Dangerous Anthroposophy

A collection of essays by Joel A. Wendt

social philosopher ... and occasional fool

cover art by Victoria Hull Temple

a brief introduction

The essays in this book are from the past, and are being published in this collection in order to represent the processes by which my thought developed over almost two decades in two related fields of interest.  Primarily I was learning to practice a new social science, and in addition I was concerned with the state of the Anthroposophical Movement and Society, for much about its nature troubled me.

The use of the term Dangerous above is discussed in the first essay, but basically what makes Anthroposophy socially Dangerous is two-fold - in point of fact the kind of Anthroposophy practiced by the Society and Movement is a two-edge sword.   One type  of danger is the truth that lives in it.  The more truth, the more socially dangerous, whether within the shared culture of humanity or within the Anthroposophical Society itself.  The other kind of danger concerns the absence of truth.

To the extent that what lives in the Anthroposophical Society and Movement is false, whether it is opinion masquerading as knowledge, or arrogance and pride, or simply mere Steinerism (a belief system, see my book American Anthroposophy), this system of falsehoods harms not only the world, but also the essential nature of Anthroposophy itself and Rudolf Steiner's true legacy.  People searching out Anthroposophy will naturally look to the Society and Movement for appreciating and understanding this New Mystery.   To the extent the Society and Movement are flawed, this will be seen by many to represent what Anthroposophy is in practice.  It shouldn't take much thought to realize that the representing of Anthroposophy in any kind of seriously flawed way will only lead to harm.

This then is the reality.   As the 21st Century unfolds, the gravest danger to the development of Anthroposophy comes from the followers of Rudolf Steiner, who collectively are members of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement.

Certain of the essays in this book are uncompromising and critical essays made by me in an attempt in the first part of the 21st Century, to wake up the membership to these problems.  Other essays are concerned with preliminary work that I did in the process of developing a new social science (again see American Anthroposophy for a more mature representation of that work).

When I first self published Dangerous Anthroposophy I mixed the critical in with the positive, and it didn't work (early critical reviews suggested serious changes), so I rethought what I was up to, and tried in American Anthroposophy to express the essential core of anthroposophical truth, with only a little mention of the many human and understandable flaws in its practice.   Since some people may want to more carefully look at these flaws (they are well worth more careful consideration), I have decided to publish this collection as a separate book from my American Anthroposophy, yet retaining the title of the original work: Dangerous Anthroposophy, for the reasons enumerated above.

While the first essay goes into more detail concerning what makes Anthroposophy dangerous, the essays following that one are laid out in the order written, so that any reader wanting to appreciate the development of my thought over the years will be able to discover the slowly unfolding nature of the various threads.

It should also be noticed, that while many of these essays were offered in various ways to the Society and Movement, they were in that context the representative of socially dangerous truths - truths many in the Society and Movement did not want to hear.   For that reason these essays were seldom published or otherwise widely distributed, except on my website, where just a few readers were then able to make their acquaintance.

All these essays then can also be read for free on that part of my website (see: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/otlwa.html) dedicated to Anthroposophy.

table of Essays

(page numbers are approximate)

Dangerous Anthroposophy (2005) - out of time-order p. 5

the rest are more or less in the order written,

- the listed dates are approximate...

Threshold Problems in Thinking the Threefold Social Organism (1991) p. 10

Waking the Sleeping Giant: the mission of Anthroposophy in America (1995) p. 22

The Mystery of the True White Brother (1997) p. 63

Outlaw Anthroposophy - the journal (1997) p.82

On the Practice of Communicating the Ideal to the American Soul (1997) p. 96

Scenes From the Eye of the Heart (1997) p. 105

Anthroposophy in the Light of America (1997) p. 113

Pragmatic Moral Psychology (1997) p. 121

Listening to the World Song (1999) p. 132

The World in the Light of the Human I Am (1999) p. 159

The Social-Spiritual Organism of a Waldorf School Community (1999) p. 169

Initiation, Goetheanism and the New Bogeyman (2001) p. 182

Die and Become: the future of Anthroposophy in America (2001) p. 189

Concerning the Renewal of Anthroposophy (2004) p. 199

The Law and the Spirit (2004) p. 224

The Crack in the Foundation of the Castle of the Dragon (2005) p. 231

Wendt on Usher on Prokofieff on Tomberg on Steiner (2005) p. 240

An Open Letter to the Anthroposophical Society in America, and World-Wide (2005) p. 248

The Three Wishes (2005) p. 264

"The least read, most important book, Steiner ever wrote." (2005) p. 288

Waldorf Charter Schools in America: some social observations (2006) p. 297

American Culture - a first look (2006) p. 300

What is American Anthroposophy? (2006) p. 313

The Future of Anthroposophy in the 21st Century (2006) p. 331

A well intended* very flawed Book: From Gondhishapur to Silicon Valley - Spiritual Forces in the development of computers and the future of technology - written by Paul Emberson (*you know, the intentions the way to hell is paved with) (2007) p. 342

Sergei O. Prokofieff's  Anthroposophy and the Philosophy of Freedom a (sort of) book review, by Joel A. Wendt (2009) p. 362

Saving Anthroposophy: from the Anthroposophical Society and Movement (2009) p. 389

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This first essay was originally written in 2005, and submitted with three other Essays sent as a group to New Review, an English anthroposophical publication. There was no response to this submission. I have slightly revised it.

Dangerous Anthroposophy

In 1997 I wrote a couple of essays and designed a small poll.   The essays were based on a many years' consideration of a certain problem that I had (and still) perceived in the Anthroposophical Society, of which by that time I had been a member for about 17 years.  This problem involved the fact that in the social operation of the Society, in its Study Groups and Branch meetings, I had observed little practical understanding of Steiner's works on objective philosophical introspection.  Reference would often be made to only one of them - The Philosophy of  Spiritual Activity (Freedom), but even that one was often portrayed as a difficult work, whose goal was only attainable for a few.

So I wrote an essay, saying in essence that the study of Rudolf Steiner's lecture cycles, in the Study Groups I had participated in, did not take account of the problem of knowledge that the works on introspection not only pointed out, but had also shown how to solve in quite practical and direct ways.  It was as if we had been given a gift that had not been understood when he lived, and so it had been set aside and is now just laying there gathering dust.

This failure to take the works on objective philosophical introspection into our souls as anthroposophists had consequences, and so I also wrote a second essay on these consequences for the Society in general.  The two essays (Rudolf Steiner's Lecture Cycles and the Problem of Cognition: musings on the epistemological swampland of the Anthroposophical Movement; and, The Anthroposophical Society: Is it a living Social Form?) plus the poll, I self published in a photo-copied journal I called: Outlaw Anthroposophy - the Journal, which can be found on my websites (1).

I had a friend take 23 copies of this work to the Ann Arbor Michigan summer conference in 1997, where they were given away for free.  As I was at that time, and still am a member of what we call the working poor, I seldom am able to attend these Conferences.  Four years later, a correspondent via e-mail, remarked to me upon reading the Journal on my website, that this must have been the material she heard referred to at that Conference as: subversive.

Now in a Society in which spiritual freedom and initiative are set forth as some of the highest principles, for just such an act of free initiative to be labeled subversive, which is after all a political term not a term based upon Spiritual Science, really says more about those who made this characterization than it does about the work itself.  The only legitimate question was: Is the material in the essays true?  To call it subversive is to be in denial of the underlying issue.  In fact that work, once on the Internet, was translated into German by Lorenzo Ravagli, and published in the Jarhbuch fur anthroposophiische Kritik 1998, at his initiative.  It was also taken up by Bob and Nancy's Waldorf website (2), where if you go to the section on Anthroposophy, it is still, after almost 9 years, prominently displayed.

Step back from this for a moment and with your imagination think back to the time when Christ walked the earth in the company of all of His disciples, both male and female.  For two and a third years the Creator of All, Himself, lived in a physical body, in order to share our fate - that is to live, to become human and then to die.  He taught during this time in such a fashion that the social order around Him could not but find Him to be dangerous and subversive, to such an extent that He was crucified.

Even Rudolf Steiner was, in the context of the wider social world in which he lived, so dangerous and subversive that an attempt seems to have been made on his life, which attempt may have ultimately killed him.  In our time, within the Anthroposophical Society and Movement, a young woman (Irina Gordienko) who published a book (Sergei O. Prokofieff: Myth and Reality) was also apparently so dangerous and subversive that her reportedly accidental death was seen by some to be murder, done so as to prevent her from standing as a living human being, within the Society, proclaiming that the current Emperor of the Vorstand has no clothes.

What is the active principle here?  What is it that is dangerous and subversive?

It is, quite simply, the truth.  The truth is always contrary to that aspect of any social community, which must deny the truth in order to make existence placid and safe for the dominance of its authority.  Until we all develop to the point that we can live with each others individual free initiative, which is a kind of social-spiritual anarchy, the social group will always try to smother that which does not conform to the group's near unconsciously created homogenized views.

This is the key - to understand how the group, to the extent that it likes to sleep and maintain its illusions, tends to homogenizes all thought content which might disturb this sleep.  The result is that after a century of work the Anthroposophical Society possesses not Spiritual Science, but something fallen, which can only be called: Steinerism.  Without the practice of the objective philosophical introspective life, there is no science, because there is no striving with the problem of knowledge. Without a scientific discipline at the heart of the social element of anthroposophical work, the unconscious tendencies in the social group will dumb down the work (homogenize it), and we end up with a blind faith in Rudolf Steiner as an authority, at the expense of trust in the spiritual reality of our own thinking (the goal of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity).

Emerson, in his lecture: The American Scholar, hit the nail on the head: "In self trust all virtues are comprehended." [emphasis added]

This means that the worship of Steiner-thought, coupled with the abdication of the responsibility to critically evaluate the work of those being put forward, even in mere gossip, as new initiates (such as Prokofieff), ruins the life work of our Teacher.   That life work was to enable the individual human being to become their own priest-initiate in the New Thinking.  By our idolizing worship we take Spiritual Science and make it merely a belief system in Steinerism; and, by our lack of critical thinking of present day work, we then allow those truths shared with us by our Teacher, to be rearranged into something they never were (by an undisciplined associative abstract thinking, too easily warped by the double-complex).

What is worse is that we harm ourselves, as well as failing humanity, because the blind acceptance of Steiner-thought as assumed gospel truth creates a prison in the soul, which is the complete opposite of his efforts to show us a path to spiritual (inner) freedom.

Why do we tolerate this insanity?

Seven years later in the Fall of 2004, I wrote two more essays (which can be found in this book).  One was called: Concerning the Renewal of Anthroposophy: rediscovering the true meaning of the New Mysteries (3), and the other: The Law and the Spirit (4).  I then went to Detroit Michigan, to the Annual General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in America, where I handed out to all present copies of these essays.  This was the second national conference I had ever attended (being working poor, you don't get out much), while the first,14 years before, was a Social Science Section sponsored conference in Spring Valley, NY (5).

I stood up on the first morning in Detroit (following the previous evening's lecture, which had been firmly rooted in Steinerism), consciously trying to disrupt the very asleep flow of things, in which everyone does what everyone usually does (homogenized social processes).  Of course, I was shouted down.  As the American writer Kurt Vonnegut has written, with his wonderfully phlegmatic acceptance of all social insanity: So it goes.

Do you want a solution here?  Do you think as a writer pointing out this problem, I owe you, the reader, a duty to suggest an answer?  Okay then, go read the essay noted in footnote (3) -  Concerning the Renewal of Anthroposophy: rediscovering the true nature of the New Mysteries (included in this book), but be prepared, it is dangerous and subversive and a lot of people already don't like it, and a lot of other people are going to join in that view.  But not liking it is not the essential question.  The essential question is: What is the truth?  And preliminary to even that question is this one: How do we know what the truth is?

Part of the truth is that to really practice Anthroposophy is to be dangerous to the contemporary social milieu, not because we intend harm, but because we stand upright for the truth in an uncompromising fashion, and that this truth we stand for we have actually worked at knowing.  Nor do we sit on the fence in regard to the great issues of the day, rather we participate fully in their discussion and resolution in a way that honors the moral ground on which we stand, all without preaching - everything done as service.

We cease being mere believers in something Steiner said, and become instead practitioners of the new gnosis (6) in our own right, justified thereby in every thought and action.  The sword and shield of Michaelic Courage is not carried by those who live in the past, or who lean not on their own work, but mostly on Steiner.

If nothing is at risk, even with each other, where then is that Courage?  For the reality is that true Anthroposophy is also dangerous to ourselves - we risk being socially isolated because our actions do not meet the approval of those among us who would define the truth for all the rest.

This then is dangerous Anthroposophy.  In that it really expresses the truth, it is dangerous to the general social milieu (scientific materialism).  There is a second dangerous entity, which is Steinerism.  Steinerism is dangerous to Anthroposophy, and pointing out such truths within the Society and Movement means also to be dangerous there.  So the fundamental question remains: How do we know the truth?  "...and you will know the truth, and the truth will free you."  John 8:32

(1) http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/oajnr.html

(2) http://www.bobnancy.com/menu-steiner.html

(3) http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/concerning.html

(4) http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/lawspirit.html

(5) This is not to say I have been out of touch with the movement, but efforts at publication of my works routinely fails.  These extensive writings can be found on that section of my website devoted to anthroposophy: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/otlwa.html, and in their descriptions will be found brief remarks showing the consistent rejection of these offerings mostly in America.  Elsewhere they receive greater welcome.

(6) See the dangerous works of Don Cruse, especially his book with Robert Zimmer: Evolution and the New Gnosis: anti-establishment essays on knowledge, science, religion and causal logic

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Written in 1991, this was my first offering to the Society and Movement, and was offered to the Threefold Review, which was brand new at that time.   They choose not to publish it, although once on my website it had a different life internationally, being favorably mentioned on David Heaf's Threefolding website in the UK, and also in an essay by Terry Boardman that was published in the book: The Future is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium.

           Threshold Problems in Thinking

           the Threefold Social Order

As awareness of the idea of the Threefold Social Order (as developed by Rudolf Steiner) increases, it becomes more and more necessary to not lose sight of the fact that this idea owes its existence to a particular way of thinking. The ordinary internal dialog with its cause and effect, or analytically oriented, thinking, which human beings possess as a result of their given conditions of consciousness and the type of education normally received in modern civilization - this inherited way of thinking is not the same kind of cognitive process as gave birth to Steiner's idea.

This presents us with a peculiar dilemma. Can we truly understand this idea without first reproducing the same cognitive process in our own consciousness? If we can understand it without this, can we yet work with it (the idea) well enough to apply it in practice? These are the main questions (there are others), but it will be enough at this point to at least appreciate the need for a certain type of preliminary work, a kind of philosophical (epistemological) reflection.

A short survey of what is being done already today with Steiner's idea will also help. There seem to me to be three general kinds of practices. A first type of practice is to try to incorporate at some kind of small community level, one or another partial aspect of Steiner's conception (such as community owned farms or the co-worker economic structure of Camphill villages). A second type is to recapitulate or otherwise restate, with the addition perhaps of some original work, Steiner's idea in terms of contemporary conditions (such as Hans Lauer's, Aggression and Repression: in the individual and society). A third way is to engage in considerations of whether or not and how to go about applying this idea within the circumstances of some modern political situation (such as current attempts to suggest this idea can be brought into being along with the unification of the two Germany's).

Each of these types of practices seems to me to have certain positive and negative aspects, which I will try to consider in what follows. There is as well a fourth way, which while considerably more difficult, yet seems to me to reveal unusual practical potential. I suspect, and the following will try to show, that it is the unification and integration of all four approaches which is necessary in order to both perceive and apply the threefold social idea in actual contemporary situations.

One of the problems I have with attempts to apply threefolding (another way of referring to Steiner's idea; see Rudi Lissau's, The Roots of Threefolding in Anthroposophy, Anthroposophical Review) into micro (small communities), as opposed to macro (national) circumstances, is that I know of no instance in which Steiner himself used his idea in such a way. In fact, one of his oft repeated remarks, that threefolding was not an utopia, has led me to question just what is really involved in attempts to insert single aspects of this idea into small communities.

I am, by the way, not suggesting that small community applications are incorrect, or otherwise doubtful. The problem to me is more subtle. In trying to understand what Steiner meant by saying threefolding was not utopian, I have come to the conclusion that an essential and fundamental aspect of threefolding is the fact that it comes into the world because the human soul is itself organized in a threefold way and that this organization impresses itself onto the social order so that the soul may find reflected there all that lies within it. This idea has led me to consider that there are two ways in which the threefold social order arises in the actual circumstances of life: one is through the attempts to ideally form communities according to this idea, and the other is a kind of spontaneous generation of threefold conditions out of the interactions between the soul and the social order on both micro and macro levels. (It is my further belief that the true threefolding of a nation can only occur when these two means are brought together, but this is getting ahead of myself.)

In the community in which I live, I (and others) participate in a community farm and in a therapeutic practice, whose economic structures have been influenced consciously by the threefold idea. These are examples of idealistic transformations on the micro level, and are representative, I believe, of an approach to threefolding which is utopian in nature. The problem with an utopian view is that it overlooks (or ignores) the actual social conditions. In the case of the above farm and therapeutic practice, while some people may believe we are living out of a threefold impulse, we are in reality just applying an utopian ideal in circumstances which hold together largely because of the social contract we make (i.e. the economic agreement concerning the financing of the farm and the therapeutic practice). This is not true threefolding because there is no dynamic interplay among three different social spheres of activity. To further appreciate this subtle difference let me describe another situation in the same local community.

Where I live there is a Waldorf school, and therefore a school community. This community had two affective bodies (i.e. organizational forms which carry different tasks in the life of the school: a Board of Trustees and a College of Teachers. One year a very large tuition increase was deemed necessary and out of the resulting social uproar another social form came into being (the Friends of Waldorf Education), which sought to carry the problem of the equalizing of the burdens of tuition, considering that there were many families whose economic situation could not absorb the large tuition increase. It was (and remains) my view that this change represented a spontaneous threefolding of the social community of the school. There existed in this community different impulses of soul, and these different impulses needed three forms (Trustee, Teacher and Friend) in order that the whole character of the soul, as regards this particular social structure (the school community), could find the proper means of expression.  (I later expanded upon this in much detail in the essay: The Social-Spiritual Organism of a Waldorf School Community)

Out of these experiences I have come to believe, that while Steiner did not (to my knowledge) express himself concerning micro threefolding, this nevertheless is a real possibility. Care must be taken, however, to distinguish specialized and utopian social contracts from actual dynamics in small communities where the different capacities of the soul seek to realize themselves in differentiated social forms having a functional threefold relationship.

The second way in which Steiner's idea is applied today is in the restatement of it in accord with modern conditions. A careful reading of Steiner suggests that he was well aware that the threefold social order idea would have to be reformulated not only in accord with time, but also with respect to the different characteristics of the people (or nation) for whom the idea is being developed. We have, for example, the remarkable book Aggression and Repression, by Lauer mentioned above, which places the threefold idea into the context of modern ideas of social and psychological theory of peoples.

The main problem in this area is that there is not enough of this kind of work. Lauer's book is continental in orientation (being originally written in German for a German audience). There does exist some English work, but as far as I know, no truly complete restatement for either the British or the America situations.  The main difficulty here is that there does not seem to be the realization that Steiner's expression of this material, as published around the twenties in Germany, was given in a form suitable for that time and people, but which, regardless of how ably translated, nevertheless does not direct our American consciousness to the appropriate social phenomena. A brief word about the different soul characteristics of the middle Europeans and the Americans may help.

The European has a strong tendency to be more active inwardly, to live more strongly out of ideals. Such a soul often wants to structure human society in accord with the highest ideal. Americans, on the other hand, are problem solvers. We live more in the immediate world and in the practical demands (pragmatism) which go with this kind of orientation. The form in which Steiner then gave the threefold idea, as a strong statement of an ideal structure, was especially appropriate for the soul consciousness which was to receive it. In America, however, we would need to build up the whole conception as a means to solving problems. That is, the problems would have to be identified, and then out of the inner necessity of their particular characteristics one would derive the threefold idea as the solution.

We need now to take a look at the consideration of the threefold idea as a solution to certain recognizable problems resulting from the separation of Eastern Europe out of its previous circumstances. In this regard I have to mention that Steiner spoke in an unusual way in his Oxford lectures (Threefolding as a Social Alternative). He said (here I am paraphrasing) that the time had passed for the application of the threefold social order in central Europe, but that even so, this idea could still be fruitful in Russia and America (if appropriately restated), and that for the West, time did not matter so much because much could still be done for the right ordering of the three spheres.

As much as our hopes ought to wish otherwise, let us consider for a moment just why it might be so that threefolding cannot be instituted in the reuniting of the two Germany's and perhaps in other newly freed areas of Eastern Europe. I am not arguing for this, rather I am taking Steiner's hint and assuming that it will lead me somewhere.

My first observation is that the general soul characteristics of a people may be such that one people is a better vessel for the development of Steiner's idea than some other soul configuration. Middle Europe's idealistic soul gesture may work in such a way that it takes up threefolding in an utopian manner, and that such an approach will bring it about that the application of social threefolding is imposed on a social dynamic which is not ripe for it. We know Steiner urged, especially, that it was essential to free the cultural life. I believe a careful reading of these thoughts will show that this was a condition of the moment i.e. that great good could be done there and then if this emancipation of the cultural and spiritual life was brought about. Such an idea is urged still today, yet I wonder whether it is appropriate. Further, how could we know this?

This leads toward the fourth mode or approach to threefolding which was referred to earlier. We need to remember that the threefold social order is something which already is, which already has being. The problem, as it were, is that the three spheres are not related to each other in healthy ways. Steiner's threefold social order is not an utopian scheme, it is rather a descriptive morphology of social life. He expressed it in the form he did so that it was suitable for a soul gesture which worked from the ideal. He expressed it at the time he did because: First, he was asked to contribute; and second, the social conditions following the war were chaotic, and chaos is always a precondition to incarnating new form. As more and more of the old forms poured back into the post-WWI social life, the opportunity to raise it to a higher level disappeared.

From this we are lead further. If we consider, in an imaginative way, picturing backwards into history from the present, the form and structure of the family and its sheath-like surrounding social form, the community, we will realize that present conditions are highly chaoticized. The nuclear family of modern Western civilization, and the unusually mobile and inconstant structure of modern communities (into and out of which families move like so many interchangeable parts) is an extremely less formed social life than existed two to three hundred years ago. In the inner cities of the West, with the welfared single parents, individual homeless and drug absorbed sub-cultures, the form, the structure of community and family life has completely disappeared.

This is why when Steiner lectured about Oswald Spengler and Spengler's idea about the falling apart of Western civilization, Spengler was called the "prophet of world chaos". While Steiner disagreed with most of what Spengler thought, he did not disagree with this. This is, in fact, the most important preliminary picture we can have of modern social existence, to recognize the chaotic conditions. Moreover, those forces which have led to this situation are not finished. Unless form giving impulses enter into civilization, barbarism will result.

Yet, not all potential form giving impulses will serve the spiritual needs of modern humanity. The economic life, which sits like a heavy burden on the soul/spiritual existence of Western humanity, if not tempered and restrained, will proceed in a one-sided way to provide a social form in which human kind becomes increasingly the servant of the technological element of modern life (which ought otherwise to serve him). What then of the role of threefolding, of the threefold social order? Is not this just the answer, just the appropriately healthy gentle form giving structure which would then free man to recreate his family and community life? Who can deny it? We know it is so, but is that the only question we need to ask? Obviously not. What we need first is to see deeper, always deeper into the dynamic qualities of modern social existence.

To say that the soul creates the threefold structure of social life in order to see reflected there its own nature is just the beginning of a longer journey. Each aspect of the threefold order has its own moment of historic birth and its own epoch of development. The Spiritual/cultural sphere has its origin in the dim past, and is already well developed in the time of the theocratic forms in ancient Egypt. When this older time gives over to the birth of Western civilization, to the Greek and the Roman epoch, the civic body, or civic order is added to the theocratic. A kind of functional split takes place, with the cultural side no longer totally carrying the burden of social order.

It is important to appreciate certain nuances connected with this change. On the one hand cultural life is able to direct itself more inwardly, having less need to concern itself with those functions that the civic element is now ordering. In the Greek civilization, the cultural life (science, art and religion) experiences a great unfolding, as if forces once devoted to other concerns are now available for purely cultural development. On the other hand the civic form appears at first in a two-fold way; there is the organization of the State at one pole, and the corresponding rights of the citizen at the other. This separation of the cultural and spiritual life from the civic element is not complete in the beginning. In the idea of the divine right of kings, the theocratic principle lives on. Even in the late middle ages, with the co-existence of both ecclesiastical and civil courts, the two spheres remain somewhat intertwined.

This is the crucial picture, to imagine the political-legal life as taking the whole of the period of Western civilization (up to the 17th century) to complete its separation from the cultural sphere. In this we can have a sense of the threefold social organism appearing in human civilization in a dynamic and living way, as a process of unfolding and development. Moreover, this process as it completes itself first creates two poles, the State and the People (citizens) such that a third element ultimately arises between them. Just as the threefold social order exists (in its ideal form) as a tripartite structure modeled on the human soul, with two poles and a middle element, so do each of the spheres of the social order possess tendencies which bring about their own inward threefolding. (This is a complicated problem. I have found it helpful in this regard to study Wolfgang Schad's book, Man and Mammals, as an especially good way to come to a deep appreciation of the threefold nature of man. In this book is described how it is that each of the three functional aspects of man is also itself a threefolding.)

In the process of the thinking which has led to these observations, I spent some time wondering just what was meant by that verse in the Gospel of Christ Jesus which says: "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.". Over time I came to realize the following. The State has no existence but what the humans, who conceive it and act it out, make it to be. Unlike sense perceptible objects, the State is a social form entirely built up out of man's ideation and deeds. The principle remains the same, even though in many instances certain individuals or groups are able to form the State according to their particular individual vision. Thus, when Christ admonishes us to "render unto Caesar", we are being directed to understand and appreciate that the State has its being and its nature from what we give to it.Where we withdraw in apathy, or otherwise seek from the State only that which benefits us, we give to the form of the State just such characteristics. For example, as much as we might think that America is what it is out of the Constitution, it is much more important how Her people behave presently. As long as most people "render" unto the State only what they must, and then only for their own purposes, the State in its being and nature can only reveal such characteristics.

But the being of God is not dependent upon man. So, what can it mean to "render unto God"? Yet, just as the State becomes according to what man renders it, so man himself becomes according to what he renders unto God. The human being who is not able to be devoted to God is unable to develop in himself certain qualities of soul that are derived from this act. These acts (rendering unto Caesar and unto God) have a reciprocal relationship. By rendering unto God, by becoming, man augments what he is able to render unto the State. By rendering unto the State, by making it more whole, by making it filled with those forces of soul which it needs in order to set free the cultural life, and to be able to set the appropriate limits on the excesses of the economic life, the State then acts in a way which increases what man is able to render unto God.

In this way we can then come to see that the threefolding of the political-legal life into the two poles, State and People and their mutually created middle (we will come to this next), as that has arisen from the dynamics of the course of Western civilization, has roots and potential even beyond what has previously been thought possible. When the founding fathers of America wrote: "We the People..." and when Lincoln spoke the words: "that a nation of the people, by the people and for the people...", and when President Kennedy said in his inaugural address: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country", they were all connected to a mutual intuition of this dynamic relationship which inhabits the middle of the three social spheres.  (The ideas in the above two paragraphs are elaborated in much greater detail in Part One of my essay: Waking the Sleeping Giant: the Mission of Anthroposophy in America)

We now come to the summa of this small essay, to the appreciation and understanding of the birth of the middle of the middle sphere, the heart of the heart of the social organism.

The 14th to 17th century represent unique moments in the life of the social organism as that manifested itself over the course of Western civilization. It is in the 14th century that the change of consciousness begins which Owen Barfield (in Saving the Appearances: a Study in Idolatry) characterizes as the leaving behind of "original participation" (being within nature, cosmos and each other to some degree) and the birth of "onlooker consciousness" (I am a self over here, nature, cosmos and others, they are outside, over there). This onlooker separation leads to modern science on the one hand and the deep alienation of modern life on the other. It is this change of consciousness which is ultimately so destructive of the social order. As Western civilization begins to die of this process, its remaining life forces flower (the renaissance), fruit (the enlightenment and the reformation) and seed (the contraction of the whole political wisdom of Western civilization into the forming of the U.S.Constitution).

As an element of these dynamic processes a certain invention occurs which begins to introduce profound changes. This is the invention of the printing press.  Previously, communication (fructifying social intercourse) for most people had to be oral, now it could be written. While this represents a solidification of the word, a crystallization, it also is a necessary process in order that those members of a culture (or polity) who cannot have direct oral communication, may nevertheless come to a shared understanding of the world and of each other.  This means that at the same time as people are becoming more alienated, a counter-pole arises which enables people to find a unity in the shared world view.

We have here two simultaneous processes. One occurring in the outer social fabric, and being a process of disintegration. The other occurring in the soul life and being a process of individuation. These processes are again mutually supportive. Prior to the arrival of "onlooker consciousness" morality was inculcated in humanity from the outside by the coercive effect of the vital social structure. At the same time these ancient social forms now begin to dissolve and lose their ability to form man morally, the soul life acquires new capacities as man gains more self conscious individuality, ultimately to lead to an ability to form independent moral judgments. In a truly miraculous way the death of civilization is also the birth of moral freedom.

Accompanying this miracle is the development of the middle of the social order, what we recognize today as Media. Media first appears as a clear aspect of the political-legal life during the founding days of the America State (form of government). Every town has at least one printer, and thus at least one news sheet. Without these news sheets it is simply not possible for the citizens of the newly forming nation to come to a common view, to equalize their individual perspectives sufficiently. (The Federalist and anti-Federalist papers are a futile act if there is no press to publicize them.) In this way we can come to a functional understanding of Media. It is the knowledge commons (to borrow from Ivan Illich), the place where the dynamic properties of the word enable a polity to form mutual comprehension.

This is how then the dynamics of the polarity, State-People, come to form the needed middle element. Now Media, in the sense conceived here, is not a static thing, but rather an evolving and developing process. The technological achievement of the printing press is just the beginning of a whole series of inventions which ultimately produce radio, television, cable, vcr's, fax machines, computers and so forth. This series is not finished. The interconnecting of home computers reveals that the knowledge commons is about to become an "electronic commons" (Illich's initial formulation).

Consider this picture. The coming into being of print media constitutes a kind of rigidification of the dynamic qualities of the word as those facilitate mutual understanding. As Media further develops, it passes from print form to image form, i.e. television. Television, in that it provides our consciousness with images, puts to sleep that part of our cognitive process which fills out the word with our own imaginations. This further weakens political life, by disabling our thinking faculty at the moment it is most needed to be awake in order to "render" its civic responsibilities. But the technical evolution of Media is not over. Close observation reveals that advertising dominated television is losing its grip, and being replaced with cable services and the possibility of self chosen viewing, the vcr. Parallel to this is the arrival of the home computer, and the various computer networks. Electronic media is becoming less image oriented, and is now interactive; i.e. the word is again becoming significant (please remember this was originally written in 1991, where one could only guess at what was later to unfold).

In California recently, an "electronic commons" (network) was created to allow people to comment on local council meetings. It became enormously popular. So popular that "There would be a near-revolution if we thought about taking it down." (comment of the city manager).

This idea of the importance of Media is nothing new (although few know it as the central element in the threefolding of the social organism). What else have politicians, terrorists, single interest groups, businesses etc. been fighting to control and manipulate? Within Media the People come to common (equalized) self knowledge and mutual understanding. Within Media the idea of the State and of the rights and duties of citizenship come to common form. Media shines light on the activities of the State, and media personalities (with varying degrees of consciousness and moral integrity) believe they act thus for the People. However we turn our thinking, if we remain pictorially descriptive of the dynamics of social life as these actually play themselves out in the political-legal sphere we will come to the perception of the threefoldness of State-Media-People.

