Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 25 November 1911, Tübingen

47. Address at the Inauguration of the Ludwig Uhland Branch

When a child answers a question from its father or mother for the first time according to its own thoughts and feelings, what joyful and grateful feelings arise in the parents' hearts! In this way we can get an idea of how the spiritual beings, who work on us from higher worlds and want to guide us, rejoice when they finally receive an answer to their many questions. This happens when spiritually minded people - people who are still searching for a hidden power behind everything external, who do not yet feel satisfied in what we can only experience or see in the physical - join together and unite to form a lodge. Even if it is small and the members do not yet face each other with complete consciousness to fulfill their task, the work is nevertheless promoted through serious diligence and loyalty and through devoted love - and slowly, step by step, we rise from one level to another, from faith to recognition, from recognition to seeing.

Let us consider a plant in its growth. It does not immediately appear before us in its full bloom, but slowly, very gradually develops from the leaf into the blossom, from the blossom into the fruit. Even if our courage sometimes fails us and our work becomes difficult, we can rest assured that we have helping powers at our side and that the spirit that permeates the entire theosophical movement will not abandon us.

The call should sound again and again in every Theosophist's heart: “Let there be!” - “Let there be!” calls out to us from all of nature; wherever we turn our gaze, “Let there be” resounds everywhere. - How depressing the autumn mood would be for us, how filled with melancholy, sad thoughts we would have to be at the sight of dying nature, which now stands there unadorned, robbed of all its splendor, if we did not have the conviction, the firm conviction deep inside that this dying must come, so that next to this dying the call “Let there be!” can ring out to us all the louder. And what comforting, uplifting feelings then enter us at the thought that in the death of the plant lies the seed for its new awakening and blossoming and that in spring it will once again stand before us in its former splendor and glory. In this way, even though it has become human autumn, we can already see the seed of Christmas and spring in it. And it is precisely in such remembrance that a joyful, blissful Christmas spirit must always prevail in every theosophical association and the Christ must be born anew in us again and again.

There are materialists who deny the divine-spiritual in human beings and regard their fellow human beings merely as machines, as automatons. In life, however, these people never deny the spirit; for, for example, when such a person sees another suffering and stands by him, does not a feeling stir within him that he would certainly not have if the sufferer were a mere machine without any spirituality in him? Compassion and sympathy arise even in such a person! Proof that in every human being, whether he admits it or not, something lies dormant in his innermost being that can be awakened - and that our physical body is only the shell of a high spiritual seed.

Now, of course, many people may object: I live the way I think is good and right; I will see what comes after death and what I have to continue working on; the deity who placed me in the world will help me along. - This is to be contrasted with the fact that, for example, one does not first show love and interest in any profession one wants to take up when one thinks about practicing it, but works towards it long beforehand with great effort and care. And yet this cannot be compared to the one high goal we are striving towards!

In the Old Testament we read that man was created in the image of God. But how far man has strayed from his divine origin! He has descended further and further into materialism, and only when he is back in the ascending line can he approach his goal, his divine starting point, again! So, man was created in the image of God. But, the New Testament goes on to say: “God is spirit”. But can we think of something dormant, inactive when we hear the word “spirit”? - Certainly not; rather, a never-resting, never-ceasing activity is concealed in this word. We are now at a transitional stage; for that which we have received from the gods has gradually expired and been forgotten - all the more so the further man descends; and the spiritual faculties must be awakened, acquired and attained anew.

In the year 1899 new gates have been opened into the spiritual world! From time to time, questions and admonitions from higher beings reach our ears with particular force. One answer to such questions was when in Rome some people from the lowest classes of the population, from the slaves in the catacombs, came together secretly in the underground burial chambers of their dead and thus laid the foundation for what later became Christianity. It was not the so-called “educated”, for they sat high up in their galleries. And it was the poor, those striving for truth, who had to serve as prey for wild animals in theatrical performances in ancient Rome, for example. - And yet! The spark living in them could not be suppressed; it spread further and further and finally became a blazing fire. When Moses wrote the Ten Commandments, it was an answer to questions of the gods from higher worlds; and the entire theosophical movement is a new answer to such questions of heaven!