Healing the Social Organism E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 568

Beschreibung

Speaking just months after the end of the First World War, Rudolf Steiner urges his audience to awaken to the practical relevance of spiritual knowledge. Serious engagement with contemporary spiritual-scientific concepts can awaken healthy forces of the will, which in turn facilitate constructive action in the outer world. Conversely, ideas that are remnants of a previous age – echoed in empty phrases and dogmas – only hinder our ability to think with the consciousness demanded by the times, destroying the potential for true social initiative. The historical context of these lectures was indeed disastrous, with inflation, hunger, homelessness and political extremism all rife. But Steiner advises that social conditions will only get worse if people don't engage with modern spiritual impulses. Thus – in contrast to the backward phenomenon of nationalism and the contemporary caricature of democracy – he introduces the future-oriented concept of social threefolding. He discusses manifold challenges, such as the decline of the West and the outmoded spiritual impulses of Jesuitism and Freemasonry – but also the positive path for an ascent of Western societies, genuine spiritual medicine, the true message of Easter, and the victory of the Archangel Michael. In several lectures, Rudolf Steiner speaks in some detail about the role and structure of the Catholic Church, the historical use of encyclicals and the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. The first full translation of this course features an introduction by Dorothy Hinkle-Uhlig, notes and an index.Seventeen lectures, Dornach, Mar.–Jul. 1920, GA 198

Leseprobe

Healing The Social Organism

Seventeen lectures given in Dornach between20 March and 18 July 1920

translated and introduced bydorothy hinkle-uhlig

Rudolf Steiner

rudolf steiner press

CW 198

Rudolf Steiner Press

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

Originally published in German under the title Heilfaktoren für den sozialen Organismus (volume 198 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the second revised German edition (1984), edited by Robert Friedenthal

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1984

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 670 8

eISBN 978 1 85584 654 8

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Visakhapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

Contents

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, Dorothy Hinkle-Uhlig

Lecture 1Dornach, 20 March 1920

The development of medicine. Concepts of disease in ancient and modern times. Knowledge as a healing process. Mystery wisdom as medicine for the social. The Greeks were blind to the colour blue. Necessary metamorphosis of our sense of seeing, hearing, and warmth. Imagination through the eye, inspiration through the ear, intuition through the sense of warmth. The necessity of threefolding the social organism.

Lecture 2Dornach, 21 March 1920

Victory of Michael as a spiritual event behind the scenes of world history. The birth of human imagination 300 years before Christ. The development of human intelligence since the fifteenth century. The difference in the ancient mystery schools between physical, intellectual, and spiritual knowledge. The conventional abstract intellectual life causes disease. Spirit knowledge heals. Anthroposophical spiritual knowledge as the carrier of the new healing process, which enables will-forces to move earthly evolution upwards.

Lecture 3Dornach, 28 March 1920

The concept of death as it relates to life in the supersensible world compared with life in the sensory world. Sensory thinking as the corpse of the supersensible world. Dead thinking enlivened in the earthly life through the newly born will-forces. The organization of the head as the metamorphosis of the rest of the body from the previous incarnation. The polarity in life between the necessity of nature and morality. The problem of human freehood. The Jupiter stage. The unity of moral laws and natural laws. Sleeping souls must wake up to the lack of logic in today’s thinking.

Lecture 4Dornach, 2 April 1920

The difference between the set date of the Christmas festival and the moving date of the Easter festival. The life of Paul. The loss of spiritual sight through the physical senses. The transition in the evolution of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha. The problem of freehood. The inner mendacity of our times. The striving toward a knowledge applicable to the supersensible world. The sense-based knowledge is the grave out of which the resurrection, the striving for supersensible knowledge must come. The true Easter message.

Lecture 5Dornach, 3 April 1920

Paul seeks to bring knowledge of the spiritual through the Christ within human beings. The blood as the carrier of spiritual perception in ancient times. The gods withdrew from human beings. The transformation of the blood and the new birth in Christ. The luciferic phenomenon of nationalism and the ahrimanic phenomenon of materialistic thinking as forms of opposition to Christianity. Easter, the celebration of warning.

Lecture 6Dornach, 30 May 1920

The historic concept of freehood of conscience and religion in the last third of the nineteenth century. The religious belief in miracles and the scientific belief in cause and effect. The opposition to freehood through the papal encyclicals and the syllabus from 1864. The time of Albertus Magnus. Frederik II of Prussia and Catherine of Russia as the protectors of the Jesuits banned by the Pope. Local Catholic attacks on Steiner and anthroposophy and the importance of recognizing them. Wake up to what is a truth and what is a lie.

Lecture 7Dornach, 3 June 1920

The Oath against Modernism. Modern civilization is sleeping, and the Catholic Church is awake to the coming materialism. Conceptio Immaculata, Encyclical and Syllabus of 1864, Papal Infallibility, encyclical Aeterni Patris. Preparations by the Catholic Church to counter materialism and ethical individualism. The structure of the Catholic Church as a reflection of the past, the fourth post-Atlantean age. The importance of spiritual science for the fifth post-Atlantean age. Opposition to spiritual science. The Jesuit Order and its relationship to modern times. The importance of the threefold social order.

Lecture 8Dornach, 6 June 1920

Initiation knowledge and materialistic knowledge. Aristotle’s teaching about the soul becomes Church dogma. Immortality, pre-birth existence and reincarnation. The intention of the Catholic Church to create a bridge between radical socialism, communism, and its own hierarchy. The dulled communal consciousness and individual consciousness. The true nature and being of Jesus Christ. The Oath against Modernism. Group consciousness and individual consciousness. Humanity to fill itself with spirit. The Jesuits. Different configurations of consciousness.

