The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The house at 70 Landhausstrasse in Stuttgart, built in 1911, was the first building in the history of the anthroposophical movement to be built by the society itself. Until then, events in Stuttgart had also taken place in various rented rooms; larger and public events were set up by the three branches that existed at the time, which had joined together in 1909 to form the “Association of Stuttgart Branches”, in the Bürgermuseum (Citizens' Museum) opposite Hegel's birthplace. The initiative to build their own house was triggered in 1910 by a foundation set up for this purpose by a Stuttgart member. (See notes on page 143.) The “Building Association of the Association of Stuttgart Branches” was formed. The laying of the foundation stone took place on January 3, 1911, and the inauguration on October 15, 1911.

The design of the house, especially the interior design, was carried out by the architect and Stuttgart member Carl Schmid-Curtius according to Rudolf Steiner's specifications. See figures 4 to 10. The polarity of the blue-red color scheme that had already appeared in Munich and Malsch was metamorphosed in the Stuttgart house: the event room was uniformly blue (dark blue-tinted wood), interrupted only by the gold ornamentation of Rudolf Steiner's planetary seals. The six and seventh of the Munich seal drawings were now created. The anteroom, called the “Red Room”, which served as a reception and meeting room, was completely red. In 1921/22, the large hall was extended to include a stage and adjoining rooms. The columns with the capitals that can be seen in the photo were only added during this renovation. The stage was inaugurated on February 24 and 25, 1922 with two eurythmic performances of various scenes from Rudolf Steiner's mystery dramas.

When the house was built in 1911, the architect also initiated the construction of a domed hall in the basement, based on the Malsch model, for the symbolic-cultic events of Rudolf Steiner's Esoteric School. This Stuttgart domed room was thus the second architecturally realized room with new column designs, the red-blue polarity of walls and dome, the apocalyptic seals - once each for the right and left sides - between the columns and new zodiac images in the dome. This cupola room was inaugurated in connection with its purpose, presumably on November 27, 1911. In any case, this is the first known date of such an event after the opening of the house on October 15, 1911. According to Imme von Eckhardtstein, who participated in the event and helped paint the dome, the first celebratory announcement of the founding of a “Society for Theosophical Art and Culture” took place on this day in 1911. The Stuttgart Hall of Columns was the only space in which Rudolf Steiner could truly realize the union of knowledge, art and cult. This step could never be taken in the first Goetheanum as the central place of the movement, because it fell prey to destruction before its completion. According to E. A. Karl Stockmeyer (see page 163 of this volume), the cultic events in the Stuttgart Säulensaal also included the two columns – red and blue-red – from the Munich Congress. However, the room was only able to serve its original purpose for a short time, because with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Rudolf Steiner stopped the symbolic-cultic events. It was only at Christmas 1934, through the initiative of C. S. Picht, that the room was reopened as a Rudolf Steiner memorial room. However, just one year later, the house had to be abandoned due to the ban on the Anthroposophical Society in Germany by the National Socialists. The interior furnishings were removed. The sandstone columns of the lower hall (height 1.98 m) were placed in the park grounds of the “Wiesneck” clinic in Buchenbach near Freiburg im Breisgau to form a pergola. They are still there today. In Stuttgart, a new house, the “Rudolf Steiner House”, was built in 1957.

H. W.

My dear friends!

Let us first remember the protecting spirits of those who are out there in the fields of difficult present decisions:

Guiding spirits of your souls, watchers ever active,
May your wings carry
The love of our souls
To the earthly beings who trust in your protection.
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may helpfully shine
On the souls it lovingly seeks.

And turning to the protecting spirits of those who have already passed through the portals of death:

Spirits of their souls, watchers ever active,
Your wings may bear
Our souls' imploring love
To the sphere-men you guard.
That united with your power, our request may helpfully shine on the souls it lovingly seeks.

And the spirit that we seek to approach through our spiritual science, the spirit that has gone to the salvation of the earth, to the freedom and progress of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha, be with you and your difficult duties.

My dear friends, it must be self-evident that in these difficult times that have befallen humanity, the thoughts of the souls that want to participate in the general destiny that can become human beings, that these thoughts turn to what is currently flowing through our time; what, above all, presents us with such difficult, difficult riddles in our time. For there is no doubt that difficult riddles are to be lived through in our time, which is truly - and this is certainly not a cliché - different from other times that we have not only been able to live through in our lives so far, but that humanity has been able to live through for a long time. When we think of some people with whom we lived before 1914, and who passed through the gate of death before 1914, we might well ask ourselves today: How would these people have related to what they are experiencing today in terms of their feelings and perceptions? Of course, if we think in terms of our spiritual science, how such souls, after they have freed themselves from the body in the spiritual world, look down, it is different. Then, when we understand what is happening from the records of the spiritual world. But it is perhaps still a need to think about how people who lived with us, if they were still alive, would judge the time in which we live.

In the lectures I have given and the reflections I have presented, I have often mentioned the name Herman Grimm. He is a personality who certainly did not stand on the ground of spiritual science, but who, with all his thoughts and ideas, grew out of the great impulses of spiritual life in the first half of the nineteenth century. And it was always interesting to either read or hear what Herman Grimm judged about what was going on in the world around him. If he were still alive today - he died at the beginning of the twentieth century - one cannot imagine how he would judge the violence of the events that surround us today based on his thoughts and feelings. Whenever I mentioned his name up until 1914, and that happened often, it was as if he were standing next to me, representing a different school of thought, but one that was always interesting to listen to. He could be thought of as a contemporary. Since 1914, it is as if he were a personality who could just as well have lived and died centuries ago. The way he thought, the way he related to world events, seems to one - as I said, not when one considers the soul in the spiritual world, but what it would have thought if it were embodied in the body - one cannot form any idea of how he would have expressed himself about current events, based on what he has otherwise judged, how he has formed feelings about them.

We have actually lived through so much in these three years that what we have lived through before must seem to us like a myth, like a legend, centuries behind us. And anyone who experiences our time with a truly feeling heart and a truly moving soul can already realize that in these three years he has lived through something that can otherwise only be lived through in centuries. All scales become different for the judgment of the events. We are confronted with things from the periphery of the world that could make one believe that humanity would not have been up to them at all before they appeared on the horizon of existence.

Of course, these things could be foreseen to a certain extent, my dear attendees, but the fact that they were so little foreseen testifies to how little people wanted to understand what was being pointed out about what was to come. I remind you of one thing today. Again and again, even after public lectures, I was asked how man's repeated lives on earth could be reconciled with the increasing population on earth, with the fact that the population is constantly growing. One would think that if souls were to return again and again, the population would remain constant in a sense. I had to say many things against this prejudice, but I always repeated one thing, as those who heard it will remember: the time could come when people would be horrified to realize that not only an increase in population but also a quite considerable decimation of the population could take place.

Of course, one could not point out the terrible prospect with dry words. But anyone who takes what I said at the time in the Vienna cycle in 1914, and considers it, will see that it points to stages in the development of humanity that make much of what has had to be experienced in the last three years understandable. Only, my dear friends, one could say that in many respects people have not yet really come to their senses. Experience and experience can be very different in the present. In this respect, it happens that people believe they are experiencing the present, but meanwhile they are oversleeping it. And today one can meet a great many people who, in the most important matters, always judge as they did in January 1914, although their hearts should be deeply moved by such terrible trials. But for the person who views the world from a certain spiritual-scientific point of view, what is now taking place within humanity must present not just one, but many, many riddles. The desire to solve these riddles with what are today superficial ideas, which pass through the general consciousness or general education in this way, should actually pass away. One should develop a longing, an urge to seek out the deeper forces that prevail in human development and that make it understandable why humanity has entered into such a crisis.

This evening, my dear friends, we want to occupy ourselves with such a consideration of the deeper developmental impulses of humanity.

We cannot understand the things that are happening in the present because they have far-reaching causes if we only look at the present itself. But over the years we have gathered enough ideas from the spiritual world to be able to gain an understanding from the wider perspective of world observation.

We must start from what we have already considered from different points of view, and what we want to consider today from such a point of view, which is of the greatest possible importance for our immediate present. But first, let us at least make a few comments on the particular way in which many things in the present show us their signature, their special nature. In this present time, I have often thought of an experience that goes back to my early youth and that is so very characteristic, although at first it seems far-fetched. It is so very characteristic of the deeper foundations of our current development.

An old friend of mine was very close to another man. This man was an excellent, fine spirit. He did not write much, did not have much printed, but what he did have printed had an enormously significant weight and would have, if it had penetrated, come to the consciousness of people, could have had a significant effect on people's souls in the second half of the nineteenth century. The man who had the little that was published printed — I will talk about this in more detail in a moment — once fell and broke his leg and died from it. The leg could easily have been set, but he could not be brought through the fall because he was malnourished. So it was said after his death, and rightly so: “You see, that was one of the deepest minds of Central Europe, Deinhardt. He died many decades ago. He remained undernourished because no one was interested in his particular kind of spirituality.

Now, what did he want? Yes, he wanted something that people today cannot even begin to grasp, that has actually been disregarded. And yet, precisely because we cannot grasp it, it is so significant for our time. My dear friends, this man wanted nothing more than to make the tremendous spiritual impulse that lies in Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man pedagogically fruitful for all of humanity. To this end, he wrote a small number of works that are tremendously ingenious. I believe that today they have all been pulped. I don't think that any of these writings can be preserved. And he died of hunger. No one was interested in the fact that something could be drawn from these letters about the aesthetic education of the human being that could raise the entire intellectual level of humanity through an incredibly profound social pedagogy. Of course, by the time the nineteenth century came to an end and the twentieth century began, humanity had absorbed other ideas. Let us also make clear to ourselves by means of an example what ideas humanity has actually absorbed.

You see, one of the leading spirits of France – but since before the war the world was not as divided into nations as it is now, he was also one of the leading spirits of the whole of Europe, and he was listened to in Germany as well as in France – was Maurice Barres. He initially belonged to the free-thinking French youth. As he went further and further in his aspirations, and actually could not befriend the materialism of the nineteenth century, he tried to find his way to a more spiritual direction, but he knew of no other spiritual direction than Catholicism. And so he surrendered to Catholicism, which made him “pious” to such an extent that he became one of the most rabid haters and denigrators of Germans. But let us turn to another side of his nature. Maurice Barres said the following words to justify that today a person who strives for the spiritual must profess Catholicism. I ask you to take these words with the full seriousness, because they are characteristic of the present-day life of ideas. Maurice Barres says:

["It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist! And however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers; whatever form mysticism may take, it contradicts reason. But let us give ourselves to the Church, first of all because she is inextricably linked with the tradition of France. And then, because she formulates with the authority of centuries and great practical experience the rules of that ethics that must be taught to nations and children. And finally, because it, far from abandoning us to mysticism, defends us directly against it, silences the voices of the mysterious groves, interprets the Gospels and sacrifices the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society."

Now, my dear friends, in the deepest sense, one cannot imagine a greater frivolity or cynicism than when a person says: Whether there is a hereafter, one can never know; maybe there is none. But let us give ourselves to the Church, not because we are attracted by what it contains, but because it has been able to adapt the generous world view of the Savior to the needs of modern society.

Yes, my dear friends, there is a cynical judgment, but a judgment that lives today in many minds as a feeling; as that feeling that does not know how to take anything very seriously, that does not want to go anywhere into the true depth of reality, because then it would have to penetrate into the spirit, which belongs to reality. But we are not dealing with a light criticism of this time. We have to understand this time. Because only those who understand what is going on can really do their duty in the place where they are. And so we want to try to understand this time by answering the question of how it has developed. As I said, we have to gain a broader perspective and look at the whole time since the great Atlantic catastrophe from a certain point of view.

We have said, my dear friends, immediately after the great Atlantic catastrophe befell the earth, there came the first, the Ur-Indian cultural period; that cultural period of which no historical documents exist. For what is available as documents comes from later times. But the first spiritual culture that could be brought to humanity developed in this post-Atlantic period within the ancient Indian cultural epoch. Life in this time was quite different. And anyone who believes that life on Earth once took a similar course to that of the present time is quite considerably mistaken; they are just too lazy to recognize how humanity has developed through spiritual science. They do not want to recognize how it has developed, and so of course they cannot fully understand what is happening in the present.

