The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Before I begin my lecture, I have to report that our dear friend Nelly Lichtenberg has left the physical plane. The younger friends may also know her from her participation in our events, but the older participants know her very well and have certainly taken her deep into their hearts – as has her mother, who is left in mourning.

Nelly Lichtenberg, who had recently sought recovery in Stuttgart, left the physical plane there a few days ago. She and her mother, who was there for her care, have been part of our anthroposophical movement since its beginning. And if I am to express in a few words what, in my eyes, perhaps best characterizes the deceased, who has passed away from the physical plane, and also her mother herself, I would like to say: Their souls were made of pure loyalty to the anthroposophical movement, of pure and deep devotion to the cause. When our movement here in Berlin was still extremely small, we all appreciated the heartfelt loyalty and deep understanding with which they both clung to the movement and participated in its development. Baroness Nelly Lichtenberg carried this loyal soul in a body that caused extraordinary difficulties for her outer life. But this soul actually came to terms with everything in a wonderful spirit of endurance, which combined with a certain inner blessed joy in absorbing the spiritual. And this spirit of endurance, combined with this inner joyfulness, warmed by a confidence in the life of the soul, wherever this soul life may unfold in the future, was also present in the now deceased at her last sickbed in Stuttgart, where I found her in this frame of mind and spiritual state during my last visits. It is clear to you all that anyone who can in any way contribute to a person's recovery must do everything in his power to bring about that recovery. But you also all know how karma works, and how it is sometimes simply impossible to bring about such a recovery. It was, so to speak, quite painful just to see the future when you had the sufferer before you in the last few weeks. But her soul, which was also so extraordinarily hopeful for the spiritual world, led her and those who had to do with her even in the last days. And so one may say that just as her soul departed from the physical plane, so did one here on earth, who had taken up anthroposophy in the true sense of the word, so taken it up that this anthroposophy was not just a theoretical world view, a satisfaction of the intellect or even a slight satisfaction of the feelings, but was the whole content of her life, the certainty of her existence. And it was with this content of her life and with this certainty of her soul existence that she also passed away from this physical plane. It is for us, especially for those of us who have shared so many of the hours here in the physical existence that a person has to spend with her in the same spiritual pursuit, to turn our thoughts to her soul existence. And that is what we want to do faithfully! She shall often find our thoughts united with her thoughts in the continuation of her existence in another region, and she will always be a faithful companion of our spiritual striving, even in her further soul existence. We can be sure of that. And that we promise her this, that we want to powerfully direct our thoughts to her, as a sign of honor, we want to rise from our seats.

Dear Mourners!

Now that the solemn priestly ceremony for our dear 'friend Elisabeth Maier has been performed here, I would like to say a few words on behalf of the spiritual community to which the dearly departed belonged from the bottom of her heart, the dear, good soul.

Elisabeth Maier sought this spiritual community from the depths of her soul because she had an intimate affinity to spiritual being and spiritual work through her entire being, because she knew with human clarity, through the best forces that lived in her soul, how life in the spirit must always triumph over death in the material. Her soul sought the company of human souls united with her in this sacred conviction, united so completely that nothing could sever the bond that bound them together. They therefore also know that death is only a transition from one life to another. But that is why, beloved mourners, the pain and sorrow that such souls feel at the coffins of those who leave them remains in its full magnitude. The pain and sorrow are transfigured, but they are not diminished.

Therefore, in this moment of sorrow and grief, I may turn especially to the beloved mother of the dear ones who have passed away from us, to assure her that there is in the souls that were connected with the dear Elisabeth Maier, the deepest, most sincere and honest sorrow for those who can understand the feeling of life that can comprehend such pain and that expresses itself in the realization that one must say: You gave life to a dear being as a mother, and you had to watch her earthly life disappear earlier than you were able to lift yourself up into the spiritual realm.

And it is out of this deep shared pain that I turn to all the other brothers and sisters, to all the other relatives and to the wider community of sorrow and mourning that is united here. All of you, dear mourners, may in this case truly regard pain as the basis for beautiful, good, sacred feelings and thoughts that may and can accompany the soul now rising up. And on the basis of this genuine pain, but transfigured by our conviction, we may speak the words that are to be a vow to remain in further loyal connection with the soul departing from the earth.

Souls that were intimately connected here on earth with that which flows as spiritual life and spiritual uplift through the spiritual conviction in which Elisabeth Maier lived, of such souls it may be said that they already stepped into life, destined to seek the spirit again here on earth, from which they had descended from the spirit-filled breath of existence in the pre-earthly life, from the community in the spirit, the divine spirit that lives and weaves through the world. Such souls bear the spirit-sign here on earth. And such a soul was Elisabeth Maier. One could truly say of her: she was born of the spirit that was seized in God. And the power of this spirit led her to that spiritual knowledge and spiritual conviction that shone before her like an ideal that carried her like a strong soul. That, in particular, was something, my dear mourners, dear funeral party, that one could experience with our dear Elisabeth Maier, and what, in this hour, with a painful heart, but also, I would like to say, with great supplication, can be expressed here, justifying the dear soul. The spiritual ideal that Elisabeth Maier had set for herself from the depths of her soul was a lofty ideal. It was an ideal that required strong forces. In her always weak body, these forces called for spiritual strength. For a long time, these soulful eyes have looked out of the frail body, gazing so longingly towards her lofty ideal. That was the deeper soul basis of this physical suffering from which our Elisabeth Maier had been suffering for a long time. Her courage to face life wanted to falter, her will to live wanted to falter because she felt weak in the face of the greatness of her ideal. And human words were not strong enough to give her the courage to face life, to give her the strength to live that she needed. And so she died, in a sense also against her soul, against life in the eternal realms of existence, to which she now ascends from this earth. Precisely from the strength with which we were often met here, something like a lack of hope in life, will come to her that strong soul power that will now lead her on in the spirit. For in the last analysis, what sapped her vitality was rooted in her soul strength. She wanted to combine in the great ideal of the spiritual community, of which she was a member with such heartfelt devotion, everything that her soul could muster in the way of strength.

Because the strongest life forces for the soul come from this spiritual community, we stand, allowing this feeling to arise very gently and intimately in our soul, at the disappearing soul that is rising up, the soul of Elisabeth Maier.

We know, dear mourners, dear funeral guests, that through this strong power she has found communion with the one who descended from spiritual heights in intimate communion of spirit with humanity in order to unite with human destiny, who is the conqueror of death, who is the founder of eternal life in all people. We know, dear mourners, dear funeral guests, that she has found the Christ who guides the human souls that seek him through the portal of death, and we know that such souls, which look up to this spirit with such intimacy, find the spirit that reigns through all spaces and times. We know that the spirit of Elisabeth Maier, who is now fading from our lives, will find this spirit.

We will no longer see with her eyes. But we will want to unite our thoughts with her soul, our feelings with the feelings of her soul, our best human existence with her soul existence, and so we can assure those who are the next to grieve, her mother, siblings, other relatives and her spiritual kin, that all thoughts that rush up to the spiritual being Elisabeth Maier will unite with her soul in the future. All those who were intimately connected with her spirit within the spiritual community sought by Elisabeth Maier.

Just as those who were dear to her will find this precious soul up in the spiritual heights, so they will always find the thoughts of those to whom she was, to their sorrow, snatched from the earth all too soon. They will find her in the spiritual heights. And so today, with our soul ascending, we send up the thoughts that most intimately and warmly connected us with dear Elisabeth Maier. We send them up through the same paths that you take, spiritual paths, so that they will always find you. From the words of today's vow, we want to draw the strength that our thoughts connected with you will always seek you, so that you will find the community forever through all worlds in which human souls live through all transformations of existence in world distances and through all time spaces. This we want to vow to you today with your dear ones and those close to you for all time.

Dear Mourners!

Now that our dear friend has been escorted by the clergy into the realms of light, words of farewell are spoken from the hearts of those who were most closely connected to our dear friend: to his dear wife, daughter and to you, dear friends, who were so closely connected to Hermann Linde. These words, which may resonate in the soul of our dear friend, are spoken:

Your soul's gentle beating of wings
Carried you, dear friend, in spiritual orbits,
Your destiny's solemn guiding hand
Brought the spiritual word to your ancestors.

Many a doubt stepped into your path,
But the strength of the heart found
through the light of life and the shadows of existence
to the goal of thought in the spiritual realm.

And so look, faithful friend soul,
in the full spiritual reality,
what you sensibly and meaningfully envisioned
as the future after your time on earth.

And in the evening of your life, you still had to Your daughter's faithful memory
Shall preserve your noble striving.

And we, united with you in spirit in our earthly existence,
We who accompany you to the new life,
Want to dwell with you in spiritual union
In the times of the future and in the vastness of the world.

Dear mourners! Our dear friend was one of the first of our spiritual community to join us in heartfelt intimacy. And we got to know his kind, good heart, whether it was in such a effectively accomplished, sacred work duty for all of us, or whether it was in walking side by side in the confession of our spiritual knowledge, we got to know this good, dear heart, we learned to appreciate it, and we should know to remain connected to it, even after our physical eye can no longer look into his physical eye. And so let our soul's eye look into his in the future, remembering him with all our heart and love, into his dear spiritual eye.

Dear friends! On his earnest path to spiritual research, Hermann Linde has found many doubts and many other soul obstacles on the way. But he has possessed a spiritually inclined, soul-warm inner heart power. With strong inner power, it led him to what he then found as his spiritual word, his spiritual insight, in which we were united with him in intimate friendship.

One could say that Hermann Linde walked in loyalty with the three epochs of anthroposophical life. First he found this spiritual life. Then came the times when he worked in Munich as one of the most effective, devoted and sacrificial collaborators on our festival mystery plays, which, together with others, were also his work. My dear friends, there are many things we have to say: at the time when we had to work on them, they would not have come about without Hermann Linde.

And then, when the call came to build the Goetheanum, which was so dear to all of us and also died on the Dornach hill, he was again one of the first to offer advice and help, giving everything he had: his art, his being, to the work. We have seen how Hermann Linde, outgrowing his artistic life, ultimately sacrificed everything he was able to give in art to the work with which he had completely identified.

And anyone who is able to appreciate and love human loyalty and human devotion could not help but appreciate and admire the quiet, gentle, and yet so energetic soul of Hermann Linde, and feel him as the dearest friend soul who walked with us on our spiritual path.

Many are the hours that come to mind's eye, when I met Hermann Linde working, working at the side of his dear wife, our friend, up in the dome of the Goetheanum, and when he sacrificed his best for the work, whose downfall he and we had to experience with such deep pain.

And when you saw Hermann Linde quietly working in his studio, completely absorbed in the Goethean idea, everything he could feel as an artist, mysteriously enmeshed in this Goethean idea, then you knew: he was one of the best who work among us.