In this way then we can circle around to our earlier theme, i.e. a fourth way or mode of understanding and working with the threefold social idea of Rudolf Steiner. Rather then having described the methodology and the epistemological justification for this way of thinking, I have sought instead to demonstrate its efficacy. For those who wish for a name for this process of thinking and observation, (assuming they have not already intuited it) it is called Goetheanism, and can be made the object of study in Steiner's The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. One can come to a deeper appreciation of this methodology by studying its application to Nature (rather then the social organism) through the study of Ernst Lehr's, Man or Matter.

We have not, of course, at all exhausted the questions which can be asked about the social organism. But by placing before our conscious understanding this evolution of Media as the central functional form in the social order, we have enabled ourselves to return more effectively to the earlier question concerning under what circumstances, and out of what perspective, may we seek to bring into more conscious existence the threefold social order. What soul characteristic (People) may be most appropriate to carry this impulse in the conditions of the present? How do we bring healing to the social order given our present understanding (i.e. is the most essential thing the separation of the cultural life, or is something else preliminary to that)? Or on a more fundamental level, how essential is it that our own thinking have certain characteristics if we wish it to be able to carry particular responsibilities?

Having raised these questions I do want to suggest answers, yet at the same time I do not want to argue them. For me, argument is not a very fruitful process, in that it tends to either derive from, or engender intensified feelings, when to my own experience the feeling life needs a certain degree of cultivated self discipline in order to support the thinking.

A depth study of Steiner and of the progress of civilization reveals that humanity is much in need of a true spiritual conception of the nature of man and his relation to outer nature and to the cosmos. As well, it appears to me, that America stands in a special place with respect to those processes which are to form a new civilization out of the present chaos. Media, if its present condition is clearly understood, is young; i.e. it is still undergoing formative developments, and functions today with a kind of moral or spiritual immaturity. In this sense Media may take one of two different courses of future development. It may become a kind of moon center, rigid, arid, not light originating, but rather only able to reflect those impulses which come to it from the outside. Or, it may become a sun center, a source of warmth and understanding, a medium of creative forces flowing into the social order and carrying both in deed and in word a true image of man as a being of soul and spirit.

I imagine then, Media becoming a sun, a true heart of the heart of the social organism, so that the common understanding of the People will find a renewed vision of the State. In Media a song can yet be heard, the song of the truly free man, the moral man. In this way the rigidification, the mechanization, the image spell-binding of the word will be overcome, and a true understanding given to Western civilization of the Idea of the Threefold Social Organism as a dynamic social form already latent in human social existence in the West.

Recall that when the civic form at the founding of the Greek civilization began to relieve the cultural life of certain responsibilities, the forces formerly devoted to this task became freed, and the cultural life flowered with great creativity. In the present moment the economic life, formerly carried more within the political, is now outside it, in fact infecting the political-legal dynamics and distorting them. There is of course no predicting how events will proceed, yet it seems clear to me that this historic moment is pregnant with certain kinds of potential. Just as there is great risk of a further fall into materialism, so as well there is much possibility for spiritual transformation. If we do not blind ourselves with a kind of threefold dogma (for example, that the first need is to free the spiritual cultural life), but instead truly perceive the actual dynamics. then as far as I am able to hold in pictorial thought, the ripe moment lies in bringing moral trans-formative forces to the thinking active within the Media, to bring a song to life just here in the heart of the heart of the social organism.

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Written in 1995, this essay was offered to the News for Members (which was why it was written in five parts).  It was ignored, of course.  It has only slightly been altered and updated, albeit in significant ways.  As you read it, you might keep in mind that I was unable to interest the membership in these matters, so it became necessary to carry myself the real world deeds such an understanding requires.  It is out of this requirement then that other work was born, as well as my book for exoteric Christianity (the Way of the Fool) and my pamphlet on American politics (Uncommon Sense* the degeneration, and the redemption, of political life in America), but most especially: American Anthroposophy.

Waking the Sleeping Giant:

the mission of Anthroposophy in America

introduction

"If we want to change the materialistic America into a new America, we must know the old one, in all of its outer appearances, thoroughly, and then we must discover the deeper ideas within its essential being. Then out of a combination of the two, as a free human deed, we must discover the 'modus' of how to change the present America into the new America." Carl Stegmann, The Third Call: Apocalyptic Destiny and the Future of America in the Light of Anthroposophy.

("modus" is a creative deed, possible only for man, which changes old earthly facts into something higher; c.f. Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom)

It is the purpose of this essay not only to suggest a particular "modus" for the transformation of America, but to show how it is the destiny of Anthroposophy to play a leading and significant role. In order to establish this possibility it is necessary first to describe in some detail certain fundamental dynamics of the Middle Sphere of the Threefold Social Organism (parts 1 and 2, of the essay), as it is these dynamics that are the essential context out of which other matters unfold. Following that, some of my researches into the Spiritual America will be developed (parts 3 and 4), after which the whole will be woven together (part 5).

I also wish at this time to express my gratitude to the many co-workers in the America Work, who over the years have been supportive of my research into the Mystery of America: Michael Byrne, Michael Franz, Arthur Lish, Mary Rubach, Stuart Weeks, and especially of late: Steve Burman and Harvey Bornfield.  But most especially I want to express my gratitude to Carl Stegmann, whose deep love and devotion to the Spiritual America was a privilege to experience.

part one

The State as a creation of the psychological (inner) environment of the individual, and the individual as a reflection of the ideal environment of the State; or, the wisdom hidden in the saying of Christ Jesus: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are Gods." (Matthew 22:21)

These words were the response of Christ Jesus when the Pharisees tried to trick Him with the question of whether the Jews should pay taxes to the Roman Emperor. While this could be narrowly interpreted as just meaning that money, being a thing of Caesar already, should be given to Caesar, my personal experience is that long and thoughtful consideration of the teachings of Christ Jesus will always be rewarded with depths of understanding that cannot be discovered in any other way.

As to this particular saying, I had thought of it off and on for many years, as I continued to struggle for the right understanding of man's social and political existence. Just like the scientist, who after years of living with a particular riddle finds himself suddenly filled with the answer to his question, so it was only after a long preparation that it finally dawned on me what wisdom lay hidden in this simple statement.

The State (that is any type of government) has no existence but what the humans, who conceive it and act it out, make it to be.  Unlike sense perceptible objects, the State is a social form entirely, built up out of man's ideation, feelings and deeds. This principle remains the same, even though in many instances (e.g. fascism or communism) a limited number of individuals or groups are able to form the State according to their particular individual vision and actions. From this point of view, the being of the State, in such instances, includes the oppressors and the oppressed, each a component of the totality. The State lives (has its only being) in the minds, hearts and wills of its members.

The point of view being expressed here is in a very narrow sense value neutral.  We may justifiably find certain forms of government to be egregious and unconscionable, but our sense of justice does not change the fact that the being of the State, even a totalitarian state, is the summation of the deeds, feelings and ideas of its members.

This is a rather complicated relation involving both individual and group action. We normally put the question: What ought the State to be? Thus we have the various theories of government from Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli and More to Nozick and Rawls. The thinking which asks the question, what ought the State to be, occasionally makes a contribution to the ideas a People hold of the nature of government, but I am trying here to direct our attention not to our theory of government, but to the actual conceptions, feelings and deeds connected to what a particular People's vision is of what their particular State means, and how that is then reflected in the actual nature (being) of the State in fact.

These conceptions, feelings and deeds vary from person to person, and as well change over the course of any individual life. Nor are these acts of soul likely to be the result of any particular political philosophic effort, but rather will tend to be the consequences of a combination of family, schooling, the types of groups one has associated with, and the practical experience of life and of government acquired in the course of ones life. Thus will arise an odd mixture of cliche, prejudice and truth, feelings of liking and disliking and acts of trust, mistrust, apathy and confusion, and perhaps even rebellion.

That we have names and words for these gestures of soul (such as liberal, conservative, rightist, leftist, democrat, republican, freedom, capitalist, communism, and so forth) is also not related to the point I am trying to make. Especially today, when so few have really given any thought at all to these matters, most of us use such words with so little precision that we very often use the same word to mean quite different things, in spite of perhaps belonging to the same political party and espousing and acting upon the same positions.

Nevertheless, each individual citizen will hold some idea of the State, and will act and feel according to this idea. Some will believe in freedom, but not for certain other classes of citizens. Some will believe in being law abiding, but at the same time cheat on their taxes. Some will form groups to demand that laws follow their ideas of what is right. Some will court such group's favor in order to get elected, only to do something else later. Some will do nothing, convinced that government is an oppressor, best to be avoided, and certainly not relevant to the real problems of life: getting a job, raising a family, struggling in a difficult relationship, and so forth. Some will be completely lawless, believing only in their own code, or desires, acting on impulse and taking whatever they want.

Wherever a single human being stands, having some kind of ideas and feelings regarding the State and acting out some kind of behavior in which these ideas and feelings are more or less central or irrelevant, in this place the State in miniature exists. Finally then, out of the totality of these miniature 'States' comes into being the State as a whole, a mixture of an enormous variety of ideas, feelings and deeds, acting in a complex arrangement as the various collective associations dance together in their struggle to dominate.

The point of this is to recognize that the being of the State is created by these ideas, feelings and deeds, by what is "rendered" it by its People.

Now because certain common themes will live in the ideas, feelings and deeds of a particular People, each characteristic People has an individual historic and characteristic State.  America, for example, has a kind of State which is given dominate thematic character by the ideas embodied in the Constitution, and the experiences and feelings which are derived from the land. Because we all live in the same land and because we are to a somewhat similar degree educated in the ideas of the Constitution, there tends to be a kind of order and consistency to the nature of the State throughout our history.

The State, as a social form, is not unlike a wave form created in a stream by the existence of a rock just beneath the surface. As the water flows past the rock a wave form rises up, and remains present. Even though water continually flows through it, the general shape of the form remains. If we now turn our imaginations to the creation of a social form, in this case the State, the flowing water is the People moving through time, who come into being, live out their lives, and pass away. The rock is the reality of the spirit, which in this instance is active in the commonly held ideas related to the Constitution, and the other characteristics induced in the soul by the common experience of the land. The social form - the State - arises out of the interaction between the two - the lives of the People and the presence of the relevant spiritual and soul elements, and maintains a certain continuous nature and quality, just as the wave form in the flowing stream remains the same, although the water itself (the People) continually moves through it.

At the core of this process, which is a kind of psychological process, lies that element of our inner life - in our soul life - which might be called: our feeling for what is right. This feeling for what is right exists in all Peoples, but varies in its content somewhat from People to People, and time to time. We should be noticing today [1995 ed.], for example, that in Eastern Europe, as the domination of the Marxist-Leninist rendering of the idea of the State recedes, that what these Peoples make most important will not be the same as what we would conceive as most significant. In fact, if we observe closely enough we will see a struggle to accept the democratic ideal, but reject the materialism, and the consumerism. While there are depths here we cannot in this place go into, the point must be understood that what a People render the State reflects certain cultural and ethnic characteristics of no little importance

The principle, that the State is what it is through what is rendered it, has been known intuitively to our wiser political leaders. Our constitution begins: "We the People...". Lincoln said: "...a nation of the People, by the People, and for the People...". And Kennedy said: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

While this may all seem too simple, it is not, and really understanding it will make other things much clearer later on. For example, we have in recent years been more interested in this country in our rights as individuals, without any thought to there being any correlative duties. We don't like conscription (the draft), paying taxes, thinking much at all about government unless we can get something from it, or it is taking something from us. Yet, the two go hand in hand. There are no rights without duties. There is no State from which to receive rights without someone having rendered it certain duties. A great deal we take for granted was first won by blood.

When we lament today the sorry condition of our political life we need to reflect that its initial being was created out of the passionate deeds of our ancestors, whose sacrifice left behind a kind of political wealth upon which we live; until, as today, we begin to exhaust it by taking without giving (all rights and no duties). The sorry condition of our modern political life is due to the gradual depletion of its being through the absence of sufficient rendering to keep it vital and alive.

This being has a quite definite qualitative nature; that is, it is not so much what it is because so many people give it so many hours, or years (quantities of time), but because of the ideal and moral element of what they render. It is the higher or lower qualities of our human nature which become aspects of the being of the State. When a voter votes only his prejudices, not having troubled himself to really understand the needs of the whole People, and when the politician encourages through advertising and speeches the People's expression of their baser instincts, then the being of the State can only reflect such qualities. When the corporations and unions lobby only so that their self interest is gratified, then the being of the State reveals no higher qualities. Did the rich get richer and the poor get poorer under recent administrations? Without a doubt, but what else did the most powerful elites render? The phrase of the computer programmers is quite apt: "garbage in, garbage out".

This brings us, of course, to the other pole of Christ Jesus' saying, because the crux of the problem is the need for the State to receive into its being the higher elements of our nature. What then does it mean to "render unto God" and how do the two statements relate to each other as a whole?

While the being of the State can be seen to be dependent in its nature for what is rendered it, this cannot be said to be true of the being of God. It is not the being of God which becomes what is rendered it, but the being of man. The human being who "renders unto God the things that are Gods" is himself transformed by the act of devotion. Those who would doubt such a proposition simply have to look closely at history. The Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, these and many more political figures, whose stature and importance to the being of our Government is unquestionable, have been able to contribute what they have in large part because of the moral nature of their character. Just as the State becomes what is rendered it. so we humans become according to whether we act so as to unfold our individual higher nature.

No one doubts today the validity of making an effort to maintain, care for and develop the physical body. Yet, the development of virtue is as much ignored as physical well being is advocated. No amount of physical fitness, however, will change the character of what is rendered the State. Only moral development, only transformation of the soul and spiritual nature of the human being can enhance the qualitative characteristics of what is rendered the State.

The statement we have been examining, the wisdom out of the Gospels of Christ Jesus, has two meanings, dependent upon which principle we emphasize. These meanings are not contradictory, but rather are complimentary. One: The State is what it is out of what is rendered it in their ideation, feelings and their deeds by its People...and...the qualitative nature of what is rendered, is higher or lower according to the development of virtue as that has proceeded in the individual.

Simultaneously (Two): Only through devotion to God (however we individually conceive Him) does the human being develop in himself those characteristics which flow from such an act...and...as a devote of God, one needs to recognize one yet remains a member of human society, which will only have as its necessary characteristics what one gives to it.

As a last point we must again notice that Christ Jesus says to render unto Caesar and unto God. Man must direct his activity both toward heaven and toward earth, in order to unfold his essential being, his i-AM. Both the State and man need to become. It is a reciprocal relationship. If the State does not become, then man's potential development is limited. If man does not become then his capacity to render unto the State, and the being of the State, is likewise limited.

As this essay concerns itself with an opportunity that Divine Circumstance presently offers to members of the anthroposophical movement in America, a peculiar problem needs to be faced. At the time of the Christmas Foundation, Rudolf Steiner stated clearly, speaking of the newly founded Society: "Politics, it does not consider its mission."

Certainly it would have been, and still would be inappropriate for the Society to organize itself in such a way that it establishes a political agenda, and lobbies, or otherwise "politics" for these issues. Nevertheless, all the members and friends remain participants in human society, contributors to the Threefold Social Organism, which for its future development depends upon fully conscious and enlightened deeds from its members. Much has been set in motion regarding the threefold social organism (as we shall see in the next part) due to the activities of the hierarchies, but the ultimate fruition of that work requires the cooperation of human kind - the will forces of human beings.

In terms of the preceding then, these questions need be kept in mind as we go forward: What do anthroposophists "render" unto the State? What do we give that flows from the inner development, the soul and spiritual changes Spiritual Science provides? At the center of our cosmology stands the Christ. What can we say to Him, regarding our contributions to the political life of modern humanity?

part two

At the threshold of this part of our considerations we need to notice a confusion which sometimes appears when the threefold social organism is discussed in anthroposophical circles. It is not infrequent to hear or read what seems to assume that human society does not yet exhibit the characteristics outlined by Steiner, and that somehow there is a threefold social "order" by which human society ought to be organized. Steiner was clear, however, that the threefold idea was not a utopia, but was, in fact, a descriptive morphology of human social existence. Nevertheless, in accord with the temper of the time (post WWI), and the soul life of his listeners/readers (who lived first in the ideal, before incarnating the ideal into the real), Steiner presented the threefold social idea as an ideal, in its most abstract and pure (healthy) formulation. It would have been possible to do the opposite, to draw out of the phenomena of social existence its threefold nature, although this would of course involve one in all the malformations as those exist in the contemporary conditions of the social organism.

As it will be fruitful, let us continue our examination of the Middle Sphere in this other way, as an exercise in the description of social phenomena after the methods first developed by Goethe. Because of the need to proceed briskly, we will first make very general observations, before descending to those more detailed and specific (see part three), which will in turn be of a limited number, again due to the need for brevity.

The Middle Sphere - the political-legal life - first began to appear on the stage of history at the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the beginning of "Western" civilization as that developed in Greece and Rome. This Sphere then appeared as a separation of the idea of the State from the being of the hierarchy (such as the Pharaoh). Thus began a slow emancipation of the civil authority from the purely religious authority. Accompanying this change came the idea of the citizen, the individual member of the State. In the earlier theocracies (the Originating Sphere of the social organism - the cultural life) the individual was simply a member of a characteristic people, and his place in society largely determined by the rules established through the temples - the mysteries.

Thus, at the founding of Western civilization a kind of functional split takes place, with the cultural life no longer carrying the whole burden of providing social order.

It is important to appreciate certain nuances connected with this change. On the one hand cultural life is able to direct itself more inwardly, having less need to concern itself with those functions that the civic element is now organizing. In the Greek civilization cultural life (science, art and religion) experiences a great unfolding, as if forces once devoted to other concerns are now available for purely cultural development. Just as with the development of the human being, once a certain level has been obtained, forces devoted to one activity are now free to serve additional purposes.

On the other hand, the civic form appears at first in a two-fold way; there is the organization of the State at one pole, and the corresponding rights of the citizen at the other. This polarity bears a direct relationship to the reality expressed in part one, above, namely that the being of the State and the inner life of the individual have a interweaving and reciprocal mutual dynamic. Here we see this dynamic interplay active as a formative force in the unfolding of the social organism.

The separation of the cultural and spiritual life from the civic element is not complete in the beginning. In the idea of the divine right of kings, the theocratic principle lives on. Even in the late middle ages, with the co-existence of both ecclesiastical and civil courts, the two Spheres remain somewhat intertwined.

This is a crucial picture, to imagine the political-legal life as taking the whole of the period of Western civilization (up to the 17th century) to complete its separation from the cultural sphere. In this we can have a sense of the threefold social organism appearing in human civilization in a dynamic and living way, as a process of unfolding and development. Moreover, this process as it completes itself first creates two poles, the State on the one side, and the People (citizens) on the other.

Those familiar with polaric processes in Nature will realize that whenever two poles arise in an organism there necessarily follows the creation of a third - middle - element. Just as the threefold social organism exists as a tripartite structure arising from the needs of the threefold soul, that is with two poles and a middle element, so do each of the three individual spheres of the social organism possess tendencies which bring about their own inward threefolding. (See in this regard W. Schad's Man and Mammals, where the ninefold organization of the human being is described. As a preliminary aide, picture the human head, the upper pole, the nerve-sense pole of the human organism. It is itself threefold, with the eyes representing a purely nerve-sense function, the nose - open to the lungs, brings the rhythmic element into play, and the mouth - the initial organ of digestion - introduces the metabolic function.)

We can, as well, recall that the cultural life, during the long period of its development has produced three functionally related elements, science, art and religion. A more careful, but brief, look at these will aid our further investigations.

In the late 1950's, the English scientist/novelist C.P.Snow gave a lecture wherein he described the existence of two cultures, a scientific culture and a literary culture, which seemed to suffer from "mutual incomprehension", "hostility and dislike" and "a curious distorted image of each other". His observations were accurate, but incomplete. To science and art he would need to add religion. These three sub-spheres of the cultural-spiritual life of the social organism have over the period of Western civilization become estranged from each other. Rare is the individual who can unite in his soul life the three human capacities whose impulses underlie this division. Here clearly is one task of anthroposophical spiritual science, to help the individual weave together the capacities of reason (science), imagination (art) and devotion (religion). And, certainly human social existence is severely distorted and malformed when its individual members are thus lamed by this division within the soul.

So far we have observed that the differentiated spheres of the social organism have different epochs of birth and development. As well, we have noted that the Originating Sphere - the cultural-spiritual life - has under the influence of modern conditions become disordered to the point of a kind of cultural schizophrenia. Although this is the oldest and most mature, it at present is not a source of health for the whole social organism.

The Middle Sphere is younger, and only now is expressing its threefold nature (we will come to this next). We ought to keep in mind that in Steiner's lectures to doctors, Spiritual Science and Medicine, strengthening the middle system of the human organism is always  essential to any renewal, recovery and health. What I am suggesting by this is that, by analogy, strengthening the Middle Sphere of the social organism will be a general aid to the health of the whole system.

The Third Sphere - the economic life - is, of course, newly born, having emerged at the beginning of the fifth cultural epoch, appearing first in the impulses to colonialism and trading empires, and then overriding all the other forces of the social organism through the industrial revolution. The significance of this will be examined next, in parallel to our observations concerning the threefolding of the Middle Sphere.

The 14th to 17th centuries represent unique moments in the life and development of the social organism. It is in the 14th century that the change of consciousness begins which Owen Barfield (in Saving the Appearances: a Study in Idolatry) characterizes as the leaving behind of "original participation" (being within nature, cosmos and each other to some degree) and the birth of "onlooker consciousness" (I am a self over here, nature, cosmos and others, they are outside, over there). This "onlooker separation" leads to modern science on the one hand and the deep alienation of modern life on the other. It is this change of consciousness which is ultimately so destructive of the social order. As Western civilization begins to die of this process, its remaining life forces flower (the renaissance), fruit (the enlightenment and the reformation) and seed (the contraction of the accumulated political wisdom of Western civilization into the forming of the U.S. Constitution).

As an element of these powerful dynamic processes, which flowed out of this change of consciousness, a certain invention occurs which begins to introduce profound changes. This is the invention of the printing press. Previously, communication (words serving social intercourse) for most people had to be oral; now it could be written. While rendering the word into fixed print represents a solidification of the word- a crystallization, it also is a necessary process in order that those members of a culture (or polity) who cannot have direct oral communication, may nevertheless come to a shared understanding of the world and of each other. At the same time as people are becoming more individualized and alienated, a counter-pole arises which enables people to find a unity in the shared world view.

We have here multiple simultaneous processes. One occurring in the outer social fabric, and being a process of disintegration. Another occurring in the soul life and being a process of individuation. These two processes are mutually supportive.

Prior to the arrival of the "onlooker" consciousness morality was inculcated in humanity from the outside, for the most part, by the coercive effect of the vital social structure (in the main this refers to what R. Steiner described as the group soul). But community, family, and church -  the traditional social forms, now begin to dissolve as a result of the social consequences of the industrial revolution and the change in world view introduced by the arrival of scientific materialism. As a result, the ability of community, family and church to inspire man's morality diminishes. Simultaneously, the soul life acquires new capacities as man gains more self-conscious individuality, ultimately to lead to an ability to form independent moral judgments (the first fruits of the epoch of the consciousness soul). In a truly miraculous way the death of tradition, of civilization, is also the birth of moral freedom.

Accompanying this miracle is a further development of the middle of the social organism. In between the State at one pole, and the People at the other, arises a mediating functional organ - Media. Media first appears as a clear aspect of the political-legal life during the founding days of the American State. Every significant town has a least one printer, and thus at least one news sheet. Without these news sheets it is simply not possible for the citizens of the newly forming nation to come to a common view, to equalize (balance and mediate) their individual perspectives. (The Federalist and anti-Federalist Papers are a futile act if there is no press to publicize them.)

In this way we can come to a functional understanding of Media. It is the knowledge commons (to borrow from Ivan Illich), the place where the dynamic properties of the word enable a polity to form mutual comprehension.

This is how then the dynamics of the polarity, State-People, come to form the needed middle element. Now Media, in the sense conceived here, is not a static thing, but rather an evolving and developing process. The technological achievement of the printing press is just the beginning of a whole series of inventions which ultimately produce radio, television, cable, VCR's, DVD's, fax machines, computers and so forth. The series is not finished. The interconnecting of home computers via the Internet reveals that the knowledge commons is about to become an electronic commons (Illich's initial formulation).

Consider this picture. The coming into being of print media constitutes a kind of rigidification of the dynamic qualities of the word as those facilitate mutual understanding. As Media further develops, it passes from print form to image form, i.e. television. Television, in that it provides our consciousness with images, puts to sleep that part of our cognitive processes which fills out the word with our own imaginations. This further weakens political life (continuing the social dynamics leading to the death of Western civilization), by disabling our thinking faculty at the moment it is most needed to be awake in order to "render" its civic responsibilities.

But the technical evolution of Media is not over. Close observation reveals that advertising dominated television is losing its grip, and being replaced with cable services and the possibility of self chosen viewing, the VCR, and later the DVD. Parallel to this is the weaving of the Web, the interconnecting of individuals via the computer networks. Electronic media is being less image oriented, and is now interactive; i.e. the word is again becoming significant.

(It is essential during these descriptions not to confuse what we might wish or believe things ought to be, with what they are in fact. Following Goethe's example, we need not fear the facts. Our task rather is to raise them into pictures, and in this manner find our way into the inner dynamics of the threefold social organism.)

In California recently, an electronic Commons (network) was created to allow people to comment on local council meetings. It became enormously popular. So popular that "There would be a near-revolution if we thought about taking it down." (comment of the city manager)

This idea of the importance of Media is nothing new (although few know it as the central element in the threefolding of the social organism). What else have politicians, terrorists, single interest groups, businesses etc. been fighting to control and manipulate? What do the revolutionaries first take over, but the TV stations and the newspapers. Within Media the People come to common self knowledge and mutual understanding. Within Media the idea of the State and of the rights and duties of citizenship comes to common form. However we turn our thinking, if we remain pictorially descriptive of the dynamics of social life as these actually play themselves out in the political-legal sphere we will come to the perception of the threefoldness of State-Media-People. [The reader may here want to recall the significance of the world-wide Culture of Media as developed in detail in the earlier essay: The Meaning of ...]

We are dealing here with dynamic processes, which are occurring at multiple levels within the social organism. We have on one level the gradual incarnation of the threefold organism, a process of unfolding and development involving many epochs of human history. At another level we have observed what appears to be a dissolving process, the end of the influence of tradition on social life, a kind of death process of civilization. In particular, if we observe the conditions of social life in the so-called inner city, we find almost no traditional social order at all. Family, community, church, school - the individual is hardly affected at all by the normal sources of tradition and continuity. We are quite justified in describing this situation as an ever increasing condition of social chaos.

This is true all over the world, for we have observed part of this process in the movement from rural to urban centers, under the influence of changes in agriculture and industrialization.  First people become concentrated in centers, and then tradition and social order more and more tend to chaos.

The observation of social chaos will prove very helpful for later considerations. For the moment, however, we only need to note two particular facts. First, almost all modern human institutions exhibit phenomena reflecting the absence of the usual organizing forces of tradition, for example the Catholic Church (c.f. Malachi Martin's remarkable, The Jesuits: the Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church).

The second fact is more personal, and needs to be stated in the form of a question. Given that the social temper of the times mostly consists of dissolving and chaos producing forces, why does the anthroposophical movement/society seem immune? Or is it?

part three

We have so far established three major pictures regarding the threefold social organism. One describes that reciprocal relationship, between the individual's process of development and the process of development of the State, as pointed toward by the saying of Christ Jesus, to render unto Caesar and unto God. The second picture concerns the birth of a middle element within the Middle Sphere of the social organism, a natural process producing over time the functional organ Media, which, though young, will become the heart of the heart of the social organism. The third picture concerns the observation of a process which seems to be leading to the death of civilization, the gradual destruction of social order and tradition connected to family, community, church and school, producing conditions of social chaos. This last is a particularly unusual process in that with the termination of the binding ties of social tradition, as those tend to form moral impulses, this has made, not only easier, but to some degree necessary, the unfolding of the faculty of a free conscience within the human being.

It may help to recall that Christ intended this:

Matthew 10:34-40: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those in his own household.  He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more that me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.  He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me"

One additional idea needs to be brought forward. In Nature, when the caterpillar spins its cocoon, the formative forces withdraw to the extent that the form caterpillar disappears, and in its place arises a homogeneous cell mass, no form, no differentiated cells, a kind of barely alive, barely functional organic chaos. Only after this stage has been reached do the formative forces again become active and create the butterfly. This process of metamorphosis is the organic mirror of the Archetypal Deed, the Death and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus, what Goethe observed in the developmental life of plants, as the process of dying and becoming. There is every reason to expect that the generation of social chaos, observable everywhere in human society in these days of the new millennium, is another mirror image of this archetypal process, a social dying and becoming.

This fact leads naturally to many questions. A few of which are: What new social forms will arise? From what sources will they come? What role can those who are awake to these facts play, so that the new civilization will be more amenable to human freedom?

With these pictures we now have a more penetrating understanding of the general social context of the time, so that it is now possible to enter more deeply into the Mystery of America, its real present condition, and its "apocalyptic destiny and future".

As a preliminary focus, as well as a bridge from the previous discussions, I would like us to examine certain details of events which occurred in America, both for their general significance for the deeper understanding of America, as well as examples confirming the pictures of the various dynamic social processes pointed out above. In this regard, everyone is aware of the unusual social events called "the Sixties". In America, this time of social upheaval only arose after certain other developments prepared the way.

Everything first of all occurred in the context of a general change of consciousness, arising especially in the young, due to the arrival of the atomic age, the cold war, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The young men and women, who were to become the center of the happenings in the sixties, were first exposed as children to a mental environment which, while threatening the annihilation of the physical world, effectively annihilated the normal dreams the young have of the future.

Many can still remember, as I do, learning to "duck and cover", to hide under the desks in school, when the civil warning system, a great wailing siren that could be heard all over town, announced the possibility of attack. In the same context, we were shown movies about civil defense at least once a year if not more often, which included pictures of buildings torn to shreds by the enormous winds and power of the atomic blast. Everywhere outside and frequently in buildings were little signs advising that here was a shelter should one be out in the open when the bombs came. Since we needed to be prepared, our communities, our national leaders, all made certain that we understood the dangers and accepted the sacrifices the cold war effort required.

The effect of this was to cast a shadow into the soul life of whole generations, a giant shadow where there ought to be a heart filled with hope and a lively and expectant interest in the future. Unfortunately for many, it was not a question of if there would be a war, but only of when.

In the middle of the 1950's, as this shadow was laid in the consciousness of far too many, three unique American personalities began their work: Hugh Hefner, Elvis Presley, and Dr. Martin Luther King. With Hefner and the publishing of Playboy magazine, began what was to be called the "sexual revolution". With Elvis, the erotic rhythms of Black American blues was integrated with the stream of love songs which dominated white popular music; and not only did rock and roll come into being (and begin its world wide destiny as a solvent of traditional family ties), a total change in social dancing arose, drawing the consciousness of the young into the lower impulses of the limb organization. With Dr. King, a balancing higher moral element entered in, making possible the exposure, and (perhaps) resolution, of explosive social issues in a manner that was powerful, effective, and ultimately less likely to rip the social fabric.

This is not to say that these personalities caused these streams of activity, but rather they were the forerunners, the lightening rods, the seed crystals, necessary for a whole set of social changes. Up to that point America had, in this century, experienced at one remove two great wars, and more directly the great depression. The fifties were a breathing space, an interval of rest. Then in one great social spasm, the young were set free from the social and political inhibitions of the near past. The normal forces which communities applied to the behavior and morals of the young were shattered, and millions had to face questions of deep personal moral difficulty on their own (just consider the impact of the Vietnam War).

So powerful were these changes, that they reached beyond the young, infecting many of the older generations as well. It is as if someone had taken a meat cleaver and cut the last third of the century completely free of the first two thirds. The decades following the Sixties are mainly after effects. Seemingly excessive liberalism leading to seemingly excessive conservatism. But this is the effect only on the surface. Our real question needs to be what is the condition of the soul? Has a real moral freedom, a self conscious/consciousness soul development, arisen?

