LECTURE THREE
AWAKENING SPIRITUAL THOUGHTS Basel, May 5, 1914
I am very
glad that we can meet here today and take a break, so to speak, for a
while from the work on our new building in Dornach.
[ Note 1 ]
But I thought it would be impossible to gather here so near our building
without also discussing anthroposophical matters. I hope we can do
this more often in the course of the year; otherwise our friends
working on the building will not have as many opportunities to attend
such meetings as they do when they are not working on our building.
Let us start with some
thoughts on the life of the spirit that might be useful in
considering what meaning spiritual science and living with
anthroposophy can have for us, for our soul. People new to
anthroposophical thinking, feeling, and perception may think we
should not worry about the life of the spirit, about the spiritual
world, since we enter the spiritual world anyway after death (even a
materialist might say this) and will there learn all we need to know
about it. Why should we not be satisfied in this life between birth
and death simply to do what is necessary for life in the physical
world; why is it wrong when we just fulfill our duties in the
physical world, and leave matters concerning the spiritual world in
the realm of the uncertain and indefinite? One could hear these words
often during the time when the tide of materialism engulfed human
development, especially in the last third of the nineteenth century.
And it was by no means the most morally reprehensible souls who said:
While on earth, let us concentrate on our tasks here and leave the
rest for the world we enter after death.
Now, let us talk about
something that can be grasped immediately by anyone who begins to
concern himself with — I do not even want to say spiritual
science — but with truly logical thinking. We actually spend
only part of our time between birth and death in the physical world,
namely, our waking time. And even people who have not yet thought
much about the spiritual world, but who can think logically, would
have to admit that with our conscious mind we know as little about
life in sleep as we do about life after death. And certainly no one
can deny that we continue to live in sleep — unless such a
person were prepared to accept that we really die every evening and
are created anew each morning. That is unlikely, but the truly
logical person will be equally unable to accept that the whole human
being is really present in a sleeping body lying in bed.
The fact that we sleep
regularly should at least make people think. And then they will be
motivated to reflect on what spiritual science has to offer. In
particular, the natural sciences will more and more realize that our
soul is not present in our physical body when we sleep. In fact, they
will reach this conclusion on their own before the end of this
century of scientific development. Then they will look to spiritual
science for answers to their questions. They will be forced by their
own conclusions to realize that our soul-spiritual being is really
not connected with our physical body when we are sleeping. It will
then become ever more important for people in the twentieth century
to know something about sleep. Therefore let us begin today and get
an idea of what people in our century will have to know about the
nature of sleep.
We know from our studies in
spiritual science that when we fall asleep, two members of our being,
the ego and the astral body, leave the physical and etheric bodies.
Where are the ego and the astral body when we are asleep? To begin
with, we can say they are in the spiritual world. Of course, we are
always in the spirit realm, because the latter is not separated from
the physical world, but surrounds us just as air envelops us
everywhere. We are always in the spiritual world, even when we are
awake.
However, we inhabit it in a
different way when we are asleep than when we are awake. Now, it may
be sufficient for the immediate needs of spiritual science to
describe this situation by saying that in sleep our ego and astral
body are outside our physical and etheric bodies. But then we would
actually be telling only half the truth. It is the same as saying the
sun sets here at night; because the sun in fact sets then only for us
in Europe. We know this does not apply to all the inhabitants of the
earth. Fundamentally, the ego and astral body leave our physical and
etheric bodies properly, we might say, completely, only after death.
In sleep they actually leave only the blood and nervous system. But
when the “sun” of our being, namely, the ego and astral
body, sets in relation to our blood and nervous system, which they
penetrate during the day, it rises for the other half of our being,
that is, for the other organs.
Our ego and astral body do
just what the sun does, which shines here during the day and when it
sets for us, it rises for the people on the other side of the earth.
When ego and astral body “set” for our blood and nervous
system, they rise for the other organs and are linked all the more
strongly with them.
