PREPARING FOR THE SIXTH EPOCH
We have
come here today for the opening of the group founded by our friend,
Professor C. This group wishes to dedicate itself to the spiritual
life of the present and future in the way that is customary in our
Movement. On such an occasion it is always good to remember why we
associate in groups and to ask ourselves why we found working groups
and cultivate in them the spiritual treasure to which we dedicate our
forces.
If this
question is to be answered truly, we must realize that we make a
distinction, even if only in thought, between the work we do in a
group like this and our other work in the world. Those who are
unwilling to enter deeply into more intimate truths connected with the
spiritual progress of humanity, might ask if we could not cultivate
spiritual science without forming ourselves into groups, but simply by
finding lecturers and providing opportunities for people who may not
know each other to come together and have access to the spiritual
treasure of which we speak. We could, of course, proceed in this way.
But as long as it is at all possible to establish, in the wider and
narrower senses, associations of human beings who are known to one
another and who come together in friendship and brotherliness within
these working groups, we will continue to found them in full
consciousness of the attitude of soul that is part and parcel of
spiritual science. It is not without meaning that among us there are
human beings who want to cultivate the more intimate side of spiritual
knowledge and who sincerely intend to work together in brotherliness
and harmony. Not only are relationships and intercourse affected by
the fact that we can speak quite differently among ourselves, knowing
that we are speaking to souls consciously associated with us —
not only is this so, but something else is also to be remembered. The
establishment of individual groups is connected with the whole
conception that we hold of our Movement if we understand its inmost
nature. We must all be conscious that our Movement is significant not
only for the existence known to the senses and for the existence that
is grasped by the outward turned mind of man, but that through this
Movement our souls are seeking a real and genuine link with the
spiritual worlds. Again and again, in full consciousness, we should
say to ourselves that by the cultivation of spiritual science we
transfer our souls as it were into spheres that are peopled not only
by beings of earth but also by the beings of the higher hierarchies,
the beings of the invisible worlds. We must realize that our work is
of significance for these invisible worlds, that we are actually
within these worlds. In the spiritual world, the work performed by
those who know one another within such groups is quite different from
work carried on outside such a group and dispersed about the world.
The work carried out in brotherly harmony within our groups has quite
a different significance for the spiritual world than other work we
may undertake. To understand this fully we must remind ourselves of
truths we have studied in many aspects during recent years.
Earth
evolution in the post-Atlantean age was sustained in the beginning by
the culture of the ancient Indian period of civilization. This was
followed by the ancient Persian epoch — the designation is only
more or less appropriate but we need not go into that now. Then came
the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian period of culture, then the
Greco-Latin, then our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Each of these epochs
has, on the one side, to cultivate a particular form of culture and of
spiritual life primarily concerned with the external and visible
world. But each epoch must at the same time prepare, bear within it in
a preparatory stage, what is to come in the ensuing period of
culture.
Within
the womb, as it were, of the ancient Indian epoch, that of ancient
Persia was prepared; within the ancient Persian culture, that of the
Egypto-Chaldean epoch was prepared, and so on. Our fifth
post-Atlantean epoch must prepare the coming sixth epoch of culture.
Our task in spiritual science is not only to acquire spiritual
treasure for ourselves, for the eternal life of the soul, but to
prepare what will constitute the content, the specific external work
of the sixth epoch of culture. Thus it has been in each of the
post-Atlantean epochs. The centers of the mysteries were the places in
which the form of external life belonging to the next epoch of culture
was prepared. The mysteries were associations of human beings among
whom other things were cultivated than those cultivated in the outer
world. The ancient Indian epoch was concerned with the cultivation of
the human etheric body, the ancient Persian epoch with the cultivation
of the astral body, the Egypto-Chaldean with that of the sentient
soul, the Greco-Latin with that of the intellectual or mind soul. Our
own epoch, throughout its duration, will develop and unfold the
consciousness or spiritual soul. But what will give to external
culture in the sixth epoch its content and character, must be prepared
in advance. Many characteristics of the sixth epoch of culture will be
entirely different from those of our age. Three characteristic traits
can be mentioned, of which we must realize that they should be carried
in our hearts for the sixth epoch of culture and that it is our task
to prepare them for this sixth epoch.
