The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends! We shall now continue our discussions of the various rituals. I would just like to start by adding a discussion of the so-called Credo, which is inserted between the Gospel and the Offertory in the Catholic Mass and which plays a certain role in the confessions. Before I discuss this Credo, however, I must explain something about how the point of view from which I must treat such a Credo is to be characterized. First of all, in view of the many discussions that take place about the Credo, it must be said to what extent such a Credo can play a role at all within a confessional community of Christianity. When the Credo is discussed today, the question is often whether one should include this or that sentence or not, and how the Credo should be formulated for this or that occasion, or rather, for this or that reason for using it, and so on.

Now it seems to me that a credo, that is, a confession of faith, could at most only make sense to those who are simultaneously willing to recognize that they have reasons of an inner, cognitive nature that compel them to utter such a credo or at least make it possible for them to utter such a credo. Of course, it is quite impossible to demand such a credo from a confirmand, for example, that is, to demand a credo from a confirmand at all. Is it even possible to have such discussions – as they have been held about the credo – whether a person who is perhaps 15 or 16 years old should profess one or the other, which basically cannot be understood in a lifetime? Nevertheless, the discussion proceeds from the standpoint of what can be signed by one or the other of these creeds? You have seen that the Jugendfeier ceremony that I showed you here, of course, contains nothing of such a creed. When I first treated the ritual of the Mass Sacrifice in its main parts, I pointed out that in the Catholic Church the Creed is inserted between the reading of the Gospel and the Offertory. But if one wants to either justify or refute the insertion of the Credo at this point in the Mass, then again various things must be taken into consideration. I am not here to justify or refute anything that concerns the Catholic Church, but to discuss the issues. What would have to be asserted in the face of the Creed at this point, what could be said in justification, is this: First the Gospel is read, and now the one who celebrates the Mass, who is thus the actual agent in the Mass, can give a kind of response in the Creed to what is heard as the inspired word in the Gospel. If the Mass sacrifice is now understood to mean that it is actually only the sacrifice celebrated by the ordained priest, then all the faithful who participate in this Mass sacrifice are naturally not at all connected with it – in principle – to recognize everything that the priest confesses during the act of celebration as that which lives in him. Besides, the priest also says silent masses where he is at most concerned with the others in the idea. What is expressed in the Credo of the Catholic Mass must not be understood as if it were a confession for those who participate in the sacrificial act of the Mass, sentence by sentence. It is a different matter as to what extent the Catholic Church demands confession of the Credo from its faithful. That is certainly the case to a certain extent. What is required here is actually all based on a somewhat liberal interpretation of church practice, but the idea is that the confession of the Credo is required, as I have read it to you. The Credo also forms the content of [Catholic] catechism lessons and is taught to children in the very form that I have read to you. The Credo also forms the content of a certain part of the ordination of a priest, which we shall have to discuss later. Here it takes on a completely different meaning and is undoubtedly justified in this context, since it contains what can really be advocated within the Church. Thus, it is quite impossible to demand a credo, to incline towards a credo that contains, as the usual credo does, I might say, a certain essence of world wisdom, of all world feeling and world will — for that is what is usually contained in a credo. In so far as the Catholic Credo contains this, one cannot help saying that it cannot, in the Christian sense, be taught to the faithful in the way it is. If it is to be discussed from an anthroposophical point of view, only the following can be said, because it really requires a great deal of knowledge to meaningfully accept what can be offered by a creed.

Anyone who professes to believe in a pedagogy that is truly based on knowledge of human nature will never advocate teaching children only things that they immediately understand. Anyone who did so would not take into account the whole of human life; for example, he would not take into account what it means in terms of rejuvenating strength, in terms of the real influx of inner life force when, let us say, in the fortieth year of one's life one remembers something that one authority in the tenth year, and now, in the fortieth year, you say to yourself: You have come through your life experience so far that you now understand from your own inner being what you learned by heart in the tenth year. Simply the fact that you understand things later on, which you can recall from memory, means that you are receiving real vitality. Another educational theory might advocate the following: the child should not be encouraged to do anything that it cannot immediately put into practice, or perhaps one should only teach the child what its hands naturally want to do.

Now, I have made this pedagogical digression so that you can see what kind of attitude can prevail in a pedagogy that is based on real human knowledge. But then, when it comes to something like the credo, the feeling must be evoked not to urge the child to believe these things, but the child must have the clear idea: the person who is dealing with him, believes in them. That is the most extreme idea that can be evoked: the person who is dealing with the child believes in it because he knows the things, and the child must also have the feeling that he can grow into an understanding of what the adult believes. Without this feeling, it is not possible to establish a community that is permeated by inner truth; but above all, this must be the case in a Christian community.

Having said that, my dear friends, I would like to present to you some of the elements of a credo that could arise out of anthroposophical knowledge. I ask you to listen to it as it is meant, namely that it arises out of anthroposophical knowledge, and that anyone who has a certain anthroposophical knowledge can , but that it is really extremely difficult to find even remotely adequate words in which to express what can only come about in the course of a wide-ranging anthroposophical realization. The words must be chosen in such a way that for someone who is not immersed in the whole process from which these words ultimately arise, they are in many respects merely a sound. I have tried by every possible means to express in concise words what, according to anthroposophical conviction, should be in such a credo, but do not think that I believe I have succeeded in doing so. What needs to be said is perfectly clear to me; but it is extraordinarily difficult to put into words, because our words have lost their values in all languages, because our words are often only external signs. So, even if some of it shocks you, I would ask you to accept what I am about to read as a possible anthroposophical credo, bearing this in mind.

An almighty spiritual-physical being of God is the reason for the existence of heaven and earth, fatherly preceding his creatures.

Christ, through whom people attain the revival of dying earthly existence, is to this divine being like the eternally born son.

In Jesus, the Christ entered the earthly world as a human being. Jesus' birth on earth is an effect of the Holy Spirit, who, in order to spiritually heal the “sickness of sin in the flesh of humanity,” prepared the son of Mary to be the vessel of the Christ.

Christ Jesus suffered death on the cross under Pontius Pilate and was buried in the grave of the earth.

In death, he became the helper of the deceased souls who had lost their divine being; then he overcame death after three days.

Since that time, he has been the Lord of the heavenly powers on earth and lives as the fulfiller of the paternal deeds of the foundation of the world.

In the progress of the world He will unite Himself with those whom He can snatch from the death of matter through their behavior.

Through Him the healing spirit can work.

Communities whose members feel the Christ within themselves may feel united in a church to which all who feel the saving power of Christ belong; they may hope for the overcoming of the disease of sin, for the continued existence of the human being and for the preservation of their life destined for eternity.

They naturally find in it essentially what is already contained in the traditional Creed. But I cannot help saying that in the traditional Creed, insofar as it is translated into newer languages, what is actually in it can no longer be found. That is why I tried to translate the Credo of the Catholic Mass in the way I have already read out, which I will now present again. But it is one thing to try to reconstruct what is available as tradition and quite another to try to express what can really be advocated today. In my opinion, the Credo would be translated as follows:

“I believe in the One God, the almighty Father, who made heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible.”

The word “made” is already in it, although it contradicts the Gospel of John; no other text is possible in opposition to the Gospel of John than:

An almighty spiritual-physical being of God is the reason for the existence of heaven and earth, who fatherly precedes his creatures.

Christ, through whom men attain the revival of the dying earthly existence, is to this being of God as the son born in eternity.

But here it says further:

“And in the One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God. Who also proceeded from the Father before all time. He is God from God. Light from Light, true God from true God.”

Well, my dear friends, it must be translated like that, but it is impossible to imprint in such words what can be experienced today originally from the spiritual worlds. The most striking fact that can prove this to you, for quite external reasons, is that in the dictionary [by Fritz Mauthner] the two most problematic articles are those about “spirit” and about “God”. This dictionary of philosophy has really emerged from the essence of more recent philological scholarship, and in this German dictionary the article “God” is treated in such a way that one must say: The deepest scholarship is no more capable of filling the word “God” with a living concept than anything else that can be found. In the very word that is most important to humanity, a word sound is pronounced that cannot be filled with a living concept if one wants to somehow arrive at the origin of the word “God” etymologically, philologically. Today's science cannot do it. Fritz Mauthner brings it together with the word “gießen” (to pour), that is, that which is poured out, which pours itself out into the world, and that would then lead back to an old word “Götze” (idol), which would be related to “Gott” (God). You see, that is the situation today with those who have spent a lot of time trying to find the origin of the word “God”.

What can be said from the spiritual scientific point of view is that the word 'God' points to something that expresses a relationship, and which still resonates in the common language in individual dialects that have the word 'God': the feminine 'Godel', which is also found in the name 'Goethe', which originally was 'Goede'. It is the godfather, it is the one to whom there is a spiritual kinship. The word is intimately connected with the fact that this kinship was felt in the monotheistic sense, that the one great godfather of the world, whom one felt like the father imagined in the spirit, was contrasted with some random godfather. So the word probably grew out of primitive, monotheistic stages of religion and probably once meant in North Asia the “Ongod”, the one great godfather, and this prefix “On” definitely points to the monotheistic origin of those ideas that correspond to the word of God.

So you see, anyone who chooses words with true inner conscientiousness is not in a position to utter them as lightly as is usually the case today. Empathizing with these words, living into them, must actually be a process of life. Today, when people believe that they can translate from one language into another by simply using a dictionary and then inserting the word that appears in the dictionary into the sentence, no one can have any sense of what is actually involved. This is because the word in the dictionary is usually the least useful one if you want to translate the real meaning. At best, the dictionary word can help us arrive at what is meant, and it is characteristic of this that even school dictionaries have become terribly poor in this regard over the course of fifty years. We are hardly familiar with all the dictionary blunders that have been made since then.

But now we find in this creed, in addition to “he who is God of God, true God of true God”, also “light from light”. Now, my dear friends, perhaps twenty or twenty-one years ago I once wrote an essay that contained something like the following. I wrote: In physics, light is spoken of as if it were given as a gift; but I ask: has light ever been seen? You can see colors; all colors, including white, are something that arises from light, but light is something that no one can see with their eyes. It is the mediator of seeing objects in color, but light itself remains invisible in the light-filled space. Just imagine standing in the middle of a room that contains no objects, only light. Would you see anything? You would be just as if in darkness, only you would feel differently, but you could not see the light. Everywhere one speaks as if one could see the light. Physics has — most terrible of horrors — instead of a color theory a light theory. They know, of course, what light is: wave motion. Now imagine that and compare it with the idea of light that you cannot have from external experience, then you will see what significance such a theory has. This is roughly how modern man must feel in his truth when he hears the words “light from light”.

Now there is a sentence in the Creed which, if it is a mere translation, cannot be translated differently than as it stands here:

“Descended, but not produced, of one essence with the Father: through whom all things were made.”

Christ... is to this divine being like the Son born in eternity.

which does not refer to a birth in time, but indicates that the Word is now born and must not now be taken in the sense in which it is usually taken.

"Who descended from the heavens for us men and for our healing. Who also came in the flesh by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

I cannot get any other text than this:

In Jesus, the Christ entered the earthly world as a human being. Jesus' birth on earth is an effect of the Holy Spirit, which, in order to spiritually heal the sin of the body of humanity, prepared the son of Mary to be the vessel of Christ.

If it is desired, we can also talk about the virgin birth in another context that does not belong to the ritual.

“Who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, who died and was buried.”

Now, it is the case that one must express it in this way:

Christ Jesus suffered crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and was laid in the tomb of the earth.

Yes, now it continues:

“And who was resurrected on the third day in the sense of the scriptures. And who was raised up into heaven again.”

These are, of course, ideas that must be given correctly:

Since that time He has been Lord of the heavenly powers on earth and lives as the fulfiller of the Fatherly deeds in the foundation of the world.

[In the translation of the Credo]:

"And he who has been lifted up on high, who sits at the right hand of the Father, will reveal himself again to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom is endless. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Who is worshiped and revealed together with the Father and the Son, who spoke through the prophets. And in the only holy catholic and apostolic church. I profess one baptism for the wiping out of wrongdoing. And I hope for the resurrection of the dead and for a life in future time circles. Yes, so be it.

So, as I said, I cannot say anything other than what I have shared here with regard to what can now, with all the difficulties, be summarized from anthroposophical foundations as a real credo. You can regard what is summarized here in such a way that it can truly be signed off in the sense of anthroposophical knowledge in every single word, if the word is now really taken with all its inner values. For it turns out that this anthroposophical insight, too, requires us to hold fast to the idea of resurrection, and to hold fast to what we encounter in the words that you also find in the Catholic Creed, at least in most versions, namely that Christ descended to the dead – or as it is also called, “into hell”. I had to express this by saying:

In death, he became the helper of the deceased souls who had lost their divine being; then, after three days, he overcame death.

It is indeed a fact that is perfectly recognizable to spiritual science that not only does the evolution of the living take place in all its differentiation in the successive epochs of earthly existence, as you know from anthroposophical descriptions, but that the life of the dead also evolves. And this life of the dead at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was such that the ancient Greek saying, which was connected with the Mysteries of that time, was indeed true: better a beggar in the Upper World than a king in the realm of shadows – that is, the dead, for the dead in those days were in danger of losing the divine, the astral, that which was present in humanity, and they had to give up their divine existence altogether. The Christ came to them to save their lives.

This is truly not at all a reminiscence from Catholicism, as one might easily believe when spiritual science presents it. A very clever person of the present day, a philosophically educated person, as they are called today, would necessarily say that only someone who experiences it as a reminiscence would come up with something like that. Well, I can give you the assurance that I never had the opportunity to experience Catholic reminiscences, but I had to be forced by the knowledge of the facts of the supersensible world to each of these things.

If the formation of new communities in the Christian sense is at issue, then I do believe that this Credo could initially serve as a basis for the cohesion of the communities through the leading priestly figures. But I also believe something else: I believe that long theological studies on the exegesis or interpretation of what is contained in this Credo should be established, at least for those who want to prepare for the priesthood. I cannot believe otherwise, because these things can indeed only be achieved step by step, and because it seems to me that after a certain transitional period – if, as I hope, the revival of religious life, as it is being pursued by our friends, is successful – then indeed the theological study must be established afterwards. And then it seems to me that a few years of theological study will be necessary to understand the Credo. But if this will evoke a true sense of truth in the person, it will naturally prevent demanding a credo or the like from confirmands.

Christian Geyer asks Dr. Steiner to read the Credo again.

Rudolf Steiner:

An almighty spiritual-physical being of God is the reason for the existence of heaven and earth, and walks before his creatures as a father.

Christ, through whom human beings attain the revival of dying earthly existence, is to this divine being as the eternally born son.

In Jesus, the Christ entered the earth as a human being. Jesus' birth on earth is an effect of the Holy Spirit, who, in order to spiritually heal the disease of sin from the body of humanity, prepared the son of Mary to be the vessel of the Christ.

The Christ Jesus -

Please note that here the two words are combined: Earlier was “Christ”, and then was “Jesus”. Now the two words are combined here:

The Christ Jesus suffered crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and was buried in the tomb of the earth.

I can only express it this way.

In death, He became the support of the deceased souls who had lost their divine being; then He overcame death after three days.

Since that time, He has been the Lord of the heavenly powers on earth and lives as the fulfiller of the Fatherly deeds of the foundation of the world.

In the future He will unite with those whom He can snatch from the death of matter through their behavior for the progress of the world.

Through Him the healing spirit can work.

Communities whose members feel the Christ within themselves may feel united in one church, to which all who feel the saving power of Christ belong;

They may hope for the conquest of the disease of sin, for the continued existence of the human being,

And on the preservation of their life destined for eternity.

And now, before I go further in discussing the sacrifice of the Mass, which after all has already been discussed in its four main parts, I would like you to see how the things we are dealing with here can also lead to the living word of the gospel being incorporated into everything , talk about how a funeral ritual can come about, and specifically the funeral ritual that our friend, Pastor Schuster, used at funerals in my presence, so that for me the use is thoroughly tried and tested from direct observation.

This funeral rite, which can also be used for cremations, has the following content. First, the part that is performed at the house of the deceased. It is, as it seems to me, as befits a funeral rite, simple:

Into the peace of the soul's being
wanders the soul of our dear departed.
Into the light of the spiritual world
steps the spirit of our dear departed.
Eternal Spirit, who art with him,
Eternal Spirit, who art with us,
fill our souls.
Christ, who art in us,
Christ, who art in him,
Fill our thoughts.

The Lord's Prayer is now recited. After the Lord's Prayer:

Let him find, eternal Spirit,
The power of life in the light of the soul,
Let him weave in your world will.

— here the name is mentioned —

leaves
and goes into the realm of the infinite
of the timeless world existence,
into which he now enters,
to live in the power of the will,
which in Christ has been able to gain eternity for humanity,
Who has opened the soul's eye for humanity
To see the world of eternal being.
Into the calm of the soul's being
The soul of the dear... (name)
Into the light of the spiritual world,
The spirit of the dear... (name)

Now follows a sprinkling with holy water. This is the ceremony in the house.

The ceremony at the grave or at the cremation site:

The sign of the cross is made over the grave or the cremation site, then the following is spoken:

At the place where we unite

Your mortality with the transient nature of the elements, our thoughts rise to the place of your soul, in the revelation of the Father (sign of the cross), the Son (sign of the cross) and the Holy Spirit (sign of the cross). Amen.

Eternal Spirit,
In whose will the souls weave,
Grasp your servant's soul weaving
And let him experience the spirit of the spirits
Through the power of the Christ,
Who is in him
Who is in us.
I am the rebirth in death,
I am the life in dying,
Thus speaks Christ,
Who is in us.
Whoever feels me in himself,
He lives,
Even if he dies;
Whoever receives me in his thoughts,
He passes through time into the timeless.
Eternal Spirit,
Look upon us.
Christ in us.

And now follows the Lord's Prayer again. After:

Let him find, eternal Spirit,
The power of life in the light of the soul.
Let him weave in your world will.
Hear, eternal Spirit, your servant's thinking,
That rises to you.
May the spirit fill the hearts of those present.
Those present send their thoughts
From the realm of the earthly,
From the realm of the dear... (names) departs
Into the realm,
Into which he enters,
And where the love of the spirit weaves
The soul's eye to the blessed spirit
To see the world of spirits.
There he sees the existence of the spirit,
There he works in the realm
To which he is inclined
His thoughts,
Rather than the realm
That his soul
Called his home.
Through Christ, who is there in him.
therefore our thoughts follow him
where he works as a spirit among spirits.
Through Christ, who is in him. Amen.

The Weihwedels are dipped into the Weihwasserfaß and the corpse, or rather what it is in, is sprinkled with holy water:

With the Breath of Light

— so it is spoken further —

let this soul be imbued

with the triune Spirit,
the Father (sign of the cross), the Son (sign of the cross) and the Holy Spirit (sign of the cross). Amen.

Eternal Spirit, grant him

The peace of soulfulness,

And may the light of the spiritual world shine upon him.

Incense is poured over the corpse.

Remember, O man,

That you are indebted to the spirit

For everything you accomplish

In thought, word and deed.

May you find, eternal soul,

In death, rebirth through the power of Christ,

Who through his death has overcome

the death of the soul;

May you receive

His strength,

as you leave the earthly for the spiritual. Amen.

Eternal Spirit,

let him find the peace of the soul's being.

May the light of the spiritual world shine upon him.

This funeral ritual could basically be understood as an adaptation of common funeral rituals. As I said, it is a tried and tested funeral ritual. When this funeral ritual is spoken with the right attitude, it is actually the spiritual processes that are at work, those that best guide the soul of the dead person from the world of physical existence into the world of spiritual existence. When we speak of a ritual, it really is a matter of living in it to the full, according to one's ability and capacity, in the things that are at stake. There is much to be learned from what has been handed down. For example, there is a great deal to be learned from studying the ancient church constitutions regarding the performance of the sign of the cross by the faithful and by the priest. The faithful make the sign of the cross by saying: In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The sign of the cross is made on the forehead for the Father, on the chin for the Son, and on the chest for the Holy Spirit. The priest does not make the sign of the cross in this way, but rather makes the sign in one go over the whole upper body. This is meant to point to a profound mystery, I would say to that mystery that shows us how the one who is on the way to becoming immersed in life, which must be called the religious life, feels in a different way than the one who has reached the end of this path to a certain degree. These two different signs of the cross show that it requires a profound experience to gradually find the three in the one.

Of course, my dear friends, I have an understanding and perhaps I may even say a heart for all the criticisms that have been raised against the fact that three should be one and one three in the divine Trinity. I have an understanding and a heart for it, and I can understand it in the case of anyone, whether it be a person who today, let us say, is one of the very clever, or the youthful, high-spirited Goethe. But true understanding of these things lies so deep that critical discussion of them is usually nothing more than proof that one has no access to understanding. You see, it is easy to say that three is not one. Arithmetic certainly teaches that, and the outer sensory perception also teaches that. But this arithmetic, which we only carry into the outer sensory perception, is, after all, first shaped by ourselves on the basis of this outer sensory perception. And the arithmetic we have today does not go back very far in the history of humanity. Even Pythagoreanism, which lies only a few hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, cannot be understood from the present-day arithmetic. For how does present-day arithmetic count? One, two, three. Each is one, and all three are just three. That is how you count. If you just adjust your counting for the physical world, it is quite good. But this counting loses all meaning when you want to apply it to the supersensible world. There you have to count quite differently. Of course you can enter the supersensible world and, if you calculate that which is inspired there in much the same way as you calculate things on earth, then you can apply earthly arithmetic; of course you can apply it, but you won't gain anything from it. There is no need to count money there, and you would get nothing out of the other things if you were to treat them with arithmetic as in the physical world and count them in an earthly way. You have to count differently there, I can only sensualize it (it is drawn on the board):

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Here you have everywhere $1=1$, $1=2$, $1=3$, $1=4$, and so on. Not the law of counting, but the law of analysis is the one that allows for real practical application in the world of the soul — not just in the intellectual world. While we can manage with counting here in the physical world, when we synthesize, the arithmetic of the supersensible is an analytical one. The point here is that all numbers are contained in the one. And it will only be possible to study psychology again when the dreadful doctrine of association, which is a subjective thing where one thought is added to another, which does not correspond to reality in the slightest, has finally been removed from the doctrine of the soul. For one is dealing [in the supersensible] with such processes that can only be grasped by such counting and calculating, where unity includes every number. Only when one begins to understand how that which is a unity in a higher world, which can be seen as a unity, actually appears as three in a lower world, does one gradually begin to understand the mystery of three in one and one in three, although it is by no means merely something arithmetic. The arithmetic is only the very least, the beginning of these things. When we enter into the qualitative, which is also contained in the God of the Trinity, then we must also come to count in this way (it is written on the board):

That is, one must proceed to qualitative counting, and qualitative counting is something that is connected with the inner nature of things. Qualitative counting always leads to concrete differentiations, while our synthetic counting leads more and more to abstractions. Try to use today's usual synthetic counting: 1 apple, 2 apples, 3 apples. Well, yes. But if there is an apple, a pear and a plum here, you can no longer remain in the concrete when you add them up: 1, 2, 3; you cannot say that there are 3 apples or 3 pears or 3 plums, but at most you can say that there are 3 pieces, which means that you are entering into the abstract. It is precisely the opposite path that quantitative arithmetic takes to qualitative arithmetic, which leads more and more into the concrete. It has a creative element in the concept of the number contained in the sentence: “For God has ordered the world according to measure, number and weight”. He certainly did not order it like a general orders his troops, but according to the creative, qualitative, analytical order of numbers.

If you say that such things are not necessary today, because we can develop a good religious life without knowing these things, then I say to you: certainly, all this may apply to the faithful, but the pastor must know these things because he must fulfill his task in harmony with the whole course of human development. He must know that these things have a very real significance.

Let me give you an example of where these things can have a very real meaning today. You see, today you learn the Copernican theory of the world at an early age. This Copernican theory of the world is traced back to two sentences of Copernicus, while his third sentence is always suppressed. What today's astronomers do is this: they add up the revolutions of the earth around itself. These rotations of the Earth around itself, around its axis, are now made each year in the path of an ellipse, progressively, over the course of 365 days to 24 hours. But while the Earth is turning around itself, astronomers say that it turns around itself yet another time. You can imagine it like this: When you turn around on your own axis, you make one revolution when you are back to where you started. But if you simultaneously turn around a central point or an interior, you have to turn a little further than one revolution each time. If you now add up 365 plus one, you do not realize that in the world things are different than when a person turns around like that. When the Earth or the world turns once, then the matter becomes concrete, then you have to say: 365 Earth days plus one world day; and if you add that up to 366, it is exactly the same as if you add up 4 pears and 1 apple gives 5 pears. And the error that underlies this has led to the fact that even today people believe that the earth revolves around the sun in the course of a year, which is not the case in reality. It follows behind the sun in a curve, the sun moves in a spiral – (during the following demonstration, it is demonstrated on the board) – the earth follows it in the same spiral. If you look at it this way, the sun is on the line when the sun has set and the earth is here, so look at it this way; this creates the illusion that the earth is moving around the sun. In reality, it follows it in a spiral.

I only mention this, of course I cannot explain it in the breadth in which it should be explained, but it is actually based essentially on a lack of insight into the way in which creating arithmetic and creating geometry work in relation to that which we use as arithmetic and geometry applicable to the sensory world. One must know how little it is right to simply take up the scientific concepts of today; the most important ones are not right. They can easily be taught to people; one can then move from this rolling [of the earth] around the sun to the circling of a nebula, as in the Kant-Laplacean theory and the splitting off [of the solar system] from it. This can even be done very vividly; the object lesson in the sense of today's pedagogy can achieve anything, can't it? You take water and alcohol and let a ball form out of a substance that floats on water, an oil ball, take a piece of a map that you stick with a pin exactly in the middle of the ball. Now you start turning: Tiny spheres separate out and the miniature world system is created. Why shouldn't it be the same outside? For the simple reason that it would be necessary for the great teacher to stand there and stick the giant pin through. When describing an observation, one must describe it very precisely. Otherwise, unselfishness is very good, but this omission of the teacher from an experiment is scientifically far too much unselfishness; because he is there and he must not be denied.

It is true that anyone approaching the renewal of religious life must deal very thoroughly with all those things that today confuse the concepts, that create such confused concepts. He must deal with the fact that they are held to with no less authority than the concepts that are church dogmas. For truly, the Trinity has never been more firmly believed in than modern people believe in such world theories, and they do the latter not with more reason than the others have done or do the former. Today, the belief in authority is only attracted to a different area. And people are truly white ravens when they talk like Herman Grimm – I think I have already told you – who, with reference to the Kant-Laplacean theory, said that a carrion bone around which a hungry dog circles is to be regarded as a more appetizing piece than this world theory, the madness of which later times would wonder at, and will wonder at the fact that this delusion in a time like ours could be adopted by wide circles. Understanding this will one day become a difficult problem for the cultural history of later times.

Emil Bock: There are a number of technical questions regarding the Mass and other services, namely: Should the Mass be spoken freely or read? — What role should freely composed speeches play in the rituals? — At what point should the sermon be in the Mass and what should its length be within the Mass? — Then the question has been raised as to how to arrive at a new selection of sermon texts. What role should congregational singing play? ¹

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, we will first address the question: can the new mass also be read or is a free recitation possible with it and with the other acts? What needs to be said first is this: I naturally had to present the essence of the mass to you and essentially had to present the texts for the four main sections. In a complete mass, the idea is that certain parts and the whole structure of the mass are constructed in a similar way – as I will show – to the sequence of breviary prayers. So you have the complete text of the mass, varying according to the time of year. However, the main things always remain the same, so that if you have to say Mass, you will have to refer to the Missal, which is of course available, and according to common usage there is actually no other way of saying Mass than reading it. Of course, it is perfectly conceivable to know the Mass by heart, but it is not usually done. There is basically no real reason to think that it would be necessary to either read the mass or recite it by heart. It says here: Is the new mass also to be read or is extemporaneous delivery to be aimed for with it and with the other acts? — Extemporaneous delivery is not necessary for the other acts either; it can be read quite well. It is always very nice when our Waldorf school celebrant delivers the free speech in essence, but I have rarely seen anything in the Roman Catholic Church that was part of the liturgy delivered freely.

The next question: the meaning and use of church music in the mass. - Well, an ordinary silent mass can certainly be performed in such a way that one is only dealing with a kind of reading, but originally a mass is actually associated with the recitative of the text, so that at the real liturgical mass one is dealing with a recitation of the mass according to notes. In the missal, you will therefore also find notes if the mass is to be celebrated in a truly liturgical manner. So the text itself is to be read in a recitative-like manner, but in addition, the mass is to be thought of as thoroughly musical, so that in a truly solemn mass, the motifs can also be set to music and the organ music, as well as other music and singing, should play a role.

