IV
Stuttgart,
6th February, 1924
From
various anthroposophical sources you know of the significance of the
heavenly bodies for man's existence and I shall speak to-day of a
particular aspect of this subject.
When
during life on Earth we look around at our terrestrial and cosmic
environment, our physical senses, even when they reach as far as the
stars, perceive only what is connected with the part of our human
constitution that is laid aside at death. We know from Anthroposophy
that the physical body derives its forces, as well as its material
composition, from what surrounds us on the Earth. In addition to the
physical body we have an etheric body, and just as the physical body
draws its forces and material components from the Earth, so does the
etheric body draw its forces and components from the
extraterrestrial Cosmos, from the etheric world. This etheric
world surrounds the Earth in the expanse of space; in it the stars
are embedded and from it the light streams down to the Earth from the
Cosmos. Thus we owe our physical and etheric existence to what is
visible in our terrestrial environment or cosmic environment. But
within this etheric environment of the Earth there are two heavenly
bodies which may be said to be gates or portals into the spiritual
world. These are the two cosmic bodies of Sun and Moon to which
everyone possessed of deeper insight into the structure of the
universe has always attached the greatest possible importance for
human life.
If we
study man with anthroposophical insight we know that as well as the
physical and etheric bodies he has within him his astral body and
Ego. But if we direct our attention to the astral body and Ego of man
we shall find that in the cosmic expanse perceptible to our physical
senses, including even the world of stars, there is nothing in the
least akin to them. We find only what is akin to our physical and
etheric nature. In the whole wide universe actually or
potentially visible to our senses or comprehensible to the
intellect there is nothing that provides any forces or components for
our astral body and Ego. The Moon and the Sun, however, are like
gates into the world from which these members of our being originate.
You know
that in my book
Occult Science
and other writings, reference is made to the
time when the physical Moon separated from the Earth with which it
once formed a single body in the Cosmos. But this physical and
etheric separation is not the only matter with which we should be
concerned in connection with the Moon existence and human life. The
separation of the Moon is a very significant spiritual fact.
I have
often said that in very ancient times man possessed a
primordial wisdom. We are very proud nowadays of our intellectual
acumen, of knowledge based upon reason and observation. This kind of
knowledge was not possessed by early humanity. The Earth, and man
together with the Earth, had necessarily to develop to a certain
stage before such knowledge was possible. Without this development
man would not have been able to use his physical body and its
delicate nervous system for the acquisition of intellectual
knowledge. The primordial knowledge possessed by man was an
instinctive knowledge, expressed in a form altogether different
from that adopted by modern scholarship. What men knew about the
mysteries of the world in those ancient times was expressed in
poetical language of great majesty and what tradition has preserved
or can be discovered in existing records is no more than an echo of
the power of that ancient wisdom. We may well be filled with wonder
today when we study the Vedas or the Vedanta philosophy; we may
marvel at the glorious verses of the Bhagavad Gita and recognise the
sublimity of all these works, but it must be remembered that they are
only the last offshoots of something infinitely greater and more
powerful. Men owed this wisdom to the fact that they lived in
communion with Beings whose existence was on a higher level than that
of modern humanity and naturally also of the
humanity of those days. These Beings had no physical body
comparable with that of man to-day; they moved about the Earth
in etheric bodies but nevertheless shared a life in common with humanity.
Since they
had no physical body, these Beings were not able to converse with men
in the way that one person converses with another to-day. But in
certain states of consciousness the men of those ancient times, that
is to say we ourselves in earlier incarnations, were aware of certain
feelings and thoughts of which we knew that they did not spring from
within our own being, as little as what we hear from someone else
through oral communication springs from within ourselves. The
much higher and more powerful knowledge possessed by these etheric
Beings was as it were ‘inspired’ into men in a spiritual
way. Thus in earlier incarnations in the primeval periods of the
Earth's existence, we communed with non-physical Beings. These Beings
are no longer and for long ages have not been part of earthly life.
They have withdrawn from intercourse with men and only a few sparse
remnants have been preserved of the world-secrets once revealed
through these Beings in the remote past. Moreover it can be said with
truth that even these few remnants are not really understood.
To what
habitation, then, have these Beings of the ancient past withdrawn?
