personally, I believe the spiritual world

is playing a joke on all of us ... or:

ELI5* “Real Anthroposophy's Future"

*(Internet slang for: “explain it like I’m five years old”)

The Anthroposophical Society doesn’t actually teach Real Anthroposophy - the Society doesn’t even seem to know what Real Anthroposophy actually is, which would really be comic if it also wasn’t so tragic.  What the Society teaches has to be called “Steinerism”, which is the end result of the “intellectualization of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence”.   All the same, in spite of the lack of precision in the thinking within the Society about what Real Anthroposophy is, a great deal that is good gets done anyway.  Most of the time.

Cults of personality also seem to dominate much of the membership, whether it is those infatuated with such as Prokofieff, von Halle, or Ben-Aharon - not one of whom knows what Real Anthroposophy is either.  If we place someone above us, in a spiritual sense, that also suggests we are less than we really are.  Oddly, Christ loves everyone the same - I wonder why?  Real Anthroposophy, by the way, is about the New Mystery of Thinking.

Many of those in Dornach, or on the Councils in America, give little or no evidence  of having  succeeded in obtaining the inner results to which an authentic study of the own mind leads (following, perhaps, Steiner’s “maps” in GA 2, GA 3, and GA 4).  The “map", however, is not the “territory".  If  this Mystery was common knowledge on any level, we’d have a whole other kind of culture in the Society.

To my embarrassment I have succeeded in stumbling into  this new thinking’s “initiation” (there might be a few others, but if so, they have their lights well hidden under a basket).  This means, from my point of view, something like being made by fate to watch a train wreck, and then because of having earned somehow the grace-gift of certain skills, crafts and arts I pretty much had to get involved.  I’d rather it was otherwise, and I am fairly certain so will a lot of other people in the Society.  I’m a 72 year-old practicing curmudgeon, and who in their right mind wants to be hectored by some fat old bald guy.  As regards my membership in the Society, I’m stuck with knowing stuff that others often don’t even believe it is possible to know.  A friend wrote a review of one of my books, and seemed to think most of it was my “opinion”.   Factually, the Mystery is about knowledge, not beliefs.

The future of Real Anthroposophy and the future of the Anthroposophical Society are presently not the same.  The former hopefully may find its true cultural birth in the early centuries of the Third Millennium, while the latter seems determined to get in the way.  How do we get people to realize, in practice, that there is more to thinking than just having opinions and beliefs?

About me:  I’m an expert in the New Thinking (and a Platonist in a Society dominated by Aristotelians).  And, an expert on the Soul and Spirit of America; an expert on the real relationship of the Christ to modern human social existence; and, I’ve meet the Lesser and the Greater Guardians of the Threshold in the New Way.   I’ve many  years experience of the Second Eucharist in the Ethereal, that accompanies Christ’s Return in the Ethereal.  I’ve also experienced the Second Pentecost in the Ethereal, as well.  In addition, I know that Ahriman is presently incarnate in America and what that means for the social organism in the Third Millennium.   I also know seriously interesting stuff about the Mystery of Evil - especially the threefold double-complex.  Fools do rush in, where angels fear to tread, although it helps - in learning about the dark-side - to be an addict in recovery (since 1987). 

This doesn’t make me anyone’s spiritual “better”.  I’m just an expert in the same way a heart surgeon is an expert - except in my case I’m an expert in this Mystery and its consequences.  Every object which exists, and can be named, has its corresponding Idea.  Steiner called this monism.  To me it is just a new potential latent in being human.  If you have questions about the above, talk to me - during this AGM, or the Youth Conference, or via e-mail** etc.. I’m not going anywhere, - that is until I die and the spiritual world gives me a much needed vacation.  Yours sincerely: **Joel A. Wendt: social philosopher, occasional fool, and professional couch potato; hermit@tiac.net; joel232001@gmail.com; Website: Shapes in the Fire: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit; Youtube Channel: the foolish philosopher: http://www.youtube.com/user/joel232001

supportive acts of love (evidence that my assertions of expertise are actually true)
(If you are going to "argue" with me, well....attendance will be taken and the exams graded)

Are we having fun yet?

ELI5 “The Future of the Anthroposophical Society”

This is a bit tricky, given the disconnect between the Society and Real Anthroposophy.  The Society is a social form, and as such it is subject to social inertia and momentum - that is it doesn’t change very easily  at all.  Tradition overwhelms much, and because “leadership” tends to the hierarchical (top down), these personalities like to hold on to their powers, privileges, and status.
 

