Rudolf Steiner:
This is a matter that should receive serious consideration from
those of the present-day Youth — and you yourselves are of course among the
number — who are devoting their lives to some great and noble calling. There is
in our time great need that young men and women should rise up among us and
exercise a regenerating influence upon mankind; and what I am now going to say
is not said out of misunderstanding of the Youth Movement of our day, nor from
lack of understanding, but out of a true understanding of it. It is a necessity,
this Youth Movement, it is something of quite extraordinary significance; for
those older people who can understand it, the modern Youth Movement is
interesting in the highest degree. Not a word shall be uttered here against it.
Nor shall we attempt to deny that there is only too often a deplorable lack of
readiness on the part of the older generation to understand this Youth Movement,
and that a great many plans have suffered shipwreck just because the Movement
has not been taken seriously enough, just because people have not troubled
themselves to look into it sufficiently. But the Youth Movement does need to
beware of one thing when it sets out to undertake specific practical tasks; and
it is incumbent on those of us who have had experience in the matter to call
attention to it, for it makes one seriously apprehensive for the whole future of
the Movement. I mean a certain vanity that shows itself there on every
hand.
This vanity is not so much due to a lack of education and culture,
but is rather the consequence of an inevitable situation. For the will to action
necessitates of course a strong development of inner capabilities, and then it
follows all too easily that under the influence of Ahriman vanity begins to
spring up in the soul. I have had opportunity in my life to make careful and
intimate observation of persons who were full of promise — persons too of the
most various ages of life — in whom one could see again and again how with the
dawn of the Age that has followed the Kali Yuga, vanity began to grow and thrive in
their souls. It is not, therefore, only among the Youth that the vanity shows
itself. What concerns us at the moment however is the special form of it that
manifests in the Youth and that has in point of fact hindered them from
developing the right and essential character that lies inherent in present-day
Youth, waiting to be developed. Hence the phenomenon with which we are so
familiar, this endless talk of “missions”, of great tasks, with all too little
inclination to set to work upon the details, to take pains about
the small things that require to be done in carrying out these
tasks.
These will emphatically be needed in the future for what has been
described in simple words as devotion to detail.
Devotion to detail and to little things is something which the
Youth of our time need to develop. They are far too apt to revel in
abstractions; and this revelling in abstractions is the very thing that can then
lure them with irresistible force into the snare of vanity. I do beg you to
bethink yourselves of the difficulties that beset your path on this account.
Make it a matter of esoteric striving to master this tendency to vanity; for it
does indeed constitute a real hindrance to any work you undertake.
Suppose you want to be able to speak to some fellow human being
from out of an intuitive power of vision.... What you have to do is to see through what lies on the
surface, see right through it to the real state of affairs. If therefore you
want to come to the point of being able to say something to him out of intuitive
vision, what do you need for that? You need to tell yourself with courage and
with energy — not just saying it at some particular moment, but carrying it
continually in your consciousness, so that it determines the very quality and
content of your consciousness: — “I can do it.” If, without vanity, in a
spirit of self-sacrifice, and in earnest endeavor to overcome all the things
that hinder, you repeat these words, not only feeling them, but saying them to
yourself over and over again, then you will begin to discover how far you are
able to go in this direction. Do not expect to find the development of the
faculty you seek by spinning out all manner of theories and thoughts. No, what
you need to do is to maintain all the time this courageous consciousness, which
develops quite simply of itself when once you have begun to fetch up from the
depths of your soul what lies hidden there, buried (metaphorically speaking)
beneath an accumulation of dust and rubbish.
Generally speaking, people are not able to achieve anything of
this kind in the realm of pedagogy. They could do so if only they would set
themselves seriously to bring to life within them a certain truth. Let me
explain to you how this can be done.
Try to accustom yourselves to live your way every evening into the
consciousness: In me is God. In me is God — or the Spirit of God, or what
other expression you prefer to use. (But please do not think I mean just
persuading yourself of this truth theoretically — which is what the meditations
of the majority of people amount to!) Then, in the morning let the
knowledge: I am in God shine out over the whole day. And now consider!
When you bring to life within you these two ideas, which are then no longer mere
thoughts, but have become something felt and perceived inwardly — yes, have even
become impulses of will within you — what is it you are doing?
First, you have this picture before you: In me is
God [see Figure, left]
 |
and on the following morning, you have this picture before
you: I am in God [see Figure, right]. They are one and the same, the upper and the lower figure. And
now you must understand: Here you have a circle (yellow); here you have a point
(blue). It doesn't look like that in the evening, but in the morning the truth
of it comes to light. And in the morning you have to think: Here is a
circle (blue); here is a point (yellow). Yes, you have to understand
that a circle is a point, and a point a circle. You have to
acquire a deep, inner understanding of this fact.
But now, this is really the only way to come to a true
understanding of the human being!... In the human being it becomes actual reality; the I-point of the
head becomes in the limb-man the circle — naturally, with modifications.
Adopting this line of approach — trying, that is, to understand man inwardly —
you will learn to understand the whole of man. You must, first of all, be quite
clear in your mind that these two figures, these two conceptions, are one and
the same, are not at all different from one another. They
only look different from outside. There is a yellow
circle; here it is too! There is a blue point; here it is
too! Why do they look different? Because that drawing is a diagram of the
head, and this a diagram of the body. When the point claims a place for
itself in the body, it becomes the spinal cord. It makes its way
in here
 Figure 5 |
and then the part it plays in the head organization is continued
in the spinal cord. There you have the inner dynamic of the morphology of man.
Taking it as your starting point, you will be able, by meditation, to build up a
true anatomy, a true physiology. And then you will acquire the inner intuition
that can perceive in how far the upper and lower jaws are limbs; for you will
begin to see in the head a complete organism in itself, sitting up there on the
top of the human being, an organism whose limbs are dwarfed and have — in the
process of deformation — turned into jaws. And you will come to a clear
perception of how teeth and toes are in polarity to one another. For you have
only to look at the attachments of the jawbones, and you can see it all there
before you — the stunted toes, the stunted hands and feet.
But, my dear friends, meditation that employs such pictures as I
have been giving can never take its course in the kind of mood that would allow
us to feel: Now I am going to settle down to a blissful time of meditation; it
will be like sinking into a snug, warm nest! No, the feeling must be continually
present in us that we are taking the plunge into reality — that we are
grasping hold of reality.
Devotion to little things — yes, to the very smallest of
all! We must not omit to cultivate this interest in very little things. The tip
of the ear, the paring of a fingernail, a single human hair — should be every
bit as interesting to us as Saturn, Sun, and Moon. For really and truly in one
human hair everything else is comprised; a person who becomes bald loses a whole
cosmos! What we see externally — we can verily create it inwardly, if only we
achieve that overcoming which is essential to a life of meditation. But we shall
never achieve it so long as any vestige of vanity is allowed to remain — and
vestiges of vanity lurk in every corner and crevice of the soul. Therefore is it
so urgent ... that you should cultivate, with the utmost humility, this
devotion in the matter of little things. And when you have made a beginning in
this way in your own sphere, you can afterwards go on to awaken in other circles
of the Youth Movement this same devotion to little things....
That is what you need — enthusiasm in the experience of
truth. This enthusiasm is an absolute sine qua non: you cannot get
on without it.... Why, you should be leading lives of joy — deep inner joy in the truth!
There is nothing in the world more delightful, nothing more fascinating, than
the experience of truth. There you have an esotericism that is far more genuine,
far more significant, than the esotericism that goes about with a long face.
Before everything else — and long before you begin to talk about having a
“mission” — there must be this living inner experience of truth.
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