The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] My dear friends! Perhaps some questions will become clearer if we first pick up on some of what was discussed yesterday. Dr. Rittelmeyer had, after all, already pointed out that certain difficulties still exist in understanding the relationship between this Christian-religious movement and anthroposophy. These difficulties are, in fact, not the kind that one should really try to overcome—I would say—through a definition, but rather they can only be overcome through practice, and also through a certain study of the soul conditions of present-day humanity. The spiritual conditions of present-day humanity have, after all, only truly emerged over the course of the last three to four centuries, and far too little consideration is still given to just how complex these spiritual conditions actually are. And so you must be clear that even if a religious movement were launched today with all one’s energy and the best of intentions—and could even have a powerful impact—it would nevertheless gradually lose people’s hearts to other contemporary trends unless, at the same time, the needs of humanity were met—needs that did not exist at all for older, though relatively not-so-old, religious movements.

[ 2 ] One must not succumb to the illusion that it will ever be possible in reality to conduct a religious movement in isolation from the rest of cultural life—and especially not in isolation from what is called scientific cultural life. You must be clear that today there exists an atheistic science endowed with the highest authority. Now you might say: Yes, this atheistic science exists as science, but aside from the fact that one person or another is engaged in contemporary science, they may still be filled with an inner piety that, while not in keeping with the times, still exists; so that there could be people today who fully integrate themselves into the current atheistic scientific enterprise and who say: ‘This is simply a different field, but when I am not active in this field, I find my way into a religious life.’

[ 3 ] You see, this separation—both external and internal—between science and religion, which has been sought for centuries, is something that even the strongest purely religious movement cannot possibly overcome. For a religious movement, just like a scientific movement, must above all be true in itself. Now it might even seem trivial if, after we have discussed so much together about what gives the religious movement its substance, we were to return to the fundamental point: the movement must be true. But we must not underestimate how pervasive untruth—the inner, unconscious untruth—has become in the impulses of our civilization today. And what the first initiators of this religious movement felt back then, when they provided the impetus for this religious movement, was essentially this inner, unconscious untruthfulness of the present age. And precisely at this moment, it seems to me urgently necessary that we engage with this inner untruthfulness.

[ 4 ] You see, out of a sense of cultural-historical discomfort, the view has gradually taken hold that science should be left to science, and that the theologian should not concern himself with it. The theologian is said to have to develop his own principle of truth, according to which he treats ethical and religious content separately from all scientific inquiry and, in a sense, approaches humanity from the perspective of the eternal and the religious, while paying no heed to what science is doing. Now, it is precisely this separation of religious life from the rest of cultural life that is permeated by a deep inner insincerity. For anyone who pursues science as it is pursued today, if he is honest and truthful, can only be an atheist, because the way of thinking about the world, as it is pursued today by physics, chemistry, and so on, offers no possibility whatsoever of rising to any ethical ideals. There is only one truth for a science such as today’s, namely this: The world is internally and universally governed by causality. But worldly causality is neutral toward ethical and religious ideals—completely neutral. That is where we must seek the truth, and there is nothing else to do but stand by the astronomer’s statement: “I have searched the entire universe and found no God anywhere; therefore, I have no need for this hypothesis.”—There is nothing else for science, if one is honest.

[ 5 ] It follows from this scientific way of thinking that the question “Should we then completely abandon morality and ethics for the time being?” is answered as follows: “If we did that, people would be driven into chaos; therefore, it is necessary to tame people from the outside through state laws or the like.” — We would then simply have tamed people, whereby the principle of taming for humans would be nothing other than a kind of higher taming, as is applied to animals. Religion would [for such a way of thinking] only be justified if it were regarded merely as a means of bringing people to behave more tamely toward one another. Religion would be merely a means to an end; that is the only conclusion permitted by the scientific mindset of the present day. And a good part of what has brought humanity to its current state lies precisely in the fact that people do not feel a genuine revulsion toward such a way of thinking, which accepts only half—namely, the scientific mindset—but otherwise invents a theory on how to tame humanity. If one speaks of religious and ethical impulses only in this way, then one must also be clear that one can then speak only of rules of taming. One continues to operate in profound insincerity if one does not admit these things to oneself. On the other hand, however, one cannot stop what atheistic natural science is doing. Consider how strongly efforts are emerging today to structure human institutions in such a way that they are largely based on a purely physical concept of heredity—for example, by creating laws governing marriage where decisions are not made based on the inner state of the heart, but rather, for instance, by a physician. These things can, of course, be talked away, but in reality, they cannot be stopped.