In the A. Society this is complicated by the tendency for the existing hierarchy to determine who is to replace a member who is leaving.  As a result, the world view of the replacement is never allowed to significantly deviate from the existing paradigm.  The culture of the Society then enters into a kind of stasis condition, and becomes resistant to outside demands for change (witness all the “conflict” in recent years in Dornach, with the result that a hardened view in the Executive has basically remained the same).

I can jump up and down, and even throw a tantrum, and Dornach and the Councils in America are very unlikely to take me seriously - they haven’t yet, and I’ve been knocking on their doors for decades.

The Spirit, however, can’t be defeated.  The “Wind” will go where it is welcomed.  In America this means that much that is Michaelic finds other places and personalities to inspire.  For example, in the TV show Joan of Arcadia, the God character there says to Joan: “You have to trust the world behind your eyes” and “learn to see in the dark”.  Clint Eastwood’s two movies, Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino, are excellent dramatic presentations of the Consciousness Soul in action in America.  On TV we have the work of David E. Kelley and Aaron Sorkin in the field of law and politics.  All this gives evidence to confirm Steiner’s indications that English speakers are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights; and, that Americans come to Anthroposophy naturally.

It seems highly likely that when the Culmination happened, and the Platonists that had previously been involved in the School of Chartres gathered on the Internet, they collectively greatly admired Steiner, but with the exception of me they all fled the A. Society.  For details: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/chartres.html

If we appreciate the ongoing End of Western Civilization, and the metamophosis of that macro-social order into something new (the old patriarchal approach: "dominion over" is being replaced with a new matriarchal impulse "communion with"), we can see (something discussed in many of my writings) that real change now comes not from the top down (they dying hierarchical social forms), but from the bottom up (the newly living circle-like social forms - such as appears in the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Youth Section of the A. Society).

 

This means that the true incarnation of Anthroposophy, in such a social form as the A. Society, is not off the table - we just have to realize it will take place from the hearts of the living evolving membership, and not from the old and more and more sterile “leadership”, with its top down vanity of such as “the themes of the year”.

Steiner anticipated that there would be a unique version of Anthroposophy in America.  While he could found the Society in Central Europe, he could not bring it alive in America.  Yet, the A. Society did not understand these differences, with the result that in America the Society pays far too much attention to European (Old World) Culture, and hardly any attention to American (New World) Culture.

My work, available for free on the Internet, can serve as a great aid.  In the link about about Chartres are other links to American personalities with a lot to give.  The works of Dennis Klocek, who seems to have succeeded on the Knowledge of Higher Worlds path, needs recognition.  Goethean Science in all forms needs to be studied and made part of the Society world-view if we are to learn how to see through materialism.  A curious tale:

I was for a short time on an Euro-American academic philosophy discussion list-serve, where such as Nietzsche, Husserl, Bergson, Foucault, Deleuze and so forth were celebrated.  The question was raised on the list-serve: where were the America thinkers at the same level as the aforementioned?  This was my answer.

Following the First Great War, and then on through the Second, deep thinkers in America were not attracted to the academic world, and had become cartoonists and stand-up comics.  It was possible to trace (which I did), the various personalities as this form of expression made for many individuals more and more sense.  The Old World academic life had too much gravitas, often being the realm of a cold ahrimanic intellect.  The world itself was too full of suffering, and one very sane escape was to find the humor in it all.  Here are some highlights.

Cartoonists: Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny’s “What’s up Doc?” (he’s the archetypal anarchist); Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman: “What? Me worry?”;  Walt Kelly’s Pogo, who says in 1970: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  and then Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead: “Are we having fun yet?” (the Zeitgeist in one sentence).  The deepest was Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, impossible to describe, yet full of amazing social observations.

Stand-up Comics (beginning with Will Rogers) have to include George Carlin and Robin Williams, including Williams’ mentor Jonathan Winters.  Right now in America the most potent news analysis is on cable’s The Daily Show, and the Colbert Report.   Philosophy has always been about clear and precise thinking, which ought to include a sense of humor.  The question then remains: Are we having fun yet?

    This was the handout.  It had in it the words: "the new thinking's initiation."  I meant it literally, but had no means to turn that idea yet into the right tool.  I had to demonstrate something - but what?

