The Evolution of Consciousness E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

According to the initiate-research of Rudolf Steiner, humanity is in a continual process of transformation and evolution. Modern-day consciousness, based as it is on sense perception and abstract logic, differs considerably from the consciousness of ancient humanity. At that time, says Steiner, the human being was seen to be a microcosm, a concentration of the laws and activities of the cosmos. The loss of such knowledge today has led to the existential quest for meaning, and even the cul-de-sac of atheism.In these comprehensive lectures, delivered to an English audience, Rudolf Steiner indicates how it is possible for people to rediscover their connection to the cosmos. He describes how one develops higher faculties of consciousness - what he calls Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition - and gives a vivid description of life after death and the individual's progress through the planetary spheres. It is in these spheres, he explains, where tasks and goals for future incarnations are prepared in cooperation with the spiritual beings of the heavenly hierarchies.The lectures culminate in a call for mankind to take its own destiny in hand through conscious and free development of spiritual capacities.The edition of this fundamental work features a revised translation as well as previously-unavailable addresses and question-and-answer sessions.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The spiritual and physical evolution of the world and of humankind in the past, the present and the future, from the point of view of anthroposophy

THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

As Revealed Through Initiation Knowledge

RUDOLF STEINER

Thirteen lectures, two addresses, two sessions of answering questions, held in Penmaenmawr, North Wales, from 18 to 31 August 1923, supplemented by drawings

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Translated by V. E. Watkin, C. Davy and P. Wehrle

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Originally published in German under the title Initiations-Erkenntnis (volume 227 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation is based on the 4th edition. Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978 1 85584 315 8

Cover by Andrew Morgan Design Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

Contents

Summary of Contents

Publisher’s Note

Rudolf Steiner Lectures in BritainMarie Steiner’s Preface to the first edition of this book (1927)

Welcoming AddressPenmaenmawr, 18 August 1923

LECTURE 1 First Steps in Imaginative Knowledge19 August 1923

LECTURE 2 Inspiration and Intuition20 August 1923

Questions and AnswersEvening of 20 August

LECTURE 3 New and Old Initiation Science21 August 1923

Questions and Answers21 August

LECTURE 4 Dream Life22 August 1923

LECTURE 5 The Relationship of Human Beings to the Three Worlds23 August 1923

LECTURE 6 The Ruling of Spirit in Nature24 August 1923

LECTURE 7 The Interplay of the Different Worlds25 August 1923

LECTURE 8 Human Experiences During Sleep as Premonitions of Experiences after Death26 August 1923

LECTURE 9 Experiences Between Death and a New Birth27 August 1923

LECTURE 10 Human Spiritual/Cosmic Existence After Death28 August 1923

LECTURE 11 Experiencing the World’s Past29 August 1923

LECTURE 12 Evolution of the World in Connection with Human Evolution30 August 1923

LECTURE 13 Entry of Human Beings into the Era of Freedom31 August 1923

Farewell AddressEvening of 31 August 1923

Facsimiles

Notes

Regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Summary of Contents

Lecture 1

Difficulties of self-knowledge. The human being and nature forces. Memory. Humans as beings of space and beings of time. Initiation knowledge in the past and in the present. A guru. Mystics and their illusions. Paths of meditation. The will in thinking. Self-knowledge: transition from the world of space to the world of time. The life tableau: time becomes space. The feeling of happiness in imaginative knowledge. The empty consciousness. Immortality and unbornness.

Lecture 2

Thoughts and their living world of force. The auric seeing of colours. The empty consciousness. The inner silence. Negative audibility. Experience of cosmic pain. The astral world. Achieving Intuition through the intensification of the capacity to love. Acquiring active thinking through picturing backwards. Experiencing spiritual beings through increasing one’s victory over oneself. The goal of initiation science today and in earlier times. From spirit to nature and from nature to spirit.

Lecture 3

Intellectual understanding of the spiritual world essential. Spiritual science: hidden memory. Contrary to the way it is in the physical world, in the spiritual world a straight line is the longest way between two points. The old initiation science reminds us of sleep experiences, the new initiation science of those prior to birth. Waking and sleeping. Humans as beings of light and warmth in the cosmic condition of love. Our morning dreams as a damming-up phenomenon.

