Notes for my Campaign to run for the office of

General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America

caveat

A lot of people are involved in the Anthroposophical Society who really don’t want to be authentically anthroposophical (as Steiner modeled) in how they express their spiritual striving.  This is expectable, and not a wrongness of any kind.  Not many of us can come near to doing what Steiner did.  Some might, for example, prefer to be a kind of Zen-like Buddhist, yet wearing the pedagogical clothes of a Waldorf teacher.  Or maybe they want to get to know faeries and nature spirits, so they become biodynamic farmers.  Perhaps they like the content of Spiritual Science because they find comfort in that detailed understanding it offers of the world of spirit.  But the last thing they want to do is get involved in some deep inner change of consciousness - something unusually taxing of their mental capacities and their will.  Reading a lot of books and following a plan as part of a community is what to them is “spiritual”, and they are justified in being satisfied with this.

Many study the content of Spiritual Science to learn what can there be learned, and perhaps pursue a specialty.  They acquire new ideas, and change their world view – their conception-collection, but don't alter any fundamental aspect of their essential nature.   They might practice the Six Exercises a bit, and try their hand at mediation, but remain satisfied that they have been “spiritual “ by adding all manner of new conceptions, and finding a community of like-minds.

Being an actual anthroposophist, after the fashion Steiner modeled for us, is not their cup of tea as it were.  In a way then their lack of interest and resistance to certain kinds of personal changes can become a kind of weight that the Society bears - a kind of heaviness, or inertia, that holds back the Society from reaching, as a community, for our more difficult to obtain potentials.  Yet these folks are not wrong to want to strive spiritually in the non-anthroposophical way they want to strive.  Rather it is their right and their choice.

At the same time, the transformation and metamorphosis of thinking that Steiner discovered and modeled involves a deed the future of humanity very much needs fulfilled.  People who really want to follow where Steiner actually went then need to set their sights by a particular Star.  What the Society needs then is to accept many Ways of spiritual striving, without putting down one as superior over another.   If we can more consciously manage and honor these multiplicity of Ways, then the Society will become something we can’t yet imagine. 

What follows is then a kind of story about one particular Way or Star - Anthroposophia - a story about how this new aspect of the “I” can be lived and as well a story about that to  which such living can lead.  This Anthroposophia - this New Thinking Mystery - has been nearly forgotten, if it ever was clearly perceived.  It really is not enough just to know the name of the macro-cosmic Being - Anthroposophia - for if we want to actually follow where Steiner went, we must then  know the microcosmic analogue in our own mind: the artistic act of exact qualitative picture thinking, coupled with precise and pure concept creation.

This writer wants to make sure we never ever, in the Society that bears Her Name, loose sight of Her again, as we have already once done.  The first forgetting was Karma and a necessity, for the 20th Century started with two Great Wars, mostly fought in Europe where Steiner gave birth to the path that is our knowing Her.  A second forgetting would be a grave tragedy ...

Maybe I’m an idiot, but ... Are we having fun yet?  This does not have to be all that serious ... put on some favorite quiet contemplative music, and then read at your leisure ...

in a room, with four walls, two doors and a large window,

there is also a television screen and a computer monitor - 

all of which are the physical and sense world entrances to my study, 

the physical and sense world heart of my earthly home ...

yet, inside me, there is another gate/door/window, ... the narrow gate ...

the doors and windows of my mind - the spiritual entrance to my “I”,

to which Christ referred in Luke, when He said:

The Kingdom of Heaven is inside you. 

what enters via this last is the most important gift of all,

so I learn to think, and speak, and sing and laugh and dance ...

of truth and grace and love,

amidst the dancing shadows of life

and through all the beautiful tears of being ordinarly human

a fool’s 

“Heart of Anthroposophy”

Campaign and Research Tour website

- we are perched on the cusp of the beginning of the Third Millennium, and this requires

 we deal with a host of questions, for nothing is truly simple or quite what it seems -

The following ad was attempted to be placed in the Spring 2013 “being human”, as well as in certain other small regional anthroposophical publications.  This attempt is unfolding, for the Spring issue became the Summer issue, and my plans, not surprisingly,  may not be working precisely as wanted.   In any event, next below is the copy for the ad:

“announcing: a fool’s “Heart of Anthroposophy” Campaign and Research Tour:  In an effort to participate in and possibly accelerate and focus the various movements for reform in the Anthroposophical Society, I am announcing my Campaign Research Tour for General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America.  I realize that the Society is presently not a democratic institution, but that is one of the matters concerning which I wish to urge reform.  Right now the process by which offices are filled basically means that already established groups pick their successors.  Even when committees are formed and time taken, the reality is there is no real standard of selection, nor much of any real open debate and consultation of the membership - an amorphous unelected “in group” has the most influence, which  we can see clearly just by noticing who in the end is actually selected.  It remains my view, however, that we need a far more open and transparent nominating process, one that includes the possibility that essentially otherwise unknown individuals can offer their own initiatives (which I am doing here), followed by a structure  within which the whole membership can participate in a selection among multiple candidates.  This is, after all, America.  For details regarding my Campaign Research Tour, and my “positions” and qualifications, go to this webpage http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/campaigntour.html.  As that piece is about 20 pages, although it has a synopsis at the beginning, you might want to first just visit my website Shapes in the Fire, if youve never been there before  http://ipwebdev.com/hermit -   Joel A. Wendt”

synopsis

for those who like things short and pithy

It can be obvious, if we think about it, that the Anthroposophical Society is “void of course”.  So many pulls in so many  directions generally leaves us rudderless in the sea of modern social chaos.  We are all very different as are our Ways.  Also as a Society we don’t seem to have enough money, membership is static, and most everyone has an independent idea of where we should go and what we should do - including myself.

In my own “foolish” activity, I could assert I can “lead” better than those in office, and seem to make a joke of how and why that should be done.  History shows that those we fancy are leaders (when we look back) often appear out of obscurity, for they are called not by the institution, but by the overall situational context surrounding the institution.  Lincoln supposedly freed the slaves and saved the Union, but that was a small deed in an otherwise very huge world-wide context - and he needed a whole host of others to help - before and after the history books anointed him as if he did it all by himself. 

