The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is incumbent upon me at this moment to inform this larger circle of an intention from the narrower circle of those who already know about it. But allow me to say a few words beforehand. It should be specified that what is said now has nothing to do with what occurred at this General Meeting or what is otherwise related to previous actions – which however does not exclude the possibility to consider them later should it be so desired.

When we look around in the world today we must say to ourselves: the contemporary world is full of ideals – and when we ask ourselves: Is the representation of these ideals by those who believe in them and are in the service of them sincere and honest? In many cases we will find the answer is: Yes, that is the case. It is the case with respect to the belief and dedication the individuals are capable of. When we then ask: How much is generally demanded when such a representation of ideals is brought to life, whether by an individual or a society? From an observation of life we will find the answer to be that in most cases all is demanded; but what is mostly demanded is that the asserted ideal finds an absolute, unconditional recognition. And the basis for such an assertion of the ideal is that an absolute agreement is demanded. And usually a lack of agreement is expressed in some kind of derogatory criticism. Those words characterize how the principle of an association of people has occurred in a natural way during the course of human development and the justification of such a principle is not meant to be doubted in any way.

But above all the possibility I wish to present is this: one was always convinced that opinions were never authoritative in respect to the realities of what went on within the societies; whatever a person might think, in the moment he uttered it, by the very fact of uttering it he entered into a contradiction with the reality. Much must be said in this moment which is not in agreement with much that is valid in the world. Thus it must be said: the avowal to a thing may not be true when this avowal is spoken of. I would like to give a simple example from which you can see that the danger can exist of being untruthful simply by pronouncing it. And I would like that this simple truth be understood as being in agreement with Rosicrucian principles.

Let's assume that someone expresses his agreement using the words: “I am silent“, which cannot be true. When someone says: “I say nothing“ and wants to describe a present condition, what he says is not true. The possibility exists that by verbally avowing a thing he denies it. From this simple example: “I say nothing”, you can see that it is applicable to innumerable instances in the world and can happen again and again.

What is the consequence of such a fact? The consequence is that the people who want to associate in order to represent such and such a thing find themselves in a most difficult position if the reasons for associating are not those of the sense world but the super-sensible world.

And when we understand what we have been able to receive from the new occultism in the course of time, then we will perceive that it is absolutely necessary in the immediate future to represent certain aspects of this occultism before the world. Therefore the attempt must be made against all the principles of occult societies and their heretofore possible organizations with something completely new, something born from the spirit of that new occultism about which we have often spoken in our circle.

This can only be done, however, if we turn our view only towards something positive, only toward something which exists in the world as a reality and which can be cultivated as such a reality. Realities in our sense are only the things which primarily belong to the super-sensual world. Therefore the attempt will for once be made to realize something that comes from the super-sensible world: an attempt not to found a community of people, but to endow it.

In other opportunities I have already emphasized the difference between founding and endowing. It was many years ago. It was not understood then, and since then hardly anyone has thought about this difference. Therefore the spiritual powers which stand before you under the symbol of the Rose Cross have also overlooked bringing this difference to the world.

A renewed attempt must be now made, this time in an energetic way, not to found but to endow a community. If it is not successful, it will have failed for a certain amount of time.

Therefore I am announcing to you now that among the appropriate persons a method of working is endowed of which the individual, whom we have called Christian Rosenkreuz since western pre-history, is the originator.

What has been said today is preliminary. For what has happened until now refers only to a part of the endowment, which, if possible, should enter the world; it refers to the artistic representation of Rosicrucian occultism.

The first point I want to make is that a method of working shall enter the world as an endowment under the direct protectorate of that individual whom we designate by the name which he had for the outer world during two incarnations: Christian Rosenkreuz; and that this endowment shall be called by the provisional name: “Gesellschaft für theosphische Art und Kunst“ (“Society for the Theosophical Way and Art“)

This named is not definitive, but a definitive name will be introduced once the first preparations for bringing this work into the world have been accomplished. What is described as the “Theosophical Way” is in a beginning stage, for the preparations must still be made in order to understand what is meant.

But what is understood with the concept of theosophical art has already begun in many ways by the performances in Munich and above all the meaningful beginnings in Stuttgart; and an additional important advance for the understanding of these things is shown by the Johannes building [in Munich].

In a certain sense what has been tried provides the required sanction. Within this working group a purely spiritual task should develop, a task which is to result in a spiritual method of working and in its results.

Obviously no one can be a member of this working group who holds to a different viewpoint, but only if he has the will to dedicate his strength to the positive aspects.

Perhaps you may say that I am talking a lot of words that are not understandable. That must be so with things such as these – for they must be grasped directly in life. And what must happen within this endowment is that according to purely occult laws what is a very small circle at first is formed which sees its duty as cooperating on this project.

A very small circle has been created. It has been created in the sense of our stream for this endowment; thus in a certain sense a beginning has been made, to be detached from me and to have its own substance.

Thus this small circle that has been sanctioned stands before you, which has received its task with its own recognition of our spiritual stream, and thereby the sovereignty and the independence of all spiritual striving, which is an absolute necessity for the future to be introduced to humanity.

Therefore within the endowment I will only serve as interpreter of the basic principles, which as such only exist in the spiritual world – as interpreter of what is to be said about the intentions behind the thing itself. Therefore a curator will be named for the outer cultivation of the endowment. And with the positions which will be created only duties are associated, no honors, no laurels, so that it is impossible for rivalries or other misunderstandings to occur if it is correctly understood.

At first Miss von Sivers will be recognized by the endowment itself. This recognition is none other than what is interpreted from out of the endowment; there are no namings, only interpretations. It will be her task in the immediate future to do what can be done in the sense of the endowment, to gather a corresponding circle of members - not in the usual sense, but rather that they come on their own.

Furthermore within this branch of our endowment a number of associate branches will be created. And as the leading personalities of these associated branches – insofar as these already exist – several of the proven personalities from within our spiritual movement will be placed with the corresponding responsibilities.

This is also an interpretation: for each of these associate branches an archdeacon will interpret.

We will have an associate branch for general art; arch-deacon will be Miss von Eckhardstein – and that is a specific recognition for what this personality has done in recent years for this art.

Literature will be published: provisional Curator Miss von Sivers. Further architectural subjects: Dr. Felix Peipers; for Music: Mr. Adolf Arenson; for painting: Mr. Hermann Linde. The work to be done is essentially interior. What will appear in public will be what has been done in total freedom by these personalities.

A certain coordination of the personalities involved in this work will be necessary; this coordination will take place in a completely different way than is the case with normal organizations. The office of Conservator will be served by Miss Sophie Stinde, in charge of this coordination.

The way in which these personalities coordinate requires work very soon. In order for the organization to come into being a Keeper of the Keeper of the Seal will be necessary: Miss Sprengel, and the Secretary will be Dr Carl Unger.

At first this will be a tiny circle. Don't think of it as something which appears immodestly in the world and says: Here I am. Rather think of it as nothing more than a seed around which the thing itself will develop.

It will be organized so that by next Three-Kings Day (Epiphany) a number of members of the community will be interpreted [sic]. This means that by that time a number of members will have been given to understand that they may participate. So that for the beginning the most ample freedom in this direction must be assured in that the will to be a member should not come from anyone except the one who desires to be a member. And the fact that he is a member is brought about by his being recognized as a member. This will only be for the time between now and the next Three Kings' Day, January 6, 1912.

Thus we have before us something which because of its peculiarity reveals itself as something which flows from the spiritual world. Furthermore it will present itself as flowing from the spiritual world in that the membership will be always and exclusively concerned with spiritual interests and the recognition of spiritual interests – with the exclusion of everything personal.

This announcement constitutes a deviation from older occult principles, and this deviation consists in the fact of the announcement itself. Therewith no use is made of that assertion of the man who says: I say nothing.

The initiative will be announced; and in full consciousness that it will be announced, this should be the result. But as soon as someone indicates that he somehow does not agree with what is announced today, then he should of course not be expected to adhere to such a way of working. For nothing but complete free will for such a way of working is applicable. You will see though, if something like this should come into being – if our time with its peculiarities allows that it come into being – then really through recognition of the spiritual world work can be done, the principle that not only all nature and all history, but everything done in the world, all human deeds are based on the spiritual, super-sensible world.

You will see that it is impossible for someone to belong to such a community if he is not really in agreement with it. If you think that what I am saying is somewhat curious, then please understand it thus: that it happens in full consciousness that what is therewith preserved is everything which belongs to the eternal laws of being. And what also belongs is that the principles of becoming are taken into consideration.

At this moment one can sin against the spirit of what is to happen if he goes out into the world and says: this or that has been founded. Not only has nothing been founded, but the fact is also that to give a definition to what is to be done will never be possible – for everything is to be in continual becoming. And what is to happen because of what has been said today cannot be described. It is based on what happens, not on words, but on persons, and not even on persons, but on what the persons will do.

It will be in a living stream, a living becoming, and everything that is said about it will be untrue at the same moment. Thus also today the principle is none other than the first principle: Recognition of the spiritual world as the basic reality. All other principles are to be formed as the thing develops. As a tree in the next instant is no longer what it was, but has added something new, so should this be like a living tree. Never should what it is to become be compromised in any way by what it is.

Therefore if someone wanted to define outside in the world as a founding what has been described here as a beginning, then he would commit the same untruth as someone who says: I say nothing. Whoever uses in this way this or that word in order to characterize the matter, he says something incorrect. Therefore at the beginning it is a question of the people who want something like this coming together. Then the matter will progress. And it will profoundly differentiate itself from what the Theosophical Society is. For not one attribute described here today can pertain to the Theosophical Society.

I had to say these things for the simple reason that the matters which the endowment deals with are also publicly connected to the Theosophical Society. Because through this endowment – in the sense of intentions the contents of which do not lie in the physical world and have nothing to do with Ahriman – a spiritually ideal counterbalance to everything connected to a founding in the outer world must be created. Only in the context can a connection be seen with what already exists, that this branch of our endowment, the branch for Theosophical Art, should create a counterweight for what is connected to the Ahrimanic. It may be hoped that an excellent model will be created by the existence of this branch of our endowment. And the other branch will do its duty in the corresponding manner.

What figures as art in the movement for spiritual science must flow into our culture from the spiritual world. Spiritual life must be the basis for everything we do. It will be impossible to confound this ideal spiritual movement with any other, which also calls itself “Theosophical Movement” and will wish to participate.² Wherever we may be, the spiritual moment is our foundation. The example of the festival in Munich, the building in Stuttgart – at the limits of possibility at first, but it was everywhere attempted that the spirit be the most important, was the conditio sine qua non.³ Those who are already somewhat familiar with what this is all about will understand me. These words are spoken less for their content than that the guidelines be indicated.

When the next Three Kings Day passed and no further nominations had been made known, one of the people who had heard his address asked Dr. Steiner when that would happen, he replied: the fact that it didn't happened could be considered an answer. The year 1912/1913 was overburdened with the dispute with Annie Besant, her proclamation of the new messiah and her “Star of the East” being active also in Germany. The President [A. Besant] received from the adherents of the western spiritual movement inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner a demand for a precise statement about the agreements reached in Munich and Budapest, instead of her evasiveness, her hide-and-seek games and behind-the-scenes acting. These were the same people who together with members from many provinces founded the “Bund”, which was followed in 1913 by the founding of the Anthroposophical Society after the expulsion of the German section by the President of the Theosophical Society. Meanwhile work was undertaken in various areas through the nomination of the intimate circle: the Johannesbau-Verein [St. John Building Society], in the completion of Society's house in Stuttgart, the so-called “Art-and-People's-rooms” in Munich and Berlin, one of Miss von Eckardstein‘s initiatives. The most spiritually outstanding publication was the Calendar of the Soul, a result of Dr Steiner's cooperation with Miss von Eckardstein; here the wonderfully transparent nuances of speech allow spirit and soul to interact and become one with nature. Various other things sought a peaceful unfolding in the future. But the World War started and its associated commotions, which deeply affected the living conditions and relations between the members from various nations in Dornach. We tried to overcome such blood [national] ties, but every now and again commotion and disruption occurred. The most irritating crisis for Dornach was in the summer of 1915. A Dr. Gösch, a typical representative of psychoanalysis, stepped front and center. He convinced himself that the Keeper of the Seal had opened his eyes about promises that Dr. Steiner gave and didn't comply with. He published this according to psychoanalytical methodology in a brochure. At the same time he wrote a letter to Dr. Steiner in which he described his theories based on the “revelations” made to him by the Keeper of the Seal. The Keeper of the Seal could not have understood the task given her by this name other than in a most personal sense. She felt herself to be the inspiration for the spiritual teaching given to humanity by Dr. Steiner. And as she also played the role of Theodora in Rudolf Steiner's Mystery Dramas in Munich, she took all this as evidence of a symbolic promise of marriage, for the fulfillment of which she had waited “seven years”. The many complaining letters revolving around this point gave Dr. Gösch the opportunity for a psychological interpretation in Freudian sense for the illumination of her case. He had been for a long time himself in Freudian treatment for a nervous disorder, which had deeply infected his person. His open letter of complaint provided the opportunity for strictly carried out actions by which the membership was to obtain clarity about the case. Descriptions about the case exist and constituted the basis for the special number of the magazine „Anthroposophie“ [and] the book published in Stuttgart: Anthroposophie und Psychoanalyse. Here is only mentioned what has to do directly with the case Sprengel – alias Proserpina – alias Theodora – alias Keeper of the Seal, and what she experienced in such a mystical, personal way as megalomania. Of course symptoms existed of her conceit even before the war. Because of this unfortunate megalomania, the possibility of further nominations to the existing circle of eight personalities failed – caused by egoistical conceit on one hand and the absurdity of false mysticism on the other. The Keeper of the Seal “sprang” the seal in the most common human sense. The necessity of women being active participants in the cultural tasks of the future is non-negotiable and will be accomplished despite failures in individual cases. - That's what happened in the case of the Keeper of the Seal.

Dr. Steiner expressed himself in the following way about this affair in an address during the so-called crisis in 1915:

“It was announced in autumn that because certain impossible symptoms had become apparent in our Society it was necessary to found a certain smaller society whereby I had attempted to attribute certain titles to a number of close associates who have been a long time in the Society in that I required of them that they would act independently in the sense of these titles. I said at that time: If something happens, the members will be informed by Three Kings Day. Nothing was informed and it is therefore obvious that the Society for the Theosophical Way and Art does not exist. It is self-evident because nobody informed anything. It is self-evident that the information would have been sent if the thing had been realized. The manner in which it was conceived in a certain case made it impossible. It was an attempt.⁴

The circle of nominees, as an internal matter, was shattered; outside the war raged; in Dornach the practical work continued no less intensively despite the external circumstances. Due to the recall to the fronts of so many artists and helpers, the burden of work fell heavily on the women. Few men were able to remain, Hermann Linde for one. From early morning on clanged the hammering and chiseling from wood which grew up out of the cement foundation to the curved domes. The outer and inner walls bore the organically moving forms, warmed and waved by the human hands grooving them. In the interior space the columns rose with their bases, capitals and architraves, until they reached the place where both domes merged into each other – a symbol of the soul's experience of how the cosmos separates and unites simultaneously.

The painters and their helpers were gathered around Hermann Linde. Dr. Steiner had drafted the motives for the painting of the domes, copies of which are preserved in Alinari's reproductions (Rudolf Steiner's drafts of the great dome in the first Goetheanum – realized by Alinari, Florence.) With diligence and zeal new priming methods were tried through which the effect of vegetable colors unfolded in glowing brilliance; plants were rubbed zealously by a group of helpers, from which the new colors for the dome paints derived. Weekly eurythmy performances provided the opportunity for the development of personal fantasy and to practice with the outlines Dr. Steiner had prepared.

In Germany a most capable replacement was soon found for the “sprung” Keeper of the Seal in the person of Miss Berta Meyer. During the months of the war years we spent in Germany, she often came from Bremen to Berlin to perfect her knowledge of jewelry art by means of Dr. Steiner's suggestions. A happy opportunity for new motivation was the return of a member from the orient with a collection of precious stones. Stones were selected whose inner substance and brilliance were especially appropriate. It was a peculiar experience to feel the cool ripple of the stones on one's hand and their penetration in one's etheric body. This grasp in the coolness of the stone kingdom and the almost exciting affecting glow of melting metal in fire, especially gold, brought the elements of nature's force clearly to consciousness. Dr. Steiner's drawing for the Mystery Dramas' seals provided the basis for the spiritual studies of this predestined [new] Keeper of the Seal, who left us so many excellent artistic works.⁵ Death tore her from us at the very moment that a place for her work, a Jewelry art school, could have been arranged in Dornach. The form forces of eurythmy, carried by etheric impulses and the musical art seeking new ways, which by experiencing the sharps and flats, over the fifth, to grasp the force of their origin in tone, to which they thanked their being, were also rehearsed with these seals. Thus feeling the way to lost words.

The new architectural style created by Dr. Steiner, which incorporated the plant movements and did not shut itself off from the outer world, but opened to the world, was also faithfully used in the glass windows.⁶ Floods of light had to stream into the space; differentiated according to the rainbow, but retaining the basic tones brought the hovering and weaving light colorings into the room. The delicateness of the nuances were intensified by the different thickness of the glass which acquired the motive during the grinding and etching; its spiritual content related to the path of initiation of humanity into the future. Whereas the motive of the larger and smaller domes followed the macrocosmic and microcosmic evolution of humanity leading to the fulfillment of his I.

The new art of black-white line drawing given by Dr. Steiner developed alongside the creative colors.⁷ And all these, artistically created from the most varied elements, were brought to life in the art of the spoken word – speech formation⁸ – which divines the original forces of the lost “Word” and to a certain extent grasps it. Through the little that was achieved by hard work it was possible to partly fulfill what Dr. Steiner referred to as the mission of the spiritual movement inaugurated by him: to allow the forgotten spiritual stream around Goethe and Schiller to flow again into culture.

We have lived in the plenitude of his impulses. He was torn from us by death in 1925. He had to pay with death for the immeasurable richness of his gifts. We were enlivened and carried by his encouraging spiritual force.

• 2. Rudolf Steiner may be referring here to the strong differences which occurred during this time, the end of 1911, because Rudolf Steiner refused to allow the members of the order founded by Annie Besant, “The Star of the East“ to attend events of the German Section [of the Theosophical Society] led by him.
• 3. Translator Note: gaps in all three manuscripts
• 4. lecture of August 1915 in Dornach – unpublished.
• 5. Kleinodienkunst. Die Dramasiegel. Nach himweisen und Entwerfen von Rudolf Steiner mitgeteilt und aussgearbeitet durch Beerta Meyer-Jabobs.
• 6. Die Goetheanum-Fenster-Motive Rudolf Steiners, Assja Turgenierff
• 7. Die schöpferische Kraft der Farbe, Hilde Boos-Hamburger
• 8. Sprachgestaltung

My dear friends! Today we have something to discuss that is very intimately connected with what can be felt from the whole of today's spirit of the age as the need for religious renewal. First of all, I have to present to you what can lead to the creation of a kind of breviary. This breviary should be what gives the pastor the strength to work, and perhaps I may take this opportunity to point out that in this respect, too, we should not confuse the intellectual with what, in the truest sense, can be the religious impulse that comes from the whole human being. Here it is really a matter of us communicating properly. There is a great deal – and this includes, in particular, because it has just been mentioned in the questions, charity – there is a great deal that must, so to speak, flow naturally from the mind, that must, as a matter of course, emanate from the pastoral care, but the pastoral care must first have acquired the appropriate mind. And that is why, to a certain extent, things that are happening inwardly are even more important today than the intellectual description of some external measures. The latter follow naturally in many respects when the inner life is in order.