Lecture 4

The dramatic course of dream pictures. A picture for the dissolving effect of a dream is a glass of water in which salt is dissolved. Unjustified to apply natural laws to cosmic circumstances. Arrhenius (Nebulium). Dreams in opposition to natural laws. Chaos. Quintessence. The astral body liberated from natural laws. During the night the ‘I’ works at preparing future spiritual existence where moral impulses have the power of natural laws. Dreams are a window into the spirit world.

Lecture 5

Why do dreams have a chaotic character? The veil of chaos is the threshold to the spiritual world. Behind are three worlds which are related to the threefold human organism: head system, rhythmic system and metabolic-limb system. Substance and activity. The warning of the Guardian of the Threshold. Dream life formerly and in the present. When on passing the threshold the Guardian is ignored the three worlds become mixed up.

Lecture 6

Sense activity and moral/spiritual activity in dreams. Dream interpretation. Behind the veil of chaos of dreams there appears the divine/spiritual essence of the world. The spiritual part is in a state of dream in plant seeds and in embryos, and is asleep in minerals. Mood of expectancy in sleeping elemental beings. The special mood of soul in the atmosphere of Penmaenmawr. The lasting quality of imaginations. Druid shrines. Visions, premonitions and second sight.

Lecture 7

The sleepwalking type, the Jakob Böhme type and the Swedenborg type. The realm of the ponderable, of that which radiates light and the fullness of the physical world; the imponderable, dark and empty nature of the spiritual world. The moon forces in the sleepwalker. Exact clairvoyance. Jakob Böhme’s second sight a legacy of the Sun evolution. The magic mirror. Oberlin, Paracelsus. Warmth and cold—Saturn—Swedenborg. The actualized mirror.

Lecture 8

Relationship between sleeping and waking. The interweaving of memory after two to three days. Sleep and death. The laying aside of the etheric body after death. Passing on of one’s acquired thoughts to the universe. The human being as the nursery for the thoughts of the gods. The three-dimensional, the two-dimensional and the one-dimensional world. Hidden one-dimensional sun rays in stone circles. The judging of our actions by the cosmos. Experiencing in a backward direction after death the content of our sleep life on earth. Former connection with the most recent Bodhisattva. Nowadays Christ alone can be our guide in our life between death and rebirth.

Lecture 9

Transition from what is physical to what is moral. Beauty based on pain. The sphere of the three iron necessities (Egyptian Mysteries). Ex deo nascimur. The Christ as guide: In Christo morimur. Spiritual awakening: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus. Reversal of time after death. ‘The wheel of births’. Danger of losing connection with spiritual world. Motor cars and typewriters. Essential to balance these with spiritual work.

Lecture 10

Life in the company of spiritual hierarchies, disembodied human souls and elemental beings. Cosmic thoughts, thoughts living in light, and thoughts that are the effect of earth life. Our life in the company of the spirits of the moon, of Venus and of Mercury corresponds to the life of our head, heart and limbs during earth life. The primeval teachers on the moon, life in the sun region, on Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The guides of human souls were formerly Bodhisattvas, and now it is the Christ. The planetoids as colonies of Jupiter and Saturn.

Lecture 11

Developing future karma together with the moon beings. The period originally planned for the time between two incarnations was 2160 years, in accordance with the forward movement of the spring equinox into the next sign of the zodiac. After the soul world of the moon comes the spirit land of the sun. The spirit seed of the next incarnation. Experiencing the past of the world and of the earth. The Bodhisattvas. The Mystery of Golgotha. Gnosis (Pistis Sophia). From moon wisdom to sun wisdom. The division of humankind into East and West. Symptoms of civilization—motor cars, typewriters, recorded music.

Lecture 12

The human inner being: World past. The human environment: World future. Head, the past; limbs, the future. Our walking, speaking, thinking and their metamorphosis into the future evolutionary stages of the cosmos. The spiritual element in sense existence. L. Kolisko’s proofs of the effectiveness of the greatest potencies. Homoeopathy.

Lecture 13

The unity of natural and moral laws among the highest hierarchy. Transition from determination to freedom. The year 333. Changes in the human astral body. The task of the Christ. Health-giving forces through the Mystery of Golgotha. Gnosis. Missing poetry from the first century. ‘Christus verus phosphorus’. The arising of dogma. Dante’s Divine Comedy. The return of the Christ. Trends in modern science: Breuer, Freud, Jung, Oliver Lodge. Occult imprisonment.

