with anthroposophy, he may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this or that. |
Those who desire evolution to succeed must acquire understanding of the spiritual life through what we today call anthroposophy. The cultivation of anthroposophy thus becomes a duty; knowledge becomes something that we actually experience, something toward which we have responsibility. |
Once the foundation has been acquired, however, it endures, and then Christ becomes visible also during the period between death and the new birth. Anthroposophy is thus not only something we learn for our physical life but also has value when we have laid aside the physical body at death. |
130. The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric: The Etherization of the Blood
01 Oct 1911, Basel Translated by Barbara Betteridge, Ruth Pusch, Diane Tatum, Alice Wuslin, Margaret Ingram de Ris |
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Wherever we, as human beings, have striven for knowledge, whether as mystics or realists or in any way at all, the acquisition of self-knowledge has been demanded of us. As has been repeatedly emphasized on other occasions, however, this knowledge of the human soul is by no means as easy to achieve as many people believe—anthroposophists sometimes among them. The anthroposophist should be constantly aware of the hindrances he will encounter in his efforts. The acquisition of self-knowledge is absolutely essential, however, if we are to reach a worthy goal in world existence and if our actions are to be worthy of us as members of humanity. Let us ask ourselves why must self-knowledge be so difficult for us. Man is truly a complicated being, and if we speak of his inner life, his life of soul, we should not begin by regarding it as something simple and elementary. We should rather have the patience and perseverance, the will, to penetrate always more deeply into this wonderful structure, this organization of the divine-spiritual powers of the world, which can appear as man. Before we investigate the nature of this self-knowledge, two aspects of the life of the human soul may present themselves to us. Just as the magnet has north and south poles, just as light and darkness are present in the world as the principle poles of the light, so there are two poles in man's life of soul. Both these poles can appear when we observe a person placed in two contrasting situations in life. Suppose we are watching someone standing on the street who is entirely lost in the contemplation of some strikingly beautiful and impressive natural phenomenon. We see how still he is standing, moving neither hand nor foot, never turning his eyes away from the spectacle presented to him, and we are aware that he is engaged in making an inner picture of what he sees. We say that he is absorbed in contemplation of what surrounds him. That is one situation; here is another. A man is walking along the street and feels that someone has insulted him, injured him. Without much thinking, he is roused to anger and gives vent to it by striking the person who insulted him. We are there witnessing a manifestation of forces springing from anger, a manifestation of impulses of will, and we can easily imagine that if the action had been preceded by thought no blow need have been struck. We have now pictured two extremely different deeds. In the one there is only the forming of a mental picture, a process from which all conscious will is absent; in the other there is no thought, no forming of a mental picture, and immediate expression is given to an impulse of will. These two things present us with the two extreme poles of the human soul. One pole is surrender to contemplation, to forming mental pictures, to thought, in which the will has no part; the second pole is the impelling force of will without thought. We have arrived at these facts simply by exoteric observation of outer life. We can go into these things more deeply, and we come then into those spheres in which we can find our bearings only by summoning the findings of esoteric research to our aid. Here another polarity confronts us—that of sleeping and waking. We know the esoteric significance of the relationship between sleeping and waking. From the elementary concepts of anthroposophy we know that in waking life the four members of a man's being—physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I—are organically and actively interwoven but that in sleep the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed while the astral body and I are poured out into the whole great world bordering directly on our physical existence. We could also approach these facts from a different point of view. We might ask what there is to be said about contemplation of the world, forming mental pictures, thinking, and the will and its impulses during waking life on the one hand and during sleep on the other. You see that if one penetrates more deeply into this question it becomes evident that in his present physical existence man is, in a certain sense, essentially always asleep. He sleeps differently during the night, however, from the way he sleeps during the day. You can be convinced of this in a purely outer way, because you know that one can wake in the esoteric sense during the day, that is to say, one can become clairvoyant and see into the spiritual world. The ordinary physical body is asleep to this observation, and one can rightly say that it is an awakening when man learns to use his spiritual senses. In the night, of course, we are asleep in the normal way. One can therefore say that ordinary sleep is sleep in relation to the outer physical world; daytime consciousness at the present time is sleep in relation to the spiritual world. These facts can be considered in yet another light. On deeper scrutiny one realizes that in the ordinary waking condition of physical life, man has, as a rule, little power or control over his will. The will quite detaches itself from daily life. Observe attentively what we call the human will, and you will see how little man has in his control during daily life regarding the will impulse. Only consider how little of all you do from morning to evening is really the outcome of your own thinking and forming of mental pictures, of your personal, individual decisions. When someone knocks at the door and you say “Come in!” that cannot be called a true decision of your own thinking and willing. If you are hungry and seat yourself for a meal, that cannot be called a decision made by the will, because it is occasioned by your condition, by the needs of your organism. Try to picture your daily life, and you will see how little the will is directly influenced from the human center. Why is this the case? Esoteric teachings show us that regarding his will man actually sleeps by day; that is, he does not really live within his will impulses at all. We can evolve better and better concepts and mental pictures, or we can become more highly moral, more refined individuals, but we can do nothing regarding the will. If we cultivate better thoughts we can work indirectly upon the will, but we can do nothing directly to the will that concerns life. This is because in our daily life our will is influenced only in an indirect way, namely, through sleep. When you are asleep you do not think; you do not form mental pictures. The will, however, awakes, permeates our organism from outside, and invigorates it. We feel strengthened in the morning because what has penetrated into our organism is of the nature of will. That we do not perceive this activity of the will, that we know nothing about it, becomes comprehensible if we consider that all conceptual activity sleeps when we sleep. To begin with, therefore, we will offer this suggestion for further contemplation, further meditation. You will see that the more progress you make in self-knowledge, the more you will find confirmation of the truth of the words that man sleeps in his will when he is awake and sleeps in his conceptual life when he is asleep. The life of will sleeps