The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Something Else About the Atmosphere Necessary for Branch Meetings

[ 1 ] Anthroposophical considerations should not lead to an underestimation of external life. For many people, it will be the case that either severe blows of fate or the perception of contradictions in external life will bring about that deepening of feeling which is expressed in the inclination toward a spiritual conception of existence.

[ 2 ] But just as the physical being of the human being needs sleep in order to be efficient when awake, so a true standing within the spiritual world needs the sense of physical experience in order to develop strength and security of the soul. For the fulfillment of the human inner life with spiritual knowledge is an awakening from life in the sensory reality and from the impulses that the will can draw from this reality.

[ 3 ] Therefore, members active in the Anthroposophical Society should always be mindful that such personalities, who seek to grasp the inner life out of an underestimation of the outer life, should be given the power of this inner life in all its possible strength, but that at the same time they should also develop an appreciation of the outer life and competence in it.

[ 4 ] One should always bear in mind that human life on earth has a meaning within the total existence of the human being, which passes through births and deaths. In this earthly life, the human spirit is embodied in material existence. It is devoted to this material existence. What it can experience in this devotion cannot be attained in any other form of existence in which it is given to itself as spirit in the spiritual realm.

[ 5 ] Life in material existence is the stage of existence in which human beings can perceive the spiritual world outside of its reality in images. And a being that does not also experience the spirit in images cannot develop a free inclination toward the spirit that springs from its own essence. Even those beings who do not incarnate in material existence in the human way go through stages of life in which they have to surrender their own being to another element of existence.

[ 6 ] This surrender is the basis for the development of the impulse of love in life. A being that never enters into alienation from its own self cannot develop within itself the inclination toward another that is revealed in love. And the human being's grasp of the spiritual can easily harden into lovelessness if it is combined with a one-sided contempt for what is revealed in the outer world.

[ 7 ] True anthroposophy does not seek the spirit because it finds nature spiritless and therefore worthy of contempt, but because it wants to seek the spirit in nature and can only find it there in an anthroposophical way.

[ 8 ] If an attitude working in this direction pervades what is done in our branch meetings, these will bring the members an experience that is in harmony with the demands that human existence as a whole places on them. And the unworldliness that can so easily arise as an unhealthy atmosphere of anthroposophical work will be dispelled.

[ 9 ] This, too, is one of the elements that should create the right atmosphere in the work of our society. Members will not have spent their visits to the branch meetings in the desirable way if a gulf opens up between what they hear through anthroposophy and what they have to experience in their outer lives. The spirit that prevails in the branch meetings must become a light that continues to shine when the member is devoted to the outer demands of the day. If such a spirit does not prevail, then anthroposophy will not make the member more capable, but less capable, for the life that has its rights. Then some of the accusations made by outsiders against the Anthroposophical Society would be justified. And the Anthroposophical Society would not promote anthroposophy, but harm it.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 21 ] 44. We should pass on to a spiritual-scientific treatment of the question of Destiny by taking examples from the life and experience of individual men and women, showing how the forces of Destiny work themselves out, and the significance they have for the whole course of human life. We may show, for instance, how an experience which a man undergoes in his youth, which he can certainly not have brought upon himself entirely of his own free will, may none the less to a large extent give shape to the whole of his later life.

[ 22 ] 45. We should describe the significance of the fact that in the physical course of life between birth and death the good may become unhappy in their outer life, and the wicked at any rate apparently happy. In expounding these things, pictures of individual cases carry more weight than theoretical explanations; they are a far better preparation for the spiritual-scientific treatment of the subject.

[ 23 ] 46. Events of Destiny which come into the life of man in such a way that their determining conditions cannot possibly be found in his present life, should be cited. Faced with such happenings, a purely reasonable view of life already points in the direction of former lives on Earth. It must of course be made clear by the very way in which these things are described that no dogmatic or binding statement is implied. The purpose of such examples is simply to direct one's thoughts towards a spiritual-scientific treatment of the question of Destiny.