This is a difficult question to answer purely from an observation of social phenomena. I read as a clue to this question the popularity of a certain type of television drama, the leading examples of which are: MASH, St Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and Picket Fences (and since this original writing in 1995, all the later works of David E. Kelley, such as The Practice, Alie McBeal, Boston Public and Boston Legal, as well as the movies of Clint Eastwood, such as Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby). Here the artistic genius, working in the most popular dramatic forum, has invented and developed a form of drama (leavened with comedy), in which the actors (generally in ensemble form, rather then just one or two "stars") struggle with constant individual moral ambiguity, in a context without traditional or easy answers. I believe we have here a valid mirror of the modern soul life of many Americans, as revealed both by the popular nature of these dramas and as well the critical acclaim which they justly receive.

I need to suggest here two matters of caution. I would not do this had not many private conversations with those acquainted with Anthroposophy induced me to believe that this is necessary. The first is that in examining social phenomena it is crucial to carefully separate fact from interpretation in that one comes to knowledge of things through contemporary media. While media has a special potential, it has hardly realized it, and basically tends to form very limited, and unnecessarily dark, pictures of the world that are of little use if one wants to seek beneath the surface symptoms. What is received through media needs to be carefully worked over, so that general trends of contemporary thought, which are often erroneous and misleading, are first removed, and the real facts obtained.

The second caution has to do with types of knowledge that those acquainted with Anthroposophy are likely to come upon, such as the affects of television and film on the etheric body, or on human consciousness. Even though these anthroposophical facts are true, and might lead one to believe that certain experiences are unhealthy, we need to recognize what is actually happening in social life, namely that the majority live lives dominated by the experiences of television and film - to continue the example - and that it is these actual happenings that are the facts from which our symptoms need be drawn.

In the preceding, concerning the Sixties, we saw more intimately into those dynamic social processes connected to the death of tradition and its consequences, the creation of social chaos and the resulting necessity of individual moral choice. Next I would like to develop further our understanding of media and its central place in the threefold social organism. In this regard let us consider the recent events connected to the tragic bombing in Oklahoma City (and then later, in an even harsher way, 9/11).

Hardly anyone needs to be told the facts. This in itself is an aspect we need not to overlook. What occurred did not just occur to those most immediately affected, those who caused it, those who died or were injured, and their families, but due to the nature of Media we all experienced it. It became a collective experience, it became part of, and reflected in its own way, the American Soul.

In this way Oklahoma City (and 9/11) is a true Media event. We need to distinguish this from the staged media event, such as makes up most of contemporary political campaigning, and as well from the media circus, which for a better example we need look no further then the O.J Simpson trial. Without the existence of media, as a dynamic social process, none of these events, the bombing, as well as the campaigns and circuses, have the same significance in the life of a People.

With a true Media event, the central phenomena are the effects on the whole people. The purveyors of media almost play no role at all; they don't have to hype the event, or interpret it. They just show it; the event speaks for itself. Media makes it possible for large groups to have a shared experience of the event. We have to be careful not to lose sight of the fact that in such an instance it is not the event itself at all, but the shared experience which is the critical social phenomenon.

The Oklahoma City bombing (9/11 was different in this regard, and as such just as instructive in its own way) is not isolated from its consequences in the general psyche of a nation. Consider these facts. Immediately following the bombing, large numbers of experts, invited by the media to comment, assumed that the bomb was the work of middle-east terrorists. All of a sudden a mood of suspicion was woven into the American Soul, suspicion of the foreigner, particularly the middle-east type, the Arab and his strange religion, Islam. In workplaces and neighborhoods, one can only guess at the strained feelings and fitful looks that must have passed between Arab and non-Arab neighbors and co-workers. Then, in an oddly beautiful and ironic moment, the tension and suspicion is dissolved.

We can only imagine the consequences. In some cases individuals were pushed further apart, the tension and suspicion only reinforced natural ignorance and prejudice. But in others, an opportunity arose, an opportunity to step across the boundary of otherness, to meet each other at a higher level. What happened actually? Who can say precisely? Even so, we can be certain a dynamic social tension arose and was released, and one consequence of the bombing was that individuals had an opportunity to see each other in a new light, perhaps to share the moment, to express the common tragedy and sympathy, to weave a few new treads of brotherhood (with 9/11, other powers of the Earth sought to make this tension almost permanent).

A second consequence of the bombing was to raise public awareness of something only a few knew about, the existence of the militant anti-government militias. Here was a festering sore in the social body of the People. Now, exposed to the light of day, its ideas  - its theology - could be examined. A kind of cleansing occurred as the militias themselves acted so as to rid themselves of their more extreme and unstable elements.

We should also not overlook the most obvious fact, which is that because media exists, the act not only injured those in Oklahoma City, but it injured the national psyche. How could we do this to ourselves? How could Americans do this to their own children? (here too with 9/11 we run into the awful possibilities the 9/11 Truth Movement struggles with)

There is a relationship between these three consequences, between the arising of social tension and its release concerning otherness, and the exposure to light and cleansing concerning the militias, and the self examination, regret and remorse connected to the fact that Americans did this to Americans. A kind of public conscience was evoked. Not a private conscience, or even a process whereby the rights and wrongs were debated, but a mood of soul in which the community, joined together by the existence of media processes, examined itself and acted on the basis of that examination.

In forming this picture, in truly penetrating to what is happening here, it is essential to realize that the media infrastructure, the equipment, the personalities, the corporations, all this merely served as the material apparatus, by which an essentially invisible social organ functioned. Media, in the sense suggested here, is a social form, a process in the body politic. It is an organ of community feeling, an organ moderating and mediating in a public (i.e. semi-conscious, dreamlike) way the heart values of the community.

In trying to come to this understanding it will help to avoid imagining the single individual's experience, our own for example. Rather we need to try to picture the whole. For days, for weeks, the body politic goes about its ordinary business, while at the same time on most every ones mind - in most every ones soul life - the events penetrate and are digested. People, who might in normal circumstances say very little to each other, discuss what happened, express their feelings, share their thoughts.

There is a feedback loop to this, as media, needing to fill the enormous time devoted to the tragedy and its consequences, interviews "the man on the street". Not just the experts, but the ordinary citizen too is consulted.

Again, it is very important not to expect this organ to be at a stage of high development. It is young and immature. It is distorted as well by all the other imbalances in the social organism. It too is under pressure from the chaos and dissolving forces characteristic of this time of the turn of the millennium.

What lies in its future? What direction will media take? Does anything in Anthroposophy speak to these questions? What responsibilities fall to those with knowledge of these matters?

part four

In this part we will further deepen our understanding of the Mystery of America, of the spiritual America. We will do this by examining some matters which have not even been guessed at by those who previously struggled to do research in this area. I have in mind here: Carl Stegmann's The Other America; F.W. Zeylmans' America and Americanism, and Dietrich Asten's America's Way. These texts, for all their anthroposophical insight, overlooked one of the most crucial elements necessary to an understanding of the Mystery of America.

In order to truly understand America it is necessary to understand America's original peoples, the Indians. While the hereditary line of their physical bodies is that of an apparently dying (or melting into others) race - the Saturn Race, their soul and spiritual life is not. In them the American Soul first appears and in them Americans will find their true roots.

We also need to keep in mind, that while in Europe the aboriginal (tribal) peoples had all but disappeared by the year 1000, this process of social (and physical) assimilation did not really begin to happen in America until the end of the Indian Wars in the late 19th Century.

Sylvester Corey, of the Myrin Institute in New York, understood this fact. He produced in 1961 a small pamphlet, originally given as an address to the Waldorf School at Adelphi University, titled: American Indians and our way of life. Its thesis was quite simple. Americans are more like the Indian than they are like the European in their general soul characteristics. This in spite of the fact of being the physical descendants of Europeans (for the most part). The racial characteristics of physical bodies is one thing, the life of the soul is something entirely different.

We can appreciate this even more by noticing that for many contemporary Americans, the Indian is becoming more and more, not only a object for imitation, and an intriguing mystery, but as well a deep and remorse filled problem of conscience. No longer can Americans hide from the near genocide on which this country was founded, and it has become increasingly necessary for many to come to terms with this fact.

Consider what we know of Nature. Nothing is wasted. That which dies is dissolved and becomes the very ground out of which the vitally new grows. In a like manner, Indian culture may seem to have disappeared, but it has not completely, nor has the rest been wasted. A most intriguing reside remains, whose potential and purposes we will only be able to begin to imagine.

Contrary to European cultures, America's aboriginal peoples still exist, still seek to preserve as much as possible of their traditions. In this they are not alone. The natural and simple way of life, the daily spirituality, the love of freedom, the understanding of brotherhood, these and more virtues of the way of life of the original peoples of America are hungered for by many Americas at a deep soul level. There is a unique hidden genius here, for the social wisdom of the Indian is a great and largely unread scripture, earned and intuited through millennia of practical experience.

In this brief essay we are only able to begin to look at a couple small aspects of this social treasure, which will come to mean so much in the future. In this regard, two matters stand out as needing our attention. The first is an Indian prophecy which, while valid in its own right, is especially important for the anthroposophist, because it predicts our movement's activity in America and the role we are needed to play. The second is of like significance, in that it is a social ritual form which has much to teach us as we search for the path to the inauguration of the needed Michael Festival.

In the southwest of America, in the northeastern corner of Arizona, about 100 miles from the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert, lives the Indian Nation known as the Hopi. Their small reservation of perhaps less then 10,000 souls is entirely surrounded by the Navajo Nation's reservation, comprising more than 150,000 individuals. Little mention is made of these people in the history of America or in the Indian Wars of the 19th century, for they are known as the Peaceful People, and did not participate as overtly as other Indian nations in the resistance to the invasion of the white race, called in the Hopi language, the Pahana.

Even so, in their oral history, and in their prophecies concerning a coming Day of Purification, the Hopi preserve a remarkable picture of the history and eventual ending of the way of life of Indian peoples.

The Hopi oral history remembers the destruction of Atlantis and the resulting migrations east and west. It tells how their leaders led them from a land being destroyed because of the deeds of evil two-hearted people. Through a reed they went up, rising through clouds (remember Atlantis was a land of mists). After this emergence, a great chief died, but his sons, two brothers, were chosen to lead them further. The younger brother was to go to the west, to a new land, and to travel as far north and south and east and west in this land as possible, leaving behind rock writings and ruins (thus, the mystery of the mound builders), because a time would come when they would forget they had once all been one.

Eventually, those lead by the younger brother would come to the place the Creator wanted them to live (three arid mesas in America's southwest). At one point the Creator said to the Hopi, after they had arrived at their destination, "...I am the first and I shall be the last." (In this regard recall Revelations 1:8 "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord...").

The elder brother was to go to the east, to the land of the rising sun and to wait there, for there would come a time when the way of life of the younger brother was being destroyed, and the elder brother was to return, to come and help and to bring the "life plan for the future".

The first sign of this coming destruction would be the appearance of a white race among them (the Hopi), who would claim the land as their own. Then will come three crises. The first two will rock the world into war (the two world wars) and the third will be the decisive one. "This third event will depend upon the Red Symbol, which will take command, setting the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion for the benefit of the Sun."...

"We know certain people are commissioned to bring about the Purification. It is the universal Plan from the beginning of creation, and we are looking up to them to bring purification to us. It is in the rock writings throughout the world, on different continents. We will come together if people all over the world know about it. So we urge you to spread this word around so people will know about it, and the appointed ones will hurry up with their task,..."...

"I am forever looking and praying eastward to the rising Sun for my true white brother to come."

The above has been necessarily abstracted from a much longer public talk given by Hopi Sun Clan Chief Dan Katchongva, Jan. 29, 1970. The full text is published in a book titled: The Return of Pahana: a Hopi Myth, by Robert Boissiere (Bear&Co, 1990). Knowledge of the Hopi Prophecy is hardly confined to America. The Voice of the Great Spirit: Prophecies of the Hopi Indians, by Rudolf Kaiser (Shambala, 1991), was originally published by the author in Europe, under the title, Der Stimme des Grossen Geistes.

I have lived with knowledge of this prophecy for over twenty-five years (35 now). Originally it was a small curiosity; I would read about it in odd places: an outdoor magazine, a '60's underground newspaper. Usually there was very little detail. Then, during the same year I met Anthroposophy, I found a small pamphlet titled: From the Beginning of Life to the Day of Purification, which was the original published version of the above noted talk by Grandfather David Katchongva (which has since gone out of print). For many years I made no connection between the two.

Finally, when I was part of the America Work, the circle of friends working with Carl Stegmann in Sacramento California, I wrote for his study letter, America in the Threefold World, a short article: Anthroposophy and the Hopi Prophecy of the True White Brother. Only two and a third pages in length, it simply asserted the general thesis, that the anthroposophical movement was the true white brother, the elder brother of the Prophecy, who was to return to aid the Hopi during the third and final crisis.

Except for meeting two or three personalities who thought that what I had suggested was true, the matter basically went to rest. About seven years later, however, I sat down to write about it again, and much to my surprise, wrote over eighty pages in ten days. This subsequently lead to a book: The Mystery of the True White Brother: an interpretation of the meaning of the Hopi Prophecy. In this book I attempted to draw detailed relations between the Prophecy and the underlying nature of Anthroposophy, while at the same time placing the whole situation in the context of the present phase of history, in particular the turn of the millennium. In consultation with a publisher, I subsequently rethought the book, and decided to rewrite it and to place the Hopi aspect into the context, and the meaning of contemporary events into the foreground. The new book, currently in progress, which can be found here on the loom, is titled: Strange Fire: the Death, and the Resurrection, of Modern Civilization. [Neither of these books was completed or published, while both can be found incomplete on my websites.]

The purpose for relating all this is twofold. First to acquaint the reader with the fact that I have lived with this riddle for many years. And second to suggest that what is said here, in this essay, concerning the Prophecy and its relation to Anthroposophy, is only a small segment of a much greater and more comprehensive study.

Let me now quote again, what I have come to see as the critical idea of the Prophecy, and then restate it in more contemporary anthroposophical terms.

"This third event will depend upon the Red Symbol, which will take command, setting the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion for the benefit of the Sun." We should perhaps note here that these words are an oral tradition and an interpretation of pictographic writings painted on rock, which the Hopi have treasured and maintained for perhaps thousands of years.

The third crisis of this century, the crisis of the turn of the millennium, will take a course dependent upon the activities of the People of the Rose-Cross (the Red Symbol). It is this symbol which the Hopi prophets (initiates) received, as part of their instructions from the Creator (the spiritual world), when they guided the Hopi from Atlantis and into the new land, the Americas.

This People (of the Rose-Cross) has the capacity to bring into play in world events the powers of the four directions, the powers which reside not only in the world in connection with the four ethers, but the reflection of those same powers in the human soul, known to us as thinking, feeling, willing, and consciousness. Remember that Rudolf Steiner not only mentions the four directions and the relevant beings in the Foundation Stone Meditation, but when the actual foundation stone was laid for the original Goetheanum he carried out a ceremony in the open air evoking these same powers, much as the Indian still does today in the Pipe Ceremony.

All of this activity is for the benefit of the Purposes of the Christ in human evolution, "for the benefit of the Sun", for to the original Hopi, at the time of the Atlantean catastrophe, the Christ was the Sun Being.

We have to imagine here the immense spiral movement through time, which is contemplated by the Prophecy, especially as understood today in anthroposophical terms. Certain peoples left Atlantis and went to the West. This stream was a physical race destined to die out, carrying spiritual traditions which also in time could pass away and be lost. Their task was to live in a spiritual way in this new land, as stewards, preserving its pristine* nature for a far future time, when the further demands of evolution would bring other peoples with other needs. These former Atlantean people were told of this destiny, and of the eventual end of their way of life. But with this went a promise. Those who went to the East, those whose task was to found all the civilizations of the early post-Atlantean epochs, would at the appointed time return. This stream of spiritual wisdom, of which Anthroposophy represents a continuation, could join the elder and the younger brothers together once more, and found a new civilization, a "life plan for the future".

*[See the book, 1491: new revelations of the Americas before Columbus, explores some rather new and unusual facts which might require a substantial reinterpretation of our pictures of the Americas and their Native Peoples.  This book was published in 2005, ten years after this essay was written.]

All that is contemplated by the Prophecy has come to pass, except one thing. The elder brother, the true white brother, the People of the Rose-Cross must in freedom accept this duty, this responsibility. There can be no compulsion, no initiate announcing that this or that must be done. No group decision either, no Vorstand, or Council. It is an individual choice.

I have made my choice. I have already set in motion those necessities leading to a personal meeting with the Hopi, at which time I expect to say, not literally in these words, but in this mood of soul: "I am of the elder brother people. I am here to offer to my brother, the Hopi, whatever aid I can give, and which you desire." (My message to the Hopi, can be found here on my website at: The Message from the True White Brother.) [This did not happen as I thought it would almost 12 years ago now.  The reasons for this are cogent, but lengthy, and will be not gone into here, but can be found somewhat expressed in the essay immediately above: The Future of Anthroposophy in the 21st Century.]

What will happen? Who can say? I do not doubt, however, that what does happen will be decided by two or more of us, in brotherhood.

We will now undertake to look at something else written in the social scriptures of America's original peoples. It will help here to look at the social activity of the Indian as a kind of speech. It is not so important to us what they thought about what they did; their cosmology was appropriate to their time and the nature of their consciousness. Rather what is important is what was done, what was willed.

The Indian in his highest cultural achievements lived a spiritual life. His whole attitude from waking to sleeping, on every day, in every season, was that behind Nature was a world of spirit and in every natural event this spirit spoke to him.

Living this way, living and willing for social good, for the well being of the group, the tribe, the nation, the whole people, this willing lead to a practical understanding of how to do that which was willed. So when we look at the social activity of the Indian we see what has been written in the script of deeds, out of their social genius - their intuitive striving for brotherhood - out of the depths of their primal version of the American Soul.

Now this activity was very much alive. It was not just something set into traditions handed down from a deep past. The Iroquois Confederacy, for example, was something added on to the life of those Nations which become associated in this way. A specific personality (Deganaweda) brought this wisdom to these nations, and convinced them to try it out. So also with what we will now look at from the wisdom of the Plains Indians. Someone came to them, someone their oral history calls Sweet Medicine, and taught them what is variously called: the Medicine Wheel Way, the Way of the Shields, the Brotherhood Way. As anthroposophists we can recognize that into these traditions flowed continuous spiritual inspiration, something we need as well if we are to keep our movement alive, healthy, and awake to the work it needs to accomplish.

In the book Seven Arrows, by Hyemeyohsts Storm (Ballantine Books, 1972), we will find the heart of this path to the spirit beautifully presented. Here can be found an aspect of the life of the Cheyenne, the Crow, and the Sioux (or as they called themselves: the Painted Arrow, the Little Black Eagle, and the Brother People) not available in the conventional histories of the time. No attempt will be made here to describe this "Way of Life of the People", this "understanding of the universe". Everyone should read about it themselves, from the source. Our concern is rather with something that happened in the life of these Peoples, as a consequence of their receiving this wisdom, something which only from our point of view reveals its significance as an inspiration for the creation of the Michael Festival.

Let us gather the needed facts. These Nations of Indians did not speak the same language, and as part of their social life - their life together - there came to be the "sign" language: Speech and communication through hand signs, sufficiently sophisticated to allow them to share questions and answers concerning the deeper elements of human existence (through the metaphorical use of nature symbols). As a result, over time, they came to share the same mystery wisdom.

Now in the course of the year the demands of life on the Great Plains necessitated certain things. In the winter, these Indians lived in small groups, perhaps just two or three families, camped in their tepees up a box canyon. Thus, spread out over large areas, each small group could find the game and fire wood needed to survive the winter. Life was lived predominately inside, with craft work, games and story telling the main activities.

As winter passed and spring arrived, these small groups began to move, to favorite hunting grounds and camping places, re-associating with others, until in the heights of summer and into the beginning of fall, large encampments came into existence, sometimes with hundreds of families and thousands of horses.

Under the influence of the teaching of the Medicine Wheel Way, individuals could go on a path of inner discovery. Those who choose to work with these teachings would then come to acquire either a painted shield (for the men) or a beaded or quilled belt (for the women) on which certain symbols would be placed. These symbols described something of who they were, the nature of their individual path, and those aspects of nature through which the spirit spoke to them in particular. Among the hundreds or thousands of individuals, who might be in a particular encampment, one would come upon those whose symbols had an affinity to ones own. Thus, one would find in the course of these annual gatherings ones spiritual brothers and sisters.

Eventually the seasons would change, late fall and winter would approach, and the various encampments would dissolve into smaller and smaller groups, to re-disperse over the Prairie. Of note here is that the smaller groups would not always be composed of the same families and individuals which wintered together the year before. One acquired new friends, marriages arose, deaths occurred, with the result that one wintered with different people, often people not even of the same Nation or language. These new associations might even include children, old enough to leave the maternal fold, who would winter with "uncles" or "grandfathers" whose relationship was not of blood, but of that spiritual affinity discovered during the summer-fall encampment.

Now these summer-fall encampments also occasionally celebrated a special ritual, the Sun Dance. We are here not concerned with the meaning of the Sun Dance (which would confront us with a whole other problem), or its details, but only with the fact that when necessary the leaders of the encampment would foster this ritual, because they knew it renewed something in the life of the people, first by giving individuals a special initiation process, which would strengthen them (and thus their contributions to the group) as well as re-inspire and rebind the group by its participation and support of the ritual.

These then are the facts of this way of life, the script or speech by activity of some of the social wisdom of these Peoples. Let us now review this activity in our imaginations, to seek what it has to say to us.

Over the course of the seasons, individuals, families and small communities traveled a path of inbreathing and outbreathing, contraction and expansion, condensation and dispersion. This grand annual rhythm brought it about that the relations and associations of disparate individuals and groups underwent growth, metamorphosis and change.

Woven into this way of life, was a common path to the spirit, which served and strengthened individuals and groups, but which was also approached in freedom. Differences of language and culture were overcome, individuals met in freedom and made new associations in freedom. Whole and part had a role; the social life itself lived, flowed, breathed, gave birth, and felt death.

Rudolf Steiner has urged the creation of a true Michael Festival, a late summer, early fall gathering. He has spoken as follows:

"This is the great and powerful picture given us in the approach of Autumn, so that from out of what happens in the cosmos we read this admonition: Nature consciousness must change in man into consciousness of self." (The Festivals and their meaning, p 338).

"...Michael rejects the inherited impulses of nationality..." (;bid.p 354)

"Because of Michael's rising from archangel to archi, spiritual deepening, which in the past was limited to certain peoples, will now be available to the whole of humanity. (ibid. p364)

"Through the Michael Impulse men will become personalities through what streams into them from above..." (ibid. p365)

What would happen were anthroposophists to found and sponsor a social festival, held annually, which brought together in America various different Peoples - people of different ways of life - to celebrate human freedom and the meeting of people across the boundaries of language, race and culture? What would happen if this were done in a way that Anthroposophy wasn't mentioned at all, purely as a service, done by those who understand that it needs to be done, and that once the people get together, they themselves will discover what needs to be done next? What if this were done in many places, not one giant overwhelming gathering, but each renewal organized in a way such that people have the opportunity to meet each other? What if each study group in America, held a small festival of this kind, gathering local people of different races, cultures and languages, into a shared celebration of their differences and their common humanity? What if these were held after high summer, as a preparation for those who might go from these gatherings to larger ones held later? What if...?

*

[Since my writing this, it was of course not shared among the anthroposophical community in America, which has remained turned away from the Mystery of America, and held too strongly to European spiritual traditions.  As a consequence, the spiritual inspiration connected to this need for a true Michaelic Festival in America has had to relocate, its main relocation being the inspiration that stands behind the Bioneers annual fall festival in mid-October.]

part five

It is now our task to weave together the various conceptions developed in the previous four parts, to seek for a higher point of view and a deeper meaning. Let us begin this process by looking at the title to this essay, to see what it suggests.

In the most obvious sense the title suggests that it is the mission of Anthroposophy in America to serve in some manner the awakening of the American Soul. Nothing unexpected here. Certainly most of us would agree that the awakening to a renewed spiritual life is in any event the general mission of Anthroposophy to humanity; so clearly it must be so to the American Soul. Yet a question does lurk here. The task being suggested is specific to the American Soul, so that we must ask ourselves: If we are to serve such a need, in what ways is the American Soul different or unique with respect to the general soul conditions of humanity, and how do those differences effect the completion of our task?

The founder of our movement had no doubt about these differences, nor about their profound and deep significance. These differences were the partial content of hundreds of individual lectures, and the central content of many lecture cycles. Moreover, there is a certain confusion which can arise, because Dr. Steiner sometimes spoke of distinctions between East and West, and sometimes about distinctions between East and Center and West, and no doubt meant something different by the term West in each of these two instances. In the former, central Europe was included, and in the latter, it was excluded. In addition Steiner often spoke of America as an appendage to the English, or spoke of English speaking peoples, including the Americans with the English. The point of all this is to suggest that when reading Steiner one must be careful to try to understand from which point of view he was speaking, at that particular time.

For example, he makes the following remarks while lecturing in England in 1922:

"So I believe that in the future my book [Towards Social Renewal] should be read more in the West and in Russia, but that it has no chance of becoming effective in Germany. The West, for instance, can learn much from this book, for in a non-Utopian manner it simple states how the three spheres co-exist, and should interact. For the West the moment in time does not matter, for much is still to be done for the right interaction of the three currents, the spiritual life, the economic life, and the politico-legal life."

Which West does he mean here? From the context and from the paragraph he seems to mean to exclude Germany, i.e. Central Europe, and therefore means West in the sense of England and America. It is far beyond the bounds of this essay to do a full analysis of the various indications given concerning the differences in soul characteristics between East, Center and West, and as well the material concerning the folk soul of individual peoples, as that would be relevant. However, for purposes of this essay, one fact does need to be brought forward; namely, a reasonable characterization of the differences between the soul life of the Middle European and the American, for it is the working together of these two, in anthroposophical work in America, that concerns us.

But even such a simple task requires of us more than one point of view. In The Challenge of the Times, Steiner says, "I have often brought to your attention the fact that the English-speaking peoples possess the real germinal potentiality for the development of the consciousness soul."; "...the German Middle European must be educated into the the consciousness soul..."; and, "The British folk character is power. The German folk character is the appearing, the seeming, if you will, the shaping of thoughts, that which is not in a certain sense of the solid earth. In the British folk character all is of the solid earth,..."

The A B C's of these distinctions include that the East is to develop freedom, the Center to develop equality and the West to develop brotherhood. In the East the spirit, thinking, in the Center, the soul, feeling, and In the West, the body, active willing. (Abstracted from Carl Stegmann's The Third Call.)

"...the American is much more intent upon learning something new than is the European who, in similar circumstances, has a greater tendency to defend his old points of view." (America and Americanism, F.W.Zeylmans.)

"...Americans live primarily in the outer world and concentrate on their tasks and problems. They have a spectator consciousness of the environment in which they live. They experience their identity through exposure to the outer world.

"By contrast, Central Europeans tend to development consciousness with regard to the inner life of the soul. They can be both actors in and spectators of their inner struggle. They come to consciousness of their own identity through the inner conflicts that arise out of the confrontation with the outer world and not so much out of the immediate experience of the world." (America's Way. Dietrich Asten.)

For myself, I have developed the following, which has been hinted at earlier in this essay.

The gesture of the American Soul is to see problems, to seek through the will to live on the Earth, and the intuitions of the thought life follow this will impulse. The need to accomplish the deed, brings in its train, the service of the active thinking, or any other conscious use of the inner life. The solving of the needs of the world as it is, becomes the cause by which the inner world is molded in the service of this will impulse.

The gesture of the Middle European Soul life is to live inwardly in the ideal, to will in that realm first and often to rest in the achievement of results in this realm alone. This in itself is seen as a significant accomplishment. Later an attempt may be made to conform earthly existence to this ideally realized conceptual result. The world is worked on in accord with what it ought to be as that ought is conceptualized by the inner activity.

We have only scratched the surface of a much needed deeper study, because these differences realize themselves in certain consequences for the anthroposophical work in America. Consequences which in many cases are unfortunate, because the whole question of how these very different ways of working should be united has been ignored, been left to take whatever course it would out of an unconscious interaction between the two soul gestures. (See, for more detail on these questions, on my website: On the Practicalities of Communicating the Ideal to the American Soul)

A great part of the problem, for us in American anthroposophical circles especially, is that the America Work is a neglected study. Set off to the side, seemingly not as attractive as Waldorf teaching, or Eurythmy, or other established anthroposophical disciplines, the study of the Spiritual America languishes, a building less then half built, really only a partial foundation, its construction interrupted and prolonged by the assertion that other concerns were more important. Yet the America Work is a life giving necessity, not just for the American Soul, but for the whole anthroposophical work. Consider the following:

For many years America has been a fertile ground for our brothers and sisters from Europe to come and find a place for themselves, and this co-mingling of vastly different soul forces, without any effort to work consciously with these realities, has lead to an intriguing, if not downright peculiar situation. Thus, from a certain point of view it is possible to look at anthroposophical work in America as being severely distorted by a strong Euro-centric bias. In this regard I have written elsewhere:

"The anthroposophical society is not free of the effect of the negative forces which seek to realize the complete descent of humanity, especially Western humanity, into materialism. In America, one of the manifestations of this is that the anthroposophical movement/society is lamed by an unfortunate over-adaption to the forms of soul life more properly belonging to Central Europe. This capture of the spiritual impulses proper to the American Soul is nearly complete, and is evidenced by the current emphasis on meditation practice in the courses and conferences. It is the gesture of the central European soul life to see meditation as an essential thing in itself, to see the vertical relationship between man and the spiritual world as the primary act. The American Soul is not so constituted, although by admiration and imitation it will so adapt itself. Its gesture is to need to act on the world, to live on the Earth in a right [moral] way. Meditation in this context becomes secondary, a means to an end. The American wants to meet spiritual people who are effectively active on the Earth and facing its problems. The American wants to know what can be done and what is being done to cure the ills of the social world, and to heal the living Earth from the damages being caused by mankind's selfish concept of progress.

"A related matter is the absence of a Christ centered meditation practice. Reading the literature offered by the American anthroposophical society on its meditation courses one is struck by the absence of this element. Especially at the time of the Etheric Return of the Christ, it seems odd that meditation practice is offered as a thing in itself, without being related to its fundamental spiritual content. This is understandable for the meditation practices of the East, for Tibetan or Zen Buddhism for example, with their non-theistic orientation. But for the West, meditation without a moral (Christian) mood of soul is unthinkable.

"In America there is a hunger for Christian meditative practices with depths equal to those of the Orient. Many souls, during the '60's and its aftermath, turned from their Christian roots, turned to the East, tasted those disciplines and found them wanting. Yet, when they looked at Christianity, they found fundamentalism, TV evangelism, essentially gross distortions of what they knew instinctively represented something higher. The hunger persists, but these souls cannot find their way to the Table. Something stands in the way."

These things could be said, and from a certain point of view they are true, but there are other aspects to these questions. This co-mingling of American and Central European soul forces was a necessity, no less than the historical and psychological necessity which drove the Europeans (on their path to becoming Americans) to the near genocide of the Indian. Even so, there is a higher point of view, from which we may solve the dilemma. Valentin Tomberg, in his remarkable Studies on the Foundation Stone, had this to say concerning the incarnation of spiritual impulses:

"The three Hierarchies of the cosmic Spirits of Light bring the fire, the movement and the form of the life-giving Light Of Christ into the life of Earth*. (*We are here speaking of the working of the Cosmic stream; the corresponding current of the spiritual Earth-organism has a different direction). Moreover they bring it - as a cosmic current - in the horizontal direction which is from sunrise to sunset. This horizontal cosmic current expresses simultaneously the graduated working of the three Hierarchies of the Spirits of Light. For the activity of the Spirits of Wisdom preponderates in the East, - there the current has the quality of pure spiritual Fire drawing near the Earth. Then, as the current flows further toward the West, the Spirits of Movement begin to participate in it, making it spiritual light that moves our moral feeling; while in the West - through the preponderance of the Spirits of Form - it becomes definite spiritual missions, tasks and aims to be achieved on Earth. In the West the current reaches its destination; through the spiritual forces of the West it can become a reality helping to mold the destiny of the Earth, it here receives a form corresponding to the destiny of Earth."