Publisher’s Note

The fourth English edition of this volume was published in 1991. Besides checking and revising the translation used in that publication, we have added to this new edition fresh translations by Pauline Wehrle of Rudolf Steiner’s Welcoming and Farewell Addresses, as well as two fascinating question-and-answer sessions. In addition, we have included the notes from the latest German edition (2000), some facsimiles and Marie Steiner’s introduction written in 1927. Although the latter is clearly dated in some respects, we decided to include it as it adds a charming and poetic eyewitness account of Britain at the time of Rudolf Steiner’s visits and some pertinent observations of the British character. More significantly, perhaps, it is written by Steiner’s close colleague, travelling companion and wife.

SG, October 2006

Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures in Britain

Marie Steiner’s Preface to the first edition of this book (1927)

Rudolf Steiner liked speaking about spiritual science in Britain and did so on many occasions.

In Britain there is a certain openness in people’s willingness to accept spiritual-scientific truths; they have a more liberal attitude to the unbounded possibilities. They are less afraid of the defeat of their hardly-won head knowledge; an inclination obstinately to resist anything new and unknown is less deeply ingrained; they are not so strongly entrenched in their scholarly vanity. They have a greater daring to go ahead and conquer unknown worlds.

What made present Britain into one people were the warlike tribes of various nationalities. After the Roman invasion came the conquering Germanic Anglo-Saxons who pushed back the native population of Britons and Gaels and drove them as far as the north-west coast of France; invading Frisians and Danes; the conquering Frankish Normans. Britain was conquered in this way several times and its people welded together after many a hard struggle. What arose out of this, however, was a strong, self-confident unity, a proud all-embracing self-reliance, a capacity to put their own mark on the character of other nationalities. The soul make-up comprising the characteristics of the various individual nations kept itself in balance, and this was maintained by an individual awareness that was raised to the point of feeling an integral part of their whole nation. Thus this many-faceted national unity was able to defy all outer attacks on its island fortress, surrounded as it was on all sides by seas turbulent yet protective, and developed energetically both its own self-confident independence as well as setting out to conquer the world.

Noblesse oblige. Both in respect of the mind as well as in respect of those things that concerned the State and humanity in general, it would have been unworthy of a nation as self-assured as this to curb its freedom of thought, stifle its freedom of conscience, and restrict its freedom of action. Therefore Britain became the land where there was least hindrance when it came to looking for the spirit. Neither the power of the State nor Church coercion could ever extinguish it, not even secret organizations with Vehmic courts could do that.

If Rudolf Steiner had been able to work in English-speaking countries in the way he did in Middle Europe his name would even now be on every tongue. He would have been neither hushed up nor stigmatized; people would not have been after his honour and his life in order to make him harmless. Yet he had to speak there in a language foreign to his audience, at the time when hatred of things German was at its height, and however correct the translation might be it could never do justice to the vital artistry of his eloquence.

And yet his message got through. A faithful circle of pupils attached themselves to him and drew the attention of outsiders to this outstanding spiritual teacher. Then, although the war threatened, as it did everywhere, to stifle the seeds that had already begun to take root, they slowly broke through into new life.

No more than three years after the end of the First World War Rudolf Steiner was able to speak to a British audience on educational matters, and to begin with he did so in the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Mrs Millicent Mackenzie, the well-known British educationalist, headed the circle of interested people who travelled from England to Switzerland to receive from new spiritual sources enlightenment on educational problems. The stimulus received on that occasion had its effects. First came an invitation to Rudolf Steiner to speak on the subject of art and education at celebrations held at Stratford-on-Avon in April 1922 in honour of Shakespeare’s birthday. One lecture bore the title ‘Drama in its Relation to Education’ and the other one was ‘Shakespeare and the new ideals’. It was a happy omen—one that carried them over the problem of national hatred—to meet in the common endeavour of celebrating Shakespeare’s genius. It was Goethe who rediscovered Shakespeare for the world, and Rudolf Steiner—the one who had built the Goetheanum—had the spiritual knowledge to throw the kind of glaring light on Shakespeare that linked him to events of cosmic proportion, which served to turn him into a problem for our intellectual age which gropes around helplessly with its ineffectual hypotheses. The festivities that took place in Stratford in connection with the memorial celebrations, in which the representatives of the different countries joined in processions, were worthy of the joyful pride felt for the greatest of England’s sons. Germany was not yet officially represented, but on the other hand it was represented by Rudolf Steiner on a spiritual level and therefore in an all the more real sense. The bond was re-established, and as early as August 1922 Rudolf Steiner was able to speak about educational matters to a considerable circle of interested parties in Oxford, the charmingly beautiful university town in which, however, the Middle Ages still lingered.