by day; the life of thought sleeps by night. If man is unaware that the will does not sleep during the night, this is because he only understands how to be awake in his life of thought. The will does not sleep during the night, but it works then in a fiery element, works upon his body in order to restore what has been used up by day. There are thus two poles in human beings, the life of observation and forming mental pictures and the impulses of will, and the human being is related in entirely opposite ways to these two poles. These are only the two poles, however. The whole life of soul lies in various nuances between these two poles, and we shall come nearer to understanding this soul life by bringing the microcosmic life of soul into relation to what we know as the higher worlds. From what has been said we have seen that the life of forming mental pictures is one of the poles of one's soul life. This life of forming mental pictures is something that seems unreal to externally, materialistically minded people. We often hear the thought expressed, “Oh, mental pictures and thoughts are only mental pictures and thoughts!” This is intended to imply that if one takes a piece of bread or meat into one's hands, this is a reality, but a thought is only a thought. By this is meant that one cannot eat a thought, and thus a thought is not real but “only” a thought. But why? Basically, because what man calls his thoughts are related to what thoughts really are as a shadow-image of an object is to the thing itself. The shadow-image of a flower points you to the flower itself, to the reality. So it is with thoughts. Human thinking is the shadow-image of mental pictures and beings belonging to a higher world, the world called the astral plane. You represent thinking rightly to yourself when you picture the human head thus (this is not absolutely correct but simply sketched schematically). In this head are thoughts, which I shall represent with these dashes. These thoughts that are in the head, however, must be pictured as living beings on the astral plane. Beings of the most varied kinds are at work there in the form of teeming mental pictures and deeds that cast their shadow-images into human beings, and these processes are reflected in the human head as thinking. Continuous streams move from your head into the astral plane, and these are the shadows that establish the life of thought within your head. ![]() As well as what we can call the life of thought, there is yet another life within the human soul. In ordinary life one distinguishes (this is not entirely correct, but I say it so that one can receive a concept from ordinary life) between a life of thought and a life of feeling. Feelings fall into two categories: those of pleasure and sympathy and those of displeasure and antipathy. The former are aroused by good, benevolent deeds; antipathy is aroused by evil, malevolent deeds. Here there is something more than and different from the mere forming of mental pictures. We form mental pictures of things regardless of any other factor. Our soul, however, experiences sympathy or antipathy only regarding what is beautiful and good or what is ugly and evil. Just as everything that takes place in the human being as thoughts points to the astral plane, so everything connected with sympathy or antipathy points to the realm we call Lower Devachan. Just as I could draw lines earlier between mental pictures and the astral world, so now in relation to feeling I can point upward to Devachan or the heavenly world. Processes in the heavenly world, or Devachan, are projected, mainly into our breast, as feelings of sympathy or antipathy for what is beautiful or ugly, for what is good or evil. In what we can call our experience of the moral-aesthetic world, we bear within our souls shades of the heavenly world or Lower Devachan. There is still a third province in the life of the human soul that we must strictly distinguish from the mere preference for good deeds. There is a difference between standing by and taking pleasure in witnessing some kindly deed and setting the will in action and actually performing some such deed oneself. I will call pleasure in good and beautiful deeds or displeasure in evil and ugly deeds the aesthetic element, as opposed to the moral element that impels a person to do good. The moral element is at a higher level than the purely aesthetic; mere pleasure or displeasure is at a lower level than the will to do something good or evil. In so far as our soul feels constrained to give expression to moral impulses, these impulses are the shadow-images of Higher Devachan, of the higher heavenly world. We can easily picture these three separate stages of activity of the human soul—the purely intellectual (thoughts, mental pictures, observation), the aesthetic (pleasure or displeasure), and the moral (revealed in impulses to do good or evil deeds)—as microcosmic images within human experience of the three realms which, in the macrocosm, the great world, lie one above the other. The astral world is shadowed in the world of thought, the intellectual world; the Devachanic world is shadowed in the aesthetic sphere of pleasure and displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is shadowed as morality.
If we connect this with what was said previously concerning the two poles of the human soul, we must experience the pole of intellect as that which dominates the waking life, the life in which man is intellectually awake. During the day man is awake regarding his intellect; during sleep he is awake regarding his will. Because at night he is asleep regarding his intellect, he becomes unconscious of what he is undertaking with his will. What we call moral principles and impulses are working indirectly into the will. In fact, man needs the life of sleep in order that the moral impulses he absorbs through the life of thought can come into effective activity. In his ordinary life today, man is capable of accomplishing what is right only on the plane of intellect; he is less able to accomplish anything on the moral plane, for there he is dependent upon help coming from the macrocosm. What is already within us can bring about the further development of intellectuality, but the gods must come to our aid if we are to acquire greater moral strength. We sink into sleep in order that we may plunge into the divine will where the intellect does not intervene and where divine forces transform into the power of will the moral principles we receive, where they instill into our will what we could otherwise receive only into our thoughts. Between these two poles, that of the will that wakes by night and that of the intellect that is awake by day, lies the sphere of aesthetic appreciation that is continuously present in man. During the day man is not fully awake; only the most prosaic, pedantic individuals are always fully awake in waking life. Human beings basically must actually dream by day, they must always be able to dream a little when awake; they must be able to give themselves up to art, poetry, or some other activity that is not concerned wholly with crass reality. Those who can give themselves up in this way form a bond that can enliven and invigorate the whole of existence. To give oneself up to such thoughts is to a certain extent like a dream penetrating into waking life. You know well that dreams enter into the life of sleep; these are real dreams, dreams that permeate the other consciousness in sleep. This is also something that human beings need by day if they do not wish to lead an arid, empty, unhealthy waking life. Dreams come during sleep at night in any case, and no proof of this is required. Midway between the two poles of night dreaming and day dreaming lies the condition that can live in fantasy. So here again there is a threefold life of soul. The intellectual element in which we are really awake brings us shadow-images of the astral plane when by day we give ourselves up to a thought, wherein originate the most fruitful ideas for daily life and great inventions. Then