Now I do not intend to go so far as to compile a literal breviary right now, but rather to bring about what a breviary can achieve. For the man of today, a breviary can no longer consist merely of reciting prayers, but must be a kind of emotional meditation in the fullest sense. Now I would like to give you the elements that, according to my findings, should make up what the pastor should experience over the course of a year, so that he can prepare himself in the right way and perform the pastoral ministry in the right way.

We begin with the time that lasts from, say, the end of November to around the end of December, until Christmas. So we begin with what can be called the Advent season. This Advent season is felt in the right way by us when we go through it as preparation for the Christmas season itself. But this can only be the case if we truly awaken within us all that is, as it were, alive in the development of the world and of humanity itself within such preparation, and these are essentially the following details for the Advent season. He who wants to live through this Advent season should first direct his meditation to that which, as a certain mystery, is included in what can be called the Word, the Logos. (The following is written on the board):

1. Word (Logos)

He should feel, in particular, how the concept of the Logos must be expanded so that one feels what it contains in everything that is actually the world, that one feels the working of the Logos in the blowing of the wind, in the moving of the clouds, in the course of the stars, the sun and the moon, in the becoming and growing of everything that surrounds us, but also in all that is becoming in man, without man adding anything to it through his own power of soul development at first. In this process, we do not yet feel the Logos or the Word in its entirety, but the most essential thing about meditation is that one begins with an incomplete beginning, like the plant with the root, and that one allows what one begins with, as it grows within oneself, to become what it can become. The second thing that can be particularly felt during this time is what I would like to call the commandment, (it is written on the board):

2. Commandment

that is, what arises when a person looks more inwardly. One could say: If one wants to visualize what is meant by this commandment or law, then one can turn, on the one hand, to the Old Testament image of the proclamation of the law to Moses at the burning bush, or, on the other hand, one can try to feel what is still felt today in ritual terms as the right thing to do when completing Jewish worship by saying: O Adonai. The third thing to focus on is, I would say, the natural event (it is written on the blackboard):

3. Natural Event

with its necessity, which must be felt in such a way that the person who sees both the sprouting and the destructive forces of nature, who sees, let us say, the proliferation of a jungle as the characteristic of growth, who sees earthquakes or volcanic eruptions as the characteristic of destruction, feels the necessary power of nature to become. In essence, this is the feeling that properly brings us to what the Old Testament calls the root of Jesse. The fourth thing we have to delve into is what can now be called the moral force in man, which in our time speaks from some vague depths as conscience, for example. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Moral Power

This is essentially what is already felt in the sense of the Old Testament as the source in man, through which he is a closed self in relation to the outside world, which can therefore well be called: the key that opens and no one locks, that locks and no one opens. We have meditatively immersed ourselves in those points that can also be felt with regard to the human being himself. If one then turns more outward, one awakens in oneself the light that pours through the world, but at the same time one feels it by taking that which is there for the senses as light and, for the spirit, as the justice of the universe. (It is written on the board):

5. Light: Justice

In the languages of earlier times, right means something that is connected with “judging”, and this in turn is connected with the ray. One can then feel how that which is felt as luminous justice penetrates into the darkness, into the shadow, as the invigorating element that works into the shadow of death. It is images that we must mainly devote ourselves to, and from this pictorial composition, after we have, so to speak, felt the sun of righteousness, the possibility arises for us to let the sun of righteousness arise from this image, when we have felt this deeply, and also that which is summarized in one the good and the evil, that it turns out for the good through the power that radiates from it – not radiating from evil, but from that which we are to grasp – so that we do not place ourselves alone among those who claim justice through a certain inward arrogance, but also among those who are recognized as sinners. Finally, as we pass through this series of images, we rise to the perception of Christ, (it is written on the board):

6. Christ

who unites life with death and death with life. And finally, from there, I would like to say, we can be brought into the perspective that leads directly to Christmas, the perspective through which we can see the Christ in the Jesus who is also called Immanuel in the New Testament, because in Jesus is God. (It is written on the blackboard):

7. Jesus = Immanuel

If we meditate on these images in the organic context just characterized during the Advent season, then this is what can be lived out, as I would like to show you using this example: by inwardly expressing what we have experienced in words, which might sound something like this:

The word permeates heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human soul, the hidden through itself
It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of darkness, gentle in the brightness
It comes to earth in Jesus.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that in the early days of human development, the language that was given and which then led to poetic forms, to the art of language in humanity, was never given than from such an inner experience of the cosmic currents and from such an experience of the world, so that every sentence in older languages and also in older poetry can be related to something like that.

When we have gone through this way to the Christmas season, we should then actually use the following four weeks until January 25 to understand the essence of this Christmas season in a holistic way. And it is connected with the understanding of this essence of the Christmas season, a large part of what can also be called the understanding of Christ. I would like to say that it is important to cross the threshold from the Advent season through the consecration evening, through the Christmas night to the actual Christmas celebration. What can we feel when we are really standing in the world as human beings? Well, my dear friends, we can feel that everything I have given you now as a meditation for the Advent season, no matter how vividly it was in us, in a certain sense destroys our humanity, as we experience these things inwardly, I would say, as an inner perception, but we do not understand them. I would like to say that throughout the whole Advent season, one believes to understand it, but precisely by having gone through it, one gets the feeling that understanding must first follow, the word must first become a name that makes sense to us, that makes the word understandable to us. And whereas we used to feel, I might say, with a certain depression, the word flowing through the world, we now become aware of it as power, as the power of becoming of existence, the name of which we have grasped; and we become further aware of it as the active factor in all activity. (It is written on the blackboard):

1. Name: The power of existence of being.
2. Active being.

The commandment ceases to be a mere intellectual concept that one is supposed to obey; one becomes aware of a power of being that also prevails in the moral realm, and one becomes aware, as a third thing, of how the naming and the named are one. Here, in the quiet interior, lies the experience of the sense of self. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Name to name

The natural law ceases to be mute, it begins to speak: name to name. And in this naming of the name, we now feel through Christ as that which leads through illness and death, through darkness and bondage. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. The Guide through Death and Darkness

And what was previously only felt as a kind of glow of justice flowing through the world is revealed to us as something that belongs to our own being in this experience of the Christmas season; the light of justice is transformed into the ancestor Christ. (It is written on the board):

5. Ancestor Christ

And then we feel how man needs Christ, how he lives unreconciled with the earth without Christ, how the earth can only bring him something that, in a certain sense, takes him away from the spiritual. If we allow these feelings to precede, we can see the reconciliation of earth and heaven emerging from them. (It is written on the blackboard):

6. Reconciliation of Earth and Heaven

And then one can feel in a very natural way how the earth denies the spirit in a certain way and now something is happening in one whereby one comes to the spirit that the earth cannot give. (It is written on the board):

7. Spiritualization of the earth

I would like to emphasize, my dear friends, that I try to give the words as I am giving them right now, because I believe that a living force is already at work in the words, and because, when one gives the words in a certain way and the other person immerses himself in the word in full inner freedom, then, if the words are chosen correctly, one can arrive at much, much more than is originally contained in these things, or at least than is contained in them according to the use of language. So I would like to express things in such a way that the word can come to life in you in a certain sense. Once more I would like to give an example of how one can summarize what has been experienced here by constantly looking at Christ Jesus in the Spirit:

In the man on earth He speaks from nature of the mystery of the world
In him He works as the creative power of the world, full of light
In him He speaks the word about His own nature
In his speaking, the gate of death and darkness opens
In Him, a new ancestor has appeared to man
Through Him, reconciliation with the heights of the world is achieved
Through Him, matter reveals spirit, spirit creates matter.

The experience of the Christmas mystery should actually extend into January, until, yes, let us say, January 22, 23, 24, 25. The time that now comes, until about February 23, 25, should be devoted to a meditative sense of what Jesus became in his transformation of humanity.

It is necessary, my dear friends, that we also feel how, through such a deepening in all becoming, being and weaving, how through such a feeling the pastor of souls can automatically come to open the testament and take from it the things that he then also brings to humanity in the reading of the gospel, and how he can come to carry out what he is to bring to humanity for understanding. In this time, which is the time of February, the third season for the Christian, we will meditate in particular on the way Jesus becomes wise. (It is written on the blackboard):

1. Jesus becoming wise

Everything that we can recognize, for example from the appearance of twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, everything that can otherwise be recognized about the development of Jesus in his youth, belongs in this meditation. Secondly, however, we are to find our way into the meditation of the one who cannot be tempted, who cannot really be tempted in temptation. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. He who cannot be tempted

Thirdly, we are to confront that which lies in a concept that we are actually to feel completely; that is the concept that the One who becomes wise, the One who in temptation is not to be seduced, is the Son of Man. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. The Son of Man

is therefore the one who is intimately related to all humanity, but who, due to the fact that he entered into earthly existence under the conditions you already know, does not represent that human being who bears the disease of sin, but rather that human being who bears within him the calling to fulfill the nature of the human being in such a way that the disease of sin may fall away. This, however, leads directly to what the fourth aspect has to present: the World Physician. (The following is written on the blackboard):

4. The World Physician

that is, the one who heals sick humanity. We can apply to ourselves everything in the Gospels that relates to this, and we can bring it to others in the appropriate way. But only through this are we properly prepared for what we are to feel about the Gospel and, in general, through our relationship with Christ Jesus as the special way in which Christ Jesus finds the disciples. (It is written on the blackboard):

5. The Finding of the Disciples

There are infinite depths to the Gospel narratives when we make the meditation just on these, on the way the Christ is approached by his disciples, how they follow him, and so forth. It is only when we have this feeling that we have a correct sense of the next, of the teacher, (it is written on the board):

6. The Teacher

by the Teacher in the sense in which I have indicated it to you in the course of these lectures, in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. And only when we have felt this will we be able to experience inwardly what I have said about the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, because the earthly kingdom is actually destined to perish, and so the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. (It is written on the board):

7. Establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom

We have immersed ourselves in an understanding of Jesus in this way, and in a sense we have become mature through it. Then we have become mature in a sense to the point of Christian self-knowledge. This would then have to be fulfilled from the end of February to March 21 to 25, or so. And we would come to such human self-knowledge by properly fulfilling the period of Lent, the time of fasting, which of course must essentially take into account the process of transformation within. In this way, the human being would first feel how the earth takes hold of him with its forces, but how he, through this taking hold of the forces of the earth, is, as it were, making his way with the decline of the earth. (It is written on the board):

1. Earthly Decline

But precisely from such a feeling of earthly decline, another feeling can arise, which I would like to characterize in the following way. One senses that in all that announces itself as external nature, there is an element of decline. One feels connected to this element of decline through the nature of one's body, and one is seized by the fear that the moral within oneself must also perish. Thus, one senses a danger for the moral in the face of becoming earthly. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. Danger for the moral sense.

Certain denominations accommodate this sentiment by ordering fasting, that is, not eating as sumptuously as is otherwise the case during the year, but rather abstaining. In this way, although it is attempted in a physical way and such physical things should actually be far removed from our time, there is indeed an increased sense of the human being within himself, and with it a transition from the otherwise merely natural feeling to the finer feeling with regard to the moral. However, fasting must not be arranged in the way it is often arranged in the Roman Catholic faith. Recently, we learned of a decree issued by the bishop to whose diocese Basel also belonged in the 12th and 13th centuries; in this episcopal ordinance, the provost of the Basel cathedral was obliged to slaughter eight pigs every day at Christmas for his canons – I believe there were twelve of them. I think there were more like 26 canons, but that's enough. In any case, the menu that was indicated was more than enough for Christmas, thanks to an episcopal decree. And then it was also indicated how to fast. But I could not find out that through this fasting precisely that could be achieved, which I have now indicated to you as the meaning of the Lenten commandment. But then, when this danger to morality has been felt, one can also have a sense of the distinction between what is actually the eternal heritage of man and how this eternal heritage of man, which is to be restored through Christ, differs from what man has become through mere earthly existence. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Eternal heritage of humanity and temporal humanity.

And now, and this can also be the case, a strong feeling should arise from this, how man as an earthly human being is in need of healing, how he is in need of the leader, how he is in need of light, how he is in need of a transformation for that kind of mind that he has only from earthly forces, how he is in need of that kind of mind that he has only as an earthly human being. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Needing healing

5. Needing a guide

6. Needing light

7. Needing a change of mind

We have thus characterized something of what we are to live through as meditation during the March time of the year, February to March, during Lent, and are now approaching what arises as the contemplation of Christ's death as the March-April time that fills the Easter season. The first thing we are to include in our meditation is looking up to heaven. Let us try to have a sense that the Easter season is connected with the fact that, in a sense, the spiritual falls away in the sky, that we are pushed towards a physical relationship. So (it is written on the board):

1. Looking up to the Physical Sky

The second thing we are to feel, looking up to the physical sky on the one hand, is the grave, in reference to Christ's descent into the grave. (It is written on the board):

2. Grave.

The third, which we should then feel deeply, is death as the effect of being in the earthly body. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Death

We will try to put ourselves in these feelings during Passion Week, in order to find the right way to make the transition during Easter days, to feel the resurrection as the effect of being a spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Resurrection

But then, when we have grasped the resurrection, when resurrection stands before us, as we have tried to do in our lectures, then the right worship of the one God arises, but then also the right self-containedness, the right “Christ in me.” (It is written on the blackboard):

5. Worship
6. Christ in me

And only after all this, what the felt connection between looking up at the starry sky, but which determines the times, and looking down at the grave, feeling death in the body, feeling the resurrection as a spirit, permeating ing of our soul with devotion in worship, of the closing in on itself of the power of Christ, all that can be deeply felt can then be summarized in what can be called the Christian confession, which is best achieved through meditation. (It is written on the board):

7. Confession

And now we come to what the May days, April 24 to May 25, can encompass. Once we have gone through all this, the days of May will give us a sense of the immediate presence of the supersensible, which we can learn to perceive in the way the resurrected Christ Jesus walks with his disciples, insofar as the Gospels give us clues. (The following is written on the board):

1. The Presence of the Supersensible

From this presence of the supersensible, from what we can feel from the fact that we feel, just as things surround us in relation to our eyes and ears, so the beings of the supersensible surround us, from this a feeling for the existence of the moral arises. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. The Existence of the Moral

And only when we have developed the right feeling for the existence of the moral will we be ready to perceive the external phenomena of the world as appearance; before that, it will always remain more or less a cliché. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. World as Appearance

But then, when we perceive the world as appearance, this carries us over to a perception of the truth that is hidden in the world. (It is written on the board):

4. Hidden Truth

And now we all have within us the elements that enable us to penetrate more concretely with the Christ, to penetrate with the Risen Christ. (It is written on the blackboard):

5. Penetrating with the Risen One

Only in this context can we really have a proper sense of how to be a disciple, not of someone facing death, but of the Risen One, which is what Paul then became. (The following is written on the board):

6. Disciple of the Risen One

And then you can feel with him in his world, feel in the spiritual world, feel in a different world. (It is written on the board):

7. Feeling in a Different World

And now we come to the time of Pentecost, that is, to the time of the appearance of the Holy Spirit, May-June. If we have gone through all this in advance, if we feel we are in another world, we get an idea of how we can have a new living realization, not the realization that we peel off as words from the things around us. So (it is written on the board):

1. New Living Realization (gospel)

We are beginning to feel the gospel in its liveliness, and now it turns out that we are learning to feel it promisingly, that a moral world is emerging, because the moral will be its continuation after the demise of the purely natural world. The second thing is therefore the prospect of the existence of the moral. (It is written on the board):

2. Prospect of the existence of morality

This will be a very concrete sensation when we have first gone through everything else, after we have come to the feeling of danger for the moral during Lent. And after we have opened up this prospect of the being of this moral, we learn to recognize, I might say, how the truth in the spirit, holding itself up, floats away from all earthly heaviness. (It is written on the board):

3. Truth that holds itself in the spirit.

This is something that one must first experience separately in its concreteness in order to have it as a human being. Everything we can experience on earth, everything we can combine through the senses and with the mind, carries within it a certain element that I would like to compare pictorially with the following: Imagine an athlete stepping up to us and showing us a weight that says, let us say, 1000 kg. We marvel at his enormous strength. But then he shows us that there is nothing inside by shaking it, and we stop believing in the reality of the appearance. Why do we stop believing in the reality of the appearance? Because we see that the earthly power of gravity is lacking, and the earthly ceases to have a being for us in the true sense of the word when it lacks the earthly power of gravity. The spiritual has the inner gravity, the inner power of retention. We do not get a correct sense of this inner power of retention of the spirit until we have gone through the things I have spoken of. But then, when we have gone through this, we realize that what appears to us separately in spirit as the truth of the world is also present in material things, so that it is not the material things that are an illusion, but only their appearance as mere matter, that matter is actually spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Matter as Spirit

When we have sensed this, then, my dear friends, we must experience something like an invasion of the power that we have gained through this entire meditation into our word. That is the moment when, in our inner meditation, what can be expressed by the words: “My tongue is loosed,” arises. (It is written on the board):

5. The tongue is loosened.

One senses the word of the world in the spoken word. One senses it as something that one experiences, I would say, in the utterance of the word itself; just as one has a taste when swallowing food, so when one speaks the word, when the tongue is loosened in this sense, one senses what the word as a world word allows us to feel, not just to understand. One then feels oneself in the word, one feels oneself raised up out of what our mere body is, one feels oneself weaving with its essence on the waves of the word, one feels the liberation. (It is written on the board):

6. Feeling of liberation

And then one also feels the union with that which has liberated one, the union with the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

7. Union

We now come to the so-called St. John's time, June-July. We have, in a certain way, meditatively completed what we must, after all, to a high degree work out with ourselves as human beings. We are now ripe to immerse ourselves in what is going on around us, and we are indeed called upon to do so by what has already been prepared in the outer world. My dear friends, we can look at what is happening and has been prepared in the outer world in such a way that our inner eye is not spiritually solar; then we see the plant world, prepared in spring, extending into the ripening of the high sun, but we do not feel the spirit in the making concretely and distinctly enough. Only when we have brought all this with us to the time of June, for the training of our spirit, do we also experience the spirit in the making. (The following is written on the board):

1. Spirit in Becoming

And when we experience the spirit in becoming, then, in a sense, all being continues for us; we feel, in a sense, when we look beyond the seed, how the seed does not merely conclude with its upper fruit, but carries within it the power, which we feel spiritually, to shoot up further. And we feel how the long light of night at this time carries within it the power to become even brighter spiritually. That the growth of the light of night can remain until the time when the actual summer begins is transformed into a spiritual growth of the universe. We feel that which in pre-Christian times could only be felt by the world, that in the post-Christian era, when we can relate to Christ in the right way, it transforms into the spiritual vision in the becoming of the light in the darkness. That which we have developed for Christ in us is also carried into nature. We also feel the light in nature outside as the spiritual in the darkness. From what we feel in the continuation of the power of growth in the plants, in the continuation of the becoming light, we are given images that are hidden in the world, which we grasp in the imaginative life. We are given the power to express ourselves in images. We learn to follow the Pentecostal call, we learn to preach. We learn to preach by learning to penetrate nature spiritually. We learn to preach by developing a deep feeling for nature, by being able to say to ourselves: the plants do not stop growing there, but the spiritual extends beyond their physical growth. The light also shines where it is on the wane. We understand the words of John: 'I will decrease, but thou shall increase'. Thus we have a sense for the light in the darkness, for the becoming in the being. (The following is written on the board):

2. Light in the Darkness. Becoming in Being.

We feel nature around us and become aware that what we feel around us, wherever we carry the spirit through our mind's eye, has a relationship to our sleeping, but that we are unconscious when we experience our sleeping, and that by looking out [into nature] we feel the waking sleeping of nature. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Nature's waking sleep.