When the physical Moon separated from the Earth, these Beings
followed after it into the universe. I have already spoken about this
but to-day I want to say something more, so that when we turn our
gaze to the Moon we shall be aware that this cosmic body is inhabited
by Beings who were once the companions of mankind on Earth. It may
seem as if these Beings have no connection with the man living
on Earth in his physical body: nevertheless
there is a connection and it is of this that I want to
speak. Simply from the fact that long ago these Beings were man's
companions on Earth we may conclude that they are connected in some
way with his past. And this is in fact the case.
A man's
life here on Earth in his physical body is interwoven with what we
call destiny. Destiny or
‘karma’ — the oriental term
we are accustomed to use — is a very mysterious factor in human
life but its most significant connections are not always perceived.
Suppose
two people who have never seen each other before, meet at a
particular moment. From this moment something that is the result of
joint action begins to play a part in their lives. Their recognition
of each other is mutual and they know that from now on they will have
a great deal to do with each other. If two people in this situation
review the course of their lives since childhood, they will find, if
they observe with sufficient detachment, that everything they did up
to the moment of their meeting had a definite significance in
that every step they took since childhood seems from the beginning to
have been so cleverly directed that the path led them to the point
where the meeting took place. If, starting from the time when they
met and began to form a friendship, they look back over their past
lives without preconceived notions it will seem that since a certain
starting-point in their distant childhood, every step led them
inevitably to the place where they finally met. Whatever they did so
purposefully was of course done unconsciously; the conscious period
began only after the meeting but the conscious and the unconscious
unite in a remarkable way. In the weaving of our destiny there is a
great difference between the path we have arranged unconsciously so
that we may meet the other person, and what we do after the meeting
has taken place. Then he is actually before us, we understand what he
says and we adjust our actions to what he is doing in external life;
thereafter we lead a common life of which our senses and intellect
are aware. But we shall see how that common life is interwoven with
what we did until the time we met. We may well ask: what is it that
is taking effect in all these forces and movements which finally
bring us together?
There may
also be some event lying ahead of us. Every aspect of destiny
comes into consideration. We shall find that there is a great
difference between experiences of the two kinds of events. There are,
in fact, two ways of encountering another human being in life. In the
one case we immediately have a feeling, or at least we have it as
soon as we have come across the man or the event in question —
a feeling which we take into the sphere of
our will. We get to know the person: what he is, what he
now does in company with us — all this we experience in the
realm of our will; we want to think as he thinks, to feel as he
feels, to will as he wills. We actually feel that he is beginning to
be active within our own being. He sets something astir within us,
something that originates in him but nevertheless lives in our will
and from our will pervades our whole soul. Indeed we learn in
this way to know ourselves better, inasmuch as in our life of will
and in the deeper feelings connected with our will, we become aware
that the person not only makes an impression upon us from outside,
but stirs something into activity within us. That is one way in which
our destined encounter with another human being takes effect.
In another
case we are less inwardly stirred by an acquaintanceship; we observe
the person more from outside, forming an opinion of him by the
impression he makes upon our intelligence, upon our aesthetic sense.
There is a very great difference between these two kinds of
acquaintanceship.
Suppose we
get to know someone, then we go away and are tempted to talk about
our new acquaintance. There will be a noticeable difference in the
way we speak about the different people we know. On one occasion the
way in which we speak makes it quite obvious to others that we are
putting something of ourselves into our words. We may speak about the
other person as though he were handsome, but in point of fact he is
the very reverse and those who are listening simply cannot understand
why we speak of him as we do; he appears to them to be the reverse of
good-looking, hence they cannot understand how anyone can possibly
rhapsodise about him. But we are not in the least concerned with what
others may see in him from an aesthetic point of view; we are not
talking about the impression he makes upon us from outside. We are
talking about the inner effect he arouses in us and what we say about
him need not tally with the impression he makes upon others.
In the
case of another acquaintance it is different. We have a good eye for
whether he is handsome or the reverse. From the way we speak it is
clear that here the impressions made upon our intellect, our senses
and our aesthetic judgement have been the criterion. We may, for
instance, refer to him as a fine fellow. You know quite well that
there are acquaintances of whom it would never occur to us to speak
in this superficial way. The actual language we use is such that
other people will immediately understand what we mean, if they know
the individual or get to know him later on.
