natural transformation

The Natural Transformation of the Anthroposophical Society

in America

written for this book, in the Season of Michaelmas, 2007

Some, who take an interest in the future of the Society in America, generally have an idea about what it should become. Some ideas could be called "continuing to develop matters along more traditional lines", and other ideas could be described as "taking the development of matters on more progressive lines". The use of neither of those terms here is meant to suggest anything fixed, but rather represents an endeavor to point out something that can be observed in the patterns of the thought-background, as it were, of the concepts being advocated by others. Such a pattern would not appear on a specific page of text, or in a lecture itself, but would hover in the contextual structure of concepts of the whole of any writing or lecturing concerned with the themes of development or change.

The recent article in the News for Members of the Anthroposophical Society in America, based on material created by former Vorstand member Heinz Zimmerman, was actually a fairly good representation of the kinds of ideas coming from both a traditionalist and progressive direction. Zimmerman gave us an intelligent summation of both sets of concerns. That Zimmerman couldn't really arrive at any conclusions or answers to questions, he himself posed, is also significant. To borrow a term from astrology, the direction of the Society might be called, in the way that he expressed it: void of course - that is absent clear direction.

To come at this from another direction, I'd like to share something from an experience I received by Grace during a group contemplation (from about 20 years ago), where a member who had just died was being remembered. The perception given to me was as follows (I have worked with it since that time, and this understanding is the most current):

There were basically two dominant soul gestures in the Society. The larger gesture (in terms of numbers of members) focuses mostly on a kind of golden past, on the great heights to which the Society had risen during Steiner's lifetime, and with respect especially to the Christmas Conference. Everything in the present in the Society is seen by this thinking as though through a kind of highly sympathetic haze colored by this spirit recollection of a golden past.

The second basic gesture of soul, but smaller in number of members, was from those who imagined a future. Their inner perception was not focused on the past, but on the possible future - the potential they experienced as latent within the Society. This spirit vision was then the point of view out of which they experienced the present, and by this vision the present was antipathetically judged.

The former I would call the traditionalists, and the latter the progressives. The traditionalists tend to want and urge preservation, while the progressives tend to want and urge transformation. Sympathy says this is good, let us hold to this. Antipathy says this is not good, we must change. Of course, no single individual or small group (such as a Branch) is wholly in one gesture or the other, so here we are just trying to delineate the patterns of thought that can be observed and their general nature and direction.

This essay hopes to place itself inside neither pattern, that is, to see the present not out of spirit recollection or spirit vision, but with spirit mindfulness.

* * *

As beginner spiritual social scientist, I strive to perceive what is actually happening in the world and within the Anthroposophical Society. An essential matter, or at least a reasonable place to start, is a certain somewhat controversial theme which concerns the so-called Michaelic Millions. A long essay researching this theme was written by Joel Kobran and published in the Threefold Review for the Fall, 2000.

On the surface, that article represents a kind of traditionalist criticism of a kind of progressive point of view. Kobran took exception to the discussions ongoing among some anthroposophists as regards the concept that Steiner had suggested there were to be in the world six or seven million anthroposophists at the end of the 20th Century, who had been within the supersensible Michael School before incarnating.

In his descriptions of the history of this concept, who is using it, what statements of Steiner's or others can serve as a reference point - in general as something requiring a great deal of careful research, Kobran's article is superb. All that needs to be kept in mind is that he did conclude that the use of this idea, of there being many members of the Michael School presently incarnate who were not yet members of the Anthroposophical Society and who were instead members of what is called Civil Society - a view taken by both Perlas, Ben-Aharon and their co-workers in the Global Network for Threefolding, - the use of this idea was (according to Kobran) defective in several different ways.

I'll not go into details here, but I just wanted to note the existence of this thorough research by Kobran and the existence of the views of others, such as Ben-Aharon's reflections in his The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century concerning the existence (or not) of an large unconscious or instinctive Michael community among humanity, as well as a much smaller more conscious Michael community.

To remain within observable social phenomena of the Society, I'd like to comment a little bit on a recent discussion among a few of the members of the Social Science Section in America, at a meeting I attended in Berkeley, California in late summer 2007. An initiative was there proposed that certain actions be taken via the creation of a website, on which would be various articles and other materials, provided by anthroposophists (and vetted by some kind of committee) that might serve as a support out of Spiritual Science for the work of many non-anthroposophists, who are engaged in creative social work in the world. It is not the details of this proposal that matter to us here, but simply the fact that such a discussion took place and was seriously considered.

