While reviewing what was developed here, positively as well as negatively affected readers could make an essentially similar objection. One group could argue that it is also their desire to overcome the old administrative or management mentality and behavior and instead to cooperate with the breakthrough of a new impulse. Therefore it may be explained to them how this could happen through concrete suggestions. The others could charge that this study is devoid of all content. In spite of its great pretensions, no concrete representations can be condensed from the indeterminacy of the common phrases brought forward. Therefore, the more the author gives utterance to this words, the more he would unmistakably reveals his inability to direct the attention of his readers to clearly defined goals and visual measures that would be able to achieve these objectives. He would therefore exhaust himself in a meaningless polemic against what has been tried and tested, trying in vain to conceal his inability to make positive statements.
Despite the deviating nuance, both cases concern the same objection that with unconscious accuracy points to the fundamental views on which this presentation is based. In order to clarify this ideational basis, the difference between a living concept and a devitalized [German: abgelähmt] representation would have to be discussed in connection with Rudolf Steiner’s book The Philosophy of Freedom. Creating an understanding of this contrast between living and dead thinking on the basis of certain cases and situations is one of the main tasks of basic anthroposophical research and individual schooling. As the starting point of every contemporary and situational science and all future social design, this contradiction has in its outlines already been characterized with epoch-making validity in Rudolf Steiner’s The Philosophy of Freedom. Those who cannot see this distinction will not be able to gain access to the deliberations brought forward here by the author. It is not possible to go into this problem in detail here. Therefore it can only be briefly recalled that, in the sense of the Goetheanism further developed by Rudolf Steiner, living concepts are formative archetypes that can become active both in the human mind and in the rest of reality. They are, therefore, the creators of a flexible sculpture of judgment based on a recognition of like through like of the ideational (though not functional) equality in the mind of man and in the world of phenomena. The cognitive human being can only become aware of these living concepts through the mobile processes of his thinking volition, which he both exercises and observes. If, in this observation of cognitive events, he succeeds not only in grasping their resultant final stages, but also their processuality, he becomes aware that he is involved in the reality-creating gestures of an objective, broadly varied style-forming event simultaneously occurring as individual self-realization. In this way his self-evolution arises from the evolution of the world, an event that continually repeats itself in the self-cognition of man, enduring in him and changing him. Only the intuitive ability of such a movement experience opens itself for the inspiration of its objective formative force and is able to create the transformative images on which the human being can base the actions of his moral technique. Those representations, on the other hand, that out of the cognitive and reality movement solidify into a fixed form only possess the character of (necessarily transient) stipulations and determinations. Whoever turns them into rules for his judgments and actions, therefore does not create from objective reality-forming forces, but only becomes aware of them in moments of exhaustion. Accordingly, such representations can serve only the subjectively oriented needs of individuals or of whole groups of people, but not true progress.
By means of the present treatise, the author attempted to give a social-scientific and social-therapeutic example in order to clarify the fundamental contradiction between dead and living ordering principles. Establishing a common consciousness relates to the building of administrative-political frameworks as a living concept to a devitalized representation. Whoever is only willing and able to administrate requires fixed representations condensed from the living formative flow of the creative spirit corresponding to certain stages of a metamorphological series of enforcements and certain stages of a process of implementation. However, anyone who wants to understand the modern social organics of Rudolf Steiner and wants to make it into the impetus for his actions, can only create from the intuitive life-content of reality related experience. Nevertheless, at every moment of the process of social formative realization social scientific tasks will be presented to him in the form of an inner challenge for the development of new metamorphoses of the social archetype. If one is able to also obtain these metamorphoses in the realm of the living, one will always be able to bring out from them new structures of real social realization and thereby again give himself new assignments for social scientific research. However, one will always have to examine oneself in a super-individual presence of mind that intuitive conscience that watches over the common consciousness of free individuals. Therefore, the indications outlined here can only direct the attention to a realm of inner practice and experience, but not give specific instructions for attaining successful, clearing defects and increasing efficiency in the sense of prosperity thinking.[1]
10.2 Some Words of Rudolf Steiner About the Nature of the Constitution of the Free School and the Anthroposophical Society
Considering the seriousness with which these deliberations must be approached and which of course is the only manner enabling one to gain access to the living word, Rudolf Steiner’s words in print may also be brought to mind, although these are only of real significance when they stimulate our actions through their mobility and not as fixed representations. But precisely in view of the social formative task of forming a common consciousness of free individualities, it can be understood that Rudolf Steiner calls the "anthroposophical movement ... in its entirety and in all its details” a "worship of God, a religious service”, emphasizing in many expressions that "the spiritual-esoteric should be the foundation of all our works and being", that the "Principles" are adjusted to the purely human and that only this and not a dogma (as the case can be according to an administrative framework) defines its reality character and that the Society cannot have a "principled-schematic structure", but that "in the future" one should strive to "to organize things in such a way that they are derived from the real powers of the Society", not from abstract principles and administrative-political measures, but from the convictions of people, who are embraced by the indestructible soul-spiritually living Goetheanum and who are called upon to help build it. In that frame of mind, Rudolf Steiner addressed the like-minded delegates and members of the Christmas Conference, so that in them the decision would be strengthened to help build a work that was begun and that should be continued, "defying the incomprehension of Gods and man." This work requires views that live up to the future, not to administrative norms, it requires a thinking that becomes capable of forming "concepts and ideas worthy to the Gods" in a consciousness community, that creates the courage for truthfulness from the center of the being of Anthroposophia, so that under the protection of such truth and awakened courage, the physical Goetheanum could become a true symbol of the inviolable spiritual Goetheanum, whose spiritual presence is sealed by the agony of the course of its destiny.[2]