Now we certainly have the expectation that Anthroposophy will spread over the Earth. But if we look at the facts, at what has happened so far, we can see that by far the strongest movement is from Center to West, from Europe through England to America. In fact if we go into the background of Steiner's work, we will remember that it was first associated with the Theosophical Society. Thus we can see that the whole impulse for the renewal of spiritual life, amidst the materialism of Western civilization, begins with first a turning toward the East. Out of the East something comes, the Bhagavad Gita is translated into European languages for the first time, and the spiritual fire of the Orient kindles an interest in the souls of Central Europeans. I think we can behold an important truth here, if, consistent with Tomberg's beautiful picture, we see that the whole spiritual revival in the world, of which Anthroposophy is only a part, is effected and directed by the flow of the work of the Spirits of Light moving from sunrise to sunset, from East to West.

Further, in accord with this picture we can see in the founding years of the Anthroposophical Society the work of the Spirits of Movement, stirring the feeling life, the soul life of the Central European, inspiring the imagination, giving birth to all that we now experience in the once-called daughter movements (see Steiner's Lectures from the 1907 Munich Conference, during which he began to emancipate the Anthroposophical Movement from the Theosophical Society, through a major conference on the Arts - The Rosicrucian Unity of Science, Religion and Art: occult Images, Seals and Pillars: The Theosophical Congress of Whitsun 1907). But now another phase begins, timing itself with the turn of the millennium and all that great struggle which this implies. Here then, the Spirits of Form, take the next step, finishing the incarnation of this new spiritual impulse on the Earth, giving it the form corresponding to the destiny of the Earth.

In this sense then we can see the movement of Europeans to America, to carry forward the anthroposophical impulse, is quite in accord with the work of the Hierarchies. Our work is, as it were, swept along by the cosmic current responsible for its being, nature and form.

Moreover, if we add to this our previous observations concerning the introduction of social chaos and the loss of tradition, we can see that the American having been torn lose from his past, will have had of necessity to enter into a kind of cocoon phase. The soul does not immediately move from the old to the new, but transitions, sheds slowly the past, passes through stages of formlessness first, before emerging out of its chrysalis into its new way of being. From this point of view the predominance of the European approach to Anthroposophy, which has held sway in American circles, has played a needed role, surrounding and protecting the American Soul as it learns to find its way on the new path to the spirit. But now something else must happen. The America Soul, as that expresses itself in anthroposophical work, is now to come into its own. It has an original relationship to Anthroposophia, it has its own unique gifts to bring to fruition; gifts, which if we accept the picture Tomberg has given us, represent those soul forces which will transform the anthroposophical movement further, into that form corresponding to the destiny of the Earth.

We need to be careful here not to consider the task of the Central European Soul to be higher or lower or any such type of distinction with respect to its relationship to Anthroposophy. This impulse, the anthroposophical impulse, through the forces of the Central European Soul was given life, vitality - that which flowers in the Arts. Through the forces of the American Soul it is to be given form, to be made Earthly. Here, where the upward streaming Earth forces are so strong, Anthroposophy becomes something through the will, something more than it has been to date. Something that it cannot become solely through the rhythmic life, or the life of feeling. Both kinds of soul forces are needed.

This need not change our more conventional image of Dornach as the center of the anthroposophical society/movement. [At the time I wrote this over 10 years ago I did not yet realize how completely the Michaelic stream of Cosmic Wisdom had been turned into mere intellectualism in the Center.] The center of the feeling life of the human organism, the heart of the human being, its role is central. It balances, mediates, and guides. It pulses in accord with its own nature and, as well, in accord with that which flows through it, the blood (the living spirit), an organ in its own right. So it is with Dornach. Dornach is [an understandable romantic idea, which I have since abandoned, especially after reading Gordienko's book (several times) on Prokofieff, meeting him personally, and observing the worship - excessive sympathies - with which he is adored.] (now was) the heart of our movement. But just as with the new born human infant, which is born with the nerve-sense pole (head) well developed, and the rhythmic system, moderately developed, and the limb system young and undeveloped, so does Anthroposophy incarnate, developing each system in order; the will organism last, only after birth.

To those who are yet unclear on this, who wonder what happened in the East, we need to see that the originating activity has taken place above the Earth in the Cosmos. Perhaps the souls of the East participated in this activity in their sleep life. From East to West then, from Cosmic birth, through life filled becoming, to Earthly form, the anthroposophical impulse moves carried along from sunrise to sunset by the Spirits of Light, bringing "the life-giving Light of Christ into the life of the Earth."

Remember what the Hopi Sun Clan Chief said: "I am forever looking eastward, to the rising sun, for my true white brother to come..."

In this regard then, let us now look at the anthroposophical impulse as that appears ready to take on the essence of its earthly form under the influence of the social genius of the American Soul. For those who might be expecting this essay to describe such form, let me say that such an act would be premature. The idea here is that we can expect the American Soul, as it matures under the influence of the new path to the spirit, to engage in activities which give rise to form, form which we cannot anticipate because of the way the America Soul works: Intuitions follow the impulses of the will.

The gesture of the American Soul is to see problems to be solved, and the modern world is certainly full of such problems. But where do we begin?

Reason it this way. America has a special relation to the modern world. American materialism and American culture is everywhere imitated and exported. This transmission of a way of life, this movement of the materialistic and commercial impulses, which flows out of America and into the world, there becomes an influence in the culture and life of other peoples. If we look with our imaginations at this activity in its totality, as a community gesture of the soul life of Americans, we can see it as a kind of song, a tone setting act in the dance of life over the whole world, a leading voice in the World Song. If that song emanating from America undergoes a change, that change as well will be noticed, exported and imitated. In a way then, American culture, in the widest sense, is a lever by which to move the whole world. The question then becomes, by what means do we change the song of American culture?

It would certainly be an impossible task if we had to approach such a problem from the beginning. But Divine Circumstance is wiser then we can imagine, and if we perceive closely and clearly enough the various matters so far developed in this essay, matters of social fact, we will see that a special seed, planted near a century ago, is about to flower. Everything is properly in place, everything is precisely and subtly balanced. We need only awake [something that as of 2007 has not yet happened, unfortunately] to the task, choose in freedom to act, and the needed deeds can be done. Even the individual personalities are in the proper places. Did not Dr. Steiner tell us of those who would return, and those who would be incarnated at the turn of the millennium, at the time of great battle with the Dragon? The Stage has been set in accord with the Designs of the Master Playwright Himself.

Let us review what has been so far developed in this essay in the light of this understanding of the Drama now to unfold.

The human being stands in the world in the center of two relationships. One is the vertical relation, between himself and the divine world of the spirit. Toward this world the human being has the possibility of "rendering" those sacrifices which lead to the transformation of his own nature. By giving up who we are now, we become as the good Gods wish for us to become.

The second relation is a horizontal one. The human being stands in relation to the social world, toward which he again may sacrifice, may "render", because the nature of the social world, the being of that social world only has those qualities which flow from such a sacrifice. The social world becomes as humanity gives to it to become.

The union of these two relations, the vertical and the horizontal is the Image of the Cross, and the human being, by sacrificing in these two directions, becomes himself a Cross-Bearer.

Through the centuries, both of these directions of action have undergone transformations consistent with the evolution of the human being and, as well, the evolution of the world of spirit. As part of this unfolding and development, the social world has complexified, becoming threefold (tending toward ninefoldness), until, at this very moment in time, its central organ, the heart of the heart of the social world (the Culture of Media), has been born and achieved sufficient maturity to begin to play its role as the sounding drum of the shared conscience of the human community.

All of these developments take place at an unusual moment, the turn of the millennium. This moment has a special character, in that with the death of tradition the historic forms of social life have become formless, chaotic. But this formlessness is not purposelessness. On the contrary, the chaos is a natural prelude to the incarnation of new social forms, and, as well, the necessary precondition for the development of moral freedom. In addition, if we understand the form giving principle in general in Nature, we are aware that it organizes matter through sound in a most general sense. In this way we can see that what is to sound in the world as a social impulse will participate in the creation of new social form out of the present chaos.

In all the world there exist yet only a few human beings who can understand that these realities have come to be and what they mean, what they portend for the future of humanity. And, this understanding would not be possible if a whole century had not been given over to the gradual enlightened preparation of these few human beings, through the work of Anthroposophy. And, not only have these few human beings developed sufficiently in their cognition to perceive the great Drama, but this preparation of souls is a continuous, ongoing, accelerating, widening process. A song is being sung, and a few are hearing it, and learning to sing along with it, to share in freedom its creation and consecration. And, most especially, these few are learning how to teach others to listen, and to sing.

In America, where the voice for brotherhood is stirring, the appointed ones mostly sleep to the ancient spiritual song, which still rings forth over the Earth here. These "appointed ones" [the true white brother - the anthroposophists] yet know little or nothing of the original peoples, or of the deep social wisdom that these peoples are ready to bequeath to the future. But that is changing, another voice takes up the song of the ancients, the Prophecy long held dear and consecrated through centuries of faithful ceremonial life.

A special time is at hand, this song tells. A great spiral dance through time has been accomplished, and those who once were brothers, but became strangers to each other, these now can be reunited. The path to the spirit of the ancients is dying, is now in its very last days. But the new path has come (the life plan for the future), borne on the long winds of time, borne by those who many times have danced on the great spiral. Out of this new Way, comes a new Song, and new singers, singing the song of life for the future, for "the Day of Purification" [the Epoch of the Consciousness Soul].

What will happen when these two voices join together, when those who yet sing the song of the honored ancients, join in community to sing together with those who bear the new song? This will not go unnoticed, although nothing overt need be done other than join the two songs together. As these voices meet and search for common ground a tone will be set, a tone which will catch the ear of many who are yearning just to hear again this sacred sound. This tone is unique, for it carries within it awareness of the special qualities of the time; and, as this tone reverberates in the land it will by its nature, as easily as flowers open to the light of the Sun, set in motion in a new way, in an almost imperceptible way, the sounding drum of the social world.

Thus, through the joining of these songs, the sounding drum will beat a new and subtle rhythm, and the sleeping giant will stir, hearing finally the call to brotherhood, which has for so long been merely a dream. Then, when the giant stirs, and begins to find his true nature, the whole world will notice, and hear the new song, and a light will dawn for many as they ask: Whence comes this song, this new Way to the Spirit, that bears in its wake such ripe fruit?

This then is the theme song of the Great Drama of the Turn of the Millennium, written carefully in the very stuff of the social world, in the simple facts of the time. There are many parts in this Play, enough for all human beings.

The thesis of this essay is, in part, that America can be turned from its materialistic course by free deeds undertaken by members of the anthroposophical movement. Yet, the subtitle suggests that this is not the mission of the anthroposophical movement, but rather the mission of Anthroposophy. There is a point to this.

"Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual In the universe." Rudolf Steiner, first leading thought, from Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts.

When I first studied the leading thoughts in an anthroposophical study group, the leader, a Central European, explained that the word cognition was a better word than knowledge, i.e the sentence should read: "...path of cognition...". His reasoning was that what was meant was that Anthroposophy was a path of active conscious thinking [Emerson's active soul], and that sometimes people became confused and seemed to see Anthroposophy as a path involving the acquisition of information and facts (knowledge), and therefore primarily of study. Subsequently I began to perceive that there were different styles of approach, and that one could discern to some degree which approach individual members of the movement/society favored.

This is not to say one or the other is better; each, I think, is appropriate to the individual, and each may have a role to play. The point is that it is the mission of the active conscious thinking to wake the sleeping giant. With active conscious thinking living spiritual forces enter into the life of the Earth. So when I suggest that Anthroposophy is to play a role in the return of the elder brother, in the reuniting in the individual soul of the meaning-significance of the two brothers and what that means in terms of the Hopi Prophecy, I have in mind more then just a meeting of people. Those who wish to put themselves forward as representatives of the true white brother need to be striving for Anthroposophy, for active conscious thinking.

It is these living spiritual forces which then become the source of the new song, forces which are not solely from the Hierarchies, but which flow primarily from human activity.

The American Soul is deep. Its roots lie hidden in the heritage of ancient aboriginal peoples. Its flowering cannot yet be seen or even imagined, for this Soul is newly born and has yet much to learn and experience. The Mystery of America is a Mystery of the Sacred Union in the souls of individuals of the new Sun Mysteries of the New Thinking and the Ancient Saturn Mysteries of community life (a necessary foundation for a true Reverse Cultus). Rudolf Steiner sets us forth on the right path when he says:

Eternal becoming in thinking / Every step a deepening / Overcoming the surface / Penetrating the depths.

to which I add:

We dream America / We sing Her shadow and Her light / We dream America / And America dreams us.

**********************************

This ideas in this essay have a long history, in fact being a part of the previous one.   In this version it was intended for a more general audience.    If I was to rewrite it today, I would alter certain aspects.  It was written in 1997.

The Mystery* of the True White Brother

an interpretation of the meaning of the Hopi Prophecy

by a member of the Elder Brother People

* sacred rite of initiation

[all quoted material in the main body is taken from the original talk given in January of 1970, by Hopi Sun Clan Chief, Dan Katchongva, and then originally published in 1972 under the title: "From the Beginning of Time to the Day of Purification". The full text of this talk may be accessed at The Hopi Prophecy , or found reprinted in its entirety in the second chapter of Robert Boissiere's book: "The Return of Pahana, a Hopi Myth"]

Some readers of this material may find certain references to the far past, a bit much to take, and wonder, as well, what rational justification could be given for certain points of view expressed there. The author's views on these understandable questions will be found at the end of this message.

The Hopi Prophecy

(in brief)

The essential core of the Hopi Prophecy, such as is available to the general public, is completely embeded in their complex oral history. While this history and the Prophecy are, for the most part, treated the same in various sources, many details, some of more than a little significance, are different in different sources. In general, however, the talk noted above, "From the Beginning of Time,..." is accepted by many as the most complete and authoritative version of both the history and the Prophecy.

This history begins with stories that are not dissimilar to those which appear in Genesis. First the People (the Hopi) find themsevles living in paradise. Then, after a failure to live up to the instructions of the Creator, the People's life changes and toil, suffering and death ensue. As time goes on, problems, which naturally flow from the fact that human beings are capable of great evil, manifest themselves.

Following this, the history recalls that the place the Hopi's ancestors had been living in was about to be destroyed due to the activity of evil two-hearted people. Then, after the beginning of the migrations of those who fled from this destruction, one of the principle leaders died. His two sons were then deemed capable of carrying on this Chief's mission. After some discussion the "Younger" Brother led some of the people into a new land. These people, after many years of travel, eventually settled in the Southwest of America, and the present day Hopi are their descendants.

The "Elder" Brother's task was to go to the East and to wait, for there would eventually come a time when the Younger Brother's way of life was about to be destroyed. When this time came the Elder Brother was to return and to save the remaining true Hopi from this destruction; and, at the same time, to inaugurate a new phase in the cycle of time - a phase called in the Prophecy: the "Day of Purification".

The Hopi Prophecy is not always clear. The terms Elder Brother and True White Brother seem interchangeable. One fact does seem certain, namely, the expectation that when the Elder Brother returns, he/she/they will be members of the white race.

Some statements in the Prophecy are highly symbolic, and therefore potentially very ambiguous. For example: "This third event will depend upon the Red Symbol, which will take command, setting the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion for the benefit of the Sun.''

When the True White Brother does appear, the Hopi expect to be able to recognize them. Not all the Hopi agree on the criteria, however. This recognition may depend upon how the True White Brother looks, what they do when they arrive, and whether or not they possess the other half of the "stone tablet(s)''. These tablets had the Creator's instructions on them. "The older brother was to take one of the stone tablets with him to the rising Sun and bring it back with him..."

Those who currently write or speak about the Prophecy, including modern Hopi Elders, almost universally seem to fail to recognize that the Elder Brother People will have their own point of view about what the Prophecy means. The way the Prophecy has been habitually discussed, is almost as if the True White Brother will appear spontaneously without any past, and as if they had been waiting in some kind of hidden stasis over the long centuries.

The reality is, of course, just as those who were lead by the Younger Brother have a history which eventually becomes the story of the present day Hopi, so also will the Elder Brother People have a past, a context, that arises from what has happened to them over this great period of time.

The following is, therefore, a statement about what the Hopi Prophecy means from the point of view of a member of the Elder Brother People, the True White Brother. It should be understood, however, that what is stated below is a simplification of a much wiser and more complicated world view, involving as it does an attempt to encompass the meaning of the whole of human history and evolution.

The Understanding of the Elder Brother People

(not so brief)

In the deep past of the evolution of the human race there existed a civilization on a land mass in the middle of that area of the Earth we call the Atlantic Ocean. This fact has been remembered in modern times as the legend of Atlantis. The reader of this text is advised not to be disturbed by a reference to what seems to many to be a fantasy. Many a significant truth is recorded in the myths and legends of humanity. It is only a modern cultural bias which believes that in all cases we know better than the ancients.

For example, we know today that Stonehenge is, at the very least, a remarkable astronomically oriented structure. We would do well not to assume that we have uncovered all its mysteries or even begun to truly understand the world view, and state of consciousness, of those who built it. What truths did they know? What ideals lived in their hearts? How did they move those stones? The deep past is full of mystery and we should not presume to limit its nature by our beliefs, prejudices and biases.

As is recalled in Hopi oral history, this land, and the civilization it nurtured, had to be destroyed so that humanity could progress in accord with the designs of the Gods. Just before that destruction occurred, a warning was given to certain priests (what the Hopi today sometimes call "Chiefs'') in various places on Atlantis where there existed mystery centers, places of learning and spiritual initiation. This was done so that specific groups of people, who possessed special qualities of consciousness, could survive the destruction and subsequently found the various post-atlantean civilizations.

In the resulting migrations, some peoples went to the West, into the Americas, and some to the East, into Europe and beyond. This is remembered in the Hopi oral history in the story of the two brothers, the Elder and the Younger.

The nature of the consciousness of these two groups was different, as what was intended for them required different qualities of soul and spirit. Those groups who went to the West, into the Americas, were intended to possess a form of consciousness which eventually centered itself in that orientation that finds in the processes and activities of Nature an expression of the world of the spirit. Thus, the people lead by the Younger Brother were to become the stewards these new lands, to hold them for a future time, when people of different needs and forms of consciousness would come to live there.

Out of these underlying impulses was born the various Nations of Indians, whose cosmology was centered in Nature and which related itself to the Four Directions, and the activity of the Great Spirit.

Not all the decadent (evil, two-hearted) spiritual impulses of Atlantis disappeared with its destruction. Certain types of knowledge, known in the atlantean mystery centers, and which today we would call sorcery because of their fascination with power, survived. It is this negative influence which we also find living in some of the South America civilizations and religious practices. Carlos Castenada's "Yaqui Way of knowledge" is a modern version of this dangerously one-sided view of spiritual life and knowledge.

Hidden beneath the surface of this long epoch of human history and prehistory, from the time of Atlantis to and through the creation of the subsequent civilizations that arose in Asia, and then later in Europe, was a general change in the consciousness of humanity. At the start of this period the human being was awake, although in a dreamy kind of way, to the spiritual life which surrounded and permeated him (thus, the Australian aboriginies concept of the "dreamtime'').

As this evolution of consciousness progressed, the original instinctive knowledge and direct experience of the reality of spiritual beings and causes was slowly lost to the general populace. Ultimately, it came to be that only in the mystery centers could individuals be brought into authentic contact with the world of the spirit through various processes of initiation.

It was the task of those who lead the migrations to the East, which the Hopi Prophecy remembers as the Elder Brother, to oversee the founding of the various post-atlantean civilizations, and in particular to create the centers of spiritual wisdom in which knowledge of how to contact the world of the spirit could be maintained. This was done so that even though for the ordinary human being a kind of darkness descended, civilizations could still be influenced and guided through direct spiritual contact with the Gods.

It is the descent of this darkness which is referred to in the ancient Indian (Asian) cosmology with its concept of the various ages ending with the so-called Dark Age, or Kali Yuga. It is from this past time of general spiritual knowledge that we receive the legends of the elemental spirits, the gnomes, undines, slyphs and fairies. All the great myths, from the Nordic to the ancient Greek, are memories of human understanding of spiritual realities from the time when direct spiritual contact existed, whether in the general populace or only in the mystery centers.

In the final stages of the age of darkness, even the mystery centers disappeared. In Western civilization this arose through those processes connected to the arrival of Christianity and the resultant destruction of the so-called pagan or goddess religions.

Those lead by the Elder Brother were to have a different kind of consciousness from those lead by the Younger Brother. We can see this most concretely when we notice that those, who went from Atlantis to the East, formed civilizations with a strong tendency toward ever increasing material progress, ultimately leading to the age of science and industry. While in the Americas, on the other hand, the tradition of intimacy with Nature maintained itself quiet strongly. Thus, one group (the Elder Brother's Peoples) eventually came to approach the natural world as something to own and to manipulate, while the other group (the Younger Brother's Peoples) continued to feel themselves as a part of Nature; that is, up until that crisis point, the conquest of the Americas, when these two completely different orientations toward the natural world began to encounter and to come into conflict with each other.

It is the meaning and significance of this crisis point that is the core element of the Hopi Prophecy.

The priests (Chiefs), which lead the migrations to the West, were still, for a while, initiates in the mysteries. From the resulting experiences of the spiritual world they obtained that knowledge which was to become the prophetic oral tradition of the Hopi People. Thus, in the imagery of the Hopi Prophecy is given one understanding of this anticipated encounter between the two modes of consciousness.

Let us review a few of these facts point by point. The Hopi were told that at a certain point in time there would appear among them a white race, which would claim the land as their own. This has come to pass.

The Hopi were told that the arrival of these people would precipitate a crisis in their way of life leading to its possible complete destruction. This has come to pass.

The Hopi were told that as this crisis matured the whole world would be affected, resulting in two great wars. This has come to pass.

The Hopi also were told that during this crisis someone or some group known as either the Elder Brother, or the True White Brother, could appear from the East, could save the true Hopi, and could inaugurate the "Day of Purification". This group was also to have the "life plan for the future". Further, in the most definitive statement of the Prophecy, we find this terminology: "This third event [following the two wars] will depend upon the Red Symbol, which will take command, setting the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion for the benefit of the Sun."

It is in the solving of this riddle, the meaning of the above quoted statement and in the understanding ot how this event is actually occurring in the modern world, that the significance of the Hopi Prophecy's imagery of the missing or broken "stone tablet" comes into play.

The point of view of the Hopi, the Younger Brother People, is only one part of the meaning of the Prophecy. The other part, the missing part, is the understanding of the Prophecy that is known to the Elder Brother People. Only through bringing together both views and integrating them will the truth come to be perceived.

Let us modify slightly the imagery we have already developed. The Younger Brother could be seen as the representative of that view of the world which sees itself as the "shepherd" of Nature, a nature which includes the human being within its circle. The Hopi understand that their ceremonial life is essential to maintain the world in balance.

The Elder Brother could be seen as the representative of that view of the world that sees itself as the "shepherd" of human consciousness. When the modern work of the Elder Brother is clearly understood, it will be seen to have as its purpose the true comprehension of the present and future potential of human inner life, the life of soul and spirit.

At this point we are near to entering more concretely into an understanding of who the Elder Brother People are. There remains, however, one more preliminary matter.

We have already seen that the Elder Brother's mission was to oversee the post-atlantean civilizations of Asia and Europe during the period of time when human consciousness lost its natural contact with the spiritual world, and entered into a kind of inner darkness. In the last days of this epoch, the Elder Brother work centered itself in various mystery centers. Then, when those events leading to the founding of Christianity occurred, it became necessary for even these mystery centers to cease existence.

Thus it was that initiation wisdom disappeared into the shadows, as is so beautifully described in Marion Zimmer Bradley's novel: ''The Mists of Avalon".

However, with the dawn of Christianity began something else. It is no accident that one of the early tasks of the youthful Christ religion was the suppression and elimination of the older mysteries. Remember please that the dominate theme of Earth existence for the human being, following the Atlantean catastrophe, was the development of certain forms of consciousness. Thus, in accord with the intentions of the Gods, the descent of humanity into a period of spiritual darkness is an absolute necessity for the evolution of human freedom; and this is meant not just to be political liberty, but true inner freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of the spirit.

Only a darkened consciousness can choose freely to seek again a knowledge of the world of the spirit. Only in the stark aloneness of the enclosed self can arise the will to go beyond the mists and once again into the light.

Thus it came about that, during that period when the ideologies of the Roman Church dominated the thought life Western Civilization, mystery knowledge disappeared, and only in the rumored warrens of alchemical and rosicrucian circles, or in the beautiful saga of Parzival and the search for the Holy Grail, was the way of initiation remembered.

But, like everything else ("and this to shall pass''), the, at one time necessary, control of Catholicism over Western minds began to wane. Science arose, and, with that excess which everything youthful engenders, all ideas of spirit became for many mere systems of belief or superstition. Yet, a science empty of the spirit is poor food for the hungry soul, and thus, in spite of the apparent command of the direction of our civilization by scientific materialism, people began to seek again for meaning and transcendence, even to the point of trying to resurrect all the old gods.

From this hunger then, begins that search for the spirit which first appeared at the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, beginning with theosophy, spiritism and Gurdjieff work, then later Indian Yoga adepts, Tibetan Buddhist Llamas, and Zen Masters, until in America, especially, the Goddess Herself resurfaces in the company of a renewed interest in shamanism.

The question could be put this way: Among all this richness of tradition, which spiritual "stream" is the one that bears the responsibility for the evolution of consciousness which is the hallmark of the mission of the Elder Brother People?

The answer to this question is not simple. For example, we have hardly examined the realities of Christianity, such as they relate to the matters under discussion. Much that claims to be Christian today is not. Some churches do not even really believe in the Christ, because the idea they hold of God is no different from that which the Jews held concerning Jehovah. For such "theologies", even though they mouth the words, it is as if the Christ events never occurred. Other churches only consider Jesus the man. For these, there is no understanding any longer of the cosmic elements of spiritual life. For them Christianity is only a wise philosophy.

But, as we noted, when Christianity appeared in the world it eclipsed the older mysteries. Just as these older paths had to pass away so that the darkening of human consciousness as regards the spiritual world could be complete, so Christianity came, destined to be the religion of the future, the religion whose yet to be discovered depths contain the seeds for the maturation of the human spirit in complete freedom.

However, if we look at what exists today, such a Christianity is hardly apparent. The current leadership of the Roman Church still seeks to determine exclusively the question of what is moral. The fundamentalist and evangelical protestant churches play dangerous games in the political realm. While at the same time, the ''religion", which is science, professes to answer all the deep questions of the human soul in terms completely without spirit.

It is no wonder then that the Hopi. Prophecy calls the age we now enter the "Day of Purification".

Among the many spiritual voices active in modern life are two personalities whose work stands head and shoulders above all the others. In saying this, I am not attempting to diminish other visions, for many of the active traditions are deep and rich in their wise understanding. Rather, I am attempting to point toward work which belongs more than any other to the realities and characteristics of the modern age. It is more a matter of what most meets the needs of modern humanity, then any other criteria.

In the 1960's in America, when a certain intensity of spiritual renewal rose to the surface, an idea floated around concerning the possibility of the reuniting of science and religion. This was to be one consequence of the arrival of the so-called age of Aquarius. In this hope was expressed a sense of the great inner disunity underlying modern culture. What was reason in the soul, which appeared most strongly in the methods of science. could not be integrated with the soul's capacity for devotion, for religious life, for the seeking of the spirit. While even deeper, hidden in even this desire for the unification of reason and devotion, was the sense of the loss of the imagination, that aspect of the soul which appears most strongly in art.

Reason, imagination and devotion, the three corner stones of soul life. Nowhere in modern life were these found in a clear unity.

In answer to this need to heal modern consciousness and soul life there arose the work of two personalities. From the side of the ideals of science, reaching toward the realm of religion, comes the work of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy (sometimes called Spiritual Science). From his genius has come Waldorf Schools, biodynamic agriculture and much else which has yet to be appreciated by the wider culture.

From the side of the ideals of religion, reaching toward the realm of science, comes the work of Valentin Tomberg. His anonymously written, "Meditations on the Tarot: a journey into Christian Hermeticism", stuns each reader who honestly encounters it, with its depth and breadth of understanding, in particular the illumination it brings to the deeper inner meaning of the three vows: chastity, poverty and obedience.

Both personalities are from the East, from the rising sun, and are European: Steiner from Central Europe and Tomberg from European Russia ("I am forever looking to the rising sun, for my True White Brother to come", Dan Katchongva, Hopi Sun Clan Chief). What marks them especially is that they are, unquestionably, true initiates. That relationship with the spiritual world, formerly cultivated in the mystery centers, and which then disappeared during the domination of European thought by the Roman Church, comes again to bring its gifts to bear on the problems and needs of modern humanity. Amidst the dust and debris of modern culture, the Elder Brother returns.

Now work such as this influences others. This is its real power. Around Steiner and around Tomberg others gather. The work multiplies, grows and develops. It "streams" into modern life, giving birth to much that has yet to be noticed in the main centers of human learning, the great universities of Western Civilization.

As this resurrected initiation wisdom is communicated, certain themes dominate. How to achieve initiation in modern times, as a free individual, is taught. The confusing relations between initiation wisdom and Christianity are resolved. That the core of this modern path of initiation follows the Seven Stages of Christ's Passion is explained. How to develop science so that it finds the spirit in Nature is elaborated. The fruit of initiation wisdom is poured out over education, medicine, art, social science, psychology, and much else besides.

The result is, that hidden among the seemingly spiritually empty way of life of the white race, that had rolled so imperiously over American aboriginal cultures, is the spiritually full work of the "True" White Brother, the Elder Brother of the Hopi Prophecy.

Even so, a most serious question does remain. The true Hopi wait expectantly. Someone is supposed to come personally to them bringing this knowledge, this "life plan for the future". But more importantly, of what value is that to which the true Hopi held so dear, their ceremonies and their simple way of life. Is this new wisdom supposed to just replace all that the Hopi are and have been? Or, is there some special meaning latent in these traditions, justifying their preservation? For according to Hopi oral history, when they arrived in the Southwest, near where they now reside, it was the Great Spirit Himself who was there waiting for them and set them on their course, saying to them: "All I have is my planting stick and my corn. If you are willing to live as I do, and follow my instructions, the life plan which I shall give to you, you may live here with me, and take care of the land."

Recall the imagery we used earlier. The Younger Brother People were the "shepherds" of Nature, the caretakers of the land. Their piece of the "stone tablet'' is the practical knowledge of the simple way of life. The Elder Brother People were the "shepherds'' of human consciousness, the caretakers of the inner life of humanity. Their piece of the "stone tablet" is the knowledge of the way of initiation, of how to have an awake and conscious relation to the world of the spirit.

We ought to, in fact, expand our imagery of the Younger Brother People. In truth they are not just the Hopi, but all the original peoples of the Americas and elsewhere, throughout the modern world. Further, they are not just the wise caretakers of the surrounding circle of Nature, but they are also the holders of a deep understanding of community, the practical workings of the circle of individuals who combine to make up a People. In a very true sense we could say that the American Indian possesses (along with all still surviving aboriginal cultures) , as living tradition, the "pattern" for the integration of human community with the natural world.

We should also expand our imagery of the Elder Brother. With the splitting of the two "streams", the Younger Brother going one way and the Elder another, the "pattern" of integration was separated out from the "pattern" of initiation. With the result that the once instinctive unity with the world was sacrificed to the needs for the development of new forms of inner life. The civilizations founded by the Elder Brother constantly fell into opposition with the ways of Nature, even while maintaining "intercourse" with the world of the spirit.

We need, as well, to understand where to fit in the older, more mature, initiation paths, for example, the striving for enlightenment typified by Tibetan and Zen Buddhism. Recall that in the deep past, the Elder Brother stream was responsible for the founding of the European and Asia cultures, so that those initiation wisdoms are, in effect, the progeny of prior work of the Elder Prother.