In a similar vein, a group was formed, by Society members in the Berkeley area more than a year before, that sought to engage in outreach. If one does an Internet search for the terms "anthroposophical" and "outreach", many hits turn up. We could say that in the Movement and Society, all over the world, there is a common will to connect to others outside of anthroposophical communities, and to participate in the great issues of the day. There was even a book published in 1999, by Temple Lodge, offering many essays on such questions: The Future is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium.

As a social scientist, it has been a part of my work to seek to observe in the phenomena of the social world facts representative of the appearance of the Consciousness Soul, which according to Steiner is the Soul transformation that is to be the signature development of the evolution of consciousness from around 1400 to 3500 AD. Various observations I have made of the activity of this Soul can be found throughout this book. I would like the reader to take it as a given, that once one learns to really appreciate in the own soul the real nature of the Consciousness Soul, it becomes clear how much of an instinctive Consciousness Soul activity is present in the world. It is everywhere, and if it remains unseen to any reader of this book, I urge them to make more careful observations of their own free moral life, and where in the world they see others expressing this free moral life. There is no free moral life, without a corresponding moral intuition of the Good (see my essay The Meaning of...), which moral intuition of the Good fits exactly Steiner's description of the Consciousness Soul in his book Theosophy:

"By causing the self-existent true and good to come to life in his inner being, the human being raises himself above the mere sentient-soul. A light is kindled in her which is imperishable. In so far as the soul lives in this light, she is a participant in the eternal. With the eternal she unites her own existence. What the soul carries within herself of the true and the good is immortal in her. Let us call that which shines forth in the soul as eternal, the consciousness-soul."

For those who wonder about the true, and who may accept that large portions of humanity could be finding their way toward free moral intuitions of the good, I suggest that you consider that the perception of the true necessarily has to be preceded by an ability to perceive the good. If people, for example, are to have at least two incarnations in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, then it is my view that the first (our present) will bring forward the good, which then becomes a basis for the soul's reaching for the true. In the discussion that follows, I'll try to develop this further, and especially the possibility that in this present time one can do both, as long as it is the good that is understood first.

For the moment, let me suggest this. Part of knowing the true is rooted in the inner ability to distinguish the true from the false. The inner organ in the soul, for making such a distinction in a conscious way, is founded on the ability to intentionally ask ourselves inwardly whether what we think we know as the true, we do in fact know to be true. We must place before the eye of our conscience, by asking that express question, the matter of our relationship to knowledge of the true. To ask such a question is to take a moral point of view regarding our own inner actions, that is to first be living out of the good. It is the goodness in our hearts that enables us to honestly consider whether or not we do in fact know something to be true. The more conscious we are of how to know the good, the better will our soul and spiritual life be able to form a right relationship to the knowledge of the true.

To round out our discussions, I'd like to add another nuance - this concerning the lectures of Steiner called: Awakening to Community, in which the concept can be found called the reverse cultus (see lecture 6).

In Awakening to Community (specifically lecture 6) Steiner remarked about a conflict then living in the Society between oppositely disposed groups (those who had duties to continue the past, and those who felt no relationship to such an impulse). Steiner then stated that it might be better if the Society divided itself into two organizations, and that these organizations would then see themselves as sister-souls, taking different paths toward reaching what was essentially the same ideal goal. A recent conversation with a friend gave rise in me the following archetypal imagery in connection with the above distinction between what I am calling the traditionalists and spirit recollection, and the progressives and spirit vision, yet which also seems related to what Steiner described in Awakening to Community as the sister-souls.

My friend thought that the two sisters could be visualized as being in the same relationship as Martha and Mary as revealed in the Gospels (search the Internet for "Gospels Mary and Martha"). Martha, the older sister, saw the world out of tradition and in action took care of the household, while Mary, the younger, pursued freedom and a devotion to the spirit. One writer calls Mary the active gesture, and Martha the contemplative gesture. Now lets not make too much of this, or too little. I do believe, however, that we can find here something very important.

In different places Rudolf Steiner spoke of the Mystery of Golgatha as being an enactment of a central Cosmic Mystery taking place on the Earth in a kind of earthly tableau. All the events connected to this moment are not just unusual historical events, but are rather a kind of Divine Speaking in which great mysteries are represented through the many actors and dramas in this Play.

