a Challenging Open Letter to
the Powers
that Be in the Anthroposophical Society
Friends often have advised me against such excursions -
where I go pointing angry fingers at various people, knowing (as
friends do instinctively), that many will overreact, others will defend
without thought, feelings will be hurt and ones message will probably
get completely lost in the resulting noise.
I’m not in this to be liked. At age 71
(physically), although only 40 plus years into my incarnation, I
basically have lately consciously cultivated a curmudgeonly demeanor,
which comes out, as was said by Clark Gable in Gone with
the Wind: frankly my dear, I don’t give
a damn, or by Peter Finch in the movie Network: I’m
as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!, or by President Harry Truman, when he was a Senator: If you don’t like the the
heat, get out of the kitchen.
People who say yes when someone comes to them and
encourages them to be on the Executive or the Councils in America, or
the heads of the Sections of the School of Spiritual Science, have
agreed to stand out, get their egos massaged, and once in a while will
have to pay a price. The positions I’m taking here, in sharing
this material at this Conference, is just me joining your club.
Very American of me - not being willing to be excluded.
Some people believe, naively, that being spiritual is all about playing nice nice. Check out the
money changers Christ threw out of the temple, or this quote from the
Gospels by Christ about hypocrites: “Woe to you canon-lawyers and
Pharisees, you fakes, for being like dusty monuments that look pretty
on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of corpses and
all kinds of rot.”. For the whole bit,
read Matthew 23: 25-28
Of course, everyone is basically human and flawed.
Prokofieff said to me: None of us are perfect, when I
challenged him, at the 2005 Ann Arbor Conference, in accord with my own
reading of his works and with Gordienko’s book. Guess that would
have to include Rudolf Steiner too. And me.
So what’s the point here?
In January of 1923, after the burning of the original
Goetheanum, Steiner began a series of lectures later published under
the title: Awakening to Community.
He didn’t mince words, and was clear that understanding that fire
included understanding that anthroposophists need to do better.
Its quite possible to take the view that we haven’t. Many
are in denial and some of the convenient fibs we tell ourselves
are clearly not justifiable. But the ahrimanic double likes for
us to be comfortable in our belief systems (such as what I label elsewhere:
Steinerism). Take a nap says Ahriman, anybody seems to rock the
boat threw them in the ocean. Better we feel good about ourselves
than stop hiding from certain truths.
That’s the key you see ... placing knowledge of the
truth over and above brotherly nice nice diplomatic feelings.
Seven years ago I was here in Ann Arbor and made known
at the final plenum three wishes: 1) that the Vorstand give us an
honest history of the Society during the 20th Century [didn’t happen];
2) that the Councils in America give us real access to those doing
research on the soul of Americans and the spirit in America [also
didn’t happen]; and, 3) that regular people would they please stop
saying: Steiner
said [again,
didn’t happen]. Nothing puts him in a
prison more, and our own souls in even a worse condition, than
constantly relying on Rudolf Steiner as an authority rather than our
own capacities for the New Mysteries of Thinking and the New Mysteries
of Community. There is a reason we have our own thoughts - they
matter!
Well, as Arnold Schwarzenegger nearly says in the later
Terminator movies, when he comes through time to save the future
leaders of the rebellion against the terrors of the machine
intelligence seeking to rub out the human race and take over the
planet: Its seven years later and I’m back!
I’m not here to lead. Don’t want to take anyone’s
job ... be on the Vorstand, a Section leader or a Council member.
Not interested. I’m basically retired, and here on vacation
doing a little fishing for men like Christ taught me. Now a
disciple of the Second Coming. You know that one, right?
The one we don’t talk about much because we seem too
scared to face down the fundamentalist Christians as if they might
attack us for wandering into the territory of the Great Lie Ahriman
helped them use to conquer and still moderate Christian voices.
The one where Christ comes back in the flesh, takes true
believers up in the rapture, and shoots bolts of lightening out
of his eyes killing the ungodly. If we had half a brain, and
maybe an ounce of real Michaelic Courage, we’d be describing the
Reality, which is that Steiner is the John the Baptist figure of
the true Second Coming of Christ - the voice crying in the wilderness
of scientific materialism. Yet, ... the fact is we are not doing
that.
Face it folks. In this Time if you want to be
spiritual in a Christ Impulse Way, if you are not taking risks of some
kind, you’re hiding under the Bed, afraid of the Bogeyman lurking in
the dark of the Closet; or the reverse, hiding in the Closet afraid of
the bogeyman lurking under the Bed. Try to remember that Christ
died (as did Rudolf Steiner) for standing out for spiritual truth in a
social situation where people who spoke the truth often get killed.
Now I don’t mean we should be standing on a street
corner making a nuisance of ourselves. We can trust to karma and
our own intuitions to lead us to those conversations where the choice
will arise in our souls to speak the true and do the good, or not.
