The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Within our European spiritual culture, one may already express the name of Buddha with very different feelings today than fifty years ago; yes, one must consider that the greatest mind of our culture, Goethe, knew nothing of Buddha. It is precisely here that we can recognize how feelings change. There is widespread interest in Buddha today. Where does this interest come from, which is present in broad sections of society, and why is the name of Buddha familiar not only in research? This is connected with the development of humanity, with the penetration of spiritual elements into this development, which will become common property in later times. I would like to draw attention to the fact that the interest shown in the Buddha promises to become a matter of the heart, a matter of the soul. At first, people do not always judge soul matters correctly when they arise. Now something is happening today that happened [in a similar way] a few centuries ago in a field more remote from the great interest, when the old scholars, misled by inaccurate observation, did not want to accept Francesco Redi's sentence “Living things come only from living things”. We see a parallel to our time, which also believes it must reject the sentence “Spiritual-soul-like comes only from spiritual-soul-like” - precisely because of inaccurate observation.

It is believed that a person's inner disposition is inherited only from their father and mother. Of course, anyone who does not believe in spiritual beings cannot go further, but anyone who recognizes the realities of the spiritual world will find it self-evident that a person's spiritual soul comes from a previous spiritual soul and that this spiritual soul draws on the predispositions of the ancestors, that there is therefore an essential core. And that is the teaching of reincarnation. Just as the animal is the repetition of its species, so the human being is the repetition of his individuality. What we see growing within us here in the way of inner gifts is nothing other than what we have acquired in previous lives on earth. Just as every plant can flourish only in soil that is suitable for it, such as the edelweiss that can take root only in the high mountains, so every human being seeks out his environment, which forms the basis for his destiny, because the environment that is beneficial and appropriate for him exerts an attraction on him. So this person is born in this country and this language area, in this family, that person in that country in that family - because his or her individual character determines this. That is the law of karma: we ourselves forge our destiny. To many, this seems fantastic, and it can easily be refuted from a scientific point of view. But just as Francesco Redi was pushed by scientific facts to express his assertion that “living things come only from living things”, so we are pushed to express the sentence: “spiritual things come only from spiritual things”. Just as Francesco Redi's sentence was misunderstood, so will our sentence be misunderstood. But every new truth evokes resistance - and from the experiences of the past we may draw courage.

Now the question arises: Why does man not remember his previous lives on earth? This ability to remember can be acquired, although it is difficult, but it must be possible to trace a thread back to previous earthly lives. Now, today's human being is mostly unable to see the bigger picture; today's European human being is not even able to remember back to birth, and the first years are dark for him. We have heard that remembering begins when the idea of self emerges in the soul. We also know that the concept of self places itself like a wall in front of the past and that we therefore cannot see into the spiritual world. If we understand this, then we can also understand the work that is involved in penetrating past earthly lives. Strict soul exercises are part of this: the self must be carried out, the self must become objective; everything that could come must meet us with complete composure. It is difficult to achieve and carry this out not only theoretically, but also in our inner life, but by doing so we gain an [independent position with respect to the ego]. We are in an important time. The human brain will think differently when it has to tell itself that everything is cause and effect [of a past life]. This is something that deeply affects everyone. Man must mature to this.

We will understand how people today can be interested in the Buddha's teachings: Buddhism, this religious confession, contains the teaching of reincarnation – albeit not quite as it is understood in Theosophy. So the interest in Buddhism is connected with something that is affecting humanity today. Now we need to ask ourselves: how does this truth fit into what European culture means? How does it relate to Christianity? For our culture is completely based on Christianity, and all opponents of Christianity have taken their concepts from the Christian arsenal. For those who think this way [in terms of the doctrine of reincarnation], the question arises: How can the Christian impulse be reconciled with this concept? Even without Buddhism, the doctrine of reincarnation would have to be crystallized out of European culture.