The world is a very complicated place. Serving the spiritual needs of billions of individuals, who are each fundamentally unique, requires a great variety of Paths and Ways. If we will just notice it, in fact, in America at present it is the current Elder Brother work which is presently still hidden. Far more individuals are aware of the older traditions.

One way of picturing the reality is to conceive of the work of the Elder Brother, over the long epochs following the destruction of Atlantis, as having been the planting and nurturing to healthy life of a variety of spiritual ways. With the passage of time these paths mature, differentiate and grow. They develop their own needs, as do the cultures in which they live.

Members of the modern stream of the work of the Elder Brother, while predominately Christian, because they have been awakened to its hidden depths, nevertheless are well aware of the need to come into contact with these other paths, such as (continuing the example) Buddhism. Books have been written dealing in detail with the relevant questions, and where communities of different orientation exist side by side, dialogues have been initiated and do progress. The necessary work goes slowly forward.

We can now, perhaps, better understand the coming direct meeting of the Younger and Elder Brothers. The "pattern" of integration and the "pattern" of initiation are to be reunited. The broken "stone tablets" are to be rejoined. When in the near future, members of the Elder Brother People come to the Hopi mesas, and ask the Younger Brother for permission to live there, to come "home" to Nature, then the "pattern" of integration, symbolized by the Circle, and the "pattern" of initiation, symbolized by the Cross, will begin to be reunited, as has been consciously and unconsciously hungered for by many through all the long ages since the time of their separation.

There yet remains one last element - the elaboration of a preliminary understanding of the Prophecy's key statement: "This third event will depend upon the Red Symbol, which will take command, setting the four forces of nature (Meha) in motion for the benefit of the Sun.

Just as Tibetan and Zen Buddhism represent deep paths of enlightenment (initiation) , so Christianity has its corresponding Way. However, when Christianity first appeared in the world, the needs of the moment required that the exoteric wisdom had to be separated from the esoteric. Thus, for most of Christian history the teachings given to Paul dominated, and the teachings given to John remained hidden.

With the return of the Way of John to modern life, as expressed in a living way in the work and lives of the two initiates Steiner and Tomberg, there came to expression what could be called: the Christian-Rosicrucian path of initiation, the Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ.

A major meditation exercise, taught to students on this path, is the Rose-Cross meditation, This is a complicated exercise, which is well elaborated in Steiner s book: ''Occult Science". It involves, in its initial stages, the careful building up, inwardly through the forces of the imagination, of an image of a rose-cross, a black cross on which are placed, in a certain pattern, seven red roses. I will refrain here from giving more details, since any one who may wish to do the exercise needs to trouble themselves to learn its dynamics directly from the above source (see also "Meditations..." Arcanum XIV, Temperance).

For our purposes the import of the above facts is to give a content to the term: "the Red Symbol". It is the People of the Rose-Cross, the People following the most modern path of initiation, whose task it is to "take command".

Now one of the main elements of the work of Steiner and his students is that struggle which reaches from the scientific impulse in the soul outward toward the religious. Steiner's Anthroposophy (also called "Spiritual Science") includes, as a major component, the foundations for the scientific understanding of the so-called life force, or, what is more properly called the ethereal realm.

These forces, which work into the Earthly realm from the Cosmic Periphery, and which are the polar opposite of the forces of gravity, are, like gravity, invisible. Yet, without a knowledge of the ethereal formative forces, humanity will never come to understand the true dynamics of organic life processes and much else besides.

The American Indian, with his cosmology of integration within the circle of Nature, paid homage to these forces from the cosmic periphery, and those spiritual beings connected to their creation, in all those ceremonies and ideas by which the "powers" of the Four Directions were acknowledged.

Thus, when the Hopi Prophecy speaks of the People of the Rose-Cross taking command of the four forces of nature, it is making us aware that this "third event'' will involve the elaboration of a genuine science of the ethereal realm.

We need now to recall that when the Younger Brother migrations began, it involved, among other elements, the fleeing of the destruction of Atlantis under the guidance of atlantean initiates. In these circles of initiation was a certain kind of direct knowledge of the Gods, of the great Cosmic Beings upon which Creation rests.

As part of this knowledge was an awareness that the Creator Being Himself had an abode in that realm of the spiritual world which was called the Sun Sphere. Thus, the Hopi Prophecy sees the work of the People of the Rose-Cross, in their elaboration of a science of the ethereal, as being for the benefit of this High Individuality.

Later initiation wisdom realized that this same Being eventually descended into incarnation as a human being, to suffer and to die, in the individuality of Christ Jesus. All the deep mysteries of Christianity are completely true, although far from being well understood or applied.

An element of these mysteries, which is necessary for our understanding, is connected to the statement of Saint Paul: ''Not I, but Christ in me." Just as some of the deep wisdoms of the far East have an understanding that each human being has a Buddha nature, so the modern initiation wisdom of the West recognizes that each human being also posseses a ''Christ Impulse".

Those, who are familiar with the esoteric doctrine "as above, so below", will understand that the human being is a microcosm, an "image and likeness" of God, the Macrocosm. Now the macrocosm is simultaneously a unity and a multiplicity. It is an aspect of this mystery which is elaborated in the Christian understanding of the Trinity, the Mystery of the Three in One: God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Thus, in accord with the rule "as above, so below''' the Cosmic Sun, the Christ, has a corresponding "seed" in human nature, the Christ Impulse. Further, just as the knowledge of the ethereal realm comes to expression out of a "scientific" endeavor under the stewardship of Rudolf Steiner, so does knowledge of the Christ Impulse come to expression out of a "religious" endeavor under the stewardship of Valentin Tomberg.

Now we can better understand the statement in the Prophecy. The People of the Rose-Cross are to elaborate the introduction of the science of the ethereal into human evolution for the benefit of the Sun, of the Christ, in both His Cosmic aspect, and as well His "seed", which appears in the individual human being as the Christ Impulse. "The stone tablets will be the final acknowledgement of their true identity and brotherhood. Their mother is Sun Clan. They are the children of the Sun."

This process, this work of the Elder Brother, and the People who ally themselves with this stream of spiritual wisdom, as it plays itself out in human history, will awaken in the human being direct knowledge of the life of the soul and the spirit, which had previously disappeared during the descent of the dark age. Now, just as physical existence has undergone an "evolution", so also the life of soul and spirit evolves. Mystery knowledge, which was at one time appropriate in prior ages, is no longer valid. The dynamics of human inner life have become different. Consciousness itself has evolved. For this reason, the attempt to reanimate older traditions is, very often, to direct the soul towards its past instead of toward its future.

As these dynamics play themselves out in human civilization, in human political and social life, such as in the tension between old and new spiritual knowledge and the tension between science, religion and art, both individual human beings and communities will experience crises. This great struggle, between the light and the dark of the human soul, is already upon us. But as modern initiation knowledge more and more comes to the fore, humanity's ability to sleep, before these great issues of the day, will cease.

Thus we have the Hopi concept: the "Day of Purification'', to describe the age we now enter.

It remains then to close this message with a brief elaboration of some of the deeper aspects of the symbolism of the Cross and its relation to the Circle.

The individual human being stands at the crosspoint of two fundamental relationships. 0ne relationship is the vertical one, between the individual human spirit and the spiritual world, the world of great and small invisible Beings .

The other relationship is the horizontal one, between the individual and all other individuals in the earthly social realm. It is this relationship we experience most strongly in our daily lives, whether it involves the intimate members of our families, the circle of friends and acquaintances and bosses and co-workers, or lastly the strangers who we encounter in passing through the busy intensity of our 1ives.

Both the vertical and the horizontal relationships force us to face moral dilemmas. We can choose the path of the "seed", of the Christ Impulse, and accept suffering and sacrifice as our gift to these relationships, or we can choose sleep. to give over the conduct of our 1ives to our unredeemed lower nature.

Now, normally the Cross, the symbol of these vertical and horizontal relationships, is seen by itself. In that we suffer and sacrifice in these relationships we become individual cross-bearers. But when we join this symbol to the Circle, other elements can begin to be acknowledged.

The World is a whole. Nature, humanity, spiritual beings, all are connected, joined. When the Cross is inside the Circle, joined to it, then we can see that the various impulses turn just where the ends of the Cross meet the inner edge of the Circle. This shows that our vertical relationship reaches around into our horizontal, and our horizontal into the vertical. The Circle, the symbol of Community and the Unity of nature, humanity and the world of the spirit, this Circle unites individual cross-bearers with each other.

We all bear crosses. Human beings, Nature beings, Cosmic beings. Our greatest strength, in all the trials we are to face during the Day of Purification, is to be found in our working together: The Way of Initiation and the Way of Integration, the "stone tablets", rejoined.

The principle danger to this reunification, which is happening in many places, not iust the lands of the Hopi, this danger is that we will go into the future seeking to reanimate the past, whether it is by occupying ourselves with an older initiation system, or in believing that we can heal the illnesses of the natural world, and of our communities, by going back to nature, or by holding on to tradition.

Everything dies. The future is always born out of processes of destruction. The dark age is necessary before there can be attempts to found an age of light. The rejoining of the pattern of integration and the pattern of initiation is meant to produce something new.

Knowledge of the ethereal realm, or to put it another way, etheric consciousness, will change the way we see our interrelationship to the world of Nature and the Cosmos. In the same way, knowledge of the Christ Impulse will change how we understand human nature and the nature of Cosmic Beings.

For example, the Hopi tradition, along with many other traditions, has tended to see history and evolution as cyclical, as containing patterns which constantly repeat. The reality is, however, that these processes are spiral in nature. Yes, there is a circle like process of return, but that return is intended always to occur at a higher stage of development.

In a concrete sense this means that what is crucial to maintain out of the pattern of integration, is not a specific way of simple living, and a specific system of ceremonial life. But rather, that the life of a community integrated with the surrounding world is most healthy when it is simple and when it is filled with ritual. These "qualities" of the Circle are then most supportive of inner growth.

Likewise, inner growth is sterile if it is not productive in the world. If all that inner growth does is separate us one from the other, or from the world of nature as if that was no concern of ours, then this inner growth is limited. The ''qualities'' of the Cross are only fruitful if they engender sacrifice directed at the redemption of the social and natural worlds.

Thus, the reunification of the Cross and the Circle is not a return to a prior condition, but rather a gateway to a future possibility. It is not what the Elder and Younger Brothers were once upon a time, but what it is that they can be together in the present and beyond. At least for some time to come, each day is potentially a day of purification.

We have one last small act; to touch the core of the ''Mystery" of the True White Brother. This is not, as pointed out initially, a mystery in the sense of a puzzle or a riddle but rather a mystery in the more archaic sense, something whose contemplation belongs usually only in the kiva or in the private time of prayer and meditation.

Just briefly was mentioned above the modern path of initiation, called at one point the Way of John, and at another the Christian-Rosicrucian Path of the Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ. The first act on this path is expressed in the Gospel of John in the story of Christ's washing the feet of the disciples. Here the God-Man taught by His Own Deed that act which is the true foundation of all spiritual development: the practice of humility.

The true Hopi will have no trouble understanding the "washing of the feet", because, as their oral history remembers, it is precisely due to their humility that they received their name.

It is in this mood of soul that the two patterns must begin their process of reunification. There can be no higher or lower knowledge, no better or more perfect way of life, no individual or group to be in charge, no one to lead and no one to follow.

Only those who meet in the spirit of genuine service to the other, and to that which they hold Higher, by whatever name, only these can begin the work.

- comments on method -

Some readers will understandably wish to know how such facts, as alleged above, are to become known; and, by what method and with what justification does the author of these words assert their truthfulness.

Two pages, elsewhere on this part of the loom, contain writings of the author about these matters in some detail, although not specifically as justification for the above material. These are: The Quiet Suffering of Nature and Pragmatic Moral Psychology.

In the first, an attempt is made to show by what method the being and consciousness of nature could be rediscovered by modern thinkers. In the second, the practical problem of the necessary moral preparation for authentic spiritual communion is introduced.

Even so, the author of the above must confess that faith has yet played a part in the Message of the Elder Brother People. Practitioners of authentic spiritual communion, whose skills for exceed the author's, have been relied upon, and for this reason, the author does not expect the reader to be bound by the same impulse. Nevertheless, the reader is asked to test the fundamental hypothesis of spiritual science through entering practically into that which is outlined in The Quiet Suffering of Nature, and as well the fundamental impulse of faith through entering practically (again) into what is outlined in Pragmatic Moral Psychology.

Were the reader to dismiss the above thesis (the Message) out of hand, without personally verifing the efficacy of the method, would violate the fundamental principle of truth used in our time, namely, that principle of science which requires that one who asserts a truth must provide the key to their method of knowledge and that one who wishes to dispute such a truth must test the hypothesis according to its stated methodology.

So much for the problem of method.

A much deeper, but slightly different, discussion will be found in the original book, which I wrote on this matter in the early '90's: The Mystery of the True White Brother: an interpretation of the meaning of the Hopi Prophecy.

*******************************

This journal was distributed free (about 25 copies) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in early August, 1997, at the major summer USA anthroposophical conference. There were some unusual reactions, as the material was not without bite.

OUTLAW (rebel) ANTHROPOSOPHY

 Vol. I, Issue no. I, summer 1997

another declaration of independence:

spiritual science with passion - light and heat

Cover artwork: Victoria Hull.

Articles and journal conception: Joel A. Wendt.

contents

The Study of Rudolf Steiner's Lecture Cycles, and the Problem of Cognition - musings on the epistomological swampland of the Anthroposophical Movement

The Anthroposophical Society: Is it a living social form?

The First Readers Poll: 25 questions you've been dying to answer about your relationship to the Anthroposophical Society.

The Study of Rudolf Steiner's Lecture Cycles,

and the Problem of Cognition*

- musings on the epistomological swampland of the

Anthroposophical Movement -

*Cognition - the German word erkennen, and its relatives, seems to have no specific English equivilant. One German speaker advised me it means "active thinking", and another spoke of it as having to do with the "relationship" of the knower to the inner nature of the object of knowledge. My own sense of this problem is that its real solution will only be found as a matter of inner experience. Erkennen can't be understood as a matter of definition or translation, but only by my direct experience of my own thinking activity.

*

Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Spiritual Activity begins with an examination of the problem of freedom: Can we choose what we desire? He solved this problem by suggesting that we can in fact choose the impelling motive, the moral ground from which our actions (both inner and outer) proceed. From this he moved to the problem of percept and concept: What is the relationship between our thinking activity and our experiences?

This second question was also approached in Steiner's The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. I find his expression there the more beautiful; namely, that the sense percept is incomplete without the act of cognition. Thinking is the final act in the process by which Nature is created.

When I think about this truth, I am always reminded, with wonder, of the verse in Genesis about God's having given to humanity the power to name the "beasts of the field and the birds of the air". World Reality needs the human being's cognitive activity to compete Itself.

The reader may have perhaps noticed that I referred above to the "sense" percept. What about the supersensible "percept"? What about those experiences which are apparently internal, which are in my soul, and for which I have many concepts (e.g. feelings)? Are those not a kind of "percept" as well. And, more significantly, what about those experiences (percepts) which are spiritual in nature; not just congnitions about objects of the sense world or within my own soul, but what about congnitions concerning invisible, supersensible Beings and their activities?

In a footnote, written forty years later, in the same text, Steiner writes:

"Therefore, what is said in this writing about the essential nature of knowledge holds good also for the knowledge of the spiritual worlds, with which my later writings are concerned. The sense-world in its manifestation to human perception is not reality. It possesses its reality in connection with that which reveals itself in man in the form of thought concerning this sense-world. Thoughts belong to the reality of the sensibly perceived; only, that which is present in the sense-existence as thought manifests itself, not externally in this existence, but inwardly in man. But thought and sense-perception are a single essence. While man enters the world in sense-perception, he separates thought from reality; but the thought merely manifests itself in another place within the mind. The separation between percept and thought possesses no significance for the objective world; it occurs only because man takes up a position in the midst of existence. It is to him that this appearance thus occurs, as if thought and percept were twofold. Nor is it otherwise in the case of spiritual perception. When this occurs by reason of processes in the soul which I have described in my more recent book Knowledge of the Higher World and Its Attainment, this then forms likewise one aspect of (spiritual) existence; and the corresponding thoughts of the spiritual form the other aspect. A difference occurs only to this extent, that sense-perception reaches its consummation through thought in reality, as it were, in an upper direction at the beginning of the spiritual; whereas spiritual perception is experienced in its true being from this beginning downward. The fact that the experience of sense-perception occurs through the senses formed by Nature, and that of the perception of the spiritual through spiritual organs of perception, first formed in a psychic manner, does not constitute a distinction in principle."

Nothing could be clearer, could it? Let me draw from this paragraph, written in 1924, what I believe is relevant to our discussion:

The same dynamic, between experience and thought, in terms of a science of knowledge, exists for both the sense world and the spiritual world. In the case of the former, the sense world, the nature object (the experience) is not the reality, as this reality is only found in the thought brought about by human cognition. This apparent division between thought and experience arises only because the human being is present; in reality they are united.

In the case of the latter, the spiritual world, the same is true, with these two differences. In spiritual perception the reality (the unity of thought and experience) is apprehended from the beginning; and, psychic organs need to be first developed in order for spiritual perception to take place.

What has this to do with our theme? Throughout the world, where anthroposophy is practiced, groups of anthroposophists engage in the common and collective study of the works of Rudolf Steiner. These works are of two kinds: works actually written to be read (e.g. Occult Science); and lectures, only spoken, whose transcriptions were never read or revised by the speaker (e.g. World History in the Light of Anthroposophy).

When I read a text, any text, not just something by Steiner, what is happening? What is the nature of my experience? What light can a science of knowledge shed on this experience? What is percept and what is concept?

I begin with the most obvious fundamentals, because it is essential not to wonder off at the very beginning by letting in any assumptions. I look at a text, and discover on a page a series of symbols - written language. Right away, just in the act of reading, I interpret meaning. This meaning is not inherent in these symbols, but is supplied entirely by my own thinking and imagination, and colored by my own life experience, prejudices and assumptions.

I have not entered into the author's mind. I do not see what he/she saw, nor do I know what she/he thought. I only know my interpretation.

This is a different experience from just looking at the book, at the sense experience. I know what a book is, what language and printing are and what a page is. These are sense objects. The ideas conveyed by the symbol system of the text are generated by me in a largely unconscious internal process seeking to reconstruct the imaginations and the thoughts of the author.

Let us consider something more familiar as an example. We read a novel. Later we see a film constructed by some others who have read and interpreted the novel. Often we do not agree with their interpretation. It has conflicted with our own personal envisioning.

Now let us consider something more familiar. We are in a study group, struggling (sometimes) to come to an consensus interpretation of a Steiner text. We do not always agree here as well. Are there differences between a novel, or a work of non-fiction, and a Steiner text on supersensible realities? Yes, many differences.

In a work of fiction the author is presuming he/she is creating something in my imagination. The whole art of the act of writing fiction is to give fuel to that process, to enable it. Yet, there are limits, and the limits are as much or more in the reader than in the author. Some characters need my sympathy, others my antipathy. Some situations require of me a similar experience in order to properly interpret the scene and its dynamics. Further, the author has the whole of the novel to create character, setting and the tension of the plot as its inhabitants move through it.

Moreover, the more I believe it, the stronger the feelings evoked in my soul. Where the author uses facts to create a scene I must consent to them. Where she/he uses insight into human nature to develop a character, I must buy into it. I participate at all levels in this creation in my imagination.

Even my motives in reading become a factor. One kind of novel lets me escape the drabness of my own life; another shows me a soul life and a world I would never otherwise know. The one fills my time, but leaves little trace. The other lifts (or drops) my heart and gives me the gift of an experience I can receive in no other way.

In the case of a non-fiction work, there is less appeal to the imagination (although such processes are still possibly active). Instead, my critical judgment is evoked; or not, if I do not properly participate. If I am a "true believer" the thoughts I am lead to will be accepted without doubt, assumed true, and therein after made a part of my world view. If I am more "objective" I will take the author's word with a grain of salt, withhold judgment and make some independent effort to verify.

In each case the work has stimulated inner activity on my part, but the images and the way I accept or reject them remains my own act. The author leads me to a world of thoughts, not unlike a traveler leading a newcomer to a place previously explored. Except, this is not the sense world, with its independent given, but rather the world of thoughts and ideas, which, we (as anthroposophists) have been told, are mere shadows of the world of spirit.

In the case of a novel, there remains only my imaginative attempt to follow the author's lead. I have been given an experience of which it is not necessary to examine the truth, as much as consent to it (the truths of literature often depend upon our reconfirming them within our own experience). In the case of a work of non-fiction, its truth is verifiable should I be willing to make the effort. In a work of the imagination there are no percepts to go with the concepts. In the case of a work of non-fiction, there are assumed to be percepts, if I were to trouble myself to seek them out.

In the case of the Steiner text, the percepts are beyond the threshold (supposedly), which places them at even a further distance then the usual non-fiction text. Not only that, but I don't even have this-world experiences that can be used by way of analogy. Whatever a Steiner text says, I remain within my self created images of what it means. I dare not confuse those weak and impotent images for the true percepts, the Presence, which is said to lie across the threshold. The map is not the territory.

Steiner was not unaware of these problems. Each lecture cycle reminds us that this transcribed work has not been corrected by the speaker. Again and again he enjoins us to not take his word for granted, but to exercise our own common sense and to verify everything, whenever possible, through our own efforts. He understands he is creating pictures (imaginations) of the spiritual world, but he insists we seek for objectivity, and in The Philosophy of Freedom he specifically warns against becoming captured by the concept - becoming so attached to an idea that we lose completely our objectivity. He has even said (The Boundaries of Natural Science) that the world would be better off with materialists who thought, than with anthroposophists who didn't.

Having now seemed to have tied myself up within my own soul, let us examine this from another direction. Let us grant for the moment that Steiner is accurately relating his experiences of the spiritual world, within those limits of language to which he so often referred. What has to have been sublime experiences, awesome in their subtlety and humbling reality, has been reduced by the initiate to abstract concepts - to the ordinary language of our age. Steiner has cognized for us - has given birth to the names of - beings and events we ourselves are unlikely to meet in our own lives. Carried upward by the language and the imaginative pictures, we are graced with thought-concepts for which we have not the related experience - percepts.

If thoughts are the shadows of things unseen, then at the least, with a Steiner text, we have shadows from objects (beings/events) with a deeper penetration of the truths of the invisible world. Steiner has told us that, armed with these concepts, our experiences in the life between death and a new birth will be different then it would be absent these ideas coming into our souls.

Granting a best result from this experience of these ideas (whose meaning and imaginative picturing remains products of my own activity) the best that is possible is the arising in my soul of a set of concepts in harmony with spiritual reality. Even so, I remain divorced from the actual perception of that reality by the laws of the threshold.

What then is the nature of my knowledge of the spiritual world? In terms of a science of knowing, what lives in my soul as a result of having traveled the thought-trails created by the spiritual researcher? Am I justified in saying to someone else, for example, that the Earth had three previous incarnations? Do I possess such factual knowledge? I don't think that I can do such a thing. Whatever I do know, it is not that; and, if it is not that, then what do I know?

I can say something on the order of..."Ruldof Steiner said...". But what could that mean to someone else? Further, in calling upon authority I am violating Steiner's own admonitions regarding this kind of knowledge - it is not to be based upon authority. In fact, the whole philosophic basis of anthroposophy turns me ever and again back upon myself as cognizer.

The question remains: Having ingested Steiner lecture cycles and texts, what do I in fact know about the spiritual world?

Up to this point I have specifically left aside what arises when one begins to undertake self development. Certainly this kind of work results in greater self knowledge, and, if I have been fortunate, there will begin to be various kinds of experiences of the threshold. We certainly do learn things on the anthroposophical path and this knowledge is of another order than that which we acquire/create in the reading of Steiner texts. What I have made my own, in this way, I can speak of as knowledge. The rest remains an interpretation, lacking direct experience, of someone else's reports from a far country.

Personally, I am unable to justify, to my conscience, failing to make a clear distinction between these two kinds of experiences: one direct and personal, the other indirect and interpretive. The first is knowledge, the second, because of the manner of its arising in my soul, cannot make the same claim.

What then happens in a study group when a Steiner text is read and discussed?

Here, I can only speak from experience, and give testimony that conversations with others have indicated that these experiences are not uncommon. Critical judgment is basically suspended and an assumption is lived out, that not only has Steiner given us the truth, but that as against all other authorities his view is the most perfect. Moreover, social pressure exists within these groups, especially upon the newcomer, to consent to these abuses of the ideals of a true science of knowledge.

In fact, a good portion of the dialogues I have been exposed to have contained, as a major theme, the never disputed proposition that Steiner has done a "great deed", always gives the perfect example or metaphor, never makes a mistake of fact, and is frequently spoken of in such glowing terms that one is tempted to pray to him as a minor deity.

There is no excuse for such behavior existing in anthroposophical groups. After over one hundred years of knowledge of the two main philosophical works noted at the beginning of this essay, the fact that study groups cannot carry out conversations, with the relevant philosophic self-discipline, means that not even the most basic fundamentals of anthroposophy have become understood.

Anthroposophy is not a content. Being anthroposophical is not about knowing about reincarnation and karma, or about the hierarchies, or the Saturn, Sun and Moon incarnations of the Earth. Being anthroposophical is about the method by which we form cognitions - the nature of the processes by which we "erkennen". Anthroposophy is not a what, it is a how.

"Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe." Rudolf Steiner, First Leading Thought. The word knowledge in this quotation is a translation from the German term: erkennen. This term is where we began this work, many thoughts ago; concluding then that knowledge of its meaning could only come from the experience of one's own soul life. To understand erkennen, one must catch one's self in the act of doing it.

Study groups generate and pass on, in their living and becoming, various practices and understandings. What lives in the present has roots in the past. That study groups lack a practical grasp of epistomological fundamentals, and even more saddening, that they also lack secure knowledge and practice of the reverse cultus (a theme too complex for this small essay), means only one thing: Within the most fundamental and common structure of the anthroposophical movement - the study group, anthroposophy does not exist.

New members imitate what they see, and rightly assume that what they see is anthroposophy. Critics judge us for what they see, and also rightly assume the same. At the turn of the millennium, just who are we fooling? My experience is that we are only truly fooling ourselves.

finis

Addendum: It may occur to the reader to wonder what do Waldorf teachers, or anthroposophical doctors do, for example, who study anthroposophy and make use of the many indications that Steiner has given. What is the nature of their knowledge?

Again, it depends upon the individual soul relationship to the concepts, the degree to which that individual soul is awake inwardly, and the nature of that soul's practice of epistomological discipline. In both the above cases, as well as other callings of a like nature, the soul can make a clear distinction between what Steiner has directed it to pay attention to and the actual phenomena of experience.

For example, the doctor is encouraged to see behind the various degrees of health and illness, which each patient brings to him or her, the activity of the subtle bodies, i.e., the etheric, the astral and the warmth or ego body. The experience generated by treating the patients with these ideas in mind creates the constant possibility of confirming the given indications. The same is true of the teacher, who will see, in the phenomena presented by the children, evidence confirming all that material about development and so forth which has been previously studied. As well, each discipline is directed to be awake to the intuitions formed inwardly in response to these sense phenomena; intuitions which are themselves an inward experience-phenomena, towards which one can have an objective and free relationship (i.e. philosophically disciplined).

This is also true for those of us who do not answer a professional anthroposophical calling. We know children, we follow the health and illness cycles within ourselves and within our families, and there is no reason not to make practical use of all the indications Steiner has provided over the many years of his life's work. But to do this in a truly anthroposophical way, we need to be awake to what is knowledge, and what, in reality, is an act of faith.

An act of faith is not a bad thing. All that Spiritual Science really calls for is for us to know the difference between the two and when we act on the basis of one, and not the other.

Science orients itself in the world through the application of doubt, even Spiritual Science. Science says, this is what I know objectively, and this is how I came to know it. Religion orients itself in the world through the application of faith. "Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed." John 20:29.

The healthy soul can (and should) contain both impulses, and be awake to and know the differences. They are not a contradiction, but rather complete and compliment each other. In fact, we could say that the art (imaginative core) of soul life is to integrate and unite the impulses toward science (reason) and religion (devotion).

The Anthroposophical Society:

is it a living social form?

    

Does it make any sense at all to talk about a social form, such as the Anthroposophical Society, as if it was living? What could that possibly mean? What qualities would a living social form need to have? What happens when one dies? How would one know this has happened? What is the role of the consciousness of the members of such a social form in the answering of such questions?

What is the proper model for a living social organism? The threefold social order, the human organism or some other pattern? What could be learned by looking to Goethe, either as an example, or a model? Rudolf Steiner held up the poet as the Ur-human being and he placed enthusiasm as an essential human quality: What can these ideas tell us?

Where is there a definition of life which would include social forms? Can any rational relationship be made between truly organic forms, and social organizations? Is it possible there is some other idea which belongs to social forms, but which has an order beyond the idea of life?

Another problem, one which is very central to the whole question, is: What does one do with the once-called daughter movements? Or in a broader vein: What do we include within the Society, in making the judgment as to whether it is living? Do we include or limit ourselves to any or all of the following: study groups, branch meetings, annual general meetings - local and national, Waldorf School communities, bio-dynamic farm communities, the Christian Community, Eurthmy performances or schools, the activities of regional or national councils, the activities of the Vorstand, the activities of the sections of the School of Spiritual Science, Camphill Villages and their relatives, and so forth. Where does the Society end and the Movement begin? Is there is a difference?

There would seem, at first blush, to be two general approaches to answering these questions. One approach would be Goethean, and would involve, first of all, intuiting a method of investigation appropriate to the phenomenal nature of the object of study. A second approach could be polar-Goethean (as described by Lawrence Edwards in his: Field of Forms), that is to work wholly with the ideal-abstract relationships.

Utilizing the first method, we could begin by inwardly beholding the "history" of the Anthroposophical Society from the Christmas Foundation meeting onward into the present. But how do we make the appropriate imaginations of those events? With the second method, we might assume, that following the Foundation meeting, the Society was in fact a living organism. From this we would have to assess what the later splitting processes (the breaking off of many of the national societies from the General Anthroposophical Society in the 1930's) meant to this living quality, and then what the reconfiguration in the 1950's and '60's meant as well.

Another method would be to form some kind of abstract idea of a living social form, and then look at the modern conditions of the Society to see if it met these criteria. In addition, one could poll the membership, to see what the nature of their perception of these questions was.

So many questions, so many ways to travel. For the purposes of at least having a starting point, let us begin with a small observation of this last - thoughts of a few of the membership on this subject.

In May of 1997, in Sebastabol California, the Western Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America met with a local group of members and friends for a weekend conference called "Spiritual Geography". Late on the Saturday, after many presentations on the theme, the Council met with those in attendance to discuss whatever was felt to be of importance.

After some "light" conversation, this writer spoke up and made the observation "...that from his point of view the Society was dead, and had been dead since, at least, before World War II. While there were many vital individual initiatives, these were simply growing in the ground made fertile by the rotting corpse...". After this the conversation grew more animated, and members of the Council later reported, during that period when the conversation spilled over into the dinner hour, that this was a common theme (the absence of 'livingness") heard by them in their travels.

During the conversation, one individual put it this way, with a great deal of feeling (I will paraphrase): "When I come to the Society I get much for my head, but nothing for my heart!" There were a number of variations on this theme - a common general sense of something being absent, and very much desired. Could this be life?

Perhaps this is our true guide, rather then all the earlier questions. We look at the present, and try to find signs of life - of something that has vital qualities. For example, what do we know about Nature, its vitality? It is attractive - we are drawn toward it. How go our meetings, in truth. Are they well attended? Do all members come, knowing something is going on there that is so essential to them they could not think of missing it?

How about a more subjective point of view? Do you feel needed, as if you would be missed if you did not come? Did you get a call after the last time you didn't go to a Society branch meeting, wondering if you were all right? Certainly all the Waldorf teachers can not carry on their work without attending branch meetings and drawing vital spiritual energy from the Presence which is evoked there. This is no doubt true for those anthroposophists in the Christian Community as well.