The eight lectures on education and the subsequent debates led to the founding of the ‘Educational Association’ under the chairmanship of Mrs Millicent Mackenzie. The aim of this union was to make Rudolf Steiner’s thoughts on education accessible to the widest circles and especially to British and American educational associations.

Such events were always coupled with lectures on spiritual science in London and in the place itself. As part of these visits there were also performances of the art of eurythmy given by artistes from the Goetheanum. Eurythmy is an art of movement that works with the oscillations of either music or the spoken word that can be spiritually perceived vibrating in the ether and sounding in the air. And as such it is a source of re-enlivenment for all the arts, and an educational factor which has not yet been adequately recognized as an answer to the needs of the spirit-starved coming generation. A gift of the living spirit, Rudolf Steiner presented it at a moment when requests for enlightenment in such matters were being pressed upon him. Thus what had begun originally as theoretical indications were speedily put into practice by responsive pupils, and from these beginnings there arose the new art which has effectually made its way into the cultural life of the present.

The enthusiasm which the young art kindled among Rudolf Steiner’s friends in London led to a splendid result. By June 1926 a lecture hall and theatre was able to be opened in one of the most accessible parts of London (35 Park Road, NW1) which is called ‘Rudolf Steiner Hall’.* The architect, Mr Wheeler, made a very pleasing combination of the building conditions necessitated by the London streets and inspiration coming from Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on architecture. The chief function of the hall is to spread Rudolf Steiner’s message and his conception of art.

His enlivening ideas for education also led to practical results. It began with the headmistress of an already existing country boarding school expressing her willingness gradually to change her system of education over to Rudolf Steiner’s educational principles. The school was housed in a charming building, formerly a Dominican abbey near London, by the name of Kings Langley Priory, and its head, Miss Cross, although she realized that it would take some time to alter existing arrangements into new teaching methods set about this with courage and loyalty, shunning no effort or disappointment. Straight after the Christmas course on education1 in Dornach she began to put her resolve into action. Those who were in greater haste, and wanted to set up a school on the outskirts of London itself based on the educational principles of Rudolf Steiner, managed to realize their ideas in a relatively short time. By the year 1923, after a two-week cycle of educational lectures by Rudolf Steiner in Ilkley,2 their resolve matured. And by June 1926 we were able to visit ‘The New School’, an excellently functioning school with a boarding establishment attached, in Streatham,* a pleasant suburb of London; it proceeds with joy and energy, and has already held an educational conference which has provoked interest.

The attractive practice of holding English summer schools brought it about that Rudolf Steiner visited not only places with well-known names such as London, Oxford and Stratford, but also remote areas which offer an interesting insight into the many-sidedness of British life. A foreigner is particularly struck by the clearly noticeable contrast between the most modern commercial/industrial enterprises and an atmosphere deeply cut off from the world. The world of cars, machinery, recorded music, speeding traffic and the superficiality of our modern cultural life borders directly on deep seclusion, cultural memories lying well before the Middle Ages, and geological formations which almost take us back to those times when continents arose out of the water. One can have impressions like these in Devonshire when travelling through the wilds of Dartmoor, and again on the coast of Cornwall on experiencing the onslaught of the ocean waves pounding round the rocky ruins of King Arthur’s Castle in Tintagel. The Middle Ages, which are so wonderfully preserved in the British buildings, creates a splendid transition, making it possible to receive a strong impression of such contrasts. You can well understand that the British people must feel an inborn need to preserve the Middle Ages right into some of the national costumes and customs and into the system of guilds. It strengthens their self-awareness and also their national consciousness, and arms them against the socializing flood which is making its first attack against the mighty bulwark of their system of Empire. It also builds a bridge for their aesthetic consciousness to reach back to the hoary past, which is uncannily alive in the way it comes to meet them in moor and mountain top, in the movements and whisperings of the ether stirrings felt in the very earth formations themselves.

