The Rudolf Steiner Archive

66. First Aid Course: Lecture Two

[ 1 ] Faith and trust (in the spirit’s victorious nature) must be so great that we value how we approach such matters—such as caring for the wounded and the sick—with our hearts and minds. With every injury, something takes place that points toward the future, so that through divine-spiritual powers, something occurs that later enters into consciousness. We direct our attitude toward something that later enters into consciousness. Thus, it is indeed significant how we enter into the role of helping others with our whole soul and state of mind; and perhaps nothing expresses this more than our entire state of mind being imbued with the right trust and faith in the power and strength of the Spirit, and by holding fast to the words, “Not I, but Christ in me.”

[ 2 ] I would like to point to an infinitely distant ideal. In the spiritual realm, what helps us are those things that will only become outwardly effective in the future. And today it is, of course, difficult to believe and difficult to understand with one’s whole heart; but one must nevertheless find one’s way into the great, all-encompassing ideal, which states: Humanity will only truly come into being when it becomes possible for the pain of the individual to be felt not only by the individual [himself] but also by others. —I will return to this in a few closing remarks tomorrow.

[ 3 ] In fact, when we are faced with any external object that is inanimate and unconscious, we can cut it up or tear it apart. You know, of course, that this also causes certain sensations of pain, but in general, what is present here is not the same as what is present when we are confronted with a conscious organism and its pain. (Human beings) have the privilege of feeling their ego, their “I,” through the medium of pain. We, however, are cut off from the pain of others. And now comes the ideal: It is of immense importance that we find our way toward this, that in the future the spiritual will become so strong that not only will the one who bears the body feel the pain in their consciousness, but the other will feel it just as strongly. One day we will be able to feel another’s injury just as strongly as our own. This is, in fact, the Christ ideal; and in these times, it is good to remember this ideal.

[ 4 ] For truly, the fact that we are able to gather around our building at this time should be regarded as a tremendous achievement on our part. And so we should at least commemorate the great ideals of humanity here at our landmark, around which [gap in the transcript]

[ 5 ] Becoming a helper, says the Spirit, is contingent upon the ideal contained in the following lines, my dear friends, which I would like to place upon your souls today as I conclude. To have these lines permeate one’s heart, to have understood them—perceiving and feeling—pours into our hands that active compassion that we may often need. (If one) can act as if speaking to oneself (she says), what lies in these seven lines:

As long as you feel the pain,

[ 6 ] (but you say that to the other person, the one who is suffering, who is in pain)

The one who avoids me

[ 7 ] (this is how you treat the wounded)

Is Christ unrecognized
As he works within the fabric of the universe.
For the spirit remains weak
When, alone within its own body,
It is capable only of feeling suffering.

[ 8 ] It is, after all, a lofty ideal to see it as a weakness of the spirit to be able to feel only one’s own pain, and to be unable to feel it when it is present in another body. True strength of the spirit lies in feeling pain everywhere. We really must overcome the prejudice that the spirit is already strong in any of us. It is strong (the spirit), but it is weak within us and must become stronger and stronger. That is why (we should) hold this ideal before us:

As long as you feel the pain,
Which shuns me,
Christ remains unrecognized
Working within the fabric of the world.
For the spirit remains weak,
When, alone within its own body,
It is capable only of feeling suffering.