A leader then is also a kind of fool (or tool), for they become a kind of pivot or level around which changes and opportunities can be introduced into streams of thought, ways of living, and multitudes of biographies.  It is not so much the part that is important as it is the confluence that is the whole.  What we do next in the Anthroposophical Society  will not make history, nor will it lead to Noble Prizes, or any Oscars, or even Sainthood, ... but it could be a very essential - though tiny - nutrient for the next stages of healthy human development.

And leading?  What is that?  Steiner pointed his finger in certain directions.  That’s all any of us can do, including myself.  Here we are - all of us - wandering and wondering in a world filled with magic and mystery, saying to each other: “Wow, will you look at that!!!”

In my view two basic questions face us: What is the point of Anthroposophy in the modern Age; and Who has the best skills to articulate that and “show the Way.”  If we find the right answer we just may find out how to mutually participate and play a very interesting role in humanity’s future - a role that should  give us hardly any recognition at all.  Like the true Alchemists and Rosicrucians, the future should know anthroposophists only as rumors within mankind’s spiritual history, of which - as we know - little is truly remembered.  We will this way come to appreciate the hard truth of: Virtue is its own reward.  No man is an island.  And, if you want to see a job done well, do it yourself.

The core difficulty for the Society is that we lost sight of Steiner’s true legacy - his works on the metamorphosis of thinking (GA 2, GA 3, and GA 4).  Everything comes from thinking - even the decision to practice meditation before consciously waking up to the will-in-thinking; and, in the Anthroposophical Society we all do that act - that thinking/doing, but mostly without really having any self-aware understanding of what Steiner meant for us to understand about thinking’s  “spiritual activity” and its fundamental Mystery-nature.

I, for my part, “run for office”, within our very obscure Society - few in the world know of us, and that often falsely.  Now I seem to assert, in what I hope is a polite and novel way, that I have the skills of a fully awake thinker, something very rare in our circles.  Not only that, but I have applied those skills to obtain to and create “knowledge” concerning the modern social conditions of humanity - knowledge needed not only by our Society, but which that Society must acquire if it is to truly penetrate the riddles made necessary by our being on the brink of the Third Millennium following the Incarnation.  Anthroposophy is meant to serve humanity, not just a small group of people still wondering where and who we are and what we should do next.

If we - all of us Steiner fans - do this right, what will happen is that a certain kind of language will be born and then enter into the Third Millennium; and, Anthroposophy (as we know it) - in its outer nature - will live for a while and then die and become into that deed.  This language can include: “percept and concept”; “moral imagination, intuition and technique”; “Goetheanism”; “pure and organic thinking”; “thinking-about, thinking-with, thinking-within and thinking-as”; “antipathy and sympathy”, “the threefold double-complex”; ”discursive thinking”; “discriminatory thinking and associative thinking”; “concrete thinking and abstract thinking”; and, all their many relatives.  A science/art/religion of the mind can arise within human culture on a small but sufficient scale such that it will wrest from the cold ahrimanic intellect the warm thoughts of a true scientific, religious and artistic heart thinking which we would name: Anthroposophy.  We, collectively, can create a completely new understanding of the mind (soul/spirit) that will help many human beings directly experience that they are not just material brains, living biologically determined lives, over which they have no choices as to declaring what it means to be individually human.

Anthroposophy then is meant to disappear into the common social language of the future, similar to the many useful ways we use the word “field” today, without most of us knowing that Faraday introduced it as a concept in his fundamental scientific investigations of electricity.  Steiner even used this term in the Class Lessons, when he spoke of "fields" of thinking, feeling and willing.  Our work should play the same kind of role - an art of the mind that becomes the common possession of much of humanity in such a way that its basic ideas are what of lot of words simply have come to mean.  Even Steiner knew that, for he said that when Anthroposophy enters the world in the right way, it will disappear.

In this way we can help free the slaves of scientific materialism, and no one will really know what we did, or how we did it; and we never need quote Rudolf Steiner at all - only our own thinking.  All of this can be done, at the same time, in a very American and pragmatic way.  Why American?  Because in America Anthroposophy finally comes to rest on the Earth.

For example, we live in the time of the Return of Christ in the Ethereal, which makes it also true that Rudolf Steiner is the John the Baptist figure of the true Second Coming of Christ.  Steiner was the voice crying in the wilderness of scientific materialism.  This also means that there is a Second Eucharist in the Ethereal - described by me in the essay: “The Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul”; and the path to that ethereal experience of Christ, during our moral thinking, is described in “In Joyous Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship”.  Both these essays are collected under the title: “Living Thinking in Action”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/liveT.html.  [See also Sacramental Thinking, for those and additional essays]

Consider ... the above ideas, about the Second Coming, a Second Eucharist, and Steiner’s John the Baptist role as the voice crying in the wilderness of scientific materialism, ought to make obvious sense - you don’t need to be an initiate to understand them and immediately appreciate they are true.  But then ask yourself: Why have not these obvious matters been stated from within the work of the Executive and the Councils in America?  Who was served by those social processes that exclude independent spiritual research, while continuing to bury us in the endless recycling of more and more quotes of Rudolf Steiner’s past utterances?

What better sign - that we no longer speak of or understand the Second Coming (the Return of Christ in the Ethereal) - could there be that we have lost our way.

The core thing to understand here, in this synopsis, is that a major aspect of Anthroposophy, as a science, is a “we” activity - something we do together.  I don’t really lead anything, I just “point a finger”.  The real source of the change in the our ideas of mind, that needs to be born into the Third Millennium, is to come from a whole host of folks, including many who right now think of themselves only as students of Rudolf Steiner, not realizing how much they themselves contain as human potential yet unrealized.

Yes, - there was a Copernican Revolution, but it was born and carried into human culture, transforming all the basic ways of thinking, by many many individuals besides Copernicus, all of whom just took up the task of trying to be scientific about physical reality.  We have the same opportunity - by becoming artists (who balance the scientific and the religious impulses) within our own minds, such that we create a counter-Copernican Revolution, to balance out the ahrimanic excesses of the first.  No single individual, even Rudolf Steiner, can accomplish that deed.  That deed takes all of us.