The first impression we had of such contrasts came to us in August 1923 on our visit to Ilkley. The journey takes you through the blackest industrial area: Leeds, Bradford, dreadful black buildings, monsters worthy of a Strindberg hell. Ilkley is a pleasant place at the foot of the Yorkshire moors. But here the ancient past speaks to you where, upon the moors, you find those hills of Druid stones, dolmens with engraved symbols which speak with the inner voice that bound the culture of those times to the existence of the spirit.

But this kind of experience is had even more forcibly in Wales in the legendary land of Merlin, whose much loved magic cloak was the rustling of the forest and the ocean spray. The train takes you from Ilkley through the overpopulated industrial area of the ‘Black Country’, with its carpet of railway lines, past the conglomeration of factories in Manchester to a bright and pleasant terrain. The medieval walls and battlements of Chester gleam and the blue bays of the approaching Irish Sea beckon to you. Gulls and other sea-birds in large colonies proclaim that their undisputed kingdom is about to begin. Mighty strongholds mount on high in magnificent proportions, subduing the wide valleys and binding themselves to the rocks. The realm of the nobility, that could be subdued neither by kings nor Church, make a powerful impression. All has now become poetry, poetry in the mysterious guise of stone and ivy. Up among the crags the heroic epic, below, among the gentle flocks of sheep on the green pastures, the idylls, where, in the trembling of the crowded backs of the sheep, reminiscent of the gentle movement of the seas, there quivers the pulse of the rhythm of worlds.

The pulse beat of time, which has been arrested in this part of the country, leads us by way of the Middle Ages to a northern antiquity which has come to a standstill. It existed once upon a time, and still does. It is there so strongly in the wild beauty of nature, in the strength of its elements, in the way the sun laughs through semi-cloudbursts, that the modern age can have little effect on it. It disappears in this environment.

Even if down on the road round the bay the cars whiz by in close formation almost like Piccadilly Circus, they are insignificant in this framework. Our gaze is drawn upwards, for it is here that most certainly the strongest claims are made on our attention. Huge gashes have been cut out of the mountain ridges; these are the quarries, and the villages which serve them lie there, black and gloomy, without any sign of an organic connection with surrounding nature. Railway lines, steam locomotives, blasting devices have bored their way into the primeval rock, tearing its veins. Nevertheless it is stronger than they are, and defies them or laughs at them, according to whether the atmosphere dissolves or hardens the mountain. What dominates here is the sphere of the air and the light: the driving clouds, the rushing wind, the rain beating down time and again, or the playful showers, the sparkling sun that merrily subdues the commotion of the elements, then just as quickly hides away again. Teasingly and playfully a gloriously youthful element romps and threatens, now down below, now up above racing along, tearing along, right in the midst of all the evidence of venerable antiquity. Nevertheless up there behind those mountains there lives the past, standing there in mighty, lasting images; and still today people seek them out, their pilgrimage taking them up steep, steep slopes, not at all afraid to battle with the sharp winds whistling at them out of the ravines. A splendid reward is soon theirs. The bay disappears from sight, and they are surrounded by slope upon slope of radiant yellow, darkly glowing violet, gorse and heather. It flashes and hushes, beckons and glows with overpowering colour. Yet for staying and enjoying oneself nature is too raw. Struggling with the wind becomes more and more difficult, and you have to fight for every forward step. We are soon surrounded solely by rock, parched grass and moss. You have to brace yourself and protect yourself from being pulled to the ground; then you make headway and breathe in new strength from drinking in the lines and the colours of the horizon.

The Druids did not make it easy for their pilgrims. What a noble festival that must have been, how boldly conceived in its festive processions, as from all sides the people of the valleys and the slopes set out to climb to the summit. What solitude surrounded and filled them, with the whisperings of the desolate wastes, the depths, the vast expanses. Up there they were far away from the everyday world and close to the gods. Here, spirit beings spoke to them through the elements, here the sun left its signature in the lingering shadows; stones were the guarantee of these written characters, placed in a circle corresponding with the signs of the zodiac. Whatever sign of the zodiac the sun was passing through, this sign was stamped into the shadow of the stone, and the initiated Druid read the mystery it told him.