Above all, for the people of the first cultural epoch, the ancient Indian cultural epoch, one can say that the whole environment was not yet as it is now. Now the environment for human beings is such that they have air around them; that they have around them what the mineral earth is; that cloud formations rise into the air, which in turn fall down as rain; the water that rises and falls in these cloud formations is contained in the rivers and seas; the air is interspersed with warmth and cold, that is, with the element that was called fire in ancient times. For people today, these are physical things: fire, air, water; physical things that they see in such a way that they ascribe to them the properties that they perceive with their senses. It was not so for the people of the ancient Indian cultural epoch. In those days, people did not yet perceive fire, air and water in the same physical way that today's people perceive fire, air and water in the physical sense. It was an enormous mystery for the people of this first cultural epoch when they saw the flame rise; when they felt the warmth sweeping over the earth with the breeze; when they perceived the air itself in its blowing; when they heard the water rushing; when they saw the water in the air as a cloud or falling as rain. And they had consciousness, these people of the first cultural epoch: just as in a person whom one stands before, not only what one sees with the senses lives in him, but a spiritual-soul life also lives in him , a spiritual soul that belongs to the spiritual worlds, so too does spiritual soul live in the fire that rises with the flame, lives in the blowing air, in the rising and descending water. And that is what they felt, these people: This spiritual-soul aspect belongs to us, belongs to the human being, just as the air, for example, belongs to us as a physical thing; we breathe it in and out. The air that is outside is inside us, then outside again; we are not a separate entity, but what is in us is inside, outside - inside, outside. But for them it was the same with the spiritual aspect of warmth. By sensing warmth, they sensed the spirit of warmth. And so with air and water. In the elements, they felt how spiritual things live in them.

But this feeling asserted itself in a very strange way in a young person during the first cultural period. He felt the elements of fire, air and water as a kind of riddle. But he could not solve this riddle. He had a feeling that it was actually his physicality, his physical corporeality, that prevented him from solving these riddles. He said to himself: “At night, when I sleep, I am outside of my physicality with my real self.” But during his youth he could not really do anything with this sleeping state. Although life in his sleep at that time was infinitely more lively than later or even today. Dreams were not so chaotic, they had some significance. But the physicality with which a person remains connected even outside of their body prevented young people in that first cultural epoch from perceiving the spiritual beings in the elements when they were out of their bodies, sleeping or dreaming.

But this physicality was arranged differently back then. Mankind changes quite a bit over the course of centuries. As strange as it seems, spiritual research shows us that in those days, people remained, one might say, childlike in their developmental capacity for much longer than they do today. Today, people complete the course of their development relatively early. In very early childhood and youth, our mental and spiritual development is quite strongly dependent on our physical development. The child can only scream when it needs something or when it is naughty. But then the structural conditions of the brain change and with the change of the physical, the mental and spiritual also change. And this continues throughout the years. We know that what is spiritual and soul-like is intimately connected with what is physical in development. How the muscles grow stronger, how the metabolism changes, all these things that occur in the human being are expressed in this spiritual and soul-like development. But this stops with increasing age. We will talk later about when it actually stops being important for human development in the present day. For people in the ancient Indian cultural epoch, it did not stop as early as it does now. The human being of the first cultural epoch went through his youth, his growth into his twenties. Then he came to that epoch of life where the human being, as it were, remains static, where he enters middle age, around 35, and enters the descending line. The body sags again, one mineralizes. Today we do not experience any of that. At most, we notice when we reach a certain age that memory declines a bit, but nothing else comes naturally instead. When old people complain that their memory is failing, and we know that this is because the brain and nervous system are becoming mineralized, then nothing else takes its place. It can be the same with the other spiritual powers. It was not so in the first cultural period. Then the soul and spiritual aspects of the human being fully participated in development, even when the human being entered the descending phase of life. Not only did their memory decline, but as their physical bodies decayed, their souls became more and more spiritual and were able to see into the spiritual world. It was precisely when their physical bodies were decaying and mineralizing that they were able to gain what they could not have during the time when their physical bodies were growing, flourishing and thriving. In this case, physical maturation and the strengthening of the imagination are hindered. The change in the physiognomy, in the nerves, holds back the soul and spiritual aspects. Today, we have no means in our external lives to counteract the body's tendency to collapse and mineralize. But in the first cultural epoch, this counteraction was there by itself. The soul still had the strength to draw directly on new forces from beyond the body, but these were spiritual forces. And then man underwent the strongest development, the actual development of maturity, immediately after the Atlantic catastrophe, at about the age of 56. Then it went down to the ages of 55, 54, 53 and so on to the age of 48. And when man had descended to the age of 48, the first, the primeval Indian cultural epoch was over. Therefore, in this leading culture, social life proceeded in such a way that everyone knew: if you ever reach your fiftieth year, you will become enlightened. The development of humanity itself provides the opportunity to live with the elements; to perceive in the fire how it is permeated by the archai, the spirits of personality; how the air is permeated by the archangeloi, the archangels; how the water is permeated by the angeloi, the angelic beings. That is why in those ancient times, the elderly were shown such tremendous respect and honor, because people knew that they were maturing and growing together with the elements. But by becoming so familiar with the elements, the spirit of the elements also took part in everything a person did. And so it came about that in those times, the way the elemental spirits worked on people was naturally specified according to the individual areas of the earth. That which lived in air and water and fire worked differently in India, in Europe, in Africa, and in America. And under the leadership of those who were enlightened in the 1950s, people drew the forces of their lives from their immediate natural surroundings, which were also perceived as spiritual. The land with air and water and fire, that is, its thermal conditions, imposed its peculiarity on those who lived on it. People were differentiated according to this. And just as our body is so differentiated that everyone grows a nose and not an ear, so the earth is such that a certain spiritual culture could only grow in India, and another in Greece, for inner reasons. Thus, out of the elemental nature of the earth, what the spirits of the elements brought into man grew.

If you imagine this, you have the earth itself as a spiritual realm of a very strange kind, which is properly expressed in the face. This gives this first cultural life in the ancient Indian epoch such a strange character. So you can say: the spirits themselves ruled on earth; the spirits. You see, the human ego did not yet have the significance that it had later. Just as little influence does man today have over his breathing, so little influence did he have in those days over what he thought and what he did. For that is what the elemental spirits in him thought.

In the next period, in the second cultural epoch, things were already different. People did not remain capable of development for as long. One could say that the age of general humanity decreased. Just as the second cultural epoch began, people only remained capable of development until the age of 48; then in the further course of time until the age of 46, 45 and so on until the age of 42. Then the second cultural epoch came to an end. So human development lasted well into the forties. Yes, but not everything was perceptible until that time. People would have had to develop well into their fifties if they were to feel and sense all the spirituality of the elemental forces and see it flowing through their beings. They could not do this to the same extent now, because in the 48th year the possibility of growing into it ceased, into that which one can naturally only grow into at the age of 48. The consequence of this was that people became duller in their feelings and perceptions, in their whole thinking and nature, towards the elements of fire, air and water. They did not become as dull as people are today, but they did become duller. One could say that they felt the elements more physically naked. They felt something like this during this time – but only when they reached their forties. Until then, they had to wait, until then they went through the ascending development of youth, went through the middle of life at the age of 35. But then, in their forties, they grew into a certain consciousness, which I could characterize in the following way.

They said to themselves: Yes, wherever there is wind and water and fire, there is also spirit; the bright spirit. When you reach your forties, you grow into this spirit. But the body itself, when it is really growing physically, really thriving physically, prevents one from growing into it. So with the soul one actually belongs to the bright spiritual realm, the spiritual that permeates all elements. The body hinders one, it pulls one back into the darkness again and again. And so, during this period, this struggle in which the human being finds himself between light and darkness was particularly emphasized. In the later Persian period, this became the struggle between the spirit of light, Ormuzd, and the spirit of darkness, Ahriman.

They felt, the people, by waking up, by coming back into the physical body: Yes, there we descend into darkness. And the youth, the young people, they knew: Because we are still in the state of growing, we have to wait until the forties, then we will be enlightened. They were not yet enlightened enough to have a living awareness of the human being's place in the struggle between light and darkness.

But with that, what was on earth ceased to be as strongly differentiated as it used to be. In the past, so to speak, every piece of culture that was above a certain area of the earth was so that it belonged there. But now that people were becoming more indifferent to the elements and were seeing more the light that fights against darkness, now came the time when less was adapted to the elemental forces that developed as culture on a stretch of the earth. There was more commonality across all of humanity. People did not have much in common in the first cultural epoch; they had as little in common as the nose has with the ear. Now the individual groups of people became more and more like one another in their belonging to their group souls.

In the third cultural epoch, things were even more different. There, in the 42nd year, people stopped being capable of development by themselves. They only remained capable of development until the 42nd year, into the 41st year and so on until the 35th year. They became even more dull to life in the elements, in fire, air and water. What lived in the elements became even more alien to them. But something else became more familiar to them. The workings of the great cosmos in light and darkness became familiar to them. Try to realize this clearly: during the day, people woke up, lived in their work, lived in the activities of the day. Then he felt that he was thrust down into the physical with his soul; there he lives in darkness. But when his soul and spirit are free, that is, from falling asleep to waking up, then this soul - in youth one did not know it, but between the ages of 42 and 35 one knew it - then the free soul is given to the spiritual environment. And one no longer felt the spirits of the elements, that is, the archai, archangeloi and angeloi, but one felt their signs shining in the stars, in the constellations, in the planetary constellations in the space in which the soul was when it was free outside the body. And so the person felt: if you descend into the darkness, then you are removed from the star constellations; but with your spiritual soul you are placed in them. There you are exposed to cosmic space; it is a star constellation where you are placed.

But consider, this star constellation is different at every point on earth. And if in the first cultural period one had directly sensed the spirits of the elements, one might say, as they descended into man, now one looked up at the stars in cosmic space and said: hence come the light forces of man. But they come differently to every place on earth. One place on earth is under this star constellation, another place on earth is under that. And it began in this third cultural period, when one became wise between the 42nd and 35th year – after that one had to become wise from the depths of the soul, one had to have what one still wanted to absorb from the stars. But it did not happen by itself, as I have characterized it now, so that one became mature between the ages of 42 and 35, and then knew very well about the dependence of the free soul on the star constellations; then people said to themselves: There are places on Earth that are under this star constellation, other places on Earth under that star constellation. If you look at Greece, you would have to say: Greece is not just this spot on Earth. It is the spot on Earth that is under a particular star constellation at a particular time of the year. Troy is the spot on Earth that is under a very specific star constellation at a particular time.

You see, it was out of these foundations that, in that third cultural period, what you have been taught as the strange struggles developed until the end of this third cultural period, when the Trojan War took place. Because what is told as the legend of Helen and Paris is only the reflection of a star constellation. And by fighting over Troy and Greece, or the Greeks fighting in Troy, and vice versa, they fought for the star constellation. And the wise men between the ages of 42 and 35 said what it meant in Greece or in “Troy to be, to possess Greece or Troy. To speak of the struggle between nations in that time, in this third cultural period, which ends in 747 BC, is to speak of something different than speaking of the struggle between nations today. At that time it meant observing how the souls of the nations fight in their own corner of the earth, how the leaders of the nations go forth to fight for their people, who are now no longer meant to express merely the physiognomy of a particular region of the earth, but something that flows down from the starry worlds, to fight for this piece of earth for this people. That is why I said: It is necessary to imagine how times will change, how something different will always happen.

To speak of the struggles between nations of that time in the same way as one speaks of them today means knowing nothing at all about the development of humanity, since this Trojan War was inspired by what the wise men of that time divined from the constellations that ruled over Greece and Troy. To speak of this war as one does today is to want to engage in fantasy and to want to know nothing of the actual nature and essence of man.

