The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Now, my dear friends, it is still my duty to speak to you about the so-called last rites. The last rites are to be carried out in such a way that they follow a confession and communion. In such a case, where Communion is given outside of Mass, it is natural that the Priest connects this Communion with the thought of his own Communion and that it is celebrated in the same way as it is celebrated during Mass, but only in the thought of the Mass. After this Communion, therefore, the Anointing would have to take place, in the vestments that we already spoke about yesterday. It is of course the case that this sacrament of unction must be administered with the greatest delicacy, so that it does not upset the person to whom it is administered, does him no harm, and also so that he is not placed in a context that would inevitably evoke the realization on all sides: this is a dying person. For he may indeed recover.

So one connects with the distribution of Communion. The priest appears with his altar boy for the anointing and connects with Communion a number of sentences from the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John, which in the version you are to receive should read as follows from the original text. I note in parenthesis that a real translation of the gospel is only possible if this translation happens out of the world consciousness from which these sentences were once written or spoken, and that later translations suffered from the outset from the fact that the one who translated did not have this world consciousness within him, from which these sentences were written. It is a very superficial way of speaking when we say that the Gospel was translated in later times in a “plain” way, for this simplicity is an untruth, and we must do our utmost today to counteract it; so that this seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John reads thus:

Jesus placed himself in the spiritual vision
and spoke: Fatherly ground of the world:
Let the works of Your Son be revealed,
so that through the works of thy Son, thou also mayst be made manifest.

You have made him a creator
in all human bodies of flesh,
that he may lead all who who came to him through you.

They will live in the future because
that their soul's eye is prepared
to behold You as the truly united foundation of the world
and the creative Christ Jesus, whom You have sent to them.

Through me You were again revealed in earthly existence,
when the earth clouded over Thy Revelation.
This was thy will, which worked through me.

So too, Fatherly Ground of the World,
now let the revelation shine,
which was already made through me
before You were revealed in the earthly world.

Through me, the word
that reveals you, was revealed in human souls,
who came to me through you.
You were in them, through You they came to me,
and they have taken in the knowledge of You.

They recognized that that what I spoke to them was spoken by You through me

was spoken to them by you.

Fatherly world-ground, I implore,
that they who have come to You through me may always live with You as I live with You, and that they may behold there Your revelation,
which you lovingly let shine before me,
before the earth was.

Through me was revealed the word
that reveals You,
and I will bear this word into human souls, so that the love with which You love me be preserved in them,
and so my eternal life
preserve their life eternally.

The altar server says, “Yes, Father, may it be according to your word.”

Then the oil is taken from a small capsule in which the oil was brought, with the thumb and index finger of the right hand, and the words are spoken:

In the healing oil
that is outside your body

— by this is meant the sick person — the spirit soars to the heights
Feel yourself living and vibrant

— make a sign of the cross over the right eye with the oil, the altar boy says:

Yes, so be it.

The ceremony continues:

Christ's blessing receive
as life-bearing power
In it lives, lives, which conquers all that is dead.

— make the sign of the cross over the left eye on the forehead, the altar server says:

Yes, so be it.

The words continue:

Christ's strong soul
Leads in the weak body ¹
From existence to existence

Through all the worlds.

The altar boy:

Yes, so be it.

A cross is made with the oil at the top of the forehead, between the eyes, but at the top. Each time after saying the four lines, the altar server says:

Yes, so be it.

That is the ceremony, and when it is properly performed in this manner, the ceremony has the delicacy that it must have if confusion is not to be caused, or at least some kind of agitation in the soul of the sick person. That such a ceremony can be performed without causing such agitation in the soul of the sick person, that would be the task of the ministry of souls for life, so that the sick person is sufficiently prepared to also receive such a ceremony in the right way in his thoughts. Now, in this context, my dear friends, there are still a few words to be said about the one question you asked me regarding the three ages of Peter, Paul and John. Yes, and then you also asked about the periods of church history after the twelve apostles. Now these things are such that they have always only formed the core of teachings that have been handed down and that can, of course, be expressed in the most diverse ways. The fact that they appear in Schelling's work is due to the fact that Schelling once read a writing from around the 13th century in which such things were still spoken of as something self-evident. In terms of content, this can be understood by saying the following: First of all, we are dealing with the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, with his Passion story, with the Mystery of Golgotha, with the Resurrection and with the appearance of the Christ in the etheric body before those who could recognize him in such an etheric body. In this way the Mystery of Golgotha first affected the disciples who were close to Christ Jesus, so that it appeared to them as the conclusion of the old time. Above all, they saw in the first man, Adam, that which had become so within the physical organization of this Adam through the cosmic events - whereby the spiritual cosmos is meant here - with all its adversaries - that in the course of the evolution of the earth up to the Mystery of Golgotha, it had to become more and more fragile and diseased. And they saw in the Mystery of Golgotha, also according to the teaching that was given to them after the Resurrection, that which in turn heals man, so that his fragile body does not allow sins to fall into the earth, which would be corrupted by them, but that sins are kept for redemption. Thus they saw in the most eminent sense in Christ Jesus the man as he now appeared on earth, in order to raise up mankind again that part which man was bound to lose through the special manner of entering into earthly existence through Adam.

This was the most essential idea, and the teaching that can be attributed to Peter was nourished by it. Peter spoke in this sense, he understood this teaching in such a way that, in the esoteric sense, the Petrine Age can be said to have begun at the creation of the earth, when people were led, through the Mysteries, to see the Christ as a supermundane being, and which found its conclusion in the appearance of the Christ on earth. Thus Peter taught in a manner that was almost taken for granted, how the Christ descended to earth.

This was opposed by the teaching of Saul. The teaching of Saul begins with the fact that the Christ is indeed on his way down to earth from the supermundane worlds, but that this event could not be realized at all in the same way as it was realized as the Mystery of Golgotha in Palestine. For from the places of initiation that Saul had gone through came the view that the Christ would appear in the world in glory and not go through what appeared to the Jews to be a shameful death: the death on the cross. Saul balked at the crucifixion, and only came to profess the Christ after the event of Damascus, through which it became clear to him, in a way that was not earthly - and therefore also not from the mysteries - but from the etheric, that the mystery of Golgotha is really the appearance of the Christ on earth. From that time on, there arose the necessity to understand the event of Golgotha more and more with the human mind. However, during the time when Paul lived on earth, the human mind was still so developed that it could easily understand such things as we then find as the interpretation of the Mystery of Golgotha in all of Paul's letters, where the idea of the re-establishment of human nature, which had fallen as the Adamic nature, through Christ Jesus, also shines through.

The direct continuation of what is in the Pauline letters forms everything that then emerged as Western theology, through Augustine and the other church teachers, and continues up to our time; so that one can say that Protestant theology is also a continuation of Paulinism, even if Paulinism is already very much veiled there. Yes, well into the 19th century and into our time, of course, this Pauline interpretation prevailed; in our time, however, there was quite strong opposition to this Pauline view among Catholic priests, in that many Catholic priests, whose teaching is considered orthodox, contrast the original Petrine Christianity with the Pauline one. One can say: Petrinism ends with Peter himself, and then Paulinism begins to take effect. And Western Christianity now awaits Johannine Christianity, which will be a Christianity based on the spirit. This is how Schelling understood it in his mature years, at forty or fifty.

The other question was about the periods of Church history after the twelve apostles. Such a division is not only peculiar to Christianity, but is basically characteristic of all mystery religions. It is that the evolution of the world, in which the evolution of the earth is also included, proceeds in periods of twelve epochs each, that after a cycle of twelve epochs the first epoch is repeated and again twelve epochs are traversed on a higher, on a modified level. It can be said that at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was to shine most intensely into physical earthly vision through its direct earthly presence in a certain way, there was a time of darkness for the outer world. And one can say: precisely in contrast to what was to shine as a light into the souls of the apostles, there was the darkness of Judas Iscariot. The cosmic aspect is the one that sees the most apostate spirit of this time as the ruler of the world, the apostate spirit that always follows a time of Michael. This cycle, which always takes up about three centuries, has arrived at the point in our time where the transition has taken place from a Gabrielic cosmic age, from the age of Gabriel, to the age of Michael, which in turn will last about three centuries. The development intertwines in many ways, so that if you express it in a calculation, nothing completely adequate comes out. (It is written on the board: 330 times 12 = 3,960.)

These are things that are also known within the Catholic Church as esoteric wisdom. But I do not think that at the present moment it would have any particular significance for you if anything were added to what I have said about some of the esotericism of the Catholic Church in the course of my lectures. Of course, there would be a lot to say about the esotericism of the Catholic Church, especially that the Catholic Church is well aware that when a new form of clairvoyance emerges today, it reveals something that it wants to conceal from its faithful, and that it has set itself the task, above all, of fighting this newly emerging clairvoyance. This is one of the teachings that the initiates among the Catholic priesthood are already receiving today.

Now, regarding the question you raised: music and chorales in worship, it would have been very nice if something like this could have been tackled already now. When the Mass is celebrated on solemn occasions, it is possible to introduce the Mass before the relay prayer is said, with appropriate choral music, with instrumental table music that may also include singing, which refers to the motif of the relay prayer, and that each individual part of the Mass can then be commented on in the appropriate way. Likewise, the mass can end with a composition of the “The Act of Human Consecration, that was it”. So it is that before Communion everything in the music should be preparatory, and after Communion there should be a dying away of the music, so that Communion would be introduced by a musical motif, which would then fade away, ending with the words “The Act of Consecration of Man, that was its purpose”.

This is something you can study. And those who are seeking to compose from the spirit of the Mass and are looking for a musical stimulus will find the most intense stimulus in Bruckner, who was stimulated by the motif of the Mass. His compositions of the Mass offer more than those of Beethoven and Brahms. You will also gain a great deal here if you follow older [composers], but you must be aware that in this direction, some things have to be done anew. In particular, it should be noted that Bruckner's compositions of the Mass were actually consciously composed for non-ecclesiastical purposes, so that one cannot see completely adequate models in them.

Then there is the question – the other questions, which are more practical in nature, will be best answered this evening – about the Bible: What can be said about textual corruption in the New Testament? How did it come about and with what intention, and how can the sources of error be eliminated?

You see best of all, whenever translations are given, including today's translation, how the consciousness of the connection between the human soul and the cosmic worlds has faded in humanity. Just as a blind person, if he does not hear about it from the outside, could not describe trees, rivers, clouds, so today's person, when he has a text in front of him, cannot interpret it with what he sees; he will interpret what he does not see. Thus, the powerlessness in the face of what lies in the Gospels has gradually led to the lack of translations. And since, in the intellectual age of the mid-15th century, an enormous arrogance and pride has asserted itself in the face of this lack, the view has arisen that it is a purely arrogant conceit to exclude what is cosmic in the gospel texts, that one should speak to the simplest of people.

Yes, my dear friends, in the time when one officially translated as you have it today in the Lutheran translation, in that time it was not this translation of the Gospels that spoke to the simplest people, but rather what Jakob Böhme or Paracelsus spoke. They translated the Gospels differently and understood them correctly, and they translated them for simple minds in the right way, quite unlike those who boast that they speak to simple minds. In Paracelsus, you have a personality for whom religion was something that had a much broader meaning than the religion that must be gained in the age of intellectualism by those who want to replace this intellectualism of the head with a very strong intellectualism of the mind by freeing the concept of God from everything, in contrast to which everything must also be freed... [here the stenographer marked a gap]. That is what has become most un-Christian in modern Christianity. Just consider that in Paracelsus there lived a personality for whom religion applied to such an extent that it included medicine. In Paracelsus there lived a conception of religion that enabled him to hold on to the spiritual so firmly that it could permeate him to the point of illness, so that the physician is the one who carries out the will of God on earth in relation to the sick person. For him, medical service was religious service. And that is what is absolutely necessary today: not just to talk endlessly about the eternal, but to bring this eternal into all of life and to make it active and effective in all that is alive.

Now here the synoptic question is also touched upon in relation to the well-known agreement of the first three Gospels down to the details and the contradictions to the fourth, the Gospel of John (second section of the sixth point of the question).

Now, you will understand that these circumstances must be so if you consider the following: Especially about the Mystery of Golgotha and everything connected with it, was spoken of as something secret in the first centuries of Christianity. You know how they dealt with mystery wisdom in ancient times. This mystery wisdom was not something that was taken directly onto the streets, but was considered something that was only given to someone who had been properly prepared with the whole person in the right way. Thus, even in the remnants of mystery wisdom, in which Christianity first appeared before the most intimate of its adherents in the first Christian centuries, the mystery of Golgotha itself was also taught. However, they did not proceed with all the facts in the way that today in external science, where one proceeds according to the so-called historical sources, but rather, great value was placed on determining the day of Jesus' death not from a historical source but from stellar wisdom, thus saying: at this and that stellar constellation, the death of Jesus occurs. Such was the form.

But this knowledge of the stars was no longer very much alive at the time when the Gospels were written down in the form in which they now exist, and so you can very easily find that one person saw it one way and another person saw it another way. As for the similarities, they mostly relate to the teaching content. The fact of the matter is that at that time, when this teaching content was passed down from personality to personality, people had a very different memory than they do today, and what they were told over and over again and continued to say was naturally continued into future times. This must be explained, otherwise we fall back into the old days, which must not be. We must seek to overcome what was customary in the old days on a higher level. In this day and age, it is necessary to write down everything that is said; even the listeners here sit and write, horribile dictu. One should not imagine that the sayings reported in the Gospels were recorded by a proud stenographer. That was not necessary even in those days, the development of memory was quite different, and people memorized everything much more faithfully than they can today. The human brain, the physical brain, is much more fragile today than it was in those times. In those times, the brain cells lived almost to a real life in certain hours of the day, to the life that only clouded consciousness – those cells that cloud consciousness, that underlie the will, those are the white blood cells – not only at night, but also during the day, and even weaker at night. The brain cells did not have such an intense life as the white blood cells, but they did have a certain life, and that caused a very different memory to be present than it is today, so that what had been learned and what should be learned was faithfully preserved. Those who know this fact also know that the synoptic question of the Gospels is answered by the faithful memory of ancient times.

These were the questions that required me to answer them in a way that was conducive to the lecture, insofar as the answer had not already been given in what had been said so far. The further questions should actually be developed in the discussion, so the discussion should really be started in such a way that it can still be continued during your stay here. It is better to develop the things that are still questions here in speech and counter-speech. I know very well, my dear friends, that a great deal more could be said about such questions as historical questions, questions about the Bible and so on, but here we must come to an end. Certainly, there are still many questions to be answered, which in the course of time can be answered on other occasions, but to those who are beginning to question, I would also like to advise them to engage in self-knowledge, which can be done in the right can be done in the right direction by the following little story, which I give without any allusion, but which, if used in the right way in self-knowledge, can lead one to expect the future with regard to certain questions.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who asked questions about everything, and his father was quite disconsolate about it and said one day: “I longingly await the day when my son stops asking questions, because otherwise I'll go crazy over all this questioning.” — Then another person came along, a family friend, who decided to answer the questions the little boy asked until the little boy himself would be in a position where he could no longer ask questions, that is, until no more questions occurred to him. That took a very long time, and the danger was already approaching that the little son would run out of questions, but he kept asking: Why is Friday noon before Friday evening? Why do the stars shine in the evening? And so on. Now, nevertheless, the danger was approaching that the little son would run out of questions, but he wanted to overcome this danger, and so he finally asked the terrible question: Why is the What? Well, we should incorporate such a narrative a little into our soul when we should be sad that in these days the time is approaching when questioning will no longer be possible for some time. But we still want to deal with the questions that are to be discussed in speech and counter-speech now. So from now on I will again be more of a listener and only occasionally interrupt you.

A participant: I would like to ask why Luke has the Risen One eat.

Rudolf Steiner: The matter is such that it can only be properly understood if one is clear about the fact that in order to interpret such things from the consciousness of the time in the right way, it is really necessary to reawaken the idea that was associated with the concept of eating at that time. Today, we simply imagine that we consume physical matter and that this physical matter passes into the human body. Now, as today's physiology tells us, the concept of eating was not always, but in the time when the Gospel of Luke was written down, the old wisdom was still valid in many ways, that man takes what he builds his body with from the etheric world, and that what he takes from the etheric world also appears in the image of eating when one sees the etheric body. So you also see in the image of the physical eating that which is the correlate for eating in the etheric world. If you base your interpretation on this, you will see that the passage could, of course, be expressed in a completely different way than it is expressed, but that it does not need to be eliminated. This is the case with many passages.

A participant asks a question about the marriage ritual [the wording of the question was not written down in shorthand].

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, this is about what marriage is as a sacrament. You have to bear in mind what the content of the church ritual of the sacrament of marriage means. The content of the church marriage sacrament is no more the consummation of the marriage than, for example, the blessing of the ripening of the fruit in the course of the year corresponds to the reality of the ripening of the fruit. The performance of the marriage sacrament in the Christian view is that which is performed by marriage in the civil sense, is elevated to the ecclesiastical, to the ceremonial. So that with regard to the dissolution or the indissolubility of marriage, nothing is given within the content of the sacrament, because what is elevated into the sacrament is what is considered to be the essence of marriage. The Catholic Church has also retained this; of course, originally it fully recognized the marriage performed by civil law and then blessed it in church. In more recent times, when the emancipation of [church from civil] marriage occurred... [larger gap marked by the stenographer in the transcript]. The Catholic Church regards what has been agreed between the spouses as the ecclesiastical and blesses that. With regard to this matter, the Church takes the most liberal position, only that it has been confused by the fact that it speaks out on marriage in all sorts of ways because, in recent times, it has presumed not to bless marriage but to perform it, that is, to assume the function of the secular power of the prince of this world... [further gap]. There the fact is that the church, by entering into the secular, has also secularized the sacraments, and then these secularized sacraments have been taken over by the state. With these explanations, you will also see the relevant passages of the testament in harmony.

A participant asks a question about emergency baptism (the wording was not noted).

Rudolf Steiner: As it stands, emergency baptism can be administered in any situation. It is different from baptism in the course of worship. It is performed when there is danger to the life of the person to be baptized, but a priest cannot be called in time. In this case, baptism can also be performed by a lay person. It does not matter how it is performed. It just has to be rectified by the priest and recognized by the community. What can happen in addition is that the priest includes baptism in the next communion, so to speak making it an ideal baptism if death has occurred; otherwise it is ritually reenacted.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: We have a colleague who is Jewish. How should adult baptism be performed?

Rudolf Steiner: Actually no different from the baptism of a child. The ritual does not contradict this at all. He must first be baptized before he is ordained a priest.

A participant: Why is child baptism necessary for the time being and not adult baptism? In the past, it was the custom to baptize adults first.

Rudolf Steiner: I have said that this cannot be avoided in today's world. We cannot introduce the baptism of adults in today's world. You have to take that into account, otherwise you will either bang your head against a wall or smash your head. I believe that we must retain infant baptism, and once it has been performed, we cannot repeat it. We have to let baptism take effect before confirmation.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: How does what is necessary today to bring healing facts to people differ from the proclamation that was possible a few centuries ago?

Rudolf Steiner: Bringing all the facts of salvation to people will have to take the course that you will first do what is possible in order to increasingly move on to what is necessary. The necessary has already been outlined, but it will really differ even in one and the same place, depending on whether you have one community or another there or there. Let us assume that one finds a community of nothing but socialists. He will have to proceed somewhat differently than the one who finds a community of old dethroned German princes. [The following remarks have only been recorded in fragments by the stenographer.] In scholasticism, this type of discussion occurs very frequently. That is something that clarifies the matter, if one says it radically. You must experience that. With what can result from it, one comes to differentiating.

[Questions are asked about the loyalty formula. Friedrich Rittelmeyer proposes an amendment. The stenographer did not write down the wording of the question and Rittelmeyer's vote. ]

Rudolf Steiner: What I consider necessary is this: At first, in a purely intellectual sense, some might believe that someone can separate [from the community] by simply continuing to do the same things within the community after the separation. Now this is against the tradition of the cult. The granting of the right to practise this cult and likewise the speaking out of the mediated Christ-power, which belongs to this cult, must be regarded as belonging to this community. Therefore, the community has the right to deny anyone the right to practise the cult or to teach in connection with this cult. He can, of course, teach, but not in connection with this cult. So he simply loses the right to continue to practise what he has taken on within the cult. The moral evaluation lies in the fact that the conference, the meeting, the community of leaders and senior leaders, has to pronounce on how his relationship to this community can now be understood in relation to real things, that is, that he loses the right to do this and that and so on. The natural connection with this community is such, and that is expressed [in the formula]. You can formulate it differently, you can grasp it more clearly if you are aware that it is so. The interpretation must also be passed on. So in this respect I could not object to this formulation, but it must be recognized not by me but by the community.

[The question was asked about the possibility of distributing it to individual cities. The questions were not noted by the stenographer.

Rudolf Steiner: There is no reason to exclude Vienna. Because it is geographically remote? Well, after all, Vienna is no further from Stuttgart geographically than Königsberg is. That is a question that is only related to whether you find the opportunity to occupy Vienna from the outset. That it is good to occupy it is something that I fully accept. Firstly, there is no reason not to occupy Vienna. Secondly, the situation in Austria is such that the configuration of religious life that you now find in Austria is actually only about fifty years old, and in the years before that, this religious life had a completely different configuration. Austria would have been an extraordinarily favorable ground for such a renewal of Christianity if it had been carefully implemented, because the orthodoxy of Catholic priests has become very alien to many people, not only to the laity but also to priests. Now, the completely untrue Christian-social element has taken over everything that existed in Austria until the 1980s – it is an embodied lie. It has also seized the religious element, and today the situation is such that one would think there was no receptivity at all for the renewal of Christianity in Austria. In Austria one could speak fairly freely about anthroposophy if one did not touch on anything that reminded one of Catholicism... [space in the text marked by the stenographer]. Then it was claimed that anthroposophy was just a form of Jesuitism in disguise. But in fact this earlier current is still there in latent form and, if approached in the right way, is good soil. [Another question is asked that was not noted by the stenographer.]