Dear mourning friends, Hermann Linde stands before us. But we also had to accompany him in such a way that we always saw in him how a strong soul, a soul with many desires, nevertheless lived in a weak body. And this weak body took Hermann Linde from us early, much too early, for all of us: this weak body, which those who were more intimately connected with Hermann Linde knew, that everything that stood in Hermann Linde's life, that even doubts arose in him, that sometimes did not allow the intentions of the work to come into full effect, came from him. Those who were very close to Hermann Linde knew that his soul was great and that he himself often felt an inner tragedy due to his weak body,

But that is precisely why he belonged to a spiritual community that is able to look beyond everything that physical-earthly sensuality alone gives, that is able to look up to that which, as a supermundane ability, the spiritually willing soul longs for and hopes for as its great goal. And in my intimate friendship with Hermann Linde, I often had the thought: You may tell yourself that not everything you want in your earthly existence will be granted to you, but you may take comfort in the fact that in spiritual regions your will to transcend the earthly will be strengthened and that you are able to give to the earth all that you would like to give to it. But we had to remind ourselves that we cannot make the same demands on ourselves that Hermann Linde made on himself. And we were truly always in complete agreement with this gentle and quiet soul. We appreciated what he did for us as one of the best.

And, my dear mourners, Hermann Linde can be a role model for many. He wrestled in his quiet mind, wrestled with earnest strength, wrestled with solemn dignity beyond all doubt, beyond all inhibitions, to that knowledge that brings man the certainty: That which you live on earth comes from divine heights of existence. But Hermann Linde appreciated the sacredness of the divine heights of existence, Hermann Linde knew how to see through what secrets these divine heights of existence hold, and he therefore knew how little of that which we carry into this existence from heavenly heights through earthly birth enters into human consciousness of earthly existence.

It is true that we are all born of God into earthly life. But during this earthly life, the human consciousness is too thin to be permeated with divine power. And only in this death, experienced with earthly consciousness, can the divine power rediscover the strong soul power that feels connected to the impulse of Christ, give birth again, resurrect the God in the human breast, the connection with Christ.

And so did Hermann Linde feel. Just as he knew that he had been led from divine existence into earthly existence, so he knew that in earthly death the awakening Christ lives, with whom the human soul, the human heart, can connect. And so today, in this solemn hour, we look up with you, beloved soul, into spiritual regions, knowing that he who retains in earthly existence the awareness of divine origin, who conquers for earthly existence the permeation with the power of Christ, will be reawakened, will resurrect in bright, luminous spiritual heights. Dear friend soul, our friendly glances from the depths of our hearts longingly accompany you. We want to let our best thoughts, which were connected to you, follow you there. We know you in the heights of spirit in the future. It will be for us to seek again and again from the depths of our hearts the thoughts that go to you, that may unite with your thoughts of purpose in the light of spirit, that want to remain with you for all time, that you will have to go through for all the worlds, that you will have to permeate. Yes, our thoughts may be with Your thoughts, out of the earthly labor, which we could feel, with which You were spiritually connected to us through Your own choice in this earthly life.

May Your thoughts, my dear mourners, always follow the spiritually connected one in his future earthly joyful existence, preparing himself for a new earthly existence full of light. So may it be. And so may our thoughts follow you, may they stay with you, our dear Hermann Linde, and may we understand to stay with you, even when our soul must seek you in the bright heights of the spirit.

The gentle beating of your soul's wings
Carried you, dear friend, in spiritual paths,
Your destiny's solemn guiding hand
Brought the spiritual word to your ancestors.

Many doubts arose in your path,
But the strength of your heart found
Its way through the light and shadow of life
To the goal of thought in the spiritual realm.

And so look, faithful friend soul,
In the full spiritual reality,
What made sense to you, shiningly envisioned
As the future after the time on earth.

And in the evening of your life, you still had to
Deep in the soul, our great pain
from the flame;
For earthly existence, it broke your heart.

Your wife's sincere heart love,
She will follow your spiritual life;
Your daughter's faithful memory
Shall preserve your noble striving.

And we, united with you in spirit in this world,
We, who accompany you to the new life,
Want to dwell with you in spiritual union
In the times of the future and in the widths of the world.

This morning we had to see off our dear friend Hermann Linde at the gate through which he will now enter the spiritual world. At such moments, my dear friends, it is up to us to make real, in a deeper, moral-religious sense and in a deeper sense of feeling and perception, what anthroposophy can trigger in our souls, what anthroposophy can inspire in our souls. It is, after all, our whole endeavour to get to know the spiritual world, to learn to live in the soul with the spiritual world.

In the moment when a dear soul departs from physical existence and enters into that life, in order to gain knowledge of which we strive, we must also feel the strength and the power to sustain in the full sense of the word all that which should have become ingrained in us during that time while we were here on earth in a spiritual bond with a soul that has now passed away from us. And we should learn to understand in the right sense that we should maintain the community in which we have found each other, beyond the bonds that are woven through earthly life. We should be able to hold that love warmly, which connects us with such souls, even when that warmth of feeling cannot be kindled by external impulses as it can when the soul in question is still walking among us in a physical body. Only then do the powers of perception that can be triggered in us through anthroposophy have the right strength, if we are able to do so. We should also be able to keep the memories of a dear dead person alive in a different way than someone who has not taken in spiritual knowledge into the depths of his soul as we have set ourselves the goal.

And Hermann Linde is indeed bound to our souls by many beautiful memories. A large number of those sitting here know this without a doubt, some perhaps in a looser way. But Hermann Linde was a personality of whom it may be said that even those who knew him only briefly grew to love him. Those who have been part of our society for longer know Hermann Linde as one of the first to join the society in order to follow a shared spiritual path with the other friends united in it. And those who knew Hermann Linde more intimately know that he was not one of those who joined this spiritual path in a mere effervescence of feeling, in an inner-soul sensation, but that he strove, out of innermost self-knowledge, to find the possibility of uniting his path with the path of this spiritual current.

Hermann Linde was a mild nature, but a nature that also had a strong, justified critical spirit within the mildness of his soul, a nature that examined what came its way, and a nature that had to examine because other impressions that were already there had stuck in the soul in a strong way. And so Hermann Linde had to fight his soul's battles with what lived in his soul, what warmed his soul, what often filled his soul with bitter doubts on the one hand, and with what, because it differs so much from everything else that one encounters in the present, on the other hand, with anthroposophy, he had to fight his soul's battles with these two currents. And today, when his life on earth is complete, we can look back on it and say to ourselves: When a soul so noble, mild and inwardly earnest has found its way into this spiritual movement, not from overflowing sentiment but from inwardly true self-knowledge, then this spiritual movement can regard it as a kind of testimony that confirms its inner strength. A movement that is in a position to point out that good people have found the opportunity to unite with it can consider itself fortunate in the most beautiful sense.

And it was indeed the case that our anthroposophical movement in its first period could, by the nature of things, be nothing other than a place where souls found themselves and their connection with the spiritual world. In view of the tasks that the anthroposophical movement has had to take on in later times, many older members may well say to themselves: Oh, if only it had always remained so, if the Anthroposophical Movement had remained in that first epoch, when it was basically a gathering of people who interacted as people, who formed an inwardly cohesive association that initially looked to the spiritual current flowing through it.

Hermann Linde knew how to unite with his own soul that which flows through the Anthroposophical Society as a spiritual current; but he was also one of those who, with an open heart and an unlimited willingness to make sacrifices, devoted themselves to every new task that arose from this spiritual movement. And for many who enter this spiritual movement, it should be so that they look to the example of such a personality.

Hermann Linde entered the anthroposophical movement as an artist. He first placed his entire artistic being at the service of this movement and then, in the third phase of this movement, sacrificed it at the altar of the same. We look back because what happened through the personalities working within our movement must be of value to us. We look back to the time when the Anthroposophical movement in Munich, steeped in true inwardness, had to be led into artistic channels. At first we needed people who could infuse it with artistic life. And now I would like to call upon those of you who remember the Mystery performances in Munich to recall in your inmost soul how marvelously unified were the stage sets that Hermann Linde contributed to the individual scenes of these Mystery Dramas out of his, I might say, natural willingness to make sacrifices. For some of those who were present at those performances, these images will be unforgettable, for they arose out of a real experience of what was to arise at that time before the soul-vision of our anthroposophists. And the words I spoke this morning from a deeply moved heart, I would like to repeat them here: We know very well that much of what was to be done back then could not have been done without a subsidy like the one that came from Hermann Linde.

And when the idea arose in some people's minds to erect a building for the anthroposophical movement, it was again a matter of course to call upon Hermann Linde in the circle of those who wanted to devote themselves above all to the construction and management of this building, because they knew that they would find a willingness to make sacrifices, a willingness to work, above all, what is most needed: a reconciling, loving spirit that balances differences.

And so Hermann Linde joined the small community of those who, as a kind of committee, led everything that was initially connected with the intention in Munich and then with the reality here in Dornach: to build up the anthroposophical cause. And he was also one of the foremost in the ranks of those who took on the work of this construction. He was imbued with such inner love for the cause that he now linked his entire existence in these last years with this construction.

And again I would like to repeat a word that I said this morning: When I think back to the hours when I met Hermann Linde, working up in our now-defunct dome room, working in harmony with our dear friend, his wife, when I discussed the most diverse matters with him up there that were related to the management of the building and to the role he held within this leadership, then in all of this lay, firstly, the revelation of his unlimited willingness to make sacrifices, the unlimited application of his artistic skill to what was to be built there, and on the other side there was also that reconciling spirit that balanced out the contradictions, which was always there with advice, rather than criticism.

Many a person has thought that either they themselves or others – as is always the case in life – could have done better what Hermann Linde has done. But these things are vain illusions. What matters when something real is brought into the world lies much more in what Hermann Linde had in such an outstanding degree than in what some believed he did not have. It would not have been possible to work with the things that were often criticized. Hermann Linde's approach to our work, which was so self-sacrificing and lovingly conciliatory, allowed us to work on every detail and as a whole. And if we are to talk about the workers in our cause, then Hermann Linde must be mentioned in the first row.

But then it must not be concealed how great our sorrow must be that he left us so early, for a difficult time that undoubtedly lies ahead of us. But he was so intimately connected with everything that concerns us here in our earthly existence that we may hope for the help that the souls from the spiritual realm can provide for those who have remained here from him to the greatest extent possible, if only we prove worthy of this help.

Many people are unaware of the extent of the individual concerns that weighed on the leading personalities during the last few years of the Dornach building work. Today it is self-evident to point out that Hermann Linde was one of those who bore these worries in the most beautiful way, but that Hermann Linde was also one of those who followed everything that happened here with a broad-minded interest and who would have liked to see many things develop into greater fruitfulness, precisely by reconciling the differences, than has been possible so far.

Many of us will remember how Hermann Linde was always among those who had the sincere desire to bring about a union of artists here among us. He was certainly not a person who would have excluded or restricted any individual activity. Out of the infinite kindness of his heart, he wanted to create a collaboration. And much of what has been achieved in this direction can be traced back to his initiative. And the fact that many of the seeds he has planted in this regard have not come to full fruition is truly not due to a lack of his own zeal. Let us remember with what heartfelt love and devotion he reported on the progress of the artistic work at our Goetheanum during the meetings of the Goetheanum Association here in this hall. Let us remember such things as what is most intimately connected with the history of our movement. We must not forget, especially at this moment, that it was Hermann Linde, for example, who gave the impetus for the small further training school established here at the Goetheanum, and that he devoted his special care and attention to this further training school.