And we feel, my dear friends, how that which was the Christ impulse can now actually be carried into the contemplation of the outer world. The time is ripe for this, because the present time must spiritualize a Christ-less natural science, to christen it; otherwise no new formation of religion arises.

The description of this process through the year in the early Church has come to an end; the time had not yet come when it was possible to carry the Christ impulse out into the outer natural world. You see how what was given in a certain abundance for the preceding period passes over into something that now has no relation at all to the development of time. You must begin — if you stop with the old development of the church — to do something like what the Catholic Church does when it has developed the Gospel up to the time of Pentecost and developed it out into the time of St. John: you must adhere to the feasts of the apostles, you must adhere to the feasts of the saints, to the feasts of Mary, you must adhere to the Acts of the Apostles, you must adhere to the letters of Paul. But basically you do not have that innermost relationship to what actually only emerges here and deepens more and more in the following time. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, had the Gentile view, which related to nature, to connect with the Jewish view, which related to the inner man. Therefore, if we feel very deeply during this time: What was the consciousness of John as the forerunner of Christ Jesus, how did he experience the Christ, and how did he, above all, express his own activity in relation to the appearance of the Christ? If we then find the transition [to the question]: How was Paul's life in relation to the living Christ? — and if we draw a comparison in ourselves in this time of John between John and Paul, then we lead over in the right way to the actual task of Paul, which is felt to be so because it could not have been fulfilled in its time.

But, my dear friends, we are not getting anywhere here; we only have three points, whereas we used to get seven points in a very natural way. And we must be content with the inner development, with the meditative development of these three points, for the time around St. John's Day. We must feel what the spirit gives us in a more lively way, how it expands, I might say, into the distance, but thereby also has less content than what arises for the spirit in what has gone before. Therefore, anyone who wanted to continue schematically with what I have given would not be able to arrive at a correct inner handling of what I must actually describe as the meditative content of the month of John for the pastor.

This afternoon I will also write down the time from July to August for you. This is the time when we experience the actual maturing of nature in the Christian sense. This is also the time when we will be particularly moved by what Paul says about his perception of the living Christ, his rapture into a spiritual world. For we will, so to speak, feel that which we previously sensed as the spirit in the process of becoming, as the presence of this spirit in the ripening nature that surrounds us. We will feel, when we can immerse ourselves in the right way in what has come to fruition, how the light has really shone in the darkness, in everything that is out there, where the light lives on in the ripening, and we will be able to feel how that which comes into being, that which lives on in the ripening, can also take root in us. We can only feel this if we can now experience, out of the earlier feeling of the waking-sleeping spirit, the calm of the August nature and the spiritual that is weaving in the calm, living in the splendor of the sunlight, and we will be able to transfer this image to that which we can experience in ourselves through Christ. Then, as a fourth point, a very lively experience of the external world emerges, and a fourth point follows from the other three. In a sense, the external and the internal come together in us. In this way, one can sense external and internal maturity, and one gets the images for inner maturity from the fact that the external fertilizes one.

I would like to continue from there in the afternoon and write down the last few points for the rest of the time.

On behalf of the administrative board of the Johannesbau Association.

We should be clear about one thing: as long as we are forced to meet in such halls, whose forms belong to a declining culture, our work must more or less meet the fate of that which is doomed. The spiritual current will only be able to bring about the new culture that it is called to bring when it is granted to work right down to the purely physical design of even the walls that surround us. And spiritual life will work differently when it flows out of spaces whose dimensions are determined by spiritual science and whose forms grow out of spiritual science. And you can be sure that spiritual science would come to nothing if it did not find its way into the hearts of those who are willing to make the sacrifices that a building like the one planned in Munich demands.

(From the Stuttgart speech at the laying of the foundation stone of the local lodge house in January this year)

The spiritual science is facing obstacles whose retarding power has become dangerous. The stream of spiritual life has become broader and deeper. The number of listeners is growing, and the spiritual-scientific truths proclaimed today have taken on a character whose intimacy demands sacred places instead of the dance and concert halls that still serve their proclamation today. And even if the strong power that works among us seems to defy all obstacles, the stronger it works, the more everyone feels the contradiction of the circumstances, and everywhere the striving to create one's own spaces is making itself felt, which can accept and nurture the unfolding life with dignity.

The marked disproportion is most pronounced in Munich, where the spiritual work in the mystery plays is most dependent on external support and where the largest number of listeners flock to the cycles. The cycle participants are familiar with some of our difficulties from their own experience, albeit only the smaller part; but they have been able to deduce from the descriptions which obstacles stand in the way of staging the mystery plays on the rented stages.

But even if we were to dismiss all these external difficulties, if we were to accept that many of our friends remain distant from the cycle because the conditions under which we work make it impossible for them to follow with the appropriate attention, if we wanted to sit back and watch the best forces in this struggle being wasted on external obstacles, we must not forget that these powers of obstruction are already making the best part of the mystery plays impossible. Perhaps the audience was not aware of what could not have escaped the performers: mystery plays on a stage that was used for a modern operetta a few hours before and a few hours after the performance must remain plays. Mysteries can only be brought to reality in places of worship.

The spiritual scientific work, in its wonderful synthesis of art, science and religion, is to lead most directly and vividly into spirituality, but it is confronted with barriers that mean a “non licet”. For the inviolable laws of the spiritual world itself forbid further giving.

Thus, with unmistakable clarity, necessity itself, through which, according to Goethe's dictum, God reveals himself, demands a work from us that cannot be conceived as greater and more beautiful and that now, as it emerges more and more, not only serves practical purposes, but one might say becomes an end in itself. And this end in itself is the deeper meaning of that language in which necessity demanded – if we understand it correctly.

Architecture has to do with the same forces that shape the human physical body. Today's human body is built according to the dimensions that were prescribed in Noah's Ark; and the Gothic cathedrals preformed the physicality of the mystics of the later Middle Ages. Thus, what our eyes see and our hands grasp has an effect into the distant future, forming forms and determining destiny. And it is not irrelevant whether future forms and dimensions are dictated by the principles of purely utilitarian contemporary culture, which means obstacles upon obstacles for what is to come, or whether physical forms are formed that are in harmony with what is to be realized in the future.

And what applies to the microcosm has a corresponding meaning for the macrocosm. We know that we are at a turning point in time that demands extraordinary things of us. The fate of the world depends on what we do. What we do is not irrelevant.

The perspectives suggested here may seem too bold; but they alone explain the words spoken in January of this year at the laying of the foundation stone of the Stuttgart Lodge, which are set before these lines. These words made us aware of the responsibility that rests on us, the responsibility to the powers that shape the world. And in the face of this responsibility, all conflicting concerns had to fade away.

We hear the same words every cycle: “We cannot cover the subject exhaustively; with the limited time available, we can only hint at it; if we really wanted to delve into the subject, we would need weeks and months.”

A changing audience follows the spiritual scientific teachings. Short lessons, and of the short time half and more must be spent saying things that have already been said elsewhere, but which are indispensable as foundations, and so it is laborious to have to start almost from scratch again and again in order to be able to build a little further. And we have been grateful for this slow building up, which allowed us to consolidate the foundations to some extent. But what was necessary in the time of elementary instruction becomes fatal when we proceed to deepen and broaden our knowledge and insight beyond the first stages. And here, too, we are confronted with the serious question of whether we want to let the work come to a deadlock where it can still have an effect in breadth but not in depth.

The idea of a School of Spiritual Science is the necessary consequence that must be drawn from the delivery of the spiritual knowledge that our time has been honored to receive. If we review the co-workers active among us, it is already quite possible today to find teachers for almost all individual fields who, as far as we have been able to ascertain, would be willing to take on a teaching position. Only then, however, would spiritual science be able to fulfill the task that has been set for it from the very beginning: to fertilize all areas of life. The School of Spiritual Science will take up the developable knowledge of the academies where its official representatives have allowed it to become frozen in materialism and lead it up to the knowledge of the spirit and into that temple in which its union with art and religion makes the living mystery possible.

When the “Theosophical-Artistic Fund” was established in 1910 to ensure the Mystery Plays during the Munich Cycle, it was done with full recognition of the indispensability of a building of our own. However, the realization that the collection was so small meant that the realization seemed a long way off. It was only the urgency of the situation, which the Stuttgart lecture brought home to us, that forced us to look for other ways to make the realization possible.

The idea of borrowing interest-bearing capital initially led to the creation of an interest-bearing foundation in the form of tenement houses for Theosophists, which were to surround the intended building and shield it from the street. The Johannesbau-Verein, which was constituted in April of this year as a registered association with the rights of a legal entity, took on the project. After a short time, it was able to purchase a suitable property free of mortgages with only a small down payment from the Theosophical Artistic Fund, thanks to interest guarantees that some of its members were able to provide.

Thus he could hope to build the residential buildings with the first mortgage to be taken out by the bank and to transfer the capital of the second mortgage to the “theosophical-artistic fund” for the Johannes building. The rents yield considerable surpluses for amortization over and above the interest. Once the mortgages have been amortized, they will provide a permanent income that alone would be enough to secure the future of the festival and the work of the School of Spiritual Science.

Since the apartment buildings are to be occupied only by Theosophists, they create the most desirable environment for the central building, within which alone a strong spiritual center can arise; and they finally offer the indispensable possibility of expansion for the School of Spiritual Science.

Thus, the idea of building residential properties, which arose from our financial difficulties, proves to be justified and necessary in every respect. The membership fees of the Johannesbau-Verein enable the interest and amortization to be raised for the central building. A series of bequests promised to the Johannesbau-Verein provide security for the future.

Despite the aforementioned documents, which the Johannesbau Association has to offer, the capital raised on the basis of the same is completely insufficient for the implementation of the project and the “theosophical-artistic fund” also falls short of expectations. The funds allocated to it at the 1911 Games were not even enough to cover the festival's deficit, so it had to be paid by a member.

When we ask for the reasons for this attitude, we unfortunately have to confirm what sounds so harsh to our ears at the foundation stone laying ceremony in Stuttgart: there is still a lack of understanding of the importance and necessity in many cases. And when the JohannesbauVerein was founded, it saw its most important task as creating and awakening understanding. And we consider our task as fulfilled, as far as promoting the cause is concerned, if we have awakened a sense of beauty and an understanding of the purpose and necessity of the Johannesbau, and we must leave it to those who hear us to ignite their will. For the Johannesbau should be an act of the freest and highest understanding and most devoted love.

Today it is only possible to teach a few things about the ideas underlying the Johannesbau; for its forms have only been given to us in sketchy outlines. And it seems to me that the spiritual worlds will only give more when the invitation that has been extended to us has found an answer, the invitation to help shape the future in our own way. But the only answer is action.

We were able to attend the inauguration of the Stuttgart Lodge during these days. And if any further confirmation of our intentions were needed, it could be found at this celebration. The words that came from the lips of our teacher in the consecration room, which had grown out of the feelings of devotion and dedication to the wisdom of “the spirit we serve,” sounded different, and the words penetrated deep into the room, like hammer blows that awaken the echo in the depths of the earth.

Since the days of the Gothic cathedrals, the temple culture could only work “underground”, that is, in secret. Our time sees the culture of the initiate come to light, and it is only logical that the “underground temple” be elevated to a “sun temple”. Those who read the signs “in which world karma is revealed” have made it clear in unmistakable words and deeds: the time has come.

Our work demands purposeful unity. The model in Stuttgart should be further developed in Munich, and on this basis, the so desirable own places for spiritual work can then arise at other places according to local needs. As commendable as the approach in Stuttgart was, equally commendable is the temporary stepping back of other branches in favor of the Munich central building, as was particularly emphasized by the Berlin Lodge at the inauguration ceremony in Stuttgart. This is the most beautiful way to demonstrate solidarity with the idea initiated in Munich, which has been dependent on the cooperation of all available forces in Germany since its first appearance. The School of Spiritual Science and the Mystery Plays are a matter for all those who care about the study and deepening of the spiritual scientific teaching and the internalization of spiritual life. To all of them we turn with the request to help carry out the great building idea, the realization of which our serious time so urgently demands of us.

And so may the nature of our work be a worthy reflection of our image in the spiritual world.

Organization:

The theosophical-artistic fund established in 1910 (deposit of Miss von Sivers and Miss Stinde at the Munich branch of the German Bank) accepts one-time donations and annual contributions of any amount.

The Johannesbau-Verein e.V. accepts extraordinary members (annual fee: at least 100 marks) and contributing members (annual fee: at least 50 marks). Applications for membership should be addressed to one of the chairpersons of the Johannesbau-Verein.

I) Miss S. Stinde, Munich, Adalbertstrasse 55/s or
II) Mr. Maler Linde, Etzenhausen near Dachau (Bavaria).

Annual contributions should be sent to the Johannesbau-Verein's check deposit account at the Bayerische Vereinsbank in Munich. Becoming a member does not involve any other obligation or liability.

Negotiations regarding mortgage loans are to be conducted with the treasurer of the Johannesbau-Verein, Count Otto Lerchenfeld-Köfering, currently of Munich, Schraudolfstr. 2 a.

The Johannesbau-Verein also accepts interest-bearing loans – but not less than 500 marks; negotiations for this also with Count Lerchenfeld. All information can be obtained from the secretaries of the Johannesbau-Verein: Countess P. v. Kalckreuth, Adalbertstraße 55/III and Dr. F. Peipers, Munich, Königinstrasse 69.

Those who wish to contribute their mite once and for all or repeatedly in annual contributions, without interest or other consideration, as a donation for the construction and the theosophical or artistic presentations, should pay to the “theosophical-artistic fund” at the Munich branch of Deutsche Bank.

Those who, by becoming members of the Johannesbau Association, wish to share in the costs of the Johannesbau on a permanent basis should make their contributions to the Johannesbau Association's cheque deposit account at the Bayerische Vereinsbank in Munich.

Please note that both ways of supporting the cause are necessary and beneficial and that it is not out of the question for someone to contribute in both ways.

The financial picture of the Johannesbau today, in round figures, is as follows:

The total requirement is estimated at 1,600,000 marks. This is broken down as follows:

A. Land purchase (including costs). 400,000 marks.
B. Residential buildings. 600,000 marks.
C. School of Spiritual Science 600,000 marks
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600,000 marks.

ad. A.: The majority of the property, with a total value of 300,000 marks, was purchased. For this, available funds in the amount of 60,000 marks from the theosophical-artistic fund were used for the down payment. The remaining amount bears interest at 4% and is to be paid off within twenty years. As security, personal interest guarantees from individual members were accepted by the seller, so that the property acquired in this way is unencumbered.

A small square of land worth 50,000 marks is still required and needs to be purchased; the conditions have been set. This amount, along with the costs of 50,000 marks, is to be raised by a second mortgage on the residential buildings to be constructed. The interest requirement for the entire building site, including high annuities, is 22,000 marks per annum.

ad. B.: The residential buildings require 600,000 Marks of capital, which can be raised primarily through a first mortgage, for which a first mortgage bank has made favorable offers. Interest requirements, including annuity, 30,000 Marks p.a.

ad. C. The construction of the university requires the same expenditure of 600,000 marks. Of this sum, the theosophical-artistic fund has 40,000 marks. Mortgage security, interest and annuity payments of 8,000 marks are possible for 160,000 marks. 400,000 marks are uncovered.

The annual expenses are calculated at 12,000 marks.

The interest and annuities totaling 75,000 marks (22,000 + 30,000 + 8,000 + 12,000 marks ) is covered by the rental income (approx. 50,000 Marks) and the contributions to the Johannesbau-Verein and the theosophical-artistic fund (currently approx. 22,000 Marks).

Personal interest guarantees from individual members, amounting to 30,000 Marks, are available to cover any shortfalls in this income.

To make the Johannesbau possible, the remaining sum of 400,000 marks must be raised through donations to the theosophical-artistic fund.

Munich, end of October 1911

The administrative board
of the Johannesbau Association

Lecture at the 1st General Assembly of the Johannesbau-Verein

My dear Theosophical friends!

The Johannesbau, insofar as it is intended to house the seat of our spiritual science, should be something that takes into account the developmental conditions of all humanity. And it will either be this, or it will not be what it should actually be. In such a matter, one has a responsibility towards all that is known to us as spiritual laws, spiritual powers, and spiritual developmental conditions of humanity, and that can speak to our soul. Above all, we also have a responsibility to the judgment of future humanity. Such a sense of responsibility in our time, in the present cycle of humanity, is something quite different from a similar sense of responsibility in past ages.

Great, mighty monuments of art and culture speak to us in the most diverse ways from the course of time. How art and cultural monuments from the course of time tell us about the inner conditions of human souls in those times, you heard a beautiful, meaningful reflection on this very topic this morning from this place. If we are to speak in our own terms about something that made the sense of responsibility easier for all the people who were involved in those cultural and artistic monuments, in a certain way, than it is for us when we want to speak about it in our language, then we must say: These people of the past had other aids than our time cycle has; the gods helped them, who, unconscious to these people, let their own powers flow into their subconscious or unconscious. And in a sense it is Maya to believe that in the minds or souls of those who built the Egyptian pyramids, the Greek temples and other works of art, only those thought forms, impulses and intentions were effective for that which confronts us, that which has confronted people over time in the forms, colors and so on, because the gods worked through the hands, through the minds, through the hearts of people.

Our time is, after the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period has passed, the first time cycle in which the gods test people for their freedom, in which the gods do not deny their help, but only come to meet people when these people, in their own free striving from their individual soul, which they have now received through enough incarnations, take up that which flows down from above. We also have to create something new in the sense that we have to create from the human soul in a completely different way than was the case in the past. Consciousness, which is born with the consciousness soul, which is the characteristic of our time cycle, that is the signature of our time. And with consciousness, with fully illuminated consciousness, into which nothing can be absorbed from the merely subconscious, we must create if the future is to receive similar cultural documents from us as we have received from the past. Therefore, it behooves us to try today to stimulate our consciousness with those thoughts that are intended to shed light on what we have to do. And we can only do something if we know from which laws, from which spiritual basic impulses we are to act. But this can only come about if we work in harmony with the entire evolution of humanity.

