The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Now that we are resuming the activities of our Berlin branch, it is fitting to look back just a little on what has touched our hearts since the time last year when we began the work of the Berlin branch in the same manner.

[ 2 ] You surely recall that about a year ago, on the occasion of the General Assembly of our German Section at that time, I gave a lecture at the Berlin branch on the sphere of the Bodhisattvas. That lecture on the mission of the Bodhisattvas in the world was intended to serve as an introduction to what then occupied us primarily throughout our branch meetings last winter: a consideration of the Christ problem, essentially in connection with the Gospel of Matthew. We have, of course, engaged in such reflections on the Christ problem in a variety of ways, drawing on other Gospels, such as the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke. And we have pointed out that, in the future, as we further deepen our understanding of this Christ problem, we will also undertake a study that will essentially be based on the Gospel of Mark.

[ 3 ] We have not approached these reflections on the Christ problem in such a way as to attempt a mere explanation of the Gospels. It has often been stated here—I would almost say in a radical way—that whatever Spiritual Science has to say about the events in Palestine should also be able to be said even if there were no external historical documents at all regarding these events in Palestine. For, at the very deepest level, what is decisive for us in describing the Christ events is not what is written in any book or document, but what is contained in the eternal, inner, spiritual record—the Akashic Records—which can be deciphered through clairvoyant consciousness. The mental image we are to have of this has often been mentioned here. And then we approach the Gospels in such a way that we compare what we have first discovered through spiritual research itself with what is given to us—let us say, with regard to the events in Palestine—in the Gospels or in the other documents of the New Testament. However, we have found that we learn to read these documents, so to speak, only by delving into the mysteries relating to the events in Palestine without relying on them, and that it is precisely because we first investigate the corresponding events with an open mind, free from these documents, that our high esteem—our reverence, we might say—for these documents grows to a very special degree.

[ 4 ] But if we do not focus solely on the immediate—and, for the time being, most pressing—interests of our community, but rather recognize that our entire historical context, our contemporary culture, demands, so to speak, a new understanding of the sacred texts of Christianity, then we must be clear that through Spiritual Science we are called not only to satisfy our own need for knowledge regarding the events in Palestine, but that we are called to translate—from the perspective of Spiritual Science—into the language of contemporary cultural needs what we have to say about the significance of the Christ event for the entire development of humanity. It is not enough, however, to limit ourselves to what the past centuries have contributed to our understanding of the Christ problem and the figure of Christ. If that were sufficient for the educational needs of the present, there would not be so many people today who can no longer reconcile their need for truth with what has been handed down in the Christian tradition, and who, in one way or another, even deny what has been reported to us about the events in Palestine and what has been believed for centuries. All of this may indicate to us that a new understanding, a new approach to Christian truths, has become necessary for our time.

[ 5 ] Now, in addition to the many other things that can bring us closer to the exploration of Christian truths, there is one means in particular that can prove especially fruitful in our field of research. This consists in broadening our perspective, in expanding our world of feelings and sensations beyond the horizons that humanity has held for the spiritual world over the past centuries. A very simple and obvious suggestion may come to mind as to how we can broaden our horizons.

[ 6 ] We all recognize—to turn to the great mind closest to us in the development of Western culture—Goethe as a titanic spirit. And many of our reflections have shown us the depth of spiritual insight hidden within Goethe’s personality. These reflections have also led us to recognize how we ourselves can ascend to spiritual heights by penetrating the fabric of Goethe’s soul. But no matter how well we come to know Goethe, no matter how deeply we immerse ourselves in what he has to offer—there is one thing we cannot yet find in him that we must have today if our vision is to be properly broadened and our horizon extended beyond the most essential spiritual needs. Nowhere in Goethe do we find any indication that he had grasped what we can learn today, what can bear fruit for us today, when we take in those concepts of humanity’s spiritual development that have only become possible to grasp through the exploration of spiritual documents in the 19th century—when we take in the achievements of Eastern life. There we gain various concepts that by no means distance us from an understanding of the Christ problem, but rather—if we assimilate them correctly—actually lead us to a correct and complete appreciation of Christ Jesus. For this reason, I, too, have believed that no better introduction to a consideration of the Christ problem can be found than a discussion of the mission of humanity’s great spiritual individuals, who from time to time must intervene in the course of development in a particularly tangible way, and whom we designate, using a term borrowed from Eastern philosophy, as the Bodhisattvas. For centuries, concepts such as that of the Bodhisattvas were simply absent from Western spiritual development. And only once one has oriented oneself toward them does one ascend accordingly to the realization of what Christ has been, can be, and will continue to be for humanity.