There is
lacking in human society nowadays a quality that, in the sixth epoch,
will be a characteristic of those men who reach the goal of that
epoch, and have not fallen short of it. It is a quality that will not,
of course, be found among those who in the sixth epoch have still
remained at the stage of savages or barbarians. One of the most
significant characteristics of men living on the earth at the peak of
culture in the sixth epoch, will be a certain moral quality. Little of
this quality is perceptible in modern humanity. A man today must be
delicately organized for his soul to feel pain when he sees other
human beings in the world in less happy circumstances than his own. It
is true that more delicately organized natures feel pain at the
suffering that is so widespread in the world, but this can only be
said of the people who are particularly sensitive. In the sixth epoch,
the most highly cultured will not only feel pain such as is caused
today by the sight of poverty, suffering and misery in the world, but
such individuals will experience the suffering of another human being
as their own suffering. If they see a hungry man they will feel the
hunger right down into the physical, so acutely indeed that the hunger
of the other man will be unendurable to them. The moral characteristic
indicated here is that, unlike conditions in the fifth epoch, in the
sixth epoch the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon
the well-being of the whole. Just as nowadays the well-being of a
single human limb depends upon the health of the whole body, and when
the whole body is not healthy the single limb is not up to doing its
work, so in the sixth epoch a common consciousness will lay hold of
the then civilized humanity and in a far higher degree than a limb
feels the health of the whole body, the individual will feel the
suffering, the need, the poverty or the wealth of the whole. This is
the first preeminently moral trait that will characterize the cultured
humanity of the sixth epoch.
A second
fundamental characteristic will be that everything we call the fruits
of belief today will depend to a far, far higher degree than is the
case today, upon the single individuality. Spiritual science expresses
this by saying that in every sphere of religion in the sixth epoch,
complete freedom of thought and a longing for it will so lay hold of
men that what a man likes to believe, what religious convictions he
holds, will rest wholly within the power of his own individuality.
Collective beliefs that exist in so many forms today among the various
communities will no longer influence those who constitute the
civilized portion of humanity in the sixth epoch of culture. Everyone
will feel that complete freedom of thought in the domain of religion
is a fundamental right of the human being.
The third
characteristic will be that men in the sixth epoch will only be
considered to have real knowledge when they recognize the spiritual,
when they know that the spiritual pervades the world and that human
souls must unite with the spiritual. What is known as science today
with its materialistic trend will certainly not be honored by the name
of science in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. It will be regarded as
antiquated superstition, able to pass muster only among those who have
remained behind at the stage of the superseded fifth post-Atlantean
epoch. Today we regard it as superstition when, let us say, a savage
holds the view that no limb ought to be separated from his body at
death because this would make it impossible for him to enter the
spiritual world as a whole man. Such a man still connects the idea of
immortality with pure materialism, with the belief that an impress of
his whole form must pass into the spiritual world. He thinks
materialistically but believes in immortality. We, today, knowing from
spiritual science that the spiritual has to be separated from the body
and that only the spiritual passes into the super-sensible world,
regard such materialistic beliefs in immortality as superstition.
Similarly, in the sixth epoch all materialistic beliefs including
science, too, will be regarded as antiquated superstition. Men as a
matter of course will accept as science only such forms of knowledge
as are based upon the spiritual, upon pneumatology.
The whole
purpose of spiritual science is to prepare in this sense for the sixth
epoch of culture. We try to cultivate spiritual science in order to
overcome materialism, to prepare the kind of science that must exist
in that epoch. We found communities of human beings within which there
must be no dogmatic beliefs or any tendency to accept teaching simply
because it emanates from one person or another. We found communities
of human beings in which everything, without exception, must be built
upon the soul's free assent to the teachings. Herein we prepare what
spiritual science calls freedom of thought. By coming together in
friendly associations for the purpose of cultivating spiritual
science, we prepare the culture, the civilization of the sixth
post-Atlantean epoch.
But we
must look still more deeply into the course of human evolution if we
are fully to understand the real tasks of our associations and groups.