Rudolf Steiner: In such areas, the need for ritual often arises as a reaction. In the east and in the north, a great deal is suppressed that lives in people's minds. You are not justified in assuming that you would not find a yearning for ritual in the north and in the east.

A participant: I think Silesia is a very good field. I have heard from the people of the social work group that they are much more popular in Breslau, in Silesia, than in Berlin.

Rudolf Steiner: I am very surprised that you think that the Protestant spirit has had such a deep influence in northern and northeastern Germany. That is actually impossible. The influence only goes so far in the north and east because it has been and is being artificially generated. It is the Prussian state power that has worked so extraordinarily, that has brought about what is there and suppressed the religious inclination of the people. What basically holds it back is Prussian militarism and the assessoral spirit, and not the spirit of the people. It cannot be dismissed out of hand that precisely on the way to the East something of what made it possible to Christianize East Prussia in earlier centuries is reviving.

Marie Steiner: I think you should go to places like Essen and Bochum. I don't know of any places that need more spiritual life than these. I felt so sorry for these people from the factories.

Rudolf Steiner: This question is one whose answer depends on whether it is possible to fill these positions.

I must say that I sometimes heard the question: “Why don't you have a Swiss person in your class?” when I came up to you. The last time we were here, there were still Swiss people among you. So with the general process of elimination, all the Swiss left. What you have now is enclosed within the borders of the German Reich, and of course it cannot remain that way, otherwise you would found a German church. Christianity cannot be enclosed within national borders, nor within political national borders. We must think not narrower, but much further. It is something that weighs heavily on me that you have been left so alone by the members living outside the borders of the German Reich. Those of you who were already pastors are few in number. The Swiss pastors had to withdraw. This is very understandable given the special nature of these personalities. But there is a tendency that even the younger Swiss people do not approach this work, who, as Swiss, could found communities in Switzerland just as you can found communities in Germany. This is because there are not as many idealists among young Swiss people as there are among young Germans. They know that they will not receive their salaries in the same way on the new path they are about to take as they would on the old path. The mistake of Old Catholicism is that it has not accepted a new element in an entirely unbiased way, but essentially wants to go back to what was corrupted by ultramontanism. Old Catholicism suffers from its own negation; it is actually only anti-ultramontane.

Gertrud Spörri is Swiss, but initially prefers to work in Germany rather than Switzerland.

Rudolf Steiner: But the Swiss are not coming either. And you must not present it as an ideal that they should also have a war so that they can catch up on what the others went through [during the war]. It would be necessary to do something for the Swiss in particular. I just want to have said that. I realize that it cannot be done the way you are now. But national borders must not be the limits of our work.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer suggests going to the universities and trying to get students to participate.

Rudolf Steiner: Actually, the whole world comes into consideration, where today there is only that name Christianity. Where is true Christianity today? The whole world comes into consideration. When in earlier times such a movement as the present one is to be, was kindled, it necessarily had to have a completely different character: it is the Hussite movement; only it was cut off at that time. But the Hussite movement had, besides the negative elements mentioned in history, also its positive elements. The conditions already exist everywhere beneath an upper stratum that has become purely Ahrimanic.

The question concerns Thuringia and Erfurt. Is it important to start immediately or to think about Thuringia later?

Rudolf Steiner: Thuringia naturally has the one characteristic that the population is the most unintelligent in all of Germany. There is a lot of native wit in Thuringia with regard to everyday life, but in terms of understanding all higher questions, Thuringia is quite backward. That is why it is difficult to work there. But why not overcome these difficulties in this way? Thuringia does not need to be an exception. I could well imagine that a center can be created in Erfurt, for example. I cannot believe it in Weimar, because even today people there are blasé about religious matters. Weimar has the harmful after-effects of the fact that Goethe and Schiller lived there. The fact is that Goethe and Schiller, who are well known by name, are basically two plaster figures in Weimar. The people are satisfied with that. A participant: Is it time to start in Munich?

Rudolf Steiner: No, in Munich it is still the case, even today -— although today much is immersed in untruth -, that everything is still possible, as it was before the war, when Munich was the German city where everything was possible. In Munich you could really do anything. But in most cases, either a very open or at least a hidden path leads from everything to the Hofbräuhaus; of course to the republican Hofbräuhaus, just as in Vienna people were surprised to get the republican roll instead of the Kaiser roll. In Munich, everything leads to the Hofbräuhaus. That is the difficulty. And so in Munich the Catholic movement is also flooded by that standard life, that standard living, the mighty Hofbräuhaus. But I believe, on the other hand, that your movement is precisely about the necessary strength and energy. Other movements will have a much harder time of it than this one of yours. So it's not a matter of saying we can't occupy Munich, but rather of asking how to properly occupy Munich, or rather, who should be admitted as Mr. Klein's helper, because he will cause offense in Munich due to his excessive youthfulness. That will cause some difficulties. But he will be supported.

Emil Bock: This is our concern, especially with regard to the large cities. We are convinced that we do not have enough older personalities who could tackle a larger city in such a way that it would attract public attention. That is why we have the question of how we want to deal with Klein and Munich: Who would be best suited for the job? We are such a small group and, after all, we don't have so many different people among us that it seems possible for us to adequately serve these cities. Therefore, we have hesitated as to whether we want to leave out the big cities because we cannot properly staff them.

Rudolf Steiner: What were the difficulties? Objective difficulties? There were none. It is precisely in Catholic cities – both Munich and Cologne are Catholic cities, although Catholicism manifests itself quite differently in the two – that you meet people who initially have a high degree of neutral feeling. At first everything is more or less the same to them because they have become indifferent; then gradually they are seized. One can achieve a great deal there. I am counting on a great deal in Munich and Cologne, that people will gradually be seized. It could also happen in Vienna, for example, that a larger number of people will simply go there out of curiosity at first, which should not be the worst thing, but the best. It could be the same in Cologne. Catholicism prepares the ground for people to become dulled to the Church out of habit, but actually have a deep urge to experience something true. Among the old Catholic population, there are many who are striving for religious renewal. The only question is: do we have the necessary personalities, and if not, how do we get them?

[Another question is asked about the dangers of sectarianism.]

Rudolf Steiner: It depends on the spirit, on the seriousness, not on the appearance. Sectarianism will arise immediately if you see something in the seclusion that is a danger for the cause. Why should it be sectarian to spread higher insights among the people.

• 1. See note

[At the beginning of the meeting, the “Community Order for the Soul Shepherds of the Christian Community” drafted by the founding circle was discussed. First, the draft for point 1 was read out:]

"Affiliation. The Christian Community was founded in Dornach between September 6 and 22, 1922 as an original community, consisting of 45 priests authorized to perform the rituals entrusted to the Christian Community.

The Church of Christ recognizes as authorized helpers for the practice of the three rituals and for giving religious instruction the personalities who, on behalf of Dr. Steiner, give the free religious instruction and celebrate the cultural rites at the independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart and at sister schools.

Ernst Uehli [a teacher of religion at the Waldorf School] points out that the individuals currently teaching religion at the Waldorf School have been appointed by Dr. Steiner. Since Dr. Steiner is in overall charge of the Waldorf School, he will also have to decide who will continue to perform the cultic service there.

Rudolf Steiner: I think that the Waldorf School will always be seen as a kind of model school for this pedagogical approach, which is cultivated within the anthroposophical movement. And for the part that figures as religious education, of course, the complete idea of Waldorf school education must be considered, so that the previous practice must certainly be continued there. For those whom one is still obliged to appoint as religion teachers, exactly the same must apply as for the present religion teachers. That should be the case. There is hardly anything in contradiction to what you have here. I just don't want to be restricted in the event that I consider someone to be a proper religion teacher and then the same does not apply to the person concerned as to the current Waldorf teachers. That is something I cannot even consider. In making the appointment I can only consider personal suitability. So the question here is whether you mean by the sentence that the subsequent religion teachers should be members of the Christian Community. Has anything been done about that yet?

Emil Bock: Perhaps this formulation is not clear enough after all. This sentence could perhaps be worded as follows: Those who are appointed by Dr. Steiner to these functions will be recognized without these conditions being met. The sentence that religious education and rituals should not be carried out by all those who are not appointed by Dr. Steiner is intended only for those schools that may receive a different leadership.

Rudolf Steiner: No, the only schools that will come into question for this paragraph of yours are those that are recognized as Waldorf schools. And I will appoint the people for these until I die [to teach religion and celebrate the rites]. So until then, it will be a matter of recognizing those I appoint. And afterwards, recognition will perhaps also be sought in accordance with what is decreed for the constitution after my death, insofar as I have not settled it.

[Further points of the draft of the community order are read out. This was only partially recorded by the stenographer. Regarding point 2c:]

"The appointment of successors and the expansion of the leadership and guidance is carried out by election from among the consecrated workers, namely by the senior leaders for the office of senior leader, and by senior leaders and leaders in community for the office of leader. If a territorial structure of the work develops, the proposals of the consecrated workers working in a particular area should be sought by those to be elected before each election of a leader or leader for that area.

Rudolf Steiner: That can certainly be done. The only difficulty arises in the one point, the very last paragraph that you read. It is not entirely clear whether the appointment or co-option of the senior leaders and leaders can be changed in the paragraphs. If it can be changed at any time, then that is something that thwarts the purpose of this paragraph, which you draw up so that something other than what you want does not take place. If you formulate the last paragraph in such general terms, this paragraph in particular calls into question something that is otherwise quite clear. It could then be changed every year. Since you consider this mode of election to be something very salutary, you would be contradicting yourself if you did not add something to the paragraph to the effect that this mode of election cannot be changed or only at very long intervals, in other words, something to protect it; otherwise you would very easily end up with a democratic election after a short time.

[The stenographer's transcript shows a gap here.

Rudolf Steiner: I might have a few words to say before you leave. This can be done tomorrow.

A request has been made for clarification of the Credo.

Rudolf Steiner: What I wanted to say about the creed has already been said to some extent in other things. The creed I gave you was taken from genuine spiritual knowledge. There is something different about this creed compared to rituals. Rituals are given as something that now arises as a form of ceremony. This creed gives something that the religious person of the present day presents as their confession. You can agree or disagree with it. Or perhaps you can say to yourself today, “You have faith that I have given this creed.” You want to declare your agreement with this creed today and regard this agreement initially as an agreement with the teaching. It will hardly be possible to object to the creed in any way. However, I believe that you have described a table 5

sentence that comes from the Credo as unclear, the sentence “to spiritually heal the disease of sin from the body of humanity”. You asked whether it should not read “to spiritually heal the body of humanity from the disease of sin”.

What is meant is this: To spiritually heal the sin-sickness of the body of humanity – to spiritually heal the sin-sickness present in the body. That is the meaning. “To spiritually heal the sin-sickness of the body of humanity” – well, that wouldn't make sense. You could also say “to spiritually heal the sin-sickness of the body of humanity”. I would prefer: “on the physical.” — “To spiritually heal the sin-sickness of the physical of humanity,” that is a genitive objective. I have paraphrased it because these two genitives are in succession, but they are simply given by the text. Otherwise, I have nothing to say in relation to the Credo.

[You still have the question:] Why are there monthly sayings that apply to the whole week? – The reason for this must be understood from a higher point of view. Suppose I were to explain the human soul, I would say: will, feeling and thinking are the three members of the soul, or at least the outer manifestation of it. (I write on the board – middle –: will, feeling, thinking.) Now I must not present it by writing: here thinking, feeling, willing.

No.

So it would be wrong. I have to draw it so that there is thinking, feeling and willing in the head, only the willing is weakest. In the metabolic-limb organism of man, the will is predominant. There is always one that takes over the others. And so, in spiritual activities, you have to have something that takes over the lower levels from a higher level.

A participant: When is the beret handed over to the priest when he is installed in office?

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to carry out this ceremony of handing over the beret after the ceremony. The handover would take place when the person concerned reads the first mass, then when you carry out the ceremony. Then he will simply receive the beret with the words I will speak tomorrow. That is the handing over of the office. Otherwise one would hand over a diploma, here one hands over the beret. This will be handed over when you read the first mass, with a few words spoken after communion.

I have tried to find a name to replace the word “priest”, but apart from the names “shepherd of souls” or “caretaker of souls”, I have not yet come up with any other. It is

new German language, it is hardly possible to form a word for the word “priest”. “Seelenhirte” (shepherd of souls) seems too sentimental, but you won't easily find a non-sentimental word.

[A participant] suggests retaining the word “priest”.

Rudolf Steiner: That is the simplest. But it is something that has been perceived as offensive in Protestant circles. Basically, “priest” also originally goes back to “shepherd of souls”. There are, of course, no objective reasons [not to use the name “priest”]. It is only the reason that all these things should be avoided that are common in Roman Catholicism. The “Act of Consecration of Man” is a very adequate term for “mass,” but for “priest” one would have to use the word “soul carer,” which also sounds sentimental. And a word that would not so much denote the priesthood as the dignity of a priest would be the word “consecrated person”, which denotes one who has been consecrated. “Consecrated person” is something that would be quite adequate, not so much for the word “priest” as for the word used in the ancient mysteries.

A participant: Are there any rules about the type of incense?

Rudolf Steiner: We use ordinary incense. The essential thing is that the incense spreads this kind of ethereal odor. That is essential to the matter. It is not correct that incense is only used in Catholic communities; it is used wherever ceremonies are performed that have a real spiritual basis. You mean, whether one can take an incense that does not have this ethereal smell, because the incense could be slandered to the effect that it puts people to sleep? There is no other option, as long as this prejudice has to be combated, than not to burn incense. You can omit the incense.

Werner Klein: Would that not substantially alter the spiritual facts?

Rudolf Steiner: By merely imagining the incense, it will be one degree less real. But you will have to make such allowances in relation to various things. I cannot see how you can fulfill the ideal if you want to see it fulfilled. You have incense everywhere. I have already mentioned the Freemasons; the Indians also have it. It is everywhere where serious occult practices are performed. Only in Protestant circles, when smoking is used, it smells Catholic. - One could also say, it smells Masonic or Indian.

A participant: We can get a small chapel for our worship in Frankfurt. Are there certain things to consider when furnishing the church? What color for the walls or the details?

Rudolf Steiner: I would not go to extremes here. I would keep it to a dull purple, not too loud, but a dull purple. That is the best way to get the mood right. The things that differ are done in a darker purple.

A participant: Could other rooms also be considered, for example, Masonic ritual rooms or similar?

Rudolf Steiner: Of the Freemasons you could only get those rooms that do not have their symbols, so the ballroom. The ballroom you could take under certain circumstances readily. This is a matter of opportunity. I could imagine that is no obstacle to use the ballroom of the Freemasons for your purposes.

Friedrich Ritielmeyer: Auditoriums and schools would also work, of course. For smaller communities, I would even consider private rooms to be the most suitable. But people don't have many rooms anymore. Only a few people in Germany still have large private rooms. The rooms of the Anthroposophical Societies are also increasingly at risk. In Munich, there are no longer any such rooms. Where they still exist, they would of course be usable in agreement with the boards of directors. Public education rooms would also be considered.

Rudolf Steiner: In these matters, I must say that I am only familiar with one adult education centre that I have come into contact with. Adult education rooms are those that also have a public character. The adult education association led by Raphael Löwenfeld had its lecture room in the Berlin City Hall. Of course, one can use these rooms. One could also use the hall of the Bernoullianum in Basel if one gets it. I would only say in such cases, if I were to take over the hall as the person in charge: Please don't be alarmed; we have ceremonies in which we use incense. —You would always have to tell the hall providers this.

A participant: There is no longer any smell of incense the next morning.

Rudolf Steiner: It depends entirely on the sense of smell of those who enter the room. Of course, you will find people who can still detect the smell days later.

A participant: How should our group relate to Freemasonry? Several of us have become more familiar with Freemasonry.

Rudolf Steiner: The Circle as such does not relate to Freemasonry. I regard it as a purely individual matter. It cannot be that anything is brought in from Freemasonry as such, because in reality Freemasonry no longer has anything Christian. That is not something we need to discuss here. Freemasonry as such has nothing Christian. A participant: Could we exert influence on Freemasonry?

Rudolf Steiner: I think that is hardly possible. It is different if someone works in Freemasonry with the impulses that he has and receives through this community. In that way he can influence them. But that is not very easy either. Now, I do not think that is particularly desirable either. What is desirable is that this community spreads as widely as possible and that everything is done to promote this spread. With Freemasonry, you will find least of all that it has a progressive effect. I also do not believe that you can come into a conflict of duty there. I do not know where that could lie. But I will not ask you if you do not want to hint at the conflict.

A participant: I think that our movement here, our circle, is much more valuable than what Freemasonry can offer. I was already a Freemason before I joined our circle. Now I am striving to devote all my energy to our movement. I don't think I will have the time and energy to be able to give to Freemasonry what it demands.

Rudolf Steiner: There is no real conflict of duty. At most, it would make it possible for you to be less active in the lodge. But it does not give rise to a real inner conflict of duty. If you were to become a Roman Catholic priest, however, there would be a conflict of duty. But as it is, there is no conflict of duty for you at all, except that you cannot be in the lodge as much. That could also be caused by something else.

Emil Bock: We would be very grateful if you could at least give us some pointers on pastoral psychology and pathology. We then asked about the sexual question in a pastoral relationship, for guidelines for pastoral care in this area.

Rudolf Steiner: This can hardly be achieved in any other way than perhaps by you first trying, together with our doctors, to gain some insights into psychiatry in general and how it is practised in our country. This must then be incorporated into the confession. Because you can only go as far as it is an object of confession. Otherwise you will hardly be able to do anything. All physical treatment you must leave to the doctor for the time being. But the confession must be aimed at being a real sedative for those who have some kind of defect. This will be an item that must be worked out step by step in Stuttgart. It cannot be done in a few minutes. But you should also talk about pastoral therapy. It is quite possible that you will need knowledge in this area when you are ready to found village communities. Since the pastors in the villages often give physical medicine at the same time, they acquire knowledge that they can then use in their pastoral care.

[A question was asked that was not recorded by the stenographer.]

Rudolf Steiner: The wives of the married may be present at tomorrow's celebration, but may not receive communion.

A participant: How can we officially identify ourselves to the authorities? Rudolf Steiner: Is the name of pastor monopolized?

Emil Bock: I believe it is legally reserved. Only those with the title of pastor in the recognized denominations may use it.

Rudolf Steiner: As soon as I find a name for “priest”, you can also use that as an official title. But I have to find it first; perhaps it will come while you are still here. For the time being it has not been possible to find anything except these three names: “Seelenpfleger”, “Seelenhirte”, “Weiheträger”. These are adequate names, but they sound a little sentimental in modern language. Friedrich Rittelmeyer: Is there a German name for “Hostie”?

Rudolf Steiner: Why do you need a German name for it? We should only strive for a word if it can truly be a word. For something as solemn as the Mass, it is acceptable to use a word like “Human Consecration Ritual”; for the host, however, it is of course difficult to use a different word. “Altar bread” and ‘altar wine’ is a very adequate name that works quite well, but it is a long name. I cannot find a word for ‘priest’ and ‘pastor’ alone. I would even find ‘pastor’ very painful if it were not used. Perhaps it would even be better to let you use the official title of “pastor”. I think “priest” is different from “pastor”. “Priest” refers to the consecration, but “pastor” refers directly to the person who is an official as a shepherd of souls.

A participant asks whether the word “clergyman” could be used.

Rudolf Steiner: Of course there is nothing wrong with the word “clergyman”. But Dr. Rittelmeyer shook his head?

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: All these words are too heavily burdened for me.

Rudolf Steiner: “Spiritual” too? “Ordained minister” is the term to be used for the priest. Outwardly, it is a demotion if you cannot bear the name “pastor”. Why is that not possible? Do you yourself have something against the title “pastor”? “Pastor” is, for the time being, a title that encompasses both Catholic and Protestant clergy.

Emil Bock: The title “clergyman” would not be confirmed as an official title for us.

Rudolf Steiner: The German language does not have a clear word, so the word “pastor” is to be aimed for. A question is asked about the doctrine of predestination. [The stenographer did not record the wording of the question, and only parts of the following remarks by Rudolf Steiner were recorded.]

Rudolf Steiner: This is a question that cannot easily be answered in a pastoral setting because it is fundamentally a profound question of world view. In ancient times, predestination meant the names of those who were entered in the Book of Creation. But now you must realize that actually until the 5th or 6th century, at least until the time of Augustine, all thinking that referred to the spiritual world itself was thought from the spiritual world to the physical world and not the other way around. It is only in the last few centuries that thinking has been from the bottom up and no longer from the top down. So if you take the way of thinking that was natural for Augustine from the moment he was able to think philosophically at all, predestination meant the names of those who were chosen by God to be written in the book of life; they meant a configuration of the world in which the names were there. So you would get the scheme: The heavenly; now comes the first name: those who gave alms, so we have the almsgivers. As a second, those who cared for the sick; and as a third name: those who taught. And now, in what is conceived from above downwards, you do not yet have people in it at all; they must first acquire the right to these names themselves, must first integrate themselves. All these designations are type designations that descend from above, so that people must first acquire the right to these type designations. It is not people who are nurses, it is not people who are alms-givers, soul-shepherds and so on; these are the names – but they are not names that the individual bears – they must first be acquired.