Then came the time when the general age of people had decreased again, the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period. Since one was no longer capable of development beyond the age of 35, the possibility of perceiving spirituality in the elements had disappeared altogether. One simply listed the elements in physical terms: fire, air, water, earth. At most, there was still a hint that something spiritual was in the elements, which the first Greek philosopher Thales said, that water is the origin of everything. That is not just physical water alone, but the spirit of water that lives in everything. This fourth post-Atlantic cultural period begins in 747 BC. But there was one thing that people still knew during this period, and it was still capable of development until well into the thirties. They no longer knew the spirit that ruled out there in the air, in the water, but they knew that there is a spirit within oneself. When you moved your finger, you knew that there was something spiritual living in you. To imagine the body as today's man imagines it, as today's science imagines it, that would not have been possible for the Greek. That was still something absolutely impossible for the Greek. But he perceives what is physical as spiritual and soul at the same time. He perceives that in every movement, in growth, in everything that happens in the body, the spiritual and soul-like prevails. Therefore, during this period, which begins in 747 BC and ends in 1413 AD after the Mystery of Golgotha, the view was developed that the human being consists of body and soul. But something remarkable developed within Greek culture. It is interesting to look at the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example. He reached the pinnacle of wisdom that a Greek could reach. But he was not initiated into the mysteries. This is very important.

Those who were initiated into the mysteries were also able to attain to that which was not given to people by themselves. But Aristotle could only come to what a person without initiation could come to. But there he was at the summit of this wisdom. How did Aristotle imagine immortality? That is characteristic. He said something like this: If I cut off one arm of a human being, it is no longer a complete human being. If I cut off two arms, it is no longer a complete human being at all. And if I take the whole body, then it is of course no longer a complete human being. Therefore, the soul, which Aristotle thought was immortal, in the sense of a Greek, in the sense of Aristotle, is immortal. But this immortal man is, after death, not a complete human being, but an incomplete one. Therefore, Aristotle expresses philosophically what I have often quoted from the Greek Homer, who says: “Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows,” because man could only be complete in the Greek view if he had body and soul. He is an incomplete human being, even though he is an immortal human being. The soul is no longer a whole human being for him. It is cut off from its surroundings if it has no body with its sense organs, which bring it into relation with the world.

You see, it turns out that what can be called: Man was brought more and more down to his physical nature. He remained incapable of development in the periods in which he could have received illuminations about the spiritual world. Only those initiated into the mysteries received such illuminations. So it came about that, to a certain extent, people lost their connection with the spiritual and were brought down to their physical nature.

This fourth period begins in 747 BC. You see, at the time the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, human beings remained capable of development until about the age of 33. They remained capable of development until the age of 33 at the time the Mystery of Golgotha occurred! What one can take up by oneself in development up to that point, people took up, but that did not give them the possibility – it can be seen best in Aristotle – to speak of an immortal in man. One could only speak of the fact that man is an imperfect human being when he goes through death; that he is actually no longer a whole human being. Not that this was true, but it was no longer possible through human insight to imagine what lives beyond death.

You can easily say: But why were people not simply initiated into the mysteries, and why did not the mysteries reveal to people the immortality of the human being? Yes, the mysteries were already there. They had to continue to have an effect little by little, because people would have lost their connection to the spiritual world through natural development. So there had to be at least one way into the spiritual world, but precisely because people were increasingly pushed down into the physical, in that the powers of the human being were claimed in order to thrive and prosper, it came down to the fact that one could only learn something [about the spiritual world] from the mysteries. On the one hand, man placed more and more value on the feeling of being in a body; on the other hand, he had to say to himself: Yes, you are connected to the spiritual world, but you can only gain insight into the spiritual world in the mysteries.

So what happened? What happened was that the rulers in the Greco-Latin period, the Roman Caesars, the Roman emperors, forced themselves to be initiated. The first Roman Caesar, Augustus, was an initiate. He had the power, he could force himself to be initiated. He made little misuse of it. You see, my dear friends, what has come about, this prevalence of external power, this placing of man in the development of the earth as a citizen of the Roman Empire - because one first became a “citizen” there - it only became possible when man no longer felt himself a citizen of the spiritual world. Only then did man become involved in everything that comes from the “flesh”. But one could force oneself - if one was the mightiest man in the flesh, if one was Roman emperor - to be initiated into the mysteries. And not only Caesar Augustus had forced himself to be initiated, but also a man like Caligula forced himself to be initiated. And what history reports refers to truths. Because Caligula was able to speak with the spirits of the elements, with the spirits of the moon. He could consciously use the formulas that were used at that time by the initiates. He knew that “man is of divine nature,” so he allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. But for people like Augustus, Caligula and Nero, who were all initiates because they forced initiation, their initiation led to an insistence on power in the physical world, but at the same time to a real contempt for the physical. For this Caligula, when he once heard of a court case in which an innocent man had been convicted, he said: That does not matter, because the innocent man was certainly just as guilty as the guilty man. And another time he said: Well, the judges who condemned the guilty man are just as guilty.

A personality like Nero's can also be understood from such backgrounds. For what did they say when they were as initiated as Nero? He did not understand Christianity. But when you were as initiated as Nero, you said to yourself: natural development no longer provides anything spiritual. The spiritual realm must come into the world in a different way. In a different way, the spirit must come to earth. It must descend in a different form than before, when one grew into what surrounded one as a spirit through natural development. This was wrung out in the insane mind of Nero and showed itself in how he wanted to demand the coming of the spirit. He knew from physics: it no longer gives the spirit, it has peeled itself out of the spiritual. Therefore, he wanted to set Rome on fire and from there ignite the world fire. It was his idea to destroy the earth because it no longer yielded the spirit. Nero was completely convinced that human physicality has now been completely abandoned by the spirit. Only if one does not rely on the body, but only on the spirit and soul, did he want to seek the spiritual realm from a completely different direction. Why then this earth, human flesh, which is in any case only unchaste? Neros called all human flesh, all physical unchaste. When one speaks of psychoanalysis today, one is strongly reminded of Nero. One can say: He was the first psychoanalyst who sought everything in the human flesh. That was the other side.

Briefly, before the time of Nero, the human race was actually only developing up to the age of 33. And now, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ grew up to the age of 33, to this lifetime of man. Human beings had descended in their development from 56 to 33 years of age; the Christ Jesus grew contrary to this age of man. He found death in the 33rd year of life and radiates his impulses into the earth. He merged with the earth's substance.

Imagine this miracle. The human race is getting younger and younger until it is 33 years old. The Christ comes at this time, he develops up to the 33rd year, then passes through the gate of death and radiates his own being there. It is a supreme moment when one contemplates this connection between the Mystery of Golgotha and the development of humanity. This is how the Mystery of Golgotha is part of human development. The 33 years of Christ Jesus are not a coincidence. It had to be so because his ascending age had to coincide with the descent of humanity.

You see, my dear friends: spiritual science does not take us away from an understanding of Christianity; spiritual science leads us more and more into this understanding of Christianity. We get more and more feeling for the great significance of Christianity. From this we can see how crazy it is to accuse spiritual science of not being able to relate to Christ in the right way. And by what kind of people is it accused? By people who want to relate to Christ in a strange way. Take a statement such as the one that was recently made in the magazine 'Die Furche' in 1915. There, in a way that is not actually initially unkind, spiritual science, insofar as it is represented by me, is spoken of, but then it is said:

Therefore, one must not only [call out the following words of Rudolf Steiner to certain aberrations of this spiritual activity, but to all those who are influenced by this movement: “Those who do not want to trust completely dark powers, whose true nature and origin they cannot know, should avoid getting involved in such things.”]

Yes, my dear friends, I am telling you this because otherwise this article is not without favoritism. But that also arises from a feeling that must be counted among the great lies of our time. What do people of this kind actually want? Well, that the Christ has redeemed them, no matter how they behave now; if only they can always speak the name “Lord, Lord” and talk about it.

Of course, spiritual science must relate to Christ Jesus in a different way. It must bear in mind the words of Christ Jesus: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Spiritual science does not want to leave unused the divine power that is in people, but seeks the path to Christ. Out of laziness, out of the great lie of life, that which speaks in such a way as is spoken at the end of this article is asserted. No attention is paid to how, especially in our time, the spiritual forces must flow in such a way that, through spiritual science, they can lead precisely to the secrets of the Christ being. Here again you have a glimpse of the terrible superficiality of the present time, through which humanity must pass. It wants to leave everything to Christ Jesus without making much effort or exerting itself. What a comfortable point of view! But this is the point of view of those today who call themselves Christians and reject spiritual science as un-Christian. True spiritual science, as you can see, dear friends, leads to such a deep understanding that one experiences the harrowing fact that the descent of the ages of humanity grows together with the 33rd year, the 'year of the death of Christ Jesus'. Right down to the last detail, spiritual science proves to open up understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

And now, since 1413, we have been living in the age where humanity is only capable of development on its own, from 1413 to the age of 28. Today we have come down to the age of 27.

From this you can see, my dear friends, that spiritual science did not arise out of an arbitrary whim or out of some principle of agitation, but rather: Man simply cannot develop further in our time through himself than up to the age of 27. What is to develop further, the soul must drive forward through its own inner impulses, which come from the spiritual world. The body can no longer provide it.

And anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has the task of leading souls beyond the development that they can find through the body alone. There you have a secret of our time. Anyone who does not try to understand spiritual science, even if only in a rational, intellectual way – you can understand spiritual science without undergoing an inner development – but this understanding must ignite the connection of the soul with the spiritual world, must feel it. If you don't come into contact with the spiritual world through spiritual science, you won't live past the age of 27. Today, one can only grow older through spiritual development. This is very significant, my dear friends, this is something tremendous. When the riddles of the present weigh heavily on you, when you want to know what has happened and what has to happen, when you are looking for an answer to the question: What is the purpose of spiritual science? How is it challenged by the interests and impulses of the present?

Then we look at the leading, most influential people, for example, of the present time. Going into more detail is not exactly appropriate in our time of non-existent freedom of the press. So one can choose an example, but it is truly not chosen from the chaos created by the war. I have spoken in cycles about what happened before the war, when the feelings that the war had produced were not yet alive in people. But you can see from this that I was already able to see certain personalities at that time as they are happening today. I always had to ask myself again: Which personalities clearly show that people cannot grow older than 27 years if they are not seeking a spiritual impulse? And then I found that a characteristic person of this kind is the President of North America, Woodrow Wilson. He is one of those people who cannot get older than 27 years old – even if they live to be a hundred – because he only takes in what humanity gives of itself. You see, that is why such a person can send great ideas into the world; one can have a spiritual and intellectual pleasure in these ideas, one can lick one's fingers because one feels such pleasure, but they are still only immature ideas. They do not even reach the age of 35, the middle of life, they are 27 years old – yes, they are boyish ideas. Humanity sleeps through these facts, that these ideas are no older than twenty-seven years, because it cannot think things in such a way that the man who sits in one of the most powerful places on earth today solves the mystery for us, why he sends nothing but abstract, nothing but big, resounding words without real reality into the world. Because his ideas are no older than twenty-seven years, therefore they cannot find their way into reality. The man who sits in the most important place today, who therefore says all the tirades in his / gap in the transcript] message, which speak of freedom of peoples and the like. So today people find beautiful words, ideal words. They sound so nice to people that they say: He is an idealist, he has good ideas.

But what matters today, my dear friends, is not that someone has beautiful ideas, but that someone has ideas that can reach into reality, that really have the power to work in reality. What matters is not that someone has ideas to secure peace and then issues a manifesto that in a few weeks creates war in their own country. There is a great difference between the beauty, logic and idealism of ideas and the reality of ideas. That is why I emphasized so strongly in my last book that today we cannot just have beautiful ideas and feel them with a certain voluptuousness, but that we can descend into reality with our ideas, that we have practical ideas for life that can become reality, that can have an effect on reality as a force. Today, beautiful ideas can be precisely those of the most immature people. I would like to give you a trivial example of this. You can hear people saying, “Oh, we are living in a great spiritual change; this war will bring about a completely new era. In the future, it will no longer be as it was before, but the most capable man will be in the right place.” What beautiful ideas! One can lick one's fingers with sheer voluptuousness at having uttered such beautiful ideas. But if the son-in-law or the nephew is “the most capable,” then the whole beautiful idea is worth nothing. These beautiful ideas do not intervene in reality. What matters is not that a person grasps the full reality and regards ideas only as the instrument for immersing themselves in reality, but that they grasp reality. Today, people do not even feel what is meant by such words. They do not feel how far they are from reality because they have become accustomed to listening for beautiful ideas that mean nothing at all. What is at stake is that we ourselves must immerse ourselves in reality with our souls, we must become akin to reality. That is why today, in every field of knowledge, there are only unrealistic ideas. Political economy has only unrealistic ideas. What is now called political science, you can go through it, everywhere at the universities it consists only of unrealistic ideas. Nowhere are the ideas suitable for immersion in reality. Now an excellent man, who is even sympathetic towards my ideas, has published a book – yes, from beginning to end the book is full of abstract ideas. Nowhere can one find the slightest sense of immersion in reality.