In the first post-Atlantean epoch, too, in communities that in those
days were connected with the mysteries, men cultivated what
subsequently prevailed in the second epoch. In the associations
peculiar to the first, the ancient Indian epoch, men were concerned
with the cultivation of the astral body, which was to be the specific
outer task of the second epoch. It would lead much too far today to
describe what, in contrast to the external culture of the time, was
developed in these associations peculiar to ancient India in order to
prepare for the second, ancient Persian epoch. But this may be said
that when those men of the ancient Indian epoch came together in order
to prepare what was necessary for the second epoch, they felt: We have
not yet attained, nor have we in us, what we shall have when our souls
are incarnated in the next epoch. It still hovers above us. It was in
truth so. In the first epoch of culture, what was to descend from the
heavens to the earth in the second epoch still hovered over the souls
of men. The work achieved on earth by men in intimate assemblies
connected with the mysteries was of such a nature that forces flowed
upwards to the spirits of the higher hierarchies, enabling them to
nourish and cultivate what was to stream down into the souls of men as
substance and content of the astral body in the second, ancient
Persian epoch. The forces that descended at a later stage of maturity
into the souls incarnated in the bodies of ancient Persian
civilizations were like little children in the first epoch. Forces
streaming upwards from the work of men below in preparation for the
next epoch were received and nurtured by the spiritual world above. So
it must be in every epoch of culture.
In our
epoch it is the consciousness or spiritual soul that has developed in
us through our ordinary civilization and culture. Beginning with the
fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, science and
materialistic consciousness have laid hold of the human being. This
will gradually become more widespread, until by the end of the fifth
epoch its development will have been completed. In the sixth epoch,
however, it is the spirit self that must be developed within the souls
of men, just as now the consciousness soul is being developed. The
nature of spirit self is that it must pre-suppose the existence in
human souls of the three characteristics of which I have spoken:
social life in which brotherliness prevails, freedom of thought, and
pneumatology. These three characteristics are essential in a community
of human beings within which the spirit self is to develop as the
consciousness soul develops in the souls of the fifth epoch. We may
therefore picture to ourselves that by uniting in brotherliness in
working groups, something hovers invisibly over our work, something
that is like the child of the forces of the spirit self — the
spirit self that is nurtured by the beings of the higher hierarchies
in order that it may stream down into our souls when they are again on
earth in the sixth epoch of civilization. In our groups we perform
work that streams upward to those forces that are being prepared for
the spirit self.
So you
see, it is only through the wisdom of spiritual science itself that we
can understand what we are really doing in respect of our connection
with the spiritual worlds when we come together in these working
groups. The thought that we do this work not only for the sake of our
own egos, but in order that it may stream upward into the spiritual
worlds, the thought that this work is connected with the spiritual
worlds, this is the true consecration of a working group. To cherish
such a thought is to permeate ourselves with the consciousness of the
consecration that is the foundation of a working group within the
Movement. It is therefore of great importance to grasp this fact in
its true spiritual sense. We find ourselves together in working groups
which, besides cultivating spiritual science, are based on freedom of
thought. They will have nothing to do with dogma or coercion of
belief, and their work should be of the nature of cooperation among
brothers. What matters most of all is to become conscious of the true
meaning of the idea of community, saying to ourselves: Apart from the
fact that as modern souls we belong to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch
of culture and develop as individuals, raising individual life more
and more out of community life, we must in turn become conscious of a
higher form of community, founded in the freedom of love among
brothers, as a breath of magic that we breathe in our working
groups.
The deep
significance of West European culture lies in the fact that the quest
of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is the consciousness soul. The task
of West European culture, and particularly of Central European
culture, is that men shall develop an individual culture, individual
consciousness. This is the task of the present age. Compare this epoch
of ours with that of Greece and Rome. The Greek epoch exhibits in a
particularly striking form, especially among the civilized Greeks, a
consciousness of living within a group soul. A man who was born and
lived in Athens felt himself to be first and foremost an
“Athenian.” This community between city and what belonged
to the city meant something different to the individual from what
community between human beings means today. In our time the individual
strives to grow out of and beyond the community, and this is right in
the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In Rome, the human being was first and
foremost a Roman citizen, nothing else. But in the fifth epoch we
strive above all else to be man in our innermost being, man and
nothing else. It is a painful experience in our day to see men
fighting against one another on the earth, but this, after all, is
just a reaction to the perpetual striving of the fifth epoch for free
development of the “human universal.” Because the
different countries and peoples shut themselves off today from one
another in hostility, it is all the more necessary to develop, as
resistance to this, the force that allows human beings to be men in
the full sense, allowing the individual to grow out of and beyond
every kind of community. But on the other hand the human being must,
in full consciousness, make preparation for communities into which he
will enter entirely of his own free will in the sixth epoch. There
hovers before us as a high ideal a form of community that will so
encompass the sixth epoch of culture that civilized human beings will
quite naturally meet each other as brothers and sisters.
