Esoteric Lessons 1913–1923
GA 266III — Hildesheim
4. Reminder notes by Herbert Hahn
Based on a photocopy of a memorandum dated and signed by H. Hahn in 1963.
[Letterhead:] C. Brumberg Hansen
[in unknown handwriting:] Told to this friend by Herbert Hahn and written down by him at the same time.
Notes from memory (October 16, 1922)
Rudolf Steiner spoke, among other things, about being young and growing old. He said, for example: "It is inevitable that you will get a gray hair here and a wrinkle there, because the physical body must grow old. But pay attention to one thing: there is no reason why the soul should grow old with it. Yes, it must not grow old. For every gray hair that suddenly appears and for every wrinkle that forms, the soul can acquire something fresh and young. Only then does aging proceed as the spirit intends."
It was probably in this context that he spoke of how we should continually revive the impulses that led us to found a community, as if it were the first day. “You see,” he said, “in everyday life, the saying goes: ‘A new broom sweeps clean.’ What this means is that the bristles on a broom gradually wear out, no matter how good they may have been at first. That must not apply to you! Your broom must be given new bristles every day.”
Another time he spoke of enthusiasm and explained that true enthusiasm is so rare. For genuine enthusiasm does not consist in being inflamed within ourselves and for ourselves. Enthusiasm is only genuine and strong enough when the flame burns so brightly within us that others can catch fire from it. This was what he meant, as I recall, when he said, “Develop your wits.” We initially understood this word in the trivial sense of cleverness or smartness. He then provided the preceding explanation.
In connection with the intellectual culture of the present day, he explained that the one-sidedness and dangers of this culture are already recognized by quite a few people today. However, there is a tendency to shut down the mind, as it were, in order to sink into the soothingly irrational realms of emotion and the dark depths of the will. In order to experience oneself fully as a human being, one chooses the path from the head downwards. We should, he said, become aware of the dangers and deceptions associated with this downward path. For this path is a wrong turn that completely contradicts what the spirit of the times wants.
The head, Rudolf Steiner emphasized, has not acquired clarity for nothing, despite all its one-sidedness. This clarity must not be lost, but must be taken along on the spiritual path desired by the spirit of the times. And it must be taken along on the path: from the head upward, beyond the head. On this path, the irrational is gained through super-clarity. This is the path that Michaelic thinking wants to take.
Rudolf Steiner said the following about meditation and meditating: The meditations are indicated for specific situations or times of day and should be done at specific times, whenever and wherever circumstances allow. But someone in the developing community will always be the first to do the morning meditation, for example, and someone else will be the last. But both meditations, indeed all the morning meditations of the community, move toward each other. This happens in such a way that the meditation that was done first has inscribed itself in the ether. All the others that follow crystallize around this first one. In a certain sense, therefore, a “virtual time” applies to the meditations, which arises from the situation and which allows even the last of these morning meditations, which may have been done late due to unforeseen circumstances, to still be a “morning meditation.”
Rudolf Steiner said something very decisive and compelling about the task and effect of meditations. While they are an organ of higher spiritual development for the individual and for the community, they also serve the whole earth. The moral forces of the earth, he explained, are so threatened by decay in our age that this meditative activity has an immensely significant, healing effect on the earth. This is especially true when, as in a spiritual community, the meditative forces are potentiated in their effect.
In this context, Rudolf Steiner also mentioned the emerging Christian Community. He said it should be welcomed with gratitude as a helper in this service for the preservation of the moral forces of the earth. This reference to the objective significance of the Christian Community is all the more meaningful in that Rudolf Steiner emphasized elsewhere that the Christian Community was an independent movement in whose founding he had played only a mediating role. Regarding the effect of meditation in the emerging community itself, he said, among other things: "With a spiritual attitude, a unique relationship will develop in relation to the spiritual substance formed through meditation, a relationship between each individual and the whole. This relationship will be able to take shape in the following way: at certain times and for certain tasks, everything that is worked out by the community will concentrate on one individual. He will then be endowed, as it were, with the entire spiritual substance of the community for his tasks.