But my dear friends, what happens among people depends on what people think and feel. Therefore, it is necessary to realize: we need a wisdom that is related to reality. We must permeate the ideas with which we want to rule the world with the spirit that is taken from reality itself.

And so the task at hand is to become familiar with reality. But this can only be achieved by building on a spiritual-scientific foundation. We have already become very alienated from reality. People can think an awful lot in the present. Some people are so clever. But these clever ideas are all abstract and have no reality value, because the human being has no reality value when it comes to ideas. In the case of man, one speaks only of the dead product in physiology, in biology; of that which has no reality value itself. How can one have anything real in economic ideas, in political science ideas, if the starting points do not contain concepts that have reality.

Try to understand this correctly, my dear friends, and you will realize that this spiritual science must not be taken as many do, as a mystical, nebulous construct that wants to lead people away from the practice of life. The opposite is true. I have often used the example of a horseshoe magnet. You can say, “Well, that's a horseshoe, we'll shoe a horse's hoof with it.” That would be nonsense, of course, because the horseshoe-shaped magnet is to be used as a magnet. The world only sees the horseshoe and shoes a horse's hoof with it. This is what today's humanity does with the world. Namely with the social order of people, because it has no concepts that really grasp what is in reality, as magnetism in the horseshoe magnet.

And here, my dear friends, is what it is all about, because no one who does not understand this understands the deeper reasons for the terrible times in which we live. And as people have moved away from reality, they have also moved further and further away from the true, real understanding of the facts.

Today it can easily happen that, for example, A says to B: Hey, C did this and that. B thinks that because A said that C did this, B actually said: C is a bad guy. A didn't say that, he just listed facts. But B goes to C and says: Hey, A said you were a bad guy.

This is a paradigm for much of what happens today. People no longer know how to distinguish between what they think of things and the facts. Enormous harm is caused by this because people do not look at what arises from such inaccuracies received through thoughts. A sense of fact is what people need. But do they have it? Do they have this sense of fact? An example that could stand for hundreds, for thousands, for millions: There is a magazine called “The Invisible Temple”. A certain Horneffer publishes this magazine.

Many people now say: Oh, “The Invisible Temple”, that is certainly something very deep, something very, very deep. And now you read; you read all kinds of beautiful things; you can have voluptuous sensations from these beautiful things. But, you see, I have the February issue right now. It contains a discussion about monism and theosophy:

[As different as the monists are from the theosophists, and as eagerly as they fight and despise each other, they are strangely similar in one respect: they monopolize the word 'science'. What they do themselves is true, pure science; what other people do is sham and pseudo-science. This can be read in Haeckel and Rudolf Steiner.]

I ask you, where? Open all the things I have written, all the things I have said, and see if I have ever spoken these words! But this is in a magazine that now comes out with the pretension of calling itself “The Invisible Temple”. In the face of this, one must get used to calling a lie a lie. You have to call a lie a lie, because that is a lie. It does not matter whether it is he who lies or they who lie, those who appear with pretension, in the blue freemason magazine under the title “The Invisible Temple” to put forward all sorts of strange chatter, not to say anything worse, who do not want to make a judgment about where lies are present. By alienating oneself from reality with one's concepts and ideas, by saying this or that without having the sense to immerse oneself in reality, one also distances oneself from the sense of the truth. But this is something that must come first: a sense of the truth if salvation is to come for our time.

And so, my dear friends, since we have actually run out of time, I would like to add to this reflection something that really shows how, even in our circles, in the so-called anthroposophical circles, and only recently, what is alienation from the sense of fact plays a role.

I started today's reflection by saying that a person could, so to speak, starve to death by wanting to popularize Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. They are truly not popular. After all, who actually knows them? Who, in particular, understands the tremendously deep meaning of the impulses they contain?

Have we not seen how, in the course of the development of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period, people have increasingly distanced themselves from the spiritual world and increasingly degenerated in their instincts? Schiller raises the big question in one of the first centuries of our time – the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period begins in 1413 – in his letters on aesthetic education: how do instincts find their way back to the spiritual? How do you find your way back? At that time there was still no spiritual science, as Schiller wrote, in the way one could think about these things at that time, how man finds his way back from instincts to spirituality. This is magnificently, powerfully, incomparably stated in these letters. And it was actually a regression in later times that one did not want to pick up the thread into the spirit that Schiller wanted to take.

And basically, within our ranks, little was understood of how everything was actually designed to truly follow the right path of spiritual science dictated by the times. One of the first publications is my lectures on Schiller, which I gave at the Berlin Free University, where we talked about the “Letters on Aesthetic Education” in connection with his spiritual development. This is one of the first publications of the Theosophical Society, which then became the Anthroposophical Society. There were difficult struggles. But, my dear friends, there is still much to come, because today we see the matter as having reached a kind of climax. I do not want to be misunderstood in this. Therefore, allow me to deal with matters in a few moments that only appear to be personal matters.

[In truth, they are really not personal matters for me. And when some members of the Anthroposophical Society, at the time when the terrible battle had to be fought against Annie Besant, withdrew in a noble way and said: we do not want to have anything to do with personal matters, is actually incomprehensible. Because you have to distinguish between who is the attacker and who is the attacked, otherwise things come about as they have now come about.

Let us take a harsh example, so that we can visualize how it is necessary to see with one's whole soul to form an opinion. You see, spiritual science could flourish without a society. If you had a few people in different German cities who organized lectures every winter, spiritual science could flourish for humanity without the Anthroposophical Society. There are two things: the Anthroposophical Society and spiritual science. The Anthroposophical Society must be something in itself, must be a reality in itself in its impulses. Therefore, one must stand within it with full judgment. Now, I have to discuss here things in which the Hanover branch is less involved, but which nevertheless affect the unity of the Society.

Do you see what happened years ago? There was a certain Mr. Grasshoff, who was pushed in by a member. He went from lecture cycle to lecture cycle, from lecture to lecture; he copied everything down, bought all the books, all the cycles? He also copied everything that was privately written down. After a few months, he had everything that had been said in the lectures and that had been written together.

Now you might say, after all that happened later: Why was the man admitted? Yes, you can't turn someone away because of what they will do in the future. That's a dilemma. When a person enters society, you can't tell them — forgive the harsh expression — you can't say: you won't be accepted because you would turn out to be a bastard later. So there is the dilemma. So the man had written down everything he could get his hands on. Except for the title he gave his book – “The Rosicrucian World Conception” – everything else is mine. But he had written a preface. In this book, he not only included what he had found in printed books, so that he had published something in America, but also things that had not yet been published here. But he wrote a preface. And in it he says: Yes, of course he used a lot in this book, included a lot that he had learned from me and my books. But that would not have been enough. Then one day he was called to a master in Transylvania, who then gave him the deepest knowledge, so he could give so much more in his book. But what you find “more” is just copied from cycles and lectures. That's how this book was made.

Now you can say: That's American. Fine. You can forgive a lot under that flag. But that wasn't the only thing that happened. A German publisher was found, but Hugo Vollrath's publishing house had this book translated into German and published it as individual Rosicrucian lesson letters in Germany. And there it had a preface in which it is said: “Some of it has already been said here, that is, in Germany, but much of it was unclean; it first had to be cleansed in the pure air of California.” And so you get so-called Rosicrucian letters in which everything is stolen, everything is theft, but on top of that, theft with defamation.

You see, such an outrage is impossible in the outer literary life, because something like that would become known and be dealt with accordingly. I have discussed this repeatedly, but with us it goes in at one ear and out the other. It is not discussed further. It is not taken into account that such an outrage must be reported and made known, otherwise it will have consequences. It will also be known if one only forms the right judgment about it. It depends on the judgment. Not only that one forms logical judgments, but that one also knows in such things how great the disgrace is that is possible in the world.

You see, things like that have consequences. You know that there was a member – a member until recently – who could not be rejected either. He was a member for a long time. In fact, because we were sympathetic to this member, one of his writings was even published by our publishing house. But then he wanted to publish another writing. In this book, 'Who Was Christ?' the author also makes use of all kinds of things from the cycles. But then he says: 'Dr. Steiner did hint at such things, but he never went into them in detail; one must treat the subject more thoroughly'. Dr. Steiner took offence at that. I myself only said that Dr. Steiner had probably taken offence, but that I had not dealt with it myself. I only read one passage, which was enough to understand that this book had to be rejected. This man had been looking for years to find some kind of field of work in the Anthroposophical Society — as a follower; he was a strange follower, though. You see, the man gets this book rejected and then becomes an opponent; even an enemy, not just an opponent. Yes, then he wrote an article in the so-called “Psychischen Studien” (Psychical Studies). An article in which he wanted to prove alleged contradictions in my writings. But if he had only written about the contradictions, he would not have attracted much attention. Whatever can be said objectively should be said. Yes, let a hundred or a thousand pamphlets appear; spiritual science has no opposition to fear. But objectivity is out of the question in this case. The man in question - it is Privy Councillor Seiling - weaves slander, defamation and lies into his foolish arguments about contradictions. He has adopted the strategy of trying to drive spiritual science into a kind of scandal, and he finds compliant editors who are far too lazy to fight spiritual science objectively; they would have to study it, and they don't want to do that. So they push the whole thing into scandal, defamation, by throwing mud at those who want to represent this spiritual science. Such things are sometimes done in a very subtle way, my dear friends! For example, Hofrat Seiling published an article that followed the article about the so-called contradictions. This article is a perfect example of what a subtle desire for defamation can do. You see, the most harmless thing that can happen is that it is of no concern to anyone – it was our marriage. A scandal arose about it among people who, of course, had no right to do so. It was nobody's business. But the fact that a number of women - not to use any other word - used the opportunity to create a scandal about this matter is characteristic of the way these women see things. This scandal was absolutely none of our business; the others made it. But how does Seiling formulate this matter? He formulates it in such a way that this marriage has led to scandals in Dornach. And so everyone must believe that the marriage itself led to a scandal, while it was these - yes, I am now making points - while it was these... women who made this scandal. - This is how you write sophisticated defamatory articles.

But other things were written as well. Many of our members know that I allowed the cycles to be printed. But I had to make up my mind to do so, firstly because the members wanted it; the transcripts that circulate among the members are often downright terrible. For example, we had to experience that we saw a transcript that was going around saying that I had said that prostitution was set up by great initiates in the sixteenth century. So I really had enough of these private transcripts. But I couldn't see all of these things.

Seiling was one of those people who did not make my life easy. Now he is noble enough to say: If Steiner did not give so many conversations to members, then he could see through the cycles and there would be no need for 'Unseen Postscript'. And Seiling cannot stop grumbling about the Anthroposophical Society and the way members behave. One can think of countless details in such matters. And just with Seiling, one only needs to think of it when he now speaks of how much time was taken for the discussions with members, then one only needs to think of the fact that it was Seiling who, for example, in Munich, saddled me with a completely insane person who did not visit me, whom I, to do Seiling a favor, visited more often. Of course, what the man wanted as advice turned into terrible vindictiveness and hatred for me.

Yes, my dear friends, to look into what happened there is a terrible thing. Therefore, one should not talk about opposing writings that only want to be factual. One must make a strict distinction. If someone has made a judgment that is as dismissive as can be, but remains objective, then I agree with it. You see, our dear, good Ludwig Deinhard – he died recently. He has done almost more than anyone else in recent times for spiritual science. Wherever he could, he published beautiful, significant articles. But he worked hard to get there because he was initially involved in a completely different field. And at the time when I began lecturing, under the influence of Deinhard — one may say this because he was later one of the most loyal and active supporters, and the latter is even more valuable — the following appeared: “The Berlin traveler in spiritual science has arrived!” That's okay. That's an opinion; anyone can take a position on this opinion. It is not a defamation, but an opinion, and one may have opinions. As I said, Deinhard has long since outgrown it, but even if he hadn't, you're allowed to do it; you're allowed to characterize, that's literary license. But you're not allowed to slander; you're not allowed to say things that are simply not true, that are objective untruths. But that is what distinguishes Seiling's attack from such attacks. And that is why it is quite worthless to refute this “discussion of contradictions.” Rather, the world must know: the man started this whole story purely because he was rejected by our publishing house with this brochure “Who Was Christ?” That is the real reason. And it is this real reason that must be pointed out, that is what matters.