For example, Christ's death and resurrection, to my thinking, could be seen as the Great Archetype of dying and becoming that moves among all that is living in earthly existence, such that when Goethe discovers the principle of metamorphosis of plants he is finding a reflection of this Great Archetype as it expresses itself across time in all manner of phenomenal existence, both cosmic and earthly .

In a like fashion, I suggest the relationship of Martha and Mary is an archetype, one which we find folded and blended into the very nature and living structure of the development of the Anthroposophical Society. Nor is what I am suggesting an entirely new thought. The sometimes conflicting impulses between preservation and initiative are common everywhere and others have written of them in regards to our Society.

What I am trying to suggest is that these sister-soul impulses, which manifested in a conflicting way in the article by Kobran that had criticized the work of Perlas and Ben-Aharon, are both healthy and needed. The meeting place then of those who on the one hand take seriously the duties that evolve from an emphasis on spirit recollection (and are drawn inward into contemplation), and of those who take seriously the duties evolved out of spirit vision (and are drawn outward into action), can be reconciled. The two can learn to understand each other, and to see in the other a necessary part of the whole, which understanding may then lead to the Natural Transformation of the Anthroposophical Society in America (and by implication world-wide).

With this background, let us come at this from a slightly new direction, following out more carefully the concept: natural.

Recall that Steiner said, which I paraphrase: the American develops Anthroposophy in a natural way.

I cannot say that I have experienced all that is anthroposophical in America, but I do not doubt that my experience (of now almost 28 years) is broad enough to give me a representative phenomenal picture. Everywhere in America there are traditional institutional social forms, such as Branches, study groups, Waldorf Schools, Camphill Communities, Eurythmy Schools, teacher training facilities and on and on and on.

In such Centers of activity (which would also include many conferences), the practices are traditional in the best sense of that word. What is done is mostly what has been recognized as the best practices born out of our experience of the past. In these Centers of anthroposophical activity members draw inward to meet each other as a community, and then afterward go back to their very busy lives.

At the same time, in many of these busy lives, the moral freedom and individuality consciously fostered as a member of the Society and Movement leads people into action as participants in the wider non-anthroposophical life. In the Center, we are concentrated together, at the Periphery we have no edge, but are dispersed and interwoven with all that is happening in the wider world.

In the Center we recognize each other as sharing an unusual common interest, focused on Rudolf Steiner's personality and teachings, and at the Periphery we are one with the rest of those in humanity that seek to heal its wounds and move it progressively forward into the future. In American, in particular, with its special soul characteristics, we find that while few know of Steiner, many yet live instinctively out of the individual moral freedom (English speakers are instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights - R.S.). Whether it is just a natural foods co-op, or a political group such as the Greens, or reading of and giving money to causes such as Doctors without Borders, many anthroposophists fully participate, as brothers and sisters, with those seeking the progressive advancement of the human condition, out of less conscious - that is instinctive - free moral activity.

When we draw inward into our Centers, we are glad to have the comfort provided by the Martha Impulse, to have a sense of coming home. And then, when we breath outward into the larger society, we join with the naturally arising Mary Impulse which can be found everywhere, in both conscious and instinctive forms.

Yes, I know, for many in our circles this is not true. The last thing many of those, who are more filled with the Mary Impulse, want to do is hang out with the Martha folk. Meanwhile, many of the Martha Impulse find that what the Mary folk do is incomprehensible and a violation of all the rules of tradition (particularly anything Steiner said).

Now one of the rules of polarity, that can be studied in may places where life processes provide organization, is that in the inside of one pole is its opposite, as a small but concentrated essence. This means that the Martha folk have a Mary Impulse in their core and that the Mary folk have a Martha Impulse in their core.

As a consequence, the traditionalists in their contemplative gesture must naturally always seek to actively deepen it. Our inner developmental tasks we always recognize as incomplete, although the outer form of our activity tends to remains constant (traditional). For the progressives, their transformational gesture must naturally always seek order, or an unrestrained urge to constant change will lead to chaos. Activists are always building social new form, so that the community of the Mary Impulse has a well formed structure or social foundation from which to act.

In the Society confusion occurs when the Mary Impulse wants to change the traditional form in the Center, or when the Martha Impulse criticizes the inner work of the activists as not properly grounded in Steiner. The Mary Impulse in its own field of activity has to move beyond Steiner and traditional Anthroposophy (so as to be compatible with the wider world), while the Martha Impulse has to maintain in the Center its concentrated devotion to Steiner.