    I went to meetings, and spoke up when I felt the need to speak up.  For example, at the blue-card meeting of the First Class, when the far too long introduction was finished, comments were invited.  I said something like this:  I don't understand why we use the word esoteric anymore.  I don't know what that means.  We live in America.  I know that is not the same as Europe.  That has to mean something about what we do here.  Others spoke, some tried to answer my questions.  It was not satisfying.

    Later, I went to the evening gathering where seven individuals were invited to give presentations - supposedly individuals somehow more ordinary.  They were not, but the presentations were interesting and funny, while the whole included a worship of all things Steiner, coupled with the common in our circles use of the word "anthroposophy" meaning this vague thing that we did or thought or believed in.  At the moment comments were invited, I rose and spoke.  After I introduced myself in this fashion: Hi, my name is Joel and I am an addict, (pause for silence) I then asked everyone to face the stage, and not look at me (I was in back of the room near the door, something I always had to do in order to be able to exit for the "calls of nature", without disturbing everyone else.  I had to say that twice - about not looking at me.  I then tried to create a picture - it was something like this: "Imagine an oval forming in the air on the stage, it shimmers and as it opens up we can see Rudolf Steiner there, dressed as we usually see him in pictures.  He seems above the stage somehow, and when he steps throught the oval to greet us he stumbles.  After picking himself up, he says: You've got to stop putting me on a pedestal, its quite hard to reach you from there.  You've also got to just stop reading the things you like about what I said.  I also said many things you don't like, because I had to keep a critical eye on what you are doing.  You have to pay attention to those critical ideas.  Then I read this from Awakening to Community (lecture three, Feb. 6th 1923) on the consequences to properly take up The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (or Freedom):  "The way it should be read is with attention to the fact that it brings one to a wholly different way of thinking and willing and looking at things...The trouble is that the Philosophy of Freedom has not been read in the different way I have been describing.  That is the point and a point that must be sharply stressed if the devlopement of the anthroposohical Society is not to fall far behind that of anthroposophy itself.  If it does fall behind, anthroposophy's conveyance throught the Society will result in its being completgely misundersood, and its only fruit will be endless conflict!"

    Like most of the speaking that I did, this was meet with silence.  I was not a speaker that was applauded.

    The above was on Friday Evening.  I did not sleep at all that night.  This condition is partially quite normal ... a different bed and so forth.  But that was not all. 

    I am someone who thinks in the new way.  This is a very sensitive kind of inner activity.  When someone with this skill reads certain people, or hears certain people, there can be an experience of soul-pain - not physical pain, but soul-pain.  It is a bit like hearing a piece of music sung off key.  The thought-world has a moral quality, which is aesthetic in nature.  The inner feeling life of the awake thinking "senses" the thoughts of the writer or the speaker, and when our I tries to raise these thoughts into the thought-world, there then can appear dissonance - either in the lack of clarity, or logical rigor or moral intention, and this dissonance is felt as a kind of pain. 

    Many of us have this sense in the field of political speech - where all manner of totally illogical ideas are asserted.   Yet, at an anthroposophical conference like this one, the mood is often very self-congradulatory, all speakers are applauded, and all they have really done is entertained us with some good jokes, said some kind things about each other, perhaps offered some simple wisdom, quoted Rudolf Steiner and provided a hint of something based on some original or novel thinking.  Now, I am not criticizing, but describing.  No one goes to these meetings to have the boat rocked.  We are club, killing each other with kindness, and heaven help us if someone actually picked a fight or did something really outrageous.

    It is also very unusual for "argument" to appear in our publications, and the latest Being Human with the article by Nathaniel Williams - An Important Reformation and its Consquences for a Renaissance was truly a surprizing breath of fresh air.  Will it be enough?

    There is also, with the new thinking, a kind of sensation of "other presence".  Beings are interested in what we are thinking, which is a deed in the world of spirit.  Let me repeat: thinking is a deed in the world of spirit. It is as if someone was watching over our shoulder.  But it is not an intrustive watching.  It is not interested in a particular outcome.  It is a kind of non-judgmental curiosity: What is this particular human being thinking concerning or of doing?  When there are many such "interested parties", the level of feeling/inner senseing of other presence increases.  It can keep you awake, but never intrudes.  Sort of like sleeping in the same bed with another person who is a bit of a stranger - their being there is something of which we are aware.