Now another case. Many years ago, a man from central Germany wrote to Dr. Schüßler: He did not know what to do, whether to marry into a family or whether to turn to another change in his life. And when she wrote to him that we were not there to give advice on such matters, he gradually became more involved with the Theosophical Society at the time, initially within it in Berlin, albeit in a peculiar way, so that people got the impression – I am not saying that he did it, but that people got the impression, and very credible people – that he would now take care of the marriage for himself in the Society. Then, at a general assembly, without any artistic feeling and without a clue, he unleashed Schiller's Cassandra on the heads of the shocked members. Then he went to Munich. Now we had the misfortune of unsuspecting people approaching us and asking us to let him learn how to paint. But he didn't want to learn to paint, he wanted to be able to paint. He didn't want to become a painter, he wanted to be a painter. We just didn't know how to go about it. We wanted to help him in every way. A great deal has been done for the man, but he could do nothing. He wanted to be a genius, and he was terribly resentful that he could not be made a genius. Just as with what is called development, people resent the fact that they have to work for it. They would actually like me to take care of it: I turn to him, then I have to develop myself – he will do it. – Well, this man was concerned with not learning anything and yet wanting to be something. He went wild over it. That is the reason for his wildness. But now he writes that through the exercises he is supposed to have received – I don't know – he has developed spots on many parts of his body. And now he writes the most incredible articles in all sorts of places, which are as ridiculous on the one hand as they are defamatory on the other.

For example, he writes: The exercise would have particularly harmed him, that he should have thought: What is happening in my environment is good and necessary. — Isn't it, you have to be so ruthless as to give someone such an exercise! It bruised him in many places. But this exercise is actually in Schopenhauer's works. You will find the words in Schopenhauer, who considers it healthy for every human being. So he has not been given anything particularly magical, as you can see, but a very generally human exercise. But today – well, those editors who included the article by Erich Bamler also know Schopenhauer. The truth is that the man wrote these articles. What is in them are objective untruths and even stupidities. The truth is that the man did not become a genius and went wild about it. Yes, that's how it is.

And now we are happy that they have started - and that the story seems to be to be continued - that not only am I being thrown dirt, but they are now no longer stopping at Dr. Steiner - and in a “tone that is not there at all. Nothing like this has been printed yet, the way it is now being printed against what is being done and written here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Yes, for example, there is rambling about the disgracefulness of the exercises that the doctor is said to have given to a young girl. And how did she give these exercises? When the young girl was called to account for how she could claim that, since it is common knowledge that Frau Doktor never gives exercises, when she was asked how she could claim that Frau Doktor had given her exercises that had harmed her, since it is quite untrue, she said, “Yes, she didn't give them to me in such a way that she would have told me.” Yes, but how then, they asked her. Well, the young girl said, I listened to Dr. Steiner's recitations for eurythmists. Poems by Lienhard, poems by Uhland. Of course the poems were only meant for the others, but for me they contained exercises, so she gave me exercises. She didn't consciously receive the exercises, it was said, but she was simply Dr. Steiner's medium.

Yes, these things – that they are insane is not our concern, but that they are invented, that they are objective untruths, that is our concern. The matter has finally come to a head, that in the same article in the “Psychischen Studien” it says - the Anthroposophical Society really had to be found in order to have members who would believe something like this from a magazine - it says something like this: Dr. Steiner wrote about the Lazarus miracle in the book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, and he wanted to perform the Lazarus miracle with me. He wanted to transform me as Christ transformed Lazarus. This is connected with the fact that she burst into my bedroom one morning in a terrible fit of raving madness. She actually wanted to assault Dr. Steiner, but her door was locked. She was then taken to a sanatorium. This does not prevent her from writing these things now. Among other things, she says that it is all because Dr. Steiner sent her chocolate. Dr. Steiner just wanted to do her a kindness and bought her chocolate and other times apples or oranges. They wanted to be kind to her. — Because at the time she was thought to be ill, she was in a sanatorium. Now she writes that this chocolate was sent to her to thicken the blood so that the Lazarus miracle could take place. That's what's in the magazine now, and the editor adds the note:

[These are the kinds of madness that can land a healthy person in the asylum! - Ed.]

That's what really makes it personal. So the treatment consisted of sending the sick girl chocolate to the sanatorium, not to thicken her blood, but to eat, that's the treatment.

These are the kinds of things that are so terribly ridiculous on the one hand, like the Goesch case. It was said: Yes, the Goesch case is yet to come and will be one of the most difficult. The Goesch case is also, on the one hand, so terribly ridiculous and, on the other hand, so defamatory and disparaging, because today the intention is to eliminate spiritual science not by honest debate but by discrediting the person, by telling things that are pure invention and so foolish that people can say, Well, if they go to such lengths to perform a Lazarus miracle, then you can't take this spiritual science seriously. On the other hand, people can say: people go crazy with spiritual science, it is dangerous. It is the best policy to count on people's addiction to scandal; it is the best policy one can adopt to make something impossible. It is written in a tone, in a way that is simply incredible. And the editor makes the comment that one could believe it.

If some defenders now come forward, so we know that there are people in this society who “consider Dr. Steiner to be the Christ”. Yes, my dear friends, anything is possible in this day and age! I recently received a letter from a neighboring town. The letter said that the gentleman had attended a public lecture of mine. I spoke about the repeated incarnations of Christ and made it clear that I am laying claim to the present one. And he noted that he heard this with his own ears and not only he, but also some friends who were sitting with him in this lecture. So today people tell stories that are the crassest nonsense; they swear by them under certain circumstances.

You see, people still have their secondary purposes. What do people want to achieve? The young lady's article was written from the attitude from which all things come. This article is entitled “Anthroposophy: Sexual Magic”. It is interesting that everything leads to the sexual realm.

People who are themselves under the influence of sexuality – well, it is easy to understand that they want to drag everything into this area. But there are other purposes behind it as well. The strange thing is that if you read Goesch's writing today - which has not yet been published, but they are threatening to publish it - if you read this writing, you will find the strange thing that he constantly proves what he says against me by referring to passages from the mystery dramas. He refutes me from books of mine, from lectures, from my writings. It has never happened before that such a method has been used. It is quite a novelty. A person in Dornach writes to Goesch to bring him a little more to reason. He receives the answer from Goesch, which is supposed to make it clear to him that he will not allow himself to be converted: “I only need to remind you of a profound saying - or something like that - that clarifies your situation:

I hear not the friend,
I hear a ghastly creature.

That is actually from the Rosicrucian Mystery. Yes, what people actually want is to get the matter onto a track where everything is made public. Whether they want to urge you to publish everything in a justification, or whether they want to urge you to bring a lawsuit in which everything must be made public. They want to have everything. In today's world, you can no longer keep anything secret from humanity, which is going through a crisis that is clearly evident in these matters.

For those who are familiar with spiritual science, this is not surprising, but the judgment must be brought into the right channels. Those who have to speak about spiritual matters, especially esoteric ones, know very well that if they speak to about 120 people, 70 of them are potential opponents. This is simply because one has to speak to certain depths of the human soul. At most, 50 can remain loyal. The others, if they do not die earlier, will become opponents. But the big difference is whether they become decent opponents. For the time being, we live in a time when most are not decent. One can be satisfied with decent opponents, because spiritual science will only slowly and gradually become part of human development. That goes without saying.

All this that I have explained to you shows the absolute necessity for me to take certain measures. For it is impossible to allow what spiritual science is supposed to achieve to be dragged through the mud. As long as only people like Freimark and the like spread their calumnies about spiritual science, the matter could still be ignored. But now that those who throw mud at everything and do the worst are recruiting from society itself, even if they are resigning, I have to take a measure - together with another one - a measure that means that I have to suspend all private meetings for the near future. It is no longer possible for me to hold private meetings. Those who are honestly seeking esoteric knowledge may be patient; a substitute will be found for these esoteric discussions. Anthroposophy must be brought into the full light of the public, and all private discussions must cease. No one can feel more sorry and wistful than I feel sorry and wistful, because I have enjoyed serving people. But since I have said many things so often in vain, it must now be pointed out by facts that a correct judgment must prevail. It cannot continue like this, that one considers fools to be initiates and the like. So it is impossible to get along. Therefore, all private discussions must stop in the near future. As I said, a replacement will be created for those who continue to strive esoterically honest.

But this measure must be supplemented by another, and anyone who does not say this second measure when saying the first, does not remain with the truth. This second measure is that I allow everyone to say everything that has ever been said to them in these private conversations, if they want to. Nothing need be kept secret that has ever been said in private conversations. For it is precisely about these private conversations that an enormous amount of lies are told. Precisely these private conversations are used to drag spiritual science into the mud, because they cannot be refuted by spiritual science itself. Therefore, these private conversations must cease; one must submit to this necessity; without exception they must cease. And besides, as I said, I authorize anyone to pass on the content of the private conversations if they so desire. This should help to silence those dreadful tongues that are now opening up such a campaign of defamation, if these measures are carried out for a while and if it is seen that not only spiritual science itself but also everything that happens in society does not need to shy away from the light of day.

But there would be a lot to do, because there would still be a lot of this mudslinging that has developed up to now, and there would be a lot to do if one had to deal with everything that has developed from the worst instincts.

You have to get to know people in society. So far, as a rule, it has been done the way a lady in Berlin did it. There were scandal-mongering ladies in Dornach who attacked me and the doctor in the most terrible way. A lady who was related to one of the scandal-mongering ladies in Dornach wrote to the doctor saying that she should do something to bring the scandal-mongering ladies to their senses in a benevolent way. It has become the custom to interpret the first principle of our society as meaning that anyone can commit any disgraceful act, so one must treat them with love and goodwill because one has to apply this principle to all people. The one who is attacked is seen as the sinner. At least we can assure you that there is no kind of impertinence that has not been directed at us in the course of anthroposophical work. I have to take these two measures not only because of the content, but also to make it clear that we must finally take the demand for sound judgment seriously, so that morbid judgments cannot persist. I also pronounced these measures in Munich. Someone said: Why should everyone have to suffer when a few people do such things? I had to answer: Yes, you turn to those who cause such things, and not to those who then have to carry out such measures under duress. If they had wanted to, they could have found a way, maybe not now that the avalanche has started – but they should have found ways and means at the time when it was still just a snowball. But in the future, the only way to help is to take such strict measures.

Please do not take it amiss that I had to add this consideration to the actual spiritual consideration that I wanted to make here.] One would like so much not to have only words at one's disposal to say what needs to be said in today's world, to find one's way to the hearts and souls of people. Language has already become a purely abstract product. And the words, how they are heard, already weak and abstract. I would like to give another example of this.

Just think, people today hear someone say, “He did it pretty well.” Who will think differently today if someone speaks as if they wanted to say “almost well.” “Pretty well” equals “almost well.” But “pretty” has the same root as the word “geziemt,” which means “what befits.” And 'pretty good' does not just mean 'almost good', but, if you feel the word in the right way, then you feel: 'in the way of 'good', so when something is done 'pretty well', that you have done it so that it can please, that it is appropriate, that it is well done. Who listens in this way today? However, spiritual science must speak in this way. Then the Seilingers come along and say: It is bad German. The worse Seiling writes, the worse he finds what is cultivated in my books or cycles as a “German style”, but which is entirely based on spiritual science.

Who today senses in the words “between”, “two”, “doubt”, that which divides? This lies in the doubt that something divides when one is confronted with a division. Who senses this so concretely in the word? Who also senses it in the word “purpose”? - “Zw” - And so with all the words. Language has also become abstract.