[ 7 ] Thus we see how a broad spectrum of humanity’s spiritual development can be harnessed to gain a proper understanding of precisely what we must comprehend for the sake of that education and culture, for that spiritual life, in which we are immersed. And from yet another perspective, it was important that, wherever possible, we let our spiritual gaze roam over the past centuries, that we emphasized the difference between a person from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and a person from the 18th or 19th century; and that we emphasized that, for example, very little was known in Europe about the Buddha and Buddhism even a century ago. But the ultimate thing in our field of work—even if not the means of our endeavor, then at least the actual impulse and also the goal of our endeavor, and what we are working toward—is, in the end, the mood, the feeling, the sensation that creeps into our soul when it is touched by the great spiritual truths. For what matters is not so much what this or that person wishes to know, but rather the warmth of feeling, the power of sensation, and the nobility of will that rise up from our soul when the great truths of humanity strike that soul. And more important in our branches than what can be expressed in words is the mood, the wave of feeling that can prevail in one of our branches when the words weave through the space. These feelings, these sensations, take many forms. And with regard to what is to stand before our souls right now, the most important, the most significant sensation should be the one that must gradually and inevitably develop within us: awe at the knowledge of the great spiritual truths—the feeling that these great spiritual truths are of such a nature that we should approach them with timid reverence, that we should not believe we can encompass a great reality with some hastily cobbled-together concept or a few quickly formed mental images.

[ 8 ] I have often used the analogy that we cannot yet fully grasp a tree standing before us if we paint a picture of it from a single vantage point; rather, we must walk around it and paint the tree from various angles. Only by synthesizing these different images do we arrive at an overall impression of what the tree is. This analogy, however, is meant in particular to illustrate how we should relate to the great spiritual realities. We should be clear that we cannot make any progress whatsoever in any real or supposed understanding of the highest things if we always approach them from only one side. And although there certainly is or can be truth in the sight of a thing, we should never abandon the humble feeling that all our mental images are—and can only be—views taken from a single vantage point. If we allow this sentiment to permeate us, we will gladly and willingly seek out from all directions the mental images, sensations, and feelings that enable us to illuminate the great realities of existence from the most diverse perspectives. Our times make this necessary. The need to view things from the most diverse perspectives will continue to grow in our time. Therefore, we no longer shut ourselves off today from any other perspective or opinion, from any path toward the highest things other than our own or that of our own culture. Even within what Western cultural development itself has offered, we have sought, over the course of recent years, to uphold this principle, which can lead us to genuine humility of knowledge. We have never presumed—and I may well say: it was deeply engraved in my soul that such presumption should never be possible in this place—to simply present a system or an overview of what the great events, which we summarize under the “Christ problem,” are supposed to be. Rather, it has always been said: We approach it from one perspective or another; and on another occasion it was said: We approach it from yet another perspective. — And attention has always been drawn to the fact that we therefore do not exhaust the problem and that we wish to continue our work calmly and patiently.

[ 9 ] The purpose of drawing on the various Gospels was to give us an opportunity to examine the problem of Christ from four different perspectives, and we then found that the four Gospels do indeed provide us with points of reference for these four different perspectives, and that we found the following principle laid out in the Gospels themselves: You should not approach this immense problem all at once, nor by looking at it from a single perspective, but rather you should approach it from at least these four different spiritual directions. And you should hope: if you approach the problem from these four spiritual directions—which are designated by the names of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—then it will gradually draw ever closer to you. And it will draw so close to you that you will never need to say of yourself that you are excluded from the great truth—without which the human soul cannot live in its deepest core—nor will you ever say that any form of truth you have grasped is already the whole truth.

[ 10 ] So, what we were able to cultivate over the course of last winter was, so to speak, designed to gradually instill in us a spirit of humility in our pursuit of knowledge. And without this spirit of humility, we truly cannot make any progress in spiritual life. That is why, in the course of these reflections, every effort was made to emphasize, again and again, the fundamental conditions for spiritual progress. And anyone who has attentively followed the lectures here week by week will not be able to claim that the fundamental conditions for spiritual progress were not pointed out throughout.

