Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 14 August 1914, Dornach

66. Samaritan Course Lecture II

Faith and trust (in the victoriousness of the spirit) must be so great that we think something of how we are with our hearts and minds in such things (such as caring for the wounded and sick). With every injury, something happens that points to the future in perspective, so that something happens through divine-spiritual powers that later passes into consciousness. We direct our attitude towards something that later becomes conscious. So it is indeed significant how we find our way into the helping role with our whole soul and frame of mind; and perhaps we can express this through nothing more than by imbuing our whole frame of mind with the right trust and faith in the power and strength of the spirit and by adhering to the words “Not I, but the Christ in me”.

I would like to point to an infinitely distant ideal. In the spiritual realm, things are helpful that will only become effective externally in the future. And today it is difficult to believe and difficult to understand with the whole mind; but one must find one's way into the great, comprehensive ideal, which says: Humanity will only be fully present when it will be possible for us to feel the pain of the individual as well as that of the other. - I will come back to this in a few final words tomorrow.

In fact, when we are confronted with any external object that is inanimate and unconscious, we can cut it up, we can tear it apart. You know that this also causes certain sensations of pain, but in general there is not what there is when we are confronted with an organism imbued with consciousness and its pain. (Man) has the privilege of feeling his ego, his I, through the detour of pain. But we are excluded from the pain of the other. And now comes the ideal: it is of immense importance that we find our way into this, that in the future the spiritual will be so strong that not only the one who carries the body feels the pain in his consciousness, but that the other feels it just as strongly. One day you will be able to feel the hurt of the other as strongly as your own hurt. This is actually the Christ ideal; and at this time it is good to remember this ideal.

For truly, that we can be around our building at this time should be struck tremendously large by us. And so we should at least commemorate the great ideals of mankind, here at our landmark, around which to frolic [gap in transcript]

To become a helper, says the spirit, to become a helper is conditioned by the ideal which is contained in the following lines, my dear friends, and which I would like to lay upon your souls today in conclusion. To have imbued one's mind with these lines, to have understood these lines, to feel, to feel, pours into our hands that active compassion which we may often need. (When one) speaks (them) as if to oneself, what lies in these seven lines can work:

As long as you feel the pain,

(but you say it to the other, the sufferer who is struck by pain)

Who avoids me

(this is how you face the wounded person)

Is Christ unrecognized
Working in the being of the world.
For only the spirit remains weak,
When it alone in its own body
Is powerful in the feeling of suffering.

It is a high ideal to see the weakness of the spirit in only being able to feel its own pain, not being able to feel it when it is present in another body. It is the strength of the spirit to feel pain everywhere. We really have to overcome the prejudice that the spirit is already strong in any of us. It is strong (the spirit), but it is weak in us and must become stronger and stronger. Therefore (we should) hold up the ideal to ourselves:

As long as you feel the pain,
Who avoids me,
Christ is unrecognized
Working in the being of the world.
For only the spirit remains weak,
When it alone in its own body
Is powerful in the feeling of suffering.