[ 6 ] For anyone who wishes to stand on the ground of religious renewal today, it is therefore necessary to be clear that they must also be in harmony with a line of thought that brings the spirit back into the natural sciences, that asserts the spirit within the natural sciences, so that the spirit is asserted all the way down to physics. This has indeed been the aim, as the religious movement is based on anthroposophy. But this foundation in anthroposophy must be a deeply inner and genuine one. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the relationship between religious renewal and anthroposophy in the right way.

[ 7 ] Isn’t it true that anthroposophy cannot and will not be anything other than a movement of knowledge? It must—even if this strains its relationship with its followers—work in every detail with full awareness in such a way that it is a movement of knowledge. Religious renewal is, after all, a religious movement with its corresponding religious practices. And when both movements operate according to their own impulses, nothing other than mutual enrichment can result. Fundamentally, a conflict can never arise. However, even while recognizing that, on the whole, a conflict cannot occur, one must thoroughly take current circumstances into account. The anthroposophical movement naturally finds itself in a difficult position today because very many people who yearn for a spiritualization of their worldview would actually prefer, in terms of knowledge, to arrive at their insights in an easier and more comfortable way than anthroposophy can provide. People are reluctant to engage in the kind of intensive inner collaboration that is necessary in anthroposophy, and as a result, some truly absurd views and ideas sometimes arise. The fact is—you need only recall yesterday’s lecture—that for anyone who truly wishes to engage honestly with anthroposophy today, such a thorough rethinking is necessary that it sets anthroposophists quite radically apart from people who have no idea that such a rethinking and reorientation of feeling is even possible.

[ 8 ] But what creates community? A shared human way of thinking and feeling! It is hard to imagine that people, when the anthroposophical impulse is working honestly within them, would not feel a sense of community unlike anything the world has ever seen. For never before has such a fundamental shift in thinking been necessary—not even in the ancient mysteries; there, much was still more akin to popular thinking. The bond is so strong that all the clamor and shouting for a sense of community—which occurs frequently, especially among the younger generation—is, at its core, already tinged with absurdity. But do not forget that we are not in a studio where we can mold people out of plasticine, but that people are here with all their absurdities, which must be taken fully into account—absurdities that cannot be ignored if one wishes to work effectively in reality. The point is to take these things truly seriously and regard them as real. But today, in the most diverse fields, people do not give them a second thought. Perhaps you’ll understand me better if I use a popular example.

[ 9 ] We now have twelve classes at the Waldorf School, so it has students up to the ages of 18 and 19. They all want to become teachers, too. Well, the very first requirement of education and instruction is that the student—while still a child, a boy, or a young girl—does not participate in discussions about the principles of education and instruction; these principles must remain the mystery of the teachers and educators. But the way things are run today, everything is laid out for the children at the Waldorf School; they might even tell you how they are being educated, explain the pedagogical principles, and so on, and sometimes know better than the teachers themselves what Waldorf education is. Yes, if that’s the way things are, then we cannot move forward.

[ 10 ] But on the other hand, it is not possible today to “secrete” things in an external way; that doesn’t work either. For example, we recently discussed at a delegates’ meeting only the method of how to raise funds for the reconstruction [of the Goetheanum]. Following that, a spiteful article appeared in a Geneva newspaper, in which we were viciously attacked for allegedly trying to squeeze a million francs out of the poor Swiss. So, making things public in this way doesn’t work. But it must come to pass that we can rely on people inwardly, so that even when there are no formal rules of confidentiality, a sense of tact develops among the leading figures—to speak about a matter only in a certain way and not, for example, to explain the pedagogical principles of the Waldorf School to a fifteen-year-old in the same way as to a thirty-year-old. This must develop gradually. It is truly the case that all sorts of absurd side effects arise because things are not taken seriously enough, deeply and strongly.