during sleep, when we dream, these dreams play into our life of sleep, and images from Lower Devachan are shadowed into us. When we work during sleep, impressing morality into our will—we cannot perceive this directly, but certainly we can perceive its effects—when we are able to imbue our thinking during the night with the influence of divine-spiritual powers, then the impulses we perceive are shadowings from Higher Devachan, the higher heavenly world. These are the moral impulses and feelings that live within us and lead us to say that human life fundamentally is justified only when we place our thoughts at the service of the good and the beautiful, when we allow the very heart's blood of divine-spiritual life to stream through our intellectual activities, permeating them with moral impulses. What we present here as the life of the human soul, first from outer, exoteric observation and then from observation of a more mystical character, is revealed by deeper esoteric research. The processes that have been described in their more outer aspect can also be perceived in man through clairvoyance. When a man stands in front of us today in his waking state and we observe him with the clairvoyant eye, certain rays of light are seen streaming continually from the heart toward the head. If we wish to sketch this schematically, we must draw the region of the heart here and show the continuous streamings from there to the brain, flowing in the head around the organ known in anatomy as the pineal gland. ![]() These rays of light stream from the heart to the head and flow around the pineal gland. These streamings arise because human blood, which is a physical substance, is continually dissolving itself into etheric substance. In the region of the heart there is a continual transformation of the blood into this delicate etheric substance that streams upward toward the head and flows glimmeringly around the pineal gland. This process, the etherization of the blood, can be shown in the human being throughout his waking life. It is different now, however, in the sleeping human being. When a human being sleeps, the occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside into the brain and also in the reverse direction, from the brain to the heart. These streams, however, which in sleeping man come from outside, from cosmic space, from the macrocosm, and flow into the inner constitution of the physical and etheric bodies lying in the bed, reveal something remarkable when they are investigated. These rays vary greatly in different individuals. Sleeping human beings differ greatly from one another, and if those who are a little vain only knew how badly they betray themselves to esoteric observation when they go to sleep during public gatherings, they would try their best not to let this happen! Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular coloring of the streams that flow into human beings during sleep; in a person of lower moral principles the streams are quite different from what is observable in a person of higher principles. Endeavors to disguise one's nature by day are useless. In the face of the higher cosmic powers, no disguise is possible. In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination toward moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in color—various shades tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet. At the moment of waking or of going to sleep, a kind of struggle takes place in the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams upward from below. When a man is awake, the intellectual element streams upward from below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams downward from above. At the moment of waking or of going to sleep, these two currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams takes place in the region of the pineal gland. In the man of high morality and an outstreaming intellectuality, a peaceful expansion of glimmering light appears in the region of the pineal gland. This gland is almost surrounded by a small sea of light in the moment between waking and sleeping. Moral nobility is revealed when a calm glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments. In this way a man's moral character is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the region of the heart. Two streams can therefore be perceived in man—one from the macrocosm, the other from the microcosm. To estimate the full significance of how these two streams meet in man, we must first consider what was said previously in a more external way about the life of the soul and how this life reveals the threefold polarity of the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the moral elements that stream downward from above, from the brain toward the heart; we must also grasp the full significance of what was said about turning our attention to the corresponding phenomenon in the macrocosm. This corresponding phenomenon can be described today as the result of the most scrupulously careful esoteric research of recent years, undertaken by individuals among the genuine Rosicrucians. (see Note 7) These investigations have shown that something corresponding to what has been described in connection with the microcosm also takes place in the macrocosm. You will understand this more fully as time goes on. Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually being transformed into etheric substance, so a similar process takes place in the macrocosm. We understand this when we turn our eyes to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ. This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that has been described as the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, it must be recognized as something altogether unique. When it flowed from His wounds and into the earth, a substance was imparted to our earth which, in uniting with it, constituted an event of the greatest possible significance for all future ages of the earth, and it could take place only once. What happened with this blood in the ages that followed? Nothing different from what otherwise takes place in the heart of man. In the course of earthly evolution, this blood passed through a process of “etherization.” Just as our blood streams upward from the heart as ether, so, since the Mystery of Golgotha, the etherized blood of Christ Jesus has lived in the ether of the earth. The etheric body of the earth is permeated by what the blood that flowed on Golgotha became. This is important. If what has thus come to pass through Christ Jesus had not taken place, man's condition on the earth could only have been as previously described. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, however, there has existed the continuous possibility for the activity of the etheric blood of Christ to flow together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head. Because the etherized blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the etheric body of the earth, it accompanies the etherized human blood streaming upward from the heart to the brain, so that not only do these streams that I described earlier meet in man, but the human bloodstream unites with the bloodstream of Christ Jesus. A union of these two streams can come about, however, only if man is able to unfold true understanding of what is contained in the Christ impulse. Otherwise, there can be no union; the two streams then mutually repel each other, thrust each other away. In every age of earthly evolution, we must acquire understanding in the form suitable for that epoch. At the time when Christ Jesus lived on earth, preceding events could be rightly understood by those who came to His forerunner, John, and were baptised by him according to the rite described in the Gospels. They experienced baptism in order that their sin, that is to say, the karma of their previous lives, karma, that had come to an end, might be changed, and in order that they might realize that the most powerful impulse in earthly evolution was about to descend into a physical body. The evolution