The only one who interested me was Rudolf Steiner. But - surely he must have come from some other planet! How can a man say such amazing things, one after the other, unendingly new, and make such astounding statements with the air of a prosaic recorder? At that time I had no idea that Rudolf Sterner had already made a name for himself by philosophical works of historic and undamental value before he came forward as a spiritual investigator, nor had I the slightest inkling that he was thoroughly at home in the various branches of scientific research. I simply felt: Here is a man who must be taken seriously. The quality of what he said was such that one no longer felt ashamed at the thought of Hegel and Fichte.
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Rudolf Steiner's Outline of Occult Science was lying on my table at that time. I can still see it there. It upset me, for I simply could not wade through it. If I read for any length of time a feeling of nausea came over me. All this mass of knowledge weighed like undigested food, and I had to read cautiously, never more than two or three pages at a time if I were not to get sick of it.
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You must learn slowly to think out a new world and yet not leave your immediate tasks undone. You must have patience, waiting to see how all this develops in the spirit and the soul! - Only very gradually did I begin to realise that by delving into world-evolution in the remote past, a man's character and spiritual freedom can be strengthened in regard to the problems of every day life as well, and that only by this means will he become truly conscious of his origin and his manhood.
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And now, what of this book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? I procured a copy at once, because, as a "cultured man," I wanted to know something about the methods of investigation by which these results were obtained. But woe betide! The beginning of the book was splendid. The ethical precepts simply won my heart. But oh ! - those "lotus-flowers". Two-petalled, sixteenpetalled, ten-petalled "higher spiritual organs" were revolving in the book! But in me nothing would revolve - not with the best will in the world! A great mill-wheel seemed to grind away in my brain, and a sense of hopelessness weighed upon my soul.
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What pleased me was the evidence of a mood of festive devotion. It was not difficult to see that this was a festival of man. These people were filled with joy that they were in the presence of one whom they felt to be quite out of the common, a leader worthy of all respect, and who yet went about among them as a man among other men.
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With absolute assurance I say that stories which accuse Rudolf Steiner of vanity or a desire for effect, are absolutely false. They were based upon fleeting, untried first impressions, and they fell utterly to the ground in his actual presence. If ever there has been an embodiment of the reverse of personal vanity, it was Rudolf Steiner. And as for striving after effect - he was not only much too sincere but much too able for that.
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He let Goethe be Goethe. He himself was looking into the world with Goethe's eyes. But he brought greater power into those eyes, and a richer, more spiritual world in which there was room for all the Gods of men - above all the God of the Christians. Here, in very truth, was a kingly mind in the realms of knowledge, far-seeing and mighty in its freedom. He let a science of Nature come to flower around us, a wisdom far more stimulating than the dead knowledge of the day and a science in which religion could breathe anew.
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In that Nuremberg lecture only one impression was strong and positive: it was the extraordinary spiritual power and mobility of expression which played over Rudolf Steiner's face while he was
speaking. At one moment he looked quite young, the next sallow with age; one moment he had the virility of a man, the next the fragile delicacy of a woman; one moment he was the dry teacher, the next an inspired Dionysus. I watched this interplay with growing interest, for I had never seen anything like it before.
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To me, one of the most remarkable things about him was the number of secrets which he consciously carried about locked up within him, taking them finally through death without revealing them to a single soul. Not once would he let himself be enticed into giving even a hint. It might well have happened that conclusions could have been drawn from some chance remark or other. But this was never the case with Rudolf Steiner.
He only said what would help, and avoided everything that might do harm, even in the future. If only people could have seen how he spoke of these matters in personal conversation! His great dark eyes became even more alert. With a consciousness of responsibility than which nothing greater or purer could be imagined, he spoke every word with hesitation. It was as if, all unseen, he had passed into a temple where he was acting before the eyes of higher powers. One could have wished that all the sensitive minds of humanity had been present to witness such a spectacle. If the teaching of reincarnation were to be renewed in a Christian sense it could not have been entrusted to a more scrupulous mind. Quite apart from my own opinion about reincarnation, I often said to myself, when I listened to Dr. Steiner speaking about this question: "If I were Providence itself and seeking for a man of sufficient moral greatness to be entrusted with knowledge of these things and speak of them, a man who is big enough to cope with the dangers to himself and others, choice could fall on no one better." - But be that as it may: Rudolf Steiner's way of treating this realm of life is like a sacred legacy, bequeathed not only to the Anthroposophical Society but to all mankind.