Facing towards the east stood a stone which, as the sun rose, received the direct impact of the heaven-sent shafts of light. By means of the horizontal placing of stones upon vertically standing ones, shadowy chambers were formed in which the sun again and again inscribed its message. In this way the priests, who were knowledgeable in the language of light and shadow, communed with the spiritual world, interpreting the commands which determined the ordering of their year, their work, their festivals, their laws and their customs. Thus was wisdom received from the gods and transformed into human wisdom.

How alive this whole atmosphere still was in this country when the opportunity arose once more for the old wisdom to be taught, but this time in a quite new form, suited now to the demands of the present stage of historical development. It could be presented differently here than in Germany, where a scientific theory of cognition would have been an essential foundation. The British public could take a more direct spiritual approach. Both the mood and the courage for this was able to come from such a setting as Penmaenmawr with its retained imaginations.

This lecture cycle comprises the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s lecturing activity in Britain. It gave the opportunity to grasp the history of the spiritual evolution of the universe and of humankind from another aspect.

Penmaenmawr meant the unfamiliar intonation and breath of things exotic, yet which is permeated by the eternal spirit; not retentive or blocked as has happened in the mixing together of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon idiom, but which has a mysterious sparkle in the many breath sounds of its language.

Rudolf Steiner was moved to the heart to read this language which stirred with the atmosphere and etheric life of a past world, and he transformed the wisdom of those times into the wisdom of the present, pouring into it the ego force which will bring human beings back to God, and in going forwards and backwards, closing the circle, taking humanity with it. When past and future find their spiritual focus in the consciousness of a human being, thus embracing eternity, humankind will have arrived, once and for all, at the spiritual experience of the oneness of the development of cosmic and of human evolution.

Marie Steiner

Dornach, December 1926

* It is now called Rudolf Steiner House.

* It moved to Sussex during the War, and is now called Michael Hall.

Knowledge should become the most heartfelt offering of soul

Rudolf Steiner

Welcoming Address

Penmaenmawr, 18 August 1923

Dear Friends,

The really warm and sincere welcome Mr Dunlop3 and Mr Collison4 have given Frau Dr Steiner and myself prompts me to say a few words today already, before the lectures start tomorrow. I find it extremely gratifying that Mr Dunlop together with his helpers wanted to organize this summer course on anthroposophy, and I hope that you, dear audience—whom I heartily welcome—will find some satisfaction, too, from its content.

I was especially happy about Mr Dunlop’s choice of the theme, for it offers me the opportunity to link up what anthroposophy has to say regarding the present time, which also includes the near future, with humankind’s oldest treasures of wisdom and the way human beings experienced the spirit in earliest times. In a certain respect, of course, it certainly is essential—and I admit I do thoroughly understand from the point of view of the spirit and purpose of the civilization of our present age what the committee that has invited us is saying—that through the very fact of laying on an anthroposophical course we are a little out of character with regard to anthroposophy as such. For in those earliest times— which we remember so fondly just because they revealed to us the oldest of our treasures of wisdom concerning our soul’s spiritual home—when the people gathered together in places where this wisdom was cultivated, it was only with the greatest difficulty that they tore themselves away from the work which occupied them day by day throughout the course of the year. These were times which were so to say read from the cosmic order, and they would never have asked: Have we to neglect any of our secular affairs when we gather around the mysteries for these seasonal festivals which have been proscribed to us out of the cosmos, so that we can cultivate science, acquire knowledge of the spirit?

We cannot do it that way, for we have other things to do in the winter, and this is why we come together in summer schools. For this reason we cannot carry on with the old customs. And as anthroposophy will enter mainstream civilization only in the future, we have to come together these days in our summer holidays, during the time when we, so to speak, have nothing else to do. This is the time for excursions and for going to festivals, and we have to use our holidays to pursue anthroposophical activities.

Now Mr Dunlop has already mentioned all the things that can happen to one; but even if it had happened to us that we had lost some of our luggage, anthroposophy would not have been in it, and we could all the same have brought it here intact. For anthroposophy is especially equipped to lift us above what can happen on a material level in space and time. And in discussing the very theme the committee have chosen, anthroposophy will transport us in the coming days into the most ancient times of humankind’s evolution, a time when a living science formed the foundation for all that civilization and culture encompassed. What human beings were able to take hold of on their path to wisdom was not only in the form of dead concepts but was the living spirit itself, which could then flow into artistic creativity and religious experience, and raise human beings by way of art and religion into the regions where they could behold those beings which otherwise—dimly though unquestionably—spoke in the form of ethical, moral ideals.