We don’t need an aggressive program, although we do need very
much to let the winds of an entirely different conversation among
ourselves come forth. The AS has plenty of work to do within
itself first, if it truly believes it
has something spiritual (besides our adoration of Steiner) to offer the
world.
Starting a little over 40 years ago, I came in, found a
world filled with many riddles I couldn’t answer, and begin a long long
path trying to answer them. Meet Rudolf Steiner, Goethean
scientists, Owen Barfield et.al. and began the best self-education
money can’t buy. Trusted life and it trained me to be me, and
graced me with a gift for thinking and speaking not seen very often.
I don’t want to be famous, by the way. But I do
want to serve the truth, you know the one connected to this I-am
statement: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. I’ve been
hanging out with that Guy, and He’s given me some skills that can serve
the truth and the Anthroposophical Society as well.
I actually know where to find the money all our
institutions need. I know a course that people can travel to
survive the Third Millennium. I know the secrets of the
Consciousness Soul Age, because when I incarnated I turned my life over
to the Big Guy and said, okay Lord, take me where to go to do good
stuff. He said yup, but don’t expect to like it. By the
way, I’m not better than anyone, just a bit different and perhaps even
weirder than most. Who wouldn’t be if they had my biography?
Who
teaches the teachers?
In America there is a profound Rights question being
played out, due to the aggressive use of domestic spying by our
intelligence apparatus. The National Security Agency monitors
more and more of our electronic intercourse, which in the age of the
Internet is now considerable and more or less ubiquitous. Those
who seek to protect our Civil Rights often asks the question: Who
watches the watchers? We justifiably have a related question in
the Anthroposophical Society. On what basis are certain
individuals put forward as capable of lecturing and teaching others?
And, more precisely, just who is it that makes the relevant
judgments putting these people forward?
We generally know who is taking on “teaching” roles.
What we don’t really know is precisely how they are selected.
We are often told “stories” and an effort is made to explain to
us these processes, but an even deeper question remains, and can here
take the form: Who selects the selectors?
As a student of the social, observing the outer details
of the AS for decades, but also well aware of common human approaches
to such questions, it appears to me that what we do in the AS is not
unlike what goes on in academia. A fact to take account of is
that many individuals who rise to “teaching” positions in the AS are
themselves holders of degrees from various institutions of higher
education. We would be surprised if a janitor in a Waldorf School
was to become the head of the Section on pedagogical matters, although
we ought to recall that one teacher of Steiner was an apparently simple
man from the countryside, who came to town to sell herbs.
Who the spiritual world favors is frequently not a
function of human values. We have the cliche’: What is wisdom in the eyes of
God is often foolish in the eyes of men.
Yes, Steiner was a Ph.D., and I have a J.D. and a B.A. and
Elizabeth has an M.A. and a B.S. But none of that reveals our
relationship to the world of spirit. If someone wants to know
that, they have to inquire after other matters, and often dig deeper.
Keep in mind that while we adore Steiner, most of the rest of the
world does not easily take that point of view. Against
conventional “wisdom” a lot of our ideas really appear goofy (two Jesus
children etc.).
At one point, after Steiner crossed over, Valentin
Tomberg was put forward by some as Steiner’s successor, a question
concerning which Steiner had himself not offered an “indication”.
During the recent years of the Constitutional Question (part of
the hidden history of the AS) it became apparent that Steiner in his
last days actually changed the members of the Executive, who after his
death were not allowed by others to carry those offices, and the old
Executive, in a kind of coup, prevailed through not exactly legal
shenanigans that took the Building Corporation, and turned it into the
General Anthroposophical Society. Our present Executive has
actually lost, in the Swiss courts, all cases on these very old
questions; and, narrowly, through recent processes of infighting
among groups loyal to Prokofieff, and groups loyal to von Halle,
survived an effort to run them out of office.
This is so much like the infighting among academics at
universities over the control of various departments to be not only
amusing, but very very human. Keep in mind, however, what is at
stake. Not only do we grant to some of our “teachers” a kind of
tenure and salary, but we also adorn them with the garment of spiritual
insight. When you read the obituaries of members who have
recently died, no one is ever spoken of in a negative (and honest)
fashion. If a person seeking spiritual development fell into the
habit of rewriting his own history all the time like we do, he’d make
no progress on his character at all.
Consider now some questions on the development of
spiritual research on America. I’ll have to necessarily be very
brief ...
Around 1977, at a meeting of the Faust Branch in Fair
Oaks California, Carl Steggman, the author of The Other
America: the West in the Light of Spiritual Science, stood up and proposed the creation of an
institution, which would have two parts. One part would be
dedicated to furthering spiritual research on America, hoping to draw
Americans to that work, and the other part would be a foundational year
for introducing people to Anthroposophy. People were inspired by
Carl, and went to work in various ways, some with the practical matters
of finding land and building buildings, and others getting prepared to
take part in the two different kinds of work.