It is the completely different way of thinking from which one must try to understand such a word as “predestination”. Otherwise, how do you get along with the teachings of Augustine and with the whole dispute of the minds at that time about predestination? You cannot get along. You cannot possibly ascribe to Augustine that he divided humanity on earth into two groups, one predetermined for good, the other for evil. What he meant is that he placed the types on the one hand and the other types on the other. But people themselves do not belong to one type or the other from the outset; they must first acquire their claim to a name.

Gnostic? There it is in the most eminent sense that only the one who acquires the possibility to do so in the course of earthly life belongs to those who can be so designated. Blessed is everyone who acquires the name in earthly life; anyone who does not do so will not be blessed. One must come to blessedness through the name. That is a Gnostic principle. If you hear the word “name” in the language of the older times, you will find that outwardly.... [gap].

Take these two things for the time being in my “Theosophy”. There is the human being who goes up to the consciousness soul; he wants to come to the spiritual man, there the impact from the spiritual world is “poured over”, and the germ of the “I” lies in this, which is poured over there. This also corresponds to Indian terminology. The Indian uses the word 'Nama', the Indian word for 'name'. Nama points upwards to 'Manas', not to what is below. It is the same in Egyptian. So what corresponds to the name is predetermined. If I may express myself very roughly, one could say that there is a map of heaven, where all those who will be blessed and all those who can be damned are written down; but one must acquire that which corresponds to what is written there as one's name. There is a typology that is nothing other than the expression of predestination. Augustine cannot be understood any differently; he is truly a follower of absolute predestination. With Calvin's doctrine of predestination, one really doesn't know what he wants; he ends it rather confusingly. I imagine – I haven't studied it, it's never interested me much, I haven't studied Calvin – but I imagine that with him it is so that he started from a moment when he sensed something, and then he couldn't face saying it clearly. His followers felt the need to bring it to an understanding. Today, people treat such things as if they were none of their business. I don't think that [the teaching] of Augustine can be treated in the same way as that of the Gnostics. Augustine is to be seen as an excellent human being.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: What is the significance of Christ's resurrection after three days?

Rudolf Steiner: For three days it was undecided whether he would die or not. It was a three-day struggle with death. So it is to be understood that the things that are there [in the Gospels] are realities. It is not the case that the Christ did not really go through the pain that had to be suffered during the scourging and the crucifixion. It is to be understood that for three days there was the possibility that he would not overcome death. The struggle lasted so long. You can say that from a higher point of view that is out of the question. But he had to fight with death for three days and had this tableau of the past life and led the fight against dissolution [of the body], which he went through with his divine nature like the human being in his human nature. The human body disintegrates at death. The body of Christ Jesus has dissolved into the substance of the earth. You can just as well call that “disappearance” as “dissolving” and “remaining”.

Something redemptive is taking place; an effect on elemental spirits is being exerted by drawing them into their realm.

[At the beginning of the meeting, the wording of the loyalty oath was discussed again. The conversation was not

- Before handing over the beret to Friedrich Rittelmeyer, Rudolf Steiner speaks:]

This is therefore the last action to be undertaken out of the spirit, out of which I have undertaken the attempt to realize this movement as a ritual-bearing one in the world, directly out of the spiritual world. In the future, this ceremony is to be performed each time before the first mass is celebrated by the ordained priest. It should be a different kind of action from all the others, and therefore less bound to fixed forms. But in spirit it should briefly contain what I now want to express with the following words. It will therefore not be clothed in the ceremonial words of making the cross or of “Christ in you”, but will be performed directly without an introduction and without the usual concluding sentence. It will be carried out in the way that I describe with the words:

All the symbols of Your actions in the sense of this spiritual movement that have come to You so far express Your communion with the divine worlds that reign over the earth. The symbol that You now receive expresses Your different relationship from You to the people for whom You administer Your office. That is, through the preceding rituals You have received Your communion with the divine essence. Through this sign you receive your power over those who place their trust in you as members of the community. You lead them by virtue of the office, which is symbolized in this protection of your own head. The baretti is placed on the head of the newly ordained.

You always wear this to express your relationship to the lay community; you wear it on the way to the altar, you wear it on the way from the altar; you wear it wherever you go to a solemn ceremony or a sacrament. Accept this symbol of your authority, an authority within which you perform priestly acts.

When the priest reaches the altar, the beret is given to the altar server; he places it on the side table until the end of the service. If the service is interrupted for any reason, in other words wherever the priest moves away from or towards the altar, the beret is put on, never at the altar itself. At the end of the service, after the words “That was the Act of Consecration of Man,” the priest takes the chalice in his left hand, puts on the beret with his right hand, and then walks away, with his right hand now resting on the chalice again.

[Friedrich Rittelmeyer now celebrates the Act of Consecration of Man. After its conclusion, Rudolf Steiner speaks:)

My dear friends! The last ceremonial act that was to be performed here in this place for the inauguration of your mission to the world has been performed, and you will now take what has been done here into your thoughts, into your feelings, into your will, and you will, according to your own judgment and insight, henceforth carry out everything that has been conceived by you in the spirit, everything that has been initiated here.

These are the last few words I shall speak to you. You will find that you have a difficult path to tread. Your attention has already been drawn to the individual difficulties that have been mentioned. But it is certainly good if you now, before you go out into the world to do your own work, face your soul impartially and frankly, that what you are thinking of undertaking is not fenced off in the world today, but is fought over, and you will have to all that you undertake out of the spirit, which is to begin here through you, what you undertake for those who will entrust themselves to you, you will have to have an alert eye for the fact that what you want to make the soul of your work will be fought over. We could also cite many things today, on this occasion, when it is a matter of adding the watchful eye for the world to the heart inspired by God, but I will bring only one of the testimonies before your soul, which will make you realize how strong you yourselves will have to be if you want to penetrate all the judgment that the world presents today against what you, as the soul, have taken up in your teaching work, what penetrates against what is called the anthroposophical worldview.

We see, don't we, how people sometimes fight with almost devilish activity against the anthroposophical worldview. We do not want to focus on that today, but we do want to draw attention to how difficult it is in our time, even for those who want to retain at least a small degree of impartiality, but absolutely cannot, for the reason that what has been accumulating over centuries now envelops human souls and really obscures their clear view of the spiritual forces. Therefore you will have to penetrate through this darkness, for believe me, in many an hour this darkness will also envelop your soul. This darkness will approach you and will ask you many a question along the lines of: Is it really the case that the spiritual world has begun to speak to people in a new way in the last three to four centuries? It is so! And you will have to struggle to the realization that it is so. But you will have to be strong to struggle through.

And so I would like to bring an example to your mind that is currently occurring, which will show you how these darkening clouds come upon people's souls and obscure their further view into the spirituality that is flowing into the earth today.

Not so long ago, a Benedictine priest from the Catholic Church, that is, one of those who express their thoughts most freely in the Catholic Church, wrote a nice little book about the journey of the human soul in the divine face. This little book, which appeared in German in an inexpensive book collection, could actually be of great use to many. Not for those who seek to walk in the light of the spiritual in the sense of our time, but for those who want to get a real idea of how, in that time, in which what was still present in the first Christian centuries of older mysteries was already darkening, the better souls sought to deepen their minds by always keeping in mind the perpetual wandering of the human soul in the face of God. In this respect, the account of the Benedictine monk is precisely a confession that even an excellent person today can no longer escape the bleakness of the darkened worlds. The same person who wrote this booklet, which is good in some respects, about the path of the human soul in the presence of God, recently wrote a condemnation of anthroposophy in the sense that he denies that today's humanity, without exception, has any possibility at all of coming to the spiritual through the paths that the human soul can take. He imagines that the divine-spiritual lies in a cosmic distance from the human soul, that in the human soul there is always a yearning to live together with this divine-spiritual, but he asserts that only in two cases was it possible for a human being to connect with the divine-spiritual world from the human soul, and that only for a very short time and in an insufficient way, but still in a distinct way. He assumes these two cases with Plotinus and with Buddha. The Benedictine monk therefore asserts today that only these two human personalities, through a special dispensation in the development of the earth, were able to bring their soul close to the divine spiritual world and thereby, in a certain sense, achieve a divine spiritual enlightenment for the other human personalities. But with that, he claims, humanity's power to do anything from the human soul to come close to the divine spiritual world is exhausted. Therefore, apart from these two personalities, everything that comes with the claim that the divine spiritual world, the spiritual existence, can really be connected to the earth through human powers is a misconception. He says that weak humanity has no other choice than to accept the historical appearance of Jesus of Nazareth and, in unillumined faith, to attain through the power of Christ that which cannot be attained in the light. Mager explains this in a rather strong way. He sees the situation of humanity in relation to the divine-spiritual world as that of an army that wants to storm the seat of the divine-spiritual. It is as if an army had set itself the task of storming a fortress; only a few of the boldest storm the wall, and the attack collapses. And so man has no choice but to renounce a connection of his consciousness with the divine spiritual world.

From such a point of view, Mager, the Benedictine monk, cannot, of course, see anything in anthroposophy but what he sees in it. These are indeed characteristic words that he speaks, but they are words of complete darkness of the human soul. He says the following words: “My innermost scientific conviction is that Steiner's Anthroposophy cannot be characterized otherwise than as the skillful systematization of hallucinations into a world view.” — And what emerges from Anthroposophy in this way, he must reject as coming from hallucinations. He cannot find any real “religious renewal of the people” in anthroposophical efforts and must therefore raise a warning voice against it. This is the judgment of a Catholic educator. Numerous other judgments are exactly the same, including the judgment of numerous Protestant recognized pastors, who cannot raise the warning voice often enough.

Now, my dear friends, these warning voices will also be raised against you. You must realize that even those who see things as they are, due to the darkness in people's souls today, do not find it easy to understand that in the evolution of the world, at the time when humanity is to receive the first impulse towards freedom in the course of modern evolution, there have always been souls that have found the way to the divine spiritual world. The voices that come from there are simply not heard because they are not illuminated by any light. For in order to make them resound, they must be illuminated by the right light. Darkness also takes away from people that which would resonate with them as the voice of the spiritual. Therefore, you may take into yourself the vigilance for all that you carry out into the world in the way of enthusiasm through being filled with the living word, in the way of the power of healing sin, and that you have to include, so to speak, in what humanity calls prayer and meditation, so that your truth can be effective.

You will have to be vigilant, first of all, to the extent to which the spirit of darkness obscures the soul itself, and you will have to be vigilant that at no hour, at no minute, at no second of your effective existence, the spirit of darkness itself takes hold of you. That is why I say to you, my dear friends, since you must decide to go out to your mission, as I speak again the words that have often been spoken, out of this spirit that is now to inaugurate your movement:

Watch and lift up your souls to the Spirit that reigns throughout all cosmic spaces, throughout all circles of time. If you develop the strength to do so, you will be able to do it, then you will not be alone. These spiritual powers themselves will help you. They will enlighten your thoughts, they will permeate your mind, they will strengthen your will. And with thoughts enlightened from the spiritual world, with feelings strengthened from the spiritual world, with a will strengthened from the spiritual world, you will be able to work. Take with you the assurance that my thoughts will always accompany you and that wherever you need help in the right sense, you will always find me ready to give you that help.

These are the words I give you now at the end, when you set out on the path to the mission you have chosen for yourselves, willed out of the power of Christ.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: We feel the need to say a few words about something that cannot really be expressed in words: the deep and immense gratitude that we all feel in our hearts towards you. You have become for us a strong, extraordinary mediator to Christ, and I believe I can make the promise on behalf of all of us that we will fight like lions for what you have given us and for what will come to us from you in the future. First of all, we are all deeply impressed by the great kindness we have experienced from you. When we think back to the hours we have experienced in Dornach, from the first serious hour in the Glass House, where we discussed the farewell of our friend Geyer, through the ceremony you celebrated with us, through the lectures in which you so kindly wanted to convey to us, to this last day that we are able to experience with you, we are filled with the memory of a truly unique wisdom and kindness and an extraordinary earnestness with which you have led us from day to day. May they become our example for our own pastoral work. We have often sought comparisons in our circle of friends for what we have experienced, so as not to oversleep its full significance while we are in it. We have thought of this and that, which is known to us from history. We have found nothing that can be compared since the time when the Christ came to earth. We feel very deeply that we, who have now been called by Providence to fight through this, we feel in the deepest reverence that we have to stand up for what has become ours with the sacrifice of our entire independent being, and that we have to see our freedom in realizing the greatness of what has come over us.

It is in this spirit that we want to continue our work. We are aware that we cannot do it alone. Apart from the help of the spiritual world and of Christ Himself, which we want to seek daily ourselves, we ask that you too, as you have so promisingly promised, may stand by us with your advice and your deeds at all times. We feel far too weak and small to stand up for what we want to stand up for.

In this spirit, we want to conclude our conference by expressing our heartfelt thanks, albeit weakly, and asking you from the bottom of our hearts for your continued support.

[For the following meeting, Rudolf Steiner was handed a series of written questions. This “questionnaire” is available in Emil Bock's handwriting and has the following wording:]

1. The change of cult colors (especially in the non-festive half of the year) and their meaning in relation to the course of the year in its psychological relationship (cultic optics)? The colors of the altar servers' vestments, the altar cloths, the chasuble, the figures and borders of the chasuble in relation to the primary colors of the chasuble itself? Colors used in the baptismal ceremony (red and blue)?

2. The spiritual meaning of the vestments, insofar as this has not yet been hinted at. Is it possible to derive an understanding of the cult vestments from the history of human clothing in general within the history of customs (the cultic origin of all clothing in general, the difference between men's and women's clothing)? What is the meaning of the vestments worn by altar servers? In what vestment does the priest serve? When is the beret worn and why only in these cases? Form of the stole, its spiritual justification? Vestments for casualities (baptism, burial, etc.)?

3. What else can be said about the substances used in worship? Incense, oil, wine, bread, salt, ash, water, mercury, sulfur, salt (cultic alchemy)? Which substances and objects are consecrated before cultic use, on what occasion and by what words? Water, salt, ashes in the baptismal ritual in relation to the Trinity. Water is associated with the Father God, salt with the Son God, whereas we expect the opposite. Connection between the four parts of the mass and the four elements? Holy water and incense at the grave?

4. Details about cultic forms, devices and gestures. Use of a monstrance and what use? Use of wooden goblets possible (social reasons)? Why turn the left cheek in the case of a community communion? Why signs on the forehead, chin, chest of the infant? Is it possible to use incense in bowls instead of the usual censer, or can a simplified form of this be considered at least? The right and left sides of the altar in their alternation during the consecration. Which direction should the altar

face and why? 5. What is the more precise distribution of the pericopes for the gospel reading over the course of the year? Use of the Pauline letters, the Apocalypse, etc.? Can we hope for translations of individual pericopes by Dr. Steiner?

6. Parish regulations and pastoral care: What conditions must be met for the first performance of the rites in the individual cities? In front of which audience should the cult be introduced?, in public or in invited circles? Who can communicate? Only community members? Is it the duty of community members to communicate? Is it possible to exclude members of the community from communion? Is it advisable to make the ritual texts accessible to the community members? (The Credo?)

Questions about the Bible:

What can be said about textual corruption in the New Testament? How did it come about and with what intention? How can it be eliminated as a source of error? The synoptic question: literal agreement of the first three Gospels down to the smallest details and contradictions in statements about facts (the date of Jesus' death, etc.)?

Historical questions:

We would like to hear as much as possible about church history, because current research leaves us in the lurch there. In particular: How and where can the origin of the Mass from the mysteries be studied and shown exoterically in order to refute the accusation of theft? The ages of Peter, Paul and John in Schelling, etc., and Dr. Steiner's suggestion of the periods of church history after the twelve apostles (the time of Judas, etc.)? Esotericism in the Catholic Church?

Individual aspects:

Music and chorales in worship. Training of priests and important books (study plan).

Practical aspects:

Our proposal for admission requirements and disciplinary regulations. Financing. Guidelines for differentiating pastoral care according to profession, temperament and age, especially in religious education, about which we would still like to hear a lot, apart from what we can learn from Waldorf teachers. Preparation for the youth celebration for those children who have already reached the appropriate age and have so far only received confessional religious education? How long will a child participate in the youth celebration? Guidelines for pastoral psychology and pathology?

What illnesses are particularly to be expected? How can meditation be used as a remedy? The sexual question in a pastoral relationship: What is the karmic and physiological basis of homosexuality, and how can we help to overcome it?

Can special prayers be given for our pastoral care work (morning, evening, table, children's prayers)?

7. Questions about the sacraments:

Why no adult baptism (conversions of Jews)? The sacrament of marriage. Solubility of marriage, divorce? Sense of the Bible passages dealing with this topic: Genesis II, 1 Cor. 6 and 7, Romans 7, Matthew 19, 1-12?

8. Questions about the texts:

In the Credo: “To spiritually heal the sin-sickness of the body of humanity” or “to spiritually heal the body of humanity from the sin-sickness”? Breviary: Why monthly sayings as weekly sayings?

The hearty words just spoken (by Dr Rittelmeyer) are an introduction of the strong impetus towards the founding of this religious community-building and the essentials which will flow through this religious working community depend upon the earnestness, I could say a deepening earnestness, which lay originally in the intention and gave the impetus towards the founding of this religious community movement. It has to be said that during the course of these years there has been within the religious community a continuation of this earnestness and that one can already say, in a certain sense, that the original intention has been proven time and again.

In this movement it also appears clearly that the outer impressions of the rituals—I mean this in the noblest sense of the word—work right into our combined spiritual movement. A strong current working from within, truly intended and also truly coming out in a devotional attitude as we recently had in one of our oldest members of our anthroposophical movement, Herman Linde, being lead to his cremation. The impressions which came out, just on this occasion, of the ritual act completely shows that the real intention is well on its way to becoming a reality, and can be spoken about in the most varied areas not mentioned until now.

I even have the feeling that the objective and progressing striving of this religious community has gone faster than the inner satisfaction and internal harmonizing in the souls of the individual carriers of these religious thoughts. Things are going well. You can feel yourself drawn out by the way these good things are developing, on the one side, and on the other side you battle with inner soul difficulties with particular meaning, because just at this gathering such inner soul difficulties can be talked about because this particular initial gathering can serve to make the difficulties you have, valid, so we can try during the next days to bring about some harmonizing of these inner difficulties.

It is completely understandable that these inner difficulties are there, because you must, while you are the representatives of the most important spiritual initiative, forever remind yourself that realities in the spiritual world work in a powerful way. Even when you are not aware of them, these realities are there. Events taking place on the surface develop roots especially when it happens in the spiritual sphere when related to good or evil. You must always be aware that if you want to work in the present in a religious area that religious orientated spiritual or non-spiritual streams develop an exceptional activity just at that moment.

Just as we are speaking about this at the moment, there is for example a gathering happening of representatives of the Roman Catholic church in a specific place in Europe, which will probably have a particularly important outcome; at least a remarkable result is being envisaged. Today in fact there are more people than one suspects whose hearts feel deserted by religion. Hearts feel deserted by religion while all too seldom words spoken to them come directly out of the spiritual realm. For quite large layers of humanity, it is simply impossible to address these deserted feelings in their hearts, when it is not addressed in words which are not merely of earthly origin, which implies words presented in a supersensible language in the rituals. You must never forget how powerfully effective the Roman Catholic Church in its mass is just at present, still in its old form yet working strongly on the soul and even more effectively in the way it can be spoken.

One must always be clear about how many powers inherent in humanity are such that errors are able to enter on this side. Consider, when you ask about circulated poetry of Central Europe today, in circles which usually discuss historical progress, and you will not once have a name mentioned such as “Thirteen Linden” von Weber, who has experienced surprisingly many conditions. Why is this so? Out of what basis, when the work of the Roman Catholic spirit is permeated ... (gap in stenographer notes).

These facts are the outer symptoms for a strong spiritual steam, particularly the Roman Catholic one, which works outwardly. This is quite clear to see. Don't forget these forces stream right through the human soul and also go through your souls and some of you probably ascribe it to a subjective experience, stirring in the objective spiritual streams at the present moment. It is of greater meaning that today some of you have formulated these subjective experiences in order for us to allow these to flow into our discussions during the next few days. You must not forget that in such a Movement, such as yours, it must be a question of working with real concrete spirits of the present time. What do people know about real spirit today? One of the most important facts for the support of inner spiritual activity in the present time will be the effect of people starting to see the indications given by Anthroposophy in America, which of course is unheard of. Now outer objects are being used to achieve insights.

Compare the world today with one of a hundred years ago. There are a multitude of differences but one could say that one of the greatest differences is that today our atmosphere is crisscrossed either with telegraph or telephone wires. In Europe this entanglement of wires looks like a child's game compared to America. Here is a trace of possible insight regarding how that might affect people. Eventually one will sense that people are not immune to the activity buzzing through telephone wires in the air, making people into actual induction apparatuses. Consider an opposing stream in their nerves and then again one in the counter direction working in the bloodstream. All of this is what humanity carries in itself today, but it is hardly even noticed. These are pre-eminently Ahrimanic forces being absorbed by people from outer culture which they can't evade. One can think about things that are possible and impossible, and yet to the most powerful realities no thought is given. At some point the difference between Goethe and present day should be spoken about, regarding the fact that Goethe wasn't surrounded by telegraph wires. You see, the desolation of the human soul is in reality connected to all of this.