The following material elaborates on and demonstrates these themes, within the context of the present situation in the Anthroposophical Society in America and world-wide:

prelude

Is it not curious, that in America, in the Land of Free Speech and in an organization which seems to want to honor the ideal of spiritual freedom, that one has to buy an advertisement in order to lay a path to a point of view outside the “box” of traditional anthroposophical thinking?  Perhaps it is not curious, - perhaps it is just human, ... perhaps there is a fundamental truth hidden in the phrase: the business of America is business.  Perhaps human institutions naturally acquire conceptual limits as to what can be thought, and what can be published by their organs of communication.  Perhaps it is “normal” that there exists a kind of unconscious “king” - or authority - that only  fools can think outside of, but yet this same “authority" is so organized - in America - that one can purchase access anyway.

The “Research Tour” idea is intended to offer a conceptual structure around my otherwise seemingly foolish and silly plans to travel in the Northeast of the United States  for a time to engage in “Campaign” conversations with my brothers and  sisters in Anthroposophy, for the purpose of discussing mutual concerns regarding the future of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement in America, as well as world-wide.  I say “foolish and silly” because thinking outside the box often makes one appear to not quite belong.  “Good grief”, as Charlie Brown would say - “run for an office that already has an inhabitant and in a Society that has no real democratic structures?” 

I plan to restrict my travel to the Northeast geographical area because that places a single day to get there and then another to get back limit on driving, while still making possible visits with new friends and old - a restriction needed for reasons of cost and health (for complicated reasons I refuse to fly anywhere)  At age 72, running around the Country in some chaotic fashion is not going to be supportive of my own health, nor practical for reaching my “Research” goals.

As regards the “Research” goals, ... the fact is that I am a new kind of social/spiritual “scientist”, such that my business card reads: “social philosopher ... and occasional fool”.  It was necessary, during the course of my biography, to develop a way of seeing the social-political world out of the impulses to Goetheanism pointed toward by Rudolf Steiner.  This required over decades the slow development of both organic and pure thinking capacities.  Yet, these thinking capacities still need “experiences” from which to draw the cognitive aspect of perception.  While life enabled me to have many kinds of relevant “experiences”, certain particular questions demand that “Research” into many specific dynamic social situations have a participatory element.  One cannot always stand outside a “social” situation and just study it in some abstract disengaged way.  As modern physics teaches us, the so-called “observer” (fool) is also effectively part of any “experimental protocol”.

Since the social/political aspects of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement are important to me as a member of both the Society and the Class, in order to fully participate in any transformative process, as is now ongoing in the Society and Movement, I must include engaging my brothers and sisters in Anthroposophy on a personal level.  My social science - being participatory - can only be empirically experimental if I am fully committed and involved.  I must not just “think”, but also “act”.  If I appear to others to be acting “foolish”, so be it.

This I have actually been doing for decades, and major results of my participatory social/political research (in general) can be found reported here: Freely Thought American Politics http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/americanpolitics.html.  Because of the potential crucial nature of what can live in the Society and Movement, as regards the future development of human culture in the Third Millennium, I have chosen this way to act alongside my friends in Anthroposophy.   In the following remarks I hope to make more explicit my thoughts on these questions, which might well be important for all of us.  Not because “I” made them by the way, but because my “I” also participated with spiritual communities in the formation of these thoughts - communities both incarnate and excarnate, a matter few would dare assert, and which can easily be cause among some for ridicule and rejection.  Yet, to dare to speak truth to institutional power can often be the only truly sane act in which one can engage.

Here is Emily  Dickinson on what happens when we deal with social and institutional and traditional thought-structures:  “Assent, and you are sane;  Demure; - you’re straightway dangerous, And handled with a chain”

introduction

Most of us believe, in one fashion or another, that the Anthroposophical Society could be improved.  Differing individuals emphasize different characteristics, all the way from sacking the whole Executive in Dornach (well worth trying, just for the fun of it), to alterations in the Theme of the Year.   Some simply might want other people in positions of authority, while others could insist no one in these positions actually exercises any kind of authority at all (except perhaps for the endlessly evoked Ghost of Rudolf Steiner). 

We can argue over the duties and responsibilities of any particular office as well, but for all these differences of seeming opinion the plain fact is that most organizational decisions are not made in a democratic fashion, for the basic form of our Society is essentially hierarchical in nature, with the result that the established groups (such as the Executive in Dornach, or the Councils in America), once in charge of whatever they are actually in charge of, easily perpetuate their institutional viewpoint in spite of Annual General Meetings, which only seem to offer the possibilities of putting to a vote various questions. 

In fact, most of us don’t even realize that the Annual General Meeting actually arises not just because it is a place for the membership to offer insights and make contributions, but also because each national Society is often a State-authorized non-profit corporation which must legally hold an annual general meeting to comply with lawful rules as to the semi-public presentation of budgets and so forth (most AGMs require the participants to demonstrate membership with their “pink card”).   Note please that we often do vote on the budget and pass various motions approving our leaders’ actions at the AGMs.  A good question is: Why don’t they tell us this plainly?  Why is a morning of the last day the “official meeting”, yet preceded and  surrounded by lectures and content given by those chosen by the amorphous and unelected in-power in-group?

The reality is we don’t just join a spiritual society - we become members of a non-profit corporation, which is loosely overseen by various State authorities.   As long as we don’t make too many waves internally, everything is fine - the State authorities don’t notice us.  Keep in mind, however, the fact that the Executive in Dornach recently lost two law suits in Swiss Courts, brought by people inside the Society, who felt the only way they could get heard was to go to Court.

 
That our Society’s hierarchical Cultural Sphere-like decisions can be challenged by Rights Sphere-like Courts is probably a very health social reality.  The threefold social organism is not meant to involve rigid divisions and separations, for each of the three sub-systems/processes is factually integrated and interdependent with the others in multiple ways. 

What the true nature of our Society is - whether it is a purely Cultural Sphere social form or otherwise, is never really discussed except in the abstract, and mostly operates along the lines of traditions established now almost a hundred years ago.   Our social form is old, institutional/traditional, and has shown in the near present that it is economically weak, because it hasn’t really known what to do with the present-day ongoing economic macro-social changes in the larger social order of which our Society is unavoidably a part.  

Nearly every non-profit organization is losing income resources these days, and for what likes to think of itself as a wise and spiritually potent Society, we have not been able to either perceive or outsmart macro economic social changes.  Moreover, our membership is small, static, and often appears to some as not well led (lots of complaints).

