“By the way, if the Society genuinely wants money, I know how to get it.”
In anticipation of the probability that this statement, from my handout, will be noted by some at the Social Science Section meeting in Shelburne Vermont, I am writing, in advance, this more detailed answer to the possible questions. The reader of this needs to resist the temptation to a lazy presumption that an answer to such questions/problems will be easy, and require no work on the part of someone seeking to find a solution. If you read further, be prepared to expend effort and to change your existing point of view. There will be matters here people don’t like. Not my task to be likable. Life is not likable, either. The truly-spiritual is both dark and light - together.
the need for money
The impulse to offer this comes from the fact that at least once a month, if not more frequently, I receive in the mail, from various anthroposophical institutions, a request for gift money. There has been a steady increase in such requests since the financial debacle in 2008, where the stock market lost about 60% of its value in just a few months. Many institutional holders of stocks then, who held these “investments”, lost the ability to provide gift money - which in essence dried up considerably.
Many centers of anthroposophical work have had to lay off people, and cut back budgets, because money was not available in the ways it had been before, not just because of investment capital being scarce, but also many ordinary people no longer had the same income stream, and many thousands of individuals could no longer pay the same amount of dues and gifts that had previously been given.
The need for more funds to support anthroposophical activity is clear. The question of how to get it is decidedly less clear.
regarding the deeper operation of the will, which is also needed
We can assume, mostly, that everyone is trying as hard as they can to obtain the needed funds. That effort of will can be limited, if the conceptions as to what is or is not possible, are themselves limited. In general we call this problem: learning to think outside the box. Do the member and friends of the Anthroposophical Society mis-conceive the possibilities in any way?
One of the main ways, anyone - anthroposophist or not, misconceives such situations, is do to the fact that their will lacks an ability to appreciate the role of renunciation, and sacrifice. Not in a material sense, but rather in a mental or spiritual sense. Part of a reason there is a confining “box” in the first place, comes from the fact that we have created this conceptual mental box ourselves, and don’t see it precisely because we created it. When a whole Society lives in shared mental boxes, most everyone is blind to potentials that are there, but not seen, because of assumptions we all share.
It is the renunciation and sacrifice of old thoughts that must first be willed, before we can get around to perceiving with the thinking the outside of the box possibilities. We build walls of various kinds, in part to keep matters out, not realizing that when we build a wall, it also hems us in. The box is a prison. Rudolf Steiner, in the last sentence to the original preface of his The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom), wrote: “One must be able to confront an idea and experience it, otherwise one will fall into its bondage”.
The A. Society is a breeding ground of many such limiting ideas.
conceptual limits common to the members and friends
of the Anthroposophical Society
The primary one is that Rudolf Steiner is to be the only teacher of Anthroposophy. A secondary, and related conception, is that skill at anthroposophy means skill at being able to quote Steiner. Another significant restricting idea is that what happens in America, that is “anthroposophical”, must be like what happens in Europe, in spite of the fact that Steiner (the great authority) said otherwise: “One can say that we in Europe develop Anthroposophy in a spiritual way; the American develops it in a natural way”. Lecture to the workman, 3 March 1923.
Another limiting thought is that anthroposophical activity is always cultural activity.
“After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these the moving impulses of our life.” President Calvin Coolidge.
A final limiting idea is that the Anthroposophical Society functions best from the top down, through the Executive in Dornach, and such as the Councils in America. Rudolf Steiner knew that the age of the pyramidal hierarchical organization was ending, and that the future of social organisms was in the social commons. For this reason he urged the creation of local Branches and Study Groups, which were to be free from any authority from above.
If we combine the above ideas we can see that in America, the “natural
anthroposophical impulse will be non-cultural, entrepreneurial, local and free. No local Branch or Study Group needs the permission of anyone, but themselves, to found a business organization in order to make money. Nor, is any local group confined to itself, but is free, under the nature and principles of associative economics, to join with others for whatever various purposes they require. We already possess the technical capacities, through social media: Facebook pages, twitter accounts, Youtube, Google chat, and so forth, to connect with and then advertise as needed, whatever services and products we wish to provide.
what is our most natural product?