When you now look around at how the highest spiritual religious needs are satisfied, you must pose the question: Are there in these gratifications already some impulses inherent which take into account an element which renders these things harmless as part of the soul-spiritual experience?—That is not so! The satisfaction of religious needs go back to a time when all of this was not present, which I have illustrated for you. Today there is a gratification of religious needs which is only valid for a few people, which is not alive in the culture we have today. Anthroposophy wants to enter here to introduce newer impulses, impulses capable of making people independent from what they can't be independent of outwardly. What is external must be absorbed inwardly. Yet the polar opposite must be created—that means a strong awareness needs to be created for the importance of your Movement in order to create more and more impulses to come out of your Movement. The most important things must be thought through when you are to answer the question: What shall we do?—The correct application of the ritual and sermon already offers the necessary strong impulse because this religious Movement is built on the basis of Anthroposophy. Yet the awareness that humanity stands in the midst of these influences in the world must be present in every single one of us. Each one of you can contribute much towards fortifying awareness in this direction by raising it up and strengthen it.

We may not forget that gradually everything in humanity has become abstract and intellectual, and that intellectualism today stands completely in the afterglow. Today we may want to just understand things but we must open our hearts for the realities of the spiritual world. Mere understanding, how this or that can be grasped, is all very good but it is not the reason for a movement to be supported. You see, some things need to be particularly perceived: those movements which are alert and equipped with strong will, sprouted from ancient humanity, have unbelievably deep roots in Central Europe and western folklore; the Roman Catholic Church is but one phase of this. Intellectualism having caused the desolation of the heart now results in crowds running in droves back to the existing church, namely the Catholic Church.

You are now only a small movement and few in numbers, but if you carry the awareness within you that you are working with Truth, then you will simply say to yourself: with spiritual movements it does not depend on how great they are in number but how strong their inner strengths are. This will be active when you have a strong awareness of what it is that is being carried. This is exactly what you must have: a strong consciousness for Truth and not allowing it to de-motivate you because in fact the truth is most detested. If you wish to spread some secular falsehood, then people will have no fear of it. Precisely when you want to spread the truth people sense your intention and there will be the strongest opposition you can find.

Today our intention is to examine two big oppositions. I don't want to refer to Jesuitism at every opportunity, also not in the usual sense; I mention it only as representative of the old spirituality penetrating present time in contrast to what modern culture has brought into the present. This stream promises the eradication of modern culture. You must not believe that the will forces in this Movement are insignificant. No doubt there is a striving to have humanity deprived of modern cultural elements, which is what this Movement carries. Modern cultural elements are considered as the devil which needs to be conquered by the old culture. Ahriman can't be eradicated but he can be refined, cleansed and made noble; he must be reckoned with alongside modern culture. Opponents know this as well and for this reason they clearly express their fear regarding your Movement because it contains truth. Errors soon come to nothing but by encountering the truth, the opposition grasp at anything in defence, big or small.

You can say that something has come out of Dornach which is connected to your Movement. However, I want to say without any ill meaning, that the destiny of the Goetheanum is also not without the link to your Movement originating from it. In the place where your actions come alive is where the burning spark is laid. Don't believe that your opposition works with limited resources. Above all we must be clear that our advancing impulse can't be located outwardly, nor can a deadening element be located externally. The one and only aspect of this Movement is its impulse of being in the inmost soul. Outer things can perhaps then take place tragically but there will be no obstacles for the impulse once it has been grasped and deepened and really expresses itself as it needs to do. It was a good impulse which has given an impetus to this religious Movement; it will express itself and bear fruit if it is continued forward with the same good sense. Now I will enter into some impulses coming from your midst, what you would like to discuss.

From the participants the following questions were brought:

1. How does our ritual relate to the cultic worship which will develop in the future? How should we work together in the right way with the Anthroposophic Movement? How can we do the right thing towards moral supportiveness of the overall Movement?

2. I ask for clarity regarding preceding historical events with particular reference to the Rhur district. (Rhurgebiet)

3. It doesn't help me to bring an objective balance to the ritual steps. They change as I practice it. The Act of Consecration of Man can be read in such a way as to physically link it to the nervous system but then it is not beneficial.

Rudolf Steiner: It is necessary to consider this last question or let someone else express it more precisely. For example, you speak a sentence and it is not always clear if it has fulfilled the ritual of worship. That is a valid question. It needs to be looked at even closer. It would not be good to bring the nervous system into it. Naturally the act of worship must be on such a level that everything coming from it is not just on the level of the nervous system, which is already considered as far too important. ... (Gap in stenographer's notes.) In your subjective experience you must honour the objective experience flowing out of the ritual.

No uncertainty may limit speaking about the relationship of the ritual to anything else. The ritual which comes about, if you ask the spiritual worlds, is the ritual which lives within you. It is not in some or other outer exceptional form but it is the ritual which is already finding its future but through life itself. The real inner involvement with the ritual is closely connected with the consciousness of the priest. The priest's consciousness can only develop when an inner honesty is outwardly present. Therefore, it would be good when the subjective soul aspect, experienced by individual personalities, as they work with the ritual, are openly spoken about on an occasion such as this. Only when you utter your subjective needs can we start talking in a fruitful way. ... (Gap in stenographer's notes.)

It boils down to the speech of the ritual being expressed as the speech of higher worlds. Human speech is from the outset an earthly speech because it finds expression in structured air. Of course it is foolish to assume that departed souls can talk in a human way. Mediums in Germany let the spirits speak German, English in England and French in France as if one can be a German, English or a Frenchman after death. A spirit does no longer speak with a human language and can't pervade the air. What streams through speech as spirit depends on how it is spoken. At the very moment you have the feeling you are speaking with reverence then you can convey something spiritual through the spoken word. What does this mean: reverence? Reverence is something our philosophers have quite unlearned. They argue that the things they are discussing need to be grasped and touched. Whoever wants to speak about spiritual things must be aware that thought is like an etheric touch and that thoughts should be formed with reverence, just as also in the physical world, if it has to be touched with awe then it only is done on the surface. This inner feeling of reverence within speaking is of course the start. As a result, talking is then not only about content but physiognomic, it becomes conscious and one can gradually become filled with the genius of speech. Through this, you start to discover talking itself as a living spiritual experience. This must be present in the ritual to the highest degree. Then you really stand within the process and therefore realize: you are not speaking subjectively but you are a tool for the spiritual world.

On this rests the substantial understanding that it can be met with the ritual. Contributing most significantly to this is the How in the speech. This How however comes through the consciousness of being a tool for the spiritual world. Every small ritual action is a continuation of what flows out of the Word. In the ritual these attribute to the words become gestures. Now the struggle surfaces in your awareness: You may think as you wish about something (this is irrelevant) but it comes down to you saying what the gods want you to say. Through this, one arrives at the point of awareness that the impulse of the Act of Consecration can be allowed to work through every little thing one does throughout the day.

What is this impulse? The impulse which comes out of the Act of Consecration lies essentially in the sacrifice/offering. In the sacrifice the earthly is offered to the spiritual world; we lay it down at the feet at the spiritual world. With communion we receive it again but now it comes out of the spiritual world. We have surrendered it out of the earthly. What happened in between? Transubstantiation; an exchange has happened with the spiritual world. This brings an awareness which allows us to stand within the spiritual world each time we experience the Act of Consecration. It is lifted higher by the Gospel reading preceding it. When the Gospel reading is a corresponding preparation for the interpenetration of the spiritual world between the offering and communion, then the right way to experience the Consecration of Man is found.

Of course an addition is implicit to this: the Act of Consecration needs to be conducted at least every day. It is prescribed for Catholic priests to perform the Mass every day; through this they receive a powerful force. This must not be celebrated absolutely every day, but it is absolutely necessary that the Mass must be celebrated every day. Through this sensing you relate to the spiritual world. This is of the utmost importance.

Something else happens between one day and the next for priests: sleep happens between the two. What does this mean, sleep? Present day science has the peculiarity that the most important things in life make sense externally, but not inwardly. What is said about sleep is that it is an illusion. During sleep the soul-spiritual part of the human being, the ‘I’ and the astral body, are separated from the physical and etheric part. Between falling asleep and waking up the physical and ether bodies work on the level of the plant kingdom. What the human being has as remnant of the plant kingdom is found in his sleep, thus the human being descends as a physical being down to the plant level. This means processes are taking place which are of a lower kind than normal when a person is fully conscious. Something “cooks” up, warmth and cold are active in lower forces of nature which work in the same way where growth takes place. Only then do we have the right feeling when waking up—this must, of course, be perceived spiritually, otherwise it can be dangerous—when we say to ourselves: our I and astral bodies were in the divine world, our bodies we had handed down to the lower worlds; we then take the body back from the lower world which actually lies beneath the actual human world. This we must not forget; from an Ahrimanic level we take our bodies back, it is full of Ahrimanic build-up which we need to destroy during our waking hours. The first hour after waking should pass in such a way that we are capable of eradicating these things deposited overnight especially in for the form of salts in our bodies. When you don't manage this then the body becomes full of rheumatism, gout and so on, and on a soul level, full of lascivious thoughts. These things come from what has been experienced during sleep.

While the human being has sunk down (during sleep) to a level below that of humanity, the priest must now restore up to a higher level. This happens when the priest practices the ritual. One does not need, like in the Catholic church, to practice the Mass every day, but one should live within the Act of Consecration. That works as powerfully as the daily read mass. It then becomes powerful objectively. These are things we must observe in reality. It is essential that the human being sleeps every night. The Act of Consecration of Man is as important as sleep. If you occupy yourself every day with the Act if Consecration, you lift yourself out of the lower level of sleep-life. The evangelical attitude knows nothing about these things; it doesn't want to lift priests out but want them to remain on the level of nightly sleep-life. This lifting out of people from their nightly life of sleep, this conscious opposition to the sinking down of people into their lower human consciousness, this is what actually constitutes the vocation of priests.

What is the level on which human beings exist? The human level lies between the plant and animal regions, also between air and water. The human being is firstly mineral, plant-like, animal-like; not yet actually human. The human being will only be formed in future. When we meditate through the Mass we don't enter the animal-like aspect but enter into the divine which otherwise can only work unconsciously in us. If we carry around with us only what is daily consciousness—yes, you see, we would not look like we look now, we would only have a body developed up to the diaphragm, men would have heads like bulls and women would have heads of lions. What we have in our day consciousness doesn't enable us to have a human physical head—that is given to us by the divine. For this reason, we see the embryo head as developed to a high degree. During normal waking hours we can't entirely embrace our total human form but we learn to take this human form which is godly, to really experience the earth. You only come to have the right to feel yourself positioned in the human physiognomy when you lift yourself out of the animalistic, during the Mass. Then you free yourself from the animal and lion nature and as a result, have a human-godly physiognomy.

This is where the Catholic Church is insistent—for the divine to speak through the human. When you start to become the practical performer of the ritual then you need to grasp these things infinitely more earnestly than in the normal sense; to the extreme it is necessary to look at it, and say to yourselves: we don't carry a human head when we interact with ordinary people, because the divine works in the human head.

For this reason, it is why the “Act of Consecration” is not a poor expression but a good one, a very good one. How your head is positioned in the world is not due to your doing but God created it thus. Ordination means taking what is firm and making it fluid, what the individual has is baptised into the spiritual. As a result, you can say: I earn the right to live in the divine through the Act of Consecration and meditation and thus allow the members of the congregation to only take part in the Act of Consecration and meditation. This doesn't contradict the social and also not the evangelical consciousness but in fact it is the right attitude to reality. Only thereby it is contradicted that you turn yourself away from the things in the ordinary world; yet by consciously juxtaposing yourself to it, you conquer it. There is always more to strive for, more to struggle through and understand because priest consciousness is not a given from one day to the next, you must first allow these things to permeate you.

A speech exercise is asked for.

Rudolf Steiner: The Catholic Church considers language seriously and insists on speech exercises. The Jesuit must recite and learn to scan, he must learn how to shape an opening sentence and a concluding sentence, how to prepare the initial sentence in order to be convincing with the second one and by ending without impoverishing it by lack of eloquence. Speech becomes something objective. Speech for most people is only an expression of a purely physical organ—the larynx and the mucous membranes. The spoken word which is to be practiced in the ritual must make itself free from the individual, it must have its foundation as a power to vibrate the air without allowing the mucus to mix into it. Today this is not something that can be done effortlessly; it needs practice. The Berlin University once had a professor of eloquence, called Curtius, but so little was known in that time that he never fulfilled this lectureship but instead recited Greek art history.

Perhaps deepening some of the questions of yesterday can be our starting point today. Dr Rittelmeyer has already called our attention to some difficulties which exist in understanding the relationship of this Christian-religious Movement to Anthroposophy. These difficulties are such that you actually can't just through, one could call it a definition, try and deal with it, but that it should actually be dealt with through practical application, and then also through a certain study of soul relationships in present-day humanity. The soul relationships in present-day humanity have only really just emerged in the course of the last three to four centuries and far too little consideration has been given to exploring just how difficult these soul relationships really are. Thus you must already be clear about how, out of all the energy and best of will impulses a religious movement can be formed, which can also work powerfully and nonetheless in opposition to other movements of our time where the hearts of people have gradually become lost, if at the same time the needs of humanity were not satisfied by the older, or relatively not so very old, religious streams having become unavailable.

We may not give in to the illusion that in reality it would be possible to lead a religious movement separated from the rest of cultural life, namely to be apart from what is called scientific culture. You must be aware that an atheistic science armed with the highest authority exists today. Now you would probably say, sure, this atheistic science exists as a science, but alongside that some or other contemporary science and those involved there insist they are filled not with a contemporary but an inner piousness; so that there are possibly people who can live quite within this present day atheistic scientific community who say: ‘This is another field but when I'm not active in this field then I find myself in a religious life.’

You see, this separation between the scientific and the religious elements which has been going on for centuries, this inner separation can still not cope with such a strong and pure Movement as yours—because a religious movement must, just like a scientific movement, above all support the truth. It can now seem even trivial when, after having spoken so much about the content of a religious movement, we again return to the elementary idea: the Movement must be truthful. We may not undervalue how strong the present day untruthfulness, the inner unconscious falsehood of civilisation has become. What the first initiators of this Religious Movement felt at the time, when they made the suggestion for founding this Movement, was in reality precisely towards dealing with that inner, unconscious untruthfulness of our present day.

You see, out of the cultural historical discomfort the view has gradually been developed that one must leave science to science; the theologians need not bother with it. The theologians had to create their own principles of truth from which they developed ethical and religious content separated from anything scientific and gradually introduced eternity and religiosity while not bothering with what drove science. It is exactly this detachment of the religious life placing itself opposite cultural life which resulted in deep inner untruth. Those who practice science as it is carried out today can only be atheists if he or she is honest because the manner and way thoughts regarding the world, as it is carried out in physics and chemistry, give no possibility to rise up to any kind of ethic ideal. There exists only one truth for the science of today, namely: “The totality of the world is determined by causes. The world of causality is however neutral towards ethic and religious ideals, completely neutral. Right here we must search for the truth and conclude there is no other way than to remain with the verdict of astronomers: I have searched through the entire universe and haven't found God anywhere, I therefore don't need this hypothesis.” Something else is not possible for science, if one is really honest.

On the basis of such a scientific viewpoint depends how a question such as: “Should we abandon everything moral and ethical?” is answered in the following way: “If we do this then humanity will fall into chaos and therefore it is necessary to tame humanity from the outside with state laws or equivalents.” We then have tamed people where the principle of being tamed becomes nothing other than a higher form of submission just like one applies to animals. Religion, for people who thought like this, only had one entitlement and that was to use it as a means to activate people into mutual opposition. Religion was just a means to an end; only this was allowed by those with a scientific way of thinking regarding the present. A large part of those who undermined humanity like this is as a result of not having an honest disgust for a way of thinking which only takes the half, that is, the scientific method of thought and incidentally invents the theory of how humanity was tamed. When one speaks about religious and ethical impulses with only this attitude then one must be completely clear that all one can speak about are the taming rules. One always steers towards deeper untruthfulness if one doesn't confess these things. On the other hand, atheistic science can't be stopped. Just think how forcefully today intentions arise to establish human institutions solely and extensively based on mere materialistically thought-out inherited principles, for example laws set up for marriage where nothing about inner heartfelt relationships are the decisive factor, but rather, for example, that a doctor decides. These things are argued away but in reality these things do not have an end. For those who want to work from the basis of religious renewal it is necessary to be clear to unite the focus of knowledge simultaneously with the spirit into nature's wisdom, making the spirit prevalent within the wisdom of nature so that right into physics spirituality is alive. This need really be striven for by the fact that the religious movement is based on Anthroposophy. Still, this basis of Anthroposophy needs to be a totally inward, truthful aspect. For this reason it is necessary that the relationship between the Religious Renewal and Anthroposophy is also represented in the correct way.

Isn't it true that Anthroposophy wants and can't be anything other than a quest for knowledge? You must, also as far as your relationship involves its followers, be fully aware that you are working with a path of knowledge. The religious renewal is even a religious movement with a corresponding religious ritual. When both movements work out of their own impulses then only mutual fructification can result. Basically this can never cause trouble. One must, when one is clear about it, know that on the whole, trouble can't appear when the conditions of the time are considered. The Anthroposophical Movement can be seen to have a difficult position because many people thirst for a spiritualised world view and spiritualised knowledge but want to come to their knowledge with more comfort and ease than what Anthroposophy offers. People don't want such intensive inner work which is necessary in Anthroposophy and as a result really absurd points of view and thoughts pop up. It is like this—you only need to remind yourselves about yesterday's lecture—for those who really want to be involved with Anthroposophy, a basic rethink is necessary which creates a radical difference between Antroposophists and those who have no inkling of the existence of such rethinking and transformative sensitivity.

What actually makes a community? A communal thinking and feeling! One can hardly imagine that people who truthfully work with the Anthroposophical impulse would not get such a feeling of community, as it had never before been in the world. Such a fundamental change in thinking has never existed before, even in the Mysteries: then everything was quite similar to popular thought. There is a strong bond where everyone calls and shouts for community which often becomes evident among the youth, surfacing basically as an absurd tendency. However, don't forget we are not in a studio where we can make people out of plasticine, but that people exist out there in all their absurdities, which one need to refer back to, from which there is no escape if one wants to do real work. It comes down to taking these things profoundly and in all seriousness. One tends not to think about all the various fields. Perhaps you will understand me better if I give you a popular example.

In the Waldorf School we now have 12 Classes and students of up to the age of 18 or 19. They all want to be teachers. Now, the first and foremost requirement in teaching and education lies in the non-discussion of the teaching methods to the child, boy or girl; these methods need to remain a mystery. The way things are accomplished these days centre around the child in the Waldorf School; revealing the pedagogical foundation and so on to them as they are growing up until they sometimes know what Waldorf pedagogy is better than the teacher. Yes, when things are like this there can be no progress.

On the other hand it is not acceptable today to dissect things in an outer manner. Recently in a delegation meeting we spoke about the method of how money could be acquired for the reconstruction (of the Goetheanum). A hateful article appeared as a result in a Geneva newspaper in a wild attack, how the poor Swiss people were having a million Franks pulled out of their pockets. Open secrets also don't work. It must come down to the ability to inwardly depend on people, so that when basic rules of secrecy are not given, that a form of tact develops among the authoritative personalities, speaking about something in a specific way and not, for instance, reveal the ground rules of Waldorf pedagogy to a fifteen year old as one would to a thirty year old person. This must gradually come out of it. In fact all kinds of absurd added impulses come to the fore, when things are not considered in depth or with enough strength.

This is how the impulse for community building appears in the Anthroposophical Movement. The Anthroposophical Movement is a movement for knowledge. It is founded on the communality of will, feeling and thought. Thus one can actually consider that the Religious Movement would simply rise out of the foundation of the Anthroposophical Movement, taken up in the way which was once given to religious movements which had come out of archetypal impulses and then developed further.

Before any religious movement existed among the Anthroposophists, a substitute was looked for in all kinds of esoteric circles which were however based solely on knowledge and the aspect considered as ritualistic also was just there to serve knowledge. As a result nothing from these circles could be brought across into a movement for the renewal of religion.

Had things going on at that time, considered then as ritualistic, had these things not been permeated with the pulse of knowledge, they would have been conceived outwardly which is not where they had their origin.

In contrast it is namely so in religious movements, that the ritual itself contains immediate content in each act of worship so that those who for instance refuse to strive for knowledge within the ritual, still through their participation in the ritual shares in the ritual's life, because the ritual, in the way it should work in this Religious Movement, is the speech of the spiritual world, brought down into earthly form, making participation in the ritual something quite positive.

Let us contemplate the central focus of the ritual from this viewpoint. When we look at the Act of Consecration we notice the preparatory part being the Gospel reading. Now here is another difficulty because it is really necessary to get a better understanding of the Gospels than what currently exists. It is really a matter of understanding that the Words of the Gospels are to be taken up quite differently to any other words, which have flowed from civilisation's development through humanity. The Word of the Gospel, when it is taken as the truth, contains within itself something which can be described when one says: The person who reads the Words of the Gospel out loud, speaks as the conduit for something which comes down from the spiritual into the physical world in order for the prepared part of the Gospel text to somehow enable the entire congregation to establish a link to the spiritual world.

