WE are commemorating this month the thirtieth anniversary of the day
on which it was Rudolf Steiner's destiny to take upon himself the
burden of the leadership of a Society; to assume, in addition to his
work in Spiritual Science, the care of educating free personalities
up to a high moral ideal, to a living understanding and grasp of Art
and to a more comprehensive consciousness of what is meant by human
duty and human service. Through many tempests and rocks had the ship
of a society to be steered, whose aim was to be the bearer of a
Theosophy adapted to the present and to the future development of
mankind; one comprehending the tasks and aims of the West with as
alert an understanding of the sublimity of the ancient wisdom, and
one in which a recognition could arise of the central significance
of the Christian impulse. Years of tireless building up of such an
understanding followed this day of inauguration. For the activities
of the orientalising Theosophical Society had not awakened a feeling
for the task of the present and the coming times. One contented
oneself with a wondering gaze into the past, without reckoning with
the forces of the present and the changes which humanity has undergone
since then and which have had to contribute to its progress. The
dogmatic clinging to the Ancient Wisdom newly proclaimed by Blavatsky,
but not sufficiently understood, was the reason in the first place
for Rudolf Steiner taking up an attitude of reserve. It was not until
certain seekers in the Theosophical sphere, who could not on that
path find by themselves the solution of the riddles crowding upon
them, formulated the precise question as to whether East and West
and Christianity did not meet in Theosophy in such a way that an
organic development, a chain of cause and effect resulted as
consequence, and the deed of Christ be thereby illuminated in a
way that satisfied the deeper knowledge of the heart it was
not till then that Rudolf Steiner saw the possibility of acceding
to the invitation of such persons and of working with them. This
desire, this longing, had first to be brought to him. That made
possible for him the task which he formulated in a definite way
as the impulse which Western Christian Esotericism had to give to
orientalising Theosophy. It would be infinitely enriched by this
impulse. Nevertheless, many people, as we know, are not pleased
by an enrichment of knowledge.
The less pretentious name of Anthroposophy was chosen
for this uniting in knowledge of East and West and of Microcosm
and Macrocosm, for this path to Ego-consciousness. It was dictated
by a feeling of modesty and chosen because the path of knowledge
from man to the godhead leads from self knowledge to cosmic knowledge,
and it gave a definite characterisation to the new impulse.
Anthroposophy is a way of knowledge which can lead the
spiritual in man to the spiritual in the universe.
The immeasurable richness of thought, the superabundance of spiritual
wealth which have been bestowed upon us by Rudolf Steiner in his
lectures often make it difficult to bring series of lectures into
a single category and to frame them into a narrow definition. They
are concentrated sources of energy from which the sparks scatter in
all directions, lighting up near and far, plunging into primal
beginnings, deeper even than time and space, then again lifting
out precise details which sometimes may appear insignificant and
yet have symptomatic importance and the power of a new light. From
the whole accumulated dynamic force of such details something arises
like the stern law of fate, pregnant with storm, yet with purifying
fire. We recognise the deeper sense in the play of forces which
preceded our present troubled times and which discharged itself in
the world-war and after it in unheard of disturbances, that will
continue to do so in the near future. We understand why it had to
come, what faults must be atoned for, which is demanded of us. An
historical picture of immense impressiveness rises up before us
from this precise configuration of details otherwise overlooked and
from the mighty cosmic-human background against which human happenings
stand out in relief.
These perspectives, plunging into cosmic archetypal history and the
hoary antiquity of human history, but which illumine our present time
with brightest light, appear with special force in those lectures
spoken to members of the Anthroposophical Society which with certain
interruptions but in constantly recurring rhythms, were held in the
places where Rudolf Steiner had his permanent home, in Berlin and
Dornach, although broken into by many journeys. The consciousness
of at least a small group of persons had to be awakened through
these lectures to the immense significance of the moment in which
we lived before the outbreak of the world-war and are still now
living. Earnest, impressive and linking up all the details of life
in his proofs, Rudolf Steiner spoke to us as .the voice of destiny
itself, as the newly aroused human conscience. And then, when from
without, all the supports believed to be so firm tottered before
the eyes of the multitude, when unfettered instincts recoiled upon
one another in elemental force, he it was who ever sought to form
saving, upbuilding thoughts without which chaos cannot be overcome.