10.3 The Seriousness of the Task
Would it not be possible in the light of the seriousness of this task also in the face of the unusual, to refrain from hostility and coercion, and to also respect the conviction of those with different views and the decisions compatible with their insight, even though what is revealed here appears to be at first so unfamiliar? Or would it indeed be impossible in a modern society to deal with views that differ from one’s own habits of thought in a cognitive manner and not only, as so often happens, to ensure this, but also to confirm it through one’s own behavior? The author is certain that the consciousness community of free spirits inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner would be the best ground on which, without resorting to sharply defined cognitive characterizations, one would be able to refrain from unmotivated evaluations and devaluations, forced propagandist argumentations and defamations. On this mobile ground, firmly established by the boldness of the idea, uninhibited by the concern for personal prestige and only supported by the consensuses of the insight of prudent human beings, a free interplay of convictions could be vouch-saved, unfolded and be furthered with mutual participation. Whoever relies on no other power than that of free insight as that which ultimately stands the test, and only recognizes in it the continual creativity and its durability through the resilient principle of modern social life, must not confront fallacies or what only appears to be such by exercising external powers of authority and invoking static administrative frameworks: he can entrust the ordering of the disorder and the maturation of the inadequate to the freedom-respecting efficacy of knowledge that elevates the with reason endowed minds to a permanent constitutional process, whereby obviously the forefinger cannot be wagged as a warning.
To the extent that instead of the real abstraction of administrative frameworks the spiritual concretization of the common consciousness of free individuals, the manifestation of a higher spirituality begins to become active, the living foundation of the harmonious cooperation of hearts, of which Rudolf Steiner speaks, can once again be established in a free society of the Christmas Conference of the New Year 1923 / 24, no matter how much divisiveness may have crept into it, can once again enter that feeling of coming home, from the lack of which many today are suffering, - those the most who speak the least about it, as everyone knows who is able to watch the hearts from within and are not misled by what easily comes to the surface.
10.4 About the Inner Attitude of What Has Been Developed
Some readers will object that, on the one hand, those who have an inner relationship to the event of the Christmas Meeting at the turn of the year 1923/24 do not need the substantiation given here, nor the repetition of Rudolf Steiner's words in print to ensure them that these have become a part of their lives, and that on the other hand those who cannot understand this writing, because they do not want to understand it, will not change their volitional attitude, as experience teaches, even in case they would consider it worthwhile to take notice of what they deem to be theoretical. The author’s efforts would therefore be superfluous. However true that may be, the author nevertheless believes that the constant renewal of keen reflection on what may be considered as already known and processed means more in a consciousness community for the hopes and concern of its members than the perception of it in solitude and that in this renewed reflection lies a supplementation and expansion, albeit initially secret, of that which in a first attempt necessarily remains incomplete and one-sided, - and that those who are not prepared in the waking state to take part in such teamwork will nevertheless dedicate themselves to it in the subconscious, now that there is an epistemologically based impetus for it. Apart from that, the author has put forward these expositions not in order to win kindred spirits, but because he is satisfies by the conviction that, despite all imperfection, they are true, although not in the sense of rammed piles, of which the unshakability can put off, but of implanted fruit twigs that can grow, that of course are also in need of care and that invite everyone, whether they are amenable to it or not, to come closer.[3] [4]
[1] Whoever wants to do an exercise for the distinction between living and dead thinking, can ask in which succession the paragraphs of the "Principles" of the General Anthroposophical Society would have to be arranged from the point of view of abstract proposals and why Rudolf Steiner gave preference to another arrangement. The publication of the author mentioned in a footnote on Section 10.1 attempts to give an answer to this question.
[2] The first Goetheanum was destroyed by arson on December 31, 1923.
[3] These observations are a partial report from the social scientific work at the Goetheanum in Dornach. They are at the same time an elucidation, again in need themselves of supplementation, of the author’s essay Im Vertrauen auf Verständnis (In Confidence of Understanding), Dornach 1971.
[4] The starting point of the author’s observations, as befits the level of consciousness of our time and the orientational right and duty of the members of the General Anthroposophical Society, is a special case, namely the members’ meeting of the year 1972. They want to direct attention on fundamental issues, not in a distracted and syllogistic manner, but on the basis of experience and the requirements of the order of social life. Yet it cannot be the intention and the task to deal with the countless errors, inaccuracies, repetition of things that have long been rectified and wrong, misleading and irrelevant allegations in the reports about this Members' Meeting (in the Supplement of the journal Goetheanum, Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht). Instead, they want by means of an example to characterize the possibilities and difficulties that the architects of future fabrics of social and cultural life must be aware of. They should therefore not only be an aid to orientation for the members of the Anthroposophical Society and especially its newcomers, but also make manifest Rudolf Steiner's greatest work as the archetype of a future civilization and its working communities.
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