If you read a book about Buddhism today, you will find many [special] terms: “Nirvana” [for example] is presented as the great goal for the Buddhist; “Nirvana” is a place that is associated with the extinction, the annihilation of all existence - it cannot be put into words, since there is no word for non-existence. One could hold great discussions about what Buddha meant by it. But we just want to try to determine the mood content, to contrast Buddhism and Christianity, to place the Buddhist's perception next to that of the Christian. First, there is a story among Buddhists: the wise King Milinda comes to an initiate and wants to hear something about the secrets of life. The conversation goes as follows. The initiate asks: How did you get here? — The king answers: By carriage. — The sage looks at the carriage; he sees the wheels: Are these wheels the carriage? — No, they are not. — Is this seat the carriage? — No, it is not. These are only the parts of the carriage, but all the parts are not yet the carriage. So what else is there? — Name and form. All the individual parts are really there, but together they are only name and form. But name and form are something unreal, just like the mango fruit on the tree, which only has name and form in common with the fruit from which the tree grew. What does the wise man mean by this? The concept of reincarnation was self-evident to him. So he explains how in this life, a person only has name and form in common with the previous life. The Buddhist does not recognize the continuous self that passes through the embodiments – only name and form. He sees the individual parts of the carriage, connected by name and form to form a whole. This is not quite in line with the teachings of the Buddha, but it depends on the feelings of a follower of Buddhism.

Now let us transfer this parable into the Christian realm: let us imagine a Christian sage speaking to a Christian king. Let us imagine that the conversation is the same as the one above, but in the end, the sage would have to say, based on the spirit of Christianity: You cannot come here on a mere name, on a mere form. These are words that must be backed by something real, something spiritual. That mango fruit at the top of the tree has become the same as the fruit that was the origin of the whole tree, although nothing physical connects them. There must be something that has formed them as equals: there must be something spiritual. - In the same way, the Christian feeling must assume that there is a continuous self from embodiment to embodiment in reincarnation. The Buddhist, on the other hand, sees the path from embodiment to embodiment without knowing the bond of a common ego, and thus he gets the feeling of futility.

Buddha, the king's son, who had grown up without having known suffering, was deeply moved when he saw a sick person for the first time - then the idea of suffering poured into him. When he saw a dead body for the first time, he realized: Death is suffering. And now it became clear to him: Life is suffering, being born is suffering, being sick is suffering, being separated from what we love is suffering - everything is suffering. Why is everything destined for suffering?

Now imagine a person like Buddha, how he faced this riddle of life. Many lives before, many lives after – and always, always suffering, suffering! He felt the urge to explore this, and a long quest followed. When enlightenment came to him – which we refer to as “sitting under the bodhi tree” – he realized: the passion, the thirst for existence, comes from previous incarnations, and this is connected to life. Therefore, suffering is connected with the thirst for existence, and so, if suffering is to cease, the thirst for existence must be extinguished. This is what he said in the sermon of Benares. Man can, through his own work, become indifferent to existence and thereby extinguish all previous embodiments and free himself from suffering. There is nothing in the world that cannot cause us suffering. If we free ourselves from everything, we can enter into Nirvana. We cannot describe Nirvana, because we lack the concept for the absolute nothing. We simply have to leave out everything that is in our imagination. The ideal of Buddhism is the extinguishing of existence. Buddha stands before us and says: I look back on many embodiments. In my present body I know that I must become free from all thirst for existence. The previous embodiment pushed me towards this body, towards that which now pushes me to become free from corporeality. I know quite certainly that each time spirituality has built the body for me as a temple; but my goal is no longer to return to such a temple of the body - I feel this.

Now let us compare this feeling with the Christian one. In the Gospel of John, Christ Jesus says of the temple of his body: “Destroy it, and in three days I will raise it up.” Christ Jesus has the will within himself not to leave what is earthly life. This is not suffering, but something that should be developed. Even if there are still many embodiments to come, keep improving your temple, live each life on Earth in such a way that you continue to perfect yourself. When we let the warmth of the Gospel sink in, we ask: What did Christ bring? The answer is: In the Christ impulse we find the indication that life can be purified. Buddha descends to become free of the embodiments; Christ descends to make life perfect. Buddhism is a doctrine of salvation, but Christianity is a doctrine of resurrection! Christ says: When you acquire the higher, you will become ever higher, and a new life will arise. The Christian impulse is compatible with the concept of reincarnation – it is strong enough for that. Why is that so? Because Christ is not just a teacher. It is significant that Christ did not write anything down himself, because the essential thing is his deed – his deed at Golgotha has eternal significance.