In the process of sacrificing old thoughts, we can come to see that there is something about Anthroposophy that represents a “product”. No large mental leap is necessary, although a bit of clearing out a lot of debris and dust is helpful. We live in an age which is sometimes characterized as a knowledge, or information, age. We’ve been making a mistake in conceiving that what we needed to do, for the world, was sell Rudolf Steiner. Not only is that unnecessary, it is the actual worst face we could put on our business model. No one today, especially in America, has any desire to submit their instinctive sense of being a free thinking individual to the authority of a dead European guru. No one.
All one has to do to appreciate this is to honestly face the resistance to Waldorf Schools here, that has come from the “appearance” of a Waldorf teacher’s dependence on Steiner. If the reader of this does not immediately grasp the problem, they can just go to the Internet and investigate the situation for themselves.
Part of our problem, again, is assumptions. For example, one hears regularly that Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual mission was to teach about reincarnation and karma. But reincarnation and karma boarded the speeding train of American culture decades ago, from the cultural East, not from the cultural Center. It is a done deed. We called it the New Age. These ideas are everywhere, even over cable television for example, including stories about families with children who clearly are remembering past lives. My girl friend is an Episcopalian, and when I go to church with her, it is common for these very tradition minded Christians to speak casually of reincarnation and karma.
In the 1960‘s, some of this became a joke on a bumper sticker: “My karma just ran over your dogma”. Think about the fact that most of those who tell pollsters they are Christian, also reject the theory of evolution. We can find their lack of philosophical sophistication a problem, but the depths of their soul’s show they don’t need an European philosophical spirituality to make them doubt the fairy tales of natural science. They do need knowledge, however. Actual knowledge, ... not a new doctrine or belief system. Yet, on the path to knowledge lies understanding. When we make well conceived imaginative pictures for people, regarding matters they don’t yet personally know, we can create “understanding”.
what is the true function of Anthroposophy, in America?
To answer that question you have to define the term: Anthroposophy. If Anthroposophy is only what Rudolf Steiner thought and wrote and said, ... telling those tales is pointless. Too many anthroposophists in America are addicted to Steiner-thought, and I mean that exactly and precisely. We are dependent upon his thoughts, and can’t imagine how to get over it. The term “anthroposophy” is itself terrible, because in part it is so unfamiliar to common speech, and so akin to the term anthropology, that the first statement out of our mouths, when trying to explain what “it” is, are often stumbling and confusing.. In marketing terms this is awful. We can’t “sell” Rudolf Steiner or Anthroposophy ... no one is going to sit still long enough to get why, which by now the reader needs to know is not only a bother, but something we need to stop trying to do.
Is there a better way to express, what Steiner intuited would be a “natural” anthroposophy in America? Lets start be recalling how he defined it, from the first sentence in the first Leading Thought: “Anthroposophy is a path of cognition from the spiritual in man to the spiritual in the universe”. In a way, it is about “how” to know something, rather than what to “know”. Anthroposophy is a “path”, not a content; and, it is a path connecting the human being to something greater than himself.
Further, not only is there no basis for our expecting what happens in America to be alike what happens and happened in Europe, Steiner himself said it would be different. That is a very big, too rigid, box/prison to overcome - this assumption that an American Anthroposophy is just an extension of something European in the soul life and culture of Americans. Not only that, but this assumption is an a kind of insult, for the A. Society in America seldom demonstrates it knows anything about American culture at all.
Decades ago, inspired by Steiner’s accomplishment, and in pursuit of the spiritual reality underlying human social-political existence, I undertook to make a scientific study of my own mind. Steiner, in his The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, had characterized that work as: “some results of introspection following the methods of natural science”. I had a mind. I had Steiner’s map. What would happen if I made my own investigations of my own interior life?
I succeeded, and eventually called the results of this pursuit: The Rising of the Sun in the Mind. Now before someone jumps to the conclusion that I am suggesting that the function of an American anthroposophy - The Rising of the Sun in the Mind, is product we “sell”, be assured that is not the case. That is a name for a method of thinking and thought, that is natural to Americans, for which there are many examples. That method produces a product. This product is needed by modern culture, for it is the precise and exact antidote for the excesses of intellectuality that have led to modern social conditions.