It is a
simple fact that these are two ways of describing individuals we
meet. The first case indicates that when we meet the individual in
question the existence we share in the previous earthly life is set
astir within us; something is pointing back to earlier incarnations
when we lived in each other's company. In the second case we judge
externally; we express our opinions in a way that others can
immediately understand, because we were not together in an earlier
earthly life but may perhaps have met him for the very first time in
the present incarnation.
If
spiritual insight enables us to penetrate to what lies at the root of
the destiny which reveals itself in so definite a form in the first
case, we shall find the
following. — Before the human being comes down to
physical existence on Earth and while, before the actual descent, he
is passing through the Moon sphere, there is implanted into his
astral body the karma he shares in common with other human beings. It
is implanted into him for his present earthly existence by those
Beings who once lived on Earth together with men and who then
withdrew to the Moon sphere. These are the Beings through whose
sphere we pass before we descend into earthly existence. It is they
who since they left the Earth and their companionship with men,
concern themselves with recording the destiny which individuals have
in common. Thus it is that when we come across another person in the
first of the two ways I described, what reverberates within us has
been recorded in those great books of destiny kept by the Moon Beings
with their knowledge of the lives of men on Earth. These are books in
which spiritual ‘accounts’ are kept and they contain
entries of everything we have experienced in common with other
men. As we pass through the Moon sphere we read in those books what
we are to bring with us to the Earth, and then, with the help of what
we have thus read, we direct our path — perhaps for twenty-five
to thirty years — until we finally meet in earthly existence
the individual of whom we had read in these Moon-books before we
descended to the Earth that we had shared certain experiences with
him in a previous earthly life.
These
mysterious connections are organised in a wonderful way. We
must look up to the Moon existence with feelings deepened through
Anthroposophy, having in mind not only the information given by
physical science but also what Spiritual Science can tell us about
the spiritual aspect of the Moon. There are many analogies which make
this sphere of cosmic existence intelligible. The analogy drawn from
earthly life is supported by knowledge to which little
attention is paid.
It has
often been emphasised here that in seven or eight years the physical
substance of a man's body has completely changed. Physical
substance is thrust out through the skin; nails and hair are cut.
This indicates, and it is actually the fact, that man thrusts out
physical substance from the centre of his being and produces new
substance to replace it. What you cut from your nails today was
within your organism seven or eight years ago; you thrust it out and
have now got rid of it. Physical substance is renewed. Any of you who
may have been here ten years ago must not imagine that the same
muscles and the same physical components are present to-day, for that
is not so. But the soul-and-spirit of each of you —
that is present. The same is true of the heavenly
bodies. The physicist is concerned only with the physical substance
and speaks as if the Moon he now sees in the heavens were the same
Moon whose physical substance once separated from the Earth. But that
is just as nonsensical as to believe that the muscles and physical
components which were here ten years ago are here again to-day. It
takes longer for the heavenly bodies to change their substance, but
they do indeed change it. The physical Moon should not really be
spoken of in the way that modern science speaks. What has endured in
the Moon are the spiritual Beings who were once inhabitants of the
Earth together with men. The Moon that is now their habitat has
changed — that is to say, its physical substance has changed.
And just as it is your soul-and-spirit which forms the link between
the ‘you’ who sat here ten years ago and the
‘you’ of to-day, so it is the Beings of spirit-and-soul
who in reality constitute the essence of the Moon. And these
are the Beings who register our past.
This whole
subject can be further deepened when expounded in the light of
Initiation-knowledge. So far I have explained how in the case of
acquaintances of the first kind something begins to stir in us, and
how this is what the Moon Beings make it possible for us to read in
their records before we descended to the Earth. An Initiate has
a very different experience of a meeting of this kind. He, like
everyone else, meets other human beings during his life; but whereas
a man with ordinary consciousness merely has the feeling that he
takes the other human being into the sphere of his will and does not
judge him only by the external impression he makes, the Initiate can
actually see the earlier incarnations of the personalities whom he
encounters. He sees not only the physical man together with his
qualities of soul-and-spirit but he sees behind him a shadowy picture
of the man's previous life or perhaps of several lives. Through
spiritual perception we get to know a man in such a way that he seems
to be a whole series of persons who are as objectively real as the
one physically in front of us. In civilisations where some inkling of
these things still survived, attempts were actually made to
portray them. Certain old pictures portray a human figure,
behind it and a little higher, a second, and behind that a third, a
little higher still. In this way attempts were made to capture in
painting the impression which the Initiate has of an acquaintance in
whom he perceives not only the qualities of which he is the bearer in
this life but what comes over with him from previous incarnations. It
may be said, and it is in strict conformity with Spiritual Science,
that whatever is karmically connected with a human being is clearly
perceptible to an Initiate but is no more than a dim inkling to
ordinary consciousness.