[ 11 ] Spiritual progress in knowledge—that is, after all, one of the driving forces underlying our entire Spiritual Science movement. Spiritual progress in knowledge—what purpose does it serve for our soul? It is meant to meet the deepest, most human longings and needs of our soul; it is meant to give us that without which a person who fully feels their human dignity cannot live. And it is meant to provide this to us within the realm of Spiritual Science in a way that meets the needs for knowledge of our present time. That which cannot be explored with the ordinary senses—to which the human being belongs not as a sensory being but as a spiritual being—is precisely what that progress in knowledge, offered to us through Spiritual Science, is meant to enlighten us about. The great questions concerning humanity’s place in the sensory world, concerning what lies beyond the revelations of this sensory world, and the truths about what lies beyond life and death—these questions correspond to a deep, indeed the most human, need of the soul. Even if, due to all sorts of circumstances, human beings push aside the questions relating to such matters, even if they are able to deprive themselves of them for a while by telling themselves: “Science cannot investigate this; human beings lack the abilities for it”—in the long run, and for the true nature of human feelings, the need for answers to these questions never fades. Where does that come from which we see taking shape in the course of childhood and adolescent development? Where does that go—what we hold within our souls—when physicality begins to fade and die away? in short, how human beings are connected to a spiritual world—that is the great question that springs from our most human need, and without an answer to which a person can only exist if they numb themselves to their most human needs.

[ 12 ] But because this question springs from such a deep need—because the soul cannot live in peace and contentment unless it receives an answer to these questions—it is only natural that people would want to find answers to these questions, so to speak, in an easy and convenient way. And how many different paths are pointed out today—even though these questions, as some would like to deny, have become particularly pressing in all areas of human life! It is no exaggeration to say that of all the paths offered to people today when these great enigmatic questions confront them, the path of Spiritual Science is the most difficult. Yes, one may also say something else. There will be many among you who consider one or another of the sciences—of which there is much talk in the world—to be difficult, and who perhaps do not even venture into them because they are daunted by all that must be overcome in order to penetrate such a science. It may also be that the path we have called Spiritual Science seems easier than the path into mathematics, botany, or another branch of the natural sciences. Nevertheless, taken absolutely, this path is itself more difficult than the path into any other science. This can be stated without exaggeration. Why, then, does it seem easier to you? Simply because it stirs the soul’s interests with tremendous force and corresponds to what lies closest to every soul. If it is the most difficult of all the paths offered to humanity today as a way up into the spiritual world, we must not forget another fact: that this path is meant to lead us to the highest in our spiritual life. Is it not natural, then, that the path to the highest must also be the most difficult? Nevertheless, we must never allow ourselves to be deterred by the difficulty of the path, nor must we ever close our souls off to the necessity of the difficulty inherent in the path of Spiritual Science.

[ 13 ] Among the various necessities of the Spiritual Science path, one has been repeatedly emphasized here: that whoever embarks on the Spiritual Science path should first carefully take in what spiritual research is already able to offer regarding the spiritual mysteries and the facts of the spiritual world. This brings us to a particularly essential aspect of our spiritual-scientific life. How many would be quick to say: “They speak to us of an immense Spiritual Science, of spiritual facts that this or that spiritual researcher, this or that enlightened being, this or that initiate has perceived or investigated.” Wouldn’t it be much more correct if you simply showed us the way to quickly ascend ourselves into the regions from which we can look into the spiritual world? Why do you keep saying: ‘This is what it looks like; this is how this or that person saw it!’ Why don’t you show us a way for us to ascend quickly ourselves?

[ 14 ] For good reasons, the facts that have been researched from the spiritual world are first presented in a broad manner before delving into what might be called the methods of soul training, which can lift the soul itself up into the spiritual realms. For a very specific goal is achieved when we first devote ourselves to the studious examination of what spiritual researchers have revealed from the spiritual worlds. We have emphasized that, while the facts of the spiritual world must be investigated, they can be discovered only through clairvoyant consciousness; but we have also frequently emphasized: once the facts have been discovered—once any trained clairvoyant consciousness has observed these facts in the spiritual world and then communicated them—the communication must be such that even anyone who has not undergone clairvoyant development can, with the sound sense of truth inherent in every soul and with truly unbiased logic, verify the facts and recognize the truths. No true researcher of the spirit world, no person gifted with clairvoyant consciousness in the true sense of the word, will communicate any fact of the spiritual world in any other way than so that anyone who truly wishes to do so can verify that fact even without clairvoyance. But he will also communicate it in such a way that it can have its full value and full significance for the human soul.