We need to learn to see it - this natural “anthroposophy” - where it lives. We help others become aware of it, as a kind of process of adult education, which adult education we “market”. We don’t sell Americans Rudolf Steiner, we wake them up to their own cultural treasures. We organize the schools they need, although the details of that are yet to be placed before the reader.
an example of which there can be hundreds, perhaps even thousands:
David Foster Wallace
From Wikipedia:
David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, short stories and essays, as well as a professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.[1]
Wallace’s last, unfinished novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011 and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A biography of Wallace was published in September 2012, and an extensive critical literature on his work has developed in the past decade.
Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace “one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years."[2]
Here is the link to the full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace Also, here is his bibliography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace_bibliography
down to business
The reality of all this is not simple, and I hope the reader appreciates this. So let’s review a little bit. Branches and Study Groups. Where anthroposophical life exists. A need for money, in a place where the business of America is business. Branches and Groups, not individuals, form associations to “market” a product which is not Rudolf Steiner. Very few in America are going to care about Rudolf Steiner, or even be impressed. Why not impressed? Because our New World culture is rooted in entirely different values than was/is Old World Culture.
We are not Rudolf Steiner. We are we, and we can choose to serve the world. Not the A. Society, but the world. What are our assets?
On the surface (only on the surface), a new kind of education (Waldorf), a new kind of medicine (anthroposophical), a new kind of natural science (Goethean), a new kind of agriculture (biodynamic) and so forth. Beneath the surface, yet to be fully born: a spiritual understanding of the world. This last one is harder because we are tied and addicted to so many Steinerisms that we can’t think (yet) beyond them to the whole. The plain fact is that the general world view of Steiner is very idealistic, and in America we need to be pragmatic. For Americans its not the best/ideal solution that we seek to incarnate, but the one that works that we struggle to find. To help appreciate this, let us be more imaginative:
As humanity began to emerge from the Dark Ages in Europe, a new type of consciousness appeared. Where the prior mode of consciousness was one of participation (see Barfield), the modern form can be called: the on-looker separation. Humanity began to step away from a long time natural connection / integration to/with everything, into a state of individualized consciousness. We were leaving a spiritual womb.
With this separation, that appeared mostly first in middle Europe among the natural philosophers, Western thinkers began to look at the world as “other”. The intellect became more dominant, and the trend over time was to more and more analytic thinking at the expense of synthetic (metaphysical) thinking. Finding the parts was more important than finding the wholes, because the basic assumption was that from the parts came the whole.
From the standpoint of the Gods, this was not a regrettable situation, but rather a gift to us. The Gods were setting us on a path whereby, via a kind of intellectual isolation, we would become free of the Gods. The early days of science undermined religion, and even art. Faith was to become arid, and rigid, and devolve into mere belief. The arts lost the imagination, and thus were set on a path where that connection with the mystery, made possible by the imagination, was severed.
The “I” was now alone.
At the same time, via Christ’s Sacrifice, the “I” was being given, as a latent capacity, the ability to manifest an individualized version of the Word, (the Christ Impulse). The thinking “I” was potentially now able to “see” into the depths of the mystery, as hidden in the Creation. In a way, with the separation and loss of participation, coupled with the inward manifestation of qualities of the Word in the “I”, the world was turned inside out. What had been outside, was now inside. What had been inside was now outside. So we have in Luke, Christ saying to the future coming human being: “the kingdom of heaven is inside you”.
Ultimately, the social-political world took the shape that was needed for the further education of this new “I”. The individual biography became the Holy Grail, and the Stage Setting (outer social history as context for the Dramas of all biographies), became filled with the Fire of social chaos. Karma intensified, and Western Civilization began to Fall, for little of civilization itself was to be able to pass the Gate into the Third Millennium, which coming Age the Hopi Prophecy called: the Day of Purification.
