The History of the German Section of the Theosophical Society 1902-1913
GA 250 — 2 November 1909, Berlin
42. On the Seven-year Anniversary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society
My dear friends!
The very considerations that are to begin with our Berlin branch with this evening could be the occasion for a brief introduction to say a number of things, to tie in once again with something that has been repeatedly mentioned and emphasized in recent weeks and especially in the days of our general assembly. We are now in the eighth year of our German Section, that is, after the conclusion of the seventh year, and it has been pointed out that what one might call the cyclical movement of events and facts in time does not arise from some fantasy theory, but is based entirely on facts of reality, and that only those who apply it to life, in which he is directly involved, understand such a thing in the deeper sense. For each of you, the fact that you have placed yourselves in the Theosophical movement makes it, in a certain sense, your own affair, and so each of you should consider such a cyclic sequence of this matter for yourselves, and, one might say, practically consider it. One can learn a great deal from such a thing. It has been repeatedly emphasized that in the development of the human being in the individual life, the period around the seventh year, when the change of teeth occurs, is important and decisive in a variety of ways. Anyone who has only superficially observed life within our German Section – not to mention the fact that everything that can be said about it appears all the more sharply and intimately when viewed more deeply – can truly say that this first cycle of our theosophical work can be compared quite accurately with the individual development that a child undergoes from birth to the change of teeth, when it gets its second, then permanent teeth. For anyone who really wants to look at the events will not be able to help saying that the overview that could be obtained during the days of our General Assembly has shown that we are dealing with a number of feverish symptoms that our changing teeth have caused in the past few weeks and months. We are even dealing with quite severe fever symptoms, and it cannot be denied that many a tooth that has grown again now that the first milk teeth have fallen out has bitten quite hard, and that this is not yet over. What I am now saying about biting and the various other symptoms has a deep and profound significance. It should be clear to everyone that another seven years lie ahead for the Theosophical movement, and that these seven years are in some respects a growing into what, when it approaches, is called the awkward age. All these things can be shaped in one way or another through a good education in the individual. In the theosophical movement, if we take our cause seriously and worthily, this education must to a large extent be a serious self-education, a taking-into-hand of the individual souls by the participants in the theosophical movement. And it will be necessary in the future to look more closely at many things than has been the case so far. In practice, many things have not been fully taken into account in the past seven years; however, things that are necessary for a fruitful development should definitely be taken into account.
For example, it should be borne in mind that in the theosophical wisdom there are initially the broad guidelines that one must first acquire. So that those who are new and fresh can always acquire these guidelines, and so that they can thoroughly acquire these guidelines for themselves, perhaps in a shorter time than the others who have been through the whole seven-year theosophical life, it will always be ensured that a course is held with these guidelines. If one understands the essence of the assimilation of these guidelines in the true sense of the word, then one will also understand, on the one hand, where the later deepening should lie, after one has assimilated these guidelines, for those who seriously want to work within the Theosophical movement. But one will also find the right relationship to the first guidelines as well as to what is given later. This is something that one should acquire through a corresponding feeling. That which gives the first guidelines is truly a great plan of world wisdom. When you absorb within yourself the configuration, the planned structure of the human being, as given in my Theosophy, it depends on how the individual reader or listener relates to it, whether he absorbs mere abstract knowledge in such a matter, or whether he absorbs warm, meaningful wisdom. The entire book of “Theosophy” contains, if you will, abstract, cold, conceptual knowledge, and it also contains, if you will, the warmest, deepest, most soul-stirring, most vital wisdom. And it is self-education and self-knowledge alone that must lead us to realize that it depends only on the reader whether it is abstract, dry knowledge or whether it is warm, meaningful wisdom that goes deep into the heart, ordering all life, setting life tasks, and offering consolation in the most difficult situations of fate.
Those who are not too lazy can find answers for all of life's situations in such a book. It often happens that someone comes to me with the best of intentions and says, “Oh, tell me what my faults are, I would so much like to get rid of them.” But they do not consider that everyone can always find the answer to this question for themselves in the spiritual scientific literature, and that it is of far greater value to them to find the answer for themselves in the available literature than to have it answered in an external way. Sometimes, instead of asking such a question and wanting a personal answer, it would be much, much better if the person concerned would take Theosophy, read half a page of it, and then imbue the matter with their own genuine thoughts.