[ 11 ] Thus arises the impulse to foster community within the anthroposophical movement. The anthroposophical movement is a movement of knowledge. It is founded on a commonality of will, feeling, and thought. So one might actually think that the religious movement would simply take up what already exists within the anthroposophical movement and, in the manner characteristic of the religious movement, develop this further from its own innermost impulses.

[ 12 ] Before there was a religious movement, people involved in the anthroposophical movement sought a substitute for it in all sorts of esoteric circles; however, these were structured in such a way that they were essentially circles of knowledge, and whatever resembled a ritual served only the purpose of knowledge. For this reason, nothing could be carried over from these circles into the religious renewal movement. And if the elements that existed there—which, in the times when this was still possible, had a ritual-like character—had not been permeated by the impulse of knowledge, they would have been understood in an external sense, and by their very nature, they were not meant to be understood that way.

[ 13 ] In contrast, the situation with the religious movement is such that the ritual itself already contains a direct substance—namely, in every ritual act—so that even someone who, for example, refuses to strive for knowledge through the ritual, still leads a life in keeping with the ritual through participation in it, because the ritual, as it is intended to function in this religious movement, is directly the language of the spiritual world, brought down into earthly form, so that participation in the ritual is something entirely positive.

[ 14 ] Let us consider the heart of the service from this perspective. When we look at the rite of consecration, we first have the reading of the Gospels as the preparatory part. Now, of course, there is still a difficulty here, because we really need to understand the Gospels even better than we do today. The point is that the word of the Gospel is received differently than any other word that has emerged in the course of human civilization and comes from human beings. The Gospel message, when accepted as true, truly contains within itself what can be described as follows: The one who reads or speaks the Gospel message is a mouthpiece for something that enters the physical world from the spiritual realms, so that the preparatory part—the reading of the Gospel—does indeed bring about a connection between the entire congregation and the spiritual world.

[ 15 ] Then comes the actual sacrificial rite, which consists of three parts: the offering, transubstantiation, and communion. Now, one simply cannot have a proper understanding of this trinity unless one realizes that at the very moment when transubstantiation takes place, for those who are even merely present, the natural order and the ethical order merge into one, so that a completely different world order is presented to the congregation each time, each time the human being is elevated into the divine, and the spiritual descends into the human. If one takes this seriously, one must say that something is taking place that is entirely independent of what the human being perceives in it. Mere feeling is sufficient for what takes place in this process. Mere feeling can never suffice for understanding. For the transformation that occurs, mere feeling is sufficient; thus, what unfolds there is in fact a collaboration, a joint activity with the congregation, when the priest performs the rite of human consecration before the congregation. This is something that must certainly be considered in its own right, and therefore the question should never cause you any sense of disharmony: Can any ritual found today in the spiritual world—and all our rituals are found in the spiritual world, are, so to speak, ordained by God for today—can that ever be changed or cease to exist? — You see, to judge these rituals in such a way that one says, “Yes, a different state will eventually develop in which people will have an invisible ritual”—such questions are not justified.

[ 16 ] The relationship must be understood as follows: People will always seek the path from ceremony to sermon; only what comes from anthroposophy, from spiritual knowledge, can enrich the sermon. Now, in the future, it will be the case that those who are, to the highest degree, experts in the spiritual realm will never refuse to associate with those who initially come to the worship service. Their relationship to the worship service is no different from that of, I might say, the naive person. So the question simply cannot arise: Are we conducting a worship service for the present time, and must it someday be replaced by another? — Since the ritual has been established, it is established and will continue; it is subject to different laws than those invoked when one asks: Will an invisible ritual eventually come into being? The ritual is subject to the great cosmic world impulses that shape everything that arises in the world. But the changes in the future will be entirely different from those of the past.

