The Story of My Life

CONCLUSION
BY MARIE STEINER

HERE the life-story abruptly ends. On 30th March, 1925 Rudolf Steiner passed away.

His life, consecrated wholly to the sacrificial service of humanity, was requited with unspeakable hostility; his way of knowledge was transformed into a path of thorns. But he walked the whole way, and mastered it for all humanity. He broke through the limits of knowledge; they are no longer there. Before us lies this road of knowledge in the crystal clarity of thoughts of which this book itself constitutes an example. He raised human understanding up to the spirit; permeated this understanding and united it with the spiritual being of the cosmos. In this he achieved the greatest human deed. The greatest deed of the Gods he taught us to understand; the greatest human deed he achieved. How could he escape being hated with all the demonic power of which Hell is capable?

But he repaid with love the misunderstanding brought against him.

He died – a Sufferer, a Leader, an Achiever –
In such a world as trod him under foot
Yet which to raise aloft his strength sufficed.
He lifted men; they cast themselves before him,
They hissed with hate and blocked his forward way.
His work they shattered even as he wrought it.
They raged with venom and with flame;
And now with joy they brand his memory: –
So he is dead who led you into freedom,
To light, to consciousness, to comprehension
Of what is Godlike in a human soul
To your own selves, to Christ.
Was this not criminal, this undertaking?

He did what once Prometheus expiated
What gave to Socrates the poisoned cup –
The pardoning of Barabbas was less vile –
A deed whose expiation is the cross.
He made the future live before you there.
We demons cannot suffer such a thing.
We harry, hunt, pursue who dares such deeds
With all those souls who give themselves to us,
With all those forces which obey our will.
For ours are the turning-points of time
And ours this humanity which lies,
Without their God, in weakness, vice, and error.
We never yield the booty we have won,
But tear to pieces him who dares to touch it.

“He dared – and, daring, he endured his fate –
In love, long suffering, and tolerance
Of weak, incapable humanity
Which ever all his work in peril set,
Which ever wrenched his word' awry,
Which misinterpreted his kind forbearance,
And in their smallness did not know themselves
Because his greatness was beyond their compass.
'Twas thus he bore us – we were out of breath
In following his stride, his very flight
Which ravished us away. 'Twas our weakness
That was the hindrance ever to his flight,
The lead that weighed his footsteps down ...

Now he is free, a helper to those high ones
Who take whatever hath been wrung from earth
As safeguard of their goal. So now they greet
The son of man who his creative power
Unfolded thus to serve the Gods' high will;
Who to the age of hardened understanding
And to the time of dead machinery
Stamped clear the Spirit, called the Spirit forth ...

They would not suffer him.
The earth rolls into shadows.
Behold those forms which now appear in space.
The Leader waits; the heavens part and open;
In joy and reverence stand the rangéd hosts.

But earth is wrapped in grey enshrouding night,