What does the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science, want to be? In January 1924, Rudolf Steiner had something to say about this: “Here there must be a place where the strength is found to point to those little traces of the spirit not only in the cleverly put together dialectical and empirical scientific manner of the present time. If Dornach is to fulfill its task, then it must be a place where human beings can hear openly about what is going on historically in the spiritual world and about the spiritual impulses which then enter into the world of nature and govern it. Human beings must be able to hear in Dornach about genuine experiences, genuine forces and genuine beings of the spiritual world. […] This is where the School of true Spiritual Science must be. […] In Dornach it must be possible to win the strength, spiritually, to look the spiritual world in the eye, to learn about the spiritual world.” (GA 260 Lecture on January 1, 1924)
And how? At least, by bringing science back to a human level, right into the heart of individual experience. No more encyclopaedias, dogmas, and learned elites. “We are only satisfied with knowledge that is not subject to any external norm, but arises from the inner life of the personality. […] We each consider ourselves entitled to start from our nearest experiences, our immediate experiences, and from there to ascend to knowledge of the whole universe. We strive for certain knowledge, but each in his own way,” Steiner wrote as early as 1894 in his Philosophy of Freedom. This is the challenge that this School wants to take up: to develop a new science based on individual experience that meets spiritual reality eye to eye. A Pentecostal event.
Translation Laura Liska
Image Staircase in the Goetheanum, photo: Xue Li