These other organs, to
which our ego and astral body are connected when we sleep, have been
constructed out of the spirit, as has everything else in the world.
And the remarkable fact is that while we are sleeping, we strongly
influence these other organs of our body with our ego and astral
body. During the day, our ego and astral body work strongly upon our
blood and nervous system, but they influence our other organs, all
those not part of the blood and nervous system but which affect the
blood from the nerves, when we are asleep.
From this follows that it
is of some consequence how we enter sleep with our ego and astral
body. Materialists will not care much about what happens in sleep to
their ego and astral body, which they never mention anyway. However,
those who understand these things will know that the organs that are
not part of the blood and nervous system and do not manifest in our
conscious existence are dependent on those aspects of our ego and
astral body that are active in sleep.
Let me illustrate this with
an obvious example. As we know, people today are haunted by a fear we
can compare with the medieval fear of ghosts. It is the fear of
germs. Objectively, both states of fear are the same. Both fit their
respective age: People of the Middle Ages held a certain belief in
the spiritual world; therefore quite naturally they had a fear of
spiritual beings. The modern age has lost this belief in the
spiritual world; it believes in material things. It therefore has a
fear of material beings, be they ever so small. Objectively speaking,
the greatest difference we might find between the two periods is that
ghosts are at any rate sizable and respectable. The tiny germs, on
the other hand, are nothing much to write home about as far as
frightening people is concerned. Now of course I do not mean to imply
by this that we should encourage germs, and that it is good to have
as many as possible. That is certainly not the implication. Still,
germs certainly exist and ghosts existed also, especially as far as
those people who held a real belief in the spiritual world are
concerned. Thus, they do not even differ in terms of reality.
However, the important
point we want to make today is that germs can become dangerous only
if they are allowed to flourish. Germs should not be allowed to
flourish. Even materialists will agree with this statement, but they
will no longer agree with us if we proceed further and, from the
standpoint of proper spiritual science, speak about the most
favorable conditions for germs. Germs flourish most intensively when
we take nothing but materialistic thoughts into sleep with us. There
is no better way to encourage them to flourish than to enter sleep
with only materialistic ideas, and then to work from the spiritual
world with the ego and the astral body on those organs that are not
part of the blood and the nervous system. The only other method that
is just as good is to live in the center of an epidemic or endemic
illness and to think of nothing but the sickness all around, filled
only with a fear of getting sick. That would be equally effective. If
fear of the illness is the only thing created in such a place and one
goes to sleep at night with that thought, it produces afterimages,
Imaginations impregnated with fear. That is a good method of
cultivating and nurturing germs. If this fear can be reduced even a
little by, for example, active love and, while tending the sick,
forgetting for a time that one might also be infected, the conditions
are less favorable for the germs.
These issues are not raised
in anthroposophy merely to play on human egotism, but to describe the
facts of the spiritual world. This concrete case demonstrates that in
real life we cannot avoid dealing with the spiritual world, because
it is the basis for our actions between going to sleep and waking up.
If people were given thoughts that lead them away from materialism
and spur them on to active love out of the spirit, it would serve the
future of humanity better. Then infinitely more productive work could
be achieved than through all the preparations now being developed by
materialistic science against germs. In the course of this century,
the insight has to spread more and more widely that the spiritual
world is by no means irrelevant to our physical life, but is of
essential importance to it because we are in the spiritual world
between going to sleep and waking up, and continue to affect the
physical body from there. Even if this is not immediately obvious, it
is nevertheless true.