From many
lectures given in past years, we know that Eastern Europe is inhabited
by a people whose particular mission it will be in the sixth epoch,
and not until the sixth epoch, to bring to definite expression the
elementary forces that now lie within them. We know that the Russian
peoples will not be ready until the sixth epoch of culture to unfold
the forces now within them in an elementary form. The mission of
Western and Central Europe is to introduce into men qualities that can
be introduced by the consciousness soul. This is not the mission of
Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe will have to wait until the spirit self
comes down to the earth and can permeate the souls of men. This must
be understood in the right sense. Understood in the wrong sense it may
easily lead to pride and superciliousness, precisely in the East. The
height of post-Atlantean culture is reached in the fifth epoch. What
will follow in the sixth and seventh epochs will be a descending line
of evolution. Nevertheless, this descending evolution in the sixth
epoch will be inspired, permeated by the spirit self. Today the man of
Eastern Europe feels instinctively, but often with perverted instinct,
that this is so; only his consciousness of it is, for the most part,
extremely hazy and confused. The frequent occurrence of the term,
“the Russian man,” is quite characteristic. Genius
expresses itself in language when, instead of saying as we do in the
West: the British, the French, the Italian, the German — Eastern
Europe says, “the Russian man.” Many of the Russian
intelligentsia attach importance to the use of the expression,
“the Russian man.” This is connected deeply with the
genius of the particular culture. The term refers to the element of
manhood, of brotherhood that is spread over a community. An attempt is
made to indicate this by including a word that brings out the
“manhood” in the term. But it is also obvious that the
height to be reached in a distant future has not yet been attained,
inasmuch as the term includes a word that glaringly contradicts the
noun. In the expression, “the Russian man.” the adjective
really nullifies what is expressed in the noun. For when true manhood
is attained there should be no adjective to suggest any element of
exclusiveness.
But at a
much, much deeper level there lies in members of the Russian
intelligentsia the realization that a conception of community, of
brotherhood must prevail in times still to come. The Russian soul
feels that spirit self is to descend, but that it can only descend
into a community of men permeated with the consciousness of
brotherhood, that it can never spread over a community where there is
no consciousness of brotherhood. That is why the Russian
intellectuals, as they call themselves, make the following reproach to
Western and Central Europe. They say, “You pay no heed at all to
a life of true community. You cultivate only individualism. Everyone
wants to be a person on his own, to be an individual only. You drive
the personal element, through which every single man feels himself an
individuality, to its highest extreme.” This is what echoes
across from the East to Western and Central Europe in many reproaches
of barbarism and the like. Those who try to realize how things really
are, accuse Western and Central Europe of having lost all feeling for
human connections. Confusing present and future as they do now, these
people say, “it is only in Russia that there is a true and
genuine community of life among men, a life where everyone feels
himself the brother of the other, as the ‘Little Father’ or the
‘Little Mother’ of the other.” The Russian intelligentsia say
that the Christianity of Western Europe has not succeeded in
developing the essence of human community, but that the Russian still
knows what community is.
Alexander
Herzen, an excellent thinker who lived in the nineteenth century and
belonged to the Russian intellectuals, brought this to its ultimate
conclusion by saying, “In Western Europe there can never be
happiness.” No matter what attempts are made, happiness will
never come to Western European civilization. There humanity will never
find contentment. Only chaos can prevail there. The one and only
salvation lies in the Russian nature and in the Russian form of life
where men have not yet separated themselves from community, where in
their village communities there is still something of the nature of
the group soul to which they hold fast. What we call the group soul,
out of which mankind has gradually emerged and in which the animal
kingdom still lives, that is what is revered by the Russian
intelligentsia as something great and significant among their people.
They cannot rise to the thought that the community of the future must
hover as a high ideal, an ideal that has yet to be realized. They
adhere firmly to the thought: We are the last people in Europe to
retain this life in the group soul; the others have risen out of it;
we have retained and must retain it for ourselves.