Sister-souls, sharing the same ideal goal, is what Steiner indicated in Awakening to Community. What is this goal?

I suggest it is the furthering of the life of the spirit in humanity, which act of furthering is rooted in a new Way, a Mystery Way made compatible with natural science.

The Martha Impulse preserves the Steiner core, while the Mary Impulse has to forge allegiances with that which does not, and need not, recognize Steiner. In this sense, I believe Ben-Aharon is right in his conception of two communities, a conscious Michael community and an unconscious (instinctive) Michael community. At the Periphery of anthroposophical activity, where the Mary Impulse has to integrate itself with the wider world, brotherhood and sisterhood means that one cannot stand apart on the basis of doctrine, but must find real inner compatibility. For the Mary Impulse this is done in recognizing the free moral nature (Consciousness Soul) instincts in others, and that this inner free moral nature can be shared across any imagined division of doctrine or path.

From the Center, in the natural realm of the Martha Impulse, Kobran was correct to suggest that, to the extent the Perlas Ben-Aharon group seemed to see the Consciousness Soul only in Civil Society and not in the world of banking, politics or corporate life, this view had to be false. Thus, the Mary Impulse can be aided, out of the work of the Martha Impulse, to struggle to see more deeply into the World, and perhaps observe that an individual's membership in any group cannot be used to define the state of their inner moral freedom (which observation includes the Anthroposophical Society and Movement - membership in either or both is not necessarily a sign of the achievement of ethical individualism).

The contemplative gesture can inform in a good way the active gesture. Of course, in order to really do this, the contemplative gesture will find its help ignored if it is rooted in a non-objective criticism; and likewise, the active gesture will lose something very precious if it removes itself too far from the Mother Source carried more strongly by the contemplative core.

The Kobran article, in its criticism of the Perlas Ben-Aharon idea of where are the so-called Michaelic Millions, also was concerned with the question of whether it was accurate to see Civil Society as a cultural gesture of threefolding in the world social organism. This dispute then would suggest that a rethinking on the part of both the Martha core and the Mary rim needs to be done as regards the state of threefolding of any new cultural life in the wider world. As this is a significant question, I'll try to contribute to its resolution next. It is, in addition, my view that learning to perceive these aspects of modern social existence will be very helpful for everyone in Anthroposophy, whether they more strongly identify with the Martha or the Mary Impulses.

The basic intuitions of the Mary Impulse as regards threefolding are represented quite strongly in Ben-Aharon's remarkable (and quite important for Mary Impulse anthroposophists) book: America's Global Responsibility: individuation, initiation and threefolding. A part of this view could be stated briefly as follows:

In the course of the 19th and 20th Centuries, the general condition of human societies encouraged greater human freedom and individuality. As a consequence, out of this freedom non-governmental organizations arose and became after a time more effective in delivering aid to those human needs that governments were becoming less and less able to provide. The State (that is one aspect of the political-legal sphere) was not able any longer to be devoted to goodness out of freedom, and into this vacuum stepped a Consciousness Soul response that was world wide: Civil Society.

At the time then of the arrival of the global economy, with its huge raw forces and influences, a counter-pole came into being as a necessary balance - a new cultural impulse. So effective was this counter-pole, that the institutionally supported and hired minds of those seeking to rule economic life recognized it long before most thinkers on threefolding in the anthroposophical Society and Movement recognized it. Civil Society, a free moral (Mary Impulse) gesture that organized social forms for the purpose of solving humanity-wide social problems, represents to such thinkers as Perlas and Ben-Aharon the coming into being of a world-wide transformation of the Cultural Sphere of humanity. Kobran seemed to disagree, and I am certain he is not alone.

The difficulty lies not, in my experience, in one or the other being more correct in their views, but in the fact that the Martha Impulse tends to think about the threefold social order through a different inner process than does the Mary Impulse. Since the method (or gesture) of thought is different, the resulting thoughts and conclusions will of course be different.

One of the phenomena that can be observed in the anthroposophical Society and Movement is that there are two major and quite different paths of development: the Knowledge of Higher Worlds path, and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity path. In several essays in this book I make reference to this, and I will not be repeating myself here about this in any great detail (all of which can be found elsewhere).

A major characteristic of the former is that it seeks the spiritual indirectly through the world of the senses, that is through the world were Ahriman has a certain influence, both within the soul and outside it in sense reality. The latter seeks the spiritual directly, through self observation (introspection), and here encounters the realm of Lucifer, again inside the own soul and then at last at the Threshold.