of humanity progresses, however, and in our present age it is important that man should learn to understand that the knowledge contained in spiritual science must be received and gradually be able so to fire the streams flowing from heart to brain that anthroposophy can be understood. If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to comprehend the event that has its beginning in the twentieth century: the appearance of the etheric Christ in contradistinction to the physical Christ of Palestine. We have now reached the moment in time when the etheric Christ enters into the life of the earth and will become visible, at first to a small number of people, through a natural clairvoyance. Then in the course of the next 3,000 years, He will become visible to greater and greater numbers of people. This will inevitably come to pass; it is an event of nature. That it will come to pass is as true as were the achievements of electricity in the nineteenth century. A certain number of individuals will see the etheric Christ and will themselves experience the event that took place at Damascus. This will depend, however, upon such human beings learning to observe the moment when Christ draws near to them. In only a few decades from now it will happen, particularly to those who are young in years—already preparation is being made for this—that some person here or there has certain experiences. If only he has truly sharpened his vision through engaging himself with anthroposophy, he may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although he believes that what he sees is a physical man. He will come to realize, however, that this is a super-sensible being, because it immediately vanishes. Many a human being will have this experience when sitting silently in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not knowing which way to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living comforter to men. However strange it may as yet seem, it is true nevertheless that many a time when people, even in considerable numbers, are sitting together not knowing what to do and waiting, they will see the etheric Christ. He Himself will be there, will confer with them, will cast His word into such gatherings. We are now approaching these times, and the positive, constructive element now described will take hold of the evolution of humanity. No word shall be said here against the great advances made by culture in our day; these achievements are essential for the welfare and the freedom of human beings. Whatever can be gained in the way of outer progress, however, in mastering the forces of nature, is something small and insignificant compared with the blessing bestowed upon the person who experiences the awakening in his soul through Christ, Who will now take hold of human culture and its concerns. What thereby awakens in human beings will be unifying, positive forces. Christ brings constructive forces into human civilization. If we were to look into early post-Atlantean times, we would find that human beings built their dwelling places by methods quite different from those used today. In those days they made use of all kinds of growing things. Even when building palaces, they summoned nature to their aid by having plants and branches of trees interlace with one another, and so on. Today, human beings must build with broken fragments. We make all culture of the outer world with the products of fragmentation. In the course of the coming years you will understand even better how much in our culture is the product of destruction. Light is destroying itself within our post-Atlantean earthly processes. Until the time of Atlantis the earthly process was a progressive process, but since then it has been a process of decay. What is light? Light decays, and the decaying light is electricity. What we know as electricity is light that is destroying itself within matter. The chemical force that undergoes a transformation within earthly evolution is magnetism. Yet a third force will become active, and if electricity seems to work wonders today, this third force will affect civilization in a still more miraculous way. The more of this force we employ, the faster the earth will tend to become a corpse and its spiritual part prepare for the Jupiter embodiment. Forces have to be applied to destroy the earth in order that man can become free of the earth and that the earth's body can fall away. As long as the earth was involved in a progressive process, this was not done, since only the decaying earth can use the great achievements of electricity. Strange as this sounds, it must gradually become known. We must understand the process of evolution to evaluate our culture in the right way. We shall learn thereby that it is necessary for the earth to be destroyed; otherwise, the spirit will not become free. We shall also learn to value what is positive, namely, the penetration of spiritual forces into our existence on earth. We thus realize what a tremendous advance was signified by the fact that Christ necessarily lived for three years on the earth in a specially prepared human body in order that He might be visible to physical eyes. Through what came to pass during those three years, human beings have become ripe to behold the Christ Who will move among them in an etheric body, Who will enter into earthly life as truly and effectively as did the physical Christ in Palestine. If human beings observe such happenings with undimmed senses they will know that there is an etheric body that will move about within the physical world, but they will know that this is the only etheric body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body works. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only, that it can be in two, three, even in a hundred, a thousand places at the same time. This is possible only for an etheric, not for a physical form. What will be accomplished in humanity through this further advance is that the two poles I have mentioned, the intellectual and the moral, will more and more become one; they will merge into unity. This will come about because in the course of the next millennia human beings will learn increasingly to observe the etheric Christ in the world; more and more they will be permeated in waking life, too, by the direct working of the good from the spiritual world. Whereas now the will sleeps by day, and man is only able to influence it indirectly through thought, in the course of the next millennia, through what from our time onward is working in us under the aegis of Christ, it will come about that the deeds of human beings in waking condition, too, can be directly productive of good. The dream of Socrates, that virtue be able to be taught, will come true; more and more it will be possible on earth not only for our intellect to be stimulated and energized by this teaching but, through this teaching, for moral impulses to be spread abroad. Schopenhauer said, “To preach morality is easy; to establish it is most difficult.” Why is this? Because no morality has yet been spread by preaching. It is quite possible to recognize moral principles and yet not abide by them. For most people the Pauline saying holds good, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. This will change, through the moral fire streaming from the figure of Christ. Through this, the need for moral impulses on earth will be increasingly clear to man. Man will transform the earth in so far as he feels with ever-increasing strength that morality is an essential part of the earth. In the future, to be immoral will be possible only for people who receive immoral help, who are goaded in this direction, who are possessed by evil demons, by Ahrimanic, Asuric powers, and who strive for this possession. This is the future condition of the earth: there will be a sufficient number of people who increasingly teach morality and at the same time offer a moral foundation, but there will also be those who by their own free decision surrender themselves to the evil powers and thus enable an excess of evil