Whatever
works and weaves from our past into our destiny may be called the
Moon-element in us. The effect of this is that if we meet a human
being who is karmically connected with us we are really always
meeting a plurality. For the Initiate, this means acquaintance with a
number of human beings in the one or at very least in several human
lives; and this recognition of the earlier lives is as vivid to him
as that of the present life.
Now let us
consider the other kind of acquaintanceship where we judge a man more
by the external, aesthetic impression he makes, by what our intellect
or our senses tell us about him; the impression can be understood by
everyone. In this case, if it is studied by the methods of Spiritual
Science, it will be found that nothing leads back to the past; no
Beings in the Moon sphere have prepared the way to this
acquaintanceship in earthly life; nothing has been inscribed in the
Moon sphere into the astral body of the man concerned. Other forces
are working here, forces of soul-and-spirit connected with the Sun
existence. In this second kind of acquaintanceship, the Sun forces,
forces of soul-and-spirit, weave destiny from a different side.
Again, if we are capable of spiritual insight, what leads us to human
beings with whom we have jointly accomplished something in past
lives, is experienced to begin with as if it were hidden in dark,
mysterious night. Then, when we actually meet the person in question
and allow the impression he makes to affect us, the Sun and the
bright light of day seem to take the place of the mysterious night.
That is indeed what happens spiritually: in the case of two people
who have been karmically connected for long ages, not only the past
but the present and the future as well are glimpsed and the weaving
of destiny continues. The spiritual influences of the Sun make
themselves felt.
But even
in the case of those who have shared no experiences in earlier
earthly lives, this spiritual element of the Sun weaves in their
destinies both in the present and in the future. If, with the insight
of Initiation, we meet someone with whom we have had no joint
experiences in earlier lives but whom we are meeting now for the
first time, we should see no shadowy pictures of earthly lives behind
him. We should see instead, Beings of the higher Hierarchies, Beings
of a rank not yet attained by man. To the insight of Initiation there
is a great difference between meeting someone with whom we have
already been connected in the past and someone we meet for the
first time. If we had often been together with him, his earlier lives
rise up in a picture behind him. If we had never met before, Beings
of the next higher Hierarchy appear in his background, Beings who
come down to us on Earth together with the rays of the Sun. Just as
the Moon Beings weave into our astral body the karma that
is past, so do these Sun Beings weave into our
subconscious Ego-organisation what is to take place after
our first meeting with another human being here on Earth: this is the
basis of our future karma. The present is all the time changing
into the future; what is now the present has for the preceding moment
become the future.
The
counterpart in the Cosmos of this course of man's evolution from
the past to the future is to be seen in the passage of the Moon in
the heavens, with the Sun either following or ahead. The relationship
between past and future in the mysterious weaving of destiny in human
life is the same as the relationship between Moon and Sun in their
passage around the universe. If with Initiation-knowledge, when you
meet someone you say to yourself with deep feeling that what the Moon
Beings have inscribed in his astral body belongs to you just as
it does to him and that by its means you have been led to him, when
you meet someone for the very first time you will feel that Angels
and Archangels stand behind him. Both experiences point to the
future. There are endless ways in which destiny may be fulfilled.
If you
learn how to contemplate the cosmic expanse in this way, Moon and Sun
are revealed as the two gates into the spiritual world. You will
realise then that what is part of the earthly, physical environment
lives for the moment in your physical body; what is present in the
wide etheric spheres where the stars are to be seen, lives in your
etheric body. But when you look up to the Moon or the Sun, you will
know that you are looking at what is present, not in your physical or
your etheric body, but in your astral body, and gives power to your
Ego. Through the Moon existence you are led out of the physical and
etheric worlds into the spiritual world. In the same way, when you
look up at the Sun, you will recognise that through its forces of
spirit-and-soul you are being led through a gate to a world akin to
your own Ego — not akin to your physical and etheric
bodies but to your Ego. The Ego enables you to take your place in the
world as a conscious being, accompanied by the destiny woven into
your life as necessity and to which you conform because of your
particular physical aptitudes, temperament or character, all of which
are merely means of expression for your karma. In everything of which
the poet says: “this you must be, you cannot escape from
yourself” — in all this the past Moon existence is living
on. And the Sun existence is working whenever you are conscious of
freedom of choice.