Both paths influence the development and awakening of more conscious thinking. As the Society and Movement developed over the 20th Century, the inner core of Martha folk (who are far more numerous) became quite involved with Knowledge of Higher Worlds. Those who followed The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity tended to the edges, and thus we find such as Barfield, Kuhlewind and Ben-Aharon on the Periphery of the Society, where the Mary folk are gathering.

The thinking, as practiced and modeled in the Center, tended toward a kind of European idealism of the soul. While on the Periphery there was an instinct for a more pragmatic (almost American) introspective life. The Martha folk looked at threefolding as an ideal to be incarnated, and the Mary folk as a phenomena of social existence to be perceived (a division rooted in the differernce between the Aristotelians and the Platonists?). So we find Kobran, for example, carefully reading Steiner, and vetting any thoughts about world threefolding development against the ideal of threefolding given out by Steiner. On the other hand, such as Perlas and Ben-Aharon tried to live into the phenomena of social existence and listen to that social-forming spirit speak into their thinking.

Where this takes us next is something we have to be very careful about understanding.

The knowledge that comes into thinking from that which we have called a kind of progressive spirit vision process is out of the future. While the knowledge that comes into thinking from that we have called a kind of traditionalist spirit recollection comes from the past. The former pulls us forward, and the latter anchors us to our necessary roots. It is only through spirit mindfulness, in the present, that we can meld the two poles together into their natural unity and harmony. Too much sympathy for the past make an idol in the present, and too much antipathetic measuring of the present against a vision of the future ungrounds us.

Paradoxically, the threefolding idealists are living in that aspect of the Mary Impulse which is the core inside of the Martha folk. So to perceive the ideal of that which is not yet fully incarnated is to have a vision of the future. While the threefolding phenomenologists, fixed in their thinking on the present, are really only seeing the past in the present - what has become - for that which is living (changing) in the present is not fixed in form, but is rather invisible or hidden as it were. Their inner core of the Martha Impulse tends to fix the views being developed by the Mary folk.

At the same time, those on the edge, in meeting the rest of humanity at the Periphery of anthroposophical (the conscious Michael community) activity have to set aside the Steiner idealism in presenting threefolding. The unconscious Michael community has no use for what would appear to them as a dogma, so the Steiner given idealism in the conception of threefolding has to be stripped away, otherwise its presentation will be sterile (see the work in the world of Gary Lamb for an example of this). What the Martha folk want to present out of traditional Anthroposophy has no use for the wider world, and Steiner even pointed this out in suggesting that when Anthroposophy truly entered social life it would disappear.

The movement from the Center, out of the contemplative Martha aspect of the sister-souls, outward toward and through the Periphery and as a gift to humanity through the actions of the Mary aspect of the sister-souls, involves the disappearance of Anthroposophy, at least as presently conceived. The Martha folk conceive of Anthroposophy as the substance and content of Rudolf Steiner's works, which need (correctly) to be preserved and kept linked to his name. The Mary folk conceive of Anthroposophy as the method of cognition, the will to spirit in the soul that leads to living thinking. Such living thinking is not owned by Rudolf Steiner by the way, who was only one of those who discovered it (for example, Coleridge and Emerson discovered it before him).

Christ is the creator of the human potential for living thinking, and its major co-participant when we are able to engender it out of ourselves. At the Periphery of the Society and Movement, where the rest of humanity is encountered, it will be Christ who is ultimately linked with this living thinking, for it is Him that is the Life that comes into us when we learn to think in this new way.

It would be possible to say then that the Martha folk would view the current world conditions as lacking something of the ideal as represented by Steiner in his books on the social organism. The Mary folk would view the world of social phenomena as a logos speaking of macro threefolding (the appearance of Civil Society) into a cultural dynamic as an opposite pole to an economic dynamic (Elite Globalization). However, if you read carefully what Ben-Aharon has written in his book on America's Global Responsibility, his presentation is a bit weak on certain levels. As this is important I am going to take up this subject next. That is we are going, for a time, to look at the present day threefold conditions of the social world out of spirit mindfulness, rather than out of spiritual recollection or spirit vision.

Years ago I wrote of this theme and offered an article on it to the Threefold Review which choose not to print it. Several years later I was able to publish it on my website, where aspects of it drew the attention of the English anthroposophist Terry Boardman, and he wrote of these ideas in an essay called: The Idea of the Threefold Society at the Dawn of the Third Millennium, which was first published in the book referred to above: The Future is Now: Anthroposophy at the New Millennium.