Regarding the question of congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony: these things, congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony, should not actually disappear from the action; on the contrary, they should be further developed. Congregational singing as such is essentially designed to increase the sense of community, just as the musical and vocal element should not be underestimated. We are too accustomed to regarding language merely as a means of expressing something. When we speak as we are accustomed to doing today, language is essentially only suitable for expressing abstract or sensual things, but it is not really an instrument for expressing the supersensible. You will notice when I express in my lectures that which is to be expressed directly through language as supersensible, that I then try to shape the language and approach a matter from different sides. Rhythm, musicality in general, and the musical-thematic element in particular, is what actually leads us into the supersensible world. In a poem, the prosaic, literal content is basically not what one should look at if one wants the artistic element. Recitation and declamation — I always say this with reference to our eurythmy performances — is completely misunderstood today. The art of recitation and declamation does not lie in emphasizing the content of the prose, but in bringing in the rhythmic and musical and musical-thematic, and thus basically also in the painting of the sound and so on. We should therefore work towards ensuring that this treatment of language and this elevation of the linguistic to song, to the musical, should not only not disappear, but should be developed more and more.

A participant: Could we not already have a new selection of sermon texts, even if it is only for half a year, that would specifically correspond to the situation from a spiritual science point of view, given to us by Dr. Steiner?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, it is not quite so easy to put together a collection of sermon texts in this way. But apart from that, it does not seem to me to be something desirable in the end, that such prescribed sermon texts are handed out. It would perhaps even be good, I think, if you want to build community in such a way that not only the individual communities build community, but that you build a community of pastors, if you were to swear, by some means to be agreed upon, never to adhere to such prescribed sermon texts. By doing so, you would make a significant contribution to revitalizing what you are actually supposed to do. Because you can be quite sure of this: anyone who needs prescribed sermons, who absolutely must have them, should actually be considered a bad preacher, and anyone who can write their own sermons but still likes to use a sermon text as a leader is forgetting how to preach and becoming lazy. It is really a matter of understanding the sermon in a different way, which is not how I have often seen it. You see, in preaching, it is important to be familiar with the Christian doctrine, but also to have a certain command of symbols and images, in the sense that I mentioned last week, and in this way to actually do the work in such a way that you can draw on what can enliven the sermon. Of course, one cannot expect everyone to speak about everything under inspiration, but one must at least strive for the following kind of preparation for preaching: the point is to have the text as such, but one should actually have found it alive, so that the task is then to address the topic; then the preparation should be a kind of meditation. It should consist in devotion to the subject, not in the elaboration of the individual word, but in devotion to the subject. If we really develop this devotion to the subject, then we grow much more together with the matter than if we try to chisel out the word and the like.

Of course, there are all sorts of gradations. Dr. Rittelmeyer recently told the story of how two preachers once discussed whether they delivered their sermons under inspiration. One said: “Well, I deliver all my sermons under inspiration.” The other said, ‘No, I don't do that anymore; the only time I waited for the Holy Spirit was when He said, ’You're a lazy slut!'

Now, these things are of course different according to human abilities. But it is certainly true that we learn to do our preaching better and better if we do it the way I have just indicated.

The next question: The word of Jesus: Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. This saying should be considered in connection with another Bible saying, namely, “Be ye good, as your heavenly Father is good.” You see, these two sayings are only really understandable in context, although they seem to contradict each other. Why, no one is good but God alone. But now, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

Now, if you want to grasp the aspiration, the tendency in man that leads to the good – and with regard to the good, of course, the Christ must be the guide – if you want to understand this tendency, this leading to the good, then you must really grasp that the idea that one can be good impairs being good through and through. Nothing detracts so much from real goodness or at least from the pursuit of goodness as the opinion that one can achieve the good. The good is something that man can only aspire to by presenting it in such a way that, to a certain extent, the model of goodness is unattainable for him. While Christ actually wants to awaken the mood of striving for the good with such words, He presents it in such a way that one should not call Him good, but that one should call the origin of the world good as united in God, thus in Father, Son and Spirit, but not Him as He walks around on earth, even if He lives and is inspired by Christ. He rejects the idea of simply calling that which is walking around on earth good, no matter how strongly it is inspired by the spiritual, because only the pursuit of the good actually constitutes the good, and one cannot truly pursue the good if one does not move it away from oneself into an objective.

Therefore, subjective ethics, the autonomy of ethics, subjective autonomous ethics, is never really a real instruction for the good. So let us understand this connection of the two sayings: Man should strive for a perfection as the Father in heaven is, but never imagine that he can be good. Only the Almighty God is good. So it is a practical instruction for the practice of good deeds. You see, this is a very broad subject. It becomes especially clear when people want to have an explanation of what is called repentance for sins in religious practice, especially in Catholic religious practice. Repentance for sins very often has an extremely selfish coloring, and people should be instructed to bring this selfish tendency out of repentance. What does the feeling of repentance often consist of? It consists in wanting to have been a better person than one actually was. This “wanting to be a better person than one actually was” contains something that, in essence, contradicts a morality imbued with Christ. One must, in essence, take responsibility for one's sins and not want to be considered a better person than one really was. Repentance only makes sense if it strives for an unprejudiced recognition of one's imperfections, if one is inclined to reproach oneself for the full severity of one's imperfections, and if this full recognition gives rise to the resolve — but one that leads to action — to abandon these imperfections. Thus, the essence must lie in the soul's work for itself in the future. Repentance is the intention to discard these imperfections through a precise realization of them. In practice, this can be seen as a teaching that arises from such sayings as the one quoted here.

Another question: could we learn something about textual corruption in the New Testament? Yes, I am not sure what is actually meant by this, if not what I have already discussed in various ways. But perhaps the questioner would be so kind as to say what he actually means.

A participant: For me, it was simply a matter of perhaps getting a few more examples from which one can see even more clearly from which source and with which intention this corruption of the text was undertaken.

Rudolf Steiner: I could, of course, look for specific examples. In general, I would just like to say this: I do not think that much can be gained by looking for intentions behind the corruption of the text. The corruption of the text has basically come about through a more or less self-evident development of humanity. Over time, the fully substantive, most ideal, spiritual substances for the words are simply lost, and the things that can still be fully felt in one generation are basically already pushed towards the words in the next generation. This is how corruptions arise, and they are the most important ones. You can still study this today. You see, today, when we do not have such, I would like to say, inwardly living text in the individual branches of science, we notice exactly the same thing in some of them, if we take a little what in any science tends towards a world view, as was the case with Haeckel, in whom the scientific tends towards a world view; that satisfied him in the highest sense. Even a student of Haeckel, just any student, who simply takes over the subject, who reads what Haeckel himself observed, can no longer have the same thing in the words and can no longer find satisfaction in the world view. And then there are the many descriptions that are given today of embryology, from the first germ cell back to the first. People believe, of course, that by reading about things they can form some idea of them, but very few of those who have written books have had any kind of direct experience of what they are describing; they have only seen pictures. For example, there are very few specimens of the earliest stages of the human germ cell, and even fewer people have been able to see them. Producing such a specimen is, of course, a very difficult matter.

So we can observe the removal of the word from the thing in external science when it is to become a world view; and it is actually this removal of the word from the thing that essentially matters. I would like to say that this is precisely the historical aspect of text corruption. It is the case, for example, that almost all of the oriental texts cannot be used, as can the biblical text if it is taken as we usually have it. It is good to occasionally ask ourselves how what we have today as a text should actually force us to search for a living text. Of course, it will take a lot of work and effort to create the text of the Gospels in such a way that it can apply to the present day. For you, it is enough to first understand that the search for the text is absolutely necessary, and I think that with what I have presented here, you will often come to understand something like this earlier, and if you take the whole of anthroposophy, you will perhaps find a kind of key to understanding in anthroposophy, at least to begin with. Take, for example, such a sentence – I will pick out something, it is not easy, without preparation, to find a characteristic example – take the eighth verse of the seventh chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans – you of course know the context: 'Sin, seizing the opportunity, aroused through the commandment all kinds of covetous desires in me, for without the law sin is dead.'

Now, I do believe that many people think they understand such a statement without further ado. But those who sense something quite profound in such a statement and believe that one really has to go deeper than the interpretation that is often given in a very superficial sense are better off. Because people look at you very strangely when you tell them that something like this has to be taken literally. And the literal interpretation of such a sentence always has a very definite consequence, my dear friends. It has the consequence that normal people today — anthroposophists are not considered normal, but rather crazy — think of you as anarchistic. It is then difficult to make them understand that they must also consider the Apostle Paul an anarchist, because the fact is that the sentence says nothing less than: Sin will not be present if, for example, you abolish state laws. Abolish all state laws, and then there can be no sin. Where there are no state laws, there is no sin. — Let us say, for example, in a flock of sheep, we have no laws, and there is no sin. So when we look after a herd of sheep or a herd of cows, when we look after those creatures that live together in nature simply out of instinct, without intellectually formulated laws being present, then we cannot speak of sin. Sin arises, that is, it shows itself, reveals itself, at the same moment that the law is given, and sin is only the other pole of the law. Sin is thus revealed through the law. But it is not merely a one-sided effect, but rather there is a reciprocal effect; the law produces sin in that human nature works against it. And whereas the animal has no laws, and so can indeed abandon itself to instinct, man's actions are inconceivable as sinful if the law is there. Only when instinctive life is permeated by the power of Christ, which stands as far above nature as instinct stands below nature, is there again that relationship which needs no law. So take this here (see drawing on the board) as the level of the law, any law; that which lies below it in terms of instinct has no law. Where there is law, there is sin. Sin absolutely accompanies the law; but that which lies so far above it is what arises in us as a spiritual-soul impulse through the Christ. There we stand above the law and hold the Christ within us. Then we may dispense with the law. To dispense with the law altogether — that is what people consider to be true anarchism.

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But that is exactly what the Apostle Paul meant. He meant that the law is overcome by the body of Christ. I must confess that an example such as this makes it particularly clear to me that today the actual living aspect of Christ's activity is not even considered, because otherwise one would see with full seriousness that the Christ actually had to present the law as that which is to be gradually overcome by him. Not abolished, but overcome, should be the law that is accompanied by sin. It would not be enough just to say what I have just said, but we must go further. We must also realize that the Apostle Paul spoke from a consciousness that also contained the following: He asks himself: Is the law — which can only ever be grasped in abstractions — enough? Is the law enough to banish sin? No, it is not enough to banish sin. Socrates might have believed that the doctrine of virtue was enough, but it is not enough to know what is right; rather, there must be a Christ-power present that counteracts sin, whereas the law can do nothing but make sin recognizable. It makes no sense whatsoever to think of the law in any other way than that it makes sin recognizable. This verse 8 should be translated as I always try to translate it: The tendency to sin was brought about by the legal prohibition, because where there is no law, sin as such cannot be alive. If only the law—the 13th verse should read—if only the law existed about what is good, I would still fall prey to moral death, because only through the law should sin become recognizable. And so on.

Another example: Now then, my brothers, by living in Christ, we are not obliged to the flesh, for he who lives in the flesh alone must perish. But if you receive the Spirit within you and overcome the flesh, you may live, for all who bear the living Spirit within them are destined to be children of the Godhead.

Of course, someone can come today and say that such a translation would be tendentious. But in this sense, one must strive to find the original text of the Gospel, and one will see that there is still truly great in it. But the rule of the spiritual-scientific method is that one must also really produce the text and also allow that to flow into the interpretation, which one can gain by producing the original text.

Now, there is still the question here: The Saints and the Belief in Saints, Invocation of Spiritual Entities. — It is obviously meant to convey the significance of invoking spiritual entities. Now, the fact is that, according to modern consciousness, one cannot, of course, limit oneself to saints established by some church, without one's own conviction leading one to do so. One can therefore only speak in relation to those Christian ancestors whose particular personal value one has recognized. As far as these are concerned, one cannot but say that leaning towards them in order to work in the sense of their power does indeed have a certain meaning, that it gives strength. It must not go so far as to somehow impair the basic feelings one has towards the Divine, towards the Christ, through these things. In the Catholic Church, the veneration of saints often takes on the character of idolatry. This is what must naturally be avoided.

Now comes the question of the immaculate conception of Mary. — Here it is really a matter of truly understanding the Gospel in relation to these things. Let us first take the Gospel of Matthew: “Now the birth of Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together in the flesh, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. But Joseph, her lover, that is, her beloved, who was a righteous man and did not want to accuse her of evil, decided to treat the whole matter as a secret.

This is more or less what was translated into the sentences that are usually found at this point today. So it actually means: Joseph, who understood how to live in the sense of righteousness – you could also say – wanted to treat the whole thing as a mystery. As he was visualizing this in his mind, the image of an angel appeared to him, and the angel said to him: Joseph, son of David, consider Mary your wife, for what is happening is happening through the determination of power in the sense of the Holy Spirit. Call the son she will bear Jesus, for it will be he who will take away the burden of sin from men.

Of course I have to tell you the truth about such things, because there is no other way, but some of you may be shocked by what has to be said as the truth in this case. You know that I have described the time on Earth that lies roughly behind the year 8000. What is concluded in today's geology through analogies and all sorts of things is pure nonsense compared to reality. We have received many fairy tales, but the strongest fairy tales are the things that geologists tell about the Alluvial, Devonian, Tertiary, Silurian, and so on; especially when they get into calculating numbers, then things are certainly interesting, but somehow a realistic thinking is not in it at all. It is sometimes downright funny how that true science deals with such things. For example, there are physicists today who calculate what the earth will be like in a million years, if we imagine certain physical analogies. They then describe, for example, how egg white, if spread on a wall, will glow wonderfully. But on an earth where egg white glows so wonderfully, humans will no longer be able to exist, everything would be extinct. I might say, people always take isolated little facts and then paint the rest of the picture around them. But things are not really like that. When they are seen in the light of spiritual science, they look quite different.

If we go back further than 8000 years, we come to a certain catastrophe on Earth, which I always call the Atlantean catastrophe. Before this catastrophe, the distribution of land and water was essentially different in the areas that we now call the areas of Western civilization. Where the waves of the Atlantic Ocean are today, Atlantis was above. Much of present-day Europe was sea and alluvial land, as was still the case with a large part of America. We are dealing here with the old Atlantis, but in this old Atlantis the physical conditions of life on earth were essentially different from what they were later, after this catastrophe had passed. The conditions were such that, for example, the air was always present with a certain greater intensity in a watery state; man could not have lived there with a substance with which he lives today. In relatively recent times man was still endowed with a substance very similar to the present-day fish substance. And when we come more to the beginning of Atlantis or even to the middle, man was such that he could not be seen better with physical eyes than the transparent jellyfish of the sea. Man was therefore relatively quite different from how he is presented by those who today believe they are pursuing exact science. But he was also different in soul. You know that when spiritual science traces development back, it must go back to about the eighth century BC. That is around the time of the founding of Rome. Until then, we can follow the age in which the intellectual soul or soul of mind was developed. But there was a time when the human soul was very different. The remains of it are still present in a few writings, but these are little understood because people no longer understand this remarkable development of the sentient soul, which was much more directed towards an understanding of the extra-sensory than of the sensory present on earth. If we go back to after the fifth millennium, we come to the time when a culture prevailed that can no longer be compared to today's at all - in my “Occult Science” I called it the ancient Persian culture - and we then come back to the ancient Indian culture and with this to the eighth millennium BC. There we approach the Atlantean catastrophe and then return to Atlantean civilization. However, the use of this word is particularly unusual, because the development of the soul was still a completely, completely different one. For example, it is quite true of ancient Atlantis that, in the case of procreation, there could never have been any awareness of the act in humans, that is, in the human ancestors. Procreation had always been carried out in complete unconsciousness; at most, in the later days of Atlantis, what had happened began to be experienced in the imagination, but this was essentially subjectively colored. But all these things are preserved in the image atavistically, only one must not grasp them roughly, but one must be clear about the fact that these things must be grasped extremely delicately. So the one who wrote the Gospel of Matthew rejected the idea that at that time feelings of procreation had somehow flowed into Mary, and he also rejected the idea that they were present in Joseph. Those who do not know that such things were a natural possibility until the fourth century of the Christian era and that it only stopped then cannot understand this matter even in its outward meaning. So we are dealing with a pure, immaculate procreation because it was unconscious. This is not a means of providing information, but, as I said before, you may or may not be shocked by it, but that is just the way it is. In Atlantis, it was taken for granted that one never spoke otherwise than that the children of men were sent by the gods, and that still extends into the post-Atlantean period and lives on in legends and myths. I advise you to study the Hertha legend in all its profound significance. There is something tremendously significant about the way in which this Hertha saga is connected with the whole spiritual development of humanity in this direction. It is shown how Hertha appears at a certain time of year, [...]² But the slaves who serve her are immediately thrown into the sea, must be killed. The man became aware of the act of procreation earlier than the woman, and those who had become aware of it in this age – this is hinted at in this saga – even had to be killed. These things must be handled with great delicacy; one must not hint at them with crude concepts. One must know something about the development of mankind, then one will be far removed from belferting like Haeckel, who says that the immaculate conception, which is asserted in the Gospel, is an impudent mockery of human reason. Human reason as such has nothing to do with the immaculate conception; according to what man justifiably calls human reason, the immaculate conception could of course not exist in the grossest sense. Yes, of course, people talk about it today as if it were a mystery, even though the words are by no means appropriate: Joseph, who was a righteous man, decided to treat the whole matter as a mystery. — No consideration is given to what led to this sentence, namely that Joseph wanted to direct the whole matter, which has happened, precisely into the mystery, that is, into what can only be perceived in the spirit, thus into what can be perceived in innocence; he really wanted to make a mystery out of it.

The concept of a miracle, as it is often understood today, is not mentioned at all in the Gospels. Rather, the Gospels are concerned with a time when the effect of soul on soul and thus from body to body was much more intense than it is today, and when, let us say, miracles are mentioned, we must understand that this is said entirely from the factual world of the time. These are the things that we must take into account when considering the Gospels. In my cycles on the Gospels, you will find numerous examples of how the concept of a miracle, as understood today, is not present in the Gospels at all. What is a miracle, as it is understood today? I have tried to reveal the resurrection of Lazarus in my book 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact'. If you read there how the so-called miracle of Lazarus is revealed, you will find that it is only possible to penetrate the mystery through supersensible cognition, but that one must simply penetrate the mystery through it.

Miracles are — I do not say this out of some kind of prejudice, but I can say this from the real knowledge of the facts — miracles are what arise in the consciousness of modern man. A miracle is a process that today's man no longer understands, but that could have taken place in the course of human development as a process. It is only because things are no longer understood that they are thought to be miracles. On the one hand, people today help themselves by thinking of things as miracles, but on the other hand, they help themselves by extending what has taken place over the course of a few millennia to 20 million years, whereby the funny thing is that with respect to geological periods, one [researcher] differs from the other by the trivial fact that one calculates some period as being 20 million years in the past, while the other calculates it as being 200 million years in the past. It is only that they are not noticed because one is usually taught only from one side. If you read about some geological period, Devonian or Alluvium, and according to some teaching 20 million years are claimed for their length, then you do not immediately read another geological writer, but you may read it only after ten years, and when he then writes that this geological period dates back 200 million years, then you have long forgotten the other. These things abound in humanity, and today, in all seriousness, everything should be paid attention to. And so, when faced with a mystery such as the Immaculate Conception, it is necessary to understand things in the right way. I have already told you that in addition to the actual dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, [the Catholic Church has also] established [the dogma of] the Immaculate Conception of St. Anne, and of course this should go further back, but that is not possible; I have already spoken about this.

Perhaps we can discuss one or two more questions, because some of you are leaving, so that we cover as much as possible. [Here is the question from Pastor Neuhaus:] The Roman concept of transubstantiation is different from that in Dr. Steiner's new mass formula. Would you (to Pastor Neuhaus) perhaps be so kind as to comment personally.

Constantin Neuhaus: The consecration, the transubstantiation formula, which is in your mass formula, is: Receive with the bread my body, receive with the wine my blood. And in my opinion, these words can only be understood in the sense of Lutheran theory, that the body and blood are expressed symbolically, while the Roman Catholic Church assumes actual transubstantiation, the disappearance of the substance of the bread, and in return the substance of the body of Christ is given. I would ask for a little clarification, but perhaps the question is only interesting for Catholics.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I don't know why you have concluded from the formula I gave this morning that the matter is as you assume.

Constantin Neuhaus: I think that yesterday, when you said mass, the actual consecration formula was the following: Receive my body with the bread. Now Thomas Aquinas did expound this doctrine, that the substances do change in transubstantiation. That has also become part of the people's consciousness. So according to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, there is no bread at all, only the accidents, only the form of bread... In your mass it says: Receive my body with the bread.

Rudolf Steiner: Is your question based on the fact that I used the expression “with the bread my body”, “with the wine my blood”?

It is, of course, necessary to bear in mind that linguistic usage itself determines what needs to be said. It is not the case that when a Roman Catholic theologian wants to explain transubstantiation philosophically, he needs to explain that the accident is not inextricably linked to the substance. Therefore, you will find in the approved Catholic philosophies that when the concepts of substance and accident are discussed, the corresponding chapter concludes by stating that it is indeed possible to connect the concept of accident with the fact that substance changes and becomes a different substance through the accident. That is the case there. So it is only necessary to understand the matter philosophically for those who want to find their way into the Catholic version. I have expressly pointed out that I have met Catholic priests who have taken everything possible back to Aristotle to help them to understand transubstantiation at all as something conceivable.

Now, you have seen how I meant today how necessary it is to formulate the words in such a way that one can grasp the correct meaning with the sentence. It is something else to simply formulate the sentence “This is my body” or “Receive with the bread my body”. In fact, there is actually no difference, but for today's people it is more vivid to feel the matter if one does not give them direct preparatory instruction in the way that it is actually only treated in the approved Catholic philosophies in the discussions about substance and accident. Perhaps such arguments are also present among the Old Catholics, but in any case they are modeled on the Roman Catholic scholastic philosophies.

If you simply stipulate: This is my body – hoc est corpus mei – then you can cause all the misunderstandings that you could possibly encounter. People don't understand that. But let me present the following image: Let us say I have a friend; I received a note from this friend saying that he had had a son, but due to some obstacles I was unable to see him for three or four years, until the boy could already walk. Now my friend brings him to me, since the opportunity has arisen, and as he enters through the door he says: “Take, I show you my son” or ‘Receive this, this is my son.’

With these words, ‘with what I bring you I show you my son,’ a perfectly possible figure of speech is given to modern man, for I really show him the body when I say: Receive with the bread my body. It is not possible to express it in any other way [that the body is received] than in connection with the bread, not the substance of the body, of course, but that which in the bread passes over into the communicant. It is not a matter here of discussing the concept, but merely of whether the formulation is useful. This formulation was chosen simply to make it clear to today's people — who do not want to get involved in the abstraction that the accident can separate from the substance — with the formula: If I show him something and he sees bread on the outside, then that is not ordinary bread, but it is the body of Christ. That should already be in the formula. This, of course, eliminates the second part of your question: “What is the sacrificial character of the Mass according to Dr. Steiner?” — That is something, as I said, that I wanted to avoid with my formula. Merely this phenomenon, which I have characterized, that the host acquires an aura, that the transformation also becomes outwardly visible, I wanted to express that in some formula that can be grasped more vividly. But I can hardly imagine that the Lutheran interpretation could be heard in this and that it could be taken as the Lutheran view. What must be avoided, of course, is the kind of nonsense that prevails there. I ask you, what does the communicant of today basically imagine, if he has not studied scholasticism, what is actually at the root of it? What does the person imagine today, who communicates as a Catholic or receives the communication, that transubstantiation takes place in the sacrifice of the Mass? What does he really imagine? He may imagine many things. But what does he really imagine?

Constantin Neuhaus: I am of the opinion that the well-informed Catholic has a certain clarity. Because in Catholicism, this point is emphasized to such an extent that the Catholic says to himself: when I communicate, I receive not only the smell and taste of the bread, but also the essence of Christ. He believes that he understands something about communion, and it is remarkable that even primary school children struggle with the concept of transubstantiation. For example, I have to teach in a totally Protestant area, and I experienced just when I had to give communion lessons and was very much concerned with the fact that this point of accident and substance has already been somewhat understood even by children.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, to a certain extent that is true, certainly. I think it is true that these things are right, and it lives in Catholicism. But can one really say that what lives in this way, for example when it is emphasized in Catholicism, leads to a possible clear conception? I have actually hardly found such clear ideas, and I have met theologians with great capacities and discussed a lot with them. I admit that the discussions are very lively, but the great liveliness stops when you enter the theological faculty. As long as you are a second-year student, you admit that you can have a say without getting close to the matter with a real idea. But then, when they enter the theological faculty, people usually become quieter, and I have met an extraordinary number of those who have resigned themselves to not understanding the subject at all. Isn't it true that it is relatively easy to discuss with someone who is not very far along in the formation of such concepts, but with the trained theologians, the discussion will take on a completely different form. I must confess that a conversation I had with one of the most important theologians at the Vienna Theological Faculty about the nature of Christ, which is connected with everything that led up to it, will remain significant to me for a long time. He simply said when I tried to develop my idea of Christ: “Now we come to a point where I need concepts that I am forbidden to think.”

Yes, that is what must be brought into the formulation of the matter and what underlies it: that one takes the process of transubstantiation as a real one, that something does indeed happen through transubstantiation; then it is something different from merely getting stuck in the formalities. I have, after all, characterized in detail what happens there. I have characterized how the process that takes place there is the outer process for an inner developmental process, how it is, so to speak, the polar opposite of it. So I have tried to characterize the matter from the real, and I had to do that because I believe that the concepts I have given here cannot actually be encompassed in any way by the traditional concepts. But that will be the case if a religious renewal is based on anthroposophy. Then it is impossible that one can be required, for example, by anthroposophy itself to lean towards a Catholic or a Protestant or any other confession, but one must just recognize the matter.

Constantin Neuhaus: All this makes a lot of sense to me and I personally like it, because I don't really understand the term transubstantiation either. But the term transubstantiation implies that something is transubstantiated, and I think that what is at issue then is that the substances actually change.

Rudolf Steiner: Because of the use of the word transubstantiation? It is quite right that the word transubstantiation is used, of course, in reference to the word that was mainly used in the tradition of the Mass. It is just a common word that has been taken historically [from tradition]. But I believe that I mainly used the word when I wanted to approach the historical tradition of the Mass in the sense of Catholicism. I believe that I have said “conversion” when I meant the real process. When I myself developed these things, I believe that I used the word “conversion”. But if I say, for example, “I was in a church in Italy and saw the aura after transubstantiation,” then I can of course say that, because the expression “transubstantiation” applies there. But I would never want to force it, because it is quite natural that the expression can be used to characterize a situation. I believe that for those who have been sitting here, the term “transubstantiation” is something perfectly common.

Constantin Neuhaus: Is the sentence in 1 Corinthians 11:30, “Therefore many of you are weak and sickly, and many sleep,” connected with illness and healing through Communion?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it is not true that today the two concepts of sin and illness, of sanctification and healing, are very far apart because we have an abyss between the moral world order and the physical world order. But it is absolutely the case that these concepts actually belong together, so that one must say that sin is, in physical terms, quite literally illness, and the healing process is a process that takes place within the soul. At most, one could perhaps take offense at the fact that one process looks more like an objective one and the other more like a subjective one.

Constantin Neuhaus: I remember that it is said: Receive the body of the Lord, which preserves you from sickness of body and soul. There is a connection with the healing of the soul through Communion. Now I wanted to point out the passage in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 28: “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.” Now it continues: “For he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not discern the Lord's body from common food. For this reason many are sickly among you, and many sleep.” Is there also a connection here?

Rudolf Steiner: I have already hinted at this. I once said: One must, of course, be aware that someone who, let us say, comes from a weak constitution to a very healthy area, which the robust person experiences as a delight, may be ruined by this healthy area. That means that the unprepared person, that is, the one who does not approach healing in the right way, is, well, I would say, destroyed, is ruined by being given something as a cure that can only help him when he can experience it in the right way. That is it. Basically, there is only a slight difference between illness and death. We are constantly dying. We begin to die the moment we are born, and the moment of dying, of actually dying – what one calls dying – is really nothing more than, I would say, the integral of all the differentials of dying between birth and death. We collect all the individual deaths in every moment of our lives. That is what must be considered right away, that in such a sentence “therefore many are sick among you and a part have fallen asleep” the same cause is present, depending on one's state. Because dying is only quantitatively different from being sick. We experience as illness that which is partial dying, if these are partial dying processes that intervene only in such a way that we can overcome them. We experience them as death if we cannot overcome them.

• 1. Editor's note: The questions were apparently submitted to Rudolf Steiner in writing, because he reads them again in the course of the following remarks.
• 2. The transcript contains a gap here. For more on the Hertha saga, see Rudolf Steiner's lecture of December 21, 1916 in the volume “Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen” 1. Teil, GA 173.