Many of the causes for these conditions can be grasped by the idea of karma.  Like any social form there is often a karmic reason for the association - people need to meet each other to work on their shared karma.  That a higher principle may be active is often incidental to the karmic needs.  One can even quote Rudolf Steiner suggesting a hundred years ago that if we did not wake up in the right way to the spirit, then karma would hold sway.   This has, at least to some significant degree, apparently  happened.

We have as well a powerful internal anthroposophical-culture - a culture distinctly separate from much of the rest of world-culture.  Moreover this is a culture that likes to ignore its own history.  We use a lot of language and ideas created by Rudolf Steiner, concerning which some evidence clearly shows that there is  disagreement as to what it all means (there are any number of Journals and books expressing views contrary to those views promoted by the Executive and the Councils).

We have a kind of Steiner-said group-speak where we assume we share an understanding, but that understanding is itself often weak, uncertain, and never really discussed in a scientifically healthy way.  Disagreements have often been covered over (witness the Constitution crisis of the last three decades), and even when we get seriously contentious, such as the split in the Society between 1925 and 1935 where all manner of people were kicked out and the National Societies divorced each other for a couple of decades, the established powers usually ultimately win the day, and then paint the result as a confirmation of their wisdom.  Our superficial oral history - the story the Anthroposophical Society culture tends to tell new members - remains written by the victors.

what next?

Most of us, exercising some common sense, are aware of this.  Where we differ is frequently on which particular matters most need correction and then how to go about correcting them. 

As the only presently announced independent candidate for the yet to be vacant office of General Secretary in America, I’d to like to offer some insight.  Keep in mind, as pointed out before, that my business card reads: “social philosopher ... and occasional fool”.

First, I think (as in believe) we should accept that karma is, as it should be, active and present.  Christ, Steiner has told us, is the Lord of Karma. Second I believe we need to realize that the Incarnation of Anthroposophy was never something that would happen quickly.  If we read Steiner carefully, he suggested it might take up to 400 years before Anthroposophy could truly effect human culture on the necessary scale.  In a way, Steiner raised up the anthroposophical impulse to considerable heights, simply on the basis of his own gifts, and then when we lost his living leadership and advice, we fell back to earth - something that needed to happen in order for us to obtain to the right level of humility.  The tragedy, which is often overlooked, is that this led us to an over-reliance on what he said in the past.  Our excessive affections for Steiner-thought might not be entirely justified, but as Prokofieff said to me at Ann Arbor in 2005, when I confronted him about the Gordienko book: none of  us  are perfect. http://kimgraaemunch.wordpress.com/various/irena-gordienkos-on-sergei-o-prokoffief/

Third, I believe we need to realize our best days are ahead of us, not behind us.  This last needs more explication: Steiner began something, but that beginning was not the high point against which every next step needs to be compared.  We very much have to stop looking backwards and keep in mind that spirit recollection - the Past - is only one of three tasks put before us by the Foundation Stone Mediation (the others are: spirit mindfulness - the Present; and spirit visioning - the Future).  Human beings rise to challenges.  What are our Present and Future challenges?

To answer this requires an honest assessment of what has not yet been done.  This next point can seem critical, and for years I wrote of this as a criticism of individuals in the AS.  But as I began to understand the world better, particularly the organization given to it by Christ (see my book “The Art of God: an actual theory of Everything” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/artofgod.html), I came to realize that we aren’t meant to get everything correct right from the start, and that which can be perceived as incomplete or unfinished within the AS has had to have been passed over for valid necessities of karma.  Christ is Lord (Artist) of Karma for a reason - marking karma as not just an incidental aspect of human existence, but perhaps its core meaning.   Steiner talked a lot about karma, including eight  books just on Karmic Relationships.

Nor is the Anthroposophical Society meant to be a perfect organization - but rather a human organization.  We are being given Time to learn (and create) how to be anthroposophists.

There is one core element to the meaning of Anthroposophy that has been mostly forgotten, and remains undone.  It is undone in part because it seems too difficult.   This is the metamorphosis of thinking itself.  What we do today is to point too strongly in the direction of meditation practices, overlooking the fact that among the world’s many depth spiritual disciplines, only Anthroposophy reclaims for the thinking “I” a special role in the Creation.   The Cultural East, for example, routinely supports the ignoring of thinking, while supporting a presumed importance to the leaving aside of “egoness", or the “I".  Here is Steiner from the preface to “Truth and Knowledge” (his dissertation):

Here we see a core meaning of Anthroposophy of which we have lost sight, in spite of the fact that in the very first sentence of the First Leading Thought, Steiner defined Anthroposophy as follows: Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe.  Part of the reason things got humanly goofy and confused is because the German word “erkenntnis” can be translated as “knowledge” or as “cognition” (or other ways as well).  For English speakers “knowledge” is more passive - it is a what we think (a content) - and “cognition” more active - it is a how we think (a method).  If we work upon and think carefully about these facts (and related matters), we can arrive at the following:

In the evolution of consciousness (see the works of Owen Barfield, especially “Saving the Appearances: a Study in Idolatry”, and ”Speakers Meaning”), the thinking of the “I” has changed over eons of time - as a soul capacity thinking did not even exist in the beginning (original participation - we didn’t need to think, we just directly “knew”).  With the arrival in the last two to three hundred years of the state of inner being we call “self-consciousness”, the nature of thinking has reached a threshold condition, where what Steiner meant by calling thinking a spiritual activity (“The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”) began to become the common possession of humanity.

It was Steiner’s gift to us to learn by his own introspective (soul-observation) activity the real nature of thinking, and to teach us regarding this core activity of the mind that cognition is the most perfect link in the organism of the universe, and that Anthroposophy is a path of cognition, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe, which are in effect two ways of looking at the same core modern human existential fact, namely: That we are self-conscious thinkers, and with thinking we can become (and instinctively are) directly joined to the Mystery.

Not only did he study thinking, he observed and taught it out of the rules and methods of natural science.  Recall the subtitle to “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” - “some results of introspection following the methods of natural science”.

Yet, for all that he said about thinking we almost never see it mentioned by our so-called leaders or in our journals with the right emphasis as to its importance.  Why?