But this is just one of the many gaps that arise in our ranks as a result of Hermann Linde's passing away from the physical plane. And those who will have the task of filling these gaps in some way will feel what Hermann Linde meant to us. Because what we take for granted in certain areas of life – that wherever a gap is created by a person, another will step in – is not the case at all.

And finally, Hermann Linde had to go through with us the pain that affected our and his work. He had to be among those who, in a short time, saw what had been built out of love and devotion dwindle to ruin. And it is truly true in the deepest sense, as I had to speak this morning, that for his earthly existence this broke his heart. This impression, which he experienced on New Year's Eve and which was a death for much of what our cause is, was deeply burning in Hermann Linde's soul. And the short span of time that he was still granted to spend on earth after the Goetheanum fire was entirely under this impression.

The last time he spent here on earth was a time of suffering. He also felt deeply in his innermost heart all that is being done against the anthroposophical movement by various opponents. That is why the last time he was allowed to dwell on earth was a time of suffering. And if pain is what deepens life in the spiritual world that follows on from the time on earth, Hermann Linde has taken much of noble pain into the form of existence that he has now entered. All this, my dear friends, should fill our soul today. And it should be the starting point for thoughts of devotion for this soul to remain in our souls. Then we will worthily find again the dear soul that has been taken from our physical sight, but that should remain with us in the most intense way in our spiritual sight.

If we can do this, if we can love Hermann Linde with the same intensity with which we loved him here, and with an ever-increasing strength, then in this case we fulfill the anthroposophical view of life that we should be able to fulfill.

The starting point for a spiritual community with this soul should be the days when he is snatched from our physical sight. He left behind his dear wife, our dear friend, and his dear daughter. We must understand the pain they feel over his death, in true inner warmth. We must understand that we make our thoughts about him, which are devoted to him, quite precious by remaining connected in the most intimate love, as long as we are granted this on earth, with these, his friends who have survived him. We must make it our will and his spiritual joy to be for those who remain behind what can serve him, when he looks down on what is happening on the site where he worked for so long, to give him inner spiritual and soul satisfaction. This is truly practical anthroposophy for the soul. If we know in the right sense that death is not the destroyer of life but the beginning of another form of life, then we must understand in the right sense that the love that has been assigned to one who is now dead to earthly life also enters into another form of existence with this death. And if we do not understand this metamorphosis of love, then we do not understand in the right sense the metamorphosis of life, which we think we understand when we join a spiritual movement like anthroposophy.

And so let us reflect today on how beautifully Hermann Linde has realized in his own heart the conviction that what a person is and does here on earth comes from the divine: Ex deo nascimur. It should be borne in mind that he found in his heart the strength to recognize, for earthly consciousness, that in this consciousness the power of Christ must come to life, so that what begins to die in man at birth may, through the experience of the power of Christ, gain the right to a new life: In Christo morimur. And in thinking of Hermann Linde today, we share the conviction that when the consciousness of our divine spiritual descent unites with the consciousness of union with the Christ impulse, we may live in the conviction that human existence is God-conscious and imbued with Christ: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

These thoughts affirm that in us which enables us, for all time, to look up in loyal thoughts to the soul of Hermann Linde, which will continue to work in the spiritual existence as a continuation of its earthly existence. As a sign of this, my dear friends, we rise from our seats.

My dear friends, perhaps it is appropriate on this day, in the short span of time that remains to us, to reflect on an event like this. We must be clear in the innermost part of our soul about how what we live through in our physical existence on earth, and also live through in our soul, is bound to the outer senses and to what the mind makes of the impressions of the outer senses. But the outer senses, with everything that the mind makes of them, do not follow us into the after-earthly existence. We hand over the external senses to the earthly existence with physical death. What the mind makes of the impressions of the outer senses, we hand over to the etheric world a few days after physical death. It melts away from us, and in all that follows, we are dependent on continuing to live out that which is immersed in the darkness of the unconscious while we live our earthly life.

To some extent, a person lives their life in the state between waking and sleeping. They are filled with what is experienced through the senses and through the mind, and what they find extinguished with death in the form in which they experience it here on earth. Every day, people experience the other side of existence between falling asleep and waking up. But even if the experiences within are immersed in the darkness of the unconscious for earthly consciousness, what appears to some to be of little importance for earthly existence: for what comes to life in the human soul when it has passed through the gate of death, it is precisely these experiences, which then transform into full consciousness, that are the most essential part of earthly life. What we go through here on earth in unconsciousness, we carry through the long time between death and a new life on earth.

The greatest difference between what we perceive, see and think here on earth and what we see on the other side after we have passed through the gate of death is in relation to the outer nature. Anyone who believes that they can exhaust what is hidden and revealed in nature with their physical senses and earthly mind while they are awake is mistaken. They only know the smallest part of nature. Nature has another essential side, the side that we live through between falling asleep and waking up, which is deeply hidden from the conscious mind, which in the truest sense of the word represents another side of our existence. The one side of existence that nature assigns to our earthly senses and our earthly mind is extremely different from the other side, which is assigned to our soul, our spiritual nature, which belongs to eternity.

He who can form a correct idea of this radical difference, he who realizes to what a high degree it is the case that, while nature reveals to our senses a completely unspiritual, un-animated entity, seen from the other side it is through and through an infinite abundance of spiritual entities in themselves, he can also comprehend what an enormous difference there is between the human being when it is clothed here in the physical body, and the human being when it has discarded the physical and etheric bodies and lives on in its soul-spiritual part beyond the gate of death. Not only in itself, but in the whole relationship to ourselves, there is a radical difference. We face a human being in earthly life, we experience together with him what happens in earthly life. What he experiences is imprinted on our earthly thoughts. Through our earthly thoughts it becomes our memory. During our time on earth, we carry this other person within us in our memory. But every time we see him again, it is not just the earthly memory that works in us, but what flows out of his soul as a living being and is poured into this earthly memory. Consider how the memory of a person that we carry within us is enlivened when we are face to face with him in earthly life, how infinitely more alive for earthly thinking is that which streams from him into our memory than is this memory itself.

And now he leaves us, out of the physical existence on earth. We are left with the memory, to which he himself adds nothing metamorphosing, nothing transforming, nothing enlivening after his death. We are left with the memory, just as we are left with thoughts of the outer nature when we see it with our physical senses, grasp them with our physical minds, where the things of nature add nothing to our knowledge, to our thoughts, where we must keep our thoughts all the more objective, the more we want to faithfully depict that which is, and where we must not be led astray by that which could modify these thoughts from life. But just as the other side of nature is different from what it assigns to us for the senses and for the earthly mind, so is that which a human being is when it has become merely an earthly memory for us, different from what it was when it lived these earthly memories day after day, from time to time. For from this point on, this human being now appears to us, to our experience, entirely on the other side of existence.

Just as we live in our sleep, so we live with the natural beings, who are inwardly spiritually alive, in contrast to what is dead and assigns its dead countenance to us for the earthly senses. So that part of the human being that which for our earthly life has now become only a memory, lives on this other side of existence, in that realm which we experience when we are pushed into unconsciousness, into the darkness of unconsciousness, in that realm which we pass through in our sleep.

Yes, my dear friends, just as our thoughts are invigorating and our impressions are vivid when the physical human being steps before us and we consciously experience him in his earthly consciousness, so we experience — unconsciously, but no less real for that — the approach, the coexistence with us in sleep of the one who has passed from earthly existence. To the same extent that the deceased disappears from our waking consciousness, he enters our sphere of life for our sleeping consciousness. And if we human souls, based on anthroposophical knowledge, know how we have to learn to adopt a completely different attitude to life for sleep than we do for waking, then we will feel what has been said.

If we could only live in such a way that the later always follows the earlier in physical time, we would never be able to experience the true spiritual. We only learn to experience the true spiritual when we can change the direction of life in the opposite direction. As paradoxical as it may seem to the physical thinker, all life in the spiritual takes place in the opposite direction. The wheel of life comes full circle. The end comes together with the beginning at last.

This seems so incredible to people on earth only because they have distanced themselves so far from any spiritual view. But every time we fall asleep, even if it is only for a moment, we experience time running backwards. For the path leading back to the spirit from which the world originates is a path leading forward.

And even what older cultural movements recognized as correct, namely that those born later return to the forefathers in death, is more correct than the idea we have in our seemingly so enlightened time.

But then, when we set out on our journey to the spiritual realm every night, in the opposite direction to the physical, those who have gone before us in physical death are the ones who precede us. And as we enter a spiritual world every night, we find, so to speak, figuratively speaking, the entities of the higher hierarchies at the front, who never incarnate on earth, and then, below them, the procession of those souls with whom we were fatefully connected and who passed through the gate of death earlier than we did. And that part of the journey, which, if not consciously, then at least in our unconscious thoughts we are allowed to follow in every state of sleep, that is the part in reality we follow them.

And if we can keep the memory of our dear dead alive and vivid, if we also have these thoughts in a vivid imagery again and again in our waking state, then what we lovingly carry within us as memories during waking hours makes it possible for the dead to have an effect in this world, to pour their will into it, and that the will of the living continues to live in the will of the dead. But also what we fully awaken again and again in our memories during waking hours for the dead, goes with us into the state of sleep as forces with a lasting effect. It is different for the dead when we fall asleep from a life in which we have forgotten our dead, or from a life in which we have lovingly called the images of our dead to our soul again and again. For what we carry into the world of the spirit every time we fall asleep becomes a sensation for the dead. There their soul perceives the images that we carry through the portal of sleep into the spiritual world every day. And so we can bring it about that the perceptive faculty of the dead unites with the images that we faithfully preserve for them during sleep. In this way we can bring it about that the will of the dead unites with our will through our thoughts, if we cherish and care for them in loyal remembrance when we are awake. And so we can learn in a real way to live with the dead.

Then the dead will find us worthy of living with them. And only then will the true human community arise, which is instinctive only within the physical world, but which also becomes spiritual for this physical world when the extinguishing of physical life on earth does not loosen or even break any spiritually formed bonds, when everything that is bound in the soul can remain, even though the outer earthly bonds are loosened or broken. This means that through the human soul the reality of the spirit is preserved when we admit the truth to the spirit in life by not depriving it of its reality, by not surrendering to the physical and sensual alone, but by finding the possibility to live freely in the spiritual and soul, as if compelled to do so in the physical and sensual.

This is what every death, and in particular the death of a dear friend, can remind us of, what it can call us to, not just as a dead memory, but as a lasting, living sensation, memory.

My dear mourners!

First of all, I would like to address my dear sister and dear brother of the dearly departed and then all of you, my dear mourners, who were united in loyal love with the one who has left us in the physical world.

At the mortal remains of our friend Georga Wiese, we stand in the soul's eye, the eternal spirit going to light heights from us. Dear Georga Wiese!

We know what moved you in spirit,
We feel what warmed you in the heart,
We strive for what your will urged.

Your mental agitation, your warmth of heart,
your will urge,
They stand before our soul.

And memory presents you to us:

How you thought with us,
What we consider the most worthy content of thought,
How you felt with us,

What we consider the most beautiful love of the soul,
And how you strove with us,
What we consider the truest goal of humanity.

And as a reminder, the spiritual vision stands before us:

How you are received by the spirits of the light-filled heights,
to work in the spirit,
to see the result of your deeds,
to speak the language of eternal being.