My dear friends! Today we have something to discuss that is very intimately connected with what can be felt from the whole of today's spirit of the age as the need for religious renewal. First of all, I have to present to you what can lead to the creation of a kind of breviary. This breviary should be what gives the pastor the strength to work, and perhaps I may take this opportunity to point out that in this respect, too, we should not confuse the intellectual with what, in the truest sense, can be the religious impulse that comes from the whole human being. Here it is really a matter of us communicating properly. There is a great deal – and this includes, in particular, because it has just been mentioned in the questions, charity – there is a great deal that must, so to speak, flow naturally from the mind, that must, as a matter of course, emanate from the pastoral care, but the pastoral care must first have acquired the appropriate mind. And that is why, to a certain extent, things that are happening inwardly are even more important today than the intellectual description of some external measures. The latter follow naturally in many respects when the inner life is in order.

Now I do not intend to go so far as to compile a literal breviary right now, but rather to bring about what a breviary can achieve. For the man of today, a breviary can no longer consist merely of reciting prayers, but must be a kind of emotional meditation in the fullest sense. Now I would like to give you the elements that, according to my findings, should make up what the pastor should experience over the course of a year, so that he can prepare himself in the right way and perform the pastoral ministry in the right way.

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We begin with the time that lasts from, say, the end of November to around the end of December, until Christmas. So we begin with what can be called the Advent season. This Advent season is felt in the right way by us when we go through it as preparation for the Christmas season itself. But this can only be the case if we truly awaken within us all that is, as it were, alive in the development of the world and of humanity itself within such preparation, and these are essentially the following details for the Advent season. He who wants to live through this Advent season should first direct his meditation to that which, as a certain mystery, is included in what can be called the Word, the Logos. (The following is written on the board):

1. Word (Logos)

He should feel, in particular, how the concept of the Logos must be expanded so that one feels what it contains in everything that is actually the world, that one feels the working of the Logos in the blowing of the wind, in the moving of the clouds, in the course of the stars, the sun and the moon, in the becoming and growing of everything that surrounds us, but also in all that is becoming in man, without man adding anything to it through his own power of soul development at first. In this process, we do not yet feel the Logos or the Word in its entirety, but the most essential thing about meditation is that one begins with an incomplete beginning, like the plant with the root, and that one allows what one begins with, as it grows within oneself, to become what it can become. The second thing that can be particularly felt during this time is what I would like to call the commandment, (it is written on the board):

2. Commandment

that is, what arises when a person looks more inwardly. One could say: If one wants to visualize what is meant by this commandment or law, then one can turn, on the one hand, to the Old Testament image of the proclamation of the law to Moses at the burning bush, or, on the other hand, one can try to feel what is still felt today in ritual terms as the right thing to do when completing Jewish worship by saying: O Adonai. The third thing to focus on is, I would say, the natural event (it is written on the blackboard):

3. Natural Event

with its necessity, which must be felt in such a way that the person who sees both the sprouting and the destructive forces of nature, who sees, let us say, the proliferation of a jungle as the characteristic of growth, who sees earthquakes or volcanic eruptions as the characteristic of destruction, feels the necessary power of nature to become. In essence, this is the feeling that properly brings us to what the Old Testament calls the root of Jesse. The fourth thing we have to delve into is what can now be called the moral force in man, which in our time speaks from some vague depths as conscience, for example. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Moral Power

This is essentially what is already felt in the sense of the Old Testament as the source in man, through which he is a closed self in relation to the outside world, which can therefore well be called: the key that opens and no one locks, that locks and no one opens. We have meditatively immersed ourselves in those points that can also be felt with regard to the human being himself. If one then turns more outward, one awakens in oneself the light that pours through the world, but at the same time one feels it by taking that which is there for the senses as light and, for the spirit, as the justice of the universe. (It is written on the board):

5. Light: Justice

In the languages of earlier times, right means something that is connected with “judging”, and this in turn is connected with the ray. One can then feel how that which is felt as luminous justice penetrates into the darkness, into the shadow, as the invigorating element that works into the shadow of death. It is images that we must mainly devote ourselves to, and from this pictorial composition, after we have, so to speak, felt the sun of righteousness, the possibility arises for us to let the sun of righteousness arise from this image, when we have felt this deeply, and also that which is summarized in one the good and the evil, that it turns out for the good through the power that radiates from it – not radiating from evil, but from that which we are to grasp – so that we do not place ourselves alone among those who claim justice through a certain inward arrogance, but also among those who are recognized as sinners. Finally, as we pass through this series of images, we rise to the perception of Christ, (it is written on the board):

6. Christ

who unites life with death and death with life. And finally, from there, I would like to say, we can be brought into the perspective that leads directly to Christmas, the perspective through which we can see the Christ in the Jesus who is also called Immanuel in the New Testament, because in Jesus is God. (It is written on the blackboard):

7. Jesus = Immanuel

If we meditate on these images in the organic context just characterized during the Advent season, then this is what can be lived out, as I would like to show you using this example: by inwardly expressing what we have experienced in words, which might sound something like this:

The word permeates heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human soul, the hidden through itself
It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of darkness, gentle in the brightness
It comes to earth in Jesus.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that in the early days of human development, the language that was given and which then led to poetic forms, to the art of language in humanity, was never given than from such an inner experience of the cosmic currents and from such an experience of the world, so that every sentence in older languages and also in older poetry can be related to something like that.

When we have gone through this way to the Christmas season, we should then actually use the following four weeks until January 25 to understand the essence of this Christmas season in a holistic way. And it is connected with the understanding of this essence of the Christmas season, a large part of what can also be called the understanding of Christ. I would like to say that it is important to cross the threshold from the Advent season through the consecration evening, through the Christmas night to the actual Christmas celebration. What can we feel when we are really standing in the world as human beings? Well, my dear friends, we can feel that everything I have given you now as a meditation for the Advent season, no matter how vividly it was in us, in a certain sense destroys our humanity, as we experience these things inwardly, I would say, as an inner perception, but we do not understand them. I would like to say that throughout the whole Advent season, one believes to understand it, but precisely by having gone through it, one gets the feeling that understanding must first follow, the word must first become a name that makes sense to us, that makes the word understandable to us. And whereas we used to feel, I might say, with a certain depression, the word flowing through the world, we now become aware of it as power, as the power of becoming of existence, the name of which we have grasped; and we become further aware of it as the active factor in all activity. (It is written on the blackboard):

1. Name: The power of existence of being.
2. Active being.

The commandment ceases to be a mere intellectual concept that one is supposed to obey; one becomes aware of a power of being that also prevails in the moral realm, and one becomes aware, as a third thing, of how the naming and the named are one. Here, in the quiet interior, lies the experience of the sense of self. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Name to name

The natural law ceases to be mute, it begins to speak: name to name. And in this naming of the name, we now feel through Christ as that which leads through illness and death, through darkness and bondage. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. The Guide through Death and Darkness

And what was previously only felt as a kind of glow of justice flowing through the world is revealed to us as something that belongs to our own being in this experience of the Christmas season; the light of justice is transformed into the ancestor Christ. (It is written on the board):

5. Ancestor Christ

And then we feel how man needs Christ, how he lives unreconciled with the earth without Christ, how the earth can only bring him something that, in a certain sense, takes him away from the spiritual. If we allow these feelings to precede, we can see the reconciliation of earth and heaven emerging from them. (It is written on the blackboard):

6. Reconciliation of Earth and Heaven

And then one can feel in a very natural way how the earth denies the spirit in a certain way and now something is happening in one whereby one comes to the spirit that the earth cannot give. (It is written on the board):

7. Spiritualization of the earth

I would like to emphasize, my dear friends, that I try to give the words as I am giving them right now, because I believe that a living force is already at work in the words, and because, when one gives the words in a certain way and the other person immerses himself in the word in full inner freedom, then, if the words are chosen correctly, one can arrive at much, much more than is originally contained in these things, or at least than is contained in them according to the use of language. So I would like to express things in such a way that the word can come to life in you in a certain sense. Once more I would like to give an example of how one can summarize what has been experienced here by constantly looking at Christ Jesus in the Spirit:

In the man on earth He speaks from nature of the mystery of the world
In him He works as the creative power of the world, full of light
In him He speaks the word about His own nature
In his speaking, the gate of death and darkness opens
In Him, a new ancestor has appeared to man
Through Him, reconciliation with the heights of the world is achieved
Through Him, matter reveals spirit, spirit creates matter.

The experience of the Christmas mystery should actually extend into January, until, yes, let us say, January 22, 23, 24, 25. The time that now comes, until about February 23, 25, should be devoted to a meditative sense of what Jesus became in his transformation of humanity.

It is necessary, my dear friends, that we also feel how, through such a deepening in all becoming, being and weaving, how through such a feeling the pastor of souls can automatically come to open the testament and take from it the things that he then also brings to humanity in the reading of the gospel, and how he can come to carry out what he is to bring to humanity for understanding. In this time, which is the time of February, the third season for the Christian, we will meditate in particular on the way Jesus becomes wise. (It is written on the blackboard):

1. Jesus becoming wise

Everything that we can recognize, for example from the appearance of twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, everything that can otherwise be recognized about the development of Jesus in his youth, belongs in this meditation. Secondly, however, we are to find our way into the meditation of the one who cannot be tempted, who cannot really be tempted in temptation. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. He who cannot be tempted

Thirdly, we are to confront that which lies in a concept that we are actually to feel completely; that is the concept that the One who becomes wise, the One who in temptation is not to be seduced, is the Son of Man. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. The Son of Man

is therefore the one who is intimately related to all humanity, but who, due to the fact that he entered into earthly existence under the conditions you already know, does not represent that human being who bears the disease of sin, but rather that human being who bears within him the calling to fulfill the nature of the human being in such a way that the disease of sin may fall away. This, however, leads directly to what the fourth aspect has to present: the World Physician. (The following is written on the blackboard):

4. The World Physician

that is, the one who heals sick humanity. We can apply to ourselves everything in the Gospels that relates to this, and we can bring it to others in the appropriate way. But only through this are we properly prepared for what we are to feel about the Gospel and, in general, through our relationship with Christ Jesus as the special way in which Christ Jesus finds the disciples. (It is written on the blackboard):

5. The Finding of the Disciples

There are infinite depths to the Gospel narratives when we make the meditation just on these, on the way the Christ is approached by his disciples, how they follow him, and so forth. It is only when we have this feeling that we have a correct sense of the next, of the teacher, (it is written on the board):

6. The Teacher

by the Teacher in the sense in which I have indicated it to you in the course of these lectures, in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. And only when we have felt this will we be able to experience inwardly what I have said about the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, because the earthly kingdom is actually destined to perish, and so the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. (It is written on the board):

7. Establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom

We have immersed ourselves in an understanding of Jesus in this way, and in a sense we have become mature through it. Then we have become mature in a sense to the point of Christian self-knowledge. This would then have to be fulfilled from the end of February to March 21 to 25, or so. And we would come to such human self-knowledge by properly fulfilling the period of Lent, the time of fasting, which of course must essentially take into account the process of transformation within. In this way, the human being would first feel how the earth takes hold of him with its forces, but how he, through this taking hold of the forces of the earth, is, as it were, making his way with the decline of the earth. (It is written on the board):

1. Earthly Decline

But precisely from such a feeling of earthly decline, another feeling can arise, which I would like to characterize in the following way. One senses that in all that announces itself as external nature, there is an element of decline. One feels connected to this element of decline through the nature of one's body, and one is seized by the fear that the moral within oneself must also perish. Thus, one senses a danger for the moral in the face of becoming earthly. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. Danger for the moral sense.

Certain denominations accommodate this sentiment by ordering fasting, that is, not eating as sumptuously as is otherwise the case during the year, but rather abstaining. In this way, although it is attempted in a physical way and such physical things should actually be far removed from our time, there is indeed an increased sense of the human being within himself, and with it a transition from the otherwise merely natural feeling to the finer feeling with regard to the moral. However, fasting must not be arranged in the way it is often arranged in the Roman Catholic faith. Recently, we learned of a decree issued by the bishop to whose diocese Basel also belonged in the 12th and 13th centuries; in this episcopal ordinance, the provost of the Basel cathedral was obliged to slaughter eight pigs every day at Christmas for his canons – I believe there were twelve of them. I think there were more like 26 canons, but that's enough. In any case, the menu that was indicated was more than enough for Christmas, thanks to an episcopal decree. And then it was also indicated how to fast. But I could not find out that through this fasting precisely that could be achieved, which I have now indicated to you as the meaning of the Lenten commandment. But then, when this danger to morality has been felt, one can also have a sense of the distinction between what is actually the eternal heritage of man and how this eternal heritage of man, which is to be restored through Christ, differs from what man has become through mere earthly existence. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Eternal heritage of humanity and temporal humanity.

And now, and this can also be the case, a strong feeling should arise from this, how man as an earthly human being is in need of healing, how he is in need of the leader, how he is in need of light, how he is in need of a transformation for that kind of mind that he has only from earthly forces, how he is in need of that kind of mind that he has only as an earthly human being. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Needing healing

5. Needing a guide

6. Needing light

7. Needing a change of mind

We have thus characterized something of what we are to live through as meditation during the March time of the year, February to March, during Lent, and are now approaching what arises as the contemplation of Christ's death as the March-April time that fills the Easter season. The first thing we are to include in our meditation is looking up to heaven. Let us try to have a sense that the Easter season is connected with the fact that, in a sense, the spiritual falls away in the sky, that we are pushed towards a physical relationship. So (it is written on the board):

1. Looking up to the Physical Sky

The second thing we are to feel, looking up to the physical sky on the one hand, is the grave, in reference to Christ's descent into the grave. (It is written on the board):

2. Grave.

The third, which we should then feel deeply, is death as the effect of being in the earthly body. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Death

We will try to put ourselves in these feelings during Passion Week, in order to find the right way to make the transition during Easter days, to feel the resurrection as the effect of being a spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Resurrection

But then, when we have grasped the resurrection, when resurrection stands before us, as we have tried to do in our lectures, then the right worship of the one God arises, but then also the right self-containedness, the right “Christ in me.” (It is written on the blackboard):

5. Worship
6. Christ in me

And only after all this, what the felt connection between looking up at the starry sky, but which determines the times, and looking down at the grave, feeling death in the body, feeling the resurrection as a spirit, permeating ing of our soul with devotion in worship, of the closing in on itself of the power of Christ, all that can be deeply felt can then be summarized in what can be called the Christian confession, which is best achieved through meditation. (It is written on the board):

7. Confession

And now we come to what the May days, April 24 to May 25, can encompass. Once we have gone through all this, the days of May will give us a sense of the immediate presence of the supersensible, which we can learn to perceive in the way the resurrected Christ Jesus walks with his disciples, insofar as the Gospels give us clues. (The following is written on the board):

1. The Presence of the Supersensible

From this presence of the supersensible, from what we can feel from the fact that we feel, just as things surround us in relation to our eyes and ears, so the beings of the supersensible surround us, from this a feeling for the existence of the moral arises. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. The Existence of the Moral

And only when we have developed the right feeling for the existence of the moral will we be ready to perceive the external phenomena of the world as appearance; before that, it will always remain more or less a cliché. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. World as Appearance

But then, when we perceive the world as appearance, this carries us over to a perception of the truth that is hidden in the world. (It is written on the board):

4. Hidden Truth

And now we all have within us the elements that enable us to penetrate more concretely with the Christ, to penetrate with the Risen Christ. (It is written on the blackboard):

5. Penetrating with the Risen One

Only in this context can we really have a proper sense of how to be a disciple, not of someone facing death, but of the Risen One, which is what Paul then became. (The following is written on the board):

6. Disciple of the Risen One

And then you can feel with him in his world, feel in the spiritual world, feel in a different world. (It is written on the board):

7. Feeling in a Different World

And now we come to the time of Pentecost, that is, to the time of the appearance of the Holy Spirit, May-June. If we have gone through all this in advance, if we feel we are in another world, we get an idea of how we can have a new living realization, not the realization that we peel off as words from the things around us. So (it is written on the board):

1. New Living Realization (gospel)

We are beginning to feel the gospel in its liveliness, and now it turns out that we are learning to feel it promisingly, that a moral world is emerging, because the moral will be its continuation after the demise of the purely natural world. The second thing is therefore the prospect of the existence of the moral. (It is written on the board):

2. Prospect of the existence of morality

This will be a very concrete sensation when we have first gone through everything else, after we have come to the feeling of danger for the moral during Lent. And after we have opened up this prospect of the being of this moral, we learn to recognize, I might say, how the truth in the spirit, holding itself up, floats away from all earthly heaviness. (It is written on the board):

3. Truth that holds itself in the spirit.

This is something that one must first experience separately in its concreteness in order to have it as a human being. Everything we can experience on earth, everything we can combine through the senses and with the mind, carries within it a certain element that I would like to compare pictorially with the following: Imagine an athlete stepping up to us and showing us a weight that says, let us say, 1000 kg. We marvel at his enormous strength. But then he shows us that there is nothing inside by shaking it, and we stop believing in the reality of the appearance. Why do we stop believing in the reality of the appearance? Because we see that the earthly power of gravity is lacking, and the earthly ceases to have a being for us in the true sense of the word when it lacks the earthly power of gravity. The spiritual has the inner gravity, the inner power of retention. We do not get a correct sense of this inner power of retention of the spirit until we have gone through the things I have spoken of. But then, when we have gone through this, we realize that what appears to us separately in spirit as the truth of the world is also present in material things, so that it is not the material things that are an illusion, but only their appearance as mere matter, that matter is actually spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Matter as Spirit

When we have sensed this, then, my dear friends, we must experience something like an invasion of the power that we have gained through this entire meditation into our word. That is the moment when, in our inner meditation, what can be expressed by the words: “My tongue is loosed,” arises. (It is written on the board):

5. The tongue is loosened.

One senses the word of the world in the spoken word. One senses it as something that one experiences, I would say, in the utterance of the word itself; just as one has a taste when swallowing food, so when one speaks the word, when the tongue is loosened in this sense, one senses what the word as a world word allows us to feel, not just to understand. One then feels oneself in the word, one feels oneself raised up out of what our mere body is, one feels oneself weaving with its essence on the waves of the word, one feels the liberation. (It is written on the board):

6. Feeling of liberation

And then one also feels the union with that which has liberated one, the union with the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

7. Union

We now come to the so-called St. John's time, June-July. We have, in a certain way, meditatively completed what we must, after all, to a high degree work out with ourselves as human beings. We are now ripe to immerse ourselves in what is going on around us, and we are indeed called upon to do so by what has already been prepared in the outer world. My dear friends, we can look at what is happening and has been prepared in the outer world in such a way that our inner eye is not spiritually solar; then we see the plant world, prepared in spring, extending into the ripening of the high sun, but we do not feel the spirit in the making concretely and distinctly enough. Only when we have brought all this with us to the time of June, for the training of our spirit, do we also experience the spirit in the making. (The following is written on the board):

1. Spirit in Becoming

And when we experience the spirit in becoming, then, in a sense, all being continues for us; we feel, in a sense, when we look beyond the seed, how the seed does not merely conclude with its upper fruit, but carries within it the power, which we feel spiritually, to shoot up further. And we feel how the long light of night at this time carries within it the power to become even brighter spiritually. That the growth of the light of night can remain until the time when the actual summer begins is transformed into a spiritual growth of the universe. We feel that which in pre-Christian times could only be felt by the world, that in the post-Christian era, when we can relate to Christ in the right way, it transforms into the spiritual vision in the becoming of the light in the darkness. That which we have developed for Christ in us is also carried into nature. We also feel the light in nature outside as the spiritual in the darkness. From what we feel in the continuation of the power of growth in the plants, in the continuation of the becoming light, we are given images that are hidden in the world, which we grasp in the imaginative life. We are given the power to express ourselves in images. We learn to follow the Pentecostal call, we learn to preach. We learn to preach by learning to penetrate nature spiritually. We learn to preach by developing a deep feeling for nature, by being able to say to ourselves: the plants do not stop growing there, but the spiritual extends beyond their physical growth. The light also shines where it is on the wane. We understand the words of John: 'I will decrease, but thou shall increase'. Thus we have a sense for the light in the darkness, for the becoming in the being. (The following is written on the board):

2. Light in the Darkness. Becoming in Being.

We feel nature around us and become aware that what we feel around us, wherever we carry the spirit through our mind's eye, has a relationship to our sleeping, but that we are unconscious when we experience our sleeping, and that by looking out [into nature] we feel the waking sleeping of nature. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Nature's waking sleep.

And we feel, my dear friends, how that which was the Christ impulse can now actually be carried into the contemplation of the outer world. The time is ripe for this, because the present time must spiritualize a Christ-less natural science, to christen it; otherwise no new formation of religion arises.

The description of this process through the year in the early Church has come to an end; the time had not yet come when it was possible to carry the Christ impulse out into the outer natural world. You see how what was given in a certain abundance for the preceding period passes over into something that now has no relation at all to the development of time. You must begin — if you stop with the old development of the church — to do something like what the Catholic Church does when it has developed the Gospel up to the time of Pentecost and developed it out into the time of St. John: you must adhere to the feasts of the apostles, you must adhere to the feasts of the saints, to the feasts of Mary, you must adhere to the Acts of the Apostles, you must adhere to the letters of Paul. But basically you do not have that innermost relationship to what actually only emerges here and deepens more and more in the following time. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, had the Gentile view, which related to nature, to connect with the Jewish view, which related to the inner man. Therefore, if we feel very deeply during this time: What was the consciousness of John as the forerunner of Christ Jesus, how did he experience the Christ, and how did he, above all, express his own activity in relation to the appearance of the Christ? If we then find the transition [to the question]: How was Paul's life in relation to the living Christ? — and if we draw a comparison in ourselves in this time of John between John and Paul, then we lead over in the right way to the actual task of Paul, which is felt to be so because it could not have been fulfilled in its time.

But, my dear friends, we are not getting anywhere here; we only have three points, whereas we used to get seven points in a very natural way. And we must be content with the inner development, with the meditative development of these three points, for the time around St. John's Day. We must feel what the spirit gives us in a more lively way, how it expands, I might say, into the distance, but thereby also has less content than what arises for the spirit in what has gone before. Therefore, anyone who wanted to continue schematically with what I have given would not be able to arrive at a correct inner handling of what I must actually describe as the meditative content of the month of John for the pastor.

This afternoon I will also write down the time from July to August for you. This is the time when we experience the actual maturing of nature in the Christian sense. This is also the time when we will be particularly moved by what Paul says about his perception of the living Christ, his rapture into a spiritual world. For we will, so to speak, feel that which we previously sensed as the spirit in the process of becoming, as the presence of this spirit in the ripening nature that surrounds us. We will feel, when we can immerse ourselves in the right way in what has come to fruition, how the light has really shone in the darkness, in everything that is out there, where the light lives on in the ripening, and we will be able to feel how that which comes into being, that which lives on in the ripening, can also take root in us. We can only feel this if we can now experience, out of the earlier feeling of the waking-sleeping spirit, the calm of the August nature and the spiritual that is weaving in the calm, living in the splendor of the sunlight, and we will be able to transfer this image to that which we can experience in ourselves through Christ. Then, as a fourth point, a very lively experience of the external world emerges, and a fourth point follows from the other three. In a sense, the external and the internal come together in us. In this way, one can sense external and internal maturity, and one gets the images for inner maturity from the fact that the external fertilizes one.

I would like to continue from there in the afternoon and write down the last few points for the rest of the time.

My dear friends! I have been meditating on the course of the year up to the time that would fall roughly on 21-23 July to 22-23 August, the time that I have called the time of ripening. If we permeate ourselves with the world during this time, let ourselves be permeated by the world, then we feel - after we have immersed ourselves in meditation in what I presented this morning - not only how the spirit works in what is becoming and, so to speak, towards the light, but we feel the becoming of the outside world itself as spirit. And I can then say for this time in the same sense as I did for the other times in the morning, that is, for the time erwa from July 22 to August 23: Firstly, becoming as spirit that fills. (It is written on the blackboard:)

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1. Becoming as spirit that fills.

Secondly, I will try to feel how the light not only continues to work as I said during the transition from the time of St. John to this time, but how the light is born, as it were, in the darkness. So: the effect of light in darkness. (It is written on the blackboard:)

2. Effect of light in darkness

And when I can feel this, I will sense all around me the calm of the spirit weaving in nature. This morning I already pointed out how the whole, which matures there, appears to me as poured out calm, in which the light of the sun blows spiritually. So: the calm of the spirit weaving. (It is written on the board:)

3. The tranquility of weaving the spirit.

And fourthly, I feel myself indistinctly in the outer spiritual, as part of the spiritual, thus: the co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard:)

4. The co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit.

This would be meditation, which can be developed by watching nature mature in August, and we will find that it is precisely during this time that Paul's writings can have such an effect on us if we approach them with understanding. While in previous periods the contrast between John and Paul should be placed before our souls or by us before the soul of the community, it becomes particularly significant for this time if we place the full significance of Paul before ourselves or before the community.

Then we come to the time when summer draws to a close and autumn sets in, when nature gives us that mood that can be called the expectation of the gifts of ripening, when we expect how that which has first worked on us as ripening will then fall to us. This is therefore the time from August 23 to September 23. As this ripening process unfolds, we will look to the spirit, in the dying away of the outward budding of nature, in the dying away of nature itself. (The following is written on the board:)

1. Look to the spirit

Secondly, we will have confidence in the power of that which lives in dying, since we see how these gifts are, as it were, brought to us by nature as it fades away. So (it is written on the blackboard:)

2. Confidence in the spirit

We will learn to revere the power that reveals itself to us in withering nature, in nature that fades away for our senses, from which the spirit confronts us, especially in view of what becomes of us from nature, in view of the harvest. We will learn to revere the power of the world in this nature.

3. Worship of the Power of the World.

Now we are ready to feel how what comes to us as gifts of the harvest does not confront us in images of the external world, but how the external world itself becomes increasingly darker, and we feel ourselves surrendered to what comes to us as a gift as the gifts of nature come to meet us. We can then feel our own inner radiance in the darkening external world. (It is written on the board:)

4. Radiant interior in the darkening outer world

And we will now condense the feelings we used to have towards the maturing into a grateful look at the radiant maturing of our own becoming. (It is written on the board:)

5. Grateful regard for the ripening of our own radiance.

These are the feelings that, as you can see, are, to a certain extent, much more abstract when they are expressed than those we have developed for Advent, for Christmas, for Easter and so on; but that is the given.

And now we come to the time from September 23 to October 23, when we experience the gifts we can receive and the harvest of the world. In beholding what is taking place there, where the world literally imposes a moral relationship on us, our feeling spiritualizes in beholding. It is impossible for man, when he feels in a fully human way, not to experience with gratitude what he can feel at the time of the harvest. (It is written on the board:)

1. The feelings spiritualize in beholding.

Our whole relationship to the world, even as it is a relationship to nature, acquires a moral character; we develop a moral view of the world. (It is written on the blackboard:)

2. Moral world view

But just as we are morally perceiving the world, it is as if the world would be forgotten as such with the approach of the harvest and as if it would become dark. (It is written on the blackboard:)

3. The world is forgotten and darkens

It is precisely in this world that is eluding us and darkening that we are compelled to withdraw into our inner selves. The luminous inner self can best learn a prayerful mood in this autumn meditation, or rather, in the meditation of the world moving towards winter. (It is written on the blackboard:)

4. The luminous inner self learns to pray.

Here meditation takes on the character that it very often, I might say as if by instinct, takes on in the case of deeper philosophical natures. By contemplating the world for a long time and forming their ideas, deeper philosophical natures very often have the feeling that all existence is only provisional because, as it presents itself to us, it does not contain seeds for the future, but because it fades away. In this mood, the mood for prayer best develops for meditation. In this mood, I would say, in this helpless mood, where the world has disappeared from our radiant inner being, it is also where we begin to pray while meditating, that is, we begin to turn to something. Here we best learn the necessity of the commandment or law. (It is written on the board:)

5. Feeling the necessity of the law.

But just by seeing the approach of the spirit, by experiencing the approach of the spirit inwardly in meditation, one feels something like a faintness in the spirit. We can say that the overabundance of the spirit can be felt there, this almost nightmare-like feeling of the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard)

6. The overabundance of the spirit is felt.

It is indeed an absolutely self-evident process that from Johanni onwards – where we have seen how only three stages of our inner meditative experience can come – through the following months, it so happens that in August there are four stages, then five stages, then six stages. This is something quite necessary. As we approach the Christmas season, the inner life of the spirit becomes more differentiated again, we live our way into a more differentiated life.