Let us now try, at least very sketchily, to bring to mind some of the main ideas that can inspire us in relation to what we are to create with this novel, not merely new work.

In a sense, we are meant to build a temple that is also a place of learning, somewhat like the ancient mystery temples. Throughout the history of human development, we have always called a “temple” any work of art that contained what was most sacred to people. And this morning you have already heard how the soul was expressed in the temple in different periods. If we look more deeply at what we can know of the temple building and the temple artwork with eyes warmed by the soul, we see a great diversity in the individual temple artworks. And I would like to say: How great is the difference to those temple works of art, of which, admittedly, only a little remains externally, and which we can actually only either guess at in their basic form, in their oldest form, or reconstruct from the Akasha Chronicle; those temple forms which we can describe as those of the second post-Atlantean cultural period, then merging into the third, as the original Persian temples, of which only a little has flowed over into the later temples, insofar as they are influenced in their configuration by that area of the earth. Some of them have been incorporated into Babylonian, Babylonian-Assyrian, and indeed Near Eastern temple art. What was the most significant aspect of this architecture?

As I said, external documents do not speak much of this architecture. But even if one cannot go into the documents of the Akasha Chronicle, but lets oneself be influenced by what has been preserved from a later period, and points out how temple buildings in such an early period in the area that has been spoken of may have looked, one must say to oneself: with these temples, an enormous amount, indeed everything, depended on the façade, on the way in which a temple presented itself when one approached the entrance. And if one had entered the temple through such a façade, one would have had the following sensation in the temple, depending on whether one belonged to the more or less profane or more or less initiated personalities: The façade is saying something to me that is spoken in a mysterious language; and inside I find what wanted to be expressed on the façade.

And if we turn our gaze from these temple buildings, which can only be guessed at by non-akashic research, to certain Egyptian temples or other sacred Egyptian buildings such as the pyramids, we find a different character indeed. We approach an Egyptian temple building and are confronted with symbols and art forms that we must first unravel. We must first unravel the mystery of the sphinxes and even the obelisks. Above all, the mysteriousness that we encounter in the sphinx and the pyramid is such that the German thinker Hegel called this art “the art of the enigma”.

In the peculiar pyramidal shape, without many external window openings, something encloses us, which is already announced by its entire enclosure as a mysterious thing, which is not revealed from the outside, at least initially through the facade, other than by the fact that we are initially presented with a puzzle. And we enter and find, in addition to the mysterious messages about all kinds of mysteries, written in the ancient mystery script or its successor, in the holy of holies, that which should lead the human heart and soul to the God who dwells in the deepest secrecy within the temple. We find the temple building as an enclosure of the most sacred secret of the deity and, on the other hand, we find the pyramid building itself as an enclosure of the most sacred secret of humanity: initiation, as something that is closed off from the outside world because it is supposed to be closed off in its inner, mysterious content.

If we turn our gaze from this Egyptian temple to Greek temple art, we find there, to be sure, the basic idea of many Egyptian temples, in that we have to understand these Greek temples as the dwelling place of the divine-spiritual. But we At the same time, we find the outer structure of the temple itself developed in such a way that it is a self-contained entity in a wonderful dynamism - not just of form, but of the inner forces living in the forms - as if in an inner infinity, as if in an inner perfection. The Greek god dwells in a work of temple art. In this temple artwork, beginning with the supporting columns, which in every way prove themselves in their dynamics as carriers and are just such that they can carry what lies on them, indeed must carry them, we find the god enclosed in a self-contained perfection; in one that represents a self-contained infinity within earthly existence, beginning with the coarsest and going into the most detailed.

And we find the thought “man's most precious expressed in temple building” captured when we approach the Christian temple, which is built over a grave or even over the grave of the Redeemer, who then joins the soaring tower and so on. But here we are confronted with a remarkable new element, one that fundamentally distinguishes later temple art, Christian temple art, from the Greek. The Greek temple is so characteristic precisely because it is self-contained, dynamically complete in itself. This is not a Christian church. I once used the expression: a temple of Pallas Athena or Apollo or Zeus needs no human soul near it or inside it, because it is not designed for a human to be near or inside it; rather, it should stand in its grandiose, lonely infinity, merely showing the dwelling of the god. The god lives in him, and this dwelling of the god in him forms his self-contained infinity. And the further away, one might say, people in the surrounding area are from a Greek temple, the more genuine a Greek temple appears. Let me express the paradox, because that is how the Greek temple is intended, and that is not the case with a Christian church: the Christian church challenges the believer with its forms of feeling and thought; and what we enter as a space, it tells us, when we study it more closely, in each of these individual forms, that it wants to take in the community and the thoughts and the feelings and the emotions of the community. And one could hardly have developed a happier instinct than to coin the word “cathedral” for the Christian temple, in which the coming together of people, the “being together” of people, to use the strange word, is expressed. “Cathedral” is closely related to “tum”, as can be seen from the suffix in the word “Volkstum”.

And if we turn our gaze further, towards the Gothic, how could we fail to recognize that the Gothic strives even more to express something in its forms, which is by no means as self-contained as, for example, Greek temple architecture. One is tempted to say: the Gothic form strives beyond itself everywhere, everywhere it strives to express something that appears in the space in which one is, like something searching, like something that wants to transcend boundaries and interweave into the universe. The Gothic arches are, of course, the result of the perception of dynamic relationships; but what leads beyond these forms themselves, what wants to make them permeable, as it were, and which, in a certain respect, is so wonderfully effective that we can, but do not have to, feel that the stained glass windows are in harmony with nature and mysteriously connect the interior with the all-pervading light. How could there be anything more grandiose and full of light in the outer weaving of space than when we stand in a Gothic cathedral and see the light weaving through the multicolored windows into the dust clouds! How could one feel more grandiose the effect of a space boundary that, going beyond itself, strives for the universe and its secrets, as they spread in the great becoming!

We have allowed our gaze to wander over a long period of temple art development and we have noticed how regularly, in accordance with the law, temple art progresses in human evolution. But in a way, we are standing before a kind of sphinx. What is the underlying reason? Why did it happen just like that? Is there an explanation for the strange facade that we encounter in the Near East as the last remnants of the first stage of temple architecture, which I have tried to hint at, with the strange winged animals, with the winged wheels, with the strange columns and capitals that tell us something, tell us something remarkable, and say exactly the same thing in a certain way that we experience in our soul when we enter the temple? Is there perhaps anything more enigmatic in the art of external forms than something like this, when we see it ourselves in the ruins in a modern museum? What was it that made that?

There is one thing that immediately gives us an explanation of what was done here. But we cannot find this explanation otherwise than by looking into the thoughts and artistic intentions of those who were involved in building this temple. This is, however, a matter that can only be solved with the help of occultism. What, after all, is a Near Eastern temple? Where do we find an example of it in the world?

The model that immediately sheds light on what happened here is as follows: Imagine a person lying on the ground and raising himself up with his forepart and his countenance. And in this man, lying on the ground and raising himself up, in order to have his body captured by the descending higher spiritual forces and to make contact with them, you have given what inspiration can give for a temple in the Near East. All the columns, the capitals, all the remarkable figures of this temple are symbols of what one can feel when one stands face to face with such a person, with all that is revealed in his hand movements, in his gestures and in his countenance. If one were to penetrate this countenance with the spiritual eye, one would enter into the human being, into the microcosm, which is an imprint of the macrocosm. In so far as the human countenance is a full expression of what is inside the human being, the microcosm, the same relationship between the human face and the inside as between the facade of the Near Eastern temple and what was inside.

A person rising up is a Near Eastern temple; not copied, but considered as a motif with all that it evokes in the soul. In so far as we are physical people and the human body can be described spiritually through theosophy, the temple of the ancient Near East is the expression of the human microcosm. Thus, by grasping the human microcosm and striving upwards, that part of human architecture is opened up. This physical human being has his faithful spiritual imprint in those remarkable temples, of which not much else remains except as ruins. In all details, down to the winged wheel and the archetypes of these things, one would be able to prove that this is so. The ages speak to us loudly: Man is the temple! And the Egyptian and Greek temples?

We cannot describe the human being merely from an anthroposophical point of view, but also from a psychosophical point of view, from the point of view of the soul. If we approach the human being as a soul-being, which is how he primarily presents himself to us on earth, then what we see when we look at a person in his eyes, in his face, in his gestures is truly a mystery. And how many people are a great mystery in this respect! Truly, when we approach a person in this way, it is no different than when we approach an Egyptian temple that presents us with the mystery. And when we enter into its interior, we find there the human soul's holy of holies. But we can only access it if we go beyond the external and enter into the inner self. A human soul is locked in the innermost Celia, like the sanctuary of the god, like the mystery secrets themselves in the Egyptian temple, in the Egyptian pyramid.

But the soul is not so closed within the human being that it cannot express itself in gestures, in everything that can come to us from a person. The body can become the external expression of the soul when it is permeated by the soul in its uniqueness. Then this human body appears to us as something that is artistically perfect to the highest degree, as something that is imbued with soul, as something infinite and perfect in itself. And if you look for something in the whole of visible creation that would represent something so perfect within itself as the human body is, insofar as it is ensouled: you will find nothing within visible creation, not in terms of dynamics, except for the Greek temple, which encloses the god within itself in such a way, but also serves as a dwelling for him in a perfect infinite, like the human body for the human soul. And in so far as man as microcosm is soul in a body, is the Egyptian, is the Greek temple: man.

The rising human being is the oriental temple. The human being who stands on the ground, keeping a world enigmatically closed within himself, but who can let this world flow into his being and calmly direct his gaze horizontally forward, closed to above and below: that is the Greek temple. And again the annals of world history speak: the temple is the human being!

And we are approaching our time, the time that originated, as we have already proven to an unshakable extent and will be able to prove more and more, in all that has emerged from ancient Hebrew antiquity and Christianity, the myster of Golgotha, but which in the first instance had to force its way into those forms that had been taken over from Egypt, from Greece, but which increasingly strove to break through these forms, to break through them in such a way that, as spatial boundaries - as broken through in themselves - they point beyond the limited space into the weaving of the infinite universe.

All things that will happen in the future are already predisposed in the past. In a certain way, the temple of the future is mysteriously predisposed in the past. And since I am talking about a great mystery of human development, I can hardly do other than express this mystery myself in a somewhat mysterious form.

We hear about the Temple of Solomon on many occasions as about that temple of which we know that it should express the whole spirit of human development. We hear about it; but the question is put to the people of the physical earth - and this is the enigmatic thing about it - that is quite in vain: Who has seen that Temple of Solomon, of which we speak as a grandiose truth, if we speak about it at all seriously? Yes, it is a mystery what I am saying! A few centuries after the Temple of Solomon must have been built, Herodotus traveled in Egypt and the Near East. From his travel accounts, which truly concern themselves with much less than what the Temple of Solomon must have been, we know that he must have passed only a few miles from the Temple of Solomon, but he did not see it. People had not yet seen the Temple of Solomon!

The mystery is now that I have to talk about something that was there and that people have not seen. But it is so. Now, there is also something in nature that can be there and that people do not see. However, the comparison is not complete, and anyone who wanted to exploit it would miss the mark completely. It is the plants that are contained in their seeds; but people do not see the plants in their seeds. However, no one should go further with this comparison, because anyone who would now interpret the Temple of Solomon based on it would immediately say something wrong. As far as I have said it myself, the comparison of the plant seed with the Temple of Solomon is entirely correct.

What is the purpose of the Temple of Solomon? It wants the same thing that the temple of the future should want and can only want.

One can depict the physical human being in anthroposophy. One can depict the human being in psychosophy, insofar as he is the temple of the soul itself and is inspired by the soul. And one can depict the human being through pneumatosophy, insofar as the human being is spirit. May we not then depict the spiritual human being in such a way that we say: First we see the human being lying on the ground, then the human being standing up; then the human being who, closed in on himself like an and stands before us with his gaze fixed straight ahead, as if he were executing himself; and then we see the man who looks up, his soul grounded within himself, but raising his soul to the spirit and receiving the spirit.

The outer human being who straightens up can be seen, and needs only to be interpreted. The human being who is to be interpreted within himself, who has been inspired by the soul, must be felt and sensed; interpretation is not enough. He was felt, as was so vividly expressed to you this morning. He was felt as truly as a Greek work of art must feel in us; in that it has been said that one feels the bones crack in the Greek temple because we are a microcosm that has been inspired to the extent that we are inspired. But the fact that the soul conceives in a spiritual, supersensible way is invisible. Yet it must become sensual if it is to become art!

No other age is capable of developing such art as our own and the coming one. But ours must make a start. All are only attempts, all are only beginnings, in the way that the self-contained temple has sought to break through the masonry in the Christian church to date and to find the connection with the infinite weaving of the universe. What must we build now?

We must build the completion of what has just been hinted at! From what spiritual science can give us, we must find the possibility of creating that inner space which, in its colors and formal effects and in other artistic presentations it contains, is at once closed and at the same time in every detail such that the seclusion is not a seclusion , that it invites us everywhere we look to penetrate the walls with the eye, with the whole feeling and sensing, so that we are closed and at the same time in the seclusion of the cell we are connected to the All of the weaving world-divine.

“To have walls and not to have walls” – that is what temple art of the future will answer: an inner space that denies itself, that no longer develops the egoism of space, that, in all the colors and forms it will offer, wants to be there only to let the universe in. How colors can do this, to what extent colors can be the connection with the spirits of the surrounding environment, insofar as they are contained in the spiritual atmosphere, I have already tried to describe at the opening of our Stuttgart building.

In the outer physical perfection of man, what is the supersensible man? Where do we still encounter a hint of the superphysical man in the outer physical man? Nowhere else but where the human being incorporates that which lives within him into the word, where he speaks, where the word becomes wisdom and prayer and - without the usual or any sentimental connotation of these words - envelops the human being in wisdom and prayer, trusting, world riddle! The Word that has become flesh in man, that is the Spirit, that is the spirituality that expresses itself also in the physical man. And we will either accomplish the task we have been given, or we will not do it at all, but will have to leave it to future ages. We will accomplish it when we are able to shape our inner space for the first time in an appropriate way, as perfectly as it is possible today, quite apart from how the building will present itself on the outside. It could be wrapped in straw on all sides — that is irrelevant. The outer appearance is for the outer, profane world, and has nothing to do with the inner. The inner space is what it is all about. What will it be?

It will present itself in such a way that every glance we cast will fall on something that announces to us: This, in all its colors and forms, in all its language of colors and forms, in all that it is, in all its real, living existence, expresses the same thing as what can be done and spoken in this place, what man can entrust to his own body as the most spiritual thing about him. And there will be a unity in this structure, proclaiming wisdom, prayer, the mystery of the human being, and that which encompasses the space. And it will be natural for the word that penetrates into space to limit itself in such a way that it falls, as it were, on the walls, and meets on the walls that which is so akin to it that it gives back to the inner space what is given by the human being himself. From the center of the word to the periphery of the word, the dynamic will emanate, and a peripheral echo of the spiritual companionship and spiritual message itself should be what presents itself as an inner space, not breaking through as a window, but at its boundaries, at what it itself is, simultaneously limited and at the same time freely opening up to the expanses of spiritual infinity.

This could not yet be there, because only spiritual science is capable of creating such a thing. But spiritual science must create such a thing at some time. If it does not create it in our age, later ages will demand it from it. And just as it is true that the Near Eastern temple, the Egyptian temple, the Greek temple, and the Christian church had to enter into human development, it is equally true that the spiritual mystery room, with its conclusion before the material world and its disclosure to the spiritual world, must arise from the human spirit as the work of art of the future.

Nothing of what already exists can remind us of the ideal form that is to emerge before us. Everything must be new in a certain respect. It will of course arise in an imperfect form, but that is enough for the time being; with it the beginning will have been made. And with it the beginning will have been made for ever higher and higher degrees of perfection in the same field. What do people of the present day need to make themselves reasonably ripe for such a work of temple art?

No art can come into being unless it arises out of the collective spirit of a cycle of humanity. The words of the architect Ferstel, builder of the Votivkirche in Vienna, still ring in my ears. These words were spoken during his rector's address in the second year of my studies at the Vienna Technical University. At the time, they sounded in my soul like a discord on the one hand, but on the other hand like a tone that truly characterizes our time. Ferstel said the remarkable words at the time: architectural styles are not invented – one must add to these words: architectural styles are born out of the peculiarity of peoples. Now, our time shows so far no signs of finding architectural styles in the same sense that the ancient times found architectural styles and presenting them to the world again. Architectural styles are indeed found, but they are only found by the collective spirit of some human cycle. How can we today bring before us anything of the collective spirit that is to find the future architectural style that we mean today?

I will now try to say something about the nature of this matter from a completely different side and from a completely different point of view: In the course of my theosophical work, I have repeatedly encountered artists in a wide variety of fields who had a certain fear, a certain shyness, of theosophy, and this was because theosophy attempts to open up a certain understanding of works of art and also of the impulses on which they are based. How often does it happen that what confronts us as saga and legend, but also as a work of art, is interpreted by theosophy, that is, it is tried to be traced back to the underlying forces. But how often does it also happen that the artist withdraws from such an interpretation in an understandable way, because he, especially when he is productive in one field, says to himself: I lose everything that is original; what I want to pour into the mold — everything, content as well as form — will be lost to me if I reduce what comes to me as a livingly felt work of art, or at least as a livingly felt intuition, to some conceptual or ideological construct.

There are few things that people have been able to say to me over time that I have been able to understand better than this fear and trepidation. For if you have the predisposition, you can fully sympathize with the horror the artist would feel if he were to find his own work, or a work he loves, analyzed here or there, with the work of art taken over by the intellect! What a terrible thought for everything that is an artist in our soul! We almost feel a kind of cadaverous odor when we have a Goethean Faust before us and below [read] the notes of an analyzing scholar, even if he belongs to the interpreting philosophers, not to the interpreting philologists alone! Yes, what should we say to that? I would like to make it clear to you very briefly in a few minutes with an example.

I have here in front of me the latest edition of the Legend of the Seven Wise Masters, which has now been published by Diederichs. This old legend – which exists in a wide variety of versions, with parts of it scattered almost all over Europe and recurring again and again – is a highly remarkable tale, beautifully constructed as a work of art. I am now talking about the art of poetry, but what is done for poetry could also be done for architecture. I cannot tell you now what is contained in the legend of the seven wise masters, which in some cases is expressed in extremely crude terms, but I would like to describe the skeleton in the following way.

