עברית The Centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference
The Centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference
Opening Lecture to the Global School of Spiritual Science
24 December 2023
My dear friends,
We begin the centenary celebration of the Christmas Foundation Conference of 1923, dedicated to the laying of the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century, with a view of a stark contrast between the creative and positive development of the global school of spiritual science in recent years, and the general decline of humanity. The first reflects the real progress of the evolution of the impulse of the time spirit, and the second the consequences of the continuous rejection of its guidance and blessings. Let us first review the positive development of our work and then turn to the present situation of humanity.
We have prepared this Christmas centenary event since 2005-8, when the global school of spiritual science received its preliminary formation, and since 2017 we developed the chalice of school’s community to form and lay in our hearts in the right way the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century in Christmas 2023. That we can do this at all in such dire times, is not something we should take for granted. If you worked for many years towards this lofty goal, you have learned to develop a certain suspenseful expectation in regard to life. You have learned to tell yourself at the beginning of each new decade: I was definitely too young and immature until now to achieve even little of what hovers as spiritual ideal before my inner gaze, but perhaps the new decade will give me the forces required to actualize more of it in real life. And at the end of the next decade, reviewing the previous one, evaluating the humble successes and the greater failures, you will say to yourself: In the tender age of my 20’ and 30’, I could make some progress, for sure, in my inner development, but as far as my ability to realize it in human and social life, I am terribly slow and hampered, and in certain respects not so far from where I was at the beginning! And you look forward with creative resignation and anticipation to the coming fourth decade of your life, and pray that you will be able to do it a little bit better. Then, when I was in the middle of my 40s I said, oh, no! You are still so retarded in regard to your ability to become truly human, but then, hopefully- shifting your gaze to the next decade- in your 50’ you must eventually be able to achieve this. And lo and behold, indeed, miracle of miracles, in your 50’, it could indeed start! You see, it is a very slow and gradual building up in such a biography, and only if you develop, energetically, in face of many obstacles and hindrances, the courage, perseverance, strength and the holy enthusiasm, and grow younger and younger inwardly the more you age externally, you can begin to realize some of the high ideals you conceived in your 21st year of life.
Actually, as I showed in the first lecture of The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity, concerning the healing of the Amfortas-Parseval wound and dichotomy in my biography, the way people look at human life and biography should be absolutely reversed. Usually people are incredibly enthusiastic about what they accomplish in their 20s, well, today already in their teens, and feel they reached the highest level of human evolution when they are 16-17 or 25 years old. But then, regrettably, for many people today, the rest of life is a veritable downhill path. It doesn’t have to be catastrophic or traumatic, it can be slow or fast decline, but when they look back at what they attained in their 20s, they will have to admit: in my next years and decades- and life is becoming longer- I didn’t experience a new creative idea and moral impulse since my 20s. And they recall their youthful years with longings and speak nostalgically about it, and write in their autobiographies about the great things they created in their 20s, but if they are honest with themselves, they will have to admit: we have not experienced again any major creative impulse in our later life.
What I described above is the exact inversion of the ordinary declining of creativity in older age. In living spiritual biography, in your young physical years you actually feel yourself spiritually very old! This may seem strange, but it is really so. You say to yourself: in my 20’ I did experience highly creative impulses from the spiritual world, but only in my inner life I could actualize them. In my human and social life, very little could have been realized. The spiritual world offered you great impulses, but your immature personality, that must receive, assimilate, and actualize them in real life in the social world, was inapt for the task. Now, to speak precisely in the sense of spiritual science, the early spiritual impulses, given in the first half of life, stream into the human being through his head; this is simply a fact. Only thanks to the graceful gift of modern spiritual science, you could achieve something valuable in the first half of life, not through your own forces, because your own forces- which are the forces of the heart and body, not the head- can only grow and mature in the second half of life. If you look honestly at your human self until your 40’, you feel humbled indeed, and you look to the future in expectation to grow spiritually younger as you are getting physically older, to transform all head knowledge into living heart and limb wisdom and actual spiritual praxis.
Therefore, I am standing here and now before you as a 68 year old man! And I beseech the good gods to give us the grace of living a little bit longer, just enough time to do something with this new impulse. Then the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement of the 21st century, that we shall form and lay tomorrow in our hearts, will continue to grow, with ever greater intensification and fruitfulness, as an organic development, through the crucial 20’, 30’ and 40’ of this crucial second century of the age of Michael, so that we can come out of our Christmas meeting empowered and inspired, fired with strength and courage and holy enthusiasm, to fulfil our humble part in the Michaelic work on earth in the service of Christ in this century.