Yes, but
this life in the group soul does not in reality belong to the future
at all, for it is the old form of group soul existence. If it
continued it would be a Luciferic group soul, a form of life that has
remained at an earlier stage, whereas the form of group soul life that
is true and must be striven for, is what we try to find in spiritual
science. But be that as it may, the urge and the longing of the
Russian intellectuals show how the spirit of community is needed to
bring about the descent of spirit self. Just as it is being striven
for there along a false path, so must it be striven for in spiritual
science along the true path. What we should like to say to the East is
this: It is our task to overcome entirely just what you are trying to
preserve in an external form, namely, an old Luciferic-Ahrimanic form
of community. In a community of a Luciferic-Ahrimanic character there
will be coercion of belief as rigid as that established by the
Orthodox Catholic Church in Russia. Such community will not understand
true freedom of thought; least of all will it be able to rise to the
level where complete individuality is associated with a social life in
which brotherhood prevails. That other form of community would like to
preserve what has remained in blood brotherhood, in brotherhood purely
through the blood. Community that is founded not upon the blood, but
upon the spirit, upon community of souls, is what must be striven for
along the paths of spiritual science. We must try to create
communities in which the factor of blood no longer has a voice.
Naturally, the factor of blood will continue, it will live itself out
in family relationships, for what must remain will not be eradicated.
But something new must arise! What is significant in the child will be
retained in the forces of old age, but in his later years the human
being must receive new forces.
The
factor of blood is not meant to encompass great communities of human
beings in the future. That is the error that is filtering from the
East into the dreadful events of today. A war has blazed up under the
heading of community of blood among the Slavic peoples. Into these
fateful times all those elements are entering of which we have just
heard, elements that in reality have in them the right kernel, namely,
the instinctive feeling that the spirit self can only manifest in a
community where brotherhood prevails. It must not, however, be a
community of blood: it must be a community of souls. What grows up as
a community of souls is what we develop, in its childhood stage, in
our working groups. What holds Eastern Europe so firmly to the group
soul, causing it to regard the Slavic group soul as something that it
does not want to abandon but, on the contrary, regards as a principle
for the whole development of the state — it is this that must be
overcome.
A great
and terrible symbol stands before the eyes of the world. Think of the
two states where the war had its starting-point. On the one side,
Russia with the Slavic world in general, declares that the war is
based on brotherhood of blood, and on the other side, there is
Austria, which comprises thirteen distinct peoples and thirteen
different languages. The mobilization order in Austria had to be
issued in thirteen languages because Austria encompasses thirteen
racial stocks: Germans, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Rumanians, Magyars,
Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes (among whom there is a second and
separate dialect), Bosnians, Dalmatians and Italians. Thirteen
different racial stocks, apart from all minor differentiations, are
united in Austria. Whether the implications of this are understood or
not, it is obvious that Austria consists of a collection of human
beings among whom community can never be based on blood relationship,
for what its strange boundaries contain shoots out into thirteen
different lineages. The most highly composite state in Europe stands
in opposition to the state that strives most intensively for life in a
group soul, or for conformity. But this striving for life in a group
soul brings a great many other things in its train. This leads us to
another matter, the significance of which we will think about
today.
In the
public lecture yesterday I mentioned the great philosopher Soloviev,
one of the most significant thinkers of all Russia. Soloviev is an
eminent thinker, but a thoroughly Russian thinker, a mind that is
exceedingly difficult to understand from the Western European point of
view. Anthroposophists, however, should study his work and try to
understand him. I propose to speak from our more intimate standpoint
about Soloviev's main and central idea. Soloviev is far too good a
philosopher to adopt for himself without question the principle of
life in a group soul. He has difficulties with it and he disagrees in
many respects. But one idea predominates in him, not quite consciously
it is true, but in such a way that one only wishes he were clairvoyant
and could thus anticipate what his soul will have to wait to see on
the earth when he is incarnated in the sixth epoch of culture. The
following conception that is extremely difficult for the men of West
and Central Europe to understand became the main and central idea in
Soloviev's mind.