Although humanity was too unripe to hear his voice, nevertheless as
far as was possible, a light had to be carried into the chaos, even
though by a small unripe to be sure but willing group
of people. And the attempt had to be ventured of penetrating here and
there into practical affairs. The self-styled practical realities of
to-day scornfully repulsed with all their merciless weapons of
sabotage anything that to them seemed strange and that spoke of
spiritual worlds. Nevertheless, as we know, living thought has the
power to outlast the moment and to rise again in new forms. It is
its duty to work even without expectation of results; the question
at issue is the rescue of mankind. In its purity it must find a way
to the souls gradually awakening in the course of time through tests
and trials. Out of the very practice of life and understanding from
which his spiritual vision never desired to withdraw, Rudolf Steiner
created a science of knowledge which comprehended all domains of life
and with energetic, creative impulses can penetrate the most varied
realms of science and art, of world-concept and religious activity.
To participate in all this was, and still is, a feeling of higher
life, a breathing of a strengthening, healing air, purified by snow
and vivified by the rays of the sun. One draws a deep breath when
one enters this region of higher reality, of cosmically conditioned
actualities which pour into human life, lending it meaning and even
now shaping the future image of man's destiny by the strengthening
of a consciousness which makes him able to grasp in thought ever
higher and higher spheres of being.
We have been bequeathed spiritual treasures whose light affrights
us and by which we can see how the dark age, the Kaliyuga, has been
broken in its power and overcome through their existence. We have
indeed the darkness still within us, yet the light is there. And it
dare not be withheld, even from a darkened humanity.
The light given to us by Rudolf Steiner in the new revelation of
the Christ Impulse, this light, for which a new form of human
consciousness had to be moulded and into which it can pour itself,
will bring to mankind the spiritual re-awakening by which alone
salvation will be possible.
No longer do the forces of the Sentient Soul suffice for the
overcoming of those obstacles which the age of rationalism has
brought, nor yet the most ardent, the most holy glow of feeling
known to the Middle Ages, such as the saints and mystics have
experienced who trod the path of Christian Initiation.
But wise Providence and the leaders of mankind opened, even before
the beginning of the new age, a second path of Christian Initiation
which was gradually to prepare souls for the demands of a later future.
This path, the Christian-Rosicrucian, makes a call above all on the
forces of the Consciousness Soul. It was therefore also its task to
strengthen man within his personality, to let him feel fully the
significance of the one life. Through study, through Imagination
and Contemplation it led men out into the Macrocosm, which they
discovered again in themselves as reflection.
But the full meaning of the forces of the personality, which could
gradually lead the Ego to the conscious grasp of the spirit, made
it necessary to conceal for a time the knowledge of repeated earth
lives from that portion of humanity which had to develop the forces
of personality.
What is needed by the new age opening at this time is not the
return of the past through taking up again the path of Yoga, nor
yet the Christian-Gnostic or Rosicrucian paths in the form they
bore when ministering to the development of those of a bygone
time. In conformity with the demands of a new age a new impulse
must be given to the Rosicrucian, the sternest path of knowledge,
which in its true nature has nothing to do with all the charlatanry
which has usurped its name. And that impulse is the unveiling of
the great truths of Reincarnation and Karma.
Rosicrucianism has deliberately concealed these truths. It has
maintained silence about them up to the time when Rudolf Steiner
assumed the task of proclaiming them. But it has worked so that
in the course of centuries these truths lit up the consciousness
of European minds as the result of severe trains of thought, as
a consequence of keen intellectual thinking. It is a matter of
deep concern to the whole of humanity, one through which the history
of human development acquires its true sense and meaning. It is no
more the affair of a single being whose aim is the deliverance from
the wheel of rebirth, as in Buddhism. For this we need only point
to Goethe and Lessing.
The rescue of the individuality, progressing through repeated
earth lives and perfected by them, the rebirth of the divine Ego
in man is the deed of the Christ, and this deed Rudolf Steiner
has ever and again brought before our gaze with the stupendous
powers of knowledge that stood at his command.
