The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. On Anthroposophical Teaching

[ 1 ] The impulse to engage with anthroposophy will in most cases arise from the fact that looking at the world outside of humanity becomes a source of dissatisfaction for people, prompting them to turn their attention to their own human nature. They sense that the mysteries of life cannot be solved by looking out into the world, but by looking inward into their own human nature. The quest for knowledge of the world is transformed into a quest for self-knowledge.

[ 2 ] Members who wish to be active in the Anthroposophical Society will have to pay attention to this. Then, on the one hand, they will learn to perceive their task in the right way. But they will also learn to recognize the dangers associated with this task.

[ 3 ] When misguided, the pursuit of self-knowledge all too often leads to a particular form of egoism. People can take themselves too seriously and thereby lose interest in everything that happens outside themselves. Any right pursuit can go astray if it becomes one-sided.

[ 4 ] One cannot arrive at a worldview at all unless one seeks it through a view of humanity. For the ancient truth that man is a microcosm, a true “small world,” will always prove to be the newest truth. Man contains within his own being all the mysteries and secrets of the “big world,” the macrocosm.

[ 5 ] If one grasps this in the right way, every glance into the inner life of human beings will draw attention to the world outside of humanity. And self-knowledge will become the gateway to knowledge of the world. If one grasps it in the wrong way, one will lock oneself into one's own being through self-contemplation and lose interest in the world.

[ 6 ] Anthroposophy must not allow the latter to happen. Otherwise, the complaint that can be heard from many new members of the Anthroposophical Society will not cease: “Oh, how selfishly the anthroposophists think!”

[ 7 ] Those who want to get to know themselves should be able to use what they gain from this self-knowledge to sharpen their view of how everything that is in them also meets them in other people. One feels what one's fellow human beings experience when one has experienced something similar in oneself. As long as this self-experience is lacking, one passes by the experience of the other without seeing it in the right way. But one's feelings can also be so captivated by one's own experience that there is nothing left for the other.

[ 8 ] Members active in society will make their work beneficial in this direction if they are willing to pay attention to the dangers that lurk there. They will then prevent self-knowledge from degenerating into self-love. Rather, they will give their work a tone that leads self-knowledge over into love for humanity. And those who develop an interest in other people will not lack an interest in the world in general.

[ 9 ] I have often given the following saying to friends who have asked me for a commemorative saying on some occasion:

If you want to know your own nature,
look around you in all directions in the world.
If you want to truly understand the world,
look into the depths of your own soul.

[ 10 ] The presentation of anthroposophical insights must adhere to the orientation provided by this saying. This will prevent the discussion of the human inner being from overly encouraging selfish immersion in one's own nature.

[ 11 ] It is indeed repulsive when newcomers to anthroposophy can only observe how anthroposophists seem to be concerned only with themselves. One notices how people who have been members of the Anthroposophical Society for some time complain at every opportunity that life does not allow them time to delve deeply into anthroposophy. This is particularly common among people who have found their field of activity within the anthroposophical movement itself. They easily become overwhelmed by their work because they believe it prevents them from meditating, reading anthroposophical writings, and so on. But love for anthroposophical knowledge must not interfere with joyful devotion to the necessities of life. If this is the case, then engagement with anthroposophy will not have the right warmth; it will degenerate into cold egoism.

[ 12 ] Imbuing themselves strongly with this insight will have to be a task for members who want to be active in society. Then they will be able to find the right tone for their work, which will avert dangers that can easily arise.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 13 ] 17. Man is a being who unfolds his life in the midst, between two regions of the world. With his bodily development he is a member of a ‘lower world’; with his soul-nature he himself constitutes a ‘middle world’; and with his faculties of Spirit he is ever striving towards an ‘upper world.’ He owes his bodily development to all that Nature has given him; he bears the being of his soul within him as his own portion; and he discovers in himself the forces of the Spirit, as the gifts that lead him out beyond himself to participate in a Divine World.

[ 14 ] 18. The Spirit is creative in these three regions of the World. Nature is not void of Spirit. We lose even Nature from our knowledge if we do not become aware of the Spirit within her. Nevertheless, in Nature's existence we find the Spirit as it were asleep. Yet just as sleep has its task in human life—as the ‘I’ must be asleep at one time in order to be the more awake at another—so must the World-Spirit be asleep where Nature is, in order to be the more awake elsewhere.

[ 15 ] 19. In relation to the World, the soul of man is like a dreamer if it does not pay heed to the Spirit at work within it. The Spirit awakens the dreams of the soul from their ceaseless weaving in the inner life, to active participation in the World where man's true Being has its origin. As the dreamer shuts himself off from the surrounding physical world and entwines himself into himself, so would the soul lose connection with the Spirit of the World in whom it has its source, if it turned a deaf ear to the awakening calls of the Spirit within it.