The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Individual Interpretation of Anthroposophical Truths

[ 1 ] I have addressed the preceding considerations to the members in the hope that they will contribute to the subject of deliberation in the various places where anthroposophists are present. It would seem good to me if the members active in the Society would take them as a starting point for raising the entire membership to a common awareness of the nature of the Anthroposophical Society.

[ 2 ] It is certainly true that in our branch meetings, discussing the anthroposophical worldview and its introduction into life must constitute the main part of our activity. But in many branch meetings, even if only a small part of the time, can be used to discuss such things as are indicated in these reflections. This will encourage many members to be representatives of the Society in the outside, non-anthroposophical world.

[ 3 ] One cannot think of the Anthroposophical Society as if its essence and mission could be summed up in a few paragraphs of statutes. Because anthroposophy brings deep impulses into human thinking, feeling, and willing, it is also strongly influenced by the soul life of human beings. Its content can be summarized in general statements, as is done in various areas of intellectual life. However necessary this may be, one should not stop there. The general statements can be given a lively color by each person who carries them in their mind expressing them from their own life experiences. And with each such individual interpretation, something valuable can be gained for the understanding of anthroposophical truths.

[ 4 ] If one attaches importance to this fact, one will discover that one becomes aware of new aspects of the nature of the Anthroposophical Society again and again.

[ 5 ] Every member active in the Society will often enough be in a position to be asked about this or that. The questioner seeks instruction through the answers he receives; the person being questioned can seek instruction through the way the questions are asked. One should not pass over this instruction inattentively. It is above all through questions that one learns about life. The reason for asking the question often becomes apparent. The person being questioned should be grateful when questioners speak to him in this way. With their help, they will be able to improve their answers. What will improve in particular is the emotional tone that resonates through the answers. And this emotional tone is essential in communicating anthroposophical truths. It is not just what you say that matters, but above all how you say it.

[ 6 ] From a certain point of view, anthroposophical truths are the most important thing that people can communicate to each other. To communicate such truths to another person without a deep inner involvement in what is being communicated is actually a distortion of those truths. But this involvement is deepened by feeling, in the case of very different people, the background of life from which they ask their questions. However, there is no need to become an examiner or psychological vivisector of the other person. One can be quite satisfied with what they put into their questions of their own accord. No active member of the Anthroposophical Society should be satisfied with answering all questions according to a prearranged scheme.

[ 7 ] It is often emphasized — and rightly so — that anthroposophy must become life in human beings, not remain a mere doctrine. But life can only become something that is continuously stimulated by life.

[ 8 ] By cultivating such behavior in anthroposophy, it becomes a driving force for human love. And all work in the anthroposophical field should be steeped in this. Anyone who has spent a lot of time in the Anthroposophical Society knows that many people join it because the truths of life they encounter elsewhere lack the fundamental tone of love. The human soul hears this tone in what is said with great sensitivity. And it is, to the highest degree, a mediator of understanding.

[ 9 ] One might ask: how can love be incorporated into a description of the development of the earth? Once one has come to understand that the development of the earth and the world is only the other side of the development of humanity, one will have no doubt that love is precisely what constitutes the soulfulness of such truths.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 10 ] 11. The Self-consciousness which is summed up in the ‘I’ or ‘Ego’ emerges out of the sea of consciousness. Consciousness arises when the forces of the physical and etheric bodies disintegrate these bodies, and thus make way for the Spiritual to enter into man. For through this disintegration is provided the ground on which the life of consciousness can develop. If, however, the organism is not to be destroyed, the disintegration must be followed by a reconstruction. Thus, when for an experience in consciousness a process of disintegration has taken place, that which has been demolished will be built up again exactly. The experience of Self-consciousness lies in the perception of this upbuilding process. The same process can be observed with inner vision. We then feel how the Conscious is led over into the Self-conscious by man's creating out of himself an after-image of the merely Conscious. The latter has its image in the emptiness, as it were, produced within the organism by the disintegration. It has passed into Self-consciousness when the emptiness has been filled up again from within. The Being, capable of this ‘fulfilment,’ is experienced as ‘I.’

[ 11 ] 12. The reality of the ‘I’ is found when the inner vision whereby the astral body is known and taken hold of, is carried a stage further. The Thinking which has become alive in meditation must now be permeated by the Will. To begin with we simply gave ourselves up to this new Thinking, without active Will. We thereby enabled spiritual realities to enter into this thinking life, even as in outer sense perception colour enters the eye or sound the ear. What we have thus called to life in our consciousness by a more passive devotion, must now be reproduced by ourselves, by an act of Will. When we do so, there enters into this act of Will the perception of our own ‘I’ or Ego.

[ 12 ] 13. On the path of meditation we discover, beside the form in which the ‘I’ occurs in ordinary consciousness, three further forms: (1) In the consciousness which takes hold of the etheric body, the ‘I’ appears in picture-form; yet the picture is at the same time active Being, and as such it gives man form and figure, growth, and the plastic forces that create his body. (2) In the consciousness which takes hold of the astral body, the ‘I’ is manifested as a member of a spiritual world whence it receives its forces. (3) In the consciousness just indicated, as the last to be achieved, the ‘I’ reveals itself as a self-contained spiritual Being—relatively independent of the surrounding spiritual world.