By the way, I am not being sarcastic. How can we call what goes on in branch meetings, which are the core meetings of a local anthroposophical community (see Statute 11: "As a general rule every member should join a Group."), living, when no one suffers who does not attend and we do not suffer when they are absent? Where is the feeling-tension that is the sign of all highly developed life.

As I struggled in the considerations of this essay, although I felt a certainty that (except in very rare localized cases) there was no life in the Anthroposophical Society, I had a difficulty forming a cognition as to where to go from there. Finally, in a study group meeting, where I was suffering through trying to communicate my conviction that the life of the group would be enhanced if people gave out of their own soul life, rather than concentrating on interpretations of Steiner texts (see above essay), the whole dilemma fell into place and I understood what was going on.

In the groups, and especially in the branch and other meeting-forums of the formal Anthroposophical Society, life does not exist because we are constantly killing it. Death forces are constantly flowing from our own souls into our group activities, disabling the natural life that would arise if we were to truly understand how we were called upon to conduct ourselves.

What are these death forces? How do they arise, and how may we act so as to no longer be killing the very vital elan' for which we are yearning?

These death forces arise whenever we do not rely upon our own knowledge and understanding - on what lives in us and we have made our own, and instead defer to some imagined truth which we attribute to Rudolf Steiner. It is the constantly evoked egregore of Steiner that kills the life in our groups and Society meetings. We manufacture a ghost, a shade, of Steiner, and place this shadow as the superior ideal before which our own soul understandings must give way. Who can compete with such a idol? In the deification and assumed perfection of the great initiate and the great deed, we erect a false god, whom we have come to worship and so violate the fundamental spiritual principle of the First Commandment: Thou wilt have no other Gods before me.

Let us consider this one more time. It is very crucial to understanding where Anthroposophy is today, and how it might proceed into the future in a more healthy and social way.

When a circle gathers, having as its intention to be anthroposophical, what is present? The primary element is the spirit and soul natures of the participants. Whatever happens in that circle is dominated by those presences. Granting, without assuming its truth, that various spiritual beings may be attracted to, and interested in, this activity, the intentions and practices of the human participants remains the determining factor.

Within the participants themselves - as individuals, it is the I, the ego, which is the essential reality. What the soul manifests, the I, or spirit, engenders. When you have a collection of egos, a group, what the group does collectively can vary considerably according to how the individual egos conduct themselves with respect to each other. Everyone is familiar with the both the positive and negative activities that can occur in groups, according to the moral qualities the ego practices in terms of listening, or not; dominating conversation, or not; and so forth.

Out of these activities the life of the group is formed and maintained.

Within anthroposophical groups something rather unusual is added, both consciously and unconsciously. Each individual brings, within their own soul life, some form of relationship to Rudolf Steiner. In addition, through those social collective processes, which groups engage in as a matter of course, the group will also form a certain relationship to Steiner. But the question needs to be asked: which Steiner? Steiner as a spiritual reality, as an ego presence himself (assuming he is still dis-incarnate), or an image of Steiner, both collective and individual, which has no relationship to Steiner as a reality, but derives its nature solely from unconscious and semi-conscious assumptions as to his nature, being, meaning and intentions.

This falsified image, self generated by the group and its separate individuals, is the egregore - a spiritual entity created by human activity, and which maintains its being through the gift of our worship and adoration, the feelings we create when we venerate this falsified image.

This being has no interest in us, as individuals or as a group. Its dynamics are entirely pathological; it acts only so as to continue its existence as a psychic parasite. All that is life in the group will eventually be absorbed by this egregore. Unless we awake to its presence, and its manifestations, and discipline our selves and our groups so that it is no longer fed.

The esoteric student is compelled, if he/she wishes to advance upon the spiritual path, to reflect frequently upon the past; and to be thorough and objective in looking at the failings and the weaknesses tolerated and given into. This is not done so as to indulge in self recriminations, but rather to learn, to grow, and to feel appropriate shame and remorse at one's misdeeds. These are the seeds and nutrients needed for further growth and development.

How can an esoteric Society not practice the same disciplines in its collective soul life?

The question was put to me in the meeting referred to above: "Okay, so the Society is dead, how to we resurrect it?"

First, admit there is no life. This ought to be done officially, although I do not expect the formal leadership to have the necessary courage. But, at least, in those groups were this essay has meant something, it would first be appropriate to speak and think together upon the fact of the absence of dynamic life within the group.

Please do not arbitrarily agree with me. Know it for yourselves, above all else. Then, if that comes about, and is in a mutually cognized form, then discuss how to practice the necessary group and individual disciplines which would enable individuals to speak more from their own experiences and that which they have made their own, and less and less in deference to the thoughts and ideas we imagine can be attributed to Rudolf Steiner.

In the beginning, I would suggest that people study Steiner at home, but do not bring the texts to the meeting. In fact, don't bring Steiner in any sense to the meetings. The temptation to quote or speak of an idea as coming from the "authority" needs to be resisted, and ultimately eliminated. I suspect individual groups will develop individual ways of helping each other end the habit of mutual worship of the idol, and learn to appreciate what is really living in each other's hearts as fellow human beings. Life is engendered in the group through admitting into the circle the heart felt concerns of each individual, irrespective of their familiarity with Steiner or Anthroposophy. The neophyte has as much to contribute to the life of the group as the long time practitioner.

finis

The "first reader's poll" can be found on my website at http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/oajnr.html, and is not included here.

           

           

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On the Practicalities of Communicating

the Ideal to the American Soul

There seems to be a growing awareness of the unconsciously participated relationship, in the American Anthroposophical Society, between the forces of the Central European Soul and the American Soul. These two Soul orientations exist side by side within the Anthroposophical Movement in America, but almost never is the nature of their mutual interaction discussed or written about in a practical fashion. It may now be appropriate to suggest some pragmatic considerations about how and why that working together could and should be carried out more consciously.

In what follows, it is the author's intention only to open a dialogue. No attempt is being made here to come to any final conclusions. The author considers these matters to be of utmost importance for the furtherance of anthroposophical work in America, especially considering the demands of the Age of the Consciousness Soul, and for that reason only wishes to begin a conversation, not to start an argument.

*

In another context (Waking the Sleeping Giant: the Mission of Anthroposophy in America, self published 1995) I have written about the differences between these two soul gestures as follows:

"The gesture of the American Soul is to see problems, to seek through the will to live on the Earth, and the intuitions of the thought life follow this will impulse. The need to accomplish the deed, brings in its train, the service of the active thinking, or any other conscious use of the inner life. The solving of the needs of the world as it is, becomes the cause by which the inner world is molded in the service of this will impulse.

"The gesture of the Middle European Soul life is to live inwardly in the ideal, to will in that realm first and often to rest in the achievement of results in this realm alone. This in itself is seen as a significant accomplishment. Later, an attempt may be made to conform earthly existence to appropriate elements of this ideally realized inner world. The outer world is then worked on in accord with what it ought to be, as that ought is conceptualized by the inner activity."

This hardly exhausts what could be said. For example, Valentin Tomberg, in his Early Writings, suggests that in lecturing to the American, one would have to speak about what had been done, about accomplished deeds. The Rudolf Steiner library in New York, on its list of Steiner references to America, at one time quoted Steiner as saying that Americans "come to anthroposophy naturally". In Steiner's, Challenge of the Times, he refers to the English speaking peoples as instinctively in the consciousness soul in their political life. There are many mysteries here - regarding the soul life of Americans and its relationship to other soul configurations, and I have often wondered why these remain so superficially explored within the circles of anthroposophical work in America.

As an American, who has read a number of writings of middle Europeans, and heard an equal number of lectures grounded in the same soul forces, I would not have any difficulty saying that the Central European Soul gesture is capable of creating the most beautiful and thoughtful word pictures. There is expressed out of this Soul an extraordinary capacity for presenting, in speech and writing, deep and penetrating pictures, not only of the natural world but of the ideal world as well.

Nevertheless, there is a subtle but significant difficulty with this.

As an American, when I experience these writings and lectures, in far to many instances my soul is made to turn away from the earthly world. If I give over the attention of my soul to such presentations, I am pulled up off the earth into a realm of ideas which seems luciferic, relative to its usual orientation. When the presentation is over, and my soul returns to its normal relationship to earthly existence, the after echo of the beautiful word pictures is unable to sink into my will. I've had a wonderful experience but I cannot translate it into deeds.

Further, I am tempted (in the absence of a conscious understanding of these facts and processes) to assume that this practice, the creation of beautiful word pictures, is an example of how one is anthroposophical, i.e. that the practice of anthroposophy is well represented by the ability to create these highly abstract, ideal, word pictures.

The truth is otherwise. As an American, I cannot unmake my soul, any more than I can unmake my temperament. To the extent that I assume that the ideal practice of anthroposophy is to follow, or to try to imitate the gesture of the Central European Soul, I lose my relationship to my own soul forces and to the Earth. This is true (that I am ill advised to imitate it) both, for the Central European Soul's speaking and writing, as well as its orientation for the practice of meditation. When such meditation practices are recommended to the American Soul, this latter soul is directed away from its own nature.

Some of the woeful conditions of the anthroposophical movement in America are due to this infection within the American Soul, i.e. the cooperated (both Souls are complicit in the unconsciousness of their relationship) imposition of forms of activity not suitable for it. Because the co-working of these two soul gestures has been allowed to proceed unconsciously, for many many years, the America Soul is unable to be fully present within anthroposophical work in America. The American Soul presently lives more strongly in the imitation of its Central European example, then it lives in its own forces.

What can be done?

Let us consider this problem as something which could be suitably discussed using the analogy of music - we are looking at different instruments and the problem of harmonizing their play. The two soul gestures are two kinds of instruments that can be played in an individual way, or together, and in this play they may consider the same theme or music or meaning.

There are very many questions. If the activity takes place in America, who chooses the music; that is, which soul's will originates the initiative the leads to the activity? If a Central European comes to America and inaugurates an initiative, will that result in the same kind of harmony, as if the originating will impulse came from the American Soul, and as part of its activity invited the Central European to participate in the mutual play?

What is the significance of various anthroposophical institutions in America having been lead for many years by Central Europeans? Can such soul forces actually bring their ideal impulse into the realm of the Earth here? Might not the earth forces here, the upward flowing forces from out of the center of the earth, push such impulses up into the luciferic, ungrounding them? What is the effect of these earth forces on the double of the Central European?

To perhaps better appreciate the importance of these questions, we would do well to imagine the reverse - that the American went to Europe and behaved the same way there that the Central European Soul has so often behaved here. In suggesting this imagination, I do not mean for just a passing moment; but instead to seriously enter into a contemplation of what such behavior would mean and how it would be received in Central Europe were the same activities, which have been carried out here, were to be carried out there

Out of the contemplation of these questions I have reached the broad, and admittedly over-general, conclusion, that only the American Soul should inaugurate impulses and lead institutions in America. Otherwise a disharmony will arise right in the very beginning. I believe such dis-harmonies have been the normal consequence for all those years that the relationship of these two soul gestures has remained unconscious.

How can these two gestures work in harmony? The first element required is, I believe, for those, who come to America from another folk, to approach their working here in a particular way, that is to realize that they stand before a Mystery. To assume, for example, as has no doubt often been done, that one has knowledge of anthroposophy which one could teach, is to confuse two very different qualities.

Deep self knowledge does not necessarily prepare one for entering into the soul life of another human being, particularly if that person or group is from a significantly different folk. Anthroposophy is grown from inner work, and one, who is not conversant with the soul workings of another people, should not presume to teach that people how their own soul functions, or how it will best take up its own development.

Rudolf Steiner more nearly represented the universally human then most men or women of this century, but that quality is not conferred through the mere study of anthroposophy. It is as difficult to obtain as it is to reach the level of Steiner's researches into the supersensible. For us, more ordinary seekers, we need to first plumb the hidden depths of our own folk soul, before moving beyond it into the universally human.

Nor should we confuse this problem with the impulse to nationalism. Nationalism places one or more idealized image of a particular folk in a position of relative greater importance. The idea of the nation, or the place, or the culture is idolized. To enter more deeply into my soul, recognizing its particular folk characteristics, is simply to practice self knowledge, exactly as esotericism requires. Just as self knowledge requires that I appreciate my temperament and all that that implies, so does the path of self knowledge require that I bring to consciousness those characteristics of my soul life that I share in common with the folk of whom I am a member.

This does not mean that the Central European Soul has nothing to say or do in America. The question is more subtle. Initiatives belong to the folk of the place. Only such impulses connected to place will be grounded in the soul climate living there. But that does not mean, those gifts belonging to another folk have no role to play. However, they must have the self disciplined patience to wait to be included, much the way a guest in one's home, does not suddenly take over the running of the kitchen; and, even if asked, they must appreciate their limitations, and be awake to when they need to consult with their hosts as to what should be done next.

To the extent that these gifts of another folk are granted in the service of the folk of the place, the harmonizing process can begin. In this way nothing foreign is imposed from the outside. But we cannot serve out of our own initiative. Only the stranger-other can guide us to his or her true needs.

Can such service be performed in leading one or another anthroposophical institution, even if asked? The history of the Movement in America is full of such examples: Central Europeans have been given the task of running many activities here.

Certainly what's done is done. Has there been a price? If I constantly give over my own thinking to another individual to perform, I will never develop my own judgment. The cost of the mutually unconscious presumption, that the gesture of the Central European Soul could suitably lead institutions in America, has been a corresponding lack of development of those American souls who might have carried these tasks themselves; as well as, the failure to discover those modes of practice and objectives of work which would be indigenous to the American Soul.

It is this last which has become the most tragic consequence. By and large anthroposophical work in America is imitative of that work originally began in the once-called daughter movements in Europe, e.g. Waldorf Schools, bio-dynamics, and so forth. Only in the striving for a renewed star wisdom (astrosophy) and its reaching for a new cosmogony, does an impulse belonging to the unique relationship, which the American Soul has to Anthroposophia, come to a more visible expression. Almost all the impulses belonging to the great spiritual awakening in America, which occurred in the sixties and seventies, have been left outside the anthroposophical movement here. As I said to one enlightened European friend in the eighties: "When I go to an anthroposophical meeting, I must check my American Soul at the door.".

This is not to suggest, by the way, that there is no American Work going on, for that is certainly not the case. Rather what has happened, is that this work is marginalized and presumed inferior in import, when the opposite is true. The true practice of anthroposophy ought to bring to the fore these latent gifts of each unique people and make the development of these talents the central mission of anthroposophical work within each folk who take it up. I can find nothing in Rudolf Steiner's work suggesting that each folk should become the spiritual clones of Central European cultural life.

When this absent development is added to the impulse to imitate the foreign soul gesture in speaking and writing, by assuming it represents true anthroposophical practice, then these two, in combination, lame the anthroposophical impulse in America, and drive out the deeper potential gifts of the America Soul.

Even though these facts may make some individuals uncomfortable, they must nevertheless be directly faced, otherwise their continuance will be fatal for anthroposophy in America, and prevent the American Soul's natural genius from coming to serve the world-wide anthroposophical impulse.

Moreover, it is not as if we did something wrong! We acted unconsciously, with those natural results that come from unconsciousness. Now it is time to reflect and to wake up. We are, after all, in the age of the Consciousness Soul, and we have no reason for expecting any other kind of process: Sleep, leading to pain, leading to an awakening.

*

Considering the future and what might be done, I can only offer a few small suggestions. Everyone really has to work out these things for, and among, themselves.

Is it possible for the Central European Soul to present word pictures that can be taken up by the will of the American Soul? I think so, but to make such an encounter work would require some effort and awakening.

Let's deal with a practical example. In a fairly recent issue of the Newsletter there is a very beautiful ideal contemplation, written by Friedemann Schwarzkopf, called, Spiritual Communion. This is a wonderful example of all that one can wish for out of the Central European Soul.

It is very difficult to read, however. In a way the problem is a matter of spiritual breath, of soul respiration. My American soul has hard time maintaining its contact with this ideal realm continuously. Because I am more naturally related to the earthly and the concrete, to live in the ideal, requires of my soul a kind of holding of its breath. It can be done, yet I question if it ought to be done. In order to actually bring it into myself, in a healthy way, I need to take the ideal in small amounts and then withdraw.

I rise up, I behold, I withdraw, then I assimilate and make concrete. The four stages of breathing - movement, pause, movement, pause. Because the writing itself remains constantly in contact with the ideal it can't support my natural rhythm. Suppose the writing followed this rhythmical form, which corresponds to my soul life: That is, it begins in the concrete and rises up into the ideal, pauses and contemplates, then withdraws and descends again into the concrete and comes to rest there, before repeating itself.

In this way I am aided in my struggle to come to terms with what has been written. With this help, what lives in the writer/speaker's soul approaches me as I am, and I can reach up to meet it, taking it in deeply, the way one takes in deeply a breath of fresh air, or gets carried to places in the soul unreachable without the inspiration of the symphony. The theme, the meaning, has been written for me.

If I were to write or speak to the Central European Soul, would not the same process work, if only I invert the rhythm? I need to begin in the ideal, then move to the concrete, the earthly, pausing there to unveil my understanding of its nature. Then rising again, I return to the ideal, creating a space of rest, so that what I have pointed to in the concrete can be taken in, savored and digested.

What about meditation practice? Without doubt the American Soul should practice meditation, but we should not assume that is sufficient. Certain alchemical transformations of the American Soul can only occur in connection with its activity in the outer world. These same transformations would be accomplished by the Central European Soul by its working on itself during meditation.

The American Soul is lead by the call its will feels to respond to the needs of the world. Transformation requires action, requires giving heed to this call, following it. Following this will impulse the American Soul awakens. Only following this will can soul phenomena arise of which the American Soul needs to become conscious. These soul phenomena are not present in the absence of this striving willing. They cannot be found in contemplation or meditation.

Rather than an emphasis on meditation practice, inner development in the American Soul can best be fostered by working to take that small step implied by the idea that Americans are natural anthroposophists and that English speaking people are instinctively within the consciousness soul in their political life (see references above). This step is made by realizing that not meditation is called for, but rather the metamorphosis of thinking, especially as regards that thinking which the concrete needs of the Earth call forth in the service of the willed response of the America Soul to those needs.

In support of the reader's exploration of these matters I can only give what has evolved out of my own practice, which I have come to call: sacramental thinking. In this style of thinking are two aspects: first the objective, as called forth by the willed response to the needs of the Earth, which determines what I need to think about; followed by, second, the process, by which I carry out this thinking in a fully conscious (consciousness soul) way.

In what follows are only the barest indications. The reader very much needs to experience their own activity and its consequences, forming their own conclusions as to which objectives and what processes are most suitable for them.

a) Preparation: these are exercises, such as those practices in control of thoughts, developing inner quite (meditation practice plays a role here) and so forth. Its like the stretching one must do before beginning serious physical exercise.

           b) Sacrifice of thoughts: letting go preconceptions; overcoming habitual patterns. Nothing will prevent new thoughts from arising, as easily as already believing one knows the answer.

           c) Refining the question: the moral atmosphere, why do we want to know; fact gathering and picture forming. It is an artistic activity. What moral color do I paint my soul, what factual materials do I gather as I prepare to form an image - i.e. think in all that that act can imply.

           d) Offering the question: acknowledging Presence, and not needing an answer. Tomberg urges us to learn to think on our knees.

           e) Thinking as a spiritual Eucharist: receiving and grace. We do not think alone. It thinks in and with me (Steiner).

           f) Attitude: sobriety and play.

*

In writing this essay it has not been my intention to criticize the quite complicated history of the interaction in America of these two soul gestures. Rather, it is my desire that we no longer sleep in the face of these realities, and, further, that over time a healthy dialogue manifest itself between the Central European and the America (as well as other folk gestures as well) concerning the differences in orientation and how they may be brought into harmony with each other.

Rudolf Steiner has advised us that much that can be done, in the world, will depend upon the East, the Center and the West learning to work together, recognizing their individual genius and capacities, and finding out how to bring them into harmony in mutually supportive activity. In the above, which I conceive of only as the bare beginning of a much overdue co-operative reflection on the co-working of the various soul gestures, nothing yet has been said concerning that near-divine music which is sure to result when that Soul instrument, which lives in the East, can enter into this mutual play as well.

*************************

 scenes from the eye of the heart - a meditation on:

- Dan Dugan, PLANS, Waldorf Education,

and the battle for the future of the soul -

Morning (or night), the alarm clock goes off (or the cock crows, or the cell doors unlatch) and the peace and rest of sleep depart. Another day (or nighttime period of wakefullness) is born.

With morning, each person (or self, or I, or human being) confronts again the individual pattern and texture of their life. No two of these lives are alike in the meaning of their wholeness, although they often bear superficial similarities.

For example, many women bear children. All human beings are born and then die. More men die in war as combatants, than do women. All human beings have thoughts and feelings, an invisible inner life known intimately, as to its specific content, only to each individual.

*

Two people watch, while a third person opens the hood of a car. Only the third person is an experienced mechanic, the two observers being a parent (owner of the car) and a child (happily late for school, because the car broke down).

All three look under the hood. Only the mechanic understands (sees with his mind) what is seen visually, even though all three have a common sense experience - see the same external materiality.

The parent sees (understands) a terrifying mystery, which has left him/her feeling helpless, late for school and for work. The child sees a wondrous mystery; and, if left to her/his own instincts, might well drown the mechanic in a thousand questions. The mechanic sees work, income, a puzzle to be solved. If the parent is poor, or a late payer, there is an additional unspoken context.

*

There is a name, famous, if you will: Jesus Christ. To some he is a myth, to others a personal god, to others still a prophet, and to not a few, an irrelevancy.

 

What is the point of the above capsule meditations?

It is this: While to be human involves much shared and common experience, each individual life is unique, both inwardly and outwardly, in its ideal content, its emotional texture, and its moral purposes.

*

One characteristic that is shared by human beings is to over generalize. Whites do this. Blacks do that. Science knows this. Christians don't know that. Anthroposophists believe this. Waldorf critics think that.

Whenever a noun is made plural and a general class created (tree becomes trees becomes forest), the individual and the specific is lost sight of. What is true about a forest, may not be true of pine trees. What is true about an oak, may not be true of the woodland ecology. I, as an individual, who is also a member of the class - anthroposophist, may share many characteristics of others who would give themselves the same name. At the same time, I share characteristics with those who are not anthroposophists and many characteristics with Waldorf critics.

*

As an individual moves through physical space, they each carry with them attitudes, ways of understanding, emotional habits, behavior patterns and points of view, whose total mixture is unique to them. It is as if each person were surrounded by a individually created living crystal egg through which they experience the world.

When two people meet, social conventions of time and place (work, home, school, saloon etc.) allow for interaction; that is: conversation, verbal and non-verbal (gesture, touch, eye contact and so forth). This interaction occurs in spite of enormous differences in nature, background and experience. It is almost a miracle, that we can communicate (although very frequently we do not, and instead misunderstand, confuse, and misread).

Depending upon the degree of familiarity, the more complex inner truths of each individual often do not meet. Even long time friends, or partners, will come upon unexpected matters, and much is often secret and private (and this accepted as needing to be this way).

*

Members of the same family, community, culture, language group, nationality, race, religion, philosophy, or discipline will share some specifics of inner life in common.. This common experience can become a source of emotional bonding across other barriers of difference.

Two anthroposophists, who both love the same book (for example, Steiner's Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception) will have much to share; as will two Waldorf critics, whose act of questioning their school's unusual philosophy was met with rejection and denial.

*

The totality of our individual ideal context, emotional texture and moral purposes will be shared with no one; but often great parts will be shared with a few, and small segments with many.

Associations of common content and purpose arise from encounters between individuals with similar experiences.

*

Sometimes interactions between individuals and/or groups of dissonant interests arises. These easily become acrimonious, and historically often end in violence.

Wars are fought over ideas, emotional slights, pieces of property and often simply the desire to dominate, one individual or group over the other.

*

In these wars, whether they are merely emotionally violent, or physically as well, human beings often justify their self interest by claiming a higher moral ground. One or the other claims to know "the truth", or be "right", or to be correcting a "wrong". In contrast, the other is declared deceitful, wrong, incorrect, manipulative, or otherwise dehumanized.

Both sides pretend there is some factual place to stand, which permits the egotistical statement: "I know better than you.". Even history, which seems to decide, after the fact, the right side of some disputes, is often revised and a view once held is later changed.

This dissonant encounter between individuals and groups can lead one to wonder whether there actually always exists an objective place from which to say: "This one is right, and this one is wrong.". Or, is there something else involved altogether?

*

As someone who has spent most of my life living with the above riddle, I would like now to share how I view this situation of individual and group point of view, both common and dissonant. I am not making an argument, but simply unfolding the conceptual frame of reference in which I view this general fact (a fact mirrored in the particular instance of the Waldorf critics list, PLANS, and the Waldorf School movement).

*

At a certain point in my life I began to realize that these clashes of points of view existed within the general context of history, and that certain elements of them were in movement. This fact can be thought, if this general condition was inwardly beheld - thought about pictorially - over time).

Ideas have historical development - birth, life and death - to be brief. This "history of ideas" allows for a maturation of the ideas themselves. The clashing (dissonant interactions of individual believers and groups) serves often as a refinement process - a fact most notable in modern science, but which also occures in other spheres. Of course, some ideas are refined at such a slow rate of change (particularly religions ideas), that they can seem constant over several centuries.

Beneath the surface of these changes in the "history of ideas", was another element of the clashing, which was not fixed, but also in movement.

Human nature changes over time, and individual human beings grow inwardly within their own lifetime. That field which studies the former, the evolution of consciousness, understands this as a general trend (see O. Barfield, Saving the Appearances: a study in Idolatry; and, G. Richter, Art and Human Consciousness).

Thus, we have two elements in movement: ideas and human consciousness. This last (human consciousness), in ways both general and individual.

*

Clashing (human interactive dissonance) refines ideas and changes the people who clash.

From this point of view, the interaction between Waldorf (as a community) and its critics and skeptics, is a valid organic and moral social process. This is how traditions and schools of thought arise, become a dominant paradigm and then are succeeded by another complex of beliefs and knowledge. For example, in an individual life, this process manifests in ways like the below:

If Dan Dugan contributes by being true to himself, even if he falls into zealotry or veneality or succumbs to prejudice, these flaws are personal to him and for which correction will naturally arise from the wider aspects of the social and moral system within which he acts;

If Joel Wendt contributes by being true to himself, even if he falls into dogmatism, emotional prejudging, or misrepresentation of facts, the same dynamics provides a corrective.

*

These correctives of the self are personal and individual, and do not apply to any general class. How Dan or Joel (to continue the example) relate to the way the world responds, to what they put out into it, is basically their own business. There are no outside absolute standards beyond what each, in his or her own freedom, chooses to measure themselves by. It is through such self chosen processes that individual human growth occures.

Over time, such individual changes as these become merged into streams of alterations within the wider social and historical courses of development. Gross historical change, such as the coming into being of the New World, following the rediscovery of the Americas, carries along the individuals who act upon such a stream and are likewise acted upon by it.

*

A question could be asked: What ideas are being refined through the clash involving Waldorf and its critics?

This again is individual. Whether skepics and critics learn something from anthroposophists, or vice versa, depends upon individual choices.

I would hope, revealing here a personal bias, that dogmatic anthroposophy would retreat and that certain institutions which promote it would reform themselves.

In an effort to make a contribution to such a process (the correction of matters within the anthroposophical movement) I will close this with a brief meditation on:

active cognition as an organ of perception

(Those of the critics and skeptics persuasion should realize that were I to attempt to write the following for their community - an unlikely act, by the way - I would not do it in the fashion below, which assumes certain common points of understanding as already tends to exist within the anthroposophical community.)

In America, it is my view, that something, much easier to come to and understand as a practical inner art, has been misrepresented and made to appear farther out of reach then it is in fact. This confusion has arisen because the principle teachers (European anthroposophists) lacked both the capacity to understand the folk character of those they presumed to teach, and how the content they wished to teach should be placed before that folk.

This more general confusion then has strongly infected, in particular, Waldorf teacher training and, as a result, has engendered the response of the critics and skeptics in America, who, upon meeting Waldorf, should have encountered something familiar and inviting and instead met something dogmatic and sectarian.

*

The core teaching of anthroposophy is the art of conscious refinement and evolution of individual insight. Its basics are the central soul development of this epoch (the age of the consciousness soul).

It is not necessary to approach this abstractly, as an ideal to be striven for (the method of the central European folk), because in America this soul condition is a natural birthright. It is, in the main, already present, and really only needs to be looked at and given its true name. The American already does it, albeit instinctively.

What is called for is simply to point a finger and say: "See what you are doing naturally. Now do it on purpose."

Moreover, this instinctive consciousness soul act is so present, one can easily point again and again to its product within American culture (for example: Amory Lovins, Theodore Rozsak, the television writer David Kelly). It involves the degree of self awareness of congitive processes, and the moral character that informs them. Just as the presence of a magnetic field organizes a undifferentiated mass of iron filings, so also do soul qualities reveal themselves in the product produced by that soul.

The problem has arisen because anthroposophy is taught as if it were a given point of view (set of concepts) and not as an already existing semi-conscious activity (way of thinking), needing an awakening

Those who are heavily influenced by the former then look within their own soul at memory (Rudolf Steiner says) for answers to questions, rather than to their own insight (active cognition)..

This not only makes one a dogmatist and sectarian, but it also lames the individual insight by making it perceive itself as lower (less enlightened) than the teacher - the great initiate.

Conscious active cognition (insight) has to be used (exercised) in order to develop. It is first a skill, then a craft, and finally an art.

It can be described this way: The spirit (ego) beholds the world as a mixed sea of experiences, in which the meanings of the experiences are given by the act of the ordering of the concepts. Using the will (limb) power of the soul, the spirit draws forth the light of its own insight as the concepts which it then shines on the mixed sea of experience, in giving them their meaning. (The mixed sea of experience includes what is experienced through the senses and what is perceived inwardly, within the soul, by the active cognizing of the spirit.)

If the spirit draws a concept from memory, it will not cast this light, but instead a shadow, which takes the mixed sea of experience and places in front of it an obscuring cloud.

Experience is then seen in terms of the cloud's shadow and not in the light which arises when the spirit forms concepts from its own insight directly.

*

This is true as regards all knowledge mediated through an external source (from something other than one's own insight, whether from a scientist, a spiritual researcher, priests, parents, spouses, etc.) Only primary knowledge (from one's own insight) casts light. Secondary knowledge (imagined interpretations of another's meanings) only casts shadows.

In regard to the title of this paper, especially the term battle: It is my view that, unless the words soul and spirit are returned to common social vocabulary, as specific references to (concepts for) the relevant part of our ordinary experience (which is inward, as against the outwardly given objects of the sense world), we will lose contact with our own essential nature, as a social community.

Soul is not an imagined entity, but an aspect of our immediate experience (See, for example: The Soul's Code, James Hillman; and, The Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore). Without a social finger again pointing (the words soul and spirit), we (humanity) may cease to look inward and come to terms with all that manifests only there (such as concept formation, emotional texture - self created mood, and moral purpose).

Imagine raising children in a world where their naturally rich and vivid imaginations are repressed as subjective illusions, and the only real things stated to exist are what is described on computer screens, with all primary experience mediated and conceptualized by secondary centralized authorities.

Waldorf communities and the PLANS community share the desire to avoid any such dark future, from whatever authority. Dan Dugan refused to let dogmatic anthroposophy (a secondary authority) tell him what is true. I believe Rudolf Steiner would see this act as heroic.

            

[Addendum: since this was written I have returned twice to the Waldorf Critics discussion list.  During my last visit it was clear that a certain amount of degeneration in the quality of interaction has occured, with a number of personalities having left the discussion, while the few remaining become more and more outrageous in the degree of their rigidity of mind and forms of personal attack.  It appears that what was originally a healthy impulse has fallen into difficulties.  For a good examination of various related issues visit the website of Sune Nordwall.]

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Anthroposophy in the Light of America:

- what the American Soul needs from the Anthroposophical Movement -

In March of 1997, I gave a poorly attended talk (I am not a recognized personality within the Anthroposophical Movement) in San Francisco, with the above title. The talk consisted of two parts: one: the shadow side of the Anthroposophical Movement; and, two: the Mystery of America. As there are certain themes which were expressed there, that are not expressed elsewhere in my anthroposophical writings, I have recollected them as best as possible from my notes and my memory, and given a short version below.