Thus,
spiritually considered, nature-existence and moral existence
interweave. Nature does not exist in isolation with its rigid
necessities on the one side and, on the other side, soul-and-spirit
unable to enter into any real relationship with it and existing
only as a remote moral order. There is no such contrast, for it is
possible, with spiritual insight, to find in the phenomena of nature
the morality that is alive within us. True, it is necessary here to
pass beyond the ordinary phenomena of nature to what is revealed by
the spiritual Sun-and Moon-existence.
Insight of
this kind makes it possible for us to ascend from a nature-existence
to existence as beings of
soul-and-spirit. It is also possible — although
not with ordinary consciousness — to perceive in our earthly or
cosmic environment the causes of illnesses which may befall us.
In itself our organism is healthy, for it is born out of its healthy
Ego, its healthy astral body and also out of a healthy etheric world.
If someone falls ill here on Earth it can only be because something
approaches him from outside which owing to his inherent constitution
he is not able completely to transform. You can see that this is so
from very simple examples. Suppose you are in a warm or a cold room.
You must not allow the heat or cold to pass through you as it might
pass through a piece of wood or stone. You absorb and convert the
external warmth which acts merely as a stimulus; you yourself
generate in your own organism the warmth you have within you. If you
cannot do this, if you allow the environment to treat you as it
treats a stick or stone, if external warmth penetrates into you and
you are unable to transform it, you will immediately catch cold. Man
cannot take anything from the environment of the Earth into himself
without transforming it — this also applies to the food
he eats. He transforms what he eats just as he transforms everything
in the environment and it is a scientific fantasy to believe
otherwise. If no transformation is achieved he will fall ill. Here
lies the physical cause of illness; but illness can also be connected
with destiny.
If we
limit our thoughts to this present earthly life, to the period, let
us say, between some year in the nineteenth or twentieth century and
to-day, 6th February 1924, we shall agree that if something from the
environment is going to make us ill, it will have to exert a very
powerful influence. If something that comes from
outside — cold or heat, or perhaps noxious air
— is to make us ill, it will need to be very forceful. If we
merely look at a deadly nightshade it will not poison us; nor if the
noxious atmosphere is sufficiently far away will it poison us. In
short, if the influence from outside affects only the life of soul,
it does not make us ill. To achieve that, a much more powerful
influence is needed.
But now
consider the following — Large numbers of people nowadays are
out-and-out materialists and believe only in material influences from
the environment But actually there are many ways in which they cannot
be materialists, for instance, in some of their bodily needs: they
cannot avoid eating what is spiritual in plants or of the nature of
soul in animals. If they were honest and consistent materialists in
the matter of their food they would eat nothing but stones —
nothing but inorganic, lifeless matter. In their life of soul the
only concepts and ideas they will accept are concerned with the
lifeless and this becomes a force leading to illness in the following
incarnation. The impressions make their way into the soul and are
transformed into forces which can become physically active. The
karmic aspect of illness is carried over from previous earthly lives
into our present life, because we admitted into ourselves in earlier
incarnations elements which are not fitting for human beings; we
have become susceptible to illness. These ideas and impressions work
in this present life as potent causes of illness. Something that may
have been no more than an idea or inner experience of the soul in one
earthly life is transformed in the period we live through between
death and rebirth into forces that work physically. We have within us
much that works physically, whereas in an earlier life it was purely
of the nature of soul. Thus we have to regard illness as a matter of
destiny and we must not succumb to the superstition that illnesses
can be cured by spiritual means alone. Means that take effect
physically are necessary. But if we fully understand the facts and
realise that what is physically active in the present life is
to be traced back to something that was active in the life of soul in
earlier lives, we shall recognise also that by turning our thoughts
away from what was imperfect towards what is perfect in man, we shall
carry over in a healthy form into our next life what would otherwise
be a cause of illness. For instance, if we are convinced that an
illness has resulted from a materialistic life of soul in a previous
incarnation, we may be sure that we can only rid ourselves of the
illness by a treatment based upon spiritual views and ideas. And
these are found in Anthroposophy — which is not theory but
directly related to life, cultivating the insight and feeling that
life requires.