Now, we will have to get
used to the fact that the direct healing powers of spiritual science
have to work through the human community if we are to see these
matters in the right light. What does it mean that some individual
here or there enters the spiritual world in sleep with thoughts
turned toward the realm of the spirit, while all around other people
nourish and nurture the germ world with their materialistic thoughts,
materialistic feelings, and with fears, which are always connected
with materialism? What is the real nature of germs? Well, here we
come to a subject essential for human life. When we see the air
around us filled with different species of birds and the water filled
with fishes, when we observe the life forms that creep along the
earth and others frolicking on it and revealing themselves to our
senses, we are looking at beings we can correctly describe as
creatures of the developing Godhead in one form or another, even if
they are occasionally harmful. But in the case of germ-like creatures
resident and active in other living beings, in plants, animals, or
humans, we are dealing with creations of Ahriman. To understand the
existence of such creatures correctly we must know that they express
spiritual facts, namely the relationship between human beings and
Ahriman. This relationship is established through a materialistic
attitude and purely egotistical states of fear. We see the conditions
allowing the existence of such parasitic beings correctly if we
realize that they are a symptom of Ahriman intervening in the world.
Clearly, then, it is not a
matter of indifference whether we take materialistic or spiritual
ideas with us into the spiritual world when we fall asleep. As soon
as we realize this, we can no longer claim it is irrelevant whether
or not we know of the spirit in this world. We have to start at a
specific point if we really want to understand the great importance
of spiritual scientific research for our life between birth and
death.
It will become increasingly
clear to us how this earthly life is connected with spiritual life.
We rely on nature, which is on a lower level than we are, for our
nourishment. For some time after death, the dead derive their
nourishment from the ideas and the unconscious emotions that we here
on earth take into sleep with us. Those who have died perceive a
tremendous difference between people who in their waking life are
filled only with materialistic feelings and ideas and also take them
into sleep, and others who are wholly filled with spiritual ideas
while awake and who continue to be filled with them in sleep. The two
types of people are as different in their effect on the dead as a
barren region where no food can grow, where people would starve, and
a fruitful area that offers nourishment in abundance. For many years
after death, the dead draw a vitality from the souls sleeping here on
earth filled with spiritual content, a vitality that is similar, only
transposed into the spiritual realm, to what we draw in our physical
life from the beings of the kingdoms of nature below us. We literally
turn ourselves into fruitful pastures for the dead when we fill
ourselves with the ideas of spiritual science. And we turn ourselves
into barren ground and starve the dead if we take only materialistic
ideas and attitudes into sleep.
It is not out of the
enthusiasm that leads to the establishment of many other associations
and societies that we speak of spiritual science in these times.
Rather, the urge to speak about it comes out of necessity and the
heartfelt realization that in the twentieth century people will need
it. Regardless of outer circumstances, those who fully understand how
much the world needs spiritual science cannot help but talk about its
results and share it with their fellow human beings. The power of the
words at our disposal seems much too weak to meet the necessity of
making spiritual science ever more available to those who would
otherwise sink deeper and deeper into materialism.
Let us think about the
nature of our relationship to the dead we were connected with in
life, whom we can clearly visualize, and of whom we often think. What
is our relationship to those who have died, apart from offering them
spiritual nourishment by taking spiritual thoughts into sleep? What
is our relationship with the dead in waking life?
If the dead draw
nourishment from the content of our souls in sleep, then every
thought that enters the spiritual world and is concerned with it and
its beings can be perceived by the dead. On the other hand, if we do
not cultivate such thoughts, the dead are deprived of them. Ideas
related only to the material world, to things in nature, live in our
souls in such a way that the dead cannot perceive them. These ideas,
however scholarly or wise, are meaningless for the dead. As soon as
we have thoughts about the spiritual world, not only the living but
also the dead have immediate access to them. That is why we have
often recommended that our friends read silently to an individual
with whom they were closely connected and who has passed on to the
spiritual world. One forms an image of the person and then, while
thinking about him or her, one reads on a subject related to the
spiritual world. The dead can then participate in the process, which
is important. Although the dead are in the world we know through
spiritual science, thoughts about the spiritual world must be
produced on earth. The dead must perceive more than the spiritual
world around them; they need the thoughts of those who live on earth,
thoughts that for them are like perceptions.