    On Saturday the following occurred, from  my point of view - almost nothing.  I was exhausted and became more and more tired as I went up and down stairs on my arthritic knees (the Americans for Disabilities Act seems to get a pass at a lot of Waldorf Schools - there is no way someone with a wheel chair could get around in the building that housed this conference.  I skipped the lecture by the Youth Section leader, Ms. Kaliks (as I was going to meet her at the Youth Section meeting anyway on Sunday through Tuesday), and did go to a "conversation group", about which meeting I can remember nothing, except a place and a few faces.

    I then went to a workshop, concerning which I had great hopes, for its title was: Taking Up the Task of "Renewing Civilization", led by Seth Jordan and others from ThinkOutWord.  It was, unfortunately for me, not a happy experience.  Understandably they tried to imagine a future where social threefolding in various ways became a part of modern civilization.  Not a bad wish to have.  The problem was that our Society has not taught its members how to be Goetheanists, or scientists.  The thinking on the social then lacks a certain strength, precision and rigor - it is too wishy washy.  Hopeful, even enthusiastic, but lacking the precision and knowledge needed of how the real world works.  You can't stuff an Ideal, however much authority you want to pin to it by saying it came from Rudolf Steiner, down the throat of the observable structural laws governing the real social world.

    The leaders of this group talked for a long time, and then when they wanted us to divide into small groups and create our own thinking along their lines of thought (imagining a future where social threefolding has become accepted) a couple of them walked out into the hall way, and I followed.  I approached them and said, by way of introduction, that what they were proposing (social threefolding) would not work.  We then had a somewhat passionate discussion, but not one with any rancor.  One of them found some chairs and after a minute or so we were sitting down.  I made my points, which could only be baldly stated, they struggled to give counters, naturally attached to their previous conclusions. We talked rapidly back and forth for about 7 minutes, when it became time for them to go back into the workshop meeting.  I'll not repeat my "arguments" here, for it is a point of view I have tried for years to argue (unsuccessfully) as a member of the Social Science Section.  A couple of papers I wrote to/for the Section and the general membership of the Society are here:  "Shapes in the Fire" (sent to the Section on the occasion of a meeting in 2011) http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Shapes.html  ; and "the Political Anthroposophist, and Social Michaelic Courage" (recently submitted to Being Human, to no effect)  http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/politicalanthroposophist.html  These are long essays, for the questions are complicated, and I have spent decades doing the needed research.

    By this time I was exhausted, and looked forward to a long Sunday following, where the AGM would finish, and the Youth Section meeting commence.  So by four p.m. I was at my motel, possessed of comfort foods (two double Whoppers with cheese, and a very large vanilla milkshake from Burger King).  I skipped the Saturday Night Contra Dancing, for my knees would have imploded at such an effort.  I actually slept somewhat, watched TV and ate off and on.

    Sunday morning included a "nice" speech by Torin Finser.  It had jokes, spoke glowingly of the shared "anthroposophical work" and ended up with lists of words on a blackboard, around which was woven a presentation of ideas abut the past and the future of the Society.  There was a lot of applause.   

    Then came the Plenum, which I had waited for, because the ordinary people (instead of the otherwise "select") get to make a point or two.  I nearly missed it, because it was done out of sync with the published program.  I was the second person to stand up, however, and the moderator Nathaniel Williams recognized me, using my name.  This is more or less what I did, first asking: Would anyone who heard of or talked about the Christmas Conferernce during the AGM raise the hands.  Nearly 150 hands rapidly went up - basically everyone.   I then asked for people who had talked about or heard something during the AGM about the Return of Christ in the Ethereal to raise their hands.  About 30 people did, several tentatively.   I then said, more or less: Modern spiritual research reveals that Rudolf Steiner was the John the Baptist Figure of the Second Coming of Christ, the voice crying in the Wilderness of Scientific Materialism.  I sat down, and there was no applause, just a kind of shocked silence. I don't think it was because what I said was forbidden ... rather it was semi-consciously disturbing to that audience that the AGM would meet and spend far more time on the Christmas Confernce, and almost no time at all about the most significant spiritual event of the 20th Century.  The Society is pregnant with itself, not with the truth.

    Part of what also happened at the AGM was meetings with individuals, of which I had many.  People came up to me, wanting to talk, and I tried to be a good listener, and ask about them as well as answering any questions they had.  All of these conversations were interesting, and of course many were brief encounters with people I already knew in the Society.  I only want to tell one of those stories, as it presented an opportunity to offer some recent research work. 