The historical event at Golgotha is a seed for something other than the liberation from suffering. Is birth suffering? No. - Is death suffering? No. - Is being separated from those you love suffering? No. — Because death leads to new birth, and every birth brings powers that are exhausted through life. But illness is purification; by conquering illness, strength comes. Not being united with those we love is not suffering, because the Christian knows the realm of the spirit, where what belongs together is together. Nor is being united with those we do not love suffering, because the Christian seeks to live in love. To make everything Christian – that is Christianity. To learn through suffering, to learn through happiness, that is what we as Christians want.

And so we see the great difference in development that extends from Buddha to Christ. One religion is a religion of salvation, the other a religion of resurrection. But then we will also understand how the Buddhist confessor cannot even approach the self. The sensations, the feelings, the ideas, the consciousness – none of this is the self. The Christian, on the other hand, says: the self is everywhere. The spiritual self is behind everything, but we do not see it because we are not able to perceive it. We may strive for the resurrection of our self through Christ – so that the spirit may shine out to meet us from every stone, from every tree. And so, Western intellectual life has nothing to gain from Buddhism, but it has much, very much to gain from accepting the doctrine of reincarnation. And just as Buddha tied the doctrine of suffering to a corpse, so several centuries later we see people looking up to a corpse. A corpse became a source of comfort and strength for them: Christ on the cross.

Report in the “Dresdner Nachrichten” of December 2, 1909

Christ and spiritual science was the topic of the lecture that Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave on Tuesday to a large audience at Meinholds Sälen. The speaker is a frail, ascetic figure, but has a pleasant, sonorous voice and speaks fluently and quite freely. Spiritual science, he explained, is a science of real spiritual, real life. It wants to open the sources in which the beginnings of the physical world lie, and to give us knowledge of the supersensible spiritual world that lies behind our sensual world. Only in the last ten years has spiritual science slowly and gradually been penetrating people's minds. Some people believe that spiritual science or theosophy has something to do with ancient superstition. But this is not the case. Nor does spiritual science want to replace any other religious beliefs of mankind with a new religion. It serves to understand religious beliefs, it is an instrument with which one can understand the various religious beliefs, but it wants to be science in the most serious sense. Those who stand firmly on the ground of a religious belief are only led deeper into it by spiritual science. Nor is it a matter of introducing an oriental religious belief, such as Buddhism, into our society. Anyone who wanted to undertake such a task would misunderstand the basis of our entire Western culture. This basis is Christianity. Even those who fight Christianity have received their best from it. The speaker then explained the goals and tasks of spiritual science. The aim is to answer the questions of what the soul is, how it relates to the temporary phenomena of human life, and how it is connected to the supersensible world. The sources of knowledge of spiritual science are quite far removed from our present-day thinking and imagination, but we see with open eyes that not only is there more in the world than meets the senses and is grasped by the mind, but there is also a wealth of spiritual facts and entities. Just as one born blind denies our world full of color and light, so does one whose spiritual eye has not yet been opened deny the spiritual world. There is a rebirth of man, after which the spiritual world appears to him. Finally, the speaker addressed the questions: What is the nature of the presentation of spiritual science and how is the evidence for it provided? In a highly poetic form, he presented an imagined conversation between a superior person and a disciple who is to be introduced to the mysteries of spiritual science by that person. “Die and become!” was the watchword. The black cross entwined with red roses was the symbol of the new life. The audience, which was largely recruited from members of the Theosophical Society, listened devoutly and applauded the speaker enthusiastically.