Yet, the “I” was not truly alone, if and when it choose to invent and then manifest the good and the true - i.e. the Consciousness Soul by which the “I” connected itself to Eternity. The infant-Word, which the “I” was becoming on leaving the womb of participation, was also to be warmed by Holy Breath, whenever it choose to be responsible for its own actions. The Cosmic Christ was Everywhere, within and without, and John the Baptist’s prediction was now being realized on the plane of social-political existence: Matthew 3: 11: “I indeed baptize you with water, for repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to bear. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”.
the epistemological (knowledge) failure
within conventional anthroposophical thinking
At present, in the A. Society, the Platonist impulse has made few inroads. There is even a kind of tale, in which Anthroposophy was to have arrived via a reincarnation of Plato, in the personality of Karl Julius Schroer. From our point of view, we could see then that whereas Aristotle followed Plato in ancient Greece, in more modern times (according to the tale), this would have been repeated. First Schroer, then Steiner, all of it involved in beginning the incarnation of Anthroposophy. As this never happened we have a riddle, which is a bit resolved when Steiner predicts “the Culmination”, for the transition from the 2nd to the 3rd Millennium was to involve an encounter between communities of Aristotelians and Platonists.
Maybe Schroer failed, because the wisest course was for the situation to invert. Before, Aristotle followed Plato. Today, the Aristotelian is to be follow by the Platonistic.
The A. Society is today dominated by Aristotelians, who have failed to appreciate Steiner’s works on the question of knowledge, which is the central question of the scientific age. With Steiner’s death, and even before, the largely Aristotelian A. Society transformed Steiner’s reports of his spiritual research into a belief system. The members and the friends did not have personal knowledge of these facts, as reported by Steiner, but nevertheless have for decades treated all his research as factual knowledge that they could gain from the mere reading of a text (a logical impossibility).
This treatment is precisely the same as materialistic science’s research reports being treated as factual (the theories of the big bang, and Darwinian evolution), by ordinary humanity. Our modern culture, in general, does not educate individuals in a sound understanding of the problem of knowledge, and the A. Society is no better at this kind of disciplined thinking than are natural scientists and their many believers.
The development of Europeans, as regards Anthroposophy, which had to happen in a “spiritual” way, did not happen. There was too much opposition, and Europe, following Steiner’s death, was drawn into a Great War, in part in order to prevent Anthroposophy from successfully being “spiritually” developed. In America, where this development of “anthroposophy” is actually succeeding, it proceeds in a “natural” Way. This is due in large part because of the pragmatic nature of the American Soul. What Steiner hoped might have been true in Europe, in America is coming true - the full natural incarnation of what Steiner called: Anthroposophy, is appearing among Americans as the instinctive Rising of the Sun in the Mind. This is a capacity of the “I”, that did not exist 300 years ago. In the long ages of the evolution of consciousness, this capacity is brand new.
The hundred years of labor, since Steiner began to teach, both in Europe and America, has then become a kind of soul compost, in which the living seeds of this new capacity of the “I” and its “soul”, planted by Michael, and the Spiritual World’s Anthroposophical Movement, can mature in individual “I"s. Against this, the opponents had convinced far too many that Anthroposophy was a feat of the intellect, and required familiarity with a great deal of Steiner’s conceptions that lay within the rubric of the content of Spiritual Science. Thus it became the “point” and “goal” of anthroposophical practice for the world to be introduced to Rudolf Steiner through his works. A collective delusion fostered by the Opponents.
Meanwhile, the march of materialism continued unabated. Such that as the Third Millennium began, and the world become more and more lost in a vision of the human being as a merely accidental creation of forces of evolutionary chance, which human being had no spirit, and was merely a brain. About this tragic confusion, the main stream of anthroposophical thinking has had little to say. The members and the friends of the A. Society relegated themselves to being wringing-their-hands observers from the sidelines, as civilization faltered, and the imagine of the human being became more and more materialized - human beings more and more being portrayed as a creature who had no free will, and in fact no real self at all.
a self-absorbed Society falters,
and needs to be rescued from its own confusion
A recent request for gift money in America begins: “Our world needs anthroposophy”, going on to suggest we have all the answers. And, implying that if everyone would just do what we do, which is love uncritically everything Steiner ever said and did, then the world’s problems will be resolved. Yes, I exaggerate a bit, but all the same: what a grandiose vanity!
Meanwhile the Spiritual World itself is not silent. The spiritual community Steiner called: “the Anthroposophical Movement”, seeks and finds minds able to hear what can be heard and see what can be seen. Several “personalities” are trained and supported, during the process that leads to the Culmination, such that the skills, crafts, and arts of the Platonists begin to manifest. Only one of these remains loyal to Steiner’s legacy, and seems to knock on the door of the A. Society, to no avail. No one there, in the A. Society, seems to want to listen, or see.
