Address Given on Rudolf Steiner’s Death Day

March 30, 2025, Spring Valley, NY

By Thomas O’Keefe

Rudolf Steiner poured his soul into the creation of the First Goetheanum. Through its forms, he hoped to establish a physical center on earth that would remind us of our spiritual origins.

The burning of the First Goetheanum was a devastating tragedy for Rudolf Steiner, leaving him severely physically hindered. He spoke of this to his close friend Ita Wegman, saying: “Compared to other people, I am as if already dead. My ‘I’ and astral body direct the physical body and supplement the etheric.” 1

In the midst of the ruins of the First Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner faced a trial. Ita Wegman tells us:

“It was shattering to see the disappointment that Rudolf Steiner experienced. People did not understand what he wanted. People did not want to take up new impulses, so that it even came to such a point that he considered abandoning the Anthroposophical Society and working somewhere with a small group of people chosen by himself.” 2

Instead, Rudolf Steiner chose to make one last attempt to bring the pure spiritual stream of Anthroposophy into a unity with the community around him. He did this by fully taking on the leadership of the Society at its refounding through the Christmas Conference of 1923.

Until then, he had adhered to a spiritual law that prohibits esoteric teachers from combining their purely spiritual tasks with the outer leadership of earthly affairs. 3

By taking the risk of uniting himself, and, as those closest to him sensed, uniting his karma with the Society as its leader, Rudolf Steiner offered a free sacrifice, as even he did not know whether his deed would meet with the approval of the spiritual world.

He later said of this: “Those spiritual powers who guide the stream of Anthroposophy in the spiritual world could have withdrawn their guidance.” 4

And the spiritual world received and accepted Rudolf Steiner’s deed – in his own words, “the spiritual world looked on with still greater benevolence” and “the gifts of the spiritual world have become essentially more abundant.” 5

Rudolf Steiner’s deed and what followed from it present us with a mystery that we are invited to ponder deeply in order to discover its meaning and true dimensions.

At the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society, Rudolf Steiner did not lay a physical foundation stone, as he had for the First Goetheanum.

Instead, he gave the Foundation Stone Meditation and fulfilled an esoteric deed of creating what he called the “Foundation Stone of Love,” 6 a deed that extended beyond those present at the Christmas Conference. He characterized the being of this Foundation Stone of Love and invited us to lay it into our hearts for the creation of a new community.

He explained that the fertile soil for this Foundation Stone of Love “consists of our hearts in their harmonious collaboration, in their good, love-filled desire to bear together the will of Anthroposophy through the world.” 7

He spoke of the new need to “permeate our activity with an esoteric element ,” 8 and to unite the esoteric and exoteric, the inner and the outer – to strive to live in even deeper union with our inner world of spiritual ideals and with our devotion to these ideals, and to incarnate this union into all the details of our lives.

Rudolf Steiner says of this:

“The difference must be that out of the strength of Anthroposophy itself, it is possible to combine the greatest conceivable openness with the most genuine and inward esotericism. And in the future this esotericism must not be lacking even in the most external of our deeds.” 9

And again in other words:

“This Anthroposophical Movement is not an act of service to the earth. This Anthroposophical Movement in its totality is a service to the divine beings, a service to God. We create the right mood for it when we see it in all its wholeness as a service to God.” 10

Rudolf Steiner spoke again and again, in deep earnestness, of how he hoped that those around him would try deeply to understand what had happened at the Christmas Conference.

He spoke of how a special opportunity to work more closely with the spiritual world had been made possible, but that if this new spiritual impulse did not find fertile soil, it would take up its dwelling place elsewhere. He even suggested the moon sphere as a possible location to which it might withdraw. 11

In a Letter to Members after the Christmas Conference, he wrote:

“The spiritual has the property, that if it is not held fast, it disappears – not of course from the cosmos, but from the place where it is not being pursued and fostered. […] For something like our Christmas Conference, one is not dependent on what occurs in the earthly realm. You therefore must not imagine that what evaporates through the lack of carrying out the impulses of the Christmas Conference would have to appear somewhere else on earth. That is not necessary. It can seek its further place of refuge in quite different worlds.” 12

At Easter 1924, he also referred to this impulse as “the Spirit of the Goetheanum ,” which had been transformed through the fire and was now returning to us in a new way.

He said: “[The cause represented by the Goetheanum] has been carried out into the ether; and it is granted us to permeate ourselves with the Goetheanum-impulses flowing in from the cosmos. […] But we must be able to receive these impulses.” 13

Then, in September of 1924, he fell ill, and it became increasingly clear that his life-forces were somehow dependent on the understanding, the consciousness, and the inner striving of those around him.

He expressed himself to Ita Wegman about this as follows: “The lectures do not tire me at all. It is these lectures that keep me in good health. What is tiring are the dead thoughts that approach one. It is the incomprehension, the lack of understanding … that leaves one paralyzed.” 14

The picture emerges that Rudolf Steiner sacrificed something of his own being in order to enable the community around him to step closer to the spiritual world, but that his life was now in their hands.

Ita Wegman says: “Human ears remained deaf, and the elemental beings waited in expectation of what might come from human beings and became restless when there was not enough of an echo coming back from them, Dr. Steiner said. Then he spoke about a promise which he had given to the spiritual world and which he had to keep if things did not change.” 15

“He ‘had not been completely followed’, he said, sadly but still lovingly, like someone who had forgiven and who had already turned his thoughts to other and greater life tasks.” 16

In her reflections on the Christmas Conference, Marie Steiner wrote: “The Christmas Conference is bound up with something infinitely tragic. […] A destiny [karma] held sway over the whole situation, a destiny that had to be settled [by Rudolf Steiner] in other spheres of existence. The outcome revealed what it meant for Dr. Steiner to take our karma upon himself.” 17

Rudolf Steiner crossed the threshold of death in the early morning of March 30th, 1925.

In the final chapter of Sergei Prokofieff’s book Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries , Prokofieff shows how the archetype of Rudolf Steiner’s relation to his students can be found in the relation of Christ Jesus to his disciples.

Rudolf Steiner describes the experience of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane in the following way:

“Why did Christ become sorrowful? He did not tremble at the prospect of the Cross. That goes without saying. He trembled at the question, ‘Will those whom I have brought with me here be able to bear this moment in which it is to be decided whether they want to accompany me in soul, to experience everything with me even to the Cross? ’”

“Then He goes and prays, ‘Father, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.’ This means: ‘Let me not experience that I stand absolutely alone as Son of Man, but that others accompany me.’ In the end, the cup had not passed from him. He was destined to fulfill the deed alone and in loneliness of soul.” 18

The disciples suffered immensely after the death of Christ Jesus and after his final departure from their vision at Ascension.

Rudolf Steiner continues: “And from this pain, from this infinite sadness, there arose what we call the Mystery of Whitsun. The disciples of Christ, having lost the vision

Continued on page 47