Question & Answer Session [question not recorded in writing]

Rudolf Steiner: The Gospel of John says of Christ that he is the incarnate Logos because he brought the impulse into the world to fully conquer the human ego, to take up this ego into the spiritual world. Man can experience a threefold Christ. The first Christ is the Christ of Intuition. Expressed in mighty images in the Documents, He speaks of that Entity which actualizes the ideal of the individual ego. This Christ is found independently of every document and external tradition when one ascends to Intuition. As spirit, the same as every I, one finds through intuition Christ, the most perfect original I; incarnated at the beginning of our time. A completely new spiritual research has become possible through the fact that the human being can take his I, the Logos, with him into the spiritual world. The event of Golgotha brought the first impulse for the fullest self-knowledge of the human being. Man can behold his own I and therein see an image of the divine. The word of Christ: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58) – when man has grasped the meaning of this word, then he has grasped in himself the Logos, the divine original I. Thus spiritual science finds the Christ, who said yes:

I am with you always.

This Christ is always there: the first Christ, the Christ of intuition. The second Christ is the Pauline Christ. How did the Christ come into the world as knowledge? Who was the first to give him to humanity as knowledge? Paul. He was the one who did not allow himself to be converted through external physical experience, but through a clairvoyant inspiration, through the event of Damascus. To him, Christ revealed himself from the transcendental world. He believed in Christ and proclaimed him with all his strength.

The third Christ is the one of the gospels. There are naive people who take what is written in the Gospels literally. Then there are the clever people who say: the Gospels are for an imperfect stage of human development. And then there is a third type of person who says: the Gospels mean all sorts of things symbolically; they speak of a Christ myth, a Peter myth, and so on – they interpret the Gospels symbolically and allegorically. Finally, there is a fourth level, the spiritual-scientific view of the Gospels, where one starts from what can be known through spiritual research about the events in Palestine. Then, when you read the Gospels, you say: Now you understand them for the first time. And you know what those who wrote them wrote into them. You discover that the Gospels are the most powerful documents of humanity. And you see into a future where, through spiritual science, people will live more and more deeply into the Christ and the mystery of Golgotha.

The crisis in human development that has occurred since the middle of the 15th century can be observed in spiritual science, even if not anatomically, in the physical body. The transition from the mind or feeling soul to the consciousness soul is a very significant one. In the present period: consciousness soul, and so on.

The Greeks felt the etheric body, but modern man does not. The Greeks felt the etheric body within the physical body, the form of the arm, the hand and so on. This was gradually lost, around the eighth or ninth century, and was completely lost by the fifteenth century. Not only did people no longer feel their etheric body, but the physical body began to decrease in size. It dried up more and more, became less and less, and hardened more and more. In the past, human bodies were softer – roughly speaking.

The sixth or seventh millennium BC marks the beginning of the ancient Indian period. Life was very different back then. Children, and even people of thirty, looked up to the elderly with great reverence and trust. Now, at seven years of age, the teeth change; at fourteen years of age, sexual maturity sets in; at 21 years of age, ideals are established. This last change is hardly noticed anymore. In the primeval Indian period, this development continued. The spiritual and soul-like is increasingly being replaced. With each seven-year cycle, something new came into life that man had not experienced before. The youthful human being was then happy to become older and older. However, this developmental opportunity decreased more and more.

From the middle of the fifteenth century onwards, this development stopped at the age of 28, and now it is the case that we actually only receive something through the body up to the age of 27, and that is becoming less and less, so that people no longer receive anything through the body, so that they have to see to receive something through the spirit. Such observations have to be made in order to understand the meaning of historical development.

Lloyd George and Erzberger are examples of such self-made men who have only received what the world around us can give, and have received nothing more from the spiritual, from their own efforts and so on.

We would face terrible times if social conditions did not return to the patriarchal conditions of the primeval Indian times. In our sixties, we have certain qualities, depending on our childhood education experiences. If a child has learned at the appropriate age to fold his hands in prayer, then this person gains the ability to bless with his hand in his old age. These are the connections. From this you will see the importance of a living education. It depends on bringing what corresponds to the forces at work each year to the child. When teaching children of seven, one must not appeal to the intellect. But reading and writing do appeal to the intellect. In the Waldorf school, we want to start with painting, drawing, and music. Art engages the human will. Drawing and form drawing affects the whole person. From these forms and lines, writing should gradually develop and from writing, reading. Because this is even more intellectual than writing.