While the world drowns in confusion, and the battleground in the souls of humanity, where the dragon-nature of the raw untamed intellect is winning, has no champions from that aspect of the School of Michael we name the A. Society. With some justification, individuals are resistant to acquiring another guru. Their “I’s are already having trouble finding themselves against the noise in their souls of Steiner, Steiner, all the time Steiner. What is being born in America is ignored within the A. Society. Ahriman and Lucifer, via the three-fold double-complex, tend to dominate the soul - the field of play.
What will save them?
Can there be any doubt? Christ. Not more Steiner, but rather a better understanding of Christ. In the time, as Steiner predicted, of the Return of Christ in the Ethereal, or the Second Coming, it is the Cosmic Christ that the souls of those, who name themselves anthroposophists, need to find. He, however, is not to be found in a book, however wise. He is found only in Life, and only someone who has found Him there can coach and guide any willing confused anthroposophist out of the wilderness of the materialization of the Cosmic Michaelic Intelligence, and into the Living Word as it is already manifesting throughout human civilization. Clearly, this may only be a few. There is a lot of momentum and inertia connected to being a “traditional” anthroposophist.
World-wide, Steiner is known only to a few. The Cosmic Christ is everywhere and known to many more than just members and friends of the A. Society. This Cosmic Christ - this Living Word, speaks through all “I’s”, independently of Rudolf Steiner’s followers. The natural development of the American, in the sense of a more pragmatic down to earth path of cognition (the Rising of the Sun in the Mind), lights up the whole world.
If members and friends of the A. Society, want to find their path to entrepreneurial success, ... if they want to find “money”, they must enlist the aid of the Cosmic Christ to wrest the captured wealth of the world and free it from the clutches of the Opponents. The key to that is an act of service, which is kin to Christ’s kicking the money changers out of the Temple of Existence. The illusions surrounding money must be laid naked for all to see. Not in an idealistic way, but in a pragmatic Way.
The members and friends must learn to wash the feet of those aspects of the world they love to hate. The Cosmic Christ does not hate the corporations, or the politicians, or the military-industrial complex, or the makers of porn, or the film makers in Hollywood, or any of the cultural artifacts of the Americans. The Cosmic Christ puts those cultural treasures to work world-wide, slowly freeing individuals all over the Earth from the group soul, and taking them one step at a time to the discovery of their own “I’s”.
The world civilization, and its many discontents that so many Steiner students think needs fixing, is not in need of fixing. It is just fine. What this social-political world needs is help becoming better at being Itself. It needs our love, not our judgment. If we believe that this world is a place at which we must throw stones, then we are the ones with a problem.
how to pragmatically carry out such a task,
or “selling water by the river”
For the Branches and Study Groups, seeking to think and act independently of higher ups, the first task is a serious effort at re-education. Two basic themes must be studied, or there is no hope, and no service to the whole is possible. Non-Steiner anthroposophical work is to be studied, such as Goethean Science in the widest sense. A principle text is Ernst Lehr’s Man or Matter. We need to learn to see how the scientific world came to be what it is, and also to see what it is not. Barfield is also to be studied, for no one appreciates the nuances of the Evolution of Consciousness in the way that he does/did. The anthroposophist who wants to actually “participate” in the modern world, needs to understand that modern world, free of an excessive attachment to Steinerism.
One very good Way to this, is the work of the American writer: Neal Stephenson, and his 2700 page, three volume yarn: The Baroque Cycle. Many young Americas have read Neal Stephenson, and if we want to serve them, we need to understand their “literature”, not the cannon of Western Civilization. We don’t have to stop reading and having study groups, we just have to change what we read study. To much Steiner is a dead end.
The other theme then to be studied is American Culture. Films and television need to be watched, together, and discussed. Clint Eastwood films, and the television works of Aaron Sorkin and David E. Kelley. Anyone wanting some coaching on this just can call or e-mail me, or find the necessary stuff in my books, particularly American Anthroposophy. In addition, American musical culture is to be embraced. How can anyone, who believes the highest is to adore Eurythmy and Bach, understand a People and a Culture that pays more attention to Rock ‘n Roll, Country, Hip Hop, Jazz, Zydeco, Cajin, Salsa, Blues and so forth. This is the New World, not the Old.