Here is some of what Terry Boardman wrote:

"In his lectures to the West-East Congress in Vienna 1922, Rudolf Steiner spoke of Europe-Asia as 'the problem' of modern times and Europe-America as 'the solution'. By this he meant that Europeans were preserving the dessicated remnants of an ancient Asian spirituality in the dusty abstractions of their intellectual, political, and religious systems. The future lay rather with the will to create out of nothing. And this willingness he saw in the youthful energies of the Americans. It is no surprise therefore to learn that it is an American anthroposopher, Joel Wendt, who has articulated best this need for Anthroposophy to enter the belly of the Media. Wendt has written: (13)

"What else have politicians, terrorists, single interest groups, businesses etc. been fighting to control and manipulate? Within Media the People come to common (equalized) self knowledge and mutual understanding. Within Media the idea of the State and of the rights and duties of citizenship come to common form. Media shines light on the activities of the State, and media personalities (with varying degrees of consciousness and moral integrity) believe they act thus for the People. However we turn our thinking, if we remain pictorially descriptive of the dynamics of social life as these actually play themselves out in the political-legal sphere we will come to the perception of the threefoldness of State-Media-People.

"It is a risk, Wendt says, to enter this realm, but a risk that should be taken, a nettle that should be grasped if the Media serpent is not to continue merely to slide in the dust.

Media, if its present condition is clearly understood, is young; i.e. it is still undergoing formative developments, and functions today with a kind of moral or spiritual immaturity. In this sense Media may take one of two different courses of future development. It may become a kind of moon center, rigid, arid, not light originating, but rather only able to reflect those impulses which come to it from the outside. Or, it may become a sun center, a source of warmth and understanding, a medium of creative forces flowing into the social order and carrying both in deed and in word a true image of man as a being of soul and spirit. I imagine then, Media becoming a sun, a true heart of the heart of the social organism, so that the common understanding of the People will find a renewed vision of the State. In Media a song can yet be heard, the song of the truly free man, the moral man. In this way the rigidification, the mechanization, the image spell-binding of the word will be overcome, and a true understanding given to Western civilization of the Idea of the Threefold Social Organism as a dynamic social form already latent in human social existence in the West....There is of course no predicting how events will proceed, yet it seems clear to me that this historic moment is pregnant with certain kinds of potential. Just as there is great risk of a further fall into materialism, so as well there is much possibility for spiritual transformation. If we do not blind ourselves with a kind of threefold dogma (for example, that the first need is to free the spiritual cultural life), but instead truly perceive the actual dynamics. then as far as I am able to hold in pictorial thought, the ripe moment lies in bringing moral transformative forces to the thinking active within the Media, to bring a song to life just here in the heart of the heart of the social organism.

"Here speaks a true American voice - a voice of idealism and the will to courage."

Leaving aside Mr. Boardman's kind words, let us consider then the concept that during the development Western Civilization, a kind of natural threefolding occurred in the newly being born Life of Rights (which arose when the Greeks and the Romans began to see the State as one pole of the Life of Rights, and the Citizen as the other pole). During the course of this unfolding of the Life of Rights, it threefolded within itself, not unlike the natural threefolding of the Cultural Sphere into Science, Art and Religion (or what is latent in the Economic Sphere: production, distribution and consumption). Only with the Life of Rights we have a natural threefolding into: State, Media and People (or Citizen).

This makes Media to be the heart of the heart of the social organism. Since the middle realm of a threefold organism (such as the human being, which is the Archetype of the Social Organism) is, in part, a melding together of the two poles, yet which seeks to be the selfless servant of both, we can see in modern media the struggle between economic and cultural impulses. Like the rest of the social organism, Media is dominated today by the cold calculations of profit and power seeking motives. Yet, this is the outer Media, which has been enriched deep in its interior core by that free moral spirit currently inhabiting the Internet.

The Internet is to a great degree that natural anarchy which is hidden beneath Steiner's idea of ethical individualism. We find this individual and natural anarchy in the Open Source communities and their various services given away for free to the Internet, and in the struggles between the free exchange of ideas and art that is giving fits to those who cling to the old Roman idea of property rights under the current term: intellectual property rights (which wants to own the products of spirit, by the way - but that is a whole other story). In any event, between the millions of blogs and millions of individual websites, the Internet is an extraordinary development of a free Media process as it works deeply within the middle of the threefold nature of the Life of Rights: State, Media and People.