The most important and the
most beautiful thing we can give the dead is to read to them in the
way I have just described. We can give something to the dead by
reading on a spiritual subject. And if you doubt that this is useful,
since the deceased is in the spiritual world anyway, just think that
we can be surrounded by things and beings in the physical world, yet
may not understand them. The understanding has to be acquired. Thus,
although the deceased is in the spiritual world, thoughts from earth
have to flow to him. Illuminating thoughts must flow up to those
regions where the dead dwell, just as rain streams down from the
clouds as a blessing to the physical world.
All these examples show
that it is infinitely important even for the physical world to
experience the spiritual world in thought. Obviously, we cannot wait
until after death for knowledge about the spiritual world. In truth,
a thorough study of the spiritual world shows us that we are not on
earth for nothing; we are here to learn something that can be learned
only on earth — a possession of such value that the living can
give it even to the dead.
The close connection
between our earth existence and life immediately after death also
manifests in many other respects, but it is difficult to talk about
this connection in concrete terms, because the words can so easily be
misunderstood. People are greatly inclined to prejudice, and whenever
a subject, such as the spiritual world and its beings, is discussed,
certain motives of the heart provoke misunderstandings. When I tell
of an individual case where there is this or that connection between
a person's life here on earth and after death, people all too easily
jump to the wrong conclusions out of a very understandable
self-centeredness and apply the description of a particular case to
themselves. They are tempted to think that things are quite different
in their case; therefore, they will not experience something this
beautiful after death. Instead of deriving satisfaction from the
events described, the listeners out of egotism feel that their
experience will not be equally exceptional after death.
As soon as we do more than
just speak in general terms and deal with specific cases, we must
develop selflessness so we can observe someone else's destiny without
drawing conclusions about our own life. Then we will not worry that
if the same does not happen to us, we are missing out on what is
being described. These and similar reactions provide grounds for
misunderstandings, which I want to avoid.
A short time ago, a very
dear friend of ours died, and many of us attended his cremation.
[ Note 2 ]
He would have celebrated his forty-third birthday tomorrow,
on May 6. In the final years of his life, he suffered much. I would
like to tell here, parenthetically as it were, a wonderful story from
his last years as his wife told it to me.
[ Note 3 ]
During his great
suffering, our friend fought not against admitting to himself that he
had to suffer, but against saying that he was ill. He was not ill, he
said. He suffered, yes, but he was not ill, and he was adamant that
such a statement should not be taken as quibbling but as something
meaningful. This definition, “I suffer, but I am not ill,”
arose from his awareness that what he carried within him as spiritual
science, what supported and carried him inwardly, defeated all
attacks of illness. He was aware that he suffered, but the health of
his soul is so great that, when he compared it to his physical
condition, he could not call himself ill. This definition is very
important and well-suited to permeate our soul as a feeling.
Anyway, we saw how the
person concerned spent his last years on earth in a sick body, in a
suffering body. Yet he did not see himself as sick but only as
suffering. If we compare that with the spiritual life that has now
begun for our friend, we will have a worthy image of what connects
our earth existence with life after death. It is a fact of the
spiritual world that a series of Imaginations was prepared in his
body, a body that showed the symptoms of illness. A series of
Imaginations, powerful Imaginations, lived, so to speak, in the sick
limbs. He was completely filled with the content of the spiritual
worlds. They lived in him in such a way that they worked on all those
organs we are usually not as aware of as we are of our brain and
nervous system, that is, organs we experience on a more subconscious
level. These powerful Imaginations lived in these organs, and all the
more so, the more outwardly ill these organs became. They prepared
themselves and now face the soul of the deceased as a mighty tableau
of the spiritual world. Now he is living in the images that were
trapped in his sick organs, especially in his final years. They
prepared themselves in such intensity that they now surround him as
his spiritual world.
It is impossible to see
more beautiful worlds, or to see the spiritual cosmos more perfectly
and more beautifully, than those that blossom and unfold in spiritual
art, which cannot be observed better anywhere else than through such
a situation. Here, on the physical plane, an artist can create in
beauty a piece of the world, so that the image on canvas or in marble
lets us see more of the world than we do on our own. All of this,
however, pales into insignificance in comparison to the spiritual
world seen as it is and also as it arises and blossoms forth from the
soul of the deceased who has been prepared by his karma in the way I
have described. How he was prepared will be clear from his poetic
works, which are now being printed and will appear soon.