Europeans need to learn to be far more silent
Some of you reading this may remember Marjorie Spock. This is from a letter she wrote to me in the early ‘90‘s (edited for brevity): “... America needs a special brand of Anthroposophy (a fact too little realized by the traveling minstrels, American as well as the Herr Prof. Doctors from abroad) who confront the public without surcease and, in my view, simple perpetuate a long-term European lecturing approach ... “ (emphasis in the original). And: “Do you know this quote from ‘Asia and Europe’, Dornach 1924: ‘...But Europe is extremely unfortunate, when it comes to spreading spiritual culture into other countries, because Europe has absolutely no understanding of how to enter into the real being of another country.’ “
I could tell tale upon tale of the damage done to Americans, in anthroposophical circles, because the Europeans that came/come here don’t actually see us, so much as they see, egotistically, an opportunity to shine as experts on all things anthroposophical. I (and we) require of them that they cease this attitude, and learn to stand in awe of the American Soul, which many have maligned over the years as too materialistic and ahrimanic. America is the leading edge of the evolution of consciousness, and the Cosmic Christ, as the Artist (Lord) of Karma has set before Americans many tasks as the Millennium turns. It is not an accident that America Culture dominates world culture. Not an accident at all. Read my writings on American Culture for details.
Essentially, European anthroposophists have no business telling American anthroposophists anything. It is not just rude, but arrogant as well. Better for them to relearn how to listen, for we Americans have a great deal we can teach.
the American People are not the American Government
We are a People who have been forced by circumstance to sacrifice our own needs on the altar of the needs of the world, during the Wars of the 20th Century. World War One; World War Two; and then the Cold War, which continues, being largely economic in nature. While elsewhere in the world, many suffer from too little, Americans suffer from too much. Yet, it was/is precisely that “too much” that makes us able to help.
The Branches and Study Groups need to understand that if we serve the cultural needs of the American people, we serve the whole world, through making stronger the American People. What are those cultural needs?
The modeling, and then teaching, of a non-materialistic thinking. Not a non-materialistic content, but a non-materialist method or how. See my Sacramental Thinking for details. To teach that you have to be able to do that. To do that you have to be free of Steinerism.
The doing of that requires a business (the business of America is business), dedicated to adult education, and marketed not as Anthroposophy, but as something entirely other. Next, a temporary proposal, keeping in mind the following: to go toward a fixed idea about what is to happen, makes us rather inflexible, while anything living very much needs to be flexible and adaptive. In addition, Divine Providence, which wants to help, very often acts in the form of a “surprise!” So that which comes next below is suggestive, but not in any way meant to be final ...
Also, keep in mind that this will be built up out of distributed social forms, such as Branches and Study Groups. There needs be no hierarchy at all. The wider principle of associative economics is acting here, while at the same time preserving individual autonomy. The only “business” model that compares is the “franchise”. What is shared is a common idea, and mutual exchanges make the shared efforts better and more efficient, because in certain cases factors of “scale” matter. “Ownership”, however, remains local. Another difference is that instead of a 501c3 (non-profit corporation), this is likely to be a for profit social form, with the “profits” accruing to that which the Branch or Study Group wants to benefit.
The Pharaoh Foundation.
In order to develop the “idea” of a business, that can both serve human beings and provide money for the future development of traditional anthroposophical works, such as Waldorf Schools, the Society itself, and Biodynamic Farms, we would start by capitalizing a small working group which would take the idea below and evolve it into a business organization that would offer itself as competitive within that field of inspiration and self-development that already exists. There is, everywhere, a real “knowledge” economy. Such an effort either works or it does not. This can only be established by taking the related risks.
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of the Pharaoh Foundation is to create unusual educational opportunities for adults, so as to prepare them to participate in the advancement of human civilization through means an ordinary university education does not provide.
The Pharaoh Foundation adopts as its model the ideal of the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, in that the “leader” of society was both a “king” and a “priest”. This idea is also repeated in the Platonic ideal of the “philosopher king”.
