Ninth Lecture

It is easy to fabricate slanderous stories about what is said in private conversations with individual members, if these slanderous stories reach the point where, for example, it is said here or there that this or that member has been hypnotized. Now, my dear friends, in the face of these things I shall have to take a different line altogether, from which you will see — and I am really speaking out of a simple sense of duty towards our movement — that I am now and in this matter, in the very bitterest seriousness, for the sake of the sanctity of spiritual science. If a movement like this is based simply on the principle of not encroaching on anyone's sphere of freedom, and if this is strictly observed, if everything that encroaches on a person's sphere of freedom is strictly rejected, and if one then proceeds with these very things, then it is necessary that one day everything that is to grow on our soil will grow in the full light of day. When things grow in full public view, then the ground will be cut from under the slanderers. But there will be no other method in the future. Therefore, I will strive, as far as it depends on me, to ensure that in the future anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will increasingly take place in the full light of the public. It does not have to shy away from the public. And today I declare explicitly: With regard to the private conversations that have taken place with members for years, I release everyone from the promise not to speak about the content of the conversation. Everyone can share, as much as they themselves find appropriate, what has ever occurred in a private conversation with a member. Nothing will be found that should be kept from the light of day. Then one will no longer be able to pussyfoot around with things that are on the following ground. I will give you an example of how these things can be used against the most blatant ignorance and the will to be most blatantly ignorant.