What is expressed here is attached to a skeleton that is brought to life in the successive stories. The whole thing is headed: “Here begins the book that tells of the Emperor Pontianus and his wives, the Empress, and of his son, the young Lord Dyocletianus, how he wanted to hang him and how seven masters redeemed him, every day, each with his saying.” An emperor is married to a woman, with whom he has a son, who is described here as Dyocletian. The woman dies and the emperor marries another woman. His son Dyocletian is his rightful successor; from his second wife he has no legitimate successor. The time is approaching when Dyocletian is to be educated. It was announced that he was to be educated in the most meaningful and satisfying way possible by the wisest people in the land, and seven wise masters then came forward to take over the education of the emperor's son. The emperor's second wife also wanted to have a son in order to prevent her stepson from succeeding her in some way. However, she does not succeed. So she now tries to blacken this son of the emperor in every way with her husband, and she finally decides to eliminate him in some way. To do this, she uses all possible means. Now it turned out that Diocletian had been taught by the seven wise masters for seven years, that he had learned great and many things in the most diverse way, that is, in the sevenfold way. But in a certain way he had even outgrown all the practical wisdom that the seven wise masters had mastered. And so he had succeeded in interpreting a star in the night sky. This enabled him to say that for seven consecutive days, when he returned to his father, he would remain silent, would not speak in any way, and would present himself as a fool. But now he also knew that the Empress was plotting his death. So he now asks the seven wise masters to save him from death.

And now, in seven successive periods of time, the following happens: The son comes home. But the Empress has told the Emperor a story that has made a great impression on his soul, and which had the very purpose of moving the Emperor to have his son hanged. The Emperor is quite in agreement with this, for the story has convinced him. The son is already being led out to the gallows, when on the way they meet the first of the seven wise masters. After being reproached for leaving his son so stupid, the first of the masters speaks up and says he wants to tell the emperor a story. The emperor wants to hear it. Yes, says the wise man, but first you have to let the son come home; because I want the son to hear us before he is hanged. - The emperor agrees.

They return home, and there the first of the seven wise masters tells his story. The emperor is so impressed by this story that he does not have the son hanged, but releases him. The next day, however, the empress tells the emperor a story that again leads to the son being sentenced to death. He is led out to the gallows again, and on the way they meet the second of the seven wise masters, who also wants to tell the emperor a story before the son is hanged. This happens, and the result is that the son stays alive again. This is repeated seven times in a row until the eighth day arrives and the son can speak. This is how the son is saved.

The entire story, as well as the entire conclusion, are vividly presented in an excellent manner. I would now like to say: On the one hand, you take the book in your hands and immerse yourself in it and you take great pleasure in the large, sometimes rough images; wonderfully, you are absorbed in the description of souls. But such a story almost demands to be explained. Absolutely? No, only in our time, because we live in the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period, where the intellect is the dominant and ever more dominant force. In the age in which this story was written, it would not have prompted anyone to explain it. But we in our time are condemned to give an explanation for it, and then one decides to give one. How obvious is it? The Emperor had a wife; from her he has a son who is destined to be educated by seven wise masters, and who is aware that he comes from the time when humanity still had the clairvoyant soul. The clairvoyant soul has died, but the human ego still remains and can be taught by the “seven wise masters”, who appear to us in the most diverse forms. I myself once pointed out that we are essentially dealing with the same thing in the seven daughters of Jethro, the priest of Midian, whom Moses meets at his father-in-law's well, but also in the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages.

The second woman, who can no longer develop a divine consciousness, is the present human soul, who therefore cannot have a son either. Dyocletian, the son, is taught in secret by the seven wise masters, and in the end he must be freed by the powers he has acquired from the seven wise masters. We could go on like this and give an

absolutely correct picture and would, of course, be of great service to our time. But let us now take our artistic sense. I do not know to what extent what I am about to say will find an echo! But if you read the book, let it sink in and then explain it very cleverly and correctly in the sense of our time, as our time demands, you still feel as if you have actually done the book an injustice, a serious injustice, because you have actually put a straw skeleton of all sorts of abstract concepts in place of the living work of art. And it makes no difference whether this is right or wrong, clever or not clever.

We can go even further. The greatest work of art is the world, either the macrocosm or the microcosm. In images or symbols, in all kinds of things, the ancient times expressed what they had to express about the secrets of things, and we come with the “age-old” wisdom - which is only as old as it has prepared itself as a seed for the fifth post-Atlantic cultural age - we come with the intellect, we come with all of theosophy as an explanation of the world. This is something just as abstract and dry as the living reality, just as the commentary is dry compared to the work of art! Although there must be Theosophy, although our time demands Theosophy, we must feel it in a certain respect like a straw skeleton compared to the living reality. In a certain way, this is no exaggeration. For in so far as Theosophy only occupies our minds, in so far as we are only with the intellect, in so far as we coin schemas and all kinds of technical terms, especially in the parts that relate to man himself, in so far is Theosophy a mere straw skeleton. And it only begins to become a little more tolerable where we can describe, for example, the different conditions of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon and the earlier times on Earth, or the activities of the different hierarchies.

But it is horrible to speak of it: that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego - or even of manas and kama-manas - and it is even more horrible when these things have been expressed in diagrams and on blackboards. I can hardly imagine anything more horrible than the whole, in itself magnificent human being, and next to it on a blackboard the human being with the seven human limbs; being surrounded by a large number of people in a large hall and having a blackboard next to you with the scale of the seven basic human parts. Yes, that's how it is! But we have to feel our way towards something like that. We don't need to hang these things right in front of our eyes, because they're not even beautiful, but we have to hang them in front of our souls! That is the mission of our time; no matter how much one may say against these things from the point of view of taste, of artistic productivity – that belongs in our time, that is the task of our time.

But how can we escape this dilemma? We are also supposed to be boring theosophists in some respects, to pick apart and dissect the world, to incorporate grandiose works of art into abstractions and even to say: We are theosophists! How can we escape this dilemma?

There is only one way out! And this means that Theosophy is a cross for us, that Theosophy is a sacrifice for us, that we really feel that it takes away almost everything that humanity has had of a living world content so far. And there is no degree of intensity that I would not describe to make it clear that for everything that springs up in a living way, including in the course of human development and the divine world, Theosophy must first be something like a field of corpses!

But when we then feel that Theosophy, as the herald of the greatest thing in the world, becomes the greatest pain and deprivation for us, so that we feel within us one of the divine traits of its mission in the world, then it becomes the corpse that rises from the grave, then it celebrates the resurrection, then it rises from the grave!

No one will experience joy at the defoliation and desolation of the world's content, but no one can experience the productivity of the world's secrets like the one who, with his productivity, feels like a follower of Christ, who has carried the cross to the place of the skull, who has gone through death. But in the realm of knowledge, too, spiritual science takes upon itself the cross of knowledge in order to die within it and to experience from the grave how a new world arises, a new life. Those who, through the study of theosophy, undergo a transformation of their soul that is as profound as it is vivid, who, as if dying, experience a kind of inner death, will also feel that life gives them a living force for new artistic impulses, which can transform into reality what I have been able to sketch for you today.

So closely connected with all theosophical feeling is what we are to do, and what we believe that the JohannesbauVerein will open up an understanding of. I hardly need to say any more to make it clear that this Johannesbau can be a matter close to the heart of the theosophist, of the kind that is felt to be a necessity in the course of time. For in answering the question of whether Theosophy is understood in a certain broader sense today, an extraordinary amount depends first on an answer that we cannot give with words, that we cannot express with thoughts, but rather on our act and that each, as far as possible, contributes in one way or another to what our JohannesbauVerein, so understandingly and beautifully placed in the evolution of humanity, wants.

Lecture at the 2nd general assembly of the Johannesbau-Verein

My dear Theosophical friends!

When the Johannesbau Association followed on from our last general assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society here in Berlin with a meeting, I had a few words to say to you about how the Johannesbau should be situated in the overall development of art, and in particular architectural art: that it should be seen, in the sense in which we also otherwise view what we want to achieve in the field of theosophy or anthroposophy, as something necessary in the whole spiritual development of humanity, so that what is to happen through theosophy or anthroposophy does not appear as some kind of arbitrariness, does not appear as something that we give birth to out of ourselves as some kind of arbitrary ideal, but appears as we derive it as a necessity from that writing, which reveals to us the necessary path of the human spirit through the development of the earth.

Now, one can choose many points of view to present this necessity that has just been characterized. At that time, I showed from a certain point of view how this necessary placing in human history of what is intended by the Johannesbau is to be understood. Today, another point of view will be chosen so that my considerations today will, in a certain respect, supplement what was presented here in December 1911.

Architecture is actually bound to a very specific premise if we understand architecture in the sense that man wants to create a shell, as it were, using some material, through some forms or other measures, be it for profane living and working, be it for religious activities or the like. In this sense, the art of building, architecture, is absolutely bound up with what we can call soul-life, is connected with the concept of soul-life, arises out of soul-life and can be grasped by grasping the whole extent of soul-life.

Now, over the years of working in spiritual science, the soul has always presented itself to us from three points of view: from the point of view of the sentient soul, from the point of view of the mind or emotional soul, and from that of the consciousness soul. But then this soulfulness also appears to us when it first announces itself, as it were, but does not yet really exist as soulfulness when we speak of the sentient or astral body. And again, the soulfulness appears to us when we say that the soulfulness has developed to such an extent that it seeks a transition to the spirit self or manas. If you look at my theosophy, you will find the threefold soul in it as a sentient soul, a mind or emotional soul and a consciousness soul, but you will find the sentient soul adjacent to the sentient body, so that the sentient soul and sentient appear as two sides of one and the same, the one side more soul-like, the other more spiritual; and then you will find, combining again, consciousness soul and spirit self; the consciousness soul representing the more soul-like side, while the spirit self represents the more spiritual side.

Those who, as anthroposophists, gradually find their way into such an understanding of these terms, as our esteemed friend Arenson has very beautifully explained in these days, will not be able to stop at the words sentient soul, mind or consciousness soul and only seek to find one or other definition for these words , but as a true anthroposophist will long to gradually develop in his mind many, many concepts, feelings and insights, which the one feeling leads to the other and so on, in order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding, which in the case of these concepts is structured in the most diverse directions.

For the seer himself, the words quoted include, one might say, entire worlds. Therefore, in order to understand such concepts, one must also take into account what has been presented about human development, for example in the post-Atlantic period: that the sentient body has particularly developed in the ancient Persian culture, the sentient soul in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the mind or emotional soul in the Greco-Roman period, the consciousness soul in the time in which we ourselves live, and that we see the next period of time, so to speak, as already approaching in its development, yes, that we ourselves, with what we want as anthroposophy, theosophy, are working on the approach of this next period of time, which in a certain way should show us the connection between consciousness soul and spirit self or manas.

Architecture, as has been said, is closely linked to the concept of the soul. Now, someone might ask: shouldn't architecture then also be linked to the development of the soul, as it has just been characterized? And should not the forms and designs of architecture show certain peculiarities in their succession that are connected with this development of sentient body, sentient soul, and so on? And would one not then have no justification at all for speaking of architecture in the case of certain periods, for example the first post-Atlantic period, which particularly brought the etheric body to development? For if architecture is bound to the soul, it should only begin to dawn when it begins to develop. So one would assume that it begins to emerge in the sentient body, because that is, as it were, the other side of the soul; and before that, one would have to refer to times in which an actual art of building, in the sense in which we characteristically understand architecture, did not exist at all.

Now it is difficult in itself to answer this question from the point of view of external history, because everything that goes back to the Egyptian-Chaldean period can hardly be gleaned from historical monuments and traditions, but can only be derived from clairvoyant research. Even the period of Zarathustra, which we call the original Persian period, lies so far back that historical research is out of the question, let alone the period that we know to be connected with the development of the etheric body, namely the original Indian period.

However, one can also have strange experiences with this matter if one approaches the very clever people of the present day with it. Recently, for example, one of these clever people said that these post-Atlantean periods, as they are recorded in my esoteric science, for example, are untenable, because anyone who is familiar with the linguistic monuments of India would never believe that Indian culture had progressed as far ahead of Egyptian and Chaldean culture as it is presented in this esoteric science. Well, one can only be surprised that such very clever people of the present day have not yet managed to read a book written in their mother tongue with understanding, even if they can sometimes read Sanskrit. For it is expressly stated in esoteric science that the culture of India, including the Vedic culture, which is the subject of external science, is not the one spoken of in esoteric science as the ancient Indian culture, the first culture of the post-Atlantean time, but that in the case of the Vedic culture we are dealing with a time that can be counted as belonging to the third post-Atlantean cultural period, which thus runs parallel to the Egyptian-Chaldean culture. The original Indian culture, on the other hand, was one of which no external documents and no external monuments and the like exist and of which only the last echoes are contained in the Vedas. I will not dwell on this any further, but say this only because one or the other of you might hear this objection and perhaps not immediately have the concepts and ideas at hand that can refute such an objection.

So the question I have just hinted at remains, namely that in the first post-Atlantic period we have to go back to times when an actual art of building, as for the later periods, could not yet be possible. But then we come to a strange boundary point, to which external research also points; we come, so to speak, to a preliminary stage of architecture: the building of spaces for religious, for worship activities in caves, carved into the rock, as can be found in India or Nubia. This is indeed the age that stands on the boundary of the development of the soul from the physical. These cave dwellings confirm what spiritual research suggests we can expect in terms of the development of the soul: it is only in the period of human development in which we see the soul developing out of the physical that we also see the first real higher architecture developing out of what were previously rock caves and underground rock caves that had been hewn out of the earth itself.

In this respect, the earth appears like the physical realm into which the human soul first works, as it also happens in the development of the human being itself, where the soul works into the physical, the sentient soul into the sentient body. And in the transition from cave rooms to architectural works that encompass human activities, we also see the importance of the transition from the culture of the sentient body to that of the sentient soul.

There will come a time when what Theosophy or Anthroposophy provides will be elaborated for all branches of human knowledge, for all branches of human development. And it will be found that everything that other human worldviews present one-sidedly is cobbled together from some inadequate concepts and ideas, while spiritual science or anthroposophy shows the comprehensive whole with which one can shine a light everywhere. One can be completely reassured, even if people do not yet believe this today. That is not the point, but rather that time will provide the evidence for it. We just have to give it time. These confirmations will gradually be realized in all areas of life and development. This also applies to architecture.

And if we now go through the post-Atlantean development, we see that, in the course of time, the individual developmental epochs are, so to speak, bound to the soul, to the development of the sentient soul, then to that of the mind or feeling soul, and then to that of the consciousness soul, right up to our time. And in our own time we can see the time approaching, even if it is still only in the preparatory stage, when the spirit soul or manas will be worked out of the consciousness soul, so that we stand, as it were, at the opposite end of the process to that in the post-Atlantean epoch when we passed from the bodily to the soul realm. Just as the sentient soul was worked out of the sentient body in those days, so we are now facing a time in which we have to work our way out of the soul and into a spiritual realm. For architecture, this means that we can expect the opposite again. That is to say, just as in those earlier times caves were hewn out of the rocks as the preliminary stages of human architectural works, so now, in the present rising time, we have to work into the spirit in order to create the complement, the counterpart to it.

Let us now try to visualize the following, initially without more precise details about the time frame, since everyone can form for themselves what is necessary for parallelism. Let us consider the development through the sentient soul, mind or intellect soul, and consciousness soul, so initially the development through the sentient soul. Through being endowed with the sentient soul, the human being enters into a reciprocal relationship with the world around him. Through the sentient soul, what is present in the world as reality passes, as it were, into the human soul, into the human inner being itself. The external becomes an inner experience by way of the sentient soul. Therefore, there should now be something in the development of architectural art that, as it were, quite naturally emerges from cave construction and shows something in itself that is characteristic of the sentient soul. That is to say, it should be built in such a way that one wants to represent both an exterior and an interior.

Here we need only recall the construction of the pyramids and similar buildings, and we can even think of more recent scientific research that has shown how astronomical-cosmic relationships are reflected in the dimensions of the pyramids, and then we have an idea of what it is all about. The more we study the pyramid, the more we discover its strange structure based on cosmic relationships. Astronomical dimensions are reflected in the ratio of the base to the height, for example. And anyone who studies the pyramid gradually comes to the conclusion that with the pyramid, the pyramid priests expressed everything that could be expressed in a structure as a perception of cosmic conditions. The pyramid was built as if the earth wanted to experience within itself what is perceived from the cosmos. Just as the sentient soul brings the external reality to life within itself and presents what is outside as an inner reality, repeating in its own way what is outside, so the pyramid repeats external cosmic relationships in its proportions and forms, for example, in the way sunlight falls within it. Just as external reality finds a kind of representation in the human being through the sentient soul, so the pyramid looks like a large sentient organ of the entire earthly culture in relation to the cosmos.

Let us move on. How should architecture behave in a cultural stage in which the characteristic is the intellectual or mind soul? The mind or soul of mind is the inner soul in man that has the most work to do within itself, that builds on the already inner foundation of the sentient soul to further develop this inner soul, but does not yet go so far as to bring it together again into the actual I; thus it spreads and expands the soul, so to speak, without allowing it to culminate in the center of the I. The person who has developed precisely this soul element comes to us through the richness of his soul life, through the many inner soul contents and experiences that he has fought for and achieved; he has less of a need to build systems out of his inner experiences, but rather gives himself over to the breadth of these inner experiences. The intellectual soul is a life of the soul that bears itself inwardly, closes itself inwardly, and totalizes itself inwardly.

What kind of architecture would be needed to correspond to such a soul? It would have to be an architecture that, unlike the construction of a pyramid, does not so much resemble a kind of image or representation of cosmic conditions, but is more of a self-contained, total being; something that supports itself and which, so to speak, entirely in keeping with the intellectual soul or soul of feeling, shows the breadth of development in the way the individual parts are supported, and is less concerned with integrating what is there in the breadth of development. No one who is familiar with the nature of the intellectual soul or the soul of feeling, as it has just been characterized, can doubt that Greek and also Roman architecture can be understood as an external image of the life of the soul of intellect or soul of feeling.

Let us consider Greek architecture, for example Greek temple architecture, as we have often done before, by understanding it as the house of the god himself, so that the god dwells within it and the whole house presents itself as the dwelling of the god, the whole inwardly rounded as an inward totality. We have even been able to say from our contemplation of the Greek temple: This Greek temple does not claim that a person or a community of people is inside it. It is the dwelling place of the god and can stand alone, closed, as a totality in itself, just as the mind or soul is an inner totality, a self-contained inner life, which does not yet go to the ego, but which, albeit unconsciously, is the manifestation of the god in man. And when we see how in Greek temple construction one part supports the other, how everything is based on the columns striving upwards and supporting the beams, how the mutual forces are combined into a totality without the whole any way systematically toward a unity, toward a point, we find in it - and in Roman architecture the same is actually the case - that breadth, that expanse, which we find in the intellectual or emotional soul itself.

What is striking about Greco-Roman architecture is that it is based on statics, on the pure statics of the individual forces that unfold in a supporting or burdening way. But there is one thing you can forget about a Greek temple: you can forget that it has a “heaviness”. For anyone who feels naturally will or can at least feel that the columns are something that grows out of the earth. And with that which really grows out of the earth, with the plant, one does not have the feeling of oppressive heaviness. That is why the column in the Greek temple gradually strives to become similar to the stem of a plant, even if this only becomes visible in the Corinthian column. And that is why, in terms of perception, the column is not a burden, but rather a support.