Weave, oh Georga Wiese, in your work in the spirit,
Behold in the result of your deeds,
Let penetrate into the language of eternal being
The ray that can penetrate into our hearts
And that returns to you again,
So that in the times to come
can live the spiritual existence together with you.

My dear mourners! When I put myself in Georga Wiese's dear soul, then these words resound in this dear soul:

Whoever was looking
for a loving heart,
Dear friend, he will surely find it beating in your chest.

Those who seek
an understanding soul, Dear friend, he will surely find it gazing from your eyes.

Those who seek
active help, Dearest friend,
He will surely find it coming
Through your will.

So may hearts beat for your soul,
so may eyes look into your eyes,
so may wills come to your spirit,
when, like the sun, your example
in the eyes of our souls
From spiritual heights.

We,
Your heart's companions,
Your soul's partakers,
Your will's admirers,
Gaze
Upon Your soul, released from time. Remain
Our eternal companion.

Let,
Ye spirits in bright heights,
Us keep
In the endless spiritual lake,
What unites us
To Thee in the earthly realm.

Thou gavest us
Most faithful spiritual friendship.
Ye spirits in bright heights,
make our hearts strong,
so that we may prove worthy
of the gift
that the gods have given us.

My dear mourners!

Deeply moved and filled with sorrow, we stand at the mortal remains of our dear friend Georga Wiese, looking up to her soul as it rushes off to the spiritual realms that she sought with such earnest striving during her earthly existence. And we know that she will be united in the future with those spiritual forces with which she united during her earthly existence out of such warm and active striving. We see what her spiritual existence will be like: a continuation of what has already been spiritually alive in her heart, in her soul, in her spirit here on earth. And we remember, my dear mourning assembly, every dear hour that united us with Georga Wiese, because these dear hours were always filled with active participation and with earnestly placing ourselves in the spiritual world. It was always filled, so it may well be said, by each individual who stood opposite Georga Wiese; it was always filled, this hour of being together with Georga Wiese, by the heartfelt conviction: You are standing opposite a dear, a loyal, a heart-warming person.

And this love, this loyalty, this wonderful warmth of heart, it radiated from Georga Wiese to such an infinitely beautiful extent that everyone who met her felt how beneficial and at the same time how deeply understanding this togetherness could be. We were privileged to get to know Georga Wiese in her native environment, to which she wanted to convey the spiritual life with such zeal and such an understanding gaze from her beautiful soul. We got to know her in her loyal attachment and love for the country, for which all of us who were privileged to be up north felt the most heartfelt love, and we saw it, and we were allowed – at least a large part of us – to work in this Nordic, rocky, sea-washed, divinely interwoven land, which presents itself so beautifully and majestically to one, and upon entering which one can believe that the hard rocks speak a hard but inwardly spiritualized language. And one comes to love this country. And one comes to love it especially when one is favored by fate to find such dear people in it, like Georga Wiese and those around her.

We took the most heartfelt interest in how the dear mother had preceded us into spiritual lands, and we wanted to witness how expectantly and understandingly this dear mother would now receive her precious daughter.

We saw Georga Wiese lovingly in the midst of the Nordic circle that had become dear to us. We saw her surrounded by a number of like-minded people. And my eye could not detect anyone who was not devoted with sincere love to the devoted soul of Georga Wiese. And much, much of what we were able to achieve in that country, where we are so happy to work, has been made possible by the sacrifice of Georga Wiese.

Do we still need much to recall in our hearts today, in these days of mourning, all the love that we had to feel for the dear departed over a long period of time, because earthly love could only be a reflection of the intimate, active, sacrificial love that came from her. The union with Georga Wiese was beautiful, and the beauty of this earthly union will be the seed for the spiritual union, which we must enter because Georga Wiese entered the spiritual realm before us. For it is a beautiful image that arises in the soul when we imagine ourselves in the Nordic country. We found warmth, the warming rays of sunshine in our hearts through Georga Wiese.

And it was always a beautiful thought, it was always a warm feeling to be able to say to ourselves, within the work in the Nordic country, Georga Wiese will stand by our side with all that she can be. That, my dear mourners, will no longer be here on earth; but we know, we hope, we long for it in our hearts, that we will remain united all the more deeply and intimately for all time with the soul of the one who united with us in a friendship of the spirit out of such a free and devoted will.

And today we remember with sorrow, with deep sorrow, with deep pain, that we will never again be able to look into those loving eyes, that we will never again be able to feel the blissful closeness. But we look up to the light of the heights, to the worlds of spiritual life, with which Georga Wiese has united, and to which we want to send our warm thoughts again and again and again, so that she may find the thoughts that are sent down to us from these bright spiritual heights, thoughts that protect, warm and help us.

And we digress from the image that has led us up to the Nordic homeland, and we look to the building that we tried to build the spiritual life here in the vicinity, which a bad, sad fate has snatched from us; we know how much has been snatched from it as well as from our dear friend. But we saw her over the years, when she repeatedly came to the Goetheanum in Dornach, as if seeking a home, and we see her in everything that had to be done, working faithfully and in close understanding. We see the hundreds of hands and the hundreds of hearts that worked and beat for what was happening at the Goetheanum, and we saw, among them, the beautiful enthusiasm that Georga Wiese brought back from the Goetheanum in Dornach, working there with a mild soul, a whole, mild personality in the light of love. It was beautiful, glorious, and almost beyond words to describe. And wherever something was missing, wherever help was needed, on a large or small scale, Georga Wiese was there. And she was there because she believed that she should do, out of her loving heart, whatever needed to be done, in complete freedom.

And we, we can only stand there today with heavy, grieving, sorrowful hearts and send heartfelt thanks to the soul that is fleeing, seeking the spiritual realm. Thanks that remain warm in our souls, as everything 'that was soul-warming, what Georga Wiese brought into our ranks, into our work. And she knew how to do it so unpretentiously, so intimately modestly. You could tell that she only gave when she had detached it from the personality. Georga Wiese's personality always took a back seat to what she meant to so many. And when, my dear mourners, the word has been used for centuries to describe souls that were of this nature, then today we no longer use the once much-used expression that encompasses so much: a beautiful soul. Goethe called the dearest person in the spiritual realm that he had come to know a beautiful soul, and today, in all the sense that ancient times once associated with these words, we look up to the beautiful soul of Georga Wiese.

And our soul's eye comes to the third image. We called the friends who wanted to join us in shaping the Anthroposophical Society in a new way at this Christmas season, to the Goetheanum in Dornach. And among those who came with an enthusiastic heart was Georga Wiese. And as soon as she arrived, anticipating the festive event she wanted to take part in, she had an accident in which she broke her arm at an unfavorable point on the upper arm. And she had to spend the days we had gathered to establish the new form of the Anthroposophical Society, to lay the foundation stone for it, in hospital. She had to spend the days she wanted to spend in festive company with those she loved in hospital. She had arrived at the place where she had often wanted to come, and she had come gladly again, and fate had kept her away from what she wanted to take part in.

Once again, the beautiful soul of Georga Wiese was at work. Outwardly, she had the most faithful care in the hospital and from the understanding doctor, and in this respect I was deeply satisfied when I was able to speak to her doctor myself during a visit shortly before her death. But it was still very moving to see Georga Wiese lying in serious illness and to have to bear in mind how much she would have liked to have been in a different place during these days. But once again, the radiance of what I have just mentioned outshone my dear mourners, the beautiful soul. She carried everything she hoped to find within our festive Christmas community in her soul, in her heart. And from her bed, in an almost heavenly transfiguration, she radiated to me from her faithful, loving heart all that she had experienced at the end of the days before Georga Wiese's death, when we celebrated the festival that she had also come to. She truly carried this celebration in her heart, she truly carried this celebration in her soul. For within her, everything in her soul was filled with powers that spoke to her from spiritual heights: “Ex deo nascimur, from the divine all human beings are born.” These words came to her without end, deeply affirming her own being.

And Georga Wiese knew that she was called by the divine. She knew that she was carried into earthly existence by the wide powers of divine existence. She knew this divine power at work in her own soul. She felt these divine powers in her own heart. She wanted to let this divine warmth, which flowed through her, stream into her own will without end. Her soul itself lived in the light of the words: Ex deo nascimur. — And she knew how that which reached divine heights disappears into earthly existence, and how the human being, whose outer physical body, is accepted by earthly existence. But she also knew that even if man dies into matter at every moment, the great power imparted by grace, which is in the living Christ, is at work in the earth. She felt it, it lived in her heart, it lived in her soul, it lived in her mind: In Christ morimur.

Dear mourners! If I could have read in the heart that I saw just a few hours before the difficult day that preceded her death, if I could have seen the light that radiated from this “In Christo morimur”, it was so sincere, so deeply spiritual and honest in the soul of this faithful soul, so genuinely devoted to everything beautiful, great and loving in the world. Oh, there was a great contrast in these last hours between this soul, which looked out of tired eyes, but with infinite luminosity, into the indefinite, which complained how little her body could still tolerate of earthly substances, and which was so visibly filled by what the spirit communicated to the soul.

I had to leave Georga Wiese in a state of deep concern. My dear mourners, if one understands the spiritual underpinnings of the human being while he is still on earth, one may only strive with strong, powerful thoughts to say that he will, he will be healthy. For it is often such thoughts that, with the mysterious forces that exist between human soul and human soul and between world spirit and human spirit, still carry many a soul beyond the act of death. But the patient was still alive because of the serious damage that had been done, which only allowed for ominous forebodings. It originated from the damaged area and spread like dark rays over the entire body. But hope lived on. The next day, hope was no longer allowed to live. We received the news that our dear friend had been taken from us in the morning for earthly life.

Dear mourners, this soul is now deeply connected to that which we have all striven for here, to that which moved us so deeply during the Christmas days, as we are all deeply connected to it, since she left us, to die in our midst during these our festive days, still sharing in spirit here on earth what we went through, then seeking the way up to spiritual heights.

Dear mourners, I can assure you that I speak for everyone here when I call this soul, so deeply devoted to the power of Christ, the one who, through this tragedy of death, has joined us in the very depths of all eternity, in such a solemn time for us. Always remember this soul devoted to Christ with all the strength that will ultimately transform the pain in your own souls when you allow the deep tragedy associated with this death, which fills us with such sorrow, to take effect.

Oh, from this death a spiritual life shall spring that unites us intimately with Georga Wiese for all eternity. And this spiritual life, she always lived it. From the “Ex deo nascimur - In Christo morimur” arose for her the self-evident conviction that the human soul, if it harbors the power of the Father's Word, if it cherishes the will of the Son of God and His love within itself, will resurrect in the Spirit, in order to grasp in the Spirit the life that belongs to the endless Spirit of the Kingdom of Light: “Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus”. This is surely the magic breath that has been wrested as the living breath when the earthly breath ceased with Georga Wiese.

And with this spirit, which constantly awakens all that is dead, we want to unite to gain the strength to remain united in the eternal spiritual existence of the future with Georga Wiese.