[ Note 4 ]
His poetry reveals that this kind of spiritual life and passage into the
spiritual world after death are intimately connected with what we
have for many years called the Christ-Impulse. The Christ-Impulse, in
the sense spiritual science speaks of it, is beautifully alive in our
friend's poetry.
In this connection I want
to add something that can truly lead us to feel the relationship
between the world of our earthly life and the one we pass through
between death and a new birth. I will not present this connection
with abstract thoughts, but so you can grasp it at the level of
feeling. You see, one can be either stupid or clever here on the
physical plane; one can even be a scholar — in the life after
death it is of little importance whether one was stupid, clever, or
learned if all these qualities relate only to the things of the
physical world. Our thoughts about the material world may be ever so
clever; they will be of no use to us once we have passed through
death. They will then no longer have any meaning. After death we need
thoughts, ideas, and feelings that do not relate to the physical
world, because only those have meaning then.
Now, I would like to put
this in a somewhat grotesque, paradoxical way. Do not be put off by
the paradox; what I want to say will become clear immediately. Let us
assume that someone refuses to have any thoughts that are not called
forth by sensory perception. As soon as anything impinges on him and
thoughts begin to develop, he says: I do not want you. I proceed only
on the basis of what my eyes see and my ears hear. That is what I
want to think about. Stop bothering me with anything else; I will not
bother with it ... Such a person does not accumulate any strength
that can be used after death. He is blind when entering the world
between death and new birth.
Let us assume now that
someone else has a lively imagination, but cannot be bothered to
approach spiritual science and learn things slowly and gradually. He
finds it much easier to develop ideas about the spiritual world from
his imagination, to fantasize about the spiritual world. This person
has ideas concerning the sense world as well as all kinds of
fantasies about the realm of the spirit. Such an individual would not
enter the spiritual world as a blind person, but will have soul
forces that will enable him to see in the spiritual world. However,
such people will be as we are when our vision in the physical world
is impaired and we see things inaccurately as a result. Such
inaccurate vision is a lot worse in the spiritual world than on the
physical plane because there it leads to confusion at every turn.
What I have just said, even if it seems grotesque at first, shows us
that we need ideas reaching beyond the life of the senses if we
really want to become citizens of the spiritual world, as we must.
And unless we get our bearings from beyond the sense world, we will
live in the spiritual world in a crippled state, as do those who take
in only ideas related to the sensory realm and those who allow their
imagination to run wild.
Various founders of
religions appeared throughout history to prevent people from having
thoughts triggered purely by physical objects or by fantasies about
the spiritual world. If we look at these personalities and the
teachings they gave humanity, we find that the aim of all these
religious founders was to offer people ideas about the super-sensible
world that would allow them to enter it healthy and whole, not
crippled. The founders of our religions provided ideas that met the
needs of their particular time and culture.
Our age is different from
the past and requires us to grow up into mature human beings. Please
do not take this in a superficial, merely external sense, but in a
deeply inward one. We have to reach maturity and find the path into
the spiritual world through our souls. The ancient founders of our
religions spoke to a humanity that was not yet mature. They addressed
people at a stage through which all our souls have also passed. These
ancient religious leaders knew their times, and also knew that they
could not speak in the same way to a humanity moving further toward
the future. For humanity must develop toward maturity and
independence.
If people of ancient times
had either restricted themselves to sense impressions or had reached
for the products of their imagination, in both cases they would have
entered the spiritual world crippled or at the very least in a
confused state. At that point a leader appeared, bringing true ideas
from the spiritual world. People then said that they themselves did
not gain access to the spiritual world through sensory perception or
use of the imagination, but rather through Zarathustra, Buddha, or
Krishna, who stimulated thoughts in them that allowed them to enter
the realm of the spirit.