[ 15 ] What value do the revelations of spiritual facts and the mental images of spiritual facts hold for the human soul? Their value lies in the fact that a person who knows—this is what the spiritual world is like—can align their life, thoughts, feelings, and sensations accordingly, and can orient themselves regarding their relationship to the spiritual world. In this sense, every communication of spiritual facts is valuable, even if the person receiving it cannot explore them for themselves through clairvoyant consciousness. Indeed, even for the clairvoyant, such a fact only acquires human value once they have brought it down into a sphere where they can express it in a form accessible to all people. No matter how much a clairvoyant may explore and perceive in the spiritual realm, it is completely worthless to him and to any other human being as long as he has not brought what he has seen down into the sphere of ordinary understanding and expressed it in such concepts and mental images that the natural sense of truth and sound logic can grasp the matter. Indeed, the clairvoyant himself must first comprehend the matter if it is to have any value for him. Value begins only where logical examination begins.

[ 16 ] To put it bluntly, we could conduct a sort of cross-check on what has just been said. Among many other valuable insights regarding spiritual truths and spiritual messages, what will undoubtedly seem important to you is what a person can take with them through the gate of death from the spiritual truths they have absorbed on the physical plane between birth and death. Or let us phrase the question this way: How much remains to a person who, through the cultivation of a spiritual life, has received messages about the spiritual world—how much remains to him of what he has thus come to understand, of what he has thus made his own? Exactly as much remains to him as he has understood, as he has grasped, as he has translated into the language of ordinary human consciousness.

[ 17 ] Imagine a clairvoyant person who may have made very special discoveries in the spiritual world through purely clairvoyant observations, but who failed to express these observations from the spiritual world in a language that, for any age, is the language of the ordinary human sense of truth. Do you know what happens to him or what happens to him? All these discoveries are erased after death. Only as much remains valuable and meaningful after death as has been translated and reformulated into a language that, in any age, corresponds to the language of a sound sense of truth.

[ 18 ] It is certainly of the utmost importance that there are clairvoyant individuals who can convey messages from the spiritual world that can enrich the lives of others. This brings blessings to our time, because our age needs such wisdom and will not be able to continue to develop unless it embraces it. It is essential that such messages be conveyed to our contemporary culture. And even if this is not yet recognized today, in half a century or a full century it will nevertheless be a universal conviction among humanity: Culture cannot progress without the conviction of the existence of spiritual wisdom, and humanity would face cultural ruin without the assimilation of spiritual wisdom. There is something that humanity will need in the future if it wishes to continue developing—something more necessary than all outwardly visible cultural resources: the acceptance of spiritual wisdom. And even if all the skies were conquered for transportation, humanity would still face the prospect of cultural death if it did not embrace spiritual wisdom. This is undoubtedly the case. There must be the possibility of looking into the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] What spiritual wisdom holds for individual souls after death, however, is of a different value than the progress of humanity on Earth. To gain a proper mental image of this, we must first ask the question: What does the clairvoyant gain from what he has explored through his clairvoyance and expressed in a form that reflects a sound sense of truth and sound human logic? What additional benefits does he derive after death from his ability to see into the spiritual world, compared to someone who, due to his karma, did not have the opportunity to see into the spiritual world himself during that particular incarnation, and was therefore dependent on hearing only from others about the results of spiritual research? How do spiritual truths differ for an initiate and for a person who has only heard about them and cannot look into the spiritual world? Is the initiate better off than the one who could only receive these things?

[ 20 ] For humanity as a whole, looking into the spiritual worlds has greater value than not doing so. For whoever looks into them enters into communion with the spiritual world; there, they can teach not only human beings but also other spiritual beings and help them progress. Thus, this clairvoyant consciousness has a very special value. But for the individual, only knowledge has value, and in terms of individual value, the most clairvoyant person does not differ from one who has merely received messages and, in a corresponding incarnation, was unable to look into the spiritual world. What we have absorbed as spiritual wisdom bears fruit after death, regardless of whether we have seen it ourselves or not.