And now we come to the time from October 23 to about November 23 or 24. This is the time when everything can guide us through the following meditation: We have empathized deeply with the growth and maturation, but then also with what the decline of growth and maturation is and the approach of the gifts out of the decline. We have learned to apply all this to our own inner life. We are, to a certain extent, living with nature and can now, first of all, have the feeling of how a power such as that which brings us the harvest gifts wants to stir in us as well. But precisely now, when we still have a vivid echo, we can feel towards nature in decline how our will is without drive. (It is written on the blackboard:)

1. The will without impulse.

One feels that the moral should enter into the will. (It is written on the board:)

2. The moral wants to seize the will.

Now one can prepare oneself for the mood in which one actually finds Christ's will for the first time. You can say to yourself: I see the world around me, but what I see is not the world. I am seeking a real world. The world is a decayed world; what I see is not the world. You must have already mustered the courage to find the world somewhere else than in what you see and hear and perceive with the other senses. (It is written on the board:)

3. What I see is not the world.

You have to have the courage not to want to see the sun where it was in April, not to perceive the spirit where it sprouts and sprouts, but in the darkness, in death I must seek the sun. (It is written on the board:)

4. In darkness, in death, I must seek the sun.

But through this one will be able to feel oneself in darkness, (it is written on the board:)

5. Man is himself in darkness.

One feels, while one used to feel with the world, now the world is dying. (It is written on the board:)

6. In man the world dies

Everything can now come together in the question (it is written on the board:)

7. How does the world live again in man?

Then the Advent mood can come, which I characterized in the morning as the first one, which begins with the sensation of the word, with the sensation of the Logos. We have truly come through the moods of the year to be able to feel what the Logos is, and we can now develop the mood in the Advent season that is to lead up to the Christmas season.

May I read to you the experiment that I began this morning, such as how, by meditatively surrendering to what I have written on the board here, the meditation can be experienced inwardly in these words, how these words can be experienced in a breviary-like manner.

For the Advent season:

The word flows through heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human interior, through itself to the hidden

It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of the darkness, gentle in the brightness
It comes to earth in Jesus.

Now the Christmas season:

In the earthly man, He speaks from nature of the mystery of the world
In him, He works as the creative power of the world, full of light
In him, He speaks the word about his own nature
In his speaking, the gate of death and darkness opens.

In Him a new ancestor has appeared for man
Through Him reconciliation with the heights of the world is achieved
Through Him matter reveals spirit, spirit creates matter.

And in the time following Christmas, when we reflect for ourselves and with the community on those parts of the Gospel that deal with Jesus' youth until his preparation for death, when we meditate ourselves in the way I showed you this morning, we can summarize this meditation in the words:

And walking on earth, the power of wisdom grew in him
And he could not be reached by the tempter
The son of the lost human being
The healing power of the world
The disciple finds in his being
From it he taught
And founded the kingdom of the spirit in the sphere of the senses.

And the time of Lent:

The earth sinks from its original state
An abyss is destined for the good sense
Earthly man has lost the heritage of eternity
The sick require healing
A leader must arise for the directionless
The light must shine for him in the darkness
The power of the senses must turn spiritually.

And so, in the spirit of the meditations and Easter Gospels mentioned this morning, we come to the following Easter saying:

I see heaven's radiance
I feel the grave as a spiritual effect
Death comes to me as a physical fall
The resurrection is placed before my spirit
The resurrection lives in my prayers
The Risen One lives in me
My mind is directed towards Him.

Now the walk on earth after the resurrection, the time that follows Easter, before the time of Pentecost:

The supersensible has revealed itself
The meaning of good is the germ of existence
The sensory sphere is only appearance
Truth secretly rules being
I permeate myself with the power of the Risen One
I want to be a disciple of the Risen One
With Him, I want to be a being of another world.

Whitsun time, June:

Insight in the spirit can live,
In a new world, the meaning of good will take effect
In the spirit, truth carries itself
In the image of the mind, it reveals itself
It loosens my tongue
It frees my soul
It unites the divine with the human.

And we come to the time of St. John:

In the becoming of space and time, the spirit weaves
In the darkness of matter, the spirit is powerfully active, forming images
A being awakens in the sleep of the sensory world.

We come to the time of Paul, the time of ripening, July to August, the time after John:

The spirit rises from the world of becoming
In the darkness, light is born
The spirit rests in the web of the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

Toward September 23, in anticipation of the gifts of maturity:

My soul's eye looks at the spirit
And trust weaves into the gaze
Providence escapes the law of nature
What seems dark on the outside shines brightly on the inside
My gratitude flows to the peaceful spirit.

Now at the harvest of nature's gifts:

I look at the world with a spirit-filled feeling
The spirit feels my way of thinking
The world sinks into darkness
The inner being shines in prayer in the spiritual being
The inner being needs a ruler in the darkness of the world
Oh, the spirit takes a level head.

Now in the time leading up to November 23:

I lack the strength of my will
The sense of good wants to work
I see a world that destroys itself
In the destruction I must seek the light of becoming for myself
Darkness spreads in me
dying in the world in being human
How do I find the world in my darkness?

Next month, Advent will answer that.

In this way, we actually get the twelve stations of the breviary if we really get involved in the whole thing. And at the same time, you see something in what I have developed for you that is like an inner call for religious renewal. If you take the church year as it is in the traditional churches, once you have found your way through what has, of course, been corrupted in some ways, to the beauty of this church year, you have the significance of the Advent season, the wonderfully sweet intimacy of the Christmas season, and you can also shape all of this for the congregation in the sense of the Gospels. We then have everything we can do for ourselves and for the community in relation to Jesus, who in his youth grows ever wiser, develops until he cannot be tempted, and develops until he can appear as a teacher. We then have Lent, into which we can place everything that human self-knowledge can become so that the Easter event can be experienced in a dignified way. We also have the Gospel accounts, and these are particularly magnificent, of the events surrounding Easter; we also have the walk of the risen Christ with one or other of his apostles, which we can also gain from the Gospel; we then have the time of Pentecost with everything that follows the Feast of Ascension. But by developing the year in this way, we now lose touch with the world. The Old Catholic Church has now inserted the work of the apostles at this point, the feasts of the apostles, the feasts of the saints up to the feast of the dead for All Souls' Day and so on. But with that, the Pauline task in inner experience has actually been dropped. According to his commission, Paul had to go to those who had previously experienced the divine only as pagans in their souls. This mood, which we particularly need in the present time, which has taken away the religious from us – while we should give it back to the world – must also be in the human being. In this time, the religious feeling must find its way into nature, just as we have found it in the John mood, in the Paul mood of maturation. In the September mood, where we will see that we can very well experience what is given to us in the letters of Peter, we will be able to carry what we have developed in the harvest mood as the meditative life into the feeling of the [... gap in the postscript], without it falling prey to fantastic mysticism. During the time leading up to Advent, which I have just characterized as the time between now and November 23, we will be able to incorporate everything we have to say to the community and to ourselves, from the time of the Apostle's disciples, from the time of the Church Fathers.

If you take this concise month, August, you will be able to sense in its fourfold structure the indication of the structure of the month in weeks, while for the other months the weeks are effaced in their conciseness. A complete breviary will now have to be compiled in such a way that the fourfold division of the month and the twelvefold division of the year are included in meditations, or that the weekly meditations are included in the annual meditations. Then one can also proceed to the daily meditation in such a way that the meditation expressed in the breviary is a threefold one for each day. The weekly verses would follow on from the annual verses, which I have shared with you as they have emerged for me. However, the weekly verses would be repeated in each month, and these would be followed by the daily verses, which run each week from Saturday to the following Sunday. So we would have year-month verses, month-week verses, week-day verses, 21 lines, three times seven lines, except for the middle months, where we have four lines in August, three lines in the St. John season, five lines in the September season, and so on. Thus the breviary is also structured inwardly according to number, and one really experiences that into which we are subconsciously placed in the world. We bring the spirit up into consciousness in the experience of the year. I will speak more about this tomorrow. So tomorrow the formation of the breviary will take us a short time and then we will move on to discussing community building.

(The following is a response to questions submitted in writing by Rudolf Steiner)

Question: When it comes to the content of the breviary, should we also consider similar methods to those used in the Catholic breviary? Days of the Saints? Examination of Conscience?

Rudolf Steiner: I have tried to develop for you, as it were, the principle of the breviary as it arises directly out of the present time, and I cannot see that a religious renewal could be possible if a renewal of breviary prayer does not take place in this direction. The hours can be taken in such a way that we have the opportunity to delve into the content of the breviary meditation three times a day, in the morning, at noon and in the evening.

Question: What is the connection between the calendar of the soul and the weekly sayings of the breviary?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the weekly sayings refer to the moods that are in the calendar of the soul. Isn't that right? The one who seeks these things out of the spirit, out of real supersensible experience, always has the very concrete situation before him; and in trying to research for your breviary, I had your minds before my soul. When I once formulated the twelve seasonal verses and the weekly verses, I had before me the very different moods of an anthroposophical context, within which no one could yet know that knowledge would arise somewhere, that a religious renewal was necessary. But you will feel that if you compare what we have in mind here with the moods of the annual week proverbs, the two will complement each other perfectly, and each will support and illuminate the other.

I will have to talk about the question of the consecration of holy water and the ordination of priests tomorrow when we come to the topic of community building. All of this is part of it. I will also talk about the place of the sermon in the service tomorrow.

Question: Should the traditional names or new names be used for the prayers and rituals? Wouldn't the latter be better?

Rudolf Steiner: I cannot understand what is meant by the question. So far I have spoken about the baptismal ritual and I do not know why this should not be mentioned by that name.

Questioner: With this question, I am mainly concerned about the names that could arouse suspicion on the part of the outside world, as if Catholicism were to be represented here, for example, the name for the new ritual, “Mass,” or here, “Breviary.” For us, these names are perfectly understandable, but I mean to the outside world.

Rudolf Steiner: I must confess that I am now using words that can make the matter understandable to you, and that will probably have been achieved. But everything that now has to do with putting it into the world should be done by you. Of course, this or that can be guessed here or there, but it is not really the anthroposophical task to intervene in the reality of community and church building.

Question: What is the significance of celibacy in the past and in the present?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I have spoken about celibacy in relation to the Catholic Church. It serves the aims of the Catholic Church in a very consistent way, as we have seen in the context of the lectures. But now the question is that today, people must rather more strongly ask the question, that is, answer the question: How does the pastor achieve the mood that can sustain pastoral care, even though he is not subject to celibacy rules or at least cannot be required to observe them? In the time in which we live, the important thing is not to alienate ourselves from the world with religion, but to penetrate the world with religion; that is the important thing.

Question: How are the triangle and the square related to baptism?

Rudolf Steiner: The triangle and the square are only the preliminary stages of the cross. The cross is the one that underlies the whole of human development. Although the cross on Golgotha is thoroughly historical – the external reality, as it is often disputed, cannot be disputed in this way – on the other hand, in the sign of the cross we have the sign for the physical and etheric human being. But before we come to the sign of the cross, we have that which lives in the human being as an astral being. Isn't it true that what lives in the sign of the cross, the physical and etheric human being, is completely unconscious? What lives in the astral body is semi-conscious; it is best expressed in the square. It is truly expressed in the square, and what lives in the I is in the triangle. So we see: I – triangle, astral body – square, the whole human being as he lives as I and astral body in the physical and ether bodies – the cross. This is entirely connected with the feeling one has towards I and astral body and towards physical and ether body. (See Chart 18 above)

Question: What is the basis for the symbols of the lamb and the dove?

Rudolf Steiner: This is something that would lead extremely far if it were to be fully developed. It is absolutely the case that there is also a spiritual natural history, if I may use the paradoxical expression. Those who look at the world of birds with a spiritual eye see in the world of birds something in which, albeit in its Ahrimanic ramification, the spirit has worked more than, for example, in the human form. The being is not formed from the inside out, but from the outside in. We have here a formation out of the cosmos in the formation of the feathers, in the whole formation of the bird, which should not simply be represented as it is represented by our sensory natural science today, but should be represented in such a way that its bone structure corresponds to a reproduction of the human head, so that the bird is actually a head with the mouth, because the bird's head is merely a complicated mouth. One must learn to understand this whole design, and when one learns to understand it, then one already gets the necessity, not just the possibility, to see that which one wants to express as the healing spirit in the dove, and to see that which the sacrifice offers in the shape of the lamb. In the time when such symbols were conceived, the lamb or the ram was usually depicted as a recumbent lamb, looking backwards with its head. This form is even something essential; it means that one does not turn one's gaze towards the world, but turns one's gaze away from the world, so to speak, one tries to look into oneself.

Question: What is the Christ experience in the Gospels besides the Father experience? And to what extent does the Christ experience or the Christ mystery in the Mass seem to be only a Christ experience compared to, for example, Paul's Christ experience?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the thing is that in the newer human being, the Christ experience and the Father experience cannot be distinguished from one another, because the newer human being perceives in nature only what grows and sprouts, and thus in nature actually perceives only that which does not carry death within itself, because the human being does not perceive the fruitfulness of death. The Christ experience only comes into confrontation with the Father experience when we can feel, for instance, that we – adding the experience of the Holy Spirit – make the negations [of the Christ experience and the Father experience] clear to ourselves in the following way. The Father-experience simply arises as the summary of the whole human nature out of the consciousness of the healthy human being. The healthy human being is organized in such a way that just as he must see and hear, so he must have the Father-experience. That is why I always said to my listeners when discussing these things: Not to have the Father-experience is an illness. Not to have the Christ-experience is a fate, because it cannot be acquired through what is merely in the blood, but because, as it were, through self-education, the encounter with the Christ in the outer world and within the human being must be experienced. That is an essential difference. And because today we cannot have the Father-experience as we did in pre-Christian times, arising from a healthy organism – I have discussed this – we have to have an inadequate Father-experience today. With our organism, which has now become such that it can no longer grasp the spiritual, we have to have the Father-experience as a memory. The Christ-experience must be a present experience. We must be able to make this clear distinction. If we wrestle with the question, where is the Father? —, then we are too weak with our present organism to find him. And if we then go to the Christ because we cannot find the Father and seek the Christ through the inner in the outer, then we experience the Christ-experience as a destiny, while one can experience the Father-experience as health. And when we wrestle with the questions: Does the Christ also give us what the Father has given? Is the Christ in what He gives us only similar to the Father or is He equal to Him? — when these questions of Arianism, of Athanasianism, take on a living form again, as we still see, for example, in Eastern philosophers such as Solowjow, then the differentiation between the experience of the Father and the experience of Christ and also the experience of the Holy Spirit in man comes to life again quite clearly, because not to recognize the Spirit is folly. Not recognizing the Father is illness, not recognizing the Christ is fate, not recognizing the Spirit is folly. And we must fight our illness in order to come to the Father, we must bring about our fate in order to come to the Christ, we must fight our 'folly' in order to come to the Spirit. This, of course, only hints at the beginning; what is at issue here is the extraordinarily differentiated experience of the Father and of the Christ. I cannot find that these two experiences are differentiated in the modern Protestant feeling; there is even something strongly Theistic or Deistic about it. One could say that one person feels more what can be achieved in the mind, he feels more Christ, but it is just only an undifferentiated feeling, and the other feels more the Father, but here too it is undifferentiated again; no Christianity comes out of this experience.

Question: What is the position of anthroposophy regarding the supersensible of the universe outside our solar system, including Uranus and Neptune? Are there beings outside the earth that are similar to humanity, and is there also a Christ impulse for them? Do they also need to be redeemed?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, why should we concern ourselves with this question? We get to know the world as a sensual world, and we arrive at the supersensible insofar as our own being is placed in this supersensible. Such questions do not actually arise in this abstraction for the spiritual researcher, because he stands in concrete life. I am often asked what the ultimate goal of the world is, because: If I do not know the ultimate goal, some people say, then I will not set myself in motion with regard to the course of the world and its development. — I always had to answer: If I want to go to Rome and someone only knows the timetable to Bern, there is bound to be someone who knows the route to Ticino and there will be someone else who knows the route to Milan and so on. So I can rest assured with my timetable to Bern. Likewise, I can be reassured if I know the present and what the near future holds, because I will first have to perfect myself in order to recognize the path to the next stage at the next stage. So it is really a matter of seeking living knowledge, knowledge that one can experience, and not of pushing intellectualism to its very limits. In doing so, we lose ourselves completely in the formless.

Question: How can we explain cruelty in the animal kingdom?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course one could answer such questions, but one is misunderstood if one answers them in short sentences. One has to go into everything that is a real force in nature. One has to start at a seemingly completely different end to arrive at an explanation of these things. Start where you are confronted with the spawning of fish, with the release of milt into the sea, and how countless of them perish and only a few become fish. But this is only an outward appearance, because it is actually not known what happens to the undeveloped fish spawn from the aspect of a world that lies immediately behind our sensory world, which is also there. It also undergoes its development. That which is deprived of development in the sense undergoes development in the spiritual. It is destroyed in appearance, but it is preserved in its inner becoming. And in the situation of this fish spawn, which becomes a fish, are also all those wheat grains in the field that are used for sowing again, that is, that turn into wheat again. But all the grains you consume with the bread are capable of becoming fish spawn, because they do not reach the goal that is set for them in the sense world. Just ask what would become of the world if all those beings who do not achieve their goal in the sense world were to withdraw from their other goal, which is not similar to the goal that can be seen in the sense world. The world is indeed very complicated. It is certainly deeply true that the lamb and the one who feels with the lamb must find it cruel when the lamb is eaten by the wolf, but it would be terribly cruel for the wolf if there were no lambs. It is just that what the wolf feels is important for a completely different world than the one in which we live with our senses. One must already have a sense of the world's unfathomability and of the possibility that the world presents itself quite differently from other sides than from the side from which we look at it here. Therefore, our combinative mind, which is actually only intended for the sensory world, fails when faced with some questions, and if we want to use it to explain cruelty in the animal kingdom or other things in the way we are accustomed to explaining [with the combinative mind], we cannot understand these things.

Well, that's what I can answer today. I'll maybe prepare the next two questions, including the one about holy water, for tomorrow.

My dear friends! Today we will try to bring to a conclusion the things we have been discussing and which are part of our program.

I have given you the annual and monthly moods as a basis for a breviary, and within the annual and monthly moods we must now seek the weekly moods. These weekly moods arise, as I began to indicate yesterday, when we look at how the weekly mood is actually already indicated in the August mood, so that within this August mood we already have the first week within the monthly mood. Just as in a living organism certain limbs have a little more of the whole [organism] and of the other [limbs] than others, so it must also be with what we find out organically as our behavior in relation to the world, and so the August mood would be the mood for meditation for the first week of the month, the September mood for the second week, the October mood for the third week, the November mood for the fourth week. In this way, the weeks intertwine with the months in a corresponding way. It cannot be otherwise, and we must make sure that we go with the months in the weekly arrangements. However, sometimes shifts will have to be made so that we can get the weeks into the course of the year. Then the daily moods follow the weekly moods, and these daily moods, which must follow the weekly moods, lead into the whole context of the world in a different way from the preceding parts of the breviary. I will now read the daily moods slowly, beginning with Saturday: Saturday:

My gaze is directed towards the divine spiritual ground of being
The senses behold the revelation of the essence of Being
The World Spirit rules in the World Matter
The World Spirit weaves in the dead, in the living, in the sentient
The World Spirit creates in man his image of being
The soul reveals the creative power of the spirit
The soul strives for spiritual fulfillment.

Sunday:

The spirit reigns full of light
Into the darkness it shines
The darkness seems to live from the light
The spirit weaves in the darkness, essentially
Darkness is enlivened by light
Light makes darkness good
The light's glow is the good in the darkness.

Monday:

Darkness seizes the received light
It wants to shine, not be illuminated
It takes possession of what it has received
It lets its own light prevail
It should not flow towards the original light
It should be itself
Darkness deceives the light.

Tuesday:

Light-Unity fades
Darkness turns away from the light
Darkness turns against the light
And so darkness is against darkness
As light is darkness deception
As light is darkness evil
As light is darkness destruction.

Where is the light in darkness?
Where does the soul find the spirit?
On Golgotha stands the cross
Christ shines on the cross
He guides through death
He shines in the darkness
He is the light of my soul.

Thursday:

Christ leads souls
From darkness He leads
Light in the Urlicht is His power
Life from death He wrests
Salvation from evil He wrests
Rise from ruin He wrests
To God's All He leads man's self.

Now, as on a higher level, Friday returns to Saturday:

Friday:

With Christ, my will is done
His cosmic goals flow into my will
Christ reigns for the future of the earth
Christ lives in the Father, shining through himself,
revealing through the healing spirit
Christ creates the spiritual goals in the soul
the soul can absorb the essence of Christ
the soul can feel: Christ in me.

The word pervades heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human interior, to the hidden through itself
It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of the darkness, gentle in the brightness. It comes to earth in Jesus.

Now comes the third week:

I look into the world with a spirit-borne feeling
The spirit feels my nature
The world sinks into darkness
The inner being shines in prayer in the spirit being
The inner being needs a ruler in the darkness of the world
Oh, the spirit takes a level head.

Thursday:

Christ leads souls
From darkness He leads
Light in the Primordial Light is His power
Life from death He wrests
Salvation from evil He wrests
Rise from ruin He wrests
To the All of God He leads the human self.

Or let us take the first Saturday in August:

The spirit of the world of becoming arises
In darkness, light is born
The spirit rests in the being of the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

The first week repeats the same saying in this case:

The spirit of the world of becoming arises
Light is born in darkness
A spirit of spirit rests in the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

Now Saturday:

My gaze is directed towards the divine spiritual ground of being
The senses behold the ground of being's revelation of being
The world spirit reigns in the world's substance
The world spirit weaves in the dead, in the living, in the sentient
The world spirit creates in man an image of its being
Soul reveals the spirit's creative power
Soul strives for spiritual fulfillment.

So it is possible, my dear friends, to use this breviary by arranging it in the appropriate way, and if you use it correctly, you will gradually find the opportunity to learn to preach in pictures; the word can come alive in you. But do not believe that the word can somehow come to life without practice. Only the practice that is in harmony with the ruling intentions of the world, only the practice that we carry out in us in accordance with the intentions of the world of becoming, draws the power of the living word from within us. And it is important that you connect these things, which are intended for pastoral care, with the appropriate trust, with the appropriate faith. The spirit cannot be given to anyone who does not fully believe that he is living in the weaving of the spirit. I ask you to pay particular attention to this, my dear friends, when I now speak about community building and about ordination.

I am now speaking about these matters as they arise from what has been said to me by those who really want to take on the task they have spoken of in all seriousness. I would like to answer the question: How can communities be founded, how can communities be led?

Of course it is not possible to simply stand up with all the things we have now discussed as our goal and now go into church planting in abstracto, but rather the first work must be done as a beginning. Therefore, I can only imagine that it can be done in a favorable sense by first bringing to the people what we consider to be the right thing to do in our whole context. I can therefore only imagine that such participants in these endeavors appear in the most diverse places, who initially simply take up the way in which one must currently work on people, so that they begin by making known what they want, through lectures that clearly reveal the goal that one sets from the outset, in such a way as to be understood. First of all, the necessity of religious renewal must be proclaimed. It must be made clear that such a religious renewal is necessary. For this, of course, one must be truly convinced of the necessity of such a religious renewal. But for that one must also be imbued with the tremendous seriousness of the situation in which present-day humanity finds itself with regard to inner spiritual and religious matters, and in which it also finds itself with regard to external world events, which, after all, are nothing more than a consequence of the fact that humanity has lost sight of the actual spiritual content of the world. If we succeed in showing from today's overall decline the necessity of a new beginning, which must be taken into the hands of individual serious people, if we succeed in explaining the whole situation of the world and the situation of religious and moral life before humanity, then the spirit will be found that works in the sense of such an ascent, and the first members of the community will emerge from those who can hear it first. For those who look impartially at what is today – which, after all, very few people do – there can be no doubt: If you speak in this way, purely lecturing at first, to all those who want to hear it, and if, above all, you find warmth in your words so that people not only believe in your mind but believe in your heart, the number of community members who come to you will not be small in a relatively short time. For there are very many who are seeking today. There are far more today who are seeking than those who can lead, and if a group can be found that can lead, then it will certainly also find those who are seeking.

My dear friends, it is my unshakable conviction that the saga of Dr. Faustus contains a profound truth in the following: In the time when it was still attributed to Dr. Faustus that he had made a pact with the emissaries of hell, Dr. Faustus was seen as the co-inventor of the art of printing. However useful the art of printing has become for modern humanity, its use is, to a certain extent, of the devil, because the art of printing erects a wall between heart and heart in relation to humanity. We must not take such things so much to mean that we should now become radically conservative, radically reactionary, and say that we must work against the art of printing. On the contrary, we must profess a completely different attitude in this regard. We must be clear about the fact that before the art of printing existed, when a pastor had to speak to a congregation from the pulpit, the congregation was entirely dependent on him for an understanding of spiritual matters. We must realize that the power the pastor had to apply in order to speak intimately to his congregation was small in those days and could be small in relation to the power that must be applied today. And I see, my dear friends, that everywhere people would like to hold on to the fact that this power can remain so small. We must be clear: the art of printing must be there. We must realize that everything that the modern world has brought forth must be there. But our strength must increase in order to make good and overcome that which has been done by the world that Christ described as the kingdom on earth into which He had to bring the kingdoms of heaven.

We must not carelessly say: What was expected in the early days of Christianity did not come to pass, so the statement of the millennial kingdom was wrong. It is a lie to accuse the Bible of making an untrue statement. It is not so. Bit by bit, the de-divinized world has emerged, and bit by bit, what could previously be sought through the world must now be sought through the spirit. The art of printing does not prevail in a world that is standing still and becoming more even, but in a world that is perishing and whose decline must be countered by the dawn. If we cannot get used to thinking about these things in sharp images, then we cannot rise to the occasion in which we want to place ourselves, and above all, we cannot come to trust in the workings of the spirit, which we must have. How can we speak of the spirit if we have no trust that the spirit will work with us? How can we speak of the spirit if we only ever weigh up intellectually whether this or that can be right? How can we speak of the spirit if we are not able to connect with the spirit? Whatever echo the world sends back to us, we connect with the spirit to bring about what we recognize as right in its sense. And we cannot work in the spirit if we do not extend this trust to everything we can do in our community. We must stand in the community objectively and judiciously, we must stand in the community knowingly. The modern pastor has basically become a stranger to his community. He goes around in the community without realizing what tragic worlds are taking place among those who pass him by. The pastor needs knowledge of human nature, and he only gains this knowledge by taking an interest in the experiences of his community. There should be nothing that community members do not see in such a way that they have the judgment: when they come to the pastor with it, they will find an open heart, but also wise judgment. We should not let any opportunity pass us by to find out what the laws of the world's phenomena are. We should thoroughly study everything that is going on in the spiritual, legal, political and economic life of the world in order to be able to help people from these three sources of all human development. We should know how to truly be close to the souls we are responsible for. Much will be well if these souls know that we are aware of their weaknesses and concerns, and that we have a proper judgment for them, one that is accompanied by openness of heart.

My dear friends, we must be careful not to become Catholic, but we must have an open heart and goodwill for what must be regarded as human and humanly necessary within the community. Very few people today know what is going on in many people. Very few people know how the people around us are really struggling in their souls today. In recent times, the misery has become so great that those who still live a little in the abstract intellectualism have no faith at all and no insight into the magnitude of this misery. Today, many souls that cannot be opened up because intellectualism has withered away everything we can say to them, everything we can give them, are on the verge of returning to the Roman Catholic Church, which could experience an immense influx. They are therefore close to converting to the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church – albeit in its external and often disastrous way – really did know how to establish with ironclad consistency what souls need apart from intellectualism, for example through confession. ©, I got to know them, these Protestant pastors, who kept saying: What do we do with our preaching, which has become so intellectualistic, if we don't have something like the Catholic priest has in confession? — and who, as pastors, longed for confession. And I have also met brave Catholic priests who, for certain reasons that are not to be discussed here, felt a deep obligation to remain within the Catholic Church, but who were deeply aware of what they owed to their inner selves by lending an ear in confession to those who had deep emotional suffering to report.