During the course of the evolution of humanity, what had once been a compelling unity—science, art, religion and moral/social life—became separate. The great tree that represented the totality of human evolution put forth four branches: science, art, religion and morality. This was a necessary happening in the evolution of humankind—the only way each of these single branches of civilization could develop the strength it needed both for its own good and for the good of humanity.

But today we happen to be at an important moment in human evolution: the point of time when the compartmentalized nature of our relation to knowledge prevents us from connecting with the source of things required by our total being, which needs to engage all its inner forces, both subconscious and even unconscious, to draw from the realms of soul and of spirit what it needs for the attainment of its full humanity.

We are really and truly at an important moment in humankind’s evolution. Those brothers, science, art, religion and moral/social life, who all have the same mother, now need, after having gone their own way in the world for a while, to return once again to their native homeland, where they can see the mother they all share. We cannot take the same paths today that human generations of the past took in order to find humanity’s spiritual light. Humankind is involved in a living evolution. The humanity of today is different from the humanity that sought in the ancient mysteries of India, of Egypt and Chaldea and of Greece for that which represented the mother of all human knowledge and skill, both in a spiritual and in a material direction. Today we must tread new paths, for we have become a new humanity.

It is these new ways to the spirit, ways that suit the present time and point us to the future, that anthroposophy wants to speak about. And the best way to do this may possibly be to attempt to do justice—even by only sketching it—to the theme our good committee has chosen for this summer course.

And we shall be especially pleased to be able to put on some performances of the new art which, although it is still in its beginnings, may just, by reason of its being still at the stage of struggling to find its identity, be best of all in a position to show us that today art too not only should but can be created out of the spirit.

We shall, of course, in the short time available to us only be able to present a small part of what we would like to bring. However, if our hearts are full of the feeling of the necessity to enable anthroposophy to come into the world today then our hearts will also be full of sincere gratitude to those who are providing the opportunity for the realization, in any area, of what anthroposophy is striving to bring into the further evolution of human civilization.

Speaking from out of all these feelings, you can believe me that my thanks to Mr Dunlop, Mrs Merry5 and all the members of the committee who have enabled this course to happen comes from the warmth of my heart, the depths of my soul. And this feeling of thankfulness really and truly springs from an understanding of all that such a committee has to do before such a course can take place.

To the same extent that we shall barely notice the hard work going on behind the scenes over the next few days that is an essential part of a eurythmy performance—and I am just mentioning this in passing—we shall also not give much thought to the extremely hard work such a committee does. And anyone who has admittedly worked on such a committee, not only many times, but many times squared, will realize in the pale faces of the committee members all that they have already been through, and the worries just before the course starts and throughout the whole proceedings, and this will tell them just how much they deserve our respect. Anyone who is able to judge such things from their own experience, who is therefore a qualified authority on sizing up the degree of pallor of the committee members, can really express his thankfulness to an adequate extent. And I would like to do this, both in the name of Frau Dr Steiner, who has been so warmly welcomed, and on my own behalf.

I only hope that what we are going to bring to the events of the next few days will be as satisfying as we can make it, and that we can fulfil at least part of the expectations you bought with you. For we are also fully aware that people do not lose their expectations along with their luggage, but bring them along in full measure. And it is extremely difficult, on the other hand, to fulfil these expectations.

But anthroposophy as such happens to be something that actually speaks so deeply to the souls of present-day humankind, coming as it does from the very needs felt by everyone of our present civilization who are aware of what it means to be truly human, that even if with our weak forces we can only achieve relatively little our intentions can at least mean something. And we need to work with purpose. We see in every direction where humanity, over the past three to four centuries, having set things going on the basis of a glorious externalized material culture, cannot cope any more. It is like a material body which, having spread in all its external perfection over a large part of the earth, yet, like anything else that should be alive, requires soul and spirit. And anthroposophy is able, after all, to bring soul and spirit to this body that has arisen in so glorious a manner in the external material civilization of today. Just as anthroposophy is inspired by this spirit in everything it does, I sincerely hope that this spirit will pervade our work throughout the days of our summer school. And it is from out of this spirit that I would like to welcome you most heartily both in Frau Dr Steiner’s name and in mine!