Lecture 9Dornach, 2 July 1920

The decline in Western culture. Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West and its influence on the youth. The forces of decline can only be averted through initiation wisdom. The impulse of democracy and its caricature in today’s culture. The danger of Spengler’s book. The decline of the West and the path to an ascent. An active soul life as a prerequisite to an understanding of spiritual science and spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge works through the individual’s will-forces. The active soul experience.

Lecture 10Dornach, 3 July 1920

Spiritual knowledge fructifies the life of the community. The continued presence of ancient spiritual cultural streams in the present. The sun cultus of the ancient mysteries understood today. Christ, the sun spirit. The ancient mystery rituals within the modern faith’s creeds and rituals. The laws of nature as distilled forms of wording from the Middle Ages. The Jesuits and the Freemasons. People are put to sleep. The various Masonic Orders. Confusion through occult streams. Necessity to make the spiritual truths practical. Writings by Pastor Kully and Pastor Ernst.

Lecture 11Dornach, 4 July 1920

Older thought paradigms in today’s thinking. The effects of materialism in the present. The task to overcome materialistic thinking. The transformation of thinking, feeling, and willing. The dependency of spiritual and legal life on the economic life. Transformation of the economic life. The theologian, Overbeck. The ideas of Rodbertus and Marx. The relation of spiritual labour to manual labour. The worldview based on materialism binds the soul to the physical. The will-forces of people. Threefolding. Thinking based on materialism. Know the human being.

Lecture 12Bern, 9 July 1920

Thinking as the inheritance of a pre-birth existence. Rejection by the traditional faiths of a pre-birth existence. Thinking as unnecessary for life in the sense world. The need to communicate one’s own thoughts to others. The child-student brings impulses from the spiritual world. The give and take between teacher and student in Waldorf pedagogy. The need for people to work together in community and in associations in the economic life. The relationship of the human head to the rest of the body. The state philosophy of Bolshevism comes out of the ideas of R. Avenarius and Harnack. The influence of Oswald Spengler. Reincarnation. The new birth of the spirit. The anthroposophical worldview.

Lecture 13Dornach, 10 July 1920

The historic separation of the spiritual from the worldly. The world of abstract ideas and the world of imaginative pictures. The world of ideas prevents the assault of etheric surges. The experience of the I in abstract ideas and in imaginative pictures. The human being as part of the entire universe. Importance of the concept, unbornness. Memory pictures as a transformation of physical growth forces. Importance for Waldorf teachers to deepen their inner life. Each person to gain the truth and spiritual vision from out of the spirit, not from a worldly authority.

Lecture 14Dornach, 11 July 1920

The wisdom of the ancient mystery centres and the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ as the higher self of the earth. The higher self of the human being. The anthroposophical spiritual knowledge and natural-scientific knowledge. Supersensible knowledge encompasses knowledge from the physical senses and from the spirit. Anthroposophy as the science of the higher human self. Working with anthroposophical scientific knowledge supports the ascending evolution of the human being. The danger that humanity will fall into barbarism. Anthroposophy as microcosm and Christology as macrocosm. Examples of the opposition to anthroposophy. The importance of the truth.

Lecture 15Dornach, 16 July 1920

The difference between the primeval knowledge of the ancient mystery centres and anthroposophical spiritual science. Supersensible knowledge must be brought to all people in our times. Challenges with the public articulation of supersensible knowledge. Misuse of esoteric knowledge. The importance of the human soul’s will-forces to counter the cultural decline. Oswald Spengler’s books, The Decline of the West and Prussia and Socialism, as a reflection of modern thinking. Spengler thinks without understanding the reality of the human soul.

Lecture 16Dornach, 17 July 1920

Life paradoxes of our time and Oswald Spengler. Materialism in thinking and its effects. Unbornness and immortality. The logic of life found in spiritual science and the logic of thoughts found in abstract intellectual thinking. The responsibility of humanity for the evolution of the earth. The loss of the individual I through materialism. Spiritual science makes people uncomfortable. Materialism cannot understand matter, the spirit of matter. Holy Communion. Knowledge, a spiritual communion. Thinking as an ahrimanic deed. Thinking as a spiritual deed that takes hold of the whole human being.

Lecture 17Dornach, 18 July 1920

Perception of an outer sense world and of a mere image of the soul within. The removal of the gods from nature. The outer world of nature as the spiritual from the past. The human body as the carrier of the creating gods and spirits, as the temple of the gods. People need to work to take up the spiritual. The danger that the earth’s mission will be lost. Waldorf pedagogy cultivates an inner life. Gravity and light. The necessary choice between ahrimanic intellectualism and the development of new spiritual knowledge as the guide for spiritual and social actions.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

Publisher’s Note

Of the seventeen lectures of this book, the first five were given at the same time as the first medical course (Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine, CW 312). This is why the theme of medicine, healing arts, and therapies are often referred to in these lectures.

Rudolf Steiner gave some preliminary remarks before the first lecture which can be read below. These remarks refer to current events of the times. In Berlin in early March of 1920, the so-called ‘Kapp coup’ took place. It was an attempt by right-wing conservatives to take control of the government, which during the November Revolution was ceded to a left-leaning coalition. The coup caused the Social Democratic Party (SPD) government to leave Berlin and retreat to Dresden. The coup failed after a few days and remains one of the many events in the turbulent times of post-World War I Germany.

Rudolf Steiner sought to counter the social chaos of the times through the movement to bring about the threefold social order. He referenced the founding of the corporation, ‘Der Kommende Tag AG’ in Stuttgart, which was incorporated on 13 March 1920. The ‘comments from the last weeks’ referenced by Rudolf Steiner in the remarks are to be found in What is Necessary in these Urgent Times? (CW 196).