Infinite things, my dear friends, are healed in the world by approaching souls in this way, which can be characterized as I have just done. But we will never be able to rediscover the possibility of relating to souls in this way if we are not also aware that we must become fighters for what is happening in the big wide world, that we have to fight for many of the rights of the spiritual ministry on the ground of the spiritual ministry, but that these rights have been taken away from the spiritual ministry in the materialistic world and continue to be taken away. How much, my dear friends, has been taken from the spiritual ministry by the materialism of doctors! People do not think about it, they do not even know. One of the sad phenomena is that the hearing of confessions has passed from the clergy to the psychoanalysts, who carry it out in a materialistic sense. Such phenomena of the time are usually not understood at all in all their depth and significance. As a servant of Christ, fight against the Ahrimanic effects that express themselves in this way in the world, for without doing so you will not be able to work in the individual as the effect of the community must be! Let no opportunity pass by to again furnish proof that there can be a pastoral psychology and pastoral psychiatry! Try to gain knowledge of the world and knowledge of human nature in this sense! Do not believe that the thoughts and aspirations of the pastor can be fulfilled by disputing the correctness of faith and knowledge. My dear friends, so much has happened in this regard that the salvation of millions of souls has been lost. Take these things seriously and consider the situation of the soul in view of what has happened and in view of the need for religious renewal today. Do not regard it as a digression from the task of the pastor as a religious worker to be expected to know what can affect the lungs of a person from the soul. Look at the spread of lung diseases and do not consider this as something that you can only learn from the materialistic medical world. Notice how worries work, brooding over them in solitude, without being able to hear the words of someone who seems wise and capable of judging such things. Listen, I say, hear something of what takes place in the outer illness as a result of the troubles over which one broods in solitude, and sense how much you can do by contemplating the solitude of those who brood over troubles; sense what you can do for the recovery of the outer life. For there are two kinds of lung disease: one is a disease of the lungs as an organ, the other is a disease of breathing, but this breathing cannot take place in the right way if the lungs are not otherwise healthy, and in the diseased lungs are the afflictions that have been brooded over in solitude. Do not consider it an impertinence, one that cannot be addressed to the office of pastor, when one asks what it is that eats away at the human organs that are supposed to refresh the organism. Unhealthy feelings, about which one is uninformed, make the liver sick and make everything that is to be regenerated by the liver and spleen sick. Do not consider it unnecessary to point out that there should be a pastoral physiology again. Consider it a question of your office: What eats away at the air organs? The unsocial feelings of people eat away at the air organs, those feelings that do not allow the potential for love to be expressed in the appropriate way. And by cultivating social feelings and mutual social respect within your community, you will help your community to breathe healthily, insofar as this is to come from the soul. Do not consider it to be outside your office to ask: What has a destructive effect on the blood and its circulation? Try to find out that the destructive effect on the blood and its circulation is caused by the feeling of the futility of existence, by insensitivity to the word that reveals itself from the Divine-Spiritual. If you can see into the mysterious connections between insensitivity to the word that reveals the divine-spiritual and the disturbances in circulation and heart diseases, and if you look at everything that strikes back - the pendulum not only goes there, it also goes here - of a materialistic attitude that comes from a ruined blood circulation and a ruined heart, which comes from this insensitivity to the spirit-filled word. Then you will be able to gauge what the situation of present humanity has actually become, and then you will feel in the right, serious way what religious renewal must actually mean. Then you will also sense something of how healing can be found in the sacred and how one does not need to lose healing in the abstraction of sanctification. It will depend entirely on this spirit, and above all, it will depend on you speaking the truth at every moment to those who belong to your community, for whose souls you are responsible, so that you are not merely administering an office, but speaking the truth.

My dear friends, mistrust is at an all-time high today. Among the forces that have developed most strongly in recent times is the mistrust from person to person, and also the mistrust of man towards his pastor. Only knowledge of human nature can counteract this increasing mistrust. Today, many people are particularly ill in their souls, but very few know anything about the mysterious connections between mental and physical illnesses. Most of the world's leading people are actually embarrassed to stray even a single step from the path of intellectualism. They always ask questions in an intellectual sense; they ask little with the heart. They ask a lot with the mind, but the hearts that want to hear cannot listen to the mind. And so something has happened that is one of the most terrible phenomena of our time.

You will find, my dear friends, that the members of your community who come to you first are many who will show that they do not come merely because there is strength in your words and your actions that attracts the fundamentally human. Rather, many will come who, when you really talk to them intimately, will say: I come to you because everything else I have tried has offered me nothing, but I don't know if you can offer me more than the other things that offered me nothing. — Many will come with precisely this attitude, and they have not developed any sense of the differences between what approaches them. Should it nevertheless be the case that you speak to people more out of the spirit than others have spoken out of the spirit, then you will find how dulled the souls are and how they can no longer even notice the difference today, and you will have to find ways to overcome precisely the dullness of the souls. Especially with regard to people who come to you with true feelings [of longing] for a life in the spirit, but with dull souls, you will not get by with anything other than being able to evoke a clear feeling of the inner intimate truth of what you have to say. Many will say to you: I cannot tell the difference between what I have been offered so far and what you are offering me. You will only get such questions if you want to convince people with intellectual arguments, but you can do without intellectual arguments if you want to enter into intimate contact with your parishioners; you can do without intellectual arguments. Learn to build on completely different arguments. Learn to build on those reasons that flow, for example, from saying: It is best if you believe me no more than you believed the others, if you believe me perhaps even less than you believed the others; I completely dispense to explain to you the matter that I have to discuss with you, with all kinds of reasons; but look and really observe everything with open eyes; see if you can't see that many things are different; and then don't let me judge, but judge for yourself. And if you then also give such people a sense of how you yourself feel about the reasons that may be put forward against your own pastoral care, if you evoke a feeling that you also know the other side and that you do not even have the slightest spark of fanaticism for the cause you represent, then you will be able to build something that you will never be able to achieve through intellectualism, which is the father of fanaticism. I say with full awareness: intellectualism is the father of fanaticism, because in no religious community has there ever been such great fanaticism as among the modern scientific communities. One must only be familiar with the currents that are flowing. One must realize how far removed from admitting the infallibility of the Roman Pope someone may be who invincibly believes in the infallibility of a professor or even in the abstract “modern science”. The faith in these things is so great because one is not even aware that it exists at all, because one takes the faith in it for granted. One does not even notice how one is stuck in a maximum of fanaticism in this area.

But, my dear friends, you will achieve nothing if your enthusiasm for the cause is not great enough to enable you to rise to such concepts, if you yourself still suffer from something that prevents you from see through the full power of this fanaticism and similar fanaticisms that live in the world today, and if you, so to speak, cannot decide to also confront this fanaticism with the spirit of Christ.

Your church planting can only be one that, first of all, starts from the right attitude, but secondly also from a strong attitude. The time when it was possible to believe that half-measures could achieve something is over. The time is over when it was possible to believe that intellectual discussions about world affairs make a difference. We must never forget that we live in the age in which humanity is to be irrevocably given freedom, and that the coming of freedom means that, if work is to be done in the spirit, it must be done from a source and origin; it means that something truly new must come into the world and that [really everything] must be ruthlessly seen and done in the spirit of this newness. Your work would be a passing one if you did not take into account that this attitude is indispensable for this work.

My dear friends, you must awaken in people everywhere the realization that modern man must be pointed to his deepest inner being and that he must draw from this deepest inner being the impulse for what he thinks, feels, wills and does. It is out of the question to think of carrying out this cult in such a way that it is in any way Catholicized. The cult, the fundamental features of which we have indicated, must be practised in such a way that it is felt to be something that really comes from the spiritual world today. It must be perfectly clear that the Catholic Church has been able to achieve such immense power because, in a sense, it is precisely because it is consistent that it can adapt to all manner of contemporary phenomena; and the Catholic Church does not do this in the way that certain newer currents have, which are characteristic of the intellectualism of modern times.

At the beginning of the 1890s, for example, we saw something emerging in Central Europe that was then called the effort to establish a Society for Ethical Culture. The movement started in America and also took hold in Europe. I was at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv at the time when the most important events took place to establish this society for so-called ethical culture in Europe, and I asked one of the leading personalities at the time [of the Society for Ethical Culture] at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv: What do you actually want with ethical culture? — I was told: The name itself says it all. — I could only answer: But first you have to understand the meaning of a name. If you asked people what they wanted with ethical culture, you would get a confession of immense weakness, you would get something like the answer: Yes, in relation to religious beliefs, in relation to world views, people differ so much that in the end everyone can have their own world view and everyone their own religion; religion will become more and more a private matter, but you can't live with that, you have to come to an understanding; so let's make ethics free of religious and ideological foundations and spread an ethics that is free of any religious or ideological basis. I always objected: Yes, but there have never been any other ethics than those that have emerged from the foundations of religions and worldviews and that were their consequences. — As a rule, no answer was given to this, because people were so intent on making an abstract extract from all that could be gained from the various religious beliefs, stripping away the religious character and then handing it down as a non-religious ethic, as a mere “ethical culture”. It really does not need to be directed against people when one speaks out sharply against it, and in an essay on the Society for Ethical Culture at the beginning of the nineties, I showed with all severity the impossibility of getting out of this chaos that one has finally gotten into. A fanatic of this ethical culture published a pamphlet against this essay in which he insulted with a matter of course what can actually be thoroughly substantiated. Other people also could not see that the time had come when these things had to be treated with complete seriousness. After I had written this essay, I came to Berlin, visited Herman Grimm, who said: What do you actually want with this fight against ethical culture? Are you going to this meeting? I found that they are all very nice people. — I never doubted that all the people sitting there were very nice people, but I regretted all the more that these nice people had this monstrosity implanted in their souls as if it were something self-evident. Even the leaders in spiritual life could no longer see at all what the seriousness of our situation was and is. This realization of the seriousness of the situation will actually be the most important thing with which you leave here, because everything else can only be of value if you leave here with this most important thing.

And now, so that we can discuss in the afternoon what is on your minds in relation to this, I would like to say a few words about what might be along the same lines as what is in other confessions as regards ordination. I would ask you to bring up the most important things first.

It is difficult, my dear friends, to speak about ordination today, because the times when the ceremonies that served the old ordination still had a meaning are over, and those who want to recognize these ceremonies are no longer in touch with the present day, not since the middle of the 15th century. For a new age has dawned. But those who have immersed themselves in the spirit of this new age have basically abolished the ordination of priests, and they have also abolished it within the denominations. And so today we are faced with the fact that those who have been ordained no longer live in the times, and that those who live in the times perhorrescize the ordination of priests. It cannot work in the same way today as it did in times gone by; it must be thoroughly brought into line with the spirit of our age. If you take this, so to speak, as a basic condition, I may say a few words to you about the ordination itself and its ceremony, as it is revealed to me for the present time. It is important that you really understand that I am, in a sense, communicating something revealed to me by the spirit.

It would be necessary for the transmission of the priestly ministry to take place in the presence of older priests, so that first of all older priests are gathered together, and that then the process of placing the person to be ordained in the overall context in which he is to be placed is begun. If I say that older priests should be present, it is of course extremely difficult to carry out at the beginning, but the beginning must be made in such a way that you, in the sense of what you impose on your central leadership, also order the beginning of such a matter in this sense. Then the things that need to be ordered in this way will also be available to you. Of course, there may not be older priests present at the beginning, but that must become the custom.

Then, first of all, there must be a very solemn presentation of the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John to the person who is to be ordained. I would like to emphasize that simplicity must be the supreme law in the face of such an act. If this act becomes complicated, it cannot be what it should actually be, that it should be on the mind at least once a day of the person who has gone through this act accordingly. The spiritual experience of this act should always precede the recitation of the rosary. If properly cultivated, it can be accomplished in a relatively short time, in my case in one minute. But this can only be done if the whole act is not complicated but has a unified character.

So the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, which begins with the words: Let not your heart be troubled. Trust in the power that leads you to the divine foundation of the world and that leads you to me. - And which concludes with the words: The world shall see how I love the foundation of the world, and how I act in the sense of the foundation of the world, as is laid upon me. Do likewise, then we can leave this place in peace. — And this should be followed by the introduction to the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John, the resurrection of Lazarus, and so it should affect the person being ordained that he feels through and through from this chapter how the power to resurrect that which is dying lies in the Christ-being. I believe, however, that in order to interpret this chapter in the right way, what I have given in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact” as an interpretation of this chapter can still serve.

Once this has been done – I am stating things fully, perhaps they cannot be done in this fullness at the beginning – the application of the garment that I have shown here in the illustration as the one that represents the etheric body would have to be carried out. This is the beginning of the symbolization of the effect of pastoral care.

Now one has to take oil – there is still a lot to be said about the consecration of oil and water, so that you can be quite clear about it – and apply this oil in the appropriate way to the pulses on the arms and – the person to be admitted has to wear sandals – to the corresponding places on the ends of the balls of the feet. With that, the sacramental act has been performed.

By leaving only what happens to the oil in the picture and making it as clear as possible in the picture, so that all bystanders - I say all bystanders, not just those who are to be introduced to pastoral care - can clearly perceive and remembrance of the picture that has been enacted. Only after the picture has been enacted should the words be spoken, and these words should be simple so that they can always stand before the soul in the way I have described:

In the name of Christ, you are authorized
firstly to administer Communion,
secondly to perform the sacrifice of the Mass,
thirdly to administer the sacraments.

After this has been done, the stole and chasuble are to be put on, that is, everything that leads to the astral body, and then there is something else to be done – so that the matter is simple, but it must be succinct – which must be deeply engraved in the soul of the person to be received: one consecrates the host as one does in the sacrifice of the Mass. One hands the host to the one whom one would not have handed to before the anointing with the oil, and afterwards lets him himself perform the consecration of this host and after this consecration perform one's own communion. Then one consecrates the chalice, as one otherwise does in the sacrifice of the Mass, and hands the chalice to the one who is to be received, so that he consecrates it in the same way and, by drinking from it, pronounces the words that have just been expressed as the words of the sacrifice of the Mass, and which he actually speaks for the first time with authority.

After this has been done, my dear friends, the question is asked in a lapidary way:

Do you vow to continue to work in the sense in which this authority was conferred?

And his answer should be:

I vow:

To teach in Christ's name To work in Christ's name To pray in Christ's name To sacrifice in Christ's name.

All those present say:

Yes, so be it, amen.

After this has been done, the headgear that the priest has to wear only during part of the ceremony and that is to be regarded as the thing with which he sets out to teach and with which he leaves teaching and so on, this headgear is handed over by, as it were, doing that which lies in his ego effect as the crowning of the whole ceremony.

Then it would be a matter of having the person preach a sermon on a topic that has been discussed with him at length, in front of those from whom he has received the ordination, as a trial sermon, but also as a solemn investiture into his office. Then the corresponding ceremony would be over.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to tell you this morning. I now ask you to prepare for the afternoon everything you might have to say in connection with this or with earlier events, so that we may part as befits our serious time together.

My dear friends! Perhaps I may first say a few words about consecration in general, including the consecration of substances or the like, before we formulate the questions that still need to be asked. To do this, I must first give a brief characterization of the concept of consecration.

My dear friends! Consecration actually means to lead something back to the effectiveness of its origin. Take salt, for example, as it is deposited in water or similar. If we consider salt and how it has changed its properties in the course of the earth's development, we find that the further back we go, the more the salt ceases to have only those properties that it manifests to man today; it approaches the stage of existence that we have at the very beginning of a development, let us say, at the beginning of a planetary development. Salt is such that, as matter, it is at the same time permeated by spirit, and as it settles in water, what I have already characterized happens: the spreading of that which is actually the same power that permeates us when we become wiser and that radiates as thought power in the universe. It is indeed the case that we must be clear about how, for example, the process of our own becoming wise takes place. This process is such that it is not the case that our brain atoms or brain molecules start to vibrate, that these vibrations are the material correlate of thoughts – such an assertion contradicts the whole process of human development. The preparation for the grasping of the thought consists in the fact that the material at the nerve cord is broken down, so that, as it were, a hole is created in the material, and into this hole the thought ray pours. (It is drawn on the board.) So our brain is only necessary for our thoughts, in that it forms a reserve, just as the ground is necessary for me to step on it; and the one who claims that our brain activity has something direct to do with thinking makes a similar claim to like someone walking along a road with ruts in it and saying: There are ruts, I want to look for the force below the surface that created these ruts, what pulled or pushed there, so that I can understand how it came about, how these ruts became possible. Of course, they are not caused by forces in the earth at all, they are caused by the fact that wagon wheels have rolled over them, which has nothing to do with [forces in the earth]. Likewise, what brain processes are is nothing more than making room for our thought processes. That is the true process, that wherever salt is deposited by brain processes, as, say, on the surface of such a nerve cord, the possibility is offered for wisdom rays to work within. I could even say, without my dear friend, Pastor Geyer, resenting it: the cleverest person is the biggest blockhead, because he has to make the most holes in his brain so that wisdom can find room in him.

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So we come to what I would call the still undifferentiated spirit materiality when we go back to the beginning of any substance.

I hope you have noticed that the substance underlying the world [the expression] was used at one point in the Credo: spiritual-physical. This is also related to this. At the starting point, at the origin of things, we do not have the completely separate matter that we have now. And so 'to consecrate' means nothing more than to give that which one applies sacramentally its original spiritual-material power. You now only need to know that by performing such a process, as I have shown in baptism, we attain precisely that which is significant for the baptismal act. There are other ways to consecrate water. It is not necessary to always use baptismal water, although this would be perfectly suitable for sacramental acts. But it is also possible to consecrate in such a way that one has pure water. Originally, in the beginning, water has the power to renew that which is perishing. Thus, the power of eternal renewal lives in water. Now the point is to try to give the water back what it had in the beginning in the sacramental form. So you have pure water, take salt, this salt will dissolve in the water when you throw it in, then you develop smoke by taking wood flour and sprinkling incense over it, you treat the smoke as that which absorbs our word, and you then speak this word to the water:

In this water lives the power of eternal renewal
With this power may this water be connected
As it was connected in the beginning.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

So speaking the words into space always means something like forming the word in the material, so that in this way you bring the word to that which you want to consecrate. Then you can use such water, which has now received its original power sacramentally, to consecrate by sprinkling.

All you really need to know is that you can treat the ashes in the same way. And if you treat the ashes in the same way, then to consecrate them for the baptismal water, if you wanted to do so beforehand – although the act is sufficient as I said the other day – you would have to say:

In the ashes lives chaos,
From which new beings can be brought forth.
Let these ashes be joined again
As they were joined in the beginning.

And again: In the name of the triune God.

Now I would like to point out that the oil can be consecrated by knowing that the oil, by acting in a substance, imbues that substance. Actually, what I am saying essentially applies to plant substances in life. So, by permeating the plant substance, the oil makes it, as one might call it, more loving, so that everything that one does with the oil as a consecration should be related to making it more loving; that is why the anointing oil is used in the ordination of priests, as I explained this morning.

So when you get to know the different spiritual properties of the substances, then you will, through this principle, return the substances to what they were in the beginning, through the formula: In that and that, the power lives forever, what it now is or was, with it may the substantial be connected, as it was connected in the name of the Trinity, that is, the three forms of the Godhead.

Now I would like to answer, not as an example, but in response to a question from yesterday, which is the question about the passage in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, verse 28, which is usually read as follows: “If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I said, ‘I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.’”

I do not believe, my dear friends, that this passage, when presented to us in this way, could ever evoke any feeling other than this: it is incomprehensible. For one hears only words, and these words, in turn, do not correspond to everything that is said in the Christian sense about the relationship between Christ and the Father. But I would like to draw your attention to the following, which can significantly help in translating this passage, namely that, especially in sacred language in earlier times, words were not used as they are used today. When we use words today, we actually always assume that the words stand side by side, and we trace things back to the words. A word means this or that. This is not the case in sacred language use. There, as in a living process, one word leads into another, so that one would not have felt authorized to simply say the word “child” without being aware of the context. Rather, one would have had to feel in the word “child” that the concept of growth is contained and that in this process of growth, which connects one with the essence of the child, one has the right, when aiming at the whole human being, to use the word “child”, “young man” or even “old man”. So there was a certain fluidity in the use of words. Now there was a relationship between this use of language in the mysteries and the use of language at the time when the mystery of Golgotha was approaching for humanity; there one used — however strange this may seem to you today — the word 'Father' for the ground of the world, alternating as if one were flowing into the other. But [it was felt with] the concept that this world reason through the events that are indeed hinted at in the Old Testament - which are then also clearly hinted at again by Paul in the old and new Adam, through the fall of the angels, with whom human beings also fell - that this fatherly world reason has gradually led to death. It was the case that in the mysteries, for a time, those who spoke in the mysteries used the words “father” and “death” in alternation, on all possible occasions. And so we would have to translate: If you truly loved me, you would rejoice that I have said that I am going to die, for death was once more powerful than I – one would actually have to say “more magical”. In the older mystery language, the word “magical” always has something to do with “powerful”. So here it is an indication of the conquering of death. It is therefore necessary, or rather, the disciples must rejoice that Christ Jesus has declared himself willing to go to the Father, but in this age that means to death.

I can well imagine how forced such an explanation may appear to one or the other, because the things that the interpreters do with the gospels today are just about the most forced things one can imagine, because they do not agree among themselves or they do not agree with the dogmatics and so on. So we have to be willing to go back a little to the living use of the words and not just interpret the words literally; this is absolutely essential for such a passage.

Question: It has been said that the laws of nature apply only within the earth's radius. How do you explain the prominences and the lines in the spectrum of the sun?

Rudolf Steiner: Today's physicists would be very surprised if they could design their airships in such a way that they could go to the place where they suspect all kinds of gas to evaporate and the like, while the matter is quite different. So, for example, one would have to say that even empty space still has an intensity, namely the intensity of zero. Take any intensity for a substance, let's say for air; air has a certain intensity, water has a greater intensity, earth an even greater intensity, and if you then go back again, you come to the so-called empty space, it has the intensity zero in relation to the effectiveness. Just as you can arrive at zero in your wallet and then, if you go further, incur debts and arrive at a negative figure, so intensity can also become negative, that is, holes can be drilled into outer space, so that you do not have space there, but negative intensity, hollowed-out space. Physicists would find it in the sun if they could travel there. But in doing so, you have already pointed out something that naturally precludes explaining the prominences in the way that today's physics explains them. So these things lead so far afield, and I can of course only hint that one should try here to get involved in spiritual science. Because that does not actually belong to our immediate path here, otherwise we would have to deal with the whole of anthroposophy here, and that is impossible.

Now I would like to believe that your questions, which rest on the seplen, could at least be answered in the main, as far as that is possible.

Question: What about the communication of individual parishioners with the chalice and bread?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, Communion should be celebrated in such a way that it is celebrated under both forms, because it is actually about the body #rd about the blood, and from the ritual you have also seen that the two parts of the action, the breaking of bread and the taking of bread and that which is done in relation to the cup, are not quite the same and that therefore [these actions] are two parts of a whole. At the time when there was a dispute about whether the cup should be given at all or not, the actual realization of this matter was essentially corrupted. And today one would even be inclined to look at the matter from a sanitary point of view, which is of course a terrible thing.

Question: How should we think about the distribution of the weekly verses over the months that last more than 28 days, when one time the verse is meditated on for two weeks?

Rudolf Steiner: I said that in the morning that I meant that one should try to integrate days for the saying. I thought that the weekly saying should not always be for seven days, but that one should try to distribute it so that it would last for a year. If you do a little calculating, you will get there. In such matters, it is never the absolute number that is important, but the rhythm that continues. Not that it should be done for two weeks, but that some weeks should be extended by days.

Question: To what extent can free speech pieces also be included in the rituals? What should be the position of the sermon in the service?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it is best, although it is different in some church areas, to insert the sermon before the Gospel reading. The sermon should precede the Gospel reading. I have not had the opportunity to give you certain formulas for what, so to speak, entwines around the four main parts of the Mass. In Catholicism, for example, we have the relay prayers, that is, the prayers below [at the steps of the altar] before the steps of the altar are climbed; we have a certain reading on the right side of the altar, while the gospel is read from the left side; and the sermon should actually always be inserted before the gospel reading. But with the exception of the sermon and the communion of the faithful, which should be performed after the priest has taken communion and before the final formulas of the mass – which I have not yet been able to explain to you either, but I will send them to you send it to you in some form or other – so with the exception of the sermon and the Communion of the faithful, which is not even connected with a single word, extemporaneous speech should not take hold within the Mass and within the ceremonies.

Of course it cannot be that you regard what I have just formulated – and I have told you how difficult it is to formulate – as something dogmatically established, but what is ritual should be stereotyped in a certain sense.

Question: Do Catholic and anthroposophical views of worship and the sacrifice of the Mass flow from the same source? Does the Catholic chasuble go back to the recognition of the supersensible nature of the human being, and is there still an awareness of these things in Catholicism today?

Rudolf Steiner: This question is extremely difficult to answer in the absolute sense. Let us start with the first question: Does the Catholic chasuble go back to the realization of the supersensible nature of the human being? — One can say: It goes back to that, but this realization, which one would have to fall back on, actually lies in a time before the Catholic chasuble was introduced. It was introduced into the old service and retained at a time when one could no longer see these things. So it has been taken over traditionally, and today, if one has access to supersensible vision, one can recognize the extent to which these things apply. As far as I know, the symbolism given in the Catholic Church in relation to the chasuble is, compared to what I have told you, extremely arbitrary. At least, as far as I know, I have found little that can be traced back to the four limbs of the human being.

Constantin Neuhaus: I know of nothing.

Rudolf Steiner: You know nothing about it? So in Catholicism it is certainly the case that the symbolism appears much more arbitrary; it is certainly not the case that one would understand things immediately. So one can hardly say that the question “Is there still an awareness of these things in Catholicism today?” could be answered with an absolute yes.

Now the question: Do Catholic and anthroposophical views on worship and the sacrifice of the Mass flow from the same source?

Yes, as I said, what is there has simply been taken over from tradition, just as much has been based on tradition that has now been abandoned, let us say, for example, the golden backgrounds in Cimabue. Yes, they were used because it was simply traditional to have gold backgrounds when depicting saints or anything related to the transcendental world. Because the solar nature of the transcendental was how it was imagined, it was traditional for many to always paint the images of saints in the way they were painted at the time of Cimabue. Only Giotto began to break away from tradition. Of course, you can't find a golden background in the sensual world, but in the world to which, traditionally, what was depicted in Cimabue's time corresponded, it was quite possible that the gold could also be seen as a background.

Now, you can even see in certain pictures — anthroposophists have even gradually come to love some of these images — how the tradition of the two Jesus children was still present as a tradition for a long time. Since nothing is known about it today, people naturally scoff at these things. Well, people “scoff at themselves and know not how”.

Question: Does the new cult not also include an episcopal church constitution?

Rudolf Steiner: It seems necessary to me, my dear friends, that you take into account the development of the matter. We are really not yet so far that we need to delve deeper into an episcopal church constitution right now. There is no doubt that something like a church constitution will arise. But do you not see that what we have brought before our souls here as the beginning of the cult – and that is enough for the time being – is really practised without a fully developed episcopal church constitution? As for what will then have to be done in order to make a start on the cult, I believe that it will be done if this start can be made. I do not think it would be advisable to start with cult forms and ordinations before the matter is sufficiently well established, so that the individuals who want to stand up for this renewal of religious life have their full task in a very firm way. Then we will be ready to say: When those concerned have gathered their community, then we will answer the question of how this is to be done in detail. Now, of course, this is also related to the next question: Who can ordain, either only the one who has already been ordained or everyone involved in the religious renewal? If the first case applies, who can perform the ordination?

It is really only about the very first case. Then it is necessary – for there to be real unity – that things are done in such a way that the consecration comes from a first person. But the first from which this emanates is again something that must arise, and then, when it has arisen, when, so to speak, the self-evident agreement, of which I have spoken before, is there, then what must be done to bring about what is necessary will certainly be found.

Perhaps you have other questions?

The question is asked about the design of the altar.

Rudolf Steiner: Design of the altar? Well, it seems to me that first of all the altar should be designed in such a way that it works through its correctness on the one hand, but through its simplicity on the other. The essential thing about an altar would of course be the following in its simplest form: There is, of course, a kind of table, and it is good if, because it is about the sacrifice, this table also remains what it was intended for, actually a tomb; so you have a tomb in the form of a table, with steps leading up to it. There is now a lampstand in which lights are arranged in such a way that there are three on the right and three on the left, and one in the middle, which is elevated. There are seven lights on the altar, and above the seven lights, in some way, the triune God, that is, God in the three forms. It is important that we really relate ourselves to what is expressed in the Mystery of Golgotha: the taking up of death into the power of the Father, so that we do well if we – of course without superstition or idolatry — leave the Father in the form of an old man; the Christ is already best represented as he has been represented since the sixth century, even for the present time, because it is true for this time that the contrast of Christianity to earlier perceptions is sharply emphasized. You know, of course, that it is said of Buddha that he arrived at his teaching as a result of the sight of a corpse. According to the account that is usually given, it was actually from this sight of the corpse that the Buddha's teaching emerged, because Buddha was horrified by the corpse, because he recoiled from the corpse. Among the manifold things that... [space in the transcription], it is a fact that six centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha people looked up to the body on the cross in jubilation, while 600 years before the Mystery of Golgotha the Buddha turned away from the body in disgust. This memory, even if only in our feelings, is something that should be presented even today when it comes to the representation of the Trinity. For reasons that we have already mentioned, the Holy Ghost was [represented] in the form of the dove, the innocent winged creature. That is, after all, approximately what matters most at the altar. Everything else is then, in part, too much for today's consciousness or it is tendrils. What should be striven for, of course, if possible, is to have the Sanctissimum, that is, the monstrance, which I have drawn, wherein the consecrated host is located, and that is something that beginning and before the end of the sacrifice of the Mass, and it is also entirely appropriate to add to what is to happen through the sacrifice of the Mass the viewing of the consecrated host, the consecrated host.