Following this, the actual offering takes place, in three parts: Revelation, Transubstantiation and Communion. A real conception of this trinity is not possible if one is not clear about the very moment when transubstantiation is fulfilled, even for those who actually take part, when natural law and ethical law flow together as one, so that quite a different world order is opened up every time for the congregation, each moment when a person is lifted up to the divine, and the spiritual sinks down into the congregation. When one takes this as reality then one must say, something is happening which is completely independent to what one can recognise as happening in it. Mere feeling is sufficient for what precedes it. For knowledge, mere feeling is insufficient. For the preparatory steps to transformation, it suffices to have feeling, therefore actually it is a task, an activity involving the congregation, when the priest celebrates the Act of Consecration for the congregation. This is something which must definitely be accepted and as a result you should never disturb this harmony by asking the question: ‘Could any ritual which is received today out of the spiritual world’—and all our rituals are received from the spiritual world are to some extent ordained by God—‘can it be changed or stopped?’—You see, by somehow evaluating these rituals and come to saying: ‘Yes, it should develop into another state where people can have an invisible ritual’—these questions are unreasonable.

The relationship must be thought of in this way: people are always going to look for a ceremony followed by a sermon; in the sermon the only enrichment flowing into it can come from Anthroposophy, out of spiritual science. It will happen in future that those who are knowledgeable in the topmost degree in spiritual matters, will never reject keeping community with those who attend the ritual. He or she has also no other way of relating to the ritual than, I could call it, a naive person. Therefore the question can't possibly be raised: ‘Do we carry the ritual for the present time and in future substitute it by another?’—Through our founding of the ritual it is established and will continue; it is subject to other rules than those that human beings validate when it is asked: ‘Will there one day be an invisible ritual?’ The Ritual is subjected to the immense cosmic world impulses which include everything in its evolution which comes about in the world. However, the changes of the future will be quite different to changes that have happened in the past.

Take the Mass of the today's Roman Catholic Church. What is present there is the synthetic confluence of all the corresponding rituals of ancient times, deepened in a Christian sense. This is the wonderful element within the Catholic Church which has flowed together out of all the ancient mysteries. However, at specific times in the development of Christianity there came about—these times actually already began in the third and fourth century—times during which there was no understanding any more for what was woven into the sacrifice of the Mass and so it became an empty formula, propagating itself through tradition, one could say, out of respect. Then, seemingly soon, people came with the courage of non-understanding and started to improve all kinds of things. Today, as a result, we have in the Catholic Mass sacrifice, something which gradually, simply through the dying out of language, has become fundamentally incomprehensible. It is celebrated in the old language, without it possibly bringing about understanding. One can regard this sacrifice of the Catholic Mass as a corpse, which is something unthinkably huge and powerful, yet still as a corpse possessing unbelievable power. In totality the peculiar aspect of the Catholic Church is how the priesthood is exceptionally educated philosophically but theologically extraordinarily uneducated. The Catholic theology has no liveliness, so that actually right up to the greatest climaxes Catholic theology is something extraordinarily uneducated. Since the Middle Ages it hasn't undergone any further development. On the grounds of religious needs of humanity, the teaching or sermon all fail to be satisfying, yet by contrast this is not the case with the cult because the cult has an extraordinary power of building the community. This is what is given in which you can engender a feeling of eternity through this new ritual, so that no disharmony need to bear down on your souls. Some Anthroposophists claim that parts of the prescribed ritual can be left out. This question would actually not come about if one has the right attitude. I really don't know out of what grounds these ideas could have come. Because, take the case of the funeral today; surely a religious community will ask for a ritual? So you are called to the Consecration of Man for the whole of humanity and not only with the attitude that it is something temporary, it will be replaced by something else. This is something eternal as far as something can be called eternal on earth. This conflict which appears to be developing among many of you, that Anthroposophy sees the ritual to some extent as something less meaningful or that something else in the future must represent the present Movement, this conflict can only be based on a feeling of a misunderstanding. As soon as you are clear that naturally Anthroposophy lies more on the side of knowledge and that it must give itself over to that, as far as the ritual is considered, then on the other side, people who attend the ritual and also seek the knowledge aspect, because of the strength of the intellect, and approach the ritual from the basis of Anthroposophy—as soon as you are clear about this then you can say to yourself in some way this is only a kind of division of labour. If taken from this basis, conflict should not arise at all.

Now I would like to ask you, following on from these comments, to express whatever you want because I know that much still lies in the depths of your souls.

A question is posed (which is not written down by the stenographer) regarding the lecture given on the 31^st December 1922 in Dornach.

A Saying:

The world's working approaches
As a material reflection to me
In the Heavenly Beings of the stars
I see, through Willing, their loving motion.
Penetrating me with life's water
Forming me through matter's power
The heavenly deeds of the stars
Within feeling I see their wise revolving.

Es nahet mir im Erdenwirken
In Stoffes Abbild mir gegeben
Der Sterne Himmelswesen
Ich seh' im Wollen sie sich liebend wandeln.
Es dringen in mich im Wasserleben
In Stoffes Kraftgewalt mich bildend
Der Sterne Himmelstaten
Ich seh' im Fühlen sie sich weise wandeln.

Rudolf Steiner: What I spoke about then is a kind of cosmic communion. When this is performed meditatively, then under the circumstances as things are today, they could offer people a certain satisfaction. In this way a kind of communion can be received. However that doesn't exclude those who receive communion through their knowledge in this way, when they in their entire soul constitution strive for it today, to also receive communion in another way. The differences should not be stressed because the two things are not contradictory. Do you experience a stronger contradiction here than what you have against the old, still truly understood, Catholic Church? There they have the priest communion and naturally also the lay communion—I don't want to say that all Anthroposophists should be priests. You have those who can give and receive communion and you have those who can receive communion but not give it. When you grasp the difference you have to say to yourself: ‘Those who give communion can't possibly, without it adding some inner experience, take the communion anyhow like the layman. He must experience something more in it.’ Therefore the priest, when working with the communion, must also experience something more, an inner communion, and this he does have. Now, it comes down to strictly adhering to the difference between the priesthood and the laity. Only these two classes exist. Today one walks away from the developments in these olden times, this past time is no longer here.

Today much which was only available to the Priests in olden times is now to some extent also made available to the laity. Our entire modern theology, all its literature is now available. The same can be said to be valid in our case. You can study theology as a layman. If you choose a way of knowledge like Anthroposophy it is self-evident that the thoughts of participants become familiar with such things as would first and foremost been available for the celebrating Priests in past times. Today it is different. We can't put up boundaries. If we would have clung to old principles it would be as if a religious movement existed and within that movement would have been the priesthood who then would have Anthroposophy to themselves, who would have to do everything on the level of profane technicality, as demanded by the times ... (gap in stenographer's notes). If you take that into account you will understand that this communion which the priest celebrates has developed from something which belongs to the Anthroposophical Movement. However, there is no ground for saying: ‘On the one hand we have the priestly, on the other we have cosmic communion.’ Both come from the same foundation, only differentiating in form. They can both stand independently beside one another. So when you enter with profound feeling into these things you will have no difficulties.

A Participant: In the report about the meeting of delegates in February 1923 it is said that the ritualistic element is something which comes from prenatal life. In the course which we attended in Dornach, it is illustrated how our ritual raises up the dead in their life after death.

Rudolf Steiner: This is something which is applicable to all things created out of the spiritual world; the concepts need to be grasped very precisely. To grasp concepts scholarly dialectic needs to be entered into. However we haven't come that far yet, neither in the area of Anthroposophy, nor in the Religious Movement. You see, the way people work in the ritual, to really engage, so that the human soul is involved, is in order for this to lead to the Portal of Death and encounter Christ—this is the one side of the cult. The other side through which that takes place for the human being is like a cosmic memory of what had been experienced prenatally. Let's take an example in ordinary life to make this clear. What meeting makes a great impression on a person today? To have had an encounter, already during his youth, with a venerated person. Now something else is added to this. It is something different, when I depict it, which germinates in the mood of soul towards the future; as a result of this he might approach relationships in life in quite a different manner to the kind of person he had been in his youth. When one partakes in the ritual, one's next, future life is touched. This happens because its origin lies in prenatal life. This works very strongly on the human being.

A Participant: Does one accomplish more by meditating on the Mass or when one celebrates the Mass? One can then come as far as saying we don't need to read the Mass any more.

Rudolf Steiner: Logically that is not quite untrue, but in fact it is not so. When the Mass is read and is then experienced meditatively and thus has an effect on you, then this effect, while depending on a more intense inner activity, actually becomes stronger. However you are not always able to call upon this inner activity. When you haven't read the Mass for some days then its power becomes paralysed. It is true, if one can, then it is good, but when it has had no preparatory stages then these forces are paralysed. It is not true that the inner meditated Mass is as strong as the read Mass, and it must not somehow become an ideal for the Priest, to not read the Mass. Then he could well say: ‘I refrain from working with my congregants, I, alone, want to make progress.’ It is possible to imagine this ideal (not reading the Mass but meditating) but the power which the priest will need, when he wants to read the Mass, this he must not allow to weaken as a result, by him wanting to present such an ideal.

A participant: How does one bring people to the Consecration of Man? Are we to only take people who emotionally come from underdeveloped religious sentiments, to whom the way of knowledge is closed? How should we approach participants if we don't follow the route of thinking?

Rudolf Steiner: You don't just have the ritual, but also in the broadest sense the sermon, lectures, or preaching in the terminological sense. Nothing can be seen as a problem. Today's younger intellectuals who work out of nothing don't want an isolated intellectual aspect, but strive strongly towards ritual.

What can enter here, which must from external sources form a synthesis between the Religious Movement and Anthroposophy, I now want to characterise. On the one hand today's intellect is not enlivened without the ritual. The ritual firstly calls upon the intellect. Today people stop believing they can think if they don't have the ritual. Stopping thinking is a danger of the time. On the other hand I don't see where the limitation must lie when presenting a sermon and ritual. A limitation can only exist where you create it artificially. They don't want to learn about Anthroposophy, they say. That they can't handle because they must! Of course one should not throw Anthroposophy at them because then the problem arises with them saying: ‘We don't want to learn about Anthroposophy.’

A participant: So I won't talk about the ether body, for example?

Rudolf Steiner: That depends on the knowledge of the congregation. I can easily imagine a congregation who relate honestly to the ritual and still can have a need for knowledge. I don't see why you shouldn't speak about the ether body.

A participant: There are actually people with a desire for knowledge and who find their way to Anthroposophy through the ritual. Can we find a possibility to satisfy people who don't want Anthroposophy?

Rudolf Steiner: The question is actually: how will you characterise someone who should be led by you, who will actually be led by you in order for that person to be seen quite separated from Anthroposophy? How must that person be? It is like this: When one really grasps what a person is about, when one really enters into true humanity, then people want Anthroposophy, just as at all times the underlying soul is being sought for. To not want Anthroposophy is only the case with inhibited people. For forty years you could still find elementally healthy people in the countryside, they uttered the highest wisdom. (The following sentence was only partially captured.) Under their pillows they use to hide something—take Jacob Böhme for instance—this is no longer found today. People who have become inhibited in large cities don't come anywhere near such things. As a result I can imagine that another way can be used, other than anthroposophic. Your approach need not be from what is printed in books but what you have experienced through books. For example the concept of the etheric body is easy to bring across to naive individuals. In some regions people called the little substance left in the eyes upon waking, “night's sleep”; the etheric is in there because it comes from the etheric body's activity. Starting points are everywhere. You satisfy people more when you become free of words and come from experience itself.

A participant: Is it possible to find the difference between cosmic communion and the ritual in order to formulate it as sacramental?

Rudolf Steiner: That is something which is difficult to say, because experience of real cosmic communication is already sacramental. All of anthroposophic thought is something sacramental, as I have expressed it already in my Theory of Knowledge in the Goethian world view. Knowledge, when it is true knowledge, strives towards sacrament. It depends more upon us trying to bring things together than to find differences, because in reality you bring yourself together with it.

A question is posed with reference to specific words in a sentence from one of Rudolf Steiner's Dornach lectures of 1922 (indicated by a few connecting words by the stenographer).

Rudolf Steiner: ‘Anthroposophy needs no religious renewal’—so you have correctly formulated the sentence. What will it mean for Anthroposophy, whose foundation is in itself, to need religious renewal? The reverse: ‘Religious renewal needs Anthroposophy!’ What was said there in the lecture, that Anthroposophy needs ritual, was actually directed at Anthroposophists, not at the Movement for Religious Renewal. Such things need to be said because many people believe they need to orientate themselves out of principle, whether they should choose to take part in the Religious Movement. There were members of the Anthroposophic Movement who were much older than Dr Rittelmeyer; when they asked if they should take part in the ritual, one must say to them: ‘In the end you should know this yourself, you must be able to consult Dr Rittelmeyer.’—One may not say that the only way to come to anthroposophy is through the Religious Movement; that would be very wrong. My lecture at that time was directed at Anthroposophists. It is therefore self evident that the Anthroposophists, as they have become lately, could be consultants for the ritual. The opposite is deadly for Anthroposophy: when you say one couldn't come to an anthroposophic understanding (of Christ) if you do not come via the ritual. It is necessary to stress that the lecture was directed at Anthroposophists. The misunderstanding came about by both sides making mistakes of omission in their handling. There are many in the Religious Movement who doesn't know what they should be doing.

Marie Steiner: Some Anthroposophists created the saying: “Dr Steiner wants the Religious Movement to replace the Anthroposophical movement”; that was Dr Steiner's assessment. Similarly at the start of the Threefold Movement it was also suggested it should replace the Anthroposophical Movement. There have already been signs of people believing that Anthroposophy should be disassembled. Lecture cycles at the publishers were cancelled, and such like.

Rudolf Steiner: These things appear in outer practice and do not lead to inner difficulties.

A Participant pointed out that Rudolf Steiner had said during the lecture on 30 December 1922 that there were many people who are orientated towards knowledge but other people with dull religious inclination (text here only copied in key words by the stenographer).

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that can't be denied, there are people with a thorough orientation towards knowledge and others with just a dull religious inclination. If I said that Anthroposophy can't do anything with people who have dull religious instincts, but only through something like the Religious Movement, then it is true. However it does not mean that the Religious Movement is applicable to only these kinds of people, but it means these people can't do anything with Anthroposophy. These people can only be reached through the ritual, not through Anthroposophy. People with a dull religious inclination are to be involved through the ritual and possibly will become very thoughtful people in their next lives.

A participant: People say: ‘The Anthroposophists have a university, you have a school for children.’ This is the kind of thing we have to deal with.

Rudolf Steiner: Recently I saw a big poster which came out of Austria with sheer nonsense on it, claiming how concerned individuals reach the spiritual world, but on the other side it said: ‘With my spiritual system I include all things which are only approached one-sidedly by Anthroposophy and Theosophy etc.’ With such things inner difficulties can't be judged. Such people one may not take as tragic. You can't be upset by this.

A participant: To prevent such things being proclaimed, the leader of the branch needs to take action.

Rudolf Steiner: These are outer things. The leader of branch is not involved with what members do outside the branch.

A participant: It is said directly that the two paths are contradictory. This frightens people and they stay away.

Rudolf Steiner: This is not inner difficulty, it is outer action of practical life. That these things happen cannot be stopped. One can't characterise something in a trivial way which is connected to the most serious profundity; for this is needed clear formulation, with serious words which can possibly appear as falsely expressed. What one or other branch leader has to say is quite insignificant. Otherwise we have to regard it as a task to only have branch leaders who are infallible. Your spiritual tools are there to educate people.

Emil Bock: In a certain sense there was no confusion in the beginning. We were looking for our field of work as somewhere different from the Anthroposophic field. We probably took the declarations of the opposition as our connecting point which made us too separate from the Anthroposophic work. Some of us also had no more time for it. As a result of these difficulties arising among the Anthroposophists we realised we could not speak from the side of Anthroposophists. As a result of the course of events we had separated ourselves somewhat out of the anthroposophical line. Now we ask you, please help us, to find the true way in the anthroposophic work again, because we have a strong desire not to fall away from the Anthroposophic work and see how as a result we have attracted the possibility to really contribute to the clarification of us not being seen as Anthroposophists but as standing for Religious Renewal. We do not want to be poor representatives of Anthroposophy.

Rudolf Steiner: The danger was actually there from the beginning. It all depends on the correct critical attitude being maintained. It is possible through many things that judgement is rectified. For several months already, Dr Rittelmeyer is very actively involved in the Management (Forstand) of the Anthroposophic Society. What he says is highly recommended. It is already so that the strength of each one of you becomes strongly recommended. I will never again, at an occasion where social relationships are to be healed by the ritual, participate without a representative of the Religious Movement working with me. At burials I will no longer speak alone, without a priest. The ritual needs to be celebrated by the priest. In this way correct judgement must be built up. In discussions misunderstandings arrive, but the facts speak for themselves.

It is important that the Religious Movement does not deny Anthroposophy. You are mistaken if you believe you can make progress without it. It is far better to be clear and stand firm on the foundation of Anthroposophy. Everything must be openly brought to light. You may not allow people to come to the opinion that it has nothing to do with Anthroposophy. The Waldorf School is completely related to Anthroposophy. Some lecturer has said that the Waldorf School is quite nice if only their basic views could be dropped.

It is this which I want to stress: If Anthroposophy is the foundation of the Waldorf School then we don't create an anthroposophic sect education, but by going through Anthroposophy we strive towards a general education of mankind.

We have the task not to clarify misunderstandings but simply to speak the truth.

My dear friends!

For the kind of striving you are involved in, it is of primary importance to cultivate a true impulse for feeling yourselves within the spiritual world as well as striving towards the achievement of such an impulse, but taken from the viewpoint of your Movement, of which I intend speaking to you today. You see it really involves establishing a connection with a definite point to enable you to link to a spiritual impulse, if you want to be a sure, broad minded, active person, which you all want to be. It involves enlivening the appropriate impulses for this particular activity. From my observations in the spiritual world as such, it appears that the following will be helpful to you.

A connection can be established with the manifestation of the spirit of speech, the wielding of the speech genius. We must firstly be very clear, my dear friends, how far we are removed as a rule from the real spiritual, inner self-activation of grasping speech within ourselves. We basically are involved with speech but without its divine quality. We take up speech in such a manner that by the very act of applying it to ordinary life, we actually profane it. We allow ourselves as contemporary people to use speech by not venerating it in any way at all. We basically speak in sinfulness and this can awaken the awareness that our speaking sinfully enables us to acquire an attitude, I may say, to develop a relationship with speech towards obtaining a spiritual impulse. Examples to confirm this arise of course from all areas.

How many people today have obtained some guidance which empathises with any of the sounds in speech? This naturally means a large number of sounds are spoken conventionally and inhumanely, without comprehension, uttered as if without human input. Who feels at the moment the word “harden” is spoken, that in expressing the word the speaker's mood is permeated by something which hardens it like a mineral and simultaneously cools down his mood? Who feels, when the word “Word” is spoken that it is linked to life from ancient times, a past spiritual weaving which has been killed in the present time, the past crystallized in the present, and so on? We have absolutely no experience of the most important words any more. I would like to know how many people today have the experience with the word “thinking,” how many people have an experience with the word “feeling,” the word “willing.” This I'm only saying to you with reference to what I really want to entrust you with today.

You may of course name yourself in the most varied expressions of language. You can call yourself “I” as one does usually, or you can start to theorise about it and say to yourself you can be called a “human-being” (Mensch).¹ Then you substitute the speech genius and determine your own being out of the being of the language. However today a person has the feeling when he does something like that, he is applying a word which he designates to himself. When a person of today says to himself he can be called a “human-being,” he thinks that under all circumstances he has in a comprehensive way with a word, he believes, described an idea.

Now, when the starting point is feeling, it is good: in the true sense of the word language is so little understood, making the description which a person as a human-being applies to himself actually something whose understanding must first be wrestled with, whose understanding must first be arrived at. Feeling should actually always be a starting point so that when I believe I can describe myself in some or other words, even in my mother tongue, they designate an infinite pride in me. When we permeate ourselves with the feeling that we believe we can manage a language, even our mother tongue, so far removed from the spirit that we can legitimately name ourselves with the word “human-being,” if we consider this belief as terribly proud then we start to draw courage for the preparatory feeling towards a specific spiritual impulse such as I am indicating today. We should much more often be able to say: ‘I am placed on the earth as a human-being through some or other divine circumstances unknown to me and this leads me to call myself a “human-being,” but the basis for this description lies high above my horizon. It is the will of God who prevails here, who has lead me out of the unconscious deep substrate, to describe me as “human-being.” I have as a human-being, as this human individuality standing on earth, actually not the right to characterize myself.’ Then the next step must be to say to oneself: Before I can become capable at all of understanding the entire preliminary stages in existence which leads to me saying “I” to myself, I must undergo three developmental steps—right up to the judgement which I may express as the following: I have no right to call myself “human-being,” I need to first go through three steps of development, I must push through three tests. When I have passed these three tests to satisfy my own judgement, will I have earned the right to say to myself: ‘You are a human-being.’

This we should actually feel toward every spoken word: an extraordinary noble humility towards the point of origin for the development of spiritual impulses. We need to say to ourselves: Just like we as human-beings stand on earth today in our 5^th Post-Atlantean period, we may, if we are honest people, start by falling quiet, name nothing and then start to conquer the three steps which will give us the right to rename things out of ourselves. Through this can we first get a feeling for how extraordinary a meaningful cosmic experience it had been, as indicated in scripture, that in the presence of God Adam was permitted to name animals and things, which only God's proximity could enable. We come through such experiences which need indeed to be concrete personal experiences, to the necessary depths of the scripture, so that it, through its inner power which we can give it, reach the necessary nuances and coloration and out of every word in each verse let it ring out, to which we can't merely say: ‘We don't have the right to name things’—but we could say: ‘Through God the right has been given to us, to name things out of ourselves.’