[ 21 ] We have thus set before our souls one of the great, most venerable ethical and moral laws of the spiritual world. However, perhaps the moral standards of our time are not refined enough to fully understand this particular ethos. Individually—that is, in the higher sense of satisfying one’s egoism—no one gains an advantage simply because their karma affords them the opportunity to glimpse into the spiritual world. Everything we wish to acquire for our individual lives, we must acquire on the physical plane and also give it forms that are suitable for the physical plane. And if a Buddha or a Bodhisattva stands higher than other human individuals in the hierarchies of the spiritual world, it is precisely because they have acquired this higher state through so many incarnations on the physical plane. What I meant by the higher ethics, the higher moral teaching that arises from spiritual life, is this: No one should have a mental image of gaining an advantage over their fellow human beings through the development of clairvoyance. That is not the case at all. They do not achieve any progress that can be justified in an egoistic sense. They achieve it only to the extent that they can be more to others. It is completely out of the question in the spiritual realm to serve egoism, which is immoral. A person cannot achieve anything for themselves through spiritual enlightenment. What they achieve, they can achieve only as a servant of the world at large, and for themselves only by achieving it for others as well.

[ 22 ] This, then, is the position of a spiritual researcher among his fellow human beings. If they are willing to listen to what he has discovered and take it to heart, they thereby gain an equal advantage over him and advance just as far in their individual development as he has. This means that the spiritual can be put to use only within the universal human spirit, not within the egoistic spirit. There is a realm in which one is moral not merely because one resolves to be so, but because being immoral or selfish would be of no help to one. But then it is also easy to see something else: that it is dangerous to enter the spiritual world, the spiritual realm, unprepared. Nothing selfish can ever be achieved for the afterlife through spiritual life. However, through spiritual development, a person can desire selfish things for this life, for life on the physical plane. Even if, so to speak, one cannot attain anything selfish for the spiritual world, one can still desire to achieve something for this world that is in the spirit of selfishness.

[ 23 ] Most people who strive for a certain level of higher development will surely say: “It goes without saying that I should strive to be unselfish before I can gain entry into the higher world.” - But believe me: there is probably no area of human delusion where the delusion can be as great as when one says, “I strive to be selfless!” - It’s easy to say that. Whether one can actually do it—truly put it into practice—is an entirely different question. It is, above all, a different question because, when one begins to cultivate activities within the soul that can lead into the spiritual world, one only then encounters oneself in one’s true form. In the outer world, in many respects, a person does not live in their true form. They live entangled in a web of mental images, impulses of will, and moral feelings, in patterns of behavior dictated by their environment, and rarely do people ask themselves: How would I act, how would I think about a matter, if I did not feel compelled by what I have been taught to think or act in a certain way? - If people were to answer this question for themselves, they would see that they are usually much, much worse than they assume.

[ 24 ] Now, practices designed to help a person learn to ascend into the spiritual world have the effect of causing one to outgrow everything with which one is intertwined—through habits, through upbringing, through everything that surrounds us. Quite soon, one outgrows all of this. One becomes increasingly “naked” in spiritual and soul terms, in terms of one’s sensibilities. The veils we have placed upon ourselves—and to which we cling in our ordinary feelings and actions—fall away. Hence that very common phenomenon, which has also been discussed many times: Before a person begins spiritual development, they may be a reasonably decent person, perhaps even a sensible one, who does not commit any major follies in life. Now they begin their spiritual development. Whereas before they were quite modest—and perhaps even said to themselves, “I am, after all, a quite modest person!”—they now, under the influence of spiritual development, begin to display a very haughty disposition and start committing all sorts of follies and foolish acts. When they enter into a process of spiritual development, they lose, so to speak, their footing and direction. Why this is so can best be understood by those who are at home in the spiritual world. For two things are necessary to find one’s bearings in the face of what approaches the human soul from the spiritual world, in order to maintain balance: one must be able to avoid becoming dizzy in the face of what comes to us from the spiritual world. In physical life, our physical constitution protects us from becoming dizzy through what we have called in the anthroposophy lectures the sense of balance, the static sense. Just as there is something in the physical human being that enables him to remain upright—for if the physical constitution does not function properly, the person becomes dizzy and falls over—so too is there something in spiritual life through which a person can orient himself to the world in relation to his own situation. He must be able to do this. Spiritual collapse consists precisely in the fact that what previously supported us—our acquired sensibilities, the effects of the fabric of the external world—is no longer present, so that we are then left to rely on ourselves. The supports fall away, and then there is a real danger that we will become dizzy. We can easily become arrogant when our external supports are removed. Arrogance is naturally within us; it simply had not come to the surface before.

