The Twelve Senses: Sensing Justice in the Encounter, by Paige Hartsell

Justice has been at the center of conversation, policy, and mass gatherings over the last year. For many people it has been an ever-present theme over generations as our world struggles to understand what it means to bring equity to fruition across race, class, and gender, cultures, the natural environment, and religious and spiritual traditions. What exactly do we mean by justice? What does justice look like in relation to our Self, the world, and the environment, and as we encounter one another?

On August 11-15, Threefold Educational Foundation and partners is hosting “The Twelve Senses: Sensing Justice in the Encounter.” This international online conference will examine this question of justice in relation to the lower, higher, and highest senses. There are many lenses through which to look at the development of the twelve senses posited by Rudolf Steiner as they relate to such topics as education or agriculture, for instance. Last year, a Twelve Senses conference entitled “A Step into a Human Future” marked the 60th anniversary of Karl König’s lectures on the senses given at the Threefold Summer School in Spring Valley, New York, and the 80th anniversary of Camphill in the United States. Recollecting Steiner’s charge that anthroposophy and human spiritual and social development is not a static task, the conference planning committee explored what keeps the König lectures relevant today. To heal the trauma and unrest of our time, we must be in authentic relationships with those around us. The development and health of the twelve senses is critical for meeting the challenges in all realms of our lives. Integrating the well-developed senses grows our capacity to live into the I-being of another person, to experience compassion, and to be in service to the world. This year’s conference will examine the theme of justice in relation to the senses in their three groupings and in their capacity to sense justice in the encounter in the inner life of the Self, in the world, and the environment, and in our interactions with other beings.

We are honored to have keynotes offered this year by Dr. Lakshmi Prasana, Jean-Michel Florin, Michael Kokinos, and Joan Sleigh. Workshops will fill the middle of each day and cover a wide range of topics, including curative education, the understanding of the senses in the Algonquian/Abenaki language, movement and clowning, inner work, social activism, fiber crafts, education and technology, and more. Each day will include a panel discussion with the day’s workshop leaders and guests, and we will have two additional panels on the topics of curative education and social activism. Presenters this year include faculty and students from Raphael Academy (New Orleans), faculty from the Fiber Craft Studio, Dottie Zold and Frank Agrama of ALIANT Alliance, Robin Schmidt, Carrie Shuchardt, Sharifa Oppenheimer, Elizabeth Frishkoff, and Algonquian/Abenaki language teacher Jesse Bowman Bruchac, individuals working on the frontlines of society in the fight against oppression, faculty from Camphill Academy and The Camphill School, and faculty from the Otto Specht School (Chestnut Ridge, NY). Recorded pre-conference lectures by Richard Steel and Jan Goeschel will be available for registrants. The full program and registration information can be found at www.twelvesenses.org.

Karl König wrote that if we are to strengthen our humanity for living into the future, we have to understand the three highest senses (A Living Physiology, trans C. Sproll, Camphill Books, 2006, p. 254). Although we can find evidence of honor and respect for our common humanity in the world, we also must acknowledge that the capacity for building the recognition of our common humanity is under attack. While our twelve senses are developing simultaneously, they are also dependent on and build on one another in order that the human spirit can flower to its utmost in this present life. It is only through an understanding of ourselves and the knowledge that we are endowed with these higher senses that “will awaken us to our reality” (p. 160), as well as deepen our understanding of justice as a moral deed of our choosing.

In developing our senses, we can strive towards objectifying our responses to sense impressions when faced with the challenges of what it means to be human in this world that is both horrifying and indescribably beautiful. We can free ourselves from biases based on our sympathies and antipathies so that our encounters and interactions are unfettered by our untransformed soul capacities. About the United States, König wrote in 1960 that if we Americans awakened to the reality of our highest senses,

It would blow through the continent like a mighty, rushing wind...and more and more people [would] become able to see the spiritual image... in every human being, in every growing child. This is what is so sorely needed all over the world (p. 161).

What does justice mean to you? Please let us know! Email your thoughts in fifty words or less to: twelvesenses@threefold.org

Paige Hartsell has been involved with anthroposophy through education, agriculture, and community living since 1994. A former Waldorf high school teacher, she worked for several years in both curative and farm education. She is currently pursuing masters degrees in Divinity and Social Work with concentrations in Islam and Interreligious Engagement and Community Organizing through Union Theological Seminary and Hunter College in Harlem. She is an intern at the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice where she is researching food access and security issues in the US as they relate to the Poor People’s Campaign analysis of the five interlocking injustices of systemic poverty, systemic racism, militarism, environmental degradation, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.