Rudolf Steiner’s preliminary remarks to Lecture 1

My dear friends, I greet you this evening after my trip to Stuttgart and will continue to speak about similar themes. First, I want to give you some preliminary remarks before the actual lecture. In Stuttgart we were able to at least begin a practical initiative, which is being asked to work out of a spiritual-scientific perspective and within the economic life. Perhaps it will be able to support what needs to happen in the present.

It is most important today that ideas for the social, based on the spiritual-scientific worldview and that come out of this spiritual-scientific worldview, are active within a large enough group of people. The souls of a sufficiently large group of people must take up these ideas and transform them into will-forces to do deeds. That is most important. It is essential because only when a sufficiently large group of people are prepared and able, will something be able to happen that is necessary for humanity. So, perhaps there are some things that will be able to contribute to what needs to come if one provides prototypes of initiatives that attempt to take hold in the practical realms of life, and answer the demands of spiritual science. We are trying to create a type of headquarters in Stuttgart, which will be an umbrella organization with commercial and bank-like activities. The commercial enterprises will be managed based on our worldview, and they will engage in the practical within the social structure out of this worldview. Perhaps, then, prototypes could be created that are far more convincing than words, which at present are unfortunately allowed to move forward much too slowly for the needs of our time.

The Waldorf School is moving happily along creating much enthusiasm. But this is truly far too little, and you can see how little it is when you compare it with the distorted news coming from Germany. These distortions are saying much. That which is saddest is that which is very, very noticeable under the surface of the phenomena. There is no reason, my dear friends, to say with any satisfaction that the government established in Berlin had to resign after a few days. It is irrelevant whether today in Germany, in the former Germany, a government is at the rudder for three days or as long as the other one was, which fled Berlin over Dresden and then to Stuttgart for three days. It is all the same. It doesn’t matter how long. What is important is that none of these governments can truly govern. None can be governed because the human will-forces, which should work in public affairs, seem unable to do anything fruitful. At the most, they can add new destructive forces to those of the past. Such events that are now happening in Germany simply show that people who are thrown to the top, whether in a coup or through an election, are all similar. They all carry together the responsibility of the horrors of the recent past.

And what is happening as outer events is less important than what is standing behind these events. We have to look at the helpless outer life that wants to continue with the old forces, through the sound bites of conventional politics, both from the left and the right. These are not forces to build up with. Those forces which will build up, are only to be sought today in those impulses which can come from a spiritual understanding of the human being. Therefore, even when we try to throw our strength towards social issues, it is most important to continually deepen our knowledge so that out of this deeper knowledge the necessary, for these times necessary, will-forces will follow.

Today people should say to themselves: It is not appropriate to look at what comes from here or there as old forces. Then it would be rightful to be pessimistic. This is proven every day anew. Today it is only appropriate for people to build the social with their own will-forces based on spiritual knowledge. Only with these will-forces does one have the right to hope. One does not have the right to hope; one only has the right to be pessimistic when one doesn’t want to decide to take up into one’s own will-forces the knowledge that is carrying the spirit. Therefore, it is most important, again and again, to deepen one’s spiritual knowledge. Let us today in the lecture bring before our souls spiritual knowledge that perhaps will build on the themes that we were looking at before I travelled to Stuttgart.

Introduction

With thoughtful reading, these seventeen fascinating lectures can work deeply in our souls, bringing us healing impulses. The literal translation of the German title would be, ‘healing impulses for the social organism’ (Heilfaktoren für den Sozialen Organismus). Rudolf Steiner strives with his thoughts to awaken in our souls the consciousness of what he calls reality. Reality can be found in the conscious, simultaneous perception and acknowledgement of the existence of both the spiritual and the material. Only in a unity of the two is there reality. In understanding this reality, we form concepts that reflect both spirit and matter. In unity, they penetrate deeply into the soul where the will-forces from the spiritual world awaken and lead us in freehood to do what is needed to heal the human being and the social. And even more important, human beings are then fulfilling their collective task, their responsibility to bring an understanding of materialism to the gods. The gods only have this understanding through human beings. Human beings are supporting the rightful evolution of the earth and, beyond, the universe—or, said differently, human beings are spiritualizing matter.

This undertaking is a daunting responsibility. This is the task of human beings, and we need to wake up to it. ‘Wake up,’ calls Steiner urgently and forcefully in these lectures, as he weaves spiritual insights from seemingly diverse angles to describe this reality for our souls. Wake up to the responsibility of transforming the polarities of matter and spirit, of materialism and spirituality. They must be understood as a unity. Wake up to the need to reform the structure of our thinking, first our perceiving and then following a transformed conceiving. He describes the thinking that is a remnant of previous ages and older ways of relating to the spiritual, that only works on as a corpse in our age in empty phrases and dogmas, hindering our ability to think with the consciousness demanded by our times and destroying the potential of relevant social initiatives. He also describes the abstract materialistic thinking that forms the concepts found in modern natural science and the humanities. These concepts leave our souls empty and they slowly lose their spiritual origins.

Wake up out of the comfortable study groups and fun events where anthroposophists gather to discuss the various facts of the spiritual world and then return to their usual life and way of thinking. Wake up to the reality of eternity which includes not only immortality, life after death, but also unbornness—life before birth. Through immortality, we create our future in freehood. Through unbornness, we recognize our responsibilities for our earthly life out of the wisdom of the past. Wake up to the need to fill our empty souls with spirit content. Over and over again he calls us to wake up!

