The Leadership Role of the Core-Group of 49

Originally, the idea of the study groups goes back, of course, to Billy, because, already in the initial years of FIGU, various core-group members, prompted by Billy, maintained diverse, little study groups which they led themselves. Thus, regular meetings, such as these, existed in Schaffhausen, Kloten, Winterthur, in Schongau, Konstanz und Munich, and not the least, in the Center itself.

In the past years, a series of FIGU study groups then came about worldwide which, in the beginning, only loosely worked together with the core-group of 49 at the Semjase-Silver-Star-Center. In part, overseas study groups existed with only a few persons, about whom, at the beginning, we were not even informed, and who got together sporadically, or regularly, in order to read and study the spiritual teaching together, in the narrower or broader sense, or to translate it into their country’s language. One of the first study groups which formed was the South German Study Group, which was founded by Günter Neugebauer und Andrea Grässl, however, before they made their way into the core-group. Soon followed, in Japan and the USA, the first official FIGU groups, which became “official” FIGU groups because of their federal laws, because they had to register as associations with their own
statutes, in their respective countries. By and by, further little study groups, and study groups, came about, which began to make efforts – extending beyond the study of the spiritual teaching – to do publicity work in some form or other. These efforts then led to the first conflicts, because it was not understood that the spiritual teaching is not to be spread by missionising, rather that every human being’s personal freedom of opinion, and free right to to make a decision, must always be preserved. From these first efforts, the core-group then worked out initial, simple rules which the study groups had to bear in mind, because we recognised that the mission could only be helped towards the desired success through an appropriate order and an efficient structure, that is to say, an appropriate system.

At all times, the responsible core-group members stood by the side of all these study groups with their knowledge, and with moral and practical support, in order to help the study groups to sort their inner and outer structures into an appropriate framework. The core-group of 49 was thereby confronted with the most varied problems and country-specific circumstances, for which solutions had to be sought and found, for which we offered assistance – appropriately, and within the structure – as is determined by the statutes and rules of FIGU. Since the legal regulations in regard to associations are not the same in every country, let it be explained here that, in Switzerland, and in other countries, statutes externally describe the legal basis of an association. Statutes are, for example, submitted to the authorities, legal persons, other associations or private persons, who want to, or must, be informed about the sense and purpose of an association. The rules, on the other hand, are the regulatory factor which internally forms the association in its essential inner structure, and which does not have to be announced outwardly, rather it only serves the internal order. The rules must, of course, be aligned with the statutes – that is to say – move within the rule of the statutes. Put another way, the rules are an internal interpretation or precise rendering of the statutes.