But when you then come to the beam, to the architrave, you immediately have the feeling that this weighs on the column, that is, the structure is permeated by inner static equilibrium. And anyone who has developed their inner life will also have the feeling that the perceptions, feelings and concepts they have arrived at, which they have worked towards internally, are supported internally in the same way that the column supports the beam. Because at the time when Greco-Roman architecture originated, the intellectual soul or soul of mind was particularly developed in humanity, therefore, when the soul wanted to express itself in the language of architecture, it naturally strove to express what it had experienced internally in the static structure. Not with the intention, but in the way the human soul nature expressed itself, it was in the architecture to create a reflection of the soul.

And then gradually the development progressed to the consciousness soul. It is essential for the consciousness soul to summarize what the soul experiences in the total feeling: “You are! And you are this one person, this one personality, this one individuality.” By living in the soul of mind or feeling, God lives in you; but you allow God to live in all the vibrations of the soul, you are certain of him, so you do not have to summarize it as in one point and you do not have to bring yourself to consciousness: “You are identical with your divine.” But this is something that must be done in the consciousness soul. In this, it is not the case that the person rests inwardly within themselves as in the mind or feeling soul, but in the consciousness soul, the person reaches out from themselves in order to unfold their I arbitrarily into reality, into existence.

If you have a feeling for the formation of words, you can literally see how the words that have just been spoken as the characteristic of the consciousness soul form themselves almost automatically into the Gothic pillar and the Gothic arch, where the enclosing shape presents us with a structure that no longer expresses calm, inward persistence, but rather, through its forms, the striving to emerge from mere inward stasis. How great is the difference between the beam, which is carried in full static calm by its column, and the mutually supporting arches, which come together at the apex and hold each other, where everything pushes towards a point, just as the power of the human soul is concentrated in the consciousness soul.

And anyone who can empathize with the ongoing process of human development, especially when observing Italian or French architecture, feels how, in the transition from the development of the intellectual or emotional soul to the development of the consciousness soul, it is no longer a matter of a calm, static support and supporting itself out of its inner totality, and one no longer strives for inward unity in form, as in Greek architecture, but rather seeks to pass over into the dynamic, as it were, to emerge from one's skin, in order to enter into connection with the reality of the outer world, as in the consciousness soul. Gothic arches open up to the light of heaven in long windows. This is not the case in Greek architecture. In a Greek temple, it would make no difference to the perception whether light fell into it or not. The light is only incidental. This is not irrelevant to the Gothic cathedral; the Gothic cathedral is inconceivable without the light refracted in the stained glass windows. Here we can feel how the consciousness soul enters into the totality of the world and strives out again into general existence. The Gothic style is thus the architectural striving that is characteristic of the age of the development of the consciousness soul.

And now we enter our own age, in which a world view that does not arise out of arbitrariness but out of the necessities of human development must realize that the human being must work his way out of the soul and into the spirit again, that the human being rests in the spirit of himself. The Gothic building, with its special architecture of the wall broken through by the windows, with its opening up for what can come in, for what must now come, appears as no more than the forerunner of this process! Like the right-hand harbinger of what is to come - where the wall necessarily leads to a structure and in this respect is also only a filler, a decoration, not an enclosure, like the walls of the Greek temple - like a harbinger, this Gothic building appears to be what must now become the new building for the enclosure of the coming Weltanschauung, the new building whose essential characteristics I have already hinted at here and there and some of whose essential features have even already been attempted, for example in the Stuttgart building.

The essential thing will be that the complement to the preliminary stage of architecture, to cave construction, where the rock itself materially closed off what had been hewn into it, will now appear; that our new building opens up on all sides, that its walls are open on all sides, not, however, to the material, but open to the spiritual. And we will achieve this by designing the forms in such a way that we can forget that there is any city or the like besides our building. Such an attempt has already been made in the Stuttgart building; its walls are open despite the material closure, open to the spirit. In the new building, too, we will design the forms, the decorative, the picturesque, in such a way that the wall is broken through, so that we can feel our way through color and form: Despite being closed in, our spiritual and mental outlook expands into the world at large. Just as the proportions of the cosmos were taken up in the pyramid, we take what we can experience through anthroposophy and theosophy and create forms, colors, outlines, figures for it , but we create all this in such a way that precisely through what we create on the walls and conjure up on the walls, these walls themselves disappear, and we experience the closed space in such a way that we can feel the illusion everywhere: It expands out into the cosmos, into the universe, just as the consciousness soul, when it merges with the spiritual self, expands out of the merely human into the spiritual.

In the new architecture, the significance of the individual column will also change completely. If, as in the Greek temple, we are dealing with static conditions, with conditions in which inwardness is of primary importance, then it is natural that the column forms and the capital forms should be repeated. For how could one imagine a column in one place as being different from another in the neighborhood if they have exactly the same function? It must be designed in the same way as the other. It cannot be any different, because every column has the same function.

If we are now dealing with a new architecture that reaches out into the cosmos, which is differentiated in the most diverse ways on all sides, and we are to forget that we are in an inner space, then the columns take on a completely new task, a task that is somewhat like that of a letter that points beyond itself by forming a word with the other letters. Thus the columns combine, not in a diversity, but like the individual letters to form a weighty writing that points outwards to the cosmos, from the inside outwards. And so we will build: from the inside out! And just as one capital follows the other, so they will join together and express something as a totality. This will be something that leads beyond the room. And what we will otherwise install, for example inside the dome, will be installed in such a way that we will not have the feeling of We are closed in by a dome, but that the whole painting seems to pierce the dome, carries it away into infinity. To do this, however, one will have to learn to paint a little in the way that Johannes Thomasius paints for Strader's sensibility, so that Strader gets the feeling: “The canvas, I want to pierce it, to find what I am supposed to seek.”

You will realize that in the mystery plays not a single word is written in vain, but always from the whole, and that all the things we want necessarily follow from the preconditions of our culture. Today I just wanted to evoke a feeling for the fact that in the entire treatment of the walls, the architectural motifs, the columns, and in the use of everything decorative, the new architecture must aim at the destruction of the material, so to speak overcome the wall and outwards, so that the picturesque must also overcome the wall; I wanted to evoke a feeling that all this must occur and be attempted through the new architecture and that this is a necessity in view of the course of human development, as we recognize it as a necessary one.

However, given the necessity of such a building in the course of human development, it seems pathetic that it is so difficult to actually carry out the building, and pathetic too are all the objections raised by the authorities in Munich, including those of the artists who have been called upon to judge it and who have said that the building would overwhelm its surroundings. Perhaps they felt a little queasy about the building overwhelming the neighborhood, about it growing out of it into a very wide environment. They will initially feel oppressed by it.

Such objections, raised by artists who believe themselves to be at the cutting edge of their time, seem grotesquely comical when viewed from the perspective of human development. Our dear friend, who is helping us here as an architect, said that the master builder should not let himself be forced by the client, but should create as a free artist, as he wishes. That is a nice principle, because let's say the client orders a department store, he would not be very satisfied if the “free artist” built him a church. Now, there are many such buzzwords. But one is limited by task and material. The term “free artist” simply makes no sense here. For I would like to know what the “free artist” will do if he intends to execute a plastic work of art from free artistry, to mold clay and create a Venus, and instead of Venus a sheep comes out? Is he then a free artist? Does the word 'free' have the slightest meaning in art when Raphael was commissioned to paint the Sistine Madonna and it ended up being a cow? Raphael would have been a 'free' artist, but he would not have created a Sistine Madonna! Just as one only needs one tongue for certain things, here too only one tongue is needed. For such reasoning has nothing to do with the necessary real conditions of human development, but rather it depends on whether one has a truth in mind that relates to doing, to working. For truths that are to be fruitful, that are to be 'true', must be grounded in the necessities of human development. However, they will always be applicable to what Schopenhauer said about truth entering into human development. For Schopenhauer said: “In all centuries, poor truth has had to blush because it was paradoxical, and yet it is not its fault. It cannot take the form of the enthroned general error. So it looks up with a sigh to its patron, Time, who beckons victory and fame to it, but whose flapping of his wings is so great and slow that the individual perishes from it.

Let us hope, dear friends, and let us do our part, because it could be good for our cause, that our guardian spirit takes pity on us and turns his gaze to us, so that we, recognizing the necessity of our structure, may soon be able to truly create this shell for anthroposophy or spiritual science, which corresponds to the development of humanity.

Brochure, based on the introductory words to the lecture of May 18, 1913.

My dear Theosophical friends!

Before I can begin with the subject of our consideration today, I still have a message to make to you. You know, my dear Theosophical friends, that some time ago the construction of a kind of Theosophical center for our work was undertaken, and that after much effort, we succeeded in acquiring a property in Munich on which the so-called Johannesbau was intended under the care and guidance of our Johannes-Bauverein, so that, in accordance with our intentions, this Johannesbau in Munich should have been there for certain central events.

Now, over time, more and more difficulties arose in terms of actually completing the construction in Munich in the foreseeable future; and one might be forgiven for suspecting that, once things have been going for a while, the story of this Johannesbau will be able to form a peculiar chapter in the illumination of contemporary intellectual life. I would like to tell you as dryly as possible, so that we can come to the consideration of our subject, what there is to say about the matter! It could easily arise the idea - since we find ourselves compelled to come to an end with the matter at a time when a number of us can still be in the process of leaving Munich and building it in another Otto — one could easily get the impression that the main reason for this was the general world's dislike of our theosophical spiritual life, which might have expressed itself in very little cooperation, say, from the administrative authorities or the like. I would like to emphasize that, although these or those entities of the earth, who are called spirits, earth spirits, human spirits, have also done what was necessary through all sorts of well-meaning newspaper articles or the like to stir up sentiment against our construction in order to turn the administrative authorities against us, that does not come into it; because judging by the overall situation, we can say that we have had no interference from any political or church authority. From that side, I would still have found resistance understandable. I do not mean to say that there were no moods – there were! – but they did not get in our way. However, if we had waited much longer as a result of the other inhibitions, we might have encountered obstacles there, but these factors could not be counted on as such until now, as ones that would have presented us with immediate, tangible resistance.

No, something has come into consideration so far, but it radically forces us not to be able to think further about the construction in Munich, something that, to characterize it precisely, could take quite a long time. It came into consideration that people who, according to their pretensions, should have shown us understanding did not show us this understanding. If we had encountered resistance from administrative or church authorities, we would have realized it; but what had to be reckoned with, and which must tip the scales, is that in our time every current of thought like ours is compelled to introduce something into the chaos of the rest of culture. Our central structure must, if it is to be anything at all, be something that is truly worth realizing. It must, of course, be something that not only fits into contemporary life, but something that expresses the very new and the freedom of our spiritual current in relation to contemporary culture.

If this is not understood by others, by the administration or the church, then one need not be surprised. But the misunderstanding came from another side: from the side that today, let's say, settles on having a judgment about what is to be considered artistic in the [world or what] does not have to be artistic in what stands as the outer cityscape. And when we come to talk about the artistic field today, we realize most of all how we are in the midst of a cultural chaos. But it is precisely here that one should have assumed that there is still so much sense of freedom in the souls that the artistic judgment should have been made: “One must respond to something that wants to arise from the center of a new spiritual life, so to speak.” Instead, resistance arose, and one could see what was asserting itself under the flag of artistic insight as artistry, the kind of artistry that calls itself that and that has not the slightest understanding of what should be achieved through the artistic evolution of humanity.

It would be presumptuous of me, my dear friends, to recall the difficulties faced by a different artistic direction in the modern era – everyone knows that I am referring to the artistic creation of Richard Wagner. But even if it would be immodest to consider a comparison, the difficulties that we had to face with those who believe that they can judge dogmatically what is art or artistic could be characterized by studying the artistic trends that are built on the name of Richard Wagner. It was people of this ilk who threw the spanner in the works, people who had once opposed the aforementioned school of thought and now, having grown old enough, are fawning on it.

You could hear judgments that were made from an artistic point of view, that could make you lose your desire. Those people who recognize human spiritual life in its becoming know anyway that it is natural for this to happen as well. All human schools of thought that represent an original could not place themselves in the middle of the other. I could make a long list. Those who could only place themselves in the world according to a principle that is already in the Gospels. That which today is often called art, which asserts itself here or there under the most absurd judgments, is a dying thing. And new cultures could never place themselves in this dying thing. Wherever we today expect to find the greatest blossoming, there we find dying; and the new cultures must take to heart the principle: “Let the dead bury their dead, but you, follow me.” That which is dying must take care of its own burial, while that which is alive and germinating will not find a place there.

This is not a defeat, it is something that is perfectly justified in the normal course of evolution, and it would be pedantic to fight today against a judgment that presents itself to the world with such ridicule, as for example when some master builder says that architecture must be free, could not be guided by what should flow from some school of thought. Art itself should be free. I would advise such a master builder only, if he were commissioned to construct a residential building or build a train station, if it occurred to him.

Such absurdities, as flourish today in so-called artistry, which pushes itself forward everywhere with infinite arrogance and impotent judgment, is what cannot be emphasized enough. And it is under the influence of such currents that we finally, after we had tried hard to set up the matter in Munich, found ourselves faced with the necessity of having to reckon with never-ending periods of time; because we received a message that was roughly the same as “Wash my fur, but don't wet it” — something you can't count on at all when you have plans to work on, like our esteemed friend, Mr. Baumeister Schmid, who works so beautifully in complete harmony with us. We would have had nothing to do but plans, which would have been rejected with the comment, “They do not correspond to artistic taste,” so that we would have had to work out plans again and again, and then someone would have said, well, something like, “summarize the masses better.” I don't want to go into these things any further!

It was only necessary, absolutely necessary, to motivate an important step. And this step is this: that we will leave Munich with the St. John's building.

Thanks to the invaluable willingness and kindness of our Swiss friends, we will be able to carry out our building in nature outside, in Dornach near Basel. And our dear friends, when they want to get out in the summer to refresh themselves in the open air, will now have the opportunity, at the central point that is to be created there, to combine the impressions of nature and landscape with what we are doing in seclusion, and to enjoy seeing how our temple will rise, reaching far into the distance, a monument to that, my dear friends, which we may perhaps want to do, especially now, at this time, when our spiritual movement must stand entirely on its own two feet and is also forced to position itself as freely as possible in terms of space and location. I assure you, I went there in the summer and imagined how beautiful our building would be seen from all sides. So we hope that, out of free life, that which corresponds to our spiritual current, our central building, will rise at that site.

Now, my dear friends, although some things can be spared in the material realm through the kindness of our Swiss friends, many things will still be needed in terms of the willingness of our Theosophical friends to make sacrifices so that what needs to be done in this work can be done. I am convinced that anyone who is able to look at the facts objectively will agree that we are breaking free from our shackles and completing the matter as necessary. And it is necessary that we can complete our summer games in this central building in the near future.

If everything really does go well, we will be able to announce to you next time, with the help of the spirits, in the same way that the summer festival for the People's Theater in Munich was announced to you today, that the festival will take place in Dornach.

We would not have been able to keep to this date if we had wanted to fight the uninteresting battle – uninteresting not in the usual sense of the word – against the meaningless judgments of an unartistic present. What would have been opposed by – I do not even want to say error, because in this case it is not a matter of error – but what would have been opposed by presumption, will not be opposed to us by the magnificent nature that is to surround our spiritual work. Many will take joy in what will come about.

That, my dear friends, is what I had to put forward in order to, firstly, share a fact with you and, secondly, to provide some motivation for this fact, which marks an important step in our spiritual movement.

Of course, there might have been people who would have found it bolder to fight against prejudice and arrogance. But something else was important, and what has happened recently shows that something else was important. Now, my dear Theosophical friends, if we want to take into account what is happening around us, we need time and we must not waste time with all kinds of fighting, but must fill it in the way that common sense can see needs to be done.

This information should be conveyed without anger or resentment, just in recognition of the fact that it had to be this way. And please regard it only as an expression of why the JohannesbauVerein was hindered from approaching you freely, so that one had to hear again and again: One does not hear what should happen; if one knew what should happen, one would be able to raise the funds much more easily. Now we are in a different position, so that everyone knows what is at stake. And what has been said may be said in such a way that it is spoken in the direction of your heart, that you take up the central building in your love. Consider what is to be created as your own, as something you want to help found for the spiritual life of humanity.

Each of us will contribute what we are able to according to our abilities. And in the future we will no longer be hindered by the side that was mentioned, but, depending on the help we receive from our dear friends, we will be able to accomplish what, under the present circumstances, must be accomplished quickly. I do not emphasize the word quickly without reason, my dear friends.

In the light of the above, the Johannesbau Association would like to make the following factual announcements:

The original program of the Johannesbau-Verein has not undergone any significant changes with regard to the actual central building. Essentially, the “School of Spiritual Science” will be built in Dornach in the manner planned for Munich; in some details, the freedom we enjoy in Switzerland makes it possible to develop the intended architectural ideas more completely, including their outward appearance.

On the other hand, the residential buildings will not be built to the extent planned for Munich. The rural conditions of Dornach call for a spacious design for our settlement, so that the individual villas will be built in the middle of gardens. However, the Johannesbau-Verein must leave it to the initiative of those who want to live near the central building to build these villas; it will devote all its energy to the design of the central building alone.

It would be desirable if the developing settlement of our anthroposophical friends were to arise around the central building in accordance with a unified idea, without the activity of individual tastes being too narrowly defined; “the individual villas should, so to speak, express both through their construction and perhaps also through their orientation, express that they belong to it.” In order to carry out this idea, knowledge of the underlying ideas and construction concepts, which have emerged over the course of a long collaboration, is of course necessary. This knowledge cannot be made available to our friends at the present time, for example through a publication , so that we are obliged to request that the plans of the villas to be built in the style of the Johannesbau be submitted to the building association, which will then, of course without wanting to claim any decisive rights, suggest those corrections that could bring the present project into line with the central building. Such a measure cannot be misinterpreted as an intended monopolization.

Centralization is also extremely important for the purchase of land. In Dornach we are dealing with a rural population; the land is divided into the smallest of plots, which are in the possession of the individual farmers. It is clear that conducting purchase negotiations with so many owners requires knowledge of the circumstances, and so on. Furthermore, there is a fear that if our projects become known too soon, this would lead to a huge increase in the price of the land.

Our friends who intend to either live permanently or secure a summer residence near the central building want to get in touch with Dr. E. Grosheintz, Basel, Holbeinstrasse 55, for the terrain acquisitions.

Dornach, in the canton of Solothurn, can be reached by train in ten minutes and by electric tram in half an hour from Basel.

Furthermore, we request that for the time being absolutely nothing about the existing projects be revealed outside the Anthroposophical Society, least of all in Dornach or Basel itself.

We would like to point out that we are thinking of setting up a “College of Spiritual Science” and urgently request that all other designations that could only mislead and antagonize public opinion be avoided.

Munich, May 22, 1915
The Board of Directors of the Johannesbau-Verein

We are beginning our work!