And for Steiner, it is through anthroposophy that we can wake up in our times. We can develop a different type of perception that perceives the spiritual world within the material world. This seeing is similar to the reality that primeval peoples saw atavistically in outer nature. It was a natural clairvoyance. This atavistic spirituality, which looked solely to nature to understand the spiritual world, belongs to another age. Now, people must work to find the spiritual clairvoyance within them, within their skin, and Steiner speaks exactly those words: ‘within our skin’. People who are clairvoyant in the modern sense, have an inner sight that encompasses both the existence of spiritual beings, spiritual beingness and simultaneously encompasses the existence of materialistic beings—materialistic beingness. This is inner work; this is the challenge for anthroposophists and all who are seekers today of the spiritual here on earth. It is then that the will-forces will arise within us to give us the potential to make systematic changes in our thinking, ennoble our social relationships and create the initiatives that will truly transform our society and support the rightful evolution of the earth and beyond.

As an example, Steiner refers to one anthroposophical idea, the threefold social organism. This social concept simply flows out of understanding the reality of what is needed now in our society. There are many such ideas that have flowed into the practical from anthroposophical thinking, that can be realized with will-forces permeated with spirit knowledge. Steiner would continue to bring forth concrete suggestions for the practical transformation of agriculture, the medical fields, pedagogy, banking, economic activities, and more.

It is important to note that Rudolf Steiner does not consider it necessary to be clairvoyant, to consciously experience the spiritual world. It is necessary to grasp the results of modern clairvoyant research in our souls with a healthy understanding. For those who seek to experience the spiritual world more consciously, Steiner has given many paths forward. Among these are the Calendar of the Soul, How to Know Higher Worlds, and the Lessons of the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science. However, most important is to fill the soul with spirit knowledge and create out of this knowledge spiritual impulses appropriate for our times. We now live in the early twenty-first century and these are our times. Each of us has a task and we must wake up to it. We are being called to do the difficult work of transcending materialism and moving into the future that is calling us—in the now.

Let us put these lectures in an historical context. Steiner was speaking just after the horrific First World War. Western society, and especially Central Europe, was truly in chaos. Steiner used the word catastrophe to refer to the times. The war devasted Europe, and the casualties were enormous. Germany was especially crippled. The Versailles Treaty had just been signed. Germany lost significant land and was seriously weakened economically. Germans deeply resented that they were given sole responsibility for the war. Inflation, hunger, and homelessness raged. Extreme feelings of anger and pessimism filled the German psyche. Many different political ideologies were rising and fighting each other in the streets, and coups were happening in the government. At this time and in these lectures, Steiner was calling on people to think differently, to think beyond materialism in order to encompass spirit in thinking, in feeling, and in will-forces. Anthroposophy was giving people the means to transform the catastrophe of the times through their actions, yet most people seemed to be asleep. Steiner was trying at least to wake up the anthroposophists, but most were content to just learn about the spiritual world. Action was needed: the practical.

Steiner was warning people that the catastrophe they were experiencing in Germany would only worsen if people did not awaken to a reality that brings spirit knowledge into practical human impulses and actions. These are harrowing consequences for the individual human being, for civilized society, and for the evolution of the earth and the universe. Engage with anthroposophy, he stated. It can bring the spiritual knowledge necessary for the times. Study deeply the lectures, the writings, and let them work into the soul and awaken the will-forces. These will-forces will bring the necessary practical skills into doing.

Know thyself, the ancient mystery wisdom cried. Steiner cries out from a more modern perspective. All knowledge, all healing, and most especially the evolution of the earth, must now come from the agency of each human being. Know thyself today. This is not the knowledge of the human being, who is the highest being of the animal world. This materialistic way of knowing only comprehends the physical of the human being and all that will die at the being’s physical death. Nor is it the knowledge of the human being who lives with empty religious phrases from the past and then expects to die into a vague, heavenly world, forever without any responsibilities. In these cases, the soul cannot live on after death and just dissolves into the spirit world. The I is lost. When a sufficient number of people work with spiritual concepts and relate to each other as ethical individuals, as characterized in Steiner’s book The Philosophy of Freedom, and when they work out of their inner spiritual agency and not from outer authority, catastrophe will be averted, and the rightful evolution of the earth can continue.

Steiner often expresses frustration, anger and shock as he speaks in these lectures. He asks: How can people not be frustrated, angry, and shocked at what is happening? Now, over a hundred years have passed since Steiner gave these talks. Are we frustrated, angry and shocked as we see the catastrophe of our times? Enough to impel us to do something? There is still the polarity between a prevailing materialism and an inarticulate spirituality to be transformed into the third, unified way, an articulate spirituality that permeates materialism. Today, there is still the need to transform the structures of thinking and feeling that are based on materialism, and to birth the will-forces that can then arise in our souls. These lectures can stir us today. Most importantly, they encourage us to understand more deeply and to act out of deep wisdom to address the needs of today. We must create the relevant concepts. We must found the healing impulses to do what needs to be done.

There are many examples of the hindering forces active at the times of these lectures. What social forces today are hindering us from being more effective and more awake in our world? What thinking structures based on materialism do we continue to fall back on? What religious beliefs are clouding our ability to perceive spiritual truths? Where are we retreating into old structures of thinking that separate and create hierarchies that do not belong to our times? How can anthroposophists not only gather together to comfortably learn in study groups and events, but also catalyze the need for action based on their anthroposophical knowledge?