[ 17 ] Take the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church today. It represents a synthetic convergence of all the corresponding cults of antiquity, deepened in the Christian sense. That is precisely what is so wonderful: that all the ancient mystery traditions have converged within the Catholic Church. But there came certain periods in Christian development—periods that actually began as early as the 3rd and 4th centuries—during which there was no longer any understanding of what was at work in the Mass, and so it initially became an empty set of rituals; it persisted as tradition, I might say, out of piety. But then, fairly soon, people found the courage to admit their lack of understanding and began to make all sorts of improvements. Thus, today, in the Catholic Mass, we have something that, little by little—and partly due to the decline of the language—has essentially become something completely incomprehensible. It is celebrated in the old language without it being possible to make it comprehensible. And therefore this Catholic Mass is something like a corpse—admittedly of something immensely great and powerful—but still a corpse, one that, even as a corpse, possesses an immensely strong power. On the whole, what is remarkable within the Catholic Church is that the priesthood is exceptionally well-educated philosophically, but exceptionally uneducated theologically. Catholic theology lacks any vitality whatsoever, so that even at the very highest levels, Catholic theology is, in fact, something exceptionally uneducated. It has not developed at all since the Middle Ages. All of this means that, fundamentally, humanity’s religious needs can no longer be satisfied by doctrine or preaching, but only by worship, because worship possesses the immense power to foster a sense of community. Therein lies what can give you a sense of eternity in the face of this new ritual, so that no disharmony need weigh upon your souls.

[ 18 ] Anthroposophists now claim that certain spiritually advanced individuals could do without the ritual. This question would not even arise if one had the right attitude. I have no idea what underlying reasons could have given rise to this question at all. For when a funeral occurs today, it is precisely the religious community that is called upon to perform the ritual. And so it is called upon through the human consecration rite for the whole of the human being—and not merely with the intention that this is something temporary that must eventually be replaced by something else. This is an eternal matter, insofar as one can speak of anything eternal on earth. So this conflict that seems to have arisen among many of you—the idea that anthroposophy, in a sense, presents the ritual as something of lesser significance, or that something else must take the place of the present movement in the future—this conflict can only be based on a misunderstanding of feeling. As soon as you realize that, naturally, those who seek anthroposophy simply focus more on the side of knowledge, and that it must be left up to them to what extent they seek the ritual, and, on the other hand, that people who come to the ritual will also strive toward the side of knowledge, because the intellect is so strong today that they will thus approach anthroposophy from this ritual—as soon as you realize this, you must conclude that, in a certain sense, this is merely a division of labor. In this area, an inner conflict should not arise at all.

[ 19 ] Now, however, after these remarks, I would like to ask you to share one or two more thoughts, since I know there is still much on your minds.

A question is asked [— not recorded by the stenographer —] regarding the saying discussed in the Dornach lecture of December 31, 1922:

It draws near to me in my earthly life
Given to me in the image of matter
The celestial beings of the stars
I see them transforming lovingly as they will.

They penetrate me in my watery life
Shaping me through the mighty power of matter
The celestial deeds of the stars
I feel them moving wisely.

[ 20 ] Rudolf Steiner: What I spoke about back then is a kind of cosmic communion. If this is practiced meditatively, it may, under certain circumstances—given the current state of affairs—be able to provide a person with a certain sense of fulfillment. In this way, he will be able to receive a kind of communion. But that does not preclude the possibility that even someone who receives communion in this way for the sake of their insight—if their overall state of mind today otherwise inclines them to do so—may also receive communion in other ways. One should not emphasize the differences, for the two things are not contradictory. Do you perceive a greater contradiction in this than in what existed in the old Catholic Church, when it was still properly understood? There you had priestly communion and, of course, lay communion—though I do not mean to say that all anthroposophists should be priests. There were those who could both give and receive communion, and there were those who could receive communion but not give it. If you grasp this distinction, you will have to say to yourself: The one who can administer Communion cannot possibly receive Communion in the same way as a layperson without having something additional in his or her inner experience. He or she must have something more. Therefore, the priest, who also received Communion, had to have something more—an inner Communion—and indeed, he did. Well, back then, the point was to strictly adhere to the distinction between the priesthood and the laity. There were only these two classes. But development has moved beyond those times; that era is no longer with us.

