The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Anthroposophical Guiding Principles

[ 1 ] In the future, a kind of anthroposophical guiding principles should be found here. They are to be understood as containing advice on the direction that the lectures and discussions in the individual groups of the society can take under the guidance of the leading members. These are intended only as suggestions that the Goetheanum would like to offer to the entire Society. The independence of the individual leading members in their work should not be affected by this. It is good if the Society develops in such a way that what the leading members have to say is given full expression in the individual groups in a completely free manner. This will enrich the life of the Society and make it diverse.

[ 2 ] But it should be possible for a unified consciousness to develop within the society. This can happen if people everywhere are aware of the suggestions made in the individual locations. For this reason, the presentations I give at the Goetheanum for the society will be summarized here in a few short sentences. I imagine that those personalities who give lectures or lead discussions in the groups (branches) will then take what has been given as guidelines and build on them in a free manner. This can contribute to a unified structure in the work of the Society, without any kind of coercion being involved.

[ 3 ] The matter can become fruitful for the whole Society if the process also finds corresponding approval, if the leading members also inform the Executive Council at the Goetheanum about the content and nature of their lectures and suggestions. Only then will we move from a chaos of different groups to a Society with a spiritual content.

[ 4 ] The guidelines given here are intended to raise certain topics. One will then find points of reference in various places in the anthroposophical books and cycle literature to develop the topics raised in such a way that they can form the content of the group discussions.

[ 5 ] Even when new ideas emerge from the leading members of the individual groups, they can be linked to what is described above as a framework for the spiritual work of the Society, inspired by the Goetheanum.

[ 6 ] It is certainly a truth that must not be violated that spiritual activity can only arise from the free development of the personalities involved. However, there is no need to sin against this principle if, within the Society, individuals act in harmony with one another in the right way. If this were not possible, the membership of individuals or groups in the Society would always remain something external. But this membership should be something that is felt as something internal.

[ 7 ] It cannot be the case that the existence of the Anthroposophical Society is used by this or that personality merely as an opportunity to say what one personally wants to say for this or that reason. Rather, the Society must be the place where anthroposophy is cultivated. Everything else can also be cultivated outside its framework. It cannot be there for that purpose.

[ 8 ] In recent years, it has not been to the Society's advantage that individual members have brought their own desires into it, simply because they believed that its expansion would provide a field of activity for these desires. One might ask: why was this not countered in the appropriate manner? If that had been done, the opinion would be heard everywhere today: yes, if the suggestions from this or that side had been taken up at the time, where would we be now? Well, many things were taken up that failed miserably and set us back.

[ 9 ] But now it is enough. The test of the example that individual experimenters in the society wanted to set has been done. There is no need to repeat such things endlessly. The Executive Council at the Goetheanum should be a body that wants to cultivate anthroposophy, and the society should be an association of people who want to communicate with it in a lively way about their cultivation of anthroposophy.

[ 10 ] One should not think that what is to be strived for can be achieved overnight. It will take time. And patience will be necessary. If it is believed that what is intended at the Christmas Conference can be realized in a few weeks, this will again be detrimental.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts given out as suggestions from the Goetheanum

[ 11 ] 1. Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. He alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds in it what he himself in his own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst.

[ 12 ] 2. Anthroposophy communicates knowledge that is gained in a spiritual way. Yet it only does so because everyday life, and the science founded on sense-perception and intellectual activity, lead to a barrier along life's way—a limit where the life of the soul in man would die if it could go no farther. Everyday life and science do not lead to this limit in such a way as to compel man to stop short at it. For at the very frontier where the knowledge derived from sense perception ceases, there is opened through the human soul itself the further outlook into the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] 3. There are those who believe that with the limits of knowledge derived from sense perception the limits of all insight are given. Yet if they would carefully observe how they become conscious of these limits, they would find in the very consciousness of the limits the faculties to transcend them. The fish swims up to the limits of the water; it must return because it lacks the physical organs to live outside this element. Man reaches the limits of knowledge attainable by sense perception; but he can recognise that on the way to this point powers of soul have arisen in him—powers whereby the soul can live in an element that goes beyond the horizon of the senses.

Continued in the next issue.