to be pitted against a good humanity. Nobody will be forced to do this; it will lie in the free will of each individual. Then will come the time when the earth passes into conditions which, as in so much else, are only described in the great definitions of Oriental occultism, Oriental mysticism. The moral atmosphere will by then have gathered considerable strength. For many thousands of years Oriental mysticism has spoken of this moment in time, and since the coming of Gautama Buddha it has spoken especially strongly about that future condition when the earth will be bathed in a “moral-ether-atmosphere.” Ever since the time of the ancient Rishis it was the great hope of Oriental mysticism that this moral impulse would come to the earth from Vishva-Karman or, as Zarathustra proclaimed, from Ahura Mazdao. Oriental mysticism thus foresaw that this moral impulse, this moral atmosphere, would come to the earth from the being we call the Christ. It was upon Him, upon Christ, that the hopes of Oriental mysticism were set. Oriental mystics were able to picture the consequences of that event but not the actual form it would take. They could picture that within a period of 5,000 years after the great Buddha achieved Enlightenment, pure Akashic forms, bathed in fire, lit by the sun, would appear in the wake of one Who could not be recognized through Oriental mysticism. A wonderful picture in very truth: that something would come to make it possible for the Sons of Fire and of Light to move about the moral atmosphere of the earth, not in physically embodied form but as pure Akashic forms within the earth's moral atmosphere. Five thousand years after Gautama Buddha's Enlightenment, so it was said, the teacher will also be there to make known to human beings what these wonderful forms are, these pure forms of Fire and Light. This teacher—the Maitreya Buddha—will appear 3,000 years after our time and will be able to teach people about the Christ impulse. Oriental mysticism thus unites with the Christian knowledge of the West to form a beautiful unity. It will also be disclosed that he who will appear 3,000 years after our time as the Maitreya Buddha will have incarnated again and again on the earth as a Bodhisattva, as the successor of Gautama Buddha. One of his incarnations was that of Jeshu ben Pandira, who lived a hundred years before the beginning of our era. The being who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira is the same one who will one day become the Maitreya Buddha and who from century to century returns ever and again in a body of flesh, not yet as Buddha himself but as Bodhisattva. Even in our age there proceeds from him who later will be the Maitreya Buddha the most significant teachings concerning the Christ being and the Sons of Fire—the Agnishvattas—of Indian mysticism. Those things by which man can recognize the being who is to become the Maitreya Buddha are common to all genuine Eastern mysticism and to Christian wisdom. The Maitreya Buddha who, in contrast to the Sons of Fire, will appear in a physical body as Bodhisattva, can be recognized by the fact that at first in his youth his development gives no intimation of the nature of the individuality within him. Only those possessed of understanding will recognize the presence of a Bodhisattva in such a human being, manifesting between the ages of thirty and thirty-three and not before. Something akin to an exchange of personality then takes place. The Maitreya Buddha will reveal his identity to humanity in the thirty-third year of his life. As Christ Jesus began his lifework in His thirtieth year, so do the Bodhisattvas, who will continue to proclaim the Christ impulses, reveal themselves in the thirty-third year of their lives. The Maitreya Buddha himself, as transformed Bodhisattva, speaking in powerful words of which no adequate idea can be given at the present time, will proclaim the great secrets of existence. He will speak in a language that must first be created, because no human being today could find the words with which the Maitreya Buddha will address humanity. The reason human beings cannot yet be addressed in this way is that the physical instrument for this form of speech does not yet exist. The teaching of the Enlightened One will not stream into human beings as teachings only but will pour moral impulses into their souls. Such words cannot yet be uttered by a physical larynx; in our time they can be present only in the spiritual worlds. Anthroposophy is the preparation for everything that will come in the future. Those who take the process of man’s evolution seriously resolve not to allow the soul's development to come to a standstill but to ensure that its development will eventually enable the spiritual part of the earth to become free, leaving the grosser part to fall away like a corpse—for human beings could frustrate the whole process. Those who desire evolution to succeed must acquire understanding of the spiritual life through what we today call anthroposophy. The cultivation of anthroposophy thus becomes a duty; knowledge becomes something that we actually experience, something toward which we have responsibility. When we are inwardly aware of this responsibility and have this resolve, when we experience the mysteries of the world so as to arouse in us the wish to become anthroposophists, then our experience is right. Anthroposophy must not, however, be something that merely satisfies our curiosity; it must rather be something without which we cannot live. Only when this is the case do we experience in the right sense; only then do we live as living building stones in that great construction that must be carried out in human souls and that can embrace all humanity. Anthroposophy is thus a revelation of true world phenomena that will confront people of the future and will confront our own souls, whether still in a physical body or in the life between death and a new birth. The coming upheaval will concern us regardless of whether we are still living in the physical body or whether we have laid it aside. People must acquire understanding of the earth in the physical body if it is to take effect between death and a new birth. To those who acquire some understanding of Christ now in the physical body, it will make no difference, when the moment comes to behold Christ, whether or not they have already passed through the portal of death. But if those who now reject understanding of the Christ have already passed through the portal of death when this moment arrives, they must wait until their next incarnation, because such understanding cannot be acquired between death and a new birth. Once the foundation has been acquired, however, it endures, and then Christ becomes visible also during the period between death and the new birth. Anthroposophy is thus not only something we learn for our physical life but also has value when we have laid aside the physical body at death. This is what I wished to impart to you today as an understanding of humanity and a handle in answering many questions. Self-knowledge is difficult because man is such a complex being. The reason for this complexity is that he is connected with all the higher worlds and beings. We have within us shadow-images of the great world, and all the members of our constitution—the physical, etheric, and astral bodies and the I—are worlds for divine beings. Our physical, etheric, and astral bodies and I form one world; the other is the higher world, the world of heaven. For the divine-spiritual beings, the higher worlds are the bodily members in high, divine-spiritual worlds. Man is so complex because he is truly a mirror-image of the spiritual world. Realization of this should make him conscious of his intrinsic worth. From this knowledge, however, that although we are pictures of the spiritual world we nevertheless fall far short of what we ought to be—from this knowledge we also acquire, in addition to consciousness of our worth as human beings, the right attitude of modesty and humility toward the macrocosm and its gods.