[ 21 ] Today, in a sense, much of what in earlier times was accessible only to the priest must also be made accessible to the layperson. After all, our entire modern theology, our entire literature, is accessible to everyone. The same can be said in our case as well. Today, you can study theology as a layperson. When a movement of knowledge such as anthroposophy asserts itself, it goes without saying that its participants are introduced to matters that were, of course, formerly intended primarily for the officiating priest. But today things are different: We cannot draw boundaries. If we still had the old principle today, it would be the case that there would be a religious movement, and within that religious movement, the priesthood; which would then have anthroposophy to itself, but would have to do everything in the field of secular technology that the course of history demands … [text gap marked by the stenographer]. If you take this into account, you will understand that this communion, which the priest possesses, is also developed by those who belong to the anthroposophical movement. But there is no reason to say: On the one hand we have a priestly communion, and on the other hand we have a cosmic communion. Both, after all, have the same foundation, just a different form. Both are things that stand entirely independently of one another. So if you feel your way through the matter thoroughly, you will have no difficulties.

A participant: In the report on the Delegates’ Assembly of February 1923, it is stated that the cultic aspect is derived from prenatal life. In a lecture we heard in Dornach, it was described how our ritual is an ascent of the human being into life after death.

[ 22 ] Rudolf Steiner: This is something that must be viewed in the same way as all things that have to do with the spiritual world; one must learn to define the concepts very precisely. [In order to define the concepts precisely,] dialectics was already practiced in Scholasticism. But we are not there yet, neither in the field of anthroposophy nor in that of the religious movement. You see, the way in which the liturgy works within a person—how it actually works, that is, how it grips the person’s soul in such a way that he finds his way through the gate of death through Christ—this effect is one aspect [of the liturgy]. And the other aspect is that through which a person experiences in worship what is like a cosmic memory of prenatal life. Let us take an example from everyday life to illustrate this. What is it that makes an encounter make such a deep impression on a person today? It is because they encounter a figure whom they already revered in their youth. But now something else comes into play. It is something else entirely when I describe what has taken root in this person’s soul for the future; through this, he may have become a completely different person, may find himself in life circumstances quite different from those of his youth. When one participates in the cult, one is moved in regard to one’s future life. This is because it originates from prenatal life. That is what has such a powerful effect on the person.

A participant: Does meditating on the Mass achieve more than celebrating the Mass? If so, we would reach a point where we no longer need to celebrate the Mass.

[ 23 ] Rudolf Steiner: Logically speaking, that is not entirely incorrect, but in fact it is not the case. When someone recites the Mass, and if they then experience it meditatively and it has an effect on them, that effect is actually stronger because it is based on intense inner activity. But one cannot always muster this inner activity. If one has not celebrated Mass for eight days, the power wanes. It is true; if someone is capable of it, then that is fine, but if they do not, so to speak, possess very special inner prerequisites, then these powers wane. It is not the case that the Mass meditated upon inwardly has as strong an effect as the Mass that is celebrated, and it must not become an ideal for the priest to refrain from celebrating Mass. For then he might say: I will refrain from working with my congregation; I want to make progress on my own. — Then he might imagine such an ideal—[not to celebrate the Mass, but to meditate on it]—but the strength that a priest is supposed to have when he wants to celebrate the Mass should not be weakened by imagining such an ideal.

A participant: How do we introduce people to the rite of human consecration? Are we limited to people who approach it based on backward religious sentiments, for whom the path of understanding is closed? How are we supposed to reach the workers if we don’t take the path of reason?

[ 24 ] Rudolf Steiner: But you don’t just have the cultural life; you also have, in the broadest sense, sermons, lectures, and even sermons in the technical sense of the term. It’s hard to see what kind of difficulty might arise there. Today’s younger intellectuals, who are working from scratch, do not want something purely intellectual in isolation; rather, they are strongly drawn toward the cult. And what might come about there—which, on the external level, would have to lead to a synthesis between the religious movement and anthroposophy—I will characterize later. On the one hand, the intellect today is not stimulated at all without the cult. It is the ritual that first calls the intellect back into the human being. People today cease to be able to think if they do not have the cult. The cessation of thinking is a danger of our time. On the other hand, I do not see where the limitation should lie in what you convey to people through the ritual and your sermons. A limitation can only exist where you artificially impose one upon yourself. You say you do not want to teach anthroposophy. But you cannot possibly maintain that, for you must do just that! Of course, one need not force anthroposophy upon people. The difficulty arises precisely when you say: “We certainly do not want to teach anthroposophy.”

One participant: For example, I wouldn't use the term “etheric body.”