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"Have you really never been mistaken in your investigations and been obliged to correct them afterwards?" - "I have never spoken of what I wasn't quite sure of," he said. Still I was not satisfied. - "I mean, have you not on closer scrutiny had to correct your first impressions and results of research?" - "Yes, but then there is always an obvious reason for it. For instance, if I meet you in a fog and do not recognise you, the fog itself is a factor which must then be taken into account." Still I would not give way. "Has it never happened that you had to admit afterwards: 'I was wrong there?'" He thought quietly for a minute or two. "Well, yes," he said, "in human beings I have sometimes been deceived. But after all, with people, something from outer life will often creep in that one cannot foresee."
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My own impression - and it grew stronger as the years went by - is that Rudolf Steiner had a store of world-knowledge of which, to his dying day, not a single one of his intimates heard a word. He spoke as an educator, never as a mere revealer. Anything else was out of the question. He entrusted very much to mankind, without regard to the counterblasts it would bring him, but he was absolutely relentless in saying only what was necessary and could be borne at the given moment.
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He told how the divine revelations contained in the Old Testament had dawned in all their greatness upon the soul of the boy Jesus during the years immediately following His return to Nazareth after the event in the Temple at Jerusalem, how His sorrow grew more and more intense as He realised that any true understanding of the greatness of this former revelation of the Divine was lacking among His contemporaries, how this sorrow lived within Him, unexpressed and not understood by those in His environment - "a sorrow in itself far greater than all other sorrows I have known among mankind." - But just because this sorrow was destined to dwell wholly in the inner being of the boy Jesus, He was able to ennoble it beyond all telling...
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Again and again I tried to be fully conscious of the unprecedented nature of the whole situation. Outside, electric trams were clanking by, one after the other, with shrill hootings. Within stood a man who claimed to have the past in pictures before him and spoke of them with natural assurance. - "Whoever are you?" I kept asking myself. Every test the human mind could make, provided it was an unprejudiced one, came out in favour of the miraculous.
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During those years I once dreamt that I asked Dr. Steiner: "Who were you in your previous incarnations?" He answered: "Pythagoras and Menander."
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Never once in Rudolf Steiner's life, so far as I know, did it happen that a recognised scientist went to him saying: You write such remarkable things. May I ask you about them? - Nothing that he wrote was taken seriously. Men would not let themselves be attracted by his other work nor be compromised by contact with something unfamiliar and unrecognised. At most they expected Rudolf Steiner to come forward on his own account and ask for investigation and recognition. But the request for the former was clearly enough stated in his books. When that had no effect, every other step would have been beneath him.
So all that was left to science was to concern itself with old-fashioned seeresses or automatic painters. But all such phenomena only lead into the dim, unconscious regions of the life of soul, and in any case the right methods of investigation are not there. With Rudolf Steiner there was simply no question of trance. One looked there into a super-consciousness, not into a dark, dreamy subconsciousness. It was a difference as between the uncanny flashing of rockets by night and the bright sunlight of day.
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"When one looks more deeply into one's inner being, one discovers things of which one does not like to speak." The tone in which he said especially the last few words would alone turn anyone who heard it into a righteous and humble man. Not a trace of sentimentality nor secret self-complacency. "A man in the presence of God" - might well have been said. Here was a man gazing at his own being in the clear light of consciousness, without losing his sense of self. Such a scene embodies everything that has made Protestantism great: self-knowledge and the experience of Grace.
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"Do you really think that Anthroposophy will succeed in becoming more than a strong impulse in our civilisation? Do you think it can really strike through as new culture?" - He became amazingly serious. "If humanity does not accept what is now being offered, it will have to wait for another hundred years," he said. He seemed to be deeply moved. It was not merely emotion, but something like the thunder of the Judgment. He said no more. Never before or since have I seen how the soul of a whole age can tremble in one man.