We need to wake up to the specifics of the challenges in our times. Anthroposophy and spiritual science live in the dynamics within each of us, the dynamic of striving to know more of reality and then transforming this knowledge into practical doing; striving to not simply recognize the spirit in outer nature but to seek this all-encompassing reality within each of us, ‘within our skin’. This is striving that recognizes place and time as important and also recognizes the great arc of the evolving universe, holding us all in unity in all of space and time. It is knowing that each and every human being is a carrier of spirit knowledge who has a responsibility to work to create a healthy social organism and bring knowledge of matter to the gods. It is learning, through spirit wisdom, how to bridge knowing and then being willing to make the necessary, great systematic changes in concert with others. Said differently, it is recognizing the need for a new birth of the spirit, and Steiner emphasizes that this is not a rebirth, not a renaissance, but a naissance. Anthroposophy shows us a clear way to live our lives with articulate spirit knowledge and together to fulfil spirit deeds.

Wake up, dear friends, and grasp your responsibilities. In you and with you the gods are creating. May these lectures help you move forward on your path in freehood, more than one hundred years after they were originally given. Bring the impulses of healing from these lectures into your thinking and doing. Transform these impulses for our time and place. Deal rightfully with the catastrophe we are living with. Wake up to the now!

A Note on the Translation:

Translations are never quite right. Words in one language do not equal words in another language, and one must struggle to bring the ideas, the style, and the force of the wording into the other language. In GA 186, The Challenge of Our Times, Rudolf Steiner tell us that the soul knows the origin of each word and how it evolved into its contemporary meaning. This is important to hold. Out of this context I use the word ‘freehood’ and not freedom. I realize this is a made-up word, but it is understandable and addresses the problem Steiner had with the word freedom. Steiner recognizes in the German word Freiheit, the freehood of the individual (suffix heit/hood equates to an individual), whereas the word freedom recognizes the freedom of a group (suffix tum/dom equates to a group). There are selfhood and knighthood, concepts that relate to an individual consciousness. Then there are kingdom and serfdom, concepts that relate to a group consciousness.

Translators of Steiner have gone to awkward twists to deal with this problem, most notably in the translation of Die Philosophie der Freiheit into The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. I also avoided translating the German adjective, göttlich, with the word divine, which is a vague English adjective referring to something supersensible. Instead, I translated literally the word as ‘godly’, to differentiate it from spiritual. There is a challenge for all of us in understanding the difference between the gods and spirits. Lastly, it is important to understand the words, spiritual science, translated from the German words, geistige Wissenschaft. Spiritual science, as a science, encompasses all realms of free, disciplined scholarship and learning. It is not limited to the hard sciences. This is more readily understood in the German wording than in the English.

I close with deep thankfulness to Rudolf Steiner Press for giving me the opportunity to translate these lectures, lectures of healing. I thank Nelson Fredsell for his meticulous editing of each lecture, and Ulrich Albrecht, John Bloom, Krystyna Jurzykowski, Frank Uhlig, and Anne Weise, each who helped in important ways. And most importantly I thank those beings who hovered over me as I sat at my computer and continually gave me very concrete support—when I asked.

Dorothy Hinkle-Uhlig

Auburn, Alabama

May 2024

Lecture 1

DORNACH, 20 MARCH 1920

Science is often considered an undisputed authority, particularly in the way that it is practised in universities and other learning centres. We have often spoken about the validity of this science and how human beings must now challenge the authority of conventional science. Today I want to point out that for the scientific community it has become a characteristic phenomenon in the last three to four hundred years to consider that only one field has the right and authority to study medicine. The medical field of today is simply one field of science among other fields of science and when pursued should lead to healing, to healing sick human beings. However, we don’t realize that this relationship of medicine to the other scientific fields has only developed in these last three to four hundred years. If we were to look back in human evolution, we would see that everything the human being developed at that time as science, as knowledge, could be understood as having a relationship to medicine. When the esoteric sciences were being developed in ancient times, all scientific concepts in all the learning centres always had a connection with the concept of healing. Spiritual knowledge and spiritual science have always had a connection with healing. Thus, one would not say in the ancient times that the medical field was one science among many. In these ancient times, when purely intellectual knowledge was not considered occult, all science, all knowledge must be pursued with the purpose of healing the whole human being. It was within this context that all thoughts were brought before the soul.

Now we must ask ourselves: What should be healed and what was there to heal? In our time of materialism, we speak of sickness when we notice something abnormal in the outer material process of the human body or in the abnormal behaviour of the senses. This is a material concept of sickness and basically a product of recent human evolution, a product of post-Grecian times. In ancient Greece, where a people lived who were more awake and more receptive to the world than later peoples, there was still basically that concept of sickness and especially the tendency toward sickness that was characteristic of the times before the second and third centuries before Christ. We must be forthright and radical. These things need to be understood and their actual importance not ignored. In ancient times it was understood that all humanity has the predisposition to be continually sick. Simply stated all of humanity continually went around predisposed to being sick. This was generally understood. Everyone needed at least some preventative healing, and people realized that humanity continually needed to be healed. This was basically the opinion of the time.

Perhaps we will understand this opinion more clearly when we compare it with one that often confronts us today in our social relationships and social challenges. We see many people coming forward who feel called to rile others up by speaking about what is needed to bring on a better future in social relationships or in other relationships. These people then describe what would be achieved if their ideas were realized—a type of paradise on earth. One hears that the thousand-year reign will finally begin when the ideas of certain people can be concretely realized.1 Those who hold these opinions probably want the good, but their ideas come from a poor understanding and an even worse reasoning, and they can be inflammatory. What could cause more upheaval than someone promising paradise on earth, especially in our materialistic time! And it is promised that this paradise will even happen before they die. Such ideas surely guarantee followers.

In contrast it will be difficult to bring forth the idea of a threefold social organism. It does not promise paradise on earth, but speaks about what can live, what is viable as a social organism.2 Let us contrast the two perspectives. The former presumes that such a paradise on earth is possible, and that people can experience an ideal and complete recovery through a regimen that only encompasses procedures from a materialistic understanding of medicine. The latter is the opinion of ancient times with its nuanced feelings and can be described in the following way. All people who are living and acting on the physical plane have to a certain degree the predisposition to sickness within them and have a continual need to be healed. This view was based on the following.