The altar will naturally be covered with cloths, which in turn go through the same annual development as I have shown for the priest's robe. The altar is to be so equipped that it essentially matches the color of the cloths with which it is covered, the priest's robe, and the external chasuble. Of course, it is important to ensure that the implements that are used, the chalice and the monstrance, are also consecrated, and that only consecrated items are used to touch them. That is probably the most important thing to say about this.

A participant asks about the technical possibilities for performing the breviary prayer and asks for a statement on Catholic kneeling and folding the hands in connection with meditation.

Rudolf Steiner: The meditations are never Catholicizing and the question of bodily positions does not arise for them, because it is always emphasized that what constitutes meditation in our Western world is independent of bodily positions. The only thing that is good for the meditator of the West is that he does not choose a position that makes him too sensitive, so that he is not distracted by uncomfortable sensations but can be completely within himself. The oriental meditations, to which, by the way, things like kneeling and the like can be traced back, also take into account the immersion of the self into the currents of the universe. This is something that should not really be considered for prayer with a breviary, but the concentration that occurs should actually replace and balance these external aids. That is why I did not go into things like kneeling, because they really do not have the same significance for the [Western] human being who is more liberated in his organization as they once had, and who would actually lower the whole cultural experience by one level than we are allowed to place it today. I believe that, as some of you have already seen, in the Sunday activities in the Waldorf School, every movement, every position is made as simply as possible, just as it arises from the situation; and that is what should actually be aimed for: to do what is done in this direction, out of the immediate situation.

A participant: Pastoral physiology and pastoral psychology were mentioned this morning. This reminded me of an expression found in old dialects and still used today in popular speech: to put something through its paces. Is that related to what was said this morning?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, if one wanted to give a complete answer, one would also have to go into anthroposophical medicine, anthroposophical anatomy and physiology. In every organ we see the outward sign of a spiritual connection in which the human being stands with the whole world. If we look at the human heart, we see everything concentrated in the heart that connects the human being with the forces that make up the will-like nature of his thoughts, so one might say, not the content of his thoughts, but the will-like nature of his thoughts, his volition in the spirit. In the kidneys we have to seek everything that is the feeling nature of the human soul; so that when we say “to test someone through their heart and kidneys”, we are saying in a vividly concrete and therefore true way what would mean in our present intellectualistic language, namely, one tests a person according to his volition and his feelings, not merely according to the content of his thoughts, but one tests a person according to his real inner attitude, when one puts him through his paces.

But these things are so far removed from today's consciousness that I believe one could have already come so far as to be embarrassed to say “through and through”, or on the other hand one could have come so far as to consider this to be crude materialism; crude materialism consists namely in looking at matter in a crude way, because one makes the spirit into an abstract in a nebulous way.

One participant feels that the Lord's Prayer and the High Priestly Prayer in John's Gospel convey two different impressions regarding the concept of the Father.

Rudolf Steiner: You have a different impression? If you examine it, you will see that precisely in the High Priestly Prayer the meaning [of the concept of the Father] shines forth more deeply if you take this [what I said about the Father God]. A participant: But in the Lord's Prayer...?

Rudolf Steiner: In the Lord's Prayer, one has to think of the foundation of the world. In the Lord's Prayer, the first sentence does not actually refer to the later becoming, but to the beginning, to the origin. The Lord's Prayer is actually intended as a measure of time, so it refers to the beginning... [gap in the transcript].

A participant: In the Catholic Church, it is necessary for the faithful to cleanse themselves through confession if they wish to partake of communion. What should take the place of confession in preparing the communicant [in our church]?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, this morning I also spoke about a kind of confession, my dear friends, at least about a connection between the community and the pastor, so that the pastor is already the confessor. These things can be taken up in a certain sense, if they are done in a free way, not in such a rigid form and almost business-like way, as is often the case in the Catholic Church. There is a difficulty that arises when Catholics become anthroposophists. On the contrary, one does not want to fight the denominations in the anthroposophical field. One would actually like everyone to progress through their denomination. I do not mean to progress to anthroposophy, but to progress religiously, as you would like to progress by speaking of a renewal of religious life. It is not the confessions that should be fought, nor the practice of the confessions. But now there is a difficulty with Roman Catholic believers that they say: Yes, how are we to practice communion when we do not receive it if we have not confessed beforehand? And that is indeed a difficulty that is insurmountable in the anthroposophical field, for example, because one cannot advise someone to make a compulsory confession that is of the kind that often occurs in Roman Catholicism. Thus, Roman Catholicism has organized things in such a way that they either require an absolutely firm adherence [to the Church] or a complete departure, in which case, however, damnation is pronounced. But much of what makes up the strength of Catholicism depends on this. You cannot be a real Catholic in a casual way, because you cannot even receive communion at Easter if you have not first made your Easter confession. The very fact that they exist in Catholicism shows that these things should be more free and also more true and sincere. After all, it is not that rare, comparatively speaking, to have a Catholic maid, and if chance would have it, you might find a note in the servant's room where she has written: I stole my master's gold watch – and only now realizes that she stole my gold watch; but she had written this down so as not to forget to confess it. Even if it is not always a matter of gold watches, these things do exist, and they make the whole thing seem trivial, untrue, un-Christian. This could be overcome precisely by the attitude that amounts to the communicant, if he feels it is necessary, first discussing it with the pastor, seeking him out, and that the pastor also knows whether he can give him Communion without having spoken to him. Much of what is always thought of in rigid terms and in rigid laws must be introduced into the practical side, into the whole management of parish life. That is what I meant this morning when I talked about parish life.

A participant: Many of us would be very grateful if we could get a hint about the right way to help the dying and how best to comfort and uplift the seriously ill.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, first of all, it has to be said that it is extremely difficult when one is obliged to try to lift someone's spirits at the moment of death or during a serious illness with some kind of catchphrase or pep talk. The essential thing should actually be to have so much influence on the whole life of the person turning to you as a pastor that the sick person or the person dying after death feels differently through this whole life, through their way of thinking, their powers of feeling, than they would if they only needed special strengthening in each individual case. But especially when one has previously entered into such a relationship with a member of the community, or when someone else who works in the same way has done so, the spoken word will always be valuable in that situation. But if in such moments something is simply to be said in the form of a formula, it will not usually help very much. For one can only speak to a person in a way that is truly understood if one is able to find an echo in his soul. Now, if a person is healthy, one will naturally be able to find an echo for many things, but in moments of illness or death, one needs preparation in order to find an echo for what is spoken out of the situation.

They could experience that at least anthroposophists fall ill and die differently than materialists, and that with them, comfort can very well be spoken out of the situation and out of the matter, and that — as I mentioned this morning — encouragement always helps if the person concerned feels lonely. Sometimes it is more important who says something and how they say it than what is said. But it is true that one can say: In all cases involving illness, when it is a matter of speaking to the dying person, and when it is a matter of consoling the bereaved, it is easier if one can speak on the very broad basis of leaning towards the spiritual through what has come before, than if there has not been a living previous influence. I would strongly urge anyone to try to attend the funeral of an Anthroposophist, to look at those left behind, to listen to how Anthroposophists have died, and they will see that they will ultimately have to answer the question as follows: What we do for the sick person, we should actually do for them while they are healthy; what we do for the dying, we should do for them during their lifetime, and what comfort we have to give to the bereaved, should also be there for them beforehand. Then these things can be done and they will be worthy, because these things sometimes have a very unworthy character.

A participant: I still have a question that could perhaps be answered. We have heard about the veneration of Christ and also that in the Catholic mass the “dominus vobiscum” was, as it were, a wrong translation and should be translated as “Christ in you”. But how is a veneration of the spiritual-physical reason for existence to be realized, since there are circles in the youth movement today that venerate God as the B. Sun?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, what it is about is that one forms a relationship to what I have often called the triune God, because through this veneration or worship or however you want of the triune God, everything that, when it afflicts people, actually corrupts them or even makes them ill, is avoided. If you take the triune God, you avoid such one-sidedness as pure, naked worship of nature, as it is in a service to the sun, in whatever form it may appear. But at the same time you have also avoided – as the matter demands – then taking the idea of God so far away from the human being that you no longer have any concrete content for it at all. For in the second form of the Godhead, in the second person, in the Christ, the Godhead is to be conceived as thoroughly human within, while we know that in the Father God it has more of a symbolic character. It is absolutely the case that the expansion of our understanding of the divine through the Trinity – if we are not speaking merely in definitions, but are entering into something very concrete – also gives the content of God a fullness that cannot be attained by anything else. If today some people fall back into a nature service, into an idolatry, it is because through a non-supernatural understanding of the concept of God, it has been greatly removed from what we now have in the visible world as the so-called most perfect in us, in man.

I can only say that, because I don't know what you meant by your question. I mean, where do you see a difficulty?

The same participant: The question only arose for me because I feel the need to also include the Father, who is still to come as the Christ. It is just the way it is for me personally.

Rudolf Steiner: The Father? Yes, but in fact: to think of the Father without the Son is actually to fall back into the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. There is a strong tendency towards this today. The tendency towards this is so strong today that it is one of the most important world-historical phenomena of our time. Just consider what divides nations today. Individual nations do not feel the human context, which is felt in a Christian way, but the national context, and what they accomplish in the national context, they often accomplish “in the name of Christ”, while something that is to be accomplished from the national context can actually only be accomplished in the name of Yahweh. So that basically today, in the way we treat nationalities, we have the phenomenon – as grotesque as it may sound – that all nations have become Jews, except that each nation has its own Yahweh; there is no right to speak of the Christ. Now, of course, one can truly say today that one does not want the Christ, but if one does so, one must also be honest enough to return to Judaism if one values the Father more than the Son. A participant: I feel the need to honor the Father more than the Christ.

Rudolf Steiner: If you feel the need to honor the father more than the Christ, then you are not going along with the actual mission of the Christ. Of course it may be natural to you, but it is not Christian.

A participant: In the Catholic Church, after confession, the pastor assigns certain penance exercises. How and with what does one help a person so that he is able to overcome his spiritual distress himself?

Rudolf Steiner: What do you mean by what is given in the Catholic Church?

The same participant: Making amends for a debt incurred. That would also be possible here. I believe prayers or something like that.

Rudolf Steiner: But of course this also has its dangerous side. You see, within Catholicism you confess as a child. You say your sins, which sometimes can be very formulaic. At least that is how I was introduced to these things, that children confess sins for which they do not understand the words they say in the slightest. Isn't that right, the children get a piece of paper like that – I still know these papers quite well – all the sins are on it; you cross out the ones you haven't committed, and then you confess the ones you've left. Not so long ago, this was not uncommon. The child does not understand how superficial it is. Sometimes the most terrible things are written on these pieces of paper, which the child is better off not knowing. But sometimes it is just as superficial as when the priest says: “Say five Our Fathers and one Creed.” What does this praying of five Our Fathers and one Creed have to do with the commandments, and what does it have to do, in the abstract, with what is actually supposed to be achieved when there is real spiritual distress or even just dissatisfaction or something similar in the soul? Naturally, the community should not exceed a certain size. Through the encouragement of the word and through everything that the confessor – if I may call him that – then considers necessary, a certain amount of amends can of course be made, can't it? All sorts of things will happen, it is hardly possible to avoid them if one really seeks the advice of a confessor. But dangers lie in the imposition of prayers or, let us say, the payment of indulgences or the ordering of masses.

The same participant: I was thinking more of a simple meditation for one person.

Rudolf Steiner: That is right, a meditation can only be given individually. No prescription for a meditation can be given, and therefore, when the priestly practice is there, it will arise precisely from what I meant today. Of course it can be there, but it must not be externalized by making patterns for it.

Heisler: It was said a few days ago that it is difficult to establish a connection with deceased people who have died without an inner relationship to Christ. What specifically can be done to help such a deceased person to find a connection with Christ?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is true. In fact, the only thing one can do is what I have already mentioned. One can try to establish a connection with the deceased through their thoughts, to cling to this connection. I did not say to Christ, but to the supersensible world in this case. Of course, for most people today, finding the supersensible world is in turn tied to a connection with Christ. The things that were indicated at the time must simply be tried. Otherwise it is of course necessary to bring about the possibility, precisely by constantly thinking of the dead person, by occupying oneself with him, to prepare oneself so that after one's own death one can then help him. It may well be the case, because he was too distant, that one cannot help him.

A participant: How should one behave in the following two cases: firstly, when a person has led such a life that one must assume that he is lost, and secondly, when one has to say a dying prayer for a seriously ill person who no longer knows anything about what is happening?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, of course [regarding the first part of the question] one must say that one should never make such decisions, that someone is lost. Because the karma of the person is clearly [to be considered], one must never take away the possibility of turning it around and helping. So under no circumstances should anyone be given to understand that he is lost, because to do so would be to add to the possibility of his loss by presenting it as a truth. Here one must remember that one should naturally avoid the thought that someone is lost, should not have it at all.

The second question is whether one should still say a prayer for a dying person if they have no sense of what is being said to them? You should definitely do that! I would ask you to always bear in mind that the soul, the spiritualized soul of the person, is indeed there, and that it is not at all just a matter of whether what the person can take in is done with the help of the physical instrument, but rather it is so that, for example, when one speaks a blessing over a person or otherwise speaks to his soul in any way, this can certainly also happen when one is quite sure that the person concerned cannot take it.

I must confess that I have always held the opinion, based entirely on the realization that many people who now listen to lectures on anthroposophy are not able to absorb things in this life. Nevertheless, I do not consider it unnecessary to speak to them, because their souls do absorb it, and they carry it through death into the next life on earth. Truly, to believe in the spirit is different from believing in the intellect, and to believe in the spirit of a person is different from believing in that person's intellect.

A participant asks whether advice could be given on how to cure mental illnesses from an anthroposophical perspective.

Rudolf Steiner: This is, of course, an extremely extensive chapter. You see, much more than one might think, so-called physical illnesses — in the sense in which I also spoke this morning — depend on spiritual-soul preconditions, and actually there are no real soul illnesses at all, but soul illnesses are basically always based, albeit sometimes on very distant, minute physical illnesses. I would like to emphasize that anthroposophy does not take the view that one speaks of mental illnesses and the like and also wants to heal the so-called mental illnesses spiritually. The point is that in this area in particular, today's external, materialistic medicine — which has almost entirely become a description of abnormal states of mind, in this respect there are indeed the most detailed medical histories — is very much mistaken. The cure for so-called mental illnesses is usually to be found in physical healing, because it is the case that the spiritual-soul is not ill, but can only fail to appear, cannot express itself, through the sick physical. One could even go as far as the paradox: physical illnesses go back to spiritual causes, mental illnesses go back to physical causes. Of course, one must not press such a paradox.

So we are being led beyond all the amateurishness that appears today in the teachings of hypnotism, suggestion or even psychoanalysis, to a healthy medicine that works with the physical and spiritual. It is true that you will sometimes have to ask yourself: Where is the possibility of treating a physical lunatic? — and one often encounters the greatest difficulties with this, because the things that are at issue are extraordinarily difficult to deal with.

A participant: Could we not learn something about the significance of the cult of Mary, especially the May devotions?

Rudolf Steiner: It should be said that the cult of Mary is related to the cult of the Holy Spirit, and that in a certain sense, one can look up to the Holy Spirit on the one hand and to Mary on the other. There is even an old trinity: Father, Mother, Son, and there are even sects that call the Holy Spirit “the Mother of God”. Indeed, in the female organization, one can already see something of the physical organization... [gap in the transcript], as I have explained in these days. On the other hand, however, the Catholic Church developed the cult of Mary at a time when far too little was understood about all these things, and so it allowed itself to exercise a certain amount of arbitrariness. In fact, you will find arbitrariness in all that has been hinted at to you in the Catholic breviary from Pentecost to the feasts of the apostles and saints. The saints' days have actually fallen into arbitrariness because one does not really have a real knowledge of these things, and some things, aren't they, are really set with the greatest arbitrariness, for example, the Feast of Corpus Christi. In the case of the Feast of Corpus Christi, it is actually not even clear — given the precisely defined dogmatic tradition — what it is really about, and, if it is about the body of Christ, for example, why this feast falls precisely at this time. You only have to look at the history of such festivals to see how numerous ambiguities have arisen from materializing knowledge.

Now I do not believe that it is necessary to go too far in the elaboration of such festivals from the very beginning. I have, for example, because I do not allow myself to speak quite objectively about things in the anthroposophical field, of course, also spoken in Protestant areas of the veneration of Mary and the like, of the position of Mary, and that has often greatly angered precisely Protestant minds. They could not bear it, they found it to be a Catholicizing tendency.

Constantin Neuhaus: If we have to free ourselves from personal sins through self-redemption, why do we need a sacramental act of repentance? And if we do, how does this sacramental act of repentance work?

Rudolf Steiner: It is true that the cause of committing a personal sin lies in the weakness brought about by the general sin. The personal sin, or the very personal part of the sin, as I once put it, must be removed in self-redemption. But is it not possible to help a person with something that he is supposed to accomplish through himself? Helping him and strengthening his strength does not contradict the principle of self-redemption. So the sacramental act is essentially a strengthening act. Now, what must be said here is actually that every sacramental act is power-strengthening, that every sacramental act, not just penance, contributes to acquiring this power in order to be able to bring about self-redemption in the course of one's life on earth. So one can express this in very pure terms, if I may express myself in this way. It is therefore quite possible to say that man should be helped as much as possible in this direction, precisely because he is dependent on self-redemption with regard to personal sin. A participant: There are very useful people today who, for some reason or other, do not want to know anything about Christianity on principle, for example Ellen Key. But surely we can ask whether these people do not unconsciously have a living relationship to Christ, or whether knowledge of the spiritual content must be added?

Rudolf Steiner: It is extremely difficult to answer this question in general. As for Ellen Key, for example, since you mentioned her yourself, you see, you have to take the reality into account. A person does not always show what is really in him, and it does not always express itself through his words either. You can, by living in a culture, say with your language, simply feel emotionally that it would make no sense to feel without Christ as one does. If you take Ellen Key's writings as a whole, there is a great deal about her. She denies what she herself has. That is absolutely the case; she has many ideas that she could not have [outside of the Christian context] because they could not have arisen in any other way than within the Christian context.

And so it is with what I said yesterday about Nietzsche. With Nietzsche it is like this: he is the son of a pastor, piously educated, his mother terribly pious, she was truly an extraordinarily pious woman even in old age. And from all this background... [gap in the transcription], there was an inner tragedy, a drilling against himself, that Nietzsche behaves like an executioner towards his own conceptual world – you can find the word from him, by the way. Now he turns against Christ, and when he finally fell into madness in Turin, he wrote letters in which he signed himself: “The Crucified”. So he wrote like that out of his madness, but a person's inclination towards the Christ cannot have disappeared, who signs 'The Crucified' in his madness, even if he wrote the book 'The Antichrist'. So these things are such that one should, I would say, handle them with great care.

Well, my dear friends, everything must come to an end sometime, and we may now conclude this course, as you must now hurry home. I will just refer to what I actually said this morning about community building as a kind of farewell word. I would like to believe that, above all, this course should be based on the most serious consideration of what religious renewal should be achieved by those who have already come together here and by those who will continue to find their way here. It is truly a relief in the deepest sense of the word to hear something like this today: a group of people are coming together to help bring about the ascent of humanity, which is so deeply involved in the movements of decline. But do not forget, my dear friends, that today it takes strength to work for something as you have set out to do. You will be able to muster this strength when you are aware of the full magnitude of the task and when, on the other hand, you are aware of how far humanity has strayed from that which is actually beneficial to it. Those who see the misfortunes of our time in the area on which you have focused as something small are simply being too complacent. Only when one sees the full extent of the decline and, at the same time, the magnitude of the task that we have, can one move forward.

If, from the content of what I have been able to give you, it has also emerged to some extent that you are looking at the current situation with all seriousness and are deciding your actions in the near future based on the seriousness of the matter, then the most important thing that these lectures and these negotiations have been able to strive for has been achieved. And what I would like to give you today from the bottom of my heart is given out of a consciousness that every word wants to shape out of the power of the spirit, that everything that can be connected in hopes, in strengthening wishes for this movement, will accompany you out into your effectiveness from me. My thoughts will be with you, my dear friends, because I see your work as extraordinarily important and meaningful for the present. If you succeed in finding the necessary strength, then it will be so – let us hope that we all find the necessary strength to do so, that we all immerse ourselves so deeply and that we can will so strongly – that what we have set out to do will happen.

In this sense, my dear friends, I would like the words and word attempts that have been presented to you during these days to continue to resound in your hearts, in your thinking, feeling and willing. Let us continue to work in this spirit!

Preliminary discussion in the glass house

Friedrich Rittelmeyer greets Rudolf Steiner: We have come here to ask you to help us so that we can help humanity in the right way. We come to you with complete trust, with as much trust as one can have in a person. This trust is not based on some kind of romanticized feelings, but on the clear experience that we ourselves have already had with what has been spiritually revealed through you, an experience that deeply obliges us, since it has become our duty not to withhold it from humanity and to do as much as is within our weak powers to pass it on, because we expect a great deal from it for humanity.

The group that is coming to you today is smaller, much smaller than the group that was here a year ago. Hardly a third of those who were here then have returned. A few new people have joined us. Some have left, and their departure is particularly painful for us. But in us who are here, there lives the most urgent desire and the firm resolve to do as much as we can to move our cause forward quickly and powerfully.

Some of our friends, many of those you see here, have already sought to work during the summer months, and some of them have succeeded in getting together a group of sixty to eighty people, whom they can hope to form the core of the future community. It has already been said of some of us that we can look to the future without too much concern.

We have just returned from a conference in Breitbrunn, where we discussed a number of issues on the basis of the pointers you gave us. And we can say that there is hardly one among us for whom this conference did not bring great satisfaction. We closed the conference by joining hands as a circle of people determined to step into the world, who have decided to use their lives and their full strength for the cause we represent together, and who want to work together to realize what we want to bring into the world: a real Christian community. We have pledged ourselves to accept the decision in Dornach and to continue to place the cause above our personal needs in the future.

And so we come before you and ask you with all our hearts: Please bless us inwardly and outwardly, so that in view of the seriousness of the world situation and in view of the great spiritual that wants to enter the world through you, a community of people may come into the world that will truly be able to help humanity.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear Dr. Rittelmeyer, dear friends! In response to the words that have just been addressed to me regarding the great cause for which you are gathering here in Dornach and for which you wish to work, I would like to begin by warmly replying with the following: From the very beginning, when this movement of yours revealed itself to me, I was keenly aware of the seriousness with which this movement of yours must proceed. Now I could say, my dear friends, thank you for the trust you have just expressed. But I think that at this moment that would not be the right word at all. I would like to say something else. I would like to say this: that in the face of such facts, which perhaps include what you now want to bring into the world, personal trust is obviously not really necessary. Personal trust would be a relatively weak basis. What must come to humanity is trust in the cause in which you now want to help, and this cause is an extraordinarily decisive one for the development of humanity.

You see, my dear friends, I am now coming from Oxford, which, I might say, gives a very definite aspect to the present spiritual situation of humanity. When one lives in Oxford for a while, one has the feeling that one is in a world surrounded by a kind of wall. Within this wall there is a lively spiritual life, but it is closed off to a certain extent from the actual present by this wall. The young people who are educated there are then sent out into the world with an education that has a strong religious slant; they are sent out into the world with an education that, I might say, is not of this time, that actually still incorporates religious impulses of the past into a world that needs new religious impulses. At Oxford I had to speak about completely different topics, but I had to use an image that simply came to me through life itself on an insignificant occasion. A friend was showing us around the various colleges, a friend who is a Fellow of Oxford. It is customary there that on such occasions people have to put on their robes and their berets; all those who have once graduated from Oxford have to do so for the rest of their lives. Afterwards, we met our friend on the street; he was still wearing his robe and beret. In my next lecture, I had to use an image to explain something about public education. This image came to me all by itself: What would be – I said this in the lecture, as I say it now – what would be if I had wanted to write a letter to him immediately after I had met our friend in his Oxford gown and with his Oxford beret? If I wanted to be true to myself, I would not have known whether to write 750 BC or 1250 AD. In any case, it would not have occurred to me to write the date of the present day if I wanted to remain true to myself. But that is precisely the case with Oxford intellectual life; Oxford intellectual life is an extraordinarily serious one, but one that sometimes actually reminds one of medieval intellectual life or even of the time before Christ's birth.

Here on the continent, or even in Central Europe, to mention just one example, it would take an extraordinarily difficult decision to give a lecture in a church. In Oxford, when I was invited to give a lecture in the chapel [of Manchester College] on a Sunday, it was quite natural for me that it should be given inside the church. Through direct experience, one gets a strong impression of how serious English intellectual life once was, when one sees how these things, even today, are still inspiring, and have been preserved, albeit in a transformed form, into the present day. On the other hand, one also gets the strong impression of how necessary a new impulse is, because the old impulses have indeed been exhausted. In Central Europe in particular, the old impulses have basically not found such an intensive continuation as in England, for example, where there is still a strong religious influence in the whole culture. In Central Europe, of course, intellectual life has been 'de-religiousized' among those who, as people of the present, feel imbued with the culture of the time. It is more difficult to take for granted than it seems today that a book like Mauthner's “History of Atheism” could be published in the immediate present. I would consider it possible that a similar book would be published in France, but I consider it out of the question that someone in England would write such a book about the history of atheism, because the old traditions still live on there.

I just want to say that it is a serious matter to start the renewal of religious life in Central Europe. Especially in countries where traditions are still more alive - in the whole of the West, probably as far as America - this necessity will not be felt so keenly. Only here, where we are standing on soil that is truly religious, can the need for a new impulse be felt intensely enough. This illustrates my statement that from the very beginning I have felt the seriousness of your aims bearing, as it were, upon me also. And now that we are coming to some kind of conclusion regarding the immediate beginning of your work, we must all imbue ourselves with this consciousness.

First of all, we really must work towards completely getting away from this trust, for which I am indeed very grateful to you, but which is a personal trust, and towards developing a real trust in the matter. As theologians, you all have more opportunity to do this than other people in the present day who are involved in intellectual life. After all, a theologian must have some feeling for intellectual life, otherwise he would be a personification of untruth. If one has some feeling for intellectual life as such, then one must also find the bridge over to what must arise in the immediate present as intellectual life. It is a sum total of perceptions and feelings and attitudes from which we must now begin our work, and it is these feelings and perceptions and attitudes that I wanted to point out to you first. We must indeed begin our work in all modesty, because at first it will be a much-challenged work, we must be aware of that. And the less you have the faith to go about this work unimpeded, the better it will be in the end. The more you prepare for obstacles and hurdles, the better it will be. And so, in response to the kind words just spoken by Dr. Rittelmeyer, I can only say: I will do everything in my power to ensure that our meeting here can be the starting point for the active engagement demanded by the spirit of the times by all of you who have decided to do so.

I think we should organize things so that we have a kind of preliminary discussion today and start our actual work tomorrow. Now, in connection with the words spoken by Dr. Rittelmeyer and in view of what I myself have said, I feel obliged to mention as the first point that which, in my opinion, has changed our situation extremely drastically: the resignation of Dr. Geyer from our movement. Dr. Geyer addressed a letter to me in which he first explained his intentions in more personal terms and also described his personal relationship with me. I would like to mention from the outset that I naturally take every word Dr. Geyer has spoken as something that is received with all love and respect and that, for my part, not the slightest change can occur in the personal relationship with him. So I would like to say that all of this personal stuff is something we really don't need to talk about, because I want to feel the nuance he mentions in his letter as my own too. But with regard to the movement, the situation changes in such a drastic way that we must be aware of this fact. Isn't it true that the mere fact that Dr. Geyer's name has been mentioned many times when this religious renewal movement has become known, not least in the sense that he, who does not belong to the Anthroposophical Society, has entered has come out in favor of this religious revival, was precisely the circumstance that in many places a certain degree of trust had been placed in this religious revival movement, and because Dr. Geyer, in his old age, has decided to join this movement. All this, together with the fact that this fact of the resignation will now be spread everywhere in the most active way, will present us with a very serious situation. At the beginning of such a movement, this means something. Dr. Rittelmeyer also spoke of other people who resigned. That may be very painful, but it does not mean the same, since Dr. Geyer was on the Central Committee for all the preparatory work. This does mean, however, that each of you must ask yourselves the question in your hearts: what is it, objectively speaking, that has prevented Pastor Geyer – leaving aside all personal reasons – from abandoning his decision to go with this movement once he had made it?

It is important for you to consider the degree of objectivity of such a decision. Your own sense of security within the movement will depend on the thoughts you entertain and the feelings you develop in the wake of the fact that one of the movement's leaders has just resigned at the decisive moment. This says nothing about personal matters, nothing about the fact that someone may now love Dr. Geyer less than before and the like. Apart from all personal considerations, however, it is important to realize: what can dissuade a determined man from his decision at this decisive moment? Because answering this question is at the same time an inner experience that must occupy us on the way to the goal that you have set yourself, my dear friends. You will have to mature your own certainty by addressing this question with all your strength and objectivity.