When Rudolf Steiner after long hesitation had decided to accede
to the petition of the German Theosophists and become the leader
of their work, he could do so because the Theosophical Society
regarded it as its task to enter the world as advocate of the
doctrine of Reincarnation and Karma. The lectures by reason of
which he was invited to become the leader of this movement in
Germany were those upon
Mystics of the Renaissance and their relation to the modern World-Concept,
and upon
Christianity as a Mystical Fact.
The impulse which he had to bring to the movement was thus clearly
denoted and an absolute freedom of teaching was secured to him. He
himself acted in the spirit of the true occultists of all times who
link on to the existing spiritual endowment in order to keep it alive
and carry it further in the line of progress. He could still hope
through the new impulse to rescue the Theosophical Society from
dogmatic rigidness, to bring it fresh forces and awaken the
understanding which was lacking for the mysteries of Christianity.
Without haste, adding slowly building-stone to building-stone,
he worked at the foundations for this understanding. A consciousness
which considered and pondered and put to the test was to be developed
in the hearers. Therefore he began by using their accustomed
terminology, gradually widening the understanding of things and
making ideas living until those designations could be used that
were adapted to a more active form of consciousness and to the
modern spirit. When the basis had been formed, wider perspectives
could be opened from which a new light broke forth, making clear
in words never heard before the mission of the earth and our task
as humanity.
Each one of the lecture series given by Rudolf Steiner is of immense
importance for those coming newly into Spiritual Science, especially
when taken in their chronological sequence, for only then can they
fully experience the living organic power of his thought. And even
remarks here and there upon the daily events of those times, which
already lie far behind, are of such a high moral force and educational
value as to give them an abiding significance. A strong attitude of
dissent had to be taken against the policy of clouding objective
truth and the undermining of the Theosophical Society through party
diplomacy and the play of personal ambitions. Perhaps the present day
reader does not always understand what is meant by such remarks. In
the main it points to the deplorable action, perpetrated by the
setting up of a World-Saviour appearing in the flesh, to whom was
even given the name of the Christ. The Indian boy Krishnamurti, was
chosen for this role, the Star of the East was founded
with enormous publicity and the Theosophical Society was supposed
to serve the hidden aims of this policy. With such coarse methods
it was hoped to win the souls who had opened themselves to the
interpretation of Christian, esotericism through Rudolf Steiner.
An attack with all the weapons of calumny was meanwhile opened
against him. The International Theosophical Congress, which was
to have been held in Genoa in 1911, and for which two lectures
from Rudolf Steiner upon Buddha in the Twentieth Century
and Christ in the Twentieth Century had been announced,
were cancelled at the last minute without sufficient reason,
but with the evident hope of hindering the effect of Rudolf Steiner's
words. These events, too quite incomprehensible to many people
had several times to be referred to in the lectures of that year.
It had become necessary to emphasise with great earnestness that one
could have nothing to do with methods that dragged down the level of
the Theosophical Society in so regrettable a manner. Words to this
effect were uttered by Dr. Steiner with intense pain but great energy;
and deeply moved, putting his whole heart into the words, he
reiterated as the desire of his life that the Society led by him
might not fall into the common failing into which occult bodies
so easily fall, when they let themselves be diverted from the
demands of strict truth and are enticed into the byways of vanity
and ambition.
Such words can live as purifying fire in the hearts of those who
represent his work and be continuously set before the soul as a
warning memory.
The lectures held in Berlin in the year 1912 refer many times to
the struggle which Rudolf Steiner had to undergo in order to save
the purity of the spirit of a movement for spiritual science, which
is always exposed to concealed attacks. The decay of the Theosophical
Society now brought forth as a consequence the independence of the
Mid-European Anthroposophical work, in its outward form as well, by
the official constitution of the Anthroposophical Union
in the last days of December, 1912.
The passing years with their rhythms cause such days to rise again
before the memory with particular intensity.
Thirty years ago, on the 20th October, 1902, Rudolf Steiner held
in Berlin his first lecture on Anthroposophy, and on 21st October
he recapitulated the theosophical lecture of Annie Besant, who at
that time was not yet under the unwholesome influences that worked
on her later. Twenty years ago Rudolf Steiner had to protect the
spirit of the anthroposophically orientated spiritual movement
inaugurated by him from the sudden assault of an occult policy
from Adyar and utter the words which sound to us as a legacy and
are now published anew in memory of those days.