These things must firstly be experienced through the depths of our soul in a priestly way to really encounter the world. Outer gestures do not make a priest, because the priest expresses what comes out of the deepest depths within. When we designate the words “human-being” as such to ourselves, we should only be able to do so when we have gone through these three stages:

The being to whom I want to ascribe the word “human-being”
has depths which I must first need to fathom;

The being to whom I want to ascribe the word “human-being”
has heights to which I need to rise first;

The being to whom I want to ascribe the word “human-being”
has widths which I first have to look at and grasp.

These three sentences contain something meaningful: being a human-being. By deepening these sentences through meditation, they can take you a long way.

In truth it is so: by the human-being placing himself in earthly existence he places himself outside spiritual heights. Solely through the fact that our earth existence is a cooperative task towards human development, cosmically validated, do we contribute a part of our totality as earthlings. Earth shapes us while we walk on it between birth and death, as earthlings, and everything which is shaped out of the earth come out of the depths which cooperates in everything, even in the most minute parts of the smallest organs in us. Just imagine the earth as a being in space has endless secrets within it which work creatively. How your eyes, your ears are formed, how every singular, how every smallest member of your body is formed and fashioned, for all this the creative forces lie within the earth. If we succeed in gradually grasping what the earth's expression of its inner being is in its countenance, with thinking, feeling and willing as an unveiling of her inner secrets, so we meditatively, gradually come to search for an answer to the question: How do I fathom the depths of the being of man?

When we succeed in placing ourselves into our bodies as the multitudinous ways of crystallised earth, which dissolves the crystallisation again, atomised to a powder, when we succeed in observing this development, pulverising and re-crystallising which in the course of time was characterised for the sensitive human-being, for example with Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva; if we succeed in experiencing this entire process which will be for us a kind of bed of the Godhead, by us being embedded in it, so that the bedding within this Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva process becomes something like a cosmic sleep for us during our earth existence, if we experience this crystallisation and dissolving as something which weaves through us with a cosmic urge for sleep, so that we could say: the human-being is so profound, so deeply fashioned in earthly existence that the depths of consciousness doesn't endure but with the entire created earth as a physical body it expires into a cosmic sleep—then we gradually approach the feeling of what it means: what it is for the human-being to be connected to the depths of the earth. If we can finally say to ourselves: the earth forms us out of its depths, permeates us out of its depths with earthly sleep, while out of the depths of earthly sleep the archetypal divine works fully consciously, then we experience something of this earthly depths within the human-being. If we could say something like: the harder the earth appears to us, diamond hard, the harder in its parts, just so more true, so powerfully speaks from this diamond hard heart the condition of sleep of the spiritual world, the light filled spirituality which works in the earth as awakened, active divinity.

Thus we need to go through our meditation in an ever more deepening feeling way and transfer the earthly foundation and say:

‘Oh man, before you can name yourself, before you can establish your depths, you need to ever more deepen yourself into the foundations of the earth.’ When we observe plants sprouting out of the earth, we may acquire a more lofty feeling of piety, a feeling of reverence, that in every plant morsel we can behold something of ourselves, something like a revelation of what is happening below in the earth. We must really clearly understand the exchange of activities taking place between the earth's depths and the breadths of the heavens. See how the blossoming roses grow out of the earth, look at the particular way the rosebud pinches its petals so tightly together as to complement the ground of the earth, counter positioned to the central point of the earth as a mighty rose of light, permeated with divine thought gestures which need to wait until the rose unfolds its bud upwards. Every sleeping rosebud you empathise with the waiting, creating, living light rose in the earthly depths. So it is with all plants. Look at the green cover of plants over the earth and experience that which sprouts out of the earth as green, in the depths of the earth, as quite light-filled but permeated with deep violet, which appears in the world, weaving through it with life. Then you have something which I have said to you: ‘I may only call myself a human-being, when I have explored myself in the earth's depths.’

So the feeling must be reached towards becoming worthy through such meditative penetration, through the conquering of this first step, for the word “human-being” to be used for people. When one takes what the profane person takes as obvious, as a level hovering high above and think one can only reach this level by climbing up to it; through humbling yourself three times more than an ordinary person, becoming three times more humble than an ordinary person believes himself to be, then one is only starting to sense oneself gradually approaching the calling of a priest.

When one has gradually in such a way led oneself to reach the first step, then one takes on the second step which lets us look into the infinite widths of the worlds and one says to oneself at the present moment: Oh, how trivial this world has become, where humanity has only developed trivial images of the wide world. Yes truly, wiser than the wisest student was Stifter's grandmother who was asked about the evening red glow and answered it was the mantle of God's mother, which is hung out in the heaven to be aired. This naive, picturesque imagination is in contrast to scientific knowledge much wiser, much wiser than the most learned astronomy.

This one must be able to absorb: To actually see the shining stars in wide space, stars with essentially the eyes of divine spiritual beings who glance down at us, children of the earth, while their spiritual hands reach out to us, while our spiritual hands reach up to their spiritual hands because we were with them before we came down to an earthly existence. The gods look after us out of space, out of the heights above worlds, in order to explore how we feel towards their predisposition while our spiritual hands reached their spiritual hands. When we are able to possibly develop many imaginations of the heights and become more and more empathic, how the being of humanity originate out of the heights, towards which it needs to climb up once again, then we will be able to come one step closer to earn the right to, as people, call ourselves ‘human beings.’

The word ‘human-being’ must first be dipped into the depths of the earth, as I have indicated, so that its absorption during this immersion becomes part of our minds and enable us to say: We understand this. Now this word ‘human-being’ need to rise up with the mists into the heights and give us the feeling that it will come again in the falling rain, when the word “human-being” will carry within itself the possibility of learning to understand it. We really must initially be clear about everything which works between the depths of the earth and the heavenly heights. In a lively way we must follow the haze rising from woods and mountains. We must not believe that the haze is rising from an area which belongs to the earth. We must develop every kind of modesty towards those people who see in a drop the dragon rising in a thermometer or a barometer, to facilitate measurements. The tendency is to immerse everything in earthly images only. We must reach a point where we can say: ‘How foolish to believe thunder develops out of the friction between clouds; clouds consist of water as every child knows, all moisture is completely kept away from a glass rod if electricity is to be created.’—Naturally this foolishness comes to the fore when a person tries to experience something in the heights of heaven which he experiences on earth for he has descended down from the heavenly heights and now he needs to feel related to it again before he can truly call himself a human-being. We must clearly understand that while the fog rises out of the mountains and forests, where water is somewhat different than it is on earth, in regions where water itself becomes spiritualised, it is ‘de-watered’ and goes through spiritual processes so that it can materialise once again until it descends again as rain out of spiritual spheres. We must know that if we rise up into such regions then we need to be familiar with these regions of our origination, out of which we descended from in a previous existence. We need to know that lightening is something which rules and weaves in spiritual regions and take the imagination of ancient times, where lightening was the arrow of the Gods, as an imagination far more wise than we can ever make today.

In total stillness we must be able to develop such meditative imaginations in the depths of our minds, enabling us to be the leaders turning a completely de-spiritualised world culture towards the Spirit. When we turn towards the hard earth, we must also turn towards the gentle, flowing water, combining with one another in the depths, right into the most concentrated minute matter, which expands in the heights and must atomise, then coalesce to become rain again in their descent to earth. We must discover all the secrets of water, everything relating to water and draw it all together in our minds. We must meditate over it, we must ask ourselves: ‘How does the sun's warmth come out of the world expanse during summer and into the earth to enable plants to bear fruit which turn ripe? How does this warmth of the sun sink into the earth to enable the farmer to entrust his seeds in the earth's warmth during winter?’ At the end of winter it is this warmth which expands again into the vastness of existence. This warmth, found in all areas of existence, working in all cosmic undertakings, is a communion of the opposites between the heavenly heights and the earthly depths. As human-beings we originate from both. We must fathom the earth's depths before we can enter into the world's expanse.

By increasingly entering into such meditations we come to a kind of feeling, a mindfulness, towards the second step, which gives us the right to apply the word ‘human-being’ to ourselves. We must achieve an awareness that all languages can only be provisional, until through the third step we have reached that union with the linguistic genius who actually speaks unconsciously within us while we, when we have made ourselves the tool of God's Word, only then need to have the right to apply the word ‘human-being’ to ourselves.

As a third step we must try and observe the world's expanse. This we can perceive when the rising and the setting sun becomes a reality in our minds. Similarly with the rising and sinking stars when we learn to understand the great journey of the sun chariot going through the world, then we are really able to recognise what the variations are between East and West, what is different from Southeast compared to Northwest and so on. This we can observe when we are able to say to ourselves: You as human-being may take five steps and so change your position on the earth's surface. For you to be able to do so, like the animal as well, is as a result of forces which draw from East to West in width and breadth, also working on you. You are also shaped out of the earth's depths. While the heights of heaven throw light on you from above and forms and enlivens you, you are all given the ability to be formed into beings able to walk on the earth's surface. The world's expanse you should sense and you can sense this by placing yourself in some distant landscape and experience the air as becoming something increasingly more real. In your immediate surroundings the air appears transparent to you, you don't see it; when you look at a mountain you can paint the air with it because it appears as dew on the surface; when you look at the air in the distance then you see the blue sky. Drenched with it you experience the beings of light as a feeling which becomes real because the experience is bound to actions of will. Thus you rise to the third step in your meditation which leads you to earn the right to name yourself a ‘human-being.’

When you deepen this step in the secret of breathing, you start to understand what the air and the widths of the world are; what is working in the heights and depths and in the horizon and you admit: what permeates your breathing lives in the wide world—it is how the wide world experiences you—and it is this that you must sense in your breath. Further, you must sense in your breathing that an act of will is the basis of penetrating your entire being with the powerful impulses of breathing. You get an inkling of how the depths of the earth give material cohesion to your entire body which you transform according to thoughts given to you from the wide world. So they work together in the whole person:

Depths of earth in your Physical
World widths in your Astral
Heavenly heights in your Etheric

Thus you can feel entire cosmic dimensions in yourself. You can sense when you enter with your feeling into the diamond hard earth how you are a sleeping being. You can feel, when you raise your gaze to the heavenly heights, you are snatched from sleep and become a dreaming being. Yet you can also feel how you are a being who is awake in the width of the world. Gradually you learn to recognise the comic human in the earthly human-being.

In this way you learn to recognise how the human-being is actually formed by God out of the entire cosmos, placed by God on earth. Thus you sense the threefold positioning in the cosmos. This is how you learn to feel how the Father God works out of the earth, whose lively activity must preferably be looked for in the past because what has remained is the firm ground on which we stand, the fixed forms repeated in the world, all that has remained appears to us in fixed images. By meditating with our mind sunk into the earthly depths we hear the words of the Father God sounding up to us. Out of the heavenly heights we hear how the presence of God speaks to us but the words are more profound and more complicated that human speech. God has descended from the heavens down to earth and had to go through the Mystery of Golgotha to allow heavenly speech to penetrate our words. The actual communion of the earthly with the heavenly we can depict in the rising water vapour, in the rain which falls down again, in the rising and again descending warmth of the world. When we allow that to work in us it will permeate us with spirit and we will sense the presence of Christ in those who we feel are under the influence of the heavenly heights. When we penetrate into our breath as coming out of the widths of space and we humbly link our feeling to what happens at every instant, when we in our physicality, ruled by the forces of earthly depths, feel formed and shaped under the leadership of Christ Jesus out of the heavenly heights then we come to really experience, and are permeated by, the activity of the Holy Ghost as the fulfilment of the Trinity and thus out of this our meditation could be:

The Father God has given me the strength which lies in my material existence, as solidified Spirit.

The Son God is always the heavenly which lives in me, which works and weaves like a watery cosmic existence, which is a symbol, an image of it. I sense Christ-God in all my weaving and living, in all which has made me from a child to an adult, in all which grows in me daily and needs to perish again, enabling me to be an earthling through my becoming.

I feel the Spirit God carry into the future that which Christ Jesus has become in us, in the past.

You see, when you meditate like this on the content born out of a word, a word previously only used provisionally, then you have earned the right to call a person a ‘human-being.’ We must begin by developing reverence towards the genius of speech because through such a meditation real reverence is cultivated. Our starting point must not be to refer to the outer impression of the human form only but as a human-being created by God, as a thought from God, as a God-filled human-being, when we speak.

When we prepare ourselves as we have through our meditation on a word such as ‘human-being,’ then the impulse is born for these three steps to be applied to some other words and for the human speech on earth to be implemented in this way. The genius of speech will teach us how we can become living tools for the Word of God when we allow the congregation to experience this Word of God. The Word of God is always there, and what we are doing, is but a moment's experience of the continuous spiritual cosmic weaving Word of God. In the very first beginnings the word existed, in ancient beginnings it was already divine. When we are however not in the position to sense the holiness in the words ‘human-being’ for the people, then our approach is not right, we do not have dignity to also express the first words of the St John's Gospel in the correct way. The priest today has not yet come so far as to be able to say these words in this way.

In our time the primary importance for priests, if they continue in their calling, is to further such things. What has actually been left over from the ancient words revealed from the holy heights above the earth? What has remained from the words such as “Deus,” “Christus,” “Spiritum”? Earthly sounds they now are, hardened by dogma. The truth within words need to be awakened in us, the truth of these words must live in us. We may not neglect anything which will still make it possible for the old, hardened and therefore dogmatic words to become alive again within us. We may no longer turn and twist in the way it was done with God's words in past times in which the Catholic Church extracted the Mystery of the Mass.

In the Old Mysteries priests were far more humble than those of today, when they are like I have just described them. The priest of old said to himself he couldn't be a priest if he was just as he was. As a result, before he was allowed to speak, those things were performed in which the last remainder of incense was still held. As a result of the sensing, which has come to its right in our Consecration of Man ritual, there is indicated that in the Mysteries of old, outer substances were used to shift the consciousness of the priests. This resulted in them feeling shifted out of their bodies and enchanted by the genius of speech, taking them to the higher Genius so that the priest of old, out of his body, experienced the Being of God. No priest was of the opinion that he could move his tongue when he expressed the Word of God; he knew he had to first go out of himself and allow his tongue to be moved from outside. We can no longer do this today and nor should we try. We should through inner spiritual means, with internalized feeling and will work towards the understanding of the foregoing, when we can call ourselves ‘human-beings.’

Just consider, my dear friends, what the Act of Consecration will become under your handling when you start from today taking these things I've spoken about into your priest meditations. These things can also just gradually be taken in by us. Mankind has distanced itself from the divine and must find its way back again. We have absorbed the Act of Consecration into the Christian Movement for Religious Renewal like religious artists. Today we have come to the point where what can only be accepted like a religious art must be taken up in such a way that we are in the position to make it into a lively organism, in order for the Act of Consecration to become really alive and in this way be experienced within the Christian Community as ever new at each fulfilment of the ritual, just like the physical body experiences something new each time it takes in nourishment.

My dear friends, take this into your souls: the Act of Consecration is to become alive. Through this you will earn the right to place yourselves in the earth's becoming and through the Act of Consecration be present within the earth's becoming. Then may you express the following truth: If this Act of Consecration is not performed then the earth will waste away and remain without nourishment. It would be just as if no plants would grow. Plants grow in the physical world; the Act of Consecration of Man must grow in the spiritual realm. If it was not enacted there on this higher level it would be the same as if on the lower level of the physical earth no plants would grow. A human-being only has the right to say this when he or she succeeds in continuously enlivening the Act of Consecration so that this self-expressed word ‘human-being’ has been achieved in the correct manner and being and weaving, within the earthly existence, through achieving the three steps of inner soul development.

Only then, my dear friends, when you have experienced it in this sensitive way can you really place yourself in the right way in our present time. According to your need to gather again after a certain time, I may say this to you, because it belongs to the entire development of the Christian Community. Thus you have taken something full of life into yourselves which can work in an enlivening way in yourselves. I wish that today's words are taken in all seriousness, in the right way.

• 1. Translator's note: “Mensch” has no English equivalent. Collins Dictionary considers mensch used in English as “a well-meaning person.” Reverso suggests ‘human,’ ‘person’ and ‘man.’ Google adds ‘individual’ to this list. The word ‘human’ is seen in contrast to ‘animal’ or ‘robot.’ To translate “Mensch” as ‘human-being’ is not quite correct, nor is ‘individuality’—the latter indicating a person being different from others in some way. “Mensch” has a humane as well as individual character so the best solution is using the expression “human-being” in this translation. As “the Word” is under examination, a hyphen is an attempt at forming a single inseparable concept.

Yes, my dear friends, I would like to supplement what I said yesterday. I wanted to offer it then already, but time was too short. This occasion gives us the opportunity to refer to our relationship we need to gradually re-establish with the Bible. The Bible, namely the New Testament, is a document which we must learn to grasp as a supersensible revelation, not in a dogmatic sense but through arriving at knowledge which indicates that religious documents originating up to about the time 4 AD were not only of human origin but were poured into the consciousness of humanity; knowledge which could not have come out of humanity. I would like to mention that you only need to bring humanity up to this point while a kind of instinctive atavistic consciousness still existed, presenting the most manifold images depicting the highest spiritual things and processes, yet these images were not conceptualised in human consciousness.

So it has come about that right at the time when intellectualism has become authoritative, religious documents are misunderstood in many areas. They are approached with intellectual thinking and basically it is quite natural that even with much goodwill, misunderstandings come to the fore. Thus it has happened that when today's presented texts are transcribed into a common language, they do not represent the original documents because a national language has an intellectual basis which is alien to the original elements in which the religious documents were embodied.

When religious documents, particularly the New Testament, are referred back to in its original language, it also becomes apparent that this original language can no longer be experienced in an adequate way in the constitution of souls of today. Actually, a kind of untruthful element enters into the understanding of ancient religious knowledge, also the New Testament. It is hopeless to think that translations done up to now can somehow be improved continually, because it must firstly involve finding the preconditions which will enable a kind of reawakening of ancient spirituality with the purpose of really understanding religious documents. This we can do, this everyone can basically do, if the trouble is taken to apply researchable spiritual scientific facts to, let's say, the New Testament.

I would like to give a small example and that from one of the most important places in the New Testament. I would like to stress from the start that representations in the New Testament are connected to a historic fact; the depiction in the New Testament can only be understood when it is very clear that the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha is placed within the rest of humanity's evolution, but as a fact which falls outside the rest of humanity's laws. The Mystery of Golgotha is a totally singular event and for its understanding should not be considered out of historical foundations but it should be grasped out of itself. Only when you take—I would like to call it super-historical fact—this cosmic fact in relationship with scientific spiritual knowledge about the development of humanity, only then can you actually start understanding the deep sense of the words and the sentence formation of the New Testament. If you don't do this, a far too strong trivial tone enters into the New Testament. We can remind ourselves of various impulses towards a possible understanding of the Bible where absolutely no preparatory understanding is regarded necessary and that it should simply be taken in a naive, primitive manner. You need to remind yourself of this fact in order to judge how strong the reluctance is to perceive the New Testament in its total profundity.

Just consider, my dear friends, that the Mystery of Golgotha, taken in its right sense, was fulfilled for the earth as a specific act of grace out of higher spiritual worlds at a specific time when a certain part of humanity was passing over from a previous state of consciousness to the next one. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the evolution of humanity's becoming in earthly life reached up to an inner ego reality. The “I” gradually unfolded at the same time as the Mystery of Golgotha. We may not look for the connection between these two facts, whether causal or just as a connection. We may only consider it a connection when it is compared with one seeing something happening and something is done towards it out of free will. The Mystery of Golgotha appears as a cosmic fact of free will which has come about within the development of humanity in such a way, that the ego consciousness is awakened. Now, you know the remainder of the important facts which are linked to the appearance of the ego consciousness. Something extraordinary may be added to this. It is necessary to know that with the embodiment of the ego consciousness in evolution there was a condition where people looked up at every opportunity of their conscious lives to gods, or—where monotheism existed—to that God who has remained as an image of the Father God. As long as we stand in the imagination of the Father God, the imagination is fulfilled so that we can say: ‘When a human being is aware of his ego nature then he feels that within his ego is the inner working of the Father God in his soul.’ The Father God distils in a certain way a drop of his own Being which remains connected to the entire spiritual sea of the Father God, to the beings of individuals and every person can say to himself: ‘The Father God is alive in me, the abundance of the Father God lives in me.’ However, the entire humanity is permeated with the being of the Father God. Experiencing all of this at present is to say to yourself: ‘I am!’ That is: ‘The Father God is in me.’—To live in this way in present times is becoming increasingly impossible. You must come to your own “I” via your own consciousness which makes it a product of yourself. This production of the individual “I” is in connection with the entire cosmic-spiritual world only possible when individuals identify themselves with Christ, thus with the Son of God.

What can be said about the relationship between people blessed by Christ and people who have not been enriched by Christ? Upon looking back at the consciousness of unblessed mankind, therefore the individual being of their souls, can you say: ‘I am the only one who has been blessed with an “I”?’—No, the soul could only say: ‘Within me the Father God lives and because He lives in me it enables me to say “I” to myself.’—People had not been completely individualised, the individual was a child of God, but as if the child was still connected to God by an umbilical cord. What the soul could have when it was aware of this divine capacity, it could have no more, later on. The Christ-blessed humanity acquired it in such a way that each single soul could take up their “I” out of this divine substance.

In this way the Christ-blessed people were able to take their own “I” out of the substance of their individual soul being.