People understood that in the material world they can do what is necessary to have institutions on the physical plane. People can do what is necessary to take care of their economy, their justice system etc. However, when all these social systems are only managed with their own forces, when nothing affects them except what has a relationship to the other institutions on the physical plane, then the physical organism of humanity will become sicker and sicker. The human being can certainly not create a healthy social organism through outer actions; such a society will only become sicker and sicker. If this is not to happen, the actions based out of the impulses from the physical world must go in parallel with a spiritual life. The spiritual life has an effect, one can say, because it paralyzes the seeds of disease, the seeds of disease that the human being is constantly producing. It was thought that any knowledge that does not continually reabsorb the ever-forming poison in the social order is an absurdity for humanity. The process of knowing is the process of healing. And so, in ancient times it was thought that should knowledge of any epoch be lost, then the social organism would become sick. That is why the force of knowledge was described as a force of healing.

At that time the holders of the mystery knowledge were simultaneously leaders of the social order, the doctors and the priests. Only later were they differentiated into the various separate roles of doctor, teacher, priest, and so forth. Everything that was later separated into different roles came from what lived together in the people who possessed in themselves knowledge, and this knowledge was at the same time in its way medicine for humanity. In ancient times the healers dealt much less with specific diseases than we do today. They had their own opinions about a specific disease, but they would not speak about this to an individual person. It would be hurtful and seem cruel. The leaders would minister to the sick by drawing from a deep spring of spiritually inspired knowledge, understood as social medicine.

The full depth and force of such views could only be present at a time when human beings understood themselves differently than we do today. We have often spoken about the form of intellectualism that dominates knowledge today and has basically dominated it for only the last two, three, four centuries. The ideal of this intellectualism is to perceive the laws of the natural world and then make them into abstract concepts. This does not engage the human personality. I have often described how to picture this non-engagement.

Imagine a student in some academic field at one of our conventional learning centres somewhere in the civilized world. The students sit there; they hear whatever is being taught with their head, with their understanding, with their intellect. They see the experiments being shown to them. However, only to a small degree are their feelings, their hearts, the whole person taking part in what is being taught. That was not the case with the ancient mystery wisdom. The student could not remain indifferent. There everything that affected the head, that affected the intellect took hold of the whole human being, encompassing at the same time the feeling and the will. The student was present as a whole human being.

Through our abstract thinking and through our abstract research into the natural world, our life has become abstract. It has become so abstract that the human being of today barely has an organ to see in the right light all that was connected to the societal life of these ancient peoples.

We have often spoken here about what was called the unspeakable name of God in Hebrew antiquity and which in the following sequence of sounds became speakable—J-A-H-W-E-H. Why was this name unspeakable? Because in those ancient times the violence of the sounds would suppress the senses of day consciousness. Another world would stand before the speaker. It was dangerous to pronounce the name because ordinary consciousness would have had to disappear. Human beings would have really felt that when this name vibrated through their physical body, they were carried into another world, a world where things happened differently than in the physical world. People today have no idea how the souls of these ancient peoples were constituted. They know nothing about it. Combinations of sounds today do not have the same shocking effect they once had.

In this context it is understandable that more could arise out of the constitution of the soul and the body of these ancient peoples than can arise out of the soul and body of today’s human beings. In today’s soul and body, the biological is initially manifested. Hunger, thirst, and other emotions arise. These or those desires, these, or those emotions, these or those antipathies and sympathies, all these can arise out of the soul and body. Everything that arises out of the organization of the human being is basically related to that individual human being, to that individual human ego. However, in addition to hunger and thirst as well as the many desires, which are all related to normal everyday life, divine revelations arose in the ancient peoples. The ancient peoples felt that when they were working within their physical bodies and within their own souls, God was working in them, as God was working in the natural world. What was arising in these ancient peoples gave them the ability to see in the surrounding natural world not only what we see today, but also to see the spirit. People today don’t want to believe that these earlier peoples were able to perceive and then conceive differently than people do today.

This prejudice is certainly easy to understand because we assume that the way we see the world today is the way everyone in the past saw the world. Even outer facts can clearly prove that the ancient Greeks saw the natural world differently than we do, and they didn’t live that long ago. Spiritual science through spiritual sight can make this clear. However, what spiritual sight so clearly brings to the surface, can also be arrived at through knowledge of the physical facts. As an example, one can look through ancient Greek literature and notice the peculiar fact that the ancient Greeks had a word for green, ‘χλωρός’. However, it is curious that they used the same word, green, for honey, for the yellow leaves of autumn and for the golden resin. The Greeks used the same word to describe dark hair that they used to describe lapis lazuli, the blue stone.

No one can accept that the Greeks had blue hair. This can be considered significant proof that the Greeks simply did not differentiate yellow from green and did not perceive the colour blue as we do.3 They saw the vibrancy of red and yellow. This is well supported by the Roman writers who stated that the Greeks had painted with only four colours, with black and white, and with red and yellow.4

We would have to say that according to today’s understanding of colour theory that a significant characteristic of the Greeks was that they were blind to the colour blue, and they only saw the yellow hue in green but not the blue. For the Greeks the environment was fierier because they mostly saw the hues of red. In this way one can see outward metamorphosis in the evolution of humanity. As was said, one can show this through outer facts. Spiritual sight clearly shows that the colour spectrum shifted towards the red side for the Greeks, and they did not experience the blue and purple side. The purple was redder than we see it today. If we were to paint a landscape as the Greeks saw it, we would have to paint it with completely different colours than we would use today. What we see as the natural world, the Greeks did not know, and what the Greeks saw as the natural world, we do not know. The evolution of humanity moves forward through metamorphoses. It is important to note that at the time, when intellectualism arose and people began to contemplate things, they began to develop the ability to perceive the darker colours, the blue and the bluish-purple. The Greeks were not contemplative; they lived firmly grounded in the objective natural world. The inner soul not only changes, but also that changes which lives into the senses through the soul.