As you know, I came to Stuttgart directly from home, from Israel, from the terrible bloodshed, pain and suffering in Israel and Palestine. The present human suffering of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, that have known suffering for a long time, has reached even a higher level of intensity, which is hard to endure. Many people in your families, friends and acquaintances, in the Jewish and Palestinian communities, are burdened heavily by these tragic events. This is something that I carried with me, when I took the flight from Israel to Germany, with the only flight-company that flies from Israel, that has become again very isolated.
I know that each one of you, on coming here, was aware that you are traveling through the ruins of humanity and the earth, sunk deep in the grave of civilization, taking into your heart the pain and suffering of countless human beings, throughout the whole earth. You all came through the historical time in which we live, and carry the pain and despair of humanity in your hearts. We all feel and experience this, it is part of our daily life in all the countries, for the earth is one and humanity is one and all the pain, that someone experiences in one corner or other, we all experience with him and her.
This is simply a fact of present human history and evolution: On the way here we all traveled through the dire human situation of our time which is so deeply sunk in the grave of civilization, and we join together in Germany to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century, during the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference, the greatest impulse Rudolf Steiner gave to modern humanity for renewal and resurrection. And he did it also in a time in which he had to tell the members of the new anthroposophical society that,
We begin our Christmas Conference for the founding of the Anthroposophical Society in a new form with a view of a stark contrast. We have had to invite you, dear friends, to pay a visit to a heap of ruins. As you climbed up the Goetheanum hill here in Dornach your eyes fell on our place of work, but what you saw were the ruins of the Goetheanum which perished a year ago. In the truest sense of the word this sight is a symbol that speaks profoundly to our hearts, a symbol not only of the external manifestation of our work and endeavour on anthroposophical ground both here and in the world, but also of many symptoms manifesting in the world as a whole.
He said, look around you, as we climb the hill of Dornach, we see the ruins of our beloved Goetheanum on which we worked so sacrificially for ten years. Through untold deeds of human sacrifice and toil, we created this marvel that embodied the being of Anthroposophia in all its beauty and truth. We walk every day up here and see the burned down ruins of the Goetheanum, which reflect the ruins of the Anthroposophical Society, that could never bring itself together in human love and brotherhood, and experience the ruins of middle Europe, devasted by the recent world war. We have to be hosted in this humble wooden Schreinerei and many of you are freezing terribly because it is bitterly cold in this Christmas time.
Rudolf Steiner pointed out these things to the gathering members of the newly founded society, and he said: My dear friends, these are tough external-physical realities that in which we are living, but we must understand that this human suffering is greatly exacerbated because humans don’t dare to look and perceive, through the physical ruins and deaths, the truth of the spiritual reality behind it. But after all, we know that all human suffering of our time is caused because humans are attached so stubbornly to the physical world of the senses and do not want to open the spiritual eyes of their minds and hearts to see the living, creative, vibrant spirit weaving and creating through everything physical. For them, death is an unnatural catastrophe, old age and illness are outrageous misfortunes that must be eliminated. For them, all the things that make life physically difficult and painful are ultimate meaningless disasters, and they lose hope, because in the physical world, facing dark Ahriman, they do not dare to raise their thinking, feeling and will, to see the living spirit healing, resurrecting, redeeming, through death and illness and evil. But if you want to know the true meaning of death you have to look through the physical illusion of death to the spiritual reality of death, which is everlasting, resurrected, life! If you want to know the meaning of illness and pain you have to experience the healing and live giving forces of the spirit. If you want to understand the meaning of evil in the human soul and in the world, you have to experience how it calls forth from the depths of your soul the forces of true love and compassion. Only thus will human life appear in its wholeness from both sides of the threshold, as a fully meaningful spiritual reality. And those people who do not dare to open their souls to the new spiritual knowledge and the great revelations flowing from Michael into the physical world, condemn themselves to suffer without realizing the meaning and value of their suffering, which is the greatest self-inflicted suffering of all.