    During the process called: Open Space, I offered to hold a meeting on: "The Michael School, in America and in the 21st Century".  For a long time no one came to the room I had been sent to occupy, and then a woman came in and said she had only a few minutes, because she was a "vendor" and needed to get back to her table as soon as possible.  I made a couple of vague comments on certain more intellectual matters about time and incarnation, and then quoted an idea of Valentin Tomberg's, which came from his book: Meditations on the Tarot.  According to this metaphor the world is like a cruise ship, with most of the passengers free to engage in their personal choices regarding fun and how to spend their time (lives).  The captain of the ship is Christ, and the crew works under Him in order to serve the passengers.  To which I then added the idea that the First Class, or the Esoteric School as some call it, is a "training" for being on the crew.  It is not the only training, but it is one of the ways in which people become ready to be "crew" and work under Christ for the benefit of humanity.  Unfortunately, the older folks in the Society cling to the past, so the Class has become static and no one knows really how to reawaken interest in it the present.

    In the last moments of the AGM, as people were leaving (I was resting in a chair near the ground floor bathrooms - my usual hangout), many people stopped by and thanked me for bringing up the 12 Steps and the Return of Christ.  These realities had meaning to them - meaning which the regular creators of anthroposophical social activity did not seem to yet appreciate.

    The Youth Section gathering followed, starting at about four p.m. on Sunday afternoon.  I was there early - it was at a differernt location.  This place reminded me of several communes I had known in the Trinity Mountains area of Northern California in the 1960's and 1970's.  Lots of buildings, some partially finished, piles of wood everywhere, and being that this was the Fall, the everywhere garden had been killed by several recent frosts.  Two cats, a large dog, and a couple of turkeys were also around and about.

    The people who planned this gathering of the Youth Section kept as much as possible to their schedule of activities, most of which I found confusing (although not to them, just to old-man me).  To be a part of the Section one has to be between the ages of 18 and 50, or if older a mentor to "young" people.  At first, when this limit was explained to me as I was trying to register to come, I didn't think I mentored anyone, believing that required some kind of face to face meetings.  After a couple of days I recalled that I had 270 plus videos on Youtube, all of me talking into a camcorder and waxing philosophical.  I'd taken my writings and turned them into an oral form.  At the time of the AGM I had over 525 subscribers, and about 140,000 visits to my videos (often by the same person).  While English speakers predominated (USA, Canada, England and Australia) over all there had been visitors from just about every country in the world.  Many had written questions to me, and gotten answers, and clearly many were quite young.  That work I will continue and widen.

    That Sunday evening at a certain point we separated into small groups to do a "laboratory" and some kind of "research", which basically involved us talking to each other, following a kind of format and then making notes.  On reflection I believe this was an effort to do something new that the Section members felt was lacking in the regular anthroposophical meetings.  It seemed a reasonable social experiment, although if they had had any inkling of what I know about the social and about groups and about thinking, we might have taken a different course.

    To a certain extent, the Youth Section was like the AGM meeting, in that it was very self involved.  Again, the word anthroposophy was used in this competely vague (imprecise) way common to mainstream A. Society culture.  The evening ended with a group of young people occupying the center of the meeting room (it was small), and singing in rounds and in harmonies with each other.  It reminded my of the best parts of church camp experiences of my own youth.  They clearly loved each other.

    I tired to engage Constanza Kaliks, the Section leader from Dornach, in conversation, at the kitchen table.  Apparently I was more boring than her "children" in the community room, she grew restless, made her excuses and went to them.

    When I went to bed, I again could not sleep at all, and made a somewhat grave yet nicely foolish decision to speak of certain intimate aspects of my biography in the morning.  Again there was a lot of "other presence" attention from the world of the invisibles.  I suspected my "revelation" would not be well received, but at the same time tried not to have any expectation other than of myself.  I was tired of being in anthropop meetings where biography work was common, and having to lie about the central aspect of  my biography.  I was going to go All In, and hang the consequences.  What I needed was to feel free to be myself, within this group.  That was all I had, and the biographical material was an attempt to gain that social freedom.

    You see, dear reader, if you return momentarily to the handout, I needed to talk about the why's and wherefore's of the A. Society not knowing what anthroposophy is, for that disfunction disabled the Society deeply.  My biography was one last card to play, in the game of getting folk to at least listen to me a bit more carefully, and see past the old fat bald guy to the real soul and spirit hidden within.