If we can
contemplate the Cosmos and the whole environment of the Earth
in the light streaming from Anthroposophy when rightly
cultivated, Moon and Sun seem intimately related to us; we see in
them the cosmic pictures of our own past and our own future. We
become intensely conscious of our relationship with the whole Cosmos;
we see our past and future weaving in our destiny; in Sun and Moon we
see world-destiny revealing itself. We shall feel in our past
something that takes its place beside our present and our future as
the Moon takes its place in the Cosmos beside the Sun. Our reverence
and devotion, our capacity for sacrifice for the sake of
the whole Cosmos will be enhanced when we learn
how to expand our own existence into cosmic existence and thus
experience the kinship between what lives in us and weaves in the universe.
One of the
tasks Anthroposophy sets itself is to help human beings to establish
union with the universe in this way. And I hope that one of the
results of our meeting here in such large numbers will be that we
shall identify ourselves more and more with this task of
Anthroposophy which is to give added depth not only to the thoughts
of men but also to their hearts and feelings. This was indeed the
purpose of the Christmas Foundation Meeting. That Meeting made it
clear that if the Anthroposophical Society is to develop the right
kind of activity it must abandon the paths it has been taking during
these last ten years; it must cease to concern itself with
externalities, must penetrate to inner, spiritual realities.
The School of Spiritual Science to be established in Dornach must
have this esoteric character, and so must the Society as a whole in
order to maintain the spiritual life it needs. It must throw off the
tendency that has threatened it during the last ten years —
the tendency to be absorbed in externalities.
What has
actually been happening during these ten years and was happening even
before then? Here is an example. A very strong
opposition — it is particularly active just now
— has been able to refer to lecture-courses and transcripts of
lectures which are not available to the general public. As you know,
people wished to possess these lecture-courses and transcripts and it
was a matter of meeting these wishes, although it was obvious that
this was the very way to give the opposition the ammunition it
needed. We live in times when secrecy is quite out of the question.
Therefore at the Christmas Meeting the Society was declared to be a
public institution. But that does not in any way gainsay the fact
that on the other side it becomes all the more esoteric. The
leadership of the Society must be more and more consciously
anthroposophical. It was for this reason that when we were
framing our Statutes, our procedure differed entirely from what is
customary. Statutes usually start by laying down some basic
principle. — We had such Statutes in the Theosophical
Society: the establishment of a universal brotherhood of
mankind; the recognition of unity in religions, and so on. As I have
often said, instead of all this we must emphasise the reality which
the Anthroposophical Society is able to establish. This was in fact
done at the Christmas Meeting. There was no mention of abstract
principles but it was declared that in Dornach there is something
that is living reality. Whoever sees justification in what is thus
actively alive in Dornach is entitled to join the Society. The life
of the Society is not conditioned by abstractions usually known as
‘Statutes;’ our so-called ‘Statutes’ are an
account of what exists in Dornach and what we aim to do from there.
The Society is to have an Executive which acts and which in its
actions and in the initiatives it takes has a clear view of what
forms and constitutes it. Thus we have tried to replace abstractions
by the genuinely human element and to assert this even in the
‘Statutes.’ This is the one and only possibility of life
for a Society that is to be an organ for the influx of spiritual
power into the world.
Let me put
it like this. — The Executive created in Dornach
at Christmas is based upon a hypothetical assumption. If the
Society is willing to accept what it does, it will be an Executive in
the real sense; if the Society is unwilling, then the Executive
will amount to nothing; it can be accepted only as the centre of
living activity. I can give no more than brief indications at the
moment — everything else will be clearly set forth in the News
Sheet.
A real
attempt was made through the Christmas Meeting to bring a new
spirit into the Society, but it is essential that the nature of this
new spirit shall be understood. It is not a spirit of
abstractions but of living reality, a spirit which wants to speak not
to the head but to the hearts of men. Thus as far as Anthroposophy is
concerned, the Christmas Meeting was either everything or nothing.