Perhaps it would be necessary to say a few words today about why some of the personalities who were there at the beginning of the movement are not here today. That will be part of the preliminary discussions, along with everything that is on your minds. Now, perhaps, we want to agree on the things to be discussed so that we can really start work tomorrow.

Emil Bock briefly reports on the activities of the individual members of the circle. [His remarks were not stenographed.]

Rudolf Steiner: We only need guidelines so that you call to mind that which should really stand before your consciousness.

A participant: {Remarks not recorded in shorthand.]

Rudolf Steiner: Can one also speak of spiritual failures? I do not mean so much failures that the friends themselves accuse themselves of in their work, but rather the failures that would lie in a lack of receptivity.

Various participants report on the situation in Duisburg and Erfurt, in particular.

Rudolf Steiner: What considerations governed the selection in Breitbrunn?

Friedrich Rittelmeyer answers. (The stenographer did not write down the answer.)

Rudolf Steiner: Is there nothing to say about Dr. Geyer's resignation?

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: I expect that Dr. Geyer will continue to work for the movement even if someone from our circle approaches him in this regard. We would still benefit from him even in this form, provided that Dr. Steiner has no decisive objections.

Rudolf Steiner: I have no decisive objections, because I really do not want to exert any decisive influence on such decisions in this area either, but rather to maintain the position I have had in relation to the movement from the very beginning: to give what can be given from the spiritual world and not to influence the constitution in any other way than by advising. That is the best thing for the cause itself. But even if one can certainly agree that such a letter could be addressed to Dr. Geyer, the important question remains as to what objective obstacles there could be for Dr. Geyer, apart from these subjective personal ones, which one can certainly understand. These subjective obstacles, that he cannot make himself a cultural authority and the like, are not so extraordinarily important; one can cope with such things if one looks at the movement with the intensity and seriousness that is necessary for it. But what is important is the objective inner position on the question: What can prevent him, in your opinion?

Friedrich Rittelmeyer suspects that what is keeping Dr. Geyer from coming with us lies in the current of the times and will confront us from many sides in the near future. Rudolf Steiner: You are touching on the objective side, which is important for the impulse. When you say that we will encounter this in various people, that is important, and it is all the more important to be very clear about it.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer and Emil Bock report on their recent perceptions regarding Dr. Geyer. [The remarks were not written down in shorthand.]

Rudolf Steiner: What is necessary for all of you is to realize – this may sound trivial compared to what you have made your motto – that a renewal of religious life as such is necessary. A renewal of religious life! If religious life is to be renewed, then it is first and foremost necessary to realize the source of the irreligiousness of many contemporary religious denominations. When these two gentlemen came to see me at the very beginning of this movement, there was an undertone that we do not actually have a religious life among those on whom you rely first, that religious life is no longer a reality. |

It is first and foremost necessary for religious life to enter into the inner being of the human personality. As you can see now with Pastor Geyer, this awareness is no longer present. Overcoming this state of mind, which you find in Pastor Geyer, that means the first step in religious life. If someone cannot rise above the point where he comes to terms with this personal impossibility of representing the spiritual, then this is a degree of irreligiousness that is precisely an important factor in our present spiritual life. Then, in the case of those personalities to whom you have referred, there is such animosity against religious life as such. What you said about this longing to experience the spiritual as something non-sensuous, but not wanting to express it in the garments - whereby the practical can still be discussed - that is actually not a representation of the spiritual, but a fight against it. That is basically what has most strongly diverted mankind from the spiritual, that gradually the representation of the spiritual has become only an abstraction, a matter of doctrine, a matter of theory, a matter in which one shrinks from having more than a few symbols at most. As soon as one comes to the realization that this is still a representation of the spiritual that wants to reveal itself, and takes offense at the fact that the spirit, when it comes to light, wants to be creative, we are dealing with an irreligious element.

Theology does not have to deal with religion at all. It can be a theory about God and everything that is associated with God; it can also appear extremely hearty, but it is not religion. Theology can be very irreligious; and that is what I mean, and that must be said clearly and without fear, that Dr. Geyer is resigning from this movement because he did not take everything as seriously as religion, as is necessary for all of you to take the matter seriously. That is the objective element, quite apart from his personality. He cannot give himself up; that is the objective reason why he cannot go along with the movement. If you look at it that way, it becomes extraordinarily characteristic when he talks about the ten years] that he is older than Dr. Rittelmeyer. Because if you have a religious feeling, you don't say, these ten years make up what prevents me from participating in the movement, but you say: I know better that this movement is necessary, because I am ten years older; I am the oldest, therefore I also know best what is necessary. - That would be said religiously. I would like us to get the matter completely away from the person. Quite apart from the fact that Dr. Geyer is someone we all love and will continue to love, it is necessary to feel that we take religious life as such very seriously today, that we take it as a substance, that we grasp religious life within its substance. I would appreciate it if you would speak up to clarify. Various people present express their views on what they think may have led Dr. Geyer to take this step. Among other things, the following is said:

Perhaps in what led Dr. Geyer to his decision there is something of a conception of the freedom of the human personality that has not penetrated into the religious sphere. If one orients oneself more according to the intellect, one believes that one is not free in relation to that in which one engages, that one accomplishes, while clothed in cultic garments.

Rudolf Steiner: To pick out just one thing: if you look at it objectively, the matter of vestments is quite unrelated to the sense of freedom. Both the vestment question and the other matters of ritual are intimately connected with the way in which the human being grows into the spiritual and with the revelation of the spiritual in the world. Now, apart from the fact that, with regard to the robes that Pastor Geyer will wear in church in the future, he cannot say that he is free in them either. There is no question of that. We are not at all free with regard to our robes. But we can disregard that entirely, because it is insignificant.

Of course, one can err in the details, but on the whole, the aim is to give the cultus those contents that are as closely related to the human being as the human skin is to the physical body. After all, nothing imaginary is worn, but rather what the person has on him anyway when he acts in the right feeling. What I mean is, the astral body has very specific figures and colorations when a person is in the mood to perform a religious sacrifice, and this is expressed in the vestments. So to rebel against the garb would be the same as saying, I want a blue skin instead of the flesh. This has nothing to do with personal freedom. If one understands the cultic properly, one must think quite differently about these things at all, and one cannot have a subjective aversion. That one prefers to wear a tailcoat rather than a surplice, one cannot assert, because that makes no sense.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: We have spoken in Breitbrunn about the fact that we have the feeling that everything so far that has not worked as a cult in the world was a kind of religious game compared to what strives to work with the spirit into the outer world.

Rudolf Steiner: It is important to create a real religious feeling, in contrast to those who talk a lot in passive performances, but who do not lead a religious life. What you said is correct, but it must be said in the form: absorbing and teaching anthroposophy can be completely irreligious. Finding anthroposophy in the soul already has a religious character. One can take in anthroposophy with one's intellect, one can certainly do that, but it does not need to be a religion. What many theologians today take in and teach, in whatever color, has nothing to do with religion. I think we can calmly regard this as an objective difficulty. I believe that we will have to experience these difficulties in some form. One can have the feeling that as soon as one goes to people, one stands outside the fruit, one points to the shell of a nut, but one does not stand inside the kernel of the nut. One cannot properly pass on what one has found within oneself as religious. I hope that we here in Dornach will finally break through the shell of the nut and get to the kernel, otherwise everything will die down again.

Then we may discuss a few external matters. When would you prefer me to speak to you in your meetings?

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: We are entirely at your disposal.

Rudolf Steiner: Then perhaps it would be best to decide from day to day, so let us say tomorrow at four or half past three. Tomorrow morning we have a reception over in the big building, so it would be less easy in the morning. We could consider the morning for the other days. The main thing would be to be clear about the time. Perhaps there are other things to be decided?

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: Do you have any further questions or suggestions for us?

Rudolf Steiner: I would have preferred it if you would tell me what you expect.

Emil Bock: I would like to say first of all that our group is actually very keen to really achieve a constitution for our cause, to be allowed to make a start on our work. So that we actually do not have the expectation in the foreground, as far as we can see, that we get a lot of theory, but that we are all attuned to the fact that the first deed happens to us from the whole course of events that we have to bring into the world. And then, after the conversations that we were recently able to have, we have already made some preparations. We have tried to prepare things and have found that we still need a lot more detailed information so that things can be done right. We want to accept from you, with heartfelt gratitude, whatever theory and support we can get, as far as we are allowed to. If I may say something about this, it is that in our work we are confronted with completely new fields of science everywhere. For example, we have come to the conclusion that in order to truly understand what we see on the garment, we need a whole cultic chemistry that will enlighten us about the nature of matter and how it is transformed. The meaning of the cultic colors... [gap in the stenographer's text]. A cultic physics will have to tell us what happens through the transformation in the course of the year. This has become clear to us from the question of clothing, that we still have a great deal to work through and that we have to say how cultic is actually present throughout the history of civilization. So that we are actually hungry for a great deal of material that brings us close to history, religious history, and the history of civilization, which has a cultic and imaginative relationship to the question of clothing.

In their pastoral work, all our friends have certainly thought about what we were told last fall in very brief references to pastoral psychiatry. We are facing very difficult challenges that we are not up to because we still lack this very new kind of theology. We still understand the Bible too poorly, and we would like to hear as much as possible and get advice on how we can develop these large areas of theology. That is what goes into the theoretical. First of all, it is important to us that we start practically. If the doctor has time, we would like him to tell us everything that can serve as an incentive and a tool for our own work. A myriad of questions have been raised that we would like to ask.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, these questions must of course be dealt with. The first thing I have to do, what I would like to do with you tomorrow, is to first of all establish the spiritual constitution of your community as such. I do not mean what the community is in the broader sense, but the community of priests. I must speak to you about what this community of priests will mean, how it should be constituted, how it should give itself self-awareness, because the reality depends on this community of priests being self-aware, in order to truly become the bearer of a spiritual consciousness of the present. Without this, a renewal of religious life will not be possible. This is lacking in all newer spiritual movements, which are aggregates that live on earth and are not constituted by the spiritual world. This will be the first thing we will talk about tomorrow in terms of what should actually happen. We do not need to talk about these things theoretically; you have to understand them in a very practical way. It will be a matter of awakening the spirit within us to a ritual act, I would like to say, if I may use the prosaic expression, that we demonstrate how a ritual act should take place. We want to start in this direction.

On the other hand, the external organization of the community, which is also necessary for us, will have to take the form of a discussion, because here we are dealing with extremely important and decisive matters. But the point is that we can only move forward or backward with human reasons, for example, what could still be done to really preserve the community, that would be the dry prose. Because now the house in Stuttgart has been started to be built and yet the possibility of continuing the construction is lacking.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: The money is there. The house in Stuttgart is paid for, as far as it is built. What is still needed will come.

Rudolf Steiner: Others, such as Mr. Leinhas, will also have a say in this. It is only so far as it goes to a certain point, but no further.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: The question of how to obtain the vestments and implements is a very tricky one. We all want to get to the cult as soon as possible. We have been pushing for it since the summer, so that it does not come to that only in the last few days. If we have to approach the matter, it is our wish that we do so as soon as possible, because only then will we feel fully immersed in it.

Rudolf Steiner: It will be done. Of course, you only have to take up the cult in the way it can only be meant: with complete seriousness.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: We celebrated the sacrifice together every day in Breitbrunn. There is a great desire among us that it could also be done every day here. And if it could be done in a better form.

Rudolf Steiner: You mean that someone celebrated the service?

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: Read it, that's all we could do.

Rudolf Steiner: We will gather here at half past three.

My dear friends! There is something that we must do before we can introduce and cultivate worship, and this is something that is not easily understood, especially in Protestant circles, because in these circles religion is not based on worship and what worship stands for is less understood, felt and appreciated. Worship naturally stands as a revelation of the spiritual. Now I assume that what you have either heard directly from me here in discussions that were actually always meant for you in the esoteric sense, or what has come to you from such discussions through others, that this is already bearing on your soul with a certain power, with a certain force, and that you are aware of how seriously this movement must be meant if it is to take place at all. Therefore, under these circumstances, I would like to say what needs to be said today.

In the true sense of the word, churches and religious communities should always be founded out of the spiritual world in accordance with the order of the world. And in essence, churches and religious communities have been founded out of the spiritual order of the world. This spiritual order of the world underlies, of course, everything that appears here on earth as a manifestation of the spiritual, even if, for example, a spiritual mission is not necessarily present in sectarian movements. In the case of a particular sect there may even be the illusion of a spiritual mission, or perhaps the whole justification is more or less conscious or even unconscious. But you will always notice, even in such cases where untruthfulness instead of truth is present, that those who found such a thing usually invoke at least an alleged impulse from the spiritual world. In any case, however, what goes out into the world as a religious community, as it is meant here, must derive the impulse for it from the spiritual world. This must be particularly emphasized for the reason that both the Catholic communities, that is, the Roman Catholic and also the Eastern Catholic communities, and the Protestant communities have failed in this respect, only in two different directions: The Catholic community, which essentially, though transformed beyond recognition, has retained the cultus that is older than Christianity on earth and also older than its present form, the Catholic community has failed by gradually allowing the center of gravity to shift into a secular institution built on external domination, into which, of course, the personal impulses of the individual rulers then always play a role. You only have to go back to the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite to see clear evidence that the community of priests – if I may put it this way, the hierarchy of priests on earth – is intended as an image of the spiritual hierarchy above. It is intended only as an image, and this, according to the view of the early Christian period, precludes the church from exercising power in the sense of a secular imperial principle here on earth. It is true that the Catholic Church has the possibility within itself of placing one or other of its priests in an objective position and of making the cult there or there true; on the other hand, as an institution, it has completely lost the possibility of being an be an image of a spiritual reality, although there are priests within the Catholic Church through whose own purity, I might say, the impurity that enters the cultus through the personal element is in turn thrown out. So in a sense, the Catholic Church has brought down into the secular institution what should be felt as the original impulse of the spiritual worlds.

The Evangelical Protestant churches – we need not speak of the Russian Orthodox Church here for the time being because it has no current significance for Central Europe – have, by completely discarding ritual, brought the entire religious practice down to the individual human individuality with their subjective conviction of the truth of so-called “propositions”. What I mean is that the individual represents before the community what he, subjectively, can believe to be true. This counteracts the formation of communities, since such subjective belief is the beginning of the atomization of the community. The convictions of individuals will, of necessity, always take on a personal and subjective coloration if they are inwardly honest and sincere, and so every pastor will have to have his own opinion, especially if his religious conviction is related to a theology that engages in discussions of propositions about the spiritual world. In addition, there is something that you must all carefully, deeply and seriously consider if you really want to practice pastoral care: You must be aware that in the Protestant church regulations today, the necessary contrast between the lay believer and the pastor has actually disappeared. The disappearance of this contrast is seen as something excellent by certain modern convictions, but it can never be a real impulse for pastoral care. Almost everything that arises within the Protestant clergy today in discussions and debates about religion is such that the clergy speak in such a way that the simple religious person must speak. Of course, they speak in a more educated, scientific way, but they speak about the recognition or non-recognition of this or that religious impulse; they also speak about: What is religion at all? What is the relationship of the soul, the heart of the religious person to God, to the supersensible world? and so on. The discussions take on this coloration. But these discussions can have this coloring with simple religious people, but not with those who exercise a priestly office. The priest must be clear about the fact that he is not the one who is protected, but the shepherd of souls, that he therefore cannot put the question in the foreground: How does the soul of man relate to God or to the supersensible world? but must ask himself: How can I teach these people, how can I care for the souls of those entrusted to me? — If religious questions are of concern to him, they must, so to speak, have only an esoteric character for him, which he never brings up for discussion before a lay audience.

This is, of course, a somewhat radical statement, but it must be stated so radically so that it is felt: If you want to establish such a community today, as your group wants to do, where you want to become priests and not simple lay believers, then you have to be aware that the questions of the special character of religion and religious life do not play a role, but rather the esoteric community of soul shepherds must be felt from the outset. Of course, one can say that this contradicts the democratic feeling. But every church, every real religious community, contradicts the democratic feeling. And if something is to become purely democratic, as is attempted within the Protestant Church, the result is the absurdity that the religious community is completely atomized by the fact that the community elects its pastor according to democratic considerations. This introduces a completely unspiritual principle, the principle of an unspiritual choice, into the religious current, and this further atomizes it. Each individual shepherd of souls must receive his special mission from the spiritual world, and the result must be that the whole procedure of [democratic] election [of the shepherd of souls by the community] is regarded as a farce, which it actually is.

It is essential that we look at these things in complete earnest and not cast a veil over them, because otherwise there would be no need to found a new community, otherwise one could still hope that the old communities could be improved. But this new community is based on the conviction that the old one can no longer be improved. Only on this rock can that which you want to found rest. But then you must have such a sense of coherence that you perceive it directly as coming from the spiritual world itself.

Now, of course, you may object: Anthroposophy speaks in such a way that it derives its insights from experiences in the spiritual world; but it is difficult to maintain a direct connection with the spiritual world in such a way that this religious community can truly speak from an awareness of this connection with the spiritual world. — But, my dear friends, here we have something that must not be left untouched. The education of Western humanity has, of course, brought forth many human virtues in the field of outer activity. There have been brave people in the outer world, even in recent centuries, of course. But what has been rooted out by Western education – I mean the whole Ahrimanic education of the last centuries – is the courage of the soul. If we are to be blunt about it, we must say that souls have become cowardly, and that the souls of the spiritual leaders of Western human development have become cowardly. That is to say, they do not dare to bring the active soul forces into real activity; they shrink from calling upon the spiritual that lies in the human soul to such an activity that the connection with the spiritual world is established. In this case they rely on the passive, they rely on passively receiving visions to which they surrender, while the real connection with the spiritual world must be sought in activity. And so I cannot say otherwise than that this enormous burden, which rests on the spiritual life of Western humanity, has gradually caused such an eclipse of the soul that these souls are indeed little inclined to courageously and bravely unfold the activity to ascend to the spiritual world through the path of exercises.

My dear friends, take only what has been given to you as a breviary; after all, this is just one of many things you have received. If you simply apply with the appropriate spiritual courage what has been given to you as a breviary, you have every opportunity to gain a connection to the spiritual world. What is then still missing is merely the inner spiritual courage. Of course, today there is nothing else for it but to take the, I would say paradoxical path, to achieve courage through humility, to say to ourselves: We human beings live in community; that which is general lives in each and every one of us, and so , what is general, has also initially paralyzed our courage; we must wait in humility until we have the opportunity to awaken this courage in our soul through practice, and we must use the first steps of our priesthood to wait in humility until this courage awakens in our soul. But we must understand humility in the sense that it is a detour to courage, which consists in man really knowing himself in spiritual community with spiritual beings. Actually, this knowledge is the prerequisite for any priesthood. In this respect, perhaps a model can be gained from the Catholic Church, albeit a daunting one, but a real one. Those who become clergy within the Catholic Church are trained in such a way that the consciousness of their connection with the spiritual world is awakened in them, that the intellectual principle, which makes man so passive, is first extinguished, paralyzed. This is actually something that the Catholic Church has been doing since the fourth century AD: sweeping away the burgeoning intellectuality, paralyzing it, so that the deeper powers of the soul can develop more easily. One could say, in fact, that for a person who has gone through what you all went through in elementary school, before you had even really become human, through an education colored by intellectualism, for such a person, choirs of angels could appear on any occasion. These revelations of the angelic choirs would have no connection to the person, because intellectuality simply paralyzes the ability to receive. In contrast to this, the Catholic Church adorns the authoritative clergy in such a way that it may be enough for a person thus liberated from his intellectuality to hear the “Ite missa est” just once at the end of a mass, intoned in the way it is in some churches, for the gates of the spiritual world to be opened to such a person through what comes from the words of the mass. You may need to speak to such a person only a single word, a single sentence, and the connection with the spiritual world is there.

Of course, this is most eminently difficult for you all, because it is impossible for you to de-intellectualize yourself. You have to go through everything that is taught about all kinds of ecclesiastical concepts that are not needed at all in the sense of the Catholic Church, and that are even harmful in its sense. But this must be pointed out in order to draw attention to the fact that those powers of activity, which a priest does need if he wants to feel the connection with the spiritual world, are covered with a thick layer. But at the same time, the principles of priestly ordination are implied, and the principles for the practice of worship are implied. But for that you must understand something else.

In the spiritual world, the validity of human language begins to fade at a relatively low level. It is simply the case that when one establishes contact with a dead person, one must first learn the language through which one can communicate with the soul in the spiritual world. After a relatively short time, this soul loses all understanding of nouns, of everything that is crystallized in nouns. But it still retains the ability to understand verbs, that is, everything that points to what is becoming, to what is active. But the more the soul grows into the spiritual world, the more it loses the ability to even feel that the way of human speech is its property, and one must, in speaking, pass over to what can be expressed in interjections, to come to a common ground between people here on earth and those in the spiritual world, of course also with such spiritual entities that never appear in a human body on earth. Language is an earthly product, and it is more or less so in different degrees, according to the particular language. And so we must realize that what is put into words, what is expressed in words — such as the pulpit or the theological — can indeed only ever be a one-sided presentation of the reality of the spirit. It is impossible for you to tell people higher spiritual truths in a single unequivocal sentence if you do not present the things from different sides. This is not a triviality, but it even applies to the relationship of human thought, not only of human language, to the higher spiritual world. If I say “Christ in me”, that is one truth, but we can also turn it around and say “I am in Christ”, that is also a truth. Both are truths in the sense in which one can establish a human theory of knowledge, but they contradict each other. You cannot elaborate the image: Christ in me - I am in Christ. How do you want to elaborate the image that the Christ can be in you by being in him? And yet both are truths, that is to say, they are truths with regard to the world and not truths with regard to the supersensible world. The truth with regard to the supersensible world lies between the two statements, which, of course, need not be in complete opposition to each other, but can be at a different angle to each other.

What is impossible in this way – to bring religious substance to people – is possible to bring to people in worship. It is also possible if you are able to carry what you gain from the cult into your preaching. For the lay believer, the cult is an edification, a revelation; for the one who practices the cult, the cult must be a constant source of inspiration. It is a true cultus when it is this source of inspiration, when the one who practices the cultus – and in the highest degree this applies of course to the cultus of the Mass – feels in the act of saying the words: You can only preach in this way when you say the Mass; you would not have the spiritual substance within you from which you speak if you did not say the Mass. There must be a real relationship between the person performing the service and the reality of the cult, especially the cult of the Mass. For the cult of the Mass actually contains everything that connects man with the spiritual world, and it contains it in such a way that it can work as a continuous inspiration, in which one stands when the Mass is experienced in the right way.

It is therefore necessary, my dear friends, to grasp the concept of the Mass in such a way that you say to yourselves each time: the day brings sunrise, the day brings sunset; between sunset and sunrise there is then the night; but there is also a period of time between the daylight and the light that comes into the world when the Mass is celebrated. This belongs to the course of events in the cosmos, just as the course of the sun belongs to it. Reading or celebrating the Mass is a real thing. Perhaps it can be expressed in another way: when we look at our earth and its surroundings, we have minerals, plants, animals, and further afield we have stars, sun and moon, clouds, rivers, mountains; but although physicists dream of the constancy of matter, all this will one day no longer be there. All this is a temporary phenomenon in the universe, that is, in place of what we have on earth in our minerals, plants, animals, and so on, there will be nothing, less than nothing. But if you then look back at the events that took place on this earth as a sacrifice, their effects would always be present. The cult is more real than nature, if it is practiced in the right way. It is more real than nature. If you do not just take this theoretically, but grasp it in its full severity, it means something tremendous. It deepens the words: Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away, whereby, of course, by “words” is not meant what any Chinese, Japanese or German language has as a random formulation in relation to the cosmos. If the Christ is understood as speaking in Aramaic, then of course this is also a random formulation. But the Logos is that which lives in reality and in reality passes over into the evolution of the world, so that one is indeed standing in a reality with the sacrificial act, which is a reality that is more real than any natural process. This gives us a sense of responsibility, and this sense of responsibility is needed if we wish to be mediators between the spiritual world and people who are in great need of such mediation, but cannot receive it through a mere teaching, however edifying it may be. This does not mean, however, that no teaching should be given; it should certainly be given, but this teaching acquires its special power and authority through its appearance in the context of the cultic. Thus the things that are given as teaching are precisely integrated into what lives as reality in the cult.

One could say that the greatest contribution to the spread of materialism was the rejection of the cultic, because it simply limited humanity to views of the divine that only appear in the guise of the earthly. One speaks about the Divine in earthly words, in poor earthly words. These earthly words can become rich when they are backed by inspiration, which is effectively evoked by the cult. It is indeed the case that the action should carry the word. And so the word of reading the Gospel should also be carried by the action. Therefore, we incorporate the reading of the Gospel into the Mass action, and in doing so, we acquire the right to understand and also to feel and sense the reading of the Gospel in such a way that the message from the spiritual world, which the Gospel represents, introduces that which then prepares for the actual sacrificial action in the offertory. For it is through the offertory, which, as one of the main acts of the Mass, follows the reading of the Gospel, that the setting for the Mass is actually only given. If you let the content of the ritual, which you all became well acquainted with during your stay in Breitbrunn, sink in, you will see that the entire spirit of the Gospel particularly sets the scene for the offertory, and that even the utensils and so on are purified to such an extent that the next step can take place. Naturally, within the Catholic Church, the view that one should have towards these things has actually been materialized. There they consecrate a chalice or a monstrance once and for all, so that the monstrance is once and for all the Holy of Holies. They even consecrate the water there. That is not a spiritual reality, but a spiritual reality has actually been externalized, materialized. The essential thing is that the spiritual reality is carried by the human soul, and that with every single sacrifice of the Mass, the chalice and what goes with it, the bread and the wine, must first be consecrated during the sacrifice of the Mass. So consecration is an ongoing act that must be maintained in perpetual liveliness, so that only during the offertory is the consecration venue created for the following one. And when the transubstantiation follows, the transubstantiation, one is indeed in the midst of a real, spiritual transformation.

Now it is simply the case that the views of the first Christian centuries, that is, of the people on whom it depended, could not actually be disputed, but were only begun to be disputed and discussed in later centuries, since the approach of Wycliffe and others, because these discussions were all already influenced by materialism. Just think, if we take the dispute in the most crude way, it is the case that people said: The bread cannot contain the body of the Lord, it cannot be the body of the Lord!

Yes, my dear friends, only someone who sees a gross reality in this external appearance before him would speak in such a way. What you have before you as bread is not real in the true sense of the word. You must first go to the real thing if you want to discuss such things as transubstantiation. Because it is a matter of getting beyond the trivial view that what appears as a whitish or yellowish color filling the space or what meets the sense of taste is a reality. As long as it is supposed to be a reality, in which even all kinds of little demons are supposed to be present, corresponding to the imperishability of matter, one can raise all kinds of objections in a discussion. But that does not address the issue. The issue here is such things as were hinted at here yesterday with the expression “spiritual chemistry”, which is also used in the new era. For transubstantiation must be considered in such a way that what is actually taking place outwardly at the altar for the eye is Maya, appearance, but that the process that is taking place spiritually is nevertheless a reality within this community, and not only within this community, but within this place. Transubstantiation is there. And only because the spectators have ahrimanically configured eyes, which make them believe that the outer sensual reality is a reality, they do not see what is going on. This is something we must have in our consciousness. You must feel this in what I am saying and what I am now saying here and there to characterize the full seriousness of the present spiritual situation of humanity.

I said in a lecture in London recently that one must get used to the fact that the things said for the physical plane may sound contradictory when the same things are said from the spiritual world. I used the example that it is quite correct, when speaking for the physical plane, to say that Rousseau was a great man for this or that reason; that is quite all right for the physical plane. But seen from the spiritual world, one can only say: Rousseau was the general babbler of modern civilization, because everything he said is, seen from the spiritual worlds, the shallowest chatter. That is, today one must become accustomed in an intensive way to the fact that the spiritual world is something different than this physical world. This must be seen if one wants to gain a connection with the spiritual world.

Now you might say that this is just the old grumbling about the spiritual world, as it was in the Middle Ages. That is not right. The physical world becomes something completely different when viewed in the way I have just characterized it. Every flower becomes different; but it loses nothing, it only gains the fact that it becomes a mediator to the spiritual world. Does the flower lose something when I admire it as it stands in the field, when I can say all kinds of beautiful things about it, right up to the revelations of a good lyrical poet, and when it then becomes clear to me: yes, but that is not all the flower is, the flower also reveals that it merges upwards into an ethereal substance? This astral substance runs in coils (he draws on the blackboard), and through these coils one can ascend to the world of the planets. What underlies the flower is a kind of spiritual ladder into the supermundane world, and by ascending this ladder one encounters the forces that make flowers grow out of the earth and up towards heaven. Yes, if you add this to what you can say about the flower based on sensory observation, will you live in a medieval asceticism? Your view of the flower will only be enriched by it. The soul must immerse itself in this mood if it wants to receive what worship can bring it, if it simply learns to see what the physical eye does not see.

