A Light That Has Changed the World

Benjamin Cherry

I wish to thank the carriers of this initiative for addressing their questions to our feelings, for through this, doors can open that might otherwise remain closed. It even makes it possible to ask ourselves, in deep humility, how it might have been for Rudolf Steiner himself on that intimate level of his own being, as he carried out the momentous decision to unite his destiny with that of the world community he was founding. And in daring to sense this, I feel I am connecting more truthfully with my own feelings, too.

Readers who have worked with the exercises in the fourth chapter of Theosophy will know that it is possible gradually to transform our feelings, which are usually related to ourselves, into organs of perception in the service of others. What a truly noble picture arises when I contemplate Rudolf Steiner himself, using that holy organ of perception as a way of connecting with the hearts of those who were present, during that freezing mid-winter gathering near the ruins of the First Goetheanum, from Christmas Eve 1923 until New Year’s morning 1924.

Through this Deed of founding the World Anthroposophical Society as a global community of free individuals and taking on its leadership, Rudolf Steiner carried out, as I feel it, a true Christ Deed. On the one hand, this giving up of his own freedom was a spiritual precondition, making it possible for what was dying to be born anew; but on the other hand, it was a completely free deed, taken out of love for the action. Through it, he united his destiny with all of us who are connected in our hearts with the ideals of this world community.

Free deeds add something to world reality that was not there before. They are Acts of Creation. And a deed of this magnitude, carried out in the presence of the whole spiritual world up to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, must imprint itself with very great power into the imperishable record of human actions. It changes World Karma, even if only very few human beings are aware of it.

Especially must this be so in the case of a high initiate who knew that his own health and well-being would depend, from now on, on the social and spiritual health of those around him. This thought leads me inevitably to contemplate Rudolf Steiner’s premature death and to sense the immense difficulty so many people around him had in understanding the mystery of what he had taken on.

In saying this, I am making no judgment. On one level or another, I feel that all of us who have found our way to anthroposophical spiritual science and whose lives have been transformed through it are complicit in the events leading up to his death and all that followed after it in the twenties and thirties of the last century, whether we were on earth or in the spiritual world during those times. Moreover, it is highly likely that many who were there physically are on earth again now, as well as others who participated without being in physical bodies.

What was the essential achievement of that mighty cosmic-human event? It created a wholly new alliance with Michael and all the beings who work with him. But everything depended on people changing their ways of thinking and acting accordingly. It required a new-born force of comprehension in the heart. And the shattering truth—so relevant for us, too, in our contemporary world crisis—is that it was not achieved.

All this comes together in the prophetic answer Rudolf Steiner gave to Ita Wegman’s anxious question, not long before he left his body for the final time, as to what would happen if people did not wake up to this: “Then karma will hold sway!” 1 And most surely, it did—and perhaps still does.

Nevertheless, like the light from on high that shone into the stable in Bethlehem at the first Christmas, so too in that house of wood on the Dornach hill at the same holy time of year, a light shone that has changed the world and is still changing it now, within the hearts of all who strive to comprehend it. What is that light? It is the Spirit whose earthly sheath was the First Goetheanum and which, through that soul-shattering fire, became homeless. How could it not be so?

What a power arises through realizing this, especially now, when almost everything spiritual that humanity has ever valued is being distorted and consumed in the fire of human genius and ambition. Is it not up to each one of us who cares, to recognize this light in our hearts—for that is where it is—and carry its radiant power into the deep confusion of our time, each in our own unique ways?

Benjamin Cherry finally met the life-work of Rudolf Steiner at a school for severely disadvantaged children in southwest England forty-six years ago, after searching for it, without knowing its name, through many other parts of the world. Since then, he has continued to carry it and foster it in foreign lands, but always within the crucible of the local culture.

1 Ita Wegman, An die Freunde [To the Friends] (Arlesheim, 1960), p. 103. Cited in S.O. Prokofieff, May Human Beings Hear It! (Temple Lodge, 2004), p. 75.