In creating the above title for the presentation, it was certainly on my mind to reverse the usual relationship of certain ideas, namely that subjects are often placed in relationship to anthroposophy (as in: World History in the Light of Anthroposophy - lectures by R. Steiner; and, The Other America: the West in the light of Spiritual Science - writings of Carl Stegmann) rather than the opposite. In the case of this talk, it was my intention to speak of Anthroposophy as it could be seen by the forces of the American Soul, bathed in that light, rather than the reverse, which is the current habit of thought within the Anthroposophical Movement.

In writing the following I have added a few small matters as seemed appropriate, that were not in the original presentation (other matters have also been left out, both due to the different modus of expression - speech vs. writing - and, the simple fact that they have been forgotten).

a meditation on the shadow

In the talk I gave, I mentioned four characteristics of the shadow, first establishing that it exists as a series of temptations within individual members of the anthroposophical society/movement, and this shadow accomplishes its work on the larger scale, because so many of the membership are asleep in these matters, thus the individual effects are multiplied and reinforced.

The first is the temptation/tendency to deify Rudolf Steiner. The most serious consequence of this is the failure to develop within ourselves those capacities which would arise if we were to exercise our own judgment, rather then defer to Steiner.

The antidote to this temptation is to form a true picture of Steiner, through inner work. For example one can contemplate inwardly the moment, when at about the age of twelve, Steiner shared in an essay his experience of being able to follow, into the spiritual world, a favorite teacher who had recently died. This sharing was rejected. Those around him could not appreciate Steiner's youthful clairvoyance, and thus begins his silence about his inner life, not broken until his forties, when he begins to participate in the life of the theosophical society. There are other matters that should be contemplated, as well.

For example, at the end of his life, either Ita Wegman or Marie Steiner, came into Steiner's room (he would die in the next day or two) to ask his advice about some matter of concern. He did not respond, and turned his back. We should contemplate how often he was asked to give advice, and how frequently that asking was derived from a failure to be willing to be responsible on the part of others. This is a mirror image of "the doctor has said" impulse still so strongly alive today; except that at that time, it was his life forces that were exhausted by those unwillling to use their own insight.

The second tendency is the denial of Valentin Tomberg, the refusal to recognize that the spiritual world offered another initiate to the Society, following Steiner's death. The most serious consequence of this, is the failure to understand the religious impulse in the soul (exemplified by Tomberg) as well as to fail to appreciate the relationship of this religious impulse to the scientific impulse (exemplified by Steiner).

The antidote to this temptation is to contemplate the question of whether, in the time of the Etheric Return of the Christ, only one individual would offer service to the working of the Christ in the modern age. Working inwardly with this question leads one to an appreciation that Steiner's clairvoyant view was from spiritual heights, while Tomberg's spiritual view was from spiritual depths, from within the Passion, not outside it, observing it. These two different cosmic experiences lead to different paths and tasks in life, and from this flows all those differences between Steiner and Tomberg that are so clearly justified, once this is understood. A further implication of this understanding is the recognition that there yet remains to reveal itself, another view, a third encounter with the Christ - that of breadth. Will the one who experiences this view have a cosmic experience, or will it necessarily be purely earthly - an artistic expression of the Christ Impulse within modern life?

The third tendency is the subversion of the impulse to community brought about by the too close relationship between the membership of the Society and the Christian Community, and the failure to sufficiently foster the reverse cultus as the needed antidote to the dangers involved. The most serious consequence of this is the encapsulating of Society social structures; their closing themselves off from the outside world, and becoming increasingly inbred in their thought structures, because they are so incestuously focused on only the thoughts of Steiner.

The antidote to this temptation is to be found in the contemplation of the complete rightness of non-anthroposophical views. This is not a rightness as against any supposed absolute spiritual facts, but rather an existential rightness, due to the fact that the views of others are in accordance with their karma and individual needs. This contemplation will lead to an appreciation of the need of the anthroposophist to kneel before the views of others and offer service, rather then to stand superior, or to have a more correct view. Only such an attitude will remove the catastrophic dogmatism and sectarianism that presently pervades the interface between anthroposophical and mainstream culture.

The fourth tendency is the colonization of America, what I also called the impulse to spiritual imperialism, which has turned the working centers in America into basically poor imitations of anthroposophically textured central European cultural life. The most serious consequence of this is that the America Soul is unable to bring the unfolding of its treasures within the anthroposophical movement, which would greatly benefit the world wide impulse.

The antidote to this temptation is the contemplation of the threefold nature of the world, and how that soul differentiation is musical in nature, requiring of us an appreciation of the individual gifts of each folk. When this contemplation focuses on the American Soul, without prejudging this naturally intuitive will, understanding can arise as to the social and temporal tendencies of modern life, which allows a renewal of the anthroposophical impulse to be carried outward into the wider world on the shoulders of the natural social genius of this intuitive will.

The redemption of the shadow would bring about the following: Overcoming the deification would result in the soul's possessing clear thinking. Overcoming the denial would result in the soul's possessing the devoted heart. Overcoming the subversion would result in the opening up of the closed circle - the will now directed outward and including the rest of the world. The overcoming of the colonization - imperialism, would bring anthroposophy before the whole world in the most healthy way, for it is the social genius of the American Soul which knows how to bridge the gaps between individuals, peoples and cultures.

a meditation on the mysteries of America

The American Soul is not so difficult to come to knowledge of, if one is careful not to bring previously arrived at ideas to the table. Within anthroposophical work in America, certain themes stand out for their not being investigated. Given that anthroposophical work in America is captured by the forces of the central European Soul, it is not the work which is done in anthroposophical circles in America that should draw our attention, but rather the work that is not done.

When was the last time the Western, as a cultural artifact, was examined within anthroposophical circles. It has not, yet just in this - the Western - is the great Myth, the deep intuition of the America Soul, laid bare and explored over and over again. At the most, the tendency has been to study the transcendentalists, such as Emerson; or to study Emily Dickinson, or Melville. Yet these are studied because they still honored (to varying degrees) the cultural life of the old world: essays, poetry and novels. Only the Western, especially in film, is purely a new world invention, and carries within itself the open secrets of the American psyche.

Consider John Wayne: Imagine him standing, with that sideways slant of shoulders, thumbs tucked in his pistol belt, uttering the classic Western line: "A man's gotta do, what a man's gotta do." What could this mean? What might be hidden there, in plain sight? To answer this question we need to consider the plot of the Western: What is it, as an archetype?

First we have a community, and in that community the presence of Evil. Second the community is unable or unwilling to act. This creates necessity for the moral individual. His/her choice is simple. Cowardice, or courage; selfcenteredness or self sacrifice (after all, death can be the result of any action - this fear of death is what paralyzes the community.

The statement, seen often as a cliche, can be more clearly written: "A man has to do, what a man has to do". The repeated parts are not actually repetitions, because each aspect means something slightly different. The first part refers to the moral imperative: the choice - a man (someone) has to act, or fail before his/her own conscience. The second part refers to the act needed, which is determined by necessity. One has to do (in order to live with conscience) that which is needed (necessity) to be done. [subsequent to this being on the internet, a correspondent wrote a rather remarkable, and much deeper, examination of this seeming cliche'.  It is well worth reading and can be found here.]

Combining these ideas we can see that the Western is an exploration of the theme of the dilemma of individual conscience in the face of Evil in the social world (the community). What better description could we have for the social conscience and generosity characteristic of the American Soul?

The greatest modern investigator of this theme is Clint Eastwood. His films, both Western and Cop movies (which are just Westerns in modern times), continually explore this problem, the relationship between individual conscience and the presence of evil in the community. The films run from the clearly mythical (Pale Rider) to the existential (Unforgiven) to the light hearted (Bronco Billy). When his work is studied at Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento California, we will have begun to come to terms with the shameful misrepresentation of the America Soul, by central European anthroposophists.

The American Soul sleeps, but not so deeply it does not dream. I implied this in my essay: Waking the Sleeping Giant. I would now like to look a little bit at television, to discover what mysteries lay there, again as an open book for those willing to look with an unprejudiced heart.

Consider Star Trek. Two and third years of one hour dramas produced during the 1966, 1967 and 1968 television seasons. Then canceled. Now a cultural giant. Two present series on television at present (Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager). A third, Star Trek: the Next Generation, ran seven years, and is now in syndicated repeats in every market. Eight or nine feature length films (I've begun to loose count). Conventions, books, websites, thousands of commercial products. Is this just space opera run amok? Or was a cord struck? Did something touch the dreaming American Soul?

The first series had three main characters: Captain Kirk (actor William Shatner), the alien science officer Spock - he of the pointed ears (actor Leonard Nimoy) and the doctor, McCoy (actor Deforest Kelly). All three were part of the crew of the starship Enterprise as it explored the universe, "going where no man has gone before".

Each show ended with a conversation between the three, often humorous, a lighthearted commentary on the drama just undergone. As the show developed its characters (a typical television literary necessity) over time, each became a distinctive voice, representative of a specific approach to the problems each episode brought. Kirk was the man of action, ready to rush in, to do what needed being done. Spock was the thinker, contemplative, rigorous of logic, refusing of emotion. McCoy was the empath, he saw the other side of things, what lay at the heart.

Later, when the seasons were over, and many conventions with fans had come and gone, William Shatner was to remark, in getting ready to direct the fifth feature length Star Trek film (The Final Frontier), that what the fans told them they most liked was the relationships between the three, but beyond that no one had a clue as to the reason for the series popularity.

Yet, with anthroposophical sensitivity it is clear. Spock-thinking, McCoy-feeling, Kirk-willing. The threefold soul, laid bare by the dreaming American Soul in a cooperatvie work of television drama. To verify this all one has to do is watch a good selection of reruns (a single episode is not adequate), and you will see the inner dialogues of the soul, as to how to relate to the problems each episode presents, spoken outwardly in the discussions between the three leading characters.

As would be expected, this being an American dramatic series, the Will man, the man of action, is the leading character, while the Thinker, the man of logic alone, is his primary support. The weakest character is the heart man, the doctor, consistent with the underdevelopment in the America Soul of the life of Feeling. [As an aside, it should be noted that this underdevelopment began to be corrected by those changes introduced into popular psychology in America during the 1960's. Thus, future generations are not the same, although this kind of change occurs very slowly. Here lies a whole other story, however.]

Consider Star Trek: the Next Generation. Seven years of dramas, two important themes woven in.The first theme, a matter generally explored in every episode: What does it mean to be a human being. Again and again this is explored, sometimes quite expressly.

There was an episode: The Measure of a Man, which approached the question of whether the regular character, Data, an android, was sentient. If he was just a machine, then he could be experimented on. The issue, dramatised as a trial, turned not on proving or disproving Data's sentient character, but whether the humans, who were deciding the issue, gained or lost something from their own humanity, by treating Data as a lesser form of existence, a potential class of slaves.

There was another level to this question (what does it mean to be human), which was posed right in the first episode (Encounter at Farpoint), in which a god-like character is introduced: "Q". This character appeared in several episodes, and again in the last (All Good Things). As an archetype, "Q" is Mephastopholies to Captain Picard's Faust (Picard, played by English actor Patrict Stewart, is Captain of a new version of the starship Enterprise). This "captain" is no longer a man of action, but a new renaissance man, cultured, a natural diplomat.

In the final episode (All Good Things), Picard has one last confrontation with "Q". As the scene is played, Picard is sitting, and "Q" is standing over him. "Q", first pointing off into space says to Picard (something on the order of): "You know mon capitan, what you are searching for is not going to be found out there, the real adventure is in here." at which point "Q" pokes his finger at Picard's chest. [I have recently discovered that this is not quite accurate, but haven't had the chance to examine a video tape of the performance to reconsider what was just written - therefore the reader is advised, for the time being, to read the above with the proverbial grain of salt.] An interesting idea, wouldn't you say, for a series that seems to be all about outer space on the surface, but turns out (once one gives up one's biases) all about inner space, instead. Consciously? No, remember, the America Soul sleeps and dreams.

More could be said, however, it is my hope that with these words, the reader might begin to see that American culture, the expressions of the American Soul, is not spiritually empty, as so many believe of that which is original to the new world. Rather it simply sleeps and dreams, and from this sleeping dreaming, intuitions of deep truths percolate to the surface, revealing small, yet significant, glimpses of the Mystery that is America.

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This was written in winter-spring 1998, and was the first effort I made at describing in detail my own inner practice, which itself was rooted in a Gospel-based introspective life, instinctively begun in 1971-72 at age 31, and continued and further developed after encountering Steiner seven years later, in 1978-79.  The material below is then an expression of something that was developed personally by me for over twenty-five years before being shared in this essay.  In certain ways, an essential part of the material below is repeated in a more mature way in 2006 in In Joyous Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship.  All the same, a certain naive wisdom still lives in the below, which I think the reader may find useful.

pragmatic moral psychology

Many people have trouble with the idea 'moral".   This is understandable given the history of Christianity (for example), which has included so many attempts at dominating the moral thinking of others.   Especially in our age a lot of us don't like being told what is right to do.   We would rather follow our own judgment.   It will come as no surprise to many, that the Christian Gospels actually support that latter view (personal moral judgment) instead of the view that allows someone else to tell us what is moral.   But this view of the Gospels is not appreciated until we have penetrated, in practice, the psychological teachings these remarkable Books of Wisdom contain.   Many so-called Christians have failed to live the Gospels, and for this reason have never come to understand what they teach about mind, about soul and spirit in a practical and pragmatic sense.   This essay is the result of my own explorations of these Books of Wisdom as they apply to life, to thinking and feeling, and to how the world is ordered in both its social and moral realms.  For it is here, in such practices that the real facing of the problem of Evil comes toward us.  It is only in the brutal self-honest examination of how we introduce Evil into the world, that we learn what we need to know in order to appreciate how Evil works in the social.  For a deeper examination of this problem, see my book The Way of the Fool.

Social morality is the highest form of art.  The world of the biography - the social world - is the moral world, and we need to move from a state of sleep with regard to this, to a state of awakeness. The material below is offered in support of the reader's struggles in this regard, and not as a statement of an activity which the reader must undertake. How one proceeds as regard these matters is very personal, and the following material, based on the author's own experience, is given only as an example of how one might proceed; should they choose to make some efforts in these directions.

The political or community leader, and certainly the story-teller who wants to encounter the Mystery, should realize that some kind of practice, some kind of personal effort at inner growth, of a kind similar to that described below, is essential to carrying out the responsibilities undertaken. We are not born virtuous, but rather human, with all the normal failings that implies. The author can state, with some surety, which he hopes this essay demonstrates, that such practice does bear fruit that can be obtained in no other way. The Mystery draws near that which strives toward goodness.

*

This is not an essay meant for psychologists. Nor is it about mental "health" per se, although its reflections may touch related problems.

This essay is based on an understanding of human inner life that developed out of the necessity of solving certain real problems of personal experience. It represents the fruit of many years of practical work derived from a struggle, only occasionally successful, to live according to certain teachings of Jesus Christ. It is the latter aspect which brings in the moral element.

When this work was begun, almost twenty-five years ago when I was in my early thirties, it first appeared as an instinctive awakening to certain problems, most notably: what was the relationship between my own thinking, and the world I experienced through my senses? A secondary question, more subtle, but quite definitely related, was what was the role of conscience in the solving of this problem?

Over a few years investigation and practice, I taught myself to: work at bringing discursive thinking to a halt (no inner dialogue); to think with my heart, instead of my head; and, to think in wholes, or, what I called at that time, gestalts.

Subsequent to this, I discovered that essentially the same problems had been confronted by the genius of a man named Rudolf Steiner, in his 1894 book, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. When I read this book, I found therein, not only a much clearer statement of the problems I had already been examining, but what turned out to be an introspection of human consciousness that was in accord with the methods of natural science; and which was therefore at the same time quite compatible with all those academic characteristics of philosophy that ordinary people find so confusing.

A few years later I encountered another book of Steiner's, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, which, although again compatible with academic philosophic standards, is nevertheless much simpler in its language. Both books were extremely helpful in making it possible to examine these questions (the interrelationship of thinking, experience and conscience), with all their possible subjectivity, in a completely objective fashion.

I mention Rudolf Steiner, because he has had an enormous influence on my thinking, and those readers, who may wish for a more academic justification for certain themes in this essay, should begin with the above materials. Most people, however, will be satisfied by their own common sense.

I use the word psychology in the title of this essay because this same struggle has also taught me that Christ's teachings are grounded in a complete understanding of human inner life. They are, in fact, a moral psychology par excellence; that is, an understanding of human nature which both fathoms and appreciates our true moral reality and potential. This is so regardless of ones conclusions regarding His religious significance.

Those readers who might have some discomfort with the religious matters below, should be advised that all that I can do is reflect my own experience. If the reader, for whom this may be some kind of problem, is careful, they may be able to translate the materials below into their own understanding and belief system. The person of Christian faith, who feels there may be matters of even deeper significance, is invited to read: Meditations on the Tarot: a Journey into Christian Hermeticism, author anonymous.

*

Matthew 7:1-5 The Unvarnished Gospels:

"Don't judge, so that you won't be judged; you will be sentenced to the same sentence that you sentence others, and by whatever standard you measure you will be measured.  Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye but don't notice the log in your own eye?  And how can you say to your brother, 'Let me get that splinter out of your eye', with that log there in your own eye?  You fake, first get the log out of your own eye, and then you can see about getting the splinter out of your brother's eye!"

The pragmatic psychological realities I have so far discovered in this teaching are as follows:

When we meet or interact with another person there may arise, within our own soul life, antipathies - feelings of disliking. Perhaps we will not like how they look, their class, the nature of the ideas they present to us or the values they express. Maybe they are of another race or culture, or believe in abortion, or believe in choice, or have a selfish political agenda, or a thousand other categories by which we may define them or weigh their moral or spiritual qualities.

In each and every instance where we experience an antipathetic judgment (or sympathetic for that matter), we do not perceive the individual before us, but rather only that classification or label by which we have identified them. This is so even though it is someone we know well. In fact, those in our most intimate circles are more likely to be the object of judgments we have made and continue to make, yet sleep through. These last have become ingrained habits of thought, a (perhaps too rigid) soul lens through which we view the world of our daily relationships.

We also apply this judgment to ourselves. Just consider how much we do not like about ourselves. It will even be possible to turn the material in this essay into another reason for unwarranted self-judgment.

This judgment is the "log in our own eye". By it we become then blind, confusing our judgment for the "splinter" in their eye, the character fault we believe we have identified.

Should it actually be possible that we could help them, the existence of our "log" nevertheless disables us. We lack the objectivity (which is neither antipathetic or sympathetic, but is rather empathic) by which we could actually understand them.

In fact the Gospel promises us that when we can succeed in setting aside the judgment and can instead empathize, i.e. know them from the inside-out objectively, then we may actually be able to be of service to them (then you can see about getting the splinter out of your brother's eye!").

From Rudolf Steiner, I was lead to understanding, that the most common types of such judgments are in fact reflections of our own weaknesses and failings. Our normal psychology is so ordered that our common antipathies are mirror images of our own defects. We often most strongly dislike, in others, our own worst flaws. So Jesus Christ advises us: "You fake, first get the log out of your own eye".

This being the case, how do we work with this in a practical manner?

The first step is to wake up to it, to notice each and every act of judgment. This is painful. A wonderful help is found in an spiritual exercise Steiner taught, the daily review. This exercise, which the reader is free to use or not, involves taking time at the end of the day, and remembering it, backwards, from the most recent events just before beginning the exercise, to those events surrounding our awakening early in the morning.  In this way we reflect upon our day, and will begin, after a time, to discover matters which need our attention. When, for example, we have begun to notice these judgments, they can become an element of the review. They are unfinished soul business.

During the review feelings of remorse and shame are good signs. In these self-reflective feelings the conscience awakens. Out of the impulse of conscience we can utter a brief prayer to the guardian angel of the one we have judged, so that the next time we meet, our perception will be more objective. The angel of the other - the thou - wants to help us do this. Those who doubt such an idea are simply asked to carry out such activity with full sincerity. Practice will, itself, establish the truth of these matters.

In this way we slowly refine the impulse to judge, and gain thereby (small bit by bit) control of our thoughts and mastery of our feelings. The soul territory, in which these unconscious antipathies and sympathies have previously tended to pull us, can now become an ever growing arena of inner spiritual freedom.

One of the mysteries of our inner life that this work, the refining of the judgment, uncovers, is that we are often captured - enslaved - by these repeated thought-judgments. Once having made them, our continued repetition of them, or habitual use of them, becomes then a point of view, a kind of judgmental colored glass through which we view the world. To refine the judgment in the manner being described in this essay, is to no longer by possessed by it - to be inwardly, spiritually, free.

These pragmatic understandings have applications in other areas as well. The reader, who works patiently with these soul-lawful realities, will discover other possible uses for the skills developed.

We can in fact be glad of those personalities who irk us so, who bring out of us these strong and unredeemed feelings. Their lives are a great gift to us and we appear to have sought out these relationships just so they could awaken us. Here is good cause for a prayer of thanks during the review.

Sympathies represent a similar problem to antipathies. How often does life teach the tragedy of those who fall so in love that the excessive sympathies and its resulting (love is) blindness leads eventually to confusion and terrible pain, when clarity finally returns.

To raise another up in excessive praise is also a beam of great proportions. Whenever we do this, we are just as blind to another's real humanity as when we live in antipathies. Our judgment is not a source of true understanding when it is derived from unconscious and unredeemed feeling-perceptions.

In the case where we are turning this unredeemed judgment upon ourselves, this can become another aspect of our search for spiritual freedom. In our inner life, once we become awake there, the voice of the conscience and the voice of the judgment are not the same. Conscience hurts because it expresses the truth, and we wince inwardly in this perception. The judgment dislikes, or excessively likes, but it is not expressing the truth. Learning to distinguish between these - between truth and dislike - can be very helpful.

While this does not begin to exhaust all that could be said about the beam and the mote, nonetheless, let us take up another thread.

John 8:5-9: The Unvarnished Gospels:

"In the law Moses ordered us to stone women like her.  So what do you say?  (They were saying this to test him, so they could have something to charge him with.)

Jesus bent down and started scratching with his finger in the soil.  Then as they kept on asking him he raised his head and said to them, "Let whoever among you is guiltless be the first one to throw stones at her."  and he bent back down and went on scratching in the soil.

On hearing that, they started going out one by one,..."

We all know this story, but we don't stone people anymore; or do we ? Obviously physical violence, retribution, against criminals continues. We understand these issues, to a degree. Is there then some more subtle meaning? This is what I have found to be true in practice.

When an unredeemed judgment is spoken, that is, when it passes from the inner life into the social world, through speech, it becomes a stone. The flesh is not wounded by this stone, but the soul surely is. Our ordinary language in its natural genius recognizes this, for don't we speak of hurt feelings?

Yet our ordinary personal life is full of just these acts of stone throwing. Tired and upset we throw them at our children and our partners. Believing too much in our own righteousness we will throw them at work, or at play.

The pragmatic teaching it this. Be silent.  Remember, Jesus' response in this story is first to say nothing: "Jesus bent down and started scratching with his finger in the soil".  We should examine our own thoughts more rigorously than that of others. Not every thought must be spoken. An ancient middle-eastern aphorism goes this way: There are three gates to speech: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Any thought that cannot pass all three gates should not be spoken. And there may be even other reasons for not speaking those thoughts which otherwise could pass.

Further questions are these. What is the moral purpose for our speech? Why have we said what we have said? What is the objective? Do we speak to be self important? Or do we have the possible benefit for others as our purpose? How do we know it will be a benefit, rather than an interference in their freedom or a hurt? Do we believe we know the truth, that our knowledge is superior to others? Hidden here are all the judgments, the consequences of the beam.

Are we so sure of ourselves, that all our thoughts are worthy of being spoken? Silence is golden is the cliché. In truth, outer silence is just the beginning.

Matthew 5:3 The Unvarnished Gospels:

The poor in spirit are in luck: the kingdom of the skies is theirs.

If my mind is not quiet, empty, poor in spirit, what can enter there? Inner silence has two valuable moral consequences.

The first benefit of inner silence is that it is essential to listening to someone else speak. If we cannot quiet our own mind when we are listening, if our whole concentration is instead on our anticipated response or on what we think, then our attention is not focused at all on the other person or what they are saying.

In some lectures published under the title: The Inner Aspect of the Social Question, Rudolf Steiner suggests the practice of seeking to hear the presence, of what he calls the Christ Impulse, in the others thinking. This is very difficult. It is not just listening, but a feeling-imagining of the heart felt purposes living in the speaker. What brings them to speak so? What life path has brought them to this place? Even if they are throwing stones at us, we must still actively listen; otherwise, there will be no understanding of their humanity.

There is a wonderful experience possible here, when we have won past our antipathetic judgment and actually have begun to hear what lives in the other speaker. Each of us has learned in life some wisdom, and these little jewels lie every where around us, often in the most improbable places, the most unsuspected souls. These treasures are often hidden only by the darkness we cast over the world through our unredeemed thought-judgments.

The second benefit is this. Unless I am silent, and empty, that is poor in spirit, how will it be possible for the Mystery to touch me?

John 3:8 The Unvarnished Gospels:

"The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound  of it, but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes; it's the same with everyone born of the breath."

The Mystery goes where It wills. If we are not listening outwardly, we well may miss it when it appears through others. An inflated sense of self righteousness will certainly interfere. How much have we missed in life because we did not listen to what was being offered? Even a piece of an overheard passing conversation on a bus, which seems to jump into our silent waiting, may have an import just for us. And inwardly? The Mystery is silence itself, quiet, like an angel's beating wings. How much has been offered to us just there as well, a barely audible whispering that our own internal rambling dialog has covered over in its insistent and restless commentary.

It thinks in me spoke Rudolf Steiner. The Mystery has It's own will. It comes like a gentle wind, when It wills, and we prepare the way by learning to think on our knees, as Valentin Tomberg, another passionate seeker I find very helpful, has advised. Two acts, only one our own.

Matthew 11: 28-30: The Unvarnished Gospels:

"Come here to me, all you drudges and overburdened ones, and I will give you a rest.  Put my yoke on and learn from me: I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for you souls, because my yoke is kindly and y load is light."

 

Two acts, only one our own. Something comes to meet us and does not bring weight, but rather eases our burdens.

Pragmatic moral psychology is not meant to be heavy labor. We are working together with the world of Mystery. We make an offering of what lives within; we offer it up. In the Celebration of the Mass, the Offertory precedes the Eucharist.

The soul makes the same rite of gesture, when the unconsciously created judgment is perceived and then let go, after which the empathic understanding is yearned for. When this has been done we are then met by grace, by the work of others. Moreover, this grace is so quiet, so silent, we may not be able to distinguish it from our own yearning thinking.

Since the Mystery seeks no gratitude for its acts, we should not mind when it has invisibly carried us to subtle heights, breadths and depths. To expect this, is true faith. However alone we may sometimes feel, we are, in fact, never alone.

*

Let us review and synthesize, perhaps adding a few new thoughts.

We are born into a culture and a language, a family and a destiny. In our youth we draw into ourselves a way of seeing the world, consistent with those who raise us, and, without which we would have become incapable of being a member of that society.

Each of us has an inborn faculty of judgment which finds its center in the feeling life, but which leaves its most conscious traces in the life of thought. We do not want to eliminate this faculty, but it does need to be refined if we are to evolve it into a capacity for perceiving the true, the beautiful and the good. As the poet Goethe pointed out, particularly in his scientific works: it is not the senses which deceive, but rather the judgment.

The fundamental quality, latent in judgment and from which its evolution may proceed, is our moral nature, our moral will. Let us consider this in a more practical way.

What do I do with antipathies (or with excessive sympathies for that matter)? Something enters my consciousness and my reaction is to not like it. The first thing (borrowing a term from more recent popular psychology) is to own it. It is my reaction, it arises in my soul, and it is not (in any obvious way) in the object to which the reaction attaches. There does seem to be something, a seed perhaps, that does exist in the judgment and that does belong to the object of the judgment, but this seed only comes to flower through processes like those outlined below.

The antipathetic reaction, which is a feeling, then draws concepts toward it, clothes itself in thought forms, and in this way enters our conscious thinking life, usually as a stream of inner dialog (discursive thinking: our spirit speaks, our soul hears). Above, we considered how to become alert to these judgments using the daily review, and noted there, as well, that to feel remorse and shame for having so unconsciously and hypocritically categorized our fellow human beings, is a sign of an awakening conscience.

Once we have become more awake in the moment, it is possible to work with this process during the day, not waiting for the daily review. The antipathy arises, we notice it. We have learned not to speak it, not to allow it across the threshold of speech into the social world. We behold it inwardly, this thing, our judgmental creation. This objective perception of our self-created thought-judgments is an act of spiritual freedom, inner freedom before the concept.

There are two very practical acts we can do in regard to this object within our consciousness. One precedes the other, and the second is born out of the first. The initial act is one of sacrifice. Steiner calls this: sacrifice of thoughts. We not only allow it to die, we participate in the process of its dying. We give it up, we detach ourselves emotionally from this no longer desired judgment.

Doing this has brought our will into play. Using this same will we now engender a new becoming of the act of judgment. Dying has preceded becoming. We actively engage the process of metamorphosis inwardly in the soul life. The caterpillar of our antipathetic judgment can give birth to the butterfly of our empathic understanding. The crucial act is our moral intention. We recreate in the newly freed soul space the object of our judgment as an act of spiritual will. We choose to behold the other - the thou - with the forces of resurrection. We clothe the object of our previous antipathy in a freely chosen word-picture created in the crucible of a struggle to know them empathically. We redeem them in thought.

The most essential matter to recognize here is that in this activity one is not acting alone. Two acts, only one our own.

One last thought. In that activity by which we transform unconscious judgments into conscious ones, we inform the world with new meaning. We adorn the world, and the individuals which inhabit it, with self-created significance. The difference is that this new meaning-significance is neither arbitrary or capricious. The world means what we choose it to mean. In this act, however, it makes a great deal of difference whenever we have invited the cooperation of the invisible world.

With regard to this problem of meaning - the creation of new meaning - there is much more yet to say, as this is one of the principle ways for crafting the resurrection of a new civilization from the decay and debris of the old and dying culture.

Unto the reader then, I place these gifts of twenty-five years of practice, with all their flaws, for whatever service they may give.

**********************************

In 1985, I wrote an article, which was called Listening to the World Song, for the small anthroposophical publication, America in the Threefold World.  This article is now really just a curiosity, but at the same time the Idea of the Title represented a profound intuition of the basic method I was developing in order to investigation of the social world.   The method, based upon Steiner's The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception involved letting the thinking perceive the phenomena without adding anything of an analytical conceptual nature.  The social world, like the world of Nature, was to speak, and I as its student, was to listen.  My poetic nature expressed this approach as: Listening to the World Song.  In the summer and fall of 1999 (some 14 years later) I returned to this theme (which I did again 6 years later - 2005 - when I again used this title in reference to the articles I had submitted to the New Review.  

There are three parts to this essay, and the reader may not want to read them all.  The first part: a few introductory remarks, concerns my views of the state of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement as I saw it at that time (1999); the second part: the path to an Idea, describes in more personal detail how I got to the Idea, and some of the experiences in the background of that process; while the third part: the experience of an Idea, concerns more the social picture that emerged out of that path/process.   By the way, by the term: Idea, I mean it as described by Steiner in his The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, namely: an Idea is a complex of concepts.  It is also my view that an Idea - this complex of concepts, in this sense, can be described more poetically as the outer garment of a single spiritual being or community of beings.
 While we do experience thought, in the beginning, as a product solely of our own activity, after a time we come to realize that thought is co-participated.   Something comes toward us in response to our need, or our Parsifal question, but we sculpt the final form of the thought as it comes to rest in our consciousness as a by-product of this encounter.