My dear friends, when one has to discuss such important contemporary issues as I have today, when one has to speak of the necessity to grasp reality again in a conscious sense, one would like to be able to handle something other than mere words, which have already become abstract today.

Perhaps some of you can still hear in your hearts, as today's abstract words are felt, what was said first about the demands of the time and about the position of spiritual science in humanity.

Think about it a lot, my dear friends; many of the riddles that confront us today in this terrible time find their solution in the development of today's reflection.

[Architect Schmid: We want to create the daily bread in the broadest sense, not a caricature of what it is supposed to be. Just as each column on the Johannesbau is the only, correct, best expression of what it is supposed to represent, so it should be with our entire environment. The aim is not to create cheap coffee and so on, but the right coffee, cocoa and so on. The name you choose is Maja; we should offer the right thing for the same money.

Many speakers spoke, then Mr. von Rainer: I had to ask the bread whether it wants to be sold like this. It told me: That's a sore point. - That doesn't suit the bread, the bread doesn't want to know anything about that either. The lowest possible prices, [that] doesn't suit the bread either. The bread is opposed to all these privileges because, in a sense, they violate the occult law under which it stands. That would just be another area of selfishness. Bread is very demanding and wants to be treated well and lovingly. It is against all modern business relationships and prefers a good wearer. Bread wants nothing to do with advertising. On the one hand, the matter must not take on fixed forms, but on the other hand, there is a desire to help others when the principle of altruism can be carried out in contrast to selfishness.

Rudolf Steiner: We should definitely avoid bringing something into the world in an indefinite way. Above all, we must be clear that it is necessary for us to proceed practically, to bring something viable into the world. Of course, some of the general principles that are developed are useful, and it is a practical matter. If we don't want to talk at cross purposes, we have to take something important into account. As unlikely as it seems, this touches on the practical side of the matter: Mr. von Rainer has stated that the bread feels offended, and Mr. Schröder has apologized. The bread cannot excuse anything by its very nature. It is necessary that we absolutely take into account the real factors.

In the moments after such a mistake as the one that has now been apologized for, but I think that when such a mistake is made later, it is important that it be translated into reality. In the moments when something like this is done, we are immediately dealing with the material consequences of it. We have to proceed practically; we talk about many points without any basis. What we should talk about would be: How can a trading company be established, how should it relate to those of our friends who produce something in some field or other and have something to sell, how can an understanding be reached with consumers? Basically, we cannot elect a commission; we cannot become a consumer association as an Anthroposophical Society. Things must develop in such a way that someone finds inspiration in their impulses and others go to them. It would be a mistake to choose a commission. We have to develop understanding and act on the basis of the original initiative. We can only be understanding consumers as an Anthroposophical Society. We can exchange our views. There are many things to consider. It is extremely important that this trade association does not take a purely materialistic point of view, but above all takes the point of view of offering support to good, appropriate production. The difficulties that arise from today's commercial nature, that those who are involved in material life cannot help but develop principles, however good a person they are, [that they] cannot help but develop the principles, as Mr. Schröder has described, that they apply in England, according to which a mistake would be worse than a crime.

But I ask you, what should the merchant, the mediator do today in the face of the fact that he has to reckon with the cheapness of the goods and not with the quality. People want cheap bread without the bread being properly right and good. Measures of value are basically false, and if we want to gain understanding, we must gain this understanding by not basing ourselves on a foundation that has not fundamentally improved the social order. Anthroposophy must advance humanity, and we must base ourselves on a foundation that advances. We can, of course, do such a thing quite properly, but we have to approach it practically; it has to yield something fruitful. We have nothing to do with patterns. We have to work from what is properly at hand; if we work according to old patterns, the only thing that can happen is that we achieve something old. We cannot establish a company to market Rainer bread, but we can spread understanding that we eat this bread! The trade association should be a mediator in the most practical way possible.

It would be completely impractical to proceed in the way we do for a purely idealistic cause, that we would organize collections. For a matter that is based on a material basis, it is not a matter of not having confidence in it from the outset, that would be an admission of failure from the outset, but rather of launching a matter that is actually well-founded, and it is a matter of the people who have an understanding of it participating with the prospect of interest and profitability. We did not want things to be based on material considerations that would fall apart after a few years, even though they had been justified several times. Capital should not be raised for an idealistic cause, but everything should be based on a practical foundation. These things must be taken into account; they are very beautiful when done right, but they should be understood in such a way that we stand vis-à-vis Mr. Schröder in such a way that we give him advice and he gives us advice, and should not talk about selfishness and altruism.

After a few other [speakers], Dr. Steiner takes the floor again and says after a few introductory words:

Of course, I take it for granted that everyone here is in favor of this trade association. We are in favor of everything good, and [it is also self-evident] that we consider Mr. Schröder to be a capable man for the job. It is very nice when there is such enthusiasm for the cause. However, I would like to emphasize right away: I am not here to

but I have experienced exactly the opposite of what Ms. Wolfram has claimed: the teaching of Saturn, Sun and Moon is quite easy to explain; people accept it readily. But if you tell them to have their shoes made by the shoemaker or to have a whole sack of Rainer bread delivered, that is more difficult than getting the teaching of Saturn, Sun and Moon across. Above all, it is necessary for the Theosophists to start thinking rationally and not just to be enthusiastic about practical things, but to persevere in the long run.

It is normal that everything is wrong at the beginning; it is usually very difficult to find understanding when this or that is wrong. The new thing about theosophists is that they should be aware that the good things are bound to appear with certain dark sides, which is self-evident. How often have we had to hear that what is based on an incorrect approach to the matter; some loaves of Rainer bread went moldy; that it is moldy is a sign that it is good, my dear theosophical friends, because vegetables only grow on good soil. It is only a matter of us working against such a thing. On the other hand, we must be clear that there are also difficulties inherent in the matter. I don't see why we can't look at the matter soberly. The story is nothing new, something we have always had in small circles. There have been many of us who said to others: Get your shoes made by this shoemaker, buy your bread here or there. There were also those who volunteered to get the necessities, to travel to cycles, order rooms and so on. All this has already been done.

Mr. Schröder has realized that something should be organized, and the newspaper is also just an expression of systematization, where it is best to turn, systematization of the matter, so that one can work more rationally when organizing a matter than when it is left to chance. Because we have the belief that when anthroposophists do something right, it will be a beautiful and ideal thing; they will do things quite differently, namely, the anthroposophists. I mean a connection between those who have something to offer - be it food, be it something else - they should connect with the trade association, where the thing is offered. It will be seen that the thing will flourish. I will be blunt: the only possibility is that it pays off in a rational sense. If someone can do or provide something well, the trade association will come to help them make a living. It is understandable that some of us producers have certain difficulties as such. A producer cannot count on a purely anthroposophical clientele. There are many details to be considered.

After further interjections, Dr. Steiner takes the floor again:

It is only necessary that this point of view be put into practice immediately, starting with the fact that what is there can be sold; and then adding more and more. We need what has been said today to be understood as nothing other than a statement from consumers to producers.

We do not need to postpone for the reason that the rest that needs to be done should come from the trade association itself. It should get in touch with our producers and get things moving. What we would like from our other friends is for them to get into the habit of taking things a little more seriously – the trade association can't do anything about that – and to be as well organized as possible when no one is buying from them. To do that, we need to talk a little, so that understanding is gained and not just among the small circle of those present, which is a small circle for 2,500 members. Try to spread understanding when you yourself agree with it, for this specific thing. Then we will actually make progress in this area, and then the matter is not so infinitely important, whether we say more or less: we take into account the other people or those who are among us. — Finally, it is quite true that we should carry anthroposophy out and not close ourselves off materially. But we shall also do what is necessary to support our materially productive friends; it is more important to accommodate a friend who is productive in some field and is part of society than to accommodate another who does everything he can to harm our movement just because it is more convenient for us. Altruism is not what moves us forward, but staying the course.

After further interjections, Dr. Steiner says the following:

Regarding Mr. Schröder's planned publication of a newspaper that is supposed to contain only an extract of the events of a certain period of time: It is not easy to publish such an extract. Just imagine: We were supposed to edit telegrams about the Balkan War that were supposed to be objectively true. One would have to proceed purely clairvoyantly – and that would be black magic in this case, [that] would not be a means of the physical plan to give a purely objective picture.

The advertising story is a questionable thing. We have to take the view that it is being done practically, that will gradually come out. Paid advertisements are not practical. And even if it is tried today, it will be different in a year. The advertising system will have to be different. It will do the newspaper good if it takes the approach of other newspaper companies. The big newspapers live from advertising, but that is also what they are like. A newspaper cannot help but take on a certain configuration if it lives from advertising. Take a large newspaper company. I would like to know how many readers there are who read these advertisements. Do you think that those who spend money on advertisements are unaware of the situation I have just described? Those who place these advertisements and pay for them with hard-earned money have very specific reasons for placing them. And even if these advertisements are not successful the first time, they still have an effect in a variety of indirect ways. It is natural that newspapers should be dependent on advertisements. In short, it will not prove to be practical at all. Only a newspaper that does not depend on advertisements, that can live on subscribers, can be in a position as it should be. A newspaper that relies on only one advertisement cannot possibly stand on solid ground. You may say that we anthroposophists are reforming the advertising business. I would like you to start with practical principles. The impractical people consider themselves the most practical because they are familiar with this subject. If they set up something new, they are not at all practical. It must be borne in mind that things must be done in a truly practical way. It will then become clear that a great many things that we imagine are not possible in practice.

Someone could easily say today: We are anthroposophists, we can easily organize things, everything should be put on a healthy basis. Certain things are in the nature of things. The advertising business cannot be reformed. If you base something on advertising, it cannot be reformed. Certain things are an inner necessity. So it is with many things that come into question in this matter, they cannot be reformed, they must be removed. Nothing can be reformed in the commercial sphere. The trade association would make no sense if it were to incorporate the principles of consumer associations and cooperatives. Our task is to ensure that what we receive is procured rationally and appropriately; commercial aspects must take a back seat. We must be sober and practical in our judgment. Our work must ensure that what is actually being implemented is that the paths of healthy, appropriate production are opened up to consumers. There is no reform in the commercial sphere. If you are dealing with a certain type of thing from the outset, you can only say: I don't want anything to do with the article, or I have to say that it is good. We must want to help healthy, appropriate production.

[Mr. Selling: draws attention to “Lucifer-Gnosis”, issues 30-32, where you can find the basics of understanding.

Dr. Steiner: The Rainer bread is just practical, that's what it's supposed to be eaten as.

H. Klepran: If not everyone can enjoy it, it's because it's living bread, in contrast to the dead bread we are used to eating.

Dr. Steiner: Found a very fine small handkerchief. Really nice! I believe it belongs to a lady.]

This is one of many courses of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) in the early years of this century, in the amplification of his spiritual science or anthroposophy. Some of these courses were given to members of the Anthroposophical Society who had been familiar with the subject for many years. Others were given to the general public. In both cases—and naturally more particularly and esoterically so in the former—they were a deepening and extension of what was contained in his written works.

It is the written works that contain the essentials of his teaching. Among them are some which have come to be known as the “basic books,” and without some knowledge of them it is impossible to appreciate what was spoken of in these lecture courses. Those basic books are: The Philosophy of Freedom (also published as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity), Theosophy, An Outline of Occult Science, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and Christianity as Mystical Fact (also published as Christianity and Occult Mysteries of Antiquity).

It is essential to make this clear to readers, and even to impress upon them the need to have some familiarity with the basic books before attempting the courses. The reasons should be obvious. First, it would be unfair to the readers themselves to be led into buying a book which they might find mystifying and confusing, if not wholly incomprehensible, later; and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it would be unfair to the cause of spiritual science if the unadvised reader should be led to forming a premature judgment about what is admittedly recondite, if not at times arcane, through insufficient knowledge of its basic principles.

Any scientific investigation—and anthroposophy is just that, even though its field is the super-sensible—presupposes a discipline which demands a thorough grounding in its fundamentals. This was all Rudolf Steiner ever asked for the results of his investigations, which he gave out in these and other lectures. So finally, it would be unfair to his unchallenged reputation as a scholar and philosopher to offer to the public such a book as this without these few introductory remarks.