The three pictures may remain unforgettable to those who have come to know her: the lover in the midst of her beloved homeland, which we ourselves have grown so fond of; the loyal, active woman who inspires enthusiasm with her heart, herself loyal, active, enthusiastically sharing, working, creating, living in the construction of the Goetheanum in Dornach; the dying woman, uniting with us in death to eternal life at our very meaningful Christmas gathering in the transition from 1923 to 1924. The power of these three images must live in your hearts! And they will live in your hearts if you allow the power of these images, together with everything that this beautiful soul had in common with you, to take effect on you, will be united in the beautiful, light-filled life of the one who has now left us in death.

We know what moved you in spirit
We feel what warmed your heart,
We strive for what your will urged.

Your mental excitement, your warmth of heart,
your urge to will,
they stand before our soul.

And the memory of earthly things presents itself before us:

How you thought with us,
what we consider the most worthy content of thought,
how you felt with us,
what we consider the most beautiful love of the soul,
how you strove with us,
what we consider the truest goals of humanity.

Alongside the memory of earthly things stands the vision of the spirit – up to the light-filled heights:

How you will be received by the spirits of the light-filled heights,
To work in the spirit,
To see the result of your deeds,
To speak the language of eternal being.

Weave in your work in the spirit,
Look into the result of your actions,
Let penetrate the language of eternal being
The ray that can penetrate into our hearts
And that returns to you,
So that in the future we
we may live the spiritual life united with You.

Oh, it seems to me as if Georga Wiese is speaking from bright heights:

I was united with you.
Remain united in me.
We will speak together
in the language of eternal being.
We will be active
where the result of action is effective,
We will weave in the spirit
where human thoughts are woven
in the word of eternal thoughts.

Those who were looking
for a loving heart,
Dear friend,
were sure to find it beating
in your breast.

Whoever sought
an understanding soul,
dear friend,
surely found it gazing
out of your eyes.

Whoever sought
active help,
dear friend,
surely found it coming
through thy will.

So may hearts beat for thy soul,
so may eyes gaze into thy eyes,
so may wills come to thy spirit,
when thy sun-like example
in the eyes of our souls
shines from spiritual heights.

We,
Your heart's companions,
Your soul's partakers,
Your will's admirers,
Gaze
Upon Your soul, released from time.
Remain
Our eternal companion.

Let,
you spirits in the bright heights,
keep us
in the endless spiritual realm,
what unites
you in the earthly realm.

And when we see you, received by the spirits of the bright heights, by the souls of our dear relatives who have preceded you in death, to whom we lovingly think, because they were yours, then, then the words shine into our warm hearts:

You gave us

most faithful friendship of minds.

You spirits in bright heights,

you united with Georga Wiese in spirit,

you preceding, you belonging human souls,

make our hearts strong,

so that we become worthy

of the gift,

that the gods have given us with Georga Wiese,

we will do so.

With this attitude and the promise to unite our thoughts unceasingly again and again with your spiritual being, dear, dear friend, that you are with us even when we can no longer look into your faithful eyes, that is what we want to promise you, knowing that when we now, in this moment of suffering, commit your mortal remains to the fire, in the heavenly spiritual fire, which does not consume, but works charitably warming through souls and spirits, we will be united with you, united in the light, in love, in loyalty to humanity, in the will of the spirit. Thus we part. Thus we do not part. Thus we feel united, united, united for eternal times of existence with the soul that lovingly departs from us.

Ex deo nascimur

In Christo morimur

Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

My dear friends!

We have seen two of the most self-sacrificing members of our Anthroposophical Society pass through death and depart from the physical world in quick succession. Mrs. Ferreri died recently in Milan during the time of my absence, and today is the first time that I can reflect on this departure. Mrs. Ferreri was a long-standing member of our society who worked for it in the most self-sacrificing and dedicated way. Wherever it was a matter of selflessly standing up for something that affected the interests of society in one way or another, Mrs. Ferreri was there.

She was not only active in northern Italy, working from Milan for the anthroposophical cause, to which she was completely devoted, but she also worked in distant Honolulu to establish a branch that is actually her work. Although it is not seen much here because it is so far away, it is thriving in an extraordinarily favorable way and has a warm and supportive effect within the anthroposophical movement. It is precisely from this branch that we repeatedly receive the strongest evidence of interest and participation.

It was always extraordinarily touching to see how devotedly Mrs. Ferreri worked in every respect. And for her, this arose from a deep inner connection with the anthroposophical cause, from that deep inner connection that I would call an inner knowing faith, knowing through its certainty. That is how it was with her: knowing through the certainty of being inside the anthroposophical movement. And so she remained faithful in her heart until her death. She was so faithful that, although she was extremely ill and although she undoubtedly received every help in the place where she was, in Milan, she still wanted to travel here during the last days of her illness because, as she wrote to Dr. Wegman, she believed that she could only recover here, at the center of the Anthroposophical Movement. Only her rapid death prevented her from coming and taking this last step, which was one of the most beautiful testimonies of her loyal devotion to the cause.

I think that we – and I mean the most diverse among us, numerous members who are also gathered here today, numerous other members – have come to know the wonderful mind and noble soul of Mrs. Ferreri in the most beautiful way. and that we follow with our thoughts, in the deepest feeling of our hearts, the soul that has passed through the gate of death and will certainly continue to live in intimate relationship with the anthroposophical cause. I ask that with these thoughts, which linger with the thoughts of the departed, our dear members, insofar as they are gathered here, rise from their seats for a while to unite their thoughts with the departed.

Now, my dear friends, on the occasion of a member who was deeply involved in the construction of the Goetheanum in Dornach, who was actively involved in the construction of the Goetheanum itself, has left the physical plane, and now, at this very moment, the coffin has to be closed and taken away, you will allow me to interrupt this lecture for ten to fifteen minutes to close the coffin and then continue it. It is Saturday, and there is no other way, the coffin has to be transferred to the crematorium in Basel today. (pause.)

My dear friends, now we have had to send the earthly remains of Edith Maryon to the crematorium in Basel. Friday morning, the membership of our Anthroposophical Society, as far as they are here, were affected by the painful news that our long-standing colleague, a colleague since the beginning of the work here at the Goetheanum, Edith Maryon, has left the physical plane. Today it is my task to briefly point out some of the things that the deceased found and gave within the Anthroposophical Society, what she has done here at the Goetheanum, and we will then gather at the Basel Crematorium at 11 o'clock on Tuesday for the actual funeral service.

Edith Maryon sought out what could be found in the anthroposophical movement by first becoming a member of another esoteric group and participating in the most diverse works of this group as a very active member. This was an esoteric group that later found its way into our anthroposophical movement through a number of its members. Then, still during brief visits to the anthroposophical movement in Germany, Edith Maryon came over from England. At first she found it difficult to integrate on the outside, as she did not understand German. But with an iron will she overcame precisely this obstacle and was thus able to fit into everything that was happening within the German-speaking part of the anthroposophical movement in a relatively short time. She identified so closely with the Anthroposophical Society that she participated from the very first task here in 1914, from the perspective of her particular artistry.

Edith Maryon had been a well-known sculptor for many years. She has created sculptured portraits of prominent figures in English politics, diplomacy and society that have received acclaim. It is, of course, difficult to make an impact in the field of art today; but Miss Maryon has, to a high degree, succeeded in making a name for herself in the art of sculpture.

But the most essential thing in her soul was not any particular branch of human activity, even if it were art; the most essential thing in her soul, her soul's intentions, was the striving for spirituality, which, as already mentioned, she had sought in that esoteric group in which she had been before she joined the Anthroposophical Movement. It was mainly this esoteric deepening that she then continued to seek within the Anthroposophical Society for herself and for the striving of her soul. But she was inspired by a far-reaching and comprehensive intention to work with us on our work. And that is what I would like to present here, because Edith Maryon was a long-standing and intensive collaborator, and we have now lost her in her.

I would like to point out how exemplary she was in certain respects, especially in the particular way she devoted herself to the Society in terms of her work for it. Anthroposophy today, my dear friends, is not only a much-challenged but also a difficult thing to accomplish if it is taken seriously. If anthroposophy and the anthroposophical movement are taken seriously, then there is no other way than for the individual to offer what they are able to contribute in this or that field at the sacrificial altar of the work of the society. And so it was with Miss Maryon. She offered her entire artistic talent at the sacrificial altar of the anthroposophical cause. She had grown into a kind of sculpture that one acquires today by going through the appropriate school, by going through everything that then brings about the opportunity to present one's work to an audience interested in art and so on. All this – it may be said, because Miss Maryon understood it perfectly – actually helps nothing within the Anthroposophical movement. Anyone who believes that it helps within the anthroposophical movement is on the wrong track. You cannot bring anything into the anthroposophical movement in a certain sense; rather, you must first leave what you have before if you want to work actively. If you do not believe this, then you do not have a clear idea of the extent to which the anthroposophical movement must draw on the very earliest sources of human development in order to fulfill its task and achieve its goal. And just as it is possible in the most diverse fields, my dear friends, so it was also possible in the field of sculpture when it came to building this Goetheanum, which unfortunately was so painfully snatched from us.

Edith Maryon not only took part in the development of the central group, but also in the most diverse sculptural work that was needed for the construction of the Goetheanum. And it was not always just a matter of producing some model or other. It was also a matter of doing all the work that was not actually visible on the outside, but which was necessary if such a special art was to be integrated into what the Goetheanum must generally achieve. And so, if we fully penetrate ourselves with the awareness from the outset that in Miss Maryon a person has come into the anthroposophical movement who has sought the esoteric in the most ardent, fullest sense, we can throw into the balance the way in which she, who has now left the physical plane, really engaged with the work. That is what I would like to characterize in particular by evoking her memory in you.

It is quite natural, my dear friends, for someone to bring in something from outside, be it this or that art. Anything that is brought in through external training is actually something that I cannot agree with, so that what is brought in is actually not something that I can agree with. Nevertheless, it is necessary for the whole to flourish that the individual contributes his abilities. You understand from the outset that the individual must contribute his abilities. The sculptor must contribute his abilities. The painter must contribute his abilities, and so on and so forth. You understand this, because otherwise I would have had to carry out the whole Goetheanum construction alone. So, in the truest sense, co-workers were really needed for the Goetheanum, co-workers who could bring the best of their abilities, but who could also sacrifice this best of their abilities, because, if I express it in external terms, I can never actually agree with what is brought in.

What I myself now had to accomplish in the field of sculpture was, of course, something quite different from what Miss Maryon could contribute. So what was it actually about? It could not be about working together in such a way that some kind of resultant of the interaction would arise, but it could only be about the work being done the way I had to have it done, the way it had to be done according to the intentions of the Goetheanum, which I had to represent.

You see, my dear friends, what comes into consideration here is that a completely new interest arises: the interest in the work itself. For this to happen, people are needed who have this interest in the work, without anything else, so that the work itself comes about. Whether or not they agree with each other, the work must come about, the work must be possible. In characterizing this, I am characterizing precisely what is needed for the work at the Goetheanum.

And Miss Maryon had two qualities that I would say are most needed for the real work in the Anthroposophical Movement: two qualities on which the work of Miss Maryon here at the Goetheanum and in the Anthroposophical Society in general was actually based. The first was absolute reliability. There was no possibility that anything I intended that Miss Maryon was supposed to carry out would not be carried out, would not be taken completely seriously and taken as far as it could be taken, as far as it was intended to go. That is the one quality needed – I mean within anthroposophical work – so that when I state something about myself, it is then sufficient in the statement, that the fact of the statement can simply stand, and that there is then certainty that the matter will be carried out.