Thus, you can say today that we in the fifth post-Atlantean age are able to perceive with our sense organs differently than the characterized people of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural age, the time of the Greco-Roman cultural age. This relates to what I have been describing. In those times the spiritual forces were still arising out of the emotions, out of sympathy and antipathy, even out of the physical body with such emotions as hunger, thirst, and satiety. The spiritual forces were pouring into the sense organs. The forces streaming out of the lower body and pouring into the sense organ of the eye are the forces that enliven the ability to perceive the nuances of the colours red and yellow. We have now entered a time when the reverse is becoming an important task of humanity. The Greeks were still so formed that their beautiful worldview was communicated through their senses and that a spiritualized biological life poured into their senses. For centuries we, humanity, have suppressed this biological life permeated with spirit. We must enliven it again from out of the soul and from out of the spirit. We must acquire the ability to penetrate into the soul-spirit as spiritual science seeks to teach us. Then as we acquire the ability to penetrate into the spirit-soul as spiritual science seeks to teach us, we will walk the reverse path. With the Greeks the flow went from the body and poured into the eyes. With us the reverse must happen.

We must develop the spirit-soul [see drawing, blue]. The flow must extend from the spirit-soul towards all that constitutes the human being, and we must bring the flow from the spirit-soul into the eyes and into the other senses. This reversed way must become the way for future humanity, which is in contrast to the way of humanity up to the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean culture. The contemplative human being will then again become spirit-knowing. This is another form of a spirit-knowing human being; this time created from above. We are growing receptive to the blue part of the spectrum.

If I wanted to draw it schematically, I would draw it like this. The Greeks were primarily receptive to the red; they lived in the red.

The Greeks lived into this part of the spectrum [see the left side of the drawing]. We must live more and more into this side of the spectrum [see the right side of the drawing]. As we live into this part of the spectrum, we grow more and more fond, one could say, of the blue and bluish-purple; we must transform our sense organs completely, a reverse metamorphosis. The sense organs must become something completely different in their delicate structure from what they were. For example, what is being poured into the sense organs is actually developing imagination through the eye, inspiration through the ear, and intuition through warmth. It is important to develop imagination through the eye, inspiration through the ear, and intuition through the sense of warmth. The ever-finer structure in the course of human evolution, the ever-finer structure of the human organism in the course of human evolution is continually in metamorphosis and becoming another.

Human beings of the present must be aware of such things because they are standing in the middle of an important time of transition. They are standing in the time, in which it must be decided whether they are able to make this transition, whether they can receive the impressions from above. We must not simply be intellectuals; we must spiritualize and ensoul intellectualism. What is then formed in us as spirit and soul will work deeply into the human organization. What happens if we don’t form it? Every organism will die when it is not used as it is supposed to be used. It will destroy itself. Here you have in the human organization what was once in ancient times out of a different state of knowledge considered necessary for human development. Look at your eyes. Into these eyes must be pouring what should be streaming from above downwards as the spiritual life of future humanity. If this stream does not flow into the eyes, they will be sentenced to sickness. It is out of the eyes’ own nature that they will become sick. It is the same for the ears and the sense of warmth.

What kind of knowledge must we seek? A healing knowledge that addresses this predisposition to sickness in our own organism. We must find again a way to understand that all knowledge that relates to people has a medicinal character. We must again have a concept that all knowledge relating to the human being must be a knowledge of healing. We must again seek knowledge because of our will to heal. Medicine is not just a field of science among other fields. All knowledge throughout humanity’s evolution must relate to healing because humanity needs to be continually healed from what is emerging on the physical plane as sickness. Those who promise an earthly paradise are not speaking correctly to people. Only those speak the truth who make it clear that even when we do everything to create useful earthly conditions, we must always seek a connection with the spiritual world! Even the best earthly conditions must continually be healed and be healed all the way into the human organism, which is permeated with the predisposition to sickness. This means that human beings must have a spiritual life, a spiritual life that has the force to create the healing powers out of itself.

There are many reasons why the anthroposophical worldview birthed the idea of threefolding, and some are provided in the analysis of today’s lecture. The idea of threefolding allows one to see from this perspective and that perspective and from a third and fourth perspective into the evolution of humanity. This assumes that one is observing correctly. The necessity of threefolding comes as a consequence of today’s truth, of today’s capacities. When those with a bit of logic hear of threefolding and they don’t understand it right away or find that it contradicts something, they should try to learn more about it. They will soon realize that it is not one proof or a stream of proofs that confirms the necessity of threefolding but countless proofs. Because wherever you look, you can make observations that are independent of each other and that prove what I could call the necessary emergence of the idea of the threefold social organism in our present time. One very important perspective is to understand the fullness encompassing what is the human being. But today in all the fields of learning, which are so proud of their abstractions, where are they inclined to enter into the concrete? The Greeks were still clearly conscious that if they let their emotions rise up out of their body, then the gods could reveal themselves in them. We must acquire the ability to bring out of spiritual heights spirit-soul forces and these soul forces must reveal a natural world to us; they must show us the natural world as the natural world truly is. This means we must be able to be clear that we cannot know the natural world through outer observation. We can only know the natural world through those sense organs, which are sharpened through what is brought from above. That is with an eye that is sharpened through imagination, with an ear that is sharpened through inspiration, with a sense of warmth that is sharpened through intuition, and, to this we must add, through the selfless experience of the things and happenings in our surroundings.