Because we are not perfect, and in the chaos following Steiner’s death some very important matters were lost sight of, and the Society became what it is today - a place where scientific introspection is not practiced, the mind is not well understood, and we stand (presently - this can change) before the world unable to refute the confusion created by scientific materialism that asserts incorrectly that mind and the physical brain are the same thing.  And also, because it was the duty of the opponents - the source of resistance - to turn us away from this most deep and artful Mystery.  We were not to easily earn the way through the needed Rites of Passage to that Mystery without the right effort of self-will, or waking up to the “will-in-thinking”.

To claim for thinking its rightful place in the future human culture of the Third Millennium is the mission of Anthroposophy, as can be learned to be practiced by members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society.  We can recreate and regenerate anthroposophical culture from the foundations up by turning our attention once more to where Steiner himself first illuminated thinking: GA 2 (“The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception” - 1886); GA 3 (“Truth and Knowledge” - Steiner’s dissertation - 1892); and, GA 4 (“The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” - 1894). 

We then learn the cognitive-based spiritual foundation Steiner discovered as an aspect of our given human nature, and which he then applied to the concept-creation activity born in the supersensible experiences of his life.  First the profound direct experiences of the world of spirit, ... that was then almost instantaneously joined to the applied disciplined and skilled methodical, yet lively and living, cognitive activity of  GA 2, 3, and 4, which then allowed him, via the creative word, to incarnate into human culture the content we call: Spiritual Science. 

That content - those words and concepts and ideas - were not what he actually experienced.  He created this "content" (Spiritual Science) via the most perfect link (an awake cognition) in the organism of the universe, where human conceptual activity added a sphere of reality (our first wide awake task as the 10th hierarchy) that had not existed before.  The self-conscious thinker makes something completely new.

The last hundred years of the history of the Society have prepared us, the same way the earth is worked and then fertilized in a biodynamic and living way.  We are ready.  We are ripe.  But at the same time nothing happens unless we act.  Now we - the self-generating seeds - can begin to grow ourselves into that which humanity needs.  We serve the whole, not ourselves, for the results of our new-thinking are to be food (nourishment) for others.

Many already do this to one degree or another.  But can you name any self-aware Goethean scientists who are in the Executive or the Councils in America?  Are they self-aware enough to name their participation in that Mystery?  No!  Mostly they talk about what Steiner said, and meditation, while giving a weak tea lip service to the metamorphosis of thinking which Steiner modeled.

Another reason our imagined leaders don’t talk much about this is quite justified and understandable.  They don’t know it.  They know of it, but they don’t know the doing of it.  You can’t really teach what you can’t do, and even an attempt to present the new-thinking, as do some as meditative contemplation, is to wander away from science and toward a kind of artistic mysticism.  The scientific aspect of the new thinking needs exactitude and precision, not a vague feeling of love or goodness that pretends we human beings don’t have a darkness as well as a light.

Again Steiner, from the last quarter of the fifth chapter of Occult Science: an outline:

I can do that.  I can teach a science of the New Thinking Mystery, as well as demonstrate it.  Out of that knowing is one of the reasons I am running for General Secretary in America.  With my cognitive activity I “created” this “running for office“ idea, and am now living it (demonstrating being a “knowing doer”).  At the same time, the fact that this can be known, means others can find it for themselves.  They don’t need to learn it from me, and in using the word “teach” above I do not mean to imply I can pour something into your soul from out of my soul.  The best thing I can do is demonstrate, and as well, in accord with the rules of science, elaborate the method involved.

Some people may dispute this, but the confirming evidence is plentiful.  Decades of works and writings and offerings, including over 240 videos for Youtube.  You can begin with my website Shapes in the Fire http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/ and go from there.

besides the New Thinking, then What?

The next valid yet fun question is: What would Wendt do if elected to the office of General Secretary in America?  Some of these next ideas are promises, and the fact that one cannot always achieve what we promise should be kept in mind; as well as the fact that there  may be no election or other process of selection that grants me, officially, that office.  Others are suggestions - very much actions I would urge on the members and friends.

I would not go to Dornach, nor to Ann Arbor.   While I will Tour in the Northeast of America during the beginning of this Campaign, I will by the end of that Campaign retire to my current home in Paxton, MA.  The reason is simple.  We live in an age of electronic potential - there is no reason for all our officers to run all around the world, giving out their thoughts as if these were the most important thoughts any anthroposophist could think.  Writings shared via the Internet can replace lectures, and the core of anthroposophical activity needs anyway to become the conversations in the Branches and Study Groups - we need to learn, along with the New Thinking Mystery, the New Mystery of Community - the Reverse Cultus.  No lectures, just conversations:

the Reverse Cultus: an Imagination

“The Circle gathers, with one shared intention - to consciously work with the spirit.  No member of the Circle is more important than any other member. First in silence they recall what Steiner taught about why Judas had to kiss Christ.  The truth at that time in Palestine was that when crowds gathered to hear teaching, the teaching came from all those in the circle around Christ.  The Christ spirit spoke through all, first one and then another.   For this reason Judas had to kiss the One who was the center, otherwise the Centurions would not know whom to arrest.

“After this mood is engendered, in which each recognizes in the other a true source of spirit presence, the members of the group begin to speak.  What they offer is not a pre-thought theme, about which one may be more expert than another, but rather the simple feelings of their hearts in the moment. These heart-felt concerns are the sharing to each other that opens the hearts to each other.  The Circle meets each other in this art of coming to know each others deepest concerns, which can (and often will) be entirely personal.  This knowing of each other is a great gift to give and to receive.

“In this brief sharing will begin to emerge the spirit music latent in the coming conversation, for the co-participating spirit presence knows the truth of our hearts, and is drawn to these concerns out of the darkness represented by the Threshold and into the light and warmth of the sharing. Thus, in acknowledging each other in silence as also true speakers of the spirit, and then in sharing the true matters of the heart as exists for each at that moment in time, the Chalice is born in the Ethereal - in the mutually shared world of thought.

“Now comes the Art of Conversation, the Royal Art.

“Here too no one is better than another for as Christ is quoted in the John Gospel: “What’s born of the flesh is flesh, and what’s born of the breath is breath.  Don’t be amazed because I told you you have to be born again.  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 breath of spirit blows where It wills, not where we will It.