[ Note 5 ]
In our time human beings must come
of age, regardless of whether the ego causes confusion or blindness.
The Mystery of Golgotha took place so that we can find the way into
the spiritual world as independent beings. Religious leaders no
longer appear in history as they did in earlier times.
Those who compare Christ to
the ancient religious teachers do not understand anything about him.
In the first place, Christ worked through a deed, the ancient
religious leaders through their teachings. To describe him merely as
a teacher of humanity means not knowing at all who Christ is. The
essential thing about him is the deed he performed, which began as a
consequence of his baptism by John and ended with the crucifixion on
Golgotha. What was done there for humanity is spiritually
all-important. What happened there is what can permeate human souls
ever since then, namely, the experience St. Paul described as “Not
I, but Christ in me.” Indeed, Christ has become the path into
the spiritual world because he brought it into this world. He brought
us the spiritual world we need if we are not to be crippled or blind
after death.
It is quite possible these
days to deny Christ and claim that there is no evidence that Christ
lived in the physical world in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In
fact, people have even produced evidence showing there was no
historical Christ. But with that they merely prove that they missed
the point. If Christ had chiseled into a rock for all future
generations, “I was here,” then those future generations
would have known he existed from the sensory world, and they would
not have needed to believe it. His deep significance, the possibility
of redemption, is precisely that this was not the case, that we
cannot comprehend him through our senses but have to accept him with
the forces of the spirit. Seen in this light, we find Christ
intimately connected with those things that even here on earth lift
human beings beyond the sense-perceptible world into the spiritual
realm. None of this exists for those who cannot raise themselves to
the spiritual world, because they cannot escape their doubts.
In this context it can be a
great relief for someone fully involved in modern culture, in science
and art, to come across a view of Christ that is appropriate to our
modern civilization, namely the anthroposophical view of Christ
presented in spiritual science. Much can be learnt from it, for
example, how to view the physical world correctly. Oh, the physical
world — where is it headed these days? I hinted at some of
these things recently in a public lecture, but now I can be more
explicit.
[ Note 6 ]
Of course, we have to admire materialist
civilization and all the achievements of technology, industry, and so
on. An immense amount of intellectual energy has flowed into these
things; they have taken up a great deal of human energy. But who
benefits from these intellectual efforts? Insofar as they satisfy the
material needs of modern humanity, they serve Ahriman. Christ Jesus
experienced the temptation by Ahriman. Ordinary human souls could
certainly not survive the sudden shock of such an experience. For us
the temptation has to be diluted. But as a consequence of this
dilution of temptation, Ahriman can say to us: Yes, think only with
the power of your science, with all those things you can discover
through science applied to technology, industry, and so on. Use only
those things for your thinking and apply them to nothing but physical
experience; that suits me fine. It fits in well with my aims, says
Ahriman, if you are unable to see me. You might well despise reason
and knowledge, the supreme achievements of human beings; thus you are
absolutely mine — at least as long as you do not see me. I will
instill the drive in you to use reason and knowledge only for earthly
things!
Something else is required
to counterbalance the service we render Ahriman. It is therefore
important that we gather everything modern technology and so on can
accomplish to build something with it that is not to serve our outer
existence, but only our spiritual life.
In ancient times, people
presented sacrifices to the gods, the first fruits of the field and
of the herd. I do not intend to talk about the meaning of sacrifice
today, but you can see what it could signify presented in a form
appropriate to modern times. When the first fruits had been
sacrificed to the gods, the people partook of the remainder.
Spiritual science is certainly not based on false asceticism. It will
not be guilty of the absurdity of ranting and raving against modern
culture with all its material blessings. On the contrary, it
recognizes their value. But if it wants to avoid serving only
Ahriman, it has to sacrifice something of the first fruits of this
external material culture to the gods.
So you see, there is a
profound thinking underlying the building that is growing outside on
the hill at Dornach: We want to offer the first fruits of modern
civilization to the gods. Everything is different now from the way it
was in the times our souls passed through in previous incarnations.