Rudolf Steiner emphasized, in his opening words on 24 December 1923, that what we perceive in the physical world from a spiritual perspective is Maja, Illusion, and if you take this as the only reality, you will never find the truth of the present age of human history and evolution. The external physical side of things presents mere illusion, Maja, to the senses and intellect. This is the reason why he said, repeatedly: My dear friends, the destroyed Goetheanum is Maja, and the justified and natural human feeling of loss is also an expression of this Maya! Of course we should feel the pain and lose, because we built it for 10 years with so much love and sacrifice, but the stark spiritual fact is that the eternally living Goetheanum stands right there where the physical stood, and moreover, it is also spread and inscribed far and wide through the entire cosmos! As we gather around the coffin of our dear friend, that recently died, and look at the body he left on earth, soon to be given to the fire and dispersed in the elements, we naturally long for his physical and soul nearness and presence, his loving physical words and embrace, and experience the pain of deprivation; but then, let us take hold of our soul and spirit, and wake up! He/she is standing right there, radiating life, love and light through her glorious appearance in the spirit, closest to our hearts, much more intimately united with us then before. Where do you look to find her at this moment? Do you look for her in the corpse soon consumed by fire? Yes, naturally, of course, the beloved body is still there and all the memories from our shared years of friendship and love are flashing up in our hearts. You do not have to deny that there is a dead body before you and that this form of shared life is over. But where is the real spiritual being of the person that you loved? Where is the spiritual Goetheanum, that you loved? It is not found in the bodily ruins and ashes. The Goetheanum stands resurrected in spiritualized fire right here and now and is actually much greater, much more beautiful and radiant than it was when it was encased in a physical body. After death, also your beloved friend experiences her expansion in the living, ensouled and spiritual universe, resurrected to magnificent cosmic life. This is the reality behind the external Maya, this is the truth of the real world.
Please open your hearts to experience the true spirit being of the Goetheanum resurrected among us, Rudolf Steiner said, and in its eternal spirit light and beauty, we shall also resurrect the Anthroposophical society from its ruins. Therefore, he said, I decided to found and build a new anthroposophical society from the beginning, becoming myself its leader and member, and give it a wholly new impulse. And for this new impulse I will form and lay the foundation stone tomorrow and it should become our guiding spirit star, for all future impulses that must illuminate and resurrect humanity and earth through the whole 20th century, until its culmination at the end of the century. A new impulse of Michael will be given tomorrow, streaming directly in real time from the spiritual world, that will be much greater and profound than everything we have accomplished since the beginning of the century.
As we stand here now exactly hundred years later, I want to read some of the original words that Rudolf Steiner spoke on the 24th of December 1923, about the esoteric meaning of the Christmas foundation conference. As you would recall, after he gave this deeply inspiring lecture, he read the statues for the newly founded anthroposophical society. Everything that he did during those long proceedings in each day of the Christmas foundation conference, is an exemplary demonstration of how the free spirit works into the minutest details of the most physical, human, and organizational elements of life, and if you want to learn from the Doctor how he handled those things, you will find so much there to learn from, but we cannot enter into this aspect of the Christmas conference at present.
I have chosen two passages that express eternal truths of Anthroposophia, not limited to the space of time of Christmas 1923. Let us hear with our hearts the first passage:
I want to tell you, that if this gathering run its course in the right way, if this gathering really reaches an awareness of how something spiritual and esoteric must be the foundation for all our work and existence, then those spiritual seeds, which are everywhere present, will be able to germinate through being warmed up by your mood and your enthusiasm. Today we want to generate a mood, which can accept in full earnestness, that external things are Maja and illusion, but that out of this Maja and illusion there germinates to our great joy, not a joy for our weakness but a joy for our strength, and for the will we now want to unfold, something that can live invisibly among us, something that can live in innumerable seeds invisible among us.
And then he added the following, which is also profoundly relevant also today and tomorrow:
Prepare your souls, dear friends, so that they may receive those seeds, for your souls are the true ground and soil in which these seeds of the spirit may germinate, unfold and develop. They are the truth. They shine forth as though with the shining of the sun bathing in light all the seeming ruin encountered by our external eye. Today of all days let us allow the profoundest call of Anthroposophy, indeed of everything spiritual to shine into our souls. Outwardly all is Maja and illusion, inwardly there unfold the fullness of truth, the fullness of divine and spiritual life. Anthroposophy shall bring into life all that is recognized as truth within it.
As Rudolf Steiner said elsewhere: The anthroposophical movement can be suppressed for some time. But you cannot root out Anthroposophia from the earth and from human evolution. You can force her to leave the earth- as indeed happened in 1925- but it will always come back again, because she is the daughter of the spirit of resurrection. To believe in the power of resurrection is, as I will also show tonight in the first public lecture, the foundation of all human evolution and history. You cannot understand human history and evolution any more if you don’t see and study it all in the light of the resurrection. What St. Paul said, some 2000 years ago, to the first Christian believers, must be said today to all those honestly striving to find Anthroposophia in the 21st century: Your anthroposophical striving is vain, is nothing, if it is not based on the actual living power of resurrection. Christianity is the religion of resurrection, Paul said, and without it, it is worse than nothing. The same is true of modern spiritual science. And as Rudolf Steiner pointed out a century ago, starting in the 30s and 40s and 50s of last century, this impulse of resurrection, the Christ-impulse, was destined to appear a second time and bring its blessing to humanity. He also pointed out that until the middle of the 20th century all the last remnants of the creative forces of the past will be exhausted and come to final end, and biblical apocalyptical prophecies will be fulfilled, as indeed happened, in mighty, shattering, all changing world-events; and he added that in 1933, ushering this apocalypse- that we call the apocalypse of the age of Michael- the etheric Christ and the apocalyptic Beast will appear together in the midst of the destruction of the old earth and humanity and the resurrection of the new humanity and earth, in the face of the greatest evil that we ever experienced before; and then the etheric Christ will reappear, Rudolf Steiner predicted, not as a suffering Christ nailed to the physical cross, as a dying Christ, but as a triumphant, apocalyptic, resurrected etheric Christ, about which we spoke in November 2022, in the lectures now published in the book, Es ist an der Zeit!