It is not too much to go over these guidelines and basic principles of the theosophical worldview again and again, to make them completely your own. Only by doing so will you be able to gain the right relationship to everything that follows. Then you will be able to understand that it was necessary, in a certain sense, to proceed from the guidelines and basic principles to what has been given at the branch evenings over the past few years: it is necessary in order to fully immerse oneself in it. On the other hand, however, it is also true that in the last three years, after the foundations had been laid, I have in fact said nothing new with regard to the deeper truths. As necessary as it was to penetrate everything intensively, these were further elaborations for life, compared to what was said in the basic and guiding principles; they were lights that were to be thrown on the various areas of life. Four lectures have been given in the last few weeks in the House for Architects: 'The Mission of Spiritual Science Once and Now', 'The Mission of Wrath', 'The Mission of Truth', 'The Mission of Devotion'. Anyone who has really studied the book 'Theosophy' could have found that everything that was said there is already contained in it: there are four squares that have now been painted in different colors. It is absolutely necessary to carry out this coloring in every single soul; for it would be the most false and incorrect to think that just because everything is contained in “Theosophy,” one should spend one's whole life with “Theosophy.” But the right attitude in practical life to these further explanations will come to him who has made entirely his own what is said there. He who has made entirely his own what is said in 'Theosophy' may say to himself: 'I have worked for four years to make entirely my own the fundamental principles of Theosophy. And now it is so strange what has happened to me! If I had heard a lecture like the one on 'The Mission of Wrath' four years ago, I would have been able to understand it, of course, but I see that there are different ways of understanding it. This is the case with such things, in which there really is something to it. There is an understanding that someone might have who is perhaps hearing these lectures for the first time but is not aware that “Theosophy” exists. Then there is a second understanding that someone has who has embraced Theosophy, and they might make a strange discovery in the process. He might say to himself: “Four years ago, this would have seemed difficult to me; some things would have been foreign to me, it would have seemed to me that some of the terms used as turns of phrase would not have made much sense to me. And now, after I have properly absorbed this matter about the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness soul, and so on, I listen to these four lectures in much the same way as I used to read a novella that spoke quite easily to my soul."
This should only be stated as what a real appropriation of “Theosophy” can and will certainly do if it is worked through in the right way. If someone, after picking up the book and going through the material once or twice, then finds, “These are dry arguments that occur in every science,” then he has never overcome the discomfort of asking himself, “Is it really not up to me to see something else in it than a science? That I cannot see that which can come out of it like sparks from a fire?” This is how we have to look at these things. We must not believe that it is demeaning for us in later years to say to ourselves: I should really learn the guidelines and basic principles correctly, and in fact as they are written. It is tremendously important that we realize that things are not said just so or just so because the writer in question thought of it, but because things are written with an inner necessity in every detail. The present, with its shabby literature, has no concept whatsoever of the great responsibility with which the book is written. It would be a great self-education if, within the theosophical movement, people would gradually get into the habit of feeling something of this responsibility. Believe me, it does matter if in a book like that, written with responsibility to the spiritual worlds, a predicate is placed before the subject or if 'was' is chosen instead of 'is'. Or if in some other way a sentence is formed in this or that way, then there are good reasons for it. And our present-day degenerate literature, which believes that one can write down anything that comes to mind and that it does not matter whether one uses this or that word, has no concept of the very profound responsibility that one must have towards these things. Today everything is written down carelessly, as people think of it. It is important to coin each sentence correctly. And if there is no right word for a concept in the language, then in a book like “Theosophy” you have to use a word in the first half line that approximately gives the right meaning, and then, in order for the concept to come out right, use a corresponding word in the second half line so that the two words balance each other and the matter can take effect on the soul.
A book like “Theosophy” cannot be compared to any book of external literature. For it will be the most beautiful, the highest fruit of the theosophical movement when a feeling awakens in the soul from that self-education. Then one also gets a feeling for the fact that most of what is printed today - with the exception of mere reports of events that are given about social conditions - would actually be best left unprinted because it is not fully developed, because it is not at all ripe to flow from one soul to another.
For that we should get a feeling and a truly dignified and earnest sentiment. It would be bad if the Theosophists were to take in what is given in “Theosophy” with exactly the same attitude as they take in anything else from the outside literature. Perhaps you remember that I developed the system of the arts here a few days ago in a very particular style. Do you think that was a quirk? If you think so, you would be completely mistaken. It is not a matter of just giving this lecture in this form, but rather that what had to be said in the process necessarily resulted in each individual sentence and each turn of phrase quite by itself; and any other way of talking about it could never have said what was said in this lecture. As everywhere, the “how” was of the utmost importance. And if you wrap these things in a different way, they are no longer the same, they are something completely different.