If the others who belong to the community understand correctly what is happening, they will look on without envy, indeed with a justified sense of shared joy, at how everything is given to the one individual at that moment. Conversely, this individual will not be able to attribute his success to his own virtues or talents alone. He will be aware that he is working and acting in essential parts from what the others have given him. And that will call him to modesty and gratitude."
As the discussions on the founding of the community became more intense, Rudolf Steiner said one day we should see how meditative activity in the sense of the new esotericism now emerging has a certain connection with a phenomenon of time known only to the initiated. And he characterized this phenomenon of time as follows. There are, he said, only a few truly well-incarnated people today whose ego has really entered their body. The bodies of human beings have become more and more such that full incarnation is becoming increasingly difficult. If we now engage in these community meditations, he continued, a deeper connection between the core of our being and its outer layers will be established. However, because this is a birth process, it may be accompanied by feelings of suffering or pain. “It may happen,” he said, “that one or other of you will be seized by an inexplicable melancholy.” We should not be alarmed by this melancholy, Rudolf Steiner emphasized. We should see through it and recognize it for what it is: the shadow of a belated incarnation process. For those who do not recognize this darkening of the soul for what it really is, a danger may arise. It will manifest itself in a sudden tendency to want to numb oneself. And this will not be mere numbness in the trivial sense, but more sophisticated forms of numbness, such as excessive busyness and the like.
Rudolf Steiner said all this with particular seriousness. One had the impression that he was looking at great dangers coming toward us from a time of increasing one-sidedness. When he had given us the meditations in the unforgettable spiritual mood described below and spoke to us about them, he said something deeply inspiring. If used correctly, these meditations could become something like windows into the spiritual world. However, the words and images given represent only half of what has been entrusted to us. We should find the “other half” ourselves through spiritual activity.
At the moment just mentioned, when the meditations were handed over, the following took place. Rudolf Steiner said, while holding the purple pocket book containing the meditations in his hand or placing it in front of him: “You can look at it this way: I have been entrusted with the task of bringing this to you.”
For the writer of these lines, this was one of the most profound impressions he ever received in his life from the personality of Rudolf Steiner. He had been able to experience more and more how, in the work and appearance of Rudolf Steiner himself, as a highly spiritual individuality, the supersensible world revealed itself in its full power. At that moment, however, as if by a flash of lightning, a spiritual background that could only be guessed at was torn open behind the bearer of modern initiation. This experience had an indescribable spiritual aroma that will forever be associated with these meditations.
Among the many statements Rudolf Steiner made about our position in today's culture and civilization, one very serious appeal stands out in my memory. Rudolf Steiner warned us not to base our initiatives and activities, where they are directed toward great goals, on the forms that exist in the outer world and have been created by routine. These forms, he said, have become old and fragile and are irretrievably heading toward their demise. We must strive everywhere to develop a new foundation on which we can move in a spiritually inspired way.
Like all the others he made in connection with the founding of the community, this statement was placed in a very broad perspective. The greatest of all was revealed when he said, with regard to the future of the nascent community: "When this community is founded, you must remember that it is destined for far-reaching work. It could happen, for example, that none of the members of the community would be on earth at a given time, so that it would be considered extinct in the everyday sense. But it would not be wiped out. With the first member of the community who reincarnates, it would return to earth."
The last statement answers in a completely satisfactory manner a question that was often asked by members who joined the community later. The question was whether this esoteric youth circle should also be considered dissolved as a result of the Christmas Conference.
Apart from the fact that Rudolf Steiner once again confirmed and called for the community through a new essential encounter during the Christmas Conference, any doubt is removed by what has just been emphasized. The reference to the carrying forward of the community impulse through incarnations speaks for itself. Much more obvious is the idea that the founding of the young esoteric community in October 1922 can be regarded as one of the preparatory steps for the Christmas Conference in 1923. And it is even more certain that this community has a special inner obligation to carry through the great impulses of the Christmas Conference.
Herbert Hahn,
Copenhagen-Charlottenlund,
12–14 August 1963