[ 25 ] How, then, does one attain spiritual balance so as not to become dizzy? By selflessly, diligently, and earnestly absorbing what spiritual science has discovered and what has been reformulated into logical formulas that correspond to the ordinary sense of truth. It is not out of caprice that it is emphasized here again and again that it is necessary to truly study what we call Spiritual Science first and foremost. It is not emphasized so that I can speak here quite often, but rather because there is no other way to gain the firm foundations for spiritual development. The devoted, diligent assimilation of the findings of Spiritual Science is the antidote to spiritual vertigo and spiritual uncertainty. And many a person who, through a misguided path of development, falls into spiritual uncertainty—even if it seems to them that they have been quite diligent—should know that they have failed to take in what can flow from the wellspring of Spiritual Science in the first place. That is what we need: this study of the facts of Spiritual Science from all angles. And that is why, even last winter in our branch—when we ultimately sought to make clear the significance of the Christ event for humanity—we kept returning to the need to emphasize the fundamental conditions for spiritual progress.

[ 26 ] Human beings need a well-oriented spiritual life in order to progress, but they also need something else. While the study of Spiritual Science provides security for the human soul, a second factor brings about what we also need. This is a certain spiritual strength, a certain courage in spiritual life. We do not need the kind of courage required for spiritual progress in our ordinary daily life—not because our innermost being, our spiritual-soul being, is embedded in the physical body and etheric body during our ordinary waking daily life, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep; and at night, after all, we do nothing and can do no harm. If human beings could act even while asleep, they would, as undeveloped human beings, bring about terrible things. However, the physical and etheric bodies contain not only the forces that are active within us insofar as we are conscious—or even merely thinking and feeling—human beings, but also those forces upon which divine-spiritual beings have worked throughout the Saturn, Sun, and Moon eras, right up into our Earth era. Forces from higher regions are constantly at work there. We rely on them. And when we wake up and enter our physical and etheric bodies, we simultaneously entrust ourselves to the divine-spiritual forces that dwell within our physical and etheric bodies for our salvation and blessing, guiding us through daily life from morning until evening. This is how it is: The entire divine-spiritual world is at work within us, and, strictly speaking, we can do much to make things worse in relation to it, but not much to improve them.

[ 27 ] But now consider that all spiritual development depends on our being able to free our inner being—our astral body and our “I”—so that we may, so to speak, learn to see and perceive clairvoyantly what lives unconsciously from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up; and because it lives unconsciously, it cannot cause any harm. What is unconscious in those members in which divine-spiritual forces reside must become conscious within us. All the strength and power that have been given to us—as we are taken into the hands, upon waking, by that which is anchored in our physical and etheric bodies—fades away when we become independent of the physical and etheric bodies and begin to perceive clairvoyantly. The entire power and force of the world remain outside. We have withdrawn from those forces that make us strong and provide a bulwark against the world that acts upon us from the outside. We have withdrawn from the forces that support us. But the world has remained as it is, and we are therefore still confronted by all the force, all the onslaught of the world. We must then draw upon all the strength that would otherwise come to us from the physical and etheric bodies, so that we can withstand the world’s onslaught and offer resistance. We must develop all of this within our ego and astral body. We develop this through the rules that are given to us, which you will find in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. All of this is designed to give our inner being the strength that was previously bestowed upon us by higher beings—a strength that is lost when external supports are removed—the strength that can make us resilient against the onslaught of the world, even when we ourselves have set aside the support offered by our physical and etheric bodies.

[ 28 ] People who do not strengthen themselves inwardly enough to replace the forces they shed along with the physical and etheric bodies through truly devotional spiritual exercises—above all through the purification of the trait we call immorality in the outer world—such people may, to a certain extent, acquire the ability to glimpse into the spiritual world. But what happens? They become what one might call hypersensitive; they become overly sensitive. It is as if they were being stung spiritually from all sides; they cannot withstand what comes at them from every direction. This is one of the significant facts one must be aware of when striving for spiritual progress: to strengthen oneself inwardly by truly cultivating the noblest and best qualities of the soul.