They are to be found in the last December lecture of that same year
in Cologne where Rudolf Steiner speaking on
The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul
made pure oriental wisdom to
radiate before our eyes in the light of Christian knowledge in never
dreamed of greatness. In his final words he ever and again earnestly
besought the bearers of the movement which he had founded to exercise
self-knowledge and to remain modest.
The powers of opposition did not slumber. Ten years ago on New
Year's Eve, 1922, the Goetheanum stood in flames. Only the sculptured
group in wood of the Representative of Humanity between the recoiling
adversaries was saved. We hope that at Christmas a hall in the
Goetheanum worthy of it will enclose this Group protectingly.
In lectures during 1912 a description of the Christ figure was given
to us in artistic and picturesque intensity, at a time when even the
thought of the possibility of its plastic realisation had not yet
been conceived. What we can now look at in a work of art, was conjured
up before us by the power of the words: Yes, this outward
plastic representation of the Christ how He should be
pictured outwardly is a question which has still to be solved.
Many feelings will have to flow through human souls before there can
be added something new to the many attempts already made in the
course of the ages, an attempt which will show in some measure what
the Christ is, as the supersensible Impulse which is making itself
one with this earthly development. Not even the first beginnings of
such a representation of the Christ are to be found in what has been
accomplished up till now. For there must appear, embodied in the
growing outward form, the organic forces of the impulses of Wonder,
of Compassion, and of Conscience gathered there.
The Christ-countenance must be so living that its very expression
will say: Here in this representation, all that makes man an
earth-man, all that has to do with sense desire, has been overcome
by the Spirit shining through by what has spiritualised this
face. There must be sublime strength in the face, brought
out by causing everything that one can think of as the highest
unfolding of conscience to manifest itself in the peculiar form
of the chin and mouth ; a mouth, it must be when one stands
before it, when the painter or the sculptor wishes to form it
which gives one the feeling that it is not there to eat with but for
the purpose of expressing all that has ever been cultivated in
humanity as morality and conscience; and that the whole bony system,
the teeth, and the lower jaw, give expression to the same. All this
will come to expression in such a countenance. There will be so
mighty a force in the form of the lower part of the face that it
streams forth, renders and tears to pieces the whole remaining
human body, till this in time will become a new form and thereby
certain ether forces will be overcome. Thus it will be quite
impossible to give to the Christ, who reveals a mouth like this
a bodily form in any way similar to that of the physical man of to-day.
On the other hand, one will have to give Him eyes out of which
there will speak an almighty compassion, such as alone is
capable of seeing inner Being and not eyes which are there to
receive impressions, but rather in order to go out, with the whole
soul into the joys and sufferings of others.
Moreover, this Christ will have a forehead which one could not
imagine as harbouring thoughts on sense impressions of earth. It
will be a brow that projects somewhat over the eyes, vaulting over
that part of the brain; yet, at the same time, it will not be a
thinker's brow that ponders over what already exists,
but rather Wonder will have to express itself from this brow that
projects above the eyes and gently arches back over the head, thus
expressing what may be called Wonder over the Mysteries of the
World. That must be a head such as man cannot meet with in
physical humanity.
Every portrayal of the Christ should really be something like the
Ideal of the Christ-figure. And the feeling which aspires towards
this ideal whenever in the course of evolution man struggles to
achieve it in so far as humanity strives artistically to
present this Highest Ideal, through the help of Spiritual Science,
must there be this feeling: You may not look to something which
already exists, if you wish to portray the Christ;
rather, you must cause to become a power, active in yourself to
permeate your whole being, everything that you can achieve through
spiritual absorption in the spiritual course of the world, through
the three momentous impulses Wonder, Compassion, and Conscience.
Many admirers of that sculptured Group have desired to have
reproductions of it. They will find them in the work which
will appear before Christmas and which will contain in 105
reproductions the architectural and sculptural motives of
the burnt building, the reproductions of the Christ Group
and the cupola paintings.
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