Thus it is always necessary for the serious theosophist to return to the first guidelines and basic principles, and precisely by making these guidelines and basic principles one's own to gain the opportunity to advance further and further. If anyone had taken these basic and fundamental lines in the first four years of our spiritual scientific movement here as they were processed in the four years with us; if anyone had taken them in such a way that three years ago they would have been present in him, would have made the discovery in the following three years that what was further developed was no longer new, but [expansion] according to life practice in all areas. He would have noticed that he absorbs this with complete ease, without difficulty of understanding and without mistaking the necessity for one or the other interpretation. But he would have had another strange feeling after another three years... today, that is. He would have given himself the opportunity to say today: “I have, without realizing it, entered into a completely new life of the soul: Now I know what spiritual life is. Now I know that I was mistaken in imagining that I could attain the spiritual life in any other way than by contemplating the world and thereby awakening the slumbering powers, at least on the first step! Four and three are again an important matter within a seven-year cycle: that is why, in our movement, we worked on the guidelines and outlines in the first four years, and in the last three years we have only inserted into what was set out in the general plan what is more important than the foundation in terms of the real content of life. But to achieve it, it is necessary to have adopted the basic and guiding principles.
And this should be said above all to the dear members of our Berlin branch, which, as one of the oldest branches, can in a sense be a leader. It should be particularly recommended to all those who are involved in the formation of new branches here or there, because these things are not done arbitrarily, but because they are to be exemplary for new branch formations: It is extremely important to keep reminding ourselves that it is not right to offer people what is supposed to be an extension first; rather, anyone who is to come into the spiritual life through the theosophical path must be able to do so simply by appropriating the guidelines in their soul in a thorough, serious and dignified manner.
If seven years ago we had started work with a small or larger group of people who had the deepest yearning for the spiritual world, and these people — whether ten or fifteen hundred — had been driven by some event to feel this yearning at the same time, and if this group had devotedly taken up the guidelines, and for three years into these guidelines what has been given in the last three years as an explanation of the practice of life, then we would now, after most of our dear friends, after having heard something about the foundations of Christianity and the essence of Christ from the reflections that were made in reference to the Gospel of John, after most of them, at least in a brief repetition, the fundamental facts that are linked to the Gospel of Luke, and on the basis of the fact that they have adopted the principles and basic lines of “theosophy”, have now connected everything that has been worked out in this way, what has been mentioned in lectures that touched on the most diverse chapters of life, such as storytelling, illness, moral principles, if all this and if we had now crowned what was there with the fact that we have now included those significant points of view that were said in reference to the Gospels of John and Luke, then we would now be on the verge of approaching the contemplation that points to the Gospel of Mark, and we would finally be able to ascend to the contemplation of the Gospel of Matthew. Then we would begin to have an inkling of what Christ Jesus is. Of course, this cannot be the case in this way, because things in life cannot be so perfect. Since we were not a small group working for seven years under complete exclusion of all disturbing circumstances, it has happened time and again that after absorbing what was said in the lectures about the Christ-being in view of the Gospel of John, one believed that one now knew what the Christ Jesus is. For one could easily believe that because the Christ has been spoken about, one now knows what He is. Then the Gospel of Luke was spoken about, and again someone might think: “Now the speaker has said everything possible, has spoken so much about the Christ in the last three years, following the Gospel of John, has also spoken about the first thirty years, following the Gospel of Luke – now one can get an idea of the thirty-three years of Jesus Christ's activity on earth...” If that were so, then it would not have been necessary to give the world the Gospels of Mark and Matthew.
If you want to look above all at the attitude from which the reflections were made in connection with the Gospels of John and Luke, if you want to consider these attitudes, they cannot be characterized other than as having been spoken from a point of view that says something like the following: “That which we call the Christ-Jesus-Being is, as far as can be grasped by human understanding at all in our present time, is so great, so all-embracing, so mighty that no consideration of it can proceed from saying in any one-sided way who the Christ-Jesus was and what significance His Essence has for each individual human spirit and for each individual soul; that would have seemed in our considerations like an irreverence toward the greatest world problem that exists. Respect and reverence are the words that describe the attitude from which our reflections have been given. Respect and reverence, which could be expressed in the sentiment: Do not place too high a value on human understanding when you are confronted with the greatest problem. Try never to place too high a value on anything that a spiritual science, no matter how great, can give you, even if it reaches the highest regions, when it is a matter of confronting life's greatest problem. And do not believe that a single human word would suffice to say anything other than what characterizes this great and formidable problem from one side.