[ 29 ] What qualities will these be, based on what we have just said today? - If it is even impossible to live in the spiritual world under the sign of selfishness—if selfishness is of no help to us there—then it will only be natural that the expulsion of selfishness, of everything that is subject to the arbitrary desires of the spiritual, will be the preparation for spiritual life. The more seriously and with greater dignity one takes this very principle, the better it is for spiritual progress. One cannot take it seriously and with enough dignity. Anyone involved in these matters often hears someone say: “I didn’t do this out of selfishness!” — But when these words are about to leave one’s lips, one should pause, should not let them escape, but should say to oneself: “Actually, you are not the kind of person who can claim to do anything without a trace of selfishness!” — That is much wiser, because it is much truer. And what matters is the truth, especially with regard to self-knowledge. In no other realm does untruth take such a heavy toll as in the realm of spiritual life. There, one should demand of oneself to be truthful rather than delude oneself with the notion: “You are unselfish.” — Better to be truthful and tell oneself: If I admit my selfishness, then at least I have an impulse to cast it aside.

[ 30 ] I would like to explain what is connected with this concept of spiritual truth with the following. It is quite easy to make the following judgment: There are people who claim to have experienced and seen all sorts of things in the higher worlds; this is then spread and presented to the public. If one realizes that this is not true, shouldn’t one use all one’s strength and resources to combat it?—Certainly, there may be circumstances under which such a struggle is necessary. But for the spiritual person concerned with the truth, there is always another consideration, namely, that only that which is truth springs from the spiritual world and bears fruit for the world, and that that which is untrue most certainly bears no fruit. To put it simply: No matter how many lies one may concoct regarding spiritual matters, these lies have very short legs. Those who spread such lies should realize that they cannot bring about anything truly fruitful with them. Only the truth is fruitful in the spiritual realm. This begins right where we start our own spiritual development—where we should begin by honestly admitting to ourselves what we are really like. This is something that must also serve as an impulse in all spiritual and occult movements: that only the true can be fruitful and effective. Truth is certainly something in the world that justifies itself through its fruitfulness and its blessing for humanity. And the lie, the untruth, is something that is barren and ineffective. It has only one effect, which I cannot elaborate on further today and therefore will merely hint at: it rebounds with the greatest force upon the propagator of the untruth himself. We will examine another time what is meant by this significant statement.

[ 31 ] So today I wanted to give you a sort of retrospective on what we’ve been up to in our branch meetings over the past year, and to once again evoke the mood and emotional resonance that permeated our souls and filled the room.

[ 32 ] If we now consider the work that has been done outside our branch over the past year from just one perspective, I might perhaps point to my own contribution, which is embodied in the Rosicrucian mystery play The Gate of Initiation, which we performed in Munich. This mystery play was intended to strive toward something we will discuss in the upcoming branch meetings. For now, let me simply say that it was possible, precisely in this—one might say—more artistic form, to present in an individual expression what can otherwise only be stated in general terms. When we speak here or elsewhere of the conditions of spiritual life, we speak in a way that is true for every soul. But it is necessary to always bear in mind that every human being is a distinct being, an individual being, and that individualization must take place with regard to each soul. That is why there was once a need to depict, so to speak, a soul at the threshold of initiation. Therefore, do not regard the Rosicrucian Mystery as a doctrinal treatise, but rather as an artistic depiction of the preparation for the initiation of a single individual. It is not a matter of how this or that person progresses, but specifically of the one portrayed in the Mystery as Johannes Thomasius—that is, the entirely individual form that the preparation for initiation takes in the case of a single person.

[ 33 ] In this way, we have, as it were, gained two major perspectives by drawing closer to the truth: first, by describing the broad aspects of progress, and second, by delving into the innermost core of a single soul. We will always be inspired by the fact that we must approach the truth from many angles and wait patiently until the various perspectives on the truth coalesce into a unified understanding. Let us make this humility of knowledge a matter of particular concern to us. Let us never say that human beings cannot experience the truth. They can experience it! It’s just that a person cannot possess the entire knowledge of the truth all at once, but only one aspect at a time. This is what makes a person humble. True humility must also be a feeling that arises within our branches, one that is to be carried out from there into the rest of contemporary culture so that it may have an effect in the world. For, given the nature of our times, our era needs a great deal of this humility of knowledge.

[ 34 ] In light of these suggestions, we will continue our work of presenting the Christian problem so that we, too, may experience how to attain this humility of understanding and, through it, continue to progress further and further in the experience of truth.