Awakening to Community

"We are firmly in our understanding of things of the spirit only when we do not rest content with abstract spiritual concepts and a capacity to express them theoretically, but instead grow into a sure belief that higher beings are present with us in a community of spirit when we engage in spiritual study. No external measures can bring about anthroposophical community-building. You have to call it forth from the profoundest depths of human consciousness." —Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner presented these lectures right after the fire that destroyed the first Goetheanum. Given during the year before the Anthroposophical Society was reestablished, they form an important part of the history of the anthroposophic movement.

Steiner calls for a "searching of conscience." He explains that in anthroposophic communities we can experience our first awakening to the spirit in our encounters with others, and he describes how the reversed cultus" forms the foundation for a new community life.

Translated from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer, from the German edition titled Anthroposophische Gemeinschaftsbildung (GA 257).

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9 May 2016; Trans. Marjorie Spock (10 lectures, Stuttgart and Dornach, January 23 - March 4, 1923, GA 257); SB;