I want now to read the second passage from the words Rudolf Steiner spoke a century ago, updating them out of the signs of the present time.
At the very beginning of our conference I therefore want to start by reminding you that it was in the last third of the 19th century that on the one hand the waves of materialism were rising while on the other hand, on the other side, a great revelation struck down into this waves of materialism.
Today we must say ‘in the last third of the 20th century’ and not refer to a ‘wave of materialism’, because the flood of materialism has already taken place, and we are sunk deeply below its muddy surface, in the gigantic global swamp or the grave of civilization. And when Rudolf Steiner speaks about ‘the revelation of the spirit that struck down into these waves’, we should say: A revelation of the etheric Christ is resurrected out of this grave, because the most important of all the revelations in our time is the revelation of the etheric Christ.
Furthermore, we must point out that we approach very soon the middle point of the present age of Michael, that falls in the middle of the 2nd century of his reign, out of its three full centuries. (1879-2054-2229). Therefore, the middle point of Michael’s age and the 2nd century, is the most decisive point, because then the destiny of the age of Michael and the destiny of humanity will be decided. Already out of the sings of the time in 1919 Rudolf Steiner warned that the age of Michael could be rejected by humanity, brining upon itself a terrible calamity. Hundred years later we must speak in the spirit of the same words; we just have to update them out of the Michaelic signs of our time, pointing to what must be emphasized now. We have to direct our attention to the new Michaelic revelation of the etheric Christ, that alone can resurrect humanity and earth from the grave of civilization.
And now Rudolf Steiner uttered some of the deepest and most profound eternal words about the essence of Anthroposophia. Here there is absolutely nothing to change or update. These are eternal truth words; truthful in all times and beyond all time, they stand forever written in the spiritual scrip of human evolution.
Not from any arbitrary earthly consideration, but in obedience to a call resounding from the spiritual world; not from any arbitrary earthly consideration, but through a vision of the sublime pictures given out of the spiritual world as a modern revelation for the spiritual life of mankind. From this flowed the impulse for the Anthroposophical Movement. This Anthroposophical Movement is not an earthly service. This Anthroposophical Movement in its totality and in all its details is a service to the divine beings, a service to God. We create the right mood for it when we see it in all its wholeness as a service to God. As a service to God let us take it into our hearts at the beginning of our conference. Let us inscribe deeply within our hearts the knowledge that this Anthroposophical Movement desires to link the soul of every individual devoted to it with the primeval sources of all that is human in the spiritual world, that this Anthroposophical Movement desires to lead the human being to that final enlightenment — that enlightenment which meanwhile in human earthly evolution is the last which gives satisfaction to man — which can clothe the newly beginning revelation in the words: Yes, this am I as a human being, as a God-willed human being on the earth, as a God-willed human being in the universe.
My dear friends, I wanted to open the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference and the laying of the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century, with these words, that we will realize the continuation of the Michaelic-Christ impulse flowing through the apocalypse of Michael through the 20th century. The laying of the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century, that we shall celebrate tomorrow, is dedicated to this eternal impulse that now wishes to reenter into historical time on earth. This continuation is based on the fact that the eternal spirit impulse of Anthroposophia, that tried to enter human evolution in Christmas 1923, that did not find open human hearts to receive and embody it, and had to rapidly take leave of the earth, seeks open human hearts again today. The eternal spirit impulse is the same, but its expression in historical time is metamorphosed, because during the hundred years in which it was separated from the conscious life of humanity on earth, the greatest spiritual event had taken place. Therefore, tomorrow the essence of this spiritual event must be added to this impulse, expressing its living, Christed, heartbeat, the essential metamorphosis of the Michaelic stream during the last century, that we must hear, comprehend and embody in our etheric hearts, and actualize in real life, tomorrow and in the coming days and years.