All scholarly inquiry, all science, was born out of the will to heal, and it must again develop the will to heal. What we recognize today as scholarly inquiry, as science, is highly valued as an authority. It is in fact only an intermediate state that is leading to a most frightening disharmony especially in the social realm, where people are together. We will speak further about all this tomorrow.

Lecture 2

DORNACH, 21 MARCH 1920

It would behove me today to relate some of the insights from here and there that formed the basis of earlier observations and to connect them with what I said yesterday. Many of these insights are known to our friends. I just want to be attentive to the essential content of yesterday’s lecture. The objective knowledge that we strive for at present is basically a creation of recent times. It is a neutral knowledge, which places the field of medicine next to the other scientific fields, and which only developed in the last three to four hundred years. In contrast all knowledge in ancient times sought to heal. Seeking knowledge and searching for the means to heal humanity was in fact one and the same goal. I pointed this out yesterday.

Now you know out of various references made in several lectures that in the last third of the nineteenth century an important spiritual event occurred. This significant event in the 1870s happened behind the scenes of world history, the external physical world history.5 To give this event a name—it could have another name—we have named it the victory of the archangel, whom we call the Archangel Michael, over the opposing forces. Let us first consider this event, which is related to our human history, as an occurrence in the spiritual world. Such events are first prepared in the spiritual world before they occur as external events here on earth. We can say that this event, to which I have just referred, began to be prepared in the year 1842. About 1849 a certain decision was made in the spiritual world, and since 1914 it is important for people to conduct themselves in harmony with this spiritual event. In 1914 human narrow-mindedness attacked what should have been happening according to the spiritual powers responsible to lead humanity.

So, we can say that in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first part of the twentieth century important events were happening behind the veil of humanity’s earthly development. These events were challenging humanity to live as these spiritual beings wanted. Humanity was to bring about change and do something that would bring a new kind of civilization to earthly life, and a new understanding of the social life, the artistic life, and the spiritual life on the earth. Over the course of human evolution such events have been happening repeatedly in the spiritual world. External history seldom records them because external history is basically a ‘fable convenue’. Nevertheless, these events have been repeatedly happening. An event that can be compared with the one mentioned above happened about three hundred years bce and then farther back in time another one happened in the middle of the third millennium bce.

Now there is a major difference between humanity’s experience of these two historic events and the experience of what is taking place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of you have experienced at least some of the events from the second half of the nineteenth century and from the beginning of the twentieth century, and most of you will know that humanity has hardly noticed that a reversal should really be taking place in spiritual life.

Misery will force humanity to take notice of what is needed. The misery will not cease until enough people will have noticed this need, especially in the organization of public affairs. We can ask the questions: Why haven’t people noticed? And was this comparable to the other similar events mentioned, the one in the third millennium bce and the one in the third century bce? No, at the time of these two events it was definitely different. If one were able to accurately read the history of the soul of the Greeks, or even the Romans who were coarser, we would notice that in the Greek soul and in the Roman soul there was a different consciousness. They knew that in the spiritual world something was happening that they had to pay attention to. We can see well, especially with the event that happened around 300 years before Christ’s birth, how things were slowly being prepared, how it came to a certain climax, and then how it was realized. The people of the third and fourth century bce were clearly conscious that something was happening in the spirit’s world that was coming into humanity’s world. And what was happening, can be described today as the birth of human imagination.

As you know, people now generally think that the way people think today, and the way people feel today, was the way people have always thought, and the way people have always felt. However, that is not correct. As I mentioned yesterday even sensory perception has changed in the course of time. There was of course artistic work before the third and fourth century bce, but this artistic work did not arise from what we call human imagination. This artistic work arose out of a truly clairvoyant imagination. Those artists could see what the spirit revealed, and they simply copied what the spirit revealed to them. The artist basically worked out of the ancient atavistic clairvoyance, the ancient imagination. That human imagination, which came then and continued to develop into the creations of Leonardo or Raphael or Michelangelo and later went downhill, takes its origin at that time. This imagination doesn’t create because the spirit appeared or was imagined but rather creates as if human beings were directing it out of themselves, were forming it out of themselves. These people were endowed with human imagination because, according to the people of those times, the divine beings were fighting who ruled over them and on whose behalf they were working.

It was much more important for the people in the middle of the third millennium, around the year 2500 bce, to realize how their whole being was interconnected with events that reached out of the spirit world into physical events. At that time, in the middle of the third century bce, no one would have found it meaningful to say: Here people wander around the earth and not to also say spiritual beings are here. That would have seemed nonsensical because people thought that the earth was populated with what was physical and at the same time with what was spiritual.

In contrast to the soul life of those ancient times, something different was developing during the nineteenth century. People were recognizing how the profane and ordinary events played out on earth, but they did not recognize the important spiritual battle that was behind these events. What was the reason they did not recognize this? This comes from the peculiar characteristic of our age, which you know began in the middle of the fifteenth century and continues into our time. We call it the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the period we are in, the most outstanding, the most significant force able to serve humanity, is the intellect. Since the fifteenth century people are being raised as intelligent beings, and they are very proud to be intelligent beings. One shouldn’t think that no other form of intelligence existed in earlier times. The earlier intelligence was at the same time born with a type of vision. Human intelligence created at that time contained spiritual insight. Today we have an intelligence that contains no spiritual insight and is only a form. Our ideas and concepts are really nothing in themselves but are simply reflections of something. Our intelligence is the sum of mere reflections of something.