The second was an extremely well-developed practical sense. This can be said precisely with regard to the occasion of passing away from the physical plane, for the reason that this practical sense is actually what we leave behind here on earth when we go through the gate of death, but which is indispensable when it comes to really working. You see, there are many idealists who are mere idealists without a practical sense. And it is good when there are idealists, and the idealist himself is good. But the idealist with a practical sense is what is needed in the world. And mere idealists are dependent on those people who develop a versatile practical sense, if only these practical people stand at the same level of idealism. Contempt for practical sense is not at all what can somehow lead to such work, imbued and permeated with spirit, as is urgently needed within the Anthroposophical Society and movement. People with a practical mind are particularly valuable there. People who are sculptors are valuable there, but also people who, when necessary, can make a lampshade in a place where a special design is needed, who can actually do everything they set their minds to, in a certain way. Of course, this is always subject to certain limits. But we do need people within the anthroposophical movement who can really do what they want, because many people want to do, but the prosperity of our Anthroposophical Society is based on those who can do what they want.

Fichte's saying has also been quoted here often: Man can do what he should, and when he says, I cannot, he will not.

These two qualities then led Miss Maryon to do a great deal, which was done in a quiet, calm manner, after she had actually only sporadically brought her own sculpture to bear, and without which the work of the last few years would not have been possible.

In doing so, she extended her practical interest and sense to other things, which certainly helped our movement. It is thanks to her selfless efforts that the teacher training course was held here, which was attended by English teachers and was held around Christmas time some time ago. It is thanks to her selfless efforts that Mrs. Mackenzie has campaigned so energetically for the movement in the field of education in English-speaking countries. Finally, it is also due to her selfless efforts that the Oxford course was able to take place, the Stratford Shakespeare visit was able to take place and many other things were able to take place precisely because of her mediation between the anthroposophical center and the English-speaking regions.

It was extremely valuable that she, on the other hand, never encountered strong resistance in her work when it came to completely changing an intention that was dear to her. For example, the idea of the eurythmy figures originated with her, as did the first attempts to make such eurythmy figures. The idea was extraordinarily fruitful. But the form of the eurythmy figures had to be completely changed. Miss Maryon never shrank from completely changing anything to suit the circumstances, so that the resistance of an attachment did not work in this direction.

And so I may say, my dear friends, that through her work, many quiet and peaceful tasks have been accomplished for the Anthroposophical Society, for which it has every reason to be deeply grateful. I do not even want to look so much at the quantity, certainly, in terms of quantity, very many achieve very much, but in terms of the quality of the work, of the way this work is integrated into the anthroposophical cause, very much has been achieved by those who have passed away that is actually irreplaceable. Only that which has a special inner quality is irreplaceable in the development of humanity. Of course, even such things can be replaced, but then an equal inner quality comes. As a rule, however, they are not replaced in the process of development. And it must be reckoned with this karma that precisely this special quality of Miss Maryon will be lacking in the building of the second Goetheanum.

The most remarkable chains of fate are connected with the construction of the first and second Goetheanum. The germ of Miss Maryon's illness was laid during the night of the fire at the Goetheanum. And from what was laid by that germ during the night of the fire at the Goetheanum, she could not be cured, no matter how careful the care. These are karmic connections. And although much can and must be done through the art of healing against these karmic connections, karma is nevertheless an iron law, and only when even the most careful care has failed can we truly think of karma. While a person is still on the physical plane, we must think only of how he can be cured. And in this direction, through the completely self-sacrificing efforts of Dr. Wegman, everything that could be done has been done. Edith Maryon also left the physical plane at Dr. Wegman's side – I myself was unable to be present due to other commitments.

Now, my dear friends, I have thus pointed out the special kind of connection that existed between the Anthroposophical Society and Edith Maryon. And I believe that this kind of connection will be what makes Miss Maryon unforgettable for the Anthroposophical Society. She will be unforgettable to all those members whom she has met in one way or another over the years, and I may call out to her in particular what is still to be said about the deceased when we have the funeral service at the Basel Crematorium at eleven o'clock on Tuesday.

What I had to say today should culminate in showing how a quiet, self-sacrificing working life within the anthroposophical cause has been effective here, that it is irreplaceable, and that I am certain that those who understand what it actually means to work in a leading position within the anthroposophical movement, as I must do, will take what has been said in an understanding sense. It is not easy to work responsibly within the anthroposophical movement.

My dear friends, please regard what I am about to say about Miss Maryon's death as something that I would like to say to you in general today. This leadership, what does it require? This leadership requires the following, and in particular, since the Christmas Conference, I have often had to point out what this leadership of the anthroposophical movement requires. It requires that I myself be able to carry up to the spiritual world what happens in connection with me, so that I am not only fulfilling a responsibility towards something here on the physical plane, but a responsibility that goes up into the spiritual worlds. And you see, if you want to participate in the right way, you have to be willing to participate in what the anthroposophical movement has become since the Christmas Conference, to understand what it means to be accountable to the spiritual world for the anthroposophical movement.

I could talk a lot about this topic, and I would like to say one of the many things on this very occasion. Of course, a wide range of personal matters are expressed by people in the anthroposophical movement. What is represented on earth as personal, when it mixes with what is supposed to happen for the anthroposophical cause, is an element that, when it remains personal, cannot be justified to the spiritual world. And what difficulties arise for someone who has to justify a matter to the spiritual world when they sometimes have to bring with them what they have to answer for, which comes from the personal aspirations of the people involved. You should be aware of the effect this has. It causes the most dreadful setbacks from the spiritual world when one has to face the spiritual world in the following way.

Every person working in the anthroposophical movement is working with personal ambitions, personal intentions, personal qualities into that which they are working with. Now one has these personal ambitions, these personal tendencies. Most people are unaware that they are personal; most people consider what they do to be impersonal because they deceive themselves about the personal and the impersonal. This is then to be taken along. And this has the most dreadful repercussions from the spiritual world on those who have to carry these things, which arise from personalities, into the spiritual world.

These are the inner difficulties, my dear friends, that arise for a movement such as that of Anthroposophy within the Anthroposophical Society. And it must be pointed out. It is certainly terrible that we have such terrible opponents, but these opponents must be treated in the right way in some way. But as regards the inner life, as regards how anthroposophy is to be represented, it is much more terrible when it becomes necessary to carry the fruits of the labors of the anthroposophical movement burdened up into the spiritual world, burdened with the personal interests of one or other. And little thought is actually given to this fact.

This is what I must mention when I want to characterize the particular achievement of Edith Maryon. And in this respect, the Anthroposophical Society owes a great debt of gratitude to the departed, because she has increasingly understood how to carry out her work in this spirit. These are the things I wanted to and should mention today, based on the idea that such achievements, symbolically speaking, are truly entered in the golden book of the Anthroposophical Society, and above all should be entered in the books of the hearts of its members.

I am sure you would also want me to place what is to be developed today and on Tuesday at the cremation in your hearts in such a way that I ask you to direct your thoughts to her, who has entered the spiritual world, for her thoughts will most certainly be with the further progress of the Anthroposophical Movement. And because of the way she has engaged with it, her thoughts will be full of strength, and it will therefore also be a powerful experience to connect with her thoughts. And as a sign that this is our will, we will rise from our seats in honor of the departed, in the certain confidence that a beautiful, lasting, and powerful connection for the anthroposophical movement has been created.

Now, my dear friends, I have said all I wanted to say today, which in a sense is also connected with the idea of karma, for life and teaching are connected for us, already incorporated into the two obituaries that I had to speak with a heavy heart today. It will now be my task to continue the reflections on karma so that what we have gained from the consideration of individual karmic connections in the human world can now be applied when we ask the big question in our own hearts, in our individual being, how what we personally experience, what we see as often overwhelming, often distressing events in our environment, what we see that is distressing, that we are distressing part of, how that relates to karma, if we want to observe it in a fateful, karmic way, if we want to come to a powerful effect in life by observing the Katmas. This will be able to follow on from the karmic considerations that we have been practising for weeks and which we will then begin to develop in this way tomorrow, applying them specifically to the individual human being, that is to say to individual human experience, to the personal position of the human being in relation to karma.

Dear Mourners! This as a final farewell to Edith Maryon, our loyal colleague:

Those who look at your path of karma,
poor in joy,
Your noble spiritual striving,
the warmth of your soul:
The human being's sense of purpose appears to him
from your life on earth.

Whoever feels your quiet being,
loving,
sees your soul's tireless efforts
never tires:
To him appears the heart of a human being
from your daily life.

Whoever stood before your death door,
the all-too-close,
sees the hard path of suffering
the gently endured:
the meaning of human suffering

He who beholds in the spiritual spheres,
The beneficent,
Weaving your soul life in the future
The light-radiant:
A human being's spiritual power appears to him
From your eternal being.

He who beholds from the heights of the sun,
The warm and loving, Your look down to us, The helping one: The power of blessing of a human being From Your spiritual activity.

Dear mourners! I would like to turn my thoughts first to the absent relatives who were unable to attend on the day when we had to commit the earthly remains of our dear Edith Maryon to the elements. The eldest brother of the deceased, Herbert Maryon, has instructed me to convey all the love that could still be shown here on the part of the family of the deceased. The others, a sister in London, another in the north of England, and a brother in Australia, are unable to be here and can only join us in spirit. But we, my dear mourners, on this day of mourning look back at the earthly life of Edith Maryon.

She came to us in our Anthroposophical Society more than ten years ago from another esoteric community, full of a noble, sacred striving for esoteric deepening of the soul. All this was present in her, alongside what she presented in her outer life. She was an artist and, in her way, a truly accomplished artist, an artist who had full access to the means of art and was fully familiar with the workings of art. She had practised sculpture in England and Italy. She had achieved great success in this art long before she joined the Anthroposophical Society. Edith Maryon has painted a whole series of portraits of respected and well-known personalities in the world. In Italy she immersed herself in everything that is great, beautiful, sublime and haunting in art. So she came among us as an artist and esoteric. At first she sought nothing from us but to deepen her soul through esoteric development. But karma brought it about that she found herself compelled to place what was hers in art in the sacrificial service of our Goetheanum, and from the very beginning she was active at the Goetheanum with all that she, out of her art and out of her human nature, was able to contribute to the completion of this Goetheanum and to everything connected with it.

Looking back on her working life, we see that it was interrupted only once, in 1914, when she suffered a very serious illness while on a trip to England. It was an illness of which it could well be said that if it were to recur in a serious way, Edith Maryon would no longer be able to remain on earth. But at that time she recovered through the efforts of her friend Dr. Felkin, a physician, and was restored to us in 1914 for further work at the Goetheanum. From the time she was able to lay down her work on the altar of sacrifice at the Goetheanum, this was the one thing that stood at the center of all her duties and all her spiritual life. And she has just found the opportunity to do real work that truly leads to a goal within the anthroposophical movement.

