The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Something of the Atmosphere That Should Prevail in Branch Meetings

[ 1 ] The way of looking at human beings that was discussed here last time leads to a proper recognition of the effectiveness of the spiritual and soul aspects in the physical and etheric human being. Once we have understood that the sensory aspects of human beings are images, it is easy to grasp that something other than the material elements contained within them is at work in these images. However, we will also respond with a completely different attitude of mind to something whose image we recognize than to something we perceive only in terms of its material nature.

[ 2 ] And there is something awakening in this different attitude of the soul. If one feels very vividly how one behaves inwardly in such an attitude, how one is disposed, one feels the awakening of soul forces that lie dormant in ordinary life. And it is very important that those who take up anthroposophy already feel, in the process of taking it up, that there are other powers of knowledge slumbering in the human soul than those they recognized before approaching anthroposophy.

[ 3 ] When you know you have an image before you, you adjust your perception to what is not immediately apparent to the senses. You are then seized by what is not immediately apparent to the senses, just as you are seized by what is immediately apparent to the senses in your everyday perception.

[ 4 ] When the lecturing members of the Anthroposophical Society draw attention to such things in the branch meetings, this will bring an anthroposophical mood to the anthroposophical teachings.

[ 5 ] And this appropriately evoked mood will give the branch meetings the spirit that should prevail in them. Participants will then feel that anthroposophy does not merely contain theoretical information about the spiritual, but that it is something powerful and essential in itself, which leads to the experience of the spiritual.

[ 6 ] In every appropriate way, active members should consider how this experience of the spiritual can be achieved in anthroposophical work.

[ 7 ] For only in this way can those who take in anthroposophy without being able to research the spiritual themselves overcome the feeling that they are only being told theoretically what others who have done the research have experienced. The right way to communicate spiritual experiences is to allow others to share in what is being communicated.

[ 8 ] If this spirit of sharing experiences prevails in the branch meetings, it dispels everything that is based on an unjustified sense of authority. Opponents of anthroposophy continually object that anthroposophists profess their belief in what is communicated to them solely on the basis of this sense of authority. If anthroposophy is practiced in the right spirit within the society, this objection loses all meaning. For those who participate in our meetings do not feel that they can say they accept this or that because this or that person has said so; they learn to know that agreement is not forced upon them from within, but arises naturally from their own experience.

[ 9 ] When we meet a well-meaning person, we experience their inner kindness not because an authority instructs us to perceive kindness as beneficial, but because our soul feels directly touched by their kind nature. In this way, one can become aware of the truth of anthroposophy through the way it is communicated, through its very essence.

[ 10 ] Branch leaders should do what is necessary to enable anthroposophy to have this effect. Not by evoking the feeling that things are being presented that are mysterious, for that would condition the esoteric character of anthroposophical gatherings. Esotericism is based on the characterized internalization in the communication of truths. This internalization should be seen as part of the impulse that the Christmas Conference sought to bring into the Anthroposophical Society. The blessing that this conference has had and will continue to pour out over the anthroposophical movement will lie in the constant preservation of this intention and this will from the Christmas Conference.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 18 ] 41. In the third of the last Leading Thoughts, we pointed to the nature of the human Will. Only when this is realised, do we enter with understanding into a sphere of the world where Destiny or Karma works. So long as we perceive only that system of law which holds sway in the relations of the things and facts of Nature, our understanding is entirely remote from the laws that work in Destiny.

[ 19 ] 42. When the law in Destiny is thus perceived, it is revealed at the same time that Destiny cannot come into existence in the course of a single physical life on Earth. So long as he inhabits the same physical body, man can realise only the moral content of his Will in the way that this particular physical body, within the physical world, allows. Only when he has passed through the gate of death into the sphere of the Spirit, can the Spirit-nature of the Will come to full effect. Then will the Good and the Evil be severally realised—a spiritual realisation to begin with—in their corresponding outcome.

[ 20 ] 43. In this spiritual realisation man fashions and forms himself between death and a new birth. He becomes in being an image of what he did during his earthly life; and out of this his being, on his subsequent return to Earth, he forms his physical life. The Spiritual that works and weaves in Destiny can only find realisation in the Physical if its corresponding cause withdrew, before this realisation, into the spiritual realm. For all that emerges in our life by way of Destiny proceeds out of the Spiritual; nor does it ever take shape within the sequence of physical phenomena.