By this ideal, we do not mean to suggest that modern democratic political leaders, as well as business and military leaders, should be both imperial and religious, but rather that individuals seeking to accept responsibility for the advancement of human civilization need to recognize that to truly contribute to such a goal requires the cultivation of unusual qualities. No one is any longer born into such a life path. And to aspire to this, and succeed, demands an extraordinary effort.
It is the desire then, of the Pharaoh Foundation, to aid individuals who want to achieve something in the realm of social evolution. Such individuals should not feel it is necessary to aspire to office, but rather only to want to prepare to play a leading role in one or more of the realms of ordinary human endeavor. However, for such aspirations to succeed, there must be a source aspiring potential leaders turn to, outside themselves, which helps inspire them to face the difficult and often personal questions, whose answers mean the difference between success and failure. To turn to such a source does not mean to sacrifice personal freedom, but rather to understand that there are teachers who are willing to serve the ambitions of those who find it necessary to lead.
The above is the purpose of the Pharaoh Foundation. The means to achieve this purpose can be stated quite simply, in what follows.
One must become a generalist. One may start out a specialist, and may even continue to grow in a particular chosen field. Yet the knowledge of a specialist carries a great danger - the necessity for a narrowness of vision. Concentrated knowledge builds walls; and leaders, in any field, need to see around corners and over walls. They need to see through the conceptual confines that specialization creates. But, most especially, they need to see through the biases of those who they would advise and serve.
For each individual the process of becoming a generalist is different. Basically, what is required is the balanced cultivation of the ability to know the truth, to create beauty, and to do the good. Inwardly, in the life of soul and spirit - as that appears in human thinking, every individual is gifted with the possibility of striving toward such experience, because every individual is given the possibility of a balanced unfolding of three universally human qualities: reason, imagination, and devotion. It is through reason that we come to know truth; it is through imagination that we come to create beauty; and it is through devotion that we learn to do the good.
This process is not a course of study, although study may be a part of it. The ordinary university, in providing its most general or liberal education, strives to teach what is called “the cannon” of Western Civilization: the works of the great thinkers and artists who have preceded us. At the Pharaoh Foundation the task is to coach others in the discovery within one’s self of those passionate impulses of the spirit, which first drove those who created our current civilization. It is not knowledge which is sought after, but that skill in the life of the soul which is only won through the experience of the individual struggle with the fundamental riddles of human existence. Through this process we teach not what, but how.
As a consequence, the student/graduate becomes the most effective and essential social architect for the renewal and regeneration of our civilization, because he/she acquires the capacity to see through the limitations of the hidden assumptions of the time and of the culture, an insight which is the fundamental key to all progress and growth for any human community.
In addition, to what is essentially an educational mission, we do offer consulting services on a similar fee basis. Where an individual or an institution desires the considerations of an experienced generalist, this service can be provided, by either resident faculty, or graduates, in accord with the needs of the requesting party.
In a like manner the Pharaoh Foundation, through its faculty and graduates, is available to give lectures, or to facilitate gatherings for whatever institution may desire this or similar services.
All kinds of individual experts in various practical fields, of what we formerly have called: anthroposophical work, such as doctors, farmers, weather experts, and researchers such as at The Nature Institute, are already capable of providing aspects of this kind of introduction to the arts of being a generalist, which is that goal to which a true Goetheanism actually leads. All that we really do here is enter into an already existing business field and offer our rather unusual services in such a way that we do not require of those who come toward it that they become Anthroposophists or members of the Society. They are completely free to chart their own course and our job/work is to let them meet individuals who can do - not who teach a theory, but who are actually doing stuff in the real world.
We organize aspects, of the former daughter movements, in an entirely new way - converting it to an innovative and entrepreneurial enterprise. The pieces are already there, they are just not yet organized in the right way for America.
For my part I teach basic conscious thinking (the Rising of the Sun in the Mind), and as well a new science of the social-political, which latter can be presented in a very inspiring form.
all the pieces are present, we just
have to organize them into a whole
This will actually be much simpler than people realize. It really just involves a slight shift of the way something that already exists is perceived. We move the foreground (Steinerism, daughter movements) into the background, and the background (the new cognition and the natural Goetheanism of Americans) into the foreground. That’s the point of the above essay - that movement. You don’t even need me to do this. Just yourselves.