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Not a priest nor a prophet, but a knower of reality stood there before us and let us gaze at this reality in and through him. Only a warped nature could fail to perceive that here one was standing in the very light of truth. The man before us was telling of a world in which he himself was living. The many hundreds of sermons I had heard about Christ came up in the background of my mind. They faded into shadows. "We speak of that which we do know and testify of that which we have seen." - A new proclamation of Christ was there. A new Christ-era was dawning - as yet in the first faint rays of the promised morning. The lecture itself spoke of this -spoke without the least trace of selfish longing for what has yet to come, proclaiming simply what is and would like to bestow itself upon us. Anyone who witnessed this could doubt no longer but that a fully authorised servant of Christ was standing before him.
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What impressed me most was the way he spoke of the great teachers who had crossed his path. Men of extraordinary pirituality, entirely unknown in public life, were there at the right moment, helping him in critical years to understand and develop his faculties, standing like sponsors at the dawn of his life's mission. Without Rudolf Steiner having spoken of it, one's impression was that long preparation is made for a life like this, that at the right moment the necessary helpers are sent, and that everything leads up to an undertaking which, with wisdom-filled knowledge, is to make an incision in human history.
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"Where are the 'Initiates' now, when a life-work like yours is at stake?" He replied: "Spiritual truths have now to be grasped by human thought. If you were to meet these Initiates to-day you might not find in them anything of what you are seeking. They had their tasks more in earlier incarnations. To-day the thinking of man must be spiritualised." "Do you not feel utterly alone in your task?" I asked, mindful of the distance which separated him from the rest of us. "I do not feel lonely," was the quiet reply. - This much may be told from hours during which one was permitted to look into the background of such a life.
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The flood of counter-articles broke in with all the greater force after the Threefold Commonwealth idea had stirred up the passions of the political and economic world against Rudolf Steiner. The verdict was "Boycott", and the ban was also put upon his friends. The invisible pope of public opinion had issued his decree.
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Dr. Steiner was no more a nationalist in the narrow sense than he was a pacifist in the shallow sense. He rightly said that the age of pacifism is the age of the Great War. He inaugurated the beginnings of future fellowship among the peoples, and in the land where the League of Nations holds its sessions there rose the Goetheanum - the Building at which members of more than twelve nations worked
during the War.
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At the turn of the year 1917-18 Dr. Steiner grew more and more sorrowful and hopeless. "Peace ought to have been made in the year 1916. In 1917, with a widely conceived spiritual plan, it was still a possibility. In 1918 it is no longer possible. Of course I do not mean that an outer ending of the war is impossible. But it will not be peace as peace has previously been made. The war will go on merely in a different guise."
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One felt in actual experience: there is not a "this world" and a "world beyond". No, there is one world, with a visible and an invisible realm, and this "invisible" realm is actually there and can make itself perceptible at any minute - if there is a man who is sensitive to it.
Not in the very remotest degree did Dr. Steiner demand belief in what he said. He simply narrated, and let others make of it what they could.
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Apart from this, all I can say is that only now, when the light of Spiritual Science had been shed upon them, did the sciences really begin to interest me. It is impossible to describe the unutterable relief of a man whose life's interest had been centred in religion, to find his feet in the realm of a science of nature which did not stand cold and aloof, nay even hostile, by the side of religion, cognisant only of dead laws. This science of nature let the living spirit of God shine through all things, and brought to all the sciences the waters of spiritual baptism; in the depths of things were the same revelations of life as have been proclaimed in religion: sacrifice, death, resurrection.
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Steiners aim:objective reality. Fundamentally different attitudes in the world! Dr. Steiner was interested in what Luther saw. For example, he regarded Luther's fights with the Devil as actual truggles with the approaching spirit of subsequent centuries, with the Spirit of materialistic intellectualism, known in Anthroposophy as Ahriman. He also held that Luther's much deplored coarseness was due to his "Imaginations", which did not, however, rise to the level of clear consciousness.
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When Dr. Steiner was asked: What is the difference between the Anthroposophical Movement and the Christian Community? - he answered: "The Anthroposophical Movement addresses itself to man's need for knowledge and brings knowledge; the Christian Community addresses itself to man's need for resurrection and brings Christ." We have already shown the sense in which knowledge, too, in itself can lead to Christ.
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If he came to Stuttgart where the Christian Community had opened its centre, the Waldorf School, the Kommende Tag,* the Clinic, the Institute for Scientific Research, the Publishing Company, the
editorial boards of the magazines, the Youth Movement, the Anthroposophical Society - all stood begging at his doors, wanting to live on his advice. His was the master-mind in them all.