[ 25 ] Rudolf Steiner: That depends on the congregation’s level of understanding. I could easily imagine a congregation that takes a completely honest stance toward the ritual and yet still has a need for knowledge. I don’t see why you shouldn’t speak about the etheric body in that context.

A participant: We have many people who have a need for knowledge; they are drawn to anthroposophy through the religious service. We don’t have people who want only the religious service and not anthroposophy. Can we find a way to satisfy the people who don’t want to engage with anthroposophy?

[ 26 ] Rudolf Steiner: The question now is this: How would you characterize someone whom you were to guide today, but who is to be guided in a way that completely disregards anthroposophy? What kind of person would that have to be? The fact is this: If one approaches people in the right way, if one addresses their true humanity, then people will want anthroposophy—just as, throughout the ages, the human soul has always sought what corresponds to it. Not wanting anthroposophy is something that happens only among people whose souls have become distorted. Forty years ago, you could still meet fundamentally healthy people in the countryside who would impart the highest wisdom to you. [The following sentences were recorded only fragmentarily by the stenographer.] They had something hidden under their pillows—Jakob Böhme, for example—which you no longer find today.

[ 27 ] People who have become jaded in the big cities can no longer relate to such things. That is why I cannot imagine that they could need any other path than the anthroposophical one. However, you must not start from what is written about anthroposophy in the book, but from what you have experienced through the book. For example, the concept of the etheric body is incredibly easy to explain to the uninitiated. In certain regions, people call the film that forms in the eyes in the morning “night sleep”; there you are already in the etheric body, for in fact, the activity of the etheric body is present there. There are points of connection everywhere. If you take these into account—and consider that we wrote our books for people today who have gone through this convoluted school system—then you will find such points of connection. You will satisfy people more if you move away from mere words and draw from your own experience.

A participant: Can't the distinction between cosmic communion and worship be phrased in such a way that it is a sacramental one?

[ 28 ] Rudolf Steiner: This is something that is difficult to articulate because the experience of true cosmic communion is already a sacramental one. The entire field of anthroposophical thought is, in fact, something sacramental, as I have already stated in my epistemology of Goethe’s worldview. Thinking is a communion of the human being. Knowledge, when it is true knowledge, becomes a sacrament. It is more important that we try to bring things together than to distinguish them, for in reality they come together of their own accord.

A question is asked regarding the exact wording of a sentence from Rudolf Steiner’s lecture in Dornach on December 30, 1922 [recorded by the stenographer only in keywords].

[ 29 ] Rudolf Steiner: “Anthroposophy does not need religious renewal”—you have phrased that quite correctly. What would it mean for anthroposophy—which must be grounded in itself—if it needed religious renewal! Conversely: religious renewal needs anthroposophy! — The statement made in the lecture that anthroposophists do not need a religious practice is, after all, directed at the anthroposophists themselves, not at the religious renewal movement. Such things had to be said because many people believed they had to decide, as a matter of principle, whether to participate in the religious movement. There were members of the anthroposophical movement who were much older than Dr. Rittelmeyer; if they asked whether they should participate in the worship service, one had to tell them: “You really must decide that for yourselves by now; you should be able to advise Dr. Rittelmeyer!” — But one must not say that one can only come to anthroposophy through the religious movement; that would be very wrong. My lecture at that time was addressed to the anthroposophists. So it goes without saying that the anthroposophists, as they have become in recent times, could serve as advisors regarding the ritual. The other view, however, is poison for anthroposophy: the claim that one cannot arrive at an anthroposophical understanding [of Christ] unless one comes to it through the ritual. It is necessary to bear in mind that this speech was addressed to anthroposophists. The misunderstanding arose because both sides made errors of interpretation in their handling of the matter. There were many in the religious movement who did not know how they should behave.

Marie Steiner: Among some anthroposophists, it was a catchphrase that “Dr. Steiner wishes for the religious movement to take the place of anthroposophy”; that was said to be Dr. Steiner’s opinion. The situation was similar at the beginning of the Threefold Social Order movement, when it was also said that this movement was intended to take the place of anthroposophy. There were already signs that people believed anthroposophy had to be phased out. Subscriptions to the publisher’s periodicals were canceled, and so on.