Listening to the World Song

 - a report on the Experience of an Idea -

a few introductory remarks

Understanding comes slowly.  It cannot be forced.  Where I stand today (and what I see from where I stand) is quite different from where I stand or what I will see tomorrow.  The same may be true for the reader of these pages.  Some of what is below may be difficult to immediately appreciate.  Hopefully those who read what is to follow will forgive my excesses and errors, and still find some nourishment for their souls in my song.

*

This essay derives the greater part of its its basic impulse from a love of Anthroposophy.  It is because of this love I take the time and trouble to think about the social forms through which Anthroposophy is integrated with the wider social world.  The understanding that results from this thinking is not encouraging.

To my heart it sometimes appears that Anthroposophy will not survive the (hopefully) unconscious failings and betrayal of those who seem to lead its institutional forms.   In fact, the leading institution, the Anthroposophical Society, could be more accurately renamed the Rudolf Steiner Preservation and Choral Bureaucracy.  Such is the attachment to the past, of the Vorstand and other leading personalities, that a substantial barrier exists, which prevents the new and the living from entering into the present social-spiritual paralysis that is falsely called today: the life of the Society.

The worship of the past is a potentially fatal disease for any institution.  For something which aspires to be a modern mystery school, it is a tragic catastrophe.

Again and again the Christmas Conference is evoked, as if this past event represented some kind of magical formula.  Never does one hear a real acknowledgment of the disarray that followed, or any honest attempt to appreciate the real consequences of the events of the next ten to fifteen years.  A great sadness can come to someone who struggles to form an imaginative picture, and behold inwardly as a whole, the history of the Society, with its great and grievous heart wound, that followed Steiner's death.

Those events broke the relationship between the Society and the Spiritual World, and far too many are in denial of this truth.  The recreation of the Society, following after the second great war, was a social-political event, not a spiritual one.  It resulted in an earthly social form, but not in a true mystery school.  This does not have to remain the case, but until the truth is recognized, a healing between the world of spirit and the social form cannot arise.

The denial of the truth is itself the core obstacle.  This refusal to admit the existence of the heart wound at the center of the Society's biography cannot continue if we are to think about the Society in a real and a healthy way.

The result is that the Anthroposophical Society more closely resembles, as a social form, a bureaucracy.  Now a bureaucracy does not require a formal creation with clerks and administrators, because bureaucracy is a human response to certain situations.  A bureaucracy arises because a common attitude is taken.  The social form grows out of the intentions sleeping in this attitude.

In what calls itself the Anthroposophical Society we have an attitude of preservation and conservation, coupled with an exclusionary impulse that keeps the wild and earthly element of human existence (the life) outside.  It is the triumph of this preservation and exclusionary impulse which allows the real social form of the Society to function as a Bureaucracy.  The whole social form looks mostly inward, and toward the past, while being concerned mainly with the preservation of traditional structures and a complete avoidance of any risk taking whatsoever.

This is not to say that the future is not expressed within the Society, occasionally in some kind of ideal form.  But such expression is meaningless without action.  It is action which is missing.   In terms of its actions the Rudolf Steiner Preservation and Choral Bureaucracy is one of the more conservative social forms in modern Western Culture.

It may help, in dealing with what could be such a heavy hearted picture, to realize that this result was the karma of the Society from the beginning.  It had to fall away from its original connection with the Higher Worlds, because this was the natural state of the membership.  We are fallen, and so our Society, after its moments in Paradise (truly connected to the spiritual world through the being and deeds of Steiner), must also fall.

So, now we are fallen, and our connections to the world of the spirit is as tenuous as any other earthly social form.  Anthroposophy lives in individuals now, which is something for which to be very grateful.  Not only this, but we have passed through the Event of the Second Golgotha.  The result is that an ethereal Pentecost is now being enacted, and individuals are appearing who speak, not just different languages in the traditional sense, but different languages in the sense of modes of consciousness and all the different disciplines and paths.  We have languages of dance, of farming, of teaching, of sociology, of all the endless variety of ways and means out of which people seek the true, the beautiful and the good.

Moreover, there is much Anthroposophy which lies outside the Society.  Anthroposophy, being a path of cognition, is not the exclusive possession of the Society or the Movement.  The path itself belongs to individuals, any number of whom are unable, or unwilling, to join the Rudolf Steiner Preservation and Choral Bureaucracy.

Today we stand at the End of the Century.  Can we find our way toward a truly anthroposophical society?  Will we find reasons to unite with all anthroposophists, or more reasons to separate and divide?  The new millennium waits for us.  What creative deeds will we initiate?  What footsteps will we take and what traces leave upon this unwritten future?

Many who see flaws in the anthroposophical society believe that the roots of these flaws are to be found in the so-called constitutional problem, or in the absence of a successful threefolding of the society.  All such thinking is confused.  The root of the present day's Society's problems is spiritual in nature, as is the cure.  Only spiritual deeds, based upon an  elevated thinking about the Society's social realities and responsibilities, will discern what is needed to be understood in order to find a healthy way into the future.

Of all the realities, whose essence must be appreciated in order to understand the meaning of Anthroposophy for the world, it is the spiritual truths of social reality that are the most central.  Anthroposophy only fully incarnates in the world to the extent it penetrates the social, and brings a  consciousness of the Being of Wisdom and the Being of Love alive within the earthly life of the individual human soul, and within human communities.

*

If we want to place our work consciously in the service of the social life of the future, we have to learn to truly see the social world's dynamic nature and work within  those parameters. Possible problems begin with a failure to distinguish thoughts about social realities, from knowledge about social realities.  Thoughts arise with little or no effort, especially if driven by some strong emotion.  Knowledge, in the sense of Steiner's Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, requires discipline and effort.  There it is made clear that the quality and character of the willed thought activity must correspond to the nature of the object about which knowledge is sought.  One must have a method equal to the nature and character of the social body / order / organism as it in fact is, in order to come to knowledge of it.

Frequently I have heard in conversation, or seen written, various suggestions by anthroposophists about how to deal with this or that social problem.  While a good hearted impulse stands at the root of this thinking, it tends to superficiality and antipathetically driven judgments.   But the social world is not apprehended this way.

There is a general pattern to this kind of thinking, which it will help to appreciate.  By nature we experience matters in the social world which disturb us, which we do not like.  Our good heart leads us to wanting to correct it.  Over against this disturbing picture we place our idea of how the social world ought to be, whether in a specific or a general way.  For example, people will look at some social problem and say/think that if only everyone was Waldorf educated, or threefolding was brought in, then the wrongness we experience would be made alright.

In spite of our good intention, our wish is completely useless.  Our experience of the disturbing matters is nothing more than a variation of the problem of the mote in our brother's eye.  We have factually not seen the social problem at all, but only the beam (our antipathetically driven judgment) in our own eye.  Further, when we propose an ideal solution, we again have failed to understand the social world, because its real processes are considerably more complicated than the mere imposition of some fantasy ideal change.  The social world does change, but when it does it follows various rules - patterns, processes, and dynamic conditions of necessity.

Do not take this matter lightly.  Without real knowledge of the social, the great gifts so far developed out of Anthroposophy cannot truly enter the world.  In fact, in many instances these gifts are finding rejection today, not from so-called opposing forces, but from a lack of knowledge, among the anthroposophists promoting them, of social realities.

It is to help those who justly desire a healing for the social world, and who reasonably see Anthroposophy as having a relationship to this goal, that I have written the material below.

the Path to the Idea

It is my experience that a complex Idea, such as the one I am discussing, does not appear whole and complete in its initial experience to the I.  There is an initial encounter, and then later, over years, an unfolding of detail and context.

Also, in the practice of Anthroposophy, how one comes to knowledge is of significance.  Method influences content, and the reliability of that content.  For these reasons, I am going to trace the Idea through its various iterations and development, as I worked with it over many years.

*

The meeting with an Idea often begins with the search for an answer to a riddle.  In the case of this Idea, there were two riddles, or experiences, which drove my interest from deep within my soul.

The first was an encounter in my early years with the cruelty of other children, an experience of evil that left many questions in its wake.  The second riddle, which combined ultimately with the first, concerned the disparity between the deeply intelligent, but romantic, vision of America's founders, and the cliche driven, and content empty, dialogs of modern politicians

All of my social, spiritual and political writing, finds its impelling motives in an attempt to resolve these dissonances in my early experiences of the Song of the World.

In fact, it was in the aftermath of the political turmoil of the 1960's and 1970's in America (about 1977-78), while I was reading Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man, that it came to me as a fully conscious understanding, that the various political views all had their roots in some idea of the nature of the human being, whether consciously expressed or not.  By this time in my life, I had already had some spiritual experiences, and was therefore certain that the human being is a spiritual being.

A few explanatory words might be appropriate here.  In my early thirties (about 1971), I underwent an unusual psychological change, following which certain previously unknown talents began to emerge.  It was seven years after this change, that the above question arose in my soul.  Thus, at this time (1977-78),  the riddle began to take this form:  What is the significance for political and social life that this is true, that human beings are creatures of soul and spirit?

It was with this question clearly before my own consciousness that I then met Anthroposophy.

Upon encountering Anthroposophy I took an immediate liking to Goetheanism, and the image building discipline born from the study of projective geometry.  I read all the Goethean science that I could get my hands on, and especially took an interest in Steiner's Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception.  This became my anthroposophical bible, in part because of the material toward the end about a science of peoples, which seemed to be the direction required by my riddle.

Yet, it was another seven years before I could give some content to what was beginning to appear in answer to the research that was prompted by my riddle.

The period of time we are looking for is about 1984-85, at which time I was living near Sacramento, California, and was involved, at an anthroposophical level, with the circle around Carl Stegmann (author of The Other America: the Western World in the Light of Spiritual Science), which circle (called the Emerson Study Group) was concerned with research on the spiritual America.

In the November 9th, 1985 issue of the Stegmann sponsored newsletter America in the Threefold World, I had published a preliminary study, indicating where my work stood at that time.  It was called: Listening to the World Song: a symptom-like contemplation of current events.

In this essay, I wrote a little about the current state of my understanding of the necessary methodology, which involved a four stage willed-in-thinking process (sacrifice of thoughts, followed by fact gathering, picture forming, and artistic expression).  The process was required in order to see past the illusions carried in media, and as well the confusion generated in the own soul by our antipathetic and sympathetic reactions to the phenomena of modern society.

One of the elements that drew forth this essay was an awareness that within the anthroposophical movement, as I had at the time so far experienced it, there seemed to be a lack of appreciation for the fact that ordinary discursive, cause and effect oriented thinking, could not take hold of social realities.  There was a kind of lip service paid to threefold social order ideas, in a very abstract way, and an occasional reference to Steiner's ideas on symptomology, but basically when people spoke of modern events and their meaning, if they gave any characterization at all, it was to use the terms luciferic and ahrimanic, which seemed more of just another way of being antipathetic, rather than representing any kind of effort at trans-formative thinking.

This saddened me.  I felt, that if Steiner's epistemological works had any social significance at all, it was in the suggestion that reality, including social reality, could not be apprehended through ordinary thinking.  Since I had found, within Steiner's works, very significant help in dealing with the riddles which drove my life, it was disturbing to realize that anthroposophical circles tended to be so intellectually oriented and so socially retarded.  The discovery of this problem awoke in me many questions about the anthroposophical movement, the answers to which later appear in that work on my website included in the section Outlaw (rebel) Anthroposophy.

In addition to the work mentioned above concerning symptom-like thinking and its relationship to the perception of social realities, this period of my life resulted in the first perception of what I consider to be one of the most significant aspects of the Idea that I was to encounter.  I have worked with this aspect of the Idea for many years now, but it was early in my time in Sacramento that I first came to it as a matter of knowledge.

When I could manage the time, it was my practice to sit quietly at my desk (my altar) and attempt to hold pictures in my mind of social realities.  Having absorbed certain ideas from my studies of Goetheanism, I worked particularly within the elements of that discipline.  For example, anything of a theoretical or explanatory nature, in the sense of concepts, was to be excluded.  I was more at work at forming pictures of facts and processes.

As I have previously mentioned, I was intrigued with modern political events and ideas.  So it was natural for me to contemplate political matters, with a strong effort to remain only in facts and observable (with thinking) processes.  It was during such a contemplation that I first apprehended that the central element of the social order, the political-legal life, was inwardly threefolded into three polarically related socially valid functional structures of its own: State, Media and People.  Please remember that this came from the contemplation of self generated facts, raised into pictures, which then spontaneously ordered themselves into the above configuration.  This particular inner event was also accompanied (as had similar experiences) with a phenomena of inner light, a sudden, yet subtle brightening.   It was as if for the moment my mind had touched the Idea.  Over time I have had many similar experiences, but, as will be explained later, my technique has changed somewhat.

It has also been my practice to work and rework with such an understanding.  As well as to integrate it with a number of other encounters with the Idea.  Following after the practice of sacrifice of thoughts, I have several times completely eliminated from my soul life this and other related ideas, after which they are built up again completely from the beginning, starting with freely and consciously choosing the impelling moral basis for the work.

There is one other aspect to these considerations that must be dealt with at this time.  This is not a happy event, once one appreciates its real consequences for the anthroposophical movement and for the world.

Around the year 1977, Carl Stegmann, at a meeting of the Faust Branch of the Anthroposophical Society in Fair Oaks, California (a suburb of Sacramento), rose and spoke passionately about founding a center for anthroposophical studies there.  He envisioned (was inspired to say) that the center should consist of two programs: one, a foundational study year in Anthroposophy, and two, a program directed at the study of the social question in America.  From Carl's studies of America, he had come to realize that America had a special relationship to social questions, and that this second program was essential to founding a true relationship between Anthroposophy and the American Soul.

As this second program began its development, various individual American anthroposophists were drawn to it, suggesting that a remarkable constellation of individuals might well become co-workers in this Center.  However, this was not to be, for without laying blame on any particular individuals, there existed a serious lack of consciousness regarding the spiritual realities involved.

First, and this seems to have been very common, no one seems to have thought that the differences between the soul life of Americans and Europeans was a matter of any moment.  Even though Steiner had spoken again and again of the differences between East, Center and West, I have never found any evidence, that as Anthroposophy was introduced into America, that anyone considered that there were any questions that needed to be thought about.  It is, of course, through unconsciousness that the opposing forces are able do much of their work.

[This condition (the absence of concrete thinking about the differences between soul configurations and the necessary and related social consequences) persists in the present, and continues to be a foundation for tragic misunderstandings.]

Without going into details, of which the various parties that I have spoken with do not agree, this fact remains clear.  A European personality was brought into the developing situation in order to oversee the Foundation Year program.  After a year of this person's involvement, the second program concerning the significance of the social question in America disappeared, and the developing Center was turned into a Waldorf Teacher training school, to be known as Rudolf Steiner College.  Waldorf was the area of expertise of the individual brought in to oversee the Foundation Year.

While I was associated with the Emerson Study Group, a small group of those working with Carl Stegmann on the American Work, I worked at trying to understand this problem.  Why had the second program failed to come into being (obviously I would have had a special connection to it, had it been thriving, when I arrived in the area about 5 years later)?

As an aspect of this work, and in preparation for a coming 35th anniversary celebration of the Faust Branch, I worked over several nights during meditation at forming pictures of the history of the Faust Branch.  It was during this work that a particular image arose in my consciousness.

The picture was divided in half vertically into a left and right image.  The left image was like a blue line drawing and the right image like a red line drawing.  In the blue line drawing there was central figure, whose form was similar to the European individual mentioned above.  This figure was about three feet off the ground, and was surrounded by two or three other figures, who were portrayed in postures of adoration.  They were also off of the ground, as if somehow following upward the central figure.

In the red half of the picture there was a partial foundation of a building, with a few weeds growing around it here and there.  Sitting on part of this foundation was a central figure, this one similar in form to Carl Stegmann.  He sat in the posture of Rodin's Thinker.  Around him were several other figures, in various states of repose, either sitting and laying down.

The whole picture was static in nature, except that the left hand picture, the one in blue lines, gave the effect of some kind of upward motion.

My understanding of the meaning of this picture is as follows: When the European soul comes to America the Earth forces here push that soul off of the Earth, ungrounding it.  If the American soul attempts to follow this soul, to live in its mental pictures and the understanding and imitation of its soul life, this will unground the American soul as well.  For the American to imitate the European is to court disaster.  Even such a personality as Carl Stegmann, who had permeated his own soul forces with deep aspects of America for over almost fifty years before coming here, could not bring his will into play, could not bear real and lasting fruit.

Eventually I came to understand, through this and other experiences, that the anthroposophical movement in America is not connected to the American Soul, but rather, because of the lack of consciousness in the integration and working together of these two soul gestures, anthroposophical centers in America have the characteristic of being ungrounded spiritual colonies of European soul and cultural life.

This is a disastrous situation for Anthroposophy and for the world which needs something from Anthroposophy.  It cannot be overstated.

The situation can be seen this way.  As I see my destiny/task, it was to bring my genius of spirit, as regards social matters, into connection with Anthroposophy via the Center for the Study of the Social Question in America.  For this work to enter into the main stream of cultural life in the world, it first had to ripen in an institutional setting with all the aid that a constellation of co-workers can bring.  It was not me, as an individual, that was to bring into Incarnation the Idea, but a working group, a social group, which was to bring about the practical down to earth realization of the anthroposophical Social Impulse (as initially apprehended by Steiner, but which needed to be brought into realization on the Earth through the forces of the American Soul, with its natural social genius).

But this was not to be.  The so-called opposing, or limiting,  forces, working through unconscious confusion regarding the correct relationship between European and American soul characteristics, and through impulses rooted in ambition, destroyed this Center before it could be born, driving my work into isolation, away from the community in which it needed to thrive.  These same forces also scattered a remarkable constellation of individuals into a similar spiritual diaspora.

The next seven years of my encounter with the Idea involved very painful social experiences, as I wandered around trying to find a place within which to root my work.  Progress was made on some levels of investigation, and my association with the Center for American Studies at Concord (Mass.)(begun in 1988) helped me focus to some degree.

  However, since I was mainly concerned with life issues (earning a living, raising a new family), the work in striving to connect at deeper levels with the Idea could only make limited degrees of progress.

Even so, there is no need to regret this, because the rich life experience acquired resulted in adding many dimensions to the nature of the riddle, and those additional questions I put to my inner life, and the World of Ideas.  Remember, at consideration is the problem of understanding human social and political existence.  Therefore, to live as I have lived, among the working poor, facing all those questions of life (bankruptcy, divorce, having to live on welfare, frequent periods of unemployment - and all the attendant anxiety and loss of meaning connected to these experiences) was very much a necessity.

[I did not produce a great deal of publishable work during this period, but I was involved in considerable research in my fields of interest (social and political life, and the Mystery of America).  A couple years ago I went through my files and discarded hand written notes from this period (1985 - 1992) on hundreds of pages of 8 x 11 sheets, which made a pile as tall as my knee.]

Nevertheless I was able to produce a paper near the end of this period (in 1991) in which the further developments could be expressed.  This paper was called Threshold Problems in Thinking the Threefold Social Order (also shortly to come in this book).  At seventeen pages it was a small essay, and I submitted it to the Threefold Review, which was just beginning to be published.  I received a letter from them acknowledging receipt of this essay, but no further correspondence.  My attitude toward this was such that I did not have any desire to push myself or my work on anyone.  One cannot sell the truly spiritual.  For example, I will write this essay and make some others aware of it, but I will not be knocking on doors and demanding people pay attention.  The work, as far as I am concerned, speaks for itself, and has all the necessary qualities that would allow someone to take an interest in it.

In this essay (Threshold Problems...) I put forward, in more detail, my work concerning the threefolding of the middle element of the threefold social organism, and noted, in passing, that the human organism is in fact nine-fold (see W. Schad's Man and Mammals).  I also unveiled for the first time what might be a core version of the Idea, such as can be put in words (although not all the implications for social life, once one understands the Idea).  This was an examination of the meaning hidden in Christ's saying regarding "Render therefore unto Caesar...."  Even Steiner's social motto is a reflection of this saying of the Christ: The healing social life is only found when in the mirror of each human soul the whole community finds its reflection and when in the community the virtue of each one is living.

I also developed, for the first time, the idea of metamorphosis as that would apply to ongoing processes in the social organism.  This is a very important aspect of the Idea, namely that our time is experiencing social chaos as a necessary prelude to certain other possibilities.  However, given the disarray within the thinking of the anthroposophical movement on social matters, it is quite possible these possibilities will not be realizable.  Some group with full consciousness has to act upon this understanding, or the time will pass when new and healthy social form giving impulses can be introduced into these conditions of social chaos.  It is the possibility that this tragedy might be averted that has caused me to write these words.

There is one other point worth given special emphasis.  This was the need for Sun forces to enter into social life.  That is, for renewing forces to enter into the meaning-structure of human existence as that is carried by Media in its broadest sense.  Everywhere that the world is described or referenced, from gossip at a conference, to statements in organizational newsletters - this world is characterized with variable forces of soul.  If this characterization is produced from , for example, antipathetically driven soul forces, then those characterizations are false.  They produce a darkening, not an enlightening.

This essay (Threshold Problems...) then marked the end of the work of the third seven year period since my awakening in my early thirties.

For the last seven years, I have been refining my understanding of this Idea and putting it to work in various contexts.  In the absence of a group of co-workers, or an institutional support system, my work has been sporadic at best.  Little that is fundamentally new has been discovered, although all the previous work has been rethought (confirmed) and brought to a deeper level (see: Waking the Sleeping Giant: the mission of Anthroposophy in America - [also in this book])  I have also been able in this period to begin work on a version of this material suitable for non-anthroposophists, so that they can have an appreciation of this Idea as well.  This will be found in my book in process: Strange Fire: the Death, and the Resurrection, of Modern Civilization. [Work on this book has now been abandoned in favor of the more elaborate and deep: the Way of the Fool, which considers the problem of "rendering unto God", and a new work, still embryonic: the Way of the Citizen, which is to consider the problem of "rendering unto Caesar".]

Nevertheless, there are certain refinements of special significance along with some subtle changes in my understanding, and I will present them shortly as aspects of a total picture of the Idea.

One would be making a serious mistake to conceive that what is written below is all that I know, understand or to which I have access inwardly.  For example, my essay: The Social-Spiritual Organism of a Waldorf School Community (the next essay in this book) represents a thought content I have had for many years, which did not receive a written form until in casual conversation I mentioned something about its basic themes, at which time I was asked to write a more formal expression of my understanding.

What is below then is a general surface outline of my work of twenty-eight years with this Idea, a work which is not only an elaborate thought content, but a highly developed way of thinking (seeing) social and political existence.  This overview should be read in conjunction with the more elaborate presentations in the individual essays.  It is not meant to stand alone

My method basically now consists (when life circumstances allow it) of sitting at my desk and writing descriptive passages of social and political realities.  Inwardly the experience is analogous to looking at a clear stream.  The surface of the stream results from my inner activity in sacrifice of thoughts, fact gathering, picture formation and artistic expression (more or less done simultaneously).  At the same time as my thinking sees this clear surface, I can perceive that there arises, on the other side of that surface, activity that does not belong to my own will, but which appears there spontaneously of its own accord.  The clear surface is then a product of the two activities acting in concert.  With my writing I record what appears there.

Let me give some concrete examples of how one might conduct this descriptive writing/thinking process.  Make a list of as many different activities a human being can engage in during the course of a day.  Make such a list, imaging living at an early time; in fact, make several such lists, reflecting on various epochs of the past.  Take the items on these lists and see if they are members of any general class of activity.  Imagine the lives of others, living in the present.  In particular, imagine their inner life.  Reading novels can be a source of inspiration for such an activity.  Write out these various versions of what happens inwardly and outwardly during the course of a day.  Write out versions of the day for different people in different historical times.  Behold inwardly the sequence over time of these various versions of daily life, one following the other, much like the leaf sequence in plant life typical of Goethean work.  Be careful of speculating on causal relationships regarding single events.

The point is to immerse the imagination in being able to picture the ordinary life events (including the inner elements) as sequences in movement over time.  The more one does this, the more transparent the dynamics of present day social life become, because the social present is the confluence of the interacting flow of long term currents mingling with each other on multiple levels.

It was my experience, during the first seven year period after my awakening, that the world, as it was, was a kind of speech.  As my efforts to understand social life matured, it became clear, following after Goethe, that it was not necessary to add anything to the facts of the social-political world, but just to more and more deeply experience them.  The world itself would speak most plainly all that we might wish to know of its social and political truths.  This is why the essay at the end of the second seven year period, and this one now at the end of the fourth period, are called: Listening to the World Song.  [The culmination of this labor of many years now - 35 (five 7 year periods) as of this writing, is the essay above in this book: The Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul.  I could not have written that without all this preparatory work.]

There is also a definite experience that can arise in my soul, calling to me to sit and write.  I always have pencil and paper with me, and will even pull off to the side of the road to note something which has spontaneously appeared within my consciousness.  Of this content, what I then relate to others first passes my own fully awake judgment as to its truthfulness.  Nothing is accepted unless it can be rethought.  With major ideas, this rethinking has been done many times over many years.

Because I possess an American Soul, it is also clear to me that I am naturally oriented toward the earthly social world and its concerns, and not toward the spiritual world.  My research is then about this social world, while my method seems to be a hybrid, standing somewhere in between Goetheanism and spiritual scientific perception.  This seems quite necessary, as the work is concerned with understanding the dynamics and realities of the social-political world in such a way that it's true nature can be communicated in the ordinary heart-felt language of the common human soul and spirit.

  the Idea

- such as words, and my flaws, can render it -

The social body has, in part, the qualities of a living organism.  It is made up of countless human beings, and its nature must possess at least some characteristics which flow from this fact.

As an organism the social body exhibits levels of order, as well as of form and of process.  The common and shared elements of our human nature are found mirrored in the social body.  That the human being is a threefold organism, necessitates the threefold nature of the social organism.

Historically the social body has exhibited various kinds of order, from the rigidly hierarchical and dictatorial to the hopelessly chaotic democratic and anarchical.  The basic law which expresses the relationship between the individual human being and the whole (the community) is found in Christ's admonition "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things which are Gods" Matthew 22:21 (see a more detailed elaboration of this in part one of my essay Waking the Sleeping Giant...)

When one can see (with objective picture thinking) the working in the social organism of this fundamental principle, then one sees the basic polaric dynamic from which all social order is born.  Even Steiner's social motto is an insightful, but modest, reflection of this essential principle.  "The healthy social life is found when in the mirror of each human soul the whole community finds its reflection and when in the community the virtue of each one is living."

What Steiner presented in an ideal form as the threefold social order, is an Idea seeking incarnation.  This incarnation process can only occur over time, and in the end will take fully conscious human  action to complete.  Today we stand at a certain stage of this incarnation process and we must understand what is the exact nature of this particular stage.

Two major processes have been completed to a certain point.  One involves the full incarnation of cultural life, and the development of Science, Art and Religion (in the most general sense) as an inner threefolding of this aspect of the social organism.  The second involves the beginning incarnation and inner threefolding of the political-legal life, into an organism of State, Media and People.  But all is not well with this incarnation process.  The three aspects of the cultural life have become diseased (split into incompatible paradigms) under the pressure of the entry of humanity into deep materialism.  And the political-legal life has only just achieved this degree of definition of its elements in the social body.  Media, in fact, is so newly arrived that it is barely capable of enacting its true function.  (For details see part two of Waking...)

The economic life is just beginning its incarnation, and because it is initially predominately a will, and a physical, process, it has acted very powerfully on the social body.  It is necessary then to see that the incarnation of this Idea, the threefold social organism, is incomplete.  We have to form a picture of it as a process over a long period of time, and as partially complete.  It is a yet immature ordering of the social body.

We also have to see that it is a process that can't be pushed.  We can't force the incarnation of the Idea.  We can participate, as co-creative forces, but we can't overwhelm the process of incarnation with our own desires.  Moreover, in order to participate, we have first to learn to see.

There is more to see.

Threefoldness is not the only formative process active in the social body.  If you will recall, at the start of this part I spoke as follows: "The social body has, in part, the qualities of an organism..."

In the discussion of the significance of Christ's admonition about "Caesar", as contained in Waking..., it is pointed out that the social order (the State) is a consequence of our ideas, our feelings and our forces of will.  Thus the social body also reflects ideas, not just organic or living process.  These ideas live in the individual human being, and sometimes in communities.  Thus arises that aspect of social life which we might call tradition as it is lived by individuals and communities and becomes an element of small social structures.  (Just consider how much is already traditional in anthroposophically oriented communities.)  All over the world are various traditions, which in our time are encountering and reacting to the idea of materialism, and the extremely active youthful forces of the newly born world economy.

From this encounter and interaction, tradition has been dissolving for some centuries, especially in Western cultures.  This dissolution and the resulting social chaos is described in part two (in general) and in part three (in particular) in Waking....  In order to appreciate this one has to inwardly behold these changes in tradition over time.  As tradition is a form giving aspect in the social body (determining family and community arrangements, as well as much wider cultural phenomena), looking at this arrival of social chaos as an organic element suggests the possibility of metamorphosis - one kind of form is in the process of being replaced with another type of form.

The question here is whether we will be awake enough to participate in this change or whether the new form giving impulses will arrive from the realm of the unconscious, thus representing an even greater descent into materiality on a social level.  Will individuals choose the nature of their community life, or will blind economic forces form community such that more and more the individual and the community live in service to the technological and other anti-human elements?

All of this is fairly obvious for many anthroposophists, although we usually know it in a very abstract way, rather than as an aspect of living social dynamics.

We complete this picture when we learn to inwardly imagine, with discipline and exactness, the relationship between the dissolution of tradition and the ongoing processes in the evolution of consciousness.  As is pointed out in my previously noted essays, the dissolution of tradition is a necessary element in the birth of moral freedom (a central aspect of the goal of the consciousness soul age).  So it is of no surprise that the dynamics occurring in social life produce effects related to the possibilities of soul transformation needed in this epoch.  It may help to understand two related active processes that are supportive of this dynamic.

History is formed out of individual deeds, a kind of radiating social process, proceeding outward from the acts of individuals.  It is also formed from the demands of incarnating individuals, whose pre-birth influence acts like a suctional process.  From this suctional process events are agreed to, events which become an alchemical crucible for individual crisis and development.  The ego needs the dynamics of crisis in order to bring it into movement on the scale necessary for those transformations leading to the evolution of consciousness appropriate to the age.

While we, as anthroposophists, can understand that practices leading to initiation can bring about this evolution without the forced nature of events, yet we cannot forget that for most individuals life crisis is necessary in order for development to take place.  Choices must arise.  They must be real.  Deep pain of soul is involved.

At the time of this writing the events in Kosovo, as well as the shootings in Colorado, are active elements of ongoing historical moment.  Such events have two levels of meaning.  One is more personal.  How are we going to react?  What do we feel?  Each individual has different needs and demands at this level.

At the level of social dynamics, another mood - one of understanding is called for.  It can't be personal, but must become objective and free of sympathy and antipathy.  This requires inner effort.  We can act from each level of understanding, but we need to see that if we wish to participate in the ongoing social dynamics, different activities are being called forth by the necessities active there.

Let us consider these events from this other level of meaning, understanding that it should be the case that, whatever the event of the moment, the implications of meaning within the social dynamics ought to be similar.  Why do I say this?

Macro social dynamics, as we have been describing them, are large ongoing general processes in the social body.  The evolution of consciousness is an effect-producing element of  one such process.  Events are then supportive of this process, or not.  The dying of one social form (civilization) and its re-creation is another.  The further ongoing developments in the incarnation of social threefolding are a third.  The relationships between events, such as Kosovo and Colorado, and these general processes ought to be similar.  Events have their own character and also serve these processes.  The social body is dynamic and living, which means polaric and holistic.  It is not an arena of cause and effect abstract relationships.

For example, the common question asked about these events is "Why?".  But this question is asked from an assumption that cause and effect thinking is capable of rendering an answer.

Consider that I perform a selfish act in a personal relationship.  This is an act of evil, however minor.  The evil derives from my self conscious choice to act with knowledge that my act, selfish in motive, will have an emotionally harmful effect on the other, the thou.  But suppose the person receiving this act chooses to experience the harm, but not to indulge in hate or other base emotions.  Instead they choose to relate to my harming them as a way to p