You Seraphim, you Cherubim, you rulers of the world, you who, like lightning, take up the veils of the Cherubim through the spiritual currents, marrying them to the creative existence of the world, you high thrones, we call upon you as protectors of our actions, and you, you wisdoms, you who radiate that which exists in man before all his own existence, and you, you keepers of the eternal forces of the world, and you, you formers of our existence, you who place the form of all being into the currents of existence: We call upon you to be protectors of our actions. And you, you personalities of the spiritual stream, and you helpers, the archangeloi and the angeloi, you who are the messengers of the spiritual life of man to the earth, we call upon you all to be the protectors and guides of this our action. We call you down upon the soul of the human being whom we wish to consecrate, insofar as this is in our power. We approach this human soul, which we wish to consecrate to the work that, to the best of our knowledge, should serve the times.

We have formed this stone as a symbol of the human soul that consecrates itself to our great work. It is a symbol for us in its double twelve-foldness of the striving human soul, as a microcosm sunk into the macrocosm. Anthropos, the human being, as he derives from the entities of the divine-spiritual hierarchies. So this cornerstone is a symbol of our own soul, which we incorporate into what we have recognized as the right spiritual striving for the present. Thus we will sink this stone, which is shaped according to the world pictures of the human soul, into the realm of the elements. Within this stone, taken from the denser realm of the elements, are two rocks that best express how the forces of the macrocosm interact in the denser realm of the elements. This twelve-part structure, we will sink it as the actual sign of the human soul into the place above which will rise that which, if we understand it correctly, my dear Theosophical friends, will become a sign of our work this evening. And with this stone we want to sink that through which we commit ourselves to that which we have recognized as the right thing in our spiritual life.

This document is sunk into our stone; it bears the inscription:

In the name of the seraphim, the cherubim, the thrones, the wisdoms, the movers, the shapers, the personalities, the archai, the archangeloi, the angeloi!

Man, Anthropos, lives as a microcosm in the macrocosm, and is also depicted here as a twofold twelve-membered image, a symbol of the spiritual world. And within this symbol, the well-known saying of Rosicrucianism expresses the meaning of our striving:

Ex Deo nascimur
In Christo morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

As the formula for an oath, do we understand this correctly? It is written on this stone, which as the cornerstone expresses the human being who wants to seek himself in the spirit, who wants to feel himself in the soul of the world, who senses himself in the world-I. We sink this stone into the condensed realm of the elements, as a symbol of the power towards which we strive, placed by the Johannesbau-Verein Dornach on the 20th day of September 1880, according to the Mystery of Golgotha, that is 1913 after the birth of Christ, when Mercury was the evening star in Libra.

As master builder:
Carl Schmid-Curtius

As members of the administrative council of the Johannesbau-Verein:
Sophie Stinde
Emil Grosheintz
Hermann Linde
Felix Peipers
Pauline Gräfin Kalckreuch
Carl Unger
Emmy Gumppenberg
Mrs. Bürgi
Mrs. Schieb
Mrs. Hirter-Weber

As the Central Council of the Anthroposophical Society:
Marie von Sivers
Dr. Carl Unger

and Dr. Steiner as the spiritual leader of the action.

This document, it is incorporated into the symbol of the human soul, and then into the denser realm of the elements.

[The document is inserted into the copper container and soldered.]

The stone, the symbol of our souls, is lowered into the condensed realm of the elements.

[Dr. Peipers and four other men place the foundation stone in the foundation stone pedestal. It is placed so that the larger dodecahedron faces east and the smaller faces west, i.e., the opposite of the building, whose larger dome faces west and the smaller faces east. Rudolf Steiner then descends into the foundation stone pit himself.

The stone, as a symbol of our soul, has been sunk into the earth; it is a symbol of the striving for knowledge, for love, for strong action, a symbol for humanity. It shall be a symbol for our souls that we will always hear the deepest meaning of the word of the world:

Ex Deo nascimur
In Christo morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

Thus the symbol of the human soul becomes a sign of the human soul. I consecrate you as a sign of the human soul with the first blows that will be struck at this, our work of creation.

[Three, five and seven blows are struck on the small, then twelve blows on the larger dodecahedron.

The stone has thus become a sign from the symbol. And now we want to entrust it to the realm of condensed elements, the earth, into which our soul has been sunk in order to develop that which is the earth's mission in the evolution of humanity. The stone from the sign becomes veiled when we entrust it to the earth. The human soul ascends three times to the three secrets of existence: at first they are symbols, then signs, when the soul reads the eternal word of the world. But the deepest depths of the secrets of the world are brought to life and united with the soul when this soul from the realm of the hierarchies is able to give itself the covering. Thus be veiled! A veiled one shall become from the symbol and the sign, so that you may be a firm cornerstone of our striving, our seeking, as we have recognized it to be right in the evolution of humanity. Thus we want to make the stone, which is the sign of our soul, the veiled one.

[Architect Schmid-Curtius and engineer Englert then cover the stone, on which Marie von Sivers has placed a bouquet of roses - 12 red and one white rose - with soil. Then Dr. Steiner hands the cross-folded hands of those present at the laying of the foundation stone, Dr. Peipers, Dr. Grosheintz, Miss von Sivers, architect Schmid and engineer Englert. Everyone leaves the foundation pit and Rudolf Steiner returns to his place on the axis of the foundation stone, where he began his address.]

My dear sisters and brothers!

Let us understand each other correctly on this festive evening. Let us understand each other to the effect that this act, in a certain sense, signifies a vow for our soul. Our striving has brought it about that we are allowed to erect this symbol of spiritual life of modern times here in this place, from which we look far out in the four elementary directions of the compass rose. Let us understand that today, by feeling our souls united with what we have symbolically sunk into the earth, we are committing ourselves to this spiritual evolutionary current of humanity that we have recognized as right. Let us try, my dear sisters and brothers, to make this vow of the soul: that we want to look away at this moment from all the pettiness of life, from all that connects us, must necessarily connect us as human beings with the life of everyday life. Let us try to awaken in us at this moment the thought of the connection of the human soul with the striving in the turn of time. Let us try to remember for a moment that, in doing what we have committed ourselves to doing today, we must bear in mind that we have to look out into the far reaches of time to see how the mission, of which this building is to become the emblem, will fit into the great mission of humanity on our planet Earth. Not in pride and arrogance, but in humility, devotion and willingness to make sacrifices, we try to reach up with our souls to the great plans, the great goals of human activity on earth. Let us try to put ourselves in the position in which we should and must actually be if we understand this moment correctly.

Let us try to remember how the great message and tidings of the eternal gospel of divine spiritual life once took time to evolve on Earth, when the divine spirits themselves were still the great teachers of humanity. Let us try, my dear sisters and brothers, to transport ourselves back to those divine times on earth, of which a last yearning, a very last memory still arises in us, when we hear about the eternal ideas and the eternal shell of the world in ancient Greece, for example, with the last tones of mystery wisdom and at the same time with the first philosophical tones of the great Plato. And let us try to comprehend what Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences have taken hold of our evolution on earth since then. Let us try to realize how the connection of the human soul with the divine existence of the world, with volition, with feeling and with divine spiritual cognition has been lost. Let us try at this moment to feel, deep down in our souls, what human souls feel out there, in the countries of the east, west and south, who we can recognize as the best and who cannot go beyond what we can express with the words: an indefinite, inadequate yearning and hope for the spirit. Look around you, my dear sisters and brothers, and see how this indefinite yearning, this indefinite hope for the spirit, prevails in humanity today. Feel and listen, here at the foundation stone of our emblem, how in humanity's indefinite yearning and hope for the spirit, the cry for the answer can be heard, for that answer that can be given where spiritual science prevails with its gospel of the spirit. Try to write into your souls the greatness of the moment we are going through this evening. If we can hear humanity's yearning for the spirit and want to build the structure from which the message of the spirit is to be proclaimed more and more and more – if we feel this in the life of the everyday world, then we understand each other correctly this evening. Then we know - not in arrogance and not in overestimation of our striving, but in humility, in devotion and willingness to sacrifice, we know - that we must be in our striving the continuers of that spiritual work that was triggered in the Occident in the course of a progressive human development, but which, through the necessary counter-current of the Ahrimanic forces, must ultimately lead to humanity standing at a point where souls would wither and become desolate if the yearning for the spirit were not heard. Let us feel, my dear sisters and brothers, these fears! This is how it must be if we are to continue to fight in that great spiritual battle, which is a battle glowing with the fire of love; in that great spiritual battle, which we are allowed to continue, which was fought by our ancestors when they distracted the Ahrimanic onslaught of the Moors.

We are now, guided by karma, at the place through which important spiritual currents have passed: Tonight, let us feel the seriousness of the situation within us. Once upon a time, humanity had reached the end of its striving for personality. Since the old heirloom of the divine ladder of the original beginning of earth evolution had withered in the abundance of this earth personality, the world word appeared over there in Asia:

In the beginning was the word.
And the word was with God.
And a god was the word.

And the Word appeared to the human soul and spoke to the human soul: Fill the evolution of the earth with the meaning of the earth. Now the Word Itself has merged with the earth aura and is absorbed by the spiritual aura of the earth.

Four times the world word has been proclaimed through the centuries, which will soon have been two millennia. Thus the world light has shone into the evolution of the earth. Deeper and deeper sank and had to sink Ahriman. We feel surrounded by human souls in which the cry of longing for the spirit resounds. But, my dear sisters and brothers, do we not feel how these human souls must remain with this general yearning, because the dark Ahriman spreads chaos over the aspired spiritual knowledge of the worlds of the higher hierarchies. Feel that the possibility exists in our time to add to the fourfold proclaimed spiritual word that other, which I can only represent in symbols.

From the East it came – the light and the word of the proclamation. From the East it went to the West, proclaimed fourfold in the four Gospels, waiting for the mirror to come from the West, which would add knowledge to what is still proclamation in the fourfold spoken word of the world. It goes deep to our hearts and souls when we hear about that Sermon on the Mount, which was spoken when the times of the maturing of the human personality were fulfilled, when the old light of the spirit had faded and the new spiritual light had appeared. The new spiritual light has appeared! But since it had appeared, it went through the centuries of human evolution from the East to the West, waiting for the understanding of the words that once sounded in the Sermon on the Mount into human hearts. From the depths of our world evolution sounds that eternal prayer that was spoken as the proclamation of the World Word when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled. And the ancient prayer resounded deeply, which was to proclaim to the microcosm in the deepest soul, from the innermost part of the human heart, the secret of existence. It was to resound in what was proclaimed to us as the Lord's Prayer when it sounded from the east to the west. But this cosmic word, which descended into the microcosm at that time, waited to resonate with the fifth gospel. Human souls had to mature in order to understand what was to echo from the West as the most ancient, because the macrocosmic gospel, like an echo of the gospel of the East. If we show understanding for the present moment, then we will also understand that a fifth gospel can be added to the four. So let the words that express the secrets of the macrocosm resound this evening, in addition to the secrets of the microcosm. The first of the fifth gospel to be heard here is the ancient macrocosmic world prayer, which is connected with the moon and Jupiter, just as the four gospels are connected with the earth:

AUM, Amen!
The evils prevail,
Witnesses of dissolving egoity,
The guilt of selfhood incurred by others, Experienced in the daily bread, In which heaven's will does not prevail, Since man has separated himself from your kingdom And forgot your name, You fathers in the heavens.

The Lord's Prayer was given as a gift: given to mankind. The microcosmic Lord's Prayer, proclaimed from East to West, is now echoed by the ancient macrocosmic prayer. Thus it resounds again, when it is rightly understood by human souls, sounding out into the world and being returned with the words that have been shaped from the macrocosm. Let us take with us the macrocosmic Lord's Prayer, feeling that we are beginning to gain an understanding of the Gospel of Knowledge: the fifth gospel. Let us carry home into our soul with earnestness and dignity our will from this important moment. Let us carry home the certainty that all wisdom sought by the human soul - if the seeking is a genuine one - is a countercurrent to cosmic wisdom; and that all human love rooted in selfless love of the soul is fruitful from the love prevailing in the evolution of mankind.

Throughout all the ages of the earth and in all human souls there is at work, arising from the strong human will that is imbued with the meaning of the earth, a strengthening through the cosmic power that humanity is invoking for itself today, looking vaguely towards a spirit that it hopes for but does not want to recognize, because an unconscious fear has been cast into the human soul Ahriman wherever the spirit is spoken of today. Let us feel this, my sisters and brothers, in this moment. Feel this, and you will be able to prepare yourselves for your spiritual work and reveal yourselves as spiritual light, “thought-powerfully even then, when, through fully awakened spiritual vision, the dark Ahriman, dimming wisdom, wants to spread the darkness of chaos.”

Fill your souls, my sisters and brothers, with the longing for true spiritual knowledge, for true human love, for strong will. And try to stir up in you that spirit that can trust the language of the word of the world, which echoes to us from the far reaches of the world and from the widths of space, entering into our souls. That is what he who has grasped the meaning of existence must truly feel this evening: human souls are at a turning point in their striving. Feel in humility, not in arrogance, in devotion and willingness to sacrifice, not in arrogance of your self, what is to become of the symbol for which we have laid the foundation stone today. Feel the significance of the realization that we are to become through the fact that we can know: In our time, the cover of spiritual beings must be pierced in the vastness of space, when spiritual beings come to speak to us about the meaning of existence. Everywhere in the surrounding area, human souls will have to take on the meaning of existence. Hearken how in the various spiritual places, where spiritual science, religion and art are spoken of and acted upon, hear how the powers of striving in the souls become more and more barren, feel that you are to learn to fertilize these souls, these powers of striving in the soul, out of the spiritual imaginations, the inspirations and intuitions. Feel what he will find who will truly hear the sound of creative spirituality.

Those who will learn to understand the meaning of the Lord's Prayer in the light of the Fifth Gospel will be able to recognize this meaning thoroughly in our new era. When we learn to understand the meaning of these words, we will seek to absorb the seeds that must flourish if earthly evolution is not to wither, if it is to continue to bear fruit and flourish, so that the earth may achieve the goal set for it from the beginning through human will.

So feel this evening that wisdom and the meaning of the new knowledge, the new love and the new strong power must come to life in human souls. The souls that will work in the flowering and fruiting of future earth evolutions will have to understand what we want to incorporate into our souls for the first time today: the macrocosmically resounding voice of the ancient eternal prayer:

AUM, Amen!
The evils prevail,
Witnesses of the dissolution of the ego,
Selfhood guilt incurred by others,
Experienced in our daily bread,
In which heaven's will does not prevail,
Because man has separated himself from your kingdom
And forgot your name,
You fathers in the heavens.

So we part, taking with us in our souls the awareness of the significance of the seriousness and dignity of the act we have performed, the awareness that should remain from this evening, igniting in us the striving for knowledge of a new revelation given to humanity, for which the human soul thirsts and from which it will drink. But only when it will fearlessly gain the faith and trust in what the Science of the Spirit can proclaim, which in turn should reunite what had to go through the evolution of humanity separated for a while: religion, art and science.

Let us take this, my sisters and brothers, with us as something that we, as a commemoration of this jointly celebrated hour, do not want to forget again.

My dear friends!

On Saturday we laid the foundation stone of our building in Dornach, and with the permission of the Johannesbau-Verein I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about this act. I would like to do this for the simple reason that one must feel that this act was a very responsible one. And in a way, we can say that this act spoke a clear karma. A karma that may only gradually come to light. Among other things, a conversation that took place this morning may have revealed that the laying of the foundation stone took place exactly seven years after the branch here in Basel was inaugurated. You can already sense that, in a sense, many forces are at play in all these matters that can only be discovered or, better said, named, little by little.

This laying of the foundation stone must be perceived as a responsible act for the simple reason that we were indeed right to remember last night - if, as I said, not in arrogance, but in humility and humility and modesty - to have also laid the cornerstone for our awareness that what we want fits - to put it very modestly - into what we feel is our mission on earth. And then, what we have done really does grant that seriousness and dignity that I tried to draw attention to at the laying of the foundation stone the day before yesterday.

We associate the stone we have been handling with the symbol of our soul, which we entrust to the earth mission, so to speak. And it was also right to emphasize on this occasion that what this stone is to be the cornerstone of must truly be our answer to a general cry that is currently going through the spiritual life of humanity. This cry is like a question from a frightened humanity. It is not always understood, my dear friends. But it can be understood, my dear friends, in the most diverse symptoms, which need only be viewed in their true light.

Take something like this in your hands – I am just saying in other words what I said at the laying of the foundation stone – like the little book of one of the currently most famous researchers, Dr. Eucken, that book: Can We Still Be Christians? you will hear from such a little book not only the soul of a single person, but the anguished, ignorant soul of humanity today, which thinks it knows. The anguished soul, which is afraid of the true answers and yet ignorant of humanity. The whole book, which is boring enough as it is, is full of talk of spirit and spiritual striving, and at the same time, the book is characterized by the clear trait that is typical of our time: the author does not know what he is talking about. It can be painful, but one finds that the call for truthfulness is necessary for humanity. People read the beautiful phrases, which sometimes sound quite theosophical, but one must read such things a little more deeply if one wants to understand their significance for spiritual life. And there I would like to suggest with a few words how one can read them. The call for truthfulness in the face of the lying culture of the present is raised in a way that disturbs people. But one passage of this book must be compared with two other passages.

For example, at one point in the book we find the same Rudolf Eucken saying that contemporary human consciousness can no longer endure the fact that certain religious circles speak of demons. The fact that demons are spoken of is accepted as a matter in relation to which contemporary human consciousness can only shrug its shoulders. Of course, it has long since gone beyond that. We no longer talk about demons; that is childish. Let us now compare this with another passage in the book, which is not far removed, only so far removed that the learned, who think they know, can forget what is said in the first passage. This second passage says: Demonic powers arise through the touching of the divine with the soul of man. This is said by the person who has been awarded the Nobel Prize, the greatest honor that can be given for achievements in the field of soul research.

Today's science does not pay attention to the infinite inner hypocrisy that lies in saying on the one hand: We have long since gone beyond demons, and on the other hand: Demonic powers arise when the divine touches the soul of man. The profound dishonesty, the unconscious profound dishonesty of our entire thinking, feeling and willing is expressed in this. And then in a third place the author cries out for the truth and the shaping of the truth in our culture.

One must enter a little into the intimacies, then one will realize what is meant by the words that the cry of the human soul is present in the unconscious depths of the soul, but that an answer can only be given where the spiritual life is really present, where writing is done concretely from the spirit, but not where it is only written about the spirit in general, as it still is by the best of our contemporaries.

There one will feel for what the cornerstone has been laid for our truthful construction. One must say: One wonders how the human souls of the present, who are searching for understanding of the consciousness of the present, are not dismayed when they perceive these things. But they do not see it, even when they pick up a widely read weekly magazine and a doctor in this magazine of the present talks about how such things as Spinoza's intellectual life should be depicted in a film so that it becomes clear to people, and how it should be grouped in the film. It is impossible to deal with abstract concepts in film so that humanity can finally get a vivid picture of Spinoza's world view!

These are things that only cause consternation in those souls who understand the course of intellectual life. But I do not see this, and we will not see the consternation that we must have when we get used to taking in the most serious thing for which the cornerstone should be laid! Then we shall grasp the feeling that with this stone we have made a symbol of that which the present time so urgently needs: an answer to the cry of the human soul, which shrinks in fear from knowledge. Only then shall we feel this seriousness, which is called for.