This was the means, as was noted by Ben-Aharon in his book on America, that enabled Civil Society to defeat the introduction of a horrible attack on the economic life of the world social organism in the guise of a treaty called: the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, which would have turned all economies world wide into prey for the concentration of wealth among speculators and huge financial capital institutions. The Internet has become the physical apparatus of living social reality: free Media, which is the free moral heart of the heart of the social organism, and was absolutely necessary for people to become informed of this attack (and essential to the use this same resource - free Media - in repelling this attack. The whole confrontation, against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments by Civil Society, would have been impossible without a truly free Media in its current form of development.

If I was to point toward the most special place for the Mary Impulse to work, it would not be so much in Civil Society itself, but within free Media on the Internet. This free Media is the beating heart of the lifeblood of the community of wisdom that is Civil Society, or the instinctive Michael community. The heart is built up out of the streaming intelligence, from below and above, yet is that one place were the opposing nature of these streams can be mediated.

From above, out of a somewhat luciferic Civil Society comes those ideals and dreams that represent an active and instinctive free moral intelligence, while from below, out of the ahrimanic economy, with its technological excesses comes the tool - the Internet. Somewhere some people have to be wise enough to consciously serve this confluence of downward streaming wisdom as it intersects with upward streaming wisely authored earthly formations. Here is the point from which to alter the world conceptions of the community of human beings meeting on the Internet. At the same time, it is not the Martha Impulse that will function best here, but the Mary Impulse.

The living thinking, cultivated in the contemplative core where the Martha Impulse struggles to nurture the Mother - Anthroposophy, has to move out through the Mary Impulse into the beating heart of free Media, and from there into the social periphery where the instinctive Consciousness Soul of humanity can come to collective self-consciousness. Only in free Media can the living nature of social threefolding, of the reverse cultus, and of a scientifically based new gnosis come to conscious world-wide understanding. Here, in this periphery, lives Christ. In the interactions on the Internet, world-wide in scope and crossing all former barriers of culture, race, language and religion, the Michael gesture predominates. Human beings seek each other as human beings, no longer as Jews or Arabs or Americans or Chinese. Then, in the interweaving exchanges, carried by a human created physical structure no less significant than the cosmos created physical structure which is necessary for speech, Christ lives in between. All is, of course, crude and barely workable, but even so, if we look at the drivers behind much of the human activity on the Internet, it's use is forged by hundreds of thousands of human intentions to create bonds of contact across former boundaries, which ultimately leads to face to face interactions (from the world's Social Forums to Moveon's American meet ups, to individual love affairs and marriages).

Let us now weave back in a previous theme: Steiner is the one, who in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity found the way to this living thinking through the application of the methods of natural science to the processes of introspection. That deed will remain linked to him for a very long time. In a certain sense, the Mary folk are the mediating principle between the inner core of anthroposophical tradition and Steiner study held dear by the Martha folk, and the wider world of humanity. Martha strives to keep the treasure house pure, while Mary tries to distribute the treasure freely to all, humbly and without need for credit, just as Christ gives Himself away without needing any acknowledgment.

As American anthroposophists (and perhaps others in the world) wake up to this conception of the sister-souls and their natural relationship, this waking up may foster in both realms impulses toward a greater clarity of activity. For the Martha folk this may arrive in the form of a desire to deepen their relationship to Anthroposophy by taking up more firmly the inner work of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity - that is to approach the spiritual more directly (instead of indirectly) through a scientifically based introspective activity. For the Mary folk this may bring about in them the desire to deepen their practices of the reverse cultus, for they will find that not only does the wider world have an instinctive relationship to free moral action, but also to deeper group practices rooted in the spirit.

After a century of anthroposophical work, it seems to be the time in which the belief, that The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is too hard, has to be overcome; and, that Knowledge of Higher Worlds, while a quite definite path to the spirit, has to be seen as Steiner saw it, as lacking the same surety or exactness as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (see Steiner's remarks toward the end of the fifth Chapter of Occult Science: an outline). Out of such a change of emphasis in its contemplative directions, the Martha Impulse, in the core of the Society and Movement, will find itself able to achieve much that before was impossible. They will, by such an act, remove, from the dust heap of the 20th Century, the most important work Steiner created, and return it to its throne as the true ruler of anthroposophical spirit activity, since it represents Steiner's own path of development (which Knowledge of Higher Worlds does not).