In fables and legends – from the age of nine – where the self is already becoming stronger, plants and animals will gradually be introduced into the curriculum. Each year must be approached in this way. Then what is taught remains for life. What the teacher transfers to the pupils with fire and zeal is based purely on authority. At a later age, this comes up again through the revival of what rests in the soul. As a result, one then knows and understands what one has previously absorbed. More and more, education must be such that one can look back on one's childhood as on a paradise. This is necessary if only because the bodies no longer give us anything.

We now have to bring a lot with us through the gateway of death that we have not processed, that we have not been able to live out. Therefore, we have the following: that the dead develop the urge to have an effect on the physical world. This should be investigated in the normal way, not mediumistically. The forces that can work from the dead into the physical world can do so in such a way that we do not ignore the forces. When we wake up, we slip into our physical and etheric bodies so quickly that we don't bring anything with us. We can change this by vividly imagining a dead person in the evening. Vividly: this is how the dead person was, this is how he lived, this is how I was with him; now ask the dead person a question and then fall asleep with it. Then you have, as it were, directed your nightly life to this dead person. Now the dead person can approach this question. If he is able to answer this question, then he will answer. But not immediately, but over time, and then the answer will come during the course of the day. And then the dead who want to have an effect on the physical world can carry this into the physical world.

I would not say this if I did not know it for a fact. I could not have written anything about Goethe if I had not first tried to see what Goethe would have said or would say now or in the 1860s. If I had not had the opportunity to do such serious research into the influence of the dead, I would not say this with such certainty. In brief: we are able to let the dead be our fellow citizens.

Then life becomes richer, but we also need this. Bridges must be built to the spiritual world. Especially young people bring a lot of undeveloped things into the spiritual world.

Christianity came from east to west – horizontally. Now spiritual entities are coming down – vertically. The fresh brains of the proletariat are coming to meet them – from bottom to top. There is only one salvation for the bourgeoisie today: to turn to spiritual thinking. It is a fact of world history that the spiritual must enter into people, into spiritual life. But many people today do not want to understand this. This realization makes us ripe to understand many things, for example, the egoism of religious denominations. Life after death is what the denominations must spread. But they should also teach life before birth or before conception. The present life is a continuation of the life before birth.

One more thing: the God of whom the religious denominations speak corresponds only to the angel within us.

In the West, people have tried to come together with the dead. They have directed mediums to them and given them special questions, for example: “How will the Balkan situation develop?” The people asked went into the mediumistic state with such questions. They then acted on the answers that came out, because in the West. They knew very well that they should turn to those people who knew how to give the right answers. For example, they turned to the Thugs in India because they knew very well that they could provide information about such things. These associations existed in India until they were dissolved by the police. In Germany, people didn't believe that because they are much too clever to believe what comes from the spiritual. It is different in the East. Tagore's speeches. The spiritual that still lives in him resonates through them. We tend more to the West than to the East. The bridge must be built from West to East.

The best translation of “Maya” today is “ideology.” Only in essence is the exact opposite regarded as Maya in the East and West.

In our spiritual life, we are steeped in Greek life; in our state life, we are attuned to the Romans; only in economic life have we had to tune ourselves to modern times. You cannot eat what the Greeks ate, but what is available now.

Then we come up to the archangeloi, the spirits of the people, and get to know them. Zeitgeister - Archai; Urgeister; Zeitempfindung.

In the West: mechanization of the spiritual. In the East: animalization of the bodies. In the middle: oversleeping, not understanding what is going on.

The animalization of the body in Russia as one path – the other: spiritual realization. This path must be chosen. Draw strength from spiritual impulses for one's social conscience. That is what I would like to have expressed from the deepest feeling, so that a sense of responsibility remains to take account of the times.

I do not want to give a program for solving the social question, but rather speak about observations of life.

It is said that never in the history of mankind have people experienced such terrible things as in this war: but then, to be consistent, one would also have to add: it takes a very special idea to find a solution to today's task. What is given, what people have to absorb, must be completely different now than it has been so far. The Communist Manifesto is not just a theoretical question, but a question of world history, one must understand that. What is called the social question lies deep, deep down in the development of humanity, only one must grasp it.

Thermometer – an indicator of the temperature of a room.