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Dr. Steiner would sit there listening inscrutably, then, quite suddenly, begin to speak - whereupon the other speeches stood out in all their poverty. The superior power was so overwhelming that, spiritually, it was like a drama of the gods, personally, however, often a catastrophe. Every egotistical feeling in these splendid men passed through a crisis. In the many meetings which I had attended over some tens of years, I never saw anything to equal this example of the supremacy of one individual over others. Dr. Steiner spoke - and the many minds in the meeting were one; at all events the resistance did not count. Everyone was staring at - what he had not seen.
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He was not concerned on account of himself as a person but on account of the effect which the disgraceful attacks would have on his work. He was fully aware that his opponents were dragging his personality in the mud in order to destroy his work. And he saw that anthroposophists did not see this. They retreated into their citadel and did not see that fire was being laid around its walls.
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During those days he was "like one great open wound," as someone said to me later on. And from there one may turn to the translucent calm and kindly spirit in which he wrote The Story of My Life. Perhaps that book, too, will help finally to place Dr. Steiner before the public in the right light.
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The dimensions which this life and activity now assumed simply took one's breath away. There were the two-and-a-half weeks during which, in spite of abdominal trouble lasting for months, he gave about seventy lectures: - one lecture every day to doctors and theologians, one to actors and artists, one to theologians alone, one to the assembled members of the Anthroposophical Society, and every second day a lecture to the workmen at the Goetheanum. All these lectures were given to people who were experts in their own line, and an unparalleled wealth of new teaching was given in all domains. It was as if one only needed to probe Dr. Steiner at some other point and a flood of super-human knowledge poured over the listeners.
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Rudolf Steiner, who was often very weak when he arrived, obviously felt well while he was giving the lectures, and grew more and more refreshed as they went on. But the additional fact of having to get through two hundred interviews with people who came to him with requests, was more than his strength could bear. - (The doorkeeper counted the number of visits. Dr. Steiner himself never did so and never spoke of it.)
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During his last illness Rudolf Steiner himself said that the finishing stroke had been the number of personal interviews, not the lectures. Certainly, once before, when a member of the Executive had asked anthroposophists to show their love for him by not making so many personal claims on him, Dr. Steiner had said: "The only love people can show me is to call me day and night when they need me." But the last words were not taken with a deep enough sense of responsibility. And so in the language of religion one can say: Dr. Steiner died at the hand of human "sins." Those outside and those inside worked together. His freely
given help led him to death.
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Six months later I was standing beside his coffin. None of us had expected that Rudolf Steiner would succumb to the illness. The mortal sheath, just abandoned by the spirit setting out on its far journey, was resting on the death-bed at the foot of the Christ statue which stood there almost completed. Those who looked at the face of the dead could see what the spirit can make of the body in the life of a truly great man on earth. The sublimity and purity of his features was equal to every test and unsurpassed. Perhaps the death mask, if it is ever reproduced as a picture, will be a means of convincing many. Again and again one's gaze turned from the forsaken earthly body to the great Christ figure which points with compelling gesture into the future. The disciple had fallen at the feet of the Master. It was as if Christ were taking the disciple to Himself with sheltering arms while He Himself went forward with unceasing step towards the future of the world. The disciple's mission was fulfilled. The Master's brow was radiant with the light of divine world-purposes.
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When, at the wish of Frau Dr. Steiner, and in the solemnly decorated hall where Dr. Steiner had given most of his great lectures, I was performing the burial service according to the ritual of The Christian Community, a drop of the sprinkled water fell in the centre of the forehead and shone there through the whole service like a sparkling diamond. The light of many candles was reflected in this glittering star - even as the revelations of light from higher worlds had been reflected in his spirit. Thus adorned, the body sank into the coffin. To me it was as if higher Spirits had indicated in an earthly picture what it had been our lot to experience.
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When the service was at an end, one impression lived mightily within my soul: "This work is now completed. Like a great question it stands there before mankind. If all who belong to that work dedicate their powers to it with single purpose, it will prevail!"
Friedrich Rittelmeyer
Rudolf Steiner Enters My Lifehttps://documents.pub/reader/full/friedrich-rittelmeyer-rudolf-steiner-enters-my-life
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