You must bring these feelings and perceptions with you to the ritual; only then will what happens become what it should be; and only then can it be said that you really enjoy with the host what the ritual speaks of. And only then are the four parts of the mass fulfilled: the gospel, the offertory, the transubstantiation or consecration, and communion.

These are things that you should not take as theory, but which I am telling you today for the reason that you approach the matter with the right feeling and only by doing so make things the truth; because without this feeling they are not truths. A mass can be a sacrifice to the devil just as easily as it can be a sacrifice to God. It is not the insignificant thing that the Protestant mind would like to make of it. A mass celebrated by a priest may be a sacrifice to God today within the

table of the Catholic Church, but it is never the nothing that the Protestants would like to make of it. They certainly do not succeed in making the Mass an insignificant material act, but they can make it a sacrifice to the devil under certain circumstances. Because what happens [in the Mass] is a reality, that is, the action in question is oriented either in the right or in the wrong direction, but not in a direction that leads to nothingness. However, it can also lead in a very bad, harmful direction. You must be aware that you can say to yourself: I cannot actually remain neutral, I can only serve God or the devil – with all possible intermediate stages, of course. Serving the devil is a very difficult task, for that you must be a consciously bad person; but there are all kinds of powers between the divine and the ahrimanic world.

This is part of the state of mind that one must have for the whole of the cult. When one has this state of mind, this inner liveliness that places one in the spiritual world, then the degree of consciousness that one attains is simply a matter of time. Do not forget that what you can achieve during the sacrifice of the Mass always draws your soul into the spiritual world, that your soul is drawn into the scene of the spiritual world, that you are not just saying something with your mouth and doing something with your hands, but that you are standing within the spiritual world. You must be aware of this when you consider the concept of worship. That means you must be very clear in your own mind that in the act of worship you are performing something that is a reality, and that when you speak as the celebrant, you are also speaking as a messenger from other worlds. You must feel as such a messenger. You must not feel as one who only establishes a connection between what is here on earth and heaven, but also as one who brings something from heaven into the earthly. That is your difference from the mere lay believer, and that is the tone that you must bring to the world if you want to found a justly existing priestly community. The world must feel that you, as priests, are attuned to the impulses from the spiritual world. You do not have to tell the world this in theory, for that would stir it up. But you must do what you do with your consciousness; then you will do the right thing. And then you can say, for example, that the words spoken at the ordination or at other ceremonies are the reflection of what takes place beforehand in the spiritual world, because you yourself have this connection to the spiritual world in your state of mind. What then appears as an outward act visible to the eyes is, of course, the legitimate reflection of the spiritual event; but one must not see it as a mere symbol when one stands before the believer. For the believer, what takes place outwardly in relation to the religious is really the same as - take any human being whom you say is a great painter, but he has never painted a picture. It may well be that he is a great painter for the spiritual world, but here in this world a painter must have actually painted a picture. They may all be priests for the spiritual world, but here in the physical world they must practice a cult in order to be true priests; then they behave in the same way as a painter behaves in order to paint. That is the great error of Protestantism today, when it says, figuratively speaking, that it does not matter that pictures are painted, but only that painters are there, so one should abolish painting, so that such terrible sensual elements do not enter into the treatment of the spiritual. It is really so. Only, when one says it, today things are such that they seem quite paradoxical to man, because even within the Catholic Church the self-evident, organic nature of worship is no longer felt, although even today one can still find naive Catholics who already have a feeling for the reality that lies in worship. Sometimes this is even more intense in the faithful than in the Catholic priesthood.

That is what I wanted to tell you, because anything I could add to what has been said so far can only be a deepening of the feeling and the state of mind. During the time we are gathered here, we must become priests, so to speak, through what is said and done among us. After all, everything that needs to be said to become a priest has already been said. Basically, not much needs to be added, except perhaps to clarify one or other sentiment.

So now we have reached the point that tomorrow at the beginning of the lesson I will first explain how we in this community now have to relate to this whole thing in practice, because of course some kind of consecration of the community will have to be carried out. To do this, it will be necessary for what has so far been described as necessary in theory to become immediately real in practice within this community. So tomorrow we will first deal with the question: How does an individual become a priest, and how do the individual members of the community relate to one another, so that those sitting here today become a priestly organism? Then we must move on to the practical exercise, to the demonstration of what I have said about celebrating a cult, and we will see that we can then really bring about the sacrifice of the Mass in a practical way.

I would like to have said this today for the strengthening of your souls. If you take it in the right way and bring with you the necessary mood for it, you will really be able to become what you want to become. You must leave as different people than when you came. You have not needed that so far, but you must have it now. You must leave here not only with the feeling that you have taken something in, but with the feeling that you have truly become something else. Consider what that means for human consciousness. If you have thought about it properly, we will be able to proceed in the right way tomorrow.

My dear friends! Today, we want to prepare ourselves for the coming together that we actually have to accomplish in the first days of our being together here, by letting the Act of Consecration of Man — as I would like to call the sacrifice of the Mass — take effect on us, even if today it is only by interpreting and hinting, because some things simply have to be explained.

It is indeed the case that this Act of Consecration of Man contains everything that should result from the soul shepherd's mood and the soul shepherd's connection with the spiritual world. In the Act of Consecration of Man, the Christian current also lives in perpetual and direct presence, and this current of Christian substance moves through this Act of Consecration of Man, so that this Act of Consecration of Man must actually stand at the center of Christian worship. So for now, we will let it take effect on us as such. From it, much will arise that may need to be added in a few words as a kind of commentary. But in the next few days, we will work to be able to perform a demonstration that is fully adequate for the Mass. So I will hint at what I cannot explain here.

Accompanied by his acolytes, the priest comes out from somewhere, where he has prepared himself in an appropriate manner, carrying the chalice, which he carries covered. The acolyte on the right carries the missal; the acolyte on the left carries a bell, with which he indicates by three rings that the Act of Consecration of Man will begin. The chalice is first placed on the altar, left covered. The priest descends the steps of the altar and says before the altar: “Let us worthily perform the Act of Consecration of Man from the Revelation of Christ, in worship of Christ, in devotion to the deed of Christ.

May the Father-God be in us
The Son-God create in us
The Spirit God enlightens us.

And turning around:

Christ in you.

The altar boy says:

And fill your spirit.

The priest:

May God the Father be in us
The Son of God create in us
The Spirit God enlightens us.

In the consciousness of our humanity, we feel the divine Father. He is in all that we are. Our substance is His substance. Our being is His being. He goes through everything in us through our existence.

In the experience of the Christ in our humanity, we feel the divine Son. He reigns as the Spirit-Word through the world. He creates in all that we create. Our being is His creating. Our life is His creating life. He creates through us in all soul-making.

In the grasping of the spirit by our humanity, we feel the healing God. May He shine as the Spirit-light through the world. May He shine in everything we behold. May our beholding be imbued with His Spirit-light. May our cognition be accepted by Him into His spiritually radiant life. May He spiritualize all the activity of our human soul. [Rudolf Steiner now reads the text of the gospel story (see GA 343, pages 414 f.) and the beginning of the gospel of John:]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being that has come into being.
In this was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.
There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.
He came for a witness, to bear witness about the Light, so that through him all might believe.
He was not the light, but a witness to the light. For the true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world.
It was in the world, and the world was made through it, but the world did not recognize it.
But it came to individual people (it came to people with a sense of self), and these individual people (people with a sense of self) did not receive it.
But those who received it were able to reveal themselves as children of God through it.
Those who trusted in his name came into being not from blood, not from the will of the flesh, and not from human will, but from God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only Son of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
John bears witness about him and clearly proclaims: This was he of whom I said, 'After me will come the one who has a higher rank than I, for he was before me. For we have all received out of his fullness, and grace upon grace has been bestowed upon us.
For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Christ.
God has never seen anyone with his eyes. The only begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father of the world, has become the guide in this beholding.

[Rudolf Steiner now reads the creed (see CW 343, p. 510) and then the text of the offertory, the consecration and the communion (see CW 343, pages 416, 464 and 471) and concludes:)

At the end, the opening epistle is repeated on the right side of the altar. Then:

The Act of Consecration of Man, that was it.

In the next few days, we will demonstrate and perform this act, which I have only hinted at, again in its entirety, as best we can. But it seems to me that from what has just been said, the spirit of this consecration can flow into your hearts, and that by living the spirit of this consecration in our hearts, we can accomplish in a worthy manner what we will have to accomplish in the coming days.

I note that in an original consecration service, a sermon was inserted at the point after the reading of the Gospel, before proceeding to the Creed. Today, the Catholic Church often separates this sermon from the sacrifice of the Mass and regards it as a separate entity. This is understandable, since in modern times preaching has taken on a more intellectual character, whereas in the original services of consecration, precisely at the point where the Christian gospel word, perceived as the word of God, was read, what was then preaching could be spoken in direct connection with this word. It was something that continually needed symbolic, pictorial clothing, something that was not merely shaped out of the subjective will and conviction of the preacher, but something that was felt to be released in the heart by the divine word of the Gospel and that could be given to the faithful as a kind of gift of the continuation of the Gospel word. One must only imagine how this human consecration ritual has emerged from ancient and most ancient cults and has found its way to the corresponding ritual for the flow of Christianity through the evolution of the earth. The further we go back in pre-Christian times, the more we find that the very place where cults of consecration took place was regarded as something that was set apart from the rest of the world, that was consecrated and hallowed in itself. Thus, when one was in this place, one felt as if it were a second world; even in the outer world, this still often resounds in those who have an inkling of such things. Goethe often speaks of the great and the small world. He does not mean a church by the “small world,” but since he had become a Freemason, he meant by the small world the Masonic lodge, and the great world is the universe for him. For it was clear to him that where a ritual act is performed, there is a world, and he calls it the “small world” because it is spatially small compared to the “big world”. Schiller meant something deeper when he made the statement:

Friends, you seek the sublime.
But the sublime does not dwell in space.

By this he meant that in the smaller space, in the “small world”, the sublime should be sought, independently of all external greatness, in the smaller world the greater world.

And so we can say: Since space was already considered sacred and hallowed, it was the case that the performance of the consecration cult was associated with the celebrants - who also placed the teaching brother, the preacher, before the faithful — felt themselves to be representatives here on earth, through whom the continuation of the word of God spoken in the Gospel could flow, in that they refrained from subjective formulation and endeavored to use such a formulation that expressed itself in symbols and images.

For our time, however, it will be entirely in harmony with the spiritual world if you hold a sermon proper alongside the Act of Consecration of Man and if this is inserted between the Gospel reading and the saying of the Creed, and if perhaps something more clothed in symbolic forms, according to the seasons, is spoken to the hearts and souls of the members of the community. This could be brief and calculated not so much to teach as to edify, as a continuation of the gospel word in the symbol.

Then, as the next step, I would like to say, as a preparatory step, that you imagine this human consecration ritual – which, in a sense, is being used by me in this way for the first time – as having been received directly from the spiritual world , whereas all those who have performed the consecrations so far have sought their authorization in the continuous succession within the Christian [church], so that those who have performed these consecrations have said to themselves: I have been ordained by one who was ordained by another, and so on through the centuries until the last one was ordained by one of the apostles, who himself followed the Christ. Apostolic continuity is, after all, what the celebrants in the churches invoke as justification for the Mass, that is, those who have performed the Mass until now. In the Catholic Church, this apostolic continuity has gradually become something that has taken on an external character. Therefore, in this day and age, it is possible for us to receive this authorization directly from the spiritual world, so that you can celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass. And the fact that you can do this should be the focus of our efforts over the next few days.

You will have to create a substitute for the place of receiving the apostolic blessing in Christian tradition, so to speak, through the mood and the state of your soul. At the starting point of your new priestly work, you will have to be completely clear that your will and your feelings, and thus your thinking, which depends on your feelings and your will, are such that everything you accomplish as a pastor is to be accomplished in the name of the Christ, the Christ whom you recognize in the particular spirituality and spiritual worlds as they have been presented from the most diverse points of view within the anthroposophical movement. But above all, you must become aware of the Christ in the present, the Christ who, in the immediate present, sends his power into everything you accomplish in detail and who, above all, is present, really present, in the Act of Consecration of Man. If you did not have the awareness of the presence of Christ in the Act of Consecration of Man and of the meaning of this Act of Consecration of Man, and if you did not take the opportunity to bring about the direct presence of Christ, you would not perform this Act of Consecration of Man in the right spirit.

Now it will be a matter of my bringing a formula with me tomorrow that each of you will speak in the sense that by speaking this formula, you will then take it into your heart in such a way that it becomes, as it were, a that by realizing what is contained in the formula, he feels that he is spiritually part of this community, which you have resolved to be part of. This will constitute the first preparation for what for this group should be ordination to the priesthood, which should also be undertaken during this time. But it will be necessary for you first to feel united with the spiritual that must live in you through inwardly speaking such a formula if you are to live together in the right way in the community you have formed.

Then, however, it will be necessary for you to prepare this community in such a way that it has an authority that is taken for granted, so that when communities are formed, the pastor is not chosen by election, but rather that - even if the initiative to appoint a pastor comes from the community, this community turns to this newly founded original community of priests, which you are to be, so that a pastor may be sent to it, the community. Only in this way, that even if the initiative comes from the community, the soul shepherd is requested by the priestly community you have founded, only in this way is the meaning fully fulfilled, that this priestly community of yours carries the spiritual from spiritual worlds down to those who want to be members of the community.

It will then also be necessary that we — having, as it were, praised ourselves for what we want to be through the formula just mentioned — also establish a kind of hierarchy tomorrow among those who have initially dedicated themselves to this community. The serious event of Dr. Geyer's resignation has shaken what I believe was in harmony with the spiritual worlds: that Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Licentiate Bock should initially form this triumvirate, which should set the tone in a certain sense, because the fact of the matter is that such a center must be there. Of course, such a center cannot be created today with the same jurisdiction that similar communities in older times had endowed to a central power. But nevertheless, measures will be necessary that make the cohesion of this circle appear as serious as possible, so that once someone has decided to be in it, they do not simply leave again without the act of leaving being felt as a world fact and then also understood accordingly. Communities that aspire to form spiritual leadership and into which one can freely enter and leave as one pleases, carry within themselves the seed of their own destruction. That is a law of the spiritual world. It is a law of the spiritual world that the decision to enter such a community within one earth life should be so strong that one cannot take an equally strong one a second time. This should indicate the intensity of the idea that must underlie the matter. Therefore, arbitrary entry and exit cannot belong to the real development of this community. Although I am thoroughly convinced that each of you has carefully considered in your soul what your attitude to this community should be, I would still like us to reflect on the question of whether you really want to belong to it, and to discuss it with your soul before tomorrow.

Then tomorrow we will also be able to resolve the question of how we organize the central power, since there cannot be two of them after all. That is a spiritual impossibility. There is no true collaboration of wills when there are two. There can be one, as has been established in the Catholic Church by the dogma of infallibility; but then the connection with the spiritual world is very often lost when external impulses of command are joined by that which is supposed to be connected with the spiritual world. The two are too balanced and do not produce any results, even if this is not always consciously perceived. This is based on a spiritual law. So there must be three. And at this moment we are indeed in a position to look for the third one from the circle. But how we will do this will perhaps only become clear to us tomorrow. For the matter of course was a different one before the matter had progressed as far as it has now; at that time this triad had emerged as a matter of course. Now Dr. Geyer's resignation must be regarded as an extraordinarily serious event, and it forces us to clarify the question of the central orientation tomorrow. I will try to bring you suggestions for this matter, which I believe is in line with the leading spiritual powers, whose leadership we must indeed maintain if what you are founding as a community is to flourish. And in accordance with these leading spiritual powers, who want a new Christian community and implore their blessing, we want to arrange all our further steps.

My dear friends! The point of today's talk is to clarify some things that you must allow to live firmly in your soul, and on the other hand, to identify a kind of central authority, at least in principle, even if the personal cannot be resolved today. I would like to emphasize first of all that today such things as the [oath] I am talking about here are usually misunderstood. They are understood as if it were a vow that one makes to anyone. Such views have come about particularly through the Catholic Church and the Masonic orders, which have always misunderstood these things and have misunderstood them all the more as time has progressed and different conditions have arisen for the whole being of man than was the case in earlier times. Today it is only possible to understand such things [as the swearing-in ceremony], which I have to give here in a formula, as a kind of examination of oneself, as something that one writes into one's soul when one takes on such an important mission as you want to take on. It will be necessary for those who take on this mission to actually proclaim it before those who are walking with them, so that everyone who walks with them knows with whom they belong. And so it is important that this kind of vow, which one makes to oneself, contains the things that are necessary for the spiritual world today.

The first thing is that it must contain what one should make clear to oneself as one's sense of belonging to the spiritual world. And here it is important that for someone who wants to work as you do, this work must be spiritually linked to the figure of Christ and to the event of Golgotha, in such a way that the spiritual nature of and that one's entire activity is developed as an implementer of that which has been introduced into the order of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha. One must come to recognize the present and future meaning of earthly evolution as coming from the Mystery of Golgotha.

But now something else is important. It is important not to understand such a matter only in a personal sense or in a narrow human sense, but to understand it as something that one professes before the whole world, and thus also before the higher hierarchies, and to accept the real consequences, that is, to fully recognize in a spiritual way what the Catholic Church, albeit in an externalized way, does recognize. She has indeed externalized everything and only retained the external forms for everything, but at least the external forms are recognized by the Church, even if not by the individual priest. This is shown, for example, by the fact that anyone who leaves the priesthood of the Catholic Church has the skin scraped off his fingers with which he has touched the consecrated host.

Then, of course, it is necessary to keep the most important moral qualities alive in oneself through constant practice, because only under the influence of these moral qualities is it possible to achieve real work from the spiritual world.

This is what the formula that I have to present to you says. It expresses it in the form in which, I would say, the cult of the spiritual world can really be expressed in human words. I would like to make it clear that the way I feel about this movement is entirely consistent with my presentation of this formula. How you then activate it, that is, how you then make such a vow in common - but in such a way that the others are present - that will then depend on you. It must be clearly understood that I shall always maintain the attitude towards this movement which I have defined at the outset, that I can therefore be of service in an advisory capacity for the external organization, but that what is to be done must come from your own ranks. This is not because I want to reject a sense of responsibility, because such a sense is also connected with the advice I give; but because it is really a matter of, once this movement has been established, keeping it independent, so that it can most certainly have the most intimate relationship with the anthroposophical movement, but nevertheless must stand on its own and should not be something like a branch or twig of the anthroposophical movement. And the anthroposophical movement, too, must, because it must remain a movement of knowledge by its very nature, refrain from founding a religion and in turn maintain its independence from this religious movement. The relationships can be the most intimate, everything can be carried and exchanged with each other, but this distinction must be made in certain ways.

So, first of all, I will read this oath of office to you. You can then comment on it yourself if anything in it is not clear to you, but I will not be able to recommend any significant changes.

“I want to direct my I in active yearning for work out of the spiritual world.”

In Christ and in the event of Golgotha I want to recognize how a supreme spiritual lives in the facts of life on earth.

In the recognition of this interweaving I will find the meaning of my activity.

Thus I will fit myself into the human order.

My self shall only feel meaningful in such an integration.

I will acknowledge that to stray from this path means the decay of my ego to the evil powers of the world.

I will always fight the impulses that prepare the way for such aberrations.

of personal vanity and ambition
inner dishonesty of the soul
and impulses of anger, which alienate the soul from itself.
I will continually renew within myself the awareness that I walk before God's gaze in everything I do.
To recognize and cultivate this as the content of my consciousness, I promise
before the Father-God, who is in me
before the Son of God who creates in me
before the Spirit God, who enlightens me."

This contains everything that, if you keep bringing it to your attention, indicates the direction you must set for yourself if you understand yourself correctly in order to find your way into the movement you want. Naturally, the way in which you carry this out depends on you. Before we proceed, I would like to say that I have given the matter a great deal of thought and that I think that, given the circumstances, it would be best if the remaining board of directors were to make its own additions. At the beginning of such a direction, everything that happens should actually be done in full agreement with all the individuals. Nothing should be done that the individual does not agree with. But on the other hand, it cannot be a matter of voting, but only of ensuring that there is a natural agreement, that people simply know what they want in this direction. For voting is often nothing more than something highly forced, while what is, so to speak, copied from the soul of another can actually lead to the right result. Again, I must leave it to you to decide what you will do with this advice.

Now there is a little more to be said. The point is that a certain wall should also be created to prevent someone who has once been accepted into the circle of your soul shepherds from leaving this circle again without further ado. It is really the case that in such a community there can be no flourishing if people enter and leave again. Therefore, in the times before liberalism enslaved spiritual life, all such communities had the means to exercise jurisdiction over those who had become apostates. We can no longer apply the older forms, which were felt somewhat differently, and therefore, since this whole rationale is something new, a new form must be found for it. This form can hardly consist of anything other than the fact that, when the central executive committee is formed, this central executive committee is given the special pledge that in the event of one resigning, one morally recognizes under all circumstances what the executive committee or a wider circle has decreed regarding the resignation.

In this context, the question of how we ourselves shape the hierarchy should of course be decided right at the beginning of our work. Since there are not very many of you so far, it would of course be quite possible for the board of three to exercise full central power. But perhaps that is not what can be considered right under all circumstances. It would perhaps be good to start with a hierarchy right from the beginning. Later on it will have to be the case that there is a considerable difference between those who have been working for some time and those who have only just begun to work, who have only just entered your circle. And there will have to be some kind of advancement. It will even be necessary to give certain names to the individual degrees to which those concerned ascend. The choice of names is a very difficult matter in general. We have already discussed how the older Latin names, which are not suitable in Protestant areas, can be replaced by German ones. The difficulty here is that separate names will have to be created for each language area into which your movement expands. But that must be accepted. It is difficult, however, because the power to create languages for such things has diminished considerably throughout the civilized world since the 15th century, and has now ceased altogether, so that if one wants to find an adequate word for the matter today, it is not that easy.

For example, I would not be able to find a different word for the Mass than “Human Consecration Ritual”, whereby perhaps “Consecration Ritual” could then be used as an abbreviation. What has been suggested – “sacrifice celebration” – would not really capture the inner meaning of the Mass. You can see that from the fact that the word 'Meß-Opfer' (sacrifice of the Mass) is possible; but if you say 'sacrifice ceremony', it would be a celebration of the sacrifice; but that is not what it is. The point is that through the sacrifice of the Mass, the human soul is brought into connection with the higher world. So the Mass itself can be called a sacrifice, but then something must be added. It is not a mere sacrifice, but one that is further defined by the word “Mass.” But everything that the Mass is can be found, at least to a very high degree, in the words “Human Consecration Ritual.” These words also include the concept that is necessarily associated with the Mass: that it is a congregational matter and that it is done at a gathering. The essence lies in the coming together, in the uniting. Of course, one could object that in Catholicism there are “silent” masses in which the priest, who as a Catholic priest is obliged to say mass every day, simply says mass in some corner of his church and there is actually no congregation; and in a monastery where the monks are priests, each one says his mass at an altar and there is actually no congregation either. But that is not really true. From some of what you have encountered in the texts for worship, you will be able to see that for the real Christian there is no distinction made between the living and the dead. Whether the dead, who are embodied in the body, inhabit the Mass or, as one has to assume when a so-called silent Mass is read, the dead, that is no difference in principle for the real Christian. If one were to see a fundamental difference in this, then one would not take the spiritual world in its full reality. You can also see this from a formula that occurs within the mass ritual itself. So one can say that if it were claimed that there are 'silent' masses, this is actually not true; it contradicts the spirit of Christianity. There are no 'silent' masses, but parish masses, and the coming together is part of the mass. This also belongs to those masses that have now become the opposite of a sacred act, to the fairground masses; the fairground mass also presupposes that people come together.

Coming together is part of the Mass, and that is precisely expressed in the words “Human Consecration Ritual”. But it is a ritual of consecration; the word “consecration” has been retained as a German word for the old word “initiation”. “Consecration” is related to ‘immersion’, to immersing oneself in something; and it has become common to have the feeling that one is immersed in the spirit of the original revelation when speaking of consecration, just as it is designated by the term ‘initiation’, which is of course much more appropriate. Both consecration and initiation lead man back to his divine beginning, to his divine origin. This is what the word “Human Consecration Ritual” may make clear. But it has many syllables, and that is something that can naturally be a stumbling block. In everyday speech, it can be abbreviated to “Weihehandlung”; but “consecration” alone cannot be said, because there are various consecrations, not only consecration of man, but also consecration of priests and even the consecration of utensils. We will manage in the next few days with the other words.

However, I would very much appreciate it if you would express your views on what I have just said. Of course, later on, differences of opinion within your group should not lead to revolutions at every opportunity – although different opinions are perfectly acceptable. But at the beginning, it is possible that consultations may lead to modifications of what is to be created or what was proposed first. So perhaps it would be possible for you to express yourselves at this point, so that we can move forward and arrive at something more definite as soon as possible.

Emil Bock: Perhaps there is already a strong willingness to do this this very afternoon, because after the words that Dr. Steiner spoke to us yesterday, we have prepared ourselves to close our circle with such an inner connection to the matter.

Rudolf Steiner: It was no exception?

Emil Bock: No, no exception has become known. It would only be our task now to find the form for the moment in which we can express this as the content of our souls.

Rudolf Steiner: For the form, it would be necessary to bring a picture of Christ. Therefore, I would think it would be better to start tomorrow. We then bring a picture of Christ that can be taken to this action.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: Is there no possibility of doing it in front of the Christ figure in the studio?

Rudolf Steiner: That is not really possible because for that it would have to be finished first. It does not depend on which form of Christ it is, it just has to be a Christ form.

Emil Bock suggests a time: tomorrow, Sunday morning. Rudolf Steiner agrees, as Sunday is also the most suitable day.

Emil Bock suggests asking further questions about things that are still unclear.

One participant would like to hear more about the special vow, and then also about whether the reading of the mass, for example, should also take place daily or how that would be handled.

Rudolf Steiner: As soon as you have been constituted, these things will arise from the matter itself. Daily reading of the fair, at least in meditative form, is something that seems necessary to me. The other, the special vow, refers to the exit. The exit must be made more difficult in a certain way. This is only possible if the formula is applied to this withdrawal, which of course can still be agreed upon at the beginning, but which must later be recognized by anyone who wants to join. It must be included in the formula that the leadership has to decide how to define the step that someone takes when withdrawing, and that he recognizes this from the outset. So you don't just generally acknowledge what it means, but what the person leaving thinks about himself in the individual case, but what the leadership thinks about him. Each individual would recognize this from the outset in the event of leaving. Of course, in today's democratic times, this seems a little harsh, but you really won't get anywhere in spiritual life if you don't create such a wall.

The other thing I would ask you to consider is this: first create a central power of three, and around these three create four others who simply replace the length of time in office with the quality you attach to them; in this way you arrive at an original seven and call the three “upper leaders” and the four others “leaders”. For the others, a word would still have to be found for the old term 'priest', which did not seem right to you either; but I don't have one yet. “Leader” and ‘senior leader’ would initially be terms that could be used. We avoid terms such as ‘bishop’, ‘deacon’ and so on. So originally the top ladder would be the three senior leaders and the four leaders; we do not need a further hierarchy. The rest would be designated by the word that is used for the term ‘priest’. I would also have to advise this.

Emil Bock believes that there are no objections to this.

Wilhelm Kelber asks whether the appointment as a leader and senior leader is limited to a certain time.

Rudolf Steiner: This can only be for a limited time until a leader becomes a senior leader, so it can only be a position that is granted for life because it is connected to the whole being of the person.

Then something about the technical side of the matter. The point is that the original inaugurators of the whole movement, in formulating the plan, have already shown an act that has a significance, and on this basis it would be advisable to make, so to speak, original proposals for the questions that have now been raised. These initial proposals, in my opinion, based on how I have seen the matter develop, could be made by Dr. Rittelmeyer, Mr. Bock, Ms. Spörri and Mr. Klein. I think that this very inner circle should come together and make initial proposals to the others after very serious consideration, so that the fact, which is a fact, is taken into account: the original initiation. Then these proposals would have to be presented to the wider circle, which should do with them as it wishes. When one makes such proposals, it is the case that the smaller the circle, the greater the sense of responsibility with which they are made. Therefore it would be good to make them initially only as advice. In this way it can best be determined what is wanted. It would be good if all this could be worked out before we meet tomorrow at 10 o'clock.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: We have actually agreed that we want to carry out the whole constitution in consultation with you. We would very much appreciate advice on how to proceed in some form before we ask the group.

Rudolf Steiner: Very well, then we shall proceed in that way. We can undertake the action we have spoken of at ten o'clock, and what you have proposed in the closest circle we can then begin tomorrow after the action.

Emil Bock suggests that, in order to reach a conclusion more quickly, the results of the meeting should be communicated to Dr. Steiner that same day, which he agrees to.