“The Royal Art is deep indeed and begins (as Tomberg expressed it) by learning to think on our knees.  At the same time, these inner skills of thinking and listening will have little effect on where the wind blows, and while the study of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity may make us individually more awake inwardly, the will of the spirit presence in the conversation belongs to that spirit presence, not to us.

“So the conversation proceeds in the heart-warmed Chalice of the shared experience of the world of thoughts.  Each contributes what is thought in them. Together a weaving of a whole is sought, but no one can judge whether anyone else’s contribution is a needed thread or not.  “Often, for example, something, which on the surface seems antagonistic or oppositional, is precisely what is needed in the moment to stimulate another in the offering of their part of the whole.

“It is possible then for this circling weaving conversation to rise, in the nature and the substance of its overall meaning, nearer and nearer to spiritual other-presence.  It will not do, however, to believe that as the conversation of the members of the group draws near this other-presence, that It will tell us what is true and good.   That would violate our freedom.  The true touch of the wind in the soul is otherwise in its nature.

“In each soul lie latent embers of spirit recollection, spirit mindfulness and spirit vision.  We are already as thinking spirits, in the spiritual worlds.  What is fostered in the Chalice is something rooted in the teaching of Christ: Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am.

“He is with us.

“Moreover, He is very interested in what we choose to think, not in our obedience to Him.  Our obedience we owe to our higher self, not to Him - that is to the Not I, but Christ in me.  He loves everyone in the Circle equally, and observing the latent embers of recollection, mindfulness and vision within each separate soul, He aids our communion by breathing on these embers.  He gives to each, according to that individual need, that aspect of His Life which is His Breath - what John the Baptist in Matthew 3:11 called holy breath.  [“Now I bathe you in the water to change hearts, but the one coming after me is stronger than me:  I’m not big enough to carry his shoes.  He will bathe you in holy breath and fire.”]

“With His Breath, during the communion that is the conversation in the Chalice, the latent embers of our own soul are given Life.  Within the thoughts of each arise that which belongs to each, but which is also seen by the Love of Christ, and enthused with His Life.  We rise on the moral quality of our will in recognizing the spirit presence in each other, and in the sharing of the concerns of our hearts; and, as we do this, the weaving of the thoughts into a whole - still resting on our own insight and will - is given Eternal Life, in the form of the good and the true.

The above quote is from my book: American Anthroposophy http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/AmericanAnthroposophy.html.  The core indications and reasons for the Reverse Cultus are found in Steiner’s Lecture 6 of the cycle: Awakening to Community, given just after the burning of the Goetheanum beginning in January of 1923.

Where and when it is not useful (because the structure is not intimate enough) to practice the Reverse Cultus, such as large meetings to carry out organizational duties, can be accomplished over Skype and related electronic means.  The economic savings for our Society will be considerable if all the endless lecturing travel of our so-called leaders is eliminated.   It is our own thinking as individuals we must foster, and that can be done best in the Branches and Groups, as aspects of the practice of the Reverse Cultus. 

Because of e-mail, websites and such as Skype, expensive conferences are really just habits we no longer question, and which if we did question them would discover we no longer need.  Collectively the membership of the Society in America is very middle-class, and mostly white.  Meanwhile the world’s and America’s poor and working poor  are increasing,  as is their need for a spiritual understanding of our shared world.   If we grow in the right way, ultimately we are to serve them.   Our Society can no longer afford to be self absorbed (enclosed) and in love exclusively with Rudolf Steiner.   Many others see that as a sign we are just one more cult.

The New Thinking Mystery is not meant to serve ourselves.  In the Age of the Return of Christ in the Ethereal, the Third Millennium calls for new Acts of the Apostles.  Anthroposophy, as a content, or a what, is like New Wine; but, we as knowing doers - as those who know Anthroposophy also as a how, are to become the New Skins for the New Wine.

We also need to replace our reliance on written books, for to the poor the sheer mass of these are difficult and expensive to obtain.  To conceive that one cannot become an anthroposophist without a huge library, is to not understand Anthroposophy at all.  All books and writings, where feasible, need to be transferred to high density discs (you can put 20,000 books on one disc according to my youngest son), and local Branches and Groups can then own rugged hand-crankable laptops if necessary.  Already MIT has developed one that will cost only $100.  Creating the discs can be done for free, and may be a task that draws to us more of the young.  To obtain access to the writings of Steiner, and his many hundreds of seriously creative students, need not be expensive at all.  Access to written published works needs to  become less expensive

Many in the Anthroposophical Society are far too afraid of what is conceived of by some as a so-called ahrimanic technology, and as a consequence the rest of the world is passing us by.  Now obviously books will not completely disappear - we love holding them in our hands.  Rather I am here suggesting that we notice that print media are dying away, and embrace that huge cultural change in which everyone is caught up.  While our publishing houses may resist, our Age will simply run us over if we remain asleep in the middle of the road of progress everyone else is traveling.  We could give to each new Waldorf School and each new Study Group and Branch a huge library through these means and at much less cost than miles of books on shelves.

In point of fact, there are already enough books out there, at least in the sense of old books.  We don't need to always print new ones ,or print old ones with new covers confusing all kinds of people.  If you have books you no longer read, find them a better home than gathering dust on your selves.

Why make books more easily available in the form of ebooks?

One of the main transformative needs for Society membership is to stop just studying Steiner Steiner, all the time Steiner.  We really need to take seriously our task as adult educators, and with that begin by intentionally  engaging in serious self-education ourselves.  What we don’t model, we can’t assert as important.  Our real spiritual leadership must be by example.

Branch and Study Group meetings need to focus on all the science that has been done - what some call Goethean Science.  The study of just the so-called Steiner “basic books” of spiritual science makes us - once more - look like a cult.  The following names need to be on everyone’s lips, and our journals; and, other ways of sharing with each other should reveal a mastery of the works of these writers and thinkers:  Owen Barfield, George Adams Kaufmann, Olive Whicher, Rudolf Hauschka, Theodore Shwenk, Dennis Klocek,  Wolfgang Schad, Gerbert Grohmann, Ronald Brady, Steve Talbott, Craig Holdrege, Arthur Zajonc, Nick Thomas, Stephen Clarke, Catherine MacCoun, Elizabeth MacKenzie, Harvey Bornfield, Bruno Abrami, Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon, Georg Kuhlewind, Patrick Dixcon, Emir Korkut, and on and on and on, ... including me of course.