It is quite natural that within the anthroposophical movement, the new impulses that I am to introduce into the most diverse fields of art, science and life come into conflict in the most diverse ways with what can be brought in, with what can be acquired with external art, with external science and so on. But there is a way of working if, above all opposition, there is a noble devotion to the work itself, if never may an obstacle be seen in a different view of how to work together. If the work is to come about, it will come about, even if one of the traditions of the older art comes from the other, and the other is obliged to bring art to a further development out of new impulses. If there is true human cooperation, then the commonality of the work can transcend all opposition.

This attitude was present in the highest degree in Edith Maryon's quiet work. That, however, many factors came into play in her working with me, may today, when we have to part with the earthly remains of Edith Maryon and look into the future, to the soul that strives upwards into the spiritual kingdom of light, there continuing to work, may well be said today to a wider circle. It was almost at the beginning of my work as a sculptor at the Goetheanum in Dornach that I had to work on the scaffolding at the top of the statue of Christ in the outer studio, the large front studio, where the model was located. At that time, I almost fell through an opening in the scaffolding and would certainly have fallen onto a pillar with a sharp point if Edith Maryon had not stopped my fall. And so I can already say, my dear mourners, that the Anthroposophical Society, in a certain way, if it believes that my work since that time has also had value within its society, has the rescue back then to be grateful for.

These things were seldom spoken of, for it was not Edith Maryon's way to talk much about her work, especially her human work. But in a very special way she displayed what may be called energy in calmness, energy in quiet work. And the two qualities which stood out as humanly beautiful and valuable were, on the one hand, Edith Maryon's reliability, whenever it was needed, and, on the other, her practical sense.

In the spiritual striving that is necessary to work out into the world, it is essential, my dear mourners, that there are also people in it who have a truly practical mind, so that what is to be realized out of the intentions of the spirit can also come before the world, can be embodied before the world. And of Edith Maryon it can be said that her reliability was something absolutely true and faithful. If she undertook something that required her practical sense, it would be there in due course, even when the work to be done was quite remote from her actual professional activity.

In addition to her collaboration on the sculptural work at the Goetheanum, which really took up even more of her time than what has since become visible, even in the Central Point Statue, in the Central Point Group, she was the most eminently suitable force for the sculptural work at the Goetheanum in the most eminent sense. She mastered the art of sculpture and was inclined to take in everything that was to permeate this art.

But something else was needed for this. A continuous interaction between the old and the new in art was necessary, and much of what has been created at the Goetheanum, without having been made by ourselves, does indeed contain the spirit that was working with Edith Maryon in the development of the plastic arts at the Goetheanum. But she went out; her energy in the quiet worked in a broader sense for the flourishing of the development of the anthroposophical cause. If it has become possible in recent years to give lectures and work for anthroposophy and eurythmy in Stratford, Oxford, London, Penmaenmawr and Ilkley, the credit is due to Edith Maryon's quiet work in mediating between the Goetheanum and the English-speaking population. It was she who first suggested the Christmas Course held years ago around Christmas time, attended by English-speaking teachers. It was she who suggested the artistic representation of the eurythmic movements and figures. And I would still have much to say if I wanted to point out everything that Edith Maryon has achieved through quiet, energetic calm. |

But that is not so important. What matters is to bring this trait of her life, which reveals itself so beautifully in her work, before our minds today.

And she was torn from this life by the fact that her old ailment was again revealed to her through the upheavals of the night of the fire in which the Goetheanum was taken from us, and that despite all careful nursing, this life could not be preserved for its earthly existence after all. Last summer, when Edith Maryon was able to make at least a few very short trips, we believed that this life could be sustained. But already in the fall it became clear how much destructive forces had intervened in this life.

It is truly out of consciousness of that karmic connection, which I expressed by pointing to that accident in the studio, when I say: Edith Maryon was predestined to enter the anthroposophical movement, and with her death much is snatched from the Anthroposophical Society, from the whole anthroposophical movement.

Much of what was her own was revealed in the most beautiful way, especially in the last few weeks, when her suffering became so extraordinarily oppressive and painful, partly through the way she bore this suffering, partly through her full attitude towards the spiritual world, which was entirely borne out of the spirit of anthroposophy, for which Edith Maryon had been preparing herself for weeks.

Due to other commitments, I was unable to be present at the hour of her death. Edith Maryon then guided her soul out of her body, with the help of her dear friend Dr. Ita Wegman, in order to lead it up into the spiritual world. She was cared for until her last hours, not only by the doctor, but also by the nurses who had become dear to her and cared for her, and it was under the care of these nurses that she often spent agonizing hours in the last days, but these could always be brightened in an extraordinarily beautiful and spiritual way. Medicines were no longer effective in the end, but what was still effective were the lectures that could be offered to her, either from what had been given as sayings at the Christmas Conference, or from the New Testament.

At that time, at the Christmas Conference, when there was still hope that we would be able to hold Edith Maryon here in the physical world, she was given the leadership of the Section for the Arts. With tremendous intensity, she endeavored, even on her deathbed, to direct her thoughts continually to the way in which this section should now come into being, and how it should work.

From this life, my dear mourners, the soul of Edith Maryon now ascends into the spiritual worlds, imbued with all that can be gained from the knowledge of anthroposophical spiritual hope and anthroposophical spiritual life. She carried, as did few, the living consciousness in her soul that she had emerged from the eternal source of the Father-Spirit of the world with her best being: Ex deo nascimur. She lived in intimate love, looking up to the Being who gave meaning to the evolution of the earth. In her last days, she had Christ's saying “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden” nailed to the side of her bed. In death she knew herself united with the spirit of Christ: In Christo morimur. And so she is certain of resurrection in the most beautiful way in the spiritual world: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus, in which we want to be united with her, to which we want to send our thoughts so that they may unite with hers. Then we can be sure, my dear 'mourners', that her thoughts, her soul's gaze, will rest. No, they will not just rest on the deeds that can still be done for the anthroposophical cause from the Goetheanum, they will work faithfully and powerfully, energetically, they will be among us when we need strength, they will be among us, and we will be able to feel their quiet comfort in our hearts when we need such comfort in the various trials to which the anthroposophical cause is exposed.

The will and testament that Edith Maryon drew up regarding her few possessions is touching. In it she remembered in an extraordinarily loving way all those who are close to her in any way.

And so we look up into those spheres where you continue to live, conquering death, wanting to be with you, united with you in that unity that never dies, that is imperishable through all the circles of the eternity that weaves and billows through the world.

He who beholds thy karmic path,
Poor in joy,
Beholds thy noble spiritual striving,
The warmth of soul:
To him appears the sense of human activity
From thy walk on earth.

He who feels thy so quiet being,
The loving one,
He beholds Thy soul's endeavor
The tireless one:
He beholds the heart of a human being
From Thy daily life.

He who stood before Thy gate of death,
The all-too-near,
He beholds the hard path of sorrow
the gently borne:
To him appears a human being's sense of endurance
from your sickbed.

Who can feel your beautiful spiritual work,
The one who is earnestly guided,
He who sees your life given up
To the spiritual goal:
He sees the strength of a human being's sacrifice
From your soul's struggle.

Whoever looks into the spiritual spheres,
The blissful,
Weave in future Your soul life
The light-radiant:
A human being's spiritual strength appears to him
From Your eternal being.

He who gazes from the heights of the sun,
The warm and loving,
Your loving gaze, the giver of help, to him appears the power to bless, from Your spiritual activity.

And so go then, You, soul so faithfully devoted to our holy cause! We want to look up to You. We know that you look down on us, we know that we remain united with you through all the circles of eternity. We live on with you, you who live the life that conquers death, as long as we are here, and when we are no longer here, we live on with you, united, united, united.

Before I begin the lecture today, I would like to say a word of remembrance for a person who is very precious and beloved to us. We would certainly have had the satisfaction of having Admiral Grafton among the participants at the eurythmy performance today if he were still with us in the physical world. And to dedicate a word of remembrance to him in these days is a heartfelt desire for me.

Admiral Grafton joined our ranks here in Dornach with the warmest and most heartfelt commitment to anthroposophical endeavors. His connection to anthroposophical endeavors was the most intimate imaginable, and when he spoke of this connection to anthroposophy, one could only be deeply moved in one's heart. Admiral Grafton had a long, busy life behind him, and during this outward-looking, working life he was always keenly interested in acquiring a worldview, a philosophy of life. interested in acquiring a worldview, a philosophy of life, and he often spoke to me about how, for many years, he sought his worldview and philosophy of life from the spirit of the age from Herbert Spencer, the more materialistically inclined philosopher, just as a person experiences this spirit of the age, on whom this spirit of the age initially has such an effect with all its power and might, as it must have on many of our contemporaries. But Admiral Grafton was a man who, in the truest sense of the word, was a seeker. And so he repeatedly told me that the great satisfaction of his life was that, after a long search, he had finally come to an understanding of life through anthroposophy, although he had started from the opposite pole. And one always had the feeling that when this personality spoke about a connection with anthroposophy, it was not only from the depths of the heart, but there was also a wonderful, almost beautiful enthusiasm in this sense of connection, an enthusiasm that must truly appear as a particularly beautiful one when it is spoken from a heart that who had reached old age through a life of hard work.

When I think of the lectures I gave here, and during which I always saw Admiral Grafton sitting in the auditorium, devoted to the lectures, with a touchingly warm and attentive attention, one could say to oneself: There is a heart that listens. — There was a heart that listened. Admiral Grafton was only able to listen because of his general enthusiasm for the spirituality of anthroposophy, as he did not understand German well enough to follow a lecture. He could only follow with his heart. He was only able to follow the general thrust of the matter. And that is what he was like, but always inwardly joyfully excited, always devoted to the matter with heartfelt enthusiasm.

He was overjoyed when his daughter turned to eurythmy and spoke about it with touching, joyful enthusiasm when he talked about it. He was truly devoted to anthroposophy in an exemplary way. He was a personality full of kindness, who could only truly live when she was able to perform acts of kindness towards her fellow human beings. He helped us in many ways by repeatedly playing the flute in our eurythmy orchestra. And he did that with a truly warm, admirable and, I may say, exemplary devotion, because I have experienced many instances of people who were supposed to participate being late. Admiral Grafton was never one of them. He was always in his place. And above all, he was always in his place when his help was needed in some way, large or small. He helped us tremendously in many ways. Admiral Grafton was truly a personage who was loved by everyone, and I know that I speak from the hearts of many when I say these short words of remembrance for him here in the spiritual world.

It was actually the case that in the last few days before we traveled to England, Admiral Grafton was in a devoted mobility, and, surprisingly for the outer life, the news was sent to us by our dear friend Heywood-Smith that Admiral Grafton had left the physical plane during an operation. All of us who received this news were deeply affected. And I am very grateful who could not be here in person at the funeral service for our dear friend, that the friends, especially our friend Heywood-Smith, have taken it upon themselves to say beautifully, devotedly, with a deep understanding of the personality of Admiral Grafton, what I would have liked to have said myself at the funeral service if I had not been detained in England out of duty.

