The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Work in Society

[ 1 ] You will remember that in my public lectures given on behalf of the Anthroposophical Society, I tried as far as possible to include all the relevant insights available in the present age. I did this because anthroposophy must not stand as an arbitrarily conceived sectarian opinion. It must express what it truly is: the worldview and way of life demanded by our time itself.

[ 23 ] It seems to me completely misguided for anthroposophists to reject what is produced outside their field by the spiritual life of the present. If they do so in such a way that the knowledgeable observer immediately notices that they are rejecting what they do not know sufficiently, anthroposophy will never be able to achieve anything.

[ 3 ] Members active in the branches will have to bear this in mind. However, the desired goal will not be achieved if, in addition to anthroposophical presentations, presentations are also organized that present things from a wide variety of contemporary fields of knowledge in the same way as this is done outside the anthroposophical movement. This only creates a painful gap for the listening members between today's common understanding and that which anthroposophy must speak of.

[ 4 ] It is unfortunate when a topic is raised and the impression arises from the outset that it is only being used as an opportunity to criticize certain contemporary ideas. First, it should be carefully examined in all cases to what extent such an idea provides a sound starting point. In most cases, such significant starting points are available everywhere in the present. Therefore, there is no need to hold back with criticism. But one should only criticize what one has first examined in its own right.

[ 5 ] If this were taken into account, something that has caused difficulties in recent times could be eliminated in the Anthroposophical Society. The scientists among us have developed an effectiveness that can only be deeply satisfying. And yet many members have developed the feeling that these scientists are not “anthroposophical” enough.

[ 6 ] A parallel to this has arisen in the attempt to develop an anthroposophical attitude as a way of life in various fields. Here, too, many members have developed the feeling that such “undertakings” are not at all anthroposophical.

[ 7 ] The criticism that arises here is certainly only partially justified. For the critic often fails to see how difficult such attempts are in the present day, and how everything takes time to be realized in the appropriate manner.

[ 8 ] But the feeling of many members has a healthy basis. As an anthroposophist, one's first task is to sharpen the soul's eye through anthroposophy in order to see what our contemporary culture produces in the right light. For this culture has the peculiarity of finding an infinite amount of fruitfulness, but lacking the soil in which to plant this fruitfulness in the right way. Certainly, one must often conclude with the harshest criticism when one takes a positive rather than a negative view of the phenomena of the present age.

[ 9 ] If we disregard the positive orientation, we will not escape the danger of shrinking back from speaking in the true anthroposophical way. How often do we hear scientists in the Anthroposophical Society say: we scare non-anthroposophists away when we talk to them so readily about the etheric or astral body. But we remain fruitless if we criticize non-anthroposophists in their own field and in doing so only use judgments that can also grow in this field itself. One can speak of etheric and astral bodies if one says why one is doing so.

[ 10 ] But if we strive to speak about what is actually anthroposophical in such a way that we allow the soul's eye, sharpened by anthroposophy, to prevail everywhere, then even among the members of the Anthroposophical Society the feeling will disappear that our scientists speak in a way that is not anthroposophical enough and that practitioners act in a way that should not be expected of members of the Society.

[ 11 ] We will have to orient our thinking in this direction if our Christmas Conference is not to remain a collection of pious wishes, but if its intentions are to be realized.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 12 ] 8. We may consider the nature of man in so far as it results from his physical and his etheric body. We shall find that all the phenomena of man's life which proceed from this side of his nature remain in the unconscious, nor do they ever lead to consciousness. Consciousness is not lighted up but darkened when the activity of the physical and the etheric body is enhanced. Conditions of faintness and the like can be recognised as the result of such enhancement. Following up this line of thought, we recognise that something is at work in man—and in the animal—which is not of the same nature as the physical and the etheric. It takes effect, not when the forces of the physical and the etheric are active in their own way, but when they cease to be thus active. In this way we arrive at the conception of the astral body.

[ 13 ] 9. The reality of this astral body is discovered when we rise in meditation from the Thinking that is stimulated by the outer senses to an inner act of Vision. To this end, the Thinking that is stimulated from without must be taken hold of inwardly, and experienced as such, intensely in the soul, apart from its relation to the outer world. Through the strength of soul thus engendered, we become aware that there are inner organs of perception, which see a spiritual reality working in the animal and man at the very point where the physical and the etheric body are held in check in order that consciousness may arise.

[ 14 ] 10. Consciousness, therefore, does not arise by a further enhancement of activities which proceed from the physical and etheric bodies. On the contrary, these two bodies, with their activities, must be reduced to zero—nay even below zero—to ‘make room’ for the working of consciousness. They do not generate consciousness, they only furnish the ground on which the Spirit must stand in order to bring forth consciousness within the earthly life. As man on Earth needs the ground on which to stand, so does the Spiritual, within the earthly realm, need a material foundation on which it may unfold itself. And as a planet in the cosmic spaces does not require any ground beneath it in order to assert its place, so too the Spirit, when it looks—not through the senses into material—but through its own power into spiritual things, needs no material foundation to call its conscious activity to life.

Continued in the next issue.