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Deeper Insights into Education: Introduction
Translated by René M. Querido |
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In 1907 he formulated his views on education in an essay entitled Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy. It was not until twelve years later, soon after the first World War, which left Middle Europe shattered, morally depleted, and financially in ruins, that Steiner answered the call from Emil Molt, the owner of the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, to found a school initially intended for the children of the factory workers. |
In studying Rudolf Steiner's educational work, a careful distinction should be made between the courses given to the first teachers of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, who were well prepared through a sound basis in anthroposophy, and those given to public audiences often without the slightest background in spiritual science. |
Deeper Insights into Education: Introduction
Translated by René M. Querido |
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In considering the beginnings of Waldorf education—now a movement of over 300 schools worldwide—one may well be astonished to find that Rudolf Steiner preferred to convey its revolutionary thrust by word of mouth rather than by means of the printed page. Over a period of almost six years (1919-1924) Steiner, traveling widely in Germany, Switzerland, France, Norway, Holland, and England, gave some 200 lectures on the Waldorf approach, speaking to small groups of qualified teachers as well as to large public audiences. Important seeds had been planted in Steiner's early years through his own experiences as tutor and teacher. In 1907 he formulated his views on education in an essay entitled Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy. It was not until twelve years later, soon after the first World War, which left Middle Europe shattered, morally depleted, and financially in ruins, that Steiner answered the call from Emil Molt, the owner of the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, to found a school initially intended for the children of the factory workers. Three mighty courses of fourteen lectures each (The Study of Man, Practical Advice for Teachers, Discussions with Teachers, August-September 1919), given over a period of two weeks to a group of twelve young, able, enthusiastic teachers, launched the bold venture that was to grow into a strong movement with schools in Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Steiner became the director of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. He was tireless in giving his time and strength, entering into every detail of the curriculum, the work in the classroom, the life of the students; he counseled teachers, visited classes, and advised parents, all this in spite of a host of other commitments in such fields as medicine, agriculture, and social renewal. In studying Rudolf Steiner's educational work, a careful distinction should be made between the courses given to the first teachers of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, who were well prepared through a sound basis in anthroposophy, and those given to public audiences often without the slightest background in spiritual science. Steiner emphasized that the Waldorf approach was a great deal more than the application of methods of teaching; this new art of education was born out of a solid anthroposophical foundation, out of a knowledge of the growing child as body, soul, and spirit. Today it would be said that Waldorf education is holistic, that it aims at unfolding the capacities of hand, heart, and head in the child according to the stages of child development. The three lectures published here were given in 1923 to the original teachers of the Waldorf School, who had received four years of intensive training and practice under Steiner's personal guidance. They should be read with this background in mine; their original and sometimes startling message will then be understood more readily. For beginners, it may well be advisable first to work through Steiner's written work and some of the earlier public lectures, for example, A Modern Art of Education, fourteen lectures delivered in August 1923 in Ilkley, England, or The Renewal of Education, fourteen lectures given to Swiss teachers in April and May 1920 in Basel, Switzerland, or Spiritual Ground of Education, four lectures given at Manchester College, Oxford, England, in August 1922. It should be mentioned that many invaluable indications on education will also be found in Steiner's lectures on the social question, the arts, medicine, curative education, and the sciences. Serious readers will readily become aware that Steiner's comprehensive teachings are undogmatic in character. They are indications, seeds that parents or teachers or anyone genuinely interested in the development and well-being of the child can make their own and verify through experience. Rather than encountering a number of easily applicable educational recipes, they will find themselves engaged in a process of discovery in the realm of childhood and adolescence. Rene M. Querido |
100. The Gospel of St. John (Basle): Lecture I
16 Nov 1907, Basel Translator Unknown |
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It might be thought that Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy desires to bring in a new religion in addition to those already existing; but that is not the case. Anthroposophy is not a new religion, it is not a new sect. In these lectures it will be our task, with the aid of Spiritual Science, to show the significance of this religious document, St. |
The fountain of Truth which springs up in it is abundant and never-ending; it is so plenteous that as the evolution of humanity progresses it will reveal every new aspects of its being. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science is to present Christianity to man from a new and different side. Now, the various religious records may be considered from four different points of view: 1. |
100. The Gospel of St. John (Basle): Lecture I
16 Nov 1907, Basel Translator Unknown |
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When we carefully study the mental life of the present day we find a deep cleft in many minds. Men now receive, even in earliest youth, not one view of the world only but two: the one from their religious instruction and the other from Natural Science. The result of this is, that from the very outset doubts arise as to the correctness of the religious traditions. It might be thought that Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy desires to bring in a new religion in addition to those already existing; but that is not the case. Anthroposophy is not a new religion, it is not a new sect. In these lectures it will be our task, with the aid of Spiritual Science, to show the significance of this religious document, St. John's Gospel, and in so doing we shall be able to point out the relation of Spiritual Science to religious records in general. Spiritual Science enables us to understand the various religions in the world. One who is acquainted with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science takes Christianity as it is, as a fact of the very greatest significance to the whole spiritual life of humanity. It has been made impossible for the mental and spiritual life of the present day to understand the depths of Christianity. This understanding can only be gained through Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. If we make use of what it provides we can penetrate deeply into the wisdom contained in the religious records. We might compare Spiritual Science with philology. We can also study the Christian documents with the aid of philology; but Spiritual Science leads us into the spirit of these documents. The best expounder of Euclid's Geometry is one who knows Geometry, not one who only knows the Greek language. Spiritual Science is not to be a new religion for the men of modern times; it is to be the means by which the true contents of Christianity may be brought home to them. Christianity is the zenith and meeting point of all religions. All other religions do but point to Christianity, which is the religion for all the future and will not be followed by any other. The fountain of Truth which springs up in it is abundant and never-ending; it is so plenteous that as the evolution of humanity progresses it will reveal every new aspects of its being. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science is to present Christianity to man from a new and different side. Now, the various religious records may be considered from four different points of view:
St. John's Gospel takes quite a special place among the four Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke give us an historical picture of Jesus, but St. John's Gospel is regarded as a kind of apotheosis, a wonderful poem. There are many contradictions when we compare it with the statements made in the other Gospels, but these contradictions are so apparent that it cannot be supposed that the old defenders of St. John's Gospel did not perceive them also. At the present time St. John's Gospel is considered to be the least worthy of credence. The reason for this attitude lies in the materialistic frame of mind of the men of our time. In the course of the 19th century humanity became materialistic in feeling, and consequently also in thought; for as a man feels, so does the judge. Materialism is not confined to the view of the world contained in the books of Büchner, Moleschott, and Vogt: even those who explain the religious documents from a certain spiritual standpoint do this in a fully materialistic way. As example of this I might quote the dispute between Karl Vogt and Professor Wagner of Munich. This dispute was fought out at the time in the “Augsburger Zeitung” and ended completely in favor of Karl Vogt. Wagner stood up for the existence of the soul; he did this, however, in an absolutely materialistic way. And as the theologians have materialistic feelings, the three synoptic Gospels please them better, because they more easily admit of a materialistic explanation. It is repugnant to materialistic thinking to accept a Being who towers above all men; it is much more acceptable to them to see in Jesus a noble human being only, “the humble man of Nazareth.” According to St. John's Gospel is quite inadmissible to see in Jesus only that which also lives in any other man. The Christ-soul in the Jesus-body is something quite different. St. John's Gospel represents Christ to us not only as a very great man, but as a Being who embraces the whole earth. If we translate St. John's Gospel according to the spirit and not only according to the words, the first 14 verses run approximately as follows:—
Even the very first words are taken in an abstract sense by the modern man. The “Very Beginning” is thought of as an abstract beginning; but to grasp the true significance of this word we must recall what was taught on this point in the Christian Secret School of Dionysius the Areopagite. Mineral, plant, animal, and man make up the series of being in evolution which require the physical body. Above them are beings who do not need the physical body, namely, the Angels, Archangels, Very Beginnings, the Powers, Virtues, Dominions, the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, and Beings were still higher. Thus the Very Beginnings are real Beings. They are those who, at the beginning of the evolution of our world, were already at the stage humanity will only reach at the end of its evolution (in the Vulcan Period.) If in the light of this we study the first verse, “In the very beginning was the word,” we might represent the state of affairs pictorially by the following comparison. Before we utter a word, this word lives in us as thought. It lives within us. When the word is uttered the air around us is set in motion; vibrations are produced. If we imagine these vibrations condensed and hardened in some way, we should see the words fall to the ground as forms and figures; we should perceive the creative power of the word with our eyes. If the word is already creative now, it will be much more so in the future. Man already possesses organs which will only attain their full significance in the future; he also possesses others which are already in decline. To the latter belong the organs of reproduction, to the former the heart and the larynx, for these are only at the beginning of their development. At the present time the heart is an involuntary muscle, although it has transverse fibers like all voluntary muscles. These transverse fibers are an indication that the heart is in the process of transition from an involuntary to a voluntary organ. The larynx is destined to be the human organ of reproduction in a distant future, strange as this may sound at present. Just as man, by means of speech, can already transpose his thoughts into vibrations of the air, he will in the future be able to create his own image by means of the word. The Very Beginnings already possessed this creative power at the outset of the evolution of our world and can therefore be rightly looked upon as divine Beings. At the beginning of the evolution of the Earth a divine Word was uttered, and this has become mineral, plant, animal and man. |
259. The Fateful Year of 1923: Preliminary Remarks by the Editor
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He saw the danger of disintegration through individual efforts, the neglect of the nourishing and cohesive mother soil of anthroposophy. He urgently warned the leading members in Stuttgart. In December 1922, he had given a commission to Mr. |
See the biographical documentation Marie Steiner-von Sivers, A Life for Anthroposophy, Dornach 1988 and 1989.2 He considered it to be of crucial importance: he was to discuss it with his colleagues on the board in Germany, so that the joint response to it would be given to him on his next arrival in Stuttgart. |
See the biographical documentation “Marie Steiner-von Sivers, A Life for Anthroposophy”, Dornach 1988 and 1989.2. According to Rudolf Steiner (see footnote to the minutes of January 16, 1923), the conversation took place on December 10. |
259. The Fateful Year of 1923: Preliminary Remarks by the Editor
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On the Negotiations for the Reorganization of German Corporate Relations The first general meeting to be held since the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914 took place in Stuttgart on September 4, 1921. A new executive council was formed (Dr. Carl Unger, Emil Leinhas, Ernst Uehli) and the Society's headquarters officially transferred from Berlin to Stuttgart. Shortly thereafter a group was formed that was named the “Thirty Circle” after its membership and was intended to be a link between the executive council and the membership (for the participants in the Thirty Circle, see S. 832). When they wanted to negotiate with Rudolf Steiner about the question of the consolidation of the Society after the fire at the Goetheanum, Ernst Uehli, a member of the central council and a teacher at the Waldorf School, set up a smaller committee for this purpose, the so-called “Circle of Seven”. At the first meeting with Rudolf Steiner, this circle consisted of Ernst Uehli and six other teachers from the Waldorf School: Caroline von Heydebrandt, Eugen Kolisko, Maria Röschl, Karl Schubert, Erich Schwebsch and Walter Johannes Stein. Marie Steiner describes the circumstances at the time in the preface to the private reproduction “Study Material from the Meetings of the Thirty Circle”, published by her in 1947, as follows: “Due to Michael Bauer's serious illness and the resignation of Marie Steiner-von Sivers,1 Since 1921 the executive council of the Anthroposophical Society was represented by Dr. Carl Unger, Emil Leinhas and Ernst Uehli, who lived in Stuttgart. Germany was a seething cauldron. The endless difficulties associated with the various machinations of political and social groups and the ever-increasing inflation undermined all efforts at reform. The collapse of economic life threatened to suffocate spiritual life. The grinding nature of this struggle was reflected in the souls and paralyzed the energies. This bleak picture was constantly being presented to those who were striving in the anthroposophical way. Anti-Semitism had already begun to dig deep into the souls. As an outward sign of the declaration of war by Pan-German circles, one