And it will be nothing if it has no real continuity, if it was
merely a festive occasion which people found enjoyable, forgetting
about it afterwards and remaining in the same old grooves. If that
happens the Meeting will have no real content and nothing will stream
back to it. The only content it
can have is derived from the life in the
various spheres, of the Society. It will become a reality only by
virtue of what happens through its impulse in the life of the
Anthroposophical Society. The Christmas Meeting becomes a reality
only through its consequences and effects. A certain responsibility
in the soul is involved merely when attention is directed to the
Christmas Meeting — the responsibility to make it a reality;
otherwise as a foundation it will withdraw from earthly existence and
go the same way as the Moon Beings of which I have spoken to-day. In
a certain sense the impulse of the Christmas Foundation Meeting was
actually in the world. Whether it will become effective in life
depends upon whether its impulse continues.
The
spiritual Foundation Stone of the Anthroposophical Society was laid
in the hearts of every participant. We brought the Meeting to a
formal conclusion, but actually it should never be closed, it should
continue perpetually in the life of the Anthroposophical Society. For
this reason I would ask you to take very seriously what you will find
in the weekly News Sheet, and to consider everything that will become
known to you by its means, not only as something reported or
described but as actual reality. It cannot be expected that
everything will be arranged at once and to begin with people will
inevitably be asking, ‘How should this or that be done?’
One of the first steps will be that in the News Sheet you will find
what I may call guiding lines in the form of aphorisms giving
expression to anthroposophical truths on such themes as life,
religion, art, and so forth. And then people in the different
groups will be able to say: Here is a thought sent to us from Dornach
as a guiding line; in addition to other business let us therefore
concentrate on this thought.
In this
way unity will develop among the various spheres of anthroposophical
life within the Society. Many things will begin to flow through the
Society as its life-blood, so that instead of merely speaking
about unity the Society may be permeated by a common spiritual blood.
Such was the aim of the Christmas Meeting. It could be felt then and
its further effects will become apparent as time goes on.
Emphasis
on this is particularly necessary here in Germany where the
whole position is different from anywhere else. In other countries
the opposition is not nearly as strong as it is here. If it crops up
elsewhere one can usually see that it is imported from here, although
there is a certain kind of opposition everywhere, especially in the
vicinity of Dornach itself. All the same it is a special kind of
opposition that faces us in Germany, a very tough opposition which
works with systematic, fully conscious methods. It was a difficult
decision to put someone who was practically lowest at the head of the
Society but that is what actually happened. When the Anthroposophical
Society was founded in 1912-13, I held no office in it; indeed I was
not even a Member. Nor was I a Member afterwards. I have often
emphasised this but it has been misunderstood. I wanted the
Anthroposophical Society to have me only as teacher, as one who could
lead to the sources of anthroposophical life. The attempt had to be
made in order to see what would come of it.
What has
happened is that at the age when people usually retire, I have to
make a beginning, for in fact I regard the Christmas Meeting as a
beginning, a genuine beginning in life. And I would like you too to
feel that we are at a beginning. If you feel like this then you may
expect results from this beginning in which there are great
possibilities. It is only from necessity that I have become a Member,
in fact President of the Anthroposophical Society, and I sincerely
hope that the significance of the Christmas Meeting will be realised.
If this comes about it may perhaps be possible, as a result of this
attempt, and with the cooperation of everyone with what will go out
from Dornach, for genuine anthroposophical life to flow through the
Society. In this spirit — and it is upon this spirit that
everything in the Society will depend — I should like to
respond most cordially to the welcome given me today by Dr. Kolisko,
on the occasion of my first visit here since the Christmas Meeting. I
should like to respond with equal warmth so that we may work together
in the spirit of the Christmas Meeting in such a way that the impulse
then given may never cease to be active among anthroposophists who
genuinely strive to understand what anthroposophical life
means. The influence of the Dornach Meeting and the spirit we tried
to invoke then will always be present if there is devotion and
perceptive understanding among the Members.
Let us
then work together, realising the deep significance of the
Dornach Meeting. Let us never treat it with indifference but regard
it as an impulse that penetrates deeply into our hearts. The Dornach
Meeting will then have been much more than a festival week; it will
be an impulse affecting the whole world and the destiny of man. And
that is the right impulse for all anthroposophical work and activity.
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