We know what we have to do and why this stone, which is to signify knowledge, love and strength, must also become a stumbling block and an offence for many opponents. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that the days of difficulty are over; I do not want to evoke that belief. On the other hand, let our confidence in the souls grow that we will overcome the difficulties. The toad-like natures will emerge from all sides, and this building will be a stumbling block and an offence to them. Therefore, we will need proper vigilance and stand bravely at our post!

Perhaps this laying of the foundation stone will only be the beginning of what we have to achieve for the truth and for living out the truth. That is why I wanted to express in words, my dear friends, what I was able to share with you for the first time at this laying of the foundation stone, which could be called the macrocosmic echo of that prayer that can be addressed as the most important event of the fourth period of our post-Atlantic development. Then, little by little, the fifth gospel will be discovered from the mysterious writing, which must be added to the other gospels in the fifth period.

Then the eternal prayer that resounds in the microcosm as the Lord's Prayer and that is included in the Gospels will reach us from the fifth gospel as the Lord's Prayer of Knowledge in contrast to the Lord's Prayer of the Agony of Redemption. Yes, what the agony of redemption is in the fourth period, that is knowledge in the fifth. If humanity in the fifth period had to wither away the realization that in the place of faith, the satisfaction of the spiritual, comes unbelief, emptiness. And this Lord's Prayer of knowledge is expressed in the words of our language:

Amen!
The evils prevail,
Witnesses of dissolving egoism,
guilt of selfhood incurred by others,
experienced in our daily bread,
in which Heaven's Will does not prevail,
since man has separated himself from your kingdom
and forgot your name,
you Fathers in the heavens.

It sounds as if it is resounding from the past to the future, but transposing the sound to the macrocosmic level, that which, as the Lord's Prayer of Knowledge, must enter into our souls. Just as inner bliss arose in the fourth period from the Lord's Prayer, so that which humanity needs from the present point on will be able to flow from this Lord's Prayer of Knowledge, which shows us in the structure of its individual sentences why the evils prevail, why man needs to rebuild his body.

What do evils mean in the face of eternity, through which man builds up his physical body from the daily bread? We know that he has descended into these deep spheres, and we must try to understand how a person works his way out in the course of earthly evolution - works out as an ego - in the way that must be out of freedom, in order to once again gain an understanding of the divine spiritual powers that are weaving through the world.

Because I wanted to point out the seriousness of the times in this way, and because I want to draw attention to the fact that we are only at the beginning of the difficulties and want to start our work with seriousness and dignity, but also with firm confidence in the spiritual victory, I have therefore asked the Johannesbau-Verein once again today asked the Johannesbau-Verein to repeat what I tried to write on Saturday in the face of the ruling elements in the open air to our assembled friends, so that this seriousness and dignity live in the souls, and so that we take it with us in this time as something we do not want to forget.

Lecture given at the second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society

My dear Theosophical friends!

In connection with the construction of our Johannesbau in Dornach, a number of our friends and members have felt the desire to create some kind of home around or near the Johannesbau, and a number of members have already registered and considered the purchase of property there in order to create permanent homes for the whole year or for some of the year. Of course, my dear friends, the words I would like to say at this moment, following on from what I have just said, are not meant to imply that I would like to interfere in any way with what these colonists are undertaking around our Johannesbau in Dornach. It is self-evident that, given the way we understand our anthroposophical movement, the freedom of each individual member must be preserved to the greatest extent. So I have no business to speak in terms of even hinting at compulsion in either direction; but I may perhaps have the right to express what is desirable.

So, in Dornach we will now have the Johannesbau as such, for which we have endeavored to find a truly novel architectural style, in order to express what we want in the building forms and to create something that can represent, in the sense already often hinted at, a not only dignified but also correct envelope for our cause.

Dr. Grosheintz has shown you the efforts that have been made to achieve this goal in various illustrations. If the funds are sufficient, buildings will be constructed directly around the Johannesbau, individual houses, some of which you have already seen will be in the immediate vicinity of the Johannesbau. And we will try to build these houses in such a way that their artistic design will truly allow them to form a whole with the plans for the Johannesbau itself.

It takes a lot to create such a whole. We have, of course, only had the opportunity to implement the idea just characterized for the small house that you see there (in the model ) at one point, and which is initially intended to be used to make the glass windows in it; so that Mr. Rychter and perhaps someone else can find shelter in it, and the glass windows can be made in the other rooms. Secondly, we have the so-called “Kesselhaus”, which is already in a very definite form, so to speak. This Kesselhaus had to be designed with the modern material of reinforced concrete in mind. And so the problem was how to construct such a giant chimney – which would, of course, be an eyesore if it were built in the same way as chimneys are built today near buildings – how to construct such a chimney in such a way that it is architecturally compatible with the building and made of the appropriate material.

In the small figure form that you see here (in the model), and in what Dr. Grosheintz showed as an image of this boiler house, you will have seen that an attempt has been made to solve the architecture of this structure as well. And once it is standing there and, in particular, once it is heated – because the smoke emerging from the chimney is incorporated into the architecture – then perhaps people will be able to feel that these forms have intrinsic beauty despite their prosaic purpose. Perhaps precisely because the building's function is truly expressed in its forms, one will be able to sense that these forms have not only been purely formed according to the principles of the old utilitarian architecture, but at the same time in such a way that an inner aesthetic formation has taken place. By thinking of the two domes together, with an extension that is shaped differently on different sides, and on the chimney in a burst of, one cannot say “leaf-like” structures, because a member who saw this model found them, for example, “ear-like” – but one need not define them as such, the forms just have to be right. All these forms will probably make it possible to feel that even such a building, which serves a very modern heating purpose – the Johannesbau and the buildings immediately around it will be heated from here – can be given aesthetically pleasing forms.

For such a thing, now – the other things are therefore only provisional and it will become clear to what extent they are provisional – in order to know what is needed for these forms, it is necessary to first know a precise, specified indication of everything that is to take place in the building, for which purpose it is to serve. I would like to say: If one knows how many rooms, for what purposes rooms are needed, how many types of staircase, how many types of view and so on one wants, and if one also knows exactly the location of the building in relation to the Johannesbau, to the north or south, then one can find a corresponding architecture for each such specification.

Therefore, it will be necessary for all those friends who want to become colonists and are thinking of building something near the Johannesbau to really follow, at least in a broader sense, what must be pursued for the buildings in the immediate vicinity of the Johannesbau if we do not want to be unfaithful to our principles. For the first thing that is at hand is that through the external construction, through the overall style, it should be apparent to the outside world that all these houses, so to speak, belong together, form a whole. Even if other houses should be in between, it would still be desirable that precisely those houses that are built by colonists be built in such a way that it is clear from the houses: they belong to this whole. People on the outside might say: These are twisted people! Very well, but one should feel it - regardless of whether one looks at it affirmatively or negatively - and we should give cause for feeling that in this way - even if perhaps disturbed by many other things that stand in between - the complex of buildings built towards the Johannesbau forms an ideal whole.

This is the one aspect that really needs to be taken into account. But the other aspect is that we really want something that has a certain significance in the cultural development of the present day. We want, my dear friends – and you can see this from the forms of the John building itself – that our spiritual-scientific attitude should actually be incorporated into the architectural style and into the artistic forms in all areas. Just as we would be in no position to answer the question, “How can one best practise the art of dance?” by saying, “Go to such and such a person who has this or that method”, so too, just as we would be compelled to seek our own way in eurythmy, we must also learn to understand how to seek our own in other art forms and thereby create something for those who want to understand, something that is perhaps only possible from such a productive spiritual current as the humanities provide.

I have often pointed out how it continues to resound in my ears what the architect Wilhelm Ferstel said after he had built the Votive Church in Vienna and was elected rector of the Vienna University of Technology, when he gave a lecture on architecture, what his actual tenor was in this lecture: architectural styles are not invented! One can object to this statement, one can also prove it, both can be equally correct. They are not invented, the architectural styles, but from the correctness of the statement that they are not invented, it does not follow at all that one simply takes the Gothic architectural style, as Ferstel took it, and builds the somewhat enlarged confectionery, this sugar work of the Votive Church in Vienna. Nor does it follow at all from that sentence that architectural styles in our own time can only be formed by modifying old architectural styles in an eclectic sense, welding them together again and again, and in this way creating this or that.

A spiritual scientific attitude should show that it is possible to bring real art forms into the architectural style from within spiritual life. And we should prove to the world that this is also possible in a private house. We should be able to gain understanding for our cause from this point of view. By being able to proceed from this point of view, we will create an enormously significant ideal value for our culture.

So it would certainly be nice, without wanting to exert any influence on the freedom of any member, if the colonists would come together and, of their own free will but with an understanding of our principles, achieve something unified. Since this cannot be changed for the time being – it may be different later – we have to take into account the factor that there is a house near the Johannesbau that cannot be removed yet and will not enhance the beauty; but it is there now and it is not important that we make everything “beautiful”, but that we make what we do beautiful in our sense.

Therefore, I was really saddened, I might say, when in the past few weeks I came across construction plans and proposals for houses to be built by the colonists there. They were, of course, intended with the very best of intentions, but they exhibited all the ugliness and monstrosity of a terrible architectural style. It really can be done differently if you have the good will to do so. It goes without saying that a number of obstacles and hindrances must be expected, but what new movement that has to become established in the world does not encounter obstacles or hindrances?

I do not want to interfere in what might arise from the members of the colony – that is, the colonists themselves – getting together tomorrow; but it would sadden me if anything other than what is in line with the words just spoken could or would arise. It will be entirely possible if we all take care to ensure that what has just been characterized comes true. Of course, if colonists do not have the patience to wait until the time comes when it may be possible to indicate how one or the other could be done well, then nothing favorable can be done.

As much as it is understandable that some of the colonists may be in a hurry to get their building project started, it would be desirable for the colonists who are serious about our cause to exercise a little patience patience in order to let things develop in accordance with the intentions, which I cannot say are ours through our will, but that they arise out of what we have to bring out of the spiritual scientific attitude. Something might indeed come into being of which the world might at first receive an impression that makes it laugh. Let it laugh! But the time for laughing at such things will come to an end. If nothing of this kind were ever undertaken, human development would never advance.

No one should think that they have to endure even the slightest discomfort in their home if the principles I have mentioned are adhered to. But one thing is certainly necessary: that not every colonist goes his own way, so to speak, but that what is done is done in a certain harmony, that people can discuss and hold each other mutually.

The architectural style of the colonists' houses will make the entire colony appear as an ideal unit, and this will be an external expression of an internal harmony. I say this, partly as a wish, partly as a hypothesis, partly as something, yes, I myself don't know what word to choose: It should simply be an expression of the inner harmony of those living in this community!

It will be in keeping with the spirit of the Anthroposophical Society that not the slightest discord or mutual incompatibility, or even a bad word from one member of the colony to another, or even a frown from one to another, will ever be allowed to pass. And it will be beautiful when this is also expressed in outward forms, as it were, as if personified peace were to pour over everything. But even if it should ever happen that a little thing in someone's mind might cause one or the other to turn a crooked mouth or a crooked face, because forms stimulate thoughts, he will turn his eyes in that crooked face to the common peaceful forms and a peaceful smile will immediately cross the twisted face.

If we consider all this, then we really have the reasons for the impulse to create something unified there. Do not think that this unity will mean that one house will be like the other. On the contrary. The houses will be very different from each other and everything will have to have a very individual character. After all, a human organism is not created by saying: an arm is like this, a hand is like this... [gap in the text]. If we had never placed the arm or the hand on top instead of the head, an organism would never have been created. Similarly, the shape of a house that is right on one side will not be right on the other side. But all of this will have to be carefully thought out for our purposes.

And then, when we are in a position to really put it all into practice, there are other aspects to consider. Just think, we were united here this week. On Monday, some Theosophical Society was meeting in the next room with a lecture by so-and-so; on another day, another society was meeting with something else, and on a third day, an “Anthropos” society was meeting, and so on. Just think, if it could happen that the son, daughter, grandson, or nephew of one of our members would join some “Anthropos” society or even some theosophical society, and it came to that houses in our colony were later inherited by such members of a family, then not only would we have the lectures of the other societies in a neighborly way, but we would also have the attitudes and so on of these societies right in the middle of us.

We must therefore consider today what difficulties may arise over time and how we can counter them. We will only be able to counter them if we create such an association of colonists through which means and ways can be found to ensure that the possessions of members of the Anthroposophical Society really do remain with members of the Anthroposophical Society in the future. That this will only be possible through a wide variety of means will become clear to you tomorrow when we discuss the practical principles. Of course, heirs must never be affected, but it is also possible to create the possibility that what one owns in the colony might never pass to heirs who are not members of the Anthroposophical Society, without affecting the heirs.

It would be desirable to preserve this colony as a colony for members of the Anthroposophical Society in the future; but not just to think about how nice it is for oneself to live there, how nice it is not to have to travel far to the events in the Johannesbau and to be there with Anthroposophists. To think only of that, would be even less in keeping with our spiritual current than if it were for anything else. The fact that our spiritual current still has to be associated with certain sacrifices is particularly evident when the principles and impulses of our spiritual current have to be put into practical reality. It should be more or less self-evident that we cannot have our houses built by just any architect who is completely unconnected with our cause. It should also be self-evident that we want to express the anthroposophical character of the colony.

These are certain aspects that I would like to present to you, of course, as I said, not to exert any pressure, but as something that you will admit on closer reflection that you cannot avoid if anything is to come out of the whole matter of our Johannesbau and thus serve our anthroposophical cause.

You see, we had to leave Munich because we did not find any understanding there, initially purely for what we wanted artistically. Out there in Dornach, where we can be now, we can put ourselves in a position to serve as a model for what our spiritual movement should bring in the future. And it would be a misunderstanding of our movement if we did not want to do this, if we let ourselves be deterred from adopting the points of view that have been discussed by petty considerations or by anything else. Basically, everyone who wants to build there should realize that it is necessary for them to really join a colonists' association. Perhaps it would be best if the artistic side of things were subject to a kind of committee or commission. There is no need to force this matter, but it would be wonderful if all the colonists could agree that it would be best to submit to a kind of commission the houses and other structures that are to be built. If we can really carry this out, if we, as colonists, can show that we can imbue a number of us with a common will and give this will the direction that is prescribed by our anthroposophical attitude, then we will create something exemplary there. And what is created there will be a test of how well or how poorly our cause has been understood. A house built by any old architect will be seen as further proof of how little our anthroposophical movement is understood in today's world! And of every house that is a formal expression of our anthroposophical convictions, people will say: How glad it makes one that there is already an inner understanding in one or other of us for what we want!

I would have been so very happy if what I had intended for this General Assembly could have come about. We will see what can still be achieved tomorrow if a really inspiring discussion comes about in this General Assembly in free debate on the basis of the theses: How can we, each and every one of us, best work anthroposophically among our fellow human beings and how can we best show our anthroposophical attitude and put our experience at the service of the world? But my dear friends, by endeavoring to merely bring the wisdom of the anthroposophical movement to the people, we alone do not do what we must do if we want to establish our movement in the world. We must really ensure that what is given to us as spiritual knowledge is properly presented to the world in the embodiment of what is created by us externally, just as the old architectural styles were embodiments of the old cultural ideas.

If we succeed in creating something truly unified there and in legally safeguarding this unity as something to be preserved for the anthroposophical movement, then we will have provided proof that we understand our movement. May it really come to pass that quite a number of such artistic elements – also in architectural and other forms – on this occasion, when it can, provide us with proof that The anthroposophical movement is already understood!

Truly, we do not want to be a sect or some kind of community that represents and spreads these or those dogmas. We want to be something that takes cultural tasks seriously. However, we can only do that in the case of the Johannesbau and the associated colony if we act in accordance with what has now been said.

I think, my dear friends, that these few words may have provided some insights for your colonization efforts around the Johannesbau.

Address before the lecture

My dear Theosophical friends!

Before I come to the lecture itself today, I would like to address a few words to you, which only mean that this year, unfortunately, we will not, as in previous years, have the events that would otherwise have taken place in Munich in the middle of summer, because the next such event is to take place in the Johannesbau and this building is taking a little longer than originally thought. We hope that in the last two months of this year we will be ready to hold a festive opening of the Johannesbau. This building is giving us more work than one would normally imagine, and you will therefore understand that personal meetings have had to be canceled for a certain period of time.

For our dear Austrian friends, it has certainly not been easy in many respects to come to terms with the fact that the Johannesbau is so far away. However, although I am not in a position to discuss this further, because there is not enough time, it was simply the case that karma led us to build the Johannesbau where it is being built; and that will be good.

We must be aware that we see this building as a kind of central place and symbol of our spiritual movement. What is far for one person is near for another; it could not be done differently from the outset. But it is to be hoped that our Austrian friends will also find ways and means to experience this symbol of our anthroposophical movement as their own, I would like to say explicitly, by being personally present at the appropriate event in the Johannesbau. It is in fact not only a symbol because of what it will become as a monumental building, but it is in a sense a symbol because, if it really comes about, it can only come about through the great willingness to make sacrifices on the part of some of our friends, who have really made the utmost in willingness to make sacrifices in order to bring the difficult and, above all, costly construction to completion, just as it is supposed to be.

What is to be created should actually express in every respect what our spiritual movement will be. And the whole architectural style must correspond to this. Everything that flows into the building must be such that it does not enter in a symbolic or allegorical way, but must flow into this building in a truly artistic way. Above all, it was necessary to construct a building that is an embodiment of the spiritual being to which we are devoted in all its forms. The different periods and cultures of human development also had their own corresponding buildings. The building to be erected in Dornach should show in all its forms, from which it is composed and with which it is to form a shell for our spiritual work, through the way this shell opens outwards and inwards and closes and joins together, that something is expressed in its forms that has never before been conceived in architecture for such a building.

Just as the Greek temple is designed to be a dwelling for the god within, just as the Gothic cathedral is designed to form a whole together with the community gathered within it, so our building should be designed in such a way that the forms directly, I would say in a spiritual, intellectual relationship, shape the building in such a way that it is spiritually transparent. That means that when you are inside the building, you will have the feeling, through the architecture and through that which passes from the architecture into the sculpture, that these walls are not like other architectural walls that have existed up to now, closed, merely enclosing, but that they are at the same time the communicators that open up spiritual life into infinite spiritual expanses. These are walls that simultaneously transcend themselves through their forms, that at the same time are not present in their physical form. The aim is to achieve something that everyone inside can gradually get used to, to understand these forms, not allegorically or symbolically, but in a living sensation, to have something like a view of the world we are talking about, simply by experiencing the form.

Of course, this is something completely new in architecture, it is unusual, and it takes time and work. And as it is already the case in our time – forgive the harsh expression – it also needs and has needed: money! And in this respect, the willingness of some of our friends to make sacrifices was so accommodating that we can say: this willingness to make sacrifices is, in a way, a symbol of how our spiritual movement has penetrated the understanding of souls.

I just wanted to mention that you take this building into your heart, that you feel it as the center of our movement, so that you can imagine yourself united with it, and that you allow your personal presence to be there as much as the opening in the future will allow.