could already see a painted swastika on many doors. Assaults and murders in the various political camps were the order of the day; they were systematically used; the assassination of Walther Rathenau is just one example. Rudolf Steiner's public lectures were also abruptly terminated by such activities at the moment of their most effective development. The rush to attend the lectures had been enormous, and so the enemies deployed the strongest counterforce on all fronts to destroy this effect. Dr. Steiner was horrified to see how some of the energies of even the formerly enthusiastic anthroposophists weakened in the face of this turmoil, and how the driving forces in the souls of inexperienced young people gained ground and overthrew. He saw the danger of disintegration through individual efforts, the neglect of the nourishing and cohesive mother soil of anthroposophy. He urgently warned the leading members in Stuttgart. In December 1922, he had given a commission to Mr. Uehli, who had traveled to Dornach on company business, in 1916 at Rudolf Steiner's instigation. See the biographical documentation Marie Steiner-von Sivers, A Life for Anthroposophy, Dornach 1988 and 1989.2 He considered it to be of crucial importance: he was to discuss it with his colleagues on the board in Germany, so that the joint response to it would be given to him on his next arrival in Stuttgart. There, a “Thirty Circle” had formed, which wanted to take a stand on the problems of the time and society in serious deliberations. In between, there were still smaller circles that were even more urgently concerned with the problems close to their hearts and wished to bring them to Rudolf Steiner in more intimate sessions. The disputes of the “Thirty Circle”, which we now want to announce, concern such sessions. An attempt has been made to transcribe in shorthand what was said by Rudolf Steiner himself. It was not possible to record the many questions and opinions that the members expressed in rapid succession. But the most important parts were saved: Rudolf Steiner's answer to the question at hand: What are the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society? Here we experience the guidelines Rudolf Steiner gave for the leadership of a society, his methodology, which is always based on respect for the freedom of others, on non-interference in the individual core of the soul, but on unyielding strictness in all questions concerning the truth, so that self-deception cannot gain ground and become systematic. He relentlessly tackled the complacency that could easily arise on this ground in order to avoid difficulties, and personal attitudes. And so these messages reflect Rudolf Steiner's method in matters of social leadership, which is so necessary for us today. While the “Thirty Circle” in Stuttgart was dealing with the catastrophic situation that had arisen there and the feared disintegration of society, the Goetheanum in Dornach burnt down on New Year's Eve 1922. In Stuttgart, too, the meetings of the “Thirty Circle” were marked by the tragedy of the devastating event; they tried to become aware of their own inadequacies, which karmically could have made such an event possible. Was it to be sought in the fact that the enthusiasm of the early years had been paralyzed by the difficulties that had arisen, both external and internal, so that the spiritual connection with each other and with the anthroposophical branches had been lost? — The 'institutions' existed as the endeavors of individual differentiated groups; but within this social union, the human connecting spiritual bond was missing. Rudolf Steiner was again approached with a request for advice and help, but he in turn expected a moral response to the task he had set the Stuttgart board in early December. He was always willing to help, so he decided to travel there and divide his time between Dornach and Stuttgart in the following weeks. In Stuttgart, in addition to the meetings of the Siebenerausschuß, there were endless discussions in the Dreißigerkreis, lasting well into the night. For these discussions, Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner traveled from Dornach to Stuttgart every week from mid-January to the end of February. During these weeks, he also gave four lectures to the Stuttgart branch on the developmental phases of the Anthroposophical Society, the necessity of its reorganization and the conditions for forming an Anthroposophical community. See the volume “Anthroposophische Gemeinschaftsbildung” (Forming an Anthroposophical Community), GA 257. Necessary remarks on the quality and reproduction of the protocols of the Stuttgart negotiationsThe following discussions between Rudolf Steiner and the Stuttgart leadership committees “Siebenerkreis” and “Dreißigerkreis” are not based on a literal stenographic transcript by a professional stenographer, but on stenographic notes that are sometimes detailed and sometimes more or less incomplete. We have Dr. Karl Schubert, a teacher at the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, to thank for the transcripts. However, it was only many years later that he undertook the task of transcribing them into plain text with the help of Dr. Erich Gabert. In his preliminary remarks, dated “Stuttgart, April 10, 1935,” Gabert writes: "Because the shorthand was partly difficult to read after such a long time, the text sometimes remains uncertain. When it was not possible to guess and complete the meaning with certainty, the words have been left unchanged, even if they appear incomprehensible at first. At the time, it was not always noted who said the written words. Therefore, the separation of the speakers sometimes had to be described as questionable; unfortunately, it cannot be said with certainty whether Dr. Steiner really said all the words that are under his name or whether they are the words of a participant in the conversation. There are no transcripts of all the meetings that took place in the Thirties Circle. The available ones are all reproduced here. What the other participants said at the meetings has only been included to the extent that it was deemed necessary for an understanding of Dr. Steiner's words. Dr. Steiner's words themselves are given as completely as they appeared in the shorthand." In order to evaluate the abridgements made by Schubert-Gabert to the contributions of the other participants, a comparison was made with the original stenographic notes of Karl Schubert available in the archives of the Rudolf Steiner estate administration. The comparison showed that by summarizing and partially omitting these votes, the transferred volume of the protocols in relation to the total volume of the stenographic notes was reduced by about 3/4 to 2/3, in some cases to less than half. This must be taken into account if one wants to get a picture of the duration of the meetings and of Rudolf Steiner's real contribution to the discussions. In this regard, however, it is even more significant that the original stenographic notes also show a very different degree of incompleteness. They range from almost complete protocols to only a few notes in the form of keywords. However, to make a complete transcription of the original stenographic notes today would require years of extremely laborious work and the result would probably still be very unsatisfactory. The essential parts for the Rudolf Steiner Complete Works are, after all, primarily Rudolf Steiner's remarks. The dots that frequently appear in the reproduction published by Marie Steiner in 1947 (...) do not mark omissions she made, as might be mistakenly assumed, but rather her need to make it visually perceptible that the protocols are incomplete in numerous places. However, since no dots appear in Karl Schubert's plain text transcriptions, and these generally indicate omissions, they have been omitted from the present edition. This is mainly to avoid the misunderstanding that any omissions have been made. Some textual corrections in comparison with Marie Steiner's edition of 1947 are based on a new comparison with Karl Schubert's manuscripts; furthermore, on brief notes by Dr. Karl Heyer, who was also a participant in the meetings of the “Thirty Circle”. Insertions in square brackets [] are by the editor. H.W.
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