Twelfth Lecture

Please do not say: There is no time for this. — It is also true that people say: People today are so busy, so endlessly busy, that they don't have time to look up at these spiritual truths. — I would like to add up for you how much idle chatter takes place at “five o'clock teas,” at “Jausen” (snacks), at “afternoon teas,” at “Frühschoppen” (morning drinks), in certain areas at “Dämmerschoppen” (evening drinks) — there are also such things — at “Sk and other things, and you would see that a considerable amount of time would be freed up in which people would have the opportunity, if they wanted it, to familiarize themselves with what is so urgently needed for the future development of humanity. It is not a lack of time, it is a lack of interest on the part of people, their lethargy. Encephalitis lethargica is now appearing externally in isolated cases; it has long since infected the souls of people in the wider human environment. The sleeping sickness of souls is a very widespread epidemic. For what is ultimately at issue is having the will to set one's spiritual powers in motion. With few exceptions, anyone who studies at a university today does not really have to exert their thinking. A certain amount of knowledge, mostly experimental results, is imparted, and this can be absorbed. There is no need to use one's thinking power. But this education must be replaced by the fact that the power of thought becomes mobile again, that the whole soul becomes mobile, that assiduity of the inner soul life takes the place of carelessness and drowsiness. One can be very active in the outer life and tremendously drowsy in one's soul life. But this must end in the development of humanity. That it ends is a truly deep, profound necessity. Today people say: First of all, humanity must have bread. - Of course it must have bread. But if we do not think about how to organize things spiritually so that this bread can also be produced tomorrow, then we will only eat what the earth can still produce today, and we will have no bread tomorrow or the day after. With the old way of thinking, you can still have bread today for a while. But figuratively speaking, of course, you will have no bread the day after tomorrow if you do not operate your institutions in accordance with a new spirituality.