In
Western Europe, as a preparation for the sixth epoch, we try among
many other things to grasp the meaning of death, the significance of
death for life. We try to understand how death is the manifestation of
a form of existence, how the soul is transformed in death into another
form of existence. We describe the life of a man within his body and
the manner of life between death and new birth. We endeavor to
understand death, to overcome death by realizing that it is only
semblance, that the soul in very truth lives on when it has passed
through death. It is an essential aim with us to overcome death
through understanding. But here we come to one of the points, indeed
to one of the most vital points, where spiritual science deviates
altogether from the central idea held by the great Russian thinker,
Soloviev. His idea is this: There is evil in the world, wickedness in
the world. If we, with our senses, behold the evil and wickedness, we
cannot deny that the world is full of both. This, says Soloviev,
refutes the divinity of the world, for when we behold the world with
our senses, how can we believe in a divine world, since a divine world
can certainly not exhibit evil! But the senses perceive evil
everywhere and the extreme evil is death. Because death is in the
world, the world is revealed in all its evil and wickedness. The
arch-evil is death!
Thus does
Soloviev characterize the world. He says — and I am quoting
almost word for word: Look at the world with your ordinary senses; try
to understand the world with your ordinary mind. You can never deny
the existence of evil in the world, and to desire to understand death
would be absurd! Death exists. Knowledge acquired through the senses
reveals a world of wickedness, a world of evil. Can we believe, asks
Soloviev, that this world is divine when it shows us that it is full
of evil, when it shows us death at every step? Nevermore can we
believe that a world that shows us death is a divine world. For in God
there can be no evil, no wickedness, above all, not the arch-evil
death. In God there cannot be death. If, therefore, God were to come
into the world (I am repeating what Soloviev says practically word for
word) — if God were to appear, should we be able immediately to
believe him to be God? No, we should not! He would have to establish
his identity first. If a being claiming to be God were to appear, we
should not believe him. He would have to prove his identity by
producing something of the nature of a world document that would
enable us to recognize him as God! Nothing of the kind exists in the
world. God cannot prove his identity through what is in the world, for
everything in the world contradicts the divine nature. By what means,
then, can he prove his identity? Only by showing, when he comes into
the world, that he has conquered death, that death can have no power
over him. We should never believe Christ to be God if He did not prove
his identity. But Christ did so, inasmuch as He has risen, inasmuch as
He has shown that the arch-evil, death, is not in Him.
This is
what Soloviev says. It is a consciousness of the divine that is based
solely upon the actual, historical resurrection of Christ, Who, as
God, proves His identity. Soloviev goes on to say: Nothing in the
world, with the single exception of the Resurrection, enables us to
realize that a God exists. If Christ had not risen, all our belief
would be vain, and everything we could say about a divine nature in
the world, this too would be vain. Soloviev quotes these words of St.
Paul again and again.
This,
then, is the fundamental outlook of Soloviev. If we look at the world
we see therein only evil, wickedness, degeneration, senselessness. If
Christ had not risen, the world would be meaningless, therefore Christ
has risen! Note this sentence well, for it is a cardinal saying of one
of the greatest thinkers of Eastern Europe: “If Christ had not
risen the world would be senseless, therefore Christ has risen.”
Soloviev has said: “There may be people who think it illogical
when I say, if Christ had not risen the world would be senseless;
therefore Christ has risen — but this is far better logic than
any you can adduce against me.”
In this
curious example of a document for proving God's divinity, which we
find in Soloviev's writings, I have given you a concrete instance of
the strangeness of thought in Eastern Europe. Curious thoughts crop up
in the attempt to understand by what means God reveals indisputably
that he is God. How different it is in the West and in Central Europe!
What is the aim of spiritual science? Try to review and to compare
what we try to cultivate in spiritual science. What is its aim and
direction? It is our desire and aim to recognize out of knowledge that
the world has meaning, significance and purpose, and that the world is
not filled merely with evil and degeneration. It is our aim to realize
through direct knowledge that the world has meaning. By this
realization we try to prepare for actual experience of the Christ. We
desire to comprehend the living Christ, accepting all these things, of
course, as a gift, as grace. We realize the portent of the words:
“I am with you always even unto the end of the world.” We
accept all that the Christ unceasingly promises us. For He speaks not
only through the Gospels; He also speaks within our souls. That is
what He means by the words: “I am with you always even unto the
end of the world.” Always He can be found as the living Christ.
We want to live in Him, to receive Him into ourselves.