Alan Howard

Reflections on the Michael Thought in its True Aspect—the Regeneration of the Michael Festival.

At Michaelmas, 1923, for the last time in his earthly life Rudolf Steiner was able to celebrate fully a Michaelmas festival, and this he did in Vienna, the capital city of his own homeland, where he had spent so many fruitful years in his youth. Much of Germany, including Berlin, was cut off from him in that year of uncontrolled inflation but here in Vienna he could feel himself truly at home, as he refounded the Anthroposophical Society in Austria and gave these wonderful lectures on the human Gemüt.

In his Christmas letter to the members that forms part of the Michael Mystery Rudolf Steiner in 1924 emphasized in a single marvelously compressed paragraph the task of man especially in the middle period of the age of the consciousness soul in which we are now living.

“In its essential nature the Spiritual Soul (Consciousness Soul) is not cold. It seems to be so only at the commencement of its unfolding, because at that stage it can only reveal the light-element in its nature, and not as yet the cosmic warmth in which it has indeed its origin.”

This cosmic warmth must now be breathed out by men into their observing of the external world. Not only must we understand the world objectively after the manner of the scientist, but we must enter into this understanding with our life of feeling, and thus wrest the world from Ahriman's clutches, filling it with the Christ forces working from within ourselves. In this short cycle, as also in the two public lectures (Supersensible Knowledge as a Demand of the Age, and Anthroposophy and the Ethical-Religious Conduct of Life) Steiner describes just how it is possible to enter into the external world with love, endowing it with soul-warmth, in the process learning also to celebrate a new kind of autumn festival in which Michael can truly participate. As soon as he returned to Dornach from Vienna, Steiner gave the five Archangel lectures (The Four Seasons and the Archangels), to which these four are a soul-warming introduction that he could perhaps never have given elsewhere than in the gemütlich city of Vienna.

Stewart C. Easton

These lectures were given to men engaged in the construction of the Goetheanum in Dornach. They could also be called dialogues, for their content was always determined by the workmen themselves. Rudolf Steiner not only had them set the themes but also welcomed their questions and comments. The talks embraced a wide range of subjects. The workmen showed a particular interest in therapeutics and hygiene, matters of much importance in their lives. Phenomena in all the kingdoms of nature were touched upon as well, and their origin from the cosmos was considered. Finally, the workmen sought an introduction to spiritual science and a foundation from which to approach the mysteries of Christianity.

This cooperative spiritual effort grew out of some courses held for those interested in such questions. At first, they were conducted by Dr. Roman Boos when work on the construction site was finished for the day. Later, they were given by other members of the Anthroposophical Society as well. Eventually, however, the workmen asked if Rudolf Steiner himself could spare them some time to satisfy their thirst for knowledge. They inquired also if an hour could be set aside during the regular workday when they would be more alert and receptive. Thereafter, the lecture period followed the morning coffee break. Some of the employees from the construction office and two or three of Rudolf Steiner's closer associates attended as well. Such practical concerns as apiculture for interested beekeepers were among the topics of discussion. The transcript of these lectures on bees was later published by the agricultural research group at the Goetheanum after Rudolf Steiner's death.

Now others have expressed an interest in seeing all the lectures in print. They were not intended for publication, however; rather, they were held for a special audience and improvised in a setting governed by the circumstances and mood of the attending workmen. Nevertheless, one would not want to omit the vitality and directness with which these lectures were delivered. Were one to change them by pedantically altering sentence structure and the like, one would deprive them of the special quality generated by the spiritual interplay of those who asked and he who answered. Therefore, the editor has decided to leave the transcript virtually unaltered, and if some passages do not conform to the rules of proper literary usage, they do, in compensation, bear the imprint of life itself.

Marie Steiner

A plenary meeting of the Circle – including Rittelmeyer, Ruhtenberg, Molt and others who had been away for some time – in Landhausstrasse in the presence of Dr. and Mrs. Steiner. Dr. Steiner reported on his trip to England, on the educational event in Ilkley and then especially on the summer course at Penmaenmawr, which he described as one of the most significant events in the history of the movement. This latter event took place near ancient Druid sites, many of which he described in detail. Once, he and Dr. Wachsmuth climbed up to a lonely plateau all alone and found two hollows there, one large and one small, which, seen from above, looked exactly like the floor plan of the Goetheanum. In general, he said, the entire spiritual past of these places is written in the astral sphere of this area as if in imperishable letters, and imaginations that would otherwise transform and blur remain there, so to speak. The island from which the Arthurian mysteries originated is also nearby. (As Dr. Steiner spoke, the light went out. A lamp was brought and he continued speaking by its light until the light came back on.)

Afterwards, Kolisko read out a series of statements of approval that had been received in response to the rally in No. 6 of Anthroposophy. [See appendix II, page 830 ff.]. Almost all of them were impressive and heartfelt, bearing vivid witness to what Dr. Steiner's personality means to countless people. Dr. Steiner noted down the names of all those who had sent in contributions and who were not members.

Kolisko then spoke again about his journey, which he had already reported on in detail at the meeting on August 15, and about the planned new organization of the “Anthroposophical Society in Germany,” which he had already presented on September 5. [No notes are available for these two meetings.] Through an “extended board”, the center is also to be present in the periphery. A circle of trusted individuals is to accept each member individually into the Society. Only then should they join a branch where the esoteric work is to take place.

Stein and von Grone also reported again on their trip to Thuringia. An interesting discussion about Friedrich Lienhard followed Stein's account of his visit to Weimar. His last essays in the “Türmer” were brought and read by Dr. Steiner himself. He and Frau Doktor then told a lot of humorous details about Lienhard, whom Dr. Steiner does not want treated as an “opponent” under any circumstances.

If we look at a phenomenon such as H.P. Blavatsky from the perspective which will have become clear to you, we need to be concerned first with her personality as such. The other aspect is the impact she had on a large number of people. Now it is true, of course, that this impact was in part quite negative. Those who had a philosophical, psychological, literary, scientific—let us say a well-educated—bent were glad to be rid of this phenomenon in one way or another. They could achieve this simply by saying that she had engaged in dishonest practices and that there was no need to spend time on something where there was evidence of that sort of thing.

Then there were those who were in possession of ancient, traditional wisdom, members of one or another secret society. One must never forget that numerous events in the world are linked to actions from such secret societies. They were concerned above all to find a way to prevent such a depiction of the spiritual world having a wider impact. Because, as we saw, these things could be read and promulgated, and in this way the secret societies had been deprived of a good deal of the power which they wanted to preserve for themselves. That is why it is members of such societies who are behind the accusations that Blavatsky engaged in dishonest practices.

More important for our present purpose, however, is that Blavatsky's writings and everything else connected with her personality made a certain impression on a large number of people. That led to the establishment of movements which describe themselves in one way or another as theosophical.

I would like you to remember that in these discussions I always try to present my material in such a way that it should correspond to the facts. This becomes impossible nowadays in many circles, simply because of the terminology one has to use. What happens today is that when a person encounters a word it is very tempting for him to seek a dictionary definition in order to avoid having to look at the issue itself. When such literary people hear of theosophy they open a dictionary—which may well be a dictionary in their minds—and look up the word. Or they might go as far as to study all kinds of literature in which a word like theosophy occurs, and then use that as the basis for their judgement. You have to be aware how much actually depends on this kind of procedure.

This must always be juxtaposed with the question: How did the societies which base themselves on Blavatsky come to use the name Theosophical Society? One thing which did not happen, when it was founded at the end of the nineteenth century, was to found a Theosophical Society with the aim of propagating theosophy as defined in the dictionary. But a body of knowledge about the spiritual world existed through Blavatsky, which initially was simply there. Then it was found necessary to cultivate this knowledge through a society and a society requires a name. It is pure coincidence that the societies which are based on that called themselves the Theosophical Society. No one could think of a better name—it's as simple as that. This has to be clearly remembered. People who have learnt about the historical development of their given area of study are likely to have come across the term theosophy. But the term they have come across has nothing to do with what called itself the Theosophical Society.

Within the Anthroposophical Society, at any rate, such things ought to be taken very seriously. There should be a certain drive for accuracy, so that a proper feeling can develop for the unobjective scribblings to which these things have gradually given rise.

But there is one question which should particularly concern us: Why is it that a large number of our contemporaries have felt the urge to follow up these revelations? Because that will provide us with the bridge to something of a quite different nature: to the Anthroposophical Society.

In considering Blavatsky, it is important that her attitude was what might well be called an anti-christian one. In her Secret Doctrine she revealed in one large sweep the differing impulses and development of the many ancient religions. But everything which might have been expected as an objective depiction is clouded by her subjective judgement, the judgement of her feelings. It becomes abundantly clear that she had a deep sympathy for all religions in the world other than Judaism and Christianity, and that she had a deep antipathy towards Judaism and Christianity. Blavatsky depicts everything which comes from the latter as inferior to the great revelations of the various pagan religions: in other words, an expressly anti-christian perspective, but an expressly spiritual one.

She was able to speak of spiritual beings and spiritual processes in the same way that one normally speaks of the beings and processes of the physical world; she was able to discuss aspects of this spiritual world because she had the capacity to move among spiritual forces in the same way that contemporary people normally move among physical-sensory forces.

On that basis she was able to bring to the surface and clarify characteristic impulses of the various pantheistic religions.

Now we might be surprised by two things. First, that it is possible at all today for someone to appear who perceives the salvation of mankind in this anti-christian perspective. And second, we might be surprised about the decisive and profound influence exerted by such an anti-christian perspective specifically on people with a Christian outlook—less so perhaps on those with a Jewish background. These are two questions we must ponder when we speak about conditions governing the existence of the contemporary life of the spirit among the broader masses in general.

In respect of Blavatsky's anti-christian perspective, I want only to recall that someone who became much better known than she in Central Europe, among certain circles at least, had as much of an anti-christian perspective. That was Nietzsche.¹ It is difficult to be more anti-christian than the author of The Anti-Christ. It would be adopting a very superficial attitude not to enquire into the reason for the anti-christian outlook of these two personalities. But to find an answer one needs to dig a little bit deeper.

For we need to have a clear understanding that increasing numbers of people today are becoming divided in their spiritual life, something which they do not always acknowledge and which they try to paper over with a certain intellectual cowardice, but which is all the more active in the unconscious depths of their mind.

One needs to have a clear understanding of the way in which the European peoples and their American cousins have been influenced by the educational endeavours of the last three, four, five hundred years. One need only consider how great the difference really is between the content of today's secular education and the religious impulses of humanity. From the time people enter elementary school all thinking, their whole inner orientation, is directed toward this modern education. Then they are also provided with what is meant to satisfy their religious needs. A dreadful gap opens up between the two. People never really have the opportunity to deal inwardly with this chasm, preferring instead to submit to the most dreadful illusions in this respect.

This raises questions about the historical process which led to the creation of this yawning chasm. For this we have to look back to those centuries in which learning was the province of those few who were thoroughly prepared for it. You can be quite certain that a twelve-year-old schoolgirl today has a greater fund of worldly knowledge than any educated person of the eleventh, twelfth or thirteenth centuries. These things must not be overlooked. Education has come to rely on an extraordinarily intense feeling of authority, an almost invincible sense of authority. In the course of the centuries modern education has increasingly comprised only the knowledge of what can be demonstrated to the outer senses, or by calculation. By excluding everything else it became possible—because two times two equals four, and the five senses are so persuasive—for modern education to acquire its sense of authority. But that also increasingly gave rise to the feeling that everything which human beings believe, which they consider to be right, must be justified by the the knowledge of which modern learning is so certain. It was impossible to present in a corresponding fashion any truth from the realms where mathematics and the senses no longer apply.

How were these truths presented to humanity prior to the existence of modern learning? They were presented in ritual images. The essential element in the spread of religion over the centuries lay not in the sermons, for instance, but in ceremonial, in the rituals. Try to imagine for a moment what it was like in Christian countries in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. The important thing was for people to enter a world presented to them in mighty and grandiose images. All around, frescoes on the walls reminded them of the spiritual life. It was as if their earthly life could reach as high as the tallest mountain, but at that point, if one could climb just a little bit higher, the spiritual life began. The language of the spiritual world was depicted in images which stimulated the imagination, in the audible harmonies of music, or in the words of set forms such as mantras and prayers. These ages understood clearly that images, not concepts, were required for the spiritual world. People needed something vividly pictorial not something which could be debated. Something was required which would allow the spirit to speak through what was accessible to the senses. Christianity and its secrets, the Mystery of Golgotha and everything connected with it, were essentially spoken about in the form of images, even when words were used in story form. The dogmas were also still understood as something pictorial. And this Christian teaching remained unchallenged from any quarter prior to the existence of intellectual learning, and for as long as these things did not have to be justified by reason.

