Awakening to Community
Awakening to community is a need that is becoming stronger and stronger in the present [[consciousness soul age}}, namely since the beginning of the 20th century. Rudolf Steiner has also called it a second awakening that leads beyond the awakening to everyday object consciousness.
Through object consciousness, the human being sees himself confronted with external nature. He also faces other people externally at first. He sees their outer form, their facial expressions and gestures, hears their speech. At the same time, his self-consciousness is ignited by this experience of the outer sensual world, in that he becomes aware of his own inner soul world through his thinking, feeling and willing. Through his compassion, he already finds an emotional bridge to his fellow human beings - a development that already began in the Greco-Latin period. Today, as an enhancement of this ability, a full awakening to the spiritual and soul of the other person is possible, an awakening to their real being, with whom one feels a karmic connection.
„A new element made its appearance in human life with the awakening and development of the consciousness soul. This calls for a second kind of awakening, one for which the human race will feel a growing need: an awakening at hand of the souls and spirits of other human beings. In ordinary waking life one awakens only in meeting another's natural aspects. But a person who has become an independent, distinct individual in the age of consciousness wants to wake up in the encounter with the soul and spirit of his fellowman. He wants to awaken to his soul and spirit, to approach him in a way that startles his own soul awake in the same sense that light and sound and other such environmental elements startle one out of dreaming.
This has been felt as an absolutely basic need since the beginning of the twentieth century, and it will grow increasingly urgent. It is a need that will be apparent throughout the twentieth century, despite the time's chaotic, tumultuous nature, which will affect every phase of life and civilization. Human beings will feel this need — the need to be brought to wake up more fully in the encounter with the other person than one can wake up in regard to the merely natural surroundings. Dream life wakes up into wakeful day consciousness in the encounter with the natural environment. Wakeful day consciousness wakes up to a higher consciousness in the encounter with the soul and spirit of our fellowman. Man must become more to his fellowman than he used to be: he must become his awakener. People must come closer to one another than they used to do, each becoming an awakener of everyone he meets. Modern human beings entering life today have stored up far too much karma not to feel a destined connection with every individual they encounter. In earlier ages, souls were younger and had not formed so many karmic ties. Now it has become necessary to be awakened not just by nature but by the human beings with whom we are karmically connected and whom we want to seek.“ (Lit.:GA 257, p. 179f)
This makes a new kind of community building possible today, a spiritual community building, such as is to be cultivated in anthroposophical community building. At the same time, this can give rise to a new form of cultus, a kind of reversed cultus, through which a community striving together spiritually elevates itself into the spiritual world in such a way that higher spiritual beings can also be effectively present in its midst.
„And so, in addition to the need for remembrance of the supersensible home, which can be satisfied through cult, there is the other need to be awakened to the spiritual-soul through the other human being. And the emotional impulse that can be effective here is that of the newer idealism. When the ideal ceases to be a mere abstract ideal, when it is rooted in the human soul-spirit, then it will take on the form: I want to awaken in the other human being. - That is, after all, the vague feeling that arises in young people today: I want to awaken to the other person. And this is what can be cultivated as a special community life in the Anthroposophical Society, what arises there in the most natural way in the world. For when a group of people come together to experience together that which can be revealed from the supersensible world through anthroposophy, then this experience in a group of people is something quite different from the solitary experience. The fact that one awakens to the soul of the other at the moment when one is together gives off an atmosphere which does not lead into the supersensible world as described in "How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?", but which promotes the understanding of the ideas which are given of the supersensible world through anthroposophical spiritual science.“ (Lit.:GA 257, p. 177f)
„Through the cultus the supersensible in word and action is brought down into the physical world. Through the anthroposophical branch the thoughts and feelings of the anthroposophical group are lifted up into the supersensible world. And when the anthroposophical content is experienced in the right frame of mind by a group of human beings, whereby human soul awakens to human soul, this human soul is actually raised to the spiritual community. It is only a question of this consciousness being really present. When this consciousness is present and such groups appear in the Anthroposophical Society, then in this, if I may say so, reversed cultus, in the other pole of the cultus, something community-forming is present in the most eminent sense. One might say, if one wants to speak metaphorically: the cult community tries to induce the angels of heaven to descend into the cult space so that they may be among the people. The anthroposophical community tries to raise human souls into the supersensible world so that they may come among the angels. This is the community-building element in both.
But if anthroposophy is to be something for the human being that really leads into the supersensible world, then it must not be theory, not abstraction. Then one must not merely speak of spiritual beings, but seek out the nearest, most immediate opportunities to be with spiritual beings. The work of an anthroposophical group does not consist merely in a number of people talking about anthroposophical ideas, but in their feeling united as human beings in such a way that human soul awakens to human soul and people are transported up into the spiritual world, so that they are really among spiritual beings, even if perhaps without seeing. Even if it is not there in the vision, it can be there in the experience. And that is then the strengthening, the invigorating, which can come out of the groups which have just come into being within the Anthroposophical Society with the right community building.“ (Lit.:GA 257, p. 179f)
Literature
- Friedrich Benesch: Das Religiöse der Anthroposophie. Der kosmische, der umgekehrte Kultus, Die Pforte, Basel 1985, ISBN 978-3856360696
- Gerhard von Beckerath: Gespräch als Kultus: Wiederkunft, Christlicher Einweihungsweg, Bruderschaft, Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach 2005, ISBN 978-3723512388
- Günter Röschert: Das freie Erkenntnisgespräch als umgekehrter Kultus, Verlag für Anthroposophie, Dornach 2010, ISBN 978-3037690277
- Herbert Ludwig: Das anthroposophische Erkenntnisgespräch als "umgekehrter Kultus", Verlag Ch. Möllmann, Borchen 2011, ISBN 978-3899791334
- Rudolf Steiner: Anthroposophische Gemeinschaftsbildung, GA 257 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-2570-9 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
- Rudolf Steiner: Vortrag in Dornach, am 3. März 1923, Klartextnachschrift des 9. Vortrags aus GA 257 pdf
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