And we have to understand the nature of our current task just as we
understood what we had to do in our earlier incarnations when we were
guided by spiritual luminaries. That is especially difficult now
because we have to take into account not only the nature of our time
but also our soul qualities. In addition, we can no longer rely on
the external authority that supported the founders of religions; we
have to work with quite different forces. Christ was the Word; in the
same way true spiritual science wishes to work only through the word
and must not use any other means.
Such reflections give us an
insight into the connection between the spiritual world and our world
here on earth. And no matter where we begin, we see the Mystery of
Golgotha radiating toward us as the heart and soul of such
reflections. But we must not forget that we have to become mature,
truly mature, so that we can understand what spiritual science is
meant to be. We must never forget that it must exist because humanity
must come of age.
It is completely true that
humanity descended from higher spiritual regions and has moved away
from the old atavistic clairvoyance by developing a world view based
on reason and systematic thinking. We have to take this progress in
evolution seriously. We must realize we live at a time when it is our
mission to develop our thinking, to advance through our thinking, and
to learn through studying. Spiritual science is our basis, our point
of departure. We must try to immerse ourselves in these ideas so that
they stimulate within us what our souls need in the future. What
spiritual science offers can be understood by everyone. Those who
claim one cannot understand the contents of spiritual science, but
must believe it, speak without knowing how these things really are.
We must not be misled when
we meet people who have not advanced by means of intellectual
understanding, but have certain psychic abilities that seem to appear
spontaneously. Based on our understanding of the mission of spiritual
science, we know that souls can now think only because the
clairvoyance of an earlier age has been suppressed. People with
natural clairvoyance, which was not acquired through inner effort,
must be seen as persons who have remained at an earlier evolutionary
stage and who should therefore receive special care in our Society,
rather than be considered particularly advanced. It would be an
incorrect judgment if we were to consider such souls particularly
mature, as having experienced particularly high incarnations. People
with a natural gift of clairvoyance have gone through far less than
those who are thinkers nowadays. These things have to be properly
understood in our Society. Then it would be possible (and it is my
duty to say this) for our Society to be a place where such souls with
psychic powers can find care and be guided on the right path. Our
Society could give them what they cannot get anywhere else: order in
their soul. But to make that possible most of the members of our
Society must have a profound inner knowledge of the mission of true
spiritual science in the present. If that happened, then the case
that so saddened us in recent days could not recur. I am referring to
a member, who joined in the belief our Society would care for
clairvoyant psychic forces, but then found here a captive audience
and took on the role of a prophet. Such an event opens the door to
all those things that, if they were to prevail, would turn our
Society into the exact opposite of what it should be according to the
intentions of the spiritual forces supporting it.
Unfortunately, we have had
to suffer the case of ..., who came from a country in the north. He
might have become a good member if he had worked quietly on
developing his psychic powers. Instead, he was immediately surrounded
by a kind of aura. He presented himself everywhere as a healer in a
way we can only consider regrettable. It became necessary to announce
that he could no longer be considered a member of our Society. For it
would be turned into the exact opposite of what it should be if we
failed to carefully draw attention to psychic phenomena that are not
imbued with true spiritual power, which, after all, is the true power
of Christ. Christ, not psychic powers, must work in us. These
circumstances must be handled so as to make it clear that our Society
will have nothing to do with this. It knows no other sanction than
the one used in the last few days. Unfortunately, a step had to be
taken we otherwise oppose in principle: a member had to be expelled.
This cannot be separated
from a serious and worthy concept of the mission of the
Anthroposophical Society. And certainly you will understand that it
is only with great sorrow one lives through the events that had to be
lived through here in the last few days. We are in principle opposed
to all expulsions and yet could not avoid expelling someone in such a
case. It will happen less and less frequently if our dear friends
continue to take to heart the things that have been said so often and
that were also the subject of tonight's talk. With that I will
conclude my remarks, my dear friends, and entrust them to your souls.
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