At the same time, the reverse cultus too must be rescued from that same dust heap into which the understandably spiritually immature activity of anthroposophists in the 20th Century discarded it. Let me create for the reader an Imagination of such a Rite in action, as an aid to appreciating what has been lost. For this Rite - the reverse cultus - is the Queen of the New Mysteries, just as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is the King.

* * *

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 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.

Thus revealing the truth that: I am with you every day, until the culmination of time. Matthew 28:20

* * *

What does this mean for the sister-souls, the Martha Impulse and the Mary Impulse?

In the Center, where the Martha folk strive to keep the work deep, in addition to their renewed studies of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, can be added a renewed interest in the reverse cultus. At the Periphery, where the Mary folk strive to integrate with the wider world, they will find everywhere, just as they had previously observed an instinct for free moral action, an equal striving for the spirit in conversation. Whether it is in a formal setting such as the striving in 12 Step Groups or the study of Non-violent Communication, the instinctive path of spiritual communion through conversation is everywhere - for again: Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I am there and I am with you every day, until the culmination of time. Christ does not make a distinction between anthroposophist and non-anthroposophist, nor from a certain perspective should we.

The Martha Impulse recognizes the treasures that Rudolf Steiner spent his life forces to give to humanity. The Mary Impulse recognizes the need to meet people where they are. Turning everyone into anthroposophists is not the mission of Anthroposophy.

The deeper is the contemplative core (Martha Impulse) of the conscious Michael community, the richer and more practical will be the realization of what Steiner taught, especially in all the daughter movements. The more other (thou) directed is the active rim (Mary Impulse) of the conscious Michael community, the more will the wider world be able to receive the dying into becoming of Anthroposophy as that metamophosis of spirit is transmitted from the Center, through the mediating Periphery thence into service in the world.

There is a direction of movement in the horizontal social, from left to right:

>Center-Martha Impulse <(Michael)> Periphery-Mary Impulse <(Michael-Christ)> World>

which as a social impulse (in the horizontal) eventually loops around (a cross within a circle) and pours itself into the individual biographies, from within (this, from the vertical-spiritual), or: Fires in the Biography, upward and downward.

holy breath

free moral activity (instinctive and conscious)

reverse cultus groups (instinctive and conscious)

sharing of trials in the group creation of the chalice

trials by fire in the biographies

where it once again spreads out in the horizontal-social, the whole inwardly a lemniscate gesture on the one hand, and outwardly a circle-cross gesture on the other. This creates in the in between, where Christ lives, the spiral-like gesture of development of which we all should now be well aware.

It is in the fires in the trials of the biographies that the outer gesture of our baptism by holy breath and fire appears. Outwardly we are baptized in trials by fire in our individual biographies (through Christ's Art as Lord of Karma), and at the same time we are inwardly baptized by the Living Christ via holy breath.

Thus does the future and the past, via Anthroposophy both in its concentrated form (conscious Michael community - the sister-souls of Martha and Mary) and distributed form (unconscious Michael community), homeopathically pollinate the present social world of humanity in a natural way. Through the shared gesture of free moral activity, and conscious conversation (whether fully awake, instinctive or somewhere in between) humanity is united in spiritual communion with and via Christ.

For anthroposophists, this creates significant responsibility. If they fight among each other, unable to recognize the value of the different Impulses, they will cripple their own work. Only by walking side by side, each honoring the other, may the two gestures - the sister-souls - accomplish the work that neither can do on its own.

The Class, the School of Spiritual Science, the work of the Sections, the work of Branches and Group - all this concentrated Steiner focused activity, essentially contemplative in nature, is one kind of work. It supports and enables the other kind, the active in the world work - the work of outreach. Some will prefer to limit their work to one sphere, and others will move back and forth. All that is really needed is for the two to understand each other, instead of judging each other. On the success of that seeking after understanding, a great deal depends.

For the real challenge in the end is whether the Martha folk and the Mary folk can combine their ideal intentions in such a way that humanity is served - such that something begins to come to light in free Media - that is Anthroposophy leaves the Society and Movement and dies into the living world social organism as a fully awake and conscious gesture of service. We are not meant to create a new philosophy or a new sub-group of spirit practitioners - that is to spread the idea of Anthroposophy, but purely and simply to serve the needs of humanity - that is to practice Anthroposophy.