Thus the Christ brought the same as what the Father God had given humanity on earth, but He brought it in a new way in order for every individual to find a connection to the ego being born within. Thus the Christ could say to humanity: ‘I bring to you what you are used to recognise out of the Logos but I bring it in a new way. I bring it to you through what the Father God has given to me, what He had given directly to you before, but for another state of consciousness. As his messenger I bring this treasure from the Father God to you, to each independent consciousness of yours, to every single individual. I don't want to just make you into some kind of member of the whole cosmos, I will by virtue of the full authority given to me by the Father God make each single one of you, if you want to come, into an “I” filled person with a divine consciousness.’

That the manner in which the divine consciousness should come to people now in a different way to what it had been in earlier times, is because of the Mystery of Golgotha. Similarly, it also applies to the Words of the Gospels taking on quite a different sense as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha. It is for instance possible to refer back to the stages of evolution of humanity from the contents of the Our Father prayer. It doesn't refer to the contents in this case but that the Our Father comes across in a different and in a newer way to the “I” filled conscious soul even though given in the same words, in the same sentences. Penetrating this event with spiritual powers makes it possible again for us to research it ourselves. This fact brings us back to the original meaning of the Gospels. This original meaning must be revealed again today. Humanity should not be allowed to be fobbed off with misunderstandings of Gospels not taken from a lofty view. One should overcome the point of understanding the matter in such a way as to ask oneself: Can you, when you are quite honest in your soul, today still, discover meaning in the words of John 17, verse 1 to 9?

My dear friends, much can be said and repeated about this if you want to disregard the facts that a clear understanding can't really be found. In an artificial way (of the commentator) no meaning can be linked to these words. Only through belief can meaning be connected to them because nothing actual is touched when you have one these sentences (of some or other terrible translation) in front of you. By contrast when you make an attempt to empathise with the (original) texts in a word-for-word translation into your mother tongue (original text says “German”—translator note), then a deeper meaning comes into it. You should not allow, if you are honest with yourself, to say these words would be simplified and be comprehensible to every ordinary human mind, through artificial comments. Actually you realise the deeper meaning in the original and this fact must be your starting point.

Humanity today would prefer not to have to search for such deep meaning in the Gospels. One can't escape the fact that there is deeper meaning which we need to discover. We can't deny it. It would be a subjective fantasy to say: ‘Don't interpret anything in the Gospels, simply remain with the contents.’ That as such is the interpretation. When we go back to the meaning which is there on quite a mundane level then we could translate it in the following way:

After Jesus saved him, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said: Father, the hour has come, let your son be revealed so that he may reveal you, as You have given him power over all who have flesh, so that he may give everlasting life to them. This now is everlasting life, that You are recognised as the only true God and Jesus Christ as your emissary. I have revealed Your being on earth, to fulfil the work You have given to me. And now reveal me, Father, with the light of revelation which came through You to me before the world began. I have brought You into manifestation to humanity which You assigned to me out of the world. They were Yours and You gave them to me and they have remained fulfilled with Your Word. Thus they can see that everything which You have given me comes from You. For the power of thought which You have given me, I have brought to them. You have linked yourself to them and seen how I come from You and that You have given them to me. I pray for each single individual, not for humanity in general, but for those you have given me, for they are yours, created by you.

As I have said to you before, this entire version is nothing other, my dear friends, than the facts of humanity's evolution depicted within the Gospels. The precise truth in the Gospels can be found when you enter into the spiritual facts within them. With this, the kind of awareness develops, I might say, for the right light to be thrown on the words. Is it not true, it is certainly not my intention to utter some idle criticism when I say it is not possible to say the words: “Father, the hour has come for You to reveal your son, so that Your son can reveal you.” If you are honest, you will admit: this doesn't really say anything, even by trying to make it comprehensible through the human heart. In contrast the truth becomes obvious by taking the Greek Text which says: “Father, the hour has come, reveal your son ...” which asks the Father to reveal the Son. The δοξα is no statement, the δοξα is to reveal, to announce, to-bring-to-recognition, and thus it is meant: “... so that your son is revealed out of You.” The mediation of the Father-contents through the power of the Son are expressed directly in these words in a naive idea. Earlier, humanity had the substance of the Father God within them, as described. Now the Father God has brought the Son to becoming the mediator for humanity. This is really written here and is no lie: “... as You have given him power over all who have flesh ...” The expression “flesh” (Fleisch) is difficult to translate here because it can be misunderstood in ordinary speech. In fact, it should say: “... as You have given him power over all human physical bodies so that he can give everlasting life for those given to him.”—When one contemplates these facts, that the human body originally had the consciousness of being filled with God and thus earned everlasting life, you realise that while this power no longer fills the consciousness, the bodies can no longer reflect back the gift of everlasting life. This is why the Christ had to be sent to humanity. ‘This now is everlasting life, that You are recognised as the only true God and Jesus Christ your emissary. I have revealed Your Being on earth, to fulfil the work You have given to me. And now reveal me, Father, with the light of revelation which came through You to me before the world began. I have brought You into manifestation for humanity which you assigned me out of the world. They were Yours and You gave them to me and they have remained fulfilled with Your Word.’

Christ Jesus has made it possible to stop the Word from dying and for the contents of the Father substance to remain in humanity. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, humanity would have forgotten about this content. The Father God would have been forgotten if the Son had not perpetuated the Fatherly content. Thus they have seen that everything which You have given me comes from You. For the power of thought which You have given me, I have brought to them. You have linked yourself to them and seen how I come from You and that You have given them to me. I pray for each single individual, not for humanity in general, but for those you have given me, for they are yours, created by you.

I add here ‘for humanity in general’ instead of ‘for the World’. This is no longer understood. This spiritual connectivity experience has just been referred to which at the time was an acceptable image: For them as individuals, not only for humanity in general.

In truth, the New Testament does not become less beautiful, magnificent and sublime through our understanding of its contents. This concerns your correct positioning in the present, in the spiritual life of the present, in a religious movement of the present to once again return to the reality contained in the Gospels. How often the request surfaces for the necessity to return again to original Christendom! It fails because nothing can be achieved by an attempt to grasp the Logos in its ancient meaning and then one repeatedly comforts oneself conveniently that the Gospels should be taken up as simple content. However, simple content would not fail if one would actually enter into what is written there. We may not forget, my dear friends, that words do essentially change in their feeling-value in the course of time. It is not possible simply to translate a word out of the ancient language lexicographically. Already today when one translates something lexicographically, the results are entirely different. This applies even more when translating historical events. It does not come down to directly taking the sentimental value attached to words of the present and applying this to ancient wording, but the task is to go back to the feeling within the contents of the ancient working. We can find examples of these facts everywhere in the New Testament where the Gospels were expressed in a time when revelation was given through grace from the spiritual cosmos to mankind which had not yet moved from the partially developed ego consciousness into the fully developed ego consciousness. All other facts need to be judged according to this basic fact. We may not remain fixed in an opinion and say that the earlier, the simple people emerging from the lowest levels could not understand the meaning in it. If the meaning of the Gospels is so simple to understand, we must reveal the other side of this wonderful fact: How were these simple people capable of relating such a profound meaning in the Gospels?—It is far more spiritual to say these simple people born from the folk could not have understood the meaning. Such a conclusion depends on another opinion.

I don't know if any of you—perhaps those of us who are older—have had this kind of experience of going with a loving heart among the country folk. You go there as an educated person feeling tremendously clever and you speak to the folk of what you've learnt. They don't understand you. Yet if you go along with them, you discover an unbelievable deep wisdom among these simple people which outshines anything you can offer out of yourself. The wisdom of naive people is actually deeper than that of educated people. The theory of simplicity among primitive people is an intellectual theory of educated people. For example, the meaning in some of Jakob Bohme's sentences could have been learnt from a herb gatherer forty years ago rather than in a university. This can't be denied. However faithfully an old text can be translated is something from which Professor Beckh can create a song for you, concerning Sanskrit in oriental texts. One will not be going too far by saying Indian philosophy becomes unrecognizable in translation, which for example was done by Professor Deußen (after the visit of Swami Viviknanda to Germany in 1896-translator note). If one wants to examine the original human contents of Deußen's translation, simply the straight forward word combination, you experience it as empty words in which no sense can be found at all. These things are of the utmost importance and are related to the deepest questions of our time. As a result, I do not want to hesitate to decide our future meeting in relation with this consideration, because I believe that it is necessary precisely at this time.

I hope you can experience it as the truth—what I mentioned yesterday—that for the Religious Movement the Act of Consecration becomes the deepest and most everlasting fact which is not merely rich in imagery but that it must become alive and remain capable of becoming ever new and more rich. I hope that we can continue with our working together in this lively unfolding way with which we have started with so much hope.

Werner Klein expressed in closing the wish of the good will remaining so powerfully in the work that in a year's time another meeting will be held where they could ask Dr Steiner's advice.

Rudolf Steiner: We wish for this as well and will hold this in our hearts.

[ 1 ] My dear friends! If I may say something in response to your kind words, it would be this: It was fully justified of you to have spoken these words on behalf of the priesthood, and one cannot always say that what is spoken by people with the best of intentions is fully justified. In this case it can be said. It is said because, in addition to everything that arises from the inner spiritual impulse that is to emanate from the Goetheanum through the Anthroposophical Movement, there is always something that goes far beyond not only all theoretical understanding, but all understanding, period. It is something that approaches what one can express as follows: Today, the tasks for humanity are becoming great again. They are becoming great because the forces from those times are exhausted, when it was possible for humanity to turn away, more or less, from the impulses of the old mysteries.

[ 2 ] The impulses of the old mysteries have unfolded divine substances and divine forces into full reality on earth. Humanity had to develop in such a way that the time came when it was more or less left to its own devices, and that during this time the divine substances and forces could not work directly through people on earth. The forces that have gone through humanity on earth in this interim period of human development have been exhausted. And this is perhaps the most significant, if not the highest, or at least an important and deeply incisive occult truth: that the forces that were allowed to take effect within human evolution without the mysteries have been exhausted, and that human evolution will not continue unless mystery forces enter into it again.

[ 3 ] In the light of this truth, it must be felt that today something other than mere understanding is necessary for those who, out of true spirituality, want to work in any branch of the Anthroposophical Movement. Something must come again that is similar to the work in the old mysteries that has been described as the sacrificial devotion of the whole human being, with the whole human being absorbed in his task.

[ 4 ] If it were not clearly evident — and it is clearly evident — that within your priesthood this impulse is present, working in pure inwardness, sacrificing the whole person for the cause you have recognized as sacred, then your words would not have this deep truth. But I may say before all the divine powers that brilliantly preside over our cause: Your words, which you have spoken of your enthusiasm and devotion to the cause, are full, pure, sincere truth. It was clear to see how this priesthood as a whole is inspired by the noblest, most inward striving to bring the sacrifices that must be made today to full fruition with the inner spirituality of man. And it may be said that what you have done is the beginning of what the divine essence can do to satisfy the world. I am saying something very important to you.

[ 5 ] Of course, your work has remained within Germany . But that has happened for reasons that will probably be overcome in the not too distant future. For the interest in that religious renewal that flamed in your hearts when you came here to me to found your priestly work also takes hold of souls across wide areas outside of Germany. And it will depend only on the inner strength that is in you, how far the possibility exists to go beyond Germany.

[ 6 ] Naturally, one can only think with a deeply moved heart of how the inauguration and initiation of your movement with the sacred human consecration service took place here two years ago, at the place where we first had to watch the flames that destroyed our beloved Goetheanum. You can see that today, this place is the most utterly decimated. But it has actually been started through your beautiful devotion to transform what happened in that room that was first consumed by the flames into a truly sacred deed in the earth. And if you continue with the holy zeal that first seized you, the impulses within your priesthood will develop in the right way.

[ 7 ] This time, when you gather again in this place, bathed in the light and warmth that came to us from the spiritual world through the Christmas Conference, we will have important questions to address as a kind of spiritual counterweight to the earthly losses that were caused by the flames. We will address what can truly be suitable to carry forward the impulses of your souls.

[ 8 ] This time we will try to let the deep content of the Apocalypse approach us, but starting from this contemplation of the Apocalypse, we will let everything pass before our soul that is of particular importance for your priesthood at this moment. And it is precisely by contemplating the Apocalypse that we will be able to place at the center of all our work here that which gives meaning to priestly work: the Act of Consecration of Man. And so, on the one hand, we will have the Act of Consecration of Man and, on the other, the Apocalypse.

[ 9 ] Today, a few words will be said about how we want to inaugurate this here and how we want to inaugurate your priestly movement through this work. And so we want to save for later what will be said over the course of time about the immediate needs of your priestly work, what will be brought about in this practical priestly work, what will be achieved in terms of looking back at the past and looking forward to the future. And today I will begin by telling you how this work of ours is to be organized here over the next few days.

[ 10 ] So, first of all, I greet you all from the bottom of my heart on behalf of all the powers that have united here and of which you are aware, that they are the hosts of the powers that follow Christ. They may provide the right religious impulsivity, the right theological insight and the right impulses for the work of worship in the present, which you would like to take over in the deepest Christian sense, religiously, theologically, ceremonially. It is in this spirit that we want to be together and it is from this spirit that the work we are now undertaking together should be shaped.

[ 11 ] We assume that we are pointing to that which is great in our time, to that which must endure in a completely new disposition of the human soul, to that which passes through priestly activity. That which is present in priestly activity when the Act of Consecration of Man is performed is something that people have always sought as long as there has been a human race on earth. But if we want to see in what light the Act of Consecration of Man must appear to the priest who celebrates it and to the lay person who receives it today, we must first take a look at what the Act of Consecration of Man has been over the course of time in the development of humanity on earth, what it is and what it must become.

[ 12 ] But to understand what the Act of Consecration of Man is when it is celebrated today, we must approach it from another angle, permeated with the true content of what John, initiated by Christ himself, wanted to give to future Christianity with his Apocalypse. Basically, the two belong together: the right sense in celebrating the Act of Consecration of Man and the right sense in inwardly permeating oneself with the substance of the Apocalypse.

[ 13 ] Let us disregard for the moment the special meaning that the Apocalypse of John has for the contemporary Christian. Let us instead call everything “apocalyptic” that is revealed as occult truth for the proper priestly impulse concerning humanity and its further development. Much falls under this concept of the apocalypse, which is precisely summarized in the Apocalypse of John and which is directed towards the Christ. In striving for an apocalypse, there was always an understanding that the full and deep sense for the reception of the apocalyptic must be given in the Act of Consecration of Man.

[ 14 ] Much will become clear to us if we first say to ourselves: There were once mysteries that I will call the old mysteries. We do not want to dwell on dates in this introduction, but only characterize the four successive stages of the mysteries. There were ancient mysteries, there were semi-ancient mysteries, there was a semi-modern mystery tradition, and we are now at the starting point of a modern mystery tradition. We thus have four stages before us, four stages in the development of the human conception of apocalypse and the human consecration ritual.

[ 15 ] If we look at the ancient mysteries that existed among people at the first dawn of human development on earth, which had to bring everything that was sacred, true and beautiful to people, then we can say: the essential feature of the ancient mysteries was this: that in them the gods descended from their seats of power to mankind, and that within the mysteries, in priestly dignity, men communed with the gods directly, from being to being. Just as man and man, being with being, communicate with each other today, so in those ancient times the gods communicated with men and men with the gods in the mysteries.

[ 16 ] But just as there are natural laws that apply to time, there are also eternal laws, which, however, do not in any way impair human freedom; and among these eternal laws are also those that relate to the interaction of the gods with humans. These primeval laws were especially taken into account at the time when the gods themselves associated with men in the sacred mysteries of primitive times, and when all human teaching took place between the divine teachers and the men themselves. When what took place in the cultus was such that the transcendental powers of the gods were also present among the celebrants, then in those old mysteries was accomplished that which has always given meaning to the Act of Consecration of Man: the Transubstantiation. But what was Transubstantiation in the old mysteries?

[ 17 ] In the ancient mysteries, Transubstantiation was that which the gods regarded as the ultimate thing through which they entered into a relationship with human beings. The ceremonies were determined by the eternal laws of which I spoke. From certain constellations of the stars, which one learned in the true old astrology and the coincidence of these constellations with circumstances that men could discern, the path was paved from the gods to the people and from the people to the gods.

[ 18 ] You can see this if you look at the calendars of ancient times: there were different calendars, for example, some that assumed 354 days and others that assumed 365 days. These calendars had leap days or leap weeks inserted into them to compensate for the discrepancy between human calculations and the true course of the cosmos. What people were able to calculate never coincided with the true course of the cosmos. There was always a small remainder somewhere. Now, the priests of the ancient mysteries paid particular attention to this small remainder where human time calculation did not correspond to the cosmic course of the world. They determined these specific times when this mismatch was particularly noticeable by dividing the year into months and weeks, leaving them with a certain number of days between lunar months until the beginning of the next year.

[ 19 ] Looking closely at these times, when people, by inserting such days or weeks, expressed, as it were, the non-coincidence of human calculation with the course of the cosmos, and when the priests regarded these times as sacred weeks, provides all the more reason for anyone who wants to find their way into the course of human development. For in such holy weeks, which made it so very noticeable that the thinking of the gods is different from that of men, in such times when this difference becomes clear, the way can be found from the gods to men and from men to the gods, if the hearts of the gods and the hearts of men are in harmony.

[ 20 ] This was something that people observed within the old astrology and that allowed them to see through it in the right way when the gods came into the mysteries. There were always sacred times at the end of each year, or at the end of an 18-year lunar cycle, or at the end of other periods, which marked the boundary between human and divine intelligence, and in which the priests of the mysteries could recognize that the gods could find their way to them and that humans could find their way to the gods.

[ 21 ] It was also in such times that those ancient priests sought to capture the workings of the sun and moon in the substances with which they celebrated the Act of Consecration of Man, in order to extend what they had received in the sacred times over all the remainder of the year. In this way they also preserved what the gods had made out of these substances and forces of the earth in the sacred times. They kept the water of those times, the Mercury element, in order to celebrate the Act of Consecration of Man with it during the rest of the year in such a way that it contained transubstantiation in the same way as it had been done by the gods themselves during those acts of consecration of man that had taken place in the “dead times”, as they were called, but which were precisely the holy times.

[ 22 ] Thus, in those ancient mysteries, at the times when the cosmic language was spoken among people, not human language, people wanted to connect with the gods, who then descended into the mysteries and which each time newly hallowed what the Act of Consecration of Man was, but which also each time left behind an understanding of the apocalyptic for the those who performed this Act of Consecration of Man and participated in it. Thus the great truths were taught in those ancient times when to stand in the Act of Consecration of Man meant to be imbued with the substance of the Apocalyptic. The Act of Consecration of Man is the path of knowledge; the Apocalypse is the object of sacred knowledge.

[ 23 ] We then come to the semi-ancient mysteries, to the mysteries of which at least a small reflection still remains in history, whereas of the mysteries that I have characterized as ancient, nothing emerges into history anymore, but can only be explored through occult science. It was already the time when the gods withdrew from men and no longer descended in their own being into the mysteries, but they still sent down their powers. It was the time when the Act of Consecration of Man was to receive through transubstantiation that splendor of the divine which must ever shine forth in the Act of Consecration of Man.

[ 24 ] Transubstantiation was no longer carried out through taking from the astrological observation of cosmic processes which substances and forces should flow into the celebration of transubstantiation, but the secret was sought in a different way. They sought the inner essence of what was called in ancient alchemy: the Ferments. That which has reached a certain age and has passed unchanged through the various stages in which it has effected the transformation of other substances is a Ferment. If we want to choose a trivial comparison, we only need to remember how to bake bread; it happens according to the same principle. You keep a small part of the old dough and add it to the new dough as a leavening agent. We can imagine how, in the times of the semi-ancient mysteries, ancient substances, which have retained their own inner substance through the transformation of other substances over time, were stored in sacred vessels that were themselves something ancient, something holy in the mysteries.

[ 25 ] The substances were taken from the sacred vessels as leaveners, with which transubstantiation was carried out in the old, still sacred alchemy. In those times, it was known that the initiated priest understood transubstantiation through the powers preserved in the substances; he knew that they radiated with the splendor of the sun in the sacred crystal vessels. What was sought in them and what they were used for was that they became the celebrant's organ of perception for receiving that which is Apocalyptic.

[ 26 ] During the time of these semi-ancient mysteries, there was this phenomenon: the priest was tested at the moment when he entered the holy place and the ancient ferments began to transform the substances in the sacred crystal vessels in such a way that he could see in the crystal vessel how the substances spread the sun-radiance. The vessel containing this small sun was called a monstrance. It was a Holy of Holies, which today can only be imitated. The moment he saw the radiance of the Holy of Holies, he became a priest inwardly.

[ 27 ] Today, in the Catholic Church, anyone who enters the church can see the Holy Sacrament, because remains only a symbol of what it once was. But once upon a time, only the one who could see in the Holy of Holies the radiance of the sun in the substances kept there was truly a priest. At that moment, his insight was opened to the apocalyptic.

[ 28 ] Then came those mysteries of which the Mass of more recent times is a reflection. For in a very complicated way, the Catholic Mass, the Armenian Mass and other masses have come into being from the semi-new mysteries. Despite having become externalized, these masses still carry the full initiation principle within them. In these semi-new mysteries, what can be perceived by man when the Word awakens inwardly in him takes the place of the presence of the gods in the old mysteries and the forces sent by the gods in the semi-ancient mysteries: the Word, the magic Word, the Word in which inwardness resounds, the Word that goes to the deepest knowledge of the inner essence of speech. For in the time of the semi-new mysteries, there was the cultic language, that cultic language of which the last remnants still exist in the individual religious denominations, in which everything is based on rhythm, on the inner understanding of the speech and on the understanding of the inner penetration of the sounds of speech from the priest's mouth into the human heart. The magic Word, the cultic Word, spoken in a holy place, was the first step up to the gods, and then to the divine powers.