    So I spoke then (having asked and received the opportunity to do so before the gathering went on with its "plan") about the fact that I had not been born in this body, but rather had undergone an "ego" change in this body's 31st year.  I told a couple of stories related to that, and then the young woman leading the mornings activities stopped me.  I was not surprised, but rather relieved.  I had gone All In, but given that this could not be received, I would then leave the group and head home.  I was exhausted, needed a good shower, a real bed and the comforts of home.  For any reader of this wanting details about my story, go here: biographical necessity.

   
    She was right to stop me.  I was right to offer my intimacy, and to want to be free to be fully myself in that circle.   As I was leaving many came up to me to give hugs.  It was a very warm moment, and I appreciated the special nature of the Youth Section work that they embodied.

    That moment was a whole with my journey to the AGM and the Youth Section meeting, which were to me a single event.  What remains, however, is the question with which my handout began, and with which I will end this essay: "The Anthroposophical Society doesn’t actually teach Real Anthroposophy - the Society doesn’t even seem to know what Real Anthroposophy actually is, which would really be comic if it also wasn’t so tragic.  What the Society teaches has to be called “Steinerism”, which is the end result of the “intellectualization of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence”.   All the same, in spite of the lack of precision in the thinking within the Society about what Real Anthroposophy is, a great deal that is good gets done anyway.  Most of the time."

    By the way, this story can be found in many different forms throughout my writings.  Its earliest version begins here: Outlaw Anthroposophy - the journal.

    The self study of the own mind reveals what is stated in The Philosophy of Spiritual Acitivity - that there is no knowledge without the union of percept and concept, or experience and thought (A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception).  This is a practical example of monism (as defined by Steiner) where the sense world (or spiritual world) object has its corrresponding Idea.  Simplistically: matter and spirit are two sides of one coin.  We experience the percept (the sense object) via the senses, and the corresponding concept/idea, to that sense object, via the thinking.

    By the presence of our consciousness in the world, reality is divided into two, and then can be reunited within our own minds, when we - in the act of creating knowledge (see Steiner's dissertation: Truth and Knowledge) - bring percept and concept together.

    When we read a text, however (and especially anything written by Steiner), we can only gather into our consciousness the "concept" side of this monism.  Steiner can not give us his experience - his percept, but only a stream of concepts for our "understanding" (which is a term he used a great deal in the introductory material to Theosophy and Occult Science).  From the reading of a Steiner text we only get a perceptless concept, which is then not "knowledge" in the way Steiner taught us knowledge was.

    Over the years the A. Society has taken up Steiner's writings as if these perceptless concepts where in fact knowlege.  We came to believe that we could "know" something through Steiner.  This is not espistemologically possible.  Yet, as we are attached to Steiner's teaching/understandings, and hungering to rely on this for our personal world view, we took these perceptless concepts and created out of them a belief system, which I insist has to be called: Steinerism - a kind of spiritual philosophy (or system of thought).

     Partially this arises because we did not understand what Steiner tried to teach us about the "intellect".  This "intellect" can be cold or warm according to whether we engender caring (love) into the "intention" necessary for the creation of thought.  If we are indifferent to the consequences of our thinking, it will be cold and "heartless".  If we are not indiffernt, but concerned morally with the consequences of our thinking, it is warmed - becoming that which  we try point to with the words: "heart thinking".  The motive for thought creation is everything.

    When Steiner spoke and wrote, his "motive" was to create warm thoughts about spiritual realities, which thoughts could be then called: Michaelic.  When we read those perceptless concepts without any effort to warm them ourselves, we "intellectualize the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence" - that is we mistake the perceptless concepts for knowledge and wisdom.

    While Steiner understood this, it was very hard to teach this to people who were not yet able to take up in the right way: The Philosophy of Freedom.  It was a problem of "language" and of the time, for Europe was still deeply bound to the former and lingering elements of the Intellectual Soul.  Keep in mind that Steiner suggested that English speakers were instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights.

    When Steiner defined the term"anthroposophy", in the very first of the Leading Thoughts, he began in this way: Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge from the spiritual in man to the Spiritual in the Universe.  People have been assuming that "knowledge" was to be found in the teachings called: Spiritual Science, rather than just "understanding".  This is a quite "understandable" confusion.  Again, real knowledge is the union of percept and concept, such that Real Anthroposophy is a Path or Way of spiritual development, leading from the thinking of the human being into the Thinking of the Universe; or, as Emerson put it:   "Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought."

    It is now time for the A. Society to move beyond this confusion.  Who will lead the Way back and onward as well as to and from this Path?  The Youth Section?  That is my hope.