Most of these writers wrote/write with ordinary educated thinkers in mind, not specialists.   It is their task to make you think, rather then fill up your head with various kinds of esoteric speculation masquerading as truth, which dogmatic works essentially puts the spirit-mind to sleep.  That a lot of  people bury their noses in the unscientific works of Prokofieff and von Halle, for example, to the exclusion of recognized anthroposophical thinkers in modern science, - that is just one more cult-like sign.  Others outside our circles cannot help but wonder what we are about.  We are really judged by what we do, not by our imagined “higher” ideas - the fake truth we like to tell ourselves.

The Heart of Anthroposophy is science - an empirical science of the mind (which when done correctly discovers the role of religious devotion and artistc imagination in the thought-creation process);  and, if we want to gain for our own thinking a truly scientific attitude, in a modern way, then there is no excuse for not becoming familiar with Goetheanism in all its manifestations.  That our so-called leaders are not conversant with this material just reveals how much of the New Wine has been poured into Old Skins, ruining them both [But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. Luke 5:38].   Want to read Steiner’s real basic books, then read GA 2, 3 and 4 as well as “The Light Course”, “The Warmth Course” and “The Astronomy Course”.  Theosophy, Knowledge of Higher Worlds, and Occult Science: an outline, all followed after the even more basic foundation was laid in the stream of a science of philosophy in GA 2, 3 and 4.

This is, after all, the Age of Science, not the Age of Mysticism or of Theosophical-like language and conceptions.  The quickest way for us to be scientists of the spirit is not through the mastery what Steiner-said, but through an introspective and empirical scientific study of our own minds.  Mind, as the arts of spirit and soul, is right in front of us.  We don’t need to be initiates or to pretend to initiation knowledge by being able to spout copious amounts of the past teachings of Rudolf Steiner, when the reality of the spirit has already been given to each of us by the Divine Mystery - immediately to our own experience.

What’s our problem with Money?

Lots of people saw the banking crash coming.  I began writing of it in my blog (“Hermit’s Weblog: everything your mother never told you about how the world really works” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/blog/) in the late ‘90‘s.   I had a conversation, as early as 1991, with a young banker at an Social Science conference in Spring Valley, in which he confessed that in monetary terms, 99% of  economic values were fake and completely dependent on the continuous creation of currency by Central Banks.  I have tried to have conversations on monetary policy issues with anthroposophists on various Internet economic discussion groups, related to Steiner’s World Economy, and all they wanted to talk about was Steiner’s theory of prices - forget monetary policy.   Watching Dornach and the Councils in America get fussy about the loses of “gift money” support for our own institutional needs, I just had to wonder: Why are these folks surprised?  Are they so absorbed in Steiner-speak that they were not paying attention at all to the real world?

The Anthroposophical Society needs to form economic relationships with the wider world.  We are to be in partnership with the world, not to stand outside it and in an assumed superior relationship as better “knowers” of the truth.  Christ loves everyone as they are.  Can we do any less?

I can earn money for the Society, American and Worldwide.  I have expertise that is needed, and can be offered to institutions that will readily pay for such expertise.  If we pay attention to Steiner’s deeds, as a kind of speech in itself, we can note that the original Waldorf School was funded by the excess capital of a thriving business enterprise.  As Christopher Budd has been pointing out for years, our Society should have been operating in this way for decades.  We certainly don’t need much gift money, or even a lot of loan money, if we do our work in the right way - especially if we are engaged in service to others in a noticeable non-judgmental (we are not better than others) fashion.

Besides my expertise as regards how to manifest the new thinking, I know a great deal about the living organism of the social-political life ... in particular the fact that we are in the midst of a massive change connected to the dying and becoming (metamorphosis) of Western Civilization.  This knowledge is very practical if put forward in the right way.  For contemporary details of this larger phenomena, with a particular American perspective, read (for free on my website) my 70 page booklet “Economic and Social Rebellion” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Rebellion.html.

The folk wisdom here is to not just feed others (give them “fish”) but to teach them how to “fish”.  Many business and other large social institutions will welcome an opportunity to train new thinkers in the hows and means of a Goetheanism of the social-political.  This is the process by which the founding of the Third Millennium will be wrested from the dead and cold intellect of the ahrimanic in the human being, and thus be spiritually reborn in the warm living thinking of the Christ-Impulse. This as well is the “Heart of Anthroposophy” as it moves further into incarnation in the wider world over the next few centuries.   After all, the business of America is business - see the Pharaoh Foundation material for details of a new kind of anthroposophical enterprise.

Much of this training I can support from home.   The Society, in reforming itself - out of the inner forces of individual members, then becomes the womb of many new-thinkers, who are each then free to add to human culture those thought-creations they manifest according to their own inclinations and experiences.  When born from this womb, and in entering into the world’s knowledge-stream of this Age, the individual then encounters, directly in their individual biography, the natural crucible for even higher stages of knowledge. 

Recall some of what I wrote above in the “synopsis”:

If we - all of us Steiner fans - do this right, what will happen is that a certain kind of language will be born and then enter into the Third Millennium; and, Anthroposophy (as we know it) - in its outer nature - will live for a while and then die and become into that deed.  This language can include: “percept and concept”; “moral imagination, intuition and technique”; “Goetheanism”; “pure and organic thinking”; “thinking-about, thinking-with, thinking-within and thinking-as”; “antipathy and sympathy”, “the threefold double-complex”; ”discursive thinking”; “discriminatory thinking and associative thinking”; “concrete thinking and abstract thinking”; and, all their many relatives.  A science/art/religion of the mind can arise within human culture on a small but sufficient scale such that it will wrest from the cold ahrimanic intellect the warm thoughts of a true scientific, religious and artistic heart thinking which we would name: Anthroposophy.  We, collectively, can create a completely new understanding of the mind (soul/spirit) that will help many human beings directly experience that they are not just material brains, living biologically determined lives, over which they have no choices as to declaring what it means to be individually human.
Anthroposophy then is meant to disappear into the common social language of the future, similar to the many useful ways we use the word “field” today, without most of us knowing that Faraday introduced it as a concept in his fundamental scientific investigations of electricity.  Steiner even used this term in the Class Lessons, when he spoke of "fields" of thinking, feeling and willing.  Our work should play the same kind of role - an art of the mind that becomes the common possession of much of humanity in such a way that its basic ideas are what of lot of words simply have come to mean.  Even Steiner knew that, for he said that when Anthroposophy enters the world in the right way, it will disappear.
In this way we can help free the slaves of scientific materialism, and no one will really know what we did, or how we did it; and we never need quote Rudolf Steiner at all - only our own thinking.  All of this can be done, at the same time, in a very American and pragmatic way.  Why American?  Because in America Anthroposophy finally comes to rest on the Earth.
For example, we live in the time of the Return of Christ in the Ethereal, which makes it also true that Rudolf Steiner is the John the Baptist figure of the true Second Coming of Christ.  Steiner was the voice crying in the wilderness of scientific materialism.  This also means that there is a Second Eucharist in the Ethereal - described by me in the essay: “The Meaning of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul”; and the path to that ethereal experience of Christ, during our moral thinking, is described in “In Joyous Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship”.  Both these essays are collected under the title: “Living Thinking in Action”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/liveT.html. [See also Sacramental Thinking, for those and additional essays]
Consider ... the above ideas, about the Second Coming, a Second Eucharist, and Steiner’s John the Baptist role as the voice crying in the wilderness of scientific materialism, ought to make obvious sense - you don’t need to be an initiate to understand them and immediately appreciate they are true.  But then ask yourself: Why have not these obvious matters been stated from within the work of the Executive and the Councils in America?  Who was served by those social processes that exclude independent spiritual research, while continuing to bury us in the endless recycling of more and more quotes of Rudolf Steiner’s past utterances?

As we individually grow into the New Thinking Mystery, via our individual biographies, so the Society will transform without any need for accelerated and revolutionary changes.  There’s a Wave moving through the evolution of consciousness and we just have to see that Inner/Outer Wave and Surf it.  This is the higher meaning of the ongoing metamorphosis of Western Civilization.  It is really inner changes, in the form of advances in the evolution of consciousness, that are driving the outer social changes manifesting in the dying and becoming of Western Civilization. 

Further, the gap between a truly awake living thinking and our ordinary consciousness is not large.  The only reason we might not make the necessary connections is because we haven’t developed an ongoing scientific self-discipline of introspective activity.  In my writings I explain how it is that the Americans are especially gifted, in an instinctive way, to do the new thinking.  Even Steiner was explicit on this point - see my book: “American Anthroposophy”.

Right now the Society is too inwardly directed - too self-absorbed.  Anyone - member or friend - is free to change that.  Life processes in social forms are “natural”, the old dies, the new is born.  The basic shift is, as Ben-Aharon almost noted in 2003, a movement away from working out of Centers, such as Dornach, toward a working out of the Periphery, such as in Branches and Study Groups.  In a lot of ways this is already happening, but our understanding of such processes is yet confused.  Details are discussed in the book “American Anthroposophy”, in the Chapter: “The Natural Transformation of the Anthroposophical Society in America.”

We are a Society that is socially meant to be a functional self-organizing anarchy.  Spiritual Freedom is the primary cultural and social power, and that comes from the individual human will-in-thinking.  Going to endless lectures and reading hundreds of books will not do it.  If you are not studying your own mind, you are not being a genuine Anthroposophist.

*         *         *

This then is the core of my Campaign to be elected General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America.  Actually, we don’t even have to have an election or to replace the current Secretary in any event.  Steiner, in his writings on social life, pointed out that in the Cultural Sphere the free activity of human beings would reveal who was gifted in the right ways, and thus who should have a recognized status within any given Cultural Sphere social form.  It is the recognition that gifts are present that matters, not the elevation to office.

The ideas and concepts that I co-create will either resonate with the reader of this or they will not.  Nothing else is required.  The Campaign Research Tour is just a poetic metaphor for offering services to my brothers and sisters in Anthroposophy.

*         *         *

One final point, which is really only an indication.

Rudolf Steiner re-introduced into our spiritual language the previously temporarily lost idea of the double, or the doppelganger or the shadow.  Our souls have a dark-side companion.

Those who live in the Americas are particularly equipped to do research on this aspect of our soul life, given that the Americas are the most material place of existence on the whole planet, and where the threefold-double complex is strongest (it is necessary for our own souls to have an appropriate “density” to go with the local soul-density of the true West - see the Class Lessons on the fields of willing, feeling and thinking).  I have done serious research on these questions, which clearly is only a beginning.  Steiner mostly worked with the soul forces (or four chakras) from the heart up, while saying little directly about the lower soul forces - the three below the heart.

Thought is a flower rooted in the soul-soil of feeling, and filled from within by the blossoming life of the will-in-thinking. Where an excess of unconsciousness infects this soil and this life, the Shadow is given free play. ...

With a cultivated feeling we transform the soul-soil from which the thought is born and then flowers (which is also why the ideal is expressed as: thinking with the heart). ...

Meanwhile, what do we do with Wendt?

Well, I’m not interested in being anyone’s boss, that’s for sure.   Nor would I be good in any administrative job - not skilled there.  Don’t want to actually be on the Executive or any of the Council’s in America either.

I do have some skill sets - some expertise as it were in the science of thinking and the science of social understanding.  In a way I am a kind of human tool - forged in the crucible of life through 72 years of experience, most of which experiences were surprises to me - I had to met them and then pass through them, or around them or surmount them or overcome them.  You pick the verb or verbs.

Life sharpened me - gave me my “edge” as it were.  If I sum up those experiences they are essentially Christian, and then secondarily directed at Anthroposophy.  I am Christian because that is what Life did to and with me - It forged me, because I saw and then surrendered to the manifestation of the Divine Mystery in the stream of Life.  “In It (the Word) was Life, and the Life was the Light of the World.” as well as: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ... “

I am anthroposophical because this is the Age of Science, and where Christian practice and science meet - that’s in Anthroposophy.  I can serve both Anthroposophy and Christ, because that was how I was forged by this Life, to which I surrendered.

Its up to the membership, and the friends, to put me to use - or not.  All I can do is offer to be available should some see a need.

Oh, and remember to “vote” :-) ... its easy, just share this with others ...