“Not I but the Christ in me!” Of all St. Paul's
sayings this is the most significant for us. “Not I but the
Christ in me.” For thereby we realize: Wherever we may turn,
meaning and purpose are revealed. Faust expressed the same truth when
he clothed his philosophy in the following words:
Spirit sublime, thou gav'st me, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Not unto me in vain
Hast thou thy countenance revealed in fire.
Thou gav'st me Nature as a kingdom grand,
With power to feel and to enjoy it. Thou
Not only cold, amazed acquaintance yield'st
But grantest, that in her profoundest breast
I gaze, as in the bosom of a friend.
The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In air and water and the silent wood.
And when the storm in forests roars and grinds,
The giant firs, in falling neighbor bough
And neighbor trunks with crushing weight bear down,
And falling, fill the hills with hollow thunders;
Then to the cave secure thou leadest me,
Then show'st me mine own self, and in my breast
The deep mysterious miracles unfold.
These
words indicate a spiritual understanding of the outer and the inner
worlds, of universal purpose, of the meaning of death itself and the
realization that death is the passage from one form of life to
another. In seeking the living Christ we also follow Him through death
and through the Resurrection. We do not, as the man of Eastern Europe,
take the Resurrection as our starting point. We follow the Christ,
letting His inspiration now into us, receiving Him into our
imaginations. We follow the Christ until death. We follow Him not only
by saying: Ex Deo Nascimur, Out of God we are born; but by also
saying: In Christo Morimur, In Christ we die.
We
scrutinize the world and know that the world itself is the document
through which God expresses His divinity. As we try to experience and
understand the weaving power of the spiritual, we in the West cannot
say that if God were to come into the world we would need a document
to establish His identity, but rather we seek for God everywhere, in
nature and in the souls of men.
So this
Fifth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization needs what we develop and
cultivate in our groups. It needs the conscious cultivation of the
spiritual aura that still hovers above us, cherished by the spirits of
the higher hierarchies, and that will flow into the souls of men when
they live in the sixth epoch. It is not our way to turn as in Eastern
Europe to the group soul life that is dead, to a form of community
that is a mere survival of the old. Our efforts are to cherish and
cultivate a living reality from its childhood — such is the
community of our groups. It is not our way to look for what speaks in
the blood, calling together only those who have blood in common, and
to cultivate this in community. Our aim is to call together human
beings who resolve to be brothers and sisters, and above whom hovers
something that they strive to develop by cultivating spiritual
science, feeling the good spirit of brotherhood hovering over and
above them.
At the
opening of one of our groups, this is the dedicatory thought we will
receive into ourselves. Hereby we consecrate a group at its founding.
Community and quickening life! We seek for community above us, the
living Christ in us, the Christ Who needs no document nor has first to
be authenticated because we experience Him within ourselves. At the
foundation of a group we will take this as our motto of consecration:
Community above us; Christ in us. We know furthermore that if two, or
three, or seven, or many are united in this sense in the Name of
Christ, the Christ lives in them in very truth. All those who in this
sense acknowledge Christ as their Brother, are themselves sisters and
brothers. The Christ will recognize as His brother that man who
recognizes other men as brothers.
If we are
able to receive such words of consecration and carry on our work in
accordance with them, the true spirit of our Movement will hold sway in
whatever we do. Even in these difficult times, friends from outside
have associated themselves with those who have founded the group here.
This is always a good custom, for thereby those who are waking in
other groups are able to carry to other places the words of
consecration. They pledge themselves to think constantly of those who
have undertaken in a group to work together in accordance with the
true spirit of the Movement. The invisible community, which we should
like to found through the manner of our work, will thus grow and
prosper. If this attitude, uniting with our work, becomes more and
more widespread, we shall put to good account the demands made by
spiritual science for the sake of the progress of mankind. Then we may
believe that those great masters of wisdom who guide human progress
and human knowledge will be with us. To the extent to which you here
work in the sense of spiritual science, to that extent I know full
well that the great masters who guide our work from the spiritual
worlds will be in the midst of your labors.
I call
down upon the labors of this group, the power and the grace and the
love of those masters of wisdom who guide and direct the work we
perform in brotherhood within such groups. I call down the grace and
the power and the love of the masters of wisdom who are directly
connected with the forces of the higher hierarchies. May there be with
this group the spirit of good that is in you, great masters of wisdom,
and may there also prevail and work in this group the true spirit of
the Movement!
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