What consciously comes to the surface, the demands, are not the real thing at all. Everything that flares up in the Communist Manifesto of all countries is a historically necessary thing: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” It is not an idea that is being appealed to, but the impulses that arise from a certain life situation, precisely because one is a proletarian, the vague demands that arise from proletarian life, something un-ideological, a force arises. The proletarians do not want ideology, they do not want any ideas. But what comes from the bourgeoisie is and will be built upon. One speaks as if the proletarian programs were something new, but that is not the case. They have been adopted from the bourgeoisie. This will only be recognized later. A gap has opened up between the leading forces and the proletariat. But this is not the case; only the class differences are there; the proletarian world has learned a great deal from the leading circles. But when it saw that their science could not bring it salvation, it lost faith in that science and in those circles. The proletariat recognized the ideology of the intellectual life.

The earlier worldview still had a very different impact; it was still connected to the spiritual world. Today's worldview has no impact; the working of spiritual power is absent. This worldview does not fill people. It is a matter of the head, while the other is a matter of the heart. This difference is expressed in the Protestant confession: understanding everything that the world around us offers with the mind; for the other, faith must suffice. In the bourgeoisie there is still a remnant of the earlier worldview, a kind of connection with the spiritual world. The proletarian is placed in the factory, at the machine. Nothing passes into him, as it did, for example, in the old crafts, when the soul spoke out of the old door handles, for example, and so on. Cut off from any connection that the old craft still had, what spoke out of things and events.

“What am I in the world?” - “I am a highly developed animal organism.” This is the proletariat's perception of what he [the proletarian] has adopted from science. You can be inspired by such ideas, but you can't live with them in the long run. The intellect is convinced that this does not come from the spiritual, but the soul revolts against it. And this is what underlies all social questions. That is the real face. It is thought that everything that lives as art, as science, as custom, law and so on, is ideology, smoke. With such a view, one can think - one cannot live with it.

It is also connected with the fact that economic life has been absorbed by the state in recent centuries.

The municipal administrations have been absorbed and united with the interests of the princes. Intellectual life flows into this state structure. It was bound to happen that the school was wrested from the church and handed over to the state. The state has absorbed the church's “trailing resentment” with regard to schools. The demand for socialism and democracy must lead to the call for the liberation of intellectual life from the state.

Should the dependence of schools and education on the state be further increased? Intellectual life is now being crushed in Russia.

Every person who has come of age should be free to decide on the organization of everything that a person who has come of age has to decide on. In the spiritual life, only those who are knowledgeable and competent in this spiritual life should have a say. Only those who are active in the spiritual life, from the lowest teacher to the highest teacher at the university, should have a say. He must have sufficient time to be able to share in the administration of this life alongside his work in education. Not as it is today, when people who are not practically involved in the profession determine what has to happen.

Then we will have true democracy in the legal life and knowledgeable, efficient leadership in spiritual life.

But the decisions that are made in economic life can only come from knowledgeable and competent and capable individuals or groups of people. It is difficult to form appropriate judgments. The current economic structure of the state is a product of historical development. That is very true. Marx's friend, Engels, explained this very well in his book.

Where expert and professional judgment is needed, the majority cannot decide. One-sided economic thinking cannot lead to a solution of the social question.

In order to properly initiate the transformation of the credit system, it is also necessary that knowledgeable and competent personalities are active. Confidence in persons or groups of persons is creditworthiness.

Not three parliaments, but only one for political life. In the intellectual and economic fields, not the majority, but knowledgeable and competent personalities who lead and guide.

Centralized administration is nothing but the product of politically mature thinking. Economic life will not be depoliticized if it is merely separated from the political parliament and centrally administered alongside it with politically mature thinking. Rather, this administration must be carried out quite differently, as envisaged in the threefold order.

Production should not be for profit, but rather for consumption. The motive for production should not be the entrepreneur's profit, but rather what the people need.

Is there anything underlying this essentially correct demand that can lead us to a proper solution of the social question?