After about a year Rene Querido and his wife were hired
to run the foundational program, and soon thereafter, the research
program on America was dropped away, and Rudolf Steiner College was
born as a Waldorf teacher training center - Rene’s specialty.
There were, among some, very hard feelings. To me it is an
excellent example of the European spiritual imperialism, that is
promoted by the ahrimanic hierarchies in their efforts to lame the
Society’s ability to lead the coming confrontation with Ahriman during
the Third Millennium.
In a later example of the same battle, in which human
beings played roles somewhat caught between such spiritual Titans such
as Ahriman and Michael, the Central Regional Council was given the task
of setting up speakers for the conference and lectures in which the
2004 AGM in Detroit was to take place. They choose to make the
theme the Spiritual America, and put together a list of dynamic and
even controversial speakers. Material was sent out, people made
plans, such as motel reservations and plane reservations, only to find
out just 30 days before the event that the whole America program was
canceled. Keep in mind I am leaving out a lot of details, for I
was myself planning to attend, and knew many of the speakers.
The reason given for the change of the program was
(allegedly) a misjudgment on the part of the Central Regional Council
in the selection of a particular speaker {why that speaker wasn’t
dropped by himself, and the rest of the program retained, remains a
significant curiosity}. All the speakers were replaced, the
emphasis on America fell to the side, a leading European living in
America gave the opening lecture and during the course of the
conference three leading American women give talks reminiscing about
Rene Querido, who had in the last year crossed over.
What makes this all so inexplicable was that this AGM
came the precise weekend after George W. Bush won re-election, once
more via processes of political theft. The speaker, who had been
the excuse for the cancellation, was prepared to lecture on the
relationship between the Ahrimanic and Luciferic hierarchies and the
Republican and Democrat parties.
What broke my heart came in the final plenum, when a
young woman (around 30, perhaps a Waldorf teacher or parent) asked
plaintively, yet powerfully: What about America? Aren’t we supposed to know
something about America? But America
never came up at that AGM.
That is still true, sort of. It is the
Anthroposophical Society in America, and in the World, that ignores the
deeper questions of America and the Americas. This happens not
because the research work has not been done, by the way, but it is
because the processes, by which speakers and institutional leaders are
determined, systematically excludes those personalities gifted with the
relevant skills, crafts and arts. People who won’t make waves,
and who more or less conform to and agree with conventional Society
culture, are the only ones selecting and selected.
Choices
now come to the fore: In the run up to
this Conference, I have been trying to arrange meetings between myself
and the members of the Executive and the Councils in America that will
be attending. I’ve written to John Beck, and as well to Torin
Finser, concerning the seeking of their help in the arranging of these
meetings. I’ve also, as a good social tactician should ,
made alternative plans, not leaving what is to happen to the
“permission” of so-called leading personalities.
What I am trying to do is avoid a war. There is an
apocryphal story that has Steiner, and George Unger (the elder),
standing on a hill overlooking Dornach, with Steiner supposedly saying:
We may have to
come back at the end of the Century and destroy all this.
I do not want to oppose the Society, but if it does not
turn itself toward the truth and spend less time playing nice nice
diplomatic games with each other, there will be for me no choice at
all. At the same time, I am not an agitator, regardless of how
others might want to perceive me. I am simply for honest
conversation, which evades the boxes and constraints of safe
non-controversial anthroposophical traditions, seeking instead the
Living Reality of the Time.
The essence of that seeking really belongs to those
attending this Conference. I’ve offered here what help I could
through trying to deepen our understanding of America and its
relationship to the real world, the world of spirit. If the
conversation is to be moved significantly more toward the so far
missing truth, that will depend upon those who bring their wills into
the guidance of that conversation, which is not the official speakers,
but those who listen and have yet not had their say.
The reality, especially in America, is that true
leadership comes for the social below, what in my writings I describe
as the social
commons. There the community of
individuals speaks to each other of the true, out of their individual
sense of the good. From this Rite, not yet fully practiced
consciously, but for which Americans have a wonderful instinct (witness
the social processes of Occupy Wall Street), is to be born the true
social future. The Anthroposophical Society is meant to be led
from the periphery, from the Branches and Groups, not from Centers, by
Vorstands, Schools and Councils.
Here is what I wrote to a friend, who was to attend the
colloquium for Branch leaders, prior to this Conference:
I believe (I hope) you know instinctively that this is
not Fifth Cultural Age to have a hierarchy of “leadership”. Our
tendency (not just in the AS but in Civilization in general) is to hold
to pyramid-like structures, that were born in the 3rd Cultural Age,
clinging to them now mostly out of habit. Steiner had to present
his work in Central Europe to people still mostly in the Intellectual
Soul, and whose orientation to “knowledge” copied the University, which
again is a last remnant of those social structures that involve some
form of “dominion over”.