[ 30 ] Rudolf Steiner: These are matters that pertain to external practice and do not lead to internal difficulties.

One participant points out that Rudolf Steiner said at one point in his lecture on December 30, 1922, that there are many people who are intellectually inclined and others who are driven by a dull religious impulse [the stenographer’s notes are only in the form of keywords].

[ 31 ] Rudolf Steiner: Yes, there’s no denying it: there are people with a distinctly intellectual drive for knowledge, while on the other hand there are those with a dull religious impulse. So when I said that anthroposophy can do nothing for people with a dull religious impulse—only the religious movement can—that is correct. But that does not mean that the religious movement is particularly or exclusively dependent on this type of person; rather, it means that anthroposophy cannot reach these people. One can only reach these people through ritual, not through anthroposophy. People with a dull religious impulse are to be reached through ritual and may, in a future life, become very intellectual people.

A participant: People say, “The anthroposophists have the university; you have the children’s school.” That’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with.

[ 32 ] Rudolf Steiner: I recently received a large poster from Austria; it was full of nonsense about how the person in question would enter the spiritual world, what he would reveal to people, and so on; but then on the second page it said: “My spiritual system also encompasses all those things that have appeared one-sidedly as anthroposophy, theosophy, and so on.” —

[ 33 ] You can't judge inner struggles based on things like that. You don't have to take people like that too seriously. It's not worth getting upset over.

A participant: The branch leaders really ought to ensure that such remarks are not made.

[ 34 ] Rudolf Steiner: Those are external matters. The branch leaders have nothing to do with what the members do outside the branch.

A participant: It was stated outright that the two approaches contradict each other. That scares people away, and they stay away.

[ 35 ] Rudolf Steiner: These are not inner difficulties; this is the external approach, the practical application in life. It is impossible to prevent such things from happening. One cannot trivialize something that is connected with deep seriousness; one must formulate it sharply, with serious words, and these are easily misinterpreted. What one or another branch leader says is entirely irrelevant. Otherwise, we would have to regard it as a task to have only branch leaders who are infallible. Their spiritual resources lie in enlightening people.

Emil Bock: In a certain sense, there was some confusion among us at the beginning. We were looking for our field of work outside the realm of anthroposophy. We may have used what was said for reasons of opposition as an excuse to keep ourselves somewhat too much on the sidelines of anthroposophical work. Some of us, after all, no longer had the time for it. As a result, when these difficulties arose among the anthroposophists, we were unable to have a say as anthroposophists. Through the course of events, we had somewhat distanced ourselves from the anthroposophical ranks. Now we ask you to help us find our way back to anthroposophical work, for we feel a strong need not to fall out of the anthroposophical ranks through our work, and we realize that we deprived ourselves of the opportunity to contribute properly to the clarification at that time because people saw us not as anthroposophists but as religious reformers. We do not wish to be poor representatives of anthroposophy.

[ 36 ] Rudolf Steiner: That danger was certainly present at the beginning. The matter depends on sound judgment prevailing. There are many ways in which that judgment can be corrected. Dr. Rittelmeyer has, after all, been very active on the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society in anthroposophical activities for months now. He is in high demand. But it is certainly true that everyone’s energy is being heavily drawn upon. I will never again undertake anything on such an occasion—where social conditions are to be sanctified through the ritual—without the participation of a representative of the religious movement. At funerals, I no longer speak alone, without a priest. The ritual must be performed [by the priest]. In this way, a correct judgment must gradually take shape. In discussions, people misunderstand one another, but the facts speak for themselves.

[ 37 ] It is important that the religious movement not deny anthroposophy. You are mistaken if you believe that this will help you move forward. It is better to stand clearly and firmly on the ground of anthroposophy. Everything should be explained openly. You must not give people the impression that you have nothing to do with anthroposophy. The Waldorf school has everything to do with anthroposophy. One lecturer said that the Waldorf School would be quite nice if only it would abandon its fundamental views. That is the point I want to emphasize: If anthroposophy is the foundation of the Waldorf School, then we are not providing an anthroposophical sectarian education, but rather, through anthroposophy, we are aiming for a general education of the human being.

[ 38 ] Our task is not to clear up misunderstandings, but simply to tell the truth.