I can say, my dear friends, that in this case, the numerous personalities who are now here and who have not heard of have not heard from Admiral Grafton, did not know him, may believe that the Goetheanum was fond of Admiral Grafton, and that of those who loved him here, the most unifying thoughts will follow him to the places he has now entered, having passed through the gate of death in such a surprisingly quick way. We are grateful to him for all that he has accomplished through his infinite kindness among us here. But we are also grateful that we were able to witness the heart-moving sense of purpose and noble enthusiasm for the anthroposophical cause in this personality, which had previously been so strong in the world. And it is out of this gratitude that we form the thoughts that will continue to connect us with the spirit and soul of Admiral Grafton. We know that he looks down on the anthroposophical movement with a devoted heart and a powerful soul. We know that our thoughts for him are truly imbued with the wish for spiritual benefit and for the anthroposophical cause to flourish. And so all of you, my dear friends, who are gathered here today, are gathered together with the circle that lived with Admiral Grafton here at the Goetheanum for the last years, and rise from your seats with us in memory of this noble soul. May our thoughts unite with his in free will, as is right and proper among anthroposophical people, who know that the bonds formed in life here on earth can endure, if they are honest and genuine, through all time and also through the eternities.

Record A by Unknown

The four elements correspond to the four bodies of man in the manner described above. With the high sun spirits, the order is reversed. The blaze of desire, the highest of the four lower bodies of the sun spirits, is not the same as the state that man undergoes in Kamaloka, but their blaze of desire is directed towards the highest and purest.

These sun spirits emerged from the earth (plus moon) with the sun because human development would otherwise have become

so fast in 1908 that man would have been consumed; he could not yet endure fire and air at that time.

The etheric body of the human being corresponds to water; it has built up the glandular system, the reproductive organs, and the digestive organs of the human being. The astral body of the human being created the nervous system within him.

During the Atlantean times, the sun spirits did not work in the human being at night as they do today. When a person sleeps today, the sun spirits work in his physical body through the embers of desire.

The highest of the sun spirits is the Christ. He prepared the disciples he needed to prepare humanity for his coming. The seven Rishis, mighty entities who, so to speak, sat around the table of the Christ, guided humanity from the Atlantean into the Aryan basic race and the Indian sub-race. Outwardly, they were simple men. Each of them was initiated into the mysteries of one of the seven planets.

One disciple whom the Christ himself had trained was Zarathustra in the Persian race. He saw in the mighty aura of the Christ what he had experienced. He could not reach the Christ himself. He called it Auramazdao, Ormuzd. He saw the mighty battle of the evil beings against the power of the Christ and their defeat.

He had two main disciples who carried his knowledge forward for the benefit of human development. One was Hermes, who founded Egyptian wisdom, and the other was Moses, to whom the Christ, the “I am,” appeared in the burning bush. They were all forerunners of the Christ. Buddha was also one of them and, so to speak, sat at the Round Table of the Christ. He also foretold us of Him until He could appear in the flesh.

When the sun went out the earth, not all its power was lost to mankind. It continued to work from outside and through the moon, which gets its light from the sun. When Yahweh appeared in the burning bush, he appeared as the bearer of the power of Christ.

The forces of the Christ-Sun have been active throughout the ages, most strongly around the time we call Christmas time. On the night of the winter solstice, those who were intensively engaged with these things could ascend to these forces, to union with the Christ. Since the event at Golgotha, it is also possible to do this by completely surrendering to the impression of this event. Then one has mystical moments when one can penetrate and the Christ comes to meet one in the night. It does not have to be Christmas Eve, but any of the nights around then.

Record B by Camilla Wandrey

When the sun and the earth separated, a downward development began for man to the physical body, but for the exalted sun beings it was an upward development. And that which corresponds to what our physical body is for them is light for them: light is their garment, that is, their body. We write “I” for the human being.

It is written in reverse. Why, that emerges from meditation on it. The high beings of the sun did not separate from our earth at that time, they always influenced everything that happened on earth. They work in light and warmth. Their ruler, the highest being of the sun, the Christ, has always been working.

In ancient Indian culture: the seven holy Rishis were simple people, but when they were in an inspired state, the planetary spirits spoke through them, each through one of the Rishis. Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus and also the high sun spirit, the Christ. Zarathustra spoke of Ahura Mazdao or the [illegible], that was the Christ, and he taught his disciples. He had two disciples: Hermes and Moses, and to the latter the Christ later appeared in the elements of the earth, in the burning bush and lightning fire of Sinai, for the Yahweh deity is none other than the reflected Christ deity.

Then the Christ-God Himself appeared on Earth and dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and a new impulse came into the development of the Earth.

During sleep, the I and the astral body leave the physical body. During sleep, the physical and etheric bodies are nourished by the higher beings of the sun, and in such a way that what is the burning desire of the higher beings of the sun is absorbed. In Atlantean times, this covering of the physical body with the beings of the sun could only take place on one single night during the year; and this night was Christmas night. This gradually disappeared. Through the impulse of Christ, and in accordance with the Mystery of Golgotha, this covering can again take place during the nights around Christmas time and on Christmas Eve itself, but only if the person has prepared for it through meditation. Dating Lessons

Notes from unknown

F.M. hours: hours of celebration. Only correct preparation and deep inner, devotional feeling.

Meditate on the Lord's Prayer. One Master I know meditates on the Lord's Prayer only once every four weeks, and in the remaining time prepares himself worthily to do so in deep devotion. Correctly, listening carefully to the mood, feeling, and tone. Every word, every sound has deep significance.

Only a fraction of the occult lodge is in the theosophical lodges, but nevertheless, it is the great responsibility for everything that penetrates into humanity. Time conditions: In the past, everyone was only happy for themselves. This egoism must be transformed into the ability to forget oneself.

The three periods, the Solomonic, Mosaic and Abrahamic Ages, which existed three times for three thousand years before Christ and must now be lived through again. The Solomon and Mosaic periods have almost been passed through. The Abrahamic period begins with the year 2000 AD. From 1932 to 1940 many occult abilities will already have awakened, such as clairvoyance and so on.

Solomon Age - wisdom
Mosaic Age - legislation
Abrahamic Age – Inheritance

The fact that people who have influenced humanity – such as Luther and Calvin – continue to exert their influence on souls in devachan means that people born after Luther are endowed with a similar spirit, for example with regard to the representation of personal and individual “opinions” on religious matters and so on.

The Abrahamic period, which at the time brought about the hereditary physical conditions, is said to make people more and more independent of birth in the future (coming Abrahamic age), thus leading them out of the bonds of blood and hereditary burdens.

The Lutheran period relates to the Mosaic Age in much the same way as the earlier Mosaic period, in which the law gave people a common and external guideline, while the Reformation period helped people to find their way out of this and to rely entirely on themselves in their relationship to the spiritual and divine.

Later, people are to find the one truth again out of their own free will.

Before Christ

1. Abrahamic Age: The God of the self reveals himself as Jehovah.
2. Mosaic Age: He reveals himself in the burning bush. 1909
3rd Solomonic Age: He reveals Himself through the symbol of the temple.

After Christ

1st Solomonic Age: The spirit of Solomon works through the best of that time. Solomon's wisdom was applied to the secrets of Christ Jesus.
2nd Mosaic Age: Moses repeats in a sense the Sinai revelation. The God of unity, but now not appearing from the outside. He now reveals Himself within, in the mysticism of Eckhart, Tauler. They were filled with the spirit of Moses.
3rd Abrahamic Age: At that time, the deity descended into the sensual world, approached it; now the time is coming when the spirit of wisdom will lead it out again into the spiritual world, when it will ascend from the sensual world back into the spiritual world.

(In Berlin, Dr. Steiner had used the example of blood-love and the leading of love out of the bonds of blood to illustrate this going in and out and rising up.

Dr. Steiner also mentioned the spiritual reappearance of Christ in the coming decades and said that this event would have an effect even in the realm of the dead. Those who, through theosophy, have gained an understanding of this event here on earth will also feel Christ's presence near them there. For the others, it will pass without a trace there as well.

Notes taken by Günther Wagner or Martina Limburger-von Hoffmann

What we want to consider as an aid on the occult path during this meeting today is entirely the responsibility of those whom we call the “Sages of the East”. The words that are to be spoken are to be understood as an inspiration from this side. Let us dwell for a moment on what we call self-knowledge, not that self-knowledge which man imagines he finds by constantly brooding over himself, but self-knowledge which is of the greatest importance for esoteric striving, in order to make meditation and concentration effective and fruitful in our soul.

When we enter into the sacred moments of meditation in the right way, it is comparable to touching the string of a musical instrument in our soul, holding on to it for a while and then letting it fade away slowly, so that the reverberation remains in it for a long time. But that is not all that must happen if we want to achieve a far-reaching effect. We must try to hollow out our soul completely, to empty it of all impressions, even of the effect of meditation. Then you will notice, though only after a long, long time, but after the appropriate time you will notice that you are getting closer and closer to the spiritual worlds, which you have already sensed and felt before, that you feel them with greater certainty, even if the clairvoyant eye cannot see them.

The souls that are now embodied in physical bodies were together for a time between death and new birth with the souls of those who lived in the sixth, seventh, or eighth century after the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, and also with the souls of those who were contemporaries of Christ Jesus.

Now, the Christ impulse has come into the world to tear humanity out of the selfishness into which it had gradually fallen, and it had to come so that people would not become completely hardened in their own egos. But He could not work as would have been necessary, for He came at a time when egotism was at its strongest on earth, and even today He is only at the beginning of His actual mission.

The bond that is to entwine soul to soul must first be woven little by little. The spiritual science points out the right way in which true brotherly love must develop in future times.

Now, through the reception of the Christ Impulse in the souls at this particular time, a very peculiar religiosity arose, which has been preserved until our time. People involve the Christ so completely in their egotism because they only strive to be saved themselves, to secure a place for themselves in heaven. What must I do to be saved? They did not realize, and still do not realize, that this is an expression of a greater selfishness than when one person begrudges another his possessions and tries to snatch them away from him.

Now the souls that were re-embodied today, at least for the most part, were also still together with other souls during their stay in the devachan state. They were still together with the souls of those who had descended in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who had implemented this egoism, which they brought with them into this embodiment, so that they considered only their own opinion to be the right one, only wanted to accept it, which had caused the great religious disputes, Calvin, Luther and so on. With these souls we were together between death and new birth. To know this is of the greatest importance, for only by knowing all these facts can one arrive at true self-knowledge, which is so necessary for progress on the occult path.

The Mystery at Golgotha is indeed the greatest sacrifice that has been made for humanity for its release from the bonds of selfishness, but it is by no means the only one. At all times there have been individuals who descended to Earth, worked there for a time and then sacrificed their three veils for the good of humanity. There have always been such individuals. They were, as it were, forerunners of the Mystery of Golgotha; the most powerful sacrifice of all times was that of John, the forerunner of Christ Jesus on earth.

Such a sacrifice of the three veils leaves a powerful impression in the spiritual atmosphere in which it took place for a long, long time. Such an event took place many, many years ago in southern Europe. When I was in Palermo in Sicily some time ago to give a lecture, I noticed the peculiar atmosphere, the spiritual atmosphere that prevailed there, and the occult research revealed that such a sacrifice had taken place there. There really lived an individuality there, and it worked among people in such a way that it then sacrificed its covers for them. It was Empedocles who, after he had completed his work as a philosopher and statesman, left his three sheaths and plunged into Mount Etna.

By becoming aware of all these facts that have come before our soul today, we will take a step forward towards true self-knowledge.