The abolition of the prevailing wage system and the right to vote for all those with equal rights – these are in fact demands that had been raised up to the Eisenach Program. Then came the Erfurt Program: nothing more of these two demands, but something quite different: the abolition of all private property and the transfer of all property, of all means of production, into state administration. The old social order had its good support in throne and altar. But now it no longer has that. Instead, it has the office and the factory, and we no longer have that “good support” from them. Overall accounting instead of church administration, nationalization and so on. This is already being done in the East, and what is being done and what is going on there is terrible. This is the grave of the entire modern civilization. One does not notice this immediately, because there are still spiritual and political forces from the past in the circumstances.

Hypnosis of the spirited Lenin.

Spiritualism of [blank in transcript] Trotsky.

Capital: sum of the means of production and land.

The developmental leap of all humanity in the fifteenth century, as in the individual human life in the sixth [to] seventh and thirteenth [to] fourteenth years. And this developmental leap boils down to the fact that man wants to be seen as a personality - each individual.

And this now leaps out in the social question. In the past, the patriarchal relationship, now industry. What about the means of production now? In the past, land was in the hands of a few people, and others worked on this land, which created a special relationship. Today, the means of production have to be procured with large sums of money and are managed by these owners. But these managers have failed to change the relationship with the workers. If there is damage somewhere, statistics are kept. But ideas for change are not found. People were without ideas. The time must come when ideas may again guide the facts. Today, people who have such ideas are branded as utopians, idealists, impractical people.

Talking about abolishing private property is nothing more than childish. Individual initiative is not anti-social, but social. Capital should be centralized by those who have the ability to do so in the right way through their own initiative. In the intellectual field, ownership passes to those who can best manage it for the general public thirty years after the owner's death. People still look perplexed today when this principle is applied to the economy.

In the Platonic teaching, defense and nurturing classes, we have the exact opposite of what must now be striven for with the threefold social order. A wall is erected in that order, between the classes. In the threefold order, it is precisely the class distinction that will be overcome. That which is outside of the human being is threefolded, while everyone can belong to any of these three realms. Do not approach humanity with abstract programs - works councils and so on - but let knowledgeable people speak from reality. That is the essential thing.

If you were to bring together about 800 such works councils, there would only be 25 to 30 who would really achieve something and have something good to show for it. It will be a great piece of work to achieve something out of today's chaos. But if there is not only debate and parliamentarization, but real work, then what these 25 to 30 can say will be understood by the other 700 to 800. The understanding is already there in the masses.

An economic community must have a very specific size. If it is too large, it becomes too inefficient; if it is too small, it cannot achieve the right level of success. The right size is somewhere in between. This must first be understood and recognized. Rathenau, on the one hand, was highly ingenious, but on the other hand, he was bound by the old, outdated ideas and concepts that must first be overcome today.

The economy does not need laws, but contracts. As soon as a product becomes too expensive, too few people work on it – if it becomes too cheap, too many work on it. If an article becomes too expensive, it shows that the particular article is not produced enough; so it must be contractually ensured that more people turn to this article. If an article becomes too cheap, too much of it is produced, then a factory may have to be closed down. Difficult! It is certainly difficult. If someone just wants to say that it is difficult and not intervene, then they do not want to ensure right relationships. Economic life should be regulated through associations, not through the chance of the market. A federal structure, not a centralized administration, must ensure proper production and circulation.

The impulse for threefolding does not claim to be wiser than other ideas, but it does assume that the wise will be called upon. That is what matters. The language of facts must be spoken. Only very deaf ears have been cultivated against the language of facts. Economic life must be fed from the spiritual life. Only from a self-governing spiritual life can the right things flow into life in all areas. A freely administered spiritual life never releases dreamers; you can never be a real philosopher if you can't chop wood when the time comes, that is, be a whole man.

Merging of blood heritage... [gap in transcript] and educational results,... [gap in transcript] and yet spiritual unity. This is how it is in a threefold state. The spiritual permeates all life, does not remain outside. It cannot be socialized in the sense of a [planned economy] or the like, but conditions can be created in which people can work socially. That is what matters. People must have the opportunity to be social, education must be such that they become social. Realistic ideas must have taken root in a sufficient number of souls.

That is the “how” of this impulse for the threefold social organism.

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