Thus:

First period of humanity – ancient mysteries – the gods descend.

Second period of humanity – semi-ancient mysteries – the gods send down their powers.

Third period of humanity – semi-new mysteries – man learns the magical speech and begins to ascend to the powers of the world of the gods by intoning this magical speech.

[ 29 ] That was the meaning of everything that was intoned within the human consecration ritual in the third age of the mysteries. And that was in those days when the Cabeiri element lived on within the mysteries as a contemporary religious cult. For the services of the Cabeiri, the Cabeiri sacrifices celebrated in Samothrace, are part of all that is ceremonial in the semi-new mysteries and of all that belongs to priestly ceremonial.

[ 30 ] We visualize the Cabeiri altar of Samothrace. The Cabeiri that stood on it as external monuments were sacrificial jugs, which now contained not fermental substances but substances that human knowledge could find if it could penetrate into the inner spiritual of the substance. The substances in the sacrificial jugs, sacrificial substances, were ignited, the smoke rose, and the magical language worked in such a way that in the rising smoke appeared the imagination of what the word intoned. Thus, in the sacrificial smoke, the path up to the divine powers became visible on the outside. In the sacrificial smoke, the priests knew themselves in the atmosphere through which transubstantiation was performed. That was the third stage in the development of the mysteries and of what is contained in the Act of Consecration of Man.

[ 31 ] These first stages have indeed entered into decadence, but some of their external forms are still preserved today. A new age of mysteries has now begun, a new era for the Act of Consecration of Man and for an understanding of the apocalyptic, at the moment when you inaugurated the new priesthood, of the movement for a Christian renewal in the burnt-down Goetheanum. What must now flow through your heart in order to properly perform the fourth stage of the Mystery of the Consecration of Man, we will begin to explore tomorrow.

[ 1 ] We will now take a closer look at the connection between the act of consecration of man and apocalyptic things, so that we will then be able to approach the Apocalypse and to see its significance for the present and future activities of priests.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we had to point to three past epochs of the mysteries, in so far as these mysteries tried to give each priest experiences which put him into an apocalyptic mood. We pointed out that there was a very ancient mystery period during which the gods descended into the mystery centers in order to work with human beings, and a semi-ancient mystery period when the gods sent down their forces, so that the men who lived in this sphere of forces were able to work with the gods in the cosmos.

[ 3 ] One could say that the path was completely reversed during the third epoch when the mysteries were partly renovated. At that time man shaped and developed forces so that they could lead him up to the gods. We saw that man looked for a way up to the world's divine, spiritual forces through the intonation of magical words in cultic ceremonies. These words either worked directly upon the auditor's whole soul mood, so that he became aware of the spiritual activities of the gods in the words, or else magical words were spoken into the smoke in the way which was indicated yesterday, and the smoke drew Imaginations out of the words.

[ 4 ] This development of a certain religious feeling, which one can really only describe separately, always went parallel with a certain condition or a certain kind of transubstantiation which was the center of the holy act of consecration of man. Priests are now being called upon to experience this transubstantiation and everything else that is connected with their activities in a new way. They will not be able to do this very well without an understanding of what transubstantiations and apocalypses were really like in each of these four successive periods of human evolution.

[ 5 ] One thing we have already seen is that the act of consecration of man and its transubstantiation process involves a working together of human beings and the gods in the spiritual world. Priests cannot really work properly unless they're aware that men and the gods can work together.

[ 6 ] If we take another look at the oldest form of transubstantiations and acts of consecration of man we find that the gods found the way to men at certain times that are really differences between what one can calculate in the course of time and what the cosmos does. The gods descended during such blank or holy times when men must add something to the times they calculated because their calculations are incorrect. In these times men had to expose themselves to cosmic influences directly in order to carry our transubstantiations, and they saved what had occurred in the substances during such times in order to carry out transubstantiations with the preserved things that had been transformed by forces from the cosmos.

[ 7 ] The right place for priests and lay brothers to be in for these transubstantiations at that time was a cave or a grotto. And in fact, wherever people were fully aware of the presence of the gods and of the significance of transubstantiations in the ancient mysteries, we see that they tried to carry out the sacred rites in subterranean rock temples or caves.

[ 8 ] The fact that they tried to do this is connected with the experiences which priests had during the transubstantiations. A transubstantiation consists of a transformation of the given earthly materials. If one wants to understand the process completely one should add the communion or the ingestion of the transformed substances by the human being to it, so that actually the two last parts of the act of consecration of man, transubstantiation and communion, constitute a unity, whereas the gospel reading and the offering are a preparation for them. Taking transubstantiation and communion as a unified priestly or cultic act, let's look at a view which the initiates we call fathers had in the oldest mysteries.

The “fathers” refers to the father grade of initiation, and this name is still given to priests in many confessions today,—pater. [ 9 ] Now when a priest carried out a transubstantiation in his earth or rock temple, he experienced the union of his physical organism with the whole earth. This is why they had the temple underground or in a rock. Today we can also feel united with the surrounding cosmos in our ordinary earthly consciousness as we live between birth and death, and this has been the case during the whole time that mankind has been evolving on earth.

[ 10 ] The air which is in your body now was outside it a moment ago, and it will soon be outside again. The air which is outside your body and the air inside your body constitute a whole. The real state of affairs is that there is an aery ocean, and when man inhales, one part of this aery ocean becomes transformed in the human being. The air is absorbed, and it penetrates and fills man and thereby assumes a human form. Then this form immediately dissolves again in the ocean of air. An aeriform man is continually being created and destroyed, although one is usually unaware of it.

[ 11 ] However, Indian yogis knew about it whenever they did their conscious breathing exercises. They didn't feel separate from the earth's ocean of air; they felt that they were united with it, and they felt this creation and destruction at each systole and diastole. One can easily experience this by doing these breathing exercises, although they are no longer appropriate for men today.

[ 12 ] However, man is not just a man in connection with physical, earthly things. Although he is an earthly man where the so-called physical, body is mainly active, he is also a fluidic man. The whole human being is filled with circulating fluids which work upon each other. This fluidic man is mainly dependent upon the ethers. For the forces in the etheric body work more upon fluids and not so much upon solids.

[ 13 ] We also bear an aery man and a warmth man in us. This aery man, which takes care of respiration, is controlled by the forces of the astral body. And the warmth man: you need only recall that if you measure some place on the surface of your body or inside it with a thermometer, you get different temperatures. This crude procedure already shows one that man is a differentiated warmth organism. The latter is mainly under the influence of the ego—organization or ego.

[ 14 ] Thus, we find four elements in man. Earth is under the influence of the physical body, water is influenced by the etheric body, air is under the influence of the astral body, and warmth or fire is under the influence of the ego.

[ 15 ] The transubstantiations and communions which the ancient fathers carried out made them feel that their physical body was connected with the earth, when they had gone into their rock temple or earth temple, in order to unite themselves with these earthly developments. What actually happened here? [ 16 ] A man's supposedly scientific view of himself today is really wrong; it is really complete nonsense. We must rethink all of our ideas about human beings. The ancient fathers received the right ideas about man through direct perception when they carried out transubstantiations during sacrificial rites which consecrate human beings.

They knew that we don't just breathe air in through our respiratory organs, but that we are continually taking in all kinds of substances from the cosmos through our sense organs. All kinds of substances are continuously being taken in through our hair and skin. Just as someone who is watching his breathing feels that air is entering his respiratory organs, so the ancient priest felt that substances passed over from the siliceous environment of the consecrated subterranean temple and penetrated his nerve-senses system just as aery man feels the air which is going through him, for when he breathes in a conscious way he can feel that these substances permeate his entire organism. The priests knew that none of the substances in the metabolic-limb man come from what we eat. Nothing of what one eats becomes part of the metabolic-limb man. [ 17 ] One takes in substances from the cosmos. The whole modern nutritional theory is really wrong. The celebrating father felt that what is eaten and then transformed by the digestive system passes over from the metabolic man to the nerve-senses man and especially to the head. He knew that what you eat is transformed into the substances of your head and what is connected with it. But the substances which become the organs that take care of your metabolic functions are taken in from the cosmos by a finer breathing. Thus he felt that his metabolic-limb man consisted of cosmic substances which are taken in from all sides through the senses and nerves. And he felt that the food that one eats and transforms goes the opposite way and becomes the upper man.

[ 18 ] When a father carried out a transubstantiation he had a current in him which flowed upwards and another one which flowed downwards. Then when he took communion he knew that he was connected with the cosmos, because he had become aware of his physical body by means of these streams. He had become united with the earth and he united what he had prepared at the altar with his body, with currents that belong to both the earth and his body, and with divine things on the earth which are a reflection of the universe.

He knew that he was united with the outside universe. He knew that the meal which he had taken in in this way was a meal which his cosmic man had completed. He felt that his divine man arose through what streamed into the current which went upwards and the one which went downwards, and that it could be a companion of the gods who had descended. He felt that the gods had transformed him into a divine human being in his physical body, that is, he felt that he had been transubstantiated. And at this moment he could say from the depths of his heart: Now I am not the one who walks around in the physical world; I am he in whom the descended god lives; I am he whose name includes all sounds and who was at the beginning, is in the middle and will be at the end. I am alpha and omega.

[ 19 ] The extent to which he could really participate in the secrets of the cosmos, in the divine working and creating in the cosmos, and in the manifestation of forces, substances and beings there while divine, spiritual work was being done, depended on the way his inner life was shaped by this feeling. This is the way priests worked in the ancient mysteries.

[ 20 ] If we go on to the semi-ancient mysteries we find that holy water and washing and sacrificial actions which are connected with water had become very important, and also that the temples had been moved aboveground. They were no longer put into subterranean caves out of the same longings as before, or if they were placed there it occurred through tradition and it was no longer understood in a living way, and it was precisely for this reason that the tradition lived on, even though it had lost its living content.

[ 21 ] Such traditions also remained with regard to the dipping of people into the dew, as it were. What the priest did at baptisms was less dependent upon the actual watery element than upon the Inner force which he applied during the sacrificial action in order to unite the fluidic man in whom the forces of the etheric body were active with the universe.

When a transubstantiation was being carried out and one observed things which involved the fluidic element before or after it in the act of consecration, one felt that the etheric organization was working in a temporal way. While the transubstantiation was being carried out one felt that one's growth since childhood had occurred under the influence of the fluidic element in one, and that the etheric body was active in this streaming from the past through the present and into the future.

[ 22 ] In ancient times priests felt that their physical body was connected with the earthly element, and during the less ancient mysteries the one who performed transubstantiations felt united with the watery element which exists in the whole universe. He felt the growth forces of all creatures sprouting, germinating, growing and unfolding in him into fully developed organisms and then contracting into seeds again. He felt this sprouting, shooting living and dying activity whenever he carried out a transubstantiation.

At every moment he could say to himself: Now I know how creatures come into being in the world and how they die. For both ascending and descending etheric forces were active in him. He could, as it were, feel eternity in the sacred transubstantiation.

[ 23 ] The priest who was performing a communion in conjunction with a sacred act of transubstantiation knew that the substances which were transformed in the way we described yesterday were absorbed by his etheric, fluidic man. He felt that he was united with everything which preserves immortality in the universe and with everything which is created and born or is killed and destroyed. Birth and death wafted over the altar and from there into the faithful who were assembled. The priest became permeated with feelings of eternity. This permeation with feelings of eternity had replaced the previous feeling of being united with the whole cosmos through the earth.

[ 24 ] Then when the third epoch of holy acts of consecration arose, man was to experience his union with the aery element and thereby with the cosmos. [ 25 ] Oriental yogis could become aware of the streaming of divine, supersensible world forces in inhalation and exhalation in a different way and for their own personal development. They took hold of breathing in a direct way.

People intoned magical words into their breath in Europe, and to a lesser extent in Asia Minor, but they didn't take hold of the undifferentiated breath directly. Thereby the breath or the air streaming in and out of them was taken hold of by magical, cultic words. The striving up of magical forces towards divine ones became manifest indirectly in what was spoken into the sacrificial smoke, or directly in what was experienced in the intonation of the magical, cultic words. Whenever someone prays, he is basically trying to ascend to divine, spiritual regions with his forces, and these people felt that when they intoned magical, cultic or prayerful words they were ascending to a region where they met the gods. When someone intones things, the godhead becomes manifest and speaks in the cultic words, so that it's not he who is speaking anymore. The godhead was now revealing itself in the aery element. Man felt that he was in something which controls the forces in the air from his own astral body.

[ 26 ] The transition from the second, semi-ancient mystery epoch to the third, partly new mystery epoch was a large one. In ancient times fathers experienced things in their physical body. This involved an intensification of its activities. The sun priests of the second epoch experienced an enhancement of their etheric or fluidic body. When a priest intoned cultic words in the third epoch he experienced the streaming of divine spiritual forces in his astral body. The astral body of the average person was only a mediator of consciousness to a very slight extent. At the beginning of the third epoch a priest could still say: when I speak magical cultic words, a god is speaking in me. However later on this awareness diminished. The new consciousness which arose was unaware of the astral body's activities. Today, ordinary consciousness is completely oblivious to the latter. The verbal content of the ritual gradually became something which made qualified people aware of the gods' presence, whereas unqualified people were unaware of what was connected with the intoned words. The latter was increasingly the case for a large number of priests who were active in Catholicism.

[ 27 ] Hence it gradually came about that the act of consecration of man or mass became something that the priest celebrated, although he himself was not present in it. However, one cannot celebrate with words or intone words which have aery beings incorporated in them in such a way that there is no spirituality there. Spiritual things immediately appear whenever something material is being shaped. And so if an act of consecration is celebrated with real cultic words by even the most unworthy priest, his soul, may be absent but something spiritual is present. So the fact is that if the liturgy is correct, the believers who are listening to it are participating in a spiritual event under all circumstances.

[ 28 ] While things were developing like this at the end of the third epoch, some of the Protestant confessions which were working in a more rationalistic way thought that they could throw the mass out altogether. They were no longer aware of the significance of cultic rites or of a real collaboration between gods and men.

This inner circumstance then led to the time in which we are living. There was less and less understanding for the act of consecration of man which brings the divine, spiritual life right down to earth. People no longer understood the apocalyptic things which the rites were supposed to take one experience. [ 29 ] This is basically the experience you had when you came one day and said: A Christian renewal must occur. You felt that the religious life of all the confessions and other things that exist in our civilization had become separated from real spiritual things in the real spiritual world. You were looking for the path to the real spiritual world again. [ 30 ] This impulse can show us the way and can lead us into the depths of the mysteries, which are connected with apocalyptic things.

So we saw that in the first epoch transubstantiation was connected with experiences with the physical body, in the second epoch the connection was through experiences with the etheric body and in the third epoch through experiences with the astral body. The grasping of apocalyptic things and of the act of consecration by the ego of mankind depends upon you and your inner experience of the working and weaving of spirituality in the world. [ 31 ] Therewith we only have a right view of what should be done by this movement for religious renewal if we look upon what is to be done as the carrying out of a task which has been given us by the supersensible world and as a task which places what one does at the service of supersensible powers. For if you don't take your task seriously enough, what you do will come to nothing in the present evolution of the world, and it will only have been a kind of disturbance. Or else you will see how deep and profound your task is and you will Immediately feel that this task is connected with the activity of the gods throughout earth evolution, and not just with human activities. In that case you can say: we are called upon to help with the shaping of the fourth mystery epoch in human earth evolution. This task will only be placed in the service of the powers in the spiritual world from whom the content of the ritual flowed two years ago when we were assembled here, if you have the courage, strength, seriousness and perseverance to find your way into your task in this way. Only then will what you took upon yourselves through the content of this ritual, which is a revelation from the spiritual world and which radiated down upon you as such, become real.

[ 32 ] Then you will increasingly sense and feel: it's really the case that Christ came into earth life in a real cosmic and tellurian ritual. The Mystery of Golgotha is present as a real ritual. In our time man must first unite this ritual with his ego; for the first commemorations of the Lord's Supper were still immersed in the third mystery epoch, when the astral body took in and controlled the cultic activities which occurred in the aery element. But now it's a question of connecting one's innermost core with the Christ so that each human being can begin to understand apocalyptic things in a new way.

[ 33 ] How did one look upon apocalyptic things in the first mystery epoch? One experienced them as the presence of the gods, which are the beginning, the middle and the end, alpha and omega.

[ 34 ] How did one look upon the presence of divine forces in the second mystery epoch? One experienced them as something which resounds through the world as the music of the spheres, and which lives in the cosmic word that created everything and that creates in everything, and which streams from the heavens to the earth. One experienced what is at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of time simultaneously, as it were. One experienced the alpha and the omega in the cosmic, world word. Whenever the subject of the Greek alpha and omega, the first and the last, came up in this or that epoch, people always tried to find out what the first and last letters of various alphabets really contain.

[ 35 ] And how did one understand apocalyptic things during the third mystery epoch? One understood apocalyptic things in such a way that people were developing cultic words which were still half conscious. Apocalyptic things were perceived during the third epoch when these half-conscious cultic words transubstantiated themselves as they were being intoned and when things were as follows. Most of you have probably heard some music on a day when your soul and senses could be entirely receptive to the impressions of the outer world, and then you fell asleep and woke up in the middle of your sleep. It was as if you lived in a surging back and forth, but in a transformed surging of the symphony you heard during the day. This is the way it was for priests in the third mystery epoch.

What happened to them is comparable to the trivial thing I just mentioned. They celebrated the act of consecration with cultic words, and they experienced that the godhead appeared in them. They had sent the cultic words up and the godhead had streamed into them. Then they left the sacred ritual in an appropriate mood. They not only experienced the presence of divine spirituality in human, cultic words during the act of consecration of man, but afterwards, they experienced a supersensible echo of what they had spoken in the liturgy of the mass. These transubstantiated, transformed words streamed towards them and revealed apocalyptic things.

The god revealed apocalyptic things as a counter present for an appropriately celebrated sacrificial rite. This is how one experienced apocalyptic things during the third mystery epoch.

[ 36 ] The one who felt that he had been made into a priest, by Christ Jesus himself, namely, the author of the book which we want to study, the Apocalypse, was more or less the first to feel that an apocalyptic content merged with his ego,—and only very few people have experienced this since. For it was the astral body which received the echo that. I mentioned, where the god gave apocalyptic things as a counter present for words. However, the one who wrote John's Apocalypse felt that his fully conscious ego was united with the content which he had given the Apocalypse.

[ 37 ] The priest who wrote the Apocalypse and who felt that he had been anointed by Christ Jesus himself, was inspired by the afterglow of ancient Ephesian rituals, and he felt as if he were continuing frequent celebrations of this ancient act of consecration up to an advanced age. One day he felt that the ego which had been completely filled with the significance of the sacred ritual was now also completely filled with an apocalyptic content.

[ 38 ] Hence John expressed his Apocalypse in the same way that one says the single word “I” in one's ordinary consciousness. When a human being says “I” he is expressing his inner nature with a single sound. The only thing which can be meant by this is what the individual human being is. But this one thing has a large content. This large content is the content of apocalyptic things.

[ 39 ] If everything which religious feeling can give a meditating soul and if all the enlightenment which is gained by energetic effort and by a striving towards an understanding of the supersensible can work in men's spirits,—if all of this is oriented in the way it can be oriented and if we let ourselves be stimulated by everything that can stimulate us through a contemplation of the three past mystery epochs which can become the inspirer of the fourth one, and if we let ourselves be stimulated by what was outlined in an introductory way yesterday and today, that is, by what lived in the first, second and third mystery epoch which was the living inspirer of the fourth, and if we let the power of the Spirit God—which is possible again today work in our souls—we will be able to experience that there is not just one Apocalypse but that there are numerically just as many apocalypses as there are human, God-fearing, priest's egos in the priest-renewal who speak to the Christ who is to be found again through this Christian renewal.

[ 40 ] There is only one apocalypse from a qualitative point of view, but from a numerical viewpoint it can become the content of the soul of each individual priest. Conversely, every single soul that undergoes the act of consecration of man, so that it prepares the ego to become identified with the content of the apocalypse, can become a proper priestly soul. We are egos as human beings. We become priests in the modern sense of the word if the ego becomes aware that it is creating a copy of the Apocalypse at every moment in life, so that it isn't just something which is finished and printed in the bible, and it isn't just memorized by heart. [ 41 ] Take the following analogy. Someone gives the content of a book. It is sent to the printers. This might seem like a pedantic, philistine analogy, but it's useful nevertheless. The book is printed and a large number of copies go through the world which are different, although they all have the same content. What you are referred to right at the beginning of the Apocalypse is a single thing and what Christ revealed to John is a single thing. For this is “The revelation of Jesus Christ” which was received by “his servant John.” There is only one content, but it is multiplied by those who recreate this content in themselves after they have been prepared through the wisdom of supersensible worlds.

[ 42 ] This is an understanding of John's apocalyptic things. In the deeper sense of the word, this also amounts to an understanding of the words: Christ has ordained us to be priests. You have felt how the Apocalypticer says that Christ Jesus anointed him to be a priest; one becomes anointed as soon as one feels how the content of the Apocalypse arose in John and as soon as one feels that people want to become priests today by creating the Apocalypse in themselves so that they experience that their ego is in the Apocalypse. If the ego becomes apocalyptic, the ego is priestly. We will take this up again tomorrow.