anthroposophy: being human

to walk the human path

Humanity has a cosmic mission. To assert this in an era of materialistic “objectivity,” when meaning and purpose and even consciousness itself are often regarded as fantasies, is revolutionary. This is not simply the old belief that we have a place between the animals and the angels. It is a transformative new insight: we are an essential part of world design.

Anthroposophy, said Rudolf Steiner, arises as a need of the human heart, and it has arrived in human culture at a stage in our evolution when we can easily lose confidence. Through a renewed consciousness of what it is to be human, it reopens a pathway from the human spirit to the creative spirit of the cosmos. To evolve to our next and higher level we must feel how there is something higher than ourselves.

Alongside key insights and guidance in self-development, Rudolf Steiner reminded us that we actually will find our higher selves in the world around us: in each other, and in community.

Related articles in this issue: The Twelve Senses: Sensing Justice in the Encounter, by Paige Hartsell; Biography & Social Art in the Time of Covid, by Karen Gierlach; Two Lives in Progress, reviews by Joyce Reilly

farms healing the earth

That humanity is fully interwoven with the living earth, and indeed the solar system and cosmos, is a foundational insight for the anthroposophical initiative in agriculture, nutrition, and planetary healing. Biodynamic agriculture was one of Rudolf Steiner’s last initiatives—all of which were undertaken because individual people has asked for them. The heavy use of artificial fertilizers after World War I in Germany caused many farmers to realize that the Earth itself was being stripped of its life. Steiner offered the perspective that a farm could be integrated, with the mineral soil, the life of the plants, the consciousness of the animals, and the creative guidance of the human being forming an organism and bringing new life to soil.

Related articles in this issue: Open-Pollinator Future Lab, Youth+Agriculture, presentation by Walter Goldstein

medicine more human

Health is a topic both intimate and limitless. Its field is truly suggestive in scope of the whole universe turned inside out. The majestic qualities of minerals are liberated in organic fluidity, the tiny cells of life are incalculably busy, the sensitivity of active and reactive consciousness amazes, and all is touched by the slowly unfolding creative potential of individuality.

The centenary of anthroposophic medicine in 2020 came in the midst of a global health crisis. That jolt demands us to see ourselves more truly in this human existence on a living earth. We begin with an account some fifty years old, followed by excepts from a new paper. The language change of half a century already reveals tremendous challenge and change.

“The young doctors sought not merely a deepened knowledge, but inwardly developed powers which could give depth and renewed life to the whole art of doctoring. To the stammering questions they brought to Dr. Steiner, he gave answers which can be summed up in the words: “You are seeking to make medicine more human.” ... In an age when even in medicine the materialistic world-outlook has more and more to say, and human perception threatens to be destroyed by technical and mechanical diagnosis, Rudolf Steiner with Ita Wegman laid down the first principles of the renewal of a medicine that has its starting-point entirely in the knowledge of the human being. This knowledge does not take into consideration only our bodily sheaths that may become sick, but also, what the eternal in us wishes to experience, has to experience, in an illness. With the knowledge of reincarnation and karma as background, the conception of sickness and healing given us by Rudolf Steiner can be ever further developed.” —Grete Kirchner-Bockholt: (Golden Blade 1958,“Widening the Art of Healing”)

Related articles in this issue: Rudolf Steiner & the Art of Healing, by Christoph Linder, MD; The Relevance of Anthroposophic Medicine for Our Times (excerpt), by Ricardo Bartelme, MD, and Walter Alexander

art awakens higher life

In the splitting-apart of the ancient mysteries into the elements of modern culture, the arts have held an intermediate place, like the place held by feelings in the soul life. And art also works between the physical world where it would produce its effects, and the spiritual world where live the ideals the artist would realize. For the reunified culture of the future, art is the repository of technique. Science knows bursts of imagination, inspiration, and intuition which can and perhaps always have produced its breakthrough discoveries, but it hurries off quickly to repeat experiments and measure results. The disciplined development of imagination, inspiration, and intuition which Rudolf Steiner called for continue to be realized consistently today only artists...

Related articles in this issue: The Unified Field, by David Anderson

enter the (cosmic) child

It is in education that the practical value of anthroposophy is best known in the world today. The understanding of the human being as a four-fold being in which the time-limited and the enduring are combined allows teachers to see uniqueness, experience, and pre-existing intentions in every child, while the archetypal stages of development provide an immensely practical set of expectations and guides for learning at all ages. The success of Waldorf/Steiner education worldwide now asks that it take up a broader responsibility for empowering coming generations—”learning to change the world.”

Related articles in this issue: Individuality and Diversity, by Harlan Gilbert

awakening community

In Rudolf Steiner’s description of human evolution (that underappreciated evolution of consciousness), our present age is a time for the development of the strong ego or “I”. It is also necessarily a time of individual isolation and selfishness, and people who seek to develop higher consciousness must begin to prepare the age to come. Steiner describes this next, “sixth post-Atlantean epoch” as a time when several things will have changed among those who may be called “civilized.” Most prominently, we will not be able to ignore the needs and sufferings of each other, but will respond to them as naturally as today we would attend to a need or injury to our own body. Imagine the reduction in fear that such solidarity would bring, and the ease of social collaborations!

Related articles in this issue: Social Ecology in Holistic Leadership, reviews by Christopher Schaefer, PhD

science and technology

Anthroposophy reveals what is conveniently overlooked: that modern science, descended from “natural science,” is a discipline specialized to focus only on measurable physical substance and mechanical forms. So its fantastic success leads us to misunderstand ourselves, since it cannot fully grasp the living, the conscious, or the individual—life, soul and spirit.

Out of this science is born a technology which produces abundance, and also, used without understanding its limitations, creates wastelands in the realms of life and consciousness. Learning how we can connect to the worlds of life and of higher consciousness and their beings is where anthroposophy can help humanity meet a most urgent and immediate challenge.

Related articles in this issue: The Perennial Alternative by Frederick Amrine, review by Frederick Dennehy; Opening Secrets: Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science, and Technology, by John Bloom