Now just look at historical processes in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the urgency with which human beings begin to experience the drive to understand everything intellectually. This introduced a critical attitude of world-historical significance.

Thus, the majority of human beings today are introduced to religious life through Christianity but alongside that to modern learning also. As a consequence, the two—Christianity and modern learning—co-exist in each soul. And even if people do not admit it, it transpires that the results of intellectual education cannot be used to prove Christian truths. So from childhood people are now taught the fact that two times two equals four and that the five senses must only be used in such a context, and they also begin to understand that such absolutes are incompatible with Christianity.

Modern theologians who have tried to marry the two have lost Christ, are no longer able to speak to the broad spectrum of people about Christ; at most they speak about the personality of Jesus. Thus Christianity itself has been able to be preserved only in its old forms. But modern people are simply no longer willing to accept this in their souls, and they lose some of their inner security. Why?

Well, just look at the way Christianity has developed historically. It is extremely dishonest to use rationalism to put meaning into Christianity, the Mystery of Golgotha and everything connected with it. One has to talk about a spiritual world if one wants to speak about Christ. Modern human beings did not have the means in their innermost being to understand Christ on the basis of what they had been taught at school, for rationalism and intellectualism have robbed them of the spiritual world. Christ is still present in name and tradition, but the feeling for what that means is gone; the understanding of Christ as a spiritual being among spiritual beings in a spiritual world has disappeared. The world created by modern astronomy, biology and science is a world devoid of spirit.

Thus numerous souls grew up who, for these reasons, had quite specific needs. Time really does progress, and the people of today are not the same as people in earlier ages. You must have said to yourselves: Here I meet with a certain number of others in a society to cultivate spiritual truths. Why do you, each single one of you, do that? What drives you? Well, the thing which drives people to do this is usually so deeply embedded in the unconscious depths of their soul life that there is little clarity about it. But here, where we want to reflect on our position as anthroposophists, the question has to be asked.

If you look back to earlier times, it was self-evident that material things and processes were not the totality, but that spirits were everywhere. People perceived a spiritual world which surrounded them in their environment. And because they found a spiritual world they were able to understand Christ.

Modern intellectualism makes it impossible to discover a spiritual world, if one is honest, and as a consequence it is impossible to understand Christ properly. The people who try so hard to rediscover a spiritual life are very specific souls driven by two things. First, most souls who come together in the kind of societies we have been talking about start to experience a vague feeling within themselves which they cannot describe. And if this feeling is investigated with the means available in the spiritual world it turns out to be a feeling which stems from earlier lives on earth in which a spiritual environment still existed. Today, people are appearing in whose souls something from their previous lives on earth remains active. There would be neither theosophists nor anthroposophists if such people did not exist. They are to be found in all sections of society. They do not know that their feeling is the result of earlier lives on earth, but it is. And it makes them search for a very specific path, for very specific knowledge. Indeed, what continues to have an effect is the spiritual content of earlier lives on earth.

Human beings today are affected in two ways. They can have the feeling that there is something within them which affects them, which is simply there. But even though they might know a great deal about the physical world they cannot describe this feeling because nothing which was not of a spiritual nature has been carried over. If, however, in the present I am deprived of everything spiritual, then what has come over from a previous life remains dissatisfied. That is the one aspect.

The other effect which lives in human beings is a vague feeling that their dreams should really reveal more than the physical world. It is of course an error, an illusion. But what is the origin of this illusion, which has arisen in parallel with the development of modern learning? When people who have had the benefit of a modern education gather together in learned circles they have to show their cultural breeding. If someone starts to talk about spiritual effects in the world people adopt an air of ridicule, because that is what being cultured demands. It is not acceptable within our school education to talk about spiritual effects in the world. To do so implies superstition, lack of education.

Two groups will then often form in such circles. Frequently someone plucks up a little courage to talk about spiritual things. People then adopt an air of ridicule. The majority leave to play cards or indulge in some other worthy pursuit. But a few are intrigued. They go into a side-room and begin to talk about these things, they listen with open mouths and cannot get enough of it; but it has to be in a side-room because anything else shows a lack of education. The things which a modern person can learn there are mostly as incoherent and chaotic as dreaming, but people love it all the same. Those who have gone to play cards would also love it, except that their passion for cards is even stronger. At least that is what they tell themselves.

Why do human beings in our modern age feel the urge to investigate their dreams? Because they feel quite instinctively, without any clear understanding, that the content of their thoughts and what they see depicted in the physical world is all very nice, but it does not give them anything for their soul life. A secret thinking, feeling and willing lives in me when I am awake, they feel, which is as free as my dream life is free when I am sleeping. There is something in the depths of the soul which is dreamt even when I am awake. Modern people feel that, precisely because the spiritual element is missing from the physical world. They can only catch a glimpse of it when they are dreaming. In earlier lives on earth they saw it in everything around them.

And now those souls are being born who can feel working within themselves not only impulses from their previous lives on earth, but what took place in the spiritual world in their pre-earthly existence. This is related to their internal dreaming. It is an echo of life before birth.

But not only do the historical processes deny them the spirit; an educational system has been constructed which is hostile to the spirit, which proves the spirit out of existence.

If we ask how people found a common interest in such societies as we are describing here, it is through these two features of the soul; namely, that something is active both from their previous earth lives and from their pre-earthly existence. This is the case for most of you. You would not be sitting here if these two things were not active in you.

In very ancient times social institutions were determined by the Mysteries, and were in harmony with the content of their spiritual teaching. Take an Athenian for example. He revered the goddess Athene. He was part of a social community which he knew to be constituted according to Athene's intentions. The olive trees around Athens were planted by her. The laws of the state had been dictated by her. Human beings were part of a social community which was in total accord with their inner beliefs. Nothing the gods had given them had, as it were, been taken away.

Compare that with modern human beings. They are placed in a social context in which there is a huge gap between their inner experiences and the way they are integrated into society. It feels to them as if their souls are divorced from their bodies by social circumstances, only they are not aware of it; it is embedded in the subconscious. Through these impulses from earlier lives on earth and pre-earthly existence, people feel connected with a spiritual world. Their bodies have to behave in a way that will satisfy social institutions. It provokes a persistent subconscious fear that their physical bodies no longer really belong to them. Well, there are modern states in which one feels that your clothes no longer belong to you because the tax man is after them! But in a larger context ones physical body is no longer ones property either. It is claimed by society.

This is the fear which lives in modern human beings, the fear that every day they have to give up their bodies to something which is not connected with their souls. And thus they become seekers after something which does not belong to the earth, which belongs to the spiritual world of their pre-earthly existence.

All this takes its effect unconsciously, instinctively. And it has to be said that the Anthroposophical Society as it has developed had its origins in small beginnings. To begin with, it had to work in the most basic way with very small groups, and there is much to be said about the ways and means in which work took place in such small groups.

For example, in the first years in Berlin I had to lecture in a room in which beer glasses were clinking in the background. And once we were shown into something not unlike a stable. I lectured in a hall, parts of which had no floor, where one had to be careful not to tumble into a hole and break a leg. But that is where people gathered who felt these impulses. Indeed, this movement aimed to make itself accessible to everyone right from the beginning. Thus the satisfaction was just as great when the simplest mind turned up in such a location. At the same time it was no great worry when people came together in order to launch the anthroposophical movement in more aristocratic fashion, as happened in Munich, because that, too, was part of humanity. No aspect of humanity was excluded.

But the important point was that the souls who met in this way always had the qualities I have described. If such people had not existed, then someone like Blavatsky would not have engendered any interest, because it was among such people that she made her mark. What was most important to them and what corresponded to their feelings?

Well, the concept of reincarnation corresponded to the one thing which was active in their souls. Now they could see themselves straddling the ages as human beings, making them stronger than the forces which daily tried to rob them of their bodies. This deep-seated, almost will-like, inner feeling of human beings had to be met by the teaching of reincarnation.

And the dreamlike, out-of-body experience of the soul, which even the simplest country person can experience, could never be satisfied with knowledge which was based only on matter and its processes. That could only be met by making it clear to them that the most profound aspect of human nature exists as if it is woven out of dreams, if I may put it in this radical way. This element has a stronger reality, a stronger existence than dreams. We are like fish out of water if we are forced to live our soul life in the world which has been conjured up for people by modern education. In the same way that fish cannot exist in air and begin to gasp, so our souls live in the contemporary environment, gasping for what they need. They fail to find it, because it is spiritual in nature; because it is the echo of their experiences in life before birth in the spiritual world. They want to hear about the spirit, that the spirit exists, that the spirit is actually present among us.

You have to understand that the two most important concerns for a certain section of mankind were to learn that human beings live more than a single life on earth, and that among the natural things and processes there are beings in the world like themselves, spiritual beings. It was Blavatsky who initially presented this to the world. It was necessary to possess that knowledge before it was possible to understand Christ once again.

As far as Blavatsky was concerned, however—and in saying this we should emphasize her compassion for mankind—she realized that these people were gasping for knowledge of the spiritual world, and she thought that she would meet their spiritual needs by revealing the ancient pagan religions to them. That was her initial aim. It is quite clear that this had to result in a tremendously partisan anti-christian standpoint, just as it is clear that Nietzsche's observation of Christianity in its present form, which he had outgrown, led him to adopt such a strong anti-christian attitude.

This anti-christian outlook, and how it might be healed, is the topic I want to address in the next lectures. It remains only to emphasize that what appeared with Blavatsky as an anti-christian standpoint was absent right from the beginning in the anthroposophical movement, because the first lecture cycle which I gave was “From Buddha to Christ”. Thus the anthroposophical movement takes an independent position within all these spiritual movements in that, from the start, it pursued a path from the heathen religions to Christianity. But it is equally necessary to understand why others did not follow this path.

• 1. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844–1900. The Anti-Christ. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth 1988. See Rudolf Steiner, Friedrich Nietzsche (1895). Translated by M. Ingram de Ris. Rudolf Steiner Publications, New Jersey, 1960.

When I last had the honor of speaking to you here, I had to conclude with a great concern that weighed on my soul at the time. It was the concern for the further construction of the Goetheanum, which was to be a sign here on earth for that which is to come into the world through anthroposophical spiritual science. At the time, the concern I expressed was met with understanding. [On November 19, 1922, see references below.]

Since that time, what is written as an unspeakable pain in the history of the anthroposophical movement has come to pass. This pain could not be averted. It was deeply inscribed in the destiny of the anthroposophical movement by the hostile forces that oppose it. But since that time, everything I have to say is truly suffused with what lies in this pain. And so today I must speak not only out of the same concern as when I last had the honor of speaking here, but I must speak as I now only know how to speak, out of the deepest pain that New Year's Eve 1922 brought us. During the assembly of delegates in July 1923 in Dornach, your representatives, along with those of the other countries, resolved to do everything necessary to rebuild the Goetheanum. We must, of course, strive to ensure that the Goetheanum can be rebuilt in a way that is worthy of it, even if it has to be rebuilt a second time in a different material that is less susceptible to the forces of fire.

I would like to entrust this reconstruction of the Goetheanum, which must now be the concern of those who have loved the Goetheanum and who love what it can be to the world, to your hearts at the end of these reflections today.

Let us act, my dear friends, as we must act out of our pain and out of the awareness that spiritual life must come into our culture again, and let us remain together in this awareness, even if we are not together for a while. For that which can flow out of anthroposophy, out of such a spiritual movement, is already the universal human element, so that souls can be together in spirit, even if they are physically separated: they will always find each other. But they will not only find each other, they will always be able to be together in spirit, which we seek in its true reality through such a movement.

[Rudolf Steiner, who came to the September conference of the Anthroposophical Society in Stuttgart, is taking part in the following session.