In creating the College of
Teachers to run Waldorf Schools, and trying to make the schools
independent of each other, and as well in trying to evoke the Reverse
Cultus, Steiner was seeking to inaugurate true Consciousness Soul
social forms (Fifth Cultural Age), which are meant to replace “dominion
over” with “communion with”.
Also in creating the
Branches and the Study groups he again tried to set the course for true
Fifth Age cultural social forms, which is partly why he tried to stay
outside the Society as its Teacher, and not (until as a last gasp) to
enter into it structurally, because this would once more give pyramidal
order that was no longer appropriate.
The very idea of
“leadership” contains 3rd Cultural Age overtones of “dominion over”,
because it seems to place decision making power at the top of something
hierarchical.
Now I know you actually
don’t want to “lead” that way, but as long as the above “understanding”
is not present in the Society consciously we will continue to behave
toward each other as if the “institutional hierarchies” (the Executive,
the “leaders” of the School, and the Councils in America) have real
spiritual and social meaning. That these institutional groups
perpetuate their unconscious “dominion over” modes of thought by being
allowed to choose their successors is again a major social imbalance.
Also, Dornach should not be giving the free and independent
spirits of the thinking of the membership “themes of the years”.
Having a “Center” is no longer socially viable.
If the “facilitators” (not
leaders) in the Branches were to consciously resist the very idea of
leadership among themselves and among the Councils and Executives etc.
a great step forward could be made. The Branches are meant to be
fully free and independent, as are the local members.
Institutional structures are necessary to do “work”, i.e.
facilitate (which is how I sense you see your role), but not to “lead”.
As noted above, Michaelic inspiration is actually concentrated in
the Periphery now, not in the Center.
The Conference, in point of
fact, fails utterly at the social level because it once more
perpetuates the hierarchical structures by having “leading
personalities” dominate our thinking by giving lectures all over the
place.
Now there is a place for
“expertise”. A committee doesn’t write poems or paint pictures or
do heart surgery. Experts should, however, also not be “leaders”,
but perhaps “guides”. They may have penetrated an area of
knowledge yet unknown to others, and can then guide those who would also go into
those territories.
I realize these are somewhat
subtle distinctions (leaders, guides and facilitators), but I also
think they are descriptive (goetheanism) of modern social developments.
Occupy Wall Street, for example, strove very hard not to have
leaders, but rather to practice as best they knew how: “communion with”.
Welcome to the Age of the Consciousness Soul, where if
people were perfect and got everything right the first time around,
we’d always just party. All the same, we are not perfect and we
don’t get it right all the time, and maybe we should just celebrate a
lot anyway. So many choices, so little time.
Let me end this by giving the final word to Elizabeth.
We are in fact, socially, in the Age of the Consciousness Soul
very much in need of being guided by women. The divine feminine
forces are returning, and while not exclusively only available to one
sex (men can know them as well), it is very important to consciously
seek out and cultivate a relationship to this style of inspiration.
From her book: The Shepherds’
Fire - a meditative study:
“...
“The Holy Spirit, whenever
It draws near, speaks Its name to me and Its name is Christ Mass.
This speaking is like no other speaking. The
Holy Breath is very gentle in the soul, like an infant reaching for a
mother; if the soul can welcome it likewise then the following
experience can happen.
“The Holy Breath, when it
moves the soul produces the sound of the Angelic Choirs singing Gloria
and simultaneously a deep dark night descends on the soul.
If one ponders the night and allows the angelic singing to
fill the soul then a third experience dawns. The heart
suddenly becomes warm and is, as it were, on fire. This
mystical fire lights up in the deep dark night with great gentleness.
It is not a blaze. The heavens are ablaze, not with
fire, but with the singing of the angelic choirs singing both Gloria
and Hosanna to God in the Highest as if the myriad stars themselves
were saying Gloria, Hosanna in the Highest, for the stars spoke once to
man.
“In the warmth of this fire
that fills the soul is the realization of the truth that the stars are
speaking; the truth is that this very night, as every night, and the
night of the soul is a Holy Night. The warmth and light of
this Truth kindles the Shepherds’ Fire that keeps the sheep safe from
the wolves- one’s own sheep and one’s own wolves and others’ wolves.
In this safety of the heart on fire one can ask the Breath
of Holiness, what are the sticks? What is the flame and how is it lit?
For one must learn to discern very clearly if one is doomed
to spiritual science, and one must learn the art of questioning as a
white dove. That is to say, one’s question must arise as a
white dove just as Noah’s question arose; or as a stock dove, a blue
dove, a columba, calman gorm. ... “
Dona Nobis Pacem
grant us peace