Erich Gutkind : as prophet of the New Age

endless cycles of cosmic development; that of Vladimir Solovyov is ona single world process of which the incarnation of Jesus Christ is the central event, and which must be completed in all its fullness by the self-perfecting in organic wholeness of mankind; and the emphasis, finally, of Erich Gutkind is on a critical jump which man mustnow make, raising himself by his own bootstraps into a wholly new state of life and consciousness.

It will lead us best into an appreciation of Gutkind’s prophetic vision if we contrast his attitude with that of Rudolf Steiner. And ifin doing this I appear to be, as it were, taking sides with Gutkind, it must not be thought that I am saying that Gutkind’s approach is the right one, or better than Steiner’s. It is of the essence of the Triune Revelation that all three are seen as different but equi-valid, and to give them each their due significance the differences between them must be squarely faced and not glossed over. The best approach to such different men of genius was well expressed by John Cowper Powys in his Preface to Visions and Revisions where he wrote, ‘It is impossible to respond to a great genius half-way. Itis a case of all or nothing. If you lack the courage, or the variability, to go all the way with very different masters and let your constructive consistency take care of itself, you may become, perhaps, an admirable moralist; you will never be a clairvoyant critic.’ This evening I am going to go, and I hope to take you with me, “all the way’ with Erich Gutkind; and it is in this spirit rather than one of partisanship that the contrast between him and Rudolf Steiner must be understood.

There is a sense in which Steiner is essentially looking to the past. His long and careful description of cosmic and human evolution gives the impression that the whole development of the world is an endless process of which we are now in the middle, and that just as crises have been lived through and overcome in the past, so they will be in the future. And even if things go wrong in one cycle of development, this will be put right in some future cycle. Gutkind acknowledges the endless cycles of evolution, but he is desperately concerned about the present crisis with an intense personal concern. To him every event is a unique event which will never be repeated in the whole of time. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is the meaning of all singles and of all created form, that it says: Only once, just this alone, one single without equal’. The development which has led

5