Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 28 April 1914, Berlin

62. About Marcello Haugen

From a lecture

No one but the atavistic clairvoyant or clairsentient or who does not “know” but gropes out of a dark feeling, no one would belong in our society to be able to catch up on what it clearly shows that he has not yet gone through in his earlier incarnations. Our society should be a place of care for people who still have atavistic abilities, so to speak. That should not be misunderstood! The fact that it has been misunderstood has caused us great concern in recent weeks. A personality who has come into our society through the whole way in which he has worked and who should be taken into our society for “care” in order to be brought up to a real grasp of the spiritual-scientific, such a personality has been taken as one who could achieve something particularly significant.

But with such old powers one cannot achieve precisely what should be valued in our society. So that personality, who is the opposite of what I have now described as necessary, Mr. Haugen from Norway, who should be cultivated by us as someone who is “educated” by our spiritual science, has been taken as an “educator”. As a result, the central board of the Anthroposophical Society has now felt compelled to declare that Mr. Haugen can no longer be a member with us. We must understand the task that our spiritual science has in today's world. It is therefore with a heavy heart that the Central Council has taken this measure to ensure that such cases do not recur; otherwise our Society would not be led up into the light, but into the mire. Of course it must be said: There can be no such [thing as] this measure as a “punishment” or something that passes judgment on the private life of the person concerned. But if the conduct is precisely such that it is contrary to what corresponds to the principle of the Society, it may prove necessary to say that this does not correspond to the mission of the Anthroposophical Society, which we know from the spiritual worlds!