The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. About the Organization of Branch Meetings

[ 1 ] For some time now, there has been much discussion among the membership as to whether it should be the rule in branch meetings to bring existing anthroposophical literature to the general attention of the Anthroposophical Society by reading it aloud and discussing it, or whether free discussion of what individual members who wish to be active have to say should be preferred.

[ 2 ] Anyone who reflects on the conditions of anthroposophical work should readily realize that it is not a question of favoring one or the other of these activities, but of cultivating both according to the possibilities available. Anthroposophical literature contains what introduces people to the Society. It is intended to form the basis for the Society's work. When it is brought to the attention of the members through the branch meetings, it will form the unified approach that we need if our society is to have the right content.

[ 3 ] One should not object: I can read what is printed at home myself; I don't need to have it presented to me at the branch meetings. This newsletter has already pointed out the fallacy of this opinion. One should see the meaning in allowing the anthroposophical spiritual heritage to approach us together with the personalities united in the Society. In this feeling of being together and absorbing the spiritual in our togetherness, one should not see something insubstantial.

[ 4 ] It is also necessary that members who want to be active take an interest in gradually making the existing literature truly the spiritual property of the membership. It is not acceptable that many members who have been in the Society for years hear nothing at the branch meetings about things for which certain insights are available in the existing literature.

[ 5 ] On the other hand, it must be said that the life of the Society would suffer serious damage if as many active members as possible did not put forward what they have to say from their own perspective. It is quite possible to harmonize this field of activity with the other. One should bear in mind that anthroposophy can only become what it is meant to be if more and more people participate in its development. There should be joy, not rejection, when active members bring to the attention of the branch meetings what they have worked out for themselves.

[ 6 ] When it is often said that what is put forward by some personalities is not anthroposophy, such a statement may certainly be justified in individual cases. But where would we end up if we sinned against the truth that everything that belongs to the spiritual heritage of humanity should live in the Anthroposophical Society? The one should be presented because it can form the basis for the development of anthroposophical presentation. The other should be communicated because it can subsequently be illuminated from anthroposophical points of view. If only the anthroposophical character of the Society's work is preserved, then what the individual active members bring should not be narrow-mindedly restricted.

[ 7 ] The task of the branch meetings should not be to exclude one or the other, but to harmoniously combine the cultivation of existing literature with the presentation of what the individual active members have to say on their own initiative.

[ 8 ] It is through diversity, not uniformity, that we will achieve the goals of the Anthroposophical Society. We have so many members within the Society who have something to contribute from their own resources that we can be truly glad about this fact. We should get into the habit of showing our appreciation to such members. Only when achievements within the Society are properly appreciated can there be true life in it. Narrow-minded rejection should be the rarest of vices within the Anthroposophical Society. Rather, we should develop an enthusiasm for learning as much as possible about what one or another member of the anthroposophical community has to say.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 9 ] 20. For a right development of the life of the human soul, it is essential for man to become fully conscious of working actively from out of spiritual sources in his being. Many adherents of the modern scientific world-conception are victims of a strong prejudice in this respect. They say that a universal causality is dominant in all phenomena of the world; and that if man believes that he himself, out of his own resources, can be the cause of anything, it is a mere illusion on his part. Modern Natural Science wishes to follow observation and experience faithfully in all things, but in its prejudice about the hidden causality of man's inner sources of action it sins against its own principle. For the free and active working, straight from the inner resources of the human being, is a perfectly elementary experience of self-observation. It cannot be argued away; rather must we harmonise it with our insight into the universal causation of things within the order of Nature.

[ 10 ] 21. Non-recognition of this impulse out of the Spirit working in the inner life of man, is the greatest hindrance to the attainment of an insight into the spiritual world. For to consider our own being as a mere part of the order of Nature is in reality to divert the soul's attention from our own being. Nor can we penetrate into the spiritual world unless we first take hold of the Spirit where it is immediately given to us, namely in clear and open-minded self-observation.

[ 11 ] 22. Self-observation is the first beginning in the observation of the Spirit. It can indeed be the right beginning, for if it is true, man cannot possibly stop short at it, but is bound to progress to the further spiritual content of the World. As the human body pines away when bereft of physical nourishment, so will the man who rightly observes himself feel that his Self is becoming stunted if he does not see working into it the forces from a creative spiritual World outside him.